Books: The Heart of Rachael

K >> Kathleen Norris >> The Heart of Rachael

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"What do you mean by forces you can't control?" he asked with a
sort of annoyed interest.

"Love, Warren," she answered quickly. "Love for you and the boys,
and fear for you and the boys. Love always brings fear. And
illness--I never thought of it before I was ill. And jealousy--"

"What have you got to be jealous of?" he asked, somewhat gruffly,
as she paused.

"Your work," Rachael said simply; "everything that keeps you away
from me!"

"And you think going to Saint Luke's every Sunday morning at
eleven o'clock, and listening to Billy Graves, will fix it all
up?" he smiled not unkindly. But as she did not answer his smile,
and as the tears he disliked came into her eyes, his tone changed.
"Now I'll tell you what's the matter with you, my dear," he said
with a brisk kindliness that cut her far more just then than
severity would have done, "you're all wound up in self-analysis
and psychologic self-consciousness, and you're spinning round and
round in your own entity like a kitten chasing her tail. It's a
perfectly recognizable phase of a sort of minor hysteria that
often gets hold of women, and curiously enough, it usually comes
about five or six years after marriage. We doctors meet it over
and over again. 'But, Doctor, I'm so nervous and excited all the
time, and I don't sleep! I worry so--and much as I love my
husband, I just can't help worrying!'"

Looking up and toward his wife as she sat opposite him in the
lamp-light, Warren Gregory found no smile on the beautiful face.
Rachael's hurt was deeper than her pride; she looked stricken.

"Don't put yourself in their class, my dear!" her husband said
leniently. "You need some country air. You'll get down to Clark's
Hills in a week or two and blow some of these notions away.
Meanwhile, why don't you run down to the club every morning, and
play a good smashing game of squash, and take a plunge. Put
yourself through a little training!" He reopened his book.

Rachael did not answer. Presently glancing at her he saw that she
was reading, too.

CHAPTER V

That his overtired nerves and her exhausted soul and body would
have recovered balance in time, did not occur to Rachael. She
suffered with all the intensity of a strongly passionate nature.
Warren had changed to her; that was the terrible fact. She went
about stunned and sick, neglecting her meals, forgetting her
tonic, refusing the distractions that would have been the best
thing possible for her. Little things troubled her; she said to
herself bitterly that everything, anything, caused irritation
between herself and Warren now. Sometimes the atmosphere
brightened for a few days, then the old hopeless tugging at cross
purposes began again.

"You're sick, Rachael, and you don't know it!" said Magsie Clay
breezily. June was coming in, and Magsie was leaving town for the
Villalonga camp. She told Rachael that she was "crazy" about Kent
Parmalee, and Rachael's feeling of amazement that Magsie Clay
could aspire to a Parmalee was softened by an odd sensation of
relief at hearing Magsie's plans--a relief she did not analyze.

"I believe I am sick!" Rachael agreed. "I shall be glad to get
down to the shore next week." She told Warren of Magsie's
admission that night.

"Kent! She wouldn't look at him!" Warren said comfortably.

"It would be a brilliant match for her," Rachael countered
quietly.

She saw that she had antagonized him, but he did not speak again.
One of their unhappy silences fell.

Home Dunes, as always, restored health and color magically.
Rachael felt more like herself after the first night's sleep on
the breezy porch, the first invigorating dip in the ocean. She
began to enjoy her meals again, she began to look carefully to her
appearance. Presently she was laughing, singing, bubbling with
life and energy. Alice, watching her, rejoiced and marvelled at
her recovery. Rachael's beauty, her old definite self-reliance,
came back in a flood. She fairly radiated charm, glowing as she
held George and Alice under the spell of her voice, the spell of
her happy planning. Her letters to Warren were in the old, tender,
vivacious strain. She was interested in everything, delighted with
everything in Clark's Hills. She begged him for news; Vivian had a
baby? And Kent Parmalee was engaged to Eliza Bowditch--what did
Magsie's say? And did he miss her? The minute she got home she was
going to talk to him about having a big porch built on, outside
the nursery, and at the back of the house; what about it? Then the
children could sleep out all the year through. George and Alice
positively stated that they were going around the world in two
years, and if they did, why couldn't the Gregorys go, too?

"You're wonderful!" said Alice one day. "You're not the same woman
you were last winter!"

"I was ill last winter, woman! And never so ill as when they all
thought I was entirely cured! Besides--" Rachael looked down at
her tanned arm and slender brown fingers marking grooves in the
sand. "Besides, it's partly--bluff, Alice," she confessed. "I'm
fighting myself these days. I don't want to think that we--Greg
and I--can't go back, can't be to each other--what we were!"

What an April creature she was, thought Alice, seeing that tears
were close to the averted eyes, and hearing the tremble in
Rachael's voice.

"Goose!" she said tenderly. "You were a nervous wreck last year,
and Warren was working far too hard! Make haste slowly, Rachael."

"But it's three weeks since he was here," Rachael said in a low
voice. "I don't understand it, that's all!"

"Nor I--nor he!" Alice said, smiling.

"Next week!" Rachael predicted bravely. And a second later she had
sprung up from the sand and was swimming through the surf as if
she swam from her own intolerable thoughts.

The next week-end would bring him she always told herself, and
usually after two or three empty Sundays there would come a happy
one, with the new car which was built like a projectile, purring
in the road, George and Alice shouting greetings as they came in
the gate, Louise excitedly attempting to outdo herself on the
dinner, and the sunburned noisy babies shrieking themselves hoarse
as they romped with their father.

To be held tight in his arms, to get his first big kiss, to come
into the house still clinging to him, was bliss to Rachael now.
But as the summer wore away she noticed that in a few hours the
joy of homecoming would fade for him, he would become fitfully
talkative, moodily silent, he would wonder why the Valentines were
always late, and ask his wife patiently if she would please not
hum, his head ached--

"Dearest! Why didn't you say so!"

"I don't know. It's been aching all day!"

"And you let those great boys climb all over you!"

"Oh, that's all right."

"Would you like a nap, Warren, or would you like to go over to the
beach, just you and me, and have a swim?"

"No, thank you. I may run the car into Katchogue"--Katchogue,
seven miles away, was the site of the nearest garage--"and have
that fellow look at my magneto. She didn't act awfully well coming
down!"

"Would you like me to go with you, Warren?"

"Love it, my dear, but I have to take Pierre. He's got twice the
sense I have about it!"

And again a sense of heaviness, of helplessness, would fall upon
Rachael, so that on Sunday afternoon it was almost a relief to
have him go away.

"Well," she would say in the nursery again, after the good-byes,
kissing the fat little shoulder of Gerald Fairfax Gregory where
the old baby white ran into the new boyish tan, "we will not be
introspective and imaginative, and cry for the moon. We will take
off our boys' little old, hot rumply shirts, and put them into
their nice cool nighties, and be glad that we have everything in
the world--almost! Get me your Peter Rabbit Book, Jimmy, and get
up here on my other arm. Everybody hasn't the same way of showing
love, and the main thing is to be grateful that the love is there.
Daddy loves his boys, and his home, and his boys' mother, only it
doesn't always occur to him that--"

"Are you talking for me, or for you, Mother?" Jimmy would
sometimes ask, after puzzled and attentive listening.

"For me, this time, but now I'll talk for you!" Rachael satisfied
her hungry heart with their kisses, and was never so happy as when
both fat little bodies were in her arms. She grudged every month
that carried them away from babyhood, and one day Alice Valentine
found her looking at a book of old photographs with an expression
of actual sadness on her face.

"Look at Jim, Alice, that second summer--before Derry was born!
Wasn't he the dearest little fatty, tumbling all over the place!"

"Rachael, don't speak as if the child was dead!" Alice laughed.

"Well, one loses them almost as completely," Rachael said,
smiling. "Jim is such a great big, brown, mischievous creature
now, and to think that my Derry is nearly two!"

"Think of me, with Mary fifteen!" Mrs. Valentine countered, "and
just as baby-hungry as ever! But I shall have to do nothing but
chaperon now, for a few years, and wait for the grandchildren."

"I shouldn't mind getting old, Alice," Rachael said, "if I were
like you; you're so temperate and unselfish and sweet that no one
could help loving you! Besides, you don't sit around worrying
about what people think, you just go on cutting out cookies, and
putting buttons on gingham dresses, and let other people do the
worrying!"

And suddenly, to the other woman's concern, she burst into bitter
crying, and covered her face with her hands.

"I'm so frightened, Alice!" sobbed Rachael. "I don't know what's
the matter with me, but I FEEL--I feel that something is all
wrong! I don't seem to have any HOLD on Warren any more--you can't
explain such things--but I'm--"

She got to her feet, a splendid figure of tragedy, and walked
blindly to the end of the long porch, where she stood staring down
at the heaving, sun-flooded expanse of the blue sea, and at the
roofs of little Quaker Bridge beyond the bar. Lazy waves were
creaming, in great interlocked circles, on the white beach, the
air was as clear as crystal on the cloudless September morning.
Not a breath of wind stirred the tufted grass on the dunes; down
by the weather-blown bath-houses a dozen children, her own among
them, were shouting and splashing in the spreading shallows.

Alice Valentine, her plain, sweet face a picture of sympathy, sat
dumb and unmoving. In her own heart she felt that Rachael's was a
terrible situation. What WAS the matter with Warren Gregory,
anyway, wondered Alice; he had a beautiful wife, and beautiful
children, and if George, with all his summer substituting and
hospital work, could come to his family, as he did come every
Friday night, it was upon no claim of hard work that Warren could
remain away. As a matter of fact, Alice knew it was not for work
that he stayed, for George, the least critical of friends, had
once or twice told her of yachting parties in which Warren had
participated--men's parties, of which Rachael perhaps might not
have disapproved, but of which Rachael certainly did not know.
George had told her vaguely that Greg liked to play golf on
Saturday afternoons, and sleep late on Sunday, and seemed to feel
it more of a rest than coming down to the shore.

"I am a fool to break down this way," said Rachael, interrupting
her guest's musings to come back to her chair, and showing a
composed face despite her red eyes, "but my--my heart is heavy to-
day!" Something in the simple dignity of the words brought the
tears to Alice's eyes. She held out her hand and Rachael took it
and clung to it, as she went on: "I had a birthday yesterday--and
Warren forgot it!"

"They all do that!" Alice said cheerfully. "George never remembers
mine!"

"But Warren always has before," Rachael said, smiling sadly, "and-
-and it came to me last night--I didn't sleep very well--that I am
thirty-four, and--and I have given him all I have!"

Again tears threatened her self-control, but she fought them
resolutely, and in a moment was herself again.

"You love too hard, my dear woman," Alice Valentine remonstrated
affectionately; "nothing is worse than extremes in anything. Say
to yourself, like a sensible girl, that you have a good husband,
and let it go at that! Be as cool and cheerful with Warren as if
he were--George, for instance, and try to interest yourself in
something entirely outside your own home. I wonder if perhaps this
place isn't a little lonely for you? Why don't you try Bar Harbor
or one of the mountain places next year, and go about among
people, and entertain a little more?"

"But, Alice, people BORE me so--I've had so much of it, and it's
always the same thing!"

"I know; I hate it, too. But there are funny phases in marriage,
Rachael, and one has to take them as they come. Warren might like
it."

Rachael pondered. Elinor Pomeroy and the Villalongas, the
Whittakers and Stokes and Parmalees again! Noise and hurry, and
dancing and smoking and drinking again! She sighed.

"I believe I'll suggest it to Warren, Alice. Then if he's keen for
it, we'll do it next year."

"I would." Mrs. Valentine rose, and looked toward the beach with
an idea of locating Martha and Katrina before sending for them.
"Isn't it almost lunch time?" she asked, adding in a matter-of-
fact tone: "Don't worry any more, Rachael; it's largely a bad
habit. Just look the whole thing in the face, and map it out like
a campaign. 'The way to begin living the ideal life is to begin,'
my father used to say!"

This talk, and others like it, had the effect of bracing Rachael
to fresh endurance and of spurring her to fresh courage for the
few days that its effect lasted. But sooner or later her bravery
would die away, and an increasing discouragement possess her.
Lying in her bare, airy bedroom at night, with sombre eyes staring
at the arch of stars above the moving sea, an almost unbearable
loneliness would fall upon soul and body; she needed Warren, she
said to herself, often with bitter tears. Warren, splashing in his
bath, scattering wet towels and discarded garments so royally
about the place; Warren, in a discursive mood, regarding some
operation as he stropped his razor; Warren's old, half-unthinking
"you look sweet, dear," when, fresh and dainty, his wife was ready
to go downstairs--for these and a thousand other memories of him
she yearned with an aching desire that racked her like a bodily
pain.

"Oh, it isn't right for him to torture me so!" she would whisper
to herself. "It isn't right!"

October found them all back in the city, an apparently united and
devoted family again. Rachael entered with great zest into the
delayed matter of redecorating and refurnishing the old home on
Washington Square, finding the dignified house--Warren's
birthplace--more and more to her liking as modern enamel fixtures
went into the bathrooms, simple modern hangings let sunshine and
air in at the long-darkened windows, and rich tapestry papers and
Oriental rugs subdued the effect of severe cream woodwork and
colonial mantels.

She found Warren singularly unenthusiastic about it, almost
ungracious when he answered her questions or decided for her any
detail. But Rachael was firmly resolved to ignore his moods, and
went blithely about her business, displaying an indifference--or
an assumed indifference--that was evidently somewhat puzzling to
Warren and to all her household. She equipped the boys in dark-
blue coats and squirrel-skin caps for the winter, marvelling a
little sadly that their father did not seem to see the charms so
evident to all the world. A rosier, gayer, more sturdy pair of
devoted little brothers never stamped through snowy parks, or came
chattering in for chops and baked potatoes. Every woman in the
neighborhood, every policeman, knew Jim and Derry Gregory; their
morning walks were so many separate little adventures in
popularity. But Warren, beyond paternal greetings at breakfast,
and an occasional perfunctory query as to their health, made no
attempt to enter into their lives. They were still too small to
interest their father except as good and satisfactory babies.

One bitter December day the thunderbolt fell. Rachael felt that
she had always known it, that she had been sitting in this hideous
hotel dining-room for years watching Warren--and Margaret Clay.

There was a bitter taste of salt water in her mouth, there was a
hideous drumming at her heart. She felt sick and cold from her
bewildered brain down to her very feet. When one felt like this--
one fainted.

But Rachael did not faint, although it was by sheer power of will
that she held her reeling senses. No scene--no, there mustn't be a
scene--for Jimmy's sake, for Derry's sake, no scene. She was here,
in the Waldorf Grill, of course. She had been--what had she been
doing? She had been--she came downtown after breakfast--of course,
shopping. Shopping for the children's Christmas. They were to have
coasters--they were old enough for coasters--she must go on this
quiet way, thinking of the children--five was old enough for
coasters--and Jim always looked out for Derry.

She couldn't go out. They hadn't seen her; they wouldn't see her,
here in this corner. But she dared not stand up and pass them
again. Warren--and Magsie. Warren--and Magsie. Oh, God--God--God--
what should she do--she was going to faint again.

Here was her shopping list, a little wet and crumpled because she
had put her glove on the snowy handle of the motor-car door. Mary
had said that it would be a white Christmas--how could Mary tell?-
-this was only the eighteenth, only the eighteenth--ridiculous to
be panting this way, like a runner. Nothing was going to hurt her-
-

"Anything--anything!" she said to the waiter, with dry, bloodless
lips, and a ghastly attempt at a smile. "Yes, that will do. Thank
you, yes, I suppose so. Yes, if you will. Thank you. That will do
nicely."

And now she must be quiet. That was the main thing now. They must
not see her. She had been shopping, and now she was having her
lunch in the Grill. If she could only breathe a little less
violently--but she seemed to have no control over her heaving
breast, she could not even close her mouth. Nobody suspected
anything, and if she could but control herself, nobody would, she
told herself desperately.

She never knew that the silent, gray-haired waiter recognized her,
and recognized both the man and woman who sat only thirty feet
away. She had not ordered coffee, but he brought her a smoking
pot. It was not the first time he had encountered the situation.
Rachael drank the vivifying fluid, and her nerves responded at
once.

She sat up, set her lips firmly, forced herself to dispose of
gloves and napkin in the usual way. Her breath was coming more
evenly--so much was gained. As for this deadly cold and quivering
sensation of nausea, that was no more than fatigue and the
frightfully cold wind.

So it was Magsie. Rachael had not been seven years a wife to
misread Warren's eyes as he looked at the girl. No woman could
misread their attitude together, an attitude of wonderful, sweet
familiarity with each other's likes and dislikes under all its
thrilling newness. Rachael had seen him turn that very glance,
that smiling-eyed yet serious look--

Oh, God! it could not be that he had come to care for Magsie! Her
hard-won calm was shattered in a second, she was panting and
quivering again. Her husband, her own big, tender, clever Warren--
but he was hers, and the boys--he was HERS! Her husband--and this
other woman was looking at him with all her soul in her eyes, this
other woman cared--all the world might see how she cared for him--
and was loved in return!

What had she been hearing, lately, of Magsie? Rachael began
dizzily to recall what she could. Magsie had been "on the road,"
she had had a small part in an unsuccessful play early in the
winter. Rachael had been for some reason unable to see it, but she
had sent Magsie flowers, and--she remembered now--Warren had
represented himself as having looked in on the play with some
friends, one evening, and as having found it pretty poor stuff. So
little had Magsie and Magsie's affairs seemed to matter, then,
that Rachael could not even remember the name of the play, nor of
hearing it discussed. The world in general had not seemed inclined
to make much of the professional advent of Miss Margaret Clay, and
presently the play closed, and Warren, in answer to a careless
question from Rachael, had said that they would probably take it
on the road until spring.

And then, some weeks ago, she had asked about Magsie again, and
Warren had said: "I believe she's in town. Somebody told me the
other day that she was to have a part in one of Bowman's things
this winter."

"It's amazing to me that Magsie doesn't get ahead faster," Rachael
had mused. No more was said.

And how pretty she was, how young she was, Rachael thought now,
with a stabbing pain at her heart. How earnestly they were
talking--no ordinary conversation. Presently tears were in the
little actress's eyes; she had no handkerchief, but Warren had. He
gave it to her, and she surreptitiously wiped her eyes, and smiled
at him, like a pretty child, in her furs.

Rachael felt actually sick with shock. She felt as if some vital
cord in her anatomy had been snapped, and as if she could never
control these heavy languid limbs of hers again. Her head ached. A
lassitude seemed to possess her. She felt cold, and old, and
helpless in the face of so much youth and beauty.

Magsie--and Warren. She must accustom herself to the thought. They
cared for each other. They cared--Rachael's heart seemed to shut
with an icy spasm, she felt herself choking and shut her eyes.

Well, what could they do--at worst? Could Magsie go out now, and
get into the Gregory motor car, and say, "Home, Martin!" to the
man? Could Magsie run up the steps of the Washington Square house,
gather the cream of the day's news from the butler in a breath,
and, flinging off furs and wraps, catch the two glorious boys to
her heart?

No! However the situation developed, Rachael was still the wife.
Rachael held the advantage, and whatever poor Magsie's influence
was, it could be but temporary, it must be unrecognized and
unapproved by the world.

Slowly self-control came back, the dizziness subsided, the room
sank and settled into its usual aspect. It was hideous, but it was
a fact, she must face it--she must face it. There was an honorable
way, and a dignified way, and that must be her way. No one must
know.

Presently the table near her was empty, and she began to breathe
more naturally. She pondered so deeply that for a long time the
room was forgotten, and the moving crowd shifted about her unseen.
Then abstractedly she rose, and went slowly out to the waiting
car. She carried a heart of lead.

"I've kept you waiting, Martin?"

Martin merely touched his hat. It was four o'clock.

And so Rachael found herself facing an unbelievable situation. To
love, and to know herself unloved, was a cold, dull misery that
clung like a weight to her heart. Her thoughts stumbled in a
close, hot fog; from sheer weariness she abandoned them again and
again.

She had never been a reasonable woman, but she forced herself to
be reasonable now. Logic and philosophy had never been her natural
defences, but she brought logic and philosophy to bear upon this
hideous circumstance. She did not waste time and tears upon a
futile "Why?" It was too late now to question; the fact spoke for
itself. Warren's senses were wrapped in the charms of another
woman. His own devoted and still young and beautiful wife was not
the first devoted and young and beautiful woman to have her claim
displaced.

For days after the episode in the Waldorf lunch-room she moved
like a conspirator, watching, thinking. Warren had never seemed
more considerate of her happiness, more satisfied with life. He
was full of agreeable chatter at breakfast, interested in her
plans, amused at the boys. He did not come home for luncheon, but
usually ran up the steps at five o'clock, and was reading or
dressing when Rachael wandered into his room to greet him after
the day. He never kissed her now, or touched her hand even by
chance; she was reminded, in his general aspect, of those
occasions when the delicious Derry wandered out from the nursery,
evading the nap which was his duty, but full of the airy
conversation and small endearments that only a child on sufferance
knows.

Rachael tried in vain to understand the affair; what evil genius
possessed Warren; what possessed Magsie? She tried to think kindly
of Magsie; poor child, she had had no ugly intention, she was
simply spoiled, simply an egotist undeveloped in brain and soul!

But--Warren! Well, Warren's soft, simple heart had been touched by
all that endearing kittenish confidence, by Magsie's belief that
he was the richest and cleverest and most powerful of men.

So they were meeting for lunch, for tea--where else? What did they
talk about, what did they plan or hope or expect? Through all her
hot impatience Rachael believed that she could trust them both, in
the graver sense. Warren was as unlikely to take advantage of
Magsie's youthful innocence as Magsie was to definitely commit
herself to a reckless course.

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