Books: The Heart of Rachael

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"Nope," the man said impatiently.

"And"--Rachael hesitated--"and you won't say anything, Clarence,"
she suggested, "because the papers will get hold of it fast
enough!"

"You can't tell me anything about that," he said sullenly. Then
there came a silence. Rachael, looking at him, wished that she
could hate him a little more, wished that his neglects and faults
had made a little deeper impression. For a minute or two neither
spoke. Then Clarence got up and left the room, and Rachael sat
still, the little slip held lightly between her fingers. The color
ebbed slowly from her face, her heart resumed its normal beat,
moments went by, the little clock on her desk ticked on and on. It
was all over; she was free. She felt strangely shaken and cold,
and desolately lonely.

He loved her as little as she loved him. They had never needed
each other, yet there was in this severance of the bond between
them a strange and unexpected pain. It was as if Rachael's heart
yearned over the wasted years, the love and happiness that might
have been. Not even the thought of Warren Gregory seemed warm or
real to-day; a great void surrounded her spirit; she felt a
chilled weariness with the world, with all men--she was sick of
life.

On the following day she gave Florence a hint of the situation. It
was only fair to warn the important, bustling matron a trifle in
advance of the rest of the world. Rachael had had a long night's
sleep; she already began to feel deliciously young and free. She
was to spend a few nights at the Havilands', and the next week
supposedly go to the Princes' at Bar Harbor; really she planned to
disappear for a time from her world. She must go up to town for a
consultation with her lawyer, and then, when the storm broke, she
would slip away to little Quaker Bridge, the tiny village far down
on Long Island upon which, quite by chance, she had stumbled two
years before. No one would recognize her there, no one of her old
world could find her, and there for a month or two she could walk
and bathe and dream in wonderful solitude. Then--then Greg would
be home again.

"I want to tell you something, Florence," Rachael said to her
sister-in-law when she was stretched upon the wide couch in
Florence's room, watching with the placidity of a good baby that
lady's process of dressing for an afternoon of bridge, or rather
the operations with cold cream, rubber face brush, hair tonic,
eyebrow stick, powder, rouge, and lip paste that preceded the
process of dressing. Mrs. Haviland, even with this assistance,
would never be beautiful; in justice it must be admitted that she
never thought herself beautiful. But she thought rouge and powder
and paste improved her appearance, and if through fatigue or haste
she was ever led to omit any or all of these embellishments, she
presented herself to the eyes of her family and friends with a
genuine sensation of guilt. Perhaps three hours out of all her
days were spent in some such occupation; between bathing,
manicuring, hair-dressing, and intervals with her dressmaker and
her corset woman it is improbable that the subject of her
appearance was long out of the lady's mind. Yet she was not vain,
nor was she particularly well satisfied with herself when it was
done. That about one-fifth of her waking time--something more than
two months out of the year--was spent in an unprofitable effort to
make herself, not beautiful nor attractive, but something only a
little nearer than was natural to a vague standard of beauty and
attractiveness, never occurred, and never would occur, to Florence
Haviland.

"What is it?" she asked now sharply, pausing with one eyebrow
beautifully pencilled and the other less definite than ever by
contrast.

"I don't suppose it will surprise you to hear that Clarence and I
have decided to try a change," Rachael said slowly.

"How do you mean a change?" the other woman said, instantly alert
and suspicious.

"The usual thing," Rachael smiled.

"What madness has got hold of that boy now?" his sister exclaimed
aghast.

"It's not entirely Clarence," Rachael explained with a touch of
pride.

"Well, then, YOU'RE mad!" the older woman said shortly.

"Not necessarily, my dear," Rachael answered, resolutely serene.

"Go talk to someone who's been through it," Florence warned her.
"You don't know what it is! It's bad enough for him, but it's
simple suicide for you!"

"Well, I wanted you to hear it from me," Rachael submitted mildly.

"Do you mean to say you've decided, seriously, to do it?"

"Very seriously, I assure you!"

"How do you propose to do it?" Florence asked after a pause,
during which she stared with growing discomfort at her sister-in-
law.

"The way other people do it," Rachael said with assumed lightness.
"Clarence agrees. There will be evidence."

Mrs. Haviland flushed.

"You think that's fair to Clarence?" she asked presently.

"I think that in any question of fairness between Clarence and me
the balance is decidedly in my favor!" Rachael said crisply.
"Personally, I shall have nothing to do with it, and Clarence very
little. Charlie Sturgis will represent me. I suppose Coates and
Crandall will take care of Clarence--I don't know. That's all
there is to it!"

Her placid gaze roved about the ceiling. Mrs. Haviland gazed at
her in silence.

"Rachael," she said desperately, "will you TALK to someone--will
you talk to Gardner?"

"Why should I?" Rachael sat up on the couch, the loosened mass of
her beautiful hair falling about her shoulders. "What has Gardner
or anyone else to do with it? It's Clarence's business, and my
business, and it concerns nobody else!" she said warmly. "You look
on from the outside. I've borne it for seven years! I'm young, I'm
only twenty-eight, and what is my life? Keeping house for a man
who insults me, and ignores me, who puts me second to his
daughter, and has put me second since our wedding day--making
excuses for him to his friends, giving up what I want to do, never
knowing from day to day what his mood will be, never having one
cent of money to call my own! I tell you there are days and days
when I'm too sick at heart to read, too sick at heart to think!
Last summer, for instance, when we were down at Easthampton with
the Parmalees, when everyone was so wild over bathing, and tennis,
and dancing, Clarence wasn't sober ONE MOMENT of the time, not
one! One night, when we were dancing--but I won't go into it!"

"I know," Florence said hastily, rather frightened at this
magnificent fury. "I know, dear, it's too bad--it's dreadful--it's
a great shame. But men are like that! Now Gardner--"

"All men aren't like that! Gardner does that sort of thing now and
then, I know," Rachael rushed on, "but Gardner is always sorry.
Gardner takes his place as a man of dignity in the world. I am
nothing to Clarence; I have never been to him one-tenth of what
Billy is! I have borne it, and borne it, and now I just can't--
bear it--any longer!"

And Rachael, to her own surprise and disgust, burst into bitter
crying, and, stammering some incoherency about an aching head, she
went to her own room and flung herself across the bed. The
suppressed excitement of the last few days found relief in a long
fit of sobbing; Florence did not dare go near her. The older woman
tried to persuade herself that the resentment and bitterness of
this unusual mood would be washed away, and that Rachael, after a
nap and a bath, would feel more like herself, but nevertheless she
went off to her game in a rather worried frame of mind, and gave
but an imperfect attention to the question of hearts or lilies.

Rachael, heartily ashamed of what she would have termed her
schoolgirlish display of emotion, came slowly to herself, dozed
over a magazine, plunged into a cold bath, and at four o'clock
dressed herself exquisitely for Mrs. Whittaker's informal dinner.
Glowing like a rose in her artfully simple gown of pink and white
checks, she went downstairs.

Florence had come in late, bearing a beautiful bit of pottery, the
first prize, and was again in the throes of dressing, but Gardner
was downstairs restlessly wandering about the dimly lighted rooms
and halls. He was fond of Rachael, and as they walked up and down
the lawn together he tried, in a blunt and clumsy way, to show her
his sympathy.

"Floss tells me you're about at the end of your rope--what?" said
Gardner. "Clarence is the limit, of course, but don't be too much
in a hurry, old girl. We'd be--we'd be awfully sorry to have you
come to a smash, don't you know--now!"

Thus Gardner. Rachael gave him a glimmering smile in the early
dusk.

"Not much fun for me, Gardner," she said gravely.

"Sure it's not," Gardner answered, clearing his throat
tremendously. Neither spoke again until Florence came down, but
later, in all honesty, he told his wife that he had pitched into
Rachael no end, and she had agreed to go slow.

Florence, however, was not satisfied with so brief a campaign. She
and Rachael did not speak of the topic again until the last
afternoon of Rachael's stay. Then the visitor, coming innocently
downstairs at tea time, was a little confused to see that besides
Mrs. Bowditch and her oldest daughter, and old Mrs. Torrence, the
Bishop and Mrs. Thomas were calling. Instantly she suspected a
trap.

"Rachael, dear," Florence said sweetly, when the greetings were
over, "will you take the bishop down to look at the sundial? I've
been boasting about it."

"You sound like a play, Florence," her sister-in-law said with a
little nervous laugh. "'Exit Rachael and Bishop, L.' Surely you've
seen the sundial, Bishop?"

"I had such a brief glimpse of it on the day of the tea," Bishop
Thomas said pleasantly, "that I feel as if I must have another
look at that inscription!" Smiling and benign, rather impressive
in his clerical black, the clergyman got to his feet, and turned
an inviting smile to Rachael.

"Shall I take you down, Bishop?" Charlotte asked, her eagerness to
be socially useful fading into sick apprehension at her mother's
look.

"No, I'll go!" Rachael ended the little scene by catching up her
wide hat. "Come on, Bishop," she said courageously, adding, as
soon as they were out of hearing, "and if you're going to be
dreadful, begin this moment!"

"And why, pray, should I be dreadful?" the bishop asked, smiling
reproachfully. "Am I usually so dreadful? I don't believe it would
be possible, among these lovely roses"--he drew in a great breath
of the sweet afternoon air--"and with such a wonderful sunset
telling us to lift up our hearts." And sauntering contentedly
along, the bishop gave her an encouraging smile, but as Rachael
continued to walk beside him without raising her eyes, presently
he added, whimsically: "Would it be dreadful, Mrs. Breckenridge,
if one saw a heedless little child--oh, a sweet and dear, but a
heedless little child--going too near the cliffs--would it be
dreadful to say: 'Look out, little child! There's a terrible fall
there, and the water's cold and dark. Be careful!'" The bishop sat
down on the carved stone bench that had been set in the circle of
shrubs that surrounded the sundial, and Rachael sat down, too.

"Well, what about the child?" he persisted, when there had been a
silence.

Rachael raised sombre eyes, her breast rose on a long sigh.

"I am not a child," she said slowly.

"Aren't we all children?" asked the bishop, mildly triumphant.

Rachael, sitting there in Florence's garden, looking down at the
white roofs of the village and the smooth sheet of blue that was
Belvedere Bay, felt a burning resentment enter her heart. How calm
and smug and sure of themselves they were, these bishops and
Florences and old lady Gregorys! How easy for them to advise and
admonish, to bottle her up with their little laws and platitudes,
these good people married to other good people, and wrapped in the
warmth of mutual approval and admiration! The bishop was talking--

"Children, yes, the best and wisest of us is no more than that,"
he was saying dreamily, "and we must bear and forbear with each
other. Not easy? Of course it's not easy! But no cross no crown,
you know. I have known Clarence a great many years--"

"I am sorry to hurt Florence--God knows I'm sorry for the whole
thing!" Rachael said, "but you must admit that I am the best judge
of this matter. I've borne it long enough. My mind is made up. You
and I have always been good friends, Bishop Thomas"--she laid a
beautiful hand impulsively on his arm--"and you know that what you
say has weight with me. But believe me, I'm not jumping hastily
into this: it's come after long, serious thought. Clarence wants
to be free as well--"

"Clarence does?" the clergyman asked, with a disapproving shake of
his head.

"He has said so," Rachael answered briefly.

"And what will your life be after this, my child?"

To this she responded merely with a shrug. Perhaps the bishop
suspected that such a calm confidence in the future indicated more
or less definite plans, for he gave her a shrewd and searching
look, but there was nothing to be said. The lovely lady continued
to stare at the soft turf with unsmiling eyes, and the clergyman
could only watch her in puzzled silence.

"After all," Rachael said presently, giving him a rueful glance,
"what are the statistics? One marriage in twelve fails--fails
openly, I mean--for of course there are hundreds that don't get
that far. Sixty thousand last year!"

"If those ARE the statistics," said the bishop warmly, "it is a
disgrace to a Christian country!"

"But you don't call this a Christian country?" Rachael said
perversely.

"It is SUPPOSEDLY so," the clergyman asserted.

"Supposedly Christian," she mused, "and yet one marriage out of
every twelve ends in divorce, and you Christians--well, you don't
CUT us! We may not keep holy the Sabbath day, we may not honor our
fathers and mothers, we may envy our neighbor's goods, yes, and
his wife, if we like, but still--you don't refuse to come to our
houses!"

"I don't know you in this mood," said Bishop Thomas coldly.

"Call it Neroism, or Commonsensism, or Modernism, or anything you
like," Rachael said with sudden fire, "but while you go on calling
what you profess Christianity, Bishop, you simply subscribe to an
untruth. You know what our lives are, myself and Florence and
Gardner and Clarence; is there a Commandment we don't break all
day long and every day? Do we give our coats away, do we possess
neither silver nor gold in our purses, do we love our neighbors?
Why don't you denounce us? Why don't you shun the women in your
parish who won't have children as murderers? Why don't you brand
some of the men who come to your church--men whose business
methods you know, and I know, and all the world knows--as
thieves!"

"And what would my branding them as murderers and thieves avail?"
asked the bishop, actually a little pale now, and rising to face
her as she rose. "Are we to judge our fellowmen?"

"I'm not," Rachael said, suddenly weary, "but I should think you
might. It would be at least refreshing to have you, or someone,
demonstrate what Christianity is. It would be good for our souls.
Instead," she added bitterly, "instead, you select one little
thing here, and one little thing there, and putter, and tinker,
and temporize, and gloss over, and build big churches, with
mortgages and taxes and insurance to pay, in the name of
Christianity! If I were little Annie Smith, down in the village
here, I could get a divorce for twenty-five dollars, and you would
never hear of it. But Clarence Breckenridge is a millionaire, and
the Breckenridges have gone to your church for a hundred years,
and so it's a scandal that must be averted if possible!"

"The church frowns on divorce," said the bishop sternly. "At the
very present moment the House of Bishops, to which I have the
distinguished honor to belong, is considering taking a decided
stand in the matter. Divorce is a sin--a sin against one of God's
institutions. But when I find a lady in this mood," he continued,
with a sort of magnificent forbearance, "I never attempt to combat
her views, no matter how extraordinarily jumbled and--and childish
they are. As a clergyman, and as an old friend, I am grieved when
I see a hasty and an undisciplined nature about to do that which
will wreck its own happiness, but I can only give a friendly
warning, and pass on. I do not propose to defend the institution
to which I have dedicated my life before you or before anyone.
Shall we go back to the house?"

"Perhaps we had better," Rachael agreed. And as they went slowly
along the wide brick walk she added in a softened tone: "I do
appreciate your affectionate interest in--in us, Bishop. But--but
it does exasperate me, when so many strange things are done in the
name of Christianity, to have--well, Florence for instance--calmly
decreeing that just these other certain things shall NOT be done!"

"Then, because we can't all be perfect, it would be better not to
try to be good at all?" the bishop asked, restored to equanimity
by what he chose to consider an unqualified apology, and resuming
his favorite attitude of benignant adviser.

Rachael sighed wearily in the depth of her soul. She knew that
kindly admonitory tone, that complacent misconception of her
meaning. She said to herself that in a moment he would begin to
ask himself questions, and answer them himself.

"We are not perfect ourselves," said the clergyman benevolently,
"yet we expect perfection in others. Before we will even change
our own lives we like to look around and see what other people are
doing. Perfectly natural? Of course it's perfectly natural, but at
the same time it's one of the things we must fight. I shall have
to tell you a little story of our Rose, as I sometimes tell some
of my boys at the College of Divinity," continued the good man.
Rose, an exemplary unmarried woman of thirty, was the bishop's
daughter. "Rose," resumed her father, "wanted to study the violin
when she was about twelve, and her peculiar old pater decided that
first she must learn to cook. Her mother quite agreed with me, and
the young lady was accordingly taken out to the kitchen and
introduced to some pots and pans. I also got her some book, I've
forgotten its name--her mother would remember; 'Complete Manual of
Cookery'--something of that sort. A day or two later I asked her
mother how the cooking went. 'Oh,' she said, 'Rose has been
reading that book, and she knows more than all the rest of us!'"

Rachael laughed generously. They had reached the house again now,
and Florence, glancing eagerly toward them, was charmed to see
both smiling. She felt that the bishop must have influenced
Rachael, and indeed the clergyman himself was sure that her mood
was softer, and found opportunity before he departed to say to his
hostess in a low tone that he fancied that they would hear no more
of the whole miserable business.

"Oh, Bishop, how wonderful of you!" said Florence thankfully.

CHAPTER VI

Two weeks later the news of the Breckenridge divorce burst like a
bomb in the social sky. Immediately pictures of the lovely wife,
of Clarence, of the town house and the country house began to
flood the evening papers, and even the morning journals found room
for a column or two of the affair on inside pages. Clarence was
tracked to his mountain retreat, and as much as possible was made
of his refusal to be interviewed. Mrs. Breckenridge was nowhere to
be found.

The cold wind of publicity could not indeed reach her in the quiet
lanes and along the sandy shore of Quaker Bridge. Rachael, known
to everyone but her kind old landlady as "Mrs. Prescott," could
even glance interestedly at the papers now and then. Her identity,
in three long and peaceful months, was not even so much as
suspected. She did not mind the plain country table, the
inconvenient old farmhouse; she loved her new solitude.
Unquestioned, she dreamed through the idle days, reading,
thinking, sleeping like a child. She spent long hours on the
seashore watching the lazy, punctual flow and tumble of the waves
that were never hurried, never delayed; her eyes followed the
flashing wings of the gulls, the even, steady upward beat of
strong pinions, the downward drifting through blue air that was of
all motion the most perfect.

And sometimes in those hours it seemed to Rachael that she was no
more in the great scheme of things than one of these myriad gulls,
than one of the grains of sand through which she ran her white,
unringed fingers. Clarence was a dream, Belvedere Bay was a dream;
it was all a hazy, dim memory now: the cards and the cocktails,
the dancing and tennis, the powder and lip-red in hot rooms and
about glittering dinner tables. What a hurry and bustle and rush
it all was--for nothing. The only actualities were the white sand
and the cool green water, and the summer sun beating down warmly
upon her bare head.

She awakened every morning in a large, bright, bare room whose
three big windows looked into rustling maple boughs. The steady
rushing of surf could be heard just beyond the maples. Sometimes a
soft fog wrapped the trees and the lawn in its pale folds, and the
bell down at the lighthouse ding-donged through the whole warm,
silent morning, but more often there was sunshine, and Rachael
took her book to the beach, got into her stiff, dry bathing suit,
in a small, hot bathhouse furnished only by a plank bench and a
few rusty nails, and plunged into the delicious breakers she loved
so well. Busy babies, digging on the beach, befriended her, and
she grew to love their sudden tears and more sudden laughter,
their stammered confidences, and the touch of their warm, sandy
little hands. She became an adept at pinning up their tiny bagging
undergarments, and at disentangling hat elastics from the soft
hair at the back of moist little necks. If a mother occasionally
showed signs of friendliness, Rachael accepted the overture
pleasantly, but managed to wander next day to some other part of
the beach, and so evade the definite beginning of a friendship.

The warm sunshine, flavored by the salty sea, soaked into her very
bones. Everything about Quaker Bridge was bare, and worn, and
clean; nothing was crowded, or hurried, or false. Barren dunes,
and white, bleaching sand, colorless little houses facing the elm-
lined main street, colorless planks outlining the road to the
water; the monotonous austerity, the pure severity of the little
ocean village was full of satisfying charm for her. If she climbed
a sandy rise beyond Mrs. Dimmick's cottage, and faced the north,
she could see the white roadway, winding down to Clark's Bar,
where the ocean fretted year after year to free the waters of the
bay only twelve feet away. Beyond on the slope, was the village
known as Clark's Hills, a smother of great trees with a weather-
whipped spire and an occasional bit of roof or fence in evidence,
to show the habitation of man.

In other directions, facing east or west or south, there was
nothing but the sand, and the coarse straggling bushes that rooted
in the sand, and the clear blue dome of the sky. Rachael, whose
life had been too crowded, gloried in the honey-scented emptiness
of the sand hills, the measureless, heaving surface of the ocean,
the dizzying breadth and space in which, an infinitesimal speck,
she moved.

She had sensibly taken her landlady, old Mrs. Dimmick, into her
confidence, and pleased to be part of the little intrigue, and
perhaps pleased as well to rent her two best rooms to this
charming stranger, the old lady protected the secret gallantly. It
was all much more simple than Rachael had feared it would be.
Nobody questioned her, nobody indeed paid attention to her; she
wandered about in a blissful isolation as good for her tired soul
as was the primitive life she led for her tired body.

Yet every one of the idle days left its mark upon her spirit;
gradually a great many things that had seemed worth while in the
old life showed their true and petty and sordid natures now;
gradually the purifying waters of solitude washed her soul clean.
She began to plan for the future--a future so different from the
crowded and hurried past!

Warren Gregory's letters came regularly, postmarked London, Paris,
Rome. They were utterly and wholly satisfying to Rachael, and they
went far to make these days the happiest in her life. Her heart
would throb like a girl's when she saw, on the little drop-leaf
table in the hallway, the big square envelope addressed in the
doctor's fine hand; sometimes--again like a girl--she carried it
down to the beach before breaking the seal, thrilled with a
thousand hopes, unready to put them to the test. Yesterday's
letter had said: "My dearest,"--had said: "Do you realize that I
will see you in five weeks?" Could to-day's be half as sweet?

She was never disappointed. The strong tide of his devotion for
her rose steadily through letter after letter; in August the
glowing letters of July seemed cold by contrast, in September
every envelope brought her a flaming brand to add to the fires
that were beginning to blaze within her. In late September there
was an interval; and Rachael told herself that now he was on the
ocean--now he was on the ocean--

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