Rachel had been married a week and a day when Dr. Macclesfield came to
drink a cup of tea with her in her new home.
Dr. Macclesfield was a little, old man who might have been eighty
and looked seventy. His face was seamed with wrinkles in curious
criss-crosses, like the stitches in drawn-work, and he still shaved
twice daily; he said that he did not care to grow a moustache, that his
always caught up vermicelli. His small eyes twinkled with curiosity;
nothing escaped him, but his sense of humor made him delightful. He had
retired from practice but was still consulted in difficult cases; he
was wealthy but his charities kept his income down to normal limits.
His wife had been dead twenty years and he had no children, so he was
perpetually interested in other people's affairs. People appealed to
him keenly; he studied them, divided them into classes, found fault
with them, and loved them. In his youth and middle age he had had an
insatiable passion for work; he had labored at his profession as some
men labor in a quarry. He had worn out a dozen young assistants and
driven an orderly and methodical wife nearly out of her senses. She
had lived and died complaining that the doctor never came home to
meals on time, and never got through one without an interruption; she
said that cold soups were perpetual and that it was useless to have
pancakes. It was impossible for him to grasp what that had meant to
her, and twenty years after her death he was still perplexed at the
thought of her nervous despair when dinner had spoiled waiting for him.
If she had explained, he would have thought it a trivial matter,--and
so it was, if he was unmoved by chilled mutton. A terrible illness,
brought on by the strain and constant exposure, had finally ended his
active career. He had slowly and painfully recovered, to find his
usefulness gone. His brain still answered the calls of the profession,
but his body was no longer equal to the work of a Corliss engine, and
he surrendered grimly, at seventy-five, describing himself as an old
bluebottle-fly who could only creep on a window-pane on a sunshiny day.
He was fond of Rachel and she had taught him to drink tea. Yet he had
deferred his visit until the last minute, for he did not relish the
idea of seeing her as Belhaven's wife. Not that he especially objected
to Belhaven. He regarded him as an undetermined quantity, who seemed
to have an unfathomed depth, and who needed some moral plummet-line as
well as a physical bracing up. When he thought of him, the old doctor
shook his head and thrust out his underlip. "He's elusive," he said to
himself. "In my young days I should have tried to experiment; now I
would hesitate whether to give pepsin or calomel. I usually hate a man
when I can't tell at a glance what sort of a pill he needs."
Rachel poured tea for him in the living-room. Belhaven's taste had
been excellent but she had given those individual touches that made
it homelike, and it began already, in a delicate way, to express her.
The light from the high, south window touched the rumpled waves of her
soft, brown hair and warmed the delicate pallor of her cheek. She wore
a simple, white dress without a single ornament and there was only a
handful of blue and yellow flags in a slender glass on the tea-table.
Dr. Macclesfield drank his tea discontentedly. After all, the room
suited her and she suited the room, if Belhaven could only obliterate
himself!
"I remember this house very well," he remarked, carefully spearing
another piece of lemon for his tea. "It was a tavern in the stage-coach
days, before you were born, my dear. Old Will Jasmine used to keep it;
he was enormously stout and very bald, which was a comfort, considering
that he did all the fine cooking himself. He could dress green turtle
as well as a _chef_. He used to keep a keg of beer on tap in that
corner where you've got your bookcase, a dry kind of a substitute,
too! That high window, with the Colonial fan over the top, was over
the counter. I wonder how much Paul Van Citters cut out of his aunt's
income for all those improvements? I heard that the old lady had to
wear the same bonnet for three years, on account of those Corinthian
capitals out on the front portico, and they ought to have been Doric!"
Rachel laughed. "Paul had been reading Ruskin, and he was mad about
the subtle influences of architecture; I'm afraid he forgot the
architecture of his aunt's bonnets."
"He couldn't; I've seen 'em."
"I wish he'd put in a few closets--not in his aunt's bonnets but in
this house; it's as barren of closets as Paul's brain. I always feel
that there are no little intricate places there, no little cells of
poetic fancy. Paul is just stodgy and commonplace but Pamela loves him."
Dr. Macclesfield stirred his tea industriously. "Rachel," he said, "why
did you let Eva's maid go to Addie Billop?"
Rachel drew a quick breath. "That's Mrs. Billop's affair; she knew that
Zélie had been dismissed."
"Humph! I didn't, until yesterday. I was in New York for the day and
met Sidney, wandering down Fifth Avenue with his mouth open, catching
flies as usual. He mentioned the fact that Zélie was a treasure. I
wonder if he's forgotten the pantry," the doctor added, chuckling
softly.
"Only the wicked remember. Doctor, let me give you another cup of tea."
"No, my child," he waved her away. "Tea makes me gossip; two cups mean
the undoing of my neighbors; a third would make me tell you about my
grandmother and my first trousers. By the way, Rachel, John Charter
landed in San Francisco yesterday, Pamela Van Citters told me; he'll
have to report to the War Department here at once, so we'll see him."
Rachel busied herself with her tea-caddy, and as she deftly measured
out another spoonful of tea, her hand was quite steady and slenderly
graceful. The doctor watched her.
"He's coming back to marry Mrs. Prynne, I believe," she remarked
quietly.
"Nonsense! That's all a lie of Addie Billop's. She picked up some
nonsense, and Lottie Prynne never denies a matrimonial rumor; she's
always in hopes that one will adhere long enough to develop a genuine
case. John Charter isn't engaged to any one; Pamela told me she knew
that for a fact."
Rachel said nothing.
"Charter's a fine fellow," the old man went on; "he's done splendid
service out there, and they say he's to be promoted. Lottie
Prynne--good Lord! I reckon all the ground Addie Billop had for that
was the soldier's button on the top of Lottie's hatpin, and she got
that from old Sedley. He told me so himself, said he'd be damned if he
didn't wish she'd swallow it; he was too old to be ripping buttons off
his uniform for pretty widows."
Rachel tried to laugh, but she had a sensation of strangling and bent
over to arrange the blue and yellow flags. "I believe Paul has taken
their house on Dupont Circle for another year," she said, in a low
voice.
"I reckon he got it cheaper on a long lease. It would have been better
taste to have taken this off his aunt's hands, but Pamela said she
couldn't bear his architectural harangues and there was no sun parlor
for the baby. By the way, the baby has cut its last double tooth; it's
an occasion for public rejoicing; we've all lived on that baby's teeth
and wrestled with them. Why--Rachel, my child!"
Rachel had suddenly covered her face with her hands and burst into
tears.
The old man set his teacup on the table and regarded her thoughtfully.
For a moment she gave way and wept passionately, unrestrainedly; the
barriers had broken down and she had lost control of herself. But it
was not so much a spiritual surrender as a physical necessity; she had
reached the limit of her endurance and she had to give up. For two
weeks she had been building a battlement of stones for her own defense;
she had been imagining how bravely she could meet her barren future
behind her tower, but now--at a touch--it had crumbled into ruins.
There had been terrible moments already, when it had seemed more than
she could bear, but she had finally achieved a state that approached
the normal; she had been trying to interest herself in the house, the
garden, the life that she must lead, and she had been composed and even
cheerful. But now the whole combination of circumstances had changed,
and what had seemed endurable was no longer possible; she must break
away from it, tear herself free or perish. Then, with that curious,
superficial consciousness that makes us aware of extraneous things even
at such moments as this, she became conscious of Dr. Macclesfield's cup
on the table, set down hastily with the spoon in it. Her recognition of
this was only mechanical but, in some way, it recalled her to herself;
she must not confess her misery, since to confess it meant to involve
Eva. She struggled with herself and began to come back; she came back a
long way and heard Belhaven's voice at the door.
She dried her tears and looked up. Dr. Macclesfield had put on his
spectacles and was writing a prescription, with his underlip thrust
out. He handed it to her as Belhaven came across the hall.
"A hundred years ago that was good for nerves," said the old man;
"you've got nerves, Rachel. Take that at bedtime and keep out of the
house; open air and sunshine, that's the idea."
Rachel's hand closed over the slip of paper mechanically, but she was
grateful. After all, tact was better than medicine; she had that moment
to recover before the two men shook hands and she had to take up her
rôle again. For the first time Rachel experienced a feeling with which
she was soon to be deeply acquainted, that would recur again and again,
and become at last a burden to her. She felt for the first time like a
wild creature of the woods and the hills caught in a trap, a cruel and
effectual trap, not one that maimed and gave a chance of a slow death,
but an enduring, live-trap from which there was no escape and where she
was not likely to be left to die. She would be fed and tended and kept
alive, as if her life preserved some great privilege or happiness to
the trapper, but she would never be allowed to escape; the bars of her
cage were closed forever. Her heart began to beat tremendously against
her breast; she was afraid, afraid of herself. Why had this awful thing
come to her? What had she done? Was it that she had not loved deep
enough, served enough, hoped enough, sacrificed enough? Had she been
afraid to trust her own heart?
At first it had been a shock to her whenever Belhaven entered a room
where she was, but to-day his coming was a relief; it gave her that
moment to recover her self-control. He was standing by her little
tea-table, talking to Dr. Macclesfield, and the light shining full on
his face revealed the haggard lines and the extreme pallor. He, too,
had been traveling along the road, but his manner was easy and even
graceful; the tact that he showed in not observing her distress, while
it was essentially a part of his breeding as a man of the world, was
still wonderfully reassuring and had the value of a guarantee that he
would, as he had said, always make it as easy for her as he could. But
with that comforting reassurance came the swift, overwhelming thought
that nothing could make it easy now, that this new turn of affairs,
Charter's return, had made it more than she could bear.
"Well, if I were you, I'd rather stay here all winter than take a house
in the city," Dr. Macclesfield was saying; "as long as you've got a
motor, the distance doesn't count."
"Not for me, but--my wife--"
Rachel did not hear the end of Belhaven's halting sentence as she
slipped out of the room and went up-stairs.