“So there was a broken axle.”
And in a flash Lavinia knew that she had lifted a load of doubt and misery from her son’s mind—had destroyed, with her revelation, the barrier that stood between him and Judith Ascott. He could hear the grinding of her sharp teeth as he turned and ascended the stairs.
XVI Coming Storm
I
Mrs. Ascott and Theodora were up in the attic searching through trunks and boxes for a fan that would harmonize with Eileen’s graduating dress. Lavinia had made a special trip to St. Louis in quest of accessories, and had returned with a marvel of lacquer sticks and landscape, befitting a mandarin’s banquet board—and Lary had said things that threw the family into a superlative state of stress.
“Mamma and my brother don’t gee worth a cent,” the child lamented, peering with eager eyes into the shadowy recesses of a chest that ought to yield treasure. “For the last month, they’re on each other’s nerves all the time. It’s mostly Lary’s fault ... and ... I believe he does it to save papa. My poor daddy can’t do a blessed thing the way it ought to be. And you know, mamma gets good and mad at only one of us at a time. Eileen says, if she felt that way about her people, she’d clean up the whole bunch at once, and get it out of her ‘cistern.’ But mamma’s just naturally economical, and this way she can make her grouches go farther. We thought Drusilla would quit us, last week, because mamma laid her out so hard—when she scorched the bottom layer of a short cake. So I guess it was a good thing Lary said what he did about the fan.”
“Lightning rod for Drusilla,” Larimore Trench called, from the foot of the narrow stairway. “You don’t mind if I come up? I’d like to see the old attic again.” His face was beaming and his gesture catlike as he mounted the steep stairs. “Bob and Syd and I used to have some wild times up here. I wonder if the ghosts of our youth ever disturb your slumbers, sweet Lady Judith. We were a rough trio, in our day.”
“You and Sydney Schubert rough! I wonder what you would call my two incorrigible brothers.”