The Heart of Rachael Part 8

To this solicitude Clarence made no answer. A dark, ugly look came into his face, and he turned his eyes sullenly and wearily away.

"How was the Chase dinner, Bill?" pursued the cheerful visitor, unabashed.

"Same old thing," Carol answered briefly.

"You're not up to the Perrys' lunch to-day, are you, Clancy?"

"Oh, my G.o.d, no!" burst from the sufferer.

"Well, I'll telephone them. If Florence comes in this morning I'm going to say you're asleep, so keep quiet up here. Do you want to see Greg again?"

"No, I don't!" said Clarence, with unexpected vigor. "Steer him off if you can. Preaching at me last night as if he'd never touched anything stronger than malted milk!"

"I don't imagine I'll have much trouble steering him off," Rachael said coldly. "His Sundays are pretty well occupied without--sick calls!"

There was a delicate and scornful emphasis on the word "sick" that brought the blood to Clarence Breckenridge's face. Billy flushed, too, and an angry light flamed into her eyes.

"That's not fair, Rachael!" the girl said hotly, "and you know it's not!"

The glances of the three crossed. Billy was breathing hard; Clarence, shakily holding a fresh match to his cold cigarette, sent a lowering look from daughter to wife. Rachael shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, I'll have my breakfast," she said, and turning she went from the room and downstairs to the sunshiny breakfast porch.

There were flowers on the little round table, a bright glitter was struck from silver and gla.s.s, an icy grapefruit, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with juice, stood at her place. The little room was all windows, and to-day the cretonne curtains had been pushed back to show the garden brave in new spring green, the exquisite freshness of elm and locust trees that bordered it, and far away the slopes of the golf green, with the scarlet and white dots that were early players moving over it. Sunshine flooded the world, great plumes of white and purple lilac rustled in their tents of green leaves, a bee blundered from the blossoming wistaria vine into the room, and blundered out again. Far off Rachael heard a c.o.c.k breaking the Sabbath stillness with a prolonged crow, and as the clock in the dining-room chimed one silver note for the half-hour, the bells of the church in the little village of Belvedere Bay began to ring.

Of the comfort, the beauty, and the harmony of all this, however, Rachael saw and felt nothing. Her brief interview with her husband had left a bitter taste in her mouth. She felt neither courage nor appet.i.te for the new day. Annie carried away the blue bowl of porridge untouched, reporting to Ellie: "She don't want no eggs, nor sausage, nor waffles--nothing more!"

Ellie, the cook, who boarded a four-year-old daughter with the gardener and his wife, at the gate-lodge, was deep in the robust charms of this young person, and not sorry to be uninterrupted.

"Thank goodness she don't," she said. "Do you want a little waffle all for yourself, Lovey? Do you want to pour the batter into Ma's iron yourself? Pin a napkin round her, Annie! An' then you can eat it out on the steps, darlin', because it just seems to be a shame to spend a minute indoors when G.o.d sends us a mornin' like this!"

"It must have been grand, walking to church this morning, all right," said Alfred, who was busy with golf sticks and emery on the vine-shaded porch.

"It was!" said Ellie and Annie together, and Annie added: "Rose from Bowditch's was there, and she says she can't get away but about once a month. She always has to wait on the children's breakfast at eight, and then down comes the others at half-past nine, or later, the way she never has a moment until it's too late for High! I told her she had a right to look for another place!"

"There's worse places than this," Ellie said, watching her small daughter begin on her waffle. A general nodding of heads in a contented silence indicated that there was some happiness in the Breckenridge household even though it was below stairs.

Rachael's sombre revery was presently interrupted by the smooth crushing of wheels on the pebbled drive and the announcement of Mrs. Haviland, who followed her name promptly into the breakfast- room. A fine, large, beautifully gowned woman, with a prayer book in her white-gloved hand, and a veil holding her close, handsome spring hat in place, she glanced at the coffee and hot bread with superiority only possible to a person whose own breakfast is several hours past.

"Rachael, you lazy woman!" said Florence Haviland lightly, breathing deep, as a heavy woman in tight corsets must perforce breathe on a warm spring morning. "Do you realize that it's almost eleven o'clock?"

"Perfectly!" Mrs. Breckenridge said. "I slept until nine, and felt quite proud of myself to think that I had got through so much of the day!"

Mrs. Haviland gave her a sharp look in answer, not quite disapproving, yet far from pleased.

"I started the girlies off to eight o'clock service," she said capably. "Fraulien went with them, and that leaves the maids free to go when they please." This was one of Mrs. Haviland's favorite illusions. "Gardner begged off this morning, he's been so good about going lately that I couldn't very well refuse, so I started early and have just dropped him at the club."

"Was Gardner at the Berry Stokes bachelor dinner on Friday night?"

asked Rachael. Mrs. Haviland was all comprehension at once.

"No, he couldn't. Mr. Payne of the London branch was here you know, and Gardner's been terribly tied. He left yesterday, thank goodness. Clarence went of course? Oh, dear, dear, dear!"

The last three words came on a gentle sigh. Clarence's sister compressed her lips and shook her handsome head.

"Is he very bad?" she asked reluctantly.

"Pretty much as usual," Rachael answered philosophically. "I had Greg in." And suddenly, unexpectedly, she felt a quick happy flutter at her heart, and a roseate mist drifted before her eyes.

"It's disgraceful!" Mrs. Haviland said, eying Rachael hopefully for a wifely denial. As this was not forthcoming, she went on briskly: "However, my dear, Clarence isn't the only one! They say Fred Bowditch is actually"--her voice sank to a discreet undertone as she added the word--"violent; and poor Lucy Pickering needed a rest cure the moment she got her divorce, she was in such a nervous state. I'm not defending Clarence--"

"What are you doing, then?" Rachael asked, with her cool smile.

"Well, I--" Mrs. Haviland, who had been drifting comfortably along on a tide of words, stopped, a little at a loss. "I hope I don't have to defend your own husband to you, Rachael," she said reproachfully.

"I'm getting pretty tired of it," said Rachael moodily.

Mrs. Haviland watched the downcast beautiful face opposite her with a sense of growing alarm.

"My dear," she said impressively, "of course it's hard for you; we all know that. But just at this time, Rachael, it would be absolutely FATAL to have any open break with Clarence--"

Rachael flung up her head impatiently, then dropped her face in her hands.

"I don't want any open break," she muttered.

"You do? Oh, you DON'T?" Mrs. Haviland questioned anxiously. "No, of course you don't. He's not himself now, for several reasons.

For one--and that's what I specially came to speak to you about-- for one thing, he's terribly worried about Carol. Carol," repeated Mrs. Haviland significantly, "and Joe Pickering."

Rachael raised sombre eyes, but did not speak.

"Is Carol here?" her aunt asked delicately.

"Dressing," Rachael answered briefly.

"Do you realize," Mrs. Haviland said, "that everyone is beginning to talk?"

"Perfectly," Rachael admitted. "But what do you expect me to do?"

"SOMETHING must be done," said the other woman firmly.

"By whom?" Rachael countered lightly.

"Well--by Clarence, I suppose," Mrs. Haviland suggested discontentedly.

"Clarence!" Rachael's tone was but a scornful breath. Her glance toward the ceiling evoked more clearly than any words a vision of Clarence's condition at the moment.

"Well, I suppose he can't do anything just now, anyway," his sister conceded ruefully. "Can't you--couldn't you talk to her, Rachael?"

"Talk to her?" Mrs. Breckenridge smiled at some memory. "My dear Florence, you don't suppose I haven't talked to her!"

"Well, I suppose of course you have," Mrs. Haviland said hastily.