XXXIX Lavinia
I
It was the largest funeral Springdale had ever seen. Lavinia reflected, with grim pride, that not even President Henderson had called forth so many or such magnificent floral tributes. Dr. Clarkson conducted the simple service and the Conservatory Quartette sang the old sweet songs that David loved. With uncovered heads his townsmen stood by while his tired body sank to rest. Then life went on as before.
II
Lavinia and Theodora were alone in the big house with Drusilla. Lary thought it absurd for them to occupy so much room. He would be going to New York in the early fall, now that Springdale had nothing to hold him. His mother might as well return to Vine Cottage. She had built the great Colonial house in order to make a propitious marriage for Sylvia. A similar need would never confront her.
“Move into this little place? Indeed I shall do nothing of the sort. In fact, I have made up my mind to go back to Bromfield.”
“Bromfield?” The tone carried something dangerously like a sneer.
“The town was good enough for your grandparents,” his mother retorted hotly. “I won’t have a relative left here but Eileen, and she will certainly never be any comfort to me. It’s a shame, the way she could forget her father in less than a month. She acts as if Dr. Schubert were her own father. I don’t believe she has shed a tear. No, I wouldn’t stop a day in Springdale for that ungrateful girl.”
“But your friends of a lifetime are here.”
“You can make new friends in New York. Why shouldn’t I? You think of me as an old woman, Larimore. I don’t like it. The day has gone by when a woman of fifty has to sit in the chimney-corner. I have written to Ted, telling him that I want to buy back the old home. You shall remodel it for me. That would be a work you could take pride in—the house your great-grandfather built.”
III
When Lavinia and Judith were alone, the real purpose of the former’s early morning call revealed itself:
“I want you to tell me how far you can hold a person to a promise—a voluntary promise, written on paper and signed.”
“It depends—” Judith eyed her narrowly—“on the nature of the one who makes the promise. I wouldn’t give a fig for all the contracts that ink and paper could record, if there were no volition—”
“Yes, but I am sure—that is, I think I have a right to demand....” She swallowed hard and a hunted look invaded the black eyes. “Would it be all right for me to—to ask for some satisfaction, some decision? You can’t let things go on in uncertainty. You have to come to an understanding. I—that is, I don’t think my brother has treated me right. Would you send the letter?”
“Use your own judgment, mother. You know what a wretched failure I made of my former attempts to advise you.”
“No, Judith, that was what I wanted to say to you. I have thought it all out, and have come to the conclusion that—that I had to do everything just as it came about. Oh, I don’t know how to tell you—but I begin to see how good comes out of evil—how I had to suffer to gain my happiness.”
At the door she turned, to ask, as if she were consulting a sorceress: “Would you advise me to write the letter—a very plain one?”
“Suspense is deadly. I should relieve my mind, at any cost,” her daughter-in-law said dryly. It was Lavinia Trench’s self-justification, the mind that could mould the universe into a pedestal for the support of her righteousness. It would be this way to the end. Nothing would ever change her. David was dead, and a letter of condolence had come from Calvin Stone, a letter that all the world might read. In all likelihood there had been no other word from him, since Lavinia was free ... to make uncomfortable demands.
She went home and wrote. With her own hands she carried the letter to the office, to insure delivery. It had occurred to her to register it ... her feet tugging to free themselves from the quicksand of doubt that spread all around her. But Drusilla or Larimore might take the receipt from the postman’s hand. Besides, it would be a confession of the fear that was in her. She must not act as if there were any question of her right, in this matter. To Lavinia it was still “this matter.” She did not name it, even to herself.
IV
Six tortured days she waited, and then the response came. Theodora ran in terror to Judith, her black eyes wide, her cheeks ashen.
“What is it, precious? Don’t stand there shaking like that.”
“It’s my mamma, and she’s—I think she’s gone crazy.”
“Because of something—a letter that came a few minutes ago?” She had the child in her arms, soothing her with gentle caresses.
“Oh, Sister Judith, what could my uncle write that would make anyone as furious as that? Last night she couldn’t sleep—because she said our whole life depended on the letter she was looking for. She made me come and get in bed with her, and she told me about Bromfield till I fell asleep in her arms.”
“And your uncle refused to let her have the old home?”
“I don’t know. I was up on the third floor with Drusilla, and all at once I knew that I was needed down stairs. When I was half way down the hall—there stood my mamma like a statue. She didn’t see me, any more than if I’d been a spook without any body. And all at once she began running back and forth and tearing the letter to bits. And then she threw them on the floor and stamped on them. She didn’t speak one single word. That was the awful part—to be as mad as that, and take it out in just jumping up and down!”
“Stay here, dearie. Or, no—” after a moment’s thought—“I want you to go and spend the day with Eileen. Don’t tell her about the letter. Dutton can drive you over in the car. You won’t need a hat.”
V
Judith surmised that Lavinia would not miss the child. For an hour there was no sign of life in the big house. Then the widow emerged clad in all her weeds. From the florist’s shop, at the corner, she returned with a great cornucopia. It was evident that her destination was the cemetery, and that she intended to walk. For Lavinia Trench, on a steamy August day, such a walk was nothing short of a penance.
Noon went by ... one, two o’clock ... and she came staggering up the steps, and into the cool living-room of Judith Trench’s home. Without a word she sank into the nearest chair and drew aside the crêpe veil, revealing a countenance from which every vestige of youth had been erased. With the toe of her small shoe she began to trace the winding pattern of the Oriental rug, her lips set hard together.
“Take off your hat, mother. You don’t want that hot veil around your neck.”
“Yes, I’ll take it off. I don’t intend ever to wear the thing again. If it isn’t in your heart—crêpe veils and flowers on graves won’t put it there. Oh, my God in heaven, why did David have to die—at such a time? What right had he to die—and expose me to such an insult?”
She had hurled the mourning hat from her, and sat staring at her moist shaking hands. Then came the reaction, a flood of colour, not scarlet but dull raspberry, that spread over neck, cheek and brow. Stiffening in her chair, she cried:
“It was you who did it, Judith Ascott, every bit of it.”
“I did what?” Judith’s eyes blazed with sudden anger. No, she would no longer palliate ... spare this woman, who had always contrived to shift responsibility to shoulders less blameworthy than her own, who had taken the best she could snatch from life, giving not even decent gratitude in return.
“You said that Sydney married Eileen and made her happy, because she didn’t resist the temptation to do wrong.”
“Oh, how monstrous!”
“Well, I hope you aren’t going to deny that you told me, point-blank, that nothing but a broken axle prevented you from being untrue to your husband. Was it my fault that the axle didn’t break for me?” She talked wildly, her thin neck drawn and throbbing.
“I blundered horribly when I said those things to you. I thought you were a woman who could handle an abstract idea. I didn’t know that everything I said must necessarily have a personal application. If I had understood why you were unhappy ... if you had told me the truth, instead of leaving me to guess it, after the mischief was done—”
“I ought to have told you—told such a thing to a stranger ... when I never more than half admitted it to myself?”
“No, I am sure you couldn’t have told me. It is just the awful fatality, that I should have put weapons into your hand that would wound you—the very knives that removed the false growth from Eileen’s spirit.”
“Yes, and if the cancer is deep inside—if it grows out of your heart ... the more you cut it away, the stronger it grows. God knows, I tried to tear it out by the roots. I tried three times to hate—”
VI
Judith drew near and laid a hand on the frantic woman’s arm.
“Mother, it is the saddest case I have ever known. If I assure you of my pity and my earnest wish to help you ... for Lary’s sake, and Theo’s,” Judith raised a hand that checked the bitter outburst, “will you talk to me with absolute frankness? You can’t bear this hideous thing alone. You can’t take it to your daughter.”
“Sylvia! I would as soon put my hand in the fire, and expect not to be burned. She would throw me out of her house, as an abandoned woman. She is hard and selfish and cruel. I don’t know where she gets such a nature.”
“We won’t talk of Sylvia now.”
“No, I hope I’ll never see her again. And ... Judith ... I am going to tell you ... from the beginning. You know already—the worst of it. David knew, the night before he died. That’s why I had to run away, when I tried to lay the roses on his grave. It made me wild with rage ... to know he was pitying me.”
She rocked to and fro a moment, as if to settle the sequence of her story. Then her eyes blazed with a challenging light.
“You are a cold woman. You can sit there and weigh me ... like a pound of steak. You never knew what it was to want something with your whole mind and body and soul. You are not capable of a passion that would burn you to a cinder. There are not many women with as deep a nature as mine. It began when I was fourteen—a plain little thing like Theo is, now. The night of Edith Trench’s Hallowe’en party—and David begged his sister to invite me. All the others were grown, nearly. I happened to be standing in a dark corner, under some mistletoe, and Calvin Stone tiptoed up behind me and grabbed me in his arms and kissed me.
“That night I couldn’t sleep ... nor the next one. Everything was changed. For two years, I used to almost die when I saw him out with the older girls. Then he went away to Buffalo, to business college, and I began to grow pretty. It’s a way we have in my father’s family. When he came home, he fairly swept me off my feet. If David had ever made love to me the way Calvin did— The room would swim before my eyes when he kissed me. He wanted me to marry him right away. But in Bromfield that would have made a scandal. A girl didn’t dare to seem too anxious.
“After about a year he began to cool off. I waited two years more, and then I married David. I may as well tell you why. Calvin went to Rochester and married that Fournier girl. She made him marry her. Thank goodness, I was safe in Olive Hill before they let it out that they were married. But the truth has leaked out at last. It always does, no matter how smart you think you are in concealing it.”
She stopped. This was not what she wanted to say—or believe. A deep nausea overcame her. Eileen’s secret ... her own! But no, she was making confession. It would not go any further, if she told Judith all ... to the last wicked detail.
“Ellen thought all along that I married David for spite; but she doesn’t know that I never got over loving Calvin Stone. When I was first married I used to lie awake nights, thinking of the time when David and Lettie would both be dead, and I could have the man I wanted. I forced David to make good, so that I could taunt Calvin. After he moved back to Bromfield—when his father broke down, and he had to take charge of the bank—Ellen and Lettie were friends. That way, I learned a good deal about them. I saved all her letters that mentioned Calvin. The others I put in the fire, as soon as David had read them. The bundle I want buried with me. It was reading them over and over that made me the woman I am now.”
“Mother, can’t you go home and burn them—blot this hateful thing from your mind—now when your heart is soft because of father?”
“David Trench! He doesn’t count, one way or the other. David was never anything but a makeshift in my life. If he had abused me, instead of giving me all that affection, it wouldn’t have been so bad. I didn’t want his love, and I despised him because he could go on loving me ... the way I treated him. I hated my children, because he was their father. After they came, I loved them for what I could see of myself in them. Isabel was so like her father that it was comical—and I could hardly bear to touch her. Judith, think of being a wife for almost thirty years to a man you hated! You couldn’t have gone through it.”
“No, I would have run away.”
“But I hadn’t any place to run to. I was caught, like a hungry rat in a trap. I could look out through the bars and see all the things I wanted, beyond my reach. When I did drag something inside, it turned out to be different from what I expected. When we celebrated our silver wedding, the minister told how we were the ideal couple, that God had joined together in our cradles. It was the vilest mockery. But David was so proud.”
“And you never saw his worth—never responded to his tenderness?”
“Not until I came home from Bromfield, two years ago. That was the only time David and I came together, in all those years. I never knew how handsome he was until I had been looking at Calvin every day for a month. And his appearance wasn’t all of it. I had made up my mind, while I was still at Ellen’s, that I was going to treat David different. You couldn’t help seeing that I had all the best of the bargain. The house Calvin built, ten years ago, is no comparison to mine. And he had to mortgage it to the limit, when his son got into trouble. Lately he sold it, to keep from losing it outright. That was when I wrote him that I would buy back the old house from my brother. But that’s ... I’ll come to that, later on. All those years I had been thinking of David as a poor carpenter, and Calvin as a banker, in fine society. And when I found out that he didn’t have near as much as I had—”
“I see how you found your deep satisfaction.”
“No, you don’t. It wasn’t just the money, and David’s position in Springdale—on the Board of Trustees, and all that. I got my real triumph after I started for home. I had snubbed Calvin and tormented him in every way I could. I wasn’t going to let him think I went to Bromfield on his account. Besides, I wanted to hurt him, for the way he had treated me. I thought I would take it out on him, and that would end it. If I had been trying to win him, I couldn’t have used better tactics.
“I was on the train and we were pulling out of Rochester when he came walking in the Pullman. At first he pretended to be surprised. Said he was going to Buffalo on business. After a while he owned up that he had come ... because he wanted to be alone with me. He told me that his life had been hell on earth, and he was glad when Lettie died. He even said that if David should die, he would go to the end of the world to compel me to marry him.”
“The boor!”
Lavinia ignored the comment. Hot lava was pouring from the crater of her wretchedness, lava long pent up, and such flimsy obstacles as her daughter-in-law’s disgust were swept away unnoticed in its stream.
“I told him he wasn’t fit for David Trench to wipe his feet on. I didn’t mean it ... but I talk that way when I am beside myself. When I repulsed David, he would look hurt and walk away. But it only made Calvin more determined. He said he would lie down and let me wipe my feet on him. And then he said something sneering about ‘Dave Trench.’ I flew into a rage—and he said I always was a beauty when I was angry. Afterwards he almost cried when he begged me to show some little spark of affection for him. He was always that way ... wanted what he thought he couldn’t get. I see the whole thing now, as plain as day. It is easy to see things, when it’s too late. If the minister hadn’t preached that sermon about helping to redeem sinners by making them suffer, and you hadn’t told me all that other ... about it being worse to want to sin than to come right out and do the thing you wanted....”
Judith shifted uneasily in her chair. Her own indictment was surely on the way. She had no choice but to see the play through, to the final curtain.
“He began writing to me, on one pretext or another. I didn’t answer more than half of his letters. And the meaner I treated him, the more devoted he grew. All that time I was falling in love with David—and I didn’t hesitate to tell Calvin so. It seemed to make him wild. The very day I found out about Eileen, I had had a letter from him that I was ashamed to read, in my own room. I believe that letter would have finished him for me ... if it hadn’t been for Eileen.
“When he heard about Larimore’s marriage, he wrote again—and asked me to forgive him for writing the other letter. But he said his love for me drove him to it. And at the same time, David was acting like a paralytic old woman—just crushed by what Eileen had done. I couldn’t help seeing the difference. I knew what Calvin would have done, if he had had a daughter act that way. He would have put his son in jail, if it hadn’t been for Lettie.”
“You needed a masterful man. David was too gentle....”
“He never was any match for me ... in any way. If I hadn’t snapped him up, the night after Mr. Stone told me that Calvin was married....” She shook herself, as if to free her body from some insidious lethargy that was creeping over her.
“While you and Larimore were in Europe, it got to be like a continued story in a magazine. I kept wondering what would happen next. I had cut loose from David, and I couldn’t keep my mind off of Calvin. After you came home with Eileen, and I had the long talk with you, the story took a different turn. Still ... I don’t believe anything would have come of it if Calvin hadn’t had to take a business trip to Chicago. He wrote, in a kind of joking way, that if I would run up there and spend a few days with him, David would divorce me and we could be married at once. That was last April. I wrote back that I wouldn’t think of such a thing—and that men didn’t marry the women who forgot their morals—except at the point of a gun. He answered, with a kind of marriage compact—no matter what might come up—he would marry me as soon as I was free. He had to go to Chicago again in July. I told him I would see him in Sylvia’s home, on his way out, and we could talk things over, and come to an understanding. It was all Larimore’s fault that the whole thing turned out wrong.”
“How Lary’s fault?”
“You know he wouldn’t let me start in time to catch Calvin in Detroit. Then I planned to go by way of Chicago, and see him between trains. But Larimore insisted on getting the ticket direct. There was only one thing for me to do. I wired Calvin, and sent a special letter to Sylvia, saying I wouldn’t be in Detroit until Tuesday noon. I planned to get into Chicago early Monday morning, and go back to Detroit that night. I wrote the letter to David while I was waiting at the station, Sunday afternoon. The rest of it—after Calvin met me—is like a dream, a miserable dream. So much has happened since then.
“That evening he made me miss my train. After I had been with him a while, I was limp as a rag in his hands. He always had that way with women. I didn’t want to go. All the years of my misery had dissolved. I was like a starved person at a banquet ... seventeen again, and Calvin acting like a boy out of school. But the second day he began to change. He told me to quit acting like an old fool—said it wasn’t becoming in people of our age. If David had ever said anything like that to me—” Her hands worked convulsively and the teeth gave forth a sharp, gritting sound. “I tried to be the way Calvin wanted me, and everything I did was wrong. Once I flared up, and he told me to cut that out—that it was because of my vile temper that he didn’t marry me thirty years ago.”
“And you are going to discipline yourself, mother, so that after your year of mourning you can marry him and be happy?”
“Marry him!” A shrill laugh burst from Lavinia’s lips. “Marry him! He was married last Saturday to a rich widow in Rochester. That isn’t the worst of it. I had written him the plainest kind of letter—about the house we would remodel—and the contract he had sent me in April. They read it together. They are laughing at me now. God, I can’t stand it! To have them gloat over me! I could tear my heart out and stamp on it. I could curse. I could spit in the face of the God that made me. Why did you advise me to write the letter? It was you—you—”
She had leaped from her chair, her face livid, her arms writhing. Judith tried to speak. Her tongue was paralysed. She had looked into the soul of the woman who bore Larimore Trench, and the sight turned her sick with horror. Then a piercing scream, a startled cry, another scream, and Lavinia crumpled down in her chair, clasping her hands to her right side, shrieking and moaning by turns.
“Mother, what has happened to you? Let me send for a doctor.”
“No, no, don’t leave me!” A long wail of anguish indescribable—and she put forth a restraining hand. “Don’t you know what has happened to me? Can’t you see that I am dying? Dr. Schubert told me two years ago that there was danger. I didn’t believe him....”
She choked back another cry of pain, cringing until her right cheek almost touched her knee. Then she straightened herself and went on, through set teeth:
“You will take Theo, Judith, and keep her for your own? I wouldn’t want Sylvia to have her. You won’t let her—miss the path?”
“I will give her the best I have, mother. I know what you mean.” She stopped speaking, fascinated by the tinge of green that crept slowly up the stricken woman’s cheeks. The same dull green was advancing along the arms, where the black sleeves were drawn up. Lavinia saw it, too. She knew the portent. Once before, she had seen that wave of green that moved with deadly precision beneath the skin.
“It’s the gall. It has burst. My grandmother died that way. She flew into a rage—after the doctor warned her not to. I taste it, now ... bitter ... in my throat....” She coughed spasmodically, and closed her eyes.
VII
Judith ran to the telephone. She told Lary that his mother had fainted. To Eileen she said bluntly: “Mother is dying. Send one of the doctors.”
Eileen called a dozen numbers before she located either Sydney or his father. Then she left her little sister in Nanny’s care and hurried to Vine Cottage.
When the old family physician reached the house, Lavinia Trench had passed beyond human aid. He drew Judith into the breakfast room and asked, unsteadily:
“Was there a violent outburst? Grief wouldn’t account for it ... nor remorse.”
The woman nodded, her throat swelling.
“Don’t tell Lary. He need not know. He wouldn’t understand. Women are so different, Dr. Schubert. I wouldn’t want Lary to despise his mother. She wasn’t wholly to blame—that the frost came too late.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.