Roger Brevard winced. He tried to say something about hope and the future, but it was so weak, a palpable retreat, leaving Sidsall alone and unsupported, that the words perished unfinished. The girl studied him, suddenly startled, and her confidence ebbed. He turned away, crushed by convention, filled with shame and a sense of self-betrayal.
A stillness followed of unendurable length, in which he found his attention resting on the diversified shapes of the East India money in a corner cabinet. It was Sidsall who finally spoke, slowly and clearly:
"Forgive me."
He recognized that she was addressing her mother and father. From a whisper of skirts he realized that she was leaving the room. Without the will necessary for a last glimpse he stood with his head bowed by an appalling sensation of weariness and years.
In a flash of self-comprehension, Roger Brevard knew that he would never, as he had hoped, leave Salem. He was an abstemious man, one of a family of long lives, and he would linger here, increasingly unimportant, for a great while, an old man in new epochs, isolated among strange people and prejudices. Whatever the cause—the small safety or an inward flaw—he had never been part of the corporate sweating humanity where, in the war of spirit and flesh, the vital rewards and accomplishments were found.
Soon after he passed Gerrit and Nettie Vollar driving in the direction of the harbor; she was lying back wanly in the Ammidon barouche, but her companion's face was set directly ahead, his expression of general disdain strongly marked. A vigorous hand, Roger noted, was clasped about Nettie's supine palm. She saw him standing on the sidewalk and bowed slightly, but the shipmaster plainly overlooked him together with the rest of Salem.
The end of summer was imminent in a whirl of yellow leaves and chill gray wind. There was a ringing of bugles through the morning, the strains of military quicksteps, rhythmic tramping feet and the irregular fulmination of salutes. That it was already the day of the annual Fall Review seemed incredible to Roger Brevard. He was indifferent to the activities of the Common; but when he heard that the Nautilus was sailing in the middle of the afternoon he left his inconsequential affairs for Phillips' Wharf.
A small number were waiting on the solid rock-filled reach, the wharfinger's office at its head and a stone warehouse blocking the end, where the Nautilus lay with her high-steeved bowsprit pointing outward. The harbor was slaty, cold, and there was a continuous slapping of small waves on the shore. Darkening clouds hung low in the west, out of which the wind cut in flaws across the open. The town, so lately folded in lush greenery, showed a dun lift of roofs and stripping branches tossing against an ashy sky.
Close beside Roger stood Barzil Dunsack, his beard blowing, with Kate Vollar in a bright red shawl, her skirts whipping uneasily against her father's legs. Beyond were the Ammidons—William, and Rhoda in a deep furred wrap, and their daughters. Rhoda waved for him to join them, but he declined with a gesture of acknowledgment.
The deck of the Nautilus was above his vision but he could see most of the stir of departure. The peremptory voice of the mate rose from the bow, minor directions were issued by the second mate aft, a seaman was aloft on the main-royal yard and another stood at the stage rising sharply from the wharf. Gerrit and his wife had not yet arrived, and the pilot, making a leisurely appearance, stopped to exchange remarks with the Ammidons. He climbed on board the ship and Roger could see his head and shoulders moving toward the poop and mounting the ladder.