XIII
Allthis while Charter had been away. He had left Washington almost immediately and was taking his leave out of the sphere of its influence; he even dreaded the possibility of a summons to report at the War Department. Not that he was afraid to meet the problem and grapple with it, but he was determined to conquer it, and Rachel's very presence, under the altered conditions, had been too distracting a pain. If he was ever to see his way through it, he must see it without her. She had removed herself from his life and he had lived so long near the thought of her that her absence seemed to take the magic part of life away, to leave him a bare skeleton of meaningless days.
At first it was indeed impossible to believe in their final separation; there seemed to exist some indestructible tie between them, spiritual and therefore immortal, born of their community of soul, their absolute sympathy, their old happy comradeship. He could not quite believe that Rachel did not belong to him, that, instead, she belonged to Belhaven, and it was the necessity of recognizing that which forced him to the overt act of flight. He must feel that he was mistaken, that no infrangible bond existed between their spirits, that he was free as Rachel had shown that she felt herself to be free. He could not have explained this feeling, his folly as he called it, to himself, but he tried to urge on the process of dissolution, to slip out of the shackles, and the fact that he knew intuitively that Rachel was unhappy had not made the process of forgetting easier. To stand outside of her life, put out of it by her own act, and to witness her misery was like pouring gall into his wound; even his magnificent courage blenched before it.
For a nature like his absence does very little; life regained its normal aspect, but individually he felt lopsided. Rachel's disappearance from her place in his plans and his hopes left them toppling over, only half complete, and he was continually groping about for a solution of his problem, a way to regain the old, equable poise. He even wanted to go back to the Philippines, a desire which made his brother officers smile sardonically. They thought that John had always been a fool, and now he had apparently become besottedly fond of living in a hole with the sole object of relieving the troubles of a few common soldiers and helping the Filipinos.
The common soldiers and the Filipinos were fervent in their desire to have John back but he did not get there. In fact he found himself suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, appreciated. The War Department was not disposed to let him hide his light under a bushel. For some unheard of reason they began to realize his value. He did not get his orders to the Philippine Islands, but he got a medal from Congress for his distinguished courage at Caloocan, a matter that seemed to have been just remembered. If he had been willing, young Captain Charter would have been quite a hero; as it was, he had to spend most of his time, while visiting his aunt at Newport, dodging social lion-tamers, and he began to dread the sight of a motor filled with ladies in fashionable attire making its way to the front door. If he had the habit of command he had not the attendant love of publicity, and he hated to move continually before the public eye, garbed, as it were, in the pomp and panoply of war. He went on obscure fishing trips with old seafaring characters; he went tramping in the woods and fields; but he could not escape the incense of popular admiration as a hero, nor the disturbing ripple of Pamela's letters. For Pamela kept him informed; from her he heard that Eva had broken down in the heat of August and the Astrys had consequently taken a flying trip to Europe. About Rachel his fair correspondent was more discreet, but she let drop a hint now and then, and he knew when, at the approach of fall, the Belhavens went away together for a brief visit in Boston, Aunt Drusilla Leven having returned from her exile to her little house in Cambridge, where she was likely, so Pamela wrote, to have to live on salt cod and kippered herring until the first of January, when her dividends would have at last arrived. "You know," Pamela added, "that college towns are fearfully expensive and even top round is out of sight up there!"
The knowledge that the Belhavens were probably still absent was a more material comfort to Charter when, in December, he got the dreaded order to report in Washington for staff duty at the White House. At the same time Paul Van Citters wrote to invite him to spend Christmas with them, and casually mentioned that the Belhavens had been away since Thanksgiving, though the Astrys were home again. Pamela had carefully instructed her husband in this portion of his letter and it had the desired effect. John was lonely, he dreaded Christmas, and he had no objections to going to the Van Citterses, as long as he had to be in Washington by the first of the year. Paul talked of going south for a shooting trip; John did not care a pin about it, but he did not want to shoot himself and sometimes he felt dangerously like it. For there are strenuous moments when even the most rational human being lets go of the normal facts of life and feels those destructive forces at work within himself, tearing away his resolutions, letting slip the material bonds that make existence possible, turning back the wheels of life, loosening the noose that holds the body and the will together. John was tired of the struggle; he had put Rachel out of his life, but, as yet, he had not replaced her. To escape the bonds of such a passion it is a vital necessity, they say, to supplant it, and John's great simplicity of soul had not yet reached this easy solution. To him it would not have been easy, chiefly because there were so few like Rachel, so few had her sweetness and her subtle charm.
The day that he arrived in Washington he was received only by Mr. Van Citters' mother, as it happened that Paul had been called to Baltimore to see a sick friend and Pamela was out at a formal luncheon at the White House. These engagements were sufficiently pressing to excuse their temporary failure to welcome their cousin, and, after lunching with his elderly hostess, Charter found time to go out for a stroll before Pamela was likely to return. He had intended to avoid the neighborhood of the Belhaven house, but they were absent, so he found it easy to excuse himself for turning his steps in that direction. The road outside of the city was more inviting, the tempter argued insidiously, and he was less likely to meet chance acquaintances; besides, it was unnecessary to go within a bow-shot of the dangerous neighborhood.
It was a crisp December day; there was snow behind the hedgerows and here and there he saw a snowbird or a woodpecker. The growing familiarity of the scene afforded him a curious kind of comfort. He was only vaguely aware of those mysterious forces that were continually turning him in one direction, and he thought that he had conquered himself, that he could risk even the sights and sounds that recalled most vividly that supreme moment when his universe had toppled over like a house of cards. Moreover, the city had grown beyond his recollection during his absence in the Philippines, and a new block of houses had so entirely altered the appearance of the neighborhood, and he had been so occupied with his own thoughts, that he was surprised to find himself at a turn of the road where he must pass the lower driveway between the entrance to Astry's estate and the old Belhaven place. But, after a moment's hesitation, he went on and, glancing down at the low rambling house, saw the smoke ascending from the chimneys and a large, gray motor standing in the stable-yard. Then he suddenly remembered that Paul's statement that they had been away since Thanksgiving did not contain a guarantee that they would remain away until spring. Sharply aware of the shock that he had received, John called himself a fool to have risked meeting Rachel so soon again. Yet the thought of it gave him a pleasure nearly as poignant as pain. She arose before his mind's eye with the clearness of a perfect revelation; he seemed to see at once the graceful erectness of her slight figure, the delicate face, the charming eyes, the mouth that had both tenderness and strength.
John averted his eyes from the house, for that made Belhaven certain; it clothed the situation in flesh and drove it to his heart. But the long grove of cedars, their pungent odor, the sweep of the frozen field, the bare poles of the wood through which he caught here and there the glorious leap and flash of the sun on the snowy slopes beyond, these things reminded him of Rachel. They made the thought of her so vivid, so persuasive, that it seemed natural to see her in the flesh as he turned the last lap of the Astry meadows. She was alone; she had been to the house and was going home by a short cut through the woods. She wore no hat and the wind had ruffled her brown hair until it curled in little vagrant tendrils about her temples. A long, gray coat covered her to her feet and she had thrust her hands into the pockets, boy fashion, and was walking fast. A swift change passed over her face as she caught sight of him, a change that deepened the soft color in her cheeks and darkened her eyes.
John met her gravely, almost bluntly. "I didn't know until a moment ago that you were here!"
"Or you wouldn't have come?"
"Or I wouldn't have come."
"Can't we let it all go, John?" she asked, a little, pitiful quiver about her lips. "I hate to lose your friendship; it—has always been dear to me."
He stood still, looking down at the frosted grass. "I thought it was dear to me until I lost you!"
"It's cruel that there can be no middle course; must it be love or hate?"
"It must always be love, I think—I've tried to kill it, Rachel."
"It will die after a while a natural death. We can't talk about it; John, haven't I done enough to kill it? I've married some one else."
"As if I didn't know it!"
"I'm trying to help you kill it!"
"You can't," bitterly, "every word you say makes it more alive. I've no right to stand here and look at you; I ought to remember the Mosaic law about my neighbor's wife. I've always despised men who made love to married women, and now I'm one of them; how you must hate me, Rachel!"
She breathed hard as if in physical pain. "Don't, John; let us forget it—thrust it out of sight. Don't you see that it's wrong for me to listen? If you care so much I must mean something to you; have I deserved this at your hands?"
"Rachel!"
"You've forced me to say that; can't you see how it seems to me? I'm married to Belhaven and you think I ought to hear this. If I were married to you, John, would you want me to hear it from him?"
She had driven it home.
"Forgive me," he said hoarsely.
She saw the drawn look about his mouth and eyes and his pain deepened hers. "I don't want you to be less than yourself," she said gently.
"I'll try to get my lesson by rote," he said bitterly, "I shan't be a brute again."
She stooped down and, picking up a fallen acorn, turned it over in her hands as if she had discovered some new interest or virtue in it; she was trying to hide her face from him, for if he saw it he could surely read it. "I was going home by the woodpath," she said. "I've been to see Eva, but she's out somewhere, perhaps on her way to my house; I must go on."
"May I go with you? Or—"
"Of course you may come; we're going to be friends, aren't we?" Then, as they turned into the path: "I've heard all about your work in the Philippines; it was like you to say nothing of it. I was so glad of the promotion, too."
"I suppose it's all right," he said drearily. "I haven't thought much about it. I've been in Newport for five months, being invited to meet widows and orphans. Then I got orders to report here and Van Citters asked me down for Christmas. They told me that you and the Astrys were away for a while."
"Eva had to go in August: she broke down; but they came back in October. Johnstone has just imported a new Chinese god."
"I see that he hasn't reformed; I mean Johnstone, not the god. Has he gone in for any more new fads?"
They were forcing themselves to talk commonplaces.
"Occult science and Shintoism, I believe," she replied, still trifling with her acorn. "He has some new toy from the West Indies, but I don't know much about it; he calls it the red sphere."
"I wish I could have brought him a few odds and ends from the Philippines. I didn't—I remembered the story of Jim Fealey coming home with six church candlesticks and a mahogany sideboard as the spoils of war."
She did not answer him for a moment, she could not; and then she tried to divert his glance. "Look, isn't that view pretty? I love that bit—and see, there's a glimpse of the Astry gateposts."
They stopped midway in the woods and looked southward. There was a clearing, and in it a few gray rocks loomed out of the snow, while the hemlocks, still mantled in snow, parted to show the long curve of the meadows beyond and the stately gateway in the dark line of hedge. As they looked, a man and a woman crossed the path below them without looking up; she was weeping passionately and clinging to her companion's arm.
Rachel turned slowly away and walked on, and John dared not look at her, for they had both recognized the two below them in the wood. It was Belhaven with Eva.
Rachel walked ahead, turning her acorn over and over in her hand and looking at it curiously, unconscious that she did it. John walked behind her, blind with rage, the old primeval instinct to kill tearing at his heart. This was the man she had married, the man she had preferred to him!
They came to the edge of the woods; before them was the old, tavernlike house, with Paul's expensive roof and Colonial porch, that had cost his aunt three years of bonnets. Rachel paused an instant.
"They wanted to cut away those cedars in summer," she said, in a lifeless voice, "but I wouldn't let them. I love their graceful shapes and they screen the garden. There are some box borders there a hundred years old. I planted one whole square to heliotrope and I could smell the blossoms fifty yards away. I suppose, though, you've seen heliotrope hedges?"
"I've seen swamps, mosquitoes and Filipinos," said John dryly.
"One would think you took no interest in it, yet I know you gave your heart and soul to the cause; that's your way, John."
"You think better of me than I deserve. At heart I'm a raging savage, selfish and revengeful."
She did not look at him, but his voice told her that he had recognized Belhaven as quickly as she had, and a deep flush of mortification rose slowly to her hair. He thought that she was actually Belhaven's wife and that she was enduring Belhaven's love-making to Eva. The thought sickened her, the impulse to tell him the truth tore her heart with the fierceness of passion. She saw his anger for her and loved him for it, while she shrank from the shame of her situation. Her wounded pride was in arms; the first sickening realization that Eva was again to blame was, for the moment, lost in her quickened sense of personal shame. She felt a complicity in Eva's guilt, for had she not helped her deceive Astry? Was not Astry now fully avenged? Her own act had recoiled upon herself; she was reaping as she had sown. Her own act had made it impossible for her to right herself in John's eyes; she could not tell him the truth without betraying Eva. Her lips were sealed. Meanwhile, they had reached the door of the house and John halted, his attitude unmistakable.
"It's teatime," she said, and her voice sounded strange, even in her own ears, "won't you come in?"
"Not to-day."
She did not hold out her hand; it was trembling and she put it behind her. "Tell Pamela that I shall expect you all to-morrow," she said, with an effort.
John was conscious of mumbling some reply, and she turned and went into the house.
He was amazed at her composure, unaware that she was overwhelmed with shame at her own awkwardness. He was in no mood to see any fault in her manner; he was at a white heat of passion. He longed fiercely to take Belhaven by the nape of the neck, as a terrier takes a rat, and shake the life out of him, but he was aware that it was an age of law and order and the conventions. To go to the electric chair for killing Belhaven would not help Rachel; besides, for all he knew, Rachel loved her husband. John ground his teeth at the thought; to have Rachel's love cast away upon such an object was gall and wormwood. A situation that has occurred many times in this world seemed new to him and of intolerable wretchedness. To love well and to see the object of that affection bestowing love unworthily in quite another quarter is not uncommon, but to John it seemed the last straw. He plunged back into the wood with a grim determination in his heart. He was quite simple and sincere; there were no fine shades of reasoning and sarcastic self-examination about John: a beautiful spiritual endowment of honesty and faith was unaccompanied by brilliant worldly gifts, and he was peculiarly unfitted to deal with a man like Belhaven. John saw the truth sharply, spoke it and lived it, because it was his nature to be simple and sincere, and he was going to deal directly now with a problem so complex that another man would have paused before it. He did not; he pursued his purpose through the snowy path with the same singleness of heart with which Sir Galahad pursued the Holy Grail. The brickbat of John's perseverance was in evidence.
Nor was he disappointed. That which we seek diligently we shall find, and in the center of the wood he found Belhaven. The two men had known each other for years, though they had nothing in common, but even John saw the change in Belhaven's face. For six months he had been journeying upon the road which Astry had journeyed before him and he showed that he had passed many milestones, that he was well on toward the end. He looked, even to John's angry eyes, like a man sick at heart, but he spoke first.
"Hello, Charter, I hadn't heard you were here!"
Having made up his mind, John was not one to waste words, or to approach the subject circuitously. "I came about two hours ago," he said slowly, "and I walked through this way twenty minutes ago. Inadvertently I saw you and Mrs. Astry in the path below me."
John paused to let this sink in, and it sank; a deep red flush burned on Belhaven's face. "I might say," he remarked slowly, "that it was none of your business."
John's head went up. "I've known Mrs. Belhaven for many years and it is my business; anything that injures her or causes her disgrace is the business of her friends. No scoundrel, seeing what I saw, would hold his tongue. You've exposed your wife to the misery of a double betrayal, you're insulting her, and making love to her sister. If you bring disgrace on her, I'll—I'll thrash you!" John ended fiercely.
The surging passions that had been chained for weeks in Belhaven's heart broke loose like furies and his face turned from magenta to ashes; he lost himself and flew at John. The assault was as violent as it was unexpected; he struck a fierce blow and John, parrying it, was caught again, then they closed. The path was icy beneath their feet and both men reeled for a moment and swayed together. A sudden, fierce joy leaped into John's heart. He longed to kill him; for one wild moment he was a savage, feeling his power, for Belhaven was no match for him physically, and it was the primitive man fighting for his woman. John's training, his tranquil life, his hard military service, had made his muscles like steel. He had Belhaven by the throat and hurled him back against a tree and held him there. The force of his grip and the consciousness of defeat wrung the life out of his adversary's eyes, but there was no surrender. John held him against the tree and gloried in the hatred and revenge, the savage let loose. Then it all passed.
"I could easily kill you," he said slowly, "but I won't; we're both mad, this only makes for scandal. Go home!"
As he spoke he released him, and Belhaven stood, leaning against the tree. He felt the receding powers of life flowing back but his rage was spent; he could not murder John now, it did not seem worth while. The struggle had revealed something to both men. Belhaven knew that John loved Rachel, John knew intuitively that Belhaven did not love Eva Astry, yet neither of them recognized the hidden powers that had revealed these things to them. John turned and walked rapidly away; he dared not trust himself again with his hand on Belhaven's throat. The fierce leap of passion in his blood warned him to retreat and he remembered Rachel at last and his desire to shield her from disgrace. Had he not been doing that which, once known, would lead to scandal? He scorned himself.
Belhaven stood a long while where John had left him, shame and rage contending with another and a deeper passion in his heart. For months he had lived in torture, he had just been dragging his chains; there seemed to be no way out and he was consumed with the fierce fires of remorse and despair.
It was long past six o'clock and the short winter twilight was over when he finally entered the house. A glance showed the old tap-room empty and Rachel's little tea-table deserted. Belhaven experienced a feeling of relief; it would have been a trial to drink a cup of tea and talk about the outside world to her to-day, for he was in no mood to talk. He went on, and passing down the hall, approached his den, a small room where he read and worked and smoked alone. Whether Rachel considered her presence there an intrusion or shrank from any appearance of intimacy, he did not know, but she never came there and he was the more surprised when he opened the door to find her standing before the fire, still dressed in her out-of-door clothes, her heavy coat thrown on the back of a chair, just as she slipped it off more than an hour ago. He stood a moment looking at her in surprise. Her expression had a certain concentration, a spiritualized anger, which amazed him.
"Please close the door," she said quietly. "I have something to say to you, and unhappily servants listen."
He closed the door and went over to the fire. "Won't you sit down?" he asked, remembering that he was the host, with an effort.
"I've been waiting to see you for an hour," she replied, without taking the chair he offered. "I was coming home through the woods this afternoon; I had no thought of playing spy but I saw you with Eva."
"Apparently we were quite observed," retorted Belhaven bitterly. "Charter also saw us."
"He was with me."
Belhaven glanced at her and raged in his heart. He would have given his all to have stood in Charter's place at that moment. "You're more candid than he was," he said bitingly.
Rachel colored. "It was impossible not to see you; the place is public. We've had months of very bitter experience; I know it's been as bitter to you as to me. We've taken up a yoke that we ought never to have assumed, which we would never have assumed had I known that you wouldn't keep your promise to me—to let poor Eva alone! I married you to shield her from Astry's anger, not to practise a deceit upon Astry. I understood from you both that there was the end of it all. My sister's folly, her conduct, I can't understand, I don't attempt to, but you—" Rachel drew a deep breath—"you're a man of the world; you know what you do! I can't stand here to shield you from Astry; there must be an end. You must give Eva up, I must save my sister—if she can't save herself."
Belhaven had listened in silence, his clenched hands strained at his sides. There was a moment's pause before he spoke. "I don't suppose you'll believe me, but I can swear to you that, since our marriage, there's been absolutely nothing between your sister and myself except her reproaches."
"Which you've deserved," said Rachel relentlessly.
"Which I've deserved," he assented dryly, "and I've had them pretty often."
"You're laying the blame upon her, you're accusing her, and it's cowardly. If you love her it is, at least, best to be honest; if you don't love her your conduct is still more unpardonable. I wish I hadn't seen you to-day, but I did and I'm forced to speak. I can't let you go on. There's Johnstone Astry; what right have you to make clandestine love to his wife? And Eva—what misery your love will bring her! If you love her, I implore you to remember her honor, her good name, her folly in caring for you at all!"
Belhaven walked away from her and stood with his back toward her. What seemed to be his indifference spurred Rachel on.
"She's young, she's thoughtless, she's at your mercy," she went on passionately. "If you love her—you must spare her!"
He swung around, his face tense with feeling, ghastly. "My God, Rachel, it's you I love!"
She stood looking at him blankly, dumbfounded, frozen in her amazement and horror. It seemed to her an enormity for him to transgress the silent compact between them, to speak of love to her. "How can you?" she gasped.
"I'm human, I've about reached the limit. I'm neither a saint nor a paladin, only a good deal of a scoundrel."
"You're taking an unfair advantage—you've no right to speak so to me!"
"I told you I was a good deal of a scoundrel; do you want me to admit more? I've pleaded guilty to all your indictments, I've stood here for months at the bar of your justice, I've borne my punishment, and I—I've learned to love you."
She turned away, deeply and sadly moved. She did not know what to say; there seemed so little that she could say.
Belhaven, who had never been greatly loved, looked at her with a kind of despair. A great change had been wrought in the nature of the man. He had seen only women like Eva before, or worse women, and there were places in his past which he would not have liked those clear eyes of Rachel's to look upon; indeed, there had been moments when he would not even have valued her. But it was not so now; the scales had fallen from his eyes; he saw Rachel as she was, and his heart reached up, breathless, trying to climb to her heights, but always falling back, always despairing. Rachel, as he had grown to know her, was greater than his heart.
"I love you," he said steadily. "I haven't lived under the same roof with you for months without knowing you as you are. I'm quite aware that you despise me; possibly I deserve it. At any rate I expect no quarter; but it's fair that you should know how impossible it is for me to betray my promise to you when I've learned to love you."
"And you throw the blame on Eva?"
"I've nothing to say against her!"
They looked at each other. Rachel read the grim agony in the man's face; he had bitten the dust, he was speaking the truth, he loved her! The color rushed up to her hair, and she was suddenly conscious of the undissolved bonds between them, that she was actually his wife. And now there was an added, infrangible bond, a sort of complicity in his despair.
"I'm sorry," she said quite simply, and her lips trembled.
He made a slight, significant gesture which seemed to dismiss his part in it and, turning to the fireplace, rested his elbow on the mantel and leaned his head on his hand.
"I'm sorry to have done you an injustice," she went on, with an effort. "I believe what you've said, but I implore you to protect my sister."
"I'll do my best."
"Oh, if you'd only done your best at first!" she cried involuntarily.
"For God's sake, Rachel, don't rub it in!"
"You're right; I hate reproaches, yet I always seem to reproach you! At least I feel sure now that you'll help me take care of Eva."
"I'll help you."
Rachel left him. She went slowly across the hall and began to ascend the stairs. From the landing she could see him still standing by the fireplace and the dejection of his attitude touched her heart. Their brief interview had been illuminating; she was intensely sorry for him, for he needed her love, and if she could have given it to him she could have saved him from himself. Rachel knew this, she knew the strength and tenderness of her own spirit, she knew her power to love and to forgive, and Belhaven needed both. Suddenly it came to her, like the still, small voice within, that she had sworn to give him all these, that by mocking him with marriage she had robbed him of his chance to win honest love and honest faith, that she stood between this wretched man and freedom, between him and all that might make his life worth living. The thought was hideous but it was true; it was Belhaven's case, the other side, the plea for the defendant, and it cut her to the soul. She had been judging and condemning one whom she had greatly wronged; she was both false and cruel, false to her vows, cruel to another soul struggling upward to the light, and as hideously shackled as her own. He had sinned, but he had been tempted; had she been tempted to her sin against him? Rachel turned her face to the wall. Her mind was suddenly flooded with light; was it God's purpose working in her? She was Belhaven's wife.
A shudder ran through her; keen, physical repulsion seized upon her. She saw herself in a new light and she could not do her duty. She loved Charter, with all her heart she loved Charter, she was his. It did not matter if she never belonged to him in fact, she was his in spirit. A great humility fell upon Rachel; she could no longer condemn any one, for she was as bad as the worst; she was a wedded wife in name to one man, in heart she belonged to another, and she could feel for poor Eva. She covered her burning face with her hands; she was ashamed. She saw her duty and she could not do it; she was Belhaven's wife.
Poor Rachel, pressing her forehead against the wall, wept bitterly.