She knew what he meant to ask. She thought, “What does it matter? Why should I not, when I love him so? I should be harming no one … no one but myself.”
And then, abruptly, through the mist of tears she saw through an opening in the thicket a little procession crossing the meadows toward the big house at Pentlands. She saw it with a terrible, intense clarity … a little procession of the gardener and his helper carrying between them on a shutter a figure that lay limp and still, and following them came Higgins on foot, leading his horse and moving with the awkward rolling gait which afflicted him when his feet were on the ground. She knew who the still figure was. It was John Pentland. The red mare had killed him at last. And she heard him saying, “There are some things which people like us, Olivia, can’t do.”
What happened immediately afterward she was never able to remember very clearly. She found herself joining the little procession; she knew that Michael was with her, and that there could be no doubt of the tragedy. … John Pentland was dead, with his neck broken. He lay on the shutter, still and peaceful, the bitter lines all melted from the grim, stern face, as he had been when she came upon him in the library smelling of dogs and woodsmoke and whisky. Only this time he had escaped for good. …
And afterward she remembered telling Michael, as they stood alone in the big white hall, that Sybil and Jean were married, and dismissing him by saying, “Now, Michael, it is impossible. While he was living I might have done it. … I might have gone away. But now it’s impossible. Don’t ask me. Please leave me in peace.”
Standing there under the wanton gaze of Savina Pentland, she watched him go away, quietly, perhaps because he understood that all she had said was true.
III
In the tragedy the elopement became lost and forgotten. Doctors came and went; even reporters put in an awkward appearance, eager for details of the death and the marriage in the Pentland family, and somehow the confusion brought peace to Olivia. They forgot her, save as one who managed everything quietly; for they had need just then of someone who did not break into wild spasms of grief or wander about helplessly. In the presence of death, Anson forgot even his anger over the elopement, and late in the afternoon Olivia saw him for the first time when he came to her helplessly to ask, “The men have come to photograph the portraits. What shall we do?”
And she answered, “Send them away. We can photograph ancestors any time. They’ll always be with us.”
Sabine volunteered to send word to Sybil and Jean. At such times all her cold-blooded detachment made of her a person of great value, and Olivia knew that she could be trusted to find them because she wanted her motor again desperately. Remembering her promise to the old man, she went across to see Mrs. Soames, but nothing came of it, for the old lady had fallen into a state of complete unconsciousness. She would, they told Olivia, probably die without ever knowing that John Pentland had gone before her.
Aunt Cassie took up her throne in the darkened drawing-room and there, amid the acrid smell of the first chrysanthemums of the autumn, she held a red-eyed, snuffling court to receive the calls of all the countryside. Again she seemed to rise for a time triumphant and strong, even overcoming her weakness enough to go and come from the gazeboed house on foot, arriving early and returning late. She insisted upon summoning Bishop Smallwood to conduct the services, and discovered after much trouble that he was attending a church conference in the West. In reply to her telegram she received only an answer that it was impossible for him to return, even if they delayed the funeral … that in the role of prominent defender of the Virgin Birth he could not leave the field at a moment when the power of his party was threatened.
It seemed for a time that, as Sabine had hoped, the whole structure of the family was falling about them in ruins.
As for Olivia, she would have been at peace save that three times within two days notes came to her from Michael—notes which she sent back unopened because she was afraid to read them; until at last she wrote on the back of one, “There is nothing more to say. Leave me in peace.” And after that there was only silence, which in a strange way seemed to her more unbearable than the sight of his writing. She discovered that two persons had witnessed the tragedy—Higgins, who had been riding with the old man, and Sabine, who had been walking the river path—walking only because Jean and Sybil had her motor. Higgins knew only that the mare had run off and killed his master; but Sabine had a strangely different version, which she recounted to Olivia as they sat in her room, the day after.
“I saw them,” she said, “coming across the meadow. … Cousin John, with Higgins following. And then, all at once, the mare seemed to be frightened by something and began to run … straight in a line for the gravel-pit. It was a fascinating sight … a horrible sight … because I knew—I was certain—what was going to happen. For a moment Cousin John seemed to fight with her, and then all at once he leaned forward on her neck and let her go. Higgins went after him; but it was no use trying to catch her. … One might as well have tried to overtake a whirlwind. They seemed to fly across the fields straight for the line of elders that hid the pit, and I knew all the while that there was no saving them unless the mare turned. At the bushes the mare jumped … the prettiest jump I’ve
