MAISIE WALTER’S LIPS stretched in a tight little smile of satisfaction as she surveyed the poky suburban house with its prim lace curtains. So this was what Mark had come to, after thirty years! Mark, with his gay, defiant opinions, his much-vaunted scorn of convention—the god-like Mark had come to this in the end!
It was the end, of course. The unspecified female relative who had written to Julia in a crabbed and elderly hand had made that perfectly clear, in spite of the circumlocutions in which such a statement must decently be couched. Mark had at most a few more months to live, and he wanted to see his old friend Maisie Walter before he died; that was the gist of the letter which Maisie now fingered almost lovingly with her tight black glove.
The triumph of it! Mark, who had once thought that he owned the world—that he owned Maisie, and could demand of her anything he liked—Mark now lay dying in this genteel-ly squalid street, with only some ageing cousin or something to look after him. Not even a wife or family to show for all that proud young strength! A little secret smile hovered round Maisie’s mouth, and she rang the bell.
*
The female relative had retired, still dimly chattering, down the dim linoleumed stairs, and Maisie was left to enter the bedroom alone. She hesitated—not from any fear of what she might feel at the sight of her lover, alone and dying, after thirty years, but from some uncertainty as to whether or not to keep on her hat and gloves. Both were becoming—the hat, in particular, with its crisp little veil, was a valuable addition to the ever more complicated apparatus necessary for making people exclaim that she didn’t look a day over forty. The gloves too—everyone knows that well-chosen gloves can do a lot for a woman past her first girlhood. On the other hand, it would be nice for him to notice, as he lay there with his once all-dominating, all-demanding body ruined and shrunken, that her hair was still yellow and shining; that her hands were still white, and beautifully manicured. She couldn’t actually show him her luxurious house in Richmond, or her prosperous stockbroker husband, but she’d soon get them into the conversation.
“Maisie?”
The voice from the bed did not sound either broken or humble, and Maisie was momentarily irritated and taken aback. Then she recovered herself, cautiously made her face light up with the smile which showed her top teeth but not her less natural-looking bottom ones, and approached the bed. Her confidence flowed warmly back at the sight of the gaunt figure leaning against the pillows. The looks were gone; the fire was gone; the blue eyes whose glance had once made her forget everything else on earth—well, not quite everything, thank goodness, or she wouldn’t now be living in that comfortable house in Richmond—those eyes had faded to a lustreless, bloodshot grey.
“How are you, Mark?” she enquired brightly, and added: “I’ve brought you some flowers.”
She dumped the twelve red roses on to the bed. Something cheaper would have done, but she had only remembered at the last minute that one is supposed to bring an invalid something and roses were all she could see to buy.
She waited for him to thank her—to look her up and down and tell her she looked as beautiful as ever—to ask her how she was getting on—all the remarks one has a right to expect in such a situation. But he didn’t say any of these things. He simply gazed at the flowers lying on the blanket in front of him, as if in deep thought. Suddenly he spoke, with a curious flash of the old arrogance—an arrogance that had no right to survive in so changed a body.
“Let me see your hands, Maisie. I haven’t seen your hands for thirty years.”
Startled, Maisie removed her gloves and held out her hands, palms downwards so that the perfectly varnished nails would show to best advantage. Sharply, he turned them over and looked at the palms.
“Why, Maisie!” he said, in tones of gentle surprise. “They’re still beautiful!”
He looked up at her in a sort of bewilderment, and Maisie bristled with annoyance. Still beautiful, indeed! And why shouldn’t they be, she’d like to know? Anybody else would have told her that she still looked beautiful … not a day over forty….
She forced a smile back on to her face—the condescending one this time. He must be made to realize how completely the tables were turned since last they were together.
“Shall I put the flowers in water for you?” she enquired briskly.
“Yes! Oh, yes, please!” he said, with a vehemence that made her start; “And when you’ve done that,” he went on, with a strange, tense eagerness, “I’m going to ask you to do something else for me.”
As Maisie poked the roses one after another into the hideous glass vase produced by the relative from some dank cupboard downstairs, she was conscious of Mark’s eyes on her all the time. No, not on her—on her hands; and she flashed her diamonds and nail varnish as well as she could without actually pricking herself on those beastly stalks.
“Do you remember, Maisie, the last time I watched you arranging red roses in a vase?”
He spoke slowly with his eyes on her hands as if he were asking them the question rather than her. “Red roses. I’d brought them to you. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen—your hands moving among the flowers.” He stopped. “I asked you for something then, Maisie, which you never gave me. Now I am going to ask you for something else—something which you may find it easier to give.”
Maisie eyed him guardedly, and he went on: “I just want you to get me the bottle of sleeping tablets from the bathroom. The doctor won’t let me have them within reach—nor will Cousin Edie. Mine is a painful complaint, you know,” he added gently, “and there is no one else I can ask to help me. I promise you nothing will happen till you are safe home again. No one will be able to blame you. Please, Maisie, just get them for me. It won’t take you a moment. In remembrance of the roses, all those years ago.”
Maisie stared at him, scandalized. Was there no limit to the outrageous demands this man would make on her? Once it had been demands that no respectable girl could submit to, and now it was this! Expecting her to abet him in an actual crime!
She drew herself up—and then faltered. If she refused point blank there would be a scene, and she had long ago had enough scenes with Mark to last her a lifetime. Better humour him—pretend she couldn’t find them, or something…. With face averted she hurried off and found the bathroom.
A fine array of bottles there, and no mistake. Cousin Edie must have almost as many things the matter with her as Mark himself! But she saw the bottle Mark meant—two of them, in fact—one nearly full, the other empty.
It was the empty one that gave her the idea—the clever, amusing idea that would get her so neatly out of the whole business. All she had to do was fill it with tablets that looked similar but were really harmless—in all this collection there must be something that would do. Then she could take it to Mark, and he’d never know the difference until—well, until she was safely out of the house!
Ah! The very thing! Vitamin tablets! They looked almost the same, and one could take dozens of them and come to no harm! Giggling like a schoolgirl, she tipped a number of them into the empty bottle, touched up her make-up in the bathroom mirror, and then, scarcely able to keep a straight face, she returned to the bedroom.
How his face lit up! Maisie could have giggled aloud as he snatched the bottle from her like a starving man and stuffed it under his pillow; as he kissed her white hand over and over again, with tears of gratitude in his eyes.
“You must go now, my love, my darling!” he cried, in a choked voice. “You must get right away from this house, safe home again, before I take them. And listen, Maisie. All the days of your life my blessing will follow you. Wherever my soul may be in all this wide universe, it will never forget what you have risked, what you have done for me today. Tonight, as the last, blessed drowsiness steals over me, I shall lie here looking at your roses, thinking of your white hands. They shall be my last thought—the brave and lovely hands that have given me my release….”
Really, it seemed as if he’d never get to the end of his speech. Maisie almost had to stuff her handkerchief into her mouth to keep from laughing outright. Honestly, it was killing! To think of him lying here tonight, gazing soulfully at red roses and lapping up vitamin tablets! Once she was safe outside in the street, Maisie stood and laughed until her sides ached.
*
It wasn’t until the next day, when she heard that Mark Wilkinson had died in the night from an overdose of sleeping tablets, that she realized the silly mistake she must have made. She’d just put the bottle down for a moment while she touched up her face, and then in her hurry she must have picked up the wrong one and given it to him. Maddening! Such a clever trick it would have been. How was it that her hands, her beautiful hands, should have so betrayed her?