XXI The Cloud on the Horizon
I
That night Theodora wrote a long letter to her mother. It was devoted almost wholly to Lary’s triumph. The following week the Bromfield Sentinel heralded on its front page the news of Mr. Larimore Trench’s latest artistic success. The florid paragraph hinted of other successes. One must not infer that the designing of a New York millionaire’s country home was a novel experience to the brilliant young architect, whose parents were natives of Bromfield. The item ended with the announcement that Mrs. David Trench was a guest in the home of her brother, “the Honourable T. J. Larimore.”
“Whew! we’d better confiscate this thing before Lary sees it,” Eileen ejaculated. “Mamma always could pull the long bow; but she pretty near overshot herself this time. You’d think Lary was a corporation.”
“Would Sylvia be vexed?” Judith asked. Sylvia was out riding with Dr. Schubert when the garrulous sheet left the postman’s hand.
“Yes ... because it smacks of the small town. She hasn’t any better taste than mamma has. It wouldn’t jolt her the way it would Lary or papa. Lady Judith, I used to cringe and sweat blood when Hal said crass things before Lary. Now it doesn’t matter what my brother thinks. I want to shout Hal from the house-tops. I don’t care who knows that we love each other, and that we have broken all the silly shackles that our stodgy civilization thinks are so important. Papa dislikes him because he isn’t the Sunday school kind, and Lary says he’s crude and common. Well, just the way he is ... is exactly right for me. I’m no Dresden china shepherdess, myself. How would I feel, marrying a man who couldn’t stand for a little slang—or expressing your real feelings, now and then? With such a man as Lary or Syd Schubert, I’d be a fish out of water.”
“Are you quite sure you are a fish?” Judith asked searchingly. “Did it ever occur to you, my dear, that you have been in the water with Hal until you fancy yourself a fish of his kind? Aren’t you afraid that you’ll be tossed up on the bank some day, a little drowned bird?”
“No! No!” Eileen screamed, her cheeks blanching. “Don’t take all the glory, all the wonder out of it. Don’t you understand that I am free? You talk about slave-women. Men don’t make slaves of them. It is their own selfishness that chains them. I wish I could pour out my heart to you ... make you see it as I do. Not the sordid thing that love usually is—Sylvia’s love for Oliver, that pays for a swell apartment and a bundle of gaudy rags. I want to be free, and I want to show other women the light.”
“My dear, dear girl,” Mrs. Ascott cried in alarm, “you are only sixteen. You haven’t even the rudiments of the system you are trying to teach. Can’t you get your feet on solid ground and stay there until you are a few years older? I was wrong when I suggested water. You are up in the clouds. If I thought it would serve to deter you from this madness, Eileen, I would open for you the darkest chapter of my life.”
“I know ... already. I heard mamma telling papa that you were divorced—that you tried to get even with your husband by running away with another man. It was contemptible of me to listen; but I did it because I wanted to see how bad she would make it out.”
Judith Ascott’s face flamed.
“And papa was quiet a long time—and then he said that there were some people who could touch pitch and not be defiled. When he said that—it got me by the heart, and I made a little gurgling noise in my throat. I was sure they heard me. But mamma flared back at him so furiously that I was half way down the stairs before they came out of their room. That was several weeks ago—a few days after you told her. And I wondered how it would affect him—towards you.”
“And—”
“The next morning at breakfast, he said you were the purest, noblest woman he had met in years. And Theo and Lary and I all raised such a chorus of approval that mamma ran out to the kitchen to tell Drusilla that the waffles were tough.”
An arm stole around the girl’s waist. What had come over Judith Ascott, that she should care ... that David Trench’s approval should mean so much? But Eileen misunderstood. In a sudden burst of confidence, she whispered:
“Will you take care of the wedding ring, along with the other?”
“You are married!”
“No, but we are going to be, before Hal leaves for college. We finally decided ... last night. Then I am going to him as soon as he is settled in Brooklyn. Of course his mother must not know.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do this, you poor, infatuated child. Give Hal the advantage of a little perspective. Look at him when he comes home for the holidays. It isn’t a summer romance—or a drama, to be disposed of in the fourth act.”
“But what if he saw some girl in Brooklyn he liked better than me?”
“Then you couldn’t possibly hold him—if you were ten times married. That is just the danger. You and Hal will almost surely grow apart when you are removed from identical influences. A year from now you may detest him, and he is more than likely to lose interest in you.”
Eileen sprang up and ran stumbling from the room.
II
When she returned, an hour later, her eyes were red and swollen from crying. She went straight to the telephone and took down the receiver. She wanted Hal to come to Mrs. Ascott’s home at once. When the youth had yielded reluctant assent, she threw herself down on the window seat to wait.
“I am going to have an adjustment,” she cried passionately. “It can’t go on this way. I was so sure of my ground ... and every word you said was ... just one puncture after another. I could fairly feel the tires sagging under me. Once I was on the point of writing to mamma. She’s the only one who agrees with me about Hal. Even Sylvia has been throwing cold water on me, the last day or two. Says I could do better—and I ought to go around with the other boys to show him I don’t care. I won’t be a liar. I do care!”
When young Marksley came into Mrs. Ascott’s presence, there was a shamed droop to his shoulders and he was plainly embarrassed.
“Hal, I have told her everything,” Eileen began. “Now I want you to—”
Judith Ascott sprang to her feet, but the youth was already striving to cover his blunder by an avalanche of apology. The expression was out of his mouth before he had time to think. He was shocked that Eileen should betray a secret they had sworn to keep. He hadn’t meant to be rude. He was stunned by her treachery.
“Well, we aren’t married yet. I only told her we intended to be—and wanted her to witness the ceremony, before you leave for college.”
Hal Marksley’s chest collapsed in a sigh of relief.
“When we get ready to be married, Mrs. Ascott, we’ll talk it over with you. Now, Eileen, run home and get your motor bonnet. I have to drive to Olive Hill on an errand for father. I left my car around the corner.”
III
At the side door of the Trench home, the girl had a sharp tilt with her sister, who had come back from the ride in time to see—and interpret—the tear-stained face. Sylvia would write to her mother. She would not continue to sponsor a love affair for a girl who had no sense. She would not play chaperone at long range. If Hal had any breeding, he would invite her to go with them.
“Oh, that’s the rub!” Eileen sneered.
“No, that isn’t the rub—and I might have known you wouldn’t appreciate anything I tried to do for you. If you keep on, the way you’re going, you’ll have Hal so sick and tired of you that he’ll be glad to get out of reach of the telephone. I tried to make you a little indifferent to him—and got insolence for my pains. If you had a grain of policy, you wouldn’t let him see that you are daft about him. That’s no way to hold a man’s love. I kept Syd Schubert dangling at my belt for four years by letting him half way think I cared.”
“Yes, and you lost Tom Henderson by the same tactics. Tom wanted whole hog or none, and you didn’t get on to the fact till he’d got sick of you.”
“Don’t, for heaven’s sake, use such vulgar expressions. Hal is such a gentleman, I don’t see how he stands you. Eileen, I wish you would see that I am doing this for your own good—and to please mamma. I have had experience, and I know what works with a man, nine times out of ten. I’ll hold Oliver Penrose to the end of the world ... by keeping him guessing. Look at the way mamma has kept papa on his knees for nearly twenty-eight years.”
“You think that a fine thing?” the girl flared. “If you pattern your life after mamma’s, at her age you’ll be as hard and cruel—”
“You outrageous, you impudent—” Words failed. “How do you dare speak that way about your parents? And Theo’s almost as bad. At your age, I never dreamed of being disrespectful, or saying a word back when mamma reproved me.”
“Oh, Sylvia, come off! Mamma says she never talked back to her mother. And then she forgets, and tells the impudent things she used to say—and how her grandmother Larimore took her part against all the rest of the family. But there’s Hal, tooting his horn for me. I’ll ask him to invite you to ride with us some evening next week. I’m sure he’ll be charmed!”