Part 6

Myra strove in vain against the impression which the words made upon her. Her tensed nerves felt a cold breath that made her shudder to the very core of her being. It seemed to her like a warning cry from the darkly veiled future. Death—the end! A fearful something strode inexorably toward her, casting its cold shadow in advance. She shivered. She had to make an effort to regain her outward calm. She dug her nails in the arms of her chair and swallowed once or twice.

“All that is quite aside from the point,” she said at last with an effort. “Perhaps you will be so good as to tell me why they really called you in and what they have decided concerning me. If not an insane asylum, do they intend to shut me up in a cloister, or a reform school, or send me to America?”

The physician smiled. “None of those things. But you will leave in a short time to stay with your Uncle George and his family. There in the fresh air and amidst quiet surroundings, your nerves will grow strong again and you will be in a position to make sane and healthy judgments unassisted.”

“When do I leave?” asked Myra curtly.

“Today!”

“At least I have to pack my suitcase!”

“It has been packed while we were talking!”

That was what she had feared. Myra felt the walls, the hand-cuffs. She glanced about her like a hunted animal driven into a trap. No escape anywhere, no possibility of flight.

They were separating her from Olga. That was bad, but not the worst. They were doing it by force. They should have asked her to take this journey, they should have allowed her time, time to say good-bye, time for an explanation, time to pack her own things, her books. Now Aunt Emily was at her bureau, was packing for her, was rummaging around. In an hour she would be sitting in the train, without having been able to inform Olga. And Uncle George would be sitting across from her—as her keeper. And what would happen here in the meanwhile—to her desk, her books, to Olga....

She had a desire to tear something to pieces, to dash out her brains against the walls. She did nothing. She rose from her chair, quite pale.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“I am delighted,” said the Professor, rising at the same time, “that you agree to this journey.”

“Agree?” said Myra with a contemptuous twitch of the lips. “I submit to coercion because I know that all resistance is useless. If my Aunt wished, she could have dragged me off in chains, and my father would look on, and all the courts in the world would uphold her.”

The Professor went up to her and opened the door.

“Miss Myra and I find ourselves in perfect agreement,” he announced cheerfully. “I have prescribed a little change of air, and she is overjoyed to pass a few weeks under your hospitable roof, Herr von Seyblitz!”

Uncle George rubbed his powerful hands, Franz Rudloff attempted a feeble smile, and Aunt Emily made a surprised, and as it seemed to Myra, disappointed face.

She rushed up to the Professor and hissed in a low voice, but loud enough for all to hear, “But you told me, Professor, that you wanted to examine her, to see if there were not some physical abnormalities ... and I think....”

The Professor endeavored in vain to silence her by a slight motion of the hand and eyelids. It was too late.

Myra had already heard. Had suddenly, instantly, understood. It was too late.

She was conscious only of the fierce desire to see this horrible creature die under her hands. She did not know she moved. The floor moved under her feet. She heard a gurgling that was strange and hideous, and yet seemed to come from her own throat. She felt her fingers close on a thin, withered neck, felt at the same moment her own wrists gripped by hands that were like iron, gripped so tightly that all the blood seemed to stop in her veins and she thought she would smother. She felt she could not endure this torture one heart-beat longer.

“Let me go!” she growled. “Let me go!”

The physician immediately released her right arm, and a moment later Uncle George released her left.

Then her wrists began to ache. She rubbed them quite mechanically. She felt exhausted, quiet, shattered. She was almost happy at the idea that she must leave this house, these people, at once, this very moment.

She turned to the physician. “When does the train leave? Isn’t it time to get ready?”

“We are going the same way, I think,” the Professor remarked casually when the auto had drawn up before the door. “Have you room in the car?”

Myra looked at him in surprise and with a little smiling scorn. “Subterfuge is unnecessary, Professor, if you want to take me to the station. My family will gladly forego the pleasure. It is better for all concerned.”

She gave her father her finger-tips, which he clasped in both hands. “Good-bye, papa, take care of yourself.”

Aunt Emily drew back against the wall as if she feared a new assault on her life, but Myra passed her with a contemptuous glance.

The journey on the train was longer than she expected. Myra gazed intently out the window, striving to impress on her mind the name of every station, every village, every crossing. It was possible that she would have to return on foot.

She had no money—whether she would have the opportunity to pawn or sell valuables was doubtful. She glanced at the mileage-signs—fifty miles from home. She could make four miles an hour with ease. Too bad it wasn’t summer. It wouldn’t be pleasant passing the night in the open at two below zero.

VII

Myra sat on the window-sill in the bright, friendly mansard room, smoking a cigarette and polishing her nails. On the white cover of the sewing-table which Myra had degraded or advanced to a dressing-table, a thick, little, black book lay open—The New Testament.

The door was pushed ajar and her Cousin Herman insinuated himself through the crack. But he stopped midway and stood toying with the latch.

“Coming down for supper, or have you still got a headache?” he asked laconically.

“Shut the door, child,” Myra commanded in a low voice. She did not want the cigarette smoke to float downstairs and assail Aunt Antonia’s sensitive nostrils.

The boy closed the door but continued to toy with the latch.

“Why do you hang on to the door?” asked Myra, amused. “Come in, come in! Take a seat!”

The boy hesitated. “Of course, we’re not supposed to come up here,” he ventured. “But if your headache is better, I guess you can’t be sick any more!”

“Sick?” said Myra in some surprise. “Are you supposed not to come up here because I’m sick?”

“Yes,” said the twelve-year-old, too shrewdly for his age, “because it’s contagious!”

“Ah, Mannie!” Myra uttered a short laugh. “My sickness certainly isn’t contagious.”

“What kind of a sickness have you?” The boy drew nearer curiously.

Myra hesitated. The boy cast a covetous glance at the cigarettes.

“Give me one!” he begged suddenly.

“Certainly,” said Myra. “As many as you like. But you’ve got to mail a letter for me, secretly, so that not a soul sees you. Can you be depended on?” Myra glanced at him sharply and searchingly. The boy’s honor was touched.

“Do you think I’d let myself get caught?” he said with conviction. “What do you think I am, a dummy?”

He received the cigarettes and the letter and stowed them so artfully in his blouse that Myra smiled. “This is not the first thing he’s hidden from mother’s sharp eyes,” she thought.

But he was still reluctant to go. He hesitated for a while and then came out with it. “Say, what kind of sickness _have_ you got?”

Myra wondered what she should tell him. Then her glance fell on the cigarette case. “Well, Mannie,” she said after a pause, “I was bitten by a scorpion, and now the poison is all through my blood. And you know, the only thing that will cure a scorpion’s bite is scorpion’s poison. But there aren’t any scorpions here. It’s all superstition that it’s contagious. It’s only phalanges that are so poisonous you die from washing in a basin that’s been used by somebody who has been bitten by one. Your mother has mixed them up.”

“Then it’s not contagious?” asked the boy, venturing a step nearer.

“No!” Myra shook her head with a doleful smile, “I believe that people can die of it—but it’s not contagious.”

* * * * *

Young Herman, who undertook to convey the letter to the post-office with much secrecy and a most important air, was firmly convinced that it must be a love letter which had been confided to him. He would have been greatly astonished could he have learned that the letter spoke more of him, of little Herman himself, than of love.

“Formerly I used to hate my Uncle’s children,” Myra wrote after a matter-of-fact recital of the events of the past few days. “I had no reason to hate them except that they had such protruding ears. Tell me, dear, what has changed me so completely? Now I see character in every childish action, I see destinies inextricably bound up with those characters. I see that little Anna is going to have a hard time of it in life—not merely because her ears stand out—and I feel that I would like to help her, to give her something, to multiply the few happy hours of her life....

“I have made a discovery, Olga. You’ll laugh at me. My Aunt Antonia has closed the bookcase to me and laid the New Testament on my table. I have a suspicion that she meant to punish me with it. A year ago, at the height of my rebellion, I flung it against the wall and would never have believed that I could actually read it again. And yet we’ve made friends once more! What a glorious book it is! But you’ll laugh at my discovery of the fact. Is there anything beautiful on earth that you do not know and love?”

* * * * *

Uncle George and Aunt Antonia were most agreeably surprised by Myra’s behavior. They had expected an unmanageable child whom it would be necessary to tame, if the occasion required, force. They found a quite perfect and lovable young lady. Hence they disliked to be always restricting and supervising her, and allowed her one liberty after another.

Myra took full advantage of these liberties and began preparations for her flight. Day or night, she had never had any other intention and her constant preoccupation with such plans kept her in a state of almost wantonly happy excitement.

But the first problem was where to find money. Myra sold everything with which she could possibly dispense. Still it was not enough. She began to dispose of articles from the household. But that was difficult and impractical. In the first place, it might be discovered before she was gone, and then all would be lost. In the second place, the results did not repay the trouble it required, and it hurt her to see valuable things given away for a song.

One day Uncle George received a large sum of money by mail, and locked it away in the desk, in Myra’s presence.

Myra stared as if hypnotized at the locked desk. Here was all she needed, but how could she get at it?

She lay all night without sleeping, or even trying to. Her mind was working feverishly. Should she break open the desk that night? There was no train at that hour which would be certain to bring her to the city before daybreak.

Should she take a wax impression of the lock? The locksmith might become suspicious if she asked him to make the key. Should she steal the key-ring? They would miss it immediately and search the whole house. Should she remove the key to the desk from the ring? They would immediately notice that this most important key was missing.

The next day Myra procured a half dozen keys from the locksmith. She told him some story about a key to the bookcase which she had lost, and was delighted at the assured and unembarrassed manner with which she told it.

That night she stole down and tried the keys. Nearly all were easy to insert, but they did not unlock the desk.

Next day she asked for her Uncle’s keys in order to get a book from the library. While she was kneeling in front of the bookcase, she removed the key to the desk from the ring. In its place, she attached one resembling it.

She took a book from the case without seeing what it was.

As she handed the keys back to Uncle George, she felt sure he must hear the furious throbbing of her pulses. She thought her face must be as white as chalk and made an effort to set her frozen lips in a smile.

Her Uncle took the keys without glancing up from his newspaper, and with a brief “Thanks,” thrust them into his trousers pocket.

Myra packed her suitcase and sent a telegram. Late in the afternoon, she carried the suitcase to the station.

At half past seven they sat down to supper. The train left at half past eight. During supper Myra complained of a headache. At her request her Uncle gave her a headache-tablet and advised her to lie down immediately.

Myra said, “good night,” while the others were still at table.

In order to reach the stairs from the dining-room, she had to pass through the darkened living-room. While she listened to their voices in the adjoining room, expecting at every moment to hear a chair scrape as someone rose, she unlocked the desk and crammed a handful of bills into her pocket.

In the hall her coat was hanging, a piece of forethought. She slipped into it and opened the little rear-door that gave on the garden. She did not dare pass the dining-room windows in front.

There was nothing difficult about swinging herself over the low garden fence. She looked back once. That side of the house was completely dark. She listened. Not a door opened or window rattled. Then she turned and ran as if the Devil were after her, across the fields, to the station.

* * * * *

During the journey on the train, she fought against an agony of fear. She saw herself pursued, hand-cuffed. The train seemed to crawl along at an intolerable pace, and to stop much longer than required at each station.

At times she felt that it would be better to get out and run, simply to run and run and run until she had no more breath or strength, than to wait, an inactive, restless captive, until the lazy engine brought her to her destination.

With sudden terror she thought of the possibility that her telegram might not arrive in time or that Olga might not be at home to receive it.

And what in God’s name was she to do if Olga were not at the station!

To go home was impossible. She could already feel the straight-jacket and hand-cuffs. Should she rush through the night to Olga? Ring a strange door-bell and wake up the people in the pension? What right had she to do that?

There was nothing left but to take a room for a night at a hotel. But where would she be safe? Early next morning they would be searching everywhere for her. She shuddered to think of what lay ahead.

She shuddered, too, at the thought of a lonely night in a strange room.

There were moments, too, when she regarded her own actions with astonishment, terrified by her daring. Suddenly feeling the bills crinkling in her waist, she asked herself with amazement, “Good God, how did I ever manage to do it?”

At eleven twenty the train arrived at the depot. The light and the tumult in the buzzing hall whose vast vault was lost in darkness, was still more alarming than the silent night of the fields.

But Olga Radó was there.

Amidst that sea of hurrying, scurrying, searching people she stood perfectly still, but drawn up a little taller than usual. Surrounded by stupid, stolid, deformed faces, her own pale face shone brightly. From under her dark brows, which were knitted as if threateningly, her dark eyes sparkled and peered along the line of coaches.

Myra flung open the door before the train stopped. Regardless of all, she forced her way through the crowd, jabbing her suitcase into people’s knee-joints. She stretched out her hand, no, she clutched like a falling man at a support, crying between tears and laughter, “Olga!”

Olga’s face which had turned abruptly to her, remained grave. Not the ghost of a smile relaxed those tense features.

“Myra!” she said in her deep voice. “My child! What folly are you up to now!”

Myra was a little taken aback. Not much. She would have preferred another reception—but what difference did these words make to her or the tone of these words? Olga was there. She gazed into her face, held her hand, listened to her voice.

Now everything was all right.

“Are you angry?” asked Myra, her eyes laughing, while she clung to Olga’s hand. “If you really are angry, you old Philistine, I won’t even dare confess all the wicked things I’ve done!”

“I’m not angry,” said Olga earnestly, “I simply refuse to be in any way responsible. If you’ve run away, that’s your affair! I have not influenced you to it by a single word, a single glance. I knew nothing about it. I want to get that straight now and forever!”

“Yes,” said Myra, “but as soon as you’ve got it straight, perhaps you’ll tell me whether or not you’re glad to see me.”

“If I must be candid,” said Olga with a vague smile and without looking at Myra, “I’m not unglad that you’re here, but I’m a little disturbed. Have you reflected at all as to what is to become of you now?”

Myra had thought about it. But reflected? No, that was certainly not the right word. She had thought of herself as coming to Olga in order to be with Olga, to remain with Olga. She had pictured herself in Olga’s comfortable room, the one room in which she had known happy hours, had meant to hide herself there, never to go into the street, never to go home—now she was aware of the folly of the idea and did not dare to declare it to the shrewd eyes watching her.

“I don’t know,” she said pitifully. “I only know that I can never go home, never, never, never, never! I’ll look for a job as a nursemaid or a chambermaid—anything!”

“Then you might just as well have remained where you were. They certainly wouldn’t have beaten you or let you go hungry. Or do you expect that you’ll have more freedom as a maid?”

“Yes,” said Myra defiantly, “at least I’ll have my Sundays free and nobody can forbid me to spend them with you!”

“Do what you like as far as I’m concerned!” Olga stood still and closed her eyes for a moment as if in mortal terror. “You are positively brutal, Myra! Don’t you see how you’re going to incriminate me! I can’t accept responsibility for this, I can’t!”

They were still standing on the platform which was by then almost emptied of its swarming crowds. Only a few night-travellers were still hurrying toward the exit.

Myra felt tired and shattered; the light suitcase was like a ton in her hand. The draught in the vast hall made her shiver.

“Can’t we sit down in the waiting-room for ten minutes?” she asked dejectedly. “Perhaps if I think about it quietly, something will occur to me that I can do. But if you feel so tired, why don’t you go home?”

“Yes,” said Olga, “and leave you sitting here alone all night in the depot! Have you gone clean crazy, my dear child?”

They sat in the empty waiting-room, warming their cold fingers on their glasses of hot tea. Myra related the story of her flight. She took the crinkled bills out of her waist and thrust them into her pocket.

Myra had almost expected Olga to laugh. While she was telling the story, the whole business struck her like an incredibly comical adventure. But Olga’s face remained intensely serious.

“And now?” she asked.

“I’m going to a hotel!”

“And I?”

“You are going back to your pension!”

“I won’t leave you alone.”

“Come with me, then,” said Myra with a flare of hope.

“Yes,” said Olga bitterly, “and the first thing tomorrow morning the police will come and arrest us. No thank you. I’ll probably be accused of making you commit grand larceny.”

“Then,” said Myra after further reflection, “in that case we’ll have to behave like real embezzlers. That is, take the next train and keep going. We’ll simply get off at some station or other and go to a hotel. From there I’ll write my father, and beg him first of all to straighten out the money business. Perhaps he’ll be reasonable and I’ll be able to come to some agreement with him. In six months, I’ll receive my grandmother’s legacy. If my father won’t give me anything, I’ll borrow against my legacy: it can be done somehow.” Myra looked at the huge schedule. “The next train leaves at midnight!”

Olga’s face had lost its stern expression. Her eyes were laughing with a deep joy. But she still hesitated.

“You’re absolutely crazy!” she said. “No night-dress, no toothbrush!”

“I have linen enough,” said Myra eagerly, “and we can buy a toothbrush!”

“What ideas you do have!” said Olga slowly.

Myra saw that she was already half convinced.

“Grand ideas!” she said radiantly. “Fascinating, entrancing ideas. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, but _I_ never would have thought of it,” said Olga emphatically. “_You_ talked me into it. It’s your idea and no one’s else!”

“Absolutely! I’m much too proud of it to let anybody else claim the authorship.”

* * * * *

The midnight train was a passenger train. They sat alone in a compartment for non-smokers, that was dimly illuminated by the blue-shaded light in the ceiling. They made an unsuccessful effort to remove the shade in order to turn on the little gas flame full force.

“Let it be,” said Myra in fun. “It’s better for us if the compartment is dark, then our pursuers can’t recognize us from outside.”

Myra was in such high spirits that she elaborated the idea into a merry comedy and even induced Olga to take part.

They played at flight. They stooped whenever anybody passed outside. They breathed freely again as soon as the train had started. Myra did her hair differently so as not to be recognized. They “bribed” the conductor with the “sum” of three marks not to let anybody enter their compartment and afterwards, were worried lest the enormous tip might cause them to be suspected as embezzlers.

“You know,” said Myra mysteriously, “we certainly ought not to get off at the place our tickets call for. If we do, they’ll be after us immediately. We’ll simply get off at some other stop.”

“Yes,” Olga agreed, “seven stops from here. Seven is a mystic number.”