THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS
THE HEART OF RACHAEL
VOLUME VI
TO MY TERESA
BOOK I
The day had opened so brightly, in such a welcome wave of Aprilsunshine, that by mid-afternoon there were two hundred playersscattered over the links of the Long Island Country Club at BelvedereBay; the men in thick plaid stockings and loose striped sweaters, thewomen's scarlet coats and white skirts making splashes of vivid coloragainst the fresh green of grass and the thick powdering of dandelions.It was Saturday, and a half-holiday; it was that one day of all theyear when the seasons change places, when winter is visibly worsted,and summer, with warmth and relaxation, bathing and tennis and motortrips in the moonlight, becomes again a reality.
There was a real warmth in the sunshine to-day, there was a fragranceof lilac and early roses in the idle breezes. "Hot!" shouted theplayers exultantly, as they passed each other in the green valleys andover the sunny mounds. "You bet it's hot!" agreed stout and glowinggentlemen, wiping wet foreheads before reaching for a particular club,and panting as they gazed about at the unbroken turf, melting a fewmiles away into the new green of maple and elm trees, and topped, wherethe slope rose, by the white columns and brick walls of the clubhouse.
Motor cars swept incessantly back and forth on the smooth roadway; afew riders, their horses wheeling and dancing, went down the bridlepath, and there was a sprinkling of young men and women and someshouting and clapping on the tennis-courts. But golf was the order ofthe day. At the first tee at least two scores of impatient playerswaited their turn to drive off, and at the last green a group of twentyor thirty men and women, mostly women, were interestedly watching theputting.
Mrs. Archibald Buckney, a large, generously made woman of perhapsfifty, who stood a little apart from the group, with two young womenand a mild-looking blond young man, suddenly interrupted a generaldiscussion of scores and play with a personality.
"Is Clarence Breckenridge playing to-day, I wonder? Anybody seen him?"
"Must be," said the more definite of the two rather indefinite girls,with an assumption of bright interest. Leila Buckney, a few weeks ago,had announced her engagement to the mild-looking blond young man,Parker Hoyt, and she was just now attempting to hold him by a charm shesuspected she did not possess for him, and at the same time to give hermother and sister the impression that Parker was so deeply in her toilsthat she need make no further effort to enslave him.
She had really nothing in common with Parker; their conversation wascomposed entirely of personalities about their various friends, andLeila felt it a great burden, and dreaded the hours she must perforcespend alone with her future husband. It would be much better when theywere married, of course, but they could not even begin to talk weddingplans yet, because Parker lived in nervous terror of his aunt'sdisapproval, and Mrs. Watts Frothingham was just now in Europe, and hadnot yet seen fit to answer her nephew's dignified notification of hisnew plans, or the dutiful and gracious note with which Miss Leila hadaccompanied it.
The truth, though Leila did not know it, was that Mrs. Frothingham hada pretty social secretary named Margaret Clay, a strange, attractivelittle person, eighteen years old, whose mother had been the old lady'scompanion for many years. And to Magsie, as they all called her, youngMr. Hoyt had paid some decided attention not many mo