Olivia touched her gently and said, “What have you lost, Mrs. Pentland? Can I help you?”
The old woman turned and, throwing the light of the torch full into Olivia’s face, stared at her with the round blue eyes, murmuring, “Oh, it’s you, Olivia. Then it’s all right. Perhaps you can help me.”
“What was it you lost? We might look for it in the morning.”
“I’ve forgotten what it was now. You startled me, and you know my poor brain isn’t very good, at best. It never has been since I married.” Sharply she looked at Olivia. “It didn’t affect you that way, did it? You don’t ever drift away and feel yourself growing dimmer and dimmer, do you? It’s odd. Perhaps it’s different with your husband.”
Olivia saw that the old woman was having one of those isolated moments of clarity and reason which were more horrible than her insanity because for a time she made you see that, after all, she was like yourself, human and capable of thought. To Olivia these moments were almost as if she witnessed the rising of the dead.
“No,” said Olivia. “Perhaps if we went to bed now, you’d remember in the morning.”
Old Mrs. Pentland shook her head violently. “No, no, I must find them now. It may be all different in the morning and I won’t know anything and that Irish woman won’t let me out. Say over the names of a few things like prunes, prisms, persimmons. That’s what Mr. Dickens used to have his children do when he couldn’t think of a word.”
“Let me have the light,” said Olivia; “perhaps I can find what it is you want.”
With the meekness of a child, the old woman gave her the electric torch and Olivia, turning it this way and that, among the trunks and old rubbish, made a mock search among the dollhouses and the toy dishes left scattered in the corner of the attic where the children had played house for the last time.
While she searched, the old woman kept up a running comment, half to herself: “It’s something I wanted to find very much. It’ll make a great difference here in the lives of all of us. I thought I might find Sabine here to help me. She was here yesterday morning, playing with Anson. It rained all day and they couldn’t go out. I hid it here yesterday when I came up to see them.”
Olivia again attempted wheedling.
“It’s late now, Mrs. Pentland. We ought both to be in bed. You try to remember what it is you want, and in the morning I’ll come up and find it for you.”
For a moment the old woman considered this, and at last she said, “You wouldn’t give it to me if you found it. I’m sure you wouldn’t. You’re too afraid of them all.”
“I promise you I will. You can trust me, can’t you?”
“Yes, yes, you’re the only one who doesn’t treat me as if I wasn’t quite bright. Yes, I think I can trust you.” Another thought occurred to her abruptly. “But I wouldn’t remember again. I might forget. Besides, I don’t think Miss Egan would let me.”
Olivia took one of the thin old hands in hers and said, as if she were talking to a little child, “I know what we’ll do. Tomorrow you write it out on a bit of paper and then I’ll find it and bring it to you.”
“I’m sure little Sabine could find it,” said the old woman. “She’s very good at such things. She’s such a clever child.”
“I’ll go over and fetch Sabine to have her help me.”
The old woman looked at her sharply. “You’ll promise that?” she asked. “You’ll promise?”
“Of course, surely.”
“Because all the others are always deceiving me.”
And then quite gently she allowed herself to be led across the moonlit patches of the dusty floor, down the stairs and back to her room. In the hall of the north wing they came suddenly upon the starched Miss Egan, all her starch rather melted and subdued now, her red face purple with alarm.
“I’ve been looking for her everywhere, Mrs. Pentland,” she told Olivia. “I don’t know how she escaped. She was asleep when I left. I went down to the kitchen for her orange-juice, and while I was gone she disappeared.”
It was the old woman who answered. Looking gravely at Olivia, she said, with an air of confidence, “You know I never speak to her at all. She’s common. She’s a common Irish servant. They can shut me up with her, but they can’t make me speak to her.” And then she began to drift back again into the hopeless state that was so much more familiar. She began to mumble over and over again a chain of words and names which had no coherence.
Olivia and Miss Egan ignored her, as if part of her—the vaguely rational old woman—had disappeared, leaving in her place this pitiful chattering creature who was a stranger.
Olivia explained where it was she found the old woman and why she had gone there.
“She’s been talking on the subject for days,” said Miss Egan. “I think it’s letters that she’s looking for, but it may be nothing at all. She mixes everything terribly.”
Olivia was shivering now in her nightdress, more from weariness and nerves than from the chill of the night.
“I wouldn’t speak of it to any of the others, Miss Egan,” she said. “It will only trouble them. And we must be more careful about her in the future.”
The old woman had gone past them now, back into the dark room where she spent her whole life, and the nurse had begun to recover a little of her defiant confidence. She even smiled, the hard, glittering smile which always said, “You cannot do without me, whatever happens.”
Aloud she said, “I can’t imagine what happened, Mrs. Pentland.”
“It was an accident, never mind,” said Olivia. “Good night. Only
