The experiment, that morning, narrowly missed success. At the moment
when three pairs of eyes were watching with anxious interest, the fumes
from a heated retort were wafted into Eileen’s face, and she collapsed
in Dr. Schubert’s arms. Judith turned off the flame beneath the mass of
glowing coal and hurried to the consultation room where the girl lay,
white and deathlike.
“Unfasten her corsets, quick! Her pulse is almost gone.” The
physician’s command held an unwonted blend of terror. Eileen Trench
was the core of his soul. He could not be impersonal, where she was
concerned. At an opportune moment Sydney arrived, to lend a hand.
It was decided that the girl must lie quiet for an hour. And of course
Mrs. Ascott would stop for luncheon. Luncheon! Could one eat food, with
the world in shambles? She went to the divan, choking with distress.
The amber eyes were half closed and great tears welled over the lids.
“It’s beastly to be such a nuisance to those we love....” The blue lips
scarcely moved to articulate the poignantly empty words. Then the long
lashes drooped in utter weariness, and Eileen slept.
Judith Ascott left the office. She wanted to get away from herself,
away from every familiar thing. Unconsciously she turned her back on
the cross-street that would have led to the campus and thence to her
home. How many miles she walked, she could not guess. She was hazily
conscious of smiling meadows and orchards, panting beneath their load
of ruddy fruit. Winding hill roads, ankle-deep in dust, and brooks
that laughed at obstructing pebbles; pastures where cattle grazed, and
acres of coreopsis, resplendent with their wealth of fleeting gold, she
viewed with eyes that saw not.
When at last her strength waned and hunger overcame her, she perceived
that she was approaching a town. She would go to the station and
inquire for a train to Springdale. A little way to her left, graders
were at work with shovels that scarred the helpless earth. Great piles
of stone and other piles of yellow brick and moulded terra cotta
crowned the rising ground. In the midst of all this orderly confusion
she perceived a sign-board, insolent with new paint:
DAVID TRENCH
BUILDING CONTRACTOR
She stared in astonishment. Then, by some magic of the mind the solid
earth beneath her feet shifted. She was no longer facing south. This
was Springdale, and she was approaching her home from the west. The
work on Henry Marksley’s mansion had already begun. She shuddered as
she thought of David.
From the high point in the parked boulevard, near which the sign-board
stood, she could see the distant tower clock, its face gilded by the
late afternoon sun. And over there on the newly paved extension of
Sherman Avenue the foolish little trolley car was bobbing serenely
along. She could catch it on the return trip if she hurried.