Part 23

The mustachioed driver grunted, turned his cab, and sped away once more as if pursued by the devil; and presently he pulled up before the American Hotel, a respectable hostelry frequented by school teachers and temperance workers.

An hour later he lay chastely in his own bed, awake and restless in the dark, but still innocent. And in the Rue du Bac the sophisticated lady waited until long after midnight. At length, after cursing all Americans, she took her lamp from the window and went angrily to bed.

LXX

At two o’clock in the house in the Rue Raynouard, Ellen came in to sit on the edge of her cousin’s bed and discuss the happenings of the day.

“I guess,” she observed, “Willie will be able to tell them a good story when he gets back to the Town. His mouth fairly hung open all the time when he was here.”

Lily smiled. “I don’t know,” she replied, braiding her heavy bronze hair. “From what he tells me, he’s in the backwater now. There are a lot of people there who have never heard of us. I suppose Willie and you and I are just back numbers so far as the Town is concerned.”

After Ellen had gone to her own room, Lily settled herself on the chaise longue and, wrapped in a peignoir of pale blue chiffon all frothy with old lace the color of ivory, she took from her desk the enameled box, opened it and read the worn clippings. The pile had grown mightily. There were a score of new clippings. The headlines had increased in size and the editorials were an inch or two longer. The man was progressing. He was denounced with a steadily increasing hatred and bitterness. It was clear that he had become a national figure, that he was a leader in the battle against the roaring furnaces.

For a long time she lay with her eyes closed ... thinking. And at last, hours after the rest of the house had grown still and dark, she sighed, replaced the clippings in the box and locked them once more into her desk. Then she settled herself to writing a letter over which she spent a long time, biting the end of the silver penholder from time to time with her firm white teeth. When at last the effort satisfied her, she placed it in an envelope and addressed it to Sister Monica in the Carmelite Convent at Lisieux. It was the hundredth letter she had written, letters in which she abased herself and begged forgiveness, letters to which there was never any reply save an unforgiving and relentless silence. It was like dropping the pale gray envelopes into a bottomless crevasse.

In the following May, Ellen went to Munich. It was the first step in a grand tour of the German cities. She would visit Salzburg, Cologne, Vienna, Leipsic. She would call upon Schönberg, Busoni, Richard Strauss, Pfitzner, von Schilling.... If the spirit moved her, she might even penetrate Russia. And certainly she would go to the festival at Weimar. All this was included in the plan she set forth to Lily. There was no schedule. She would simply progress from one place to another as her fancy dictated. She knew no German but she would learn it, as she had learned French, by living among the people. She went alone. Therefore she would have to learn the language.

The expedition was singularly characteristic of all her life. When she found that the Town was unendurable she had reversed the plan of her pioneer ancestors and turned east instead of west, to seek a new world which to her was far more strange than the rolling prairies of the west had been to her great-grandfather. When the traveling salesman, whom she used as a stepping stone, fell by the wayside and departed this life she was free to go unhindered on her own roving way, fortified by the experience of a few years of married life. She owned no fixed home. On the contrary, she moved about restlessly ... exploring, conquering, exhausting now this city, now that one. She was, it seemed, possessed of a veritable demon of restlessness, of energy, of a sharp inquiring intelligence. It was this quality, stimulated constantly by an overpowering curiosity, which sent her pioneering into the world of new music which Lily disliked so intensely. She explored those regions which musicians of a more contemplative and less restless nature dared not enter. It was as if she were possessed by a Gargantuan desire to devour all the world within a single lifetime.

Once in Paris she said to Lily, “You know, I am obsessed by a terrible sense of the shortness of life. It is impossible to know and experience all that I wish to know.”

But this was as near as she came to a contemplative philosophy. She had no time for reflection. The hours she spent with the indolent Lily inevitably fired her with a fierce and resentful unrest. It was then that she grew impatient, bad-tempered, unendurable. It was the descent of one of these black moods which drove her from the peaceful solitude of the house at Germigny upon a new voyage of exploration.

And so it happened that Lily and Madame Gigon were alone on the peaceful summer evening when Eustache, the red-cheeked farmer’s boy, returning on his bicycle through the rain from Meaux, brought the final edition of the Figaro containing a short paragraph of the most enormous importance to all the world.

Madame Gigon had been installed days before on the first floor of the lodge, because she was no longer able to leave her bed and insisted upon being placed where her ears would serve her to the greatest advantage. The door of her room opened outward upon the terrace above the Marne and here, just inside the door, sat Lily when Eustache arrived.

She opened the Figaro and spread it across her knees.

Madame Gigon, hearing the rustle of the paper, stirred and said peevishly, “What is new to-day?”

“Not much of importance,” said Lily, and after a pause. “The archduke of Austria has been assassinated. Shall I read you that?”

“Certainly,” replied the old woman with a fierce impatience. “Certainly!”

It was only part of a daily game ... this asking Madame Gigon what she would have read to her; because in the end the entire journal was read aloud by Lily--the daily progress of the celebrated case of Madame Caillaux, the signed articles by this or that politician, the news of the watering places ... Deauville, Vichy, Aix, Biarritz, the accounts of the summer charity fêtes, the annual ball at the Opéra, the military news ... everything was read to the old woman. For Madame Gigon found a keen delight in the recognition of a name among those who had been present at this fête or were stopping at that watering-place. After her own fashion, the blind old woman reduced all France to the proportions of a village. To her, the Caillaux trial became simply an old wives’ tale, a village scandal.

So Lily read of the Archduke’s assassination and Madame Gigon listened, thoughtfully, interrupting her occasionally with a clucking sound to indicate how terrible the affair really was. She understood these things, being a Bonapartist. It was as if the Prince himself had been shot down. It was the natural result of the Republican movement, of Socialism, which was, after all, the same thing. Just another example of what these wild ideas might lead to.

“These are sad times,” remarked Madame Gigon when Lily had finished reading. “There is no such thing as law and order ... no such thing as respect and regard for rank. A wild confusion (_une melée sauvage_) to see who can gain the most wealth and make the greatest display. Money!” the old woman muttered. “That’s it. Money! If you make a fortune out of chocolate or soap, that is enough to put you into the government. Good God! What times are ahead!”

To this harangue, Lily listened absently. It was all monotonously familiar to her. Madame Gigon had said it a thousand times. Every evil she attributed to “these dirty times.” She concluded by saying, “Crazy Madame Blaise is right after all. There will be a war.... She was right.... There will be.”

While she was speaking, Lily tore open the only interesting letter among the dozen. Quietly she read it to herself. When she had finished she interrupted Madame Gigon.

“I have a letter from M. de Cyon,” she said, “about some furniture I was selling. He writes that Madame is ill again with indigestion ... quite seriously this time.”

Madame Gigon made a little grunting noise. “Nadine eats too much.... I have told her so a dozen times but she will not listen. A woman as fat as that....”

And from the superior pinnacle of her great age, Madame allowed the sentence to trail off into unspeakable vistas of Madame de Cyon’s folly. At the end of a long time during which they both sat silently in the dripping quiet of the summer evening Madame Gigon said explosively, “She will go off suddenly one of these days ... like that,” and she snapped her finger weakly.

At the sound Criquette and Michou got up lazily, stretched themselves, and waddled close to her chair. For a moment she scratched their heads with groping fingers and then turning to Lily said, “It is time for their milk.... And see to it, my child, that they have a little cream in it.”

Lily rose and called the dogs inside the lodge. Across the river in the tiny church, the old curé, M. Dupont, rang the vesper bell. Behind the cropped willows along the Marne the last glow faded above the rolling fields of wheat. Inside the house Lily was singing softly, “O, le coeur de ma mie est petit, tous p’tit, p’tit.” There was no other sound.

Presently, Madame Gigon leaned back in her bed and called to Lily. “To-morrow,” she said, “you might ask M. Dupont to call on me. It has been two days since he was here.”

LXXI

Upon Germigny l’Evec, removed from the highroad and the railway, the war descended at first slowly, with the unreality of a vague dream, and then with a gathering, ponderous ferocity of an appalling nightmare. In the beginning even the farmer and his men, familiar with the army and with military service, could not believe it. Still there was the memory of 1870, said the pessimists. It was not impossible.

“Ah, but war is unthinkable,” said Lily to Madame Gigon. “The days of war are over. It could not happen. They would not dare to permit it.”

But Madame Gigon, again from the pinnacle of her superior age, replied, “My child. You have never seen a war. You know nothing of it. It is not at all impossible. You see, I can remember well 1870.”

All the talk, it seemed, turned back at once to 1870. Sooner or later every one returned to it--M. Dupont, the curé, who had served at Metz with MacMahon, the farmer and his wife, even Eustache. 1870 was no longer a half-century away. It became only yesterday, an event which was just finished the evening before at sunset. And slowly it became clear that war was not at all an impossibility. The order for mobilization made it a reality so hideous, so monstrous, as to be utterly lacking in reality. In the château and at the farm, there were no longer any barriers. The cook and the farmer’s wife, came and sat on the terrace, red-faced and weeping. In the quiet of the evening there drifted across the wheatfields the ominous whistling of trains which followed no schedule, and from the distant high-road the faint sound of an unceasing procession of taxicabs and omnibuses rushing east and north through Pantin, through Meaux, on to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre.

From Paris came three letters, two by messenger, an orderly of the Baron, the other by post. One was from the Baron himself and one was from M. de Cyon.

“It is all more grave than any of us suspect,” wrote the Baron. “Unhappily, Dear Lily, it is impossible for me to see you. I cannot leave my regiment. You cannot come to Vincennes. We must try to endure all this in the fashion of philosophers. It is not, you understand, as if it had been unexpected. It has been slow--more slow than any one hoped--in arriving.

“As for what may come of it, to me or to Jean. What is there to do? We are all helpless as if caught in a web. May God be with us all! Jean will be with me. Your heart can be assured that I shall do all it is possible to do for him. The rest remains with the good God. I would give ... What would I give? Ten years or more of my life to have seen you before going away. But that, it seems, is impossible. So we must wait until it is possible.

“We are leaving to-night. I have sent old Pierre to see to it that you and Madame Gigon are brought safely back to Paris. Germigny is safe from the Germans, but there is always a chance. Who can say what will happen? Good God! The suddenness of it!

“Au revoir, dear Lily, in haste. A thousand kisses from thy Césaire.”

It was the first time that there had been in all their correspondence even the faintest note of anything more compromising than a proper friendship between the Baron and the woman who had made his old cousin, Madame Gigon, comfortable for life. It was this which somehow gave the letter a gravity more terrible than any hint of foreboding contained in its crisp white pages. It was as if the barriers of convention had suddenly been destroyed, as if they had gone down in ruin to reveal life in all the primitive directness of unfettered nature. It seemed to say, “Nothing matters any longer save those things which have to do with life, death and love.”

The letter from M. de Cyon was more calm and dignified, the proper letter of a diplomat. It was the letter of a distinguished, white-haired gentleman.

“You must leave Germigny as soon as it is possible. I write you this in confidence and beg you not to arouse a panic among the peasants and the citizens of Meaux. It is war, Madame, and no one can say what will happen. Your security is of the deepest concern to me. I beg you to waste no time. Go on foot, by ox-cart, by train--however it is possible, but go. A battle is no place for so beautiful a woman.”

That was all, yet it contained hints and innuendoes of things too terrible for the imagination. M. de Cyon undoubtedly knew more than he chose to reveal in his circumspect note. He was, to be sure, near to the Ministry of War.

There was a letter too from Jean, breathless and full of spirit, the letter of a young warrior eager for battle, forgetful of all else, of God, of his mother, of everything save the prospect of fighting.

“Dear Mama,” he wrote, “we are leaving to-night for the front. I shall return perhaps a captain. Think of it! Thy Jean a captain! Do not worry. Our troops are in excellent condition. I fancy the war will be over in a fortnight. I am in Césaire’s company. I think of you, of course.

“THY JEAN.”

With the three letters in her hand Lily left Madame Gigon and set out to walk the white tow-path at the edge of the river. On the far side the farm appeared deserted as if suddenly its occupants had been overcome by a sleep of enchantment. The oxen were nowhere to be seen. The fowls were gone. The house lay shuttered and empty as a house of the dead. Above the tow-path, the château likewise stood silent and empty. In all the landscape there was no sign of life, no dogs, no chickens, no crying children. And as she walked she turned her head presently and saw, leaving the far side of the farm, a lumbering two-wheeled cart piled high with furniture,--mattresses, a sewing machine, a few chairs, and swinging underneath, little cages of osier in which were crowded the barnyard fowls. Tied to the wheels, three goats followed the gentle motion of the cart. Fat Madame Borgue, the farmer’s wife, trudged by the side guiding the slow-gaited oxen with a long wand, and high up, perched on a truss of straw, sat her mother, an immensely old and wrinkled woman, with Madame Borgue’s baby in her arms. They were deserting, driven before the straggling columns of refugees which had appeared like magic during the early morning along the high-roads from La Ferté to Meaux. There could be no doubt. The farm and the château were empty. At Germigny only Lily and Madame Gigon remained behind.

LXXII

It appeared that the discovery made no impression upon Lily, for she continued on her way along the deserted river path without stopping, without even checking the mad speed at which she walked. Her manner was that of one fleeing before a terror from which there is no escape. When she had reached a spot opposite the little island that divided the waters of the river, she halted suddenly by a clump of hazel bushes and flung herself down upon the thick grass in the shadow of the plane trees. She began to weep, soundlessly with long, racking, silent sobs which shook her whole body as if she had been stricken by some frightful pain.

Far off a train whistled distantly. The bright red kepis of the soldiers showed in rows like poppies at the windows of the coaches. On the white solid bridge at Trilport there appeared a double procession; one column hot, dusty, bedraggled, full of crying, exhausted, women and children, moved toward Paris. The other was gay and bright. The men wore bright red trousers and bright red caps. It moved briskly forward. The guns were like a field of wheat come suddenly to life, moving gallantly to throw itself upon the reaper.

After a time, Lily sat up, her hair all blown and disheveled, her dark eyes bright from weeping. She read the letters over and over absorbing the same phrases.... May God be with us all!... It is all more grave than any of us suspect.... A thousand kisses from thy Césaire.... It is war, Madame, and no one can say what will happen.... A battle is no place for a beautiful woman.... Perhaps I shall return.... Perhaps I shall return a captain.... Think of it! Thy Jean a captain!... Thy Jean!... Thy Jean.... Thy Césaire!... Thy Jean! Thy precious Jean!

Slowly she refolded the letters and thrust them into the bosom of her dress and then, as if her emotion were too strong for silence, she said aloud.... “Me ... myself.... Why do they worry about me?... Do they think that I am afraid?” She laughed suddenly. “Afraid of what?”

Besides it was impossible to flee with a sick old woman and no means of conveyance. She laughed again and said bitterly, “What do they think ... that I am a magician?”

Lying there in the deep grass, it must have occurred to her all at once that her whole life had been pillaged and destroyed because an Austrian archduke was shot in a little hole called Serajevo. Madame Gigon dying. Césaire and Jean on their way to destruction. Who remained? What remained? De Cyon, perhaps. No one else. No one in all the world. The years of her life come to an end like this ... that everything she loved, everything she cherished, might be swept away over-night like so much rubbish into a dustbin. As if she were no more than a poor forsaken flower vender or charwoman! What was money now? What were beautiful things? What was all her life?

And she flung herself down once more, sobbing wildly as she had sobbed another time in the old house at Cypress Hill, when all at once, she had sensed the tragedy of a whole lifetime, as if she stood in a vast plain surrounded only by loneliness.

At dusk she arose slowly and, from long habit put her hair in order, smoothed her dress, and set out upon her homeward journey, walking slowly, with feet from which all youth had gone. When she arrived at the lodge, the traces of her weeping had disappeared and she entered proudly and in silence. For a moment there came into her pale lovely face a fleeting likeness to her mother, a certain determination that was inseparable from the rugged countenance of the stoic Julia Shane.

The house was still because old Madame Gigon had slipped out of her bed and was lying asleep on the floor. When Lily attempted to rouse the old woman, she discovered that she was not sleeping at all but unconscious, and suddenly Lily too slipped to the floor, buried her face in her hands and wept noisily and without restraint. The sound of her sobbing penetrated the breathless garden and the distant empty rooms of the château, but there was no one to answer it. The only sound was the triumphant, ironic whistle of a steel locomotive, its belly hot with red flames, its nostrils breathing fire and smoke.

At last she lifted Madame Gigon into the bed by the window and, lying by the side of the unconscious old woman, she fell into a profound sleep.

LXXIII

It was dark when she awoke and rose wearily to light a lamp. The first flame of the match illuminated the room. It revealed all the familiar furniture ... the chintz covered chairs, the bright curtains of _toile de Juouy_, the bowl of ghostly white phloxes by the window. Everything was the same save that Madame Gigon ... old Tante Louise ... lay unconscious upon the bed, and the house was so still that the silence was suffocating.

She went into the kitchen and prepared a mixture of egg, milk and brandy which she fed the old woman through a tube. She understood the care of Madame Gigon. The old woman had been like this before. Lily, herself, ate nothing, but took from the cupboard by the window a bottle of port and drank a brimming glass. And after a time she went outside to listen to the silence.

With her black cloak wrapped about her she sat there for a long time. The farm, the tiny inn, the houses of the village were black and silent. There hung in the atmosphere the ghostly feeling of a house suddenly deserted by its inhabitants, standing empty and alone. The mournfulness was overwhelming. After a time she lighted a cigarette and smoked it, holding the ember away from her and regarding it at a little distance as if the faint light in some way dissipated the loneliness.

For a time she regarded the distant horizon and the queer flashes of color like heat lightning which appeared at intervals. Sometimes the rising night wind bore toward her a faint sound like that of distant thunder. And then all at once, there appeared in the house by the village church a bright light. It was a lamp placed close to the open window so that the rays piercing the darkness traversed the river, penetrated the low branches of the plane trees and enveloped Lily herself in a faint glow.