CHAPTER XVIITHE OTHER WOMAN
Marysat 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—beingfairly 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 behindhim, 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 sawno 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 asense 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 swiftfinaleto 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—andher 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 seeminglyinvoluntary 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 makesit? 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.