XXVI The Light Within
I
A little while before the expressman called for the trunks, Judith went for the last time through the wicket gate. She and Eileen had been packing all day, and she was weary to the verge of collapse. Theodora had hovered over her ever since she came from school, up in the attic where winter garments must be looked over, down in the pantry and cellar, where the Duttons were receiving orders for the temporary closing of Vine Cottage. Through it all she had been silent and unobtrusive, her face wearing an expression that well-nigh broke the heart of the woman who loved her. Only once did she offer speech:
“I guess it’s better for my mamma to get natural again—because—the other way she couldn’t have lived.”
The remedy that would work such magic once ought to be efficacious again. Lavinia’s altered attitude towards her husband was, beyond peradventure, the result of her visit in Bromfield. When Judith found opportunity, she asked:
“Do you think you will be coming to New York this fall? There will always be a guest room for you and father.”
“David can’t get away before spring, with the Marksley contract crowding him to the wall, and Larimore gone all the time. If he had any system about him, he wouldn’t let things crowd him that way. If I was a contractor—”
“Then, perhaps you will come alone, and stop off at Bromfield on the way home. Your visit there in July certainly gave you great benefit.”
“How much benefit—no one will ever know!” The black eyes snapped. “It almost paid for all that has happened since. To see some one that you thought was rich and prosperous—and find out that they have actually less than you have—” She stopped, and the even white teeth clicked. “I mean my brother Ted.” In crimson confusion she hurried to the window, where she stood dumbly contemplating the street. When she turned, it was to abuse Eileen so extravagantly that she became aware of the blunder she was making.
“Mrs. Ascott, you mustn’t listen to what I am saying,” she floundered.
“Won’t you call me Judith, now that I am no longer Mrs. Ascott?”
Mrs. Trench laughed foolishly.
“I forgot that you and Larimore were married last night. I’ll forget my own name if I have to live in this nightmare much longer.”
“Perhaps you can get it off your mind if you go to Bromfield for a few weeks. I am sure Dr. Schubert and Nanny will look after—”
“I never want to see Bromfield again.”
II
Judith put the puzzle aside and went home to dress for the train. At the station she kissed David and said, reassuringly:
“Don’t brood over it, father. Eileen will come through without a blemish.”
“If there is any one who can save her it is you. We had to get her away from her mother. Not that I blame my wife for this. She is the most conscientious woman I have ever known, the most positive in her convictions of morality. She has always set a good example for her children.”
Just then the engine whistled for the crossing below Springdale, and there was a hurrying to and fro on the platform, for the crashing wheels scarcely came to rest in the little college town. Judith was glad of the interruption. Were all good men blind? A moment later she was waving farewell from the rear Pullman, as David stood beside the track, Theodora’s hand clasped in his.
III
On Saturday Eileen had her first glimpse of the Hudson. That evening the Ramsays called, and then ... Aladdin’s lamp was relegated to the attic along with the other wonders that had survived their day of glory. New York was the real fairy land. From the hippopotamus in the Bronx to the hippocampus in Battery Park, the girl saw it all. Sometimes with Judith, more often with Laura Ramsay or her mother, she went from elevated to subway, from the amusing little cross-town horse-cars that were more primitive even than Springdale, to the thrilling taxicab and the Fifth Avenue bus, with a zest that whetted the jaded appetites of the women for whom the city had long since lost its novelty.
After two weeks she decided that she had taken in all the impressions she could hold, and settled down to her music in earnest. There were daily letters from her father, empty because of that fullness he dared not express. Twice a week Theodora wrote—exhaustive discourses on the city, which her imagination rendered more real than reality itself. There were letters, long or brief, to Lary from Lavinia, with never a mention of Eileen. The girl wrote four times to her mother, and then her spirit revolted.
“She can go to grass before I’ll ever know she’s on earth. I suppose she’s afraid of contaminating herself. I’d like to tell her there are some thinking people—people whose opinions count—who don’t consider it half as immoral to go to the devil with the man you believe you love—as it is to bear six children for the man you know you hate.”
“Dearest, don’t do it,” Judith pleaded. “You must not stir up all that rancour in your soul. Remember what you are stamping on the mind and character of the child I am going to call my own. You owe it to me—not to make my burden too hard. And, Eileen, your mother is no more responsible for her limitations than you are for yours. She was brought up to a belief that there is something supernatural in a marriage certificate. Morality is wholly a matter of external forms. And she has the clear advantage of standing with the majority.”
“Yes, she always grabs a front seat in the bandwagon. If it ever gets popular to run off with some other woman’s husband—you’ll find her in the procession. No! you won’t find her. She’s too set in her ideas for that. But after the way she cottoned to Mrs. Nims—when it suited her purpose—and other swells in Springdale—” She choked, her face growing scarlet. “I hope I’ll never be intolerant.”
Judith sensed the thought that had flared up in the girl’s mind, from which she had retrieved herself in a swift change of subject. Ignoring Mrs. Trench’s reason for that first neighbourly call on Adelaide Nims, after her return from Bromfield, she fell back on the nature of toleration.
“My dear, don’t you know that you are just as intolerant of your mother as she is of you—that you are like her, when you justify to yourself the thing you want to do—and spare your lacerated feelings, when things go wrong, by finding flaws to pick in some other person’s conduct?”
Eileen hung her head. From infancy she had been branded as a Trench. And now it shamed her to be told that she resembled her mother, her mother in whom she could see nothing but bourgeois complacence. After a moment she said:
“You always get the nub of it, Judith. How can you see the inside of things so quick? I can work a thing out, when once I get a good grip on an idea. I guess I’m like mamma there, too. Only—Lary says you have to be careful what ideas you give her—because she’s like as not to apply them upside down. I suppose there’s only one thing for me to do. I’ll have to take myself apart and see what my inner works are like. You shan’t have any such vixen as I was, to take care of. I clawed Dr. Schubert in the eye before I was an hour old. It wasn’t an accident, either. I was just naturally vicious. It was because mamma had put in a whole winter hating me and papa and the fool Creator who put all the burden of bearing children on the wife. At least I haven’t any such feeling as that. I don’t even blame—” Her cheeks crimsoned again. “I don’t blame any one but myself.”
There were other serious talks, touching the deep hidden things of life; but as the autumn passed these became more and more impersonal. Once a week Eileen went to visit the Ramsays at Rye, usually on Saturday when she could spend the night, and Laura’s mother saw to it that the violin was never left at home. In the suburban town, young Mrs. Winthrop was an immediate social success.