Judith heard about it, in a burst of fierce indignation, from Theodora.
It was Monday, and the atmosphere of her home was still so forbidding
that she dreaded to enter the house, when she came from school. Mrs.
Ascott might want her to do an errand, she argued. At least, it would
do no harm to ask. But Mrs. Ascott did not want an errand. She wanted
the very information Theo was only too eager to offer. From Eileen
she had had a shaft of unpleasant illumination: “Lary has crawled in
his hole and pulled the hole in after him.” There was no iron in his
nature, nothing with which to fend himself against such clumsy insults.
But Theodora inadvertently revealed the deep cause of his hurt. It was
not the Marksleys, but his mother’s attitude, that offended him.
“To think, Lady Judith, of those stupid Marksley judges, turning down
all Lary’s beautiful plans in favour of--” She gasped, her cheeks
burning. “I wish you could see the front elevation of the house. It
looks for all the world like a frumpy old woman. There’s a gable that
reminds you of a poke bonnet, and under the gable are two round windows
... like staring eyes. If I’d gone that far, I would have had the nerve
to put in a nose and a mouth. But, no, he has a door between those
windows, opening out on a ledge. You don’t have a third story door
opening on a ledge, unless you want some one to walk out there, in the
dark, and get his neck broken. It ought to have been a balcony. Hm-m-m,
I guess he used up all the balconies the law allows. He has them at
both sides ... like the big hips that were in style when mamma was a
bride. And a coat of arms above the door--the Marksleys never had a
coat of arms.”
“How did you come to see the plans, Theo?”
“Hal smuggled them over, last night, to show mamma why Lary missed
out. And she didn’t do a thing but roast him again, this morning ...
because they took the cow barn, that he did to please her, and cut out
the classical part, that he did to please himself. That wasn’t the only
ruction we had at breakfast. But there’s no living with my mother,
these days. Papa said he wouldn’t figure on the contract--after the way
they treated Lary. And she nearly raised the roof. I guess my daddy’ll
put in a bid, all right.”