Slowly, while she was speaking, her husband’s face had grown more and more sour. The very color of the skin seemed to have changed so that it appeared faintly green in the light from the Victorian luster just above his narrow head.
“Olivia, you have no right to speak of my aunt in that way.”
“We needn’t go into that. I think you know that what I said was the truth.” And a slow warmth began to steal over her. She was getting beneath his skin. After all those long years, he was finding that she was not entirely gentle.
He was exasperated now and astonished. In a more gentle voice he said, “Olivia, I don’t understand what has come over you lately.”
She found herself thinking, wildly, “Perhaps he is going to soften. Perhaps there is still a chance of warmth in him. Perhaps even now, after so long, he is going to be pleasant and kind and perhaps … perhaps … more.”
“You’re very queer,” he was saying. “I’m not the only one who finds you so.”
“No,” said Olivia, a little sadly. “Aunt Cassie does, too. She’s been telling all the neighborhood that I seem to be unhappy. Perhaps it’s because I’m a little tired. I’ve not had much rest for a long time now … from Jack, from Aunt Cassie, from your father … and … from her.” At the last word she made a curious little half-gesture in the direction of the dark north wing of the big house.
She watched him, conscious that he was shocked and startled by her mentioning in a single breath so many things which they never discussed at Pentlands, things which they buried in silence and tried to destroy by pretending that they did not exist.
“We ought to speak of those things, sometimes,” she continued sadly. “Sometimes when we are entirely alone with no one about to hear, when it doesn’t make any difference. We can’t pretend forever that they don’t exist.”
For a time he was silent, groping obviously, in a kind of desperation for something to answer. At last he said feebly, “And yet you sit up all night playing bridge with Sabine and old Mrs. Soames and Father.”
“That does me good. You must admit that it is a change at least.”
But he only answered, “I don’t understand you,” and began to pace up and down in agitation while she sat there waiting, actually waiting, for the thing to work itself up to a climax. She had a sudden feeling of victory, of intoxication such as she had not known in years, not since she was a young girl; and at the same time she wanted to laugh, wildly, hysterically, at the sight of Anson, so tall and thin, prancing up and down.
Opposite her he halted abruptly and said, “And I can see no good in inviting Mrs. Soames here so often.”
She saw now that the tension, the excitement between them, was greater even than she had imagined, for Anson had spoken of Mrs. Soames and his father, a thing which in the family no one ever mentioned. He had done it quite openly, of his own free will.
“What harm can it do now? What difference can it make?” she asked. “It is the only pleasure left to the poor battered old thing, and one of the few left to your father.”
Anson began to mutter in disgust. “It is a silly affair … two old … old. …” He did not finish the sentence, for there was only one word that could have finished it and that was a word which no gentleman and certainly no Pentland ever used in referring to his own father.
“Perhaps,” said Olivia, “it is a silly affair now. … I’m not so sure that it always was.”
“What do you mean by that? Do you mean. …” Again he fumbled for words, groping to avoid using the words that clearly came into his mind. It was strange to see him brought face to face with realities, to see him grow so helpless and muddled. “Do you mean,” he stammered, “that my father has ever behaved …” he choked and then added, “dishonorably.”
“Anson … I feel strangely like being honest tonight … just for once … just for once.”
“You are succeeding only in being perverse.”
“No …” and she found herself smiling sadly, “unless you mean that in this house … in this room …” She made a gesture which swept within the circle of her white arm all that collection of Victorian souvenirs, all the mementoes of a once sturdy and powerful Puritan family, “… in this room to be truthful and honest is to be perverse.”
He would have interrupted her here, angrily, but she raised her hand and continued, “No, Anson; I shall tell you honestly what I think … whether you want to hear it or not. I don’t hope that it will do any good. … I do not know whether, as you put it, your father has behaved dishonorably or not. I hope he has. … I hope he was Mrs. Soames’ lover in the days when love could have meant something to them. … Yes … something fleshly is exactly what I mean. … I think it would have been better. I think they might have been happy … really happy for a little time … not just living in a state of enchantment when one day is exactly like the next. … I think your father, of all men, has deserved that happiness. …” She sighed and added in a
