Willa Sibert Cather

“ Myra said suddenly. “That is always such a forgiving time. When that first cold, bright streak comes over the water, it’s as if all our sins were pardoned; as if the sky leaned over the earth and kissed it and gave it absolution. You know how the great sinners always came home to die in some religious house, and the abbot or the abbess went out and received them with a kiss?”
When we got home she was, of course, very tired. Oswald was waiting for us, and he and the driver carried her upstairs. While we were getting her into bed, the noise overhead broke out—tramp, tramp, bang! ”

“ I gain strength faster if I haven’t people on my mind. But you, Nellie . . . that’s different.” She put my two hands to her cheeks, making a frame for her face. “That’s different. Somebody young, and clear-eyed, chock-full of opinions, and without a past. But you may have a past, already? The darkest ones come early.”
I was delighted. She was . . . she was herself, Myra Henshawe! I hadn’t expected anything so good. The electric bulbs in the room were shrouded and muffled with coloured scarfs, and in that light she looked much less changed than Oswald. ”

“ Modjeska again drew her cloak around her, and Oswald took them down to their carriage. Aunt Lydia and I followed, and as we crossed the Square we saw their cab going up the Avenue. For many years I associated Mrs. Henshawe with that music, thought of that aria as being mysteriously related to something in her nature that one rarely saw, but nearly always felt; a compelling, passionate, overmastering something for which I had no name, but which was audible, visible in the air that night, as she sat crouching in the shadow. ”

“ I saw Oswald at dinner in the restaurant every night, and he reported her condition to me as if nothing had happened. The short-haired newspaper girl often came to our table, and the three of us talked together. I could see that he got great refreshment from her. Her questions woke pleasant trains of recollection, and her straightforward affection was dear to him. Once Myra, in telling me that it was a pleasure to him to have me come into their lives again thus, had remarked: “He was always a man to feel women, you know, in every way.” ”

“ I was young, and it didn’t matter so much about me; for youth there is always the hope, the certainty, of better things. But an old man, a gentleman, living in this shabby, comfortless place, cleaning his neckties of a Sunday morning and humming to himself. . . it depressed me unreasonably. I was glad when his outer door shut softly and I heard no more of him.
There was an indifferent restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel. As I was going down to my dinner that evening, I met, at the head of the stairs, a man coming up and carrying a large black tin tray. ”

“ My aunt often said that Myra was incorrigibly extravagant; but I saw that her chief extravagance was in caring for so many people, and in caring for them so much. When she but mentioned the name of some one whom she admired, one got an instant impression that the person must be wonderful, her voice invested the name with a sort of grace. When she liked people she always called them by name a great many times in talking to them, and she enunciated the name, no matter how commonplace, in a penetrating way, without hurrying over it or slurring it ”

“ What good fortune for Myra! She will hardly believe it when I tell her. She is ill, my poor Myra. Oh, very ill! But we must not speak of that, nor seem to know it. What it will mean to her to see you again! Her friends always were so much to her, you remember? Will you stop and see us as you come up? Her room is thirty-two; rap gently, and I’ll be waiting for you. Now I must take her dinner. Oh, I hope for her sake you are staying some time. She has no one here.”
He took up the tray and went softly along the uncarpeted hall. ”

“ How the great poets do shine on, Nellie! Into all the dark corners of the world. They have no night.”
They shone for her, certainly. Miss Stirling, “a nice young person from the library,” as Myra called her, ran in occasionally with new books, but Myra’s eyes tired quickly, and she used to shut a new book and lie back and repeat the old ones she knew by heart, the long declamations from Richard II or King John. ”

“ People are always talking about the joys of youth—but, oh, how youth can suffer! I’ve not forgotten; those hot southern Illinois nights, when Oswald was in New York, and I had no word from him except through Liddy, and I used to lie on the floor all night and listen to the express trains go by. ”

“ You ought to get me away from this, Oswald. If I were on my feet, and you laid low, I wouldn’t let you be despised and trampled upon.”
“I’ll go up and see those people to-morrow, Mrs. Henshawe,” I promised. “I’m sure I can do something.”
“Oh, don’t, Nellie!” she looked up at me in affright. “She’d turn a deaf ear to you. You know the Bible says the wicked are deaf like the adder. And, Nellie, she has the wrinkled, white throat of an adder, that woman, and the hard eyes of one. Don’t go near her!” ”

“ I’d been dreaming I was young, and the sorrows of youth had set me crying!” She took my hand as I sat down beside her. “Do you know that poem of Heine’s, about how he found in his eye a tear that was not of the present, an old one, left over from the kind he used to weep? A tear that belonged to a long dead time of his life and was an anachronism. He couldn’t account for it, yet there it was, and he addresses it so prettily: ‘Thou old, lonesome tear!’ Would you read it for me? There’s my little Heine, on the shelf over the sofa. You can easily find the verse, Du alte, einsame Thräne!” ”

“ If Myra gave a ball or a garden-party, the band furnished the music. It was, indeed, John Driscoll’s band.
Myra, as my aunt often said, had everything: dresses and jewels, a fine riding horse, a Steinway piano. Her uncle took her back to Ireland with him, one summer, and had her painted by a famous painter. When they were at home, in Parthia, his house was always open to the young people of the town. Myra’s good looks and high spirits gratified the old man’s pride. ”

“ Henshawe told him he had better leave us. “You must be there when Esther’s train gets in—and remember, you are to bring her to dine with us to-morrow night. There will be no one else.”
“Thank you, Myra.” He stood looking down at her with a grateful, almost humble expression, holding his soft hat against his breast, while the snow-flakes fell about his head. ”

“ We were going to Grace Church, and the morning was so beautiful that we decided to walk.
“Lydia,” said Henshawe, as he took us each by an arm, “I want you to give me a Christmas present.”
“Why, Oswald,” she stammered.
“Oh, I have it ready! You’ve only to present it.” He took a little flat package from his pocket and slipped it into her muff. He drew both of us closer to him. “Listen, it’s nothing. It’s some sleeve-buttons, given me by a young woman who means no harm, but doesn’t know the ways of the world very well. ”

“ Perhaps that’s it. When there are children, that feeling goes through natural changes. But when it remains so personal . . . something gives way in one. In age we lose everything; even the power to love.”
“He hasn’t,” I suggested.
“He has asked you to speak for him, my dear? Then we have destroyed each other indeed!”
“Certainly he hasn’t, Mrs. Myra! But you are hard on him, you know, and when there are so many hard things, it seems a pity.”
“Yes, it’s a great pity.” She drew herself up in her chair. “And I’d rather you didn’t come any more for the time being, Nellie. ”

“ Oswald would laugh at me, but all the same they have a bad history. Love itself draws on a woman nearly all the bad luck in the world; why, for mercy’s sake, add opals? He brought two bracelets for me to decide between them, Oswald, both lovely. However did they let you carry off two, Ewan?”
“They know me there. I always pay my bills, Myra. I don’t know why, but I do. I suppose it’s the Scotch in me.”
He wished us all good-night.
“Give a kiss to Esther for me,” said Mrs. Henshawe merrily at the door. ”

“ I must be there within call, but he would go back to help the police.
After he left I began to search Mrs. Henshawe’s room. She had worn her heavy coat and her furs, though the night was warm. When I found that the pair of Austrian blankets was missing, I felt I knew where she had gone. Should I try to get Oswald at the police station? I sat down to think it over. It seemed to me that she ought to be allowed to meet the inevitable end in the way she chose. A yearning strong enough to lift that ailing body and drag it out into the world again should have its way. ”

“ Driscoll so persecuted the boy that he felt there was no chance for him in Parthia. He roused himself and went to New York. He stayed there two years without coming home, sending his letters to Myra through my aunt.
All Myra’s friends were drawn into the web of her romance; half a dozen young men understudied for Oswald so assiduously that her uncle might have thought she was going to marry any one of them. Oswald, meanwhile, was pegging away in New York, at a time when salaries were small and advancement was slow. But he managed to get on, and in two years he was in a position to marry. ”

“ I ran through the volume, reading a poem here and there where a leaf had been turned down, or where I saw a line I knew well. It was a fat old book, with yellow pages, bound in tooled leather, and on the fly-leaf, in faint violet ink, was an inscription, “To Myra Driscoll from Oswald,” dated 1876.
My friend lay still, with her eyes closed, and occasionally one of those anachronistic tears gathered on her lashes and fell on the pillow, making a little grey spot. Often she took the verse out of my mouth and finished it herself. ”

“ Light and silence: they heal all one’s wounds—all but one, and that is healed by dark and silence. I find I don’t miss clever talk, the kind I always used to have about me, when I can have silence. It’s like cold water poured over fever. ”

“ After it was all over, and her ashes sealed up in a little steel box, Henshawe called me into her room one morning, where he was packing her things, and told me he was going to Alaska.
“Oh, not to seek my fortune,” he said, smiling. “That is for young men. But the steamship company have a place for me in their office there. I have always wanted to go, and now there is nothing to hold me. This poor little box goes with me; I shall scatter her ashes somewhere in those vast waters. ”

“ The sleeve-buttons were topazes, winy-yellow, lightly set in crinkly gold. I believe she was seduced by their beauty. “I really think he ought to have them, if he wants them. Everything is always for Myra. He never gets anything for himself. And all the admiration is for her; why shouldn’t he have a little? He has been devoted to a fault. It isn’t good for any woman to be humoured and pampered as he has humoured her. ”

“ Henshawe a great deal, but we were seldom alone. It was the season of calls and visits, and she said that meeting so many people would certainly improve my manners and my English. She hated my careless, slangy, Western speech. Her friends, I found, were of two kinds: artistic people—actors, musicians, literary men—with whom she was always at her best because she admired them; and another group whom she called her “moneyed” friends (she seemed to like the word) , and these she cultivated, she told me, on Oswald’s account. ”

“ The road, unfortunately, kept winding away from the sea. At last we came out on a bare headland, with only one old twisted tree upon it, and the sea beneath.
“Why, Nellie!” she exclaimed, “it’s like the cliff in Lear, Gloucester’s cliff, so it is! Can’t we stay here? I believe this nice darkey man would fix me up under the tree there and come back for us later.” ”

“ You can see; he’s just the sort of boy that women pick up and run off into the jungle with. But he’s never wanted to marry before; it might be the making of him. He’s distractedly in love—goes about like a sleep-walker. Still, I couldn’t bear it if anything cruel happened to Esther.”
Aunt Lydia and Myra were going to do some shopping. When we went out into Madison Square again, Mrs. Henshawe must have seen my wistful gaze, for she stopped short and said: “How would Nellie like it if we left her here, and picked her up as we come back? ”

“ At another time, when she had been lying like a marble figure for a long while, she said in a gentle, reasonable voice:
“Ah, Father Fay, that isn’t the reason! Religion is different from everything else; because in religion seeking is finding.” ”

“ It was then that Driscoll had it out with Myra. He did not come at her in a tantrum, as he had done before, but confronted her with a cold, business proposition. If she married young Henshawe, he would cut her off without a penny. He could do so, because he had never adopted her. If she did not, she would inherit two-thirds of his property—the remaining third was to go to the church. “And I advise ye to think well,” he told her. “It’s better to be a stray dog in this world than a man without money. ”