Inside the house, she listened until the creak of boots on the snow died
away. Then she moved off along the hall toward the corridor. She walked
uncertainly and from time to time leaned against the wall for support.
The spot of light from the electric torch preceded her slippered feet, a
bright moving circle which seemed to devour and destroy the streak of
flooring which it crossed on its way to the storeroom. Weakly she opened
the door and stepped inside.
“It’s all right, now. I’ve sent them away.”
The books in the great box stirred with a heaving motion and out of them
presently emerged Krylenko, pale and shaken. He climbed out and as his
foot struck the floor, Lily gave a little cry and pitched forward so
that he caught her suddenly. The electric torch dropped to the floor.
The glass shattered with a faint pop and the room swam in a thick, soft
darkness.
She did not faint. In a moment she recovered herself and managed to
stand upright, but she did not move away from Krylenko. She stood there,
waiting. Slowly his powerful arms closed about her with the vague
gesture of a man wakening slowly from a profound sleep.
“It’s all right,” she whispered faintly. “I’ve saved you.”
He made no other answer than a faint crooning sound. He stroked her hair
gently with his strong, calloused hand, and tried to quiet the violent
trembling which once more had taken possession of her. Again the house
was silent save for the distant, ghostly creaking.
Perhaps he was seized by an overwhelming sense of awe which until that
moment he had never experienced ... an awe for some unknown and terrific
force against which he was helpless, like a little child. It may have
been that, as Irene believed, he had never known any woman, that he had
been pure as a saint. If these things had not been, it is impossible to
say what might have happened. He stood holding Lily close to him,
kissing with a strange, awed gentleness the white line of her bare
throat.
He discovered presently that she was sobbing.... Lily, who never wept.
It was a terrible heartbreaking sound as if, all at once, she had sensed
the tragedy of a whole lifetime, as if she stood in a vast and barren
plain surrounded only by loneliness.
Krylenko’s hands and arms became unaccountably gentle. His cheek brushed
against her white forehead with a comforting, caressing motion. And
presently he lifted her as easily and as gently as he had lifted the
wounded striker at Mrs. Tolliver’s command, and bore her from the room
and down the dark corridor. She lay quietly, still sobbing in the same
heartbroken fashion.
Thus he carried her into the long drawing-room and placed her among the
brocade cushions of the divan, her amber hair all disheveled, her eyes
bright with tears. For a moment he stood by her side awkwardly, silent
and incoherent, overwhelmed by some new and profound emotion. The fire
of cannel coal had died down. In the grate there was nothing now but
ashes. Silently he knelt beside the sofa and rested his blond head on
her breasts. Neither of them spoke a word, but Lily’s hand returned once
more to the old gentle caressing motion across his tired eyes.
The minutes slipped away, one by one in a quick stream as if they were
no more than the trickle of a clear spring water which is beyond all
peril of drought, as if time itself were nothing and eternity even less.
So engulfed were they by the mood that even the sound of a key turning
distantly in a clumsy lock and the echo of a light footfall in the
hallway failed to disturb them. They were, it seemed oblivious to
everything until suddenly there stepped through the doorway the thin
figure of Irene in the worn gray suit and battered black hat. At the
sight of them she halted, an apparition with a tired white face, drawn
and quivering. It was not until she gave a low convulsive cry that Lily
and Krylenko discovered she was watching them. Krylenko remained on his
knees, only straightening his body to look at her. Lily turned her head
a little, gently, listlessly, almost with indifference.
Irene had become hideous. In her eyes was the light of fury. When she
spoke her voice was cold with an insane, unearthly hatred.
“So,” she said bitterly, “it has happened!” The worn hat fell from her
grasp. Her fingers intertwined with a strangling gesture. “I might have
known it.... I should have guessed....” And then her voice rose to a
suppressed scream. “You are no better than a street walker! You are
damned forever! I have prayed.... I have prayed but God himself could
not save you.... He would not want you ... a vile creature ... a
strumpet!... to destroy all that I have spent my life to create.” She
began to sob wildly. “To destroy in a night what cost me years.”
Slowly, silently, Krylenko rose to his feet. He watched Irene with a
look of bewilderment, as if he found himself in a wild nightmare. Lily
turned away silently and buried her face in the pillows. A Fury had
descended upon them unawares.
Irene continued to cry. “I have known always.... I have known from the
beginning.... I knew about the Governor.... I saw him go into your
room.... Only God knows how many men you have had.... You are lost,
damned, forever!” The terrible sound of her weeping echoed and reechoed
through the silent old house.
Lily raised her body from the cushions and sat with her silver slippers
touching the floor. “What are you saying, Irene?” she asked. “You are
mad. There has been nothing ... nothing ... nothing. You are mad!”
It was true that for the moment Irene was quite insane, yet her madness
endowed her with the clairvoyance that is beyond sanity. She rushed
toward Lily. She would have strangled her but Krylenko stepped between
them and held her as if she had been an angry bad-tempered little child.
“Ah, don’t lie to me,” she cried. “I’m no fool. I can see. It is written
in your eyes. Both of you.... I know. I know!... It is there! I see it!”
She struggled fiercely in the powerful grasp of Krylenko. “Let me
go.... You ... You are no better than the others ... a common beast, a
swine like the others ... a swine like all men, lying to me all these
years. And on a night like this. May God damn you both in Hell forever
and ever!”
She freed herself and sank to the floor at Krylenko’s feet. The tirade
gave way to a torrent of wild hysterical sobbing. Her pale, battered
face was all distorted, her thin hair disarrayed. She collapsed suddenly
into a barren shattered old woman, abandoned by life. She had lost in
her battle against something which was far stronger than herself,
stronger even than Lily and Krylenko. She was broken, pitiful.
Lily sat by helplessly, her own tears dried now. She turned the rings
round and round on her fingers and in the gesture there was a
concentrated agony.
“You must not mind her,” she said presently. “She is not well.” Then she
rose slowly and moved toward her sister. “Irene,” she said softly.
“Irene.”
But Irene shuddered and drew away from her. “Don’t touch me ... evil
one! Don’t touch me!” she cried monotonously.
“Perhaps if she had rest,” said Krylenko. “Perhaps if she slept.”
Irene kept up moaning and rocking. “In the Flats they’re dying.... In
the Flats they’re dying ... and you two up here, like beasts all that
time ... like beasts!”
Lily began to walk up and down the long shadowy room in a wild
distracted manner, as if the contagion of her sister’s hysteria had
touched her too. “There is nothing I can do,” she kept saying. “There is
nothing.... Perhaps if we left her....”
It was Krylenko who solved the difficulty. He bent over Irene and picked
her up despite her protests. She screamed. She wept. She would have
scratched and bitten him if his arms had been less powerful and his grip
less certain. He turned to Lily. “Where is her bed?”
He spoke with a curious, intimate understanding. In an hour he had come
nearer to Lily than ten years had brought him to the chaste fanatic
sister.
Silently Lily led the way up the long stairs while he followed bearing
Irene who moaned like a wounded animal. At the door of the room with the
white bed and the pink-gilt image of the Virgin, he halted as if fearful
of desecrating its purity. But Lily led the way boldly and together they
laid the sister upon the narrow white bed. When they had gone out,
closing the door behind them, the sound of her faint moaning haunted the
dark hallway.
At the door of her own room Lily halted. “Wait,” she said, and left him,
returning in a moment, her arms burdened with blankets.
“Take these,” she said. “It will be cold in the drawing-room.” In all
the confusion, she had not forgotten his wounds, his comfort.
Krylenko smiled vaguely. “It will be hard to sleep anywhere to-night,”
he said softly.
“But it is spoiled now ...” replied Lily. “Everything.”
And Krylenko turned away and went silently down the stairs.
It is true that no one slept until the dawn. Irene and Lily did not
sleep at all. The one lay awake sobbing and praying, the other lay with
her head buried in the pillows keeping her body rigid to still its wild
trembling. Krylenko was the only one who slept. With the coming of dawn
he sank into a deadening thick slumber among the stained brocade pillows
of the rosewood sofa.
There he slept undisturbed until midday, for with the curtains tightly
drawn there was no light to waken him. When at last he did waken, he
found on the lacquer table beside him a note, which read:
“There are some things in this world which are impossible, things fate
herself will not permit. This you will understand, I am sure. I have
gone away. Irene has gone too. Where she has gone I do not know. Perhaps
it does not matter. There is small chance of our ever meeting again. Our
paths lie too far apart.... I have arranged for you to remain in the
house ... as long as it is necessary. As long even as you desire it.
There is no one but yourself and the two black servants. They have been
told. It is my house. It would please me to think of you there. It
would please me ... and my mother too ... to know that you were safe
inside it still leading the strike. It is a good place, for you can keep
in hiding and still lead the fight. My blessings are with you and your
cause.”
The note was signed with Lily’s name, and underneath it in the same
sprawling hand was written, “O God! I love you. Good-by.”
She had come in some time between the dawn and the broad daylight to
leave the note by his side. She had passed him and gone away without a
word, whither he could not possibly know. Nothing remained save a
confused memory of her and this short, enigmatic, note which avowed
nothing and yet everything.
For a long time Krylenko held the bit of paper between his strong heavy
fingers, staring dully all the while at the generous impetuous writing.
At last he took out a battered cigarette, put a match to it, and at the
same moment set fire to the wisp of paper which he tossed among the cold
ashes of the dead fire.... _There are some things in this world which
are impossible._
He got up and began pacing the floor angrily, up and down, up and down,
scarring the polished floor at each step. It made no difference now.
There was no one there any longer to use the floor. Presently he began
muttering to himself. “They are no different than the others. They are
all alike. When they are tired they run away because they are rich. Damn
them and their money!”
And then all at once he went down upon his knees before the sofa and
seizing one of the stained cushions in his arms, he kissed it again and
again as if it were Lily instead of a feather-stuffed bit of brocade
which he held in his arms.