“Why,” said Olivia, “should she write you such a thing? What made her think you’d be interested?”
“Well, Kate Pulsifer and I went to school together and we still correspond now and then. I just happened to mention the boy’s name when I was writing her about Sabine. She says, by the way, that Sabine has very queer friends in Paris and that Sabine has never so much as called on her or asked her for tea. And there’s been some new scandal about Sabine’s husband and an Italian woman. It happened in Venice. …”
“But he’s not her husband any longer.”
The old lady seated herself and went on pouring forth the news from Kate Pulsifer’s letter; with each word she appeared to grow stronger and stronger, less and less yellow and worn.
(“It must be,” thought Olivia, “the effect of so many calamities contained in one letter.”)
She saw now that she had acted only just in time and she was glad that she had lied, so flatly, so abruptly, without thinking why she had done it. For Mrs. Pulsifer was certain to go to the bottom of the affair, if for no other reason than to do harm to Sabine; she had once lived in a house on Chestnut Street with a bow-window which swept the entrance to every house. She was one of John Pentland’s dead, who lived by watching others live.
IV
From the moment she encountered Mr. Gavin on the turnpike until the tragedy which occurred two days later, life at Pentlands appeared to lose all reality for Olivia. When she thought of it long afterward, the hours became a sort of nightmare in which the old enchantment snapped and gave way to a strained sense of struggle between forces which, centering about herself, left her in the end bruised and a little broken, but secure.
The breathless heat of the sort which from time to time enveloped that corner of New England, leaving the very leaves of the trees hanging limp and wilted, again settled down over the meadows and marshes, and in the midst of the afternoon appeared the rarest of sights—the indolent Sabine stirring in the burning sun. Olivia watched her coming across the fields, protected from the blazing sun only by the frivolous yellow parasol. She came slowly, indifferently, and until she entered the cool, darkened drawing-room she appeared the familiar bored Sabine; only after she greeted Olivia the difference appeared.
She said abruptly, “I’m leaving day after tomorrow,” and instead of seating herself to talk, she kept wandering restlessly about the room, examining Horace Pentland’s bibelots and turning the pages of books and magazines without seeing them.
“Why?” asked Olivia. “I thought you were staying until October.”
“No, I’m going away at once.” She turned and murmured, “I’ve hated Durham always. It’s unbearable to me now. I’m bored to death. I only came, in the first place, because I thought Thérèse ought to know her own people. But it’s no good. She’ll have none of them. I see now how like her father she is. They’re not her own people and never will be. … I don’t imagine Durham will ever see either of us again.”
Olivia smiled. “I know it’s dull here.”
“Oh, I don’t mean you, Olivia dear, or even Sybil or O’Hara, but there’s something in the air. … I’m going to Newport for two weeks and then to Biarritz for October. Thérèse wants to go to Oxford.” She grinned sardonically. “There’s a bit of New England in her, after all … this education business. I wanted a femme du monde for a daughter and God and New England sent me a scientist who would rather wear flat heels and look through a microscope. It’s funny how children turn out.”
(“Even Thérèse and Sabine,” thought Olivia. “Even they belong to it.”)
She watched Sabine, so worldly, so superbly dressed, so hard—such a restless nomad; and as she watched her it occurred to her again that she was very like Aunt Cassie—an Aunt Cassie in revolt against Aunt Cassie’s gods, an Aunt Cassie, as John Pentland had said, “turned inside out.”
Without looking up from the pages of the Nouvelle Revue, Sabine said, “I’m glad this thing about Sybil is settled.”
“Yes.”
“He told you about his mother?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t let that make any difference? You didn’t tell the others?”
“No. … Anything I had to say would have made no difference.”
“You were wise. … I think Thérèse is right, perhaps … righter than any of us. She says that nature has a contempt for marriage certificates. Respectability can’t turn decay into life … and Jean is alive. … So is his mother.”
“I know what you are driving at.”
“Certainly, my dear, you ought to know. You’ve suffered enough from it. And knowing his mother makes a difference. She’s no ordinary light woman, or even one who was weak enough to allow herself to be seduced. Once in fifty years there occurs a woman who can … how shall I say it? … get away with a thing like that. You have to be a great woman to do it. I don’t think it’s made much difference in her life, chiefly because she’s a woman of discretion and excellent taste. But it might have made a difference in Jean’s life if he had encountered a mother less wise than yourself.”
“I don’t know whether I’m being wise or not. I believe in him and I want Sybil to escape.”
Olivia understood that for the first time they were discussing the thing which none of them ever mentioned, the thing which up to now Sabine had only touched upon by insinuation. Sabine had turned away and stood looking out of the window across the meadows where the distant trees danced in waves of heat.
“You spoiled my summer a bit, Olivia dear,
