XXIX The Truth that is Clean
I
The winter wore away. Larimore Trench was too deeply occupied to give much time to his small family. “Success had come to him unsought: not the success he had hoped for or desired. Griffith Ramsay opened the way when, as toast-master at a convention banquet, he introduced Lary as Consulting Architect—a title the opulent New Yorker took seriously. And it was Ramsay who looked after the contracts, stipulating enormous fees for the service Lary would have given gratuitously, had he been left to his own devices.
“I feel like a robber,” he told Judith when he handed her a check in four figures—compensation for work that had actually consumed only a few hours of his time. “You know, I met the man at a stag dinner, early in December, and took a real liking to him. He had an option on a place, and he asked me to go out and look at it. It was one of the worst atrocities I ever saw—and I didn’t mince words with him. It was such a bargain that he could afford to spend a little money on drastic changes—and I told him what to do. I have often given that kind of advice to a friend. I wouldn’t think of sending in a bill.”
“And it hurts your pride, to be selling your taste.”
Lary looked at her, a light dawning in his limpid brown eyes.
“You are the most remarkable woman in the world. You have the insight of a sage ... and the intuition of a poet. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. And in a second you put your finger on the tender spot. It is precisely the feeling I had the first time an editor sent me a check for a poem. You don’t sell things that come out of your soul. To take money for them is like rubbing the bloom from the grape. It leaves your soul shiny and bare.”
“But, Lary, an artist takes money for his pictures. It is bad for his art if he lives by any other means. The painter who has no need to work is almost sure to go stale in a few years. If you had been born when Greece was at the climax of her glory—”
“I would have been an artisan—taking wages for my work, like Apollodorus and Praxiteles—with no more social opportunity and aspiration than an upper servant,” Lary retorted, laughing whimsically. “The Greeks had no illusions about art. It was as closely knit with the kitchen as with the temple. This idea that artists are fit associates for millionaires—that is, for the aristocracy—is purely a figment of modern times. My repugnance for money is not the result of my classical training. It was burned into my mind by the gruelling conflict of opinions between my father and mother. My father and I were born to an age that knows only the money standard. The world—and my mother—are not to blame, if he and I are out of joint with the times.”
“But you won’t let it hurt you, Lary ... let it embitter you?”
“No, sweetheart. I’ll make a joke of it. I’ll tell Ramsay to double his infamous bills.” And Larimore Trench went forth to rob another rich man.
II
Later in the day Laura came to the apartment. It was a dreary February morning and the outlook from the front windows was bleak and cheerless. Eileen had sat for an hour contemplating the waste of sullen water, and Judith had let her alone. She was thinking things out. She would come to her sister for help when she needed it. At times the older woman could follow her thought process by an intuition that was almost uncanny. This morning not a glimmer of light came through. Scarcely had Mrs. Ramsay disposed of her furs and selected her favourite rocker when the girl began, her face whiter than usual and her lips compressed:
“Judith, I am going to tell her. I can’t go on feeling like a dirty sneak.”
“You—what, Eileen?” Laura asked, her hazel eyes opening in wonder.
“May I, Judith? You know what I mean.”
“If you feel that it is right, dear. You know how it looks to you.”
“Then here goes! Mrs. Ramsay, you and your husband have been perfectly splendid to me—and I owe it to you, not to have you go on this way any longer. As far as your mother is concerned—she’s been a darling; but I’ve paid that with my violin. I don’t need to tell her. But I do need to tell you that I am not Mrs. Winthrop, and my husband didn’t drown in that Alaska steamship disaster. I am Eileen Trench—and I never had a husband....” She set her teeth hard, then went on heroically: “There won’t be any name for the baby that comes, the first of May.”
“Eileen, are you mad! Judith, what has come over the girl?”
“No. It’s just cold facts. I’m not twenty years. I’ll be seventeen, the last of March. Long before I was sixteen I was crazy mad in love with a man. It was mostly my fault—that he wasn’t the hero I made him out, I mean. We were engaged and we talked things over—things that aren’t safe for a girl and a man to talk about before they are married. I don’t need to tell you the rest.”
“And the contemptible cur deserted you?”
“Not exactly ... deserted. When we found out, he said at first that he would be loyal, and would marry me after he got through with college. To save my reputation, he wanted me to commit murder.”
“What did you say to him? How did you answer the cad?”
“I blacked his eye.”
The words fell cold and mirthless.
“I was going to kill myself, but Judith wouldn’t let me. She married Lary, so that they could take—”
Laura Ramsay’s usually placid face took on an expression of intense emotion. She rose to her feet and walked hurriedly to the window.
“If you are going to cut me off—well, that’s all the more reason why I had to tell you,” Eileen said, following her. “It’s what I have to expect.”
“But I don’t intend to cut you off, child. Judith, why couldn’t I do for her what I did in Nelka’s case? Especially if it turns out to be a little girl. Junior is wild for a sister—and it’s the only way I can hope to get one for him. And of course I’d be game, if it were another boy. Won’t you, Judith? I’m sure Griff would approve. Why—why, Eileen, what is the matter?”
The girl had flung herself on her knees, her face in Judith’s lap, her slender body shaken with sobs. When the paroxysm had passed, she slipped to the floor and sat looking from one to the other with a wry smile.
“There is only one stumbling block in the way, Mrs. Ramsay—and that’s me. Judith and I are going to the sanitarium, the middle of April. After the baby comes, I am to hand it over to her and forget about it. Why, I can’t. I croon over it every night, in my dreams. When I’m wide awake, I see him, a splendid man, thrilling audiences with his violin. Wouldn’t I lose my head, some day—go raving mad and tell the whole thing?”
“All the more reason why it should be in the nursery, out at Rye, where you wouldn’t see it. Boy or girl, you must let me have it. The child will be a musical genius,” Laura cried, her eyes beaming with expectant mother-pride.
III
That night Judith talked it over with Lary. She had known, all along, that the thought of this child, with the Marksley brand, filled him with dread. The following day Laura came again, with a whole chest of dainty things. She and her sister had made them before Junior’s coming, and he was such a robust baby that they were outgrown before they had been worn. Griff was as eager as she.
Gradually, as the weeks passed, Judith divorced herself from the thought of the child. Had she a right, when the Ramsays offered sanctuary to the nameless waif—especially in view of Eileen’s preternatural mother-love, and the great loneliness that had been Lary’s, before her coming? There might some day be a child of her own. Her homesickness for Theodora gave her pause—and Theodora had not twined tendrils of helplessness around her heart. Yes, it was best to let Laura have the baby....