"Rachael, don"t talk so recklessly!"
Rachael smiled sadly.
"Well, perhaps I can be a good mother to them, even if they don"t idealize me!" she mused.
"I have come to this conclusion," she told
Alice one day, about a fortnight later, "while civilization is as it is, divorce is wrong. No matter what the circ.u.mstances are, no matter where the right and wrong lie, divorce is wrong."
"I suppose there are cases of drink or infidelity--" Alice submitted mildly.
"Then it"s the drink, or the infidelity that should be changed!"
Rachael answered inflexibly. "It"s the one vow we take with G.o.d as witness; and no blessing ever follows a broken vow!"
"I think myself that there are not many marriages that couldn"t be successes!" Alice said thoughtfully.
"Separation, if you like!" Rachael conceded with something of her old bright energy. "Change and absence, for weeks and months, but not divorce. Paula Verlaine should never have divorced Clarence; she made a worse match, if that was possible, and involved three other small lives in the general discomfort. And I never should have married Clarence, because I didn"t love him. I didn"t want children then; I never felt that the arrangement was permanent; but having married him, I should have stayed by him. I know the mood in which Clarence took his own life; he never loved me as he did Bill, but he wouldn"t have done it if I had been there!"
"I cannot consider Clarence Breckenridge a loss to society," Alice said.
"I might have made Clarence a man who would have been a loss to society," Rachael mused. "He was proud; loved to be praised. And he loved children; one or two babies in the nursery would have put Billy in second place. But he bored me, and I simply wouldn"t go on being bored. So that if I had had a little more courage, or a little more prudence in the first place, Billy, Clarence, perhaps Charlotte and Charlie, Greg, Deny, Jim, Joe Pickering, and Billy might all have been happier, to say nothing of the general example to society."
"I hear that Billy is unhappy enough now," Alice said, pleased at Rachael"s unusual vivacity. "Isabella Haviland told my Mary that Cousin Billy was talking about divorce."
"From Joe?--is that so?" Rachael looked up interestedly. "I hadn"t heard it, and somehow I don"t believe it! They have a curious affinity through all their adventures. Poor little Bill, it hasn"t been much of a life!"
"They say she is going on the stage," Alice pursued, "which seems a pity, especially for the child"s sake. He"s an attractive boy; we saw him with her at Atlantic City last winter--one of those wonderfully dressed, patient, pathetic children, always with the grown-ups! The little chap must have a rather queer life of it drifting about from hotel to hotel. They"re hard up, and I believe most of the shops and hotels have actually black-listed them. He would seem to be the sort of man who cannot hold on to anything, and, of course, there"s the drinking! She"s not the girl to save him. She drinks rather recklessly herself; it"s a part of her pose."
"I wonder if she would let the youngster come down here and scramble about with my boys?" Rachael said unexpectedly. She had not seriously thought of it; the suggestion came idly. But instantly it took definite hold. "I wonder if she would?" she added with more animation than she had shown for some time. "I would love to have him, and of course the boys would go wild with joy! I would be so glad to do poor old Billy a good turn. She and I were always friends, and had some queer times together. And more than that"--Rachael"s eyes darkened--"I believe that if I had had the right influence over her she never would have married Joe. I regarded the whole thing too lightly; I could have tried, in a different way, to prevent it, at least. I am certainly going to write her, and ask for little Breckenridge. It would be something to do for Clarence, too," Rachael added in a low tone, and as if half to herself, "and for many long years I have felt that I would be glad to do something for him! To have his grandson here-- doesn"t it seem odd?-and perhaps to lend Billy a hand; it seems almost like an answer to prayer! He can sleep on the porch, between the boys, and if he has some old clothes, and a bathing suit--"
"MY DEAR BILLY," she wrote that night, "I have heard one or two hints of late that you have a good many things in your life just now that make for worry, and am writing to know if my boys and I may borrow your small son for a few weeks or a month, so that one small complication of a summer in the city will be spared you. We are down here on Long Island on a strip of high land that runs between the beautiful bay and the very ocean, and when Jim and Derry are not in the one they are apt to be in the other. It will be a great joy to them to have a guest, and a delight to me to take good care of your boy. I think he will enjoy it, and it will certainly do him good.
"I often think of you with great affection, and hope that life is treating you kindly. Sometimes I fancy that my old influence might have been better for you than it was, but life is mistakes, after all, and paying for them, and doing better next time.
"Always affectionately yours, RACHAEL."
Three days elapsed after this letter was dispatched, and Rachael had time to wonder with a little chill if she had been too cordial to Billy, and if Billy were laughing her cool little laugh at her one-time step-mother"s hospitality and moralizing.
But as a matter of fact, the invitation could not have been more happily timed for young Mrs. Pickering. Billy, without any further notice to Magsie, had been to see Magsie"s manager, coolly betraying her friend"s marriage plans, pledging the angry and bewildered Bowman to secrecy, and applying for the position on her own account in the course of one brief visit.
Bowman would not commit himself to engaging Billy, but he was infinitely obliged to her for the news of Magsie, and told her so frankly.
It was when she returned home from this call, and hot and weary, was trying to break an absolute promise to the boy, involving the Zoo and ice-cream, that Rachael"s letter arrived.
Billy read it through, sat thinking hard, and presently read it again. The softest expression her rather hard young face ever knew came over it as she sat there. This was terribly decent of Rachael, thought Billy. She must be the busiest and happiest woman in the world, and yet her heart had gone out to little Breck. The last line, however, meant more than all the rest, just now, to Billy Pickering. She was impressionable, and not given to finding out the truths of life for herself. Rachael"s opinions she had always respected. And now Rachael admitted that life was all mistakes, and added that heartening line about paying for them, and doing better.
""Cause I am so hot--and I never had any lunch--and you said you would!" fretted the little boy, flinging himself against her, and sending a wave of heat through her clothing as he did so.
"Listen, Breck," she said suddenly, catching him lightly in her arm, and smiling down at him, "would you like to go down and stay with the Gregory boys?"
"I don"t know "em," said Breck doubtfully.
"Down on the ocean sh.o.r.e," Billy went on, "where you could go in bathing every day, and roll in the surf, and picnic, and sleep out of doors!"
"Did they ask me?" he demanded excitedly.
"Their mother did, and she says that you can stay as long as you"re a good boy, down there where it"s nice and cool, digging in the sand, and going bare foot--"
"I"ll be the best boy you ever saw!" Breck sputtered eagerly.
"I"ll work for her, and I"ll make the other kids work for her-- she"ll tell you she never saw such a good boy! And I"ll write you letters--"
"You won"t have to work, old man!" Billy felt strangely stirred as she kissed him. She watched him as he rushed away to break the news of his departure to the stolid Swedish girl in the kitchen and the colored boy at the elevator. He jerked his little bureau open, and began to scramble among his clothes; he selected a toy for Jim and a toy for Derry, and his mother noticed that they were his dearest toys. She took him downtown and bought him a bathing suit, and sandals, and new pajamas, and his breathless delight, as he a.s.sured sympathetic clerks that he was going down to the sh.o.r.e, made her realize what a lonely, uncomfortable little fellow he had been all these months. He could hardly eat his supper that night, and had to be punished before he would even attempt to go to sleep, and the next morning he waked his mother at six, and fairly danced with impatience and anxiety as the last preparations were made.
Billy took him down to Clark"s Hills herself. She had not notified Rachael, or answered her in any way, never questioning that Rachael would know her invitation to be accepted. But from the big terminal station she did send a wire, and Rachael and the boys met her after the hot trip.
"Billy, it was good of you to come," Rachael said, kissing her quite naturally as they met.
"I never thought of doing anything else," Billy said, breathing the fresh salt air with obvious pleasure. "I had no idea that it was such a trip. But he was an angel--look at them now, aren"t they cute together?"
Rachael"s boys had taken eager possession of their guest; the three were fast making friends as they trotted along together toward the old motor car that Rachael ran herself.
"It"s a joy to them," their mother said. "Get in here next to me, Bill; I"m not going even to look at you until I get you home. Did you ever see the water look so delicious? We"ll all go down for a dip pretty soon. I live so simply here that I"m entirely out of the way of entertaining a guest, but now that you"re here, you must stay and have a little rest yourself!"
"Oh, thank you, but--" Billy began in perfunctory regret. Her tone changed: "I should love to!" she said honestly.
Rachael laughed. "So funny to hear your old voice, Bill, and your old expressions."
"I was just thinking that you"ve not changed much, Rachael."
"I? Oh, but I"ve gray hair! Getting old fast, Billum."
"And how"s Greg?" Billy did not understand the sudden shadow that fell across Rachael"s face, but she saw it, and wondered.
"Very well, my dear."
"Does he get down here often? It"s a hard trip."
"He always comes in his car. They make it in--I don"t know-- something like two hours and ten minutes, I think. This is my house, with all its hydrangeas in full bloom. Yes, isn"t it nice?
And here"s Mary for Breckenridge"s bag."
Rachael had got out of the car, and now she gave Billy"s boy her hand, and stood ready to help him down.
"Well, Breck," said she, "do you think you are going to like my house, and my little boys? Will you give Aunt Rachael a kiss?"
Billy said nothing as the child embraced his new-found relative heartily, nor when Rachael took her upstairs to show her the third hammock between the other two, and herself invested the visitor in blue overalls and a wide hat. But late that evening, after a silence, she said suddenly:
"You"re more charming than ever, Rachael; you"re one of the sweetest women I ever saw!"