When they had gone Sabine said abruptly, “What sort of man is this Higgins. … I mean your head stableman?”
“A good sort,” replied Olivia. “The children are very fond of him. Why?”
“Oh … no reason at all. I happened to think of him tonight because I noticed him standing on the terrace just now looking in at the ball.”
“He was a jockey once … a good one, I believe, until he got too heavy. He’s been with us ten years. He’s good and reliable and sometimes very funny. Old Mr. Pentland depends on him for everything. … Only he has a way of getting into scrapes with the girls from the village. He seems irresistible to them … and he’s an immoral scamp.”
Sabine’s face lighted up suddenly, as if she had made a great discovery. “I thought so,” she observed, and wandered away abruptly to continue the business of “absorbing” the ball.
She had asked about Higgins because the man was stuck there in her brain, set in the midst of a strange, confused impression that disturbed a mind usually marked by precision and clarity. She did not understand why it was that he remained the most vivid of all the kaleidoscopic procession of the ball. He had been an outsider, a servant, looking in upon it, and yet there he was—a man whom she had never noticed before—vivid and clear-cut, dominating the whole evening.
It had happened a little earlier when, standing in the windowed alcove of the old red-paneled writing-room, she had turned her back for a moment on the ball, to look out upon the distant marshes and the sea, across meadows where every stone and tree and hedge was thrown into a brilliant relief by the clarity of the moonlight and the thin New England air. And trapped suddenly by the still and breathless beauty of the meadows and marshes and distant white dunes, lost in memories more than twenty years old, she had found herself thinking: “It was always like this … rather beautiful and hard and cold and a little barren, only I never saw it before. It’s only now, when I’ve come back after twenty years, that I see my own country exactly as it is.”
And then, standing there quite alone, she had become aware slowly that she was being watched by someone. There was a sudden movement among the lilacs that stood a little way off wrapped in thick black shadows … the faintest stirring of the leaves that drew her sharply back to a consciousness of where she was and why she was there; and, focusing all her attention, she was able to make out presently a short, stocky little figure, and a white face peering out from among the branches, watching the dancers who moved about inside the house. The sight produced in her suddenly a sensation of uneasiness and a faint prickling of the skin, which slipped away presently when she recognized the odd, prematurely wrinkled face of Higgins, the Pentland groom. She must have seen him a dozen times before, barely noticing him, but now she saw him with a kind of illuminating clarity, in a way which made his face and figure unforgettable.
He was clad in the eternal riding-breeches and a sleeveless cotton shirt that exposed the short, hairy, muscular arms. Standing there he seemed, with his arched, firmly planted legs, like some creature rooted into the soil … like the old apple-tree which stood in the moonlight showering the last of its white petals on the black lawn. There was something unpleasant in the sight, as if (she thought afterwards) she had been watched without knowing it by some animal of an uncanny intelligence.
And then abruptly he had slipped away again, shyly, among the branches of the lilacs … like a faun.
Olivia, looking after Sabine as she walked away, smiled at the knowledge of where she was bound. Sabine would go into the old writing-room and there, sitting in a corner, would pretend that she was interested in the latest number of the Mercure de France or some fashion paper, and all the time she would be watching, listening, while old John Pentland and poor battered old Mrs. Soames sat playing bridge with a pair of contemporaries. Sabine, she knew, wanted to probe the lives of the two old people. She wasn’t content like the others at Pentlands to go on pretending that there had never been anything between them. She wanted to get to the root of the story, to know the truth. It was the truth, always the truth, which fascinated Sabine.
And Olivia felt a sudden, swift, almost poignant wave of affection for the abrupt, grim woman, an affection which it was impossible to express because Sabine was too scornful of all sentiment and too shut in ever to receive gracefully a demonstration; yet she fancied that Sabine knew she was fond of her, in the same shy, silent way that old John Pentland knew she was fond of him. It was impossible for either of them ever to speak of such simple things as affection.
Since Sabine had come to Durham, it seemed to Olivia that life was a little less barren and not quite so hopeless. There was in Sabine a curious hard, solid strength which the others, save only the old man, lacked completely. Sabine had made some discovery in life that had set her free … of everything but that terrible barrier of false coldness.
In the midst of these thoughts came another procession of retreating guests, and the sadness, slipping away from Olivia’s face, gave way to a perfect, artificial sort of gaiety. She smiled,
