“Because,” he added, looking away from her once more, “because I owe her that ... even after I’m dead. I couldn’t rest if she were shut up somewhere ... among strangers. You see ... once ... once....” He broke off sharply, as if what he had been about to say was unbearable.
With Olivia the sense of uneasiness changed into actual terror. She wanted to cry out, “Stop!... Don’t go on!” But some instinct told her that he meant to go on and on to the very end, painfully, despite anything she could do.
“It’s odd,” he was saying quite calmly, “but there seem to be only women left ... no men ... for Anson is really an old woman.”
Quietly, firmly, with the air of a man before a confessor, speaking almost as if she were invisible, impersonal, a creature who was a kind of machine, he went on, “And of course, Horace Pentland is dead, so we needn’t think of him any longer.... But there’s Mrs. Soames....” He coughed and began again to weave the gaunt bony fingers in and out, as if what he had to say were drawn from the depth of his soul with a great agony. “There’s Mrs. Soames,” he repeated. “I know that you understand about her, Olivia ... and I’m grateful to you for having been kind and human where none of the others would have been. I fancy we’ve given Beacon Hill and Commonwealth Avenue subject for conversation for thirty years ... but I don’t care about that. They’ve watched us ... they’ve known every time I went up the steps of her brownstone house ... the very hour I arrived and the hour I left. They have eyes, in our world, Olivia, even in the backs of their heads. You must remember that, my dear. They watch you ... they see everything you do. They almost know what you think ... and when they don’t know, they make it up. That’s one of the signs of a sick, decaying world ... that they get their living vicariously ... by watching some one else live ... that they live always in the past. That’s the only reason I ever felt sorry for Horace Pentland ... the only reason that I had sympathy for him. It was cruel that he should have been born in such a place.”
The bitterness ran like acid through all the speech, through the very timbre of his voice. It burned in the fierce black eyes where the fire was not yet dead. Olivia believed that she was seeing him now for the first time, in his fulness, with nothing concealed. And as she listened, the old cloud of mystery that had always hidden him from her began to clear away like the fog lifting from the marshes in the early morning. She saw him now as he really was ... a man fiercely masculine, bitter, clear-headed, and more human than the rest of them, who had never before betrayed himself even for an instant.
“But about Mrs. Soames.... If anything should happen to me, Olivia ... if I should die first, I want you to be kind to her ... for my sake and for hers. She’s been patient and good to me for so long.” The bitterness seemed to flow away a little now, leaving only a kindling warmth in its place. “She’s been good to me.... She’s always understood, Olivia, even before you came here to help me. You and she, Olivia, have made life worth living for me. She’s been patient ... more patient than you know. Sometimes I must have made life for her a hell on earth ... but she’s always been there, waiting, full of gentleness and sympathy. She’s been ill most of the time you’ve known her ... old and ill. You can’t imagine how beautiful she once was.”
“I know,” said Olivia softly. “I remember seeing her when I first came to Pentlands ... and Sabine has told me.”
The name of Sabine appeared to rouse him suddenly. He sat up very straight and said, “Don’t trust Sabine too far, Olivia. She belongs to us, after all. She’s very like my sister Cassie ... more like her than you can imagine. It’s why they hate each other so. She’s Cassie turned inside out, as you might say. They’d both sacrifice everything for the sake of stirring up some trouble or calamity that would interest them. They live ... vicariously.”
Olivia would have interrupted him, defending Sabine and telling of the one real thing that had happened to her ... the tragic love for her husband; she would have told him of all the abrupt, incoherent confidences Sabine had made her; but the old man gave her no chance. It seemed suddenly that he had become possessed, fiercely intent upon pouring out to her all the dark things he had kept hidden for so long.
(She kept thinking, “Why must I know all these things? Why must I take up the burden? Why was it that I should find those letters which had lain safe and hidden for so long?”)