"We are not perfect ourselves," said the clergyman benevolently, "yet we expect perfection in others. Before we will even change our own lives we like to look around and see what other people are doing. Perfectly natural? Of course it's perfectly natural, but at the same time it's one of the things we must fight. I shall have to tell you a little story of our Rose, as I sometimes tell some of my boys at the College of Divinity," continued the good man.

Rose, an exemplary unmarried woman of thirty, was the bishop's daughter. "Rose," resumed her father, "wanted to study the violin when she was about twelve, and her peculiar old pater decided that first she must learn to cook. Her mother quite agreed with me, and the young lady was accordingly taken out to the kitchen and introduced to some pots and pans. I also got her some book, I've forgotten its name--her mother would remember; 'Complete Manual of Cookery'--something of that sort. A day or two later I asked her mother how the cooking went. 'Oh,' she said, 'Rose has been reading that book, and she knows more than all the rest of us!'"

Rachael laughed generously. They had reached the house again now, and Florence, glancing eagerly toward them, was charmed to see both smiling. She felt that the bishop must have influenced Rachael, and indeed the clergyman himself was sure that her mood was softer, and found opportunity before he departed to say to his hostess in a low tone that he fancied that they would hear no more of the whole miserable business.

"Oh, Bishop, how wonderful of you!" said Florence thankfully.

CHAPTER VI

Two weeks later the news of the Breckenridge divorce burst like a bomb in the social sky. Immediately pictures of the lovely wife, of Clarence, of the town house and the country house began to flood the evening papers, and even the morning journals found room for a column or two of the affair on inside pages. Clarence was tracked to his mountain retreat, and as much as possible was made of his refusal to be interviewed. Mrs. Breckenridge was nowhere to be found.

The cold wind of publicity could not indeed reach her in the quiet lanes and along the sandy sh.o.r.e of Quaker Bridge. Rachael, known to everyone but her kind old landlady as "Mrs. Prescott," could even glance interestedly at the papers now and then. Her ident.i.ty, in three long and peaceful months, was not even so much as suspected. She did not mind the plain country table, the inconvenient old farmhouse; she loved her new solitude.

Unquestioned, she dreamed through the idle days, reading, thinking, sleeping like a child. She spent long hours on the seash.o.r.e watching the lazy, punctual flow and tumble of the waves that were never hurried, never delayed; her eyes followed the flashing wings of the gulls, the even, steady upward beat of strong pinions, the downward drifting through blue air that was of all motion the most perfect.

And sometimes in those hours it seemed to Rachael that she was no more in the great scheme of things than one of these myriad gulls, than one of the grains of sand through which she ran her white, unringed fingers. Clarence was a dream, Belvedere Bay was a dream; it was all a hazy, dim memory now: the cards and the c.o.c.ktails, the dancing and tennis, the powder and lip-red in hot rooms and about glittering dinner tables. What a hurry and bustle and rush it all was--for nothing. The only actualities were the white sand and the cool green water, and the summer sun beating down warmly upon her bare head.

She awakened every morning in a large, bright, bare room whose three big windows looked into rustling maple boughs. The steady rushing of surf could be heard just beyond the maples. Sometimes a soft fog wrapped the trees and the lawn in its pale folds, and the bell down at the lighthouse ding-donged through the whole warm, silent morning, but more often there was sunshine, and Rachael took her book to the beach, got into her stiff, dry bathing suit, in a small, hot bathhouse furnished only by a plank bench and a few rusty nails, and plunged into the delicious breakers she loved so well. Busy babies, digging on the beach, befriended her, and she grew to love their sudden tears and more sudden laughter, their stammered confidences, and the touch of their warm, sandy little hands. She became an adept at pinning up their tiny bagging undergarments, and at disentangling hat elastics from the soft hair at the back of moist little necks. If a mother occasionally showed signs of friendliness, Rachael accepted the overture pleasantly, but managed to wander next day to some other part of the beach, and so evade the definite beginning of a friendship.

The warm sunshine, flavored by the salty sea, soaked into her very bones. Everything about Quaker Bridge was bare, and worn, and clean; nothing was crowded, or hurried, or false. Barren dunes, and white, bleaching sand, colorless little houses facing the elm- lined main street, colorless planks outlining the road to the water; the monotonous austerity, the pure severity of the little ocean village was full of satisfying charm for her. If she climbed a sandy rise beyond Mrs. Dimmick's cottage, and faced the north, she could see the white roadway, winding down to Clark's Bar, where the ocean fretted year after year to free the waters of the bay only twelve feet away. Beyond on the slope, was the village known as Clark's Hills, a smother of great trees with a weather- whipped spire and an occasional bit of roof or fence in evidence, to show the habitation of man.

In other directions, facing east or west or south, there was nothing but the sand, and the coa.r.s.e straggling bushes that rooted in the sand, and the clear blue dome of the sky. Rachael, whose life had been too crowded, gloried in the honey-scented emptiness of the sand hills, the measureless, heaving surface of the ocean, the dizzying breadth and s.p.a.ce in which, an infinitesimal speck, she moved.

She had sensibly taken her landlady, old Mrs. Dimmick, into her confidence, and pleased to be part of the little intrigue, and perhaps pleased as well to rent her two best rooms to this charming stranger, the old lady protected the secret gallantly. It was all much more simple than Rachael had feared it would be.

n.o.body questioned her, n.o.body indeed paid attention to her; she wandered about in a blissful isolation as good for her tired soul as was the primitive life she led for her tired body.

Yet every one of the idle days left its mark upon her spirit; gradually a great many things that had seemed worth while in the old life showed their true and petty and sordid natures now; gradually the purifying waters of solitude washed her soul clean.

She began to plan for the future--a future so different from the crowded and hurried past!

Warren Gregory's letters came regularly, postmarked London, Paris, Rome. They were utterly and wholly satisfying to Rachael, and they went far to make these days the happiest in her life. Her heart would throb like a girl's when she saw, on the little drop-leaf table in the hallway, the big square envelope addressed in the doctor's fine hand; sometimes--again like a girl--she carried it down to the beach before breaking the seal, thrilled with a thousand hopes, unready to put them to the test. Yesterday's letter had said: "My dearest,"--had said: "Do you realize that I will see you in five weeks?" Could to-day's be half as sweet?

She was never disappointed. The strong tide of his devotion for her rose steadily through letter after letter; in August the glowing letters of July seemed cold by contrast, in September every envelope brought her a flaming brand to add to the fires that were beginning to blaze within her. In late September there was an interval; and Rachael told herself that now he was on the ocean--now he was on the ocean--

By this time the digging babies were gone, the beach was almost deserted. Little office clerks, men and women, coming down for the two weeks of rest that break the fifty of work, still arrived on the late train Sat.u.r.day, and went away on the last train two weeks from the following Sunday, but there were no more dances at the one big hotel, and some of the smaller hotels were closed. The tall, plain, attractive woman--with the three children and the baby, who drove over from Clark's Hills every day, and, who, for all her graying hair and sun-bleached linens, seemed to be of Rachael's own world--still brought her shrieking and splashing trio to the beach, but she had confided to Mrs. Dimmick, who had known her for many summers, that even her long holiday was drawing to a close. Mrs. Dimmick brought extra blankets down from the attic, and began to talk of seeing her daughter in California.

Rachael, drinking in the glory of the dying summer, found each day more exquisite than the last, and gratified her old hostess by expressing her desire to spend all the rest of her life in Quaker Bridge.

She had, indeed, come to like the villagers thoroughly; not the summer population, for the guests at all summer hotels are alike uninteresting, but for the quiet life that went on year in and year out in the little side streets: the women who washed clothes and swept porches, who gardened with tow-headed babies tumbling around them, who went on Sundays to the little bald-faced church at ten o'clock. Rachael got into talk with them, trying to realize what it must be to walk a hot mile for the small transaction of selling a dozen eggs for thirty cents, to spend a long morning carefully darning an old, clean Nottingham lace curtain that could be replaced for three dollars. She read their lives as if they had been an absorbing book laid open for her eyes. The coming of the Holladay baby, the decline and death of old Mrs. Bird, the narrow escape of Sammy Tew from drowning, and the thorough old-fashioned thrashing that Mary Trimble gave her oldest son for taking a little boy like Sammy out beyond the "heads,"--all these things sank deep into the consciousness of the new Rachael. She liked the whitewashed cottages with their blazing geraniums and climbing honeysuckle, and the back-door yards, with chickens fluffing in the dust, and old men, seated on upturned old boats, smoking and whittling as they watched the babies "while Lou gets her work caught up".

October came in on a storm, the most terrifying storm Rachael had ever seen. Late in the afternoon of September's last golden day a wind began to rise among the dunes, and Rachael, who, wrapped in a white wooly coat and deep in a book, had been lying for an hour or two on the beach, was suddenly roused by a shower of sand, and sat up to look at the sky. Clouds, low and gray, were moving rapidly overhead, and although the tide was only making, and high water would not be due for another hour, the waves, emerald green, swift, and capped with white, were already touching the landmost water-mark.

Quickly getting to her feet, she started briskly for home, following the broken line of kelp and weeds, gra.s.ses, driftwood, and cocoanut sh.e.l.ls that fringed the tide-mark, and rather fascinated by the sudden ominous change in sea and sky. In the little village there was great clapping of shutters and straining of clotheslines, distracted, bareheaded women ran about their dooryards, doors banged, everywhere was rush and flutter.

"D'clare if don't think th' folks at Clark's Hills going to be shut of completely," said Mrs. Dimmick, bustling about with housewifely activity, and evidently, like all the village and like Rachael herself, a little exhilarated by the oncoming siege.

"What will they do?" Rachael demanded, unhooking a writhing hammock from the porch as the old woman briskly dragged the big cane rockers indoors.

"Oh, ther' wunt no hurt come t'um," Mrs. Dimmick said. "But--come an awful mean tide, Clark's Bar is under water. They'll jest have to wait until she goes down, that's all."

"Sh.e.l.l I bring up some candles from suller; we ain't got much karosene!" Florrie, the one maid, demanded excitedly. Chess, the hired man, who was Florrie's "steady," began to bring wood in by the armful, and fling it down by the airtight stove that had been set up only a few days before.

The wind began to howl about the roof; trees in the dooryard rocked and arched. Darkness fell at four o'clock, and the deafening roar of the ocean seemed an actual menace as the night came down. Chess and Florrie, after supper, frankly joined the family group in the sitting-room, a group composed only of Rachael and Mrs. Dimmick and two rather terrified young stenographers from the city.

These two did not go to bed, but Rachael went upstairs as usual at ten o'clock, and drifted to sleep in a world of creaking, banging, and roaring. A confusion and excited voices below stairs brought her down again rather pale, in her long wrapper, at three. The Barwicks, mother, father, and three babies, had left their beach cottage in the night and the storm to seek safer shelter and the welcome sound of other voices than their own.

After that there was little sleep for anyone. Still in the roaring darkness the clocks presently announced morning, and a neighbor's boy, breathless, dripping in tarpaulins, was blown against the door, and burst in to say with youthful relish that the porches of the Holcomb house were under water, and the boardwalk washed away, and folks said that the road was all gone betwixt here and the lighthouse. Rain was still falling in sheets, and the wind was still high. Rachael braved it, late in the afternoon, to go out and see with her own eyes that the surf was foaming and frothing over the deserted bandstand at the end of the main street, and got back to the shelter of the house wet and gasping, and with the first little twist of personal fear at her heart. Suppose that limitless raging green wall down there rose another ten--another twenty--feet, swept deep and roaring and resistless over little Quaker Bridge, plunged them all for a few struggling, hopeless moments into its emerald depths, and then washed the little loosely drifting bodies that had been men and women far out to sea again?

What could one do? No trains came into Quaker Bridge to-day; it was understood that there were washouts all along the line.

Rachael sat in the dark, stuffy little sitting-room with the placid Barwick baby drowsing in her lap, and at last her face reflected the nervous uneasiness of the other women. Every time an especially heavy rush of rain or wind struck the unsubstantial little house, Mrs. Barwick said, "Oh, my!" in patient, hopeless terror, and the two young women looked at each other with a quick hissing breath of fear.

The night was long with horror. There were other refugees in Mrs.

Dimmick's house now; there were in all fifteen people sitting around her little stove listening to the wind and the ocean. The old lady herself was the most cheerful of the group, although Rachael and one or two of the others managed an appearance at least of calm.

"Declare," said the hostess, more than once, "dunt see what we's all thinkin' of not to git over to Clark's Hills 'fore the bar was under water! They've got sixty-foot elevation there!"

"I'd just as soon try to get there now," said Miss Stokes of New York eagerly.

"There's waves eight feet high washin' over that bar," Ernest Barwick said, and something in the simple words made little Miss Stokes look sick for a moment.

"What's our elevation?" Rachael asked.

"'Bout--" Mr. Barwick paused. "But you can't tell nothing by that," he contented himself with remarking after a moment's thought.

"But I never heard--I never HEARD of the sea coming right over a whole village!" Rachael hated herself for the fear that dragged the words out, and the white lips that spoke them.

"Neither did I!" said half a dozen voices. There was silence while the old clock on the mantel wheezed out a lugubrious eight strokes. "LORD, how it rains!" muttered Emily Barwick.

Nine o'clock--ten o'clock. The young women, the old woman, the maid and man who would be married some day if they lived, the husband and wife who had been lovers like them only a few years ago, and who now had these three little lives to guard, all sat wrapped in their own thoughts. Rachael sat staring at the stove's red eye, thinking, thinking, thinking. She thought of Warren Gregory; his steamer must be in now, he must be with his mother in the old house, and planning to see her any day. To-morrow--if there was a to-morrow--might bring his telegram. What would his life be if he might never see her again? She could not even leave him a note, or a word; on this eve of their meeting, were they to be parted forever? Should she never tell him how dearly--how dearly--she loved him? Tears came to her eyes, her heart was wrung with exquisite sorrow.

She thought of Billy--poor little Billy--who had never had a mother, who needed a mother so sadly, and of her own mother, dead now, and of the old blue coat of thirteen years ago, and the rough blue hat. She thought of her great-grandmother in the little whitewashed California cottage under the shadow of the blue mountains, with the lilacs and marigolds in the yard. And colored by her new great love, and by the solemn fears of this endless night, Rachael found a tenderness in her heart for all those shadowy figures that had played a part in her life.

At midnight there came a thundering crash on the ocean side of the house.

"Oh, G.o.d, IT'S THE SEA!" screamed Emily Barwick. They all rushed to the door and flung it open, and in a second were out in the wild blackness of the night. Still the roaring and howling and shrieking of the elements, still the infuriated booming of the surf, but--thank G.o.d--no new sound. There was no break in the flying darkness above them; the street was a running sheet of water in the dark.

Yet strangely they all went back into the house vaguely quieted.

Rachael presently said that no matter what was going to happen, she was too cold and tired to stay up any longer, and went upstairs to bed. Miss Stokes and Miss McKim settled themselves in their chairs; Emily Barwick went to sleep with her head against her husband's thin young shoulder. Somebody suggested coffee, and there was a general move toward the kitchen.

Rachael, a little bewildered, woke in heavenly sunlight in exactly the position she had taken when she crept into bed the night before. For a few minutes she lay staring at the bright old homely room, and at the clock ticking briskly toward nine.

"Dear Lord, what a thing sunshine is?" she said then slowly. No need to ask of the storm with this celestial rea.s.surance flooding the room. But after a few moments she got up and went to the window. The trees, battered and torn, were ruffling such leaves as were left them gallantly in the wind, the paths still ran yellow water, the roadway was a muddy waste, eaves were still gurgling, and everywhere was the drip and splash of water. But the sky was clear and blue, and the air as soft as milk.

As eager as a child Rachael dressed and ran downstairs, and was out in the new world. The fresh wind whipped a glorious color into her face; the whole of sea and sky and earth seemed to be singing.

Trees were down, fences were down, autumn gardens were all a wreck; and the ocean, when she came to the sh.o.r.e, was still rolling wild and high. But it was blue now, and the pure sky above it was blue, and there was utter protection and peace in the sunny air. Landmarks all along the sh.o.r.e were washed away, and beyond the first line of dunes were pools left by the great tide, sc.u.mmy and sinking fast into the sand, to leave only a fringe of bubbles behind. Minor wreckages of all sorts lay scattered all along the beach: poles and ropes, boxes and barrels.

Rachael walked on and on, breathing deep, swept out of herself by the fresh glory of the singing morning. Presently she would go back, and there would be Warren's letter, or his telegram, or perhaps himself, and then their golden days would begin--their happy time! But even Warren to-day could not intrude upon her mood of utter grat.i.tude and joy in just living--just being young and alive in a world that could hold such a sea and such a sky.