Books: The Heart of Rachael

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"Oh, George--my God--how you stood by me then," Warren said. "Get
me out of this, and I'll believe that there never was a friend
like you in the world! I don't know what I ever did to have you
and Alice stand by me--"

"Alice isn't standing by you to any conspicuous extent," George
Valentine said smilingly, "although, last night, when she was
putting the girls to bed, she put her arms about Martha, and said,
'George, she wouldn't be here to-day if Greg hadn't taken the
chance and cut that thing out of her throat!' At which, of
course," Doctor Valentine added with his boyish smile, "Martha's
dad had to wipe his eyes, and Martha's mother began to cry!"

And again he frankly wiped his eyes.

"However, the thing is this," he presently resumed, "if you could
buy off Magsie--simply tell her frankly that you've been a fool,
that you don't want to go on with it--no, eh?" A little
discouraged by Warren's dubious shake of the head, he went on to
the next suggestion. "Well, then, if you can't--tell her that
there cannot be any talk at present of a legal separation, and
that you are going away. Would you have the nerve to do that? Tell
her that you'll be back in eight months or a year. But of course
the best thing would be to buy her off, or call it off in some
way, and then write Rachael fully, frankly--tell her the whole
thing, ask her to wait at least one year, and then let you see
her--"

Warren could see himself writing this letter, could even see
himself walking into the dear old sitting-room at Home Dunes.

"I might see Magsie," he said after thought, "and ask her what she
would take in place of what she wants. It's just possible, but I
don't believe she would---"

"Well, what could she do if you simply called the whole thing
off?" George asked. "Hang it! it's a beastly thing to do, but if
she wants money, you've got it, and you've done her no harm,
though nobody'll believe that."

"She'll take the heartbroken attitude," Warren said slowly.
"She'll say that she trusted me, that she can't believe me, and so
on."

"Well, you can stand that. Just set your jaw, and think of
Rachael, and go through with it once and for all."

"Yes, but then if she should turn to Rachael again?"

"Ah, well, she mustn't do that. Let her think that, after the
year, you'll come to a fresh understanding rather than let her
fight. And meanwhile, if I were you, I would write Rachael a long
letter and make a clean breast. Alice and the girls go down to-
morrow; they'll keep me in touch. How about coming in here for a
bachelor dinner Friday? Then we can talk developments."

"George, you certainly are a generous loyal friend!" Warren
Gregory said, a dry huskiness in his voice as he wrung the other's
hand in good-bye.

George went upstairs to tell the interested and excited and
encouraged Alice about their talk, and Alice laughed and cried
with-pleasure, confident that everything would come out well now,
and grateful beyond words that Greg was showing so humbled and
penitent a spirit.

"Leave Rachael to me!" Alice said exultingly. "How we'll all laugh
at this nonsense some day!"

Even Warren Gregory, walking down the street, was conscious of new
hope and confidence. He was not thinking of Magsie to-day, but of
Rachael, the most superb and splendid figure of womanhood that had
ever come into his life. How she had raged at him in that last
memorable talk; how vital, how vigorous she was, uncompromising,
direct, courageous! And as a swimmer, who miles away from shore in
the cruel shifting green water, might think with aching longing of
the quiet home garden, the kitchen with its glowing fire and
gleaming pottery, the pleasant homely routine of uneventful days,
and wonder that he had ever found safety and comfort anything less
than a miracle, Warren thought of the wife he had sacrificed, the
children and home that had been his, unchallenged and undisputed,
only a few months before. He knew just where he had failed his
wife. He felt to-day that to comfort her again, to take her to
dinner again, violets on her breast, and to see her loosen her
veil, and lay aside her gloves with those little gestures so
familiar and so infinitely dear would be heaven, no less! What
comradeship they had had, they two, what theatre trips, what
summer days in the car, what communion over the first baby's downy
head, what conferences over the new papers and cretonnes for Home
Dunes!

Girded by these and a hundred other sacred memories he went to
Magsie, who was busy, the maid told him, with her hairdresser. But
she presently came out to him, wrapped snugly in a magnificent
embroidered kimono, and with her masses of bright hair, almost
dry, hanging about her lovely little face. She had never in all
their intercourse shown him quite this touch of intimacy before,
and he felt with a little wince of his heart that it was a sign of
her approaching possession.

"Greg, dear," said Magsie seating herself on the arm of his chair,
and resting her soft little person against him, "I've been
thinking about you, and about the wonderful, WONDERFUL way that
all our troubles have come out! If anyone had told us, two months
ago, that Rachael would set you free, and that all this would have
happened, we wouldn't have believed it, would we? I watched you
walking down the street yesterday afternoon, and, oh, Greg, I hope
I'm going to be a good wife to you; I hope I'm going to make up to
you for all the misery you've had to bear!"

This was not the opening sentence Warren was expecting. Magsie had
been petulant the day before, and had pettishly declared that she
would not wait a year for any man in the world. Warren had at once
seized the opening to say that he would not hold her to anything
against her will, to be answered by a burst of tears, and an
entreaty not to be "so mean." Then Magsie had to be soothed, and
they had gone to tea as a part of that familiar process. But to-
day her mood was different; she was full of youthful enthusiasm
for the future.

"You know I love Rachael, Greg, and of course she is a most
exceptional woman," bubbled Magsie happily, "but she doesn't
appreciate the fact that you're a genius--you're not a little
everyday husband, to be held to her ideas of what's done and what
isn't done! Big men are a law unto themselves. If Rachael wants to
hang over babies' cribs, and scare you to death every time Jim
sneezes--"

Warren listened no further. His mind went astray on a memory of
the night Jim was feverish, a memory of Rachael in her trailing
dull-blue robe, with her thick braids hanging over her shoulders.
He remembered that Jim was promised the circus if he would take
his medicine; and how Rachael, with smiling lips and anxious eyes,
had described the big lions and the elephants for the little
restless potentate---

"--because I've had enough of Bowman, and enough of this city, and
all I ask is to run away with you, and never think of rehearsals
and routes and all the rest of it in my life again!" Magsie was
saying. Presently she seemed to notice his silence, for she asked
abruptly: "Where's Rachael?"

Warren roused himself from deep thought.

"At the Long Island house; at Clark's Hills."

"Oh!" Magsie, who was now seated opposite him, clasped her hands
girlishly about her knees. "What is the plan, Greg?" she asked
vivaciously.

"Her plan?" Warren said clearing his throat.

"Our plan!" Magsie amended contentedly. And she summarized the
case briskly: "Rachael consents to a divorce, we know that. I am
not going on with Bowman, I've decided that. Now what?" She eyed
his brooding face curiously. "What shall I do, Greg? I suppose we
oughtn't to see each other as we did last summer? If Rachael goes
West--and I suppose she will--shall I go up to the Villalongas'?
They're terribly nice to me; and I think Vera suspects---"

"What makes you think she does?" Warren asked, feeling as if a
hot, dry wind suddenly smote his skin.

"Because she's so nice to me!" Magsie answered triumphantly.
"Rachael's been just a little snippy to Vera," she confided
further, "or Vera thinks she has. She's not been up there for
ages! I could tell Vera---"

Warren's power of reasoning was dissipated in an absolute panic.
But George had primed him for this talk. He assumed an air of
business.

"There are several things to think of, Magsie," he said briskly,
"before we can go farther. In the first place, you must spend the
summer comfortably. I've arranged for that--"

He handed her a small yellow bank-book. Magsie glanced at it;
glanced at him.

"Oh, Greg, dear, you're too generous!"

"I'm not generous at all," he answered with an honest flush. "I
know what I am now, Magsie, I'm a cad."

"Who says you're a cad?" Magsie demanded indignantly.

"I say so!" he answered. "Any man is a cad who gets two women into
a mess like this!"

"Greg, dear, you shan't say so!" Her slender arms were about his
neck.

"Well--" He disengaged the arms, and went on with his planning.
"George Valentine is going to see Rachael," he proceeded.

"About the divorce?" said Magsie with a nod.

"About the whole thing. And George thinks I had better go away."

"Where?" demanded Magsie.

"Oh, travelling somewhere."

"Rio?" dimpled Magsie. "You know you have always had a sneaking
desire to see Rio."

Warren smiled mechanically. It had been Rachael's favorite dream
"when the boys are big enough!" His sons--were they bathing this
minute, or eagerly emptying their blue porridge bowls?

"Magsie, dear," he said slowly, "it's a miserable business--this.
I'm as sorry as I can be about it. But the truth is that George
wants me to get away only until he and Alice can get Rachael into
a mood where she'll forgive me. They see this whole crazy thing as
it really is, dear. I'm not a young man, Magsie, I'm nearly fifty.
I have no business to think of anything but my own wife and my
work and my children--Don't look so, Magsie," he broke off to say;
"I only blame myself! I have loved you--I do love you--but it's
only a man's love for a sweet little amusing friend. Can't we--
can't we stop it right here? You do what you please; draw on me
for twice that, for ten times that; have a long, restful summer,
and then come back in the fall as if this was all a dream---"

Magsie had been watching him steadily during this speech, a long
speech for him. At first she had been obviously puzzled, then
astonished, now she was angry. She had grown pale, her pretty
childish mouth was a little open, her breath coming fast. For a
full minute, as his voice halted, there was silence.

"Then--then you didn't mean all you said?" Magsie demanded
stormily, after the pause. "You didn't mean that you--cared? You
didn't mean the letters, and the presents, and the talks we've
had? You knew I was in earnest, but you were just fooling!" Sheer
excitement and fury kept her panting for a moment, then she went
on: "But I think I know who's done this, Greg!" she said
viciously; "it's Mrs. Valentine. She and her husband have been
talking to you; they've done it. She's persuaded you that you
never were in earnest with me!" Magsie ran across the room, flung
open the little desk that stood there, and tore the rubber band
from a package of letters. "You take her one of these!" she said,
half sobbing. "Ask her if that means anything! Greg, dear!" she
interrupted herself to say in a child's reproachful tone, "didn't
you mean it?" And with her soft hair floating, and her figure
youthful under the simple lines of her Oriental robe, she came to
stand close beside him, her mood suddenly changed. "Don't you love
me any more, Greg?" said she.

"Love you!" he countered with a rueful laugh, "that's the
trouble."

She linked her soft little hands in his, raised reproachful eyes.

"But you don't love me enough to stand by me, now that Rachael is
so cross?" she asked artlessly. "Oh, Greg, I will wait years and
years for you!"

Warren's expression was of wretchedness; he managed a smile.

"It's only that I hate to let you in for it all, dear. And let her
in for it. I feel as if we hadn't thought it out--quite enough,"
he said.

"What does it let Rachael in for?" she asked quickly. "Here's her
letter, Greg--I'll read it to you! Rachael doesn't mind."

"Well--it will be horrible for you," he submitted in a troubled
tone. "Horrible for us both."

"You mean your work can't spare you?" she asked with a shrewd
look.

"No!" He shrugged wearily. "No. The truth is, I want to get away,"
he said in an undertone.

"Ah, well!" Magsie understood that. "Of course you want to get
away from the fuss and the talk, Greg," she said eagerly. "I think
we all ought to get away: Rachael to Long Island, I to Vera, you
anywhere! We can't possibly be married for months---" Suddenly her
voice sank, she dropped his hands, and locked her smooth little
arms about his neck. "But I'll be waiting for you, and you for me,
Greg," she whispered. "Isn't it all settled now, isn't it only a
question of all the bother, lawyers and arrangements, before you
and I belong to each other as we've always dreamed we might?"

He looked down gravely, almost sadly, and yet with tenderness,
upon the eager face. He had always found her lovable, endearing,
and sweet; even out of this hideous smoke and flame she emerged
all charming and all desirable. He tightened his arms about the
thinly wrapped little figure.

"Yes. I think it's all settled now, Magsie!" he said.

"Well, then!" She sealed it with one of her quick little kisses.
"Now sit down and read a magazine, Greg," she said happily, "and
in ten minutes you'll see me in my new hat, all ready to go to
lunch!"

CHAPTER IV

The blue tides rose and fell at Clark's Hills, the summer sun
shone healingly down upon Rachael's sick heart and soul. Day after
day she took her bare-headed, sandalled boys to the white beach,
and lay in the warm sands, with the tonic Atlantic breezes blowing
over her. Space and warmth and silence were all about; the
incoming breakers moved steadily in, and shrank back in a tumble
of foam and blue water; gulls dipped and wheeled in the spray. As
far as her dreaming eyes could reach, up the beach and down, there
was the same bath of warm color, blue sea melting into blue sky,
white sand mingling with yellow dunes, until all colors, in the
distance, swam in a haze of dull gold.

Now and then, when even the shore was hot, the boys elected to
spend their afternoon by the bay on the other side of the village.
Here there was much small traffic in dingies and dories and
lobster-pots; the slower tides rocked the little craft at the
moorings, and sent bright swinging light against the weather-worn
planks under the pier. Rachael smiled when she saw Derry's little
dark head confidently resting against the flowing, milky beard of
old Cap'n Jessup, or heard the bronzed lean younger men shout to
her older son, as to an equal, "Pitch us that painter, will ye,
Jim!"

She spoke infrequently but quietly of Warren to Alice. The older
woman discovered, with a pang of dismay, that Rachael's attitude
was fixed beyond appeal. There was such a thing as divorce,
established and approved; she, Rachael, had availed herself of its
advantages; now it was Warren's turn.

Rachael would live for her sons. They must of course be her own.
She would take them away to some other atmosphere: "England, I
think," she told Alice. "That's my mother country, you know, and
children lead a sane, balanced life there."

"I will be everything to them until they are--say, ten and
twelve," she added on another day, "and then they will begin to
turn toward their father. Of course I can't blame him to them,
Alice. And some day they will come to believe that it is all their
mother's fault--that's the way with children! And so I'll pay
again."

"Dearest girl, you're morbid!" Alice said, not knowing whether to
laugh or cry.

"No, I mean it, I truly mean that! It is disillusioning for young
boys to learn that their father and mother were not self-
controlled, normal persons, able to bear the little pricks of
life, but that our history has been public gossip for years, that
two separate divorces are in their immediate history!"

"Rachael, don't talk so recklessly!"

Rachael smiled sadly.

"Well, perhaps I can be a good mother to them, even if they don't
idealize me!" she mused.

"I have come to this conclusion," she told

Alice one day, about a fortnight later, "while civilization is as
it is, divorce is wrong. No matter what the circumstances are, no
matter where the right and wrong lie, divorce is wrong."

"I suppose there are cases of drink or infidelity--" Alice
submitted mildly.

"Then it's the drink, or the infidelity that should be changed!"
Rachael answered inflexibly. "It's the one vow we take with God as
witness; and no blessing ever follows a broken vow!"

"I think myself that there are not many marriages that couldn't be
successes!" Alice said thoughtfully.

"Separation, if you like!" Rachael conceded with something of her
old bright energy. "Change and absence, for weeks and months, but
not divorce. Paula Verlaine should never have divorced Clarence;
she made a worse match, if that was possible, and involved three
other small lives in the general discomfort. And I never should
have married Clarence, because I didn't love him. I didn't want
children then; I never felt that the arrangement was permanent;
but having married him, I should have stayed by him. I know the
mood in which Clarence took his own life; he never loved me as he
did Bill, but he wouldn't have done it if I had been there!"

"I cannot consider Clarence Breckenridge a loss to society," Alice
said.

"I might have made Clarence a man who would have been a loss to
society," Rachael mused. "He was proud; loved to be praised. And
he loved children; one or two babies in the nursery would have put
Billy in second place. But he bored me, and I simply wouldn't go
on being bored. So that if I had had a little more courage, or a
little more prudence in the first place, Billy, Clarence, perhaps
Charlotte and Charlie, Greg, Deny, Jim, Joe Pickering, and Billy
might all have been happier, to say nothing of the general example
to society."

"I hear that Billy is unhappy enough now," Alice said, pleased at
Rachael's unusual vivacity. "Isabella Haviland told my Mary that
Cousin Billy was talking about divorce."

"From Joe?--is that so?" Rachael looked up interestedly. "I hadn't
heard it, and somehow I don't believe it! They have a curious
affinity through all their adventures. Poor little Bill, it hasn't
been much of a life!"

"They say she is going on the stage," Alice pursued, "which seems
a pity, especially for the child's sake. He's an attractive boy;
we saw him with her at Atlantic City last winter--one of those
wonderfully dressed, patient, pathetic children, always with the
grown-ups! The little chap must have a rather queer life of it
drifting about from hotel to hotel. They're hard up, and I believe
most of the shops and hotels have actually black-listed them. He
would seem to be the sort of man who cannot hold on to anything,
and, of course, there's the drinking! She's not the girl to save
him. She drinks rather recklessly herself; it's a part of her
pose."

"I wonder if she would let the youngster come down here and
scramble about with my boys?" Rachael said unexpectedly. She had
not seriously thought of it; the suggestion came idly. But
instantly it took definite hold. "I wonder if she would?" she
added with more animation than she had shown for some time. "I
would love to have him, and of course the boys would go wild with
joy! I would be so glad to do poor old Billy a good turn. She and
I were always friends, and had some queer times together. And more
than that"--Rachael's eyes darkened--"I believe that if I had had
the right influence over her she never would have married Joe. I
regarded the whole thing too lightly; I could have tried, in a
different way, to prevent it, at least. I am certainly going to
write her, and ask for little Breckenridge. It would be something
to do for Clarence, too," Rachael added in a low tone, and as if
half to herself, "and for many long years I have felt that I would
be glad to do something for him! To have his grandson here--
doesn't it seem odd?-and perhaps to lend Billy a hand; it seems
almost like an answer to prayer! He can sleep on the porch,
between the boys, and if he has some old clothes, and a bathing
suit--"

"MY DEAR BILLY," she wrote that night, "I have heard one or two
hints of late that you have a good many things in your life just
now that make for worry, and am writing to know if my boys and I
may borrow your small son for a few weeks or a month, so that one
small complication of a summer in the city will be spared you. We
are down here on Long Island on a strip of high land that runs
between the beautiful bay and the very ocean, and when Jim and
Derry are not in the one they are apt to be in the other. It will
be a great joy to them to have a guest, and a delight to me to
take good care of your boy. I think he will enjoy it, and it will
certainly do him good.

"I often think of you with great affection, and hope that life is
treating you kindly. Sometimes I fancy that my old influence might
have been better for you than it was, but life is mistakes, after
all, and paying for them, and doing better next time.

"Always affectionately yours, RACHAEL."

Three days elapsed after this letter was dispatched, and Rachael
had time to wonder with a little chill if she had been too cordial
to Billy, and if Billy were laughing her cool little laugh at her
one-time step-mother's hospitality and moralizing.

But as a matter of fact, the invitation could not have been more
happily timed for young Mrs. Pickering. Billy, without any further
notice to Magsie, had been to see Magsie's manager, coolly
betraying her friend's marriage plans, pledging the angry and
bewildered Bowman to secrecy, and applying for the position on her
own account in the course of one brief visit.

Bowman would not commit himself to engaging Billy, but he was
infinitely obliged to her for the news of Magsie, and told her so
frankly.

It was when she returned home from this call, and hot and weary,
was trying to break an absolute promise to the boy, involving the
Zoo and ice-cream, that Rachael's letter arrived.

Billy read it through, sat thinking hard, and presently read it
again. The softest expression her rather hard young face ever knew
came over it as she sat there. This was terribly decent of
Rachael, thought Billy. She must be the busiest and happiest woman
in the world, and yet her heart had gone out to little Breck. The
last line, however, meant more than all the rest, just now, to
Billy Pickering. She was impressionable, and not given to finding
out the truths of life for herself. Rachael's opinions she had
always respected. And now Rachael admitted that life was all
mistakes, and added that heartening line about paying for them,
and doing better.

"'Cause I am so hot--and I never had any lunch--and you said you
would!" fretted the little boy, flinging himself against her, and
sending a wave of heat through her clothing as he did so.

"Listen, Breck," she said suddenly, catching him lightly in her
arm, and smiling down at him, "would you like to go down and stay
with the Gregory boys?"

"I don't know 'em," said Breck doubtfully.

"Down on the ocean shore," Billy went on, "where you could go in
bathing every day, and roll in the surf, and picnic, and sleep out
of doors!"

"Did they ask me?" he demanded excitedly.

"Their mother did, and she says that you can stay as long as
you're a good boy, down there where it's nice and cool, digging in
the sand, and going bare foot--"

"I'll be the best boy you ever saw!" Breck sputtered eagerly.
"I'll work for her, and I'll make the other kids work for her--
she'll tell you she never saw such a good boy! And I'll write you
letters--"

"You won't have to work, old man!" Billy felt strangely stirred as
she kissed him. She watched him as he rushed away to break the
news of his departure to the stolid Swedish girl in the kitchen
and the colored boy at the elevator. He jerked his little bureau
open, and began to scramble among his clothes; he selected a toy
for Jim and a toy for Derry, and his mother noticed that they were
his dearest toys. She took him downtown and bought him a bathing
suit, and sandals, and new pajamas, and his breathless delight, as
he assured sympathetic clerks that he was going down to the shore,
made her realize what a lonely, uncomfortable little fellow he had
been all these months. He could hardly eat his supper that night,
and had to be punished before he would even attempt to go to
sleep, and the next morning he waked his mother at six, and fairly
danced with impatience and anxiety as the last preparations were
made.

Billy took him down to Clark's Hills herself. She had not notified
Rachael, or answered her in any way, never questioning that
Rachael would know her invitation to be accepted. But from the big
terminal station she did send a wire, and Rachael and the boys met
her after the hot trip.

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