Books: The Heart of Rachael

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But Mrs. Gregory, in her dark blue suit and her new sables, won
everybody's eyes as she came down the church aisle with her
husband beside her. Her son was not quite a month old, and if she
had not recovered her usual wholesome bloom, there was a refined,
almost a spiritual, element in her beauty now that more than made
up for the loss. She wore a fragrant great bunch of violets at her
breast, and under the sweeping brim of her hat her beautiful eyes
were as deeply blue as the flowers. She seemed full of a new
wifely and matronly charm to-day, and it was quite in key with the
pose that old Mrs. Gregory and young Charles should be constantly
in her neighborhood. Her relatives with her, her babies safe at
home, young Mrs. Gregory was the personification of domestic
dignity and decorum.

At the hotel, after the wedding, she was the centre of an admiring
group, and conscious of her husband's approving eyes, full of her
old brilliant charm. All the old friends rallied about her--they
had not seen much of her since her marriage--and found her more
magnetic than ever. The circumstances of her marriage were blotted
out by more recent events now: there was the Chase divorce to
discuss; the Villalonga motor-car accident; Elinor Vanderwall had
astonished everybody a few weeks before by her sudden marriage to
millions in the person of old Peter Pomeroy; now people were
beginning to say that Jeanette Vanderwall might soon be expected
to follow suit with Peter's nephew George. The big, beautifully
decorated reception-room hummed with gay gossip, with the tinkling
laughter of women and the deeper tones of men.

Caterers' men began to work their way through the crush, bearing
indiscriminately trays of bouillon, sandwiches, salads, and ices.
The bride, with her surrounding bridesmaids, was still standing at
the far end of the room mechanically shaking hands, and smilingly
saying something dazed and inappropriate to her friends as they
filed by; but now various groups, scattered about the room, began
to interest themselves in the food. Elderly persons, after looking
vaguely about for seats, disposed of their coffee and salad while
standing, and soon there was a general breaking-up; the Buckney-
Hoyt wedding was almost a thing of the past.

Rachael, thinking of the impending dinner-hour of little Gerald
Fairfax Gregory, began to watch the swirling groups for Warren.
They could slip away now, surely; several persons had already
gone. Her heart was in her nursery, where Jim was toddling back
and forth tirelessly in the firelight, and where, between the
white bars of the new crib, was the tiny roll of snowy blankets
that enclosed the new baby.

"That's a pretty girl," she found herself saying involuntarily as
her absent eyes were suddenly arrested by the face and figure of
one of the guests. "I wonder who that is?"

The brown eyes she was watching met hers at the same second, and
smiling a little question, their owner came toward her.

"Hello, Rachael," the girl said. "How are you after all these
years?"

"Magsie Clay!" Rachael exclaimed, the look of uncertainty on her
face changing to one of pleasure and welcome. "Well, you dear
child, you! How are you? I knew you were here, and yet I couldn't
place you. You've changed--you're thinner."

"Oh, much thinner, but then I was an absolute butterball!" Miss
Clay said. "Tell me about yourself. I hear that you're having a
baby every ten minutes!"

"Not quite!" Rachael said, laughing, but a little discomposed by
the girl's coolness. "But I have two mighty nice boys, as I'll
prove to you if you'll come see me!"

"Don't expect me to rave over babies, because I don't know
anything about them," said Magsie Clay, with a slow, drawling
manner that was, Rachael decided, effective. "Do they like toys?"

"Jimmy does, the baby is rather young for tastes of any
description," Rachael answered with an odd, new sense of being
somehow sedate and old-fashioned beside this composed young woman.
Miss Clay was not listening. Her brown eyes were moving idly over
the room, and now she suddenly bowed and smiled.

"There's Greg!" she said. "What a comfort it is to see a man dress
as that man dresses!"

"I've been looking for you," Warren Gregory said, coming up to his
wife, and, noticing the other woman, he added enthusiastically:
"Well, Margaret! I didn't know you! Bless my life and heart, how
you children grow up!"

"Children! I'm twenty-two!" Miss Clay said, pouting, with her
round brown eyes fixed in childish reproach upon his face. They
had been great friends when Warren was with his mother in Paris,
nearly four years ago, and now they fell into an animated
recollection of some of their experiences there with the two old
ladies. While they talked Rachael watched Magsie Clay with
admiration and surprise.

She knew all the girl's history, as indeed everybody m the room
knew it, but to-day it was a little hard to identify the poised
and beautiful young woman who was looking so demurely up from
under her dark lashes at Warren with the "little Clay girl" of a
few years ago.

Parker Hoyt's aunt, the magnificent old Lady Frothingham, had been
just enough of an invalid for the twenty years preceding her death
to need a nurse or a companion, or a social secretary, or someone
who was a little of all three. The great problem was to find the
right person, and for a period that actually extended itself over
years the right person was not to be found, and the old lady was
consequently miserable and unmanageable.

Then came the advent of Mrs. Clay, a dark, silent, dignified
widow, who more than met all requirements, and who became a
companion figure to the little, fussing, over-dressed old lady.
From the day she first arrived at the Frothingham mansion Mrs.
Clay never failed her old employer for so much as a single hour.
For fifteen years she managed the house, the maids, and, if the
truth were known, the old lady herself, with a quiet, irresistible
efficiency. But it was early remarked that she did not manage her
small daughter with her usual success. Magsie was a fascinating
baby, and a beautiful child, quicker of speech than thought, with
a lovely little heart-shaped face framed in flying locks of tawny
hair. But she was unmanageable and strong-willed, and possessed of
a winning and insolent charm hard to refuse.

Her mother in her silent, repressed way realized that Magsie was
not having the proper upbringing, but her own youth had been hard
and dark, and it was perhaps the closest approach to joy that she
ever knew when Magsie glowing under her wide summer hats, or
radiant in new furs, rushed up to demand something preposterous
and extravagant of her mother, and was not denied.

She was a stout, conceited sixteen-year-old when her mother died,
so spoiled and so self-centred that old Lady Frothingham had been
heard more than once to mutter that the young lady could get down
from her high horse and make herself useful, or she could march.
But that was six years ago. And now--this! Magsie had evidently
decided to make herself useful, but she had managed to make
herself beautiful and fascinating as well. She was in mourning now
for the good-hearted old benefactress who had left her a nest-egg
of some fifteen thousand dollars, and Rachael noticed with
approval that it was correct mourning: simple, severe, Parisian.
Nothing could have been more becoming to the exquisite bloom of
the young face than the soft, clear folds of filmy veiling; under
the small, close-set hat there showed a ripple of rich golden
hair. The watching woman thought that she had never seen such
self-possession; at twenty-two it was almost uncanny. The
modulated, bored young voice, the lazily lifted, indifferent young
eyes, the general air of requesting an appreciative world to be
amusing and interesting, or to expect nothing of Miss Magsie Clay,
these things caused Rachael a deep, hidden chuckle of amusement.
Little Magsie had turned out to be something of a personality!
Why, she was even employing a distinct and youthfully insolent air
of keeping Warren by her side merely on sufferance--Warren, the
cleverest and finest man in the room, who was more than twice her
age!

"To think that she is younger than Charlotte!" Rachael ejaculated
to herself, catching a glimpse of Charlotte, towed by her mother,
uncomfortable, ignored, blinking through her glasses. And when she
and Warren were in the car homeward bound, she spoke admiringly of
Magsie. "Did you ever see any one so improved, Warren? Really,
she's quite extraordinary!"

Warren smiled absently.

"She's a terribly spoiled little thing," he remarked. "She's out
for a rich man, and she'll get him!"

"I suppose so," Rachael agreed, casting about among the men she
knew for an appropriate partner for Miss Clay.

"Suppose so!" he echoed in good-humored scorn. "Don't you fool
yourself, she'll get what she's after! There isn't a man alive
that wouldn't fall for that particular type!"

"Warren, do you suppose so?" his wife asked in surprise.

"Well, watch and see!"

"Perhaps--" Rachael's interest wandered. "What time have you?" she
asked.

He glanced at his watch. "Six-ten."

"Six-TEN! Oh, my poor abused baby--and I should have been here at
quarter before six!" She was all mother as she ran upstairs. Had
he been crying? Oh, he had been crying! Poor little old duck of a
hungry boy, did he have a bad, wicked mother that never remembered
him! He was in her arms in an instant, and the laughing maid
carried away her hat and wrap without disturbing his meal. Rachael
leaned back in the big chair, panting comfortably, as much
relieved over his relief as he was. The wedding was forgotten. She
was at home again; she could presently put this baby down and have
a little interval of hugging and 'tories with Jimmy.

"You'll get your lovely dress all mussed," said old Mary in high
approval.

"Never mind, Mary!" her mistress said in luxurious ease before the
fire, "there are plenty of dresses!"

A week later Warren came in, in the late afternoon, to say that he
had met Miss Clay downtown, and they had had tea together. She
suggested tea, and he couldn't well get out of it. He would have
telephoned Rachael had he fancied she would care to come. She had
been out? That was what he thought. But how about a little dinner
for Magsie? Did she think it would be awfully stupid?

"No, she's not stupid," Rachael said cordially. "Let's do it!"

"Oh, I don't mean stupid for us," Warren hastened to explain. "I
mean stupid for her!"

"Why should it be stupid for her?" Rachael looked at him in
surprise.

"Well, she's awfully young, and she's getting a lot of attention,
and perhaps she'd think it a bore!"

"I don't imagine Magsie Clay would find a dinner here in her honor
a bore," Rachael said in delicate scorn. "Why, think who she is,
Warren--a nurse's daughter! Her father was--I don't know what--an
enlisted man, who rose to be a sergeant!"

"I don't believe it!" he said flatly.

"It's true, Warren. I've known that for years--everybody knows
it!"

"Well," Warren Gregory said stubbornly, "she's making a great hit
just the same. She's going up to the Royces' next week for the
Bowditch theatricals, and she's asked to the Pinckard dinner
dance. She may not go on account of her mourning."

"Her mourning is rather absurd under the circumstances," Rachael
said vaguely, antagonized against anyone he chose to defend. "And
if people choose to treat her as if she were Mrs. Frothingham's
daughter instead of what she really is, it's nice for Magsie! But
I don't see why we should."

"We might because she is such a nice, simple girl," Warren
suggested, "and because we like her! I'm not trying to keep in the
current; I've no social axe to grind; I merely suggested it, and
if you don't want to--"

"Oh, of course, if you put it that way!" Rachael said with a faint
shrug.. "I'll get hold of some eligibles--we'll have Charlie, and
have rather a youthful dinner!"

Warren, who was shaving, was silent for a few minutes, then he
said thoughtfully:

"I don't imagine that Charlie is the sort of person who will
interest her. She may be only twenty-two, but she is older than
most girls in things like that. She's had more offers now than you
could shake a stick at--"

"She told you about them?"

"Well, in a general way, yes--that is, she doesn't want to marry,
and she hates the usual attitude, that a lot of college kids have
to be trotted out for her benefit!"

This having been her own exact attitude a few seconds before,
Rachael flushed a little resentfully.

"What DOES she want to do?"

Warren shaved on for a moment in silence, then with a rather
important air he said impulsively:

"Well, I'll tell you, although she told me in confidence, and of
course nothing may come of it. You won't say anything about it, of
course? She wants to go on the stage."

"Really!" said Rachael, who, for some reason she could not at this
moment define, was finding the conversation extraordinarily
distasteful.

"Yes, she's had it in mind for years," Warren pursued with
simplicity. "And she's had some good offers, too. You can see that
she's the kind of girl that would make an immediate hit, that
would get across the footlights, as it were. Of course, it all
depends upon how hard she's willing to work, but I believe she's
got a big future before her!"

There was a short silence while he finished the operation of
shaving, and Rachael, who was busy with the defective clasp of a
string of pearls, bent absorbedly over the microscopic ring and
swivel.

"Let's think about the dinner," she said presently. She found that
he had already planned almost all the details.

When it took place, about ten days later, she resolutely steeled
herself for an experience that promised to hold no special
enjoyment for her. Her love for her husband made her find in his
enthusiasm for Magsie something a little pitiful and absurd.
Magsie was only a girl, a rather shallow and stupid girl at that,
yet Warren was as excited over the arrangements for the dinner as
if she had been the most important of personages. If it had been
some other dinner--the affair for the English ambassador, or the
great London novelist, or the fascinating Frenchman who had
painted Jimmy--she told herself, it would have been
comprehensible! But Warren, like all great men, had his simple,
almost childish, phases, and this was one of them!

She watched her guest of honor, when the evening came, with a
puzzled intensity. Magsie was in her glory, sparkling, chattering,
almost noisy. Her exquisite little white silk gown was so low in
the waist, and so short in the skirt, that it was almost no gown
at all, yet it was amazingly smart. She had touched her lips with
red, and her eyelids were cunningly given just a hint of
elongation with a black pencil. Her bright hair was pushed
severely from her face, and so trimly massed and netted as not to
show its beautiful quantity, and yet, somehow, one knew the
quantity was there in all its gold glory.

Rachael, magnificent in black-and-white, was ashamed of herself
for the instinctive antagonism that she began to feel toward this
young creature. It was not the fact of Magsie's undeniable youth
and beauty that she resented, but it was her affectations, her
full, pouting lips, her dimples, her reproachful upward glances.
Even these, perhaps, in themselves, she did not resent, she mused;
it was their instant effect upon Warren and, to a greater or
lesser degree, upon all the other men present, that filled her
with a sort of patient scorn. Rachael wondered what Warren's
feeling would have been had his wife suddenly picked out some
callow youth still in college for her admiring laughter and
earnest consideration.

It was sacrilege to think it. It was always absurd, an older man's
kindly interest in, and affection for, a pretty young girl, but
what harm? He thought her beautiful, and charming, and talented-
well, she was those things. It was January now, in March they were
going to California, then would come dear Home Dunes, and before
the summer was over Magsie would be safely launched, or married,
and the whole thing but an episode! Warren was her husband and the
father of her two splendid boys; there was tremendous reassurance
in the thought.

But that evening, and throughout the weeks that followed, Rachael
mused somewhat sadly upon the extraordinary susceptibility of the
human male. Magsie's methods were those of a high-school belle.
She pouted, she dimpled, she dispensed babyish slaps, she lapsed
into rather poorly imitated baby talk. She was sometimes
mysterious and tragic, according to her own lights, her voice
deep, her eyes sombre; at other times she was all girl, wild for
dancing and gossip and matinees. She would widen her eyes demurely
at some older woman, plaintively demanding a chaperon, all these
bad men were worrying her to death; she had nicknames for all the
men, and liked to ask their wives if there was any harm in that?
Like Billy, and like Charlotte, she never spoke of anyone but
herself, but Billy was a mere beginner beside Magsie, and poor
Charlotte like a denizen of another world.

Magsie always scored. There was an air of refinement and propriety
about the little gypsy that saved her most daring venture, and in
a society bored to death with its own sameness she became an
instant favorite. Everyone said that "there was no harm in
Magsie," she was the eagerly heralded and loudly welcomed cap-and-
bells wherever she went.

Early in March there was an entertainment given in one of the big
hotels for some charity, and Miss Clay, who appeared in a dainty
little French comedy, the last number on the program, captured all
the honors. Her companion player, Dr. Warren Gregory, who in the
play had taken the part of her guardian, and, with his temples
touched with gray, his peruke, and his satin coat and breeches,
had been a handsome foil for her beauty, was declared excellent,
but the captivating, piquant, enchanting Magsie was the favorite
of the hour. Before the hot, exciting, memorable evening was over
the rumor flew about that she had signed a contract to appear with
Bowman, the great manager, in the fall.

The whole experience was difficult for Rachael, but no one
suspected it, and she would have given her life cheerfully to keep
her world from suspecting. Long before the rehearsals for the
little play were over she knew the name of that new passion that
was tearing and gnawing at her heart. No use to tell herself that
if Magsie WAS deeply admired by Warren, if Magsie WAS beautiful,
if Magsie WAS constantly in his thoughts, way, she, Rachael, was
still his wife; his home, his sons, his name were hers! She was
jealous--jealous--jealous of Magsie Clay.

She could not bear even the smothering thought of a divided
kingdom. Professionally, socially, the world might claim him; but
no one but herself should ever claim even one one-hundredth of
that innermost heart of his that had been all her own! The thought
pierced her vitally, and she felt in sick discouragement that she
could not fight, she could not meet his cruelty with new cruelty.
Her very beauty grew dimmed, and the old flashing wit and radiant
self-confidence were clouded for a time. When she was alone with
her husband she felt constrained and serious, her heart a
smouldering furnace of resentment and pain.

"What do you think of this, dearie?" he asked eagerly one
afternoon. "We got talking about California at the Princes' last
night, and it seems that Peter and Elinor plan to go; only not
before the first week in April. Now, that would suit me as well as
next week, if it wouldn't put you out. Could you manage it? The
Pomeroys take their car, and an awfully nice crowd; just you and
I--if we'll go--Peter and Elinor, and perhaps the Oliphants, and a
beau for Magsie!"

Rachael had been waiting for Magsie's name. But there seemed to be
nothing to say. She rose to the situation gallantly. She put the
boys in the care of their grandmother and the faithful Mary, with
Doctor Valentine's telephone number pasted prominently on the
nursery wall. She bought herself charming gowns and hats, she made
herself the most delightful travelling companion that ever seven
hot and spoiled men and women were fortunate enough to find. When
everyone, even Magsie, was bored and cross, upset by close air, by
late hours, by unlimited candy and cocktails, Mrs. Gregory would
appear from her stateroom, dainty, interested, ready for bridge or
gossip, full of enthusiasm for the scenery and for the company in
which she found herself. When she and Warren were alone she often
tried to fancy herself merely an acquaintance again, with an
acquaintance's anxiety to meet his mood and interest him. She made
no claims, she resented nothing, and she schooled herself to
praise Magsie, to quote her, and to discuss her.

The result was all that she could have hoped. After the five
weeks' trip Warren was heard to make the astonishing comment that
Magsie was a shallow little thing, and Rachael, hungrily kissing
her boys' sweet, bewildered faces, and laughing and crying
together as Mary gave her an account of every hour of her absence,
felt more than rewarded for the somewhat sordid scheme and the
humiliating effort. Little Gerald was in short clothes now, a rose
of a baby, and Jimmy at the irresistible age when every stammered
word and every changing expression had new charm.

CHAPTER IV

Ten days later, in the midst of her preparations to leave the city
for Clark's Hills, Rachael was summoned to the telephone by the
news of a serious change in young Charlie Gregory's condition.
Charlie had been ill for perhaps a week; kept at home and babied
by his grandmother and Miss Cannon, the nurse, visited daily by
his adored Aunt Rachael, and nearly as often by the uproarious
young Gregorys, and duly spoiled by every maid in the house.
Warren went in to see him often in the evenings, for trivial as
his illness was, all the members of his immediate family agreed
later that there had been in it, from the beginning, something
vaguely alarming and menacing.

He was a quiet, peculiar, rather friendless youth at twenty-six;
he had never had "girls," like the other boys, and, while he read
books incessantly, Rachael knew it to be rather from loneliness
than any other motive, as his silence was from shyness rather than
reserve. His dying was as quiet as his living, between a silent
luncheon in the gloomy old dining-room when nobody seemed able
either to eat or speak, and a dreadful dinner hour when Miss
Cannon sobbed unobtrusively, Warren and Rachael talked in low
tones, and the chairs at the head and foot of the table were
untenanted.

Only a day or two later his grandmother followed him, and Rachael
and her husband went through the sombre days like two persons in
an oppressive dream. Great grief they did not naturally feel, for
Warren's curious self-absorption extended even to his relationship
with his mother, and Charlie had always been one of the
unnecessary, unimportant figures of which there are a few in every
family. But the events left a lasting mark upon Rachael's life.
She had grown really to love the old woman, and had felt a certain
pitying affection for Charlie, too. He had been a good, gentle,
considerate boy always, and it was hard to think of him as going
before life had really begun for him.

On the morning of the day he died an incident had occurred, or
rather two had occurred, that even then filled her with vague
discomfort, and that she was to remember for many days to come.

She had been crossing the great, dark entrance hall, late in the
morning, on some errand to the telephone, or to the service
department of the house, her heart burdened by the sombre shadow
of death that already lay upon them all, when the muffled street-
door bell had rung, and the butler, red eyed, had admitted two
women. Rachael, caught and reluctantly glancing toward them, had
been surprised to recognize Charlotte Haviland and old Fanny.

"Charlotte!" she said, coming toward the girl. And at her low,
tense tone, Charlotte had begun to cry.

"Aunt Rachael"--the old name came naturally after seven years--
"you'll think I'm quite crazy coming here this way"--Charlotte, as
always, was justifying her shy little efforts at living--"but M'ma
was busy, and"--the old, nervous gasp--"and it seemed only
friendly to come and--and inquire--"

"Don't cry, dear!" said Rachael's rich, kind voice. She put a hand
upon Charlotte's shoulder. "Did you want to ask for Charlie?"

"I know how odd, how very odd it must look," said Charlotte,
managing a wet smile, "and my crying--perfectly absurd--I can't
think why I'm so silly!"

"We've all been pretty near crying, ourselves, this morning,"
Rachael said, not looking at her, but rather seeming to explain to
the sympathetic yet pleasurably thrilled Fanny. "Dear boy, he is
very ill. Doctor Hamilton has just been here; and he tells us
frankly that it is only a question of a few hours now--"

At this poor Charlotte tried to compose her face to the merely
sorrowful and shocked expression of a person justified in her
friendly concern, but succeeded only in giving Mrs. Gregory a
quivering look of mortal hurt.

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