About two o'clock I heard Maisie say she would have to telephone home,
and if a totally innocent person can suffer the way I did I don't know
how a guilty one could live. But Roger leaped in front of her.
"I'll do it, honey," he said. "I--I was just thinking of telephoning."
They were close to the door.
"Don't call me honey," Maisie said in a tense voice. "I know about
Carrie Smith's party and who was there. After the way Clara has schemed
all these years to get you back, to have you fall into a trap like that!
It's sickening!"
She put her hand on the knob of the door.
"Listen, darling," Roger implored. "I--I don't care a hang for anyone
but you. I'm perfectly wretched. I----"
He pulled her hand off the knob of the door and I heard him kiss it.
"Let me call your mother," he said. "She'll know you are all right when
I'm here."
Well, I had to listen. The idea of her saying I'd tried to get him back,
when everybody knows how he carried on when I turned him down! I hadn't
given him a thought for years.
"Did you make love to Clara?"
"Certainly not. Look here, Maisie, you can afford to be magnanimous.
Clara's a nice woman, but she's years older than you are. You know who
loves you, don't you?"
Positively he was appealing. He sounded fairly sick.
"Get mother on the wire," said Maisie curtly. "Then call me. I'll talk
to her."
Roger opened the door as soon as she had gone and squeezed in beside me.
"She's coming to telephone. You'll have to go somewhere else, Clara," he
said.
"Where, for instance?"
"I may be able to collect them in the pantry. Then you can run across
and get out the door."
"Into the rain?"
"Well, you can't stay here, can you?"
"I'll do nothing of the sort. Go and tell her the wires are down. They
are. And then get that crowd of flappers upstairs. If they go the men
will. I give you ten minutes. At the end of that time I'm coming out to
the fire. I'm cold."
"And after they go up, what?"
"Then you're going into somebody's room to steal me a pair of dry shoes.
Get Maisie's, she's about my size. We'll have to walk to mother's."
"I can't leave, Clara. If anything happened and I was missing----"
When I said nothing he knew I was in earnest. He went out and told them
the telephone was out of order, and somehow or other he shooed them
upstairs. I opened the door of the telephone closet for air, and I
could hear them overhead, ragging Roger about the engagement and how he
happened to get to Maisie's when it was so far from his road home. Every
time I thought they were settled, some fool of a boy or giggling
débutante would come down again and look for soap, or towels, or
matches, or heaven knows what. I could have strangled the lot of them.
By three o'clock it was fairly quiet, and I crept out and sat by the log
fire. If I had had a shoe I would have started off then and there. I'm
no coward and I was desperate. But I couldn't go in my silk stockings.
And when after a while Roger slipped down the stairs he had no shoes for
me.
"I've tried all the girls' doors," he said wretchedly, "and they're
locked. Couldn't you tie a towel round your foot, or something? I'm
going to get into trouble over this thing yet. I feel it."
"Go up and bring me little Teddy Robinson's shoes," I snapped. "It won't
compromise you to go into his room, I daresay."
"What if he's not asleep?"
"Tell him you're going to clean them. Tell him anything. And, Roger,
don't let Maisie pull the _ingénue_ stunt on you. I may be years older
than she is, but Maisie's no child."
Well, with everyone gone and Roger hunting me some boots, I felt rather
better. I went to the pantry and fixed some hot milk and carried it in
to drink by the fire. Roger came down with the boots, and to save time
he laced them on my feet while I sat back and sipped.
That, of course, in spite of what Bill pretends to think, is why Roger
was on his knees before me when Peter walked in.
Oh, yes, Peter Arundel walked in! It just shows the sort of luck I
played in that night. He walked in and slammed the door.
"Thank heaven!" he said, and stalked over to me and jerked the cup out
of my hand. "You pair of idiots!" he fairly snarled. "What sort of an
escapade is this anyhow?"
"It--it's a joke, Peter," I quavered. He stared at me in speechless
scorn. "Positively it is a joke, Peter."
"I daresay," he said grimly. "Perhaps to-morrow I may see it that way.
The question is, will Bill think it's a joke?"
He looked round, and luckily for me he saw all the girls' wraps lying
about.
"If the family's here, Clara," he said in a milder voice, "I--I may be
doing you an injustice."
Roger had not said a word. He was standing in front of the fire,
watching the stairs.
"When we found the note," Peter went on in his awful booming voice,
"saying you were going at last to be true to yourself, and when you and
Roger had disappeared, what were we to think? Especially after the way
you two had fallen into each other's arms from the moment you met."
"How interesting!" said a voice from the staircase.
It was Maisie!
Well, what's the use of going into it again? She gave Roger his ring
instantly, and Roger was positively grey. He went back on me without a
particle of shame--said I'd suggested the whole thing and begged him to
help me; that he'd felt like a fool the whole time.
"Maisie, darling," he said, "surely you know that there's nobody in all
the world for me but you."
He held out the ring to her, but she shook her head.
"I'm not angry--not any more," she said. "I've lost my faith in you,
that's all. One thing I'm profoundly grateful for--that you and Clara
had this--this explosion before we were married and not after."
"Maisie!" he cried.
All at once I remembered Bill's letter, which would positively clear us.
But Peter said Harry Delaney's coat had been stolen from the machine,
letter and all! Maisie laughed at that, as if she didn't believe there
had been such a letter, and Roger went a shade greyer. All at once it
came to me that now Bill would never forgive me. He is so upright, Bill
is, and he expects everyone to come up to his standard. And in a way
Bill had always had me on a pedestal, and he would never believe that I
had been such a fool as to jump off for a lark.
Maisie turned and walked upstairs, leaving the three of us there, Roger
holding the ring and staring at it with a perfectly vacant face. At last
he turned and went to the door.
"Where are you going, Roger?" I asked helplessly.
"I'm going out to drown myself," he said, and went out.
I shall pass over the rest briefly. Peter took me home in his car. I did
not go to mother's. For one thing, the bridge was down. For another, it
seemed better for Bill and me to settle things ourselves without family
interference.
I went home and went to bed, and all day Monday I watched for Bill.
Powell came over and I put on my best negligée and waited, with a water
bottle to keep my feet warm and my courage up.
He did not come.
I stayed in bed for three days, and there was not a sign from him.
Carrie and Ida telephoned, but only formal messages, and Alice
Warrington sent me a box of flowers with her card. But Bill did not
come home or call up. I knew he must be staying at the club, and I had
terrible hours when I knew he would never forgive me, and then there
would be a divorce, and I wanted to die. Roger never gave a sign, but he
had not drowned himself.
Wednesday evening came, and no Bill. By that time I knew it was Bill or
nobody for me. After those terrible two days at Carrie's, the thought of
Bill's ugly, quiet face made me perfectly homesick for him. I didn't
care how much he fell asleep in the evening after dinner. That only
showed how contented he was. And I tried to imagine being married to
Roger, and seeing him fuss about his ties, and brush the hair over the
thin places on top of his head, and I simply couldn't.
It was Wednesday evening when I heard a car come up the drive. I knew at
once that it was Bill. I had barely time to turn out all the lights but
the pink-shaded one by the bed, and to lay a handkerchief across my
eyes, when he came in.
"Well, Clara," he said, standing just inside the door, "I thought we'd
better talk this over."
"Bill!" I said, from under the handkerchief.
"I should have come out sooner," he said without moving, "but at first I
could not trust myself. I needed a little time."
"Who told you?"
"That doesn't matter, does it? Everybody knows it. But that's not the
question. The real issue is between you and me and that--that
nincompoop, Waite."
"What has Roger got to do with it?" I looked out from under the
handkerchief, and he was livid, positively.
"Bill," I said desperately, "will you come over and sit down on the side
of the bed and let me tell you the whole story?"
"I won't be bamboozled, Clara; this is serious. If you've got anything
to say, say it. I'll sit here."
He sat down just inside the door on a straight chair and folded his long
arms. It was a perfectly hopeless distance.
"Bill!" I said appealingly, and he came over and sat, very
uncompromising and stiff, on the side of the bed. I put out my hand, and
after a moment's hesitation he took it, but I must say without
enthusiasm. I felt like the guiltiest wretch unhung. That's what makes
me so perfectly furious now.
"You see, Bill," I said, "it was like this." And I told him the whole
thing. About halfway through he dropped my hand.
"It's been an awful lesson, Bill," I ended up. "I'll never say a word
again about your enjoying yourself the way you want to. You can swim and
play golf and shoot all you like, and--and sleep after dinner, if
you'll only forgive me. Bill, suppose I had married Roger Waite!"
He drew a long breath.
"So that was it, old dear!" he said. "Well, all right. We'll put the
whole thing in the discard." And he leaned over and put his arms round
me.
* * * * *
That ought to be the end of the story. I'd had a lesson and so had some
of the others. As Carrie Smith said afterward, to have a good time is
one thing, but to be happy is entirely different, and the only way to be
happy is to be smug and conventional and virtuous. I never say anything
when she starts that line of conversation. But once or twice I've caught
her eye, and she has had the grace to look uneasy.
But that's not all. There is more to the story, and now and then I eye
Bill, and wonder when he will come and tell me the whole thing. For the
other day, in the back of Bill's chiffonier, I came across the letter to
him Harry Delaney said he had lost. And Bill had received it Monday
morning!
That is not all. Clamped to it was a note from Peter Arundel, and that
is why I am writing the whole story, using names and everything. It was
a mean trick, and if Bill wants to go to Maisie Brown's wedding he can
go. I shall not.
This is Peter's note:
"_Dear Old Man_: Inclosed is the letter Clara gave Delaney to mail,
which I read to you last night over the long-distance phone. I'm
called away or I'd bring it round.
"It was easy enough for you to say not to let Clara get away with
it, but for a time during the storm it looked as if she'd got the
bit and was off. Luckily their car got stuck in the creek, and the
rest was easy. We saw them, during a flash of lightning, climbing
the hill to the Brown place for shelter. Luck was with us after
that, for Maisie and a crowd came along, and we told Maisie the
story. I take my hat off to Maisie. She's a trump. If you could
have seen Roger Waite's face when she gave him back the ring!
Carrie, who was looking through the windows with the others, was so
sorry for him that she wanted to go in and let him cry on her
shoulder.
"I hope Clara didn't take cold. She must have been pretty wet. But
you were quite right. It wasn't only that she'd have had the laugh
on all of us if she got away with it. As you said, it would be a
bad precedent.
"Burn this, for the love of Mike. If Clara sees it she'll go crazy.
"Yours,
"PETER."