Part 11

"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.