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Title: The long way

Author: Mary Imlay Taylor

Release date: June 19, 2024 [eBook #73867]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Little, Brown, & Company, 1913

Credits: David E. Brown, D A Alexander, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG WAY ***






THE LONG WAY




  THE LONG WAY

  BY
  MARY IMLAY TAYLOR

  AUTHOR OF "CALEB TRENCH," "THE IMPERSONATOR,"
  "THE REAPING," ETC.

  BOSTON
  LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
  1913




  _Copyright, 1913_,
  By Little, Brown, and Company.

  _All rights reserved_

  Published, May, 1913

  THE COLONIAL PRESS
  C.H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.




  TO

  LADY HELEN




THE LONG WAY




I


Rachel Leven stopped on the landing and laid both hands on the
banister. She was experiencing a new and curious sensation of
unreality, and her impulse to touch something solid was rather to
assure herself that her own personality had survived unchanged, than
from any physical need of support.

The contact of her sensitive fingers with the polished wood was almost
a relief; it convinced her that her sensations, so vague that they were
like a nebulous mist before her spiritual vision, were not actualities
at all, but only a fleeting deflection from a commonplace mood, that
the uneasiness she had felt all the evening was a mere figment of her
imagination, a shadowy specter which had no place in this charming
_mise-en-scène_. For she was poignantly aware of the heavy perfume
of flowers, of the vivid gleam of electric lights that hung, like
huge, quivering dewdrops, in the midst of the tall fern fronds and
giant palms of the conservatory; while through the vista of greenery,
festooned with scarlet blooms of a climbing passion flower, she caught
a glimpse of the flashing wings of Johnstone Astry's parrots.

Looking at this exotic scene, Rachel told herself that it was no wonder
that her sensations were at once so varied and so unreal, since the
very air she breathed was fevered and artificial. The conservatory, the
imposing dining-room, the spacious hall, with its Doric columns, and
the long, really beautiful drawing-rooms, that opened on the terrace,
were all perfect in their way, yet none of them appealed to her but the
last. The paved terrace, with its white balustrade and its wide and
dignified prospect of the distant city and the classic, faintly bluish
dome of the Capitol, brought her a feeling of pleasure, the freedom of
space and the larger purposes of life; especially at sunset, when the
white shaft of the Monument pierced the pink mist like the uplifted
finger of a prostrate giant, admonishing the world.

But the luxury of the beautiful Georgian house, flagrantly extravagant
and yet perfectly harmonious in detail, was precisely the setting
for Rachel's sister, Eva Astry; some said--for rumor in Washington
is pungent--that she had married the house with Johnstone Astry and
the parrots thrown in. At least it interpreted her as houses seldom
interpret their owners, though it did not even suggest Astry the
student, the traveler, the millionaire. Yet the lavishness of the
place, its aimless, beautiful extravagance, a country house just
outside of Washington that was more costly than two town houses would
have been, furnished Rachel with an explanation of her impressions.
She argued to herself that it must be this very element of financial
exuberance, this thoughtless expenditure of millions, that seemed so
unreal to her; for the Levens had not been wealthy, only comfortably
off, and Eva had amazed a limited but critical circle by her successful
marriage. She had--to use the words of her paternal aunt, Drusilla
Leven--landed a millionaire "as easily as old Josh Sterrit used to land
carp." Rachel, more intimately acquainted with Eva's mental attitude
at the time of her _coup d'état_, had remained determinedly silent.
Even now she did not admit to herself her own feeling in regard to her
sister's marriage. From her vantage-ground on the landing, appraising
the beauty and luxury of her surroundings, she was still keenly aware
that the price would have been too heavy for her to pay. Shut in, as
she was to-night, by the warm and perfumed atmosphere of the house,
oppressed by the littleness of that curiously complex social world that
made up her sister's life, Rachel felt more than her usual repugnance
to her task of entertaining the Astrys' guests.

She had stolen up-stairs after dinner for a little respite, but not
even a convenient headache furnished a plausible excuse for a continued
absence. As she descended, therefore, she heard the continuous ripple
of talk, like a shallow but persistent fountain, and knew that Mrs.
Billop was still entertaining little Mrs. Van Citters. The two were
seated on a sofa inconveniently near the table where their host,
Johnstone Astry, was playing bridge with Dr. Macclesfield, young
Mrs. Prynne, the new and pretty widow, and Paul Van Citters, who had
inherited a Knickerbocker descent that was too long for his short body,
and a social responsibility that rested heavily on his comfortable,
commonplace soul.

As Rachel entered, her brother-in-law glanced up from his cards,
nodding to her with the casual manner of their relationship, while
the others remained apparently absorbed in the fact that the stakes
were five a point. Mrs. Billop went on giving Mrs. Van Citters classic
advice about the latter's sixteen-months' baby, but Rachel, avoiding
the eddies of this conversation, went over to the fire. For, although
it was spring and the blackberries in blossom, a sudden chill in the
night air had made a few logs desirable in the great fireplace. Rachel
stood with one foot on the low fender, observing the players, her soft
gown enfolding her slender figure as closely as the calyx of a flower;
for she had that indefinable gift that is called "style" and, without
great beauty, possessed an elusive and subtle charm. She stretched out
one slender hand toward the blaze, her face slightly averted, and the
shadowed beauty of her gray eyes eclipsed by their own thick-set, dark
lashes.

Astry, with his head bent over his cards, was secretly irritated; he
knew that the scene diverted Rachel, that her attitude was distinctly
that of a spectator, and he played with sudden indifference.

"Diamonds!" said Van Citters disgustedly. "Astry, why the deuce didn't
you make it hearts?"

Astry rose. "Rachel, come here and take my hand; Van Citters wants my
blood. I never make hearts trumps," he added, with his cool smile; "I'm
superstitious."

"Nonsense!" said Van Citters, "we might have got four tricks with our
eyes shut. Miss Leven, I'm a beastly player when I'm nervous, and
Astry's on my nerves."

"My dear Paul," retorted Astry, "you've no more nerves than a Dutch
clock; all you want is winding up and you'll tick till midnight. I'll
send in some whiskey and soda. Feel his pulse, Macclesfield."

The old doctor, who was sorting his cards, looked over his spectacles.
"Put out your tongue, Paul," he said dryly.

"Is Paul in trouble again?" asked Mrs. Van Citters, suddenly catching
the drift of the talk.

"He's lost fifty dollars, Pamela," laughed Astry.

"We'll go to the poorhouse," she lamented.

"What was it you said about my long suit, Paul?" asked Mrs. Prynne
sweetly, suddenly regarding him with her softest smile.

"He didn't advise you to tell everybody what you had in your hand,"
snapped Dr. Macclesfield; "it's Rachel's lead."

"I'll tell you all about that long suit when Dr. Macclesfield's gone to
bed, Lottie," said Van Citters coolly; "go on, Rachel."

Dr. Macclesfield grunted, looking over his spectacles at Rachel's lead.

She put down the card mechanically, her eyes unconsciously following
Astry's lean and striking figure as he moved deliberately down the long
rooms and passed out into the hall, where he stood a moment speaking
to Craggs, his confidential valet. Rachel could not see his face, but
she had a curious feeling that he was conscious of her presence at
the card-table. Her perceptions were as delicate and feeler-like as
the tendrils of some air-plant and they made her aware of a subtle
undercurrent, and she recalled that moment on the staircase when she
had been glad to feel the solid banister under her hands.

The game went on, Mrs. Prynne losing prettily and appealing to Van
Citters, Dr. Macclesfield irritable and exacting, as a good player
is under such conditions, while Rachel tried to give her undivided
attention to the hand, her seriousness almost adjusting the balance
of the pretty widow's frivolity. The four players began to be more
silent, yet, at the most critical moments, Mrs. Billop's voice broke in
with maternal advice to Pamela.

"When Sidney was teething, I gave him catnip tea," she said, with a
finality that disposed of the young mother's faintly suggested remedies.

Mrs. Prynne, having led the wrong card, was plunged into misery by Dr.
Macclesfield's scowl, while Rachel, who was now playing dummy, laid
her cards down on the table, but scarcely saw them. She was beginning
to wonder where Eva was, and she was aware that Dr. Macclesfield was
looking over her shoulder into the conservatory. The old man's shaggy
brows were bent and he was playing skilfully, scorning Mrs. Prynne.
Rachel stirred uneasily in her chair and glanced down unconsciously at
her own capable white hands as they lay idle in her lap. She felt a
keen and entirely impossible longing to look behind her and she heard
distinctly the distant click of billiard balls.

"Never use pins, sew them on," broke in Mrs. Billop's voice
impressively; "pins are dangerous. When Sidney was only two months
old--"

"Good Lord, why didn't he die?" murmured Dr. Macclesfield, with feeling.

It was then that Eva Astry came through the conservatory with Belhaven
and they appeared quietly at the threshold of the drawing-room. Eva,
who was really lovely, small, dimpled, and blond, was gowned in black
lace, and she had broken off a spray of scarlet passion flowers, which
she held trailing against her black draperies. The whiteness of her
brow and neck was almost dazzling, and her eyes were deeply violet with
a caressing expression that won many hearts. This expression was the
very acme of achievement; art, not emotion, had crystallized it, until
people always found in it precisely what they were looking for, which
is the secret of much personal success.

She walked across the room and put one arm around Rachel's neck, for
she was fond of contrasting her intensely blond beauty with Rachel's
ivory tints and shadowy brown hair.

"Where's Johnstone?" she asked carelessly, interrupting the game
without a twinge of conscience.

"I took his hand," Rachel replied quietly; "he went into the
conservatory."

She was conscious that the soft arm on her shoulder stirred a little as
she spoke, but her sister's laugh came readily.

"We thought it was the parrot, Jim."

Belhaven nodded, watching Macclesfield play, and Rachel noticed how
worn the man looked. In the last month he had aged perceptibly; he had
seemed peculiarly boyish, but there was nothing boyish now in the pale
cheek and haggard eyes. Rachel frowned; why did Eva play with men as a
cat plays with mice? She had apparently no deep feeling; she could skim
safely on the surface and even dip into dangerous shallows without so
much as moistening her delicate finger-tips, yet she could produce a
commotion in the pool quite out of proportion with her endeavors.

Rachel rose. "Won't you take my hand?" she said to Belhaven, "I'm
tired."

Dr. Macclesfield gave her a keen professional glance.

"Oh, no one can play any more," interposed Eva lightly. "I've sent for
refreshments and we're going to have conversation. Where are Sidney
and Count Massena and Colonel Sedley?" she added, going toward the
billiard-room.

As she pushed aside the portières and looked into the long narrow
room, she smiled a little at the picture that the three men made,
for Colonel Sedley was playing with the young _Chargé d'Affaires_ of
the Italian Embassy, while Sidney Billop stood looking on with that
vacant expression that Astry called his "frog stare." Count Massena,
graceful, olive-tinted, and astute, used his cue with an easy grace
and finish that might have been called diplomatic, while Sedley, red
and obviously short of breath, plunged at his ball with more zeal than
accuracy. Their hostess regarded them a moment unperceived and then she
allowed her presence to interrupt the game at precisely the moment when
they would all be most likely to observe the beauty of her delicate,
black-robed figure against the crimson draperies of the door.

However, at that very moment, there was the stir of rising from the
card-table and Dr. Macclesfield inadvertently stepped on Mrs. Prynne's
skirt. She sweetly accepted his apologies, looking at him with a
confiding smile that seemed to wreathe her mutilated gown in the roses
of poetical oblivion, although it was a recent arrival from Paris.

Mrs. Billop raised her lorgnon and studied Mrs. Prynne's porcelain
beauty with an impartial stare. Then she bent confidentially toward
Rachel.

"My dear," she whispered, "have you heard? She's engaged to John
Charter."

Rachel turned slowly toward her. "Who's engaged to--Mr. Charter?"

"Lottie Prynne; it isn't to be announced until his return from the
Philippines; she told me so herself."

A footman was placing the silver-collared decanters on the table by
the fire, while Van Citters had drawn up a chair and was telling Mrs.
Prynne's fortune with cards. She was dressed in pale blue and her
pretty face was bloomingly childlike; she rested one white elbow on
the table and nestled her round chin in her upturned, pink palm, her
hair showing exquisite blond tints except where it grew out dark at
the roots. She looked so pretty and neat in her blue gown that she
reminded you of those dear little, shallow, blue and white saucepans
that are so useful to mix sweeties in, only she would have described
herself as the "sweetie," had she been asked to interpret the analogy.
Van Citters thought her "jolly pretty" and he rather liked to flirt
with her when Pamela had been trying; not that this diversion made
Pamela more amiable, but it was a counter-irritant.

Meanwhile Johnstone Astry came back with Colonel Sedley, whom Eva had
previously rescued from Sidney Billop. The colonel was a fresh-faced
man of fifty, whose increasing girth had ruined a dapper figure. He
liked the open-air life in the country, but could not afford to keep
horses and hounds as Astry did, so he visited Astry. Sidney Billop had
transferred his attentions to Eva, and Eva, regretting her generosity
to Sedley, was painfully aware that his pale hair was parted crooked
and his pale eyes were more watery than usual. His head was so big and
round and he tapered so abruptly toward the feet that in early life
he had been called, by a small but appreciative circle of friends,
"the Tadpole." Sidney was the only son of a fond and admiring mother,
and Dr. Macclesfield had once remarked that a merciful Providence had
withheld a duplicate. Sidney was the amazing result of an anxious
maternal supervision that had engulfed him, like a poultice, from
his cradle to his final exit from college, where he had been a kind
of mental and moral sponge, absorbing only bad habits and small beer.
He kept laughing incessantly now, with a succulent gurgle, at the
interruptions of Count Massena, who had come over to help Eva out of
her dilemma. But this triangular scene was completely disrupted by
Mrs. Van Citters. She had been nibbling a piece of cake when a sudden
thought diverted her from her peaceful occupation.

"Does any one know what became of the boy who was hurt so seriously by
Eva's motor the other day?" she asked abruptly.

She had struck a discordant note and there was a slight awkward pause,
of the kind which usually occurs when some one drops a piece of bread
butter-side down.

"Rachel sent him to the hospital," replied Astry, with a smiling glance
at his sister-in-law. "Rachel is a society for regulating the universe
at her own expense."

Rachel looked up quickly. "I believe you paid half, Johnstone."

Eva laughed. "If Rachel asked Johnstone for my head on a charger she'd
get it," she mocked. "I never worry about details; Rachel settles us
all."

"But I thought you were in the motor," persisted Pamela.

"I was," said Eva, with a shudder, "but do you suppose I want to
remember it? I couldn't help it; it was abominable. I hate pain, I hate
to see suffering! Rachel loves to take care of sick people; isn't it
fortunate?"

"It is," said Dr. Macclesfield. "I reckon the Levite hated to see
suffering too," he added to himself, pouring a little more wine into
his glass.

The desultory talk went on and Rachel kept her place, wondering a
little why she joined in so easily, but she looked up at the clock more
than once, convinced that it must be wrong, that the hands crawled
toward the ensuing hour to-night at a snail's pace. For she had been
trying to collect her thoughts, to force herself to accept the naked
fact that seemed now, at the first shock, to be too amazing for belief.
All through the trivialities of the discussion going on around her,
Mrs. Billop's extraordinary assertion that Charter was to marry Mrs.
Prynne ran like a strong, black thread in a gossamer woof, and that
previous moment of unreality, when she had snatched at a material
object for reassurance seemed about to repeat itself, only her feeling
now was even more confused. She had received a blow that had affected
her as keenly as the stab of a rapier, and the only clear perception
which survived was the necessity to conceal the wound.

It cost her almost a physical effort to go across the room and lift one
of the decanters to pour out a little wine, and she was shocked to find
her hand so unsteady that she spilt a few drops on the table without
pouring any into the glass.

Belhaven, who was standing near, turned and came to her aid. As he took
the decanter, their fingers touched and she looked up into his eyes
with an involuntary start of surprise.

"What is it?" she exclaimed, in a low tone.

A slight color went up to his hair. "Is anything the matter? Were you
listening to Astry's parrot? It's screaming like a banshee."

She took the glass mechanically, shaking her head with a smile, and at
that moment the parrot began to shriek in the conservatory.

"Eva, Eva!" it called.

The voice was so human and so shrill that the group about the
card-table looked up startled.

"By godfrey, I thought it was fire!" said Dr. Macclesfield.

Young Mrs. Astry rose from her chair. "I hate parrots," she said, so
abruptly that Sidney Billop dropped his glass.

Astry smiled. "I like them," he retorted. "Sidney, you'll step on the
glass if you wobble so."

"Eva," shrieked the parrot, coming nearer and then, with discordant
laughter: "you're a liar!"

Eva looked over her shoulder. "_Merci du compliment_," she mocked. "How
charming! Johnstone, do get another parrot."




II


It was midnight when Rachel went up-stairs to her own room and closed
the door. She had dispensed with the attendance of her maid; she rarely
let old Bantry, who had loved and tended her from babyhood, sit up
late to wait on her, for Rachel was always thoughtful for others and
had that natural sweetness of temperament which makes courtesy toward
an inferior as much a matter of necessity as of inclination. She
stood alone, therefore, in the dark room, looking out across the trim
lawns, past the tall, Lombardy poplars and the tennis-court, to the
distant city that, submerged as it was in night, was set with lines
and cross-lines of vivid lights, as though arched and threaded and
interwoven with a network of fallen stars.

Rachel went over to the window and, letting her hands rest lightly on
the wide sill, looked out at a scene that seemed strangely unfamiliar.
Even her recollections of the lovely and intimate prospect were
suddenly disrupted and vague. The shock that had rudely disturbed her
dream must have altered the outlines of the landscape and darkened
the lovely profile of the Virginia hills. She was again conscious
of the curious fancy that had submerged her world, with its wealth,
its luxury, its inconsequence, in the mists of unreality, and to her
fevered vision the scene before her began to assume a shadowy and
impalpable aspect, while the lights of the distant city receded farther
and farther into the night.

Aware that these whimsical imaginings were diverting her from the
actual conflict of the moment, she strove to put them aside, to look
at the problem before her with a clarified vision, but the effort was
vain. The one force that was needful to rouse her lay within, and was
as yet uncalled for and unappreciated,--that innate impulse which is
called pride, an inherited spiritual force that had always enabled the
women, as well as the men, of her family to meet the calamities of life
with a decent courage, sufficient, in fact, as far as the women were
concerned, to deceive the eyes of the world. And if the men had not
deceived it, it was because there had been no need to deceive, since
there are some troubles that a man may bear more openly than a woman
and remain an object of sympathy, rather than ridicule, because he
has worn his heart upon his sleeve. Rachel felt the sting of it even
now, but, in this first moment of disillusionment, she seemed to need
the abandonment, the luxury of grief. She could not, as yet, adjust
her mind to this new aspect of her life; it struggled back to the
recurrent thought of John Charter's last words to her. There had been
no thought of finality between them. She had felt that he loved her,
and the sudden substitution of Lottie Prynne was incredible. If he had
ever loved her, he could not love Lottie; there was nothing analogous
about them. Rachel rebelled against the suggestion of a comparison and
her heart clamored, too, to be happy; she wanted happiness as keenly as
a child.

She stretched out both arms with an involuntary gesture and then,
feeling her helplessness, the futility of her rebellion, she hid her
face in her hands. The whole world, splendid in the star-light, was
as empty as a silver goblet. The wine had run out into the sand, and
the cold brim of the empty cup pressed chill against her shrinking
lips. She was brave but her heart sank and unshed tears burned in her
eyes. She felt her helplessness, too, even while her soul cried out
against the narrow bounds of a convention that enforced a hateful
silence. She must suffer him to destroy this beautiful illusion, to
murder it, without even a protest or a sign. Their understanding had
been so perfect, it had clothed itself in a semblance so spiritual and
so beautiful, that she had felt there was, at yet, no expression for
it in the language of the commonplace. But it seemed that the dream
had been hers alone; Charter had never dreamed at all, and Rachel's
cheek reddened as she realized that he had been absorbed, instead, by
another vision.

It was then that she thought hard things of Mrs. Prynne and, in her
eagerness to find an excuse for the man she loved, she imagined some
underhand maneuvers on the part of the little widow, and experienced
a feeling of angry loathing for those arts, often as harmless as they
were transparent, that had equipped Mrs. Prynne for the arena. Rachel
made excuses for Charter which were accusations of her rival. She felt
that his silence at parting, when he was so suddenly ordered to the
Philippines, was caused by some obstacle, some inexplicable change in
him, and while she had been waiting and watching his progress toward
promotion, in infatuated ignorance of her peril, Mrs. Prynne had been
undermining his devotion.

Yet, in the midst of this torrential accusation of Lottie Prynne,
Rachel suddenly remembered that she was not so fully and deeply
acquainted with Charter's habit of mind as to be certain that the small
and appealing figure of the widow was not, after all, his ideal of
feminine beauty and goodness. A girl's ignorance of the masculine mind
has its moments of fearful awakening, and Rachel had seen far too much
of the world not to know that the exterior appeal is more likely to
reach the average male creature than the higher mental attitude and the
richer spiritual endowment. It was at this point that her pride began
to assert itself and she revolted at the idea that a man whom she had
loved could prefer Lottie Prynne.

Rachel was human, and she turned from the window again, with an
impotent gesture of anger and despair, and began to walk to and fro,
once in a while covering her face with her hands. She was hurt and
angry and, most of all, ashamed. The wound was new and she did not yet
know how deeply it might hurt, but she must hide it, get away from
it; and she paced with restless feet, fighting her battle alone. That
power within her, whether pride or something deeper and nobler, was
beginning to assert itself, to show her new and hitherto unsuspected
resources of strength and endurance. She had reeled before the shock,
stood dizzy, as it were, on the edge of a moral precipice, but she had
kept her foothold with an intuitive instinct of self-preservation, and
now, slowly but surely, she would retreat from the dangerous vicinity,
she would safeguard herself from betrayal. As the feeling of giddiness
passed off, she put her hand to her forehead and, pushing back her soft
dusky hair, stood a moment looking at her own image in the mirror. She
had lighted only one candle on her dressing-table and the effect of the
pallid flame was to cast such vivid shadows that Rachel suddenly felt
that she was looking at the face of a stranger, for she experienced
the common sensation of surprise that the sufferer feels at the sight
of his own face after the calamity.

She drew back, almost with dismay, and was just lighting another taper
when, suddenly, there was a soft, hurried tapping at the door. At first
she thought she had been mistaken and had heard nothing; then she saw
the handle turn. She went swiftly across the room and bent her ear
to the door. It was half-past one o'clock in the morning and she had
supposed every one else in the house to be asleep.

"What is it?"

"It's I, Eva," her sister's voice breathed on the other side, "let me
in, Rachel; for God's sake, let me in!"

Thoroughly alarmed, Rachel opened the door. The hall was dark and out
of the night her sister, lovely and disheveled, almost fell into the
room. In fact Rachel caught her to keep her from falling, and Eva's
golden hair, like floss and very abundant, fell across her shoulder.

"Shut the door and lock it!" she whispered, with shaking lips.

Rachel locked it and her sister slipped out of her arms and threw
herself into an old-fashioned, chintz-covered, winged chair that had
belonged to their grandmother and was Rachel's favorite resting-place
in happier moods. Eva cowered there, hiding her face against the high
back. Her white silk kimono was covered with little pink butterflies
and her bare feet were thrust into gold embroidered sandals, while her
wonderful hair completed an alluring picture. Rachel stood looking at
her in some amazement, a strange dread tugging at her heart.

"What has happened, Eva?" she asked at last; "are you frightened, or
are you really ill or in pain?"

"I dare not tell you!"

Eva's voice was quite changed; the usual caressing tone was gone; it
was almost harsh.

"I can't imagine what you mean," said Rachel.

Eva suddenly sat up, shaking back her beautiful hair. "You could never
imagine it," she cried passionately, "you could never dream it. I've
told a horrible lie about you. Rachel, I've taken away your good name."

"You're mad, quite mad!"

"I'm not mad, I wasn't mad when I did it, but I think I'll go mad
soon!" Then she rose and fell on her knees at Rachel's feet. "Rachel,
save me--if you don't have mercy on me I'm disgraced. Johnstone has
accused me of--of wrong-doing; he believes I'm an unfaithful wife, that
I've committed the worst sins; he accuses me of everything horrible; he
says I love Belhaven too well!"

Rachel's face quivered. "Do you?" she asked faintly.

Eva burst into tears, weeping passionately, her pretty head bowed so
low that it wrung Rachel's heart to see her humiliation.

"Do you love him, Eva?" she asked again, very low. "I know he loves
you."

"With all my heart!" sobbed Eva, "and he loves me--Johnstone is cruel!"

"I don't think Johnstone cruel to want his wife to cease loving another
man! Eva, what have you done?"

Eva, still clinging to her sister, averted her face.

"Why don't you answer me?"

"Rachel, it's all too dreadful--Johnstone must have set that wretch,
Craggs, to watch me, I--I couldn't say a word to Belhaven, he followed
us about so, I--Rachel, Johnstone believes some story Craggs has told
him--"

Rachel seemed suddenly turned to stone. "You mean about you and
Belhaven? Eva, what mad indiscretion has led to this? It's past
forgiveness; how could you do it?"

"I--I never thought!" sobbed Eva, clinging closer, her blond head on
Rachel's breast.

"You should think," sternly; "you're not a child, and you know what any
evil-minded person would think. They don't know you as I know you; they
won't believe in your innocence. And Johnstone? Eva, what did you tell
him?"

Eva trembled. "He was dreadful, Rachel. I--I nearly died of fright.
He--oh, I know he'll kill Belhaven!"

"He'll do nothing of the sort; it would make for scandal. Eva, you must
prove your innocence to him. He has every right to judge you harshly;
you've deeply wronged him in your heart, you've no right to expect much
mercy. You've imperiled your good name. Eva, Eva, why will you be so
foolish? Is mere admiration worth your reputation? How few husbands
would ever forgive you! How, can you expect Johnstone to forgive you?"

"He won't, he h-hates me--I was afraid for my life! I never saw him
like that before. Rachel, I--oh, God, Rachel, I've done something
dreadful to you!"

She sank lower, clasping Rachel's knees, shaken with sobs, a picture at
once lovely and pitiful. Her sister, watching her, felt her own heart
sink lower; a shuddering premonition of evil shot through her and she
trembled.

"Eva, what is it? Tell me--"

"Rachel, I--I told him it was you and Jim; t-that I was trying to save
your reputation."

There was a silence. In that silence the thing grew monstrous.

At last it became intolerable. The only sound was Eva's weeping; her
sister did not stir, she did not seem to breathe. Eva, stricken with a
great fear, raised her head and met a look of such loathing that she
cried out, clutching at Rachel's knees again. Rachel suddenly shook
her off; she tore her skirt from Eva's detaining fingers, leaving a
fragment of the lace behind, and stood free of her.

"Don't touch me," she said, in a choking voice, "don't dare to touch
me!"

Eva cowered in a new and deeper terror. She had hardly realized the
effect of her confession; she had not measured, until now, the enormity
of her crime against her sister. Even now she did not think of Rachel,
she was thinking of herself. If Rachel felt thus, if she cast her off
and denounced her, so would Johnstone, and he would cast her off in
open disgrace. The finger of scorn would be pointed at her, at Eva,
who had always been so lovely, so courted, so beloved. She broke into
horrible weeping; her beautiful body, so exquisite in its white and
pink tints, its dimpled flesh, was shaken with agony; the soul was
in travail but it was not yet born. It was significant that, at that
moment, she did not remember Belhaven. Astry had threatened to kill
him, he was capable of killing him; men have been killed before for
such sins and misdemeanors. Later, Eva remembered Belhaven; now she
was only torn with self-pity. Rachel had dared to judge her and she
had only sought to hide herself behind Rachel, to use her for a cloak;
she did not mean to injure her so deeply. It was dreadful, but she had
never thought, she had never thought of any one but herself. Rachel was
to have been the buffer.

"Rachel," she moaned, "it will kill me--I can't face it alone, you must
help me; mother said you'd always help me in trouble!" That was Eva's
strongest card; she knew it and played it.

Rachel heard her, but did not move.

"I'm innocent, I was terribly frightened, I didn't know what to say--I
never thought--forgive me, Rachel!"

Rachel did not speak.

"I knew he'd kill Belhaven, I saw it in his face, I--" Eva's wild sobs
grew fainter; she was terribly frightened now--"Rachel, if you don't
save me, I'm lost! Johnstone hates me, he'll disgrace me, he'll say
that I'm--I'm guilty, he'll tell the whole world. Rachel, Rachel, I'm
not very well, I--I will die!"

"It would be best to die!" said Rachel wildly, then she broke down, she
stretched out her quivering hands. "Eva, Eva, it can't be true, you
didn't do it--I'm dreaming--say that I'm dreaming!" she implored her.

"Oh, Rachel, can't you forgive me? I didn't know what I said!"

"Oh, how could you?" cried Rachel passionately; horror and humiliation
swept over her, wave upon wave; she felt all the agony of Eva's
treachery, she suffered as Eva could not suffer.

"I didn't mean to make him think you'd done wrong; I only meant that
you and Belhaven had been foolish, thoughtless. It was Johnstone who
thought the evil; he has a bad mind, he said at once that he'd make
Belhaven marry you."

"But I won't marry Belhaven."

"Then he'll kill him!" Eva rose and stood, clutching at the chintz
winged chair; she was very beautiful, very childlike. Such women often
are; these shallow souls sometimes have only enough soil for weeds, and
weeds grow mightily.

Rachel steadied herself; she began to realize at last that this honor
must be true. "I'm not concerned for Belhaven, I'm concerned for my own
good name. I never imagined that my own sister would slander me."

Eva turned and held out both her beautiful arms pleadingly. Her beauty
had never failed of its appeal; would it fail now in its appeal to the
sister who loved her?

"I was crazed with grief, I never thought, I hadn't time, I spoke in a
moment of agony. Johnstone wouldn't believe what I said. I thought he
was going to kill me--I was afraid for my life, I made wild excuses,
I scarcely knew what I said and your name slipped out. In an instant
he seized upon it--forgive me!" She went nearer and laid a hand upon
Rachel's arm, then, as Rachel did not repulse her, she threw both arms
around her neck. "I'll bear it all!" she sobbed, "I'll let him disgrace
me; I'll see Belhaven die--I'll die myself, but I can't do it without
your forgiveness!"

Rachel did not repulse her; all her life she had shielded Eva, watched
over her; she could not quite shake off the fetters of a habit fixed as
the seven hills of Rome. Eva clung closer.

"He'll kill Belhaven, he'll shoot him down and be tried for murder;
and I--oh, God!" she laid her head on Rachel's shoulder and wept
passionately, "I wish I could die!"

Rachel looked down at the prone, golden head with a shudder of anguish;
she remembered her mother's last words to her, when she had extracted
a promise from Rachel to take care of her younger sister. She said
that Eva was tender and helpless and easily led; she must, therefore,
be taken care of. It is strange, but the beautiful child in a family
is always apparently more in need of care and sacrifice than are her
commonplace brothers and sisters; there seems to be a brittle quality
about her, she is like blown-glass, attractive but not substantial.
Beauty is like the flame of a candle, in some eyes; it not only draws
the moths but it is easily extinguished.

"It will be horrible," Eva sighed. "It will kill me--after I'm
dead--will you forgive me, Rachel?"

"You've done a very terrible thing; you've sacrificed your sister's
good name to save yourself from the consequences of your own folly."

"No one knows what I said but Johnstone, no one will ever know but
Johnstone. I didn't mean it, I thought you'd help me, that you'd marry
Belhaven to save us both. I believed in you, you're so good!"

"Why should I marry Belhaven? I don't even like him."

"Johnstone will kill him."

"Oh, I don't believe that!"

Eva let go her hold upon her and went to the window. "Look!" she said,
and pointed.

Rachel followed her to the open window. There was a light on the
lower veranda, which cast a soft radiance on the terrace, paved with
flagstones and guarded by a marble balustrade. Below them a figure
paced to and fro.

"It's Johnstone. Belhaven's in the library. If you refuse to marry him,
Johnstone says he'll know my story is false, he'll not believe in our
innocence, he'll shoot Belhaven."

"It would be murder," said Rachel, aghast, "cold-blooded murder; he'd
die for it."

"He doesn't care."

The two sisters looked at each other, white-lipped. Rachel knew Astry,
and she did not now doubt Eva's words, for he held life cheap, even his
own.

"Is Belhaven such a coward as that?" she cried.

Eva's parched lips moved, and it was a moment before the words came.
"He's shielding me; he loves me; he'd shield me with his life."

Rachel drew a deep breath. What a beautiful thing it was to be so
loved! Sudden tears blinded her eyes, while Eva sank gently down at her
feet again and clasped her knees.

"Rachel, you can save your own sister from disgrace, you can save our
parents' memory from dishonor; only say you'll marry Belhaven. We'll
find a way out, surely we'll find a way out; you won't really have to
marry him! Oh, Rachel, it's killing me, I can't stand public disgrace.
Johnstone has no pity, he'll take it all into the divorce court, he'll
drag me on to the witness-stand, he'll blazon it all out, he--" She
fell forward, burying her face against Rachel's knees, weeping horribly.

Her sister shuddered. The picture was appalling and she knew that Eva
did not exaggerate. She stood there, the culprit clinging to her knees,
and looked out across the distant city to the beautiful dome of the
Capitol, outlined now against the eastern sky. A strange, ghostly light
was slowly emerging from the night; the rim of the world was white, day
was breaking; like the fragile lips of a morning-glory, it deepened to
violet as it opened, but the heart of the dawn was translucently white.

"If I marry Belhaven, I admit the truth of your words, and your words
are false."

"No one knows what I said but Johnstone!" Eva replied, with a low sob.

"Oh, I can't do it!" gasped Rachel, with a shudder of repulsion.

Eva gave a little cry of despair and slipped to the floor; she lay
there white and still and she scarcely seemed to breathe.

Her sister knelt, raised her head, and she pushed back the fair hair.
Eva's face was soft and childlike and it bore no line of thought, or
passion, or even remorse,--only childish grief. Tears filled Rachel's
eyes; she had been cruel, her sister's case was desperate, the family
honor was involved, the hope of any future happiness for Eva, even for
Eva's soul. Rachel gathered her into her arms and her sister, feeling
her embrace, sighed and opened her eyes.

"You're like God, Rachel; you always forgive!"

"Hush!" Rachel looked solemnly into the violet eyes. "Eva, as you'll
answer at the last day, answer me now. Are you innocent? Have you done
wrong?"

Eva trembled; she was afraid of those inexorable eyes. She was not
afraid of wrong-doing, she was not afraid of untruth, she was not even
afraid of God, but she was afraid of Rachel.

"I'm innocent," she said, but her heart quaked.

Rachel, still kneeling, with her arms around the culprit, closed her
eyes. She tried to shut out the world, to see her way. "If I marry
Belhaven, will you swear to me now, as a condition, that you will,
from this hour, break with him and never again permit him to make
love to you? That you'll try to be a true and loyal wife to Astry, to
remember that he's given you his name?"

The color came back to Eva's cheeks, the light to her eyes; she saw
hope, escape from the disgrace, and she snatched at it.

"I promise! Rachel--you will?"

Rachel raised her gently to her feet and put away her clinging hands,
then she went to the window and looked out at the light which grew and
grew across the city. God's day was wonderful; it was coming to her
at last and she must meet it. Love was lost, happiness was lost, but
truth was not lost. Her sister was innocent, it was a duty to save her;
she had promised to always take care of her, she was called upon now
to fulfil that promise. Was she ready? She stood there for a moment
longer, a moment that seemed to Eva's anxiety interminable, before she
turned and covered her face with her hands. She wanted to shut it all
out, to hide this horror from her own eyes, and again the unreality of
it possessed her. She let her hands fall at her sides and Eva saw that
her face was colorless and worn.

"I suppose there's nothing else to be done," she said, with a shudder,
"and if it's to save you--"

"Oh, Rachel, you'll do it?"

"I must."




III


Rachel's engagement to Belhaven was announced by Astry, before twelve
o'clock the following day, in the library.

Matrimonial engagements do not, as a rule, occur during week-end
parties without some preliminary symptoms. The entire family might be
taken by measles unawares much more easily than to be wholly surprised
by an engagement. This absence of preliminary symptoms, in fact of
any symptoms at all, had the effect of making Astry's announcement as
violently abrupt as an explosion of nitroglycerine.

Paul Van Citters remarked afterwards, in private, that it had quite
bowled him over, but Mrs. Van Citters, though a dutiful wife, made no
response; she had impressions of her own, having just heard from her
husband the report of that other engagement between Charter and Mrs.
Prynne. Charter was Pamela Van Citters' first cousin and she did not
relish the Prynne idea, though she withheld her reasons from Paul.
Being a wise woman, Pamela had never criticized Mrs. Prynne, but she
was really stunned by Rachel's engagement to Belhaven. So were the
others.

Sidney Billop nearly swallowed his collar-button, which he had in
his mouth when his mother burst into his room to inform him. She had
been one of the group in the library; Sidney had not, having sat up
uncommonly late the night before trying to discover why Astry kept
Belhaven so long in tête-à-tête. The engagement offered a solution,
but not a satisfactory one. It was scarcely necessary for Belhaven to
ask Astry's consent to his sister-in-law's marriage, and everybody
knew that the Leven money, what there was of it, was in charge of a
trust company and tied up in real estate, so there could have been no
question of a settlement. Sidney recovered the collar-button but not
his peace of mind; it was all certainly very curious.

Colonel Sedley, with an elephantine effort at playfulness,
congratulated Rachel with the remark that he had hoped, at one time,
that she would join the army, but she met this shaft with composure and
even smiled gently at the colonel's impossible pleasantry.

The subtle charm of her personality had never been more apparent and,
although she was very pale, her face had the delicate loveliness
of a Greuze. The low arch of the brow, framed by dusky hair, and
the thick-set, dark lashes that shadowed her dark gray eyes, seemed
perfect enough, in the subdued light of the library, to establish an
actual claim to beauty almost as great as Eva Astry's. She had suddenly
become the central figure of the drama and her friends were surprised
and even impressed by the unexpected resources she showed, for no
matter how awkward and incongruous it seemed, she remained the mistress
of the situation. That the situation was incongruous could not be
denied; it had the appearance, at first sight, of a nine days' wonder.

"Surprised?" Pamela Van Citters exclaimed, replying to Dr.
Macclesfield. "Don't ask me; I've been figuratively snatching at things
to keep on my feet. I'm like Paul; it's bowled me over."

"Yet we were wondering the other day how Rachel had escaped the
infection so long."

"It isn't that. Rachel's lovely and she must have refused dozens of
offers already, but--it's the man!"

Dr. Macclesfield cocked an erratic eyebrow. "Why the man? Belhaven's
good looking, you know, and reasonably rich, and I rather thought you
women liked him."

"Oh, did you?"

The old man laughed. "Out with it, Pamela; I'm safe as the
confessional."

Pamela considered; of course the doctor was safe enough, but ought she
to speak the truth? She edged around the idea, fascinated with it; she
was possessed with a wild desire to talk it over; she was loyal enough
to Rachel, but that very loyalty made her indignant; from her point of
view the engagement was an injury to Rachel.

"I suppose you know what people say?" she ventured.

"Oh, that's sometimes wide of the mark!"

"Well, it's true, I think, don't you? At least he's in love with Eva."

"My dear Pamela, how do you know that?"

"Know it?" She gave a quick glance back at the long room--they were
standing in the door of the hall--to assure herself that she was
unheard. "Why, it's as plain as the nose on your face!"

Macclesfield laughed. "You can't expect me to be accomplished in these
details; besides, Belhaven has probably only been telling Eva how much
he loved her sister."

Mrs. Van Citters met this suggestion with scorn. "Is that all you know?"

"Isn't it enough for a mere man?"

"Perhaps I shouldn't expect any more, but the idea of deliberately
choosing a man who's in love with your sister! It's hard enough to keep
a husband devoted anyway, and I'd want him to begin by being in love
with me."

"Wouldn't it be just as well if he ended there?"

"You mean that you think he can't help falling in love with Rachel in
the end?"

"Something like that, only I think he's in love with her already."

"Pff! Nothing of the sort; look at his face."

"You couldn't expect a mere man to keep his _sang-froid_ at such a
moment as this?" the doctor retorted, adjusting his eye-glasses to look
at the bridegroom elect.

"At least he needn't look as if he expected to be hung!"

"Oh, that's natural enough, my dear," Macclesfield retorted, with a
chuckle. "Mrs. Billop's got him in tow."

"He looked just the same before she got him, which shows where he is!
It makes me indignant--not on his account, of course you know that!
He's not half good enough for Rachel and he ought to be down on his
knees to get her; but he's mad about Eva. He's been watching Eva all
the time; any one can see it."

The doctor smiled grimly. "She'll bear watching."

"Oh, she's pretty enough, and, heavens, what a gown! Her clothes cost
a fortune. It doesn't seem fair, and I've told her so, to be so pretty
and to have so much money to make you more so."

"You can't imagine all the compliments Pamela's paying you, Eva,"
said the old doctor, as their hostess came past them in one of her
excursions across the room.

"It's because I'm so happy over dear Rachel's happiness," she replied,
with a beaming glance.

Belhaven, who heard this, regarded her with sudden amazement. There was
always a time when Eva's lovers were amazed, usually just before they
were disillusioned, and Belhaven found it difficult, at the moment, to
meet her on her own ground. What had been to him a kind of exhibition,
in which he was compelled to pose as the unwilling dancing-bear, was
apparently an occasion of joy and relief to her. He did not appreciate
the fact that, having saved her own skin, Eva was not keenly aware that
his was gone. And if he caught a look of exasperation on Astry's face,
it did not enlighten him to the fact that Astry had traveled that road
before him, had asked for bread and received a stone.

But Dr. Macclesfield, ruminating on Pamela's remarks, was not so easily
misled. He had known the two sisters all their lives and he observed
Eva shrewdly.

"I wonder what the little devil's been up to?" he thought. "She's
acting a little more elaborately than usual; she's aware herself
that she's acting, and as a rule it's a second nature. She never did
anything natural in her life except to have chicken-pox when she was
seven."

Family doctors accumulate a store of perfectly useless but
uncomfortable information; that is the penalty we pay for expert
advice, we reveal our affairs and our tongues.

Meanwhile, Paul Van Citters and the Italian _Chargé d'Affaires_ having
fallen into the toils of little Mrs. Prynne, Astry found himself
offering his best cigars to Colonel Sedley as a means of diverting him
from his one idea. But, though the fragrant Havana somewhat softened
the edge of the colonel's observations, it did not entirely change the
course of his conversation.

"I say, Astry, how about Charter?" he said. "You know I thought he was
hard hit when he was here last."

Astry lit his own cigar carefully. "I'm not responsible for that, you
know," he said dryly.

"I know that if he's come a cropper you didn't lend him the horse! But
he's a fine fellow, Astry, a splendid fellow! I'd like to have seen
Miss Leven marry a man like that."

"Exactly, but isn't it for her to choose after all?"

Sedley nodded slowly. "Of course, but, by Jove," he added, after a
moment of silent puffing at his cigar, "what queer men women choose!"

Astry colored slightly and frowned, yet he was aware that Sedley did
not know that he had loved Rachel first and asked her to marry him
before Eva came back from a two years' stay in Paris. Rachel had
refused him, simply because she did not love him. Knowing this, Astry
had always regarded her as above the consideration of fortune, and
it angered him the more that she should have deliberately chosen
Belhaven. He was conscious, too, and it embittered his mood, that he
had never hated Belhaven so on Eva's account, nor been so jealous of
him as he was now, watching him stand close to Rachel to receive the
congratulations of their bewildered friends. What would Rachel say to
Belhaven, what would she do? The position was so forced, so unreal,
that it affected Astry like a distasteful tragedy realistically acted
but imperfectly staged.

"I have a feeling that Charter'll be considerably knocked up about it,"
persisted Sedley; "and he's made a splendid record in the Philippines."

"Well, a man who can stand the Philippines can stand a disappointment
in love."

"They tell me the climate's a perfect Turkish bath, but we've done a
lot in Manila; it'll be half-way decent now that the moat's grassed
over and their confounded drains filled up."

"Oh, if you've got to drains!"

The colonel laughed good-humoredly. "I don't know but that they're more
in my line than match-making," he said.

All this while Rachel had been listening to appropriate remarks and
Mrs. Billop was particularly affectionate.

"My dear," she whispered, "I'm envious; you're positively the only one
I should have loved for Sidney."

Rachel did not sink under this tremendous compliment but she smiled
a little. To have escaped Sidney was something. But she reflected
that Mrs. Billop only said it because she was safely out of the way.
Sidney was one of those interesting youths who remain firmly staked
in the list as safe home-prizes, guarded by their anxious mothers,
who flutter about them clucking wildly at every speck on the horizon,
lest it prove to be a matrimonial chicken-hawk descending upon their
offspring. Mrs. Billop would have clucked very wildly had she thought
that Rachel intended to descend upon Sidney, for she regarded Rachel as
strong-minded, a new woman.

It was fortunate that Rachel was strong-minded, else she would scarcely
have faced the ordeal without betraying herself. As it was, she went
through it successfully and saw most of the guests pairing off for the
day to leave her alone with Belhaven, a prospect at once amazing and
terrible. What would she do with Belhaven?

Astry asked himself the same question with conscious irritation, as he
went off in his motor with Count Massena, Pamela, and Mrs. Prynne. Eva
was asking it with a thrill of jealousy, as she sallied forth to the
tennis-court with Sidney and Van Citters. Dr. Macclesfield was asking
it with grim humor, as he disposed of Mrs. Billop and Colonel Sedley
in the wagonette, and, perhaps, no one was more embarrassed by it than
Belhaven himself.

The last guest had drifted out of the library. They had been left
obviously alone together, and as the wagonette disappeared, they turned
from the window and faced each other in the broad, uncompromising
light of noon, with only the slight screen of the striped awning that
shielded the long terrace. Rachel remembered instantly the figure on
that terrace the night before; then she raised her eyes and met those
of Belhaven. The man's handsome face, keen-featured, clean-shaven
and well proportioned, was haggard, and his expression, as he met
Rachel's clear glance, was deeply shamed. She saw it with a quick
thrill of doubt: had Eva told her the truth? Then suddenly her cheek
reddened deeply; was it because he must marry her? The situation was
intolerable. They stood looking at each other a long moment in painful
silence before she moved a little away from him and took the nearest
chair; her knees were trembling so that she could not stand, but she
was apparently calm.

"Will you sit down?" she said coldly; "I must speak to you."

Belhaven obeyed mechanically; he wanted to speak, too, but his lips
were parched, for he felt that he had a coward's part. He had known
it ever since he looked in the clear depths of her gray eyes. He was
tasting the fruits of his indiscretions and he rebelled against it,
for, like most sinners, he would greatly have preferred to go free. He
was ashamed to look at Rachel; he felt himself suddenly a moral leper.
He had never entertained so poor an opinion of himself as he did at
that moment, and he had never been aware before that he profoundly
admired her. He met her eyes at last and was surprised that her
expression was so tranquil; it was even kind,--companions in misery are
sometimes drawn to each other.

"I'm sorry for you," she said quietly, "we're in an unhappy situation.
I'm nearly as sorry for you as I am for myself, which is saying a good
deal," she added, with the ghost of a smile.

Belhaven pulled himself together. "I don't deserve your pity," he said
hoarsely.

Again Rachel felt a thrill of doubt, but she passed it over. "I'm sorry
we have to go through with it--this marriage--but it's the only thing
to do."

Belhaven was silent; he wanted to tell her that he would face the
worst, that he would not accept the sacrifice, but words choked him. He
had not courage enough; he stormed in his heart but it was true, he was
a coward! He heard Rachel's voice again and it seemed a long way off.

"I suppose--oh, really I don't know what to say to you," she cried,
almost breaking down after her fine beginning; "it's--it's hard to
talk of it, but I suppose we've got to do it. You and I alone know that
she's innocent and you and I are forced to save her from--from the
consequences of her indiscretion!"

She broke off, waiting for him to answer but he did not; he, too,
flushed a dark red during her speech and then paled to the lips. He was
silent.

"It was her folly," Rachel began again, in a low voice, "but
you--you're a man of the world, it's just unpardonable in you; you
can't blame Johnstone for what he's done! If only Eva had told the real
truth--but she was so frightened, she's afraid he'll kill you and she's
flung the thing upon me--so I've got to save her. I'm doing it for her
sake, I--I--" Her voice failed her altogether, she turned scarlet, and
her lips trembled.

He looked up into her eyes. He had never before encountered this kind
of a woman and he was impressed. There was a dignity about her, even in
the midst of her embarrassment, that made him feel that her soul kept a
space to move in too elevated for him to enter.

"I think it's fine of you," he said haltingly; "it's tremendously
plucky--of course I can make no excuses. I don't. I love her; it's my
fault; I suppose such things have happened before;" this was a very old
excuse but he used it unconsciously; "I'd give my right hand to save
her from it all, but I feel I'm a coward to let you do this."

Rachel turned from him. Looking out into the beautiful sunshine, she
saw a busy little bevy of white butterflies skim past the window; a
bird sang persistently, sweetly; it was free, it was good to be free.
Her hands trembled in her lap; she did not look back at him.

"It will be only a marriage in name," she forced herself to say. "I'll
try to interfere with your life as little as I can and I shall expect
you to consider my feelings too."

"I quite understand."

There was again a painful silence, then they both heard Eva's laugh,
an exceedingly sweet, light-hearted, care-free laugh that was her
characteristic. It came to them from the tennis-court and Belhaven
shuddered. Rachel rose, steadying herself with a hand on the back of
the chair.

"I believe there's nothing more to say," she said gently.

He had risen too. "The marriage?" he asked, hesitatingly.

She turned white to the lips. "Johnstone has set next Thursday; these
people leave to-morrow and Wednesday; would you--" She looked up; for
one wild moment she felt that she must appeal to him to be man enough
to save her.

But his answer killed the last faint hope. "Any time will do," he said,
avoiding her eyes.

She turned away with a slight gesture of despair; there was nothing to
hope from such a man as this, and she went quietly to the door. As she
reached it, he came quickly over and opened it for her. He had been
like a man in a dream and now his face flushed deeply again.

"I humbly beg your pardon," he said hoarsely.

Rachel bent her head and passed out. Belhaven closed the door behind
her and threw himself into the nearest chair with a groan.

"You and I alone know that she's innocent and you and I are forced
to protect her!" Could Rachel have invented a more refined torment?
He thought not. He saw himself as in a mirror; she had held it up to
reflect his image and he found it hideous. He was a coward! It burns a
man's soul to realize that. We are fond of heroics, we like to picture
ourselves undaunted in the firing line; more causes have been won in
day-dreams than were ever lost in reality, more forlorn hopes have
found a leader than there were hopes of any kind to lead. But when the
crisis comes, the hero suddenly collapses, the old cowardly self comes
out from behind the hayrick, is affrighted and runs back. Belhaven had
never known himself until those three awful hours when Astry kept him a
prisoner in that same room waiting for Rachel's decision, waiting for
a woman to save him for her sister's sake; not even for his own sake,
but for some one else's. Alone he was obviously not worth saving;
she had told him so. Belhaven, left alone in the most uncomfortable
moment of his life, began to realize forcibly that he was not worth
it; he was marooned on an island of sentimental purpose and he had no
sentiment. He was thirty-two and he had never done a useful thing in
his life unless it was to give his old clothes to his man servant,
whom they fitted rather better than most cast-off clothes do. He had
lived hard, drank hard, spent his money hard; he would have spent all
of it, if a wise and frugal parent had not trusteed a large portion
of the principal so that the worst that could happen were periods of
impecuniosity, seasons of financial drought, like a summer after a dry
St. Swithin's day, before the interest from those trusteed thousands
began to come in again.

Yet Belhaven was not vicious, he was not even hardened, and he had
fallen foolishly in love with Eva Astry chiefly because she wanted him
to fall in love with her. Like most of his predecessors in flirtation,
he did not know that that was her perpetual attitude; he supposed
that he was an exception, he thought Eva really loved him better than
herself. But Rachel knew better; something in her manner told him that
she knew better, but she did not dream that her sister was anything
but innocent. Belhaven had caught a glimpse of her soul, he had dimly
discerned the mental attitude; he knew that Eva had deceived her and he
was deeply ashamed. Yet he was not strong enough to go out and face
Astry; his three hours with Astry had almost been the death of him; the
man was as relentless as an Indian and as clever as a devil.

Belhaven got up and walked about the library. What should he do? If he
went away it would do no good; it was cowardly and it would do no good,
Astry would pursue him and blazon out the truth. If he refused to marry
Rachel, Astry would kill him. If Eva--his mind stopped there; Eva had
betrayed him. At the last ditch, the hardest pinch, she had bargained
with the enemy for her own safety; she had delivered him, bound hand
and foot, to Astry. She was cruel. Eva, the darling, little creature,
the soft pink and white beauty, whose tender flesh could endure no
pain, whose heart could endure no suffering,--this paragon had suddenly
failed him. She had left him in the lurch, she had gathered up her
skirts and fled before the deluge. He began dimly to understand Eva;
he was slowly, painfully, laboriously, to climb the road which Astry
had traveled before him. It is a long road and it is well worn by the
footprints of many pilgrims; he whose feet are once set upon this road,
turns not back.




IV


Rachel was very tired when she opened the door of her room and found
her maid still engaged in folding up and rearranging her clothes.

Bantry, a tall, gaunt, Scotchwoman, was an old servant; she had been in
the Leven family before the two girls were born and naturally claimed
the privileges of long and faithful service. A glance at her face told
Rachel that the end was not yet.

"What is it?" she asked involuntarily.

Bantry closed the door and locked it, her homely face magenta color.
"Miss Rachel, that French girl of Miss Eva's ought to be dismissed. I
beg your pardon for bringing it to you, but I must,--" the big woman's
eyes filled with tears,--"I'm thinking of you, my lamb."

Rachel sank down into the big, winged chair that had received Eva the
night before. "I hate servants' gossip, Bantry; is it really necessary
to mention it to me?"

"It is so, Miss Rachel, or I wouldn't; she says things that she
shouldn't, and I can't stop her!"

Rachel still leaned back in her chair, looking out of the window. This
nightmare grew worse every moment; it was like a labyrinth to which she
had lost the guiding thread. She could not question a servant, but she
knew, intuitively, that Zélie had gossiped of her engagement. It was
not hard to divine the curiosity it must have excited, for Belhaven had
been a devoted admirer of Eva Astry's and had never before bestowed a
glance on her sister. Rachel's cheek reddened at the thought.

"I think we won't discuss it further, Bantry," she said at last.

But the old woman was not satisfied. "You'll speak to Miss Eva, Miss?"

Rachel looked up and met her eyes. "You think it's necessary?"

Bantry nodded. "That girl mustn't stay in this house, Miss Rachel."

Rachel turned away, resting her chin in her hand, and conscious of a
thrill of alarm. What did the Scotchwoman mean? She knew that Bantry's
intentions were the best,--nothing else would have influenced her
to even listen to her suggestions,--but she was filled with disgust
at the nearer prospect of the situation. To be the subject of idle
gossip, perhaps even of scandal, was degrading. She felt suddenly that
the guidance of her affairs had slipped out of her own hands, that in
assuming the responsibility for Eva's actions she had lost control of
her own. The feeling of unreality, so poignant the night before, was
again with her, but it clothed her now with the fantastic shape of a
masquerader; her little world was real enough, but she was no longer
playing her own part in it. Instead she had assumed a character that
she did not even know by heart, and she had the despairing feeling that
she was sure to be caught and stripped of her borrowed plumes.

"It's not right to keep the thing in the house," Bantry resumed; "the
tongue in her head's a scandal for decent folks to hear. You can take
my word for it, Miss Rachel, dear; I wouldn't speak if I didn't have
to!"

"Well, we won't say anything more about it," Rachel replied, and her
voice, even in her own ears, sounded a long way off. The thing was
insufferable, yet, perhaps, she would have to speak to Eva.

Eva had long ago discarded Bantry as too old and too unfashionable; she
employed instead a little French girl who wore charmingly appropriate
black frocks and coquettish caps and aprons. Sidney Billop had once
been caught kissing Zélie in the pantry; he had never done it but
once, for it was his mother who caught him. Dr. Macclesfield remarked
upon that occasion that some men never went to Hades for punishment,
they found a private one in the bosoms of their families. Sidney found
his on emerging from the pantry and one scorching was enough; he had
occasion afterwards to cherish the ancient apothegm that a burnt child
fears the fire.

"Miss Rachel, dear, you're not angry?"

Rachel turned quickly and found that Bantry was in tears. She laid a
kindly hand on the old woman's shoulder.

"I'm not in the least angry, but I hate the whole business, Bantry; I
don't want to hear about it."

The Scotchwoman sobbed brokenly. "Miss Rachel--oh, for God's sake,
darling, it isn't true?"

Rachel's hand fell from her shoulder and she turned very pale. "I don't
understand."

"About Mr. Belhaven?"

"You mean about my engagement? Yes, it's true; I'm going to marry him."

Bantry covered her face with her hands and leaned against the wall,
sobbing.

Rachel was touched; she knew that the old woman regarded her almost
in the light of a foster-child, and she realized that there must be
strong reasons for her horror of the approaching marriage. Without even
imagining the depths of a kitchen scandal, she experienced a vague
feeling of terror, a terror that was chiefly concerned with the danger
to Eva. If Bantry felt such grief at the mere thought of her marriage
with Belhaven, of what terrible thing had Zélie accused her sister? As
yet Rachel's mind, perplexed and dulled with anguish, had not fully
realized her own situation; it almost seemed to her that some one else
was going to marry Belhaven. But now she began to appreciate her peril;
she must not let the old Scotchwoman discover the secret, for not even
the faithful Bantry could know that she was saving Eva. She tried to
assume a lighter tone.

"I'm sorry my marriage grieves you so much, Bantry, but it won't
separate us; I shall keep you with me."

"Oh, Miss Rachel!"

"And," Rachel risked adding this, "I'll speak to Mrs. Astry about
Zélie."

Bantry looked at her, almost indignantly, over the top of her crumpled
apron. Eva had not been in her thoughts, or Zélie either. In the
kitchen, that melting-pot of our social makeshifts, they said that Miss
Leven was marrying Belhaven to hush up an imminent scandal, and the old
Scotchwoman, in whose heart was a kind of fierce clan loyalty, longed
to rescue her favorite, to warn her, but there was something about
Rachel, an aloofness, a distinction, that set a gulf between them.
Bantry dared not tell her.

"Besides," Rachel went on in a low voice, "I don't want you to listen
to all this talk; keep it from the servants. Whatever it is, it's
false, but falsehoods are often believed; don't listen to them."

Bantry bent suddenly over Rachel's evening gown, folding it with
careful hands, her eyes still full of tears.

"Very well, Miss," she said, "I--I've only told you the truth."

"I know it; I won't forget that, Bantry."

"It's only right for you to believe me, Miss."

"I always believe you!"

Bantry's answer was inaudible; she bent low over the clothes on the
lounge to allow Rachel to pass without seeing that she was still
crying, for Bantry was storming in her heart against Mrs. Astry. It had
always been so, she told herself. Eva had always traded on her sister's
generosity and abused her affection.

"Jealous little cat!" the grim old Scotchwoman said to herself,
"selfish isn't the name for her; she's like an Angora when it's got all
the cream."

Meanwhile Rachel made her way to young Mrs. Astry's room. She entered
the boudoir, which opened on the balcony outside her own window, and
she shuddered involuntarily at the thought of last night. Eva had come
up from tennis and had just been dressed for luncheon, and the French
maid courtesied and left the room as her sister entered.

Rachel came in gravely and closed the door. "Eva, you must dismiss
Zélie."

Eva looked up with a violent start, her pretty face wet with tears.
"Why?" she exclaimed, and there was a thrill of terror in her voice.

Rachel did not notice it; she told her quite simply all that Bantry had
said. "She mustn't stay a day longer in this house, Eva. Dismiss her
with a month's wages in lieu of notice. I'm sure she doesn't deserve
it, but I'd do that."

Eva trembled; she knew that Rachel was inexorable and she knew also
that she was in Zélie's power. She could not tell Rachel the whole
truth, she could not refuse to dismiss Zélie, and she dared not resist
her sister, so she temporized.

"Wouldn't it be better to keep her a while? If we dismiss her, she'll
talk more--"

"Of what? If you keep her, you practically admit that you're afraid of
her, the servants will believe her, and the end will be a scandal. Eva,
you must dismiss her; I insist upon it."

"I--I can't!"

"You can't? Why?" Rachel's face flushed deeply.

Eva saw it; she busied herself arranging and rearranging the little
silver articles on her toilet-table, though her fingers trembled.

"Well, for one thing, don't you think it's just old Bantry's spite?
She's always jealous of a new servant."

"I think Bantry's immensely good and honest; she wouldn't accuse Zélie
falsely. You haven't an idea how she feels; she's crying in my room
now."

"Then, of course, it's all jealousy; she can't bear to have you marry
and set up a household; she's afraid you'll take Zélie."

"She knows I wouldn't; besides I haven't thought of the household--oh,
Eva, how can you talk of it?"

Eva covered her face with her hands. "It's killing me!" she sobbed.

Her sister looked at her with sudden contrition. She had been suffering
so much herself that she had forgotten how much Eva must have to
endure, and her cheek reddened again at the thought that Eva loved
Belhaven, that to see him marry her would be bitter. Yet there was
nothing she could say that would make it any easier to bear, and it was
impossible to let this French girl make matters worse.

"You really must send Zélie away," she persisted. "I'm sure that
Bantry's right about it."

Eva twisted in her chair, afraid to tell Rachel any more. "I hate to
dismiss a servant," she said weakly.

Rachel could understand this, for she hated to do it herself, but
sometimes even surgical operations are necessary and she was willing to
concede something to Eva's nervous condition.

"I'll dismiss her for you," she said quietly.

Eva shivered, watching her as she moved to the door.

"Now?" she gasped.

"At once," said Rachel, but before she could touch the bell some one
knocked at the door.

It was Pamela Van Citters. "I've come to say good-by," she explained.
"Paul and I are going to drive back to town this afternoon."

Eva rose hastily from the dressing-table and threw herself into
Pamela's arms. "Don't go!" she cried.

"It's sweet of you to ask me to stay, my dear, but think of my
offspring. I haven't seen the baby for three days."

"What of it? He'll be all the more delighted to see you and he'll have
cut a new tooth. Oh, Pamela, stay; Rachel's going to leave me."

Pamela turned large, startled eyes upon Rachel. "As soon as that?"

Rachel nodded; she could not speak, she felt as if a net had been
spread around her feet,--a long, floating net, like those she had seen
the fishermen draw up in the Sound, and that it was closing in.

Eva turned her head on her friend's shoulder. "Johnstone thinks it's
best to have it soon."

Pamela tried to look vacant. "Of course it's the best way," she
admitted; "a wedding does hang over one so. I nearly turned gray with
fright while I was thinking of mine; it took the whole family to screw
up my courage, and poor, dear Paul says he was in a perfect funk. Do
you remember what a crush it was? I'd never have another like it;
that's what I tell Paul when I want to frighten him. I suppose Lottie
Prynne is rehearsing to duplicate hers; Paul says she's engaged to my
cousin. You remember John Charter, Rachel?"

But Rachel was gone; she had stolen out of the room while Pamela was
talking to Eva.




V


Having yielded to Eva's urgent request to stay a little longer, it was
not until the following afternoon that Pamela and her husband returned
to the city. Their departure broke up the week-end party, some of the
others having drifted away during the earlier hours of the day. Of
course Rachel had to undergo a second ordeal at parting.

"I'm not going to congratulate you," said Paul Van Citters bluntly.
"Belhaven's a fortunate man."

In the carriage Pamela reproached him. "How could you, Paul? You put
your foot in it!"

"Hanged if I care!" he retorted hotly. "She's throwing herself away and
she looks as if she knew it. What in thunder do you women marry brutes
for?"

"I don't know," replied Pamela demurely. "Some ask why I married you,
dear."

Mrs. Billop pecked Rachel on both cheeks; her manner was almost as
motherly and warming as a teapot cosy. "My dear, I'd love to see you
married, but I quite understand quiet weddings are so much better
taste; when we're really in love we don't want 'the madding crowd.'
Sidney and I have ordered you a little present, a dainty trifle." It
came later, a banqueting-lamp four feet high, and it looked like the
givers. "I hope you'll love it for our sakes, dear."

Rachel thanked her and held out a weary hand to Sidney.

Colonel Sedley had ordered a farewell bouquet of orchids for Rachel and
he got through his ordeal with a red face. The colonel was innocent of
guile but he could not reconcile himself to Belhaven. He wrung Astry's
hand at parting.

"You're losing the finest woman in the world in your sister-in-law.
Oh, of course Mrs. Astry's lovely, but Rachel--to tell you the truth,
Astry, I'm cut up; I wanted her to marry my favorite."

"You mean John Charter?"

"I do; he's going to feel this."

"He's to marry Mrs. Prynne."

"Oh, damn!" said the colonel, and plunged out into the omnibus, in
which Mrs. Billop, Sidney, and Mrs. Prynne were already packed.

Astry's big, gray horses were prancing impatiently, and as soon as the
footman had closed the door on the colonel's irate form, the carriage
rolled away down the long drive from the terrace and disappeared at
last through the picturesque Georgian gateway.

The presence of guests had been distinctly uncomfortable in the
strained relations of the household, but this disappearance of the
last--old Dr. Macclesfield and Count Massena had left early in the
morning--plunged the group in the hall into a sudden panic. Eva took
instant flight up-stairs, scarcely allowing them more than a vanishing
view of her trailing draperies as she turned the last wide curve above
the landing. Belhaven retired awkwardly toward the library, a retreat
which offered only a new refinement of torment if Astry chose to follow
him. But Astry did not; he remained standing at Rachel's side in the
big doorway.

It was late afternoon and the western sun streamed over the
close-cropped lawns, drenched the terrace in light, and reached across
the tessellated floor to the hem of Rachel's white dress. The glow of
it even penetrated the shadowy corners of the large hall and the warmth
and fragrance of early spring breathed itself upon the atmosphere.
A glint caught on the mediaeval arms that hung on the darkening
walls. Astry had collected armor and carvings, curious ivories, and
hideous, little Indian gods and Chinese idols, from every corner of
the world. Here and there in the house cropped up a curiosity or
an odd decoration, but his greatest treasures were gathered in his
smoking-room. The world supposed that Astry was an agnostic; some of
his intimates said that he was a Buddhist. The fact was that no one
really knew him, for he guarded the peculiarities of his personality
as carefully as the Veiled Prophet hid his face. He stood beside his
sister-in-law and watched the omnibus leave the gate and, traveling
down the long shaded road, disappear abruptly over the hill, as if
it had plunged over the side of the universe. As abruptly they felt
themselves to be alone.

Rachel, who had rather dreaded this moment, was astonished to find
herself so tranquil. In the last few days she had become certain that
Astry did not believe Eva's monstrous charge against her; what he
really believed she found it impossible to imagine. That he could know
his wife's folly and her cowardly makeshift to save herself, and yet
force this terrible alternative upon her sister, Rachel herself did
not believe. That he had probably thought Eva guilty of the worst was
not unnatural, for the evidence, barring Eva's story about her sister,
was overwhelmingly against her. Tortured between contending emotions,
Rachel did not attempt to fathom her brother-in-law's conclusions; she
had even ceased to consider his actions. She was wholly absorbed in the
contemplation of the fast approaching event; her marriage to Belhaven
had become a terror that walked by night and dwelt with her by day. She
stood looking out into the sunshine and counting the hours that were
left to her.

Astry's voice startled her.

"Marriage is a serious step, my dear Rachel," he said calmly, "a step
that needs meditation; like hanging, it's usually fatal."

Rachel met his eyes. "I'd be glad of more time," she said quickly.

He shook his head, smiling slightly, though his eyes did not smile.
"I have Belhaven to think of; I really couldn't stand him a day over
Thursday."

Rachel made a little impatient gesture as if she had meant to speak
and suddenly withdrawn into herself. His words seemed to imply a doubt
of Eva that Rachel could not refute, and she was filled with dismay at
her own helplessness. She could not defend her sister without impugning
herself, she could not defend herself without traducing her sister.
Eva's lie had been double-edged and, like all lies, it required a
hundred falsehoods to hedge it in. She was silent.

Astry began to walk to and fro across the hall, his hands in his
pockets, his head bent. At last, just as Rachel turned to go, he spoke
again.

"Rachel, you don't want to marry this man," he looked keenly at her,
"if it isn't true,--if--I'll take your word for it--if it's not
compromising you, I want to know it."

The full significance of his words forcing itself upon Rachel,
she flushed darkly. "You don't think I'm like--that!" she cried
involuntarily.

He stood still and she felt his eyes on her.

"Then it isn't true! Good God, Rachel, why did you consent?"

She realized her danger, the possibility that his mind had leaped to a
conclusion, the right one.

"Because," she said slowly, dragging out the words, "the situation was
compromising--"

"I don't believe it! I did at first; I was mad, furious, but now--I
know it isn't true. I believe that Eva--"

"You mustn't believe anything wrong of Eva!" she cried.

"What am I to believe then? This is maddening. But I'll get the truth
yet. I can't make you women speak out, but, at least, Belhaven--"

"That's it, you've made it so--you've threatened to kill him!"

"You mean he's been a cur?"

She was silent.

Astry halted in his pacing to regard her sternly; he felt that she
was defeating him, whether because she would not help him, or through
some inadvertence, he did not know, but what he saw was her figure
against the afternoon sunshine, the subtle grace of the long lines, the
delicately poised head and slender throat, and her beauty, which had
always appealed keenly to his senses, drove him on to exasperation.

He resumed with a new and bitter emphasis. "Rachel, there's only one
explanation: Eva hasn't told me the whole truth. I've always thought
you'd be square with me--what is it?"

She drew a long breath of misery. "I said that the situation would
compromise me now," she dragged it out slowly again, "that I must marry
him."

This was too much. Astry flung himself away with an inarticulate curse.

Rachel stood a moment looking after him, realizing it all, hot with
shame and anger, then she turned and ran up-stairs. As she went, one
of the parrots in the conservatory shrieked out its mocking cry, "Eva,
Eva!" and she covered her ears with her hands and ran on to Eva's door.
It was closed, but Rachel opened it and burst into the room, her face
flushed and agitated, and running over to the lounge, she flung herself
down and buried her head in the sofa-pillows.

Eva started to her feet with a little, frightened cry and then stood
looking at her, waiting, but Rachel said nothing; she only continued to
hide her face in the pillows, her whole body shaking with emotion.

"Rachel, what is it? Oh, what's happened?"

"It's Johnstone!" Rachel's voice was muffled by the pillows.

Eva shook like a leaf. "He hasn't killed him? Oh, Rachel, he hasn't--"

"He thinks I'm like that! He thinks I'm guilty. Eva, I can't stand
it--I won't!"

"You mean he's been talking to you about it?" Eva was still trembling;
she wrung her hands feebly. "What did he say?"

Rachel writhed on the lounge, hiding her face yet more. "He thinks I'm
like that!" she shuddered. "I'm so ashamed, I--I can't stand it!"

"Oh, Rachel, Rachel, you won't betray me, you can't, now!"

Her sister sat up suddenly, her face one blur of tears and blushes.
"Eva, you've no right to make me so ashamed; I can't forgive it!"

The sinner sobbed bitterly. "Rachel, he'll kill him!"

"I--I almost wish he would!"

Eva wept hysterically. "It will kill me, too, that's all; but I don't
suppose you care!"

Rachel looked at her, and gradually her senses cleared, her
overwhelming feeling of shame passed into even deeper suffering; she
saw the old relations of life take flesh again, the old need to save
her sister, and she shivered.

"If you go back on it now," sobbed Eva, "he'll say I'm a liar and he'll
cast me off; he'll disgrace me so I can never hold up my head again!"

Poor Rachel was silent.

"Oh, Rachel, I'm so wretched!"

The other girl made no reply; instead she got up and went to the window
and opened the shutter. Across the distant city, above the house-tops
and the spires, she saw the great dome of the Capitol, and from the
lower terrace came the sweet perfume of heliotrope.

"I haven't slept," Eva went on; "it's killing me, I can't bear it.
Rachel, Rachel," she fell on her knees again beside Rachel and hid her
face on her dress, "I love him!"

"You mean Belhaven?"

There was a sound of strangled anguish from Eva and Rachel laid her
hand on her shoulder. "Eva, have you told me the truth?"

There was a moment's silence.

"Yes."

"Then why in the world didn't you tell Astry the truth, too? Your one
falsehood has cost us all this misery. Oh, I'm so ashamed, I feel as if
I couldn't look Johnstone in the face again!" It was so incredible that
even to save herself Eva should impugn her sister; Astry had dragged
out that side of it, and Rachel was shuddering before it. "I don't see
how you could do it!" she cried.

"He would have killed me!"

"If you haven't sinned, why are you so afraid of him? Eva, in your
heart you're sinning against him now. You've got to give up Belhaven;
if you can't you needn't ask me to do this awful thing. You'll have to
give up Johnstone! I can't do it unless you're true; it's too much!
Have you really chosen, Eva?"

Eva staggered to her feet and leaned against the wall, weeping. "I've
chosen," she sobbed; "I've given him up. Oh, I've suffered enough. I
wish I could be like you; you've no feeling!"

Rachel looked at her in amazement; was it possible that Eva did not
know what she was suffering, what this terrible marriage would cost
her? Was she so utterly selfish that she could not only malign her
sister but sacrifice her without a pang?

But suddenly Eva flung herself into her arms.

"Oh, Rachel, I'm wicked, I'm worthless--you've been an angel. Forgive
me! Save me, save us both; we're not worth it, but save us!"

A moment before Rachel had meant to tell her that she could never do
it, that she would rather die, to beg for a reprieve, an escape, even
if Eva had to suffer, but this anguish dwarfed her own; Eva had not the
strength to take her punishment.

"Eva," her lips quivered, "Eva, promise me that this is the end, that
it won't be in vain, that I will really save you if I take all this
horror to myself?"

"I promise--" her golden head sank lower on Rachel's breast, "I
promise; God help me to keep it!"

Rachel still loved her; she tried to quiet her, she put aside her own
trouble and gave herself to the task of consoling her betrayer, and so
the night passed.

In the morning she was married to Belhaven.




VI


Some time before his marriage Belhaven had leased an old house not
far from Astry's, but nearer the Tennallytown Road. It had once been
a tavern, but for fifteen years had been disused, and was part of an
estate that belonged to Paul Van Citters' aunt. The old lady had turned
it over to Paul to manage for her, and in one of his idle moments he
had conceived the idea of refitting it and, perhaps, turning it into a
club-house. He had employed an expensive architect and more expensive
decorators, and the end had been an alarming hole in the aunt's
pocketbook. After the first accounts came in, she closed down upon her
nephew's artistic departure, and the old house had remained partly done
over and, therefore, of two styles of architecture. The porch, with
its Colonial pillars, the long, low wing that Paul had intended for a
tea-room, and the terraced lawns, were only half done, but the roof
had been reshingled with mossy green, the walls had been harmoniously
decorated, and hardwood floors put down instead of wide, rough planks
with pieces of zinc nailed over the rat-holes, which had served for
a hundred years before. Paul's architect had ripped out the narrow
staircase and widened the hall by throwing a small room into it; he had
built a flight of wide and handsome stairs ascending to a landing under
an oriel window; he had taken advantage of an ingle-nook and thrown
out a second wing from the original house, and had foreshadowed even
greater changes, when the aunt's pocketbook closed with a snap.

Belhaven had leased the place and furnished it simply, intending to
entertain his friends with various fêtes, over which the beautiful Mrs.
Astry was to preside, accompanied, of course, by an admiring and docile
husband. Unhappily Belhaven and Eva had reckoned without Astry.

It was to this quaint old house that Belhaven took Rachel. There seemed
to be nothing else to do. Neither of them had framed, even dimly, that
existence which must follow the marriage in Astry's library, and it
came to them with a shock when Astry pleasantly suggested a wedding
trip.

It was afternoon when they were left alone together in the quaint old
room that had been the tavern tap-room. Belhaven had furnished it with
admirable and simple taste and, as the sun shone through the many-paned
windows and lit up the warm tints of rugs and hangings, touching the
gold frame of an old-fashioned mirror over the still more old-fashioned
mantel, Rachel was struck with its charms. She walked over to the
fireplace and, opening the little cupboard set at one side of the
chimney, revealed two deep shelves; above the mirror was another little
door and two more shelves. She opened both.

"What delightful corners," she said dreamily. "Do you suppose the old
fellow kept his rum here and his accounts there, and mixed them at
bedtime?"

"Possibly before bedtime," replied Belhaven, with an effort. He had
been trying to swallow a cup of tea that Rachel had poured for him.

The servants had prepared a little tea-table and decorated it with
an appropriate bouquet of white roses and lilies-of-the-valley. It
had loomed up embarrassingly gigantic when they entered, out of all
proportion to its actual size, but Rachel had very simply made the
tea before she rose to look at the mantel. Belhaven could not quite
imitate her; her fortitude and her forbearance were so impressive that
he found himself watching her with a curiously complex feeling. She
was not beautiful, as he conceived beauty, but she was wonderfully
reassuring and restful, and her tranquil manner, her self-controlled
expression, the clear gray of her eyes, all seemed to convey a message.
As yet Belhaven did not fully grasp it; he did not know women like
this, but dimly, like a blind man, his soul was groping forward to
meet hers. Hitherto he had had a very good opinion of himself, he had
not been too severe on his own backsliding, but the last few days had
convinced him that there was a reckoning, even for him. If it had been
hard for Rachel, it had been equally hard for him; he had faced the
terrible prospect of being called a coward, and he had been unable to
save himself without injury to a woman. The situation had been gall and
wormwood and, thinking of it, he watched Rachel as she moved about the
room inspecting it.

"I like your house," she said frankly.

"It is also yours," he replied abruptly, and then hated himself for
saying it.

A faint color rose to her pale cheeks. "Thank you," she said gravely,
"you're very courteous."

There was another silence. The warm sunlight, creeping across the
floor, had climbed from the hem of Rachel's dress to the belt, where
she had fastened a bunch of violets that one of the old servants had
brought her, her only wedding bouquet. Her long-fingered, slender
hand hung at her side and Belhaven saw the ring he had just placed
on it with almost a start of surprise. She was his wife, incredible
circumstance!

"I want to speak to you," he said, with an effort; "shall I call
you--Rachel?"

She smiled. "I think so; we needn't pretend about conventionalities;
if it's simpler to call me Rachel, pray do so. I can't quite make up
my mind to what I shall call you yet. Probably for a time it will be
something as cryptic as 'um.'"

"I wish I had your fortitude," said Belhaven fervently.

"Better not; when we have it, we're called upon to exercise it,
we're used as buffers by our weaker neighbors. Personally I've often
regretted that I wasn't as irresponsible as Sidney Billop. I know of no
one more care-free and sweetly untroubled; Sidney's a veritable lily of
the field."

Belhaven moved the smaller impedimenta of the tea-table about with
restless fingers and frowned abstractedly as he viewed the teapot.
"Astry says we ought to go off for a wedding journey; he's trying to
drive us both to the last ditch, I suppose, to make you confess that
you took me to shield--your sister."

"I think we'll cut out the wedding journey; Johnstone's very much like
an Iroquois medicine-man; he wants to fire the splinters after driving
them into the flesh."

"There are the conventionalities; people will talk; in fact, people are
talking."

"I wish you'd remembered the conventionalities before," replied Rachel,
with her first flash of indignation.

"I admit the justice of your reproach; it's quite in your power to
dictate terms to me; I've admitted myself to be in the wrong."

Her face flushed. "I hate reproaches, I always try to avoid them,
but--I'm very human!"

Belhaven still concerned himself with the tea things; he lifted the lid
of the teapot mechanically and replaced it. "My suggestion was on your
account," he said reluctantly; "it's to your interest, as well as mine,
to concede something to appearances. If our real position is known,
even to our friends, we'll become the target of curiosity and gossip,
and the situation will soon be unendurable. Sympathy is a compound of
curiosity and slander; let us avoid it."

Rachel regarded him attentively. "Do you mean that you're afraid that
I'll seek sympathy? Confide my troubles to my intimates and so reveal
our--our affairs?"

"Good Lord, no! I can't imagine you confiding in--in Mrs. Billop."

"I might possibly find some one beside Mrs. Billop but I don't propose
to seek a confidante."

"I really meant that we must hedge ourselves in from curiosity, make
some concessions to conventionality. I began by suggesting a wedding
trip--"

"To Niagara?" interposed Rachel ironically.

In spite of himself he smiled. "Florida," he substituted.

"In June? Why not do a hundred inane things? I'm sorry I'm not
conventional. You'll find that I crop up unexpectedly; I shall make
you uncomfortable, no doubt. But, at least, I'll avoid anything
outlandish. It's bad enough to be embarked together upon an enterprise
of deception; let us save some shreds of truth. It's impossible to be
always false; I won't pretend on a wedding journey, I won't play a part
for public entertainment! I'll do my best and--" she paused, a slight,
painful flush mounting in her pale cheeks again and deepening the charm
of her face, "I shall always remember that I bear your name. You gave
it against your will, but I accept it as a trust, and you may rest
assured that I shall guard it as my own."

"I've never doubted that for a moment," he said hastily, "and believe
me, I want to--I will--do the best I can to make it easy for you."

Rachel was on her way to the door; she had felt an irresistible desire
to break off the interview. Her brain was reeling, she had not known
an hour's rest, an hour to cry out to God for mercy. She stopped now,
arrested by something she saw in his face, and held out her hand. Was
he not her fellow sufferer? Was he not also shackled? Like two galley
slaves their hands had been locked together.

"I'm sorry for you," she said sweetly; "you did wrong, you've injured
my sister, deeply pained her,--poor, foolish child! But let no one say
that you haven't suffered, that you're not punished. To have to marry
me was hard indeed. We must make the best of it, fellow sufferer; let
us forego reproaches!"

Belhaven pressed her cold fingers in silence and she went out; he saw
her cross the hall and slowly ascend the staircase. She walked like one
who dragged a weight; all the elasticity of her graceful figure seemed
gone, and he realized at last that she had made a terrible sacrifice.
Before this revelation, Belhaven's mind stopped short; he had been
devoutly occupied in contemplating his own misery until, like the frog
that looked at the cow, he had tried to distend his own importance
to match its endless inflations. He had regarded himself from every
standpoint but Rachel's; he was now suddenly to behold himself from
hers. To her he apparently had no compensations, he was the climax of
her misery, the last straw. Then he remembered her sympathy for him.
It was quite genuine; she pitied him because he was married to her.
Belhaven smiled bitterly to himself. She was a fine woman, an unusual
woman, but she clearly meant it; he wondered how many women ever
considered it a punishment to be married to them? Certainly not Eva.

Then he recalled how quickly Eva decided to sacrifice him to escape
disgrace, how suddenly she had awakened to public opinion. Her vows
and caresses one day, her tears and reproaches the next, and then her
abrupt desertion. Her willingness to sacrifice Rachel, her falsehood
about Rachel--he had only heard an expurgated edition of it from
Eva herself--had been so many shocks to him; the whole thing was
incredible. He found it necessary to take to pieces his conception of
Eva and put it together again in a different combination, for, if he
was her fellow sinner, he certainly was not her fellow sufferer; she
had escaped. In some mysterious way she always evaded the consequences
of her own acts; she slipped them off on to other people's shoulders,
whitewashed them, and, at last, frankly disowned them. Belhaven,
suffering the first shock of disillusionment, wondered if she ever
really loved any one but herself? Since a week he had traveled past
the first milestone on the road that Astry had traveled before him;
since two days he was well on the second lap. How much more to the end?
Sometimes it is a short, dusty, abrupt road and sometimes it is long
and tortuous, and it broils in the sunshine of desert places, but it
leads to one end. Having entered it, no one has ever turned back, no
one will ever turn back. Surely, in Paradise there must be a place for
the disillusioned, for the way blisters the feet.

Let no one suppose that because a man sins he cannot suffer. Belhaven
knew better; he was feverish, the very air of the room suffocated
him. Was it the heavy perfume of those foolish, white flowers? He
stretched out his hand to pitch them out, but abruptly withdrew it as
if something had stung him. Something had; he remembered appearances!
Henceforth he was to spend three-fourths of the day remembering them;
they hung about his neck like a millstone. He laughed bitterly, as he
realized that Eva had sold him into slavery; she ought to have dipped
his coat in the blood of a kid and handed him to Astry. She had done
for him, disposed of him! Then he remembered Rachel and was overcome
with shame, for, like a poltroon, he had hidden himself behind a woman
and she was greater than he. It will be seen that Belhaven was rapidly
approaching the third milestone--but then it is always a question of
how many milestones there will be. The length of the way is only great
enough to accomplish its purpose, but, sometimes, it has to be very
great indeed; however, that is only in obstinate cases; violent ones
run abruptly down the hill and cast themselves into the sea, like the
Gadarene swine.

It does not matter so long as the end is accomplished, and it always
is.




VII


Rachel had been married a week and a day when Dr. Macclesfield came to
drink a cup of tea with her in her new home.

Dr. Macclesfield was a little, old man who might have been eighty
and looked seventy. His face was seamed with wrinkles in curious
criss-crosses, like the stitches in drawn-work, and he still shaved
twice daily; he said that he did not care to grow a moustache, that his
always caught up vermicelli. His small eyes twinkled with curiosity;
nothing escaped him, but his sense of humor made him delightful. He had
retired from practice but was still consulted in difficult cases; he
was wealthy but his charities kept his income down to normal limits.
His wife had been dead twenty years and he had no children, so he was
perpetually interested in other people's affairs. People appealed to
him keenly; he studied them, divided them into classes, found fault
with them, and loved them. In his youth and middle age he had had an
insatiable passion for work; he had labored at his profession as some
men labor in a quarry. He had worn out a dozen young assistants and
driven an orderly and methodical wife nearly out of her senses. She
had lived and died complaining that the doctor never came home to
meals on time, and never got through one without an interruption; she
said that cold soups were perpetual and that it was useless to have
pancakes. It was impossible for him to grasp what that had meant to
her, and twenty years after her death he was still perplexed at the
thought of her nervous despair when dinner had spoiled waiting for him.
If she had explained, he would have thought it a trivial matter,--and
so it was, if he was unmoved by chilled mutton. A terrible illness,
brought on by the strain and constant exposure, had finally ended his
active career. He had slowly and painfully recovered, to find his
usefulness gone. His brain still answered the calls of the profession,
but his body was no longer equal to the work of a Corliss engine, and
he surrendered grimly, at seventy-five, describing himself as an old
bluebottle-fly who could only creep on a window-pane on a sunshiny day.

He was fond of Rachel and she had taught him to drink tea. Yet he had
deferred his visit until the last minute, for he did not relish the
idea of seeing her as Belhaven's wife. Not that he especially objected
to Belhaven. He regarded him as an undetermined quantity, who seemed
to have an unfathomed depth, and who needed some moral plummet-line as
well as a physical bracing up. When he thought of him, the old doctor
shook his head and thrust out his underlip. "He's elusive," he said to
himself. "In my young days I should have tried to experiment; now I
would hesitate whether to give pepsin or calomel. I usually hate a man
when I can't tell at a glance what sort of a pill he needs."

Rachel poured tea for him in the living-room. Belhaven's taste had
been excellent but she had given those individual touches that made
it homelike, and it began already, in a delicate way, to express her.
The light from the high, south window touched the rumpled waves of her
soft, brown hair and warmed the delicate pallor of her cheek. She wore
a simple, white dress without a single ornament and there was only a
handful of blue and yellow flags in a slender glass on the tea-table.
Dr. Macclesfield drank his tea discontentedly. After all, the room
suited her and she suited the room, if Belhaven could only obliterate
himself!

"I remember this house very well," he remarked, carefully spearing
another piece of lemon for his tea. "It was a tavern in the stage-coach
days, before you were born, my dear. Old Will Jasmine used to keep it;
he was enormously stout and very bald, which was a comfort, considering
that he did all the fine cooking himself. He could dress green turtle
as well as a _chef_. He used to keep a keg of beer on tap in that
corner where you've got your bookcase, a dry kind of a substitute,
too! That high window, with the Colonial fan over the top, was over
the counter. I wonder how much Paul Van Citters cut out of his aunt's
income for all those improvements? I heard that the old lady had to
wear the same bonnet for three years, on account of those Corinthian
capitals out on the front portico, and they ought to have been Doric!"

Rachel laughed. "Paul had been reading Ruskin, and he was mad about
the subtle influences of architecture; I'm afraid he forgot the
architecture of his aunt's bonnets."

"He couldn't; I've seen 'em."

"I wish he'd put in a few closets--not in his aunt's bonnets but in
this house; it's as barren of closets as Paul's brain. I always feel
that there are no little intricate places there, no little cells of
poetic fancy. Paul is just stodgy and commonplace but Pamela loves him."

Dr. Macclesfield stirred his tea industriously. "Rachel," he said, "why
did you let Eva's maid go to Addie Billop?"

Rachel drew a quick breath. "That's Mrs. Billop's affair; she knew that
Zélie had been dismissed."

"Humph! I didn't, until yesterday. I was in New York for the day and
met Sidney, wandering down Fifth Avenue with his mouth open, catching
flies as usual. He mentioned the fact that Zélie was a treasure. I
wonder if he's forgotten the pantry," the doctor added, chuckling
softly.

"Only the wicked remember. Doctor, let me give you another cup of tea."

"No, my child," he waved her away. "Tea makes me gossip; two cups mean
the undoing of my neighbors; a third would make me tell you about my
grandmother and my first trousers. By the way, Rachel, John Charter
landed in San Francisco yesterday, Pamela Van Citters told me; he'll
have to report to the War Department here at once, so we'll see him."

Rachel busied herself with her tea-caddy, and as she deftly measured
out another spoonful of tea, her hand was quite steady and slenderly
graceful. The doctor watched her.

"He's coming back to marry Mrs. Prynne, I believe," she remarked
quietly.

"Nonsense! That's all a lie of Addie Billop's. She picked up some
nonsense, and Lottie Prynne never denies a matrimonial rumor; she's
always in hopes that one will adhere long enough to develop a genuine
case. John Charter isn't engaged to any one; Pamela told me she knew
that for a fact."

Rachel said nothing.

"Charter's a fine fellow," the old man went on; "he's done splendid
service out there, and they say he's to be promoted. Lottie
Prynne--good Lord! I reckon all the ground Addie Billop had for that
was the soldier's button on the top of Lottie's hatpin, and she got
that from old Sedley. He told me so himself, said he'd be damned if he
didn't wish she'd swallow it; he was too old to be ripping buttons off
his uniform for pretty widows."

Rachel tried to laugh, but she had a sensation of strangling and bent
over to arrange the blue and yellow flags. "I believe Paul has taken
their house on Dupont Circle for another year," she said, in a low
voice.

"I reckon he got it cheaper on a long lease. It would have been better
taste to have taken this off his aunt's hands, but Pamela said she
couldn't bear his architectural harangues and there was no sun parlor
for the baby. By the way, the baby has cut its last double tooth; it's
an occasion for public rejoicing; we've all lived on that baby's teeth
and wrestled with them. Why--Rachel, my child!"

Rachel had suddenly covered her face with her hands and burst into
tears.

The old man set his teacup on the table and regarded her thoughtfully.
For a moment she gave way and wept passionately, unrestrainedly; the
barriers had broken down and she had lost control of herself. But it
was not so much a spiritual surrender as a physical necessity; she had
reached the limit of her endurance and she had to give up. For two
weeks she had been building a battlement of stones for her own defense;
she had been imagining how bravely she could meet her barren future
behind her tower, but now--at a touch--it had crumbled into ruins.
There had been terrible moments already, when it had seemed more than
she could bear, but she had finally achieved a state that approached
the normal; she had been trying to interest herself in the house, the
garden, the life that she must lead, and she had been composed and even
cheerful. But now the whole combination of circumstances had changed,
and what had seemed endurable was no longer possible; she must break
away from it, tear herself free or perish. Then, with that curious,
superficial consciousness that makes us aware of extraneous things even
at such moments as this, she became conscious of Dr. Macclesfield's cup
on the table, set down hastily with the spoon in it. Her recognition of
this was only mechanical but, in some way, it recalled her to herself;
she must not confess her misery, since to confess it meant to involve
Eva. She struggled with herself and began to come back; she came back a
long way and heard Belhaven's voice at the door.

She dried her tears and looked up. Dr. Macclesfield had put on his
spectacles and was writing a prescription, with his underlip thrust
out. He handed it to her as Belhaven came across the hall.

"A hundred years ago that was good for nerves," said the old man;
"you've got nerves, Rachel. Take that at bedtime and keep out of the
house; open air and sunshine, that's the idea."

Rachel's hand closed over the slip of paper mechanically, but she was
grateful. After all, tact was better than medicine; she had that moment
to recover before the two men shook hands and she had to take up her
rôle again. For the first time Rachel experienced a feeling with which
she was soon to be deeply acquainted, that would recur again and again,
and become at last a burden to her. She felt for the first time like a
wild creature of the woods and the hills caught in a trap, a cruel and
effectual trap, not one that maimed and gave a chance of a slow death,
but an enduring, live-trap from which there was no escape and where she
was not likely to be left to die. She would be fed and tended and kept
alive, as if her life preserved some great privilege or happiness to
the trapper, but she would never be allowed to escape; the bars of her
cage were closed forever. Her heart began to beat tremendously against
her breast; she was afraid, afraid of herself. Why had this awful thing
come to her? What had she done? Was it that she had not loved deep
enough, served enough, hoped enough, sacrificed enough? Had she been
afraid to trust her own heart?

At first it had been a shock to her whenever Belhaven entered a room
where she was, but to-day his coming was a relief; it gave her that
moment to recover her self-control. He was standing by her little
tea-table, talking to Dr. Macclesfield, and the light shining full on
his face revealed the haggard lines and the extreme pallor. He, too,
had been traveling along the road, but his manner was easy and even
graceful; the tact that he showed in not observing her distress, while
it was essentially a part of his breeding as a man of the world, was
still wonderfully reassuring and had the value of a guarantee that he
would, as he had said, always make it as easy for her as he could. But
with that comforting reassurance came the swift, overwhelming thought
that nothing could make it easy now, that this new turn of affairs,
Charter's return, had made it more than she could bear.

"Well, if I were you, I'd rather stay here all winter than take a house
in the city," Dr. Macclesfield was saying; "as long as you've got a
motor, the distance doesn't count."

"Not for me, but--my wife--"

Rachel did not hear the end of Belhaven's halting sentence as she
slipped out of the room and went up-stairs.




VIII


It was true that John Charter was coming home from the Philippine
Islands.

Out there in the Island of Luzon there was consequently much mourning
in the regiment, for John Charter had borne the heat and burden of the
day, and it remained to be seen whether he would receive his reward.
That Charter greatly differed, at first sight, from other men of his
class and his profession cannot be said; that he did differ greatly in
soul is true. He was a tall, muscular, well-built, young American, a
soldier by instinct, a West Pointer by training, and a first lieutenant
in a regiment of regulars by promotion, but John wore his khaki with
distinction. He had a clean hand and a clean soul, he was superbly
honest, and he was so simple that it seemed that the eternal boy would
never die in him. A certain habit of reserve had kept him unknown and
not greatly liked until the cholera came. In seasons of stress and
cases of cholera, men learn things. The regiment learned John. It was
hot and men fell sick like flies; a steam rose from the rice paddies;
the water was poison; and the soldiers cursed God and died,--that is,
a good many of them.

It was a time when the officers were on leave, but John came back at
the first call. He had been trying to write to Rachel Leven a long
delayed letter,--a letter that he found hard to write, there was so
much to be said in it, and it would have changed the course of so many
lives. On a little thing hangs, sometimes, the fate of a lifetime, but
John never wrote that letter, for the cholera broke out in Company B
and he took off his coat and went to work. He could do anything better
than write a letter.

The men were very sick and the regiment surgeon had chills and fever;
he worked between shakes and swore fearfully, but John and the chaplain
helped him without profanity. The first week three died and ten more
sickened; the second week the chaplain died and John helped the surgeon
alone, for the colonel was in bed with cholera. John seldom slept,
and when he did, he slept in his clothes. The camp was a pest-house.
It is true that we come into this world alone and that we must go out
of it alone, but at the last a man likes to hear a kind word, to see
a friend's face. The dying saw John; he wrote their last letters for
them, took charge of their little bequests, made their wills, sat with
the sick and the delirious; and one poor boy from Maryland raved and
clung to him for twenty-four hours. Then he fell asleep and began to
mend. He thought John had saved his life, and he was probably right,
for the surgeon had had a chill the day of the crisis and was not able
to lift a finger.

Charter worked on; he grew thin and his eyes sank back in his head,
but he worked on. Then he found that the natives were sick, too, and
in distress, and he rode out of camp at all hours to carry medicines
and administer comfort under the _nipa_ roofs, where the skull of the
carabao on the gate-post had failed of its charm to keep away cholera.
He did the work of five men and superintended the burying of the dead,
but after six weeks of it he fell in his tracks. They carried him
into the hospital-tent and laid him on a cot, then they tiptoed out,
bareheaded, white with fear; and the boy from Maryland stood outside in
his socks and wept. The colonel got out of bed and came down to consult
with the surgeon, and together they went and looked at John, who lay
unconscious, with a blue ring around his mouth. The surgeon swore, a
sign of fear and emotion with him, while the colonel's eyes were wet;
they were both fighting mad and they had been boys together.

"Going to die?" the colonel asked hoarsely.

"How do I know?" snapped the surgeon; "I'm not omniscient; it would be
a damned sight better if I had been!"

"We can't afford to lose him," said the colonel, blowing his nose. "If
you're not a damned fool, you'll pull him through."

"I am a damned fool. If I hadn't been, I'd have stopped his racket;
he's worked like a mule."

"He ought to be promoted," growled the colonel, "and here he is on his
back, sick as a dog. Simon, I'll hang you if you let him slip; he's got
to be promoted."

"Think likely he'll be promoted to heaven," snapped the surgeon; "this
damned cholera--"

"Simon," said the colonel, "profanity and chills and fever won't save
this boy, and I--I love him like a son!"

The surgeon went to the door and looked out. In the distance he saw the
peaks of the Caraballo Sur, blue and vivid; a mist floated over the
valley, the rice fields were green, the _nipa_ palms and the cocoanuts
looked gray. In his heart he cursed the Philippine Islands collectively
and the cholera individually, but the flag must not come down. He wiped
his forehead and turned back, and he and the colonel eyed each other
grimly.

"How d'ye think I feel?" he asked fiercely. "You love John like a son?
By the Lord Harry, Colonel, I'd give my right hand for him now--and my
right eye! So would the boy from Maryland, so would Private Davitt,
so would Private McPhee, so would Michael Larry, whom he carried up
the long hill when the Moros stabbed Mike in the back; so would the
Filipino woman whose baby he saved when the hill village burned, so
would every man jack in this regiment, but it's only God Almighty that
can save him now. I'm fighting, but so is the cholera."

The colonel took off his hat and buried his face in it. Let no man say
that in that hour the rough old soldier and the profane doctor did not
pray.

John lay a long while between life and death. Then one beautiful
morning he opened his eyes on a new world, where a fresh breeze was
blowing and the sun shone. He lay still and weak on his bed and watched
a little lizard crawl in the sun at the tent door. His head felt quite
light but his heart was filled with peace, for he had been dreaming a
great deal and Rachel had spoken to him, not once but many times; he
remembered her voice quite well.

He was amazed when the surgeon came in and sat down beside him. The old
man looked ill and worn as he felt John's pulse. Then John remembered.

"I meant to have gone down to-day to see the boy from Maryland," he
said. "I'll go--"

"The boy's well," said the doctor, "he's been well a month."

John tried to sit up in bed and failed. "What do you mean?" he gasped.
"Have I been ill?"

"Six weeks; you're promoted to be a captain of the Tenth, and you're
ordered home two weeks from to-day."

It was then that John fainted. In his own mind he had done only his
plain duty. He had such a simple conception of life that he perplexed
other people; they imagined him to be always trying to compass great
ends, while in reality he only saw his work and did it. Simplicity is
sometimes more perplexing than diplomacy and John had achieved perfect
simplicity; he had done a hard duty well because he had no idea how
to leave it undone, and he did not know that it was uncommon to do it
in his way, or that he had done it uncommonly well. He was surprised
that the men had so suddenly adopted him and he was a little shy under
their enthusiasm. The boy from Maryland followed him around like a
dog and wept when John took ship on the government transport with his
tall, thin person fairly bulging with farewell letters and remembrances
that he was carrying to the kindred of the dead soldiers. It was this
multiplicity of commissions, this new and deadly popularity, that had
kept John from writing that one important letter, Rachel's letter. But,
if he did not write it, he thought it out a dozen times, for she was
never long absent from his mind. All the way across the Pacific it may
be said that Rachel traveled with him; she fairly walked the waves, and
when he stood, as he often stood, on the deck and looked seaward with
steadfast eyes, he was thinking of Rachel.

He had known her nearly all his life and he had loved her long before
Rachel had even dimly perceived it. But John was deliberate; not
even a great love could reverse the fixed habits of a lifetime, and
he waited for the full time to come before he opened his heart, not
knowing that opportunity had come like a thief in the night and stolen
away again, thwarted and lost forever. He continued to look ahead with
steadfast, blue eyes and that habit--as strong as his deliberation--the
habit of determination. All that he had ever won in his life he had
won by a quiet, determined perseverance. It was said of him in the
regiment that Charter's perseverance was more deadly than a brickbat,
and John's perseverance had the effect of a moral brickbat; it was a
projectile that hit opposition fairly in the bull's-eye and crushed
its way through it. He had worked his way steadily upward without
favoritism,--no one had rolled logs for him; he had the qualities that
win recognition in the teeth of circumstance, and he had outgrown his
comrades, as he had outgrown himself; at thirty-three he was still
growing, still pursuing his moral development. It was this quality
that had lifted him above his fellows, and that had stretched him on a
sick-bed for weeks in the islands. Sometimes our victories seem defeats
because they are robbed of the fruits, and John's greatest victory had
been won in the cholera camp; he had grown steadily during those weeks
of service; the regiment adored him, but he had lost touch with the
world, and it is not always safe to put aside an important letter.

By this it will be seen that, having been ill six weeks, and coming
home on a transport, beset by many duties, John had heard nothing, and
had missed many home papers and even one newsy letter from his cousin
Pamela Van Citters. He was coming home to Rachel Leven; he had decided,
after much deliberation, that it was better to speak than to write, for
he was by no means sure of Rachel's love, though he was overwhelmingly
sure of her kindness. It would be sweet to see Rachel; there was
something in her strength, her tranquility, her sanity, that appealed
to John's heart. He felt their community of spirit; she was clever and
charming and all that, and yet he understood her and she understood
him. He landed in San Francisco with a feeling of joy that he stood
once more on the same continent, that the sea was no longer between
them. But it was characteristic of Charter that he proceeded to attend
to the various commissions that he had received from the dead soldiers
out in Luzon. He traveled miles out of his way to carry a letter and
a lock of hair to a bereaved old mother, and he took back a ring and
a sword to a young widow. He did a dozen painful and tedious things
before he set his face toward Washington, where he had to report to the
War Department and where he hoped to find Rachel.

It was now nearly the first of August and the hot sun on the paved
streets made him recall the cool-looking rice paddies and the river
that had flowed so near the camp. Sickening memories came back, and
some sorrow; he remembered dying faces and the clinging of chilly
hands. He hurried through the city without even a visit to his club
and therefore he heard nothing. The calm of midsummer had settled on
the place and he saw no one he knew, except at the War Department,
and there he received his promotion. Afterwards, he went over to the
White House and the President himself spoke a few words to him, so
full of appreciation and kindness that John blushed like a girl. When
he was finally through with this ordeal, for it was an ordeal to him,
he walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, where even the gay chatter of
people about him sounded cheerful and homelike. He walked on, unaware
that many glanced curiously at the tall, soldierly figure, the bronzed
face, the straight-looking, blue eyes. He was not handsome, but he was
distinguished looking, with that crisp blond hair that seldom shows a
streak of white until the approach of extreme old age. People thought
him absorbed and happy, but, in reality, his spirit was traveling
ahead of him, and it continued to journey ahead of the trolley which
carried him the rest of the way.

He knew that Rachel was usually with the Astrys in July and August and
he had started without hesitation for the Astry place. He had sent no
word ahead of him; he longed to see the glad surprise in Rachel's eyes,
for he knew that, in any case, she would be glad to see him, and her
eyes were wonderful when she was pleased. Charter was quite unaware
that they had a look for him that they had for no other in the world;
but he was at peace with himself, no premonition stirred in his own
heart, no shadow fell before him upon the perfect sunshine of the day.
At last he would see Rachel! He believed in her; his large, simple
nature centered itself on that one thing, his belief in her.

It was late afternoon when he got off at the end of the avenue and set
off across country; purposely he walked, for it was no great distance
now, and he could think. Besides, he loved the hedgerows where the wild
carrot was riotously abloom and the wild grapevine was heavy with green
fruit. He broke off a spray of wild flowers and pressed them against
his face. It was good to be home again; down in that lane there used to
be swamp magnolias; he looked across a golden field of rye and saw the
deep blue of the Virginia hills; another bend of the road would bring
him to a little wood below the Astry meadows. He climbed the stile and
struck through the wood path. Ferns grew about his feet, the afternoon
sunshine made glorious vistas between the tall trunks of pines and
hemlocks. A solitary silver birch caught the light on its slender stem
far ahead.

Below the wood, another path crossed the Astry estate; it led to the
old tavern that belonged to Van Citters' aunt. John knew all about it;
Pamela was his first cousin and she had written him a humorous account
of Paul's architectural madness and his aunt's wrath. A grove of trees
shielded its old gables from sight, but John felt its presence; he even
thought he saw the highest chimney. He had come past the silver birch
now; below him lay the meadow, and the path, diverging from his own,
was fringed with a tall, plume-like growth of sumach. He descended the
slope, crossed the stream on the old stepping-stones, and looked up. On
the further bank stood Rachel.

She had seen him coming and had had that brief interval to recover her
self-control. Of course he knew, Pamela must have told him, and it
would be soon over; he would say something conventional, she had only
to play her part. It was almost a relief to her to feel that Pamela
must have given him all the details, but she was startled at the look
on his face, the joy that flashed into his eyes when he saw her. It
was disconcerting, but she held out her hand mechanically and made her
trite little speech.

"I'm so glad to see you home again."

His speech was not quite so ready, but his hand closed warmly over
hers and his eyes were eloquent. There was nothing wanting now in his
world, with Rachel in it. The joy of seeing her again blinded him to
the change in her, the shyness and constraint of her manner; he was
occupied, instead, with the delicate oval of her face, the dusky hair,
the clear, gray tint of her eyes. She had on a clinging, creamy gown
and a wide-brimmed hat that shaded her forehead, and he took in every
detail of the slender, graceful figure, holding her hand a good deal
longer than even such an occasion warranted.

"I can't tell you how glad I am to see you!" he said finally, his eyes
deeply kindled with happiness. "It seems a thousand years since I saw
you last, but you're unchanged!"

Was it possible that Pamela had not told him? She withdrew her hand
gently.

"Am I?" her lips trembled; "it's a long time, everything has happened."

"Yes, we've had war, pestilence, and almost famine out in the
Philippines. It's been a jolly hard row to hoe, and I had to see so
many poor fellows die, but it's done; they've let me come home to stay
a while, you know?"

"We've heard a great deal more than that, and we've honored the hero;
they've made you a captain, so I'm told." She was doing very well now;
after all, he might know and take it casually!

He blushed like a girl. "I didn't expect it to come so soon; I believe
the dear old colonel had something to do with it. I was glad chiefly
because I thought it would please--you."

"It does please me so much."

They had turned and were walking together across the meadow; neither of
them knew where they were going; the warm sunshine bathed them with its
caresses, a flock of purple martins descended before them and whirled
over the long grass in ever narrowing circles, their wings flashing in
the sunlight.

"Tell me about yourself," he said; "it is a long time really, and we
heard nothing out there, or next to nothing. I used to hope for a
letter from you, and kept on hoping until I realized that I was too
poor a correspondent to expect remembrance; but all the same I was
starving for news."

She had the feeling of a condemned criminal who has a brief,
unlooked-for reprieve with no hope of pardon later on.

"Haven't you heard anything? I thought Pamela wrote."

"When she feels like it. You know Pamela does things
spasmodically,--and there's the baby; nearly everything gives way to
his highness. The rest of us merely cumber the earth. Let me see, I
think my last letter from Pamela was at New Year's."

Then of course he did not know! She must tell him, but her tongue
refused to utter it.

"I thought Pamela would have written you," she chose her words slowly.
The opportunity to tell him was plain, but she could not do it, not
yet! "Quite a number of things have happened."

"But you've been well, I see that,--and Mrs. Astry?"

She snatched at the digression.

"Very well indeed; they're going to stay here all summer and go to
Lenox in October, I believe. I suppose Johnstone is staying on because
Congress does this year; you know he takes an interest in politics. I
hope it won't be too hot for Eva."

"You ought to feel the Philippines; one has to, to appreciate them! I
was very ill out there. I believe old Dr. Lewis thought I was going
to die, but I didn't; I only lay there in a sort of a trance and had
visions of you. You were very kind to me in my dreams. I think I was
content to lie there in the blistering heat and fever just to dream of
you."

"Poor fellow!" she said softly. She was walking beside him, trailing
her furled parasol in the grass, and she had a vague feeling of
amazement that she could still go on, for there is no torture so great
as the necessity to hurt one who is greatly loved, and Rachel was
tasting the dregs of her cup.

"When that old chap told me that I was promoted and ordered home, I
fainted. You see what a jolly fool I was, Miss Leven, but the joy was
too great; I was going to see you again. I thought of that all the way;
I was thinking of it when I came through the wood just now,--that I'd
soon see you, that I could speak to you at last, tell you all that's
been in my heart through these three years of exile. You know I never
could write a decent letter; I'm a perfect lumpkin with a pen! Rachel,
when I came across the brook and saw you, I--"

She stopped him. "Hush!" she said, with white lips. "I'm married."

He stood still. All the joy of life slipped out of his face and she saw
it grow gray before her eyes. He straightened himself with a shuddering
start as if a shot had struck him, for his faith in her, one of the
vital realities of his life, had received a terrible shock. She had led
him on into fond and foolish talk; she had led him on to bare his heart
to her!

"I've made a jolly fool of myself!" he said bitterly.

"John!" she cried, in involuntary anguish.

But not even his large heart was proof against the gall and wormwood
of betrayal. "You must forgive a fellow for butting in. I didn't
know--of course you understand that?"

"I never for a moment dreamed that you knew," she said finely.

He looked up then and saw the white agony of her face and his head
swam. Had the fever come back on him?

"Will you tell me--his name?" he asked hoarsely.

She tried twice to speak before she could answer him. "Belhaven," she
said at last.

John turned his face away; she could not see his expression, but she
saw the strong hand at his side clench nervously and she felt and
shared the still agony. They were walking on; before them the green
meadowland sloped beautifully to the edge of the brook; beyond it, rose
the low growth of laurel and young dogwood, and through the shadowy
grove she caught glimpses of Belhaven's house, her home!

"Have you been married long?" John asked at last, though he could not
look at her.

"Nearly three months."

"I don't know why I didn't hear," he said, after a long moment. "You'll
have to forgive me, I--" he stopped abruptly.

Rachel looked up and met his eyes. The despair in them cut her to the
soul; she could have borne anything but this, to see his pain! She
broke down suddenly, hiding her face in her hands, and her grief was
anguish. He looked at her in pained surprise; hitherto he had thought
only of his own trouble, now he became aware of hers, for she was
weeping dreadfully.

"Rachel!"

She did not reply; she had stopped and was leaning against the slender
stem of the silver birch, which they had reached again together. He
could see only the curve of cheek and brow and the long, slender
fingers clasped convulsively over her eyes; she was still weeping
silently.

"I can't bear to see you like this, Rachel; is it because you're sorry
for me?"

She tried to answer him but she could not.

"You're--you're not in trouble yourself?"

She shook her head; it was best to lie to him, but what a poor liar she
was!

Her grief appealed to him, moving him to generosity and even to
gentleness. "Don't think of me; it's just my portion. I've always loved
you, Rachel; I wouldn't grieve you for the world."

"I grieved you!"

"Well, you couldn't help it. I was a fool not to know, I--I--" Then he
broke out in spite of himself: "Rachel, did you love him when I went
away?"

She writhed, hiding her face.

John watched her, a perception of something wrong creeping into his
reluctant mind. Then he was conscience-stricken; what right had he to
thrust himself into her confidence? Yet passion, denied and betrayed,
tore his heart.

"Forgive me, I had no right to ask you, but somehow I couldn't help it;
I felt as if I must know! There are little moments in those old days
that are dear to me. Rachel, you understand? I wanted to feel that they
were mine still; I didn't want to be robbed of them, I--"

"They're all yours," she said, controlling herself, "all yours, John."

"Rachel, did--did you love me a little then? I wasn't altogether a
fool--you did?"

"Oh, God!" she moaned softly, wringing her hands.

"I can't understand!" he broke out fiercely; "this is fearful!"

"Don't try to understand--" She was walking on again blindly, trying to
recover herself, her face bloodless, the muscles drawn about the eyes
and mouth.

"I'm a brute," said John bitterly. "I'm hurting you!"

"It kills me to hurt you!" she cried.

"Rachel--" his voice was hoarse with pain--"do you love him?"

She walked ahead of him, her head bent; once she stumbled and almost
fell, then she recovered herself and stood still. They were at the
edge of the wood; Belhaven's house stood before them and there were
flowers abloom on the low terrace. John came up to her, his white face
set and stern, passion in his eyes.

"I meant it," he said hoarsely. "I'm a brute--but I meant it, Rachel."

"I've married him."

They looked at each other. They were two souls in torment and she would
have given hers to save him this anguish. At that moment she felt that
she could have died for him. They were silent a long time and then he
thrust his clenched hands into his pockets.

"I'll take you home; forgive me again--if you can!"

"There's nothing to forgive," her white lips stiffened. "Don't go on
with me now--come some other time, to-morrow. Now I can't bear it!" The
tears ran down her cheeks.

Something in his throat choked him and he turned away. "You're
right--of course, but I wish you'd tell me all; it--it would be easier
to bear."

She shook her head. "Not easier, harder."

"Good God, as if it could be!"

"Good-by, John!"

He did not answer her, but turned away, ashamed of the hard-wrung tears
in his eyes. She stood watching him go, her lips quivering,--she had
grieved the heart she loved best in the world. When he was gone, she
made her way blindly into the house and crept up-stairs to her own
room, and once there she fell on her knees beside the bed and buried
her face on her outstretched arms.

It was indeed more than she could bear. Then she was ashamed of her
rebellion. God Almighty would not give her more than she could bear; He
knew her, He would not do it. Perhaps she could bear more than others,
perhaps she had a greater power of endurance, as she had a greater
power of love. Her soul, reeling in darkness, cried out for release.
Then suddenly she remembered and understood. God was punishing her
for her sin. Was not that the old Biblical idea? She had sworn to a
falsehood before Him; to save her sister she had flung a challenge at
God. She had vowed to love Belhaven when she could not; she had vowed
to honor him when she despised him; she had vowed to obey him when
she was determined to have nothing to do with him. She was perjured;
she had called Eva a liar in her heart because Eva had maligned her,
and now she was herself a living lie. That was it; God was punishing
her! It was fair, it was just, it was what men would call a square
deal; she had no right to beg off, she was a coward. She had done it
on an impulse. She searched her own heart with merciless severity and
she knew that she would never have done it but for the thought that
Charter had left her for Mrs. Prynne. It stultified even her sacrifice;
it made her the more frivolous and contemptible in her own eyes, and
she was a coward, for she wanted to beg off. She wanted to tell John
the truth; it was hard to let him suffer as she had suffered. If she
could only have told him that she loved him and shared his pain,
but she dared not. John was good but she dared not. He would not be
resigned to such a fate; he would rebel against it, and if he rebelled,
would she resist him? Would she stand out for her own cause, or would
she yield to him? She was a strong woman, but she loved much; would she
want to yield, would she resist?

It had always cost her an effort to contradict Charter; her impulse
was always to give up, to be guided by him, and her happiness lay
in pleasing him. Would she be strong enough not only to resist John
but to resist her own heart? The enemy was within, the enemy of her
resolutions, her own heart, was John's ally; it was pleading for him
now. If she betrayed Eva, if she told John the truth, would he submit
to this miserable marriage to save Eva and Belhaven from Astry? Not
for a day, not for an hour! She knew John and she dared not tell him.
Then the desolate loneliness of it came back to her and she cast
herself, face downward, upon the floor and lay prone beside her bed,
submerged in supreme weakness and misery. All her strength was gone,
all her resistance, all her self-control; she lay there--broken and
desperate--overwhelmed at last. There was nothing left in the world.




IX


When Charter left Rachel so abruptly, he did not return to the city
but, turning his face toward the country, walked steadily away from
the habitations of men. His mood was one that sought solitude as a
spiritual necessity, for, at the very moment when the journey's end
seemed to have been achieved and the lovely presence of Rachel--no
longer a vision of his fevered fancy--was actually assured, his
universe had crumbled about his ears.

The fact that no intimation of an engagement to Belhaven had ever
reached him made the blow more astonishing; it seemed incredible that
she could have been married without his knowledge, that an event of
such vital importance to him could have occurred without a warning or
even a premonition. He recalled his foolish expressions of feeling,
his interrupted declaration, with a kind of shamed anger. He must have
appeared like an idiot, coming back after his long silence to make love
to a woman who had had time, in the interval, to get married to another
man. Yet not even his first resentment against her for permitting him
to go so far unwarned, was of long duration; his mind was too occupied
with the astonishing fact of her marriage. The shock had been so great
that his senses were benumbed, and he was able to go across country,
picking a path through the woods, without an idea of where he was going.

The cool, green shade of the place, with the pungent scent of the pines
and hemlocks, the delicate growth and glossy green leaves of the young
gum trees, with here and there the tall frond of a hardy fern, gave
him a feeling of familiarity without suggesting the painful necessity
of reconciling himself to the change in all his most cherished
remembrances. His mind staggered back from the consideration of his
loss and he tried to recall the slow process of reasoning that had
made him delay the letter to Rachel. The fact that he had not the pen
of a ready writer did not furnish a sufficient excuse for delaying a
matter so vital, and he remembered, in a bewildered way, his fruitless
efforts to put his thoughts on paper. But intimately associated with
these efforts was the sputter of Mauser bullets and the musical bugle
of the trumpeter sounding the charge. He seemed to see the malarious
mist rising from the rice paddies and the _nipa_ huts of the Filipinos,
while he recalled, with an even more vague recollection of the pains
and the weariness, those hours that he had worked with the camp surgeon
and sat beside the victims of cholera. He remembered, too, the face
of the Filipino woman when he snatched her baby from the burning ruins
of the village that the fleeing insurgents had fired, and he seemed
to feel the clinging hands of the poor boy from Maryland when he had
been mad with delirium and cried for his mother. The very fulness of
those months in the tropics, the routine of marching and attacking the
earthworks of the rebels, when those big straw hats had bobbed up and
down until the awful charge with fixed bayonets drove them out of their
trenches like ants out of a demolished hill in a flower-bed, returned
to him.

It was incredible to think that, at the very moment when such vital
things as this had occupied him, life on this side of the globe had
continued to flow on in its usual conventional course, and that
Belhaven had found opportunity to supplant him in Rachel's heart. At
this thought an unreasoning rage against Belhaven made him walk faster
and faster along the path; once or twice he had to stop to break his
way through the brush or to tear aside the wild tangle of a vine, and
it gave him almost a sensation of joy to tear and to break. He would
have liked to crush Belhaven, to take him up bodily and fling him out
of the way. He tried to recall his recollections of the man, but he had
never liked him, and now, at the crucial moment, he could not summon
up a vision of him, as Saul conjured the figure of Samuel out of the
pit. Of one thing, however, he was reasonably sure, and that was that
Belhaven did not belong to the class that he recognized as one that
was made up of men of honor. With a very exalted conception of those
qualifications that constitute "an officer and a gentleman," Charter
had a peculiar scorn for the men who did not belong to that type, and
nothing was more intolerable than the fact of Rachel's marriage to a
creature that he would have been likely to call, had he been asked
to qualify him, "that fellow Belhaven!" The fact that women rarely
understand those qualities in men that are most obvious to their own
sex did not alleviate Charter's anger and disgust. Rachel married to
Belhaven was an object to move the gods to pity.

It was at this point in his confused misery that he recalled her
anguish; after all, it might not have been altogether pity for him.
He reddened at that thought, but, perhaps, she was already aware of
her mistake, already plunged into the misery that now apparently was
the common result of marriage and made divorce appear as a boon to
those unfortunates who desire another opportunity, like the man in the
nursery rhyme who jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his
eyes, only to jump into another bush and scratch them in again. Yet the
thought that she was unhappy did not alleviate his misery or offer
any solution of her extraordinary marriage, for her unhappiness must
be independent of him since she had not considered him of sufficient
importance to influence her decision. If she was disappointed in her
choice it must be because she had suffered the common awakening after
the event, rather than that she was grieved by any recollection of his
affection, or regret that she had not awaited his return. The fact
that her outbreak of grief was synchronous with his declaration was
not significant in the light of previous events, for she must have
seen that he loved her. With such marvelous obtuseness as this Charter
failed to realize that his silence in the Philippines would have
convinced almost any woman of his utter indifference, and that Rachel
had had every right to argue that he wanted her to forget him.

Instead he reviewed the whole course of their acquaintance and failed
to find any spot where he had not given evidence of her importance in
his life, and he could not imagine why it was necessary to put into
formal words a fact so vital and so obvious. He had lost her; that was
all there was to be said, and he must take his medicine like a man, and
the best thing to do was to get out of it and forget it.

These reflections had brought him to the edge of a stream and, as he
recovered his mental poise, he was surprised to find that it was a
part of Rock Creek and that he had, therefore, wandered many miles
out of his way. He stood still for a moment, allowing his eyes to
follow the lovely rivulet with a crowding recollection of its beauties
that had first appealed to his childish eyes, then to his boyish
fancy, and now gave him almost a sensation of comfort. It happened
to be one of those charming spots where the creek, so often tranquil
and limpid, was hurrying over stones and sending up little clouds of
spray as the miniature waves dashed through the narrow gorge between
the rocks, where the graceful boughs of a weeping birch drooped far
down over it and dropped their leaves into the stream. The gentle
murmur of the swift flowing current, the soft rustle of the abundant
foliage overhead, and the sweet, shrill cry of a catbird, were the only
sounds he heard. There was something uplifting in the solitude, in the
natural beauty of the scene, and, for the first time since the shock of
Rachel's announcement, Charter recalled himself to a more normal mood.

This was still with him, clothing familiar objects with the grim
outlines of reality, when an hour later he rode into the city on the
trolley and made his way at last to the Van Citters' house on Dupont
Circle, where he had been invited to make his home during his stay in
Washington. It was now late afternoon, or rather early evening; the
familiar drawing-room was cool and dim and he found Pamela yawning
over the latest novel.

She greeted him with a fusilade of reproaches; where had he been,
what had he been doing? They had been expecting him for hours; Paul
had gone out a second time to inquire at the War Department; a dozen
people had been to see him and gone away disappointed. Charter found it
difficult to answer the questions, and even more difficult to keep his
_sang-froid_ under his cousin's searching gaze, for Pamela had detected
his heightened color and gave him swift, birdlike glances that were
plainly suspicious.

"You must remember that I had a number of things to see to," he
parried, "besides, I went to the White House."

"Don't tell me that took all day--unless you unearthed a Filipino
conspiracy."

"Come, Pamela, give me a cup of tea; I know I've been ungrateful not to
report sooner, for it's awfully good of you and Paul to ask me here,
but I'll try to make the most of your hospitality the few days that I'm
likely to be in the city."

She gazed at him over the teacup, the sugar tongs suspended in mid-air.
"You don't mean to say that you're ordered off again?"

He shook his head, smiling faintly at her amazed attitude. "No, but you
mustn't expect me to spend my time loafing around Washington; you know
I was never intended for a carpet-knight."

"I wonder if you know that there was a report that you were engaged to
Mrs. Prynne?"

His blank amazement amply repaid her for this random shot. "What
nonsense! She must have been immensely annoyed."

Pamela smiled. "She wasn't. You haven't an idea, I suppose, that you're
something of a lion--with your Philippine record and the medal they
talk of giving you for bravery."

"Oh, rot!"

"How eloquent! It got all about, the report, I mean. Eva Astry asked
about it the day Rachel's engagement to Belhaven was announced."

"I didn't know until to-day that--that Miss Leven was married." Charter
flattered himself that his tone was casual and he busied himself with
Pamela's sugar-bowl.

She eyed him shrewdly. "It was almost as sudden as a stroke of
apoplexy," she remarked, sipping her tea.

"What?"

"Rachel's marriage; what else did you suppose?"

"I don't see why it should have been sudden. I seem to remember that
Mrs. Astry's was--"

"A sort of nine days' wonder? Yes, but Rachel's was more amazing in a
different way."

He considered several dominoes of sugar and selected a small half. "In
what way?" he risked, aware that his cousin was more than a match for
him in the conversational arena.

"Her engagement was announced on Monday and she was married on
Thursday."

"That doesn't show that the engagement had only existed since Monday."

"But it does show just that. Up to Monday Belhaven had been making
violent love to Eva Astry; everybody knew it."

Charter's face flushed darkly. "I hope you don't repeat any such
malicious gossip as that, Pamela!"

"It isn't gossip; ask Paul. We were out there for a week-end; so was
Massena, the Italian Chargé d'Affaires, and he was perfectly amazed.
Belhaven was simply devoted to Eva, and then to our surprise Astry
announced his engagement to Rachel."

"All this only goes to show that he needed a thrashing."

"Belhaven isn't the sort to get it. You know he's rather charming, but
I'm quite sure that Rachel never cared for him."

"I can see no other reason for her accepting him."

"Nor I, yet I've heard things--" Pamela stopped; after all Charter was
the last one to hear all this gossip; he would loathe it.

But he pressed the point. "What things?"

"Well, for one thing, they say Astry made the match to get him out of
Eva's way."

"I should say it was putting him in it; it would have been easier to
horsewhip him and be done with it."

Pamela sighed. "Your methods are so cryptic. I don't understand the
thing anyway, but--" she weighed her words--"I know Rachel's wretched."

He rose and walked up and down the room; she was giving form and shape
to the impression that had been growing in his own slower mind as he
recalled Rachel's evident distress.

Pamela made matters worse, for looking up at his tall figure as it
approached her and seeing the trouble in his face, she gave way to her
feelings.

"Oh, John, I wish you'd been here!"

He halted, amazed. "Why?"

"Because--because I always thought Rachel liked you, and you might have
prevented it somehow! I felt that she was--well, just sacrificed for
Eva."

"I can't imagine why she should have been," he said hoarsely. "Good
God, Pamela, don't make it any worse!"

Pamela, who had been using a plummet-line to sound the depths, was
filled with awe at her discovery.

"I don't believe she ever cared a rap for Belhaven!" she climaxed.

"I don't see that that makes it any better."

"It doesn't make it any worse, and--"

"Perhaps not." Charter's face was very white. "Pamela, suppose we talk
of something else!"




X


The slow weeks that had dragged by had not been happy ones for Eva
Astry. Her first feeling of relief that it was done, the ordeal of
Rachel's marriage and the risk that Astry would discover the motive
that had prompted it, was over, and she had long ago begun to feel
that she had purchased her immunity at too heavy a price. The cost of
it, indeed, was chiefly revealed to her by Belhaven's attitude. The
cruelty of his position began to appear to her in various aspects and
she saw that her betrayal of him had cost her the chief place in his
regard. She began to be vaguely aware that she had given him the right
to hate her, that the sort of love she had inspired was not of a fiber
to resist such an attack, that it was not even equal to the demands of
common self-sacrifice. Unconsciously, too, she began to compare his
attitude at the time of Astry's discovery with that of Rachel. Her
sister had sacrificed herself to save her from the shadow of dishonor,
while her lover had not even had the manhood to face her husband. No
light in which she could view it made the situation seem less ugly, and
at no time did Belhaven figure as a hero. Yet her affection for him
had been strong enough to torture her with jealousy when she saw him
stand up to be married to her sister. Although she knew that Rachel
probably despised him, her own nature--soft and pleasure-loving--was
not one to readily yield an admirer to another woman. It had been that
reluctance to part with one that had made her recall Belhaven after her
marriage with Astry. She could have married him in the first place but
she had greatly preferred the Astry millions. It had seemed to her that
all the accessories and comforts of wealth were necessary to her, that
her beauty, always of a rare and lovely type, demanded the setting that
Astry offered her.

She had always affected a mode of living and a class of society which
had drained every purse in the family to keep her afloat, even as a
young girl, and she had always intended to achieve a dazzling marriage.
Astry, while failing to offer her a title and a place in Europe which
she had coveted, did present the next thing to it,--the possession of
a great fortune and the power to purchase the place in society which
she had failed to attain through her mere beauty and charm. If she
could not be a princess in a small European State, like one of her
cousins, she could be the wife of an American millionaire, and she did
not hesitate long over her decision. Belhaven, whose fortune was much
smaller and who had squandered a large part of his income, was no
match for Astry, and Eva's marriage to the latter had been celebrated
with all the pomp that the Leven family, reinforced by the maternal
relatives, the Sterrits, had been able to achieve. The paying for it,
indeed, had driven poor Aunt Drusilla Leven into the retirement of an
obscure Italian town where, as she frankly wrote her friends, washing
was fabulously cheap. Profiting by this financial sacrifice, Eva had
made the great match of the season and had never bestowed a thought
upon poor Aunt Drusilla in her exile, except to be thankful that she
did not have to invite that "old frump" to her dinners. But, after the
first few months, even the society of a frump would have been more
desirable than the continued criticism of a watchful, jealous, and
uncongenial husband.

After his first discovery that Eva was not, as he had supposed, a
beautiful and delicate replica of Rachel, Astry had been frankly
disappointed. They had very little in common and he could not remain
long unaware that, if Eva did not love money for its own sake, she
cared greatly for the luxuries and privileges that money could obtain
for her. Finding himself, therefore, an object of indifference to his
young and beautiful wife, he met her with a like coldness and reserve,
so that Eva was soon, like a naughty child, shut out of the inner
circle of her husband's confidence. It was at this point, when they
were both to blame, that she began to encourage Belhaven's renewed
devotion. The result had been that Astry, no longer trusting her, had
taken alarm, and there had been many quarrels, at first petty and then
so serious that they led up to the moment when she had feared for
Belhaven's life. Then had come the climax and her falsehood about her
sister, Rachel's sacrifice to protect her, and the marriage.

Now that it was over and she was left to view the matter from every
standpoint, in the cold light of common sense, she was filled with
horror at the tangle she had made; and the continued necessity of
acting it all out, of keeping up the tissue of falsehood that she had
woven, was wearing her out. Her beauty, of that delicate and ephemeral
type that is dependent on color and light, was visibly diminished.
Mrs. Van Citters, happening in upon her at the unfortunate hour of
noon, when all the defects are most fiercely revealed, thought that
she looked absolutely pinched and white, and that only her peculiarly
lovely hair and eyes saved her from being what Aunt Drusilla Leven
would have called "real peaked."

Pamela, who had been carefully instructed by her husband to attend
strictly to her own business, found it difficult to refrain from
remarking upon Eva's looks, but she began the conversation with the
determination to be very guarded and to only skim the surface.

"Are you really going to stay all summer?" she inquired casually, as
she folded her parasol and tossed it with her gloves on a convenient
chair in the breakfast-room, where Eva had just been taking coffee and
toast. "Paul and I get off to-morrow. Mother took the baby last week;
it's abominable in the city now."

"Well, you see we're not in the city," Eva drawled, "and Johnstone's
been interested in the tariff. Besides, I suppose we'll go to Florida
this winter and--" she shrugged her shoulders--"what's the use?"

Pamela stretched out an absent-minded hand and, picking up a strawberry
from the cut-glass dish on the table, dangled it by its green stem. "I
suppose you like to be here on Rachel's account; she isn't going away,
is she?"

"I'm sure I don't know; I suggested the pyramids of Egypt."

Pamela clung to the surface. "There are such horrible cockroaches on
those Nile boats," she observed.

"I can't imagine why people here have made such a fuss about Rachel's
marriage," said Eva fretfully. "One would think a bomb had exploded;
they seem to catalogue it with murder and sudden death."

Pamela looked vacant. "Do they? You know I've been simply taken up
with trying to keep John Charter with us; Paul and I offered all sorts
of inducements but he wouldn't stay."

"Good gracious, hadn't you Mrs. Prynne? I thought they were engaged."

"Nonsense! Imagine John marrying a paper doll! I don't know who started
that report unless it was Mrs. Billop."

"She's equal to anything, but I can't see her object unless she thought
Mrs. Prynne had designs on Sidney."

"Poor Lottie! I think even she'd draw the line there! I was perfectly
amazed when Paul told me about that supposed engagement, the day that
Rachel's was announced, but I fancy that was really what put it into
Mrs. Billop's head."

"I don't see why."

"Why of course you know John was in love with Rachel?"

Eva, who had been only languidly attentive, turned quickly. "What?"

Pamela reddened. "Didn't you know it? Didn't Rachel ever tell you about
it?"

"Not a word."

Her visitor felt deliciously guilty; she had not intended to transgress
her husband's injunctions, but, as long as she had inadvertently let
the cat out of the bag, there was a wicked satisfaction in seeing Eva's
amazed incredulity.

"Well, of course I knew it," she said sweetly, nibbling her strawberry,
"it was perfectly easy to see; John's so thoroughly masculine that he
can't hide it; you know men are just like ostriches; they bury their
heads in the sand and think they're completely hidden."

"If it was so obvious, it seems rather strange, doesn't it, that I
never heard anything about it?"

"Well, I suppose of course Rachel didn't reciprocate and so you didn't
notice."

Eva deliberated; she began to suspect that Pamela was watching her.
"No, Rachel didn't reciprocate," she risked at last; "that's certain,
isn't it?"

"Yes, if we take it for granted that we always marry the people we care
for."

Eva blushed,--a blush that spread painfully from brow to chin and
throat,--her eyelids quivered and drooped from Pamela's gaze, she
clasped her hands tightly under the table.

"Don't you think Rachel's too superbly honest to do anything else?" she
asked.

"I think Rachel's perfectly lovely and the dearest girl in the world,
but she looks--oh, Eva, can't you see how wretched she looks?"

"No, I haven't seen it, and she can't be; I won't let her be!" Eva's
face quivered.

"There, now I've made you unhappy!" lamented Pamela, sincerely
distressed and contrite. "I shouldn't have said it, but Rachel does
look so pale, so worn, and you know I do love her."

"You can't love her as I do; she's the dearest thing in the world!
She isn't unhappy: I won't believe it; and this is all nonsense about
Charter. You dreamed it, Pamela!"

"Oh, I only said that he was in love with her!"

"You implied the rest of it!"

"I'm such a romantic idiot; Paul says so."

"I hope people aren't talking about it."

"Oh, no, no!"

Eva sank back in her chair and pressed her hands over her eyes for an
instant. "Why in the world did you want to frighten me so, Pamela?"

"But I didn't. I only went on talking about Rachel when I should
have held my tongue; I didn't mean to worry you, but she does look
wretchedly unwell and--"

"Who does?" said Astry, who had entered as she spoke.

Pamela, in some discomfiture, cast an appealing glance at Eva, but Eva
offered no explanations and she was compelled to rise to the emergency
alone.

"We were talking of Rachel; I think she's feeling the heat," she said
feebly, as Astry shook hands with her.

"Nonsense, it's been quite cool out here and Rachel's never complained
of the weather. Belhaven just told me that she'd refused to go to
Newport."

Pamela looked about for her parasol and gloves; she knew that John
Charter had gone to Newport to visit an aunt.

"I think it's perfectly abominable myself,--I mean the weather," she
said desperately; "we're going to-morrow."

Astry moved easily over to the mantelpiece and began to arrange one
of his Chinese gods. "There'll be an exodus now," he remarked, "since
Congress adjourned yesterday. Massachusetts Avenue is boarded up
already; only the unfashionable will dare to stay in the face of those
shutters. I expect Eva to go to Lenox."

"I'm not going anywhere," she replied quickly; "this is my summer off.
Don't go, Pamela; stay and we'll go over to see Rachel."

But Pamela felt guilty; if she had only skimmed the surface, she had
certainly skimmed it very thoroughly. "I can't stay; think of the
things I've got to do before half-past seven to-morrow morning."

"Nothing half as important as staying to see your friends," said Astry.

But Pamela would not be diverted from her flight, though she stood on
the terrace a moment while she raised her pink parasol and whirled it
slowly around before balancing it over her head.

"If I had a view like this I'd stay too!" she declared.

Eva, standing in the door, looked out over the magnificent prospect
with languid eyes.

"Oh, you'd get tired of it! I sometimes want to paint the dome
sky-blue--as the monkey did his tail."

Disregarding Eva's irreverence, Pamela waved again from the lower
terrace, and then they watched her go down the long road until the
fluttering pink parasol diminished to the size of a new blown peony.

Astry, who had escorted her to the gate, came back slowly and his wife
noticed for the first time that his expression was unusually grave.
In the broad sunshine she saw the crow's-feet about his eyes and the
streak of gray in his hair; he was not handsome, but distinguished, and
he had that indefinable air that is inalienable from a man of his birth
and breeding. As he approached, he took a letter out of his pocket and
Eva's fascinated eyes, following his movements, discovered that the
envelope was small and odiously blue. Her hand tightened its hold on
the white pilaster beside the door and she stood quite still, though a
thrill of panic shot through her with an almost irresistible impulse of
flight. He came up and proffered the letter gravely.

"I think this is yours."

She took it mechanically, coloring again almost as painfully as she
had under Pamela's observation.

"Craggs brought it up with my mail this morning, I hope by mistake, but
there have been others like it and it seemed worth while to tell you."

"I don't see why you keep that man!"

"My dear Eva, the excellent Craggs is invaluable; he knows how to press
my trousers and hold his tongue."

"He creeps about the house like a spy."

Astry turned quickly. "I hope you don't think I employ servants to
watch my wife."

She bit her lip, sudden tears in her eyes.

Her husband's face changed sharply. "At least I deserve fair treatment;
I'm incapable of sinking to such a depth as that."

"You know I dislike the man."

"That's neither here nor there; the question's more vital. Did you
suppose because of what I said to you that night, the night of Rachel's
engagement," his voice halted an instant and then went on, "that I had
set Craggs to watch you?"

Eva leaned heavily against the door with the little blue note crushed
in her hand. "There was nothing else for me to think," she said in a
low voice.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Astry, "is that what you think of your
husband?"

He turned away and was half-way across the terrace when a new thought
arrested him and he came back.

"I spoke of that note just now to warn you. As I said, several have
been put with my mail, though plainly addressed to you. I have reason
to think that the servants do it purposely. I can assure you that I
have no wish to see them."

Eva tried to answer him, to assure him that the letter was of no
importance, but she could not; her tongue refused to utter the denial
and she remained standing for a while as he had left her, her head
resting against the white pilaster and her eyes closed. He had been
dignified and almost kind and she felt humbled to the dust before his
just anger. She began to be vaguely aware that she had judged him
by a standard too mean for a man of his intellect and strength of
character; she felt that she had given him the right to despise her and
her humiliation strangled her natural impulse to defend herself at his
expense. Besides, there was that letter in her pocket. How many of them
had he seen? She shuddered at the thought of the blue conspicuousness
of that cheap envelope with its over-powering perfume. No one could
mistake one of them, and the servants had been watching them, the
servants who probably knew the hand-writing. That thought thrust out
the other which had clothed Astry in a new aspect.

She made her way into the house and slowly ascended the stairs to her
own room. Her heart was heavy as she closed the door and locked it.
Then she drew the letter out of her pocket, read it, and tore it up
with keen disgust. It was from her former maid, Zélie, and it demanded
five hundred dollars. There had been three of these in a month, and to
each of them Eva had responded with a cheque. But money only increased
the demand for money; it was like casting a piece of paper into a
sucking draught of a furnace,--it was consumed in a twinkling.

Ever since Rachel dismissed the French girl, Eva had been in terror
of her tongue, and then blackmail actually began. At first it was
easy to pay a little, and then a little more; the sense of security
was too sweet to be dear at any price. But security could not be
purchased; a hundred was a mere drop in the bucket, and Zélie could
dictate her terms. She was with Mrs. Billop; Mrs. Billop desired to
know everything, but Zélie had been faithful to Eva, how faithful
Eva could judge, but she was perishing for money, she was the sole
support of aged parents, she must be paid or--she left the rest to
Eva's imagination, and Eva knew Mrs. Billop. She longed extremely to be
rid of Mrs. Billop and Zélie, but money was no longer plentiful; she
had nearly exhausted her own cheque-book and an appeal to Astry was
impossible, since their relations were strained to the breaking-point.
She had borrowed heavily of Rachel, but now even Rachel asked
questions. Of course there was Belhaven, but here some instinct innate
in her blood stayed Eva; she was not sordid and she hated to ask
Belhaven to pay the price of Zélie's silence. Moreover she felt that
Belhaven was slipping away from her; he had honestly kept faith with
Rachel, he had tried to let the past go, and, lately, she had even
felt in his manner, his detached air, his vagrant glances, that he
had ceased altogether to feel her spell, that he was eluding her. He
no longer looked only at her, he no longer felt her presence in the
room; he had grown distant and deeply thoughtful. Clearly she could not
appeal to Belhaven.

Alone in her room Eva went over her accounts, studying them with an
anxiety new to her. She wrote an eager note to one of her father's
trustees suggesting a new investment that would bring greater results;
then she remembered Aunt Drusilla Leven, still in her self-imposed
exile. An appeal to her would, perhaps, avert the danger if Aunt
Drusilla had managed to recuperate financially in the interval.
Meanwhile Eva could only spare two hundred for the cormorant which is
called blackmail. Only two hundred--that made five thousand in five
months. The sum was appalling. Eva rebelled against it, and she rose
and paced the room angrily, her cheeks red. She needed a great deal
of money herself; she was wildly extravagant, and she would have to
curtail her own luxuries for this. It was odious! A servant, a little
French girl, a worthless creature, who was to be feared chiefly because
she would not hesitate to falsify the matter from the beginning to the
end and make a mountain out of a mole-hill! She would not endure it,
and she tore up the cheque and wrote one for fifty and a note to say it
was the last, she had paid enough.

She received no reply to this letter; no word was said, no sign made.
After all, she reflected, she had won the victory; she had only needed
a little courage. What a fool she had been!

Yes, what a fool, but the piper must always be paid.




XI


That night was a sleepless one for Eva. Not only did the thought of
that little blue note recur to her constantly, but also the remembrance
of Pamela's talk about Charter. Could it possibly be true? She recalled
Rachel's face that night with a new perception of its anguish. At
the time she had been too much absorbed in her own misery to see her
sister's distress, but now her quickened mind leaped to conclusions.
Was it possible that the announcement of Mrs. Prynne's engagement had
influenced Rachel, that she had taken the leap in the dark because she
was hurt to the quick? If so, the return of Charter a free man and
still in love with her must have been the crowning agony of it all.

Eva sat up in bed in the soft darkness of the summer night and conjured
up the past weeks, and at every point she found evidence, at every turn
she saw the mark of Rachel's footprints ahead of her. It has been said
that it is natural to hate one whom we have deeply injured, and at
first Eva had recoiled from Rachel, but now a sudden rush of feeling
carried her back to the days when they had been children together
and Rachel had always given up to her, always petted her. Rachel's
love had been like a well that was too deep for Eva's shallow plummet
to fathom. Reviewing all the events that had crowded on the heels of
Astry's accusation, Eva found no crumb of comfort for herself. She had
suffered loss and mortification and a keen and excruciating anxiety;
she had saved herself, as it were, at the slippery edge of the chasm,
but she had been forced to crawl and cling to that edge ever since. She
had sacrificed her sister, but, although she had saved herself for the
moment, she had not achieved security, for there was Zélie. The little
French girl who had discovered how near Mrs. Astry had been to running
away with Belhaven held a rod of iron over her head that not even
Rachel could avert. If it fell, it would not only ruin Eva but it would
involve her innocent sister in the disgrace. It was characteristic of
Eva that she nearly got out of bed to write another and larger cheque
for Zélie, but she had not the courage; instead she shrank back into
the pillows, afraid of the darkness and the solitude, afraid that if
she moved Astry might hear her.

Through her terror and anxiety, too, filtered the thought, vague at
first but crystallized at last into coherent shape, that she had gained
nothing at all, not even the love of Belhaven, for, when she forced him
to the alternative of his cowardly marriage to save her reputation,
she had lost his affection, if she had ever had it! That was a
question that tore her heart, for Eva, loving admiration and worship at
her shrine, was disgusted with the idea that perhaps after all she had
got herself into this horrible tangle for a man who had never really
loved her and who, therefore, gave her up the more easily. She had lost
everything then, she argued, and not even gained her own soul. Eva was
just beginning to recognize that the Way of the Transgressors is hard.

In the morning she was troubled again at the new aspect in which her
husband appeared. He was grave and almost kind; if he watched her,
she was not aware of it, and he made no reference to those awful blue
notes. She looked at him covertly, while trying to swallow her coffee,
and discovered new lines about his eyes and mouth, a certain settled
gravity of demeanor that seemed to remove him further and further from
her, to alienate even his admiration and the keener tribute of his
jealousy; she began to be vaguely aware that she was no longer first
even with him. She had never loved him, and while she thought he loved
her it was pleasant to flout him, but his indifference was altogether
another matter. If blessings brighten as they take their flight,
Astry's love certainly increased in value as it diminished. She was
conscious, too, that he talked less than had been his custom when they
were first married; he had dropped into the habit of absorbing his
newspaper with his coffee and she found herself in the common wifely
predicament of either remaining quiescent or trying to read the news
upside down across the breakfast-table. Eva, who had been spoiled all
her life, chafed under this commonplace treatment; it was disgusting to
find herself suddenly of no importance. She did not yet recognize the
inalienable truth of the maxim that indifference is the death of love,
that no human being can go on forever loving another without the shadow
of a return, and that there are few so humble that they care to pick
up the crumbs that fall under the table. She had treated Astry with
a pretty and languid indifference; she had violated his sense of the
proprieties by encouraging the love-making of other men, and she had
finally, it seemed, murdered his love for her.

The situation was quite unbearable and, pushing aside her plate, she
rose from the table and began to tie on a large sun-hat of lace and
muslin that framed her delicate face in its soft and filmy folds.

Astry glanced up from his paper. "You'll find it warm; it's eighty-five
in the shade."

She shot an indignant glance at the paper behind which he had
immediately subsided. "I don't think I'll feel it!"

Astry made no reply and Eva passed out of the long French window on to
the piazza, but, instead of descending into the rose garden, which was
situated on that side of the house, she made her way slowly across the
terrace and through the tennis-court to the road. There she stood a
moment considering, her white dress gathered up in both hands.

The road was shady and inviting, but it led directly past Rachel's
front door and, although she was going there, she did not want to meet
Belhaven. She had tried lately to avoid an encounter, and while she
stood there, undecided, she was almost startled by the appearance of
the postman, who stopped to hand her a letter. She took it gingerly,
but a glance reassured her; it was not Zélie again, but only Pamela.
Standing under the shade of a friendly locust, Eva broke the seal and
glanced hastily at the careless, fashionable scrawl.

 "DEAR EVA:--You looked so distressed when I went away that I can't
 forget it. Don't think of what I said; I don't know anything, and I'm
 sure Rachel never loved Charter, if she did why marry Belhaven? Don't
 you see how simple it is? Do take more care of yourself. We're off
 at seven thirty-five to-morrow, a brutal hour, but I hope it will be
 cooler. In haste, yours,

  "PAMELA."

In spite of herself Eva smiled. Her friend's method of solving the
problem was so entirely the usual method of people who try to solve
the problems of others. Pamela, in an effort to comfort, was only
turning the weapon in the wound, as the ignorant sympathizer will tear
the heart open by uttering condolences that only strip the horror of
all decent covering and accumulate the agony. Pamela's argument only
furnished another reason for Eva to feel keenly distressed; she began
to be convinced that Rachel had really loved Charter, while she had
thrust Belhaven upon her at the very moment when she thought that her
lover had forgotten her to marry Mrs. Prynne. Eva tore up Pamela's note
and, scattering the bits broadcast, walked on under the trees; but she
could not escape the thought that possessed her, it had become an _idée
fixe_. It explained so many things, it goaded her with a hundred little
pricks of pain. She scarcely noticed her path under the familiar trees,
and she found none of Rachel's pleasure in a flower by the wayside or
a bird in the bush. The simple, homely things of nature, the things of
the Creator which comforted one sister, passed unseen by the other. Eva
only observed that there was no one in the cedar grove and she entered
by the little turnstile that led her to the rear of the house. She felt
almost like some trespasser skulking along behind the rhododendrons,
but she could not make up her mind to face the ordeal of Rachel and
Belhaven together. She stopped once or twice, her graceful figure
concealed by the clustering foliage, and peeped through some vista in
the greenwood. The old, rambling house nestled under the trees with
a peculiarly friendly and inviting aspect, and Eva perceived, with a
fresh pang, how entirely Rachel had transformed it and clothed it with
beauty and quaintness.

The deep-seated chairs on the wide veranda, the cool awnings, the
lovely coloring of the flower-beds, all suggested the fostering
hand of a woman clothed with those peculiar gifts which make home
beautiful. Eva perceived it with a new keenness of vision and her heart
sank as she recalled the unreal splendor of the big house that she
had never loved to dwell in, which had been altogether for show and
entertainment, and where she dreaded now to be alone with Astry. With
this thought came another: with a sharp stab of pain, she wondered if
Belhaven saw the difference, if he felt it too?

She had scarcely asked herself this question, however, when he appeared
and she drew back with an involuntary start, forgetting that the
rhododendrons completely screened her from his careless glance. But,
after the first panic, she peeped out again and saw him lighting his
cigar with the comfortable air of the habitué. He was clad in a suit
of light summer flannels and wore a straw hat, and it seemed to Eva
that he looked younger and taller than usual. He stood a moment on
the steps and then sauntered down the driveway and disappeared through
the gate. As he went he turned, looked back, and raised his hat with a
courteous gesture. Eva caught her breath; then Rachel was watching him
go!

After all, perhaps her distress was groundless, perhaps these two had
found a way to reconcile themselves to their fate. She stood still, her
lips compressed, thinking; with her old, soft self-pity, she thought
her own position the hardest in the world, and that she had created
the situation herself did not alleviate its misery. It was, perhaps,
this very selfishness, this desire to find that no grief was as great
as her own, that drove her on, for she only remained a moment in
doubt; the next she was crossing the short stretch of lawn between the
rhododendrons and the rear door. Sure now that Belhaven was out, she
trailed leisurely across the intervening space and made her way to the
front of the house.

As she had anticipated, she found Rachel in the front hall, but not
even jealousy could detect any embarrassment or tenderness in her
expression; instead, young Mrs. Belhaven looked deeply depressed. The
sisters greeted each other with that constraint which was the natural
result of their mutual knowledge. Rachel had been engaged in arranging
some long-stemmed roses in a tall vase and she went on with her task,
selecting them from a great cluster that lay on the table at her side.
Eva picked up one or two and pressed them languidly against her face
while she asked the usual desultory questions about the house and their
mutual friends.

"Pamela went away this morning," she announced; "she came out yesterday
to bid me good-by."

Rachel went on with the roses. "She needs a change: she's fallen off
since last winter; Pamela's always in motion, like a merry-go-round."

"She thinks you look perfectly wretched."

"How complimentary! It seems we must have been taking stock of each
other without any illusions on either side."

"You do look badly, Rachel, so white! You aren't ill, are you?"

"Do I look any whiter than you do? Come, Eva, we can't expect to look
blooming; we've been through so much, you and I."

"I was in hopes I didn't show it; I can see that you do."

Rachel looked at her over the roses, a little vexed. "Well, you do show
it."

"Do I?"

Eva went over to the mirror and gazed at her own reflection. The
grace and loveliness of outline, the exquisite color of hair and eyes
remained, but her face--now that she looked at it in the full light of
the open door--was almost transparently pale. She sighed.

"I've gone off worse than Pamela!"

"With more cause, I'm sure," said Rachel bitterly.

"Oh, I've suffered!" Eva threw her two roses back on the table with the
petulant gesture of a child, "no one knows how I've suffered!"

Rachel picked up the discarded roses and put them carefully into the
vase. "Have you never thought of me, Eva?"

"That's one of the things that make it so bad, Rachel; I've thought of
it often. I know it must be dreadful for you, it must be!"

"I don't think that quite expresses it."

Rachel spoke dispassionately, but as she turned and stood facing Eva,
the ravages of pain were apparent in the dark shadows under the eyes,
the delicately hollowed cheeks, the tightening of the sensitive lips.
It had not diminished her beauty, which was less dependent on color
than Eva's, and the subtle charm of her expression was deepened and
accentuated; Eva felt it.

"Rachel, I'm certain that he--that he'll learn to love you better than
he ever loved me; I know he hates me now!"

"Can't you let him go out of your life altogether?"

Eva shook her head slowly. "How can I? Think of all it meant to us, to
you and me, Rachel! Besides, I've suffered."

Rachel looked at her with forbearance; she was unchanged after all,
and she was in need of pity and help like a child.

"You'll have to bear it, Eva; I have to."

"Then--" Eva dragged the words out--"you are wretched?"

"Why do you want to dwell on it? What good does it do? We've got to
bear it."

Eva caught Rachel by both arms, holding her and looking at her.
"Rachel, tell me, were you in love with Charter?"

Rachel recoiled, tried to drag herself away. "Why do you want to know?
What right have you to ask?"

Eva clung to her. "I must know, I must!"

But Rachel made no response; instead she eluded her sister's grasp and
went to the open door. She stood there, looking out past the young
hemlocks and the maples, across a field of wheat, where a flock of
crows skimming low over it showed black against the golden grain.
Suddenly she hid her face in her hands, and her whole slender figure,
shaken with emotion, quivered from head to foot.

"You needn't tell me," said Eva's voice behind her, "I know!"

There was a long silence. The hot, August sunshine filtered through
the foliage of the maples and flecked the gravel path with gold; there
was a dusky haze about the horizon, while the sky overhead was vividly
blue. A faint, hot wind ran over the yellow grain in long, quivering
waves and the vivid atmosphere seemed to pulsate and throb with heat.

"Rachel, I can't bear it, it's too much--and I did it--I did it all!"

Poor Rachel turned and went back to the table and began mechanically to
arrange and rearrange the roses. "It's no use to talk of it, Eva; it's
over and done with now!"

"No, it isn't, it can't be! You've got to face it and so have I--"
Her voice broke with self-pity, but her grief for Rachel was quite as
sincere. She looked at her in anguish--"You must hate me!"

"Do you think hate made me do it?"

"No, you were an angel, but you're human; you must hate me now!"

"No, I don't hate you, but--sometimes--I've been very angry with you,
Eva. God knows I wish you'd never done it!"

"You've every right to hate me," the penitent lamented. "I--I lied
about you to save myself."

Rachel could endure no more; she covered her ears with her hands. "Oh,
Eva, please go away, let me be; I can't stand it!"

Eva looked at her a moment in silence and then ran out of the house.
She went home blindly, not feeling the heat, and following the shade of
the woodpath by instinct. Before her went the anguished face of Rachel;
she knew at last that she had ruined her sister's life, she had lost
all, and gained nothing. She had set out gayly on the Way of the
Transgressors; with bleeding feet she was coming slowly and painfully
back from the Way.

Astry was alone in the library when his wife entered it an hour later
and he rose and put down his book. Something in her face warned him
that a climax had been reached. Eva flung her big white hat on the
table and sank into a chair.

"Take me away, please, to-morrow," she said. "I can't stand it here a
moment longer."

Astry turned to the window and deliberately lit his pipe, but his hand
shook as he struck the match. Was this an appeal for help? Was she
coming back to him to save her?

"We'll go to-morrow," he said, and his voice was almost kind. His old
anger against her had died down to ashes, he no longer felt the rage
and jealousy of passion; the small figure in the chair and the bent,
golden head looked almost childish, and he no longer hardened his
heart.




XII


Belhaven came back from town rather late in the afternoon. He had
ridden out on the front seat of an open car, talking in a desultory
way to the gripman, chiefly because it seemed to afford him a
perverse pleasure to disregard the large sign overhead which forbade
conversation with the motorman. He was in a mood to enjoy breaking all
rules in a puny effort to feel independent. For, if the truth be told,
he had felt for months as if Astry had caught him and chained him up,
much as the infidel Turks used to chain their Christian captives to the
oars when their galleys went into battle.

Not even a long day at the club had relaxed his mood and he was far
from feeling as gay and debonair as he had appeared to Eva when she had
observed him through the leaves of the rhododendrons. He was deeply
vexed with himself, ashamed of the part he had played, disgusted
that he had sacrificed so much for a feeling that had proved to be
so ephemeral, that he had given up his own freedom and even his
self-respect to shield a woman who could toss him aside, at the first
alarm, as easily as she would have discarded a soiled glove.

These reflections had become, of late, so habitual that Belhaven found
it difficult to control his passionate resentment; like Eva herself, he
was engrossed with the spectacle of his own misery, but he longed, more
keenly than she did, to visit it on some one else. It added nothing to
the joy of the situation either to be well aware of Astry's scorn. It
did not require a very delicate perception to understand his attitude,
and the bare politeness with which he treated Belhaven made the latter
long to strangle him. It amazed him even now, in his moments of blind
fury, that he had ever been afraid to encounter Astry's anger, for it
seemed to him that he hungered exceedingly for an opportunity to avenge
the contemptuous scorn of the other man's manner. To use the metaphor
that came uppermost in Belhaven's own mind, he longed "to have it out
with him," and the very impossibility of any outbreak that would lead
to exposure made it all the more maddening. He could not speak now
without betraying Eva, and it seemed to be his lot in life to swallow
the polished insults of Eva's husband.

The heat of the August afternoon did not tend to decrease the heat
of his mood, and Belhaven, having left the tram at the corner of the
avenue, walked slowly along in the dust of the highway, using his stick
to knock off the heads of the wayside flowers with a vicious stroke
that was at least a small vent for an irritation that had reached the
limits of his endurance.

It was anything but a pleasure, therefore, to see Astry himself
approaching, seated alone in his smart little trap, driving one of the
finest of his thoroughbreds, while Belhaven was fairly in the way to
be covered with the dust from his wheels. But, in spite of the feeling
which he inspired, Astry was not inclined to dash the gravel of the
roadside upon his enemy; instead he drew up as he came within earshot,
and leaning over, with his whip-hand resting on the edge of the seat,
he called out, in a tone that was unconsciously that of superiority and
indifference, a perfectly casual greeting.

"I say, going straight home?"

The tone, as well as the look that accompanied this remark, affected
Belhaven almost as agreeably as a sudden attack by obnoxious insects.

"Where did you suppose I was going?" he retorted, his face flushing
darkly with anger.

But Astry took no notice of this reply.

"Tell Rachel that we sail day after to-morrow. I've wired for
staterooms on the 'Marianna.' Some one failed at the last moment and we
got them."

Belhaven was sufficiently startled to answer more rationally. "Rather
sudden, isn't it? I thought you were going to Lenox."

Astry resumed his erect position and gathered up the reins. "Eva simply
went to pieces this morning," he said, meeting the other man's look
with a direct cold stare, "collapsed and begged me to take her away at
once."

"She looked perfectly well when I saw her last," Belhaven exclaimed, in
open surprise.

"Well, she isn't now; the doctor's just ordered a sea voyage. Tell
Rachel I said so."

"Extremely sorry, I'm sure," Belhaven stammered slightly, digging his
stick in the dirt.

But Astry merely nodded and drove on, his beautiful horse, already
restive at the delay, sweeping down hill and away at a rate of speed
that would have to be moderated at the city limits.

His brother-in-law, feeling figuratively, if not actually, deluged in
the dust from his wheels, walked slowly on, past the wide, Georgian
gateway and into the grove of cedars that led more directly to his
own house. As he went, his reflections were scarcely more agreeable
than they had been before this encounter, and he experienced a feeling
of bitterness at the thought that Eva always managed to escape. She
had escaped at his expense on a previous occasion, and now, when
the situation was so hideously unpleasant, she had only to affect
illness to induce a doctor to order her to Europe. The convenience of
this arrangement was too much like stratagem to escape Belhaven's
suspicions and it marked one more lap in the long road that he had
entered. He had learned, to his cost, that an affection that can be so
easily diverted from its lawful channel is, after all, of too thin and
desultory a quality to be worth the trouble of capture. It was evident
that Eva cared no more for him than she had cared for her husband, but
that she did care very devotedly for herself, that she would never
willingly permit a lovely hair of her head to be injured, or suffer a
single pang that she could escape. And for this he had wrecked his life!

These thoughts, bitter enough in the first blaze of disillusionment,
brought him to the edge of the garden. Looking across it, he was
suddenly aware of Rachel, although she was quite unconscious of his
approach. The quaint flower garden, with its long rows of old box and
its gravel paths, lay on the east side of the house and, at this hour
of the day, was pleasantly shadowed and fragrant with flowers. Rachel
had planted many of the old-fashioned flower-beds herself with that
feverish energy that we display when it is necessary to find some
vent for our misery, some commonplace occupation that will hide the
suffering that it cannot heal.

At this moment she was kneeling in the gravel path beside a bed of
heliotrope, clipping away dead leaves and blossoms and rearranging,
with the aid of a trowel, some of the smaller plants. She was
bareheaded and the charming oval of her face was delicately framed by
the dusky rumple of her soft hair, while her white sleeves were folded
back above the elbow and she wielded her trowel with dexterous fingers.
The simplicity of her attitude and the earnestness with which she
delved after a vagrant plant, that had intruded itself into the sacred
precincts of her heliotrope, were as refreshing as a bouquet of homely
flowers in the gorgeously barren splendor of Eva's drawing-room. It
was just this thought, this impression of the clear contrast between
the two sisters, that arrested Belhaven at the edge of the garden, and
he stood, unobserved, watching Rachel as she lifted her stray deftly
out of the earth and, making another hole for it in a bed of friendly
petunias, set it down and pressed the soil back around the roots with
the tender care that makes the lover of Nature respect the life of the
humblest seedlings of the garden. He noticed, too, as Eva had noticed,
the delicate hollows in the cheeks, the shadows under the eyes, and
the tight line of the lips, and he fancied that there was a greater
need here for care and a change of scene than existed in Eva's case.
But most of all the homely occupation, the apparent absorption in an
uninteresting task, surprised him; he had been accustomed all his life
to women of fashion, to the idle butterflies of a society that drifted
from Washington to Newport or Lenox, the Hot Springs or Florida, when
it did not immediately take flight to London, Paris or the Riviera. To
see a young and beautiful woman kneeling on the ground to delve in a
flower-bed was something so new that it interested him. After all, he
reflected, Rachel had kept her word; she was unconventional and she was
always doing something that he did not expect. It was at this point in
his reflections that she looked up and suspended her labors long enough
to make a remark so conventional that he almost smiled.

"You found it hot coming out, didn't you?"

"No, I came on the front of the tram; no one felt the weather but an
old colored woman who was carrying a watermelon."

Rachel went on patting the earth down with her trowel. "The melon will
repay her for that. I thought Harter was to go for you in the motor."

"He missed me then." Belhaven had come down between the box borders and
stood now, with his hands in his pockets, observing her plants. "I say,
where did you get all that heliotrope? I didn't know there were so many
shades."

"Didn't you? I bought the plants; you know it was too late to start
them from seeds when--I came--" the instant of hesitation was
perceptible and he noticed the delicate color that softly suffused the
cheek that she tried to turn away from him.

He made no immediate reply and the soft pat of her trowel went on. The
green shadows were lengthening across the long lawns and there was no
other sound but the hum of a bumblebee who kept trying to intrude into
the heliotrope.

At last he spoke with an effort. "I just met Astry; he sent a message
to you."

She suspended her trowel without looking up. "Yes?"

"They sail for Europe on Saturday."

Rachel stopped short in her work. "Going to Europe on Saturday? Why, I
can't understand--Eva was here this morning."

"Astry says she's broken down and the doctor's ordered a trip to
Europe."

"She said nothing about it; I--I thought her quite well."

"So did I," said Belhaven dryly, "but it seems that the doctor was
called in."

Rachel rose, gathering up her trowel and shears. "I must go and 'phone
to her; I can't understand."

Belhaven moved about among the flower-beds, examining them much as an
explorer would look at a newly discovered specimen. "I think you need
a change yourself," he said at last; "you've had as much of it as--the
rest of us."

"Oh, I can't go!"

Something in her tone made him turn sharply.

"You mean you can't go anywhere with me; that I'm too horrible to take
along?"

She flung him an eloquent look. "Need we talk of such things at all?"

He frowned. "To tell you the truth I hate to feel that I'm a--a sort of
a crocodile to you."

In spite of herself Rachel laughed hysterically. "I often think I must
be almost that to you!" she replied.

He hesitated; a strange feeling had taken possession of him, the old
landmarks were being swept away, he no longer belonged to the false
and trivial world that had once been his only idea of life. He was
shipwrecked, but across the sea he seemed to catch glimpses of a
lovelier, saner existence,--"he who loses his life shall find it."
More than once lately he had remembered the words though he could not
remember where he had seen them. But he had not the courage to say any
of these things to his wife.

"I wish you'd let me take you away; you'd be as free of my society
as you are here,--more so, for we wouldn't be so observed by our
friends,--and I think the change would be a blessing to you."

Rachel blushed slightly again. "Thank you," she said quite gently,
"but--I just can't--not now. Later I'd like to go to Boston. I think
you belong to clubs there, don't you? And I could get a chance to go
out to Cambridge; my aunt is coming back and--and I'd like to go there
to her."

He faced her without coming a step nearer, but with a new and quite
humble air. "I wish you'd feel that I really want to please you," he
said.

She looked down at the trowel in her hands and saw the marks of
the earth on her fingers. "Thank you," she said, almost shyly, and
went away from him across the lawn, and he saw her, a moment later,
disappear into the house.

"She's a good sport," he said to himself, in the language that was most
familiar to him, "a downright good sport, and I've been a beastly cad."




XIII


All this 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.




XIV


Pamela's little five o'clock tea-table always stood in the south
bow-window, situated at an angle that commanded Dupont Circle and the
wide stretch of Massachusetts Avenue, where, at that hour, the long
rows of electric lights showed like stars through the dusk of an early
December evening.

Here and there the red eyes of an approaching motor emerged from the
distance, or an equipage, gorgeous with ambassadorial liveries, dashed
past. It was a bird's-eye glimpse, the external aspect of the absorbing
gayety of the gay capital city. Pamela's little drawing-room, with its
rich-toned mahogany, its ancient Turkey rugs, its one or two heavily
framed portraits of old Van Citterses of Knickerbocker fame, was like a
quiet haven where one could look out upon the passing show. The samovar
and the more antique Delft teapot had belonged to Paul's grandmother,
while the delicate shell-like cups ornamented with little Dutch
windmills were objects of envy to her feminine friends.

Aware that her possessions had the value of being both charming and
unique, Pamela made tea with that languid grace which permits the
recipient to examine both the teapot and the sugar-tongs as well as the
lovely turn of the tea-maker's wrist.

She had lighted only one of the low candelabra on her table, for,
although it was nearly six o'clock, she and Mrs. Prynne were drinking
tea alone. Pamela had been dragging out a miserable half-hour trying
to entertain the pretty widow, who, in the absence of a masculine
audience, lost her sparkle as quickly as evaporating champagne.

Mrs. Prynne selected a small bonbon and nibbled it placidly. "Did you
know the Billops were back from New York?" she inquired between nibbles.

"Oh, of course!" Pamela looked distinctly bored. "You know she's a
cousin of Paul's mother or his grandmother, Heaven knows which, and she
and Sidney have taken their old apartments and she's got that little
French maid of hers who does such wonderful salads. You remember, the
one Sidney kissed in the Astrys' pantry?"

"I should think it bad enough to be kissed by Sidney without having to
do his mother's back hair!"

"Pshaw, it's nothing but a transformation; she got it at Devigné's."
Pamela was in a mood to strip conventionalities down to the naked spars.

"I've been told she's perfectly bald," rejoined Mrs. Prynne
interestedly. "What do you suppose caused it?"

"Perhaps some one pulled it out; it wouldn't surprise me."

"It couldn't have been her late husband!" Mrs. Prynne giggled.

Pamela looked scornful. "My dear Lottie, he married her for her money,
and he used to look like the bald-headed eagle at the Zoo,--captivity
made him vicious,--but Dr. Macclesfield hints that it was Cousin Addie
who did the hair-pulling."

Mrs. Prynne gazed absently out of the window. Twilight had deepened,
the white lamps shone more clearly, the gay procession passed and
repassed between them. "Don't you think she says dreadfully suggestive
things about people--sometimes?" she ventured cautiously.

"She's a terrible gossip, if you mean that. I told Paul the other day
that to let Mrs. Billop into a bit of scandal was like dropping a soda
cracker into a bowl of hot milk; she fairly soaks it up."

"I suppose we're all terrible gossips, but--well, really she scares me."

"Oh, I don't listen to her unless I have to." Pamela was looking
superior, but she was really experiencing a keen feeling of alarm; what
in the world was Lottie leading up to?

Mrs. Prynne sipped her tea daintily, still looking out of the
window. A big hat of violet velvet furnished a charming frame for her
delicately tinted face. "I really think she says things--she shouldn't."

"It's usually Sidney who tattles. Paul says he was brought up on a
trundle-bed and catnip tea and he can't offer any mental resistance.
Yet we all have him about, we warm the serpent in our bosoms!"

"But it wasn't Sidney who said it."

Pamela's endurance was exhausted. "Good heavens, Lottie, who said what?"

This cryptic but human inquiry made Mrs. Prynne laugh a little
hysterically.

"Hasn't she told you? The things she says about Eva Astry, I mean."

Pamela sat still for a moment, gazing intently into her little Dutch
cups, and the softly shaded light of the candelabrum glowed on her
light brown hair, the curve of her white brow, and her rather wide
but pleasant mouth. She was aware that a pause is always significant,
but she felt the cruel necessity of being very guarded. She did not
know how much Lottie had heard and she dared not risk increasing her
knowledge. The situation was so delicate that while Pamela enjoyed its
intricacies, like all social diplomatists, she was deeply alarmed lest
she betray too deep a knowledge.

"I know there are some cruel things said," she risked at last, "but,
of course, I try not to hear them, and--so far--people have been
careful not to speak of them too freely to me."

Mrs. Prynne colored a little. "I didn't intend to repeat it," she said
sharply, "but you know she claims to get all she tells from that French
girl. It seems Mrs. Astry dismissed her, and Mrs. Billop isn't in the
least ashamed to repeat servants' chatter."

"Well, we all know what a discharged servant will do, and,
unfortunately, there are always people who listen to them; it's the
most odious form of gossip too."

"Of course it is, but people do listen--once it's started, and I've
heard it everywhere."

"Doesn't one always hear horrid things floating about, when people are
idle?" Pamela was longing to ask her all about it, to be sure that it
was no worse than she feared, but she had taken high ground and was
trying gallantly to maintain it.

"Yes, when Mrs. Billop is about."

"To tell you the truth I never believe half she says!"

"You're on the safe side," said Dr. Macclesfield, who had entered the
room unperceived. "No, I won't take tea, Pamela, I detest that stuff
of yours; it's too costly. Rachel's the only one who can make tea to
suit me. But you can give me some of that rum that you spoon in at the
last moment, to give a nip, eh? That's enough, now a macaroon. You
were talking scandal; I caught you at it! I wish you women had necks
like cranes; you remember the old monk who said he wished men had 'em,
so their speech, coming up through the many joints of a crane's neck,
might leave malice and foolishness behind, in the filtration plant, so
to speak."

"Can't you perform an operation on Sidney Billop," Pamela asked
maliciously, "and graft a crane's neck on to him?"

The doctor giggled. "Pamela, I'm the worst gossip in the District, and
Sidney's a sort of cousin of yours, isn't he?"

"Oh, I suppose I married Paul, the mahogany sideboard, and the Billops!"

"Get a divorce from the Billops," suggested the doctor.

Pamela laughed a little bitterly. "I ought to hold my tongue, but
Paul's so good-natured, if an Apache Indian wired he was coming to
spend the night, Paul would drive down to meet him and help him unload
his tomahawk."

"Well, Sidney's unloaded his tomahawk," said Dr. Macclesfield
enigmatically.

Pamela glanced at him uneasily. She was not sure that she understood
him but she was certain that all this dove-tailed into Lottie's
previous hints about a scandal. "I believe Sidney's in love," she said
irrelevantly.

"Oh, Lord!" ejaculated Dr. Macclesfield.

"Pamela says such foolish things," Mrs. Prynne drawled, with a little
conscious laugh.

"I didn't mean with you, Lottie dear," Pamela replied sweetly, offering
more sugar for her tea.

The old doctor twinkled. "There are compensations, Mrs. Prynne."

She reddened. "I'm sure I care nothing for Sidney!"

Pamela began to laugh hysterically. She got up from the tea-table and
walked to the opposite window. She reflected that it was impossible to
argue with Lottie Prynne; she had no sense of humor. But the sting of
the situation was this gossip of the Billops. They were related to Paul
but Sidney was making it intolerable by circulating some story about
the Astrys and the Belhavens. As yet Pamela only half knew it; she had
forbidden Mrs. Billop to repeat it to her, but not even her prohibition
would silence Sidney's foolish tongue, and, to make matters worse, he
had accepted an invitation from Astry for Thursday night. They were
all bidden there to dinner, and Pamela wondered if Charter would go. A
woman's sixth sense told her that he loved Rachel and that there were
shoals ahead. Pamela, who was happily married, found John's misery
absorbingly interesting.

"Pamela, your back's charming," said Dr. Macclesfield, from the
tea-table, "but Mrs. Prynne and I feel obscured without the light of
your countenance."

Pamela turned, laughing. "Are you going to dine at the Astrys' Thursday
night, Doctor?"

"My dear, I wouldn't miss it for the world; I want to see the parrots."

"I'm afraid of Astry," Lottie Prynne said; "he looks straight through
you with those cold eyes of his. And I hate that den with the skulls
and the toads and the old warming-pans."

Dr. Macclesfield choked violently. "No, no, no water!" he gasped to
Pamela, "it was a crumb of macaroon."

"I don't know what to do," she said, "but I read somewhere that you
ought to stand people on their heads for choking."

"How in the world could you do it?" objected Mrs. Prynne; "if they
didn't balance themselves with their hands they'd topple over and choke
worse than ever."

"Pamela's a mental acrobat," gasped the doctor, wiping his eyes, "you
can't follow her, Mrs. Prynne."

"Here comes Paul now with Colonel Sedley and Sidney," announced Pamela,
looking out of the window.

"Are Sidney's ears red?" asked the doctor maliciously.

Pamela caught his eye and laughed reluctantly, just as the three men
came in. Colonel Sedley made his way to a chair by Mrs. Prynne and Paul
walked over to shake hands with the doctor. Sidney, with his lank,
blond hair carefully parted and a redness to his eyelids, occupied the
center of the stage. He took a rare old chair and creaked in it, to
Pamela's secret despair.

"I've just heard an awfully jolly conundrum," he said, looking a little
more vacant than usual. "Why is an elephant like a brickbat?"

"Both good to kill fools, I reckon," said Colonel Sedley viciously.

Dr. Macclesfield tittered shamelessly.

"Neither of them can climb a tree," Sidney cried triumphantly.

"I hope you didn't invent that, Billop," said Van Citters languidly.
"If you did, don't allow yourself many like it in one day."

"One before meals, Sidney, with a little pepsin," suggested Dr.
Macclesfield.

"You know I think it's awfully good," said Sidney candidly. "One
wouldn't guess it quickly; that's the main point."

"I thought my answer as good as yours," said Colonel Sedley.

"Oh, we don't expect soldiers to discover anything but projectiles,"
said Pamela. "Where have you men been this morning?" she added,
measuring some fresh tea from the little caddy at her elbow.

"Playing billiards with Astry," Sidney replied promptly. "By Jove, I
pity that man!"

"What do you mean, Billop?" exclaimed Sedley bluntly. "Johnstone
Astry's worth five million and a half and--"

"Hush!" said Pamela suddenly, holding up her finger.

The footman pushed aside the portière and everybody looked around.
Rachel Belhaven came in alone, dressed in simple gray cloth, a sable
boa on her shoulders and a large, halo-like, black hat throwing the
delicate oval of her face into keen relief. She greeted them all easily.

"I only stopped for a moment," she explained. "Eva 'phoned me to
make sure you were all coming on Thursday; she says Johnstone was so
informal she was afraid there might be a misunderstanding."

Paul turned very red. "We'll be delighted," he said sheepishly,
thinking of Sidney's iniquities.

"We may all get stalled in the snow," said Sidney. "They're predicting
a blizzard."

"It's clear as a bell," snapped Van Citters.

"Sidney has an inherited dread of accidents," chuckled Dr.
Macclesfield. "Addie would never go to church picnics because she said
there might be snakes."

Meanwhile Pamela was begging Rachel to take off her hat and stay to
dinner. "I'll 'phone for Belhaven," she urged.

Rachel colored; she could never conquer her inward start at the
intimate association of Belhaven's name with hers. She stood in
continued amazement at the miracle of their outward union and their
actual aloofness. She evaded Mrs. Van Citters' urgency, however,
and made her way at last to the door. Here she had to dismiss Paul
with difficulty. She wanted to be alone, yet it was hard to escape
an escort, especially now that it was dusk. However, she got away at
last and walked swiftly out the long avenue to the suburbs. She felt
an actual physical need of the long, hard climb; the exercise, the
keen, cold air, the busy life of the thoroughfare, served to break
the tension of her mood. She had scarcely seen her sister lately; Eva
had withdrawn herself from her reach. She evaded her and refused to
see her, pleading nerves, headaches, any indisposition, to escape,
and Rachel felt that she understood and began herself to dread the
resumption of any intimacy. Since her talk with Belhaven she had
excused her sister less; she had not doubted her actual guiltlessness
but she did doubt her innocence of treachery, in heart at least, to
Astry. Between the actual crime and the guilt in thought there was
a horrible propinquity which made Rachel shudder. She was aware of
helping Eva to avoid her, but this condition of things could not last.
The old relations of life remained, therefore she had immediately
answered Eva's telephone message, and she was going on to her now.

In her heart Rachel hoped that Eva and Astry might yet be drawn
together. She was sorry for Johnstone; it was like her to drop the
thought of personal grievance in the larger considerations of justice
and mercy, and she felt that Johnstone Astry had been hardly used.
Since her talk with Belhaven she could not escape a horrid feeling
of complicity in guilt against Astry; it made a bond between Eva,
Belhaven, and herself, and it weighed heavily on Rachel's conscience.
However, she was continually conscious now that Belhaven loved her;
it seemed rather an increasing, than a decreasing, element in their
relations. He had greatly changed and, in spite of herself, she began
to like him. She saw that he blamed himself profoundly and that he
clung to the thin thread of their friendship, a friendship that had
grown on her side, too, during the weary months of their enforced
companionship. The man was vitally changed; that he was less a coward,
Rachel doubted; that he would ever transgress again she did not
believe, not while his love for her held, and that thought forced home
to her the sudden, unwelcome responsibility for this man's soul. He was
weak; with her help he could stand,--without it? Rachel shivered; she
longed to cry out with Cain: "Am I my brother's keeper?"

At the top of the long hill she stopped and looked back. The city lay
at her feet and she recalled, with keen distress, that night when she
had stood looking out of her window before Eva came to her door. Here
again were the scroll-like mystery of the lights, the long bright vista
of the avenues, the distant, classic dome and the ghostly shaft of the
monument. The frosty air cooled her cheek, the snow crunched under her
feet; above she saw the stars, keen as knife-points in the winter sky.
A feeling of ineffable sorrow and loneliness swept over her; she seemed
such an atom in this vast dark universe, such an atom to possess the
power to rescue that mysterious thing, a human soul. "Am I my brother's
keeper?" A supreme question, deeply and intimately thrust into her
life. She shuddered slightly and turned away, the mystery of her fate
seeming, at the moment, unsolvable.

This thought was still with her when she approached the big, Georgian
house on the hill and entered the hall where she and Astry had stood
together that afternoon before her marriage. She recalled it as she
crossed it and ascended the stairs. She had never been able to quite
discover her brother-in-law's thought through his words; even now she
was not sure. On the wide landing, where she had stood to look into the
conservatory, she met him. He was coming down-stairs, his hands thrust
into the pockets of his smoking-jacket and his head thrown back in
a pose that was easy and characteristic. His sleepy eyelids drooped
over his light eyes, his complexion had the dead whiteness that comes
sometimes with light brown hair.

"Hello, Rachel, you're quite a stranger. Going up to see Eva?"

"Of course I'm going up to see Eva."

"You'll find her as charming as ever."

Rachel looked back over her shoulder, still ascending, and their eyes
met; his look was a challenge. She quickened her step and left him
standing there, the memory of his expression freezing an impulse of
happiness that had risen in her heart.

Eva had taken Rachel's old room and was standing at the window, looking
out into the darkness as her sister entered.

"I delivered your message, Eva, and they're all coming, but you'll have
to excuse me."

Eva had not moved from the window and her figure in its long, loose,
white kimono reminded Rachel painfully of that other dreadful scene in
that same room. But now she turned her head languidly. "And Jim?" she
asked.

"Of course he'll come."

The room was very still again; neither of the sisters moved or spoke;
the little clock on the mantel ticked tumultuously; it raced with
Rachel's heart.

Eva's voice broke the unearthly stillness. "You've been a long time
coming to see us."

"I've been busy."

"Johnstone's just told me--that Charter's come back."

Rachel moved nearer to the big winged chair and laid her hand on the
back. "Yes," she said slowly, "he'll be on duty here all winter."

Eva turned from the window and faced her, clasping her hands tightly
together. She was very pale and her long, beautiful hair fell about her
face and shoulders like a cloud of gold.

"Oh, Rachel," her voice trembled, "how hard it will be for you!"

"Don't let us talk too much about it, Eva."

But Eva came over and sank into the chair, hiding her face in her
hands. "Rachel, I--I asked Belhaven to let you go."

"You asked him--to let me go?" Rachel's heart seemed to stop beating.
"Eva, you don't mean that you still care so much for him?"

"No--no, not that!"

Rachel stood thinking; a sudden horror had filled her soul with agony.
"Eva, I meant to have told you before--I saw you and Belhaven that day
in the wood."

Eva's hands fell in her lap; a deep blush dyed her worn face as she
looked up. "And you thought?"

Rachel nodded, tears in her eyes. "Forgive me!"

Eva shook her head slowly. "It's natural--I--I--oh, Rachel, I was
begging him to let you go; I can't bear it, I've ruined your life and
his and Johnstone's--I can never be anything to him either!"

Rachel caught her hands in hers. "Eva, you're beginning to care what
Johnstone thinks?"

Eva slipped from the chair to the floor at her sister's feet. "Rachel,
I can't bear it any longer; I was false and cruel, I know it now! I've
never done a noble thing in my life and you've always been an angel
to me, Rachel," her head sank lower. "I was going away that night
with Belhaven and--at the last--I was afraid; I made you save me from
Astry's anger."

Rachel's heart seemed to stop beating; she could not speak. What had
she done, what had she done? And Eva was guilty!

The golden head sank lower.

"Rachel, it's almost killed me. If any one thinks it's happiness to do
such a thing, it isn't. The way--the way of the transgressor is hard;
God only knows how hard is the way!"

Rachel raised her gently and put her in the chair, then she knelt down
beside her and held her in her arms.

"I'd gladly die if I could undo it," Eva said brokenly, "but I can't.
It's like a trap; I'm caught, I can't get away from my sins."

"Eva, do you--still love him?"

"You mean Belhaven?" Eva hid her face on Rachel's shoulder. "Never,
never a moment after I saw he was afraid of Johnstone!"

"Thank God!"

"What does it matter?" Eva was in despair. "What does anything matter?
I can't undo it! I don't think he'll let you get a divorce; he said it
wouldn't do any good. Oh, Rachel, I'm so wretched! What can I do?"

"You can tell the truth to Johnstone now, Eva."

The culprit shrank. "Oh, no, no!"

Rachel took her hands again and held them steadily. "Eva, I think you
love your husband."

Eva made no answer, but she turned her face away with a little,
half-stifled sob. "It wouldn't make any difference now! I've no one but
you left to love me, Rachel, and I've lied about you and ruined your
life!"

"Not even that must keep you silent, Eva; the truth is God's, you'll
have to speak it sooner or later."

"I'm not like you, Rachel, I'm not like that; I feel as if I'd been too
wicked for God to have anything to do with me."

"You poor child!" Rachel forgot the misery that had made her recoil
at first from the confession, and again her sister's weakness appealed
to her strength. "You've got to go to God first, Eva, and afterwards
you've got to tell Johnstone."

Eva sat staring at the wall, her face pale and small as a child's, her
eyes wide with misery. "Rachel, I can't--I can't see the scorn grow in
his eyes, I can't!"

"You'll never be happy until you do; it's just that--the
falsehood--that hurts you."

"You mean against you?"

"Never mind me; I can bear it, I can even forgive you. I mean the
falsehood against your husband."

Eva looked at her wildly. "Rachel, I'll do it if it will help you, if
you can get a divorce."

Rachel shook her head. "I've always thought marriage too sacred to
break so lightly. It hurt most to have taken the vows as I did, but it
isn't only that. If I got it, Eva, all that I've done, all that I've
suffered, would go for nothing, for it would publish the scandal; I
couldn't save your good name."

Eva gazed at her with growing terror, her lips shaking. "Oh, Rachel,
how awful! You're caught in a trap, and I did it!"

"I shan't feel that it's all in vain, I shan't even count the suffering
too much, if it means that I've saved you, Eva, if I've brought you
back to your husband."

Eva flung herself into her arms with a sob. "I'm not worth saving," she
cried, "and I've ruined your life!"




XV


When Rachel finally got home she remembered with relief that Belhaven
dined out that evening. She had forgotten it, forgotten everything but
the misery of Eva's confession. But now she refused the dinner that the
servants had prepared for her and asked, instead, for a cup of tea. She
laid aside her furs mechanically and went into the old tap-room. Its
aspect, with the fire on the hearth and the candles on the tea-table,
gave her almost a shock. She had the dazed feeling of one who has been
away a long time and come back to find material things unchanged.

She stood looking at the room, trying to recall its normal aspect,
for its cheerfulness mocked her. Under her rule it had assumed an
appearance so warm and homely and inviting that she had grown to love
it, and it had touched her once when she found Belhaven there looking
about him in a kind of despair.

"You've made it like home," he said to her, "and I wish you might come
to be happy in it."

At the time she had found a gentle answer; now she felt that it would
shrivel on her lips. He and Eva had sacrificed her to their sin and
their cowardice; or was it only Eva's cowardice, her determination to
escape the consequences of her own act? Yet, poor Eva! The thought
of her, broken and penitent, touched the wellspring of her sister's
sympathy. But the facts of life remained; how was she to meet them?
How endure this tissue of falsehood? She, too, had helped deceive
her brother-in-law, for however she tried to excuse herself, in the
light of Eva's confession, she was party to a conspiracy to deceive
the husband. She felt again the subtle, bonds of complicity in guilt
against Astry, as if in the law she had compounded a felony; yet she
was, for the first time, drawn toward him as her fellow sufferer. Astry
and herself were the victims; they paid the piper. Then came again the
pity for Eva, the sinner who so needed help and forgiveness, whom she
could not betray, not even to escape the shackles that bound her.

Rachel walked to and fro across the room, and once she stopped and
deftly arranged some flowers in a vase on the table; then her hand fell
from them with a shudder. Belhaven had brought them to her the day
before--and he loved her! It was an enormity, but it was true. She did
not know that he only obeyed the instinct of self-preservation, that he
sought to find his own soul.

Presently Bantry came in with the hot water for the teakettle, and
some cake. She arranged the tea-table herself frequently in the absence
of the footman. As she passed Rachel she stopped to touch the fold of
her skirt.

"You're pale, Miss Rachel," she said reprovingly, "you ought to eat
something more; you look all tired out."

"I'm well enough," smiled Rachel.

The woman shook her head; as she went out and closed the door behind
her she muttered to herself. "She's wearing her heart out, poor lamb,
and there's that little devil!" Bantry shook her fist fiercely in the
direction of the Astrys'. Eva had never appealed to her. The Evas of
this world rarely appeal to their servants.

Rachel continued her walk, absorbed in thought, the vital forces
of her strong nature warring within her. She was rebelling against
the circumstances of her existence, she was realizing that she had
deliberately ruined her own life to shield a sister who ought to have
borne her punishment. She had sacrificed Charter, too, and now John's
love for her was the one comfort of her lot and its greatest misery;
it was hers and she could not take it, it was hers and she must cast
it off! She looked across her life and saw it desolate, sacrificed to
Eva. She was caught in an inextricable tangle and she could not escape
without betraying Eva. She stretched out her hands with an impotent
gesture of despair. She was battling for life, for hope; her strong
soul rose passionately within her and struggled for its own.

Her mind was so full of the thought of him that she was scarcely
startled when Charter appeared at the threshold, unannounced.

"Bantry let me in," he explained; "she said you had just come from the
Astrys' and I wanted to see you."

"I came back some time ago," said Rachel, with an effort to speak
naturally.

But his calm was even more unnatural than hers. "I had to come; I don't
intend to make my presence in the city an annoyance to you, but--"

"John!" she cried sharply.

"It must be an annoyance to feel that I can't behave like a rational
being when I'm near you; I suppose I shan't behave like one to-day,
although I came here determined to have a plain talk with you at last."

Rachel's face paled yet more. "Better not, John!"

"I must! I've tried to stop my ears but I can't; it's no use. Rachel,
it's said that you married Belhaven to save your sister."

She was silent; her clasped hands quivered slightly.

Charter looked at her with love and reproach.

"I understand, I had no right to say it to you, but--Rachel, it's more
than I can bear!"

His cry touched her heart as no agony of her own had ever touched it.

"You're very brave, John, I've always believed in you; you're good,
you've got to help me bear it."

"Isn't that mocking me?" he asked bitterly.

"I never mocked you in my life; I've always honored you."

"I don't deserve it. I'm a scoundrel, for with every thought of my
heart, with every breath I draw, I'm making love to another man's wife!"

"You mustn't do it!"

He laughed, and his laugh was so strange that it startled them both.
"Your advice is good; I can't follow it, that's all. Rachel, for God's
sake, tell me the truth: do you love Belhaven, did you marry him of
your own free will?"

Rachel turned from him and went to the fireplace; she folded her arms
and laid her head upon them. She did not remember that Belhaven had
stood there on the day of their marriage. She was cruelly placed; her
love for Charter seemed to be the only thing in the world. What real
claim had Belhaven upon her? He had deceived her, he had traded upon
her loyalty to her sister, he had accepted her sacrifice, he was only
her husband in name. But what if she told Charter the truth? He was
good, but if she told him the truth? She loved him with all her soul.

"I don't believe you love him," he argued; "you're wretched, I can see
it. I believe these hideous stories. Rachel, I have a right to know the
truth, only the truth!"

She shuddered. The truth? Oh, God, how she longed to tell him the
truth; her heart leaped at the thought!

"I ask for nothing else; if you love him, if you married him of your
own free choice, tell me; it will help me, it will drive me away. I'm
asking for bread, Rachel, and you've given me a stone."

She was weeping now, for she dared not tell him the truth, she dared
not.

"Only the truth, Rachel!"

Her tears dried, they seemed burned into her eyes, and she pressed her
hands against her throat; she felt as if she must surely strangle to
death.

"Did you marry Belhaven of your own choice?" John asked again and his
voice cut her to the heart; it was not like him to force her into a
corner, but he was battling for life himself and this vivid revelation
of his love was an acute agony to her.

She raised her head; she did not look at him, and her voice was very
low as she replied, "Of my own choice!"

Charter turned from her and hid his face a moment in his
hands,--strong, muscular, expressive hands, they were like him.

There was an intense silence.

At last he went slowly to the door. "Forgive me, I've been a
brute--good-by."

But the limit of her endurance had been reached. "John," she cried,
"come back!"

He turned and faced her; he looked as he had looked at death in battle.
"It's no use, Rachel; thank you for telling me the truth."

"I didn't; I lied to you."

He uttered an inarticulate sound.

"I lied to you," said Rachel steadily; "now I'm going to tell you
the truth. It's wrong, but I shall do it; I shall tell you the whole
truth. I married Belhaven to shield my sister from Astry's anger. Astry
accused her and Belhaven, she begged me to save her from disgrace. I
yielded, I married him; I never loved him, I'm only his wife in name."

"Good God, was there no one in the world to stop you? No one to save
you from such madness? Rachel, did you have no thought of me?"

"I thought--" her voice broke a little; she steadied herself again,
"John, let it go--I married him."

"I couldn't let it go--Rachel, you knew I loved you?"

She shook her head sadly.

"You knew it, you must have known it!"

"No woman knows it until she's told."

"Is it possible that you married him thinking I didn't? What a fool I
was, what a dunce! If I had only written you! But, Rachel, there was
the cholera in the camp and I was with the poor fellows all the time. I
thought you knew I loved you, I only tormented myself because I wasn't
sure of you!"

"We were neither of us sure, it seems; it's our poor, stupid, little
tragedy, John; let it go--it's over."

"You love me?" he asked gravely.

"Yes."

They stood looking at each other. There was no light in either face,
no triumphant recognition of mutual feeling; to both the situation was
horrible. He understood perfectly her feelings; that the fact of her
marriage was unchanged, that it constituted an insuperable barrier
between them; but he could not be restrained.

"I can't stand this, Rachel. Your marriage is in fact no marriage.
Belhaven has no right to hold you to it; it must be broken, you shall
be free!"

"I can't; don't you see it?" She held out both hands with a pathetic
gesture. "Can't you see it? It would undo all I've done to save her."

"Do you think for a moment that I'll give you up for Eva?"

Her face quivered pitifully. She longed to give up, to let him take the
lead and sweep her on to liberty. Then her tortured soul rose again to
the struggle. "I knew you wouldn't give up; that's why I lied to you
just now. I never did before, John."

"Is it possible you want this to go on?"

"It must!"

"It can't and it shan't!" he cried hotly. "I'm human, I won't give you
up; you shan't be bound by such a miserable tie--the man was a cowardly
brute to let you shield him."

"I did it for Eva; I've betrayed her by telling you."

"Eva wasn't worth it," said John, in honest wrath. "No one is worth it.
Rachel, I won't endure it."

"We've got to endure it; I can't publicly disgrace my sister."

"You needn't; Belhaven can make the way easy,--he can and he shall!"

She shook her head. "He won't."

"He must."

She still shook her head.

A light broke in on John. "He loves you!" he cried suddenly.

She blushed and her eyes filled with tears. "Yes."

He turned and walked to and fro, his white face set and hard. She
watched him, reading him, trembling for him, with that intuitive
knowledge of his strength and his weakness which is an instinct with a
woman who loves much.

He swung around suddenly and faced her. "And you?" he asked, with great
bitterness.

She met his eyes bravely; she tried to speak but it was too much.

John caught her in his arms. "You do love me still?" he cried
passionately.

"With all my heart!" she said, for one blind moment swept away, and,
yielding to her own grief and his rebellion, she clung to him. Then she
recalled herself, her heart struggled back to meet fate again. "John,
we must part now--I'd hoped to keep your friendship, but we've lost
even that--there was, after all, no middle course."

"Do you think I'll give you up now? This marriage is a mockery; it's
got to be annulled."

She looked up at him, struggling to be calm. "John, I've always
believed in you, I've always trusted you; I trust you now to help me to
do right. I'm weak; I'm broken down; you know it, you've felt it--help
me to be myself!"

"I can't, and it isn't right, it's an outrage; who ever heard of such
a thing? Eva has no right to your life, Belhaven has no right to
you--you're mine!"

"I'm not yours while I'm his wife," she said steadily, and she slipped
out of his arms and stood trembling.

"His wife!" John laughed bitterly. "You're not, you can't remain his
wife, loving me. I can't think that of you, Rachel!"

"Don't think it. I couldn't."

"And you call it right to keep up this sham? It's a lie, Rachel, a
living lie!"

She wrung her hands in a kind of agony. "John, I can't bear much more;
you'll have to leave me now. Give me a little time, I--I can't bear it!"

"My darling, forgive me!"

"Don't, John," she sobbed, "don't kiss me again--I've got to give you
up."

"I won't give you up."

"I've no right to disgrace poor Eva, to disgrace Astry; he's had enough
to bear, and that's what it would cost. Can't you see it?"

"It needn't, but Belhaven must release you, I'll make him."

"John, I can't do it. I love you, let me believe in you."

"Have I got to suffer for Belhaven?"

She slipped down on her knees beside a chair, and burying her head on
her arms, gave way to her grief. The spiritual agony had given birth to
agony of the body and she wept bitterly. He tried to raise her in his
arms but she resisted, still weeping.

"Rachel, you'll make me kill Belhaven."

She looked up at that, her eyes still full of tears.

"John, I did it of my own free will. The man has suffered too; it's
cruel to him, I can't disgrace and ruin him now. I can't betray Eva,
I can't simply think of my own happiness; I'm not like that! I did it
myself. I thought you didn't care; I was angry, blind, and, yes, I did
want to save my sister, but I've often thought that perhaps I wouldn't
have done it but for my anger. I deserve to be punished, and I've got
to bear it somehow. What would be the use of it all if, at the first
temptation, I gave in and told the world the whole miserable story?
When mother was dying she made me promise to be good to Eva; she said
she might need all that I could give, she knew her! I can't disgrace
her. She's heart-broken about it all, she's sorry; I think I can bring
her back to her husband. It's worth trying, John. I've always believed
in you, I've always trusted you; help me to be true to myself, help
me--because you love me!"

"I can't give you up."

She turned away from him, struggling hard for more composure. "Give me
a little time, John. I--I can't bear any more now!"

"You mean you want me to go now? I'll do your bidding, Rachel, but I'll
never give you up; I can't."

"Oh, I know--I know, but go--please, John, I can't answer now--I can't
do wrong."

"I'm going--you see I'm not trying to force it; I won't even touch you,
but I won't give you up."

She did not answer, but stood with bowed head, the charm and grace
of her figure outlined against the soft, warm glow of the room, her
hands wrung together to hide their trembling. He turned at the door and
looked back at her and she tried to smile. There is sometimes mortal
agony behind a smile.

"Because I love you, John," she said, with a gesture of appeal.

He turned with a groan and went out into the night.




XVI


It was nearly an hour later when Charter made his way to the
fashionable club that he knew Belhaven commonly frequented. He went
deliberately, after a brief space of time given to what he would have
called deliberation, but which did not deserve the name. He had left
Rachel in a storm of feeling, so much more violent than anything usual
to his equable nature that he had been unable at first to think with
coherence. All smaller considerations, even the events of yesterday,
seemed relegated to the limbo of eternal forgetfulness, and nothing
was of consequence but this terrible fact, thrust so rudely into his
life, this trapping of the woman he loved by a coward who was using
her, so Charter felt, as a shield to save him from the punishment which
he so richly deserved. Yet, even in his passion, he saw that Rachel's
argument was true, that he could do nothing without exposing both
sisters to an open scandal, but, in his present mood, even that seemed
a small matter compared to Rachel's vindication, and he had no pity for
Eva at all.

It was certain, however, that he could not apply primitive methods to
the case, and he did not even dream of wringing Belhaven's neck, but,
in spite of his rage against him, he was also aware that he could not
let this go on without informing him of his own position. When he left
the old house on the hill, he had felt keenly the sting of shame and
disgust. It seemed to him that he had been there on Belhaven's own
errand, to make love to another man's wife, that he was falling to the
level of his adversary. But he would not give Rachel up; every instinct
battled against such a renunciation, and, being determined to rescue
her at any cost, he suddenly hit upon the only course that seemed open
to one of his temperament. He would see Belhaven and warn him; he would
tell him, face to face, exactly what he intended to do. This idea
taking possession of him, he acted upon it with a sudden deviation from
his usual tardy deliberation; he went directly to the club and inquired
for Belhaven.

As he supposed, he had no difficulty in finding him, seated in a corner
of the library reading, or pretending to read, a new book that in
reality was only a cover to prevent the interruption of his thought,
for Belhaven had more than enough to occupy his mind.

Catching sight of his dark head and handsome profile bent over his book
in a remote corner of the big room, Charter walked in, and observing
that the only other occupants, two rather elderly men, were deeply
engaged with their newspapers, he went over to Belhaven's retreat and
addressed him with an abruptness that made him start slightly and lay
his book upon his knee.

"I want a word with you."

Belhaven's face darkened with the recollection of John's hands on his
throat but he restrained himself with admirable determination.

"I can't exactly prevent you from saying it here," he remarked coolly.

But John took no notice of his manner; instead he leaned against the
wall opposite and folded his arms across his breast, perhaps to be
certain that he would not make too violent use of them, but he spoke as
calmly as Belhaven had, only with a slight stiffening of the lips that
with him was a sign of great anger hardly controlled.

"I came over here to tell you that I've just been to your house; I
don't want you to think I'm a sneak or a coward. I went there to see
Mrs. Belhaven because I've heard--pretty plainly--all the circumstances
of your marriage."

Belhaven took up the pipe which he had laid down at John's approach and
held it thoughtfully between his fingers, looking into the bowl of it.

"After what occurred the other day I suppose I needn't say I think it's
none of your business."

"That's just the point; it is. I love Mrs. Belhaven and I won't give
her up to you--after all I've found out!"

Belhaven threw back his head and their eyes met.

"Has she told you?"

Charter hesitated, his face flushing as darkly as his interrogator's.
He had not foreseen this natural question.

"I refuse to answer."

Belhaven smiled bitterly. "In other words you've been making love to my
wife."

"Exactly; that's what I want to say. I don't propose to be a sneak
about it; I love her and I won't allow her to be nothing more than a
shield to protect you from Astry."

Belhaven considered this a moment. His first impulse was to resent
it angrily, but, after a little thought, he decided to let it go
unquestioned. "Perhaps you don't know that she's determined to protect
Mrs. Astry."

"I don't consider that Mrs. Astry is worth her life."

"You think she's ruining her life to marry me?"

"You know well enough that you had no right to marry her!"

Belhaven's hand trembled slightly, but he emptied the ashes out of his
pipe before he replied.

"You're taking the natural view of a man in love with another man's
wife."

"That's neither here nor there; she's the one to consider. If you're a
man you'll simply give her her freedom. It's the least thing you can
do, the only reparation you can make."

"I don't suppose it occurs to you that, perhaps, she wouldn't take it."

"That's inconceivable."

"You don't know then that she has peculiar ideas about the sacredness
of the marriage ceremony?"

"Which couldn't apply to this case; you must see that yourself."

"You mean because she's married me? But I don't suppose I've anything
to do with a fixed principle."

"You think she'd apply her scruples even to such a mockery of marriage
as this?"

Belhaven assented grimly.

"You've no right to let her do it!"

"Has it occurred to you that I've a right to have my own feelings about
it?"

"You haven't; you've got to consider her, to give her up."

"And if I refuse?"

John's angry blue eyes glowed deeply. "Do you think that I'm going to
stand it? I'm a factor in this case."

Belhaven eyed him coldly. "Has she made you so?"

Charter winced; he felt keenly that Rachel had not. "No!" he said
sharply.

"Well, she won't. I know her well enough for that. You think you
know all about her because you're in love with her, but you don't if
you imagine she's like that; she--" he stopped and drew a deep breath
that was nearer pain than a sigh--"she's too fine for that! I know her
better than you do and if I choose to hold her to it I can; she won't
listen to you if she feels it to be wrong, and she will."

"And you mean to take advantage of her very goodness to keep her to
such a bargain?"

His scorn cut like a knife but Belhaven met it without self-betrayal.

"Why should I give her up to you?" he asked, after a moment.

Charter looked at him attentively. He remembered that Rachel had
admitted that Belhaven loved her and he began to suspect now that he
would never give her up, that he meant to use his claim upon her to
keep her against her will. Such an attitude was almost inconceivable to
John.

"You intend to make her stay because you've fallen in love with her?"

"That's no affair of yours."

John glanced across at the old man opposite, who was hunting now for
another newspaper on the table. In the distance he saw Count Massena
coming through the corridor.

"I'm sorry that this is a place where I can't tell you just what I
think of you," he said.

Belhaven did not move. "I can't see that you're in a better situation
than I am," he retorted coolly. "You've no right to make love to my
wife."

"You've no right to make your wife endure this misery and I tell you
now I won't allow it."

Rachel's husband watched him thoughtfully, a drawn look changing his
face yet more deeply.

"See here, Charter," he said suddenly, "I'm willing to say this: I've
lived in the same house with Rachel long enough to be a changed man.
She's humanized me. I'm not quite what you think me, and I'll let her
decide in the end, but, by Jove, I won't give her up just for you; I'd
die first!"

John looked at him squarely. "If you're a man," he said again, "you'll
set her free; then she could choose. Now--if you hold her--"

"Well, and if I do?"

"Then," said John, "you're a damned scoundrel!" and he turned his back
on him and walked out of the room.




XVII


Astry was amusing himself driving the billiard balls about on the
table, practising some of his favorite strokes. He was an unusually
graceful man and he showed it as he handled his cue, his cigarette
between his teeth and his eyes narrowed in thought. He had long ago
ceased to be a happy man. There had been moments, years before, when
he had been considered rather jolly; men liked him and women liked him
too. He was greatly changed; the hardening process had destroyed some
of the more tender amenities of life.

He drove the ball successfully and stopped to chalk his cue; on the
wire over his head one of his parrots balanced, sidling along and
talking once and a while in strange jargon. Astry watched him, half
amused, then he continued to play with the balls. The house was
profoundly quiet; at the moment they had no house guests, though Eva
courted company for she dreaded being alone with her husband. He had
asked John Charter to come to them but John had refused. The refusal
did not surprise Astry; it only confirmed him in certain suspicions
and, as the balls danced away from his driving cue, he was thinking
of Rachel. Hers was undoubtedly the figure of the drama and he knew
that she was unhappy; he divined much more though he made no sign.
But he was as other men; he desired love, he craved happiness, he
had been embittered by the loss of both, poisoned by the contact of
treachery, and he had ceased to believe, he had even ceased to forgive.
Forgiveness is godlike, and very few of us ever know it, feel it,
or receive it. Forgiveness is like the work in a stone quarry; it
takes hard labor and only the morally great accomplish it. But Astry
saw revealed Rachel's love for Eva and the sight of it was almost
irritating; it seemed as if she wasted it, that Eva gave back so
little. He had come to think that Eva had very little to give.

He continued to play with the balls. Presently the old clock in the
hall chimed sweetly, five o'clock. Then he heard his wife coming. She
had been out and had just returned; she came through the drawing-room,
her dress rustling, her light footstep uneven. He reached up and,
taking the chattering parrot from the wire, put him into the
conservatory and came back with his cue in his hand just as Eva looked
in.

"Playing billiards alone," she remarked languidly. "I should think it
would bore you to death."

"My dear Eva, I'm bored to extinction, but one must have something to
do."

She came slowly into the room and, going to the window, stood there
looking out.

"I suppose you'd really be happier if you weren't so rich," she
remarked.

"Do you think it's altogether a matter of money? That the possession of
it brings misery?"

"Sometimes I think it does. I don't seem to think of any one I know
who's very rich and happy too."

Astry put his cue down on the table and sat down; he seemed willing to
discuss the point. "Suppose you were poor to-morrow, Eva; would you be
any less wretched?"

She gave him a startled look over her shoulder. "Who said I was
wretched?"

He smiled grimly. "He who runs may read."

She drew a quick breath of alarm, pressing her cheek against the
window-pane and looking out with unseeing eyes. Before her was the
wide terrace, the level stretch of lawn with here and there a mound of
unmelted snow, and beyond the bare, brown trees and the winter sky.

Astry spoke again with a certain moderation, a mental detachment that
made her feel how wide was the chasm between them.

"I can see you're unhappy and I'm sorry. I don't know that there's much
to do about it. Divorce is common but a little vulgar. I'm not sure
that you care to have me offer you such an avenue of escape."

"I must have been very unpleasant," she said slowly. "I didn't intend
to make people think things like that."

"Like what?" he asked gently.

"What you said--just now--that I might want a divorce."

"Do you?"

She did not reply; her face was turned now directly to the window and
he only saw the hand that rested on the pane tremble slightly. He moved
uneasily in his chair.

"I didn't know it was as bad as that, Eva!"

"As bad as that?" her voice trembled. "I don't understand."

"I didn't know that you wanted a divorce."

"It isn't that!"

He leaned forward, watching her, his expression singularly grave.
"Would you mind telling me just what you do mean?"

Eva turned from the window and came toward him, and as the light fell
on her face Astry was startled. He rose involuntarily from his seat and
Eva stood still, her slender hands clutching at the back of a chair.
She tried to speak twice before the words came.

"I can't bear it any longer, Johnstone; I'm going to tell the
truth--the whole truth."

He did not speak; he was watching her strangely.

She shivered and then went on, not looking at him, her voice at first a
mere whisper, growing a little firmer.

"Rachel married Belhaven--to save my good name."

He was still silent for a moment, regarding her.

"You mean that you--told me a falsehood that night?"

"About Rachel? Yes."

"Good God!"

She hid her face in her hands, but her voice, small and thin and
quivering, struggled on. She had to confess, she had to tell him, she
could endure it no longer.

"I lied about Rachel."

"And you--" he dragged out the words--"you were guilty?"

"Indeed--no! In thought, in the intention, yes." She broke off and then
after a moment of agony went on, her face still hidden in her hands. "I
was going to run away with him that day."

Astry did not speak, he did not even move, and Eva sank down into a
chair.

"I was going and you caught me; you accused me and--" she stopped again
and then went on, "and I was frightened. I'm a coward; I told you a
falsehood about Rachel, then I went to her--"

"And Rachel?" his voice was hoarse.

"She forgave me, she sacrificed herself for me; she's an angel."

"And you let her marry that--that scoundrel to save you?"

"I was afraid you'd kill him."

"He ought to have been killed."

Her head sank lower.

"It's incredible! To let your sister marry that scoundrel to save his
life, to shield you!"

"She's forgiven me," Eva's voice broke pitifully. "I told her--she--"

He had risen in his agitation and he swung around now, facing her. "Did
she know?"

"That I was guilty?" Eva turned darkly crimson. "No, not until the
other day--I told her--and she forgave me."

"It's past belief."

"That she should forgive me? Rachel? She's so good to me."

"I know Rachel, but it's past belief that you could let her do it,
sacrifice her to save that hound."

"Wait!" Eva rose; she tried to face him steadily. "Listen, you told me
that if she didn't marry him you'd kill him."

"Well?"

"That you'd kill him because of me. I told her that and she married him
to save my good name."

"It was my business to take care of your good name."

"No, it was mine," she was gaining strength now. "It was mine and I'd
failed. I was weak, wicked, foolish; I thought I loved him."

"You thought you loved him? Do you mean you didn't?"

"Not--not afterwards."

"Not after you saw the coward shield himself behind a woman?"

She wrung her hands together. "Yes, it was that; I hated that!"

Astry stood looking at her, a strange conflict of emotions in his face.
"Are you telling me the truth, Eva, or are you trying to shield him
again?"

"I'm telling you the truth. I thought I loved him, I was afraid of
you,--you frightened me sometimes then,--and I had loved him once, I--"

"You never loved me then?"

She hesitated; again a dark blush mounted from throat to brow.
"At first I married you because--because Aunt Drusilla wanted it,
because--" she stopped.

"Yes--because?" he was watching her sternly.

"Because I wanted to make a great match."

"Oh, for my money!"

"If you want to put it that way."

"And afterwards you called back Belhaven?"

Again she assented.

"You thought it easy to be free of the millionaire after--" He
stopped, something in the mute agony of her attitude, her evident
humiliation, checking him.

"I thought I loved Belhaven," she said simply, determined not to spare
herself. "I was going to run away with him. He begged me to--but it
wasn't any more his fault than mine. I'm trying to tell you the truth,
the whole truth. Then came that night and your anger and--and I saw he
was afraid."

"The hound!"

"I saw he was afraid," her voice trailed on, quivering, "and I saw how
Rachel suffered. Johnstone, I've been punished; I deserve it, but--the
way is fearful, that way of the transgressors. Not my feet only, but my
heart bleeds. I went to Rachel; I begged her, I've begged her twice,
to get a divorce, to marry Charter; they love each other. She won't do
it--because--" Eva's voice broke with a sob--"she says she can't, that
it would ruin me."

"So it would--now."

"Then let it! I can't bear this, Johnstone; cast me out, help Rachel to
get free. I can't bear it any longer, it's killing me!"

"You've quite forgotten me, Eva."

"No, no, I haven't!" She burst into sudden, violent weeping. "I
haven't; I know now--I know you've suffered too. Johnstone, you won't
kill him?"

"Not now. It would disgrace Rachel. Think what I--your husband--owe to
Rachel."

"Then it's for her, you mean? It can't be done on her account?"

He nodded; speech was not easy.

Eva stood up, stretching out her arms with her impotent, childish
gesture of despair. "I never thought--oh, God, why can't I die?"

"Why didn't you tell me the truth then, as you're telling me now? What
if I killed him?"

"I was afraid; I'm a coward, I've told you so!" She stopped and stood
looking at him, then suddenly her face quivered. "Can you forgive me?
I've suffered, I'd like to feel that you'd forgiven me."

"Does it make any difference? Does it matter?"

"It matters to me."

He turned and met her eyes and his face paled. "Eva," he said gently,
"did you ever even for one moment love me?"

She pressed her hands together tightly, looking at him strangely.

"Would--would it make it easier to forgive me?"

"Yes," he replied slowly, "I, too, have traveled a long way, Eva;
I, too, came to find that there was no love for me; I, too, have
suffered,--I'm really quite human. But I could forgive you, I would
forgive you even this, if I felt that you'd ever been honest with me,
ever loved your husband for a moment in your life."

She drew a step nearer, her eyes dilated. "Did--did you ever love me?"

"Once."

"And I lost it?"

"You didn't want it."

She covered her face with her hands again.

"And you--did you ever love me?" he asked bitterly.

"Not then."

"Do you mean?" he paused, and then unsteadily: "Have you come back to
your husband, Eva?"

"Not then--but now!"

Astry stood still; for a moment the fundamental forces of life seemed
suspended. He was amazed. Then he took a step forward, but before he
spoke Eva suddenly swayed and would have fallen but for his arms around
her.

He lifted her and carried her up-stairs. She was unconscious and her
head lay helpless, her pretty soft hair against his breast. He carried
her across the hall and into her own room and laid her on the bed with
a touch as tender as a woman's. The disdain and anger and bitterness
that had been waging a battle in his soul receded before the wave of
humanity, of pity, almost of tenderness, that suddenly submerged his
being. Her helplessness, the appeal of her childish face, the evident
grief and humiliation that she had suffered to tell him the truth,
touched his heart. He summoned her maid and then went out softly and
closed the door.

Before him he seemed to see the long, cruel way that her small,
bleeding feet had traveled, coming back at last to him.

In his heart he had already forgiven her.




XVIII


It was nearly dusk on Thursday afternoon when Belhaven came in and
found Rachel in the living-room. He was pale and fagged and came slowly
across the room to the tea-table. She was sitting in a deep chair by
the fire but she rose mechanically and went to pour tea for him. The
little service had become so familiar that it was a matter of habit. He
glanced at her as he took the cup from her hands and was startled by
her face.

"There's something wrong, Rachel?"

"No, I'm a little tired, that's all."

His glance traveled around the room and came back to her again, with a
peculiar significance.

"I know that you're unhappy here," he said, a strong note of restraint
in his voice, unaware that he was repeating Astry's words to Eva.

Rachel rallied her thoughts. "Not more so than you are," she replied
without bitterness.

"In a way that's true; you've been unhappy but, none the less, you've
made this house a home to me. I can pay no greater tribute to your
unselfishness; you've been cruelly placed but you've uttered no
reproaches."

"Oh, that isn't so much to my credit; reproaches are idle enough!"

He set his untasted tea on the table and leaned forward, looking at
her, his clasped hands between his knees, his dark face perturbed. The
light of the candelabrum on the tea-table flickered softly between
them; the long room was full of keen shadows. Rachel's face, pale and
spiritualized, was thrown into high relief; it had never seemed so
nearly beautiful, with the subtle charm of the shadowed eyes and the
soft, dark hair. She had passed through deep waters but Charter knew
she loved him; there was comfort in that. The feeling of Charter's
presence was with her, as it must be in great love, even in the
immortal moment of renunciation.

Belhaven, looking at her with a comprehension of suffering, discerned
the crisis. He saw that she had been deep in the struggle, he divined
that Eva had, at last, confessed the truth, and his soul drew back
shuddering from the thought of Rachel's judgment of him--and the
justice of it. There was a long silence. At last he broke it.

"Rachel, I've been thinking it all over and I've tried to put myself
out of it; for you it's intolerable."

She looked up in vague surprise; in the pause her mind had floated with
the stream and she had almost forgotten Belhaven's point of view. "Not
more intolerable than it has been--except I know now that Eva deceived
me. But I still believe you told me the truth, that it's past with you
both now, and I suppose it's best to let things go--even for Astry."

"You never seem to think of yourself."

She colored deeply. "I've thought much of myself."

He saw the blush and a pang of hideous jealousy tore through the
remorse of his mood, but he gripped himself again. "I know you hate
me!" he began.

Rachel looked up quickly. "I don't hate you, far from it. I'm sorry for
you."

He smiled grimly, thinking of Charter. Had he come here to do Charter's
bidding after all? But he was resolved to go on. "Thank you," he said,
"I have, it seems, the beggar's meed--pity! Yet I feel that my very
presence here must be hateful to you. I've traded on your generosity,
your womanliness, even your pity. I've felt at times that I'd be
content to be a dog on your hearth-rug, but it's not so now. Every day
I'm with you I grow to love you more deeply--"

She turned to interrupt him but he held up a protesting hand. "Let me
finish. I know my love's hideous to you, but, none the less, I love you
for your sweetness, your justice, your kindness, and at last a spark
of generosity has been born in my own heart. I've been a good deal of
a scoundrel, Rachel; I can plead no decent excuse, but there's enough
manhood in me to feel that I've got to set you free."

A sudden hope, keen as joy, leaped in her heart for an instant, only
to pass into eclipse. "It's impossible without ruining Eva. I did it
myself, I dreaded the public scandal for her; it's just as much my
fault, in a way, as yours."

"There are ways that involve but little scandal."

Rachel sat looking at the fire. Her heart cried out again; she desired
happiness as fiercely as the most unreasoning child of circumstance,
but she remembered the obligations that had led to her sacrifice.

"It would be the end for Eva. Besides," she hesitated, "perhaps you
don't understand how I feel about marriage--I don't think I've got
a right to get a divorce. I knew what I was doing. You've blamed
yourself; have you ever thought of the wrong I did?"

"You?" He looked at her amazed, and encountering her eyes, that had the
sweet, abashed look of a frightened girl, a sudden wild hope leaped up.
"You mean you consider your marriage too sacred to break?"

She inclined her head.

He drew a quick breath. "Rachel!" then the sight of her face, stricken
with grief and reluctance, brought him back to his senses. "I see, you
mean from the religious point of view. I've always understood that; I
knew you had scruples."

"I've always abhorred the light view, as if it wasn't sacred at all.
I know, I feel I wronged you when I married you. I haven't any right
to bring discredit on you by a divorce, unless--" she looked up
gravely--"if you wish to be free to--to find happiness elsewhere, then
I don't think I'd have the same right to--to insist on bearing my share
of it."

He met her eyes directly; his own face blanched. "You forget that I
love you!" he said slowly.

She colored painfully. "That's another thing that lies heavy on my
soul. I had no right to marry you--forgive me!"

"Rachel, could you ever--have loved me?"

She covered her face with her hands; she was thinking of Charter.
"N-no."

Belhaven still regarded her. He thought that she really abhorred him
and the idea stung him. He had traveled the long road, he had reached
the end of it, and met disaster and defeat. "You've refused divorce,"
he said, in a strange voice, "yet you despise me. I suppose I'm a very
toad in your sight, but you would still save Eva! You're right, I
accept your wishes, but--there are other ways."

She did not understand him; she still hid her face, shutting out the
horror of the situation. Eva's lover as her husband! She could not
bring herself to speak to him.

"There are other ways," he repeated quietly, "but, for your sake, I
wish it wasn't so hard. I wish I could lighten it, Rachel."

"In a way you've done much to lighten it. I'm--I'm grateful."

He stood looking at her bowed head, remembering grimly that the thought
of his love had made her shudder as he had seen women shudder at the
sight of a reptile. Then he turned and went out without another word.

It was a long time after that before Rachel seemed to be aware of
sounds and movements in the house. She had remained where Belhaven left
her, looking into the fire, her chin in her hand. Her gray eyes, lit by
the glow of the falling embers, were intent on some distant thought,
her gaze full of introspection; she saw nothing in the room and, for
a while, heard nothing. She seemed to have been dragged through an
endless chain of events, a series of agonizing scenes. She was no
longer what she had been a week ago, or even yesterday; she seemed
suddenly separated from herself, or was rather a new self, born of
suffering and joy,--the joy of feeling that Charter knew,--and looking
back at her old self,--the self of slow growth, of childhood and
girlhood and womanhood. She had, indeed, been born again in anguish.
She had renounced her own happiness, and what had she gained? In
that dreadful moment she felt that she had not even gained her own
salvation, for the awful feeling of complicity in their guilt remained.
She and Eva and Belhaven had wretchedly cheated Astry; it was to Astry
that she owed the inexorable debt. If she could only feel that she had
saved Eva, brought her back to her husband!

Then came the temptation to escape from her sacrifice, to nullify her
act by accepting the first means of escape. Her heart clamored for
happiness and her love for Charter rebelled against all scruples.
What right had she to make Charter unhappy? There is no argument so
subtle, so unanswerable as the argument of love. Her own heart cried
out against her judgment; it would gladly have broken her bonds and
stultified her sacrifice. She thought that it would be easier to
bear if Charter knew, but it was a million times harder, for Charter
rebelled against it. Charter, who was good, saw no virtue in her
self-immolation; he, too, craved happiness. While Belhaven had offered
her divorce, at the cost, as she saw, of great personal misery, he
had offered her freedom. Her presence in the house had become dear to
him; her kindness, her quick sympathy, her womanliness, had penetrated
the armor of his worldliness and, at last, his soul had risen to meet
hers in an act of self-sacrifice. Though she did not know it, she
had gone far to save Belhaven. It would have been natural for her to
have despised him, to have let him feel himself outside of her life,
the cause of all, but she had not despised him, she had been gentle
and forbearing, and he had seen new and charming qualities in her
simplicity.

If Rachel could have known this, it would have comforted her a little,
but she had not even that small comfort as she sat brooding over the
fire. This was the Thursday of the dinner at the Astrys' and Belhaven
had reluctantly promised to go, for there were many reasons that made
him careful of the conventionalities; Rachel had dined alone and early.

A big fire leaped in the old-fashioned chimney and there was a rich and
luxurious glow of color and light; the heavy, crimson curtains were
drawn over the windows, but it was storming outside, and she heard
the sleet on the window-panes. The wind shouted under the old gables.
Rachel went to a window and looked out; it was still light enough to
discern the cedars beaten by the gale. An old hemlock near the house
stretched spectral arms, sheeted in ice. The gray veil of fog and rain
cloaked the long slope of the landscape, and she could not discover
the distant city. It grew dark fast. She let the curtain fall across
the sash again and went to the fire, stretching out both hands to the
blaze with a shiver. A strange feeling of uneasiness stirred in her
heart, some vague forewarning; delicate and floating like a tendril, it
trembled back again into uncertainty.

She opened a book at random and began to read. It chanced to be a life
of St. Francis of Assisi, exquisitely illuminated, that Belhaven had
picked up for its artistic setting rather than its religious teachings,
for he was something of a connoisseur in books.

Rachel turned the leaf.

"Never set an empty pot to boil on the fire, in hope that your neighbor
will fill it!" ran the proverb.

She sighed. Had not Belhaven set his empty heart on the fire with the
hope that she would fill it for him? And she had not. In this, then,
Brother Giles understood the world; evidently he entertained no hope
for the filling of the pot.

Rachel turned the page, her fingers trembling slightly.

"And they twain ate the pottage of flour by reason of his importunate
charity. And they were refreshed much more by devotion than by the
food."

"And they twain ate of the pottage--" and she and Belhaven had eaten of
it to their despair. They had not been refreshed by devotion, they had
eaten it of necessity; had she found the key at last? They had eaten
the pottage and the taste of it was very bitter. Rachel leaned forward
and looked into the fire, where the red embers fell and the flame
continued to leap merrily.

"And they twain ate the pottage."

She heard the outer door open and close and a step come across the
hall. She turned sharply; some one had braved the storm. It was Astry.

He stood in the door looking at her, as Belhaven had done. His fur coat
was thrown back and disclosed his evening dress; his face, as usual,
was pale and fair.

"I came for Belhaven," he said.

Rachel was surprised. "He's getting ready now; I thought the hour was
eight."

"It is, but I was determined to have no failures and I particularly
want Belhaven; you know he didn't want to come."

"Has any one failed you?"

"Only Mrs. Billop."

She smiled involuntarily. "Eva won't regret that."

"There are special dispensations. I don't see why we keep on inviting
those creatures unless it is because they're related to Paul. I suppose
Belhaven really means to come; it isn't informal enough to let him off,
you know."

"There seems to be no question about his coming."

Astry smiled again. "My dear Rachel," he said carelessly, "there might
be a question about it; if I were Belhaven there would be a question
about it."

She colored and Astry saw that she understood.

"Even an Arab has a right to protection; his bread and salt should not
be abused," he said, watching her.

"But his bread and salt protect the life of the stranger who tastes
them," she answered quickly.

Astry smiled bitterly. "I never thought of you as one to plead for the
transgressor."

Rachel put the little book down on the table and sat looking at him
with grave eyes, her heart throbbing heavily. Had Eva told him or--some
one else?

He came over and stood beside her. "Rachel, I'm deeply sorry that there
seems no way out, that you've got to bear it--or else your sacrifice
goes for nothing."

"You mean--" she could not go on.

"Eva has told me."

Rachel sank back in her chair, her hands trembling in her lap.
"Johnstone--you've forgiven her?"

He had averted his face and she saw only the outlines of the strong,
lithe figure and fine head. There was a brief significant pause, then
he turned, and Rachel saw the wreck of happiness in his face.

"I've tried to."

She hid her own face in her hands; the relief was intense that the
concealment was over! Astry turned and walked twice across the room.

"Why didn't you let me kill him that night?"

"I couldn't--and I had to save Eva."

"That would have saved her and he--he needed killing!"

Rachel's hands fell in her lap again; she looked at him gravely, her
face tear-stained and pale. "Would it have saved the poor child to have
destroyed her name, to murder a man, and hang for it yourself?"

He was silenced.

"That was it, that is what you would have done, Johnstone, and I had to
save you both. I did wrong, I've suffered for it, but oh, thank God,
Eva's told you the truth!"

"Rachel, I've felt, and I know Eva feels, that we've no right to accept
your sacrifice; we want to set you free even at the price of scandal.
Eva begs me to set you free, but--"

"You see how it is? If I get a divorce it will ruin Eva."

"I see how it is, otherwise I'd shoot that fellow now, but I can't
touch him without injury to you both. Yet--my God, Rachel, I've no
right to hold you to it."

"You don't. I feel so differently from you about it, you don't
understand. I can't break the marriage; I've got to take the
punishment, for I did it myself. I've got to keep my contract."

"You mean that your scruples won't permit you to break it?"

"Don't you understand? I was wrong to do it; I see it. I did it to save
Eva, but I had no right to take the vows as I did. I dare not break
them."

"Do you mean you're afraid of the scandal, or the odium of it all?"

"I'll have to be very plain--I'm afraid of God."

He stood looking at her a while in silence. Then his face changed and
softened.

"Like Felix, I'm almost persuaded," he said.

Rachel made a slight deprecating gesture. "Would I have made this
sacrifice if I'd contemplated making it void?"

He reflected. "I suppose not; you're a singular woman."

"I'm singularly placed."

He walked to and fro again. Rachel, meanwhile, heard Belhaven slowly
descending the stairs.

"Johnstone, you--you don't mean to quarrel with him now?"

"I've told you I can't; he's safe enough."

"I'm thankful for that!"

Astry stood still, regarding her earnestly, his heavy pale eyes seeming
to concentrate thought.

"You're unhappy."

She turned away. "Pardon me, we've said enough."

"I accept my rebuke as I long ago accepted my _congé_," he said gently.
"Nevertheless you're wretched, and you've been a good angel to Eva; I
owe about all I've got left to you."

Her lips quivered. "Please don't!"

He looked at her strangely. "I've been a brute, I've always been a
brute, and I've hurt you again. I feel as if we'd trapped you, Rachel;
can you forgive us?"

She looked beyond him, struggling to regain her composure, and she
heard the wind shouting under the gables while the rain leaped against
the window-panes. She could not answer Astry and before he spoke again
Belhaven came to the door.

"I heard you were waiting for me, Astry; it's certainly obliging to go
after your guests in such a storm. The rain's turning into snow and
sleet."

"My dear Belhaven," said Astry easily, "I particularly wanted you. I
have a word to say to you beforehand."

Belhaven glanced keenly from Astry to Rachel.

"I've no intentions of shirking my responsibilities," he said. "You'll
find me ready."

Astry turned. "Then we'd better be off. Good night, Rachel."

She made no reply but as she looked up she met Belhaven's eyes and they
were full of regret, of kindness, of appeal. The glance was fleeting;
the next moment both men went out into the night and she heard the stir
and jar of the motor-car as it started, backed, and finally whirled
down the road. She could not resist the impulse to push aside the
curtain and look out after it. Reluctant as she was to think of it, she
could not dismiss that glance into oblivion; it was the look of a man
mortally hurt.

The window-pane was covered now with frost and she had to breathe on it
before she could clear a space to see out into the stormy night. Away
in the distance were the retreating lights of Astry's big car, like
monster eyes, growing smaller and smaller until she saw them no more.
A gust of wind swayed the trees and swept the branches low across the
front of the house and there was a sudden rush of snowflakes. She drew
back a little and was on the point of returning to her chair when she
saw a figure coming swiftly up the path from the gate, and something
in the bearing, the quick, determined step, made her start and drop
the curtain again. She went hastily to the hearth and stood there
shivering, holding her hands out to the blaze, and her heart seemed to
stop beating while she listened.

She heard the servant going past the door to answer the bell and, after
an interval, she knew some one was coming across the hall.




XIX


She had not regained control of herself when Charter entered the room
but she turned and faced him with something as near a greeting as she
was able to achieve. It was almost a shock to her to see him looking
so splendidly well and strong and fearless after that other look that
haunted her in the eyes of the man she had married.

"I thought Belhaven was here," he said abruptly. "I told him I was
coming but your man says he's gone over to Astry's already."

"Johnstone came for him," she managed to say. "I--aren't you going too?"

"I suppose I've got to. I promised because I thought I'd see you there.
I didn't want to come here; you see, I've told him."

Rachel colored. "You told--Belhaven?"

"That I loved you and I wouldn't let him keep you here like this."

She sank into the nearest chair, looking at him weakly. "Oh, John!"

"Well, it's true, isn't it? You wouldn't want me to sneak into the
house without his knowing it?"

"I don't think you ought to come really; that's just it, John, we've
lost everything."

He was indignant. "We haven't. I won't stand it, Rachel; it's
ridiculous. He's trading on your generosity; he--why, he almost
admitted it to me!"

Rachel leaned back in the chair, her head sinking into the cushions;
she felt almost as if she might swoon. "John, he's just offered to set
me free."

Charter swung around and looked at her, his face changing.

"Good! Then there's a spark in him. I thought he--well, I told him what
I thought!"

She remembered Belhaven's face with a sudden illumination of mind. If
Charter had told him what he thought of him perhaps it was no wonder he
looked like that!

"I--I wish you hadn't!"

"Rachel," he stopped in his walk and bent over her, trembling, "is it
possible you're half in love with him now?"

"No, no!"

"Then--oh, my dear, my dear, we'll get you free yet! Rachel, my
darling!"

She let him hold her hands close but the tears were running down her
face.

"John, I told him I wouldn't take it!"

"You told him you wouldn't take your freedom?" His tone was
incredulous, dumbfounded.

She had only enough voice to murmur: "I--I can't!"

He dropped her hands and sprang up. "You don't care a pin for me! You
love him!"

She could not endure that. "I don't, but--oh, can't you see? How can
I? I did it myself--he's done nothing since; what right have I to make
all this scandal just--just to be happy? Isn't there something higher?
I've--I've got to take my punishment."

He looked at her with a set face, blanched until the tan showed in a
band across his brow and cheeks.

"And how about me? Am I to be punished too?"

She got up then and went to him and put her arms around his neck; he
felt her shivering from head to foot. "John, do you want to kill me?
I can't bear any more. You know I love you. I'm trying hard to do the
right thing just because I have to; I've been almost wicked in thinking
of it, but now, John--you've got to go."

"See here, Rachel, I've always tried to be straight, to be honest, but
I'm a scoundrel now. I told Belhaven I was making love to you and I
am. I'd--I'd take you away with me this minute if you'd go! He'd get a
divorce then."

She smiled faintly, looking up at his drawn face. "No, you wouldn't,
you'd never do it,--when you thought of it, John,--because--I think you
love me."

"That's what causes it--I mean elopements, isn't it?"

She shook her head. "No, because when a man really loves a woman he
won't dishonor her."

"Well, that's why I've let you stay here. If it wasn't for that I'd
have taken that--that fellow and thrown him in the river and carried
you off. Rachel, I won't give you up!"

She slipped out of his arms again and made her way uncertainly back to
her seat. "You've got to go over there now, John."

"To Astry's?" He glanced at the clock. "I've got ten minutes and I'm
not sure I'll go at all."

She made a queer little gesture with her hands, as if she fought for
breath, but he did not see it.

"You've got to go," she said gently, "because--because I can't have you
here any longer. We're not in our senses to-night; we can't talk it
over."

"You told me to go before, but what good did it do? We're no better
off, we won't be any better off, until I make him give you up."

"I've set myself up to be good, I've made him think me so; he believes
in me, but you--I see you don't, John."

His amazement made him swing around and stare at her blankly. "What do
you mean?"

"If you believed in me--even a little bit--you'd see that I've got to
do the right thing."

"I believe in you so much that I think you're too good; you're
sacrificing yourself and you're sacrificing me too for an idea. I've
got to the point where I don't care a fig for ideas; it doesn't matter
to me if they did make you stand up and marry that--marry him--to save
Eva. I'd like to smash everything out of my way; I want to set you
free, I must!"

"You can't--there's no way out. I've just got to be punished!"

"For what, pray? For being an angel to your sister? For pitying
that--that fellow?"

"No, for marrying him just because--"

"Because what?"

"Because I thought you loved some one else."

"Good Lord!"

"Well, that's it. I'm just as wicked and silly as that!"

"Look here, Rachel, this kills me! I did it, I was the fool, the
lumpkin, the gumpy, who couldn't write a decent letter. I can't see why
you didn't know!"

"Oh!" she wrung her hands together hysterically, "how can you? Can't
you see that no woman could know? But that's no excuse. I did it and
I've just got to suffer for it; I can't ruin my sister now!"

He did not reply, he could not, without risk of consigning Eva to that
limbo of forgetfulness to which furious men assign unworthy objects.
He planted himself firmly opposite to her, looking like a tower of
strength, his face still blanched but his blue eyes kindled.

"I swear I won't give you up. I told him so too."

"To-day?"

"The other day. I told him to-day I was coming here before I went
to Astry's. I told him after I found out you weren't going there. I
thought I should meet you; I didn't want to come into his house, but I
had to."

She looked down thoughtfully, clasping her hands again.

"He told me to-night, he offered to set me free; don't you think it was
fine in him really?"

"I don't think it fine to do what you've got to, if you're an honest
man!"

"Even when it's hard to do?"

"Oh, I know he's in love with you--damn him!"

"John!"

"I beg your pardon."

"It wasn't the language," she smiled feebly. "It was--to feel like
that. I--I don't want him to love me."

"I suppose you thought a man could live here day after day and look at
you as if you were a--well, a broomstick!" He was deeply sarcastic now,
for he was furious; the pang was deeper than jealousy, it was rending
his being.

Rachel saw his pain, and would have given the world to comfort him, to
lay her hand on his crisp blond hair, to touch his cheek, but she dared
only to get up from her chair and move further away from him. "John,
you've got to go; you'll be late now and--"

"Well, he knows I was coming."

"That doesn't matter--please," she looked at him gently, almost humbly,
"please don't make people talk. I want to be proud of you."

He walked straight across the room and took her in his arms and kissed
her. "I'm going; I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head if I died for it,
I'm willing to die to keep you safe; I'm going--God bless you, it's
like death, Rachel, for I know you're sending me away, but I adore you
for being just what you are!"

She kept on her feet until he went out, and stood still, by the table,
with the soft light on her, but when she heard the door close behind
him, she crumpled down into a pitiful, little heap on the floor, her
head buried in the cushions of her chair, and she heard nothing, not
even the storm; it seemed to her that it was more than she could bear!




XX


The big house was brilliantly lighted for the expected dinner guests
when Astry and Belhaven came in out of the driving storm, and the
sybaritic atmosphere, the vista of spacious rooms, the mocking cries
of the parrots in the conservatory, all gave Belhaven the same strange
feeling of unreality that had once so strongly affected Rachel. As he
followed Astry into the library, it crossed his mind that external
things would look much like this to him if he ever came back after
death, as a disembodied spirit. He seemed to have no immediate concern
with this artificial life except a feeling of being outside of it.

But, however vague and unreal might seem the _mise-en-scène_, he was
vividly aware of the untenable position in which his fate had involved
him. Astry had made that absolutely plain; only a few words had been
said but those had keenly revealed the situation. The humiliation which
had pursued him ever since he had permitted Rachel to intervene to
save her sister, now became unbearable; there was no fate so miserable
that he would not have preferred it to the shame and despair that
he felt as he realized the futility of any effort of his to overcome
Astry's contempt. In veiled and courteous phrase he had been allowed to
perceive that he was esteemed a coward, and to his maddened senses one
of the parrots in the conservatory seemed to echo the insulting cry.

He walked over to the table and stood there, mechanically turning the
leaves of a magazine, while Astry found a newspaper with a marked
paragraph and handed it to him.

"You see there's no doubt about the drift of it," was his dry comment.

Belhaven read it slowly, a deep flush mounting to his forehead. It was
one of those slightly veiled bits of scandal that sometimes appear in
scurrilous journals and it gave, with only too well defined details,
the outline of his marriage and the preceding scandal which had
involved "a beautiful young matron, the sister of the bride."

"No; there's no doubt about it," he admitted slowly; "but what do you
expect me to do?"

Astry stood looking at him with a singular expression; if he had
expected violent anger and determined resistance he was none the less
aware that Belhaven was neatly trapped. A denial would only confirm
the report and a divorce would blazon the story to the world. Rachel's
reasoning was sound; quite aside from any ethical consideration divorce
was impossible. He had become aware, too, in their brief talk, that
Belhaven did not desire it, that he was deeply and hopelessly in love
with his own wife.

"Something must be done to stop this," he said at last. "I shall do it
if you don't."

Belhaven laid the paper on the table. "It's Sidney Billop; of course I
can thrash him, but--you know the result."

"He's coming here to-night. My wife--" Astry hesitated over the word
and then went on--"asked him. I suppose you're right about him, for
there have been some anonymous letters from some French girl whom Eva
dismissed."

"And the Billops engaged."

"Did you know that?"

"Macclesfield told me."

"As a warning?"

"I rather think so."

"Good heavens! How many people know all this?"

Belhaven again flushed deeply. "I assure you, Astry, that it's terrible
for me to come here to-night."

Astry made a slight, enigmatical gesture. "More so than before?" he
asked coolly.

"In a way--yes. I'd greatly prefer that we settled it in the primitive
way."

"You forget that the scandal would involve the innocent as well as the
guilty, otherwise I should be delighted."

"I forget nothing--but I know that this is worse than Dante's Inferno."

"Unfortunately I can't permit you to involve us all in greater
difficulties. It's necessary for things to go on as they are, but
Billop has got to be stopped."

"It would be quite easy to kill him, but I might point out that this
would only increase the scandal."

"Nevertheless something must be done. I'd gladly undertake it, but the
privilege plainly belongs to you."

"It would be a privilege if I could thrash him."

"Unfortunately he'd shriek if you did."

Belhaven took a short turn across the room, thinking, and Astry saw the
haggard lines on his face.

"There's no end to it!" he exclaimed at last.

"There's an end to everything--when we look for it," said Astry slowly.

Belhaven stopped short and looked at him. His host smiled coolly,
drawing the paper-knife through his fingers.

"Possibly you haven't looked for it diligently enough," he said
courteously.

Belhaven threw back his head. "I'll settle with Billop to-night, given
the opportunity."

"I'll see that you get it," Astry retorted. "Here they come now," he
added, as the sound of arriving guests reached their ears.

As he spoke he turned and made his way into the drawing-room to greet
them, and Belhaven, looking after him through the double arches of the
long vista, saw the slender, small figure of Eva standing in the hall
to welcome her guests. She was gowned in black, as she had been on that
evening which seemed now so long ago, and he noticed the whiteness of
her beautiful neck and arms and the soft gold of her lovely hair. He
looked at her with strangely complex feelings, aware that she had never
had sufficient power over the best that was in him to keep him long
enslaved, yet recalling with keen misery the moments when her charm had
seemed so irresistible that he had plunged on in the course that had
led to his ruin, for however she might have saved herself and retained
her hold upon her husband, she had wrecked his life. It seemed strange
that a creature so small and so fragile and so apparently lovely had,
after all, possessed so little genuine feeling that she had been
willing, at any cost, to save herself. The life that he had led had
hardened many of the finer instincts of his being and destroyed those
delicate perceptions that lead to hair-splitting introspection, but he
was still keenly aware that he was deeply to blame, that there had been
something fundamentally wrong with him or he would never have played
the cowardly rôle of accepting Rachel's sacrifice. The thought of her
brought back the pang of disappointment with renewed anguish; to her
he was apparently an abject being, and it seemed doubtful if any deed
of his, however self-sacrificing, would rehabilitate him in her eyes.

Looking at Eva now, he realized how trivial had been the passion that
had led to his downfall and it seemed as if even his soul must be
darkly flushed with shame at the thought of Astry's scorn. He turned
with an irresistible desire to escape and was making his way toward
the long window that opened on the terrace when he heard his name
spoken and found that Colonel Sedley and Massena were already in the
room. There was no alternative, therefore, but to return to play his
detestable rôle as a guest at the table of a man against whom he had
once planned the deepest and most despicable of all injuries.

With an effort he recalled himself to the conventions of every-day life
and in a moment was exchanging meaningless commonplaces with his fellow
guests, while, a little later, he was able to respond with commendable
grace to little Mrs. Prynne's fluttering greeting. She had a way that
old Dr. Macclesfield described as "cheeping like a hen-sparrow," but
which afforded the relief of nonentities to a man already overwhelmed
with misery and aware that the men regarded him with an indifference
that Charter, at least, was at no pains to conceal.

Charter had come in so late that dinner had to be put off for him,
and he had scarcely apologized to his hostess before he took the
opportunity to walk up to Belhaven and inform him that he had just
been to his house. Belhaven received this information with a slight
inclination of the head and a look that was fully as hostile as
Charter's own, but neither of them had had the chance to say more,
and now Charter found himself seated beside Eva at the dinner table.
He regretted that he had yielded to Pamela's persuasions and made the
engagement in the hope of meeting Rachel there; it was almost too much
to have to break bread at the same table with her husband, but having
got himself into what he would have called "a confounded muddle," he
had nothing to do but to make the best of it, and he sat there quietly
observing them all, while Eva talked in snatches to first one and then
to another. He had never found her as appealing as other men did and
he could scarcely look at her now without anger. He longed to tell
her what he thought of her for permitting her sister to sacrifice
herself, and, with this in his mind, he looked down the long table
and encountered the eyes of his host. Something in the look, guarded,
enigmatical, mocking, arrested Charter's thought; it seemed to him to
interpret the man. Astry's personality was enigmatical to most people.
It had passed through some strange transitions: five years ago he might
have been a Christian, indeed he had been much nearer one than many
of those who profess Christianity; now he might as well be a Shintoist
or an Indian medicine-man. He was sardonic, cold, he even suggested
cruelty. It is curious what a hardening effect some of these pretty,
little, dimpled women have on a man. Astry had hardened; he was urbane
but he was sarcastic, yet no one was more easily acceptable, for his
polish was so fine that it took the edge off his ill humor; it fitted
him into any social niche and left his companions chilled to the marrow.

Charter, angry at himself for being there at all, glanced from Astry
to Belhaven with contempt and anger, but even he recognized the change
there. Belhaven, too, had greatly altered, but, in his case, there
was a fine air of restraint, the effect of a refining influence which
Charter saw with a pang of jealousy and with a maddening thought of
Rachel as he had left her beside Belhaven's hearth. Belhaven loved
her; he bore the evidence of it on his brow and he was able to face
his antagonist without blenching, to even ignore their meeting at the
club and Charter's insult, with something akin to dignity and without
betraying, at the moment, the almost overwhelming shame that he felt.
He had traveled the long road, he had nearly found the end, and he had
the brooding air of a man who was only half aware of his surroundings.
He scarcely glanced at the others except when directly addressed and
his preoccupation would have been observed by people less engrossed
in their own affairs, but they, too, were looking on at the game,
each with his own idea about the next throw. Paul, fair and stout and
visibly enjoying his dinner, was talking to pretty little Mrs. Prynne,
whose face showed no more change than that of a wax doll, while Pamela,
bright and restless, bantered gayly with old Dr. Macclesfield, and
Sidney Billop ate plover with the eagerness of a hungry man whose
conversational powers are limited and who recognizes a _chef_. Massena,
dark, graceful, easily fluent; Colonel Sedley, florid and comfortable,
talking to his hostess when he could get her undivided attention. Eva
had never looked more lovely; her delicate face had the freshness of a
girl and her soft eyes looked up with an innocent appeal that gave no
hint of the suffering through which she, too, had passed. Eva's nature
was too shallow to feel all that Belhaven felt; she had suffered after
her own fashion, but Astry had been so much more merciful than she had
expected that she had experienced a feeling of relief. If she could
only readjust it all on the old scale of comfort and luxury, all might
yet be well! Astry required so little of her,--he seemed to require
less and less; and she was trying bravely to do her best, for she was
eager to hide it, to get back all she had lost.

She leaned over and threw a careless remark to Sidney very much as some
throw a bone to a dog.

"I'm sorry that the storm kept your mother at home to-night," she
said. "I suppose it's her rheumatism. You ought to take her to the Hot
Springs, Sidney."

"She's going to Biarritz this summer," said Sidney stolidly,
reluctantly withdrawing himself from the plover.

"I wish I could, but Johnstone likes to sit on the edge of a stream
back here in the woods and try and hypnotize minnows. We only took a
flying trip abroad last fall; it's terrible to have a naturalist for a
husband!"

"I thought Astry's taste ran to curio hunting," said Dr. Macclesfield.
"I fancied him like the man who pickled a rattlesnake in peach-brandy
and brought him home in his wife's hat-box."

"On the contrary," said Astry, "Eva's only interview with the Serpent
had to do with the famous apple; I might add that she didn't give me
the core."

"I don't think I should mind the pickled serpents," retorted Eva, "but
he keeps dried toads in his library!"

"I know," said the doctor, "and also grasshoppers; he's studied
Pharaoh's epoch."

"Oh, anything to be rid of grasshoppers," said Pamela. "We had a plague
of them in Newport last summer; they obscured the sea when they rose
from the grass. I believe poor, dear Sidney swallowed one."

"Beg pardon," said Sidney seriously, "it wasn't a grasshopper, Cousin
Pamela; it was a fly."

"Eh?" said Dr. Macclesfield.

"I'm sure I never meant to enlarge it," Pamela retorted charmingly. "I
knew some poor thing sought shelter and you swallowed it. John, why in
the world didn't you bring me something beautiful from the Philippines?
I detest such honesty. He came home without spoiling the Egyptians."

"But he made himself famous," interposed Mrs. Prynne.

John reddened under Dr. Macclesfield's amused eyes.

"The truth is that neither spoils nor fame were so easily come by,"
he objected. "I can only regret my lost opportunities. You should get
Astry to go there; he'd be happy in the pawn-shops, Mrs. Astry."

"Oh, Johnstone doesn't care for beautiful things," said Eva scornfully.
"He wants 'a lizard's leg and owlet's wing;' he's always brewing
cauldrons like the witches. He's just imported some new horror from the
West Indies, not a sorcerer's crystal but something more potent. Beware
of his den, my friends."

"How do you escape these terrors?" asked Pamela. "It would be so easy
for him to cast his spell over you."

"He did once." Eva colored suddenly. "Now I simply avoid the peril
and he's likely to practise it on you. Come, girls, let us escape the
danger," she added, laughing, as she rose from the table.

But in the drawing-room Eva was scarcely as gay; she let Pamela fill in
the gaps while she sat listening to Mrs. Prynne, but her eyes wandered
restlessly to the door. It grew later and later, yet the men still
lingered over their wine and their cigars, or else they had gone to the
den. Had her idle jesting led them there? She stirred uneasily; she
had an inexplicable horror of Astry's den; it brought back to her the
terrors of that night when she had told the falsehood against Rachel to
save herself.

As Eva feared, it was to his den that Astry had taken the men. It was a
long, low-ceiled room in the extreme end of the house, separated by a
wing from the conservatory and entirely beyond sight and sound of the
drawing-rooms and hall. The ceiling was of carved oak and the walls
were covered with tapestries, curious pictures, old firearms, and bits
of carvings and engravings. The polished floor was bare and in the
center of the room was a large table of sculptured marble, a curious
dragon forming the central body and legs. There was nothing on it now
but a graceful wand of carved ivory forked at the end to support a red
ball, a perfect sphere in shape and the size of an enormous orange.

Hideous things grinned in the dusky corners, polished death's heads,
toads with jeweled eyes, coiled serpents, grinning Chinese gods, and
the fortune-teller's crystal sparkled on a cushion beside the alembics
and the crucibles of the alchemist. Astry had collected every odd and
end that he had found in a life given much to travel and the luxury of
dilettanteism. The rage of the collector had run riot here with the
purse of the millionaire to back it.

His guests walked about looking at things with idle amusement, for he
seldom took visitors here. To Charter it presented a side of Astry's
character that seemed trivial. John was not given to imagination, and
he found the room stuffy and redolent of chemicals. He would have
preferred books or something wholesome and manly; he had no taste for
dipping into strange creeds and confusing the gods of Shintoism. John
found the atmosphere irritating and he stood looking at a picture of
St. Jerome on a broken tablet while the others were grouped about
Astry's dried toads. Dr. Macclesfield joined him. They were apart from
the rest.

"John," said the doctor, "you and I have got to gag Sidney Billop."

John looked around at the old man inquiringly.

"He's telling tales," said the doctor, in a low voice; "he's picked
up some servants' tattle, a nasty bit of gossip, but it involves our
friends and we've got to stop him."

"I'd thrash him with pleasure," said John.

Macclesfield laughed. "And spread it? Sidney would run screaming to
his mother; he's not altogether responsible. The yellow journals would
blaze; we've got to be diplomatic."

"I'm not diplomatic," said John, and he meant it; there was deadly
anger in his eyes.

"No, you're martial. I reckon I shouldn't have told you. I'll have to
scare Sidney myself; I used to when he was a child by telling him about
the bogie man. He's not very different now. Lord, John, you might as
well thrash a jellyfish; he's all flabby."

"Thrashing would substantiate him," said John grimly.

The doctor laughed again. "He'd be all of a splutter. There's trouble
brewing; I think Astry's seen the paper."

John shut his mouth with a snap; the thought of Rachel sent the blood
back to his heart. To have her subjected to this scandal, to have
Sidney and such as Sidney bandy her name about, passed endurance.

"I'll take Sidney aside and threaten him with the Star Chamber," said
the doctor; "let me try that before you birch him, John."

"There are some things that a man can't endure!"

"A good many, but like the plagues of Egypt they don't always soften
Pharaoh's heart. If Addie Billop had only used enough soothing-syrup we
might have been spared; some of it kills as quick as rat poison."

"Macclesfield," called Sedley from the other end of the room, "how long
does it take to starve a man to death?"

"It depends on the man," laughed Macclesfield. "It would take quite a
while with you, Sedley; you could live on your paws."

The old man sauntered down to the other group as he spoke, and John
remained, turning over the leaves of a thirteenth century missal. Here
he could understand Astry's interest, but his thoughts were not on it;
he was raging against the intolerable situation.

Meanwhile, Sidney Billop had wandered to the center-table and was
looking at the wand and its red sphere with a curiosity that invited a
visitation of fate.

"I say, Astry," he said, "what in the world's all this? Looks like a
top."

"Don't touch it," advised Astry, looking up from the toad he was
displaying. "It has divining powers, Billop; it will expose the inmost
secrets of your soul."

"Oh, rotten!" said Sidney.

"Your soul?" Astry laughed mockingly. "My dear fellow, I haven't a
doubt of it, but we shan't investigate it without invoking the gods. I
got that wand with its mystic sphere from an old West Indian sorcerer,
a coal-black negro of Jamaica, and he taught me its secret. Touch it
with but the finger-tip and it reveals the innocent; it declares the
guilty."

"What a delightful thing is an imagination," said Van Citters. "On my
soul, Astry, I believe you love these idiotic stories."

"Astry ought to have been an Indian medicine-man," said Colonel Sedley.
"I remember one who was tremendous. He and Chief Rain-in-the-Face led a
charge once in a fight out by the Little Big Horn. I saw him as a very
old man about to be gathered to his fathers,--the biggest Indian I ever
saw and the most remarkable; he could make you believe in the black
arts."

"So can Astry," retorted Dr. Macclesfield.

Astry was standing by the table, his cigar between his fingers, his
head thrown back, and a singular expression on his pale face.

Something in the atmosphere disturbed Sedley, who was a good-natured
man. "Suppose we go and join the ladies," he suggested.

There was an assenting movement, but Astry held up his hand. "Shall we
test the Red Sphere?" he said lightly. "According to the sorcerer who
gave it to me, he who touches it is revealed. I have a whim--I invite
you all to test it."

"See here, Astry," said Colonel Sedley bluntly, "what are you driving
at?"

"Oh, hang it all!" said Van Citters, "let's touch it. Johnstone's off
the bat to-night."

Astry laughed. "That's it, Paul," he agreed. "I'm off the bat." He held
up the red sphere. "You're to touch it with the left hand only."

They all moved forward and touched it, their faces strongly suggestive
of their temperaments. John's was scornful, Sedley's red and slightly
embarrassed, Macclesfield's curious and amused, Van Citters' stolid,
Belhaven's and Billop's both white.

Five hands were held up.

Astry looked from one to the other and laughed mockingly. "Billop,
you're the man; every other hand is stained with red. You were the only
one afraid to touch it; what's your crime?"

They stood looking at Sidney, who turned from white to red.

"Look here, I don't know what you mean, anyhow," he stammered; "it's
all rotten!"

Astry continued to laugh, his eyes very narrow. "This lies between you
and Belhaven," he said courteously, "and I'll leave you to him. He's a
kind of interpreter of the Red Sphere to-night. Come, gentlemen," he
added to the others, with a sudden grave change of manner, "I think I
hear Mrs. Astry calling us. We'd better leave them to settle it between
them; the sphere closes the episode."




XXI


Left alone to his task, Belhaven lost no time in stating the case
plainly and without mercy to the unfortunate talebearer; he presented
it with a peculiar nakedness that would be popularly described as
being "without frills." Sidney Billop, like all other busybodies
when confronted with the result of their labors, was seized with an
overwhelming panic. His hand shook slightly as he held the damning
sheet close to his face and his near-sighted eyes seemed to fade with
fright, while he occupied considerable time in adjusting his glasses to
read an article that he already knew by heart. For he and his mother
had been filled with mingled feelings of alarm and amusement on reading
it at the breakfast-table that morning. They had relished the whispered
discussions in cosy corners and the hints over a cup of tea, but the
actual appearance of the story in type was rather discomfiting, for
they had never intended it to get that far, and were not even certain
how it had traveled, growing in size and momentum like a snow-ball,
until it finally exploded in the open and spattered the surrounding
landscape with the fragments.

Belhaven watched him moodily, his handsome, haggard face dark with
contending emotions. "I suppose you know that story is framed by the
malice of a discharged servant now in the employ of your mother?"

Sidney wriggled. "Of course I don't know anything about this," he said.

"Probably not; but you do know the things that started it, the whispers
and chatterings and talebearings. You know, too, that the girl--I
believe her name is Zélie--is employed by your mother."

"Yes; that is, I know she's got a French maid."

"Then you can see that she's discharged."

"Oh, come now! Isn't that butting into our affairs?"

"Can you deny discussing her story, her malicious, scandalous story, in
public?"

"I don't know that I have. Perhaps we've heard things, and, good
heavens, man, things travel!"

"In the usual channel, yes," Belhaven assented dryly. "Come, Billop,
you're a man, you'll have to answer for this; we'll have to settle it
once for all."

"Oh, I say--do you think this is just the time or the--the place?"
Sidney glanced miserably about the room for a means of escape.

"Astry knows that I intend to settle it," Belhaven replied sternly. "We
may as well do it here as anywhere--unless you prefer the terrace," he
added grimly.

"Oh, I say--perhaps--"

"A woman may gossip with impunity, but a man can't lend himself to a
thing like this. You'll be glad no doubt to prove that you had no hand
in circulating a villainous scandal; we're giving you the opportunity
to clear yourself, Billop."

Sidney was angry; his flaccid face was purple and his watery eyes
winked restlessly, but his courage was not equal to the emergency; he
was not fond of heroics.

"Oh, I say--I hate a scene, you know."

"So do I," agreed Belhaven grimly, "let's avoid one. We can settle it
quietly; make a statement here in writing that you'll discharge the
girl from the employ of your family."

"Oh, but that's butting in; you know she's my mother's maid and--"

"Do you prefer to stand for it?"

Belhaven's words snapped clear as a pistol shot. He was standing
opposite the culprit, one hand resting on the table, the other hanging
at his side. All the agony and piled-up fury of the last few weeks
burned in his eyes. The primeval instinct to kill an adversary was
mingled, at the moment, with the impulse that makes a man grind a
venomous snake under his heel.

"Oh, I say--I think you ought to give a fellow time to--to answer! I'm
not the French maid, you know, and my mother--why, my mother manages
her own affairs. I don't see but that it's all a devilish bad mix-up
and I don't want to commit myself; I don't know what you're driving at
anyhow, don't you see?"

"Well, I'm in a position to let you know it. See here, Billop, this has
got to stop."

It always seemed to Sidney a miracle that a servant came to the door at
that very moment.

"A telephone for you, Mr. Billop; we're holding the wire."

"You'll have to excuse me for a minute, Belhaven." Sidney flushed
with relief; even ten minutes' respite would be a godsend, for he was
entirely at loss what to say to his interrogator.

In fact he was thinking, with an inward shudder, of the terrible
face of the man as he made his way across the wide hall and down a
little entry to the telephone room. A black-uniformed, white-capped
maid was at the 'phone but Sidney was too confused to even give her
a languishing glance as he took the receiver. It was a call from his
mother and she wanted him home at once; the storm was frightful and
increasing so that she feared he would be in danger on his way home.
Besides, the weather-man had threatened a blizzard and he knew he was
subject to tonsilitis,--Sidney, not the weather-man, she said,--and
if dinner happened to be over he must come at once; she had sent a
taxicab.

"Make any excuse," she 'phoned wildly. "Come--it's a blizzard and you
always take cold when you get your feet wet. I had overshoes put in the
cab."

He made a reassuring reply, hung up the receiver and looked around. The
little room was empty; beyond, the hall was empty too; only a discreet
footman sat by the front door, and Sidney remembered that, for some
providential reason, he had left his coat and hat in the hall instead
of going up to the dressing-room. For a moment he hesitated, his face
deeply flushed, then the recollection of the figure waiting in the den,
of that inexorable look in Belhaven's eyes, decided his wavering mood.
He went quietly out, almost on tiptoe; he passed the conservatory and
the drawing-room door unobserved, and in another moment the footman had
him into his fur coat and the taxi was waiting at the terrace step.
Sidney scribbled a line on a card for Mrs. Astry,--he had been summoned
home by his mother, he said,--and then he gave the man a dollar, for
he was really grateful, and went out rather hurriedly and got into
the cab. But he did not breathe freely until it was speeding swiftly
down-hill toward the city with the snow white on the glass of the
windows and the wind driving past like a hurricane.

Belhaven waited a long time. The cowardly absurdity of Billop's
attitude had not affected him as it would have done at another time.
Where he would only have felt contempt, he was experiencing a feverish
rage; he longed to take the fool, as he called him, and shut his mouth
forever. Billop's very cowardice, his patent desire to escape even for
a moment, only added fuel to the other man's wrath. What right had this
idiot to thrust himself into a situation so delicate and so painful, to
tattle of it to the world for his own amusement?

Belhaven walked restlessly about the room, storming against the fate
that permitted such imbeciles a place in civilized communities, and it
was not until the clock on the mantel suddenly chimed the hour that he
awoke to the possibility that "the idiot" had decamped. After a moment
of angry amazement he went to the door and summoned the same servant
who had delivered the telephone call. It happened that the man had
seen Sidney's abrupt departure, and Belhaven had the mortification of
finding that his quarry had slipped through his fingers. That flight
was an admission of guilt would amount to nothing with a man like
Sidney Billop, and Belhaven realized that he would probably evade
another climax, or meet it only under his mother's sheltering wing, and
he experienced a maddened feeling of defeat. For the time, at least,
"the idiot" had got the better of him.

At every point, then, he was facing defeat and mortification. He had
been insulted by Charter, tortured by Astry, and yet was unable to
defend himself without tearing open the gaping seams of the scandal.
For he was trapped, crucified, made helpless by his own act. He
felt that Rachel must despise him, that she must remember that his
acceptance of her sacrifice had caused the whole miserable situation,
that had he faced Astry like a man and taken his punishment, he would
have been delivered from the shackles that bound him. If he had died
by Astry's hand, he would, at least, have died a free man; now he
could turn neither to the right nor to the left, and he felt that
the immeasurable distance between Rachel and himself could never be
spanned,--she would always regard him as her sister's discarded lover,
as the poltroon who refused to face her sister's husband. Even a kind
glance, a reassuring word, a smile from her, meant nothing but pity,
pity for the weakness that had cowed him in horror of his own moral
obliquity. The terrible clarity of this new mental vision showed him
the lasting shame of his punishment, the disgrace of cowardice!

In crossing the hall he heard the sound of voices in the drawing-room
and Pamela's light touch on the piano. Some one laughed gayly and the
parrot in the conservatory suddenly screamed out its mocking cry of
"Eva, Eva!" He had again the feeling of being outside of it all, of
viewing it with the detachment of a stranger, and even recalled that
moment, earlier in the evening, when he had thought that things would
look thus to his disembodied spirit. His intimacy with the place, the
people, the artificial life they led, seemed to have dissolved; he
no longer belonged to them, or if he did, he was so greatly changed
that, if they recognized him at all, they would disown him. He had
forfeited his place among them, he had forfeited his right to a place
among men; he was a coward! The thought stung him so keenly that he
shrank, naturally and unconsciously, from that familiar scene in the
drawing-room; he could not force himself to go in and see Pamela
lightly strumming out a popular tune and Sedley playing bridge! He
turned, instead, and unnoticed except by one of the servants, went on
into the library. As he passed through the room, he glanced around at
the warm, tinted walls, the richly lined book-shelves, the big table
with its study lamp, the fire on the hearth; and the comfort and the
luxury of it touched some incoherent consciousness of home. He sighed,
and going to the fire, tore up and burned the scurrilous paper that
Astry had given him, watching it until the last charred fragment fell
into a blackened cinder. Then he opened one of the long, French windows
and, closing it carefully behind him, went out on the terrace.

He was greeted with the sting of sleet in his face and the sudden shock
of unprecedented cold roused him from the stupor of despair into which
he had fallen. He was without coat or hat and his thin evening clothes
felt like so much paper in the gale. For an instant he hesitated,
half inclined to go back, and then the same impulse that had driven
him out returned with overwhelming force. He must find a way out of
it, he must force Rachel to accept her freedom; he could no longer
hold her to her bargain and feel that by the very act of her marriage
she had made him a miserable creature ready to seek shelter behind a
woman rather than face the man against whom he had planned an injury
as cowardly as it was base. He had traveled so far upon that long road
that it seemed incredible that he had ever deliberately chosen it, that
his moral turpitude had been so great that he had not recognized that
his waywardness could never prevail against the eternal principles of
right and wrong, and that his sins would only invoke an inevitable
and complete retribution, that he would be crushed at last beneath
the weight of that edifice which he had erected in the days of his
transgressions. He believed vaguely in God and for a moment he almost
cried out incoherently to that Supreme Being Who had created him and
against Whom he had deliberately sinned. But there seemed to be no ear,
even the Eternal One, that could hear him through the blasts of that
fearful storm, and, smitten alike with cold and despair, he plunged
forward into a space that seemed to be limited to a frozen circle of
white, in which he turned around and around, and which never expanded
beyond the ring that his dazed senses made in the mist of the tempest.
Yet the one idea that survived the whirlpool of his mood was the desire
to see Rachel, to beg her to forgive him, to set her free, even if by
that one act of renunciation he wiped out forever the desire of life.

With this thought in his heart he turned and made his way blindly
across the terrace, and the greatest snow-storm of many seasons,
driving around the northeast corner, enfolded him deeply and softly in
its heavy flakes.




XXII


It was much later in the evening when Charter finally escaped from
Colonel Sedley and, under a pretext of looking out at the weather, made
his way into the conservatory. The whole party of dinner guests had
been much chagrined an hour before by the astounding news that they
were snow-bound.

The predictions of Mrs. Billop's weather-man had been startlingly
fulfilled, and had Sidney not escaped as he did, not even overshoes and
a taxicab would have sufficed to get him home. The snow had drifted
so heavily that no conveyances were at hand and even the telephone
had gone quietly out of commission. There was nothing to do, as Astry
said, but to stay the night with them. But this arrangement, accepted
with more or less laughter and uneasiness by the others, was not to
Charter's taste. He had found the evening bad enough as it was without
prolonging it until morning, and he escaped from the drawing-room
with the frank intention of taking French leave. He was too hardy a
soldier to dread even the extreme cold, and he went now to the door
of the conservatory to ascertain the depth of the drifts before he
started. The frost had affected the electric system sufficiently to
blot out many of the lamps and the shadowy aisles of the conservatory
showed only an occasional light. A disgruntled parrot sat on the stem
of the banana tree, but not even he uttered a sound as Charter passed
on his way to the vestibule. As he opened the door, the cold seemed to
pounce upon him and he saw nothing but a vast sheet of unbroken snow
and sleet. But the tempest had ceased and the clouds were clearing away
from a sky that was brilliant with stars.

He thought of Rachel with a vision of the old, low-ceiled room with
the glow of the fire behind her graceful figure and the sorrow, the
sweetness, the subtle tenderness in her face. Involuntarily he clenched
his hand; what right had that fellow to hold her? He turned, deeply
incensed at the thought and determined to get his overcoat and go
down to the city. He was already back in the conservatory before he
encountered his host.

Astry had just discovered that Billop had gone home in a taxicab hours
ago and he was looking for Belhaven. A game of bridge had kept him
in the drawing-room until the usual hour for the breaking up of the
gathering and he had supposed that Belhaven and Billop were still in
the house. It was impossible to telephone to Rachel now to ascertain
where her husband was and Astry had taken the last chance of finding
him either in the library or the conservatory. Instead, he found
Charter coming back from the door alone. A sudden recollection of Eva's
statement that Charter and Rachel loved each other startled Astry with
a new and swift suspicion. Had Charter anything to do with Belhaven's
absence? But the young officer's face, though grave, was quite
composed. Astry looked at him thoughtfully.

"You're going to have the south room, Charter," he said easily, "next
to Sedley. I hope he won't bore you to death; he snores like a Corliss
engine."

"If you don't mind, I won't stay," Charter replied, a little awkwardly.
"I'm used to roughing it, you know, and it isn't snowing now."

"Oh, but we couldn't think of it. The snow's knee-deep and not even the
tram is moving. I can't allow it; besides, you know, the Van Citterses
are staying."

"Oh, yes, but I can walk in easily, and it will be a comfort to Mrs.
Van Citters,--the old lady, I mean,--to be sure they're safe."

Astry leaned back against one of the Doric pillars and deliberately
rolled a cigarette. "I can't think of it; you've got to stay. It's
too far to walk in those drifts; at least wait until they get the
snow-plough going. I'm sorry we're so objectionable, you know."

Charter reddened. "I've been a jolly idiot again," he thought, but
what he said was quite simple.

"I don't want to be a bother and I really like a snow-storm."

"It looks as if we must be very inhospitable when a man prefers that--"
he waved his hand toward the door--"to a good bed and a fire."

"Oh, you can't understand how a fellow feels who's been soldiering for
years. It's like being shut up to get into a house; sometimes I really
long for the open. I'm going back there, too."

Astry offered a cigarette and a light, but he was observing the young
man narrowly. "I didn't know you were going back. Don't like us over
here then?"

"Well, I'd like to get out with a fighting squad just now. I suppose
the vagabond life has spoiled me; I'm only a dancing bear here!"

Astry knocked the ashes from the end of his cigarette.

"Ah, I see--it's pretty bad, isn't it? You're hard hit?"

Charter turned sharply and looked at him, then he reddened yet more
deeply. Of course Astry knew. He was aware of a shock of surprise;
if he knew, what did he think of Eva? After an instant of thought he
decided to let it pass without an attempt at denial.

"Yes," he assented dryly, "I'm hard hit but I can take my medicine."

"She's refused to get a divorce."

Charter stiffened. "Pardon me, I decline to answer."

Astry smiled. "My dear fellow, I know! Do you think for a moment I'd
speak if it wasn't all in that scurrilous sheet, the Meopilus Journal?"

"I heard there was something, but I never see that paper."

"It seems to me useless to try to conceal it now; but I can't make her
see it so, and of course, personally, I'd rather she didn't. She's got
scruples, you see."

Charter turned and walked across the conservatory twice; he was
blanched and his lips were set. At last he stopped in front of Astry.

"See here, I can't talk of it; she's too fine and sweet and good to be
talked about. If she wants me to go and jump in the river--I'll do it,
but, by God, I'd like to kill him!"

Astry smiled bitterly but said nothing; he only continued to puff
at his cigarette. The pause was awkward and after a little Charter
resumed: "I'd better be going; it's pretty late and--" he stopped short
and turned around.

They had both heard some one trying the conservatory door. It was
nearest the end of the terrace and the first door from the side
entrance to the grounds. Astry flung away his cigarette.

"It's Belhaven," he said dryly. "I knew he must have gone out this way."

He went back and unlocked the door and opened it. There was a piercing
blast of cold air and the lights danced up and down with a weird effect
as some one came in. Charter had turned, too, but he stood still,
aghast.

It was Rachel!

She had thrown on a long fur coat, but she was covered with snow to her
knees and her dark hair had escaped its bonds and was curling in little
wild tendrils about her white face. She did not see him and she stood
leaning against the door, gasping.

"Oh, Johnstone, quick! I was looking out--a long while ago--and I saw a
man come out on the terrace; you know I can see this end of it from my
window. He fell in the snow at the gate. I've been looking for him ever
and ever so long and I can't find him!"

"Good heavens, Rachel, in this snow? You're mad!"

"No, I--" She stopped; she had just seen Charter and she gave a little
cry of joy. "Oh, John--John, I thought it was you!"

He was at her side now and caught hold of her.

"You're half frozen. For heaven's sake, Astry, get some brandy; look at
her, feel of her hands!"

"Oh, I don't care!" she cried again wildly, "you're safe! Oh, John,
I--" She caught the look in Astry's eyes. "Johnstone, who was it?
Who's missing?"

He swung around, averting his face. "No one. I'll see--Charter, take
her into the library."

But Rachel caught his arm. "I know--it's Belhaven!"

"I'll go right out, Rachel; he'll be all right!" he tried to put her
off.

But Charter took her gently away. "Come," he said firmly, "you've got
to get warm. We're going to look at once; nothing but a fall in snow at
the worst, and very likely you were mistaken."

"No--no! I saw him. Johnstone, get a lantern; I'll show you where I
think it was."

Astry had already called the man from the hall and in a moment there
were lights on the terrace.

"Don't come, Rachel, but tell me,--the snow's drifted,--which way?"

"I'll go--"

"No," Charter held her firmly, "this will kill you, you'll have to stay
here; tell us the way."

She pointed, trembling. "At the end there, by the little gate--oh, the
snow's awful!"

Astry and his men went down into it and she turned and looked at
Charter.

"I thought it was you, John. I ran out--I think I must have been
mad--for I didn't call any one; I just rushed out."

"You might have fallen in the drifts yourself! Oh, Rachel, my dear, my
dear, you're mine--don't you see you are? I won't give you up!"

"I never thought of him, God forgive me! John, let me go--no, I must,
he's--he's my husband--and I think I know almost where he fell!"

"They'll find him."

"John--"

They looked at each other mutely, then he drew the furs up about her
throat and opened the door; together they went along the terrace.

"Rachel."

"Yes?"

"Forgive me!"

"Oh, I do! I've been a brute, I never once thought of him, only of you;
but I must go now--you see that I must?"

He did not reply; he had seen that the lights were stationary over
the snow and they outlined the dark figures of Astry and his men.
They delved in the snow and labored with it. It was so deep that
Charter helped Rachel down the last few yards with difficulty until
they reached the path that the others had broken. Astry was kneeling
in the drift, his head against the breast of the figure that they had
uncovered.

Rachel went forward unsteadily and stood beside him. The others brushed
away more snow and the form of Belhaven was fully revealed; he lay
quite easily, his head on his arm as though he slept.

Astry rose from his knees and took Rachel's hands and turned her gently
away.

"It's all over," he said gravely, "all over."

       *       *       *       *       *

"It wasn't the cold; it was heart failure," Van Citters explained
patiently, for the third time.

He was alone with his wife and Lottie Prynne. Eva had been carried
up-stairs and Rachel and Dr. Macclesfield were with her. It had been
necessary to tell all the guests at once, and under Pamela's skilful
leading Paul told all he knew.

"I thought he looked ill," said Pamela, "but there'll be an inquest.
Oh, poor Rachel, and poor Eva, too!"

"I can't get over it!" sobbed Lottie Prynne. "I always liked
Belhaven--it's--it's dreadful. I should think we'd had thirteen at
table."

Paul looked at her, exasperated; he was not sure, after all, that he
admired her. Pamela showed sense at a crisis, he recognized, with a
thrill of pride; Pamela really was a trump.

"Lord, it's awful to see a man go like that so suddenly!" was all he
said, however.

Pamela rose. "See here, Paul," she said decisively, "you've got to take
me in town somehow; we're just in the way here."

Paul demurred. "My dear, do you think?" he paused meaningly.

"Yes, I do! Rachel's a woman. I don't care a pin for your horrid
stories; if she didn't love him she feels dreadfully. Any one can see
that, poor dear! I don't believe Eva remembered anything; she just
collapsed; but there's nothing to do now but get out of the way and
come back to-morrow when one can be useful. You know we must be a
nuisance here with all this happening!"

Paul surrendered. "You're right, but it's as cold as the devil and
they've only just got the snow-plough through."

"I don't care," said Pamela stoutly. "Lottie, stop crying; it makes
your nose red, dear, and I'm so nervous I just can't bear it."

Paul came back with his own coat and Pamela's wrap. "I say, they've
actually got a motor out and it's waiting. I thought perhaps you'd
better go on in it to our house, Mrs. Prynne, with Pamela; it's nearly
morning--"

Lottie's face cleared. "I'll go straight home if you'll take me," she
said, "and be only too thankful to go. I'm all upset!"

In the hall they met John Charter; he had been out and was splashed
with snow from the drifts.

"We're going; we thought we'd better," Pamela told him, in a low voice.
"But to-morrow I'm coming back to be with Rachel."

John looked at her fresh, kind face. "I wish you would!" he said
fervently.

She put out her hand and he took it, aware for the first time that she
understood.

He helped them into the motor, for Astry was with Sedley and Dr.
Macclesfield in the library beside Belhaven's body. When they were gone
Charter went out to the end of the long terrace. The whitened landscape
seemed to make every object clear and he noticed the heavy sweep of the
big hemlocks under their load of snow. Behind him the house was full of
lights; servants moved silently to and fro, for the business of death
was there.

He felt the shock of it; this sudden end had found him filled with
anger against the dead. He had been in deep rebellion against the
fate that had thrust this man into Rachel's life; he had called him
coward a thousand times, and now he was overtaken with the abrupt pause
that follows the death of an adversary, the feeling that silences
reproach on the lips of the living and appeals from man's judgment to
that supreme tribunal where there can be neither anger nor malice nor
false-witness, and where the soul, climbing slowly and painfully up
that long way that men call life, may have already made an atonement
deep as life itself. The overwhelming certainty that as a man sows he
shall reap was brought home to him in that moment when, thinking of
the dead man within, he thought also of Eva, who seemed to have saved
herself. But he had seen Eva when the body of Belhaven was borne in,
a mute witness of the deed that she had done, and he knew that Eva had
need of Astry's mercy, as great as Belhaven's need of salvation.

Standing on the terrace, Charter looked out across the frozen landscape
and saw, a long, long way off, the light in the open door of Belhaven's
house, where they made ready for his silent return. That light upon the
snow made a long and exceedingly narrow way, and over it he seemed to
see the figure of the woman he loved coming toward him. For, by her one
unthinking act to save her sister, Rachel, too, had stumbled upon the
way, and he seemed to see her traveling along it now, stooping always
to help those who had stumbled lower or fallen, and bearing always the
burden of another's transgressions, but coming at last through the
light to meet him and reaping, not in pain and sorrow, but in joy and
peace, because her love was greater than theirs.


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