Pamela reddened. "Didn't you know it? Didn't Rachel ever tell you about
it?"
"Not a word."
Her visitor felt deliciously guilty; she had not intended to transgress
her husband's injunctions, but, as long as she had inadvertently let
the cat out of the bag, there was a wicked satisfaction in seeing Eva's
amazed incredulity.
"Well, of course I knew it," she said sweetly, nibbling her strawberry,
"it was perfectly easy to see; John's so thoroughly masculine that he
can't hide it; you know men are just like ostriches; they bury their
heads in the sand and think they're completely hidden."
"If it was so obvious, it seems rather strange, doesn't it, that I
never heard anything about it?"
"Well, I suppose of course Rachel didn't reciprocate and so you didn't
notice."
Eva deliberated; she began to suspect that Pamela was watching her.
"No, Rachel didn't reciprocate," she risked at last; "that's certain,
isn't it?"
"Yes, if we take it for granted that we always marry the people we care
for."
Eva blushed,--a blush that spread painfully from brow to chin and
throat,--her eyelids quivered and drooped from Pamela's gaze, she
clasped her hands tightly under the table.
"Don't you think Rachel's too superbly honest to do anything else?" she
asked.
"I think Rachel's perfectly lovely and the dearest girl in the world,
but she looks--oh, Eva, can't you see how wretched she looks?"
"No, I haven't seen it, and she can't be; I won't let her be!" Eva's
face quivered.
"There, now I've made you unhappy!" lamented Pamela, sincerely
distressed and contrite. "I shouldn't have said it, but Rachel does
look so pale, so worn, and you know I do love her."
"You can't love her as I do; she's the dearest thing in the world!
She isn't unhappy: I won't believe it; and this is all nonsense about
Charter. You dreamed it, Pamela!"
"Oh, I only said that he was in love with her!"
"You implied the rest of it!"
"I'm such a romantic idiot; Paul says so."
"I hope people aren't talking about it."
"Oh, no, no!"
Eva sank back in her chair and pressed her hands over her eyes for an
instant. "Why in the world did you want to frighten me so, Pamela?"
"But I didn't. I only went on talking about Rachel when I should
have held my tongue; I didn't mean to worry you, but she does look
wretchedly unwell and--"
"Who does?" said Astry, who had entered as she spoke.
Pamela, in some discomfiture, cast an appealing glance at Eva, but Eva
offered no explanations and she was compelled to rise to the emergency
alone.
"We were talking of Rachel; I think she's feeling the heat," she said
feebly, as Astry shook hands with her.
"Nonsense, it's been quite cool out here and Rachel's never complained
of the weather. Belhaven just told me that she'd refused to go to
Newport."
Pamela looked about for her parasol and gloves; she knew that John
Charter had gone to Newport to visit an aunt.
"I think it's perfectly abominable myself,--I mean the weather," she
said desperately; "we're going to-morrow."
Astry moved easily over to the mantelpiece and began to arrange one
of his Chinese gods. "There'll be an exodus now," he remarked, "since
Congress adjourned yesterday. Massachusetts Avenue is boarded up
already; only the unfashionable will dare to stay in the face of those
shutters. I expect Eva to go to Lenox."
"I'm not going anywhere," she replied quickly; "this is my summer off.
Don't go, Pamela; stay and we'll go over to see Rachel."
But Pamela felt guilty; if she had only skimmed the surface, she had
certainly skimmed it very thoroughly. "I can't stay; think of the
things I've got to do before half-past seven to-morrow morning."
"Nothing half as important as staying to see your friends," said Astry.
But Pamela would not be diverted from her flight, though she stood on
the terrace a moment while she raised her pink parasol and whirled it
slowly around before balancing it over her head.
"If I had a view like this I'd stay too!" she declared.
Eva, standing in the door, looked out over the magnificent prospect
with languid eyes.
"Oh, you'd get tired of it! I sometimes want to paint the dome
sky-blue--as the monkey did his tail."
Disregarding Eva's irreverence, Pamela waved again from the lower
terrace, and then they watched her go down the long road until the
fluttering pink parasol diminished to the size of a new blown peony.
Astry, who had escorted her to the gate, came back slowly and his wife
noticed for the first time that his expression was unusually grave.
In the broad sunshine she saw the crow's-feet about his eyes and the
streak of gray in his hair; he was not handsome, but distinguished, and
he had that indefinable air that is inalienable from a man of his birth
and breeding. As he approached, he took a letter out of his pocket and
Eva's fascinated eyes, following his movements, discovered that the
envelope was small and odiously blue. Her hand tightened its hold on
the white pilaster beside the door and she stood quite still, though a
thrill of panic shot through her with an almost irresistible impulse of
flight. He came up and proffered the letter gravely.
"I think this is yours."
She took it mechanically, coloring again almost as painfully as she
had under Pamela's observation.
"Craggs brought it up with my mail this morning, I hope by mistake, but
there have been others like it and it seemed worth while to tell you."
"I don't see why you keep that man!"
"My dear Eva, the excellent Craggs is invaluable; he knows how to press
my trousers and hold his tongue."
"He creeps about the house like a spy."
Astry turned quickly. "I hope you don't think I employ servants to
watch my wife."
She bit her lip, sudden tears in her eyes.
Her husband's face changed sharply. "At least I deserve fair treatment;
I'm incapable of sinking to such a depth as that."
"You know I dislike the man."
"That's neither here nor there; the question's more vital. Did you
suppose because of what I said to you that night, the night of Rachel's
engagement," his voice halted an instant and then went on, "that I had
set Craggs to watch you?"
Eva leaned heavily against the door with the little blue note crushed
in her hand. "There was nothing else for me to think," she said in a
low voice.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Astry, "is that what you think of your
husband?"
He turned away and was half-way across the terrace when a new thought
arrested him and he came back.
"I spoke of that note just now to warn you. As I said, several have
been put with my mail, though plainly addressed to you. I have reason
to think that the servants do it purposely. I can assure you that I
have no wish to see them."
Eva tried to answer him, to assure him that the letter was of no
importance, but she could not; her tongue refused to utter the denial
and she remained standing for a while as he had left her, her head
resting against the white pilaster and her eyes closed. He had been
dignified and almost kind and she felt humbled to the dust before his
just anger. She began to be vaguely aware that she had judged him
by a standard too mean for a man of his intellect and strength of
character; she felt that she had given him the right to despise her and
her humiliation strangled her natural impulse to defend herself at his
expense. Besides, there was that letter in her pocket. How many of them
had he seen? She shuddered at the thought of the blue conspicuousness
of that cheap envelope with its over-powering perfume. No one could
mistake one of them, and the servants had been watching them, the
servants who probably knew the hand-writing. That thought thrust out
the other which had clothed Astry in a new aspect.
She made her way into the house and slowly ascended the stairs to her
own room. Her heart was heavy as she closed the door and locked it.
Then she drew the letter out of her pocket, read it, and tore it up
with keen disgust. It was from her former maid, Zélie, and it demanded
five hundred dollars. There had been three of these in a month, and to
each of them Eva had responded with a cheque. But money only increased
the demand for money; it was like casting a piece of paper into a
sucking draught of a furnace,--it was consumed in a twinkling.
Ever since Rachel dismissed the French girl, Eva had been in terror
of her tongue, and then blackmail actually began. At first it was
easy to pay a little, and then a little more; the sense of security
was too sweet to be dear at any price. But security could not be
purchased; a hundred was a mere drop in the bucket, and Zélie could
dictate her terms. She was with Mrs. Billop; Mrs. Billop desired to
know everything, but Zélie had been faithful to Eva, how faithful
Eva could judge, but she was perishing for money, she was the sole
support of aged parents, she must be paid or--she left the rest to
Eva's imagination, and Eva knew Mrs. Billop. She longed extremely to be
rid of Mrs. Billop and Zélie, but money was no longer plentiful; she
had nearly exhausted her own cheque-book and an appeal to Astry was
impossible, since their relations were strained to the breaking-point.
She had borrowed heavily of Rachel, but now even Rachel asked
questions. Of course there was Belhaven, but here some instinct innate
in her blood stayed Eva; she was not sordid and she hated to ask
Belhaven to pay the price of Zélie's silence. Moreover she felt that
Belhaven was slipping away from her; he had honestly kept faith with
Rachel, he had tried to let the past go, and, lately, she had even
felt in his manner, his detached air, his vagrant glances, that he
had ceased altogether to feel her spell, that he was eluding her. He
no longer looked only at her, he no longer felt her presence in the
room; he had grown distant and deeply thoughtful. Clearly she could not
appeal to Belhaven.
Alone in her room Eva went over her accounts, studying them with an
anxiety new to her. She wrote an eager note to one of her father's
trustees suggesting a new investment that would bring greater results;
then she remembered Aunt Drusilla Leven, still in her self-imposed
exile. An appeal to her would, perhaps, avert the danger if Aunt
Drusilla had managed to recuperate financially in the interval.
Meanwhile Eva could only spare two hundred for the cormorant which is
called blackmail. Only two hundred--that made five thousand in five
months. The sum was appalling. Eva rebelled against it, and she rose
and paced the room angrily, her cheeks red. She needed a great deal
of money herself; she was wildly extravagant, and she would have to
curtail her own luxuries for this. It was odious! A servant, a little
French girl, a worthless creature, who was to be feared chiefly because
she would not hesitate to falsify the matter from the beginning to the
end and make a mountain out of a mole-hill! She would not endure it,
and she tore up the cheque and wrote one for fifty and a note to say it
was the last, she had paid enough.
She received no reply to this letter; no word was said, no sign made.
After all, she reflected, she had won the victory; she had only needed
a little courage. What a fool she had been!
Yes, what a fool, but the piper must always be paid.