When Theodora looked from the window, some minutes later, the two were crossing the street in the direction of the Nims’ house. A full minute she stood, perplexed. Then her chest heaved with futile indignation. In that minute, the scattered troubles of the past six weeks had danced into form, like iron filings on the glass disc, when Sydney drew his violin bow across its vibrating edge. She understood. Mamma had given permission for Eileen to go with Hal to Mrs. Nims’—to dinner. After all she had said about Mrs. Nims! A quarrel with papa was inevitable. Mamma wanted to provoke a quarrel with papa. There was no other explanation. Things had gone from bad to worse, with only an occasional rift in her mother’s lowering sky. Whatever the cause of her displeasure, it had reached a climax. Something must be done to protect papa—done quickly. Lary was not always tactful—when people acted that way. And mamma always took it out on papa, when Lary got the best of her.
“Lady Judith, couldn’t you call her to come right back here ... eat dinner with you?” The plea tumbled from the inchoate depth of her distress. Mrs. Ascott and Lary interrupted a flow of intimate talk, to look at the pale face and the preternaturally bright eyes.
“What, darling?”
“Eileen! I think my mother has gone crazy. First she says Mrs. Nims isn’t fit for a decent woman to speak to—when papa talked about Christian charity—and now she lets Eileen go over there to dinner.”
“How do you know that, baby?”
“Well, Lary Trench, look for yourself. I guess I can put two and two together. If I didn’t want papa to think Mrs. Nims was a dangerous woman—I wouldn’t tell him that Christ himself couldn’t save her. Either my mother hasn’t got any system at all ... or ... she wants to have one awful row with my father.”
“We might as well face a sickeningly unpleasant situation,” Larimore said to Judith. “You are seeing my mother at her absolute worst. Something has occurred to annoy her, desperately. And we can’t even surmise what it is. The baby and I have laid plots to trap her into betraying the cause of her hurt. But only last night we acknowledged ourselves beaten.”
“May I confess that I have been trying, too, at Dr. Schubert’s suggestion? He tells me that this state of her mind may lead to serious consequences. Some obscure liver trouble, I believe.”
“Not obscure,” Lary amended. “Dr. Schubert understands its pathological aspect. It is the mental cause that baffles all of us. Gall stones are not uncommon in women of my mother’s temperament. She has too much energy for the small engine she has to operate. Her physician has tried to impress on her the need for keeping herself tranquil. He might as well advise a tornado to be calm and rational.”
“Yet she does take advice from him—if he makes it specific and definite.”