THE OTHER WOMAN
Mary sat on the bed in the bedroom of her suite, trying to moderate
Jack, who had furtively stolen up five minutes before in response
to her telephone summons. The stage was set for the last act of her
carefully planned version of the eternal triangle,--the time for the
curtain to rise was near at hand,--and as she talked to Jack she kept
her ears alert for any sound that might come through the open door
connecting with her sitting-room. This would denote the entrance of
Maisie, and was to be the cue for the action to begin on which she had
staked everything. To prevent any misadventure to her plan through the
automatic habit of ringing bells, Mary had disconnected the wire.
She had not told Jack of the rôle that he was to play, for she had not
dared to trust him with the knowledge that he was playing a rôle--he
might balk; so she had the added difficulty of so managing him that he
would play a part without even guessing that he was play-acting.
“I can’t stand this situation any longer, Mary,” Jack fumed. “I want
to come out with it all! Think of me having to sneak up here to see my
own wife! And think of the other angle of my damned situation--being
fairly shoved to the brink of the altar with another woman. I can’t
stall that thing off for more than a day or so longer. Then I’ll simply
have to come out with the truth--our being married.”
“Jack,” she said sharply, for there had been dynamite in his temperish
speech, “you must remember what you just agreed upon--that even when
we’re alone you are not to refer to my being your wife, or to our
marriage. You are not to speak of those things again until I give my
consent.”
“All right, Mary,” he groaned.
“For the present we’ve got to keep up the pretense that our
relationship is what we admitted before your father. You promise that,
too?”
“All right--I promise. But this is certainly hell!” And he looked his
misery; for his habit of life had accustomed Jack Morton neither to
suffering nor self-restraint. “But say, I don’t see that you’re working
out anything with Maisie Jones--at least I’ve felt no relief.”
“You will if you keep your promises.”
She looked at the little gold clock--Jack’s gift--on her
dressing-table; the hour was exactly four. She must now, with her
utmost carefulness, steer the dialogue without Jack’s guessing that it
was being steered.
“What we’re doing is for the best, Jack,--you must trust me as to
that,” she said. “But, of course, things were a lot more comfortable
when we were at the Mordona.”
“Why, our flat there was heaven!” he exclaimed. She had him talking on
the right tack now, and he held the course enthusiastically. Her ears
reached out for other sounds than his words; and after a minute or two
she heard a slight noise in her sitting-room--and she knew that Maisie
Jones had entered; and she knew--in fact she was visualizing it--that
Maisie had heard Jack’s voice, that Maisie had suddenly paused and was
breathlessly listening.
“It was pleasant, Jack,” she said distinctly--her mind’s eye seeing the
effect on the tense figure in the next room.
“I’ll never forget that little flat, sweetheart,” he enthused. “That
week we spent at the Mordona--say, that was living!”
“And as Mr. and Mrs. Grayson--”
“I wish we were back there now, Mary!” And he seized her hands.
“Perhaps when you get things straightened out--and suspicion quieted
down--”
“You mean about Maisie Jones?”
“Yes. Perhaps then we can go back to our flat in the Mordona.”
“No. Not back there. The Mordona won’t be safe for us until--you know!
But this old town is full of other nice little flats--where we’ll be
quiet and cozy and nobody’ll ever find us out. And we’ll do it the
minute you say the word!”
“And I’ll say the word just as soon as it is safe. You must go, Jack,
in just a minute, for I’m expecting some one.”
Enough had been said; her little scene was now complete; the listening
figure in the next room could put but one interpretation upon what
she had heard. Mary let Jack hold her hands and his ardent gaze
she returned with a seemingly equal ardor. But her faculties were
really all in the next room, witnessing what was happening there. She
visioned the girl as standing transfixed at this evidence of Jack’s
faithlessness; and then in pain, in a fury of pride, stealing silently
away--later to say, if by any chance she ever again spoke to Mary, that
she had changed her mind and had decided not to come that afternoon.
That stricken, creeping figure was what Mary visioned; that was the
way she had calculated human nature would react. What she actually
saw, the next moment, was Maisie Jones standing in the doorway, her
hands clenched so that her white gloves had burst at a dozen seams, her
figure trembling, her blue eyes blazing fury.
“I’ve heard everything!” she gasped. “Oh, you--”
“Maisie!” breathed Jack, staring.
“Oh, you sneaks--you liars--you beasts--both of you!”
“Maisie--you don’t understand--listen--”
“Don’t come near me!” She backed through the door. “Don’t come near me!”
He followed her in consternation, Mary behind him, until all three
were in the sitting-room. “Listen, Maisie, for God’s sake!” he cried.
“You don’t understand--”
“Oh, yes, I do understand!” the furious girl flamed at him. “After what
I heard, I couldn’t help understanding! You’re simply a low, vicious,
lying beast of a man, Jack Morton,--you with your pretense of having
steadied down and become a worker! And this woman you’ve been living
with--your--your--”
He had seized her wrist. “Maisie,” he said, “say what you like about
me. But don’t say a word against Mary--for Mary--”
“Jack, stop!” Mary cried sharply, thrusting herself between the pair.
She was dismayed by this unexpected development of her carefully
constructed triangle--but if she could end this scene quietly the
situation might somehow be saved. “Stop, Jack!” she added warningly.
“What she says won’t hurt me.”
Maisie, her control now all gone, turned her fury and scorn full upon
Mary. “You adventuress! You common street woman! You cheap seller of
yourself! You--you--”
Jack gasped at her enraged words, then broke through Mary’s
intervention.
“You shall not say such things about Mary!” he cried in an almost equal
rage. “Mary is my wife!”
“Your wife!” repeated Maisie.
“Yes, my wife!”
“Jack, be still!” cried Mary. “Miss Jones, he’s lying to protect me. I
don’t like the words you used about me; but in substance they’re the
truth.”
“They’re not the truth, Maisie!” Jack, for that moment, had passed
beyond Mary’s control. “She’s my wife, and nobody can say such things
about her! She’s my wife, and I can prove it!” Swiftly he took a wallet
from an inside pocket of his vest, drew a slip of paper from it, and
thrust it into Maisie’s hands. “There--look at that!”
There was neither time nor chance for Mary to interfere. Maisie glanced
at the slip of paper. Her volcanic wrath suddenly subsided; her face
blanched. Then mechanically her lips repeated the script in the printed
form she held: “John Harrison Morton and Mary Russell Regan.”
She looked up; she was in a daze. “Your marriage certificate, Jack,”
she said in her mechanical tone. And then questioningly: “But Mary
Regan?”
“That’s Mary’s real name--she just borrowed the name of Mrs. Gardner,”
Jack explained. “You see we were married secretly because Mary thought
father would object to her; and also because--don’t take this in a
wrong way, Maisie--because of what father wanted you and me to do.”
“I see,” said the heavy lips. She turned to Mary, “But those things I
just overheard? And your pretending not to be Jack’s wife?”
Mary’s plan had gone so far from its calculated course, and so
swiftly, that upon the instant she saw no better way than to tell the
truth--even if she should not tell it all.
“Miss Jones, I planned for you to overhear, and believe, what passed
between Jack and me--though Jack had no knowledge of what I was doing.
I thought that if you discovered that Jack was in love with another
woman--and had been living with her--your insulted pride would cause
you to break with Jack and give no reason.”
“Yes--go on,” breathed the girl.
“You see, Jack was in the worst sort of a predicament. He was married
to me; he was dependent as to his future upon his father; and his
father was trying to press him into an immediate marriage with you. It
was a matter of days. Had he told the truth or had he for no explained
reason broken with you--either would have ended him with his father.
There was only one way out of the situation that would not ruin Jack,
and that was for you to be the one to break it off. To play upon you so
that you would do that, that’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
“I see.” The girl, grayish pale, regarded Mary in dazed wonderment.
“But why did you, just a moment ago, try to make me believe that you
were Jack’s--his--his mistress?”
“To keep Jack’s father from learning the truth. Don’t you see it?
If you should tell his father that you had learned that Jack had a
mistress, it would not injure Jack’s prospects nearly so much as if you
told him that Jack had a wife.”
“And, Maisie,” Jack cut in, “if I have steadied down, it’s because Mary
made me! I want you to know that!”
The blue-eyed girl, standing very still, and breathing very tensely,
made no response, but kept her gaze fastened upon Mary. Mary tried to
guess what was passing in the mind of this girl--young, willful, of
proven jealousy and temper, who, holding that marriage certificate in
her hand, held also Mary’s fate. What was that girl going to do?
A minute or more passed, all three of them motionless and silent--a
space Mary was never to forget. Then the tableau was sharply broken by
a soft knocking at the door of the suite. The three turned about, just
as the unlatched door swung cautiously open and into the room stepped
the elder Morton, his masterful face bouqueted with a smile. He stopped
short and the smile was plucked away.
No one of the four moved or spoke; then followed tense silence which,
though but a moment long, seemed an epoch to three of the group--each
of whom sensed a different charge of human dynamite, its fuse
sputtering, in this scene.... The elder Morton, here on such other
business, looked penetratingly at the unexpected trio: did the presence
of the three mean that Maisie had learned the truth about Jack and
Mrs. Gardner?--which would disrupt one of his dearest and most patient
plans. And also did they suspect why he was here?... As for Jack, he
was merely stricken dumb and powerless with a sense of unavertable
disaster--the axe was already falling.... And Mary, her will nullified
for the moment by a sense of futility, breathlessly watched the grayish
face of Maisie Jones, who, in the hand that now held the crumpled
marriage certificate, also held the swift _finale_ to all her planning;
each second she expected the outraged, jealous, and vindictive girl to
speak, or hand the crumpled paper to the gray-templed man beside the
door.
It was the elder Morton, trained by his worldly experience to keep on
playing his part whatever the circumstances, who ended this hour-long
moment.
“I just started to call on you, Maisie,” he explained evenly,
pleasantly, “and at your door I learned from a maid that you were with
Mrs. Gardner. I pressed the bell-button, then knocked, but as there was
no answer, and as the door was open, I ventured in--and here I find the
three of you.”
Mary felt the uselessness of further effort, since the other girl
held her fate in her tightly clenched hand; but her inborn quality of
keeping on mechanically forced words from her lips--though as she spoke
them she recognized her words as a lame explanation. “Miss Jones was
going out with your son, and as she was passing she stopped in for a
moment.”
Mr. Morton looked keenly at Maisie, and waited; and Mary looked at her,
in suspense yet sure of the end, and waited.
Then the gray-faced girl spoke for the first time--and her fingers
twitched about the document she held.
“Yes, Jack and I were passing, and just dropped in.”
Mary maintained her outward composure, but inwardly she started.
So!--Maisie Jones was holding back her weapon, waiting her chosen time
to strike.
Morton seemed to accept Maisie’s words; but before another word could
be spoken, while all the dangerous human elements of the situation were
in suspense, Mary saw a new figure press open the unlatched door--Peter
Loveman. In a flash she understood the little lawyer’s presence: that
dread which had caused him to be forever hovering about her and Mr.
Morton had made him follow Morton here--that he might be beforehand and
save himself, in case of mishap to her impossible plans.
Her mind, working with incredible speed, had another instantaneous
fear. Every instant she expected Clifford to enter and add to the
complications swarming upon her.
Loveman’s round, keen eyes swiftly took in the situation. To him this
coming together of the four of them face to face, of Mr. Morton, Jack,
Mary, and the girl Jack had been directed to marry, could have but one
meaning, one outcome. His speech followed his conclusion so promptly
that there was barely a moment between his entrance and his first word.
“Pardon my coming up here, Mr. Morton,” he said rapidly, stepping
forward, “but the matter is so immensely important as to abrogate
formalities. I have just made a discovery--”
“Mr. Morton,” Mary interrupted sharply, pressing between the two
men. She knew that yet a new destruction was in Loveman’s next eager
words; and her instinct to keep on fighting to the very end instantly
controlled her. “Mr. Morton--before you hear him, read my letter!”
“Your letter?” queried Mr. Morton, taken aback by the suddenness of all
this.
“The letter I gave you in the Japanese Room. The letter I told you to
hold until I gave you permission to read it. You have it with you?”
“Yes, here it is, Mrs. Gardner.” He drew an envelope from an inner coat
pocket.
“Mr. Morton, I’ve just discovered--”
“Read my letter first,” Mary again broke sharply in upon Loveman. “The
time has come that I spoke of, Mr. Morton,--the time when you have my
permission to read my letter. It tells you all that Mr. Loveman has
discovered and more!”
“Mr. Morton--”
“You wait, Loveman. Mrs. Gardner first.”
Mr. Morton ran a forefinger beneath the embossed flap. The little
lawyer was yellowish-pale, there was a spasmodic quivering of the soft
folds beneath which his Adam’s apple was throbbing. Mary saw Loveman’s
condition, and with a seemingly involuntary action, laid a hand upon
the finger of Mr. Morton’s that was sheathed in the envelope.
“That letter contains everything, Mr. Morton. I wasn’t quite ready for
you to know it. I’d rather you did not know it yet--but Mr. Loveman
has forced me.” She turned to Loveman, and her next words had in them
a hidden meaning for him, and another meaning for Mr. Morton. “Since
you are determined, Mr. Loveman, that Mr. Morton must know it, I prefer
that he learn it from me--and that he learn everything.”
In her steady glance, the sallow little man read reckless defiance--and
beneath her words he read the offer of a bargain. And he had a swift
sense, vague as yet, that the situation might not be as desperate as he
had at first believed.
“If Mrs. Gardner really prefers that nothing be said about it just
now--”
“I do prefer,” she interrupted him.
“Why, then, naturally, I’ll not say anything at present--provided Mrs.
Gardner agrees to say nothing.”
“I agree.”
“And the letter?” softly suggested Loveman.
“With your permission, Mr. Morton,” and Mary deftly slipped the
envelope out of his hands.
“But, see here, the letter was mine!” Morton exclaimed. “Where do I
come in?”
“It is my confession, is it not?--and hasn’t a woman the right to
choose the time when she makes it? You shall know everything--when the
right time comes.”
She turned to the little lawyer. “I believe that is all, Mr. Loveman.”
“But the letter?” he prompted.
She understood. “You definitely promise?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, then”--and slowly, all eyes upon her, Mary tore the sealed
letter up and dropped the pieces into the waste-basket.
There was a moment’s pause. Each of the four had his own belief as to
the revelation in that letter she had so calmly torn to fragments. As
for Mary, she was outwardly composed enough; she believed that the
crisis with Loveman was safely passed--perhaps; but every second she
was poignantly aware of the danger represented by that motionless girl
who still held the marriage certificate in her hand. Mary could not
guess what that emotional, jealous, pampered girl would do, nor at what
instant she would do it.
Mr. Morton turned from Mary to Jack and Maisie. “Run along, children,”
he said pleasantly, “and do whatever it was you were planning to do. I
may pick you up later somewhere.”
Almost mechanically the girl walked out. With a quick glance of fear
at Mary, Jack went after her--and Mary followed her with her eyes,
wondering.