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.