Lily sat up, listening. The sound was repeated and presently there
followed the noise of a door being opened slowly and cautiously. Lily
rose and made her way to the dressing table where she pulled the bell.
Once she pulled, and then again and again. There was no response. Either
the servants were asleep or too terrified to answer. She gave the bell a
final pull and when the only answer was silence, she took from the
dressing table an electric torch and from the drawer of her carved desk
a tiny pistol with a handle of mother of pearl which had been her
mother’s. Then she made her way quietly into the hall until she reached
the top of the stairway where she leaned over the rail and flashed the
light.
The glare illuminated all the lower hall, lighting up the familiar
carved chest, the straight-backed chair, the crystal chandelier, the
mirror. Everything was the same save that on the chest with his head
bowed and resting on his hands in an attitude of despair, sat Krylenko,
hatless, his coat all torn, the blood streaming down the side of his
face.
It appeared that he was weak and dazed, for he remained in this same
position for a long time, failing to notice even the bright shower of
light which, without warning, drenched the hall. When at last he
stirred, it was to lean back wearily against the wall and say in a low
voice, “I have used the key, Miss Irene.”
At the sound Lily ran down the long stairs, more rapidly than she had
descended them in all the years she had lived in the house. She soared
above the polished wood, until she stood suddenly by his side. She bent
over him and touched his shoulder.
“It is not Miss Irene ... I am Lily,” she said. “Lily ... Miss Irene’s
sister.”
With one arm Krylenko wiped the blood from his eyes.
“Then you don’t know me,” he said weakly. “I am not a thief ... breaking
in.”
The little revolver Lily placed beside him on the chest, “I know you,”
she said. “I have seen you ... you are Krylenko.” She placed one arm
beneath his. “Come,” she said, “this is no place for you. There is a
divan in the drawing room. Come and lie down there. I’ll fetch some
whiskey.”
With an air of great weariness the man managed to gain his feet and,
leaning upon her, he made his way preceded by the little circle of white
light from Lily’s torch across the polished floor into the drawing-room.
Lily was tall but Krylenko towered above her like a giant.
She made him comfortable, piling the brocade pillows carelessly beneath
his bloody head. Then she went out and as she left, there rose behind
her the sound of a heart breaking sigh, like the cry of a defeated,
sobbing child.
After a little while she returned bearing a white basin filled with
water, a pair of linen pillow cases and a small silver flask. Presently
he sat up.
It was the first time she had seen him since that afternoon in the Mill
shed when Willie Harrison, fumbling with the ruby clasp of his watch
chain, proposed to her for the last time. He had changed. He was older.
Experience had traced its record in the fine lines about his eyes and
mouth. The crudeness of the massive head had likewise undergone a
change, giving place to a more certain modeling and a new dignity. Where
there had once been a certain shapelessness of feature, there was now a
firmness of line, a determination in the fine mouth, the strong nose and
the high massive forehead.
Lily, tearing the linen pillow cases into long strips, watched him
narrowly.
The wavy blond hair, where it was not stained with blood, clung against
the damp forehead. Where the coat was torn and the dark flannel shirt
ripped from the throat, the powerful muscles of the arm and shoulder lay
exposed. The fair skin was as white as Lily’s own soft body. The man’s
whole figure carried an air of freedom, of a certain fierce desire to
burst through the shabby, stained clothing.
All at once he raised his head and looked about him. The color returned
a little way into his face.
“The blinds,” he said, “are they shut?”
“Yes,” said Lily. “You are safe here.”
She had thrown off the old sealskin coat and sat by him clad in the
black and silver kimono, seductive, beautiful, perfect, save for the
tips of her silver slippers all soaked by the melted snow. The kimono
had come open at the neck and left her white soft throat exposed.
Krylenko was watching her now in a puzzled fashion. He behaved almost as
if she terrified him in some new and indefinable way.
“I let myself in with a key,” he told her. “A key Miss Irene gave me.
She told me to use it if ever I had to hide.” He paused for a moment and
took a second drink from the flask. “You see, I am safe here because it
is the last place they would look for me. They would never look for me
in the house of a rich man. They wouldn’t expect to find me in the house
of an American, a wealthy lady.”
He looked up at her in a singularly straightforward fashion,
“I suppose,” he said, “you too are on our side.”
Lily dipping a bit of linen into the basin did not reply for a moment.
At last she said, “I’d never thought about it one way or another until
now. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. But you needn’t fear what I’ll do.
I’d rather have _you_ here than the police.”
“If they caught me now,” he continued weakly, “they’d hang me. I
wouldn’t have a chance with Judge Weissman and the rest. Any jury in the
Town would hang me. You see there were men killed out there in the park
... men on both sides. That fellow over by the fire ... he’s dead. I
stopped to make certain. I didn’t kill anybody myself, but that makes no
difference. It’s me they’re after. They’ve been waiting for a chance
like this.”
He spoke English with a curious lack of accent, for the chaste Irene as
a teacher was thorough. He spoke it deliberately and rather carefully to
be sure, but without serious faults. His manner was neither shy nor
awkward. It was the manner of a man unused to women’s company, of a man
who had never before addressed a great lady; for Irene could not
properly be called either a woman or a great lady. She was, rather, the
embodiment of an idea.
“You’re safe,” said Lily. “You may depend on it. I, myself, will see to
it. I don’t love the police or the Harrisons or Judge Weissman ... I
don’t love any of them.” She drew her chair nearer. “Now lie down and
I’ll bathe your head.”
He lay down and instantly sat up again. “My head!” he protested. “It’s
all bloody.... It’ll spoil everything.” He picked up one of the pillows.
“See, I’ve done it already. They’re covered with blood.”
Lily smiled at him in her charming fashion, an imperceptible, secret
smile. She behaved as if she were entertaining a great man, an
ambassador or a rich banker, as if she were intent only upon making him
comfortable, at ease.
“It makes no difference,” she said. “In a few days there will be no one
to use the pillows. There are times, you know, when such things don’t
matter. Lie down,” she commanded. “One must know when such things are of
no account. It is part of knowing how to live.”
Protesting, Krylenko laid his great body back gently and she bent over
him, first removing the rings from her finger and placing them in a
glittering heap upon the lacquer table. He closed his eyes with a sigh
and she washed away with great gentleness the blood from his hair, from
the side of his face. Her soft white fingers swept across the tanned
face, then lower to where the throat became white and across the smooth,
hard muscles of the shoulder until at last there was in her touch more
of the caress of a woman than the ministering of a nurse.
“It is not serious,” she said in a low voice. “The bullet only cut the
skin.”
She took the strips of linen and bound them with the same gentle,
caressing fingers round and round his head. And presently she discovered
that he was still watching her in a curious embarrassed fashion. When
she had finished the dressing, she bathed the deep cut on his shoulder
and bound it carefully.
At length he sat up once more. A sudden change came over him. His blue
eyes grew dark, almost clouded.
“You are a good nurse,” he said, and took another drink from the silver
flask.
Lily moved about, clearing away the blood stained cloths and the bowl of
reddish water. The soft glow of the lamp captured the silver of her
kimono and fixed it as she moved with a flashing light. And all the time
Krylenko regarded her with a strange look of awe, as if he had never
before seen a woman.
“Strange,” she said presently, “that we should meet like this. You, who
have never seen me before.”
Krylenko stirred and ran one strong hand awkwardly over the back of the
other. “I’ve seen you before ... twice ... No ... three times. Once on
that day you came to the Mills, once in the street in your carriage and
once”--he looked up--“once in this room, right here. You were with the
boss that time ... dancing with him.”
Lily laughed softly. She must have remembered the shameless gown of
chartreuse green. “I’ll never be dancing with him again. I doubt if I
ever see him.”
Krylenko regarded her quizzically. “But he is rich.... Don’t rich women
marry rich men?” And he finished with a puzzled grunt of inquiry.
“Yes,” replied Lily. “It’s because I’m rich that I wouldn’t marry him.”
It must have occurred to her then how wide was the chasm which separated
her world from Krylenko’s. Still he failed to understand.
“That’s no reason,” she continued, “for marrying him ... a poor thing
like that.”
She sat down and drew her chair quite close to the rosewood sofa,
laughing at the same time. Clearly the whole adventure struck her as
bizarre, ridiculous ... even unreal. Yet she trembled as if she were
shivering with cold, and her laugh carried a vague hint of hysteria. She
leaned forward and began to stroke his aching head gently.
After a long awkward pause, she said, “Miss Irene will be home any time
now.”
“Yes.” And Krylenko gave a sort of grunt. Unmistakably there was a
crudeness about him. He was gauche, awkward; yet there was in his manner
a quality of power, of domination which had its origin somewhere in the
dim ages, when there were no drawing-rooms and no books of etiquette.
He had a manifest self-possession. He did not become obsequious before
this great lady as Judge Weissman and other men in stations beneath her
had done. He treated her, after all, as his equal. He was even a little
arrogant; a trifle scornful of her wealth.
“Miss Irene,” he observed presently, “is a noble woman. You understand
she gives up her life to my people. Do you know where she is now?” His
voice was raised, his manner excited. “She’s looking after the fellows
that got hurt. There was a woman, too. I saw her ... shot through the
arm.... Ah, Miss Irene is a saint. You know she could go anywhere in the
Flats. No one would touch her.”
The whole speech was touched with a tone of simple adoration. The
essence of him was a great, a really profound simplicity.
“She works hard,” said Lily. “She works hard. She cares for nothing
else.” By the watch on her white wrist it was midnight. “So that is why
she is late,” she added.
“There will be much work for her to-night,” said Krylenko. He kept
watching Lily in the same furtive fashion, his gaze wandering to the
lovely line of her bare white throat.
Again there was an awkward pause. “You don’t know how much she does,” he
said presently. “You don’t know what life is in the Flats. You sit here
in a warm house ... with silk and pillows and good food. You don’t
know,” he said bitterly. “You don’t know!”
Until now their conversation had been broken, disjointed, awkward, as if
circumstance compelled them to talk about something. Now for the first
time, a certain fire entered the Russian’s voice. Lily kept silent,
watching him with her great burning eyes. She still trembled.
“Maybe you think I like working twelve hours a day in that hot shed like
you saw me. Maybe you think I don’t want time to read and think.” The
man was working himself into a kind of frenzy. “You don’t know.... You
don’t know.... And then they shoot us down like pigs.” He leaned forward
and raised at Lily a strong finger. “I come here from Russia. I come
here because I could not live in Russia.... My father ... My father ...
He was shot by the Cossacks. I come here because they tell me that in
America you are free and have a good life. And what do they give me?
They make me work twelve hours in a hot shed. They put me into a filthy
house. They say, you must not complain. You must do as we say. We will
not pay you more. We will not let you live like a man. You are
Hunkies!... You are dirt! You did not have to come here. But all the
same, they want us. They send men to Russia to tell us great things
about America so we will come here because they need men for the Mills
... men to feed to the furnaces like coal ... to make a few men rich.”
He sighed bitterly and buried his face in his hands. “And now they shoot
us like the Cossacks shot my father in Russia.... I came here full of
hope and peace ... only to be shot like my father in Russia!”
In his excitement he forgot the perfect English Irene had taught him.
His blue eyes flashed and his face grew pale once more.
“No.... They can take me.... They can hang me.... Let them! I will not
go away.... It is not America or Russia that counts.... It is all
humanity!... Christians.... Bah!” He spat suddenly upon the polished
floor. And all at once he pitched back again among the pillows, weak and
fainting. The bandage slipped from his wounded head over one eye.
Quickly Lily bent over him. She poured more whiskey between his lips and
refastened the bandage. Then she settled herself to chafing his strong
wrists and rubbing his forehead in the old caressing motion with a
delicate, white hand that trembled beyond control. A queer light came
into her dark eyes.
Presently he sighed and looked up at her. “I am sorry,” he said, “to
bother a fine lady like you. If it had been Miss Irene.” He closed his
eyes suddenly. “I have been hungry, you know. We haven’t even enough
food in the Flats.” Then he took her hand and pressed it in a naive,
grateful fashion. “I am sorry, you know ...” he murmured gently.
She did not move. She remained there stroking his head. “I know.... I
understand.... You must lie still. Be quiet,” she said softly. For a
long time they remained thus, and presently Krylenko, opening his eyes
looked up at her with a puzzled expression. “You are not the same as
Miss Irene,” he said in a low voice. “You are different ... very
different.”
To this she made no reply. Gently the motion of her hand ceased. A pool
of silence enveloped them. _You are not the same as Miss Irene._