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

The girl’s eyes kept staring straight up at the ceiling overhead. Not right away, not soon even, but after a lengthy while they flickered closed, reopened briefly once or twice, and then at last she slept.

Her sleep was not without the continuing thoughts and images of her waking, however; its stresses and its longings kept on uninterrupted. And, as in most such dreams, there was a magic formula by which she could recover him, bring him back. Waiting there for her to use, if only she could. So easy that it tantalized, so simple that it tortured, made her twitch upon the bed. It was: just to speak his name, just to say it. That was all she had to do.

Other names like meteors flashed by, lighting up momentarily the black skies of her sleep, but always the wrong ones. “Arthur.” “Wallace.” And the strange name of a little boy she had once schooled with: “Ansel.” While he waited patiently just out of sight to appear when she would have pronounced his own, the right one.

Faster and faster her head rolled to and fro on the pillow. She even arched her back clear of the bed time after time, to fall back again frustrated every time.

And suddenly, as she seized upon it at last, the effort of doing so shattered the dream like a dark-glass casing, too much violence for its fragile texture, and her eyes flew open and she awoke.

Saying it low first, then louder, louder still, then screaming it out, in vain effort to stay the dream and have it fulfill its promise. “Johnny! John -eee!”

But the dream wouldn’t come back, and the magic formula was no good now.

Over and over she screamed it, hoping against hope that it would work. “John- eee! John -eee!” Then stopped at last only because she had no more breath to spend.

In a moment or so someone tapped tentatively on the other side of the door. She seized a corner of the pillow and stuffed it into her mouth, and closed her teeth on it, to keep from screaming any more.

Then the voice of a man said, speaking to someone beside him: “Nobody in there. It must have come from somewhere else, I guess.” And they went away again.

She whimpered awhile, and lay awake awhile, in the silence of the coffinlike night.

Then again she slept, and then again she dreamed. But the new dream was less exacting, producing him without requiring of her any magic formula.

The petticoat vanished and the naked door was there again.

Then it opened, and she knew he was there, just back out of sight. Her heart could feel his presence salving its hurt.

Then his head appeared, timorously. She had to call out, to reassure him: “It’s all right, Johnny. It’s all right.”

Then at last all of him, and there he was. The tie he’d worn, the suit. Even to his hat, thrown back upon his head, as she had seen him once do on the train, to relieve heat and haste.

He came all the way in, as far as the foot of the bed. As though he were staying now, as though he were staying now. He even rested both hands on the footrail of the bed. He was so near her now, and she to him. Almost she thought she could feel the warmth of his breath carried to her on the cold barren air. Almost she thought she could see those little glints of topaz, like spinning pinwheels, in his dark-brown eyes.

“I can explain,” he said. “I can explain why I stayed so long.”

“I know you can,” she said docilely. “I know you can, Johnny.”

“But only if I have time enough. If they don’t give me time enough—”

“Hurry, Johnny! Hurry, while you still have time — I”

But just as he started to, it was already too late. Time, the mysterious enemy, overtook him. Three cherries sprouted from the top of his head, and dangled over sideward, one on a broken stem.

His face got redder than it had been, and broader, and he was Ann the chambermaid, leaning over the foot of the bed and crooning pleadingly: “Don’t you know me, now? Don’t you remember me from yesterday?” The girl murmured softly, but wistfully rather than with resentment, “Now he’ll never come. Now you’ve made him go away forever. And just when I almost had him.”

Ann stayed with her awhile, and gave her tea again. Then she left, promising, “I’ll be back soon, dear. As soon as ever I can.”

When she came it was several hours later, and she had someone else with her. She stood back by the doorway in deference, and let the other come forward alone and take command of the visit. The newcomer was a woman.

She wore pince-nez glasses. She wore a dress of sleek bronze-colored bombazine, iridescent like the breast feathers of a pouter pigeon, and at her waist a black alpaca apron with two pockets. In one was a writing-tablet, in the other a great mass of keys, resembling a porous chunk of ore that has been imperfectly smelted and failed to fuse properly. From her bosom hung an open-face gold watch, suspended upside-down so that it could be lifted and read with a single move of the hand. A lead pencil was thrust raffishly (but no doubt the raffishness was not intended) through one of the “rats” at the back of her head.

She patted the girl’s hand. It was meant kindly, but it was a perfunctory pat. She exuded no warmth, such as Ann breathed with every breath she drew. “Now, dear,” she said, “what is it?”

“Nothing,” the girl said. She could think of no other answer to make to a question like that.

“Now, dear,” the housekeeper said again, “what do you want us to do?”

“Nothing,” the girl said. She could think of no other answer to make to that question either.

“Is there nothing you would like us to do?”

This time the girl looked up at her with the plaintiveness of a sick child coaxing for a drink of water. “Can I have Ann back?”

The woman turned her head to where Ann stood. “Ann has her duties,” she replied disapprovingly. “She must not stay away from them too long.”

As though she understood the hint, Ann immediately slithered out the door and was gone.

The housekeeper gave the girl’s hand one more perfunctory pat, turned to go herself. At the open door she said, “Mr. Lindsey will have to be notified. He will have to decide what is to be done.” Then she closed the door after her.

The girl remained alone.

Some time after, a knock again interrupted her solitude. The knock did not wait for a response, but the door was opened immediately on its heels, and a dignified and well-dressed gentleman entered, with the air of someone who did not need to ask permission but was free to enter a room like this at any time he chose.

He was about her father’s age, and dressed somewhat as she had seen her father dressed; but not at ordinary times, only on rare occasions, such as churchgoing on an Easter Sunday morning. He had a very heavy down-turned mustache, glistening with wax, and wore a small flower, she did not know its name, in the buttonhole of his swallowtail coat.

“My poor child,” was his greeting to her. “I’ve come to see what can be done about this.” Then, after having already seated himself, he asked, “May I sit down a moment and have a little chat with you?”

Her face flickered briefly as the sympathy in his voice revived her grief. She nodded mutely; he made her feel less lost and lonesome.

“I’m Mr. Lindsey, dear,” he introduced himself; and though he didn’t add that he was the manager, somehow she knew that he must be. He had too much of an air of habitual authority about him.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said artlessly.

And, hesitantly and awkwardly at first, but soon without any self-consciousness whatever or even awareness that she was doing so, she was answering the sprinkling of guiding questions that he put to shape the course of her talk. She did not even know that they were questions, they were so deftly inserted. She did not even know, in telling him about their house at home, that she had told him what street it was on, or what its number was, or of course what town it was situated in. Sitting back at ease in his chair, one knee crossed above the other, nodding benignly, he skillfully slanted the conversation.