The Project Gutenberg eBook, Indian Summer, by Mrs. Emily Grant Hutchings This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Indian Summer Author: Mrs. Emily Grant Hutchings Release Date: May 22, 2020 [eBook #62194] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIAN SUMMER*** E-text prepared by David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/indiansummer00hutciala Indian Summer NEW BORZOI NOVELS FALL, 1922 The Quest Pio Baroja The Room G. B. Stern One of Ours Willa Cather A Lovely Day Henry Céard Mary Lee Geoffrey Dennis Tutors’ Lane Wilmarth Lewis The Promised Isle Laurids Bruun The Return Walter de la Mare The Bright Shawl Joseph Hergesheimer The Moth Decides Edward Alden Jewell Indian Summer Emily Grant Hutchings INDIAN SUMMER EMILY GRANT HUTCHINGS ALFRED A. KNOPF NEW YORK 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. Published, July, 1922 Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. Paper furnished by Perkins-Goodwin Co., New York, N. Y. Bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To Edwin Hutchings My Inspiration Contents Prologue I Lavinia 3 II Calvin 6 III David 12 Book One: Spring IV Vine Cottage 21 V Judith Goes West 26 VI The Trench Children 32 VII Lavinia Pays a Call 43 VIII Hal Marksley Intrudes 53 IX News from Bromfield 61 X Eileen Seeks Counsel 65 XI Vicarious Living 76 XII The Poem Judith Read 84 XIII Eyes Turned Homeward 93 XIV A Broken Axle 101 XV Masked Benefaction 109 XVI Coming Storm 120 XVII A Place Called Bromfield 131 Book Two: Summer XVIII Sylvia 139 XIX A Web in the Moonlight 146 XX Red Dawn 153 XXI The Cloud on the Horizon 158 XXII Midsummer Magic 164 XXIII Lavinia Sees the Abyss 173 XXIV One Way Out 177 XXV A Wedding at Vine Cottage 183 XXVI The Light Within 193 XXVII David’s Children 198 XXVIII Indian Summer 205 XXIX The Truth that is Clean 211 XXX Katharsis 216 XXXI A New Hilltop 224 Book Three: Belated Frost XXXII Lavinia Flounders 231 XXXIII The Statue and the Bust 237 XXXIV Lavinia’s Credo 248 XXXV The Credo at Work 256 XXXVI Consummation 263 XXXVII In the “Personal” Column 268 XXXVIII The Greater Love 274 XXXIX Lavinia 282 Prologue I Lavinia I Tense quiet filled the crooked streets of Bromfield, the quiet that presages storm. Vine Larimore looked anxiously from the window. She was not afraid of tempests: she reveled in them. But a great fear had gripped her in the night. Why had Calvin failed to stop on his way home from the station? What business was it that took Calvin Stone to Rochester every week or two? Another sweetheart? She would not give the hideous thought house room. Was not she, Lavinia Larimore, the handsomest girl in Bromfield? Was not her father, next to the Calvins and the Stones, the most important man in the rusty old New York village? Had she not worn Calvin’s ring for three endless years? Most of the girls in her set were already married, and at New Year’s she had worn the green stockings for her seventeen-year-old sister, Isabel. The wedding dress she had made with so much care and skill, two years agone, hid its once modish lines beneath the cover of the cedar chest—the hope chest that Calvin had ordered for her at Stephen Trench’s shop. Calvin’s father had promised them the old house on High Street, to be remodeled and furnished with the best that Rochester could provide. Mr. Trench had twice figured on the contract, and yet Calvin dallied. It was first one pretext and then another. Once, when he asked her what she wanted for her birthday—it was the latter part of May, and Lavinia would be twenty—she took her courage in her shaking hands and pleaded for a wedding. It was an unmaidenly thing. Bromfield would have branded her as bold. But Calvin saw in her abashed eyes the image of his own dereliction. To be sure he still loved her. He had always intended to make good his pledge. They would be married the middle of August, when the G. A. R. was giving a great excursion to New York City. That would be a honeymoon well worth the waiting. And then, on the second of July, the President was shot. Vine was shocked, as everyone was; but what had that to do with her wedding? Calvin could not think of marrying while Mr. Garfield’s life was in doubt. The President had died, and it was now October. Vine saw Calvin almost daily. In a little town, with the Larimore home near the middle of the principal street, such contact was almost inevitable. But Lavinia found no avenue of approach. Calvin was usually sullen or distraught. Sometimes he took the long détour across the bridge and up behind Stephen Trench’s carpenter shop, on his way to and from the bank. This morning, with a storm brewing, he could hardly risk that walk. He must pass the house any minute. She would stop him and demand an explanation. She knew just what she wanted to say, and when she was thoroughly aroused her tongue never failed her. There was a step on the grass-grown flag-stones, an eager step. Lavinia was on her feet—her fury gone, she knew not where, or why. He was coming. In another minute she would be in his arms, listening to the same old excuses, feeding her hope on the same old shreds of promise. And then.... The front door opened and Ellen Porter’s interrogating eyes met hers. Ellen and Ted Larimore were soon to be married, but the early morning call had nothing to do with the fever of activity that had disturbed the routine of two households for a month past. “Vine, did Calvin show you what he bought in Rochester yesterday?” “Who told you he bought anything?” “Papa. He saw him in the jewelry store. He was looking at wedding rings. He turned his back when he saw somebody from Bromfield; but papa was almost sure he bought one. Viny, are you going to beat Ted and me out, after all?” Lavinia thought for a moment that she would suffocate. The blood pounded in her ears and the room swam dizzily before her. And then the storm broke. She tried to fashion some convincing reply; but the thunder was deafening and the rain beat loudly against the windows. She ran to get a floor cloth, when little rivulets began to trickle over the sill. Ellen sought to help her with the transom, that was seldom closed from spring to fall, when the door was pushed open violently and Ted Larimore, dripping and out of temper, burst into the room. He had forgotten something. No, he could not stop to change his coat. He would take Ellen back to the store with him. For this, at least, his sister was grateful. By noon she would have seen Calvin—would know the meaning of the ring. She would see Calvin ... if she had to go to the bank. Things could not go on this way. [3] [4] [5] II Calvin I While Ted and Ellen strolled down Main Street, oblivious of the rain that swirled upon them, now from the east, now from the south, and while Lavinia plunged with headlong haste into the morning’s housework, a conversation was under way in the dining-room of the Stone mansion. Calvin was late coming down to breakfast and his father had waited for him. “You have something on your mind, and you might as well out with it,” the elder was saying, as he drew his napkin from his collar and folded it crookedly. Calvin drummed the table with uneasy fingers. “Gambling again?” “No, Sir.” “Drinking?” “No, Sir.” “What then? Look here, Calvin Stone, you can’t fool your mother and me. You act like a sheep-stealing dog. What were you doing in Rochester yesterday?” “I was married.” The words fell with the dull impact of a mass of putty. His father’s eyes opened wide, then narrowed, and his huge shoulders bent forward. “Who did you marry? Vine wasn’t with you.” “That’s just the trouble, father. I didn’t marry Vine. Fact is, I didn’t intend to get married at all. Lettie took me by surprise when she told me—” “Lettie who?” “Arlette Fournier. She’s French—and a stunner. I met her at a dance last winter. Oh, she’s a good fellow. She’ll keep it secret till I get out of this scrape with Vine. She wouldn’t want me to bring her to Bromfield for a year or two.” Stone brought his fist down on the table with a vehemence that rattled the breakfast china. “Have you no conscience, no decency? How are you going to square yourself with that girl?” “I couldn’t square myself with both of them. I’ve been thinking it over, since I got home last night. I thought I’d play on Vine’s pride ... snub her openly, you know, so that she’d get in a huff and throw me over. Then I could afterwards pretend I married the other girl for spite. That would save Vine’s feelings.” “You’ll do nothing of the sort, you miserable coward. You are going to Viny Larimore this very morning, and confess what you’ve done.” “No. I am not!” “I say you are.” “You don’t know what you are talking about. I’d never get out of her house alive. You never saw Vine when she was mad. I’d go back to Rochester—I’d—jump in the river, before I’d face her. I don’t have to stay here. Lettie has money of her own, that we could live off of. She doesn’t want to live in this ugly village, any way.” “You could take your living from this stranger, this foreigner that nobody ever heard of? You—you say she is rich? Who are her people?” “Father, won’t you—” Calvin’s voice, a moment before raucous with assurance and determination, broke into waves of impotent pleading. He had perceived the flaw in his parent’s armour. To press home his advantage was the task of the moment. “Her uncle is one of the leading business men of Rochester, and she has money in her own right. She’s been an orphan since she was six years old—sent over here from France by herself, after her parents died, and nobody to look after her. Father, won’t you go and straighten it out with Vine? Honest, I can’t.” The elder Stone spat with disgust. II In slicker and high rubber boots Calvin took the long muddy road to the bank. From every rain-drenched shrub along the way Lavinia Larimore’s outraged womanhood glared at him. For an hour he tried to work, conscious of his father’s eyes with their unfeeling condemnation. When the strain became unbearable, he took a silver-mounted pistol from the safe—with surreptitious gesture, yet making sure that the object in his hand did not escape notice—and thrust it into the drawer of his desk. The threat bore fruit. [6] [7] [8] Mr. Stone took down hat and umbrella and went forth into the abating storm. He was not a man to mince words when he had an unpleasant task before him. Vine greeted him at the door. Her dark cheeks blanched. “What—where is Calvin? Is he sick? Has anything happened to him?” “I wish to God he was dead. Viny, I hope you don’t care any too much for that young scoundrel. He isn’t worthy of the love of a decent girl.” “He hasn’t— You mean, he has embezzled money? Mr. Stone, you won’t let it be found out? I wouldn’t go back on him for—Oh, you won’t....” “I’d brain him if he ever touched a penny that didn’t belong to him.” “Then what—what has he done?” “He was married, yesterday, to a girl in Rochester.” “Married!” And then, in an incredulous whisper, “married.” A moment only Lavinia stood numb and baffled. Then the words poured in a rising tide of indignation, rage, fury. Three years she had waited, and for this. She might have had any one of a dozen—the finest young men in Bromfield. Calvin Stone had won her away from them all. He had deprived her of her girlhood, her opportunities—everything but her self- respect. She had known for two years that he was a drunkard and a gambler. She had clung to him, because it was her Christian duty to reform him. His parents would not have her to blame when he reeled into a drunkard’s grave. It was fortunate that some fool woman had taken the burden from her shoulders. She would have stuck to her promise, in the face of certain misery. The Larimores had that kind of honour—such honour as all the Calvin and Stone money could not buy. But now she need no longer keep up the pretense of caring for a man who was not fit to wipe the mud from her shoes. She had tried to hold together what little manhood was in him—to spare his parents the disgrace he was sure to bring upon them. Once and again the bank president, who was wont to command silence, to be granted a respectful hearing in the highest councils of the town, sought to breast the tide of her anger. His interruptions were swept away like spindrift. He wanted to offer financial restitution, since no other was possible. She met the proposal with scorn. Money could not cover up the disgrace of such a consummation. Calvin might rue his bargain, and come back to plead for forgiveness. The desperately proffered balm brought a more bitter outburst. She would not be any man’s second choice. No, the damage was irreparable. It was done. III As the man of finance turned the interview over in his mind, a curious balance was struck—and his heart softened towards his son. There might have been other tongue-lashings. No woman could have achieved such fluency without practice. Before he reached the front door of the little bank, Lavinia was in her own room, her compact figure half submerged in the feather bed, her hot tears of shame and chagrin wetting the scarlet stars of the quilt her own deft fingers had pieced. She had lost her temper—it was easily misplaced—but the scene she had raised had no share in her memory of the encounter. Her humiliation blotted all else from view. It was not only that she had aimed at the highest, and lost. She loved Calvin Stone with all the passion of a fiery nature—loved him with a depth and intensity that might be gauged by the hate that loomed on the surface of her wrath. And there was no one in the whole world to whom she could open her heart. Mrs. Larimore knew there had been a quarrel, a quarrel that outran the morning’s tempest in violence; but when she ventured to ask what the trouble was, Lavinia told her curtly that it was none of her business. Now she stood outside the door, listening to her daughter’s stormy sobbing. She had never been on intimate terms with her children, and the relationship with her eldest daughter was most casual. A headstrong girl. Where she got her ambition—unless it was a heritage from her Grandmother Larimore—no one could say. The other members of the family were easygoing, content with the day’s pleasure and profit. But Lavinia was avid for work, for praise, for position. She would shine as Mrs. Calvin Stone, if ever.... And then Mrs. Larimore began afresh to wonder. [9] [10] [11] III David I 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, [12] [13] [14] [15] “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. [16] [17] [18] Book One Spring [19] [20]