Part 19

“Intoxication, intoxication,” Myra thought, “I must force myself to feel what the others feel! I had such a nice warm sense of well-being before, a soft gliding dizziness. Why has it gone and left everything so stale and horrid?”

She tossed off two glasses of champagne quickly, one after the other. But she simply felt a dull heavy pressure over her eyes. She held her hand over the glass that Kraft wanted to give her “to make her happy.”

“No, thanks, please, I have a head-ache, and I won’t become happy anyway.”

“Take a little coke and get rid of your head-ache,” suggested Gisela.

“Perhaps.” Myra was ready for anything.

From all sides little gold and silver boxes were offered her.

She took a pinch of the white powder on the back of her hand, and snuffed it up her nose. She had an impression of powdered snow when she saw the white crystals. The room was close and stuffy and the idea made her feel better. It was as if she were breathing pure clear winter air. The top of her skull opened and the depressing fog that had weighed down her brain all evening disappeared. The veils seemed to be torn from her weary eyes. Everything seemed nearer and clearer, firmer in its outlines, brighter in color.

“Thank God,” she said with relief, “I’m beginning to understand. It really is a glorious feeling.”

But the effect wore off quickly. She tried it again.

Her head was clear, her thought firm. She felt well and secure.

Giesbert was paying her rather thick-tongued compliments. “Shplendid, little Rudloff, shplendid! The little girl can carry off a thing or two! My highest reshpects! She’ll drink ush under the table, Will, and ‘shnow’ us under the floor, into the cellar, under the cellar. We jusht won’t be there at all, she makesh ush look shmall, sho shmall!”

Mara Luigi had changed places with Kramer in order to sit beside Myra. She laid both her arms on the arm of Myra’s chair and spoke to her in a low voice.

“Tell me honestly, why is it you don’t like me? I’ve always liked you so immensely. From the very first moment—I’m right in saying that, am I not, Gisela? But at the same time, I’ve always had the feeling that you couldn’t abide me. I’m too feminine for you, eh? But, believe me, the externals have very little to do with it! Or do you prefer bobbed hair? Shall I have my hair bobbed?”

“Myra is the only woman in the world I’d ever marry,” declared little John like a sleepy child. “I’d marry Myra right off, if I were a man!”

“God, what a fore-leg the lady has!” Kraft put his hand around her wrist admiringly. “Show us your feet too!”

Laughing, Myra pressed her crossed feet against the edge of his chair. He stroked her ankles in their sheer silk stockings.

“Yes, you may stroke them,” John conceded magnanimously, “you may stroke them because it’s Myra, that’s why.”

A great and almost thrilling joy surged over Myra. She felt herself beautiful, desirable and desired.

“She has the most beautiful legs in the world,” said Gisela, pulling back Myra’s skirt to her knees. Myra let her do it without protest. For the first time, in a burst of pride, she realized herself what perfect slender legs she had.

The girl at the other table, who looked like a Greek boy, had been constantly trying to attract Myra’s attention. Every time that Myra glanced up, the Greek boy would carry her glass to her mouth. At first she had done it as if by accident, now she smiled as she raised her glass. Myra smiled back and drank to her.

Presently the girl wanted to get up. The people at her table laughed and tried to restrain her. But she would not be deterred.

Glass in hand, she came over to Myra. The effort to walk without staggering, lent her movements an especial grace.

“I want to drink to you,” she said with a challenging little laugh.

Myra raised her glass. They drank.

The stranger hesitated. “And—I’d like to give you a kiss, too—that is, if Gisela will allow me.”

Everybody at the table laughed aloud and shouted remarks.

“Oh, I allow you,” said Gisela ironically.

“There is nothing for her to allow,” Myra contradicted haughtily.

The stranger bent quickly, and Myra felt against her lips a hot open wine-wet mouth—for the space of a second. She closed her eyes, and since her head was pressed back into her shoulders, and Kraft still held her feet on his chair, she became so dizzy that she gripped her chair with both hands. She felt as if the chair were tipping, the whole room swaying, as if she were on a swing that was plunging through the air, or on a ship whose planks were sprung and were being sucked into a raging whirl-pool.

She sat up and pushed away the stranger almost violently in her need for air.

At the same moment, she saw Gisela jump up, deathly pale, with her mouth distorted, her head stretched forward like a panther ready to spring. Her burning eyes were staring at the entrance door.

Involuntarily Myra followed her glance and saw the dark curtain fall into place behind the latest arrivals.

Beside Ulrich Zeeden’s somewhat stooped figure stood Fiametta, on the arm of a tall, slender elegant man.

Her eyes were large and clear and unsurprised, but full of a probing curiosity and of a warm velvety sheen. To Myra it seemed as if those eyes were not an arm’s length away from her, so distinctly could she observe the play of the lids, the flecks of light on the brown iris, the shadow of the lashes.

Those eyes were raised with a soft gleam to the man at her side as if they had had more than enough of the scene before them. Her lips moved. The man nodded in agreement. All three turned, and the curtain fell into place behind them again.

Gisela seized a glass from the table and flung it with a bitter laugh at the door. Giesbert and Kraft instantly caught her wrists. She resisted, trying to free herself, but finally dropped her head on her breast, and began to cry, loudly, unrestrainedly, hysterically.

The other people, occupied as they were with themselves, nevertheless watched her attentively.

Myra began to tremble in every limb.

“Go!” she muttered. “I must go, must go, must go!”

She felt as if she would join in that strident weeping the next moment, or throw herself on the floor, or overturn the table and trample the glasses and bottles under her feet.

She was glad when she found herself in the street at last, in a cold blue dawn, and still gladder to be in the taxi that they all took.

The air brought her to her senses. She felt beastly wretched.

She made the others swear not to cause any unnecessary commotion on the stairs or in the halls. But the more she pleaded, the more exuberant they became. Kramer had lost control completely. He was all for knocking on Mrs. Meidinger’s door and ordering her to send him up a pretty girl.

“It’s no more than her duty,” he babbled. “She’s the mother of this establishment. What’s to prevent her putting it on my bill, she puts everything else on it.”

When Myra opened her door, Giesbert tried to crowd in after her. She pushed him out, but he embraced her and a tussle ensued in the open door in the course of which Giesbert hugged Myra and covered her face and neck with passionate kisses.

Suddenly the door of the next room was opened with a bang, and Luisa Peters emerged in an amazing big-checked dressing-gown, with her hair done up for the night in two long smoothly plaited braids. She forcefully commanded quiet.

Little Marga Luigi found her unexpected appearance so comical that she bent double, shaking with laughter and pointing her finger at her.

Myra took advantage of Giesbert’s astonished about-face to slip into her room where she shut and bolted the door.

She staggered against the bureau with which she supported herself, trembling in every limb. Burning shame was devouring her, gnawing at her inwardly, hollowing her out.

She bent double but she could not escape the incessant gnawing pain. She wished she could get away, but she knew she did not have the courage or the strength to pack a suitcase. But she must get away, at least out of that house, before morning. It was unthinkable that she should ever cross the dining-room again. Unthinkable, too, to wait for Mrs. Meidinger to give her notice that she could not tolerate such a person in her house.

She abhorred, she loathed herself. In addition she felt physically wretched—dizziness, weariness, a galloping heart, the gall-like bitterness with which the cocaine burned her jaws.

She felt that she must come to some decision, but she did not know what.

Her thoughts sought feverishly for something to which they could cling, sought some person to whom they could confess, and who would have the power to absolve them. She was seeking someone who would protect her from herself, to whom she could kneel, in whose lap she could hide her face, and who would lay kind, strong hands on her head.

“Mother!” a voice cried within her. “Mother!”

Her thoughts turned to Sophie—but Sophie repelled them. In that serene little house, which had always been so comforting a refuge to her, she would be a disturber of the peace. Not through any fault of hers, she thought bitterly.

Olga—Olga alone was salvation. She would press the revolver to her forehead, would think that it was Olga’s cool, firm hand.

And Olga’s hands would efface, erase, all the painful things, the shame, the remorse, the disgust and grief and hopeless despair. In another moment all that could be effaced.

And if she was dead the next morning, everything would be explained. Of course, little Mara Luigi would not understand it: she would always declare that Myra had been “so cheerful last night.”

But Fiametta would understand. She would recall the previous night. For she had seen Myra, oh, Myra still felt the impact of her glance, and Fiametta would hunch up her shoulders with a sudden shudder at the thought that she had glanced at a dying woman.

Luisa Peters would say, “Poor child, she drank to find the courage.”

Sophie would be very shocked—perhaps she would be grieved too. But what concern was that of Myra’s! Sophie had not given a thought as to what became of Myra. And she had Nora....

It must happen quickly before anybody woke up in the house. In twenty seconds it would be over—all over.

At that moment when she took the revolver out of the box, there was a knock at the door.

Myra stood motionless, holding her breath. Perhaps she ought to do it now, at once, quickly, spurred by that impatient knocking.

Then it would be over, then whoever was outside there could enter, for all she cared.

Would it make a loud noise? Probably she wouldn’t hear it herself—she hoped not, though of all the senses the ear must function the longest. Ah, perhaps it wouldn’t happen so quickly, and she would hear them breaking down the door and the shrieks and cries.

“Please, open the door!” called the voice outside; it was as pleading as it was commanding. “Please, Miss Rudloff, open the door a moment!”

It was not Giesbert, or Mara Luigi, or one of the maids. It was Luisa Peters.

Perhaps she was sick and needed someone. She would hardly be rattling Myra’s door in the middle of the night to read her a moral lecture.

Myra tossed the revolver carelessly into the box and opened the door.

Luisa Peters forced her way into the room. She stood broad and robust, and a little ridiculous in her big-checked dressing-gown, in spite of her pale face.

Her quick alert eye instantly noticed the open box and the revolver with the butt sticking out.

But she did not betray this by the slightest gesture.

“I must beg your pardon, Miss Rudloff,” she said with a good-natured smile. “I complained because I thought that you came home in a rather happy condition. But I saw at once that you weren’t well. You must lie down immediately—you can hardly stand on your feet. Can I help you? You had better believe, I know something about taking care of sick people!”

While she was speaking, she took Myra’s hat from her tangled hair. She unbuttoned her dress. She held Myra like a doll, turning her this way and that with her strong arms. She removed the hurting hair-pins from the loosened knots.

Suddenly Myra felt the warm presence of a human being, felt those good, strong, solicitous hands. It was as if all her festering wounds broke open and warm blood washed away her pain. She began to weep, unappeasable gentle tears, releasing her, rinsing her of pain.

“I am still too much a child,” she said, while the tears streamed down her face. “You will think I am drunk—but I am perfectly serious. I am still too much a child to run around the world so horribly alone!”

* * * * *

For three days Luisa Peters held Myra in gentle captivity. She did not leave her alone for a moment, had her meals served in her room and turned away everyone with the announcement that Myra was sick.

Myra was perfectly satisfied with this arrangement. She herself would not have found the strength for this lie, and yet she felt the absolute necessity of separating forever from all the people among whom she had lived during the past year.

The very first day Luisa Peters endeavored to convince Myra—which did not prove difficult—that her associations were altogether unsuitable and that the best thing she could do would be to turn her back on that city and all her so-called friends.

On the third, in the morning, she told Myra a great deal about her native city, of its far-famed cleanliness for which she was constantly longing, of its people who were reputed stiff and formal because they did not wear their hearts on their sleeves—although they were honest and courageous and pure. She told her, too, about her beautiful little step-sister, Gwen, who was about Myra’s age, though still a child, the carefully sheltered pet of the whole house. She would be a more suitable companion for Myra than these horrible females here.

In the afternoon she helped Myra pack her suitcase. Myra wanted to go away, to go to the clean city where the swift white little boats crossed the blue waters.

Myra was quite touched by so much kindness and more so, if anything, by Luisa’s confidence.

She smiled, a sad and knowing smile, when at parting Luisa Peters took her in her arms and kissed her on both cheeks.

“At heart I’m at least ten years older than she,” she thought sorrowfully, “for I know what, God be praised, she does not even suspect—that she’s in love with me! Because she has little of the talent of ‘the horrible females,’ she’ll never confess it to herself. Probably she’d have to shoot herself, if she admitted it. God grant, that she never becomes conscious.”

The only person whose hand Myra wished to shake once more was Eccarius. There was much sympathy in his face. Perhaps Luisa Peters had informed him of more than Myra gave her credit for knowing.

“There is something that you still have to tell me,” said Myra with an attempt at smiling, “I’ve often thought of it on sleepless nights and have wanted to ask you—and then I’ve always forgotten. Do you remember when we were walking out to Mrs. Hersfeld’s one day”—a sudden shyness prevented her from mentioning Sophie’s name—“I said that my motto would be ‘Love life and be not afraid of death!’ But you wanted to turn the motto around....”

“Yes,” Eccarius nodded gravely. “‘Love death and be not afraid of life!’ Or in other words, and this is my life’s motto, a good motto for a long journey, ‘No one ought to die until he has learned to love death!’”

XVI

Somewhere The long white roads lead well away: Somewhere Will lead me home on earth, some day.

Myra was sitting on the terrace with the older women, with Mrs. Peters, with Mrs. Borgessen, with Mrs. Wietinghoff, and with the young Mrs. Vandahl who because of her condition felt a little awkward and preferred to sit still in her basket-chair rather than amuse herself with the “young people” in the garden.

Nearly all the women had some knitting in hand at which they worked more or less attentively. The conversation flowed along quietly, without haste, but also without stopping.

Myra looked down at the white net through which, also without haste but without stopping, she plied her needle in and out, silently rejoicing that she did not need to take part in the conversation. All she had to do was keep her eyes on her work. She need only look up and speak when she was spoken to. As a result, she seemed demure and young-girlish, and nobody ever suspected what a gloriously comfortable feeling that was.

She had sat on that terrace frequently in the last few months, but that day for the first time she felt the beauty of the garden, the quiet voices beside her, the clear calls from the tennis court, everything—colors, fragrances, sounds—with a sense of ease and comfort and grateful enjoyment.

For weeks and weeks she had lived in a state of secret apprehension like a criminal in flight. A hundred times, she thought she saw Gisela or heard her voice. A hundred times, when she tore open a letter from Luisa Peters, she expected to read that Gisela had come to some horrible end. A hundred times her heart had throbbed so violently that she had had to struggle for breath. And a hundred times her fear and anxiety had been unnecessary.

She often repeated to herself that there was really no need to fear a scandal, since the opinion and favor of these people was of no account to her anyway. And yet there were moments when she had to confess to herself that it would be less terrible to learn of Gisela’s death than to see her suddenly appear from somewhere—here on the terrace of the Peters’ house, for example. Some vexatious scene was sure to result, an unsavory scene of which she would willy-nilly be the central figure. She could picture it to herself down to the smallest detail, so that she would turn pale and blush, and the blood would hammer in her veins.

More than once she resolved to affect an astonished and injured expression, a bewildered smile. When she had found her poise sufficiently to deny the acquaintanceship, they would, they must take Gisela for a mad woman and have her put out by the servants.

Myra went over and over it during her sleepless nights. She saw Gisela’s face as distorted with hate and pain and vengeance as at that moment when she had flung her glass after Fiametta.

And she would hear herself saying in a very clear and calm voice, “I am so frightfully sorry, Mrs. Peters, to be the occasion of such a scene in your house. But I assure you I have never seen this—lady before in my life.”

It would make a very good impression if she paused for a moment before the word “lady,” much better than if she were to say “person.”

Perhaps it would be cleverer yet to go right up to Gisela and speak to her in a big sister tone. “Won’t you tell me where I have met you before? Where did you learn my name? I know you, of course, but for the moment I can’t recollect—won’t you help me? Did we perhaps go to school together?”

Or might she not produce the best impression by playing the terrified maiden, by fleeing behind a chair and trembling, or by seeking protection from the ladies. “Help me! What does she want with me? Do you understand what she wants with me? Do you know her? Do you know who she is?”

Yes, perhaps that would be the most natural course for a well-bred and somewhat timid young lady when attacked by a lunatic....

She would lie, lie to the limit—although she really did not care very much for the opinion of Mrs. Peters, or the opinion of Mrs. Borgessen. But she wanted peace, she wanted to be completely enveloped in an invulnerable cloak of propriety and convention. She wanted never again to be exposed, never again to let the shirt be torn from her shoulders. Never again should a contemptuous glance strike her. Her skin had become sensitive, so incredibly sensitive—a glance in which she did not read kindliness and friendliness hurt her.

Oh, how well she understood Olga Radó, who had denied her, pitilessly denied and handed her over. She had been hunted till she was worn out. Her skin had been seared with contemptuous glances. She could not endure another glance and did not mean to. She was afraid of glances, her fear of them amounted to the paltriest cowardice.

But she had not been afraid of a loaded revolver....

Now Myra had reached the same pass.

She was prepared to die rather than endure contempt. And prepared to lie, with a straight face, with a clear voice, to lie cold-bloodedly, not for any personal advantage, not ever for the sake of respect, but from shame, from the profoundest, most abysmal shame, in order that the protecting mantle might not be stripped from her naked soul.

Of course, she had never loved Gisela. But sometimes it seemed to her as if she were capable of denying even her greatest and most sacred love.

That was when she trembled with fear of the Moebius girls. Might it not be that she would suddenly see Fannie’s and Emmie’s reddish blonde heads bob up? Might she not suddenly confront one of them, totally unprepared?

Yes, and in this case it would do no good to declare them insane. No one would ever question the sound intelligence of the Moebius girls. Certainly no one here.

But what could they convict her of after all! Myra could meet every attack with a counter-attack. Myra had met Olga Radó at the Moebius house. “Our cousin,” they had proudly called her then. All she need do was inquire of them about their “relative,” and ask with surprise if it were true that Olga Radó was dead. Had she really shot herself?

Only, she must not weep as she asked it....

And whenever Myra thought that she must not weep, the tears would begin streaming down her face.

But presently she would grow calmer. She was no longer thinking of the possibility of such encounters. The last year seemed to her somewhat unreal, vague and meaningless. The memory of Olga Radó persisted. But she now remembered most vividly the first period of their friendship, and the pure adoration she had felt for Olga’s intellectual superiority, her accomplished manner, the distinguished and captivating quality of her entrances and exits. Myra was inclined to think less frequently of her burning tenderness, of the agony of a farewell which could not even be called a farewell—less frequently of her death.