Part 13

All this her manner declared unmistakably during the few strained seconds that she stood in the doorway facing her cousin. For an instant, while the two women, the worldly and the provincial, faced each other, the making of family history hung in the balance. It was Mrs. Tolliver who decided the issue. Suddenly she took her beautiful cousin into her arms, encircling her in an embrace so warm and so filled with defiance of all the world that Lily’s black hat, trimmed with camelias, was knocked awry.

“Your poor mother!” were Cousin Hattie’s first words. “She is very low indeed. She has been asking for you.”

And so Lily won another victory in her long line of conquests, a victory which she must have known was a real triumph in which to take a profound pride.

Then while Lily took off her hat and set her fine hair in order, her cousin poured out the news of the last few days. It was news of a sort that warmed the heart of Mrs. Tolliver ... news of Julia Shane’s illness delivered gravely with a vast embroidery of detail, a long account of the mulatto woman’s insolence and derelictions which increased as the old woman grew weaker; and, last of all, an eloquent and denunciatory account of Irene’s behavior.

“She behaves,” said Mrs. Tolliver, “as though a daughter had no obligations toward her own mother.” Her face grew scarlet with indignation at this flouting of family ties. “She spends all her time in the Flats among those foreigners and never sees her own mother more than a minute or two a day. There she lies, a sick and dying woman, grieving because her daughter neglects her. You’d think Irene loved the strikers more ... especially one young fellow who is the leader,” she added darkly.

Lily, knowing her mother, must have guessed that Cousin Hattie’s account suffered from a certain emotional exaggeration. The picture of old Julia Shane, grieving because her daughter neglected her, was not a convincing one. The old woman was too self reliant for that sort of behavior. She expected too little from the world.

But Lily said nothing. She unstrapped her bag and brought out a fresh handkerchief and a bottle of scent. Then she raised her lovely head and looked sharply at her cousin. “I suppose it’s this same Krylenko,” she said. “D’you think she’s in love with him?”

“No,” replied Mrs. Tolliver shrewdly, “I don’t think she loves anybody or anything but her own soul. She’s like a machine. She has an idea she loves the strikers but that’s only because she thinks she’s saving her soul by good works. I suppose it makes her happy. Only yesterday I told her, thinking it would be a hint, that charity begins at home.” For a moment Mrs. Tolliver waited thoughtfully, and then she added, “You know, sometimes Irene looks at her mother as if she wanted her to make haste with her dying. I’ve noticed the look--more than once.”

And so they talked for a time, as people always talked of Irene, as if she were a stranger, a curiosity, something which stood outside the realm of human understanding. And out of the ruin of Irene’s character, Hattie Tolliver rose phoenix-like, triumphant, as the heroine who had seen Irene’s duty and taken it upon herself.

“You know, I’m nursing your mother,” she continued. “She wouldn’t have a nurse because she couldn’t bear to have a stranger in the house. She has that one idea now ... seeing no one but the doctor and her own family. Now that you’ve come, I suppose she won’t even see the doctor any more. She’s asleep now, so I came down-stairs to put the house into some sort of order. Heaven knows what it would have been like if the drawing-room had been open too. That mulatto woman,” she added bitterly, “hasn’t touched a thing in weeks.”

Silently, thoughtfully, Lily pushed open the double doors into the drawing-room.

“It’s not been opened since you left,” continued Mrs. Tolliver. “Not even for the Christmas party. But that wasn’t necessary because there aren’t many of us left. You could put all of us into the library. There’s only Eva Barr and Charles and me. The old ones are all dead and the young ones have gone away.” For a moment she paused, for Lily appeared not to be listening. Then she added softly, “But I guess you know all that. I’d forgotten Ellen was living with you.”

For the time being, the conversation ended while the two women, Lily in her smart suit from the Rue de la Paix and Hattie Tolliver in shiny black alpaca with apron and dustcloth, stood in the doorway reverently surveying the vast old room, so dead now and so full of memories. The rosewood chairs, shrouded like ghosts, appeared dimly in the light that filtered through the curtained windows. In the far end, before the long mirror, the piano with its shapeless covering resembled some crouching, prehistoric animal. Above the mantelpiece, the flaming Venice of Mr. Turner glowed vaguely beneath layers of dust. Cobwebs hung from the crystal chandeliers and festooned the wall sconces; and beneath the piano the Aubusson carpet, rolled into a long coil, waited like a python. The room was the mute symbol of something departed from the Town.

Silently the two women regarded the spectacle and when Lily at length turned away, her dark eyes were shining with tears. She was inexpressibly lovely, all softened now by the melancholy sight.

“I suppose it will never be opened again,” observed Mrs Tolliver in a solemn voice. “But I mean to clean it thoroughly the first time I have an opportunity. Just look at the dust.” And with her competent finger she traced her initials on the top of a lacquer table.

For a moment Lily made no reply. At last she said, “No. I suppose it is closed for good.”

“You wouldn’t come back here to live?” probed her cousin with an air of hopefulness.

“No. Why should I?” And a second later Lily added, “But how quiet it is. You can almost hear the stillness.”

Mrs. Tolliver closed the door, seizing at the same time the opportunity to polish the knobs on the hallway side. “Yes, it’s a relief not to hear the Mills. But there are other noises now ... riots and machine guns, and at night there are searchlights. Only last night the police clubbed an old woman to death at the foot of the drive. She was a Polish woman ... hadn’t been harming any one. I wonder you didn’t see the blood. It’s smeared on the gates. Irene can tell you all about it.” For a moment she polished thoughtfully; then she straightened her vigorous body and said, “But I got back at them. I gave one of the hired policeman a poke he won’t soon forget. It’s a crime the way they behave.... It’s murder. No decent community would allow it.” And she told Lily the story of the rescue at the corner saloon.

As Lily made her way up the long stairway, Mrs. Tolliver paused in her work to watch the ascending figure until it reached the top. Her large honest face was alive with interest, her eyes shining as if she now really saw Lily for the first time, as if the old Lily had been simply an illusion. The beautiful stranger climbed the stairs languidly, the long, lovely lines of her body showing through the trim black suit. Her red hair glowed in the dim light of the hallway. She was incredibly young and happy, so unbelievably fresh and lovely that Mrs. Tolliver, after Lily had disappeared at the turn of the stair, moved away shaking her head and making the clucking sound which primitive women use to indicate a disturbance of their suspicions.

And when she returned to dusting the library under the handsome, malignant face of John Shane she worked in silence, abandoning her usual habit of humming snatches of old ballads. After the Ball was Over and The Baggage Coach Ahead were forgotten. Presently, when she had finished polishing the little ornaments of jade and crystal, she fell to regarding the portrait with a profound interest. She stood thus, with her arms akimbo, for many minutes regarding the man in the picture as if he too had become a stranger to her. She discovered, it appeared, something more than a temperamental and clever old reprobate who had been indulgent toward her. Her manner was that of a person who stands before a suddenly opened door in the presence of magnificent and incomprehensible wonders.

Lily found her there when she came down-stairs.

“You know,” observed Mrs. Tolliver, “I must be getting old. I have such funny thoughts lately ... the kind of thoughts a normal healthy woman doesn’t have.”

XLII

Room by room, closet by closet, Mrs. Tolliver and Lily put the big house in order. They even set Hennery to cleaning the cellar, and themselves went into the attic where they poked about among old boxes and trunks filled with clothing and photographs, bits of yellow lace and brocade for which no use had ever been found. There were photographs of Lily and Irene as little girls in tarlatan dresses much ornamented with artificial pansies and daisies; pictures of John Shane on the wrought iron piazza, surrounded by men who were leaders in state politics; dim photographs of Julia Shane in an extremely tight riding habit with a bustle, and a hat set well forward over the eyes; pictures of the annual family gatherings at Christmas time with all its robust members standing in the snow outside the house at Cypress Hill. There were even pictures of Mrs. Tolliver’s father, Jacob Barr, on the heavy hack he sometimes rode, and one of him surrounded by his eight vigorous children.

From the sentimental Mrs. Tolliver, this collection wrenched a tempest of sighs. To Lily she said. “It’s like raising the dead. I just can’t believe the changes that have occurred.”

The arrival of Lily brought a certain repose to the household. The mulatto woman who behaved so sulkily under the shifting dominations of the powerful Mrs. Tolliver and the anemic Irene, began slowly to regain her old respectful attitude. It appeared that she honored Miss Lily with the respect which servants have for those who understand them. Where the complaints of Irene and the stormy commands of Mrs. Tolliver had wrought nothing, the amiable smiles and the interested queries of Lily accomplished miracles. For a time the household regained the air of order and dignity which it had known in the days of Julia Shane’s domination. Lily was unable to explain her success. After all, there was nothing new in the process. Servants had always obeyed her in the same fashion. She charmed them whether they were her own or not.

Although her arrival worked many a pleasant change in the house and appeared to check for a time the inward sweeping waves of melancholy, there was one thing which she was unable, either consciously or unconsciously, to alter in any way. This was the position of Irene. The sister remained an outsider. It was as if the old dwelling were a rooming house and she were simply a roomer, detached, aloof ... a roomer in whom no one was especially interested. She was, in fact, altogether incomprehensible. Lily, to be sure, made every effort to change the condition of affairs; but her efforts, it appeared, only drove her sister more deeply into the shell of taciturnity and indifference. The first encounter of the two sisters, for all the kisses and warmth of Lily, was an awkward and soulless affair to which Irene submitted listlessly. So apparent was the strain of the encounter that Mrs. Tolliver, during the course of the morning’s work, found occasion to refer to it.

“You mustn’t mind Irene’s behavior,” she said. “She has been growing queerer and queerer.” And raising her eyebrows significantly she continued, “You know, sometimes I think she’s a little cracked. Religion sometimes affects people in that way, especially the sort of popery Irene practises.”

And then she told of finding Irene, quite by accident, prostrate before the pink-gilt image of the Virgin, her hair all disheveled, her eyes streaming with tears.

Once Mrs. Tolliver had reconciled herself to Lily’s secret, her entire manner toward her cousin suffered a change. The awe which had once colored her behavior disappeared completely. She was no longer the provincial, ignorant of life outside the Town, face to face with an experienced woman of the world. She was one mother with an understanding for another. Before many days had passed the pair worked and gossiped side by side, not only as old friends might have gossiped but as old friends who are quite the same age, whose interests are identical. In her manner there was no evidence of any strangeness save in the occasional moments when she would cease working abruptly to regard her lovely cousin with an expression of complete bewilderment, which did not vanish until Lily, attracted by her cousin’s steady gaze, looked up and caused Mrs. Tolliver to blush as if it were herself who had sinned.

XLIII

It was Lily who in the end mentioned the affair. She spoke of it as they sat at lunch in the paneled dining room.

“Mama,” she said suddenly, “tells me that you know all about Jean.”

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Tolliver, in a queer unearthly voice. “She told me.”

“I’m glad, because I wanted to tell you before, only she wouldn’t let me. She said you wouldn’t understand.”

There was an awesome little pause and Mrs. Tolliver, her fork poised, said, “I don’t quite understand, Lily. I must say it’s puzzling. But I guessed you knew what you were doing. It wasn’t as if you were a common woman who took lovers.” She must have seen the faint tinge of color that swept over Lily’s face, but she continued in the manner of a virtuous woman doing her duty, seeing a thing in the proper light, being fair and honest. “I guessed there was some reason. Of course, I wouldn’t want a daughter of mine to do such a thing. I would rather see her in her grave.”

Her manner was emphatic and profound. It was clear that however she might forgive Lily in the eyes of the world, she had her own opinions which none should ever know but herself and Lily.

Lily blushed, the color spreading over her lovely face to the soft fringe of her hair. “You needn’t worry, Cousin Hattie,” she said. “Ellen would never do such a thing. You see, Ellen is complete. She doesn’t need anything but herself. She’s not like me at all. She isn’t weak. She would never do anything because she lost her head.”

Ellen’s mother, who had stopped eating, regarded her with a look of astonishment. “But your mother said you hadn’t lost your head. She said it was you who wouldn’t marry the Governor.”

Lily’s smile persisted. She leaned over to touch her cousin’s hand, gently as though pleading with her to be tolerant.

“It’s true,” she said. “Some of what mother told you. It’s true about my refusing to marry him. You see the trouble is that I’m not afraid when I should be. I’m not afraid of the things I should be afraid of. When there is danger, I can’t run away. If I could run away I’d be saved, but I can’t. Something makes me see it through. It’s something that betrays me ... something that is stronger than myself. That’s what happened with the Governor. It was I who was more guilty than he. It is I who played with fire. If I was not unwilling, what could you expect of him ... a man. Men love the strength of women as a refuge from their own weakness.” She paused and her face grew serious. “When it was done, I was afraid ... not afraid, you understand of bearing a child or even afraid of what people would say of me. I was afraid of losing myself, because I knew I couldn’t always love him.... I knew it. I knew it. I knew that something had betrayed me. I couldn’t give up all my life to a man because I’d given an hour of it to him. I was afraid of what he would become. Can you understand that? That was the only thing I was afraid of ... nothing else but that. It was I who was wrong in the very beginning.”

But Mrs. Tolliver’s expression of bewilderment failed to dissolve before this disjointed explanation. “No,” she said, “I don’t understand.... I should think you would have wanted a home and children and a successful husband. He’s been elected senator, you know, and they talk of making him president.”

Lily’s red lip curved in a furtive, secret, smile. “And what’s that to me?” she asked. “They can make him what they like. A successful husband isn’t always the best. I could see what they would make him. That’s why I couldn’t face being his wife. I wasn’t a girl when it happened. I was twenty-four and I knew a great many things. I wasn’t a poor innocent seduced creature. But it wasn’t so much that I thought it out. I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t marry him. Something inside me wouldn’t let me. A part of me was wise. You see, only half of me loved him ... my body, shall we say, desired him. That is not enough for a lifetime. The body changes.” For a second she cast down her eyes as if in shame and Mrs. Tolliver, who never before had heard such talk, looked away, out of the tall window across the snow covered park.

“Besides,” Lily continued, after a little silence, “I have a home and I have a child. Both of them are perfect. I am a very happy woman, Cousin Hattie ... much happier than if I had married him. I know that from what he taught me ... in that one hour.”

Mrs. Tolliver regarded her now with a curious, prying, look. Plainly it was a miracle she had found in a woman who had sinned and still was happy. “But you have no husband,” she said presently, with the air of presenting a final argument.

“No,” replied Lily, “I have no husband.”

“But that must mean something.”

“Yes, I suppose it does mean something.”

And then the approach of the mulatto woman put an end to the talk for the time being. When she had disappeared once more, it was Mrs. Tolliver who spoke. “You know,” she said, “I sometimes think Irene would be better off if such a thing had happened to her. It isn’t natural, the way she carries on. It’s morbid. I’ve told her so often enough.”

“But it couldn’t have happened to Irene. She will never marry. You see Irene’s afraid of men ... in that way. Such a thing I’m sure would drive her mad.” And Lily bowed her lovely head for a moment. “We must be good to Irene. She can’t help being as she is. You see she believes all love is a kind of sin. Love, I mean, of the sort you and I have known.”

At this speech Mrs. Tolliver grew suddenly tense. Her large, honest face became scarlet with indignation. “But it isn’t the same,” she protested. “What I knew and what you knew. They’re very different things. My love was consecrated.”

Lily’s dark eyes grew thoughtful. “It would have been the same if I had married the Governor. People would have said that we loved each other as you and Cousin Charles love each other. They wouldn’t have known the truth. One doesn’t wash one’s dirty linen in public.”

Her cousin interrupted her abruptly. “It is not the same. I could not have had children by Charlie until I was married to him. I mean there could have been nothing like that between us beforehand.”

“That’s only because you were stronger than me,” said Lily. “You see I was born as I am. That much I could not help. There are times when I cannot save myself. You are more fortunate. Irene is like me. That is the reason she behaves as she does. After all, it is the same thing in us both.”

But Mrs. Tolliver, it was plain to be seen, understood none of this. It was quite beyond her simple code of conduct. Her life bore witness to her faith in the creed that breaking the rules meant disaster.

“I know,” continued Lily, “that I was lucky to have been rich. If I had been poor it would have been another matter. I should have married him. But because I was rich, I was free. I was independent to do as I wished, independent ... like a man, you understand. Free to do as I pleased.” All at once she leaned forward impulsively. “Tell me, Cousin Hattie ... it has not made me hard, has it? It has not made me old and evil? It has not made people dislike me?”

Mrs. Tolliver regarded her for a moment as if weighing arguments, seeking reasons, why Lily seemed content and happy despite everything. At length, finding no better retort, she said weakly, “How could they dislike you? No one ever knew anything about it.”

A look of triumph shone in Lily’s dark eyes. “Ah, that’s it!” she cried. “That’s it! They didn’t know anything, so they don’t dislike me. If they had known they would have found all sorts of disagreeable things in me. They would have said, ‘We cannot speak to Lily Shane. She is an immoral woman.’ They would have made me into a hard and unhappy creature. They would have created the traits which they believed I should possess. It is the knowing that counts and not the act itself. It is the old story. It is worse to be found out in a little sin than to commit secretly a big one. There is only one thing that puzzles them.” She raised her slim, soft hands in a little gesture of badinage. “Do you know what it is? They can’t understand why I have never married and why I am not old and rattly as a spinster should be. It puzzles them that I am young and fresh.”

For a time Mrs. Tolliver considered the dark implications of this speech. But she was not to be downed. “Just the same, I don’t approve, Lily,” she said. “I don’t want you to think for a minute that I approve. If my daughter had done it, it would have killed me. It’s not right. One day you will pay for it, in this world or the next.”

At this threat Lily grew serious once more and the smoldering light of rebellion came into her eyes. She was leaning back in her old indolent manner. It was true that there was about her something inexpressibly voluptuous and beautiful which alarmed her cousin. It was a dangerous, flaunting beauty, undoubtedly wicked to the Presbyterian eyes of Mrs. Tolliver. And she was young too. At that moment she might have been taken for a woman in her early twenties.

After a time she raised her head. “But I am happy,” she said, defiantly, “completely happy.”

“I wish,” said Mrs. Tolliver with a frown, “that you wouldn’t say such things. I can’t bear to hear you.”