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

They smiled at each other, the way two affable strangers do, who know they have never met before, and presume they will never meet again, but for the moment take a polite interest in their mutual conversation.

“Ann,” the old lady said. “Could I ask you to do something for me?”

“Sure, if I can.”

“This dresser. I don’t want it over there. I want it over here. This wall.” She went over and showed her.

“Well, it’s just for one night—” the maid said doubtfully.

“Doesn’t matter,” the old lady declared flatly. “Here’s where it belongs. Not there. I can’t do it by myself, or I would.”

“I’ll do it for you,” the maid relented good-naturedly. “All right, I’ll do it.” She trundled it about and over without too much difficulty. “That right?” she asked.

“There. Now. That’s more like it.” Again the old lady gave it a pat, as she had the chair before, as though its misplacement had been due to willfulness on its own part that it now repented of. “Now’d you bring me everything I need?” she asked.

“Everything. Towels, soap. I even brought you an extra blanket, although I don’t suppose at this time of year—”

“At my age,” said the old lady almost vaingloriously, “you feel chilly at any time of the year.”

“That’s right too,” said the maid reflectively. “I’ve noticed that myself for some time now.” She backed toward the door. “I’ll look in on you in the morning, just before we’re all dismissed for the last time. The few of us there’s left.”

The old lady eyed her piercingly. “You’re not crying, are you?”

The maid gave a shamefaced little smile. “Well, after all, it’s like losing an old friend. So many years of my life—”

“You mustn’t cry in here,” the old lady reprimanded her quite severely. “This is a room of happiness. No tears in here.” And she even shook her finger at her to add emphasis.

“I won’t,” the maid promised. “Good night. Sleep well.”

“I intend to. I know that I will,” declared the old lady staunchly. “I’m sure of it.”

And as she closed the door and turned away from it, she repeated what she had just said. “This is a room of happiness. This is a room of reunion.”

She began to unpack her bag now. From it she took a wafer-flat oblong white cardboard box, fastened with white paper tape.

“He didn’t even want to put it in a box for me. I told him it was for a gift,” she complained aloud, as if at the memory of some recent disputation. “Nowadays everything’s too much for them.”

She removed the bow-tied tape and the lid, peeled open the two interlocking leaves of crisp tissue paper, and took out a necktie, bright and new. She went to the dresser top with it and laid it down there, painstakingly choosing a certain exact spot to place it in, measuring it off almost, moving it a little, smoothing it a little, until she had attained the desired accuracy of position.

“Johnny, this is for you. For you to wear tomorrow. They lost your other one, that night. And I don’t want my Johnny to be without a necktie.”

Then she lowered her face, touched her lips to it, and said with old-fashioned formality, “Wear it in good health, dear.”

She returned to the bag, and as she took from it still something else, turned her head once more toward the dresser, as if addressing an after-remark to someone standing there unseen. “Luckily I didn’t have to buy you one of these. I don’t know much about picking them out.” She opened a packet of yellowed tissue and from it took a wallet, worn with much handling and giving at the seams. “I’ve kept it for you all these years. Just the way it was. Thirty-nine dollars and eighty-five cents. Perhaps the money will come in handy to you. You might want us to go sightseeing tomorrow, on our first day together.”

She placed it close to the tie, in just a certain place upon the dresser, and adjusted it too as she had the tie, as if fitting it to some invisible guide lines.

Returning to the opened bag a third and final time, she took out a neatly folded nightgown, and holding it up at shoulder-height, allowed it to fall open of its own weight. It was old-fashioned yet not old-fashioned, for fashion had come full circle again and its voluminous width and full-length sleeves were newer than the scantiness of intervening decades. It was old rather than old-fashioned, of finest batiste, with eyelet embroidery and a bertha, all handwork, the way a bridal gown should be, but citron-color with long existence. And the ghosts of hundreds of successive little bags of sachet still clung to it, even though they were gone now.

She disrobed now and put it on. It took on bluish hollows where it fell away from her body, yellow opacity where it clung close. It detracted from her age. She did not look like a young girl in it. Not even like a young woman. She looked like a wizened child, parading around in one of its elder’s garments.

She loosened and brushed her hair now, with a brush that came from the bag. And that done, she went to the light switch and darkened the room. Then she went to the bed and got into it, but not with a complete absence of any effort. Lying there, she stirred awhile until she had attained the desired comfort, and then lay there awhile longer after that, in repose, murmuring to herself. Aloud but softly. Just over her breath, as when one says a prayer.

“Good night, my Johnny. Good night, my love. We’ll see each other tomorrow. And tomorrow will come. Oh, I know it will. I’ve never doubted that it will for a single moment.

“And thank you for so many things. So many, many things. As I’ve thanked you for them so many times before. Thank you for a perfect marriage. The most perfect a marriage could be. Never an angry word, never a sullen silence; never a quarrel, never a jealous stab, never a drunken stumble. Never the fright of illness, nor the ignominy of nursing and watching some of its more ignoble symptoms. Never the strife of lack of earning power, nor the bitter recriminations of failure and mistake and final ill-fortune. And above all, for not slowly aging before my eyes, as I would have slowly aged before yours, until finally neither of us was what the other had married, but somebody else entirely. Some unknown old man. Some unknown old woman. Thank you for staying young. And for letting me stay young along with you. A lifetime of youth. Eternal spring. Thank you for always being the bridegroom of our first night, romance blazing in your eyes. Thank you for all this. For all this, thank you forevermore. Good night, my beloved, my only, only love, my lifetime’s love. Good night — the word I like to call you best of all: my husband. Your wife is wishing you good night.”

In the morning, after her first discovery, the maid came back in a few minutes bringing the manager with her this time. They both looked at her, first, from where they stood. Then the manager went over closer to her and gently touched her forehead.

He turned around and said, “She’s gone.”

“I knew she was,” the maid whispered. “I could tell even from the doorway.”

He came back to where the maid was standing, and they both continued to look at her from there, the serene figure in the bed.

“That smile,” he said under his breath. “Did you ever see anyone look so perfectly at rest, with such a peaceful, contented smile on their face?”

“She looks so happy,” the maid concurred. “More like a — like a new bride than an old lady whose time has come to die.”

“I guess she was one once,” he mused. “Just like this room was brand-new once. And then they both got older — the two of them — slowly, slowly, over the years. A little bit at a time, and then they got — like they both are now. Done with. People are a lot like hotel rooms, when you come to think of it.”