When Rachel finally got home she remembered with relief that Belhaven
dined out that evening. She had forgotten it, forgotten everything but
the misery of Eva's confession. But now she refused the dinner that the
servants had prepared for her and asked, instead, for a cup of tea. She
laid aside her furs mechanically and went into the old tap-room. Its
aspect, with the fire on the hearth and the candles on the tea-table,
gave her almost a shock. She had the dazed feeling of one who has been
away a long time and come back to find material things unchanged.
She stood looking at the room, trying to recall its normal aspect,
for its cheerfulness mocked her. Under her rule it had assumed an
appearance so warm and homely and inviting that she had grown to love
it, and it had touched her once when she found Belhaven there looking
about him in a kind of despair.
"You've made it like home," he said to her, "and I wish you might come
to be happy in it."
At the time she had found a gentle answer; now she felt that it would
shrivel on her lips. He and Eva had sacrificed her to their sin and
their cowardice; or was it only Eva's cowardice, her determination to
escape the consequences of her own act? Yet, poor Eva! The thought
of her, broken and penitent, touched the wellspring of her sister's
sympathy. But the facts of life remained; how was she to meet them?
How endure this tissue of falsehood? She, too, had helped deceive
her brother-in-law, for however she tried to excuse herself, in the
light of Eva's confession, she was party to a conspiracy to deceive
the husband. She felt again the subtle, bonds of complicity in guilt
against Astry, as if in the law she had compounded a felony; yet she
was, for the first time, drawn toward him as her fellow sufferer. Astry
and herself were the victims; they paid the piper. Then came again the
pity for Eva, the sinner who so needed help and forgiveness, whom she
could not betray, not even to escape the shackles that bound her.
Rachel walked to and fro across the room, and once she stopped and
deftly arranged some flowers in a vase on the table; then her hand fell
from them with a shudder. Belhaven had brought them to her the day
before--and he loved her! It was an enormity, but it was true. She did
not know that he only obeyed the instinct of self-preservation, that he
sought to find his own soul.
Presently Bantry came in with the hot water for the teakettle, and
some cake. She arranged the tea-table herself frequently in the absence
of the footman. As she passed Rachel she stopped to touch the fold of
her skirt.
"You're pale, Miss Rachel," she said reprovingly, "you ought to eat
something more; you look all tired out."
"I'm well enough," smiled Rachel.
The woman shook her head; as she went out and closed the door behind
her she muttered to herself. "She's wearing her heart out, poor lamb,
and there's that little devil!" Bantry shook her fist fiercely in the
direction of the Astrys'. Eva had never appealed to her. The Evas of
this world rarely appeal to their servants.
Rachel continued her walk, absorbed in thought, the vital forces
of her strong nature warring within her. She was rebelling against
the circumstances of her existence, she was realizing that she had
deliberately ruined her own life to shield a sister who ought to have
borne her punishment. She had sacrificed Charter, too, and now John's
love for her was the one comfort of her lot and its greatest misery;
it was hers and she could not take it, it was hers and she must cast
it off! She looked across her life and saw it desolate, sacrificed to
Eva. She was caught in an inextricable tangle and she could not escape
without betraying Eva. She stretched out her hands with an impotent
gesture of despair. She was battling for life, for hope; her strong
soul rose passionately within her and struggled for its own.
Her mind was so full of the thought of him that she was scarcely
startled when Charter appeared at the threshold, unannounced.
"Bantry let me in," he explained; "she said you had just come from the
Astrys' and I wanted to see you."
"I came back some time ago," said Rachel, with an effort to speak
naturally.
But his calm was even more unnatural than hers. "I had to come; I don't
intend to make my presence in the city an annoyance to you, but--"
"John!" she cried sharply.
"It must be an annoyance to feel that I can't behave like a rational
being when I'm near you; I suppose I shan't behave like one to-day,
although I came here determined to have a plain talk with you at last."