Books: The Heart of Rachael

K >> Kathleen Norris >> The Heart of Rachael

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"I thought you'd rather have him here," said Alice.

Rachael knew why. Rachael knew what doctors said to each other,
when they gathered, and used those quick, low monosyllables. She
knew why Miss Redding was speeding the arrangements for the
improvised operating-room with such desperate hurry. She knew why
one of these assisting doctors was delegated to do nothing but sit
beside Derry, watching the little hurt breast rise and fall,
watching the bubble of blood form and break on the swollen mouth.

Warren had told her to get into dry clothing, and then to take a
stimulant, and have something to eat. And eager to save him what
she could, she was warm and dry now. She sat in Derry's room, and
presently, when they came to stand beside him, Warren and George,
they found her agonized eyes, bright with questions, facing them.
But she knew better than to speak.

Neither man spoke for a few dreadful moments. Warren looked at the
child without a flicker of change in his impassive look; George
bit his lip, and almost imperceptibly shook his head. And in their
faces Rachael read the death of her last faint hope.

"We don't dare anesthetize him until we know just the lie of those
broken ribs," said Warren gravely to his wife, "and yet the little
chap is so exhausted that the strain of trying to touch it may--
may be too much for him. There's no time for an X-ray. Some of
these fellows think it is too great a risk. I believe it may be
done. If there are internal injuries, we can't hope to--" He
paused. "But otherwise, I believe--"

Again his voice dropped. He stood looking at the little boy with
eyes that were not a surgeon's now; all a father's.

"Good little chap," he said softly. "Do you remember how he used
to watch Jim, through the bars of his crib, when he was about
eight months old, and laugh as if Jim was the funniest thing in
the world?"

Rachael looked up and nodded with brimming eyes. She could not
speak.

They carried Derry away, and Rachael followed them up to the head
of the stairway outside of the operating-room, and sat there, her
hands locked in her lap, her head resting against the wall. Alice
dared not join her, she kept her seat by the library fire, and
with one hand pressed tight against her eyes, tried to pray.

Rachael did not pray. She was unable even to think clearly.
Visions drifted through her tired brain, the panorama of the long
day and night swept by unceasingly. She was in Eighth Avenue
again, she was in the hot train, with the rain beating against the
windows, and tears running down her hot cheeks. She was entering
the house--"Where's my boy?" And then she was driving the car
through that cruel world of water and wind. She would have saved
him if she could! She had done her share. Instantly,
unflinchingly, she had torn through blackness and storm; a
battered ship beating somehow toward the familiar harbor. Now he
must be saved. Rachael knew that madness would come upon her if
these hideous hours were only working toward the moment when she
would know that she had been too late. For the rest of her life
she would only review them: the Bar, the wet roads, the detour,
and the frightful seconds on the bridge. There had been something
expiatory, something symbolic in this mad adventure, this flight
through the night. The fires that had been burning in her heart
for the past terrible hours were purged, she must be changed
forevermore after to-night. But for the new birth, Derry must not
be the price! The strain had been too great, the delicate
machinery of her brain would give, she could not take up life
again, having lost him--and lost him in this way--

They were torturing him; the child's cry of utter agony reached
her where she sat. It came to her, in a flash, that Warren had
said there might be no merciful chloroform. Cold water broke out
on her forehead, she covered her ears with her hands, her breath
coming wild and deep. Derry!

"Oh, no--Daddy! Oh, no, Daddy! Oh, Mother--Mother--!"

"Oh, my God! this is not right," Rachael said half aloud. "Oh,
take him, take him, but don't let him suffer so!"

She was writhing as if the suffering were her own. For perhaps
five horrible moments the house rang, then there was sudden
silence.

"Now he is dead," Rachael said in the same quiet, half-audible
tone. "I am glad. He will never know what pain is again. Five
perfect little years, with never one instant that was not sweet
and good. Gerald Fairfax Gregory--five years old. One sees it in
the papers almost every day. But who thinks what it means? Just
the mother, who remembers the first cry, and the little crumpled
flannel wrappers, and the little hand crawling up her breast. He
walked so much sooner than Jim did, but of course he was lighter.
And how he would throw things out of windows--the camera that hit
the postman! Oh, my God!"

For the anguished screaming had recommenced, and the child wanted
his mother.

Rachael bore it for endless, agonizing minutes. Presently Alice,
white-faced, was kneeling on the step below her, and their wet
hands were clasped.

"Dearest, why do you sit here!"

"Oh, Alice, could I get Warren, do you think? They mustn't--it's
too cruel! He's only a baby, he doesn't understand! Better a
thousand times to let him go--tell them so! Get George--tell him I
say so!"

"Rachael, it's terrible," said Alice, who was crying hard, "b-b-
but they must think there is a chance, dear. We couldn't interrupt
them now. He would see you--there, he's quiet again. That may be
all!"

But it was not the end for many hours. The women on the stairs,
and the sobbing maids in the diningroom, hoped and despaired, and
grew faint and sick themselves as the merciless work went on. Once
George came out of the room for a few minutes, with a face flaked
with white, and his surgeon's gown crumpled, wet with water and
stained here and there a terrible red. He did not speak to either
woman, and in answer to Alice's breath of interrogation merely
shook his head.

At four o'clock Warren himself came to the door. Rachael sprang to
her feet, was close to him in a second. The sight of him, his
gown, his hands, his dreadful face, turned Alice faint, but
Rachael's voice was steady.

"What is it?"

"We are nearly done. Nearly done," Warren said. "I can't tell yet-
-nobody can. But I must finish it. Do you think you could--he
keeps asking for you. I am sorry to ask you--"

"Hold him?" Rachael's voice of agony said. "Yes, I could do that.
I--I have been wanting to!"

"No--there is no necessity for that. He is on the table. But if he
could see you. It is the very end of our work," he answered. "It
may be that he can't--you must be ready for that."

"I am ready," she said.

A second later she was in the room with the child. She saw nothing
but Derry, his little body beneath the sheet rigidly strapped to
the table. The group gave place, and Rachael stood beside him. His
beautiful baby eyes, wild with terror and agony, found her; she
bent over him, and laid her fingers on his wet little forehead. He
wanted his mother to take him away, he had been calling her--
hadn't she heard him? Please, please, not to let anyone touch him
again!

Rachael summoned a desperate courage. She spoke to him, she could
even smile. Did he remember the swing--yes, but he didn't remember
Mother bringing him all the way up, so that Daddy and Uncle
George--

His brave eyes were fixed on hers. He was trying to remember,
trying to answer her smile, trying to think of other things than
the recommencing pain.

No use. The hoarse, terrible little screams began again. His
little hand writhed in hers.

"Mother--PLEASE--will you make them stop?"

Rachael was breathing deep, her own forehead was wet. She knew the
child's strength was gone.

"Just a little more, dearest," she said, white lipped; eyes full
of agonized appeal turned to George.

"Doctor--" One of the nurses, her hand on his pulse, said softly.
George Valentine looked up.

Rachael's apprehensive glance questioned them both. But Warren
Gregory did not falter, did not even glance away from his own
hands.

Then it was over. The tension in the room broke suddenly, the
atmosphere changed, although there was not an audible breath. The
nurses moved swiftly and surely, needing no instructions. George
lifted Derry's little hand from Rachael's, and put one arm about
her. Warren put down his instrument, and bent, his face a mask of
anxiety, over the child. Derry was breathing--no more. But on the
bloodless face that Warren raised there was the light of hope.

"I believe he will make it, George," he said. "I think we have
saved him for you, Rachael! No--no--leave him where he is, Miss
Moore. Get a flat pillow under his head if you can. Cover him up.
I'm going to stay here."

"Wouldn't he be more comfortable in his bed?" Rachael's shaken
voice asked in a low tone. She was conscious only that she must
not faint now.

"He would be, of course. But it may be just by that fraction of
energy that he is hanging on. Brave little chap, he has been
helping us just as if he knew--"

But this Rachael could not endure. Her whole body shook, the room
rocked before her eyes. She had strength to reach the hall, saw
Alice standing white and tense, at the top of the stairs--then it
was all darkness.

It seemed hours later, though it was only minutes, that Rachael
came dreamily to consciousness in her own old room, on her own
bed. Her idly moving eyes found the shaded lamp, found Alice
sitting beside her. Alice's hand lay over her own. For a long time
they did not speak.

A perfect circle of shadow was flung on the high ceiling from the
lamp. Outside of the shadow were the familiar window draperies,
the white mantel with its old candlesticks, the exquisite crayon
portrait of Jim at three, and Derry a delicious eighteen-months-
old. There was the white bowl that had always been filled with
violets, empty now. And there were the low bookcases where a few
special favorites were kept, and the quaint old mahogany sewing-
table that had been old Mrs. Gregory's as a bride.

Rachael was exhausted in every fibre of body and soul, consecutive
thought was impossible now; her aching head defied the effort, but
lying here, in this dim light, there came to her a vision of the
years that might be. If she were ever rested again, if little
Derry were again his sunny, resolute self, if Warren and she were
reunited, then what an ideal of fine and simple and unselfish
living would be hers! How she would cling to honor and truth and
goodness, how she would fortify herself against the pitfalls dug
by her own impulsiveness. She and Warren had everything in life
worth while, it was not for them to throw their gifts away. Their
home should be the source of help to other homes, their sons
should some day go out into the world equipped with wisdom,
disciplined and self-controlled, ready to meet life far more
bravely than ever their mother had.

There was a low voice at her door. Alice was gone, and Warren was
kneeling beside her. And as she laid one tired arm about his neck,
in the dear familiar fashion of the past, and as their eyes met,
Rachael felt that all her life had been a preparation for this
exquisite minute.

"I thought you would like to know that he is sleeping, and we have
moved him," Warren said. "In three days you will have him roaring
to get up."

Tears brimmed Rachael's eyes.

"You saved him," she whispered.

"YOU saved him; George says so, too. If that fellow down there had
given him chloroform, there would have been no chance. Our only
hope was to relieve that pressure on his heart, and take the risk
of it being too much for him. He's as strong as a bull. But it was
a fight! And no one but a woman would have rushed him up here in
the rain."

Rachael's eyes were streaming. She could not speak. She clung to
her husband's hand for a moment or two of silence.

"And now, I want to speak to you," Warren said, ending it. "I have
nothing to say in excuse. I know--I shall know all my life, what I
have done. It is like a bad dream."

His uncertain voice stopped. Husband and wife looked full at each
other, both breathing quickly, both faces drawn and tense.

"But, Rachael," Warren went on, "I think, if you knew how I have
suffered, that you would--that some day, you would forgive me. I
was never happy. Never anything but troubled and excited and
confused. But for the last few months, in this empty house, seeing
other men with their wives, and thinking what a wife you were--It
has been like finding my sight--like coming out of a fever--" He
paused. Rachael did not speak.

"I know what I deserve at your hands," Warren said. "Nobody--
nobody--not old George, not anyone--can think of me with the
contempt and the detestation with which I think of myself! It has
changed me. I will never--I can never, hold up my head again. But,
Rachael, you loved me once, and I made you happy--you've not
forgotten that! Give me another chance. Let me show you how I love
you, how bitterly sorry I am that I ever caused you one moment of
pain! Don't leave me alone. Don't let me feel that between you and
me, as the years go by, there is going to be a widening gulf. You
don't know what the loneliness means to me! You don't know how I
miss my wife every time I sit down to dinner, every time I climb
into the car. I think of the years to come--of what they might
have been, of what they will be without you! And I can't bear it.
Why, to go down with you and the boys to Clark's Hills, to tell
you about my work, to take you to dinner again--my God! it seems
to me like Heaven now, and I look back a few years, when it was
all mine, and wonder if I have been sane, wonder if too much work,
and all the other responsibilities, of the boys, and Mother's
death, and the estate, and poor little Charlie, whether I really
wasn't a little twisted mentally!"

Rachael tightened her arms about his neck, pressed her wet face to
his.

"Sweetheart," said her wonderful voice, a mere tired essence of a
voice now, "if there is anything to forgive, I am so glad to
forgive it! You are mine, and I am yours. Please God we will never
be parted again!"

And then for a long time there was silence in the room, while
husband and wife clung together, and the hurt of the long months
was cured, and dissolved, and gone forever. What Warren felt,
Rachael could only know from his tears, and his passionate kisses,
and the grip of his arms. For herself, she felt that she might
gladly die, being so held against his heart, feeling through her
entire being the rising flood of satisfied love that is life and
breath to such a nature as hers.

"I am changed," said Warren after long moments; "you will see it,
for I see it myself. I can see now what my mother meant, years
ago, when she talked to me about myself. And I am older, Rachael."

"I am not younger," Rachael said, smiling. "And I think I am
changed, too. All the pressure, all the nervous worry of the last
few years, seem to be gone. Washed away, perhaps, by tears--there
have been tears enough! But somehow--somehow I am confident,
Warren, as I never was before, that happiness is ahead. Somehow I
feel sure that you and I have won to happiness, now, won to
sureness. With each other, and the boys, and books and music, and
Home Dunes, the years to come seem all bright. After all, we are
young to have learned how to live!"

And again she drew his face down to hers.

Alice did not come back again, but Mary came in with a cup of
smoking soup. Mrs. Valentine had taken the doctor home, but they
would be back later on. It was after six, and Doctor Gregory said
Mrs. Gregory was to drink this, and try to get some sleep. But
first Mary and Rachael must talk over the terrible and wonderful
night, and Rachael must creep down the hall, to smile at the
nurse, who sat by the heavily sleeping Derry.

Then she slept, for hours and hours, while the winter sun smiled
down on the bare trees in the square and women in furs and babies
in woolens walked and chattered on the leaf-strewn paths.

Such a sleep and such a waking are memorable in a lifetime.
Rachael woke, smiling and refreshed, in a radiant world. Afternoon
sunshine was streaming in at her windows, she felt rested,
deliciously ready for life again.

To bathe, to dress with the chatting Jimmy tying strings to her
dressing-table, to have the maids quietly and cheerfully coming
and going in the old way; this in itself was delight. But when she
tiptoed into Derry's room, and found hope and confidence there,
found the blue eyes wide open, under the bandage, and heard the
enchanting little voice announce, "I had hot milk, Mother,"
Rachael felt that her cup of joy was brimming.

He had fallen out of the swing, Derry told her, and Dad had hurted
him, and Jimmy added sensationally that Derry had broken his leg!

"But just the same, we wanted our Daddy the moment we woke up this
morning," Miss Moore smiled, "and we managed to hold up one arm to
welcome him, and it was Daddy that held the glass of milk, wasn't
it, Gerald?"

"She calls me Gerald because she doesn't know me very well," said
Derry in a tactful aside, and Rachael, not daring to laugh for
fear of beginning to cry, could only kiss the brown hand, and
devour, with tear-dazzled eyes, the eager face.

Then she and Jimmy went down to have a meal that was like
breakfast and luncheon and tea in one, with Warren. And to
Rachael, thinking of all their happy meals together, since
honeymoon days, this seemed the best of all. The afternoon light
in the breakfast-room, the maids so poorly concealing their
delight in this turn of events, little Jim so pleased at finding a
meal served at this unusual hour, and his parents seemingly
disposed to let him eat anything and everything, and Warren,
tired--so strangely gray--and yet utterly content and at peace;
these made the hour memorably happy; a forerunner of other happy
hours to come.

"It seems to me that there never was such a bright sunshine, and
never such a nice little third person, and never such coffee, and
such happiness!" said Rachael, her eyes reflecting something of
the placid winter day; soul and body wrapped in peace. "Yesterday-
-only yesterday, I was wretched beyond all believing! To-day I
think I have had the best hours of my life!"

"It is always going to be this way for you, Rachael," her husband
said, "my life is going to be one long effort to keep you
absolutely happy. You will never grieve on my account again!"

"Say rather," she said seriously, "that we know each other, and
ourselves, now. Say that I will never demand utter perfection of
you, or you of me. But, Warren--Warren--as long as we love each
other--"

He had come around the table to her side, and was kneeling with
his arms about her, and Rachael locked her hands about his neck.
He was tired, he had had no sleep after the difficult night, and
he seemed to her strangely broken, strangely her own. Rachael felt
that he had never been so infinitely dear, so much hers to protect
and save. The wonder of marriage came to her, the miracle of love
rooted too deep for disturbance, of love fed on faults as well as
virtues; so light a tie in the beginning, so powerful a bond as
the years go by.

"As long as we love each other!" she said, smiling through tears,
her eyes piercing him to the very soul.

He did not speak, and so for a moment they remained motionless,
looking at each other. But when she released him, with one of her
quick, shy kisses, he knew that the heart of Rachael was
satisfied.

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