Chapter 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.”