A day later Dennison brought up the card of Miss Margaret Clay. Rachael
turned it slowly in her hands, pondering, with a quickened heartbeat
and a fluctuating color. Magsie had been often a guest in Rachael's
house a year ago, but she had not been to see Rachael for a long time
now. They were to meet, they were to talk alone together--what about?
There was nothing about which Rachael Gregory cared to talk to Margaret
Clay.
A certain chilliness and trembling smote Rachael, and she sat down. She
wished she had been out. It would be simple enough to send down a
message to that effect, of course, but that was not the same thing.
That would be evading the issue, whereas, had she been out, she could
not have held herself responsible for missing Magsie.
Well, the girl was in the neighborhood, of course, and had simply come
in to say now do you do? But it would mean evasions, and affectations,
and insincerities to talk with Magsie; it would mean lying, unless
there must be an open breach. Rachael found herself in a state of
actual dread of the encounter, and to end it, impatient at anything so
absurd, she asked Dennison to bring the young lady at once to her own
sitting-room.
This was the transformed apartment that had been old Mrs. Gregory's,
running straight across the bedroom floor, and commanding from four
wide windows a glimpse of the old square, now brave in new feathery
green. Rachael had replaced its dull red rep with modern tapestries,
had had it papered in peacock and gray, had covered the old, dark
woodwork with cream-colored enamel and replaced the black marble mantel
with a simply carved one of white stone. The chairs here were all
comfortable now; Rachael's book lay on a magazine-littered table, a
dozen tiny, leather-cased animals, cows, horses, and sheep, were
stabled on the hearth, and the spring sunlight poured in through
fragile curtains of crisp net. Over the fireplace the great oil
portrait of Warren Gregory smiled down, a younger Warren, but hardly
more handsome than he was to-day. A pastel of the boys' lovely heads
hung opposite it, between two windows, and photographs of Jim and Derry
and their father were everywhere: on the desk, on the little grand
piano, under the table lamp. This was Rachael's own domain, and in
asking Magsie to come here she consciously chose the environment in
which she would feel most at ease.
Upstairs came the light, tripping feet. "In here?" said the fresh,
confident voice. Magsie came in.
Rachael met her at the door, and the two women shook hands. Magsie
hardly glanced at her hostess, her dancing scrutiny swept the room and
settled on Warren's portrait.
She looked her prettiest, Rachael decided miserably. She was all in
white: white shoes, white stockings, the smartest of little white
suits, a white hat half hiding her heavy masses of trimly banded golden
hair. If her hard winter had tired Magsie--"The Bad Little Lady" was
approaching the end of its run--she did not show it. But there was some
new quality in her face, some quality almost wistful, almost anxious,
that made its appeal even to Warren Gregory's wife.
"This is nice of you, Magsie," Rachael said, watching her closely, and
conscious still of that absurd flutter at her heart. Both women had
seated themselves, now Rachael reached for the silk-lined basket where
she kept a little pretence of needlework, and began to sew. There were
several squares of dark rich silks in the basket, and their touch
seemed to give her confidence.
"What are you making?" said Magsie with a rather touching pretence at
interest. Rachael began to perceive that Magsie was ill at ease, too.
She knew the girl well enough to know that nothing but her own affairs
interested her; it was not like Magsie to ask seriously about another
woman's sewing.
"Warren likes silk handkerchiefs," explained Rachael, all the capable
wife, "and those I make are much prettier than those he can find in the
shops. So I pick up pieces of silk, from time to time, and keep him
supplied."
"He always has beautiful handkerchiefs," said Magsie rather faintly. "I
remember, years ago, when I was with Mrs. Torrence, thinking that Greg
always looked so--so carefully groomed."
"A doctor has to be," Rachael answered sensibly. There were no girlish
vapors or uncertainties about her manner; she had been the man's wife
for nearly seven years; she was in his house; she need not fear Magsie
Clay.
"I suppose so," Magsie said vaguely.
"What are your plans, Magsie?" Rachael asked kindly, as she threaded a
needle.
"We close on the eighteenth," Magsie announced.
"Yes, so I noticed." Rachael had looked for this news every week since
the run of the play began. "Well, that was a successful engagement,
wasn't it?" she asked. It began to be rather a satisfaction to Rachael
to find herself at such close quarters at last. What a harmless little
thing this dreaded opponent was, after all!
"Yes, they were delighted," Magsie responded still in such a
lackadaisical, toneless, and dreary manner that Rachael glanced at her
in surprise. Magsie's eyes were full of tears.
"Why, what's the matter, my dear child?" she asked, feeling more sure
of herself every instant.
Her guest took a little handkerchief from her pretty white leather
purse, and touched her bright brown eyes with it lightly.
"I'll tell you, Rachael," said she, with an evident effort at
brightness and naturalness, "I came here to see you about something
to-day, but I--I don't quite know how to begin. Only, whatever you
think about it, I want you to remember that your opinion is what
counts; you're the one person who--who can really advise me, and--and
perhaps help me and other people out of a difficulty."
Rachael looked at her with a twinge of inward distaste. This rather
dramatic start did not promise well; she was to be treated to some
youthful heroics. Instantly the hope came to her that Magsie had some
new admirer, someone she would really consider as a husband, and wanted
to make of Rachael an advocate with Warren, who, in his present absurd
state of infatuation, might not find such a situation to his taste.
"I want to put to you the case of a friend of mine," Magsie said
presently, "a girl who, like myself, is on the stage." Rachael wondered
if the girl really hoped to say anything convincing under so thin a
disguise, but said nothing herself, and Magsie went on: "She's pretty,
and young--" Her tone wavered. "We've had a nice company all winter,"
she remarked lamely.
This was beginning to be rather absurd. Rachael, quite at ease, raised
mildly interrogatory eyes to Magsie.
"You'll go on with your work, now that you've begun so well, won't
you?" she asked casually.
"W--w--well, I suppose so," Magsie answered dubiously, flushing a
sudden red. "I--don't know what I shall do!"
"But surely you've had an unusually encouraging beginning?" pursued
Rachael comfortably.
"Oh, yes, there's no doubt about that, at least!" Magsie said. About
what was there doubt, then? Rachael wondered.
She deliberately allowed a little silence to follow this remark,
smiling, as if at her own thoughts, as she sewed. The younger woman's
gaze roved restlessly about the room, she leaned from her chair to take
a framed photograph of the boys from a low bookcase, and studied it
with evidently forced attention.
"They're stunning!" she said in an undertone as she laid it aside.
"They're good little boys," their mother said contentedly. "I know that
the queerest persons in the world, about eating and drinking, are
actresses, Magsie," she added, smiling, "so I don't know whether to
offer you tea, or hot soup, or an egg beaten up in milk, or what! We
had a pianist here about a year ago, and--"
"Oh, nothing, nothing, thank you, Rachael!" Magsie said eagerly and
nervously. "I couldn't--"
"The boys may be in soon," Rachael remarked, choosing to ignore her
guest's rather unexpected emotion.
This seemed to spur Magsie suddenly into speech. She glanced at the
tall old moonfaced clock that was slowly ticking near the door, as if
to estimate the time left her, and sat suddenly erect on the edge of
her chair.
"I mustn't stay,"' she said breathlessly. "I--I have to be back at the
theatre at seven, and I ought to go home first for a few minutes. My
girl--she's just a Swedish woman that I picked up by chance--worries
about me as if she were my mother, unless I come in and rest, and take
an eggnog, or something." She rallied her forces with a quite visible
effort. "It was just this, Rachael," said Magsie, looking at the fire,
and twisting her white gloves in desperate embarrassment, "I know
you've always liked me, you've always been so kind to me, and I can
only hope that you'll forgive me if what I say sounds strange to you. I
thought I could come here and say it, but--I've always been a little
bit afraid of you, Rachael--and I"--Magsie laughed nervously--"and I'm
scared to death now!" she said simply.
Something natural, unaffected, and direct in her usually self-conscious
and artificial manner struck Rachael with a vague sense of uneasiness.
Magsie certainly did not seem to be acting now; there were real tears
in her pretty eyes, and a genuine break in her young voice.
"I'm going straight ahead," she said rapidly, "because I've been
getting up my courage this whole week to come and see you, and now,
while Greg is in Albany, I can't put it off any longer. He doesn't know
it, of course, and, although I know I'm putting myself entirely at your
mercy, Rachael, I believe you'll never tell him if I ask you not to!"
"I don't understand," Rachael said slowly.
"I've been thinking it all out," Magsie went on, "and this is the
conclusion--at least, this is what I've thought! You have always had
everything, Rachael. You've always been so beautiful, and so much
admired. You loved Clarence, and married him--oh, don't think I'm rude,
Rachael," the girl pleaded eagerly, as Rachael voiced an inarticulate
protest, "because I'm so desperately in earnest, and s-s-so desperately
unhappy!" Her voice broke on a rush of tears, but she commanded it, and
hurried on. "You've always been fortunate, not like other women, who
had to be second best, but ALWAYS the cleverest, and ALWAYS the
handsomest! I remember, when I heard you were to marry Greg, I was just
sick with misery for two or three days! I had seen him a few weeks
before in Paris, but he said nothing of it, didn't even mention you.
Don't think I was jealous, Rachael--it wasn't that. But it seemed to me
that you had everything! First the position of marrying a Breckenridge,
then to step straight into Greg's life. You'll never know how I--how I
singled you out to watch--"
"Just as I have singled you out this horrible winter," Rachael said to
herself, in strange pain and bewilderment at heart. Magsie watched her
hopefully, but Rachael did not speak, and the girl went on:
"When I came to America I thought of you, and I listened to what
everyone said of you. You had a splendid boy, named for Greg, and then
another boy; you were richer and happier and more admired than ever!
And Rachael--I know you'll forgive me--you were so much FINER than
ever--when I met you I saw that. I couldn't dislike you, I couldn't do
anything but admire, with all the others. I remember at Leila's
wedding, when you wore dark blue and furs, and you looked so lovely!
And then I met Greg again. And truly, truly, Rachael, I never dreamed
of this then!"
"Dreamed of what?" Rachael said with dry lips. The girl's voice, the
darkening room, the dull, fluttering flames of the dying fire, seemed
all like some oppressive dream.
"Dreamed--" Magsie's voice sank. Her eyes closed, she put one hand over
her heart, and pressed it there. "Then came my plan to go on the
stage," she said, taking up her story, "and one day, when I was
especially blue, I met Greg. We had tea together. I've never forgotten
one instant of that day! He tried to telephone you, but couldn't get
you; we just talked like any friends. But he promised to help me, he
was so interested, and I was homesick for Paris, and ready to die in
this awful city! After that you gave me a dinner, and then we had
theatricals, and then Bowman placed me, and I had to go on the road.
But I saw Greg two or three times, and one day--one day last
winter"--again her voice faltered, as if she found the memories too
poignant for speech--"we drove in the Park," she said dreamily; "and
then Greg saw how it was."
Rachael sat silent, stunned.
"Oh, Rachael," the girl said passionately. "Don't think I didn't fight
it! I thought of you, I tried to think for us all. I said we would
never see each other again, and I went away--you know that! For months
after that day in the Park we hardly saw each other. And then, last
summer, we met again. And he talked to me so wonderfully, Rachael,
about making the best of it, about being good friends anyway--and I've
lived on that! But I can't live on that forever, Rachael."
"You've been seeing each other?" Rachael asked stupidly.
"Oh, every day! At tea, you know, or sometimes especially before you
came back, at dinner. And, Rachael, nobody will ever know what it's
done for me! Greg's managed all my business, and whenever I was utterly
discouraged and tired he had the kindest way of saying: 'Never mind,
Magsie, I'm tired and discouraged, too!'" Magsie's face glowed happily
at the memory of it. "I know I'm not worthy of Greg's friendship," she
said eagerly. "And all the time I've thought of you, Rachael, as having
the first right, as being far, far above me in everything! But--I'm
telling you everything, you see--" Magsie interrupted herself to
explain.
"Go on!" Rachael urged, clearing her throat.
"Well, it's not much. But a week or two ago Greg was talking to me
about your being eager to get the boys into the country early this
year. He looked awfully tired that afternoon, and he said that he
thought he would close this house, and live at the club this summer,
and he said 'That means you have a dinner date every night, Magsie!'
And suddenly, Rachael--I don't know what came over me, but I burst out
crying"--Magsie's eyes filled now as she thought of it--"and I said,
'Oh, Greg, we need each other! Why can't we belong to each other! You
love me and I love you; why can't we give up our work and the city and
everything else, and just be happy!'"
"And what did--Warren say?" Rachael asked in a whisper.
"Oh, Rachael! That's what I've been remembering ever since!" Magsie
said. "That's what made me want to come to you; I KNEW you would
understand! You're so good; you want people to be happy," said Magsie,
fighting tears again and trying to smile. "You have everything: your
sons, your position, your beauty--everything! I'm--I'm different from
some women, Rachael. I can't just run away with him. There is an
honorable and a right way to do it, and I want to ask you if you'll let
us take that way!"
"An honorable way?" Rachael echoed in an unnatural voice.
"Well--" Magsie widened innocent eyes. "Nobody has ever blamed YOU for
taking it, Rachael!" she said simply. "And nobody ever blamed Clarence,
with Paula!"
Rachael, looking fixedly at her, sat as if turned to stone.
"You are brave, Magsie, to come and tell me this," she said at last
quietly.
"You are kind to listen to me," Magsie answered with disarming
sincerity. "I know it is a strange thing to do." She laughed nervously.
"Of course, I know THAT!" she added. "But it came to me that I would
the other day. Greg and I were talking about dreams, you know--things
we wanted to do. And we talked about going away to some beach, and
swimming, and moonlight, and just rest--and quiet--"
"I see," Rachael said.
"Greg said, 'This is only a dream, Magsie, and we mustn't let ourselves
dream!'" Magsie went on. "But--but sometimes dreams come true, don't
they?"
She stopped. There was an unearthly silence in the room.
"I've tried to fight it, and I cannot," Magsie presently said in a
small, tired voice; "it comes between me and everything I do. I'm not a
great actress--I know that. I don't even want to be any more. I want to
go away where no one will ever see me or hear of me again. I've heard
of this--feeling"--she sent Rachael a brave if rather uncertain
smile--"but I never believed in it before! I never believed that
when--when you care"--Rachael was grateful to be spared the great
word--"you can't live or breathe or think anything"--again there was an
evasion--"but the one thing!"
And with a long, tired sigh, again she relapsed into silence. Rachael
could find nothing to say.
"Honestly, HONESTLY," the younger woman presently added, "you mustn't
think that either one of us saw this coming! We were simply carried
away. It was only this year, only a few months ago, that I began to
think that perhaps--perhaps if you understood, you would set--Greg
free. You want to live just for the boys, you love the country, and
books, and a few friends. Your life would go on, Rachael, just as it
has, only he would be happy, and I would be happy. Oh, my God," said
Magsie, with quivering lips and brimming eyes, "how happy I would be!"
Rachael looked at her in impassive silence.
"At all events," the visitor said more composedly, "I have been
planning for a week to come to you, Rachael, and have this talk. I may
have done more harm than good--I don't know; but from the instant I
thought of it I have simply been drawn, as if I were under a spell. I
haven't said what I meant to, I know that. I haven't said"--her smile
was wistful and young and sweet, as, rising from her chair, she stood
looking down at Rachael--"how badly I feel that it--it happens so,"
said Magsie. "But you know how deeply I've always admired you! It must
seem strange to you that I would come to you about it. But Ruskin,
wasn't it, and Wagner--didn't they do something like this? I knew, even
if things were changed between you and Greg, that you would be big
enough and good enough to help us all to find the--the solution, if
there is one!"
Rachael stood up, too, so near her guest that she could put one hand on
Magsie's shoulder. The girl looked up at her with the faith of a
distressed child.
"I'm glad you did come, Magsie," said Rachael painfully, "although I
never dreamed, until this afternoon, that--this--could possibly have
been in Warren's thoughts. You speak of--divorce, quite naturally, as
of course anyone may, to me. But I never had thought of it. It's a sad
tangle, whatever comes of it, and perhaps you're right in feeling that
we had better face it, and try to find the solution, if, as you say,
there is one."
And Rachael, breathing a little hard, stood looking down at Magsie with
something so benign, so tragic, and so heroic in her beautiful face
that the younger woman was a little awed, even a little puzzled, where
she had been so sure. She would have liked to put her arms about her
hostess's neck, and to seal their extraordinary treaty with a kiss, but
she knew better. As well attempt to kiss the vision of a ministering
angel. Rachael, one arm on Magsie's shoulder, her whole figure and her
face expressing painful indecision, had never seemed so remote, so
goddesslike.
"And--and you won't tell him of this?" faltered Magsie.
"Ah--you must leave that to me," Rachael said with a sad smile.
For a few seconds longer they looked at each other. Then Rachael
dropped her arm, and Magsie moved a little. The visitor knew that
another sentence must be in farewell, but she felt strangely awkward,
curiously young and crude. Rachael, except for the falling of her arm,
was motionless. Her eyes were far away, she seemed utterly unconscious
of herself and her surroundings. Magsie wanted to think of one more
thing to say, one clinching sentence, but everything seemed to be said.
Something of the other woman's weariness and coldness of spirit seemed
to communicate itself to her; she felt tired and desolate. It seemed a
small and insignificant matter that she had had her momentous talk with
Rachael, and had succeeded in her venture. Love was failing her, life
was failing.
"I hope--I haven't distressed you--too awfully, Rachael," Magsie
faltered. She had not thought of herself, a few hours ago, as
distressing Rachael at all. She had thought that Rachael might be
scornful, might be cold, might overwhelm her with her magnificence of
manner, and shame her for her daring. She had come in on a sudden
impulse, and had had no time for any thought but that her revelation
would be exciting and dramatic and astonishing. She was sincerely
anxious to have Warren freed, but not so swept away by emotion that she
could not appreciate this lovely setting and her own picturesque
position in the eyes of her beautiful rival.
"Oh, no!" Rachael answered, perfunctorily polite, and with her eyes
still fixed darkly on space. And as if half to herself, she added, in a
breathless, level undertone:
"It all rests with Warren!"
Presently Magsie breathed a faint "Good-bye," following it with an
almost inaudible murmur that Dennison would let her out. Then the white
figure was gone from the gloom of the room, and Rachael was alone.
For a time she was so dazed, so emotionally exhausted by the event of
the last hour, that she stood on, fixed, unseeing, one hand pressed
against her side as if she stopped with it the mouth of a wound.
Occasionally she drew a long, sharp breath as the dying sometimes
breathe.
"It all rests with Warren," she said presently, half-aloud, and in a
toneless, passive voice. And slowly she turned and slowly went to the
window.
The room was dark, but twilight lingered in the old square, and
home-going men and women were filing across it. The babies and their
nurses were gone now, there were only lounging men on the benches.
Lumbering green omnibuses rocked their way through the great stone
arch, and toward the south, over the crowded foreign quarter, the pink
of street lamps was beginning to battle with the warm purple and blue
that still hung in the evening sky. The season had been long delayed,
but now there was a rustle of green against the network of boughs; a
few warm days would bring the tulips and the fruit blossoms.
What a sweet, good, natural world it was in which to be happy! With its
wheeling motor cars, its lovers seated in high security for the long
omnibus ride, its laborers pleasantly ready for the home table and the
day's domestic news! The chattering little Jewish girls from one of the
uptown department stores were gay with shrilly voiced plans; the
driver, riding lazily home on a pile of empty bags, had no quarrel with
the world; the smooth-haired, unhatted Italian women from the Ghetto,
with shawls wrapped over their full breasts, and serene black-eyed
babies toddling beside them, were placidly content with the run of
their days. It remained for the beautiful woman in the drawing-room to
look with melancholy eyes upon the springtime, and tear out her heart
in an agony no human power could cure.
"It all rests with Warren," Rachael said. Magsie was nothing, she was
nothing; the world, the boys, were nothing. It was for Warren to hold
their destinies in his hands and decide for them all. No use in raging,
in reasoning, in arguing. No use in setting forth the facts, the
palpable right and wrong. No use in bitterly asking the unanswering
heavens if this were right and just, this system that could allow any
young girl to feel any married man, any father, her natural prey. She
had come to love Warren just as in a few years she might come to love
someone else. That was all permissible; regrettable perhaps for
Warren's wife, an unmistakable calamity for Warren's boys, but, from
Magsie's standpoint, comprehensible and acceptable. If Warren were
free, Magsie was well within her rights; if he were not, Rachael was
the last woman in the world to dispute it.
After a while Rachael began to move mechanically about the room. She
sat down at her desk and wrote a few checks; the boys little first
dancing lessons must be paid for, the man who mended the clock, the
woman who had put all her linen in order. She wrote briskly, reaching
quickly for envelopes and stamps, and, when she had finished, closed
the desk with her usual neatness. She telephoned the kitchen; had she
told Louise that Doctor Gregory might come home at midnight? He might
be at home for breakfast. Then she glanced about the quiet room, and
went softly out, through the inner door, to her own bedroom adjoining.
She walked on little usual errands between bureau and wardrobe,
steadily proceeding with the changing of her gown. Once she stopped
short, in the centre of the floor, and stood musing for a few silent
minutes, then she said, aloud and lightly:
"Poor Magsie--it's all so absurd!"
If for a few seconds her thoughts wandered, they always came swiftly
back. Magsie and Warren had fallen in love with each other--wanted to
marry each other. Rachael tried to marshal her whirling thoughts; there
must be simple reason somewhere in this chaotic matter. She had the
desperate sensation of a mad-woman trying to prove herself sane. Were
they all crazy, to have got themselves into this hideous fix? What was
definite, what facts had they upon which to build their surmises?
Warren was her husband, that was one fact; Warren loved her, that was
another. They had lived together for nearly eight years, planned
together, they knew each other now, heart and soul. And there were two
sons. These being facts for Rachael, what facts had Magsie? Rachael's
heart rose on a wild rush of confidence. Magsie had no basis for her
pretension. Magsie was young, and she had madly and blindly fallen in
love. There was her single claim: she loved. Rachael could not doubt it
after that hour in the sitting-room. But what pitiable folly! To love
and to admit love for another woman's husband!
Thinking, thinking, thinking, Rachael lay awake all night. She composed
herself a hundred times for sleep, and a hundred times sleep evaded
her. Magsie--Warren--Rachael. Their names swept round and round in her
tired brain. She was talking to Magsie, so eloquently and kindly; she
was talking to Warren. Warren was shocked at the mere thought of her
suspicions, had seen nothing, had suspected nothing, couldn't believe
that Rachael could be so foolish! Warren's arms were about her, he was
going to take her and the boys away. This was a bad atmosphere for
wives, this diseased and abnormal city, Warren said. She was buying
steamer coats for Derry and Jim--
Magsie! Again the girl's tense, excited face rose before Rachael's
fevered memory. "You mustn't think either one of us saw this coming!"
Rachael rose on her elbow, shook her pillows, flashed a night-light on
her watch. Quarter to three. It was a rather dismal hour, she thought,
not near enough either midnight or morning. Tossing so long, she would
be sleepless all night now.
Well, what was marriage anyway? Was there never a time of serenity, of
surety? Was any pretty, irresponsible young woman free to set her heart
upon another woman's husband, the father of another woman's children?
Rachael suddenly thought of Clarence. How different the whole thing had
seemed then! Clarence's pride, Clarence's child, had they been so hurt
as her pride and her children were to be hurt now?
She must not allow herself to be so easily frightened. She had been
thinking too many months of the one thing; she could not see it fairly.
Why, Magsie had been infinitely more dangerous in the early days of her
success; there was nothing to fear from the simple, apprehensive Magsie
of this afternoon! The only sensible thing was to stop thinking of it,
and to go to sleep. But Rachael felt sick and frightened, experienced
sensations of faintness, sensations like hunger. Her eyes seemed
painfully open, she could not shut them. Her breath came fitfully. She
sighed, turned on her side. She would count one hundred, breathing deep
and with closed eyes. "Sixteen, seventeen!" Rachael sat suddenly erect,
and looked at her watch again. Twenty-two minutes past three.
Morning broke with wind and rain; the new leaves in the square were
tossing wildly; sleet struck noisily against the windows. Rachael,
waking exhausted, after not more than an hour's sleep, went through the
process of dressing in a weary daze. The boys, as was usual, came in
during the hour, full of fresh conversation and eager to discuss plans
for the day. Jim tied strings from knob to knob of her bureau drawers,
Derry amused himself by dashing a chain of glass beads against the foot
of the bed until the links gave and the tiny balls rolled in every
direction over the floor.
"Never mind," Rachael consoled the discomfited junior, "Pauline will
come in and pick them all up. Mother doesn't care!"
Derry, however, howled on unconsoled, and Rachael, stopping,
half-dressed, to take him in her arms, mused while she kissed him over
the tiny sorrow that could so convulse him. Was she no more than a
howling baby robbed of a toy? Nothing could be more real than Derry's
sense of loss, no human being could weep more desolately or more
unreasonably. Were her love and her life no more than a string of
baubles, scattered and flung about by some irresponsible hand? Was
nothing real except the great moving sea and the arch of stars above
the spring nights? Life and death, and laughter and tears, how
unimportant they were! Eight years ago she had felt herself to be
unhappy; now she knew that in those days she had known neither sorrow
nor joy. Since then, what an ecstasy of fulfilled desire had been hers!
She had lived upon the heights, she had tasted the fullest and the
sweetest of human emotions. What other woman--Cleopatra, Helen, all the
great queens of countries and of art--had known more exquisite delight
than hers had been in those first days when she had waited for Warren
to come to her with violets?
The morning went on like an ugly dream. At nine o'clock Rachael sent
down an untouched breakfast tray. Mary took the boys out into the
struggling sunshine. The house was still.
Rachael lay on her wide couch, staring wretchedly into space. Her head
ached. The moonfaced clock struck a slow ten, the hall clock downstairs
following it with a brisk silver chime. Vendors in the square called
their wares; the first carts of potted spring flowers were going their
rounds.
Shortly after ten o'clock she heard Warren run upstairs and into his
room. She could hear his voice at the telephone; he wanted the
hospital--Doctor Gregory wished to speak to Miss Moore.
Miss Moore? Doctor Gregory would be there at eleven ... please have
everything ready. Miss Moore, who was a veteran nurse and a privileged
character, asked some question as to the Albany case; Warren wearily
answered that the patient had not rallied; it was too bad--too bad.
Once it would have been Rachael's delight to soothe him, to give him
the strong coffee he needed before eleven o'clock, to ask about the
poor Albany man. Now she hardly heard him. Beginning to tremble, she
sat up, her heart beating fast.
"Warren!" she called in a shaken voice.
He came to her door immediately, and they faced each other, his
perfunctory greeting arrested by her look.
"Warren," said Rachael with a desperate effort at control, "I want you
to tell me about--about you and Magsie Clay."
Instantly his face darkened. He gazed back at her steadily, narrowing
his eyes.
"What about it?" he asked sharply.
Rachael knew that she was growing angry against her passionate
resolution to keep the conversation in her own hands.
"Magsie came to see me yesterday," she said, panting.
Had she touched him? She could not tell. There was no wavering in his
impassive face.
"What about it?" he asked again after a silence.
His wife pushed the rich, tumbled hair from her face with a wild
gesture, as if she fought for air.
"What about it?" she echoed, in a constrained tone, still with that
quickened shallow breath. "Do you think it is CUSTOMARY for a girl to
come to a man's wife, and tell her that she cares for him? Do you think
it is CUSTOMARY for a man to have tea every day with a young actress
who admits she is in love with him--"
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Warren said, his face a dull
red.
"Do you mean to tell me that you don't know that Margaret Clay cares
for you," Rachael asked in rising anger, "and that you have never told
her you care for her--that you and she have never talked about it, have
never wished that you were free to belong to each other!"
"You will make yourself ill!" Warren said quietly, watching her.
His tone brought Rachael abruptly to her senses. Fury and accusation
were not her best defence. With Warren calm and dignified she would
only hurt her claim by this course. In a second she was herself again,
her breath grew normal, she straightened her hair, and with a brief
shrug walked slowly from the room into her own sitting-room adjoining.
Following her, Warren found her looking down at the square from the
window.
"If you are implying anything against Magsie, you are merely making
yourself ridiculous, Rachael," he said nervously. "Neither Magsie nor I
have forgotten your claim for a single instant. If she came here and
talked to you, she did so absolutely without my knowledge."
"She said so," Rachael admitted, heart and mind in a whirl.
"From a sense of protection--for her," Warren went on, "I did NOT tell
you how much we have come to mean to each other. I am
extremely--unwilling--to discuss it now. There is nothing to be said,
as far as I am concerned. It is better not to discuss it; we shall not
agree. That Magsie could come here and talk to you surprises me. I
naturally don't know what she said, or what impression she gave you. I
would only remind you that she is young--and unhappy." He glanced at
the morning paper he carried in his hand with an air of casual
interest, and added in a moderate undertone, "It's an unhappy business!"
Rachael stood as if she had been shot through the heart--motionless,
dumb. She felt the inward physical convulsion that might have followed
an actual shot. Her heart seemed to be struggling under a choking
flood, and black circles moved before her eyes.
Watching her, Warren presently began to enlarge upon the subject. His
tone was that of frank and unashamed, if regretful, narrative. Rachael
perceived, with utter stupefaction, that although he was sorry, and
even angry at being drawn into this talk, he was far from being
confused or ashamed.
"I am sorry for this, Rachael," he began in the logical tone she knew
so well. "I think, frankly, that Magsie made a mistake in coming to
you. The situation isn't of my making. Magsie, being a woman, being
impulsive and impatient, has taken the law into her own hands." He
shrugged. "She may have been wise, or unwise, I can't tell!"
He paused, but Rachael did not speak or stir.
Warren had rolled up the paper, and now, in his pacing, reaching the
end of the room, he turned, and, thrusting it into his armpit, came
back with folded arms.
"Now that this thing has come up," he said in a practical tone, "it is
a great satisfaction to me to realize how reasonable a woman you are. I
want you to know just how this whole thing happened. Magsie has always
been a most attractive girl to me. I remember her in Paris, years ago,
young, and with a pretty little way of turning her head, and effective
eyes."
"I know all this, Warren!" Rachael said wearily.
"I know you do. But let me recapitulate it," he said, resuming in a
businesslike voice: "When I met her at Hoyt's wedding I knew right away
that we had a personality to deal with--something rare! I remember
thinking then that it would be interesting to see whom she cared for,
what that volcanic little heart would be in love--Time went on; we saw
more of her. I met her, now and then, we had the theatricals, and the
California trip. One day, that fall, in the Park, I took her for a
drive, innocently enough, nothing prearranged. And I remember asking if
any lucky man had made an impression upon her."
Warren smiled, his eyes absent. Rachael's look of superb scorn was
wasted.
"It came to me in a flash," he went on, "that Magsie had come to care
for me. Poor little Magsie, she hadn't meant to, she hadn't seen it
coming. I remember her looking up at me--she didn't have to say a word.
'I'm sorry, Magsie,' I said. That was all. The touching thing was that
even in that trouble she turned to me. We talked it over, I took her
back to her hotel, and very simply she said, 'Kiss me, once, Greg, and
I'll be good!' After that I didn't see her for a long, long time.
"It seemed to me a sacred charge--you can see that. I couldn't doubt
it, the evidence was right there before my eyes, and thinking it over,
I couldn't be much surprised. We were in the fix, and of course there
was nothing to be done. She went away and that was the end of it, then.
But when I saw her again last winter the whole miserable business came
up. The rest, of course, she told you. She is unhappy and rebellious,
or she would never have dared to come to you! I can't understand her
doing so, now, for Magsie is a good little sport, Rachael; she knows
you have the right of way. The affair has always been with that
understanding. However much I feel for Magsie, and regret the whole
thing--why, I am not a cad!" He struck her to her heart with his
friendly smile. "You brought the subject up; I don't care to discuss
it," he said. "I don't question your actions, and all I ask is that you
will not question mine!"
"Perhaps--the world--may some day question them, Warren!" Rachael tried
to speak quietly, but she was beginning to be frightened at her own
violence. She shook with actual chill, her mouth was dry and her cheeks
blazing.
"The world?" He shrugged. "I can hardly see that it is the world's
business that you go your way and I go mine!" he said reasonably. He
glanced at his watch. "Perhaps you will be so good as to say no more
about it?" he suggested. "I have no time, now, anyway. Marriage--"
"Warren!" Rachael interrupted hoarsely. She stopped.
"Marriage," he went on, "never stands still! A man and woman are
growing nearer together hourly, or they are growing apart. There is no
need, between reasonable beings, for recriminations and bitterness. A
man is only a man, after all, and if I have been carried off my feet by
Magsie--as I admit I have been--why, such things have happened before!
When she and my wife--who might have protected my dignity--meet to
discuss the question of their feelings, and their rights, then I
confess that I am beyond my depth."
He took a deep chair and sat back, his knees crossed, his elbow on the
chair arm, his chin resting on his hand, as one conscious of scoring a
point.
"And what about the boys' feelings and rights?" Rachael said in a low,
tense tone.
"There you are!" Warren exclaimed. "It's all absurd on the face of
it--the whole tangle!"
His wife looked at him in grave, dispassionate scrutiny. Of what was he
made, this handsome, well-groomed man of forty-eight? What fatal
infection had poisoned heart and brain? She saw him this morning as a
stranger, and as a most repellent stranger.
"But it is a tangle in which one still sees right and wrong, Warren,"
she said, desperately struggling for calm. "Human relationships can't
be discussed as if they were the moves on a chess-board. I make no
claim for myself--the time has gone by when I could do so--but there is
honor and decency in the world, there is simple uprightness! Your
attentions, as a married man, can only do Magsie harm, and your
daring"--suddenly she began restlessly to pace the floor as he had
done--"your daring in coming here to me, to tell me that any other
woman has a claim on you," she said, beginning to breathe violently,
"only shows me how blind, how drugged you are with--I don't know what
to call it--with your own utter lawlessness! What right has Margaret
Clay compared to MY right? Are my claims, and my sons' claims, to be
swept aside because a little idle girl of Magsie's age chooses to flirt
with my husband? What is marriage, anyway--what is parenthood? Are you
mad, Warren, that you can come here to our home and talk of
'tangles'--and rights? Do you think I am going to argue it with you,
going to belittle my own position by admitting, for one second, that it
is open to question?"
She flashed him one blazing look, then resumed her walking and her
angry rush of words.
"Why, if some four-year-old child came in here and began to contend for
Derry's place," Rachael asked passionately, "how long would we
seriously consider his right? If I must dispute the title of Magsie
Clay this year, why not of Jennie Jones next year, of Polly Smith the
year after that? If--"
"Now you are talking recklessly," Warren Gregory said quietly, "and you
have entirely lost sight of the point at issue. Nobody is attempting a
controversy with you."
The cool, analytical voice robbed Rachael of all her fire. She sat
down, and was silent.
"What you say is quite true," pursued Warren, "and of course, if a
woman chooses to stand on her RIGHTS--if it becomes a question of legal
obligation--"
"Warren! When was our marriage that?"
"I don't say it was that! I am protesting because YOU talk of rights
and titles. I only say that if the problem has come down to a mere
question of what is LEGAL, why, that in itself is a confession of
failure!"
"Failure!" she echoed with white lips.
"I am not speaking of ourselves, I tell you!" he said, annoyed. "But
can any sane person in these days deny that when a man and woman no
longer pull together in double harness, our world accepts an honorable
change?"
Rachael was silent. These had been her words eight years ago.
"They may have reasons for not making that change," Warren went on
logically; "they may prefer to go on, as thousands of people do, to
present a perfectly smooth exterior to the world. But don't be so
unfair as to assume that what hundreds of good and reputable men and
women are doing every day is essentially wrong!"
"You know that you may say this--to me, Warren," she said with a leaden
heart.
"Anybody may say it to anybody!" he answered irritably. "Tying a man
and a woman together doesn't necessarily make them--"
She interrupted with a quick, breathless, "WARREN!"
"Well!" Again he shrugged his shoulders and again glanced at his watch.
"It seems to me that you shouldn't have spoken of the matter if you
were not prepared to discuss it!" he said.
Rachael felt the room whirling. She could neither see nor feel anything
now but the fury that possessed her. Perhaps twice in her life before,
never with him, had she so given way to anger.
"_I_ shouldn't have spoken of it, Warren!" she echoed. "I should have
borne it, and smiled, and said nothing! Perhaps I should! Perhaps some
women would have done that--"
"Rachael!" he interrupted quickly. But she swept down his words in the
wild tide of her own.
"Warren!" she said with deadly decision, "I'm not that sort of woman.
You've had your fun--now it's my turn! Now it's my turn!" Rachael
repeated in a voiceless undertone as she rapidly paced the room. "Now
you can turn to the world, and SEE what the world thinks! Let them know
how often you and Magsie have been together, let them know that she
came here to ask me to set you free, and then see what the general
verdict is! I'm not going to hush this up, to refrain from discussing
it because you don't care to, because it hurts your feelings! It SHALL
be discussed, and you shall be free! You shall be free, and if you
choose to put Magsie Clay here in my place, you may do so!"
"Rachael!" he said angrily. And he caught her thin wrists in his hands.
"Don't touch me!" she said, wrenching herself free. "Don't touch me,
you cruel and wicked and heartless--! Go to Magsie! Tell her that I
sent you to her! Take your hands off me, Warren--"
Standing back, discomfited, he attempted reason.
"Rachael! Don't talk so! I don't know what to make of you! Why, I never
saw you like this. I never heard you--"
The door of her room closed behind her. She was gone. A long silence
fell in the troubled room where their voices had warred so lately.
Warren looked at his watch, looked at her door. Then he went out the
other door, and downstairs, and out of the house. Rachael heard him go.
She was still breathing fast, still blind to everything but her own
fury. She would punish him, she would punish him. He should have his
verdict from the world he trusted so serenely; he should have his
Magsie.
The clocks struck eleven: first the slow clock in her sitting-room,
then the quick silvery echo from downstairs. Rachael glanced about
nervously. The Bank--the boys' lunches--the trunks--
She went downstairs. In the little breakfast-room off the big
dining-room the array of Warren's breakfast waited. Old Mary, with the
boys, had just come in the side door.
"Mary," Rachael said quickly, "I want you to help me. Pack some clothes
for the boys and me, and give them some luncheon. We are going down to
Clark's Hills on the two o'clock train--"
"My God! Mrs. Gregory, you look very bad, my dear!" said Mary.
The unconscious endearment, the shock and concern visible on Mary's
homely, honest face were too much for Rachael. Her face changed to
ivory, she put one hand to her throat, and her lips quivered.
"Help me--some coffee--Mary!" she whispered. "I think--I'm dying!"
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
Warren went to the hospital and performed his operation. It was a long,
hard strain for all concerned, and the nurses told each other afterward
that you could see Doctor Gregory's heart was in it, he looked as bad
as the child's father and mother did. It was after one o'clock when the
surgeons got out of their white gowns, and Warren was in the cold,
watery sunlight of the street before he realized that he had had
nothing to eat since his dinner in Albany last night.
He looked about vaguely; there were plenty of places all about where he
could get a meal. He saw Magsie--
Magsie often drove about in hansom-cabs--they were one of her delights;
and more than once of late she had come to meet Warren at some
hospital, or even to pick him up at the club. But this was the first
time that she had done so without prearrangement.
She leaned out of the cab, a picture of youth and beauty, and waved a
white glove. How did she know he was in here? she echoed his question.
He had written her from Albany that he would operate at Doctor Berry's
hospital this morning she reminded him. And where was he going now?
"I'm awfully worried this morning, honey-girl," said Warren, "and I
can't stop to play with nice little Magsies in new blue dresses! My
head is blazing, and I believe I'll go home--"
"When did you get in, and where did you have breakfast?" she asked with
pretty concern. "Greg, you've not had any? Oh, I believe he hasn't had
any! And it's after one, and you've been operating! Get STRAIGHT in--"
"No, dear!" he smiled as she moved to one side of the seat, and packed
her thin skirts neatly under her, "not to-day! I'll--"
"Warren Gregory!" said Magsie sternly, "you get right straight in here,
and come and have your breakfast! Now, what's nearest? The Biltmore!"
She poked the upper door with her slim umbrella. "To the Biltmore!"
commanded Magsie.
At a quiet table Warren had coffee and eggs and toast, and more coffee,
and finally his cigar. The color came back into his face, and he looked
less tired.
Magsie was a rather simple little soul under her casing of Parisian
veneer, and was often innocently surprised at the potency of her own
charm. That men, big men and wise men, were inclined to take her artful
artlessness at its surface value was a continual revelation to her.
Like Rachael, she had gone to bed the night before in a profoundly
thoughtful frame of mind, a little apprehensive as to Warren's view of
her call, and uneasy as to the state in which she had left his wife.
But, unlike Rachael, Magsie had not been wakeful long. The
consideration of other people's attitudes never troubled her for more
than a few consecutive minutes. She had been genuinely stirred by her
talk that afternoon, and was honestly determined to become Mrs. Warren
Gregory; but these feelings did not prevent her from looking back, with
thrilled complacence, to the scene in Rachael's sitting-room, and from
remembering that it was a dramatic and heroic thing for a slender,
pretty girl in white to go to a man's wife and plead for her love. "No
harm done, anyway!" Magsie had reflected drowsily, drifting off to
sleep; and she had awakened conscious of no emotion stronger than a
mild trepidation at the possibility of Warren's wrath.
Dainty and sweet, she came to meet him halfway, and now sat
congratulating herself that he was soothed, fed, and placidly smoking
before their conversation reached deep channels.
"Greg, dear, I've got a horrible confession to make!" began Magsie when
this propitious moment arrived.
"You mean your call on Rachael?" he asked quickly, the shadow coming
back to his eyes. "Why did you do it?"
Magsie was conscious of being frightened.
"Was she surprised, Greg?"
"I don't know that she was surprised. Of course she was angry."
"Well," Magsie said, widening her childish eyes, "didn't you EXPECT her
to be angry?"
"I didn't expect her to take any attitude whatever," Warren said with a
look half puzzled and half reproving.
"Greg!" Magsie was quite honestly astonished. "What did you expect her
to do? Give you a divorce without any feeling whatever?"
There was no misunderstanding her. For a full minute Warren stared at
her in silence. In that minute he remembered some of his recent talks
with Magsie, some of his notes and presents, he remembered the plan
that involved a desert island, sea-bathing, moonlight, and solitude.
"I think, if you had been listening to us," Magsie went on, as he did
not answer, "you could not have objected to one word I said! And
Rachael was lovely, Greg. She told me she would not contest it--"
"She told you THAT?"
"Well, she said several times that it must be as you decide." Magsie
dimpled demurely. "And I was--nice, too!" she asserted youthfully. "I
didn't tell her about this--and this!" and with one movement of her
pretty hand Magsie indicated the big emerald on her ring finger and the
heavy bracelet of mesh gold about her wrist. Suddenly her face
brightened, and with an eager movement she leaned across the narrow
table, and caught his hand in both her own. "Ah, Greg," she said
tenderly, "does it seem true, that after all these months of talking,
and hoping, you and I are going to belong to each other?"
"But I have no idea that Rachael is seriously considering a divorce,"
Warren said slowly. "Why should she? She has no cause!"
"She thinks she has!" Magsie said triumphantly.
"She isn't the sort of woman to think things without reason," Warren
said.
"She doesn't have to think," Magsie assured him with the same air of
satisfaction; "she knows! Everyone knows how much you and I have been
together: everyone knows that you backed 'The Bad Little Lady'--"
"Everyone has no right to draw conclusions from that!" Warren said.
Magsie shrugged her shoulders.
"And what do we care, Greg? I don't care what the world thinks as long
as I have you! Let them have the letters, let them buzz--we'll be miles
away, and we won't care! And in a year or two, Greg, we'll come back,
and they'll all flock about us--you'll see! That's the advantage of a
name like the Gregory name! Why, who among them all dropped Clarence on
Paula's account, or Rachael on Clarence's?"
"Your going to see her has certainly--complicated things," Warren said
reflectively.
"On the contrary," Magsie said confidently, "it has cleared things up.
It had to come, Greg; every time you and I talked about it we brought
the inevitable nearer! Why, you weren't ever at home. Could that have
gone on forever? You had no home, no wife, no freedom. I was simply
getting sick of the whole thing! Now at least we're all open and
aboveboard; all we've got to do is quietly set the wheels in motion!"
"Well, I'll tell you what must be the first step, Magsie," Warren said
after thought; "I'm going home now to see Rachael. I'll talk the whole
thing over with her. Then I'll come to see you."
"Positively?" asked Magsie.
"Positively."
"You won't just telephone that you're delayed, Greg, and leave me to
wonder and worry?" the girl asked wistfully. "I'll wait until any
hour!" He looked at her kindly, with a gentleness of aspect new in
their relationship.
"No, dear. It's nearly three now. I'll come take you to tea at, say,
half-past four. I am operating again to-night, at nine, and SOME TIME
I've got to get in a bath and some sleep. But there'll be time for tea."
Magsie chattered gayly, but Warren was almost silent as they gathered
together their belongings, and went out to the street. He called her
another cab and beckoned to the man who was waiting with his own car.
"In a few months, perhaps," said Magsie at parting, "when he's all
tired and cross, I'll make him coffee AT HOME, and see that he gets his
rest and quiet whenever he needs it!"
She did not like his answer.
"Rachael's a wonder at that sort of thing," he said. Magsie had not
heard him speak so of his wife for months. "In fact, she spoils me," he
added.
"Spoils you by leaving you alone in this hot town for six months out of
every year?" Magsie laughed lightly. "Good-bye, dear! At half-past
four?"
But even while he nodded Warren Gregory was resolving, in his soul,
that he must never see Magsie Clay again. His world was strange and
alarming; was falling to pieces about him. He was thirsting for
Rachael: her voice, her reproaches, her forgiveness. In seven minutes
he would be at home talking to his wife--
Dennison reported, with an impassive face, that Mrs. Gregory had left
two hours ago with the children. He believed that they were gone to the
Long Island house, sir. Warren, stupefied, went slowly upstairs to have
the news confirmed by Pauline. Mrs. Gregory had taken Mary and Millie,
sir. And there was a note.
Of course there was a note. To emotion like Rachael's emotion silence
was the only unthinkable thing. She had planned a dozen notes, written
perhaps five. The one she left was brief:
MY DEAR WARREN: I am leaving with the children for Clark's Hills. You
will know best what steps to take in the matter of the freedom you
desire. I will cooperate in any way. I have written Magsie that I will
not contest your divorce. If for any reason you come to Clark's Hills,
I will of course be obliged to see you. I ask you not to come. Please
spare me another such talk as ours this morning. I have plenty of money.
Always faithfully, R. G.
Warren read it, and stood in the middle of her bedroom with the sheet
crushed in his hand. Pauline had put the empty room in order--in
terrible and desolate order. Usually there were flowers in the jars and
glass bowls, a doll's chair by the bed, and a woolly animal seated in
the chair; a dainty litter of lace scattered on Rachael's sewing-table.
Usually she was there when he came in tired, to look up beautiful and
concerned: "Something to eat, dear, or are you going to lie down?"
Standing here with the note that ended it all in his hand, he wondered
if he was the same man who had so often met that inquiry with an
impatient: "Just please don't bother me, dear!" Who had met the
succeeding question with, "I don't know whether I shall dine here or
not!"
It was half-past three. In an hour he would see Magsie.
In that hour Magsie had received Rachael's note, and her heart sang.
For the first time, in what she would have described as this "funny,
mixed-up business," she began seriously to contemplate her elevation to
the dignity of Warren Gregory's wife. Rachael's note was capable of
only one interpretation: she would no longer stand in their way. She
was taking the boys to the country, and had given Warren the definite
assurance of her agreement to his divorce. If necessary, on condition
that her claim to the children was granted, she would establish her
residence in some Western city, and proceed with the legal steps from
there.
Magsie was frightened, excited, and thrilled all at once. She felt as
if she had set some enormous machinery in motion, and was not quite
sure of how it might be controlled. But on the whole, complacency
underlay all other emotions. She was going to be married to the richest
and nicest and most important man of her acquaintance!
At heart, however, her manner belied her; Magsie had little
self-confidence. She lived in a French girl's terror that youth would
leave her before she had time to make a good match. If nobody knew
better than Magsie that she was pretty, also nobody knew better that
she was not clever. Men tired of her dimples and giggles and round
eyes. Bryan Masters admired her, to be sure, but then Bryan Masters was
also a divorced man, and an actor whose popularity was already on the
wane. Richie Gardiner admired her in his pathetic, hopeless way, and
Richie was young and rich. But Magsie shuddered away from Richie's
coughing and fainting; his tonics and his diet had no place in her
robust and joyous scheme of life. Besides, all Magsie's world would
envy her capture of Greg; he belonged to New York. And Richie's father
had been a miner, and his mother was "impossible!"
Magsie dressed exquisitely for the tea; it seemed to her that she had
never been so pleasantly excited in her life. She felt a part of the
humming, crowded city, the spring wind and the uncertain sky. Life was
thrilling and surprising.
Half-past four o'clock came, and Warren came. They were in Magsie's
little apartment now, and she could go into his arms. Warren was rather
quiet as they went out to tea, but Magsie did not notice it.
As a matter of fact, the man was bewildered; he was tired and worried
about his work; but that was the least of it. He could not believe that
the day's dazing and flying memories were real--the Albany train,
Rachael's room, the hospital, Magsie and the Biltmore breakfast-room,
Rachael's room again, and now again Magsie.
Were the lawsuits about which one read in the papers based on no more
than this? Apparently not. Magsie seemed perfectly confident of the
outcome; Rachael had not shown any doubt. One woman had practically
presented him to the other; the law was to be consulted.
The law? How would those letters of Magsie's read if the law got hold
of them? His memory flew from note to note. These hastily scratched
words would be flung to the wind of gossip, that wind that blew so
merrily among the houses where he was known. He had called Magsie his
"wonder-child" and his "good little bad girl!" He had given her rings
and sashes and a gold purse and a hat and white fox furs--any one gift
he had made her was innocent enough in itself! But taken with all the
others--
Magsie was in high feather; some tiresome preliminaries, and the day
was won! She had not planned so definite a campaign, but it was all
coming about in a fashion that more than fulfilled her plans. So, said
Magsie to herself, stirring her tea, that was to be her fate: Paris,
America, the stage, and then a rich marriage? Well, so be it. She could
not complain.
"Greg," she said a dozen times, "isn't it all like a dream?"
To Warren Gregory, as he walked down the street after leaving her at
the theatre, it was indeed like a dream, a frightful dream. He could
hardly credit his senses, hardly believe that all these horrible things
were true, that Rachael knew all about Magsie, and that Magsie was
quietly thinking of divorce and marriage! Rachael, in such a rage,
rushing away with the boys--why, he had made no secret of his
admiration for Magsie from Rachael, he had often talked to her
enthusiastically of Magsie! And here she was furiously offering him his
freedom.
Well, what had he done after all? What a preposterous fuss about
nothing. His thoughts were checked and chilled by the memory of letters
that Magsie had. Magsie could prove nothing by those letters--
But what a fool they would make him! Warren Gregory remembered the case
of a dignified college professor whose private correspondence had
recently been given to the press, and he felt a cool shudder run down
his spine. Rachael, reading those letters! It was unthinkable! She and
the world would think him a fool! It came to him suddenly that she and
the world would be right. He was a fool, and it was a fool's paradise
in which he had been wandering: to take his wife and home and sons for
granted, and to spend all his leisure at the feet of a calculating
little girl like Magsie!
"What did you expect her to do?" Magsie had asked. What would any sane
man expect her to do? Smile with him at the new favorite's charms, and
take up her life in loneliness and neglect?
And now, Rachael was gone, and he stood promised to Magsie. So much was
clear. Rachael would fight for her divorce. Magsie would fight for her
husband.
"Oh, my God, how did we ever get into this sickening, sickening mess?"
Warren said out loud in his misery.
He had not dined, he did not think of dinner as he paced the windy,
cool city streets hour after hour. Nine struck, and he hailed a cab,
and went to the hospital, moving through his work like a man in a
dream. The woman whose life he chanced to save throughout all her days
would say she had had a lovely doctor. Warren hardly saw her. He
thought only of Magsie, Magsie who had in her possession a number of
compromising letters, every one sillier than the last--Magsie, who
expected him to divorce his wife and marry her. He was in such a state
of terror that he could not think. Every instant brought more disquiet
to his thoughts; he felt as if, when he stepped out into the street
again, the newsboys might be calling his divorce, as if honor and
safety and happiness were gone forever.
He did not see Magsie again that night, but walked and walked, entering
his house sick and haggard, and sleeping the hours restlessly away.
At nine o'clock the next morning he went to the telephone, and called
the Valentine house. Doctor Valentine was not at home, he was informed.
Was Mrs. Valentine there? Would she speak to Doctor Gregory?
A long pause. Then the maid's pleasant impersonal voice again. Mrs.
Valentine begged Doctor Gregory to excuse her.
Warren felt as if he had been struck in the face. Under the eyes of
irreproachable and voiceless servants he moved about his silent house.
The hush of death seemed to him to lie heavy in the lovely rooms that
had been Rachael's delight, and over the city that was just breaking
into the green of spring. He dressed, and left directions with unusual
sternness; he would be at the hospital, or the club, if he was wanted.
He would come home to dinner at seven.
"Mrs. Gregory may be back in a day or so, Pauline," he said. "I wish
you'd keep her rooms in order--flowers, and all that."
"Yes, sir," Pauline said respectfully. "Excuse me, Doctor--" she added.
"Well?" said Warren as she paused.
"Excuse me, Doctor, but I telephoned Mrs. Prince yesterday, as Mrs.
Gregory suggested," Pauline went on timidly, "and she would be glad to
have me come at any time, sir."
Warren's expression did not change.
"You mean that Mrs. Gregory dismissed you?" he suggested.
"Yes, sir!" said Pauline with a sniff. "She paid me for--"
"Then I should make an arrangement with Mrs. Prince, by all means!"
Warren said evenly. But a deathlike terror convulsed his heart. Rachael
had burned her bridges!
He sent Magsie a note and flowers. He was "troubled by unexpected
developments," he said, and too busy to see her to-day, but he would
see her to-morrow.
CHAPTER II
Magsie had awakened to a sense of pleasure impending. It was many
months since she had felt so important and so sure of herself. Her
self-esteem had received more than one blow of late. Bowman had
attempted to persuade her to take "The Bad Little Lady" on the road;
Magsie had indignantly declined. He had then offered her a poor part in
a summer farce; about this Magsie had not yet made up her mind.
Now, she said to herself, reading Warren's note over her late breakfast
tray, perhaps she might treat Mr. Bowman to the snubbing she had long
been anxious to give him. Perhaps she might spend the summer quietly,
inconspicuously, somewhere, placidly awaiting the hour when she would
come out gloriously before the world as Warren Gregory's wife. Not at
all a bad prospect for the daughter of old Mrs. Torrence's companion
and housekeeper.
A caller was announced and was admitted, a thin, restless woman who
looked thirty-five despite or perhaps because of the rouge on her
sunken cheeks and the smart gown she wore. The years had not treated
Carol Pickering kindly: she was an embittered, dissatisfied woman now,
noisily interested in the stage as a possible escape from matrimony for
herself, and hence interested in Magsie, with whom she had lately
formed a sort of suspicious and resentful intimacy.
Joe Pickering had entirely justified in eight years the misgivings felt
toward him by everyone who had Carol Breckenridge's interests at heart.
His wife had come to him rich, and a few hours after their wedding her
father's death had more than doubled the fortune left her by her
grandmother. But it would be a sturdy legacy indeed that might hope to
resist such inroads as the aimless and ill-matched young couple made
upon it from their first day together.
Idly acquiring, idly losing, being cheated and robbed on all sides,
they drifted through an unhappy and exciting year or two, finally
investing much of their money in bonds, and a handsome residue in that
favorite dream of such young wasters: the breeding of horses for the
polo market. "What if we lose it all--which we won't--we've still got
the bonds!" Joe Pickering, leaden pockets under his eyes, his weak lips
hanging loose, had said with his unsteady laugh. What inevitably
followed, and what he had not foreseen, was that he should lose more
than half the bonds, too. They were seriously crippled now, and began
to quarrel, to hate each other for a greater part of the time; and
their little son's handsome dark eyes fell on some sad scenes. But now,
in the child's sixth year, they were still together, still appearing in
public, and still, in that mysterious way known only to their type,
rushing about on motor parties, buying champagne, and entertaining
after a fashion in their cramped but pretentious apartment.
Of late Billy had been seriously considering the stage. She was but
twenty-six, after all, and she still had a girl's thirst for admiration
and for excitement. She had called on Magsie, entertained the young
actress, and the two had discovered a certain affinity. Magsie was
delighted to see her now. They greeted each other affectionately, and
Magsie, sending out her tray, settled herself comfortably in her
pillows, and took the interested Carol entirely into her confidence,
with the single reservation of Warren Gregory's name.
"Handsome, and rich as Croesus, and his wife would divorce him, and
belongs to one of the best families," summarized Billy. "Why, I think
you would be a fool to do anything else!"
"S'pose I would," dimpled Magsie in interesting embarrassment.
"Have a heart, and tell me who it is," teased Carol, slipping her foot
from her low shoe to study a hole in the heel of her silk stocking.
"Oh, I couldn't!" Magsie protested.
"Well, I shall guess, if I can," the other woman warned her. And
presently she added: "I'll tell you what, if you do give it up, I'm
going straight to Bowman, and ask for your place in your new show!
There's nothing about it that I couldn't do, and I believe he might
give me a chance! I'll tell you what: you wait until the last moment
before you tell him, and then he can't be prepared in advance. And I'll
risk having Jacqueline make me a couple of gowns, and be all ready to
jump in. I'll learn the part, too," said Billy kindling; "you'll coach
me in it, won't you?"
"Of course I will!" Magsie agreed, but she did not say it heartily. The
conversation was not extremely pleasing to Magsie at the moment. She
loved Warren, of course, but it was certainly a good deal to resign,
even to marry a Gregory of New York! Why, here was Billy, who had been
a rich man's daughter, and had married the man of her choice, and had a
nice child, mad to step into her shoes!
And it was a painful reflection that probably Billy could do it. Billy
was smart, she had a dash and finish about her that might well catch a
manager's eye, and more than that, it was a rather poor part. It was no
such part as Magsie had had in "The Bad Little Lady." There was a
comedian in this cast, and a matinee idol for a leading man, and Magsie
must content herself with a part and a salary much smaller than was
given to either of these.
She thought of Warren, and also fleetingly of Bryan Masters, and even
of Richie Gardiner, and decided that it was a bitter and empty world,
and she wished she had never been born. Bowman would be smart enough to
see that he need pay Billy almost no salary, that she might be a
discovery--the discovery for which all managers are always so
pathetically on the alert, and that in case the play failed--Magsie was
sure, this morning, that it would be the flattest failure ever seen on
Broadway--he would have no irate leading lady to pacify; Billy would be
only too grateful for the opportunity to try and fail.
"Farce is the most difficult thing in the world to play," she said, now
clinging desperately to her little distinction.
"Oh, I know that!" Billy answered absently. She would have a smart
apartment on the Drive, and dear little old Breck should drive with her
in the Park, and go to the smartest boys' school in the country--
"And of course, I may not marry!" said Magsie.
Carol hardly heard her. She was looking about the comfortable hotel
apartment, all in a pretty disorder now, with Magsie's various
possessions scattered about. There were pictures of actors on the
mantel, heavily autographed, and flowers thrust carelessly into vases.
There was a great sheaf of Killarney roses; the envelope that had held
a card still dangled from their stems. Carol would have given a great
deal to know whose card had been torn from it, and whose name was
ringing just now in Magsie's brain. She even cared enough to
tentatively interrogate Anna, Magsie's faithful Swedish woman.
"Well, perhaps we shall have a change here, Anna?" Billy said brightly
but cautiously, when she was in the hall. She wondered whether the
woman would let her slip a bill into her hand.
"Maybe," said Anna impassively.
"How shall you like keeping house for a man and wife?" Billy pursued.
"Aye do that bayfore," remarked Anna, responsive to this kindly
interest; "aye ban hahr savan yahre, now, en des country."
"And do you like Miss Clay's young man?" Billy said boldly. But at this
shift of topic the light faded from Anna's infantile blue eyes, and a
wary look replaced it.
"She got more as one feller," she remarked discouragingly. Billy,
outfaced, departed, feeling rather contemptible as she walked down the
street. Joe was at home; she had left him in bed when she left the
house at ten o'clock, and little Breck had been rather listlessly
chatting with the colored boy in the elevator, and had begged his
mother to take him downtown. Billy was really sorry for the little boy,
but she did not know what to do about it; she wondered what other women
did with little lonely boys of six. If she went home, it would not
materially better the situation; the cook was cross to-day anyway, and
would be crosser if Joe shouted for his breakfast in his usual
ungracious manner. She could not go to Jacqueline and talk dresses
unless she was willing to pay something on the last bill.
Billy thought of the bank, as she always did think of the bank, when
her reflections reached this point. There were the bonds, not as many
as they had been, but still fine, salable bonds. She could pay the
cook, pay the dressmaker, take Breck home a game, look at hats, spend
the day in exactly the manner that pleased her best. She had promised
Joe that they would discuss the sale of the next one together when they
had sold the last bond, a month ago, and avoid it if possible. But what
difference did one make?--a paltry fifty dollars a year! Perhaps it
would be possible not to tell Joe--
Billy looked in her purse. She had a dollar bill and fifty cents, more
than enough to take her to the bank in appropriate style. She signalled
a taxicab.
Magsie did not see Warren the next day, but they had tea and a talk on
the day following. She told him gayly that he needed cheering, and
presently took him into Tiffany's, where Warren found himself buying
her a coveted emerald. Somehow during the afternoon he found himself
talking and planning as if they really loved each other, and really
were to be married. But it was an unsatisfactory hour. Magsie was
excited and nervous, and was rather relieved than otherwise that her
interviews with her admirer were necessarily short. As a matter of
fact, the undisciplined little creature was overtired and unreasonable.
She would have given her whole future for a quiet week in bed, with
frivolous novels to read, and Anna to spoil her, no captious manager to
please, no exhausting performances to madden her with a sense of her
own and other people's imperfections, and no Warren to worry her with
his long face.
Added to Magsie's trials, in this dreadful week, was an interview with
the imposing mother of young Richie Gardiner, a handsome, florid lady,
who had inherited a large fortune from the miner husband whose fortunes
she had gallantly shared through some extraordinary adventures in Nome.
Mrs. Gardiner idolized her son; she was not inclined to be generous to
the little flippant actress who had broken his heart. Richie would not
go to the healing desert, he would not go to any place out of sound of
Miss Clay's voice, out of the light of Miss Clay's eyes. Mrs. Gardiner
had no objection to Magsie's person, nor to her profession, the fact
being that her own origin had been even more humble than that of Miss
Clay, but she wanted the treasure of her boy's love to be appreciated;
she had been envying, since the hour of his birth, the woman who should
win Richie's love.
Stout, overdressed, deep-voiced, she came to see the actress, and they
both cried; Magsie said that she was sorry--she was so bitterly
sorry--but, yes, there was someone else. Mrs. Gardiner shrugged
philosophically, wiped her eyes, drew a deep breath. No help for it!
Presently she heavily departed; her solid weight, her tinkling
spangles, and her rainbow plumes vanished into the limousine, and she
was whirled away.
Magsie sighed; these complications were romantic. What could one do?
CHAPTER III
Silent, abstracted, unsmiling, Rachael got through the days. She ate
what Mary put before her, slept fairly well, answered the puzzled boys
the second time they addressed her. She buckled sandals, read fairy
tales, brushed the unruly heads, and listened to the wavering prayers
day after day. Her eyes were strained, her usually quick, definite
motions curiously uncertain; otherwise there was little change.
Alice, in spite of her husband's half protest, went down to Clark's
Hills, deciding in the first hour that the worst of the matter was all
over and Rachael quite herself, gradually becoming doubtful, and
returning home in despair. Her tearful account took George down to the
country house a week later.
Rachael met them; they dined with her. She was interested about the
Valentine children, interested in their summer plans. She laughed as
she quoted Derry's latest ventures with words. She walked to her gate
to wave them good-bye on Monday morning, and told Alice that she was
counting the days until the big family came down. But George and Alice
were heavy hearted as they drove away.
"What IS it?" asked Alice, anxious eyes upon her husband's kind, homely
face. "She's like a person recovering from a blow. She's not sick; but,
George, she isn't well!"
"No, she's not well," George agreed soberly. "Bad glitter in her eyes,
and I don't like that calm for fiery Rachael! Well, you'll be down here
in a week or two--"
"Last week," Alice said not for the first time, "she only spoke of--of
the trouble, you know--once. We were just going out to dinner, and she
turned to me, and said: 'I didn't like my bargain eight years ago,
Alice, and I tore my contract to pieces! Now I'll pay for it.'"
"And you said?"
"I said, 'Oh, nonsense, Rachael. Don't be morbid! There's no parallel
between the cases!'"
"H'm!" The doctor was silent for a long time. "I don't know what Greg's
doing," he added after thought.
"The question is, what is Magsie doing?" said Alice.
"In my opinion, Rachael's simply blown up," George submitted.
"Magsie told her they had talked of marriage!" Alice countered. George
gave an incredulous snort.
"Well, then, Magsie lied," he said firmly.
"She really isn't the lying type, George. And there's no question that
Greg and she did see each other every day, and that he wrote her
letters and gave her presents!" Alice finished rather timidly, for her
husband's face was a thunder-cloud. The old car flew along at
thirty-five miles an hour.
"Damn FOOL!" George presently muttered. Alice glanced at him in
sympathetic concern.
"George, why don't you see him?"
George preserved a stern silence for perhaps two flying minutes, then
he sighed.
"Oh, he'll come to me fast enough when he needs me! Lord, I've pulled
old Greg out of trouble before." His whole face grew tender as he
added: "You know Greg is a genius, Alice; he's not like other men!"
"I should hope he wasn't!" said Alice with spirit.
"We--ll!" She was sorry for her vehemence when George merely shook his
head and ended the conversation on the monosyllable. After a while she
attempted to reopen the subject.
"If geniuses can act that way, I'd rather have our girls marry grocers!"
The girls' father smiled absently.
"Oh, well, of course!" he conceded.
"Greg is no more a genius than you are, George," argued Alice.
"Oh, Alice, Alice!" he protested, really distressed, "don't ever let
anyone hear you say that! Why, that only shows that you don't know what
Greg is. Lord, the man seems to have an absolute instinct for bones;
he'll take a chance when not one of the rest will! No, you mark my
words, Alice, Greg has let Magsie Clay make a fool of him; he's been
overtired and nervous--we've all seen that--but he's as innocent of any
actual harm in this thing as our Gogo!"
"Innocent!" sniffed Alice. "He'll break Rachael's heart with his
innocence, and then he'll marry Magsie Clay--you'll see!"
"He'll come to me to get him out of it within the month--you'll see!"
George retorted.
"He'll keep out of your way!" Alice predicted confidently. "I know
Greg. He has to be perfect or nothing."
But it was only ten days later that Warren Gregory walked up the steps
of the Valentine house at about ten o'clock on a silent, hazy morning.
George had not yet left the house for the day. The drawing-room
furniture was swathed in linen covers, and a collection of golf irons,
fishing rods, canoe paddles, and tennis rackets crowded the hallway.
The young Valentines were departing for the country to-morrow, and
their excited voices echoed from above stairs.
Warren had supposed them already gone. Rachael was alone, then, he
reflected, alone in that desolate little country village! He nodded to
the maid, and asked in a guarded tone for Doctor Valentine. A moment
later George Valentine came into the drawing-room, and the two men
exchanged a look strange to their twenty years of affectionate
intercourse. Warren attempted mere cold dignity; he was on the
defensive, and he knew it. George's look verged on contempt, thinly
veiled by a polite interest in his visitor's errand.
"George," said Warren suddenly, when he had asked for Alice and the
children, and an awkward silence had made itself felt; "George, I'm in
trouble. I--I wonder if you can help me out?"
He could hardly have made a more fortunate beginning; halting as the
words were, and miserable as was the look that accompanied them, both
rang true to the older man, and went straight to his heart.
"I'm sorry to hear it," George said.
Warren folded his arms, and regarded his friend steadily across them.
"You know Rachael has left me, George?" he began.
"I--well, yes, Alice went down there first, and then I went down,"
George said. "We only came back ten days ago." There was another brief
silence.
"She--she hasn't any cause for this, you know, George," Warren said,
ending it, after watching the other man hopefully for further
suggestion.
"Hasn't, huh?" George asked thoughtfully, hopefully.
"No, she hasn't!" Warren reiterated, gaining confidence. "I've been a
fool, I admit that, but Rachael has no cause to go off at half-cock,
this way!"
"What d'you mean by that?" George asked flatly. "What do you
mean--you've been a fool?"
"I've been a fool about Magsie Clay," Warren admitted, "and Rachael
learned about it, that's all. My Lord! there never was an instant in my
life when I took it seriously, I give you my word, George!"
"Well, if Rachael takes it seriously, and Magsie takes it seriously,
you may find yourself beginning to take it seriously, too," George said
with a dull man's simple evasion of confusing elements.
"Rachael may get her divorce," Warren said desperately. "I can't help
that, I suppose. I've got a letter from her here--she left it. I don't
know what she thinks! But I'll never marry Margaret Clay--that much is
settled. I'll leave town--my work's ended, I might as well be dead. God
knows I wish I were!"
"Just how far have you gone with Magsie?" George interrupted quietly.
"Why, nothing at all!" Warren said. "Flowers, handbags, things like
that! I've kissed her, but I swear Rachael never gave me any reason to
think she'd mind that."
"How often have you seen her?" George asked in a somewhat relieved
tone. "Have you seen her once a week?"
"Oh, yes! I say frankly that this was a--a flirtation, George. I've
seen her pretty nearly every day---"
"But she hasn't got any letters--nothing like that?"
Warren's confident expression changed.
"Well, yes, she has some letters. I--damn it! I am a fool, George! I
swear I wrote them just as I might to anybody. I--I knew it mattered to
her, you know, and that she looked for them. I don't know how they'd
read!"
George was silent, scowling, and Warren said, "Damn it!" again
nervously, before the other man said:
"What do you think she will do?"
"I don't know, George," Warren said honestly.
"Could you--buy her off?" George presently asked after thought.
"Magsie? Never! She's not that type. She's one of ourselves as to that,
George. It was that that made me like Magsie--she's a lady, you know.
She thinks she's in love; she wants to be married. And if Rachael
divorces me, what else can I do?"
"Rachael wants the divorce for the boys," George said. "She told Alice
so. She said that except for that, nothing on earth would have made her
consider it. But she doesn't want you and Magsie Clay to have any hold
over her sons--and can you blame her? She's been dragged through all
this once. You might have thought of that!"
"Oh, my God!" Warren said, stopping by the mantel, and putting his face
in his hands.
"Well, what did you think would happen?" George asked as Magsie had
asked.
Then for perhaps two long minutes there was absolute silence, while
Warren remained motionless, and George, in great distress, rubbed his
upstanding hair.
"George, what shall I do?" Warren burst out at length.
"Why, now I'll tell you," the older man said in a tone that carried
exquisite balm to his listener. "Alice and I have talked this over, of
course, and this seems to me to be the only way out: we know you, old
man--that's what hurts. Alice and I know exactly what has got you into
this thing. You're too easy, Warren. You think because you mean
honorably by Magsie Clay, and amuse yourself by being generous to her,
that Magsie means honorably by you. You've got a high standard of
morals, Greg, but where they differ from the common standards you fail.
If the world is going to put a certain construction upon your
attentions to an actress, it doesn't matter what private construction
you happen to put upon them! Wake up, and realize what a fool you are
to try to buck the conventions! What you need is to study other
people's morals, not to be eternally justifying and analyzing your own.
I don't know how you'll come out of this thing. Upon my word, it's the
worst mess we ever got into since you misquoted Professor Diggs and he
sued you. Remember that?"
"Oh, George--my God--how you stood by me then," Warren said. "Get me
out of this, and I'll believe that there never was a friend like you in
the world! I don't know what I ever did to have you and Alice stand by
me--"
"Alice isn't standing by you to any conspicuous extent," George
Valentine said smilingly, "although, last night, when she was putting
the girls to bed, she put her arms about Martha, and said, 'George, she
wouldn't be here to-day if Greg hadn't taken the chance and cut that
thing out of her throat!' At which, of course," Doctor Valentine added
with his boyish smile, "Martha's dad had to wipe his eyes, and Martha's
mother began to cry!"
And again he frankly wiped his eyes.
"However, the thing is this," he presently resumed, "if you could buy
off Magsie--simply tell her frankly that you've been a fool, that you
don't want to go on with it--no, eh?" A little discouraged by Warren's
dubious shake of the head, he went on to the next suggestion. "Well,
then, if you can't--tell her that there cannot be any talk at present
of a legal separation, and that you are going away. Would you have the
nerve to do that? Tell her that you'll be back in eight months or a
year. But of course the best thing would be to buy her off, or call it
off in some way, and then write Rachael fully, frankly--tell her the
whole thing, ask her to wait at least one year, and then let you see
her--"
Warren could see himself writing this letter, could even see himself
walking into the dear old sitting-room at Home Dunes.
"I might see Magsie," he said after thought, "and ask her what she
would take in place of what she wants. It's just possible, but I don't
believe she would---"
"Well, what could she do if you simply called the whole thing off?"
George asked. "Hang it! it's a beastly thing to do, but if she wants
money, you've got it, and you've done her no harm, though nobody'll
believe that."
"She'll take the heartbroken attitude," Warren said slowly. "She'll say
that she trusted me, that she can't believe me, and so on."
"Well, you can stand that. Just set your jaw, and think of Rachael, and
go through with it once and for all."
"Yes, but then if she should turn to Rachael again?"
"Ah, well, she mustn't do that. Let her think that, after the year,
you'll come to a fresh understanding rather than let her fight. And
meanwhile, if I were you, I would write Rachael a long letter and make
a clean breast. Alice and the girls go down to-morrow; they'll keep me
in touch. How about coming in here for a bachelor dinner Friday? Then
we can talk developments."
"George, you certainly are a generous loyal friend!" Warren Gregory
said, a dry huskiness in his voice as he wrung the other's hand in
good-bye.
George went upstairs to tell the interested and excited and encouraged
Alice about their talk, and Alice laughed and cried with-pleasure,
confident that everything would come out well now, and grateful beyond
words that Greg was showing so humbled and penitent a spirit.
"Leave Rachael to me!" Alice said exultingly. "How we'll all laugh at
this nonsense some day!"
Even Warren Gregory, walking down the street, was conscious of new hope
and confidence. He was not thinking of Magsie to-day, but of Rachael,
the most superb and splendid figure of womanhood that had ever come
into his life. How she had raged at him in that last memorable talk;
how vital, how vigorous she was, uncompromising, direct, courageous!
And as a swimmer, who miles away from shore in the cruel shifting green
water, might think with aching longing of the quiet home garden, the
kitchen with its glowing fire and gleaming pottery, the pleasant homely
routine of uneventful days, and wonder that he had ever found safety
and comfort anything less than a miracle, Warren thought of the wife he
had sacrificed, the children and home that had been his, unchallenged
and undisputed, only a few months before. He knew just where he had
failed his wife. He felt to-day that to comfort her again, to take her
to dinner again, violets on her breast, and to see her loosen her veil,
and lay aside her gloves with those little gestures so familiar and so
infinitely dear would be heaven, no less! What comradeship they had
had, they two, what theatre trips, what summer days in the car, what
communion over the first baby's downy head, what conferences over the
new papers and cretonnes for Home Dunes!
Girded by these and a hundred other sacred memories he went to Magsie,
who was busy, the maid told him, with her hairdresser. But she
presently came out to him, wrapped snugly in a magnificent embroidered
kimono, and with her masses of bright hair, almost dry, hanging about
her lovely little face. She had never in all their intercourse shown
him quite this touch of intimacy before, and he felt with a little
wince of his heart that it was a sign of her approaching possession.
"Greg, dear," said Magsie seating herself on the arm of his chair, and
resting her soft little person against him, "I've been thinking about
you, and about the wonderful, WONDERFUL way that all our troubles have
come out! If anyone had told us, two months ago, that Rachael would set
you free, and that all this would have happened, we wouldn't have
believed it, would we? I watched you walking down the street yesterday
afternoon, and, oh, Greg, I hope I'm going to be a good wife to you; I
hope I'm going to make up to you for all the misery you've had to bear!"
This was not the opening sentence Warren was expecting. Magsie had been
petulant the day before, and had pettishly declared that she would not
wait a year for any man in the world. Warren had at once seized the
opening to say that he would not hold her to anything against her will,
to be answered by a burst of tears, and an entreaty not to be "so
mean." Then Magsie had to be soothed, and they had gone to tea as a
part of that familiar process. But to-day her mood was different; she
was full of youthful enthusiasm for the future.
"You know I love Rachael, Greg, and of course she is a most exceptional
woman," bubbled Magsie happily, "but she doesn't appreciate the fact
that you're a genius--you're not a little everyday husband, to be held
to her ideas of what's done and what isn't done! Big men are a law unto
themselves. If Rachael wants to hang over babies' cribs, and scare you
to death every time Jim sneezes--"
Warren listened no further. His mind went astray on a memory of the
night Jim was feverish, a memory of Rachael in her trailing dull-blue
robe, with her thick braids hanging over her shoulders. He remembered
that Jim was promised the circus if he would take his medicine; and how
Rachael, with smiling lips and anxious eyes, had described the big
lions and the elephants for the little restless potentate----
"--because I've had enough of Bowman, and enough of this city, and all
I ask is to run away with you, and never think of rehearsals and routes
and all the rest of it in my life again!" Magsie was saying. Presently
she seemed to notice his silence, for she asked abruptly: "Where's
Rachael?"
Warren roused himself from deep thought.
"At the Long Island house; at Clark's Hills."
"Oh!" Magsie, who was now seated opposite him, clasped her hands
girlishly about her knees. "What is the plan, Greg?" she asked
vivaciously.
"Her plan?" Warren said clearing his throat.
"Our plan!" Magsie amended contentedly. And she summarized the case
briskly: "Rachael consents to a divorce, we know that. I am not going
on with Bowman, I've decided that. Now what?" She eyed his brooding
face curiously. "What shall I do, Greg? I suppose we oughtn't to see
each other as we did last summer? If Rachael goes West--and I suppose
she will--shall I go up to the Villalongas'? They're terribly nice to
me; and I think Vera suspects---"
"What makes you think she does?" Warren asked, feeling as if a hot, dry
wind suddenly smote his skin.
"Because she's so nice to me!" Magsie answered triumphantly. "Rachael's
been just a little snippy to Vera," she confided further, "or Vera
thinks she has. She's not been up there for ages! I could tell Vera---"
Warren's power of reasoning was dissipated in an absolute panic. But
George had primed him for this talk. He assumed an air of business.
"There are several things to think of, Magsie," he said briskly,
"before we can go farther. In the first place, you must spend the
summer comfortably. I've arranged for that--"
He handed her a small yellow bank-book. Magsie glanced at it; glanced
at him.
"Oh, Greg, dear, you're too generous!"
"I'm not generous at all," he answered with an honest flush. "I know
what I am now, Magsie, I'm a cad."
"Who says you're a cad?" Magsie demanded indignantly.
"I say so!" he answered. "Any man is a cad who gets two women into a
mess like this!"
"Greg, dear, you shan't say so!" Her slender arms were about his neck.
"Well--" He disengaged the arms, and went on with his planning. "George
Valentine is going to see Rachael," he proceeded.
"About the divorce?" said Magsie with a nod.
"About the whole thing. And George thinks I had better go away."
"Where?" demanded Magsie.
"Oh, travelling somewhere."
"Rio?" dimpled Magsie. "You know you have always had a sneaking desire
to see Rio."
Warren smiled mechanically. It had been Rachael's favorite dream "when
the boys are big enough!" His sons--were they bathing this minute, or
eagerly emptying their blue porridge bowls?
"Magsie, dear," he said slowly, "it's a miserable business--this. I'm
as sorry as I can be about it. But the truth is that George wants me to
get away only until he and Alice can get Rachael into a mood where
she'll forgive me. They see this whole crazy thing as it really is,
dear. I'm not a young man, Magsie, I'm nearly fifty. I have no business
to think of anything but my own wife and my work and my children--Don't
look so, Magsie," he broke off to say; "I only blame myself! I have
loved you--I do love you--but it's only a man's love for a sweet little
amusing friend. Can't we--can't we stop it right here? You do what you
please; draw on me for twice that, for ten times that; have a long,
restful summer, and then come back in the fall as if this was all a
dream---"
Magsie had been watching him steadily during this speech, a long speech
for him. At first she had been obviously puzzled, then astonished, now
she was angry. She had grown pale, her pretty childish mouth was a
little open, her breath coming fast. For a full minute, as his voice
halted, there was silence.
"Then--then you didn't mean all you said?" Magsie demanded stormily,
after the pause. "You didn't mean that you--cared? You didn't mean the
letters, and the presents, and the talks we've had? You knew I was in
earnest, but you were just fooling!" Sheer excitement and fury kept her
panting for a moment, then she went on: "But I think I know who's done
this, Greg!" she said viciously; "it's Mrs. Valentine. She and her
husband have been talking to you; they've done it. She's persuaded you
that you never were in earnest with me!" Magsie ran across the room,
flung open the little desk that stood there, and tore the rubber band
from a package of letters. "You take her one of these!" she said, half
sobbing. "Ask her if that means anything! Greg, dear!" she interrupted
herself to say in a child's reproachful tone, "didn't you mean it?" And
with her soft hair floating, and her figure youthful under the simple
lines of her Oriental robe, she came to stand close beside him, her
mood suddenly changed. "Don't you love me any more, Greg?" said she.
"Love you!" he countered with a rueful laugh, "that's the trouble."
She linked her soft little hands in his, raised reproachful eyes.
"But you don't love me enough to stand by me, now that Rachael is so
cross?" she asked artlessly. "Oh, Greg, I will wait years and years for
you!"
Warren's expression was of wretchedness; he managed a smile.
"It's only that I hate to let you in for it all, dear. And let her in
for it. I feel as if we hadn't thought it out--quite enough," he said.
"What does it let Rachael in for?" she asked quickly. "Here's her
letter, Greg--I'll read it to you! Rachael doesn't mind."
"Well--it will be horrible for you," he submitted in a troubled tone.
"Horrible for us both."
"You mean your work can't spare you?" she asked with a shrewd look.
"No!" He shrugged wearily. "No. The truth is, I want to get away," he
said in an undertone.
"Ah, well!" Magsie understood that. "Of course you want to get away
from the fuss and the talk, Greg," she said eagerly. "I think we all
ought to get away: Rachael to Long Island, I to Vera, you anywhere! We
can't possibly be married for months---" Suddenly her voice sank, she
dropped his hands, and locked her smooth little arms about his neck.
"But I'll be waiting for you, and you for me, Greg," she whispered.
"Isn't it all settled now, isn't it only a question of all the bother,
lawyers and arrangements, before you and I belong to each other as
we've always dreamed we might?"
He looked down gravely, almost sadly, and yet with tenderness, upon the
eager face. He had always found her lovable, endearing, and sweet; even
out of this hideous smoke and flame she emerged all charming and all
desirable. He tightened his arms about the thinly wrapped little figure.
"Yes. I think it's all settled now, Magsie!" he said.
"Well, then!" She sealed it with one of her quick little kisses. "Now
sit down and read a magazine, Greg," she said happily, "and in ten
minutes you'll see me in my new hat, all ready to go to lunch!"
CHAPTER IV
The blue tides rose and fell at Clark's Hills, the summer sun shone
healingly down upon Rachael's sick heart and soul. Day after day she
took her bare-headed, sandalled boys to the white beach, and lay in the
warm sands, with the tonic Atlantic breezes blowing over her. Space and
warmth and silence were all about; the incoming breakers moved steadily
in, and shrank back in a tumble of foam and blue water; gulls dipped
and wheeled in the spray. As far as her dreaming eyes could reach, up
the beach and down, there was the same bath of warm color, blue sea
melting into blue sky, white sand mingling with yellow dunes, until all
colors, in the distance, swam in a haze of dull gold.
Now and then, when even the shore was hot, the boys elected to spend
their afternoon by the bay on the other side of the village. Here there
was much small traffic in dingies and dories and lobster-pots; the
slower tides rocked the little craft at the moorings, and sent bright
swinging light against the weather-worn planks under the pier. Rachael
smiled when she saw Derry's little dark head confidently resting
against the flowing, milky beard of old Cap'n Jessup, or heard the
bronzed lean younger men shout to her older son, as to an equal, "Pitch
us that painter, will ye, Jim!"
She spoke infrequently but quietly of Warren to Alice. The older woman
discovered, with a pang of dismay, that Rachael's attitude was fixed
beyond appeal. There was such a thing as divorce, established and
approved; she, Rachael, had availed herself of its advantages; now it
was Warren's turn.
Rachael would live for her sons. They must of course be her own. She
would take them away to some other atmosphere: "England, I think," she
told Alice. "That's my mother country, you know, and children lead a
sane, balanced life there."
"I will be everything to them until they are--say, ten and twelve," she
added on another day, "and then they will begin to turn toward their
father. Of course I can't blame him to them, Alice. And some day they
will come to believe that it is all their mother's fault--that's the
way with children! And so I'll pay again."
"Dearest girl, you're morbid!" Alice said, not knowing whether to laugh
or cry.
"No, I mean it, I truly mean that! It is disillusioning for young boys
to learn that their father and mother were not self-controlled, normal
persons, able to bear the little pricks of life, but that our history
has been public gossip for years, that two separate divorces are in
their immediate history!"
"Rachael, don't talk so recklessly!"
Rachael smiled sadly.
"Well, perhaps I can be a good mother to them, even if they don't
idealize me!" she mused.
"I have come to this conclusion," she told
Alice one day, about a fortnight later, "while civilization is as it
is, divorce is wrong. No matter what the circumstances are, no matter
where the right and wrong lie, divorce is wrong."
"I suppose there are cases of drink or infidelity--" Alice submitted
mildly.
"Then it's the drink, or the infidelity that should be changed!"
Rachael answered inflexibly. "It's the one vow we take with God as
witness; and no blessing ever follows a broken vow!"
"I think myself that there are not many marriages that couldn't be
successes!" Alice said thoughtfully.
"Separation, if you like!" Rachael conceded with something of her old
bright energy. "Change and absence, for weeks and months, but not
divorce. Paula Verlaine should never have divorced Clarence; she made a
worse match, if that was possible, and involved three other small lives
in the general discomfort. And I never should have married Clarence,
because I didn't love him. I didn't want children then; I never felt
that the arrangement was permanent; but having married him, I should
have stayed by him. I know the mood in which Clarence took his own
life; he never loved me as he did Bill, but he wouldn't have done it if
I had been there!"
"I cannot consider Clarence Breckenridge a loss to society," Alice said.
"I might have made Clarence a man who would have been a loss to
society," Rachael mused. "He was proud; loved to be praised. And he
loved children; one or two babies in the nursery would have put Billy
in second place. But he bored me, and I simply wouldn't go on being
bored. So that if I had had a little more courage, or a little more
prudence in the first place, Billy, Clarence, perhaps Charlotte and
Charlie, Greg, Deny, Jim, Joe Pickering, and Billy might all have been
happier, to say nothing of the general example to society."
"I hear that Billy is unhappy enough now," Alice said, pleased at
Rachael's unusual vivacity. "Isabella Haviland told my Mary that Cousin
Billy was talking about divorce."
"From Joe?--is that so?" Rachael looked up interestedly. "I hadn't
heard it, and somehow I don't believe it! They have a curious affinity
through all their adventures. Poor little Bill, it hasn't been much of
a life!"
"They say she is going on the stage," Alice pursued, "which seems a
pity, especially for the child's sake. He's an attractive boy; we saw
him with her at Atlantic City last winter--one of those wonderfully
dressed, patient, pathetic children, always with the grown-ups! The
little chap must have a rather queer life of it drifting about from
hotel to hotel. They're hard up, and I believe most of the shops and
hotels have actually black-listed them. He would seem to be the sort of
man who cannot hold on to anything, and, of course, there's the
drinking! She's not the girl to save him. She drinks rather recklessly
herself; it's a part of her pose."
"I wonder if she would let the youngster come down here and scramble
about with my boys?" Rachael said unexpectedly. She had not seriously
thought of it; the suggestion came idly. But instantly it took definite
hold. "I wonder if she would?" she added with more animation than she
had shown for some time. "I would love to have him, and of course the
boys would go wild with joy! I would be so glad to do poor old Billy a
good turn. She and I were always friends, and had some queer times
together. And more than that"--Rachael's eyes darkened--"I believe that
if I had had the right influence over her she never would have married
Joe. I regarded the whole thing too lightly; I could have tried, in a
different way, to prevent it, at least. I am certainly going to write
her, and ask for little Breckenridge. It would be something to do for
Clarence, too," Rachael added in a low tone, and as if half to herself,
"and for many long years I have felt that I would be glad to do
something for him! To have his grandson here--doesn't it seem odd?-and
perhaps to lend Billy a hand; it seems almost like an answer to prayer!
He can sleep on the porch, between the boys, and if he has some old
clothes, and a bathing suit--"
"MY DEAR BILLY," she wrote that night, "I have heard one or two hints
of late that you have a good many things in your life just now that
make for worry, and am writing to know if my boys and I may borrow your
small son for a few weeks or a month, so that one small complication of
a summer in the city will be spared you. We are down here on Long
Island on a strip of high land that runs between the beautiful bay and
the very ocean, and when Jim and Derry are not in the one they are apt
to be in the other. It will be a great joy to them to have a guest, and
a delight to me to take good care of your boy. I think he will enjoy
it, and it will certainly do him good.
"I often think of you with great affection, and hope that life is
treating you kindly. Sometimes I fancy that my old influence might have
been better for you than it was, but life is mistakes, after all, and
paying for them, and doing better next time.
"Always affectionately yours, RACHAEL."
Three days elapsed after this letter was dispatched, and Rachael had
time to wonder with a little chill if she had been too cordial to
Billy, and if Billy were laughing her cool little laugh at her one-time
step-mother's hospitality and moralizing.
But as a matter of fact, the invitation could not have been more
happily timed for young Mrs. Pickering. Billy, without any further
notice to Magsie, had been to see Magsie's manager, coolly betraying
her friend's marriage plans, pledging the angry and bewildered Bowman
to secrecy, and applying for the position on her own account in the
course of one brief visit.
Bowman would not commit himself to engaging Billy, but he was
infinitely obliged to her for the news of Magsie, and told her so
frankly.
It was when she returned home from this call, and hot and weary, was
trying to break an absolute promise to the boy, involving the Zoo and
ice-cream, that Rachael's letter arrived.
Billy read it through, sat thinking hard, and presently read it again.
The softest expression her rather hard young face ever knew came over
it as she sat there. This was terribly decent of Rachael, thought
Billy. She must be the busiest and happiest woman in the world, and yet
her heart had gone out to little Breck. The last line, however, meant
more than all the rest, just now, to Billy Pickering. She was
impressionable, and not given to finding out the truths of life for
herself. Rachael's opinions she had always respected. And now Rachael
admitted that life was all mistakes, and added that heartening line
about paying for them, and doing better.
"'Cause I am so hot--and I never had any lunch--and you said you
would!" fretted the little boy, flinging himself against her, and
sending a wave of heat through her clothing as he did so.
"Listen, Breck," she said suddenly, catching him lightly in her arm,
and smiling down at him, "would you like to go down and stay with the
Gregory boys?"
"I don't know 'em," said Breck doubtfully.
"Down on the ocean shore," Billy went on, "where you could go in
bathing every day, and roll in the surf, and picnic, and sleep out of
doors!"
"Did they ask me?" he demanded excitedly.
"Their mother did, and she says that you can stay as long as you're a
good boy, down there where it's nice and cool, digging in the sand, and
going bare foot--"
"I'll be the best boy you ever saw!" Breck sputtered eagerly. "I'll
work for her, and I'll make the other kids work for her--she'll tell
you she never saw such a good boy! And I'll write you letters--"
"You won't have to work, old man!" Billy felt strangely stirred as she
kissed him. She watched him as he rushed away to break the news of his
departure to the stolid Swedish girl in the kitchen and the colored boy
at the elevator. He jerked his little bureau open, and began to
scramble among his clothes; he selected a toy for Jim and a toy for
Derry, and his mother noticed that they were his dearest toys. She took
him downtown and bought him a bathing suit, and sandals, and new
pajamas, and his breathless delight, as he assured sympathetic clerks
that he was going down to the shore, made her realize what a lonely,
uncomfortable little fellow he had been all these months. He could
hardly eat his supper that night, and had to be punished before he
would even attempt to go to sleep, and the next morning he waked his
mother at six, and fairly danced with impatience and anxiety as the
last preparations were made.
Billy took him down to Clark's Hills herself. She had not notified
Rachael, or answered her in any way, never questioning that Rachael
would know her invitation to be accepted. But from the big terminal
station she did send a wire, and Rachael and the boys met her after the
hot trip.
"Billy, it was good of you to come," Rachael said, kissing her quite
naturally as they met.
"I never thought of doing anything else," Billy said, breathing the
fresh salt air with obvious pleasure. "I had no idea that it was such a
trip. But he was an angel--look at them now, aren't they cute together?"
Rachael's boys had taken eager possession of their guest; the three
were fast making friends as they trotted along together toward the old
motor car that Rachael ran herself.
"It's a joy to them," their mother said. "Get in here next to me, Bill;
I'm not going even to look at you until I get you home. Did you ever
see the water look so delicious? We'll all go down for a dip pretty
soon. I live so simply here that I'm entirely out of the way of
entertaining a guest, but now that you're here, you must stay and have
a little rest yourself!"
"Oh, thank you, but--" Billy began in perfunctory regret. Her tone
changed: "I should love to!" she said honestly.
Rachael laughed. "So funny to hear your old voice, Bill, and your old
expressions."
"I was just thinking that you've not changed much, Rachael."
"I? Oh, but I've gray hair! Getting old fast, Billum."
"And how's Greg?" Billy did not understand the sudden shadow that fell
across Rachael's face, but she saw it, and wondered.
"Very well, my dear."
"Does he get down here often? It's a hard trip."
"He always comes in his car. They make it in--I don't know--something
like two hours and ten minutes, I think. This is my house, with all its
hydrangeas in full bloom. Yes, isn't it nice? And here's Mary for
Breckenridge's bag."
Rachael had got out of the car, and now she gave Billy's boy her hand,
and stood ready to help him down.
"Well, Breck," said she, "do you think you are going to like my house,
and my little boys? Will you give Aunt Rachael a kiss?"
Billy said nothing as the child embraced his new-found relative
heartily, nor when Rachael took her upstairs to show her the third
hammock between the other two, and herself invested the visitor in blue
overalls and a wide hat. But late that evening, after a silence, she
said suddenly:
"You're more charming than ever, Rachael; you're one of the sweetest
women I ever saw!"
"Thank you!" Rachael said with a little note of real pleasure under her
laugh.
"You've grown so gentle, and good," said Billy a little awkwardly.
"Perhaps it's just because you're so sweet to Breck, and because you
have such a nice way with children, but I--I am ever and ever so
grateful to you! I've often thought of you, all this time, and of the
old days, and been glad that so much happiness of every sort has come
to you. At first I felt dreadfully--at that time, you know--"
She stopped and faltered, but Rachael looked at her kindly. They were
sitting on the wide porch, under the velvet-black arch of the starry
sky, and watching the occasional twinkle of lights on the dark surface
of the bay.
"You may say anything you like to me, Billy," Rachael said.
"Well, it was only--you know how I loved him--" Billy said quickly.
"I've so often thought that perhaps you were the only person who knew
what it all meant to me. I only thought he would be angry for a while.
I thought then that Joe would surely win him. And afterward, I thought
I would go crazy, thinking of him sitting there in the club. I had
failed him, you know! I've never talked about it. I guess I'm all tired
out from the trip down."
It was clumsily expressed; the words came as if every one were wrung
from the jealous silence of the long years, but presently Billy was
beside Rachael's chair, kneeling on the floor, and their arms were
about each other.
"I killed him!" sobbed Billy. "He spoke of me the last of all. He said
to Berry Stokes that he--he loved me. And he had a little old picture
of me--you remember the one in the daisy frame?--over his heart. Oh,
Daddy, Daddy!--always so good to me!"