XXXVI Consummation
I
A brief, unsatisfactory letter came Monday noon, while David was having luncheon at Vine Cottage. It was written on Pullman paper, in a loose scrawl. The train was four hours late, and of course there was no one at the station to meet her. But then, she had not expected to be met. Everything would be all right, she was sure. It was frightfully hot in Detroit. She would not write again until Tuesday evening, since she and Sylvia would be up to the ears in housecleaning.
“I can’t, somehow, feel that things are right,” David said, returning the envelope to his pocket and drawing out another. “Vine acted so strange while we were waiting in the station. I thought I ought to go along to take care of her—but this work in the office is so pressing—and I’m just compelled to go to Jacksonville for part of the week. I told her, if she needed me....” He halted, his eyes receding. “She flared out at me so fiercely that I didn’t say another word. That’s where I ought to have been firm. But I never could understand your mother, Lary.”
“None of us does, papa. What is the other letter?”
“It’s from Sylvia. I found it at the office.” Larimore read aloud:
“Dear Papa:
“I’m writing in a hurry, so that you can do me a favour. Mamma’s special has just arrived, saying she can’t reach Detroit until Tuesday noon—that you and Lary have upset all her plans. Well, now, please, please, PLEASE upset them some more. Not that I don’t want her to visit me; but it is terribly inconvenient now. The place is torn up with painters and paper-hangers. The weather is a fright—and Oliver cross as a bear. Mamma says she must be here to help me. But you know how I hate to have her around when I have anything important to do. If you can induce her to wait a week—really, I’m afraid Oliver won’t be civil to her, in his present mood—you’ll do her and us a big service.
“Your affectionate Daughter,
Sylvia.”
II
Four days of agonized suspense, during which—at Lary’s urgent request—David abstained from replying to either of the letters ... and Lavinia Trench came home. She walked into the house, a tottering old woman. Theo and her father were in the dining-room, trying to choke down Drusilla’s tempting dinner, and they started from the table as if an apparition from the dead had confronted them. She was dusty and disheveled. The close travelling hat hung limp over one eye, and through the greenish-gray of her cheeks the bones were modelled remorselessly.
“What—what has happened to you, Vine? Have you been in a wreck?”
“A wreck? Oh, yes, a wreck. Everything is a wreck.”
She sank into a chair and sat staring at the floor. After a moment she collected herself to ask: “Has Sylvia written?” And then: “What has Sylvia written?”
“Nothing—except the letter she sent before you got there. She wanted you to wait until she was through with her housecleaning—”
“I know all about that! David Trench, if you ever speak to that unprincipled girl, I’ll....” Lavinia glared, her heart pounding visibly. “She ... I might have known what to expect, after the letter she wrote when Syd and Eileen were married. She’s worse than Eileen, a hundred times worse. She’s capable—of lying—about her own mother. She’ll try to lie out of this thing. You can’t depend on a word she says. And Oliver’s as unprincipled as she is.”
In times of stress it had always been a source of relief to Lavinia to talk—to abuse some one. More often than not, David was the victim. Now she was hardly conscious of his presence. Theodora she did not see at all. She was sunk in the morass of her own misery, a misery so devastating that her worst enemy must have pitied her.
“Was Sylvia unkind to you?”
“Unkind? I like the way you pick your words!”
“I’m so sorry, Vine. You must make allowances for the hot weather—and Oliver’s uncertain temper. Sylvia had enough to upset her.”
“That’s no excuse for treating her mother in such a shameful way.”
She went up to her room and shut herself in. From behind a curtain she watched while David went to the cottage to consult his son. There was no train arriving from Detroit at that hour of the day. It later developed that Lavinia had left the train at Littlefield, and that her travel-stained appearance was the result of a rough ride in a service car. David had often come home that way, when he had contracts in Pana and Sullivan. He knew, too, that it was the Chicago train; but the fact was without significance for him.
When the woman had calmed herself somewhat, she told a more or less coherent story. She had foolishly tried to surprise Sylvia—had pictured her daughter’s delight, when she should walk in, unannounced, on the heels of the letter that deferred her coming until Tuesday. She went to the apartment in a cab and rang the bell. There was no one at home. She returned to the station and wrote the letter to David—she would not have told him for the world that she was greeted by locked doors.
“Why didn’t you go right to the janitor, my dear?” David asked, tenderly. “You know Oliver and Sylvia often go out on the lake, Sundays, when it’s hot. And—it just occurs to me—are you sure you went to the right place?”
Judith, watching the unfoldment of the story from a vantage point that was not David’s, thought the woman clutched eagerly at a plank she had hitherto not seen. She gained a precious interval of thought, while her lips retorted:
“I should think I ought to know Sylvia’s address.”
“Yes, but those great apartment houses all look alike. You might not even have been on the right street. You know, once when you went to St. Louis—”
“Yes, but that time I took the wrong car line. It was the fault of the policeman who directed me. I’d think a cabman would know the streets.”
“What did Sylvia say—when you finally—”
“What did she say? She didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t let me in. I tried to telephone her from the hotel, Monday morning—and I’m morally certain it was Oliver who answered the ’phone. When I said it was mother, he said I had the wrong number, and hung up. I tried again, and they wouldn’t answer.”
“But when you went back to the house—”
“I went three times—and once I know I saw Sylvia peeping through the curtain at the apartment door. She didn’t want me there, and she wouldn’t let me in.”
“I’m going to call Sylvia up and ask her what she means by—”
Lavinia leaped across the room and fell upon her husband, forcing him roughly into his chair.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. Haven’t I been humiliated enough already?”
III
They were interrupted by the clanging of bells, on Sherman avenue. Judith went to the window, to report that a cloud of smoke was visible against the western sky. A moment later, Dutton called from the lawn that the Marksley house was burning. Theodora wanted to see the fun. He would drive her out, if her father and brother were willing. They were not willing!
Dutton’s disappointment was greater than Theo’s, albeit she would have revelled in the sight of that one particular fire. Dutton could not make out why people kept a car, if they were too stingy to use it. Nothing ever happened in Springdale, and when there was a little excitement, a fellow wasn’t allowed to enjoy it.
But the spectacle would hardly have been worth the exertion of cranking the car. The Monday paper gave a graphic account of the blaze that started in the store room on the top floor, and was extinguished before it had accomplished more than partial destruction of the roof. The damage was amply covered by insurance. It was understood that Mr. David Trench would investigate the loss, and make necessary repairs, at the insistence of the insurance company.