Луис Бромфилд - Early Autumn - A Story of a Lady

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 nice face 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 anyone 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 in the 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 lovemaking, 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? Everyone 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 what a 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. He never told because, being a 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 today. 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.”