The Heart of Rachael Part 16

"I didn't think of it, M'ma," said Charlotte lucidly.

"What a dreadful age it is," mused Rachael. "I wonder which phase is hardest to deal with: Billy or poor little Carlotta?" Aloud, from the fulness of her own happiness, she said: "Suppose you walk down to the courts with me, Infant, and we will see what's going on?"

"If M'ma doesn't object," said the dutiful daughter.

"No, go along," Florence said with vague discontent. "I've got to do some telephoning, anyway."

Charlotte, being eighteen, could think of nothing but herself, and Rachael, wrapped in her own romance, was amused, as they walked along, to see how different her display of youthful egotism was from Billy's, and yet how typical of all adolescence.

"Isn't it a wonderful afternoon, Aunt Rachael?" Charlotte said, as one in duty bound to be entertaining. "I do think they've picked out such a charming site for the club!" And then, as Rachael did not answer, being indeed content to drink in the last of the long summer day in silence, Charlotte went on, with an air blended of comprehension and amus.e.m.e.nt: "Poor M'ma, she would so like me to be a little, fluffy, empty-headed b.u.t.terfly of a girl, and I know I disappoint her! It isn't that I don't like boys," pursued Charlotte, the smooth and even stream of her words beginning to remind Rachael of Florence, "or that they don't like me; they're always coming to me with their confidences and asking my advice, but it's just that I can't take them seriously. If a boy wants to kiss me, why, I say to him in perfect good faith, 'Why shouldn't you kiss me, John? When I'm fond of a person I always like to kiss him, and I'm sure I'm fond of you!'" Charlotte stopped for a short laugh full of relish. "Of course that takes the wind out of their sails completely," she went on, "and we have a good laugh over it, and are all the better friends! That is," said Charlotte, thoroughly enjoying herself, "I treat my men friends exactly as I do my girl friends. Do you think that's so extraordinary, Aunt Rachael? Because I can't do anything different, you know--really I can't!"

"Just be natural--that's the best way," said Rachael from the depths of an icy boredom.

"Of course, some day I shall marry," the girl added in brisk decision, "because I love a home, and I love children, and I think I would be a good mother to children. But meanwhile, my books and my friends mean a thousand times more to me than all these stupid boys! Why is it other girls are so crazy about boys, Aunt Rachael?" asked Charlotte, brightly sensible. "Of course I like them, and all that, but I can't see the sense of all these notes and telephones and flirtations. I told Vivvie Sartoris that I was afraid I knew all these boys too well; of course Jack and Kent and Charley are just like brothers! It all"--Charlotte smiled, signed, shook her disillusioned young head--"it all seems so awfully SILLY to me!" she said, and before Rachael could speak she had caught breath again and added laughingly: "Of course I know Billy doesn't agree with me, and Billy has plenty of admiration of a sort, and I suppose that satisfies her! But, in short," finished Charlotte, giving Rachael's arm a squeeze as they came out upon the tennis courts, "in short, you have an exacting little niece, Auntie dear, and I'm afraid the man who is going to make her happy must be out of the ordinary!"

Rachael sighed a long deep sigh, but no other answer was demanded, for the knot of onlookers welcomed them eagerly to the benches beside the courts, and even the players--Gardner Haviland, Louis Chase, a fat young man in an irreproachable tennis costume; Warren Gregory and Joe Butler found time for a shouted "h.e.l.lo!"

"How do you do, Kent?" said Charlotte to a young man who was sprawling on the sloping gra.s.s between the benches and the court.

The young man blinked, sat up, and s.n.a.t.c.hed off his hat.

"Oh, how do you do, Charlotte? I didn't know you were here," he said enthusiastically. "Some game--what?"

"It SEEMS to be," said Charlotte with smiling, deep significance.

Both young persons laughed heartily at this spirited exchange. A silence fell. Then Mr. Parmalee turned back to watch the players, and Charlotte, who had seated herself, leaned back in her seat and gave a devoted attention to the game.

Gregory came to Rachael the instant the game was over; she had known, since the first triumphant instant when his eyes fell upon her, that he would. She had seen the color rush under his brown skin, and, alone among all the onlookers, had known why Greg put three b.a.l.l.s into the net, and why he laughed so inexplicably as he did so. And Rachael thought, for the first time, how sweet it would be to be his wife, to sit here lovely in lavender stripes and loose white coat: Warren Gregory's wife.

"You mustn't do that," he said, sitting down on the bench beside her, and wiping his hot face.

"Mustn't do what?" she asked.

"Mustn't turn up suddenly when I don't expect you. It makes me dizzy. Look here--what are you doing? I'm going up to the pool.

I've got to get back into town to-night. When can I see you?"

"Why"--Rachael rose slowly, and slowly unfurled her parasol--"why, suppose we walk up together?"

They strolled away from the courts deliberately, openly. Several persons remembered weeks later that they went slowly, stopped now and then. No one thought much of it at the time, for only a week later Doctor Gregory took his mother to England, and during that week it was ascertained that he and Mrs. Breckenridge saw each other only once, and then were in the presence of his mother and of Carol Breckenridge and young Charles Gregory as well. There was no tiniest peg for gossip to hang scandal upon, for where old Mrs.

James Gregory was, decorum of an absolutely puritanic order prevailed.

Yet that stroll across the gra.s.s of the golf links was a milestone in Rachael Breckenridge's life, and every word that pa.s.sed between Gregory and herself was graven upon her heart for all time. The aspect of laughter, of flirtation, was utterly absent to-day. His tone was crisp and serious, he spoke almost before they were out of the hearing of the group on the courts.

"I've been wanting to talk to you, Rachael; in fact"--he laughed briefly--"in fact, I am talking to you all day long, these days,"

he said, "arguing and consulting and advising and planning. But before we can talk, there's Clarence. What about Clarence?"

Something in the gravity of his expression as their eyes met impressed Rachael as she had rarely been impressed in her life before. He was in deadly earnest, he had planned his campaign, and he must take the first step by clearing the way. How sure he was, how wonderfully, quietly certain of his course.

"We are facing a miserable situation, but it's a commonplace one, after all," said Warren Gregory, as she did not speak. "I--you can see the position I'm in. I have to ask you to be free before I can move. I can't go to Breckenridge's wife---"

The color burned in both their faces as they looked at each other.

"It IS a miserable position, Greg," Rachael said, after a moment's silence. "And although, as you say, it's commonplace enough, somehow I never thought before just what this sort of thing involves! However, the future must take care of itself. For the present there's only this. I'm going to leave Clarence."

Warren Gregory drew a long breath.

"He won't fight it?"

"I don't think he will." Rachael frowned. "I think he'll be willing to furnish--the evidence. Especially if he has no reason to suspect that I have any other plans," she added thoughtfully.

"Then he mustn't suspect," the doctor said instantly.

"Nor anyone," she finished, with a look of alarm.

"Nor anyone, of course," he repeated.

"I don't know that I HAVE any other plans," Rachael said sadly. "I won't think beyond that one thing. Our marriage has been an utter and absolute failure, we are both wretched. It must end. I hate the fuss, of course--"

He was watching her closely, too keenly tuned to her mood to disquiet her with any hint of the lover's att.i.tude now.

"And just how will you go about it?" he asked.

"I shall slip off to some quiet place, I think. I'll tell him before he goes away. My attorneys will handle the matter for me-- it's a sickening business!" Rachael's beautiful face expressed distaste.

"It's done every day," Warren Gregory said.

"Of course divorce is not a new idea to me" Rachael presently pursued. "But it is only in the last two or three days--for a week, perhaps--that it has seemed to have that inevitable quality- -that the-sooner-over-the-better sort of urgency. I wonder why I didn't do it years ago. I shall"--she laughed sadly--"I shall hate myself as a divorced woman," she said. "It's a survival of some old instinct, I suppose, but it doesn't seem RIGHT."

"It's done all the time," was the doctor's simple defence. "And oh, my dear," he added, "you will know--and I will know--we can't keep knowing--"

She stopped short, her lovely face serious in the shade of her parasol, her dark-blue eyes burning with a sort of n.o.ble shame.

"Greg!" she said quickly and breathlessly. "Please---Let's not-- let's not say it. Let me feel, all this summer, that it wasn't said. Let me feel that while I was living under one man's roof, and spending his money, that I didn't even THINK of another man.

It's done all the time, you say, that's true. But I HATE it.

Whether I leave Clarence, and make my own life under new conditions, and never remarry, or whether, in a year or two--but I won't think of that!" And to his surprise and concern, as she stopped short on the gra.s.sy path, the eyes that Rachael turned toward him were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. "You s-see what a baby I am becoming, Greg," she said unsteadily. "It's all your doing, I'm afraid! I haven't cried for years--loneliness and injustice and unhappiness don't make me cry! But just lately I've known what it was to dream of--of joy, Greg. And if that joy is ever really coming to us, I want to be worthy of it. I want to start RIGHT this time. I want to spend the summer quietly somewhere, thinking and reading. I'm going to give up cards and even c.o.c.ktails. You smile, Greg, but I truly am! Just for this time, I mean. And it's come to me, just lately, that I wouldn't leave Clarence if he really needed me, or if it would make him unhappy. I'm going to be different--everything SEEMS different already--"

"Don't you know why?" he said with his grave smile, as she paused.

It was enchanting to him to see the color flood her face, to see her shy eyes suddenly averted. She did not answer, and they walked slowly toward the clubhouse steps.

"There's only one thing more to say," Warren Gregory said, arresting her for one more moment. "It's this: as soon as you're free, I'm coming for you. You may not have made up your mind by that time, Rachael. My mind will never change."

Shaken beyond all control by his tone, Rachael did not even raise her eyes. Her flush died away, leaving her face pale. He saw her breast rise on a quick breath.

"Will you write me?" he asked, after a moment.

"Oh, yes, Greg!" she answered quickly, in a voice hardly above a whisper. "When do you go?"

"On Wednesday--a week from to-day, in fact. And that reminds me, Billy says you are coming into town early next week?"

"Monday, probably." Rachael was coming back to the normal. "She needs things for camp, and I've got a little shopping to do."