Луис Бромфилд - Early Autumn - A Story of a Lady

They rode on slowly and in silence while Olivia thought wearily round and round the dark, tangled maze in which she found herself. There seemed no way out of it. She was caught, shut in a prison, at the very moment when her chance of happiness had come.

They came suddenly out of the thicket into the lane that led from Aunt Cassie’s gazeboed house to Pentlands, and as they passed through the gate, they saw Aunt Cassie’s antiquated motorcar drawn up at the side of the road. The old lady was nowhere to be seen, but at the sound of hoofs the rotund form and silly face of Miss Peavey emerged from the bushes at one side, her bulging arms filled with great bunches of some weed.

She greeted Olivia and nodded to O’Hara. “I’ve been gathering catnip for my cats,” she called out. “It grows fine and thick there in the damp ground by the spring.”

Olivia smiled … a smile that gave her a kind of physical pain … and they rode on, conscious all the while that Miss Peavey’s china-blue eyes were following them. She knew that Miss Peavey was too silly and innocent to suspect anything, but she would, beyond all doubt, go directly to Aunt Cassie with a detailed description of the encounter. Very little happened in Miss Peavey’s life and such an encounter loomed large. Aunt Cassie would draw from her all the tiny details, such as the fact that Olivia looked as if she had been weeping.

Olivia turned to O’Hara. “There’s nothing malicious about poor Miss Peavey,” she said, “but she’s a fool, which is far more dangerous.”

As 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 motorcar 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.

And 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.

There 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.”

And 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.

A 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.”

She knew what Peters meant; it was a kind of code between them. … The same words used so many times before.

She went quickly to the tall narrow library that smelled of dogs and apples and wood smoke, 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 whiskey—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.

Standing 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.

Higgins 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.

For 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.”

On the evening of the third day, just after dinner, Higgins opened the door and went in search of Olivia.

“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.”

She 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.

Looking up at her, he said gravely, “I wanted to speak to you, Olivia. You weren’t busy, were you? I didn’t disturb you?”

“No,” she said. “There’s nothing. … Jean and Thérèse are here with Sybil. … That’s all.”

“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.”