When Theodora looked from the window, some minutes later, the two
were crossing the street in the direction of the Nims’ house. A
full minute she stood, perplexed. Then her chest heaved with futile
indignation. In that minute, the scattered troubles of the past six
weeks had danced into form, like iron filings on the glass disc, when
Sydney drew his violin bow across its vibrating edge. She understood.
Mamma had given permission for Eileen to go with Hal to Mrs. Nims’--to
dinner. After all she had said about Mrs. Nims! A quarrel with papa was
inevitable. _Mamma wanted to provoke a quarrel with papa._ There was
no other explanation. Things had gone from bad to worse, with only an
occasional rift in her mother’s lowering sky. Whatever the cause of her
displeasure, it had reached a climax. Something must be done to protect
papa--done quickly. Lary was not always tactful--when people acted
that way. And mamma always took it out on papa, when Lary got the best
of her.
“Lady Judith, couldn’t you call her to come right back here ... eat
dinner with you?” The plea tumbled from the inchoate depth of her
distress. Mrs. Ascott and Lary interrupted a flow of intimate talk, to
look at the pale face and the preternaturally bright eyes.
“What, darling?”
“Eileen! I think my mother has gone crazy. First she says Mrs. Nims
isn’t fit for a decent woman to speak to--when papa talked about
Christian charity--and now she lets Eileen go over there to dinner.”
“How do you know that, baby?”
“Well, Lary Trench, look for yourself. I guess I can put two and two
together. If I didn’t want papa to think Mrs. Nims was a dangerous
woman--I wouldn’t tell him that Christ himself couldn’t save her.
Either my mother hasn’t got any system at all ... or ... she wants to
have one awful row with my father.”
“We might as well face a sickeningly unpleasant situation,” Larimore
said to Judith. “You are seeing my mother at her absolute worst.
Something has occurred to annoy her, desperately. And we can’t even
surmise what it is. The baby and I have laid plots to trap her into
betraying the cause of her hurt. But only last night we acknowledged
ourselves beaten.”
“May I confess that I have been trying, too, at Dr. Schubert’s
suggestion? He tells me that this state of her mind may lead to serious
consequences. Some obscure liver trouble, I believe.”
“Not obscure,” Lary amended. “Dr. Schubert understands its
pathological aspect. It is the mental cause that baffles all of us.
Gall stones are not uncommon in women of my mother’s temperament.
She has too much energy for the small engine she has to operate. Her
physician has tried to impress on her the need for keeping herself
tranquil. He might as well advise a tornado to be calm and rational.”
“Yet she does take advice from him--if he makes it specific and
definite.”
“You have the index to my mother’s mind--that cost me years of search.
She learns one thing at a time. She has no faculty for making logical
deductions. When she tries to apply a known principle to a new set of
conditions the chances are nine to one that she will go wrong.”
As he spoke, the woman’s eyes turned to Theodora ... impelled by some
unrecognized attraction. The little head was nodding in sage approval.
She was only half conscious of what those two were saying. The fact
that it was intimate--confidential--sufficed. Things were coming
on, entirely to her liking. It was almost the end of June, and she
wanted to be sure there would be no backslidings, while she and her
mother were in Minneapolis, the following month. She had never been
anywhere--excepting the week in St. Louis for the Exposition, when she
was seven--and a trip up the river on a steamer had been particularly
alluring. Now she would almost rather not go. She might be needed. Oh,
not to patch up a quarrel! Lary and Lady Judith were too wellbred for
that. But Lary did need to have his courage bucked up, now and then.
She was only a child, she reflected, but she knew that when people were
in love, they had no business mooning around in the dark--_in separate
yards_. She could go over the wall without touching anything but her
hands. And Lary was much more athletic than she. Besides, the gate was
there--even if mamma did padlock it, one morning. What if Lady Judith
should try to go through that gate--and have her feelings hurt!