"No, Bill, you mustn't say that you killed him," Rachael said, turning

pale. "If you were to blame, I was, too, and your grandmother, and all

of us who made him what he was. I didn't love him when I married him,

and he was the sort of man who has to be loved; he knew he wasn't big,

and admirable, and strong, but many a man like Clancy has been made so,

been made worth while, by having a woman believe in him. I never

believed in him for one second, and he knew it. I despised him, and

where he sputtered and stammered and raged, I was cool and quiet, and

smiling at him. It isn't right for human beings to feel that way, I see

it now. I see now that love--love is the lubricant everywhere in the

world, Bill. One needn't be a fool and be stepped upon; one has rights;

but if loving enough goes into everything, why, it's bound to come out

right."

"Oh, I do believe it!" said Billy fervently, kneeling on the floor at

Rachael's feet, her wet, earnest eyes on Rachael's face, her arms

crossed on the older woman's knees.

"I believe," Rachael said, "that in those seven years I might have won

your father to something better if I had cared. He wasn't a hard man,

just desperately weak. I've thought of it so often, of late, Bill.

There might have been children. Clancy had a funny little pathetic

fondness for babies. And he was a loving sort of person---"

"Ah, wasn't he?" Billy's eyes brimmed again. "Always that to me. But

not to you, Rachael, and little cat that I was--I knew it. But you see

I had no particular reverence for marriage, either. How should I? Why,

my own mother and my half-sisters--hideous girls, they are, too--were

pointed out to me in Rome a year ago. I didn't know them! I could have

made your life much easier, Rachael. I wish I had. I was thinking that

this afternoon when Breck was letting you carry him out into deep

water, clinging to you so cunningly. He is a cute little kid, isn't he?

And he'll love you to death! He's a great kisser."

"He's a great darling," smiled Rachael, "and all small boys I adore.

He'll begin to put on weight in no time. And--I was thinking, Bill--he

would have reconciled Clancy to you and Joe, perhaps; one can't tell!

If I had not left him, Clarence might have been living to-day, that I

know. He only--did what he did in one of those desperate lonely times

he used to dread so."

"Ah, but he was terrible to you, Rachael!" Billy said generously. "You

deserved happiness if anyone ever did!" Again she did not understand

Rachael's sharp sigh, nor the little silence that followed it. Their

talk ran on quite naturally to other topics: they discussed all the men

and women of that old world they both had known, the changes, the

newcomers, and the empty places. Mrs. Barker Emory had been much taken

up by Mary Moulton, and was a recognized leader at Belvedere Bay now;

Straker Thomas was in a sanitarium; old Lady Torrence was dead; Marian

Cowles had snatched George Pomeroy away from one of the Vanderwall

girls at the last second; Thomas Prince was paralyzed; Agnes Chase had

married a Denver man whom nobody knew; the Parker Hoyts had a delicate

little baby at last; Vivian Sartoris had left her husband, nobody knew

why. Billy was quite her old self as she retailed these items and many

more for Rachael's benefit.

But Rachael saw that the years had made a sad change in her before the

three days' visit was over. Poor little, impudent, audacious Billy was

gone forever--Billy, who had always been so exquisite in dress, so

prettily conspicuous on the floor of the ballroom, so superbly

self-conscious in her yachting gear, her riding-clothes, her smart

little tennis costumes! She was but a shadow of her old self now. The

smart hats, the silk stockings, the severely trim frocks were still

hers, but the old delicious youth, her roses, her limpid gaze, the

velvety curve of throat and cheek, these were gone. Billy had been

spirited, now she was noisy. She had been amusingly precocious, now she

was assuming an innocence, a naivete, that were no longer hers, had

never been natural to her at any time. She had always been coolly

indifferent to the lives of other men and women. Now she was embittered

as to her own destiny, and full of ugly and eager gossip concerning

everyone she knew. She chanced upon the name of Magsie Clay, little

dreaming how straight the blow went to Rachael's heart, but had

excellent reasons of her own for not expressing the belief that Magsie

would soon leave the stage, and so gave no hint of Magsie's rich and

mysterious lover. She did tell Rachael that she herself meant to go on

the stage, but imparted no details as to her hopes for doing so.

"Just how much money is left, Billy?" Rachael presently felt herself

justified in asking.

"Oh, well"--Billy had always hated statistics--"we sold the Belvedere

Bay place last year, you know, but it was a perfect wreck, and the

Moultons said they had to put seventeen thousand dollars into repairs,

but I don't believe it, and that money, and some other things, were put

into the bank. Joe was just making a scene about it--we have to draw

now and then--we sank I don't know what into those awful ponies, and we

still have that place--it's a lovely house, but it doesn't rent. It's

too far away. The kid adores it of course, but it's too far away, it

gives me the creeps. It's just going to wreck, too. Joe says sometimes

that he's going to raise chickens there. I see him!" Billy scowled, but

as Rachael did not speak, she presently came back to the topic. "But

just how much of my money is left, I don't know. There are two houses

in East One Hundredth--way over by the river. Daddy took them for some

sort of debt."

Rachael remembered them perfectly. But she could not revert to the days

when she was Clarence's wife without a pang, and so let the allusion go.

"Why he took them I don't know," Billy resumed, "ten flats, and all

empty. They say it would cost us ten thousand dollars to get them into

shape. They're mortgaged, anyway."

"But Billy, wouldn't that bring you in a fair income, in itself, if it

was once filled?"

"My dear, perhaps it would. But do you think you could get Joe

Pickering to do it? As long as the money in the bank lasts--I forget

what it is, several thousand, more than twenty, I think--we'll go along

as we are. Joe has a half-interest in a patent, anyway, some sort of

curtain-pole; it's always going to make us a fortune!"

"But, Billy, if you and the boy took a little place somewhere, and you

had one good maid--up there on the pony farm, for instance--surely it

would be saner, surely it would be wiser, than trying to think of the

stage now with him on your hands!"

"Except that I would simply die!" Billy said. "I love the city, and the

excitement of not knowing what will turn up. And if Joe would behave

himself, and if I should make a hit, why, we'll be all right."

A queer, hectic, unsatisfying life it must be, Rachael thought, saying

good-bye to her guest a day or two later. Dressing, rouging, lacing,

pinning on her outrageously expensive hats, jerking on her extravagant

white gloves, drinking, rushing, screaming with laughter, screaming

with anger, Billy was one of that large class of women that the big

city breeds, and that cannot live elsewhere than in the big city. She

would ride in a thousand taxicabs, worrying as she watched the metre;

she would drink a thousand glasses of champagne, wondering anxiously if

Joe were to pay for it; she would gossip of a dozen successful

actresses without the self-control to work for one-tenth of their

success, and she would move through all the life of the theatres and

hotels without ever having her place among them, and her share of their

little glory. And almost as reckless in action as she was in speech,

she would cling to the brink of the conventions, never quite a good

woman, never quite anything else, a fond and loyal if a foolish and

selfish mother, some day noisily informing her admirers that she

actually had a boy in college, and enjoying their flattering disbelief.

And so would disappear the last of the handsome fortune that poor

Clarence's father had bequeathed to him, and Clarence's grandson must

fight his way with no better start than his grandfather had had

financially, and with an infinitely less useful brain and less reliable

pair of hands. Billy might be widowed or freed in some less

unexceptionable way, and then Billy would marry again, and it would be

a queer marriage; Rachael could read her fate in her character.

She wondered, walking slowly the short mile that lay between her house

and the station, when Billy was gone, just how a discerning eye might

read her own fate in her own character. Just what did the confused

mixture of good motives and bad motives, erratic unselfishnesses and

even more erratic weaknesses that was Rachael, deserve of Fate? She had

bought some knowledge, but it had been dearly bought; she had bought

some goodness, but at what a cost of pain!

"I don't believe that Warren ever did one-tenth the silly things we

suspected him of!" Alice exclaimed one day. "I believe he was just an

utter fool, and Magsie took advantage of it!"

Rachael did not answer, but there was no brightening of her sombre

look. Her eyes, grave and sad, held for Alice no hope that she had

come, as George and Alice had come, to a softer view of Warren's

offence.

"I see him always as he was that last horrible morning," she said to

Alice. "And I pray that I will never look upon his face again!" And

when presently Alice hinted that George was receiving an occasional

letter from Warren, Rachael turned pale.

"Don't quote it to me, Alice," she said gently; "don't ask me to hear

it. It's all over. I haven't a heart any more, just a void and a pain.

You only hurt me--I can't ever be different. You and George love me, I

know that. Don't drive me away. Don't ever feel that it will be

different from what it is now. I--I wish him no ill, God knows, but--I

can't. It wouldn't be happiness for me or for him. Please, PLEASE--!"

Alice, in tears, could only give her her way.

CHAPTER V

Upon the discontented musings of Miss Margaret Clay one hot September

morning came Mrs. Joseph Pickering, very charming in coffee-colored

madras, with an exquisite heron cockade upon her narrow tan hat. Magsie

was up, but not dressed, and was not ill pleased to have company. Her

private as well as professional affairs were causing her much

dissatisfaction of late, and she was at the moment in the act of

addressing a letter to Warren, now on the ocean, from whom she had only

this morning had an extremely disquieting letter.

Warren had come to see her the day before sailing, and with a grave

determination new to their intercourse, had repeated several

unpalatable truths. Rachael, on second thoughts, he told her, had

absolutely refused him a divorce.

"But she can't do that! She wrote me herself--" Magsie had begun in

anger. His distressed voice interrupted her.

"She's acting for the boys, Magsie. And she's right."

"Right!" The little actress turned pale as the full significance of his

words and tone dawned upon her. "But--but what do you mean! What about

ME?"

To this Warren had only answered with an exquisitely uncomfortable look

and the simple phrase, "Magsie, I'm sorry."

"You mean that you're not going to MAKE her keep her word?"

And again she had put an imperative little hand upon his arm, sure of

her power to win him ultimately. Days afterward the angry blood came

into her face when she remembered his kind, his almost fatherly, smile,

as he dislodged the hand.

"Magsie, I'm sorry. You can't despise me as I despise myself, dear. I'm

ashamed. Some day, perhaps, there'll be something I can do for you, and

then you'll see by the way I do it that I want with all my heart to

make it up to you. But I'm going away now, Magsie, and we mustn't see

each other any more."

Magsie, repulsed, had flung herself the length of the little room.

"You DARE tell me that, Greg?"

"I'm sorry, Magsie!"

"Sorry!" Her tone was vitriol. "Why, but I've got your letters. I've

got your own words! Everyone knows-the whole world knows! Can you deny

that you gave me this?--and this? Can you deny--"

"No, I'm not denying anything, Magsie. Except--that I never meant to

hurt you. And I hope there was some happiness in it for you as there

was for me."

Magsie had dropped into a chair with her back to him.

"I've made you cross," she said penitently, "and you're punishing me!

Was it my seeing Richie, Greg? You know I never cared---"

"Don't take that tone," he said.

Her color flamed again, and she set her little teeth. He saw her breast

rise and fall.

"Don't think you can do this, Greg," she said with icy viciousness.

"Don't delude yourself! I can punish you, and I will. Alice and George

Valentine can fix it all up to suit themselves, but they don't know me!

You've said your say now, and I've listened. Very well!"

"Magsie," he said almost pleadingly, interrupting the hard little

voice, "can't you see what a mistake it's all been?"

She looked at him with eyes suddenly flooded with tears.

"M-m-mistake to s-s-say we loved each other, Greg?"

The man did not answer. Presently Magsie began to speak in a sad, low

tone.

"You can go now if you want to, Greg. I'm not going to try to hold you.

But I know you'll come back to me to-morrow, and tell me it was all

just the trouble other people tried to make between us--it wasn't

really you, the man I love!"

"I'll write you," he said after a silence. And from the doorway he

added, "Good-bye." Magsie did not turn or speak; she could not believe

her ears when she heard the door softly close.

Next day brought her only a letter from the steamer, a letter

reiterating his good-byes, and asking her again to forgive him. Magsie

read it in stupefaction. He was gone, and she had lost him!

The first panic of surprise gave way to more reasonable thinking. There

were ways of bringing him back; there were arguments that might

persuade Rachael to adhere to her original resolution. It could not be

dropped so easily. Magsie began to wonder what a lawyer might advise.

Billy came in upon her irresolute musing.

"Hello, dearie! But I'm interrupting---" said Billy.

"Oh, hello, darling! No, indeed you're not," Magsie said, tearing up an

envelope lazily. "I was trying to write a letter, but I have to think

it over before it goes."

"I should think you could write a letter to your beau with your eyes

shut," Billy said. "You've had practice enough! I know you're busy, but

I won't interrupt you long. Upon my word, I had a hard enough time

getting to you. There was no boy at the lift, and only a dear old Irish

girl mopping up the floors. We had a long heart-to-heart talk, and I

gave her a dollar."

"A dollar! I'll have to move-you're raising the price of living!" said

Magsie. "She's the janitor's wife, and they're rich already. What

possessed you?"

"Well, she unpinned her skirts and went after the boy," Billy said

idly, "and it was the only thing I had." She was trying quietly to see

the name on the envelope Magsie had destroyed, but being unsuccessful,

she went on more briskly, "How is the beau, by the way?"

"I wish I had never seen the man!" Magsie said, glad to talk of him.

"His wife is raising the roof now---"

"I thought she would!" Billy said wisely. "I didn't see any woman,

especially if she's not young, giving all that up without a fight! You

know I said so."

"I know you did," said Magsie ruefully. "But I don't see what she can

do!"

"Well, she can refuse to give him his divorce, can't she?" Billy said

sensibly.

"But CAN she?" Magsie was obviously not sure.

"Of course she can!"

"But she doesn't want him. I went to see her--"

"Went to see her? For heaven's sake, what did you do that for?"

"Because I cared for him," Magsie said, coloring.

"For heaven's sake! You had your nerve! And what sort of a person is

she?"

"Oh, beautiful! I knew her before. And she said that she would not

interfere. She was as willing as he was; then---"

"But now she's changed her mind?"

"Apparently." Magsie scowled into space.

"Well, what does HE say?" Billy asked after a pause.

"Why, he can't--or he seems to think he can't--force her."

"Well, I don't know that he can--here. There are states--"

"Yes, I know, but we're here in New York," Magsie said briefly. A

second later she sat up, suddenly energetic and definite in voice and

manner. "But there ARE ways of forcing her, as she will soon see," said

Magsie in a venomous voice. "I have his letters. I could put the whole

thing into a lawyer's hands. There's such a thing as-as a breach of

promise suit--"

"Not with a married man," Billy interrupted. Magsie halted, a little

dashed.

"How do you know?" she demanded.

"You'd have to show you had been injured--and you've known all along he

was married," Billy said.

"Well"--Magsie was scarlet with anger--"I could make him sorry, don't

worry about that!" she said childishly.

"Of course, if his wife DID consent, and then changed her mind, and you

sent his letters to her," Billy said after cogitation. "It might--he

may have glossed it all over, to her, you know."

"Exactly!" Magsie said triumphantly. "I knew there was a way! She's a

sensitive woman, too. You know you can't go as far as you like with a

girl, Billy," she went on argumentatively, "without paying for it

somehow!"

"Make him pay!" said the practical Billy.

"I don't want--just money," Magsie said discontentedly. "I want--I

don't want to be interfered with. I believe I shall do just that," she

went on with a brightening eye. "I'll write him---"

"Tell him. Ever so much more effective than writing!" Billy suggested.

"Tell him then," Magsie did not mean to betray his identity if she

could help it, "that I really will send these things on to his

wife--that's just what I'll do!"

"Are there children?" asked Billy.

"Two--girls," Magsie said with barely perceptible hesitation.

"Grown?" pursued the visitor.

"Ye-es, I believe so." Magsie was too clever to multiply unnecessary

untruths. She began to dress.

"What are you doing this afternoon?" asked Billy. "I have the Butlers'

car for the day. Joe brought it into town to be fixed, and can't drive

it out until tomorrow. We might do something. It's a gorgeous car."

"I'm not doing one thing in the world. Where's Joe?"

"Joe Pickering?" asked Billy. "Oh, he's gone off with some men for some

golf and poker. We might find someone, and go on a party. Where could

we go--Long Beach? It's going to be stifling hot."

"Stay and have lunch with me," said Magsie.

"I can't to-day. I'm lunching with a theatrical man at Sherry's. I tell

you I'm in deadly earnest. I'm going to break in! Suppose I come here

for you at just three. Meanwhile, you think up someone. How about Bryan

Masters?"

Magsie made a face.

"Well," said Billy, departing, "you think of someone, and I will.

Perhaps the Royces would go--a nice little early party. The worst of it

is, no one's in town!"

She ran downstairs and jumped into the beautiful car.

"Sherry's, please, Hungerford," said Billy easily. "And then you might

get your lunch, and come for me sharp at half-past two."

The man touched his hat. Billy leaned back against the rich leather

upholstery luxuriously; she was absolutely content. Joe was quiet and

away, dear little old Breck was in seventh heaven down on the cool

seashore, and there was a prospect of a party to-night. As they rolled

smoothly downtown the passing throng might well have envied the

complacent little figure in coffee-colored madras with the big heron

feather in her hat.

When Billy was gone, Magsie, with a thoughtful face and compressed

lips, took two packages of letters from her desk and wrapped them for

posting. She fell into deep musing for a few minutes before she wrote

Rachael's name on the wrapper, but after that she dressed with her

usual care, and carried the package to the elevator boy for mailing. As

she came back to her rooms a caller was announced and followed her name

into Magsie's apartment almost immediately. Magsie, with a pang of

consternation, found herself facing Richie Gardiner's mother.

Anna would never have permitted this, was Magsie's first resentful

thought, but Anna was on a vacation, and the elevator boy could not be

expected to discriminate.

"Good morning, Mrs. Gardiner," said Magsie; "you'll excuse my dressing

all over the place, but I have no maid this week. How's Richie?"

Mrs. Gardiner was oblivious of anything amiss. She sat down, first

removing a filmy scarf of Magsie's from a chair, and smiled, the little

muscle-twitching smile of a person in pain, as if she hardly heard

Magsie's easy talk.

"He doesn't seem to get better, Miss Clay," said she, almost snorting

in her violent effort to breathe quietly. "Doctor doesn't say he gets

worse, but of course he don't fool me--I know my boy's pretty sick."

The agony of helpless motherhood was not all lost upon Magsie, even

though it was displayed by a large, plain woman in preposterous

clothes, strangely introduced into her pretty rooms, and a most

incongruous figure there.

"What a SHAME!" she said warmly.

"It's a shame to anyone that knew Rich as I did a few years ago," his

mother said. "There wasn't a brighter nor a hardier child. It wasn't

until we came to this city that he begun to give way--and what wonder?

It'd kill a horse to live in this place. I wish to God that I had got

him out of it when he had that first spell. I may be--I don't know, but

I may be too late now." Tears came to her eyes, the hard tears of a

proud and suffering woman. She took out a folded handkerchief and

pressed it unashamedly to her eyes. "But he wouldn't go," she resumed,

clearing her throat. "He was going to stay here, live or die. And Miss

Clay, YOU know why!" She stopped short, a terrible look upon Magsie.

"I?" faltered Magsie, coloring, and feeling as if she would cry herself.

"You kept him," said his mother. "He hung round you like a bee round a

rose--poor, sick boy that he was! He's losing sleep now because he

can't get you out of his thoughts."

She stopped again, and Magsie hung her head.

"I'm sorry," she said slowly. And with the childish words came childish

tears. "I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Gardiner," stammered Magsie. "I

know--I've known all along--how Richie feels to me. I suppose I could

have stopped him, got him to go away, perhaps, in time. But--but I've

been unhappy myself, Mrs. Gardiner. A person--I love has been cruel to

me. I don't know what I'm going to do. I worry and worry!" Magsie was

frankly crying now. "I wish there was something I could do for Richie,

but I can't tell him I care!" she sobbed.

Both women sat in miserable silence for a moment, then Richard

Gardiner's mother said: "It wouldn't do you any harm to just--if you

would--to just see him, would it? Don't say anything about this other

man. Could you do that? Couldn't you let him think that maybe if he

went away and came back all well you'd--you might--there might be some

chance for him? Doctor says he's got to go away AT ONCE if he's going

to get well."

The anguish in her voice and manner reached Magsie at last. There was

nothing cruel about the little actress, however sordid her ambitions

and however selfish her plans.

"Could you get him away, now?" she said almost timidly. "Is he strong

enough to go?"

"That's what Doctor says; he ought to go away TO-DAY, but--but he won't

lissen to me," his mother answered with trembling lips. "He's all I

have. I just live for Rich. I loved his father, and when Dick was

killed I had only him."

"I'll go see him," said Magsie in sudden generous impulse. "I'll tell

him to take care of himself. It's simply wicked of him to throw his

life away like this."

"Miss Clay," said Mrs. Gardiner with a break in her strong, deep voice,

"if you do that--may the Lord send you the happiness you give my boy!"

She began to cry again.

"Why, Mrs. Gardiner," said Magsie in a hurt, childish voice, "I LIKE

Richie!"

"Well, he likes you all right," said his mother on a long, quivering

breath. With big, coarse, tender fingers she helped Magsie with the

last hooks and bands of her toilette. "If you ain't as pretty and

dainty as a little wax doll!" she observed admiringly. Magsie merely

sighed in answer. Wax dolls had their troubles!

But she liked the doglike devotion of Richie's big mother, and the

beautiful car--Richie's car. Perhaps the hurt to her heart and her

pride had altered Magsie's sense of values. At all events, she did not

even shrink from Richie to-day.

She sat down beside the white bed, beside the bony form that the

counterpane revealed in outline, and smiled at Richie's dark, thin

eager face and sunken, adoring eyes. She laid her warm, plump little

hand between his long, thin fingers. After a while the nurse timidly

suggested the detested milk; Richie drank it dutifully for Magsie.

They were left together in the cool, airy, orderly room, and in low,

confidential tones they talked. Magsie was well aware that the big

doctors themselves would not interrupt this talk, that the nurses and

the mother were keeping guard outside the door. Richie was conscious of

nothing but Magsie.

In this hour the girl thought of the stormy years that were past and

the stormy future. She had played her last card in the game for Warren

Gregory's love. The letters, without an additional word, were gone to

Rachael. If Rachael chose to use them against Warren, then the road for

Magsie, if long, was unobstructed. But suppose Rachael, with that

baffling superiority of hers, decided not to use them?

Magsie had seriously considered and seriously abandoned the idea of

holding out several letters from the packages, but the letters, as

legal documents, had no value to anyone but Rachael. If Rachael chose

to forgive and ignore the writing of them, they were so much waste

paper, and Magsie had no more hold over Warren than any other young

woman of his acquaintance.

But Magsie was more or less committed to a complete change. The break

with Bowman could not be avoided without great awkwardness now. She

despised herself for having so simply accepted a bank account from

Warren, yet what else could she do? Magsie had wanted money all her

life, and when that money was gone---Richie was falling into a doze,

his hand still tightly clasping hers. She slipped to her knees beside

the bed, and as he lazily opened his eyes she gave him a smile that

turned the room to Heaven for him. When a nurse peeped cautiously in, a

warning nod from Magsie sent the surprised and delighted woman away

again with the great news. Mr. Gardiner was asleep!

The clock struck twelve, struck one, still Magsie knelt by the bedside,

watching the sleeping face. Outside the city was silent under the

summer sun. In the great hospital feet cheeped along wide corridors,

now and then a door was opened or closed. There was no other sound.

Magsie eyed her charge affectionately. When he had come to her

dressing-room in former days trying to ignore his cough, trying to take

her about and to order her suppers as the other men did, he had been

vaguely irritating; but here in this plain little bed, so boyish, so

dependent, so appreciative, he seemed more attractive than he ever had

before. Whatever there was maternal in Magsie rose to meet his need.

She could not but be impressed by the royal solicitude that surrounded

the heir to the "Little Dick Mine." Mrs. Richard Gardiner would be

something of a personage, thought Magsie dreamily. He might not live

long!

Of course, that was calculating and despicable; she was not the woman

to marry where she did not love! But then she really did love Richie in

a way. And Richie loved her--no question of that! Loved her more than

Warren did for all his letters and gifts, she decided resentfully.

When Richie wakened, bewildered, at one o'clock, Magsie was still

there. She insisted that he drink more milk before a word was said.

Then they talked again, Magsie in a new mood of reluctance and

gentleness, Richie half wild with rising hope and joy.

"And you would want me to marry you, feeling this way?" Magsie faltered.

"Oh, Magsie!" he whispered.

A tear fell on the thin hand that Magsie was patting. Through dazzled

eyes she saw the future: reckless buying of gowns--brief and few

farewells--the private car, the adoring invalid, the great sunny West

with its forests and beaches, the plain gold ring on her little hand.

In the whole concerned group--doctor, nurse, valet, mother, maid--young

Mrs. Gardiner would be supreme! She saw herself flitting about a

California bungalow, lending her young strength to Richie's increasing

strength in the sunwashed, health-giving air.

She put her arms about him, laid her rosy cheek against his pale one.

"And you really want me to go out," Magsie began, smiling through

tears, "and get a nice special license and a nice little plain gold

ring and come back here with a nice kind clergyman, and say 'I will'---"

But at this her tears again interrupted her, and Richard, clinging

desperately to her hand, could not speak either for tears. His mother

who had silently entered the room on Magsie's last words suddenly put

her fat arms about her and gave her the great motherly embrace for

which, without knowing it, she had hungered for years, and they all

fell to planning.

Richard could help only with an occasional assent. There was nothing to

which he would not consent now. They would be married as soon as Magsie

and his mother could get back with the necessities. And then would he

drink his milk, good boy--and go straight to sleep, good boy. Then

to-morrow he should be helped into the softest motor car procurable for

money, and into the private car that his mother and Magsie meant to

engage, by hook or crook, to-night. In six days they would be watching

the blue Pacific, and in three weeks Richie should be sleeping out of

doors and coming downstairs to meals. He had only to obey his mother;

he had only to obey his wife. Magsie kissed him good-bye tenderly

before leaving him for the hour's absence. Her heart was twisting

little tendrils about him already. He was a sweet, patient dear, she

told his mother, and he would simply have to get well!

"God above bless and reward you, Margaret!" was all Mrs. Gardiner could

say, but Magsie never tired of hearing it.

When the two women went down the hospital steps they found Billy

Pickering, in her large red car, eying them reproachfully from the curb.

"This is a nice way to act!" Billy began. "Your janitor's wife said you

had come here. I've got two men--" Magsie's expression stopped her.

"This is Mr. Gardiner's mother, Billy," Magsie said solemnly. "The

doctors agree that he must not stand this climate another day. He had

another sinking spell yesterday, and he--he mustn't have another! I am

going with them to California--"

"You ARE?" Billy ejaculated in amazement. Magsie bridled in becoming

importance.

"It is all very sudden," she said with the weary, patient smile of the

invalid's wife, "but he won't go without me." And then, as Mrs.

Gardiner began to give directions to the driver of her own car, which

was waiting, she went on inconsequentially, and in a low and troubled

undertone, "I didn't know what to do. Do--do you think I'm a fool,

Billy?"

"But what'll the other man say?" demanded Billy.

Magsie, leaning against the door of the car, rubbed the polished wood

with a filmy handkerchief.

"He won't know," she said.

"Won't know? But what will you tell him?"

"Oh, he's not here. He won't be back for ever so long. And--and Richie

can't live--they all say that. So if I come back before he does, what

earthly difference can it make to him that I was married to Richie?"

"MARRIED!" For once in her life Billy was completely at a loss. "But

are you going to MARRY him?"

Magsie gave her a solemn look, and nodded gravely. "He loves me," she

said in a soft injured tone, "and I mean to take as good care of him as

the best wife in the world could! I'm sick of the stage, and if

anything happens with--the other, I shan't have to worry--about money,

I mean. I'm not a fool, Billy. I can't let a chance like this slip. Of

course I wouldn't do it if I didn't like him and like his mother, too.

And I'll bet he will get well, and I'll never come back to New York! Of

course this is all a secret. We're going right down to the City Hall

for the license now, and the ring---There are a lot of clothes I've got

to buy immediately--"

"Why don't you let me run you about?" suggested Billy. "I don't have to

meet the men until six--I'll have to round up another girl, too; but

I'd love to. Let Mama go back to Mr. Gardiner!"

"Oh, I couldn't," Magsie said, quite the dutiful daughter. "She's a

wonderful person; she's arranging for our own private car, and a cook,

and I may take Anna if I can get her!"

"All righto!" agreed Billy.

A rather speculative look came into her face as the other car whirled

away. She suddenly gave directions to the driver.

"Drive to Miss Clay's apartment, where you picked me up this morning,

Hungerford!" she said quickly. "I--I think I left something

there--gloves--"

"I wonder if you would let me into Miss Clay's apartment?" she said to

the beaming janitor's wife fifteen minutes later. "Miss Clay isn't

here, and I left my gloves in her rooms."

Something in Magsie's manner had made her feel that Magsie had good

reason for keeping the name of her admirer hid. Billy had felt for

weeks that she would know the name if Magsie ever divulged it. And this

morning she had noticed the admission that the wronged wife was a

beautiful woman--and the hesitation with which Magsie had answered "Two

girls." Then Magsie had said that she would "write him," not at all the

natural thing to do to a man one was sure to see, and Rachael had said

that Warren was away! But most significant of all was her answer to

Billy's question as to whether the children were grown. Magsie had

admitted that she knew the wife, had "known her before," and yet she

pretended not to know whether or not the children were grown. Billy had

had just a fleeting idea of Warren Gregory before that, but this

particular term confirmed the suspicion suddenly.

So while Magsie was getting her marriage license, Billy was in Magsie's

apartment turning over the contents of her wastepaper basket in

feverish haste. The envelope was ruined, it had been crushed while wet;

a name had been barely started anyway. But here was the precious scrap

of commencement, "My dearest Greg--"

Billy was almost terrified by the discovery. There it was, in

irrefutable black and white. She stuffed it back into the basket, and

left the house like a thief, panting for the open air. A suspicion only

ten minutes before, now she felt as if no other fact on earth had ever

so fully possessed her. For an hour she drove about in a daze. Then she

went home, and sat down at her desk, and wrote the following letter:

"Mv DEAR RACHAEL: The letter with the darling little 'B' came

yesterday. I think he is cute to learn to write his own letter so

quickly. Tell him that mother is proud of him for picking so many

blackberries, and will love the jam. It is as hot as fire here, and the

park has that steamy smell that a hothouse has. I have been driving

about in Joe Butler's car all afternoon. We are going to Long Beach

to-night.

"Rachael--Magsie Clay and a man named Richard Gardiner were married

this afternoon. He is an invalid or something; he is at St. Luke's

Hospital, and she and his mother are going to take him to California at

once. What do you know about that? Of course this is a secret, and for

Heaven's sake, if you tell anybody this, don't say I gave it away.

"If Magsie Clay should send you a bunch of letters, she will just do it

to be a devil, and I want to ask you to burn them up before you read

them. You know how you talked to me about divorce, Rachael! What you

don't know can't hurt you. Don't please Magsie Clay to the extent of

doing exactly what she wants you to do. If anyone you love has been a

fool, why, it is certainly hard to understand how they could, but you

stand by what you said to me the other day, and forget it.

"I feel as if I was breaking into your own affairs. I hope you won't

care, and that I'm not all in the dark about this--" "Affectionately,

BILLY."

CHAPTER VI

This letter, creased from constant reading, Rachael showed to George

Valentine a week later. The doctor, who had spent the week-end with his

family at Clark's Hills, was in his car and running past the gate of

Home Dunes on his way back to town when Rachael stopped him. She looked

her composed and dignified self in her striped blue linen and

deep-brimmed hat, but the man's trained look found the circles about

her wonderful eyes, and he detected signs of utter weariness in her

voice.

"Read this, George," said she, resting against the door of his car, and

opening the letter before him. "This came from Billy--Mrs. Pickering,

you know--several days ago."

George read the document through twice, then raised questioning eyes to

hers, and made the mouth of a whistler.

"What do you think?" Rachael questioned in her turn.

"Lord! I don't know what to think," said George. "Do you suppose this

can be true?"

Rachael sighed wearily, staring down the road under the warming leaves

of the maples into a far vista of bare dunes in thinning September

sunshine.

"It might be, I suppose. You can see that Billy believes it," she said.

"Sure, she believes it," George agreed. "At least, we can find out. But

I don't understand it!"

"Understand it?" she echoed in rich scorn. "Who understands anything of

the whole miserable business? Do I? Does Warren, do you suppose?"

"No, of course nobody does," George said hastily in distress. He

regarded the paper almost balefully. "This is the deuce of a thing!" he

said. "If she didn't care for him any more than that, what's all the

fuss about? I don't believe the threat about sending his letters,

anyway!" he added hardily.

"Oh, that was true enough," Rachael said lifelessly. "They came."

George gave her an alarmed glance, but did not speak.

"A great package of them came," Rachael added dully. "I didn't open it.

I had a fire that morning, and I simply set it on the fire." Her voice

sank, her eyes, brooding and sombre, were far away. "But I watched it

burning, George," she said in a low, absent tone, "and I saw his

handwriting--how well I know it--Warren's writing, on dozens and dozens

of letters--there must have been a hundred! To think of it--to think of

it!"

Her voice was like some living thing writhing in anguish. George could

think of nothing to say. He looked about helplessly, buttoned a glove

button briskly, folded the letter, and made some work of putting it

away in an inside pocket.

"Well," Rachael said, straightening up suddenly, and with resolute

courage returning to her manner and voice, "you'll have, somebody look

it up, will you, George?"

"You may depend upon it-immediately," George said huskily. "It--of

course it will make an immense difference," he added, in his anxiety to

be reassuring saying exactly the wrong thing.

Rachael was pale.

"I don't know how anything can make a great difference now, George,"

she answered slowly. "The thing remains--a fact. Of course this ends,

in one way, the sordid side, the fear of publicity, of notoriety. But

that wasn't the phase of it that ever counted with me. This will

probably hurt Warren--"

"Oh, Rachael, dear old girl, don't talk that way!" George protested.

"You can't believe that Warren will feel anything but a--a most

unbelievable relief! We all know that. He's not the first man who let a

pretty face drive him crazy when he was working himself to death."

George was studying her as he spoke, with all his honest heart in his

look, but Rachael merely shook her head forlornly.

"Perhaps I don't understand men," she said with a mildness that George

found infinitely more disturbing than any fury would have been.

"Well, I'll look up records at the City Hall," he said after a pause.

"That's the first thing to do. And then I'll let you know. Boys well

this morning?"

"Lovely," Rachael smiled. "My trio goes fishing to-day, packing its

lunch itself, and asking no feminine assistance. The lunch will be

eaten by ten o'clock, and the boys home at half-past ten, thinking it

is almost sundown. They only go as far as the cove, where the men are

working, and we can see the tops of their heads from the upstairs'

porch, so Mary and I won't feel entirely unprotected. I'm to lunch with

Alice, so my day is nicely planned!"

The bright look did not deceive him, nor the reassuring tone. But

George Valentine's friendship was more easily displayed by deeds than

words, and now, with an affectionate pat for her hand, he touched his

starter, and the car leaped upon its way. Just four hours later he

telephoned Alice that the wedding license of Margaret Rose Clay and

Richard Gardiner had indeed been issued a week before, and that Magsie

was not to be found at her apartment, which was to be sublet at the

janitor's discretion; that Bowman's secretary reported the absence of

Miss Clay from the city, and the uncertainty of her appearing in any of

Mr. Bowman's productions that winter, and that at the hospital a

confident inquiry for "Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner" had resulted in the

discreet reply that "the parties" had left for California. George, with

what was for him a rare flash of imagination, had casually inquired as

to the name of the clergyman who had performed the ceremony, being

answered dispassionately that the person at the other end of the

telephone "didn't know."

"George, you are an absolute WONDER!" said Alice's proud voice, faintly

echoed from Clark's Hills. "Now, shall you cable--anybody--you know who

I mean?"

"I have," answered the efficient George, "already."

"Oh, George! And what will he do?"

"Well, eventually, he'll come back."

"Do you THINK so? I don't!"

"Well, anyway, we'll see."

"And you're an angel," said Mrs. Valentine, finishing the conversation.

Ten days later Warren Gregory walked into George Valentine's office,

and the two men gripped hands without speaking. That Warren had left

for America the day George's cable reached him there was no need to

say. That he was a man almost sick with empty days and brooding nights

there was no need to say. George was shocked in the first instant of

meeting, and found himself, as they talked together, increasingly

shocked at the other's aspect.

Warren was thin, his hair actually showed more gray, there were deep

lines about his mouth. But it was not only that; his eyes had a tired

and haunted look that George found sad to see, his voice had lost its

old confident ring, and he seemed weary and shaken. He asked for Alice

and the children, and for Rachael and the boys.

"Rachael's well," George said. "She looks--well, she shows what she's

been through; but she's very handsome. And the boys are fine. We had

the whole crowd down as far as Shark Light for a picnic last Sunday.

Rachael has little Breck Pickering down there now; he's a nice little

chap, younger than our Katrina--Jim's age. The youngster is in

paradise, sure enough, and putting on weight at a great rate."

"I didn't know he was there," Warren said slowly. "Like her--to take

him in. I wish I had been there--Sunday. I wish to the Lord that it was

all a horrible dream!"

He stopped and sat silent, looking gloomily at the floor, his whole

figure, George thought, indicating a broken and shamed spirit.

"Well, Magsie's settled, at least," said George after a silence.

"Yes. That wasn't what counted, though," Warren said, as Rachael had

said. "She is settled without my moving; there's no way in which I can

ever make Rachael feel that I would have moved." Again his voice sank

into silence, but presently he roused himself. "I've come back to work,

George," he said with a quiet decision of manner that George found new

and admirable. "That's all I can do now. If she ever forgives me--but

she's not the kind that forgives. She's not weak--Rachael. But anyway,

I can work. I'll go to the old house, for the present, and get things

in order. And you drop a hint to Alice, when she talks to Rachael, that

I've not got anything to say. I'll not annoy her."

George's heart ached for him as Warren suddenly covered his face with

his hands. Warren had always been the adored younger brother to him,

Warren's wonderful fingers over the surgical table, a miracle that gave

their owner the right to claim whatever human weaknesses and failings

he might, as a balance. George had never thought him perfect, as so

much of the world thought him; to George, Warren had always been a

little more than perfect, a machine of inspired surgery, underbalanced

in many ways that in this one supreme way he might be more than human.

George had to struggle for what he achieved; Warren achieved by divine

right. The women were in the right of it now, George conceded, they had

the argument. But of course they didn't understand--a thing like that

had nothing to do with Warren's wife; Rachael wasn't brought into the

question at all. And Lord! when all was said and done Warren was

Warren, and professionally the biggest figure in George's world.

"I don't suppose you feel like taking Hudson's work?" said George now.

"He's crazy to get away, and he was telling me yesterday that he didn't

see himself breaking out of it. Mrs. Hudson wants to go to her own

people, in Montreal, and I suppose Jack would be glad to go, too."

"Take it in a minute!" Warren said, his whole expression changing. "Of

course I'll take it. I'm going to spend this afternoon getting things

into shape at the house, and I think I'll drop round at the hospital

about five. But I can start right in to-morrow."

"It isn't too much?" George asked affectionately.

"Too much? It's the only thing that will save my reason, I think,"

Warren answered, and after that George said no more.

The two men lunched together, and dined together, five times a week,

with a curious change from old times: it was Warren who listened, and

George who did the talking now. They talked of cases chiefly, for

Warren was working day and night, and thought of little else than his

work; but once or twice, as September waned, and October moved toward

its close, there burst from him an occasional inquiry as to his wife.

"Will she ever forgive me, George?" Warren asked one cool autumn

dawning when the two men were walking away from the hospital under the

fading stars. Warren had commenced an operation just before midnight,

it was only concluded now, and George, who had remained beside him for

sheer admiration of his daring and his skill, had suggested that they

walk for a while, and shake off the atmosphere of ether and of pain.

"It's a time like this I miss her," Warren said. "I took it all for

granted, then. But after such a night as this, when I would go home in

those first years, and creep into bed, she was never too sleepy to

rouse and ask me how the case went, she never failed to see that the

house was quiet the next morning, and she'd bring in my tray

herself--Lord, a woman like that, waiting on me!"

George shook his head but did not speak. They walked an echoing block

or two in silence.

"George, I need my wife," Warren said then. "There isn't an hour of my

life that some phase of our life together doesn't come back to me and

wring my heart. I don't want anything else--our sons, our fireside, our

interests together. I've heard her voice ever since. And I'm changed,

George, not in what I always believed, because I know right from wrong,

and always have, but I don't believe in myself any more. I want my kids

to be taught laws--not their own laws. I want to go on my knees to my

girl---"

His voice thickened suddenly, and they walked on with no attempt on

either side to end the silence for a long time. The city streets were

wet from a rain, but day was breaking in hopeful pearl and rose.

"I can say this," said George at last: "I believe that she needs you as

much as you do her. But Rachael's proud--"

"Ah, yes, she's that!" Warren said eagerly as he paused.

"And Warren, she has been dragged through the muck during the last few

years," George resumed in a mildly expostulatory tone.

"Oh, I know it!" Warren answered, stricken.

"She hates coarseness," pursued George, "she hates weakness. I believe

that if ever a divorce was justified in this world, hers was. But to

have you come back at her, to have Magsie Clay break in on her, and

begin to yap breezily about divorce, and how prevalent it is, and what

a solution it is, why, of course it was enough to break her heart!"

"Don't!" Warren said thickly, quickening his pace, as if to walk away

from his own insufferable thoughts.

For many days they did not speak of Rachael again; indeed George felt

that there was nothing further to say. He feared in his own heart that

nothing would ever bring about a change in her feeling, or rather, that

the change that had been taking place in her for so many weeks was one

that would be lasting, that Rachael was an altered woman.

Alice believed this, too, and Rachael believed it most of all. Indeed,

over Rachael's torn and shaken spirit there had fallen of late a peace

and a sense of security that she had never before known in her life.

She tried not to think of Warren any more, or at least to think of him

as he had been in the happy days when they had been all in all to each

other. If other thoughts would creep in, and her heart grow hot and

bitter within her at the memory of her wrongs, she resolutely fought

for composure; no matter now what he had been or done, that life was

dead. She had her boys, the sunsets and sunrises, the mellowing beauty

of the year. She had her books, and above all her memories. And in

these memories she found much to blame in herself, but much to pity,

too. A rudderless little bark, she had been set adrift in so inviting,

so welcoming a sea twenty years ago! She had known that she was

beautiful, and that she must marry--what else? What more serious

thought ever flitted through the brain of little Rachael Fairfax than

that it was a delicious adventure to face life in a rough blue coat and

feathered hat, and steer her wild little sails straight into the heart

of the great waters?

She would have broken Stephen's heart; but Stephen was dead. She had

seized upon Clarence with never a thought of what she was to give him,

with never a prayer as to her fitness to be his wife, nor his fitness

to be the father of her children. She had laughed at self-sacrifice,

laughed at endurance, laughed at married love--these things were only

words to her. And when she had tugged with all her might at the problem

before her, and tried, with her pitiable, untrained strength to force

what she wished from Fate, then she had flung the whole thing aside,

and rushed on to new experiments--and to new failures.

Always on the surface, always thinking of the impression she made on

the watching men and women about her, what a life it had been! She had

never known who made Clarence's money, what his own father had been

like, what the forces were that had formed him, and had made him what

he was. He did not please her, that began and ended the story. He had

presently flung himself into eternity with as little heed as she had

cast herself into her new life.

Ah, but there had been a difference there! She had loved there, and

been awakened by great love. Her child's crumpled, rosy foot had come

to mean more to her than all the world had meant before. The smile, or

the frown, in her husband's eyes had been her sunshine or her storm.

Through love she had come to know the brimming life of the world, the

pathos, the comedy that is ready to spill itself over every humble

window-sill, the joy that some woman's heart feels whenever the piping

cry of the new-born sounds in a darkened room, the sorrow held by every

shabby white hearse that winds its way through a hot and unnoticing

street. She had clung to husband and sons with the tigerish tenacity

that is the rightful dower of wife and mother; she had thought the

world well lost in holding them.

And then the sordid, selfish past rose like an ugly mist before her,

and she found at her lips the bitter cup she had filled herself. She

was not so safe now, behind her barrier of love, but that the terrible

machinery she had set in motion might bring its grinding wheels to bear

upon the lives she guarded. She had flung her solemn promise aside,

once; what defence could she make for a second solemn promise now? The

world, divorce mad, spun blindly on, and the echo of her own complacent

"one in twelve" came faintly, sickly back to her after the happy years.

"Divorce has actually no place in our laws, it isn't either wrong or

right," Rachael said one autumn day when they were walking slowly to

the beach. Over their heads the trees were turning scarlet; the days

were still soft and warm, but twilight fell earlier now, and in the air

at morning and evening was the intoxicating sharpness, the thin blue

and clear steel color that mark the dying summer. Alice's three younger

children were in school, and the family came to Clark's Hills only for

the week-ends, but Rachael and her boys stayed on and on, enjoying the

rare warmth and beauty of the Indian Summer, and comfortable in the old

house that had weathered fifty autumns and would weather fifty more.

"In some states it is absolutely illegal," Rachael continued, "in

others, it's permissible. In some it is a real source of revenue. Now

fancy treating any other offence that way! Imagine states in which

stealing was only a regrettable incident, or where murder was

tolerated! In South Carolina you cannot get a divorce on any grounds!

In Washington the courts can give it to you for any cause they consider

sufficient. There was a case: a man and his wife obtained a divorce and

both remarried. Now they find they are both bigamists, because it was

shown that the wife went West, with her husband's knowledge and

consent, to establish her residence there for the explicit purpose of

getting a divorce. It was well-established law that if a husband or

wife seek the jurisdiction of another state for the sole object of

obtaining a divorce, without any real intent of living there, making

their home there, goes, in other words, just for divorce purposes, then

the decree having been fraudulently obtained will not be recognized

anywhere!"

"But thousands do it, Rachael."

"But thousands don't seem to realize--I never did before--that that is

illegal. You can't deliberately move to Reno or Seattle or San

Francisco for such a purpose. All marriages following a divorce

procured under these conditions are illegal. Besides this, the divorce

laws as they exist in Washington, California, or Nevada are not

recognized by other states, and so because a couple are separated upon

the grounds of cruelty or incompatibility in some Western state, they

are still legally man and wife in New York or Massachusetts. All sorts

of hideous complications are going on: blackmail and perjury!

"I wonder why divorce laws are so little understood?" Alice mused.

"Because divorce is an abnormal thing. You can't make it right, and of

course we are a long way from making it wrong. But that is what it is

coming to, I believe. Divorce will be against the law some day! No

divorce on ANY GROUNDS! It cannot be reconciled to law; it defies law.

Right on the face of it, it is breaking a contract. Are any other

contracts to be broken with public approval? We will see the return of

the old, simple law, then we will wonder at ourselves! I am not a woman

who takes naturally to public work--I wish I were. But perhaps some day

I can strike the system a blow. It is women like me who understand, and

who will help to end it."

"It is only the worth-while women who do understand," said Alice. "You

are the marble worth cutting. Life is a series of phases; we are none

of us the same from year to year. You are not the same girl that you

were when you married Clarence Breckenridge--"

"What a different woman!" Rachael said under her breath.

"Well," said Alice then a little frightened, "why won't you think that

perhaps Warren might have changed, too; that whatever Warren has done,

it was done more like--like the little boy who has never had his fling,

who gets dizzy with his own freedom, and does something foolish without

analyzing just what he is doing?"

"But Warren, after all, isn't a child!" Rachael said sadly.

"But Warren is in some ways; that's just it," Alice said eagerly. "He

has always been singularly--well, unbalanced, in some ways. Don't you

know there was always a sort of simplicity, a sort of bright innocence

about Warren? He believed whatever anybody said until you laughed at

him; he took every one of his friends on his own valuation. It's only

where his work is concerned that you ever see Warren positive, and

dictatorial, and keen--"

Rachael's eyes had filled with tears.

"But he isn't the man I loved, and married," she said slowly. "I

thought he was a sort of god--he could do no wrong for me!"

"Yes, but that isn't the way to feel toward anybody," persisted Alice.

"No man is a god, no man is perfect. You're not perfect yourself; I'm

not. Can't you just say to yourself that human beings are faulty--it

may be your form of it to get dignified and sulk, and Warren's to

wander off dreamily into curious paths--but that's life, Rachael,

that's 'better or worse,' isn't it?"

"It isn't a question of my holding out for a mere theory, Alice,"

Rachael said after a while; "I'm not saying that I'm all in the right,

and that I will never see Warren again until he admits it, and everyone

admits it--that isn't what I want. But it's just that I'm dead, so far

as that old feeling is concerned. It is as if a child saw his mother

suddenly turn into a fiend, and do some hideously cruel act; no amount

of cool reason could ever convince that child again that his mother was

sweet and good."

"But as you get older," Alice smiled, "you differentiate between good

and good, and you see grades in evil, too. Everything isn't all good or

all bad, like the heroes and the villains of the old plays. If Warren

had done a 'hideously cruel' thing deliberately, that would be one

thing; what he has done is quite another. The God who made us put sex

into the world, Warren didn't; and Warren only committed, in his--what

is it?--forty-eighth year one of the follies that most boys dispose of

in their teens. Be generous, Rachael, and forgive him. Give him another

trial!"

"How CAN I forgive him?" Rachael said, badly shaken, and through tears.

"No, no, no, I couldn't! I never can."

They had reached the beach now, and could see the children, in their

blue field coats, following the curving reaches of the incoming waves.

The fresh roar of the breakers filled a silence, gulls piped their

wistful little cry as they circled high in the blue air. Old Captain

Semple, in his rickety one-seated buggy, drove up the beach, the water

rising in the wheel-tracks. The children gathered about him; it was one

of their excitements to see the Captain wash his carriage, and the old

mare splash in the shallow water. Alice seated herself on a great log,

worn silver from the sea, and half buried in the white sand, but

Rachael remained standing, the sweet October wind whipping against her

strong and splendid figure, her beautiful eyes looking far out to sea.

"You two have no quarrel," the older woman added mildly. "You and

Warren were rarely companionable. I used to say to George that you were

almost TOO congenial, too sensitive to each other's moods. Warren knew

that you idolized him, Rachael, and consequently, when criticism came,

when he felt that you of all persons were misjudging him, why, he

simply flung up his head like a horse, and bolted!"

"Misjudging?" Rachael said quickly, half turning her head, and bringing

her eyes from the far horizon to rest upon Alice's face. The children

had seen them now, and were running toward them, and Alice did not

attempt to answer. She sighed, and shrugged her shoulders.

A dead horseshoe crab on the sands deflected the course of the racing

children, except Derry, who pursued his panting way, and as Rachael sat

down on the log, cast himself, radiant and breathless, into her arms.

She caught the child to her heart passionately. He had always been

closer to her than even the splendid first-born because of the giddy

little head that was always getting him into troubles, and the reckless

little feet that never chose a sensible course. Derry was always being

rescued from deep water, always leaping blindly from high places and

saved by the narrowest possible chance, always getting his soft mop of

hair inextricably tangled in the steering-gear of Rachael's car, or his

foot hopelessly twisted in the innocent-looking bars of his own bed,

always eating mysterious berries, or tasting dangerous medicines,

always ready to laugh deeply and deliciously at his own crimes. Jim

assumed a protective attitude toward him, chuckling at his

predicaments, advising him, and even gallantly assuming the blame for

his worst misdeeds. Rachael imagined them in boarding-school some day;

in college; Jim the student, dragged from his books and window-seat to

go to the rescue of the unfortunate but fascinating junior. Jim said he

was going to write books; Derry was going--her heart contracted

whenever he said it--was going to be a doctor, and Dad would show him

what to do!

Ah, how proud Warren might have been of them, she thought, walking home

to-day, a sandy hand in each of hers, Derry hopping on one foot,

twisting, and leaping; Jim leaning affectionately against her, and

holding forth as to the proper method of washing wagons! What man would

not have been proud of this pair, enchanting in faded galatea now, soon

to be introduced to linen knickerbockers, busy with their first toiling

capitals now, some day to be growling Latin verbs. They would be

interested in the Zoo this winter, and then in skating, and then in

football--Warren loved football. He had thrown it all away!

Widowed in spirit, still Rachael was continually reminded that she was

not actually widowed, and in the hurt that came to her, even in these

first months, she found a chilling premonition of the years to come.

Warm-hearted Vera Villalonga wrote impulsively from the large

establishment at Lakewood that she had acquired for the early winter.

She had heard that Rachael and Greg weren't exactly hitting it

off--hoped to the Lord it wasn't true--anyway, Rachael had been

perfectly horrible about seeing her old friends; couldn't she come at

once to Vera, lots of the old crowd were there, and spend a month? Mrs.

Barker Emery, meeting Rachael on one of the rare occasions when Rachael

went into the city, asked pleasantly for the boys, and pleasantly did

not ask for Warren. Belvedere Bay was gayer than ever this year, Mrs.

Emory said; did Rachael know that the Duchess of Exton was visiting

Mary Moulton--such a dear! Georgiana Vanderwall, visiting the Thomases

at Easthampton, motored over one day to spend a sympathetic half

morning with Rachael, pressing that lady's unresponsive hand with her

own large, capable one, and murmuring that of course--one heard--that

the Bishop of course felt dreadfully--they only hoped--both such dear

sweet people--

Rachael felt as if she would like to take a bath after this well-meant

visitation. A day or two later she had a letter from Florence, who said

that "someone" had told her that the Gregorys might not be planning to

keep their wonderful cook this winter. If that was true, would Rachael

be so awfully good as to ask her to go see Mrs. Haviland?

"The pack," Rachael said to Alice, "is ready to run again!"

CHAPTER VII

November turned chilly, and in its second week there was even a flutter

of snow at Clark's Hills. Rachael did not dislike it, and it was a huge

adventure to the boys. Nevertheless, she began to feel that a longer

stay down on the bleak coast might be unwise. The old house, for all

its purring furnace and double windows, was draughty enough to admit

icy little fingers of the outside air, here and there, and the village,

getting under storm shutters and closing up this wing or that room for

the winter, was so businesslike in its preparations as to fill

Rachael's heart with mild misgivings.

Alice still brought her brood down for the week-ends, and it was on one

of these that Rachael suddenly decided to move. The two women discussed

it, Rachael finally agreeing to go to the Valentines' for a week before

going on to Boston--or it might be Washington or Philadelphia--any

other city than the one in which she might encounter the boys' father.

Alice had never won her to promise a visit before, and although

Rachael's confidence in her--for Rachael neither extracted a promise

from Alice as to any possible encounter with Warren, nor reminded her

friend that she placed herself entirely at Alice's mercy--rather

disconcerted Alice, she had a simple woman's strong faith in

coincidence, and she felt, she told George, that the Lord would not let

this opportunity for a reconciliation go by. Mrs. Valentine had seen

Warren Gregory now, more than once, and far more potent than any

argument that he might have made was his silence, his most unexpected

and unnatural silence. There was no explanation; indeed Warren had

little to say on any subject in these days. He liked to come now and

then, in the evening, to the Valentine house, but he would not dine

there, and confined his remarks almost entirely to answers to George.

Physically, Alice thought him shockingly changed.

"He is simply broken," she said to George, in something like fright. "I

didn't know human beings could change that way. Warren--who used to be

so positive! Why, he's almost timid!"

She did not tell Rachael this, and George insisted that, while Rachael

and the boys were at the house, Warren must be warned to keep away; so

that Alice had frail enough material with which to build her dreams.

Nevertheless, she dreamed.

It was finally arranged that Rachael and little Jim should go up to

town on a certain Monday with Alice; that Rachael should make various

engagements then, as to storage, packing, and such matters as the care

of the piano and the car, for the winter. Then Jim, for the first time

in his life, would stay away from his mother overnight with Aunt Alice,

Rachael returning to Clark's Hills to bring Mary and Derry up the next

day in the car. Jim was to go to the dentist, and to get shoes; there

were several excellent reasons why it seemed wise to have him await his

mother and brother in town rather than make the long trip twice in one

day. Mary smuggled Derry out of sight when the Monday morning came, and

Rachael and her oldest son went away with the Valentines in the car.

It was a fresh, sweet morning in the early winter, and both women,

furred to the eyes, enjoyed the trip. The children, snuggled in between

them, chattered of their own affairs, and Rachael interrupted her

inexhaustible talk with Alice only to ask a question of the driver now

and then.

"I shall have to bring my own car over this road to-morrow, Kane," she

explained. "I have never been at the wheel myself before in all the

times I have done it."

"Mar-r-tin does be knowin' every step of the way," suggested Kane.

"But Martin hasn't been with me this summer," the lady smiled.

"I thought I saw him runnin' the docther's car yesterda' week," mused

Kane who was a privileged character. "Well,'tis not hard, Mrs. Gregory.

The whole place is plasthered wid posts. But the thing of it is,

ma'am," he added, after a moment, turning back toward her without

taking his eyes from the road, "there does be a big storm blowin' up.

Look there, far over there, how black it is."

"But that won't break to-day?" Rachael said uneasily, thinking of Derry.

"Well, it may not--that's thrue. But these roads will be in a grand

mess if we have anny more rain--that's a fact for ye," Kane persisted.

"Then don't come until Wednesday," suggested Alice.

"Oh, Alice, but I'll be so frantic to see my boy!"

"Twenty-four hours more, you goose!" Alice laughed. Rachael laughed,

too, and took several surreptitious kisses from the back of Jimmy's

neck as a fortification against the coming separation.

Indeed, she found it unbelievably hard to leave him, trotting happily

upstairs with his beloved Katharine, and to go about her day's business

anticipating the long trip back to Home Dunes without him. However,

there were not many hours to spare, and Rachael had much to do. She set

herself systematically to work.

By one o'clock everything was done, with an hour to spare for train

time. But she had foolishly omitted luncheon, and felt tired and dizzy.

She turned toward a downtown lunchroom, and was held at the crossing of

Fifth Avenue and one of the thirties idly watching the crowd of cars

that delayed her when she saw Warren in his car.

He was on the cross street, and so also stopped, but he did not see

her. Martin was at the wheel, Warren buttoned to the neck in a gray

coat, his hat well down over his eyes, alone in the back seat. He was

staring steadily, yet with unseeing eyes, before him, and Rachael felt

a sense of almost sickening shock at the sight of his altered face.

Warren, looking tired and depressed, looking discouraged, and with some

new look of diffidence and hurt, besides all these, in his face! Warren

old! Warren OLD!

Rachael felt as if she should faint. She was rooted where she stood.

Fifth Avenue pushed gayly and busily by her under the leaden sky.

Furred old ladies, furred little girls, messenger boys and club men,

jostling, gossiping, planning. Only she stood still. And after a while

she looked again where Warren had been. He was gone. But had he seen

her? her heart asked itself with wild clamor. Had he seen her?

She began to walk rapidly and blindly, conscious of taking a general

direction toward the Terminal Station, but so vague as to her course

that she presently looked bewilderedly about to find that she was in

Eighth Avenue and that, standing absolutely still again, and held by

thought, she was being curiously regarded by a policeman. She gave the

man a dazed and sickly smile.

"I am afraid I am a little out of my way," she stammered. "I am going

to the station."

He pointed out the direction, and she thanked him, and blindly went on

her way. But her heart was tearing like a living thing in her breast,

and she walked like a wounded creature that leaves a trail of life

blood.

Oh, she was his wife--his wife--his wife! She belonged there, in that

empty seat beside him, with her shoulder against that gray overcoat!

What was she doing in this desolate street of little shops, faint and

heartsick and alone! Oh, for the security of that familiar car again!

How often she had sat beside him, arrested by the traffic, content to

placidly watch the shifting crowd, to wait for the shrill little

whistle that gave them the right of way! If she were there now, where

might they be going? Perhaps to a concert, perhaps to look at a picture

in some gallery, but first of all certainly to lunch. His first

question would be: "Had your lunch?" and his answer only a satisfied

nod. But he would direct Martin to the first place that suggested

itself to him as being suitable for Rachael's meal. And he would order

it, no trouble was too much for her; nothing too good for his wife.

She was not beside him. She was still drifting along this hideous

street, battling with faintness and headache, and never, perhaps, to

see her husband again. One of her sons was in the city, another miles

away, To her horror she felt herself beginning to cry. She quickened

her pace, and reckless of the waiter's concern, entered the station

restaurant and ordered herself a lunch. But when it came she could not

eat it, and she was presently in the train, without a book or magazine,

still fasting except for a hurried half cup of tea, and every instant

less and less able to resist the corning flood of her tears.

All the long trip home she wept, quietly and steadily, one arm on the

window sill, a hand pressed against her face. There were few other

passengers in the train, which was too hot. The winter twilight shut

down early, and at last the storm broke; not violently, but with a

stern and steady persistence. The windows ran rain, and were blurred

with steam, the darkening landscape swept by under a deluge. When the

train stopped at a station, a rush of wet air, mingled with the odors

of mackintoshes and the wet leather of motor cars, came in. Rachael

would look out to see meetings, lanterns and raincoats, umbrellas

dripping over eager, rosy faces.

She would be glad to get home, she said to herself, to her snuggly

little comforting Derry. They would not attempt to make the move

to-morrow--that was absurd. It had been far too much of a trip to-day,

and Alice had advised her against it. But it had not sounded so

formidable. To start at seven, be in town at ten, after the brisk run,

and take the afternoon train home--this was no such strain, as they had

planned it. But it had proved to be a frightful strain. Leaving Jim,

and then catching that heart-rending glimpse of the changed

Warren--Warren looking like a hurt child who must bear a punishment

without understanding it.

"Oh, what are we thinking about, to act in this crazy manner!" Rachael

asked herself desperately. "He loves me, and I--I've always loved him.

Other people may misjudge him, but I know! He's horrified and shamed

and sorry. He's suffering as much as I am. What fools--what utter FOOLS

we are!"

And suddenly--it was nearly six o'clock now, and they were within a few

minutes of Clark's Hills--she stopped crying, and began to plan a

letter that should end the whole terrible episode.

"Your stop Quaker Bridge?" asked the conductor, coming in, and

beginning to shift the seats briskly on their iron pivots, as one who

expected a large crowd to accompany him on the run back.

"Clark's Hills," Rachael said, noticing that she was alone in the train.

"Don't know as we can get over the Bar," the man said cheerily.

"Looks as if we were going to try it!" Rachael answered with equal

aplomb as the train ran through Quaker Bridge without stopping, and

went on with only slightly decreased speed. And a moment later she

began to gather her possessions together, and the conductor remarked

amiably: "Here we are! But she surely is raining," he added. "Well,

we've only got to run back as far as the car barn--that's

Seawall--to-night. My folks live there."

Rachael did not mind the rain. She would be at home in five minutes.

She climbed into a closed surrey, smelling strongly of leather and

horses, and asked the driver pleasantly how early the rain had

commenced. He evidently did not hear her, at all events made no answer,

and she did not speak again.

"Where's my Derry?" Rachael's voice rang strong and happy through the

house. "Mary--Mary!" she added, stopping, rather puzzled, in the hall.

"Where is he?"

How did it come to her, by what degrees? How does such news tell

itself, from the first little chill, that is not quite fear, to the

full thundering avalanche of utter horror? Rachael never remembered

afterward, never tried to remember. The moment remained the blackest of

all her life. It was not the subtly changed atmosphere of the house,

not Mary's tear-swollen face, as she appeared, silent, at the top of

the stairs; not Millie, who came ashen-faced and panting from the

kitchen; not the sudden, weary little moan that floated softly through

the hallway--no one of all these things.

Yet Rachael knew--Derry was dying. She needed not to know how or why.

Her furs fell where she stood, her hat was gone, she had flown upstairs

as swiftly as light. She knew the door, she knew what she would see.

She went down on her knees beside him.

Her little gallant, reckless, shouting Derry! Her warm, beautiful boy,

changed in these few hours to this crushed and moaning little being,

this cruelly crumpled and tortured little wreck of all that had been

gay and sound and confident babyhood!

In that first moment at his side it had seemed to Rachael that she must

die, too, of sheer agony of spirit. She put her beautiful head down

against the brown little limp hand upon which a rusty stain was drying,

and she could have wailed aloud in the bitter rebellion of her soul.

Not Derry, not Derry, so small and innocent and confiding--her own

child, her own flesh and blood, the fibre of her being! Trusting them,

obeying them, and betrayed--brought to this!

At her first look she had thought the child dead; now, as she drew back

from him, and caught her self-control with a quivering breath, and

wrung her hands together in desperate effort to hold back a scream, she

found it in her heart to wish he were. His little face was black from a

great bruise that spread from temple to chin, his mouth cut and

swollen, his eyes half shut. His body was doubled where it lay, a great

bubble of blood moved with his breath. He breathed lightly and faintly,

with an occasional deep gasp that invariably brought the long,

heart-sickening moan. They had taken off part of his clothes, his shoes

and stockings, but he still wore his Holland suit, and the dark-blue

woolen coat had only been partly removed.

Rachael, ashen-faced, rose from her knees, and faced Mary and Millie.

With bitter tears the story was told. He had been playing, as usual, in

the barn, and Mary had been swinging him. Not high, nothing like as

high as Jimmie went. And Millie came out to say that their dinner was

ready, and all of a sudden he called out that he could swing without

holding on, and put both his hands up in the air. And then Mary saw him

fall, the board of the swing falling, too, and striking him as he fell,

and his face dashing against the old mill-wheel that stood by the door.

And he had not spoken since.

His arm had hung down loose-like, as Mary carried him in, and Millie

had run for the doctor. But Doctor Peet wouldn't be back until seven,

and the girls had dared do no more than wash off his face a little and

try to make him comfortable. "I wish the Lord had called me before the

day came," said Mary, "me, that would have died for him--for any of

you!"

"I know that, Mary," Rachael said. "It would have happened as easily

with me. We all know what you have been to the boys, Mary. But you

mustn't cry so hard. I need you. I am going to drive him into town."

"Oh, my God, in this storm?" exclaimed Millie.

"There's nothing else to do," Rachael said. "He may die on the way, but

his mother will do what she can. I couldn't have Doctor Peet, kind as

he is. Doctor Gregory--his father--will know. It's nearly seven now. We

must start as fast as we can. You'll have to pin something all about

the back seat, Mary, and line it with comforters. We'll put his

mattress on the seat--you'll make it snug, won't you?--and you'll sit

on the floor there, and steady him all you can, for I'll have to drive.

We ought to be there by midnight, even in the storm."

"I'll fix it," Mary said, with one great sob, and immediately, to

Rachael's great relief, she was her practical self.

"And I want some coffee, Millie," she said, "strong; I'm not hungry,

but if you have something ready, I'll eat what I can. Did Ruddy come up

and get the car to-day, for oil and gas, and so on?"

"He did," said Millie, eager to be helpful.

"That's a blessing." Rachael turned to look at the little figure on the

bed. Her heart contracted with a freezing spasm of terror whenever her

eyes even moved in that direction.

But there was plenty to do. She got herself into dry, warm clothes. She

leaned over her little charge, straightening and adjusting as best she

could, shifting the little body as gently as was possible to the

smaller mattress, covering it warmly but lightly. As she did so she

wondered which one of those long, moaning breaths would be the last;

when would little Derry straighten himself--and lie still?

No time to think of that. She tied on her hat and veil, and went out to

look at the car. The rear seat was lined with pillows, the curtain

drawn. She had matches, her electric flashlight, her road maps, a flask

of brandy--what else?

Millie had run for neighbors, and the chains were finally adjusted. The

car had been made ready for the run, and was in good shape.

The big shadowy barn that was the garage was full of dancing shapes in

the lantern-light. The rain splashed and spattered incessantly outside;

a black sky seemed to have closed down just over their heads. She was

in a fever to get away.

Slowly the dazzling headlights moved in the pitchy blackness, the

wheels grated but held their own. The car came to the side door, and

the little mattress came out, and the muffled shape that was Mary got

in beside it. Then there was buttoning of storm curtains by willing

hands, and many a whispered good wish to Rachael as she slipped in

under the wheel. Millie was beside her, at the last moment, begging to

be of some use if she might.

"There's just this, Mrs. Gregory," said Ruddy Simms nervously, when the

engine was humming, and, Rachael's gloved hand racing the accelerator,

"they say the tide's making fast in all this rain! I don't know how

you'll do at the Bar. She's ugly a night, like this; what with the bay

eating one side, and the sea breaking over the other!"

"Thank you," Rachael said, not hearing him. "God bless you! Good-bye!"

She released the clutch. The big car leaped forward, into the darkness.

The clock before her eyes said thirty-five minutes past seven. Rain

beat against the heavy cloth of the curtains, water swished and

splashed under the wheels, and above the purring of the engine they

could hear the clinking fall of the chains. There was no other sound

except when Derry caught a moaning breath.

Clark's Hills passed in blackness, the road dropped down toward the

Bar. Rachael could feel that Mary, in the back seat, was praying, and

that Millie was praying beside her. Her own heart rose on a wild and

desperate prayer. If they could cross this narrow strip between the bay

and the ocean, then whatever the fortune of the road, she could meet

it. Telephones, at least, were on the other side, resources of all

sorts. But to be stopped here!

The look of the Bar, when they reached it, struck chill even to

Rachael's heart. In the clear tunnels of light flung from the car lamps

it seemed all a moving level of restless water smitten under sheets of

rain. Anything more desperate than an effort to find the little belt of

safety in this trackless spread of merciless seas it would be hard to

imagine. At an ordinary high tide the Bar was but a few inches above

the sea; now, with a wind blowing, a heavy rain falling, and the tide

almost at the full, no road whatever was visible. It was there, the

friendly road that Rachael and the hot and sandy boys had tramped a

hundred times, but even she could not believe it, now, so utterly

impassable did the shifting surface appear.

But she gallantly put the car straight into the heart of it, moving as

slowly as the engine permitted, and sending quick, apprehensive glances

into the darkness as she went.

"At the worst, we can back out of this, Millie," said she.

"Of course we can," Millie said, suppressing frightened tears with some

courage.

The water was washing roughly against the running boards; to an

onlooker the car would have had the appearance of being afloat,

hub-deep, at sea.

Slowly, slowly, slowly they were still moving. The car stopped short.

The engine was dead. Rachael touched her starter, touched it again and

again. No use. The car had stopped. The rain struck in noisy sheets

against the curtains. The sea gurgled and rushed about them. Derry

moaned softly.

And now the full madness of the attempted expedition struck her for the

first time. She had never thought that, at worst, she could not go

back. What now? Should they stand here on the shifting sand of the Bar

until the tide fell--it was not yet full. Rachael felt her heart

beating quick with terror. It began to seem like a feverish dream.

Neither maid spoke, perhaps neither one realized the full extent of the

calamity. With the confidence of those who do not understand the

workings of a car, they waited to have it start again.

But both girls screamed when suddenly a new voice was heard. Rachael,

starting nervously as a man's figure came about the car out of the

black night, in the next second saw, with a great rush of relief, that

it was Ruddy Simms. He was a mighty fellow, devoted to the Gregorys. He

proceeded rather awkwardly to explain that he hadn't liked to think of

their trying to cross the Bar, and so had come with them on the running

board.

"Oh, Ruddy, how grateful I am to you!" Rachael said. "Perhaps you can

go back and get us a tow? What can we do?"

"Stuck?" asked Ruddy, wading as unconcernedly about the car as if the

sun were shining on the scene.

"No, I don't think so, not yet. But I can feel the road under us giving

already. And I've killed my engine!"

Ruddy deliberated.

"Won't start, eh?"

"She simply WON'T!"

"Ain't got a crank, have ye?"

Rachael stared.

"Why, yes, we have, under my seat here. But is there a chance that she

might start on cranking?" she said eagerly.

"Dun't know," Ruddy said non-committally.

Rachael was instantly on her feet, and after some groping and

adjusting, the cranking was attempted. Failure. Ruddy went bravely at

it again. Failure. Again Rachael touched the starter.

"No use!" she said with a sinking heart.

But Ruddy was bred of sea-folk who do not expect quick results. He

tugged away again vigorously, and again after that. And suddenly--the

most delicious sound that Rachael's ears had ever heard--there was the

sucking and plunging that meant success. The car panted like a giant

revived, and Ruddy stood back in the merciless green light and sent

Rachael a smile. His homely face, running rain, looked at her as bright

as an angel's.

"Dun't know as I'd stand there, s'deep in my tracks!" shouted Ruddy.

Gingerly, timidly, she pushed the car on some ten feet. "What I's

thinking," suggested Ruddy then, coming to put his face in close to

hers, and shouting over the noise of wind and water, "is this: if I was

to walk ahead of ye, kinder feeling for the road with my feet, then you

could come after, d'ye see?"

"Oh, Ruddy, do you think we can make it, then?" Rachael's face was wet

with tears.

"Dun't know," he said. He took off his immense boots and gray socks,

and rolled up his wet trousers, the better to feel every inch of rise

or fall in the ground beneath his feet, and Millie held these for him

as if it were a sacred charge.

And then, with the full light of the lamps illumining his big figure,

and with the water rushing and gurgling about them, and the rain

pouring down as if it were an actual deluge, they made the crossing at

Clark's Bar. The shifting water almost blinded Rachael sometimes, and

sometimes it seemed as if any way but the way that Ruddy's waving arms

indicated was the right one; as if to follow him were utter madness.

The water spouted up through the clutch, and once again the engine

stopped, and long moments went by before it would respond to the crank

again. But Rachael pushed slowly on. She was not thinking now, she was

conscious of no feeling but that there was an opposite shore, and she

must reach it.

And presently it rose before them. The road ran gradually upward, a

shallow sheet of running water covering it, but firm, hard roadway

discernible nevertheless. Rachael stopped the car, and Ruddy came again

and put his face close to hers, through the curtains.

"Now ye've got straight road, Mrs. Gregory, and I hope to the good Lord

you'll have a good run. Thank ye, Millie--much obliged!"

"Ruddy!" said Rachael passionately, her wet gloves holding his big,

hairy hands tight. "I'll never forget this! If he has a chance to live

at all, this is his chance, and you've given it to him! God bless you,

a thousand times!"

"That's all right," said Ruddy, terribly embarrassed. "You've always

been awful good to my folks. I'm glad we done it! Good-night!" Then

Ruddy had turned back for the walk home in the streaming blackness, and

Rachael, drawing a deep breath, was on her way again. She stopped only

for a quick question to Mary.

"No change?"

"Just the same."

The wet miles flew by; rain beat untiringly against the curtains,

slished in two great feathers of water from under the rushing wheels.

Rachael watched her speedometer;

twenty-five--twenty-eight--thirty--they could not do better than that

in this weather. And they had a hundred miles to go.

But that hundred was only eighty-six now, only eighty. Villages flew

by, and men came out and stood on the dripping porches of crossroad

stores to marvel as the long scream of Rachael's horn cut through the

night air. Twenty minutes past eight o'clock--eight minutes of nine

o'clock. The little villages began to grow dark.

There was nothing to pass on the road; so much was gain. Except in the

villages, and once or twice where a slow, rattling wagon was plodding

along on the wet mirror-like asphalt, Rachael might make her own speed.

The road lay straight, and was an exceptionally good road, even in this

weather. She need hardly pause for signboards. The rain still fell in

sheets. Seventy-two miles to go.

"How is he, Mary?"

"The same, Mrs. Gregory. Except that he gives a little groan now and

then--when it shakes him!"

"My boy! But not sleeping?" "Oh, no, Mrs. Gregory. He just lies quiet

like."

"God bless him!" Rachael said under her breath. Aloud she said:

"Millie, couldn't you lean over, and watch him a few minutes, and see

what you think?"

Then they were flying on again. Rachael began to wonder just how long

the run was. They always carelessly called it "a hundred miles." But

was it really a hundred and two, or ninety-eight? What a difference two

or three miles would make to-night! She fell into a nervous shiver;

suppose they reached the bridge, and then Mary should touch her arm.

"He doesn't look right, Mrs. Gregory!" Suppose that for the little boy

that they finally carried into New York there was no longer any hope.

Her little Derry--

The child that might have been the joy of a happy home, that might have

grown to a dignified inheritance of the love and tenderness that had

been between his father and mother. Robbed in his babyhood, taken away

from the father he adored, and now--this! Sixty-one miles to go.

"Detour to New York." The sign, with all its hideous import, rose

before her suddenly. No help for it; she must lose one or two, perhaps

a dozen miles, she must give up the good road for a bad one. She must

lose her way, too, perhaps. Had Kane gone over this road yesterday? It

was much farther on that she had spoken to Kane. Perhaps he had, but

she could not remember, doubt made every foot of the way terrible to

Rachael. She could only plunge on, over rocks, over bumps, into

mud-holes. She could only blindly take what seemed of two turnings the

one most probably right.

"Oh--Mother!" The little wail came from Derry. Rachael, her heart

turned to ice, slowed down--stopped and leaned into the half darkness

in the back of the car. The child's lovely eyes were opened. Rachael

could barely see his white face.

"My darling!" she said.

"Will you not--bump me so, Mother?" the little boy whispered.

"I will try not to, my heart!" Rachael, wild with terror, looked to

Mary's face. Was he dying, now and here?

"Oh Moth--it hurts so!"

"Does it, my darling?"

He drowsed again. Rachael turned back to her wheel. They must go more

slowly now, at any cost.

The road was terrible, in parts, after the hours of heavy rain, it

seemed almost impassable. Rachael pushed on. Presently they were back

in the main road again, and could make better time. Of the hundred

miles only fifty remained. But that meant nothing now. How much time

had she lost in that frightful bypath? Rachael's face was dripping with

rain, rain had trickled under her clothing at neck and wrists. Through

her raincoat the breast of her gown was soaking, and her feet ached

with the strain of controlling the heavy car. Water came in long

runnels through the wind-shield, and struck her knees; she had turned

her dress back, her thin silk petticoat was soaked, and the muscles of

knees and ankles were cold and sore. But she felt these things not at

all. Her eyes burned ahead, into the darkness, she heard nothing but

the occasional fluttering moan from Derry; she thought nothing but that

she might be too late--too late--too late!

At the first town of any size she stopped, a telegram to George taking

shape in her mind. But the wires here were down, as they had been

farther down the Island. The rain was thinning, but the wind was rising

every second, and as she rushed on she saw that in many places the

lights on the road were out; all the Island lay battered and bruised

under the storm.

Slowly as they seemed to creep, yet the miles were going by.

Freeport--Lynbrook--Jamaica--like a woman in a dream she reached the

bridge and a moment later looked down upon the long belt of lights

winking in the rain that was New York.

And here, on the very apex of the bridge, came the most heart-rending

moment of the run, for the little boy began to cough, and for two or

three frightful minutes the women hung over him, speechless with

terror, and knowing that at any second the exhausted little body might

succumb to the strain. Blindly, as with a long, choked cry he sank back

again, Rachael went back to her wheel. Third Avenue--Fifth

Avenue--Forty-second Street tore by; they were running straight down

toward Washington Arch as the clocks everywhere struck midnight. The

wide street was deserted in the rain, it shone like a mirror,

reflecting long pendants of light.

They were turning the corner; she was out of the car, and had glanced

at the familiar old house. Wet, exhausted, fired by a passion that made

her feel curiously light and sure, Rachael put her arms about her

child, and carried him up the steps. Mary had preceded her, the door

was opened; a dazed and frightened maid was looking at her.

Then she was crossing the familiar hall; lights were in the library,

and Warren in the library, somebody with him, but Rachael only caught a

glimpse of the old familiar attitude: he was sitting in a

straight-backed chair, his legs crossed, and one firm hand grasping a

silk-clad ankle as he intently listened to whatever was being said.

"Warren!" she said in a voice that those who heard it remembered all

their lives. "It's Derry! He's hurt--he's dying, I think! Can you--can

you save him?" And with a great burst of tears she gave up the child.

"My God--what is it!" said Warren Gregory on his feet, and with Derry

in his arms, even as he spoke. For a second the tableau held: Rachael,

agonized, her beautiful face colorless, and dripping with rain, her

husband staring at her as if he could not credit his senses, the

child's limp body in his arms, yet not quite freed from hers. In the

background were the whitefaced servants and the gray-headed doctor upon

whose conversation the newcomers had so abruptly broken.

"We've just brought him up from Clark's Hills!" Rachael said.

"From Clark's Hills--YOU!"

His look, the dear familiar look of solicitude and concern, tore her to

the soul.

"There was nothing else to do!" she faltered.

"But--you drove up to-night?"

"Since seven."

He looked at her, and Rachael felt the look sink into her soul like

rain into parched land.

"And you came straight to me!" His voice sank. "Rachael," he said, "I

will save him for you if I can!"

And instantly there began such activities in the old house as perhaps

even its dignified century of living had never known. Rachael, hungry

through these terrible hours of suspense for just the wild rush and

hurry, watched her husband as if she had never seen him before.

Presently lights blazed from cellar to attic, maids flew in every

direction, fires were lighted, the moving of heavy furniture shook the

floors. Derry, the little unconscious cause of it all, lay quiet, with

Mary watching him.

New York had been asleep; it was awakened now. Motor cars wheeled into

the Gregorys' street; Mrs. Gregory herself answered the door. Here was

the nurse, efficient, yet sympathetic, too, with her paraphernalia and

her assistants. Yes, she had been able to get it, Doctor Gregory. Yes,

Doctor, she had that. Here was the man from the drug store--that was

all right, Doctor, that was what he expected, being waked up in the

night; thank you, Doctor. And here was George Valentine, too much

absorbed in the business in hand to say more than an affectionate

"Hello" to Rachael. But with George was Alice, white-faced but smiling,

and little sleepy Jimmy, who was to be smuggled immediately into bed.

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

Rachael knew why. Rachael knew what doctors said to each other, when

they gathered, and used those quick, low monosyllables. She knew why

Miss Redding was speeding the arrangements for the improvised

operating-room with such desperate hurry. She knew why one of these

assisting doctors was delegated to do nothing but sit beside Derry,

watching the little hurt breast rise and fall, watching the bubble of

blood form and break on the swollen mouth.

Warren had told her to get into dry clothing, and then to take a

stimulant, and have something to eat. And eager to save him what she

could, she was warm and dry now. She sat in Derry's room, and

presently, when they came to stand beside him, Warren and George, they

found her agonized eyes, bright with questions, facing them. But she

knew better than to speak.

Neither man spoke for a few dreadful moments. Warren looked at the

child without a flicker of change in his impassive look; George bit his

lip, and almost imperceptibly shook his head. And in their faces

Rachael read the death of her last faint hope.

"We don't dare anesthetize him until we know just the lie of those

broken ribs," said Warren gravely to his wife, "and yet the little chap

is so exhausted that the strain of trying to touch it may--may be too

much for him. There's no time for an X-ray. Some of these fellows think

it is too great a risk. I believe it may be done. If there are internal

injuries, we can't hope to--" He paused. "But otherwise, I believe--"

Again his voice dropped. He stood looking at the little boy with eyes

that were not a surgeon's now; all a father's.

"Good little chap," he said softly. "Do you remember how he used to

watch Jim, through the bars of his crib, when he was about eight months

old, and laugh as if Jim was the funniest thing in the world?"

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

They carried Derry away, and Rachael followed them up to the head of

the stairway outside of the operating-room, and sat there, her hands

locked in her lap, her head resting against the wall. Alice dared not

join her, she kept her seat by the library fire, and with one hand

pressed tight against her eyes, tried to pray.

Rachael did not pray. She was unable even to think clearly. Visions

drifted through her tired brain, the panorama of the long day and night

swept by unceasingly. She was in Eighth Avenue again, she was in the

hot train, with the rain beating against the windows, and tears running

down her hot cheeks. She was entering the house--"Where's my boy?" And

then she was driving the car through that cruel world of water and

wind. She would have saved him if she could! She had done her share.

Instantly, unflinchingly, she had torn through blackness and storm; a

battered ship beating somehow toward the familiar harbor. Now he must

be saved. Rachael knew that madness would come upon her if these

hideous hours were only working toward the moment when she would know

that she had been too late. For the rest of her life she would only

review them: the Bar, the wet roads, the detour, and the frightful

seconds on the bridge. There had been something expiatory, something

symbolic in this mad adventure, this flight through the night. The

fires that had been burning in her heart for the past terrible hours

were purged, she must be changed forevermore after to-night. But for

the new birth, Derry must not be the price! The strain had been too

great, the delicate machinery of her brain would give, she could not

take up life again, having lost him--and lost him in this way--

They were torturing him; the child's cry of utter agony reached her

where she sat. It came to her, in a flash, that Warren had said there

might be no merciful chloroform. Cold water broke out on her forehead,

she covered her ears with her hands, her breath coming wild and deep.

Derry!

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

"Oh, my God! this is not right," Rachael said half aloud. "Oh, take

him, take him, but don't let him suffer so!"

She was writhing as if the suffering were her own. For perhaps five

horrible moments the house rang, then there was sudden silence.

"Now he is dead," Rachael said in the same quiet, half-audible tone. "I

am glad. He will never know what pain is again. Five perfect little

years, with never one instant that was not sweet and good. Gerald

Fairfax Gregory--five years old. One sees it in the papers almost every

day. But who thinks what it means? Just the mother, who remembers the

first cry, and the little crumpled flannel wrappers, and the little

hand crawling up her breast. He walked so much sooner than Jim did, but

of course he was lighter. And how he would throw things out of

windows--the camera that hit the postman! Oh, my God!"

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

mother.

Rachael bore it for endless, agonizing minutes. Presently Alice,

white-faced, was kneeling on the step below her, and their wet hands

were clasped.

"Dearest, why do you sit here!"

"Oh, Alice, could I get Warren, do you think? They mustn't--it's too

cruel! He's only a baby, he doesn't understand! Better a thousand times

to let him go--tell them so! Get George--tell him I say so!"

"Rachael, it's terrible," said Alice, who was crying hard, "b-b-but

they must think there is a chance, dear. We couldn't interrupt them

now. He would see you--there, he's quiet again. That may be all!"

But it was not the end for many hours. The women on the stairs, and the

sobbing maids in the diningroom, hoped and despaired, and grew faint

and sick themselves as the merciless work went on. Once George came out

of the room for a few minutes, with a face flaked with white, and his

surgeon's gown crumpled, wet with water and stained here and there a

terrible red. He did not speak to either woman, and in answer to

Alice's breath of interrogation merely shook his head.

At four o'clock Warren himself came to the door. Rachael sprang to her

feet, was close to him in a second. The sight of him, his gown, his

hands, his dreadful face, turned Alice faint, but Rachael's voice was

steady.

"What is it?"

"We are nearly done. Nearly done," Warren said. "I can't tell

yet--nobody can. But I must finish it. Do you think you could--he keeps

asking for you. I am sorry to ask you--"

"Hold him?" Rachael's voice of agony said. "Yes, I could do that. I--I

have been wanting to!"

"No--there is no necessity for that. He is on the table. But if he

could see you. It is the very end of our work," he answered. "It may be

that he can't--you must be ready for that."

"I am ready," she said.

A second later she was in the room with the child. She saw nothing but

Derry, his little body beneath the sheet rigidly strapped to the table.

The group gave place, and Rachael stood beside him. His beautiful baby

eyes, wild with terror and agony, found her; she bent over him, and

laid her fingers on his wet little forehead. He wanted his mother to

take him away, he had been calling her--hadn't she heard him? Please,

please, not to let anyone touch him again!

Rachael summoned a desperate courage. She spoke to him, she could even

smile. Did he remember the swing--yes, but he didn't remember Mother

bringing him all the way up, so that Daddy and Uncle George--

His brave eyes were fixed on hers. He was trying to remember, trying to

answer her smile, trying to think of other things than the recommencing

pain.

No use. The hoarse, terrible little screams began again. His little

hand writhed in hers.

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

Rachael was breathing deep, her own forehead was wet. She knew the

child's strength was gone.

"Just a little more, dearest," she said, white lipped; eyes full of

agonized appeal turned to George.

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

George Valentine looked up.

Rachael's apprehensive glance questioned them both. But Warren Gregory

did not falter, did not even glance away from his own hands.

Then it was over. The tension in the room broke suddenly, the

atmosphere changed, although there was not an audible breath. The

nurses moved swiftly and surely, needing no instructions. George lifted

Derry's little hand from Rachael's, and put one arm about her. Warren

put down his instrument, and bent, his face a mask of anxiety, over the

child. Derry was breathing--no more. But on the bloodless face that

Warren raised there was the light of hope.

"I believe he will make it, George," he said. "I think we have saved

him for you, Rachael! No--no--leave him where he is, Miss Moore. Get a

flat pillow under his head if you can. Cover him up. I'm going to stay

here."

"Wouldn't he be more comfortable in his bed?" Rachael's shaken voice

asked in a low tone. She was conscious only that she must not faint now.

"He would be, of course. But it may be just by that fraction of energy

that he is hanging on. Brave little chap, he has been helping us just

as if he knew--"

But this Rachael could not endure. Her whole body shook, the room

rocked before her eyes. She had strength to reach the hall, saw Alice

standing white and tense, at the top of the stairs--then it was all

darkness.

It seemed hours later, though it was only minutes, that Rachael came

dreamily to consciousness in her own old room, on her own bed. Her idly

moving eyes found the shaded lamp, found Alice sitting beside her.

Alice's hand lay over her own. For a long time they did not speak.

A perfect circle of shadow was flung on the high ceiling from the lamp.

Outside of the shadow were the familiar window draperies, the white

mantel with its old candlesticks, the exquisite crayon portrait of Jim

at three, and Derry a delicious eighteen-months-old. There was the

white bowl that had always been filled with violets, empty now. And

there were the low bookcases where a few special favorites were kept,

and the quaint old mahogany sewing-table that had been old Mrs.

Gregory's as a bride.

Rachael was exhausted in every fibre of body and soul, consecutive

thought was impossible now; her aching head defied the effort, but

lying here, in this dim light, there came to her a vision of the years

that might be. If she were ever rested again, if little Derry were

again his sunny, resolute self, if Warren and she were reunited, then

what an ideal of fine and simple and unselfish living would be hers!

How she would cling to honor and truth and goodness, how she would

fortify herself against the pitfalls dug by her own impulsiveness. She

and Warren had everything in life worth while, it was not for them to

throw their gifts away. Their home should be the source of help to

other homes, their sons should some day go out into the world equipped

with wisdom, disciplined and self-controlled, ready to meet life far

more bravely than ever their mother had.

There was a low voice at her door. Alice was gone, and Warren was

kneeling beside her. And as she laid one tired arm about his neck, in

the dear familiar fashion of the past, and as their eyes met, Rachael

felt that all her life had been a preparation for this exquisite minute.

"I thought you would like to know that he is sleeping, and we have

moved him," Warren said. "In three days you will have him roaring to

get up."

Tears brimmed Rachael's eyes.

"You saved him," she whispered.

"YOU saved him; George says so, too. If that fellow down there had

given him chloroform, there would have been no chance. Our only hope

was to relieve that pressure on his heart, and take the risk of it

being too much for him. He's as strong as a bull. But it was a fight!

And no one but a woman would have rushed him up here in the rain."

Rachael's eyes were streaming. She could not speak. She clung to her

husband's hand for a moment or two of silence.

"And now, I want to speak to you," Warren said, ending it. "I have

nothing to say in excuse. I know--I shall know all my life, what I have

done. It is like a bad dream."

His uncertain voice stopped. Husband and wife looked full at each

other, both breathing quickly, both faces drawn and tense.

"But, Rachael," Warren went on, "I think, if you knew how I have

suffered, that you would--that some day, you would forgive me. I was

never happy. Never anything but troubled and excited and confused. But

for the last few months, in this empty house, seeing other men with

their wives, and thinking what a wife you were--It has been like

finding my sight--like coming out of a fever--" He paused. Rachael did

not speak.

"I know what I deserve at your hands," Warren said.

"Nobody--nobody--not old George, not anyone--can think of me with the

contempt and the detestation with which I think of myself! It has

changed me. I will never--I can never, hold up my head again. But,

Rachael, you loved me once, and I made you happy--you've not forgotten

that! Give me another chance. Let me show you how I love you, how

bitterly sorry I am that I ever caused you one moment of pain! Don't

leave me alone. Don't let me feel that between you and me, as the years

go by, there is going to be a widening gulf. You don't know what the

loneliness means to me! You don't know how I miss my wife every time I

sit down to dinner, every time I climb into the car. I think of the

years to come--of what they might have been, of what they will be

without you! And I can't bear it. Why, to go down with you and the boys

to Clark's Hills, to tell you about my work, to take you to dinner

again--my God! it seems to me like Heaven now, and I look back a few

years, when it was all mine, and wonder if I have been sane, wonder if

too much work, and all the other responsibilities, of the boys, and

Mother's death, and the estate, and poor little Charlie, whether I

really wasn't a little twisted mentally!"

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

"Sweetheart," said her wonderful voice, a mere tired essence of a voice

now, "if there is anything to forgive, I am so glad to forgive it! You

are mine, and I am yours. Please God we will never be parted again!"

And then for a long time there was silence in the room, while husband

and wife clung together, and the hurt of the long months was cured, and

dissolved, and gone forever. What Warren felt, Rachael could only know

from his tears, and his passionate kisses, and the grip of his arms.

For herself, she felt that she might gladly die, being so held against

his heart, feeling through her entire being the rising flood of

satisfied love that is life and breath to such a nature as hers.

"I am changed," said Warren after long moments; "you will see it, for I

see it myself. I can see now what my mother meant, years ago, when she

talked to me about myself. And I am older, Rachael."

"I am not younger," Rachael said, smiling. "And I think I am changed,

too. All the pressure, all the nervous worry of the last few years,

seem to be gone. Washed away, perhaps, by tears--there have been tears

enough! But somehow--somehow I am confident, Warren, as I never was

before, that happiness is ahead. Somehow I feel sure that you and I

have won to happiness, now, won to sureness. With each other, and the

boys, and books and music, and Home Dunes, the years to come seem all

bright. After all, we are young to have learned how to live!"

And again she drew his face down to hers.

Alice did not come back again, but Mary came in with a cup of smoking

soup. Mrs. Valentine had taken the doctor home, but they would be back

later on. It was after six, and Doctor Gregory said Mrs. Gregory was to

drink this, and try to get some sleep. But first Mary and Rachael must

talk over the terrible and wonderful night, and Rachael must creep down

the hall, to smile at the nurse, who sat by the heavily sleeping Derry.

Then she slept, for hours and hours, while the winter sun smiled down

on the bare trees in the square and women in furs and babies in woolens

walked and chattered on the leaf-strewn paths.

Such a sleep and such a waking are memorable in a lifetime. Rachael

woke, smiling and refreshed, in a radiant world. Afternoon sunshine was

streaming in at her windows, she felt rested, deliciously ready for

life again.

To bathe, to dress with the chatting Jimmy tying strings to her

dressing-table, to have the maids quietly and cheerfully coming and

going in the old way; this in itself was delight. But when she tiptoed

into Derry's room, and found hope and confidence there, found the blue

eyes wide open, under the bandage, and heard the enchanting little

voice announce, "I had hot milk, Mother," Rachael felt that her cup of

joy was brimming.

He had fallen out of the swing, Derry told her, and Dad had hurted him,

and Jimmy added sensationally that Derry had broken his leg!

"But just the same, we wanted our Daddy the moment we woke up this

morning," Miss Moore smiled, "and we managed to hold up one arm to

welcome him, and it was Daddy that held the glass of milk, wasn't it,

Gerald?"

"She calls me Gerald because she doesn't know me very well," said Derry

in a tactful aside, and Rachael, not daring to laugh for fear of

beginning to cry, could only kiss the brown hand, and devour, with

tear-dazzled eyes, the eager face.

Then she and Jimmy went down to have a meal that was like breakfast and

luncheon and tea in one, with Warren. And to Rachael, thinking of all

their happy meals together, since honeymoon days, this seemed the best

of all. The afternoon light in the breakfast-room, the maids so poorly

concealing their delight in this turn of events, little Jim so pleased

at finding a meal served at this unusual hour, and his parents

seemingly disposed to let him eat anything and everything, and Warren,

tired--so strangely gray--and yet utterly content and at peace; these

made the hour memorably happy; a forerunner of other happy hours to

come.

"It seems to me that there never was such a bright sunshine, and never

such a nice little third person, and never such coffee, and such

happiness!" said Rachael, her eyes reflecting something of the placid

winter day; soul and body wrapped in peace. "Yesterday--only yesterday,

I was wretched beyond all believing! To-day I think I have had the best

hours of my life!"

"It is always going to be this way for you, Rachael," her husband said,

"my life is going to be one long effort to keep you absolutely happy.

You will never grieve on my account again!"

"Say rather," she said seriously, "that we know each other, and

ourselves, now. Say that I will never demand utter perfection of you,

or you of me. But, Warren--Warren--as long as we love each other--"

He had come around the table to her side, and was kneeling with his

arms about her, and Rachael locked her hands about his neck. He was

tired, he had had no sleep after the difficult night, and he seemed to

her strangely broken, strangely her own. Rachael felt that he had never

been so infinitely dear, so much hers to protect and save. The wonder

of marriage came to her, the miracle of love rooted too deep for

disturbance, of love fed on faults as well as virtues; so light a tie

in the beginning, so powerful a bond as the years go by.

"As long as we love each other!" she said, smiling through tears, her

eyes piercing him to the very soul.

He did not speak, and so for a moment they remained motionless, looking

at each other. But when she released him, with one of her quick, shy

kisses, he knew that the heart of Rachael was satisfied.