Читать книгу Indian Summer - Emily Grant Hutchings - Страница 5
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Early in the afternoon, when the sun was making furtive efforts to slip past the cloud-guard and repair the damage the rain had wrought, Lavinia stepped briskly from her room, clad in her best blue silk poplin. An hour past she had been bathing her eyes, and her mirror satisfied her that the redness and swelling were all gone. She went straight to her father’s store, across from the bank. Ellen Porter would be there, behind the bookkeeper’s desk.
“I want you to do something for me, Nell,” she began—noting the hollow in her voice, and striving against it. “I want you to take this to Mr. Stone.”
She held a small, neatly tied parcel in her hand. They walked to the wide doorway and stood watching the sun-glints in the pools of the muddy street, each waiting for the other to venture on some hospitable avenue of speech. Ellen considered her thin-soled shoes, scarce dry from the morning’s wetting, glanced at the precarious stepping stones, half a block away ... and caught sight of David Trench, coming towards them. She beckoned him.
David was a shy, fair-cheeked youth, a few months older than Lavinia and Ellen. The three had been christened the same Sunday in the little Presbyterian church. They had gone through the village school together, and David and Ellen sang leading parts in the church choir. It was Dave Trench who sharpened their skates, pulled their sleds up the hill, tuned their pianos, repaired their furniture, took them home from Sunday evening services when no other escort was available.
“Vine wants you to do an errand for her, Davy. Would you mind taking this little package over to the bank?”
“I wouldn’t mind going to Halifax for her.”
Ellen laid the parcel in his hand. He was to give it to Mr. Stone. In no case was he to give it to Calvin. As his lithe figure melted into the gloom of the building across the way, she turned for the information that was her due.
“It’s my engagement ring.”
“What!”
“Yes, I’ve given Calvin the mitten. His father came down this morning and laboured with me for more than an hour to get me to change my mind; but I told him I would never marry a man who smoked and drank and gambled. That was what I was about to tell you this morning, when Ted ran in on us. I’ve had him on probation since last spring—for two years, in fact. He’s promised me over and over. And yesterday, after he bought the ring for our wedding, he went and got roaring drunk—fell into the hands of some disreputable woman—and— Why, Ellen, when he stopped at the house last night he was so maudlin that he couldn’t give an account of where he’d been or what had happened to him. You can guess how we parted. He told his father this morning that he’d go to the dogs if I turned him down. Mr. Stone almost got down on his knees to me, but it was all wasted. When I’m done, I’m done.”
Ellen Porter had but one grievous fault. When she found herself unable to keep a secret, she did not scruple to seek help. Lavinia thought afterward it had been almost an inspiration ... telling Ellen. By Sunday it would be all over town, each one of Ellen’s confidantes pledged to hold the revelation sacred. She knew, too, how Calvin’s lapse from virtue would grow with each fresh telling of the story. By another Sunday it would be murder he had committed.
II
The ring delivered, Vine went home to plan the next move. That she must leave Bromfield before the truth of Calvin’s marriage leaked out, she did not so much as debate. There was an uncle in the wilds of Illinois. Once she had visited him, with the result that the buffalo and Indian frontier had receded some leagues farther to the west. A coal mining town. She remembered that some adventurous investors dreamed of oil and natural gas. There ought to be employment for an energetic, fairly well educated girl who was accustomed to hard work.
Lavinia Larimore had not been blessed with an elastic nature, but in moments of desperation she manifested something like the elasticity of ivory. She could yield, yet show no after-trace of the yielding. By night her plans were well on the way towards maturity. She would write to her uncle, and wait for a reply before telling her parents of her purpose.
She opened the small drawer of the secretary, only to discover that it was bare of stamps. Her brother Theodore would be going to Ellen’s, and the post office was not far out of his way. But Ted would ask questions. No, she would wait for David Trench. He and his father worked at the shop every evening, and he would be passing at nine.
Up to this point Lavinia had thought of David as nothing more than an errand boy. But as she sat by the window in the gathering dusk, he began to change before her fevered eyes, to assert his height and the grace of his strong young hands. She had never thought about David’s hands before. Strange that the hard work had never rendered them unshapely. Calvin’s hands were pudgy, the fingers short and thick. She had always been conscious of Calvin’s hands—had viewed them almost with repugnance even when she craved their touch the most.
David’s smile was beautiful. He would grow into a fine-looking man, like his father. Now that they had taken to refinishing antique furniture, there would be money in the shop for two households. David would always be kind. He might even.... What was she thinking! A startled laugh burst from her lips. Davy, little Davy Trench! With a suppressed, “Huh! I might go farther and fare worse,” she tossed the absurd thought aside. A moment later it presented itself in another guise. She was still toying with the audacious intruder when she heard David’s slow, regular step on the stone flagging. Through the open window she called his name. With nervous haste she lighted the tall, flamboyantly shaded piano lamp and motioned him to a chair. Then she seated herself rather stiffly on the old-fashioned sparking settee, her heart pounding, her tongue thick and useless.
“Was there something I could do for you, Vine?”
“You wouldn’t—mind—going back to the post office, Dave? I want to get off an important letter to my uncle. He wants me to come out to Illinois, and—there isn’t a stamp in the house.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t send it to-night. The post office was closed when I came by, and the last mail goes up to Rochester at half-past eight. If you had only told me sooner.... I’ll be glad to stop by and get it in the morning, on my way to the shop.”
“Oh, well, it’s not so urgent. I’ll have it ready before breakfast. You won’t forget to stop?”
“Why, of course not, Vine.”
“David, would you be sorry if I should go away from Bromfield—to stay?”
“It wouldn’t be Bromfield without you.”
Lavinia Larimore took the bit in her teeth.
“Dave, what do you think Ellen Porter was saying to me when you came to the store, this afternoon?”
“I couldn’t guess.”
“She said it was all over town that you and I are going to be married.”
“I—” The boy gasped. He gripped the edge of his chair and the blood died out of his cheeks. “Vine, you oughtn’t to make fun of me that way. It isn’t kind.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you, Davy. Honest to goodness, everybody has noticed how much we have been together lately.”
“But Calvin?”
“Pooh! I broke off with him long ago. Dave, are you asleep, that you don’t know it is all over between Calvin and me?”
“I—I am afraid I’m dreaming now.”
“No, you aren’t. You are broad awake, and I’m telling you the truth. I would not marry Calvin Stone if he was the last man left on earth. He is a low-lived gambler—and I despise him. He isn’t worth your little finger.”
David slipped from his chair and gained the settee, somehow, his knees knocking together.
“Vine, do you mean— Would I be a fool to—” Then his lips found hers.
At midnight David Trench stumbled drunkenly home, his head bumping the stars, while Lavinia took the two-year-old wedding dress from the cedar chest and planned to modernize its lines.
