Book 3 - Chapter 5

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_ BOOK III CHAPTER V

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." _

Read next: Book 3: Chapter 6

Read previous: Book 3: Chapter 4

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