Mrs. Gardner Haviland, whirling home in her big car, after church, was

hardly more pleased with life than was her beautiful sister-in-law,

although she was not quite as conscious of dissatisfaction as was

Rachael. Her position as a successful mother, wife, housekeeper, and

member of society was theoretically so perfect that she derived from

it, necessarily, an enormous amount of theoretical satisfaction. She

could find no fault with herself or her environment; she was pleasantly

ready with advice or with an opinion or with a verdict in every

contingency that might arise in human affairs, as a Christian woman of

unimpeachable moral standing. She knew her value in a hectic and

reckless world. She did not approve of women smoking, or of suffrage,

but she played a brilliant game of bridge, and did not object to an

infinitesimal stake. She belonged to clubs and to their directorates,

yet it was her boast that she knew every thought in her children's

hearts, and the personal lives and hopes and ambitions of her maids

were as an open book to her.

Still, she had her moments of weakness, and on this warm day of the

spring she felt vaguely disappointed with life. Rachael's hints of

divorce had filled her with a real apprehension; she felt a good aunt's

concern at Billy's reckless course, and a good sister's disapproval of

Clarence and his besetting sin.

But it was not these considerations that darkened her full handsome

face as she went up the steps of her big, widespread country mansion;

it was some vaguer, more subtle discontent. She had not dressed herself

for the sudden warmth of the day, and her heavy flowered hat and trim

veil had given her a headache. The blazing sunlight on white steps and

blooming flowers blinded her, and when she stepped into the dark, cool

hall she could hardly see.

The three girls were there, well-bred, homely girls, in their simple

linens: Charlotte, a rather severe type, eyeglassed at eighteen, her

thick, light-brown hair plainly brushed off her face and knotted on her

neck, was obviously the opposite of everything Billy was;

conscientious, intellectual, and conscious of her own righteousness,

she could not compete with her cousin in Billy's field; she very

sensibly made the best of her own field. Isabelle was a stout, clumsy

girl of sixteen, with a metal bar across her large white teeth, red

hair, and a creamy skin. Little Florence was only nine, a thin,

freckled, sensitive child, with a shy, unsmiling passion for dogs and

horses, and little in common with the rest of the world.

Their mother had expected sons in every case, and still felt a little

baffled by the fact of her children's sex. Charlotte proving a girl,

she had said gallantly that she must have a little brother "to play

with Charlotte." Isabelle, duly arriving, probably played with

Charlotte much more amiably than a brother would have done, and Mrs.

Haviland blandly accepted her existence, but in her heart she was far

from feeling satisfied. She was, of course, an absolutely competent

mother to girls, but she felt that she would have been a more capable

and wonderful mother to boys.

More than six years after Isabelle's birth Florence Haviland began to

talk smilingly of "my boy." "Gardner worships the girls," she said,

with wifely indulgence, "but I know he wants a son--and the girlies

need a brother!" A resigned shrug ended the sentence with: "So I'm in

for the whole thing again!"

It was said that Mrs. Haviland greeted the news that the third child

was a daughter with a mechanically bright smile, as one puzzled beyond

all words by perverse event, and that her spoken comment was the single

mild ejaculation: "Extraordinary!"

Now the two older Haviland girls, following their mother into her

bedroom, seated themselves there while she changed her dress. Florence

junior, in passionate argument with the butler over the death of one of

the drawing-room goldfish, remained downstairs. Mrs. Haviland, casting

the hot, high-collared silk upon the bed, took a new embroidered pongee

from a box, and busied herself with its unfamiliar hooks and straps.

Charlotte and Isabelle were never quite spontaneous in their

conversations with their mother, their attitude in talking with her

being one of alert and cautious self-consciousness; they did not

breathe quite naturally, and they laughed constantly. Yet they both

loved this big, firm, omnipotent being, and believed in her utterly and

completely.

"We met Doctor Gregory and Charlie near the club this morning, M'ma,"

volunteered Isabelle.

"And they asked about Mrs. Bowditch's dance," Charlotte added with a

little innocent craft. "But I said that M'ma had been unable to decide.

Of course I said that we would LIKE to go, and that you knew that, and

would allow it if you possibly could."

"That was quite right, dear," Mrs. Haviland said to her oldest

daughter, calmly ignoring the implied question, and to Isabelle she

added kindly: "M'ma doesn't quite like to hear you calling a young man

you hardly know by his first name, Isabelle. Of course, there's no harm

in it, but it cheapens a girl just a LITTLE. While Charlotte might do

it because she is older, and has seen Charlie Gregory at some of the

little informal affairs last winter, you are younger, and haven't

really seen much of him since he went to college. Don't let M'ma hear

you do that again."

Isabelle turned a lively scarlet, and even Charlotte colored and was

silent. The younger girl's shamed eyes met her mother's, and she nodded

in quick embarrassment. But this tacit consent did not satisfy Mrs.

Haviland.

"You understand M'ma, don't you, dear?" she asked. Isabelle murmured

something indistinguishable.

"Yes, M'ma!" said that lady herself, encouragingly and briskly.

Isabelle duly echoed a husky "Yes, M'ma!"

"Did you give my message to Miss Roper, Charlotte?" pursued the matron.

"She wasn't at church, M'ma," said Charlotte, taken unawares and

instinctively uneasy. "Mrs. Roper said she had a heavy cold; she said

she'd been sleeping on the sleeping porch."

"So M'ma's message was forgotten?" the mother asked pleasantly.

Charlotte perceived herself to be in an extremely dangerous position.

Long ago both girls had lost, under this close surveillance and skilful

system of cross-examination, their original regard for truth as truth.

That they usually said what was true was because policy and

self-protection suggested it. Charlotte had time now for a flying

survey of the situation and its possibilities before she answered,

somewhat uncertainly:

"I asked Mrs. Roper to deliver it, M'ma. Wasn't that--" Her voice

faltered nervously. "Was it something you would have rather telephoned

about?"

"Would rather have telephoned about?" Mrs. Haviland corrected

automatically. "Well, M'ma would rather FEEL that when she sends a

message it is given to JUST the person to whom she sent it, in JUST the

way she sent it. However, in this case no harm was done. Don't hook

your heel over the rung of your chair, dear! Ring the bell, Isabelle, I

want Alice."

"I'll hook you, M'ma!" volunteered Charlotte.

"Thank you, dear, but I want to speak to Alice. And now you girls might

run along. I'll be down directly."

A moment later she submitted herself patiently to the maid's hands.

Florence was a conscientious woman, and she felt that she owed Alice as

well as herself this little office. Charlotte might have hooked her

gown for her; indeed, she might with a small effort have done it

herself, but it was Alice's duty, and nothing could be worse for Alice,

or any servant, than to have her duties erratically assumed by others

on one day and left to her on the next. This was the quickest way to

spoil servants, and Florence never spoiled her servants.

"They have a pleasant day for their picnic," she observed now, kindly.

Alice was on her knees, her face puckered as she busied herself with

the hooks of a girdle, but she smiled gratefully. Her two brothers had

borrowed their employer's coal barge to-day, and with a score of

cherished associates, several hundred sandwiches, sardines,

camp-chairs, and bottles of root beer, with a smaller number of

chaperoning mothers and concertinas, and the inevitable baby or two,

were making a day of it on the river. Alice had timidly asked, a few

days before, for a holiday to-day, that she might join them, but Mrs.

Haviland had pointed out to her reasonably that she, Alice, had been at

home, unexpectedly, because of her mother's illness, not only the

previous Sunday, but the Saturday, too, and had got half-a-day's leave

of absence for her cousin's wedding only the week before that. Alice

was only eighteen, and her little spurt of bravery had been entirely

exhausted long before her mistress's pleasant voice had stopped.

Nothing more was said of the excursion until to-day.

"I guess they'll be eating their lunch, now, at Old Dock Point," said

Alice, rising from her knees.

"Well, I hope they'll be careful; one hears of so many accidents among

foolish young people there!" Mrs. Haviland answered, going downstairs

to join her daughters in the hall, and, surrounded by them, proceeding

to her own lunch.

For a while she was thoughtfully silent, and the conversation was

maintained between the older girls and their governess. Charlotte and

Isabelle chatted both German and French charmingly. Little Florence

presently began to talk of her goldfish, meanwhile cutting a channel

across her timbale through which the gravy ran in a stream.

Usually their mother listened to them with a quiet smile; they were

well-educated girls, and any mother's heart must have been proud of

them. But to-day she felt herself singularly dissatisfied with them.

She said to herself that she hated Sundays, of all the days of the

week. Other days had their duties: music, studies, riding, tennis, or

walks, but on Sundays the girls were a dead weight upon her. Somehow,

they were not in the current of good times that the other girls and

boys of their ages were having. If she suggested brightly that they go

over to the Parmalees' or the Morans' and see if the young people were

playing tennis, she knew that Charlotte would delicately negative the

idea: "They've got their sets all made up, M'ma, and one hates to,

unless they specially ask one, don't you know?" They might go, of

course, and greet their friends decorously, and watch the game

smilingly for a while. Then they would come home with Fraulein, not

forgetting to say good-bye to their hostess. But, although Charlotte

played a better game than many of the other girls, and Isabelle played

a good game, too, there were always gay little creatures in dashing

costumes who monopolized the courts and the young men, and made the

Haviland girls feel hopelessly heavy and dull. They would come home and

tell their mother that Vivian Sartoris let two of the boys jump her

over the net, and that Cousin Carol wore Kent Parmalee's panama all

afternoon, and called out to him, right across the court, "Come on down

to the boathouse, Kent, and let's have a smoke!"

"Poor Vivian--poor Billy!" Mrs. Haviland would say. "Men don't really

admire girls who allow them such familiarities, although the silly

girls may think they do! But when it comes to marrying, it is the

sweet, womanly girls to whom the men turn!"

She did not believe this herself, nor did the girls believe it, but, if

they discussed it when they were alone together, before Mamma, they

were always decorously impressed.

"Any plans for the afternoon, girlies?" she asked now, when the forced

strawberries were on the table, and little Florence was trying to eat

the nuts out of her cake, and at the same time carefully avoid the cake

itself and the frosting.

"What's Carol doing, M'ma?"

"When M'ma asks you a question, Isabelle, do not answer with another

question, dear. I dropped Carol at the club, but I think Aunt Rachael

means to pick her up there later, and go on to Mrs. Whittaker's for

tea."

"We met Mrs. Whittaker in the Exchange yesterday, M'ma, and she very

sweetly said that you were to--that is, that she hoped you would bring

us in for a little while this afternoon. Didn't she, Isabelle?"

"I don't want to go!" Isabelle grumbled. But her mother ignored her.

"That was very sweet of Aunt Gertrude. I think I will go over to the

club and see what Papa is planning and how his game is going, and then

I could pick you girls up here."

"I'm going over to play with Georgie and Robbie Royce!" shrilled

Florence. "They're mean to me, but I don't care! I hit George in the

stomach---"

Mrs. Haviland looked as pained as if the reported blow had fallen upon

her own person, but she was strangely indulgent to her youngest born,

and now did no more than signal to the nurse, old Fanny, who stood

grinning behind the child's chair, that Miss Florence might be excused.

Florence was accordingly borne off, and the girls drifted idly

upstairs, Isabelle confiding to her sister as she dutifully brushed her

teeth that she wished "something" would happen! Alice muttered to

Sally, another maid, over her strong hot tea, that you might as well be

dead as never do a thing in God's world you wanted to do, but the rest

of the large staff enjoyed a hearty meal, and when Percival brought the

car around at three o'clock, Mrs. Haviland, magnificent in a change of

costume, spent the entire trip to the club in the resentful reflection

that the man had obviously had coffee and cream and mutton for his

lunch--disgusting of him to come straight to his car and his mistress

still redolent of his meal, but what could one do? In Mrs. Haviland's

upper rear hall was a framed and typewritten list of rules for the

maids, conspicuous upon which were those for daily baths and regular

use of toothbrushes. But Percival never had seen this list, and he was

a wonderful driver and a special favorite with her husband. She decided

that there was nothing to be done, unless of course the thing recurred,

although the moment's talk with Percival haunted and distressed her all

day.

She duly returned to the house for her daughters a little after four

o'clock, and in amicable conversation they went together to the tea, a

crowded, informal affair, in another large house full of rugs and

flowers, rooms dark and rich with expensive tapestries and mahogany,

rooms bright and gay with white enamel and chintz and wicker furniture.

Everybody was here. Jeanette and Phyllis, as well as Elinor Vanderwall,

Peter Pomeroy and George, the Buckneys and Parker Hoyt, the Emorys, the

Chases, Mrs. Sartoris and old Mrs. Torrence and Jack, all jumbled a

greeting to the Havilands. Of Carol they presently caught a glimpse

standing on a sheltered little porch with Joe Pickering's sleek head

beside her. They were apparently not talking, just staring quietly down

at the green terraces of the garden. Rachael was pouring tea, her face

radiant under a narrowbrimmed, close hat loaded with cherries, her gown

of narrow green and white stripes the target for every pair of female

eyes in the room.

Charlotte Haviland, in her mother's wake, chanced to encounter Kenneth

Moran, a red-faced, well-dressed and blushing youth of her own age. Her

complacent mother was witness to the blameless conversation between

them.

"How do you do, Kenneth? I didn't know you were here!"

"Oh, how do you do, Charlotte? How do you do, Isabelle? I didn't know

you were here!"

Isabelle grinned silently in horrible embarrassment but Charlotte said,

quick-wittedly:

"How is your mother, Kenneth, and Dorothy?"

"She's well--they're well, thank you. They're here somewhere--at least

Mother is. I think Dorothy's still over at the Clays', playing tennis!"

He laughed violently at this admission, and Charlotte laughed, too.

"It's lovely weather for tennis," she said encouragingly. "We--"

"You--" Mr. Moran began. "I beg your pardon!"

"No, I interrupted you!"

"No, that was my fault. I was only going to say that we ought to have a

game some morning. Going to have your courts in order this year?"

"Yes, indeed," Charlotte said, with what was great vivacity for her.

"Papa has had them all rolled; some men came down from town--we had it

all sodded, you know, last year."

"Is that right?" asked Mr. Moran, as one deeply impressed. "We must go

to it--what?"

"We must!" Charlotte said happily. "Any morning, Kenneth!"

"Sure, I'll telephone!" agreed the youth enthusiastically. "I'm trying

to find Kent Parmalee; his aunt wants him!" he added mumblingly, as he

began to vaguely shoulder his way through the crowd again.

"You'd better take a microscope!" said Charlotte wittily. And Mr.

Moran's burst of laughter and his "That's right, too!" came back to

them as he went away.

"Dear fellow!" Mrs. Haviland said warmly.

"Isn't he nice!" Charlotte said, fluttered and glowing. She hoped in

her heart that she would meet him again, but although the Havilands

stayed until nearly six o'clock they did not do so; perhaps because

shortly after this conversation Kenneth Moran met Miss Vivian Sartoris,

and they took a plateful of rich, crushy little cakes and went and sat

under the stairs, where they took alternate bites of each other's mocha

and chocolate confections, and where Vivian told Kenneth all about a

complicated and thrilling love affair between herself and one of the

popular actors of the day. This narrative reflected more credit upon

the young woman's imagination than upon her charms had the listener but

suspected it, but Kenneth was not a brilliant boy, and they had a

lovely time over their confidences.

Charlotte's romantic encounter with the gentleman, however, made her

happy for several hours, and colored her cheeks rosily.

"You're getting pretty, Carlotta!" said her Aunt Rachael, observing

this. "Don't drink tea, that's a good child! You can stuff on cakes and

chocolate of course, Isabelle," she added, "but Charlotte's complexion

ought to be her FIRST THOUGHT for the next five years!"

"I don't really want any," asserted Charlotte, feeling wonderfully

grown-up and superior to the claims of a nursery appetite. "But can't I

help you, Aunt Rachael?"

"No, my dear, you can't! I'm through the worst of it, and being bored

slowly but firmly to death! Gertrude, I'm just saying that your party

bores me."

"So sorry about you, Rachael!" said the slim, laceclad hostess calmly.

"Here's Judy Moran! Nearly six, Judy, and we dine at seven on Sundays.

But never mind, eat and drink your fill, my child."

"Billy's flirtin' her head off out there!" wheezed stout Mrs. Moran,

dropping into a chair. "Joe and Kent and young Gregory and half a dozen

others are out there with her."

Mrs. Breckenridge, who had begun to frown, relaxed in her chair.

"Ah, well, there's safety in numbers!" she said, reassured. "You take

cream, Judy, and two lumps? Give Mrs. Moran some of those little damp,

brown sandwiches, Isabelle. A minute ago she had some of the most

heavenly hot toast here, but she's taken it away again! I wish I could

get some tea myself, but I've tried three times and I can't!"

She busied herself resignedly with tongs and teapot, and as Mrs. Moran

bit into her first sandwiches, and the Haviland girls moved away at a

word from their mother, Rachael raised her eyes and met Warren

Gregory's look.

He was standing, ten feet away, in a doorway, his eyelids half dropped

over amused eyes, his hands sunk in his coat pockets. Rachael knew that

he had been there for some moments, and her heart struggled and

fluttered like a bird in a snare, and with a thrill as girlish as

Charlotte's own she felt the color rise in her cheeks.

"Come have some tea, Greg," she said, indicating the empty chair beside

her.

"Thank you, dear," he answered, his head close to hers for a moment as

he sat down. The little word set Rachael's heart to hammering again.

She glanced quickly to see if Mrs. Moran had overheard, but that lady

had at last caught sight of the maid with the hot toast, and her ample

back was turned toward the teatable.

Indeed, in the noisy, disordered room, which was beginning to be

deserted by straggling groups of guests, they were quite unobserved. To

both it was a delicious moment, this little domestic interlude of tea

and talk in the curved window of the dining-room, lighted by the last

light of a spring day, and sweet with the scent of wilting spring

flowers.

"You make my heart behave in a manner not to be described in words!"

said Rachael, her fingers touching his as she handed him his tea.

"It must be mine you feel," suggested Warren Gregory; "you haven't

one--by all accounts!"

"I thought I hadn't, Greg, but, upon my word---" She puckered her lips

and raised her eyebrows whimsically, and gave her head a little shake.

Doctor Gregory gave her a shrewdly appraising look, sighed, and stirred

his tea.

"If ever you discover yourself to be the possessor of such an organ,

Rachael," said he dispassionately, "you won't joke about it over a

tea-table! You'll wake up, my friend; we'll see something besides

laughter in those eyes of yours, and hear something besides cool reason

in your voice! I may not be the man to do it, but some man will, some

day, and--when John Gilpin rides--"

The eyes to which he referred had been fixed in serene confidence upon

his as he began to speak. But a second later Rachael dropped them, and

they rested upon her own slender hand, lying idle upon the teatable,

with its plain gold ring guarded by a dozen blazing stones. Had he

really stirred her, Warren Gregory wondered, as he watched the

thoughtful face under the bright, cherry-loaded hat.

"You know how often there is neither cool reason nor any cause for

laughter in my life, Greg," she said, after a moment. "As for love--I

don't think I know what love is! I am an absolutely calculating woman,

and my first, last, and only view of anything is just how much it

affects me and my comfort."

"I don't believe it!" said the doctor.

"It's true. And why shouldn't it be?" Rachael gave him a grave smile.

"No one," said she seriously, "ever--ever--EVER suggested to me that

there was anything amiss in that point of view! Why is there?"

"I don't understand you," said the doctor simply.

"One doesn't often talk this way, I suppose," she said slowly. "But

there is a funny streak of--what shall I call it?--conscience, or soul,

or whatever you like, in me. Whether I get it from my mother's Irish

father or my father's clergyman grandfather, I don't know, but I'm

eternally defending myself. I have long sessions with myself, when I'm

judge and jury, and invariably I find 'Not Guilty!'"

"Not guilty of what?" the man asked, stirring his untasted cup.

"Not guilty of anything!" she answered, with a child's puzzled laugh.

"I stick to my bond, I dress and talk and eat and go about--" Her voice

dropped; she stared absently at the table.

"But--" the doctor prompted.

"But--that's just it--but I'm so UNHAPPY all the time!" Rachael

confessed. "We all seem like a lot of puppets, to me--like Bander-log!

What are we all going round and round in circles for, and who gets any

fun out of it? What's YOUR answer, Greg--what makes the wheels go

round?"

"'Tis love--'tis love--that makes--etcetera, etcetera," supplied the

doctor, his tone less flippant than his words.

"Oh--love!" Rachael's voice was full of delicate scorn. "I've seen a

great deal of all sorts and kinds of love," she went on, "and I must

say that I consider love a very much overrated article! You're laughing

at me, you bold gossoon, but I mean it. Clarence loved Paula madly,

kidnapped her from a boarding-school and all that, but I don't know how

much THEIR seven years together helped the world go round. He never

loved me, never once said he did, but I've made him a better wife than

she did. He loves Bill, now, and it's the worst thing in the world for

her!"

"THERE'S some love for you," said Doctor Gregory, glancing across the

room to the figures of Miss Leila Buckney and Mr. Parker Hoyt, who were

laughing over a cabinet full of ivories.

"I wonder just what would happen there if Parker lost his money

to-morrow--if Aunt Frothy died and left it all to Magsie Clay?" Rachael

suggested, smiling.

The doctor answered only with a shrug.

"More than that," pursued Rachael, "suppose that Parker woke up

to-morrow morning and found his engagement was all a dream, found that

he really hadn't asked Leila to marry him, and that he was as free as

air. Do you suppose that the minute he'd had his breakfast he would go

straight over to Leila's house and make his dream a heavenly reality?

Or would he decide that there was no hurry about it, and that he might

as well rather keep away from the Buckney house until he'd made up his

mind?"

"I suppose he might convince himself that an hour or two's delay

wouldn't matter!" said the doctor, laughing.

"If you talk to me of clothes, or of jewelry, or of what one ought to

send a bride, and what to say in a letter of condolence, I know where I

am," said Rachael, "but love, I freely confess, is something else

again!"

"I suppose my mother has known great love," said the man, after a

pause. "She spends her days in that quiet old house dreaming about my

father, and my brothers, looking at their pictures, and reading their

letters--"

"But, Greg, she's so unhappy!" Rachael objected briskly. "And

love--surely the contention is that love ought to make one happy?"

"Well, I think her memories DO make her happy, in a way. Although my

mother is really too conscientious a woman to be happy, she worries

about events that are dead issues these twenty years. She wonders if my

brother George might have been saved if she had noticed his cough

before she did; there was a child who died at birth, and then there are

all the memories of my father's death--the time he wanted ice water and

the doctors forbade it, and he looked at her reproachfully. Poor

Mother!"

"You're a joy to her anyway, Greg," Rachael said, as he paused.

"Charley is," he conceded thoughtfully, "and in a way I know I am! But

not in every way, of course," Warren Gregory smiled a little ruefully.

"So the case for love is far from proved," Rachael summarized

cheerfully. "There's no such thing!"

"On the contrary, there isn't anything else, REALLY, in the world,"

smiled the man. "I've seen it shining here and there; we get away from

it here, somewhat, I'll admit"--his glance and gesture indicated the

other occupants of the room--"and, like you, I don't quite know where

we miss it, and what it's all about, but there have been cases in our

wards, for instance: girls whose husbands have been brought in all

smashed up--"

"Girls who saw themselves worried about rent and bread and butter!"

suggested Rachael in delicate irony.

"No, I don't think so. And mothers--mothers hanging over sick

children--"

The women nodded quickly.

"Yes, I know, Greg. There's something very appealing about a sick

kiddie. Bill was ill once, just after we were married, such a little

thing she looked, with her hair all cut! And that DID--now that I

remember it--it really did bring Clarence and me tremendously close.

We'd sit and wait for news, and slip out for little meals, and I'd make

him coffee late at night. I remember thinking then that I never wanted

a child, to make me suffer as we suffered then!"

"Mother love, then, we concede," Doctor Gregory said, smiling.

"Well, yes, I suppose so. Some mothers. I don't believe a mother like

Florence ever was really made to suffer through loving. However, there

IS mother love!"

"And married love."

"No, there I don't agree. While the novelty lasts, while the passion

lasts--not more than a year or two. Then there's just civility--opening

the city house, opening the country house, entertaining, going about,

liking some things about each other, loathing others, keeping off the

dangerous places until the crash comes, or, perhaps, for some lucky

ones, doesn't come!"

"What a mushy little sentimentalist you are, Rachael!" Gregory said

with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "You're too dear and sweet to talk

that way! It's too bad--it's too bad to have you feel so! I wish that I

could carry you away from all these people here--just for a while! I'd

like to prescribe that sea beach you spoke about last night! Wouldn't

we love our desert island! Would you help me build a thatched hut, and

a mud oven, and string shells in your hair, and swim way out in the

green breakers with me?"

"And what makes you think that there would be some saving element in

our relationship?" Rachael asked in a low voice. "What makes you think

that our love would survive the--the dry-rot of life? People would send

us silver and rugs, and there would be a lot of engraving, and barrels

of champagne, and newspaper men trying to cross-examine the maids, and

caterers all over the place, but a few years later, wouldn't it be the

same old story? You talk of a desert island, and swimming, and seaweed,

Greg! But my ideas of a desert island isn't Palm Beach with commercial

photographers snapping at whoever sits down in the sand! Look about us,

Greg--who's happy? Who isn't watching the future for just this or just

that to happen before she can really feel content? Young girls all want

to be older and more experienced, older girls want to be young; this

one is waiting for the new house to be ready, that one--like

Florence--is worrying a little for fear the girls won't quite make a

hit! Clarence worries about Billy, I worry about Clarence--"

"I worry about you!" said Doctor Gregory as she paused.

"Of course you do, bless your heart!" Rachael laughed. "So here we are,

the rich and fashionable and fortunate people of the world, having a

cloudless good time!"

"You know, it's a shame to eat this way--ruin our dinners!" said Mrs.

Moran, suddenly entering the conversation. "Stop flirting with Greg,

Rachael, and give me some more tea. One lump, and only about half a

cup, dear. Tell me a good way to get thin, Greg! Agnes Chase says her

doctor has a diet--you eat all you want, and you get thin. Agnes says

Lou has a friend who has taken off forty-eight pounds. Do you believe

it, Greg? I'm too fat, you know--"

"You carry it well, Judy," said Rachael, still a little shaken by the

abruptly closed conversation, as the doctor, with a conscious thrill,

perceived.

"Thank you, my dear, that's what they all say. But I'd just as soon

somebody else should carry it for awhile!"

"Listen, Rachael," said their hostess, coming up suddenly, and speaking

quickly and lightly, "Clarence is here. Where in the name of everything

sensible is Billy?"

"Clarence!" said Rachael, uncomfortable premonition clutching at her

heart.

"Yes; you come and talk to him, Rachael," Mrs. Whittaker said, in the

same quick undertone. "He's all right, of course, but he's just a

little fussy--"

"Oh, if he wouldn't DO these things!" Rachael said apprehensively as

she rose. "I left him all comfortable--Joe Butler was coming in to see

him! It does EXASPERATE me so! However!"

"Of course it does, but we all know Clarence!" Mrs. Whittaker said

soothingly. "He seems to have got it into his head that Billy--You go

talk to him, Rachael, and I'll send her in."

"Billy's doing no harm! What did he say?" Rachael asked impatiently.

"Oh, nothing definite, of course. But as soon as I said that Billy was

here--he'd asked if she was--he said, 'Then I suppose Mr. Pickering is

here, too!'"

"He's the one person in the world afraid of talk about Billy, yet if he

starts it, he can blame no one but himself!" Rachael said, as she

turned toward the adjoining room. An unexpected ordeal like this always

annoyed her. She was equal to it, of course; she could smooth

Clarence's ruffled feelings, keep a serene front to the world, and get

her family safely home before the storm; she had done it many times

before. But it was so unnecessary! It was so unnecessary to exhibit the

Breckenridge weaknesses before the observant Emorys, before that

unconscionable old gossip Peter Pomeroy, and to the cool, pitying gaze

of all her world!

She found Clarence the centre of a small group in the long

drawing-room. He and Frank Whittaker were drinking cocktails; the

others--Jeanette Vanderwall, Vera Villalonga, a flushed, excitable

woman older than Rachael, and Jimmy and Estelle Hoyt--had refused the

drink, but were adding much noise and laughter to the newcomer's

welcome.

"Hello, Clarence" Rachael said, appraising the situation rapidly as she

came up. "I would have waited for you if I had thought you would come!"

"I just--just thought I would--look in," Clarence said slowly but

steadily. "Didn't want to miss anything. You all seem to be

having--having a pretty good time!"

"It's been a lovely tea," Rachael assured him enthusiastically. "But

I'm just going. Billy's out here on the porch with a bunch of

youngsters; I was just going after her. Don't let Frank give you any

more of that stuff, Clancy. Stop it, Frank! It always gives him a

splitting headache!"

The tone was irreproachably casual and cheerful, but Clarence scowled

at his wife significantly. His dignity, as he answered, was tremendous.

"I can judge pretty well of what hurts me and what doesn't, thank you,

Rachael," he said coldly, with a look ominous with warning.

"That's just what you can't, dear," Mrs. Whittaker, who had joined the

group, said pleasantly. "Take that stuff away, Frank, and don't be so

silly! If Frank," she added to the group, "hadn't been at it all

afternoon himself he wouldn't be such an idiot."

"Greg says he'll take us home, Clarence," Rachael said, in a

matter-of-fact tone. "It's a shame to carry you off when you've just

got here, but I'm going."

"Where's Billy?" Clarence asked stubbornly.

"Right here!" his wife answered reassuringly. And to her great relief

Billy substantiated the statement by coming up to them, a little

uneasy, as her stepmother was, over her father's appearance, yet

confident that there was no real cause for a scene. To get him home as

fast as possible, and let the trouble, whatever it might be, break

there, was the thought in both their minds.

"Had enough tea, Monkey?" said Rachael pleasantly, aware of her

husband's sulphurous gaze, but carefully ignoring it. "Then say day-day

to Aunt Gertrude!"

"If Greg takes you home, send Alfred back with the runabout for me,"

Billy suggested.

"So that you can stay a little longer, eh?" said Clarence, in so ugly a

tone and with so leering a look for his daughter that Rachael's heart

for a moment failed her. "That's a very nice little plan, my dear, but,

as it happens, I came over in the runabout! I'm a fool, you know," said

Clarence sullenly. "I can be hoodwinked and deceived and made a fool

of--oh, sure! But there's a limit! There's a limit," he said in stupid

anger to his wife. "And if I say that I don't like certain friendships

for my daughter, it means that _I_ DON'T LIKE CERTAIN FRIENDSHIPS FOR

MY DAUGHTER, do you get me? That's clear enough, isn't it, Gertrude?"

"It's perfectly clear that you're acting like an idiot, Clancy," Mrs.

Whittaker said briskly. "Nobody's trying to hoodwink you; it isn't

being done this year! You've got an awful katzenjammer from the Stokes'

dinner, and all you men ought to be horsewhipped for letting yourselves

in for such a party. Now if you and Rachael want to go home in the

runabout, I'll send Billy straight after you with Kenneth or Kent--"

"I'll take Billy home," Clarence said heavily.

By this time Rachael was so exquisitely conscious of watching eyes and

listening ears, so agonized over the realization that the fuss Clarence

Breckenridge made at the Whittakers' over Joe Pickering would be handed

down, a precious tradition, over every tea and dinner table for weeks

to come, so miserably aware that a dozen persons, at least, among the

audience were finding in this scene welcome confirmation of all the

odds and ends of gossip that were floating about concerning Billy, that

she would have consented blindly to any arrangement that might

terminate the episode.

It was not the first time that Clarence had made himself ridiculous and

his family conspicuous when not quite himself. At almost every tea

party and at every dance and dinner at least one of the guests

similarly distinguished himself. Rachael knew that there would be no

blame in her friends' minds, but she hated their laughter.

"Do that, then," she agreed quickly. "Greg, will bring me!"

"By George," said Clarence darkly to his hostess, "I'd be a long time

doing that to you, Gertrude! If you had a daughter--"

"My dear Clarence, your daughter is old enough to know her own mind!"

Mrs. Whittaker said impatiently.

"And you're only making me conspicuous for something that's ENTIRELY in

your own brain!" blazed Billy. As usual, her influence over her father

was instantaneous.

"Because I love you, you know that," he said meekly. "I--I may be TOO

careful, Billy. But--"

"Nonsense!" said Billy in a nervous undertone close to tears. "If you

loved me you'd have some consideration for me!"

"When I say a thing, don't you say it's nonsense," Clarence said with

heavy fatherly dignity. "I'll tell you why--because I won't stand for

it!"

"Oh, aren't they hopeless!" Mrs. Whittaker asked with an indulgent

laugh and a glance for Rachael.

"Well, I won't be taken home like a bad child!" flamed Billy.

"I'd like to bump both your silly heads together," Rachael exclaimed,

steering them toward the porch. "Yes, you bring the car around, Kent,"

she added to one of the onlookers in an urgent aside. "Come on, Bill?

get in. Get in, Clarence! Don't be an utter fool--"

In another moment it was settled. Billy, looking fretty and sulky,

said: "Good-bye, Aunt Gertrude! I'm sorry for this, but it's not my

fault!" Frank Whittaker almost bodily lifted his somewhat befuddled

guest into the car, the door of the runabout went home with a bang.

Billy snatched the wheel, and Clarence, with an attempt at a martyred

expression, sank back in his seat. The car rocked out of sight, and was

gone.

Rachael, in silent dignity, turned about on the wide brick steps to

reenter the house. Where there had been a dozen interested faces a

moment ago there was no one now except Gertrude Whittaker, whose

expression betrayed her as tactfully divided between unconcern and

sympathy, and Frank Whittaker, who was looking thoughtfully at the

cloudless spring sky as one anticipating a change of weather.

Rachael caught Mrs. Whittaker's eye and shrugged her shoulders wearily.

She began slowly to mount the steps.

"It was nothing at all!" said the hostess cheerfully, adding

immediately, "You poor thing!"

"All in the day's work!" Rachael said, on a long sigh. And turning to

the man who stood silently in the doorway she asked, with all the

confidence of a weary child, "Will you take me home, Greg?"

Her glance and the doctor's met. In the last soft, brilliant light of

the afternoon long shadows fell from the great trees nearby. Rachael's

green and white gown was dappled with blots of golden light, her

troubled, glowing eyes were of an almost unearthly beauty, and her

slender figure, against the background of colonial white paint and red

brick, had all the tremulous, reedy grace of a young girl's figure. In

the long look the two exchanged there was some new element born of this

wonderful hour of spring, and of the woman's need, and the man's

nearness. Both knew it, although Rachael did not speak again, and, also

in silence, the doctor nodded, and went past her down the steps for his

car.

"Too bad!" Mrs. Whittaker said, coming back from a brief disappearance

beyond the doorway. "But such things will happen! It's too bad,

Rachael, but what can one do? Are you going to be warm enough? Sure?

Don't give it another thought, dear, nobody noticed it, anyway. And

listen--any chance of a game tonight? I could send over for you.

Marian's with me, you know, and we could get Peter or Greg for a

fourth."

"No chance at all," Rachael said bitterly. She had always loved to play

bridge with Greg; under the circumstances it would be a delicious

experience. She layed brilliantly, and Greg, when he was matched by

partner and opponents, became absorbed in the game with absolutely

fanatic fervor. Rachael had a vision of her own white hand spreading

out the cards, of the nod and glance that said clearly: "Great bidding,

Rachael; we're as safe as a church!"

Clarence did not play bridge, he did not care for music, for books, for

pictures. He played poker, and sometimes tennis, and often golf; a

selfish, solitary game of golf, in which he cared only for his own play

and his own score, and paid no attention to anyone else.

Gregory's great car came round the drive. "Good-bye, Gertrude," said

Rachael with an unsmiling nod of farewell, and Mrs. Whittaker thought,

as Elinor Vanderwall had thought the night before, that she had never

seen Rachael look so serious before, and that things in the

Breckenridge family must be coming rapidly to a crisis.

Doctor Gregory, as the lovely Mrs. Breckenridge packed her striped

green and white ruffles trimly beside him, turned upon her a quick and

affectionate smile. It asked no confidence, it expressed no sympathy,

it was simply the satisfied glance of a man pleased with the moment and

with the company in which he found himself. To Rachael, overwrought,

nervous, and ashamed, no mood could have been more delicately tuned.

She sank back against the deep upholstery luxuriously, and drew a long

breath, inhaling the delicious air of early summer twilight. What a

sweet, clean, solid sort of friend Greg was, thought Rachael, noticing

the clever, well-groomed hands on the wheel, the kindly earnestness of

the handsome, sun-browned face, the little wrinkle between the dark

eyes that meant that Doctor Gregory was thinking.

"Straight home?" said he, giving her a smiling glance.

"If you please, Greg," Rachael answered, a sudden vision of the

probable state of affairs at home causing her to end the words with a

quick sigh.

Silence. They were running smoothly along the lovely country roads that

were bowered so generously in fresh green that great feathery boughs of

maple and locust brushed against the car. The birds were still now, and

the sunlight gone, although all the world was still flooded with a soft

golden light. The first dew had fallen, bringing forth from the dust a

sweet and pungent odor.

"Thinking about what I said to you last night?" asked the doctor

suddenly.

"I am afraid I am--a little," Rachael answered, meeting his quick side

glance with another as fleet.

"And what do you think about it?" he asked. For answer Rachael only

sighed wearily, and for a while they went on in silence. But when they

had almost reached the Breckenridge gateway Doctor Gregory spoke again.

"Do you often have a scene like that one just now to get through?"

The color rushed into Rachael's face at his friendly, not too

sympathetic, tone. She was still shaken from the encounter with

Clarence, and still thrilling to the memory of her talk with Warren

Gregory last night, and it was with some new quality of hesitation,

almost of bewilderment, that she said:

"That--that wasn't anything unusual, Greg."

Doctor Gregory stopped the car at the foot of her own steps, the noise

of the engine suddenly ceased, and they faced each other, their heads

close together.

"But since last night," Rachael added, smiling after a moment's

thought, "I know I have a friend. I believe now, when the crash comes,

and the whole world begins to talk, that one person will not misjudge

me, and one person will not misunderstand."

"Only that?" he asked. She raised her glorious eyes quickly, trying to

smile, and it brought his heart to a quick stop to see that they were

brimming with tears.

"Only that?" she echoed. "My dear Greg, after seven such years as I

have had as Clarence's wife, that is not a small thing!"

Their hands were together now, and he felt hers cling suddenly as she

said:

"Don't--don't let me drag you into this, Greg!"

"This is what I want you to believe," Warren Gregory told her, "that

you are not his wife, you are nothing to him any more. And some day,

some day, you're going to be happy again!"

A wonderful color flooded her face; she gave him a look

half-frightened, half-won. Then with an almost inaudible "Good-night,"

she was gone.

Warren Gregory stood watching the slender figure mount the steps. She

did not turn to nod him a fare-well, but vanished like a shadow into

the soft shadows of the doorway. Yet he was enough a lover to find

consolation in that. Rachael Breckenridge was not flirting now, forces

far greater than any she had ever known were threatening the shallow

waters of her life, and she might well be troubled and afraid.

"She is not his wife any more," Warren Gregory said, half aloud, as he

turned back to his car. "From now on she belongs to me! She SHALL be

mine!"




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024