XVII A Place Called Bromfield
I
In the morning the mistress of Vine Cottage went out to inspect the havoc the storm had wrought. Dutton was down on his knees, righting the vivid green corn stalks and banking them in with the soft soil. Theodora stood on the gravel walk, watching him with elfin curiosity—his shins protected by huge pads of faded brussels carpet, his fingers so packed with mud that they resembled a sculptor’s model in the rough. When she caught sight of Mrs. Ascott she crossed the intervening lawn on dainty toes, like a kitten afraid of the wet.
“We didn’t have any trouble about Eileen,” she began in a whisper pregnant with meaning. “I fixed it.”
“You were a good little angel. Have you a kiss for me this morning?”
“A million of them ... but only one, now.” She pursed her lips with strigine solemnity. The kiss was a rite—not to be taken frivolously. “I have to tell you about it. I don’t think it was half bad—for a kid like me. It didn’t look as if it would work, when I started in. But if you are in as tight a pinch as that, you have to jump where there looks like an opening. Then I had to see it through. There wasn’t any chance to back out.” The sentence was somewhat chaotic, but the meaning was plain.
“When we started in the house, I let mamma and Lary get clear inside the hall. Then I pulled papa back and whispered in his ear—that Eileen was over at Mrs. Nims’ and for him not to let on that he missed her. He asked me why, and I told him that if he was any sport at all, he’d do as I said, and not ask any questions. And what do you think, Lady Judith ... he was game! Mamma threw out one hook after another, to make him ask where Eileen was. And every time he turned and looked at me—and I gave him the most awful glances, behind my napkin. The only thing he could think of, right quick, was getting made treasurer of the college trustees. And I don’t know why mamma didn’t smell something, because it isn’t the least bit like my daddy to boast.”
“And then the storm may have helped.”
“Yes, papa said that was sent by Divine Providence. It gave me a chance to explain to him—while mamma was chasing all over the house, putting down windows, and screaming at Drusilla as if the house was on fire. I told him that mamma was mad as a wet hen—and just bound and determined to start something, with him ... and he mustn’t fall for it. Lady Judith, I wish my daddy had more sand. He choked up—like he was about to cry—and said he didn’t know what was wrong with mamma. He tried every way to please her and make her happy. He asked me if I knew why she was so cross all the time ... and I fibbed an awful fib. I told him Dr. Schubert said she had rocks in her liver and that would make a saint cross.”
Her eyes danced with roguish mirth, then fell. When she raised them again to the woman’s face, they were full of obstinate purpose.
“I guess it was a sin and God will punish me. Well, let Him ... if He feels that way about it. I’d take a whipping any day, to keep my daddy from getting one. If your soul is so nice that you can’t fib once in a while, to help a fellow out of trouble—” She battled with the futility of language to convey the situation as she perceived it. “Still, I wouldn’t want you to think it was wrong ... telling a story, to keep some one out of a scolding—some one that never did a mean thing in his whole life. Do you—do you think it is?”
“You darling!” Aching arms encircled her. “I don’t know how to answer you. We both know that it is wrong, in the abstract, to tell lies.”
“Yes, but I never tell them in the abstract. It’s only when there isn’t any other way.” The explanation threatened to assume the solemnity of a lecture on pragmatism. “I have wanted to tell you—ever since Lary said I was a conscienceless fibber. It’s one thing I can’t make him understand, and he knows everything else without being told. When you want a thing to be a certain way, and it isn’t that way at all, you can’t use the facts. They don’t fit. And what good does it do—to keep saying a thing over, the way you don’t want it to be?”
“A popular religion was founded on that premise, dearie.”
“What I’m talking about hasn’t got anything to do with religion. Bob used to say, ‘A lie is an abomination in the sight of the Lord, and a very present help in time of trouble.’ But I would never fib to keep myself out of trouble. You have to save them ... till there’s something important. If I hadn’t told Lary you didn’t like the apricot lamp shade, he wouldn’t have thought of going over to call on you—till Syd Schubert or some other man fell in love with you.”
Lavinia Trench’s strident voice rasped the sweet morning air. Theo was having altogether too pleasant a time, over there in Mrs. Ascott’s garden. That which she had related would have stung her mother to madness. But Theo’s afterthought was a little outcropping of Lavinia herself. In Dutton’s phrase: “That woman’ll have something stickin’ in her craw for years—and she’ll have to fetch it out, in spite of the devil. If you ever make her sore, or do her a bad turn—you might think she forgot it—but the time’ll come when she lets you hear about it.”
II
When the child had gone, Dutton untied the pads from his knees and approached his mistress. The wind had wrecked the frail framework which he had constructed of lath and the refuse from David Trench’s shop, to support the rank growth of tomato vines, over there by the wall. He admitted, shamefacedly, that he “knowed them end supports was too weak,” when he put them in. He wondered if Mrs. Ascott would mind helping him. Mrs. Dutton was in a bad humour, on account of some words she had had with Mrs. Trench. And Nanny was no good for carpenter work.
“I’m not much of a carpenter—”
“Oh, it ain’t work. It’s just that Nanny’s feet’s too big. She gets in the way. I thought I might call Dave over to he’p me; but he’s been out in the shop runnin’ the scroll saw for dear life, since right after breakfast. The old boy’s goin’ through his hells again. I tell you, ma’am, it’s an awful mistake to call a girl ‘Vine’ and then give her no mind to cling. When she’s in one o’ her tantrums, she wouldn’t see the Lord Jesus Christ if she met Him in the middle of the road—and she sets a heap o’ store by the Lord.”
There was only one way to handle Jeff Dutton. An open rebuke was invariably followed by a day of insolent idleness. Mrs. Ascott had heard him quarrel with Lavinia Trench in a manner to indicate that one of them, at least, had not forgotten their former state of social equality. The pointed ignoring of his familiar gossip usually proved efficacious. He followed his mistress to the loamy bed in the sheltered angle between the garage and the wall, where downy leaved vines and splintered lath lay in a hopeless tangle on the ground. A while they worked, side by side, the sullen silence broken only by the whirring of David’s saw. Judith’s fingers were verde and odorous, and the hem of her skirt was adorned with a batik pattern of grotesque figures in the harmonious hues of earth and vine. Nanny would scold. But what was the good of a garden, if one must only be a disinterested onlooker? Suddenly Dutton yelled:
“There! Grab ’er quick! This end—can’t you see?”
The next moment he offered profuse apology. But his mistress was ready for the emergency. It was necessary for him to go into the garage and cut another support to take the place of the one that had snapped.
“Better put this ’ere pad on the ground, under your right foot, while you hold ’er up. Them slippers is mighty thin. I won’t be gone a minute.”
III
Dutton’s minute was always a variable quantity, and this time it lengthened itself until the woman’s arms and shoulders ached, from the unwonted strain. But she was glad of the interval—glad that only she was forced to hear snatches of the conversation that took place in the shop at the other side of the wall. One of the voices was low and appealing, the other raucous with purposeful anger:
“I can’t see, my dear, why you want to go to Bromfield this summer, when you have all your plans made to take the trip to St. Paul on the boat. You have always refused to visit Bromfield.”
“That’s just it. You never want me to go anywhere—have any pleasure—or even a vacation when you see that the work is killing me. You gad around as much as you like. You’ve been away five times this spring.”
“I certainly don’t go for pleasure, my dear.”
“Oh, don’t ‘my dear’ me! I’m sick and tired of it. That’s all I ever get. You expect me to slave and stint myself and stay at home, so that you and the children can make a big showing. And I’m supposed to be happy and contented on your everlasting ‘my dears.’ I tell you, there’s got to be a change in this family.”
“Who is there in Bromfield that you want to see?”
“I should think I might want to see my brother. And a daughter might want to put flowers on her parents’ graves.”
“That isn’t it, Vine. Why don’t you tell me the truth? I would give you anything in my power, that would make you happy. It’s this underhanded way you have, that hurts me. I don’t care where you go or what you do, if you’ll only—”
At that moment Dutton came from the garage, to be greeted by a volley of questions and suggestions. Fortunately, as he worked, his deaf ear was turned towards David Trench’s shop. Scarcely had the last nail been driven when Mrs. Trench emerged from the building and strode triumphantly towards the back stoop. For her the universe was a straight line. Everything above, beneath and beside it had melted into oblivion. The line ended in a point on the map of New York, known to the initiate as Bromfield.