CHAPTER XI

FLAMES

Some hours later Rachel sat at a window of her room with her forehead resting on her hands. The clouds by this time covered the face of the moon; and the darkness was enlivened by patches and scars of lightning, as though the heavens were being laid open with a fiery whip. Rain fell. A fine spray of moisture penetrated the ragged awning. Rachel never stirred.

A dull lethargy had descended on her. She no longer thought of Emil or of her husband. She had but one sensation--the inevitable had happened. The fury of the storm brought her a sense of relief. At moments she felt herself being carried forward by a dark irresistible current. None the less her determination, like an anchor, held. She never faltered in her resolution to leave Gray Arches; she even heard herself explaining the matter to Simon and she saw his face. His fingers trembled through his hair, his jaw fell, all the blood receded from his cheek. "But why disturb him?" she thought; "why should he be made to suffer?" No, plainly, she must invent some pretext for leaving, then go at once. She must not see Emil again.

Without realizing it, Rachel dropped at last into a troubled sleep, from which she was aroused by a rap on the door.

"Oh, has he gone?" she cried, starting to her feet, and she pushed back the hair from her face. "Has Simon gone?"

The very possibility that her husband already had started for the city, in view of her resolution, seemed to her a tragedy.

Emily, after a short, sharp inspection of her, laid a pile of freshly-ironed linen on a chair.

"Yes," she answered, "he knocked at your door, but you gave no sign and he didn't like to disturb you. Peter was slow harnessing and Mr. Hart was afraid he wouldn't make the train, but he must have made it or he'd be back by now. It is after eight o'clock."

Rachel sank into her chair with huddled knees. She looked as if she never intended to move again.

Emily took her wrist. "Wouldn't you like your coffee here?"

Rachel looked up at her stupidly.

Emily repeated the question; she even broke into scolding as she brought a loose gown to the other and insisted on her removing her dress. But once outside the door, Emily extended both hands as if appealing to a protective Providence. "A nice state of things!" she muttered, with an expression of mingled pain, indignation and perfect comprehension.

But when she appeared with the breakfast tray a few moments later she was as stern of aspect as before. After shaking out a table-cloth, she placed the tray on a little stand at Rachel's elbow.

But Rachel turned away. With her head propped on her two hands, she stared in front of her; and nothing Emily could say served to draw her from this state.

That morning the little toy-maker could not work as usual. A tiny parachute was very nearly ruined by an ill-directed movement of the shears; and a piece of green satin for the aeronaut's coat was utterly spoiled by tears, which she scorned to notice, falling upon it. She was so upset that more than once the utensils of her craft rolled on the floor while her hands dropped to her knees. To herself Emily fiercely denied any attraction in Emil and she praised staunchly every one of Simon Hart's qualities.

About one o'clock Rachel, after refusing luncheon, left the house for a walk; and Emily, having satisfied herself that the other went to the beach, lay down on her bed. "Let her tire herself out; it is the best thing she can do," Emily murmured, and dropped asleep, with a tear standing in a furrow under one eye.

The caretaker, who served in the capacity of cook, in company with her husband and the other servants, was spending the day with friends and would not return until late; even Peter, the coachman, was away for the afternoon. Meanwhile, in this house far removed from the city, the stillness which is peculiar to the Sabbath, deepened.

Rachel walked the beach. She sat down, but immediately rose again. Not only her own life, but all the life about her seemed suspended.

Emil was on his way to the station now; in her mind she could see him swinging along the road: so robust and naïve was his egotism, he would never question for a moment that she would come. At the thought of his disappointment, she began sobbing with her handkerchief to her lips. All sorts of dark thoughts rose indistinctly from the depths of her soul. Simon, save for one failing, was hopelessly free of faults; he was almost perfect. Scarcely aware of what was passing in her mind, she began picturing what would happen in case of his death. But there was Annie. However, Annie could obtain a divorce; she could return, as Emil had said, to her parents. Rachel arranged every detail of the situation; but these scarcely articulate plans, these involuntary dreams, were accompanied by a physical sensation of shame--revulsion.

She shook herself free of the sorry brood and looked about her. Had she been there an hour, two hours, five minutes? She did not know. Presently a vesper bell from a distant village sounded intermittently above the plashing of the waves. With her hand pressed to her heart, she listened. Then she sped to the house.

In the hallway the old-fashioned clock marked a quarter past five. Three quarters of an hour more! There was still time to meet Emil! And she pictured him waiting for her in the grove near the station, impatiently scanning the road. Reaching her room, she flung herself into a chair and clung to its arms to prevent herself from answering the summons. Dumb, breathless, distraught, with her head hanging on her breast, she listened to the measured ticking of the clock which reached her from the hall. She could still restrain her body, but she could not control her mind.

"To-day decides my fate; either I go with Emil now, or I remain with Simon forever. To-day decides my fate."

She seemed to have a fondness for the phrase for she said it over and over.

"If I remain with Simon, all will go on as before; but if I go with Emil--"

She closed her eyes. The walls of the room dropped away and she saw a landscape. Sedge grass bordered the road to the station. In it she sank repeatedly and its brown waves washed over her head. But ever before her was Emil. Infinitely multiplied, he smiled at her from the leaves, the grass, the dust. The faces resolved themselves into one face. He drew near; she was penetrated by his presence. All the love in her, all the joy of which she was capable, was revealed. She clasped her hands about his neck, she laid her face on his breast, and the past with its futile struggles, its anguish, like a bad dream, receded from her.

Then she recognized the sunlight striking through the white shades of the room. It was tracing the usual pattern on the floor and glistening indolently on the brass knobs of the dressing-table.

With a cry she started to her feet. Maddened, she began to heap some articles into a dressing-bag. She was turning from her bureau to the bag when John Smith's letter, which she had not yet read, caught her eye. It was propped against the frame of the mirror. She put out a hand.

With his closely-written pages which she passed over, there was a little yellow note directed to her mother in a feeble scrawl. Leaning against the embrasure of the window, Rachel unfolded the note almost against her will. But the more she endeavoured to fix her attention upon it, the more confused she became.

"My dear Lavina: I ought not to have left you--"

She stared at the words, which trailed off into an illegible run of characters; and the note with its message for another heart, stilled now these twenty years, slipped from her fingers.

Outside the sunlight danced on the multitudinous leaves and shimmered on the gravel path. Except for the sound of the sea all was silence. A passing breeze fluttered the paper at her feet and the room was filled with the subtle exhalation of that old regret.

She was on her knees. She still saw Emil, heard his voice; and as if grasping something, she opened her arms and carried them back against her heart while her whole frame trembled.

Then the miracle held her spell-bound:

_She had been saved from the irretrievable step; she had been plucked back from the rock's edge_.

Slowly, slowly the dry heart-flames subsided. As mists rose from the ground in summer after the heat and fever of the day, so something pure as childhood, sweet as the aspirations of early youth, rose from the depths of her soul. All the treachery, all the longing of purely selfish love was annihilated. It was one of those crises when the heart sets wide its doors; when the emotion that was personal becomes universal.

The shrubbery was alive with insects, murmuring gently; and amid the foliage of the trees, the birds were preparing to go to roost. They had reached those wistful days in late summer, which by the sea fade away in evenings of gold and rose, which fade away into the sea itself. A little wind set all the leaves astir. As she looked toward the sea, a wonderful serenity seemed to fall upon her from that radiant sunset sky, seemed to light on her like a benediction from the dying day.

She turned her eyes in the direction of the gardener's cottage. Owing to a row of large trees and an intervening wall, barely more than its red pointed roof was visible. Buried in greenery, bathed in the calm light, it had, at this distance, an ethereal, unreal aspect, like a cottage seen in a picture. About it nothing stirred. But, as she looked, a trail of smoke appeared above a rear gable. This doubled angrily upon itself, then spread out in the still air like a fan. It became in an instant an all-enveloping sable mass crossed by licking tongues of red. In the midst of the sweet country, the cottage in utter silence was being destroyed, its burning but emphasizing the surrounding peace.

Rachel's feet scarcely touched the stairs. She was out of doors and crossing the lawn without realizing her own movements. As she ran, she cried for help. But she recollected that all the servants were away. André had not been seen since the evening before; and, except for Emily Short asleep in a distant wing, the place was deserted. She had gone but a few steps when a cry of horror burst from her. _Annie_! Where was Annie? When not engaged in hanging about Emil while he worked, she was in the habit of visiting at the big house. But that day Rachel had not seen her. Then she recollected Emil's words about his wife's habit of taking a nap in the afternoon.

"Annie!--wake up!--Fire!"

Rachel's cries were confused. She was breathless, almost falling; but despite this excitement, the wonderful sense of peace that had come to her remained in her heart like a dove in its nest.

She stumbled once as she crossed the lawn, and once her dress caught on a branch. She wrenched it free. Beyond the wall the longer, coarser grass impeded her steps and the rays of the setting sun, glancing across the grass, seemed coming to meet her.

"Fire! Annie, fire!" she called.

She was near enough to the cottage now to make out that its windows and doors were closed. She sprang up the path and the hot breath of flames struck into her face. She tried the door, it was locked; and she divined what had happened. Annie had feared to go to sleep with the cottage open; when Emil had started for the station, she had locked herself in.

In a frenzy, Rachel beat upon the door with her flattened palms. The vine over her head was fluttering in a keen breeze and all its leaves were curling. She wrenched open the nearest blind and the slat already smoking, scorched her hands. This house of old and seasoned timbers was burning like paper. She climbed over the sill.

Face down, with the skirt of her dress drawn over her head and across her mouth, she groped her way to the chamber. She felt along the bed; it was empty. Then out into the living room where the organ stood, with lurid flashes playing over its keys, she stumbled. And there, lying across the threshold, was something that yielded to her touch yet resisted it. Gathering Annie in her arms, folding her in a spread which she tore from a table, Rachel groped her way back to the window. The walls of the cottage seemed drawing together like the fingers of a hand about to close; but she scarcely felt the intense heat, was scarcely aware of the suffocating smoke, because of that emotion which was more than joy as it was more than peace.

As she half-dragged, half-carried her insensible burden to the window, she felt the joy of that Freedom of which she had ever dreamed.

Annie's head fell back lifeless, and her arms hung inert; but a slight shiver ran through her body, when, with a supreme effort, Rachel lifted her to the sill. For an instant she balanced her burden there; then, not knowing what she did, blinded by the smoke, the flames that all at once darted out upon her from every direction, she thrust the body through the window.

She had a sense that it was received--that someone, in a frantic dear and well-known voice, called her name. She tried to follow, to struggle into the sweet air, where beyond the smoke and the flames, she knew the leaves were still dancing. But something heavy, inflexible, struck her head.

She fell back into the darkness.

Some minutes before the flames made their appearance above the surrounding trees, a sombre scene took place on a slight rise of ground at the rear of the cottage.

As Ding Dong, carrying a pail of milk he had secured at a neighbouring farm, sauntered unsuspecting toward his master's dwelling, he felt himself seized from behind by the waist and shoulders; his arms grasped, bent, wrenched, his feet thrust from under him. Dumfounded, he sprawled on the ground with fingers of steel at his throat. Athwart a reddish haze he saw the livid countenance and bloodshot eyes of the young man who had made his appearance at Gray Arches a day or two before.

With writhings and twistings, Ding Dong tried to wrap his assailant in sinewy arms, to close with him, to crush him in a mighty embrace; the other fought with the strength of desperation.

Finally, pinning Ding Dong to the earth, André flung a look toward the cottage. The flames were now mounting above the trees. A savage joy distorted his face.

He laughed.

At the same instant Ding Dong, hurled him aside. Seeing the flames, the fellow started for the cottage with André after him, but he had gone but a short distance, when he halted and lifted his arm.

A mournful procession was slowly crossing the open field in the light of the waning day and André, rigid, his head advanced, caught the flutter of a familiar dress, saw a deathlike face.

The locked doors and windows had deceived him. Believing the cottage deserted, he had sought to destroy the organ which, in his blindness, he thought recommended the inventor to Rachel's favour; and he had destroyed instead the object of his own devotion--his own love.

The flames leaping into the sky revealed all the impotence of that act of jealousy and revenge.