She would have gone away then, but an odd thought occurred to her, a hope, feeble enough, but one which might give him a little pleasure. She was struck again by his way of speaking, as if he were very near to death or already dead. He had the air of a very old and weary man.
She said, “There’s one thing I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time.” She hesitated and then plunged. “It was about Savina Pentland. Did she ever have more than one child?”
He looked at her sharply out of the bright black eyes and asked, “Why do you want to know that?”
She tried to deceive him by shrugging her shoulders and saying casually, “I don’t know. … I’ve become interested lately, perhaps on account of Anson’s book.”
“You … interested in the past, Olivia?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, she only had one child … and then she was drowned when he was only a year old. He was my grandfather.” Again he looked at her sharply. “Olivia, you must tell me the truth. Why did you ask me that question?”
Again she hesitated, saying, “I don’t know … it seemed to me. …”
“Did you find something? Did she,” he asked, making the gesture toward the north wing, “did she tell you anything?”
She understood then that he, marvelous old man, must even know about the letters. “Yes,” she said in a low voice, “I found something … in the attic.”
He sighed and looked away again, across the wet meadows. “So you know, too. … She found them first, and hid them away again. She wouldn’t give them to me because she hated me … from our wedding-night. I’ve told you about that. And then she couldn’t remember where she’d hid them … poor thing. But she told me about them. At times she used to taunt me by saying that I wasn’t a Pentland at all. I think the thing made her mind darker than it was before. She had some terrible idea about the sin in my family for which she must atone. …”
“It’s true,” said Olivia softly. “There’s no doubt of it. It was written by Toby Cane himself … in his own handwriting. I’ve compared it with the letters Anson has of his.” After a moment she asked, “And you … you’ve known it always?”
“Always,” he said sadly. “It explains many things. … Sometimes I think that those of us who have lived since have had to atone for their sin. It’s all worked out in a harsh way, when you come to think of it. …”
She guessed what it was he meant. She saw again that he believed in such a thing as sin, that the belief in it was rooted deeply in his whole being.
“Have you got the letters, Olivia?” he asked.
“No … I burned them … last night … because I was afraid of them. I was afraid that I might do something shameful with them. And if they were burned, no one would believe such a preposterous story and there wouldn’t be any proof. I was afraid, too,” she added softly, “of what was in them … not what was written there, so much as the way it was written.”
He took her hand and with the oddest, most awkward gesture, kissed it gently. “You were right, Olivia dear,” he said. “It’s all they have … the others … that belief in the past. We daren’t take that from them. The strong daren’t oppress the weak. It would have been too cruel. It would have destroyed the one thing into which Anson poured his whole life. You see, Olivia, there are people … people like you … who have to be strong enough to look out for the others. It’s a hard task … and sometimes a cruel one. If it weren’t for such people the world would fall apart and we’d see it for the cruel, unbearable place it is. That’s why I’ve trusted everything to you. That’s what I was trying to tell you the other night. You see, Olivia, I know you … I know there are things which people like us can’t do. … Perhaps it’s because we’re weak or foolish—who knows? But it’s true. I knew that you were the sort who would do just such a thing.”
Listening to him, she again felt all her determination slipping from her. It was a strange sensation, as if he took possession of her, leaving her powerless to act, prisoning her again in that terrible wall of rightness in which he believed. The familiar sense of his strength frightened her, because it seemed a force so irresistible. It was the strength of one who was more than right; it was the strength of one who believed.
She had a fierce impulse to turn from him and to run swiftly, recklessly, across the wet meadows toward Michael, leaving forever behind her the placid, beautiful old house beneath the elms.
“There are some things,” he was saying, “which it is impossible to do … for people like us, Olivia. They are impossible because the mere act of doing them would ruin us forever. They aren’t things which we can do gracefully.”
And she knew again what it was that he meant, as she had known vaguely while she stood alone in the darkness before the figures of Higgins and Miss Egan emerged from the mist of the marshes.
“You had better go now and telephone to Anson. I fancy he’ll be badly upset, but I shall put an end to that … and Cassie, too. She had it all planned for the Mannering boy.”
II
Anson was not to be reached all the morning at the office; he had gone, so his secretary said, to a meeting of the Society of Guardians of Young Working Girls without Homes and left express word that he was not to be disturbed. But Aunt Cassie heard the news when she arrived on her morning call at Pentlands. Olivia broke it to her as gently as possible, but as soon as the
