When Myra awoke the next morning, she found a bright, cheerful, winter
sunshine in the room. Her first thought was of Olga. She was not there.
Her coat, too, was gone from its hook. Myra felt a sudden pang of
terror. Olga was gone, forever, would not return, was lost,
irretrievably lost.
Myra sprang out of bed, suddenly wide awake.
Then she saw Olga’s hat and gloves. She picked up the gloves and stroked
them, pressing them against her cheek. A sense of joy and tranquillity
seemed to emanate from the soft gray leather. So it was no dream, no
witchery: Olga had really been there, Olga would return. The gloves
retained the shape of her beautiful slender hands, were still filled
with their life....
From below came a familiar grinding and scraping sound.
Myra ran in her bare feet to the window and drew the heavy white twill
curtain a little to one side. On the window-ledge lay a thick cushion of
white snow. The houses below all had roofs of dazzling white, while
above, flashed a sky of the purest blue.
In front of the hotel, the servant of the house was scraping a dark path
with his shovel through the white carpet. Beside him stood Olga, her
coat open, both hands plunged in its pockets, her head thrust somewhat
forward in the intentness of her conversation with the old man.
Myra gazed down for a while, delighting in every line of Olga’s figure.
She watched her speak, seeming to hear the intonations of her voice. She
wondered what she could find to talk about with the servant. She admired
her talent for embarking on conversations with all kinds of people, and
giving each just the proper tone.
Myra knew that talent of hers. If Olga were in the mood, she could make
the grouchiest waiter or conductor beam at her.
After a few moments Olga suddenly glanced up: she must have felt Myra’s
gaze. She saw her standing at the window, or perhaps only the trembling
curtain. She waved and ran into the house.
Olga brought a breath of cool snowy air into the room. Her eyes were as
clear and as transparent as ice, while a very faint rosy flush mantled
her cheeks.
“Where have you been, you gad-about?” asked Myra.
“Have a nice long sleep, my wench?” Olga inquired by way of reply. “I’ve
been walking. I was in town. I wanted to get some flowers for your
breakfast table. But flowers in winter—such sinful things are unheard of
here! But there’s a bake-shop below, one of those with steps and a
railing in front of the door. You know the kind? And a gold pretzel up
above! And it smells of fresh bread. Hurry up, I’ve got a ravening
appetite.”
They breakfasted in their room. Then Myra urged that they go walking.
Snow and sunshine beckoned them out.
“First you must write to your father,” said Olga seriously.
“Yes,” said Myra, making a face. “You don’t want to accept any
responsibility—I know without your saying it.”
She sat down and wrote a long, well-considered letter. She described the
incidents at Uncle George’s with much humor. She told where she was
stopping, earnestly begged her father to let her remain where she felt
happy and was in no one’s way. She begged him, too, to believe that she
was a mature and intelligent person and knew exactly what was best for
her. And she begged him to pay back the money which she had unwillingly
borrowed from Uncle George—and to support her for the short period until
she came of age, or else to give her an advance against her
grandmother’s legacy.
But of the fact that she was not alone, she did not write him a word.
They took the letter together to be mailed. Olga already knew the way.
When the letter had dropped into the blue box, she breathed more freely,
and took Myra’s arm.
“Come,” she said, “what had to be done, is done. In three days you may
get an answer. But let us enjoy those three days.”
“Do you suppose,” said Myra, glowering, “that any power on earth could
compel me to return home? If they won’t send me money, I’ll hire out to
do washing or sewing, or I’ll run up debts.”
“I don’t know,” said Olga, “I only know that as long as that letter is
on its way we are safe. No living soul knows where we are—that’s a
glorious feeling—as if one were safe behind walls and moats. But once
that letter arrives, the drawbridge will be lowered. What will happen
then, I do not know. I know nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing! But it’s
always possible that we’ll be torn into little pieces!”
“Then why did we lower the draw-bridge?” asked Myra, stopping short.
“Why did you force me to write?”
Olga smiled rather gloomily. “Because I will _not_ accept
responsibility!” she said, making an effort to jest.
* * * * *
They walked along the broad streets with the little low houses. The
show-windows were strangely fascinating.
As they entered the woods, it was suddenly still and warm about them—so
warm that their faces, lashed by the wind, began to burn.
In the branches, high above them, the wind murmured, now and again
shaking down a silvery star to the dark ground. But they did not feel
the cold rush of its fall.
They wandered plunged in silence. Only when gay titmice flitted past, or
a squirrel dashed up a tree trunk, did they indicate it to one another
by a gesture, a whisper. And when their glances met, they remained fixed
on one another till they smiled and closed their eyes.
“Aha, there it is!” said Olga at last.
“What? Where?” asked Myra in surprise.
Olga pointed ahead. A red brick wall was suddenly visible between the
tree trunks.
“Did you know all the time where we were going?” Myra was filled with
wonder.
“Of course, child! I would not lead you through here at random. By all
human computations, this should be the wild-cat’s lair. In summer
there’s coffee, music and dancing here. In winter we may get a bite to
eat—if we’re lucky. The servant at the hotel told me all about it this
morning. Such a lovely story about a haunted mill where there are only a
donkey, a cat and a dove. And one other animal. Look, there goes the
dove, and there’s the cat. But not a soul to be seen. Are you
frightened, Myra? Wait and see, the cat will say something to us.”
They crossed a kind of inn courtyard and shook a couple of locked doors.
“They can’t have died,” said Olga, pointing to the wisp of smoke that
arose from the chimney. “Or perhaps the cat made the fire. But if she
can do that, she can also cook us something to eat.”
They found one door open. Through a cold and empty hall, from the
ceiling of which hung strips of torn and dusty paper, they reached
another door that gave when they lifted the latch. The room they next
entered was filled with a comfortable warmth and a penetrating smell of
cabbage. An iron stove was giving off a glowing heat while on top a blue
enamel pot was bubbling and steaming. At one of the tables a big-boned
maid was sitting sprawled, eating her mess of cabbage with her knife.
“Good day, Anna,” said Olga, beaming affably. “Well, how goes it? Does
it taste good?”
The girl rose slowly, grinning. “I’m not Anna,” she said. “The girl
before me was Anna. I’m Bertha.”
“It’s lovely and warm in here, Bertha.” Olga drew off her gloves and
spread her fingers before the fire. “And it smells wonderfully of
cabbage! Will you give us a little of your lunch?”
“If the ladies would like something to eat, I’ll ask the mistress.”
The black and white spotted cat stole into the room.
“There’s the wild-cat!” said Olga. “Come here, Mies! Come to me!”
The cat let her pick him up and hold him. Olga stroked him and pressed
him to her while she talked to him in a whisper, asking sympathetic
questions.
“Strange, that you like cats so much and can’t bear dogs,” said Myra a
little disapprovingly. “It’s certainly typical of you!”
Olga raised her head quickly and her brows were lifted. “In what way is
it typical?”
“Because you set more value on grace than on faithfulness,” said Myra
with a melancholy smile. “Because you love what scratches you
unexpectedly more than what lets itself be whipped and then licks your
hand. I guess I’ll have to take care that you don’t grow to despise me.”
Olga pushed the cat off her lap. “No, Myra,” she said, her big eyes
grave, “there you misunderstand me completely. I have an antipathy to
dogs, not because they are faithful, but because they are shameless.
Because they carry on their love affairs on the street.” Again that
crimson flush overspread her features. “Cats are more cultured about
such things—if I may use that much misused word. There are insects that
mate only in the darkest nights, in the most forsaken corners, so that
no forester has ever succeeded in observing them. I’ve always held that
there will come a time when we will speak of the barbarous practices of
this century, or the last ten centuries, as if they were a fairy-tale.
Just think how tremendously funny it must strike any sensitive person
when two people, having conceived a certain desire to go to bed with one
another, set a special date for the event. They inform certain public
institutions, the State, the Church. They tell their friends and
relations, their own parents, their own brothers and sisters. On the day
which is to end in that night, they gather everybody they know about
them, let themselves be observed by persons who stuff themselves and
drink until they are sick, listen to suggestive songs and suggestive
speeches—and yet do not get sick themselves. I’ve always had a feeling
that marriage as it is practiced today would be fit punishment for a
hardened criminal. It is such a cruel, such an exquisite torture. Myra,
my child, oblige me and if you ever decide to marry, do it when you
desire and not on some appointed day. Do it in utter secrecy so that no
living soul can suspect the possibility of such a thing....”
“I?” cried Myra, her eyes filled with the horror of a shattered dream.
“I?”
“Yes, you!” said Olga, smiling. “Ah, my child, do you fancy that you
even begin to suspect all the things that can still happen in your
life?”
* * * * *
The next day they went to see if there was a letter. Olga was relieved
to find none.
“This blessed postal service,” she said. “The mail comes here only once
a day.”
Myra shook her head. “I don’t understand you. I shan’t really be able to
rest until the answer comes. Until then we’re always on the _qui vive_,
sitting on a volcano or some such thing. Once we know where we’re at,
then we can arrange matters. Eventually, I’ll have to write to the
attorney who is my grandmother’s executor. He will surely advance me
some money on which we can live for the six months until I’m of age. But
I wish I were finished with all these things.”
Olga played with the fringe of the table-cloth and smiled.
“Why do you keep smiling?” asked Myra.
“Because you make such elaborate plans. Your father will write, Come,
and you will go.”
“You know very well that that is impossible,” said Myra almost angrily.
Olga rose with a shrug of her shoulders and walked to the window.
“Perhaps I will send you!” she said in a hard voice.
That afternoon they took another long walk across the fields. The early
nightfall surprised them, and they did not reach the hotel until dark.
They trudged along the highway, struggling hard against the wind, and
saw the lights of the town beginning to twinkle in the blue dusk.
“Strange,” said Olga, “we’re going home. There is a town ahead of us
whose name I had never heard of three days ago. And yet it is home to
me. There is a hotel room in which some salesman may have slept three
days ago, a room in which there is not a picture, not a book to attract
me—and yet I call it home. When I think of our gas-heater and its
reflection of the worn carpet, I feel so warm that I scarcely notice the
wind. How happy a person must be who really has her own home, and loves
each chair and the color of the carpet and the light of the lamp and
each picture and each cup.”
“You could have that,” said Myra.
“I? Never! Never! Never!”
“But you can!” Myra objected somewhat timidly, “if you have the
patience—in six months.”
Olga laughed abruptly. “Child!” she cried and hugged Myra’s arm tighter.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful little creature! In six months! Where will
you be then, and where will I? You will be married perhaps, and I—dead.”
* * * * *
As they entered the room, something white was lying upon the dark
table-cover. Myra seized it and ran to the window. The lantern outside
shed a faint light.
It was an urgent telegram. “Turn on the light, please,” she asked in a
rather shaky voice. She tore the message out of the envelope, and read
it in the dusk by the window. She read it again by the bright gas light.
It was no different:
“Your father has suffered a stroke. End expected hourly.”
Without a word, Myra handed the open telegram to Olga, and walked past
her to the heater. She held her hands in front of the flame, and was
filled with the strangely painful sensation of not knowing how she ought
to behave.
For no feeling welled up irresistibly from the depths of her being,
darkening every thought—neither grief nor fear, nor yet love. Only ugly,
painful thoughts: “Now I’ll have to go away and arrive too late anyhow.
So that it’s quite useless for me to go at all. If he really is going to
die, why couldn’t I have just received word that he’s dead, instead?
Then no power on earth could drag me away from here.”
She cast a stealthy glance at Olga whose back was still toward her.
“She’ll wait for me to do something,” she thought. “I’ll have to say
something or other. I suppose the most natural thing for me to do would
be to cry. But I simply can’t. Of course, I think it’s dreadful. But
it’s nothing to weep about. What would Olga do in my place? Strange, how
little we actually know of one another! I don’t know what she would do.
And I don’t know what she expects me to do.”
At last Olga turned, laying the paper on the table with a beautiful and
extraordinarily discreet gesture. Her face was calm, but very pale.
“I’ll go ask about the trains,” she said and went out quietly.
Myra was glad to be left alone for a moment. She could now consider in
quiet what was to be done. If Olga were going to inquire about the
trains, she must accept it as a foregone conclusion that Myra would
leave at once for home. And it probably was a foregone conclusion: of
course, it was.
She rose with a sigh from her easy-chair by the fire, opened her
suitcase and began to pack. Meanwhile her thoughts kept flying hither
and thither.
Perhaps it was not true!
Perhaps Aunt Emily had thought it up to lure her back home! To shut her
up in prison!
If only a telegram would come from her father, denying the first.
Or supposing it were true, if only a telegram would come from Aunt Emily
saying that all was over! Then she would not have to go. Or would Olga
demand that she go?
If only Olga would come back now and say, “There is no train, not today,
not tomorrow, not ever. The trains, are snow bound. Or there’s been a
wash-out.”
Or if Olga would return and say, “Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Let us go
somewhere else, anywhere they can’t find us. Prove to me how much you
love me: give up everything for me! What is that strange dead man to
you? Nothing! You belong to me, are mine! I demand of you that you
remain with me. I don’t want to be parted from you, not for a single
hour.”
Yes, that would be the most beautiful way, but of all impossible things,
the most impossible.
Olga opened the door. Her movements, though quick, were as gentle as if
she were entering a sick-room.
“At nine forty-five,” she said and glanced at her wrist-watch. “So we
have plenty of time to pack and eat a bite.”
Myra felt a twinge of something like resentment. She _had to_ go. She
was simply being sent. Would Olga have gone in her place? Olga acted
freely and flew in the face of everything that was considered
convention. But Myra must be bound by what was normal, commonplace,
proper. The train left at nine forty-five—she was not even asked if she
wanted to take it. It was the next train, therefore she was to go on it.
She continued to pack her suitcase, with a sullen expression.
“Can I help you?” asked Olga gravely and gently.
“Thanks, no!” said Myra curtly.
Olga’s compassionate tone tormented her. She would have liked so much to
speak the brutal truth: “You don’t need to treat me as if I were an
invalid. The worst of this business for me is that we have to part, that
I have to go away from here, that our fairy-tale life here must end.”
But she did not possess the courage to say so. Yet she felt that Olga
was withdrawing herself almost timidly, as if she had no right to
disturb Myra in her sacred, childish grief.
In packing, Myra’s hand accidentally touched something carefully wrapped
in tissue paper on the bottom of the suitcase. She tore off the
wrapping, so that the shreds fluttered to the floor and held the gold
cigarette-case in her hand.
“Oh, Myra!” cried Olga with a soft exclamation of surprise. “There it is
again! How long has it been there?”
“It has never been anywhere else,” said Myra with a rather strained
smile. “I could never bring myself to give it into a stranger’s dirty
hands. I really did not want to say anything about it to you. I intended
to send it to you at Christmas. But that’s all silliness, I’d rather
give it to you now.”
Myra walked over and placed it in Olga’s hands.
Olga held the case very quietly on her fingers without closing them over
it while she regarded it with a profoundly thoughtful smile.
“Strange,” she said without raising her eyes. “Why now? Why today? One
must not be superstitious, but sometimes it is hard....”
* * * * *
At home there was the odor of sickness and death. The maids sat about
drunk with sleep, with swollen eyes and stupid faces.
Everywhere there were lights burning. Not bright, cheerful, radiant
lights, but individual lamps casting a faint glow in one or two rooms.
The doors stood open or ajar so that one could see that it was not night
in this house, that no one was sleeping, that people were constantly
hurrying to and fro. And through the open doors, too, came the
monotonous rattling in the throat of the dying man. It filled all the
rooms.
Her owlish eyes wide open in her puckered face, Aunt Emily flitted about
like a spook.
“You come too late!” she said with icy triumph as she confronted Myra.
“There is no more hope.”
Myra felt as if something dreadful ought to happen to her, and the
sudden consciousness of being so depraved, so unfeeling that nothing
could happen to her, that even this woman’s immeasurable hate implied
too high an opinion of her, brought the tears to her eyes, for she was
tired and over-excited.
Aunt Emily, of course, could not divine these thoughts.
“Your tears are too late, too!” she said meanly.
Each of the twenty hours that followed had a thousand minutes. Myra
paced to and fro, or sat now in one chair, now in another. Everywhere
she felt out of place, in the way, and observed by evil eyes.
She was worn out in every limb and felt the need, if only for an hour,
to lock herself into her room and throw herself on her bed. But she
lacked the courage.
She knew they expected her to stand flooding repentant tears or to sit
by her father’s death bed, or better yet, to kneel. She endeavored to
control the horror that from time to time shook her, and went in. The
heavy air smelt of decomposition and medicines. Among the many white
pillows lay a small, strangely bony skull with closed eyes, an alien,
distorted mask, whose yellowish lips moved gently as it gasped.
Myra sat for a while beside the bed, terrified lest that dreadful rattle
in the throat should cease suddenly; terrified still more lest that
strange something should suddenly open its eyes and begin speaking.
Doctors entered, conferred in whispers, bestowed sympathetic glances on
her, and went out again.
The maid spread the table at the usual time and urged her to eat
something. Aunt Emily left all the connecting-doors open, listening
intently while she spooned her soup, for any change in that monotonously
rattling throat.
It was all Myra could do to choke down a bite.
The twilight set in early and again the lamps were lit.
Myra picked up a book, but encountered so furious a glance from Aunt
Emily that she laid it down again, and folded her hands spiritlessly in
her lap.
Toward evening the rattlings grew feebler. The bridge of the nose stood
out sharply against the tiny shrunken face. The doctor who came at night
did not go away again. Now there was one more to sit in silence or pace
noiselessly to and fro across the thick carpets—waiting.
The rattlings grew more and more feeble. Then a louder, grating
expiration of the breath, twice, with short pauses. Then
suddenly—silence.
And suddenly, too, as if it had just begun, they heard the ticking of
every clock in the house.
The doctor bent over the bed, then drew himself up and walked over to
Myra to give her his hand. Aunt Emily dabbed her dry eyes and the maids
outside sobbed.
Myra saw and heard it all as if through a dense veil; she was afraid of
fainting.
The doctor probably observed her greenish, livid appearance, and laid
his hand on her hair. “Go lie down, my child,” he said gently. “You can
be of no further use here. You have sad days behind you and before you.
Youth needs sleep.”
Myra was glad to be in her room. But she did not think of lying down.
When, after an interval, she heard the doctor go a nameless dread seized
on her. She was so tired and yet so afraid to sleep lest horrible dreams
torment her once she relaxed control of her thoughts.
If her heavy eyelids shut for a moment, she saw the dying man’s
distorted features, or Aunt Emily trying to seize her with her claws to
strangle her, or Uncle George raising his arm to strike her with an
enormous bunch of keys that would crush her aching head.
Myra reached out longingly for another hand that would clasp hers warmly
and firmly. But her cold fingers remained empty. Finally, she could not
endure her terrors any longer. Slipping into her coat, she stole down
the rear stairs and out of the house.
The cold night air awoke her from her trance. She ran, rather than
walked, through the streets to Olga’s house. The house was locked. Myra
stood for a while undecided. Perhaps someone who lived there would be
coming home late, or the watchman would unlock the door for her for a
tip.
She waited a long time. She was shivering with cold. At last she woke up
the doorman. But at the top of the first stairs, she hesitated again
before she dared ring.
She sat down on the steps and laid her forehead against the wooden
door-jamb. She endeavored to awaken Olga, to summon her by thinking
intensely of her, by ardent entreaty, by fierce willing. From time to
time she thought she heard her light step approaching the door and she
listened breathlessly, only to perceive that she was mistaken.
At last she had to make up her mind to ring. It was a long time before a
very sleepy, half-dressed girl opened the door. She told some tale of
having just come from the train and of being unable to go home because
she had left her key with Miss Radó. She laughed as she was saying it
and had a feeling that the girl thought her positively demented.
She groped her way along the familiar hall, fearing, for some
incomprehensible reason, to strike a light. Perhaps she was afraid that
the noise or the illumination would wake someone, or perhaps she had
some unconscious dread of being seen, and felt herself safer in the
dark.
As she stood in front of Olga’s door she felt suddenly, and with a
painful intensity so strong that she thought it must be premonition,
that Olga was not alone—that this horrible day was to have a still more
horrible close.
She leaned against the wall, not daring to knock or to lift the latch. A
voice, which she seemed to hear speaking distinctly outside her, said,
“What are you seeking here? What right have you to force your way in
here? Where did you acquire the boundless audacity to feel at home
here?”
The door opened noiselessly and a feeble ray of light appeared. In its
glow stood Olga Radó, tall and slender in a varicolored dark kimono, one
hand on the latch, peering sharply from under her knitted brows. She saw
and recognized Myra at once.
“Myra!” she exclaimed softly, and closed her eyes a moment as if
frightened. “I knew it! What has happened, child? How did you get up
here?”
Myra did not walk, she staggered. She went into the room, looking at the
soft light of the shaded lamp on the papers, on the desk, on the backs
of the books, on the silk cushions. Colors and shapes were a marvellous
exhilaration. She let herself slide to the floor, laying her head
against the easy-chair, and saying between tears and a laugh, between
waking and sleeping, “Let me stay here, it is so good!”
Olga raised her, undressed her like a little child and laid her in the
bed. As the cold sheets touched her body, horror set her trembling
again. Once more she was wide awake, and sat bolt upright in the bed,
striving to control the chattering of her teeth.
“Lie beside me,” she pleaded, “I must feel that I’m not alone. I’m so
dreadfully frightened.”
Olga did not answer. She bolted the door, she set the lamp behind the
bed, spread another silken veil over the light and let the kimono fall
from her shoulders—all with a sad smile and slow, languid movements as
if she were preparing for a sacrifice. Then she put her arm under Myra’s
neck, tucked the coverlet more tightly around her and stroked the
tangled hair from her forehead.
And as Myra felt the warmth of that beloved life, the strong pulse of
that heart, she began to weep, quietly, released from pain. She cried
herself to sleep.
After an interval, she did not know if it were hours or minutes, she
awoke again. The light was still burning. Olga lay motionless beside
her, her eyes wide open. Myra sat up and released her arm.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she said reproachfully. “Poor thing, I must
have broken your arm, that’s why you can’t sleep.”
Olga turned her head a little. “I should not have slept anyway. I’m so
wide awake.”
“What were you thinking of?” asked Myra, trying to fathom her eyes.
Olga smiled a little wearily.
“I was thinking that your people are probably searching the whole house
by now. I should like to know, or better, I’d rather not know, what is
going on in Aunt Emily’s head at this moment. She certainly must think
you’ve been bitten by a tarantula!”
Myra laughed softly and put her arm around Olga.
“By a scorpion!” she said tenderly. “There is no antidote but its own
poison. You know that very well.”
Olga sat up and clasped her hands about her knees. Her glossy black
curls fell luxuriantly about her shoulders. Her eyes gazed straight
ahead and her wide pupils darkened the irises.
“What a strange fate!” she said in a vibrant tone as soft and deep as a
cello’s. “That I must be stung by the scorpion and yet look for healing
to the same creature.”
Her pale beautiful features assumed an expression of fierce, of
sorrowful, of almost weird energy.
Myra was so terrified that her heart seemed to miss a beat. She did not
have the courage to touch Olga, to embrace her.
“Olga!” she cried, in fear and pain, and stretched out her hands to her.
Again that troubled smile played about those pale lips. Olga threw both
her arms around Myra and clasped her to her as if her embrace must
smother, must annihilate, must destroy.
“Ah, little Myra!” she said with a little explosive laugh, “it’s all no
good! You’ll have to let me take the easy road first, then perhaps,
everything will be all right.”