"Mr. Breckenridge got a telephone message from Doctor Jordan, Mrs.

Breckenridge; the doctor's been called into town to a patient, so he can't see Mr. Breckenridge to-night."

"Oh! Well, he'll probably be here in the morning," Rachael said carelessly.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Breckenridge, but Mr. Breckenridge seemed to be a good deal worried about himself, and he had me call Doctor Gregory," the man pursued respectfully.

"Doctor GREGORY!" echoed his mistress, with a laugh like a wail.

"Alfred, what were you THINKING of! Why didn't you call me?"

"He wouldn't have me call you," Alfred said unhappily. "He spoke to the doctor himself. We got the housekeeper first, and she said Doctor Gregory was dressing. 'Tell him it's a matter of life and death,' says Mr. Breckenridge. Then we got him. 'I'm dining out,'

he says, 'but I'll be there this evening.'"

"Oh, dear, dear, dear!" Mrs. Breckenridge said half to herself in serio-comic desperation. "Gregory--called in for a--for a--for this! If I could get hold of him! He didn't say where he was dining?"

"No, Mrs. Breckenridge," the man answered, with a great air of efficiency.

"Well, Alfred, I wish sometimes you knew a little more--or a little less!" Rachael said dispa.s.sionately. "Light a fire in the library, will you? I'll have my dinner there. Tell Ellie to send me up something broiled--nothing messy--and some strong coffee."

CHAPTER II

The coffee was strong. Mrs. Breckenridge found it soothing to rasped nerves and tired body, and after the dinner things had been cleared away she sat on beside the library fire, under the soft arc of light from the library lamp, sipping the stimulating fluid, and staring at the snapping and flashing logs.

A sense of merely physical well-being crept through her body, and for a little time even her active brain was quieter; she forgot the man now heavily sleeping upstairs, the pretty little tyrant who had rushed off to dinner at the Chases', and the many perplexing elements in her own immediate problem. She saw only the quiet changes in the fire as yellow flame turned to blue--sank, rose, and sank again.

The house was still. Kitchenward, to be sure, there was a great deal of cheerful laughter and chatter, as Ellie, sitting heavily ensconced in the largest rocker, embroidered a centrepiece for her sister's birthday, Annie read fortunes in the teacups, Alfred imitated the supercilious manner of a lady who had called that afternoon upon Mrs. Breckenridge, and Helda, a milk-blond Dane with pink-rimmed eyes, laughed with infantile indiscrimination at everything, blushing an agonized scarlet whenever Alfred's admiring eye met her own.

But the kitchen was not within hearing distance of the quiet room where Rachael sat alone, and as the soft spring night wore on no sound came to disturb her revery. It was not the first solitary evening she had had of late, for Clarence had been more than usually reckless, and was developing in his wife, although she did not realize it herself, a habit of introspection quite foreign to her real nature.

She had never been a thoughtful woman, her days for many years had run brilliantly on the surface of life, she knew not whence the current was flowing, nor why, nor where it led her; she did not naturally a.n.a.lyze, nor dispute events. Only a few years ago she would have said that to an extraordinary degree fortune had been kind to her. She had been born with an adventurous spirit, she had played her game well and boldly, and, according to all the standards of her type, she had won. But sitting before this quiet fire, perhaps it occurred to her to wonder how it happened that there were no more hazards, no more cards left to play. She was caught in a net of circ.u.mstances too tight for her unravelling.

Truly it might be cut, but when she stood in the loose wreckage of it--how should she use her freedom? If it was a cage, at least it was a comfortable cage; at least it was better than the howling darkness of the unfamiliar desert beyond.

And yet she raged, and her hurt spirit flung itself again and again at the bars. Young and beautiful and clever, how had life tricked her into this deadlock, where had been the fault, and whose?

For some undefined reason Rachael rarely thought of the past. She did not care to bring its certainties, its panorama of blinded eyes and closed doors before her mental vision. But to-night she found herself walking again in those old avenues; her thoughts went back to the memories of her girlhood.

Girlhood? Her eyes smiled, but with the smile a little twinge of bitterness drew down her mouth. What a discontented, eager, restless girlhood it had been, after all. A girlhood eternally a.n.a.lyzing, comparing, resenting, envying. How she had secretly despised the other girls, typical of their cla.s.s, the laughing, flirting, dress-possessed girls of a small California town. How she had despised her aunts, all comfortably married and prosperous, her aunts' husbands, her stodgy, noisy cousins! And, for that matter, there had never been much reverence in her regard for her mother, although Rachael loved that complaining little woman in her cool way.

But for her father, the tall, clever, unhappy girl had a genuine admiration. She did not love him, no one who knew Gerald Fairfax well could possibly have sustained a deep affection for him, but she believed him to be almost as remarkably educated and naturally gifted as he believed himself to be. Her uncles were simply country merchants, her mother's fat, cheerful father dealt in furniture, and, incidentally, coffins, but her father was an Englishman, and naturally held himself above the ordinary folk of Los Lobos.

n.o.body knew much about him, when he first made his appearance in Los Lobos, this silky-haired, round-faced, supercilious stranger, in his smart, shabby Norfolk coat, which was perhaps one reason why every girl in the village was at once willing to marry him, no questions asked. His speech was almost a different tongue from theirs; he was thirty-five, he had dogs and a man-servant, instead of the usual equipment of mother, sisters, and "hired girl," and he seemed eternally bored and ungracious. This was enough for the Los Lobos girls, and for most of their mothers, too.

The newcomer bought a small ranch, three miles out of town, and lounged about it in a highly edifying condition of elegant idleness. He rode a good horse, drank a great deal, and strode out of the post-office once a week scattering monogrammed envelopes carelessly behind him. He had not been long in town before people began to say that his elder brother was a lord; a duke, Mrs. Chess Baxter, the postmistress said, because to her question regarding the rumor he had answered carelessly: "Something of that sort."

Thirty years ago there were a great many detached Englishmen in California, fourth and fifth sons, remittance men, family scapegraces who had been banished to the farthest frontier by relatives who regarded California as beyond the reach of gossip, and almost beyond the reach of letters. Checks, small but regular, arrived quarterly for these gentry, who had only to drink, sleep, play cards, and demoralize the girls of the country. Here and there among them, to be sure, were pink-skinned boys as fresh and sweet as the apple-blossoms under which they rode their horses, but for the most part the emigrants were dissipated, disenchanted, clinging loyally to the traditions of the older country that had discarded them, and scorning the fragrant and inexhaustible richness of the new land that had made them welcome. They were, as a cla.s.s, silent, only voluble on the subject of the despised country of their adoption, and absolutely non-committal as to their own histories. But far from questioning their credentials, the women and girls everywhere accepted them eagerly, caught something of an English accent and something of an English arrogance.

So Clara Mumford, a rose of a girl, cream-skinned, blue-eyed, and innocent with the terrible innocence of the village girlhood that feels itself so wise--Clara, who knew, because her two older sisters were married, where babies come from, and knew, because of Alta Porter's experience, that girls--nice girls, who went with one through the high school--can yield to temptation and be ruined--Clara only felt, in shyly announcing her engagement to Gerald Fairfax, that Fate had been too kind.

That this glittering stranger twice her age--why, he was even a little bald--a man who had travelled, who knew people of t.i.tle, knew books, and manners, and languages--that he should marry an undertaker's daughter in Los Lobos! It was unbelievable. Clara's only misgiving during her short engagement was that he would disappear like a dream. She agreed with everything he said; even carrying her new allegiance to the point of laughing a little at her own people: the layer cakes her mother made for the Sunday noonday dinner; the red-handed, freckled swain who called on her younger sister in the crisp, moonlighted winter evenings; and the fact that her father shaved in the kitchen.

A few weeks slipped by, and Clara duly confided her youth and her innocence and her roses to her English husband, a little ashamed of the wedding presents her friends sent her, even a little doubtful of her parents' handsome gift of a bird's-eye maple bedroom set and a parlor set in upholstered cherry.

On her side she accepted everything unquestionably: the shabby little ranch house that smelled of wood smoke, and tobacco smoke, and dogs; the easy scorn of her old friends on her husband's part that so soon alienated her from them; the drink that she quickly learned to regard with uneasiness and distrust. It was not that Jerry ever got really intoxicated, but he got ugly, excitable, irritable, even though quite in control of his actions and his senses.

Clara was a good cook, although not as expert as her fond mother's little subst.i.tutions and innocent manipulations during their engagement had led Gerald to believe. But she loved to please him, and when flushed and triumphant she put down some especially tempting dish before him, and felt his arm about her, tears of actual joy would stand in her bright eyes. They had some happy days, some happy hours, in the first newness of being together.

Gerald's man, Thomas, was an early cause of annoyance to Clara.

She would not have objected to cooking for a farm "hand"; that was a matter of course with all good farmers' wives. But Thomas was more British, in all that makes the British objectionable, than his master, and Thomas was quite decidedly addicted to drink. He never thought of wiping a dish, or bringing Clara in a bucket of water from the well. He ate what she set out upon the kitchen table for him, three times a day, chatting pleasantly enough of the farm, the horses, chickens, and vegetable garden, if Clara was in an amiable mood, but if, busy at the sink, or clearing the dining-room table, she was inwardly fuming with resentment at his very existence, Thomas could be silent, too, and would presently saunter away, stuffing his pipe, without even the common courtesy of piling his dishes together for her washing. Thomas held long conversations with his master as they idled about the place; Clara would hear their laughter. The manservant slept in a small shed detached from the main house, and there were times when he did not appear in the morning. At such times Gerald with a pot of strong coffee likewise disappeared into the cabin.

"Pore old rotter!" the husband would say generously. "He's a decentish sort, don't you know? I meanter say, poor old Thomas did me an awfully good turn once--and that!"

Clara inferred from various hints that Gerald had once been in the English army, and had met Thomas, and befriended him, or been befriended by him, at that period of his existence. But, greatly to the little bride's disappointment, Gerald never spoke of his old home or his connections there. Clara had to draw what comfort she could from his intimation that all his relatives were unbelievably eminent and distinguished, the least of them superior in brain and achievement to any American who ever drew the breath of life.

And presently she forgot Thomas, forgot the petty annoyance of cooking and summer heat and dogs and physical discomfort, in the overwhelming prayer that the coming child, about whose advent Gerald, at first annoyed, had later been so generously good- natured, might prove a boy. Gerald, living uncomplainingly in this dreadful little country town, enduring Western conditions with such dignity, and loving his little wife despite her undertaker father, would be seriously disgusted, she knew, if she gave him a daughter.

"A--a girl?" Clara stammered, her wet eyes on the doctor's face, her panting little figure lost in the big outline of her mother's spare-room bed. She managed a brave smile, but there was a bitter lump in her throat.

A girl!

And she had been so brave, so sweet with Jerry, who had not enjoyed the three or four days of waiting at her mother's house; so strong in her agonies, as became the healthy, normal little country girl she was! Fate owed her a son, she had done her share, she had not flinched. And now--a girl! Fresh tears of disappointment came to take the place of tears of pain in her eyes. She remembered that Jerry had said, a few days before, "It'll be a boy, of course--all the old women about seem to have settled that--and I believe I'll cable Cousin Harold."

"Ma says it'll be a boy," Clara had submitted hopefully, longing to hear more of "Cousin Harold," to whom Gerald alluded at long intervals.

"Of course it will--good old girl!" Jerry had agreed. And that was only Thursday night, and this was in the late dawn of cold, wintry Sat.u.r.day morning.

Her mother bent over her and kissed her wet forehead. Mrs.

Mumford's big kind face was radiant; she had already four small grandsons; this was the first grand-daughter. More than that, the nurse was not here yet; she had been supreme through the ordeal; she had managed one more birth extremely well, and she rejoiced in the making of a nation.

"Such a nice baby, darling!" she whispered, "with her dear little head all covered with black hair! Neta's dressing her."

"Where's Gerald?" the young mother asked weakly.

"Right here! I'll let him in for a moment!" There was a satisfaction in Mrs. Mumford's voice; everything was proceeding absolutely by schedule. "And just as anxious to see you as you are to see him!" she added happily. These occasions were always the same, and always far more enjoyable to this practised parent than any pageant, any opera, any social distinction could have been. To comfortably, soothingly lead the trembling novice through the long experience, to whisk about the house capably and briskly busy with the familiar paraphernalia, to cry in sympathy with another's tears, to stand white-lipped, impotent, anguished through a few dreadful moments, and then to laugh, and rejoice, and rea.s.sure, before the happy hours of resting, and feeding, and cuddling began--this was the greatest satisfaction in her life.

Clara, afraid in this first moment to face his disappointment, felt in another the most delicious rea.s.surance and comfort she had known in months. Jerry, taking the chair by the bedside, was so dear about it! The long night had much impressed the new-made father. They had had coffee at about two o'clock--Clara remembered wondering how they could sit enjoying it, instead of dashing the hideous cups to the floor, and rushing out of the horrible enclosure of walls and curtains--and as he bent over her she knew he had had something stronger since--but he was so dear!

"Well, we've had a night of it, eh?" he said kindly. "Funny how much one takes the little beggars for grawnted until it's one's own that kicks up the row? You've not seen her--she's a nice little beggar. You might get some sleep, I should think. I'm going to hang around until some sort of a family jamboree is over, at one o'clock--your mother insists that we have dinner--and then I'll go out to the rawnch. But I'll be in in the morning!"

"Girl!" said Clara, apologetically, whimsically, deprecatingly, her weak fingers clinging tightly to his.

"Ah, well, one carn't help that!" he answered philosophically.

"We'll have a row of jolly little chaps yet!"

But there was never another child. Clara, having cast her fortunes in with her lord, was faithful to him through every breath she drew. But before Rachael's first crying, feverish little summer was over there had been some definite changes at the ranch. Thomas was gone, and Clara, pale and exhausted with the heat, engaged Ella, a young woman servant of her mother's selecting, to bake and wash and carry in stove-wood. Clara managed them all, Gerald, the baby, and the maid. Perhaps at first she was just a little astonished to find her husband as easily managed as Ella and far more easily managed than Rachael. Gerald Fairfax was surprised, too, lazily conceding his altered little wife her new and energetic way with a mental reservation that when she was strong and well again and the child less a care, things would be as they were. But Clara, once in power, never weakened for a moment again.

Rachael grew up, a solitary and unfriendly, yet a tactful and diplomatic, little person on the ranch. She early developed a great admiration for her father, and a consequent regard for herself as superior to her a.s.sociates. She ruled her mother absolutely from her fourth year, and remained her grandmother's great favorite among a constantly increasing flock of grandchildren. Some innate pride and scorn and dignity in the child won her her own way through school and school days; her young cousins were bewildered themselves by the respect and fealty they yielded her despite the contempt in which they held her affectations.