""Tis love--"tis love--that makes--etcetera, etcetera," supplied the doctor, his tone less flippant than his words.
"Oh--love!" Rachael"s voice was full of delicate scorn. "I"ve seen a great deal of all sorts and kinds of love," she went on, "and I must say that I consider love a very much overrated article!
You"re laughing at me, you bold gossoon, but I mean it. Clarence loved Paula madly, kidnapped her from a boarding-school and all that, but I don"t know how much THEIR seven years together helped the world go round. He never loved me, never once said he did, but I"ve made him a better wife than she did. He loves Bill, now, and it"s the worst thing in the world for her!"
"THERE"S some love for you," said Doctor Gregory, glancing across the room to the figures of Miss Leila Buckney and Mr. Parker Hoyt, who were laughing over a cabinet full of ivories.
"I wonder just what would happen there if Parker lost his money to-morrow--if Aunt Frothy died and left it all to Magsie Clay?"
Rachael suggested, smiling.
The doctor answered only with a shrug.
"More than that," pursued Rachael, "suppose that Parker woke up to-morrow morning and found his engagement was all a dream, found that he really hadn"t asked Leila to marry him, and that he was as free as air. Do you suppose that the minute he"d had his breakfast he would go straight over to Leila"s house and make his dream a heavenly reality? Or would he decide that there was no hurry about it, and that he might as well rather keep away from the Buckney house until he"d made up his mind?"
"I suppose he might convince himself that an hour or two"s delay wouldn"t matter!" said the doctor, laughing.
"If you talk to me of clothes, or of jewelry, or of what one ought to send a bride, and what to say in a letter of condolence, I know where I am," said Rachael, "but love, I freely confess, is something else again!"
"I suppose my mother has known great love," said the man, after a pause. "She spends her days in that quiet old house dreaming about my father, and my brothers, looking at their pictures, and reading their letters--"
"But, Greg, she"s so unhappy!" Rachael objected briskly. "And love--surely the contention is that love ought to make one happy?"
"Well, I think her memories DO make her happy, in a way. Although my mother is really too conscientious a woman to be happy, she worries about events that are dead issues these twenty years. She wonders if my brother George might have been saved if she had noticed his cough before she did; there was a child who died at birth, and then there are all the memories of my father"s death-- the time he wanted ice water and the doctors forbade it, and he looked at her reproachfully. Poor Mother!"
"You"re a joy to her anyway, Greg," Rachael said, as he paused.
"Charley is," he conceded thoughtfully, "and in a way I know I am!
But not in every way, of course," Warren Gregory smiled a little ruefully.
"So the case for love is far from proved," Rachael summarized cheerfully. "There"s no such thing!"
"On the contrary, there isn"t anything else, REALLY, in the world," smiled the man. "I"ve seen it shining here and there; we get away from it here, somewhat, I"ll admit"--his glance and gesture indicated the other occupants of the room--"and, like you, I don"t quite know where we miss it, and what it"s all about, but there have been cases in our wards, for instance: girls whose husbands have been brought in all smashed up--"
"Girls who saw themselves worried about rent and bread and b.u.t.ter!" suggested Rachael in delicate irony.
"No, I don"t think so. And mothers--mothers hanging over sick children--"
The women nodded quickly.
"Yes, I know, Greg. There"s something very appealing about a sick kiddie. Bill was ill once, just after we were married, such a little thing she looked, with her hair all cut! And that DID--now that I remember it--it really did bring Clarence and me tremendously close. We"d sit and wait for news, and slip out for little meals, and I"d make him coffee late at night. I remember thinking then that I never wanted a child, to make me suffer as we suffered then!"
"Mother love, then, we concede," Doctor Gregory said, smiling.
"Well, yes, I suppose so. Some mothers. I don"t believe a mother like Florence ever was really made to suffer through loving.
However, there IS mother love!"
"And married love."
"No, there I don"t agree. While the novelty lasts, while the pa.s.sion lasts--not more than a year or two. Then there"s just civility--opening the city house, opening the country house, entertaining, going about, liking some things about each other, loathing others, keeping off the dangerous places until the crash comes, or, perhaps, for some lucky ones, doesn"t come!"
"What a mushy little sentimentalist you are, Rachael!" Gregory said with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "You"re too dear and sweet to talk that way! It"s too bad--it"s too bad to have you feel so!
I wish that I could carry you away from all these people here-- just for a while! I"d like to prescribe that sea beach you spoke about last night! Wouldn"t we love our desert island! Would you help me build a thatched hut, and a mud oven, and string sh.e.l.ls in your hair, and swim way out in the green breakers with me?"
"And what makes you think that there would be some saving element in our relationship?" Rachael asked in a low voice. "What makes you think that our love would survive the--the dry-rot of life?
People would send us silver and rugs, and there would be a lot of engraving, and barrels of champagne, and newspaper men trying to cross-examine the maids, and caterers all over the place, but a few years later, wouldn"t it be the same old story? You talk of a desert island, and swimming, and seaweed, Greg! But my ideas of a desert island isn"t Palm Beach with commercial photographers snapping at whoever sits down in the sand! Look about us, Greg-- who"s happy? Who isn"t watching the future for just this or just that to happen before she can really feel content? Young girls all want to be older and more experienced, older girls want to be young; this one is waiting for the new house to be ready, that one--like Florence--is worrying a little for fear the girls won"t quite make a hit! Clarence worries about Billy, I worry about Clarence--"
"I worry about you!" said Doctor Gregory as she paused.
"Of course you do, bless your heart!" Rachael laughed. "So here we are, the rich and fashionable and fortunate people of the world, having a cloudless good time!"
"You know, it"s a shame to eat this way--ruin our dinners!" said Mrs. Moran, suddenly entering the conversation. "Stop flirting with Greg, Rachael, and give me some more tea. One lump, and only about half a cup, dear. Tell me a good way to get thin, Greg!
Agnes Chase says her doctor has a diet--you eat all you want, and you get thin. Agnes says Lou has a friend who has taken off forty- eight pounds. Do you believe it, Greg? I"m too fat, you know--"
"You carry it well, Judy," said Rachael, still a little shaken by the abruptly closed conversation, as the doctor, with a conscious thrill, perceived.
"Thank you, my dear, that"s what they all say. But I"d just as soon somebody else should carry it for awhile!"
"Listen, Rachael," said their hostess, coming up suddenly, and speaking quickly and lightly, "Clarence is here. Where in the name of everything sensible is Billy?"
"Clarence!" said Rachael, uncomfortable premonition clutching at her heart.
"Yes; you come and talk to him, Rachael," Mrs. Whittaker said, in the same quick undertone. "He"s all right, of course, but he"s just a little fussy--"
"Oh, if he wouldn"t DO these things!" Rachael said apprehensively as she rose. "I left him all comfortable--Joe Butler was coming in to see him! It does EXASPERATE me so! However!"
"Of course it does, but we all know Clarence!" Mrs. Whittaker said soothingly. "He seems to have got it into his head that Billy--You go talk to him, Rachael, and I"ll send her in."
"Billy"s doing no harm! What did he say?" Rachael asked impatiently.
"Oh, nothing definite, of course. But as soon as I said that Billy was here--he"d asked if she was--he said, "Then I suppose Mr.
Pickering is here, too!""
"He"s the one person in the world afraid of talk about Billy, yet if he starts it, he can blame no one but himself!" Rachael said, as she turned toward the adjoining room. An unexpected ordeal like this always annoyed her. She was equal to it, of course; she could smooth Clarence"s ruffled feelings, keep a serene front to the world, and get her family safely home before the storm; she had done it many times before. But it was so unnecessary! It was so unnecessary to exhibit the Breckenridge weaknesses before the observant Emorys, before that unconscionable old gossip Peter Pomeroy, and to the cool, pitying gaze of all her world!
She found Clarence the centre of a small group in the long drawing-room. He and Frank Whittaker were drinking c.o.c.ktails; the others--Jeanette Vanderwall, Vera Villalonga, a flushed, excitable woman older than Rachael, and Jimmy and Estelle Hoyt--had refused the drink, but were adding much noise and laughter to the newcomer"s welcome.
"h.e.l.lo, Clarence" Rachael said, appraising the situation rapidly as she came up. "I would have waited for you if I had thought you would come!"
"I just--just thought I would--look in," Clarence said slowly but steadily. "Didn"t want to miss anything. You all seem to be having--having a pretty good time!"
"It"s been a lovely tea," Rachael a.s.sured him enthusiastically.
"But I"m just going. Billy"s out here on the porch with a bunch of youngsters; I was just going after her. Don"t let Frank give you any more of that stuff, Clancy. Stop it, Frank! It always gives him a splitting headache!"
The tone was irreproachably casual and cheerful, but Clarence scowled at his wife significantly. His dignity, as he answered, was tremendous.
"I can judge pretty well of what hurts me and what doesn"t, thank you, Rachael," he said coldly, with a look ominous with warning.
"That"s just what you can"t, dear," Mrs. Whittaker, who had joined the group, said pleasantly. "Take that stuff away, Frank, and don"t be so silly! If Frank," she added to the group, "hadn"t been at it all afternoon himself he wouldn"t be such an idiot."