The Star in the Window (Stokes)/Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV
ONE warm early-September Saturday morning Reba made a trip to her dressmaker's to insure the safe delivery of a costume, consisting of a dress and hat (the dressmaker carried millinery, and other bits of finery, too) and a long canary-colored motor-coat, ordered especially for Chadwick Booth, whom, as usual on Saturdays now, she was to meet in his automobile on a side street three or four blocks away from the hospital where he was detained until four or five o'clock in the afternoon.
If Chadwick Booth liked pleasing Becky with menu-surprises, and pretty places of entertainment, Becky liked pleasing Chadwick Booth with pretty clothes. It might be only a word or two that he would let drop about a new gown, or hat, that she had put on with such care for his delectation, but if it was only an approving nod that he gave her when she appeared before him in some triumph from the seldom-erring dressmaker, it was sufficient to make her glow with happiness.
Last Saturday he had said to her, as she had sat against the yellowish background of a tiny tea-room, "I'd like to see you in corn-color sometime, Becky." And to-day Becky had gone to bring back to her room the embroidered corn-colored linen dress, which she had promptly ordered the preceding Monday; and broad-brimmed, corn-colored hat and motor-coat to match.
It was when she was in her room trying on the dress, to make sure that every hook and fastener was in place, and every fold and fall of lace was perfect, that somebody knocked on her door. It was Louise Bartholomew.
"Oh, how pretty!" Louise exclaimed from the threshold. "But I must say, Rebecca, you're getting scandalously extravagant. I never knew a woman to get so many summer clothes at the tail-end of the season. Are you busy?" she broke off. "May I come in?"
"Do come in. You know I'm never busy Saturday mornings. Do you really like the dress, Louise?" Reba asked, and then a little anxiously, "Don't you think the shade a little too deep?"
"Not a bit," briefly Louise replied, and crossed the room and sat down. "Come, Rebecca. Come and sit down a minute, please. I've come up to talk a little while."
Reba looked sharply at Louise Bartholomew, left the mirror, and sat down abruptly on the foot of the bed.
"News from Katherine Park?" she inquired in a frightened voice.
"Heavens, no!" Louise assured her. "Goodness! How you do worship Katherine. No—she's all right, for all I know." Then suddenly she blurted out, "Oh, I hate this job! I hate what I've got to say to you, Rebecca."
"Why, what do you mean? What have you got to say?"
"If only Katherine Park were here!" sighed Louise. "But then," she tucked in, "if she were, it probably wouldn't have to be said at all. You see, Miss Ellsworth" (Miss Ellsworth was the General Secretary of the Women's Alliance) "Miss Ellsworth thought I knew you next best, and so, and so—oh, Rebecca, are you going off again with Dr. Booth to-night?" she broke off.
Reba flushed. "Why, yes," she said, "I was. He asked me to go to dinner with him." Then after a miserable silence, "Is it about him Miss Ellsworth asked you to speak to me?"
Louise Bartholomew did not reply directly to that. "We workers here have to be so careful about whom we go with, and how we conduct ourselves," she explained. "We're sort of examples, you see. And you and Dr. Booth are getting just a little bit talked about."
Reba couldn't reply, she was so covered with shame. That such a reprimand as this was necessary! That she was guilty of misconduct! Oh, how could she look Louise Bartholomew in the face? If she only could have told her that she and Dr. Booth were engaged to be married! If only she could wipe out all offense by that quiet announcement! But she couldn't. Not yet. The crimson of her face turned to purple.
"I'm terribly sorry, Rebecca," Louise took up again. "But people keep seeing you—the girls, the boarders, you know, at different places. But, of course you can stop it," she comforted. She reached out, and put her hand on Reba's knee. "Don't take it too seriously. I told Miss Ellsworth we had only to drop you the hint, and I was sure you wouldn't be seen alone with him anywhere another single time."
"But," murmured Reba. "I—Katherine Park used to—and you sometimes, too—go out to dinner with young men alone, and"
"Yes, of course, Rebecca; but, my dear, isn't it rather different for you to go with Dr. Booth?"
Reba wondered exactly why it was different.
"He's a friend of Katherine's," she said.
"Friend! No friend at all! A mere acquaintance."
"But he was at the Parks' that night."
"Oh, everybody's at the Parks'. Even that disgraceful connection of theirs, Marjorie Remington, just about lives there. That's nothing."
"He teaches here," groped Reba.
"Why, of course—of course. Being married doesn't interfere with his teaching here, in the least; nor in his going to the Parks', but it does interfere with his taking you out to dinner. Don't you see, silly? You can't go out dining alone with a married man. It just isn't done."
Reba looked down at her hands folded on her crossed knees. Married! The color left her face as completely as it had flooded it a moment ago. But she made no exclamation of surprise. The self-control she had practiced in the gray house on Chestnut Street stood her in good stead now. She gave way to no expression of pain, as the realization of Louise Bartholomew's information struck home.
"You do forgive me, don't you, Rebecca, for talking like this to you?" asked Louise.
"Of course, of course," Reba replied quietly.
"But I had to. Somebody had to, anyhow. I knew you didn't think much about it, one way or the other, but I must say I think Dr. Booth ought to be choked!"
"Oh, no," murmured Reba, more for the sake of something to say than to defend Chadwick Booth. "It wasn't his fault."
"Of course it was!" fiercely defended Louise Bartholomew. "Nobody else's fault! I don't consider it a bit of an excuse for a man, just because he is unhappily married, to play around with other women—especially unmarried women."
"Of course not," agreed Reba dully.
After Louise Bartholomew had finally left her room, Reba sat motionless on the foot of her bed, gazing at her folded hands, trying to comprehend just what had happened. Married! Is that what Louise had said? Married! Chadwick Booth! Why, if that were so, then she mustn't see him again, must she? She mustn't see him even this afternoon. She must never see him again. And she loved him! Tighter still she clasped her hands, clenched her crossed knees, and sat very still, staring into space. Later she became aware that one of her feet, so long held in one position, had become numb. Oh, how she wished that the same numbness might creep over her entire body, brain, and consciousness. Married! She reiterated the merciless word. Married! Married!
When Louise Bartholomew had let drop her information about Dr. Booth, she little guessed that she had struck a sword into Reba's heart. It had not occurred to her as possible that Rebecca Jerome could fill the position she did at the Alliance, and not know that Chadwick Booth was married, considering whom he had married—Virginia Cross, whose father was a wealthy New York banker, of an old long-established family. Why, everybody knew that Chadwick Booth was married, even Mamie and Lollie Terrence (Louise had heard them speak of it). Everybody knew that his marriage, while extremely advantageous to his position, both socially and professionally, was not supposed to be a love-affair. If she had thought that Reba was ignorant of such well-known facts and suppositions about the much discussed Chadwick Booth, she would have been more gentle.
It was after Reba's brain had recovered a little from its first shock, that she began slowly, dully, rehearsing the details of the conversation that had just taken place in her room. Abruptly she stumbled onto Louise Bartholomew's last remark. What was it she had said? Unhappily married?
"Why," Reba exclaimed outloud, unlocking her long-clasped hands, "I'm unhappily married too!"
She stood up, walked over to the window, and looked out across the roofs. His marriage might not be any more restrictive than hers. Her heart gave a jerk of sudden hope. Moreover, might it not possibly account for his disturbing silence? It wouldn't be strange if there were things in his past life that must be arranged, wiped out, annulled, as well as in hers, before he was able to ask her to marry him, or she to do so.
"I must see him. I must talk with him," she said. She looked at her watch. There was time enough. It was only a little after two. "Of course I must see him," she told herself again, and the very thought that the immediate afternoon's meeting was not to be foregone acted like a stimulant upon her.
She became aware of hunger (she had not had anything to eat since breakfast), and slipping into her street suit, she went out to a nearby restaurant.
She was to meet Chadwick Booth at five o'clock; and by the time she had returned, finished with her careful toilette, and stood ready in her room, about half-past four, in her corn-colored linen dress, concealed beneath the soft yellow motor-coat, the seed of hope contained in Louise's last words had grown into a conviction.
She was almost glad of the difficult task before her. She had not been really happy since that evening by the ocean, but after to-night there would be no more uncertainty, no more duplicity or secrets on either side. For Reba had slipped the broad gold wedding ring which Nathan had given her into her shopping-bag. It was her plan to show it to Chadwick Booth, after she had gently unearthed the facts of his unhappy alliance, thereby softening his discomfort (for she well knew he would deplore the pain the knowledge of his marriage would be expected to cause her). She would tell him that the mistake he had once made, she had made also, that they shared the same misfortune. It might draw them closer in sympathy; and if, as with a deep sigh it occurred to Reba possible, the realization of their love had to be sacrificed on some high altar of duty—postponed—it would be sweet comfort to her, a shining beacon, to know that they were suffering together, just as they had been happy together.
In this exalted mood Reba set forth upon her mission.