Part 28

The crowd had begun to thin a little. Down the long vista of rooms it was possible now to distinguish a figure here and there in the throng. Outside the darkness had descended, veiling completely the white square. There was nothing now but the faint globes of light and the dim shooting rays of the passing motors.

The Governor turned suddenly and opened his mouth to speak. Then he closed it again sharply. It was clear that he had intended to say something and had lost his courage. He spoke at last, evading clearly what he had intended to say.

“Tell me.... Where’s Irene?”

“She’s buried.... She’s been buried these eleven years.”

The Governor frowned.

“I’d no idea,” he stammered. “I wouldn’t have asked if I had known.” He was sinking deeper in his confusion. There was something almost pitiful in his manner, so empty now of pompousness, so devoid of complacency.

Lily smiled. “Oh, she’s not dead. She’s a nun. She’s in the Carmelite convent at Lisieux ... I meant that she was buried so far as life is concerned. She’s lost to the world. She never leaves the convent, you know. It’s part of her vow. She’s buried there ... alive! It’s a living death.” All at once she cast down her eyes and shuddered. “Perhaps she is dead.... When one’s faith is killed one is not alive any more. You see, I killed her faith in this world. That’s all I meant. She’s really buried, ... alive, you understand.”

The Governor made a low whistling sound. “I’m not surprised.”

As if she did not hear him, Lily said, “I used to think that it was possible to live by one’s self, alone ... without touching the lives of others. It isn’t possible, is it? Life is far too complicated.”

The Governor flushed slowly. He turned the speech nervously once more to Irene. “You don’t forget how she acted on the night....” Suddenly he choked. It was too late now and he finished the speech, inarticulately. “On the night of the garden party!”

LXXXVIII

It was done now. He had betrayed himself. The wall was down, and before them both there must have arisen once more the painful scene in the library under the malignant portrait of John Shane. (Lily, a young girl, smiling and saying, “I love you, I suppose, but not better than myself. I might have married you once. I cannot now, because I know.” Julia Shane, so long dead now, leaning on her ebony stick, hard, unflinching, in the face of everything. “You see, I can do nothing. There is too much of her father in her.”)

It stood before them now, the crisis of two lives, naked, stripped of all forgetfulness. The Governor, his face scarlet and apoplectic, remained silent, unable to speak. Lily said softly, “I’m sorry ... I’m sorry. I should never have mentioned it. I did not guess it would pain you so.”

The new gentleness, the new sympathy revealed itself for the first time in all their talk together. It showed in her dark, lustrous eyes. There could be no doubt of it. She was no longer mocking. She was sorry for the lover, grown old, confused now by the memory of a youthful, overwhelming passion. She even touched his hand gently.

“It does not matter now,” she said. “After all, it was simply a part of life. I’m not sorry, myself ... and the world would say that it was I who suffered most. I didn’t suffer.... Believe me, I didn’t suffer.” She smiled. “Besides what could regrets possibly accomplish? It is the future in which one must live ... not the past. The longer I live the more certain I am of that.”

Still he remained silent. He had become humble, subdued, wilted before the memory of something which had happened more than twenty years before. She must have guessed then, for the first time, what in the unwitting cruelty of her youth she had never known ... that he had really suffered, far more deeply than she had ever imagined. It may have been hurt pride, for he was a proud man. It may have been that he had loved her passionately. He was, after all, a crude, unsubtle man who must have regarded the whole affair as dishonorable and wretched. It was clear that the wound had never healed, that it still had the power to cause him pain.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m sorry.... There was never any question of forgiveness. I was not injured.... Besides it was more my fault than yours.”

And then the Governor did a fantastic thing. He bent over his own fat stomach and raised her hand gently to his lips. There was in the gesture a curious absence of sentimentality. It was not even theatrically self-conscious, as well might have been expected. It was the simple gesture of a man who made speeches before thousands and became helpless and mute before one woman. It was eloquent. It spoke more than whole volumes of words. And somehow it released his tongue.

“The boy?” he said, “What about the boy?”

For a moment Lily did not answer him. She turned away, looking out of the window. She trembled a little and when at last she spoke, it was with averted face, for she lied to him, coldly and with deliberation.

“He is dead,” she said gently. “He was killed in the war ... the very first year, at the beginning.” And then she turned with a sudden air of domination over herself and her ravaged, saddened lover. “I must go now,” she said. “Good-by, Henry. I wish you luck. I know now that what I respected in you is not dead. It has survived everything. It is not completely destroyed. Until just now, I was afraid.”

“Good-by, Lily.”

In a moment she was gone, down the long corridor to the spot where M. de Cyon awaited her. Halfway to her destination she turned and saw that the Governor was still watching her. She saw that he watched her despite the fact that he was talking now to a woman, a large woman who was unmistakably his wife. She was deep-bosomed, of the type which becomes masculine with the approach of middle age. She wore flat-heeled shoes and a picture hat with a series of flowing veils. Her gown was of dark blue foulard, figured with an enormous white pattern. Far out upon her massive bosom hung a gold pince-nez suspended from a little hook fashioned in the shape of an elaborate fleur-de-lis. Her manner was commanding, a manner appropriate to the chairman of the State Woman’s Republican Committee. She could, no doubt, make wonderful speeches. Doubtless she had a powerful voice. Certainly her manner with the Governor was executive. It is easy to see that in the world of politics she had contributed much to the success of the husband she worshiped. What energy she had! What an appalling power!

As Lily turned away, she saw that he was still watching her, slyly, wistfully, with his head bent a little.

LXXXIX

It was not until the spring of 1920 that work was at last begun on the new railway station in the Town. Months before the actual building was undertaken, the Town Council raised on each side of the triangular and barren park at Cypress Hill enormous signs with lettering three feet high. The signs faced the tracks of three great transcontinental railroads. Above the squalor and filth of the Flats they raised their explosive legends. Each read the same.

MAKE YOUR HOME HERE!!!!!

THE HIGHEST, HEALTHIEST, LIVEST, BIGGEST CITY IN THE STATE

EIGHT STEEL MILLS AND SIXTY-SEVEN OTHER INDUSTRIES

WATCH US GROW!!!!

In the deserted park at Cypress Hill workmen appeared who cut down the remaining dead trees. The Venus of Cydnos and the Apollo Belvedere were pulled down from their pedestals in the dead hedge. One of the workmen, a Calabrian, carted them off, scrubbed them clean of the corroding soot and set them up in the back yard of his little house in the Flats. They came to a good end, for the workman cherished them earnestly. In the little garden behind his house, which by some miracle of devotion he managed to fill with green things, he placed the two statues on pedestals which he himself constructed of bricks and concrete. At the base he planted ivy which flourished and spread over the cracked marble and the adjoining fence. So in all the desert of the great mill town there was one corner at least where beauty was worshiped in a humble setting of cabbages and tomato vines. In the evening when the light was not too bright, the little corner looked for all the world like a bit of a Florentine garden.

The steam shovels set to work on a bright April morning with a terrific sound of hissing steam, of grinding cables and clattering chains. In great gulps they tore up the earth which had lain undisturbed since the passing of the second great glacier. For the Town was not satisfied with the destruction of the house at Cypress Hill; it was not content until the Hill itself was scooped up and carted away. It was a wonderful feat and brought the Town a vast amount of advertisement. Pictures of the hill’s destruction found their way into the illustrated papers. They were shown in movie palaces in every part of the country.

It happened that on the very day the steam shovels set to work Eva Barr died in the boarding house where she had lived for more than a decade upon the pension provided by her cousin, Lily Shane. Of the family which had founded the Town, she was the last.

On the hill there remained a few people who remembered Cypress Hill in the days of its glory. But most persons had never heard of Shane’s Castle and knew nothing of Lily and Irene Shane. When their names were mentioned, the old residents would say, “Yes ... Lily and Irene. Of course, you never knew them. They belonged to the old Town. Lily was very beautiful and a little fast, so the stories ran, although no one ever knew for certain. Of course, they may be dead by now. I believe Lily was living in Paris the last that was heard of her.”

That was all. Within a century Shane’s Castle had risen and disappeared. Within a century the old life was gone, and with it the memory of a great, respectable family which had made the history of the county. It survived only in the name of the Town; and that it would have been unprofitable to change since the Town was known round the world as one of the greatest of industrial centers.

XC

With Lily’s marriage and the end of the war, the house in Rue Raynouard regained something of its old life and gaiety. For M. de Cyon, the match was one surrounded by advantages. His wife was rich and beautiful. She had superb taste. She spoke excellent French and yet she was an American and thus provided a bond with the powerful nation whose favor was invaluable to every nation of Europe. His friends were charmed by her, for she had a way of listening to them, of drinking in their talk with a breathless air. Therefore they declared her not only beautiful but clever, a distinction which even Lily had never claimed. The world knew only that she was an American widow, wealthy, distinguished, beautiful, who had lived very quietly in Paris for more than twenty years. None knew anything against her. Indeed the only person who knew her story was dead, shot in the dungheaps of a French barnyard.

Yet there was, as people said, something about Lily de Cyon that aroused curiosity, even a tenuous suspicion. Somehow she did not fit the story of a quiet existence among the dowdy friends of Madame Gigon. She appeared to have mysterious resources, of instinct, of knowledge, of mystery. Enfin! She was a fascinating woman.

The strange gift of the crazy Madame Blaise appeared no longer to fill her with horror; for The Girl in the Hat and The Byzantine Empress were brought down from their hiding place in the dusty garret of Numero Dix and hung on either side of the flaming Venice of Mr. Turner. They were greatly admired by the painters whom Paul Schneidermann brought to the house. Some attributed them to Ingres, but none was certain. It was impossible to say who had painted them for they bore no signature. There were some who believed that they were the only great pictures of an obscure artist whose solitary rise from mediocrity came through the inspiration of a woman, a marvelously beautiful woman with dark amber hair and green white skin.

In the spring of 1920, the postman left with the concierge of Numero Dix a thin letter bordered in black bearing the postmark of Lisieux. It contained only a line or two, the mere mention of the death of Sister Monica. She was buried within the walls of the convent which she had not left in more than thirteen years.

XCI

The pavilion in the garden Lily gave to M. de Cyon for a study. Here it was her habit to meet him daily on his return from the Ministry when his motor, a gift from her, left him at the gate on the Rue de Passy.

One bright October day of the same year, she went as usual to the pavilion to amuse herself until he arrived by reading the newspapers which were placed upon his table. They lay in a neat pile ... Le Journal de Genève, Il Seccolo of Milan, La Tribuna of Roma, the London Post, the London Times, Le Figaro, L’Echo de Paris, Le Petit Parisien, Le Matin, L’Oeuvre.

She skimmed through them, reading snatches of news, of the opera, and the theater, of society, of politics, of races, the personals in the London Times ... this or that, whatever caught her fancy.

In the drawing-room Ellen and Jean, with his crutches by his side, sat at the piano playing with four hands snatches of music from the operettas of the moment, from Phi-Phi and La Reine Joyeuse. They sang and laughed as they played. The sound of their gaiety drifted out across the garden.

Lily read the journals until she grew bored. Something had delayed M. de Cyon. Already he was late by half an hour. She came at last, languidly, to the bottom of the pile, to L’Oeuvre which lay buried beneath the more pompous and expensive papers. This she never read because it was a socialist daily and therefore dull. Doubtless she would have passed it by again for the hundredth time but a name, buried in one corner in the smallest of print, caught her attention. It must have struck her suddenly with all the force of a blow in the face, for she closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. The paper slipped to the floor forgotten.

It was a brief paragraph, not more than three or four lines. It recounted the death of one Stepan Krylenko, a man well known as a leader in international labor circles. He died, according to the despatch, of typhus in Moscow whither he had been deported by the American government.

(Perhaps, after all, the Uhlan was right. The Monster would devour them all in the end.)

After a time Lily rose and went out of the pavilion into the garden where she walked slowly up and down for a long time, seating herself at last on the bench under the laburnum tree.

Inside the house the wild merriment persisted. Ellen was singing now in a rich contralto voice a valse which she played with an exaggerated sweep of sentimentality. From the peak of her hard and cynical intelligence, she mocked the song. She sang,

“O, la troublante volupté de la première etreinte qu’on risque avec timidité et presque avec contrainte Le contact vous fait frisonner....”

In a wild burst of mocking laughter, the song came abruptly to an end. The shattered chords floated out into the garden where Lily sat leaning against the laburnum tree, silent and thoughtful, her eyes filled with sorrow and wonder. She was in that moment more beautiful than she had ever been before ... a symbol of that which is above all else eternal, which knows no bonds, which survives cities and mills and even nations, which is in itself the beginning and end of all things, without which the world itself must fail.

And presently, far down among the plane trees, the gate in the high wall swung gently open and, against the distant lights of the Rue de Passy, the figure of the white haired M. de Cyon came into the garden.

THE END

Miss Abercombie sighed deeply=> Miss Abercrombie sighed deeply {pg 116}

feminine stubborness=> feminine stubborness {pg 198

Guermantes’ _soireés_=> Guermantes’ _soirées_ {pg 210}

Who it it=> Who is it {pg 260}