Lavinia fled weeping through the door. She would tell Larimore how his
wife had insulted her. Unfortunately he was in New York. At least she
could write to him ... and the letter had distinct advantages. She
would be spared interruption. Larimore always broke the point of her
lance before she had time to drive it home. She wrote. She read the
long letter through twice--and tore it into shreds. A second letter
followed the first one. Then it was time to go down to luncheon.
When the noonday meal was over, and David and Theo had gone, she went
again to Vine Cottage. Judith was in the library, an open volume of
Browning on the table before her. Her face was pale and her eyes showed
flecks of hazel.
“We had a misunderstanding this morning, my dear, and I don’t want to
leave things that way.” The words came with a brave show of confidence,
but Lavinia Trench looked like a corpse, an automaton that was made to
speak by a force other than its own. “I am going to ask you to forgive
me, and help me as you did Eileen.”
“Oh, mother!” The cry was from her heart.
“I knew you would be surprised. I never apologized to any one in my
life. I’ve been fighting it for a week. When I said those things, this
morning, it was to keep from saying what--what I’m going to say now.
Since Eileen came home, I’ve been going over my life. David said she
had missed the path, and you showed her the right way. I am the most
unhappy woman in the world. If you could do that for Eileen, you could
do it for me.”
It was a challenge, flung like a pelting of hail stones. Judith looked
at her with troubled gaze. How could she deal with a mentality so
different from her own? Eileen was young, and Eileen loved her. That
her mother-in-law cordially detested her, she could not doubt.
“You know I would gladly....”
“It’s all perfectly simple--excepting two points. By all the rules
of right and wrong, Eileen ought to be a miserable girl, broken in
soul and body--and not respected by good people. It doesn’t make a
particle of difference that she hid her wickedness. God knows what she
did, and it is God that punishes sin. Instead of that, she comes back
here better in every way than she was before. She’s prettier now than
Sylvia. She used to be cross and hateful most of the time. Now she
laughs and sings and whistles till I wish she would pout for a change.
She sits up and discusses the most serious topics with grown men and
women--and you know how she used to rattle slang, and sneer at people
who were serious.”
“Her experience developed her marvellously. It might have wrecked
her, just as a powerful dose of medicine might destroy your body, if
administered in the wrong way. It was fearful medicine, but it was what
her sick mind needed.”
“That takes care of one of the points,” Lavinia cried, her black eyes
dilating. “You call it medicine. I saw it only as the consequences of
sin.”
“The name doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, the name does matter. I want to get this thing down in black and
white. All my life I have been discontented. It’s just one crushing
disappointment after another. Eileen was the same way. I never used
to think she was like me--but in some respects she is. I had a chance
to marry the son of the richest man in town. But I have always been
virtuous and upright--”
“Mother, perhaps if you--”
“Don’t interrupt me. I have to say this all at once, while it’s
connected. You call Eileen’s discontentment and rebellious nature a
kind of disease. Well then, I had the same disease, and she got it from
me. After my grandmother died, there wasn’t one in the family that
understood me. And the man I was engaged to--” She brought her teeth
together, as if she were biting off and forcing back the words that
strove to assert themselves in spite of her. “I threw him over, when I
found out that he was an unprincipled scoundrel, like Hal Marksley. If
I had gone on, as she did--but I never could have done such a thing.”
“Probably not. You were brought up in a provincial New York town. You
were hedged about by customs and convictions that don’t obtain in
Springdale, or among Eileen’s associates. You must make allowance for
that.”
Lavinia sidestepped the interruption. “Eileen was sick--and God picked
out a remedy that I thought God, in His purity, wouldn’t know anything
about. I was taught that it was the devil that--well, I’ve been
figuring that she had to come to grief, because she went over to Satan.
That’s the only way I could square things with my religious training. I
don’t believe, now, that she will ever be punished. That shows that it
was God and not the devil that did it. I’m willing to admit that I was
mistaken, if you’ll show me how to find happiness.”
“It isn’t a recipe, like the ingredients for a cake. And you must
remember that I didn’t prescribe the remedy, in Eileen’s case. I only
nursed her, after she had taken it. I haven’t the faintest idea why you
are unhappy.”
“And I would have to tell you the whole story?”
“I wouldn’t pry into your heart. I would do anything in my power to
give you peace. You are Lary’s mother. I have never overlooked my
obligation to you.”