The Heart of Rachael
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER VI
Two weeks later the news of the Breckenridge divorce burst like a bomb in the
social sky. Immediately pictures of the lovely wife, of Clarence, of the town
house and the country house began to flood the evening papers, and even the
morning journals found room for a column or two of the affair on inside pages.
Clarence was tracked to his mountain retreat, and as much as possible was made
of his refusal to be interviewed. Mrs. Breckenridge was nowhere to be found.
The cold wind of publicity could not indeed reach her in the quiet lanes and
along the sandy shore of Quaker Bridge. Rachael, known to everyone but her kind
old landlady as "Mrs. Prescott," could even glance interestedly at the papers
now and then. Her identity, in three long and peaceful months, was not even so
much as suspected. She did not mind the plain country table, the inconvenient
old farmhouse; she loved her new solitude. Unquestioned, she dreamed through the
idle days, reading, thinking, sleeping like a child. She spent long hours on the
seashore watching the lazy, punctual flow and tumble of the waves that were
never hurried, never delayed; her eyes followed the flashing wings of the gulls,
the even, steady upward beat of strong pinions, the downward drifting through
blue air that was of all motion the most perfect.
And sometimes in those hours it seemed to Rachael that she was no more in the
great scheme of things than one of these myriad gulls, than one of the grains of
sand through which she ran her white, unringed fingers. Clarence was a dream,
Belvedere Bay was a dream; it was all a hazy, dim memory now: the cards and the
cocktails, the dancing and tennis, the powder and lip-red in hot rooms and about
glittering dinner tables. What a hurry and bustle and rush it all was — for
nothing. The only actualities were the white sand and the cool green water, and
the summer sun beating down warmly upon her bare head.
She awakened every morning in a large, bright, bare room whose three big
windows looked into rustling maple boughs. The steady rushing of surf could be
heard just beyond the maples. Sometimes a soft fog wrapped the trees and the
lawn in its pale folds, and the bell down at the lighthouse ding-donged through
the whole warm, silent morning, but more often there was sunshine, and Rachael
took her book to the beach, got into her stiff, dry bathing suit, in a small,
hot bathhouse furnished only by a plank bench and a few rusty nails, and plunged
into the delicious breakers she loved so well. Busy babies, digging on the
beach, befriended her, and she grew to love their sudden tears and more sudden
laughter, their stammered confidences, and the touch of their warm, sandy little
hands. She became an adept at pinning up their tiny bagging undergarments, and
at disentangling hat elastics from the soft hair at the back of moist little
necks. If a mother occasionally showed signs of friendliness, Rachael accepted
the overture pleasantly, but managed to wander next day to some other part of
the beach, and so evade the definite beginning of a friendship.
The warm sunshine, flavored by the salty sea, soaked into her very bones.
Everything about Quaker Bridge was bare, and worn, and clean; nothing was
crowded, or hurried, or false. Barren dunes, and white, bleaching sand,
colorless little houses facing the elm- lined main street, colorless planks
outlining the road to the water; the monotonous austerity, the pure severity of
the little ocean village was full of satisfying charm for her. If she climbed a
sandy rise beyond Mrs. Dimmick's cottage, and faced the north, she could see the
white roadway, winding down to Clark's Bar, where the ocean fretted year after
year to free the waters of the bay only twelve feet away. Beyond on the slope,
was the village known as Clark's Hills, a smother of great trees with a weather-
whipped spire and an occasional bit of roof or fence in evidence, to show the
habitation of man.
In other directions, facing east or west or south, there was nothing but the
sand, and the coarse straggling bushes that rooted in the sand, and the clear
blue dome of the sky. Rachael, whose life had been too crowded, gloried in the
honey-scented emptiness of the sand hills, the measureless, heaving surface of
the ocean, the dizzying breadth and space in which, an infinitesimal speck, she
moved.
She had sensibly taken her landlady, old Mrs. Dimmick, into her confidence,
and pleased to be part of the little intrigue, and perhaps pleased as well to
rent her two best rooms to this charming stranger, the old lady protected the
secret gallantly. It was all much more simple than Rachael had feared it would
be. Nobody questioned her, nobody indeed paid attention to her; she wandered
about in a blissful isolation as good for her tired soul as was the primitive
life she led for her tired body.
Yet every one of the idle days left its mark upon her spirit; gradually a
great many things that had seemed worth while in the old life showed their true
and petty and sordid natures now; gradually the purifying waters of solitude
washed her soul clean. She began to plan for the future — a future so different
from the crowded and hurried past!
Warren Gregory's letters came regularly, postmarked London, Paris, Rome. They
were utterly and wholly satisfying to Rachael, and they went far to make these
days the happiest in her life. Her heart would throb like a girl's when she saw,
on the little drop-leaf table in the hallway, the big square envelope addressed
in the doctor's fine hand; sometimes — again like a girl — she carried it down
to the beach before breaking the seal, thrilled with a thousand hopes, unready
to put them to the test. Yesterday's letter had said: "My dearest," — had said:
"Do you realize that I will see you in five weeks?" Could to-day's be half as
sweet?
She was never disappointed. The strong tide of his devotion for her rose
steadily through letter after letter; in August the glowing letters of July
seemed cold by contrast, in September every envelope brought her a flaming brand
to add to the fires that were beginning to blaze within her. In late September
there was an interval; and Rachael told herself that now he was on the ocean —
now he was on the ocean —
By this time the digging babies were gone, the beach was almost deserted.
Little office clerks, men and women, coming down for the two weeks of rest that
break the fifty of work, still arrived on the late train Saturday, and went away
on the last train two weeks from the following Sunday, but there were no more
dances at the one big hotel, and some of the smaller hotels were closed. The
tall, plain, attractive woman — with the three children and the baby, who drove
over from Clark's Hills every day, and, who, for all her graying hair and
sun-bleached linens, seemed to be of Rachael's own world — still brought her
shrieking and splashing trio to the beach, but she had confided to Mrs. Dimmick,
who had known her for many summers, that even her long holiday was drawing to a
close. Mrs. Dimmick brought extra blankets down from the attic, and began to
talk of seeing her daughter in California. Rachael, drinking in the glory of the
dying summer, found each day more exquisite than the last, and gratified her old
hostess by expressing her desire to spend all the rest of her life in Quaker
Bridge.
She had, indeed, come to like the villagers thoroughly; not the summer
population, for the guests at all summer hotels are alike uninteresting, but for
the quiet life that went on year in and year out in the little side streets: the
women who washed clothes and swept porches, who gardened with tow-headed babies
tumbling around them, who went on Sundays to the little bald-faced church at ten
o'clock. Rachael got into talk with them, trying to realize what it must be to
walk a hot mile for the small transaction of selling a dozen eggs for thirty
cents, to spend a long morning carefully darning an old, clean Nottingham lace
curtain that could be replaced for three dollars. She read their lives as if
they had been an absorbing book laid open for her eyes. The coming of the
Holladay baby, the decline and death of old Mrs. Bird, the narrow escape of
Sammy Tew from drowning, and the thorough old-fashioned thrashing that Mary
Trimble gave her oldest son for taking a little boy like Sammy out beyond the
"heads," — all these things sank deep into the consciousness of the new
Rachael. She liked the whitewashed cottages with their blazing geraniums and
climbing honeysuckle, and the back-door yards, with chickens fluffing in the
dust, and old men, seated on upturned old boats, smoking and whittling as they
watched the babies "while Lou gets her work caught up".
October came in on a storm, the most terrifying storm Rachael had ever seen.
Late in the afternoon of September's last golden day a wind began to rise among
the dunes, and Rachael, who, wrapped in a white wooly coat and deep in a book,
had been lying for an hour or two on the beach, was suddenly roused by a shower
of sand, and sat up to look at the sky. Clouds, low and gray, were moving
rapidly overhead, and although the tide was only making, and high water would
not be due for another hour, the waves, emerald green, swift, and capped with
white, were already touching the landmost water-mark.
Quickly getting to her feet, she started briskly for home, following the
broken line of kelp and weeds, grasses, driftwood, and cocoanut shells that
fringed the tide-mark, and rather fascinated by the sudden ominous change in sea
and sky. In the little village there was great clapping of shutters and
straining of clotheslines, distracted, bareheaded women ran about their
dooryards, doors banged, everywhere was rush and flutter.
"D'clare if don't think th' folks at Clark's Hills going to be shut of
completely," said Mrs. Dimmick, bustling about with housewifely activity, and
evidently, like all the village and like Rachael herself, a little exhilarated
by the oncoming siege.
"What will they do?" Rachael demanded, unhooking a writhing hammock from the
porch as the old woman briskly dragged the big cane rockers indoors.
"Oh, ther' wunt no hurt come t'um," Mrs. Dimmick said. "But — come an awful
mean tide, Clark's Bar is under water. They'll jest have to wait until she goes
down, that's all."
"Shell I bring up some candles from suller; we ain't got much karosene!"
Florrie, the one maid, demanded excitedly. Chess, the hired man, who was
Florrie's "steady," began to bring wood in by the armful, and fling it down by
the airtight stove that had been set up only a few days before.
The wind began to howl about the roof; trees in the dooryard rocked and
arched. Darkness fell at four o'clock, and the deafening roar of the ocean
seemed an actual menace as the night came down. Chess and Florrie, after supper,
frankly joined the family group in the sitting-room, a group composed only of
Rachael and Mrs. Dimmick and two rather terrified young stenographers from the
city.
These two did not go to bed, but Rachael went upstairs as usual at ten
o'clock, and drifted to sleep in a world of creaking, banging, and roaring. A
confusion and excited voices below stairs brought her down again rather pale, in
her long wrapper, at three. The Barwicks, mother, father, and three babies, had
left their beach cottage in the night and the storm to seek safer shelter and
the welcome sound of other voices than their own.
After that there was little sleep for anyone. Still in the roaring darkness
the clocks presently announced morning, and a neighbor's boy, breathless,
dripping in tarpaulins, was blown against the door, and burst in to say with
youthful relish that the porches of the Holcomb house were under water, and the
boardwalk washed away, and folks said that the road was all gone betwixt here
and the lighthouse. Rain was still falling in sheets, and the wind was still
high. Rachael braved it, late in the afternoon, to go out and see with her own
eyes that the surf was foaming and frothing over the deserted bandstand at the
end of the main street, and got back to the shelter of the house wet and
gasping, and with the first little twist of personal fear at her heart. Suppose
that limitless raging green wall down there rose another ten — another twenty
— feet, swept deep and roaring and resistless over little Quaker Bridge,
plunged them all for a few struggling, hopeless moments into its emerald depths,
and then washed the little loosely drifting bodies that had been men and women
far out to sea again?
What could one do? No trains came into Quaker Bridge to-day; it was
understood that there were washouts all along the line. Rachael sat in the dark,
stuffy little sitting-room with the placid Barwick baby drowsing in her lap, and
at last her face reflected the nervous uneasiness of the other women. Every time
an especially heavy rush of rain or wind struck the unsubstantial little house,
Mrs. Barwick said, "Oh, my!" in patient, hopeless terror, and the two young
women looked at each other with a quick hissing breath of fear.
The night was long with horror. There were other refugees in Mrs. Dimmick's
house now; there were in all fifteen people sitting around her little stove
listening to the wind and the ocean. The old lady herself was the most cheerful
of the group, although Rachael and one or two of the others managed an
appearance at least of calm.
"Declare," said the hostess, more than once, "dunt see what we's all thinkin'
of not to git over to Clark's Hills 'fore the bar was under water! They've got
sixty-foot elevation there!"
"I'd just as soon try to get there now," said Miss Stokes of New York
eagerly.
"There's waves eight feet high washin' over that bar," Ernest Barwick said,
and something in the simple words made little Miss Stokes look sick for a
moment.
"What's our elevation?" Rachael asked.
"'Bout — " Mr. Barwick paused. "But you can't tell nothing by that," he
contented himself with remarking after a moment's thought.
"But I never heard — I never HEARD of the sea coming right over a whole
village!" Rachael hated herself for the fear that dragged the words out, and the
white lips that spoke them.
"Neither did I!" said half a dozen voices. There was silence while the old
clock on the mantel wheezed out a lugubrious eight strokes. "LORD, how it
rains!" muttered Emily Barwick.
Nine o'clock — ten o'clock. The young women, the old woman, the maid and man
who would be married some day if they lived, the husband and wife who had been
lovers like them only a few years ago, and who now had these three little lives
to guard, all sat wrapped in their own thoughts. Rachael sat staring at the
stove's red eye, thinking, thinking, thinking. She thought of Warren Gregory;
his steamer must be in now, he must be with his mother in the old house, and
planning to see her any day. To-morrow — if there was a to-morrow — might
bring his telegram. What would his life be if he might never see her again? She
could not even leave him a note, or a word; on this eve of their meeting, were
they to be parted forever? Should she never tell him how dearly — how dearly —
she loved him? Tears came to her eyes, her heart was wrung with exquisite
sorrow.
She thought of Billy — poor little Billy — who had never had a mother, who
needed a mother so sadly, and of her own mother, dead now, and of the old blue
coat of thirteen years ago, and the rough blue hat. She thought of her
great-grandmother in the little whitewashed California cottage under the shadow
of the blue mountains, with the lilacs and marigolds in the yard. And colored by
her new great love, and by the solemn fears of this endless night, Rachael found
a tenderness in her heart for all those shadowy figures that had played a part
in her life.
At midnight there came a thundering crash on the ocean side of the house.
"Oh, God, IT'S THE SEA!" screamed Emily Barwick. They all rushed to the door
and flung it open, and in a second were out in the wild blackness of the night.
Still the roaring and howling and shrieking of the elements, still the
infuriated booming of the surf, but — thank God — no new sound. There was no
break in the flying darkness above them; the street was a running sheet of water
in the dark.
Yet strangely they all went back into the house vaguely quieted. Rachael
presently said that no matter what was going to happen, she was too cold and
tired to stay up any longer, and went upstairs to bed. Miss Stokes and Miss
McKim settled themselves in their chairs; Emily Barwick went to sleep with her
head against her husband's thin young shoulder. Somebody suggested coffee, and
there was a general move toward the kitchen.
Rachael, a little bewildered, woke in heavenly sunlight in exactly the
position she had taken when she crept into bed the night before. For a few
minutes she lay staring at the bright old homely room, and at the clock ticking
briskly toward nine.
"Dear Lord, what a thing sunshine is?" she said then slowly. No need to ask
of the storm with this celestial reassurance flooding the room. But after a few
moments she got up and went to the window. The trees, battered and torn, were
ruffling such leaves as were left them gallantly in the wind, the paths still
ran yellow water, the roadway was a muddy waste, eaves were still gurgling, and
everywhere was the drip and splash of water. But the sky was clear and blue, and
the air as soft as milk.
As eager as a child Rachael dressed and ran downstairs, and was out in the
new world. The fresh wind whipped a glorious color into her face; the whole of
sea and sky and earth seemed to be singing.
Trees were down, fences were down, autumn gardens were all a wreck; and the
ocean, when she came to the shore, was still rolling wild and high. But it was
blue now, and the pure sky above it was blue, and there was utter protection and
peace in the sunny air. Landmarks all along the shore were washed away, and
beyond the first line of dunes were pools left by the great tide, scummy and
sinking fast into the sand, to leave only a fringe of bubbles behind. Minor
wreckages of all sorts lay scattered all along the beach: poles and ropes, boxes
and barrels.
Rachael walked on and on, breathing deep, swept out of herself by the fresh
glory of the singing morning. Presently she would go back, and there would be
Warren's letter, or his telegram, or perhaps himself, and then their golden days
would begin — their happy time! But even Warren to-day could not intrude upon
her mood of utter gratitude and joy in just living — just being young and alive
in a world that could hold such a sea and such a sky.
A full mile from the village, along the ocean shore, a stream came down from
under a cliff, a stream, as Rachael and investigating children had often proved
to their own satisfaction, that rose in a small but eminently satisfactory cave.
The storm had washed several great smooth logs of driftwood into the cave, and
beyond them to-day there was such a gurgling and churning going on that Rachael,
eager not to miss any effect of the storm, stepped cautiously inside.
The augmented little river was three times its usual size, and was further
made unmanageable by the impeding logs swept in by the high tide. Straw and
weeds and rubbish of every description choked its course, and little foaming
currents and backwaters almost filled the cave with their bubbling and swirling.
Rachael, with a few casual pushes of a sturdy little shoe, accomplished such
surprising results in freeing and directing the stream that she fell upon it in
sudden serious earnest, grasping a long pole the better to push obstructing
matters aside, and growing rosy and breathless over her self-imposed and
senseless undertaking.
She had just loosened a whole tangle of wreckage, and had straightened
herself up with a long, triumphant "Ah-h!" of relief, as the current rushed it
away, when a shadow fell over the mouth of the cave. Looking about in quick,
instinctive fear, she saw Warren Gregory smiling at her.
For only one second she hesitated, all girlhood's radiant shyness in her
face. Then she was in his arms, and clinging to him, and for a few minutes they
did not speak, eyes and lips together in the wild rapture of meeting.
"Oh, Greg — Greg — Greg!" Rachael laughed and cried and sang the words
together. "When did you come, and how did you get here? Tell me — tell me all
about it!" But before he could begin to answer her their eager joy carried them
both far away from all the conversational landmarks, and again they had breath
only for monosyllables, instinct only to cling to each other.
"My girl, my own girl!" Warren Gregory said. "Oh, how I've missed you — and
you're more beautiful than ever — did you know it? More beautiful even than I
remembered you to be, and that was beautiful enough!"
"Oh, hush!" she said, laughing, her fingers over the mouth that praised her,
his arm still holding her tight.
"I'll never hush again, my darling! Never, never in all the years we spend
together! I am going to tell you a hundred times a day that you are the most
beautiful, and the dearest — Oh, Rachael, Rachael, shall I tell you something?
It's October! Do you know what that means?"
"Yes, I suppose I do!" She laughed, and colored exquisitely, drawing herself
back the length of their linked arms.
"Do you know what you're going to BE in about thirty-six hours?"
"Now — you embarrass me! Was — was anything settled?"
"Shall you like being Mrs. Gregory?"
"Greg — " Tears came to her eyes. "You don't know how much!" she said in a
whisper.
They sat down on a great log, washed silver white with long years of riding
unguided through the seas, and all the wonderful world of blue sky and white
sand might have been made for them. Rachael's hand lay in her lover's, her
glorious eyes rarely left his face. Browned by his summer of travel, she found
him better than ever to look upon; hungry after these waiting months, every tone
of his voice held for her a separate delight.
"Did you ever dream of happiness like this, Rachael?"
"Never — never in my wildest flights. Not even in the past few months!"
"What — didn't trust me?"
"No, not that. But I've been rebuilding, body and soul. I didn't think of the
future or the past. It was all present."
"With me," he said, "it was all future. I've been counting the days. I've not
done that since I was at school! Rachael, do you remember our talk the night
after the Berry Stokes' dinner?"
"Do I remember it?"
"Ah, my dear, if anyone had said that night that in six months we would be
sitting here, and that you would have promised yourself to me! You don't know
what my wife is going to mean to me, my dearest. I can't believe it yet!"
"It is going to mean everything in life to me," she said seriously. "I mean
to be the best wife a man ever had. If loving counts — "
"Do you mean that?" he said eagerly. "Say it — do you mean that you love
me?"
"Love you?" She stood up, pressing both hands over her heart as if there were
real pain there. For a few paces she walked away from him, and, as he followed
her, she turned upon him the extraordinary beauty of her face transfigured with
strong emotion.
"Greg," she said quietly, "I didn't know there was such love! I've heard it
called fire and pain and restlessness, but this thing is ME! It is burning in me
like flame, it is consuming me. To be with you" — she caught his wrist with one
hand, and with her free hand pointed out across the smiling ocean — "to be with
you and KNOW you were mine, I could walk straight out into that water, and end
it all, and be glad — glad — glad of the chance! I loved you yesterday, but
what is this to-day, when you have kissed me, and held me in your arms!" Her
voice broke on something like a sob, but her eyes were smiling. "All my life
I've been asleep," said Rachael. "I'm awake now — I'm awake now! I begin to
realize how helpless one is — to realize what I should have done if you hadn't
come — "
"My darling," Gregory said, his arms about her "what else — feeling as we
feel — could I have done?"
Held in his embrace, she rested her hands upon his shoulders, and looked
wistfully into his eyes.
"It is as WE feel, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, it isn't only me? You — you
love me?"
Looking down at her dropped, velvety lashes, feeling the warm strong beat of
her heart against his, holding close as he did all her glowing and fragrant
beauty, Warren Gregory felt it the most exquisite moment of his life. Her youth,
her history, her wonderful poise and sureness so intoxicatingly linked with all
a girl's unexpected shyness and adorable uncertainties, all these combined to
enthrall the man who had admired her for many years and loved her for more than
one.
"Love you?" he asked, claiming again the lips she yielded with such a
delicious widening of her eyes and quickening of breath.
"You see, Warren," she said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give myself to you
with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly have. I don't want to coquette
and delay. I want to be your wife, and to learn your faults, and have you learn
mine, and settle down into harness — one year, five years — ten years married!
Oh, you don't know how I LONG to be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit being
nearly forty. Forty — doesn't it sound SETTLED, and sedate — and that's what I
want. I — I shall love getting gray, and feeling that you and I don't care so
much about going places, don't you know? We'll like better just being home
together, won't we? We're older than most people now, aren't we?"
He laughed aloud at the bright face so enchantingly young in its restored
beauty. He had expected to find her charming, but in this new phase of
girlishness, of happiness, she was a thousand times more charming than he had
dreamed. It was hard to believe that this eager girl in a striped blue and
yellow and purple skirt, and rough white crash hat, was the bored, the remote,
the much-feared Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge. Something free and sweet and
virginal had come back to her, or been born in her. She was like no phase of the
many phases in which he had known her; she was a Rachael who had never known the
sordid, the disillusioning side of life. Even her seriousness had the confident,
eager quality of youth, and her gayety was as pure as a child's. She had cast
off the old sophistication, the old recklessness of speech; she was not even
interested in the old associates. The world for her was all in him and their
love for each other, and she walked back to Quaker Bridge, at his side, too
wholly swept away from all self- consciousness to know or to care that they were
at once the target for all eyes.
A wonderful day followed, many wonderful days. Doctor Gregory's great touring
car and his livened man were at Mrs. Dimmick's door when they got back, an
incongruous note in little Quaker Bridge, still gasping from the great storm.
"Your car?" Rachael said. "You drove down?"
"Yesterday. I put up at Valentine's — George Valentine's, you know, at
Clark's Hills."
"Oh, that's my nice lady — gray haired, and with three children?" Rachael
said eagerly. "Do you know her?"
"Know her? Valentine is my closest associate. They meet us in town to-morrow:
he's to be best man. You'll have to have them to dinner once a month for the
rest of your life!"
The picture brought her happy color, the shy look he loved.
"I'm glad, Greg. I like her immensely!"
They were at the car; she must flush again at the chauffeur's greeting,
finding a certain grave significance, a certain acceptance, in his manner.
"Wife and baby well, Martin?"
"Very well, thank you, Mrs. Breckenridge."
"Still in Belvedere Hills?"
"Well, just at present, yes, Madam."
"You see, I am looking for suitable quarters for all hands," Doctor Gregory
said, his laugh drowning hers, his eyes feasting on her delicious confusion. She
was aware that feminine eyes from the house were watching her. Presently she had
kissed Mrs. Dimmick good-bye. Warren had put his man in the tonneau; he would
take the wheel himself for the three hours' run into town.
"Good-bye, my dear!" said the old lady, adding with an innocent vacuity of
manner quite characteristic of Quaker Bridge. "Let me know when the weddin's
goin' to be!"
"I'll let you know right now," said Doctor Gregory, who, gloved and coated,
was bustling about the car, deep in the mysterious rites incidental to starting.
"It's going to be to-morrow!"
"Good grief!" exclaimed Mrs. Dimmick delightedly. "Well," she added, "folks
down here think you've got an awfully pretty bride!"
"I'm glad she's up to the standard down here," Warren Gregory observed.
"Nobody seems to think much of her looks up in the city!"
Rachael laughed and leaned from her place beside the driver to kiss the old
lady again and to wave a general good-bye to Florrie and Chess and the group on
the porch. As smoothly as if she were launched in air the great car sprang into
motion; the storm-blown cottages, the battered dooryards, the great shabby trees
over the little post office all swept by. They passed the turning that led to
Clark's Bar, and a weather-worn sign-post that read "Quaker Bridge, 1 mile." It
was not a dream, it was all wonderfully true: this was Greg beside her, and they
were going to be married!
Rachael settled back against the deep, soft cushions in utter content. To be
flying through the soft Indian summer sunshine, alone with Greg, to actually
touch his big shoulder with her own, to command his interest, his laughter, his
tenderness, at will — after these lonely months it was a memorable and an
enchanting experience. Their talk drifted about uncontrolled, as talk after long
silence must: now it was a waiter on the ocean liner of whom Gregory spoke, or
perhaps the story of a small child's rescue from the waves, from Rachael. They
spoke of the roads, splendidly hard and clean after the rain, and of the
villages through which they rushed.
But over their late luncheon, in a roadside inn, the talk fell into deeper
grooves, their letters, their loneliness, and their new plans, and when the car
at last reached the traffic of the big bridge, and Rachael caught her first
glimpse of the city under its thousand smoking chimneys, there had entered into
their relationship a new sacred element, something infinitely tender and almost
sad, a dependence upon each other, a oneness in which Rachael could get a
foretaste of the exquisite communion so soon to be.
They were spinning up the avenue, through a city humming with the first
reviving breath of winter. They were at the great hotel, and Rachael was
laughing in Elinor Vanderwall's embrace. The linen shop, the milliner, a dinner
absurdly happy, and one of the new plays — a sunshiny morning when she and
Elinor breakfasted in their rooms, and opened box after box of gowns and hats —
the hours fled by like a dream.
"Nervous, Rachael?" asked Miss Vanderwall of the vision that looked out from
Rachael's mirror.
"Not a bit!" the wife-to-be answered, feeling as she said it that her hands,
busy with long gloves, were shaking, and her knees almost unready to support
her.
"It must be wonderful to marry a man like Greg," said the bridesmaid
thoughtfully. "He simply IS everything and HAS everything — "
"Ah, Elinor, it's wonderful to marry the man you love!" Rachael turned from
the mirror, her blue eyes misted with tears under the brim of her wedding hat.
"YOU!" Elinor smiled. "That I should live to see it! You — in love!"
"And unashamed, and proud of it!" Rachael said with a tremulous laugh. "Are
you all ready? Shall we go down?" She turned at the door and put one arm about
her friend. "Kiss me, Elinor, and wish me joy," said she.
"I don't have to!" asserted Miss Vanderwall, with a hearty kiss nevertheless,
"for it will be your own fault entirely if there's ever the littlest, teeniest
cloud in the sky!"