It was not for six months that Frances got her first clue to this
baffling creature. She tried to study her, to understand her, why she
had no friends, no “circle” such as she had imagined literary people
always had, why she was sometimes so slovenly, sometimes so
extravagantly dressed, why sometimes she couldn’t bear to go out, and
sometimes couldn’t endure staying at home.
It was after one of her infrequent visits home. Miss Eppendorfer hated
to let her go, and would never go out during her absence, which
naturally used to distress Frankie and cause her to cut her time at home
unduly short. She did everything possible before leaving, and always saw
to it that Jennie was there, under a solemn promise not to leave for a
minute until she got back; then with soothing assurances, as if Miss
Eppendorfer were a very nervous child, she would pack her bag and hurry
off, oppressed and serious, worrying over the household she had left.
This time, when she came back, Jennie didn’t answer the bell. She rang
again and again, but couldn’t hear a sound. Then she questioned the
hall-boy and he told her Jennie had left that morning, but that Miss
Eppendorfer was at home.
“Maybe she’s asleep,” he said, with a grin.
Frances turned white, remembering all the stories she had read of
suicides and murders.
“Isn’t there _any_ way I can get in?” she cried.
The boy leisurely suggested going to the flat below and asking leave to
go up through the fire escape. He didn’t offer to do it for her; he was,
on the contrary, as indifferent, as contemptuous as he could well be.
Fortunately the window on the fire escape was open and Frances got in
without difficulty. And rushed into Miss Eppendorfer’s room.
She was asleep, her mouth open, her hair in her eyes, lying on the
outside of the bed with no covering but a gauzy nightdress. The room was
full of a smell unfamiliar to Frances, but she surmised, even before she
saw the empty bottle.
Whiskey.
Somehow she got the poor thing warmly and decently covered up and the
horrible littered room tidied. Then she went into her own room and sank
into a chair, for her knees would support her no longer. She couldn’t
_think_ about it, her intelligence seemed to have fled, to be suspended,
waiting. She was conscious of nothing but horror and a reluctant and
painful compassion. She felt that now, after this, she could never,
never leave Miss Eppendorfer.