Chapter XXXI: A New Hilltop (2)

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.