VI
Sometime before his marriage Belhaven had leased an old house not far from Astry's, but nearer the Tennallytown Road. It had once been a tavern, but for fifteen years had been disused, and was part of an estate that belonged to Paul Van Citters' aunt. The old lady had turned it over to Paul to manage for her, and in one of his idle moments he had conceived the idea of refitting it and, perhaps, turning it into a club-house. He had employed an expensive architect and more expensive decorators, and the end had been an alarming hole in the aunt's pocketbook. After the first accounts came in, she closed down upon her nephew's artistic departure, and the old house had remained partly done over and, therefore, of two styles of architecture. The porch, with its Colonial pillars, the long, low wing that Paul had intended for a tea-room, and the terraced lawns, were only half done, but the roof had been reshingled with mossy green, the walls had been harmoniously decorated, and hardwood floors put down instead of wide, rough planks with pieces of zinc nailed over the rat-holes, which had served for a hundred years before. Paul's architect had ripped out the narrow staircase and widened the hall by throwing a small room into it; he had built a flight of wide and handsome stairs ascending to a landing under an oriel window; he had taken advantage of an ingle-nook and thrown out a second wing from the original house, and had foreshadowed even greater changes, when the aunt's pocketbook closed with a snap.
Belhaven had leased the place and furnished it simply, intending to entertain his friends with various fêtes, over which the beautiful Mrs. Astry was to preside, accompanied, of course, by an admiring and docile husband. Unhappily Belhaven and Eva had reckoned without Astry.
It was to this quaint old house that Belhaven took Rachel. There seemed to be nothing else to do. Neither of them had framed, even dimly, that existence which must follow the marriage in Astry's library, and it came to them with a shock when Astry pleasantly suggested a wedding trip.
It was afternoon when they were left alone together in the quaint old room that had been the tavern tap-room. Belhaven had furnished it with admirable and simple taste and, as the sun shone through the many-paned windows and lit up the warm tints of rugs and hangings, touching the gold frame of an old-fashioned mirror over the still more old-fashioned mantel, Rachel was struck with its charms. She walked over to the fireplace and, opening the little cupboard set at one side of the chimney, revealed two deep shelves; above the mirror was another little door and two more shelves. She opened both.
"What delightful corners," she said dreamily. "Do you suppose the old fellow kept his rum here and his accounts there, and mixed them at bedtime?"
"Possibly before bedtime," replied Belhaven, with an effort. He had been trying to swallow a cup of tea that Rachel had poured for him.
The servants had prepared a little tea-table and decorated it with an appropriate bouquet of white roses and lilies-of-the-valley. It had loomed up embarrassingly gigantic when they entered, out of all proportion to its actual size, but Rachel had very simply made the tea before she rose to look at the mantel. Belhaven could not quite imitate her; her fortitude and her forbearance were so impressive that he found himself watching her with a curiously complex feeling. She was not beautiful, as he conceived beauty, but she was wonderfully reassuring and restful, and her tranquil manner, her self-controlled expression, the clear gray of her eyes, all seemed to convey a message. As yet Belhaven did not fully grasp it; he did not know women like this, but dimly, like a blind man, his soul was groping forward to meet hers. Hitherto he had had a very good opinion of himself, he had not been too severe on his own backsliding, but the last few days had convinced him that there was a reckoning, even for him. If it had been hard for Rachel, it had been equally hard for him; he had faced the terrible prospect of being called a coward, and he had been unable to save himself without injury to a woman. The situation had been gall and wormwood and, thinking of it, he watched Rachel as she moved about the room inspecting it.
"I like your house," she said frankly.
"It is also yours," he replied abruptly, and then hated himself for saying it.
A faint color rose to her pale cheeks. "Thank you," she said gravely, "you're very courteous."
There was another silence. The warm sunlight, creeping across the floor, had climbed from the hem of Rachel's dress to the belt, where she had fastened a bunch of violets that one of the old servants had brought her, her only wedding bouquet. Her long-fingered, slender hand hung at her side and Belhaven saw the ring he had just placed on it with almost a start of surprise. She was his wife, incredible circumstance!
"I want to speak to you," he said, with an effort; "shall I call you—Rachel?"
She smiled. "I think so; we needn't pretend about conventionalities; if it's simpler to call me Rachel, pray do so. I can't quite make up my mind to what I shall call you yet. Probably for a time it will be something as cryptic as 'um.'"
"I wish I had your fortitude," said Belhaven fervently.
"Better not; when we have it, we're called upon to exercise it, we're used as buffers by our weaker neighbors. Personally I've often regretted that I wasn't as irresponsible as Sidney Billop. I know of no one more care-free and sweetly untroubled; Sidney's a veritable lily of the field."
Belhaven moved the smaller impedimenta of the tea-table about with restless fingers and frowned abstractedly as he viewed the teapot. "Astry says we ought to go off for a wedding journey; he's trying to drive us both to the last ditch, I suppose, to make you confess that you took me to shield—your sister."
"I think we'll cut out the wedding journey; Johnstone's very much like an Iroquois medicine-man; he wants to fire the splinters after driving them into the flesh."
"There are the conventionalities; people will talk; in fact, people are talking."
"I wish you'd remembered the conventionalities before," replied Rachel, with her first flash of indignation.
"I admit the justice of your reproach; it's quite in your power to dictate terms to me; I've admitted myself to be in the wrong."
Her face flushed. "I hate reproaches, I always try to avoid them, but—I'm very human!"
Belhaven still concerned himself with the tea things; he lifted the lid of the teapot mechanically and replaced it. "My suggestion was on your account," he said reluctantly; "it's to your interest, as well as mine, to concede something to appearances. If our real position is known, even to our friends, we'll become the target of curiosity and gossip, and the situation will soon be unendurable. Sympathy is a compound of curiosity and slander; let us avoid it."
Rachel regarded him attentively. "Do you mean that you're afraid that I'll seek sympathy? Confide my troubles to my intimates and so reveal our—our affairs?"
"Good Lord, no! I can't imagine you confiding in—in Mrs. Billop."
"I might possibly find some one beside Mrs. Billop but I don't propose to seek a confidante."
"I really meant that we must hedge ourselves in from curiosity, make some concessions to conventionality. I began by suggesting a wedding trip—"
"To Niagara?" interposed Rachel ironically.
In spite of himself he smiled. "Florida," he substituted.
"In June? Why not do a hundred inane things? I'm sorry I'm not conventional. You'll find that I crop up unexpectedly; I shall make you uncomfortable, no doubt. But, at least, I'll avoid anything outlandish. It's bad enough to be embarked together upon an enterprise of deception; let us save some shreds of truth. It's impossible to be always false; I won't pretend on a wedding journey, I won't play a part for public entertainment! I'll do my best and—" she paused, a slight, painful flush mounting in her pale cheeks again and deepening the charm of her face, "I shall always remember that I bear your name. You gave it against your will, but I accept it as a trust, and you may rest assured that I shall guard it as my own."
"I've never doubted that for a moment," he said hastily, "and believe me, I want to—I will—do the best I can to make it easy for you."
Rachel was on her way to the door; she had felt an irresistible desire to break off the interview. Her brain was reeling, she had not known an hour's rest, an hour to cry out to God for mercy. She stopped now, arrested by something she saw in his face, and held out her hand. Was he not her fellow sufferer? Was he not also shackled? Like two galley slaves their hands had been locked together.
"I'm sorry for you," she said sweetly; "you did wrong, you've injured my sister, deeply pained her,—poor, foolish child! But let no one say that you haven't suffered, that you're not punished. To have to marry me was hard indeed. We must make the best of it, fellow sufferer; let us forego reproaches!"
Belhaven pressed her cold fingers in silence and she went out; he saw her cross the hall and slowly ascend the staircase. She walked like one who dragged a weight; all the elasticity of her graceful figure seemed gone, and he realized at last that she had made a terrible sacrifice. Before this revelation, Belhaven's mind stopped short; he had been devoutly occupied in contemplating his own misery until, like the frog that looked at the cow, he had tried to distend his own importance to match its endless inflations. He had regarded himself from every standpoint but Rachel's; he was now suddenly to behold himself from hers. To her he apparently had no compensations, he was the climax of her misery, the last straw. Then he remembered her sympathy for him. It was quite genuine; she pitied him because he was married to her. Belhaven smiled bitterly to himself. She was a fine woman, an unusual woman, but she clearly meant it; he wondered how many women ever considered it a punishment to be married to them? Certainly not Eva.
Then he recalled how quickly Eva decided to sacrifice him to escape disgrace, how suddenly she had awakened to public opinion. Her vows and caresses one day, her tears and reproaches the next, and then her abrupt desertion. Her willingness to sacrifice Rachel, her falsehood about Rachel—he had only heard an expurgated edition of it from Eva herself—had been so many shocks to him; the whole thing was incredible. He found it necessary to take to pieces his conception of Eva and put it together again in a different combination, for, if he was her fellow sinner, he certainly was not her fellow sufferer; she had escaped. In some mysterious way she always evaded the consequences of her own acts; she slipped them off on to other people's shoulders, whitewashed them, and, at last, frankly disowned them. Belhaven, suffering the first shock of disillusionment, wondered if she ever really loved any one but herself? Since a week he had traveled past the first milestone on the road that Astry had traveled before him; since two days he was well on the second lap. How much more to the end? Sometimes it is a short, dusty, abrupt road and sometimes it is long and tortuous, and it broils in the sunshine of desert places, but it leads to one end. Having entered it, no one has ever turned back, no one will ever turn back. Surely, in Paradise there must be a place for the disillusioned, for the way blisters the feet.
Let no one suppose that because a man sins he cannot suffer. Belhaven knew better; he was feverish, the very air of the room suffocated him. Was it the heavy perfume of those foolish, white flowers? He stretched out his hand to pitch them out, but abruptly withdrew it as if something had stung him. Something had; he remembered appearances! Henceforth he was to spend three-fourths of the day remembering them; they hung about his neck like a millstone. He laughed bitterly, as he realized that Eva had sold him into slavery; she ought to have dipped his coat in the blood of a kid and handed him to Astry. She had done for him, disposed of him! Then he remembered Rachel and was overcome with shame, for, like a poltroon, he had hidden himself behind a woman and she was greater than he. It will be seen that Belhaven was rapidly approaching the third milestone—but then it is always a question of how many milestones there will be. The length of the way is only great enough to accomplish its purpose, but, sometimes, it has to be very great indeed; however, that is only in obstinate cases; violent ones run abruptly down the hill and cast themselves into the sea, like the Gadarene swine.
It does not matter so long as the end is accomplished, and it always is.