To-day their conversation ran along pleasantly; they were companionable little brothers, and only unmanageable when separated.
"All the men walking home will get their feet horrid an' wet," said Jim, "and then the ladies will scold 'em!"
"This would be a great, big ocean for a fairy," Derry commented, flicking a wide puddle with a well-protected little foot. "Jim," he added in an anxious undertone, "could a fairy drown?"
"Not if he had his swimming belt on," Jim said hardily.
"All the fairies have to take little white rose leaves, and make themselves swimming belts," Derry said dreamily, "'r else their mothers won't let them go swimming, will they, Mother?"
They did not wait for her answer, and Rachael was free to return to her own thoughts. But the interruption roused her, and she watched the little pair with pleasure as they trotted before her on the drying sidewalks. Derry was blond and Jim dark, yet they looked alike, both with Rachael's dark, expressive eyes, and with their father's handsome mouth and sudden, appealing smile. But Rachael fancied that her oldest son was most like his father in type, and found it hard to be as stern with Jim as she was with the impulsive reckless, eager Derry, whose faults were more apt to be her own.
To-night she went with them to the nursery, where their little table was already set for supper and their small white beds already neatly turned down.
"Mother's going to give us our baths!" shouted Jim. Both boys looked at her eagerly; Rachael smiled doubtfully.
"Mother's afraid that she will have to dress, to meet Daddy downtown," she began regretfully, when old Mary interposed respectfully:
"Excuse me, Mrs. Gregory. But Dennison took a message from Doctor this afternoon. I happen to know it because Louise asked me if I didn't think she had better order dinner for you. Doctor has been called to Albany on a case, and was to let you know when to expect him."
"Goody--goody--good-good!" shouted Jim, and Derry joined in with a triumphant shriek, and clasped his arms tightly about his mother's knees. Rachael had turned a little pale, but she kissed both boys, and only left them long enough to change her gown to something loose and comfortable.
Then she came back to the nursery, and there were baths, and games, and suppers, and then stories and prayers before the fire, Mary and Rachael laughing over the fluffy heads, revelling in the beauty of the little bodies.
When they were in bed she went down to a solitary dinner, and, as she ate it, her thoughts went back to other solitary dinners years ago. Utter discouragement and something like a great, all-enveloping fear possessed her. She was afraid of life. She had dented her armor, broken her steel, she had been flung back and worsted in the fight.
What was the secret, then, Rachael asked the fire, if youth and beauty and high hopes and great love failed like so many straws? Why was Alice contented, and she, Rachael, torn by a thousand conflicting hopes and fears? Why was it, that with all her cleverness, and all her beauty, the woman who had been Rachael Fairfax, and Rachael Breckenridge, and Rachael Gregory, had never yet felt sure of joy, had never dared lay hands upon it boldly, and know it to be her own, had trembled, and apprehended, and distrusted where women of infinitely lesser gifts had been able to enter into the kingdom with such utter certainty and serenity?
Sitting through the long evening by the fire, in the drowsy silence of the big drawing-room, Rachael felt her eyes grow heavy. Who was unhappy, who was happy--what was all life about anyway--Dennison and old Mary came in at eleven, and looked at her for a long five minutes. Their eyes said a great many things, although neither spoke aloud. The fire had burned low, the light of a shaded lamp fell softly on the sleeping woman's face. There was a little frown between the beautiful brows, and once she sighed lightly, like a child.
The man stepped softly back into the hall, and Mary touched her mistress.
"Mrs. Gregory, you've dropped off to sleep!"
Rachael roused, looked up, smiling bewilderedly. Her look seemed to search the shadows beyond the old woman's form. Slowly the new look of strain and sorrow came back into her eyes.
"Why, so I did!" she said, getting to her feet. "I think I'll go upstairs. Any message from Doctor Gregory?"
"No message, Mrs. Gregory."
"Thank you, Mary, good-night!" Rachael went slowly out through the dimly lighted arch of the hall doorway, and slowly upstairs. She deliberately passed the nursery door. Her heart was too full to risk a visit to the boys to-night. She lighted her room and sank dazedly into a chair.
"I dreamed that we were just married, and in the old studio," she said, half aloud. "I dreamed I had the old-feeling again, of being so sure, and so beloved! I thought Warren had come home early and had brought me violets!"
A day later Dennison brought up the card of Miss Margaret Clay. Rachael turned it slowly in her hands, pondering, with a quickened heartbeat and a fluctuating color. Magsie had been often a guest in Rachael's house a year ago, but she had not been to see Rachael for a long time now. They were to meet, they were to talk alone together--what about? There was nothing about which Rachael Gregory cared to talk to Margaret Clay.
A certain chilliness and trembling smote Rachael, and she sat down. She wished she had been out. It would be simple enough to send down a message to that effect, of course, but that was not the same thing. That would be evading the issue, whereas, had she been out, she could not have held herself responsible for missing Magsie.
Well, the girl was in the neighborhood, of course, and had simply come in to say now do you do? But it would mean evasions, and affectations, and insincerities to talk with Magsie; it would mean lying, unless there must be an open breach. Rachael found herself in a state of actual dread of the encounter, and to end it, impatient at anything so absurd, she asked Dennison to bring the young lady at once to her own sitting-room.
This was the transformed apartment that had been old Mrs. Gregory's, running straight across the bedroom floor, and commanding from four wide windows a glimpse of the old square, now brave in new feathery green. Rachael had replaced its dull red rep with modern tapestries, had had it papered in peacock and gray, had covered the old, dark woodwork with cream-colored enamel and replaced the black marble mantel with a simply carved one of white stone. The chairs here were all comfortable now; Rachael's book lay on a magazine-littered table, a dozen tiny, leather-cased animals, cows, horses, and sheep, were stabled on the hearth, and the spring sunlight poured in through fragile curtains of crisp net. Over the fireplace the great oil portrait of Warren Gregory smiled down, a younger Warren, but hardly more handsome than he was to-day. A pastel of the boys' lovely heads hung opposite it, between two windows, and photographs of Jim and Derry and their father were everywhere: on the desk, on the little grand piano, under the table lamp. This was Rachael's own domain, and in asking Magsie to come here she consciously chose the environment in which she would feel most at ease.
Upstairs came the light, tripping feet. "In here?" said the fresh, confident voice. Magsie came in.
Rachael met her at the door, and the two women shook hands. Magsie hardly glanced at her hostess, her dancing scrutiny swept the room and settled on Warren's portrait.
She looked her prettiest, Rachael decided miserably. She was all in white: white shoes, white stockings, the smartest of little white suits, a white hat half hiding her heavy masses of trimly banded golden hair. If her hard winter had tired Magsie--"The Bad Little Lady" was approaching the end of its run--she did not show it. But there was some new quality in her face, some quality almost wistful, almost anxious, that made its appeal even to Warren Gregory's wife.
"This is nice of you, Magsie," Rachael said, watching her closely, and conscious still of that absurd flutter at her heart. Both women had seated themselves, now Rachael reached for the silk-lined basket where she kept a little pretence of needlework, and began to sew. There were several squares of dark rich silks in the basket, and their touch seemed to give her confidence.
"What are you making?" said Magsie with a rather touching pretence at interest. Rachael began to perceive that Magsie was ill at ease, too. She knew the girl well enough to know that nothing but her own affairs interested her; it was not like Magsie to ask seriously about another woman's sewing.
"Warren likes silk handkerchiefs," explained Rachael, all the capable wife, "and those I make are much prettier than those he can find in the shops. So I pick up pieces of silk, from time to time, and keep him supplied."
"He always has beautiful handkerchiefs," said Magsie rather faintly. "I remember, years ago, when I was with Mrs. Torrence, thinking that Greg always looked so--so carefully groomed."
"A doctor has to be," Rachael answered sensibly. There were no girlish vapors or uncertainties about her manner; she had been the man's wife for nearly seven years; she was in his house; she need not fear Magsie Clay.
"I suppose so," Magsie said vaguely.
"What are your plans, Magsie?" Rachael asked kindly, as she threaded a needle.
"We close on the eighteenth," Magsie announced.
"Yes, so I noticed." Rachael had looked for this news every week since the run of the play began. "Well, that was a successful engagement, wasn't it?" she asked. It began to be rather a satisfaction to Rachael to find herself at such close quarters at last. What a harmless little thing this dreaded opponent was, after all!
"Yes, they were delighted," Magsie responded still in such a lackadaisical, toneless, and dreary manner that Rachael glanced at her in surprise. Magsie's eyes were full of tears.
"Why, what's the matter, my dear child?" she asked, feeling more sure of herself every instant.
Her guest took a little handkerchief from her pretty white leather purse, and touched her bright brown eyes with it lightly.
"I'll tell you, Rachael," said she, with an evident effort at brightness and naturalness, "I came here to see you about something to-day, but I--I don't quite know how to begin. Only, whatever you think about it, I want you to remember that your opinion is what counts; you're the one person who--who can really advise me, and--and perhaps help me and other people out of a difficulty."
Rachael looked at her with a twinge of inward distaste. This rather dramatic start did not promise well; she was to be treated to some youthful heroics. Instantly the hope came to her that Magsie had some new admirer, someone she would really consider as a husband, and wanted to make of Rachael an advocate with Warren, who, in his present absurd state of infatuation, might not find such a situation to his taste.
"I want to put to you the case of a friend of mine," Magsie said presently, "a girl who, like myself, is on the stage." Rachael wondered if the girl really hoped to say anything convincing under so thin a disguise, but said nothing herself, and Magsie went on: "She's pretty, and young--" Her tone wavered. "We've had a nice company all winter," she remarked lamely.
This was beginning to be rather absurd. Rachael, quite at ease, raised mildly interrogatory eyes to Magsie.
"You'll go on with your work, now that you've begun so well, won't you?" she asked casually.
"W--w--well, I suppose so," Magsie answered dubiously, flushing a sudden red. "I--don't know what I shall do!"
"But surely you've had an unusually encouraging beginning?" pursued Rachael comfortably.
"Oh, yes, there's no doubt about that, at least!" Magsie said. About what was there doubt, then? Rachael wondered.
She deliberately allowed a little silence to follow this remark, smiling, as if at her own thoughts, as she sewed. The younger woman's gaze roved restlessly about the room, she leaned from her chair to take a framed photograph of the boys from a low bookcase, and studied it with evidently forced attention.
"They're stunning!" she said in an undertone as she laid it aside.
"They're good little boys," their mother said contentedly. "I know that the queerest persons in the world, about eating and drinking, are actresses, Magsie," she added, smiling, "so I don't know whether to offer you tea, or hot soup, or an egg beaten up in milk, or what! We had a pianist here about a year ago, and--"
"Oh, nothing, nothing, thank you, Rachael!" Magsie said eagerly and nervously. "I couldn't--"
"The boys may be in soon," Rachael remarked, choosing to ignore her guest's rather unexpected emotion.
This seemed to spur Magsie suddenly into speech. She glanced at the tall old moonfaced clock that was slowly ticking near the door, as if to estimate the time left her, and sat suddenly erect on the edge of her chair.
"I mustn't stay,"' she said breathlessly. "I--I have to be back at the theatre at seven, and I ought to go home first for a few minutes. My girl--she's just a Swedish woman that I picked up by chance--worries about me as if she were my mother, unless I come in and rest, and take an eggnog, or something." She rallied her forces with a quite visible effort. "It was just this, Rachael," said Magsie, looking at the fire, and twisting her white gloves in desperate embarrassment, "I know you've always liked me, you've always been so kind to me, and I can only hope that you'll forgive me if what I say sounds strange to you. I thought I could come here and say it, but--I've always been a little bit afraid of you, Rachael--and I"--Magsie laughed nervously--"and I'm scared to death now!" she said simply.
Something natural, unaffected, and direct in her usually self-conscious and artificial manner struck Rachael with a vague sense of uneasiness. Magsie certainly did not seem to be acting now; there were real tears in her pretty eyes, and a genuine break in her young voice.
"I'm going straight ahead," she said rapidly, "because I've been getting up my courage this whole week to come and see you, and now, while Greg is in Albany, I can't put it off any longer. He doesn't know it, of course, and, although I know I'm putting myself entirely at your mercy, Rachael, I believe you'll never tell him if I ask you not to!"
"I don't understand," Rachael said slowly.
"I've been thinking it all out," Magsie went on, "and this is the conclusion--at least, this is what I've thought! You have always had everything, Rachael. You've always been so beautiful, and so much admired. You loved Clarence, and married him--oh, don't think I'm rude, Rachael," the girl pleaded eagerly, as Rachael voiced an inarticulate protest, "because I'm so desperately in earnest, and s-s-so desperately unhappy!" Her voice broke on a rush of tears, but she commanded it, and hurried on. "You've always been fortunate, not like other women, who had to be second best, but ALWAYS the cleverest, and ALWAYS the handsomest! I remember, when I heard you were to marry Greg, I was just sick with misery for two or three days! I had seen him a few weeks before in Paris, but he said nothing of it, didn't even mention you. Don't think I was jealous, Rachael--it wasn't that. But it seemed to me that you had everything! First the position of marrying a Breckenridge, then to step straight into Greg's life. You'll never know how I--how I singled you out to watch--"
"Just as I have singled you out this horrible winter," Rachael said to herself, in strange pain and bewilderment at heart. Magsie watched her hopefully, but Rachael did not speak, and the girl went on:
"When I came to America I thought of you, and I listened to what everyone said of you. You had a splendid boy, named for Greg, and then another boy; you were richer and happier and more admired than ever! And Rachael--I know you'll forgive me--you were so much FINER than ever--when I met you I saw that. I couldn't dislike you, I couldn't do anything but admire, with all the others. I remember at Leila's wedding, when you wore dark blue and furs, and you looked so lovely! And then I met Greg again. And truly, truly, Rachael, I never dreamed of this then!"
"Dreamed of what?" Rachael said with dry lips. The girl's voice, the darkening room, the dull, fluttering flames of the dying fire, seemed all like some oppressive dream.
"Dreamed--" Magsie's voice sank. Her eyes closed, she put one hand over her heart, and pressed it there. "Then came my plan to go on the stage," she said, taking up her story, "and one day, when I was especially blue, I met Greg. We had tea together. I've never forgotten one instant of that day! He tried to telephone you, but couldn't get you; we just talked like any friends. But he promised to help me, he was so interested, and I was homesick for Paris, and ready to die in this awful city! After that you gave me a dinner, and then we had theatricals, and then Bowman placed me, and I had to go on the road. But I saw Greg two or three times, and one day--one day last winter"--again her voice faltered, as if she found the memories too poignant for speech--"we drove in the Park," she said dreamily; "and then Greg saw how it was."
Rachael sat silent, stunned.
"Oh, Rachael," the girl said passionately. "Don't think I didn't fight it! I thought of you, I tried to think for us all. I said we would never see each other again, and I went away--you know that! For months after that day in the Park we hardly saw each other. And then, last summer, we met again. And he talked to me so wonderfully, Rachael, about making the best of it, about being good friends anyway--and I've lived on that! But I can't live on that forever, Rachael."
"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, nobody 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. "Nobody has ever blamed YOU for taking it, Rachael!" she said simply. "And nobody 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 God," said Magsie, with quivering lips and brimming eyes, "how happy I would be!"
Rachael looked at her in impassive 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 goddesslike.
"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 space. 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, passive 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 breasts, 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 knob to knob of her bureau drawers, Derry amused himself by dashing a chain of glass beads against the foot of the bed until the links gave and the tiny balls 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!"
Derry, however, howled on unconsoled, and Rachael, stopping, half-dressed, to take him in her arms, mused while she kissed him over the tiny sorrow that could so convulse him. Was she no more than a howling baby robbed of a toy? Nothing could be more real than Derry's sense of loss, no human being could weep more desolately or more unreasonably. Were her love and her life no more than a string of baubles, scattered and flung about by some irresponsible hand? Was nothing real except the great moving sea and the arch of stars above the spring nights? Life and death, and laughter and tears, how unimportant they were! Eight years ago she had felt herself to be unhappy; now she knew that in those days she had known neither sorrow nor joy. Since then, what an ecstasy of fulfilled desire had been hers! She had lived upon the heights, she had tasted the fullest and the sweetest of human emotions. What other woman--Cleopatra, Helen, all the great queens of countries and of art--had known more exquisite delight than hers had been in those first days when she had waited for Warren to come to her with violets?
The morning went on like an ugly dream. At nine o'clock Rachael sent down an untouched breakfast tray. Mary took the boys out into the struggling sunshine. The house was still.
Rachael lay on her wide couch, staring wretchedly into space. Her head ached. The moonfaced clock struck a slow ten, the hall clock downstairs following it with a brisk silver chime. Vendors in the square called their wares; the first carts of potted spring flowers were going their rounds.
Shortly after ten o'clock she heard Warren run upstairs and into his room. She could hear his voice at the telephone; he wanted the hospital--Doctor Gregory wished to speak to Miss Moore.
Miss Moore? Doctor Gregory would be there at eleven ... please have everything ready. Miss Moore, who was a veteran nurse and a privileged character, asked some question as to the Albany case; Warren wearily answered that the patient had not rallied; it was too bad--too bad.
Once it would have been Rachael's delight to soothe him, to give him the strong coffee he needed before eleven o'clock, to ask about the poor Albany man. Now she hardly heard him. Beginning to tremble, she sat up, her heart beating fast.
"Warren!" she called in a shaken voice.
He came to her door immediately, and they faced each other, his perfunctory greeting arrested by her look.
"Warren," said Rachael with a desperate effort at control, "I want you to tell me about--about you and Magsie Clay."
Instantly his face darkened. He gazed back at her steadily, narrowing his eyes.
"What about it?" he asked sharply.
Rachael knew that she was growing angry against her passionate resolution to keep the conversation in her own hands.
"Magsie came to see me yesterday," she said, panting.
Had she touched him? She could not tell. There was no wavering in his impassive face.
"What about it?" he asked again after a silence.
His wife pushed the rich, tumbled hair from her face with a wild gesture, as if she fought for air.
"What about it?" she echoed, in a constrained tone, still with that quickened shallow breath. "Do you think it is CUSTOMARY for a girl to come to a man's wife, and tell her that she cares for him? Do you think it is CUSTOMARY for a man to have tea every day with a young actress who admits she is in love with him--"
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Warren said, his face a dull red.
"Do you mean to tell me that you don't know that Margaret Clay cares for you," Rachael asked in rising anger, "and that you have never told her you care for her--that you and she have never talked about it, have never wished that you were free to belong to each other!"
"You will make yourself ill!" Warren said quietly, watching her.
His tone brought Rachael abruptly to her senses. Fury and accusation were not her best defence. With Warren calm and dignified she would only hurt her claim by this course. In a second she was herself again, her breath grew normal, she straightened her hair, and with a brief shrug walked slowly from the room into her own sitting-room adjoining. Following her, Warren found her looking down at the square from the window.
"If you are implying anything against Magsie, you are merely making yourself ridiculous, Rachael," he said nervously. "Neither Magsie nor I have forgotten your claim for a single instant. If she came here and talked to you, she did so absolutely without my knowledge."
"She said so," Rachael admitted, heart and mind in a whirl.
"From a sense of protection--for her," Warren went on, "I did NOT tell you how much we have come to mean to each other. I am extremely--unwilling--to discuss it now. There is nothing to be said, as far as I am concerned. It is better not to discuss it; we shall not agree. That Magsie could come here and talk to you surprises me. I naturally don't know what she said, or what impression she gave you. I would only remind you that she is young--and unhappy." He glanced at the morning paper he carried in his hand with an air of casual interest, and added in a moderate undertone, "It's an unhappy business!"
Rachael stood as if she had been shot through the heart--motionless, dumb. She felt the inward physical convulsion that might have followed an actual shot. Her heart seemed to be struggling under a choking flood, and black circles moved before her eyes.
Watching her, Warren presently began to enlarge upon the subject. His tone was that of frank and unashamed, if regretful, narrative. Rachael perceived, with utter stupefaction, that although he was sorry, and even angry at being drawn into this talk, he was far from being confused or ashamed.
"I am sorry for this, Rachael," he began in the logical tone she knew so well. "I think, frankly, that Magsie made a mistake in coming to you. The situation isn't of my making. Magsie, being a woman, being impulsive and impatient, has taken the law into her own hands." He shrugged. "She may have been wise, or unwise, I can't tell!"
He paused, but Rachael did not speak or stir.
Warren had rolled up the paper, and now, in his pacing, reaching the end of the room, he turned, and, thrusting it into his armpit, came back with folded arms.
"Now that this thing has come up," he said in a practical tone, "it is a great satisfaction to me to realize how reasonable a woman you are. I want you to know just how this whole thing happened. Magsie has always been a most attractive girl to me. I remember her in Paris, years ago, young, and with a pretty little way of turning her head, and effective eyes."
"I know all this, Warren!" Rachael said wearily.
"I know you do. But let me recapitulate it," he said, resuming in a businesslike voice: "When I met her at Hoyt's wedding I knew right away that we had a personality to deal with--something rare! I remember thinking then that it would be interesting to see whom she cared for, what that volcanic little heart would be in love--Time went on; we saw more of her. I met her, now and then, we had the theatricals, and the California trip. One day, that fall, in the Park, I took her for a drive, innocently enough, nothing prearranged. And I remember asking if any lucky man had made an impression upon her."
Warren smiled, his eyes absent. Rachael's look of superb scorn was wasted.
"It came to me in a flash," he went on, "that Magsie had come to care for me. Poor little Magsie, she hadn't meant to, she hadn't seen it coming. I remember her looking up at me--she didn't have to say a word. 'I'm sorry, Magsie,' I said. That was all. The touching thing was that even in that trouble she turned to me. We talked it over, I took her back to her hotel, and very simply she said, 'Kiss me, once, Greg, and I'll be good!' After that I didn't see her for a long, long time.
"It seemed to me a sacred charge--you can see that. I couldn't doubt it, the evidence was right there before my eyes, and thinking it over, I couldn't be much surprised. We were in the fix, and of course there was nothing to be done. She went away and that was the end of it, then. But when I saw her again last winter the whole miserable business came up. The rest, of course, she told you. She is unhappy and rebellious, or she would never have dared to come to you! I can't understand her doing so, now, for Magsie is a good little sport, Rachael; she knows you have the right of way. The affair has always been with that understanding. However much I feel for Magsie, and regret the whole thing--why, I am not a cad!" He struck her to her heart with his friendly smile. "You brought the subject up; I don't care to discuss it," he said. "I don't question your actions, and all I ask is that you will not question mine!"
"Perhaps--the world--may some day question them, Warren!" Rachael tried to speak quietly, but she was beginning to be frightened at her own violence. She shook with actual chill, her mouth was dry and her cheeks blazing.
"The world?" He shrugged. "I can hardly see that it is the world's business that you go your way and I go mine!" he said reasonably. He glanced at his watch. "Perhaps you will be so good as to say no more about it?" he suggested. "I have no time, now, anyway. Marriage--"
"Warren!" Rachael interrupted hoarsely. She stopped.
"Marriage," he went on, "never stands still! A man and woman are growing nearer together hourly, or they are growing apart. There is no need, between reasonable beings, for recriminations and bitterness. A man is only a man, after all, and if I have been carried off my feet by Magsie--as I admit I have been--why, such things have happened before! When she and my wife--who might have protected my dignity--meet to discuss the question of their feelings, and their rights, then I confess that I am beyond my depth."
He took a deep chair and sat back, his knees crossed, his elbow on the chair arm, his chin resting on his hand, as one conscious of scoring a point.
"And what about the boys' feelings and rights?" Rachael said in a low, tense tone.
"There you are!" Warren exclaimed. "It's all absurd on the face of it--the whole tangle!"
His wife looked at him in grave, dispassionate scrutiny. Of what was he made, this handsome, well-groomed man of forty-eight? What fatal infection had poisoned heart and brain? She saw him this morning as a stranger, and as a most repellent stranger.
"But it is a tangle in which one still sees right and wrong, Warren," she said, desperately struggling for calm. "Human relationships can't be discussed as if they were the moves on a chess-board. I make no claim for myself--the time has gone by when I could do so--but there is honor and decency in the world, there is simple uprightness! Your attentions, as a married man, can only do Magsie harm, and your daring"--suddenly she began restlessly to pace the floor as he had done--"your daring in coming here to me, to tell me that any other woman has a claim on you," she said, beginning to breathe violently, "only shows me how blind, how drugged you are with--I don't know what to call it--with your own utter lawlessness! What right has Margaret Clay compared to MY right? Are my claims, and my sons' claims, to be swept aside because a little idle girl of Magsie's age chooses to flirt with my husband? What is marriage, anyway--what is parenthood? Are you mad, Warren, that you can come here to our home and talk of 'tangles'--and rights? Do you think I am going to argue it with you, going to belittle my own position by admitting, for one second, that it is open to question?"
She flashed him one blazing look, then resumed her walking and her angry rush of words.
"Why, if some four-year-old child came in here and began to contend for Derry's place," Rachael asked passionately, "how long would we seriously consider his right? If I must dispute the title of Magsie Clay this year, why not of Jennie Jones next year, of Polly Smith the year after that? If--"
"Now you are talking recklessly," Warren Gregory said quietly, "and you have entirely lost sight of the point at issue. Nobody is attempting a controversy with you."
The cool, analytical voice robbed Rachael of all her fire. She sat down, and was silent.
"What you say is quite true," pursued Warren, "and of course, if a woman chooses to stand on her RIGHTS--if it becomes a question of legal obligation--"
"Warren! When was our marriage that?"
"I don't say it was that! I am protesting because YOU talk of rights and titles. I only say that if the problem has come down to a mere question of what is LEGAL, why, that in itself is a confession of failure!"
"Failure!" she echoed with white lips.
"I am not speaking of ourselves, I tell you!" he said, annoyed. "But can any sane person in these days deny that when a man and woman no longer pull together in double harness, our world accepts an honorable change?"
Rachael was silent. These had been her words eight years ago.
"They may have reasons for not making that change," Warren went on logically; "they may prefer to go on, as thousands of people do, to present a perfectly smooth exterior to the world. But don't be so unfair as to assume that what hundreds of good and reputable men and women are doing every day is essentially wrong!"
"You know that you may say this--to me, Warren," she said with a leaden heart.
"Anybody may say it to anybody!" he answered irritably. "Tying a man and a woman together doesn't necessarily make them--"
She interrupted with a quick, breathless, "WARREN!"
"Well!" Again he shrugged his shoulders and again glanced at his watch. "It seems to me that you shouldn't have spoken of the matter if you were not prepared to discuss it!" he said.
Rachael felt the room whirling. She could neither see nor feel anything now but the fury that possessed her. Perhaps twice in her life before, never with him, had she so given way to anger.
"_I_ shouldn't have spoken of it, Warren!" she echoed. "I should have borne it, and smiled, and said nothing! Perhaps I should! Perhaps some women would have done that--"
"Rachael!" he interrupted quickly. But she swept down his words in the wild tide of her own.
"Warren!" she said with deadly decision, "I'm not that sort of woman. You've had your fun--now it's my turn! Now it's my turn!" Rachael repeated in a voiceless undertone as she rapidly paced the room. "Now you can turn to the world, and SEE what the world thinks! Let them know how often you and Magsie have been together, let them know that she came here to ask me to set you free, and then see what the general verdict is! I'm not going to hush this up, to refrain from discussing it because you don't care to, because it hurts your feelings! It SHALL be discussed, and you shall be free! You shall be free, and if you choose to put Magsie Clay here in my place, you may do so!"
"Rachael!" he said angrily. And he caught her thin wrists in his hands.
"Don't touch me!" she said, wrenching herself free. "Don't touch me, you cruel and wicked and heartless--! Go to Magsie! Tell her that I sent you to her! Take your hands off me, Warren--"
Standing back, discomfited, he attempted reason.
"Rachael! Don't talk so! I don't know what to make of you! Why, I never saw you like this. I never heard you--"
The door of her room closed behind her. She was gone. A long silence fell in the troubled room where their voices had warred so lately.
Warren looked at his watch, looked at her door. Then he went out the other door, and downstairs, and out of the house. Rachael heard him go. She was still breathing fast, still blind to everything but her own fury. She would punish him, she would punish him. He should have his verdict from the world he trusted so serenely; he should have his Magsie.
The clocks struck eleven: first the slow clock in her sitting-room, then the quick silvery echo from downstairs. Rachael glanced about nervously. The Bank--the boys' lunches--the trunks--
She went downstairs. In the little breakfast-room off the big dining-room the array of Warren's breakfast waited. Old Mary, with the boys, had just come in the side door.
"Mary," Rachael said quickly, "I want you to help me. Pack some clothes for the boys and me, and give them some luncheon. We are going down to Clark's Hills on the two o'clock train--"
"My God! Mrs. Gregory, you look very bad, my dear!" said Mary.
The unconscious endearment, the shock and concern visible on Mary's homely, honest face were too much for Rachael. Her face changed to ivory, she put one hand to her throat, and her lips quivered.
"Help me--some coffee--Mary!" she whispered. "I think--I'm dying!"
BOOK III
Warren went to the hospital and performed his operation. It was a long, hard strain for all concerned, and the nurses told each other afterward that you could see Doctor Gregory's heart was in it, he looked as bad as the child's father and mother did. It was after one o'clock when the surgeons got out of their white gowns, and Warren was in the cold, watery sunlight of the street before he realized that he had had nothing to eat since his dinner in Albany last night.
He looked about vaguely; there were plenty of places all about where he could get a meal. He saw Magsie--
Magsie often drove about in hansom-cabs--they were one of her delights; and more than once of late she had come to meet Warren at some hospital, or even to pick him up at the club. But this was the first time that she had done so without prearrangement.
She leaned out of the cab, a picture of youth and beauty, and waved a white glove. How did she know he was in here? she echoed his question. He had written her from Albany that he would operate at Doctor Berry's hospital this morning she reminded him. And where was he going now?
"I'm awfully worried this morning, honey-girl," said Warren, "and I can't stop to play with nice little Magsies in new blue dresses! My head is blazing, and I believe I'll go home--"
"When did you get in, and where did you have breakfast?" she asked with pretty concern. "Greg, you've not had any? Oh, I believe he hasn't had any! And it's after one, and you've been operating! Get STRAIGHT in--"
"No, dear!" he smiled as she moved to one side of the seat, and packed her thin skirts neatly under her, "not to-day! I'll--"
"Warren Gregory!" said Magsie sternly, "you get right straight in here, and come and have your breakfast! Now, what's nearest? The Biltmore!" She poked the upper door with her slim umbrella. "To the Biltmore!" commanded Magsie.
At a quiet table Warren had coffee and eggs and toast, and more coffee, and finally his cigar. The color came back into his face, and he looked less tired.
Magsie was a rather simple little soul under her casing of Parisian veneer, and was often innocently surprised at the potency of her own charm. That men, big men and wise men, were inclined to take her artful artlessness at its surface value was a continual revelation to her. Like Rachael, she had gone to bed the night before in a profoundly thoughtful frame of mind, a little apprehensive as to Warren's view of her call, and uneasy as to the state in which she had left his wife. But, unlike Rachael, Magsie had not been wakeful long. The consideration of other people's attitudes never troubled her for more than a few consecutive minutes. She had been genuinely stirred by her talk that afternoon, and was honestly determined to become Mrs. Warren Gregory; but these feelings did not prevent her from looking back, with thrilled complacence, to the scene in Rachael's sitting-room, and from remembering that it was a dramatic and heroic thing for a slender, pretty girl in white to go to a man's wife and plead for her love. "No harm done, anyway!" Magsie had reflected drowsily, drifting off to sleep; and she had awakened conscious of no emotion stronger than a mild trepidation at the possibility of Warren's wrath.
Dainty and sweet, she came to meet him halfway, and now sat congratulating herself that he was soothed, fed, and placidly smoking before their conversation reached deep channels.
"Greg, dear, I've got a horrible confession to make!" began Magsie when this propitious moment arrived.
"You mean your call on Rachael?" he asked quickly, the shadow coming back to his eyes. "Why did you do it?"
Magsie was conscious of being frightened.
"Was she surprised, Greg?"
"I don't know that she was surprised. Of course she was angry."
"Well," Magsie said, widening her childish eyes, "didn't you EXPECT her to be angry?"
"I didn't expect her to take any attitude whatever," Warren said with a look half puzzled and half reproving.
"Greg!" Magsie was quite honestly astonished. "What did you expect her to do? Give you a divorce without any feeling whatever?"
There was no misunderstanding her. For a full minute Warren stared at her in silence. In that minute he remembered some of his recent talks with Magsie, some of his notes and presents, he remembered the plan that involved a desert island, sea-bathing, moonlight, and solitude.
"I think, if you had been listening to us," Magsie went on, as he did not answer, "you could not have objected to one word I said! And Rachael was lovely, Greg. She told me she would not contest it--"
"She told you THAT?"
"Well, she said several times that it must be as you decide." Magsie dimpled demurely. "And I was--nice, too!" she asserted youthfully. "I didn't tell her about this--and this!" and with one movement of her pretty hand Magsie indicated the big emerald on her ring finger and the heavy bracelet of mesh gold about her wrist. Suddenly her face brightened, and with an eager movement she leaned across the narrow table, and caught his hand in both her own. "Ah, Greg," she said tenderly, "does it seem true, that after all these months of talking, and hoping, you and I are going to belong to each other?"
"But I have no idea that Rachael is seriously considering a divorce," Warren said slowly. "Why should she? She has no cause!"
"She thinks she has!" Magsie said triumphantly.
"She isn't the sort of woman to think things without reason," Warren said.
"She doesn't have to think," Magsie assured him with the same air of satisfaction; "she knows! Everyone knows how much you and I have been together: everyone knows that you backed 'The Bad Little Lady'--"
"Everyone has no right to draw conclusions from that!" Warren said.
Magsie shrugged her shoulders.
"And what do we care, Greg? I don't care what the world thinks as long as I have you! Let them have the letters, let them buzz--we'll be miles away, and we won't care! And in a year or two, Greg, we'll come back, and they'll all flock about us--you'll see! That's the advantage of a name like the Gregory name! Why, who among them all dropped Clarence on Paula's account, or Rachael on Clarence's?"
"Your going to see her has certainly--complicated things," Warren said reflectively.
"On the contrary," Magsie said confidently, "it has cleared things up. It had to come, Greg; every time you and I talked about it we brought the inevitable nearer! Why, you weren't ever at home. Could that have gone on forever? You had no home, no wife, no freedom. I was simply getting sick of the whole thing! Now at least we're all open and aboveboard; all we've got to do is quietly set the wheels in motion!"
"Well, I'll tell you what must be the first step, Magsie," Warren said after thought; "I'm going home now to see Rachael. I'll talk the whole thing over with her. Then I'll come to see you."
"Positively?" asked Magsie.
"Positively."
"You won't just telephone that you're delayed, Greg, and leave me to wonder and worry?" the girl asked wistfully. "I'll wait until any hour!" He looked at her kindly, with a gentleness of aspect new in their relationship.
"No, dear. It's nearly three now. I'll come take you to tea at, say, half-past four. I am operating again to-night, at nine, and SOME TIME I've got to get in a bath and some sleep. But there'll be time for tea."
Magsie chattered gayly, but Warren was almost silent as they gathered together their belongings, and went out to the street. He called her another cab and beckoned to the man who was waiting with his own car.
"In a few months, perhaps," said Magsie at parting, "when he's all tired and cross, I'll make him coffee AT HOME, and see that he gets his rest and quiet whenever he needs it!"
She did not like his answer.
"Rachael's a wonder at that sort of thing," he said. Magsie had not heard him speak so of his wife for months. "In fact, she spoils me," he added.
"Spoils you by leaving you alone in this hot town for six months out of every year?" Magsie laughed lightly. "Good-bye, dear! At half-past four?"
But even while he nodded Warren Gregory was resolving, in his soul, that he must never see Magsie Clay again. His world was strange and alarming; was falling to pieces about him. He was thirsting for Rachael: her voice, her reproaches, her forgiveness. In seven minutes he would be at home talking to his wife--
Dennison reported, with an impassive face, that Mrs. Gregory had left two hours ago with the children. He believed that they were gone to the Long Island house, sir. Warren, stupefied, went slowly upstairs to have the news confirmed by Pauline. Mrs. Gregory had taken Mary and Millie, sir. And there was a note.
Of course there was a note. To emotion like Rachael's emotion silence was the only unthinkable thing. She had planned a dozen notes, written perhaps five. The one she left was brief:
MY DEAR WARREN: I am leaving with the children for Clark's Hills. You will know best what steps to take in the matter of the freedom you desire. I will cooperate in any way. I have written Magsie that I will not contest your divorce. If for any reason you come to Clark's Hills, I will of course be obliged to see you. I ask you not to come. Please spare me another such talk as ours this morning. I have plenty of money.
Always faithfully, R. G.
Warren read it, and stood in the middle of her bedroom with the sheet crushed in his hand. Pauline had put the empty room in order--in terrible and desolate order. Usually there were flowers in the jars and glass bowls, a doll's chair by the bed, and a woolly animal seated in the chair; a dainty litter of lace scattered on Rachael's sewing-table. Usually she was there when he came in tired, to look up beautiful and concerned: "Something to eat, dear, or are you going to lie down?"
Standing here with the note that ended it all in his hand, he wondered if he was the same man who had so often met that inquiry with an impatient: "Just please don't bother me, dear!" Who had met the succeeding question with, "I don't know whether I shall dine here or not!"
It was half-past three. In an hour he would see Magsie.
In that hour Magsie had received Rachael's note, and her heart sang. For the first time, in what she would have described as this "funny, mixed-up business," she began seriously to contemplate her elevation to the dignity of Warren Gregory's wife. Rachael's note was capable of only one interpretation: she would no longer stand in their way. She was taking the boys to the country, and had given Warren the definite assurance of her agreement to his divorce. If necessary, on condition that her claim to the children was granted, she would establish her residence in some Western city, and proceed with the legal steps from there.
Magsie was frightened, excited, and thrilled all at once. She felt as if she had set some enormous machinery in motion, and was not quite sure of how it might be controlled. But on the whole, complacency underlay all other emotions. She was going to be married to the richest and nicest and most important man of her acquaintance!
At heart, however, her manner belied her; Magsie had little self-confidence. She lived in a French girl's terror that youth would leave her before she had time to make a good match. If nobody knew better than Magsie that she was pretty, also nobody knew better that she was not clever. Men tired of her dimples and giggles and round eyes. Bryan Masters admired her, to be sure, but then Bryan Masters was also a divorced man, and an actor whose popularity was already on the wane. Richie Gardiner admired her in his pathetic, hopeless way, and Richie was young and rich. But Magsie shuddered away from Richie's coughing and fainting; his tonics and his diet had no place in her robust and joyous scheme of life. Besides, all Magsie's world would envy her capture of Greg; he belonged to New York. And Richie's father had been a miner, and his mother was "impossible!"
Magsie dressed exquisitely for the tea; it seemed to her that she had never been so pleasantly excited in her life. She felt a part of the humming, crowded city, the spring wind and the uncertain sky. Life was thrilling and surprising.
Half-past four o'clock came, and Warren came. They were in Magsie's little apartment now, and she could go into his arms. Warren was rather quiet as they went out to tea, but Magsie did not notice it.
As a matter of fact, the man was bewildered; he was tired and worried about his work; but that was the least of it. He could not believe that the day's dazing and flying memories were real--the Albany train, Rachael's room, the hospital, Magsie and the Biltmore breakfast-room, Rachael's room again, and now again Magsie.
Were the lawsuits about which one read in the papers based on no more than this? Apparently not. Magsie seemed perfectly confident of the outcome; Rachael had not shown any doubt. One woman had practically presented him to the other; the law was to be consulted.
The law? How would those letters of Magsie's read if the law got hold of them? His memory flew from note to note. These hastily scratched words would be flung to the wind of gossip, that wind that blew so merrily among the houses where he was known. He had called Magsie his "wonder-child" and his "good little bad girl!" He had given her rings and sashes and a gold purse and a hat and white fox furs--any one gift he had made her was innocent enough in itself! But taken with all the others--
Magsie was in high feather; some tiresome preliminaries, and the day was won! She had not planned so definite a campaign, but it was all coming about in a fashion that more than fulfilled her plans. So, said Magsie to herself, stirring her tea, that was to be her fate: Paris, America, the stage, and then a rich marriage? Well, so be it. She could not complain.
"Greg," she said a dozen times, "isn't it all like a dream?"
To Warren Gregory, as he walked down the street after leaving her at the theatre, it was indeed like a dream, a frightful dream. He could hardly credit his senses, hardly believe that all these horrible things were true, that Rachael knew all about Magsie, and that Magsie was quietly thinking of divorce and marriage! Rachael, in such a rage, rushing away with the boys--why, he had made no secret of his admiration for Magsie from Rachael, he had often talked to her enthusiastically of Magsie! And here she was furiously offering him his freedom.
Well, what had he done after all? What a preposterous fuss about nothing. His thoughts were checked and chilled by the memory of letters that Magsie had. Magsie could prove nothing by those letters--
But what a fool they would make him! Warren Gregory remembered the case of a dignified college professor whose private correspondence had recently been given to the press, and he felt a cool shudder run down his spine. Rachael, reading those letters! It was unthinkable! She and the world would think him a fool! It came to him suddenly that she and the world would be right. He was a fool, and it was a fool's paradise in which he had been wandering: to take his wife and home and sons for granted, and to spend all his leisure at the feet of a calculating little girl like Magsie!
"What did you expect her to do?" Magsie had asked. What would any sane man expect her to do? Smile with him at the new favorite's charms, and take up her life in loneliness and neglect?
And now, Rachael was gone, and he stood promised to Magsie. So much was clear. Rachael would fight for her divorce. Magsie would fight for her husband.
"Oh, my God, how did we ever get into this sickening, sickening mess?" Warren said out loud in his misery.
He had not dined, he did not think of dinner as he paced the windy, cool city streets hour after hour. Nine struck, and he hailed a cab, and went to the hospital, moving through his work like a man in a dream. The woman whose life he chanced to save throughout all her days would say she had had a lovely doctor. Warren hardly saw her. He thought only of Magsie, Magsie who had in her possession a number of compromising letters, every one sillier than the last--Magsie, who expected him to divorce his wife and marry her. He was in such a state of terror that he could not think. Every instant brought more disquiet to his thoughts; he felt as if, when he stepped out into the street again, the newsboys might be calling his divorce, as if honor and safety and happiness were gone forever.
He did not see Magsie again that night, but walked and walked, entering his house sick and haggard, and sleeping the hours restlessly away.
At nine o'clock the next morning he went to the telephone, and called the Valentine house. Doctor Valentine was not at home, he was informed. Was Mrs. Valentine there? Would she speak to Doctor Gregory?
A long pause. Then the maid's pleasant impersonal voice again. Mrs. Valentine begged Doctor Gregory to excuse her.
Warren felt as if he had been struck in the face. Under the eyes of irreproachable and voiceless servants he moved about his silent house. The hush of death seemed to him to lie heavy in the lovely rooms that had been Rachael's delight, and over the city that was just breaking into the green of spring. He dressed, and left directions with unusual sternness; he would be at the hospital, or the club, if he was wanted. He would come home to dinner at seven.
"Mrs. Gregory may be back in a day or so, Pauline," he said. "I wish you'd keep her rooms in order--flowers, and all that."
"Yes, sir," Pauline said respectfully. "Excuse me, Doctor--" she added.
"Well?" said Warren as she paused.
"Excuse me, Doctor, but I telephoned Mrs. Prince yesterday, as Mrs. Gregory suggested," Pauline went on timidly, "and she would be glad to have me come at any time, sir."
Warren's expression did not change.
"You mean that Mrs. Gregory dismissed you?" he suggested.
"Yes, sir!" said Pauline with a sniff. "She paid me for--"
"Then I should make an arrangement with Mrs. Prince, by all means!" Warren said evenly. But a deathlike terror convulsed his heart. Rachael had burned her bridges!
He sent Magsie a note and flowers. He was "troubled by unexpected developments," he said, and too busy to see her to-day, but he would see her to-morrow.