She rocked to and fro a moment, as if to settle the sequence of her story. Then her eyes blazed with a challenging light.
“You are a cold woman. You can sit there and weigh me ... like a pound of steak. You never knew what it was to want something with your whole mind and body and soul. You are not capable of a passion that would burn you to a cinder. There are not many women with as deep a nature as mine. It began when I was fourteen—a plain little thing like Theo is, now. The night of Edith Trench’s Hallowe’en party—and David begged his sister to invite me. All the others were grown, nearly. I happened to be standing in a dark corner, under some mistletoe, and Calvin Stone tiptoed up behind me and grabbed me in his arms and kissed me.
“That night I couldn’t sleep ... nor the next one. Everything was changed. For two years, I used to almost die when I saw him out with the older girls. Then he went away to Buffalo, to business college, and I began to grow pretty. It’s a way we have in my father’s family. When he came home, he fairly swept me off my feet. If David had ever made love to me the way Calvin did— The room would swim before my eyes when he kissed me. He wanted me to marry him right away. But in Bromfield that would have made a scandal. A girl didn’t dare to seem too anxious.
“After about a year he began to cool off. I waited two years more, and then I married David. I may as well tell you why. Calvin went to Rochester and married that Fournier girl. She made him marry her. Thank goodness, I was safe in Olive Hill before they let it out that they were married. But the truth has leaked out at last. It always does, no matter how smart you think you are in concealing it.”
She stopped. This was not what she wanted to say—or believe. A deep nausea overcame her. Eileen’s secret ... her own! But no, she was making confession. It would not go any further, if she told Judith all ... to the last wicked detail.
“Ellen thought all along that I married David for spite; but she doesn’t know that I never got over loving Calvin Stone. When I was first married I used to lie awake nights, thinking of the time when David and Lettie would both be dead, and I could have the man I wanted. I forced David to make good, so that I could taunt Calvin. After he moved back to Bromfield—when his father broke down, and he had to take charge of the bank—Ellen and Lettie were friends. That way, I learned a good deal about them. I saved all her letters that mentioned Calvin. The others I put in the fire, as soon as David had read them. The bundle I want buried with me. It was reading them over and over that made me the woman I am now.”
“Mother, can’t you go home and burn them—blot this hateful thing from your mind—now when your heart is soft because of father?”
“David Trench! He doesn’t count, one way or the other. David was never anything but a makeshift in my life. If he had abused me, instead of giving me all that affection, it wouldn’t have been so bad. I didn’t want his love, and I despised him because he could go on loving me ... the way I treated him. I hated my children, because he was their father. After they came, I loved them for what I could see of myself in them. Isabel was so like her father that it was comical—and I could hardly bear to touch her. Judith, think of being a wife for almost thirty years to a man you hated! You couldn’t have gone through it.”
“No, I would have run away.”
“But I hadn’t any place to run to. I was caught, like a hungry rat in a trap. I could look out through the bars and see all the things I wanted, beyond my reach. When I did drag something inside, it turned out to be different from what I expected. When we celebrated our silver wedding, the minister told how we were the ideal couple, that God had joined together in our cradles. It was the vilest mockery. But David was so proud.”