Читать книгу Indian Summer - Emily Grant Hutchings - Страница 8
ОглавлениеI
Mrs. Ascott had an early appointment with her attorney. An early appointment necessitated her catching the nine-fifteen train for the city. That, again, implied the disruption of the entire household regimen, and Judith Ascott had learned not to try her mother’s patience too far. She was the unpleasant note in an otherwise satisfactory family. True, her mother had stood by her through all the scandal and unpleasantness. But the changing of the breakfast hour was quite another matter.
As she slipped into the pantry of the big suburban home and set the coffee machine going, she turned over in her mind another reason for her care not to disturb the family slumber. She did not know why her attorney wished to see her—was not even sure which member of the firm would be awaiting her, that still March morning. The long-distance message conveyed the bare information that the business was urgent. Might there be another delay in the divorce? She had been assured that the decree would be in her hands by the end of the week; but gruff old Sanderson, the senior partner, was not so sure. Any reference to the “distasteful affair” threw her mother into a nervous chill. A note on the breakfast table, informing the family that she had caught the early express for a morning at the art gallery, would suffice as well as any other explanation.
All the way in, between the snow-decked New York fields and the dreary waste of the Sound, she dwelt moodily on the unpleasant possibilities of the coming interview. But when she emerged from the confusion of the Grand Central station, already in the turmoil of reconstruction, she thought only of the relative merits of the taxicab and the subway. She had schooled herself, in times of stress, to take refuge in irrelevant trifles. She had learned, too, that the more she worried before the ordeal the less occasion she found for worry when the actual conditions confronted her. In view of her sleepless night, she would probably find roses and Griff Ramsay instead of thorns and Donald Sanderson.
II
The attorney had thought it all out, had decided just how he was going to break the news. But when he found his client confronting him, across the unaccustomed barrier of his desk, his assurance forsook him.
“Judith, what are you going to do, now that you are free?”
“What am I going to do, Griff? That, as usual, depends on mamma. You know I have never planned anything—vital—in my life. When she lays too much stress on the ‘must’ I do the opposite. She says that I am going to sail with her and the boys on the fifth of April, a month from to-day. Ben is going on with his architecture at the Beaux Arts and Jack is wild about airplanes. Paris has hideous memories—but there’s no other place for me.”
“You are not going to Paris.”
The woman started. “No?”
“Not if you have the qualities I believe you have. Judith, may I for once talk cold unpleasant facts? You are twenty-seven years old and the life you have made for yourself is a failure.” Mrs. Ascott deprecated the finality of the word, but she let it pass. “Going to Paris would only be temporizing. Your mother’s influence has always been bad. You and your father are scarcely acquainted. Your brothers are too young to count. Laura and I have been your only intimates, since your return to New York. I need not remind you of our staunch friendship for you.”
“Griff—tell me what you have in mind. I promise not to cry out, if I do squirm a little.”
He told her of Springdale, the kindly old physician who had a theory that soft coal could be transformed, at the mines, into clean fuel and a whole retinue of valuable by-products—of his need for a secretary and laboratory assistant, to keep his records and assist him with experiments. He told her of Vine Cottage, its wide garden and fruit trees. “The house faces south. Get that solidly established in your mind,” he admonished. He knew how important it was for Judith Ascott to be properly oriented. Other details of the place he painted, graphic and engaging. She would take with her her old nurse, Nanny. For servants he had leased Jeff Dutton and wife, who occupied the rooms above the garage. As an afterthought he added that she would spend four mornings a week in Dr. Schubert’s laboratory. Her compensation—a large block of treasury stock in the corporation that would result from the evolving of a process for the cleansing of soft coal.
“Where is this Springdale—this Utopia? What has it to do with Sutton and Olive Hill, where the mines are located?”
“As little as possible. You’ll note that Springdale draws its virtuous white skirts away from those filthy towns, with an air so smug that it would disgust you if it were not so amusingly naïve. It claims ten thousand inhabitants—when the census taker isn’t within hearing. There is a denominational college—co-ed, I believe—with a conservatory of music and a school of dramatic art. The President isn’t the lean sycophant in a shabby Prince Albert coat that you might expect. I met him—a singularly spruce-minded successor to that old Presbyterian war-horse, Thomas Henderson, who built the college out of Illinois dirt.”
“Sounds interesting, Griff. Is there any more?”
“Yes, ever so much. The college isn’t the whole show, by any means. At one end of the town is a Bible Institute and at the other an asylum for the feeble-minded. There is a manual training school for deaf-mutes and a sanitarium for drug fiends and booze fighters. On the whole, quite an intellectual centre. It is under no circumstances to be confused with Springfield, the capital of the state. You are sentenced to live there for a year. At the end of your term you may come back to New York—if you haven’t found yourself.”
“Only last night I was wishing that I could run away—somewhere—anywhere—to a place I had never heard of. Do you think I can do the work?”
“Oh, that part of it.... My only concern is for your mother. I’ll send Laura down to Pelham to help persuade her.”
Judith Ascott’s finely modelled shoulders came up in an almost imperceptible shrug. “Mamma will be so relieved. Don’t trouble Laura. I was only going to Paris because there was no convenient pigeonhole to stow me away ‘till wanted.’ Mamma, of course, hopes that I will marry. She wouldn’t want me tagging around after her, the rest of her life. You know that I am done with men.”
“By-the-way,” Ramsay interrupted, “I led those people to suppose your husband was dead. It’s that kind of town. Not the old doctor, understand. His sympathy’s as wide as humanity. But your next-door neighbours—excellent people, though with small-town limitations. You’ll have to depend on them for such social life as your gregarious nature demands. How soon can you be ready to go west?”
“As soon as I can bring Nanny from Vermont. I ought to be on my way in a week.”
III
Later in the day, when she found herself alone in a quiet corner of the Metropolitan, Mrs. Ascott turned the preposterous proposition over in her mind. No doubt the Ramsays were as tired of her eternal flopping from one untenable situation to another as her own people were. In Springdale she would be safely off their hands ... at least until the sensation of her divorce had subsided. Would her late husband marry the nonchalant co-respondent? Would Herbert Faulkner, with whom she had all but eloped, while Raoul Ascott and the girl were in Egypt.... But she was not interested in Herbert Faulkner, and she cared not a straw whether Raoul married or pursued his butterfly career, free from the stimulating restrictions of domestic life. Was Griff afraid she would disturb the farcical relations of her late impassioned admirer and the stern-lipped woman who bore his name and made free with his check-book to further her aberrant social ambition? Was it for this that she had been banished to the coal fields of western Illinois—to save Maida Faulkner the annoyance of a divorce and consequent loss of income? Whatever the actuating motive, the thing was done. She had acquiesced without a murmur of protest. This was in keeping with her whole nondescript life. Nothing had been worth the effort of opposition. She had never known the stinging contact of human suffering. Oh, to burn her fingers with the flame of living! But Springdale—a hide-bound college town, where divorce is reckoned among the cardinal sins....
