I am not old, yet I feel old. I am only forty-odd years of age, and nowadays that is not age. I have no friends. I know no one. I must be lonely. I don’t know.
I think a great deal of you. I think of your wasted life. I don’t mean from the money standpoint. Which is the least thing in the world. For I experienced greater happiness living in a hovel, in dirt and in squalor, than I did with a butler and the other servants. But your life, Peter, is over. You are sixty and more. Time is ready to take you back into itself and close its account with you. Soon you will be dead. And out of it all you have got nothing. I’ve followed your career with interest and amusement. I knew its futility. I knew what in your heart you wanted. You wanted me. And your cupidity and your philosophy had lost for you the greatest thing in your life—love.
Do you know, Peter, that after all these years of separation I feel that you ought to come to me? That in all this world you have no one to take care of you. I told you in one of my letters to you that no matter what comes into a woman’s life, in her heart she lives alone with the man she gave herself to first. I am no different. I am only a woman, with all the frailties of a woman.
I don’t believe that there is any quality in a woman which is stronger than the quality of pity. I pity you. You are such a sad waste—such a pitiable thing. At times, Peter, I loved you with all the fervor of a young mind. That is something. Bill was only a sporadic incident in my life. As a fact he only seared it—burnt it with horrors that it would have been better that I should not have known. Had I not had the frailties of a woman I would not have gone with Bill; nature and its demands are too strong. Nature made me go with Bill. It was not of any volition of my own. If it had been I would not have gone.
Tizzia is with me. I’ve had her for the past few years. I hunted her up after I buried Bill. She is here beside me. She is looking over my shoulder as I write to you. She and I have become more than maid and mistress. I hold to her with eager hand. It is by her that I link myself with the past, with you and with the boy. I am weak. I wobble. I am not as I used to be. My strength is gone. The fight in me is over. I have suffered, Peter—suffered terribly.
I often wonder at the weakness of the human. We start with such assurance and we end so pitiably. I had strength. I had determination. I did the thing that now I know I should not have done and out of it I have gotten that thing revenge. It is only too true the words in the Bible—“Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.” I have lost. I wonder what the proper course in life is, for what we do is always wrong. I tried and I failed.
Tizzia and I talked over this thing this morning and I write it hastily for fear I may again change and the old feeling might arouse itself in me and I would not put down here truly what I feel. There is only one thing left in me that is like my old self and that is my absolute strength for the truth. That I think is my one saving grace.
Tizzia said slowly and with what I thought was wonderful clearness. “Now, Madame, I would write this. I would give Mr. Thorbald the chance. You would have done your duty. It is better. Why carry out a bad situation when it can be bettered?”
“But,” I answered, “he will think me foolish, and weak. After all my bragging as to what I was going to do.”
“We are all weak, Madame,” she replied. “We are only human.”