Books: The Heart of Rachael

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Something natural, unaffected, and direct in her usually self-
conscious and artificial manner struck Rachael with a vague sense
of uneasiness. Magsie certainly did not seem to be acting now;
there were real tears in her pretty eyes, and a genuine break in
her young voice.

"I'm going straight ahead," she said rapidly, "because I've been
getting up my courage this whole week to come and see you, and
now, while Greg is in Albany, I can't put it off any longer. He
doesn't know it, of course, and, although I know I'm putting
myself entirely at your mercy, Rachael, I believe you'll never
tell him if I ask you not to!"

"I don't understand," Rachael said slowly.

"I've been thinking it all out," Magsie went on, "and this is the
conclusion--at least, this is what I've thought! You have always
had everything, Rachael. You've always been so beautiful, and so
much admired. You loved Clarence, and married him--oh, don't think
I'm rude, Rachael," the girl pleaded eagerly, as Rachael voiced an
inarticulate protest, "because I'm so desperately in earnest, and
s-s-so desperately unhappy!" Her voice broke on a rush of tears,
but she commanded it, and hurried on. "You've always been
fortunate, not like other women, who had to be second best, but
ALWAYS the cleverest, and ALWAYS the handsomest! I remember, when
I heard you were to marry Greg, I was just sick with misery for
two or three days! I had seen him a few weeks before in Paris, but
he said nothing of it, didn't even mention you. Don't think I was
jealous, Rachael--it wasn't that. But it seemed to me that you had
everything! First the position of marrying a Breckenridge, then to
step straight into Greg's life. You'll never know how I--how I
singled you out to watch--"

"Just as I have singled you out this horrible winter," Rachael
said to herself, in strange pain and bewilderment at heart. Magsie
watched her hopefully, but Rachael did not speak, and the girl
went on:

"When I came to America I thought of you, and I listened to what
everyone said of you. You had a splendid boy, named for Greg, and
then another boy; you were richer and happier and more admired
than ever! And Rachael--I know you'll forgive me--you were so much
FINER than ever--when I met you I saw that. I couldn't dislike
you, I couldn't do anything but admire, with all the others. I
remember at Leila's wedding, when you wore dark blue and furs, and
you looked so lovely! And then I met Greg again. And truly, truly,
Rachael, I never dreamed of this then!"

"Dreamed of what?" Rachael said with dry lips. The girl's voice,
the darkening room, the dull, fluttering flames of the dying fire,
seemed all like some oppressive dream.

"Dreamed--" Magsie's voice sank. Her eyes closed, she put one hand
over her heart, and pressed it there. "Then came my plan to go on
the stage," she said, taking up her story, "and one day, when I
was especially blue, I met Greg. We had tea together. I've never
forgotten one instant of that day! He tried to telephone you, but
couldn't get you; we just talked like any friends. But he promised
to help me, he was so interested, and I was homesick for Paris,
and ready to die in this awful city! After that you gave me a
dinner, and then we had theatricals, and then Bowman placed me,
and I had to go on the road. But I saw Greg two or three times,
and one day--one day last winter"--again her voice faltered, as if
she found the memories too poignant for speech--"we drove in the
Park," she said dreamily; "and then Greg saw how it was."

Rachael sat silent, stunned.

"Oh, Rachael," the girl said passionately. "Don't think I didn't
fight it! I thought of you, I tried to think for us all. I said we
would never see each other again, and I went away--you know that!
For months after that day in the Park we hardly saw each other.
And then, last summer, we met again. And he talked to me so
wonderfully, Rachael, about making the best of it, about being
good friends anyway--and I've lived on that! But I can't live on
that forever, Rachael."

"You've been seeing each other?" Rachael asked stupidly.

"Oh, every day! At tea, you know, or sometimes especially before
you came back, at dinner. And, Rachael, nobody will ever know what
it's done for me! Greg's managed all my business, and whenever I
was utterly discouraged and tired he had the kindest way of
saying: 'Never mind, Magsie, I'm tired and discouraged, too!'"
Magsie's face glowed happily at the memory of it. "I know I'm not
worthy of Greg's friendship," she said eagerly. "And all the time
I've thought of you, Rachael, as having the first right, as being
far, far above me in everything! But--I'm telling you everything,
you see--" Magsie interrupted herself to explain.

"Go on!" Rachael urged, clearing her throat.

"Well, it's not much. But a week or two ago Greg was talking to me
about your being eager to get the boys into the country early this
year. He looked awfully tired that afternoon, and he said that he
thought he would close this house, and live at the club this
summer, and he said 'That means you have a dinner date every
night, Magsie!' And suddenly, Rachael--I don't know what came over
me, but I burst out crying"--Magsie's eyes filled now as she
thought of it--"and I said, 'Oh, Greg, we need each other! Why
can't we belong to each other! You love me and I love you; why
can't we give up our work and the city and everything else, and
just be happy!'"

"And what did--Warren say?" Rachael asked in a whisper.

"Oh, Rachael! That's what I've been remembering ever since!"
Magsie said. "That's what made me want to come to you; I KNEW you
would understand! You're so good; you want people to be happy,"
said Magsie, fighting tears again and trying to smile. "You have
everything: your sons, your position, your beauty--everything!
I'm--I'm different from some women, Rachael. I can't just run away
with him. There is an honorable and a right way to do it, and I
want to ask you if you'll let us take that way!"

"An honorable way?" Rachael echoed in an unnatural voice.

"Well--" Magsie widened innocent eyes. "Nobody has ever blamed YOU
for taking it, Rachael!" she said simply. "And nobody ever blamed
Clarence, with Paula!"

Rachael, looking fixedly at her, sat as if turned to stone.

"You are brave, Magsie, to come and tell me this," she said at
last quietly.

"You are kind to listen to me," Magsie answered with disarming
sincerity. "I know it is a strange thing to do." She laughed
nervously. "Of course, I know THAT!" she added. "But it came to me
that I would the other day. Greg and I were talking about dreams,
you know--things we wanted to do. And we talked about going away
to some beach, and swimming, and moonlight, and just rest--and
quiet--"

"I see," Rachael said.

"Greg said, 'This is only a dream, Magsie, and we mustn't let
ourselves dream!'" Magsie went on. "But--but sometimes dreams come
true, don't they?"

She stopped. There was an unearthly silence in the room.

"I've tried to fight it, and I cannot," Magsie presently said in a
small, tired voice; "it comes between me and everything I do. I'm
not a great actress--I know that. I don't even want to be any
more. I want to go away where no one will ever see me or hear of
me again. I've heard of this--feeling"--she sent Rachael a brave
if rather uncertain smile--"but I never believed in it before! I
never believed that when--when you care"--Rachael was grateful to
be spared the great word--"you can't live or breathe or think
anything"--again there was an evasion--"but the one thing!"

And with a long, tired sigh, again she relapsed into silence.
Rachael could find nothing to say.

"Honestly, HONESTLY," the younger woman presently added, "you
mustn't think that either one of us saw this coming! We were
simply carried away. It was only this year, only a few months ago,
that I began to think that perhaps--perhaps if you understood, you
would set--Greg free. You want to live just for the boys, you love
the country, and books, and a few friends. Your life would go on,
Rachael, just as it has, only he would be happy, and I would be
happy. Oh, my God," said Magsie, with quivering lips and brimming
eyes, "how happy I would be!"

Rachael looked at her in impassive silence.

"At all events," the visitor said more composedly, "I have been
planning for a week to come to you, Rachael, and have this talk. I
may have done more harm than good--I don't know; but from the
instant I thought of it I have simply been drawn, as if I were
under a spell. I haven't said what I meant to, I know that. I
haven't said"--her smile was wistful and young and sweet, as,
rising from her chair, she stood looking down at Rachael--"how
badly I feel that it--it happens so," said Magsie. "But you know
how deeply I've always admired you! It must seem strange to you
that I would come to you about it. But Ruskin, wasn't it, and
Wagner--didn't they do something like this? I knew, even if things
were changed between you and Greg, that you would be big enough
and good enough to help us all to find the--the solution, if there
is one!"

Rachael stood up, too, so near her guest that she could put one
hand on Magsie's shoulder. The girl looked up at her with the
faith of a distressed child.

"I'm glad you did come, Magsie," said Rachael painfully, "although
I never dreamed, until this afternoon, that--this--could possibly
have been in Warren's thoughts. You speak of--divorce, quite
naturally, as of course anyone may, to me. But I never had thought
of it. It's a sad tangle, whatever comes of it, and perhaps you're
right in feeling that we had better face it, and try to find the
solution, if, as you say, there is one."

And Rachael, breathing a little hard, stood looking down at Magsie
with something so benign, so tragic, and so heroic in her
beautiful face that the younger woman was a little awed, even a
little puzzled, where she had been so sure. She would have liked
to put her arms about her hostess's neck, and to seal their
extraordinary treaty with a kiss, but she knew better. As well
attempt to kiss the vision of a ministering angel. Rachael, one
arm on Magsie's shoulder, her whole figure and her face expressing
painful indecision, had never seemed so remote, so goddesslike.

"And--and you won't tell him of this?" faltered Magsie.

"Ah--you must leave that to me," Rachael said with a sad smile.

For a few seconds longer they looked at each other. Then Rachael
dropped her arm, and Magsie moved a little. The visitor knew that
another sentence must be in farewell, but she felt strangely
awkward, curiously young and crude. Rachael, except for the
falling of her arm, was motionless. Her eyes were far away, she
seemed utterly unconscious of herself and her surroundings. Magsie
wanted to think of one more thing to say, one clinching sentence,
but everything seemed to be said. Something of the other woman's
weariness and coldness of spirit seemed to communicate itself to
her; she felt tired and desolate. It seemed a small and
insignificant matter that she had had her momentous talk with
Rachael, and had succeeded in her venture. Love was failing her,
life was failing.

"I hope--I haven't distressed you--too awfully, Rachael," Magsie
faltered. She had not thought of herself, a few hours ago, as
distressing Rachael at all. She had thought that Rachael might be
scornful, might be cold, might overwhelm her with her magnificence
of manner, and shame her for her daring. She had come in on a
sudden impulse, and had had no time for any thought but that her
revelation would be exciting and dramatic and astonishing. She was
sincerely anxious to have Warren freed, but not so swept away by
emotion that she could not appreciate this lovely setting and her
own picturesque position in the eyes of her beautiful rival.

"Oh, no!" Rachael answered, perfunctorily polite, and with her
eyes still fixed darkly on space. And as if half to herself, she
added, in a breathless, level undertone:

"It all rests with Warren!"

Presently Magsie breathed a faint "Good-bye," following it with an
almost inaudible murmur that Dennison would let her out. Then the
white figure was gone from the gloom of the room, and Rachael was
alone.

For a time she was so dazed, so emotionally exhausted by the event
of the last hour, that she stood on, fixed, unseeing, one hand
pressed against her side as if she stopped with it the mouth of a
wound. Occasionally she drew a long, sharp breath as the dying
sometimes breathe.

"It all rests with Warren," she said presently, half-aloud, and in
a toneless, passive voice. And slowly she turned and slowly went
to the window.

The room was dark, but twilight lingered in the old square, and
home-going men and women were filing across it. The babies and
their nurses were gone now, there were only lounging men on the
benches. Lumbering green omnibuses rocked their way through the
great stone arch, and toward the south, over the crowded foreign
quarter, the pink of street lamps was beginning to battle with the
warm purple and blue that still hung in the evening sky. The
season had been long delayed, but now there was a rustle of green
against the network of boughs; a few warm days would bring the
tulips and the fruit blossoms.

What a sweet, good, natural world it was in which to be happy!
With its wheeling motor cars, its lovers seated in high security
for the long omnibus ride, its laborers pleasantly ready for the
home table and the day's domestic news! The chattering little
Jewish girls from one of the uptown department stores were gay
with shrilly voiced plans; the driver, riding lazily home on a
pile of empty bags, had no quarrel with the world; the smooth-
haired, unhatted Italian women from the Ghetto, with shawls
wrapped over their full breasts, and serene black-eyed babies
toddling beside them, were placidly content with the run of their
days. It remained for the beautiful woman in the drawing-room to
look with melancholy eyes upon the springtime, and tear out her
heart in an agony no human power could cure.

"It all rests with Warren," Rachael said. Magsie was nothing, she
was nothing; the world, the boys, were nothing. It was for Warren
to hold their destinies in his hands and decide for them all. No
use in raging, in reasoning, in arguing. No use in setting forth
the facts, the palpable right and wrong. No use in bitterly asking
the unanswering heavens if this were right and just, this system
that could allow any young girl to feel any married man, any
father, her natural prey. She had come to love Warren just as in a
few years she might come to love someone else. That was all
permissible; regrettable perhaps for Warren's wife, an
unmistakable calamity for Warren's boys, but, from Magsie's
standpoint, comprehensible and acceptable. If Warren were free,
Magsie was well within her rights; if he were not, Rachael was the
last woman in the world to dispute it.

After a while Rachael began to move mechanically about the room.
She sat down at her desk and wrote a few checks; the boys little
first dancing lessons must be paid for, the man who mended the
clock, the woman who had put all her linen in order. She wrote
briskly, reaching quickly for envelopes and stamps, and, when she
had finished, closed the desk with her usual neatness. She
telephoned the kitchen; had she told Louise that Doctor Gregory
might come home at midnight? He might be at home for breakfast.
Then she glanced about the quiet room, and went softly out,
through the inner door, to her own bedroom adjoining. She walked
on little usual errands between bureau and wardrobe, steadily
proceeding with the changing of her gown. Once she stopped short,
in the centre of the floor, and stood musing for a few silent
minutes, then she said, aloud and lightly:

"Poor Magsie--it's all so absurd!"

If for a few seconds her thoughts wandered, they always came
swiftly back. Magsie and Warren had fallen in love with each
other--wanted to marry each other. Rachael tried to marshal her
whirling thoughts; there must be simple reason somewhere in this
chaotic matter. She had the desperate sensation of a mad-woman
trying to prove herself sane. Were they all crazy, to have got
themselves into this hideous fix? What was definite, what facts
had they upon which to build their surmises?

Warren was her husband, that was one fact; Warren loved her, that
was another. They had lived together for nearly eight years,
planned together, they knew each other now, heart and soul. And
there were two sons. These being facts for Rachael, what facts had
Magsie? Rachael's heart rose on a wild rush of confidence. Magsie
had no basis for her pretension. Magsie was young, and she had
madly and blindly fallen in love. There was her single claim: she
loved. Rachael could not doubt it after that hour in the sitting-
room. But what pitiable folly! To love and to admit love for
another woman's husband!

Thinking, thinking, thinking, Rachael lay awake all night. She
composed herself a hundred times for sleep, and a hundred times
sleep evaded her. Magsie--Warren--Rachael. Their names swept round
and round in her tired brain. She was talking to Magsie, so
eloquently and kindly; she was talking to Warren. Warren was
shocked at the mere thought of her suspicions, had seen nothing,
had suspected nothing, couldn't believe that Rachael could be so
foolish! Warren's arms were about her, he was going to take her
and the boys away. This was a bad atmosphere for wives, this
diseased and abnormal city, Warren said. She was buying steamer
coats for Derry and Jim--

Magsie! Again the girl's tense, excited face rose before Rachael's
fevered memory. "You mustn't think either one of us saw this
coming!"

Rachael rose on her elbow, shook her pillows, flashed a night-
light on her watch. Quarter to three. It was a rather dismal hour,
she thought, not near enough either midnight or morning. Tossing
so long, she would be sleepless all night now.

Well, what was marriage anyway? Was there never a time of
serenity, of surety? Was any pretty, irresponsible young woman
free to set her heart upon another woman's husband, the father of
another woman's children? Rachael suddenly thought of Clarence.
How different the whole thing had seemed then! Clarence's pride,
Clarence's child, had they been so hurt as her pride and her
children were to be hurt now?

She must not allow herself to be so easily frightened. She had
been thinking too many months of the one thing; she could not see
it fairly. Why, Magsie had been infinitely more dangerous in the
early days of her success; there was nothing to fear from the
simple, apprehensive Magsie of this afternoon! The only sensible
thing was to stop thinking of it, and to go to sleep. But Rachael
felt sick and frightened, experienced sensations of faintness,
sensations like hunger. Her eyes seemed painfully open, she could
not shut them. Her breath came fitfully. She sighed, turned on her
side. She would count one hundred, breathing deep and with closed
eyes. "Sixteen, seventeen!" Rachael sat suddenly erect, and looked
at her watch again. Twenty-two minutes past three.

Morning broke with wind and rain; the new leaves in the square
were tossing wildly; sleet struck noisily against the windows.
Rachael, waking exhausted, after not more than an hour's sleep,
went through the process of dressing in a weary daze. The boys, as
was usual, came in during the hour, full of fresh conversation and
eager to discuss plans for the day. Jim tied strings from knob to
knob of her bureau drawers, Derry amused himself by dashing a
chain of glass beads against the foot of the bed until the links
gave and the tiny balls rolled in every direction over the floor.

"Never mind," Rachael consoled the discomfited junior, "Pauline
will come in and pick them all up. Mother doesn't care!"

Derry, however, howled on unconsoled, and Rachael, stopping, half-
dressed, to take him in her arms, mused while she kissed him over
the tiny sorrow that could so convulse him. Was she no more than a
howling baby robbed of a toy? Nothing could be more real than
Derry's sense of loss, no human being could weep more desolately
or more unreasonably. Were her love and her life no more than a
string of baubles, scattered and flung about by some irresponsible
hand? Was nothing real except the great moving sea and the arch of
stars above the spring nights? Life and death, and laughter and
tears, how unimportant they were! Eight years ago she had felt
herself to be unhappy; now she knew that in those days she had
known neither sorrow nor joy. Since then, what an ecstasy of
fulfilled desire had been hers! She had lived upon the heights,
she had tasted the fullest and the sweetest of human emotions.
What other woman--Cleopatra, Helen, all the great queens of
countries and of art--had known more exquisite delight than hers
had been in those first days when she had waited for Warren to
come to her with violets?

The morning went on like an ugly dream. At nine o'clock Rachael
sent down an untouched breakfast tray. Mary took the boys out into
the struggling sunshine. The house was still.

Rachael lay on her wide couch, staring wretchedly into space. Her
head ached. The moonfaced clock struck a slow ten, the hall clock
downstairs following it with a brisk silver chime. Vendors in the
square called their wares; the first carts of potted spring
flowers were going their rounds.

Shortly after ten o'clock she heard Warren run upstairs and into
his room. She could hear his voice at the telephone; he wanted the
hospital--Doctor Gregory wished to speak to Miss Moore.

Miss Moore? Doctor Gregory would be there at eleven ... please
have everything ready. Miss Moore, who was a veteran nurse and a
privileged character, asked some question as to the Albany case;
Warren wearily answered that the patient had not rallied; it was
too bad--too bad.

Once it would have been Rachael's delight to soothe him, to give
him the strong coffee he needed before eleven o'clock, to ask
about the poor Albany man. Now she hardly heard him. Beginning to
tremble, she sat up, her heart beating fast.

"Warren!" she called in a shaken voice.

He came to her door immediately, and they faced each other, his
perfunctory greeting arrested by her look.

"Warren," said Rachael with a desperate effort at control, "I want
you to tell me about--about you and Magsie Clay."

Instantly his face darkened. He gazed back at her steadily,
narrowing his eyes.

"What about it?" he asked sharply.

Rachael knew that she was growing angry against her passionate
resolution to keep the conversation in her own hands.

"Magsie came to see me yesterday," she said, panting.

Had she touched him? She could not tell. There was no wavering in
his impassive face.

"What about it?" he asked again after a silence.

His wife pushed the rich, tumbled hair from her face with a wild
gesture, as if she fought for air.

"What about it?" she echoed, in a constrained tone, still with
that quickened shallow breath. "Do you think it is CUSTOMARY for a
girl to come to a man's wife, and tell her that she cares for him?
Do you think it is CUSTOMARY for a man to have tea every day with
a young actress who admits she is in love with him--"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Warren said, his face a
dull red.

"Do you mean to tell me that you don't know that Margaret Clay
cares for you," Rachael asked in rising anger, "and that you have
never told her you care for her--that you and she have never
talked about it, have never wished that you were free to belong to
each other!"

"You will make yourself ill!" Warren said quietly, watching her.

His tone brought Rachael abruptly to her senses. Fury and
accusation were not her best defence. With Warren calm and
dignified she would only hurt her claim by this course. In a
second she was herself again, her breath grew normal, she
straightened her hair, and with a brief shrug walked slowly from
the room into her own sitting-room adjoining. Following her,
Warren found her looking down at the square from the window.

"If you are implying anything against Magsie, you are merely
making yourself ridiculous, Rachael," he said nervously. "Neither
Magsie nor I have forgotten your claim for a single instant. If
she came here and talked to you, she did so absolutely without my
knowledge."

"She said so," Rachael admitted, heart and mind in a whirl.

"From a sense of protection--for her," Warren went on, "I did NOT
tell you how much we have come to mean to each other. I am
extremely--unwilling--to discuss it now. There is nothing to be
said, as far as I am concerned. It is better not to discuss it; we
shall not agree. That Magsie could come here and talk to you
surprises me. I naturally don't know what she said, or what
impression she gave you. I would only remind you that she is
young--and unhappy." He glanced at the morning paper he carried in
his hand with an air of casual interest, and added in a moderate
undertone, "It's an unhappy business!"

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