"A million apologies--all my fault!" said Doctor Gregory in the doorway. His mother, in rustling black silk, was on his arm. She had given up her cane to-day to use the living support, and no lover could have wished to appear more charming in his lady"s eyes than did Warren Gregory appear to Rachael as he lowered the frail old figure to a chair and neglected his guests while he made his mother comfortable.
"He would have you think, now, that I was the cause of the delay,"
said the old lady in a sweet voice that betrayed curiously the weakness of the flesh and the strength of the spirit. "But I a.s.sure you my beauty is no longer a matter of great importance to me!"
"So it was Greg who was curling his hair?" Rachael asked, with one swift and eloquent glance for him before she drew a much-fringed ha.s.sock to his mother"s knee and seated herself there with the confidence of a captivating child. "I always thought he was rather vain! But let"s not talk about him, we only make him worse. Tell me about yourself?"
Mrs. Gregory was a rather spirited old lady, and liked to fancy, with the pathetic complacency of the pa.s.sing generation, that her sense of humor quite kept up with the times. Rachael knew her well, and knew all her stories, but this only made her the pleasanter companion. She quickly carried the conversation into the past, and was content to be a listener; indeed, with a hostess far removed in type from herself it was the only safe role to play. The conversation was full of pitfalls for this charming and dutiful worldling, and Rachael was too clever to risk a fall.
She was afraid of the crippled little gentlewoman in the big chair, and Warren Gregory was afraid, too. Some mysterious element in her regard for them made luncheon an ordeal for them both, although Billy"s healthy young eyes saw only an old woman, impotent and alone; the maids were respectful and pitying, and young Charles Gregory, who joined them at luncheon, Was obviously unimpressed by his grandmother"s power, but was smitten red and inarticulate at the first glimpse of Billy.
This youth, after silently disposing of several courses, finally asked in a husky voice for Miss Charlotte Haviland, and relapsed into silence again. Billy flirted youthfully with her host, Rachael devoted herself to the old lady.
She had always been happy here, a marked favorite with old Mrs.
Gregory to whom her audacious nonsense had always seemed a great delight before. But to-day she was conscious of a change, she could not control the conversation with her usual sure touch, she floundered and contradicted herself like a schoolgirl. One of her brilliant stories fell rather flat because its humor was largely supplied by an intoxicated man--"of course it was dreadful, but then it was funny, too!" Rachael finished lamely. Another flashing account won from the old hostess the single words "On Sunday?"
"Well, yes. It was on Sunday. I am afraid we are absolute pagans; we don"t always remember to go to church, by any means!" Rachael began to feel that a cloud of midges were buzzing about her face.
Every topic led her deeper into the quicksand. There was a definite touch of resentment under the gracious manner in which she presently said her good-bye, and they were no sooner in the motor car than she exclaimed to Billy:
"Didn"t Mrs. Gregory seem horribly cross to you to-day? She made me feel as if I"d broken all the Commandments and was dancing on the pieces!"
"What do you know about Charles asking for Charlotte?" was Billy"s only answer. "Isn"t he just the sort of mutt who would ask for Charlotte!"
"Isn"t she quite lovely?" said Mrs. Gregory from over the fleecy yarn she was knitting, when the guests had gone.
"Carol?" the doctor countered.
"Yes, Carol, too. But I was thinking of Mrs. Breckenridge. Do you see her very often, James?"
"Quite a bit. Do you mind my smoking?"
"I often wonder," pursued the old lady innocently, "what such a sweet, gay, lovely girl could see in a fellow like poor Clarence Breckenridge!"
"Great marvel she doesn"t throw him over!" Warren said casually.
"It distresses me to hear you talk so recklessly, my son," Mrs.
Gregory said after a brief pause,
"Lord, Mother," her son presently observed impatiently, "is it reasonable to expect that because a girl like that makes a mistake when she is twenty or twenty-one, that she shall pay for it for the rest of her life?"
"Unfortunately, we are not left in any doubt about it," the old lady said dryly. And as Warren was silent she went on with quavering vigor: "It is not for us to judge her husband"s infirmities. She is his wife."
"Oh, well, there"s no use arguing it," the man said pleasantly after a sulphurous interval. "Fortunately for her, most people don"t feel as you do."
"You surely don"t think that _I_ originated this theory?" his mother asked quietly after a silence, during which her long needles moved a little more swiftly than was natural.
"I don"t think anything about it. I KNOW that you"re much, much narrower about such things than your religion or any religion gives you any right to be," Warren a.s.serted hotly. "It is nothing to me, but I hate this smug parcelling out of other people"s affairs," he went on. "Mrs. Breckenridge is a very wonderful and a most unfortunate woman; her husband isn"t fit to lace her shoes--"
"All that may be true," his mother interrupted with some agitation.
"All that may be true, you say! And yet if Rachael left him, and tried to find happiness somewhere else--"
"The law is not of MY making, James," the old lady intervened mildly, noting his use of the discussed woman"s name with a pang.
"But it IS of your making--you people who sit around and say what"s respectable and what"s not respectable! Who are you to judge?"
"I try not to judge," Mrs. Gregory said so simply that the man"s anger cooled in spite of himself. "And perhaps I am foolish, James, all mothers are. But you are the last of my four sons, and I am a widow in my old age, and I tremble for you. When a woman with beauty as great as that confides in you, my child, when she turns to you, your soul is in danger, and your mother sees it. I cannot--I cannot be silent--"
Rachael herself, an hour ago, had not used her youth and beauty with more definite design than was this other woman using her age and infirmity now. Warren Gregory was almost as readily affected.
"My dear Mother," he said sensibly and charmingly, "don"t think for one instant that I do not appreciate your devotion to me. What has suddenly put into your head this concern about Mrs.
Breckenridge, I can"t imagine. I know that if she were ever in any trouble or need you would be the first to defend her. She is in a peculiarly difficult position, and in a professional way I am somewhat in her confidence, that"s all!"
"I should think she could do something with Clarence," the old lady said, somewhat mollified. "Interest him in something new; lead him away from bad influences."
"Clarence is rather a hopeless problem," Warren Gregory said. The talk drifted away to other persons and affairs, but when they presently parted, with great amiability on both sides, Warren Gregory knew that his mother"s suspicions had in some mysterious way been aroused, and old Mrs. Gregory, sitting alone in the heat of the afternoon, writhed in the grip of a definite apprehension.
Absurd--absurd--to interpret that married woman"s brightly innocent glances into a declaration of love, absurd to find pa.s.sion concealed in Warren"s cheerfully hospitable manner. But she could not shake off the terrified conviction that it was so.
"Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Moulton of England have rented for the season the house of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge, at Belvedere Bay," stated the social columns authoritatively. "Mr.
Breckenridge and Miss Carol Breckenridge will leave at once for the summer camp of Mrs. Booth Villalonga, at Elks Leap, where Mrs.
Breckenridge will join them after spending a few weeks with friends."
Rachael saw the notice on the morning of the last day that she and Clarence were together. In the afternoon Billy and Clarence were to leave for the north, and Rachael was to go to Florence for a day or two. She had been unusually indefinite about her plans for the summer, but in the general confusion of all plans this had not been noticed. She had superintended the packing and a.s.sorting and storing of silver and linen, as a matter of course, and it was easy to see that certain things indisputably her own went into certain crates. n.o.body questioned her authority, and Clarence and Billy paid no attention whatever to the stupid proceeding of getting the house in order for tenants.
On this last morning she sat at the breakfast table studying these two who had been her companions for seven years, and who suspected so little that this companionship was not to last for another seven years, for an indefinite time. Billy was in a bad temper because her father was not taking Alfred and the car with them to the camp, as he had done for the two previous years. Clarence, sullen as always under Billy"s disapproval, was pretending to read his paper. He had a severe headache this morning, his face looked flushed and swollen. He was dreading the twenty-four hours in a hot train, even though the Bowditches, going up in their own car to their own camp, had offered the Breckenridges its comparative comfort and coolness for the entire trip.
"Makes me so sick," grumbled Billy, who looked extremely pretty in a Chinese coat of blue and purple embroideries; "every time I want to move I"ll have to ask Aunt Vera if I may have a car! No fun at all!"
"Loads of horses and cars up there, my dear," Rachael said pacifically. She was quivering from head to foot with nervous excitement; the next few hours were all-important to her. And, under the pressure of her own great emotions, Billy seemed only rather pitiful and young to-day, and even Clarence less a conscious tyrant, and more a blundering boy, than he had seemed.
She bore them no ill will after these seven hard years; indeed a great peace and kindliness pervaded her spirit and softened her manner toward them both. Her marriage had been a great disappointment, composed of a thousand small disappointments, but she was surprised to find that some intangible and elementary emotion was about to make this parting strangely hard.
"Yes, but it"s not the same thing," Billy raged. Rachael began a low-voiced rea.s.surance to which the younger woman listened reluctantly, scowling over her omelette, and interposing an occasional protest.
"Oh, yap--yap--yap! My G.o.d, I do get tired of hearing you two go on and on and on!" Clarence presently burst out angrily. "If you don"t want to go, Billy, say so. I"m sick of the whole thing, anyway!"
"You know very well I never wanted to go," Billy answered. And because, being now committed to the Villalonga visit, she perversely dreaded it, she pursued aggrievedly, "I"d EVER so much rather have gone to California, Dad!"
How sure the youngster was of her power, Rachael thought, watching him instantly soften under his daughter"s skilful touch.
"For five cents," he said eagerly, "I"d wire Vera, and you and I"d beat it to Santa Barbara! What do you say?"
"And if Rachael promised to be awfully good, she could come, too!"
Billy laughed. But the girl"s gay patronage was never again to be extended to Rachael Breckenridge.
"You couldn"t disappoint Vera now," she protested.
"Oh, Lord! make some objections!" Clarence growled.
"My dear boy, it"s nothing to me, whatever you do," Rachael said quickly. "But Vera Villalonga is a very important friend for Bill.