VI

Judith drew near and laid a hand on the frantic woman’s arm.

“Mother, it is the saddest case I have ever known. If I assure you

of my pity and my earnest wish to help you ... for Lary’s sake, and

Theo’s,” Judith raised a hand that checked the bitter outburst, “will

you talk to me with absolute frankness? You can’t bear this hideous

thing alone. You can’t take it to your daughter.”

“Sylvia! I would as soon put my hand in the fire, and expect not to be

burned. She would throw me out of her house, as an abandoned woman.

She is hard and selfish and cruel. I don’t know where she gets such a

nature.”

“We won’t talk of Sylvia now.”

“No, I hope I’ll never see her again. And ... Judith ... I am going to

tell you ... from the beginning. You know already--the worst of it.

David knew, the night before he died. That’s why I had to run away,

when I tried to lay the roses on his grave. It made me wild with rage

... to know he was pitying me.”

She rocked to and fro a moment, as if to settle the sequence of her

story. Then her eyes blazed with a challenging light.

“You are a cold woman. You can sit there and weigh me ... like a pound

of steak. You never knew what it was to want something with your whole

mind and body and soul. You are not capable of a passion that would

burn you to a cinder. There are not many women with as deep a nature as

mine. It began when I was fourteen--a plain little thing like Theo is,

now. The night of Edith Trench’s Hallowe’en party--and David begged his

sister to invite me. All the others were grown, nearly. I happened to

be standing in a dark corner, under some mistletoe, and Calvin Stone

tiptoed up behind me and grabbed me in his arms and kissed me.

“That night I couldn’t sleep ... nor the next one. Everything was

changed. For two years, I used to almost die when I saw him out with

the older girls. Then he went away to Buffalo, to business college, and

I began to grow pretty. It’s a way we have in my father’s family. When

he came home, he fairly swept me off my feet. If David had ever made

love to me the way Calvin did-- The room would swim before my eyes when

he kissed me. He wanted me to marry him right away. But in Bromfield

that would have made a scandal. A girl didn’t dare to seem too anxious.

“After about a year he began to cool off. I waited two years more,

and then I married David. I may as well tell you why. Calvin went to

Rochester and married that Fournier girl. She made him marry her. Thank

goodness, I was safe in Olive Hill before they let it out that they

were married. But the truth has leaked out at last. It always does, no

matter how smart you think you are in concealing it.”

She stopped. This was not what she wanted to say--or believe. A deep

nausea overcame her. Eileen’s secret ... her own! But no, she was

making confession. It would not go any further, if she told Judith all

... to the last wicked detail.

“Ellen thought all along that I married David for spite; but she

doesn’t know that I never got over loving Calvin Stone. When I was

first married I used to lie awake nights, thinking of the time when

David and Lettie would both be dead, and I could have the man I wanted.

I forced David to make good, so that I could taunt Calvin. After he

moved back to Bromfield--when his father broke down, and he had to take

charge of the bank--Ellen and Lettie were friends. That way, I learned

a good deal about them. I saved all her letters that mentioned Calvin.

The others I put in the fire, as soon as David had read them. The

bundle I want buried with me. It was reading them over and over that

made me the woman I am now.”

“Mother, can’t you go home and burn them--blot this hateful thing from

your mind--now when your heart is soft because of father?”

“David Trench! He doesn’t count, one way or the other. David was never

anything but a makeshift in my life. If he had abused me, instead of

giving me all that affection, it wouldn’t have been so bad. I didn’t

want his love, and I despised him because he could go on loving me

... the way I treated him. I hated my children, because he was their

father. After they came, I loved them for what I could see of myself in

them. Isabel was so like her father that it was comical--and I could

hardly bear to touch her. Judith, think of being a wife for almost

thirty years to a man you hated! You couldn’t have gone through it.”

“No, I would have run away.”

“But I hadn’t any place to run to. I was caught, like a hungry rat in

a trap. I could look out through the bars and see all the things I

wanted, beyond my reach. When I did drag something inside, it turned

out to be different from what I expected. When we celebrated our silver

wedding, the minister told how we were the ideal couple, that God had

joined together in our cradles. It was the vilest mockery. But David

was so proud.”

“And you never saw his worth--never responded to his tenderness?”

“Not until I came home from Bromfield, two years ago. That was the

only time David and I came together, in all those years. I never knew

how handsome he was until I had been looking at Calvin every day

for a month. And his appearance wasn’t all of it. I had made up my

mind, while I was still at Ellen’s, that I was going to treat David

different. You couldn’t help seeing that I had all the best of the

bargain. The house Calvin built, ten years ago, is no comparison to

mine. And he had to mortgage it to the limit, when his son got into

trouble. Lately he sold it, to keep from losing it outright. That was

when I wrote him that I would buy back the old house from my brother.

But that’s ... I’ll come to that, later on. All those years I had been

thinking of David as a poor carpenter, and Calvin as a banker, in fine

society. And when I found out that he didn’t have near as much as I

had--”

“I see how you found your deep satisfaction.”

“No, you don’t. It wasn’t just the money, and David’s position in

Springdale--on the Board of Trustees, and all that. I got my real

triumph after I started for home. I had snubbed Calvin and tormented

him in every way I could. I wasn’t going to let him think I went to

Bromfield on his account. Besides, I wanted to hurt him, for the way he

had treated me. I thought I would take it out on him, and that would

end it. If I had been trying to win him, I couldn’t have used better

tactics.

“I was on the train and we were pulling out of Rochester when he came

walking in the Pullman. At first he pretended to be surprised. Said he

was going to Buffalo on business. After a while he owned up that he had

come ... because he wanted to be alone with me. He told me that his

life had been hell on earth, and he was glad when Lettie died. He even

said that if David should die, he would go to the end of the world to

compel me to marry him.”

“The boor!”

Lavinia ignored the comment. Hot lava was pouring from the crater of

her wretchedness, lava long pent up, and such flimsy obstacles as her

daughter-in-law’s disgust were swept away unnoticed in its stream.

“I told him he wasn’t fit for David Trench to wipe his feet on. I

didn’t mean it ... but I talk that way when I am beside myself. When

I repulsed David, he would look hurt and walk away. But it only made

Calvin more determined. He said he would lie down and let me wipe my

feet on him. And then he said something sneering about ‘Dave Trench.’ I

flew into a rage--and he said I always was a beauty when I was angry.

Afterwards he almost cried when he begged me to show some little spark

of affection for him. He was always that way ... wanted what he thought

he couldn’t get. I see the whole thing now, as plain as day. It is easy

to see things, when it’s too late. If the minister hadn’t preached that

sermon about helping to redeem sinners by making them suffer, and you

hadn’t told me all that other ... about it being worse to want to sin

than to come right out and do the thing you wanted....”

Judith shifted uneasily in her chair. Her own indictment was surely on

the way. She had no choice but to see the play through, to the final

curtain.

“He began writing to me, on one pretext or another. I didn’t answer

more than half of his letters. And the meaner I treated him, the more

devoted he grew. All that time I was falling in love with David--and

I didn’t hesitate to tell Calvin so. It seemed to make him wild. The

very day I found out about Eileen, I had had a letter from him that I

was ashamed to read, in my own room. I believe that letter would have

finished him for me ... if it hadn’t been for Eileen.

“When he heard about Larimore’s marriage, he wrote again--and asked

me to forgive him for writing the other letter. But he said his love

for me drove him to it. And at the same time, David was acting like a

paralytic old woman--just crushed by what Eileen had done. I couldn’t

help seeing the difference. I knew what Calvin would have done, if he

had had a daughter act that way. He would have put his son in jail, if

it hadn’t been for Lettie.”

“You needed a masterful man. David was too gentle....”

“He never was any match for me ... in any way. If I hadn’t snapped him

up, the night after Mr. Stone told me that Calvin was married....” She

shook herself, as if to free her body from some insidious lethargy that

was creeping over her.

“While you and Larimore were in Europe, it got to be like a continued

story in a magazine. I kept wondering what would happen next. I had

cut loose from David, and I couldn’t keep my mind off of Calvin. After

you came home with Eileen, and I had the long talk with you, the story

took a different turn. Still ... I don’t believe anything would have

come of it if Calvin hadn’t had to take a business trip to Chicago. He

wrote, in a kind of joking way, that if I would run up there and spend

a few days with him, David would divorce me and we could be married

at once. That was last April. I wrote back that I wouldn’t think of

such a thing--and that men didn’t marry the women who forgot their

morals--except at the point of a gun. He answered, with a kind of

marriage compact--no matter what might come up--he would marry me as

soon as I was free. He had to go to Chicago again in July. I told him

I would see him in Sylvia’s home, on his way out, and we could talk

things over, and come to an understanding. It was all Larimore’s fault

that the whole thing turned out wrong.”

“How Lary’s fault?”

“You know he wouldn’t let me start in time to catch Calvin in Detroit.

Then I planned to go by way of Chicago, and see him between trains.

But Larimore insisted on getting the ticket direct. There was only

one thing for me to do. I wired Calvin, and sent a special letter to

Sylvia, saying I wouldn’t be in Detroit until Tuesday noon. I planned

to get into Chicago early Monday morning, and go back to Detroit that

night. I wrote the letter to David while I was waiting at the station,

Sunday afternoon. The rest of it--after Calvin met me--is like a dream,

a miserable dream. So much has happened since then.

“That evening he made me miss my train. After I had been with him a

while, I was limp as a rag in his hands. He always had that way with

women. I didn’t want to go. All the years of my misery had dissolved. I

was like a starved person at a banquet ... seventeen again, and Calvin

acting like a boy out of school. But the second day he began to change.

He told me to quit acting like an old fool--said it wasn’t becoming

in people of our age. If David had ever said anything like that to

me--” Her hands worked convulsively and the teeth gave forth a sharp,

gritting sound. “I tried to be the way Calvin wanted me, and everything

I did was wrong. Once I flared up, and he told me to cut that out--that

it was because of my vile temper that he didn’t marry me thirty years

ago.”

“And you are going to discipline yourself, mother, so that after your

year of mourning you can marry him and be happy?”

“Marry him!” A shrill laugh burst from Lavinia’s lips. “Marry him! He

was married last Saturday to a rich widow in Rochester. That isn’t the

worst of it. I had written him the plainest kind of letter--about the

house we would remodel--and the contract he had sent me in April. They

read it together. They are laughing at me now. God, I can’t stand it!

To have them gloat over me! I could tear my heart out and stamp on it.

I could curse. I could spit in the face of the God that made me. Why

did you advise me to write the letter? It was you--you--”

She had leaped from her chair, her face livid, her arms writhing.

Judith tried to speak. Her tongue was paralysed. She had looked into

the soul of the woman who bore Larimore Trench, and the sight turned

her sick with horror. Then a piercing scream, a startled cry, another

scream, and Lavinia crumpled down in her chair, clasping her hands to

her right side, shrieking and moaning by turns.

“Mother, what has happened to you? Let me send for a doctor.”

“No, no, don’t leave me!” A long wail of anguish indescribable--and she

put forth a restraining hand. “Don’t you know what has happened to me?

Can’t you see that I am dying? Dr. Schubert told me two years ago that

there was danger. I didn’t believe him....”

She choked back another cry of pain, cringing until her right cheek

almost touched her knee. Then she straightened herself and went on,

through set teeth:

“You will take Theo, Judith, and keep her for your own? I wouldn’t want

Sylvia to have her. You won’t let her--miss the path?”

“I will give her the best I have, mother. I know what you mean.” She

stopped speaking, fascinated by the tinge of green that crept slowly up

the stricken woman’s cheeks. The same dull green was advancing along

the arms, where the black sleeves were drawn up. Lavinia saw it, too.

She knew the portent. Once before, she had seen that wave of green that

moved with deadly precision beneath the skin.

“It’s the gall. It has burst. My grandmother died that way. She flew

into a rage--after the doctor warned her not to. I taste it, now ...

bitter ... in my throat....” She coughed spasmodically, and closed her

eyes.