I
Late Thursday afternoon Mrs. Trench crossed the lawn with tottering
steps. She looked incredibly old, with the bloodless lips and the
greenish pallor of her sunken cheeks. “No wonder her children are
temperamental,” Judith thought, remembering the crispness of her step
and the full flush of her dark skin as she crossed that same stretch of
grass the previous evening, the plate of rolls in her hand. She came
now with no offering of good will. There was set purpose in her eyes.
And her mouth ... Judith wondered how she could have thought Eileen’s
mouth looked like that. A sleepless night and the bald revelation of
Calvin Stone’s sorrow--discussed at the luncheon table as the Bromfield
paper was handed about--had reduced her resistive power to its lowest
point. When her life stream was full, she had little difficulty
concealing the slimy bed of her being. But now, with all her animation
ebbed away, she groped within her own turbid depths, blinded by
resentment and self-pity until even prudence forsook her. In any other
state of mind, she would not have flung down the gauntlet to the one
woman on whom she must depend for the furthering of her plans.
“Mrs. Ascott, would you mind going inside? I can’t stand this sunshine.
I never could see why David put a door in the west side of this summer
house, where the afternoon sun can shine right in your face. But David
always bungles things.”
“You are ill. I am so sorry.”
“It’s nothing. I’ll be myself after I’ve had a night’s rest. The fact
is, I want to have a plain talk with you.” Judith led the way to the
library. With rigid lips, that marred her usual sharp enunciation, she
began bluntly. “I feel that it’s my Christian duty to tell you some
nasty truths about that Mrs. Nims.”
“Village gossip. I’m sure, Mrs. Trench, I’m not in the least
interested.”
An ugly purplish red crept along Lavinia’s corded neck and up over the
cheeks to the line of straight black hair.
“But you and Eileen are planning all sorts of intimacy--musical trio
with you at the piano, playing accompaniments for the violin and
’cello--and Larimore and his father are terribly vexed. Of course you
couldn’t be expected to know anything about the woman ... being a
newcomer in the town. And you couldn’t know how important it is to me,
right now, not to have my husband displeased.”
It transpired that Eileen had talked too much, at breakfast, that
morning ... too many details of her call at the Marksleys’ home,
the play the Dramatic Club was putting on, for the benefit of the
laboratory fund, in which Hal Marksley had to kiss her, beneath the
pale glow of a marvellously devised stage moon.
“The trio was only a tentative suggestion. If Mr. Trench--”
“It isn’t so much his opposition as Larimore’s. He never had any use
for the Marksley family--and this big competition coming on. Villa
residence, keeper’s lodge, garage and barns. It will mean a great
deal to my son to win that commission. And the contract for the
construction will be the biggest thing Mr. Trench has had since he put
up the new Science Hall.
“I should think being kind to Mrs. Nims would be a help rather than a
hindrance,” Mrs. Ascott said, perplexed.
“It would, if I had reasonable men to deal with. The fact is--if I
_must_ speak plainly--young Mr. Marksley is very much in love with
Eileen. I wouldn’t have anything come between them for the world. You
are a married woman. You ought to know Eileen’s type. She isn’t the
least bit like me. If she resembles any of my family, it is my sister
Isabel--and we were thankful to get her safely married at seventeen.”
“But Mr. Marksley, they told me, is going to Pratt when he is graduated
from the college, here. It will be four or five years before--”
“Some more of Eileen’s foolishness. What use has he for more
education--with all that money? And she knows as well as I do that
he can go into business with his brother Alfred, in St. Louis, the
day after commencement. He doesn’t have to depend on his father, who
detests him. I suppose Eileen has told you that fact, too.”
Mrs. Ascott shook her head, irritation mounting to anger, as her
caller’s tone divested itself of that modicum of reserve that had been
the inculcated habit of years. In all her experience she had never
met a woman like Lavinia Trench. From their second meeting, there had
been an undercurrent of hostility, which Lavinia was at great pains
to subdue or conceal. A rich woman was a person to be envied ... and
conciliated. In her normal state she would not have jeopardized the
fragile bond of surface friendship that bound them.