“He said that he was bored, tired, unhappy.”
After a morning spent with her! Camelia clasped her hands behind her back, and tried to still her quick breathing. She eyed Mary, but she did not think much of Mary.
“Really!” she said.
“Yes. Really.” Suddenly Mary rose from her chair; she clutched the chair-back. “Oh, you cruel creature! you bad creature!” she cried hoarsely.
Camelia stared, open-mouthed.
“Oh, you bad creature,” Mary repeated. Camelia never forgot the look of her—the ghastly white, stricken out of sharp shadows, the splash of garish color on either cheek, the pale intensity of her eyes. She noticed, too, the sharp prominence of Mary’s knuckles as she clutched the chair-back, and in her amazement stirred a certain, quite different discomfort. She could find no words, and stared speechlessly at the apparition.
“You are cruel to every one,” said Mary. “You don’t care about any one. You don’t care about your mother—or about him, though you like to have him there—loving you; you don’t care about me—you never did—nor thought of me. Well, listen, Camelia. I am dying; in a month I will be dead; and I love him. There! Now do you see what you have done?”
A fierce joy filled her as she spoke the words out. To tear the bleeding tragedy from its hiding-place, and make Camelia shudder, scream at it—it brought relief, lightness; she breathed deeply, with a sense of bodily dissolution; and Camelia’s look was better than screams or shudders. Let the truths go like knives to the heart that deserved them. As she spoke Mary felt her wrongs gather around her like an army. She had no fear. She straightened herself to send to her cousin a solemn look of power.
“You did not know I was dying; of course you would not know it—for you think of nothing but yourself. There, do you see that handkerchief? I have been coughing blood for a long time. Nothing can be done for me. You know how my father died. And when I am dead, Camelia, you may say to yourself, ‘I helped to make the last year of her life black and terrible—quite hideous and awful.’ Yes; say it. Perhaps it will make you feel a little badly.” With the words all the anguish of those baffled, suffering months came upon her. The sobs rose, panting; the tears gushed forth. Staggering, she came round the chair and dropped into it, and her sobs filled the silence.
Camelia stood rooted in terror. She expected to see the sudden horror fulfil itself, to see Mary die before her eyes, Mary’s curse upon her, and all her misdeeds one vague, menacing blackness. To clutch at any doubt was impossible. From the first moment of her uprising Mary’s body had been like a shattered casket from which streamed a relentless light. Camelia’s eyes were unsealed; she saw that the casket was shattered—the light convicted her.