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?”