The little man kept interrupting himself with apologies. “I shan’t keep you long, Mrs. Pentland ... only a moment. You see I thought it was better if I saw you here instead of coming to the house.” Suddenly screwing up his shiny face, he became intensely serious. “It’s like this, Mrs. Pentland.... I know you’re a good friend of his and you wish him well. You want to see him get elected ... even though you people out here don’t hold much with the Democratic party.”
“Yes,” said Olivia. “That’s true.”
“Well,” he continued with a visible effort, “Michael’s a good friend of mine. I’m sort of a bodyguard to him. Of course, I never come out here, I don’t belong in this world.... I’d feel sort of funny out here.”
(Olivia found herself feeling respect for the little man. He was so simple and so honest and he so obviously worshiped Michael.)
“You see ... I know all about Michael. I’ve been through a great deal with him ... and he’s not himself just now. There’s something wrong. He ain’t interested in his work. He acts as if he’d be willing to chuck his whole career overboard ... and I can’t let him do that. None of his friends ... can’t let him do it. We can’t get him to take a proper interest in his affairs. Usually, he manages everything ... better than any one else could.” He became suddenly confidential, closing one eye. “D’you knowwhat I think is the matter? I’ve been watching him and I’ve got an idea.”
He waited until Olivia said, “No ... I haven’t the least idea.”
Cocking his head on one side and speaking with the air of having made a great discovery, he said, “Well, I think there’s a woman mixed up in it.”
She felt the blood mounting to her head, in spite of anything she could do. When she was able to speak, she asked, “Yes, and what am I to do?”
He moved a little nearer, still with the same air of confiding in her. “Well, this is my idea. Now, you’re a friend of his ... you’ll understand. You see, the trouble is that it’s some woman here in Durham ... some swell, you see, like yourself. That’s what makes it hard. He’s had women before, but they were women out of the ward and it didn’t make much difference. But this is different. He’s all upset, and....” He hesitated for a moment. “Well, I don’t like to say a thing like this about Michael, but I think his head is turned a little. That’s a mean thing to say, but then we’re all human, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” said Olivia softly. “Yes ... in the end, we’re all human ... even swells like me.” There was a twinkle of humor in her eye which for a moment disconcerted the little man.
“Well,” he went on, “he’s all upset about her and he’s no good for anything. Now, what I thought was this ... that you could find out who this woman is and go to her and persuade her to lay off him for a time ... to go away some place ... at least until the campaign is over. It’d make a difference. D’you see?”
He looked at her boldly, as if what he had been saying was absolutely honest and direct, as if he really had not the faintest idea who this woman was, and beneath a sense ofanger, Olivia was amused at the crude tact which had evolved this trick.
“There’s not much that I can do,” she said. “It’s a preposterous idea ... but I’ll do what I can. I’ll try. I can’t promise anything. It lies with Mr. O’Hara, after all.”
“You see, Mrs. Pentland, if it ever got to be a scandal, it’d be the end of him. A woman out of the ward doesn’t matter so much, but a woman out here would be different. She’d get a lot of publicity from the sassiety editors and all.... That’s what’s dangerous. He’d have the whole church against him on the grounds of immorality.”
While he was speaking, a strange idea occurred to Olivia—that much of what he said sounded like a strange echo of Aunt Cassie’s methods of argument.
The horse had grown impatient and was pawing the road and tossing his head; and Olivia was angry now, genuinely angry, so that she waited for a time before speaking, lest she should betray herself and spoil all this little game of pretense which Mr. Gavin had built up to keep himself in countenance. At last she said, “I’ll do what I can, but it’s a ridiculous thing you’re asking of me.”
The little man grinned. “I’ve been a long time in politics, Ma’am, and I’ve seen funnier things than this....” He put on his hat, as if to signal that he had said all he wanted to say. “But there’s one thing I’d like to ask ... and that’s that you never let Michael know that I spoke to you about this.”
“Why should I promise ... anything?”
He moved nearer and said in a low voice, “You know Michael very well, Mrs. Pentland.... You know Michael very well, and you know that he’s got a bad, quick temper. If he found out that we were meddling in his affairs, he might do anything. He might chuck the whole businessand clear out altogether. He’s never been like this about a woman before. He’d do it just now.... That’s the way he’s feeling. You don’t want to see him ruin himself any more than I do ... a clever man like Michael. Why, he might be president one of these days. He can do anything he sets his will to, Ma’am, but he is, as they say, temperamental just now.”
“I’ll not tell him,” said Olivia quietly. “And I’ll do what I can to help you. And now I must go.” She felt suddenly friendly toward Mr. Gavin, perhaps because what he had been telling her was exactly what she wanted most at that moment to hear. She leaned down from her horse and held out her hand, saying, “Good-morning, Mr. Gavin.”
Mr. Gavin removed his hat once more, revealing his round, bald, shiny head. “Good-morning, Mrs. Pentland.”
As she rode off, the little man remained standing in the middle of the road looking after her until she had disappeared. His eye glowed with the light of admiration, but as Olivia turned from the road into the meadows, he frowned and swore aloud. Until now he hadn’t understood how a good politician like Michael could lose his head over any woman. But he had an idea that he could trust this woman to do what she had promised. There was a look about her ... a look which made her seem different from most women; perhaps it was this look which had made a fool of Michael, who usually kept women in their proper places.
Grinning and shaking his head, he got into the Ford, started it with a great uproar, and set off in the direction of Boston. After he had gone a little way he halted again and got out, for in his agitation he had forgotten to close the hood.
From the moment she turned and rode away from Mr. Gavin, Olivia gave herself over to action. She saw thatthere was need of more than mere static truth to bring order out of the hazy chaos at Pentlands; there must be action as well. And she was angry now, really angry, even at Mr. Gavin for his impertinence, and at the unknown person who had been his informant. The strange idea that Aunt Cassie or Anson was somehow responsible still remained; tactics such as these were completely sympathetic to them—to go thus in Machiavellian fashion to a man like Gavin instead of coming to her. By using Mr. Gavin there would be no scene, no definite unpleasantness to disturb the enchantment of Pentlands. They could go on pretending that nothing was wrong, that nothing had happened.
But stronger than her anger was the fear that in some way they might use the same tactics to spoil the happiness of Sybil. They would, she was certain, sacrifice everything to their belief in their own rightness.
She found Jean at the house when she returned, and, closing the door of the drawing-room, she said to him, “Jean, I want to talk to you for a moment ... alone.”
He said at once, “I know, Mrs. Pentland. It’s about Sybil.”
There was a little echo of humor in his voice that touched and disarmed her as it always did. It struck her that he was still young enough to be confident that everything in life would go exactly as he wished it....
“Yes,” she said, “that was it.” They sat on two of Horace Pentland’s chairs and she continued. “I don’t believe in meddling, Jean, only now there are circumstances ... reasons....” She made a little gesture. “I thought that if really ... really....”
He interrupted her quickly. “I do, Mrs. Pentland. We’ve talked it all over, Sybil and I ... and we’re agreed. We love each other. We’re going to be married.”
Watching the young, ardent face, she thought, “It’s a niceface in which there is nothing mean or nasty. The lips aren’t thin and tight like Anson’s, nor the skin sickly and pallid the way Anson’s has always been. There’s life in it, and force and charm. It’s the face of a man who would be good to a woman ... a man not in the least cold-blooded.”
“Do you love her ... really?” she asked.
“I ... I.... It’s a thing I can’t answer because there aren’t words to describe it.”
“Because ... well ... Jean, it’s no ordinary case of a mother and a daughter. It’s much more than that. It means more to me than my own happiness, my own life ... because, well, because Sybil is like a part of myself. I want her to be happy. It’s not just a simple case of two young people marrying. It’s much more than that.” There was a silence, and she asked, “How do you love her?”
He sat forward on the edge of his chair, all eagerness. “Why ...” he began, stammering a little, “I couldn’t think of living without her. It’s different from anything I ever imagined. Why ... we’ve planned everything ... all our lives. If ever I lost her, it wouldn’t matter what happened to me afterwards.” He grinned and added, “But you see ... people have said all that before. There aren’t any words to explain ... to make it seem as different from anything else as it seems to me.”
“But you’re going to take her away?”
“Yes ... she wants to go where I go.”
(“They are young,” thought Olivia. “They’ve never once thought of any one else ... myself or Sybil’s grandfather.”)
Aloud she said, “That’s right, Jean.... I want you to take her away ... no matter what happens, you must take her away....” (“And then I won’t even have Sybil.”)
“We’re going to my ranch in the Argentine.”
“That’s right.... I think Sybil would like that.” She sighed, in spite of herself, vaguely envious of these two. “But you’re so young. How can you know for certain.”
A shadow crossed his face and he said, “I’m twenty-five, Mrs. Pentland ... but that’s not the only thing.... I was brought up, you see, among the French ... like a Frenchman. That makes a difference.” He hesitated, frowning for a moment. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell.... You mightn’t understand. I know how things are in this part of the world.... You see, I was brought up to look upon falling in love as something natural ... something that was pleasant and natural and amusing. I’ve been in love before, casually ... the way young Frenchmen are ... but in earnest, too, because a Frenchman can’t help surrounding a thing like that with sentiment and romance. He can’t help it. If it were just ... just something shameful and nasty, he couldn’t endure it. They don’t have affairs in cold blood ... the way I’ve heard men talk about such things since I’ve come here. It makes a difference, Mrs. Pentland, if you look at the thing in the light they do. It’s different here.... I see the difference more every day.”
He was talking earnestly, passionately, and when he paused for a moment she remained silent, unwilling to interrupt him until he had finished.
“What I’m trying to say is difficult, Mrs. Pentland. It’s simply this ... that I’m twenty-five, but I’ve had experience with life. Don’t laugh! Don’t think I’m just a college boy trying to make you think I’m a roué. Only what I say is true. I know about such things ... and I’m glad because it makes me all the more certain that Sybil is the only woman inthe world for me ... the one for whom I’d sacrifice everything. And I’ll know better how to make her happy, to be gentle with her ... to understand her. I’ve learned now, and it’s a thing which needs learning ... the most important thing in all life. The French are right about it. They make a fine, wonderful thing of love.” He turned away with a sudden air of sadness. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you all this.... I’ve told Sybil. She understands.”
“No,” said Olivia, “I think you’re right ... perhaps.” She kept thinking of the long tragic story of John Pentland, and of Anson, who had always been ashamed of love and treated it as something distasteful. To them it had been a dark, strange thing always touched by shame. She kept thinking, despite anything she could do, of Anson’s clumsy, artificial attempts at love-making, and she was swept suddenly by shame for him. Anson, so proud and supercilious, was a poor thing, inferior even to his own groom.
“But why,” she asked, “didn’t you tell me about Sybil sooner? Every one has seen it, but you never spoke to me.”
For a moment he did not answer her. An expression of pain clouded the blue eyes, and then, looking at her directly, he said, “It’s not easy to explain why. I was afraid to come to you for fear you mightn’t understand, and the longer I’ve been here, the longer I’ve put it off because ... well, because here in Durham, ancestors, family, all that, seems to be the beginning and end of everything. It seems always to be a question of who one’s family is. There is only the past and no future at all. And, you see, in a way ... I haven’t any family.” He shrugged his big shoulders and repeated, “In a way, I haven’t any family at all. You see, my mother was never married to my father.... I’ve no blood-right to the name of de Cyon. I’m ... I’m ... well, just a bastard, and it seemed hopeless for me even to talk to a Pentland about Sybil.”
He saw that she was startled, disturbed, but he could not have known that the look in her eyes had very little to do with shock at what he had told her; rather she was thinking whata weapon the knowledge would be in the hands of Anson and Aunt Cassie and even John Pentland himself.
He was talking again with the same passionate earnestness.
“I shan’t let it make any difference, so long as Sybil will have me, but, you see, it’s very hard to explain, because it isn’t the way it seems. I want you to understand that my mother is a wonderful woman.... I wouldn’t bother to explain, to say anything ... except to Sybil and to you.”
“Sabine has told me about her.”
“Mrs. Callendar has known her for a long time.... They’re great friends,” said Jean. “She understands.”
“But she never told me ... that. You mean that she’s known it all along?”
“It’s not an easy thing to tell ... especially here in Durham, and I fancy she thought it might make trouble for me ... after she saw what had happened to Sybil and me.”
He went on quickly, telling her what he had told Sybil of his mother’s story, trying to make her understand what he understood, and Sabine and even his stepfather, the distinguished old de Cyon ... trying to explain a thing which he himself knew was not to be explained. He told her that his mother had refused to marry her lover, “because in his life outside ... the life which had nothing to do with her ... she discovered that there were things she couldn’t support. She saw that it was better not to marry him ... better for herself and for him and, most of all, for me.... He did things for the sake of success—mean, dishonorable things—which she couldn’t forgive ... and so she wouldn’t marry him. And now, looking back, I think she was right. It made no great difference in her life. She lived abroad ... as a widow, and very few people—not more than two or three—ever knew the truth.Henever told because, beinga politician, he was afraid of such a scandal. She didn’t want me to be brought up under such an influence, and I think she was right. He’s gone on doing things that were mean and dishonorable.... He’s still doing them to-day. You see he’s a politician ... a rather cheap one. He’s a Senator now and he hasn’t changed. I could tell you his name.... I suppose some people would think him a distinguished man ... only I promised her never to tell it. He thinks that I’m dead.... He came to her once and asked to see me, to have a hand in my education and my future. There were things, he said, that he could do for me in America ... and she told him simply that I was dead ... that I was killed in the war.” He finished in a sudden burst of enthusiasm, his face alight with affection. “But you must know her really to understand what I’ve been saying. Knowing her, you understand everything, because she’s one of the great people ... the strong people of the world. You see, it’s one of the things which it is impossible to explain—to you or even to Sybil—impossible to explain to the others. One must know her.”
If she had had any doubts or fears, she knew now that it was too late to act; she saw that it was impossible to change the wills of two such lovers as Jean and Sybil. In a way, she came to understand the story of Jean’s mother more from watching him than by listening to his long explanation. There must be in her that same determination and ardor that was in her son ... a thing in its way irresistible. And yet it was difficult; she was afraid, somehow, of this unexpected thing, perhaps because it seemed vaguely like the taint of Savina Pentland.
She said, “If no one knows this, there is no reason to tell it here. It would only make unhappiness for all concerned. It is your business alone... and Sybil’s. The others have no right to interfere, even to know; but they will try, Jean ... unless ... unless you both do what you want ... quickly. Sometimes I think they might do anything.”
“You mean ...” he began impatiently.
Olivia fell back upon that vague hint which John Pentland had dropped to her the night before. She said, “There was once an elopement in the Pentland family.”
“You wouldn’t mind that?” he asked eagerly. “You wouldn’t be hurt ... if we did it that way?”
“I shouldn’t know anything about it,” said Olivia quietly, “until it was too late to do anything.”
“It’s funny,” he said; “we’d thought of that. We’ve talked of it, only Sybil was afraid you’d want to have a big wedding and all that....”
“No, I think it would be better not to have any wedding at all ... especially under the circumstances.”
“Mrs. Callendar suggested it as the best way out.... She offered to lend us her motor,” he said eagerly.
“You discussed it with her and yet you didn’t speak to me?”
“Well, you see, she’s different ... she and Thérèse.... They don’t belong here in Durham. Besides, she spoke of it first. She knew what was going on. She always knows. I almost think that she planned the whole thing long ago.”
Olivia, looking out of the window, saw entering the long drive the antiquated motor with Aunt Cassie, Miss Peavey, her flying veils and her Pekinese.
“Mrs. Struthers is coming ...” she said. “We mustn’t make her suspicious. And you’d best tell me nothing of your plans and then ... I shan’t be able to interfere even if I wanted to. I might change my mind ... one never knows.”
He stood up and, coming over to her, took her hand andkissed it. “There’s nothing to say, Mrs. Pentland ... except that you’ll be glad for what you’ve done. You needn’t worry about Sybil.... I shall make her happy.... I think I know how.”
He left her, hurrying away past the ancestors in the long hall to find Sybil, thinking all the while how odd it would seem to have a woman so young and beautiful as Mrs. Pentland for a mother-in-law. She was a charming woman (he thought in his enthusiasm), a great woman, but she was so sad, as if she had never been very happy. There was always a cloud about her.
He did not escape quickly enough, for Aunt Cassie’s sharp eyes caught a glimpse of him as he left the house in the direction of the stables. She met Olivia in the doorway, kissing her and saying, “Was that Sybil’s young man I saw leaving?”
“Yes,” said Olivia. “We’ve been talking about Sybil. I’ve been telling him that he mustn’t think of her as some one to marry.”
The yellow face of Aunt Cassie lighted with a smile of approval. “I’m glad, my dear, that you’re being sensible about this. I was afraid you wouldn’t be, but I didn’t like to interfere. I never believe any good comes of it, unless one is forced to. He’s not the person for Sybil.... Why, no one knows anything about him. You can’t let a girl marry like that ... just any one who comes along. Besides, Mrs. Pulsifer writes me.... You remember her, Olivia, the Mannering boy’s aunt who used to have a house in Chestnut Street.... Well, she lives in Paris now at the Hotel Continental, and she writes me she’s discovered there’s some mystery about his mother. No one seems to know much about her.”
“Why,” said Olivia, “should she write you such a thing? What made her think you’d be interested?”
“Well, Kate Pulsifer and I went to school together and we still correspond now and then. I just happened to mention the boy’s name when I was writing her about Sabine. She says, by the way, that Sabine has very queer friends in Paris and that Sabine has never so much as called on her or asked her for tea. And there’s been some new scandal about Sabine’s husband and an Italian woman. It happened in Venice....”
“But he’s not her husband any longer.”
The old lady seated herself and went on pouring forth the news from Kate Pulsifer’s letter; with each word she appeared to grow stronger and stronger, less and less yellow and worn.
(“It must be,” thought Olivia, “the effect of so many calamities contained in one letter.”)
She saw now that she had acted only just in time and she was glad that she had lied, so flatly, so abruptly, without thinking why she had done it. For Mrs. Pulsifer was certain to go to the bottom of the affair, if for no other reason than to do harm to Sabine; she had once lived in a house on Chestnut Street with a bow-window which swept the entrance to every house. She was one of John Pentland’s dead, who lived by watching others live.
Fromthe moment she encountered Mr. Gavin on the turnpike until the tragedy which occurred two days later, life at Pentlands appeared to lose all reality for Olivia. When she thought of it long afterward, the hours became a sort of nightmare in which the old enchantment snapped and gave way to a strained sense of struggle between forces which,centering about herself, left her in the end bruised and a little broken, but secure.
The breathless heat of the sort which from time to time enveloped that corner of New England, leaving the very leaves of the trees hanging limp and wilted, again settled down over the meadows and marshes, and in the midst of the afternoon appeared the rarest of sights—the indolent Sabine stirring in the burning sun. Olivia watched her coming across the fields, protected from the blazing sun only by the frivolous yellow parasol. She came slowly, indifferently, and until she entered the cool, darkened drawing-room she appeared the familiar bored Sabine; only after she greeted Olivia the difference appeared.
She said abruptly, “I’m leaving day after to-morrow,” and instead of seating herself to talk, she kept wandering restlessly about the room, examining Horace Pentland’s bibelots and turning the pages of books and magazines without seeing them.
“Why?” asked Olivia. “I thought you were staying until October.”
“No, I’m going away at once.” She turned and murmured, “I’ve hated Durham always. It’s unbearable to me now. I’m bored to death. I only came, in the first place, because I thought Thérèse ought to know her own people. But it’s no good. She’ll have none of them. I see now how like her father she is. They’re not her own people and never will be.... I don’t imagine Durham will ever see either of us again.”
Olivia smiled. “I know it’s dull here.”
“Oh, I don’t mean you, Olivia dear, or even Sybil or O’Hara, but there’s something in the air.... I’m going to Newport for two weeks and then to Biarritz for October. Thérèse wants to go to Oxford.” She grinnedsardonically. “There’s a bit of New England in her, after all ... this education business. I wanted afemme du mondefor a daughter and God and New England sent me a scientist who would rather wear flat heels and look through a microscope. It’s funny how children turn out.”
(“Even Thérèse and Sabine,” thought Olivia. “Even they belong to it.”)
She watched Sabine, so worldly, so superbly dressed, so hard—such a restless nomad; and as she watched her it occurred to her again that she was very like Aunt Cassie—an Aunt Cassie in revolt against Aunt Cassie’s gods, an Aunt Cassie, as John Pentland had said, “turned inside out.”
Without looking up from the pages of theNouvelle Revue, Sabine said, “I’m glad this thing about Sybil is settled.”
“Yes.”
“He told you about his mother?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t let that make any difference? You didn’t tell the others?”
“No.... Anything I had to say would have made no difference.”
“You were wise.... I think Thérèse is right, perhaps ... righter than any of us. She says that nature has a contempt for marriage certificates. Respectability can’t turn decay into life ... and Jean is alive.... So is his mother.”
“I know what you are driving at.”
“Certainly, my dear, you ought to know. You’ve suffered enough from it. And knowing his mother makes a difference. She’s no ordinary light woman, or even one who was weak enough to allow herself to be seduced. Once in fifty years there occurs a woman who can ... how shall I say it?... get away with a thing like that. You have to be a great woman to do it. I don’t think it’s made much difference in her life, chiefly because she’s a woman of discretion and excellent taste. But it might have made a difference in Jean’s life if he had encountered a mother less wise than yourself.”
“I don’t know whether I’m being wise or not. I believe in him and I want Sybil to escape.”
Olivia understood that for the first time they were discussing the thing which none of them ever mentioned, the thing which up to now Sabine had only touched upon by insinuation. Sabine had turned away and stood looking out of the window across the meadows where the distant trees danced in waves of heat.
“You spoiled my summer a bit, Olivia dear, by taking away my Irish friend from me.”
Suddenly Olivia was angry as she was angry sometimes at the meddling of Aunt Cassie. “I didn’t take him away. I did everything possible to avoid him ... until you came. It was you who threw us together. That’s why we’re all in a tangle now.” And she kept thinking what a strange woman Sabine Callendar really was, how intricate and unfathomable. She knew of no other woman in the world who could talk thus so dispassionately, so without emotion.
“I thought I’d have him to amuse,” she was saying, “and instead of that he only uses me as a confidante. He comes to me for advice about another woman. And that, as you know, isn’t very interesting....”
Olivia sat suddenly erect. “What does he say? What right has he to do such a thing?”
“Because I’ve asked him to. When I first came here, I promised to help him. You see, I’m very friendly with you both. I want you both to be happy and ... besides I can think of nothing happening which could give me greater pleasure.”
When Olivia did not answer her, she turned from thewindow and asked abruptly, “What are you going to do about him?”
Again Olivia thought it best not to answer, but Sabine went on pushing home her point relentlessly, “You must forgive me for speaking plainly, but I have a great affection for you both ... and I ... well, I have a sense of conscience in the affair.”
“You needn’t have. There’s nothing to have a conscience about.”
“You’re not being very honest.”
Suddenly Olivia burst out angrily, “And why should it concern you, Sabine ... in the least? Why should I not do as I please, without interference?”
“Because, here ... and you know this as well as I do ... here such a thing is impossible.”
In a strange fashion she was suddenly afraid of Sabine, perhaps because she was so bent upon pushing things to a definite solution. It seemed to Olivia that she herself was losing all power of action, all capacity for anything save waiting, pretending, doing nothing.
“And I’m interested,” continued Sabine slowly, “because I can’t bear the tragic spectacle of another John Pentland and Mrs. Soames.”
“There won’t be,” said Olivia desperately. “My father-in-law is different from Michael.”
“That’s true....”
“In a way ... a finer man.” She found herself suddenly in the amazing position of actually defending Pentlands.
“But not,” said Sabine with a terrifying reasonableness, “so wise a one ... or one so intelligent.”
“No. It’s impossible to say....”
“A thing like this is likely to come only once to a woman.”
(“Why does she keep repeating the very things that I’vebeen fighting all along,” thought Olivia.) Aloud she said, “Sabine, you must leave me in peace. It’s for me alone to settle.”
“I don’t want you to do a thing you will regret the rest of your life ... bitterly.”
“You mean....”
“Oh, I mean simply to give him up.”
Again Olivia was silent, and Sabine asked suddenly, “Have you had a call from a Mr. Gavin? A gentleman with a bald head and a polished face?”
Olivia looked at her sharply. “How could you know that?”
“Because I sent him, my dear ... for the same reason that I’m here now ... because I wanted you to do something ... to act. And I’m confessing now because I thought you ought to know the truth, since I’m going away. Otherwise you might think Aunt Cassie or Anson had done it ... and trouble might come of that.”
Again Olivia said nothing; she was lost in a sadness over the thought that, after all, Sabine was no better than the others.
“It’s not easy to act in this house,” Sabine was saying. “It’s not easy to do anything but pretend and go on and on until at last you are an old woman and die. I did it to help you ... for your own good.”
“That’s what Aunt Cassie always says.”
The shaft went home, for it silenced Sabine, and in the moment’s pause Sabine seemed less a woman than an amazing, disembodied, almost malevolent force. When she answered, it was with a shrug of the shoulders and a bitter smile which seemed doubly bitter on the frankly painted lips. “I suppose Iamlike Aunt Cassie. I mightn’t have been, though.... I might have been just a pleasant normal person ... like Higgins or one of the servants.”
The strange speech found an echo in Olivia’s heart. Lately the same thought had come to her again and again—if only she could be simple like Higgins or the kitchen-maid. Such a state seemed to her at the moment the most desirable thing in the world. It was perhaps this strange desire which led Sabine to surround herself with what Durham called “queer people,” who were, after all, simply people like Higgins and the kitchen-maid who happened to occupy a higher place in society.
“The air here needs clearing,” Sabine was saying. “It needs a thunderstorm, and it can be cleared only by acting.... This affair of Jean and Sybil will help. We are all caught up in a tangle of thoughts and ideas ... which don’t matter.... You can do it, Olivia. You can clear the air once and for all.”
Then for the first time Olivia thought she saw what lay behind all this intriguing of Sabine; for a moment she fancied that she saw what it was Sabine wanted more passionately than anything else in the world.
Aloud she said it, “I could clear the air, but it would also be the destruction of everything.”
Sabine looked at her directly. “Well?... and would you be sorry? Would you count it a loss? Would it make any difference?”
Impulsively she touched Sabine’s hand. “Sabine,” she said, without looking at her, “I’m fond of you. You know that. Please don’t talk any more about this ... please, because I want to go on being fond of you ... and I can’t otherwise. It’s our affair, mine and Michael’s ... and I’m going to settle it, to-night perhaps, as soon as I can have a talk with him.... I can’t go on any longer.”
Taking up the yellow parasol, Sabine asked, “Do you expect me for dinner to-night?”
“Of course, more than ever to-night.... I’m sorry you’vedecided to go so soon.... It’ll be dreary without you or Sybil.”
“You can go, too,” said Sabine quickly. “There is a way. He’d give up everything for you ... everything. I know that.” Suddenly she gave Olivia a sharp look. “You’re thirty-eight, aren’t you?”
“Day after to-morrow I shall be forty!”
Sabine was tracing the design of roses on Horace Pentland’s Savonnerie carpet with the tip of her parasol. “Gather them while you may,” she said and went out into the blazing heat to cross the meadows to Brook Cottage.
Left alone, Olivia knew she was glad that day after to-morrow Sabine would no longer be here. She saw now what John Pentland meant when he said, “Sabine ought never to have come back here.”
Theheat clung on far into the evening, penetrating with the darkness even the drawing-room where they sat—Sabine and John Pentland and old Mrs. Soames and Olivia—playing bridge for the last time, and as the evening wore on the game went more and more badly, with the old lady forgetting her cards and John Pentland being patient and Sabine sitting in a controlled and sardonic silence, with an expression on her face which said clearly, “I can endure this for to-night because to-morrow I shall escape again into the lively world.”
Jean and Sybil sat for a time at the piano, and then fell to watching the bridge. No one spoke save to bid or to remind Mrs. Soames that it was time for her shaking hands to distribute the cards about the table. Even Olivia’s low, quiet voice sounded loud in the hot stillness of the old room.
At nine o’clock Higgins appeared with a message for Olivia—that Mr. O’Hara was being detained in town and that ifhe could get away before ten he would come down and stop at Pentlands if the lights were still burning in the drawing-room. Otherwise he would not be down to ride in the morning.
Once during a pause in the game Sabine stirred herself to say, “I haven’t asked about Anson’s book. He must be near to the end.”
“Very near,” said Olivia. “There’s very little more to be done. Men are coming to-morrow to photograph the portraits. He’s using them to illustrate the book.”
At eleven, when they came to the end of a rubber, Sabine said, “I’m sorry, but I must stop. I must get up early to-morrow to see about the packing.” And turning to Jean she said, “Will you drive me home? Perhaps Sybil will ride over with us for the air. You can bring her back.”
At the sound of her voice, Olivia wanted to cry out, “No, don’t go. You mustn’t leave me now ... alone. You mustn’t go away like this!” But she managed to say quietly, in a voice which sounded far away, “Don’t stay too late, Sybil,” and mechanically, without knowing what she was doing, she began to put the cards back again in their boxes.
She saw that Sabine went out first, and then John Pentland and old Mrs. Soames, and that Jean and Sybil remained behind until the others had gone, until John Pentland had helped the old lady gently into his motor and driven off with her. Then, looking up with a smile which somehow seemed to give her pain she said, “Well?”
And Sybil, coming to her side, kissed her and said in a low voice, “Good-by, darling, for a little while.... I love you....” And Jean kissed her in a shy fashion on both cheeks.
She could find nothing to say. She knew Sybil would come back, but she would be a different Sybil, a Sybil who was a woman, no longer the child who even at eighteen sometimes had the absurd trick of sitting on her mother’s knee. And she was taking away with her something that until now had belonged to Olivia, something which she could never again claim. She could find nothing to say. She could only follow them to the door, from where she saw Sabine already sitting in the motor as if nothing in the least unusual were happening; and all the while she wanted to go with them, to run away anywhere at all.
Through a mist she saw them turning to wave to her as the motor drove off, to wave gaily and happily because they were at the beginning of life.... She stood in the doorway to watch the motor-lights slipping away in silence down the lane and over the bridge through the blackness to the door of Brook Cottage. There was something about Brook Cottage ... something that was lacking from the air of Pentlands: it was where Toby Cane and Savina Pentland had had their wanton meetings.
In the still heat the sound of the distant surf came to her dimly across the marshes, and into her mind came absurdly words she had forgotten for years.... “The breaking waves dashed high on the stern and rockbound coast.” Against the accompaniment of the surf, the crickets and katydids (harbingers of autumn) kept up a fiddling and singing; and far away in the direction of Marblehead she watched the eye of a lighthouse winking and winking. She was aware of every sight and sound and odor of the breathless night. It might storm, she thought, before they got into Connecticut. They would be motoring all the night....
The lights of Sabine’s motor were moving again now, away from Brook Cottage, through O’Hara’s land, on and on in the direction of the turnpike. In the deep hollow by the river they disappeared for a moment and then were to be seen once more against the black mass of the hill crowned by the town burial-ground. And then abruptly they were gone,leaving only the sound of the surf and the music of the crickets and the distant, ironically winking lighthouse.
She kept seeing them, side by side in the motor racing through the darkness, oblivious to all else in the world save their own happiness. Yes, something had gone away from her forever.... She felt a terrible, passionate envy that was like a physical pain, and all at once she knew that she was terribly alone standing in the darkness before the door of the old house.
She was roused by the sound of Anson’s voice asking, “Is that you, Olivia?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing out there?”
“I came out for some air.”
“Where’s Sybil?”
For a moment she did not answer, and then quite boldly she said, “She’s ridden over with Jean to take Sabine home.”
“You know I don’t approve of that.” He had come through the hall now and was standing near her.
“It can’t do any harm.”
“That’s been said before....”
“Why are you so suspicious, Anson, of your own child?” She had no desire to argue with him. She wanted only to be left in peace, to go away to her room and lie there alone in the darkness, for she knew now that Michael was not coming.
“Olivia,” Anson was saying, “come inside for a moment. I want to talk to you.”
“Very well ... but please don’t be disagreeable. I’m very tired.”
“I shan’t be disagreeable.... I only want to settle something.”
She knew then that he meant to be very disagreeable, and she told herself that she would not listen to him; she would think of something else while he was speaking—a trick she had learned long ago. In the drawing-room she sat quietly and waited for him to begin. Standing by the mantelpiece, he appeared more tired and yellow than usual. She knew that he had worked on his book; she knew that he had poured all his vitality, all his being, into it; but as she watched him her imagination again played her the old trick of showing her Michael standing there in his place ... defiant, a little sulky, and filled with a slow, steady, inexhaustible force.
“It’s chiefly about Sybil,” he said. “I want her to give up seeing this boy.”
“Don’t be a martinet, Anson. Nothing was ever gained by it.”
(She thought, “They must be almost to Salem by now.”) And aloud she added, “You’re her father, Anson; why don’t you speak?”
“It’s better for you. I’ve no influence with her.”
“I have spoken,” she said, thinking bitterly that he could never guess what she meant.
“And what’s the result? Look at her, going off at this hour of the night....”
She shrugged her shoulders, filled with a warm sense of having outwitted the enemy, for at the moment Anson seemed to her an enemy not only of herself, but of Jean and Sybil, of all that was young and alive in the world.
“Besides,” he was saying, “she hasn’t proper respect for me ... her father. Sometimes I think it’s the ideas she got from you and from going abroad to school.”
“What a nasty thing to say! But if you want the truth, I think it’s because you’ve never been a very good father. Sometimes I’ve thought younever wanted children. You’ve never paid much attention to them ... not even to Jack ... while he was alive. It wasn’t ever as if they wereourchildren. You’ve always left them to me ... alone.”
The thin neck stiffened a little and he said, “There are reasons for that. I’m a busy man.... I’ve given most of my time, not to making money, but to doing things to better the world in some way. If I’ve neglected my children it’s been for a good reason ... few men have as much on their minds. And there’s been the book to take all my energies. You’re being unjust, Olivia. You never could see me as I am.”
“Perhaps,” said Olivia. (She wanted to say, “What difference does the book make to any one in the world? Who cares whether it is written or not?”) She knew that she must keep up her deceit, so she said, “You needn’t worry, because Sabine is going away to-morrow and Jean will go with her.” She sighed. “After that your life won’t be disturbed any longer. Nothing in the least unusual is likely to happen.”
“And there’s this other thing,” he said, “this disloyalty of yours to me and to all the family.”
Stiffening slightly, she asked, “What can you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean.”
She saw that he was putting himself in the position of a wronged husband, assuming a martyrdom of the sort which Aunt Cassie practised so effectively. He meant to be a patient, well-meaning husband and to place her in the position of a shameful woman; and slowly, with a slow, heavy anger, she resolved to circumvent his trick.
“I think, Anson, that you’re talking nonsense. I haven’t been disloyal to any one. Your father will tell you that.”
“My father was always weak where women are concerned, and now he’s beginning to grow childish. He’s so old that he’s beginning to forgive and condone anything.” And thenafter a silence he said, “This O’Hara. I’m not such a fool as you think, Olivia.”
For a long time neither of them said anything, and in the end it was Olivia who spoke, striking straight into the heart of the question. She said, “Anson, would you consider letting me divorce you?”
The effect upon him was alarming. His face turned gray, and the long, thin, oversensitive hands began to tremble. She saw that she had touched him on the rawest of places, upon his immense sense of pride and dignity. It would be unbearable for him to believe that she would want to be rid of him in order to go to another man, especially to a man whom he professed to hold in contempt, a man who had the qualities which he himself did not possess. He could only see the request as a humiliation of his own precious dignity.
He managed to grin, trying to turn the request to mockery, and said, “Have you lost your mind?”
“No, Anson, not for a moment. What I ask is a simple thing. It has been done before.”
He did not answer her at once, and began to move about the room in the deepest agitation, a strange figure curiously out of place in the midst of Horace Pentland’s exotic, beautiful pictures and chairs and bibelots—as wrong in such a setting as he had been right a month or two earlier among the museum of Pentland family relics.
“No,” he said again and again. “What you ask is preposterous! To-morrow when you are less tired you will see how ridiculous it is. No ... I couldn’t think of such a thing!”
She made an effort to speak quietly. “Is it because you don’t want to put yourself in such a position?”
“It has nothing to do with that. Why should you want a divorce? We are well off, content, comfortable, happy....”
She interrupted him, asking, “Are we?”
“What is it you expect, Olivia ... to live always in a sort of romantic glow? We’re happier than most.”
“No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think happiness has ever meant much to you, Anson. Perhaps you’re above such things as happiness and unhappiness. Perhaps you’re more fortunate than most of us. I doubt if you have ever known happiness or unhappiness, for that matter. You’ve been uncomfortable when people annoyed you and got in your way, but ... that’s all. Nothing more than that. Happiness ... I mean it in the sensible way ... has sometimes to do with delight in living, and I don’t think you’ve ever known that, even for a moment.”
He turned toward her saying, “I’ve been an honest, God-fearing, conscientious man, and I think you’re talking nonsense!”
“No, not for a moment.... Heaven knows I ought to know the truth of what I’ve been saying.”
Again they reached an impasse in the conversation and again they both remained silent, disturbed perhaps and uneasy in the consciousness that between them they had destroyed something which could never be restored; and yet with Olivia there was a cold, sustained sense of balance which came to her miraculously at such times. She felt, too, that she stood with her back against a wall, fighting. At last she said, “I would even let you divorce me—if that would be easier for you. I don’t mind putting myself in the wrong.”
Again he began to tremble. “Are you trying to tell me that....”
“I’m not telling you anything. There hasn’t been anything at all ... but ... but I would give you grounds if you would agree.”
He turned away from her in disgust. “That is even more impossible.... A gentleman never divorces his wife.”
“Let’s leave the gentlemen out of it, Anson,” she said.“I’m weary of hearing what gentlemen do and do not do. I want you to act as yourself, as Anson Pentland, and not as you think you ought to act. Let’s be honest. You know you married me only because you had to marry some one ... and I ... I wasn’t actually disreputable, even, as you remind me, if my father was shanty Irish. And ... let’s be just too. I married you because I was alone and frightened and wanted to escape a horrible life with Aunt Alice.... I wanted a home. That was it, wasn’t it? We are both guilty, but that doesn’t change the reality in the least. No, I fancy you practised loving me through a sense of duty. You tried it as long as you could and you hated it always. Oh, I’ve known what was going on. I’ve been learning ever since I came to Pentlands for the first time.”
He was regarding her now with a fixed expression of horrid fascination; he was perhaps even dazed at the sound of her voice, slowly, resolutely, tearing aside all the veils of pretense which had made their life possible for so long. He kept mumbling, “How can you talk this way? How can you say such things?”
Slowly, terribly, she went on and on: “We’re both guilty ... and it’s been a failure, from the very start. I’ve tried to do my best and perhaps sometimes I’ve failed. I’ve tried to be a good mother ... and now that Sybil is grown and Jack ... is dead, I want a chance at freedom. I’m still young enough to want to live a little before it is too late.”
Between his teeth he said, “Don’t be a fool, Olivia.... You’re forty years old....”
“You needn’t remind me of that. To-morrow I shall be forty. I know it ... bitterly. But my being forty makes no difference to you. To you it would be all the same if I were seventy. But to me it makes a difference... a great difference.” She waited a moment, and then said, “That’s the truth, Anson; and it’s the truth that interests me to-night. Let me be free, Anson.... Let me go while being free still means something.”
Perhaps if she had thrown herself at his feet in the attitude of a wretched, shameful woman, if she had made him feel strong and noble and heroic, she would have won; but it was a thing she could not do. She could only go on being coldly reasonable.
“And you would give up all this?” he was saying. “You’d leave Pentlands and all it stands for to marry this cheap Irishman ... a nobody, the son perhaps of an immigrant dock-laborer.”
“Heisthe son of a dock-laborer,” she answered quietly. “And his mother was a housemaid. He’s told me so himself. And as to all this.... Why, Anson, it doesn’t mean anything to me ... nothing at all that I can’t give up, nothing which means very much. I’m fond of your father, Anson, and I’m fond of you when you are yourself and not talking about what a gentleman would do. But I’d give it all up ... everything ... for the sake of this other thing.”
For a moment his lips moved silently and in agitation, as if it were impossible for him to answer things so preposterous as those his wife had just spoken. At last he was able to say, “I think you must have lost your mind, Olivia ... to even think of asking such a thing of me. You’ve lived here long enough to know how impossible it is. Some of us must make a stand in a community. There has never been a scandal, or even a divorce, in the Pentland family ... never. We’ve come to stand for something. Three hundred years of clean, moral living can’t be dashed aside so easily.... We’re in a position where others look up to us. Can’t you see that? Can’t you understand such a responsibility?”
For a moment she had a terrible, dizzy, intoxicating sense of power, of knowing that she held the means of destroyinghim and all this whited structure of pride and respectability. She had only to begin by saying, “There was Savina Pentland and her lover....” The moment passed quickly and at once she knew that it was a thing she could not do. Instead, she murmured, “Ah, Anson, do you think the world really looks at us at all? Do you think it really cares what we do or don’t do? You can’t be as blind as that.”
“I’m not blind ... only there’s such a thing as honor and tradition. We stand for something....”
She interrupted him. “For what?”
“For decency, for a glorious past, for stability ... for endless things ... all the things which count in a civilized community.”
He really believed what he was saying; she knew that he must have believed it to have written all those thousands of dull, laborious words in glorification of the past.
He went on. “No, what you ask is impossible. You knew it before you asked.... And it would be a kindness to me if you never mentioned it again.”
He was still pale, but he had gained control of himself and his hands no longer trembled; as he talked, as his sense of virtue mounted, he even grew eloquent, and his voice took on a shade of that unction which had always colored the voice of the Apostle to the Genteel and made of him a celebrated and fashionable cleric. Perhaps for the first time since his childhood, since the days when the red-haired little Sabine had mocked his curls and velvet suits, he felt himself a strong and powerful person. There was a kind of fierce intoxication in the knowledge of his power over Olivia. In his virtuous ardor he seemed for a moment to become a positive, almost admirable person.
At length she said quietly, “And what if I should simply go away ... without bothering about a divorce?”
The remark shattered all his confidence once more; andshe knew that she had struck at the weakest point in all his defense—the fear of a scandal. “You wouldn’t do that!” he cried. “You couldn’t—you couldn’t behave like a common prostitute!”
“Loving one man is not behaving like a common prostitute.... I never loved any other.”
“You couldn’t bring such a disgrace on Sybil, even if you don’t care for the rest of us.”
(“He knew, then, that I couldn’t do such a thing, that I haven’t the courage. He knows that I’ve lived too long in this world.”) Aloud she said, “You don’t know me, Anson.... In all these years you’ve never known me at all.”
“Besides,” he added quickly, “he wouldn’t do such a thing. Such a climber isn’t likely to throw over his whole career by running away with a woman. You’d find out if you asked him.”
“But heiswilling. He’s already told me so. Perhaps you can’t understand such a thing.” When he did not answer, she said ironically, “Besides, I don’t think a gentleman would talk as you are talking. No, Anson.... I don’t think you know what the world is. You’ve lived here always, shut up in your own little corner.” Rising, she sighed and murmured, “But there’s no use in talk. I am going to bed.... I suppose we must struggle on as best we can ... but there are times ... times like to-night when you make it hard for me to bear it. Some day ... who knows ... there’s nothing any longer to keep me....”
She went away without troubling to finish what she had meant to say, lost again in an overwhelming sense of the futility of everything. She felt, she thought, like an idiot standing in the middle of an empty field, making gestures.
Towardmorning the still, breathless heat broke without warning into a fantastic storm which filled all the sky with blinding light and enveloped the whole countryside in a wild uproar of wind and thunder, leaving the dawn to reveal fields torn and ravaged and strewn with broken branches, and the bright garden bruised and battered by hail.
At breakfast Anson appeared neat and shaven and smooth, as though there had been no struggle a few hours before in the drawing-room, as if the thing had made no impression upon the smooth surface which he turned toward the world. Olivia poured his coffee quietly and permitted him to kiss her as he had done every day for twenty years—a strange, cold, absent-minded kiss—and stood in the doorway to watch him drive off to the train. Nothing had changed; it seemed to her that life at Pentlands had become incapable of any change.
And as she turned from the door Peters summoned her to the telephone to receive the telegram from Jean and Sybil; they had been married at seven in Hartford.
She set out at once to find John Pentland and after a search she came upon him in the stable-yard talking with Higgins. The strange pair stood by the side of the red mare, who watched them with her small, vicious red eyes; they were talking in that curious intimate way which descended upon them at the mention of horses, and as she approached she was struck,as she always was, by the fiery beauty of the animal, the pride of her lean head, the trembling of the fine nostrils as she breathed, the savagery of her eye. She was a strange, half-evil, beautiful beast. Olivia heard Higgins saying that it was no use trying to breed her ... an animal like that, who kicked and screamed and bit at the very sight of another horse....
Higgins saw her first and, touching his cap, bade her good-morning, and as the old man turned, she said, “I’ve news for you, Mr. Pentland.”
A shrewd, queer look came into his eyes and he asked, “Is it about Sybil?”
“Yes.... It’s done.”
She saw that Higgins was mystified, and she was moved by a desire to tell him. Higgins ought to know certainly among the first. And she added, “It’s about Miss Sybil. She married young Mr. de Cyon this morning in Hartford.”
The news had a magical effect on the little groom; his ugly, shriveled face expanded into a broad grin and he slapped his thigh in his enthusiasm. “That’s grand, Ma’am.... I don’t mind telling you I was for it all along. She couldn’t have done better ... nor him either.”
Again moved by impulse, she said, “So you think it’s a good thing?”
“It’s grand, Ma’am. He’s one in a million. He’s the only one I know who was good enough. I was afraid she was going to throw herself away on Mr. O’Hara.... But she ought to have a younger man.”
She turned away from him, pleased and relieved from the anxiety which had never really left her since the moment they drove off into the darkness. She kept thinking, “Higgins is always right about people. He has a second sight.” Somehow, of them all, she trusted him most as a judge.
John Pentland led her away, out of range of Higgins’ curiosity, along the hedge that bordered the gardens. The news seemed to affect him strangely, for he had turned pale, and for a long time he simply stood looking over the hedge in silence. At last he asked, “When did they do it?”
“Last night.... She went for a drive with him and they didn’t come back.”
“I hope we’ve been right ...” he said. “I hope we haven’t connived at a foolish thing.”
“No.... I’m sure we haven’t.”
Something in the brilliance of the sunlight, in the certainty of Sybil’s escape and happiness, in the freshness of the air touched after the storm by the first faint feel of autumn, filled her with a sense of giddiness, so that she forgot her own troubles; she forgot, even, that this was her fortieth birthday.
“Did they go in Sabine’s motor?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Grinning suddenly, he said, “She thought perhaps that she was doing us a bad turn.”
“No, she knew that I approved. She did think of it first. She did propose it....”
When he spoke again there was a faint hint of bitterness in his voice. “I’m sure she did. I only hope she’ll stop her mischief with this. In any case, she’s had a victory over Cassie ... and that’s what she wanted, more than anything....” He turned toward her sharply, with an air of anxiety. “I suppose he’ll take her away with him?”
“Yes. They’re going to Paris first and then to the Argentine.”
Suddenly he touched her shoulder with the odd, shy gesture of affection. “It’ll be hard for you, Olivia dear ... without her.”
The sudden action brought a lump into her throat, and yetshe did not want to be pitied. She hated pity, because it implied weakness on her part.
“Oh,” she said quickly, “they’ll come back from time to time.... I think that some day they may come back here to live.”
“Yes.... Pentlands will belong to them one day.”
And then for the first time she remembered that there was something which she had to tell him, something which had come to seem almost a confession. She must tell him now, especially since Jean would one day own all of Pentlands and all the fortune.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you before,” she began. “It’s something which I kept to myself because I wanted Sybil to have her happiness ... in spite of everything.”
He interrupted her, saying, “I know what it is.”
“You couldn’t know what I mean.”
“Yes; the boy told me himself. I went to him to talk about Sybil because I wanted to make sure of him ... and after a time he told me. It was an honorable thing for him to have done. He needn’t have told. Sabine would never have told us ... never until it was too late.”
The speech left her feeling weak and disconcerted, for she had expected anger from him and disapproval. She had been fearful that he might treat her silence as a disloyalty to him, that it might in the end shatter the long, trusting relationship between them.
“The boy couldn’t help it,” he was saying. “It’s a thing one can’t properly explain. But he’s a nice boy ... and Sybil was so set on him. I think she has a good, sensible head on her young shoulders.” Sighing and turning toward her again, he added, “I wouldn’t speak of it to the others ... not even to Anson. They may never know, and if they don’t what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
The mystery of him, it seemed, grew deeper and deepereach time they talked thus, intimately, perhaps because there were in the old man depths which she had never believed possible. Perhaps, deep down beneath all the fierce reticence of his nature, there lay a humanity far greater than any she had ever encountered. She thought, “And I have always believed him hard and cold and disapproving.” She was beginning to fathom the great strength that lay in his fierce isolation, the strength of a man who had always been alone.
“And you, Olivia?” he asked presently. “Are you happy?”
“Yes.... At least, I’m happy this morning ... on account of Sybil and Jean.”
“That’s right,” he said with a gentle sadness. “That’s right. They’ve done what you and I were never able to do, Olivia. They’ll have what we’ve never had and never can have because it’s too late. And we’ve helped them to gain it.... That’s something. I merely wanted you to know that I understood.” And then, “We’d better go and tell the others. The devil will be to pay when they hear.”
She would have gone away then, but an odd thought occurred to her, a hope, feeble enough, but one which might give him a little pleasure. She was struck again by his way of speaking, as if he were very near to death or already dead. He had the air of a very old and weary man.
She said, “There’s one thing I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time.” She hesitated and then plunged. “It was about Savina Pentland. Did she ever have more than one child?”
He looked at her sharply out of the bright black eyes and asked, “Why do you want to know that?”
She tried to deceive him by shrugging her shoulders and saying casually, “I don’t know ... I’ve become interested lately, perhaps on account of Anson’s book.”
“You ... interested in the past, Olivia?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, she only had one child ... and then she was drowned when he was only a year old. He was my grandfather.” Again he looked at her sharply. “Olivia, you must tell me the truth. Why did you ask me that question?”
Again she hesitated, saying, “I don’t know ... it seemed to me....”
“Did you find something? Didshe,” he asked, making the gesture toward the north wing, “didshetell you anything?”
She understood then that he, marvelous old man, must even know about the letters. “Yes,” she said in a low voice, “I found something ... in the attic.”
He sighed and looked away again, across the wet meadows. “So you know, too....Shefound them first, and hid them away again. She wouldn’t give them to me because she hated me ... from our wedding-night. I’ve told you about that. And then she couldn’t remember where she’d hid them ... poor thing. But she told me about them. At times she used to taunt me by saying that I wasn’t a Pentland at all. I think the thing made her mind darker than it was before. She had some terrible idea about the sin in my family for which she must atone....”
“It’s true,” said Olivia softly. “There’s no doubt of it. It was written by Toby Cane himself ... in his own handwriting. I’ve compared it with the letters Anson has of his.” After a moment she asked, “And you ... you’ve known it always?”
“Always,” he said sadly. “It explains many things.... Sometimes I think that those of us who have lived since have had to atone for their sin. It’s all worked out in a harsh way, when you come to think of it....”
She guessed what it was he meant. She saw again that he believed in such a thing as sin, that the belief in it was rooted deeply in his whole being.
“Have you got the letters, Olivia?” he asked.