The old lady grew daily more dazed and forgetful and irritating as a fourth at bridge. John Pentland always insisted upon playing with her, saying that they understood each other’s game; but he deceived no one, save Mrs. Soames, whose wits were at best a little dim; the others knew that it was to protect her. They saw him sit calmly and patiently while she bid suits she could not possibly make, while she trumped his tricks and excused herself on the ground of bad eyesight. She had been a great beauty once and she was still, with all her paint and powder, a vain woman. She would not wear spectacles and so played by looking through lorgnettes, which lowered the whole tempo of the game and added to the confusion. At times, in the midst of the old lady’s blunders, a look of murder came into the green eyes of Sabine, but Olivia managed somehow to prevent any outburst; she even managed to force Sabine into playing on, night after night. The patience and tenderness of the old man towards Mrs. Soames moved her profoundly, and she fancied that Sabine, too—hard, cynical, intolerant Sabine—was touched by it. There was a curious, unsuspected soft spot in Sabine, as if in some way she understood the bond between the two old people. Sabine, who allowed herself to be bored by no one, presently became willing to sit there night after night bearing this special boredom patiently.
Once when Olivia said to her, “We’ll all be old some day. Perhaps we’ll be worse than old Mrs. Soames,” Sabine replied with a shrug of bitterness, “Old age is a bore. That’s the trouble with us, Olivia. We’ll never give up and become old ladies. It used to be the beauties who clung to youth, and now all of us do it. We’ll probably be painted old horrors … like her.”
“Perhaps,” replied Olivia, and a kind of terror took possession of her at the thought that she would be forty on her next birthday and that nothing lay before her, even in the immediate future, save evenings like these, playing bridge with old people until presently she herself was old, always in the melancholy atmosphere of the big house at Pentlands.
“But I shan’t take to drugs,” said Sabine. “At least I shan’t do that.”
Olivia looked at her sharply. “Who takes drugs?” she asked.
“Why, she does … old Mrs. Soames. She’s taken drugs for years. I thought everyone knew it.”
“No,” said Olivia sadly. “I never knew it.”
Sabine laughed. “You are an innocent,” she answered.
And after Sabine had gone home, the cloud of melancholy clung to her for hours. She felt suddenly that Anson and Aunt Cassie might be right, after all. There was something dangerous in a woman like Sabine, who tore aside every veil, who sacrificed everything to her passion for the truth. Somehow it riddled a world which at its best was not too cheerful.
There were evenings when Mrs. Soames sent word that she was feeling too ill to play, and on those occasions John Pentland drove over to see her, and the bridge was played instead at Brook Cottage with O’Hara and a fourth recruited impersonally from the countryside. To Sabine, the choice was a matter of indifference so long as the chosen one could play well.
It happened on these occasions that O’Hara and Olivia came to play together, making a sort of team, which worked admirably. He played as she knew he would play, aggressively and brilliantly, with a fierce concentration and a determination to win. It fascinated her that a man who had spent most of his life in circles where bridge played no part, should have mastered the intricate game so completely. She fancied him taking lessons with the same passionate application which he had given to his career.
He did not speak to her again of the things he had touched upon during that first hot night on the terrace, and she was careful never to find herself alone with him. She was ashamed at the game she played—of seeing him always with Sabine or riding with Sybil and giving him no chance to speak; it seemed to her that such behavior was cheap and dishonest. Yet she could not bring herself to refuse seeing him, partly because to refuse would have aroused the suspicions of the already interested Sabine, but more because she wanted to see him. She found a kind of delight in the way he looked at her, in the perfection with which they came to understand each other’s game; and though he did not see her alone, he kept telling her in a hundred subtle ways that he was a man in love, who adored her.
She told herself that she was behaving like a silly schoolgirl, but she could not bring herself to give him up altogether. It seemed to her unbearable that she should lose these rare happy evenings. And she was afraid, too, that Sabine would call her a fool.
As early summer turned into July, old Mrs. Soames came less and less frequently to play bridge and there were times
