V
The visit was one continuous triumphal procession for the girl. There was her mother’s reception, Friday afternoon, at which—according to the formally engraved cards of invitation—the best people of Springdale were requested to meet Mrs. Larimore Trench. But Eileen, behind the coffee urn, was the real attraction. On Saturday Mrs. Henderson and Mrs. Clarkson joined in a musical tea, and together they prevailed on the girl to play Schubert’s Ave Maria at church, Sunday morning.
When it was ended, and Sunday night saw her safely on the train, her mother went home to a three days’ sick headache. If she could “put that over” on the smartest people in Springdale, perhaps there was nothing to fear. Larimore had some ridiculous story he used to quote ... about a boy who held a fox under his cloak while it tore his vitals out. It was a stolen fox, she reminded herself. After all, it didn’t matter much what you did—so long as you had the grit to keep it under your cloak.
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.”