Belhaven came back from town rather late in the afternoon. He had
ridden out on the front seat of an open car, talking in a desultory
way to the gripman, chiefly because it seemed to afford him a
perverse pleasure to disregard the large sign overhead which forbade
conversation with the motorman. He was in a mood to enjoy breaking all
rules in a puny effort to feel independent. For, if the truth be told,
he had felt for months as if Astry had caught him and chained him up,
much as the infidel Turks used to chain their Christian captives to the
oars when their galleys went into battle.
Not even a long day at the club had relaxed his mood and he was far
from feeling as gay and debonair as he had appeared to Eva when she had
observed him through the leaves of the rhododendrons. He was deeply
vexed with himself, ashamed of the part he had played, disgusted
that he had sacrificed so much for a feeling that had proved to be
so ephemeral, that he had given up his own freedom and even his
self-respect to shield a woman who could toss him aside, at the first
alarm, as easily as she would have discarded a soiled glove.
These reflections had become, of late, so habitual that Belhaven found
it difficult to control his passionate resentment; like Eva herself, he
was engrossed with the spectacle of his own misery, but he longed, more
keenly than she did, to visit it on some one else. It added nothing to
the joy of the situation either to be well aware of Astry's scorn. It
did not require a very delicate perception to understand his attitude,
and the bare politeness with which he treated Belhaven made the latter
long to strangle him. It amazed him even now, in his moments of blind
fury, that he had ever been afraid to encounter Astry's anger, for it
seemed to him that he hungered exceedingly for an opportunity to avenge
the contemptuous scorn of the other man's manner. To use the metaphor
that came uppermost in Belhaven's own mind, he longed "to have it out
with him," and the very impossibility of any outbreak that would lead
to exposure made it all the more maddening. He could not speak now
without betraying Eva, and it seemed to be his lot in life to swallow
the polished insults of Eva's husband.
The heat of the August afternoon did not tend to decrease the heat
of his mood, and Belhaven, having left the tram at the corner of the
avenue, walked slowly along in the dust of the highway, using his stick
to knock off the heads of the wayside flowers with a vicious stroke
that was at least a small vent for an irritation that had reached the
limits of his endurance.
It was anything but a pleasure, therefore, to see Astry himself
approaching, seated alone in his smart little trap, driving one of the
finest of his thoroughbreds, while Belhaven was fairly in the way to
be covered with the dust from his wheels. But, in spite of the feeling
which he inspired, Astry was not inclined to dash the gravel of the
roadside upon his enemy; instead he drew up as he came within earshot,
and leaning over, with his whip-hand resting on the edge of the seat,
he called out, in a tone that was unconsciously that of superiority and
indifference, a perfectly casual greeting.
"I say, going straight home?"
The tone, as well as the look that accompanied this remark, affected
Belhaven almost as agreeably as a sudden attack by obnoxious insects.
"Where did you suppose I was going?" he retorted, his face flushing
darkly with anger.
But Astry took no notice of this reply.
"Tell Rachel that we sail day after to-morrow. I've wired for
staterooms on the 'Marianna.' Some one failed at the last moment and we
got them."
Belhaven was sufficiently startled to answer more rationally. "Rather
sudden, isn't it? I thought you were going to Lenox."
Astry resumed his erect position and gathered up the reins. "Eva simply
went to pieces this morning," he said, meeting the other man's look
with a direct cold stare, "collapsed and begged me to take her away at
once."
"She looked perfectly well when I saw her last," Belhaven exclaimed, in
open surprise.
"Well, she isn't now; the doctor's just ordered a sea voyage. Tell
Rachel I said so."
"Extremely sorry, I'm sure," Belhaven stammered slightly, digging his
stick in the dirt.
But Astry merely nodded and drove on, his beautiful horse, already
restive at the delay, sweeping down hill and away at a rate of speed
that would have to be moderated at the city limits.
His brother-in-law, feeling figuratively, if not actually, deluged in
the dust from his wheels, walked slowly on, past the wide, Georgian
gateway and into the grove of cedars that led more directly to his
own house. As he went, his reflections were scarcely more agreeable
than they had been before this encounter, and he experienced a feeling
of bitterness at the thought that Eva always managed to escape. She
had escaped at his expense on a previous occasion, and now, when
the situation was so hideously unpleasant, she had only to affect
illness to induce a doctor to order her to Europe. The convenience of
this arrangement was too much like stratagem to escape Belhaven's
suspicions and it marked one more lap in the long road that he had
entered. He had learned, to his cost, that an affection that can be so
easily diverted from its lawful channel is, after all, of too thin and
desultory a quality to be worth the trouble of capture. It was evident
that Eva cared no more for him than she had cared for her husband, but
that she did care very devotedly for herself, that she would never
willingly permit a lovely hair of her head to be injured, or suffer a
single pang that she could escape. And for this he had wrecked his life!
These thoughts, bitter enough in the first blaze of disillusionment,
brought him to the edge of the garden. Looking across it, he was
suddenly aware of Rachel, although she was quite unconscious of his
approach. The quaint flower garden, with its long rows of old box and
its gravel paths, lay on the east side of the house and, at this hour
of the day, was pleasantly shadowed and fragrant with flowers. Rachel
had planted many of the old-fashioned flower-beds herself with that
feverish energy that we display when it is necessary to find some
vent for our misery, some commonplace occupation that will hide the
suffering that it cannot heal.
At this moment she was kneeling in the gravel path beside a bed of
heliotrope, clipping away dead leaves and blossoms and rearranging,
with the aid of a trowel, some of the smaller plants. She was
bareheaded and the charming oval of her face was delicately framed by
the dusky rumple of her soft hair, while her white sleeves were folded
back above the elbow and she wielded her trowel with dexterous fingers.
The simplicity of her attitude and the earnestness with which she
delved after a vagrant plant, that had intruded itself into the sacred
precincts of her heliotrope, were as refreshing as a bouquet of homely
flowers in the gorgeously barren splendor of Eva's drawing-room. It
was just this thought, this impression of the clear contrast between
the two sisters, that arrested Belhaven at the edge of the garden, and
he stood, unobserved, watching Rachel as she lifted her stray deftly
out of the earth and, making another hole for it in a bed of friendly
petunias, set it down and pressed the soil back around the roots with
the tender care that makes the lover of Nature respect the life of the
humblest seedlings of the garden. He noticed, too, as Eva had noticed,
the delicate hollows in the cheeks, the shadows under the eyes, and
the tight line of the lips, and he fancied that there was a greater
need here for care and a change of scene than existed in Eva's case.
But most of all the homely occupation, the apparent absorption in an
uninteresting task, surprised him; he had been accustomed all his life
to women of fashion, to the idle butterflies of a society that drifted
from Washington to Newport or Lenox, the Hot Springs or Florida, when
it did not immediately take flight to London, Paris or the Riviera. To
see a young and beautiful woman kneeling on the ground to delve in a
flower-bed was something so new that it interested him. After all, he
reflected, Rachel had kept her word; she was unconventional and she was
always doing something that he did not expect. It was at this point in
his reflections that she looked up and suspended her labors long enough
to make a remark so conventional that he almost smiled.
"You found it hot coming out, didn't you?"
"No, I came on the front of the tram; no one felt the weather but an
old colored woman who was carrying a watermelon."
Rachel went on patting the earth down with her trowel. "The melon will
repay her for that. I thought Harter was to go for you in the motor."
"He missed me then." Belhaven had come down between the box borders and
stood now, with his hands in his pockets, observing her plants. "I say,
where did you get all that heliotrope? I didn't know there were so many
shades."
"Didn't you? I bought the plants; you know it was too late to start
them from seeds when--I came--" the instant of hesitation was
perceptible and he noticed the delicate color that softly suffused the
cheek that she tried to turn away from him.
He made no immediate reply and the soft pat of her trowel went on. The
green shadows were lengthening across the long lawns and there was no
other sound but the hum of a bumblebee who kept trying to intrude into
the heliotrope.
At last he spoke with an effort. "I just met Astry; he sent a message
to you."