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.