1The death of Horace Pentland was not an event to be kept quiet by so simple a means as a funeral that was almost secret; news of it leaked out and was carried here and there by ladies eager to rake up an old Pentland scandal in vengeance upon Aunt Cassie, the community’s principal disseminator of calamities. It even penetrated at last the offices of the Transcript, which sent a request for an obituary of the dead man, for he was, after all, a member of one of Boston’s proudest families. And then, without warning, the ghost of Horace Pentland reappeared suddenly in the most disconcerting of all quarters—Brook Cottage.

2The ghost accompanied Sabine up the long drive one hot morning while Olivia sat listening to Aunt Cassie. Olivia noticed that Sabine approached them with an unaccustomed briskness, that all trace of the familiar indolence had vanished. As she reached the edge of the terrace, she called out with a bright look in her eyes, “I have news ... of Cousin Horace.”

3She was enjoying the moment keenly, and the sight of her enjoyment must have filled Aunt Cassie, who knew her so well, with uneasiness. She took her own time about revealing the news, inquiring first after Aunt Cassie’s health, and settling herself comfortably in one of the wicker chairs. She was an artist in the business of tormenting the old lady and she waited now to squeeze every drop of effect out of her announcement. She was not to be hurried even by the expression which Aunt Cassie’s face inevitably assumed at the mention of Horace Pentland—the expression of one who finds himself in the vicinity of a bad smell and is unable to escape.

4At last, after lighting a cigarette and moving her chair out of the sun, Sabine announced in a flat voice, “Cousin Horace has left everything he possesses to me.”

5A look of passionate relief swept Aunt Cassie’s face, a look which said, “Pooh! Pooh! Is that all?” She laughed—it was almost a titter, colored by mockery—and said, “Is that all? I imagine it doesn’t make you a great heiress.”

6(“Aunt Cassie,” thought Olivia, “ought not to have given Sabine such an opportunity; she has said just what Sabine wanted her to say.”)

7Sabine answered her: “But you’re wrong there, Aunt Cassie. It’s not money that he’s left, but furniture ... furniture and bibelots ... and it’s a wonderful collection. I’ve seen it myself when I visited him at Mentone.”

8“You ought never to have gone.... You certainly have lost all moral sense, Sabine. You’ve forgotten all that I taught you as a little girl.”

9Sabine ignored her. “You see, he worshiped such things, and he spent twenty years of his life collecting them.”

10“It seems improbable that they could be worth much ... with as little money as Horace Pentland had ... only what we let him have to live on.”

11Sabine smiled again, sardonically, perhaps because the tilt with Aunt Cassie proved so successful. “You’re wrong again, Aunt Cassie.... They’re worth a great deal ... far more than he paid for them, because there are things in his collection which you couldn’t buy elsewhere for any amount of money. He took to trading pieces off until his collection became nearly perfect.” She paused for a moment, allowing the knife to rest in the wound. “It’s an immensely valuable collection. You see, I know about it because I used to see Cousin Horace every winter when I went to Rome. I knew more about him than any of you. He was a man of perfect taste in such things. He really knew.”

12Olivia sat all the while watching the scene with a quiet amusement. The triumph on this occasion was clearly Sabine’s, and Sabine knew it. She sat there enjoying every moment of it, watching Aunt Cassie writhe at the thought of so valuable a heritage going out of the direct family, to so remote and hostile a connection. It was clearly a disaster ranking in importance with the historic loss of Savina Pentland’s parure of pearls and emeralds at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. It was property lost forever that should have gone into the family fortune.

13Sabine was opening the letter slowly, allowing the paper to crackle ominously, as if she knew that every crackle ran painfully up and down the spine of the old lady.

14“It’s the invoice from the Custom House,” she said, lifting each of the five long sheets separately. “Five pages long ... total value perhaps as much as seventy-five thousand dollars.... Of course there’s not even any duty to pay, as they’re all old things.”

15Aunt Cassie started, as if seized by a sudden pain, and Sabine continued, “He even left provision for shipping it ... all save four or five big pieces which are being held at Mentone. There are eighteen cases in all.”

16She began to read the items one by one ... cabinets, commodes, chairs, lusters, tables, pictures, bits of bronze, crystal and jade ... all the long list of things which Horace Pentland had gathered with the loving care of a connoisseur during the long years of his exile; and in the midst of the reading, Aunt Cassie, unable any longer to control herself, interrupted, saying, “It seems to me he was an ungrateful, disgusting man. It ought to have gone to my dear brother, who supported him all these years. I don’t see why he left it all to a remote cousin like you.”

17Sabine delved again into the envelope. “Wait,” she said. “He explains that point himself ... in his own will.” She opened a copy of this document and, searching for a moment, read, “To my cousin, Sabine Callendar (Mrs. Cane Callendar), of—Rue de Tilsitt, Paris, France, and Newport, Rhode Island, I leave all my collections of furniture, tapestries, bibelots, etc., in gratitude for her kindness to me over a period of many years and in return for her faith and understanding at a time when the rest of my family treated me as an outcast.”

18Aunt Cassie was beside herself. “And how should he have been treated if not as an outcast? He was an ungrateful, horrible wretch! It was Pentland money which supported him all his miserable life.” She paused a moment for breath. “I always told my dear brother that twenty-five hundred a year was far more than Horace Pentland needed. And that is how he has spent it, to insult the very people who were kind to him.”

19Sabine put the papers back in the envelope and, looking up, said in her hard, metallic voice: “Money’s not everything, as I told you once before, Aunt Cassie. I’ve always said that the trouble with the Pentlands ... with most of Boston, for that matter ... lies in the fact that they were lower middle-class shopkeepers to begin with and they’ve never lost any of the lower middle-class virtues ... especially about money. They’ve been proud of living off the income of their incomes.... No, it wasn’t money that Horace Pentland wanted. It was a little decency and kindness and intelligence. I fancy you got your money’s worth out of the poor twenty-five hundred dollars you sent him every year. It was worth a great deal more than that to keep the truth under a bushel.”

20A long and painful silence followed this speech and Olivia, turning toward Sabine, tried to reproach her with a glance for speaking thus to the old lady. Aunt Cassie was being put to rout so pitifully, not only by Sabine, but by Horace Pentland, who had taken his vengeance shrewdly, long after he was dead, by striking at the Pentland sense of possessions, of property.

21The light of triumph glittered in the green eyes of Sabine. She was paying back, bit by bit, the long account of her unhappy childhood; and she had not yet finished.

22Olivia, watching the conflict with disinterest, was swept suddenly by a feeling of pity for the old lady. She broke the painful silence by asking them both to stay for lunch, but this time Aunt Cassie refused, in all sincerity, and Olivia did not press her, knowing that she could not bear to face the ironic grin of Sabine until she had rested and composed her face. Aunt Cassie seemed suddenly tired and old this morning. The indefatigable, meddling spirit seemed to droop, no longer flying proudly in the wind.

23The queer, stuffy motor appeared suddenly on the drive, the back seat filled by the rotund form of Miss Peavey surrounded by four yapping Pekinese. The intricate veils which she wore on entering a motor streamed behind her. Aunt Cassie rose and, kissing Olivia with ostentation, turned to Sabine and went back again to the root of the matter. “I always told my dear brother,” she repeated, “that twenty-five hundred a year was far too much for Horace Pentland.”

24The motor rattled off, and Sabine, laying the letter on the table beside her, said, “Of course, I don’t want all this stuff of Cousin Horace’s, but I’m determined it shan’t go to her. If she had it the poor old man wouldn’t rest in his grave. Besides, she wouldn’t know what to do with it in a house filled with tassels and antimacassars and souvenirs of Uncle Ned. She’d only sell it and invest the money in invincible securities.”

25“She’s not well ... the poor old thing,” said Olivia. “She wouldn’t have had the motor come for her if she’d been well. She’s pretended all her life, and now she’s really ill—she’s terrified at the idea of death. She can’t bear it.”

26The old relentless, cruel smile lighted Sabine’s face. “No, now that the time has come she hasn’t much faith in the Heaven she’s preached all her life.” There was a brief silence and Sabine added grimly, “She will certainly be a nuisance to Saint Peter.”

27But there was only sadness in Olivia’s dark eyes, because she kept thinking what a shallow, futile life Aunt Cassie’s had been. She had turned her back upon life from the beginning, even with the husband whom she married as a convenience. She kept thinking what a poor barren thing that life had been; how little of richness, of memories, it held, now that it was coming to an end.

28Sabine was speaking again. “I know you’re thinking that I’m heartless, but you don’t know how cruel she was to me ... what things she did to me as a child.” Her voice softened a little, but in pity for herself and not for Aunt Cassie. It was as if the ghost of the queer, unhappy, red-haired little girl of her childhood had come suddenly to stand there beside them where the ghost of Horace Pentland had stood a little while before. The old ghosts were crowding about once more, even there on the terrace in the hot August sunlight in the beauty of Olivia’s flowery garden.

29“She sent me into the world,” continued Sabine’s hard voice, “knowing nothing but what was false, believing—the little I believed in anything—in false gods, thinking that marriage was no more than a business contract between two young people with fortunes. She called ignorance by the name of innocence and quoted the Bible and that milk-and-water philosopher Emerson ... ‘dear Mr. Emerson’ ... whenever I asked her a direct, sensible question.... And all she accomplished was to give me a hunger for facts—hard, unvarnished facts—pleasant or unpleasant.”

30A kind of hot passion entered the metallic voice, so that it took on an unaccustomed warmth and beauty. “You don’t know how much she is responsible for in my life. She ... and all the others like her ... killed my chance of happiness, of satisfaction. She cost me my husband.... What chance had I with a man who came from an older, wiser world ... a world in which things were looked at squarely, and honestly as truth ... a man who expected women to be women and not timid icebergs? No, I don’t think I shall ever forgive her.” She paused for a moment, thoughtfully, and then added, “And whatever she did, whatever cruelties she practised, whatever nonsense she preached, was always done in the name of duty and always ‘for your own good, my dear.’”

31Then abruptly, with a bitter smile, her whole manner changed and took on once more the old air of indolent, almost despairing, boredom. “I couldn’t begin to tell you all, my dear.... It goes back too far. We’re all rotten here ... not so much rotten as desiccated, for there was never much blood in us to rot.... The roots go deep.... But I shan’t bore you again with all this, I promise.”

32Olivia, listening, wanted to say, “You don’t know how much blood there is in the Pentlands.... You don’t know that they aren’t Pentlands at all, but the children of Savina Dalgedo and Toby Cane.... But even that hasn’t mattered.... The very air, the very earth of New England, has changed them, dried them up.”

33But she could not say it, for she knew that the story of those letters must never fall into the hands of the unscrupulous Sabine.

34“It doesn’t bore me,” said Olivia quietly. “It doesn’t bore me. I understand it much too well.”

35“In any case, we’ve spoiled enough of one fine day with it.” Sabine lighted another cigarette and said with an abrupt change of tone, “About this furniture, Olivia.... I don’t want it. I’ve a house full of such things in Paris. I shouldn’t know what to do with it and I don’t think I have the right to break it up and sell it. I want you to have it here at Pentlands.... Horace Pentland would be satisfied if it went to you and Cousin John. And it’ll be an excuse to clear out some of the Victorian junk and some of the terrible early American stuff. Plenty of people will buy the early American things. The best of them are only bad imitations of the real things Horace Pentland collected, and you might as well have the real ones.”

36Olivia protested, but Sabine pushed the point, scarcely giving her time to speak. “I want you to do it. It will be a kindness to me ... and after all, Horace Pentland’s furniture ought to be here ... in Pentlands. I’ll take one or two things for Thérèse, and the rest you must keep, only nothing ... not so much as a medallion or a snuff-box ... is to go to Aunt Cassie. She hated him while he was alive. It would be wrong for her to possess anything belonging to him after he is dead. Besides,” she added, “a little new furniture would do a great deal toward cheering up the house. It’s always been rather spare and cold. It needs a little elegance and sense of luxury. There has never been any splendor in the Pentland family—or in all New England, for that matter.”