# Early Autumn (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 1)/Chapter 10

Toward morning 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 yet ​she 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 deeper ​each 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? Did she," he asked, making the gesture toward the north wing, "did she tell 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. . . . She found 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.
"No . . . I burned them . . . last night . . . because I ​was afraid of them. I was afraid that I might do something shameful with them. And if they were burned, no one would believe such a preposterous story and there wouldn't be any proof. I was afraid, too," she added softly, "of what was in them . . . not what was written there, so much as the way it was written."
He took her hand and with the oddest, most awkward gesture, kissed it gently. "You were right, Olivia dear," he said. "It's all they have . . . the others . . . that belief in the past. We daren't take that from them. The strong daren't oppress the weak. It would have been too cruel. It would have destroyed the one thing into which Anson poured his whole life. You see, Olivia, there are people . . . people like you . . . who have to be strong enough to look out for the others. It's a hard task . . . and sometimes a cruel one. If it weren't for such people the world would fall apart and we'd see it for the cruel, unbearable place it is. That's why I've trusted everything to you. That's what I was trying to tell you the other night. You see, Olivia, I know you . . . I know there are things which people like us can't do. . . . Perhaps it's because we're weak or foolish—who knows? But it's true. I knew that you were the sort who would do just such a thing."
Listening to him, she again felt all her determination slipping from her. It was a strange sensation, as if he took possession of her, leaving her powerless to act, prisoning her again in that terrible wall of rightness in which he believed. The familiar sense of his strength frightened her, because it seemed a force so irresistible. It was the strength of one who was more than right; it was the strength of one who believed.
She had a fierce impulse to turn from him and to run swiftly, recklessly, across the wet meadows toward Michael, ​leaving forever behind her the placid, beautiful old house beneath the elms.
"There are some things," he was saying, "which it is impossible to do . . . for people like us, Olivia. They are impossible because the mere act of doing them would ruin us forever. They aren't things which we can do gracefully."
And she knew again what it was that he meant, as she had known vaguely while she stood alone in the darkness before the figures of Higgins and Miss Egan emerged from the mist of the marshes.
"You had better go now and telephone to Anson. I fancy he'll be badly upset, but I shall put an end to that . . . and Cassie, too. She had it all planned for the Mannering boy."
Anson was not to be reached all the morning at the office; he had gone, so his secretary said, to a meeting of the Society of Guardians of Young Working Girls without Homes and left express word that he was not to be disturbed. But Aunt Cassie heard the news when she arrived on her morning call at Pentlands. Olivia broke it to her as gently as possible, but as soon as the old lady understood what had happened, she went to pieces badly. Her eyes grew wild; she wept, and her hair became all disheveled. She took the attitude that Sybil had been seduced and was now a woman lost beyond all hope. She kept repeating between punctuations of profound sympathy for Olivia in the hour of her trial, that such a thing had never happened in the Pentland family; until Olivia, enveloped in the old, perilous calm, reminded her of the elopement of Jared Pentland and Savina Dalgedo and bade her abruptly to stop talking nonsense.
And then Aunt Cassie was deeply hurt by her tone, and Peters had to be sent away for smelling-salts at the very mo​ment that Sabine arrived, grinning and triumphant. It was Sabine who helped administer the smelling-salts with the grim air of administering burning coals. When the old lady grew a little more calm she fell again to saying over and over again, "Poor Sybil. . . . My poor, innocent little Sybil . . . that this should have happened to her!"
To which Olivia replied at last, "Jean is a fine young man. I'm sure she couldn't have done better." And then, to soften a little Aunt Cassie's anguish, she said, "And he's very rich, Aunt Cassie . . . a great deal richer than many a husband she might have found here."
The information had an even better effect than the smelling-salts, so that the old lady became calm enough to take an interest in the details and asked where they had found a motor to go away in.
"It was mine," said Sabine dryly. "I loaned it to them."
The result of this statement was all that Sabine could have desired. The old lady sat bolt upright, all bristling, and cried, with an air of suffocation, "Oh, you viper! Why God should have sent me such a trial, I don't know. You've always wished us evil and now I suppose you're content! May God have mercy on your malicious soul!" And breaking into fresh sobs, she began all over again, "My poor, innocent little Sybil. . . . What will people say? What will they think has been going on!"
"Don't be evil-minded, Aunt Cassie," said Sabine sharply; and then in a calmer voice, "It will be hard on me. . . . I won't be able to go to Newport until they come back with the motor."
"You! . . . You! . . ." began Aunt Cassie, and then fell back, a broken woman.
"I suppose," continued Sabine ruthlessly, "that we ought to tell the Mannering boy."
​"Yes," cried Aunt Cassie, reviving again, "Yes! There's the boy she ought to have married. . . ."
"And Mrs. Soames," said Sabine. "She'll be pleased at the news."
Olivia spoke for the first time in nearly half an hour. "It's no use. Mr. Pentland has been over to see her, but she didn't understand what it was he wanted to tell her. She was in a daze . . . only half-conscious . . . and they think she may not recover this time."
In a whisper, lost in the greater agitation of Aunt Cassie's sobs, she said to Sabine, "It's like the end of everything for him. I don't know what he'll do."
The confusion of the day seemed to increase rather than to die away. Aunt Cassie was asked to stay to lunch, but she said it was impossible to consider swallowing even a crust of bread. "It would choke me!" she cried melodramatically.
"It is an excellent lunch," urged Olivia.
"No . . . no . . . don't ask me!"
But, unwilling to quit the scene of action, she lay on Horace Pentland's Regence sofa and regained her strength a little by taking a nap while the others ate.
At last Anson called, and when the news was told him, the telephone echoed with his threats. He would, he said, hire a motor (an extravagance by which to gage the profundity of his agitation) and come down at once.
And then, almost immediately, Michael telephoned. "I have just come down," he said, and asked Olivia to come riding with him. "I must talk to you at once."
She refused to ride, but consented to meet him half-way, at the pine thicket where Higgins had discovered the fox-cubs. "I can't leave just now," she told him, "and I don't think it's best for you to come here at the moment."
​For some reason, perhaps vaguely because she thought he might use the knowledge as a weapon to break down her will, she said nothing of the elopement. For in the confusion of the day, beneath all the uproar of scenes, emotions and telephone-calls, she had been thinking, thinking, thinking, so that in the end the uproar had made little impression upon her. She had come to understand that John Pentland must have lived thus, year after year, moving always in a secret life of his own, and presently she had come to the conclusion that she must send Michael away once and for all.
As she moved across the meadow she noticed that the birches had begun to turn yellow and that in the low ground along the river the meadows were already painted gold and purple by masses of goldenrod and ironweed. With each step she seemed to grow weaker and weaker, and as she drew near the blue-black wall of pines she was seized by a violent trembling, as if the sense of his presence were able somehow to reach out and engulf her even before she saw him. She kept trying to think of the old man as he stood beside her at the hedge, but something stronger than her will made her see only Michael's curly black head and blue eyes. She began even to pray . . . she (Olivia) who never prayed because the piety of Aunt Cassie and Anson and the Apostle to the Genteel stood always in her way.
And then, looking up, she saw him standing half-hidden among the lower pines, watching her. She began to run toward him, in terror lest her knees should give way and let her fall before she reached the shelter of the trees.
In the darkness of the thicket where the sun seldom penetrated, he put his arms about her and kissed her in a way he had never done before, and the action only increased her terror. She said nothing; she only wept quietly; and at last, when she had gained control of herself, she struggled free and said, "Don't, Michael . . . please don't . . . please."
​They sat on a fallen log and, still holding her hand, he asked, "What is it? What has happened?"
"Nothing. . . . I'm just tired."
"Are you willing to come away with me? Now?" And in a low, warm voice, he added, "I'll never let you be tired again . . . never."
She did not answer him, because it seemed to her that what she had to tell him made all her actions in the past seem inexplicable and cheap. She was filled with shame, and tried to put off the moment when she must speak.
"I haven't been down in three days," he was saying, "because there's been trouble in Boston which made it impossible. I've only slept an hour or two a night. They've been trying to do me in . . . some of the men I always trusted. They've been double-crossing me all along and I had to stay to fight them."
He told her a long and complicated story of treachery, of money having been passed among men whom he had known and trusted always. He was sad and yet defiant, too, and filled with a desire to fight the thing to an end. She failed to understand the story; indeed she did not even hear much of it: she only knew that he was telling her everything, pouring out all his sadness and trouble to her as if she were the one person in all the world to whom he could tell such things.
And when he had finished he waited for a moment and then said, "And now I'm willing to chuck the whole dirty business and quit . . . to tell them all to go to hell."
Quickly she answered, "No, you mustn't do that. You can't do that. A man like you, Michael, daren't do such a thing. . . ." For she knew that without a battle life would mean nothing to him.
"No . . . I mean it. I'm ready to quit. I want you to go with me."
She thought, "He says this . . . and yet he stayed three ​days and nights in Boston to fight!" She saw that he was not looking at her, but sitting with his head in his hands; there was something broken, almost pitiful, in his manner, and it occurred to her that perhaps for the first time he found all his life in a hopeless tangle. She thought, "If I had never known him, this might not have happened. He would have been able to fight without even thinking of me."
Aloud she said, "I can't do it, Michael. . . . It's no use. I can't."
He looked up quickly, but before he could speak she placed her hand over his lips, saying, "Wait, Michael, let me talk first. Let me say what I've wanted to say for so long. . . . I've thought. . . . I've done nothing else but think day and night for the past three days. And it's no good, Michael. . . . It's no good. I'm forty years old to-day, and what can I give you that will make up for all you will lose? Why should you give up everything for me? No, I've nothing to offer. You can go back and fight and win. It's what you like more than anything in the world . . . more than any woman . . . even me."
Again he tried to speak, but she silenced him. "Oh, I know it's true . . . what I say. And if I had you at such a price, you'd only hate me in the end. I couldn't do it, Michael, because . . . because in the end, with men like you it's work, it's a career, which is first. . . . You couldn't bear giving up. You couldn't bear failure. . . . And in the end that's right, as it should be. It's what keeps the world going."
He was watching her with a look of fascination in his eyes, and she knew—she was certain of it—that he had never been so much in love with her before; but she knew, too, from the shadow which crossed his face (it seemed to her that he almost winced) and because she knew him so well, that he recognized the truth of what she had said.
​"It's not true, Olivia. . . . You can't go back on me now . . . just when I need you most."
"I'd be betraying you, Michael, if I did the other thing. It's not me you need half so much as the other thing. Oh, I know that I'm right. What you should have in the end is a young woman . . . a woman who will help you. It doesn't matter very much whether you're terribly in love with her or not . . . but a woman who can be your wife and bear your children and give dinner parties and help make of you the famous man you've always meant to be. You need some one who will help you to found a family, to fill your new house with children . . . some one who'll help you and your children to take the place of families like ours who are at the end of things. No, Michael . . . I'm right. . . . Look at me," she commanded suddenly. "Look at me and you'll know that it's not because I don't love you."
He was on his knees now, on the carpet of scented pine-needles, his arms about her while she stroked the thick black hair with a kind of hysterical intensity.
"You don't know what you're saying, Olivia. It's not true! It's not true! I'd give up everything. . . . I don't want the other thing. I'll sell my farm and go away from here forever with you."
"Yes, Michael, you think that to-day, just now . . . and to-morrow everything will be changed. That's one of the mean tricks Nature plays us. It's not so simple as that. We're not like Higgins and . . . the kitchen-maid . . . at least not in some ways."
"Olivia . . . Olivia, do you love me enough to. . . ."
She knew what he meant to ask. She thought, "What does it matter? Why should I not, when I love him so? I should be harming no one . . . no one but myself."
And then, abruptly, through the mist of tears she saw through an opening in the thicket a little procession crossing ​the meadows toward the big house at Pentlands. She saw it with a terrible, intense clarity . . . a little procession of the gardener and his helper carrying between them on a shutter a figure that lay limp and still, and following them came Higgins on foot, leading his horse and moving with the awkward rolling gait which afflicted him when his feet were on the ground. She knew who the still figure was. It was John Pentland. The red mare had killed him at last. And she heard him saying, "There are some things which people like us, Olivia, can't do."
What happened immediately afterward she was never able to remember very clearly. She found herself joining the little procession; she knew that Michael was with her, and that there could be no doubt of the tragedy. . . . John Pentland was dead, with his neck broken. He lay on the shutter, still and peaceful, the bitter lines all melted from the grim, stern face, as he had been when she came upon him in the library smelling of dogs and woodsmoke and whisky. Only this time he had escaped for good. . . .
And afterward she remembered telling Michael, as they stood alone in the big white hall, that Sybil and Jean were married, and dismissing him by saying, "Now, Michael, it is impossible. While he was living I might have done it. . . . I might have gone away. But now it's impossible. Don't ask me. Please leave me in peace."
Standing there under the wanton gaze of Savina Pentland, she watched him go away, quietly, perhaps because he understood that all she had said was true.
In the tragedy the elopement became lost and forgotten. ​Doctors came and went; even reporters put in an awkward appearance, eager for details of the death and the marriage in the Pentland family, and somehow the confusion brought peace to Olivia. They forgot her, save as one who managed everything quietly; for they had need just then of some one who did not break into wild spasms of grief or wander about helplessly. In the presence of death, Anson forgot even his anger over the elopement, and late in the afternoon Olivia saw him for the first time when he came to her helplessly to ask, "The men have come to photograph the portraits. What shall we do?"
And she answered, "Send them away. We can photograph ancestors any time. They'll always be with us."
Sabine volunteered to send word to Sybil and Jean. At such times all her cold-blooded detachment made of her a person of great value, and Olivia knew that she could be trusted to find them because she wanted her motor again desperately. Remembering her promise to the old man, she went across to see Mrs. Soames, but nothing came of it, for the old lady had fallen into a state of complete unconsciousness. She would, they told Olivia, probably die without ever knowing that John Pentland had gone before her.
Aunt Cassie took up her throne in the darkened drawing-room and there, amid the acrid smell of the first chrysanthemums of the autumn, she held a red-eyed, snuffling court to receive the calls of all the countryside. Again she seemed to rise for a time triumphant and strong, even overcoming her weakness enough to go and come from the gazeboed house on foot, arriving early and returning late. She insisted upon summoning Bishop Smallwood to conduct the services, and discovered after much trouble that he was attending a church conference in the West. In reply to her telegram she received only an answer that it was impossible for him to return, even if they delayed the funeral . . . ​that in the rôle of prominent defender of the Virgin Birth he could not leave the field at a moment when the power of his party was threatened.
It seemed for a time that, as Sabine had hoped, the whole structure of the family was falling about them in ruins.
As for Olivia, she would have been at peace save that three times within two days notes came to her from Michael—notes which she sent back unopened because she was afraid to read them; until at last she wrote on the back of one, "There is nothing more to say. Leave me in peace." And after that there was only silence, which in a strange way seemed to her more unbearable than the sight of his writing. She discovered that two persons had witnessed the tragedy—Higgins, who had been riding with the old man, and Sabine, who had been walking the river path—walking only because Jean and Sybil had her motor. Higgins knew only that the mare had run off and killed his master; but Sabine had a strangely different version, which she recounted to Olivia as they sat in her room, the day after.
"I saw them," she said, "coming across the meadow. . . . Cousin John, with Higgins following. And then, all at once, the mare seemed to be frightened by something and began to run . . . straight in a line for the gravel-pit. It was a fascinating sight . . . a horrible sight . . . because I knew—I was certain—what was going to happen. For a moment Cousin John seemed to fight with her, and then all at once he leaned forward on her neck and let her go. Higgins went after him; but it was no use trying to catch her. . . . One might as well have tried to overtake a whirlwind. They seemed to fly across the fields straight for the line of elders that hid the pit, and I knew all the while that there was no saving them unless the mare turned. At the bushes the mare jumped . . . the prettiest jump I've ever seen a horse make, straight above the bushes into the open air. . . ."
​For a moment Sabine's face was lighted by a macabre enthusiasm. Her voice wavered a little. "It was a horrible, beautiful sight. For a moment they seemed almost to rise in the air as if the mare were flying, and then all at once they fell . . . into the bottom of the pit."
Olivia was silent, and presently, as if she had been waiting for the courage, Sabine continued in a low voice, "But there's one thing I saw beyond any doubt. At the edge of the pit the mare tried to turn. She would have turned away, but Cousin John raised his crop and struck her savagely. There was no doubt of it. He forced her over the elders. . . ." Again after a pause, "Higgins must have seen it, too. He followed them to the very edge of the pit. I shall always see him there, sitting on his horse outlined against the sky. He was looking down into the pit and for a moment the horse and man together looked exactly like a centaur. . . . It was an extraordinary impression."
She remembered him thus, but she remembered him, too, as she had seen him on the night of the ball, slipping away through the lilacs like a shadow. Rising, she said, "Jean and Sybil will be back to-morrow, and then I'll be off for Newport. I thought you might want to know what Higgins and I knew, Olivia." For a moment she hesitated, looking out of the window toward the sea. And at last she said, "He was a queer man. He was the last of the great Puritans. There aren't any more. None of the rest of us believe anything. We only pretend. . . ."
But Olivia scarcely heard her. She understood now why it was that the old man had talked to her as if he were very near to death, and she thought, "He did it in a way that none would ever discover. He trusted Higgins, and Sabine was an accident. Perhaps . . . perhaps . . . he did it to keep me here . . . to save the thing he believed in all his life."
It was a horrible thought which she tried to kill, but it ​lingered, together with the regret that she had never finished what she had begun to tell him as they stood by the hedge talking of the letters—that one day Jean might take the name of John Pentland. He had, after all, as much right to it as he had to the name of de Cyon; it would be only a little change, but it would allow the name of Pentland to go on and on. All the land, all the money, all the tradition, would go down to Pentland children, and so make a reason for their existence; and in the end the name would be something more then than a thing embalmed in "The Pentland Family and the Massachusetts Bay Colony." The descendants would be, after all, of Pentland blood, or at least of the blood of Savina Dalgedo and Toby Cane, which had come long ago to be Pentland blood.
And she thought grimly, "He was right, after all. I am one of them at last . . . in spite of everything. It's I who am carrying on now."
On the morning of the funeral, as she stood on the terrace expecting Jean and Sybil, Higgins, dressed in his best black suit and looking horribly awkward and ill at ease, came toward her to say, looking away from her, "Mr. O'Hara is going away. They're putting up a 'For Sale' sign on his gate. He isn't coming back." And then looking at her boldly he added, "I thought you might want to know, Mrs. Pentland."
For a moment she had a sudden, fierce desire to cry out, "No, he mustn't go! You must tell him to stay. I can't let him go away like that!" She wanted suddenly to run across the fields to the bright, vulgar, new house, to tell him herself. She thought, "He meant, then, what he said. He's given up everything here."
But she knew, too, that he had gone away to fight, freed ​now and moved only by his passion for success, for victory.
And before she could answer Higgins, who stood there wanting her to send him to Michael, Miss Egan appeared, starched and rigid and wearing the professional expression of solemnity which she adopted in the presence of bereaved families. She said, "It's about her, Mrs. Pentland. She seems very bright this morning and quite in her right mind. She wants to know why he hasn't been to see her for two whole days. I thought. . . ."
Olivia interrupted her quietly. "It's all right," she said. "I'll go and tell her. I'll explain. It's better for me to do it."
She went away into the house, knowing bitterly that she left Miss Egan and Higgins thinking of her with pity.
As she climbed the worn stair carpet to the north wing, she knew suddenly a profound sense of peace such as she had not known for years. It was over and done now, and life would go on the same as it had always done, filled with trickiness and boredom and deceits, but pleasant, too, in spite of everything, perhaps because, as John Pentland had said, "One had sometimes to pretend." And, after all, Sybil had escaped and was happy.
She knew now that she herself would never escape; she had been too long a part of Pentlands, and she knew that what the old man had said was the truth. She had acted thus not because of duty, or promises, or nobility, or pride, or even out of virtue. . . . Perhaps it was even because she was not strong enough to do otherwise. But she knew that she had acted thus because, as he said, "There are things, Olivia, which people like us can't do."
And as she moved along the narrow hall, she saw from one of the deep-set windows the figure of Sabine moving along the lane in a faint cloud of dust, and nearer at hand, at the entrance of the elm-bordered drive, Aunt Cassie in ​deep black, coming along briskly in a cloud of crape. No, nothing had changed. It would go on and on. . . .
The door opened and the sickly odor of medicines flooded the hallway. Out of the darkness came the sound of a feeble, reed-like voice, terrible in its sanity, saying, "Oh, it's you, Olivia. I knew you'd come. I've been waiting for you. . . ."
The End
Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island
June 4, 1925
St. Jean-de-Luz, B. P., France
July 21, 1926