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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS

THE HEART OF RACHAEL

VOLUME VI

TO MY TERESA

BOOK I

THE HEART OF RACHAEL

CHAPTER I

The day had opened so brightly, in such a welcome wave of April
sunshine, that by mid-afternoon there were two hundred players
scattered over the links of the Long Island Country Club at
Belvedere Bay; the men in thick plaid stockings and loose striped
sweaters, the women's scarlet coats and white skirts making
splashes of vivid color against the fresh green of grass and the
thick powdering of dandelions. It was Saturday, and a half-
holiday; it was that one day of all the year when the seasons
change places, when winter is visibly worsted, and summer, with
warmth and relaxation, bathing and tennis and motor trips in the
moonlight, becomes again a reality.

There was a real warmth in the sunshine to-day, there was a
fragrance of lilac and early roses in the idle breezes. "Hot!"
shouted the players exultantly, as they passed each other in the
green valleys and over the sunny mounds. "You bet it's hot!"
agreed stout and glowing gentlemen, wiping wet foreheads before
reaching for a particular club, and panting as they gazed about at
the unbroken turf, melting a few miles away into the new green of
maple and elm trees, and topped, where the slope rose, by the
white columns and brick walls of the clubhouse.

Motor cars swept incessantly back and forth on the smooth roadway;
a few riders, their horses wheeling and dancing, went down the
bridle path, and there was a sprinkling of young men and women and
some shouting and clapping on the tennis-courts. But golf was the
order of the day. At the first tee at least two scores of
impatient players waited their turn to drive off, and at the last
green a group of twenty or thirty men and women, mostly women,
were interestedly watching the putting.

Mrs. Archibald Buckney, a large, generously made woman of perhaps
fifty, who stood a little apart from the group, with two young
women and a mild-looking blond young man, suddenly interrupted a
general discussion of scores and play with a personality.

"Is Clarence Breckenridge playing to-day, I wonder? Anybody seen
him?"

"Must be," said the more definite of the two rather indefinite
girls, with an assumption of bright interest. Leila Buckney, a few
weeks ago, had announced her engagement to the mild-looking blond
young man, Parker Hoyt, and she was just now attempting to hold
him by a charm she suspected she did not possess for him, and at
the same time to give her mother and sister the impression that
Parker was so deeply in her toils that she need make no further
effort to enslave him.

She had really nothing in common with Parker; their conversation
was composed entirely of personalities about their various
friends, and Leila felt it a great burden, and dreaded the hours
she must perforce spend alone with her future husband. It would be
much better when they were married, of course, but they could not
even begin to talk wedding plans yet, because Parker lived in
nervous terror of his aunt's disapproval, and Mrs. Watts
Frothingham was just now in Europe, and had not yet seen fit to
answer her nephew's dignified notification of his new plans, or
the dutiful and gracious note with which Miss Leila had
accompanied it.

The truth, though Leila did not know it, was that Mrs. Frothingham
had a pretty social secretary named Margaret Clay, a strange,
attractive little person, eighteen years old, whose mother had
been the old lady's companion for many years. And to Magsie, as
they all called her, young Mr. Hoyt had paid some decided
attention not many months before. Mrs. Frothingham had seen fit to
disapprove these advances then, but she was an extraordinarily
erratic and cross-grained old lady, and her silence now had forced
her nephew uncomfortably to suspect that she might have changed
her mind.

"Darn it!" said the engaging youth to himself "It's none of her
business, anyway, what I do!" But it made him acutely uneasy none
the less. He was the possessor of a good income, as he stood
there, this mild little blond; it came to him steadily and
regularly, with no effort at all on his part, but, with his aunt's
million--it must be at least that--he felt that he would have been
much happier. There it was, safe in the family, and she was
seventy-six, and without a direct heir. It would be too bad to
miss it now!

He thought of it a great deal, was thinking of it this moment, in
fact, and Leila suspected that he was. But Mrs. Buckney, aside
from a half-formed wish that young persons were more demonstrative
in these days, and that the wedding might be soon, had not a care
in the world, and, after a moment's unresponsive silence, returned
blithely to her query about Clarence Breckenridge.

"I haven't seen him," responded one of her daughters presently.
"Funny, too! Last year he didn't miss a day."

"Of course he'll get the cup as usual, this year," Mrs. Buckney
said brightly. "But I don't suppose young people with their heads
full of wedding plans will care much about the golf!" she added
courageously.

To this Miss Leila answered only with a weary shrug.

"Been drinking lately," Mr. Hoyt volunteered.

"You say he has?" Mrs. Buckney took him up promptly. "Is that so?
I knew he did all the time, of course, but I hadn't heard lately.
Well--! Pretty hard on Mrs. Breckenridge, isn't it?"

"Pretty hard on his daughter," Miss Leila drawled. "He has all
kinds of money, hasn't he, Park?"

"Scads," said Mr. Hoyt succinctly. Conversation languished. Miss
Leila presently said decidedly that unless her mother stood still,
the sun, which was indeed sinking low in the western sky, got in
everyone's eyes. Miss Edith said that she was dying for tea; Mr.
Hoyt's watch was consulted. Four o'clock; it was a little too
early for tea.

At about five o'clock the sunlight was softened by a steadily
rising bank of fog, which drifted in from the east; a mist almost
like a light rain beat upon the faces of the last golfers. There
were no riders on the bridle path now, and the long line of motor
cars parked by the clubhouse doors began to move and shift and
lessen. People with dinner engagements melted mysteriously away,
lights bloomed suddenly in the dining-room, shades were drawn and
awnings furled.

But in the club's great central apartment--which was reception-
room, lounging-room, and tea-room, and which, opened to the
immense porches, was used for dances in summer, and closed and
holly-trimmed, was the scene of many a winter dance as well--a
dozen good friends and neighbors lingered for tea. The women, sunk
in deep chairs about the blazing logs in the immense fireplace,
gossiped in low tones together, punctuating their talk with an
occasional burst of soft laughter. The men watched teacups, adding
an occasional comment to the talk, but listening in silence for
the most part, their amused eyes on the women's interested faces.

Here was a representative group, ranging in age from old Peter
Pomeroy, who had been one of the club's founders twelve years ago,
and at sixty was one of its prominent members to-day, to lovely
Vivian Sartoris, a demure, baby-faced little blonde of eighteen,
who might be confidently expected to make a brilliant match in a
year or two. Peter, slim, hard, gray-haired and leaden-skinned,
well-groomed and irreproachably dressed, was discussing a
cotillion with Mrs. Sartoris, a stout, florid little woman who was
only twice her daughter's age. Mrs. Sartoris really did look young
to be the mother of a popular debutante; she rode and played golf
and tennis as briskly as ever; it was her pose to bring up the
subject of age at all times, and to threaten Vivian with terrible
penalties if she dared marry before her mother was forty at least.

Old Peter Pomeroy, who had a shrewd and disillusioned gray eye,
thought, as everyone else thought, that Mrs. Sartoris was an
empty-headed little fool, but he rarely talked to a woman who was
anything else, and no woman ever thought him anything but markedly
courteous and gallant. He was old now, rich, unmarried, quite
alone in the world. For forty years he had kept all the women of
his acquaintance speculating as to his plans; marriageable women
especially--perhaps fifty of them--had been able in all
maidenliness to indicate to him that they might easily be
persuaded to share the Pomeroy name and fortune. But Peter went on
kissing their hands, and thrilling them with an intimate casual
word now and then, and did no more.

Perhaps he smiled about it sometimes, in the privacy of his own
apartments--apartments which were variously located in a great
city hotel, an Adirondacks camp, a luxurious club, his own yacht,
and the beautiful home he had built for himself within a mile of
the spot where he was now having his tea. Sometimes it seemed
amusing to him that so many traps were laid for him. He could
appraise women quickly, and now and then he teased a woman of his
acquaintance with a delightfully worded description of his ideal
of a wife. If the woman thereafter carelessly indicated the
possession of the desired qualities in herself, Peter saw that,
too, but she never knew it, and never saw him laughing at her. She
went on for a month or two dressing brilliantly for his carefully
chaperoned little dinners, listening absorbed to his dissertations
upon Japanese prints or draperies from Peshawar, until Peter grew
tired and drew off, when she must put a brave face upon it and do
her share to show that she realized that the little game was over.

He had not been entirely without feminine companionship, however,
during the half-century of his life as a man. Everybody knew
something--and suspected a great deal more--of various friendships
of his. Even the girls knew that Peter Pomeroy was not over-
cautious in the management of his affairs, but they did not like
him the less, nor did their mothers find him less eligible, in a
matrimonial sense. Sometimes he met the older women's hints quite
seriously, with brief allusions to some "little girl" who was
always as sweet and deserving and virtuous as his own fatherly
interference in her affairs was disinterested and kind. "I did
what I could for her--risking what might or might not be said,"
Mr. Pomeroy might add, with a hero's modest smile and shrug. And
if nobody ever believed him, at least nobody ever challenged him.

Vivian Sartoris, girlishly perched on the great square leather
fender that framed the fireplace, was merely a modern, a very
modern, little girl, demurely dressed in the smartest of white
taffeta ruffles, with her small feet in white silk stockings and
shoes, a daring little black-and-white hat mashed down upon her
soft, loose hair, and, slung about her shoulders, a woolly coat of
clearest lemon yellow. Vivian gave the impression of a soft little
watchful cat, unfriendly, alert, selfish. Her manner was studiedly
rowdyish, her speech marred by slang; she loved only a few persons
in the world besides herself. One of these few persons, however,
was Clarence Breckenridge's daughter, Carol, affectionately known
to all these persons as "Billy," and it was in Miss Breckenridge's
defence that Vivian was speaking now. A general yet desultory
discussion of the three Breckenridges had been going on for some
moments. And some particular criticism of the man of the family
had pierced Miss Sartoris' habitual attitude of bored silence.

"That's all true about him," she said, idly spreading a sturdy
little hand to the blaze. "I have no use for Clarence
Breckenridge, and I think Mrs. Breckenridge is absolutely the most
cold-blooded woman I ever met! She always makes me feel as if she
were waiting to see me make a fool of myself, so that she could
smile that smooth superior smile at me. But Carol's different--
she's square, she is; she's just top-hole--if you know what I
mean--she's the finest ever," finished Miss Sartoris, with a
carefully calculated boyishness, "and what I mean to say is, she's
never had a fair deal!"

There was a little murmur of assent and admiration at this, and
only one voice disputed it.

"You're not called upon to defend Billy Breckenridge, Vivian,"
said Elinor Vanderwall, in her cool, amused voice. "Nobody's
blaming Billy, and Rachael Breckenridge can stand on her own feet.
But what we're saying is that Clarence, in spite of what they do
to protect him, will get himself dropped by decent people if he
goes on as he IS going on! He was tennis champion four or five
years ago; he played against an Englishman named Waters, who was
about half his age; it was the most remarkable thing I ever saw--"

"Wonderful match!" said Peter Pomeroy, as she paused.

"Wonderful--I should say so!" Miss Vanderwall sighed admiringly at
the memory. "Do you remember that one set went to nineteen--
twenty-one? Each man won on his own service--'most remarkable
match I ever saw! But Clarence Breckenridge couldn't hold a racket
now, and his game of bridge is getting to be absolutely rotten.
Crime, I call it!"

Vivian Sartoris offered no further remark. Indeed she had drifted
into a low-toned conversation with a young man on the fender.
Elinor Vanderwall was neither pretty nor rich, and she was
unmarried at thirty-four, her social importance being further
lessened by the fact that she had five sisters, all unmarried,
too, except Anna, the oldest, whose son was in college. Anna was
Mrs. Prince; her wedding was only a long-ago memory now.
Georgiana, who came next, was a calm, plain woman of thirty-seven,
interested in church work and organized charities. Alice was
musical and delicate. Elinor was worldly, decisive, the social
favorite among the sisters. Jeanette was boyish and brisk, a
splendid sportswoman, and Phyllis, at twenty-six, was still
babyish and appealing, tiny in build, and full of feminine charms.

All five were good dancers, good tennis and golf players, good
horsewomen, and good managers. All five dressed well, talked well,
and played excellent bridge. The fact of their not marrying was an
eternal mystery to their friends, to their wiry, nervous little
father, and their large, fat, serene mother; perhaps to themselves
as well. They met life, as they saw it, with great cleverness,
making it a rule to do little entertaining at home, where the
preponderance of women was most notable, and refusing to accept
invitations except singly. The Vanderwall girls were rarely seen
together; each had her pose and kept to it, each helped the others
to maintain theirs in turn. Alice's music, Georgiana's altruistic
duties, these were matters of sacred family tradition, and if
outsiders sometimes speculated as to the sisters' sincerity, at
least no Vanderwall ever betrayed another. And despite their
obvious handicaps, the five girls were regarded as social
authorities, and their names were prominently displayed in
newspaper accounts of all smart affairs. While making a fine art
of feminine friendships, they yet diffused a general impression of
being involved in endless affairs of the heart. They were much in
demand to fill in bridge tables, to serve on club directorates, to
amuse week-end parties, to be present at house weddings, and to
remain with the family for the first blank day or two after the
bride and groom were gone.

"Queer fellow, Breckenridge," said George Pomeroy, old Peter's
nephew, a red-faced, florid, simple man of forty.

"Well, he never should have married as he did, it's all in a
mess," a woman's voice said lazily. "Rachael's extraordinary of
course--there's no one quite like her. But she wasn't the woman
for him. Clarence wanted the little, clinging, adoring kind, who
would put cracked ice on his forehead, and wish those bad
saloonkeepers would stop drugging her dear big boy. Rachael looks
right through him; she doesn't fight, she doesn't care enough to
fight. She's just supremely bored by his weakness and stupidity.
He isn't big enough for her, either in goodness or badness. I
never knew what she married him for, and I don't believe anyone
else ever did!"

"I did, for one," said Miss Vanderwall, flicking the ashes from
her cigarette with a well-groomed fingertip. "Clarence
Breckenridge never was in love but once in his life--no, I don't
mean with Paula. I mean with Billy." And as a general nodding of
heads confirmed this theory, the speaker went on decidedly: "Since
that child was born she's been all the world to him. When he and
Paula were divorced--she was the offender--he fretted himself sick
for fear he'd done that precious five-year-old an injury. She
didn't get on with her grandmother, she drove governesses insane,
for two or three years there was simply no end of trouble. Finally
he took her abroad, for the excellent reason that she wanted to
go. In Paris they ran into Rachael Fairfax and her mother--let's
see, that was seven years ago. Rachael was only about twenty-one
or two then. But she'd been out since she was sixteen. She had the
bel air, she was beautiful--not as pretty as she is now, perhaps--
and of course her father was dead, and Rachael was absolutely on
the make. She took both Clarence and Billy in hand. I understand
the child was wearing jewelry and staying up until all hours every
night. Rachael mothered her, and of course the child came to
admire her. The funny thing is that Rachael and Billy hit it off
very well to this day.

"She and Clarence were married quietly, and came home. And I don't
think it was weeks, it was DAYS--and not many days--later, that
Rachael realized what a fool she'd been. Clarence had eyes for no
one but the girl, and of course she was a fascinating little
creature, and she's more fascinating every year."

"She's not as attractive as Rachael at that," said Peter Pomeroy.

"I know, my dear Peter," Miss Vanderwall assented quickly. "But
Billy's impulsive, and affectionate, at least, and Rachael is
neither. Anyway, Billy's at the age now when she can't think of
anything but herself. Her frocks, her parties, her friends--that's
all Clarence cares about!"

"Selfish ass!" said a man's voice in the firelight.

"I KNOW Clarence takes Carol and her friends off on week-end
trips," some woman said, "and leaves Rachael at home. If Rachael
wants the car, she has to ask them their plans. If she accepts a
dinner invitation, why, Clarence may drop out the last moment
because Carol's going to dine alone at home and wants her Daddy."

"Rachael's terribly decent about it," said the deep voice of old
Mrs. Torrence, who was chaperoning a grandson, glad of any excuse
to be at the club. "Upon my word I wouldn't be! She will breakfast
upstairs many a morning because Clarence likes Carol to pour his
coffee. And when that feller comes home tipsy--"

"Five nights a week!" supplemented Peter Pomeroy.

"Five nights a week," the old lady agreed, nodding, "she makes him
comfortable, quiets the house, and telephones around generally
that Clarence has come home with a splitting headache, and they
can't come--to dinner, or cards, or whatever it may be. But of
course I don't claim that she loves him, nor pretends to. I can
imagine the scornful look with which she goes about it."

"Well, why does she stand it?" said Mrs. Barker Emory, a handsome
but somewhat hard-faced woman, with a manner curiously compounded
of eagerness and uncertainty.

"Y'know, that's what I've been wondering," an Englishman added
interestedly.

"Why, what else would she do?" Miss Vanderwall asked briskly.

"Rachael's a perfectly adorable and brilliant and delightful
creature," summarized Peter Pomeroy, "but she's not got a penny
nor a relative in the world that I've ever heard of! She's got no
grounds for divorcing Clarence, and if she simply wanted to get
out, why, now that she's brought Billy up, introduced her
generally, whipped the girl into some sort of shape and got her
the right sort of friends, I suppose she might get out and
welcome!"

"No, Billy honestly likes her," objected Vivian Sartoris.

"She doesn't care for her enough to see that there's fair play,"
Elinor Vanderwall said quickly.

"Why doesn't she take a leaf from Paula's book," somebody
suggested, "and marry again? She could go out West and get a
divorce on any grounds she might choose to name."

"Well, Rachael's a cold woman, and a hard woman--in a way," Miss
Vanderwall said musingly, after a pause, when the troubles of the
Breckenridges kept the group silent for a moment. "But she's a
good sport. She gets a home, and clothes, and the club, and a car
and all the rest out of it, and she knows Billy and Clarence do
need her, in a way, to run things, and to keep up the social end.
More than that, Clarence can't keep up this pace long--he's going
to pieces fast--and Billy may marry any day--"

"I understand Joe Pickering's a little bit touched in that
quarter," said Mrs. Torrence.

"Yes--well, Clarence will never stand for THAT," somebody said.

Little Miss Sartoris neglected the Torrence grandson long enough
to say decidedly:

"She wouldn't LOOK at Joe Pickering! Joe drinks, and Billy's had
enough of that with her father. Besides, he has no money of his
own! He's impossible!"

"Where's the mother all this time?" asked the Englishman. "I mean
to say, she's living, isn't she, and all that?"

"Very much alive," Miss Vanderwall said. "Married to an Italian
count--Countess Luca d' Asafo. His people have cut him off;
they're Catholics. She has two little girls; there's an uncle
who's obliged to leave property to a son, and it serves Paula
quite right, I think. Where they live, or what on, I haven't the
remotest idea. I saw her in a car on Fifth Avenue, not so long
ago, with two heavy little black-haired girls; she looked sixty."

"Her sister, you know, was thick with my niece, Barbara
Olliphant," said Peter Pomeroy. "And funny thing!--when Barbara
was married..."

It was a long story, and fortunately moved away from the previous
topic; so that when it was presently interrupted by the arrival of
two women, everybody in the group had cause to feel gratitude for
a merciful deliverance.

The two women were Rachael and Carol Breckenridge, who came in a
little breathless, the throbbing engine of their motor car still
sounding faintly from the direction of the club doorway. Carol, a
slender, black-eyed, dusky-skinned girl of seventeen, took her
place beside Miss Sartoris on the fender, granting a brief
unsmiling nod to one or two friends, and eying the group between
the loose locks of her smoky, cropped black hair with the
inscrutable, almost brooding, expression that was her favorite
affectation. Her lithe, loosely built little body was as flat as a
boy's, she clasped her crossed knees with slender, satin-smooth
little brown hands, exposing by her attitude a frill of
embroidered petticoat, a transparent stretch of ash-gray silk
stocking, and smart ash-gray buckskin slippers with silver
buckles.

She was an effective little figure in the mingled twilight and
firelight, but it was toward her beautiful stepmother that
everybody looked as Rachael Breckenridge seated herself on the arm
of old Mrs. Torrence's chair and sent a careless greeting about
the circle.

"Hello, everybody!" she said, in a voice of extraordinary richness
and sweetness, "Peter, Dolly, Vivian--HELLO, Elinor! How do you
do, Mrs. Emory?" There was an aside when the newcomer said
imperatively to a club attendant, "We'll have some light here,
please!" Then she resumed easily: "I do beg your pardon, Mrs.
Emory, I interrupted you--"

"I only said that you were a little late for tea," said Mrs.
Emory, sweetly, wishing with a sort of futile rage that she could
learn to say almost nothing when this other woman, with her
insulting bright air of making one feel inferior, was about. The
Emorys had lived in Belvedere Hills for two years, coming from
Denver with much money and irrefutable credentials. They had been
members of the club perhaps half that time, members in good
standing. But Mrs. Emory would have paid a large sum to have
Rachael Breckenridge call her "Belle," and Rachael Breckenridge
knew it.

The lights, duly poured in a soft flood from all sides of the
room, revealed in Mrs. Breckenridge one of those beauties that an
older generation of diarists and letter writers frankly spelled
with a capital letter as distinguishing her charms from those of a
thousand of lesser degree. When such beauty is unaccompanied by
intellect it is a royal dower, and its possessor may serenely
command half a century of unquestioning adoration from the sons of
men, and all the good things of life as well.

But when there is a soul behind the matchless eyes, and a keen wit
animates the lovely mouth, and when the indication of the white
forehead is not belied, it is a nice question whether great beauty
be a gift of benign or malicious fairies. Not a woman in this room
or in any room she entered could look at Rachael Breckenridge
without a pang; her supremacy was beyond all argument or dispute.
And yet there was neither complacency nor content in the lovely
face; it wore its usual expression of arrogant amusement at a
somewhat tiresome world.

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