Olivia by Dorothy Strachey Page A

pillow.

    But what was this that suddenly disturbed me? What frightful clamour? My door was flung violently open. Mlle Julie was standing there, a candle in her hand, terror on her face.
    “Quick! Quick!” she cried in a hoarse, unrecognizable voice. “Go and fetch Signorina and Frau Riesener. Something’s the matter with Mlle Cara. Run! Run!”
    I dashed out of bed and without stopping to put on dressing gown or slippers sped down the dark passage, up the stairs, which were dimly lighted by night-lights top and bottom, and flung open Signorina’s door. I knew she would be awake.
    “Quick! Quick!” I cried breathlessly. “There’s something the matter——Mlle Julie——Mlle Cara——She wants you.”
    Signorina was out of bed, clutching me.
    “The matter with whom?” she cried.
    “Mlle Cara. Mlle Cara. I must go now and call Frau Riesener.”
    She held me back. “What is it? What is it?”
    “I don’t know. Go to her quick.”
    Again I tore along the passage to Frau Riesener’s room at the other end. I had a harder task there. I knocked at the door; I almost battered on it. Then I opened it and called:

    “Frau Riesener! Frau Riesener! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
    “What is it?” she said at last.
    “You’re wanted downstairs. Quick!——Mlle Cara——There’s something the matter.”
    I saw her light the candle deliberately.
    “What is it?” she said again.
    “I don’t know—I don’t know, I tell you. But you’re wanted—quick—quick!”
    When I got downstairs again, Signorina was there in her neat little dressing gown and slippers, bustling about with hot-water bottles, hot cloths and so on, and she was soon joined by Frau Riesener. I was despatched to wake the housekeeper and tell her to send for the doctor, but first Signorina made me put on a skirt, a woollen coat, and shoes.
    “What has happened?” I asked.
    “An overdose of chloral,” was the answer, as I knew it would be.
    “And how is she?”
    “Unconscious. That’s all I can say. We can’t do anything more till the doctor comes.”
    But in those days, there were no telephones, no motorcars. The gardener’s boy would go to the town on his bicycle; the doctor would drive out in his carriage. An hour must elapse at the very least before he could possibly arrive. I stayed in my room, waiting, not daring to enquire, sometimes standing at my door listening,
sometimes restlessly walking up and down my little bedroom, or lying face downwards on my bed. After the first confusion and agitation, the bustle died away and was succeeded by a deathly silence. Once, kind little Signorina put her head into my room for a second, but all she said was, “No change.” I saw no more of Mlle Julie.
    At last I heard the doctor’s step, a brief, whispered colloquy between him and Frau Riesener in the passage, the sound of a gently shutting door. I nerved myself for another long wait. There would certainly be all kinds of things to do—emetics, stomach pumps, artificial breathing. I imagined all this, but no. Dreadful as the delay of his coming had been, the shortness of his stay was more dreadful still. I heard him and Frau Riesener walking down the passage together. It was he who was talking this time.
    Signorina came to my room then.
    “I can only stay a second, Olivia. It’s all over. She’s dead. She’s been dead for hours.”
    I don’t know how I got through the night. This was no personal grief, but I was hardly aware of that. It was my first contact with death and death with some of its worst terrors, unexpected, unapprehended—the brutal stroke of some awful, malignant power lying in wait for us, ready to pounce when we were least prepared. Not the slow natural death of elders, not the anticipated, inevitable result of disease, but an accident. An avoidable, unnecessary accident. An accident! But was it an accident?
A fresh horror chilled me. Supposing it were not an accident. Supposing she had taken the overdose on purpose?