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

The eyes just looked.

“Shall I step out and be coming back a little later then?”

A voice like the echo of far-off sound said: “It doesn’t matter.”

“Did the young man step out for a minute?”

The far-off voice said: “He’s gone.”

She advanced more fully into the room now, concerned. “What’s the matter, darlin’? What ails—?”

The bunched-up robe suddenly exploded like an overstuffed pod, lay there flaccid, the chair was empty, and she was clinging to her, and being clung to. Someone of one’s own kind, another woman. Someone like your mother, someone like your sister. Someone like — you.

The maid held her, and patted her, and coaxed her. “Sh, darlin’. Sure and he’ll be back before you know it. Any minute now, through the door he’ll be coming.”

“He won’t. He won’t. He never will again.”

“How lang ago did he leave? How lang is it he’s gone?”

“At twelve. I think it was at twelve. But I don’t know any more. I can’t remember any more.”

“But sure, darlin’, it’s only a little after two o’clock now.”

“At twelve last night.”

The ruddy face whitened. For a moment her eyes were frightened too, then she covered it up. She patted the girl some more, she held her to her. Then she left her briefly, saying she’d be back. The girl just stood there exactly where she’d left her, like someone deprived of her own powers of locomotion.

When the maid came back she held a thick crockery mug of steaming tea. She led her, like an automaton, to the chair and into it, and held the mug up to her lips.

“Come, now. This’ll do you good. They have a little closet on each floor at the back of the hall, with a gas-ring in it, so we maids can brew ourselves a cup of tea at noon.” She stroked her hair a little as the girl tasted of it. She finally left the mug in her hands altogether. Then she turned to make the bed, from habit that was already fixed by morning-long practice. When she saw she had no need to, she drew in her lips in unspoken commiseration, and quickly turned away again with an almost pirouette-like rapidity.

She sat down herself then, in solacing camaraderie, but on the very edge of the chair, to show that her stay was stolen and had to be a short one.

She asked what her name was, the girl’s. This brought on pain again, but the mug was there to conceal the flickering her lips made. “It was to have been Compton.”

The maid quickly spoke of her own, to snare her mind away. “Mine’s Ann, spelt shart, without the e. I don’t know why they left it aff, but as long as they did, I might as well keep it that way. Ye can write it quicker that way.”

She rose soon and had to leave her, telling her she had half the floor still to do, but promising to look in on her a little later. “I’ll be right out there somewhere. Cahll me if you want anything, and I’ll drop the broom and dustpan and come to you in a minute. Don’t you want to get a little rest now.”

The girl averted her eyes from the bed almost in horror. “I couldn’t get in there. I couldn’t.”

“Let me fix you in the chair, then.” She put a pillow behind her head and, daring the official wrath, for all the bedding was new, slipped another to the floor underneath her feet. She took one of the blankets and deftly spread it over her. She stroked her hair soothingly, before turning to go. “Is there no one ye want me to tell, for you, now?”

The girl said plaintively, “There was only he. Who else could there be?”

She left as she had entered the first time, gradually; her face remaining to peer back after the rest of her was already hidden.

“Come back soon, Ann,” the girl whispered.

A flirt of skirt in the door-seam, just like the first time, and she was gone.

She had left the chair when Ann next entered. This was quite some hours later, and she was crouched on the floor, head and shoulder supported upright against the dresser. One of the drawers peered open. Against her she held pressed a man’s white shirt, still buttoned in a flat oblong. One empty papery sleeve she had drawn up around her own shoulder, as if seeking a phantom embrace. She was awake.

Ann said nothing, drew it subtly away from her, and it deftly vanished from sight. She got her back to the chair again. She had brought more tea, and this time slabs of buttered white bread. The tea she got her to take, the bread she couldn’t.

“And is there no one you’re going to tell about this, darlin’?” she breathed coaxingly.

“I have no one. Who is there?”

Then, belatedly, she noticed a change in her comforter’s appearance. “You’re going away. You’re going to leave me.”

Ann had on a short pinched-in jacket, a bell-shaped ground-trailing skirt, and on her head a flat saucer-like straw hat from which looped three cherries, one of them on a broken stem. “I have to, darlin’. Sure I finished up lang ago. I hung behind all I could. I even asked the housekeeper could I be staying with you in here tonight. ‘An employee in one of the guest-rooms? Out of the question!’ You know how they talk.”

The girl wrung her hands, and bowed her forehead against them. “Oh, what’ll I do? All night in here, alone.”

“I’ll be here bright and early. I’ll look in at you the first thing.” She drew her from the chair, and tried to guide her across the room.

At the last minute the girl noticed the destination, shrank back. “I can’t. Don’t ask me to. I’ll keep staring at the door, and the door’ll keep staring at me. Like last night.”

“Is it the door that bothers you, now?”

“All night long I’ll watch it, waiting for it to open.”

“If I cover it so ye can’t see it, then will ye try to sleep?”

“But how can you?”

The purposeful Ann looked about, for a daring moment even eyed the drapes. Then, discarding such a job-risking choice, came to a heroic decision. Modestly she turned away from her protégée. Up, in bunchy awkwardness, went the ground-trailing skirt. Down, in sudden release, came a petticoat. Not new, not even whole perhaps, but her own, all she had to give. She stepped clear, the skirt subsided, and the diminution could not have been detected.

She picked it up, went to the door, and held it outspread against it in measurement. It was inadequate.

“Wait, now,” she said determinedly, though nothing had been said.

Her arms came close together, widened with a rending noise, and the petticoat had opened from waist to hem into twice its former area.

“Oh, no!” the girl protested too late. “Your petticoat— How’ll you get home?”

“Sure and many’s the time I hadn’t one to my name, and I still moved about. It’s June.”

She slipped out, came back with a palmful of thumbtacks filched from the supply room at the end of the hall. Using only the toil-toughened heel of her hand to drive them home, she obliterated the door for at least two-thirds of the way down with a sort of diagonal slipcover effect. The bottom third could not be seen from a prone position in the bed.

“There, darlin’,” she said, “it won’t hurt you anny more.”

“Now when I look at it,” the girl mused, “I’ll think of you, not of—”

Ann was able now to lead her docilely to the bed, help her in, and prod and plump the covers about her. The girl lay with her head flat on the pillow, staring straight up at the ceiling overhead. Ann stood there by her a moment, placed her hand on her forehead in consolation; looked down considering, decided, and finally put her lips to the girl’s forehead in a sisterly kiss of sympathy.

“Rest, now,” she coaxed her. “Till the marning, darlin’. We’ve been told to get here by seven, but I’ll make sure I’m here by six, so I can be with you a little bit.” She moved on toward the door, the ex-petticoat bellied out hugely for a moment, there was a smothered latch-click, and she was gone.