As early summer turned into July, old Mrs. Soames came less and less frequently to play bridge and there were times when Sabine, dining out or retiring early, left them without any game at all and the old familiar stillness came to settle over the drawing-room at Pentlands ... evenings when Olivia and Sybil played double patience and Anson worked at Mr. Lowell’s desk over the mazes of the Pentland Family history.
On one of these evenings, when Olivia’s eyes had grown weary of reading, she closed her book and, turning toward her husband, called his name. When he did not answer her at once she spoke to him again, and waited until he looked up. Then she said, “Anson, I have taken up riding again. I think it is doing me good.”
But Anson, lost somewhere in the chapter about Savina Pentland and her friendship with Ingres, was not interested and made no answer.
“I go in the mornings,” she repeated, “before breakfast, with Sybil.”
Anson said, “Yes,” again, and then, “I think it an excellent idea—your color is better,” and went back to his work.
So she succeeded in telling him that it was all right about Sybil and O’Hara. She managed to tell him without actually saying it that she would go with them and prevent any entanglement. She had told him, too, without once alluding to the scene of which he was ashamed. And she knew, of course, now, that there was no danger of any entanglement, at least not one which involved Sybil.
Sitting with the book closed in her lap, she remained for a time watching the back of her husband’s head—the thin gray hair, the cords that stood out weakly under the desiccated skin, the too small ears set too close against the skull; and in reality, all the while she was seeing another head set upon a full muscular neck, the skin tanned and glowing with the flush of health, the thick hair short and vigorous; and she felt an odd, inexplicable desire to weep, thinking at the same time, “I am a wicked woman. I must be really bad.” For she had never known before what it was to be in love and she had lived for nearly twenty years in a family where love had occupied a poor forgotten niche.
She was sitting thus when John Pentland came in at last, looking more yellow and haggard than he had been in days. She asked him quietly, so as not to disturb Anson, whether Mrs. Soames was really ill. “No,” said the old man, “I don’t think so; she seems all right, a little tired, that’s all. We’re all growing old.”
He seated himself and began to read like the others, pretending clearly an interest which he did not feel, for Olivia caught him suddenly staring before him in a line beyond the printed page. She saw that he was not reading at all, and in the back of her mind a little cluster of words kept repeating themselves—“a little tired, that’s all, we’re all growing old; a little tired, that’s all, we’re all growing old”—over and over again monotonously, as if she were hypnotizing herself. She found herself, too, staring into space in the same enchanted fashion as the old man. And then, all at once, she became aware of a figure standing in the doorway beckoning to her, and, focusing her gaze, she saw that it was Nannie, clad in a dressing-gown, her old face screwed up in an expression of anxiety. She had some reason for not disturbing the others, for she did not speak. Standing in the shadow, she beckoned; and Olivia, rising quietly, went out into the hall, closing the door behind her.
There, in the dim light, she saw that the old woman had been crying and was shaking in fright. She said, “Something had happened to Jack, something dreadful.”