25. CHAPTER IX I
Early Autumn / 初秋
1As the month of August moved toward an end there was no longer any doubt as to the “failing” of Aunt Cassie; it was confirmed by the very silence with which she surrounded the state of her health. For forty years one had discussed Aunt Cassie’s health as one discussed the weather—a thing ever present in the consciousness of man about which one could do nothing, and now Aunt Cassie ceased suddenly to speak of her health at all. She even abandoned her habit of going about on foot and took to making her round of calls in the rattling motor which she protested to fear and loathe, and she came to lean more and more heavily upon the robust Miss Peavey for companionship and support. Claiming a fear of burglars, she had Miss Peavey’s bed moved into the room next to hers and kept the door open between. She developed, Olivia discovered, an almost morbid terror of being left alone.
2And so the depression of another illness came to add its weight to the burden of Jack’s death and the grief of John Pentland. The task of battling the cloud of melancholy which hung over the old house grew more and more heavy upon Olivia’s shoulders. Anson remained as usual indifferent to any changes in the life about him, living really in the past among all the sheaves of musty papers, a man not so much cold-blooded as bloodless, for there was nothing active nor calculating in his nature, but only a great inertia, a lack of all fire. And it was impossible to turn to Sabine, who in an odd way seemed as cold and detached as Anson; she appeared to stand at a little distance, waiting, watching them all, even Olivia herself. And it was of course unthinkable to cloud the happiness of Sybil by going to her for support.
3There was at least O’Hara, who came more and more frequently to Pentlands, now that the first visit had been made and the ice was broken. Anson encountered him once in the hallway, coldly; and he had become very friendly with old John Pentland. The two had a common interest in horses and dogs and cattle, and O’Hara, born in the Boston slums and knowing very little on any of these subjects, perhaps found the old gentleman a valuable source of information. He told Olivia, “I wouldn’t come to the house except for you. I can’t bear to think of you there ... always alone ... always troubled.”
4And in the evenings, while they played bridge or listened to Jean’s music, she sometimes caught his eye, watching her with the old admiration, telling her that he was ready to support her no matter what happened.
5A week after the encounter with Miss Peavey at the catnip-bed, Peters came to Olivia’s room late in the afternoon to say, with a curious blend of respect and confidence, “He’s ill again, Mrs. Pentland.”
6She knew what Peters meant; it was a kind of code between them.... The same words used so many times before.
7She went quickly to the tall narrow library that smelled of dogs and apples and woodsmoke, knowing well enough what she would find there; and on opening the door she saw him at once, lying asleep in the big leather chair. The faint odor of whisky—a smell which had come long since to fill her always with a kind of horror—hung in the air, and on the mahogany desk stood three bottles, each nearly emptied. He slept quietly, one arm flung across his chest, the other hanging to the floor, where the bony fingers rested limply against the Turkey-red carpet. There was something childlike in the peace which enveloped him. It seemed to Olivia that he was even free now of the troubles which long ago had left their mark in the harsh, bitter lines of the old face. The lines were gone, melted away somehow, drowned in the immense quiet of this artificial death. It was only thus, perhaps, that he slept quietly, untroubled by dreams. It was only thus that he ever escaped.
8Standing in the doorway she watched him for a time, quietly, and then, turning, she said to Peters, “Will you tell Higgins?” and entering the door she closed the red-plush curtains, shutting out the late afternoon sunlight.
9Higgins came, as he had done so many times before, to lock the door and sit there in the room, even sleeping on the worn leather divan, until John Pentland, wakening slowly and looking about in a dazed way, discovered his groom sitting in the same room, polishing a bridle or a pair of riding-boots. The little man was never idle. Something deep inside him demanded action: he must always be doing something. And so, after these melancholy occasions, a new odor clung to the library for days ... the fresh, clean, healthy odor of leather and harness-soap.
10For two days Higgins stayed in the library, leaving it only for meals, and for two days the old lady in the north wing went unvisited. Save for this single room, there was no evidence of any change in the order of life at Pentlands. Jean, in ignorance of what had happened, came in the evenings to play. But Sabine knew; and Aunt Cassie, who never asked questions concerning the mysterious absence of her brother lest she be told the truth. Anson, as usual, noticed nothing. The only real change lay in a sudden display of sulking and ill-temper on the part of Miss Egan. The invincible nurse even quarreled with the cook, and was uncivil to Olivia, who thought, “What next is to happen? I shall be forced to look for a new nurse.”
11On the evening of the third day, just after dinner, Higgins opened the door and went in search of Olivia.
12“The old gentleman is all right again,” he said. “He’s gone to bathe and he’d like to see you in the library in half an hour.”
13She found him there, seated by the big mahogany desk, bathed and spotlessly neat in clean linen; but he looked very old and weary, and beneath the tan of the leathery face there was a pallor which gave him a yellowish look. It was his habit never to refer in any way to these sad occasions, to behave always as if he had only been away for a day or two and wanted to hear what had happened during his absence.
14Looking up at her, he said gravely, “I wanted to speak to you, Olivia. You weren’t busy, were you? I didn’t disturb you?”
15“No,” she said. “There’s nothing.... Jean and Thérèse are here with Sybil.... That’s all.”
16“Sybil,” he repeated. “Sybil.... She’s very happy these days, isn’t she?” Olivia nodded and even smiled a little, in a warm, understanding way, so that he added, “Well, we mustn’t spoil her happiness. We mustn’t allow anything to happen to it.”
17A light came into the eyes of Olivia. “No; we mustn’t,” she repeated, and then, “She’s a clever girl.... She knows what she wants from life, and that’s the whole secret. Most people never know until it’s too late.”
18A silence followed this speech, so eloquent, so full of unsaid things, that Olivia grew uneasy.
19“I wanted to talk to you about ...” he hesitated for a moment, and she saw that beneath the edge of the table his hands were clenched so violently that the bony knuckles showed through the brown skin. “I wanted to talk to you about a great many things.” He stirred and added abruptly, “First of all, there’s my will.”
20He opened the desk and took out a packet of papers, separating them carefully into little piles before he spoke again. There was a weariness in all his movements. “I’ve made some changes,” he said, “changes that you ought to know about ... and there are one or two other things.” He looked at her from under the fierce, shaggy eyebrows. “You see, I haven’t long to live. I’ve no reason to expect to live forever and I want to leave things in perfect order, as they have always been.”
21To Olivia, sitting in silence, the conversation became suddenly painful. With each word she felt a wall rising about her, shutting her in, while the old man went on and on with an agonizing calmness, with an air of being certain that his will would be obeyed in death as it had always been in life.
22“To begin with, you will all be left very rich ... very rich ... something over six million dollars. And it’s solid money, Olivia ... money not made by gambling, but money that’s been saved and multiplied by careful living. For seventy-five years it’s been the tradition of the family to live on the income of its income. We’ve managed to do it somehow, and in the end we’re rich ... very rich.”
23As he talked he kept fingering the papers nervously, placing them in neat little piles, arranging and rearranging them.
24“And, as you know, Olivia, the money has been kept in a way so that the principal could never be spent. Sybil’s grandchildren will be able to touch some of it ... that is, if you are unwise enough to leave it to them that way.”
25Olivia looked up suddenly. “But why me? What have I to do with it?”
26“That’s what I’m coming to, Olivia dear.... It’s because I’m leaving control of the whole fortune to you.”
27Suddenly, fiercely, she wanted none of it. She had a quick, passionate desire to seize all the neatly piled papers and burn them, to tear them into small bits and fling them out of the window.
28“I don’t want it!” she said. “Why should you leave it to me? I’m rich myself. I don’t want it! I’m not a Pentland.... It’s not my money. I’ve nothing to do with it.” In spite of herself, there was a note of passionate resentment in her voice.
29The shaggy brows raised faintly in a look of surprise.
30“To whom, if not to you?” he asked.
31After a moment, she said, “Why, Anson ... to Anson, I suppose.”
32“You don’t really think that?”
33“It’s his money ... Pentland money ... not mine. I’ve all the money I need and more.”
34“It’s yours, Olivia....” He looked at her sharply. “You’re more a Pentland than Anson, in spite of blood ... in spite of name. You’re more a Pentland than any of them. It’s your money by every right in spite of anything you can do.”
35(“But Anson isn’t a Pentland, nor you either,” thought Olivia.)
36“It’s you who are dependable, who are careful, who are honorable, Olivia. You’re the strong one. When I die, you’ll be the head of the family.... Surely, you know that ... already.”
37(“I,” thought Olivia, “I who have been so giddy, who am planning to betray you all.... I am all this!”)
38“If I left it to Anson, it would be wasted, lost on foolish ideas. He’s no idea of business.... There’s a screw loose in Anson.... He’s a crank. He’d be giving away this good money to missionaries and queer committees ... societies for meddling in the affairs of people. That wasn’t what this fortune was made for. No, I won’t have Pentland money squandered like that....”
39“And I,” asked Olivia. “How do you know what I will do with it?”
40He smiled softly, affectionately. “I know what you’ll do with it, because I know you, Olivia, my dear.... You’ll keep it safe and intact.... You’re the Pentland of the family. You weren’t when you came here, but you are now. I mean that you belong to the grand tradition of Pentlands ... the old ones who hang out there in the hall. You’re the only one left ... for Sybil is too young. She’s only a child ... yet.”
41Olivia was silent, but beneath the silence there ran a torrent of cold, rebellious thoughts. Being a Pentland, then, was not a matter of blood: it was an idea, even an ideal. She thought fiercely, “I’m not a Pentland. I’m alive. I am myself. I’ve not been absorbed into nothing. All these years haven’t changed me so much. They haven’t made me into a Pentland.” But for the sake of her affection, she could say none of these things. She only said, “How do you know what I’ll do with it? How do you know that I mightn’t squander it extravagantly—or—or even run away, taking all that was free with me. No one could stop me—no one.”
42He only repeated what he had said before, saying it more slowly this time, as if to impress her. “I know what you’ll do with it, Olivia, because I know you, Olivia dear—you’d never do anything foolish or shameful—I know that—that’s why I trust you.”
43And when she did not answer him, he asked, “You will accept it, won’t you, Olivia? You’ll have the help of a good lawyer ... one of the best ... John Mannering. It will please me, Olivia, and it will let the world know what I think of you, what you have been to me all these years ... all that Anson has never been ... nor my own sister, Cassie.” He leaned across the table, touching her white hand gently. “You will, Olivia?”
44It was impossible to refuse, impossible even to protest any further, impossible to say that in this very moment she wanted only to run away, to escape, to leave them all forever, now that Sybil was safe. Looking away, she said in a low voice, “Yes.”
45It was impossible to desert him now ... an old, tired man. The bond between them was too strong; it had existed for too long, since that first day she had come to Pentlands as Anson’s bride and known that it was the father and not the son whom she respected. In a way, he had imposed upon her something of his own rugged, patriarchal strength. It seemed to her that she had been caught when she meant most to escape; and she was frightened, too, by the echoing thought that perhaps she had become, after all, a Pentland ... hard, cautious, unadventurous and a little bitter, one for whom there was no fire or glamour in life, one who worshiped a harsh, changeable, invisible goddess called Duty. She kept thinking of Sabine’s bitter remark about “the lower middle-class virtues of the Pentlands” ... the lack of fire, the lack of splendor, of gallantry. And yet this fierce old man was gallant, in an odd fashion.... Even Sabine knew that.
46He was talking again. “It’s not only money that’s been left to you.... There’s Sybil, who’s still too young to be let free....”
47“No,” said Olivia with a quiet stubbornness, “she’s not too young. She’s to do as she pleases. I’ve tried to make her wiser than I was at her age ... perhaps wiser than I’ve ever been ... even now.”
48“Perhaps you’re right, my dear. You have been so many times ... and things aren’t the same as they were in my day ... certainly not with young girls.”
49He took up the papers again, fussing over them in a curious, nervous way, very unlike his usual firm, unrelenting manner. She had a flash of insight which told her that he was behaving thus because he wanted to avoid looking at her. She hated confidences and she was afraid now that he was about to tell her things she preferred never to hear. She hated confidences and yet she seemed to be a person who attracted them always.
50“And leaving Sybil out of it,” he continued, “there’s queer old Miss Haddon in Durham whom, as you know, we’ve taken care of for years; and there’s Cassie, who’s growing old and ill, I think. We can’t leave her to half-witted Miss Peavey. I know my sister Cassie has been a burden to you.... She’s been a burden to me, all my life....” He smiled grimly. “I suppose you know that....” Then, after a pause, he said, “But most of all, there’s my wife.”
51His voice assumed a queer, unnatural quality, from which all feeling had been removed. It became like the voices of deaf persons who never hear the sounds they make.
52“I can’t leave her alone,” he said. “Alone ... with no one to care for her save a paid nurse. I couldn’t die and know that there’s no one to think of her ... save that wretched, efficient Miss Egan ... a stranger. No, Olivia ... there’s no one but you.... No one I can trust.” He looked at her sharply. “You’ll promise me to keep her here always ... never to let them send her away? You’ll promise?”
53Again she was caught. “Of course,” she said. “Of course I’ll promise you that.” What else was she to say?
54“Because,” he added, looking away from her once more, “because I owe her that ... even after I’m dead. I couldn’t rest if she were shut up somewhere ... among strangers. You see ... once ... once....” He broke off sharply, as if what he had been about to say was unbearable.
55With Olivia the sense of uneasiness changed into actual terror. She wanted to cry out, “Stop!... Don’t go on!” But some instinct told her that he meant to go on and on to the very end, painfully, despite anything she could do.
56“It’s odd,” he was saying quite calmly, “but there seem to be only women left ... no men ... for Anson is really an old woman.”
57Quietly, firmly, with the air of a man before a confessor, speaking almost as if she were invisible, impersonal, a creature who was a kind of machine, he went on, “And of course, Horace Pentland is dead, so we needn’t think of him any longer.... But there’s Mrs. Soames....” He coughed and began again to weave the gaunt bony fingers in and out, as if what he had to say were drawn from the depth of his soul with a great agony. “There’s Mrs. Soames,” he repeated. “I know that you understand about her, Olivia ... and I’m grateful to you for having been kind and human where none of the others would have been. I fancy we’ve given Beacon Hill and Commonwealth Avenue subject for conversation for thirty years ... but I don’t care about that. They’ve watched us ... they’ve known every time I went up the steps of her brownstone house ... the very hour I arrived and the hour I left. They have eyes, in our world, Olivia, even in the backs of their heads. You must remember that, my dear. They watch you ... they see everything you do. They almost know what you think ... and when they don’t know, they make it up. That’s one of the signs of a sick, decaying world ... that they get their living vicariously ... by watching some one else live ... that they live always in the past. That’s the only reason I ever felt sorry for Horace Pentland ... the only reason that I had sympathy for him. It was cruel that he should have been born in such a place.”
58The bitterness ran like acid through all the speech, through the very timbre of his voice. It burned in the fierce black eyes where the fire was not yet dead. Olivia believed that she was seeing him now for the first time, in his fulness, with nothing concealed. And as she listened, the old cloud of mystery that had always hidden him from her began to clear away like the fog lifting from the marshes in the early morning. She saw him now as he really was ... a man fiercely masculine, bitter, clear-headed, and more human than the rest of them, who had never before betrayed himself even for an instant.
59“But about Mrs. Soames.... If anything should happen to me, Olivia ... if I should die first, I want you to be kind to her ... for my sake and for hers. She’s been patient and good to me for so long.” The bitterness seemed to flow away a little now, leaving only a kindling warmth in its place. “She’s been good to me.... She’s always understood, Olivia, even before you came here to help me. You and she, Olivia, have made life worth living for me. She’s been patient ... more patient than you know. Sometimes I must have made life for her a hell on earth ... but she’s always been there, waiting, full of gentleness and sympathy. She’s been ill most of the time you’ve known her ... old and ill. You can’t imagine how beautiful she once was.”
60“I know,” said Olivia softly. “I remember seeing her when I first came to Pentlands ... and Sabine has told me.”
61The name of Sabine appeared to rouse him suddenly. He sat up very straight and said, “Don’t trust Sabine too far, Olivia. She belongs to us, after all. She’s very like my sister Cassie ... more like her than you can imagine. It’s why they hate each other so. She’s Cassie turned inside out, as you might say. They’d both sacrifice everything for the sake of stirring up some trouble or calamity that would interest them. They live ... vicariously.”
62Olivia would have interrupted him, defending Sabine and telling of the one real thing that had happened to her ... the tragic love for her husband; she would have told him of all the abrupt, incoherent confidences Sabine had made her; but the old man gave her no chance. It seemed suddenly that he had become possessed, fiercely intent upon pouring out to her all the dark things he had kept hidden for so long.
63(She kept thinking, “Why must I know all these things? Why must I take up the burden? Why was it that I should find those letters which had lain safe and hidden for so long?”)
64He was talking again quietly, the bony fingers weaving in and out their nervous futile pattern. “You see, Olivia.... You see, she takes drugs now ... and there’s no use in trying to cure her. She’s old now, and it doesn’t really matter. It’s not as if she were young with all her life before her.”
65Almost without thinking, Olivia answered, “I know that.”
66He looked up quickly. “Know it?” he asked sharply. “How could you know it?”
67“Sabine told me.”
68The head bowed again. “Oh, Sabine! Of course! She’s dangerous. She knows far too much of the world. She’s known too many strange people.” And then he repeated again what he had said months ago after the ball. “She ought never to have come back here.”
69Into the midst of the strange, disjointed conversation there came presently the sound of music drifting toward them from the distant drawing-room. John Pentland, who was a little deaf, did not hear it at first, but after a little time he sat up, listening, and turning toward her, asked, “Is that Sybil’s young man?”
70“Yes.”
71“He’s a nice boy, isn’t he?”
72“A very nice boy.”
73After a silence he asked, “What’s the name of the thing he’s playing?”
74Olivia could not help smiling. “It’s called I’m in love again and the spring is a-comin’. Jean brought it back from Paris. A friend of his wrote it ... but names don’t mean anything in music any more. No one listens to the words.”
75A shadow of amusement crossed his face. “Songs have queer names nowadays.”
76She would have escaped, then, going quietly away. She stirred and even made a gesture toward leaving, but he raised his hand in the way he had, making her feel that she must obey him as if she were a child.
77“There are one or two more things you ought to know, Olivia ... things that will help you to understand. Some one has to know them. Some one....” He halted abruptly and again made a great effort to go on. The veins stood out sharply on the bony head.
78“It’s about her chiefly,” he said, with the inevitable gesture toward the north wing. “She wasn’t always that way. That’s what I want to explain. You see ... we were married when we were both very young. It was my father who wanted it. I was twenty and she was eighteen. My father had known her family always. They were cousins of ours, in a way, just as they were cousins of Sabine’s. He had gone to school with her father and they belonged to the same club and she was an only child with a prospect of coming into a great fortune. It’s an old story, you see, but a rather common one in our world.... All these things counted, and as for myself, I’d never had anything to do with women and I’d never been in love with any one. I was very young. I think they saw it as a perfect match ... made in the hard, prosperous Heaven of their dreams. She was very pretty ... you can see even now that she must have been very pretty.... She was sweet, too, and innocent.” He coughed, and continued with a great effort. “She had ... she had a mind like a little child’s. She knew nothing ... a flower of innocence,” he added with a strange savagery.
79And then, as if the effort were too much for him, he paused and sat staring out of the window toward the sea. To Olivia it seemed that he had slipped back across the years to the time when the poor old lady had been young and perhaps curiously shy of his ardent wooing. A silence settled again over the room, so profound that this time the faint, distant roaring of the surf on the rocks became audible, and then again the sound of Jean’s music breaking in upon them. He was playing another tune ... not I’m in love again, but one called Ukulele Lady.
80“I wish they’d stop that damned music!” said John Pentland.
81“I’ll go,” began Olivia, rising.
82“No ... don’t go. You mustn’t go ... not now.” He seemed anxious, almost terrified, perhaps by the fear that if he did not tell now he would never tell her the long story that he must tell to some one. “No, don’t go ... not until I’ve finished, Olivia. I must finish.... I want you to know why such things happened as happened here yesterday and the day before in this room.... There’s no excuse, but what I have to tell you may explain it ... a little.”
83He rose and opening one of the bookcases, took out a bottle of whisky. Looking at her, he said, “Don’t worry, Olivia, I shan’t repeat it. It’s only that I’m feeling weak. It will never happen again ... what happened yesterday ... never. I give you my word.”
84He poured out a full glass and seated himself once more, drinking the stuff slowly while he talked.
85“So we were married, I thinking that I was in love with her, because I knew nothing of such things ... nothing. It wasn’t really love, you see.... Olivia, I’m going to tell you the truth ... everything ... all of the truth. It wasn’t really love, you see. It was only that she was the only woman I had ever approached in that way ... and I was a strong, healthy young man.”
86He began to speak more and more slowly, as if each word were thrust out by an immense effort of will. “And she knew nothing ... nothing at all. She was,” he said bitterly, “all that a young woman was supposed to be. After the first night of the honeymoon, she was never quite the same again ... never quite the same, Olivia. Do you know what that means? The honeymoon ended in a kind of madness, a fixed obsession. She’d been brought up to think of such things with a sacred horror and there was a touch of madness in her family. She was never the same again,” he repeated in a melancholy voice, “and when Anson was born she went quite out of her head. She would not see me or speak to me. She fancied that I had disgraced her forever ... and after that she could never be left alone without some one to watch her. She never went out again in the world....”
87The voice died away into a hoarse whisper. The glass of whisky had been emptied in a supreme effort to break through the shell which had closed him in from all the world, from Olivia, whom he cherished, perhaps even from Mrs. Soames, whom he had loved. In the distance the music still continued, this time as an accompaniment to the hard, loud voice of Thérèse singing, I’m in love again and the spring is a-comin’.... Thérèse, the dark, cynical, invincible Thérèse for whom life, from frogs to men, held very few secrets.
88“But the story doesn’t end there,” continued John Pentland weakly. “It goes on ... because I came to know what being in love might be when I met Mrs. Soames.... Only then,” he said sadly, as if he saw the tragedy from far off as a thing which had little to do with him. “Only then,” he repeated, “it was too late. After what I had done to her, it was too late to fall in love. I couldn’t abandon her. It was impossible. It ought never to have happened.” He straightened his tough old body and added, “I’ve told you all this, Olivia, because I wanted you to understand why sometimes I am ...” He paused for a moment and then plunged ahead, “why I am a beast as I was yesterday. There have been times when it was the only way I could go on living.... And it harmed no one. There aren’t many who ever knew about it.... I always hid myself. There was never any spectacle.”
89Slowly Olivia’s white hand stole across the polished surface of the desk and touched the brown, bony one that lay there now, quietly, like a hawk come to rest. She said nothing and yet the simple gesture carried an eloquence of which no words were capable. It brought tears into the burning eyes for the second time in the life of John Pentland. He had wept only once before ... on the night of his grandson’s death. And they were not, Olivia knew, tears of self-pity, for there was no self-pity in the tough, rugged old body; they were tears at the spectacle of a tragedy in which he happened by accident to be concerned.
90“I wanted you to know, my dear Olivia ... that I have never been unfaithful to her, not once in all the years since our wedding-night.... I know the world will never believe it, but I wanted you to know because, you see, you and Mrs. Soames are the only ones who matter to me ... and she knows that it is true.”
91And now that she knew the story was finished, she did not go away, because she knew that he wanted her to stay, sitting there beside him in silence, touching his hand. He was the sort of man—a man, she thought, like Michael—who needed women about him.
92After a long time, he turned suddenly and asked, “This boy of Sybil’s—who is he? What is he like?”
93“Sabine knows about him.”
94“It’s that which makes me afraid.... He’s out of her world and I’m not so sure that I like it. In Sabine’s world it doesn’t matter who a person is or where he comes from as long as he’s clever and amusing.”
95“I’ve watched him.... I’ve talked with him. I think him all that a girl could ask ... a girl like Sybil, I mean.... I shouldn’t recommend him to a silly girl ... he’d give such a wife a very bad time. Besides, I don’t think we can do much about it. Sybil, I think, has decided.”
96“Has he asked her to marry him? Has he spoken to you?”
97“I don’t know whether he’s asked her. He hasn’t spoken to me. Young men don’t bother about such things nowadays.”
98“But Anson won’t like it. There’ll be trouble ... and Cassie, too.”
99“Yes ... and still, if Sybil wants him, she’ll have him. I’ve tried to teach her that in a case like this ... well,” she made a little gesture with her white hand, “that she should let nothing make any difference.”
100He sat thoughtfully for a long time, and at last, without looking up and almost as if speaking to himself, he said, “There was once an elopement in the family.... Jared and Savina Pentland were married that way.”
101“But that wasn’t a happy match ... not too happy,” said Olivia; and immediately she knew that she had come near to betraying herself. A word or two more and he might have trapped her. She saw that it was impossible to add the burden of the letters to these other secrets.
102As it was, he looked at her sharply, saying, “No one knows that.... One only knows that she was drowned.”
103She saw well enough what he meant to tell her, by that vague hint regarding Savina’s elopement; only now he was back once more in the terrible shell; he was the mysterious, the false, John Pentland who could only hint but never speak directly.
104The music ceased altogether in the drawing-room, leaving only the vague, distant, eternal pounding of the surf on the red rocks, and once the distant echo of a footstep coming from the north wing. The old man said presently, “So she wasn’t falling in love with this man O’Hara, after all? There wasn’t any need for worry?”
105“No, she never thought of him in that way, even for a moment.... To her he seems an old man.... We mustn’t forget how young she is.”
106“He’s not a bad sort,” replied the old man. “I’ve grown fond of him, and Higgins thinks he’s a fine fellow. I’m inclined to trust Higgins. He has an instinct about people ... the same as he has about the weather.” He paused for a moment, and then continued, “Still, I think we’d best be careful about him. He’s a clever Irishman on the make ... and such gentlemen need watching. They’re usually thinking only of themselves.”
107“Perhaps,” said Olivia, in a whisper. “Perhaps....”
108The silence was broken by the whirring and banging of the clock in the hall making ready to strike eleven. The evening had slipped away quickly, veiled in a mist of unreality. At last the truth had been spoken at Pentlands—the grim, unadorned, terrible truth; and Olivia, who had hungered for it for so long, found herself shaken.
109John Pentland rose slowly, painfully, for he had grown stiff and brittle with the passing of the summer. “It’s eleven, Olivia. You’d better go to bed and get some rest.”