The Heart of Rachael Part 11

But he did not keep his promises. Rachael had not thought he would; perhaps the old lady herself had not thought he would. He was sobered at the funeral, but not sober. Six weeks later all the bills against the estate were in. Florence had some of the family jewels and the family silver, Rachael had some, some was put away for Billy; the furniture was sold, the house rented for a men's club, and a nondescript man, calling upon young Mrs. Breckenridge, notified her that the stone had been set in place as ordered. They never saw it; they paid a small sum annually for keeping the plot in order, and the episode of Ada Martin Langhorne Breckenridge's life was over.

Clarence drank so heavily after that, and squandered his magnificent heritage so recklessly, that people began to say that he would soon follow his mother. But that was four years ago, and Rachael looking dispa.s.sionately at him, where he lay dozing in his pillows, had to admit that he had shown no change in the past four--or eight, or twelve--years. Like many a better woman, and many a better wife, she wondered if she would outlive him, vaguely saw herself, correct and remote, in her new black.

Involuntarily she sighed. How free she would be! She wished Clarence no ill, but the fact remained that, loose as was the bond between them, it galled and checked them both at every step. Their conversations were embittered by a thousand personalities, they instinctively knew how to hurt each other; a look from Clarence could crush his poised and accomplished wife into a mere sullen shrew, and she knew that it took less than a look from her--it took the mere existence of her youth and health and freshness--to infuriate him sometimes. At best, their relations.h.i.+p consciously avoided hostility. Rachael was silent, fuming; Clarence fumed and was silent; they sank to light monosyllables; they parted as quickly as possible. Would Clarence like to dine with this friend or that? Rachael didn't think he would, but might as well ask him.

No, thank you! he wouldn't be found dead in that bunch. Did Rachael want to go with the Smiths and the Joneses to dine at the Highway, and dance afterward? Oh, horrors! no, thank you!

It was only when she spoke of Billy that Rachael was sure of his interest and attention, and of late she perforce had for Billy only criticism and disapproval. Rachael read the girl's vain and shallow and pleasure-loving little heart far more truly than her father could, and she was conscious of a genuine fear lest Billy bring sorrow to them all. Society was indulgent, yes, but an insolent and undeveloped little girl like Billy could not snap her fingers at the law without suffering the full penalty. Rachael would suffer, too. Florence and her girls would suffer, and Clarence--well, Clarence would not bear it. "What an awful mix-up it is!" Rachael thought wearily. "And what a sickening, tiresome place this world is!"

And then suddenly the thought of Warren Gregory came back, and the new curious sensation of warmth tugged at her heart.

CHAPTER IV

Mrs. Gardner Haviland, whirling home in her big car, after church, was hardly more pleased with life than was her beautiful sister- in-law, although she was not quite as conscious of dissatisfaction as was Rachael. Her position as a successful mother, wife, housekeeper, and member of society was theoretically so perfect that she derived from it, necessarily, an enormous amount of theoretical satisfaction. She could find no fault with herself or her environment; she was pleasantly ready with advice or with an opinion or with a verdict in every contingency that might arise in human affairs, as a Christian woman of unimpeachable moral standing. She knew her value in a hectic and reckless world. She did not approve of women smoking, or of suffrage, but she played a brilliant game of bridge, and did not object to an infinitesimal stake. She belonged to clubs and to their directorates, yet it was her boast that she knew every thought in her children's hearts, and the personal lives and hopes and ambitions of her maids were as an open book to her.

Still, she had her moments of weakness, and on this warm day of the spring she felt vaguely disappointed with life. Rachael's hints of divorce had filled her with a real apprehension; she felt a good aunt's concern at Billy's reckless course, and a good sister's disapproval of Clarence and his besetting sin.

But it was not these considerations that darkened her full handsome face as she went up the steps of her big, widespread country mansion; it was some vaguer, more subtle discontent. She had not dressed herself for the sudden warmth of the day, and her heavy flowered hat and trim veil had given her a headache. The blazing sunlight on white steps and blooming flowers blinded her, and when she stepped into the dark, cool hall she could hardly see.

The three girls were there, well-bred, homely girls, in their simple linens: Charlotte, a rather severe type, eyegla.s.sed at eighteen, her thick, light-brown hair plainly brushed off her face and knotted on her neck, was obviously the opposite of everything Billy was; conscientious, intellectual, and conscious of her own righteousness, she could not compete with her cousin in Billy's field; she very sensibly made the best of her own field. Isabelle was a stout, clumsy girl of sixteen, with a metal bar across her large white teeth, red hair, and a creamy skin. Little Florence was only nine, a thin, freckled, sensitive child, with a shy, unsmiling pa.s.sion for dogs and horses, and little in common with the rest of the world.

Their mother had expected sons in every case, and still felt a little baffled by the fact of her children's s.e.x. Charlotte proving a girl, she had said gallantly that she must have a little brother "to play with Charlotte." Isabelle, duly arriving, probably played with Charlotte much more amiably than a brother would have done, and Mrs. Haviland blandly accepted her existence, but in her heart she was far from feeling satisfied. She was, of course, an absolutely competent mother to girls, but she felt that she would have been a more capable and wonderful mother to boys.

More than six years after Isabelle's birth Florence Haviland began to talk smilingly of "my boy." "Gardner wors.h.i.+ps the girls," she said, with wifely indulgence, "but I know he wants a son--and the girlies need a brother!" A resigned shrug ended the sentence with: "So I'm in for the whole thing again!"

It was said that Mrs. Haviland greeted the news that the third child was a daughter with a mechanically bright smile, as one puzzled beyond all words by perverse event, and that her spoken comment was the single mild e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n: "Extraordinary!"

Now the two older Haviland girls, following their mother into her bedroom, seated themselves there while she changed her dress.

Florence junior, in pa.s.sionate argument with the butler over the death of one of the drawing-room goldfish, remained downstairs.

Mrs. Haviland, casting the hot, high-collared silk upon the bed, took a new embroidered pongee from a box, and busied herself with its unfamiliar hooks and straps. Charlotte and Isabelle were never quite spontaneous in their conversations with their mother, their att.i.tude in talking with her being one of alert and cautious self- consciousness; they did not breathe quite naturally, and they laughed constantly. Yet they both loved this big, firm, omnipotent being, and believed in her utterly and completely.

"We met Doctor Gregory and Charlie near the club this morning, M'ma," volunteered Isabelle.

"And they asked about Mrs. Bowditch's dance," Charlotte added with a little innocent craft. "But I said that M'ma had been unable to decide. Of course I said that we would LIKE to go, and that you knew that, and would allow it if you possibly could."

"That was quite right, dear," Mrs. Haviland said to her oldest daughter, calmly ignoring the implied question, and to Isabelle she added kindly: "M'ma doesn't quite like to hear you calling a young man you hardly know by his first name, Isabelle. Of course, there's no harm in it, but it cheapens a girl just a LITTLE. While Charlotte might do it because she is older, and has seen Charlie Gregory at some of the little informal affairs last winter, you are younger, and haven't really seen much of him since he went to college. Don't let M'ma hear you do that again."

Isabelle turned a lively scarlet, and even Charlotte colored and was silent. The younger girl's shamed eyes met her mother's, and she nodded in quick embarra.s.sment. But this tacit consent did not satisfy Mrs. Haviland.

"You understand M'ma, don't you, dear?" she asked. Isabelle murmured something indistinguishable.

"Yes, M'ma!" said that lady herself, encouragingly and briskly.

Isabelle duly echoed a husky "Yes, M'ma!"

"Did you give my message to Miss Roper, Charlotte?" pursued the matron.

"She wasn't at church, M'ma," said Charlotte, taken unawares and instinctively uneasy. "Mrs. Roper said she had a heavy cold; she said she'd been sleeping on the sleeping porch."

"So M'ma's message was forgotten?" the mother asked pleasantly.

Charlotte perceived herself to be in an extremely dangerous position. Long ago both girls had lost, under this close surveillance and skilful system of cross-examination, their original regard for truth as truth. That they usually said what was true was because policy and self-protection suggested it.

Charlotte had time now for a flying survey of the situation and its possibilities before she answered, somewhat uncertainly:

"I asked Mrs. Roper to deliver it, M'ma. Wasn't that--" Her voice faltered nervously. "Was it something you would have rather telephoned about?"

"Would rather have telephoned about?" Mrs. Haviland corrected automatically. "Well, M'ma would rather FEEL that when she sends a message it is given to JUST the person to whom she sent it, in JUST the way she sent it. However, in this case no harm was done.

Don't hook your heel over the rung of your chair, dear! Ring the bell, Isabelle, I want Alice."

"I'll hook you, M'ma!" volunteered Charlotte.

"Thank you, dear, but I want to speak to Alice. And now you girls might run along. I'll be down directly."

A moment later she submitted herself patiently to the maid's hands. Florence was a conscientious woman, and she felt that she owed Alice as well as herself this little office. Charlotte might have hooked her gown for her; indeed, she might with a small effort have done it herself, but it was Alice's duty, and nothing could be worse for Alice, or any servant, than to have her duties erratically a.s.sumed by others on one day and left to her on the next. This was the quickest way to spoil servants, and Florence never spoiled her servants.

"They have a pleasant day for their picnic," she observed now, kindly. Alice was on her knees, her face puckered as she busied herself with the hooks of a girdle, but she smiled gratefully. Her two brothers had borrowed their employer's coal barge to-day, and with a score of cherished a.s.sociates, several hundred sandwiches, sardines, camp-chairs, and bottles of root beer, with a smaller number of chaperoning mothers and concertinas, and the inevitable baby or two, were making a day of it on the river. Alice had timidly asked, a few days before, for a holiday to-day, that she might join them, but Mrs. Haviland had pointed out to her reasonably that she, Alice, had been at home, unexpectedly, because of her mother's illness, not only the previous Sunday, but the Sat.u.r.day, too, and had got half-a-day's leave of absence for her cousin's wedding only the week before that. Alice was only eighteen, and her little spurt of bravery had been entirely exhausted long before her mistress's pleasant voice had stopped.

Nothing more was said of the excursion until to-day.

"I guess they'll be eating their lunch, now, at Old Dock Point,"

said Alice, rising from her knees.

"Well, I hope they'll be careful; one hears of so many accidents among foolish young people there!" Mrs. Haviland answered, going downstairs to join her daughters in the hall, and, surrounded by them, proceeding to her own lunch.

For a while she was thoughtfully silent, and the conversation was maintained between the older girls and their governess. Charlotte and Isabelle chatted both German and French charmingly. Little Florence presently began to talk of her goldfish, meanwhile cutting a channel across her timbale through which the gravy ran in a stream.

Usually their mother listened to them with a quiet smile; they were well-educated girls, and any mother's heart must have been proud of them. But to-day she felt herself singularly dissatisfied with them. She said to herself that she hated Sundays, of all the days of the week. Other days had their duties: music, studies, riding, tennis, or walks, but on Sundays the girls were a dead weight upon her. Somehow, they were not in the current of good times that the other girls and boys of their ages were having. If she suggested brightly that they go over to the Parmalees' or the Morans' and see if the young people were playing tennis, she knew that Charlotte would delicately negative the idea: "They've got their sets all made up, M'ma, and one hates to, unless they specially ask one, don't you know?" They might go, of course, and greet their friends decorously, and watch the game smilingly for a while. Then they would come home with Fraulein, not forgetting to say good-bye to their hostess. But, although Charlotte played a better game than many of the other girls, and Isabelle played a good game, too, there were always gay little creatures in das.h.i.+ng costumes who monopolized the courts and the young men, and made the Haviland girls feel hopelessly heavy and dull. They would come home and tell their mother that Vivian Sartoris let two of the boys jump her over the net, and that Cousin Carol wore Kent Parmalee's panama all afternoon, and called out to him, right across the court, "Come on down to the boathouse, Kent, and let's have a smoke!"

"Poor Vivian--poor Billy!" Mrs. Haviland would say. "Men don't really admire girls who allow them such familiarities, although the silly girls may think they do! But when it comes to marrying, it is the sweet, womanly girls to whom the men turn!"

She did not believe this herself, nor did the girls believe it, but, if they discussed it when they were alone together, before Mamma, they were always decorously impressed.

"Any plans for the afternoon, girlies?" she asked now, when the forced strawberries were on the table, and little Florence was trying to eat the nuts out of her cake, and at the same time carefully avoid the cake itself and the frosting.

"What's Carol doing, M'ma?"

"When M'ma asks you a question, Isabelle, do not answer with another question, dear. I dropped Carol at the club, but I think Aunt Rachael means to pick her up there later, and go on to Mrs.

Whittaker's for tea."

"We met Mrs. Whittaker in the Exchange yesterday, M'ma, and she very sweetly said that you were to--that is, that she hoped you would bring us in for a little while this afternoon. Didn't she, Isabelle?"

"I don't want to go!" Isabelle grumbled. But her mother ignored her.

"That was very sweet of Aunt Gertrude. I think I will go over to the club and see what Papa is planning and how his game is going, and then I could pick you girls up here."

"I'm going over to play with Georgie and Robbie Royce!" shrilled Florence. "They're mean to me, but I don't care! I hit George in the stomach---"

Mrs. Haviland looked as pained as if the reported blow had fallen upon her own person, but she was strangely indulgent to her youngest born, and now did no more than signal to the nurse, old f.a.n.n.y, who stood grinning behind the child's chair, that Miss Florence might be excused. Florence was accordingly borne off, and the girls drifted idly upstairs, Isabelle confiding to her sister as she dutifully brushed her teeth that she wished "something"