The Heart of Rachael Part 40

"You've been seeing each other?" Rachael asked stupidly.

"Oh, every day! At tea, you know, or sometimes especially before you came back, at dinner. And, Rachael, n.o.body will ever know what it's done for me! Greg's managed all my business, and whenever I was utterly discouraged and tired he had the kindest way of saying: 'Never mind, Magsie, I'm tired and discouraged, too!'"

Magsie's face glowed happily at the memory of it. "I know I'm not worthy of Greg's friendship," she said eagerly. "And all the time I've thought of you, Rachael, as having the first right, as being far, far above me in everything! But--I'm telling you everything, you see--" Magsie interrupted herself to explain.

"Go on!" Rachael urged, clearing her throat.

"Well, it's not much. But a week or two ago Greg was talking to me about your being eager to get the boys into the country early this year. He looked awfully tired that afternoon, and he said that he thought he would close this house, and live at the club this summer, and he said 'That means you have a dinner date every night, Magsie!' And suddenly, Rachael--I don't know what came over me, but I burst out crying"--Magsie's eyes filled now as she thought of it--"and I said, 'Oh, Greg, we need each other! Why can't we belong to each other! You love me and I love you; why can't we give up our work and the city and everything else, and just be happy!'"

"And what did--Warren say?" Rachael asked in a whisper.

"Oh, Rachael! That's what I've been remembering ever since!"

Magsie said. "That's what made me want to come to you; I KNEW you would understand! You're so good; you want people to be happy,"

said Magsie, fighting tears again and trying to smile. "You have everything: your sons, your position, your beauty--everything!

I'm--I'm different from some women, Rachael. I can't just run away with him. There is an honorable and a right way to do it, and I want to ask you if you'll let us take that way!"

"An honorable way?" Rachael echoed in an unnatural voice.

"Well--" Magsie widened innocent eyes. "n.o.body has ever blamed YOU for taking it, Rachael!" she said simply. "And n.o.body ever blamed Clarence, with Paula!"

Rachael, looking fixedly at her, sat as if turned to stone.

"You are brave, Magsie, to come and tell me this," she said at last quietly.

"You are kind to listen to me," Magsie answered with disarming sincerity. "I know it is a strange thing to do." She laughed nervously. "Of course, I know THAT!" she added. "But it came to me that I would the other day. Greg and I were talking about dreams, you know--things we wanted to do. And we talked about going away to some beach, and swimming, and moonlight, and just rest--and quiet--"

"I see," Rachael said.

"Greg said, 'This is only a dream, Magsie, and we mustn't let ourselves dream!'" Magsie went on. "But--but sometimes dreams come true, don't they?"

She stopped. There was an unearthly silence in the room.

"I've tried to fight it, and I cannot," Magsie presently said in a small, tired voice; "it comes between me and everything I do. I'm not a great actress--I know that. I don't even want to be any more. I want to go away where no one will ever see me or hear of me again. I've heard of this--feeling"--she sent Rachael a brave if rather uncertain smile--"but I never believed in it before! I never believed that when--when you care"--Rachael was grateful to be spared the great word--"you can't live or breathe or think anything"--again there was an evasion--"but the one thing!"

And with a long, tired sigh, again she relapsed into silence.

Rachael could find nothing to say.

"Honestly, HONESTLY," the younger woman presently added, "you mustn't think that either one of us saw this coming! We were simply carried away. It was only this year, only a few months ago, that I began to think that perhaps--perhaps if you understood, you would set--Greg free. You want to live just for the boys, you love the country, and books, and a few friends. Your life would go on, Rachael, just as it has, only he would be happy, and I would be happy. Oh, my G.o.d," said Magsie, with quivering lips and br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes, "how happy I would be!"

Rachael looked at her in impa.s.sive silence.

"At all events," the visitor said more composedly, "I have been planning for a week to come to you, Rachael, and have this talk. I may have done more harm than good--I don't know; but from the instant I thought of it I have simply been drawn, as if I were under a spell. I haven't said what I meant to, I know that. I haven't said"--her smile was wistful and young and sweet, as, rising from her chair, she stood looking down at Rachael--"how badly I feel that it--it happens so," said Magsie. "But you know how deeply I've always admired you! It must seem strange to you that I would come to you about it. But Ruskin, wasn't it, and Wagner--didn't they do something like this? I knew, even if things were changed between you and Greg, that you would be big enough and good enough to help us all to find the--the solution, if there is one!"

Rachael stood up, too, so near her guest that she could put one hand on Magsie's shoulder. The girl looked up at her with the faith of a distressed child.

"I'm glad you did come, Magsie," said Rachael painfully, "although I never dreamed, until this afternoon, that--this--could possibly have been in Warren's thoughts. You speak of--divorce, quite naturally, as of course anyone may, to me. But I never had thought of it. It's a sad tangle, whatever comes of it, and perhaps you're right in feeling that we had better face it, and try to find the solution, if, as you say, there is one."

And Rachael, breathing a little hard, stood looking down at Magsie with something so benign, so tragic, and so heroic in her beautiful face that the younger woman was a little awed, even a little puzzled, where she had been so sure. She would have liked to put her arms about her hostess's neck, and to seal their extraordinary treaty with a kiss, but she knew better. As well attempt to kiss the vision of a ministering angel. Rachael, one arm on Magsie's shoulder, her whole figure and her face expressing painful indecision, had never seemed so remote, so G.o.ddesslike.

"And--and you won't tell him of this?" faltered Magsie.

"Ah--you must leave that to me," Rachael said with a sad smile.

For a few seconds longer they looked at each other. Then Rachael dropped her arm, and Magsie moved a little. The visitor knew that another sentence must be in farewell, but she felt strangely awkward, curiously young and crude. Rachael, except for the falling of her arm, was motionless. Her eyes were far away, she seemed utterly unconscious of herself and her surroundings. Magsie wanted to think of one more thing to say, one clinching sentence, but everything seemed to be said. Something of the other woman's weariness and coldness of spirit seemed to communicate itself to her; she felt tired and desolate. It seemed a small and insignificant matter that she had had her momentous talk with Rachael, and had succeeded in her venture. Love was failing her, life was failing.

"I hope--I haven't distressed you--too awfully, Rachael," Magsie faltered. She had not thought of herself, a few hours ago, as distressing Rachael at all. She had thought that Rachael might be scornful, might be cold, might overwhelm her with her magnificence of manner, and shame her for her daring. She had come in on a sudden impulse, and had had no time for any thought but that her revelation would be exciting and dramatic and astonishing. She was sincerely anxious to have Warren freed, but not so swept away by emotion that she could not appreciate this lovely setting and her own picturesque position in the eyes of her beautiful rival.

"Oh, no!" Rachael answered, perfunctorily polite, and with her eyes still fixed darkly on s.p.a.ce. And as if half to herself, she added, in a breathless, level undertone:

"It all rests with Warren!"

Presently Magsie breathed a faint "Good-bye," following it with an almost inaudible murmur that Dennison would let her out. Then the white figure was gone from the gloom of the room, and Rachael was alone.

For a time she was so dazed, so emotionally exhausted by the event of the last hour, that she stood on, fixed, unseeing, one hand pressed against her side as if she stopped with it the mouth of a wound. Occasionally she drew a long, sharp breath as the dying sometimes breathe.

"It all rests with Warren," she said presently, half-aloud, and in a toneless, pa.s.sive voice. And slowly she turned and slowly went to the window.

The room was dark, but twilight lingered in the old square, and home-going men and women were filing across it. The babies and their nurses were gone now, there were only lounging men on the benches. Lumbering green omnibuses rocked their way through the great stone arch, and toward the south, over the crowded foreign quarter, the pink of street lamps was beginning to battle with the warm purple and blue that still hung in the evening sky. The season had been long delayed, but now there was a rustle of green against the network of boughs; a few warm days would bring the tulips and the fruit blossoms.

What a sweet, good, natural world it was in which to be happy!

With its wheeling motor cars, its lovers seated in high security for the long omnibus ride, its laborers pleasantly ready for the home table and the day's domestic news! The chattering little Jewish girls from one of the uptown department stores were gay with shrilly voiced plans; the driver, riding lazily home on a pile of empty bags, had no quarrel with the world; the smooth- haired, unhatted Italian women from the Ghetto, with shawls wrapped over their full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and serene black-eyed babies toddling beside them, were placidly content with the run of their days. It remained for the beautiful woman in the drawing-room to look with melancholy eyes upon the springtime, and tear out her heart in an agony no human power could cure.

"It all rests with Warren," Rachael said. Magsie was nothing, she was nothing; the world, the boys, were nothing. It was for Warren to hold their destinies in his hands and decide for them all. No use in raging, in reasoning, in arguing. No use in setting forth the facts, the palpable right and wrong. No use in bitterly asking the unanswering heavens if this were right and just, this system that could allow any young girl to feel any married man, any father, her natural prey. She had come to love Warren just as in a few years she might come to love someone else. That was all permissible; regrettable perhaps for Warren's wife, an unmistakable calamity for Warren's boys, but, from Magsie's standpoint, comprehensible and acceptable. If Warren were free, Magsie was well within her rights; if he were not, Rachael was the last woman in the world to dispute it.

After a while Rachael began to move mechanically about the room.

She sat down at her desk and wrote a few checks; the boys little first dancing lessons must be paid for, the man who mended the clock, the woman who had put all her linen in order. She wrote briskly, reaching quickly for envelopes and stamps, and, when she had finished, closed the desk with her usual neatness. She telephoned the kitchen; had she told Louise that Doctor Gregory might come home at midnight? He might be at home for breakfast.

Then she glanced about the quiet room, and went softly out, through the inner door, to her own bedroom adjoining. She walked on little usual errands between bureau and wardrobe, steadily proceeding with the changing of her gown. Once she stopped short, in the centre of the floor, and stood musing for a few silent minutes, then she said, aloud and lightly:

"Poor Magsie--it's all so absurd!"

If for a few seconds her thoughts wandered, they always came swiftly back. Magsie and Warren had fallen in love with each other--wanted to marry each other. Rachael tried to marshal her whirling thoughts; there must be simple reason somewhere in this chaotic matter. She had the desperate sensation of a mad-woman trying to prove herself sane. Were they all crazy, to have got themselves into this hideous fix? What was definite, what facts had they upon which to build their surmises?

Warren was her husband, that was one fact; Warren loved her, that was another. They had lived together for nearly eight years, planned together, they knew each other now, heart and soul. And there were two sons. These being facts for Rachael, what facts had Magsie? Rachael's heart rose on a wild rush of confidence. Magsie had no basis for her pretension. Magsie was young, and she had madly and blindly fallen in love. There was her single claim: she loved. Rachael could not doubt it after that hour in the sitting- room. But what pitiable folly! To love and to admit love for another woman's husband!

Thinking, thinking, thinking, Rachael lay awake all night. She composed herself a hundred times for sleep, and a hundred times sleep evaded her. Magsie--Warren--Rachael. Their names swept round and round in her tired brain. She was talking to Magsie, so eloquently and kindly; she was talking to Warren. Warren was shocked at the mere thought of her suspicions, had seen nothing, had suspected nothing, couldn't believe that Rachael could be so foolish! Warren's arms were about her, he was going to take her and the boys away. This was a bad atmosphere for wives, this diseased and abnormal city, Warren said. She was buying steamer coats for Derry and Jim--

Magsie! Again the girl's tense, excited face rose before Rachael's fevered memory. "You mustn't think either one of us saw this coming!"

Rachael rose on her elbow, shook her pillows, flashed a night- light on her watch. Quarter to three. It was a rather dismal hour, she thought, not near enough either midnight or morning. Tossing so long, she would be sleepless all night now.

Well, what was marriage anyway? Was there never a time of serenity, of surety? Was any pretty, irresponsible young woman free to set her heart upon another woman's husband, the father of another woman's children? Rachael suddenly thought of Clarence.

How different the whole thing had seemed then! Clarence's pride, Clarence's child, had they been so hurt as her pride and her children were to be hurt now?

She must not allow herself to be so easily frightened. She had been thinking too many months of the one thing; she could not see it fairly. Why, Magsie had been infinitely more dangerous in the early days of her success; there was nothing to fear from the simple, apprehensive Magsie of this afternoon! The only sensible thing was to stop thinking of it, and to go to sleep. But Rachael felt sick and frightened, experienced sensations of faintness, sensations like hunger. Her eyes seemed painfully open, she could not shut them. Her breath came fitfully. She sighed, turned on her side. She would count one hundred, breathing deep and with closed eyes. "Sixteen, seventeen!" Rachael sat suddenly erect, and looked at her watch again. Twenty-two minutes past three.

Morning broke with wind and rain; the new leaves in the square were tossing wildly; sleet struck noisily against the windows.

Rachael, waking exhausted, after not more than an hour's sleep, went through the process of dressing in a weary daze. The boys, as was usual, came in during the hour, full of fresh conversation and eager to discuss plans for the day. Jim tied strings from k.n.o.b to k.n.o.b of her bureau drawers, Derry amused himself by dashing a chain of gla.s.s beads against the foot of the bed until the links gave and the tiny b.a.l.l.s rolled in every direction over the floor.

"Never mind," Rachael consoled the discomfited junior, "Pauline will come in and pick them all up. Mother doesn't care!"