Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

She stood there long, long moments. But nothing, no one, came into sight. The emptiness stayed as empty as before. She re-entered the room at last, closed the door, and mournfully inclined her head against it on the inside in a desolate sort of way. Then that ended too, presently, as all attitudes and postures must sooner or later.

She moved away from there and roamed the room, without a destination, deep in thought, absently touching things as she went, to guide herself. He could not mean to stay away this long. He had lost track of the time. That must be it. That must be the explanation, there could be no other.

Perhaps if she called down, he would understand. Yes, but what genteel way was there to convey the message? “Would you ask my husband to come up, please?” She shuddered at that. It was so unthinkable it made her squeeze her eyes tightly shut for a moment. No, she couldn’t say anything like that. The man at the phone—

She tried out several other phrases in her mind, and rejected them as being almost as indelicate if not equally so. “Could you tell me what the time is, please? Our watch has stopped up here.” But the mere fact that she was watching the watch; he’d read between the lines — “Could you please arrange to have us called at such-and-such an hour?” But that was unsatisfactory from another point of view; that was almost too neutral. The man down there might take the request literally, and while accepting it, fail entirely to convey it to her husband, in which case nothing would have been solved.

She had stopped meanwhile by one of the valises, her own, and this finally, as she glanced down and noticed it, gave her the sought-after inspiration. The perfect phrasing in which to imbed her unspoken message. Completely neutral, and yet personal enough to require his participation. She rehearsed it to herself, in order to have the wordage arranged right and not be caught faltering at the moment of pronouncing it. Then, letter-perfect, she went to the wall telephone and brought down the corded earpiece from it. She wound the little crank and the connection was established.

A man’s voice, frighteningly immediate and immediately frightening, the gruffest voice a man had ever used in the whole world before, the harshest, the raspiest, said: “Yes, please? Can I be of service?”

She began too low, and had to start over at once.

“Beg pardon?”

“I said, I can’t seem to open one of our suitcases. My husband—” She swallowed hard, and almost spoiled it, but recovered in time. “Would you ask him if he has the key with him, please?”

“I will without fail, madam, just as soon as I see him.”

She’d had the same sensation once years before, when a small boy in a tree had dropped a soft splashy snowball on her as she passed below and it had struck and disintegrated at the nape of her neck.

“Oh, isn’t he—? I thought he was—”

“He went out of the building, madam. I saw him as he went past.”

“But are you sure it was—?”

“The night bellboy told me it was the young man from ’23.”

She didn’t speak any further. She hadn’t strength enough to hang up, she hadn’t fortitude enough to continue listening.

He must have sensed an urgency she hadn’t wanted to show. “Shall I send out and see if he’s outside by the entrance?”

She didn’t say anything. Her breath was too much in the way, rising up again before it had even finished going down, leaving no passage clear.

The wait was cruel and long. And this had nothing to do with measured time, for even had it been of no duration whatever, an immediate turnabout, it would have been no less cruel, no less long. The heart cannot measure, it can only feel; in a single instant it can feel as much as in a long slow hour, it cannot feel more than that.

There was a background murmur soon, as of tidings being brought, and then a clear-spoken address directly to her: “He doesn’t seem to be out there right now, madam. He may have taken a short stroll away from the hotel. Just as soon as he returns I’ll notify him that you—”

She heard him go, at the other end, and what was there to stay for anyway? But she stayed; just stayed there, on and on, through long slow minutes that never seemed to pass away.

At last she came away from there, a thin shining line down each cheek like silver threads unraveling from her eyes. She was cold suddenly, in mid-step, in mid-room, with a knifelike instantaneousness that temperature alone could never have brought about. Quivering spasmodically, with clenched teeth and rigidity of movement. Clutching for the warmest thing she could lay hands on, a woolen bathrobe, she encased herself in it like a cocoon, muscles too chill-bound to allow her to insert arms through sleeves. Covered up to her very eyes, she huddled in the chair they had once shared, feet folded up, a lumpy little woolen mound of misery.

The chill soon stopped. Only misery went on; whether warm blood or cold, the same misery. Her eyes stared hauntedly, fixedly, from just above the upended robe-collar; darkly shadowed now by long strain, perhaps darkly shadowed too by the fact that they were so recessed within the sheltering robe. Her mouth was hidden, and most of her nose. Only the eyes, like low-burning lamps of despair. Never wavering, scarcely blinking. Duller now than they had been before. Tearless too, for grief was past its early weeping stage; had become a deeper, unseen thing.

The night wore on, with a hush like funeral velvet draperies.

When she was a little girl, she had feared the night, as most small children do. Once, awakening too early and in the dark, she had cowered there uneasy and sent up a little plea: “Make the light come soon; make the night go away.” Now, it was the day she feared, the coming of light. For while the night still lasted, it might yet return him. But when the day came, she would have lost him altogether. She knew that well, knew that well. It was in the night that he had gone, and if the night did not bring him back to her, the day never would. His absence would be sealed forever. So now she prayed for darkness, prayed for night, the punishing night, to last beyond its span.

“Don’t let the day come. Don’t let it come yet. Wait till he’s back first. Then let it come.”

But mercilessly the night thinned away, as if there were a giant unseen blackboard eraser at work, rubbing it out. And in the new light he didn’t come, just as he hadn’t in the former dark. Still her eyes stared out over the woolen folds, looking nowhere, seeing nothing now. Duller than dull, hopelessly opaque.

She must have slept, or dozed awake at least. Her head went over a little to the side at last, became more inert. The eyes never fully closed, but lost some of their haunted fixity. The lids did not drop over them the whole way, but sagged to a somnolent meridian.

The fidgeting of the knob must have been hours after. No hope came with its fluttering, somehow. Hope would not come back; it had been dead too long perhaps. It didn’t even stir, strangely enough. Nor when the questioning tap came. Nor when it parted at the seams and a gap was made, empty the first few instants. Then an errant flounce of skirt peered momentarily, showing hope it had been right to lie there dead.

Above, a head looked cautiously in, everything else kept back.

The woman was in maid’s headgarb, ruched cap atop a massive pillow of upturned red hair, kept walled in by barrettes. She was buxom, florid, maternal in every respect. Save perhaps the actuality.

“Did I come too soon, now?” she murmured softly.

The eyes just looked at her.

“They told me one of the rooms around here was a bride and groom, but sure it’s the first day for all of us, and I would be getting mixed up like this.”