She attached a superstitious and terrible importance to the tragical episode in the parlour because it was their first quarrel as husband and wife.  True, she had stormed at him before their engagement, but even then he had kept intact his respect for her, whereas now, a husband, he had shamed her.  The breach, she knew, could never be closed.  She had only to glance at the empty bed to be sure that it was eternal.  It had been made slowly yet swiftly; and it was complete and unbridgable ere she had realized its existence.  When she contrasted the idyllic afternoon with the tragedy of the night, she was astounded by the swiftness of the change.  The catastrophe lay, not in the threatened loss of vast sums of money and consequent ruin—­that had diminished to insignificance!—­but in the breach.

And then Mrs. Tams had inserted herself in the bedroom.  Mrs. Tams knew or guessed everything.  And she would not pretend that she did not; and Rachel would not pretend—­did not even care to pretend, for Mrs. Tams was so unimportant that nobody minded her.  Mrs. Tams had heard and seen.  She commiserated.  She stroked timidly with her gnarled hand the short, fragile sleeve of the nightgown, whereat Rachel sobbed afresh, with more plenteous tears, and tried to articulate a word, and could not till the third attempt.  The word was “handkerchief.”  She was not weeping in comfort.  Mrs. Tams was aware of the right drawer and drew from it a little white thing—­yet not so little, for Rachel was Rachel!—­and shook out its quadrangular folds, and it seemed beautiful in the gaslight; and Rachel took it and sobbed “Thank you.”

Mrs. Tams rose higher than even a general servant; she was the soubrette, the confidential maid, the very echo of the young and haughty mistress, leagued with the worshipped creature against the wickedness and wile of a whole sex.  Mrs. Tams had no illusions save the sublime illusion that her mistress was an angel and a martyr.  Mrs. Tams had been married, and she had seen a daughter married.  She was an authority on first quarrels and could and did tell tales of first quarrels—­tales in which the husband, while admittedly an utterly callous monster, had at the same time somehow some leaven of decency.  Soon she was launched in the epic recital of the birth and death of a grandchild; Rachel, being a married women like the rest, could properly listen to every interesting and recondite detail.  Rachel sobbed and sympathized with the classic tale.  And both women, as it was unrolled, kept well in their minds the vision of the vile man, mysterious and implacable, alone in the parlour.  Occasionally Mrs. Tams listened for a footstep, ready discreetly to withdraw at the slightest symptom on the stairs.  Once when she did this, Rachel murmured, weakly, “He won’t—­” and then lapsed into new weeping.  And after a little time Mrs. Tams departed.

VI