Part 53 (1/2)
”Well,” Rachael said, straightening up suddenly, and with resolute courage returning to her manner and voice, ”you'll have, somebody look it up, will you, George?”
”You may depend upon it-immediately,” George said huskily. ”It--of course it will make an immense difference,” he added, in his anxiety to be rea.s.suring saying exactly the wrong thing.
Rachael was pale.
”I don't know how anything can make a great difference now, George,” she answered slowly. ”The thing remains--a fact. Of course this ends, in one way, the sordid side, the fear of publicity, of notoriety. But that wasn't the phase of it that ever counted with me. This will probably hurt Warren--”
”Oh, Rachael, dear old girl, don't talk that way!” George protested. ”You can't believe that Warren will feel anything but a--a most unbelievable relief! We all know that. He's not the first man who let a pretty face drive him crazy when he was working himself to death.” George was studying her as he spoke, with all his honest heart in his look, but Rachael merely shook her head forlornly.
”Perhaps I don't understand men,” she said with a mildness that George found infinitely more disturbing than any fury would have been.
”Well, I'll look up records at the City Hall,” he said after a pause. ”That's the first thing to do. And then I'll let you know.
Boys well this morning?”
”Lovely,” Rachael smiled. ”My trio goes fis.h.i.+ng to-day, packing its lunch itself, and asking no feminine a.s.sistance. The lunch will be eaten by ten o'clock, and the boys home at half-past ten, thinking it is almost sundown. They only go as far as the cove, where the men are working, and we can see the tops of their heads from the upstairs' porch, so Mary and I won't feel entirely unprotected. I'm to lunch with Alice, so my day is nicely planned!”
The bright look did not deceive him, nor the rea.s.suring tone. But George Valentine's friends.h.i.+p was more easily displayed by deeds than words, and now, with an affectionate pat for her hand, he touched his starter, and the car leaped upon its way. Just four hours later he telephoned Alice that the wedding license of Margaret Rose Clay and Richard Gardiner had indeed been issued a week before, and that Magsie was not to be found at her apartment, which was to be sublet at the janitor's discretion; that Bowman's secretary reported the absence of Miss Clay from the city, and the uncertainty of her appearing in any of Mr. Bowman's productions that winter, and that at the hospital a confident inquiry for ”Mr.
and Mrs. Gardiner” had resulted in the discreet reply that ”the parties” had left for California. George, with what was for him a rare flash of imagination, had casually inquired as to the name of the clergyman who had performed the ceremony, being answered dispa.s.sionately that the person at the other end of the telephone ”didn't know.”
”George, you are an absolute WONDER!” said Alice's proud voice, faintly echoed from Clark's Hills. ”Now, shall you cable--anybody- -you know who I mean?”
”I have,” answered the efficient George, ”already.”
”Oh, George! And what will he do?”
”Well, eventually, he'll come back.”
”Do you THINK so? I don't!”
”Well, anyway, we'll see.”
”And you're an angel,” said Mrs. Valentine, finis.h.i.+ng the conversation.
Ten days later Warren Gregory walked into George Valentine's office, and the two men gripped hands without speaking. That Warren had left for America the day George's cable reached him there was no need to say. That he was a man almost sick with empty days and brooding nights there was no need to say. George was shocked in the first instant of meeting, and found himself, as they talked together, increasingly shocked at the other's aspect.
Warren was thin, his hair actually showed more gray, there were deep lines about his mouth. But it was not only that; his eyes had a tired and haunted look that George found sad to see, his voice had lost its old confident ring, and he seemed weary and shaken.
He asked for Alice and the children, and for Rachael and the boys.
”Rachael's well,” George said. ”She looks--well, she shows what she's been through; but she's very handsome. And the boys are fine. We had the whole crowd down as far as Shark Light for a picnic last Sunday. Rachael has little Breck Pickering down there now; he's a nice little chap, younger than our Katrina--Jim's age.
The youngster is in paradise, sure enough, and putting on weight at a great rate.”
”I didn't know he was there,” Warren said slowly. ”Like her--to take him in. I wish I had been there--Sunday. I wish to the Lord that it was all a horrible dream!”
He stopped and sat silent, looking gloomily at the floor, his whole figure, George thought, indicating a broken and shamed spirit.
”Well, Magsie's settled, at least,” said George after a silence.
”Yes. That wasn't what counted, though,” Warren said, as Rachael had said. ”She is settled without my moving; there's no way in which I can ever make Rachael feel that I would have moved.” Again his voice sank into silence, but presently he roused himself.
”I've come back to work, George,” he said with a quiet decision of manner that George found new and admirable. ”That's all I can do now. If she ever forgives me--but she's not the kind that forgives. She's not weak--Rachael. But anyway, I can work.