Part 34 (1/2)
CHAPTER V
That his overtired nerves and her exhausted soul and body would have recovered balance in time, did not occur to Rachael. She suffered with all the intensity of a strongly pa.s.sionate nature.
Warren had changed to her; that was the terrible fact. She went about stunned and sick, neglecting her meals, forgetting her tonic, refusing the distractions that would have been the best thing possible for her. Little things troubled her; she said to herself bitterly that everything, anything, caused irritation between herself and Warren now. Sometimes the atmosphere brightened for a few days, then the old hopeless tugging at cross purposes began again.
”You're sick, Rachael, and you don't know it!” said Magsie Clay breezily. June was coming in, and Magsie was leaving town for the Villalonga camp. She told Rachael that she was ”crazy” about Kent Parmalee, and Rachael's feeling of amazement that Magsie Clay could aspire to a Parmalee was softened by an odd sensation of relief at hearing Magsie's plans--a relief she did not a.n.a.lyze.
”I believe I am sick!” Rachael agreed. ”I shall be glad to get down to the sh.o.r.e next week.” She told Warren of Magsie's admission that night.
”Kent! She wouldn't look at him!” Warren said comfortably.
”It would be a brilliant match for her,” Rachael countered quietly.
She saw that she had antagonized him, but he did not speak again.
One of their unhappy silences fell.
Home Dunes, as always, restored health and color magically.
Rachael felt more like herself after the first night's sleep on the breezy porch, the first invigorating dip in the ocean. She began to enjoy her meals again, she began to look carefully to her appearance. Presently she was laughing, singing, bubbling with life and energy. Alice, watching her, rejoiced and marvelled at her recovery. Rachael's beauty, her old definite self-reliance, came back in a flood. She fairly radiated charm, glowing as she held George and Alice under the spell of her voice, the spell of her happy planning. Her letters to Warren were in the old, tender, vivacious strain. She was interested in everything, delighted with everything in Clark's Hills. She begged him for news; Vivian had a baby? And Kent Parmalee was engaged to Eliza Bowditch--what did Magsie's say? And did he miss her? The minute she got home she was going to talk to him about having a big porch built on, outside the nursery, and at the back of the house; what about it? Then the children could sleep out all the year through. George and Alice positively stated that they were going around the world in two years, and if they did, why couldn't the Gregorys go, too?
”You're wonderful!” said Alice one day. ”You're not the same woman you were last winter!”
”I was ill last winter, woman! And never so ill as when they all thought I was entirely cured! Besides--” Rachael looked down at her tanned arm and slender brown fingers marking grooves in the sand. ”Besides, it's partly--bluff, Alice,” she confessed. ”I'm fighting myself these days. I don't want to think that we--Greg and I--can't go back, can't be to each other--what we were!”
What an April creature she was, thought Alice, seeing that tears were close to the averted eyes, and hearing the tremble in Rachael's voice.
”Goose!” she said tenderly. ”You were a nervous wreck last year, and Warren was working far too hard! Make haste slowly, Rachael.”
”But it's three weeks since he was here,” Rachael said in a low voice. ”I don't understand it, that's all!”
”Nor I--nor he!” Alice said, smiling.
”Next week!” Rachael predicted bravely. And a second later she had sprung up from the sand and was swimming through the surf as if she swam from her own intolerable thoughts.
The next week-end would bring him she always told herself, and usually after two or three empty Sundays there would come a happy one, with the new car which was built like a projectile, purring in the road, George and Alice shouting greetings as they came in the gate, Louise excitedly attempting to outdo herself on the dinner, and the sunburned noisy babies shrieking themselves hoa.r.s.e as they romped with their father.
To be held tight in his arms, to get his first big kiss, to come into the house still clinging to him, was bliss to Rachael now.
But as the summer wore away she noticed that in a few hours the joy of homecoming would fade for him, he would become fitfully talkative, moodily silent, he would wonder why the Valentines were always late, and ask his wife patiently if she would please not hum, his head ached--
”Dearest! Why didn't you say so!”
”I don't know. It's been aching all day!”
”And you let those great boys climb all over you!”
”Oh, that's all right.”
”Would you like a nap, Warren, or would you like to go over to the beach, just you and me, and have a swim?”
”No, thank you. I may run the car into Katchogue”--Katchogue, seven miles away, was the site of the nearest garage--”and have that fellow look at my magneto. She didn't act awfully well coming down!”