Part 8

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!