He bent to kiss her, a kiss that was part of the compulsory daily routine, and hurriedly left the house. Lavinia turned his words over in her mind, and her gorge rose. David was always that way. You could never make him shoulder responsibility. True, she had wanted Sylvia next door, where she could watch over her daughter’s blundering beginnings at housekeeping. And anyone would say it was an honour to have Professor Penrose in the family—even if his salary was small. But another lessee—with the boon of a commercial position in Detroit at four times the amount he received from the little denominational college in Springdale—would have been held to the strict interpretation of the lease. David would not hear of Oliver and Sylvia paying rent for a house they did not occupy, a sentiment promptly seconded by his daughter. Sylvia never failed to perceive her own advantage—a fact at once gratifying and maddening to her mother. What if David had been like that? What if.... She always put David aside. Why bother about the inevitable?
II
Mr. Trench did not go at once to the office of Trench & Son, architects and general building contractors. It was important to his domestic peace that some definite step be taken towards the renting of the cottage. He would stop, he thought, at the office of the Argus, and insert a three-time advertisement. He could bring the matter up with Henry Marksley, for whom he always had some construction work on hand. But second thought deterred him. It might be disastrous to have young Hal Marksley next door, if only for a few months. Hal was a senior in the Presbyterian college. His recent attentions to Eileen Trench, just approaching her sixteenth birthday, had been disquieting to her father, none the less because of her mother’s unconcealed approval.
Eileen was impressionable. A youth of Hal Marksley’s—David searched his mind for the word. Disposition? He was more than amiable. Principles? Not quite that, either. In short, there was nothing he could urge against the young man that had not been set at naught by Eileen’s mother. Money had lifted the Marksleys above the restrictions imposed upon common people. Their life had been unconventional, at times positively scandalous. Eileen’s iconoclastic spirit would grasp at anything to justify her revolt against the conventional trammels of her home, the puritanical regulations which served Lavinia in lieu of religion. There was enough friction in that quarter already.
As he passed the college campus, with its motley group of buildings—dingy red brick of forty years’ standing, and the impudent modernity of Bedford stone with trimmings of terra cotta and Carthage marble—he caught sight of Dr. Schubert’s mud-bespattered buggy. The grey mare, these ten years a stranger to the restraining tether, nosed contentedly in the snow for the succulent sprigs that were already making their appearance among the exposed roots of the huge old elms. From the opposite side of the street the family physician waved a driving glove.
“Wait a minute, David.” He made his way cautiously through the ooze of the crudely paved avenue. “I was on my way out to your house. Stopped to look in on a pneumonia that kept me up nearly all night. Does Mrs. Trench still want to rent the cottage? Or is it true that Sylvia and Penrose are coming back?”
“They are well pleased with Detroit. And my wife is most anxious for a tenant. You know, Doctor, she draws the line on children and dogs.”
“We ought to be able to close a very satisfactory deal. My old friend, Griffith Ramsay, spent the night with us. He’s out here from New York—some legal business connected with the mines at Olive Hill, for a client of his, a Mrs. Ascott. The lady is recently widowed, and in need of some kind of diversion. I had been telling him about my experiments, my need for a competent assistant in the laboratory, and he arrived at the conclusion that these two needs would neutralize each other. Mrs. Ascott, having a large financial stake in the mines, would be interested in the possibility of increasing the value of soft coal. The more he though about it, the greater his enthusiasm. The one thing in the way, he thought, would be a suitable place for her to live. That was when Vine Cottage popped into my mind. I’ll send him around to the office to talk over the details of the lease with you.”