"Five nights a week!" supplemented Peter Pomeroy.
"Five nights a week," the old lady agreed, nodding, "she makes him
comfortable, quiets the house, and telephones around generally
that Clarence has come home with a splitting headache, and they
can't come--to dinner, or cards, or whatever it may be. But of
course I don't claim that she loves him, nor pretends to. I can
imagine the scornful look with which she goes about it."
"Well, why does she stand it?" said Mrs. Barker Emory, a handsome
but somewhat hard-faced woman, with a manner curiously compounded
of eagerness and uncertainty.
"Y'know, that's what I've been wondering," an Englishman added
interestedly.
"Why, what else would she do?" Miss Vanderwall asked briskly.
"Rachael's a perfectly adorable and brilliant and delightful
creature," summarized Peter Pomeroy, "but she's not got a penny
nor a relative in the world that I've ever heard of! She's got no
grounds for divorcing Clarence, and if she simply wanted to get
out, why, now that she's brought Billy up, introduced her
generally, whipped the girl into some sort of shape and got her
the right sort of friends, I suppose she might get out and
welcome!"
"No, Billy honestly likes her," objected Vivian Sartoris.
"She doesn't care for her enough to see that there's fair play,"
Elinor Vanderwall said quickly.
"Why doesn't she take a leaf from Paula's book," somebody
suggested, "and marry again? She could go out West and get a
divorce on any grounds she might choose to name."
"Well, Rachael's a cold woman, and a hard woman--in a way," Miss
Vanderwall said musingly, after a pause, when the troubles of the
Breckenridges kept the group silent for a moment. "But she's a
good sport. She gets a home, and clothes, and the club, and a car
and all the rest out of it, and she knows Billy and Clarence do
need her, in a way, to run things, and to keep up the social end.
More than that, Clarence can't keep up this pace long--he's going
to pieces fast--and Billy may marry any day--"
"I understand Joe Pickering's a little bit touched in that
quarter," said Mrs. Torrence.
"Yes--well, Clarence will never stand for THAT," somebody said.
Little Miss Sartoris neglected the Torrence grandson long enough
to say decidedly: "She wouldn't LOOK at Joe Pickering! Joe drinks, and Billy's had
enough of that with her father. Besides, he has no money of his
own! He's impossible!"
"Where's the mother all this time?" asked the Englishman. "I mean
to say, she's living, isn't she, and all that?"
"Very much alive," Miss Vanderwall said. "Married to an Italian
count--Countess Luca d' Asafo. His people have cut him off;
they're Catholics. She has two little girls; there's an uncle
who's obliged to leave property to a son, and it serves Paula
quite right, I think. Where they live, or what on, I haven't the
remotest idea. I saw her in a car on Fifth Avenue, not so long
ago, with two heavy little black-haired girls; she looked sixty."