Books: The Heart of Rachael

K >> Kathleen Norris >> The Heart of Rachael

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29

And Elinor had her absurd and unnecessary troubles, rich man's
wife as she was now, and firmly established in the social group
upon whose outskirts she had lingered so long. The single state of
her four sisters was a constant annoyance to her, especially as
Peter was not fond of the girls, and liked to allude to them as
"spinsters" and "old maids," and to ask more entertaining and
younger women to the house. Elinor had never wanted a child, but
in the third or fourth year of her marriage she had begun to
perceive that it might be wise to give her worldly old husband an
heir, much better that, at any cost, than to encourage his
fondness for Barbara Oliphant's boy, his namesake nephew, who was
an officious, self-satisfied little lad of twelve. But Nature
refused to cooperate in Elinor's maternal plans and Peter Junior
did not make his appearance at the big house on the Avenue. Elinor
grew yearly noisier, more reckless, more shallow; she rushed about
excitedly from place to place, sometimes with Peter, sometimes
with one of her sisters; not happy in either case, but much given
to quarrelsome questioning of life. It was not that she could not
get what she wanted so much as that she did not know her own mind
and heart. Whatever was momentarily tiresome or distasteful must
be pushed out of her path, and as almost every friend and every
human experience came sooner or later into this category, Elinor
found herself stranded in the very centre of life.

Alice had her troubles, too, but when her thoughts came to Alice,
Rachael found a certain envy in her heart. Ah, those were the
troubles she could have welcomed; she could have cried with sheer
joy at the thought that her life might some day slip into the same
groove as Alice's life. Rachael loved the atmosphere of the big,
shabby house now; it was the only place to which she really cared
to go. There was in Alice Valentine's character something simple,
direct, and high-principled that communicated itself to everybody
and everything in her household. A small girl in her nursery might
show symptoms of diphtheria, a broken tile on the roof might
deluge the bedroom ceilings, an old cook leave suddenly, or a
heavy rain fall upon a Sunday predestined for picknicking, but
Alice Valentine, plain, slow of speech, and slow of thought, went
her serene way, nursing, consoling, repairing, readjusting.

She had her cares about George, but they were not like Rachael's
cares for Warren. Alice knew him to be none too strong, easily
tired, often discouraged. His professional successes were many,
but there were times when the collapse of a tiny child in a free
hospital could blot from George's simple, big, tender heart the
memory of a dozen achievements. The wife, deep in the claims of
her four growing children, sometimes longed to put her arms about
him, to run away with him to some quiet land of sunshine and
palms, some lazy curve of white beach where he could rest and
sleep, and drift back to his old splendid energy and strength. She
longed to cook for him the old dishes he had loved in the early
days of their marriage, to read to him, to let the world forget
them while they forgot the world.

Instead, a hundred claims kept them here in the current of
affairs. Mary was a tall, sweet, gracious girl of sixteen now,
like her father, a pretty edition of his red hair and long-
featured clever face. Mary must go on with her music, must be put
through the lessoning and grooming of a gentlewoman, and take her
place in the dancing class that would be the Junior Cotillion in a
year or two. Alice Valentine was not a worldly woman, but she knew
it would be sheer cruelty to let her daughter grow up a stranger
in her own world, different in speech and dress and manner from
all the other girls and boys. So Mary went to little dances at the
Royces' and the Bowditches', and walked home from her riding
lesson with little Billy Parmalee or Frank Whittaker, or with
Florence Haviland and Bobby Oliphant. And Alice watched her gowns,
and her hair, and her pretty young teeth only a little less
carefully than she listened to her confidences, questioned her
about persons and things, and looked for inaccuracies in her
speech.

George Junior was a care, too, in these days at the non-committal,
unenthusiastic age of fourteen, when all the vices in the world,
finger on lip, form a bright escort for waking or sleeping hours,
and the tenderest and most tactful of maternal questions slips
from the shell of boyish silence and gruffness unanswered. Full of
apprehension and eagerness, Alice watched her only son; she could
not give him every hour of her busy days; she would have given him
every instant if she could. He was a good boy, but he was human.
Dressed for dinner and the theatre, his mother would look into the
children's sitting-room to find Mary reading, George reading,
Martha, very conscious of being there on sufferance, also reading
virtuously and attentively.

"Good-night, my darlings! You're going to bed promptly at nine,
aren't you, Mary--and Gogo, too? You know we were all late last
night," Alice would say, coming in.

"I am!" Mary would give her mother her sunny smile. "Leslie Perry
is going to be here to-morrow night, anyway, and we're going to
Thomas Prince's skating party in the afternoon, aren't we,
Mother?"

"Thomas Prince, the big boob!" Gogo might comment without
bitterness.

"He's not a big boob, either, is he, Mother?" Mary was swift in
defence. "He's not nearly such a boob as Tubby Butler or Sam
Moulton!"

"Gosh, that's right--knock Tubby!" Gogo would mumble.

"Oh, my darling boy, and my darling girl!" Alice, full of
affection and distress, would look from one to the other. Gogo,
standing near his mother, usually had a request.

"They're all over at Sam's to-night. Gosh! they're going to have
fun!"

"Father said 'NOT again this week,'" Mary might chant.

"Mary!" Alice's reproachful look would silence her daughter; she
would put an arm about her son.

"What is it to-night, dear?"

"Oh, nothing much!" Gogo would fling up his dark head impatiently.

"Just Tubby and Sam?"

"I guess so," gruffly.

"But Daddy feels--" Alice would stop short in perplexity. Why
shouldn't he go? She had known Mrs. Moulton from the days when
they both were brides, the Moultons' house was near, and it was
dull for Gogo here, under the sitting-room lamp. If he had only
been as contented as Mary, who, with a good time to remember from
yesterday, and another to look forward to to-morrow, was perfectly
happy to-night. But boys were different. Sam was a trustworthy
little fellow, but Alice did not so much like Tubby Butler. And
George did not like to have Gogo away from the house at night. She
would smile into the boy's gloomy eyes.

"Couldn't you just read to-night, my son, or perhaps Mary would
play rum with you? Wouldn't that be better, and a long night's
sleep, than going over to Sam's EVERY night?"

But she would leave a disappointed and sullen boy behind her; his
disgusted face would haunt her throughout the entire evening.

Martha was not so much a problem, and little Katharine was still
baby enough to be a joy to the whole house. But between the
children's meals, their shoes and hats and lessons, Alice was a
busy woman, and she realized that her responsibilities must
increase rather than lessen in the next few years. When Mary was
married, and Gogo finishing college, and Martha ready to be
entertained and chaperoned by her big sister, then she and George
might take Kittiwake and run away; but not now.

Rachael formed the habit of calling at the Valentine house through
the wet winds of March and April, coming in upon Alice at all
hours, sometimes with the boys, sometimes alone. Alice, in her
quiet way, was ready to open her heart completely to her brilliant
friend. Rachael spoke of all topics except one to Alice. They
discussed houses and maids, the children, books and plays and
plans for the summer, birth and death, the approaching
responsibility of the vote, philosophies and religions, saints and
sages. And the day came when Rachael spoke of Warren and of
Margaret Clay.

It was a quiet, wet spring afternoon, a day when the coming of
green leaves could be actually felt in the softened air. The two
women were upstairs in Alice's white and blue sitting-room
enjoying a wood fire. Jim and Derry were in the playroom with
Kittiwake; the house was silent, so silent that they could hear
the drumming of rain on the leads, and the lazy purr of the fire.

Alice was first incredulous, and then stunned at the story.

Rachael told all she knew, the change in her husband, the opening
night of "The Bad Little Lady," her lonely dinners and evenings,
and Magsie's complacent attitude of possession.

"Well," said Alice, who had been an absorbed and astounded
listener, when she finished, "I confess I don't understand it! If
Warren Gregory is making a fool of himself over Margaret Clay, no
one is going to be as much ashamed as he is when he is over it. I
think with you," Alice added, much in earnest, "that as far as any
actual infidelity goes, neither one would be CAPABLE of it!
Magsie's a selfish little featherhead, but she has her own
advantage too close at heart, and Warren, no matter what
preposterous theory he has to explain his interest in Magsie,
isn't going to actually do anything that would put him in the
wrong!" She paused, but Rachael did not speak, and something in
her aspect, as she sat steadily watching the fire, smote Alice to
the heart. "I have never been so shocked and so disappointed in my
life!" Alice went on, "I can't YET believe it! The only thing you
can do is keep quiet and dignified, and wait for the whole thing
to wear itself out. This explains the change between George and
Warren. I knew George suspected something from the way he tried to
shut me up when I saw Warren the other night at the theatre."

"Now that I've talked about it," Rachael smiled, "I believe I feel
better!" And presently she dried her eyes, and even laughed at
herself a little as she and Alice fell to talking of other things.
When Rachael, a boy in each hand, said good-bye, and went out into
the pale, late afternoon sunshine that followed the rain, Alice
accompanied her to the door, and stood for a moment with her at
the top of the street steps.

"You're so lovely, Rachael," said her friend affectionately. "It
doesn't seem right to have anything ever trouble anyone so
pretty!"

Rachael only smiled doubtfully in answer, but Derry and Jim talked
all the way home, their mother listening in silence. She found
their conversation infinitely more amusing when uninfluenced by
her. Both were naturally observant, Jim logical and reasonable,
Derry always misled by his fancy and his dreams. When Tim was a
lion, he was a lion who lived in the Gregory nursery, sat in the
chairs that belonged to the Gregory children, and preyed upon
their toys, as toys. But Derry was a beast of another calibre. The
polished nursery floor was the still water of jungle pools, and
the cribs were trees which a hideous and ferocious beast,
radically differing in every way from little Gerald Gregory,
climbed at will. Jim was a lion who liked to be interrupted by
grown-ups, who was laughing at his make-believe all the time, but
Derry was so frightfully in earnest as to often terrify himself,
and almost always impress his brother, with his roarings and
ravaging.

To-day their conversation ran along pleasantly; they were
companionable little brothers, and only unmanageable when
separated.

"All the men walking home will get their feet horrid an' wet,"
said Jim, "and then the ladies will scold 'em!"

"This would be a great, big ocean for a fairy," Derry commented,
flicking a wide puddle with a well-protected little foot. "Jim,"
he added in an anxious undertone, "could a fairy drown?"

"Not if he had his swimming belt on," Jim said hardily.

"All the fairies have to take little white rose leaves, and make
themselves swimming belts," Derry said dreamily, "'r else their
mothers won't let them go swimming, will they, Mother?"

They did not wait for her answer, and Rachael was free to return
to her own thoughts. But the interruption roused her, and she
watched the little pair with pleasure as they trotted before her
on the drying sidewalks. Derry was blond and Jim dark, yet they
looked alike, both with Rachael's dark, expressive eyes, and with
their father's handsome mouth and sudden, appealing smile. But
Rachael fancied that her oldest son was most like his father in
type, and found it hard to be as stern with Jim as she was with
the impulsive reckless, eager Derry, whose faults were more apt to
be her own.

To-night she went with them to the nursery, where their little
table was already set for supper and their small white beds
already neatly turned down.

"Mother's going to give us our baths!" shouted Jim. Both boys
looked at her eagerly; Rachael smiled doubtfully.

"Mother's afraid that she will have to dress, to meet Daddy
downtown," she began regretfully, when old Mary interposed
respectfully:

"Excuse me, Mrs. Gregory. But Dennison took a message from Doctor
this afternoon. I happen to know it because Louise asked me if I
didn't think she had better order dinner for you. Doctor has been
called to Albany on a case, and was to let you know when to expect
him."

"Goody--goody--good-good!" shouted Jim, and Derry joined in with a
triumphant shriek, and clasped his arms tightly about his mother's
knees. Rachael had turned a little pale, but she kissed both boys,
and only left them long enough to change her gown to something
loose and comfortable.

Then she came back to the nursery, and there were baths, and
games, and suppers, and then stories and prayers before the fire,
Mary and Rachael laughing over the fluffy heads, revelling in the
beauty of the little bodies.

When they were in bed she went down to a solitary dinner, and, as
she ate it, her thoughts went back to other solitary dinners years
ago. Utter discouragement and something like a great, all-
enveloping fear possessed her. She was afraid of life. She had
dented her armor, broken her steel, she had been flung back and
worsted in the fight.

What was the secret, then, Rachael asked the fire, if youth and
beauty and high hopes and great love failed like so many straws?
Why was Alice contented, and she, Rachael, torn by a thousand
conflicting hopes and fears? Why was it, that with all her
cleverness, and all her beauty, the woman who had been Rachael
Fairfax, and Rachael Breckenridge, and Rachael Gregory, had never
yet felt sure of joy, had never dared lay hands upon it boldly,
and know it to be her own, had trembled, and apprehended, and
distrusted where women of infinitely lesser gifts had been able to
enter into the kingdom with such utter certainty and serenity?

Sitting through the long evening by the fire, in the drowsy
silence of the big drawing-room, Rachael felt her eyes grow heavy.
Who was unhappy, who was happy--what was all life about anyway--

Dennison and old Mary came in at eleven, and looked at her for a
long five minutes. Their eyes said a great many things, although
neither spoke aloud. The fire had burned low, the light of a
shaded lamp fell softly on the sleeping woman's face. There was a
little frown between the beautiful brows, and once she sighed
lightly, like a child.

The man stepped softly back into the hall, and Mary touched her
mistress.

"Mrs. Gregory, you've dropped off to sleep!"

Rachael roused, looked up, smiling bewilderedly. Her look seemed
to search the shadows beyond the old woman's form. Slowly the new
look of strain and sorrow came back into her eyes.

"Why, so I did!" she said, getting to her feet. "I think I'll go
upstairs. Any message from Doctor Gregory?"

"No message, Mrs. Gregory."

"Thank you, Mary, good-night!" Rachael went slowly out through the
dimly lighted arch of the hall doorway, and slowly upstairs. She
deliberately passed the nursery door. Her heart was too full to
risk a visit to the boys to-night. She lighted her room and sank
dazedly into a chair.

"I dreamed that we were just married, and in the old studio," she
said, half aloud. "I dreamed I had the old-feeling again, of being
so sure, and so beloved! I thought Warren had come home early and
had brought me violets!"

CHAPTER VII

A day later Dennison brought up the card of Miss Margaret Clay.
Rachael turned it slowly in her hands, pondering, with a quickened
heartbeat and a fluctuating color. Magsie had been often a guest
in Rachael's house a year ago, but she had not been to see Rachael
for a long time now. They were to meet, they were to talk alone
together--what about? There was nothing about which Rachael
Gregory cared to talk to Margaret Clay.

A certain chilliness and trembling smote Rachael, and she sat
down. She wished she had been out. It would be simple enough to
send down a message to that effect, of course, but that was not
the same thing. That would be evading the issue, whereas, had she
been out, she could not have held herself responsible for missing
Magsie.

Well, the girl was in the neighborhood, of course, and had simply
come in to say now do you do? But it would mean evasions, and
affectations, and insincerities to talk with Magsie; it would mean
lying, unless there must be an open breach. Rachael found herself
in a state of actual dread of the encounter, and to end it,
impatient at anything so absurd, she asked Dennison to bring the
young lady at once to her own sitting-room.

This was the transformed apartment that had been old Mrs.
Gregory's, running straight across the bedroom floor, and
commanding from four wide windows a glimpse of the old square, now
brave in new feathery green. Rachael had replaced its dull red rep
with modern tapestries, had had it papered in peacock and gray,
had covered the old, dark woodwork with cream-colored enamel and
replaced the black marble mantel with a simply carved one of white
stone. The chairs here were all comfortable now; Rachael's book
lay on a magazine-littered table, a dozen tiny, leather-cased
animals, cows, horses, and sheep, were stabled on the hearth, and
the spring sunlight poured in through fragile curtains of crisp
net. Over the fireplace the great oil portrait of Warren Gregory
smiled down, a younger Warren, but hardly more handsome than he
was to-day. A pastel of the boys' lovely heads hung opposite it,
between two windows, and photographs of Jim and Derry and their
father were everywhere: on the desk, on the little grand piano,
under the table lamp. This was Rachael's own domain, and in asking
Magsie to come here she consciously chose the environment in which
she would feel most at ease.

Upstairs came the light, tripping feet. "In here?" said the fresh,
confident voice. Magsie came in.

Rachael met her at the door, and the two women shook hands. Magsie
hardly glanced at her hostess, her dancing scrutiny swept the room
and settled on Warren's portrait.

She looked her prettiest, Rachael decided miserably. She was all
in white: white shoes, white stockings, the smartest of little
white suits, a white hat half hiding her heavy masses of trimly
banded golden hair. If her hard winter had tired Magsie--"The Bad
Little Lady" was approaching the end of its run--she did not show
it. But there was some new quality in her face, some quality
almost wistful, almost anxious, that made its appeal even to
Warren Gregory's wife.

"This is nice of you, Magsie," Rachael said, watching her closely,
and conscious still of that absurd flutter at her heart. Both
women had seated themselves, now Rachael reached for the silk-
lined basket where she kept a little pretence of needlework, and
began to sew. There were several squares of dark rich silks in the
basket, and their touch seemed to give her confidence.

"What are you making?" said Magsie with a rather touching pretence
at interest. Rachael began to perceive that Magsie was ill at
ease, too. She knew the girl well enough to know that nothing but
her own affairs interested her; it was not like Magsie to ask
seriously about another woman's sewing.

"Warren likes silk handkerchiefs," explained Rachael, all the
capable wife, "and those I make are much prettier than those he
can find in the shops. So I pick up pieces of silk, from time to
time, and keep him supplied."

"He always has beautiful handkerchiefs," said Magsie rather
faintly. "I remember, years ago, when I was with Mrs. Torrence,
thinking that Greg always looked so--so carefully groomed."

"A doctor has to be," Rachael answered sensibly. There were no
girlish vapors or uncertainties about her manner; she had been the
man's wife for nearly seven years; she was in his house; she need
not fear Magsie Clay.

"I suppose so," Magsie said vaguely.

"What are your plans, Magsie?" Rachael asked kindly, as she
threaded a needle.

"We close on the eighteenth," Magsie announced.

"Yes, so I noticed." Rachael had looked for this news every week
since the run of the play began. "Well, that was a successful
engagement, wasn't it?" she asked. It began to be rather a
satisfaction to Rachael to find herself at such close quarters at
last. What a harmless little thing this dreaded opponent was,
after all!

"Yes, they were delighted," Magsie responded still in such a
lackadaisical, toneless, and dreary manner that Rachael glanced at
her in surprise. Magsie's eyes were full of tears.

"Why, what's the matter, my dear child?" she asked, feeling more
sure of herself every instant.

Her guest took a little handkerchief from her pretty white leather
purse, and touched her bright brown eyes with it lightly.

"I'll tell you, Rachael," said she, with an evident effort at
brightness and naturalness, "I came here to see you about
something to-day, but I--I don't quite know how to begin. Only,
whatever you think about it, I want you to remember that your
opinion is what counts; you're the one person who--who can really
advise me, and--and perhaps help me and other people out of a
difficulty."

Rachael looked at her with a twinge of inward distaste. This
rather dramatic start did not promise well; she was to be treated
to some youthful heroics. Instantly the hope came to her that
Magsie had some new admirer, someone she would really consider as
a husband, and wanted to make of Rachael an advocate with Warren,
who, in his present absurd state of infatuation, might not find
such a situation to his taste.

"I want to put to you the case of a friend of mine," Magsie said
presently, "a girl who, like myself, is on the stage." Rachael
wondered if the girl really hoped to say anything convincing under
so thin a disguise, but said nothing herself, and Magsie went on:
"She's pretty, and young--" Her tone wavered. "We've had a nice
company all winter," she remarked lamely.

This was beginning to be rather absurd. Rachael, quite at ease,
raised mildly interrogatory eyes to Magsie.

"You'll go on with your work, now that you've begun so well, won't
you?" she asked casually.

"W--w--well, I suppose so," Magsie answered dubiously, flushing a
sudden red. "I--don't know what I shall do!"

"But surely you've had an unusually encouraging beginning?"
pursued Rachael comfortably.

"Oh, yes, there's no doubt about that, at least!" Magsie said.
About what was there doubt, then? Rachael wondered.

She deliberately allowed a little silence to follow this remark,
smiling, as if at her own thoughts, as she sewed. The younger
woman's gaze roved restlessly about the room, she leaned from her
chair to take a framed photograph of the boys from a low bookcase,
and studied it with evidently forced attention.

"They're stunning!" she said in an undertone as she laid it aside.

"They're good little boys," their mother said contentedly. "I know
that the queerest persons in the world, about eating and drinking,
are actresses, Magsie," she added, smiling, "so I don't know
whether to offer you tea, or hot soup, or an egg beaten up in
milk, or what! We had a pianist here about a year ago, and--"

"Oh, nothing, nothing, thank you, Rachael!" Magsie said eagerly
and nervously. "I couldn't--"

"The boys may be in soon," Rachael remarked, choosing to ignore
her guest's rather unexpected emotion.

This seemed to spur Magsie suddenly into speech. She glanced at
the tall old moonfaced clock that was slowly ticking near the
door, as if to estimate the time left her, and sat suddenly erect
on the edge of her chair.

"I mustn't stay,"' she said breathlessly. "I--I have to be back at
the theatre at seven, and I ought to go home first for a few
minutes. My girl--she's just a Swedish woman that I picked up by
chance--worries about me as if she were my mother, unless I come
in and rest, and take an eggnog, or something." She rallied her
forces with a quite visible effort. "It was just this, Rachael,"
said Magsie, looking at the fire, and twisting her white gloves in
desperate embarrassment, "I know you've always liked me, you've
always been so kind to me, and I can only hope that you'll forgive
me if what I say sounds strange to you. I thought I could come
here and say it, but--I've always been a little bit afraid of you,
Rachael--and I"--Magsie laughed nervously--"and I'm scared to
death now!" she said simply.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29