Part 7

Myra unpacked her suitcase, spread night-gowns on the bed, set bottles and boxes on the wash-table. Olga walked about noiselessly, whistling with soft, sweet flute-tones. She stopped before each picture, studying it with childish enthusiasm, while she made up long stories about it.

“Here!” said Myra, laying her silk kimono on the chair, “you can put that on.”

“And you?”

“I have my wrapper, that’s all right for me.”

“Wonderful,” she said, “simply wonderful! Now all I need is warm feet. Then I’ll be absolutely happy.”

She rolled a chair up to the gas-heater and began to untie her shoes.

“Shall I help you?” asked Myra, eager to serve.

“I never heard of such a thing!” said Olga provoked. “Why, I wouldn’t let my maid do such a thing for me!”

“That’s another matter,” said Myra, smiling. “It’s a distinction that one does not confer on maids.”

“You’re certainly insane!” Again that sudden deep crimson pulsed into Olga’s cheeks.

She had drawn off her thin silk stockings and was holding her bare feet toward the flame. She raised her arms and slowly ran Myra’s brush over the hair that fell in heavy black curls about her neck.

Myra jumped on the chair and turned out the gas-light.

“Now,” she said with a laugh, “you can have a painting made of yourself, or a chromo and frame it in gold and hang it on the walls here. Title: _Au coin du feu_, or The Witch, or Firelight, or something just as good. How can anybody be so shamelessly lovely?”

“Indeed!” said Olga dryly. “Now you’ve done it! We haven’t any matches!”

“In the first place, there’s light enough for me,” said Myra, seating herself on the floor in the ruddy firelight. “And in the second place, we can always light a spill from this. If we can’t find anything better, we’ll use a hundred mark note. We have plenty of them. Child, what a marvellous foot you have! But so cold, they’re always like ice!”

She clasped both hands about Olga’s foot. It was as nobly shaped, as beautiful in line and color as if a masterhand had chiselled it out of marble. But it was as heavy and as cold as stone.

Myra endeavored to warm it in her hands, but then she could not resist temptation—she set her lips upon its cool, smooth, white skin.

Olga broke away, sprang up and ran through the dark room to the window.

“Olga!” cried Myra, terrified, and rose, hesitantly. “What is the matter? What’s wrong with you?”

No answer. Myra went over to her. But when she reached the window and stretched out her hand toward her, Olga dodged as if hunted, along the wall.

She stood, cowering, in a corner, Myra barring her way.

Her lovely pale face gleamed weirdly in the dark. Her tense features were at once frightened and threatening, like a wounded animal’s, that sees itself surrounded and prepares to defend itself desperately.

Myra shrank from the expression of those compressed lips, those darkly glowing eyes. Timidly she laid her hand on Olga’s arms, which were folded across her breast.

Olga started and cowered deeper in her corner.

“Go away!” she said through clenched teeth. “Let me be!”

“You must not stand in your bare feet on the bare floor,” said Myra on the verge of tears. “You’ll catch your death of cold. I don’t want you to do anything but sit by the heater. I can sleep in the hall, in front of the door, or I can take another room, or I can jump out the window. But come out of that corner, I can’t bear to look at you a minute longer!”

She seized her by both shoulders, but Olga shook her off.

“Let me be!” she said angrily. “Can’t you see that you’re torturing me to death? How can anybody be so stupidly cruel?”

Her voice broke and suddenly her face was covered with tears.

Myra could control herself no longer. Her eyes, too, brimmed over.

“I don’t understand!” she said with quivering lips. “If I’m so hateful to you that you can’t stand me, what are you here for? Why do you have anything to do with me? No one can like a person whose presence is a torture to him. But I know why you can’t stand me!”

“Why?” asked Olga astonished.

Myra shook her head in silence, still struggling with her tears.

“Why can’t I stand you?” Olga demanded more urgently. “Answer me! I want to know!”

Myra still avoided looking at her. “Because I love you too much!” she said bitterly and sadly. “It must be dreadful to be loved by someone whom you do not love! Almost disgusting!”

“Idiot!” said Olga and stroked Myra’s hair very tenderly.

“Oh, don’t,” said Myra and disengaged herself from the hand. “There’s no use forcing one’s self.”

Olga let her arms drop heavily.

“One must force one’s self,” she said, breathing softly but with an effort. “If I did not force myself, I would so smother you with caresses that you’d be frightened to death and run away.”

Myra felt the pulse throbbing in her neck so that she could scarcely breathe.

“Don’t do it,” she said. “Though I would certainly never run away, I might go mad with happiness!”

Then Olga slowly raised both her slender white arms and laid them on Myra’s shoulders. Myra felt their powerful, delicious pressure grow tenser and tenser.

Since Olga was barefoot, their faces were almost on a level. Their eyes bored into one another, gravely, unflinchingly, while they felt in every vein the terrible throbbing of their hearts.

Then they bent toward one another, like two thirsting souls, and laid mouth upon mouth.

They did not release one another again. They kissed one another more and more covetously. They walked through the room, nestling close together, they sat on the edge of the bed in one another’s arms. Their clothes slipped off and lay on the floor.

The coarse, damp sheets exhaled a chill miasma. They hardly felt it, so hot was the blood in their youthful bodies.

They pressed upon one another as if they wanted to pass one into the other, to be merged, be one.

Their slender, supple limbs wove one into the other, as the trees of a virgin forest inextricably interpenetrate.

They did not speak. But like a murmuring music, they heard the droning pulse of one another’s hearts, and the breath that came quicker and quicker.

Their bodies seized each other as wild beasts seize and shake the bars of their cages. They buried their nails in one another’s flesh, their teeth in their tensed muscles.

Then they lay nestling one against the other like children tired with play, while their lips brushed eyelids and cheeks as gently, as softly, as a butterfly a swaying flower.

“Little one!” said Olga, and all the bells pealed in her voice. “My beautiful, my good one!”

“My dear,” said Myra. “Oh you miracle of heaven! What are you really? Are you a wild creature? Or a god? Or the spirit of a white orchid?”

“I don’t know,” said Olga. “I believe I am a god. But an hour ago I was a poor tortured creature. Are you not proud, little girl, to be able to work such miracles?”

“I wish I could work miracles,” said Myra longingly.

Olga laughed a hard laugh. “Then you’d change me into a man!” she said.

“God forbid!” cried Myra, clasping her in both arms. “Never! Never! Never! But if I could work miracles, I’d never let this night end. I would make it last forever!”

The red glow of the copper behind the gas flame filled the room with a warm light. The little pointed flames trembled gently, and the bright spot on the worn gay carpet trembled, too.

Olga leaned on her elbows, supporting her head in her hands. Between her white fingers her black curls peeped. In her pale face, her clear dark eyes glowed in infinite majesty and clarity, like twin stars.

“Forever!” she said softly. “Everything that is God, is eternal! Do you not feel that this night belongs to God? Time is an invention of the Devil. Satan invented the passage of time in order to make man apostate to God. But God remains eternal. Satan invented much else, besides, sickness, pain, vermin and money. Above all—money! But time came and the passage of time, and could never be dispelled again. Now they are a part of every invention of the Devil. But what is God’s is eternal. New happiness always effaces old pain as if it had never been. And happiness endures. No pain can efface it. I would die of shame if I thought that only the nerve-endings in our skin vibrate. Don’t you feel that something has happened to your soul that must remain with it beyond all death? Don’t you feel that this hour has changed you beyond any power of death to change?”

“Yes,” said Myra. “And more than any birth. I was born today—not twenty years ago. Now I can say to myself for the first time consciously: ‘I live!’”

“_We_ live!” said Olga, clasping her to her, with an exultation in her voice that was like the jubilant cry of a wild bird rising in flight.

“We live, sweetheart! Forever, and ever, and ever, we live!”

VIII

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.”