IX
WhenCharter left Rachel so abruptly, he did not return to the city but, turning his face toward the country, walked steadily away from the habitations of men. His mood was one that sought solitude as a spiritual necessity, for, at the very moment when the journey's end seemed to have been achieved and the lovely presence of Rachel—no longer a vision of his fevered fancy—was actually assured, his universe had crumbled about his ears.
The fact that no intimation of an engagement to Belhaven had ever reached him made the blow more astonishing; it seemed incredible that she could have been married without his knowledge, that an event of such vital importance to him could have occurred without a warning or even a premonition. He recalled his foolish expressions of feeling, his interrupted declaration, with a kind of shamed anger. He must have appeared like an idiot, coming back after his long silence to make love to a woman who had had time, in the interval, to get married to another man. Yet not even his first resentment against her for permitting him to go so far unwarned, was of long duration; his mind was too occupied with the astonishing fact of her marriage. The shock had been so great that his senses were benumbed, and he was able to go across country, picking a path through the woods, without an idea of where he was going.
The cool, green shade of the place, with the pungent scent of the pines and hemlocks, the delicate growth and glossy green leaves of the young gum trees, with here and there the tall frond of a hardy fern, gave him a feeling of familiarity without suggesting the painful necessity of reconciling himself to the change in all his most cherished remembrances. His mind staggered back from the consideration of his loss and he tried to recall the slow process of reasoning that had made him delay the letter to Rachel. The fact that he had not the pen of a ready writer did not furnish a sufficient excuse for delaying a matter so vital, and he remembered, in a bewildered way, his fruitless efforts to put his thoughts on paper. But intimately associated with these efforts was the sputter of Mauser bullets and the musical bugle of the trumpeter sounding the charge. He seemed to see the malarious mist rising from the rice paddies and thenipahuts of the Filipinos, while he recalled, with an even more vague recollection of the pains and the weariness, those hours that he had worked with the camp surgeon and sat beside the victims of cholera. He remembered, too, the face of the Filipino woman when he snatched her baby from the burning ruins of the village that the fleeing insurgents had fired, and he seemed to feel the clinging hands of the poor boy from Maryland when he had been mad with delirium and cried for his mother. The very fulness of those months in the tropics, the routine of marching and attacking the earthworks of the rebels, when those big straw hats had bobbed up and down until the awful charge with fixed bayonets drove them out of their trenches like ants out of a demolished hill in a flower-bed, returned to him.
It was incredible to think that, at the very moment when such vital things as this had occupied him, life on this side of the globe had continued to flow on in its usual conventional course, and that Belhaven had found opportunity to supplant him in Rachel's heart. At this thought an unreasoning rage against Belhaven made him walk faster and faster along the path; once or twice he had to stop to break his way through the brush or to tear aside the wild tangle of a vine, and it gave him almost a sensation of joy to tear and to break. He would have liked to crush Belhaven, to take him up bodily and fling him out of the way. He tried to recall his recollections of the man, but he had never liked him, and now, at the crucial moment, he could not summon up a vision of him, as Saul conjured the figure of Samuel out of the pit. Of one thing, however, he was reasonably sure, and that was that Belhaven did not belong to the class that he recognized as one that was made up of men of honor. With a very exalted conception of those qualifications that constitute "an officer and a gentleman," Charter had a peculiar scorn for the men who did not belong to that type, and nothing was more intolerable than the fact of Rachel's marriage to a creature that he would have been likely to call, had he been asked to qualify him, "that fellow Belhaven!" The fact that women rarely understand those qualities in men that are most obvious to their own sex did not alleviate Charter's anger and disgust. Rachel married to Belhaven was an object to move the gods to pity.
It was at this point in his confused misery that he recalled her anguish; after all, it might not have been altogether pity for him. He reddened at that thought, but, perhaps, she was already aware of her mistake, already plunged into the misery that now apparently was the common result of marriage and made divorce appear as a boon to those unfortunates who desire another opportunity, like the man in the nursery rhyme who jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes, only to jump into another bush and scratch them in again. Yet the thought that she was unhappy did not alleviate his misery or offer any solution of her extraordinary marriage, for her unhappiness must be independent of him since she had not considered him of sufficient importance to influence her decision. If she was disappointed in her choice it must be because she had suffered the common awakening after the event, rather than that she was grieved by any recollection of his affection, or regret that she had not awaited his return. The fact that her outbreak of grief was synchronous with his declaration was not significant in the light of previous events, for she must have seen that he loved her. With such marvelous obtuseness as this Charter failed to realize that his silence in the Philippines would have convinced almost any woman of his utter indifference, and that Rachel had had every right to argue that he wanted her to forget him.
Instead he reviewed the whole course of their acquaintance and failed to find any spot where he had not given evidence of her importance in his life, and he could not imagine why it was necessary to put into formal words a fact so vital and so obvious. He had lost her; that was all there was to be said, and he must take his medicine like a man, and the best thing to do was to get out of it and forget it.
These reflections had brought him to the edge of a stream and, as he recovered his mental poise, he was surprised to find that it was a part of Rock Creek and that he had, therefore, wandered many miles out of his way. He stood still for a moment, allowing his eyes to follow the lovely rivulet with a crowding recollection of its beauties that had first appealed to his childish eyes, then to his boyish fancy, and now gave him almost a sensation of comfort. It happened to be one of those charming spots where the creek, so often tranquil and limpid, was hurrying over stones and sending up little clouds of spray as the miniature waves dashed through the narrow gorge between the rocks, where the graceful boughs of a weeping birch drooped far down over it and dropped their leaves into the stream. The gentle murmur of the swift flowing current, the soft rustle of the abundant foliage overhead, and the sweet, shrill cry of a catbird, were the only sounds he heard. There was something uplifting in the solitude, in the natural beauty of the scene, and, for the first time since the shock of Rachel's announcement, Charter recalled himself to a more normal mood.
This was still with him, clothing familiar objects with the grim outlines of reality, when an hour later he rode into the city on the trolley and made his way at last to the Van Citters' house on Dupont Circle, where he had been invited to make his home during his stay in Washington. It was now late afternoon, or rather early evening; the familiar drawing-room was cool and dim and he found Pamela yawning over the latest novel.
She greeted him with a fusilade of reproaches; where had he been, what had he been doing? They had been expecting him for hours; Paul had gone out a second time to inquire at the War Department; a dozen people had been to see him and gone away disappointed. Charter found it difficult to answer the questions, and even more difficult to keep hissang-froidunder his cousin's searching gaze, for Pamela had detected his heightened color and gave him swift, birdlike glances that were plainly suspicious.
"You must remember that I had a number of things to see to," he parried, "besides, I went to the White House."
"Don't tell me that took all day—unless you unearthed a Filipino conspiracy."
"Come, Pamela, give me a cup of tea; I know I've been ungrateful not to report sooner, for it's awfully good of you and Paul to ask me here, but I'll try to make the most of your hospitality the few days that I'm likely to be in the city."
She gazed at him over the teacup, the sugar tongs suspended in mid-air. "You don't mean to say that you're ordered off again?"
He shook his head, smiling faintly at her amazed attitude. "No, but you mustn't expect me to spend my time loafing around Washington; you know I was never intended for a carpet-knight."
"I wonder if you know that there was a report that you were engaged to Mrs. Prynne?"
His blank amazement amply repaid her for this random shot. "What nonsense! She must have been immensely annoyed."
Pamela smiled. "She wasn't. You haven't an idea, I suppose, that you're something of a lion—with your Philippine record and the medal they talk of giving you for bravery."
"Oh, rot!"
"How eloquent! It got all about, the report, I mean. Eva Astry asked about it the day Rachel's engagement to Belhaven was announced."
"I didn't know until to-day that—that Miss Leven was married." Charter flattered himself that his tone was casual and he busied himself with Pamela's sugar-bowl.
She eyed him shrewdly. "It was almost as sudden as a stroke of apoplexy," she remarked, sipping her tea.
"What?"
"Rachel's marriage; what else did you suppose?"
"I don't see why it should have been sudden. I seem to remember that Mrs. Astry's was—"
"A sort of nine days' wonder? Yes, but Rachel's was more amazing in a different way."
He considered several dominoes of sugar and selected a small half. "In what way?" he risked, aware that his cousin was more than a match for him in the conversational arena.
"Her engagement was announced on Monday and she was married on Thursday."
"That doesn't show that the engagement had only existed since Monday."
"But it does show just that. Up to Monday Belhaven had been making violent love to Eva Astry; everybody knew it."
Charter's face flushed darkly. "I hope you don't repeat any such malicious gossip as that, Pamela!"
"It isn't gossip; ask Paul. We were out there for a week-end; so was Massena, the Italian Chargé d'Affaires, and he was perfectly amazed. Belhaven was simply devoted to Eva, and then to our surprise Astry announced his engagement to Rachel."
"All this only goes to show that he needed a thrashing."
"Belhaven isn't the sort to get it. You know he's rather charming, but I'm quite sure that Rachel never cared for him."
"I can see no other reason for her accepting him."
"Nor I, yet I've heard things—" Pamela stopped; after all Charter was the last one to hear all this gossip; he would loathe it.
But he pressed the point. "What things?"
"Well, for one thing, they say Astry made the match to get him out of Eva's way."
"I should say it was putting him in it; it would have been easier to horsewhip him and be done with it."
Pamela sighed. "Your methods are so cryptic. I don't understand the thing anyway, but—" she weighed her words—"I know Rachel's wretched."
He rose and walked up and down the room; she was giving form and shape to the impression that had been growing in his own slower mind as he recalled Rachel's evident distress.
Pamela made matters worse, for looking up at his tall figure as it approached her and seeing the trouble in his face, she gave way to her feelings.
"Oh, John, I wish you'd been here!"
He halted, amazed. "Why?"
"Because—because I always thought Rachel liked you, and you might have prevented it somehow! I felt that she was—well, just sacrificed for Eva."
"I can't imagine why she should have been," he said hoarsely. "Good God, Pamela, don't make it any worse!"
Pamela, who had been using a plummet-line to sound the depths, was filled with awe at her discovery.
"I don't believe she ever cared a rap for Belhaven!" she climaxed.
"I don't see that that makes it any better."
"It doesn't make it any worse, and—"
"Perhaps not." Charter's face was very white. "Pamela, suppose we talk of something else!"