Part 11

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.

“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.

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 doesn’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.

II

As they stepped out of the tranquil, bright house, the cold sprang like a wolf at Paul’s throat and made him gasp. The blackness and the stillness of that night!

“We’ll make a dash for it,” he said, taking Miss Banks’s arm--a very solid little arm it was, too.

“No hurry,” said she. “I like this kind of weather, and I like this awful, dismal little place. At night it doesn’t look like a suburban residential park. It might be Siberia!”

Paul, being a man, was therefore obliged to conceal his extreme discomfort, and to stroll along at the girl’s side, though the cold bit him to the bone and made his throat ache, though his numbed feet struck against stones and caused him anguish. He had to talk, too, and even to laugh, as they went down the long, lonely road.

Then they reached the corner, and turned off down a lane, not yet improved, but full of ruts and ridges of frozen mud. Paul had heard of the good old-fashioned punishment in which the culprit had to walk over red-hot plowshares. He thought that it could not have been much more painful than traversing this lane. The friendly interest he had felt in Miss Banks was greatly chilled. He thought she was an inhuman little monster.

They came in time to her cottage, all dark and silent, with a low, white fence faintly visible, like a necklace of bones round the stark garden. There wasn’t another house within sight. No one but an inhuman little monster could have endured to live here.

“Now!” said she. “Let’s see you get in!”

She perched herself on the fence, quite blithe and unconcerned. She even whistled.

Paul and Christine had always agreed that woman should be man’s comrade and helper. When woman, however, was not a helper and comrade, but sat upon a fence, whistling, and simply waiting, man was conscious of a new and not displeasing sense of obligation. He felt that he must display the primitive manly qualities of strength and cunning, that he must be practical, energetic, and so on.

Christine would have wanted to help and advise him. If he had insisted upon doing it alone, she would have thought he was “showing off.” Well, perhaps he was. He deserved that privilege, set down as he was on a bitter night before a strange house and told to get into it.

He did get into it. After finding everything locked, he broke a window pane with a stone, inserted his hand, and turned the catch. The window then lifted readily enough, so that he could crawl through. Ingenuity, always ingenuity!

Nothing for him to stumble about in that musty, cold, strange blackness, find a lamp and light it, and open the front door. Nothing for him to light a fire on the hearth of the sitting room and another in the kitchen stove. Nothing to him that his hand and wrist were cut and bleeding. He pretended not to notice that, and Miss Banks really didn’t.

Then he stuffed up the broken window pane with rags, and then Miss Banks had plenty of other little things for him to do--boxes to open, furniture to move, and so on.

“I can’t do a blessed thing for myself,” she observed.

Now Paul was grimy and very weary, and those cuts were painful. The sight of Miss Banks sitting comfortably in an armchair by the fire did not give him the unselfish pleasure it should have given.

“How did you manage to get on, then, in Siberia, or wherever it was?” he demanded.

“I’ve never been in Siberia,” said she, “but I’d get on there--or anywhere. I know how to get things done!”

This struck Paul as a very tactless remark. Such knowledge was not a thing to boast of; but he happened to look at her, and she was looking at him, and his serious face broke reluctantly into a grin.

“Don’t you know,” said she, “that Adam delved while Eve spun? I’m perfectly willing to sit comfortably by the fire and spin, as long as there’s a man to go out in the cold and delve; and there always is!”

Now Paul did not like this attitude. He thought Miss Banks a selfish, unscrupulous, and domineering creature--but challenging. She was quick and clever and audacious, besides being _very_ pretty; and it was necessary to show her that he was not a cat’s-paw.

Of course, he could not very well refuse any of her requests. He had to chop wood, to break open a cupboard door, and to nail up rows and rows of hooks; but he did all this with a bland and superior air. Being unused to such work, it took him a long time. When at last he had done, and had put on his overcoat, instead of thanking him, Miss Banks remarked:

“They say that if you want a thing done well, you must do it yourself: but for my part I’d rather have things done badly--by some one else!”

“Thanks!” said Paul frigidly.

Miss Banks was standing quite close to him, staring at him with candid interest.

“The trouble with you is,” she said, “that you’re spoiled!”

Paul was hard put to it to find a superior smile.

“Thanks!” he said again. “And now, if there’s nothing more you want done I may as--”

“There’ll be lots more things to-morrow,” she interrupted; “but you’ve had enough, haven’t you?”

This was too much for Paul. He saw by her self-satisfied smile that she fancied she had exploited him and made an idiot of him, and was laughing at him.

“No,” he said, in a calm, reasonable tone. “If you want me to help you, I’ll come again to-morrow.”

Then he went off, scarcely feeling the cold now, because of the wrath and resentment that burned in him.

III

Paul found Christine just beginning to grow alarmed.

“It’s nearly one o’clock,” she said. “I thought--”

Her husband sat down and lit a cigarette.

“The silly girl has things in such a mess,” he said, “I thought it would only be decent to stay and help her a little.”

“Of course,” Christine agreed.

She was uneasy at Paul’s appearance. He looked pale and tired and severe. There were smudges on his face and on his collar; and then she caught sight of a grimy handkerchief tied around his wrist.

“Have you hurt yourself, Paul, darling?” she asked anxiously. “Do let me see--”

“Certainly not!” he answered, frowning. “I’m not one of those clumsy imbeciles who are always getting hurt!”

This was the first time that Paul had ever behaved quite so much like a married man; but Christine was prepared for it, and was tactful.

“She’s a very pretty girl, isn’t she?” she asked.

“She may be pretty,” Paul answered judiciously; “but she’s not the type that appeals to me. Personally, I think she’s the very worst type of modern woman. She’s--there’s nothing feminine about her. She’s an egotist.” He paused. “After all,” he went on, “what a woman should be is a man’s comrade and companion. They should share their work and their play. This idea of a woman having all sorts of absurd privileges, and behaving like an empress, simply because she’s a woman, is monstrous!”

Christine made a heroic effort not to cry. She knew Paul was not speaking of herself. Never had _she_ behaved like an empress, or wished to do so, and she did share the work loyally. Of course it wasn’t his fault if her share was composed of very monotonous, dusty, dull little tasks, and of course it wasn’t his fault that there was mighty little play to be shared.

He went on, in that severe tone, talking about women, and she was certainly one of them. Indeed, she had a guilty consciousness that she was more of a woman than Paul suspected. She tried to stifle her shameful, ignoble feelings, and when she couldn’t stifle them, she hid them. Never should Paul know how she felt about Miss Banks. He expected his wife to be a comrade, and a comrade she would be, at any cost.

Thus it was that a curious situation arose. Paul would denounce Miss Banks with great energy, while continuing to go and see her and to assist her; but Christine, who avoided the girl as far as possible, defended her chivalrously.

Miss Banks now had a telephone, and knew how to use it. Suddenly, in the middle of a calm, sensible evening, her voice would come over the wire, asking Paul to come and mend a leak, or kill a rat, or investigate a mysterious noise. Paul always said no, he wouldn’t go, but Christine always persuaded him to go--and generally cried after he had gone, because he so obviously wished to be persuaded.

He never suggested that Christine should accompany him. Neither did Miss Banks. Indeed, she said things about tame husbands that prevented Paul from even considering such an idea.

Why he liked to see the girl he couldn’t understand. She was as rude, as impertinent, as mocking, as she chose to be. She frankly admitted that she liked to “take him down a peg.” She made fun of him, she kept him busy at arduous and humiliating tasks. And all this, instead of crushing him, had the odd effect of making him--well, Christine’s private word for it was “bumptious.”

He really was bumptious. He was bumptious while he killed rats for Miss Banks, and still more bumptious when he got home and told Christine about it.

Generally, when he went down to the cottage, he stayed there a long time. After he had finished the work she set for him, Miss Banks would graciously let him sit before her fire, and smoke, and be baited. One night, however, he came home so promptly that he almost caught Christine in tears. Although he was so much upset, he probably would not have noticed.

“That girl’s a little too much!” he said. “Of course, I make allowances for her being so silly and spoiled, but--”

“Who spoils her?” inquired Christine unexpectedly.

“Who? Why, every one, I suppose,” he answered, a little taken aback.

“Why?” asked Christine.

Well, Paul didn’t know. He said it didn’t matter; that wasn’t the point. The point was, apparently, that Miss Banks didn’t understand what a man would put up with and what he would not put up with. Paul said he had already done too much for her, and would no longer submit to her outrageous claims.

“If she’s so blamed independent,” he said, “then let her be independent, and shift for herself!”

And their peaceful evenings began again. Christine was delighted. She didn’t mind Paul’s being bumptious and talking so sternly about women. In her heart she thought it was rather pathetic and sweet and young. She was very sorry that Miss Banks had hurt him, for he was hurt, though he called it disgust. He had firmly believed that the girl couldn’t get on without him, couldn’t light a fire or open a reluctant door; yet he hadn’t been near the cottage for a week, and she still lived.

Now, in his heart, Paul didn’t care two straws for Miss Banks. He believed that there never had been, and probably never would be, a woman in any way comparable to his own Christine. Christine was beautiful, good, kind, sensible, and brave; only Christine admired him and Miss Banks didn’t, and by some diabolic art Miss Banks had aroused in him a violent desire to be admired by her.

Paul was almost ashamed to remember how boastful he had sometimes been, with what an air of unconcern he had done things frightfully difficult for him to do; but not once had Miss Banks praised or thanked him, or even been agreeable to him. Nevertheless he was obliged to go on and on.

He missed all that when it ceased. He felt like a warrior tamely at home after the war. He didn’t miss the outrageous girl, but he greatly missed the inspiration she had given him to exert himself mightily. He found it irksome to sit still and read in the evening, without the least chance of an emergency arising in which he could distinguish himself. He became restless and sometimes a little irritable.

Christine, seeing this, believed that he was unhappy because he had quarreled with Miss Banks. That made Christine bitterly unhappy herself.

She set to work with all her heart, then, to win back her hero. She kept the most miraculous order in the house, and cooked the most appetizing meals. She worked out a number of ways in which to save more money. She read “Post-War Conditions in Beluchistan” and other such books, in order to discuss them with Paul. She dressed her hair in a new way. She did all she could think of to make herself and her home delightful to him.

He noticed everything, or almost everything, and he praised her; yet his praise lacked something for which she longed. It was sincere, but it had no enthusiasm. In some way she failed.

She had always accepted Paul’s theories without reservation. It seemed reasonable to her that Paul should wish to find a helpmeet and comrade in his wife, and it also seemed reasonable to believe that Paul really knew what he wanted. When she made of herself exactly what he _said_ he wanted, it seemed reasonable to expect that he would be satisfied; and yet he wasn’t. He tried not to show it, but he wasn’t.

IV