Part 19

From the shelter of a divan placed between two of the tall windows, Lily and the Baron watched the three noisy musicians. On the verge of middle-age, her beauty appeared to have reached its height. There are those who would have preferred her as a young girl, fresher, more gentle and more naive. But likewise there are those who find the greatest beauty in the opulent women of Titian, and it was this beauty which Lily now possessed. She wore a black tea-gown, loosely and curiously made with a collar which came high about her throat and emphasized the ivory green tint of her skin and the copper red of her hair. She lay back among the cushions watching Jean with the triumphant, possessive look which strayed into her dark eyes whenever her son was with her. It was an expression so intense as to be almost tragic.

The Baron smiled too, but his smile was concealed somewhat by the fierce black military mustaches that adorned his face. They were the mustaches of the French army, very long, very luxurious, and purposely rather ill-kempt. There was nothing silky about them. On the contrary they were the mustaches of an _homme de guerre_--stiff, bristling and full of vitality. He was a dark, wiry Frenchman, with strong, nervous hands and very bright black eyes which clouded easily with anger. He was perhaps four or five years older than Lily and did not look his age. Indeed his figure was youthful and muscular with the hard, fierce masculinity which belongs to some men of the Latin race.

Whenever he regarded Ellen, it was with a stern glance that was almost hostile. They did not get on well. Even Lily, indifferent and unobservant, must have seen the hidden clash of their two strong natures. It appeared that he resented Ellen’s wilfulness and even the masculine simplicity of her clothes. On this evening she was at her best. Her dark hair she no longer wore in the manner of Lily. It was drawn straight back from her high forehead with an uncompromising severity and done in a knot low on the back of her strong, well-shaped neck. Jean dragged her by sheer force of strength to the piano where the two sat down noisily, the boy searching through the music while Ellen played the most amazing, delicate and agile roulades and cascades of notes on the polished ivory keyboard. Schneidermann, thrown a little into the background by the wild exuberance of the pair, drew up a chair and waited quietly until it was time for him to turn the pages.

And during these preliminaries Lily and the Baron rose and made their way silently through one of the tall windows on to the terrace and thence into the garden. Lily herself confessed that she could not abide the new music.

“I do not understand it,” she told her cousin. “And I do not find it beautiful. It is beyond me, I confess. I cannot see what you and Jean find in it. I suppose it is because I am growing old. You and Jean belong to the same generation. I am too old for new ideas.” And for the first time her laugh was not all geniality and warmth. It carried a fine edge of bitterness, scarcely to be discerned but none the less unmistakable.

And now in the soft spring twilight of the garden she and the Baron walked along the neat gravel paths until they reached the wall shutting out the Rue de Passy. Here they sat for a time on a stone bench saying nothing, remaining quite still and silent. And at last as the darkness grew more heavy they rose and wandered off again, aimlessly and slowly, until in the shadow of a laburnum tree, the man seized her suddenly and kissed her, long and passionately. And after a little while when it was quite dark they entered the pavilion hidden by shrubbery where Jean lived when he was home on a holiday.

The garden lay breathless and silent. Even the rumbling noises from the street beyond the wall had died away with the coming of darkness. From the distant Seine arose the faint whistle of the St. Cloud steamer, and through the tall window drifted in wild fragments the savage, barbaric chords of Stravinsky’s music.

LIX

Day in and day out Lily’s life followed its easy, happy course. Always there were diversions, always gaiety, always people. Yet there were times now--indeed they seemed to have begun upon her return from America following her mother’s death--when a cloud of sadness descended upon her, times when she would withdraw suddenly to her own room as if some tiny thing, a word, a gesture, an intonation, had set fire to a train of secret memories. Frequently she kept her room for the rest of the day, seeing no one, lunching and dining alone on a gilt table placed before her chaise longue by the window.

These sudden fits of melancholy disturbed Ellen who remarked on them gravely to old Madame Gigon.

“She was never like that before. I can’t see what it is that disturbs her.”

Madame Gigon saw no cause for alarm. “It’s true,” she said. “She was never like that before. But it may be that she grows tired. You see she is growing older, my dear Mees Ellen. All of us, as we grow older, like moments of solitude and quiet. It gives one time to reflect on life. You don’t understand that yet. You’re too young. But some day you will understand. As you get older you begin to wonder what it’s all about ... (_pourquoi le combat_).”

“Perhaps,” replied Ellen with a vigorous shrug. “I’m sure it can’t be her mother. It might, of course, be Irene.”

And they fell to discussing for the hundredth time the case of Irene, whom Madame Gigon had not seen since she was a little girl. They talked of her strange behavior, Madame Gigon wagging her old head, staring before her with sightless eyes.

“It is tragic ... a life like that,” she would say. “A life wasted. You know she was a pretty little girl.... She could have married.”

They spoke of her as if she were dead. It was true that to them ... to Ellen, to Madame Gigon, she was forever lost. Perhaps they were right, with that instinctive knowledge which underlies the consciousness of women chattering together over the strangeness of human behavior. Perhaps Irene _was_ dead.... Perhaps she had been dead since a certain night when the last traces of her faith in humanity were throttled. It was true that she had left the world and turned her faith toward God alone, as if she were already dead and in purgatory.

“She was always queer,” Ellen would say.

And then Madame Gigon, as if she were conscious of toying with thoughts of blasphemy, would say piously:

“But she is a good woman, who has given her life to good work and prayer.”

But she spoke as if trying to convince herself, as if she did not quite believe what she said.

And Lily, all the while, kept her secret. Undoubtedly she was no longer in her first youth. This may have depressed her, for she was a woman to whom beauty and youth were the beginning and the end. Yet the fits of melancholy had something to do with a more definite and tangible thing. They were associated in some way with a little enameled box in which she kept a growing bundle of clippings from the American newspapers which Ellen brought into the house at Numero Dix.

In the solitude of her room, she opened the box and reread them many times, over and over again until the edges became frayed and the print blurred from much fingering. They had to do with the career of a certain labor leader, a man named Krylenko who seemed a strange person to excite the interest of a woman like Madame Shane. The clippings marked the progress of the man. Whenever there was a strike, Krylenko appeared to take a hand in it. Slowly, clipping by clipping, the battle he fought was being won. The unions penetrated now this steel town, now that one. There were battles, brutalities, deaths, fires in his trail, but the trail led steadily upward toward a goal. He was winning slowly. That he was strong there could be no doubt. He was so strong that great newspapers printed editorials against him and his cause. They called him an “anarchist,” “an alien disturber,” “a peril to the great American nation” and, most frequently of all, “a menace to prosperity and the inalienable rights of property.”

Lily kept the enameled box locked in a drawer of her writing desk. No one had ever seen it. No one would see it until she died. It had been there for seven years.

It was on the morning after one of these attacks of melancholy, a few days after Jean’s visit, that the Town suddenly intruded once more upon the house in the Rue Raynouard.

Lily sat on the sunlit terrace of the garden before a late breakfast of chocolate and buttered rolls, opposite Ellen whose habit it was to arise early and pursue some form of violent exercise while her cousin still slept. This morning she had been riding in the Bois de Bologne. As a little girl she learned to ride under the instruction of her grandfather, old Jacob Barr, and she rode well and easily with the air and the skill of one who has grown up with horses. The languid Schneidermann accompanied her on these early morning jaunts. She owned her horse because in the long run it was more economical and, as she said, “No pennies slip through my fingers.”

She wore a tight black riding habit with a white stock and a low derby hat. The riding crop lay across her strong, slim knees as she smoked and watched Lily devour too many rolls and a too large bowl of rich chocolate.

Between them on the table lay the morning’s letters. In Ellen’s little heap there were three or four notes from struggling music students, begging help or advice from her, one from a manager proposing an interview with regard to an American tour, a bill from Durand the publisher. Lily’s pile was altogether different. It consisted almost entirely of bills, from Coty, from Worth, from Henri the florist, from Augustin the hairdresser, from Lanvin ... from ... on and on endlessly and at the bottom a letter from the lawyers who succeeded on the death of William Baines, “the old fogy,” to the management of Lily’s holdings in the Town.

The last letter she read through twice with so deep an interest that the chocolate grew cold and she was forced to send for a hot cup and more hot rolls. When she had finished she leaned back in the wicker chair, buried beneath the silk, the lace ruffles and the pale tiny bows of her peignoir.

“D’you know, Ellen,” she remarked, “I am growing too rich. I’ve no idea what to do with all my money.”

Ellen put down her letter abruptly and knocked the ash from her cigarette.

“There are plenty of places for it.” She slapped the envelope against her slim thigh. “I’ve had two letters this morning asking me for money ... from two music students. Heaven knows I’ve got nothing to spare. All that’s left over I send to Ma. What is it now? A gold mine or an oil well?”

“Neither,” said Lily. “It’s just the Town making me richer and richer. It’s from Folsom and Jones ... I guess they’re since your time. They’re lawyers and they handle Irene’s and my estate. They want me to sell the rest of the property we own.”

Ellen pursed her lips reflectively. “How much are they offered?”

“Something over five hundred thousand. They say they can get six in a pinch.”

She whistled softly. “Take it ... take it. Those old shacks can’t be worth that.”

“It isn’t the shacks,” said Lily. “It’s the land itself they want. The shacks aren’t even worth repair. Why, they were built, most of them, while father was still living. The lawyers hint that the Town is ashamed of them, that they are a disgrace to the Town.”

“I suppose it has changed,” remarked Ellen.

“The population has doubled,” said her cousin. “There aren’t enough houses for the people. Why, last summer people who came to work at the Mills had to live in tents for a time. Even the people on Park avenue let out rooms. The Chamber of Commerce asked them to. They appealed to their pride not to stop the tremendous growth. There’s been a tremendous....”

Ellen interrupted her. “I know ... I know.... Watch us grow. The biggest city in the state in ten years. Well, it’s money in your pocket. You’ve no kick coming.”

The chocolate and rolls arrived and Lily began once more to eat.

“I don’t see how you can eat all that and keep your figure,” observed Ellen.

“Massage,” said Lily. “Massage ... and luckily the time is coming when I can eat all I want and be as fat as I like. In another fifteen years I’ll be an old woman and it won’t matter what I do.” The faint bitterness again drifted through the speech, evasive and imperceptible.

“What does Irene say to your selling?” inquired Ellen.

“The lawyers say she wants to sell. You know I haven’t had a line from her in years. She’s in France now, you know.”

“In France!” said Ellen, her eyebrows rising in surprise.

“Yes, at Lisieux.”

“I should think you’d go and see her.”

“She wouldn’t see me if I went. What good would it do?”

LX

There was a sudden silence while Ellen beat her riding crop against her leg. “I must say she’s very queer. I never understood her. You know when I was a girl, she gave me the creeps ... the way she had of looking at you with those pale eyes.”

“I know,” replied Lily. And then after a pause. “You know they want to buy Cypress Hill too. The Lord alone knows how many times they tried. They began before Mama died. Irene hasn’t any share in it. It belongs outright to me.”

“I suppose it’s the Mills.”

“No, not this time. The Town wants it now.” She paused while she buttered another roll. “They want it for a new railway station ... a union station, you know, for all three roads. It’s perfect for that. And each time they increase the offer. Now they write me that they’ve made a last offer. If I won’t sell, they’ll undertake proceedings to condemn it.”

During this speech the countenance of Ellen Tolliver underwent a complete metamorphosis. The devil-may-care look vanished slowly, replaced by a certain hardness, a squaring of the handsome jaw, a slight hardening of the firm lips. It may have been that while Lily talked her cousin was swept by a torrent of memories--memories of hurt pride, of poverty and indignities endured because she was helpless, memories of patronizing women and young girls who spoke of “poor Ellen Tolliver,” memories of her father’s defeats and disappointments, of Judge Weissman’s dishonesty and corruption, of her mother’s agonizing and endless struggle to keep up appearances. As sometimes occurs with individuals of strong personality, a whole life, a complete philosophy stood revealed for an instant in her intelligent face. She had run off with Clarence Murdoch “to show the Town.” She had become famous and successful because, deep down in her heart, she was resolved always to show the Town how little it counted in her life, how great was the contempt she felt for it. It was always this thought--this more than everything else--which had driven her forward. And now came this new opportunity, perhaps the best of all, to block the Town, to thwart its most cherished desire. It was a chance to prevent a new and flamboyant effort to advertise its wealth, its prosperity, its bigness.

“As if,” she said aloud, “‘bigness’ was something to be proud of. Let them try and condemn it, Lily. I doubt if they can. Anyway I’d keep it just to spite them. It’s a chance to show your power.” She leaned earnestly across the table, striking it with her riding crop to emphasize her words. “You hate the place as much as I do. Why, it isn’t even the same Town we grew up in. It’s another place built upon filth and soot. It’s not that we’re fouling our own nest. Why, Lily, the Town your mother and my grandfather loved wasn’t that sort of place at all. It was a pleasant place where people lived quietly and peacefully, where they had horses and dogs and were decent to each other. And now that’s all buried under those damned filthy Mills, under a pile of muck and corruption with Judge Weissman and his crowd enthroned on the very top.” She stood up, her blue eyes flashing. “It’s changed the very people in it. It’s made them noisy, common, cheap. Damn it! I hate them all!” She struck the table a violent blow with her riding crop. “Don’t sell it. You don’t need the money. It’s nothing to you ... not even if they offered you a million!” And then she laughed savagely. “That’s the best part of it. The longer you hold it, the more they’ll have to pay you. The more prosperous they are, the more it will cost them to have a new railway station. You’re the one who has the power now. Don’t you see what power there is in money?... the power that grows out of just owning a thing?”

Lily, it appeared, was amazed by the passion of the sudden, outburst. For a time she lay back in the wicker chair, regarding her cousin with a thoughtful look. At last, she said, “I had no idea that you felt that way about it. It’s the way Mama used to feel. I suppose I never had enough of the place to really hate it.”

Ellen again interrupted her passionately. “If you’d had as much as I had, you’d have hated it all right.”

“I just ran away from it as soon as I could,” continued Lily. “Besides,” she added after a pause, “Mama left a letter asking me to keep Cypress Hill. She always felt that way about the Town.”

Ellen, persistent, bent over the table toward her cousin. The riding crop fell to the gravel terrace. “Promise me you won’t sell it, Lily.... Promise me you’ll keep it. It’s a chance to hit back.... Promise!”

And Lily, who after all was indifferent in matters of business, promised, perhaps because the violent revelations made by her cousin astounded her so completely that she was unable to think of any argument. Doubtless she had reasons of her own ... secret reasons which had to do with the worn clippings in the enameled box.

“I’ll keep it,” she replied. “They can wait until Hell freezes over. And besides you put the idea so that it amuses me. I’ll sell the other stuff and invest the money.”

Ellen interrupted her with a bitter laugh. “It’s funny, you know, that all this time they’ve been pouring money into your pocket. That’s the joke of it. In a way, it was all this booming and prosperity that helped me too. If you hadn’t been so rich, I suppose I’d never have made a success of it.”

Lily languidly finished the last of her chocolate. “I’d never thought of it in that way. It’s an amusing idea.”

Ellen was satisfied. Gathering up her letters she went into the house, changed her clothes, and in a little while, seated under the flaming Venice of Mr. Turner, she was working stormily at her music, filling the house with glorious sound until it overflowed and spilled its rhapsodies over the terrace into the garden where the first bright irises were abloom.

LXI

Upstairs Lily made her way, after a toilette which occupied two hours, to the room of Madame Gigon. It was, amid the elegance of the house, a black-sheep of a room, its walls covered with books, its corners cluttered with broken fragments of Gothic saints and virgins, the sole legacy of the distant and obscure M. Gigon, curator at the Cluny Museum. In the center stood a table covered with dark red rep, heavily embroidered and cluttered with inkpots, pens and all the paraphernalia of writing. Bits of faded brocade ornamented the wall save for a space opposite the door where hung an immense engraving of the First Napoleon, dominating a smaller portrait of Napoleon the Little in all the glory of his mustaches and imperial. An engraving of the Eugènie by Winterhalter stood over the washstand, a convenience to which Madame Gigon clung even after Lily’s installation of the most elaborate American plumbing.

Madame Gigon huddled like a benevolent old witch among the bedclothes of her diminutive bed. At the foot, in a bright patch of sunlight, lay Criquette and Michou amiably close to each other and both quite stuffed with toasted rolls and hot chocolate.

Lily came in looking fresh and radiant in a severe suit and smart hat. They exchanged greetings.

“How are you this morning, Tante Louise?” she inquired of the old woman.

“Not so well ... not so well. I slept badly. The pain in my hip.”

Lily went and sat on the bed, taking the old woman’s hand which she caressed as she felt her pulse.

“You have everything you want?” she inquired.

“Oui ... everything.” There was a little pause and Madame Gigon peered at her with dim eyes. “I’ve been thinking how lucky I am.”

Lily smiled.

“I mean that I’m not left poor and alone. You’ve been good to me.”

Lily’s smile expanded into a laugh. “Nonsense.... Nonsense. It’s given me enough pleasure....”

“It seems like the hand of God,” said the old woman very piously.

“It may be,” said Lily. “Mees Ellen has been telling me it’s the hand of man.”

And Madame Gigon, not having heard the talk on the terrace, was puzzled. Secretly she disapproved Mees Ellen’s lack of piety.

“Mees Ellen plays well this morning ... beautifully,” said Madame Gigon. “She is an artist ... a true artist. Will you ask her a favor?”

Lily nodded.

“Will you ask her to play something of Offenbach? I’ve been hungry for it.” She looked feeble and appealing somewhat confused by violence of the life with which she found herself surrounded since the advent of Mees Ellen and the grown-up Jean.

“Of course,” said Lily.

“And one more thing,” said Madame Gigon. “This I must ask of you.... I’m too ill to go to Madame Blaise this afternoon. I want you to go and explain why I have not come. Tell her I am too ill.” A slight frown crossed Lily’s brow. Madame Gigon, with her dim eyes could not possibly have seen it, yet she said, “Madame Blaise admires you.... She thinks you are all that a woman should be ... a perfect woman.”

If Lily had felt any genuine hesitation, the faint flattery destroyed it, for she replied, “I’ll go, certainly. I’m lunching out and I’ll go there late and tell her.”

“Not too late.... She is easily offended,” said Madame Gigon. “You know she is a little ...” She made a comic gesture indicating that Madame Blaise was a little cracked.