Upon the discontented musings of Miss Margaret Clay one hot September
morning came Mrs. Joseph Pickering, very charming in coffee-colored
madras, with an exquisite heron cockade upon her narrow tan hat. Magsie
was up, but not dressed, and was not ill pleased to have company. Her
private as well as professional affairs were causing her much
dissatisfaction of late, and she was at the moment in the act of
addressing a letter to Warren, now on the ocean, from whom she had only
this morning had an extremely disquieting letter.
Warren had come to see her the day before sailing, and with a grave
determination new to their intercourse, had repeated several
unpalatable truths. Rachael, on second thoughts, he told her, had
absolutely refused him a divorce.
"But she can't do that! She wrote me herself--" Magsie had begun in
anger. His distressed voice interrupted her.
"She's acting for the boys, Magsie. And she's right."
"Right!" The little actress turned pale as the full significance of his
words and tone dawned upon her. "But--but what do you mean! What about
ME?"
To this Warren had only answered with an exquisitely uncomfortable look
and the simple phrase, "Magsie, I'm sorry."
"You mean that you're not going to MAKE her keep her word?"
And again she had put an imperative little hand upon his arm, sure of
her power to win him ultimately. Days afterward the angry blood came
into her face when she remembered his kind, his almost fatherly, smile,
as he dislodged the hand.
"Magsie, I'm sorry. You can't despise me as I despise myself, dear. I'm
ashamed. Some day, perhaps, there'll be something I can do for you, and
then you'll see by the way I do it that I want with all my heart to
make it up to you. But I'm going away now, Magsie, and we mustn't see
each other any more."
Magsie, repulsed, had flung herself the length of the little room.
"You DARE tell me that, Greg?"
"I'm sorry, Magsie!"
"Sorry!" Her tone was vitriol. "Why, but I've got your letters. I've
got your own words! Everyone knows-the whole world knows! Can you deny
that you gave me this?--and this? Can you deny--"
"No, I'm not denying anything, Magsie. Except--that I never meant to
hurt you. And I hope there was some happiness in it for you as there
was for me."
Magsie had dropped into a chair with her back to him.
"I've made you cross," she said penitently, "and you're punishing me!
Was it my seeing Richie, Greg? You know I never cared---"
"Don't take that tone," he said.
Her color flamed again, and she set her little teeth. He saw her breast
rise and fall.
"Don't think you can do this, Greg," she said with icy viciousness.
"Don't delude yourself! I can punish you, and I will. Alice and George
Valentine can fix it all up to suit themselves, but they don't know me!
You've said your say now, and I've listened. Very well!"
"Magsie," he said almost pleadingly, interrupting the hard little
voice, "can't you see what a mistake it's all been?"
She looked at him with eyes suddenly flooded with tears.
"M-m-mistake to s-s-say we loved each other, Greg?"
The man did not answer. Presently Magsie began to speak in a sad, low
tone.
"You can go now if you want to, Greg. I'm not going to try to hold you.
But I know you'll come back to me to-morrow, and tell me it was all
just the trouble other people tried to make between us--it wasn't
really you, the man I love!"
"I'll write you," he said after a silence. And from the doorway he
added, "Good-bye." Magsie did not turn or speak; she could not believe
her ears when she heard the door softly close.
Next day brought her only a letter from the steamer, a letter
reiterating his good-byes, and asking her again to forgive him. Magsie
read it in stupefaction. He was gone, and she had lost him!
The first panic of surprise gave way to more reasonable thinking. There
were ways of bringing him back; there were arguments that might
persuade Rachael to adhere to her original resolution. It could not be
dropped so easily. Magsie began to wonder what a lawyer might advise.
Billy came in upon her irresolute musing.
"Hello, dearie! But I'm interrupting---" said Billy.
"Oh, hello, darling! No, indeed you're not," Magsie said, tearing up an
envelope lazily. "I was trying to write a letter, but I have to think
it over before it goes."
"I should think you could write a letter to your beau with your eyes
shut," Billy said. "You've had practice enough! I know you're busy, but
I won't interrupt you long. Upon my word, I had a hard enough time
getting to you. There was no boy at the lift, and only a dear old Irish
girl mopping up the floors. We had a long heart-to-heart talk, and I
gave her a dollar."
"A dollar! I'll have to move-you're raising the price of living!" said
Magsie. "She's the janitor's wife, and they're rich already. What
possessed you?"
"Well, she unpinned her skirts and went after the boy," Billy said
idly, "and it was the only thing I had." She was trying quietly to see
the name on the envelope Magsie had destroyed, but being unsuccessful,
she went on more briskly, "How is the beau, by the way?"
"I wish I had never seen the man!" Magsie said, glad to talk of him.
"His wife is raising the roof now---"
"I thought she would!" Billy said wisely. "I didn't see any woman,
especially if she's not young, giving all that up without a fight! You
know I said so."
"I know you did," said Magsie ruefully. "But I don't see what she can
do!"
"Well, she can refuse to give him his divorce, can't she?" Billy said
sensibly.
"But CAN she?" Magsie was obviously not sure.
"Of course she can!"
"But she doesn't want him. I went to see her--"
"Went to see her? For heaven's sake, what did you do that for?"
"Because I cared for him," Magsie said, coloring.
"For heaven's sake! You had your nerve! And what sort of a person is
she?"
"Oh, beautiful! I knew her before. And she said that she would not
interfere. She was as willing as he was; then---"
"But now she's changed her mind?"
"Apparently." Magsie scowled into space.
"Well, what does HE say?" Billy asked after a pause.
"Why, he can't--or he seems to think he can't--force her."
"Well, I don't know that he can--here. There are states--"
"Yes, I know, but we're here in New York," Magsie said briefly. A
second later she sat up, suddenly energetic and definite in voice and
manner. "But there ARE ways of forcing her, as she will soon see," said
Magsie in a venomous voice. "I have his letters. I could put the whole
thing into a lawyer's hands. There's such a thing as-as a breach of
promise suit--"
"Not with a married man," Billy interrupted. Magsie halted, a little
dashed.
"How do you know?" she demanded.
"You'd have to show you had been injured--and you've known all along he
was married," Billy said.
"Well"--Magsie was scarlet with anger--"I could make him sorry, don't
worry about that!" she said childishly.
"Of course, if his wife DID consent, and then changed her mind, and you
sent his letters to her," Billy said after cogitation. "It might--he
may have glossed it all over, to her, you know."
"Exactly!" Magsie said triumphantly. "I knew there was a way! She's a
sensitive woman, too. You know you can't go as far as you like with a
girl, Billy," she went on argumentatively, "without paying for it
somehow!"
"Make him pay!" said the practical Billy.
"I don't want--just money," Magsie said discontentedly. "I want--I
don't want to be interfered with. I believe I shall do just that," she
went on with a brightening eye. "I'll write him---"
"Tell him. Ever so much more effective than writing!" Billy suggested.
"Tell him then," Magsie did not mean to betray his identity if she
could help it, "that I really will send these things on to his
wife--that's just what I'll do!"
"Are there children?" asked Billy.
"Two--girls," Magsie said with barely perceptible hesitation.
"Grown?" pursued the visitor.
"Ye-es, I believe so." Magsie was too clever to multiply unnecessary
untruths. She began to dress.
"What are you doing this afternoon?" asked Billy. "I have the Butlers'
car for the day. Joe brought it into town to be fixed, and can't drive
it out until tomorrow. We might do something. It's a gorgeous car."
"I'm not doing one thing in the world. Where's Joe?"
"Joe Pickering?" asked Billy. "Oh, he's gone off with some men for some
golf and poker. We might find someone, and go on a party. Where could
we go--Long Beach? It's going to be stifling hot."
"Stay and have lunch with me," said Magsie.
"I can't to-day. I'm lunching with a theatrical man at Sherry's. I tell
you I'm in deadly earnest. I'm going to break in! Suppose I come here
for you at just three. Meanwhile, you think up someone. How about Bryan
Masters?"
Magsie made a face.
"Well," said Billy, departing, "you think of someone, and I will.
Perhaps the Royces would go--a nice little early party. The worst of it
is, no one's in town!"
She ran downstairs and jumped into the beautiful car.
"Sherry's, please, Hungerford," said Billy easily. "And then you might
get your lunch, and come for me sharp at half-past two."
The man touched his hat. Billy leaned back against the rich leather
upholstery luxuriously; she was absolutely content. Joe was quiet and
away, dear little old Breck was in seventh heaven down on the cool
seashore, and there was a prospect of a party to-night. As they rolled
smoothly downtown the passing throng might well have envied the
complacent little figure in coffee-colored madras with the big heron
feather in her hat.
When Billy was gone, Magsie, with a thoughtful face and compressed
lips, took two packages of letters from her desk and wrapped them for
posting. She fell into deep musing for a few minutes before she wrote
Rachael's name on the wrapper, but after that she dressed with her
usual care, and carried the package to the elevator boy for mailing. As
she came back to her rooms a caller was announced and followed her name
into Magsie's apartment almost immediately. Magsie, with a pang of
consternation, found herself facing Richie Gardiner's mother.
Anna would never have permitted this, was Magsie's first resentful
thought, but Anna was on a vacation, and the elevator boy could not be
expected to discriminate.
"Good morning, Mrs. Gardiner," said Magsie; "you'll excuse my dressing
all over the place, but I have no maid this week. How's Richie?"
Mrs. Gardiner was oblivious of anything amiss. She sat down, first
removing a filmy scarf of Magsie's from a chair, and smiled, the little
muscle-twitching smile of a person in pain, as if she hardly heard
Magsie's easy talk.
"He doesn't seem to get better, Miss Clay," said she, almost snorting
in her violent effort to breathe quietly. "Doctor doesn't say he gets
worse, but of course he don't fool me--I know my boy's pretty sick."
The agony of helpless motherhood was not all lost upon Magsie, even
though it was displayed by a large, plain woman in preposterous
clothes, strangely introduced into her pretty rooms, and a most
incongruous figure there.
"What a SHAME!" she said warmly.
"It's a shame to anyone that knew Rich as I did a few years ago," his
mother said. "There wasn't a brighter nor a hardier child. It wasn't
until we came to this city that he begun to give way--and what wonder?
It'd kill a horse to live in this place. I wish to God that I had got
him out of it when he had that first spell. I may be--I don't know, but
I may be too late now." Tears came to her eyes, the hard tears of a
proud and suffering woman. She took out a folded handkerchief and
pressed it unashamedly to her eyes. "But he wouldn't go," she resumed,
clearing her throat. "He was going to stay here, live or die. And Miss
Clay, YOU know why!" She stopped short, a terrible look upon Magsie.
"I?" faltered Magsie, coloring, and feeling as if she would cry herself.
"You kept him," said his mother. "He hung round you like a bee round a
rose--poor, sick boy that he was! He's losing sleep now because he
can't get you out of his thoughts."
She stopped again, and Magsie hung her head.
"I'm sorry," she said slowly. And with the childish words came childish
tears. "I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Gardiner," stammered Magsie. "I
know--I've known all along--how Richie feels to me. I suppose I could
have stopped him, got him to go away, perhaps, in time. But--but I've
been unhappy myself, Mrs. Gardiner. A person--I love has been cruel to
me. I don't know what I'm going to do. I worry and worry!" Magsie was
frankly crying now. "I wish there was something I could do for Richie,
but I can't tell him I care!" she sobbed.
Both women sat in miserable silence for a moment, then Richard
Gardiner's mother said: "It wouldn't do you any harm to just--if you
would--to just see him, would it? Don't say anything about this other
man. Could you do that? Couldn't you let him think that maybe if he
went away and came back all well you'd--you might--there might be some
chance for him? Doctor says he's got to go away AT ONCE if he's going
to get well."
The anguish in her voice and manner reached Magsie at last. There was
nothing cruel about the little actress, however sordid her ambitions
and however selfish her plans.
"Could you get him away, now?" she said almost timidly. "Is he strong
enough to go?"
"That's what Doctor says; he ought to go away TO-DAY, but--but he won't
lissen to me," his mother answered with trembling lips. "He's all I
have. I just live for Rich. I loved his father, and when Dick was
killed I had only him."
"I'll go see him," said Magsie in sudden generous impulse. "I'll tell
him to take care of himself. It's simply wicked of him to throw his
life away like this."
"Miss Clay," said Mrs. Gardiner with a break in her strong, deep voice,
"if you do that--may the Lord send you the happiness you give my boy!"
She began to cry again.
"Why, Mrs. Gardiner," said Magsie in a hurt, childish voice, "I LIKE
Richie!"
"Well, he likes you all right," said his mother on a long, quivering
breath. With big, coarse, tender fingers she helped Magsie with the
last hooks and bands of her toilette. "If you ain't as pretty and
dainty as a little wax doll!" she observed admiringly. Magsie merely
sighed in answer. Wax dolls had their troubles!
But she liked the doglike devotion of Richie's big mother, and the
beautiful car--Richie's car. Perhaps the hurt to her heart and her
pride had altered Magsie's sense of values. At all events, she did not
even shrink from Richie to-day.
She sat down beside the white bed, beside the bony form that the
counterpane revealed in outline, and smiled at Richie's dark, thin
eager face and sunken, adoring eyes. She laid her warm, plump little
hand between his long, thin fingers. After a while the nurse timidly
suggested the detested milk; Richie drank it dutifully for Magsie.
They were left together in the cool, airy, orderly room, and in low,
confidential tones they talked. Magsie was well aware that the big
doctors themselves would not interrupt this talk, that the nurses and
the mother were keeping guard outside the door. Richie was conscious of
nothing but Magsie.
In this hour the girl thought of the stormy years that were past and
the stormy future. She had played her last card in the game for Warren
Gregory's love. The letters, without an additional word, were gone to
Rachael. If Rachael chose to use them against Warren, then the road for
Magsie, if long, was unobstructed. But suppose Rachael, with that
baffling superiority of hers, decided not to use them?
Magsie had seriously considered and seriously abandoned the idea of
holding out several letters from the packages, but the letters, as
legal documents, had no value to anyone but Rachael. If Rachael chose
to forgive and ignore the writing of them, they were so much waste
paper, and Magsie had no more hold over Warren than any other young
woman of his acquaintance.
But Magsie was more or less committed to a complete change. The break
with Bowman could not be avoided without great awkwardness now. She
despised herself for having so simply accepted a bank account from
Warren, yet what else could she do? Magsie had wanted money all her
life, and when that money was gone---Richie was falling into a doze,
his hand still tightly clasping hers. She slipped to her knees beside
the bed, and as he lazily opened his eyes she gave him a smile that
turned the room to Heaven for him. When a nurse peeped cautiously in, a
warning nod from Magsie sent the surprised and delighted woman away
again with the great news. Mr. Gardiner was asleep!
The clock struck twelve, struck one, still Magsie knelt by the bedside,
watching the sleeping face. Outside the city was silent under the
summer sun. In the great hospital feet cheeped along wide corridors,
now and then a door was opened or closed. There was no other sound.
Magsie eyed her charge affectionately. When he had come to her
dressing-room in former days trying to ignore his cough, trying to take
her about and to order her suppers as the other men did, he had been
vaguely irritating; but here in this plain little bed, so boyish, so
dependent, so appreciative, he seemed more attractive than he ever had
before. Whatever there was maternal in Magsie rose to meet his need.
She could not but be impressed by the royal solicitude that surrounded
the heir to the "Little Dick Mine." Mrs. Richard Gardiner would be
something of a personage, thought Magsie dreamily. He might not live
long!
Of course, that was calculating and despicable; she was not the woman
to marry where she did not love! But then she really did love Richie in
a way. And Richie loved her--no question of that! Loved her more than
Warren did for all his letters and gifts, she decided resentfully.
When Richie wakened, bewildered, at one o'clock, Magsie was still
there. She insisted that he drink more milk before a word was said.
Then they talked again, Magsie in a new mood of reluctance and
gentleness, Richie half wild with rising hope and joy.
"And you would want me to marry you, feeling this way?" Magsie faltered.
"Oh, Magsie!" he whispered.
A tear fell on the thin hand that Magsie was patting. Through dazzled
eyes she saw the future: reckless buying of gowns--brief and few
farewells--the private car, the adoring invalid, the great sunny West
with its forests and beaches, the plain gold ring on her little hand.
In the whole concerned group--doctor, nurse, valet, mother, maid--young
Mrs. Gardiner would be supreme! She saw herself flitting about a
California bungalow, lending her young strength to Richie's increasing
strength in the sunwashed, health-giving air.
She put her arms about him, laid her rosy cheek against his pale one.
"And you really want me to go out," Magsie began, smiling through
tears, "and get a nice special license and a nice little plain gold
ring and come back here with a nice kind clergyman, and say 'I will'---"
But at this her tears again interrupted her, and Richard, clinging
desperately to her hand, could not speak either for tears. His mother
who had silently entered the room on Magsie's last words suddenly put
her fat arms about her and gave her the great motherly embrace for
which, without knowing it, she had hungered for years, and they all
fell to planning.
Richard could help only with an occasional assent. There was nothing to
which he would not consent now. They would be married as soon as Magsie
and his mother could get back with the necessities. And then would he
drink his milk, good boy--and go straight to sleep, good boy. Then
to-morrow he should be helped into the softest motor car procurable for
money, and into the private car that his mother and Magsie meant to
engage, by hook or crook, to-night. In six days they would be watching
the blue Pacific, and in three weeks Richie should be sleeping out of
doors and coming downstairs to meals. He had only to obey his mother;
he had only to obey his wife. Magsie kissed him good-bye tenderly
before leaving him for the hour's absence. Her heart was twisting
little tendrils about him already. He was a sweet, patient dear, she
told his mother, and he would simply have to get well!
"God above bless and reward you, Margaret!" was all Mrs. Gardiner could
say, but Magsie never tired of hearing it.
When the two women went down the hospital steps they found Billy
Pickering, in her large red car, eying them reproachfully from the curb.
"This is a nice way to act!" Billy began. "Your janitor's wife said you
had come here. I've got two men--" Magsie's expression stopped her.
"This is Mr. Gardiner's mother, Billy," Magsie said solemnly. "The
doctors agree that he must not stand this climate another day. He had
another sinking spell yesterday, and he--he mustn't have another! I am
going with them to California--"
"You ARE?" Billy ejaculated in amazement. Magsie bridled in becoming
importance.
"It is all very sudden," she said with the weary, patient smile of the
invalid's wife, "but he won't go without me." And then, as Mrs.
Gardiner began to give directions to the driver of her own car, which
was waiting, she went on inconsequentially, and in a low and troubled
undertone, "I didn't know what to do. Do--do you think I'm a fool,
Billy?"
"But what'll the other man say?" demanded Billy.
Magsie, leaning against the door of the car, rubbed the polished wood
with a filmy handkerchief.
"He won't know," she said.
"Won't know? But what will you tell him?"
"Oh, he's not here. He won't be back for ever so long. And--and Richie
can't live--they all say that. So if I come back before he does, what
earthly difference can it make to him that I was married to Richie?"
"MARRIED!" For once in her life Billy was completely at a loss. "But
are you going to MARRY him?"
Magsie gave her a solemn look, and nodded gravely. "He loves me," she
said in a soft injured tone, "and I mean to take as good care of him as
the best wife in the world could! I'm sick of the stage, and if
anything happens with--the other, I shan't have to worry--about money,
I mean. I'm not a fool, Billy. I can't let a chance like this slip. Of
course I wouldn't do it if I didn't like him and like his mother, too.
And I'll bet he will get well, and I'll never come back to New York! Of
course this is all a secret. We're going right down to the City Hall
for the license now, and the ring---There are a lot of clothes I've got
to buy immediately--"
"Why don't you let me run you about?" suggested Billy. "I don't have to
meet the men until six--I'll have to round up another girl, too; but
I'd love to. Let Mama go back to Mr. Gardiner!"
"Oh, I couldn't," Magsie said, quite the dutiful daughter. "She's a
wonderful person; she's arranging for our own private car, and a cook,
and I may take Anna if I can get her!"
"All righto!" agreed Billy.
A rather speculative look came into her face as the other car whirled
away. She suddenly gave directions to the driver.
"Drive to Miss Clay's apartment, where you picked me up this morning,
Hungerford!" she said quickly. "I--I think I left something
there--gloves--"
"I wonder if you would let me into Miss Clay's apartment?" she said to
the beaming janitor's wife fifteen minutes later. "Miss Clay isn't
here, and I left my gloves in her rooms."
Something in Magsie's manner had made her feel that Magsie had good
reason for keeping the name of her admirer hid. Billy had felt for
weeks that she would know the name if Magsie ever divulged it. And this
morning she had noticed the admission that the wronged wife was a
beautiful woman--and the hesitation with which Magsie had answered "Two
girls." Then Magsie had said that she would "write him," not at all the
natural thing to do to a man one was sure to see, and Rachael had said
that Warren was away! But most significant of all was her answer to
Billy's question as to whether the children were grown. Magsie had
admitted that she knew the wife, had "known her before," and yet she
pretended not to know whether or not the children were grown. Billy had
had just a fleeting idea of Warren Gregory before that, but this
particular term confirmed the suspicion suddenly.
So while Magsie was getting her marriage license, Billy was in Magsie's
apartment turning over the contents of her wastepaper basket in
feverish haste. The envelope was ruined, it had been crushed while wet;
a name had been barely started anyway. But here was the precious scrap
of commencement, "My dearest Greg--"
Billy was almost terrified by the discovery. There it was, in
irrefutable black and white. She stuffed it back into the basket, and
left the house like a thief, panting for the open air. A suspicion only
ten minutes before, now she felt as if no other fact on earth had ever
so fully possessed her. For an hour she drove about in a daze. Then she
went home, and sat down at her desk, and wrote the following letter:
"Mv DEAR RACHAEL: The letter with the darling little 'B' came
yesterday. I think he is cute to learn to write his own letter so
quickly. Tell him that mother is proud of him for picking so many
blackberries, and will love the jam. It is as hot as fire here, and the
park has that steamy smell that a hothouse has. I have been driving
about in Joe Butler's car all afternoon. We are going to Long Beach
to-night.
"Rachael--Magsie Clay and a man named Richard Gardiner were married
this afternoon. He is an invalid or something; he is at St. Luke's
Hospital, and she and his mother are going to take him to California at
once. What do you know about that? Of course this is a secret, and for
Heaven's sake, if you tell anybody this, don't say I gave it away.
"If Magsie Clay should send you a bunch of letters, she will just do it
to be a devil, and I want to ask you to burn them up before you read
them. You know how you talked to me about divorce, Rachael! What you
don't know can't hurt you. Don't please Magsie Clay to the extent of
doing exactly what she wants you to do. If anyone you love has been a
fool, why, it is certainly hard to understand how they could, but you
stand by what you said to me the other day, and forget it.
"I feel as if I was breaking into your own affairs. I hope you won't
care, and that I'm not all in the dark about this--" "Affectionately,
BILLY."