There had been periods, weeks and even months, when the foothills of her immediate environment had obscured that treeless mountain peak in her life—the irreparable injury she had suffered. But something always happened to bring her perfidious lover once more within her ken. Never so poignantly as when Mrs. Ascott unwittingly revealed the reason for Calvin’s hasty marriage. She had fancied such an explanation ... had been sure that the certainty of it would be anodyne for her deep hurt. Instead it had served only to tear open the old wound, to set it festering with the toxin of that other unstudied remark: “He afterward tried to get out of it.” Had not Calvin’s father foreshadowed this very contingency? Lettie’s husband might sicken of his bargain—might come back to his first love, to plead for her forgiveness and the boon of her restored favour.
She would keep this idea uppermost in her mind, when she went to Bromfield. It not only served to soothe her vanity, but it would be a whip with which to lash the man who had wronged her. No, she would not give him the satisfaction of thinking she regretted her own hasty marriage. She would make him believe she had been infinitely the gainer when she married David Trench. The idea was so preposterous that, given a less subjective sense of humour, she might have laughed at it. But David had been that kind of stalking horse before.
II
David leaned against the wall, his tired eyes resting fondly on the garden where his children had romped. He was telling Mrs. Ascott the origin of the summer house—that he had built as a surprise for his wife, the spring she went to visit Lary in Ithaca, his first year in college. In those days Sylvia was the honey-pot for a swarm of students, and an occasional mature man, and a folding tea table in an outdoor living-room covered with kudzu and crimson rambler was an added attraction. Lavinia joined them, her cheeks flushed, her dark eyes ablaze with animation.
“You are going to be compelled to get along without me for a few weeks, Mrs. Ascott. My husband is sick and tired of seeing me around, and he’s going to bundle me up and send me home to my own people. It’s the first trip I’ve had in years ... always tied down to home and my children. Is there anyone in Rochester you’d like to send a message to? I haven’t seen dear old New York state since I left there, twenty-eight years ago next November.”
“Why, Vine, I was just telling Mrs. Ascott about building the little summer house for you, when you went to see Lary.”
Lavinia Trench flushed, not the slow red that betokened deep wrath, but a light wave of crimson that swallowed up the hectic spots in her cheeks, that tinged the hollow of her temples and the taut skin of her high and slightly receding forehead. It was gone in an instant, leaving in its wash a strained look of embarrassment.
“I never think of that as a visit. I went in such a hurry—and then I didn’t have time to go over to Bromfield, because ... you wrote me that Sylvia had a cold and Robert had sprained his wrist. I never go away from home without something dreadful happening. I wonder what Sylvia will say when she gets my telegram to-night. I hope she won’t be frightened.”
“You are going to telegraph Sylvia? What for?”
“I want her to look after the children while I’m gone.”