XI Vicarious Living
I
Hal Marksley called regularly in his car to take the two girls to school. Theo, in the rôle of chaperone, was novel, to say the least. Occasionally he and Eileen went for long rides in the country when classes were over. Once they were delayed by the amusing annoyance of three punctures, and it was dinner time when they neared home. Hal took the precaution to leave the roadster on Grant Drive, traversing the three short blocks to Elm Street on foot. On other occasions, when there was no danger of encountering the men-folk of the family, Mrs. Trench would invite him in for lemonade and cake, after which she would command Eileen to play her latest violin piece—usually a bravura of technique, quite as incomprehensible to Mrs. Trench’s accustomed ears as to Hal’s—during which the youth would drum the window sill with impatient fingers.
It was understood between the young people that Mrs. Ascott alone was in the secret, and that the engagement ring had been placed with some of her valuables in Dr. Schubert’s vault, against the time when it would be safe to display it. There was one drop of bitter in Eileen’s great happiness. Her father. Even since her talk with Judith, she had been conscious of something essentially dishonourable in her conduct. She was beginning to look at her father with awakened eyes. He had always been a person of little consequence in his home. Lavinia was the dynamo that drove the plant. David was a belt or a fly-wheel, a driving rod or some such nonessential—easily replaced if he should break or rust. But David Trench would never rust. His wife kept him going at such a rate that a high polish was his only alternative. Rust gathers on unused metal. Eileen wondered what her father was like—inside. What her mother was like, for that matter. David talked little and Lavinia talked all the time, and the revelation of silence was, if anything, more informing than that of incessant chatter.
Mrs. Ascott might win Lary over to a reluctant acceptance of the engagement; but that would have small bearing on the problem of her father. It was the way with pliant natures. You can bend them without in the least influencing their ultimate resistance. Lavinia might be shattered by a well directed blow, whereas David would yield courteous response. There might be a dent in his feelings, but his convictions would remain as they were.
II
One Friday afternoon, as April lingered tiptoe on the threshold of May, Dr. Schubert sent for Lary to assist him with a peculiarly difficult experiment, one calling for strong nerves and a quick perception. When it was finished, Lary and Judith walked home together, crossing the campus to avoid the thoroughfare that connected the old residence quarter with the fashionable section that had rooted itself in the once fertile farms of Springdale’s newer society.
“Would you mind going a little out of your way?” the man asked, consulting his watch. “It’s early, and I have a troublesome problem. You know women—I don’t.”
“An estimate of a possible Mrs. Trench? Take my advice, Lary. Have her sized up for you by a man—never by another woman. Women can’t be just to each other when they meet on ... mating ground. Besides, no woman ever tells a man quite what she thinks of another woman. The other woman’s secret is, in part, her own. She must guard it—as you guarded the silly secrets of your college fraternity. If you ever saw the inside of one of us, you’d know how little there is to conceal. But the mystery ... that’s the important thing. Still, I’ll do my best. I’m old enough to be your mother, and ought to trust my judgment.”
“There is no potential Mrs. Trench in this problem. The thing that’s worrying me is the inglenook in a house I’m building in Roosevelt Place. The woman—who has exceptionally definite ideas of architecture—has changed her mind three times. Now she’s as dissatisfied with her own planning as she is with mine. We’re at our wits’ end, and I must find—”