Plans for the big dance presently began to move briskly, and there was
much talk of the affair. As hostess, Rachael would not mask, nor would
Warren, but they were already amusing themselves with the details of
elaborate costumes. Warren's rather stern and classic beauty was to be
enhanced by the blue and buff of an officer of the Revolution, fine
ruffles falling at wrist and throat, wide silver buckles on square-toed
shoes, and satin ribbon tying his white wig. Rachael, separately
tempted by the thought of Dutch wooden shoes and of the always
delightful hoop skirts, eventually abandoned both because it was not
possible historically to connect either costume with the one upon which
Warren had decided. She eventually determined to be the most
picturesque of Indian maidens, with brown silk stockings disappearing
into moccasins, exquisite beadwork upon her fringed and slashed skirt,
feathers in her loosened hair, and a small but matchless tiger skin,
strapped closely across her back, to lend a touch of distinction to the
costume.
On the Monday evening before the dance she tried on her regalia and
appeared before her husband and three or four waiting dinner guests, so
exquisite a vision of glowing and radiant beauty that their admiration
was almost a little awed. Her cheeks were crimson between her loosened
rich braids of hair; her eyes shone deeply blue, and the fantastic
costume, with its fluttering strips of leather and richly colored
wampum, gave an extraordinary quality of youth and almost of frailty to
her whole aspect.
"The woman just sent this home. I couldn't resist showing you!" said
Rachael, in a shower of compliments. "Isn't my tiger a darling? Warren
went six hundred and seventy-two places to catch him. Of course there
never was a stripey tiger like this in North America but what care I?
I'm only a poor little redskin; a trifling inconsistency like that
doesn't worry ME!"
"Me taky you my wikiup-HUH!" said Frank Whittaker invitingly. "You my
squaw?"
"Come here, Hattie Fishboy," said her husband, catching her by the arm.
His face showed no more than an amused indulgence to her caprice, but
Rachael knew he was pleased. "Well, when you first planned this outfit
I thought it was going to be an awful mess," said he, turning her
slowly about. "But it isn't so bad!"
"Isn't so bad!" Mrs. Bowditch said scornfully; "it's the loveliest
thing I ever saw. I'll tell you what, Rachael, if you come down to
Easthampton this summer we'll have a play, and you can be an Indian--"
"I'd love it," Rachael said, and making a deep bow before her husband
she added: "I'll be Squaw-Afraid-of-Her-Man!"
She heard them laughing as she ran upstairs to change to a more
conventional dress.
"Etta," said she, consigning the Indian costume to her maid, "I'm too
happy to live!"
Etta, one of those homely, conscientious women who extract in some
mysterious way an actual pride and pleasure from the beauty of the
women whom they serve, smiled faintly and dully.
"The weather's getting real nice now," she submitted, as one who will
not discourage a worthy emotion.
Rachael laughed out joyously. The next instant she had flung up a
window and leaned out in the spring darkness. Trees on the drive were
rustling over pools of light, a lighted steamboat went slowly up the
river, the brilliant eyes of motor cars curved swiftly through the
blackness. A hurdy-gurdy, guarded by two shadowy forms, was pouring out
a wild jangle of sound from the curb. When the window was shut, a
moment later, the old Italian man and woman who owned the musical
instrument decided that they must mark this apartment house for many a
future visit, and, chattering hopefully, went upon their way. The
belladonna in the spangled gown, who had looked down upon them for a
brief interval, meanwhile ran down to her guests.
She was in wild spirits, inspired with her most enchanting mood; for an
hour or two there was no resisting her. Mrs. Whittaker and Mrs.
Bowditch fell as certainly under her spell as did the three men. "She
really HAS changed since she married Greg," said Louise Bowditch to
Mrs. Whittaker; "but it's all nonsense--this talk about her being no
more fun! She's more fun than ever!"
"She's prettier than ever," Gertrude Whittaker said with a sigh.
The next afternoon, a dreary, wet afternoon, at about four o'clock,
Warren Gregory stepped out of the elevator, and quietly admitted
himself to his own hallway with a latchkey. It was an unusual hour for
the doctor to come home, and in the butler's carefully commonplace tone
as he answered a few questions Warren knew that he knew.
The awning had been stretched across the sidewalk, caterers' men were
in possession, the lovely spacious rooms were full of flowers; the big
studio had been emptied of furniture, there were great palms massed in
the musicians' corner; maids were quietly busy everywhere; no eye met
the glance of the man of the house as he went upstairs.
He found Mrs. Gregory alone in her own luxurious room. No one who had
seen her in the excited beauty of the night before would have been
likely to recognize her now. She was pale, tense, and visibly nervous,
wrapped in a great woolly robe, as if she were cold, and with her hair
bound carelessly and tightly back as a woman binds it for bathing.
"You've seen it?" she said instantly, as her husband came in.
"George called my attention to it; I came straight home. I knew"--he
was kneeling beside her, one arm about her, all his tenderness and
devotion in his face--"I knew you'd need me."
She laid an arm about his neck, sighed deeply, but continued to stare
distractedly beyond him.
"Warren, what shall we do?" she said with a certain vagueness and
brokenness in her manner that he found very disquieting.
"Do, sweetheart?" he echoed at a loss.
"With all those people coming to-night," she added, mildly impatient.
"Why, what CAN we do, dear?"
"You don't mean," Rachael said incredulously, "that we shall have to GO
ON with it?"
"Think a minute, dearest. Why shouldn't we?"
"But"--her color, better since his entrance, was waning again--"with
Clarence Breckenridge dying while we dance!" she shuddered.
"Could anything be more preposterous than your letting anything that
concerns Clarence Breckenridge affect what you do now?" he asked with
kindly patience.
"No, it's not that!" she answered feverishly. "But--but for any old
friend one would--would make a difference, and surely--surely he was
more than that!"
"He WAS more than that, of course, but he has been less than nothing to
you for a long time!"
"Yes, legally--technically, of course," Rachael agreed nervously. She
sat silent for a moment, frowning over some sombre thought. "But,
Warren, they'll all know of it, they'll all be THINKING of it," she
said presently. "I--really I don't think I can go through it!"
"It's too bad, of course," Warren Gregory said with his arm still about
her. "I'd give ten thousand dollars to have had the poor fellow select
some other time. But you've had nothing to do with it, and you simply
must put it out of your mind!"
"It was Billy's marriage, of course!"
"Of course. She was married yesterday, you see, the day she came of
age. Poor kid--it's rather a sad start for her, especially with no one
but Joe Pickering to console her!"
"She was mad about her father," Rachael said in a preoccupied whisper.
"Poor Billy--poor Billy! She never crossed him in anything but this.
What did you see it in?"
"The World. How did you hear it?"
"Etta brought up the paper." She closed her eyes and leaned back in her
chair. "It seemed to jump at me--his picture and the name. Is he
living--where is he?"
"At St. Mark's. He won't live. Poor fellow!" Warren Gregory scowled
thoughtfully as he gave a moment's thought to the other man's
situation, and then smiled sunnily at his wife with a brisk change of
topic. "Well," he said cheerfully, "is anyone in this place glad to see
me, or not, or what?"
"It just seems to me that I CANNOT face all those people to-night!"
Rachael said, giving him a quick, unthinking kiss before she gently put
him away from her, and got to her feet. "It seems so wrong--so
coarse--to be utterly and totally indifferent to the man who was my
husband a year ago. I don't love him, he is nothing to me, but it's all
wrong, this way. If it was Peter Pomeroy or Joe Butler, of COURSE we'd
put off our dance--Warren," she turned to him with sudden hope in her
eyes, "do you suppose anybody'll come?"
"My dear girl," he said, displeased, "why are you working yourself into
a fever over this? It's most unfortunate, but as far as you're
concerned, it's unavoidable, and you'll simply have to put a brave face
on it, and get through it SOMEHOW! I am absolutely confident that when
you've pulled yourself together you'll come through with flying colors.
Of course everyone'll come; this is their chance to show you exactly
how little they ever think of you as Breckenridge's wife! And this is
your chance, too, to act as if you'd never heard of him. Dash it! it
does spoil our little party, but it can't be helped!"
"Do you suppose Billy's with him?" Rachael asked, her absent,
glittering eyes fixed upon her own person as she sat before her mirror.
"Oh, no--she and Pickering sailed yesterday for England--that's the
dreadful thing for her. Clarence evidently spent the whole night at the
club, sitting in the library, thinking. Berry Stokes went in for his
mail after the theatre, and they had a little talk. He promised to dine
there to-night. At about ten this morning Billings, the steward there,
saw old Maynard going out--Maynard's one of the directors--and asked
him if he wouldn't please go and speak to Mr. Breckenridge. Mayn went
over to him, and Clarence said, 'Anything you say--'"
Rachael gave a gasp that was like a shriek, and put her two elbows on
the dressing-table, and her face in her hands. It was Clarence's
familiar phrase.
"Oh, don't--don't--don't--Greg!"
"Well, that was all there was to it," her husband said, watching her
anxiously. "He had the thing in his pocket. He stood up--everybody
heard it. Fellows came rushing in from everywhere. They got him to a
hospital."
"Florence is with him, of course?"
"Florence is at Palm Beach."
"Then who IS with him, Greg?"
"My dear girl, how do I know? It's none of my affair!"
Rachael sat still for perhaps two minutes, while her husband,
ostentatiously cheerful, moved about the room selecting a change of
clothes.
"To-morrow you can take it as hard as you like, sweet," said he. "But
to-night you'll have to face the music! Now get into something
warm--it's a little cool out--and I'll take you for a spin, and we'll
have dinner somewhere. Then we'll get back here about eight o'clock,
and take our time dressing."
"Yes, I'll do that," Rachael agreed automatically. A moment later she
said urgently: "Warren, isn't there a chance that I'm right about this?
Mightn't it be better simply to telephone everyone that the dance is
postponed? Make it next week, or Mi-Careme--anything. If they talk--let
them! I don't care what they say. They'll talk anyway. But every fibre
of my being, every delicate or decent instinct I ever had, rebels
against this. Say I'm not well, and let them buzz! I know what you are
going to say--I know that it would SEEM less sensitive, less fine, to
mourn for one man while I'm another man's wife, than to absolutely
ignore what happens to him, but you know what's the truth! I never
loved him, and I love every hair of your head--you know that. Only--"
She stopped short, baffled by the difficulty of expressing herself
accurately.
"If you really love me, do what I ask you to-night," Warren Gregory
said firmly.
His wife sat as if turned to stone for only a few seconds. When she
spoke it was naturally and cheerfully.
"I'll be ready in no time, dear. Where are we to dine?" She glanced at
her little crystal clock as she spoke, as if she were computing
casually the length of the drive before dinner. But what she said in
her heart was, "At this time to-morrow it will all have been over for
many hours!"
A few days later the Gregorys sailed for Bermuda, Rachael with a sense
of whipped and smarting shame that was all the more acute because she
could not share it with this dearest comrade and confidant. Warren
thought indeed that the miserable episode of the past week had been
dismissed from her mind, and delighting like a boy in the little
holiday, and proud of his beautiful wife, he found their hours at sea
cloudless. With two men, whose acquaintance was made on the steamer,
they played bridge, and Rachael's game drew other players from all
sides to watch her leads and grin over her bidding. They walked up and
down the deck for hours together, they lay side by side in deck chairs
lazily watching the blue water creep up and down the painted white
ropes of the rail; but they never spoke of Clarence Breckenridge.
The Mardi-Gras dance had been like a hideous dream to Rachael. She had
known that it would be hard from the first sick moment in which the
significance of Clarence's suicide had rushed upon her. She had known
that her arriving guests would be gay and conversational, that the
dance and the supper would go with a dash and swing which no other
circumstance could more certainly have assured for them; and she knew
that in every heart would be the knowledge that Clarence Breckenridge
was dying by his own hand, and his daughter on the ocean, and that this
woman in the Indian dress, with painted lips and a tiger skin outlining
her beautiful figure, had been his wife.
This she had expected, and this was as she had expected. But there were
other circumstances that made her feel even more acutely the turn of
the screw. Joe Butler, always Clarence's closest friend, did not come
to the dance, and at about twelve o'clock an innocent maid delivered to
Warren a message that several persons besides Warren heard: "Mr. Butler
to speak to you on the telephone, Doctor Gregory."
Everyone could surmise where Joe Butler was, but no one voiced the
supposition. Warren, handsome in his skirted coat, knee breeches, and
ruffles, disappeared from the room, and the dancing went on. The scene
was unbelievably brilliant, the hot, bright air sweet with flowers and
perfume, and the more subtle odors of silk and fine linen and powder on
delicate skin. Warren was presently among them again, and there was a
supper, the hostess' lovely face showing no more strain or concern than
was natural to a woman eager to make comfortable nearly a hundred
guests.
After supper there was more dancing, and an augmented gayety. There
were no more telephone messages, nor was there any definite foundation
for the rumor that was presently stealthily circulating. Women,
powdering their noses as they waited for their wraps, murmured it in
the dressing-rooms; a clown, smoking in the hall, confided it to a
Mephistopheles; a pastry cook, after his effusive good-nights,
confirmed it as he climbed into the motorcar that held the Pierrette
who was his wife: "Dead, poor fellow!"
"Dead, poor Clarence!" said Mrs. Prince, magnificent as Queen
Elizabeth, as she and Elinor Vanderwall went downstairs. She had once
danced a fancy dance with him more than twenty years ago. "Awful!" said
Elinor, shuddering.
After the last guest was gone Warren telephoned to the hospital,
Rachael, a little tired and pale in the Indian costume, watching and
listening tensely. She was sick at heart. Even into the library, where
they stood, the Mardi-Gras disorder had penetrated: a blue silk mask
was lying across Warren's blotter, a spatter of confetti lay on the
polished floor, and on the reading table was a tray on which were two
glasses through whose amber contents a lazy bubble still occasionally
rose. The logs that had snapped in the fireplace were gone, only gray
ashes remained, and to Rachael, at least, the room's desolation and
disorder seemed to typify her own state of mind.
She could tell from Warren's look that he found the whole matter
painful and distasteful to an almost unbearable degree; on his handsome
serious face was an expression of grim endurance, of hurt yet dignified
protest against events. He did not blame her, how could he blame her?
But he was suffering in every fibre of his sensitive soul at this
sordid notoriety, at this blatant voicing of a hundred ugly whispers in
a matter so closely touching the woman he loved.
"Dead?" Rachael said quietly, when his brief conversation was over.
Warren Gregory, setting the telephone back upon the desk, nodded
gravely.
Rachael made no comment. For a moment her eyes widened nervously, and a
little shudder rippled through her. Then silently she gathered up the
leather belt and chains of beads that she had been loosening as she
listened, and slowly went toward the door.
They did not speak again of Clarence that night, although they chatted
easily for the next hour on other topics, even laughing a little as the
various episodes of the evening were passed in review.
But Rachael did not sleep, nor did she sleep during the long hours of
the following night. On the third night she wakened her husband
suddenly from his sleep.
"Greg--Greg! Won't you talk to me a little? I'm going mad, I think!"
"Rachael! What is it?" stammered the doctor, blinking in the dim light
of Rachael's bedside lamp. His wife, haggard, with her rich hair
falling in two long braids over her shoulders, was sitting on the side
of his bed. "What is it, darling--hear something?" he asked, more
naturally, putting his arm about her.
"I've been lying awake--and lying awake!" said Rachael, panting. "I
haven't shut my eyes--it's nearly three. Greg, I keep seeing
it--Clarence's face, you know, with that horrible scar! What shall I
do?"
Shivering, gasping, wild-eyed, she clung to him, and for a long hour he
soothed her as if she had been an hysterical child. He put her into a
comfortable chair, mixed her a sedative, and knelt beside her, slowly
winning her back to calm and sanity again. It was terrible, of course,
but no one but Clarence himself was to blame, unless it was poor Billy--
"Yes, I must see Billy when she comes back!" Rachael said quickly, when
the tranquillizing voice reached this point. If Warren Gregory's quiet
mouth registered any opposition, she did not see it, and he did not
express it. She was presently sound asleep, still catching a long
childish breath as she slept. But she woke smiling, with all the horrid
visions of the past few days apparently blotted out, and she and Warren
went gayly downtown to get steamer tickets, and buy appropriate frocks
and hats for the spring heat of Bermuda.
In midsummer came the inevitable invitation to visit old friends at
Belvedere Bay. Rachael was pleased to accept Mrs. Moran's hospitality
for a glorious July week. Warren, to her delight, took an eightdays'
holiday, and while he looked to his racquet and golf irons she packed
her prettiest gowns. Belvedere Bay welcomed them rapturously, and
beautiful Mrs. Gregory was the idol of the hour. Mrs. Moulton, giving a
tennis tea during this week, duly sent Mrs. Gregory a card. But when
society wondering whether Rachael would really be a guest in her own
old home, had duly gathered at the Breckenridge house, young Dicky
Moran was so considerate as to be flung from his riding-horse. Neither
the Gregorys nor the Morans consequently appeared at the tea, but
Rachael, meeting all inquirers on the Moran terrace, late in the
afternoon, with the news that Dicky was quite all right, no harm done,
asked prettily for details of the affair they had missed.
She told herself that the past really made no difference in the radiant
present, but she knew it was not so. In a thousand little ways she had
lost caste, and she saw it, if Warren did not. A certain bloom was
gone. Girls were not quite as deferentially adoring, women were a
little less impressed. The old prestige was somehow lessened. She knew
that newcomers at the club, struck by her beauty, were a little chilled
by her history. She felt the difference in the very air.
In her musings she went over the old arguments hotly. Why was she
merely the "divorced Mrs. Gregory?" Why were these casual inquirers not
told of Clarence, of her long endurance of neglect and shame? More than
once the thought came to her, that if other, events had been as they
were, and only the facts of her divorce and remarriage lacking, she
would have been Clarence's widow now.
"What's the difference? It all comes out the same!" commented Warren,
to whom she confided this thought.
"Then you and I would have been only engaged now," said Rachael,
smiling. "And I would like that!"
"You mean you regret your marriage?" he laughed, his arms about her.
"I'd like to live the first days over and over and over again, Greg!"
she answered passionately.
"You are an insatiable creature!" he said. But her earnestness was
beginning to puzzle him a little. She was too deeply wrapped in her
love for her own happiness or his. There was something almost startling
in her intensity. She was jealous of every minute that they were apart;
she made no secret of her blind adoration.
Warren had at first found this touching; it had humbled him. Later, in
the first months of their marriage, he had shared it, and their mutual
passion had seemed to them both a source of inexhaustible delight. But
now, even while he smiled at her, his keen sensitiveness where her
dignity was concerned had shown him that there was in her attitude
something a little pitiful, something even a little absurd.
Judy and Gertrude and little Mrs. Sartoris listened interestedly when
Rachael talked of Greg, of his likes, his dislikes, his favorite words,
his old-maidish way of arranging his ties, his marvellous latest
operation. But Warren, watching his wife's flushed, lovely face,
wondered if they were laughing at her. He smiled uncomfortably when she
interrupted her bridge game to come across the club porch to him, to
ask him if the tennis had been good, to warn him that he would catch
cold if he did not instantly get out of those wet flannels, to ask
Frank Whittaker what he meant by beating her big boy three sets in
succession?
"Rachael, I'm dealing for you--come back here!" Gertrude might call.
"Deal away!" Rachael, one hand on Warren's arm, would look saucily at
the others over his shoulder. "I like my beau," she would assert
brazenly, "and if you say a word more, I'll kiss him here and now!"
They all shrieked derisively when the kiss was duly delivered and
Gregory Warren with a self-conscious laugh had escaped to his shower.
But Rachael saw nothing absurd; she told Warren that she loved him, and
let them laugh if they liked!
"Listen, dearest!" he said on the last night of their stay. "Will you
be a darling, and not trail round the links if we play to-morrow?"
"Why not?" asked Rachael absently, fluffing his hair from her point of
vantage on the arm of his chair.
"Well, wouldn't you rather stay up on the porch with the girls?"
"If you men want to swear at your strokes, I decline to be a party to
it!" Rachael said maternally.
"I know. But, darling, it does rather affect our game," Warren said
uncertainly; "that is, you don't play, you see! And it only gets you
hot and mussy, and I love my wife to be waiting when we come up. It
isn't that I don't think you're a darling to want to do it," he added
in hasty concern.
No use. She was deeply hurt. She went to her dressing-table and began
her preparations for the night with a downcast face. Certainly she
wouldn't bother Warren. She only did it because she loved him so. A
tear splashed down on her white hand.
Next day she triumphantly accompanied the golfers. Warren had petted
and coaxed her out of her sulks, and she was radiant again. When they
had said their good-byes to Judy, and were spinning into town in the
car that afternoon, she made him confess that she had not spoiled the
game at all; he couldn't make her believe that Frank and Tom and Peter
had been pretending their pleasure at having her go along!
But later in the summer she realized that Belvedere Bay was smiling
quietly at her bride-like infatuation, and she resented it deeply. The
discovery came about on a lazy summer afternoon when several women,
Rachael among them, were enjoying gossip and iced drinks on the
Parmalees' porch. Rachael had been talking of the emeralds that Warren
was having reset for her, and chanced to observe that Tiffany's man had
said that Warren's taste in jewelry was astonishing.
"Rachael," yawned little Vivian Sartoris, "for heaven's sake talk about
something else than Warren?"
"I talk about him because I like him!" Rachael said. "Better than
anybody else in the world."
"And he likes you better than anybody else in the world, I suppose?"
Vivian said idly.
"He says so," Rachael answered with a demure smile. "Then that settles
it!" Vivian laughed. But she and several of her intimates fell into low
conversation, and the older women were presently interrupted by
Vivian's voice again. "Rachael!" she challenged, "Katrina says that SHE
knows somebody Warren likes as well as he does you!"
"I did not!" protested Katrina, scarlet-cheeked and giggling, giving
Vivian, who sat next her on the wide tiled steps, a violent push.
"Oh, you did, too!" one of the group exclaimed.
Katrina murmured something unintelligible.
"Well, that's the same thing!" Vivian assured her promptly. "She says
now that Warren DID like her as well, Rachael!"
"Well, don't tell me who it is, and break my heart!" Rachael warned
them. But her old sense of humor so far failed her that she could not
help adding curiously, "If Warren ever cared for anybody else, he'll
tell me!"
There was a general burst of laughter, and Rachael colored.
"No, it's nobody," Katrina said hastily. "It's only idiocy!" She and
the other girls laughed in a suppressed fashion for some time. Finally,
to Rachael's secret relief, Gertrude Whittaker energetically demanded
the secret. More giggling ensued. Then Katrina agreed that she would
whisper it in Mrs. Whittaker's ear, which she did. Rachael saw Gertrude
color and look puzzled for a second, then she laughed scornfully.
"What geese girls are! I never heard anything so silly!" Gertrude said.
Several hours later she told Rachael.
She did not tell her without some hesitation. It was so silly--it was
just like that scatter-brained Katrina, she said. Rachael, proudly
asserting that nothing Katrina said would make any difference to her,
nevertheless urged the confidence.
"Well, it's nothing," Gertrude said at last. "This is what Katrina
said: she said that Warren Gregory had liked Rachael Breckenridge as
well as he liked Rachael Gregory! That was all."
Rachael looked puzzled in turn for a minute. Then she smiled proudly,
and colored.
"But that's not true," she said presently. "For I have never seen a man
change as much since marriage as Warren! It's still a perfect miracle
to him. He says himself that he gets happier and happier--"
"Oh, Rachael, you're hopeless!" Gertrude laughed, and Rachael colored
again. She flushed whenever she thought of this particular visit.
Far happier were the days they spent with the Valentines at Clark's
Bar. Rachael loved them all dearly, from little Katharine to the big
quiet doctor; she was not misunderstood nor laughed at here.
They swam, tramped, played cards, and talked tirelessly. Rachael slept
like a child on the wide, windbathed porch. To the great satisfaction
of both doctors she and Alice grew to be devoted friends, and when
Warren's holiday was over, Rachael stayed on, for a longer visit, and
the men came down in the car on Fridays.
On her birthday this year her husband gave Rachael Gregory, and her
heirs and assigns forever, a roomy, plain old colonial farmhouse that
stood near Alice's house, in a ring of great elms, looking down on the
green level surface of the sea. Rachael accepted it with wild delight.
She loved the big, homelike halls, the simple fireplaces, the green
blinds that shut a sweet twilight into the empty rooms. Her own barns,
her own strip of beach, her own side yard where she and Alice could sit
and talk, she took eager possession of them all.
She went into town for chintzes, papers, wicker tables and chairs. She
brought old Mrs. Gregory down for the housewarming, and had all the
Valentines to dinner on the August evening when the Gregorys moved in.
And late that same evening, when Warren's arms were about her, she told
him her great news. There were to be little feet running about Home
Dunes, and a little voice echoing through the new home. "Shall you be
glad, Greg?" she asked, with tears in her eyes; "shall you be just a
little jealous?"
"Rachael!" he said in a quick, tense whisper, afraid to believe her.
And Rachael, caught in his dear arms, and with his cheek against her
wet lashes, felt a triumph and a confidence rise within her, and a
glorious content that it was so.
When the happy suspicion was a happy certainty she told his mother, and
entered at once into the world of advice and reassurance, planning and
speculation that belongs to women alone. Mrs. Valentine was also full
of eager interest and counsel, and Rachael enjoyed their solicitude and
affection as she had enjoyed few things in life. This was a perfectly
natural symptom, that was a perfectly natural phase, she must do this
thing, get that, and avoid a third.
The fact that she was not quite herself in soul or body, that she must
be careful, must be guarded and saved, was a source of strange and
mysterious satisfaction to her as the quick months slipped by. Her
increasing helplessness shut her quite naturally away into a world that
contained only her husband and herself and a few intimate friends, and
Rachael found this absolutely satisfying, and did not miss the social
world that hummed on as busily and gayly as ever without her.
Her baby was born in March, a beautiful boy, like his father even in
the first few moments of his life. Rachael, whose experience had been,
to her astonishment, described complacently by physician and nurses as
"perfectly normal," was slow to recover from the experience in body;
perhaps never quite recovered in soul. It changed all her values of
life--this knowledge of what the coming of a child costs; she told
Alice that she was glad of the change.
"What a fool I've been about the shadows," she said. "This is the
reality! This counts, as it seems to me that nothing else I ever did in
my life counts."
She felt nearer than ever to Warren now, and more dependent upon him.
But a new dignity came into her relationship with him: husband and
wife, father and mother, they wore the great titles of the world, now!
He found her more beautiful than ever, and as the baby was the centre
of her universe, and all her hopes and fears and thoughts for the
child, the old bridal attitude toward him vanished forever, and she was
the more fascinating for that. His love for her rose like a great
flame, and the passionate devotion for which she had been wistfully
waiting for months enveloped her now, when, shaken in body and soul,
she wished only to devote herself to the miracle that was her child.
When he was but six weeks old James Warren Gregory Third terrified the
little circle of his family and friends with a severe touch of summer
sickness. The weather, in late April, was untimely--hot and humid--and
the baby seemed to suffer from it, even in his airy nursery. There were
two hideous days in which he would take no food, and when Rachael heard
nothing but the little wailing voice through the long hours. All night
she sat beside him, hearing Warren's affectionate protests as little as
she heard the dignified remonstrance of the nurse. When day came she
was haggard and exhausted, but still she would not leave her baby. She
knelt at the crib, impressing the tiny countenance upon mind and
heart--her first-born baby, upon whose little features the wisdom of
another world still lingered like a light!
Only a few weeks old, and thousands of them older than he died every
year! Fear in another form had come to Rachael now--life seemed all
fear.
"Oh, Warren, is he very ill?"
"Pretty sick, dear little chap!"
"But, Warren, you don't think--"
"My darling, I don't know!"
She turned desperately to George Valentine when that good friend came
in his professional capacity at five o'clock.
"George, there's been a change--I'm sure of it. Look at him!"
"You ought to take better care of your wife, Greg," was Doctor
Valentine's quiet almost smiling answer to this. "You'll have her sick
next!"
"How is he?" Rachael whispered, as the newcomer bent over the baby.
There was a silence.
"Well, my dear," said Doctor Valentine, as he straightened himself, "I
believe this little chap has decided to remain with us a little while.
Very--much--better!"
Rachael tried to smile, but burst out crying instead, and clung to her
husband's shoulder.
"Let him have his sleep out, Miss Snow," said the doctor, "and then
sponge him off and try him with food!"
"Oh--yes--yes--yes!" the baby's mother said eagerly, drying her eyes.
"And you'll be back later, George?"
"Not unless you telephone me, and I don't think you'll have to," George
Valentine said. Rachael's face grew radiant with joy.
"Oh, George, then he is better!" She was breathing like a runner.
"Better! I think he'll be himself to-morrow. Console yourself, my dear
Rachael, with the thought that you'll go through this a hundred times
with every one of your children!"
"Oh, what a world!" Rachael said, half laughing and half sighing. But
later she said to Warren, "Yet isn't it deliciously worth while!"
He had persuaded her to have some supper, and then they had come back
to the nursery, to see if the baby really would eat. He had awakened,
and had had his bath, and was crying again, but, as Rachael eagerly
said, it was a healthy cry. Trembling and smiling, she took the little
creature in her arms, and when the busy little lips found her breast,
Rachael felt as if she could hardly bear the exquisite incoming rush of
joy again.
Warren, watching her, smiled in deep satisfaction, and Miss Snow
smiled, too. But before she gave herself up to the luxury of possession
the mother's tears fell hot on the baby's delicate gown and tiny face,
and from that hour Rachael loved her son with the passionate and
intense devotion she felt for his father.
Years later, looking at the pictures they took of him that summer, or
perhaps stopped by the sight of some white-coated baby in the street,
she would say to herself,--with that little heartache all mothers know,
"Ah, but Jim was the darling baby!" After the first scare he bloomed
like a rose, a splendid, square, royal boy who laughed joyously when
admitted to the company of his family and friends, and lay contentedly
dozing and smiling when it seemed good to them to ignore him. Rachael
found him the most delightfully amusing and absorbing element her life
had ever known; she would break into ecstatic laughter at his simplest
feat--when he yawned, or pressed his little downy head against the bars
of his crib and stared unsmilingly at her. She would run to the nursery
the instant she arrived home, her eager, "How's my boy?" making the
baby crow, and struggle to reach her, and it was an event to her to
meet his coach in the park, and give him her purse or parasol handle
with which to play. Often old Mary, the nurse, would see Mrs. Gregory
pick up a pair of tiny white shoes that still bore the imprint of the
fat little feet, and touch them to her lips, or catch a crumpled little
linen coat from the drawer, and bury her face in it for a moment.
Even in his tiny babyhood he was companionable to his mother, Rachael
even consenting to the plan of taking him to Home Dunes in June,
although by this arrangement she saw Warren only at week-end intervals
until the doctor's vacation came in August. When he came down, and the
big car honked at the gate, she invariably had the baby in her arms
when she came to meet him.
"Hello, Daddy. Here we are! How are you, dearest?" Rachael would say,
adding, before he could answer her: "We want you to notice our chic
Italian socks, Doctor Gregory; how's that for five months? Take him,
Greg! Go to Daddy, Little Mister!"
"All very well, but how's my wife?" Warren Gregory might ask, kissing
her over the baby's bobbing head.
"Lovely! Do you know that your son weighs fifteen pounds--isn't that
amazing?" Rachael would hang on his free arm, in happy wifely fashion,
as they went back to the house.
"Want to go with me to London?" he asked her one day in the late fall
when they were back in town.
"Why not Mars?" she asked placidly, putting a fresh, stiff dress over
Jimmy's head.
"No, but I'm serious, my dear girl," Warren Gregory said surprised.
"But--I don't understand you. What about Jim?"
"Why, leave him here with Mary. We won't be gone four weeks."
Rachael smiled, but it was an uneasy, almost an affronted, smile.
"Oh, Warren, we couldn't! I couldn't! I would simply worry myself sick!"
"I don't see why. The child would be perfectly safe. George is right
here if anything happened!"
"George--but George isn't his mother!" Rachael fell silent, biting her
lip, a little shadow between her brows. "What is it--the convention?"
she presently asked. "Do you HAVE to go?"
"It isn't absolutely necessary," Warren said dryly. But this was enough
for Rachael, who opened the subject that evening when George and Alice
Valentine were there.
"George, DOES Warren have to go to this London convention, or whatever
it is?"
"Not necessarily," smiled Doctor Valentine. "Why, doesn't he want to
go?"
"I don't want him to go!" Rachael asserted.
"It would be a senseless risk to take that baby across the ocean,"
Alice contributed, and no more was said of the possibility then or at
any other time, to Rachael's great content.
But when the winter season was well begun, and Jimmy delicious in his
diminutive furs, Doctor Gregory and his wife had a serious talk, late
on a snowy afternoon, and Rachael realized then that her husband had
been carrying a slight sense of grievance over this matter for many
weeks.
He had come in at six o'clock, and was changing his clothes for dinner,
half an hour later, when Rachael came into his dressing-room. Her hair
had been dressed, and under her white silk wrapper her gold slippers
and stockings were visible, but she seemed disinclined to finish her
toilette.
"Awful bore!" she said, smiling, as she sat down to watch him.
"What--the Hoyts? Oh, I don't think so!" he answered in surprise.
"They all bore me to death," Rachael said idly. "I'd rather have a chop
here with you, and then trot off somewhere all by ourselves! Why don't
they leave us alone?"
"My dear girl, that isn't life," Warren Gregory said firmly. His tone
chilled her a little, and she looked up in quick penitence. But before
she could speak he antagonized her by adding disapprovingly: "I must
say I don't like your attitude of criticism and ungraciousness, my dear
girl! These people are all our good friends; I personally can find no
fault with them. You may feel that you would rather spend all of your
time hanging over Jim's crib--I suppose all young mothers do, and to a
certain extent all mothers ought to--but don't, for heaven's sake, let
everything else slip out of your life!"
"I know, I know!" Rachael said breathlessly and quickly, finding his
disapproval almost unendurable. Warren did not often complain; he had
never spoken to her in this way before. Her face was scarlet, and she
knew that she wanted to cry. "I know, dear," she added more composedly;
"I am afraid I do think too much about Jim; I am afraid"--and Rachael
smiled a little pitifully--"that I would never want anyone but you and
the boy if I had my own way! Sometimes I wish that we could just slip
away from everybody and everything, and never see these people again!"
If she had expected him to endorse this radical hope she was
disappointed, for Warren responded briskly: "Yes, and we would bore
each other to death in two months!"
Rachael was silent, but over the sinking discouragement of her heart
she was gallantly forming new resolutions. She would think more of her
clothes, she would make a special study of dinners and theatre parties,
she would be seen at the opera at least every other week.
"I gave up the London trip just because you weren't enthusiastic,"
Warren was saying, with the unmistakable readiness of one whose
grievances have long been classified in his mind. "It's
baby--baby--baby! I don't say much--"
"Indeed you don't!" Rachael conceded gratefully.
"But I think you overdo it, my dear!" finished her husband kindly.
Clarence Breckenridge's wife would have assumed a different attitude
during this little talk, but Rachael Gregory felt every word like a
blow upon her quivering heart. She could not protest, she could not
ignore. Her love for him made this moment one of absolute agony, and it
was with the humility of great love that she met him more than halfway.
"You're right, of course, Greg, and it must have been stupid for you!"
Stupid! It seemed even in this moment treason, it seemed desecration,
to use this word of their quiet, wonderful summer together!
"Well," he said, mollified, "don't take what I say too much to heart.
It's only that I love my wife, and am proud of her, and I don't want to
cut out everything else but Jim's shoes and Mary's day off!" He came
over and kissed her, and Rachael clung to him.
"Greg, as if I could be angry with you for being jealous of your son!"
"Trust a woman to put that construction on it," he said, laughing. "You
like to think I'm jealous, don't you?"
"I like anything that makes you seem my devoted adorer," Rachael
answered wistfully, and smiling whimsically she added, "and I am going
to get some new frocks, and give a series of dinners, and win you all
over again!"
"Bully!" approved Doctor Gregory, cheerfully going on with his
dressing. Rachael watched him thoughtfully for a moment before she went
on to her own dressing-room.
Long afterward she remembered that this conversation marked a certain
change in her life; it was never quite glad, confident morning again,
although for many months no definite element seemed altered. Alice and
old Mrs. Gregory had told her, and all the world agreed, that the
coming of her child would draw her husband and herself more closely
together, but, as Rachael expressed it to herself, it was if she alone
moved--moved infinitely nearer to her husband truly, came to depend
upon him, to need him as she had never needed him in her life before.
But there was always the feeling that Warren had not moved. He stood
where he had always been, an eager sympathizer in these new and intense
experiences, but untouched and unaltered himself. For her pain, for her
responsibility, for her physical limitations, he had the most intense
tenderness and pity, but the fact remained that he might sleep through
the nights, enjoy his meals, and play with his baby, when the mood
decreed, untroubled by personal handicap.
Rachael, like all women, thought of these things seriously during the
first year of her child's life, and in February, when Jimmy was
beginning to utter his first delicious, stammering monosyllables, it
was with great gravity that she realized that motherhood was
approaching her again, that at Thanksgiving she would have a second
child. She was wretchedly languid and ill during the entire spring, and
found her mother-in-law's and Alice Valentine's calm acceptance of the
situation bewildering and discouraging.
"My dear, I don't eat a meal in comfort, the entire time!" Alice said
cheerfully. "I mind that more than any other phase!"
"But I am such a broken reed!" Rachael smiled ruefully. "I have no
energy!"
The older woman laughed.
"I know, my dear--haven't I been through it all? Just don't worry, and
spare Greg what you can--"
Rachael could do neither. She wanted Warren every minute, and she
wanted nobody else. Her favorite hours were when she lay on the couch,
near the fire, playing with his free hand, while he read to her or
talked to her. She wanted to hear, over and over again, that he loved
no one else; and sometimes she declined invitations without even
consulting him, "because we're happier by our own fire than anywhere
else, aren't we, dearest?" "Don't tell me about your stupid
operations!" she would smile at him, "talk about--US!"
She went over and over the details of her old life with a certain
morbid satisfaction in his constant reassurance. Her marriage had not
been the cause of Clarence's suicide, nor of Billy's elopement; she had
done her share for them both, more than her share!
Summer came, and she and the baby were comfortably established at Home
Dunes. Warren came when he could, perhaps twice a month, and usually
without warning. If he promised her the week-ends, she felt aggrieved
to have him miss one, so he wired her every day, and sent her books and
fruit, letters and magazines every week, and came at irregular
intervals. Alice and George Valentine and their children, her garden,
her baby, and the ocean she loved so well must fill this summer for
Rachael.