XXIV One Way Out
I
Early Sunday morning Mrs. Trench came to the back door, brushed Nanny aside as if her redundant bulk had been a wisp of grass in the path, crossed the immaculate kitchen, and climbed the rear stairs. She knew that the mistress of Vine Cottage was having breakfast in her bedroom, and the ultimate degree of privacy was necessary. She was no longer the gentle Lavinia of those seven charmed weeks. All the softness had vanished from her countenance, and her voice was flinty as she spoke. There was no need of mincing words. Mrs. Ascott was in the secret, and she might as well know the worst. Eileen was guilty. There was no excuse and no help for it. She had confessed the whole thing to her father.
“I have been afraid from the first that she was in danger. She is too young to discriminate, and she was madly in love. Have you told her brother?”
“Yes. It was lucky for Larimore that that dog of a Hal Marksley was safe out of town. There would have been murder, and another scandal.”
“And her father?”
“David! He makes me sick. He sits and stares at the carpet as if he’d been turned to stone. Oh, why did I marry such a dolt! If he would only whip her—anything to show that he is a man! Mrs. Ascott, you are a woman of the world. You have had affairs of your own, and have got through them unscathed. Can’t you help me? Don’t you see that I am distracted?”
“You may count on me for anything I can do,” Judith told her coldly.
II
When the heavy Sunday dinner was over, and Drusilla had gone out for the afternoon, Lary and Theodora walked hand in hand to the shop behind the vegetable garden. A minute later, Judith saw the child flitting across the alley in the direction of the Stevens home. She knew that now Larimore Trench would come to her.
Her heart stood still and all her senses swam.
When, after an interminable period of waiting—how stupid the clock that measures our travail by its rigid tape of minutes!—the man stood before her, she saw that his face was white with grief and his hands shook.
“Are you willing to come to us? All the manhood has gone out of me. I can’t go through it alone.”
“Yes, Lary.” And they crossed the lawn together.
III
The library blinds were drawn and the room was hot and still. Eileen lay back in the chaise longue, her eyes half closed, her lips pouting surlily. Her father paced the floor, his blue eyes lost in shadow.
“Mrs. Ascott,” he began in a choked voice, “you know the pitiful thing that has come upon us. You have been a good neighbour, and we come to you for advice. We are simple people, and my wife feels that you....” He finished the sentence with his deep, appealing eyes. “I wanted to go to Mr. Marksley and insist that his son make restitution.”
“Yes!” Lavinia screamed, the remnant of her self-control tearing to tatters as she looked at her daughter, “and that idiot of a girl threatening to kill herself if we go a step.”
“I won’t be married to any man at the point of a gun—as long as there is a river in Springdale where people can be drowned.”
“It is a mortal sin to take your own life,” her father pleaded. “You couldn’t face your God with such a crime on your hands.”
“When it comes to a choice between facing God and you people—I’d take my chances with God any day. If I have committed the unpardonable sin, I don’t see how marrying Hal Marksley would make it any better.”
She sat bolt upright and her eyes blazed.
“What is right? What is sin? You would hound a woman to death because she has a child without being tied body and soul to a man she despises. Hal’s mother and father hate each other ... and look at their children. There isn’t one of them that’s fit to live. Look at us. We are another family of misfits. And why? Mamma hates papa, lets him follow her around like a hungry dog begging for a bone.”
“You insolent girl!” Lavinia gasped.
“You don’t know anything about love—and what it means to come into the world all warped and out of tune. Do you imagine that I am going to tie myself to a cad—let him be responsible for other children of mine? There isn’t any fidelity in a man who is born of hate. If you knew what a contemptible pup he is, you’d see why the river looks better to me.”
“You might have thought of that, before—” David offered gently.
“I didn’t know him till it was too late.” She relaxed ever so little. “We had talked it all over, and he had the most advanced ideas. But when it came to facing the music.... Bah! I despise a man who whimpers. He was afraid of his mother. I could have stood even that. But when he wanted to take me to Sutton, to a doctor he said was in the habit of helping those factory girls out of their scrapes ... I slapped him; I beat him with my two fists; I spit in his face. I told him that if he was not a man, I would take the consequences alone.”
She paused to gather breath, her cheeks burning, her gaze detached. She was living over again that monstrous cataclysm. “He tried to defend himself by saying I had no right to disgrace his family. Imagine! Disgrace Henry Marksley and Adelaide Nims! I told him I wasn’t going through life with murder on my soul.”
“I’m glad you told him that, daughter,” David said, his eyes warming.
Judith Ascott crossed the room and laid a hand protectingly on Eileen’s shoulder. “May I offer a solution? You have asked me to use my wits. I know of a case—not unlike this one—a young girl who made the same blunder. She had a married sister who had no child. Among all their friends, I am the only one who knows that the splendid little boy is not that sister’s child.”
“How—how was it managed?” Lavinia’s practical mind demanded.
“They went together to a sanitarium, where not even the superintendent knew which was the wife of the man whose name the baby was to bear. I should suggest sending at once for Sylvia. She and Eileen could—”
“Never work in the world!” Lavinia exploded. “Oliver detests children. He won’t let Sylvia have one of her own—even if she wanted it. And he’d leave her ... if he knew there was such a disgrace in the family.”
“Yes,” Eileen said with bitter scorn, “he was born in Salem, where they put scarlet letters on women who sin. I guess it’s the river for me.”
“There is another way,” Judith cried, defiant and exultant. “I can take the baby for my own. I will go away with you, until it’s over, and you can come back alone, with nobody to know—”
“You mean—” Lavinia Trench stood up, her eyes wild, her throat swelling—“you mean, marry Larimore and palm the child off as his?”
“That—if no other way can be found. We could go to New York, where the building of the Sanderson home would provide the necessary explanation. Eileen might take lessons from Professor Auersbach for several months. She could come home in a year. I would not return until a child in my arms would cause no remark.”
David moved to her side and pressed his lips reverently to her brow. “Daughter,” he murmured, his eyes overflowing.
IV
That evening Lary came to the summer house. There was a crescent moon and the air was heavy with the scent of flowers.
“I can’t let you make this sacrifice for me,” he began huskily.
“Sacrifice? Oh, my darling.... I have been so hungry for you. I could cry for joy that Eileen has opened the way.”
“Dear, my heart went cold when she said what she did about the children of hate. Are you willing to trust me?”
“You born of hate? Lary, Lary ... such love as your father’s ... the love that could survive twenty-eight years of starvation!”
The man gripped her hand until it hurt. Then he drew her into his arms and his cheek rested against hers. The young moon sank to sleep; the garden throbbed in the velvet darkness; a moon-flower burst its bonds, just above them, sending forth a shower of perfume.
“You are too wonderful,” he murmured. “Judith, I know the man that is in me. I have met him face to face. I saw him reflected in your eyes, there in the library. Now I shall never be alone. I have attained the unattainable.”