Books: The Heart of Rachael

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"What a SHAME!" she said warmly.

"It's a shame to anyone that knew Rich as I did a few years ago,"
his mother said. "There wasn't a brighter nor a hardier child. It
wasn't until we came to this city that he begun to give way--and
what wonder? It'd kill a horse to live in this place. I wish to
God that I had got him out of it when he had that first spell. I
may be--I don't know, but I may be too late now." Tears came to
her eyes, the hard tears of a proud and suffering woman. She took
out a folded handkerchief and pressed it unashamedly to her eyes.
"But he wouldn't go," she resumed, clearing her throat. "He was
going to stay here, live or die. And Miss Clay, YOU know why!" She
stopped short, a terrible look upon Magsie.

"I?" faltered Magsie, coloring, and feeling as if she would cry
herself.

"You kept him," said his mother. "He hung round you like a bee
round a rose--poor, sick boy that he was! He's losing sleep now
because he can't get you out of his thoughts."

She stopped again, and Magsie hung her head.

"I'm sorry," she said slowly. And with the childish words came
childish tears. "I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Gardiner," stammered
Magsie. "I know--I've known all along--how Richie feels to me. I
suppose I could have stopped him, got him to go away, perhaps, in
time. But--but I've been unhappy myself, Mrs. Gardiner. A person--
I love has been cruel to me. I don't know what I'm going to do. I
worry and worry!" Magsie was frankly crying now. "I wish there was
something I could do for Richie, but I can't tell him I care!" she
sobbed.

Both women sat in miserable silence for a moment, then Richard
Gardiner's mother said: "It wouldn't do you any harm to just--if
you would--to just see him, would it? Don't say anything about
this other man. Could you do that? Couldn't you let him think that
maybe if he went away and came back all well you'd--you might--
there might be some chance for him? Doctor says he's got to go
away AT ONCE if he's going to get well."

The anguish in her voice and manner reached Magsie at last. There
was nothing cruel about the little actress, however sordid her
ambitions and however selfish her plans.

"Could you get him away, now?" she said almost timidly. "Is he
strong enough to go?"

"That's what Doctor says; he ought to go away TO-DAY, but--but he
won't lissen to me," his mother answered with trembling lips.
"He's all I have. I just live for Rich. I loved his father, and
when Dick was killed I had only him."

"I'll go see him," said Magsie in sudden generous impulse. "I'll
tell him to take care of himself. It's simply wicked of him to
throw his life away like this."

"Miss Clay," said Mrs. Gardiner with a break in her strong, deep
voice, "if you do that--may the Lord send you the happiness you
give my boy!" She began to cry again.

"Why, Mrs. Gardiner," said Magsie in a hurt, childish voice, "I
LIKE Richie!"

"Well, he likes you all right," said his mother on a long,
quivering breath. With big, coarse, tender fingers she helped
Magsie with the last hooks and bands of her toilette. "If you
ain't as pretty and dainty as a little wax doll!" she observed
admiringly. Magsie merely sighed in answer. Wax dolls had their
troubles!

But she liked the doglike devotion of Richie's big mother, and the
beautiful car--Richie's car. Perhaps the hurt to her heart and her
pride had altered Magsie's sense of values. At all events, she did
not even shrink from Richie to-day.

She sat down beside the white bed, beside the bony form that the
counterpane revealed in outline, and smiled at Richie's dark, thin
eager face and sunken, adoring eyes. She laid her warm, plump
little hand between his long, thin fingers. After a while the
nurse timidly suggested the detested milk; Richie drank it
dutifully for Magsie.

They were left together in the cool, airy, orderly room, and in
low, confidential tones they talked. Magsie was well aware that
the big doctors themselves would not interrupt this talk, that the
nurses and the mother were keeping guard outside the door. Richie
was conscious of nothing but Magsie.

In this hour the girl thought of the stormy years that were past
and the stormy future. She had played her last card in the game
for Warren Gregory's love. The letters, without an additional
word, were gone to Rachael. If Rachael chose to use them against
Warren, then the road for Magsie, if long, was unobstructed. But
suppose Rachael, with that baffling superiority of hers, decided
not to use them?

Magsie had seriously considered and seriously abandoned the idea
of holding out several letters from the packages, but the letters,
as legal documents, had no value to anyone but Rachael. If Rachael
chose to forgive and ignore the writing of them, they were so much
waste paper, and Magsie had no more hold over Warren than any
other young woman of his acquaintance.

But Magsie was more or less committed to a complete change. The
break with Bowman could not be avoided without great awkwardness
now. She despised herself for having so simply accepted a bank
account from Warren, yet what else could she do? Magsie had wanted
money all her life, and when that money was gone---Richie was
falling into a doze, his hand still tightly clasping hers. She
slipped to her knees beside the bed, and as he lazily opened his
eyes she gave him a smile that turned the room to Heaven for him.
When a nurse peeped cautiously in, a warning nod from Magsie sent
the surprised and delighted woman away again with the great news.
Mr. Gardiner was asleep!

The clock struck twelve, struck one, still Magsie knelt by the
bedside, watching the sleeping face. Outside the city was silent
under the summer sun. In the great hospital feet cheeped along
wide corridors, now and then a door was opened or closed. There
was no other sound.

Magsie eyed her charge affectionately. When he had come to her
dressing-room in former days trying to ignore his cough, trying to
take her about and to order her suppers as the other men did, he
had been vaguely irritating; but here in this plain little bed, so
boyish, so dependent, so appreciative, he seemed more attractive
than he ever had before. Whatever there was maternal in Magsie
rose to meet his need. She could not but be impressed by the royal
solicitude that surrounded the heir to the "Little Dick Mine."
Mrs. Richard Gardiner would be something of a personage, thought
Magsie dreamily. He might not live long!

Of course, that was calculating and despicable; she was not the
woman to marry where she did not love! But then she really did
love Richie in a way. And Richie loved her--no question of that!
Loved her more than Warren did for all his letters and gifts, she
decided resentfully.

When Richie wakened, bewildered, at one o'clock, Magsie was still
there. She insisted that he drink more milk before a word was
said. Then they talked again, Magsie in a new mood of reluctance
and gentleness, Richie half wild with rising hope and joy.

"And you would want me to marry you, feeling this way?" Magsie
faltered.

"Oh, Magsie!" he whispered.

A tear fell on the thin hand that Magsie was patting. Through
dazzled eyes she saw the future: reckless buying of gowns--brief
and few farewells--the private car, the adoring invalid, the great
sunny West with its forests and beaches, the plain gold ring on
her little hand. In the whole concerned group--doctor, nurse,
valet, mother, maid--young Mrs. Gardiner would be supreme! She saw
herself flitting about a California bungalow, lending her young
strength to Richie's increasing strength in the sunwashed, health-
giving air.

She put her arms about him, laid her rosy cheek against his pale
one.

"And you really want me to go out," Magsie began, smiling through
tears, "and get a nice special license and a nice little plain
gold ring and come back here with a nice kind clergyman, and say
'I will'---"

But at this her tears again interrupted her, and Richard, clinging
desperately to her hand, could not speak either for tears. His
mother who had silently entered the room on Magsie's last words
suddenly put her fat arms about her and gave her the great
motherly embrace for which, without knowing it, she had hungered
for years, and they all fell to planning.

Richard could help only with an occasional assent. There was
nothing to which he would not consent now. They would be married
as soon as Magsie and his mother could get back with the
necessities. And then would he drink his milk, good boy--and go
straight to sleep, good boy. Then to-morrow he should be helped
into the softest motor car procurable for money, and into the
private car that his mother and Magsie meant to engage, by hook or
crook, to-night. In six days they would be watching the blue
Pacific, and in three weeks Richie should be sleeping out of doors
and coming downstairs to meals. He had only to obey his mother; he
had only to obey his wife. Magsie kissed him good-bye tenderly
before leaving him for the hour's absence. Her heart was twisting
little tendrils about him already. He was a sweet, patient dear,
she told his mother, and he would simply have to get well!

"God above bless and reward you, Margaret!" was all Mrs. Gardiner
could say, but Magsie never tired of hearing it.

When the two women went down the hospital steps they found Billy
Pickering, in her large red car, eying them reproachfully from the
curb.

"This is a nice way to act!" Billy began. "Your janitor's wife
said you had come here. I've got two men--" Magsie's expression
stopped her.

"This is Mr. Gardiner's mother, Billy," Magsie said solemnly. "The
doctors agree that he must not stand this climate another day. He
had another sinking spell yesterday, and he--he mustn't have
another! I am going with them to California--"

"You ARE?" Billy ejaculated in amazement. Magsie bridled in
becoming importance.

"It is all very sudden," she said with the weary, patient smile of
the invalid's wife, "but he won't go without me." And then, as
Mrs. Gardiner began to give directions to the driver of her own
car, which was waiting, she went on inconsequentially, and in a
low and troubled undertone, "I didn't know what to do. Do--do you
think I'm a fool, Billy?"

"But what'll the other man say?" demanded Billy.

Magsie, leaning against the door of the car, rubbed the polished
wood with a filmy handkerchief.

"He won't know," she said.

"Won't know? But what will you tell him?"

"Oh, he's not here. He won't be back for ever so long. And--and
Richie can't live--they all say that. So if I come back before he
does, what earthly difference can it make to him that I was
married to Richie?"

"MARRIED!" For once in her life Billy was completely at a loss.
"But are you going to MARRY him?"

Magsie gave her a solemn look, and nodded gravely. "He loves me,"
she said in a soft injured tone, "and I mean to take as good care
of him as the best wife in the world could! I'm sick of the stage,
and if anything happens with--the other, I shan't have to worry--
about money, I mean. I'm not a fool, Billy. I can't let a chance
like this slip. Of course I wouldn't do it if I didn't like him
and like his mother, too. And I'll bet he will get well, and I'll
never come back to New York! Of course this is all a secret. We're
going right down to the City Hall for the license now, and the
ring---There are a lot of clothes I've got to buy immediately--"

"Why don't you let me run you about?" suggested Billy. "I don't
have to meet the men until six--I'll have to round up another
girl, too; but I'd love to. Let Mama go back to Mr. Gardiner!"

"Oh, I couldn't," Magsie said, quite the dutiful daughter. "She's
a wonderful person; she's arranging for our own private car, and a
cook, and I may take Anna if I can get her!"

"All righto!" agreed Billy.

A rather speculative look came into her face as the other car
whirled away. She suddenly gave directions to the driver.

"Drive to Miss Clay's apartment, where you picked me up this
morning, Hungerford!" she said quickly. "I--I think I left
something there--gloves--"

"I wonder if you would let me into Miss Clay's apartment?" she
said to the beaming janitor's wife fifteen minutes later. "Miss
Clay isn't here, and I left my gloves in her rooms."

Something in Magsie's manner had made her feel that Magsie had
good reason for keeping the name of her admirer hid. Billy had
felt for weeks that she would know the name if Magsie ever
divulged it. And this morning she had noticed the admission that
the wronged wife was a beautiful woman--and the hesitation with
which Magsie had answered "Two girls." Then Magsie had said that
she would "write him," not at all the natural thing to do to a man
one was sure to see, and Rachael had said that Warren was away!
But most significant of all was her answer to Billy's question as
to whether the children were grown. Magsie had admitted that she
knew the wife, had "known her before," and yet she pretended not
to know whether or not the children were grown. Billy had had just
a fleeting idea of Warren Gregory before that, but this particular
term confirmed the suspicion suddenly.

So while Magsie was getting her marriage license, Billy was in
Magsie's apartment turning over the contents of her wastepaper
basket in feverish haste. The envelope was ruined, it had been
crushed while wet; a name had been barely started anyway. But here
was the precious scrap of commencement, "My dearest Greg--"

Billy was almost terrified by the discovery. There it was, in
irrefutable black and white. She stuffed it back into the basket,
and left the house like a thief, panting for the open air. A
suspicion only ten minutes before, now she felt as if no other
fact on earth had ever so fully possessed her. For an hour she
drove about in a daze. Then she went home, and sat down at her
desk, and wrote the following letter:

"Mv DEAR RACHAEL: The letter with the darling little 'B' came
yesterday. I think he is cute to learn to write his own letter so
quickly. Tell him that mother is proud of him for picking so many
blackberries, and will love the jam. It is as hot as fire here,
and the park has that steamy smell that a hothouse has. I have
been driving about in Joe Butler's car all afternoon. We are going
to Long Beach to-night.

"Rachael--Magsie Clay and a man named Richard Gardiner were
married this afternoon. He is an invalid or something; he is at
St. Luke's Hospital, and she and his mother are going to take him
to California at once. What do you know about that? Of course this
is a secret, and for Heaven's sake, if you tell anybody this,
don't say I gave it away.

"If Magsie Clay should send you a bunch of letters, she will just
do it to be a devil, and I want to ask you to burn them up before
you read them. You know how you talked to me about divorce,
Rachael! What you don't know can't hurt you. Don't please Magsie
Clay to the extent of doing exactly what she wants you to do. If
anyone you love has been a fool, why, it is certainly hard to
understand how they could, but you stand by what you said to me
the other day, and forget it.

"I feel as if I was breaking into your own affairs. I hope you
won't care, and that I'm not all in the dark about this--"
"Affectionately, BILLY."

CHAPTER VI

This letter, creased from constant reading, Rachael showed to
George Valentine a week later. The doctor, who had spent the week-
end with his family at Clark's Hills, was in his car and running
past the gate of Home Dunes on his way back to town when Rachael
stopped him. She looked her composed and dignified self in her
striped blue linen and deep-brimmed hat, but the man's trained
look found the circles about her wonderful eyes, and he detected
signs of utter weariness in her voice.

"Read this, George," said she, resting against the door of his
car, and opening the letter before him. "This came from Billy--
Mrs. Pickering, you know--several days ago."

George read the document through twice, then raised questioning
eyes to hers, and made the mouth of a whistler.

"What do you think?" Rachael questioned in her turn.

"Lord! I don't know what to think," said George. "Do you suppose
this can be true?"

Rachael sighed wearily, staring down the road under the warming
leaves of the maples into a far vista of bare dunes in thinning
September sunshine.

"It might be, I suppose. You can see that Billy believes it," she
said.

"Sure, she believes it," George agreed. "At least, we can find
out. But I don't understand it!"

"Understand it?" she echoed in rich scorn. "Who understands
anything of the whole miserable business? Do I? Does Warren, do
you suppose?"

"No, of course nobody does," George said hastily in distress. He
regarded the paper almost balefully. "This is the deuce of a
thing!" he said. "If she didn't care for him any more than that,
what's all the fuss about? I don't believe the threat about
sending his letters, anyway!" he added hardily.

"Oh, that was true enough," Rachael said lifelessly. "They came."

George gave her an alarmed glance, but did not speak.

"A great package of them came," Rachael added dully. "I didn't
open it. I had a fire that morning, and I simply set it on the
fire." Her voice sank, her eyes, brooding and sombre, were far
away. "But I watched it burning, George," she said in a low,
absent tone, "and I saw his handwriting--how well I know it--
Warren's writing, on dozens and dozens of letters--there must have
been a hundred! To think of it--to think of it!"

Her voice was like some living thing writhing in anguish. George
could think of nothing to say. He looked about helplessly,
buttoned a glove button briskly, folded the letter, and made some
work of putting it away in an inside pocket.

"Well," Rachael said, straightening up suddenly, and with resolute
courage returning to her manner and voice, "you'll have, somebody
look it up, will you, George?"

"You may depend upon it-immediately," George said huskily. "It--of
course it will make an immense difference," he added, in his
anxiety to be reassuring saying exactly the wrong thing.

Rachael was pale.

"I don't know how anything can make a great difference now,
George," she answered slowly. "The thing remains--a fact. Of
course this ends, in one way, the sordid side, the fear of
publicity, of notoriety. But that wasn't the phase of it that ever
counted with me. This will probably hurt Warren--"

"Oh, Rachael, dear old girl, don't talk that way!" George
protested. "You can't believe that Warren will feel anything but
a--a most unbelievable relief! We all know that. He's not the
first man who let a pretty face drive him crazy when he was
working himself to death." George was studying her as he spoke,
with all his honest heart in his look, but Rachael merely shook
her head forlornly.

"Perhaps I don't understand men," she said with a mildness that
George found infinitely more disturbing than any fury would have
been.

"Well, I'll look up records at the City Hall," he said after a
pause. "That's the first thing to do. And then I'll let you know.
Boys well this morning?"

"Lovely," Rachael smiled. "My trio goes fishing to-day, packing
its lunch itself, and asking no feminine assistance. The lunch
will be eaten by ten o'clock, and the boys home at half-past ten,
thinking it is almost sundown. They only go as far as the cove,
where the men are working, and we can see the tops of their heads
from the upstairs' porch, so Mary and I won't feel entirely
unprotected. I'm to lunch with Alice, so my day is nicely
planned!"

The bright look did not deceive him, nor the reassuring tone. But
George Valentine's friendship was more easily displayed by deeds
than words, and now, with an affectionate pat for her hand, he
touched his starter, and the car leaped upon its way. Just four
hours later he telephoned Alice that the wedding license of
Margaret Rose Clay and Richard Gardiner had indeed been issued a
week before, and that Magsie was not to be found at her apartment,
which was to be sublet at the janitor's discretion; that Bowman's
secretary reported the absence of Miss Clay from the city, and the
uncertainty of her appearing in any of Mr. Bowman's productions
that winter, and that at the hospital a confident inquiry for "Mr.
and Mrs. Gardiner" had resulted in the discreet reply that "the
parties" had left for California. George, with what was for him a
rare flash of imagination, had casually inquired as to the name of
the clergyman who had performed the ceremony, being answered
dispassionately that the person at the other end of the telephone
"didn't know."

"George, you are an absolute WONDER!" said Alice's proud voice,
faintly echoed from Clark's Hills. "Now, shall you cable--anybody-
-you know who I mean?"

"I have," answered the efficient George, "already."

"Oh, George! And what will he do?"

"Well, eventually, he'll come back."

"Do you THINK so? I don't!"

"Well, anyway, we'll see."

"And you're an angel," said Mrs. Valentine, finishing the
conversation.

Ten days later Warren Gregory walked into George Valentine's
office, and the two men gripped hands without speaking. That
Warren had left for America the day George's cable reached him
there was no need to say. That he was a man almost sick with empty
days and brooding nights there was no need to say. George was
shocked in the first instant of meeting, and found himself, as
they talked together, increasingly shocked at the other's aspect.

Warren was thin, his hair actually showed more gray, there were
deep lines about his mouth. But it was not only that; his eyes had
a tired and haunted look that George found sad to see, his voice
had lost its old confident ring, and he seemed weary and shaken.
He asked for Alice and the children, and for Rachael and the boys.

"Rachael's well," George said. "She looks--well, she shows what
she's been through; but she's very handsome. And the boys are
fine. We had the whole crowd down as far as Shark Light for a
picnic last Sunday. Rachael has little Breck Pickering down there
now; he's a nice little chap, younger than our Katrina--Jim's age.
The youngster is in paradise, sure enough, and putting on weight
at a great rate."

"I didn't know he was there," Warren said slowly. "Like her--to
take him in. I wish I had been there--Sunday. I wish to the Lord
that it was all a horrible dream!"

He stopped and sat silent, looking gloomily at the floor, his
whole figure, George thought, indicating a broken and shamed
spirit.

"Well, Magsie's settled, at least," said George after a silence.

"Yes. That wasn't what counted, though," Warren said, as Rachael
had said. "She is settled without my moving; there's no way in
which I can ever make Rachael feel that I would have moved." Again
his voice sank into silence, but presently he roused himself.
"I've come back to work, George," he said with a quiet decision of
manner that George found new and admirable. "That's all I can do
now. If she ever forgives me--but she's not the kind that
forgives. She's not weak--Rachael. But anyway, I can work.
I'll go to the old house, for the present, and get things in
order. And you drop a hint to Alice, when she talks to Rachael,
that I've not got anything to say. I'll not annoy her."

George's heart ached for him as Warren suddenly covered his face
with his hands. Warren had always been the adored younger brother
to him, Warren's wonderful fingers over the surgical table, a
miracle that gave their owner the right to claim whatever human
weaknesses and failings he might, as a balance. George had never
thought him perfect, as so much of the world thought him; to
George, Warren had always been a little more than perfect, a
machine of inspired surgery, underbalanced in many ways that in
this one supreme way he might be more than human. George had to
struggle for what he achieved; Warren achieved by divine right.
The women were in the right of it now, George conceded, they had
the argument. But of course they didn't understand--a thing like
that had nothing to do with Warren's wife; Rachael wasn't brought
into the question at all. And Lord! when all was said and done
Warren was Warren, and professionally the biggest figure in
George's world.

"I don't suppose you feel like taking Hudson's work?" said George
now. "He's crazy to get away, and he was telling me yesterday that
he didn't see himself breaking out of it. Mrs. Hudson wants to go
to her own people, in Montreal, and I suppose Jack would be glad
to go, too."

"Take it in a minute!" Warren said, his whole expression changing.
"Of course I'll take it. I'm going to spend this afternoon getting
things into shape at the house, and I think I'll drop round at the
hospital about five. But I can start right in to-morrow."

"It isn't too much?" George asked affectionately.

"Too much? It's the only thing that will save my reason, I think,"
Warren answered, and after that George said no more.

The two men lunched together, and dined together, five times a
week, with a curious change from old times: it was Warren who
listened, and George who did the talking now. They talked of cases
chiefly, for Warren was working day and night, and thought of
little else than his work; but once or twice, as September waned,
and October moved toward its close, there burst from him an
occasional inquiry as to his wife.

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