The afternoon was taken up with rehearsal for to-morrow evening’s program in the college chapel. Once Eileen was on the brink of the sordid past. She had met Adelaide Nims with unruffled composure; but when Kitten joked her about her prospective sister-in-law, and Ina wanted to know how many evenings a week Hal was in the habit of spending with her, she almost forgot the rôle she had been playing ... that in New York she was Mrs. Winthrop, whereas in Springdale she was still Eileen Trench, and presumably betrothed to Mrs. Nims’ brother.
“You can’t fool us,” Miss Henderson teased. “I bet Ina a pair of gold-buckled garters that you’d follow Hal to New York, instead of going to college here. And your mother didn’t get by, this morning, with that line of talk about keeping you at home. She wouldn’t tear you and Hal apart for the world.”
Eileen felt a sinking in the region of her solar plexus, but she contrived a flippant retort, and took up her violin. She had not remembered that Hal Marksley was in Brooklyn ... that she was likely to meet him in the subway or at the theatre, any day. In the onrush of her first disillusionment he had been carried beyond her ken, as an obstruction of logs and floating débris is torn from its moorings and scattered in meaningless fragments by the violence of a spring flood.
III
Judith, after a few hours with Mrs. Dutton and a hurried visit from Nanny—indeed the Doctors Schubert were dears; but her heart was still with her mistress—found Lary in the hall where, less than three months ago, she promised to love, honour and obey him. He must make a hurried run to Littlefield, on business for his father. It was a glorious autumn afternoon and the road was in fair condition. At his suggestion, Judith took an extra wrap, for the air would be chill after the sun went down.
It was the twenty-fourth of November, and the temperature was that of late spring; but the air held a dreamy content, as if the earth and her children were drunk with rare old amber wine. On the brow of a hill, a little way out from town, Lary stopped the car to point out a great diadem of irregular rubies, in a setting of Etruscan gold. That, he explained, was a scattering of scarlet oaks in a grove composed largely of soft maples. Here and there a flavescent green asserted itself, thinly.
“Walnuts,” he said, his face taking on a boyish look. “We had every tree marked, when Bob and Syd and I were youngsters. You have to pick out the location ... and remember it. The walnut has no community instinct. It seldom grows in friendly groups, like the sweet gums and sugar maples. The leaves are only yellowed by a frost that turns the oaks crimson over night, and their formation gives the effect of delicate filigree. Look at that sumac bush, Judith—like a great sang de boeuf vase, with a red on the shoulder that would have filled an ancient Chinese potter with awe. The flame-red in the sang de boeuf porcelain was supposed to be derived from the breath of the gods, while the kiln was at white heat. This red, that gives a flambé touch to so many of these sumacs, is an insolent growth of rhus toxicodendron, that has run wild all over these hills.”
“Poison ivy,” Judith cried. “Yes, we have it in New York and Connecticut—all up to the Sound. During the summer, city people often mistake it for Virginia creeper, to their sorrow. But after frost, its coral colour betrays it.”
Something on the grassy slope caught her eye, and she asked for explanation. Cobwebs. The shrubs were festooned with them, long streamers floating in the breeze, like knotted gossamer threads. Over the short grass they formed a continuous fabric, as delicate as crêpe chiffon.
“Millions of spiders set to work with their spinning, the morning after the first hard frost. No naturalist has ever explained, to my satisfaction, where they come from, or what purpose they serve by throwing out all this maze of webs. I can’t believe that there is any utilitarian end in view. As if nature couldn’t squander a little effort on pure beauty!”