CHAPTER XVIIIHOW MAISIE JONES REACTED
Mr. Mortonturned 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 thisaffair 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—thisis 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. “Thatis 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, mydear”—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 mindtrying 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....