But she did not know what Olivia and John Pentland knew—that Sabine had written a short, abrupt, almost incoherent note, with all the worn, tattered, pious old phrases missing, which had meant more to them than any of the cries and whispering and confusion that went on belowstairs, where the whole countryside passed in and out in an endless procession.
When Miss Peavey was not at hand to run errands for her, she made Anson her messenger.... Anson, who wandered about helpless and lost and troubled because death had interrupted the easy, eventless flow of a life in which usually all moved according to a set plan. Death had upset the whole household. It was impossible to know how Anson Pentland felt over the death of his son. He did not speak at all, and now that “The Pentland Family and the Massachusetts Bay Colony” had been laid aside in the midst of the confusion and Mr. Lowell’s desk stood buried beneath floral offerings, there was nothing to do but wander about getting in the way of every one and drawing upon his head the sharp reproofs of Aunt Cassie.
It was Aunt Cassie and Anson who opened the great box of roses that came from O’Hara. It was Aunt Cassie’s thin, blue-veined hand that tore open the envelope addressed plainly to “Mrs. Anson Pentland.” It was Aunt Cassie who forced Anson to read what was written inside:
“Dear Mrs. Pentland,
You know what I feel. There is no need to say anything more.
Michael O’Hara.”
And it was Aunt Cassie who said, “Impertinent! Why should he send flowers at all?” And Aunt Cassie who read the note again and again, as if she might find in some way a veiled meaning behind the two cryptic sentences. It was Aunt Cassie who carried the note to Olivia and watched her while she read it and laid it quietly aside on her dressing-table. And when she had discovered nothing she said to Olivia, “It seems to me impertinent of him to send flowers and write such a note. What is he to us here at Pentlands?”
Olivia looked at her a little wearily and said, “What does it matter whether he is impertinent or not? Besides, he was a great friend of Jack’s.” And then, straightening her tired body, she looked at Aunt Cassie and said slowly, “He is also a friend of mine.”
It was the first time that the division of forces had stood revealed, even for a second, the first time that Olivia had shown any feeling for O’Hara, and there was something ominous in the quietness of a speech made so casually. She ended any possible discussion by leaving the room in search of Anson, leaving Aunt Cassie disturbed by the sensation of alarm which attacked her when she found herself suddenly face to face with the mysterious and perilous calm that sometimes took possession of Olivia. Left alone in the room, she took up the note again from the dressing-table and read it through for the twentieth time. There was nothing in it ... nothing on which one could properly even pin a suspicion.
So, in the midst of death, enveloped by the odor of tuberoses, the old lady rose triumphant, a phoenix from ashes. In some way she found in tragedy her proper rôle and she managed to draw most of the light from the other actors to herself. She must have known that people went away from the house saying, “Cassie rises to such occasions beautifully. She has taken everything on her own shoulders.” She succeeded in conveying the double impression that she suffered far more than any of the others and that none of the others could possibly have done without her.