IV
Judith reflected, on the way home that morning, that if she wanted to get on with Mrs. Trench, she must guard her own questionable past with double zeal. It came to her, with a curious feeling of separation, that she might care what Mrs. Trench thought. The concept was a new one, and she inspected it with interest. But then ... she had been so desperately lonely, so remote from everything she had known in the past. And she was, as Griff Ramsay suggested, a gregarious animal—recognizing only in its absence her need of the herd. For the sake of Griff and Laura she would endure her exile to the end, and she was, it seemed, dependent on the morally austere woman in the great Colonial house for such human contact as Springdale might offer—human contact which for the first time in her life she craved with poignant longing.
Nanny met her at the door, her face red with laughter, her ample sides shaking. There had been a gravel fight between Jeff Dutton and one of the Trench children. It appeared to be one of the regular institutions of Vine Cottage.
“You must hurry with your luncheon, Miss Judith, so as not to miss the next round. The little girl was furious. She said Dutton muffed his play, and that was against the rules. She’s coming back to settle with him.”
Nanny had prepared an unusually tempting repast, in the tiny breakfast room that looked out, with many windows, on the stretch of lawn that separated the two houses, on the little wicket gate in the low stone wall, and the ample kitchen garden beyond the wall, brown and scarred with the first spring spading. The lonely woman viewed, with chill apprehension, the imposing façade of the house, the crisp white curtains that served, with their thin opacity, to conceal all the activity of the Trench home life. A sugar-coated sphinx, that house, guarding its secret soul with a subtle reticence that belied its seeming candour. Larimore Trench had drawn the plans for the new home. Was he that sort of man—or was this another expression of the ubiquitous Lavinia, whom Dutton had characterized as “running the hull ranch”?
There was a commotion in the hall that led from the kitchen to the breakfast room, and Nanny opened the door. She was plainly perplexed. Miss Judith was still a child to her, but she was too instinctively a servant to venture upon the prerogative of her mistress.
“You let me by,” a shrill voice piped. “I’m going to tell her, myself.”
The housekeeper yielded to a vicious pinch in the rotund cushion of her thigh, and a small parcel of humanity slid adroitly into Mrs. Ascott’s field of vision. Her head was set defiantly on one side, but the dark eyes were inscrutable. A moment only she faltered, tucking in her long under lip and shifting her slight bulk from one foot to the other.
“I broke a window in your garage. It was Jeff’s fault. He had no business ducking. How did he know I had a rock in that handful of gravel? Just gravel wouldn’t have broken the window. I’m willing to shoulder the blame, and pay for the glass out of my allowance—if you’ll make Jeff put it in. I can swipe that much putty from my papa’s shop. And—and don’t let Jeff Dutton snitch on me—to Lary.”
She finished with an excited gasp, and stood awaiting the inevitable.