“How unhappy those months were! We took a villa in Florence for a while-Florence with its Medici Palace and its golden light! How I should have loved it in other circumstances. I used to escape from my misery by imagining myself strolling along the Arno with Desmond. When I saw opals in a shop window on the famous bridge I turned shuddering away and could not bear to look at them.
“A few weeks before my confinement we went to Rome and there my baby was born. That was June 1880 and I called her Opal. Mama said it was a foolish name and that she should be given another. So the baby had my name too; she was Opal Jessica.
“We came home, and such was my mother’s indefatigable energy that although there might have been those who put a certain construction on our departure and return with a newly born baby, no one dared mention it. You, my dear Opal, as you have guessed, were that child. Never be ashamed of your birth. You were conceived in love. Always remember that, and no matter what people may tell you of your father do not believe them. I knew him well, and it could not be so. He was not capable of stealing that miserable opal. How I wish it had never been found. But he knew nothing of it. Someone else stole the Green Flash at Sunset. It was not your father. One day the truth will be known.
I’m sure of it.
‘now, my dearest child, I come to the end of my story. After you were born I was beset by such despair that I did not know where to turn for comfort. We had never been happy in the Dower House; now Mama made our lives a misery-not only mine, but Papa’s as well. I watched him as he grew more and more miserable every day. I would look up suddenly and see her eyes fixed on me with utter distaste. Constantly she blamed him. It was his weakness which had come out in me, she said. He was to blame for everything. Miriam took an interest in you, and I think she loved you in her way, though she was afraid to show it too much when Mama was around. You liked her too. You would always go to Miriam; and Xavier was fond of you, so was Papa.
“I was so unhappy. I used to go down to the stream which divides the Dower House from Oakland and I’d stare at the cool shallow water. I thought a lot about my life then, and the belief came to me that I should never see Desmond again, for since he would never have deserted me, he must be dead. The conviction was so strong that as I sat there by the stream it was as though the waters beckoned to me. It was as though Desmond himself was asking me to come and join him. The only solution could be that he was dead, for if he was not, why had he disappeared? Of one thing I was , certain: he would never have gone away and left me. There was one answer only, someone had stolen the opal and laid the blame on him. They had killed him perhaps that he might appear to be the thief. I knew no one else would believe this, I but my conviction was strong. He would never come back. That was why he called me to the stream because he wanted me to be with him.
“My presence in the Dower House was bringing more and more unhappiness there. My mother was blaming my father more than she ever had before.
I tried to think of what my life would be like because I was never going to see Desmond again on this Earth. The servants all loved the baby . everybody loved her . except Mama, and I don’t think she ever loved anybody. So I used to sit by the stream and think of all the trouble I had brought the family and how much better they would be without me. Even the baby would be better off, because as she grew up the reproaches would go on. It would be better for her not to know that her mother had brought disgrace on the family, and while I was there Mama would always continue to regard me with contempt “I dreamed then of lying face downwards in that cool water, and when I did I experienced a perfect peace. I couldn’t talk about it to anyone but Hannah. She knew the whole story, but she was very discreet. She told me that they talked about it in the servants’ hall at Oakland and although they had considered the possibility of the baby’s being mine and not my mother’s, they weren’t sure about it. Even Mrs. Bucket was of the opinion that Mama would never have lent herself to such a thing and that it was a well-known fact that women getting on in years often ” got caught” when they least expected it, and her Aunt Polly had been just like that … feeling not up to the mark and the doctors not being sure what was wrong … and then all of a sudden she’s pregnant and the baby almost ready to be born.
“I didn’t tell them different,” said good, kind Hannah, “A few weeks passed and I was still going to sit by the stream. When I talked to Hannah about what I felt she cried out: ” It’s wrong. You mustn’t think like that. ” I said: ” It might be for the best. The baby would be all right. They’ll care for her. It’s better for me not to be there. “
“Perhaps you could go away for a while,” suggested Hannah.
“Time’s not important,” I said.
“It’s now that counts. Perhaps in twenty years I could look back at all this and find it tolerable, but it’s not twenty years from now. It’s now, and I’ve got to live through a lot before twenty years passes.” Hannah said: “If you were to do away with yourself they couldn’t bury you in consecrated ground.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I tell you they won’t if you were to … do that. It’s a law, I think, a law of the Church. They bury people at the cross-roads or some other place … never in consecrated ground in the churchyard.”
I thought about that quite a lot, but I continued to go down to the stream, and one day I shall go down there and not come back. I think of you, my daughter, growing up, and I wonder what they will tell you about me . and your father . and that is why I have decided to write so that you can know the truth as I saw it. And that is the real truth, Opal. So I sit by the stream and write and as I sit here the past comes vividly back to me. You see, you must know what happened and how it happened. I shall give this to Hannah, and she will give it to you when the time comes. It may be that the time will never come and that I shall tell you the story myself.
Today I am giving this to Hannah so this will be the last I shall write to you.
“Goodbye, little Opal. May God bless you and one day you will discover the truth about your father. I promise you there will be nothing to discredit him. One last word, my dear little daughter, if I should not be there when you grow up and if I am, you will not have read this-never let anyone say a word against him. Perhaps one day you will be the one to discover the truth.”
I stared ahead of me. I was seeing it all so clearly.
Then I went and knelt by her grave and when I touched my cheeks I found that they were wet, although I had not known that I was weeping.
I did not appear at dinner that evening because I could not face them.
I was thinking of them as different people; I was seeing them all so much more dearly than I ever had before. I was angry with them. They drove her to it, I thought. If they had been kinder to her, she would have been alive today and I should have had a mother. How miserable she must have been! I wanted to storm at them every one of them; my poor ineffectual father my grandfather in fact; my proud unloving grandmother (how glad I was that she was not after all my mother); Miriam, who always had to have her mind made up for her; and Xavier with his negative kindness, so remote that he had not done anything to save her.