For a day or two Eileen was abstracted and moody, a flaccid resignation taking the place of the high spiritual enthusiasm that ushered in her surrender. But it was not in the girl’s nature to remain long depressed. She could not, as Lavinia did, nurture a grouch to its final fruition. Her return to normal was accompanied by a sequence of quarrels with her elder sister, and she shunned her father with studied aversion. Hal resumed his old habit of asking her to meet him on the campus or around the corner on Sherman Avenue. “To escape Sylvia’s sticky patronage,” she explained to Mrs. Ascott.
Towards the end of the week she went with Theodora to the shady west porch of Vine Cottage, to assist with the drawing of innumerable threads and the hemming of a fresh supply of napkins for the two linen closets. Her lap was overflowing with damask when the postman’s whistle shrilled through the sultry morning air. Theo bounded to her feet, her eyes wide with excitement. The coming of the postman was always an adventure, vicarious but none the less interesting. Some day he might bring.... No, she was not expecting letters for herself. But Lary had sent away a poem and an essay. And then, there ought to be a long letter for daddy. As yet there had been nothing but a stingy post card, with the hackneyed old Niagara Falls on one side and on the other that offensive old cliché: “Will write soon.” And mamma had sent such attractive cards to all the others, not omitting Nanny and Mrs. Dutton.
After a few minutes she came slowly back, all the joy gone out of her face. There was a long envelope addressed to Mr. Larimore Trench. She inverted the hateful thing in Judith’s lap. Letters of acceptance did not come in long envelopes. There was another one, square and perfumed, bearing the name, Mrs. Raoul Ascott. Who was this Raoul Ascott, that he should intrude here?
“The dead have had their shining day;
Why should they try
To listen to the words we say
And breathe their blight upon our May
While the winds sigh?”
She had read the stanza in the back of one of Sylvia’s books ... written while Sylvia was temporarily engrossed with a young professor whose spouse had died. But, after all, it wasn’t quite fair to feel that way about people who couldn’t help being remembered. And Mr. Ascott had vacated the place that belonged rightfully to Lary. The third letter was from mamma. It bore, in Lavinia’s cramped writing, the name of Mrs. Oliver Penrose. The little girl raged impotently as she called her sister.