The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 51
LILY sat up, listening. The sound was repeated and presently there followed the noise of a door being opened slowly and cautiously. Lily rose and made her way to the dressing table where she pulled the bell. Once she pulled, and then again and again. There was no response. Either the servants were asleep or too terrified to answer. She gave the bell a final pull and when the only answer was silence, she took from the dressing table an electric torch and from the drawer of her carved desk a tiny pistol with a handle of mother of pearl which had been her mother's. Then she made her way quietly into the hall until she reached the top of the stairway where she leaned over the rail and flashed the light.
The glare illuminated all the lower hall, lighting up the familiar carved chest, the straight-backed chair, the crystal chandelier, the mirror. Everything was the same save that on the chest with his head bowed and resting on his hands in an attitude of despair, sat Krylenko, hatless, his coat all torn, the blood streaming down the side of his face.
It appeared that he was weak and dazed, for he remained in this same position for a long time, failing to notice even the bright shower of light which, without warning, drenched the hall. When at last he stirred, it was to lean back wearily against the wall and say in a low voice, "I have used the key, Miss Irene."
At the sound Lily ran down the long stairs, more rapidly than she had descended them in all the years she had lived in the house. She soared above the polished wood, until she stood suddenly by his side. She bent over him and touched his shoulder.
"It is not Miss Irene . . . I am Lily," she said. "Lily . . . Miss Irene's sister."
With one arm Krylenko wiped the blood from his eyes.
"Then you don't know me," he said weakly. "I am not a thief . . . breaking in."
The little revolver Lily placed beside him on the chest. "I know you," she said. "I have seen you . . . you are Krylenko." She placed one arm beneath his. "Come," she said, "this is no place for you. There is a divan in the drawing room. Come and lie down there. I'll fetch some whiskey."
With an air of great weariness the man managed to gain his feet and, leaning upon her, he made his way preceded by the little circle of white light from Lily's torch across the polished floor into the drawing-room. Lily was tall but Krylenko towered above her like a giant.
She made him comfortable, piling the brocade pillows carelessly beneath his bloody head. Then she went out and as she left, there rose behind her the sound of a heart breaking sigh, like the cry of a defeated, sobbing child.
After a little while she returned bearing a white basin filled with water, a pair of linen pillow cases and a small silver flask. Presently he sat up.
It was the first time she had seen him since that afternoon in the Mill shed when Willie Harrison, fumbling with the ruby clasp of his watch chain, proposed to her for the last time. He had changed. He was older. Experience had traced its record in the fine lines about his eyes and mouth. The crudeness of the massive head had likewise undergone a change, giving place to a more certain modeling and a new dignity. Where there had once been a certain shapelessness of feature, there was now a firmness of line, a determination in the fine mouth, the strong nose and the high massive forehead.
Lily, tearing the linen pillow cases into long strips, watched him narrowly.
The wavy blond hair, where it was not stained with blood, chung against the damp forehead. Where the coat was torn and the dark flannel shirt ripped from the throat, the powerful muscles of the arm and shoulder lay exposed. The fair skin was as white as Lily's own soft body. The man's whole figure carried an air of freedom, of a certain fierce desire to burst through the shabby, stained clothing.
All at once he raised his head and looked about him. The color returned a little way into his face.
"The blinds," he said, "are they shut?"
"Yes," said Lily. "You are safe here."
She had thrown off the old sealskin coat and sat by him clad in the black and silver kimono, seductive, beautiful, perfect, save for the tips of her silver slippers all soaked by the melted snow. The kimono had come open at the neck and left her white soft throat exposed. Krylenko was watching her now in a puzzled fashion. He behaved almost as if she terrified him in some new and indefinable way.
"I let myself in with a key," he told her. "A key Miss Irene gave me. She told me to use it if ever I had to hide." He paused for a moment and took a second drink from the flask. "You see, I am safe here because it is the last place they would look for me. They would never look for me in the house of a rich man. They wouldn't expect to find me in the house of an American, a wealthy lady."
He looked up at her in a singularly straightforward fashion.
"I suppose," he said, "you too are on our side."
Lily dipping a bit of linen into the basin did not reply for a moment. At last she said, "I'd never thought about it one way or another until now. It doesn't matter, I suppose. But you needn't fear what I'll do. I'd rather have you here than the police."
"If they caught me now," he continued weakly, "they'd hang me. I wouldn't have a chance with Judge Weissman and the rest. Any jury in the Town would hang me. You see there were men killed out there in the park . . . men on both sides. That fellow over by the fire . . . he's dead. I stopped to make certain. I didn't kill anybody myself, but that makes no difference. It's me they're after. They've been waiting for a chance like this."
He spoke English with a curious lack of accent, for the chaste Irene as a teacher was thorough. He spoke it deliberately and rather carefully to be sure, but without serious faults. His manner was neither shy nor awkward. It was the manner of a man unused to women's company, of a man who had never before addressed a great lady; for Irene could not properly be called either a woman or a great lady. She was, rather, the embodiment of an idea.
"You're safe," said Lily. "You may depend on it. I, myself, will see to it. I don't love the police or the Harrisons or Judge Weissman . . . I don't love any of them." She drew her chair nearer. "Now lie down and I'll bathe your head."
He lay down and instantly sat up again. "My head!" he protested. "It's all bloody. . . . It'll spoil everything." He picked up one of the pillows. "See, I've done it already. They're covered with blood."
Lily smiled at him in her charming fashion, an imperceptible, secret smile. She behaved as if she were entertaining a great man, an ambassador or a rich banker, as if she were intent only upon making him comfortable, at ease.
"It makes no difference," she said. "In a few days there will be no one to use the pillows. There are times, you know, when such things don't matter. Lie down," she commanded. "One must know when such things are of no account. It is part of knowing how to live."
Protesting, Krylenko laid his great body back gently and she bent over him, first removing the rings from her finger and placing them in a glittering heap upon the lacquer table. He closed his eyes with a sigh and she washed away with great gentleness the blood from his hair, from the side of his face. Her soft white fingers swept across the tanned face, then lower to where the throat became white and across the smooth, hard muscles of the shoulder until at last there was in her touch more of the caress of a woman than the ministering of a nurse.
"It is not serious," she said in a low voice. "The bullet only cut the skin."
She took the strips of linen and bound them with the same gentle, caressing fingers round and round his head. And presently she discovered that he was still watching her in a curious embarrassed fashion. When she had finished the dressing, she bathed the deep cut on his shoulder and bound it carefully.
At length he sat up once more. A sudden change came over him. His blue eyes grew dark, almost clouded.
"You are a good nurse," he said, and took another drink from the silver flask.
Lily moved about, clearing away the blood stained cloths and the bowl of reddish water. The soft glow of the lamp captured the silver of her kimono and fixed it as she moved with a flashing light. And all the time Krylenko regarded her with a strange look of awe, as if he had never before seen a woman.
"Strange," she said presently, "that we should meet like this. You, who have never seen me before."
Krylenko stirred and ran one strong hand awkwardly over the back of the other. "I've seen you before . . . twice . . . No . . . three times. Once on that day you came to the Mills, once in the street in your carriage and once"—he looked up—"once in this room, right here. You were with the boss that time . . . dancing with him."
Lily laughed softly. She must have remembered the shameless gown of chartreuse green. "I'll never be dancing with him again. I doubt if I ever see him."
Krylenko regarded her quizzically. "But he is rich. . . . Don't rich women marry rich men?" And he finished with a puzzled grunt of inquiry.
"Yes," replied Lily. "It's because I'm rich that I wouldn't marry him." It must have occurred to her then how wide was the chasm which separated her world from Krylenko's. Still he failed to understand.
"That's no reason," she continued, "for marrying him . . . a poor thing like that."
She sat down and drew her chair quite close to the rosewood sofa, laughing at the same time. Clearly the whole adventure struck her as bizarre, ridiculous . . . even unreal. Yet she trembled as if she were shivering with cold, and her laugh carried a vague hint of hysteria. She leaned forward and began to stroke his aching head gently.
After a long awkward pause, she said, "Miss Irene will be home any time now."
"Yes." And Krylenko gave a sort of grunt. Unmistakably there was a crudeness about him. He was gauche, awkward; yet there was in his manner a quality of power, of domination which had its origin somewhere in the dim ages, when there were no drawing-rooms and no books of etiquette. He had a manifest self-possession. He did not become obsequious before this great lady as Judge Weissman and other men in stations beneath her had done. He treated her, after all, as his equal. He was even a little arrogant; a trifle scornful of her wealth.
"Miss Irene," he observed presently, "is a noble woman. You understand she gives up her life to my people. Do you know where she is now?" His voice was raised, his manner excited. "She's looking after the fellows that got hurt. There was a woman, too. I saw her . . . shot through the arm . . . Ah, Miss Irene is a saint. You know she could go anywhere in the Flats. No one would touch her."
The whole speech was touched with a tone of simple adoration. The essence of him was a great, a really profound simplicity.
"She works hard," said Lily. "She works hard. She cares for nothing else." By the watch on her white wrist it was midnight. "So that is why she is late," she added.
"There will be much work for her to-night," said Krylenko. He kept watching Lily in the same furtive fashion, his gaze wandering to the lovely line of her bare white throat.
Again there was an awkward pause. "You don't know how much she does," he said presently. "You don't know what life is in the Flats. You sit here in a warm house . . . with silk and pillows and good food. You don't know," he said bitterly. "You don't know!"
Until now their conversation had been broken, disjointed, awkward, as if circumstance compelled them to talk about something. Now for the first time, a certain fire entered the Russian's voice. Lily kept silent, watching him with her great burning eyes. She still trembled.
"Maybe you think I like working twelve hours a day in that hot shed like you saw me. Maybe you think I don't want time to read and think." The man was working himself into a kind of frenzy. "You don't know. . . . You don't know. . . . And then they shoot us down like pigs." He leaned forward and raised at Lily a strong finger. "I come here from Russia. I come here because I could not live in Russia. . . . My father . . . My father . . . He was shot by the Cossacks. I come here because they tell me that in America you are free and have a good life. And what do they give me? They make me work twelve hours in a hot shed. They put me into a filthy house. They say, you must not complain. You must do as we say. We will not pay you more. We will not let you live like a man. You are Hunkies! . . . You are dirt! You did not have to come here. But all the same, they want us. They send men to Russia to tell us great things about America so we will come here because they need men for the Mills . . . men to feed to the furnaces like coal . . . to make a few men rich." He sighed bitterly and buried his face in his hands. "And now they shoot us like the Cossacks shot my father in Russia. . . . I came here full of hope and peace . . . only to be shot like my father in Russia!"
In his excitement he forgot the perfect English Irene had taught him. His blue eyes flashed and his face grew pale once more.
"No. . . . They can take me. . . . They can hang me. . . . Let them! I will not go away. . . . It is not America or Russia that counts. . . . It is all humanity! . . . Christians. . . . Bah!" He spat suddenly upon the polished floor. And all at once he pitched back again among the pillows, weak and fainting. The bandage slipped from his wounded head over one eye.
Quickly Lily bent over him. She poured more whiskey between his lips and refastened the bandage. Then she settled herself to chafing his strong wrists and rubbing his forehead in the old caressing motion with a delicate, white hand that trembled beyond control. A queer light came into her dark eyes.
Presently he sighed and looked up at her. "I am sorry," he said, "to bother a fine lady like you. If it had been Miss Irene." He closed his eyes suddenly. "I have been hungry, you know. We haven't even enough food in the Flats," hen he took her hand and pressed it in a naïve, grateful fashion. "I am sorry, you know . . ." he murmured gently.
She did not move. She remained there stroking his head. "I know. . . . I understand. . . . You must lie still. Be quiet," she said softly. For a long time they remained thus, and presently Krylenko, opening his eyes looked up at her with a puzzled expression. "You are not the same as Miss Irene," he said in a low voice. "You are different . . . very different."
To this she made no reply. Gently the motion of her hand ceased. A pool of silence enveloped them. You are not the same as Miss Irene.