The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 53
INSIDE the house, she listened until the creak of boots on the snow died away. Then she moved off along the hall toward the corridor. She walked uncertainly and from time to time leaned against the wall for support. The spot of light from the electric torch preceded her slippered feet, a bright moving circle which seemed to devour and destroy the streak of flooring which it crossed on its way to the storeroom. Weakly she opened the door and stepped inside.
"It's all right, now. I've sent them away."
The books in the great box stirred with a heaving motion and out of them presently emerged Krylenko, pale and shaken. He climbed out and as his foot struck the floor, Lily gave a little cry and pitched forward so that he caught her suddenly. The electric torch dropped to the floor. The glass shattered with a faint pop and the room swam in a thick, soft darkness.
She did riot faint. In a moment she recovered herself and managed to stand upright, but she did not move away from Krylenko. She stood there, waiting. Slowly his powerful arms closed about her with the vague gesture of a man wakening slowly from a profound sleep.
"It's all right," she whispered faintly. "I've saved you."
He made no other answer than a faint crooning sound. He stroked her hair gently with his strong, calloused hand, and tried to quiet the violent trembling which once more had taken possession of her. Again the house was silent save for the distant, ghostly creaking.
Perhaps he was seized by an overwhelming sense of awe which until that moment he had never experienced . . . an awe for some unknown and terrific force against which he was helpless, like a little child. It may have been that, as Irene believed, he had never known any woman, that he had been pure as a saint. If these things had not been, it is impossible to say what might have happened. He stood holding Lily close to him, kissing with a strange, awed gentleness the white line of her bare throat.
He discovered presently that she was sobbing. . . . Lily, who never wept. It was a terrible heartbreaking sound as if, all at once, she had sensed the tragedy of a whole lifetime, as if she stood in a vast and barren plain surrounded only by loneliness.
Krylenko's hands and arms became unaccountably gentle. His cheek brushed against her white forehead with a comforting, caressing motion. And presently he lifted her as easily and as gently as he had lifted the wounded striker at Mrs. Tolliver's command, and bore her from the room and down the dark corridor. She lay quietly, still sobbing in the same heartbroken fashion.
Thus he carried her into the long drawing-room and placed her among the brocade cushions of the divan, her amber hair all disheveled, her eyes bright with tears. For a moment he stood by her side awkwardly, silent and incoherent, overwhelmed by some new and profound emotion. The fire of cannel coal had died down. In the grate there was nothing now but ashes. Silently he knelt beside the sofa and rested his blond head on her breasts. Neither of them spoke a word, but Lily's hand returned once more to the old gentle caressing motion across his tired eyes.
The minutes slipped away, one by one in a quick stream as if they were no more than the trickle of a clear spring water which is beyond all peril of drought, as if time itself were nothing and eternity even less.
So engulfed were they by the mood that even the sound of a key turning distantly in a clumsy lock and the echo of a light footfall in the hallway failed to disturb them. They were, it seemed oblivious to everything until suddenly there stepped through the doorway the thin figure of Irene in the worn gray suit and battered black hat. At the sight of them she halted, an apparition with a tired white face, drawn and quivering. It was not until she gave a low convulsive cry that Lily and Krylenko discovered she was watching them. Krylenko remained on his knees, only straightening his body to look at her. Lily turned her head a little, gently, listlessly, almost with indifference.
Irene had become hideous. In her eyes was the light of fury. When she spoke her voice was cold with an insane, unearthly hatred.
"So," she said bitterly, "it has happened!" The worn hat fell from her grasp. Her fingers intertwined with a strangling gesture. "I might have known it. . . . I should have guessed. . . ." And then her voice rose to a suppressed scream. "You are no better than a street walker! You are damned forever! I have prayed. . . . I have prayed but God himself could not save you. . . . He would not want you . . . a vile creature . . . a strumpet! . . . to destroy all that I have spent my life to create." She began to sob wildly. "To destroy in a night what cost me years."
Slowly, silently, Krylenko rose to his feet. He watched Irene with a look of bewilderment, as if he found himself in a wild nightmare. Lily turned away silently and buried her face in the pillows. A Fury had descended upon them unawares.
Irene continued to cry. "I have known always. . . . I have known from the beginning. . . . I knew about the Governor. . . . I saw him go into your room. . . . Only God knows how many men you have had. . . . You are lost, damned, forever!" The terrible sound of her weeping echoed and reechoed through the silent old house.
Lily raised her body from the cushions and sat with her silver slippers touching the floor. "What are you saying, Irene?" she asked. "You are mad. There has been nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing. You are mad!"
It was true that for the moment Irene was quite insane, yet her madness endowed her with the clairvoyance that is beyond sanity. She rushed toward Lily. She would have strangled her but Krylenko stepped between them and held her as if she had been an angry bad-tempered little child.
"Ah, don't lie to me," she cried. "I'm no fool. I can see. It is written in your eyes. Both of you. . . . I know. I know! . . . It is there! I see it!"
She struggled fiercely in the powerful grasp of Krylenko. "Let me go. . . . You . . . You are no better than the others . . . a common beast, a swine like the others . . . a swine like all men, lying to me all these years. And on a night like this. May God damn you both in Hell forever and ever!"
She freed herself and sank to the floor at Krylenko's feet. The tirade gave way to a torrent of wild hysterical sobbing. Her pale, battered face was all distorted, her thin hair disarrayed. She collapsed suddenly into a barren shattered old woman, abandoned by life. She had lost in her battle against something which was far stronger than herself, stronger even than Lily and Krylenko. She was broken, pitiful.
Lily sat by helplessly, her own tears dried now. She turned the rings round and round on her fingers and in the gesture there was a concentrated agony.
"You must not mind her," she said presently. "She is not well." Then she rose slowly and moved toward her sister. "Irene," she said softly. "Irene."
But Irene shuddered and drew away from her. "Don't touch me . . . evil one! Don't touch me!" she cried monotonously.
"Perhaps if she had rest," said Krylenko. "Perhaps if she slept."
Irene kept up moaning and rocking. "In the Flats they're dying. . . . In the Flats they're dying . . . and you two up here, like beasts all that time . . . like beasts!"
Lily began to walk up and down the long shadowy room in a wild distracted manner, as if the contagion of her sister's hysteria had touched her too. "There is nothing I can do," she kept saying. "There is nothing. . . . Perhaps if we left her . . ."
It was Krylenko who solved the difficulty. He bent over Irene and picked her up despite her protests. She screamed. She wept. She would have scratched and bitten him if his arms had been less powerful and his grip less certain. He turned to Lily. "Where is her bed?"
He spoke with a curious, intimate understanding. In an hour he had come nearer to Lily than ten years had brought him to the chaste fanatic sister.
Silently Lily led the way up the long stairs while he followed bearing Irene who moaned like a wounded animal. At the door of the room with the white bed and the pink-gilt image of the Virgin, he halted as if fearful of desecrating its purity. But Lily led the way boldly and together they laid the sister upon the narrow white bed. When they had gone out, closing the door behind them, the sound of her faint moaning haunted the dark hallway.
At the door of her own room Lily halted. "Wait," she said, and left him, returning in a moment, her arms burdened with blankets.
"Take these," she said. "It will be cold in the drawing-room." In all the confusion, she had not forgotten his wounds, his comfort.
Krylenko smiled vaguely. "It will be hard to sleep anywhere to-night," he said softly.
"But it is spoiled now . . ." replied Lily. "Everything."
And Krylenko turned away and went silently down the stairs.
It is true that no one slept until the dawn. Irene and Lily did not sleep at all. The one lay awake sobbing and praying, the other lay with her head buried in the pillows keeping her body rigid to still its wild trembling. Krylenko was the only one who slept. With the coming of dawn he sank into a deadening thick slumber among the stained brocade pillows of the rosewood sofa.
There he slept undisturbed until midday, for with the curtains tightly drawn there was no light to waken him. When at last he did waken, he found on the lacquer table beside him a note, which read;
"There are some things in this world which are impossible, things fate herself will not permit. This you will understand, I am sure. I have gone away. Irene has gone too. Where she has gone I do not know. Perhaps it does not matter. There is small chance of our ever meeting again. Our paths lie too far apart. . . . I have arranged for you to remain in the house . . . as long as it is necessary. As long even as you desire it. There is no one but yourself and the two black servants. They have been told. It is my house. It would please me to think of you there. It would please me . . . and my mother too . . . to know that you were safe inside it still leading the strike. It is a good place, for you can keep in hiding and still lead the fight. My blessings are with you and your cause."
The note was signed with Lily's name, and underneath it in the same sprawling hand was written, "O God! I love you. Good-by."
She had come in some time between the dawn and the broad daylight to leave the note by his side. She had passed him and gone away without a word, whither he could not possibly know. Nothing remained save a confused memory of her and this short, enigmatic, note which avowed nothing and yet everything.
For a long time Krylenko held the bit of paper between his strong heavy fingers, staring dully all the while at the generous impetuous writing, At last he took out a battered cigarette, put a match to it, and at the same moment set fire to the wisp of paper which he tossed among the cold ashes of the dead fire. . . . There are some things in this world which are impossible.
He got up and began pacing the floor angrily, up and down, up and down, scarring the polished floor at each step. It made no difference now. There was no one there any longer to use the floor. Presently he began muttering to himself. They are no different than the others. "They are all alike. When they are tired they run away because they are rich. Damn them and their money!"
And then all at once he went down upon his knees before the sofa and seizing one of the stained cushions in his arms, he kissed it again and again as if it were Lily instead of a feather-stuffed bit of brocade which he held in his arms.