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diff --git a/old/62194-0.txt b/old/62194-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b71b7cb..0000000 --- a/old/62194-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9456 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Indian Summer, by Mrs. Emily Grant Hutchings - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Indian Summer - - -Author: Mrs. Emily Grant Hutchings - - - -Release Date: May 22, 2020 [eBook #62194] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIAN SUMMER*** - - -E-text prepared by David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading -Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by -Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/indiansummer00hutciala - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - - - - -INDIAN SUMMER - - - * * * * * * - -_NEW BORZOI NOVELS_ - -_FALL, 1922_ - - - THE QUEST - _Pio Baroja_ - - THE ROOM - _G. B. Stern_ - - ONE OF OURS - _Willa Cather_ - - A LOVELY DAY - _Henry Céard_ - - MARY LEE - _Geoffrey Dennis_ - - TUTORS’ LANE - _Wilmarth Lewis_ - - THE PROMISED ISLE - _Laurids Bruun_ - - THE RETURN - _Walter de la Mare_ - - THE BRIGHT SHAWL - _Joseph Hergesheimer_ - - THE MOTH DECIDES - _Edward Alden Jewell_ - - INDIAN SUMMER - _Emily Grant Hutchings_ - - * * * * * * - - - -INDIAN SUMMER - -EMILY GRANT HUTCHINGS - - -[Illustration] - - - - - - -Alfred A. Knopf -New York 1922 - - -[Illustration] - - -Copyright, 1922, by -Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. - -Published, July, 1922 - -Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., -Binghamton, N. Y. -Paper furnished by Perkins-Goodwin Co., New York, N. Y. -Bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. - -Manufactured in the United States of America - - - - - To Edwin Hutchings - My Inspiration - - - - -Contents - - - Prologue - - I Lavinia 3 - - II Calvin 6 - - III David 12 - - - Book One: Spring - - IV Vine Cottage 21 - - V Judith Goes West 26 - - VI The Trench Children 32 - - VII Lavinia Pays a Call 43 - - VIII Hal Marksley Intrudes 53 - - IX News from Bromfield 61 - - X Eileen Seeks Counsel 65 - - XI Vicarious Living 76 - - XII The Poem Judith Read 84 - - XIII Eyes Turned Homeward 93 - - XIV A Broken Axle 101 - - XV Masked Benefaction 109 - - XVI Coming Storm 120 - - XVII A Place Called Bromfield 131 - - - Book Two: Summer - - XVIII Sylvia 139 - - XIX A Web in the Moonlight 146 - - XX Red Dawn 153 - - XXI The Cloud on the Horizon 158 - - XXII Midsummer Magic 164 - - XXIII Lavinia Sees the Abyss 173 - - XXIV One Way Out 177 - - XXV A Wedding at Vine Cottage 183 - - XXVI The Light Within 193 - - XXVII David’s Children 198 - - XXVIII Indian Summer 205 - - XXIX The Truth that is Clean 211 - - XXX Katharsis 216 - - XXXI A New Hilltop 224 - - - Book Three: Belated Frost - - XXXII Lavinia Flounders 231 - - XXXIII The Statue and the Bust 237 - - XXXIV Lavinia’s Credo 248 - - XXXV The Credo at Work 256 - - XXXVI Consummation 263 - - XXXVII In the “Personal” Column 268 - - XXXVIII The Greater Love 274 - - XXXIX Lavinia 282 - - - - -Prologue - - - - -I Lavinia - - -I - -Tense quiet filled the crooked streets of Bromfield, the quiet that -presages storm. Vine Larimore looked anxiously from the window. She -was not afraid of tempests: she reveled in them. But a great fear had -gripped her in the night. Why had Calvin failed to stop on his way -home from the station? What business was it that took Calvin Stone -to Rochester every week or two? Another sweetheart? She would not -give the hideous thought house room. Was not she, Lavinia Larimore, -the handsomest girl in Bromfield? Was not her father, next to the -Calvins and the Stones, the most important man in the rusty old New -York village? Had she not worn Calvin’s ring for three endless years? -Most of the girls in her set were already married, and at New Year’s -she had worn the green stockings for her seventeen-year-old sister, -Isabel. The wedding dress she had made with so much care and skill, -two years agone, hid its once modish lines beneath the cover of the -cedar chest--the hope chest that Calvin had ordered for her at Stephen -Trench’s shop. - -Calvin’s father had promised them the old house on High Street, to be -remodeled and furnished with the best that Rochester could provide. -Mr. Trench had twice figured on the contract, and yet Calvin dallied. -It was first one pretext and then another. Once, when he asked her what -she wanted for her birthday--it was the latter part of May, and Lavinia -would be twenty--she took her courage in her shaking hands and pleaded -for a wedding. It was an unmaidenly thing. Bromfield would have branded -her as bold. But Calvin saw in her abashed eyes the image of his own -dereliction. To be sure he still loved her. He had always intended to -make good his pledge. They would be married the middle of August, when -the G. A. R. was giving a great excursion to New York City. That would -be a honeymoon well worth the waiting. - -And then, on the second of July, the President was shot. Vine was -shocked, as everyone was; but what had that to do with her wedding? -Calvin could not think of marrying while Mr. Garfield’s life was in -doubt. - -The President had died, and it was now October. Vine saw Calvin almost -daily. In a little town, with the Larimore home near the middle of -the principal street, such contact was almost inevitable. But Lavinia -found no avenue of approach. Calvin was usually sullen or distraught. -Sometimes he took the long détour across the bridge and up behind -Stephen Trench’s carpenter shop, on his way to and from the bank. -This morning, with a storm brewing, he could hardly risk that walk. -He must pass the house any minute. She would stop him and demand an -explanation. She knew just what she wanted to say, and when she was -thoroughly aroused her tongue never failed her. - -There was a step on the grass-grown flag-stones, an eager step. Lavinia -was on her feet--her fury gone, she knew not where, or why. He was -coming. In another minute she would be in his arms, listening to the -same old excuses, feeding her hope on the same old shreds of promise. -And then.... The front door opened and Ellen Porter’s interrogating -eyes met hers. Ellen and Ted Larimore were soon to be married, but the -early morning call had nothing to do with the fever of activity that -had disturbed the routine of two households for a month past. - -“Vine, did Calvin show you what he bought in Rochester yesterday?” - -“Who told you he bought anything?” - -“Papa. He saw him in the jewelry store. He was looking at wedding -rings. He turned his back when he saw somebody from Bromfield; but papa -was almost sure he bought one. Viny, are you going to beat Ted and me -out, after all?” - -Lavinia thought for a moment that she would suffocate. The blood -pounded in her ears and the room swam dizzily before her. And then -the storm broke. She tried to fashion some convincing reply; but the -thunder was deafening and the rain beat loudly against the windows. She -ran to get a floor cloth, when little rivulets began to trickle over -the sill. Ellen sought to help her with the transom, that was seldom -closed from spring to fall, when the door was pushed open violently -and Ted Larimore, dripping and out of temper, burst into the room. He -had forgotten something. No, he could not stop to change his coat. He -would take Ellen back to the store with him. For this, at least, his -sister was grateful. By noon she would have seen Calvin--would know the -meaning of the ring. She would see Calvin ... if she had to go to the -bank. Things could not go on this way. - - - - -II Calvin - - -I - -While Ted and Ellen strolled down Main Street, oblivious of the rain -that swirled upon them, now from the east, now from the south, and -while Lavinia plunged with headlong haste into the morning’s housework, -a conversation was under way in the dining-room of the Stone mansion. -Calvin was late coming down to breakfast and his father had waited for -him. - -“You have something on your mind, and you might as well out with it,” -the elder was saying, as he drew his napkin from his collar and folded -it crookedly. - -Calvin drummed the table with uneasy fingers. - -“Gambling again?” - -“No, Sir.” - -“Drinking?” - -“No, Sir.” - -“What then? Look here, Calvin Stone, you can’t fool your mother and me. -You act like a sheep-stealing dog. What were you doing in Rochester -yesterday?” - -“I was married.” - -The words fell with the dull impact of a mass of putty. His father’s -eyes opened wide, then narrowed, and his huge shoulders bent forward. - -“Who did you marry? Vine wasn’t with you.” - -“That’s just the trouble, father. I didn’t marry Vine. Fact is, I -didn’t intend to get married at all. Lettie took me by surprise when -she told me--” - -“Lettie who?” - -“Arlette Fournier. She’s French--and a stunner. I met her at a dance -last winter. Oh, she’s a good fellow. She’ll keep it secret till I get -out of this scrape with Vine. She wouldn’t want me to bring her to -Bromfield for a year or two.” - -Stone brought his fist down on the table with a vehemence that rattled -the breakfast china. - -“Have you no conscience, no decency? How are you going to square -yourself with that girl?” - -“I couldn’t square myself with both of them. I’ve been thinking it -over, since I got home last night. I thought I’d play on Vine’s pride -... snub her openly, you know, so that she’d get in a huff and throw -me over. Then I could afterwards pretend I married the other girl for -spite. That would save Vine’s feelings.” - -“You’ll do nothing of the sort, you miserable coward. You are going to -Viny Larimore this very morning, and confess what you’ve done.” - -“No. I am not!” - -“I say you are.” - -“You don’t know what you are talking about. I’d never get out of her -house alive. You never saw Vine when she was mad. I’d go back to -Rochester--I’d--jump in the river, before I’d face her. I don’t have to -stay here. Lettie has money of her own, that we could live off of. She -doesn’t want to live in this ugly village, any way.” - -“You could take your living from this stranger, this foreigner that -nobody ever heard of? You--you say she is rich? Who are her people?” - -“Father, won’t you--” - -Calvin’s voice, a moment before raucous with assurance and -determination, broke into waves of impotent pleading. He had perceived -the flaw in his parent’s armour. To press home his advantage was the -task of the moment. - -“Her uncle is one of the leading business men of Rochester, and she has -money in her own right. She’s been an orphan since she was six years -old--sent over here from France by herself, after her parents died, and -nobody to look after her. Father, won’t you go and straighten it out -with Vine? Honest, I can’t.” - -The elder Stone spat with disgust. - - -II - -In slicker and high rubber boots Calvin took the long muddy road to the -bank. From every rain-drenched shrub along the way Lavinia Larimore’s -outraged womanhood glared at him. For an hour he tried to work, -conscious of his father’s eyes with their unfeeling condemnation. When -the strain became unbearable, he took a silver-mounted pistol from the -safe--with surreptitious gesture, yet making sure that the object in -his hand did not escape notice--and thrust it into the drawer of his -desk. The threat bore fruit. - -Mr. Stone took down hat and umbrella and went forth into the abating -storm. He was not a man to mince words when he had an unpleasant task -before him. Vine greeted him at the door. Her dark cheeks blanched. - -“What--where is Calvin? Is he sick? Has anything happened to him?” - -“I wish to God he was dead. Viny, I hope you don’t care any too much -for that young scoundrel. He isn’t worthy of the love of a decent girl.” - -“He hasn’t-- You mean, he has embezzled money? Mr. Stone, you won’t let -it be found out? I wouldn’t go back on him for--Oh, you won’t....” - -“I’d brain him if he ever touched a penny that didn’t belong to him.” - -“Then what--what has he done?” - -“He was married, yesterday, to a girl in Rochester.” - -“Married!” And then, in an incredulous whisper, “married.” - -A moment only Lavinia stood numb and baffled. Then the words poured in -a rising tide of indignation, rage, fury. Three years she had waited, -and for this. She might have had any one of a dozen--the finest young -men in Bromfield. Calvin Stone had won her away from them all. He had -deprived her of her girlhood, her opportunities--everything but her -self-respect. She had known for two years that he was a drunkard and -a gambler. She had clung to him, because it was her Christian duty to -reform him. His parents would not have her to blame when he reeled into -a drunkard’s grave. It was fortunate that some fool woman had taken the -burden from her shoulders. She would have stuck to her promise, in the -face of certain misery. The Larimores had that kind of honour--such -honour as all the Calvin and Stone money could not buy. But now she -need no longer keep up the pretense of caring for a man who was not fit -to wipe the mud from her shoes. She had tried to hold together what -little manhood was in him--to spare his parents the disgrace he was -sure to bring upon them. - -Once and again the bank president, who was wont to command silence, to -be granted a respectful hearing in the highest councils of the town, -sought to breast the tide of her anger. His interruptions were swept -away like spindrift. He wanted to offer financial restitution, since -no other was possible. She met the proposal with scorn. Money could -not cover up the disgrace of such a consummation. Calvin might rue -his bargain, and come back to plead for forgiveness. The desperately -proffered balm brought a more bitter outburst. She would not be any -man’s second choice. No, the damage was irreparable. It was done. - - -III - -As the man of finance turned the interview over in his mind, a curious -balance was struck--and his heart softened towards his son. There -might have been other tongue-lashings. No woman could have achieved -such fluency without practice. Before he reached the front door of -the little bank, Lavinia was in her own room, her compact figure half -submerged in the feather bed, her hot tears of shame and chagrin -wetting the scarlet stars of the quilt her own deft fingers had pieced. -She had lost her temper--it was easily misplaced--but the scene she had -raised had no share in her memory of the encounter. Her humiliation -blotted all else from view. It was not only that she had aimed at the -highest, and lost. She loved Calvin Stone with all the passion of a -fiery nature--loved him with a depth and intensity that might be gauged -by the hate that loomed on the surface of her wrath. And there was no -one in the whole world to whom she could open her heart. - -Mrs. Larimore knew there had been a quarrel, a quarrel that outran the -morning’s tempest in violence; but when she ventured to ask what the -trouble was, Lavinia told her curtly that it was none of her business. -Now she stood outside the door, listening to her daughter’s stormy -sobbing. She had never been on intimate terms with her children, -and the relationship with her eldest daughter was most casual. A -headstrong girl. Where she got her ambition--unless it was a heritage -from her Grandmother Larimore--no one could say. The other members of -the family were easygoing, content with the day’s pleasure and profit. -But Lavinia was avid for work, for praise, for position. She would -shine as Mrs. Calvin Stone, if ever.... And then Mrs. Larimore began -afresh to wonder. - - - - -III David - - -I - -Early in the afternoon, when the sun was making furtive efforts to -slip past the cloud-guard and repair the damage the rain had wrought, -Lavinia stepped briskly from her room, clad in her best blue silk -poplin. An hour past she had been bathing her eyes, and her mirror -satisfied her that the redness and swelling were all gone. She went -straight to her father’s store, across from the bank. Ellen Porter -would be there, behind the bookkeeper’s desk. - -“I want you to do something for me, Nell,” she began--noting the hollow -in her voice, and striving against it. “I want you to take this to Mr. -Stone.” - -She held a small, neatly tied parcel in her hand. They walked to the -wide doorway and stood watching the sun-glints in the pools of the -muddy street, each waiting for the other to venture on some hospitable -avenue of speech. Ellen considered her thin-soled shoes, scarce dry -from the morning’s wetting, glanced at the precarious stepping stones, -half a block away ... and caught sight of David Trench, coming towards -them. She beckoned him. - -David was a shy, fair-cheeked youth, a few months older than Lavinia -and Ellen. The three had been christened the same Sunday in the little -Presbyterian church. They had gone through the village school together, -and David and Ellen sang leading parts in the church choir. It was Dave -Trench who sharpened their skates, pulled their sleds up the hill, -tuned their pianos, repaired their furniture, took them home from -Sunday evening services when no other escort was available. - -“Vine wants you to do an errand for her, Davy. Would you mind taking -this little package over to the bank?” - -“I wouldn’t mind going to Halifax for her.” - -Ellen laid the parcel in his hand. He was to give it to Mr. Stone. -In no case was he to give it to Calvin. As his lithe figure melted -into the gloom of the building across the way, she turned for the -information that was her due. - -“It’s my engagement ring.” - -“What!” - -“Yes, I’ve given Calvin the mitten. His father came down this morning -and laboured with me for more than an hour to get me to change my -mind; but I told him I would never marry a man who smoked and drank -and gambled. That was what I was about to tell you this morning, when -Ted ran in on us. I’ve had him on probation since last spring--for two -years, in fact. He’s promised me over and over. And yesterday, after he -bought the ring for our wedding, he went and got roaring drunk--fell -into the hands of some disreputable woman--and-- Why, Ellen, when he -stopped at the house last night he was so maudlin that he couldn’t give -an account of where he’d been or what had happened to him. You can -guess how we parted. He told his father this morning that he’d go to -the dogs if I turned him down. Mr. Stone almost got down on his knees -to me, but it was all wasted. When I’m done, I’m done.” - -Ellen Porter had but one grievous fault. When she found herself unable -to keep a secret, she did not scruple to seek help. Lavinia thought -afterward it had been almost an inspiration ... telling Ellen. By -Sunday it would be all over town, each one of Ellen’s confidantes -pledged to hold the revelation sacred. She knew, too, how Calvin’s -lapse from virtue would grow with each fresh telling of the story. By -another Sunday it would be murder he had committed. - - -II - -The ring delivered, Vine went home to plan the next move. That she must -leave Bromfield before the truth of Calvin’s marriage leaked out, she -did not so much as debate. There was an uncle in the wilds of Illinois. -Once she had visited him, with the result that the buffalo and Indian -frontier had receded some leagues farther to the west. A coal mining -town. She remembered that some adventurous investors dreamed of oil and -natural gas. There ought to be employment for an energetic, fairly well -educated girl who was accustomed to hard work. - -Lavinia Larimore had not been blessed with an elastic nature, but in -moments of desperation she manifested something like the elasticity of -ivory. She could yield, yet show no after-trace of the yielding. By -night her plans were well on the way towards maturity. She would write -to her uncle, and wait for a reply before telling her parents of her -purpose. - -She opened the small drawer of the secretary, only to discover that it -was bare of stamps. Her brother Theodore would be going to Ellen’s, -and the post office was not far out of his way. But Ted would ask -questions. No, she would wait for David Trench. He and his father -worked at the shop every evening, and he would be passing at nine. - -Up to this point Lavinia had thought of David as nothing more than an -errand boy. But as she sat by the window in the gathering dusk, he -began to change before her fevered eyes, to assert his height and the -grace of his strong young hands. She had never thought about David’s -hands before. Strange that the hard work had never rendered them -unshapely. Calvin’s hands were pudgy, the fingers short and thick. She -had always been conscious of Calvin’s hands--had viewed them almost -with repugnance even when she craved their touch the most. - -David’s smile was beautiful. He would grow into a fine-looking man, -like his father. Now that they had taken to refinishing antique -furniture, there would be money in the shop for two households. David -would always be kind. He might even.... What was she thinking! A -startled laugh burst from her lips. Davy, little Davy Trench! With a -suppressed, “Huh! I might go farther and fare worse,” she tossed the -absurd thought aside. A moment later it presented itself in another -guise. She was still toying with the audacious intruder when she heard -David’s slow, regular step on the stone flagging. Through the open -window she called his name. With nervous haste she lighted the tall, -flamboyantly shaded piano lamp and motioned him to a chair. Then she -seated herself rather stiffly on the old-fashioned sparking settee, her -heart pounding, her tongue thick and useless. - -“Was there something I could do for you, Vine?” - -“You wouldn’t--mind--going back to the post office, Dave? I want to -get off an important letter to my uncle. He wants me to come out to -Illinois, and--there isn’t a stamp in the house.” - -“I’m sorry, but you can’t send it to-night. The post office was closed -when I came by, and the last mail goes up to Rochester at half-past -eight. If you had only told me sooner.... I’ll be glad to stop by and -get it in the morning, on my way to the shop.” - -“Oh, well, it’s not so urgent. I’ll have it ready before breakfast. You -won’t forget to stop?” - -“Why, of course not, Vine.” - -“David, would you be sorry if I should go away from Bromfield--to stay?” - -“It wouldn’t be Bromfield without you.” - -Lavinia Larimore took the bit in her teeth. - -“Dave, what do you think Ellen Porter was saying to me when you came to -the store, this afternoon?” - -“I couldn’t guess.” - -“She said it was all over town that you and I are going to be married.” - -“I--” The boy gasped. He gripped the edge of his chair and the blood -died out of his cheeks. “Vine, you oughtn’t to make fun of me that way. -It isn’t kind.” - -“I wasn’t making fun of you, Davy. Honest to goodness, everybody has -noticed how much we have been together lately.” - -“But Calvin?” - -“Pooh! I broke off with him long ago. Dave, are you asleep, that you -don’t know it is all over between Calvin and me?” - -“I--I am afraid I’m dreaming now.” - -“No, you aren’t. You are broad awake, and I’m telling you the truth. I -would not marry Calvin Stone if he was the last man left on earth. He -is a low-lived gambler--and I despise him. He isn’t worth your little -finger.” - -David slipped from his chair and gained the settee, somehow, his knees -knocking together. - -“Vine, do you mean-- Would I be a fool to--” Then his lips found hers. - -At midnight David Trench stumbled drunkenly home, his head bumping the -stars, while Lavinia took the two-year-old wedding dress from the cedar -chest and planned to modernize its lines. - - - - -Book One - -Spring - - - - -IV Vine Cottage - - -I - -The cottage had been vacant almost four months, an economic waste that -cut deeply into Lavinia Trench’s pin-money. Not that David stinted her -in the matter of funds. The purse strings had always lain loosely in -David’s hands. But her penurious soul, bent on making the best possible -showing of whatever resources came within her reach, rebelled at the -insolent idleness of invested capital. Vine Cottage had been hers, -to do with as she pleased, since the completion of the big Colonial -mansion that housed the remnant of the Trench family. There were not -half-a-dozen furnished residences to let in Springdale, and that this -one should have been unoccupied since the middle of November was -inexplicable. - -“You haven’t half way tried to rent it,” the woman charged, her eyes -shifting from her husband’s face to the cottage beyond the low stone -wall, with its sullenly drawn blinds and its air of insensate content. -Her glance rested appraisingly on the broad veranda, now banked with -wet February snow; the little glass-enclosed breakfast room that had -been her own conservatory, in the years gone by; the sturdy-throated -chimney, that would never draw--but that none the less served as one of -the important talking points of the cottage. An attractive set of gas -logs did away with the danger of stale wood smoke in the library; but -the chimney remained--moss-covered at the corners, near the ground, a -hardy ampelopsis tracing a pattern of brown lace against its dull red -bricks. There were eight rooms and a capacious attic. The furniture -was excellent. There was a garage, too, with living quarters for the -servants. In the year of grace, nineteen hundred and nine, there were -not many residences in Springdale with garages. - -“I heard at church, Sunday, that Mrs. Marksley is looking for a house. -You know, Vine, their place on Grant Drive is for sale--against the -building of the new house in Marksley’s Addition. Do you want me to--” - -“Mrs. Marksley! Humph!” Lavinia’s black eyes snapped. It would be to -her liking to have the wife of the richest man in town as her tenant. -Still ... the situation had its disadvantages, not the least of which -was that they would be moving out again in a few months, and the same -old problem to be faced afresh. - -“Do as you like about speaking to Mr. Marksley. But remember, David, I -don’t recommend it.” - -“It’s your house, my dear. You blamed me for offering the place to -Sylvia when she was married. I told you, last fall, I’d have nothing -more to do with it.” - -He bent to kiss her, a kiss that was part of the compulsory daily -routine, and hurriedly left the house. Lavinia turned his words over -in her mind, and her gorge rose. David was always that way. You could -never make him shoulder responsibility. True, she had wanted Sylvia -next door, where she could watch over her daughter’s blundering -beginnings at housekeeping. And anyone would say it was an honour -to have Professor Penrose in the family--even if his salary was -small. But another lessee--with the boon of a commercial position -in Detroit at four times the amount he received from the little -denominational college in Springdale--would have been held to the -strict interpretation of the lease. David would not hear of Oliver -and Sylvia paying rent for a house they did not occupy, a sentiment -promptly seconded by his daughter. Sylvia never failed to perceive her -own advantage--a fact at once gratifying and maddening to her mother. -What if David had been like that? What if.... She always put David -aside. Why bother about the inevitable? - - -II - -Mr. Trench did not go at once to the office of Trench & Son, architects -and general building contractors. It was important to his domestic -peace that some definite step be taken towards the renting of the -cottage. He would stop, he thought, at the office of the Argus, and -insert a three-time advertisement. He could bring the matter up with -Henry Marksley, for whom he always had some construction work on hand. -But second thought deterred him. It might be disastrous to have young -Hal Marksley next door, if only for a few months. Hal was a senior in -the Presbyterian college. His recent attentions to Eileen Trench, just -approaching her sixteenth birthday, had been disquieting to her father, -none the less because of her mother’s unconcealed approval. - -Eileen was impressionable. A youth of Hal Marksley’s--David searched -his mind for the word. Disposition? He was more than amiable. -Principles? Not quite that, either. In short, there was nothing he -could urge against the young man that had not been set at naught by -Eileen’s mother. Money had lifted the Marksleys above the restrictions -imposed upon common people. Their life had been unconventional, at -times positively scandalous. Eileen’s iconoclastic spirit would grasp -at anything to justify her revolt against the conventional trammels of -her home, the puritanical regulations which served Lavinia in lieu of -religion. There was enough friction in that quarter already. - -As he passed the college campus, with its motley group of -buildings--dingy red brick of forty years’ standing, and the impudent -modernity of Bedford stone with trimmings of terra cotta and Carthage -marble--he caught sight of Dr. Schubert’s mud-bespattered buggy. The -grey mare, these ten years a stranger to the restraining tether, nosed -contentedly in the snow for the succulent sprigs that were already -making their appearance among the exposed roots of the huge old elms. -From the opposite side of the street the family physician waved a -driving glove. - -“Wait a minute, David.” He made his way cautiously through the ooze of -the crudely paved avenue. “I was on my way out to your house. Stopped -to look in on a pneumonia that kept me up nearly all night. Does Mrs. -Trench still want to rent the cottage? Or is it true that Sylvia and -Penrose are coming back?” - -“They are well pleased with Detroit. And my wife is most anxious for a -tenant. You know, Doctor, she draws the line on children and dogs.” - -“We ought to be able to close a very satisfactory deal. My old friend, -Griffith Ramsay, spent the night with us. He’s out here from New -York--some legal business connected with the mines at Olive Hill, for a -client of his, a Mrs. Ascott. The lady is recently widowed, and in need -of some kind of diversion. I had been telling him about my experiments, -my need for a competent assistant in the laboratory, and he arrived -at the conclusion that these two needs would neutralize each other. -Mrs. Ascott, having a large financial stake in the mines, would be -interested in the possibility of increasing the value of soft coal. The -more he though about it, the greater his enthusiasm. The one thing in -the way, he thought, would be a suitable place for her to live. That -was when Vine Cottage popped into my mind. I’ll send him around to the -office to talk over the details of the lease with you.” - - - - -V Judith Goes West - - -I - -Mrs. Ascott had an early appointment with her attorney. An early -appointment necessitated her catching the nine-fifteen train for the -city. That, again, implied the disruption of the entire household -regimen, and Judith Ascott had learned not to try her mother’s patience -too far. She was the unpleasant note in an otherwise satisfactory -family. True, her mother had stood by her through all the scandal -and unpleasantness. But the changing of the breakfast hour was quite -another matter. - -As she slipped into the pantry of the big suburban home and set the -coffee machine going, she turned over in her mind another reason for -her care not to disturb the family slumber. She did not know why her -attorney wished to see her--was not even sure which member of the firm -would be awaiting her, that still March morning. The long-distance -message conveyed the bare information that the business was urgent. -Might there be another delay in the divorce? She had been assured that -the decree would be in her hands by the end of the week; but gruff old -Sanderson, the senior partner, was not so sure. Any reference to the -“distasteful affair” threw her mother into a nervous chill. A note on -the breakfast table, informing the family that she had caught the early -express for a morning at the art gallery, would suffice as well as any -other explanation. - -All the way in, between the snow-decked New York fields and the dreary -waste of the Sound, she dwelt moodily on the unpleasant possibilities -of the coming interview. But when she emerged from the confusion of the -Grand Central station, already in the turmoil of reconstruction, she -thought only of the relative merits of the taxicab and the subway. She -had schooled herself, in times of stress, to take refuge in irrelevant -trifles. She had learned, too, that the more she worried before the -ordeal the less occasion she found for worry when the actual conditions -confronted her. In view of her sleepless night, she would probably find -roses and Griff Ramsay instead of thorns and Donald Sanderson. - - -II - -The attorney had thought it all out, had decided just how he was going -to break the news. But when he found his client confronting him, across -the unaccustomed barrier of his desk, his assurance forsook him. - -“Judith, what are you going to do, now that you are free?” - -“What am I going to do, Griff? That, as usual, depends on mamma. You -know I have never planned anything--vital--in my life. When she lays -too much stress on the ‘must’ I do the opposite. She says that I am -going to sail with her and the boys on the fifth of April, a month from -to-day. Ben is going on with his architecture at the Beaux Arts and -Jack is wild about airplanes. Paris has hideous memories--but there’s -no other place for me.” - -“You are not going to Paris.” - -The woman started. “No?” - -“Not if you have the qualities I believe you have. Judith, may I for -once talk cold unpleasant facts? You are twenty-seven years old and the -life you have made for yourself is a failure.” Mrs. Ascott deprecated -the finality of the word, but she let it pass. “Going to Paris would -only be temporizing. Your mother’s influence has always been bad. You -and your father are scarcely acquainted. Your brothers are too young to -count. Laura and I have been your only intimates, since your return to -New York. I need not remind you of our staunch friendship for you.” - -“Griff--tell me what you have in mind. I promise not to cry out, if I -do squirm a little.” - -He told her of Springdale, the kindly old physician who had a theory -that soft coal could be transformed, at the mines, into clean fuel and -a whole retinue of valuable by-products--of his need for a secretary -and laboratory assistant, to keep his records and assist him with -experiments. He told her of Vine Cottage, its wide garden and fruit -trees. “The house faces south. Get that solidly established in your -mind,” he admonished. He knew how important it was for Judith Ascott to -be properly oriented. Other details of the place he painted, graphic -and engaging. She would take with her her old nurse, Nanny. For -servants he had leased Jeff Dutton and wife, who occupied the rooms -above the garage. As an afterthought he added that she would spend four -mornings a week in Dr. Schubert’s laboratory. Her compensation--a large -block of treasury stock in the corporation that would result from the -evolving of a process for the cleansing of soft coal. - -“Where is this Springdale--this Utopia? What has it to do with Sutton -and Olive Hill, where the mines are located?” - -“As little as possible. You’ll note that Springdale draws its virtuous -white skirts away from those filthy towns, with an air so smug that -it would disgust you if it were not so amusingly naïve. It claims ten -thousand inhabitants--when the census taker isn’t within hearing. There -is a denominational college--co-ed, I believe--with a conservatory -of music and a school of dramatic art. The President isn’t the lean -sycophant in a shabby Prince Albert coat that you might expect. I met -him--a singularly spruce-minded successor to that old Presbyterian -war-horse, Thomas Henderson, who built the college out of Illinois -dirt.” - -“Sounds interesting, Griff. Is there any more?” - -“Yes, ever so much. The college isn’t the whole show, by any means. At -one end of the town is a Bible Institute and at the other an asylum for -the feeble-minded. There is a manual training school for deaf-mutes and -a sanitarium for drug fiends and booze fighters. On the whole, quite an -intellectual centre. It is under no circumstances to be confused with -Springfield, the capital of the state. You are sentenced to live there -for a year. At the end of your term you may come back to New York--if -you haven’t found yourself.” - -“Only last night I was wishing that I could run -away--somewhere--anywhere--to a place I had never heard of. Do you -think I can do the work?” - -“Oh, that part of it.... My only concern is for your mother. I’ll send -Laura down to Pelham to help persuade her.” - -Judith Ascott’s finely modelled shoulders came up in an almost -imperceptible shrug. “Mamma will be so relieved. Don’t trouble Laura. -I was only going to Paris because there was no convenient pigeonhole to -stow me away ‘till wanted.’ Mamma, of course, hopes that I will marry. -She wouldn’t want me tagging around after her, the rest of her life. -_You_ know that I am done with men.” - -“By-the-way,” Ramsay interrupted, “I led those people to suppose -your husband was dead. It’s that kind of town. Not the old doctor, -understand. His sympathy’s as wide as humanity. But your next-door -neighbours--excellent people, though with small-town limitations. -You’ll have to depend on them for such social life as your gregarious -nature demands. How soon can you be ready to go west?” - -“As soon as I can bring Nanny from Vermont. I ought to be on my way in -a week.” - - -III - -Later in the day, when she found herself alone in a quiet corner of the -Metropolitan, Mrs. Ascott turned the preposterous proposition over in -her mind. No doubt the Ramsays were as tired of her eternal flopping -from one untenable situation to another as her own people were. In -Springdale she would be safely off their hands ... at least until the -sensation of her divorce had subsided. Would her late husband marry the -nonchalant co-respondent? Would Herbert Faulkner, with whom she had -all but eloped, while Raoul Ascott and the girl were in Egypt.... But -she was not interested in Herbert Faulkner, and she cared not a straw -whether Raoul married or pursued his butterfly career, free from the -stimulating restrictions of domestic life. Was Griff afraid she would -disturb the farcical relations of her late impassioned admirer and the -stern-lipped woman who bore his name and made free with his check-book -to further her aberrant social ambition? Was it for this that she had -been banished to the coal fields of western Illinois--to save Maida -Faulkner the annoyance of a divorce and consequent loss of income? -Whatever the actuating motive, the thing was done. She had acquiesced -without a murmur of protest. This was in keeping with her whole -nondescript life. Nothing had been worth the effort of opposition. She -had never known the stinging contact of human suffering. Oh, to burn -her fingers with the flame of living! But Springdale--a hide-bound -college town, where divorce is reckoned among the cardinal sins.... - - - - -VI The Trench Children - - -I - -Lavinia stood in the sun-room, staring perplexedly across the lawn in -the direction of Vine Cottage. She was trying to decide a ponderous -question. To call on the new tenant ... or to wait the prescribed -two weeks? David and the children felt that a neighbourly visit was -already overdue. Probably, Larimore had said at breakfast, Mrs. Ascott -knew nothing of the silly custom which prevailed in Springdale, and -would think her landlady either hostile or rude. For once in her life -Lavinia Trench was uncertain. The new tenant was a woman of the world. -Ominous distinction. How could one gauge a neighbour who had crossed -the ocean sixteen times and had lived in every European capital from -London to Constantinople? She did not wear black. Incomprehensible for -a widow. Likely as not, she held Springdale unworthy the display of -her expensive weeds. Or perhaps she was saving them for some adequate -occasion. Just going to Dr. Schubert’s laboratory to work ... one’s -old clothes would serve for that. Besides, there were so many new fads -about mourning. It might be that taupe was the correct thing. She would -write and ask Sylvia about it. - -Sylvia was the one member of the family whose opinion was accorded a -meed of respect--now that she had gone to Detroit to live. It was too -bad that she should have moved to another city, just when a woman who -might have been of service to her had come to Springdale. It was always -that way. Life offered the great desideratum--after the wish or need -for it had gone by. Life, Lavinia Trench’s life, was an endless chain -of disappointments. Of this there was no shadow of doubt. David and -the children had heard the statement reiterated with such consistent -regularity that they failed now to hear it at all--like the noise of -the trolley cars on Sherman Avenue, behind the Trench home, that at -first made such a deafening clatter. - -“You seem to get everything you ask for,” her second son, Robert, had -once reminded her. “That’s more than you can say for the rest of us.” -Whereat she reeled off such a catalogue of woes that even Bob was -silenced. - - -II - -There was something abnormal about the Trench children. Nothing ever -went right with them. Sylvia was the college beauty, an exact replica -of her mother, and she had been forced in sheer desperation to marry, -at twenty-four, the baldheaded professor of chemistry and physics, -whom half the girls in town had refused. Larimore was a successful -architect, had taken honours at Cornell; but he detested girls and -boys. Had his nose in a book most of the time. He might have done -things for his sister, if he had not been so steeped in his own morbid -fancies. Bob would have brought eligible young men to the house, if he -had been the next one in age to Sylvia. Mrs. Trench shuddered when she -thought about Bob. It was the culminating tragedy of her badly ordered -life. - -A good many things made her shudder ... horrible patches of the past, -that had been lived through, somehow. There were the first few years -of her married life at Olive Hill, when David worked as a carpenter, -and two babies invaded the three-room cottage before her second -anniversary. She had not considered the possibility of children when, -after an engagement lasting less than a month, she and David had been -married. A little daughter--three weeks older than Ellen’s first child! -Lavinia made it an occasion for rejoicing. Sent dainty announcements to -Bromfield, tied with blue ribbon. But when, after fourteen months, a -boy came, she began to question the leap she had made, that tempestuous -October day. - -The boy was called Larimore, in protest against the unmistakable -lineaments of the Trenches that revealed themselves in his pathetic -baby face. He was an anaemic child, given to wailing softly when in -pain--a sharp contrast to Sylvia’s insistent screams. As he grew into -boyhood he was quiet and studious, as David had been. Seldom gave -his mother cause for anxiety, glutted her maternal pride with his -achievements at school, and yet she never quite overcame the feeling -that he was an interloper in her family. There were three years of -immunity, and then came Robert, the child whom everybody else regarded -as a stray. But Lavinia saw in his thick black hair and virile body -the materialization of her contempt for David’s softness, as it had -perpetuated itself in her first son. - -There was nothing about Bob that was soft but his skin. And that was -another Trench anomaly. Between Lary’s curling blond locks and Bob’s -peach bloom complexion, Sylvia had a desperate time of it, before -the period of adolescence when her own sallow cheeks began to clear. -Those were the dim prehistoric days when, in Springdale, rouge and lip -sticks carried all the sinister implication which had attached, in the -Bromfield of Lavinia’s day, to the suggested idea that a “nice” girl -wanted to marry. There was implicit in each the stigma of the wanton, -and Lavinia had taught her children that, before all else, they must -be respectable. Her own powder box was closely guarded, its existence -denied with oaths that would have condemned a less righteous soul to -perdition. - -After David removed to Springdale, as junior member of the firm that -had the contract for two new buildings on the college campus, and Vine -Cottage had been erected beyond the residence district of the town, -three other babies arrived--at perfectly decent intervals. They were -all girls. Isabel, like Lary, was given an unequivocal Larimore name, -because she was so exactly like her father. She was four years younger -than Bob, and the death of these two made a strange break in the family -continuity. Mrs. Ascott heard about the Trench children in a manner at -once vivid and enlightening. - - -III - -It was the ninth day of her tenancy at Vine Cottage, and she and Dr. -Schubert were already old friends. With the exception of a reference -to Eileen, whom the quality rather than the content of his allusion -marked as his favourite, he had studiously avoided any comment on -the Trenches that would serve to divert the free flow of her own -sensitive perception. Larimore and Sydney Schubert were of about the -same age--had been intimate friends from boyhood. Syd’s affection for -Lary, at one period of his youth, had overflowed and engulfed Sylvia. -But Mrs. Trench had set her face sternly against any such alliance. -“The obstacle seems to have been that intangible thing, a discrepancy -in age--on the wrong side of the ledger,” the physician explained. -“_There_ is one woman,” he stressed the first word extravagantly, his -eyes twinkling, “who has the whole scheme of life crystallized. With -most of us, certain problems remain fluid. Mrs. Trench _knows_. The -eternal verities don’t admit of argument. My boy was only a medical -student when he went mooning after Sylvia, but his prospects were -good. If he had been born the day before--instead of lagging a stupid -sixteen months after the girl--it would have been all right for her to -wait ten years for him. As it was, he simply wouldn’t do. Mrs. Trench -objected to Walter Marksley on entirely different grounds. Mrs. Trench -is strong for the moral code, and Walter kept a fairly luxuriant crop -of wild oats in his front yard.... But my dear, my dear, I’m developing -the garrulity that is a sure harbinger of old age. Don’t let a word -I’ve been saying serve to bias you in your estimate of your landlady. I -assure you, she’s a trump.” - - -IV - -Judith reflected, on the way home that morning, that if she wanted to -get on with Mrs. Trench, she must guard her own questionable past with -double zeal. It came to her, with a curious feeling of separation, -that she might care what Mrs. Trench thought. The concept was a -new one, and she inspected it with interest. But then ... she had -been so desperately lonely, so remote from everything she had known -in the past. And she was, as Griff Ramsay suggested, a gregarious -animal--recognizing only in its absence her need of the herd. For the -sake of Griff and Laura she would endure her exile to the end, and she -was, it seemed, dependent on the morally austere woman in the great -Colonial house for such human contact as Springdale might offer--human -contact which for the first time in her life she craved with poignant -longing. - -Nanny met her at the door, her face red with laughter, her ample sides -shaking. There had been a gravel fight between Jeff Dutton and one of -the Trench children. It appeared to be one of the regular institutions -of Vine Cottage. - -“You must hurry with your luncheon, Miss Judith, so as not to miss the -next round. The little girl was furious. She said Dutton muffed his -play, and that was against the rules. She’s coming back to settle with -him.” - -Nanny had prepared an unusually tempting repast, in the tiny breakfast -room that looked out, with many windows, on the stretch of lawn -that separated the two houses, on the little wicket gate in the low -stone wall, and the ample kitchen garden beyond the wall, brown and -scarred with the first spring spading. The lonely woman viewed, with -chill apprehension, the imposing façade of the house, the crisp -white curtains that served, with their thin opacity, to conceal all -the activity of the Trench home life. A sugar-coated sphinx, that -house, guarding its secret soul with a subtle reticence that belied -its seeming candour. Larimore Trench had drawn the plans for the new -home. Was he that sort of man--or was this another expression of the -ubiquitous Lavinia, whom Dutton had characterized as “running the hull -ranch”? - -There was a commotion in the hall that led from the kitchen to the -breakfast room, and Nanny opened the door. She was plainly perplexed. -Miss Judith was still a child to her, but she was too instinctively a -servant to venture upon the prerogative of her mistress. - -“You let me by,” a shrill voice piped. “I’m going to tell her, myself.” - -The housekeeper yielded to a vicious pinch in the rotund cushion of her -thigh, and a small parcel of humanity slid adroitly into Mrs. Ascott’s -field of vision. Her head was set defiantly on one side, but the dark -eyes were inscrutable. A moment only she faltered, tucking in her long -under lip and shifting her slight bulk from one foot to the other. - -“I broke a window in your garage. It was Jeff’s fault. He had no -business ducking. How did he know I had a rock in that handful of -gravel? Just gravel wouldn’t have broken the window. I’m willing to -shoulder the blame, and pay for the glass out of my allowance--if -you’ll make Jeff put it in. I can swipe that much putty from my papa’s -shop. And--and don’t let Jeff Dutton snitch on me--to Lary.” - -She finished with an excited gasp, and stood awaiting the inevitable. - -“Come here, little girl. Don’t mind about the pane. Are you Eileen -Trench?” - -“Me? Mercy, no!” Astonishment dissolved into mirth, mirth that savoured -of derision. The next instant the laugh died and the high forehead was -puckered in a frown of swift displeasure. She came a step nearer, her -thin brown hand plucking at her skirt. “I shouldn’t have laughed that -way, as if you’d said something silly. It goes hard with me to say -I’m sorry--because--usually I’m not. I hate lying, just to be polite. -Eileen’ll take a lickin’ any day, before she’ll say she’s sorry. But -Sylvia says it’s better to apologize and be done with it. And I guess -it does save time.” - -The ideas appeared chaotic, as if the child were in the throes of a -mighty change in ethical standards. Judith looked at her, a whimsical -fancy taking possession of her mind that she was watching some -fantastic mime--that this was no flesh-and-blood child, but an owl -masquerading in wren’s attire. - -“My dear old doctor mentioned Sylvia and Lary and Eileen. Would you -mind telling me your name?” - -“Theodora.” - -“Theodora--the gift of God.” - -“Yes, and it was a rummy gift. Jeff Dutton says the Lord hung a lemon -on my mother’s Christmas tree. I was supposed to come a boy--there’d -been too many girls already--and they were going to name me after my -uncle Theodore. Jeff thinks I cried so much because I was disappointed -at being just a girl. I guess I cried, all right. My brother, Bob, -named me ‘Schubert’s Serenade’ because he and Lary had me ’neath their -casement every night till two o’clock. Mamma’s room was where your -library is now. I like this house lots better than ours.” - -“Do you remember this one? I thought the new house was built five years -ago.” - -Theodora turned questioning eyes upon her. Then, in a flash, she -understood. - -“Dear me, you have an idea I’m about six years old. Strangers always -do. I can’t help it that I never grow any bigger. I was twelve last -Christmas, and I’m first year Prep. It’s horrid to be so little. People -never have any respect for you. Eileen’s tall as a broom--but nobody -has much respect for her, either.” - -“Tell me about Eileen. Dr. Schubert is fond of her, I believe.” - -“Yes, he sees good in her. He’s about the only one who does. She was -sixteen last Sunday, and she’s third year Prep. Goes into college next -fall, if she don’t flunk again. She’s getting too big for mamma’s -slipper, and I don’t know what is going to become of her. She’s been -ugly as sin, ever since mamma heard a Chautauqua lecturer say you had -to go in for technique. You know, Eileen plays the violin. And when -mamma shuts her up and makes her practice--she gets even by making her -fiddle swear. It says ‘hell’ and ‘damn’ and some worse ones, just as -plain. And when she’s mad, her eyes get as yellow as cat’s eyes. You -never saw yellow eyes, did you?” - -“My own look that way, at times--when I’m ill or out of sorts.” - -“But they’re the loveliest--like gray violets!” She looked deep into -Mrs. Ascott’s eyes, and her own kindled with admiration. “Dr. Schubert -told us yours were like Lary’s. But they aren’t, a bit. His are light -brown. That barely saves him from being a Trench.” - -Manifestly Lavinia had impressed on her family the advantage of looking -like the Larimores. And yet, Judith thought she had never seen a finer -looking man than David Trench--not so well groomed as his son, and with -the gait of a man perennially tired, but with a face that Fra Angelico -would have loved to paint. - - -V - -When the elfin child had gone, in response to the ringing of a great -bell on the distant campus, Mrs. Ascott sat a long while in smiling -silence. Not in years had she been so entertained. Bit by bit she -added the child’s revelations to the broken comments of her garrulous -gardener. The Duttons had been neighbours of the Trenches in Olive -Hill, when Jeff and Dave were fellow workmen, and before Jeff’s baleful -visit to the “Jag Institoot” that robbed him of his prowess as a brick -mason, along with the appetite for undiluted whiskey. Mrs. Dutton -“wasn’t very friendly” because her fortunes had declined until she -was compelled to serve as laundress and house-maid to Mrs. Trench’s -tenants. But there was a time when she and her husband were glad of -a refuge in the rooms above the garage. This small brick structure, -it transpired, had been David’s work shop, and here Lary had made his -first architectural drawings. - -Theodora’s prattle fairly bristled with Lary. Whatever his mother might -think of him, in his little sister’s eyes he was the one flawless -being. It was he who had supervised the furnishing of Vine Cottage, -for a certain Professor Ferguson, a testy little Scot in charge of -the department of biology at the college. And Lary and his mother had -almost broken heads over some of the details. - -Everything about the house was exquisite. Judith thought she knew what -Lary would be like--the man who could limit himself to a single dull -blue and yellow vase for the library mantel. The external appearance -of the cottage had promised fustian ... the fish-scale ornament above -the bay-window, the elaborate carvings between the veranda pillars, the -somewhat fussy pergola that covered the gravel walk from the kitchen to -the garage. - -Bare vines were everywhere, swelling with sap and viridescent with -eager buds that strove with their armour of winter scales, although it -was not yet the end of March. Beds of narcissus and tulips gave promise -of early bloom, and already the yellow and white crocus blossoms were -starring the withered bluegrass of the front lawns. There was an -unwritten law that the lattice which screened the vegetable garden must -never carry anything but cypress and Japanese morning glories, and -that potatoes must be planted east of the pergola. There were other -unwritten “musts” that came to light, day by day, all of them having -to do with the garden, over which apparently Mrs. Trench had retained -control. - -“But, Lordee, you don’t have to pay no attention to her,” Dutton -sniffed, when a rather arbitrary ruling was undergoing vicarious -transmission. “Treat her like Ferguson did, the fust time she butted -in. It’s _your_ house.” - -Between Dutton and Theodora, it would not be long until all the -Trench skeletons had been dragged from their closets and set dancing -in hilarious abandon, for the amusement of the new tenant. They were -not real people, the Duttons and the Trenches, with their unfamiliar -life-experience. She had never envisaged anyone like them. It was all -a part of the dream she had cherished--a place she had never heard of, -where she could lose herself ... and forget.... - - - - -VII Lavinia Pays a Call - - -I - -In the pigeonholes of her memory, Mrs. Ascott had stowed a collection -of unanswered questions, neatly tabulated and reserved for possible -solution. Why had her marriage with Raoul been the inevitable failure -she knew it must be, almost from the beginning? Would they have found -each other if there had been children? Would her own life have been -more satisfactory, had her mother married for love and not for social -position? And now she added another, trivial as compared with these, -yet quite as elusive: Would Mrs. Trench have waited the prescribed -two weeks for a first call on a new neighbour, had her small daughter -failed to report the broken window--and other things? - -Whatever the answer, the stubborn fact remained that Mrs. David -Trench did call, on Friday afternoon. She left a correctly engraved -card on the vestibule table, and sat erect on the edge of her chair. -She wore an austere tailored suit, patent leather boots that called -attention to the trim shape of her feet, and a flesh-tinted veil of -fine silk net with flossy black dots. In the full light of the south -window, she might have passed for thirty-six. Barring a conspicuous -hardness of the mouth, her features were excellent. The hair that lay -in palpably artificial curls along the line of her velvet hat was as -black as it is possible for Caucasian hair to be, and the eyes were -coldly piercing--as if appraisal were their chief function. But her -speech.... Cloying sweetness trickled through her words, as she assured -her tenant that they were destined to be friends. She would come and -care for Mrs. Ascott if she should fall ill--so far from home and -mother. She was a famous nurse. Dr. Schubert would bear her witness. -Her heart ached as she thought how desolate must be the life of a young -widow. - -“Yet,” she added, “it is an enviable state, after all--when one has -passed the first shock of grief. Like everything in life, it has its -compensations. You don’t have to bother with a man, and there is no -danger of your being an old maid.” She pronounced the last words as -if she were referring to the plague or small-pox. “The West must look -strange to you,” she hurried on, “a little town, too, after spending -all your life in New York and the great cities of Europe.” - -“I have spent very little time in New York,” her tenant corrected. -“When I was married I went to Philadelphia to live--such time as we -were not travelling. And I was scarcely away from Rochester until I was -fifteen.” - -“Rochester! You don’t tell me! We went to Rochester for shopping and -the theatre, as people in Springdale go to St. Louis. What a little -world it is, after all. Did you ever hear of a town called Bromfield?” - -Judith searched her memory. At last she had it. She had driven to that -village more than once with her grandfather, Dr. Holden. She recalled -one visit, when the sleigh was insecurely anchored in front of a house -on Main Street, while she curled up for a nap in the great fur robes -on the seat. The horse, arriving at the mental state which demanded -dinner, before the physician was ready to leave the house, had untied -the hitching strap and cantered unconcernedly to the livery stable -where he was in the habit of being fed. - -“You don’t mean that you were the little girl in the sleigh!” Mrs. -Trench’s eyes were scintillating with astonished interest. “I’ll show -you the account of it--in the Bromfield Sentinel. I have a complete -file of the little home paper. And it will surprise you to know that -the man your grandfather was calling on was Robert Larimore, my father. -He died of brain hemorrhage, that same night. All the Larimores go that -way--suddenly. Dr. Holden was called, when my father’s mother died, but -it was all over before the telegram reached him. And your grandmother -... she must have been the Mrs. Holden who did so much work among the -poor.” - -“Yes, my parents left Rochester to escape from her pets. That, of -course, is only a family joke. My father spent a good many years in -South America, and I was left with my grandparents. One of my brothers -was born in Bolivia and the other in the Argentine. I didn’t see them -until they were six and ten years old.” - -Mrs. Trench was not listening. Should she ... or should she not? In the -end, she did. “Mrs. Ascott, I know it sounds like a foolish question--a -city the size of Rochester--but you said a moment ago that as a child -you knew everybody. Did you ever hear of a family named Fournier?” - -“The people who kept the delicatessen, around the corner from my -grandfather’s private sanitarium? Yes, I knew them well.” - -“Was there a daughter--Lettie or Arletta--some such name? She’d be a -woman of about forty-five by this time, I should think.” - -“No, she was the niece, a wild, highstrung girl who gave them a good -deal of trouble. She ran away and was married, at sixteen--some -worthless fellow from up-state, who afterward tried to get out of it.” - -“Worthless?” Mrs. Trench bristled unaccountably. - -“That was the way Lettie’s people regarded him. Their little boy and -I played together, as children. My grandmother took a lively interest -in Lettie, as she did in all wayward girls who found no sympathy at -home. I remember she devoted a good deal of her time to the patching up -of quarrels between Lettie and her husband--and keeping peace in the -family, when he was in Rochester with them.” - -“Was there anything--peculiar--about their marriage?” - -“Lettie was romantic. I believe that was all. It happened before I -was born; but I remember that there was always talk. Grandma Holden -compelled her to confess her marriage, to save her good name. And -the foolish part of it was that she and the youth were married under -assumed names--” - -“The boy--how old is he?” - -“By a very amusing coincidence, I happen to know that, too. I couldn’t -tell you the ages of my brothers, with any degree of certainty. But -Fournier Stone and I were born the same night, in adjoining rooms of -Dr. Holden’s sanitarium. He arrived early in the evening, and I a -little before dawn. By that much I escaped the ‘April Fool’ that was so -offensive to him. I shall be twenty-seven next Friday.” - -Mrs. Trench made swift mental calculation, and her stiffly pursed lips -uttered one inexplicable sentence: - -“Thank God, my people have always been respectable.” - - -II - -Lavinia went home, her whole being in turmoil. She had not seen -Bromfield since the day when she and David packed their scant -belongings and turned to seek oblivion or happiness in Olive Hill. With -the exception of the Sentinel and her sister-in-law’s verbose letters, -she knew little of the course of events in that quiet back-water that -had environed her stagnant girlhood. And Ellen left large gaps in the -village news, gaps that could be filled, inadequately, by inference or -imagination. That Calvin had a child, this much she knew. That he had -spent most of his time in Rochester, prior to his father’s long illness -and death, this, too, had been conveyed to her by a random personal -notice now and then. But that he and Lettie had gotten on badly--had -quarreled.... Cruel joy burned in her eyes. They had had recourse -to the neighbours, to smooth out their family affairs. Whatever -unpleasantness she had had, within the four walls of her own home, -none of the neighbours had been permitted to suspect that her life was -not all she wished it to be. The neighbours. What kind of woman was -Mrs. Stone, that she would.... But Lavinia knew, at last, what kind of -woman Mrs. Stone was. She reflected that Lettie’s marriage certificate -probably had not been framed in gold, as hers was, and conspicuously -displayed on the wall of her bedroom. The past ten years, the Stones -had prospered, and Calvin had succeeded his father as president of the -bank. Ellen and Lettie were on calling terms. She would write Ellen.... - -In memory she went back to the days when Vine Cottage was new, when -to her fell the task of choosing a line of social progress in the -clique-ridden town of Springdale. She had three small children, ample -excuse for a little dalliance. And the cottage, with two hundred feet -of ground to be transformed into a marvellous garden, was a little way -out--a double reason for delay, when David urged her to return the -calls of the Eastern Star ladies, who had been most gracious. “I don’t -want to make any mistake,” she told him. “If you once get in with the -wrong set....” David didn’t know what she meant. - - -III - -Society in Springdale, such society as counted for anything, was -divided by a clearly marked line of cleavage, with Mrs. Henry Marksley -dominating one stratum and Mrs. Thomas Henderson the other. The -Hendersons were leaders in the intellectual life of the community and -staunch pillars in the Presbyterian church. Lavinia was glad that David -had been brought up a Presbyterian--or rather, that that happened to -be the fashionable church in Springdale. When it came to matters of -principle, it was not easy to manipulate David. - -The Marksleys seldom went to church. On the other hand, Mr. Marksley -stood ready with three contracts, before David had finished the work -on the campus, contracts which enabled him to reap the benefit of -his labour, instead of delivering two-thirds of the profits into the -hand of the senior partner. Mrs. Marksley was particularly anxious -to rally to her standard the best looking and aggressive young women -of the town. She was trying to live down the latest escapades of her -husband and her eldest daughter, Adelaide. Such a woman as Mrs. David -Trench would be of service to her--and she could make the association -correspondingly profitable. But at the psychological moment Mrs. -Marksley went into temporary social exile, ceasing all activity until -after the birth of a son. The hiatus, together with certain whispered -stories concerning Adelaide, drove Lavinia to Mrs. Henderson and the -Browning Club. It was a step she never regretted. Within a year she -was able to send to the Bromfield Sentinel an account of a spirited -business meeting, at which “young Mrs. Trench” had been elected -secretary, over the heads of two rival candidates whose husbands were -in the college faculty. Mrs. Henderson was perpetual president, and -membership in the club gave just the right intellectual and cultural -stamp. - -Years afterward, Tom Henderson and Walter Marksley began an exciting -race for Sylvia’s favour--courtship that came to nothing, as all -Sylvia’s courtship did. And now, the boy whose advent had settled, -once and for all, Mrs. Trench’s social destiny, was playing around -with Eileen, taking her to and from school in his car and ruining her -digestion with parfait and divinity. David and Larimore--to his mother -he was always Larimore, never Lary--had set their faces stubbornly -against this flattering attachment. There had been no scandal in the -Marksley family in recent years, and no other objection that a sensible -person could name. But how to persuade them.... Mrs. Ascott! To be -sure. It was providential that she had come to Springdale at such an -opportune time. She would see things in their true light--being a woman -of the world. If only Larimore could be induced to call on her. She -was--m-m-m, yes, nineteen months older than Larimore. That made it -safe. A young widow.... But Larimore Trench had never been interested -in any woman. She would trump up some reason for sending him over, -that very evening. She must have Mrs. Ascott’s assistance. Eileen’s -future--her own future, for reasons as yet but dimly apprehended--was -at stake. - - -IV - -But Theodora spared her the trouble. Judith was finishing her lonely -dinner when the telephone rang. “I’m bringing my brother over to see -you. I told him you wanted some changes made in the living-room.” In -a muffled whisper she added: “Of course you didn’t; but I’ll explain. -We’ll be there in a minute.” Before she could reply, the receiver had -clicked into its hook, and the two were seen emerging from the house. - -“Mrs. Ascott, this is Lary. It’s the lamp shade, the one on the newel -post--you know--that’s the colour of ripe apricots.” - -She darted from the vestibule into the wide living-room, from which a -stairway ascended to the floor above, and turned on the light, although -the day was not yet gone. - -“You don’t like it?” Larimore Trench, asked. “This colour scheme, I -know, is a bit personal.” - -“Why, child, when did I say such a thing? I don’t recall discussing the -lamp shade with you.” - -“I didn’t exactly tell him you said that you objected to it. I said I -_thought_ you did. You see, mamma told us at dinner that you agreed -with her in everything. And she has always said that for this room the -lamp shade must be rose pink.” - -“I’m sorry to disagree with your mother, but I should not like rose -pink.” - -“Mrs. Ascott,” Lary began, his clear brown eyes mock-serious, “I must -warn you that Miss Theodora Trench is a conscienceless little fibber. -It isn’t her only fault, but it is her most serious one.” - -“Lary! To think of _you_--giving me a black eye, right before Lady -Judith! When I haven’t had a chance to make good with her. If mamma or -Eileen.... But _you_!” - -“I couldn’t make either of them any blacker than they already are, -dearie. And I didn’t mean to humiliate you. But you mustn’t begin by -fibbing to Mrs. Ascott.” - -She hung her head, crimson blotches staining the sallow cheeks. After -a moment she looked up, and the angry fire had been extinguished by -shining tears. - -“I guess it’s better this way. Now Lady Judith knows what kind of a -family we are. You can’t get disappointed in people if you know the -worst of them first.” - - -V - -It transpired that within the Trench home the new tenant had already -been established as “Lady Judith,” a name which Theodora afterward -explained, with documentary and graphic evidence to substantiate her -none too credible word. A long time ago Lary had given her a book of -fairy tales, the heroine of which was Lady Judith Dinglewood--beloved -of all the bold knights, but destined for the favour of the king’s son. -Lary had adorned the title-page with a miniature of the beautiful lady, -and had added a colophon showing her in the robes of a royal bride. -Theodora could recite every word of the romantic tale before she was -old enough to read. She had gone to sleep with that book in her arms, -as Sylvia had insisted on taking her best wax doll to bed. The moment -she espied the name, Judith Ascott, on the lease that Griffith Ramsay -had signed, she decided that her Lady Judith had come true. - -It mattered little that the new occupant of the name bore not the -slightest resemblance to the two little water colour drawings. Lary -could paint a new Lady Judith, now that he knew what she really looked -like. It was not his fault that he had made the eyes black. He had to -do that, to appease mamma and Sylvia--whose standards of beauty were -rigidly fixed. But eyes that could be blue or grey, or flecked with -brown, as they were this evening.... How much more interesting than -eyes that were always the same colour! The hair, in that new picture -which Lary must paint, would be pale chestnut, with golden glints where -the light fell on it. And the mouth--the sweetest mouth! She told Lary -about it as they went home, through the close dark of a wonderful -spring night. Had he noticed Mrs. Ascott’s mouth? He had. - - - - -VIII Hal Marksley Intrudes - - -I - -April brought a break in the stolid serenity of Elm Street. The big -house across from the Trench property began to manifest signs of -awakening life. For almost a year it had stood vacant, with only a -caretaker to guard it against the depredations of Springdale’s budding -youth. Paint and pruning shears had scarcely achieved the miracle of -external transformation when a consignment of furniture arrived, via -the Oriental express and San Francisco. This much Theodora discovered -as she risked her fragile bones among the packing cases in the -reception hall. She had contrived to make out four letters, N-I-M-S, in -great smears of glossy black ink on several of the boxes. That hardly -sounded like a name. - -“Mamma says it will be time enough to find out about them when -they move in,” she complained to Mrs. Ascott. “I heard her ask the -agent--and she was mad as hops when he refused to tell her.” - -“Delightfully mysterious, Theo. Perhaps some European monarch has grown -tired of his crown, and is coming to live across the street from us.” - -“Maybe it’s the Emperor of China. I saw the loveliest great red -dragon--where one of the cases had broken open and the burlap was torn -off. Oh--” in sudden fright, “don’t let Lary know I pried.” - -She had perceived her brother’s approach, by some subtle sense that -bound them. He and Eileen were crossing the lawn with noiseless steps -and Theodora’s back was turned. When they reached the front gate, Mrs. -Ascott gave greeting: - -“What does one do in Springdale, these glorious spring evenings?” - -“One goes to the show, if one has an amiable brother.” To Eileen’s -suggestion, Larimore added: “Won’t you come along, Mrs. Ascott? -Vaudeville and pictures--not much of an attraction; but it might amuse -you. My mother is entertaining the ladies of the missionary society -this evening, and she doesn’t want us around.” - -“Yes,” Theodora added, “and Mrs. Stevens is coming. She and Eileen -don’t speak, since the ‘ossified episode.’ You know, Lady Judith, -that’s all that saved you from being invited to join the Self Culture -Club. Mamma belongs. She was one of the charter members--reads the -magazine, like it was the Bible--and she meant it for a compliment to -offer your name for membership. But Mrs. Stevens was so furious at -Eileen that she tabled all the names mamma submitted.” - -“You wouldn’t have gone in for that rubbish anyway,” Eileen defended -herself. “Mrs. Stevens makes me tired. She hasn’t a thing in her -library but reference works. And mamma holds her up to Theo and me as -a bright example. Tells us that we can’t expect to get culture unless -we look things up. Ina Stevens does that, and she has facts hanging all -over her. She’s as prissy as her mother.” - -“But what was the ‘ossified episode’?” Judith asked, recognizing one -of Larimore Trench’s expressions, wherewith Theodora’s speech was -frequently adorned. - -“Humph, I got caught on the word, in rhetoric class. Thought it meant -something about kissing, and the whole class hooted at me. Ina was -at home, sick, that day, and Theo and I went over in the evening to -take her credit card. Her marks were loads better’n mine, and Mrs. -Stevens swelled up so about it that I couldn’t help telling her that my -grandfather was expected to die, because all his bones had ossified. -And, Mrs. Ascott, both of them--Ina and her mother--fell for it. Mrs. -Stevens said it was a dreadful disease, but she had known one old -lady who lived three years in that condition. I looked blank as a -grindstone; but Theo had to go and snigger. And after we went home, -Mrs. Stevens looked it up--and ’phoned mamma that I had to apologize, -or she wouldn’t let Ina chum with me any more. I don’t care. I like -Kitten Henderson best, any way.” - -She turned to look anxiously up the street, as if she were more than -half expecting some one, while Judith went into the house to get her -hat. - - -II - -The performance had been going on for an hour when the four entered the -theatre, groping their way down the dark aisle to a row of unoccupied -seats at the left side. The stage was being set for a troupe of -Japanese tumblers, and the interval was bridged by news films and an -animated cartoon. To Judith this form of entertainment was new. Raoul -could tolerate nothing but the sprightliest comedy. With the Ramsays -and Herbert Faulkner she had tried to find surcease in grand opera and -the symphony. Once in London she and her mother had taken refuge from -the rain in a cinema theatre where, on a wide screen, a company of fat -French women chased a terrified little man--who had loved not wisely -but too often--through the familiar streets of the Latin Quarter, -overturning flower stands and vegetable carts, falling in scrambled -heaps that writhed with a brave showing of lingerie, untangling -themselves and scampering to fresh disaster, when they discovered that -the object of their jealous rage had somehow slipped unhurt from the -mass. Mrs. Denslow was disgusted. Judith was only bored. - -But this bit of screen craft was different. On an expanse of dazzling -white a single black dot appeared, paused a breathless moment and went -tripping about in a zigzag dance, spilling smaller dots as it went. -These resolved themselves into figures that stalked about with the -jerky motion of automata. A ghostly hand passed over the picture, and -it stood revealed a plenum of regularly arranged dots. With another -wave of the wraithlike hand, the dots began to move slowly to and -fro, advancing and retreating until they assumed the outlines of a -great picture, “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” Other pictures were -produced by means of those same dots. But Mrs. Ascott, who had never -before watched the vibrant changes of an animated cartoon, found it -necessary to close her eyes to relieve the strain. And then ... some -one was leaning over her shoulder, heavy with the odour of a spent -cigar, and a full, authoritative voice was saying: - -“Come on, Eileen. The whole bunch is down in front. Ina and Jimmy are -there, and Kitten and Dan.” - -“Hal Marksley, if you can’t come to the house for me--” the girl said -petulantly, but she stepped to the seat of her chair and vaulted nimbly -over the back. Theodora moved to the vacant place beside her. Lady -Judith and the play went on. - - -III - -At the gate, Lary kissed his little sister and sent her home, going -into the house with Mrs. Ascott. There was no need of so much as a nod -to assure him that the evening was not yet finished. She wanted to ask -him about Dr. Schubert--the tragedy that had mellowed and sweetened -him. But the revelation would come in due time. Instead, she demanded -to know the significance of Indian Summer. Only that morning the old -physician had remarked--when she told him of Dutton’s warning--“We hop -from snow to sweat, out here in Illinois,”--that one could endure the -heat if one kept constantly in mind that after frost there would be -Indian Summer. - -Indian Summer. She had read a sentimental essay, years ago.... -April--the arrogant, reckless abundance of Youth. August--the -passionate heat of Love. October--the killing frost of Sorrow. And -after that, the golden peace of Indian Summer. In her part of the world -there was no such division of seasons. Yet the figures had attached -themselves to the walls of her memory by tenacious tentacles. For her -there had been neither sorrow nor peace ... just the bald monotony -of a life that had been regulated by the artificial standards of her -mother or her husband. She was so deadly tired of it all. And her -work at the laboratory had not proved absorbing. It was too easy ... -the copying of formulæ and an occasional hand at an experiment that -might be dangerous. But she knew that none of them would be dangerous. -Dr. Schubert was too cautious to permit her even that zest. Sydney -Schubert, the son, who specialized in diseases of children, she hardly -knew. An epidemic of scarlet fever was raging in the mining towns of -Sutton and Olive Hill, and he was away from home most of the time. - -“In order to appreciate Syd, you must know the tragedy of his boyhood,” -Lary began. “It was more terrible for his parents, of course. But to a -sensitive boy who had an instinctive love of beauty--quite aside from -his natural devotion to his mother.... Mrs. Schubert was without doubt -the most beautiful woman either of us had ever seen. Not the type my -mother admires. And it may not have been the kind that would last. She -was too fair and exquisite.” - -“And she died, while the bloom was still fresh?” Judith asked. - -“No, she lived eight years. We never knew how the thing happened ... -a breeze that ruffled her clothing too close to the grate, or it may -have been that her veil caught fire from an exposed gas flame. She -was dressed to go out, and was waiting for the doctor in the great -hall of their house, when she discovered that her clothing was ablaze. -She wrapped herself in a carriage robe that happened to be lying on -the settle; but she was horribly burned. One side of her face was -disfigured beyond recognition. Fortunately the eyes were saved. It was -after her recovery that Dr. Schubert had the pipe organ installed in -the hall, to occupy her time, for she never went out, and at home she -always covered her scars with a veil of white chiffon. Syd and Bob and -I took turns at pumping the organ for her, before the days of electric -motors, and she taught all of us music. One afternoon, three years ago, -they found her at the organ ... her head resting on the upper manual. -They thought at first she was asleep.” - -“I’m glad she went that way,” Judith said, her throat tight with -emotion. - -Lary might have resumed, but he was arrested by boisterous laughter, -out on the street. Eileen and her friends were going by, and young -Marksley was saying, with a good-natured sneer: “Cornell--nix on -Cornell for mine. The kid and I have this college business all doped -out. She’s going to cut this little Presbyterian joint, next fall, and -we’re both going to Valparaiso University. Greatest college on earth! -Place where they teach you to dissolve the insoluble, to transmute the -immutable and unscrew the inscrutable. I’m going to take commercial -law, and Eileen can go on with her music....” The voices died away, as -the group turned the corner beyond Vine Cottage. - -“I wish my sister wouldn’t--” Lary checked himself, colouring. - -“I shouldn’t take it too seriously. Such school boy and girl affairs -seldom come to anything. Eileen’s a stubborn child. I wouldn’t oppose -her ... openly.” - - -IV - -It proved a mistake, letting Eileen go away with Hal and the others. -At midnight she tried to let herself in noiselessly at the side door, -found it unaccountably locked, and was forced to ring the bell. -There was a scene at the breakfast table, reported to Mrs. Ascott by -Theodora, with dramatic touches. Scenes were not uncommon, but this one -was different. It developed along unexpected lines. No one had taken -into account the possibility of Mrs. Trench as a bulwark of defence -for Eileen. But that wary ally was not wont to fight in the open. She -was so accustomed to storming the postern gate, that she was likely -to creep around to the rear of her objective, when the front portal -stood open, undefended. This morning she had for subterfuge the highly -practical business advantage of cultivating Hal Marksley’s friendship. -Hal’s father, as the whole town knew, was preparing to build a palatial -mansion in the parklike addition he had recently laid out, at the -western limit of Springdale’s residential section. Six architects had -been invited to compete for the plans. It was important that Larimore -Trench be the victor. This would place the contract for construction -automatically in David’s hands. But David and Lary wanted to eliminate -themselves from the competition, and admonish Hal that it would be -advisable for him to take his affection elsewhere. At this, Lavinia -forgot her prudence--delivered a direct assault on her husband, which -might have been but an echo of the thing she had been saying to him at -regular intervals for twenty-eight years: - -“Yes, and you’d insult Hal--spoil Eileen’s chance, _the way my father -spoiled mine_--just because a young man has money and knows how to -show a girl a good time! I don’t intend to go through another such -experience as I had with Sylvia.” - -The reference to Sylvia was beside the mark. She had not intended to -betray her eagerness for an early marriage for her second daughter. - - - - -IX News From Bromfield - - -I - -Lavinia was finding her tenant increasingly useful--the wicket gate -an open sesame to many of the difficult problems for which she had -been wont to search in vain the pages of the Self Culture Magazine. -A development watched by her son with incredulous wonder. Hitherto -Lavinia Trench had believed nothing that was conveyed to her by word of -mouth. “She’s a pure visuel,” Dr. Schubert had sought to explain. “She -gets her mental concepts through her eyes.” But Lary knew that that -was not all of it. His mother held an enormous respect for the printed -word. She wanted one of her sons to be a writer. That would reflect -real credit on the family. Her own inability to form fluid sentences -only increased her admiration for those unseen masters whose thoughts -and experiences had received the accolade of printer’s ink. True, -she had many times appeared over her own signature, in the clumsily -edited columns of the Bromfield Sentinel--when there was a chance to -weave into the story some reference to Larimore’s triumphs at Cornell, -Sylvia’s social conquests or Bob’s athletic achievements. But to get -things published ... and paid for.... This last comment always sent -Lary flying from the room. She would probably not take any stock in -the things he wrote, even if she read them in print. They were so at -variance with all her established convictions. - -On a certain Thursday morning she made occasion to call on Mrs. -Ascott, the newly arrived copy of the Sentinel in her hand. Her dark -sallow cheeks showed hectic splotches, and her eyes flared and dimmed -with the emotion she was trying to conceal. She had not written the -story on the front page of the Bromfield paper. Her fancy’s most -ingenious flight could not have fabricated anything one half so ... -gratifying. So terrible, she amended, to her own soul. But the real, -the usually submerged Lavinia, knew that the former word was the right -one. - -“You remember the boy, Fournier Stone, that you used to play with when -you were a little girl in Rochester,” she began tensely. “Read that.” - -The story was told with all the crass vulgarity and offensiveness of -small town journalism. The bank examiner had paid an unexpected visit -to the Bromfield National bank--because of certain stories that had -been circulated concerning young Stone’s extravagance in Rochester and -Buffalo. It was found that a large gap between the bank’s records and -the actual cash on hand had been bridged by spurious paper that implied -the additional crime of forgery. This, it transpired, was not Fournier -Stone’s first offence. In the past he had fled to his mother for -assistance; but now Mrs. Stone was critically ill, and he had not dared -to tell her of his dilemma. - -“To think of a mother shielding her son in such rascality!” to which -Lavinia added, with snapping satisfaction, “But what could you expect -of such a mother?” - -The account closed with the statement that Mrs. Stone had suffered a -relapse, because of the shock of her son’s arrest, and for several -hours her life was despaired of. The culprit was released, under heavy -bond, and was constantly at his mother’s bedside. - - -II - -Saturday brought a letter from Ellen Larimore, with further details. -Fournier Stone had disappeared--walked out of the house, in the clothes -of one of the servants, right past the secret service man who was there -to trap him. It was thought that he had gone to Canada. His mother was -in a desperate condition. “Of course,” Ellen added, “we don’t know a -thing for certain. I talked to Calvin this morning, and the poor man -is distracted. But most people here think he might have set the boy a -better example. I never forgot the day you told me it was too risky to -marry a man who drank and gambled. What if it was Larimore that was -a fugitive from justice! Aren’t you thankful that you married David -instead of Calvin? I’ve had an idea for a long time that you got wind -of the affair with Lettie, and threw Calvin over, in a jealous huff. -Now I see your wisdom. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that when they -came to look up Fournier’s records, in Rochester, it came out that he -is six months older than we thought he was. There are a lot of things -about Calvin Stone’s marriage that some of us older people would like -to find out about.” Lavinia set her teeth hard, and a yellow pallor -replaced the flush of indignant pleasure that had accompanied the -reading of the letter ... up to this point. She had intended to show -the letter to David; but when she came to the mention of her wisdom in -the choice of a husband, she wavered. That last sentence brought her to -an abrupt decision. She burned the letter--and repeated such parts of -it as would fit in with a half formed plan in her own mind. - -David was profoundly sorry for the Stones. Their misfortunes helped -to ease the pain in his own heart, a pain that had never been lulled -since the black day when Bob Trench’s dripping body was taken from the -river. It was his mother who had urged him to compete for one more -trophy at the annual college field meet. To David it seemed that his -wife cared more for Bob’s ribbons and foolish little silver cups than -for all Lary’s scholarships and medals. He had never connected these -spectacular mementoes with the boastings in the Bromfield Sentinel, and -their possible effect on certain of the old friends, whose children had -not distinguished themselves. Providence, it now appeared, had been -kind in the untimely taking off of his son. Such disgrace as Fournier -Stone had brought upon his parents would be harder to bear. In David’s -limited vocabulary respectability had no place. But principle loomed -large. It was the thing Fournier Stone had done, not the newspaper -account of it, that mattered. - - - - -X Eileen Seeks Counsel - - -I - -Mrs. Ascott went out into the garden after breakfast to watch the -transfer of tomato plants from the cold frames beside the garage to -the loamy bed that bordered the west wall. Dutton had explained to her -that nothing would thrive against the high board fence that shut the -grounds from the street, at the east side of the garden--on account of -the afternoon sun--and that these tomatoes would grow six feet high and -would disport their fruit above the stone wall ... if the suckers were -kept picked off. She wondered what suckers were, and how the afternoon -sun had acquired such a sinister reputation. - -She had not slept, and the April air was cool and refreshing. Mamma and -the boys were safely installed in a Paris apartment. Papa had closed -the big house at Pelham, taking two of the best trained servants with -him to the city establishment on Riverside Drive, and was happily -engrossed in the Wall Street fight for further millions--secure from -the annoyance of family intrusion. She had several letters and one -cablegram. How remote it all seemed, how like the hazy memory of -another existence! Two months ago she was trying to forget Raoul, his -amiable as well as his maddeningly offensive side. Now she seldom -thought of him at all. His personality had lost its definite line and -mass. Even his form was growing nebulous. She could not remember what -it was that he particularly disliked for breakfast ... and whether he -was growing alarmingly stout or thin when he went away to Egypt with -Hilda Travers. - -It was strange that she should have forgotten. Her life with him had -been made up of just such things as these. She searched herself for an -explanation, as the gardener rambled on, his words scarce reaching her -consciousness. Slowly the imponderable thoughts assembled themselves, -fashioning for her a shadow picture of her remote childhood. She was -in the old kitchen at Rochester and her grandmother Holden was baking -cookies for the slum children. There on the marble slab lay the great -mass of yellow dough that so tempted her eager fingers. More than once -she had seized a breathless opportunity, while grandma’s back was -turned, to thrust an index finger far down into its golden softness. -And behold! The mass had come together, leaving scarce a trace of the -deep impression she had made. - -Was she as plastic as dough, and had her husband gone from her life -without leaving an impression? There must be something more ... -something that had not worked out with precision in their case. Did -not that same yielding substance take on the fairly permanent shapes -of lions and camels, dancing girls and roosters with arching tails? -Perhaps Raoul had neglected to bake the dough. Was she still an -impressionable girl, for all her tragic experience? - - -II - -The wicket gate opened and Eileen came towards her. The slim shoulders -drooped carelessly and there was a sullen look about the too voluptuous -mouth. Mrs. Ascott noticed for the first time that Eileen’s mouth was -like her mother’s. All the rest of her was, as Theodora put it, “pure, -unadulterated Trench” ... excepting, of course, the eyes, which were -amber or vicious yellow, according to her mood. Lary had his father’s -mouth; but had compromised with his mother on the question of eyes. -Lavinia abhorred compromises, albeit she had learned to accept them as -if they had been of her own choosing. - -The girl stood in rebellious indecision, a few feet from the tomato -bed. Then, as if she had made up her mind to do the thing ... and take -the consequences, she came swiftly forward, put an arm around Judith’s -waist and kissed her full on the mouth. It had been so long since -any one had kissed her! The lips were speaking now, the tone low and -vibrant with pleading. - -“You don’t mind, do you? If you only knew how I adore you! I have sat -at my window and watched you--and wondered about you--and wanted to -kiss you, till my mouth ached.” - -A thrill went through the woman’s usually tranquil body. Here was -passion, susceptibility, imagination. She had not dreamed of such -intensity in a girl so young. And this was the girl Larimore Trench had -begged her to influence, to mould into some shape of his choosing--a -shape that would be utterly displeasing to her mother. - -“Can you come into the house with me? It’s only a little after eight. -You won’t be late for chapel if you start at half-past.” - -“I’m in no hurry. Hal’s coming by for me with the car. He’ll be on the -campus five minutes before he started, if our old moth-eaten policeman -happens to be looking the other way. I framed up the best looking -excuse for a morning call ... and now I don’t need it. You invited me -in--just like that! It’s always the way. If I have my gun loaded, there -isn’t any bear.” - -“Did you think you needed a pretext?” - -“I couldn’t be sure. And with you ... it’s too important to take -chances. I’ve been feeling my way, ever since you came. I can’t go -dancing in, as Theo does. She is like mamma. You simply can’t snub that -kid.” - -The pretext was the revelation of the mystery-house across the way. Hal -had told her all about it, after they left Ina and Kitten and their -escorts. The owner of the carved dragon was Hal’s sister, Adelaide -Nims. There had been a former marriage, about the time of Hal’s birth, -a most unsavoury affair. Adelaide was seventeen at the time, and the -reluctant husband was the divorced partner of one of Henry Marksley’s -affinities. The Marksleys, père and mère, had been separated three -times. Eileen and Hal agreed that it was indecent for people who -despised each other to live together. Still, if his parents had not -made up that last time, there would have been no Hal. This would have -been calamity for Eileen. - -The present Mrs. Nims was little known in Springdale, having lived -abroad for almost twenty years. Her first husband, in Eileen’s piquant -phrase, “had chucked her” after a few months--as a man usually does -when he is dragooned into a distasteful marriage. There had been other -marriages, “without benefit of clergy,” the details of which were -suppressed in Springdale. Indeed coming to light only in connection -with a divorce or two wherein Adelaide had figured as the reprehensible -other woman. She had hair like polished mahogany and melting brown -eyes, a skin like the petals of a Victoria Regia, at dawn of the -morning after the lily’s opening, before the sun has tinged its creamy -white with the faint rose that is destined to run the colour gamut to -rich purplish red. She and Syd Schubert vied with each other in the -number of instruments they could play; but she had made her great -success with the ’cello, an instrument whose playing revealed to the -best possible advantage the slim sensual grace of her body. - -It was in a London music hall that Reginald Nims, younger son of a -peer, had fallen beneath the weight of her manifold charms and had -married her--to the dismay of his family. Eileen knew what she looked -like. Not from Hal’s description, but because Springdale had seen her -portrait. Just before she and her husband left England for China, they -had sent it home for safe keeping ... the magnificent portrait that -Sargent had painted. Mrs. Henderson gave a talk on it, in the reading -room of the college library. Red hair, coppery in the high lights, -eyes that would turn an anchorite from the path of duty, skin texture -that was unsurpassed in the far reach of Sargent’s marvellous texture -painting, a chiffon gown that reminded you of a cloud of flame-shot -smoke, and a bit of still-life that was definitely, though not -insistently, turquoise. - -“Mrs. Henderson said that when she read a description of the picture, -she supposed it was going to look like a Henner; but it was nothing -of the sort. I had to go on the Q. T. to hear her talk. Of course you -know, mamma belongs to the Art Study Club; but she was scandalized at -Mrs. Henderson getting up there and talking about Adelaide Marksley. -Lary tried to make her see that it was Sargent ... but what’s the use? -You can’t get that kind of an idea into my mother’s head.” - -The Browning Club had long since gone the way of Browning. But Mrs. -Henderson, after the death of her husband, was constrained to seek new -means of holding her grip on the social and intellectual leadership -of the town. Fortunately Mrs. Clarkson, wife of the new Dean, was not -aggressive. She was glad to be enrolled, along with Mrs. David Trench, -as a member of the Art Study Club. Being a late comer in the town, she -knew no reason why she should withdraw her moral support from the club, -after its shocking display of the Sargent picture. - -“But I hope the poor girl is at last happily married,” Mrs. Ascott -hastened to say. She wondered if Eileen was always quite fair to her -mother. - -“That’s just what she isn’t. And thereby hangs the tale of their coming -here to live for a couple of years. Hal said his father wanted to rent -Vine Cottage for them--and in that case they wouldn’t have brought -their furniture. But your Mr. Ramsay got ahead of him. I’m glad he -did. But mamma would have turned them out, lease or no lease, if she -ever got her eyes on an English paper published in Hong Kong, that Hal -showed me, last night. It was the rippingest account you ever read, of -Adelaide’s elopement with a member of the military band. It started in -a sort of musical flirtation ... and ended in a miserable little hotel -in Fu Chau. The writer said your sympathy would be with Mrs. Nims if -you looked at the shape of Reginald Nims, and remembered that his wife -was fond of dancing. Hal doesn’t know what that means--because he never -saw his brother-in-law. He must be either a cripple or fat. It won’t be -long till we know. They sail from Honolulu to-morrow.” - -“Then she’s reconciled to her husband?” - -“Had to be! She’s trying to make the best of a bad mess. The musician -soured on his bargain....” The amber eyes flamed yellow. “Left her in -the room at the hotel, and gave her husband the key. How did he know -Nims wouldn’t kill her? I should think he would--if he had any spirit. -They’re coming here till the scandal blows over and they can go back to -London. Adelaide loathes China, and adores England. Hal said he guessed -that Nims couldn’t bear to part with a wife who had red hair, even if -he had to do the reversed Mormon stunt once in a while.” - -Mrs. Ascott experienced a swift revulsion--not at the story Eileen was -telling. She had heard many such. But in the bald discussion of sex -encounters there lurked a definite element of danger. For another, and -less serious reason, Hal Marksley ought not to be telling this story in -Springdale, where his sister expected to live. But Eileen hastened to -explain that she alone was in the secret, and she ... “was part of the -family.” - -“Really, my dear? I hadn’t suspected.” - -“Yes, Lady Judith, and if you’ll let me, I’m coming back after school -to tell you what I actually came to tell you this morning. May I? I’ll -have to chase home and get my books. Hal’s honking for me, this minute.” - - -III - -It was three o’clock when Eileen came home from school, tossed -her things on the settee in the living-room and curled herself up -contentedly on a hassock at Mrs. Ascott’s feet. Her cheeks were flushed -and her low brow was framed in little caressing ringlets. She looked -amazingly like Lary. Happiness fairly exuded from her being. - -“I can’t beat around the bush, Lady Judith. When I have anything to say -... I have to go to it with both feet. Will you take care of this for -me?” - -She drew a shining gold chain from somewhere within the harbouring -crispness of her piqué collar, wound the pliant links around her -slender forefinger, and brought to light a ring set with a huge -diamond. Hal had given it to her that morning. She had known about it -for some time. The stone was one of many that belonged to his father -... and would never be missed. There was a good handful of them in a -box in the office safe, and Adelaide would coax them all away from her -father. He, Hal, might as well get his--while the getting was good. He -had taken this one, and another for a scarf pin for himself, to St. -Louis to be mounted the day after he and Eileen became engaged. - -“You haven’t told your mother?” Mrs. Ascott interrupted. - -“I can’t! I can’t! If you knew mamma better.... It would take all the -sacredness--all the meaning out of it ... to have mamma preen herself -because her daughter is going to marry the son of the richest man in -town.” - -“And your father, Eileen?” - -The fair face went gray, and pain quivered the sensitive lips. “I can’t -make that as clear as the other; but I’m the most unfortunate person in -the world. You don’t know how I have dreamt of the time when I could go -to my darling old daddy and hide my blushes in his shoulder, while I -told him that the greatest thing in life had come to me. And now that -it’s come ... he wouldn’t understand ... or approve. And mamma, who -hasn’t a mortal bit of use for me, would take it as a personal triumph. -Rush off to that silly little Bromfield Sentinel with an announcement -of my engagement, and all about who the Marksleys are, and how much -money they have. I just can’t give her that gratification. I’d choke.” - -Sixteen! and she had life’s irony at her finger ends. The amber eyes -filled with tears that glistened a moment on the long lashes and went -trickling down the pale checks to make little welts on the stiffly -starched piqué collar. Mrs. Ascott felt no impulse to smile. Here was -a little hurt child, whose quivering lips might have been pleading for -the life of a puppy condemned to be drowned. And it was all so deadly -serious to her. Love? She might experience a dozen such heart-burnings -before the dawning of the great passion. - -“My dear, there is a touchstone given to each one of us, before we -reach the years of discretion and judgment. Mine was my grandmother. -Yours, I believe, is your father. I hid my engagement to Raoul Ascott -from Grandma Holden. Only because I knew she would not approve. And, -Eileen, my marriage turned out wretchedly. My husband was much older -than I. And, do you know, dear, the immature mind is keenly flattered -by the attention of the mature one. Hal is a college senior, almost -five years older than you. If you could be sure your vanity isn’t -involved--” - -“No, that has nothing to do with it. Hal loves me. You can’t -understand what that means to me ... because ... you don’t know how -my people regard me. The only thing I ever wanted is love. Not the -kind that papa gives me. That’s too general. He loves everything and -everybody--including my mother, when she treats him like a dog. But I -don’t want to think about them, now. It hurts ... to think about my -father. I can stand it, because I’m not very lovable. He couldn’t be -unkind if he tried. He would go on loving his children, if we did the -worst thing in the world. I used to wish Lary would love me ... he’s so -much like papa in some ways. But you couldn’t tell anybody that what -you wanted was love. They’d think you were stalling--that you were -after something else, and used that for a blind. Why, even Bob didn’t -really know me--and he was the best friend I ever had. I used to steal -matches for him, when he was learning to smoke, and I’ve taken many a -lickin’ to keep him out of trouble. I got mean and hateful after he was -drowned. Talk about an all-wise Providence! I couldn’t have any respect -for a God that would kill Bob and leave me alive.” - -“But Dr. Schubert--” - -“Yes, he and Syd....” Her lips tightened. “They wouldn’t approve of -Hal either. He has a reputation for being ... well, rather loose in -his ideas. He isn’t a bit worse than the other boys in college. But -he happens not to be the psalm-singing kind. I hate the tight ideas I -was brought up on. But that isn’t what makes me love Hal. Lady Judith, -if you had been told all your life that you were ugly and cross and -good-for-nothing ... and somebody came along who thought you were sweet -and clever and beautiful--” She laughed shortly. “Yes, all of that! I -know I’m built according to the architecture of an ironing board; but -Hal says my form is perfect. He twists my hair around his fingers by -the hour, and he just loves to stroke my cheeks, because my skin is -soft--like Lary’s, and papa’s. Don’t you see? Being loved like that--” - -“Yes, Eileen, I see. How soon are you going to be married?” - -“Not for years and years. I persuaded Hal, last night, to go to Pratt -Institute, instead of that third rate college where he was going to -take finance. I want him to do that--so that Lary’ll respect him. He -doesn’t intend to settle down in this dried-up village. He hates it as -much as I do.” She fell silent a moment. “There’s only one drawback to -living away from Springdale.” - -“Leaving your father?” - -“No, he wouldn’t mind that, and neither would I--after I had a family -of my own. But if one of my children should get sick--very sick--and -I couldn’t reach Syd--I’d be frantic! Syd’s the only doctor who knows -what’s the matter with a baby.” - -“You love children, Eileen?” - -“I adore them.” She hugged her breast ecstatically. “I hope I’ll -have six. Hal loves them, too. That’s only one of the tastes we have -in common. He wants a home ... he’d even be willing to let Lary build -it, and select the furniture. And that’s a lot ... the way my brother -treats him. I hope you’ll try to see his fine side, to like him ... for -my sake. You know what it’s going to mean to me.” - - - - -XI Vicarious Living - - -I - -Hal Marksley called regularly in his car to take the two girls to -school. Theo, in the rôle of chaperone, was novel, to say the least. -Occasionally he and Eileen went for long rides in the country when -classes were over. Once they were delayed by the amusing annoyance of -three punctures, and it was dinner time when they neared home. Hal -took the precaution to leave the roadster on Grant Drive, traversing -the three short blocks to Elm Street on foot. On other occasions, when -there was no danger of encountering the men-folk of the family, Mrs. -Trench would invite him in for lemonade and cake, after which she would -command Eileen to play her latest violin piece--usually a bravura of -technique, quite as incomprehensible to Mrs. Trench’s accustomed ears -as to Hal’s--during which the youth would drum the window sill with -impatient fingers. - -It was understood between the young people that Mrs. Ascott alone was -in the secret, and that the engagement ring had been placed with some -of her valuables in Dr. Schubert’s vault, against the time when it -would be safe to display it. There was one drop of bitter in Eileen’s -great happiness. Her father. Even since her talk with Judith, she had -been conscious of something essentially dishonourable in her conduct. -She was beginning to look at her father with awakened eyes. He had -always been a person of little consequence in his home. Lavinia was -the dynamo that drove the plant. David was a belt or a fly-wheel, a -driving rod or some such nonessential--easily replaced if he should -break or rust. But David Trench would never rust. His wife kept him -going at such a rate that a high polish was his only alternative. -Rust gathers on unused metal. Eileen wondered what her father was -like--inside. What her mother was like, for that matter. David talked -little and Lavinia talked all the time, and the revelation of silence -was, if anything, more informing than that of incessant chatter. - -Mrs. Ascott might win Lary over to a reluctant acceptance of the -engagement; but that would have small bearing on the problem of her -father. It was the way with pliant natures. You can bend them without -in the least influencing their ultimate resistance. Lavinia might be -shattered by a well directed blow, whereas David would yield courteous -response. There might be a dent in his feelings, but his convictions -would remain as they were. - - -II - -One Friday afternoon, as April lingered tiptoe on the threshold of May, -Dr. Schubert sent for Lary to assist him with a peculiarly difficult -experiment, one calling for strong nerves and a quick perception. -When it was finished, Lary and Judith walked home together, crossing -the campus to avoid the thoroughfare that connected the old residence -quarter with the fashionable section that had rooted itself in the once -fertile farms of Springdale’s newer society. - -“Would you mind going a little out of your way?” the man asked, -consulting his watch. “It’s early, and I have a troublesome problem. -You know women--I don’t.” - -“An estimate of a possible Mrs. Trench? Take my advice, Lary. Have her -sized up for you by a man--never by another woman. Women can’t be just -to each other when they meet on ... mating ground. Besides, no woman -ever tells a man quite what she thinks of another woman. The other -woman’s secret is, in part, her own. She must guard it--as you guarded -the silly secrets of your college fraternity. If you ever saw the -inside of one of us, you’d know how little there is to conceal. But the -mystery ... that’s the important thing. Still, I’ll do my best. I’m old -enough to be your mother, and ought to trust my judgment.” - -“There is no potential Mrs. Trench in this problem. The thing -that’s worrying me is the inglenook in a house I’m building in -Roosevelt Place. The woman--who has exceptionally definite ideas -of architecture--has changed her mind three times. Now she’s as -dissatisfied with her own planning as she is with mine. We’re at our -wits’ end, and I must find--” - -“Look, Lary, those birds! They’re fighting!” - -The woman seized his arm and whirled him about. They were nearing the -end of the campus walk, where the maples cast slow-dancing shadows -on the hard gravel. Larimore Trench almost lost his footing, as the -pebbles scurried across the grass. He looked at his companion in -astonishment. She was not one to go off her head at trifles, yet her -tone revealed genuine alarm. In the grass, not ten feet away, two -chesty robins were battling like miniature game cocks, their cries -denoting a grotesque kind of rage. - -“La femme in the case is over there on that syringa,” Lary told her, -“estimating the prospects for the posterity she expects to mother. I -have never been satisfied with the age I have to live in. But I’m glad -I wasn’t born a troglodyte, in a world crying for population.” - -As he spoke, his back to the street, Hal and Eileen whisked by in -their car and disappeared around the corner. The two watched the birds -a moment. Then they resumed their walk. The easy confidence that had -grown, quite unnoticed, between them was interrupted. Strive as they -would they could find no common ground. Judith was vexed with Eileen. -Why should she come along, with her crashing discord, at just that -moment? And again, why did it matter whether she and Larimore Trench -had a pleasant walk or a sullen one? They had long since discussed -every problem under the sun--and had found all of them hopelessly old. -As they turned from Grant Drive and were entering Roosevelt Place, she -paused to lay an arresting hand on his arm. - -“Lary, there are three houses here under construction. The one near the -middle of the block is yours. You haven’t even a bowing acquaintance -with the other two.” - -The man--not the architect--flushed with pleasure. He had never talked -shop to Mrs. Ascott, and her recognition of one of his ideas, simply -rendered in rough concrete and blue-green tile, pleased him. She would -help him to compromise with Mrs. Morton about that inglenook. But the -inglenook was only a subterfuge. He wanted to talk to her about his -sister. She alone could make Eileen see that her admirer was uncouth, a -good-looking animal devoid of a single quality to survive the honeymoon. - - -III - -As they picked their way cautiously between paint cans and piles -of building refuse, Lary discovered that the workmen had erected a -barricade between the front hall and the living-room, and the angle of -the stairway shut the chimney corner from view. On the second floor -there was another obstacle. The floors had been newly waxed, and a -stern “Verboten” flaunted its impotent arrogance in their path. They -continued their climb to the third floor, where children, servants, -billiards, and winter garments would be harboured. Judith paused in the -door to the nursery, crossed the room and sank, exhausted, in the wide -window seat. Lary found place beside her, as he told her of the clever -girl who had done the Peter Pan frieze above the yellow painted wall. - -“Are you fond of children, Lary?” She was thinking of Eileen. - -“No, I detest them.” - -“You-- But how can you say such a thing? Your understanding with -Theodora is perfect. You kindle, you glow, when you are telling her -stories from the classics.” - -“That’s because she isn’t a child. I believe she never was. But my -affection for her didn’t begin when she was.... The first few months, -I believe I hated her. I may tell you about it some time. When I -lose patience with my mother--and other women--I think about that -hideous afternoon, twelve years ago last December. I don’t believe any -child--or anything else that men and women are at such a bother to -create and leave behind them--is worth all that suffering.” - -Mrs. Ascott withdrew, ever so little. She did not like Larimore Trench -when his tone revealed that peculiar timbre, that quality of boyish -cynicism. He had seen so much of books, so little of life. And then it -came to her that he viewed everything in the sordid world--the world -outside his imagination--through the distorting lenses of his mother’s -personality, her limitations and her prejudices. In his most violent -opposition he was, nevertheless, directed by her. He would go to the -south pole ... because she stood obstinately at the north. It was she -who shaped his course, determined his stand. Her insistence on the -fundamental importance of material progress drove him early to the post -of disinterested onlooker. That he did his work, and did it well, was -a reflex of his inner nature, the nature that came to him when David’s -fineness and Lavinia’s dynamic ardour were fused, in a moment of -unthinking contact. And it was the penalty of such fusing, that neither -of his parents comprehended the nature they had given him. - - -IV - -The silence towered, opaque and forbidding, between them. But they had -come with a purpose, groping their way to the same objective, neither -one guessing what was in the other’s mind. By a devious path, that was -nevertheless essentially feminine, Judith approached: - -“Lary, do you want to tell me about your brother? It would have made -such a difference in Eileen’s life--if he had lived.” - -“You would have enjoyed Bob--a tremendous fellow, every phase of him. -He played half-back on the college team when he was sixteen. And at -that, he took the state cup in the half mile dash. He had medals for -hammer throwing and pole vault. There is a whole case of his cups and -ribbons in the college library. He’s the only one of us who inherited -my mother’s energy. Oh, Sylvia, of course. She can rattle around and -make a great showing--and she does actually accomplish things when she -has a definite purpose ... something she wants to do. The rest of us -are a listless pack. We’d rather climb a tree and watch the parade go -by. But Bob was in everything, for the sheer fun of living. It looks -to me like a stupid blunder ... to cut off such virility before it had -perpetuated itself.” - -“Eileen told me she had lost her respect for God, since her brother was -drowned. She was so naïve and in such deadly earnest.” - -“Eileen was a born doubter. I was sixteen when I revolted against the -idea of a Deity with the duties of an ordinary stockroom clerk--and it -was one of Eileen’s searching questions that set me thinking. Not bad -for six years old. Mamma holds to the old orthodox belief as one of the -hallmarks of respectability. In her day, and town, the iconoclasts were -pool-room keepers and saloon bums. The catechism was drilled into us as -soon as we could talk. My mother would have been a great ritualist, if -she had had the luck to be born an Anglican. There isn’t much in her -church to hang your hat on.” - -“But your father, Lary--religion means something to him.” - -“Yes ... it’s about all he has. Eileen breaks his heart with her -irreverent flings. I spare him. Not because I am more considerate than -she. More selfish, perhaps. I can’t take the consequences of inflicting -pain. You’ll call it crass spiritual weakness--a flaw in the casting. -I’ve tried to overcome it. I couldn’t have endured....” His voice -wavered, “Last night I heard my father praying for Eileen. It was -ghastly. I wanted to tell her how she is torturing him. But it would -only provoke a fresh outburst of scoffing.” - -“Lary, will you give Eileen into my hands--stop worrying about her--you -and your father? Will you persuade him that I have been sent ‘from on -high’ to guide her through this wilderness? I may fail; but I have her -confidence.” - -“Papa was afraid, because you were rich, that you would share her -mother’s view. Oh, not that Eileen took refuge in your sympathy. She’s -too proud, too good a sport, for that. She only told him that money, -_per se_, was no obstacle--_vide_ Mrs. Ascott. Before she was through -with it, she told him that if he kept on, she would go to the devil -with Hal Marksley. It was after that that he carried his trouble to the -God who is said to answer prayers.” - -“As a substitute for the Deity.... But at least, Lary, I know the -premises. And at the worst, it is only the working out of her own -nature. No one can live Eileen’s life for her, not even her father. But -there’s the tower clock, striking six. You will be late for dinner--and -we haven’t looked at that inglenook.” - - - - -XII The Poem Judith Read - - -I - -From her vine-screened retreat in the summer house, Judith Ascott -looked out on the fairest May Day she had ever known. It was the -morning after ... and the promise she had made to Lary hung sinister -and foreboding over her spirit. Everything around her was vibrant with -coming summer. At home the buds would be opening timorously, while -here the perennial climbers were in full leaf. An aureate splendour, -seductive as Danae’s rain, rippled through the open structure of the -pergola, transmuting the pebble walk to a pavement of costly gems; -but within the widening of the arbour--that David had converted into -an outdoor living-room--the frightened shadows sought refuge from the -shafts that would presently destroy them. To the cool umbrageous corner -nearest the house, where the light was faint, the woman had taken her -world-weary body, yearning for the relaxation her bed had denied her. - -It was all so insistent, this new life that had come to her, its music -keyed to a pitch she had never realized, a tempo beyond the reach of -her experience. The Trenches. Were there other families in the universe -like this one? Before her coming to Springdale she had viewed the world -through a thick forest of people, most of them intolerably tiresome. -In the main they were contented ... such contentment as is to be -derived from a favourable turn in the market or the balm of Bermuda to -beguile a winter’s day. Happy lives, she had read, make uninteresting -biographies. Her life had been far from happy, and her biography -would be utterly stupid. Mrs. Trench was--she realized with a stab of -astonishment--a desperately unhappy woman, and her life story was made -up of a propitious marriage and six abnormally interesting children. -And then ... Theo appeared at the other side of the garden wall, -discerned the white-clad figure among the verdant shadows of the summer -house, and scaled the low barrier with the nimbleness of a squirrel. In -the folds of her skirt she held something, and a furtive air pervaded -her small person. - - -II - -“Dear Lady Judith, may I have the honour of a morning call?” - -“Do come, you little ray of sunshine. Your Lady Judith’s sky is -overcast, and she is in sore need of cheer.” - -“Don’t you go bothering Mrs. Ascott this morning,” Theo’s mother cried -sharply from the pantry window. “You ought to know enough not to wear -out your welcome.” - -“No danger,” Judith assured her. She did not perceive the look of sharp -displeasure on the older woman’s face, but the voice affected her -disagreeably, and she turned for relief to the anomalous reproduction -of Lavinia, who was already nestling confidently at her side, on the -oaken settle. The child spread upon her knee two sheets of paper, on -which many lines had been written. A casual glance betrayed the agony -of composition. Words had been discarded by the device of an impatient -pen stroke. Others had been consigned to oblivion by means of carefully -drawn lines. Phrases had been transposed and rhyming terminals changed. - - -“It’s a poem. I thought it would help to cheer you up. Mamma wouldn’t -like it, and neither would Mrs. Stevens--because it doesn’t hop along -on nice little iambic feet. It has to say ‘te-tum, te-tum, te-tum,’ or -they think it isn’t poetry. Eileen writes some that are wilder than -this one; but she never lets mamma see them. She wrote one on Love, -last Sunday morning, when she ought to have been listening to the -sermon, and ... what do you think! Left it in the hymn book! And Kitten -Henderson found it, and sent it to Dan Vincel as her own composition.” - -Mrs. Ascott took the copy, scanning the first page with crescent -interest. She had not thought of Eileen as a poet. Yet such intense -musical feeling.... The musician is seldom a poet of marked quality or -distinction. The godlike gifts of rhythm, cadence, imagery, these may -not flow with equal volume in double channels. Yet the verses, however -crude, would shed another light on a nature too complex for ready -analysis. There was no title, no clue to the impulse that promoted the -writing. There was no need of such. A girl in Eileen’s rhapsodic mental -state would not go far in search of inspiration. - - “Birth, Hope, Ambition, Love, - These four the minor half of life compose: - The sylvan stream to broadening river flows, - And, golden-fair, replete with promise, glows - The radiant Sun above. - - “The major half of life? - Love scars the soul, as ’twere a searing brand: - Ambition turns to ashes in our hand, - Nor, ’til the glass has spilled its latest sand, - Comes rest from urge and strife. - - “O Birth! thou wanton wight - That dost with smiles enmask thy mocking eyes! - How dost thou cheat the unborn soul that flies - Full-eager from its formless Paradise - To realms of Death and Night!” - -Theo sat breathless, a flush of expectation staining her dark skin, as -the first page was laid aside and the second came to view. Before the -remaining stanzas were finished, her heart was beating visibly through -the thin morning dress, as her lips fashioned soundlessly the lines she -had memorized at the second reading: - - “O Love! more wanton e’en - Than Birth or Hope or bold Ambition, thine - To lift the quivering soul to heights divine, - To mad the brain with Amor’s poisoned wine, - To spread thy wonder-sheen - - “O’er eyes that erst could see! - Thy promises, how fair, how full of bliss! - Are mortals born for rapture such as this? - Helas! the web was cunning-wove, I wis, - That e’en entangled me!” - -“Theodora, are you _sure_ that Eileen wrote these verses?” - -“Eileen? Goodness, no! She scrawls all over the paper. You never saw -her write a neat little hand like that.” - -“Then who did write it?” - -“Why ... Lary, of course. I thought you knew he was the poet--the -_real_ poet of the family. He wrote it last night. I saw his light -burning at four o’clock this morning. I couldn’t sleep, either. Mine -was ear-ache. His was another kind. He says you always have to agonize -when you write anything worth while. And I think this poem is ... worth -while ... don’t you?” - -The solid ground of assurance was, somehow, slipping from beneath her -feet. Lady Judith was not pleased. Her usually pale cheeks burned red, -and there was an unfamiliar look in her eyes. - -“Eileen told you to bring this to me?” - -“Humph! You don’t think I’d show her Lary’s poem? He lets me see -lots of things he writes, that mamma and the rest of them don’t know -anything about--till they’re published. And if the stupid editors send -them back--I never do tell. I wouldn’t ... for the world.” - -“He gave you this to read?” - -“N-n-not exactly. He left the desk unlocked. Didn’t put the top quite -all the way down, and one corner of the paper was sticking out. I had -to see what it was, so that if it was something the others oughtn’t to -see, I could put it under the blotter, out of sight.” - -An expression of Dutton’s flashed through Mrs. Ascott’s mind: “Theo’s -the spit of her mother. She’ll do the dirtiest tricks, and explain ’em -on high moral grounds.” She caught and held the dark, troubled eyes. - -“Theodora, do you know that you have done something almost -unpardonable?” - -“But, Lady Judith, when anybody feels the way Lary does, and you -love him as much as I do--don’t you see, the sooner there’s an -understanding, the better? It was that way with the Lady Judith in the -story. And if it hadn’t been for the meddlesome fairy, that found the -drawing of the two hearts, interlocked, the Prince wouldn’t have known, -till it was too late.” - -“Theo,” the woman interrupted sharply, “take these two sheets of paper -back to your brother’s room, and lay them exactly as you found them, so -that he won’t know they have been moved or seen.” - -Fear puckered the thin little face, fear and chagrin. With -sparrow-like motion she turned and darted in the direction of the -wicket gate. Midway she stopped, arrested by the timbre of Mrs. -Ascott’s voice--a sternness she had not deemed possible. - -“Come back, Theodora, if you want me ever to care for you again.” - -A moment the lithe body wavered, the mind irresolute. Then she set her -head impishly on one side, looked at the angry, frightened woman with a -scold-me-if-you-can expression, and slowly retraced her steps, dragging -her toes in the gravel and swaying her straight hips from side to side. -It was pure bravado. At the entrance to the summer house, her spirit -broke. In another instant she was in Mrs. Ascott’s lap and great sobs -were shaking her agitated bosom. - -“There, precious, I didn’t mean to hurt you. But, can’t you realize, -dearie? You must be made to realize, no matter how it hurts.” - -“No, you are the one who must be made to realize. I knew it, all along.” - -“Knew what, Theo?” - -“That Lary’s crazy about you. He never cared for anybody--not even -puppy-dog love, when he was a boy. He was glad when Sylvia married, so -he wouldn’t have to take her girl friends home--when they hung around -so late that they were afraid to go home by themselves. I’ve been -waiting to tell you about him for ever so long. You couldn’t know how -good he is--how good--and wonderful.” The smothered voice was full of -adoration. “He has the dearest ways, when you are all alone with him. -And he never misses the point of a joke. Mamma can say witty things; -but she almost never sees the other fellow’s joke. And his hands are so -gentle--not strong and rough, like Bob’s. If you only knew.... But Lary -wouldn’t ever tell you the nice side of him.” - -Hungry arms pressed her close. - -“Ah!” the advocate stopped her pleading, to sigh with infinite relief. -“You won’t be angry with me. But, Lady Judith, I had to do it ... if -you hadn’t ever forgiven me. Lary is teaching me to stand things like a -stoic. And when so much depends on it--” The eyes flamed with an idea. -“You know, like walking along in the dark, and all at once somebody -strikes a match to light a cigar, and you see that there is a hole in -the road that you would have fallen into. If no one had struck a match, -how would you know the hole was there?” - -“And you can keep this secret--never let your brother suspect?” - -“He’s the last person in the world that I’d tell. He’d be more angry -than you were. And there’s another reason. I’m not quite sure that Lary -knows what’s the matter with him. Of course he says--in the last stanza -of the poem. He’s written love poetry before, when it was only a woman -he imagined, and so he might not think it was serious. Mrs. Ferguson -said that if her husband had suspected that he was falling in love with -her, he would have taken the first train out of town. Afterward ... he -was glad he didn’t know.” - -“Theodora! Are you sixty years old, and have you settled the marriage -problems of a dozen unpromising daughters and granddaughters? Where did -you get such ideas?” - -“I heard mamma and Mrs. Ferguson talking about it, before Sylvia was -married. I never forget anything I hear; but it’s an awful long time -before I get light on some things. When I read Lary’s poem, this -morning--and came to that last line--and remembered how pale you looked -when you came out in the yard before breakfast--why, all at once the -ideas came tumbling together, and I knew that Lary mustn’t know he was -in love till he was so far in, he wouldn’t want to ever get out.” - -It was adorable, the way she took Mrs. Ascott’s attitude and response -for granted. No woman, not even the enshrined Lady Judith, would fail -to be honoured by Lary’s love. - - -III - -“Theo-_do_-ra!” Drusilla’s broad cadence issued from the pantry window. -Drusilla was the coffee-coloured maid of all work, who was serving -temporarily as mouthpiece for Mrs. Trench. “Come home this minute, -honey. You got to do an errand befoh lunch.” - -Theodora reflected that there was time for twenty such errands. And her -perplexity grew when, after a few minutes, she saw Eileen pass through -the wicket gate to take Mrs. Ascott an embroidery pattern from an old -number of the Self Culture magazine. She remembered distinctly that -Mrs. Ascott had said she did not care particularly about it. That was a -week ago. Why had mamma dragged it out now, and sent it over by Eileen? - -With all her wizard penetration, the child had never glimpsed the deep -windings of her mother’s mind. Mrs. Ascott could not be counted on -to take a lively interest in two of the Trench children, and for the -present Eileen was the focal point of her mother’s concern. More and -more the conviction grew that this woman from the great outside world -had been sent by Divine Providence to aid in bringing to swift climax -what otherwise might have been a long drawn out affair. - -Long engagements were dangerous. Sylvia had been engaged to Tom -Henderson for two years. If she, Lavinia Larimore, had listened to -Calvin, when he begged her to run away and be married, the night he -proposed to her.... It was when she reached this stage in her silent -soliloquy that she determined to have Drusilla call Theodora home, and -send Eileen to Vine Cottage in her stead. - - - - -XIII Eyes Turned Homeward - - -I - -It is improbable that Bromfield’s weekly paper would have yielded its -meagre space for the chronicling of Eileen Trench’s engagement, had -that important fact been divulged at home. There were other, more -momentous things going on. The entire front page of each issue was -plastered with the Stone sensation, which grew by melodramatic leaps -to something like an international affair. Fournier Stone had been -captured in Montreal, had broken from his captor and leaped into the -river. At first it was thought that he had been drowned; but he was an -agile swimmer, and it was reported that a man answering his description -had been seen near Longueuil, an hour or two after his escape. - -From Mrs. Stone’s darkened bedroom came bulletins of one collapse after -another. The news that her darling had perished in the treacherous -waters beneath the Victoria bridge affected her so profoundly that -the physician resorted to nitroglycerine injections to restore her. -Lavinia read the accounts with emotions that surged from exultation to -a species of envy. The part she had been called upon to play was such -a drab one, that Lettie Stone’s colourful rôle stung her. To ease her -mind, she fell back on one passage of Scripture after another. She -might have known all along that the marriage would end in something -like this. It was right that it should end this way ... right that an -immoral, unprincipled woman should suffer. And Calvin? No doubt he was -suffering, too. But what was the good of going over that ground--ground -that she had long since stripped bare of every sprig of comfort or -misery? - -At last came the startling denouement. Mrs. Calvin Stone was dead. -There had been a simple private funeral--attended by everybody in -Bromfield. That night Fournier had slipped stealthily into town, and -out to the cemetery, where he had ended his life on his mother’s grave. -The account of the double tragedy was not news to Lavinia. Ellen -Larimore had sent a telegram ... just why, it was difficult to explain. -The message came Sunday morning, while David and the girls were at -church and Lary was at the office getting out some rush specifications. -It conveyed only the bare information that Fournier Stone had shot -himself, the night after his mother’s funeral. - -“Dead ... Calvin free!” the woman muttered, staring in a daze at the -words. And, after a moment of strangling emotion: “But what difference -does it make--now? I can’t be there to see it. I wouldn’t go, _if_ I -_could_.” - -At this juncture Lavinia’s thoughts took an unexpected turn. She was -always thinking things she had no intention of harbouring within her -consciousness--as if she had a whole cellar full of ideas she did not -know she possessed. The one that came up to her now nauseated her. To -see Calvin weeping over the body of his dead wife! Oh, the insolent -superiority of the dead! You have no words with which to confront them. -All their failings, all their sins are lifted above your most virtuous -attack. It would be like this if David should die, and she could no -longer upbraid him. No, it was better for people to go on living. You -could at least speak your mind, without galling self-reproach. - - -II - -Lavinia was determined to put Calvin Stone definitely and permanently -from her thought. He had been amply punished for his monstrous -treatment of her. The incident was closed, and at last she could have -peace. And then something came to divert all her thinking into a -channel that must have been present in the dark valley of her being all -the while--unrecognized, because the need for it had been so hazily -remote. A story--one of Larimore’s foolish stories. She seldom listened -to them; but this one she could not escape. Eileen had gone home with -Hal Marksley and had met his sister. It was Wednesday, and the outcome -of the Stone imbroglio was still locked in her heart, the telegram -having been burned in the kitchen range, Sunday morning, while Drusilla -was on the second floor, doing up the bedrooms. - -After dinner the Trench family had gravitated, one by one, to Mrs. -Ascott’s summer house. David was there, laughing boyishly at something -Eileen was telling. What were they talking about? Lavinia’s sharp -ears caught a sentence now and then. It was not her wont to be out of -things, the things that concerned her family. Her tenant seldom invited -her--specifically. But then she never invited Mrs. Ascott, either. -Going to the pantry, she filled a plate with raisin muffins, from the -afternoon’s baking. Eileen would approach that shrine, armed with a -sensational story; but her mother carried breakfast rolls. - - -III - -When Nanny had taken the plate into the house, Judith made room for -Mrs. Trench on the settle at her side. David leaned against the solid -beam that he had set, seven years ago, to support the arch of the -doorway. His blue eyes were full of unwonted content. Theodora was -perched on the afternoon tea table, folded now to look like a packing -case, steadying herself by a brown hand on her father’s arm. Eileen was -on the other bench with Lary. She resumed the narrative that had been -interrupted by her mother’s arrival: - -“Yes, he’s the most unspeakable beast I ever saw. Oh, by-the-way, -mamma, I was telling them about meeting Mr. and Mrs. Nims, this -afternoon. Kitten and Hal and I had to go over to the house to get -some rugs and things for the play, in the college chapel, and Adelaide -opened the door for us.” - -“You don’t mean-- How did she treat you?” - -“Oh, all right. She didn’t know me from anybody else.... But she’s -coming to help coach us, the night of dress rehearsal. Mrs. Henderson -said, in her talk, that most of the charm in that Sargent portrait -was the technique--brush work and colour arrangement. But Adelaide -Nims doesn’t need Johnny Sargent or any other artist to tell her how -to colour up. She had on an embroidered Chinese robe--the kind the -Mandarin women wear in the house--pinkish tan, with a wide band of blue -around the sleeves and neck--the kind of blue that fairly made her hair -flame. I wanted to eat her, she was so beautiful. And just then I got -a glimpse of her husband, through the window. He was sprawled all over -a lawn bench that was built to hold three decent-sized people, and his -stomach came out like the side of the rain barrel. I was trying to get -a good look at his face, when he began to yawn--you know, the kind of -a yawn that ate up all the rest of his features. I wanted to giggle -... or scream! And when he finally came into the house, and Kitten and -I met him, I couldn’t think of a thing but that awful cavern inside -his mouth. Gee! I’d hate to have to live with a man who looks like a -hogshead, split down the middle, and an Edam cheese for a head--and no -neck at all.” - -“I didn’t suppose the nobility looked like that,” Mrs. Trench snapped. - -“Humph! He’s only a younger son--and nine brothers and nephews between -him and a handle to his name. Adelaide must have been in an awful tight -pinch to have married him, money or no money.” - -“He may not have been so stout when he courted her,” David ventured. -“When your mother married me, no one would have thought of calling me -her ‘better three-quarters’--and look at us now.” - -“_Other_ three-quarters,” Lavinia corrected. “I never could see the -justice in calling a man his wife’s ‘better’ half.” - -“There’s historical warrant for your objection, mamma,” Lary said, -hoping to avert the revelation his mother was all too prone to -make--her callous contempt for David in particular and men as a class. - -“You don’t mean the tiresome old story of Adam and the rib,” Eileen -demurred. - -“Nothing like that. I found the story in some elective Greek we were -reading, my third year in college. And as you describe this Mr. Nims, -he seems to fit the original model. Seven of us were selected to -translate the Symposium of Plato, and I had the story Aristophanes was -said to have told at that memorable banquet. It was in response to -the toast, ‘The Origin of Love.’ As the gods planned the world, there -was no such thing as love. But they had created a race of terribly -efficient mortals--hermaphroditic beings, man and woman in one body, -their faces looking in opposite directions. They had four legs and a -double pair of arms, and when they wanted to go somewhere in a hurry, -they rolled over and over, like an exaggerated cart wheel, touching all -their hands and feet to the ground in succession. They could see what -was going on behind them, and could throw missiles in two directions at -the same time. - -“As long as they didn’t realize their advantage, it was all right. But -one day a leader was born among them. I suspect it was the female half -of him who discovered that they were superior to the gods. If they went -about it right, they could capture Olympus, and send the gods to earth -to toil and offer sacrifices. The one thing the gods cared about was -having their vanity fed, by the smoke from countless altars. It was -for this service that man was created, in the beginning. So, when it -was reported on Mount Olympus that mortals aspired to be gods, Zeus -conceived a way to avert the disaster, and at the same time have twice -as many creatures on earth to offer sacrifices. - -“He made a great feast, and invited all the insolent race of man. And -when he had them at his mercy, so that they couldn’t escape, he had -them brought to him, one at a time, and cleft them in two, vertically, -so that they could look only in one direction, and run on only two -feet--” - -“O-wee-woo!” Theodora squirmed. “Didn’t they bleed ... terribly?” - -“Hush, Theo, it’s only a story,” Mrs. Trench exclaimed, irritably. - -“And that’s how a man and his other half came to be separated,” David -said, drawing Theodora to him and stroking her pain-puckered brow. - -“Yes, the gods thought they had destroyed man, when they cleft him -in two,” Lary went on, his brown eyes shining. “But in that act of -ruthlessness they sowed the seeds of their own destruction. When they -hurled the mutilated creatures out of Paradise, most of the halves -became separated. Then began the endless search for their other halves. -The men realized that they couldn’t live up to their full capacity, -with the feminine side of themselves gone. And when they did find -each other, they experienced a rapture that surpassed the highest -emotional possibility of the immortals. That thrill was love. The gods -heard about it, and condescended to mate with mortals, in the hope -of experiencing the thrill. But it was useless. They had not been -separated from their other halves.” - -“But how did they sow the seeds of their own destruction?” Judith asked. - -“It’s the old story of the apple in the Garden of Eden. The thing -they couldn’t get became the ultimate desideratum. They devoted all -their energy to the quest of love. They deserted all their old godlike -pursuits--and in the end, the Greek deities crumbled and were destroyed -by the more vigorous gods of the barbarians.” - -Theodora pondered the tale. She could not be satisfied by the -application to Mr. and Mrs. Nims. The tub-like man, who was far more -tublike in her imagination than Eileen’s exaggerated description -should have warranted, was undoubtedly the man who was married to -Hal’s sister. But Mrs. Nims was thin. And he was her second husband. -Manifestly something was wrong. - -“But Lary, suppose when those men tried to find their other halves, -they couldn’t.... Their right halves had died, or had got tired of -waiting and had gone off with some one else....” - -“There wouldn’t be any thrill of love, and the man couldn’t do his -best, because he lacked the right person to urge him on,” David told -her. - -“Humph!” this from Eileen, “I guess the woman would be in as bad a fix -as the man. Poor Adelaide Nims has had two tries at her other half, and -missed it both times. She’s terribly unhappy, for all that she puts up -such a good front. Lady Judith, don’t you think she ought to keep on -trying till she does find the right one? Or is there a right one for -all of us?” - -“Yes ... unless we rush off into an alliance that prevents us from -recognizing our true mate,” Mrs. Ascott said pointedly. - -The girl flushed. The shaft had gone home. She shifted her gaze from -the clear gray eyes ... and surprised an inexplicable expression on her -mother’s face. - - -IV - -Lavinia had listened, without interest, to the story. But the -application--she had been brought up on stories with a Moral at the -end. “Unless we rush off into an alliance....” Her face grew hard, -a yellow pallor spreading from neck to brow. That was what she had -done. That was what Calvin had done. It was his fault, not hers, that -she had erred. She ignored the years of waiting, before Calvin had -known Lettie. And those two had been mismated, had lived apart most -of the time, the first few years of their married life, had quarreled -violently when they were together. There must have been a right partner -for Calvin. She choked with emotion as she realized--she had never been -sure of it, in all those years--that Lettie was not the right one. -She would like to see Calvin Stone again, now that it was all over. -But what was the use? There was David, forty-eight, and ridiculously -healthy. That night she lay awake, into the gray of dawn, thinking, -thinking.... - - - - -XIV A Broken Axle - - -I - -Late Thursday afternoon Mrs. Trench crossed the lawn with tottering -steps. She looked incredibly old, with the bloodless lips and the -greenish pallor of her sunken cheeks. “No wonder her children are -temperamental,” Judith thought, remembering the crispness of her step -and the full flush of her dark skin as she crossed that same stretch of -grass the previous evening, the plate of rolls in her hand. She came -now with no offering of good will. There was set purpose in her eyes. -And her mouth ... Judith wondered how she could have thought Eileen’s -mouth looked like that. A sleepless night and the bald revelation of -Calvin Stone’s sorrow--discussed at the luncheon table as the Bromfield -paper was handed about--had reduced her resistive power to its lowest -point. When her life stream was full, she had little difficulty -concealing the slimy bed of her being. But now, with all her animation -ebbed away, she groped within her own turbid depths, blinded by -resentment and self-pity until even prudence forsook her. In any other -state of mind, she would not have flung down the gauntlet to the one -woman on whom she must depend for the furthering of her plans. - -“Mrs. Ascott, would you mind going inside? I can’t stand this sunshine. -I never could see why David put a door in the west side of this summer -house, where the afternoon sun can shine right in your face. But David -always bungles things.” - -“You are ill. I am so sorry.” - -“It’s nothing. I’ll be myself after I’ve had a night’s rest. The fact -is, I want to have a plain talk with you.” Judith led the way to the -library. With rigid lips, that marred her usual sharp enunciation, she -began bluntly. “I feel that it’s my Christian duty to tell you some -nasty truths about that Mrs. Nims.” - -“Village gossip. I’m sure, Mrs. Trench, I’m not in the least -interested.” - -An ugly purplish red crept along Lavinia’s corded neck and up over the -cheeks to the line of straight black hair. - -“But you and Eileen are planning all sorts of intimacy--musical trio -with you at the piano, playing accompaniments for the violin and -’cello--and Larimore and his father are terribly vexed. Of course you -couldn’t be expected to know anything about the woman ... being a -newcomer in the town. And you couldn’t know how important it is to me, -right now, not to have my husband displeased.” - -It transpired that Eileen had talked too much, at breakfast, that -morning ... too many details of her call at the Marksleys’ home, -the play the Dramatic Club was putting on, for the benefit of the -laboratory fund, in which Hal Marksley had to kiss her, beneath the -pale glow of a marvellously devised stage moon. - -“The trio was only a tentative suggestion. If Mr. Trench--” - -“It isn’t so much his opposition as Larimore’s. He never had any use -for the Marksley family--and this big competition coming on. Villa -residence, keeper’s lodge, garage and barns. It will mean a great -deal to my son to win that commission. And the contract for the -construction will be the biggest thing Mr. Trench has had since he put -up the new Science Hall. - -“I should think being kind to Mrs. Nims would be a help rather than a -hindrance,” Mrs. Ascott said, perplexed. - -“It would, if I had reasonable men to deal with. The fact is--if I -_must_ speak plainly--young Mr. Marksley is very much in love with -Eileen. I wouldn’t have anything come between them for the world. You -are a married woman. You ought to know Eileen’s type. She isn’t the -least bit like me. If she resembles any of my family, it is my sister -Isabel--and we were thankful to get her safely married at seventeen.” - -“But Mr. Marksley, they told me, is going to Pratt when he is graduated -from the college, here. It will be four or five years before--” - -“Some more of Eileen’s foolishness. What use has he for more -education--with all that money? And she knows as well as I do that -he can go into business with his brother Alfred, in St. Louis, the -day after commencement. He doesn’t have to depend on his father, who -detests him. I suppose Eileen has told you that fact, too.” - -Mrs. Ascott shook her head, irritation mounting to anger, as her -caller’s tone divested itself of that modicum of reserve that had been -the inculcated habit of years. In all her experience she had never -met a woman like Lavinia Trench. From their second meeting, there had -been an undercurrent of hostility, which Lavinia was at great pains -to subdue or conceal. A rich woman was a person to be envied ... and -conciliated. In her normal state she would not have jeopardized the -fragile bond of surface friendship that bound them. - - -II - -Not that the interview reached the disgusting level of a quarrel. Yet -Judith was betrayed into the fatal error of attempting to reason with a -woman whose mental processes had never recognized the inevitable link -between cause and effect. She did not know how to deal with the mind -that leaped from one vantage point to another, with all the nimbleness -and none of the objectivity of a circus acrobat. Dutton had once said -of Mrs. Trench: “You can’t nail that woman down. When you trap her -square, on her own proposition--she’s over yonder, on an entirely -different subject, crowing over you. If she can’t make her point, she -talks about something else.” But Judith gave little heed to Dutton’s -mumblings. - -The one thing Mrs. Trench had made unequivocally plain was that -Larimore and his father must not be antagonized. This could be -accomplished only by keeping Eileen’s fondness for Hal in the -background, and avoiding any public contact with his highly immoral -sister. It was in connection with Mrs. Nims that Judith blundered. She -could not believe that either David or Larimore Trench would cast a -stone at the woman who had sinned and was unhappy because of her sin. - -“You mean Mary Magdalene, and all that? Well, I don’t believe Christ -expects _me_ to associate with the woman who ran away from two -husbands--travelled with the first one for three weeks before they were -married at all. There’s no reforming a woman like Adelaide Marksley. -She’s bad, through and through.” - -“There may have been extenuating circumstances. What do you and I know -about her inside life? Until we have been tempted, as she was, we have -no moral right to set up our code--” - -“You think I have never been tempted? I could tell you a story ... if I -was a-mind to. It was only my sense of honour and duty. And that ought -to be enough for Adelaide Nims or any other woman.” - -“She may not have had a very clear conception of the meaning of -‘honour’ and ‘duty.’ Do you think those terms mean the same thing to -all women? Do they mean the same thing to any woman, at all times? You -don’t know anything about the inner life of the girl who grows up in a -loveless home, or is trapped in a childless home of her own, with a man -who doesn’t love her. Your life has been crowded with responsibility -and affection. You have a husband whose devotion to you is the most -beautiful--” - -“You think David is a paragon. You haven’t had to live with him for -almost twenty-eight years. You haven’t had to drive him, every step he -took, for fear he would sit down on you, and let the family starve. -And as for the children ... what has that got to do with it? Why--it -was when Isabel was so sick that--that the minister kept calling and -calling. All the women in the church were crazy about him. I never -dreamt he was in love with me till the night before the baby died. But -I showed him his place, quick enough, when he told me he could see -that David didn’t understand or appreciate me.” Her eyes gleamed with -pride, as if she would have gloated: “There! You didn’t know I had been -tempted--and by the minister, too!” - -“For all that, Mrs. Trench, you can’t draw the line between the woman -who sins and the one who is saved from sinning by some fortuitous -accident. Your baby died, the next day. If she had lived ... and you -had seized the chance for the happiness you had missed, I would have no -condemnation for you. I know. I was almost in sight of that treacherous -snare--when the axle of our motor car broke, and my father overtook us -and--brought me to my senses. We were within a mile of the pier where -his yacht was anchored--the man who was as unhappy in his loveless home -as I was in mine. We were going to Italy, to hunt for what we both had -missed. My husband had gone to Egypt with another woman. I told myself -that my marriage vow was an empty mockery....” She stopped, a sickening -wave of self-disgust overwhelming her. Why had she bared her soul to -this woman? - -Lavinia? She made no effort to conceal her horror. So this was why Mrs. -Ascott did not wear mourning! - -“And he, your husband--divorced you?” - -“No, I divorced him. In New York there is only one cause for divorce, -and in the eyes of the law, I had committed no offence. Mrs. Nims, with -her bringing up--with the family environment that surrounds her and her -brother--” - -“Oh, with men it is different. You don’t expect morality in them. David -says that Hal is fast. That’s at the bottom of the whole trouble. I -wish I hadn’t said anything about the affair. I might have known you -wouldn’t see it as I do. But then, I hadn’t suspected--” She checked -herself. There were some things Lavinia wouldn’t say, even when she was -indignant to the core. - - -III - -When she went home, a few minutes later, she resolved to padlock the -wicket gate--to secure it with hammer and nails, if need be. She -would not have her family subjected to such an influence. Eileen was -completely bewitched. It was “Mrs. Ascott this” and “Lady Judith that” -from morning till night. Theo was even worse. David was getting to -look like a boy, since he had been chatting across the wall with -that designing woman. And Larimore! He was already in her clutches. -How could a mother have been so blind? If the gate were closed, with -obvious intent, Mrs. Ascott would take the hint, and move away. - -Then she remembered the months that Vine Cottage had stood idle. It -was a poor time to rent a furnished cottage, with vacation coming on, -and ever so many of the faculty houses eager to be leased for the -summer months. Besides ... Mrs. Ascott had her redeeming points. She -was never at a loss which forks to put on the table, and how to add -that chic effect to a costume. If Eileen were to shine as Mrs. Henry -Marksley, Junior, she would need much coaching. And, after all, what -had Mrs. Ascott done? She might have gone to Italy in a yacht. A flight -in a motor car--pursuit--a broken axle--capture! There had never been -anything like that in Lavinia Trench’s life. Then, too, her husband had -deserted her ... had run away with another woman. It was always, in -these cases, “running.” One could not conceive of a leisurely departure -from the confines of the moral code. No doubt Mr. Ascott had abused -her. Men usually did, when they were casting amorous eyes at some one -else. That made a different case of it. Her father had taken her back. -It could not have resulted in a public scandal. Probably the facts -never leaked out. Mrs. Ascott had certainly been received by the best -society in New York and Pelham before coming to Springdale. - -Moreover ... this thing of nailing up gates did not always turn out -the way one expected. She had nailed up one gate in her life that -she would have given the whole world to open. And this was such a -friendly little gate. Who could tell but that some day she, Vine--the -self-sufficient--might need a friend? Mrs. Ascott was--potent -phrase--“a woman of the world.” She made the women of Springdale look -pitifully gauche. It was not a bad idea to have such a woman as a -neighbour. Not too much intimacy. She would look to that. She might -mention.... But what was there to tell? Mrs. Ascott had not sinned, as -Adelaide Marksley had. Herein lay the crux of the whole matter. Still -... she was a dangerous woman. Larimore must be watched. - - - - -XV Masked Benefaction - - -I - -The day following her illuminating talk with her non-conformist -neighbour, Mrs. Trench remained in bed. To some women a headache is a -godsend. It obviates the necessity for explanation. When she emerged -from the darkened room, she brought with her all the marks of physical -illness, to account for the rasped state of her nerves; but to her -son, at least, the evidence was not convincing. He had witnessed too -many narrow brushes with Death, when Lavinia had something important -to attain or conceal. Had she waited, she might have seized on a -ready-made cause for a period of bad humour ... the outcome of the -Marksley building competition. On Saturday afternoon the contest was -settled, and Larimore Trench was not the winner. The prize had gone -to a Chicago architect. That was not the worst of it. Mrs. Marksley -wrote Lary a letter, informing him that his plans were too stiff and -old-fashioned; but that she would like to buy from him the design -for the cow barn, which was better in some respects than the one the -up-to-date architect had made. - -“You remember, Larimore, that was what I said, all along.” Lavinia’s -voice cut both ways. “And if you had gone on, the way you did the cow -barn.... I don’t believe you have forgotten that you put the ornament -on the barn, to please me.” - -“No, I haven’t forgotten. I designed the house for people, not for -cows.” - - -II - -Judith heard about it, in a burst of fierce indignation, from Theodora. -It was Monday, and the atmosphere of her home was still so forbidding -that she dreaded to enter the house, when she came from school. Mrs. -Ascott might want her to do an errand, she argued. At least, it would -do no harm to ask. But Mrs. Ascott did not want an errand. She wanted -the very information Theo was only too eager to offer. From Eileen -she had had a shaft of unpleasant illumination: “Lary has crawled in -his hole and pulled the hole in after him.” There was no iron in his -nature, nothing with which to fend himself against such clumsy insults. -But Theodora inadvertently revealed the deep cause of his hurt. It was -not the Marksleys, but his mother’s attitude, that offended him. - -“To think, Lady Judith, of those stupid Marksley judges, turning down -all Lary’s beautiful plans in favour of--” She gasped, her cheeks -burning. “I wish you could see the front elevation of the house. It -looks for all the world like a frumpy old woman. There’s a gable that -reminds you of a poke bonnet, and under the gable are two round windows -... like staring eyes. If I’d gone that far, I would have had the nerve -to put in a nose and a mouth. But, no, he has a door between those -windows, opening out on a ledge. You don’t have a third story door -opening on a ledge, unless you want some one to walk out there, in the -dark, and get his neck broken. It ought to have been a balcony. Hm-m-m, -I guess he used up all the balconies the law allows. He has them at -both sides ... like the big hips that were in style when mamma was a -bride. And a coat of arms above the door--the Marksleys never had a -coat of arms.” - -“How did you come to see the plans, Theo?” - -“Hal smuggled them over, last night, to show mamma why Lary missed -out. And she didn’t do a thing but roast him again, this morning ... -because they took the cow barn, that he did to please her, and cut out -the classical part, that he did to please himself. That wasn’t the only -ruction we had at breakfast. But there’s no living with my mother, -these days. Papa said he wouldn’t figure on the contract--after the way -they treated Lary. And she nearly raised the roof. I guess my daddy’ll -put in a bid, all right.” - - -III - -More than once, in the weeks that followed, Judith’s mind swung back -to the words: “There’s no living with my mother, these days.” Once -she asked Dr. Schubert about it. Might not Mrs. Trench be, in fact, -a very sick woman--keeping herself out of bed by sheer force of her -indomitable will? To which Lavinia’s physician replied, with a none -too sympathetic smile: “Yes, she is a very sick woman ... but there is -nothing in my materia medica that will reach her case. I am looking for -a return of her old trouble--a hardening of the fluid in the gall duct. -She has passed through two sieges of jaundice. And at another time the -hardening reached the stage of well solidified stones, that yielded to -large and persistent doses of olive oil--a remedy that Mrs. Trench took -as a peculiarly cruel and unnecessary punishment.” - -“I’m glad to know it’s purely physical,” Mrs. Ascott breathed. “I was -afraid it was ... spleen.” - -Dr. Schubert’s eyes twinkled. - -“Your neighbour’s liver trouble originates in her spleen. You’ll say -my anatomy is defective; but Mrs. Trench’s body is the victim of an -abnormal mind. To be physically unfit always infuriates her. Her -passionate outbursts always react on that highly important gland, -that nature designed for the cleansing of the physical body. Result? -A clogged liver and a worse fit of temper. Poor David! He is so fine. -Life ought to have given him velvet instead of gravel.” - -At no time did Lavinia take to her bed for more than a few hours, and -then only when some personal triumph was to be gained by a direct -appeal to the sympathy of her family. If she harboured a feeling of -ill-will against her neighbour, it was in effect to class her with -those of her own household. She seldom glanced into the garden across -the low stone barrier, and when she walked from the kitchen stoop to -David’s shop, at the lower end of her own domain, she went with head -inclined, as if she were battling against a furious northern gale. Even -Theodora was beginning to practice caution, and a less amiable maid -than Drusilla would have given notice, long ago. - -Larimore and his mother were icily polite, as was their wont when no -other form of civil intercourse was possible. The coldness began the -day after Mrs. Trench taunted her son with his failure to win the -Marksley commission. But her smug “I told you so” had little to do -with the prolonged siege. Lary would have forgiven her. His father had -schooled him not to hold her accountable for the bitter things she -said. You could reason with Theodora; but Lavinia.... - -No, the rancour was not on this side. His had been the triumph. His -mother had sought to deliver a blow that must shatter his dearest -idol--and the blow had missed the mark. Dutton was wont to say that -nobody ever got ahead of Vine Trench. And in this case it was Lavinia -who defeated herself. So much the worse for Larimore, who had parried -the thrust with a foreknowledge that staggered and infuriated her. - - -IV - - -It was the Friday following the close of the competition, and there -were indications of a coming thaw in the big Colonial house. The girls -had betaken themselves to Mrs. Ascott’s arbour, as soon as dinner was -over. They spent every available minute at Vine Cottage--to make up for -their mother’s open hostility. And their mother, seeing how happy they -were, had dispatched Larimore to tell them that they were to accompany -her to Mrs. Henderson’s on some inconsequential errand. When they had -gone, Lary let himself wearily down on the bench at Mrs. Ascott’s side. -All the boyishness was gone from his face and his eyes were deeply -circled and dull. No word passed between them. The man reflected, -feeling the warm presence so close to him, that most women chattered, -preached or philosophized without cessation, as if the one thing -demanded of femininity were an unbroken flow of talk. Judith Ascott -knew when speech was obtrusive. She knew, too, when to break the thread -of Lary’s morbid musings. - -“Have you been watching that sunset? Theo called my attention to it, -before you came out. She saw, in those clouds, the form of a woman with -streaming red curls. ‘The red-haired wife of the sun,’ she called it. -Now the locks are straight and almost gray. I never saw such sunsets as -you have here, not even in Italy.” - -“I didn’t know what bewitching colour effects we had, until I began -to sit here on this bench with you. My father has often called us to -enjoy a peculiarly beautiful sky with him. Mamma usually spoils it by -reminding him that all the wealth of tints is produced by particles of -dirt in the atmosphere. She hates dirt, even when it reveals itself in -a form that doesn’t menace her housekeeping. If she had gone on living -in Olive Hill, I believe she would have died of disgust.” - -“Does the town--the immediate environment--make any difference, Lary? -Olive Hill or Springdale, Florence or Pelham. I have been as wretchedly -unhappy and ... alone ... in a crowded Paris café as ever I was on the -deck of a steamer, in mid-ocean, when I wanted to climb overboard and -end it, in the inviting black water.” - -“You? Judith! I thought your life had been eminently -satisfactory--barring the one sorrow.” - -“You must not think I have been a happy woman. I have only been a -coward--shutting the trap door on my failures. But I don’t want to talk -about myself. I have a favour to ask. Will you--” Her voice took on the -quality of appeal. - -“What is it, Judith? A favour?” - -She drew from its envelope a letter that had come, that afternoon, -from her attorney. His partner, Mr. Sanderson, was planning to build a -home on Long Island, as a wedding gift to his only daughter. She knew -the girl’s taste. She wanted to send the plans that Mrs. Marksley had -rejected. With such entrée as the Sandersons could give him, Larimore -Trench ought to find success in New York. He was wasting his talents in -Springdale. - -“It’s good of you, my dear. But that kind of success--or -failure--doesn’t mean much to me.” - -“Then what would satisfy you, Lary? You have so much ability.” - -“A little of the right kind of recognition--perhaps. I used to think -I would experience the thrill at the acceptance of a poem or essay by -some discriminating editor. The first time such an acceptance came, it -left me numb and cold with disappointment ... in myself, I mean--my -inability to rise to the occasion.” - -“May I tell you what you want--what you demand of life?” Some one had -struck a match in her darkness. - -“I--wish you would.” - -“The thing you have attained, Lary, the height you have reached ... -is under your feet. You--_you_ are superior to it. The only thing -that could satisfy you is--” she paused, a fervid instant--“the -unattainable.” - -Larimore Trench turned and looked into her eyes. - -Dusk had settled on the garden, but Luna’s fire illuminated her face. -His body stiffened, and a dull anguish smote him. - -“Judith--God help me--the unattainable is ... you!” - - -V - -Judith Ascott had dreamed of the time when love should come, not such -love as Raoul had given her in her romantic girlhood. Nor that other -love, that had marched with slow musical cadence into the discord of -her early maturity. It must be the masterful love, austere and tender, -a discipline and a refuge for her unruly spirit. And now it was come -... the only love that had ever mattered to her--the only man she had -known whose very faults and weaknesses were precious, and she had but -one impulse--to fold him in her arms and soothe his aching spirit. -Was this love? Or mayhap the thwarted motherhood within her, that -perceived in Lary and Eileen the void left by the rebellious aversion -of the woman who was their mother in the flesh? A long moment she -scrutinized, challenged the stranger that had arisen, unheralded and -undesired, in her own heart. Then she said, resolutely: - -“No, Lary. I am the unattainable, only so long as I retain the wisdom -to hold myself beyond your reach. I should prove as disappointing as -all the others--the achievements that were to give you joy. The real -Judith is not the peerless being your imagination has fashioned. Would -you shrink from me in repugnance and horror if I should tell you that -my husband is not dead?” - -“You are another man’s wife?” - -“I was. The divorce was granted a few days before I came to Springdale, -less than three months ago.” - -Lary breathed a sigh so sharp that it cut him like a knife. - -“But that isn’t all. There was another man ... a man I fancied I loved. -Perhaps I pitied him. Most of all, I pitied myself. I was more than -willing to listen to his arguments. We would go to some place where no -one knew us. We had not the courage to brush away the falsehoods and -conventions of society. I faced all the consequences. It was no impulse -of youth. I was twenty-five, and had been married almost seven years. -We both knew what we were doing when I told him I would go.” - -All at once she felt the man at her side shrink--involuntarily, she -was sure. It was as if his body had repulsed her, while his mind was -striving to be just, even magnanimous. She had thought it all out, -after Theodora’s revelation, knowing that some day Lary would come to -her with the pure white offering of his love. And she had resolved -to tell him of Herbert Faulkner--not the fiasco, but the fact of her -elopement. Perhaps it was this submerged thought that had leaped to -the surface, in her talk with Lary’s mother. With him she would not -take refuge in the timely intervention of a broken axle and a prudent -father. Her sin was as complete as if she had carried elopement to -its inevitable conclusion. He must hear the story in all its sordid -aspect. She waited for him to speak. The clear outline of his face cut -the shadow, incisive and still as an Egyptian profile in stone. Not a -quiver of the lips betrayed his emotion. Yet Judith Ascott knew she had -dealt him the cruelest blow of his life. - -“You won’t let it interfere with our friendship, Lary?” It was a -stupid, girlish question, such as Eileen or Kitten Henderson might have -asked. She felt incredibly young and inexperienced. When the man spoke, -his voice was hoarse with pain. - -“I don’t want friendship. I want, oh, God! the unattainable. Judith, it -is not what you have done. I am not such a cad as to judge you. I long -since freed myself from the tyranny of an absolute thing called virtue. -That isn’t the--the obstacle. At bottom I am a selfish brute, jealous -and unreasonable. If there is another man in the world who has meant -that much to you.... Oh, not that I blame him. If I had known you when -you were another man’s wife, I wouldn’t have scrupled to take you from -him. You are my other self. I have known it--from the moment I looked -into your eyes, under the little apricot lamp. All my life I have been -heart-hungry, wanting something I couldn’t find. Zeus cleft us apart, -in the beginning of time. And now that you are here--” He set his teeth -hard and his frame shook. - -A long, long time they sat silent. The night settled about them and -clouds covered the face of the moon. In the great house next door, -lights gleamed here and there as the family came home and prepared for -bed. Mrs. Trench had arrived in Hal Marksley’s touring car, with the -girls. Apparently they had been for a ride. As she went to the back -door, to be sure Drusilla had put out the milk bottles, she caught -sight of the two motionless figures in the summer house. She went to -the sun room and turned on a light that shimmered faintly through the -Venetian blinds. Judith saw, without perceiving it. The whole irony of -life lay between her and that impatient light. - -The tower clock chimed eleven, when, like a stage illumination, the -garden was bathed in golden glory. With a single impulse the two on the -settee turned and looked up through the roof of the summer house, where -the vines were thin. And there, in a little clear blue lake, piled -high around the marge with mountains of sombre clouds, the yellow moon -floated, serene and detached. Lary took the fevered hands between his -cold, moist palms. - -“Will you wait for me ... wait till I can search myself? Perhaps there -is a man, hidden somewhere in the husk of me. If I find him ... I will -come and lay him at your feet.” - - -VI - -Mrs. Trench was waiting for her son. She had dallied too long with that -warning. She was in the door of the sun room at the first sound of his -key in the lock. - -“Larimore!” as he crossed the hall and made for the stairs. - -“Yes, mamma. Why aren’t you in bed?” - -“I have something to say to you. I don’t often meddle in your affairs; -but there come times when it is a mother’s duty to speak. I wish you -would be a little more careful in your associations with that Mrs. -Ascott. She isn’t the pure, virtuous woman we thought her. She told -me--in the most brazen way--that her husband ran away to Africa with -another woman. Though what anybody would want to go to Africa for-- But -he wasn’t entirely to blame for leaving her. She had an affair with -another man. A low scoundrel who pretended to be her husband’s friend. -She told me, without the least bit of shame, that the only thing that -saved her from breaking her marriage vow was--her father catching up -with them, when the axle of their automobile broke--before they reached -the yacht that they were going to Italy in ... alone ... not a touring -party. Alone!” - -The words poured forth in a disorderly phalanx. Larimore stood -patiently waiting until the need for breath stopped her utterance. Then -he said incisively: - -“So there was a broken axle.” - -And in a flash Lavinia knew that she had lifted a load of doubt and -misery from her son’s mind--had destroyed, with her revelation, the -barrier that stood between him and Judith Ascott. He could hear the -grinding of her sharp teeth as he turned and ascended the stairs. - - - - -XVI Coming Storm - - -I - -Mrs. Ascott and Theodora were up in the attic searching through trunks -and boxes for a fan that would harmonize with Eileen’s graduating -dress. Lavinia had made a special trip to St. Louis in quest of -accessories, and had returned with a marvel of lacquer sticks and -landscape, befitting a mandarin’s banquet board--and Lary had said -things that threw the family into a superlative state of stress. - -“Mamma and my brother don’t gee worth a cent,” the child lamented, -peering with eager eyes into the shadowy recesses of a chest that ought -to yield treasure. “For the last month, they’re on each other’s nerves -all the time. It’s mostly Lary’s fault ... and ... I believe he does -it to save papa. My poor daddy can’t do a blessed thing the way it -ought to be. And you know, mamma gets good and mad at only one of us -at a time. Eileen says, if she felt that way about her people, she’d -clean up the whole bunch at once, and get it out of her ‘cistern.’ -But mamma’s just naturally economical, and this way she can make her -grouches go farther. We thought Drusilla would quit us, last week, -because mamma laid her out so hard--when she scorched the bottom layer -of a short cake. So I guess it was a good thing Lary said what he did -about the fan.” - -“Lightning rod for Drusilla,” Larimore Trench called, from the foot of -the narrow stairway. “You don’t mind if I come up? I’d like to see -the old attic again.” His face was beaming and his gesture catlike as -he mounted the steep stairs. “Bob and Syd and I used to have some wild -times up here. I wonder if the ghosts of our youth ever disturb your -slumbers, sweet Lady Judith. We were a rough trio, in our day.” - -“You and Sydney Schubert rough! I wonder what you would call my two -incorrigible brothers.” - -“Yes, but they were,” Theo broke in. “Bob could get them to do -anything. We got awful quiet at our house after he went away. Come over -here, Lary, where you can get the breeze. I’ll let you have half of my -box to sit on.” With a wisp of paper she wiped the dust from the top of -a packing case that bore in bold black letters the legend: “Books--Keep -Dry.” - -“Look at this, Lady Judith!” The small frame shook with reminiscent -mirth. “It belongs to mamma ... twenty volumes of general information, -in doses to match the monthly payments. ‘Keep Dry!’ You couldn’t wet -’em with a fire hose. We had to leave them here, because Lary planned -the book-cases, in the other house, so that they wouldn’t quite go in. -And mamma had one awful set-to with Professor Ferguson when he had -the nerve to use her box of canned culture to lay out his herbarium -specimens for mounting. Sylvia said it taught mamma a lesson. If she -wanted to rent Vine Cottage, she couldn’t go on deciding how often the -silver must be polished, and what the tenant could do with the old -plunder she left in the attic. _Plunder!_ Think of it!” - -“She has been an exemplary ‘landlord’ since I have been here,” Judith -said, ignoring Lary and his too evident embarrassment. “I don’t in the -least mind her ordering Dutton around. It saves my humiliating myself -in the eyes of my gardener. How was I to know that you can’t grow sweet -potatoes from seed, and that Brussels sprouts aren’t good until after -frost?” - - -II - -Down on the street there was a harsh grinding of brakes and an excited -cry, as Hal Marksley’s car stopped so abruptly as to precipitate Eileen -from her seat. Theodora darted to the window, cupped her hands around -her mouth, and shouted: - -“Come on up. Mrs. Ascott’s got three fans for you to choose from.” - -A moment later, two pairs of feet were heard ascending the stairs. A -swift sense of impending disaster sent Theo’s glance from the face -of her hostess to that of her brother. She wondered how she ought to -have worded her invitation so that Hal could not have assumed it to -include him. A young man of fine breeding would not need to be told -that she was not asking him to Mrs. Ascott’s attic, when Mrs. Ascott -had never invited him to her reception room. He just didn’t know how to -discriminate. Lately Eileen didn’t seem to discriminate, either. She -should have told Hal not to come. He would be terribly embarrassed, -meeting Lary. But of course neither of them knew Lary was there. - -If young Marksley knew he was not welcome in the sultry store room of -Vine cottage, he gave no token. Eileen’s breathless condition, when she -reached the top of the steep stair, gave him a momentary conversational -advantage. - -“I’m going over to my sister’s to dinner, this evening, and the kid and -I were wondering how we’d put in the time till the rest of the folks -arrive.” - -“You don’t mean you’re going to _eat_ again--just coming from Ina’s -graduation party!” Theodora gasped. “What did she serve?” - -“Oh, the usual sumptuous Stevens spread. What did she have, Eileen? All -I can remember is that Kitten said she borrowed the microtome from the -lab. to cut the sandwiches. I believe there was an olive apiece, by -actual count.” - -“Don’t you remember, Hal? The feast began with frappéd essence of rose -fragrance, served in cocktail glasses, with hearts of doughnuts. Then -there was a salad of last year’s ambitions and next year’s hopes. And -something to drink that had a reminiscent flavour of coffee. But her -china was lovely. She borrowed most of it from Mrs. Marksley. That’s -how Hal came to be invited with the preps. Gee, when I ask a bunch of -hungry kids to my house, I _feed_ ’em. But then, I know how to cook. -And I don’t have to be so desperately dainty, for fear of blundering in -the menu.” - -“You might have waited for some one else to say that,” Larimore rebuked. - -“Huh! it’s a poor dog that can’t wag its own tail. Besides, I can’t -remember when you or any of my family made me duck to keep from being -pelted with praise. That poor boy is almost starved. He pretended he -didn’t like olives, so that I could have two. And he was about to -smuggle another sandwich when Mrs. Stevens told what they charge for a -beef tongue, and how it shrinks in cooking.” - -“Yes,” the youth roared, “when you go to Ina’s for a meal, your -oesophagus rings a bell every time you swallow. Her mother makes -you feel as if you were eating the grocery bill. We eat like pigs at -our house--all but sister, and she’s sure no recommendation for the -æsthetic diet. She’d be a stunner, with a little more meat on her -bones.” - -Eileen flushed and changed the subject. A few minutes later, Hal -lounged across the room to where Lary and Theo sat silently side by -side. He began, in a tone that sought to be intimate: - -“I say, old man, it was a rotten shame about those plans. I was just as -sorry as could be. But my mother--” - -“One doesn’t speak of such things,” Larimore said curtly. - -Judith saved the situation by the timely intervention of the fan--a -woman’s device that evoked from Lary gratitude, from Theo worship. -An exclamation of delight, a moment’s perplexed comparison, a hasty -choice, and Eileen and her uncouth cavalier were gone. - - -III - -When Theodora looked from the window, some minutes later, the two -were crossing the street in the direction of the Nims’ house. A -full minute she stood, perplexed. Then her chest heaved with futile -indignation. In that minute, the scattered troubles of the past six -weeks had danced into form, like iron filings on the glass disc, when -Sydney drew his violin bow across its vibrating edge. She understood. -Mamma had given permission for Eileen to go with Hal to Mrs. Nims’--to -dinner. After all she had said about Mrs. Nims! A quarrel with papa was -inevitable. _Mamma wanted to provoke a quarrel with papa._ There was -no other explanation. Things had gone from bad to worse, with only an -occasional rift in her mother’s lowering sky. Whatever the cause of her -displeasure, it had reached a climax. Something must be done to protect -papa--done quickly. Lary was not always tactful--when people acted -that way. And mamma always took it out on papa, when Lary got the best -of her. - -“Lady Judith, couldn’t you call her to come right back here ... eat -dinner with you?” The plea tumbled from the inchoate depth of her -distress. Mrs. Ascott and Lary interrupted a flow of intimate talk, to -look at the pale face and the preternaturally bright eyes. - -“What, darling?” - -“Eileen! I think my mother has gone crazy. First she says Mrs. Nims -isn’t fit for a decent woman to speak to--when papa talked about -Christian charity--and now she lets Eileen go over there to dinner.” - -“How do you know that, baby?” - -“Well, Lary Trench, look for yourself. I guess I can put two and two -together. If I didn’t want papa to think Mrs. Nims was a dangerous -woman--I wouldn’t tell him that Christ himself couldn’t save her. -Either my mother hasn’t got any system at all ... or ... she wants to -have one awful row with my father.” - -“We might as well face a sickeningly unpleasant situation,” Larimore -said to Judith. “You are seeing my mother at her absolute worst. -Something has occurred to annoy her, desperately. And we can’t even -surmise what it is. The baby and I have laid plots to trap her into -betraying the cause of her hurt. But only last night we acknowledged -ourselves beaten.” - -“May I confess that I have been trying, too, at Dr. Schubert’s -suggestion? He tells me that this state of her mind may lead to serious -consequences. Some obscure liver trouble, I believe.” - -“Not obscure,” Lary amended. “Dr. Schubert understands its -pathological aspect. It is the mental cause that baffles all of us. -Gall stones are not uncommon in women of my mother’s temperament. -She has too much energy for the small engine she has to operate. Her -physician has tried to impress on her the need for keeping herself -tranquil. He might as well advise a tornado to be calm and rational.” - -“Yet she does take advice from him--if he makes it specific and -definite.” - -“You have the index to my mother’s mind--that cost me years of search. -She learns one thing at a time. She has no faculty for making logical -deductions. When she tries to apply a known principle to a new set of -conditions the chances are nine to one that she will go wrong.” - -As he spoke, the woman’s eyes turned to Theodora ... impelled by some -unrecognized attraction. The little head was nodding in sage approval. -She was only half conscious of what those two were saying. The fact -that it was intimate--confidential--sufficed. Things were coming -on, entirely to her liking. It was almost the end of June, and she -wanted to be sure there would be no backslidings, while she and her -mother were in Minneapolis, the following month. She had never been -anywhere--excepting the week in St. Louis for the Exposition, when she -was seven--and a trip up the river on a steamer had been particularly -alluring. Now she would almost rather not go. She might be needed. Oh, -not to patch up a quarrel! Lary and Lady Judith were too wellbred for -that. But Lary did need to have his courage bucked up, now and then. - -She was only a child, she reflected, but she knew that when people were -in love, they had no business mooning around in the dark--_in separate -yards_. She could go over the wall without touching anything but her -hands. And Lary was much more athletic than she. Besides, the gate was -there--even if mamma did padlock it, one morning. What if Lady Judith -should try to go through that gate--and have her feelings hurt! - - -IV - -Theodora glanced up from her troubled musings to perceive that she -was quite alone in the attic. They had gone and left her. They had -forgotten all about her. She sprang from the packing case and danced -for joy. It was the first time in all her life that Lary had forgotten -her. It was the best omen of all. They were standing at the foot of the -stairs--and they weren’t saying a word. She paused, on tiptoe, afraid -to breathe lest she break the witching spell. What did people think -about, when they were all alone in that kind of heaven? Now she heard -their feet on the lower stairs. She hurried to the window to see them -go down to the grassy plot before the house, where her father joined -them. - -The rosy picture was obscured, in an instant, as if she had spilled -the ink bottle over it, and daddy’s danger loomed before her. She -trudged wearily down to join them on the grass. Things never were what -you thought they were going to be. When she reached the edge of the -veranda, a pair of strong arms caught her in a yearning embrace. - -“Aren’t you going to congratulate your papa?” - -“If there’s any reason. Did you get the Marksley contract?” - -David’s transparent face darkened. - -“Yes ... but that’s not a matter for congratulation. I figured so high -that I counted on escaping. I didn’t want it at any price.” - -“Then what is it?” - -“You know, this was the annual meeting of the college Board--and they -elected your papa treasurer. When Dr. Clarkson made his nominating -speech, I didn’t dream he was talking about me.” - -“Mamma said this morning that they’d shove it off on you--after the way -the last two treasurers handled the funds. She couldn’t see why you -would want to do all that work, just to be called the most honest man -on the Board.” - -“Mamma and I don’t always look at things alike. Come, my dears, she is -at the door, and dinner may be waiting.” - -“Eileen went to a party, over at Ina’s,” Theo cried, mindful of danger. -To herself she added: “Well, she did. I didn’t tell him she wasn’t -there still.” Daddy must not find out that she was right across the -street. There had been too many disagreements, and it never did daddy -any good to fight back. He always got the worst of it, and it made him -sick. She wanted to ask Mrs. Ascott to come with them, and eat dinner -in Eileen’s place. Mamma would hardly raise a scene before company. As -the invitation took shape on her lips, it was halted by her mother’s -curt voice: - -“I suppose you like your victuals cold, the way you stand there and -gossip.” - -The three Trenches stepped over the wall, which at the front was little -more than an ornamental coping, and Judith went in to her lonely meal. - - -V - -Dinner was scarcely over when the room was plunged in a glare of fire, -the startling illumination followed almost instantly by thunder that -crackled and smote. Then the storm, that had hovered all afternoon -in the sultry air, broke with the fury of explosively released wind -and rain. Nanny called for help, as the deluge poured through the -screens at three sides of the cottage in quick succession. Before the -east windows had been closed, the rain was driving straight from the -south--and the attic window wide open. Nanny’s bulk halted at the foot -of the breath-exhausting stairs, and her mistress ran past her, to make -good the publisher’s injunction, “Keep Dry.” When the sash had been -lowered, Judith went to the rear of the attic and looked down into the -garden, tossing in the summer storm. - -Sharp, hissing flames heralded the detonation of thunder such as she -had heard nowhere save in the Alps or the tropics. The earth, a moment -ago black with the pall of midnight, leaped into the semblance of a -stage set with dancing marionets, that vanished in the ensuing darkness -to rise again with the next purple flash. Now the wind swooned, lay -panting and breathless against the palpitating bosom of the earth. And -now it leaped with renewed ardour, gripped the pear tree and shook -it as an ill-controlled mother shakes an unruly child. One of the -trellises at the east side of the lawn went over with a crash, carrying -in its wake a shower of Prairie Queen roses. The Dorothy Perkins looked -on with serene security from the shoulder of the garage, her petals -draggled, but exultant in the garish light. - -The air was clearing now. Gradually the tender green corn slumped -down in the softened loam and a disconsolate toad hopped mournfully -across the white gravel walk. This was too much even for a toad. -With a long, soul-sickening lunge he disappeared in the shrubbery, -as the thunder rumbled its retreat behind the western horizon. Out -of its dying reverberation, music came floating up through the moist -air ... marvellous strains. Judith crossed the attic and threw open -the window. Yes, her surmise was right. Eileen and Mrs. Nims were -playing Debussy’s matchless tone picture, “Garden in the Rain,” the -’cello blending exquisitely with the piano. Would David hear? Would -he recognize his daughter’s touch? But Eileen had never played like -this. The tones came, moist and meaningful, lulling the conscious mind -to dreams, steeping the senses in the drowsy calm that follows the -delirium of summer heat. - -Judith Ascott felt her soul at one with the garden ... arid clay, whose -thirst had been quenched. She had played Debussy’s imagist arrangement, -and had rejected it because it failed to symbolize a prosaic natural -phenomenon. Now she knew that it was not the rain, but the garden, -which the composer had in mind. She had approached the theme from -overhead, just as a moment ago she had looked down on her own garden. -With a thrill she perceived Debussy’s thought in all its naked, -elemental beauty--the primitive consciousness of maternal Earth, glad -and grateful for the benison of summer rain. - -Had something new come into Eileen’s playing? Was it Adelaide -Marksley’s ’cello that made the elusive thought tangible? Was it, -rather, something that had come into her own soul? She had been so -long athirst. Must one faint beneath the heat, brave the wind and the -lightning’s terror, in order to drink in at last the bountiful rain? -Was there any price one would not pay for such peace as had found -habitation within her soul? - - - - -XVII A Place Called Bromfield - - -I - -In the morning the mistress of Vine Cottage went out to inspect the -havoc the storm had wrought. Dutton was down on his knees, righting -the vivid green corn stalks and banking them in with the soft -soil. Theodora stood on the gravel walk, watching him with elfin -curiosity--his shins protected by huge pads of faded brussels carpet, -his fingers so packed with mud that they resembled a sculptor’s model -in the rough. When she caught sight of Mrs. Ascott she crossed the -intervening lawn on dainty toes, like a kitten afraid of the wet. - -“We didn’t have any trouble about Eileen,” she began in a whisper -pregnant with meaning. “I fixed it.” - -“You were a good little angel. Have you a kiss for me this morning?” - -“A million of them ... but only one, now.” She pursed her lips with -strigine solemnity. The kiss was a rite--not to be taken frivolously. -“I have to tell you about it. I don’t think it was half bad--for a kid -like me. It didn’t look as if it would work, when I started in. But if -you are in as tight a pinch as that, you have to jump where there looks -like an opening. Then I had to see it through. There wasn’t any chance -to back out.” The sentence was somewhat chaotic, but the meaning was -plain. - -“When we started in the house, I let mamma and Lary get clear inside -the hall. Then I pulled papa back and whispered in his ear--that Eileen -was over at Mrs. Nims’ and for him not to let on that he missed her. -He asked me why, and I told him that if he was any sport at all, he’d -do as I said, _and not ask any questions_. And what do you think, Lady -Judith ... he was game! Mamma threw out one hook after another, to -make him ask where Eileen was. And every time he turned and looked at -me--and I gave him the most awful glances, behind my napkin. The only -thing he could think of, right quick, was getting made treasurer of the -college trustees. And I don’t know why mamma didn’t smell something, -because it isn’t the least bit like my daddy to boast.” - -“And then the storm may have helped.” - -“Yes, papa said that was sent by Divine Providence. It gave me a chance -to explain to him--while mamma was chasing all over the house, putting -down windows, and screaming at Drusilla as if the house was on fire. I -told him that mamma was mad as a wet hen--and just bound and determined -to start something, with him ... and he _mustn’t_ fall for it. Lady -Judith, I wish my daddy had more sand. He choked up--like he was about -to cry--and said he didn’t know what was wrong with mamma. He tried -every way to please her and make her happy. He asked me if I knew why -she was so cross all the time ... and I fibbed an awful fib. I told -him Dr. Schubert said she had rocks in her liver and that would make a -saint cross.” - -Her eyes danced with roguish mirth, then fell. When she raised them -again to the woman’s face, they were full of obstinate purpose. - -“I guess it was a sin and God will punish me. Well, let Him ... if -He feels that way about it. I’d take a whipping any day, to keep my -daddy from getting one. If your soul is so nice that you can’t fib -once in a while, to help a fellow out of trouble--” She battled with -the futility of language to convey the situation as she perceived it. -“Still, I wouldn’t want you to think it was wrong ... telling a story, -to keep some one out of a scolding--some one that never did a mean -thing in his whole life. Do you--do you think it is?” - -“You darling!” Aching arms encircled her. “I don’t know how to answer -you. We both know that it is wrong, in the abstract, to tell lies.” - -“Yes, but I never tell them in the abstract. It’s only when there isn’t -any other way.” The explanation threatened to assume the solemnity of -a lecture on pragmatism. “I have wanted to tell you--ever since Lary -said I was a conscienceless fibber. It’s one thing I can’t make him -understand, and he knows everything else without being told. When you -want a thing to be a certain way, and it isn’t that way at all, you -can’t use the facts. _They don’t fit._ And what good does it do--to -keep saying a thing over, the way you don’t want it to be?” - -“A popular religion was founded on that premise, dearie.” - -“What I’m talking about hasn’t got anything to do with religion. Bob -used to say, ‘A lie is an abomination in the sight of the Lord, and a -very present help in time of trouble.’ But I would never fib to keep -myself out of trouble. You have to save them ... till there’s something -important. If I hadn’t told Lary you didn’t like the apricot lamp -shade, he wouldn’t have thought of going over to call on you--till Syd -Schubert or some other man fell in love with you.” - -Lavinia Trench’s strident voice rasped the sweet morning air. Theo was -having altogether too pleasant a time, over there in Mrs. Ascott’s -garden. That which she had related would have stung her mother to -madness. But Theo’s afterthought was a little outcropping of Lavinia -herself. In Dutton’s phrase: “That woman’ll have something stickin’ in -her craw for years--and she’ll have to fetch it out, in spite of the -devil. If you ever make her sore, or do her a bad turn--you might think -she forgot it--but the time’ll come when she lets you hear about it.” - - -II - -When the child had gone, Dutton untied the pads from his knees and -approached his mistress. The wind had wrecked the frail framework -which he had constructed of lath and the refuse from David Trench’s -shop, to support the rank growth of tomato vines, over there by the -wall. He admitted, shamefacedly, that he “knowed them end supports was -too weak,” when he put them in. He wondered if Mrs. Ascott would mind -helping him. Mrs. Dutton was in a bad humour, on account of some words -she had had with Mrs. Trench. And Nanny was no good for carpenter work. - -“I’m not much of a carpenter--” - -“Oh, it ain’t work. It’s just that Nanny’s feet’s too big. She gets in -the way. I thought I might call Dave over to he’p me; but he’s been out -in the shop runnin’ the scroll saw for dear life, since right after -breakfast. The old boy’s goin’ through his hells again. I tell you, -ma’am, it’s an awful mistake to call a girl ‘Vine’ and then give her -no mind to cling. When she’s in one o’ her tantrums, she wouldn’t see -the Lord Jesus Christ if she met Him in the middle of the road--and she -sets a heap o’ store by the Lord.” - -There was only one way to handle Jeff Dutton. An open rebuke was -invariably followed by a day of insolent idleness. Mrs. Ascott had -heard him quarrel with Lavinia Trench in a manner to indicate that -one of them, at least, had not forgotten their former state of social -equality. The pointed ignoring of his familiar gossip usually proved -efficacious. He followed his mistress to the loamy bed in the sheltered -angle between the garage and the wall, where downy leaved vines and -splintered lath lay in a hopeless tangle on the ground. A while they -worked, side by side, the sullen silence broken only by the whirring -of David’s saw. Judith’s fingers were verde and odorous, and the hem -of her skirt was adorned with a batik pattern of grotesque figures in -the harmonious hues of earth and vine. Nanny would scold. But what was -the good of a garden, if one must only be a disinterested onlooker? -Suddenly Dutton yelled: - -“There! Grab ’er quick! This end--can’t you see?” - -The next moment he offered profuse apology. But his mistress was ready -for the emergency. It was necessary for him to go into the garage and -cut another support to take the place of the one that had snapped. - -“Better put this ’ere pad on the ground, under your right foot, while -you hold ’er up. Them slippers is mighty thin. I won’t be gone a -minute.” - - -III - -Dutton’s minute was always a variable quantity, and this time it -lengthened itself until the woman’s arms and shoulders ached, from the -unwonted strain. But she was glad of the interval--glad that only she -was forced to hear snatches of the conversation that took place in -the shop at the other side of the wall. One of the voices was low and -appealing, the other raucous with purposeful anger: - -“I can’t see, my dear, why you want to go to Bromfield this summer, -when you have all your plans made to take the trip to St. Paul on the -boat. You have always refused to visit Bromfield.” - -“That’s just it. You never want me to go anywhere--have any -pleasure--or even a vacation when you see that the work is killing me. -You gad around as much as you like. You’ve been away five times this -spring.” - -“I certainly don’t go for pleasure, my dear.” - -“Oh, don’t ‘my dear’ me! I’m sick and tired of it. That’s all I ever -get. You expect me to slave and stint myself and stay at home, so that -you and the children can make a big showing. And I’m supposed to be -happy and contented on your everlasting ‘my dears.’ I tell you, there’s -got to be a change in this family.” - -“Who is there in Bromfield that you want to see?” - -“I should think I might want to see my brother. And a daughter might -want to put flowers on her parents’ graves.” - -“That isn’t it, Vine. Why don’t you tell me the truth? I would give you -anything in my power, that would make you happy. It’s this underhanded -way you have, that hurts me. I don’t care where you go or what you do, -if you’ll only--” - -At that moment Dutton came from the garage, to be greeted by a volley -of questions and suggestions. Fortunately, as he worked, his deaf ear -was turned towards David Trench’s shop. Scarcely had the last nail -been driven when Mrs. Trench emerged from the building and strode -triumphantly towards the back stoop. For her the universe was a -straight line. Everything above, beneath and beside it had melted into -oblivion. The line ended in a point on the map of New York, known to -the initiate as Bromfield. - - - - -Book Two - -Summer - - - - -XVIII Sylvia - - -I - -Throughout the months of May and June the battle had raged--Lavinia -Trench’s battle, not with her family but with herself. She knew, as -all those in her little world knew, that a visit to Bromfield was not -the difficult thing she had made it. Times without number David had -implored her to go with him especially when there was serious illness -or death in one or the other of their families. And now that she had -achieved her purpose, knowing all the while, somewhere in the depths of -her, hope of conquest on a certain perfectly definite object, and had -bent her tremendous energy in that direction--knowing all the while, -somewhere in the depths of her, that the enemy lay entrenched in quite -another quarter. - -In those former struggles, in which she had invariably bent David to -her will, she had rewarded him with a period of forced sweetness which -he was glad to take in lieu of the comradeship he had long since ceased -to hope for. It had been this way when they made the perilous move from -Olive Hill, where he was doing remarkably well, working at a daily -wage, to Springdale, where he must hazard all he had saved ... to give -his wife the social advantage she could not find in a dirty mining -town. But Lavinia had no instinct for society, derived no immediate -satisfaction from such triumphs as had come to her. It appeared to -David’s simple and always lucid mind that she created situations for -the sheer purpose of annihilating them. In every crisis in their lives, -he had owned in retrospect that Lavinia was right. Had he understood -the situation, a frank discussion would have won him. It was her method -of approach that seemed to him unnecessarily cruel. - -She had, from childhood, viewed David Trench as an amiable yokel, to -be blindfolded and led about by the hand. And now one sentence in his -talk, that morning in the shop, rankled: “Who is it that you want to -see in Bromfield?” She had been telling herself over and over again -that there was no one in particular she wanted to see. Her essentially -prudish mind shrank from the naked truth that stalked before her, in -the dark hours of the night, with David peacefully sleeping at her -side. But negation was not conquest. In vain she declared to her own -soul that Calvin Stone was nothing to her. She could meet him without -a tremor. She tried to picture him, old and scarred by life--shrinking -from her gaze, because of the stain on his fair name. She saw him, -instead, a debonair youth of three-and-twenty, the sort of fellow who -would kiss a girl ... and argue about it afterward. - -There had been periods, weeks and even months, when the foothills of -her immediate environment had obscured that treeless mountain peak in -her life--the irreparable injury she had suffered. But something always -happened to bring her perfidious lover once more within her ken. Never -so poignantly as when Mrs. Ascott unwittingly revealed the reason -for Calvin’s hasty marriage. She had fancied such an explanation ... -had been sure that the certainty of it would be anodyne for her deep -hurt. Instead it had served only to tear open the old wound, to set it -festering with the toxin of that other unstudied remark: “He afterward -tried to get out of it.” Had not Calvin’s father foreshadowed this very -contingency? Lettie’s husband might sicken of his bargain--might come -back to his first love, to plead for her forgiveness and the boon of -her restored favour. - -She would keep this idea uppermost in her mind, when she went to -Bromfield. It not only served to soothe her vanity, but it would be -a whip with which to lash the man who had wronged her. No, she would -not give him the satisfaction of thinking she regretted her own hasty -marriage. She would make him believe she had been infinitely the gainer -when she married David Trench. The idea was so preposterous that, given -a less subjective sense of humour, she might have laughed at it. But -David had been that kind of stalking horse before. - - -II - -David leaned against the wall, his tired eyes resting fondly on the -garden where his children had romped. He was telling Mrs. Ascott the -origin of the summer house--that he had built as a surprise for his -wife, the spring she went to visit Lary in Ithaca, his first year -in college. In those days Sylvia was the honey-pot for a swarm of -students, and an occasional mature man, and a folding tea table in an -outdoor living-room covered with kudzu and crimson rambler was an added -attraction. Lavinia joined them, her cheeks flushed, her dark eyes -ablaze with animation. - -“You are going to be compelled to get along without me for a few weeks, -Mrs. Ascott. My husband is sick and tired of seeing me around, and he’s -going to bundle me up and send me home to my own people. It’s the first -trip I’ve had in years ... always tied down to home and my children. Is -there anyone in Rochester you’d like to send a message to? I haven’t -seen dear old New York state since I left there, twenty-eight years ago -next November.” - -“Why, Vine, I was just telling Mrs. Ascott about building the little -summer house for you, when you went to see Lary.” - -Lavinia Trench flushed, not the slow red that betokened deep wrath, -but a light wave of crimson that swallowed up the hectic spots in her -cheeks, that tinged the hollow of her temples and the taut skin of her -high and slightly receding forehead. It was gone in an instant, leaving -in its wash a strained look of embarrassment. - -“I never think of that as a visit. I went in such a hurry--and then -I didn’t have time to go over to Bromfield, because ... you wrote me -that Sylvia had a cold and Robert had sprained his wrist. I never go -away from home without something dreadful happening. I wonder what -Sylvia will say when she gets my telegram to-night. I hope she won’t be -frightened.” - -“You are going to telegraph Sylvia? What for?” - -“I want her to look after the children while I’m gone.” - -“You aren’t taking them with you--after promising Eileen that she might -spend the summer with her cousin, Alice Larimore?” - -“A nice rest I would have--dragging two children around with me!” - -“They don’t need to have their bottles fixed.” David smiled in spite -of his perplexity. “I had counted on this summer--to break up the -infatuation for young Marksley. I thought you agreed with me. It was -your solution. You told me not to say anything about it until vacation, -and that you would send Eileen away.” - -David might have spared his breath. The telegram was already on the -wire. - - -III - -Sylvia Penrose came home in time for commencement. It was her first -visit since the gold-lined catastrophe whereby she was shorn of the -coveted “Mrs. Professor,” and she brought with her more pretty clothes -than anyone in Springdale had dreamed of--outside a department store. -Her father watched her uneasily, the first evening. He saw a marked -change in her, and the quality of it disturbed him. Could a child -of his acquire such a degree of cynical world-wisdom in a brief ten -months? Had Sylvia changed, or was he seeing her for the first time, as -she was? - -David was not given to introspection. The chambers of his heart were -filled with the ghosts of dreams and longings that had perished ... -yet would not lie quiet in the graves to which his acquiescent mind -had consigned them. One could always take refuge from the hurt of life -in the tangible things that life had imposed. He took refuge, now, in -his wife’s vivid charm, her spontaneous return to health and buoyancy. -Barring a certain smugness, that had come to be an essential fibre of -her mental woof, she was amazingly attractive. - -“You might easily pass for Mrs. Penrose’s sister,” Judith exclaimed, -astonished at the apparition of Lavinia in a cameo pink negligée with -wide frills of cream lace. And, Lavinia, smarting under the lash of her -daughter’s comments regarding the morning jacket--and the foolish old -women who tried to prolong youth by such ill-considered devices--turned -to preen herself before the mirror. - -She had fully intended to prime Sylvia, with regard to Larimore and -the dangerous widow; but that burst of spontaneous praise disarmed -her. She did not, however, neglect to make plain her intentions in -another quarter. Hal Marksley was to be treated with proper respect. -It would not be a bad idea to have the engagement--the wedding, -even--consummated before her return from Bromfield. Any one with a -grain of sense must know that a fellow as popular and rich as Hal--with -half the girls in town after him--would not stand such snubbing as -he had received from the men of the household. He was of age ... and -Eileen could easily pass herself off for eighteen or twenty if she did -up her hair and went to Greenville where she was not known. Papa and -Larimore were absolutely insane not to see that a girl with Eileen’s -impetuous nature.... Mrs. Trench did not finish the sentence. She and -Sylvia understood each other. - - -IV - -After the train had gone the big house was unbearably lonely, reft of -the all pervasive personality that dominated its moods of sunshine and -gloom. Early Sunday afternoon David passed through the wicket gate -and sought his neighbour in the summer house. One by one the other -Trenches joined them. For a time Sylvia went about with her brother, -examining old familiar objects, assuming charming attitudes, giving -vent to laughter that rippled in measured cadence. Theodora watched -her, wondering what kind of impression she was making. Sylvia was -like mamma--always sure of herself. Lary and Eileen were like papa. -And she--she wasn’t like anybody. Just a little remnant that had been -patched together, out of the left-overs of the other children. - -She came out of her musings to hear her father say: “Mrs. Ascott, you -don’t know what it means to live with one person until that person -becomes part of your very body. When Vine is away.... I do everything -left-handed. It’s as if a piece of me was gone, here.” He slipped a -hand under his left arm, and his eyes smiled mournfully. “I am always -turning to look for her, and the vacancy makes me dizzy.” - -How stupid to miss the first part of such a conversation! And now Lady -Judith wouldn’t say anything in reply--because the others were coming -for afternoon tea, with Nanny, an exaggerated cocoa girl in white cap -and apron, bearing a steaming samovar and a wide range of accessories -to suit the prejudice of those who preferred their Sunday afternoon -tipple hot or cold. - -“It’s so foolish for the Fourth to come on Sunday--and have to save up -all your fire-crackers till to-morrow,” the child began disconsolately, -choosing a macaroon from the embarrassing variety of small cakes in the -silver basket. “Hal says the Governor can’t come; but there will be a -better orator to spread the eagle in the stadium. He didn’t ask me to -go with him and Eileen.” - -“I thought all three of my daughters were going with me,” David -pleaded, his eyes seeking Eileen’s. But Sylvia dispensed with argument: - - -“No, mamma said I was to take Theo to the stadium with us. There isn’t -room for her in Hal’s little car. And besides, I know how I used to -hate to have the younger children tagging after me, when I was having -company. I’ve asked Dr. Schubert and Syd to join us, and they’ll come -home for a spread, after the celebration. Mrs. Ascott, I hope you’ll -come, too. I have already asked Hal. Syd has promised to help me with -the serving. He ought to make some woman a good husband--the training I -gave him when we were growing up.” - - - - -XIX A Web in the Moonlight - - -I - -Judith was glad, afterward, that the responsibility for Eileen had -been lifted from David Trench’s shoulders, howsoever humiliating the -conditions might be. All that would have made for guidance had long -since been wrested from his hands, and the inevitable pain would be -robbed of the corrosive quality of self-reproach. She wondered what he -was thinking, that portentous Monday evening, as he gazed past her and -Theodora to the row of seats across the aisle where Hal and Eileen sat, -munching popcorn and making audible comments on the speeches, comments -that bubbled with cleverness not always refined in its quality. - -Just as the perspiring statesman appeared on the flag-draped platform, -bearing a message from the Governor of the state, Dr. Schubert and -his son came down the aisle, looking to right and left with searching -eyes. Theodora stood on tiptoe to signal them. There was a shifting of -the original seating arrangement, so that Sydney and Sylvia might be -together. The first few sentences of the florid oration were lost in -the general confusion, and when Judith looked again into the row of -seats across the aisle, two places were vacant. Hal and Eileen had gone. - - -II - -After the fireworks the town went home. Sydney Schubert walked with -Sylvia, talking of other Fourth of July experiences in a tone from -which the restraint of the disappointed lover was wholly wanting. -David played sweetheart to Theodora, a rôle that had been developed by -long practice. It came to Judith, walking behind them with Lary and Dr. -Schubert, that David Trench was essentially a lover--and love must have -something to feed upon. - -“Will we wait for Eileen?” he asked, when the feast had been prepared. - -“They’ll be here any minute,” Sylvia cried flippantly. Then, in a voice -that echoed her mother’s objurgatory habit of speech: “For goodness’ -sake, papa, stop worrying about that girl. She’s old enough to take -care of herself. Syd and I were traipsing all over the country when I -was her age, and I can’t remember that you sat up nights worrying about -me.” - -“Young Marksley isn’t Sydney Schubert,” her father reminded her. - - -III - -It was one o’clock when the merry party separated, and still no Eileen. -A light rain was falling, and the coat closet must be searched for -umbrellas. Lary lingered at Judith Ascott’s door, unwilling to say good -night. Some misshapen apprehension that had tormented him all evening -struggled for expression. - -“Do you believe, Judith, that whatever is, is right?” - -“I can recall the time, less than six months ago, when I was convinced -that whatever is--is wrong,” she answered, mystified. - -“And now?” He searched her face, there in the moist dusk of the -veranda. When he spoke again, it was with something of Theo’s kindling -animation: “I don’t know what you have done to me. A moment ago I was -facing a great onrushing wall of black water. And all at once it has -broken into ripples of silver joy. Last night I watched a great black -and yellow spider, playing with his web in the moonlight. He was such -a handsome, capable fellow--and the moth was so blunderingly stupid. -I wondered if there were not something to be said in favour of the -spider. But--you will think me a fatalist, if I finish the thought I -had in mind. You will believe me when I tell you that I am not, in the -least?” - -“No, Lary, I will not believe you--one whit more than I can believe -that it was an empty accident that brought me to Springdale--to Vine -Cottage--four months ago. You and Eileen and I are caught in the web. -The spider is Fate. I begged the gods to burn my fingers with the fire -of life ... and they heard my prayer....” - -“You delicious pagan! I might fancy gentle Clotho spinning a silken -strand for you. But to sear your fingers--” He caught them and pressed -them to his lips. Then he hurried across the lawn in a panic, his bare -head wet with the summer rain. Judith looked after him, Sylvia’s best -umbrella in her hand. She wanted to call him back, but it would only -mean a double wetting. And Sylvia need not know. - -She went up to her room but not to sleep. Taking down the thick coils -of her pale chestnut hair, she braided it deliberately. A strand, blown -across her face by the breeze from the west window, reminded her, all -at once, of the web. She relaxed weakly on a hassock, watching the -glittering drops on the edge of the awning that shaded her window from -the afternoon sun. Was the web inevitable ... Fate? As yet she was -free. Could she view with equanimity a future that involved, not Lary -and his two young sisters, but those others who were of his flesh? -Could she bear the heartache that was David Trench? Could she.... Her -head drooped low on the window sill and her mind drifted rudderless on -a sea of dreams. - - -IV - -When Hal and Eileen left the stadium it was in accordance with a -prearranged plan to meet Ina and Kitten and two of the boys who had -contrived the loan of a touring car for the evening. They would drive -to Olive Hill for the celebration--the exciting part of it. Competitive -drilling, not in gaudy uniforms, but that more useful drilling that had -to do with ledges of shale and limestone. It was at best but a poor -imitation of the annual drill contest in the gold mining country, where -powerful muscles contended with steel bitted drills against the tough -impediment of granite. Here the very ledge had to be faked--removed -from the nearby hillside with infinite care, and mounted against an -improvised wall of mine refuse. It was the best the coal mines of -Illinois could afford, but it served its purpose. There were money -prizes and lesser trophies--geese, chickens and baskets of provisions. - -The contest finished, there was a dance in the pavilion. Hal had parked -his roadster where he and Eileen could watch the antics of the dancers. -He was not sorry when he learned that the borrowed car must be returned -by midnight, and the others must be on their way towards Springdale. He -and Eileen would be following in a little while, he said. - -“I’ve been trying all evening to dodge them,” he added, as he waved -farewell to the departing car. “Some people simply can’t take a hint.” - -The girl nestled close. “Just you and me ... all alone in the universe.” - -“Sweetheart,” Hal slipped his arm around her waist and laid his cheek -against hers, “it’s all fixed with my father. He’s set on having me go -to Pratt; but he’s agreed on an allowance that ought to take care of -two. We’re in luck that you can cook. And you won’t mind a little flat? -I can count on Adelaide to help us out if we get in a pinch. Of course -my mother’ll raise Cain--and I’ll be on the lookout for a job, from the -start. If they think I’m going to wait all that time for you--why, I -can’t, Eileen!” - -The girl’s breath came so thick, it choked her. The dancers swam -dizzily before her eyes. The saplings in the little grove took up the -dance, swaying with uncertain rhythm, their lithe trunks bending to the -tumult in her brain. “Do you love me well enough to get along that way -for a year or two? Will you come to me, sweetheart, when I send for -you?” - -And then the rain. Men and women went scurrying to places of shelter. -The thin grove, the pavilion with its dilapidated roof, the mine -house--whose inner spaces were always barred to the public as soon as -the last workman had gone--these offered meagre protection. Over there -behind the mine dump was a corn crib and feed room where provender for -the now obsolete pit mules had formerly been kept. No one else had -thought of this refuge. Hal and Eileen were alone, the rain pounding on -the rusty tin roof to the tune of their madly beating hearts. - - -V - -How long Judith lay asleep she did not know. She was aroused at length -by voices, so close that they seemed to emanate from the lawn beneath -her window. She tried to move. Her arm, her neck, her shoulder creaked -with pain. She must have been there in that cramped position a long -time. Her hair and her thin negligée were quite damp. As her scattered -senses collected themselves she realized that the sound came from -beyond the wall. A voice, hoarse with rapture, Eileen’s voice, murmured -over and over: - -“Oh, darling, I never knew I loved you until now.” - -Some high platitude touching manly fidelity punctuated the girl’s -impassioned utterance. The façade of the house lay in ghostly shadows -that enveloped the figures completely. But out there across the lawn -lay the white moonlight, frosting the wet grass with a shimmering -incrustation of unearthly jewels. Hal Marksley’s substantial form came -like a skulking wraith from the gloom, gliding along the thin edge of -the shadow until he reached a convenient screen of shrubs, vaulted over -the wall and crossed close beneath Judith’s casement. He was cranking -the reluctant engine of his motor car, out there in the side street, as -the clock in the chapel tower struck three. - - -VI - -It was ten o’clock when Eileen came down stairs, refused breakfast and -wandered listlessly out into the hot July air. She was pale and her -full lips were swollen. Her eyes were set in murky pools of shadow, as -yellow as ochre, beneath their screen of long lashes, and her blond -braids hung stiff and obdurate. As she entered the summer house, -Theodora greeted her with a derisive gesture. - -“Lady Judith, tell her what she missed. I never saw the automobile yet -that could take me away from such a lobster salad.” - -“Perhaps she didn’t know about it.” - -“Indeed she did. She made the mayonnaise herself. Sylvia can’t hit it -one time in three. And mamma and Drusilla ... the oil always separates, -on them.” - -“Separates on them!” Eileen sniffed. “Where do you get that line of -talk?” - -She had relaxed on the oaken bench and sat kicking the gravel with the -toe of her loose slipper. After a time she broke the sullen silence: - -“I didn’t mean to be discourteous to you, Lady Judith. That’s what -Sylvia scolded me about; but that wasn’t what she had in mind. She’s -sore because I didn’t bring Hal to her party. I knew what kind of a -frosty shoulder he’d get from Lary and papa. And the way she fawns over -him! It makes me sick. He hates to be toadied to--because his people -have money. He knows that if he didn’t have a rich father, mamma and -Sylvia wouldn’t think any more of him than Lary does. He’d take me away -from that house to-day, if he had his way about it. He knows what I’m -in for ... Sylvia to order me around for a month. I almost wish mamma -hadn’t gone to Bromfield.” - - - - -XX Red Dawn - - -I - -For a day or two Eileen was abstracted and moody, a flaccid resignation -taking the place of the high spiritual enthusiasm that ushered in -her surrender. But it was not in the girl’s nature to remain long -depressed. She could not, as Lavinia did, nurture a grouch to its -final fruition. Her return to normal was accompanied by a sequence of -quarrels with her elder sister, and she shunned her father with studied -aversion. Hal resumed his old habit of asking her to meet him on the -campus or around the corner on Sherman Avenue. “To escape Sylvia’s -sticky patronage,” she explained to Mrs. Ascott. - -Towards the end of the week she went with Theodora to the shady west -porch of Vine Cottage, to assist with the drawing of innumerable -threads and the hemming of a fresh supply of napkins for the two linen -closets. Her lap was overflowing with damask when the postman’s whistle -shrilled through the sultry morning air. Theo bounded to her feet, -her eyes wide with excitement. The coming of the postman was always -an adventure, vicarious but none the less interesting. Some day he -might bring.... No, she was not expecting letters for herself. But -Lary had sent away a poem and an essay. And then, there ought to be a -long letter for daddy. As yet there had been nothing but a stingy post -card, with the hackneyed old Niagara Falls on one side and on the other -that offensive old cliché: “Will write soon.” And mamma had sent such -attractive cards to all the others, not omitting Nanny and Mrs. Dutton. - -After a few minutes she came slowly back, all the joy gone out of her -face. There was a long envelope addressed to Mr. Larimore Trench. She -inverted the hateful thing in Judith’s lap. Letters of acceptance did -not come in long envelopes. There was another one, square and perfumed, -bearing the name, Mrs. Raoul Ascott. Who was this Raoul Ascott, that he -should intrude here? - - “The dead have had their shining day; - Why should they try - To listen to the words we say - And breathe their blight upon our May - While the winds sigh?” - -She had read the stanza in the back of one of Sylvia’s books ... -written while Sylvia was temporarily engrossed with a young professor -whose spouse had died. But, after all, it wasn’t quite fair to feel -that way about people who couldn’t help being remembered. And Mr. -Ascott _had_ vacated the place that belonged rightfully to Lary. The -third letter was from mamma. It bore, in Lavinia’s cramped writing, the -name of Mrs. Oliver Penrose. The little girl raged impotently as she -called her sister. - - -II - -Sylvia pushed Eileen none too gently aside, to make room for herself in -the hammock beside Mrs. Ascott. Then she fell upon her letter, reading -aloud such passages as involved no violation of the family’s privacy. -The journey had been hot and dusty--not a familiar face on the train -from beginning to end. Theodore had met her in Rochester with the -new car, and she had enjoyed the first part of the ride, along the -Genesee. She was glad Ellen was not along. It gave Ted a chance to tell -her ever so many things, that she would otherwise not have heard. - -Ellen could think of nothing but the Stone scandal. Everybody felt -sorry for Calvin. For her part, she thought he got only what he -deserved. She had not seen him, as yet. His life was a terrible example -of the consequences of sin. She hoped he had not forgotten how she -tried for years to lead him into the church. She might remind him of -this, when she saw him ... for Ellen had invited him--oh, much against -her own wishes--to have dinner with them Sunday. - -As Sylvia read, the long envelope addressed to Mr. Larimore Trench -slipped from Judith’s lap and fell to the floor. Eileen stooped to -restore it. - -“Whee-oo! Lary’ll be down in the back cellar, eating coal to warm his -heart,” she cried. “It certainly does take the tuck out of him to have -the editors give him the back-fire.” - -“I can imagine what you mean,” Mrs. Ascott smiled, “but you are wrong -in your surmise. This is not a rejected manuscript. It is a business -letter from one of my attorneys--not Mr. Ramsay.” - - * * * * * - -That evening, just as Hal and Eileen were driving away in the little -roadster, with Sylvia watching them from a third-floor window, Lary -sprang nimbly over the wall and hurried to the summer house, the long -envelope in his hand. His feet scarce touched the grass ... he walked -like Theodora in her most charming mood. - -“It’s the contract for the plans. I couldn’t wait to let you know. It -might have been the other thing. I wouldn’t let myself see how eager I -was for ... success. Mr. Sanderson says they are charmed with the whole -arrangement. They want me to come to New York at once for a conference. -His daughter doesn’t care about the cow barn--since she isn’t operating -a dairy. They would like to have me substitute a studio, somewhere out -in the woods. It appears that the bride-to-be is a sculptor.” - -“Yes, she and Hilda Travers were in Paris together--but of course you -don’t know about Hilda.” - -A queer, chilly feeling crept over Judith Ascott. She had forgotten -Hilda. She had forgotten everything. It all belonged to another world, -a story she had read in a book on an idle summer’s day. - -“You didn’t--let the Marksleys have the cow barn?” she faltered. - -“No.” - -“I’m glad you didn’t. A lower nature than yours would have taken a mean -revenge--by letting the dwelling of cattle shame the manor house.” - -“It wasn’t that, Judith. They offered me a stiff price for that one set -of plans, and I needed the money. But ... seeing anything of mine in -that environment of cairngorms would make me feel the way it does to -see Eileen running around with that--” He checked himself, and the slow -red--Lavinia’s red that betokened impotent rage--crept above the line -of his collar. - -“When are they going to begin building? The Sandersons, I mean.” - -“Immediately. They want me to go over the ground and outline the -landscape features. I shall probably be back and forth the rest of the -summer. They have asked me to serve in the capacity of supervising -architect. We don’t do things that way in Springdale. But I have -helped my father--long before I was out of college--so I have all the -necessary experience. The only difference is that Mr. Sanderson will -pay me a fee and flaunt my name on sign-boards all over the estate. I -may as well get used to that part of it. I have always insisted that my -father use his name, as contractor, in connection with the actual work. -It’s a distinction I never relished. But if I’m going to invade the New -York field--” - -“I’m so happy. Have you told Sylvia?” - -“No, I told the baby.” - -“That was dear, Lary.” - -Larimore Trench turned to look at her. The blue-grey eyes were suffused -and the sweet lips trembled. The man wondered why he had no impulse to -kiss so engaging a mouth. It was all spiritual, that strange contact -that he was experiencing for the first time in his life. Then, too, -kissing had always been associated with his mother, the outward symbol -of a bond he knew did not exist. - -“I am going down to the office to talk it over with papa. They have -asked for an immediate answer by wire. It is not necessary to tell you -what the answer will be. Won’t you come with me? I’ll turn the electric -fan on you while we talk shop.” - -“But, Lary, won’t I be horribly in the way?” - -“How could the other half of me be in the way? Don’t you see, dear, you -must be with me when my father has the proudest moment of his life. -This will be the antidote for all that Marksley poison in his soul.” - - - - -XXI The Cloud on the Horizon - - -I - -That night Theodora wrote a long letter to her mother. It was devoted -almost wholly to Lary’s triumph. The following week the Bromfield -Sentinel heralded on its front page the news of Mr. Larimore -Trench’s latest artistic success. The florid paragraph hinted of -other successes. One must not infer that the designing of a New York -millionaire’s country home was a novel experience to the brilliant -young architect, whose parents were natives of Bromfield. The item -ended with the announcement that Mrs. David Trench was a guest in the -home of her brother, “the Honourable T. J. Larimore.” - -“Whew! we’d better confiscate this thing before Lary sees it,” Eileen -ejaculated. “Mamma always could pull the long bow; but she pretty near -overshot herself this time. You’d think Lary was a corporation.” - -“Would Sylvia be vexed?” Judith asked. Sylvia was out riding with Dr. -Schubert when the garrulous sheet left the postman’s hand. - -“Yes ... because it smacks of the small town. She hasn’t any better -taste than mamma has. It wouldn’t jolt her the way it would Lary or -papa. Lady Judith, I used to cringe and sweat blood when Hal said crass -things before Lary. Now it doesn’t matter what my brother thinks. I -want to shout Hal from the house-tops. I don’t care who knows that we -love each other, and that we have broken all the silly shackles that -our stodgy civilization thinks are so important. Papa dislikes him -because he isn’t the Sunday school kind, and Lary says he’s crude and -common. Well, just the way he is ... is exactly right for me. I’m no -Dresden china shepherdess, myself. How would I feel, marrying a man who -couldn’t stand for a little slang--or expressing your real feelings, -now and then? With such a man as Lary or Syd Schubert, I’d be a fish -out of water.” - -“Are you quite sure you are a fish?” Judith asked searchingly. “Did it -ever occur to you, my dear, that you have been in the water with Hal -until you fancy yourself a fish of his kind? Aren’t you afraid that -you’ll be tossed up on the bank some day, a little drowned bird?” - -“No! No!” Eileen screamed, her cheeks blanching. “Don’t take all the -glory, all the wonder out of it. Don’t you understand that I am free? -You talk about slave-women. Men don’t make slaves of them. It is their -own selfishness that chains them. I wish I could pour out my heart to -you ... make you see it as I do. Not the sordid thing that love usually -is--Sylvia’s love for Oliver, that pays for a swell apartment and a -bundle of gaudy rags. I want to be free, and I want to show other women -the light.” - -“My dear, dear girl,” Mrs. Ascott cried in alarm, “you are only -sixteen. You haven’t even the rudiments of the system you are trying -to teach. Can’t you get your feet on solid ground and stay there until -you are a few years older? I was wrong when I suggested water. You are -up in the clouds. If I thought it would serve to deter you from this -madness, Eileen, I would open for you the darkest chapter of my life.” - -“I know ... already. I heard mamma telling papa that you were -divorced--that you tried to get even with your husband by running away -with another man. It was contemptible of me to listen; but I did it -because I wanted to see how bad she would make it out.” - -Judith Ascott’s face flamed. - -“And papa was quiet a long time--and then he said that there were some -people who could touch pitch and not be defiled. When he said that--it -got me by the heart, and I made a little gurgling noise in my throat. I -was sure they heard me. But mamma flared back at him so furiously that -I was half way down the stairs before they came out of their room. That -was several weeks ago--a few days after you told her. And I wondered -how it would affect him--towards you.” - -“And--” - -“The next morning at breakfast, he said you were the purest, noblest -woman he had met in years. And Theo and Lary and I all raised such a -chorus of approval that mamma ran out to the kitchen to tell Drusilla -that the waffles were tough.” - -An arm stole around the girl’s waist. What had come over Judith Ascott, -that she should care ... that David Trench’s approval should mean so -much? But Eileen misunderstood. In a sudden burst of confidence, she -whispered: - -“Will you take care of the wedding ring, along with the other?” - -“You are married!” - -“No, but we are going to be, before Hal leaves for college. We finally -decided ... last night. Then I am going to him as soon as he is settled -in Brooklyn. Of course his mother must not know.” - -“I wish you wouldn’t do this, you poor, infatuated child. Give Hal the -advantage of a little perspective. Look at him when he comes home for -the holidays. It isn’t a summer romance--or a drama, to be disposed of -in the fourth act.” - -“But what if he saw some girl in Brooklyn he liked better than me?” - -“Then you couldn’t possibly hold him--if you were ten times married. -That is just the danger. You and Hal will almost surely grow apart when -you are removed from identical influences. A year from now you may -detest him, and he is more than likely to lose interest in you.” - -Eileen sprang up and ran stumbling from the room. - - -II - -When she returned, an hour later, her eyes were red and swollen from -crying. She went straight to the telephone and took down the receiver. -She wanted Hal to come to Mrs. Ascott’s home at once. When the youth -had yielded reluctant assent, she threw herself down on the window seat -to wait. - -“I am going to have an adjustment,” she cried passionately. “It can’t -go on this way. I was so sure of my ground ... and every word you -said was ... just one puncture after another. I could fairly feel the -tires sagging under me. Once I was on the point of writing to mamma. -She’s the only one who agrees with me about Hal. Even Sylvia has -been throwing cold water on me, the last day or two. Says I could do -better--and I ought to go around with the other boys to show him I -don’t care. I won’t be a liar. I do care!” - -When young Marksley came into Mrs. Ascott’s presence, there was a -shamed droop to his shoulders and he was plainly embarrassed. - -“Hal, I have told her everything,” Eileen began. “Now I want you to--” - -“You little fool!” - -Judith Ascott sprang to her feet, but the youth was already striving to -cover his blunder by an avalanche of apology. The expression was out -of his mouth before he had time to think. He was shocked that Eileen -should betray a secret they had sworn to keep. He hadn’t meant to be -rude. He was stunned by her treachery. - -“Well, we aren’t married yet. I only told her we intended to be--and -wanted her to witness the ceremony, before you leave for college.” - -Hal Marksley’s chest collapsed in a sigh of relief. - -“When we get ready to be married, Mrs. Ascott, we’ll talk it over with -you. Now, Eileen, run home and get your motor bonnet. I have to drive -to Olive Hill on an errand for father. I left my car around the corner.” - - -III - -At the side door of the Trench home, the girl had a sharp tilt with -her sister, who had come back from the ride in time to see--and -interpret--the tear-stained face. Sylvia would write to her mother. -She would not continue to sponsor a love affair for a girl who had -no sense. She would not play chaperone at long range. If Hal had any -breeding, he would invite her to go with them. - -“Oh, that’s the rub!” Eileen sneered. - -“No, that isn’t the rub--and I might have known you wouldn’t appreciate -anything I tried to do for you. If you keep on, the way you’re going, -you’ll have Hal so sick and tired of you that he’ll be glad to get out -of reach of the telephone. I tried to make you a little indifferent to -him--and got insolence for my pains. If you had a grain of policy, you -wouldn’t let him see that you are daft about him. That’s no way to hold -a man’s love. I kept Syd Schubert dangling at my belt for four years by -letting him half way think I cared.” - -“Yes, and you lost Tom Henderson by the same tactics. Tom wanted whole -hog or none, and you didn’t get on to the fact till he’d got sick of -you.” - -“Don’t, for heaven’s sake, use such vulgar expressions. Hal is such a -gentleman, I don’t see how he stands you. Eileen, I wish you would see -that I am doing this for your own good--and to please mamma. I have had -experience, and I know what works with a man, nine times out of ten. -I’ll hold Oliver Penrose to the end of the world ... by keeping him -guessing. Look at the way mamma has kept papa on his knees for nearly -twenty-eight years.” - -“You think that a fine thing?” the girl flared. “If you pattern your -life after mamma’s, at her age you’ll be as hard and cruel--” - -“You outrageous, you impudent--” Words failed. “How do you dare speak -that way about your parents? And Theo’s almost as bad. At your age, I -never dreamed of being disrespectful, or saying a word back when mamma -reproved me.” - -“Oh, Sylvia, come off! Mamma says she never talked back to her mother. -And then she forgets, and tells the impudent things she used to -say--and how her grandmother Larimore took her part against all the -rest of the family. But there’s Hal, tooting his horn for me. I’ll ask -him to invite you to ride with us some evening next week. I’m sure -he’ll be charmed!” - - - - -XXII Midsummer Magic - - -I - -Life moved on another fortnight, with little to vary the monotony -of motor rides, luncheons, and irritating disputes, and all at once -Sylvia’s reason for prolonging her visit in Springdale was removed. -Lavinia Trench came home! She startled the girls by driving up to the -gate in Hafferty’s lumbering old cab, her trunk toppling precariously -on the driver’s seat and her trim body hemmed in between boxes and -travelling bags. A letter that had arrived that very morning announced -that she would yield to Ellen’s pleading that she remain another -week--unless she were greatly needed at home. - -Without waiting for the ceremony of the bath and a change of raiment, -she hurried to Vine Cottage to present the souvenir she had brought -from Rochester. Judith forgot to thank her, so amazed was she by the -astounding change in the woman’s countenance. Such a change she had -witnessed in her garden when Dutton, with hoe and fine-toothed rake, -had obliterated the ridges and hummocks of his spading. All that had -been Lavinia was gone. It was not that she looked girlish, rejuvenated. -In the past few months she had made many swift changes from youth to -age--had rebounded from dank depression to hysterical buoyancy. This -change was different. It was, in fact, as if Lavinia had lent her body -to some other woman. - -“I can’t stay a minute,” she fluttered. “My precious old sweetheart is -coming home early, and he thinks no one can cook chicken the way I can. -You ought to have heard him when I called him on the ’phone, a minute -ago. I thought he’d let the receiver fall, he was so astonished ... and -pleased.” - - -II - -During the next few days Judith forgot Eileen, well-nigh forgot Lary, -in her perplexed contemplation of their mother. Some thaumaturge, -endowed with more than a magician’s power, must have his habitation in -Bromfield. The most audacious quack would guarantee no such cure of -a sick body and a doubly sick mind in four short weeks. Lavinia had -subtracted twenty years from her normal age, as neatly as a reptile -discards an outworn skin. Her step was short and vigorous, with none of -the stumping determination that so long marked it. Her head was carried -high and the black eyes beamed with amiability. The very quality of her -voice had undergone change. She no longer swung from cloying sweetness -to acrid outbursts. More than all else, a half gentleness--that she -still wore uncomfortably, like a fur cloak in August--held her family -in puzzled wonder. - -David moved as one walking in his sleep. He was afraid to breathe, lest -he fall to earth and awaken to the old barren reality. When it appeared -likely that the mood would remain, he accepted the goods the gods had -provided. He had waited long, and the reward was justly his. - -One evening Theodora sought her Lady Judith. She was agitated to the -point of inarticulateness. Her little brown face was drawn with fear -and two red spots burned in the thin cheeks. Twice, thrice she essayed -to speak, her throat swelling and her bird-like eyes darting their mute -appeal. - -“Might I--might I sit in your lap?” she faltered at last. “I’m not so -very heavy, and I can’t tell you unless I.... I have to tell you in -your ear.” - -“What are you afraid of, dearie?” Mrs. Ascott snuggled her close. - -“It happened just a few minutes ago--and--I know I didn’t dream it. -It was when Papa came downstairs from changing his clothes. You know, -they are going to the reception for the Board of Trustees, and my daddy -looked so handsome when he came in the library--with a pink carnation -in his buttonhole.” - -“There they go, now. Don’t you want to wave good-bye to them?” - -“No, I don’t want to interrupt mamma. They don’t know I’m on earth. -That’s what I came to tell you about. You see that mamma has on the -yellow organdie dress. But you don’t know what that means--signifies,” -she amended, weighing the word with unaccustomed deliberation. “Papa -bought it for her, at a big store in St. Louis, when she was going -away. And she was so hateful--wouldn’t put it on, or even take it -with her. And to-night she said she was glad she’d saved it--just for -him--because it was the prettiest dress she ever had.” - -“I’m glad she said that, dear.” - -“Oh, but that wasn’t all she said. She noticed that he picked a pink -carnation, when everybody knows my daddy prefers red ones. I was -sitting in the window niche, reading a book. Goodness knows, I was in -plain sight. And they didn’t either one of them see me. Mamma came in -first, talking to herself about how pretty her dress was ... and how -happy she was....” Theodora’s breath came short, and the black eyes -were luminous with tears. - -“And, Lady Judith, all at once my daddy came in the room, and he -tiptoed up behind her and cuddled her under the chin with his fingers. -And she wheeled around and just nestled in his arms, like a kitten. And -then she kissed him--the way you do when you just _adore_ anyone.” - -The voice sank to an awed whisper. Judith clasped the frail body, with -its consuming emotional fire, her own heart pounding with vicarious -passion. - -“And she looked up in his eyes and told him he was the best man in -the world, a million times handsomer and more successful than any -man among their old friends. And she wanted to go back, on their -anniversary, the first of November, to let all those silly people see -for themselves what a fine man he had turned out to be. And papa looked -as if he wanted to laugh and cry, at the same time, and his face was -as beautiful as an angel’s, he was so happy. And I’m afraid my mamma -is--going to--di-i-ie!” The voice broke in an agony of sobs. - -“No, no, precious. She is just beginning to live.” - -What had wrought the miracle? The absence that makes the heart grow -fond? But Mrs. Trench had often been away from home and family, and -it was certain that none of her former home-comings had had such -sequential consummation. Had she, for some unfathomable reason, -perceived David as he was? Had she fallen in love with her husband? - - -III - -August was a glorious month for the circle that revolved around Vine -Cottage. Eileen had been wooed by her mother to confession of her -secret engagement, and David had given reluctant consent. He was -too deeply steeped in his own belated bliss to deny any other human -creature the benison of happiness. Hal would be leaving for Brooklyn -the second week in September, and it was only right that the two young -people should spend all their evenings together. - -Occasionally they went across the street for a musical feast with Mrs. -Nims--whom society was accepting, since it had been noised abroad -that only three lives stood between her and a peerage. More often -they explored strange highways beneath the starlight. Lary, at home -for brief periods, viewed the situation with equanimity. He had made -many compromises, and this was only a little more galling than some of -the others. He found a modicum of compensation in his father’s sweet -content, and in his mother’s almost pathetic devotion to the woman who -had rounded out his own being. - -“She quotes you on every possible occasion,” he told Judith. “If you -advised her to forswear the moral code, she would obey you.” - -“It’s a fearsome responsibility,” the woman averred. “What if I should -blunder?” - -“You couldn’t make her any less happy than she was when you came. -She says you are better medicine than anything Dr. Schubert ever -prescribed. And she insists it was you who compelled her to go to -Bromfield.” - -“Lary, you must have read a story--I don’t recall the title--one of -Pierre Loti’s exotic conceits ... the faithless lover who was tormented -by remorse until he went back to Constantinople and spent a night on -the grave of the woman he had wronged. Do you think some fancy of your -mother’s girlhood has been dispelled by her visit ... perhaps some -illusion shattered by crass reality?” - -“I don’t know how to gauge my mother--now less than ever before.” - - -IV - -When Lary had gone, Mrs. Trench slipped in at the back door. She had -been waiting her turn. It was like the old Lavinia to know exactly -what she wanted. And again, it was like Lavinia to veil her request in -mystery and innuendo. - -“I want to ask your advice. You know so much more about the ways of the -world than I do.” She drew from the pocket of her muslin dress a thick -letter. “Do you think there are any circumstances under which it would -be right for a married woman to receive--” - -She was so naïve, Judith could with difficulty repress a smile. - -“I write a good many letters to my attorney, Mr. Ramsay. He has a wife.” - -“But those are business letters.” - -“Not always. I write to him when I am blue or in doubt. His wife -detests letter-writing. She usually adds a postscript.” - -“She sees the letters--and replies?” - -“Why, to be sure. You mean, Mrs. Trench, the kind of letters a woman -could not show her husband? I’m afraid that is never quite safe.” - -“I ignored the first--and the second. This one came on Friday. And then -the minister preached that sermon on regeneration through suffering. -He said it was our duty to help God to chastise the wayward soul. -This man ... the one who wrote to me....” She faltered, then went on -resolutely: “He is very unhappy. It is a man I met on the train--and -he fell in love with me. Of course I repulsed him. I told him what a -splendid husband I had. And in this letter he says that when I praised -David to him--on the train--it was all he could do to keep from -carrying me off bodily--it threw him into such a jealous rage. I ought -to be furious with him.” She stared into vacancy, adding slowly: “but -I’m not.” - -This new Lavinia had suddenly come upon some bewildering apparition. -Her fingers twitched, and a yellow pallor drank up the flush in her -rounded cheeks. A chance acquaintance on a railroad train! Eileen might -have fallen beneath the glamour of such a romance. But for a woman of -Mrs. Trench’s age and temperament! It was unthinkable. - -“Mrs. Ascott, tell me ... do people ever really get over things?” - -All the fire of her being leaped to her eyes as she put the question, -leaving her face ghastly. It was as if her whole life hung on the -answer. - - -“Sorrow and disappointment? Oh, I am sure they do. And, my dear Mrs. -Trench, I wouldn’t lay too much stress on the infatuation of a man you -met in the Pullman. To write to him--letters you couldn’t show your -husband--might be followed by serious complications.” - -“Don’t you think I have character--stability enough to--you won’t say -anything about this to Larimore?” - -“Surely not.” - - -V - -That evening David and Lavinia went out to sprinkle the vegetable -garden, their arms around each other’s waists, their attitude that of -a honeymoon pair. When the task was done they came to the summer house -for an hour’s visit. Not even Hal and Eileen, in the first fever of -their revealed engagement, were more frankly devoted than they. It -seemed to Judith, sitting with them, that the woman was the aggressor, -that she multiplied endearing terms and half-concealed caresses, to -assure herself that she truly felt what her lips were saying. For David -these manifestations were unnecessary. His whole being was a caress. - - -VI - -August passed, and the first hot days of September--their discomfort -forgotten in the excitement of Eileen’s entrance into college. There -was yet another week before Hal must depart for his examinations, -and on Thursday evening he failed to report, either in person or by -telephone. The omission elicited no comment. But when the week had -slipped by, and it became known that the youth had departed for New -York without calling to say good-bye, Lavinia made bold to question her -daughter. - -“If he didn’t want to come, I’m sure nobody was going to ask him,” the -girl flung back, her eyes darkening. - -“Never mind, dear. These little quarrels only prove that it is true -love. You and Hal will make it all up in your letters.” - -“There aren’t going to be any letters.” - -After her mother had gone into the house, Theodora drew near the -hammock where Eileen had been studying Christian Ethics, squinting her -burning eyes as the daylight waned, striving to focus her mind on the -empty paragraphs. - -“What did you and Hal quarrel about? Go on--tell me,” the child teased. - -“Get out and let me alone. Don’t you know any better than to interrupt -a fellow who has to bone freshman ethics? I almost had a philosophic -thought by the tail, when you butted in on my painful ratiocinations.” - -“I don’t want to pry, Eileen. Honest, I don’t. But you’ve cried every -night since Wednesday. And when you talked in your sleep, last night--” - -“I did!” The girl sat up, sending the textbook flying across the lawn. -“What did I say? Tell me every word.” - -“You’d been kind of mumbling, and all at once you said right out loud: -‘Hal Marksley, to think I could have loved a dirty calf like you.’” - -“I didn’t say ‘calf’--I said--” She clapped her hand to her mouth and -her cheeks went white. “I’m going to have a separate room. That’s all -there is about it. If I can’t keep from babbling in my sleep....” - - - - -XXIII Lavinia Sees the Abyss - - -I - -Four days without incident ... and then Eileen fainted at the -dressmaker’s. The afternoon was hot and she had stood for a long -fitting. It was nothing unusual to the seamstress, but it was a -thrilling experience for the girl who had never known oblivion other -than that of normal sleep. She went home with a bump on her head, to -tell how near she came to being impaled on Miss Denison’s shears. -Saturday morning she fainted again. It was after a long telephone -conversation with Kitten Henderson. Lavinia sent for Dr. Schubert. He -was making a country call. In a panic of fear she summoned Mrs. Ascott. -When they had chafed the girl’s hands and bathed her temples with -brandy, consciousness returned slowly. - -“I thought I was dying,” she murmured between stiffened lips. “My hands -felt like clubs, and all at once my whole body seemed to be climbing -into my head.” - -A cry--the sudden baffled scream of a trapped animal--burst from -Lavinia Trench, as she sprang to the side of the divan. “What have you -done? Oh, my God, what have you done?” - -“My dear Mrs. Trench,” Judith expostulated, “what has come over you!” - -“You don’t know what it means. You haven’t been through it six times. I -never fainted at any other time--and that scapegrace of a Hal Marksley -off to college without a word. Oh, I’ll go mad!” - -Relief came in a torrential flood of abuse, of self-pity. All the -store that had been repressed since the early days of July poured its -acrid waters over the girl. In vain Eileen sought to defend herself, -to declare furiously that her mother’s accusation was untrue. In such -moods, Lavinia was never careful to choose her words. When the tirade -became insulting, beyond endurance, she sprang from the couch and fled -to a room on the third floor where she could lock herself in and defy -the family to drag her forth. - -Judith went home, dumb with anguish. Would Eileen do violence to -herself? Would David’s heart break? Would Lary.... She paused, panting, -to frame the question: “Would Lary rise to the occasion?” On the answer -hung all her hope. After an hour of thinking, such as she had never -done before, she went again through the wicket gate. She would take the -girl with her for the laboratory experiment--an unusually important -one, that called for an extra pair of hands. Lavinia was nowhere in -sight; but from the cellar came the sound of mop and broom. Absinthe -might give surcease to the roué in the boulevard restaurant but for -Lavinia Trench the safety-valve was hard manual labor. - - -II - -The experiment, that morning, narrowly missed success. At the moment -when three pairs of eyes were watching with anxious interest, the fumes -from a heated retort were wafted into Eileen’s face, and she collapsed -in Dr. Schubert’s arms. Judith turned off the flame beneath the mass of -glowing coal and hurried to the consultation room where the girl lay, -white and deathlike. - -“Unfasten her corsets, quick! Her pulse is almost gone.” The -physician’s command held an unwonted blend of terror. Eileen Trench -was the core of his soul. He could not be impersonal, where she was -concerned. At an opportune moment Sydney arrived, to lend a hand. - -It was decided that the girl must lie quiet for an hour. And of course -Mrs. Ascott would stop for luncheon. Luncheon! Could one eat food, with -the world in shambles? She went to the divan, choking with distress. -The amber eyes were half closed and great tears welled over the lids. - -“It’s beastly to be such a nuisance to those we love....” The blue lips -scarcely moved to articulate the poignantly empty words. Then the long -lashes drooped in utter weariness, and Eileen slept. - -Judith Ascott left the office. She wanted to get away from herself, -away from every familiar thing. Unconsciously she turned her back on -the cross-street that would have led to the campus and thence to her -home. How many miles she walked, she could not guess. She was hazily -conscious of smiling meadows and orchards, panting beneath their load -of ruddy fruit. Winding hill roads, ankle-deep in dust, and brooks -that laughed at obstructing pebbles; pastures where cattle grazed, and -acres of coreopsis, resplendent with their wealth of fleeting gold, she -viewed with eyes that saw not. - -When at last her strength waned and hunger overcame her, she perceived -that she was approaching a town. She would go to the station and -inquire for a train to Springdale. A little way to her left, graders -were at work with shovels that scarred the helpless earth. Great piles -of stone and other piles of yellow brick and moulded terra cotta -crowned the rising ground. In the midst of all this orderly confusion -she perceived a sign-board, insolent with new paint: - - DAVID TRENCH - BUILDING CONTRACTOR - -She stared in astonishment. Then, by some magic of the mind the solid -earth beneath her feet shifted. She was no longer facing south. This -was Springdale, and she was approaching her home from the west. The -work on Henry Marksley’s mansion had already begun. She shuddered as -she thought of David. - -From the high point in the parked boulevard, near which the sign-board -stood, she could see the distant tower clock, its face gilded by the -late afternoon sun. And over there on the newly paved extension of -Sherman Avenue the foolish little trolley car was bobbing serenely -along. She could catch it on the return trip if she hurried. - - - - -XXIV One Way Out - - -I - -Early Sunday morning Mrs. Trench came to the back door, brushed Nanny -aside as if her redundant bulk had been a wisp of grass in the path, -crossed the immaculate kitchen, and climbed the rear stairs. She knew -that the mistress of Vine Cottage was having breakfast in her bedroom, -and the ultimate degree of privacy was necessary. She was no longer -the gentle Lavinia of those seven charmed weeks. All the softness had -vanished from her countenance, and her voice was flinty as she spoke. -There was no need of mincing words. Mrs. Ascott was in the secret, -and she might as well know the worst. Eileen was guilty. There was no -excuse and no help for it. She had confessed the whole thing to her -father. - -“I have been afraid from the first that she was in danger. She is too -young to discriminate, and she was madly in love. Have you told her -brother?” - -“Yes. It was lucky for Larimore that that dog of a Hal Marksley was -safe out of town. There would have been murder, and another scandal.” - -“And her father?” - -“David! He makes me sick. He sits and stares at the carpet as if he’d -been turned to stone. Oh, why did I marry such a dolt! If he would -only whip her--anything to show that he is a man! Mrs. Ascott, you are -a woman of the world. You have had affairs of your own, and have got -through them unscathed. Can’t you help me? Don’t you see that I am -distracted?” - -“You may count on me for anything I can do,” Judith told her coldly. - - -II - -When the heavy Sunday dinner was over, and Drusilla had gone out for -the afternoon, Lary and Theodora walked hand in hand to the shop behind -the vegetable garden. A minute later, Judith saw the child flitting -across the alley in the direction of the Stevens home. She knew that -now Larimore Trench would come to her. - -Her heart stood still and all her senses swam. - -When, after an interminable period of waiting--how stupid the clock -that measures our travail by its rigid tape of minutes!--the man stood -before her, she saw that his face was white with grief and his hands -shook. - -“Are you willing to come to us? All the manhood has gone out of me. I -can’t go through it alone.” - -“Yes, Lary.” And they crossed the lawn together. - - -III - -The library blinds were drawn and the room was hot and still. Eileen -lay back in the chaise longue, her eyes half closed, her lips pouting -surlily. Her father paced the floor, his blue eyes lost in shadow. - -“Mrs. Ascott,” he began in a choked voice, “you know the pitiful thing -that has come upon us. You have been a good neighbour, and we come to -you for advice. We are simple people, and my wife feels that you....” -He finished the sentence with his deep, appealing eyes. “I wanted to go -to Mr. Marksley and insist that his son make restitution.” - -“Yes!” Lavinia screamed, the remnant of her self-control tearing -to tatters as she looked at her daughter, “and that idiot of a girl -threatening to kill herself if we go a step.” - -“I won’t be married to any man at the point of a gun--as long as there -is a river in Springdale where people can be drowned.” - -“It is a mortal sin to take your own life,” her father pleaded. “You -couldn’t face your God with such a crime on your hands.” - -“When it comes to a choice between facing God and you people--I’d take -my chances with God any day. If I have committed the unpardonable sin, -I don’t see how marrying Hal Marksley would make it any better.” - -She sat bolt upright and her eyes blazed. - -“What is right? What is sin? You would hound a woman to death because -she has a child without being tied body and soul to a man she despises. -Hal’s mother and father hate each other ... and look at their children. -There isn’t one of them that’s fit to live. Look at us. We are another -family of misfits. And why? Mamma hates papa, lets him follow her -around like a hungry dog begging for a bone.” - -“You insolent girl!” Lavinia gasped. - -“You don’t know anything about love--and what it means to come into the -world all warped and out of tune. Do you imagine that I am going to tie -myself to a cad--let him be responsible for other children of mine? -There isn’t any fidelity in a man who is born of hate. If you knew what -a contemptible pup he is, you’d see why the river looks better to me.” - -“You might have thought of that, before--” David offered gently. - -“I didn’t know him till it was too late.” She relaxed ever so little. -“We had talked it all over, and he had the most advanced ideas. But -when it came to facing the music.... Bah! I despise a man who whimpers. -_He was afraid of his mother._ I could have stood even that. But when -he wanted to take me to Sutton, to a doctor he said was in the habit of -helping those factory girls out of their scrapes ... I slapped him; I -beat him with my two fists; I spit in his face. I told him that if he -was not a man, I would take the consequences alone.” - -She paused to gather breath, her cheeks burning, her gaze detached. She -was living over again that monstrous cataclysm. “He tried to defend -himself by saying I had no right to disgrace his family. Imagine! -Disgrace Henry Marksley and Adelaide Nims! I told him I wasn’t going -through life with murder on my soul.” - -“I’m glad you told him that, daughter,” David said, his eyes warming. - -Judith Ascott crossed the room and laid a hand protectingly on Eileen’s -shoulder. “May I offer a solution? You have asked me to use my wits. -I know of a case--not unlike this one--a young girl who made the same -blunder. She had a married sister who had no child. Among all their -friends, I am the only one who knows that the splendid little boy is -not that sister’s child.” - -“How--how was it managed?” Lavinia’s practical mind demanded. - -“They went together to a sanitarium, where not even the superintendent -knew which was the wife of the man whose name the baby was to bear. I -should suggest sending at once for Sylvia. She and Eileen could--” - -“Never work in the world!” Lavinia exploded. “Oliver detests children. -He won’t let Sylvia have one of her own--even if she wanted it. And -he’d leave her ... if he knew there was such a disgrace in the family.” - -“Yes,” Eileen said with bitter scorn, “he was born in Salem, where they -put scarlet letters on women who sin. I guess it’s the river for me.” - -“There is another way,” Judith cried, defiant and exultant. “I can take -the baby for my own. I will go away with you, until it’s over, and you -can come back alone, with nobody to know--” - -“You mean--” Lavinia Trench stood up, her eyes wild, her throat -swelling--“you mean, marry Larimore and palm the child off as his?” - -“That--if no other way can be found. We could go to New York, where the -building of the Sanderson home would provide the necessary explanation. -Eileen might take lessons from Professor Auersbach for several months. -She could come home in a year. I would not return until a child in my -arms would cause no remark.” - -David moved to her side and pressed his lips reverently to her brow. -“Daughter,” he murmured, his eyes overflowing. - - -IV - -That evening Lary came to the summer house. There was a crescent moon -and the air was heavy with the scent of flowers. - -“I can’t let you make this sacrifice for me,” he began huskily. - -“Sacrifice? Oh, my darling.... I have been so hungry for you. I could -cry for joy that Eileen has opened the way.” - -“Dear, my heart went cold when she said what she did about the children -of hate. Are you willing to trust me?” - -“You born of hate? Lary, Lary ... such love as your father’s ... the -love that could survive twenty-eight years of starvation!” - -The man gripped her hand until it hurt. Then he drew her into his arms -and his cheek rested against hers. The young moon sank to sleep; the -garden throbbed in the velvet darkness; a moon-flower burst its bonds, -just above them, sending forth a shower of perfume. - -“You are too wonderful,” he murmured. “Judith, I know the man that is -in me. I have met him face to face. I saw him reflected in your eyes, -there in the library. Now I shall never be alone. I have attained the -unattainable.” - - - - -XXV A Wedding at Vine Cottage - - -I - -Monday morning found Eileen too ill to be out of bed. Dr. Schubert -came in response to an urgent request from her father, looked at her -tongue, felt her pulse, smiled tolerantly ... and prescribed a nerve -sedative. Later in the day the girl who had twined her baby fingers -about the emotional center which in a man of science does duty as a -heart asserted her right to consideration. He went home and talked it -over with Sydney. - -“Use your intuition, boy. I can’t have her going to pieces like this. -She has always been free from hysteria--so different from her mother.” - -“She has had her first love affair--and Hal Marksley is off to college.” - -“Sydney! That thick-lipped youth! Besides, Eileen is only a child.” - -“You remember the day she was born, and you forget the days between. I -have been wretched over it all summer. One night I met them, half way -over to Greenville--the night I was called to see the Hemple baby. I -spoke to Sylvia about it. And she reminded me of the night--on that -same road--when old Selim cast a shoe, and we didn’t get home until -almost morning. Once I was on the point of taking it up with Lary; but -he’s too deeply in love to see.” - -“Lary in love! Who’s the charmer?” - -“You dear old scientific abstraction. Have you had Mrs. Ascott at -your elbow four days a week--and do you think a fellow with Lary’s -temperament could spend all his evenings with her, and escape?” - -“That’s--beautiful! But what about her ... a woman who has exhausted -New York and Paris? Would she be satisfied with a simple nature like -Lary’s?” - -“Lary’s nature is about as simple in its refractions as a rose diamond! -Mrs. Ascott mothers him. I have tried to make up that deficit in -his life--but of course a boy he grew up with couldn’t do it, as a -sensitive woman could. He knows I understand about Mrs. Ascott. Oh, not -that we have ever talked about it. That would be too crude for Lary.” - -“You are like your mother, boy. She spoke three languages--and could -dispense with all of them. But we have gone miles from Eileen. I need -your help, desperately.” - - -II - -While the two physicians discussed a disturbing case, the one with -understanding, the other blindly, a different conversation was under -way in Eileen’s bedroom. Mrs. Trench had sent for Judith as soon as the -coast was clear of tale-bearers. - -“He--said this morning that he was going to take you and Eileen with -him when he goes to New York, Thursday night. I thought we’d better lay -out the details.” - -It was all so bald, so matter-of-fact. The woman cringed, as from a -desecration. She turned for relief to the white face on the pillow. -Mercurial tears glistened in the dove-gray shadows that lurked beneath -the swollen eyes, and the mouth wore the old rebellious look. Eileen -was still smarting from the crass, polluting things her mother had -said, after the physician’s departure. She had brought this disgraceful -thing on the family, and Lavinia did not intend that she should shirk -one minim of her punishment. - -“For my part, I don’t see how you are going to hide it by going to New -York ... where everybody knows you. All your friends will see at the -first glance that Larimore and Eileen are brother and sister. They look -exactly alike.” - -“Thanks for the compliment!” The girl tossed aside the sheet and sat -up. “We both have noses running lengthwise of our faces, and mouths -that cut across. That’s all the resemblance you ever saw--when you were -telling me how handsome Lary was and how ugly I was. I have it all -figured out. I am going to be Lary’s cousin--young Mrs. Winthrop, whose -husband was lost on that Alaska steamer that foundered two weeks ago. -Ina and I worked out the situation in a play we did last winter.” - -“And Ina will recognize your situation--and spread it all over town.” - -“Mamma! Please credit me with a little sense. This story isn’t for home -consumption. It’s for Judith’s friends--when we get to New York.” - -“There will be few of them,” Mrs. Ascott interrupted. “That danger -is negligible. A few acquaintances at Pelham and Larchmont. With the -exception of my father and the Ramsays, who live at Rye--” - -“But the neighbours!” Lavinia cried irritably. - -“There are none. We can go up and down in the same lift with them -for months without knowing what they look like. New York is too -self-absorbed to care about any one’s happiness or misery.” - -“But your father!” the woman snapped. Her triumph was short-lived. - -“Papa could live in the same house with Eileen for a year without -knowing whether she was Miss Trench or Mrs. Winthrop--Lary’s cousin or -mine. He has forgotten all but the outstanding facts of my life. As for -the Ramsays, they would take the situation as I do--if it should become -necessary to tell them.” - -Vine shook her head. She had no words with which to express her -disapproval of a city that could be thus cold-bloodedly immoral. What -sort of people were the Ramsays, that one could tell them of a girl’s -fall from virtue without shocking them? What sort of woman was Mrs. -Ascott, that she could carry out such a wickedly dishonest piece of -business? Still, we must praise the bridge that carries us over. - - -III - -Lary stopped by on his way to the office after luncheon to assure -himself that it was not all an iridescent dream. On him, too, Lavinia’s -stolid acceptance of Judith’s solution had a dampening effect. The rose -had been stripped of its blossoms and stood stark and thorny before -him. A few minutes of random talk, in which each sought to sound the -other’s depths, and then the man said, as if it were an inconsequential -afterthought: - -“Would Wednesday evening do for the ceremony? Not that it makes any -difference. I feel as if we had been married from the beginning of -time. I told the baby about it, and she pleaded for Wednesday. Some -lucky omen, I believe. She said there was no use taking chances. I wish -I had her philosophy of life.” - -“I wish I had _her_,” Judith cried, foolish tears rushing to her eyes. - -“Why, you have all of us--from my father down. I never saw a conquest -more complete.” The man’s eyes were moist and shining. “But, dear, -the baby said another thing. She wants you to let Eileen serve as maid -of honour. Another omen--that she heard when Oliver’s sister came from -Brookline to attend Sylvia. It presages a happy marriage for the girl.” - -“I know another old superstition that might apply--in a sinister way. -My grandmother was full of them. To serve as a bride’s attendant, or as -godmother at a christening, she held, was fatal to the little--” - -Her voice broke and a wave of crimson tumbled over the fair cheek. -A shrug of swift annoyance. Why should she be blushing like an -unsophisticated school-girl? Larimore Trench caught his breath, and his -heart ceased its monotonous beating. - -“You adorable being! You vestal-hearted woman! Don’t let me touch you. -Judith, Judith, I shall go mad with ecstasy.” He retreated a step, and -all at once he laughed, a laugh of sardonic triumph. - -“Poor old fool gods! They thought they were destroying man when they -cleft him in two. Olympus never realized a thrill like this. Send me to -the office, sweetheart. I have to finish the specifications for Miss -Sanderson’s studio. How can a man build little tawdry boxes of wood and -stone, when his eyes have looked into heaven?” - -Judith Ascott was sobbing on his shoulder. - - -IV - -When he had gone, she did an unaccountable thing. She sent a telegram -to her father. It was simple and direct. She would be married on -Wednesday. It would please her if he could be with her. There would -be a train through Littlefield at four o’clock in the afternoon, and -she would have Dutton meet him with the car. He could return, via -Detroit, at eleven the same night. When the message had gone, she fell -to wondering what motive had actuated her. She and her father were, as -Griff Ramsay had said, strangers. Lary’s mother? The thought angered -her. Yes, she had had recourse to her father ... the only available -shield against the small-town criticism that would be reiterated, -in veiled innuendo, the rest of her life. It was her father who had -pursued her--brought her back to the path of rectitude. Such a father -would lend reasonable sanctity to her second marriage! Was she, too, in -the thrall of that woman, the slave of that cunning, provincial mind? - -She sought for relief in the meeting between Lary and her father. Would -he see in her beloved nothing more than a village architect? Would her -mother be furious--her mother who had approved Raoul? - -At six o’clock the reply came. Mr. Denslow was starting Tuesday for the -southwest, where he was to look over some oil properties. He would stop -off in Springdale, providing he could get a late train to St. Louis. -His explicit telegram made no mention of the occasion for his brief -visit in his daughter’s home. - - -V - -The train schedule was propitious. He came. The instant after he had -deposited his travelling bag on the floor of the guest room, he began -to ply Judith with questions concerning the deucedly clever fellow -who was building Avis Sanderson’s house. He had driven over the place -with some friends, had inspected the drawings, and had commissioned -Ramsay to enter into negotiations with the architect. By-the-way, he -had sold the house at Pelham. He was thinking of a princely estate on -Long Island--French château style--to be finished before her mother’s -return from Paris. This man, Trench, would be the one to handle it. - -“Papa, you don’t seem to understand that I am going to marry Larimore -Trench this evening!” - -“Oh, quite so, quite so. Ramsay told me he would be the one. It’s a -singular piece of good fortune. I never liked the idea of putting Ben -in one of those big offices, where a young draughtsman is swallowed -up. The boy hasn’t brains enough to go it alone. This way, Trench can -take him into a partnership. I’ll talk it over with his mother. I’m -crossing, the first of December, for a couple of months in London and -on the Continent. I’m worn out, and the doctors say--Damn it all, -Judith, I can’t give up ... go to the wall at fifty four, with a -family to support. Black specks floating in the air, no appetite for -breakfast. It’s a dog’s life, and they’ll skin me out of my eye teeth -while I’m gone.” He stopped, disconsolate. After a moment he resumed, -his manner somewhat detached: - -“I was thinking that you might have the apartment. I’m not in it -once a week. Hotel so much more convenient. Maids sleep their heads -off--nothing to do. I sold off everything, at Pelham, except the rugs -and a few pictures that the beggars wouldn’t give me a price for. -Thought I didn’t know what Orientals were worth. Offered me thirty -dollars for that little Blakelock. An idiotic smear of red and yellow -paint; but it’ll be worth money some day, mark my word. And that -reminds me ... Jack has got over his craze for flying machines and -wants to study art. The boy’s a failure--no good on earth. Perhaps -Trench will steady him.” - -“Larimore, his name is, papa.” - -“Larimore? Ramsay said the name was Trench.” - -Judith gave it up. - - -VI - -At dusk the simple ceremony was read, Dr. Clarkson of the College -officiating. Sydney Schubert played the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin -as Mr. Denslow descended the stairs with his daughter. Before them -Eileen walked, her head bowed, her face pale and serious. In the cozy -angle of the hall, Lary and Dr. Schubert met them. The formality -was a concession to Theodora. The murmured responses were all but -extinguished by Mrs. Trench’s sudden flood of weeping. When it was -over, Eileen said to Judith, between lips that hissed with anger: - -“I could have choked her. She just did that for effect. Mrs. Henderson -cried when her daughter was married, and mamma thinks it’s the proper -thing. She nearly disrupted Sylvia’s wedding--and every one in church -knew she was pleased as Punch to get Sylvia off her hands.” - -Mrs. Trench led the way to the dining-room, where the bridal party was -served by Nanny and Drusilla, with Mrs. Dutton in the kitchen. In the -domestic realm of the two households the colour line had never been -drawn. Nanny hailed from that section of New England where a dark skin -excites the same kind of interest that a green rose or a two-headed -calf would elicit. Mrs. Dutton, Judith perceived early in the days of -her tenancy, found a malicious pleasure in her own function as a social -link between Mrs. David Trench and her negro cook--a link that Mrs. -Trench saw fit to ignore, since the breaking of it had thus far baffled -even her resourcefulness. - -Later in the evening, while Syd and Eileen played poignant melodies, -with David leaning over the piano, and Lavinia told Dr. Clarkson -of the great Denslow wealth--her daughter-in-law’s exalted social -position--Mr. Denslow and Dr. Schubert talked of old times in -Rochester, where the youthful physician had had his first hospital -experience, where Denslow, a poor boy with an iron will, had found -the open path to fortune through a painful accident and a sojourn in -a hospital ward. They drifted to the laboratory experiments, which -Judith’s father had never taken the trouble to inquire about. This was -just another of the girl’s wild goose chases. He wondered why he had -such a damnably unsatisfactory family. - -“I shall miss her, cruelly. You don’t know what it has meant to my boy -and me--having a woman in the house four mornings a week. I wanted -to train Eileen to help me with the experiments; but your daughter -tells me they are taking the child with them, to study under a famous -violinist. I have salvaged only one thing out of the wreck of our two -households. They are leaving Nanny with me. I have worried with six -housekeepers since my faithful Sophie died, two years ago.” - -The disposition of Nanny was Lavinia’s bright inspiration. Obviously -Nanny must not go to New York--to return a year later and spread gossip. - -When Dutton had taken Mr. Denslow to the station, the wedding guests -went home. At the door, Theodora paused and looked ruefully back. They -had ignored her completely, and was not she responsible for it all? -Even Lary’s kiss had been abstracted. But then, Lary did not know. -None of the others knew why there was a wedding at Vine Cottage, that -evening. Only she and Judith understood--and one of them must have -forgotten, now that the fairy tale had come true. - -She looked at the Beloved, standing there in the light of the little -apricot lamp, and her throat swelled with loneliness and misery. She -was not jealous--even if they were taking Eileen for a year in New -York. Some one had to stay and take care of daddy--and she could do -that much better than Eileen, or even Lary. Another thought came to -her, just as Judith perceived her and held out her enticing arms. - -“You--you still think it was dishonourable--showing you the poem Lary -wrote?” - -“No, darling. It was a stroke of genius. You have the head of a -diplomat. I want you to do something really truly dishonourable for -your sister Judith. After we have gone, I want you to rummage through -Lary’s things until you find those two sheets of paper--the original -ones. Pry open the lid of his desk, if there is no other way, and send -them to me. I am going to have them framed!” - - - - -XXVI The Light Within - - -I - -A little while before the expressman called for the trunks, Judith -went for the last time through the wicket gate. She and Eileen had -been packing all day, and she was weary to the verge of collapse. -Theodora had hovered over her ever since she came from school, up in -the attic where winter garments must be looked over, down in the pantry -and cellar, where the Duttons were receiving orders for the temporary -closing of Vine Cottage. Through it all she had been silent and -unobtrusive, her face wearing an expression that well-nigh broke the -heart of the woman who loved her. Only once did she offer speech: - -“I guess it’s better for my mamma to get natural again--because--the -other way she couldn’t have lived.” - -The remedy that would work such magic once ought to be efficacious -again. Lavinia’s altered attitude towards her husband was, beyond -peradventure, the result of her visit in Bromfield. When Judith found -opportunity, she asked: - -“Do you think you will be coming to New York this fall? There will -always be a guest room for you and father.” - -“David can’t get away before spring, with the Marksley contract -crowding him to the wall, and Larimore gone all the time. If he had any -system about him, he wouldn’t let things crowd him that way. If I was a -contractor--” - -“Then, perhaps you will come alone, and stop off at Bromfield on the -way home. Your visit there in July certainly gave you great benefit.” - -“How much benefit--no one will ever know!” The black eyes snapped. “It -almost paid for all that has happened since. To see some one that you -thought was rich and prosperous--and find out that they have actually -less than you have--” She stopped, and the even white teeth clicked. “I -mean my brother Ted.” In crimson confusion she hurried to the window, -where she stood dumbly contemplating the street. When she turned, it -was to abuse Eileen so extravagantly that she became aware of the -blunder she was making. - -“Mrs. Ascott, you mustn’t listen to what I am saying,” she floundered. - -“Won’t you call me Judith, now that I am no longer Mrs. Ascott?” - -Mrs. Trench laughed foolishly. - -“I forgot that you and Larimore were married last night. I’ll forget my -own name if I have to live in this nightmare much longer.” - -“Perhaps you can get it off your mind if you go to Bromfield for a few -weeks. I am sure Dr. Schubert and Nanny will look after--” - -“I never want to see Bromfield again.” - - -II - -Judith put the puzzle aside and went home to dress for the train. At -the station she kissed David and said, reassuringly: - -“Don’t brood over it, father. Eileen will come through without a -blemish.” - -“If there is any one who can save her it is you. We had to get her -away from her mother. Not that I blame my wife for this. She is the -most conscientious woman I have ever known, the most positive in her -convictions of morality. She has always set a good example for her -children.” - -Just then the engine whistled for the crossing below Springdale, and -there was a hurrying to and fro on the platform, for the crashing -wheels scarcely came to rest in the little college town. Judith was -glad of the interruption. Were all good men blind? A moment later she -was waving farewell from the rear Pullman, as David stood beside the -track, Theodora’s hand clasped in his. - - -III - -On Saturday Eileen had her first glimpse of the Hudson. That evening -the Ramsays called, and then ... Aladdin’s lamp was relegated to the -attic along with the other wonders that had survived their day of -glory. New York was the real fairy land. From the hippopotamus in -the Bronx to the hippocampus in Battery Park, the girl saw it all. -Sometimes with Judith, more often with Laura Ramsay or her mother, -she went from elevated to subway, from the amusing little cross-town -horse-cars that were more primitive even than Springdale, to the -thrilling taxicab and the Fifth Avenue bus, with a zest that whetted -the jaded appetites of the women for whom the city had long since lost -its novelty. - -After two weeks she decided that she had taken in all the impressions -she could hold, and settled down to her music in earnest. There were -daily letters from her father, empty because of that fullness he dared -not express. Twice a week Theodora wrote--exhaustive discourses on the -city, which her imagination rendered more real than reality itself. -There were letters, long or brief, to Lary from Lavinia, with never a -mention of Eileen. The girl wrote four times to her mother, and then -her spirit revolted. - -“She can go to grass before I’ll ever know she’s on earth. I suppose -she’s afraid of contaminating herself. I’d like to tell her there are -some thinking people--people whose opinions count--who don’t consider -it half as immoral to go to the devil with the man you believe you -love--as it is to bear six children for the man you know you hate.” - -“Dearest, don’t do it,” Judith pleaded. “You must not stir up all -that rancour in your soul. Remember what you are stamping on the mind -and character of the child I am going to call my own. You owe it to -me--not to make my burden too hard. And, Eileen, your mother is no more -responsible for her limitations than you are for yours. She was brought -up to a belief that there is something supernatural in a marriage -certificate. Morality is wholly a matter of external forms. And she has -the clear advantage of standing with the majority.” - -“Yes, she always grabs a front seat in the bandwagon. If it ever gets -popular to run off with some other woman’s husband--you’ll find her in -the procession. No! you won’t find her. She’s too set in her ideas for -that. But after the way she cottoned to Mrs. Nims--when it suited her -purpose--and other swells in Springdale--” She choked, her face growing -scarlet. “I hope I’ll never be intolerant.” - -Judith sensed the thought that had flared up in the girl’s mind, from -which she had retrieved herself in a swift change of subject. Ignoring -Mrs. Trench’s reason for that first neighbourly call on Adelaide -Nims, after her return from Bromfield, she fell back on the nature of -toleration. - -“My dear, don’t you know that you are just as intolerant of your -mother as she is of you--that you are like her, when you justify to -yourself the thing you want to do--and spare your lacerated feelings, -when things go wrong, by finding flaws to pick in some other person’s -conduct?” - -Eileen hung her head. From infancy she had been branded as a Trench. -And now it shamed her to be told that she resembled her mother, her -mother in whom she could see nothing but bourgeois complacence. After a -moment she said: - -“You always get the nub of it, Judith. How can you see the inside of -things so quick? I can work a thing out, when once I get a good grip on -an idea. I guess I’m like mamma there, too. Only--Lary says you have -to be careful what ideas you give her--because she’s like as not to -apply them upside down. I suppose there’s only one thing for me to do. -I’ll have to take myself apart and see what my inner works are like. -You shan’t have any such vixen as I was, to take care of. I clawed Dr. -Schubert in the eye before I was an hour old. It wasn’t an accident, -either. I was just naturally vicious. It was because mamma had put in -a whole winter hating me and papa and the fool Creator who put all the -burden of bearing children on the wife. At least I haven’t any such -feeling as that. I don’t even blame--” Her cheeks crimsoned again. “I -don’t blame any one but myself.” - -There were other serious talks, touching the deep hidden things of -life; but as the autumn passed these became more and more impersonal. -Once a week Eileen went to visit the Ramsays at Rye, usually on -Saturday when she could spend the night, and Laura’s mother saw to it -that the violin was never left at home. In the suburban town, young -Mrs. Winthrop was an immediate social success. - - - - -XXVII David’s Children - - -I - -November was half gone when Judith wrote to David, the letter she had -yearned to write, weeks ago: - - “We are on the eve of victory, the great spiritual victory that I - know means more than anything else to you. Eileen puts in four hours - a day practicing. This evening she is giving a recital at the church - Mrs. Ramsay’s mother attends. She is a great favourite in Rye, where - the story of her tragic widowhood first stimulated interest. I know, - father, how distasteful this kind of subterfuge is to you; but Lary - agrees with me that it is necessary. As yet no one suspects. But we - must plan a long way ahead. - - “I have it all arranged, even to the wording of the announcement - cards I hope to send out, some time next July. But I shall not dare - to show myself in Springdale for another year. There are too many - experienced mothers, who would know whether a baby was three weeks - or three months old. I could not conceal the telltale marks. I don’t - know what a baby ought to look like! - - “Don’t say anything about this to Lary’s mother. She would only - worry, and she might do something, inadvertently, to spoil all our - planning. Lary would like to have us accompany him when he makes his - next business trip to Springdale. It is perfectly safe, as far as - Eileen is concerned, I assure you. I do so want you to hear her play. - It is not merely technique. I can fairly hear her soul grow. She is - having her growing pains, but they are good for her. She never speaks - of the ordeal that is before her, and for a week I thought she had - forgotten it. When she brought me an exquisite little garment she had - made, every stitch by hand, I knew I was mistaken. - - “Professor Auersbach sees a great career for her. The strain in her - nature that will militate against high artistic success, such as - he hopes for, is her salvation now. She rebounds from disagreeable - things with the resiliency of a rubber ball. Lary doesn’t want her to - be famous. He only wants her to grow into a good woman. It would make - you happy to see the little intimacy that is growing up between them. - She doesn’t at all see in him the demigod he is to me; but I had the - advantage of seeing him first through Theodora’s eyes. Tell her how I - miss her, and give her a big hug from her Sister Judith.” - - -II - -David put the letter away in the safe, with his few priceless -possessions. He wanted to see his children--the two whose likeness to -him had been a cause for half humorous apology or bitter reproach. He -walked home from the office, lost in a flood of incoherent longing. -If only Lavinia had never been kind! There was to be a concert in the -college chapel on Thanksgiving evening. Perhaps Eileen could play in -public. His soul revolted at such philandering with the truth; but he -had taught himself to make peace with the powers that were stronger -than his will or his ability. He quickened his step. He would offer the -suggestion to Vine. - -“It’s just the thing. I’ll go right over and tell Mrs. Henderson -about it! The women of Springdale will remember the date--if anything -should ever leak out. Eileen is built like the Trenches. I remember, -your sister Edith was at church the Sunday before little Buddie was -born--and when he came, it was a complete surprise. Nobody suspected -anything.” - -David covered his face with his hands. His wife’s bald physical view -of Eileen’s soul-tragedy filled him with loathing. At long intervals, -in the years that were gone, she had forced him to look within the -steel-girt casket of her being, and always he had turned away -horrified eyes--to restore as best he might the priceless jewels of -his imagining. Could he censure his daughter because she had believed -in Hal Marksley, to her hurt? How had he judged the one he loved, the -woman he had given Eileen for a mother? - -He put the thought aside as wickedly disloyal. Vine was the mother of -his children. She had taken him, a simple-hearted boy with no ambition -beyond the making of beautiful furniture, and she had made of him a -successful business man. He could no longer make beautiful things. -His fingers had lost their sure touch. But he had given his children -the cultural advantages his own boyhood had lacked, and he had laid -by enough to care for his family, if he should be taken. He had not -been happy. He knew, all at once, that he had not been happy. He had -never thought of it before. Still, what right had mortals to demand -happiness? Had Vine been sympathetic, he might never have risen above -the rank of a carpenter. His children would have toiled with their -hands, to measure the stolid level of Bromfield or Olive Hill. It was -Vine, with her far-seeing eyes and her two-edged tongue, who had made -Lary’s achievement possible, who had given Sylvia the satisfaction of -a marriage to her liking. It was patent that Sylvia, at least, was -satisfied with her lot. - -His eyes turned inward, he began to take stock of his children. Bob and -Isabel were in heaven. The acts of God were not to be challenged. Lary -had periods of morbid brooding, when life looked worse than worthless. -It would be different, now that he had a wife to love him ... a wife -who saw in him a demigod. Such devotion had stimulated him to greater -endeavour than he had deemed worth while. It might not have worked -that way with Lary’s father ... if he had had a wife to soothe and -admire him. He might have been too happy to exert himself. He could not -be sure. - -The very qualities which had won Judith were fostered by Vine’s -determination to send Larimore to Cornell. Just why Cornell, David had -no means of knowing. Lary had not gone to Bromfield for any of his -vacations. So the proximity of the old home town had nothing to do with -it. With all his cultural charm, he might not have won Mrs. Ascott, had -there been no strong incentive to action. He was inclined to drift, to -shun the crass grip of reality. His happiness had been thrust upon him, -because of Eileen’s drastic need. - -Theodora was too young to be estimated with any degree of finality. -As she was, so had Vine Larimore appeared to him when, as a boy, he -had looked upon her with yearning eyes. In the after years Vine had -been the prototype of Sylvia. She might have bargained better with her -beauty--as Sylvia had bargained. What had prompted Vine to the breaking -of that other engagement? She had told him, times without number, that -he had won her--against her better judgment--by his persistent devotion -... had taken her by storm, and had thereby driven his rival to a hasty -and ill-starred marriage. How could he have taken any woman by storm? -He felt a little foolish pride in the thought that for one rash moment -he had been bold. - -He once heard his wife counselling Sylvia, when she was on the point -of marrying for pique, an elderly widower in the college faculty. She -could afford to swallow Tom Henderson’s neglect, Vine had said, if -thereby she might some day step into Mrs. Dr. Henderson’s shoes. But -Sylvia was in no need of advice. She would always make the best of her -situation--glamour it over with a value calculated to inspire envy in -the minds of her friends. It would have been the same, had she occupied -a three-room cottage in Olive Hill, with miners’ wives for her social -equals. She was developing into a snob. David had not known the meaning -of the word until he felt it in Sylvia, that summer. - -He turned for relief to Theodora, the one who was still plastic. His -mind had climbed awkwardly over Eileen. He must do his work, and a -father could not contemplate that catastrophe and live. Theo understood -him, as none of the others did. She had rejoiced with him in the seven -weeks of his belated honeymoon, and she sorrowed with him in the -bitterness of the aftermath. - - -III - -“What in the world is the matter with you? Have you gone stone deaf? I -have spoken to you three times, and you haven’t turned a hair.” He was -aroused from his musings by Vine’s raucous voice. - -“I suppose my mind was wandering. What do you want, dear?” - -“What were you thinking?” Her eyes were dark with suspicion. - -“I--I believe I was thinking about old Selim, the saddle horse ... you -know, Vine, that Dr. Schubert used to ride when the roads were too -muddy for the buggy. And what sore places the saddle would make on -the poor old fellow’s back--and how the sores would turn into kindly -calluses after the saddle had been worn a few weeks. It was taking the -saddle off, and putting it back on again, that made the new sores. It -would be better never to feel relief from the calloused places than to -have to harden them all over again.” - -“Yes! I wish I had never gone to Bromfield. Not that the trip didn’t -benefit my health wonderfully. But we wouldn’t be in all this trouble -if I had stayed at home. And the worst of it isn’t Eileen, either. I -had to give in to let Larimore marry that grass widow. That’s the part -that can’t be so easily undone.” - -“Vine!” David Trench towered his full height, his face stiff with -indignation. “Have you no decency, no gratitude, no human kindness in -your heart? For shame, to let such words pass your lips!” - -Lavinia laughed, a strangled, empty giggle, while the red crept up her -neck. - -“I was only joking. Larimore says I have no sense of humour. I think -you are the one who can’t see a joke.” - -“I can’t see a joke in things that are not to be joked about. Judith -is a noble woman and she has saved you from disgrace. We are the last -people in the world who have a moral right to bring up her past. We all -make mistakes, even you--” - -“I made the mistake of my life when I married a man who always sides -against me, no matter what comes up.” She began to weep loudly. - - -IV - -David was wont to coax and comfort until the storm was over; but this -time he put on his hat and left the house without a word. When he -returned at dinner time the sky was serene and the atmosphere almost -balmy. Lavinia kissed him on both cheeks and turned to pick a thread -from his coat with wifely care. Her lips wore a satisfied smirk. - -“It’s all fixed. I had the luck to run into a meeting of the committee -at Mrs. Henderson’s, and they want Eileen to play three numbers. I have -written Judith to get her the finest dress in New York--not to mind the -cost--and to send the titles by return mail. I’m going to give a big -reception, Friday afternoon.” - -David smiled wearily. Another whirlpool in his domestic stream had been -navigated, safely. Before him lay a week of tranquillity. Vine was -always amiable, with some such absorbing task in prospect. - - - - -XXVIII Indian Summer - - -I - -The trio arrived Wednesday morning, with half the freshman class at the -station to meet Eileen. It was all so different from her going away. -How strange the town looked, how tranquil and confiding the faces of -her friends! What a long, long time she had been gone! Could she ever -again talk to Kitten and Ina as in the old life? Could she adjust -herself, for even a few days, to the environment that had been her -whole world? - -The change was not all in herself. There was her mother--kissing -her ecstatically before all that crowd, telling her how sweet she -looked, how lonely the big house was without her. And--did she hear -aright?--declaring in ringing tones that she should not go back to -New York with Larimore and Judith, but should enter college at the -beginning of the second semester. A moment later Mrs. Trench passed -from this demonstration to embrace Judith with equal warmth, to address -her as “my dear daughter” and lament the shortness of the visit. -The girl was bewildered. Only Theodora was unchanged. She bubbled -and vibrated as of old, pouting disconsolately when the chapel bell -summoned her. - - -II - -The afternoon was taken up with rehearsal for to-morrow evening’s -program in the college chapel. Once Eileen was on the brink of the -sordid past. She had met Adelaide Nims with unruffled composure; -but when Kitten joked her about her prospective sister-in-law, and -Ina wanted to know how many evenings a week Hal was in the habit of -spending with her, she almost forgot the rôle she had been playing ... -that in New York she was Mrs. Winthrop, whereas in Springdale she was -still Eileen Trench, and presumably betrothed to Mrs. Nims’ brother. - -“You can’t fool us,” Miss Henderson teased. “I bet Ina a pair of -gold-buckled garters that you’d follow Hal to New York, instead of -going to college here. And your mother didn’t get by, this morning, -with that line of talk about keeping you at home. She wouldn’t tear you -and Hal apart for the world.” - -Eileen felt a sinking in the region of her solar plexus, but she -contrived a flippant retort, and took up her violin. She had not -remembered that Hal Marksley was in Brooklyn ... that she was likely -to meet him in the subway or at the theatre, any day. In the onrush of -her first disillusionment he had been carried beyond her ken, as an -obstruction of logs and floating débris is torn from its moorings and -scattered in meaningless fragments by the violence of a spring flood. - - -III - -Judith, after a few hours with Mrs. Dutton and a hurried visit from -Nanny--indeed the Doctors Schubert were dears; but her heart was still -with her mistress--found Lary in the hall where, less than three months -ago, she promised to love, honour and obey him. He must make a hurried -run to Littlefield, on business for his father. It was a glorious -autumn afternoon and the road was in fair condition. At his suggestion, -Judith took an extra wrap, for the air would be chill after the sun -went down. - -It was the twenty-fourth of November, and the temperature was that of -late spring; but the air held a dreamy content, as if the earth and her -children were drunk with rare old amber wine. On the brow of a hill, -a little way out from town, Lary stopped the car to point out a great -diadem of irregular rubies, in a setting of Etruscan gold. That, he -explained, was a scattering of scarlet oaks in a grove composed largely -of soft maples. Here and there a flavescent green asserted itself, -thinly. - -“Walnuts,” he said, his face taking on a boyish look. “We had every -tree marked, when Bob and Syd and I were youngsters. You have to pick -out the location ... and remember it. The walnut has no community -instinct. It seldom grows in friendly groups, like the sweet gums -and sugar maples. The leaves are only yellowed by a frost that turns -the oaks crimson over night, and their formation gives the effect of -delicate filigree. Look at that sumac bush, Judith--like a great sang -de boeuf vase, with a red on the shoulder that would have filled an -ancient Chinese potter with awe. The flame-red in the sang de boeuf -porcelain was supposed to be derived from the breath of the gods, while -the kiln was at white heat. This red, that gives a flambé touch to so -many of these sumacs, is an insolent growth of rhus toxicodendron, that -has run wild all over these hills.” - -“Poison ivy,” Judith cried. “Yes, we have it in New York and -Connecticut--all up to the Sound. During the summer, city people often -mistake it for Virginia creeper, to their sorrow. But after frost, its -coral colour betrays it.” - -Something on the grassy slope caught her eye, and she asked for -explanation. Cobwebs. The shrubs were festooned with them, long -streamers floating in the breeze, like knotted gossamer threads. Over -the short grass they formed a continuous fabric, as delicate as crêpe -chiffon. - -“Millions of spiders set to work with their spinning, the morning -after the first hard frost. No naturalist has ever explained, to my -satisfaction, where they come from, or what purpose they serve by -throwing out all this maze of webs. I can’t believe that there is any -utilitarian end in view. As if nature couldn’t squander a little effort -on pure beauty!” - -When the car had rounded the shoulder of the hill, Judith touched her -husband’s arm. “Look, Lary, is that fire? Not the red of the foliage, -but that film of smoke, away beyond the field.” - -He followed the lead of her gaze, across a dun field dotted at more or -less regular intervals with huge shocks of withered corn, beside some -of which lay piles of yellow and white ears, husked and ready for the -crib. Beyond this were broad acres of wheat stubble, glistening silver -in the sun. And then the creek, half hidden from view by a tangle of -wild grape and trumpet creeper that well-nigh suffocated the stunted -trees along its bank. Over the field, the stream, the low woods beyond, -was a silver mist that deepened first to azure, then to smoky purple, -as it met the far horizon. - -“That isn’t the result of fire, dear. That is our much vaunted Indian -Summer haze. The Indians had a legend to explain it. Ask Theo to tell -you. It’s one of her favourites.” - -“Yes, yes.... I had forgotten. I shall always associate it with Dr. -Schubert--the peace that came to him after the long years of tragedy -and the final shock of sudden death. Lary, do you think....” - -“I am afraid not, dearest. My mother was born in an off season. Nothing -in her case works out on normal lines.” - -Then they rode on in silence, each wondering how the other had caught -the unvoiced question that was in both minds. - - -IV - -The concert, for the benefit of the scholarship fund, the following -evening, was the social event of the season. Mrs. Trench was -disappointed in the dress Judith had bought for Eileen--a simple affair -of white chiffon, in long graceful lines, over a satin slip that showed -a tracery of silver threads--until she heard Mrs. Nims whisper to Mrs. -Henderson that it must have been a late Paris importation. After that -she caught the “style” her village eyes had not perceived. It was worth -the price, to have Mrs. Nims say that to Mrs. Henderson. - -But Eileen’s appearance, as she emerged upon the chapel stage from -the sheltering screen of palms, was no disappointment to her mother. -As the burst of spontaneous applause died away--the violinist -bowing recognition, as graciously as if this were a matter of daily -occurrence--she heard Kitten exclaim to the girls near her: - -“Gee, isn’t she stunning! If ten weeks in New York could do that for -Eileen Trench, ten days of it ought to make a howling beauty of me.” -Then she clapped her hand to her mouth, remembering Mrs. Trench’s -lynx-ears. - - -V - -The visit was one continuous triumphal procession for the girl. There -was her mother’s reception, Friday afternoon, at which--according -to the formally engraved cards of invitation--the best people of -Springdale were requested to meet Mrs. Larimore Trench. But Eileen, -behind the coffee urn, was the real attraction. On Saturday Mrs. -Henderson and Mrs. Clarkson joined in a musical tea, and together they -prevailed on the girl to play Schubert’s Ave Maria at church, Sunday -morning. - -When it was ended, and Sunday night saw her safely on the train, her -mother went home to a three days’ sick headache. If she could “put that -over” on the smartest people in Springdale, perhaps there was nothing -to fear. Larimore had some ridiculous story he used to quote ... about -a boy who held a fox under his cloak while it tore his vitals out. It -was a stolen fox, she reminded herself. After all, it didn’t matter -much what you did--so long as you had the grit to keep it under your -cloak. - - - - -XXIX The Truth that is Clean - - -I - -The winter wore away. Larimore Trench was too deeply occupied to give -much time to his small family. “Success had come to him unsought: not -the success he had hoped for or desired. Griffith Ramsay opened the way -when, as toast-master at a convention banquet, he introduced Lary as -Consulting Architect--a title the opulent New Yorker took seriously. -And it was Ramsay who looked after the contracts, stipulating enormous -fees for the service Lary would have given gratuitously, had he been -left to his own devices. - -“I feel like a robber,” he told Judith when he handed her a check in -four figures--compensation for work that had actually consumed only -a few hours of his time. “You know, I met the man at a stag dinner, -early in December, and took a real liking to him. He had an option on -a place, and he asked me to go out and look at it. It was one of the -worst atrocities I ever saw--and I didn’t mince words with him. It was -such a bargain that he could afford to spend a little money on drastic -changes--and I told him what to do. I have often given that kind of -advice to a friend. I wouldn’t think of sending in a bill.” - -“And it hurts your pride, to be selling your taste.” - -Lary looked at her, a light dawning in his limpid brown eyes. - -“You are the most remarkable woman in the world. You have the insight -of a sage ... and the intuition of a poet. I didn’t know what was wrong -with me. And in a second you put your finger on the tender spot. It is -precisely the feeling I had the first time an editor sent me a check -for a poem. You don’t sell things that come out of your soul. To take -money for them is like rubbing the bloom from the grape. It leaves your -soul shiny and bare.” - -“But, Lary, an artist takes money for his pictures. It is bad for his -art if he lives by any other means. The painter who has no need to work -is almost sure to go stale in a few years. If you had been born when -Greece was at the climax of her glory--” - -“I would have been an artisan--taking wages for my work, like -Apollodorus and Praxiteles--with no more social opportunity and -aspiration than an upper servant,” Lary retorted, laughing whimsically. -“The Greeks had no illusions about art. It was as closely knit with the -kitchen as with the temple. This idea that artists are fit associates -for millionaires--that is, for the aristocracy--is purely a figment of -modern times. My repugnance for money is not the result of my classical -training. It was burned into my mind by the gruelling conflict of -opinions between my father and mother. My father and I were born to an -age that knows only the money standard. The world--and my mother--are -not to blame, if he and I are out of joint with the times.” - -“But you won’t let it hurt you, Lary ... let it embitter you?” - -“No, sweetheart. I’ll make a joke of it. I’ll tell Ramsay to double his -infamous bills.” And Larimore Trench went forth to rob another rich man. - - -II - -Later in the day Laura came to the apartment. It was a dreary February -morning and the outlook from the front windows was bleak and cheerless. -Eileen had sat for an hour contemplating the waste of sullen water, -and Judith had let her alone. She was thinking things out. She would -come to her sister for help when she needed it. At times the older -woman could follow her thought process by an intuition that was almost -uncanny. This morning not a glimmer of light came through. Scarcely had -Mrs. Ramsay disposed of her furs and selected her favourite rocker when -the girl began, her face whiter than usual and her lips compressed: - -“Judith, I am going to tell her. I can’t go on feeling like a dirty -sneak.” - -“You--what, Eileen?” Laura asked, her hazel eyes opening in wonder. - -“May I, Judith? You know what I mean.” - -“If you feel that it is right, dear. You know how it looks to you.” - -“Then here goes! Mrs. Ramsay, you and your husband have been perfectly -splendid to me--and I owe it to you, not to have you go on this way any -longer. As far as your mother is concerned--she’s been a darling; but -I’ve paid that with my violin. I don’t need to tell her. But I do need -to tell you that I am not Mrs. Winthrop, and my husband didn’t drown -in that Alaska steamship disaster. I am Eileen Trench--and I never had -a husband....” She set her teeth hard, then went on heroically: “There -won’t be any name for the baby that comes, the first of May.” - -“Eileen, are you mad! Judith, what has come over the girl?” - -“No. It’s just cold facts. I’m not twenty years. I’ll be seventeen, the -last of March. Long before I was sixteen I was crazy mad in love with -a man. It was mostly my fault--that he wasn’t the hero I made him out, -I mean. We were engaged and we talked things over--things that aren’t -safe for a girl and a man to talk about before they are married. I -don’t need to tell you the rest.” - -“And the contemptible cur deserted you?” - -“Not exactly ... deserted. When we found out, he said at first that he -would be loyal, and would marry me after he got through with college. -To save my reputation, he wanted me to commit murder.” - -“What did you say to him? How did you answer the cad?” - -“I blacked his eye.” - -The words fell cold and mirthless. - -“I was going to kill myself, but Judith wouldn’t let me. She married -Lary, so that they could take--” - -Laura Ramsay’s usually placid face took on an expression of intense -emotion. She rose to her feet and walked hurriedly to the window. - -“If you are going to cut me off--well, that’s all the more reason why -I had to tell you,” Eileen said, following her. “It’s what I have to -expect.” - -“But I don’t intend to cut you off, child. Judith, why couldn’t I do -for her what I did in Nelka’s case? Especially if it turns out to be a -little girl. Junior is wild for a sister--and it’s the only way I can -hope to get one for him. And of course I’d be game, if it were another -boy. Won’t you, Judith? I’m sure Griff would approve. Why--why, Eileen, -what is the matter?” - -The girl had flung herself on her knees, her face in Judith’s lap, -her slender body shaken with sobs. When the paroxysm had passed, she -slipped to the floor and sat looking from one to the other with a wry -smile. - -“There is only one stumbling block in the way, Mrs. Ramsay--and that’s -_me_. Judith and I are going to the sanitarium, the middle of April. -After the baby comes, I am to hand it over to her and forget about it. -Why, I can’t. I croon over it every night, in my dreams. When I’m wide -awake, I see him, a splendid man, thrilling audiences with his violin. -Wouldn’t I lose my head, some day--go raving mad and tell the whole -thing?” - -“All the more reason why it should be in the nursery, out at Rye, where -you wouldn’t see it. Boy or girl, you must let me have it. The child -will be a musical genius,” Laura cried, her eyes beaming with expectant -mother-pride. - - -III - -That night Judith talked it over with Lary. She had known, all along, -that the thought of this child, with the Marksley brand, filled him -with dread. The following day Laura came again, with a whole chest of -dainty things. She and her sister had made them before Junior’s coming, -and he was such a robust baby that they were outgrown before they had -been worn. Griff was as eager as she. - -Gradually, as the weeks passed, Judith divorced herself from the -thought of the child. Had she a right, when the Ramsays offered -sanctuary to the nameless waif--especially in view of Eileen’s -preternatural mother-love, and the great loneliness that had been -Lary’s, before her coming? There might some day be a child of her own. -Her homesickness for Theodora gave her pause--and Theodora had not -twined tendrils of helplessness around her heart. Yes, it was best to -let Laura have the baby.... - - - - -XXX Katharsis - - -I - -March came, and the layette was practically finished. Judith Trench -looked up from her sewing to realize with a strange thrill that it was -just a year since first she heard the name of Springdale. She and Lary -would be going to the theatre, that evening. She wondered whether he -had remembered, when he got the tickets. Eileen was leaving for Rye on -an early afternoon train--indeed she must be well on the way, going -directly from Professor Auersbach’s studio. The train must pass Pelham -in a few minutes. - -A year ago, Judith Ascott had gone out to Pelham with the buoyancy of -a toy balloon released from its tether, to break the epoch-making news -to her mother. Now the house at Pelham was in alien hands. Father was -still abroad, was still complaining of floating specks in the air and -a disheartening lack of appetite for breakfast. Mother was rapturous -over the new house Lary was building for her. Ben was eager to get back -to America, to try his hand at concrete construction. Jack thought he -wanted to be a landscape architect--with brother Lary to instruct him. -That would beat the Beaux Arts all hollow. - -From one to another of the family, her mind flitted. Had they not -accepted Lary without reservation? Was not her own life complete? She -turned questioning eyes towards the door. A key in the outer lock. Had -Lary come home early ... remembering? Was he ill? The living-room door -opened, slowly, as if it were pushing some imponderable but deadly -weight. In an instant she was on her feet. - -“Eileen! What has happened?” - -The girl sank into the nearest chair and buried her face from sight. -After a moment she said, in a voice hollow and remote: - -“There’s no use torturing you with suspense. I’m not hurt.” - -“But something has happened to you--something dreadful.” - -“Judith, you don’t need to go out of your way to hunt punishment, when -you’ve sinned. And you don’t need to dodge it, either. A little while -ago I would have thrown myself in front of a subway train, if I hadn’t -been a coward. Last summer I thought I had done something heroic. But -when I saw _him_, this afternoon--” - -“Hal Marksley? Eileen!” - -“Now you know the worst.” She nodded slowly. “If you’ll let me, Judith, -I’ll tell you from the beginning. I guess I’m like mamma in that, too. -She has to tell a thing all in one piece, or she loses the thread of -it. In the first place, I had a great lesson. I was the last, before -luncheon, and Professor Auersbach stopped to compliment me. It was the -first time. He explained the meaning of _hypsos_, the sublime reach of -spiritual exaltation--and he said it had come into my playing because -of what I had suffered. He talked like Syd Schubert. I went out of -the studio walking on air. I don’t know what I ate--or where. All I -remember is that I left too large a tip, because the change came out -wrong. - -“I went to the Grand Central and bought a ticket. It was ever so long -before train time, but I thought I’d better scout around and see how to -get down to the tracks. You know, the construction people change the -route every few days. The first passage I tried had been barricaded. I -went half way up the stairs when I came face to face with three men. -The one in the middle was Hal.” - -“He recognized you?” - -“Not at first--and I hurried past them and into a side aisle. It was -a blind pocket, and before I could get out of it I heard him calling -my name. Judith, I was all alone. Hundreds of people within hearing, -and I was all alone with the man I loathe. It was like a nightmare--my -feet hobbled with ropes. Before I knew it, he had me in his arms and -was kissing me. I suppose I fainted. When I began to see things again, -we were in that little temporary waiting-room, and my head was on his -shoulder. I looked at him through a mist ... and every minute of last -summer rolled over me. It was a flood from a sewer. They say you review -your life when you are about to die. You don’t need any hell after -that.” - -When the tumultuous beating of her heart subsided a little, she went -on: - -“He wanted to call a taxicab and take me to a hotel. I didn’t get his -meaning at first. When I did--life came back to me. I suppose the -people around us thought we were a married couple, having our first -public quarrel. Once he looked at me with a leer and said: ‘So you were -mistaken about what you told me, the first of September--or else you -took my advice’. I told him I was mistaken about a good many things, -last summer. Then he said he had gone to the studio to look me up, -after his sister wrote him that I was studying music in New York, and -the secretary said there was no one enrolled there by the name of -Trench. He chuckled and said I was a smart kid, and he had half a mind -to take me with him to Rio.” - -“Rio?” - -“Yes. He hasn’t been at Pratt Institute at all. He flunked his entrance -exams. He didn’t let his people know, but has been taking all the money -they’d sent him. Has a position in a Brazilian importing house, and has -been studying Portuguese all winter. They are sending him down there in -an important place--and he hopes he’ll never see this ratty old country -again. He even said he’d marry me, if ...” - -“And there was no return of the old ardour?” - -“No, Judith, only a sick disgust.” - - -II - -They were still talking when Larimore came home, surprised and a shade -annoyed when he found that Eileen was there. He had but two tickets, -and he wanted to be alone with his wife. - -“Don’t tell him,” the girl whispered when he left the room to dress -for dinner. “He is just beginning to respect me a little. I so want -his--respect.” - -When dinner was over she went to her room. No, she was not ill. She -only wanted to be alone. If Lary had planned an evening at the theatre, -thinking that she would spend the night at Rye, there was no reason for -a change in his plans. She was glad they were going out, so that she -might be alone. She knew the meaning of _hypsos_, now that she had made -the descent, within the brief space of an hour, from that height to -_bathos_, the lowest depth of sordid physical reality. She wanted to -play again the winged notes that had carried her beyond the farthest -reach of her own being--to purge her soul of the earth-taint that was -in her. - -“You are perfectly sure you are all right?” Judith asked when she told -her good-night. “You won’t brood or cry?” - -“No, I am past all that. When you strike bottom--there isn’t any -farther to go.” - - -III - -After the play there was a little supper, and then the long ride in the -taxicab. It was nearing two o’clock when Judith looked into Eileen’s -room. The bed was empty. In swift alarm she turned, to catch a faint -cry from the bathroom. - -“I came in here to get some hot water--and--I couldn’t get back,” the -girl groaned, striving to make light of a desperate situation. - -“Oh, it was heartless of me to leave you alone, at such a time.” - -“Not at all. I’ve had a wonderful evening. I took my violin ... and we -worked it out together. I went to bed and slept like a rock until--oh, -oh!” - -“Lary!” Judith cried in fright, “telephone for a doctor. Eileen is -dreadfully ill.” The tortured girl had striven to rise, but fell back -convulsed on the rug. - -When Larimore had carried her to her bed, he said huskily: - -“Only this evening, when we were going out, I was thinking how -fortunate it was to have a doctor here in the apartment. He came up in -the elevator with us. He may not care to take this kind of case, but--” - -“Lary, you must be mistaken. It’s not to be for almost two months. -And if you were right--wouldn’t it be over by this time? She’s been -suffering two hours.” - -“The first one is often premature. Eileen is a highly emotional -nature. And I suspected at dinner that something was wrong. As to the -duration--no one can gauge that. I was with my mother for three hours -before Theodora was born. My father was out of town, and mamma wouldn’t -have Sylvia around. Bob had been sent for the nurse, and there was -nothing to do but wait. Dr. Schubert knew my mother’s habits. He said -there was no hurry.” They had reached the outer door of the apartment, -his hand on the knob. “In those three hours, Judith, I was transformed -from a sentimental boy to a morbid, cynical man. Syd has tried to -change my viewpoint; but all his reasoning is empty. He will never be -called upon to bear children.” - -A few minutes later he returned with the physician, in bathrobe and -slippers. It was almost morning before a nurse arrived; but one of the -maids was herself a mother, and intelligent help was not wanting. After -an hour Lary led his wife from the room. - -“Sweetheart, you can’t help her, and you are enduring every pang she -suffers. Her pain is mostly physical now. Yours is both physical and -mental. You must not squander your strength. We will need it for the -harder part to come. Won’t you lie down and try to sleep?” - -“Sleep! when the most terribly significant thing in the world is under -way? How can we grow so callous? I never realized the marvel of life -until now. I must go through every heart-throb of it. I need it! I will -have more pity for your mother, more toleration for my own mother, more -love for you, Lary--if there is any more.” - -Larimore Trench closed his eyes, bitter self-abasement surging through -his being. He had never been at grips with life. Nay, rather, he had -turned from it in a superior attitude of disdain. He would not touch -the woman he loved. She was too holy for his coward’s hands. - - -IV - -As the grey dawn was breaking over the snow-whitened Hudson, the nurse -aroused the two who dozed in their chairs in the living-room. - -“You’d better come,” she said excitedly. “Mrs. Winthrop isn’t going to -hold out.” - -At the door the physician waved them back. Judith caught a glimpse of -Eileen’s deathlike face and she ran sobbing down the hall. A long time -she stood, her husband’s cherishing arms around her. Then a petulant -wail from the room at the end of the long hall told them it was over. - -At noon a letter to David was posted. - - “You must be prepared for the worst. Early this morning a little girl - came. It weighs less than four pounds. The doctor says, considering - its premature condition, the extreme youth of the mother, and the - circumstances of delivery, there is not one chance in ten that it - will survive. We are more concerned for the mother. I will telegraph - you, only in case of extremity.” - - -V - -Laura Ramsay had come, in response to a long-distance call, and she and -Judith stood beside the nurse when, after twelve hours of earth-life, -the unformed morsel of humanity gave up the struggle. - -It was not until the following morning that they told Eileen her baby -had died. Lary was with them. He had looked for a passionate outburst. -He could not fathom her mood as she lay, quite tranquil, on her pillow, -a smile gathering radiance in her deepset eyes. - -“It’s the only way,” she said at length. “I’m glad it won’t have to -face life--with such a handicap. It’s better for all of us.” - -Lary stooped and kissed her. He wondered why women were so much -stronger than men, why, in most of life’s crises, they must bear the -shock. - - - - -XXXI A New Hilltop - - -I - -Eileen’s strength returned slowly. It was the middle of April before -she ventured out to Rye, a pallid wraith of her former self. Griff and -Laura were afraid for her ... a fear that was transformed into action -by the potent chemistry of a woman’s mind. - -“Round up a bunch of Lary’s patrons,” Mrs. Ramsay said in her decisive -way, “and convince them that they ought to send him abroad to buy -furnishings for their new homes. He and Judith can take Eileen along. -The sea voyage will--” - -“Capital!” Griff cut in. “Only yesterday I had Parkinson on my neck for -an hour, howling about the difficulty of getting draperies and rugs for -the stunning place Lary has made of his old junk heap. Commissioned a -fellow in Paris to send him some things and--Lord love us! You should -have seen the consignment! It wasn’t the price. But Parkinson hates to -be laughed at, when he’s been stung.” - -“Lary’s orderly mind would take care of the needs of a dozen men like -Parkinson, and it would give him a chance to see Europe--right!” - - -II - -Thus it came about that on a serene May morning Judith Trench dismissed -the maids, closed the apartment and set her face towards the rising -sun. For her it was the real adventure. She had looked at Europe so -often. Now she would see through the shell, with Lary’s eyes. - -At the Cherbourg pier Mr. Denslow met them. Mamma and the boys could -hardly wait to see Judith’s new husband. But after a week Lary’s -importance was blurred, sent into almost complete occultation, as -Eileen’s vivid youth asserted itself. Ben was her slave from the first. -The night after they left her in Brussels, to have a few lessons with -Ysaye, and Lary and Judith set forth on their real honeymoon, he -confided to his mother that he was going to add another Trench to the -Denslow family, as soon as he was sure he could earn a living for two. - -“Have you asked her?” Mrs. Denslow quizzed. - -“No. She thinks I’m a boy. You might tell her that I’m nearly five -years older than she. I thought I’d grow whiskers--to impress her.” - - -III - -From Antwerp to Munich, from Venice to Constantinople, and thence by -boat to Naples and the eastern coast of Spain, Lary and the other half -of his being wandered, too happy to remember the fiery ordeal wherein -their severed selves had been fused again. When they reached Paris, the -middle of August, a great pile of letters awaited them. Lary thrust one -of them into his inside pocket. It was from his mother. Another he tore -open with eager fingers. A moment later he handed it to Judith, his -eyes shining. It bore the signature of a discriminating editor: - - “I never knew why Renaissance art, with all its brilliance and charm, - was unsatisfying to me, until I read your keenly analytical essay. - We would be glad to consider a series of essays, covering other - architectural periods and styles.” - -Mr. Denslow read the letter with indifference, but the accompanying -check had weight. He was coming to believe that his daughter had made -a first-rate investment when she went to look after her interests in -Olive Hill, and incidentally acquired a husband who could make good in -New York in six months. - -Judith followed Lary to his room, whither he had retreated to read -the letters from home. One glance at his face satisfied her that all -was not well. A moment he wavered, on the point of thrusting that -disturbing letter out of sight. Then he recognized, in his feeling, not -loyalty to his mother but a raw personal chagrin. Judith was his wife. -She had earned the right to share even his humiliation. Yet he dared -not look at her while she read the closely written pages. - -His father was breaking. It was his duty to come home and assume -the burden, now that the reason for his absence from Springdale, -with Judith and Eileen, had been removed by an unhoped-for act of -Providence. The building of a great place like the Marksley home was -too much for David, who never could shoulder responsibility. She had -tried to fire his ambition--make him see how proud he ought to be, to -get a chance to put up such fine buildings. It was wasted breath. He -went about as if he had a sack of concrete on his shoulders. He would -certainly have to forfeit money on the contract. She was outdone with -him, and must have help. - -“Dearest, cable your father to throw over that contract, no matter what -it costs. Can’t she see that his soul is being ground--because of you -and Eileen?” - -“I couldn’t send such a cablegram, dear. I didn’t want ever to see -Springdale again. You and Eileen can stay on here with your mother.” - -“But, Lary, I shouldn’t mind Springdale. David and Theo are there--and -an arbour with a summer house--and Indian Summer coming. It would be -worth all the rest ... a cheap price to pay, for another such afternoon -as we had last November, on the road to Littlefield. Is it always as -glorious as that, Lary?” - -“Usually, but not always. I remember, once when I was a young boy, -there was no frost at all until the first week of December. The -glorious tints and that silver haze in the air are the result of a -heavy frost that catches the foliage in full sap. But that year--it was -the winter Theo was born--the trees were a sickly gray-green, and all -the shrubs and vines looked as if they were suffering from some wasting -disease. The leaves had shrivelled, and still they clung. The morning -after the frost they fell like rain. Within three days the branches -were stark and bare. It was absolutely startling.” - -“You had no crimson and gold, no chiffon webs on the grass?” - -“Not that year. It was an open winter, with a frost late in the spring, -that killed all the fruit. Don’t set your heart on--I mean, dear, don’t -go back to Springdale ... just for the Indian Summer.” - -“I was going, Lary, to comfort your father.” - - -IV - -That evening they told Mrs. Denslow that they would book passage for an -early return to New York. And that lady, whose plans had been changed -so often within the past year, was glad to have her shifting course -in life directed by some one with a real necessity. They would all go -home together, especially as Ben was eager to get to work. Not at his -instance, but rather because the girl promised relief from the boredom -that had begun to weigh heavy on her, Mrs. Denslow urged Eileen to -spend the winter in New York. - -“Papa’s health is failing. He needs me,” was the eminently satisfactory -reply. To Judith the girl confided another reason. The apartment -overlooking the Hudson held memories she did not wish to revive. She -was done with that chapter of her story. She had climbed, with bleeding -feet, to a hilltop ... and the future lay misty with promise before -her. - - - - -Book Three - -Belated Frost - - - - -XXXII Lavinia Flounders - - -I - -It was like the home-coming of a national hero. The college paper -and the little local daily had announced that Miss Eileen Trench had -played at a private audience with the King of Belgium--the paragraph -inspired by her mother, when one of the letters from Brussels brought -the humorous announcement that His Majesty had stopped his motor car in -front of her window while she was practicing a brilliant Chopin number. - -Judith thought the crowd was at the station as a tribute to Lary’s -recent triumphs. And Lary thought, bitterly, that his New York success -had won him the plaudits of his native town. Theodora told them both -the truth, on the way home. She was afraid too much adulation would -turn Eileen’s head. - -At first they did not miss David in the throng. A year ago he and -Theodora had stood alone on the little station platform. Judith knew -why he was not there now. Eileen knew, too, and her eyes darkened with -suffering. He was at the gate as they approached. Lary caught his -breath sharply, as he took in the shrunken figure and the mournful -eyes. Eileen leaped from the cab and ran to greet him. - -“Papa, darling!” - -He looked at her as one awakening from deep sleep. Then all at once -the smile broke ... it spread, like ripples on the surface of a placid -pool. Every emotion of his heart was recorded on that transparent face. -The blue eyes beamed with incredible joy, as he held out his arms. - -“It’s my little girl. I thought I had lost you.” - -“No, daddy dear, it’s only that I have found myself.” - -Lavinia hurried into the house. She could not bear such spectacles in -public. What would the neighbours think? - - -II - -The following day an astounding thing came to pass. The president of -the college and the dean of the musical faculty called on Miss Trench. -They wanted to offer her a position in the conservatory. Naturally -it could not be an actual professorship. A seventeen-year-old girl -... without a degree. They thought she might give recitals in the -neighbouring towns, and take pupils in advanced technique. It would -mean much to the college to announce an instructor who had studied -with the great Ysaye. No one need know how young she was. Indeed she -was altogether different from the immature girl they remembered--quite -dignified and impressive. Marvellously changed. - -“If they knew what changed her,” Mrs. Trench reflected, her gorge -rising, “they wouldn’t be flattering her this way.” It was a mistake -to tell that about the King of Belgium. She hadn’t thought about the -effect on Eileen. Of late she blundered at every turn. Somehow things -were slipping out of her grasp. - -After they had gone, Eileen ran breathless to Vine Cottage to tell -Judith. She could not contemplate any step without that guidance or -approval. - -“Lary will be pleased. This will put an end to your mother’s plan of -having you enter the freshman class next Monday. But ... Eileen, I have -an idea. You are not going to stop studying. I wonder if you and I -couldn’t--I’m a horribly uneducated person.” - -“With Lary for tutor, you mean? Well, in the first place, my brother’s -no salesman when it comes to the things he knows. He can lay them out -on the counter and let you pick what you want. What I want most is -Latin. And he thinks it is bald and plebeian, compared with Greek. Syd -reads Horace, in the original, to rest him when he’s tired and can’t -get his mind off of the sick babies and their fool mothers. I’m crazy -to translate Ovid and--” - -“Syd’s just the thing. Don’t tell Lary, but I foundered on the Greek -alphabet. It simply wouldn’t stick in my memory. I substituted organic -chemistry. My classicist husband would be disgusted.” - -“Lary’s a prig--and I love him! Judith, it was worth it--just to get -acquainted with my brother.” - - -III - -From Vine Cottage she went to the office for David’s stamp of approval. -She had once called her father a rubber stamp. She thought of it now, -with stinging chagrin. Would not he serve as her anchor, as Judith had -been her pilot? Had she anything to fear? As she walked past the clump -of shrubbery on the campus, where Hal Marksley had kissed her that -first time, she thought with a thrill of exultation that her craft had -outrun the storm. - -From her father’s arms she hurried to Dr. Schubert’s office to tell -the joyful and as yet half apprehended news. And the man who had heard -her first shrill cry of protest against the life that was not of her -choosing, drew her to him and kissed her. The act was paternal. She -had always been more at home with him than with those of her own blood. - -“Poor old Syd,” she beamed, “he doesn’t know what he’s in for.” And -Sydney, coming through the laboratory door with a microscope slide in -one hand and a bottle of red colouring fluid in the other, put up his -mouth for the customary salutation. - -“No more of that, old fellow. I’m a young lady now. Besides you’re -going to be my preceptor, and it’s bad form for the dominie to kiss -his pupils. You’re to teach Judith and me, and you couldn’t bestow -osculations on one and not on the other. Now could you?” - -“I should think Judith would be lovely to kiss.” - -“She is ... but you and Lary can’t go out in the alley and fight duels. -And while we are on the subject--you and Papa Schubert are ages behind -the times--with all your X-rays and bacteriological tests. In Europe -they have decided that kissing is unsanitary. Disease germs are carried -that way.” - -“Yes,” the elder assented, “the dangerous little amorococcus is usually -conveyed from lip to lip.” - -Syd changed the subject. He had never been seriously touched by love. -But he thought the shaft of his father’s playful humour might carry a -poisoned barb for the girl. He demanded, with a grimace: - -“Why don’t you take me into your confidence about the preceptorship? -What do you need to learn ... after Brussels and Paris?” - -“We had thought about Latin--and anything else you happen to have -in your system that would help us to shine as intellectuals. But, -seriously, Syd, I want you to do one thing for me. Get this _teaching_ -idea across to me. You remember how you gave me the legato--when Prexie -Irwin was making us whack the strings with the bow--everything jumpy -staccato, don’t you remember? And how you showed me, in five minutes, -how to produce the singing tones? I know how to do it; but you’ll have -to show me how to teach the other fellow.” - - -IV - -When the door had closed behind her, Dr. Schubert said jubilantly: - -“The child isn’t spoiled a bit. I’ve been afraid she’d come home -sophisticated and world-wise. She’s just an innocent girl, in spite of -her long skirts.” - -“Yes,” Sydney said, with a catch in his throat, “she’s as pure and fair -as a May morning--and the fairest mornings are always the ones that -follow the darkest nights. Father, couldn’t you trump up some excuse -to bring her here to stay with us ... keep her away from her mother as -much as possible?” - -“Curious, Syd, but I was going to speak to you about that very thing. -David came to me, when he knew Eileen was coming home and asked me--oh, -it was tough for him to do it. He’s so damnably loyal! Don’t you think -we could fit up the room next to Nanny’s, so that the child could sleep -here, the nights when she’s going to have early classes at the college? -It’s a shame to deprive David of even that much of her company. But -we’ll make it up to him in ways his wife doesn’t suspect--if we can -inject enough guile into him to enable him to play his part without -fumbling. He feels that she must, _must_ be kept away from her mother.” - -“What is the trouble with David?” Syd asked abruptly. “You’ve doped him -on tonics all summer, and he doesn’t improve in the least.” - -“The climacteric--and his wife’s merciless tongue. David is -approaching fifty. A man’s mental and physical being undergoes a subtle -change in that year. It’s not so crucial as the grand climacteric--the -transformation from manhood to age--that comes at sixty-three. You -young doctors will be telling us that it is an exploded theory; but -I have followed it for forty years. To a sensitive chap like David -Trench, it’s serious. Just this year, when he ought to be coddled and -petted, his wife seasons his food with gall and puts a dash of aqua -fortis in his tea. - -“I’ve ordered him to sleep in a room by himself, with the door locked, -so that she couldn’t wake him up with her nagging and upbraiding. I -told her, point-blank, that she was killing him--and she did what I -might have expected.” - -“Yes, she ‘slipped from under’ by writing Lary that she was being -terribly set upon by his father, and it was his duty to come home. -Father”--Syd’s blue eyes blazed--“why didn’t David take a riding whip -to his wife the first time she--” - -The man who could look beneath sex interrupted with an impatient -gesture. - -“David is a woman. More than that, Sydney, Mrs. Trench is a -man--trapped in a woman’s body. When nature makes a blunder like that, -there’s usually the devil to pay. I have to keep reminding myself of -that fact--or I’d be in danger of poisoning Lavinia Trench.” - - - - -XXXII The Statue and the Bust - - -I - -Autumn was on the threshold of winter when Lavinia decided that things -had to take a turn. Eileen was spending three mornings a week at the -college, which necessitated her absence from home practically half -the time. She was uniformly polite and gentle with her mother, an -attitude that was not wholly the result of Judith’s stern schooling. -Under the whip of her own discipline, she sought to round off the rough -corners, to modulate her voice and temper her diction. Her outbursts of -picturesque speech were reserved for Dr. Schubert and Syd, with Nanny -in the background, shaking her ample sides with adoring laughter. Now -there would be a fortnightly concert trip, and some elective work in -the academic department, which promised further separation from the -chilly atmosphere of her home. - -“Judith, I want to have a talk with you,” Mrs. Trench began, and -the stern set of her jaw left no doubt that the interview would be -unpleasant. “I don’t like the way Eileen is acting.” - -“Every one else does.” Judith sought to be impersonal. She had been -expecting some such outburst and had framed a line of defence, against -a possible attack. - -“That’s just it! Everybody in Springdale thinks she has done something -fine in going away to New York and Europe, and coming back here to -teach in the college before she’s even been a student. You are making a -rank hypocrite of her.” - -“I?” - -“Yes, you--who else but you? You did the whole thing. I am sure -Larimore is as disgusted as I am; but he doesn’t dare to say--” - -“We won’t discuss my relations with my husband.” - -Lavinia’s face flamed scarlet and she tugged at the collar of her -elaborate silk waist. But speech was not wanting, for more than the -fraction of a second. - -“Well, I want to know what other wild-goose schemes you have for her.” - -Judith shifted impatiently in her chair. “You have a grievance. I wish -you would be specific. Eileen is surely not causing you any anxiety. -She is growing into a beautiful young woman and she has the respect of -the entire community.” - -“Respect! Yes!” The words crackled. “The whole town respects her. You -can’t see what that means. You have no religion and no moral sense of -your own. For a girl to do what she did--and then walk right back here -into a position that she never would have had, if she’d been a good -girl, is a positive slur on religion.” - -Judith gasped. She wanted to laugh--to take her mother-in-law by the -shoulders and shake her. But Lavinia had not done speaking: - -“It says in the Bible--” - -“It says a good many things in the Bible. You take from it what appeals -to you--and shape your religion to suit your own needs.” - -Lavinia was not slow to catch an idea that could be stopped by the mesh -of her mental net. Her son’s philosophy usually passed through without -leaving a fragment. But this idea was large enough to be arrested. -Two facts conspired to give it substance and form. For his Sunday -sermon, the minister had combined a passage from Isaiah with another -from the Epistle to the Hebrews. And--wholly unrelated, but subtly -significant--Lavinia had just finished an elaborate gelatine dessert -for dinner. - -“You mean that we pick from the Bible what we want and fit it together.” - -“Practically that. We can’t get anything out of a book unless we have -in our own minds the vessels to carry away the meaning. A cult or a -religion is nothing more than the solidifying of a group of ideas. The -Christian religion--” - -“Like lemon jelly in a mould,” the woman said, thinking aloud. Then, -arousing herself to the business at hand, she pursued: “That may be all -true enough about religion; but it has nothing to do with Eileen, and -the way she’s acting.” - -“I asked you to be definite. What has she done that displeased you?” - -“Staying at Dr. Schubert’s, three nights in the week--with no woman -there except a housekeeper. What will the neighbours say?” - -“Have you heard them say anything?” - -“No, but they’re likely to. I’m sure I’d think it was queer if Ina -Stevens--” - -“I wouldn’t suggest it to them. And another thing--I wouldn’t say a -word to Eileen--if I were you. She is doing so well that it would break -Lary’s heart to have her thrown back on the old life. There is only one -danger, as he sees it. She has a strong vein of stubbornness in her -nature.” - -“Yes, she gets that from her father,” Lavinia snapped. - -“No, she doesn’t get it from her father. There is no obstinacy in -father, except his stubborn clinging to his ideals. You can’t deal with -Eileen as you did with Sylvia, and you’ll play havoc with her if you -try.” - -“No! Sylvia never caused me a moment’s anxiety in her life.” - -Judith ignored the palpable falsehood. “You must know that Eileen -couldn’t have finer moral influence than that of Dr. Schubert and his -son. And my faithful Nanny is no ordinary servant. She was more to me -than my own mother, when I was a girl.” - -The innocent remark was flint and steel, with Lavinia’s powder heap in -dangerous proximity. “I suppose your mother was _delighted_ with that. -But of course she was a rich woman, and glad to be rid of the moral -training of her children. I can say for myself that I never shirked -my duty--and I don’t intend to hand it over to you or Nanny or Dr. -Schubert now. I made up my mind that I wouldn’t say a word about this; -but it’s grinding my heart out. I can’t stand it any longer.” - -“Mother, I don’t follow you at all. I asked you to be frank with me.” - -“Very well, I’ll put it so plain that you can’t pretend you don’t -understand. How would you feel if you had a daughter, and some -stranger came along and took that girl’s life clear out of your hands? -I haven’t a word to say about her. She runs to you for all sorts of -things--clothes--as if I wouldn’t know what was stylish or becoming. -If she’s in doubt about what to do, she talks it over with Larimore or -Syd. When anything comes along to make her proud, she tells her father. -She talks to Theodora by the hour about the things she saw when she was -abroad--and she never tells me one thing. I’m simply shut out on every -side, and it’s killing me!” She burst into hysterical weeping. - -“I’m so sorry, mother. I hadn’t realized. Perhaps if you weren’t always -so short and critical with her--” - -“Oh, I’m to go down on my knees to her? Indeed I won’t. As long as she -is under eighteen, she takes her orders from me. She’ll go to the dogs, -with all this flattery and praise--” - -“The surest way to ruin Eileen is to take that attitude towards her.” - -“Well, she is _my_ child, and I have a right to do with her as I -please.” - -“No--you--have--not!” Judith’s eyes flashed and her voice was hoarse -with indignation. “Rather than permit you to wreck her chance for -happiness, I’ll send her to Laura Ramsay--or even to my mother.” - - -II - -Lavinia fled weeping through the door. She would tell Larimore how his -wife had insulted her. Unfortunately he was in New York. At least she -could write to him ... and the letter had distinct advantages. She -would be spared interruption. Larimore always broke the point of her -lance before she had time to drive it home. She wrote. She read the -long letter through twice--and tore it into shreds. A second letter -followed the first one. Then it was time to go down to luncheon. - -When the noonday meal was over, and David and Theo had gone, she went -again to Vine Cottage. Judith was in the library, an open volume of -Browning on the table before her. Her face was pale and her eyes showed -flecks of hazel. - -“We had a misunderstanding this morning, my dear, and I don’t want to -leave things that way.” The words came with a brave show of confidence, -but Lavinia Trench looked like a corpse, an automaton that was made to -speak by a force other than its own. “I am going to ask you to forgive -me, and help me as you did Eileen.” - -“Oh, mother!” The cry was from her heart. - -“I knew you would be surprised. I never apologized to any one in my -life. I’ve been fighting it for a week. When I said those things, this -morning, it was to keep from saying what--what I’m going to say now. -Since Eileen came home, I’ve been going over my life. David said she -had missed the path, and you showed her the right way. I am the most -unhappy woman in the world. If you could do that for Eileen, you could -do it for me.” - -It was a challenge, flung like a pelting of hail stones. Judith looked -at her with troubled gaze. How could she deal with a mentality so -different from her own? Eileen was young, and Eileen loved her. That -her mother-in-law cordially detested her, she could not doubt. - -“You know I would gladly....” - -“It’s all perfectly simple--excepting two points. By all the rules -of right and wrong, Eileen ought to be a miserable girl, broken in -soul and body--and not respected by good people. It doesn’t make a -particle of difference that she hid her wickedness. God knows what she -did, and it is God that punishes sin. Instead of that, she comes back -here better in every way than she was before. She’s prettier now than -Sylvia. She used to be cross and hateful most of the time. Now she -laughs and sings and whistles till I wish she would pout for a change. -She sits up and discusses the most serious topics with grown men and -women--and you know how she used to rattle slang, and sneer at people -who were serious.” - -“Her experience developed her marvellously. It might have wrecked -her, just as a powerful dose of medicine might destroy your body, if -administered in the wrong way. It was fearful medicine, but it was what -her sick mind needed.” - -“That takes care of one of the points,” Lavinia cried, her black eyes -dilating. “You call it medicine. I saw it only as the consequences of -sin.” - -“The name doesn’t matter.” - -“Yes, the name does matter. I want to get this thing down in black and -white. All my life I have been discontented. It’s just one crushing -disappointment after another. Eileen was the same way. I never used -to think she was like me--but in some respects she is. I had a chance -to marry the son of the richest man in town. But I have always been -virtuous and upright--” - -“Mother, perhaps if you--” - -“Don’t interrupt me. I have to say this all at once, while it’s -connected. You call Eileen’s discontentment and rebellious nature a -kind of disease. Well then, I had the same disease, and she got it from -me. After my grandmother died, there wasn’t one in the family that -understood me. And the man I was engaged to--” She brought her teeth -together, as if she were biting off and forcing back the words that -strove to assert themselves in spite of her. “I threw him over, when I -found out that he was an unprincipled scoundrel, like Hal Marksley. If -I had gone on, as she did--but I never could have done such a thing.” - -“Probably not. You were brought up in a provincial New York town. You -were hedged about by customs and convictions that don’t obtain in -Springdale, or among Eileen’s associates. You must make allowance for -that.” - -Lavinia sidestepped the interruption. “Eileen was sick--and God picked -out a remedy that I thought God, in His purity, wouldn’t know anything -about. I was taught that it was the devil that--well, I’ve been -figuring that she had to come to grief, because she went over to Satan. -That’s the only way I could square things with my religious training. I -don’t believe, now, that she will ever be punished. That shows that it -was God and not the devil that did it. I’m willing to admit that I was -mistaken, if you’ll show me how to find happiness.” - -“It isn’t a recipe, like the ingredients for a cake. And you must -remember that I didn’t prescribe the remedy, in Eileen’s case. I only -nursed her, after she had taken it. I haven’t the faintest idea why you -are unhappy.” - -“And I would have to tell you the whole story?” - -“I wouldn’t pry into your heart. I would do anything in my power to -give you peace. You are Lary’s mother. I have never overlooked my -obligation to you.” - - -III - -Lavinia took from the words an implication more humiliating than her -daughter-in-law had intended. But this was no time for recrimination. -She must hold on to herself. The canker in her heart had eaten so deep -that help must come, or she would go mad. Mechanically she reached -for the volume on the table. Her mind went back to those first years -in Springdale, when she had conned Browning in an effort to shine in -Mrs. Henderson’s club. Was it indeed for this that she had memorized -poems, delved in abstruse literary criticism--that she might win Mrs. -Henderson’s approbation? One half of her knew that it was not, while -the other half as stoutly denied an ulterior motive for this, or for -any other deliberate act of her life. - -While she was giving the attic its annual overhauling, she had come -upon the yellow files of the Bromfield Sentinel, the edges broken like -pie crust. She had read again the spirited account of the meeting at -which Mrs. David Trench was elected secretary of the most intellectual -club in Springdale. Who was there in her girlhood home for whom this -triumph would provide a thrill of gratification or a sting of envy? -Ellen knew all about it. Isabel had long since removed to California. -Her mother was dead. The girls of her social circle? The Browning craze -had not invaded Bromfield, and there was not one among her old friends -for whose opinion she cared a straw. - - -IV - -She came back to herself with a start. “The Statue and the Bust,” she -muttered. “We did that one, the winter before Isabel was born. I had -to drop out--and Mrs. Henderson sent me her notes. It was a shockingly -immoral thing, for the wife of a college president--a Presbyterian -minister, at that. I never had quite the same opinion of her, after I -read those notes. She said the lady who sat at the window and watched -for the duke to ride by--would have been less wicked if she had -actually run away with him. She said it was just as bad to want to -commit sin as to actually commit it--” - -“Yes, if they restrained themselves only because of fear of the -consequences. There is no virtue in that kind of repression.” - -To Lavinia Trench everything was personal. She turned the thought over -in her mind ... “afraid of the consequences” ... “no virtue in that -kind of repression.” Her whole life had been one of repression. Mrs. -Henderson had stressed the lines: - - “And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost - Is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, - Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.” - -“That isn’t my idea of sin. At least it wasn’t, until....” She trailed -off into incoherence, thumbing the pages nervously. “Judith, do you -think a woman--a married woman--could go on caring for some other -man--” She struggled with the obstruction in her throat. “I mean the -bride of Riccardi, in the poem. I can’t see how caring, and just -thinking how much she would like to be with him--was--wrong. She didn’t -commit any act of sin--didn’t break the seventh commandment.” - -“In the eyes of the world she was a virtuous woman. In her own -heart she was an unsatisfied wanton. She added hypocrisy to the sin -of desire, and on that hypocrisy she wrecked her only chance for -happiness.” - - -V - -Once before, Judith had attempted to implant an abstract idea in -Mrs. Trench’s mind. Now she was betrayed into a discussion of moral -responsibility, with no intent other than that of bridging over -a trying period of her none too comfortable relations with her -mother-in-law. That Lavinia would carry away even a germ of an idea, -she did not suspect. She had merely reiterated what Mrs. Henderson -had said, twenty years ago. As yet she had not fully perceived, in -that warped mind, one dominating characteristic: the ability to find -justification for anything that seemed desirable. True, Eileen had -said--but Eileen was not always fair in her old-time strictures on her -mother. - -Judith looked at the abject figure, the pallid face and the hard mouth -... and pity overmastered her. She wanted to say something comforting. -The door was shut, the discussion ended. Lavinia sat there, pondering. -It was all so different from the groundwork of her religious training. -Probably Browning and Judith and Mrs. Henderson were wrong. To her -literal mind, their idea could not accord with the stern dictum: “The -wages of sin is death.” Still, their theory would serve to explain -Eileen. In her pondering, she went the length of formulating the -postulate: “Eileen sinned and became happy. Her sin was the source of -her regeneration.” - -There must be something to it. She, Vine Larimore, had been -virtuous--and disaster had overtaken her. Lettie Fournier had sinned -... and for all the years of her subsequent life she had worn the -name of Calvin Stone. That this distinction brought her rival scant -happiness, was beside the point. The transgression of the moral law -was the barrier which both Lettie and Eileen had passed to the kind of -satisfaction that had been denied her. Judith had not told her of the -days and nights of self-purging. She saw only externals, and these were -all in favour of the Browning theory. After a long interval she said: - -“Would you mind telling her--Eileen--that I want her to come to me? You -know better how to get hold of her. She thinks I don’t love her--that -I’m partial to Sylvia. I do love her ... and I want her at home with -me, where I can study her. It will be bitter enough dose for me to take -my lesson from her. But I am willing to do it, if she can show me the -way to happiness.” She looked incredibly old and tired and hopeless. -“And would you mind lending me your copy of Browning? I want to read -‘The Statue and the Bust’ through. Sylvia took mine with her when she -moved to Detroit. I didn’t think I would ever look at it again.” - - - - -XXXIV Lavinia’s Credo - - -I - -“Sister Judy,” Jack Denslow called, “there’s a bully fire down the -avenue. Come and watch the motor engine go by. Good-bye, old horse, -your day is done.” - -Judith Trench crossed to the window and stood beside her young brother; -but her mind was not on the marvel of metal and speed that had gone -from sight almost before its clanging bell-note reached her ears. -Another fifth of March. A year ago ... Eileen ... there, in that very -room. And now.... Did Eileen remember? Did any of the family remember? -She and Lary had spent the winter in New York, going to Springdale only -when business demanded, and each brief visit brought its fresh surprise. - -With the Marksley contract off his hands, David improved in health so -rapidly that he had long since ceased to be a source of anxiety. Eileen -and her mother had effected an _entente cordiale_ which apparently -worked well for both. The woman who had wrought the bridge, however -frail and inadequate, over which mother and daughter might pass to an -understanding hitherto unknown in their association, reflected with -grave misgivings that the bridge was not the end of the journey. - -Once she was on the point of telling Lary about his mother, their sharp -dispute and the subsequent ethical discussion. The change in Lavinia, -since that day, was so marked that the neighbours made comment. The -woman who had spent her mature years surging from officious sweetness -to the most violent outbursts of temper, went about in a state of -tranquil meditation that could not be accounted for by anything -external to herself. There was none of the rapturous devotion to David -that had characterized her return from Bromfield; but at least she was -not unkind. Of all those who watched her, only Judith could surmise -what was going on in her mind. Might it be that Lavinia had achieved -her Indian Summer without the killing frost? Had there, perhaps, been a -revision of her _credo_ from the simple tenets of the catechism to the -complex philosophy of Robert Browning? Judith shivered as she faced the -thought and its possible consequences. - -She had told the troubled woman that sin consisted, not in action, -but in desire. Could Lavinia, literal-minded and creed-ridden, handle -a concept so foreign to her convictions? Had Lary’s mother torn away -the solid foundation of her existence, and was she building again--a -substructure that would sustain her through the barren years to come? -Could this be done, at Lavinia’s age and with the rigid material of -Lavinia’s soul? Would the house of her being come crashing down, when -she sought to shift from what she had been to what she hoped to be? - -Judith was glad when Lary told her, that evening, that he must return -to Springdale. Her mother-in-law might seek counsel of her, in the -privacy of the library where their two natures had clashed again and -yet again. All the tedious journey to the West, she turned over in her -mind a working corollary to that elusive proposition, the nature of -sin. How tenuous, how like shifting sand, the thought-mass on which our -concrete actions must rest! Had she any assurance that her conception -of duty, of principle, of right-thinking, was better for humanity than -the set of fatuous concepts she had sought to displace? - - -II - -If Lavinia had need of help, she gave no token. She was at the station -to meet them, and she was bursting with a secret. There had been no -mention of it in her letters, because one could not be sure about such -things--and telling them in advance was likely to spoil the charm. Then -she sealed her lips until they were well within the discreet walls of -Vine Cottage. - -“Of course I may be mistaken; but unless I miss my guess, there’s going -to be a wedding before you go back to New York.” - -“A wedding? Some one I have met?” - -“There! I was sure you didn’t suspect. Though how you could have helped -it--the way Syd acted, when you were here the end of January--” - -“Dear old Syd! I hope he has fallen in love wisely. It would go hard -with him if he should blunder.” - -“I’m sure it will be all right. The difference in age doesn’t -matter--and you know he will make her a noble husband. If only she -doesn’t get some foolish notion of telling him all that wretched -affair. I tried to caution her, in a roundabout way; but you know how -stubborn Eileen is.” - -“Eileen!” Judith dropped a handful of toilet articles on the dressing -table and sat down, weakly. - -“Mercy, Judith!” The woman’s tone carried positive contempt for such -obtuseness. “He was with her every evening while you and Larimore were -here, the last time. Of course they were reading Latin together, or -working with the violin. But I knew what it would lead to. And it was -my making her come home, after she’d been at their house three evenings -a week, that did it. He missed her so dreadfully that he got over -thinking about her as a little girl. Goodness knows, she’s more mature -than Sylvia was at twenty--and Syd will always be a boy.” - -“Has she told you?” - -“No, but I wouldn’t look for her to do that. She’s been very nice to -me. Oh, Judith, I hope she will tell you it’s true.” - -“I’m sure it would be a great comfort to you to have her happily -married.” - -“Yes--but I wasn’t thinking so much about that part of it. I had my own -case in mind. It would be the last straw of evidence--that all my old -ideas were wrong. For the first time in my life, I want to be sure I -was in the wrong.” - -Her eyes glittered and her slender form seemed to dilate. She was not -thinking of her cruelty to Eileen and her subsequent reluctance to -admit that in her daughter’s case good might grow out of evil. Eileen -was become, in her mother’s eyes, a manikin, to be posed this way and -that for the studying of effects--an architect’s drawing, to serve as a -pattern for the rebuilding of her mother’s life. - - -III - -Later in the day the girl came, her face wearing an expression of -deadly earnest. Already Mrs. Trench’s hope was transformed into -certainty. Judith led the way to the little boudoir Lary had fitted for -her on the second floor. - -“Now, dear, what is it?” she asked when the door was shut. - -“The most important trouble I ever had. I ought to have written -you--when Syd first asked me. But I did so want to tell papa first ... -before even you. I owe him that, for all the pain I caused him. Syd -wants to be married on my eighteenth birthday, and that’s less than -three weeks off.” - -“And you love him, Eileen?” - -“As I never thought it would be possible to love. We just belong -together--like you and Lary, only, oh, so different. I can see it in a -hundred ways. When I don’t get what he’s trying to tell me--abstract -ideas, you know--he goes up to the landing in the reception hall -and sits down at his mother’s pipe organ and puts the thought into -something that I can get hold of. When a man can talk to you that -way--and music is the only language you really do understand--there is -only one answer. If I’m in an ugly mood, he doesn’t scold or upbraid -me. He works out a theme in A-minor. I try to run away from it, and -I can’t. I’ve made bold to go past him, up to my room, and my feet -wouldn’t carry me up the stairs.” - -“And then, Eileen?” - -“I cry it out on his shoulder. After I have washed the meanness out, we -can talk sense. I don’t mind in the least--that he’s always right.” - -“And there’s one point on which you can’t come to an agreement?” - -“Yes, only one. Judith, how far is it necessary to go with confession -of something that you know will lose you the respect and affection of--” - -“Oh, Eileen, my poor little sister!” - -“Don’t let it hurt you,” the girl cried, her eyes filling. “If life -isn’t so perfect, I can stand it. There is one thing more important -than the man you love--and that is your conviction of what is square -and honest. Syd can tell me what to do in other matters--but this is in -your line, not his.” - -“Dearest, it seems to me that there can be no sure foothold in marriage -if a wife conceals from her husband an experience as important as that. -I know what a humiliation it is to open such a secret chamber. I did -it, Eileen.” - -“Judith, you don’t think I--” She stared, aghast. “You couldn’t think -me capable of taking Sydney Schubert’s love--a man as clean and -honourable as he is--without telling him why I went to New York?” - -“Then he knows?” - -“He knew ... all along.” Her fair cheeks flamed. “When he told me he -cared, I said there was a reason why I couldn’t ever marry any decent -man. Judith, he put his two arms around me and looked me square in the -eyes, and said: ‘You were a poor little wilful child, and you didn’t -know that fire would burn. Any woman, my dear, is good enough for any -man--if she is honest.’ The only thing he wanted to know was ... what -we had done with it. He said that would make a difference. He was -relieved when I told him. And he thinks you were made in heaven--to -have saved me--for him.” - -“But if you have told him, and he is satisfied--what is the obstacle?” - -“It is his father. I can’t marry Syd and go there to live, letting Papa -Schubert believe I am the pure white flower he thinks me. Syd says -he won’t have his father’s ideal of me shattered--because his father -wouldn’t look at it the way he does. He might forgive me: but I’d -always be tarnished, to him.” - -“Do you remember, Eileen, the day you told the truth to Laura Ramsay? -You began by saying you were under no moral obligation to her mother. I -don’t know how we can draw those lines of distinction; but I feel them -with absolute certainty. You are under no need to confess your secret -to Sylvia or Theodora--and for widely different reasons. Indeed we must -go to any length to prevent Theo ever learning the truth. With Dr. -Schubert it is the same. It would only give him useless pain.” - -“That’s what Syd said. He led me over to that little peachblow -vase--the one that was bequeathed to his father by one of his grateful -patients. He told me the satin glaze and the peachbloom tints were the -result of the heat in the kiln, that almost destroyed the body of the -vase. He asked me if I would be willing to break that little amphora, -that his father loves, just to prove to him that it isn’t as perfect on -the inside as it looks to him. He might patch the fragments together, -but he would always be conscious of the cracks.” - -“Syd is right. It would be brutality--sheer vandalism.” - -“You precious treasure. He told me that was what you would say. Now I -am going to the office to tell my darling daddy that he is to have a -_real_ son-in-law.” - -“When are you going to tell your mother, dear?” - -“That’s Syd’s job. He is going to make formal application for my hand. -He can get off a thing like that, without batting an eye, when he’s -just dying to get out and yell. And the worst of it is, mamma’ll take -it in dead earnest. I suppose Sylvia will have sarcastic things to say. -I don’t care. Syd never was really in love with her--after he was old -enough to cut his eye teeth.” - - -IV - -Mrs. Penrose did not come home for the wedding. Just what she wrote her -mother, the other members of the family never knew. Her letter came -with another, which bore the Bromfield postmark, and the two were on -Lavinia’s plate when she came down to breakfast. David and the girls -were already at the table, and Theo had inspected the mail. Drusilla -had been instructed not to take letters from the box, and the sight -of two thick envelopes threw Lavinia into a nervous chill. She picked -them up and carried them to the sun room, saying she had a headache and -would eat nothing. - -After a little, David followed her, distressed. “Is there anything -wrong in Bromfield--at your brother’s house, or with my people?” - -“There’s nothing the matter in Bromfield. Sylvia is a cat!” - - - - -XXXV The Credo at Work - - -I - -When school closed in June, Judith took Theodora for the long promised -visit to New York. Sydney and Eileen were off for a belated honeymoon -in the mountains of Colorado, and Lavinia Trench reflected that the -coveted privacy had come at the crucial moment. She would be alone to -think things out. David was away from home much of the time, and when -he was in the house his wife was only mechanically conscious of his -presence. She viewed the neighbours as through a mist. Orders were -given to Drusilla, with the monotonous intonation of a talking machine. -That the orders were rational was evidence of the complete detachment -that could enable her mind to function without conscious effort. It was -as if she had wound up the machinery of her being and had withdrawn, -leaving it to the old familiar routine. - -After three weeks, her cloistered retreat was invaded by the most -disturbing member of her family. The passionate devotion that had -centered in her youngest-born--to her purblind vision the most perfect -copy of herself--had undergone insidious change, as she centered -her interest in Eileen. Theodora was irritating beyond endurance. -With the child in the house, there could be no peace. Reluctantly, -almost bitterly, she came back to the dull reality of life. David was -still in Jacksonville from Monday to Saturday. After a day or two, -she consented to let Theo stay with Dr. Schubert and Nanny. To her -daughter-in-law she confessed that it was not because the old doctor -was so lonely, but that she could not endure the child’s incessant -chatter. The dropping of a fork behind her chair would send her into a -paroxysm of shaking--Lavinia, who had always laughed at nervous women. - - -II - -One morning Judith stood with her husband at an upper window, watching -the agitated woman as she paced up and down before the house. The -postman was late. - -“She watched for him just that way yesterday, Lary. And when he failed -to bring what she was expecting, her disappointment was pitiful.” - -“My mother is going through some deep transition. I wish I could help -her; but she has always shut me out. She is a hundred times more frank -and confidential with you than she has ever been with me or with her -own daughters. Do you think, dear, you could induce her to tell you -what is troubling her?” - -“I have tried. She talks freely about the emptiness and misery of -her life. She is gnawingly unsatisfied; but she gives no clue. Such -devotion as your father’s ought to have won her, years ago. I spoke -rather plainly to her about it. I knew it would anger her; but I wanted -to shock her into some line of rational thinking. The mention of her -husband’s tenderness only infuriated her. She said such cruel things -about him. And, Lary, he is as much in the dark as we are. He talked to -me about it, Sunday night. Is it possible....” - -“What, dear?” - -“I wondered if there might be something in her life--long ago--a scar -that is still sensitive--some shock that left a buried impression.” - -“A lover, you mean? I hardly think so. She has always teased or -brutally insulted my father with the mention of an old sweetheart of -hers. It seems, they were deadly rivals, and papa won her because of -his clean morals. The other man was the rakish sort--and in a town like -Bromfield--with my mother’s prejudices and the thing that in her case -passes for religious conviction....” - -Just then the postman rounded the corner. There was only one letter -for the Trench household, but its effect was electrical. Lavinia took -it from his hand and ran stumbling into the house. At the sill she -dropped to her knees, regained her footing and hurried inside. She had -not opened the envelope, hence its contents could not account for her -perturbed state of mind. It came to Judith ... that the whole future -hung on the tenor of a reply. - - -III - -At noon she appeared in the dining-room of Vine Cottage. Her cheeks -were pasty, ashen, but her eyes burned with insane luster. She -must send an important letter to Sylvia, and it was too late-- She -floundered, catching a chair for support. Would Larimore send the -office boy out with a special delivery stamp? - -“I’ll take your letter with me, and post it at the office,” Lary said, -annoyed by the crafty manner that marked his mother’s too frequent -subterfuges. - -“I haven’t written it yet. It isn’t the kind I could dash off in a -minute. Sylvia wants me to be in Detroit by Friday noon. I’ll have to -get word--” - -“Papa won’t be home until Saturday evening,” her son said sharply. -“You can’t go off without consulting him.” - -The word “consulting” was unfortunate. It released a flood of -martyrdom. Lavinia thought she owed a duty to her daughter that must -outweigh any consideration or demand on the part of her husband. - -“Let me see my sister’s letter. If there is anything serious, I can -telephone.” - -“I didn’t bring it with me. In fact, I accidentally dropped it in the -grate and it was burned before I could get it out.” - -“A grate fire in July?” - -“I was burning some scraps--and it got mixed with them.” - -“You are not going away until papa comes home. It isn’t fair to -him--and if you insist--I shall call Sylvia by long distance.” - -Judith averted her eyes. The sight of her mother-in-law’s baffled fury -was more than she could endure. In the end the woman agreed to defer -her trip until Saturday night. She would write Sylvia that she could -not be spared from home. - - -IV - -Early Friday morning she came with another request. She had a letter -from her husband which she handed to Lary, ostentatiously. David -was entirely willing that she should go to Detroit. In fact, he had -promised Sylvia that they together would visit her as soon as the -housecleaning and redecorating of the apartment was over. He would have -earned a vacation when the Jacksonville contract was finished. - -“Now, Larimore, if you will look after the ticket--and the sleeper -berth--I’ll only take a suit case, and your father can bring what I -need in his trunk. By that time, I’ll know about the weather, and what -kind of clothes I need. I want the ticket via Chicago. It’s so much -shorter than the other route.” - -“Chicago?” Something feline, insinuating, in her tone arrested him. -“There’s no direct route from Springdale to Detroit via Chicago. You -would have to go to Littlefield and wait there for the St. Louis -train--and in Chicago it would mean going from one station to the -other. The last time you tried that, you got lost, and missed your -connection.” - -“But I must--that is, I’d prefer to go that way. It wouldn’t matter if -I did miss my train. Sylvia wants me to do some shopping for her.” - -“Shopping on Sunday, mamma?” - -As the woman hurried from her son’s presence, Judith heard her mutter: -“There’s more than one way to kill a cat.” - - -V - -Saturday was consumed with the endless little things that went to -the preparation for a journey. At noon Lavinia sent Dutton out to -post a letter to Sylvia. It was plastered over the upper third with a -combination of pink and green stamps. Lavinia Trench abhorred that sort -of thing; but she would not ask Larimore for a proper stamp to insure -Sunday delivery of her letter. She shunned him with an animosity that -was not to be misinterpreted. He had angered her profoundly. She told -Judith that she would go to the station in Hafferty’s cab and wait -there until David came in. In such a case he would not mind sitting -with her until her train arrived. She had evidently asked too many -favours of her son. She had always supposed that sons were glad to -serve their mothers. - -Judith sought to analyse the woman’s torn state of mind. Did she always -get into such a fever when she was going away from home? Lavinia had -travelled much, in spite of her oft repeated assertion that she never -went anywhere, never had any pleasure ... nothing but the dull drudgery -of a wife and mother. Before her visit to Bromfield she had been in -just such a mental state. But was it, exactly, this condition of mind? -Two years ago, everything that Lavinia did--every subterfuge, every -veiled speech or cruel innuendo--was carefully thought out. It all had -a direct bearing on the main object. She must go to Bromfield, and she -would not admit to her family--nor indeed to herself--that she had need -to go. From infancy she had been devious, approaching her goal by the -most tortuous path. She was this way in her housekeeping. One could not -be a martyr if things were easy. The simple, natural way was hateful to -her--the refuge of lazy wives. - -This much Judith had set down, in her effort to understand her -mother-in-law’s curiously warped psychology. But now there was a new -phase. The episode of Sylvia’s letter, accidentally burned in the grate -on a steaming July day, sufficed to betray a significant breaking-up -of the tough fibre of an irrational but tremendously efficient mind. -The mycelium of decay--some deadly fungus--had penetrated the heartwood -of Lavinia Trench’s being. She went into a panic at the slightest turn -in her plans. She no longer counted upon the unforeseen contingency, -or guarded against it. That that crashing letter--the occasion for -this hurried trip to Detroit--was not from Sylvia, Judith was morally -certain. From whom, then? She laid the perplexity wearily aside. With -one unknown quantity, she might have solved the equation. Here were -two unknown and unknowable quantities, since Lavinia--after her two -disastrous blunders--refused to talk except in monosyllables. - - -VI - -When the suit case was in process of preparation, Judith invaded Mrs. -Trench’s bedroom. She brought a dark negligée for the Pullman, in place -of the delicate one that Sylvia had ridiculed, two years ago. As she -offered it, her mother-in-law turned furtively to conceal something she -was in the act of securing in the bottom of her small travelling bag. -Her fingers caught at the edge of a night-dress, awkwardly, and the -thing was revealed ... the borrowed volume of Browning. - - - - -XXXVI Consummation - - -I - -A brief, unsatisfactory letter came Monday noon, while David was having -luncheon at Vine Cottage. It was written on Pullman paper, in a loose -scrawl. The train was four hours late, and of course there was no one -at the station to meet her. But then, she had not expected to be met. -Everything would be all right, she was sure. It was frightfully hot in -Detroit. She would not write again until Tuesday evening, since she and -Sylvia would be up to the ears in housecleaning. - -“I can’t, somehow, feel that things are right,” David said, returning -the envelope to his pocket and drawing out another. “Vine acted so -strange while we were waiting in the station. I thought I ought to -go along to take care of her--but this work in the office is so -pressing--and I’m just compelled to go to Jacksonville for part of the -week. I told her, if she needed me....” He halted, his eyes receding. -“She flared out at me so fiercely that I didn’t say another word. -That’s where I ought to have been firm. But I never could understand -your mother, Lary.” - -“None of us does, papa. What is the other letter?” - -“It’s from Sylvia. I found it at the office.” Larimore read aloud: - - “_Dear Papa_: - - “I’m writing in a hurry, so that you can do me a favour. Mamma’s - special has just arrived, saying she can’t reach Detroit until - Tuesday noon--that you and Lary have upset all her plans. Well, now, - please, _please_, PLEASE upset them some more. Not that I don’t want - her to visit me; but it is terribly inconvenient now. The place is - torn up with painters and paper-hangers. The weather is a fright--and - Oliver cross as a bear. Mamma says she must be here to help me. But - you know how I hate to have her around when I have anything important - to do. If you can induce her to wait a week--really, I’m afraid - Oliver won’t be civil to her, in his present mood--you’ll do her and - us a big service. - - “Your affectionate Daughter, - - SYLVIA.” - - -II - -Four days of agonized suspense, during which--at Lary’s urgent -request--David abstained from replying to either of the letters ... -and Lavinia Trench came home. She walked into the house, a tottering -old woman. Theo and her father were in the dining-room, trying to -choke down Drusilla’s tempting dinner, and they started from the table -as if an apparition from the dead had confronted them. She was dusty -and disheveled. The close travelling hat hung limp over one eye, -and through the greenish-gray of her cheeks the bones were modelled -remorselessly. - -“What--what has happened to you, Vine? Have you been in a wreck?” - -“A wreck? Oh, yes, a wreck. Everything is a wreck.” - -She sank into a chair and sat staring at the floor. After a moment she -collected herself to ask: “Has Sylvia written?” And then: “_What_ has -Sylvia written?” - -“Nothing--except the letter she sent before you got there. She wanted -you to wait until she was through with her housecleaning--” - -“I know all about that! David Trench, if you ever speak to that -unprincipled girl, I’ll....” Lavinia glared, her heart pounding -visibly. “She ... I might have known what to expect, after the letter -she wrote when Syd and Eileen were married. She’s worse than Eileen, -a hundred times worse. She’s capable--of lying--about her own mother. -She’ll try to lie out of this thing. You can’t depend on a word she -says. And Oliver’s as unprincipled as she is.” - -In times of stress it had always been a source of relief to Lavinia to -talk--to abuse some one. More often than not, David was the victim. -Now she was hardly conscious of his presence. Theodora she did not -see at all. She was sunk in the morass of her own misery, a misery so -devastating that her worst enemy must have pitied her. - -“Was Sylvia unkind to you?” - -“Unkind? I like the way you pick your words!” - -“I’m so sorry, Vine. You must make allowances for the hot weather--and -Oliver’s uncertain temper. Sylvia had enough to upset her.” - -“That’s no excuse for treating her mother in such a shameful way.” - -She went up to her room and shut herself in. From behind a curtain -she watched while David went to the cottage to consult his son. There -was no train arriving from Detroit at that hour of the day. It later -developed that Lavinia had left the train at Littlefield, and that her -travel-stained appearance was the result of a rough ride in a service -car. David had often come home that way, when he had contracts in Pana -and Sullivan. He knew, too, that it was the Chicago train; but the fact -was without significance for him. - -When the woman had calmed herself somewhat, she told a more or less -coherent story. She had foolishly tried to surprise Sylvia--had -pictured her daughter’s delight, when she should walk in, unannounced, -on the heels of the letter that deferred her coming until Tuesday. She -went to the apartment in a cab and rang the bell. There was no one at -home. She returned to the station and wrote the letter to David--she -would not have told him for the world that she was greeted by locked -doors. - -“Why didn’t you go right to the janitor, my dear?” David asked, -tenderly. “You know Oliver and Sylvia often go out on the lake, -Sundays, when it’s hot. And--it just occurs to me--are you sure you -went to the right place?” - -Judith, watching the unfoldment of the story from a vantage point that -was not David’s, thought the woman clutched eagerly at a plank she had -hitherto not seen. She gained a precious interval of thought, while her -lips retorted: - -“I should think I ought to know Sylvia’s address.” - -“Yes, but those great apartment houses all look alike. You might not -even have been on the right street. You know, once when you went to St. -Louis--” - -“Yes, but that time I took the wrong car line. It was the fault of the -policeman who directed me. I’d think a cabman would know the streets.” - -“What did Sylvia say--when you finally--” - -“What did she say? She didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t let me in. I -tried to telephone her from the hotel, Monday morning--and I’m morally -certain it was Oliver who answered the ’phone. When I said it was -mother, he said I had the wrong number, and hung up. I tried again, and -they wouldn’t answer.” - -“But when you went back to the house--” - -“I went three times--and once I know I saw Sylvia peeping through -the curtain at the apartment door. She didn’t want me there, and she -wouldn’t let me in.” - -“I’m going to call Sylvia up and ask her what she means by--” - -Lavinia leaped across the room and fell upon her husband, forcing him -roughly into his chair. - -“You’ll do nothing of the sort. Haven’t I been humiliated enough -already?” - - -III - -They were interrupted by the clanging of bells, on Sherman avenue. -Judith went to the window, to report that a cloud of smoke was visible -against the western sky. A moment later, Dutton called from the lawn -that the Marksley house was burning. Theodora wanted to see the fun. He -would drive her out, if her father and brother were willing. They were -not willing! - -Dutton’s disappointment was greater than Theo’s, albeit she would -have revelled in the sight of that one particular fire. Dutton could -not make out why people kept a car, if they were too stingy to use -it. Nothing ever happened in Springdale, and when there was a little -excitement, a fellow wasn’t allowed to enjoy it. - -But the spectacle would hardly have been worth the exertion of cranking -the car. The Monday paper gave a graphic account of the blaze that -started in the store room on the top floor, and was extinguished before -it had accomplished more than partial destruction of the roof. The -damage was amply covered by insurance. It was understood that Mr. David -Trench would investigate the loss, and make necessary repairs, at the -insistence of the insurance company. - - - - -XXXVII In the “Personal” Column - - -I - -Early Thursday morning, David was on the point of going out to the -Marksley Addition to estimate the fire loss, when he stopped at sight -of Judith, entering her own gate. He crossed the parched grass of the -wide lawn and joined her. Once before he had hinted that his wife’s -mind might be failing--that the shock of Eileen’s tragedy and the -consequent relief of her propitious marriage might have unsettled -her mother’s reason. He had talked to Dr. Schubert about it, but had -elicited no sympathy for his theory. The physician did not believe -for a moment that Sylvia--in spite of the evidential letter to her -father--had refused to open the door or to answer the telephone. Sylvia -was entirely absorbed in herself, but she was not a fool. He was rather -taken with the belief that Lavinia had been playing some sort of prank -on her family. A born play-actor, she grew weary of the burden of -actuality, and sought relief--excitement--in a world of make-believe. -This time she had miscalculated, and found things hard to explain. - -“He said one thing that went against the grain, Judith, even from -Dr. Schubert. He said that when we make a lifelong practice of petty -deception, we don’t gain the facility we gain by any other constant -exercise; but instead, we grow reckless, until we are unable to know -truth from falsehood. Then we overreach ourselves. I accept the -fact--but I don’t like to think that Vine would deliberately--lie to -me. She doesn’t always see things in their true relations. But that she -would make up a lie ... I can’t believe that.” - -“Certainly you can’t, father.” - -Through the sheer curtains of her bedroom window Lavinia watched -them--Lavinia who through five days of shifting from one detail to -another had maintained the mystery of her fruitless visit. What were -they saying? She strained her keen ears, to catch only a muffled note -of solicitude. Now the postman loomed in sight. The ubiquitous postman! -If he had not delivered that letter.... In her rage, she began to -abuse the postman for her wretchedness, the collapse of her iridescent -bubble of happiness. He was putting into David’s hand some letters -and a paper, the Bromfield Sentinel. She had forgotten that this was -Thursday. She saw her husband open the crude little sheet and glance at -the Personal Column, where he so often found news of a friend he had -not seen since his wedding day. A long agony of waiting ... and David -thrust the paper into Judith’s hand and walked rapidly away, a strange -look on his transparent face. - - -II - -What had he seen in the column of village gossip? Lavinia was conscious -that a hornets’ nest had been rent asunder, above her head. A hundred -furious possibilities buzzed in her ears. Stumbling in wild agitation -to the deep closet of her room, she took a leather-bound volume from -her Gladstone, where it had lain since her return from Detroit. Without -opening it, she fled in a panic to Vine Cottage--burst into the -breakfast-room, with a fine show of indignation, and flung the book on -the table. - -“There! I’m done with that thing. Browning’s a fool!” - -“I’m sorry you have found him unprofitable. He isn’t easy reading.” - -“I have as much sense as you or Mrs. Henderson. You made me believe he -told the truth. I hate a liar. I never told a lie in my life.” - -“I didn’t ask you to take the volume,” Judith said pointedly. - -“No, but you made me believe there was something in it--something that -was an improvement on the Bible....” - -Her daughter-in-law took up the offender and carried it to the library. -When she returned, there was a precipitate relapse into a chair. -Lavinia had improved the interval to look for the Sentinel. It was not -in the room. A bitter tirade poured from her purple lips. There was no -use in people trying to shirk responsibility. David had always done it. -So had Larimore. They continually placed her in untenable situations -and then left her to bear the consequences alone. She had had to rear -the family single-handed, to take all the responsibility for their -moral and financial welfare. If it had not been for her, they might -have been criminals or tramps. David had never concerned himself for -her ... or them. - -“Mother, I can’t listen to such outrageous injustice. I have never seen -a more considerate husband than father is to you. Even Lary, with all -his tenderness, and his perfect comradeship, has his eyes on himself -most of the time. Father never thinks of himself. His whole heart is -given to you and his children.” - -“Yes, and he hangs over me until he drives me to distraction. I’ll tell -him where I have been--if he doesn’t stop following me about--as if I -hadn’t a right to go where I please.” - - -III - -Lavinia’s usual solvent, a flood of tears, failed her. Dry-eyed she -left the room, forgetting to ask for the paper, which had been the real -object of her call. Judith returned to the library and took down the -volume of Browning. In some unfathomable way it was responsible for the -distressing situation. As she turned the pages, pencil marks caught -her eye. A line, a word or two, in some instances an entire stanza had -been underscored. They were, without exception, love passages. Well -over towards the back, a sheet of note paper came to view, covered -with Lavinia’s tight, precise writing. If Browning _would_ change the -subject, just when you thought you had grasped his meaning ... at -least, you could fling your net over the elusive concept and carry it -away--isolate it from the confusing wealth of context. - -But no! This was more than random copying. Widely separated passages -had been woven together into a kind of confession of faith ... like -lemon jelly in a mould. Judith, as she read, forgot that she was -looking into another woman’s soul, forgot Lavinia, in the fascination -of following the curious windings of Lavinia’s mind. - - “Come back with me to the first of all. Let us lean and love it - over again. Let us now forget and now recall, and gather what we - let fall. Each life’s incomplete, you see. I follow where I am led, - knowing so well the leader’s hand. Oh, woman, wooed, not wed! When - we loved each other, lived and loved the same, till an evening came - when a shaft from the devil’s bow pierced to our ingle-glow, and the - friends were friend and foe. Never fear but there’s provision of the - devils to quench knowledge, lest we walk the earth in rapture--making - those who catch God’s secret just so much more prize their capture. - The true end, sole and single, we stop here for is this love-way with - some other soul to mingle. How is it under our control to love or not - to love? Heart, shall we live or die? The rest ... settle by and by.” - -Judith laid the sheet in its place and returned the volume to the -bookcase. Yes, David was right. But what a weird obsession! Lavinia, -out of the pregnant depths of her misery, had fashioned a lover to her -liking, a phantom lover, to be communed with in secret. Had she gone to -Detroit, not to visit Sylvia, but to seek some fantastic realization of -her yearning for the perfect romance? Why had she come home, shattered -and undone. A real man ... the man she met in the Pullman when she was -returning from Bromfield--the man who had fallen in love with her? - -She paused beside the table where, an hour ago, she had laid the -Bromfield paper. She looked at it with vacant eyes, striving to clarify -her turbid thoughts. Gradually, out of the emptiness, words came up -to her, the words that David had read, at the head of the “personal” -column. - - “Our distinguished citizen, Mr. Calvin Stone, has just returned from - a ten days’ business trip to Chicago.” - -The room with its delicate furnishings faded, as when the lights are -suddenly turned off. Judith stared, her heart leaping in unrhythmic -cadence, her eyes following the monstrous panorama that unrolled before -her. Long ago she had gone to a little cinema theatre with Lary and the -girls, where black dots had danced on a white screen. Black dots were -dancing now, on the white screen of her memory. - -A dozen disjointed fragments of conversation; an old story her -grandmother had told her, of a secret wedding in Rochester; Lavinia’s -greedy interest in the story, in all that pertained to Calvin and -Lettie Stone; her determination to revisit Bromfield the summer -following Mrs. Stone’s death; the miracle of her regeneration when she -returned home; the yellow pallor on her face when she put the question: -“Do people ever really get over things?” The dots had woven themselves -into a succession of preliminary shapes, and all at once the picture -was complete. Lavinia’s secret lay bare before her daughter-in-law’s -gaze. - - -IV - -Outside on the street there was commotion. Judith was aroused from her -torpor of pain by Lavinia Trench’s voice, strident and hysterical: - -“Carry him into the west room. You can’t take him upstairs on that -stretcher. What has happened to him? Why didn’t you telephone me? -David, are you alive?” - -David had fallen from the roof of the Marksley house. No one knew what -had caused the accident. He was standing on a wide ledge, that ought to -have been secure. One of the workmen saw him stagger, reel backward and -come crashing down. It was fortunate that he did not strike the stone -pavement. That would have been fatal. He was apparently only stunned by -the fall. - -Judith followed the curious crowd into the house and bent above the -stricken man, while his wife ran panting up the stairs to prepare his -bed. He opened his eyes and his lips fashioned inarticulate words. - -“The paper,” she saw rather than heard, “the paper ... burn it. I -saw--in a flash--that blinded me--and I fell....” - - - - -XXXVIII The Greater Love - - -I - -The consulting surgeon was still upstairs with Dr. Schubert and the -nurse. In the sun-room, the Venetian blinds drawn to shut out the hot -July rays, the family sat, awaiting the verdict. Sydney and Eileen had -hurried home from the West in response to a conservative telegram from -Lary. Sylvia and her husband were already there. The meeting of the -sisters was reserved, befitting the occasion. Now Sylvia forgot her -father--her growing resentment because of the general misunderstanding -with regard to her mother’s alleged visit--as she gazed across the -spacious room at the beautiful young woman whom she could with -difficulty accept as Mrs. Sydney Schubert. - -“I can’t understand it,” she whispered to Oliver. “You know what a raw, -scraggy girl she was when we left here. I couldn’t make out what Hal -Marksley saw in her. But for Syd--he had such an eye for beauty. He -never went with a girl who was plain or homely. Mamma never wrote us -how she had changed.” - -“I told you a long time ago,” her husband retorted, “that the ugly -duckling had a way of growing into the swan of the family.” - -Sylvia flushed, annoyed, and lapsed into silence. - - -II - -Outside the passer-by paused to look curiously at the house. David -Trench hovered between life and death, and the town forgot the summer -heat in its anxious sympathy. No one had known what a great man he was, -what an irreparable loss his death would mean to the community. All -over the town little groups of prominent men discussed the catastrophe -with hushed breathing. The labourers who had done David’s bidding for -years wiped furtive tears from their eyes when they were told that the -case was all but hopeless. - -Fifty--the meridian of life! A younger man would stand a better chance. -Dr. Schubert feared a spinal lesion. Yet the shock to the nervous -system might account for the torpor that had prevailed, with fleeting -lucid intervals, for four days. If that were all, the human machine -would right itself presently. - -Early Sunday morning Mr. Marksley had come to the house to inquire -about the patient, and to repudiate any responsibility for the accident -... and had encountered Lavinia Trench’s tongue in a manner that he was -not likely to forget. She had another score to settle with this man and -his family, unnamed but not absent from the motive power of her attack. -The outburst had a salutary effect on the woman who, after the first -excitement of David’s home-coming, had moved with the automatism of a -sleep-walker. When he had gone, she sought Judith. Larimore must go at -once and arrange with Dr. Schubert for consultation, the best surgeon -in St. Louis. - - -III - -When they were alone, she fell on her daughter-in-law’s neck, sobbing -hysterically: “Oh, oh, oh, if he dies I shall go distracted. He -doesn’t dare to die ... now. If he was going to die, why couldn’t it -have been sooner? Oh, my God in heaven, what am I saying? Judith, can’t -you save him? Don’t you know what it would mean for him to die now?” - -“Try to be calm, mother. The case isn’t quite desperate.” - -“Oh, but my case is desperate. You don’t know.... If you could have -heard him, last night! He said the most terrible thing. He must have -been thinking it, or it wouldn’t have slipped out like that, when his -mind was wandering. When you think a thing over and over, you say it -without meaning to. He took my hands and said he was only a carpenter’s -son ... but Ch--rist was a carpenter’s son, too ... and it was worth -carrying a cross all these years, to have me, when I belonged to -another man.” - -“Mother! Oh, this is pitiful.” - -“I wanted to get down on my knees and tell him that I never belonged to -any other man. I wanted to confess that I was the vilest sinner, and -unworthy of his love. It wasn’t me, at all. I was standing to one side, -looking at David and me, and thinking what I would do it I was in Vine -Larimore’s place. And when I walked away, there didn’t seem to be any -floor under my feet.” - -“Mother, dear, why didn’t you open your heart to him, when you were so -close?” - -“No, no!” she cried, beating back the suggestion with baffled hands. -“You never had David look at you with condemnation. Oh, I would -rather have him slap my face. I could resent that. But to have him -condemn--and then forgive....” She swayed weakly, all her force -concentrated in the relentless mouth. “Judith, if he dies, it will -be on my head. You told me that it was as bad to sin in thought as to -carry out the desire. I wanted to kill David. Don’t look at me like -that. I have to tell you. There is no one else I can trust--and I’ll -babble it, when I don’t know I’m talking, if I don’t get it out of my -mind.” - -“How do you mean, mother?” - -“Twice I tried. Once when you were in Europe--when his health was so -poor--and I was going to give him the wrong medicine. And six weeks -ago, when he brought a lot of money home--and I thought it would look -as if a burglar did it. It was just after you took Theo to New York, -and we were alone in the house. At the last moment, my courage failed. -But if he dies, I will be held accountable for his murder. Judith, he -has to live. Don’t you see....” - - -IV - -And thus it came about that the great specialist had been sent for. -Already he had been up there in David’s room for more than an hour. -Now a door was opening, two pairs of feet were descending the stairs. -Before those in the sun-room realized it, the distinguished man had -passed to the waiting cab and was gone. Lavinia was on her feet, -aquiver with excitement. - -“Where is he going? I want to ask him a hundred questions.” - -“He has told me everything you need to know,” the old family -physician told her sternly. “He will send us another nurse from St. -Louis--a young man capable of handling a dead weight. My diagnosis, -unfortunately, was correct.” - -“Will he get well?” Lavinia’s lips were blue and her eyes protruded. - -“We must wait and see. He will be paralysed from the waist down.” - -David to sit in a wheel-chair the rest of his life! Vine staggered -from the room. Her daughter-in-law followed, fearful for one or the -other of those two actors in life’s sorry drama. But the stricken -woman only paused an instant at her husband’s door, and passed on to -the performance of some commonplace duty. Judith returned to the lower -hall, to hear Dr. Schubert say: - -“He begged me not to let them prolong his life. Said it was wrong -to hang on, when he had finished his task. He would have a fighting -chance, if he had the least recuperative desire. David doesn’t want to -get well. He said that death was nothing to be afraid of--after a man -had lived.” - -“He sees an honourable way out of the hell he has had for thirty -years,” Syd muttered, his blue eyes wrathful, his slender hands -clenched. “I hope there is a heaven--that he’s so sure of. We know what -it would be for him here, chained down to a pair of helpless legs. All -his life he has walked away from it, when he had taken all he could -endure. It would break Eileen’s heart to see her father--” - -Out in the kitchen Drusilla burst all at once into song: - - “God moves in a mysterious way - His wonders to perform. - He plants His footsteps in the sea - And rides upon the storm.” - -The nurse hurried down to check the stridulous singing, and to say -that Mr. Trench wanted to see his two daughters, Judith and Eileen, -together. The specialist had said it would do him no harm to talk -quietly with his family. - - -V - -At the threshold Eileen asked, her face white with grief: “Judith, did -I do this? Am I to blame for his fall? Last night he told Theo that -when he was up on that ledge, he saw something. And the pity and horror -of it made him lose his footing. The poor baby thought he meant the -burning of that ugly gable.” - -“I know what he had in mind, dear. You can go to him without a pang of -regret.” - -A moment later the girl was kneeling at her father’s side. There was no -blemish on the beautiful face, no wasting, as of disease, and the blue -eyes smiled tenderly, their smile changing to protest, as she cried: - -“Oh, papa, this is the hardest part of my punishment--to know that I -made you suffer. If only I had known!” - -“You brought me the only real happiness of my life. It was worth all -I paid. When I saw you--the day you came home from Europe--I almost -died of joy. And when I heard you give your vow to Sydney, I said: ‘My -cup runneth over.’ I know now why Sylvia had to treat him so cruelly. -I asked God to make her realize his worth. What foolish children we -are, when we pray. I knew the sorrow of his boyhood, and how pure his -heart was. Eileen, none of us knew that he had to minister to a gentle, -afflicted mother, all those years ... just to fit him to be your -husband.” - -“Papa!” The girl’s tears wet her father’s face. “And only you could -have seen it. There isn’t another man in the world who could have taken -me--without ever humiliating me--and made me want to be the best woman -that ever lived.” - -“And you won’t ever forget that men need love?” - -“They need it more than we do. Perhaps I can make up some of what I -owe you--when I take care of Syd’s father ... make his home bright and -happy.” - -David stroked her hand, his eyes wandering to the face of Judith who -stood, shaken with emotion, at the foot of the bed. - -“Come to me, dear daughter. I have something to tell you, while I have -my wits about me. It may be our last chance.” - -The woman pressed her hand to her quivering chin, as the sobs surged up -in her throat. Then she hid her face in the pillow, her cheek close to -the dear face, so that David could whisper in her ear: - -“You took care of the paper? You won’t let her know I saw it? After I -am gone, she can go to him and be happy. I forgive them, as Christ has -forgiven me.” - -“Father! Now I can believe there _was_ a Christ.” - -“It wasn’t her fault, Judith. You were never harsh with Eileen. You -must not be harsh with her. She was too brilliant for me. I was never -anything but a drag. I was too stupid to understand, when she told me I -had won her away from him. If I had had any wit--but I did love her so!” - -It was not a wail of regret. Just a simple statement of fact. He had -bought a priceless treasure and had paid for it with the sorrow of the -loveless years. He looked up, to see Eileen gazing in troubled wonder. - -“I didn’t mean to say so much; but I believe it would be all right -for you to tell her--about her mother. If it was right for Eileen--it -couldn’t have been wrong for her mother. We can’t see the flowers when -we put the ugly bulbs into the ground. Perhaps her own child can help -you show her the path.” - -“Father, I can’t endure it,” Judith cried. “It was I who blundered. I -tried to show her the way. I didn’t know what her ailment was. I opened -the wrong medicine.” - -“You gave her your best. That’s all any of us can do. You and Eileen -and I have suffered; but for my poor Vine it is terrible. She had -so much love to give, and it was all sealed up in her heart until -it--putrified--poisoned her. Tell her that she was not to blame. Tell -her that ... Christ died ... to make others ... happy....” - -The words trailed off in a half audible whisper, and David Trench -slept. - - - - -XXXIX Lavinia - - -I - -It was the largest funeral Springdale had ever seen. Lavinia reflected, -with grim pride, that not even President Henderson had called forth so -many or such magnificent floral tributes. Dr. Clarkson conducted the -simple service and the Conservatory Quartette sang the old sweet songs -that David loved. With uncovered heads his townsmen stood by while his -tired body sank to rest. Then life went on as before. - - -II - -Lavinia and Theodora were alone in the big house with Drusilla. Lary -thought it absurd for them to occupy so much room. He would be going -to New York in the early fall, now that Springdale had nothing to hold -him. His mother might as well return to Vine Cottage. She had built the -great Colonial house in order to make a propitious marriage for Sylvia. -A similar need would never confront her. - -“Move into this little place? Indeed I shall do nothing of the sort. In -fact, I have made up my mind to go back to Bromfield.” - -“Bromfield?” The tone carried something dangerously like a sneer. - -“The town was good enough for your grandparents,” his mother retorted -hotly. “I won’t have a relative left here but Eileen, and she will -certainly never be any comfort to me. It’s a shame, the way she could -forget her father in less than a month. She acts as if Dr. Schubert -were her own father. I don’t believe she has shed a tear. No, I -wouldn’t stop a day in Springdale for that ungrateful girl.” - -“But your friends of a lifetime are here.” - -“You can make new friends in New York. Why shouldn’t I? You think of me -as an old woman, Larimore. I don’t like it. The day has gone by when a -woman of fifty has to sit in the chimney-corner. I have written to Ted, -telling him that I want to buy back the old home. You shall remodel it -for me. That would be a work you could take pride in--the house your -great-grandfather built.” - - -III - -When Lavinia and Judith were alone, the real purpose of the former’s -early morning call revealed itself: - -“I want you to tell me how far you can hold a person to a promise--a -voluntary promise, written on paper and signed.” - -“It depends--” Judith eyed her narrowly--“on the nature of the one who -makes the promise. I wouldn’t give a fig for all the contracts that ink -and paper could record, if there were no volition--” - -“Yes, but I am sure--that is, I think I have a right to demand....” -She swallowed hard and a hunted look invaded the black eyes. “Would it -be all right for me to--to ask for some satisfaction, some decision? -You can’t let things go on in uncertainty. You have to come to an -understanding. I--that is, I don’t think my brother has treated me -right. Would you send the letter?” - -“Use your own judgment, mother. You know what a wretched failure I made -of my former attempts to advise you.” - -“No, Judith, that was what I wanted to say to you. I have thought -it all out, and have come to the conclusion that--that I had to do -everything just as it came about. Oh, I don’t know how to tell you--but -I begin to see how good comes out of evil--how I had to suffer to gain -my happiness.” - -At the door she turned, to ask, as if she were consulting a sorceress: -“Would you advise me to write the letter--a very plain one?” - -“Suspense is deadly. I should relieve my mind, at any cost,” her -daughter-in-law said dryly. It was Lavinia Trench’s self-justification, -the mind that could mould the universe into a pedestal for the support -of her righteousness. It would be this way to the end. Nothing would -ever change her. David was dead, and a letter of condolence had come -from Calvin Stone, a letter that all the world might read. In all -likelihood there had been no other word from him, since Lavinia was -free ... to make uncomfortable demands. - -She went home and wrote. With her own hands she carried the letter to -the office, to insure delivery. It had occurred to her to register it -... her feet tugging to free themselves from the quicksand of doubt -that spread all around her. But Drusilla or Larimore might take the -receipt from the postman’s hand. Besides, it would be a confession -of the fear that was in her. She must not act as if there were any -question of her right, in this matter. To Lavinia it was still “this -matter.” She did not name it, even to herself. - - -IV - -Six tortured days she waited, and then the response came. Theodora ran -in terror to Judith, her black eyes wide, her cheeks ashen. - -“What is it, precious? Don’t stand there shaking like that.” - -“It’s my mamma, and she’s--I think she’s gone crazy.” - -“Because of something--a letter that came a few minutes ago?” She had -the child in her arms, soothing her with gentle caresses. - -“Oh, Sister Judith, what could my uncle write that would make anyone as -furious as that? Last night she couldn’t sleep--because she said our -whole life depended on the letter she was looking for. She made me come -and get in bed with her, and she told me about Bromfield till I fell -asleep in her arms.” - -“And your uncle refused to let her have the old home?” - -“I don’t know. I was up on the third floor with Drusilla, and all at -once I knew that I was needed down stairs. When I was half way down -the hall--there stood my mamma like a statue. She didn’t see me, any -more than if I’d been a spook without any body. And all at once she -began running back and forth and tearing the letter to bits. And then -she threw them on the floor and stamped on them. She didn’t speak one -single word. That was the awful part--to be as mad as that, and take it -out in just jumping up and down!” - -“Stay here, dearie. Or, no--” after a moment’s thought--“I want you -to go and spend the day with Eileen. Don’t tell her about the letter. -Dutton can drive you over in the car. You won’t need a hat.” - - -V - -Judith surmised that Lavinia would not miss the child. For an hour -there was no sign of life in the big house. Then the widow emerged -clad in all her weeds. From the florist’s shop, at the corner, she -returned with a great cornucopia. It was evident that her destination -was the cemetery, and that she intended to walk. For Lavinia Trench, on -a steamy August day, such a walk was nothing short of a penance. - -Noon went by ... one, two o’clock ... and she came staggering up the -steps, and into the cool living-room of Judith Trench’s home. Without -a word she sank into the nearest chair and drew aside the crêpe veil, -revealing a countenance from which every vestige of youth had been -erased. With the toe of her small shoe she began to trace the winding -pattern of the Oriental rug, her lips set hard together. - -“Take off your hat, mother. You don’t want that hot veil around your -neck.” - -“Yes, I’ll take it off. I don’t intend ever to wear the thing again. If -it isn’t in your heart--crêpe veils and flowers on graves won’t put it -there. Oh, my God in heaven, why did David have to die--at such a time? -What right had he to die--and expose me to such an insult?” - -She had hurled the mourning hat from her, and sat staring at her moist -shaking hands. Then came the reaction, a flood of colour, not scarlet -but dull raspberry, that spread over neck, cheek and brow. Stiffening -in her chair, she cried: - -“It was you who did it, Judith Ascott, every bit of it.” - -“I did what?” Judith’s eyes blazed with sudden anger. No, she would -no longer palliate ... spare this woman, who had always contrived to -shift responsibility to shoulders less blameworthy than her own, who -had taken the best she could snatch from life, giving not even decent -gratitude in return. - -“You said that Sydney married Eileen and made her happy, because she -didn’t resist the temptation to do wrong.” - -“Oh, how monstrous!” - -“Well, I hope you aren’t going to deny that you told me, point-blank, -that nothing but a broken axle prevented you from being untrue to your -husband. Was it my fault that the axle didn’t break for me?” She talked -wildly, her thin neck drawn and throbbing. - -“I blundered horribly when I said those things to you. I thought you -were a woman who could handle an abstract idea. I didn’t know that -everything I said must necessarily have a personal application. If I -had understood why you were unhappy ... if you had told me the truth, -instead of leaving me to guess it, after the mischief was done--” - -“I ought to have told you--told such a thing to a stranger ... when I -never more than half admitted it to myself?” - -“No, I am sure you couldn’t have told me. It is just the awful -fatality, that I should have put weapons into your hand that would -wound you--the very knives that removed the false growth from Eileen’s -spirit.” - -“Yes, and if the cancer is deep inside--if it grows out of your heart -... the more you cut it away, the stronger it grows. God knows, I tried -to tear it out by the roots. I tried three times to hate--” - - -VI - -Judith drew near and laid a hand on the frantic woman’s arm. - -“Mother, it is the saddest case I have ever known. If I assure you -of my pity and my earnest wish to help you ... for Lary’s sake, and -Theo’s,” Judith raised a hand that checked the bitter outburst, “will -you talk to me with absolute frankness? You can’t bear this hideous -thing alone. You can’t take it to your daughter.” - -“Sylvia! I would as soon put my hand in the fire, and expect not to be -burned. She would throw me out of her house, as an abandoned woman. -She is hard and selfish and cruel. I don’t know where she gets such a -nature.” - -“We won’t talk of Sylvia now.” - -“No, I hope I’ll never see her again. And ... Judith ... I am going to -tell you ... from the beginning. You know already--the worst of it. -David knew, the night before he died. That’s why I had to run away, -when I tried to lay the roses on his grave. It made me wild with rage -... to know he was pitying me.” - -She rocked to and fro a moment, as if to settle the sequence of her -story. Then her eyes blazed with a challenging light. - -“You are a cold woman. You can sit there and weigh me ... like a pound -of steak. You never knew what it was to want something with your whole -mind and body and soul. You are not capable of a passion that would -burn you to a cinder. There are not many women with as deep a nature as -mine. It began when I was fourteen--a plain little thing like Theo is, -now. The night of Edith Trench’s Hallowe’en party--and David begged his -sister to invite me. All the others were grown, nearly. I happened to -be standing in a dark corner, under some mistletoe, and Calvin Stone -tiptoed up behind me and grabbed me in his arms and kissed me. - -“That night I couldn’t sleep ... nor the next one. Everything was -changed. For two years, I used to almost die when I saw him out with -the older girls. Then he went away to Buffalo, to business college, and -I began to grow pretty. It’s a way we have in my father’s family. When -he came home, he fairly swept me off my feet. If David had ever made -love to me the way Calvin did-- The room would swim before my eyes when -he kissed me. He wanted me to marry him right away. But in Bromfield -that would have made a scandal. A girl didn’t dare to seem too anxious. - -“After about a year he began to cool off. I waited two years more, -and then I married David. I may as well tell you why. Calvin went to -Rochester and married that Fournier girl. She made him marry her. Thank -goodness, I was safe in Olive Hill before they let it out that they -were married. But the truth has leaked out at last. It always does, no -matter how smart you think you are in concealing it.” - -She stopped. This was not what she wanted to say--or believe. A deep -nausea overcame her. Eileen’s secret ... her own! But no, she was -making confession. It would not go any further, if she told Judith all -... to the last wicked detail. - -“Ellen thought all along that I married David for spite; but she -doesn’t know that I never got over loving Calvin Stone. When I was -first married I used to lie awake nights, thinking of the time when -David and Lettie would both be dead, and I could have the man I wanted. -I forced David to make good, so that I could taunt Calvin. After he -moved back to Bromfield--when his father broke down, and he had to take -charge of the bank--Ellen and Lettie were friends. That way, I learned -a good deal about them. I saved all her letters that mentioned Calvin. -The others I put in the fire, as soon as David had read them. The -bundle I want buried with me. It was reading them over and over that -made me the woman I am now.” - -“Mother, can’t you go home and burn them--blot this hateful thing from -your mind--now when your heart is soft because of father?” - -“David Trench! He doesn’t count, one way or the other. David was never -anything but a makeshift in my life. If he had abused me, instead of -giving me all that affection, it wouldn’t have been so bad. I didn’t -want his love, and I despised him because he could go on loving me -... the way I treated him. I hated my children, because he was their -father. After they came, I loved them for what I could see of myself in -them. Isabel was so like her father that it was comical--and I could -hardly bear to touch her. Judith, think of being a wife for almost -thirty years to a man you hated! You couldn’t have gone through it.” - -“No, I would have run away.” - -“But I hadn’t any place to run to. I was caught, like a hungry rat in -a trap. I could look out through the bars and see all the things I -wanted, beyond my reach. When I did drag something inside, it turned -out to be different from what I expected. When we celebrated our silver -wedding, the minister told how we were the ideal couple, that God had -joined together in our cradles. It was the vilest mockery. But David -was so proud.” - -“And you never saw his worth--never responded to his tenderness?” - -“Not until I came home from Bromfield, two years ago. That was the -only time David and I came together, in all those years. I never knew -how handsome he was until I had been looking at Calvin every day -for a month. And his appearance wasn’t all of it. I had made up my -mind, while I was still at Ellen’s, that I was going to treat David -different. You couldn’t help seeing that I had all the best of the -bargain. The house Calvin built, ten years ago, is no comparison to -mine. And he had to mortgage it to the limit, when his son got into -trouble. Lately he sold it, to keep from losing it outright. That was -when I wrote him that I would buy back the old house from my brother. -But that’s ... I’ll come to that, later on. All those years I had been -thinking of David as a poor carpenter, and Calvin as a banker, in fine -society. And when I found out that he didn’t have near as much as I -had--” - -“I see how you found your deep satisfaction.” - -“No, you don’t. It wasn’t just the money, and David’s position in -Springdale--on the Board of Trustees, and all that. I got my real -triumph after I started for home. I had snubbed Calvin and tormented -him in every way I could. I wasn’t going to let him think I went to -Bromfield on his account. Besides, I wanted to hurt him, for the way he -had treated me. I thought I would take it out on him, and that would -end it. If I had been trying to win him, I couldn’t have used better -tactics. - -“I was on the train and we were pulling out of Rochester when he came -walking in the Pullman. At first he pretended to be surprised. Said he -was going to Buffalo on business. After a while he owned up that he had -come ... because he wanted to be alone with me. He told me that his -life had been hell on earth, and he was glad when Lettie died. He even -said that if David should die, he would go to the end of the world to -compel me to marry him.” - -“The boor!” - -Lavinia ignored the comment. Hot lava was pouring from the crater of -her wretchedness, lava long pent up, and such flimsy obstacles as her -daughter-in-law’s disgust were swept away unnoticed in its stream. - -“I told him he wasn’t fit for David Trench to wipe his feet on. I -didn’t mean it ... but I talk that way when I am beside myself. When -I repulsed David, he would look hurt and walk away. But it only made -Calvin more determined. He said he would lie down and let me wipe my -feet on him. And then he said something sneering about ‘Dave Trench.’ I -flew into a rage--and he said I always was a beauty when I was angry. -Afterwards he almost cried when he begged me to show some little spark -of affection for him. He was always that way ... wanted what he thought -he couldn’t get. I see the whole thing now, as plain as day. It is easy -to see things, when it’s too late. If the minister hadn’t preached that -sermon about helping to redeem sinners by making them suffer, and you -hadn’t told me all that other ... about it being worse to want to sin -than to come right out and do the thing you wanted....” - -Judith shifted uneasily in her chair. Her own indictment was surely on -the way. She had no choice but to see the play through, to the final -curtain. - -“He began writing to me, on one pretext or another. I didn’t answer -more than half of his letters. And the meaner I treated him, the more -devoted he grew. All that time I was falling in love with David--and -I didn’t hesitate to tell Calvin so. It seemed to make him wild. The -very day I found out about Eileen, I had had a letter from him that I -was ashamed to read, in my own room. I believe that letter would have -finished him for me ... if it hadn’t been for Eileen. - -“When he heard about Larimore’s marriage, he wrote again--and asked -me to forgive him for writing the other letter. But he said his love -for me drove him to it. And at the same time, David was acting like a -paralytic old woman--just crushed by what Eileen had done. I couldn’t -help seeing the difference. I knew what Calvin would have done, if he -had had a daughter act that way. He would have put his son in jail, if -it hadn’t been for Lettie.” - -“You needed a masterful man. David was too gentle....” - -“He never was any match for me ... in any way. If I hadn’t snapped him -up, the night after Mr. Stone told me that Calvin was married....” She -shook herself, as if to free her body from some insidious lethargy that -was creeping over her. - -“While you and Larimore were in Europe, it got to be like a continued -story in a magazine. I kept wondering what would happen next. I had -cut loose from David, and I couldn’t keep my mind off of Calvin. After -you came home with Eileen, and I had the long talk with you, the story -took a different turn. Still ... I don’t believe anything would have -come of it if Calvin hadn’t had to take a business trip to Chicago. He -wrote, in a kind of joking way, that if I would run up there and spend -a few days with him, David would divorce me and we could be married -at once. That was last April. I wrote back that I wouldn’t think of -such a thing--and that men didn’t marry the women who forgot their -morals--except at the point of a gun. He answered, with a kind of -marriage compact--no matter what might come up--he would marry me as -soon as I was free. He had to go to Chicago again in July. I told him -I would see him in Sylvia’s home, on his way out, and we could talk -things over, and come to an understanding. It was all Larimore’s fault -that the whole thing turned out wrong.” - -“How Lary’s fault?” - -“You know he wouldn’t let me start in time to catch Calvin in Detroit. -Then I planned to go by way of Chicago, and see him between trains. -But Larimore insisted on getting the ticket direct. There was only -one thing for me to do. I wired Calvin, and sent a special letter to -Sylvia, saying I wouldn’t be in Detroit until Tuesday noon. I planned -to get into Chicago early Monday morning, and go back to Detroit that -night. I wrote the letter to David while I was waiting at the station, -Sunday afternoon. The rest of it--after Calvin met me--is like a dream, -a miserable dream. So much has happened since then. - -“That evening he made me miss my train. After I had been with him a -while, I was limp as a rag in his hands. He always had that way with -women. I didn’t want to go. All the years of my misery had dissolved. I -was like a starved person at a banquet ... seventeen again, and Calvin -acting like a boy out of school. But the second day he began to change. -He told me to quit acting like an old fool--said it wasn’t becoming -in people of our age. If David had ever said anything like that to -me--” Her hands worked convulsively and the teeth gave forth a sharp, -gritting sound. “I tried to be the way Calvin wanted me, and everything -I did was wrong. Once I flared up, and he told me to cut that out--that -it was because of my vile temper that he didn’t marry me thirty years -ago.” - -“And you are going to discipline yourself, mother, so that after your -year of mourning you can marry him and be happy?” - -“Marry him!” A shrill laugh burst from Lavinia’s lips. “Marry him! He -was married last Saturday to a rich widow in Rochester. That isn’t the -worst of it. I had written him the plainest kind of letter--about the -house we would remodel--and the contract he had sent me in April. They -read it together. They are laughing at me now. God, I can’t stand it! -To have them gloat over me! I could tear my heart out and stamp on it. -I could curse. I could spit in the face of the God that made me. Why -did you advise me to write the letter? It was you--you--” - -She had leaped from her chair, her face livid, her arms writhing. -Judith tried to speak. Her tongue was paralysed. She had looked into -the soul of the woman who bore Larimore Trench, and the sight turned -her sick with horror. Then a piercing scream, a startled cry, another -scream, and Lavinia crumpled down in her chair, clasping her hands to -her right side, shrieking and moaning by turns. - -“Mother, what has happened to you? Let me send for a doctor.” - -“No, no, don’t leave me!” A long wail of anguish indescribable--and she -put forth a restraining hand. “Don’t you know what has happened to me? -Can’t you see that I am dying? Dr. Schubert told me two years ago that -there was danger. I didn’t believe him....” - -She choked back another cry of pain, cringing until her right cheek -almost touched her knee. Then she straightened herself and went on, -through set teeth: - -“You will take Theo, Judith, and keep her for your own? I wouldn’t want -Sylvia to have her. You won’t let her--miss the path?” - -“I will give her the best I have, mother. I know what you mean.” She -stopped speaking, fascinated by the tinge of green that crept slowly up -the stricken woman’s cheeks. The same dull green was advancing along -the arms, where the black sleeves were drawn up. Lavinia saw it, too. -She knew the portent. Once before, she had seen that wave of green that -moved with deadly precision beneath the skin. - -“It’s the gall. It has burst. My grandmother died that way. She flew -into a rage--after the doctor warned her not to. I taste it, now ... -bitter ... in my throat....” She coughed spasmodically, and closed her -eyes. - - -VII - -Judith ran to the telephone. She told Lary that his mother had fainted. -To Eileen she said bluntly: “Mother is dying. Send one of the doctors.” - -Eileen called a dozen numbers before she located either Sydney or his -father. Then she left her little sister in Nanny’s care and hurried to -Vine Cottage. - -When the old family physician reached the house, Lavinia Trench had -passed beyond human aid. He drew Judith into the breakfast room and -asked, unsteadily: - -“Was there a violent outburst? Grief wouldn’t account for it ... nor -remorse.” - -The woman nodded, her throat swelling. - -“Don’t tell Lary. He need not know. He wouldn’t understand. Women are -so different, Dr. Schubert. I wouldn’t want Lary to despise his mother. -She wasn’t wholly to blame--that the frost came too late.” - - - - - * * * * * * - - - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIAN SUMMER*** - - -******* This file should be named 62194-0.txt or 62194-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/2/1/9/62194 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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