Part 11

“Then there were threatening letters—I can’t tell you how vulgar. Filled with expressions that one simply can’t repeat. From your Aunt Emily, I think. But they were sent as if they came from you. They said you knew now the sort she was and wanted her to drop every attempt to get in touch with you and to stop blackmailing you. It was sufficient that she had seduced you into stealing and breaking open people’s desks, that she had undermined your health, that she had caused your father’s death—ah, I don’t know all that was in them. And then, things you were supposed to have said—they must have been horrible, for she would never tell me what they were or let me read them.

“She used to sit here in front of me, her face perfectly white and her eyes blazing, while she gripped my wrist so that I thought she would snap the bone. ‘Myra doesn’t know anything of this, does she, Peterkin?’ she kept repeating, ‘Myra doesn’t know about this?’

“There were times when I did not like that tone of voice. But now, when it is ringing in my ears again, I don’t see how I could have failed to understand it. From that time forth, she began frequently to speak of the journey. ‘I’m going home on the twenty-second of June.’ She was always saying it. Once I asked her why she had chosen that particular day. She laughed and said, ‘Because it is three days after the nineteenth.’ I pondered over it considerably. But at that time the connection was not clear to me....

“But after your engagement everything was different. Suddenly she began to say ‘When I go away—next week—or the day after tomorrow,’ I teased her about it, ‘So you’ve turned traitor to your plans? I thought you weren’t going away until three days after the nineteenth?’ Then she looked at me mysteriously and shook her head. ‘Ah, no, Peterkin, I have no reason for waiting now!’”

* * * * *

“On the evening of the ... on Monday evening, she appeared here suddenly in what I thought was a very cheerful state of mind. She laid the cigarette case on my desk just where it’s lying now, and asked me to do her the favor of placing it in your hands. She intended to go away and was already packing. If she sent the case to you, it would probably be taken as an attempt at blackmail!

“I was to give it to you after she had gone—on your birthday. And she insisted that I mark the date on my calendar. I said I could remember it without that. But she opened my calendar to the date and marked it herself.”

With an almost devout gesture, he turned back the last leaf and pushed the calendar toward Myra. In the white space, under the nineteenth of June, which had been carefully circled, was written in Olga’s bold, beautiful hand, “Myra’s birthday. Don’t forget, Peterkin!” Underneath were three crosses, playful little crosses marked in black ink.

Myra said nothing. She laid the palm of her hand on the paper and did not remove it.

Peterkin cleared his throat a few times and continued. “Before she left, we arranged everything for the next day. We would inquire about the trains in the morning; in the evening, I would take her to the station. But when she had gone, I grew terribly nervous. Something struck me as wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. I tried to telephone her, but there was no answer. I sat here at my desk in a quite indescribable state of nerves. This thing was lying before me,” he picked up the cigarette case. “I picked it up quite without thinking. Suddenly it occurred to me—pardon, Myra, if it was not discreet, but I felt such dreadful anxiety—suddenly it occurred to me to open it. I did so half in fun, half with the notion that I might find something in it which would tell me something. When I opened it, I found this note.”

He handed it to Myra. Under the clasps that were to hold the cigarettes against the case, was a slip of paper. On it was written in Olga’s unmistakable hand:

“_Qui vivens laedit, morte medetur!_”

“_Qui vivens laedit, morte medetur!_” repeated Peterkin. “I read it several times like a drunken man without understanding. Then I rushed down. Without my hat, without my keys. The lower house was locked. I rang for the doorman. He did not come at once. I rushed upstairs again to get my keys. It took me ages to unlock the house, to run around the corner and ring for their doorman—ages. On the stairs I met the maid, screaming and sobbing. It had already happened.”

Myra laid her forehead against the edge of the desk. Not a sound was to be heard. Peterkin stroked Myra’s hair once or twice, with trembling fingers.

“There is something else that I must tell you,” he said in a low voice. “She was completely covered with your flowers. Perhaps that will make you happy. You know, when you parted that time—you ran downstairs with your people after you—I half heard what was said between you. After quite a long while I went back to my room—there was Olga still standing in the middle of the room, supporting herself against the table. When I entered, she looked at me as if I were awaking her from sleep. I took her by both arms and shook her. ‘What’s happened, Olga? What have you done to Myra?’ She looked distractedly at me and kept repeating ‘Something terrible, Oh, God, Peterkin, something terrible!’ She showed you the door quite formally, did she not? She said that you shouldn’t bother her again, or something like that, didn’t she?

“Then she seized my hand and said very quietly, ‘I’m lying, Peterkin, I’m simply lying. It was nothing but my miserable cowardice. But Myra must know that, she understands me. I would have jumped in front of a train for her, I’d have jumped out a window, but I can’t let the clothes be torn off my body in front of such people, I can’t, I can’t. I know, I’m a miserable, contemptible creature, but I can’t, I can’t.’ I asked her what you had answered. She turned quite pale and said, ‘Nothing. Not a word. That’s the terrible part. She was so defenseless against my commonness.’

“Then she had another discussion with Miss Flesch. You have no idea how that woman acted. Olga would not remain in the house another hour. For which I could hardly blame her. Then she went to pack her things. In a few moments she came back, and seizing me by the wrist, drew me into her room.

“‘That is her answer,’ she said and showed me the money on the bed. ‘She is articulate,’ she said. ‘We underestimated her powers.’ Oh, Myra, why did you do that? To be quite frank, I was dreadfully angry with you myself at the time. She kept saying ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’ I said ‘Put the money in an envelope and send it back without any message.’ But she shook her head. ‘I deserved the blow,’ she said at last, ‘I will have to take it and smile.’ She gathered the bills almost lovingly, saying several times in a low voice, ‘What a child! What a child! She did not know what she was doing! She did not know what she was doing!’ Then she gave me the roll of bills. ‘Keep it for me, Peterkin, the time may come when I shall need it, and when it will be a joy to me to know that it comes from Myra.’

“I mentioned it to her often before the end, when she literally did not know which way to turn for troubles. But she always shook her head and said, ‘Not yet, not yet!’

“After she—was dead,” his voice broke, “I bought white orchids for her, I spent the whole sum: she looked beautiful.”

He could get no further. His lips quivered, the tears rolled down his cheeks. After a long, long pause, Myra sat up: her eyes were dry.

Beside the cigarette case, on the desk, lay a revolver.

“Is that the revolver?” asked Myra and reached for it.

“Yes.”

“Give it to me.” She clasped the butt in her fingers.

Peterkin made a gesture of terror. But Myra slowly shook her head. Peterkin looked into her eyes, then he reluctantly drew back his hand.

“I do not want to keep it,” he said, “it is too much of a constant temptation. And not everyone has as steady a hand as Olga Radó. You have a right to it. Of course. But I should not like you to keep it either. Promise me something, Myra—promise me you will give it to the man you love. Then it will be in the best hands.”

She had risen. “I promise you,” she said almost solemnly, “I will give it to the man I love.”

“Promise that you won’t do anything silly with it, that you won’t carry it carelessly or foolishly.”

“I promise you,” said Myra, “with this proviso. I have no right yet to swear on my life that I won’t shoot myself. But I will swear by my eternal salvation. I will swear by Olga Radó’s ten thousand times sacred memory.”

Something struck him in her tone. He rose slowly from his chair as if trying to search her eyes with his own. “Tell me, Myra,” he said, “I hope you are not angry with me. I should not like anything that I have said to influence your decisions in any way.”

Myra held his fingers in a short firm clasp. From the swift gesture with which she drew herself up and ran her hand over his hips, it was apparent that she was at the utmost limit of her powers.

“I swear,” she said, “that from this hour forth nothing and nobody can ever again influence my decisions.”

* * * * *

Myra did not return home at once. In a few seconds she had made plans which instantly became decisions. There was no wavering as they took form; it all advanced with one stride from darkness into light and remained there irrevocably.

She visited a shipping-agency and the landlord of the house in which she had spent so many years. There was a time when she would have dreaded such tasks. Now she felt that never as long as she lived should anyone relieve her of such unpleasantnesses.

It made her feel good, to be determined, to manage her affairs prudently and deliberately. When she entered her room and laid her hat in the closet, her hand touched the black dress that she had worn to her father’s burial. For a moment, she felt a desire to put it on, to see herself in gloomy crêpe. But she drew herself up. “Nonsense!” she muttered, gritted her teeth and shut the closet.

She went to her father’s study, seated herself at the desk and wrote various letters, to the attorney, to the bank.

After a while the maid entered. “Your Aunt, my mistress, requests you to come to dinner.”

Myra did not raise her head. “Tell your mistress, my Aunt, that I have already eaten. And request my Aunt, your mistress, to come here after dinner.”

The maid stood in the door for a moment, her mouth wide open. But as Myra did not stir, adding nothing and retracting nothing, simply scratching her pen hurriedly over the paper, she trotted off.

Presently, Aunt Emily appeared, visibly undecided as to whether to be indignant or affable.

“Sit down, please,” said Myra in a tone, so businesslike, so short, so firm and unimpeachably polite that it threw Aunt Emily into confusion and deprived her of all power of speech. “Pardon me, if I shorten your afternoon nap a little, but I have something to say to you and time is pressing.”

Myra picked up the paper-knife, turned it over and over, bent it, rapped her outstretched fingers with it, and stared intently at it while she spoke.

“You will have to decide quickly where you are going—I am about to travel....”

“You?”

“I am about to travel. We are going to break up the household. The house will be rented. Newes has agreed to let me break the lease. The furniture will be put in storage. Within the next few days. I’m beginning today. The moving-men will be here tomorrow. You will certainly want to get out of the way of the commotion. I suggest that you go to a hotel or a pension until you have definitely made up your mind. If you need the maid this afternoon to help you pack, she will be at your service. And then—I should not like you to suffer in a pecuniary way on my account. I should prefer if you were to state your wishes in writing and hand them to Rosenbaum. I have already written him in this connection.”

Myra laid down the paper-knife.

“That’s about all!” She rose and supported herself with her hands behind her, against the desk. “But if we should not see one another again, God’s will be done, and well done by you.”

Aunt Emily also rose, her knees trembling, while her face turned all shades of color from citron yellow to ash gray.

“And—and Alfred?” she asked with a vain effort to inject a touching gentleness into her sharp voice.

“What? Who?” Myra knitted her brow. “Oh, yes—no thank you. You don’t have to notify him. I will take care of everything necessary myself.”

“Myra!” said Aunt Emily solemnly, “what would your dear father say! I have cared for and shielded you from the day you were born, and for thanks I am shown the door....”

Myra seized the paper-knife again.

“I have already written Rosenbaum that he is to transfer fifty thousand marks of my fortune to you. With what you have and what is coming to you from father, you can live very comfortably indeed. I will go tomorrow morning and give him the necessary authorizations.”

“Myra,” said Aunt Emily with mounting pathos. “I shielded you from an awful fate. You ought to go down on your knees and thank me!”

“All right, all right,” said Myra and made a rather wry mouth. “I’ll tell Rosenbaum a hundred thousand.”

Then Aunt Emily turned and rushed out.

Myra packed her things in feverish haste as if for flight. She worked all day and night, permitting no one to help her, not even the maid, not even Peterkin.

But on the evening, when she was departing, Peterkin came to fetch her from the house and accompany her to the depot.

The house was dark and empty. All the furniture had been removed. The chandeliers were down and the windows curtainless. Here and there a picture hook projected disconsolately from the bare wall, or a square on the paper showed that a picture had hung there for years. A big suitcase and a small bag stood in the middle of the empty room. Myra had stuck a lit taper on the window-sill. It gave a strange, flickering half-light. Their shadows glided, huge and bent along the walls and ceiling.

Peterkin kept glancing at his watch. “Isn’t it time for me to call the taxi?” he asked uneasily.

Myra raised her hand. “Stop it! We have oceans of time. What would we do at the station? And what difference does it make if I miss the train? I’ll simply leave in the early morning.”

“Ah,” said Peterkin relieved, “I’d much prefer that. I don’t understand how anybody can travel at night.”

“I’ll travel in the morning,” said Myra. “In a few hours the dawn will come. But I love the night. Whoever loves the stars must love the night. Tell me, Peterkin, have you really never thought that they’re up there in the daytime, too—just as remote and just as near as at night? Sometimes I try to see them when the sun is shining—and I feel quite certain—that such and such a one is here, and another there, and I can hardly wait for twilight to make them visible.”

“You get that from her, too,” said Peterkin sadly, “that insane love of the stars.”

“Yes,” said Myra and her deep voice was like a bell, “what have I that I didn’t get from her? Everything! Certainly all love. The earth and sky are full of things she loved. And her love streams back to me again from all those things. Good God, how many things she loved. Mountains and seas and flowers and spiders and little children and leather and silk and crystal and Günderode and the blessed St. Francis of Assisi—and—me.

“Truly, she taught me love. Good heavens, if Aunt Emily were to hear that she would certainly read a wrong meaning into it.

“Once she said something to me, Olga, I mean, it was when we were on our trip and were talking about our future, and I said that I did not want to be separated from her until I came of age. Then she grew quite impatient and said, ‘Good heavens, what a dreadful attitude, never to be able to love what you aren’t holding in your own two hands!’

“Wasn’t she right, too? Why shouldn’t one love the dead and those who are arriving and those who are far away, whose existence we can only surmise or whose creation wafts us a breath of their souls? And why only one, why not thousands—those for whom we yearn and those who yearn for us—those who have died with longing for us unfulfilled, and those who will live with longing unfulfilled after us, when we have long been dead. Sometimes I feel as if I should stretch both my arms into space and call, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you!’”

“It is strange,” said Peterkin timidly, shaking his head as he gazed up at Myra who stood, weirdly tall and slender in the spectral light, “it is strange how like her you sometimes are.”

“It is much stranger how _unlike_ her I was,” said Myra, with a smile. “Remote, strange, unrelated. So horribly unlike her that I really did not understand her at all. I think I tormented her to death with jealousy and distrust.”

“And now?” asked Peterkin. “Would you be jealous and distrustful now? Who knows, if you had remained together, perhaps in a few months you would have had cause to be.”

Myra shook her head slowly. “You’re just trying to comfort me, Peterkin. But you don’t succeed. My delight in her was so uncontrollable. Even though her form were destroyed a thousand times, my delight in her will always remain. I see now that I should not have been so greedy as to rob heaven and earth of her love. But Olga never deceived me. Never, never, never!”

“The train, Myra,” warned Peterkin.

Myra glanced at her wrist-watch. “Yes, we must go.”

Peterkin went to call a taxi. The chauffeur carried down the luggage.

“And look there,” she rose with a strange rapture on her face and pointed to the starry sky, “there’s Antares! The heart of the Scorpion! I’ll follow it, farther and farther south. We may remain together, or I may wait until it appears again, for it is the most trustworthy of friends.”

“Nevertheless,” said Peterkin, “I have a feeling that it will be very little protection or friendship for you. When I think that in a few nights you will be sleeping in a strange city, in a strange bed....”

“Splendid!” said Myra. “That is the one thing that can give me peace. A room that I’ve never set eyes on before. And what if that room is already there and another person occupies it and fills it with his sorrows and joys and worries and thoughts? Must one always lie down in a strange bed with a feeling of aversion? There are no strange microbes and bacteria in a freshly made hotel bed.

“In the morning the strange bed will tell me everything it has ever experienced. That’s also a fairy gift, you know. I’m no longer afraid because things begin to talk to me. It is always the lucky children in the fairy tales or the wise men in the stories—King Solomon conversing with the birds—to whom things and animals and trees tell their secrets. You don’t know what that means. The whole world was so dreadfully mute. And now everywhere I hear beloved, familiar, inaudible voices. You can’t imagine with what joy and pride that fills one. See, Peterkin, that is something else that I learned from her, from Olga.”

“I am grateful to her for what hours of pleasure I may again find in this masked ball of life, but if the effort seems worthless to me, then I shall be grateful to her for showing me the exit.”

“Yes,” said Peterkin somewhat bitterly, “a loaded revolver.”

“Oh, more than that,” said Myra, “it isn’t done with that alone. Don’t you remember what the little mermaid yearned for, why she let them cut off her tongue, why she suffered a thousand agonies at every step she took—what only a great, a truly great love could give her? Well, Olga gave me that. Olga has given me everything one needs to confront the future with imperturbable calm—a loaded revolver and an immortal soul!”

X

Myra locked and bolted the door. She heard the footsteps of the maid grow fainter, a click as the electric lights were turned on and off, a latch lifted somewhere in the distance, the creaking of a hinge—more steps, probably on the next floor—and a slowly repeated, irregular sound as if an open window were banging. Then silence. Vast, overarching, empty, cool, dark, unmoving silence.

Myra had to make up her mind at last to take her hand from the lock and go to the electric button, although she was afraid of the sound of her footsteps and the rustling of her own skirt. She turned on all the lights, even the little lamps beside the bed and on the desk. In the overilluminated room, she stole along the walls, opening and closing the closets, raising the curtains and drawing them again.

She was not afraid that there might be a murderer hidden in the room, but she wished to familiarize herself with every detail of her strange surroundings. She was merely afraid that something might surprise, and thereby terrify, her. The unfamiliar furniture might assume the form of a phantom figure in the dark room, a draft might twist the curtains into human shape. She also examined the pictures very carefully. She recollected from feverish nights in her childhood that even well-known pictures, when seen in the dusk or in the penumbra of the night-lamp by the bed, can transform themselves into terrifying faces.

When she had examined the room in this fashion, she again turned out all the bulbs except one that shed only a very diffuse light. But there was no longer anything to terrify her in this twilight: Myra knew that that crouching shadow was the curved commode, and that unaccountable ray of light came from the edge of the mirror above the wash-basin, reflecting the reflection of the electric light in the mirror on the bureau.