Луис Бромфилд - Early Autumn - A Story of a Lady

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 someone 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 motorcar 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 role 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 motorcar. 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 tomorrow, 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.”