Rachel cast a scornful glance at her husband. Everything he said to-night annoyed her. But his next words made her ashamed.
"I wish I could bring Father out here," he added, "but the doctor is against it and perhaps he's right."
She turned impulsively with some idea of making amends for her thoughts. But when Simon, as they were leaving the dining room, inclined his head toward hers, she sprang aside, giving him a strange look in the face.
Of course she must tell him everything; but not to-night—to-night, she thought, he seemed particularly contented. He had gone now to get his hat. The clouds on the previous day had not emptied themselves. Now they once more drove through the heavens, though the moon, at present, shone victoriously. As Annie feared for her starched dress, Simon was going to take her home at once.
When the door had closed upon them, Rachel went into the front room. André was sitting before one of the long windows, the casement of which lay back against the wall. In one of the upper panes of glass, swimming through a bank of wild clouds, the moon was reflected. It was as if the moon were in the room. The heat had increased; lightning played along the sky, and in the garden, the shrubbery, half shrouded in a silvery mist, was motionless.
"Play something for me, André," Rachel said; and going to the window, she stood with her hands clasped behind her neck. How get through this evening—how get through her entire life?
"I thought out a piece after you left Pemoquod. I will play that for you." And passing to the mantel, André took down his fiddle. "I call it your piece," he added softly.
But Rachel, her eyes on the gleaming garden, did not hear him.
Presently, a mournful and plaintive air, like the voice of a child giving way to grief, began to float through the room. It was instinctive playing, devoid of skill in the technical sense; none the less the sound of the strings was wistful, heart-rending. And suddenly the song gained in force and rang out powerfully; the crude, passionate, beseeching melody flowed from under the nervous, swift-moving bow, and such tenderness and devotion mingled with its flowing, such piercingly-sweet supplication, that Rachel, laying her face on her arm, supported herself against the casement.
And André, his dark head bent, his cheek pressed to the violin, conscious that she was there before him in her rich dress, played like one in an ecstasy. His body swayed, tears stood on his pale cheeks, but his eyes were closed.
At last, unable to endure the constantly recurring lovemotif, which was sweeter than the moon, more fathomless than the white moon drowned in space, Rachel fled through the long window. With a fierce movement she lifted her arms above her head; then, as if broken, rested her face against a tree. Rising from the ground beneath her feet, floating between the branches of the mist-hung trees, thrilling through all the spaces of the still and waiting garden, ran the fire of that exquisite melody, sounded those strains of pure and youthful love.
Presently a flowering shrub moved slightly. Some branches that overhung a path stirred; then everything was motionless.
She raised her head, her whole frame quivering like a tightly drawn bow.
Out of the shadows, running rather than walking, Emil was advancing.
With one movement she sprang to him and, uttering a low cry, he caught her.
Each on the lips of the other, their souls were drowned in oblivion; for if he kissed her, she as openly kissed him; and if her cheeks were drenched with tears, they certainly were not all of her own shedding. Tempestuous, tragic emotion overflowed the hearts of both. In the delicious anguish of their embrace, the memory of life with its pitiful conventions dropped from them. Loyalty was an empty word, pity a name.
Their clinging arms its walls, their shining eyes its stars, they stood apart in a universe new-made.
And from the old, old sky the moon that watches over this paltry world of man with his misery and his bliss,—the moon looked down on them. Changing her position on her cloudbank, like a head lolling lazily on a pillow, the moon bestowed on the pair of bewildered children the same glance of remote indulgence she recently had bestowed on the lovers in the Garden of Eden. She threw her brightness over their clasping arms and eloquent faces, and with her radiance mischievously deepened the glamour of that supreme moment in their infinitesimal lives. Then sinking amid the down of her pillow, she temporarily disappeared.
"Rachel, what did you mean by leaving me the way you did this afternoon?" Emil whispered, pausing long enough between his kisses to hold back her head, while he looked down into her eyes with his own which were fierce and wet; "Didn't you know it would be useless?"
His words roused her from the spell that had enwrapped her. Freeing herself with violence, she turned on him. The crimson had dropped from her cheek like the colours from a mast head.
"Emil, leave me!"
His eyes glowed with a peculiar brilliance:
"Leave you, my own? I'll never leave you! and you'll never leave me again; that couldn't happen more than once!"
And as she looked at him, she understood that he could conceive of nothing strong enough to deter him from following the dictates of his pagan and powerful nature.
"Go away, Emil," she said dully, "if you have any love for me—any pity even." Her brows drew together with hopeless obstinacy. She turned.
With one stride he was beside her and had caught her hand. "Listen to me, love," he cried, and a curious mingling of command, entreaty and supplication trembled in the words, "to-morrow is Sunday, there is a train in the afternoon at six; I'll wait for you in that little grove near the station. Do you understand?"
"No;" and she stared back at him, all in a blaze.
"Oh, yes you do," he said gently; "I mean that we'll go off somewhere—far, far away. We'll have a cottage on a beach, something like this one here; and we'll have a boat. And there'll be nothing to come between us any more. All that is past. We'll forget it, as if it had never been, and we'll live for each other. And perhaps, later, if you are willing," he pursued, carried away by his visions, "we'll have Mother join us; for you'll take to Mother, Rachel, and she'll take to you. Then, how I will work! I'll astonish you; I'll astonish the world. I'll make you a proud and happy woman, but it will all be owing to you."
"But Simon—Annie—what of them?" she broke in upon him hastily, for she feared this last argument more than she feared death.
"Well, what of them?" he interrogated, purposely misinterpreting her. "To be sure, Annie scarcely lets me out of her sight these days," he added thoughtfully. "She understands about as much as a humming-bird how such a chap as I has to do his work, and she's eternally standing at my elbow and egging me on. It will be a little difficult to slip away. However, I'll tell her that I'm obliged to see those fellows in the Bronx,—which is quite true," he finished with a brightening smile. "And then another thing that will make my getting away easy, Annie takes a nap now every afternoon, so it can be readily arranged. We'll simply walk away from this, Rachel—we'll leave it all."
She heard in these words the declaration of one who refuses to be fettered by life; who, instead of being hampered by its conventions, rises superior to them. The simplicity of the point of view transfixed her.
Ordinarily Emil would have been swift to note and follow up the advantage he had gained; but, as he looked upon Rachel, the quality of her resistance struck him for the first time; thereupon that primitive something which in him took the place of conscience stirred ever so slightly. For a brief instant he saw the line of conduct he was tracing so blithely for the pair of them, in a novel and uncomfortable light. A burning emotion rose from the depths of his soul, and in its wake it carried new and troubling questions. He waved his arms vehemently as if to drive this brood of questions from him. But the new emotion persisted, and seemed to fill his breast.
"I don't pretend to know much about any question of right or wrong," he murmured, all at once humble; "but it seems to me, love such as ours is beyond all that. As for Annie," he went on, his confidence in himself restored, "she won't be sorry to be rid of me when she gets over the first surprise. Her parents are forever urging her to come home, and you remember she did leave me a while ago. Ours was a daft marriage if there ever was one," he continued, "for two unliker people were never yoked together. And the life she'll lead with her parents will suit Annie far better. Poor kitten," he commented with unwonted softness, "she was never made for hardships, and we'll be doing her no wrong. The thing I'm striving after means less than nothing to Annie, and there's where you are different, Rachel. You'll be patient till I do succeed; but I'll not keep you waiting long, sweet, for your presence will brace me so that I can't fail. Then take your husband," he pursued, with a steady glance under her lids, "is he a fit mate for you? Ask yourself? No, no, my own, my darling, we are the fit mates!"
Strongly, in spite of her swift denying, even with sobs, he drew her to his breast.
And through the garden, André's song of love struck on their ears. It wrapped them round like the voice of their own passion. It increased perceptibly in volume as though the player were drawing near. Then, its strains which leapt on a sudden to those of triumph, ceased:—there came a crash.
Rachel struggled to escape, and she did escape. She retraced the few steps of the path, she entered the house through the long window. Something flashed past her and disappeared in the shrubbery. On the sill she stumbled over a dark object which gave out a faint discordant sound. It was André's violin with its strings still vibrating.
Some hours later Rachel sat at a window of her room with her forehead resting on her hands. The clouds by this time covered the face of the moon; and the darkness was enlivened by patches and scars of lightning, as though the heavens were being laid open with a fiery whip. Rain fell. A fine spray of moisture penetrated the ragged awning. Rachel never stirred.
A dull lethargy had descended on her. She no longer thought of Emil or of her husband. She had but one sensation—the inevitable had happened. The fury of the storm brought her a sense of relief. At moments she felt herself being carried forward by a dark irresistible current. None the less her determination, like an anchor, held. She never faltered in her resolution to leave Gray Arches; she even heard herself explaining the matter to Simon and she saw his face. His fingers trembled through his hair, his jaw fell, all the blood receded from his cheek. "But why disturb him?" she thought; "why should he be made to suffer?" No, plainly, she must invent some pretext for leaving, then go at once. She must not see Emil again.
Without realizing it, Rachel dropped at last into a troubled sleep, from which she was aroused by a rap on the door.
"Oh, has he gone?" she cried, starting to her feet, and she pushed back the hair from her face. "Has Simon gone?"
The very possibility that her husband already had started for the city, in view of her resolution, seemed to her a tragedy.
Emily, after a short, sharp inspection of her, laid a pile of freshly-ironed linen on a chair.
"Yes," she answered, "he knocked at your door, but you gave no sign and he didn't like to disturb you. Peter was slow harnessing and Mr. Hart was afraid he wouldn't make the train, but he must have made it or he'd be back by now. It is after eight o'clock."
Rachel sank into her chair with huddled knees. She looked as if she never intended to move again.
Emily took her wrist. "Wouldn't you like your coffee here?"
Rachel looked up at her stupidly.
Emily repeated the question; she even broke into scolding as she brought a loose gown to the other and insisted on her removing her dress. But once outside the door, Emily extended both hands as if appealing to a protective Providence. "A nice state of things!" she muttered, with an expression of mingled pain, indignation and perfect comprehension.
But when she appeared with the breakfast tray a few moments later she was as stern of aspect as before. After shaking out a table-cloth, she placed the tray on a little stand at Rachel's elbow.
But Rachel turned away. With her head propped on her two hands, she stared in front of her; and nothing Emily could say served to draw her from this state.
That morning the little toy-maker could not work as usual. A tiny parachute was very nearly ruined by an ill-directed movement of the shears; and a piece of green satin for the aeronaut's coat was utterly spoiled by tears, which she scorned to notice, falling upon it. She was so upset that more than once the utensils of her craft rolled on the floor while her hands dropped to her knees. To herself Emily fiercely denied any attraction in Emil and she praised staunchly every one of Simon Hart's qualities.
About one o'clock Rachel, after refusing luncheon, left the house for a walk; and Emily, having satisfied herself that the other went to the beach, lay down on her bed. "Let her tire herself out; it is the best thing she can do," Emily murmured, and dropped asleep, with a tear standing in a furrow under one eye.
The caretaker, who served in the capacity of cook, in company with her husband and the other servants, was spending the day with friends and would not return until late; even Peter, the coachman, was away for the afternoon. Meanwhile, in this house far removed from the city, the stillness which is peculiar to the Sabbath, deepened.
Rachel walked the beach. She sat down, but immediately rose again. Not only her own life, but all the life about her seemed suspended.
Emil was on his way to the station now; in her mind she could see him swinging along the road: so robust and naïve was his egotism, he would never question for a moment that she would come. At the thought of his disappointment, she began sobbing with her handkerchief to her lips. All sorts of dark thoughts rose indistinctly from the depths of her soul. Simon, save for one failing, was hopelessly free of faults; he was almost perfect. Scarcely aware of what was passing in her mind, she began picturing what would happen in case of his death. But there was Annie. However, Annie could obtain a divorce; she could return, as Emil had said, to her parents. Rachel arranged every detail of the situation; but these scarcely articulate plans, these involuntary dreams, were accompanied by a physical sensation of shame—revulsion.
She shook herself free of the sorry brood and looked about her. Had she been there an hour, two hours, five minutes? She did not know. Presently a vesper bell from a distant village sounded intermittently above the plashing of the waves. With her hand pressed to her heart, she listened. Then she sped to the house.
In the hallway the old-fashioned clock marked a quarter past five. Three quarters of an hour more! There was still time to meet Emil! And she pictured him waiting for her in the grove near the station, impatiently scanning the road. Reaching her room, she flung herself into a chair and clung to its arms to prevent herself from answering the summons. Dumb, breathless, distraught, with her head hanging on her breast, she listened to the measured ticking of the clock which reached her from the hall. She could still restrain her body, but she could not control her mind.
"To-day decides my fate; either I go with Emil now, or I remain with Simon forever. To-day decides my fate."
She seemed to have a fondness for the phrase for she said it over and over.
"If I remain with Simon, all will go on as before; but if I go with Emil—"
She closed her eyes. The walls of the room dropped away and she saw a landscape. Sedge grass bordered the road to the station. In it she sank repeatedly and its brown waves washed over her head. But ever before her was Emil. Infinitely multiplied, he smiled at her from the leaves, the grass, the dust. The faces resolved themselves into one face. He drew near; she was penetrated by his presence. All the love in her, all the joy of which she was capable, was revealed. She clasped her hands about his neck, she laid her face on his breast, and the past with its futile struggles, its anguish, like a bad dream, receded from her.
Then she recognized the sunlight striking through the white shades of the room. It was tracing the usual pattern on the floor and glistening indolently on the brass knobs of the dressing-table.
With a cry she started to her feet. Maddened, she began to heap some articles into a dressing-bag. She was turning from her bureau to the bag when John Smith's letter, which she had not yet read, caught her eye. It was propped against the frame of the mirror. She put out a hand.
With his closely-written pages which she passed over, there was a little yellow note directed to her mother in a feeble scrawl. Leaning against the embrasure of the window, Rachel unfolded the note almost against her will. But the more she endeavoured to fix her attention upon it, the more confused she became.
"My dear Lavina: I ought not to have left you—"
She stared at the words, which trailed off into an illegible run of characters; and the note with its message for another heart, stilled now these twenty years, slipped from her fingers.
Outside the sunlight danced on the multitudinous leaves and shimmered on the gravel path. Except for the sound of the sea all was silence. A passing breeze fluttered the paper at her feet and the room was filled with the subtle exhalation of that old regret.
She was on her knees. She still saw Emil, heard his voice; and as if grasping something, she opened her arms and carried them back against her heart while her whole frame trembled.
Then the miracle held her spell-bound:
She had been saved from the irretrievable step; she had been plucked back from the rock's edge.
Slowly, slowly the dry heart-flames subsided. As mists rose from the ground in summer after the heat and fever of the day, so something pure as childhood, sweet as the aspirations of early youth, rose from the depths of her soul. All the treachery, all the longing of purely selfish love was annihilated. It was one of those crises when the heart sets wide its doors; when the emotion that was personal becomes universal.
The shrubbery was alive with insects, murmuring gently; and amid the foliage of the trees, the birds were preparing to go to roost. They had reached those wistful days in late summer, which by the sea fade away in evenings of gold and rose, which fade away into the sea itself. A little wind set all the leaves astir. As she looked toward the sea, a wonderful serenity seemed to fall upon her from that radiant sunset sky, seemed to light on her like a benediction from the dying day.
She turned her eyes in the direction of the gardener's cottage. Owing to a row of large trees and an intervening wall, barely more than its red pointed roof was visible. Buried in greenery, bathed in the calm light, it had, at this distance, an ethereal, unreal aspect, like a cottage seen in a picture. About it nothing stirred. But, as she looked, a trail of smoke appeared above a rear gable. This doubled angrily upon itself, then spread out in the still air like a fan. It became in an instant an all-enveloping sable mass crossed by licking tongues of red. In the midst of the sweet country, the cottage in utter silence was being destroyed, its burning but emphasizing the surrounding peace.
Rachel's feet scarcely touched the stairs. She was out of doors and crossing the lawn without realizing her own movements. As she ran, she cried for help. But she recollected that all the servants were away. André had not been seen since the evening before; and, except for Emily Short asleep in a distant wing, the place was deserted. She had gone but a few steps when a cry of horror burst from her.Annie! Where was Annie? When not engaged in hanging about Emil while he worked, she was in the habit of visiting at the big house. But that day Rachel had not seen her. Then she recollected Emil's words about his wife's habit of taking a nap in the afternoon.
"Annie!—wake up!—Fire!"
Rachel's cries were confused. She was breathless, almost falling; but despite this excitement, the wonderful sense of peace that had come to her remained in her heart like a dove in its nest.
She stumbled once as she crossed the lawn, and once her dress caught on a branch. She wrenched it free. Beyond the wall the longer, coarser grass impeded her steps and the rays of the setting sun, glancing across the grass, seemed coming to meet her.
"Fire! Annie, fire!" she called.
She was near enough to the cottage now to make out that its windows and doors were closed. She sprang up the path and the hot breath of flames struck into her face. She tried the door, it was locked; and she divined what had happened. Annie had feared to go to sleep with the cottage open; when Emil had started for the station, she had locked herself in.
In a frenzy, Rachel beat upon the door with her flattened palms. The vine over her head was fluttering in a keen breeze and all its leaves were curling. She wrenched open the nearest blind and the slat already smoking, scorched her hands. This house of old and seasoned timbers was burning like paper. She climbed over the sill.
Face down, with the skirt of her dress drawn over her head and across her mouth, she groped her way to the chamber. She felt along the bed; it was empty. Then out into the living room where the organ stood, with lurid flashes playing over its keys, she stumbled. And there, lying across the threshold, was something that yielded to her touch yet resisted it. Gathering Annie in her arms, folding her in a spread which she tore from a table, Rachel groped her way back to the window. The walls of the cottage seemed drawing together like the fingers of a hand about to close; but she scarcely felt the intense heat, was scarcely aware of the suffocating smoke, because of that emotion which was more than joy as it was more than peace.
As she half-dragged, half-carried her insensible burden to the window, she felt the joy of that Freedom of which she had ever dreamed.
Annie's head fell back lifeless, and her arms hung inert; but a slight shiver ran through her body, when, with a supreme effort, Rachel lifted her to the sill. For an instant she balanced her burden there; then, not knowing what she did, blinded by the smoke, the flames that all at once darted out upon her from every direction, she thrust the body through the window.
She had a sense that it was received—that someone, in a frantic dear and well-known voice, called her name. She tried to follow, to struggle into the sweet air, where beyond the smoke and the flames, she knew the leaves were still dancing. But something heavy, inflexible, struck her head.
She fell back into the darkness.
Some minutes before the flames made their appearance above the surrounding trees, a sombre scene took place on a slight rise of ground at the rear of the cottage.
As Ding Dong, carrying a pail of milk he had secured at a neighbouring farm, sauntered unsuspecting toward his master's dwelling, he felt himself seized from behind by the waist and shoulders; his arms grasped, bent, wrenched, his feet thrust from under him. Dumfounded, he sprawled on the ground with fingers of steel at his throat. Athwart a reddish haze he saw the livid countenance and bloodshot eyes of the young man who had made his appearance at Gray Arches a day or two before.
With writhings and twistings, Ding Dong tried to wrap his assailant in sinewy arms, to close with him, to crush him in a mighty embrace; the other fought with the strength of desperation.
Finally, pinning Ding Dong to the earth, André flung a look toward the cottage. The flames were now mounting above the trees. A savage joy distorted his face.
He laughed.
At the same instant Ding Dong, hurled him aside. Seeing the flames, the fellow started for the cottage with André after him, but he had gone but a short distance, when he halted and lifted his arm.
A mournful procession was slowly crossing the open field in the light of the waning day and André, rigid, his head advanced, caught the flutter of a familiar dress, saw a deathlike face.
The locked doors and windows had deceived him. Believing the cottage deserted, he had sought to destroy the organ which, in his blindness, he thought recommended the inventor to Rachel's favour; and he had destroyed instead the object of his own devotion—his own love.
The flames leaping into the sky revealed all the impotence of that act of jealousy and revenge.
"No, we might disturb her, and she appears to be resting quietly. In her case it's a little natural exhaustion. As for Mrs. Hart—the spine, I'm afraid. She rescued this one, I understand. Well, she paid the price. As for the young man, he couldn't have been in the water above half an hour. Yes, a tragedy."
The steps, which had merely paused at the door, passed on.
Annie sat up in the bed.
It was true then; that strangled awakening, that battle with the smoke, Rachel's voice faintly heard. In her dream—or what she had been striving to believe a dream—Rachel had saved her; and the dream was truth.
The impatient, not quite friendly Rachel throwing her own life away to save hers! Annie's stunned mind failed to grasp the novel vision. A lamp stood on a chair. Judging by the amount of oil remaining in the glass receptacle, the lamp had been burning there for many hours. Annie stared at the light; then, a little ball of misery and bewilderment, she wept against the pillows.
Presently the instinct awoke in her to find the one who was her natural comforter.
Slipping from the bed, she stood up on her feet. At first she swayed dizzily. Then she managed to dress herself and quitted the room.
She reached the lighted passage. The entire east wing of the house, she discovered, was brightly illuminated. She steadied herself against the wall and peered in the direction whence came a muffled sobbing. Outside Rachel's door Simon Hart stood with his face in his hands.
"Oh be careful!" he implored as she approached.
He had heard somewhere that in cases of injury to the spine the least jar to the patient was sometimes fatal. He looked at Annie without recognizing her and the tears which he made no effort to conceal, streamed down his face from his eyes which were filled with blank, inconceivable despair.
At that moment the door of the chamber opened; a physician emerged. Simon caught him by the arms.
"Is there no change, Doctor?"
"Not yet. There—there, my poor fellow, have courage."
"But I may go in for a moment? I don't ask to remain."
"Yes, if you will be calm."
"Oh, I will be calm, quite calm. You can trust me for that. But wait—this trembling—" And with his massive shoulders bent forward, Simon stole into the room.
"What, you?" And the physician caught Annie's elbow.
She looked at him.
He released her.
Between the muslin curtains, the night entered in its freshness. Every breeze bore tree odours, vine odours, flower odours. In the subdued light the bed gleamed an island of bluish white.
They had placed Rachel on a flat mattress, not venturing even to braid her hair. Instead, those rich and heavy locks that of late had breathed so poignantly a youthful beauty and pride, were spread over the linen where they framed the poor pallid cheeks. As she lay on her back, the lines of her mouth appeared slightly accentuated. Her arms were laid straight to her sides. Never did Death more completely express detachment. At the bed's foot stood Emily Short, her apron to her lips. A nurse in a starched cap noiselessly altered the position of a screen.
The thrilling brave act was apparent. Annie stood a figure abashed and small and unworthy.
Simon was unable to restrain his sobs. The physician laid a hand on his shoulder and he obeyed as unquestioningly as a child. Bending over Rachel he kissed her forehead; then followed the doctor out of the chamber. Annie kept at their heels.
The physician began to consult Simon about some matter and, unobserved, Annie passed them. She descended the stairs. Under the door of the front room there appeared a streak of light. She rapped: there was no answer; someone was in there who could not answer.
Filled with a confused memory, conjured terrors, she hastened down the hall. Very carefully and with great difficulty she opened the heavy front door and stepped out on the porch. In the light that streamed from that east wing, she saw Emil. He was standing with his shoulders against a tree. Her impulse was to run to him; she checked it.
Beneath his disordered mane his face was wild and haggard, and his eyes, raised to a certain window, were filled with an agony no tears had come to relieve. Occasionally his chest lifted with a sigh.
Seized by the selfish anguish of love, Annie thrust out her chin.
He did not belong to her, he belonged to Rachel! She had always suspected.
The next instant, however, the memory of what was flashed before her and like a flame for which there is no fuel, jealousy died in her breast. And what remained? A disconcerted self that wept under its own examining eyes.
"I never could have done what Rachel did," she thought forlornly; "I never could. And Emil knew she was different from me, he knew she was strong; and he loved her. I don't blame him," with a low catch of the breath,—"No, I don't blame him. How could he help it?"
Hour after hour, sick and weak, she clung to a pillar of the porch conscious only of an intensified confusion, a profound loneliness. Gradually, as she listened to those long deep sighs, she ceased to think of herself and longed to console Emil. But henceforth he must hate her as the cause of Rachel's death. The realization sent her into deeper shadow.
So they stood within a few yards of each other and only when dawn began to show faintly over the water, did Annie enter the house.
She saw no one from that east wing but the doctor, who took her wrist, feeling the pulse.
"Not the thing yet," he said, "though a decided improvement over yesterday. But you must show a better face than this."
She asked after Rachel.
He pretended to consult his watch.
She stepped in front of him, "Is there any chance for her, Doctor?"
He met her eyes then gravely. "There is about one chance in a hundred of her recovery; but go and get something to eat. You will find the servants about. I am going to the city now; I shall be back again on the noon train."
Annie went to the kitchen; she found the cook who gave her steaming coffee. She did not drink the coffee, but carried it through the house and out into the garden. She understood that Emil, fearing to betray his grief, had moved away at the doctor's approach. She went to the tree by which he had been standing and placed the coffee on the grass.
A few moments later he returned. He did not notice the cup until he had upset it; then he stared at the stupidly rolling china, and immediately struck off toward the beach.
Obscurely afraid of bringing shame on her who was dying, he shunned everyone. He remained on the beach, alternately watching the house from a distance, and pacing up and down.
At noon Annie ventured in the direction he had taken. He was no longer in sight. She went only a short way, then placed a basket of food where it could not escape his eye. Her preoccupation with her husband kept her from dwelling on more tragic matters.
The next day, when she was taking his dinner to the shore, Emil spied her. She set down the basket hastily and started to run. But he beckoned to her and then called.
She went to him, lifting up a suppliant face.
His eyes as she drew near, held the look of an animal that consciously awaits slaughter:
"How is she?"
As she did not answer at once, not knowing how to say what she must say, he caught her shoulder in a grip that spoke the madness of torture. "For God's sake, tell me!" he almost shouted.
"There is one chance in a hundred, Alexander," she said; "but there is one chance."
His head went up and his hand dropped.
Presently, with a convulsive breath:
"I've been a coward. I've dodged the doctor—couldn't ask him." His hands clenched. "Does she suffer?" he asked, and swung a look on her.
"No, she does not suffer," Annie answered. "She lies there very still as though she were asleep; and her husband stands outside the door and will not let anyone move in that part of the house. And in the front room, that strange young man who came the other day is lying dead. It seems he was sort of unbalanced, and it was he who set the fire; Ding Dong knows he did, for he tried to keep Ding Dong from giving the alarm. And then he drowned himself."
But her husband was interested in no one but Rachel. Haggard and unkempt, he stared at the water.
"I don't know anything about a God," he said slowly, "about a Creator, but if He—if she lives," he amended, "I'll take my oath to give her up as she plead with me to. I'll never trouble her again though it tears my heart out. I ask only that she shall live."
"There is one chance, Alexander," Annie said bravely.
He looked around at her; then took her hand.
They sat down side by side and stared at the waves.
Annie waved one hand aloft. When she spied her husband on the beach, she waved the other hand. Her movement suggested flying.
"Conscious!" she cried, "she's conscious; she's going to get well!"
Emil gazed at her as at an apparition. His knees bent, he dropped in a heap on the sand.
Annie stooped to him: "It's life—life—life, Alexander!" she panted; "not death—life!"
His arms went about his head.
Annie knelt and put an arm around his heaving shoulders. She flung back her hair, lifting her face. "Life, life, life!" she whispered.
And it was life.
Early on the morning of the third day following the catastrophe, the doctor spoke cautiously of an improvement in the patient; there was unquestionably a favourable change. But it was only when Rachel followed the first vague opening of her eyes with a stirring of her hands, that he spoke heartily of recovery. No injury to the spine, that was clear. Merely a brain concussion, as he had hoped. But any excitement coming to her now—the doctor closed his medicine case with a snap.
There was the difficulty. How to keep his wife in a state of perfect tranquillity, this was Simon's problem. Hour after hour his vigilance did duty in her chamber; but when they came, those questions of hers, so weak he had to lean to catch them, yet charged with eagerness, he knew not how to stem the tide.
Her first word was of Annie. To Simon this question, after the long stillness, was like a star trembling out of complete black night. He could have wept on hearing her.
"Is Annie safe?" she murmured, and followed the inquiry with a beseeching glance; "is she well?"
Mindful of his task, he lifted an admonishing finger, while answering her strongly in the affirmative.
"Annie," he said, "is safe and sound; she's as right as possible."
She smiled up at him, a picture of peace and thankfulness. But a few moments later anxiety spoke in a soft contraction of her brow: "Emil—is he well?"
"Yes, he's well; we're all well, and all of us in high spirits because of you, dear. But you must obey the doctor."
Once more Rachel exhibited a face of repose; but almost immediately her eyes flew wide.
"All?" she echoed, "you said all?"
Simon repeated his words stoutly.
"André too?"
He bent his head with a stifled "yes."
At something in his voice, she managed to lift herself, and as she looked at him a colourless and piteous smile came upon her lips.
"Not André," she said.
"Why do you say that?" and, settling her on the pillows, he affected to laugh at the fancy, but her changed aspect alarmed him.
"Because of your face, because I did not see André after—" Her features seemed hidden beneath a veil of dumb suffering. Then her whole countenance shut on a thought; an immense concentration chained her. Directly she felt for his hand.
"André is still here?" she asked.
"Yes."
"May I see him?"
Simon's look wavered and his eyes sank under hers. His attempt to deceive was manifest, plain as the Writing on the Wall.
"Oh not now," he said, striving for an air that should restore her confidence, "you can't see anyone now, you know."
But her suspicions were past allaying, though she swerved swiftly to another question.
"The fire," she demanded. "Do they know what caused the fire?"
"Oh, some carelessness, doubtless. Mrs. St. Ives may have dropped a match."
Once more Rachel half lifted herself. She shook her head, scanning him fixedly.
"Annie was asleep—the cottage locked. Simon, is it known who set that fire?"
He gasped, unable to believe the astonishing thing: she was actually taking the facts from his mind. He opened his lips, but she needed no answer.
"Oh," she whispered, on a long breath, "I understand. Andnow—now where is he?" and her fingers closed on his convulsively. "Now?" Her voice rose.
Helplessly Simon met her look and his jaw hung.
"He is dead," she said, and relaxed her hold.
Seeing that she had guessed all through the marvellous second-sight of love, Simon told her the story briefly, striving, however, to lessen its sadness by relating it in a voice soothing as the ripple of a stream.
"And directions came to-day from the mother," he concluded, "so St. Ives can start with the—the boy, to-morrow morning early. There's a milk train passes through here at five; it will be flagged. In that way St. Ives will make good connections. As for Mrs. St. Ives—" Simon might have been telling her any news, save that he hastened his speech a little as he struck into this new subject—"she goes along too. She will stop in the city, however, for the John Street place is all ready for occupancy and it seemed wisest— My darling Rachel! my own reasonable brave girl!" he cried. "You know you always said the lad was not quite right mentally and he certainly had that air; the servants all remarked it."
From her closed eyes, over her white cheeks, her tears rolled steadily. "Poor, poor André," she whispered.
She knew—she guessed all. She remembered praising the organ attachment to André. And later he had witnessed that mad meeting between her and Emil in the garden. As she imagined the boy, lost, wandering, inflamed with jealousy; remorse intolerable and overwhelming filled her. She had driven him to the desperate act.
Never the less Simon's gravest apprehensions were relieved. Almost with the first glimmer of returning consciousness she had divined the truth and it had not wrecked her, for after that first rain of tears, the strange and lofty look of peace returned to her face. André had been unhappy; now he was no longer so. His need of her guidance had been imperative; now that need no longer existed. Dear heart, dear, simple, clinging soul! And the comforting comparison struck her of a little lost child with its hand safely locked at last in the hand of the All-Father.
She spoke no more until evening; then, as if pursuing a subject that had just been mentioned:
"And Emil will go with him? He will see André's mother?"
"Yes, dearest."
"And he will tell her the truth? For you must explain to Emil, Simon, that he need not hide the truth from Lizzie. Any fiction about André she'd see through: she's his mother. And Emil is to say that I will write and that soon I will come."
"Yes, he will tell her."
"And before they start, Emil and Annie,—they will come here?"
She was so bent on seeing them it seemed unwise to oppose her.
When Simon leaned over her bed in the morning, he knew from her expression that she was alert to the muffled commotion below stairs—to those sharp hammerings, those stealthy treads, those silences—throbbingly alert, although there was no diminution in the radiance of her eyes.
"They have come, dearest," he said, and left the room.
Emil and Annie came forward. Never before at any time had they seen Rachel as she appeared to them now. The courage of her strong young face was mingled with a look of unutterable sweetness. She reached a hand to each.
Instantly Annie was on her knees and Rachel had her head in the curve of a feeble arm. She pressed Annie's head to her breast with fingers tremulous with blessing as a mother's. They said nothing—no words were needed.
Rising, Annie stole to a distant window.
Rachel had kept her hold on Emil. Now once more she looked at him with a smile that expressed more love than she had ever shown him before. Such complete, such utter tenderness, he had never dreamed eyes could hold. And yet in those soft depths so earthly-sweet, he saw renunciation shining through devotion.
He blanched.
In a voice in which there was a tremour she could not control, Rachel spoke of his work and of herself as watching his progress with eagerness.
"For I long, I long more than you can realize to have you make the best possible use of your life. I have set my hopes on you, such high hopes, Emil; and you will not disappoint me."
Finally, panting a little but with electrical energy, with exquisite passionateness, she spoke of the open vision of love. "It is," she said, letting her eyes dwell wistfully in his, "the forgetting of ourselves and—and the abandonment of our self-seeking. This is the soul's way out. And it is the only way out," she insisted.
At first he did not understand, but gradually as he listened, helpless in his grief, her words opened out before him like a pathway that led somewhere into peace.
He looked down at her, his eyes flaming as if all his life had centralized and focused within them. Then he bent and laid his forehead on her arm.
What with weak souls requires time, even long years, powerful natures achieve at once. In the silence Emil's oath was fulfilled.
Summoning Annie, Rachel kissed her; and the other, with timid impulsiveness, slipped a little hand in that of her husband. So they left Rachel. But at the door they turned. She was still gazing after them with a mute, almost mystic concentration. Meeting their look, however, she suddenly smiled and in her eyes was the splendour of some newly-discovered truth.
Something she had long wished for had been gained. She felt a sense of supreme restfulness and this sense deepened and increased even as she lent an ear to the sound of the wheels on the gravel, those wheels that were carrying from her, through the stillness of the morning world, the two who had loved her wildly and whom she had loved.
When Simon returned, he found her leaning on her elbow. The nurse had carried out the night-lamp and the chamber was filled with a wan half-light.
"The box, Simon, will you hand it to me?"
He did not know at first to what she referred; his brow flew up in wrinkles: then he brought the little Swiss clock from its place on her dressing-table.
"Now wind it," she said.
He wound the pretty plaything, and placed it on her raised knees.
Lying back on her pillows, her hands folded across her breast, Rachel listened to the tiny bird, and as she listened, a little, tender, understanding smile touched her lips.
When the golden shell had closed over the performer she looked up at her husband:
"Its song is the song of freedom, isn't it?"
But for Simon these words had no meaning. He had not slept for several nights, and as he replaced the box in its former position, he stumbled. He took a chair beside the bed and his head sank. Lower and lower it sank until it rested on the pillow beside hers. She laid her hand on it.
And ever the day waxed stronger. Now as the mist began to lift, the wild birds awoke in the garden. Here and there from a tree sounded a tentative chirp. The air moved in currents of keener freshness. Everything breathed of the dawn. Rachel turned her eyes to the sea and on her face was the light of her inner vision.
Thus Love solves all the problems that torture the soul of man; through beauty and through silence, it speaks to the heart of a Freedom beyond all its earthly dreams.
THE END