Part 12

“No, go on with your work. If you prop me a little higher and give me my glass, I’ll read it.”

This operation completed, she read the letter through. It was not until Ellen’s name occurred that Cousin Hattie displayed any real interest. At the sound of her daughter’s name, the woman put down her sewing and assumed an attitude of passionate listening.

“Ellen,” ran the letter, “is doing splendidly. She is contented here and is working hard under Philippe. She plays better than ever ... if that is possible, and plans to make her début in London next year. She has every reason to make a great success. I am leaving her in my house when I come to America. She gets on beautifully with Madame Gigon. That was my greatest worry, for Madame Gigon has grown worse as she has grown older. But she has taken a fancy to Ellen ... fortunately, so everything is perfect. Tell Cousin Hattie that one day she will be proud of her daughter.”

Julia Shane, when she had finished, put down the letter, and regarded her niece. “You see, Hattie,” she said, “there is no need to worry. Everything is going splendidly. Ellen couldn’t be in better hands. Lily knows her way about the world a great deal better than most. Some day your daughter will be famous.”

There came no response from her niece. Mrs. Tolliver sat upright and thoughtful. Presently she took up the pillow case and set to work again.

“These débuts,” she said. “They cost money, don’t they?”

“Yes,” replied her aunt.

“Well where is Ellen to get it? Clarence’s life insurance must all be gone by this time.”

“I suppose Lily has found a way. Lily is clever. Besides Ellen isn’t altogether helpless.”

Again there was a thoughtful pause and the old woman said, “I don’t think you’d be pleased if Ellen _was_ a great success.”

“I don’t know. I’d be more pleased if I had her nearer to me. I don’t like the idea of her being in Paris. It’s not a healthy place. It’s the wickedest city in the world.”

“Come, Hattie. You mustn’t forget Ellen was made to live in the world. You brought her up to be successful and famous. It’s your fault if you have reason to be proud of her.”

Into this single sentence or two Julia Shane managed to condense a whole epic. It was an epic of maternal sacrifices, of a household kept without servants so that the children might profit by the money saved, of plans which had their beginning even before the children were born, of hopes and ambitions aroused skilfully by a woman who now sat deserted, hemming a pillow-case to help dispel her loneliness. She had, in effect, brought about her own sorrow. They were gone now, Ellen to Paris, Fergus and Robert to New York. It was in their very blood. All this was written, after all, in the strong proud face bent low over the pillow-case ... an epic of passionate maternity.

“We have to expect these things of our children,” continued Aunt Julia. “I’m old enough to know that it’s no new story, and I’ve lived long enough to know that we have no right to demand of them the things which seem to us the only ones worth while. Every one of us is different from the others. There are no two in the least alike. And no one ever really knows any one else. There is always a part which remains secret and hidden, concealed in the deepest part of the soul. No husband ever knows his wife, Hattie, and no wife ever really knows her husband. There is always something just beyond that remains aloof and untouched, mysterious and undiscoverable because we ourselves do not know just what it is. Sometimes it is shameful. Sometimes it is too fine, too precious, ever to reveal. It is quite beyond revelation even if we chose to reveal it....”

XXXIX

At the close of this long speech, the old woman fell into a fit of coughing and her niece rose quickly to bring more medicine and water. If Hattie Tolliver had understood even for a moment these metaphysical theories, they were forgotten in the confusion of the coughing fit. It is more than probable that she understood nothing of the speech and probable that she was too far lost in thoughts of Ellen to have heard it. In any case, she was, like most good mothers and housewives, a pure realist who dealt in terms of the material. At least she gave no sign, and when the coughing fit was over, she returned at once to the main thread of the conversation.

“These careers,” she said, “may be all right but I think that Ellen might be happier if she had something more sound ... like a husband and children and a home.”

It was useless to argue with her. Like all women whose domestic life has been happy and successful, she could not be convinced that there was anything in the world more desirable than the love of a good husband and children. With her it was indeed something even stronger--a tribal instinct upon which life itself is founded. She was a fundamental person beside whom Irene and Lily, even her own daughter Ellen, were sports in the biological sense. They were removed by at least two generations from the soil. In them the struggle for life had become transvalued into a pursuit of the arts, of religion, of pleasure itself.

In the gathering twilight, Hattie Tolliver brought a lamp and lighted it to work by. Julia Shane watched her silently for a time, observing the strong neck, the immaculate full curve of her niece’s figure, the certainty with which the strong worn fingers moved about their delicate work.

“You remember,” she said, “that Lily mentioned a boy ... a young boy, in her letter?”

“Yes,” replied Hattie Tolliver, without glancing from her work. “The child of a friend. I thought she might have passed him by to come home to her mother.... Funny how children can forget you.”

Julia Shane stirred softly in the deep bed. “I thought you might be thinking that,” she said. “I thought it would be better to tell you the truth. I wanted you to know anyway. The truth is, Hattie, that the child is her own. She is more interested in him than in me, and that’s natural enough and quite proper.”

The strong fingers paused abruptly in their work and lay motionless against the white linen. Hattie Tolliver’s face betrayed her amazement; yet clearly she was a little amused.

“Charles always said there was something mysterious about Lily,” she said. “But I never guessed she’d been secretly married.”

The old woman, hesitating, coughed before she replied, as though the supremely respectable innocence of her niece somehow made her inarticulate. At last she summoned strength.

“But she’s never been married, Hattie. There never was any ceremony.”

“Then how ...” In Mrs. Tolliver’s face the amazement spread until her countenance was one great interrogation.

“Children,” interrupted her aunt in a voice filled with tremulous calm, “can be born without marriage certificates. They have nothing to do with legal processes.”

For a long time the niece kept silent, fingering the while the half finished pillow case. It appeared that she found some new and marvelous quality in it. She fingered the stuff as though she were in the act of purchasing it across a counter. At last she raised her head.

“Then it was true ... that old story?” she asked.

“What story?”

“The one they told in the Town ... about Lily’s _having_ to go away to Paris.”

“Yes.... But no one ever really knew. They only guessed. They knew nothing at all. And they know nothing more to-day.” The old woman paused for a second as though to give her words emphasis. “I’m trusting you never to tell, Hattie. I wanted you to know because if ever it was necessary, I wanted Lily to come to you for help. It never will be. It isn’t likely.”

Hattie Tolliver sat up very stiff and red. “Tell!” she said, “Tell! Who should I ever tell in the Town? Why should I tell any of them?” The tribal instinct rose in triumph. It was a matter of her family against the Mills, the Town, all the world if necessary. Torture could not have dragged from her the truth.

Yet Hattie Tolliver was not unmoved by the confession. It may even have been that she herself long ago had suspicions of the truth which had withered and died since from too much doubt. To a woman of her nature the news of a thousand strikes, of murder and of warfare was as nothing beside the thing Julia Shane revealed. For a long time she said nothing at all, but her strong fingers spoke for her. They worked faster and more skilfully than ever, as if all her agitation was pouring itself out through their tips. The fingers and the flying needle said, “That this should have happened in our family! I can’t believe it. Perhaps Aunt Julia is so sick that her mind is weakened. Surely she must imagine this tale. Such things happen only to servant girls. All this is unreal. It cannot be true. Lily could not be so happy, so buoyant if this were true. Sinners can only suffer and be miserable.”

All this time she remained silent, breathing heavily, and when at last she spoke, it was to ask, “Who was the man?” in so terrible a voice that the old woman on the bed started for a moment and then averted her face lest her niece see the ghost of a smile which slipped out unwilled.

“It was the Governor,” the aunt replied at last.

And then, “Why would he not marry her?” in a voice filled with accumulations of hatred and scorn for the ravishers of women.

This time Julia Shane did not smile. Her pride,--the old fierce and arrogant pride--was touched.

“Oh,” she replied, “it was not that. It was Lily who refused to marry him. He begged her ... on his knees he begged her. I saw him. He would have been glad enough to have her.”

And this led only to a “Why?” to which the old woman answered that she did not know except that Lily had said she wished to be herself and go her own way, that she was content and would not marry him even if he became president. “Beyond that, I do not know,” she said. “That is where a mother does not know even her own daughter. I don’t believe Lily knows herself. Can you tell why it is that Ellen must go on studying and studying, why she cannot help it? Can I know why Irene wants only to be left in peace to go her own way? No, we never really know any one.”

All this swept over the head of Hattie Tolliver. She returned to one thing. “It would not have been a bad match. He is a senator now.”

It had grown quite dark during their talk and from inside the barrier of the Mills the searchlights began to operate, at first furtively and in jerky fashion and then slowly with greater and greater deliberation, sweeping in gigantic arcs the sky and the squalid area of the Flats. A dozen times in their course the hard white beams swept the walls of the barren old house, penetrating even the room where Julia Shane lay slowly dying. The flashes of light came suddenly, bathing in an unearthly glow and with a dazzling clarity the walls and the furniture. At last, as the beams swept the face of the ormulu clock, Hattie Tolliver, rising, folded her pillow case and thrust it into the black bag she carried.

“I must go now,” she said. “Charlie will be wanting his supper.”

The old woman asked her to bend down while she kissed her. It was the first time she had ever made such a request and she passed over the extraordinary event by hastily begging her niece to draw the curtains.

“The lights make me nervous,” she said. “I don’t know why, but they are worse than the noise the Mills used to make.”

And when this operation was completed she summoned her niece again to her side. “Would you like to see a picture of Lily’s boy?”

Hattie Tolliver nodded.

“It is in the top drawer of the chiffonier. Will you fetch it to me?”

Her niece brought the picture and for a time the two women regarded it silently. It was the photograph of a handsome child, singularly like Lily although there was something of the Governor’s rather florid good looks, particularly about the high sweeping forehead.

“He is a fine child, isn’t he?” the old woman remarked. “I never expected to have a grandchild named Shane.”

Still regarding the picture with a sort of fascination, Mrs. Tolliver replied, “He is a darling, isn’t he? Does she call him that?”

“Of course. What would she call him?”

“Yes, he is a fine lad. He looks like our family.” And then after a long pause she added, “I’m glad you told me all the story. I’m glad Lily did what she did deliberately. I should hate to think that any of us would be weak enough to let a man take advantage of her. That makes a great difference.”

After she had put on her small black hat trimmed with worn and stubby ostrich plumes, she turned for the last time. “If you have another of those pictures, Aunt Julia, I would like to have one. I’d like to show it to Charles. He’s always admired Lily. It’s funny what a way she has with men.”

There was no sting in the remark. It was a simple declaration, spoken as though the truth of it had occurred to her for the first time. She was too direct and vigorous to be feline.

As she closed the door the voice of her aunt trailed weakly after. “You needn’t worry about Ellen. All her strength and character is your strength and character, Hattie. She can take care of herself.”

The niece turned in the doorway, her thick strong figure blocking the shower of dim light from the hall. “No,” she said. “It’s not as though Lily were bad. She isn’t bad. I’ve always had an idea that she knew what she was about. I suppose she has her own ideas on life. Perhaps she lives up to them. I can’t say they’re my ideas.” For a second she leaned against the frame of the door, searching with an air of physical effort for words to express her thoughts. “No, she isn’t bad,” she continued. “No one who ever knew her can say she is a bad woman. I can’t explain what I mean, but I suppose she believes in what she does.”

And with this wise and mysterious observation Mrs. Tolliver returned to the world of the concrete--her own world--swept down the long stairway and into the kitchen where she reclaimed her basket, and left the house without waiting for the hostile mulatto woman to open the door.

XL

Perhaps because she was so dazed and fascinated by the story which Julia Shane had poured into her astonished ears, she walked in a sort of dream to the foot of the long drive where she found herself suddenly embroiled in a waking nightmare. On all sides of her there rose a great tumult and shouting. Stones were thrown. Cries rang out in barbaric tongues. Men struggled and fought, and above the men on foot rose the figures of the constabulary mounted on wild and terrified horses who charged and curvetted as their masters struck about them with heavy clubs.

Through all this, Hattie Tolliver passed with an air of the most profound detachment and scorn, somewhat in the manner of a great sea-going freighter riding the waves of an insignificant squall. She carried her head high, despising the Irish constabulary as profoundly as she despised the noisy alien rabble. Clearly it was none of her affair. This embroiled rabble had nothing to do with her, nothing to do with her family, nothing to do with her world. The riot was as nothing beside the tale that kept running through her mind, blinding her senses to all the struggle that took place at her very side.

And then, suddenly and without warning, the crack of a pistol tore the air; then another and another, and there fell at the feet of Hattie Tolliver, completely blocking her overwhelming progress, the body of a swarthy man with heavy black mustaches. Before she was able to move, one of the constabulary, rushing up, kicked the prostrate body of the groaning man.

But he did not kick twice, for he was repulsed a second later by the savage thrust in the stomach from the umbrella of Mrs. Tolliver who, rushing to the attack, cried out, “Get away, you filthy brute!... You dirty coward!”

And the trooper, seeing no doubt that she was not one of the foreigners, retired sheepishly before the menace of the angry mob to join his fellows.

The basket and umbrella were cast aside and Mrs. Tolliver, bending over the writhing man, searched for the wound. When she looked up again she found, standing over her, the gigantic steel worker who she knew was Irene’s friend. She did not know his name.

“Here,” she said, with the manner of a field marshal. “Help me get this fellow into the house over there.”

Without a word, Krylenko bent down, picked up the stricken workman and bore him, laid across his brawny shoulders, into the corner saloon whither Hattie Tolliver with her recovered basket and umbrella followed him, surrounded by a protecting phalanx of excited and gibbering strikers.

The saloon was empty, for all the hangers-on had drifted long before into the streets to watch the riot from a safe distance. But the electrical piano kept up its uncanny uproar playing over and over again, Bon-Bon Buddy, the Chocolate Drop and I’m Afraid to go Home in the Dark.

There on the bar, among the empty glasses, Krylenko laid the unconscious striker and Hattie Tolliver, with the scissors she had used but a moment before in hemstitching a pillow-case, cut away the soiled shirt and dressed the wound. When her work was done she ordered Krylenko to take down one of the swinging doors and on this the strikers bore the wounded man to his own house.

When the little procession had vanished around a corner, Mrs. Tolliver brushed her black clothes, gathered up her basket and umbrella and set out up the hill to the Town. It was the first time she had ever set foot inside an establishment which sold intoxicating liquors.

Behind her in the darkened room at Cypress Hill, the sound of shots and cries came distantly to Julia Shane as through a high impenetrable wall, out of another world. At the moment she was alive in a world of memories, a world as real and as tangible as the world of the Mills and the Flats, for the past may be quite as real as the present. It is a vast country full of trees and houses, animals and friends, where people may go on having adventures as long as they live. And the sounds she heard in her world bore no relation to the sounds in sordid Halsted street. They were the sounds of pounding hoofs on hard green turf, and the cries of admiration from a little group of farmers and townspeople who leaned on the rail of John Shane’s paddock while his wife, with a skilful hand sent his sleek hunter Doña Rita over the bars--first five, then six and last of all and marvelous to relate, a clean seven!

A stained and dusty photograph slipped from her thin fingers and lost itself among the mountainous bedclothing which she found impossible to keep in order. It was the portrait of a youngish man with a full black beard and eyes that were wild, passionate, adventurous ... the portrait of John Shane, the lover, as he returned to his wife at the school of Mademoiselle Violette de Vaux at St. Cloud on the outskirts of Paris.

XLI

As Julia Shane grew weaker, it was Cousin Hattie Tolliver who “took hold” of the establishment at Shane’s Castle. It was always Mrs. Tolliver, capable and housewifely, who “took hold” in a family crisis. She managed funerals, weddings and christenings. Cousins came to die at her shabby house in the Town. She gathered into her large strong hands the threads of life and death that stretched themselves through a family scattered from Paris to Australia. Her relatives embroiled themselves in scrapes, they grew ill, they lost or made fortunes, they succumbed to all the weaknesses to which the human flesh is prone; and always, at the definitive moment, they turned to Hattie Tolliver as to a house built upon a rock.

Irene, so capable in succoring the miserable inhabitants of the Flats, grew helpless when death peered in at the tall windows of Shane’s Castle. Besides, she had her own work to do. As the strike progressed she came to spend days and nights in the squalid houses of Halsted street, returning at midnight to inquire after her mother. She knew nothing of managing a house and Hattie Tolliver knew these things intimately. More than that, Mrs. Tolliver enjoyed “taking hold”; and she extracted, beyond all doubt, a certain faintly malicious satisfaction in taking over the duties which should have fallen upon Irene, while Irene spent her strength, her very life, in helping people unrelated to her, people who were not even Americans.

So it was Hattie Tolliver, wearing a spotless apron and bearing a dustcloth, who opened the door when Hennery, returning from his solitary and heroic venture outside the gates, drove Lily up from the dirty red brick station, bringing this time no great trunks covered with gay labels of Firenze and Sorrento but a pair of black handbags and a small trunk neatly strapped. It may have been that Hennery, as Irene hinted bitterly, made that perilous journey through the riots of Halsted street only because it was Mis’ Lily who was returning. Certainly no other cause had induced him to venture outside the barren park.

The encounter, for Hattie Tolliver, was no ordinary one. From her manner it was clear that she was opening the door to a woman ... her own cousin ... who had lived in sin, who had borne a child out of wedlock. Indeed the woman might still be living in sin. Paris was a Babylon where it was impossible to know any one’s manner of living. Like all the others, Mrs. Tolliver had lived all her life secure in the belief that she knew Lily. She remembered the day of her cousin’s birth ... a snowy blustering day. She knew Lily throughout her childhood. She knew her as a woman. “Lily,” she undoubtedly told herself, “was thus and so. If any one knows Lily, I know her.” And then all this knowledge had been upset suddenly by a single word from Lily’s mother. It was necessary to create a whole new pattern. The woman who stood on the other side of the door was not Lily at all--at least not the old Lily--but a new woman, a stranger, whom she did not know. There might be, after all, something in what Aunt Julia said about never really knowing any one.