HOW MAISIE JONES REACTED
Mr. Morton turned upon Mary the instant Jack and Maisie Jones were out.
“Mrs. Gardner, how much did Miss Jones learn or guess about you and
Jack?” he demanded sharply.
“You saw the scene, you can draw your own conclusions,” replied Mary.
“If you wish to know definitely, I suggest you ask Miss Jones.”
“U’m. She didn’t seem to know just what to make of the scene--but I
don’t believe she suspected anything. You carried it all off mighty
well,--Mrs. Gardner,--mighty well; in fact you saved the situation.
Loveman”--with sharp rebuke--“you damned near spilled everything,
trying to blurt out your discovery before Miss Jones!”
“That’s once I didn’t stop to think,” apologized Loveman.
“Then suppose you excuse yourself and do some thinking outside. I want
a few words with Miss Gilmore--beg pardon, Mrs. Gardner I should say.”
“But--first I’d like a few words with Mr. Loveman,” said Mary,--“alone.”
She stepped out into the corridor ahead of Loveman, walked a few
unsteady paces, and turned a corner. This corridor was empty. She
halted.
“What did you want to see me about, Mary?” the little lawyer asked
nervously.
“I didn’t want to see you--I wanted to get out of that room--after what
I’ve been through.”
She leaned dizzily against the wall, and breathed like a runner at the
end of a race. The situation she had just been through had, indeed,
taxed her full strength; but her mind went on to dangers yet ahead.
That girl with the marriage certificate in her hand--she had held back
because she was waiting a better time, and a more effective method, to
strike. And when she struck, she would strike hard--no doubt of that!
Mary wondered in what form of cold fury the girl’s natural feminine
vindictiveness would express itself.
She opened her eyes. Peter Loveman was still waiting beside her.
“I guess I didn’t quite get the situation when I broke in on that scene
awhile ago,” the little man began apologetically. “I thought it was all
up with you--and I thought I might as well save myself if I could.”
“I know,” she said wearily. And then vigor came into her voice and
bearing. “But don’t forget this, Peter Loveman,--if you ever try
to cross me again, I’ll finish you off with Mr. Morton just as I
said--even though I finish myself, too!”
“That’s never going to happen, Mary,” the little man said
propitiatingly. “And remember, Mary, what I said to you this
morning--that if this affair gives any sign of going wrong, just
privately leave your end of it with me--and after that let me manage
you--and there’s nothing I can’t do with you! Nothing!”
She regarded him absently--although the vision his words had created
registered itself in her subconscious mind as something that might
come to pass in the future. Without answering him, she turned away and
reëntered her apartment. Beside her door she came to a sudden pause.
Bending over her desk was Mr. Morton intently working over something
which she could not identify. But the next moment she knew. Mr. Morton
had recovered from the waste-basket her torn letter and was fitting its
fragments together.
Instantly she was across the room, and had caught his arm. “Mr. Morton,
you mustn’t do that!” she exclaimed, reaching swiftly for the letter.
He easily warded off her clutching hand. She struggled to possess the
fragments. But he was too powerful a man for her to contest with on
equal physical terms, and she dared not cry out--so after a moment she
gave up.
“Really, Miss Gilmore, you know, you can’t trust a man’s curiosity too
far,” he said coolly, though pleasantly; and holding her two wrists in
a powerful, yet gentle grip, he read the torn letter through.
He looked up. His face was without expression.
“And so, Miss Gilmore--_this_ is your confession?”
She nodded.
“And also your answer to my suggestion about our little cruise?”
Again she nodded.
“So!” He turned back to the ragged mosaic of heavy note-paper, and
slowly he read aloud:--
“‘I can no longer keep my secret from you. I am really a married woman.
Further, my husband is very jealous. He may be back any time. I must be
most discreet.’”
Morton raised his gray eyes to her; and then suddenly his strong,
worldly face softened into a smile.
“My dear, what a little fool you are! This is nothing to make such a
fuss about. Your being married doesn’t necessarily make the slightest
difference to me--and I’m sure the Caribbean winds will be just as
soothing--and that the moonlight will be just as soft. The yacht will
be ready next Thursday.”
He tried to slip an arm about her. But she evaded him, and spoke
quietly.
“But my husband is now in New York!”
“Oh, the devil!” And then he smiled again. “But I’m sure a woman of
your quickness of mind can invent an excuse that will take care of your
husband. You can trust that my end will all be managed quietly.”
Again she avoided an attempted embrace. “But he is now in this
hotel--and he knows I’m here--and he’s so jealous--”
“The devil!” This time he did not smile. “That is some complication!
You certainly do have to be discreet!” He thought quickly. “You’d
better move from this hotel to some place where you will not be so
easily under his eye. Anyhow, I was going to suggest your moving on
account of Miss Jones. Being this close to her, she might any time
stumble on to--you know, between you and Jack.”
“I’m going to move to-night,” she agreed, her mind all on how she was
going to rid herself of him, and yet not offend him.
“Good! Now, as token and seal of our understanding--” He bent toward
her with pursed lips.
She checked him with the thrust of a stiffened arm. “Not now!”
“Some day, then? And soon?”
She eyed him steadily. “Sometime, perhaps--if when that time comes you
still want to.”
He had no suspicion of what was in her mind. He smiled.
“Oh, I shall want to! But don’t set the time too far--”
The telephone on her desk began to ring. In relief at the interruption
she seized it--but the relief was gone as she heard the voice that came
over the wire.
“Yes, I’m alone,” she replied into the mouthpiece. “You may see me
right away.”
“Who was that?” asked Morton as she hung up.
“My husband.”
“My cue for a quick exit! Remember, my dear”--he seized both her
hands--“we’re going to have that little cruise just the same. I’ll give
orders--”
“You must hurry,” she interrupted. While he had been speaking, she had
reached quickly behind her back, opened a little drawer and thrust
into it her hand. “You must hurry,” she repeated, and urgently pressed
her hands against him--and while doing so she slipped the envelope
containing the ten one-thousand-dollar bills into the inner pocket of
his coat. “Go, please! Good-bye!”
The next instant he was gone. Mary sank into a chair beside her window.
She had won thus far through her wit and her will; but wit and will
would serve her no further; she was spent--utterly spent. What was her
culminating scene, the scene that would end her, lay just before her,
and for it she had neither strength nor subterfuge nor courage. She had
fought, through sheer force of habit, to the end--and at the end, which
was only a moment ahead, she had lost. So she leaned back in her chair,
limp, her eyes closed....
But spent as she was she was sufficiently alive for her curiosity to
respond to a matter that again recurred to her. Clifford had known of
her whereabouts, possibly of her purpose. Why had he not interfered?...
Why?...
A minute or two passed; then she became aware that some one had entered
and had crossed to her side. She slowly opened her eyes, and wearily
arose, and regarded Maisie Jones dully, indifferent to denunciation or
threats or furious acts.
“You telephoned you wished to see me,” she said.
Maisie, very rigid and still gray of face, did not at once speak.
“Well?” prompted Mary.
“I came to tell you what I intend to do,” said the other, and stopped.
“Go on. I know just about how you feel, and I guess I’d do about the
same. I’m prepared, so don’t try to break it easy to me.”
“Of course,” said the girl,--and there was a catch in her voice,--“of
course you know that I love Jack.”
“Yes, I know,” said Mary.
“I love him so well,” continued the girl, “that I don’t want to do
anything to hurt him.” She swallowed, then drove herself on, her blue
eyes gazing straight into Mary’s dark ones. “I’m going to be honest.
I’m not doing this because it’s easy; nor because I like you--I can’t
do that yet. I’m doing it for--for Jack.”
“Doing what?” breathed Mary, suddenly bewildered.
“I’m doing it because I see you can be more to Jack than I can ever
be,” the girl went on. “You’re the sort of woman that can make a
man--you proved that when you made Jack steady down and go to work. I
could never have done that for Jack.”
Mary could only stare.
“And I think it was big of you,” the voice went on, now a choked and
awed voice, “to try to save Jack by sacrificing yourself--by being
willing to acknowledge yourself his--his mistress, and accept that
humiliation, in order to protect him. I could never have done that
either.”
Still Mary, sure manager of her destiny, could not speak--could only
stare at the white face which had begun to work.
“I shall return to Chicago to-night,” the girl went on. “In a week or
two I shall make my aunt write Jack’s father, giving no reason, stating
I no longer care for Jack and wish everything broken off. And I shall
write, confirming this. That will put me out of the way--I’ll no longer
be a source of danger to you and Jack. I guess that’s all. Good-bye.”
She thrust the marriage certificate into Mary’s hands and turned and
started rapidly out. Then she abruptly turned and came back; and she
gripped Mary’s hands, and her blue eyes were flooding.
“I can’t like you--yet. But I’m not going to let myself be mean about
this,” she said huskily, in awe and humility. “I wish I were as fine as
you are! You are wonderful--wonderful!”
Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed Mary’s cheek; and then, this
time, she was gone.
Mary gazed after her with wide eyes, then sank limply into a chair.
She had won--for the time being; but that she had won did not at this
moment even touch her thoughts; nor just then was her mind trying to
justify her by saying that Maisie, as now she saw her, was too good
for Jack, and that her own action, whatever its motives, had saved
Maisie from a life of certain unhappiness. Just then she was dazed by
the uncalculated twist of the girl’s action; unsuspected, unanalyzable
things were tumultuously stirring, quickened into life by that swift,
tear-wet kiss which still thrilled her cheek--by the fervid declaration
that she was fine and wonderful. That girl, tears in her eyes, had
called her fine and wonderful!...
She seemed, with all those sudden strange things surging within her,
to be sitting there a woman unknown to herself. And then out of this
chaos, there rose a clear-cut, definite sentence, that remained fixed
before her mind--a sentence of Clifford’s, spoken with impersonal
grimness: “There is a big woman in you--but if you are to be changed,
only Life can do it.”... Was this what it meant, that chaos within her?
After all, had Clifford been right? Was Life doing something to her?
Bewildered, breathless, almost fearfully, she sat regarding this
strange, unknown woman stirring within herself....