The Heart of Rachael Part 20

Mrs. Haviland flushed.

"You think that's fair to Clarence?" she asked presently.

"I think that in any question of fairness between Clarence and me the balance is decidedly in my favor!" Rachael said crisply.

"Personally, I shall have nothing to do with it, and Clarence very little. Charlie Sturgis will represent me. I suppose Coates and Crandall will take care of Clarence--I don't know. That's all there is to it!"

Her placid gaze roved about the ceiling. Mrs. Haviland gazed at her in silence.

"Rachael," she said desperately, "will you TALK to someone--will you talk to Gardner?"

"Why should I?" Rachael sat up on the couch, the loosened ma.s.s of her beautiful hair falling about her shoulders. "What has Gardner or anyone else to do with it? It's Clarence's business, and my business, and it concerns n.o.body else!" she said warmly. "You look on from the outside. I've borne it for seven years! I'm young, I'm only twenty-eight, and what is my life? Keeping house for a man who insults me, and ignores me, who puts me second to his daughter, and has put me second since our wedding day--making excuses for him to his friends, giving up what I want to do, never knowing from day to day what his mood will be, never having one cent of money to call my own! I tell you there are days and days when I'm too sick at heart to read, too sick at heart to think!

Last summer, for instance, when we were down at Easthampton with the Parmalees, when everyone was so wild over bathing, and tennis, and dancing, Clarence wasn't sober ONE MOMENT of the time, not one! One night, when we were dancing--but I won't go into it!"

"I know," Florence said hastily, rather frightened at this magnificent fury. "I know, dear, it's too bad--it's dreadful--it's a great shame. But men are like that! Now Gardner--"

"All men aren't like that! Gardner does that sort of thing now and then, I know," Rachael rushed on, "but Gardner is always sorry.

Gardner takes his place as a man of dignity in the world. I am nothing to Clarence; I have never been to him one-tenth of what Billy is! I have borne it, and borne it, and now I just can't-- bear it--any longer!"

And Rachael, to her own surprise and disgust, burst into bitter crying, and, stammering some incoherency about an aching head, she went to her own room and flung herself across the bed. The suppressed excitement of the last few days found relief in a long fit of sobbing; Florence did not dare go near her. The older woman tried to persuade herself that the resentment and bitterness of this unusual mood would be washed away, and that Rachael, after a nap and a bath, would feel more like herself, but nevertheless she went off to her game in a rather worried frame of mind, and gave but an imperfect attention to the question of hearts or lilies.

Rachael, heartily ashamed of what she would have termed her schoolgirlish display of emotion, came slowly to herself, dozed over a magazine, plunged into a cold bath, and at four o'clock dressed herself exquisitely for Mrs. Whittaker's informal dinner.

Glowing like a rose in her artfully simple gown of pink and white checks, she went downstairs.

Florence had come in late, bearing a beautiful bit of pottery, the first prize, and was again in the throes of dressing, but Gardner was downstairs restlessly wandering about the dimly lighted rooms and halls. He was fond of Rachael, and as they walked up and down the lawn together he tried, in a blunt and clumsy way, to show her his sympathy.

"Floss tells me you're about at the end of your rope--what?" said Gardner. "Clarence is the limit, of course, but don't be too much in a hurry, old girl. We'd be--we'd be awfully sorry to have you come to a smash, don't you know--now!"

Thus Gardner. Rachael gave him a glimmering smile in the early dusk.

"Not much fun for me, Gardner," she said gravely.

"Sure it's not," Gardner answered, clearing his throat tremendously. Neither spoke again until Florence came down, but later, in all honesty, he told his wife that he had pitched into Rachael no end, and she had agreed to go slow.

Florence, however, was not satisfied with so brief a campaign. She and Rachael did not speak of the topic again until the last afternoon of Rachael's stay. Then the visitor, coming innocently downstairs at tea time, was a little confused to see that besides Mrs. Bowditch and her oldest daughter, and old Mrs. Torrence, the Bishop and Mrs. Thomas were calling. Instantly she suspected a trap.

"Rachael, dear," Florence said sweetly, when the greetings were over, "will you take the bishop down to look at the sundial? I've been boasting about it."

"You sound like a play, Florence," her sister-in-law said with a little nervous laugh. "'Exit Rachael and Bishop, L.' Surely you've seen the sundial, Bishop?"

"I had such a brief glimpse of it on the day of the tea," Bishop Thomas said pleasantly, "that I feel as if I must have another look at that inscription!" Smiling and benign, rather impressive in his clerical black, the clergyman got to his feet, and turned an inviting smile to Rachael.

"Shall I take you down, Bishop?" Charlotte asked, her eagerness to be socially useful fading into sick apprehension at her mother's look.

"No, I'll go!" Rachael ended the little scene by catching up her wide hat. "Come on, Bishop," she said courageously, adding, as soon as they were out of hearing, "and if you're going to be dreadful, begin this moment!"

"And why, pray, should I be dreadful?" the bishop asked, smiling reproachfully. "Am I usually so dreadful? I don't believe it would be possible, among these lovely roses"--he drew in a great breath of the sweet afternoon air--"and with such a wonderful sunset telling us to lift up our hearts." And sauntering contentedly along, the bishop gave her an encouraging smile, but as Rachael continued to walk beside him without raising her eyes, presently he added, whimsically: "Would it be dreadful, Mrs. Breckenridge, if one saw a heedless little child--oh, a sweet and dear, but a heedless little child--going too near the cliffs--would it be dreadful to say: 'Look out, little child! There's a terrible fall there, and the water's cold and dark. Be careful!'" The bishop sat down on the carved stone bench that had been set in the circle of shrubs that surrounded the sundial, and Rachael sat down, too.

"Well, what about the child?" he persisted, when there had been a silence.

Rachael raised sombre eyes, her breast rose on a long sigh.

"I am not a child," she said slowly.

"Aren't we all children?" asked the bishop, mildly triumphant.

Rachael, sitting there in Florence's garden, looking down at the white roofs of the village and the smooth sheet of blue that was Belvedere Bay, felt a burning resentment enter her heart. How calm and smug and sure of themselves they were, these bishops and Florences and old lady Gregorys! How easy for them to advise and admonish, to bottle her up with their little laws and plat.i.tudes, these good people married to other good people, and wrapped in the warmth of mutual approval and admiration! The bishop was talking--

"Children, yes, the best and wisest of us is no more than that,"

he was saying dreamily, "and we must bear and forbear with each other. Not easy? Of course it's not easy! But no cross no crown, you know. I have known Clarence a great many years--"

"I am sorry to hurt Florence--G.o.d knows I'm sorry for the whole thing!" Rachael said, "but you must admit that I am the best judge of this matter. I've borne it long enough. My mind is made up. You and I have always been good friends, Bishop Thomas"--she laid a beautiful hand impulsively on his arm--"and you know that what you say has weight with me. But believe me, I'm not jumping hastily into this: it's come after long, serious thought. Clarence wants to be free as well--"

"Clarence does?" the clergyman asked, with a disapproving shake of his head.

"He has said so," Rachael answered briefly.

"And what will your life be after this, my child?"

To this she responded merely with a shrug. Perhaps the bishop suspected that such a calm confidence in the future indicated more or less definite plans, for he gave her a shrewd and searching look, but there was nothing to be said. The lovely lady continued to stare at the soft turf with unsmiling eyes, and the clergyman could only watch her in puzzled silence.

"After all," Rachael said presently, giving him a rueful glance, "what are the statistics? One marriage in twelve fails--fails openly, I mean--for of course there are hundreds that don't get that far. Sixty thousand last year!"

"If those ARE the statistics," said the bishop warmly, "it is a disgrace to a Christian country!"

"But you don't call this a Christian country?" Rachael said perversely.

"It is SUPPOSEDLY so," the clergyman a.s.serted.

"Supposedly Christian," she mused, "and yet one marriage out of every twelve ends in divorce, and you Christians--well, you don't CUT us! We may not keep holy the Sabbath day, we may not honor our fathers and mothers, we may envy our neighbor's goods, yes, and his wife, if we like, but still--you don't refuse to come to our houses!"

"I don't know you in this mood," said Bishop Thomas coldly.

"Call it Neroism, or Commonsensism, or Modernism, or anything you like," Rachael said with sudden fire, "but while you go on calling what you profess Christianity, Bishop, you simply subscribe to an untruth. You know what our lives are, myself and Florence and Gardner and Clarence; is there a Commandment we don't break all day long and every day? Do we give our coats away, do we possess neither silver nor gold in our purses, do we love our neighbors?

Why don't you denounce us? Why don't you shun the women in your parish who won't have children as murderers? Why don't you brand some of the men who come to your church--men whose business methods you know, and I know, and all the world knows--as thieves!"

"And what would my branding them as murderers and thieves avail?"

asked the bishop, actually a little pale now, and rising to face her as she rose. "Are we to judge our fellowmen?"

"I'm not," Rachael said, suddenly weary, "but I should think you might. It would be at least refres.h.i.+ng to have you, or someone, demonstrate what Christianity is. It would be good for our souls.

Instead," she added bitterly, "instead, you select one little thing here, and one little thing there, and putter, and tinker, and temporize, and gloss over, and build big churches, with mortgages and taxes and insurance to pay, in the name of Christianity! If I were little Annie Smith, down in the village here, I could get a divorce for twenty-five dollars, and you would never hear of it. But Clarence Breckenridge is a millionaire, and the Breckenridges have gone to your church for a hundred years, and so it's a scandal that must be averted if possible!"

"The church frowns on divorce," said the bishop sternly. "At the very present moment the House of Bishops, to which I have the distinguished honor to belong, is considering taking a decided stand in the matter. Divorce is a sin--a sin against one of G.o.d's inst.i.tutions. But when I find a lady in this mood," he continued, with a sort of magnificent forbearance, "I never attempt to combat her views, no matter how extraordinarily jumbled and--and childish they are. As a clergyman, and as an old friend, I am grieved when I see a hasty and an undisciplined nature about to do that which will wreck its own happiness, but I can only give a friendly warning, and pa.s.s on. I do not propose to defend the inst.i.tution to which I have dedicated my life before you or before anyone.

Shall we go back to the house?"

"Perhaps we had better," Rachael agreed. And as they went slowly along the wide brick walk she added in a softened tone: "I do appreciate your affectionate interest in--in us, Bishop. But--but it does exasperate me, when so many strange things are done in the name of Christianity, to have--well, Florence for instance--calmly decreeing that just these other certain things shall NOT be done!"

"Then, because we can't all be perfect, it would be better not to try to be good at all?" the bishop asked, restored to equanimity by what he chose to consider an unqualified apology, and resuming his favorite att.i.tude of benignant adviser.

Rachael sighed wearily in the depth of her soul. She knew that kindly admonitory tone, that complacent misconception of her meaning. She said to herself that in a moment he would begin to ask himself questions, and answer them himself.