Lora reached down and gripped her mother’s shoulders and pulled her up to look at her.
“Was it dead?” she demanded.
Her mother nodded. “It’s dead.”
“Was it dead when he took it?”
That question was never answered. Not then or ever. Mrs. Winter got to her feet and stumbled out of the room, sobbing afresh, and down the stairs. Lora sat on the edge of the bed staring at the open door. She got up and pushed the door shut, then returned and sat down again. She felt cold and faint and the objects in the room were staggering crazily in front of her eyes. She fell back onto the bed and pulled the covers up, turned over on her face and lay there without moving.
When Martha came in with her breakfast tray half an hour later she refused to move or make any reply to the maid’s greeting, until, frightened, Martha approached and touched her shoulder; then she turned her head a little.
“Let me alone, I’m all right.”
“You’ve got to eat, Miss Lora. You ought to eat while it’s hot.”
“All right. Let me alone.”
At the sound of the door closing behind Martha she suddenly turned over and sat up. The dizziness was all gone. It was all quite clear; it would be the simplest thing in the world. Her father’s loaded revolver was of course in the drawer of the desk in his bedroom, where it had been kept as long as she could remember; as a child she had often opened the drawer a crack and shudderingly peeked at it, not daring to touch it. To get it now, unseen, would be easy, with Martha and her mother both downstairs. Then under her pillow. In the evening he would come to her room as usual, right after dinner. Maybe he wouldn’t. Tomorrow evening then, or the next, or the next; he would come; she could wait. The revolver held six bullets, and all it needed was to pull the trigger. She would wait till he was quite close, the closer the better, even so she could touch him with it. Then she would get back into bed and lie there peacefully, and when people came she wouldn’t bother to say a word. She would never say anything to anybody again. If Pete came she wouldn’t speak to him even; she’d just twist up her mouth the way he did and he would hump up his shoulders and peer at her and she would know it was all right.
At the same time, without words, her mind was making its practical decisions. To carry them out she needed all the strength she could muster; the fragrance of the coffee floating over from the tray started that. She could see the little clock on the bureau but wasn’t sure it had been wound, so she got out of bed and went to get her wristwatch which she had wound herself when she undressed the afternoon before. Not twenty-four hours ago; that was hard to believe. Somewhat less in fact, for the watch said twenty past twelve. She had a full hour; the afternoon train was at one-thirty. She put on her dressing-gown and carried the tray to the bed, and efficiently and deliberately went through the fruit and toast and eggs and coffee to the last drop and crumb. All the time she felt herself tremulous inside, but her hands were perfectly steady; the swallowing was difficult and required some determination. Then she put the tray back on the table and went to the head of the stairs and called her mother, and at once heard her pattering footsteps.
Mrs. Winter entered the room hesitantly, stopping just inside the door, and looking at Lora and the empty tray tried to smile. Lora gazed at her in contemptuous astonishment. It was incredible, but there was no doubt about it; pathetically and idiotically she was trying to disarm her daughter with a smile.
“How much money have you got?” Lora said.
The attempted smile disappeared for faint amazement.
“Why — I don’t know—”
“I need all I can get. I’m going away. I have to leave in half an hour, to take the one-thirty train. Have you got as much as a hundred dollars?”
Her mother’s mouth opened, and closed again. Opened by Lora’s words, and closed by the look on Lora’s face.
“You can’t go like this,” she said. “It will kill you.”
“Please,” Lora said. “Listen, if you ever did anything... Go and see how much money you’ve got. In that jar in the attic, I know.”
Her mother looked startled. “How did you know—”
“I know lots of things. Hurry up.”
“Child, you can’t go—”
Lora interrupted her, suddenly blazing:
“Can’t you see it’s silly to talk?”
Her mother turned and went without a word, and Lora took off her dressing-gown and nightgown and started to dress. She wouldn’t stop to pack a bag; she wanted nothing from there; she would like to leave that house naked if it could be done. Anyway, she didn’t want to be encumbered with a bag — and she might never need one. She hated everything in that room; she loathed the smell of it. God, what an unspeakable and unforgivable fool — but she shook her head and set her teeth together against that useless indulgence. Later would do for that.
Her mother came in panting a little, her eyes gleaming. She had a little over a hundred dollars, and she had got twenty more from Martha. Lora took it, a large roll of ones and fives and tens, and stuffed it into her purse. That was it. Money. Then she sent her mother down to phone for a taxicab.
When she got downstairs, steadying herself by the rail on one side and her mother on the other, Martha was there, crying as though her heart would break. She threw her arms around Lora and implored her not to go; she would die, she was sure to die. Mrs. Winter, her thin little body erect and only her glittering eyes betraying her excitement, said nothing. Once more upstairs she had tried to protest; now she was silent, but kissed her daughter on the cheek and buttoned her coat collar for her.
“Don’t come out, I’ll get to the taxi all right,” Lora said.
But they both went with her through the snow-covered yard, down the walk to the curb, and stood there gazing after her till the cab turned the corner two blocks away. She saw them through the cab window, but somewhat dimly, for she was beginning to feel cold and faint again. She kept saying to herself, if once I get on the train I’m all right.
It was not so bad. The ticket-seller recognized her and was obviously surprised. Perhaps others did; she looked at no one. In a few minutes the train arrived and she went to the platform and got on, pulling herself up by clinging to the iron railings. There was an empty seat not far from the door and she sank into the corner of it and let her head go back. Her feet were terribly cold, there was an aching hurt inside of her, and her head was whirling madly, but as the train jerked forward she turned a little to look out of the window.
XV
If Lora’s mind had been consecrated to the preservation of enigmas a considerable portion of her waking thoughts, as well as her dreams, from her twentieth to her thirtieth year, might easily have been devoted to the several questionable aspects of her management of life during that period which began when Pete Halliday accosted her at Mrs. Ranley’s party, and ended when she sank into a seat in the day coach of the Chicago express. But in the first place she never at any time had the slightest idea that life was susceptible, in any broad sense, to management; and in the second place enigmas bored her. With her the fact that a question was complicated and difficult was proof that it deserved only to be ignored; and if the question were posed by the past instead of the present or the immediate future it wasn’t worthwhile even to listen to it. So in the hospital bed in New York she not only made no attempt to retrace to their sources the threads of accident and design that had led her into catastrophe, but even devised no solution of her present difficulties until one was offered to her through the interest of Doctor Nielsen; the day she looked out of the window and saw Anne Whitman and Steve Adams drive off in his roadster she went downstairs to get the things she had so carefully deposited in Anne’s room only three days earlier, and then calmly arranged herself for her afternoon nap; the broken baby-carriage wheel, which Albert Scher, his pockets inside out, despairingly and clumsily repaired with picture wire, produced in her one sole reaction, an added caution in avoiding bumps and negotiating curbs; when Max Kadish died she let his family take his body without a struggle, not enough interested in Albert’s feeling of outrage to try to comprehend it; and when Lewis Kane insisted that the four-page contract be signed before they proceeded to the execution of their project she would have affixed her name without reading more than a paragraph or two if he had not made her go through it from beginning to end. She kept the copy he gave her though, in a wooden box which contained an assortment of trinkets, some sketches Albert had made of her, a poem Max had written, and her snapshots.