Affinities and Other Stories Part 23

I sat there for two hours.

About two o'clock I heard Maisie say she would have to telephone home, and if a totally innocent person can suffer the way I did I don't know how a guilty one could live. But Roger leaped in front of her.

"I'll do it, honey," he said. "I--I was just thinking of telephoning."

They were close to the door.

"Don't call me honey," Maisie said in a tense voice. "I know about Carrie Smith's party and who was there. After the way Clara has schemed all these years to get you back, to have you fall into a trap like that!

It's sickening!"

She put her hand on the k.n.o.b of the door.

"Listen, darling," Roger implored. "I--I don't care a hang for anyone but you. I'm perfectly wretched. I----"

He pulled her hand off the k.n.o.b of the door and I heard him kiss it.

"Let me call your mother," he said. "She'll know you are all right when I'm here."

Well, I had to listen. The idea of her saying I'd tried to get him back, when everybody knows how he carried on when I turned him down! I hadn't given him a thought for years.

"Did you make love to Clara?"

"Certainly not. Look here, Maisie, you can afford to be magnanimous.

Clara's a nice woman, but she's years older than you are. You know who loves you, don't you?"

Positively he was appealing. He sounded fairly sick.

"Get mother on the wire," said Maisie curtly. "Then call me. I'll talk to her."

Roger opened the door as soon as she had gone and squeezed in beside me.

"She's coming to telephone. You'll have to go somewhere else, Clara," he said.

"Where, for instance?"

"I may be able to collect them in the pantry. Then you can run across and get out the door."

"Into the rain?"

"Well, you can't stay here, can you?"

"I'll do nothing of the sort. Go and tell her the wires are down. They are. And then get that crowd of flappers upstairs. If they go the men will. I give you ten minutes. At the end of that time I'm coming out to the fire. I'm cold."

"And after they go up, what?"

"Then you're going into somebody's room to steal me a pair of dry shoes.

Get Maisie's, she's about my size. We'll have to walk to mother's."

"I can't leave, Clara. If anything happened and I was missing----"

When I said nothing he knew I was in earnest. He went out and told them the telephone was out of order, and somehow or other he shooed them upstairs. I opened the door of the telephone closet for air, and I could hear them overhead, ragging Roger about the engagement and how he happened to get to Maisie's when it was so far from his road home. Every time I thought they were settled, some fool of a boy or giggling debutante would come down again and look for soap, or towels, or matches, or heaven knows what. I could have strangled the lot of them.

By three o'clock it was fairly quiet, and I crept out and sat by the log fire. If I had had a shoe I would have started off then and there. I'm no coward and I was desperate. But I couldn't go in my silk stockings.

And when after a while Roger slipped down the stairs he had no shoes for me.

"I've tried all the girls' doors," he said wretchedly, "and they're locked. Couldn't you tie a towel round your foot, or something? I'm going to get into trouble over this thing yet. I feel it."

"Go up and bring me little Teddy Robinson's shoes," I snapped. "It won't compromise you to go into his room, I daresay."

"What if he's not asleep?"

"Tell him you're going to clean them. Tell him anything. And, Roger, don't let Maisie pull the _ingenue_ stunt on you. I may be years older than she is, but Maisie's no child."

Well, with everyone gone and Roger hunting me some boots, I felt rather better. I went to the pantry and fixed some hot milk and carried it in to drink by the fire. Roger came down with the boots, and to save time he laced them on my feet while I sat back and sipped.

That, of course, in spite of what Bill pretends to think, is why Roger was on his knees before me when Peter walked in.

Oh, yes, Peter Arundel walked in! It just shows the sort of luck I played in that night. He walked in and slammed the door.

"Thank heaven!" he said, and stalked over to me and jerked the cup out of my hand. "You pair of idiots!" he fairly snarled. "What sort of an escapade is this anyhow?"

"It--it's a joke, Peter," I quavered. He stared at me in speechless scorn. "Positively it is a joke, Peter."

"I daresay," he said grimly. "Perhaps to-morrow I may see it that way.

The question is, will Bill think it's a joke?"

He looked round, and luckily for me he saw all the girls' wraps lying about.

"If the family's here, Clara," he said in a milder voice, "I--I may be doing you an injustice."

Roger had not said a word. He was standing in front of the fire, watching the stairs.

"When we found the note," Peter went on in his awful booming voice, "saying you were going at last to be true to yourself, and when you and Roger had disappeared, what were we to think? Especially after the way you two had fallen into each other's arms from the moment you met."

"How interesting!" said a voice from the staircase.

It was Maisie!

Well, what's the use of going into it again? She gave Roger his ring instantly, and Roger was positively grey. He went back on me without a particle of shame--said I'd suggested the whole thing and begged him to help me; that he'd felt like a fool the whole time.

"Maisie, darling," he said, "surely you know that there's n.o.body in all the world for me but you."

He held out the ring to her, but she shook her head.

"I'm not angry--not any more," she said. "I've lost my faith in you, that's all. One thing I'm profoundly grateful for--that you and Clara had this--this explosion before we were married and not after."

"Maisie!" he cried.