Not that the interview reached the disgusting level of a quarrel. Yet
Judith was betrayed into the fatal error of attempting to reason with a
woman whose mental processes had never recognized the inevitable link
between cause and effect. She did not know how to deal with the mind
that leaped from one vantage point to another, with all the nimbleness
and none of the objectivity of a circus acrobat. Dutton had once said
of Mrs. Trench: “You can’t nail that woman down. When you trap her
square, on her own proposition--she’s over yonder, on an entirely
different subject, crowing over you. If she can’t make her point, she
talks about something else.” But Judith gave little heed to Dutton’s
mumblings.
The one thing Mrs. Trench had made unequivocally plain was that
Larimore and his father must not be antagonized. This could be
accomplished only by keeping Eileen’s fondness for Hal in the
background, and avoiding any public contact with his highly immoral
sister. It was in connection with Mrs. Nims that Judith blundered. She
could not believe that either David or Larimore Trench would cast a
stone at the woman who had sinned and was unhappy because of her sin.
“You mean Mary Magdalene, and all that? Well, I don’t believe Christ
expects _me_ to associate with the woman who ran away from two
husbands--travelled with the first one for three weeks before they were
married at all. There’s no reforming a woman like Adelaide Marksley.
She’s bad, through and through.”
“There may have been extenuating circumstances. What do you and I know
about her inside life? Until we have been tempted, as she was, we have
no moral right to set up our code--”
“You think I have never been tempted? I could tell you a story ... if I
was a-mind to. It was only my sense of honour and duty. And that ought
to be enough for Adelaide Nims or any other woman.”
“She may not have had a very clear conception of the meaning of
‘honour’ and ‘duty.’ Do you think those terms mean the same thing to
all women? Do they mean the same thing to any woman, at all times? You
don’t know anything about the inner life of the girl who grows up in a
loveless home, or is trapped in a childless home of her own, with a man
who doesn’t love her. Your life has been crowded with responsibility
and affection. You have a husband whose devotion to you is the most
beautiful--”
“You think David is a paragon. You haven’t had to live with him for
almost twenty-eight years. You haven’t had to drive him, every step he
took, for fear he would sit down on you, and let the family starve.
And as for the children ... what has that got to do with it? Why--it
was when Isabel was so sick that--that the minister kept calling and
calling. All the women in the church were crazy about him. I never
dreamt he was in love with me till the night before the baby died. But
I showed him his place, quick enough, when he told me he could see
that David didn’t understand or appreciate me.” Her eyes gleamed with
pride, as if she would have gloated: “There! You didn’t know I had been
tempted--and by the minister, too!”
“For all that, Mrs. Trench, you can’t draw the line between the woman
who sins and the one who is saved from sinning by some fortuitous
accident. Your baby died, the next day. If she had lived ... and you
had seized the chance for the happiness you had missed, I would have no
condemnation for you. I know. I was almost in sight of that treacherous
snare--when the axle of our motor car broke, and my father overtook us
and--brought me to my senses. We were within a mile of the pier where
his yacht was anchored--the man who was as unhappy in his loveless home
as I was in mine. We were going to Italy, to hunt for what we both had
missed. My husband had gone to Egypt with another woman. I told myself
that my marriage vow was an empty mockery....” She stopped, a sickening
wave of self-disgust overwhelming her. Why had she bared her soul to
this woman?
Lavinia? She made no effort to conceal her horror. So this was why Mrs.
Ascott did not wear mourning!
“And he, your husband--divorced you?”
“No, I divorced him. In New York there is only one cause for divorce,
and in the eyes of the law, I had committed no offence. Mrs. Nims, with
her bringing up--with the family environment that surrounds her and her
brother--”
“Oh, with men it is different. You don’t expect morality in them. David
says that Hal is fast. That’s at the bottom of the whole trouble. I
wish I hadn’t said anything about the affair. I might have known you
wouldn’t see it as I do. But then, I hadn’t suspected--” She checked
herself. There were some things Lavinia wouldn’t say, even when she was
indignant to the core.