VIII
It was by this absolutely unexpected action of Maisie’s that Mrs. Tracy was defeated. Two detectives, who believed—because they had been so informed—that they were employed by Mr. Lester Tracy to collect evidence against his wife, arrived precisely at the time when they had been told to arrive, and entered the flat. They found Maisie there, with a man who brazenly insisted that he was Mr. Lester Tracy. He didn’t look it. He was disheveled, his coat was torn, he had a bad bruise on his cheek bone and a cut over one eyebrow, and he was incoherent with rage.
The detectives had reason to believe that the fellow was a Mr. Ainsworth Denbigh, and they said so. He told them that they would very likely find Mr. Denbigh in a hospital, although jail was where he belonged. He showed a marked inclination to make a row, which was not what they had been led to expect. In fact, he was so vigorous in his methods that the detectives were at a loss.
“Telephone to Mrs. Tracy,” said he. “She’ll come and identify me. Then you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing who it is that kicks you out!”
They agreed to this, and sat down to wait. It was an odd enough group—the two detectives, both burly and severe, their hats on their knees, while up and down the room walked the disordered and vehement young man. All three were somehow overshadowed by the quiet and downcast Maisie, sitting with her feet crossed, her hands clasped, in that patient, meek attitude of hers. The light of a shaded lamp fell upon her shining dark hair, untidy as always. Just once she raised her clear, honest eyes to the young man’s face, and he stopped short.
“Don’t worry, Maisie!” he said. “I’ll—I’ll look after you!”
Mrs. Tracy had had to be fetched from a bridge party, and she was in no good humor. She was astounded, too, by the maladroitness of that man Denbigh in thus dragging her into an affair which she had strongly desired to avoid.
“I suppose something went wrong,” she thought, “and he wants me to prove that he’s not Lester. It’s incredibly clumsy of him. Oh, I’ll be so thankful when the wretched anxiety of this thing is over, and I have the poor little baby again! If it wasn’t for the baby, I couldn’t go through with it, but I’d do anything in the world to save the child from that outrageous girl!”
She rang the bell of the apartment, and one of the detectives let her in. He was impressed by her frigid magnificence, her crown of white hair, her penetrating eye.
“Sorry to trouble you, ma’am,” he said. “Won’t take you a minute to clear this[Pg 59] thing up. This fellow here claims he’s Mr. Tracy, and—”
She smiled scornfully. The detective stood aside, and she preceded him down the hall to the living room.
“Where is this—” she began, but stopped short.
Her face blanched. She flung out her hand in a curiously helpless gesture, and it rested upon the detective’s shoulder. She needed his support.
“Lester!” she said faintly. “Oh, Lester! It can’t be—”
He had been filled with a terrible anger against his mother for this brutal and shameful ruse. He had thought he could never bear to see her face again, could never speak to her with common humanity; but when he did see her, in the anguish of her defeat, all that passed.
“Tell these men who I am,” he said, “and send them away.”
Her dry lips could scarcely frame the words.
“It’s my son. Please go!”
With the resignation acquired in their profession, they went off, and the door closed behind them. Lester brought forward a chair, but Mrs. Tracy would not sit down. She had recovered something of her poise, and looked at him steadily.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
He did not find it easy to answer without reproaching her too cruelly.
“I’m glad it has happened,” he said aloud. “I needed something like this to show me where I was drifting. If I hadn’t known—if I hadn’t come here—this—this crime would have been done, and very likely I’d have taken it all for granted. I’ve let this thing go on, I’ve let little Maisie be tormented and persecuted, and I’ve never lifted a finger to help her. It has been no one’s fault but mine, because she’s my responsibility. It’s no use saying I didn’t realize; it was my business to realize. But it’s ended now. She’s going to keep her baby!”
“Lester! My son! You don’t know what you’re saying! Simply because you’ve seen this girl again, and perhaps felt a little of your old, tragic infatuation—”
“I don’t know whether it’s that,” he said slowly; “but whatever it was I felt for Maisie, there’s never been anything else half so fine in all my life. I always knew that, but I hadn’t the sense—or the manliness—to understand what it meant. I thought I’d get over it. I should have, in the course of time, and I should have been getting over the only thing in me that’s good!”
He turned to Maisie.
“You’re free, you know, Maisie,” he said. “You can do exactly as you please. I give you my word you won’t be disturbed again. You’re to have the baby, and I’ll see that there’s a proper provision made.”
“Lester!” cried his mother. “You cannot put me aside entirely—”
“I do put you aside,” he said sternly. “It’s Maisie’s child, and she’s going to have it. I wish to Heaven she’d take me, too!”
Maisie had not stirred or spoken a word. She got up now and went out of the room.
They looked after her with amazement. Mrs. Tracy came close to her son.
“Oh, try to realize!” she whispered. “It’s your child, too. It’s a Tracy. You can’t abandon your own child to that ignorant, common girl!”
“Common!” said he. “I’ve never seen one like her!”
“She’s—” Mrs. Tracy began.
Maisie reëntered with the baby in her arms. It was asleep, lying limp and flushed against her frail shoulder. Over its dark, rough head, her eyes, misty with tears, met Mrs. Tracy’s.
“I know it’s my baby,” she said in an unsteady voice. “My very own! It’s wrong of any one to take her away from me, for one minute; but I know you love her. I wanted to say—” Maisie’s voice broke entirely. “I couldn’t be—cruel,” she sobbed; “not now when I have her safe. I’ll go to-morrow—I will indeed—to sign a paper—”
“What paper?” Lester demanded.
He came up beside her and put his arm about her. She looked up into his face with her old trust and candor.
“You don’t need to sign any papers, Maisie, darling!”
“But I want to,” she said. “I mean a paper to say that Mrs. Tracy is to have—” She paused for a moment, struggling with her tears. “I remember just how it goes. I want it to say that Mrs. Tracy is to have free access to the aforementioned infant at any reasonable hour. And any hour’ll be reasonable—really it will. Even if the baby’s in her bath, she’ll be welcome to come in.”
“Don’t, Maisie!” cried Mrs. Tracy sharply.[Pg 60]
“I mean it! I mean it with all my heart!” cried Maisie. “I know you love the baby. I know what it is to long to see her, and not be able to. I thought you’d like to hold her for a minute, now before you go home. It just makes the whole night different, when you’ve done that!”
On the way home in her car, Mrs. Tracy reflected upon the incredible thing that had happened. Of all wildly improbable things, the most improbable was that she should ever beseech and entreat Maisie to come home with her to live; yet she had done that.
Lester sat on one side of her, very silent, but she was not troubled by his silence. The sleeping baby lay against her heart, and one of her hands held Maisie’s in a firm clasp.[Pg 61]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
APRIL, 1923
Vol. LXXVIII NUMBER 3
It Seemed Reasonable
FAR BETTER TO DO IT YOURSELF, OR HAVE IT DONE BADLY—BY SOME ONE ELSE
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
CHRISTINE and Paul were peaceably reading that evening in their model sitting room. The room was properly ventilated, the air was kept at the correct degree of humidity, the lighting was restful and hygienic, the furnishings were all in the best of taste.
They were a serious young couple. Paul was reading “Post-War Conditions in Beluchistan,” Christine was reading “Civilization’s Last Sigh,” and they concentrated their attention upon the books. Beside Paul, on the table, lay the three cigarettes which he allowed himself every evening, while Christine had three ounces of milk chocolate. There was not a sound from either of them, because the correct hygienic temperature, the bland light, and their own well balanced temperaments, prevented them from being fidgety. They had made up their minds that marriage should not make them frivolous, narrow, or dull, and it had not.
It was a January night of cruel, silent cold, black as the pit. It was nearly ten o’clock, and they certainly expected no intruders upon their serious quiet. Once, when Paul found that he had not exactly grasped the meaning of a paragraph, and had to turn back, he glanced up. By chance Christine also looked up, so that he met her eyes—her clear, honest blue eyes, so soft as they rested upon his face that he grew a little dizzy with the joy of it.
He could not take Christine quite sensibly yet. He knew that she was nothing but a human being, with many faults; yet very often he had wild hallucinations that she was an angel, a goddess, a mystery. She may have been subject to similar delusions, for she continued to look at her Paul, half smiling, as if lost in the contemplation of a miracle.
But suddenly their peace was destroyed—and for a good long time, too, as it happened—by the sound of the doorbell and the entrance of a glowing, dark-eyed girl with a tam-o’-shanter and a scarf of violent green. She brought an icy breath of air with her, but she herself seemed warm, almost fiery, with her rosy cheeks, her red hair, her gay and confident manner.
“Excuse me, people!” she said. “I know it’s an awfully unconventional time to burst in on you, but I’ve locked myself out of my poor little house, and I’d rather be a little unmannerly than freeze!”
Paul drew forward a chair, and down she sat, drawing off woolen gloves from a pair of very pretty little hands. She was very pretty, altogether, in a startling sort of way, and she had an incomparable self-possession.
“My name’s Lucille Banks,” she remarked. “I’ve taken that little cottage down at the crossroads. I moved in this morning, and I was so busy getting settled that I forgot about dinner until awfully late. Then I went out to buy something to eat, and I forgot my key.”
“But you’re not alone in the cottage?” said Christine.
“Lord, yes!” replied the other cheerfully. “I don’t mind that. I’m used to being alone. I like it.” She laughed. “I look like a kid, but I’m not,” she said. “I’m twenty-four. I was with the Red Cross in Italy. I’ve lived in Paris and London. I did a thousand miles by airplane. I’ve written a book. So you see!”
The serious couple were astounded and greatly interested.
“But where could you get anything to eat at this hour in this place?” asked Christine.
“I couldn’t. I didn’t; but that does[Pg 63]n’t bother me. I’ve never pampered myself by eating a certain amount of food at certain intervals. If I could possibly beg a cigarette?”
“Oh, by all means!” said Paul hastily, and brought out his case.
Christine protested.
“Let me get you something to eat, instead,” she said. “It’s so bad for you to—”
“Nothing hurts me,” Miss Banks coolly interrupted. “Even if it did hurt me, I shouldn’t care. I’m going to do all the things I like to do, and hang the consequences!”
This speech did not please Christine very much. She glanced at Paul. Somewhat to her surprise, she found him with a faint smile on his lips.
“Every one who says ‘hang the consequences’ thinks there won’t really be any,” he said.
“Consequences fall alike upon the just and the unjust,” remarked Miss Banks, through a cloud of smoke.
She, too, was smiling now, with her strong little white teeth gleaming, her dark eyes alight. She went on to express her audacious theories of life, and her energetic and reckless views about everything else, at some length.
Christine liked it less and less. She admitted freely that this Miss Banks was extraordinarily pretty, and had a debonair charm of her own, but she imagined that the girl was not to be trusted very far. She felt sure that Paul would think as she did, for they always agreed; so she looked at him, and the expression on his face surprised her. He was regarding Miss Banks with a sort of indulgence, almost compassionate, as if she were a rash and silly child, and he a man of the world.
Until this moment, Christine had looked upon Paul as a comrade, a friend, whose heart she knew as she knew her own; but now it suddenly occurred to her that Paul had been alive for twenty-six years before she had seen him, existing and thriving by himself. For some reason this idea hurt and dismayed her. She no longer listened to the lively dialogue between him and Miss Banks. She wasn’t good at talking; what she liked was to listen to Paul—but to Paul when he was talking to herself, not to Miss Banks.
“Of course I’m not interesting,” she thought. “I’ve never done anything but grow up and go to college and get married. I’ve never seen Paul so interested!”
Her far from pleasant reverie was disturbed by Miss Banks springing up.
“Well!” she said. “If you can get me into my little house, please do. I’ve got to be up early to-morrow morning, to cover the Industrial Women’s Peace Convention for my paper.”
“Are you—” began Christine.
“I’m a free lance journalist,” said Miss Banks. “I suppose they picked me for this job because I don’t know anything about industry, and hate peace and women!”
Paul had risen.
“Do you hate women?” he asked in that same amused, indulgent tone.
“As much as Nietzsche did,” Miss Banks assured him. “Only in general, of course. There are exceptions.”
She smiled at Christine and held out her hand—which Christine had to take, and from which she received a fierce grasp that tingled through her arm and positively made the color rise in her face.
“You little beast!” she murmured, with energy, as Paul and Miss Banks went out of the front door.