CHAPTER X

IN THE GARDEN

The sight of Annie, arrayed in a freshly-ironed white dress and sitting in the carriage behind Peter, gave Rachel a disagreeable shock.

"Mr. Hart thought very likely you'd come on the Express, and he sent me along for the drive," and Annie moved her starched flounces that Rachel might sit beside her. "Was it hot in the city?"

"Yes, very."

"And did you go to the marble works to see the new machine? Alexander said that he had asked you."

"Yes, I went there; but it was Saturday and they had closed down."

"Oh--then nothing came of your visit?"

Rachel shivered.

"All the same," the other continued, "it's very remarkable, that machine; and the best of it is, though I don't suppose you'll think so, Alexander is entitled to all he makes on it and he's going to make a good deal. You see, it's this way," she explained, "Mr. Watson, Mr. Hart--none of the Company, in fact, took a bit of stock in that marble-cutting scheme when Alexander outlined it for them. They said: 'There's nothing in it; you go ahead with the organ attachment, don't let anything come before that; and work out the marble-cutting machine on the side and you're welcome to all you make on it.' And Alexander worked out the whole thing and even made the big model on three Sundays and the Fourth of July, which came on Monday. Those four days were sufficient, and it's proved a triumph--really a great triumph. But I suppose he's told you. He said he was going to; and I thought it would be all right, for I knew you'd be on Alexander's side and would see that what he's done is perfectly fair."

Rachel nodded. "Perfectly fair," she murmured.

She had been asking herself while they had been driving along, what Annie's mode of escape was. Now she knew. "It's the accumulation of things," she told herself. "Annie thinks if Emil can earn enough money so that they can have _things_, she'll be more than she is now."

"If they pay him as much as they promised to, those Italians up there," Annie continued, "I don't see why we shouldn't have a little cottage in the fall on the outskirts of the city somewhere, and Alexander could go in to his work."

"Didn't I say so?" Rachel thought; and she was delighted at her own astuteness.

The carriage lamps were lighted and by the aid of these and the shining of the full moon, she could see her companion distinctly even to the tiny freckles that covered the bridge of her nose. Freckles and all, however, Annie was looking undeniably pretty in a fresh and innocent, if somewhat meaningless, way. Annie's emotions were those of a child, Rachel told herself, trying to lighten her burden of self-reproach and shame.

They arrived at the gate of Gray Arches which was cut through an evergreen hedge and guarded by two large ornamental lamps, that, being rusty and out of order, were never lighted. The carriage rolled over the sand of the avenue, past some large bushes of rhododendron and arrived before the steps of the glass-enclosed porch. Simon hastened out of the house and helped them to alight.

"So you caught the Express all right?" he cried; then added, in an undertone as he took Rachel's arm, "I sent her to meet you, because I knew she'd enjoy the drive. St. Ives is in the city to-day and I asked her to dine with us."

A few moments later Rachel stood at the window of her room.

Below in the garden Annie was standing beside Simon. He had picked up a pebble from the path. "Do you know," she heard him say in the tone he always assumed when communicating information, "I've noticed that a great many of these pebbles are of the amethyst variety."

"It's curious," she thought, approaching the washstand, "what Simon sees in Annie. He can't do enough for her, apparently. She's over here all the time now."

She began drawing off her rings, but the wedding ring resisted and she was obliged to hold the finger under a faucet. Her face assumed a moody, desperate expression. The world had shrunk to the round of her wedding ring.

She plunged her face into the cold water. What should she put on? Emil had called her beautiful. Was it true that she was beautiful? She put on a light dress trimmed with insertions of real lace, a dress much too elaborate for the occasion, and went downstairs.

In the dining room the party was awaiting her, and Simon had lit the wax candles in the large candelabra in honour of Annie's presence. In the shifting radiance which is a peculiarity of candle light, Rachel's beauty shone forth triumphantly. Annie in her freshly-starched frock, with her smooth blond little head and her unimaginative glance, looked like a daisy of the kind that grows by the thousand in the fields, beside some rare flower that had opened its petals to their extreme limit. There was no mystery in Annie; but Rachel was all mystery, all passion, all fire. Something unusual escaped from the glances she lifted, and from those she half-concealed. Shadows teased the corners of her mouth and sank into the slight hollow at the base of her throat. Light bathed her brow. Something that was at once the "joy of her soul" and the grief of her soul trembled from between her parted lips.

André could not take his eyes from her; and, as he looked, an immeasurable anguish mingled with his delight.

"I must catch the train in the morning, Rachel," Simon remarked as they rose from the table, "a note from Theresa says Father is ailing. Nothing serious, I infer, but I shall spend the day in town to-morrow, lunch with him, and then I shall know all I wish. Watch a man when he's taking his food and you can judge fairly of his condition."

Rachel cast a scornful glance at her husband. Everything he said to-night annoyed her. But his next words made her ashamed.

"I wish I could bring Father out here," he added, "but the doctor is against it and perhaps he's right."

She turned impulsively with some idea of making amends for her thoughts. But when Simon, as they were leaving the dining room, inclined his head toward hers, she sprang aside, giving him a strange look in the face.

Of course she must tell him everything; but not to-night--to-night, she thought, he seemed particularly contented. He had gone now to get his hat. The clouds on the previous day had not emptied themselves. Now they once more drove through the heavens, though the moon, at present, shone victoriously. As Annie feared for her starched dress, Simon was going to take her home at once.

When the door had closed upon them, Rachel went into the front room. André was sitting before one of the long windows, the casement of which lay back against the wall. In one of the upper panes of glass, swimming through a bank of wild clouds, the moon was reflected. It was as if the moon were in the room. The heat had increased; lightning played along the sky, and in the garden, the shrubbery, half shrouded in a silvery mist, was motionless.

"Play something for me, André," Rachel said; and going to the window, she stood with her hands clasped behind her neck. How get through this evening--how get through her entire life?

"I thought out a piece after you left Pemoquod. I will play that for you." And passing to the mantel, André took down his fiddle. "I call it your piece," he added softly.

But Rachel, her eyes on the gleaming garden, did not hear him.

Presently, a mournful and plaintive air, like the voice of a child giving way to grief, began to float through the room. It was instinctive playing, devoid of skill in the technical sense; none the less the sound of the strings was wistful, heart-rending. And suddenly the song gained in force and rang out powerfully; the crude, passionate, beseeching melody flowed from under the nervous, swift-moving bow, and such tenderness and devotion mingled with its flowing, such piercingly-sweet supplication, that Rachel, laying her face on her arm, supported herself against the casement.

And André, his dark head bent, his cheek pressed to the violin, conscious that she was there before him in her rich dress, played like one in an ecstasy. His body swayed, tears stood on his pale cheeks, but his eyes were closed.

At last, unable to endure the constantly recurring love _motif_, which was sweeter than the moon, more fathomless than the white moon drowned in space, Rachel fled through the long window. With a fierce movement she lifted her arms above her head; then, as if broken, rested her face against a tree. Rising from the ground beneath her feet, floating between the branches of the mist-hung trees, thrilling through all the spaces of the still and waiting garden, ran the fire of that exquisite melody, sounded those strains of pure and youthful love.

Presently a flowering shrub moved slightly. Some branches that overhung a path stirred; then everything was motionless.

She raised her head, her whole frame quivering like a tightly drawn bow.

Out of the shadows, running rather than walking, Emil was advancing.

With one movement she sprang to him and, uttering a low cry, he caught her.

Each on the lips of the other, their souls were drowned in oblivion; for if he kissed her, she as openly kissed him; and if her cheeks were drenched with tears, they certainly were not all of her own shedding. Tempestuous, tragic emotion overflowed the hearts of both. In the delicious anguish of their embrace, the memory of life with its pitiful conventions dropped from them. Loyalty was an empty word, pity a name.

Their clinging arms its walls, their shining eyes its stars, they stood apart in a universe new-made.

And from the old, old sky the moon that watches over this paltry world of man with his misery and his bliss,--the moon looked down on them. Changing her position on her cloudbank, like a head lolling lazily on a pillow, the moon bestowed on the pair of bewildered children the same glance of remote indulgence she recently had bestowed on the lovers in the Garden of Eden. She threw her brightness over their clasping arms and eloquent faces, and with her radiance mischievously deepened the glamour of that supreme moment in their infinitesimal lives. Then sinking amid the down of her pillow, she temporarily disappeared.

"Rachel, what did you mean by leaving me the way you did this afternoon?" Emil whispered, pausing long enough between his kisses to hold back her head, while he looked down into her eyes with his own which were fierce and wet; "Didn't you know it would be useless?"

His words roused her from the spell that had enwrapped her. Freeing herself with violence, she turned on him. The crimson had dropped from her cheek like the colours from a mast head.

"Emil, leave me!"

His eyes glowed with a peculiar brilliance:

"Leave you, my own? I'll never leave you! and you'll never leave me again; that couldn't happen more than once!"

And as she looked at him, she understood that he could conceive of nothing strong enough to deter him from following the dictates of his pagan and powerful nature.

"Go away, Emil," she said dully, "if you have any love for me--any pity even." Her brows drew together with hopeless obstinacy. She turned.

With one stride he was beside her and had caught her hand. "Listen to me, love," he cried, and a curious mingling of command, entreaty and supplication trembled in the words, "to-morrow is Sunday, there is a train in the afternoon at six; I'll wait for you in that little grove near the station. Do you understand?"

"No;" and she stared back at him, all in a blaze.

"Oh, yes you do," he said gently; "I mean that we'll go off somewhere--far, far away. We'll have a cottage on a beach, something like this one here; and we'll have a boat. And there'll be nothing to come between us any more. All that is past. We'll forget it, as if it had never been, and we'll live for each other. And perhaps, later, if you are willing," he pursued, carried away by his visions, "we'll have Mother join us; for you'll take to Mother, Rachel, and she'll take to you. Then, how I will work! I'll astonish you; I'll astonish the world. I'll make you a proud and happy woman, but it will all be owing to you."

"But Simon--Annie--what of them?" she broke in upon him hastily, for she feared this last argument more than she feared death.

"Well, what of them?" he interrogated, purposely misinterpreting her. "To be sure, Annie scarcely lets me out of her sight these days," he added thoughtfully. "She understands about as much as a humming-bird how such a chap as I has to do his work, and she's eternally standing at my elbow and egging me on. It will be a little difficult to slip away. However, I'll tell her that I'm obliged to see those fellows in the Bronx,--which is quite true," he finished with a brightening smile. "And then another thing that will make my getting away easy, Annie takes a nap now every afternoon, so it can be readily arranged. We'll simply walk away from this, Rachel--we'll leave it all."

She heard in these words the declaration of one who refuses to be fettered by life; who, instead of being hampered by its conventions, rises superior to them. The simplicity of the point of view transfixed her.

Ordinarily Emil would have been swift to note and follow up the advantage he had gained; but, as he looked upon Rachel, the quality of her resistance struck him for the first time; thereupon that primitive something which in him took the place of conscience stirred ever so slightly. For a brief instant he saw the line of conduct he was tracing so blithely for the pair of them, in a novel and uncomfortable light. A burning emotion rose from the depths of his soul, and in its wake it carried new and troubling questions. He waved his arms vehemently as if to drive this brood of questions from him. But the new emotion persisted, and seemed to fill his breast.

"I don't pretend to know much about any question of right or wrong," he murmured, all at once humble; "but it seems to me, love such as ours is beyond all that. As for Annie," he went on, his confidence in himself restored, "she won't be sorry to be rid of me when she gets over the first surprise. Her parents are forever urging her to come home, and you remember she did leave me a while ago. Ours was a daft marriage if there ever was one," he continued, "for two unliker people were never yoked together. And the life she'll lead with her parents will suit Annie far better. Poor kitten," he commented with unwonted softness, "she was never made for hardships, and we'll be doing her no wrong. The thing I'm striving after means less than nothing to Annie, and there's where you are different, Rachel. You'll be patient till I do succeed; but I'll not keep you waiting long, sweet, for your presence will brace me so that I can't fail. Then take your husband," he pursued, with a steady glance under her lids, "is he a fit mate for you? Ask yourself? No, no, my own, my darling, we are the fit mates!"

Strongly, in spite of her swift denying, even with sobs, he drew her to his breast.

And through the garden, André's song of love struck on their ears. It wrapped them round like the voice of their own passion. It increased perceptibly in volume as though the player were drawing near. Then, its strains which leapt on a sudden to those of triumph, ceased:--there came a crash.

Rachel struggled to escape, and she did escape. She retraced the few steps of the path, she entered the house through the long window. Something flashed past her and disappeared in the shrubbery. On the sill she stumbled over a dark object which gave out a faint discordant sound. It was André's violin with its strings still vibrating.