Part 10

Although Irene seldom penetrated the Town any longer and her mother never left the confines of Shane’s Castle, their affairs still held an interest for those who had known Cypress Hill in the days of its vanished splendor. For women who had long since ceased to take any part in the life of a community, the names of old Julia Shane and her two daughters came up with startling frequency at the dinners and lunches and tea parties in the Town. It may have been that in a community where life was so noisy, so banal, so strenuous, so redolent of prosperity, the Shanes and the old house satisfied some profound and universal hunger for the mysterious, the beautiful, the bizarre, even the mystic. Certainly in the midst of so materialistic a community the Shanes were exotic and worthy of attention. And always in the background there was the tradition of John Shane and the memories of things which it was whispered had happened in Shane’s Castle. It was Lily who aroused the most talk, perhaps because she was even more withdrawn and mysterious than her mother and sister, because it was so easy to imagine things about her.... Lily who could come back and bring all the Town once more to Shane’s Castle; Lily, the generous, the good-natured, the beautiful Lily.

Mrs. Julis Harrison discussed them; and her son, the rejected Willie; and Miss Abercrombie, who with the passing of years had developed an affection of the nerves which made her face twitch constantly so that always, even in the midst of the most solemn conversations, she had the appearance of winking in a lascivious fashion. It was a trial which she bore, with a truly noble fortitude.

XXXIII

On the evening of the day that Mrs. Harrison called for the last time at Cypress Hill, Miss Abercrombie was invited to dine with her in the ugly sandstone house on the Hill. The call was Mrs. Harrison’s final gesture in an effort to patch up the feud which had grown so furiously since the affair over the taxes. Of its significance Miss Abercrombie had been told in advance, so it must have been with a beating, expectant heart that she arrived at the Harrison mansion.

The two women dined alone in a vast dining-room finished in golden oak, beneath a gigantic brass chandelier fitted with a score of pendant brass globes. They sat at either end of a table so long that shouting was almost a necessity.

“William is absent,” explained Mrs. Harrison in a loud, deep voice. “There is a big corporation from the east that wants to buy the Mills. It wants to absorb them at a good price with a large block of stock for William and me. Of course, I oppose it ... with all my strength. As I told William, the Mills _are_ the Harrisons ... I will never see them out of the family ... Judge Weissman has gone east with William to see that he does nothing rash. Neither of them ought to be away, I told Willie, with all this trouble brewing in the Flats.” Here she paused for a long breath. “Why, only this afternoon, some of those Polish brats threw stones at my victoria, right at the foot of Julia’s drive.... Imagine that in the old days!”

This long and complicated speech, she made with but a single pause for breath. She had grown even more stout, and her stupendous masculine spirit had suffered a certain weakening. A light stroke of paralysis she had passed over heroically, dismissing it by sheer force of her tremendous will. The misfortune left no trace save a slight limp as she dragged her body across the floor and settled it heavily in the plush covered arm chair at one end of the table.

The butler--Mrs. Harrison used a butler as the symbol of her domination in the Town, wearing him as a sort of crest--noiselessly brought the thick mushroom soup, his eye gleaming at the sight of the two women. He was an old man with white hair and the appearance of a gentleman.

“How dreadful!” exclaimed Miss Abercrombie, and then unable longer to restrain herself, she said, “Tell me! Do tell me about Julia!”

Mrs. Harrison drank from her water glass, set it down slowly and then said impressively, “She did not receive me!”

“I feared so,” rejoined Miss Abercrombie, winking with nervous impatience.

“It is the end! No one can say that I have not done my part toward a reconciliation.” This statement she uttered with all the majesty of an empress declaring war. “And to think,” she added mournfully, “that such an old friendship should come to such an end.”

“It’s just the way I feel,” replied Miss Abercrombie. “And you know, my friendship was even older. I knew her before you. Why, I can remember when she was only a farmer girl.” Here her illness forced her to wink as if there were something obscene in her simple statement.

“Well,” said Mrs. Harrison, “I don’t suppose any one in the Town was ever closer to Julia than I was. D’you know? That mulatto woman actually turned me away to-day, and I must say her manner was insolent. She said Julia was not feeling well enough to see me. Imagine, not well enough to see _me_, her oldest friend!” This statement the sycophantic Miss Abercrombie allowed to pass unchallenged. “Heaven knows,” continued Mrs. Harrison. “It was only friendship that prompted me. I certainly would not go prying about for the sake of curiosity. You know that, Pearl. Why, I wasn’t allowed to set my foot inside the door. You’d have thought I was diseased.”

After this a silence descended during which the room vibrated with unsaid things. At the memory of her reception, Mrs. Harrison’s face grew more and more flushed. The gentlemanly butler removed the soup and brought on whitefish nicely browned and swimming in butter.

“It’s a queer household,” remarked Miss Abercrombie, with an air of hinting at unspeakable things and feeling her way cautiously toward a letting down of all bars. Undoubtedly it was unfortunate that they had disputed the position of “oldest friend.” In a way it tied both their hands.

“It has always been queer,” replied the hostess. “Even since the house was built.”

Again a pregnant silence, and then Miss Abercrombie with another unwilled and obscene wink added, “I must say I can’t understand Irene’s behavior.” About this effort, there was something oblique and yet effective. It marked another step.

“Or Lily’s,” rejoined Mrs. Harrison, taking a third step.

“They say,” said Miss Abercrombie, pulling fishbones from her mouth, “that there is a common mill worker who is very attentive to Irene. Surely she can’t be considering marriage with _him_.”

“No, from what I hear, she _isn’t_,” observed Mrs. Harrison. After this dark hint she paused for a moment tottering upon the edge of new revelations with the air of a swimmer about to dive into cold water. At last she plunged.

“They say,” she murmured in a lowered voice, “that there is more between them than most people guess ... more than is proper.”

Miss Abercrombie leaned forward. “You know,” she said, “that’s funny. I’ve heard the same thing.”

“Well, I heard it from Thomas, the coachman. Of course, I reproved him for even hinting at such things. I must say he only hinted ... very delicately. He was discreet. If I hadn’t guessed there was something of the sort going on, I should never have known what he was driving at.”

Miss Abercrombie bridled and leaned back for the butler to remove her fish plate. “Imagine!” she said, “Imagine a child of yours being the subject of gossip among servants!”

Her hostess gave a wicked chuckle. “You’ve forgotten John Shane. When he was alive, his behavior was the talk of every one. But how could you have forgotten the talk that went the rounds? It was common property ... common property.”

Miss Abercrombie sighed deeply. “I know ... I know. Julia’s life has not been happy.” And into the sigh she put a thousand implications of the superior happiness of virgins.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Harrison, “he was insane. There’s no doubt about it. People may talk, but facts are facts. John Shane was insane ... certainly toward the end he was insane.”

The butler brought the roast fowl, and until his back was turned once more both women kept silence. When he had gone out of the room, they found themselves striving for first place in the race. Both spoke at once but Mrs. Harrison overwhelmed the sycophantic Abercrombie.

“Of course,” she said, “I think Julia herself is a little queer at times. I’ve noticed it for years ... ever since ... well ... ever since Lily went to Paris to live.”

“Yes,” observed Miss Abercrombie, moving toward something more definite. “Ever since the Governor’s garden party. All that was very queer ... very queer.”

Here again they found themselves halted by the immensity of the unspoken. Mrs. Harrison veered aside.

“The house has gone to ruin. Even the gate is hanging by one hinge. Nothing is kept up any longer.”

“Have you seen this lover of Irene’s?” asked Miss Abercrombie, calling a spade a spade and endeavoring to keep to one thing at a time.

“I’ve seen him once ... William pointed him out to me at the Mills. He’s one of the men who have been making trouble there.”

“Is he good looking?” asked Miss Abercrombie.

“Yes and no,” replied her companion.

“Well, what does that mean?”

“Well, he’s tall and has a handsome face ... a little evil perhaps. The real trouble is that I should call him common. Yes, common is the word I should use, decidedly common.”

Miss Abercrombie raised her eyebrows and smiled. “But, my dear, after all he is nothing but a workman.”

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Harrison, “he _is_.” In a manner which put an end to all doubt in the matter.

“Do you really think,” asked Miss Abercrombie, “that there is anything in it?”

Mrs. Harrison poised her fork and gave her guest a knowing look. “Well, of course I can’t see what he sees in her ... pale and haggard as she is. Now with him it’s different. He’s ... well.” She halted suddenly, adding, “This fowl is tough, Pearl ... I’m sorry it happened when you were dining with me.” And then, “I suppose it’s money he’s after. She must be very rich.”

The butler, after bringing more rich food, disappeared again and this time, Miss Abercrombie, casting to the winds all restraint, rose and said, “I’m going to bring my chair nearer, Belle. I can’t talk all the way from this end of the table.”

And she moved her chair and plate to a more strategic position so that when the butler returned, he found the two women sitting quite close to each other, their heads together, their voices lowered to the most confidential of pitches. Fragments of their talk reached an ear long trained to eavesdropping upon old women.

“But Lily is the one,” drifted to the ear. “I’d really like to know the truth about her. Of course blood is thicker than water. They say she....” Mrs. Harrison rattled the ice in her glass, thus destroying the remainder of the sentence.

So they sat until near midnight--two old women, one of them at the end of a life barren of love, the other abandoned by love forever and cast aside, a slowly decaying mass of fat--pawing over the affairs of two women for whom the force of love in some manifestation or other was still a radiant reality. They knew nothing; they possessed only suspicions and fragments of gossip, but out of these they succeeded in patching together a mosaic which glowed with all the colors of the most glamorous sin and the most romantic passion.

XXXIV

And at the same moment in the house at Cypress Hill, Julia Shane lay propped up in her bed reading a French novel. It was an enormous bed with a vast dusty canopy supported by two ironical wood-gilt cupids who hung suspended from the ceiling; and Julia Shane, reading by the light of her night lamp, appeared lost in it like a woman tossing on the waves of the sea. To-night, feeling more ill than usual, she had her dinner in bed, wrapped in a peignoir of mauve ribbon and valenciennes, her bony neck exposed above the linen of her night dress.

She read, as usual, with the aid of a silver mounted reading glass which tossed the sentences in enormous capitals well into the range of her fading vision. On the table beside her stood one of the gilt coffee cups, a mute witness to the old woman’s disobedience of the doctor’s orders. Beside it lay two paper backed French novels and on the floor in the shadow of the table a half dozen more tossed aside carelessly, some lying properly, others open and sprawled, exposing the ragged edges of the hastily cut pages.

In the fashion of the ill and aging, she lived nowadays in memories ... memories of her girlhood when she had ridden John Shane’s wildest mare Doña Rita recklessly about the paddock of the farm, memories of Mademoiselle Violette de Vaux and the picnics with French and English girls in a neatly kept wood at Sèvres, memories of Cypress Hill in the days immediately after her return when John Shane was still more the passionate lover than the husband. As she grew older, the memories became clearer and more vivid, but they were neither vivid nor diverse enough to occupy all her time. What remained she divided between the game of patience and the French novels which Lily supplied faithfully, shipping them from Paris in lots of a dozen at a time.

The old woman had evolved her own scheme of reading, a plan which Irene condemned by the word “skimming,” but which satisfied Julia Shane because it revealed the plot without an unnecessary waste of time over long, involved descriptions of scenery and minute analyses of incomprehensible Gallic passions. Under the skimming system she read a few pages at the beginning and then turned to the end to learn the outcome of the tale. After this, she plunged into the middle of the book and read a page or two here and there until her curiosity was satisfied and her interest flagged. And at last the book was tossed aside to be carried off by the mulatto woman, who never failed to go through each volume carefully as though by looking at the words frequently enough she would be able at length to unlock the secrets of foreign tongues. The books which lay on the floor beside the bed had been “skimmed.” They lay prostrate and sprawled like the dead soldiers of an army. The titles served as an index of the old woman’s favorite authors. They appeared some in black ink, some in red, some even in blue ... Paul Marguerite, Marcel Prévost, Pierre Loti, Paul Bourget, Collette Willy and, strange to relate, Anatole France represented by _L’Ile des Penguins_ which, it seemed, had baffled the “skimming” system, for of all the lot it was the only volume in which every page had been cut.

After she grew weary, she tossed aside _Les Anges Gardiens_ which she had been reading and sat leaning back with her eyes closed. Perhaps she pondered the doings of the four evil governesses in the Prévost tale; perhaps she turned her thoughts to the Town and Mrs. Julis Harrison whom she had sent away because she “was not in a mood to be bored.” It is even possible that she knew at this very moment that in the sandstone house of the Harrisons, they were discussing her affairs. She was too wise and too worldly not to have known what Belle Harrison would say of her. Yet she appeared calm and content enough, completely indifferent to the opinions of her acquaintances, of the Town--indeed of all the world. She had reached the time when such things are no longer of any importance.

So great was her indifference that in more than three months she had left the house only once and then to follow the coffin of Jacob Barr to the cemetery on the hill. The old man was dead at last, after an illness which had drained with a bitter, heart-breaking slowness all the vigor of his strong and energetic body. On the day of the funeral the foreign women in Halsted street caught a swift glimpse of the mistress of Cypress Hill as she drove through on her way to the cemetery. They must have guessed that it was an event of great importance which drew her from her seclusion; and indeed it was such an event, for it was the funeral of the oldest member of the family, the last of all his generation save Julia Shane.

And after the funeral Julia Shane returned and shut herself in, resolved to see no one but Irene and her niece, Hattie Tolliver.

XXXV

Whatever her thoughts and memories may have been, they were interrupted presently by the knock of the mulatto woman who came to bear away the gilt coffee cup and pile of ravaged novels. The sound of the woman’s shuffling approach aroused Julia Shane who opened her eyes and said, “Here, Sarah. Give me a hand. I’ve slipped down.”

Sarah helped lift her once more into a sitting posture. The old woman raised herself scornfully as if there was between her indomitable spirit and her wrecked body no bond of any sort, as if she had only contempt for the body as a thing unworthy of her, a thing which had failed her, over which she had neither control nor responsibility.

The mulatto woman bent to pick up the scattered novels, and as she stood up, her mistress, chuckling, said, “My God. They’re tiresome, Sarah. They never write about anything but _l’amour_. You’d think there was nothing else in the world. Even _l’amour_ gets to be a bore after a time.”

The mulatto woman waited obediently. “Yes, Mis’ Shane. I guess you’re right,” she said presently. At which the old woman smiled.

“And Sarah,” the mistress continued. “When Miss Irene comes in, tell her I should like to see her. It’s important.”

The servant hesitated for an instant. “But Miss Irene don’t come in till after midnight, Mis’ Shane.” She spoke with the manner of concealing something. In her soft voice there was a thin trace of insinuating suspicion, almost of servile accusation. “That foreign fella brings her home,” she added.

“It’s all right,” replied the old woman. “I shall be awake.” And then in a cold voice she added, “I’m sure it’s good of him to bring her home. I shouldn’t want her wandering about alone at that hour of the night. It’s very thoughtful of him.”

At midnight, true to her word, she was still awake. She had even managed to gain her feet painfully and to make her way with unsteady step across the room to the drawer which held her cigarettes. These too the doctor had forbidden her.

On the way back to her vast bed, she passed by the window and, drawing aside the curtain for a moment, she looked out over the hot panorama of glowing furnaces and tall black chimneys. As she stood there, she saw entering the wrought iron gates two figures sharply outlined against the glare of the white arc light in Halsted Street. The woman was Irene. She was accompanied by Krylenko.

Quietly the old woman extinguished the candle on the table beside her. The room became a vault of darkness. Beneath her window at the turn in the drive, the pair halted and stood talking in voices so low that what they said was inaudible even through the open window. After a time Irene seated herself wearily on the horseblock. Her frail body sagged with fatigue. She leaned against the cast iron Cupid who held in one outstretched hand an iron ring. Krylenko bent over her and his hands, with the curious, eloquent gestures of an alien, pantomimed their tale against the distant arc light. Above them in the recessed window the mother, clinging all the while to the heavy curtains for support, watched silently. She could hear nothing. She could only keep watch. At length Irene arose and lifting the ugly black hat from her head, ran her finger through her loose hair all damp with the terrible heat. Now was the moment. The old woman, awaiting proof, leaned against the table by her side.

But there was no proof. There was no embrace, not even the faintest exchange of intimacies. Krylenko chastely took Irene’s hand, bade her good-night and turned with his swinging powerful stride down the long drive. Irene, passing along the gallery by the drawing room, slipped her key into the lock and entered the house.

Above stairs she found her mother sitting up in bed, lost again in the midst of _Les Anges Gardiens_. Still carrying the worn hat in her hand, the daughter came over to the bed. With the increasing illness of the old woman, Irene’s manner had become more gentle. She even smiled a tired smile.

“What?” she said playfully. “Are you still awake? Skimming again, I see.”

Yet her manner was not the manner of a daughter with a mother. Rather it was that of a casual friend. It was too playful, too forced. The chasm of thirty years and more was not to be bridged by any amount of strained cordiality.

Julia Shane put down her reading glass. “I couldn’t sleep, so I tried to read,” she said.

Irene drew up a chair and sat by the bed. She appeared worn and exhausted, as though the August heat had drained to the dregs all her intense, self-inspired vitality.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better ... much better except for the ache in my back.”

Irene’s face grew serious. “You’ve been smoking again,” she said, “after the doctor forbade you.” The old woman, quite prepared to lie, started to protest, shaking her head in negation. “It’s no use, Mama ... I saw you ... I saw the glow of your cigarette at the window.”

(So Irene knew that she had been watched, and there was no need to protest.) The old woman sat still for a moment twisting the silver reading glass round and round, her brow contracted in an angry frown as though she resented bitterly the decay of body which gave any one authority over her. (That Julia Shane should ever take orders from a doctor or stand reproved by her own daughter!) It was this angry emotion that stood revealed and transparent in every line of her face, in the very defiance of her thin body. At length the frown melted slowly away.

“What sort of a man is he, Irene?” she asked looking straight into her daughter’s tired eyes. Irene moved uneasily.

“What man?” she asked, “I don’t know who you mean.”

“That foreigner ... I don’t remember his name. You’ve never told me.... You might have told your mother.” There was a note of peevishness in her voice which sounded queer and alien, almost a portent.

“Oh, Krylenko,” said Irene, twisting her black hat with her thin hands. “Krylenko.” Then she waited for a moment. “He’s a fine man ... a wonderful man. He has given up everything for his people.”

“But they are not _your_ people,” observed her mother looking at her sharply.

“They are my people,” replied Irene softly. “All of them down to the last baby. If they are not my people, who are?”