There was a frank immorality in this statement which put Aunt Cassie to rout, bag and baggage. She merely stared, finding nothing to say in reply to such a speech. Clearly, in all her life she had never heard anyone say a thing so bald and so frank, so completely naked of all pretense of gentility.
Sabine went on coldly, pushing her assault to the very end. “I divorced him at last, not because he was unfaithful to me, but because there was another woman who wanted to marry him … a woman whom I respect and like … a woman who is still my friend. Understand that I loved him passionately … in a very fleshly way. One couldn’t help it. I wasn’t the only woman. … He was a kind of devil, but a very fascinating one.”
The old woman was a little stunned but not by any means defeated. Sabine saw a look come into her eyes, a look which clearly said, “So this is what the world has done to my poor, dear, innocent little Sabine!” At last she said with a sigh, “I find it an amazing world. I don’t know what it is coming to.”
“Nor I,” replied Sabine with an air of complete agreement and sympathy. She understood that the struggle was not yet finished, for Aunt Cassie had a way of putting herself always in an impregnable position, of wrapping herself in layer after layer of sighs and sympathy, of charity and forgiveness, of meekness and tears, so that in the end there was no way of suddenly tearing them aside and saying, “There you are … naked at last, a horrible meddling old woman!” And Sabine kept thinking, too, that if Aunt Cassie had lived in the days of her witch-baiting ancestor, Preserved Pentland, she would have been burned for a witch.
And all the while Sabine had been suffering, quietly, deep inside, behind the frankly painted face … suffering in a way which no one in the world had ever suspected; for it was like tearing out her heart, to talk thus of Richard Callendar, even to speak his name.
Aloud she said, “And how is Mrs. Pentland. … I mean Olivia … not my cousin. … I know how she is … no better.”
“No better. … It is one of those things which I can never understand. … Why God should have sent such a calamity to a good man like my brother.”
“But Olivia …” began Sabine, putting an end abruptly to what was clearly the prelude to a pious monologue.
“Oh! … Olivia,” replied Aunt Cassie, launching into an account of the young Mrs. Pentland. “Olivia is an angel … an angel, a blessing of God sent to my poor brother. But she’s not been well lately. She’s been rather sharp with me … even with poor Miss Peavey, who is so sensitive. I can’t imagine what has come over her.”
It seemed that the strong, handsome Olivia was suffering from nerves. She was, Aunt Cassie said, unhappy about something, although she could not see why Olivia shouldn’t be happy … a woman with everything in the world.
“Everything?” echoed Sabine. “Has anyone in the world got everything?”
“It is Olivia’s fault if she hasn’t everything. All the materials are there. She has a good husband … a husband who never looks at other women.”
“Nor at his own wife either,” interrupted Sabine. “I know all about Anson. I grew up with him.”
Aunt Cassie saw fit to ignore this. “She’s rich,” she said, resuming the catalogue of Olivia’s blessings.
And again Sabine interrupted, “But what does money mean, Aunt Cassie? In our world one is rich and that’s the end of it. One takes it for granted. When one isn’t rich any longer, one simply slips out of it. It has very little to do with happiness. …”
The strain was beginning to show on Aunt Cassie. “You’d find out if you weren’t rich,” she observed with asperity, “if your father and great-grandfather hadn’t taken care of their money.” She recovered herself and made a deprecating gesture. “But don’t think I’m criticizing dear Olivia. She is the best, the most wonderful woman.” She began to wrap herself once more in kindliness and charity and forgiveness. “Only she seems to me to be a little queer lately.”
Sabine’s artificially crimson mouth took on a slow smile. “It would be too bad if the Pentland family drove two wives insane—one after the other.”
Again Aunt Cassie came near to defeat by losing her composure. She snorted, and Sabine helped her out by asking: “And Anson?” ironically. “What is dear Anson doing?”
She told him of Anson’s great work, The Pentland Family and the Massachusetts Bay Colony and of its immense value as a contribution to the history of the nation; and when she had finished with that, she turned to Jack’s wretched health, saying in a low, melancholy voice, “It’s only a matter of time, you know. … At least, so the doctors say. … With a heart like that it’s only a matter of time.” The tears came again.
“And yet,” Sabine said slowly, “you say that Olivia has everything.”
“Well,” replied Aunt Cassie, “perhaps not everything.”
Before she left she inquired for Sabine’s daughter and was told that she had gone over to Pentlands to see Sybil.
“They went to the same school in France,” said Sabine. “They were friends there.”
“Yes,” said Aunt Cassie. “I was against Sybil’s going abroad to school. It fills a girl’s head with queer ideas … especially a school like that where anyone could go. Since she’s home, Sybil behaves very queerly. … I think it’ll stand in the way of her success in Boston. The boys don’t like girls who are different.”
“Perhaps,” said Sabine, “she may marry outside of Boston. Men aren’t the same everywhere. Even in Boston there must be one or two who don’t refer to women as ‘Good old So-and-so.’ Even in Boston there must be men who like women who are well dressed … women who are ladies. …”
Aunt Cassie began to grow
