Books: The Heart of Rachael

K >> Kathleen Norris >> The Heart of Rachael

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She was not beside him. She was still drifting along this hideous
street, battling with faintness and headache, and never, perhaps,
to see her husband again. One of her sons was in the city, another
miles away, To her horror she felt herself beginning to cry. She
quickened her pace, and reckless of the waiter's concern, entered
the station restaurant and ordered herself a lunch. But when it
came she could not eat it, and she was presently in the train,
without a book or magazine, still fasting except for a hurried
half cup of tea, and every instant less and less able to resist
the corning flood of her tears.

All the long trip home she wept, quietly and steadily, one arm on
the window sill, a hand pressed against her face. There were few
other passengers in the train, which was too hot. The winter
twilight shut down early, and at last the storm broke; not
violently, but with a stern and steady persistence. The windows
ran rain, and were blurred with steam, the darkening landscape
swept by under a deluge. When the train stopped at a station, a
rush of wet air, mingled with the odors of mackintoshes and the
wet leather of motor cars, came in. Rachael would look out to see
meetings, lanterns and raincoats, umbrellas dripping over eager,
rosy faces.

She would be glad to get home, she said to herself, to her snuggly
little comforting Derry. They would not attempt to make the move
to-morrow--that was absurd. It had been far too much of a trip to-
day, and Alice had advised her against it. But it had not sounded
so formidable. To start at seven, be in town at ten, after the
brisk run, and take the afternoon train home--this was no such
strain, as they had planned it. But it had proved to be a
frightful strain. Leaving Jim, and then catching that heart-
rending glimpse of the changed Warren--Warren looking like a hurt
child who must bear a punishment without understanding it.

"Oh, what are we thinking about, to act in this crazy manner!"
Rachael asked herself desperately. "He loves me, and I--I've
always loved him. Other people may misjudge him, but I know! He's
horrified and shamed and sorry. He's suffering as much as I am.
What fools--what utter FOOLS we are!"

And suddenly--it was nearly six o'clock now, and they were within
a few minutes of Clark's Hills--she stopped crying, and began to
plan a letter that should end the whole terrible episode.

"Your stop Quaker Bridge?" asked the conductor, coming in, and
beginning to shift the seats briskly on their iron pivots, as one
who expected a large crowd to accompany him on the run back.

"Clark's Hills," Rachael said, noticing that she was alone in the
train.

"Don't know as we can get over the Bar," the man said cheerily.

"Looks as if we were going to try it!" Rachael answered with equal
aplomb as the train ran through Quaker Bridge without stopping,
and went on with only slightly decreased speed. And a moment later
she began to gather her possessions together, and the conductor
remarked amiably: "Here we are! But she surely is raining," he
added. "Well, we've only got to run back as far as the car barn--
that's Seawall--to-night. My folks live there."

Rachael did not mind the rain. She would be at home in five
minutes. She climbed into a closed surrey, smelling strongly of
leather and horses, and asked the driver pleasantly how early the
rain had commenced. He evidently did not hear her, at all events
made no answer, and she did not speak again.

"Where's my Derry?" Rachael's voice rang strong and happy through
the house. "Mary--Mary!" she added, stopping, rather puzzled, in
the hall. "Where is he?"

How did it come to her, by what degrees? How does such news tell
itself, from the first little chill, that is not quite fear, to
the full thundering avalanche of utter horror? Rachael never
remembered afterward, never tried to remember. The moment remained
the blackest of all her life. It was not the subtly changed
atmosphere of the house, not Mary's tear-swollen face, as she
appeared, silent, at the top of the stairs; not Millie, who came
ashen-faced and panting from the kitchen; not the sudden, weary
little moan that floated softly through the hallway--no one of all
these things.

Yet Rachael knew--Derry was dying. She needed not to know how or
why. Her furs fell where she stood, her hat was gone, she had
flown upstairs as swiftly as light. She knew the door, she knew
what she would see. She went down on her knees beside him.

Her little gallant, reckless, shouting Derry! Her warm, beautiful
boy, changed in these few hours to this crushed and moaning little
being, this cruelly crumpled and tortured little wreck of all that
had been gay and sound and confident babyhood!

In that first moment at his side it had seemed to Rachael that she
must die, too, of sheer agony of spirit. She put her beautiful
head down against the brown little limp hand upon which a rusty
stain was drying, and she could have wailed aloud in the bitter
rebellion of her soul. Not Derry, not Derry, so small and innocent
and confiding--her own child, her own flesh and blood, the fibre
of her being! Trusting them, obeying them, and betrayed--brought
to this!

At her first look she had thought the child dead; now, as she drew
back from him, and caught her self-control with a quivering
breath, and wrung her hands together in desperate effort to hold
back a scream, she found it in her heart to wish he were. His
little face was black from a great bruise that spread from temple
to chin, his mouth cut and swollen, his eyes half shut. His body
was doubled where it lay, a great bubble of blood moved with his
breath. He breathed lightly and faintly, with an occasional deep
gasp that invariably brought the long, heart-sickening moan. They
had taken off part of his clothes, his shoes and stockings, but he
still wore his Holland suit, and the dark-blue woolen coat had
only been partly removed.

Rachael, ashen-faced, rose from her knees, and faced Mary and
Millie. With bitter tears the story was told. He had been playing,
as usual, in the barn, and Mary had been swinging him. Not high,
nothing like as high as Jimmie went. And Millie came out to say
that their dinner was ready, and all of a sudden he called out
that he could swing without holding on, and put both his hands up
in the air. And then Mary saw him fall, the board of the swing
falling, too, and striking him as he fell, and his face dashing
against the old mill-wheel that stood by the door. And he had not
spoken since.

His arm had hung down loose-like, as Mary carried him in, and
Millie had run for the doctor. But Doctor Peet wouldn't be back
until seven, and the girls had dared do no more than wash off his
face a little and try to make him comfortable. "I wish the Lord
had called me before the day came," said Mary, "me, that would
have died for him--for any of you!"

"I know that, Mary," Rachael said. "It would have happened as
easily with me. We all know what you have been to the boys, Mary.
But you mustn't cry so hard. I need you. I am going to drive him
into town."

"Oh, my God, in this storm?" exclaimed Millie.

"There's nothing else to do," Rachael said. "He may die on the
way, but his mother will do what she can. I couldn't have Doctor
Peet, kind as he is. Doctor Gregory--his father--will know. It's
nearly seven now. We must start as fast as we can. You'll have to
pin something all about the back seat, Mary, and line it with
comforters. We'll put his mattress on the seat--you'll make it
snug, won't you?--and you'll sit on the floor there, and steady
him all you can, for I'll have to drive. We ought to be there by
midnight, even in the storm."

"I'll fix it," Mary said, with one great sob, and immediately, to
Rachael's great relief, she was her practical self.

"And I want some coffee, Millie," she said, "strong; I'm not
hungry, but if you have something ready, I'll eat what I can. Did
Ruddy come up and get the car to-day, for oil and gas, and so on?"

"He did," said Millie, eager to be helpful.

"That's a blessing." Rachael turned to look at the little figure
on the bed. Her heart contracted with a freezing spasm of terror
whenever her eyes even moved in that direction.

But there was plenty to do. She got herself into dry, warm
clothes. She leaned over her little charge, straightening and
adjusting as best she could, shifting the little body as gently as
was possible to the smaller mattress, covering it warmly but
lightly. As she did so she wondered which one of those long,
moaning breaths would be the last; when would little Derry
straighten himself--and lie still?

No time to think of that. She tied on her hat and veil, and went
out to look at the car. The rear seat was lined with pillows, the
curtain drawn. She had matches, her electric flashlight, her road
maps, a flask of brandy--what else?

Millie had run for neighbors, and the chains were finally
adjusted. The car had been made ready for the run, and was in good
shape.

The big shadowy barn that was the garage was full of dancing
shapes in the lantern-light. The rain splashed and spattered
incessantly outside; a black sky seemed to have closed down just
over their heads. She was in a fever to get away.

Slowly the dazzling headlights moved in the pitchy blackness, the
wheels grated but held their own. The car came to the side door,
and the little mattress came out, and the muffled shape that was
Mary got in beside it. Then there was buttoning of storm curtains
by willing hands, and many a whispered good wish to Rachael as she
slipped in under the wheel. Millie was beside her, at the last
moment, begging to be of some use if she might.

"There's just this, Mrs. Gregory," said Ruddy Simms nervously,
when the engine was humming, and, Rachael's gloved hand racing the
accelerator, "they say the tide's making fast in all this rain! I
don't know how you'll do at the Bar. She's ugly a night, like
this; what with the bay eating one side, and the sea breaking over
the other!"

"Thank you," Rachael said, not hearing him. "God bless you! Good-
bye!"

She released the clutch. The big car leaped forward, into the
darkness. The clock before her eyes said thirty-five minutes past
seven. Rain beat against the heavy cloth of the curtains, water
swished and splashed under the wheels, and above the purring of
the engine they could hear the clinking fall of the chains. There
was no other sound except when Derry caught a moaning breath.

Clark's Hills passed in blackness, the road dropped down toward
the Bar. Rachael could feel that Mary, in the back seat, was
praying, and that Millie was praying beside her. Her own heart
rose on a wild and desperate prayer. If they could cross this
narrow strip between the bay and the ocean, then whatever the
fortune of the road, she could meet it. Telephones, at least, were
on the other side, resources of all sorts. But to be stopped here!

The look of the Bar, when they reached it, struck chill even to
Rachael's heart. In the clear tunnels of light flung from the car
lamps it seemed all a moving level of restless water smitten under
sheets of rain. Anything more desperate than an effort to find the
little belt of safety in this trackless spread of merciless seas
it would be hard to imagine. At an ordinary high tide the Bar was
but a few inches above the sea; now, with a wind blowing, a heavy
rain falling, and the tide almost at the full, no road whatever
was visible. It was there, the friendly road that Rachael and the
hot and sandy boys had tramped a hundred times, but even she could
not believe it, now, so utterly impassable did the shifting
surface appear.

But she gallantly put the car straight into the heart of it,
moving as slowly as the engine permitted, and sending quick,
apprehensive glances into the darkness as she went.

"At the worst, we can back out of this, Millie," said she.

"Of course we can," Millie said, suppressing frightened tears with
some courage.

The water was washing roughly against the running boards; to an
onlooker the car would have had the appearance of being afloat,
hub-deep, at sea.

Slowly, slowly, slowly they were still moving. The car stopped
short. The engine was dead. Rachael touched her starter, touched
it again and again. No use. The car had stopped. The rain struck
in noisy sheets against the curtains. The sea gurgled and rushed
about them. Derry moaned softly.

And now the full madness of the attempted expedition struck her
for the first time. She had never thought that, at worst, she
could not go back. What now? Should they stand here on the
shifting sand of the Bar until the tide fell--it was not yet full.
Rachael felt her heart beating quick with terror. It began to seem
like a feverish dream.

Neither maid spoke, perhaps neither one realized the full extent
of the calamity. With the confidence of those who do not
understand the workings of a car, they waited to have it start
again.

But both girls screamed when suddenly a new voice was heard.
Rachael, starting nervously as a man's figure came about the car
out of the black night, in the next second saw, with a great rush
of relief, that it was Ruddy Simms. He was a mighty fellow,
devoted to the Gregorys. He proceeded rather awkwardly to explain
that he hadn't liked to think of their trying to cross the Bar,
and so had come with them on the running board.

"Oh, Ruddy, how grateful I am to you!" Rachael said. "Perhaps you
can go back and get us a tow? What can we do?"

"Stuck?" asked Ruddy, wading as unconcernedly about the car as if
the sun were shining on the scene.

"No, I don't think so, not yet. But I can feel the road under us
giving already. And I've killed my engine!"

Ruddy deliberated.

"Won't start, eh?"

"She simply WON'T!"

"Ain't got a crank, have ye?"

Rachael stared.

"Why, yes, we have, under my seat here. But is there a chance that
she might start on cranking?" she said eagerly.

"Dun't know," Ruddy said non-committally.

Rachael was instantly on her feet, and after some groping and
adjusting, the cranking was attempted. Failure. Ruddy went bravely
at it again. Failure. Again Rachael touched the starter.

"No use!" she said with a sinking heart.

But Ruddy was bred of sea-folk who do not expect quick results. He
tugged away again vigorously, and again after that. And suddenly--
the most delicious sound that Rachael's ears had ever heard--there
was the sucking and plunging that meant success. The car panted
like a giant revived, and Ruddy stood back in the merciless green
light and sent Rachael a smile. His homely face, running rain,
looked at her as bright as an angel's.

"Dun't know as I'd stand there, s'deep in my tracks!" shouted
Ruddy.

Gingerly, timidly, she pushed the car on some ten feet. "What I's
thinking," suggested Ruddy then, coming to put his face in close
to hers, and shouting over the noise of wind and water, "is this:
if I was to walk ahead of ye, kinder feeling for the road with my
feet, then you could come after, d'ye see?"

"Oh, Ruddy, do you think we can make it, then?" Rachael's face was
wet with tears.

"Dun't know," he said. He took off his immense boots and gray
socks, and rolled up his wet trousers, the better to feel every
inch of rise or fall in the ground beneath his feet, and Millie
held these for him as if it were a sacred charge.

And then, with the full light of the lamps illumining his big
figure, and with the water rushing and gurgling about them, and
the rain pouring down as if it were an actual deluge, they made
the crossing at Clark's Bar. The shifting water almost blinded
Rachael sometimes, and sometimes it seemed as if any way but the
way that Ruddy's waving arms indicated was the right one; as if to
follow him were utter madness. The water spouted up through the
clutch, and once again the engine stopped, and long moments went
by before it would respond to the crank again. But Rachael pushed
slowly on. She was not thinking now, she was conscious of no
feeling but that there was an opposite shore, and she must reach
it.

And presently it rose before them. The road ran gradually upward,
a shallow sheet of running water covering it, but firm, hard
roadway discernible nevertheless. Rachael stopped the car, and
Ruddy came again and put his face close to hers, through the
curtains.

"Now ye've got straight road, Mrs. Gregory, and I hope to the good
Lord you'll have a good run. Thank ye, Millie--much obliged!"

"Ruddy!" said Rachael passionately, her wet gloves holding his
big, hairy hands tight. "I'll never forget this! If he has a
chance to live at all, this is his chance, and you've given it to
him! God bless you, a thousand times!"

"That's all right," said Ruddy, terribly embarrassed. "You've
always been awful good to my folks. I'm glad we done it! Good-
night!" Then Ruddy had turned back for the walk home in the
streaming blackness, and Rachael, drawing a deep breath, was on
her way again. She stopped only for a quick question to Mary.

"No change?"

"Just the same."

The wet miles flew by; rain beat untiringly against the curtains,
slished in two great feathers of water from under the rushing
wheels. Rachael watched her speedometer; twenty-five--twenty-
eight--thirty--they could not do better than that in this weather.
And they had a hundred miles to go.

But that hundred was only eighty-six now, only eighty. Villages
flew by, and men came out and stood on the dripping porches of
crossroad stores to marvel as the long scream of Rachael's horn
cut through the night air. Twenty minutes past eight o'clock--
eight minutes of nine o'clock. The little villages began to grow
dark.

There was nothing to pass on the road; so much was gain. Except in
the villages, and once or twice where a slow, rattling wagon was
plodding along on the wet mirror-like asphalt, Rachael might make
her own speed. The road lay straight, and was an exceptionally
good road, even in this weather. She need hardly pause for
signboards. The rain still fell in sheets. Seventy-two miles to
go.

"How is he, Mary?"

"The same, Mrs. Gregory. Except that he gives a little groan now
and then--when it shakes him!"

"My boy! But not sleeping?" "Oh, no, Mrs. Gregory. He just lies
quiet like."

"God bless him!" Rachael said under her breath. Aloud she said:
"Millie, couldn't you lean over, and watch him a few minutes, and
see what you think?"

Then they were flying on again. Rachael began to wonder just how
long the run was. They always carelessly called it "a hundred
miles." But was it really a hundred and two, or ninety-eight? What
a difference two or three miles would make to-night! She fell into
a nervous shiver; suppose they reached the bridge, and then Mary
should touch her arm. "He doesn't look right, Mrs. Gregory!"
Suppose that for the little boy that they finally carried into New
York there was no longer any hope. Her little Derry--

The child that might have been the joy of a happy home, that might
have grown to a dignified inheritance of the love and tenderness
that had been between his father and mother. Robbed in his
babyhood, taken away from the father he adored, and now--this!
Sixty-one miles to go.

"Detour to New York." The sign, with all its hideous import, rose
before her suddenly. No help for it; she must lose one or two,
perhaps a dozen miles, she must give up the good road for a bad
one. She must lose her way, too, perhaps. Had Kane gone over this
road yesterday? It was much farther on that she had spoken to
Kane. Perhaps he had, but she could not remember, doubt made every
foot of the way terrible to Rachael. She could only plunge on,
over rocks, over bumps, into mud-holes. She could only blindly
take what seemed of two turnings the one most probably right.

"Oh--Mother!" The little wail came from Derry. Rachael, her heart
turned to ice, slowed down--stopped and leaned into the half
darkness in the back of the car. The child's lovely eyes were
opened. Rachael could barely see his white face.

"My darling!" she said.

"Will you not--bump me so, Mother?" the little boy whispered.

"I will try not to, my heart!" Rachael, wild with terror, looked
to Mary's face. Was he dying, now and here?

"Oh Moth--it hurts so!"

"Does it, my darling?"

He drowsed again. Rachael turned back to her wheel. They must go
more slowly now, at any cost.

The road was terrible, in parts, after the hours of heavy rain, it
seemed almost impassable. Rachael pushed on. Presently they were
back in the main road again, and could make better time. Of the
hundred miles only fifty remained. But that meant nothing now. How
much time had she lost in that frightful bypath? Rachael's face
was dripping with rain, rain had trickled under her clothing at
neck and wrists. Through her raincoat the breast of her gown was
soaking, and her feet ached with the strain of controlling the
heavy car. Water came in long runnels through the wind-shield, and
struck her knees; she had turned her dress back, her thin silk
petticoat was soaked, and the muscles of knees and ankles were
cold and sore. But she felt these things not at all. Her eyes
burned ahead, into the darkness, she heard nothing but the
occasional fluttering moan from Derry; she thought nothing but
that she might be too late--too late--too late!

At the first town of any size she stopped, a telegram to George
taking shape in her mind. But the wires here were down, as they
had been farther down the Island. The rain was thinning, but the
wind was rising every second, and as she rushed on she saw that in
many places the lights on the road were out; all the Island lay
battered and bruised under the storm.

Slowly as they seemed to creep, yet the miles were going by.
Freeport--Lynbrook--Jamaica--like a woman in a dream she reached
the bridge and a moment later looked down upon the long belt of
lights winking in the rain that was New York.

And here, on the very apex of the bridge, came the most heart-
rending moment of the run, for the little boy began to cough, and
for two or three frightful minutes the women hung over him,
speechless with terror, and knowing that at any second the
exhausted little body might succumb to the strain. Blindly, as
with a long, choked cry he sank back again, Rachael went back to
her wheel. Third Avenue--Fifth Avenue--Forty-second Street tore
by; they were running straight down toward Washington Arch as the
clocks everywhere struck midnight. The wide street was deserted in
the rain, it shone like a mirror, reflecting long pendants of
light.

They were turning the corner; she was out of the car, and had
glanced at the familiar old house. Wet, exhausted, fired by a
passion that made her feel curiously light and sure, Rachael put
her arms about her child, and carried him up the steps. Mary had
preceded her, the door was opened; a dazed and frightened maid was
looking at her.

Then she was crossing the familiar hall; lights were in the
library, and Warren in the library, somebody with him, but Rachael
only caught a glimpse of the old familiar attitude: he was sitting
in a straight-backed chair, his legs crossed, and one firm hand
grasping a silk-clad ankle as he intently listened to whatever was
being said.

"Warren!" she said in a voice that those who heard it remembered
all their lives. "It's Derry! He's hurt--he's dying, I think! Can
you--can you save him?" And with a great burst of tears she gave
up the child.

"My God--what is it!" said Warren Gregory on his feet, and with
Derry in his arms, even as he spoke. For a second the tableau
held: Rachael, agonized, her beautiful face colorless, and
dripping with rain, her husband staring at her as if he could not
credit his senses, the child's limp body in his arms, yet not
quite freed from hers. In the background were the whitefaced
servants and the gray-headed doctor upon whose conversation the
newcomers had so abruptly broken.

"We've just brought him up from Clark's Hills!" Rachael said.

"From Clark's Hills--YOU!"

His look, the dear familiar look of solicitude and concern, tore
her to the soul.

"There was nothing else to do!" she faltered.

"But--you drove up to-night?"

"Since seven."

He looked at her, and Rachael felt the look sink into her soul
like rain into parched land.

"And you came straight to me!" His voice sank. "Rachael," he said,
"I will save him for you if I can!"

And instantly there began such activities in the old house as
perhaps even its dignified century of living had never known.
Rachael, hungry through these terrible hours of suspense for just
the wild rush and hurry, watched her husband as if she had never
seen him before. Presently lights blazed from cellar to attic,
maids flew in every direction, fires were lighted, the moving of
heavy furniture shook the floors. Derry, the little unconscious
cause of it all, lay quiet, with Mary watching him.

New York had been asleep; it was awakened now. Motor cars wheeled
into the Gregorys' street; Mrs. Gregory herself answered the door.
Here was the nurse, efficient, yet sympathetic, too, with her
paraphernalia and her assistants. Yes, she had been able to get
it, Doctor Gregory. Yes, Doctor, she had that. Here was the man
from the drug store--that was all right, Doctor, that was what he
expected, being waked up in the night; thank you, Doctor. And here
was George Valentine, too much absorbed in the business in hand to
say more than an affectionate "Hello" to Rachael. But with George
was Alice, white-faced but smiling, and little sleepy Jimmy, who
was to be smuggled immediately into bed.

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