CHAPTER XIX
MARY THINKS THINGS OUT
Mary awoke with a start to certain practical and immediate dangers of her situation. Mr. Morton knew she was here at the Grantham, and so did Peter Loveman; whatever she might do in the end, she had a desire to avoid both of these men for the present—at least until she had determined upon her course. There was but one way to escape them, and that was to disappear from the Grantham before either of the pair had time to return upon their different enterprises.
Within an hour she and her baggage were at another hotel. Within a second hour she was being shown about by a representative of a renting agency. That same evening she was installed in a little furnished apartment in the Nineties just west of Central Park. The better to protect her privacy she decided she would do her own housework and would go out rarely except in the evening.
Here her mind began once more to review her situation—as it was to keep on doing for many a long day to come. She had won, by an unbelievable twist of human nature. Yet she had not won; she was, as she now perceived, only at the beginning of an enterprise that was hourly becoming more complex and difficult—and that was also leading into what for her were undiscovered and uncomfortable areas of the human soul.
To be sure, for the immediate present at least, she had apparently averted the danger of the discovery of her secret marriage to Jack Morton. But the danger of that discovery would keep on recurring—at least until she had finally won out. And there was the ever-present danger that her husband, and her husband’s father, might somehow learn who Mary Regan was and had been. And there was the elder Morton, eager in his amorous suit. And there was Peter Loveman, who might any time, to serve his own ends, proceed swiftly upon some course that would mean disaster for her.
And then, there were those queer feelings which had been stirring in her since Maisie Jones, a choke in her voice, had called her fine!—wonderful!—and since Maisie, loving Jack, had declared Mary had proved that she would make far the better wife for Jack. Mary did not understand these strange emotions. She did not like them, and she tried to force them out of her being. But despite this effort there were fear-stricken moments when, with all her dangers, she felt that she could not even count upon herself.
The next morning she called up Jack, telling him where she was. He could telephone her as often as he liked, she told him, if he would be careful to speak only when he was alone. But she forbade him coming to see her; that would be unsafe, as he might be followed. Jack protested against this order, but she was firm, and at length he gave his promise.
As the days passed, days when she had no company except her own thoughts and Jack’s telephone messages, she reasoned herself out of the influence of those strange feelings begotten by the behavior and the words of Maisie Jones (at least she believed she did), and she reached a clearer conception of herself (or believed she did) and of what must be her future procedure. And the way she saw herself, her plans, her motives, was anything but unfavorable. She was just like most other women. She wanted position, yes—she wanted money, yes; and she was getting them in exactly the same way that the most proper and honored women were winning them, by playing her cards as a woman. As for what she was hiding—well, wasn’t all the world hiding something? She was merely doing what all were doing.
She came to see herself—despite the methods by which she would attain her end—as making a figure as a wife that Jack would be proud of before the world. As Jack’s wife she was going to give him her best. No man’s wife was going to be better-gowned or of more distinguished appearance, and no wife could do more than she, with the will and the brains which she knew she had, to hold her husband up to the standards expected of a man of large affairs. Later, after she had made Jack into a real man, and through that service had somehow managed to get Jack’s father reconciled, and after she had thoroughly established herself with them and as a noteworthy figure in their circle—later she would tell them just who she was and what she had been, and by that time Mr. Morton would recognize that she was the one woman in the world who could have brought, and could still hold, Jack to such a position of worldly success.
Thus she thought, as the lonely days went by. But as more and more she saw Jack as the foundation of her plan, so more and more did she see him in another possible aspect. This second possibility grew to be her chief concern.