Pentland

“ The warm, rich odor of cattle filled the air, touched by the faint, ghostly perfume of the last white nympheas that bordered the pool.
And while she stood there, bathed in the stillness of the dark solitude, she began to understand a little what had really passed between them in the room smelling of whisky and saddle-soap. She saw how the whole tragedy of John Pentland and his life had been born of the stupidity, the ignorance, the hypocrisy of others, and she saw, too, that he was beyond all doubt the grandson of the Toby Cane who had written those wild passionate letters glorifying the flesh ”

“ For some reason, perhaps vaguely because she thought he might use the knowledge as a weapon to break down her will, she said nothing of the elopement. For in the confusion of the day, beneath all the uproar of scenes, emotions and telephone-calls, she had been thinking, thinking, thinking, so that in the end the uproar had made little impression upon her. She had come to understand that John Pentland must have lived thus, year after year, moving always in a secret life of his own, and presently she had come to the conclusion that she must send Michael away once and for all. ”

“ She saw, of course, that a love affair between so radiant a creature as Savina Pentland and a scamp like Toby Cane would seem rather odd in a book called “The Pentland Family and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.” Perhaps it was better not to speak of the letters at all. Anson would manage somehow to destroy all the value there was in them; he would sacrifice truth to the gods of Respectability and Pretense. ”

“ Soames had known these same thoughts again and again during her long devotion to John Pentland. “No,” she told herself, “whatever happens I shall never lead the life she has led. Anything is better than that ... anything.”
It seemed strange to her to awaken and find that nothing was changed in all the world about her. After what had happened the night before in the library and on the dark meadows, there should have been some mark left upon the life at Pentlands. The very house, the very landscape, should have kept some record of what had happened ”

“ Plenty of people will buy the early American things. The best of them are only bad imitations of the real things Horace Pentland collected, and you might as well have the real ones.”
Olivia protested, but Sabine pushed the point, scarcely giving her time to speak. “I want you to do it. It will be a kindness to me ... and after all, Horace Pentland’s furniture ought to be here ... in Pentlands. I’ll take one or two things for Thérèse, and the rest you must keep, only nothing ... not so much as a medallion or a snuff-box ... is to go to Aunt Cassie. She hated him while he was alive. ”

“ In the course of a short time, reprisals, law-suits, battles, murders, and massacres, multiplied to such an extent throughout the whole country, that the sapient senators who occasioned such commotion were compelled to repeal their own act as soon as they found how it worked. Necessity, together with being the mother of invention, is also the cause of many an accidental discovery. Pentland had been so frequently defeated by little George, that he vowed never to rest until he had secured him ”

“ Higgins came, as he had done so many times before, to lock the door and sit there in the room, even sleeping on the worn leather divan, until John Pentland, wakening slowly and looking about in a dazed way, discovered his groom sitting in the same room, polishing a bridle or a pair of riding-boots. The little man was never idle. Something deep inside him demanded action: he must always be doing something. And so, after these melancholy occasions, a new odor clung to the library for days ... the fresh, clean, healthy odor of leather and harness-soap. ”

“ Happily for a respectable family, crowned heads have no great business in the Pentland Hills. But the story lends a character of comicality to the stone; and the passer-by will sometimes chuckle to himself. ”

“ Leaving out those in Dumfriesshire, Ayrshire, and Haddington, where there was originally a Welsh-speaking people, ‘we find,’ he says, ‘the Cymric form of the word in the Grampians,’ which is utter nonsense, ‘the Pentland Hills,’ which is a corruption of Petland Hills, as the Pentland Firth is of the Petland Firth, ‘the Pennguaul Hills,’ which have no existence, and ‘Pendrich in Perth,’ which is a corruption of Pittindriech. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the north-western part of this region they appear to have remained till a comparatively late period, extending from the Carron to the Pentland hills, and known by the name of the plain of Manau, or Manann, while the name of Pentland, corrupted from Petland, or Pictland, has preserved a record of their occupation. ”

“ IN the year 1666 when the Lord's persecuted and oppresed people were gathered together for their own defence who were broken at Pentland-bills, he with Mr Welch and the laird of Glorover, in the parish of Balentrea, wire riding together in the same parish, and met upon the way a small party of the enemy's horse, and no eviting of them; the Laird fainted, fearing they would all be taken. Mr Peden seeing this, said, "Keep up your courage and confidence for God hath laid an arrest upon these men, that they shall not harm us." ”

“ There was naebody lived here wi' him but an auld maiden sister, his man Ramsay, and twa servant lasses. His sister's dead; and it's thocht it was partly her death that sent him awa frae Dryfield; for they war just extraordinar attached to ane anither. Just to show you, sir, how worthy a man he is," continued Mr Pentland, "the rent o' this property is, by his orders, to be handed owre to the minister, for the use o' the poor o' the parish." ”

“ I know what you’ll do with it, because I know you, Olivia, my dear.... You’ll keep it safe and intact.... You’re the Pentland of the family. You weren’t when you came here, but you are now. I mean that you belong to the grand tradition of Pentlands ... the old ones who hang out there in the hall. You’re the only one left ... for Sybil is too young. She’s only a child ... ”

“ There was at least O’Hara, who came more and more frequently to Pentlands, now that the first visit had been made and the ice was broken. Anson encountered him once in the hallway, coldly; and he had become very friendly with old John Pentland. The two had a common interest in horses and dogs and cattle, and O’Hara, born in the Boston slums and knowing very little on any of these subjects, perhaps found the old gentleman a valuable source of information. He told Olivia, “I wouldn’t come to the house except for you. I can’t bear to think of you there ... always alone ... always troubled.” ”

“ She said, “If no one knows this, there is no reason to tell it here. It would only make unhappiness for all concerned. It is your business alone {266}... and Sybil’s. The others have no right to interfere, even to know; but they will try, Jean ... unless ... unless you both do what you want ... quickly. Sometimes I think they might do anything.”
“You mean ...” he began impatiently.
Olivia fell back upon that vague hint which John Pentland had dropped to her the night before. She said, “There was once an elopement in the Pentland family.” ”

“ Sabine, remarking that she had always known that New England was the hottest place this side of Sheol, settled into a state of complete inertia, not stirring from the house until after the sun had disappeared. Even then her only action was to come to Pentlands to sit in the writing-room playing bridge languidly with Olivia and John Pentland and old Mrs. Soames.
The old lady grew daily more dazed and forgetful and irritating as a fourth at bridge. John Pentland always insisted upon playing with her, saying that they understood each other’s game; but he deceived no one, save Mrs. ”

“ Now it so happened that about the period we write of, there lived in our parish two individuals so antithetical to each other in their pursuits of life, that we question whether throughout all the instinctive antipathies of nature we could find any two animals more destructive of each other than the two we mean—to wit, Bob Pentland the gauger, and little George Steen the illicit distiller. ”

“ Are we not descended, father and son, from Robert Bruce and Sir William Wallace, having the bright blood of freemen in our veins, and the Pentland Hills, as well as our own dear homes and firesides, to fight for? The rascal that would not give cut-and-thrust for his country as long as he had a breath to draw, or a leg to stand on, should be tied neck and heels, without benefit of clergy, and thrown over Leith pier, to swim for his life like a mangy dog! ”

“ It would be wrong for her to possess anything belonging to him after he is dead. Besides,” she added, “a little new furniture would do a great deal toward cheering up the house. It’s always been rather spare and cold. It needs a little elegance and sense of luxury. There has never been any splendor in the Pentland family—or in all New England, for that matter.”
2
At almost the same moment that Olivia and Sabine entered the old house to lunch, the figures of Sybil and Jean{206} appeared against the horizon on the rim of the great, bald hill crowned by the town burial-ground. ”

“ Quickly, with a youthful agility, John Pentland swung himself to her back ... quickly enough to keep her from sidling away from him. There was a short, fierce struggle{67} between the rider and the horse, and in a shower of stones they sped away down the lane that led across the meadows, past the thicket of black pines and the abandoned gravel-pit, toward the house of Mrs. ”

“ He was{52} rather like his sister Cassie in appearance—one of the black Pentlands who had appeared mysteriously in the line nearly a hundred years earlier, and he had burning black eyes that looked out from shaggy brows ... a man as different in appearance and vigor from his son as it was possible to imagine. (For Anson was a typical Pentland—blond, with round blue eyes and an inclination when in health toward ruddiness.) ”

“ These are mainly composed of those common and well-known species which annually make these islands their winter resort, and take the place of our summer birds: they come in one broad stream, cutting the line of ordinary migration at nearly right angles; one flank brushes the Orkneys and Shetlands, pouring through the Pentland Firth, even touching the distant Faroes; the southern wing crosses the Channel Islands, shaping its course in a north-westerly direction to the English coast. ”

“ After him, gentility had conquered completely, and the Sargent portrait of old John Pentland at middle-age showed a man who was master of hounds and led the life of a country gentleman, a man clearly of power and character, whose strength of feature had turned slowly into the bitter hardness of the old man who sat now in the light of Mr. ”

“ James Batter mostly blinded both his eyes, looking all last winter for one of our name in the Book of Martyrs, to make us proud of; but his search, I am free to confess, worse than failed—as the only man of the name he could find out was a Sergeant Jacob Wauch, that lost his lug and his left arm, fighting like a Russian Turk against the godly, at the bloody battle of the Pentland Hills.
Auld granfaither died when I was a growing callant, some seven or eight years old; yet I mind him full well; it being a curious thing how early such matters take hold of one’s memory. ”

“ Its eastern and southern shores are indented by numerous bays, one of which, Long Hope, forms a natural harbour 4 m. long, with a breadth varying from 1/4 m. to more than 1 m., affording to any number of vessels a haven of refuge from the roughest weather of the Pentland Firth. Off the eastern coast lie the islands of Graemsay, Cava, Risa, Fara, Flotta and Switha, while the peninsula of South Walls, forming the southern side of the harbour of Long Hope, is an island in all but name. Red and yellow sandstone cliffs, sometimes over 1000 ft. in height, stretch for 10 to 12 m. ”

“ We now come to the autumn movement, if we take the same dates as for many land birds; but this is apt to be mixed up with the later summer movements of old and young birds, and therefore we will keep July by itself. All the records here relate, as before, to Pentland Skerries. An equally exact record from each salient or conspicuous station round our coasts could not fail to give us exact knowledge as regards the movements of sea-fowl, or rather of rock birds. ”

“ The reverberation of the snow increases the pale daylight, and brings all objects nearer the eye. The Pentlands are smooth and glittering, with here and there the black ribbon of a dry-stone dyke, and here and there, if there be wind, a cloud of blowing snow upon a shoulder. ”

“ There are the hills of Fife, the hills of Peebles, the Lammermoors and the Ochils, more or less mountainous in outline, more or less blue with distance. Of the Pentlands themselves, you see a field of wild heathery peaks with a pond gleaming in the midst; and to that side the view is as desolate as if you were looking into Galloway or Applecross. To turn to the other is like a piece of travel. Far out in the Lowlands Edinburgh shows herself, making a
The Castle from the Vennel. ”

“ Then the kings and royal princes that were with him, finding him bent on battle, and knowing well that the Northumbrians would not begin the attack, came to Penda saying—
“We would counsel thee, O king, to wait still until Feargus and Osbert shall reach us, for of a certainty they will come: here are we face to face with a host mightier than ours.”
Then the king answered: “And hath not the host of Penda oft-times conquered hosts twice as mighty as itself, led by greatest warriors of the world? Strength lieth not in numbers, nor in big warriors or little, but in the hearts and minds of men. ”