Part 7

Myra was enthusiastic. “It’s beautiful, it’s wonderful! We go on, and we don’t know where. We get off, and we don’t know where. We’ll wake up early tomorrow morning in a strange city, and won’t know the name of it.”

“How strange that sounds!” said Olga, paraphrasing the words. “Like something really profound! We live—and we don’t know how! We love—and we don’t know why! We die—and we don’t know when!”

“No,” said Myra, “I don’t know when! Thank God! But I do know why! Also, thank God!”

The ghost of a shadow seemed to pass over Olga’s face as if she wished not to hear what Myra said. “I used to long so dreadfully to know when I would die,” she said reflectively. “I think it is so unjust for us to know absolutely nothing about how much time we have before us. We ought to have a right to regulate that! I used to envy a friend of mine who died of tuberculosis. She knew exactly—so much of my lung is left, I can live so much longer provided I economize, provided I spare myself. Or I have the choice of squandering the rest, of throwing away what’s left. That must be beautiful! As it is, you know, I never can leave my room until it is cleaned up, because I suffer so from the fixed idea—who knows if I shall ever return. The thought is so appalling to me that some time I may have just to step out of life and leave everything in disorder behind me!”

Myra was on the verge of tears. She wanted to conceal, to dispel the sadness that was tormenting her, so she said with affected rudeness, “Don’t you think you’re really insane? Perhaps you’ll be good enough to choose some other topic of conversation for this dismal night-journey! If you don’t, I’m going to sit in the next compartment until you’ve finished your meditations.”

“Child!” said Olga, smiling and clasping her hand. “You are quite right! Scold me! It’s because of my stupid oracle!”

“Oracle?” said Myra, astounded.

“Haven’t you found that out about me yet? I’m like these old peasant women who, whenever they are in trouble, stick a knitting-needle in the Bible and fish out a quotation.”

“But you haven’t got a knitting-needle,” said Myra, laughing.

“Nor a Bible either! The Bible must be an heirloom. A new one is no good. But you really don’t have to have a Bible for that purpose: you can take any book and open it. It’s remarkable, what answers you sometimes find. I asked yesterday, for example—when your telegram came—whether I should go to the depot....”

“And?” asked Myra in suspense.

“Oh, it’s all silliness,” said Olga with a wry smile. She turned away and stared intently out of the window into the black night that was flitting by them.

“Of course, it’s silliness,” said Myra sincerely. “But it worries you all the same. And you won’t see how really silly it is until you’ve told me. So tell me—then we can laugh at it together.”

Olga turned to her again. She was trying to maintain an uncertain smile.

“When Radomonte Gozaga entered Genoa—in some campaign of vengeance or other, I don’t remember just what—he wore a doublet on which was embroidered a scorpion. Under it was the legend: _Qui vivens laedit, morte medetur_.[1] Is that an answer or not?”

[1] “What life wounds, is healed in death.”

Myra seized Olga’s hand. She must rend some veil that the words, which had been uttered with such effort, had thrown over her.

“You are certainly insane!” she said. But her voice did not ring true. She had to clear her throat of a sudden huskiness.

* * * * *

The brakes ground under the coaches. “The sixth stop!” said Myra mysteriously, her eyes big. “The next is our fate. I hope to heaven, it isn’t a large city.”

When the train was once more in motion, they began to make ready to get off. The next stop might be ten minutes or an hour distant—they did not know.

They had placed their suitcase on the seat, and were standing side by side at the window, their faces pressed against the pane in an effort to penetrate the darkness rushing past.

“There are lots of woods in this country,” said Olga, “pine woods!”

“Yes,” Myra exulted, “we’ll go walking in them tomorrow.”

The woods ended. A slate-gray, clouded sky hung above long, gently rolling, dark fields. More trees, at first singly, then a thick black woods that extended to the railway embankment, and above which not a scrap of sky was to be seen.

Again, the trees grew more sparsely, disappeared. Again, broad fields. Then at a distance they could not estimate, as though set between the gently rolling furrows, a tiny light twinkled. Another, and another.

“Look! Look!” cried Myra, in raptures. “Maybe that’s our stop.”

“Strange,” said Olga, “maybe one of those lights will be in our window tomorrow morning. And perhaps we’ll have a feeling of home when we pass those lights ten years hence. But now we don’t even know the name of the place.”

A watchman’s shack flitted past. Now and again a section of shiny rails was lit up by a lantern. Once more woods grew right up to the tracks, but more open, criss-crossed by numerous paths. Then a hedge ran along beside them for a while. After the clipped hedge, a bright wooden fence. Behind it, quite close at hand, the outlines of individual houses already loomed darkly. A rather smoky lantern, and gates that closed a dark tree-bordered highway.

Other bits of woods and gardens. Beyond them, little light after little light. The train was slowing, creaking, puffing. Wooden columns flashed out suddenly, supporting the roof of a narrow shelter. The train stopped.

Olga seized the suitcase, lifted the latch and sprang down the high steps. Myra followed her, in a strange dreamy trance. She was worn out by the two sleepless nights; her senses, sharpened a thousandfold, seemed to notice everything. The thin film of hoar-frost that covered the earth and the trunks of the trees, the coarse faces of two women in peasant’s attire, who hurried past, the conductor’s long-drawn shout, the leisurely slamming of doors, the red hands in knitted mittens, of the man at the guard-gates, the little dark room, its walls pasted up with bills, and the worn benches, the whistle of the departing train behind her—all was impressed on her mind with ineradicable distinctness.

Olga pushed open a door, descended a flight of stone steps, and they were standing on the uneven flag-stones of a broad square, feebly illuminated by the lights of the station.

Left and right—pitch darkness. As far as they could see—nothing but bare, twisted trees, unpaved, sodden paths, slightly frozen over.

At a little distance there was something that resembled the beginning of a street.

Olga stood still and looked at Myra with a smile. “Well,” she said, “are you shivering already? What would you give now to be safe at home under a down-comfortable, with the electric light to turn on whenever you want it?”

“Nothing at all!” said Myra defiantly. “On the contrary, I think it’s extremely pleasant right here. And if we don’t find any accommodations, I shall mind it for your sake only. It was I who led you into this excursion!”

“Oh, for all I care,” said Olga deprecatingly, “for all I care, we can spend the night on those benches in the station. But if you’re afraid, we can go back and ask the man at the guard-gates if there’s a hotel.”

“No,” Myra insisted, “don’t ask. Let’s go on.”

A few hundred paces ahead of them, the houses began. Dark and sleeping or with an occasional lighted window. They stood rather apart, surrounded by their gardens and fields. The road was paved with cobbles. Presently the houses stood closer together, began to form a street which was illuminated by flickering lanterns.

The street broadened to a kind of market-place. It was a dreary polygon, without any artistic embellishments, lime-trees, or a purling spring. On one side, was a long, squat, gray box with a broad roof, sloping low, and several dormer-windows. Over the broad arch of the dark entrance a tin star was swaying, not unlike a shaving-basin, while a big blue lantern, swinging from a beautifully curved arm, illuminated the words: “At the Sign of the Blue Star. Hotel and stable accommodations.”

“Look,” said Olga, “even a hotel!”

They looked for a night-bell. But they could not find even a door. Beside the entrance-way was a handle for ringing a big bell at the end of a rusty iron rod. But it was difficult to reach. Myra made an attempt.

“Don’t bother,” said Olga, “that’s not for poor pedestrians like us. Moreover, we’ll wake up the whole town. Let’s try inside instead.”

They ventured into the dark cavern of the entrance, but did not get far. Before the passage could open into a court, a huge rack-wagon barred the way. But beside the wagon they found a flight of steps and a little wooden door in the wall. They felt a metal knob, tugged at it and succeeded in evoking a shrill ring that made them start, so hair-raisingly did it shatter the silence.

Steps, voices, a light.

A sleepy-looking individual appeared in the doorway, slippers on his bare feet, in grayish-yellow underwear, over which he had managed in some remarkable fashion to pull on a jacket that he held closed under his chin with his left hand. In his upraised right he carried a wax candle.

Olga took over the management of negotiations.

She told the sleep-drunk man a long tale of the train by which they had just arrived, and of how the “Blue Star” had had been recommended to her, and how she regretted having had to disturb his slumbers, but the trains arrived at such uncomfortable hours, and they couldn’t remain on the streets, and, of course, the people at the station had directed them here.

The man rallied sufficiently to say, “One moment, please!” vanished and left them standing there.

They looked at one another and laughed, waiting patiently. After some time a gas-lamp without a globe was lighted farther up the stairs, and the man reappeared, this time in black trousers.

The fact that he was collarless and wore neither a jacket nor stockings did not prevent a certain deftness of his movements from revealing at once that he was “mine host.”

He conducted them into a big, dark, cold room, jumped up on the cushion of a chair and lit the gas-jet. It was evidently the “Blue Star’s” “imperial suite.”

The high, broad bed, the ponderous plush sofa almost vanished in the vast room. Between the windows stood a huge, gold-framed mirror before which, on the console, were wax flowers under glass, while the walls were elegant with numerous gay prints, most of them in heavy gold frames.

“Mine host” stooped and lit a gas-heater. A long row of little pointed blue flames puffed up, were mirrored in a reflector of grooved copper that cast a warm and ruddy glow on the shabby carpet.

“Splendid!” said Olga, tossing her gloves on the big, round, plush-covered table. “Now it will be warm here, too. That’s simply ideal! No, sir, we don’t need another thing. We should like to have breakfast here in the morning. Is this the bell—splendid! Thank you! Good night!”

The door closed behind him.

“Wonderful!” said Olga, including it all in a wide embrace.

“Are you serious?” asked Myra timidly. “I was afraid your sense of beauty would be in constant agony! Those pictures! And those artificial flowers, and the plush-upholstery!”

“Simply splendid!” said Olga. “It just couldn’t be any different. I’d have been terribly disappointed if those fighting stags were not here, or that wonderful Empire maiden with the apple-tree in bloom. Do you think I want to see Chippendale furniture or a Kokoschka in the ‘Blue Star’? God forbid! As it is, I think it’s simply heavenly!”

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.