Later in the day the girl came, her face wearing an expression of
deadly earnest. Already Mrs. Trench’s hope was transformed into
certainty. Judith led the way to the little boudoir Lary had fitted for
her on the second floor.
“Now, dear, what is it?” she asked when the door was shut.
“The most important trouble I ever had. I ought to have written
you--when Syd first asked me. But I did so want to tell papa first ...
before even you. I owe him that, for all the pain I caused him. Syd
wants to be married on my eighteenth birthday, and that’s less than
three weeks off.”
“And you love him, Eileen?”
“As I never thought it would be possible to love. We just belong
together--like you and Lary, only, oh, so different. I can see it in a
hundred ways. When I don’t get what he’s trying to tell me--abstract
ideas, you know--he goes up to the landing in the reception hall
and sits down at his mother’s pipe organ and puts the thought into
something that I can get hold of. When a man can talk to you that
way--and music is the only language you really do understand--there is
only one answer. If I’m in an ugly mood, he doesn’t scold or upbraid
me. He works out a theme in A-minor. I try to run away from it, and
I can’t. I’ve made bold to go past him, up to my room, and my feet
wouldn’t carry me up the stairs.”
“And then, Eileen?”
“I cry it out on his shoulder. After I have washed the meanness out, we
can talk sense. I don’t mind in the least--that he’s always right.”
“And there’s one point on which you can’t come to an agreement?”
“Yes, only one. Judith, how far is it necessary to go with confession
of something that you know will lose you the respect and affection of--”
“Oh, Eileen, my poor little sister!”
“Don’t let it hurt you,” the girl cried, her eyes filling. “If life
isn’t so perfect, I can stand it. There is one thing more important
than the man you love--and that is your conviction of what is square
and honest. Syd can tell me what to do in other matters--but this is in
your line, not his.”
“Dearest, it seems to me that there can be no sure foothold in marriage
if a wife conceals from her husband an experience as important as that.
I know what a humiliation it is to open such a secret chamber. I did
it, Eileen.”
“Judith, you don’t think I--” She stared, aghast. “You couldn’t think
me capable of taking Sydney Schubert’s love--a man as clean and
honourable as he is--without telling him why I went to New York?”
“Then he knows?”
“He knew ... all along.” Her fair cheeks flamed. “When he told me he
cared, I said there was a reason why I couldn’t ever marry any decent
man. Judith, he put his two arms around me and looked me square in the
eyes, and said: ‘You were a poor little wilful child, and you didn’t
know that fire would burn. Any woman, my dear, is good enough for any
man--if she is honest.’ The only thing he wanted to know was ... what
we had done with it. He said that would make a difference. He was
relieved when I told him. And he thinks you were made in heaven--to
have saved me--for him.”
“But if you have told him, and he is satisfied--what is the obstacle?”
“It is his father. I can’t marry Syd and go there to live, letting Papa
Schubert believe I am the pure white flower he thinks me. Syd says
he won’t have his father’s ideal of me shattered--because his father
wouldn’t look at it the way he does. He might forgive me: but I’d
always be tarnished, to him.”
“Do you remember, Eileen, the day you told the truth to Laura Ramsay?
You began by saying you were under no moral obligation to her mother. I
don’t know how we can draw those lines of distinction; but I feel them
with absolute certainty. You are under no need to confess your secret
to Sylvia or Theodora--and for widely different reasons. Indeed we must
go to any length to prevent Theo ever learning the truth. With Dr.
Schubert it is the same. It would only give him useless pain.”
“That’s what Syd said. He led me over to that little peachblow
vase--the one that was bequeathed to his father by one of his grateful
patients. He told me the satin glaze and the peachbloom tints were the
result of the heat in the kiln, that almost destroyed the body of the
vase. He asked me if I would be willing to break that little amphora,
that his father loves, just to prove to him that it isn’t as perfect on
the inside as it looks to him. He might patch the fragments together,
but he would always be conscious of the cracks.”
“Syd is right. It would be brutality--sheer vandalism.”
“You precious treasure. He told me that was what you would say. Now I
am going to the office to tell my darling daddy that he is to have a
_real_ son-in-law.”
“When are you going to tell your mother, dear?”
“That’s Syd’s job. He is going to make formal application for my hand.
He can get off a thing like that, without batting an eye, when he’s
just dying to get out and yell. And the worst of it is, mamma’ll take
it in dead earnest. I suppose Sylvia will have sarcastic things to say.
I don’t care. Syd never was really in love with her--after he was old
enough to cut his eye teeth.”