Book Three Belated Frost (continued 2)

She stopped. This was not what she wanted to say—or believe. A deep nausea overcame her. Eileen’s secret ... her own! But no, she was making confession. It would not go any further, if she told Judith all ... to the last wicked detail.

“Ellen thought all along that I married David for spite; but she doesn’t know that I never got over loving Calvin Stone. When I was first married I used to lie awake nights, thinking of the time when David and Lettie would both be dead, and I could have the man I wanted. I forced David to make good, so that I could taunt Calvin. After he moved back to Bromfield—when his father broke down, and he had to take charge of the bank—Ellen and Lettie were friends. That way, I learned a good deal about them. I saved all her letters that mentioned Calvin. The others I put in the fire, as soon as David had read them. The bundle I want buried with me. It was reading them over and over that made me the woman I am now.”

“Mother, can’t you go home and burn them—blot this hateful thing from your mind—now when your heart is soft because of father?”

“David Trench! He doesn’t count, one way or the other. David was never anything but a makeshift in my life. If he had abused me, instead of giving me all that affection, it wouldn’t have been so bad. I didn’t want his love, and I despised him because he could go on loving me ... the way I treated him. I hated my children, because he was their father. After they came, I loved them for what I could see of myself in them. Isabel was so like her father that it was comical—and I could hardly bear to touch her. Judith, think of being a wife for almost thirty years to a man you hated! You couldn’t have gone through it.”

“No, I would have run away.”

“But I hadn’t any place to run to. I was caught, like a hungry rat in a trap. I could look out through the bars and see all the things I wanted, beyond my reach. When I did drag something inside, it turned out to be different from what I expected. When we celebrated our silver wedding, the minister told how we were the ideal couple, that God had joined together in our cradles. It was the vilest mockery. But David was so proud.”

“And you never saw his worth—never responded to his tenderness?”

“Not until I came home from Bromfield, two years ago. That was the only time David and I came together, in all those years. I never knew how handsome he was until I had been looking at Calvin every day for a month. And his appearance wasn’t all of it. I had made up my mind, while I was still at Ellen’s, that I was going to treat David different. You couldn’t help seeing that I had all the best of the bargain. The house Calvin built, ten years ago, is no comparison to mine. And he had to mortgage it to the limit, when his son got into trouble. Lately he sold it, to keep from losing it outright. That was when I wrote him that I would buy back the old house from my brother. But that’s ... I’ll come to that, later on. All those years I had been thinking of David as a poor carpenter, and Calvin as a banker, in fine society. And when I found out that he didn’t have near as much as I had—”

“I see how you found your deep satisfaction.”

“No, you don’t. It wasn’t just the money, and David’s position in Springdale—on the Board of Trustees, and all that. I got my real triumph after I started for home. I had snubbed Calvin and tormented him in every way I could. I wasn’t going to let him think I went to Bromfield on his account. Besides, I wanted to hurt him, for the way he had treated me. I thought I would take it out on him, and that would end it. If I had been trying to win him, I couldn’t have used better tactics.

“I was on the train and we were pulling out of Rochester when he came walking in the Pullman. At first he pretended to be surprised. Said he was going to Buffalo on business. After a while he owned up that he had come ... because he wanted to be alone with me. He told me that his life had been hell on earth, and he was glad when Lettie died. He even said that if David should die, he would go to the end of the world to compel me to marry him.”

“The boor!”

Lavinia ignored the comment. Hot lava was pouring from the crater of her wretchedness, lava long pent up, and such flimsy obstacles as her daughter-in-law’s disgust were swept away unnoticed in its stream.

“I told him he wasn’t fit for David Trench to wipe his feet on. I didn’t mean it ... but I talk that way when I am beside myself. When I repulsed David, he would look hurt and walk away. But it only made Calvin more determined. He said he would lie down and let me wipe my feet on him. And then he said something sneering about ‘Dave Trench.’ I flew into a rage—and he said I always was a beauty when I was angry. Afterwards he almost cried when he begged me to show some little spark of affection for him. He was always that way ... wanted what he thought he couldn’t get. I see the whole thing now, as plain as day. It is easy to see things, when it’s too late. If the minister hadn’t preached that sermon about helping to redeem sinners by making them suffer, and you hadn’t told me all that other ... about it being worse to want to sin than to come right out and do the thing you wanted....”

Judith shifted uneasily in her chair. Her own indictment was surely on the way. She had no choice but to see the play through, to the final curtain.

“He began writing to me, on one pretext or another. I didn’t answer more than half of his letters. And the meaner I treated him, the more devoted he grew. All that time I was falling in love with David—and I didn’t hesitate to tell Calvin so. It seemed to make him wild. The very day I found out about Eileen, I had had a letter from him that I was ashamed to read, in my own room. I believe that letter would have finished him for me ... if it hadn’t been for Eileen.

“When he heard about Larimore’s marriage, he wrote again—and asked me to forgive him for writing the other letter. But he said his love for me drove him to it. And at the same time, David was acting like a paralytic old woman—just crushed by what Eileen had done. I couldn’t help seeing the difference. I knew what Calvin would have done, if he had had a daughter act that way. He would have put his son in jail, if it hadn’t been for Lettie.”

“You needed a masterful man. David was too gentle....”

“He never was any match for me ... in any way. If I hadn’t snapped him up, the night after Mr. Stone told me that Calvin was married....” She shook herself, as if to free her body from some insidious lethargy that was creeping over her.

“While you and Larimore were in Europe, it got to be like a continued story in a magazine. I kept wondering what would happen next. I had cut loose from David, and I couldn’t keep my mind off of Calvin. After you came home with Eileen, and I had the long talk with you, the story took a different turn. Still ... I don’t believe anything would have come of it if Calvin hadn’t had to take a business trip to Chicago. He wrote, in a kind of joking way, that if I would run up there and spend a few days with him, David would divorce me and we could be married at once. That was last April. I wrote back that I wouldn’t think of such a thing—and that men didn’t marry the women who forgot their morals—except at the point of a gun. He answered, with a kind of marriage compact—no matter what might come up—he would marry me as soon as I was free. He had to go to Chicago again in July. I told him I would see him in Sylvia’s home, on his way out, and we could talk things over, and come to an understanding. It was all Larimore’s fault that the whole thing turned out wrong.”

“How Lary’s fault?”

“You know he wouldn’t let me start in time to catch Calvin in Detroit. Then I planned to go by way of Chicago, and see him between trains. But Larimore insisted on getting the ticket direct. There was only one thing for me to do. I wired Calvin, and sent a special letter to Sylvia, saying I wouldn’t be in Detroit until Tuesday noon. I planned to get into Chicago early Monday morning, and go back to Detroit that night. I wrote the letter to David while I was waiting at the station, Sunday afternoon. The rest of it—after Calvin met me—is like a dream, a miserable dream. So much has happened since then.

“That evening he made me miss my train. After I had been with him a while, I was limp as a rag in his hands. He always had that way with women. I didn’t want to go. All the years of my misery had dissolved. I was like a starved person at a banquet ... seventeen again, and Calvin acting like a boy out of school. But the second day he began to change. He told me to quit acting like an old fool—said it wasn’t becoming in people of our age. If David had ever said anything like that to me—” Her hands worked convulsively and the teeth gave forth a sharp, gritting sound. “I tried to be the way Calvin wanted me, and everything I did was wrong. Once I flared up, and he told me to cut that out—that it was because of my vile temper that he didn’t marry me thirty years ago.”

“And you are going to discipline yourself, mother, so that after your year of mourning you can marry him and be happy?”

“Marry him!” A shrill laugh burst from Lavinia’s lips. “Marry him! He was married last Saturday to a rich widow in Rochester. That isn’t the worst of it. I had written him the plainest kind of letter—about the house we would remodel—and the contract he had sent me in April. They read it together. They are laughing at me now. God, I can’t stand it! To have them gloat over me! I could tear my heart out and stamp on it. I could curse. I could spit in the face of the God that made me. Why did you advise me to write the letter? It was you—you—”

She had leaped from her chair, her face livid, her arms writhing. Judith tried to speak. Her tongue was paralysed. She had looked into the soul of the woman who bore Larimore Trench, and the sight turned her sick with horror. Then a piercing scream, a startled cry, another scream, and Lavinia crumpled down in her chair, clasping her hands to her right side, shrieking and moaning by turns.

“Mother, what has happened to you? Let me send for a doctor.”

“No, no, don’t leave me!” A long wail of anguish indescribable—and she put forth a restraining hand. “Don’t you know what has happened to me? Can’t you see that I am dying? Dr. Schubert told me two years ago that there was danger. I didn’t believe him....”

She choked back another cry of pain, cringing until her right cheek almost touched her knee. Then she straightened herself and went on, through set teeth:

“You will take Theo, Judith, and keep her for your own? I wouldn’t want Sylvia to have her. You won’t let her—miss the path?”

“I will give her the best I have, mother. I know what you mean.” She stopped speaking, fascinated by the tinge of green that crept slowly up the stricken woman’s cheeks. The same dull green was advancing along the arms, where the black sleeves were drawn up. Lavinia saw it, too. She knew the portent. Once before, she had seen that wave of green that moved with deadly precision beneath the skin.

“It’s the gall. It has burst. My grandmother died that way. She flew into a rage—after the doctor warned her not to. I taste it, now ... bitter ... in my throat....” She coughed spasmodically, and closed her eyes.

VII

Judith ran to the telephone. She told Lary that his mother had fainted. To Eileen she said bluntly: “Mother is dying. Send one of the doctors.”

Eileen called a dozen numbers before she located either Sydney or his father. Then she left her little sister in Nanny’s care and hurried to Vine Cottage.

When the old family physician reached the house, Lavinia Trench had passed beyond human aid. He drew Judith into the breakfast room and asked, unsteadily:

“Was there a violent outburst? Grief wouldn’t account for it ... nor remorse.”

The woman nodded, her throat swelling.

“Don’t tell Lary. He need not know. He wouldn’t understand. Women are so different, Dr. Schubert. I wouldn’t want Lary to despise his mother. She wasn’t wholly to blame—that the frost came too late.”