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.