XVIII Sylvia
I
Throughout the months of May and June the battle had raged—Lavinia Trench’s battle, not with her family but with herself. She knew, as all those in her little world knew, that a visit to Bromfield was not the difficult thing she had made it. Times without number David had implored her to go with him especially when there was serious illness or death in one or the other of their families. And now that she had achieved her purpose, knowing all the while, somewhere in the depths of her, hope of conquest on a certain perfectly definite object, and had bent her tremendous energy in that direction—knowing all the while, somewhere in the depths of her, that the enemy lay entrenched in quite another quarter.
In those former struggles, in which she had invariably bent David to her will, she had rewarded him with a period of forced sweetness which he was glad to take in lieu of the comradeship he had long since ceased to hope for. It had been this way when they made the perilous move from Olive Hill, where he was doing remarkably well, working at a daily wage, to Springdale, where he must hazard all he had saved ... to give his wife the social advantage she could not find in a dirty mining town. But Lavinia had no instinct for society, derived no immediate satisfaction from such triumphs as had come to her. It appeared to David’s simple and always lucid mind that she created situations for the sheer purpose of annihilating them. In every crisis in their lives, he had owned in retrospect that Lavinia was right. Had he understood the situation, a frank discussion would have won him. It was her method of approach that seemed to him unnecessarily cruel.
She had, from childhood, viewed David Trench as an amiable yokel, to be blindfolded and led about by the hand. And now one sentence in his talk, that morning in the shop, rankled: “Who is it that you want to see in Bromfield?” She had been telling herself over and over again that there was no one in particular she wanted to see. Her essentially prudish mind shrank from the naked truth that stalked before her, in the dark hours of the night, with David peacefully sleeping at her side. But negation was not conquest. In vain she declared to her own soul that Calvin Stone was nothing to her. She could meet him without a tremor. She tried to picture him, old and scarred by life—shrinking from her gaze, because of the stain on his fair name. She saw him, instead, a debonair youth of three-and-twenty, the sort of fellow who would kiss a girl ... and argue about it afterward.
There had been periods, weeks and even months, when the foothills of her immediate environment had obscured that treeless mountain peak in her life—the irreparable injury she had suffered. But something always happened to bring her perfidious lover once more within her ken. Never so poignantly as when Mrs. Ascott unwittingly revealed the reason for Calvin’s hasty marriage. She had fancied such an explanation ... had been sure that the certainty of it would be anodyne for her deep hurt. Instead it had served only to tear open the old wound, to set it festering with the toxin of that other unstudied remark: “He afterward tried to get out of it.” Had not Calvin’s father foreshadowed this very contingency? Lettie’s husband might sicken of his bargain—might come back to his first love, to plead for her forgiveness and the boon of her restored favour.
She would keep this idea uppermost in her mind, when she went to Bromfield. It not only served to soothe her vanity, but it would be a whip with which to lash the man who had wronged her. No, she would not give him the satisfaction of thinking she regretted her own hasty marriage. She would make him believe she had been infinitely the gainer when she married David Trench. The idea was so preposterous that, given a less subjective sense of humour, she might have laughed at it. But David had been that kind of stalking horse before.
II
David leaned against the wall, his tired eyes resting fondly on the garden where his children had romped. He was telling Mrs. Ascott the origin of the summer house—that he had built as a surprise for his wife, the spring she went to visit Lary in Ithaca, his first year in college. In those days Sylvia was the honey-pot for a swarm of students, and an occasional mature man, and a folding tea table in an outdoor living-room covered with kudzu and crimson rambler was an added attraction. Lavinia joined them, her cheeks flushed, her dark eyes ablaze with animation.
“You are going to be compelled to get along without me for a few weeks, Mrs. Ascott. My husband is sick and tired of seeing me around, and he’s going to bundle me up and send me home to my own people. It’s the first trip I’ve had in years ... always tied down to home and my children. Is there anyone in Rochester you’d like to send a message to? I haven’t seen dear old New York state since I left there, twenty-eight years ago next November.”
“Why, Vine, I was just telling Mrs. Ascott about building the little summer house for you, when you went to see Lary.”
Lavinia Trench flushed, not the slow red that betokened deep wrath, but a light wave of crimson that swallowed up the hectic spots in her cheeks, that tinged the hollow of her temples and the taut skin of her high and slightly receding forehead. It was gone in an instant, leaving in its wash a strained look of embarrassment.
“I never think of that as a visit. I went in such a hurry—and then I didn’t have time to go over to Bromfield, because ... you wrote me that Sylvia had a cold and Robert had sprained his wrist. I never go away from home without something dreadful happening. I wonder what Sylvia will say when she gets my telegram to-night. I hope she won’t be frightened.”
“You are going to telegraph Sylvia? What for?”
“I want her to look after the children while I’m gone.”
“You aren’t taking them with you—after promising Eileen that she might spend the summer with her cousin, Alice Larimore?”
“A nice rest I would have—dragging two children around with me!”
“They don’t need to have their bottles fixed.” David smiled in spite of his perplexity. “I had counted on this summer—to break up the infatuation for young Marksley. I thought you agreed with me. It was your solution. You told me not to say anything about it until vacation, and that you would send Eileen away.”
David might have spared his breath. The telegram was already on the wire.
III
Sylvia Penrose came home in time for commencement. It was her first visit since the gold-lined catastrophe whereby she was shorn of the coveted “Mrs. Professor,” and she brought with her more pretty clothes than anyone in Springdale had dreamed of—outside a department store. Her father watched her uneasily, the first evening. He saw a marked change in her, and the quality of it disturbed him. Could a child of his acquire such a degree of cynical world-wisdom in a brief ten months? Had Sylvia changed, or was he seeing her for the first time, as she was?
David was not given to introspection. The chambers of his heart were filled with the ghosts of dreams and longings that had perished ... yet would not lie quiet in the graves to which his acquiescent mind had consigned them. One could always take refuge from the hurt of life in the tangible things that life had imposed. He took refuge, now, in his wife’s vivid charm, her spontaneous return to health and buoyancy. Barring a certain smugness, that had come to be an essential fibre of her mental woof, she was amazingly attractive.
“You might easily pass for Mrs. Penrose’s sister,” Judith exclaimed, astonished at the apparition of Lavinia in a cameo pink negligée with wide frills of cream lace. And, Lavinia, smarting under the lash of her daughter’s comments regarding the morning jacket—and the foolish old women who tried to prolong youth by such ill-considered devices—turned to preen herself before the mirror.
She had fully intended to prime Sylvia, with regard to Larimore and the dangerous widow; but that burst of spontaneous praise disarmed her. She did not, however, neglect to make plain her intentions in another quarter. Hal Marksley was to be treated with proper respect. It would not be a bad idea to have the engagement—the wedding, even—consummated before her return from Bromfield. Any one with a grain of sense must know that a fellow as popular and rich as Hal—with half the girls in town after him—would not stand such snubbing as he had received from the men of the household. He was of age ... and Eileen could easily pass herself off for eighteen or twenty if she did up her hair and went to Greenville where she was not known. Papa and Larimore were absolutely insane not to see that a girl with Eileen’s impetuous nature.... Mrs. Trench did not finish the sentence. She and Sylvia understood each other.
IV
After the train had gone the big house was unbearably lonely, reft of the all pervasive personality that dominated its moods of sunshine and gloom. Early Sunday afternoon David passed through the wicket gate and sought his neighbour in the summer house. One by one the other Trenches joined them. For a time Sylvia went about with her brother, examining old familiar objects, assuming charming attitudes, giving vent to laughter that rippled in measured cadence. Theodora watched her, wondering what kind of impression she was making. Sylvia was like mamma—always sure of herself. Lary and Eileen were like papa. And she—she wasn’t like anybody. Just a little remnant that had been patched together, out of the left-overs of the other children.
She came out of her musings to hear her father say: “Mrs. Ascott, you don’t know what it means to live with one person until that person becomes part of your very body. When Vine is away.... I do everything left-handed. It’s as if a piece of me was gone, here.” He slipped a hand under his left arm, and his eyes smiled mournfully. “I am always turning to look for her, and the vacancy makes me dizzy.”
How stupid to miss the first part of such a conversation! And now Lady Judith wouldn’t say anything in reply—because the others were coming for afternoon tea, with Nanny, an exaggerated cocoa girl in white cap and apron, bearing a steaming samovar and a wide range of accessories to suit the prejudice of those who preferred their Sunday afternoon tipple hot or cold.
“It’s so foolish for the Fourth to come on Sunday—and have to save up all your fire-crackers till to-morrow,” the child began disconsolately, choosing a macaroon from the embarrassing variety of small cakes in the silver basket. “Hal says the Governor can’t come; but there will be a better orator to spread the eagle in the stadium. He didn’t ask me to go with him and Eileen.”
“I thought all three of my daughters were going with me,” David pleaded, his eyes seeking Eileen’s. But Sylvia dispensed with argument:
“No, mamma said I was to take Theo to the stadium with us. There isn’t room for her in Hal’s little car. And besides, I know how I used to hate to have the younger children tagging after me, when I was having company. I’ve asked Dr. Schubert and Syd to join us, and they’ll come home for a spread, after the celebration. Mrs. Ascott, I hope you’ll come, too. I have already asked Hal. Syd has promised to help me with the serving. He ought to make some woman a good husband—the training I gave him when we were growing up.”