All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 134: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

844 the opened flood-gates of her senses, and, spiritually drowning, operfed dry, colorless lips to cry out, to scream, shriek, yell hideously. She was lying there in her bare, little, cheerless room, with the rosin oozing oderiferously through the pine walls and the tattered old skirt hung over the unglazed window. Everything about her was familiar; nothing was changed except her inner being. She screeched raucously in mental nausea. In a trice twenty well-known and beloved faces were about her bed- side and half a dozen women with arms outstretched to mother her. “Vera—child, child, what is it?” they cried, and another voice—that of ‘Tomasz—said anxiously : © Pell ws? The girl pushed them frantically away from her and sat up in bed—eyes staring and vacant, lips parted in a senile way. Her voice was a mere whisper. ‘* Murderers — murderers—murder- ers!” she croaked. ‘ You have killed him—killed him!” A babel of ejaculations broke loose round her. Old Yakof stared per- plexedly at his good wife. Red-lipped Olga shrank back with a little cry against ‘Tomasz’s stalwart form. ‘The lover seemed to gape his incredulity of the words that grated from his be- trothed’s lips. “Why don’t you speak?” the girl rasped, gritting strong, white teeth so that all there could hear her. ‘ Why don’t you say something—laugh—ad- mit that you did this thing? “Are you afraid now that you have made away with a boyar? Are you thinking of nooses and the gallows by the crossroads with yourselves strung up there, swinging in the wind like scarecrows ? “You, old Yakof—you who begot me—gouged out his eye with that thumb, and you, Tomasz, stamped him flat with your nail-hobbed boots. Oh, I saw. Murderers! Lying there, still THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. fighting, with blood puddled in the dead leaves. Murderers! Murder- ers!” “ Vera!’ shouted old Yakof com- mandingly, and upraised both arms like a priest exorcising some poor soul possessed of a devil. A. dozen voices whispered: “ Mad. Poor Tomasz!” The bridegroom dropped to his knees by the bed, appeal on his face. -\n old woman—she had suckled Vera in infancy—pushed him to one side and put her two arms around the quivering, exhausted figure on the bed. ‘“Go away, you foolish people,’’ she cried. ‘“‘ Don't all stand there staring like boobies! Can’t you see that this i# nothing? The poor child has had the nightinare.”’ “A dream—she is still in the travail of some awful dream,” the wedding guests and relatives chorused, and sev- eral laughed throatily in their relief. ‘* Why did we not think of that before? But oh, how she startled us!” Rank contempt curled the girl's lips. “So you are really cowards as well as murderers,’ she accused them. “Do not try to fool me so! I dream, indeed! Have I slept for'a whole day and a night, then? I ask you that?” ‘Slept for a day and a. night? \Vhat is she talking about?” the en- semble asked each other. The old nurse waved them pettishly back again and addressed herself to the girl with in- finite patience. “You are unstrung, my dear,” said she. ‘ You must have eaten something that did not agree with you at the bridal dinner. No day has passed since then. See, child, you still have on the bridal dress, just as you left us to come in here from the table last night. “You must have thrown yourself on the bed to doze for a minute before undressing, and then this hallucination came to you. Be yourself. This is your wedding morn, and it is time we were on the way to Scurocz, where Father Ivan awaits us with bell, book, and candle. comlicloooks.com