Читать книгу Indian Summer - Emily Grant Hutchings - Страница 13

Judith reflected, on the way home that morning, that if she wanted to get on with Mrs. Trench, she must guard her own questionable past with double zeal. It came to her, with a curious feeling of separation, that she might care what Mrs. Trench thought. The concept was a new one, and she inspected it with interest. But then ... she had been so desperately lonely, so remote from everything she had known in the past. And she was, as Griff Ramsay suggested, a gregarious animal—recognizing only in its absence her need of the herd. For the sake of Griff and Laura she would endure her exile to the end, and she was, it seemed, dependent on the morally austere woman in the great Colonial house for such human contact as Springdale might offer—human contact which for the first time in her life she craved with poignant longing.

Nanny met her at the door, her face red with laughter, her ample sides shaking. There had been a gravel fight between Jeff Dutton and one of the Trench children. It appeared to be one of the regular institutions of Vine Cottage.

“You must hurry with your luncheon, Miss Judith, so as not to miss the next round. The little girl was furious. She said Dutton muffed his play, and that was against the rules. She’s coming back to settle with him.”

Nanny had prepared an unusually tempting repast, in the tiny breakfast room that looked out, with many windows, on the stretch of lawn that separated the two houses, on the little wicket gate in the low stone wall, and the ample kitchen garden beyond the wall, brown and scarred with the first spring spading. The lonely woman viewed, with chill apprehension, the imposing façade of the house, the crisp white curtains that served, with their thin opacity, to conceal all the activity of the Trench home life. A sugar-coated sphinx, that house, guarding its secret soul with a subtle reticence that belied its seeming candour. Larimore Trench had drawn the plans for the new home. Was he that sort of man—or was this another expression of the ubiquitous Lavinia, whom Dutton had characterized as “running the hull ranch”?

There was a commotion in the hall that led from the kitchen to the breakfast room, and Nanny opened the door. She was plainly perplexed. Miss Judith was still a child to her, but she was too instinctively a servant to venture upon the prerogative of her mistress.

“You let me by,” a shrill voice piped. “I’m going to tell her, myself.”

The housekeeper yielded to a vicious pinch in the rotund cushion of her thigh, and a small parcel of humanity slid adroitly into Mrs. Ascott’s field of vision. Her head was set defiantly on one side, but the dark eyes were inscrutable. A moment only she faltered, tucking in her long under lip and shifting her slight bulk from one foot to the other.

“I broke a window in your garage. It was Jeff’s fault. He had no business ducking. How did he know I had a rock in that handful of gravel? Just gravel wouldn’t have broken the window. I’m willing to shoulder the blame, and pay for the glass out of my allowance—if you’ll make Jeff put it in. I can swipe that much putty from my papa’s shop. And—and don’t let Jeff Dutton snitch on me—to Lary.”

She finished with an excited gasp, and stood awaiting the inevitable.

“Come here, little girl. Don’t mind about the pane. Are you Eileen Trench?”

“Me? Mercy, no!” Astonishment dissolved into mirth, mirth that savoured of derision. The next instant the laugh died and the high forehead was puckered in a frown of swift displeasure. She came a step nearer, her thin brown hand plucking at her skirt. “I shouldn’t have laughed that way, as if you’d said something silly. It goes hard with me to say I’m sorry—because—usually I’m not. I hate lying, just to be polite. Eileen’ll take a lickin’ any day, before she’ll say she’s sorry. But Sylvia says it’s better to apologize and be done with it. And I guess it does save time.”

The ideas appeared chaotic, as if the child were in the throes of a mighty change in ethical standards. Judith looked at her, a whimsical fancy taking possession of her mind that she was watching some fantastic mime—that this was no flesh-and-blood child, but an owl masquerading in wren’s attire.

“My dear old doctor mentioned Sylvia and Lary and Eileen. Would you mind telling me your name?”

“Theodora.”

“Theodora—the gift of God.”

“Yes, and it was a rummy gift. Jeff Dutton says the Lord hung a lemon on my mother’s Christmas tree. I was supposed to come a boy—there’d been too many girls already—and they were going to name me after my uncle Theodore. Jeff thinks I cried so much because I was disappointed at being just a girl. I guess I cried, all right. My brother, Bob, named me ‘Schubert’s Serenade’ because he and Lary had me ’neath their casement every night till two o’clock. Mamma’s room was where your library is now. I like this house lots better than ours.”

“Do you remember this one? I thought the new house was built five years ago.”

Theodora turned questioning eyes upon her. Then, in a flash, she understood.

“Dear me, you have an idea I’m about six years old. Strangers always do. I can’t help it that I never grow any bigger. I was twelve last Christmas, and I’m first year Prep. It’s horrid to be so little. People never have any respect for you. Eileen’s tall as a broom—but nobody has much respect for her, either.”

“Tell me about Eileen. Dr. Schubert is fond of her, I believe.”

“Yes, he sees good in her. He’s about the only one who does. She was sixteen last Sunday, and she’s third year Prep. Goes into college next fall, if she don’t flunk again. She’s getting too big for mamma’s slipper, and I don’t know what is going to become of her. She’s been ugly as sin, ever since mamma heard a Chautauqua lecturer say you had to go in for technique. You know, Eileen plays the violin. And when mamma shuts her up and makes her practice—she gets even by making her fiddle swear. It says ‘hell’ and ‘damn’ and some worse ones, just as plain. And when she’s mad, her eyes get as yellow as cat’s eyes. You never saw yellow eyes, did you?”

“My own look that way, at times—when I’m ill or out of sorts.”

“But they’re the loveliest—like gray violets!” She looked deep into Mrs. Ascott’s eyes, and her own kindled with admiration. “Dr. Schubert told us yours were like Lary’s. But they aren’t, a bit. His are light brown. That barely saves him from being a Trench.”

Manifestly Lavinia had impressed on her family the advantage of looking like the Larimores. And yet, Judith thought she had never seen a finer looking man than David Trench—not so well groomed as his son, and with the gait of a man perennially tired, but with a face that Fra Angelico would have loved to paint.