IT is possible that Madame Blaise felt for Lily the admiration which Madame Gigon attributed to her, but she was such a queer old thing that it was impossible ever to know for a certainty. It could not be said that she revealed these sentiments by any open demonstration, or even by an occasional word of approval. There are women whose manner of showing their devotion assumes an inverted character; it takes to displaying itself in sharp criticisms of the object they love or admire. There are women who nag their lovers, who deprecate the charms of their own children, who sharply denounce the behavior of their dearest friends. And if there be any truth in this theory of inverted demonstration, it could be said that Madame Blaise admired Lily. Indeed judging from her behavior it could be said that she experienced a profound affection for the younger woman.
The old woman seldom addressed Lily, yet when Lily politely assumed the initiative and inquired after the health of Madame Blaise or her plans for the summer, Madame Blaise was flattered and smiled with all the warmth of an August sun. To Madame Gigon she criticized Lily unmercifully. She called her indolent, without ambition. She accused her of having wasted her life and permitted her beauty to fade without using its power. It was not true that Lily had faded, yet Madame Blaise was convinced of it. To have heard her talk, one would have thought Lily was a withered old harridan.
“I understand these things,” she told Madame Gigon confidentially, “because I was a beauty myself ... a famous beauty.” And the memory of her triumphs led her to bridle and cast a glance at the nearest mirror. Yet she never spoke of these things to Lily, whose greater youth, already turning into middle-age, seemed to inspire the old woman with an awe tinged by actual worship.
“Why does she bury herself among these old women?” she would say. “Has she no energy ... no zest for life? If only she could capture some of Mees Tolliver’sélan. Mees Tolliver could spare her a great deal and be the more charming for it.”
And to all this, Madame Gigon had one answer which it was her habit to repeat over and over again. “Madame Shane is content. Is not that enough? What more can any of us wish upon this earth?”
So it ran, this perpetual and carping interest of Madame Blaise. Although she avoided Lily, she could not resist discussing her. And Madame Gigon, believing firmly that Madame Blaise was a little cracked, never mentioned these things to Lily.
There hung about Madame Blaise something of the mystery which envelopes people suffering from delusions. Not only was it impossible to know when she was lying and when she was speaking the truth ... it was impossible even to say, “Madame Blaise is thus and so. She is mean or she is benevolent. She is hostile or she is friendly.” It was impossible to reach any sensible opinion concerning her. She was subject to the most absurd whims which rendered impossible any anticipation of her actions. Besides, she lived in a world of her own which resembled in no way the world of her friends, so bound up in shopkeepers, food, laundry, housekeeping, etc. Her world was inhabited by all sorts of fantastic and imaginary creatures. She believed passionately that she was still a fine figure of a woman. Not even a mirror could persuade her otherwise. She asserted with a challenging pugnacity that she had once played a prominent part in European politics, and hinted that she was the last of the women who would go down in history as creatures who ruled kings; but what it was she had done or when she had done it, no one could discover. The tragedy was that no one took her seriously. When one spoke of her, there was always a suspicion in the speech of that comic gesture which Madame Gigon used to indicate that her friend was a little cracked. Yet they were kind to her. No one allowed her to suspect that she was accepted generally as a mere pack of highly animated hallucinations. Indeed herfaiblessegave her thewhip hand over her friends. People humored her. They submitted to her insults with a calm good-nature.
When she began one of her long tales, people smiled and feigned interest and remarked, “How wonderful! Who would have thought it?” Or with mock protests, they would say, “But my dear Madame Blaise, you are still a fine figure of a woman.” And she would go off home delighted that she had managed to preserve her figure and her youthful complexion, even if a bit of rouge was at times necessary. Her delight was always apparent. It was visible in every line of her seamed old face.
There were all sorts of stories concerning Madame Blaise, stories of the most fantastic and incredible nature, stories that she was well known in the generation which she had outlived, stories even that she had been the mistress of this or that politician. Indeed some of the most fantastic tales were contributed slyly by Madame Blaise herself. But no one really knew anything of her youth; and although every one repeated the stories with a certain relish, there was no one who really believed them.
The old women who came to Madame Gigon’s salon knew that she had come to Paris some twenty years earlier as the widow of a merchant from Marseilles. She was rich, respected, and at that time seemed wholly in her right mind, save for an overfondness to surround herself with mystery. A respectable Bonapartist, the uncle of Captain Marchand, acted as her sponsor. She settled herself presently into the respectable circle. She had hersalonand all went well. By now she had been accepted for so long a time that she seemed always to have been a part of that neat little society, so neat, so compact and so circumspect. She was a figure. Madame Blaise? Why, of course, every one knew Madame Blaise ... always. What had gone before became quickly veiled in the mists of the past, and Madame Blaise, whose life may have been after all one of the most romantic and exciting, found herself a part of a singularly dull and prosaic society.
Lily could have known no more than this concerning the old woman. Indeed it is probable that she knew even less, for her good nature and her tolerant indifference had long since stifledall her curiosity concerning people. She went to Madame Blaise on that Tuesday afternoon to please Madame Gigon, because she had no other engagement, and because she was accustomed to obliging her friends. She may even have suspected that the visit would give pleasure to Madame Blaise herself. She arrived very late as usual (it was impossible for Lily to be punctual) having lingered a long time over lunch and made an expensive tour of the shops in the Rue de la Paix.
In a little enclosure shaded by old trees and high, neglected shrubbery in Passy five minutes walk from the Trocadero, Madame Blaise had her house. The enclosure was shared by two other houses, less pretentious, which stood respectfully apart at a little distance. The dwelling was built of wood in imitation of a Swiss chalet, and ornamented with little carved balconies and fantastic ornaments in bizarre exaggeration of some cowherd’s house on the mountains above Lucerne. A wall ran about the enclosure with an opening which was barred at night by a massive iron gate. Here Lily stepped down from the fiacre, passing, on her way through the gate, Madame de Cyon and the Marchands, who were leaving.
“You are late,” observed Madame de Cyon, taking in Lily’s costume with her small green eyes.
“I have been hurrying all the way,” replied Lily. “I was kept by business.”
Captain Marchand and his wife bowed gravely.
“Every one has gone,” observed Madame de Cyon, waiting as though curious to see what Lily would do.
“Well, I must go in.... Madame Gigon was too ill to come. She asked me to convey her compliments.”
Madame de Cyon brightened. “Nothing serious, I hope.”
“No,” said Lily. “Madame is an old woman ...” And then politely, “She tells me Monsieur de Cyon is back from the Balkans.”
“Yes. He is full of wars and intrigues. You must come to me on Thursday. He has asked for you.”
Lily smiled. “Please remember me to him. I find him very interesting.” She turned suddenly. “But I must hurry on. It is disgusting to be so late. Good-by until Thursday.”
Madame de Cyon laid a hand on her arm. “Madame Blaisewas eager that you should come. She has been asking for you.”
“It is good of her,” said Lily politely, at the same time moving away.
“Good-by until Thursday,” said Madame de Cyon, and as Lily hurried into the shadows of the enclosure the Russian woman turned and looked after her, her small green eyes alight with an interest in which there was a shade of malice and envy. It was well known that de Cyon admired Madame Shane.
When Lily had disappeared in the thick shrubbery surrounding the house, Madame de Cyon made a clucking noise and passed through the gate into the street on her way to the Metro. She had lost money again to the Marchands. She was planning to economize.
AT the door Lily was admitted by a fat Bretonne maidservant who ushered her through a dark hall and up a dark stairway where the light was so bad that she was unable to distinguish any of the furnishings. It might have been a tunnel for all the impression it made upon a visitor. At a turn of the stairs she was forced to press her body against the wall in order to allow pass two strangers whom she had never seen at Madame Gigon’s salon. At the top she was led through another hall lighted by a sort of chalice, with a gas flame burning inside a red globe suspended by Moorish chains from the low ceiling. Here it was possible to discern the most enormous quantity of furniture and decorations, bronze ornaments, bits of chinoiserie, pictures of all sizes in enormous gilt frames, umbrellas, cloaks, chairs, pillows and what not. At the end of the hall the maidservant opened the door of a large square room and silently indicated Madame Blaise who was seated before a gentle charcoal fire. Lily entered and the servant closed the door behind her.
Madame Blaise, dressed in old-fashioned gown of some thick black stuff, sat on the edge of her chair like a crow upon a wall. Her cheeks and lips were rouged and this, together with the red glow from the fire and the thick mass of dyed red hair, gave her an appearance completely bizarre and inhuman. She could not have heard Lily enter, for she did not look up until the younger woman came quite close to her and said, “Madame Blaise!”
“Ah!” said the old woman suddenly, as if waking from a dream. “It’s you.”
Lily was smiling and apologetic. She lied about being detained on business. She explained Madame Gigon’s indisposition. Altogether she made herself charming, agreeable and insincere.
“Yes,” said Madame Blaise. “Madame Gigon is old,” in a tone which implied “much older than I shall ever be.”
“I shan’t stay but a moment,” said Lily, sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the fire.
“No, I suppose not.”
And then a silence fell during which it seemed that Madame Blaise returned again to her dream. Lily took off her gloves, straightened her hat and fell to regarding the room. It was an amazing room, full of shadows and indefinable and shapeless objects which danced in the dim gaslight. Gradually these things began to take shape. There were all sorts of chairs and tables and cushions of every fashion and period. The room fairly crawled with furniture. Near the fire stood a red lacquer table, exquisitely made, laden with the remnants of tea—a chocolate pot, a tea urn with the lamp extinguished and the tea growing cold, plates with sandwiches and gateaux. The windows were covered by thick curtains of some brocaded stuff which were drawn now to shut out the twilight. But the most remarkable feature of the room was the number of pictures. They hung in every conceivable nook and corner, standing upright in little frames of gilt bronze, tortoiseshell or ebony, leaning against the walls and against the mirror over the fireplace. Some, judging from the flamboyance and heroic note of the poses, were pictures of actresses and opera singers. Others from the pomposity of the subject were undoubtedly politicians. There were pictures of ladies in crinolines and gentlemen with beards or flowing mustaches. Some were photographs, faded and worn; others were sketches or prints clipped out of journals. There were at least a half dozen portraits in oil of varying degrees of excellence.
Lily occupied herself for a time in studying the room. At last Madame Blaise. “I am glad the others have gone. They weary me—inexpressibly.” She leaned forward a little in her chair. “You understand I have had an interesting life. These others ...” She made a stiff gesture of contempt. “What have they known of life? They go round and round like squirrels in a cage ... always the same little circle. Always the same dull people.”
Lily smiled agreeably. She was remarkably beautiful in thesoft light. “I understand,” she said, with the air of humoring the old woman.
Madame Blaise rose suddenly. “But I forgot.... You must forgive me for not asking you sooner. Will you have some tea or some chocolate?”
“Nothing,” said Lily. “I must think of my figure.”
Madame Blaise sat down again. “I am glad you have come ...” And after a little pause, she added, “Alone.” A frown contracted her brow beneath a neatly clipped bang. “You understand.... I think we have some things in common ... you and I.”
Lily still sat complacently. “I’m sure we have!” she said, purely to oblige her companion.
“But not what you suppose,” said Madame Blaise looking at her sharply. “Not at all what you suppose. I am not speaking of the youth which we share ... you and I. I am speaking rather of the qualities which have nothing to do with youth. I mean the capacity to love.” This sentiment she uttered with a look of profound mystery. In spite of her eccentricity, there gleamed now and then through the cloud of mystery traces of a grand manner, a certain elusive distinction. It showed in a turn of the head, a gesture, an intonation ... nothing very tangible, indeed, little more than a fleeting illusion.
Lily’s eye began to wander once more, round and round the room to this picture and that, hesitating for a moment on one or another of the amazing collection which caught her fancy. When Madame Blaise fell silent once more for a long interval, she remarked,
“But have you no picture of yourself among all these?”
“No,” replied the old woman. “I am coming to that later.” And without pausing, she added, “You have had lovers of course.” And when Lily, astounded by this sudden observation, stirred nervously in her chair, Madame Blaise raised her hand. “Oh, I know. I am not going to reproach you. I approve, you understand. It is what beautiful women are made for.” Her eyes took on an uncanny look of shrewdness.
“Don’t fancy that I am ignorant. Some people of course say that I am crazy. I am not. It’s the others who are crazy, so they think that I am. But I understand. You have a lovernow.... He is Madame Gigon’s cousin.” She looked fiercely into Lily’s face which had grown deathly pale at the crazy outburst of the old woman. She appeared frightened now. She did not even protest.
“I have watched,” continued Madame Blaise, in the most intimate manner possible. “I understand these things. I know what a glance can mean ... a gesture, a sudden unguarded word. You, my dear, have not always been as cautious, as discreet, as you might have been. You needn’t fear. I shall say nothing. I shall not betray you.” She reached over and touched Lily’s hand with an air of great confidence. “You see, we are alike. We are as one. It is necessary for us to fight these other women ... like de Cyon. She is a cat, you understand.”
Lily, all her complacency vanished now, glanced at the watch on her wrist. She stood up and walked to the fireplace in an effort to break the way toward escape. She was, it appeared, unable to collect her wits so that she might deal with Madame Blaise.
“You must not go yet,” continued the harridan. “I have so much to tell you.” She pursed her withered lips reflectively and put her head a little on one side. “When I was a young girl, I was very like you. You can see that my hair is still the same. People notice and remark how beautifully it has kept its color. Oh yes, many have spoken to me of it. There is nothing like preserving your beauty.” And at this she chuckled a little wildly with an air of savage triumph.
SO she talked for what must have seemed to Lily hour upon hour. When the younger woman betrayed any sign of leaving, Madame Blaise thrust her tall thin body between her and the door. Even if Lily had desired to speak she would have found small opportunity, for Madame Blaise never once stopped talking. It was as if all the talk of years, repressed and hidden, was suddenly rushing forth in a torrent. The room became intolerably stuffy from the burning gas. Lily’s head began to ache and her face to grow more and more pale. If she had been less pleasant by nature she would have made her way by force past the old woman and out into the open air. As it was, she kept hoping, no doubt, that Madame Blaise would come to an end of her talk, that some one would come in and interrupt her ... the maid perhaps ... any one. She no longer heard what Madame Blaise was saying. The talk came to her in fragments, the inexpressibly boring chatter of a cracked old woman. To break the monotony she took up the pictures on the mantelpiece and began to examine them. During a brief pause, she observed. “Your pictures are interesting, Madame Blaise. I should like to call again when I have more time, in order to see them all.”
“Ah, yes,” said the old woman. “So they are ... so they are. The men ... they were not all lovers you understand. But I might have had them for lovers by the raising of my finger.”
“This one,” said Lily, holding up the portrait of a heavily built man wearing the mustachios of a dragoon. “He is interesting.”
“Yes ... yes. He was a Spaniard ... a nobleman, very aristocratic. Dead now.... Extraordinary how many of them are dead!”
Then all at once the attention of Madame Blaise wasarrested by the most extraordinary change in her companion. So remarkable was the change that the old woman actually stopped talking and fell to observing the face of Madame Shane.
Lily held in her hand a small photograph, very faded and soiled, of a man in a black coat with sharp eyes, a high brow and a full black beard. It bore in one corner the stamp of a well-known photographer of the seventies, a gentleman with an establishment in the Galerie des Panoramas. It was a handsome face, fascinating, fanatic, which at once arrested the attention. Beyond all doubt it was the mate of a photograph which Julia Shane, dying, had left to her daughter. Across the face of the one Lily held in her hand was written, “A la Reine de la Nuit de son Cavalier Irlandais.” The ink was faded, almost illegible.
“You find that gentleman especially interesting?” asked Madame Blaise in a tone of unbearable curiosity.
For a moment Lily did not reply. She regarded the photograph closely, turning it this way and that under the gaslight.
“Yes,” she said at last in a low, hushed voice. “Who is he?”
Madame Blaise bridled. “He was a gentleman ... very interesting,” she said. “He admired me ... greatly. The inscription? It was a joke between us. He was full of deviltry and fun (un vrai diable ... tout gamin). I have forgotten what the joke was.... He was forced to leave the country by some unpleasantness.... I too went away for time.” And again her eyes narrowed in a mysterious look, invoking romantic, glamorous things. Lily, the picture still clasped in her hand, sat down weakly.
Above all else, old photographs have the power of calling up dead memories. It is so perhaps because they are so terribly, so cruelly, realistic. Those things which the memory, desiring to forget, succeeds in losing among the shadows of time, remain in a photograph so long as it exists ... the posture of a head, the betraying affected gesture of a hand, the manner of carrying oneself, the arrogance of countenance, the habit of dress ... all these things survive on a bit of paper no larger perhaps than the palm of one’s hand.
The photograph with “A la Reine de la Nuit” written acrossit must have invoked forgotten things ... memories of John Shane’s savage temper and whimsical kindnesses, of terrible scenes between him and his proud wife, of his contempt for the anemic Irene and his admiration for the glowing Lily, of a thousand things distant yet appallingly vivid.
While Lily sat thoughtful and silent, Madame Blaise kept up a stream of hysterical chatter, turning crazily from one subject to another, from personalities to anecdotes, from advice to warning. Lily heard none of it. When she had recovered a little, she said, “This gentleman interests me. I wish you could tell me more of him.”
But Madame Blaise shook her head ruefully. “I have forgotten so much,” she said. “It is terrible how one forgets. Do you know?” And again the look of mad confidence came into her face. “I have forgotten his name. What is it he calls himself in the inscription?”
She took the photograph from Lily’s hand and thrust it under the circle of light, holding it at arm’s length and squinting in order to discern it properly. “Ah, yes,” she said. “Cavalier Irlandais.... That was his name. I don’t remember his other name, though I believe he had one.” She paused, thoughtful, as if trying by a tremendous force of will to recapture the thing which had escaped her. “His father was Irish, you understand.... Strange I can’t remember his name.” So she talked on crazily, answering Lily’s questions madly, tangling the answers hopelessly in a flood of insane philosophy and distorted observation. The look of mystery and the remnants of a grand manner persisted. Lily watched her with a look of intense curiosity as if she believed that, after all, the queer old creature might once have been young,—young, mysterious and lovely. But she learned little of the gentleman in the portrait. It was impossible for Madame Blaise to concentrate upon her subject. Lily learned only that the gentleman had been forced to leave the country following some unpleasantness arising out of a duel in which he had killed a relative ... a cousin perhaps. She did not remember. He had been in politics too. That played a part in his flight. He returned once, Madame Blaise believed, but she did not remember why he had come back.
Altogether it was hopeless. Lily replaced the photograph on the high mantel, powdered her nose and drew on her gloves. Presently there came an opening in the flood of Madame Blaise’ talk and Lily seized it sharply.
“I must really go, Madame Blaise. I have stayed much too long. It has been so interesting.”
She rose and began to move slowly backward in the direction of the door, as if she feared to rouse the old woman to fresh outbursts. She made her departure gently, vanishing noiselessly; but she got no further than the inlaid music box when Madame Blaise, detecting her plan, sprang up and seized her arm fiercely with her thin old hands.
“Wait!” she cried. “There is one more thing I must show you ... only one. It will take but a second.”
The patient Lily acquiesced, though she kept up a mild protest. Madame Blaise scurried away, rather sidewise as a crab moves, into a dark corner of the room where she disappeared for an instant through a door. When she returned, she bore two dusty paintings in oil. Each was surrounded by a heavy gilt frame and together the pair burdened the strength of the old woman. Her whole manner reeked of secrecy. With an air of triumph she smiled to herself as she took from the chair where she had been sitting a red silk handkerchief with which she dusted the faces of the two paintings. All this time she kept them turned from Lily. At last she stiffened her thin body suddenly and said sharply, “Now, look!”
Lily, bending low, discerned in the light from the fire the character of the two pictures. Each was the portrait of a woman, painted in the smooth, skilful, slightly hard manner of Ingres. Yet there was a difference, which the connoisseur’s eye of Lily must have detected. They were cleverly done with a too great facility. But for that one might almost have said they were the work of a genius. Clearly the same woman had posed for both. In one she wore an enormous drooping hat, tilted a little over one eye. In the other she wore a barbaric crown and robes of Byzantine splendor.
Madame Blaise stood by with the air of a great art collector displaying his treasures. “They are beautiful, aren’t they?” she said. “Superb! You know I understand these things.I have never shown them to any one in years. I am showing them to you because I know you understand these things. I have seen your house. I have seen your beautiful things. You see it is the same woman who posed for both.... The one is called ‘The Girl in the Hat’ ... the other is ‘The Byzantine Empress.’ Theodora, you know, who was born a slave girl.”
LILY, it seemed, had scarcely heard her. She had taken one of the pictures on her lap and was examining it minutely. She held it close to her and then at a little distance. Madame Blaise stood surveying her treasures proudly, her face lighted by a look of satisfaction at Lily’s profound interest.
“I wonder,” said the old woman presently, “if you see what I see.”
For a moment Lily did not answer. She was still fascinated by the pictures. At last she looked up. “Do you mean the woman is like me? Did you see it too?”
Madame Blaise assumed a secretive expression. “Yes,” she said. “I have known it all along ... ever since I saw you. But I never told any one. I kept it as a secret for you.” And she spread her skinny hands in an exhibitive gesture, full of satisfaction, of pride, even of triumph.
The likeness was unmistakable. Indeed, upon closer examination it was nothing short of extraordinary. It might have been the Lily of ten years earlier, when she was less heavy and opulent. The Byzantine Empress had the same soft bronze hair, the same green-white skin, the same sensuous red lips.
“It is like me when I was younger.”
“Very much,” observed Madame Blaise, and then with the air of an empress bestowing a dazzling favor, she added, “I am going to give them to you.”
“But they are valuable,” protested Lily. “I can see that. They are no ordinary paintings.” She spoke without raising her eyes, continuing all the while to examine the pictures, first one and then the other as she frequently examined with infinite care the reflection in her mirror in the Rue Raynouard.
“I realize that you could not carry them home alone,” continued Madame Blaise, ignoring her protests. “You mightappear ridiculous. You might even be arrested on suspicion. But I shall have them sent round. I must give them to you. What would you have me do? When I die they will be sold. I have no relatives ... no one. My sister is dead these ten years. I have no child ... nothing. I am alone, you understand, absolutely alone. Would you have my pictures knocking about some art dealer’s place?”
She shook her head savagely. “No, you must have them. You cannot refuse. It is the hand of God in the matter. I understand these things because there is in me something of the woman of all time. The pictures are for you. Nothing can dissuade me.”
Again the good-natured Lily was forced to yield, simply by the force of the old woman’s crazy will. She must have sensed the fantastic, uncanny quality of the entire affair, for she stirred uneasily and put the Byzantine Empress on the floor, face down. The Girl in the Hat lay across her knees, forgotten for the moment.
Madame Blaise had begun to walk up and down the room in a crazy fashion, muttering to herself. All at once she halted again before Lily.
“It was a famous woman who sat for those pictures,” she said. “You could never imagine who she really was.”
Vaguely, as if she had been absent from the room for a long time, Lily replied. “No. I’m sure I have no idea. How could I? She was evidently a great beauty.”
A look of delight swept the countenance of the old woman. “Wait!” she cried. “Wait! I will make it easy for you. In one moment you will understand!” And she scurried away once more into the dusty closet from which she had brought the pictures. While she was absent Lily leaned back in her chair closing her eyes and pressing a hand against her forehead. For some time she remained thus and when, at last, she opened her eyes at the sharp command of Madame Blaise she found the old woman standing before her with the big hat of the girl in the picture drooped over one eye.
The effect was grotesque, even horrible. Madame Blaise had arranged the dress of black stuff so that her breasts and shoulders were exposed in the fashion of the Girl in the Hat;but the ripe full breasts of the girl in the picture were in the old woman sunken and withered, the color of dusty paper; the gentle soft curve of the throat was shrunken and flabby, and the soft glow of the face and the fresh carmine of the caressing, sensuous lips were grotesquely simulated with hard rouge, and powder which had caked in little channels on the wrinkled face of the old woman. Even the bit of hair which showed beneath the big hat was travestied horribly by dye. Madame Blaise simpered weakly in imitation of the mysterious, youthful smile which curved the lips of the girl in the picture.
There could be no mistake. The features were there, the same modeling, the same indefinable spirit. Madame Blaise was the Byzantine Empress and the Girl in the Hat. The caricature was cruel, relentless, bitter beyond the power of imagination. Lily’s eyes widened with the horror of one who has seen an unspeakable ghost. She trembled and the Girl in the Hat slipped from her knee and fell with a clatter face downward upon the Byzantine Empress.
Madame Blaise had begun to walk up and down the room with the languid air of a mannequin. The big hat flopped as she moved. Turning her head coyly, she said, “I have not changed. You see, I am almost the same.”
And then she fell to talking rapidly to herself, holding unearthly conversations with men and women who stood in the dark corners of the room among the innumerable pictures and bits of decaying bric-a-brac. Crossing the room she passed near Lily’s chair where, halting for a second, she bent down until her painted cheek touched Lily’s soft hair. “You see,” she cried, pointing toward the dusty closet, “that one over there.... He would give his life to have me.” She laughed a crazy laugh. “But no ... not I. Never yield too easily and yield only for love. Live only for love.” And she moved off again on her mad promenade, gibbering, bowing and smiling into the dusty corners.
In the midst of a tête-á-tête which the old woman held with an invisible beau whom she addressed as “Your Highness,” Lily sprang up and ran toward the door. Opening it, she rushed through the upper hall down the stairway into the dark tunnel below. As the outer door slammed behind her, it shutin the sound of Madame Blaise’ cracked singing, punctuated by peals of crazy laughter.
Lily did not stop running until she passed the gate of the little enclosure and stood, breathless and fainting with terror, beneath the lights of the Rue de l’Assomption.
THEY passed the summer at Germigny-l’Evec in the lodge on the terrace above the winding Marne. The little house at Houlgate kept its shutters up all through the hot months. It is true that the health of Madame Gigon was none too good. It is true too that she might have benefited by the sea air. Although Lily mentioned the migration once or twice as the summer advanced she did not insist upon it. Madame Gigon, it appeared, preferred the house where she had always passed her summers, and Lily was content to remain there as the weeks passed through June and into a hot and breathless July. It seemed that, for the first time, she was tired. Indolent by nature, she had reserves of energy which could be roused when the occasion arose. But it appeared that this occasion was not one of sufficient importance; so she remained quietly, reading, walking by the Marne; sometimes in the early morning when the weather was not too hot, she even rode one of the Baron’s horses along the paths of the wood on the opposite side of the river near Trilport.
For diversion the pair were visited by Jean who came romping down from St. Cyr for a brief holiday now and then, always looking handsome and behaving with the ferocity appropriate to a budding cavalryman. Ellen came too, but her visits tired her cousin, especially during the hot months. While she was there Lily pretended that she did not ride because Ellen made riding impossible for her. Ellen insisted upon riding at top speed. She searched for stone walls to jump. She even swam her horse through the Marne on one hot morning in July. Unlike Lily she made no effort to preserve her complexion. She became as tanned as an Indian and as hard as an athlete. Jean admired her enormously, and together they careered wildly across country; for Ellen sat her saddle lightly and as well as any man. Indeed she was as good as a boy for a companion.She even enjoyed the risqué barracks jokes which Jean told her. She listened to the ballads he sang, the bawdy ballads of the cavalry, old songs filled with the traditions of Napoleon’s army ... the same ballads which Lily sang to herself as she dressed for the last ball ever given at Cypress Hill.
Ellen could swear too, in English or in bad French. They became great friends. Lily saw them off in the mornings from her window, looking after them with an expression of mingled envy and regret in her dusky blue eyes. She must have envied the pair their youth. She was jealous of Ellen as she was always jealous of any one for whom Jean showed affection.
But an end came to the early morning excursions when Ellen in August sailed for New York to spend a month with her mother and father. They lived in a little house on Long Island; for Hattie Tolliver, since her children had become successful, no longer kept a rooming house in Manhattan.
“Pa is content now,” Ellen said. “He’s got a horse and a garden and chickens. That’s what he always wanted. Ma is too. But it’s different with her. She ought to have another complete family of children. She’s never gotten over being a mother. She wants us to stay with her always. She can’t bear having us grown up.”
It was true. The more successful her children became, the less Hattie Tolliver saw of them.
“It is a warning,” said Ellen, “never to be too fond of your children.” She laughed ironically. “And yet, if it hadn’t been for Ma, I don’t suppose I’d be where I am ... or Fergus or Robert either. She brought us up well. She made us ambitious.” And she concluded the speech with the remark that “it was a damned funny world anyway.” She had never seen any one who was content.
There had been a time, even a little while before, when she might have said that Lily was the supreme example of contentment, but that time seemed to have passed. Lily was clearly unhappy during that summer. She became more grave and quiet. She was content only when the Baron came down to stay for a week or two and rode with her through the mists of the early summer mornings. When he had gone again, the vague restlessness returned.
Madame Gigon grew to be more and more of a care; and added to the calamities, Criquette on short notice gave birth to a family of puppies of which it appeared the black and tan at the farm was the father. Somehow Madame Gigon took this as a betrayal on the part of the hitherto virginal Criquette. She complained of it as if Criquette had been her own daughter, as indeed she might well have been for the affection and care lavished upon her by the blind old woman. She succumbed completely to her arthritis and lay most of the day in a chair under the clipped linden trees, wearing an injured, fretful air when Lily was not by her side to talk or read to her. Indeed it appeared that between the riotous visits of Jean and Nellie a grayness had descended upon the lodge.
IT may have been that Madame Blaise played her part in the depression. After the night that Lily ran out of her house, she never saw the crazy old woman again, for a day or two later Madame Blaise, in a purple hat and a bright Venetian shawl, was led away on the promise of a wonderful adventure to a house in Versailles where well-to-do lunatics were cared for and allowed to indulge to the utmost their idiosyncrasies. Her guardian was none other than the handsome and distinguished M. de Cyon, who with his brother, a lawyer, looked after the old woman’s property. She seemed completely happy in the new establishment, so M. de Cyon reported, because she found there an elderly wine merchant who believed himself descended from Henri Quatre and Diane de Poitiers, and therefore the rightful heir to the French throne. Together they spent their days plotting intrigues and revolutions by which he was to be set upon the throne with Madame Blaise as his consort. So there was no opportunity for Lily to wring from the old woman any further information regarding the photograph of the handsome gentleman in the black beard. The photograph together with the hundreds of other pictures, was packed away in a cavernous storehouse in Montparnasse when the furniture was cleared out of the chalet in the enclosure near the Trocadero and it was let to an Englishwoman interested in art. Life, as old Julia Shane said, was after all no story book in which everything was revealed. Every man had secrets which he carried into the grave.
But before Madame Blaise was led away, she kept her threat and sent round to the house in the Rue Raynouard The Byzantine Empress and The Girl in the Hat. The pictures were left there by the driver of a battered fiacre who went off immediately. To Lily, the pictures had become objects of horror. She would not see them. She bade the housekeeperput them away in the top room of the house where she could not possibly find them. When they arrived she was still in bed, suffering from a wild headache that did not leave her for days after the experience with Madame Blaise.
“It was horrible,” she told Ellen. “More horrible than you can imagine, to see that old devil dancing before me like an omen ... a warning of old age. If you had seen her ... so like me in the pictures ... so like me even in the reality, like me as I might easily be some day. It was horrible ... horrible!” And she buried her face in her hands.
Ellen, as usual, consulted Madame Gigon.
“She is really ill, this time,” she said. “It isn’t that she’s just tired. She’s frightened by something. She’s much worse than she’s ever been before.”
And they sent for a physician, a great bearded man, recommended by Madame de Cyon, who diagnosed the case as acrise de nerfsand bade her go at once to the lodge in the country. The servants remarked that Madame seemed ill and tired for the first time in her life.
After a time she appeared to forget the mysterious photograph. It was clear that her father was destined to remain, as he had always been, a solitary, fascinating, malevolent figure translated by some turn of circumstance from the intrigues of the old world into the frontier life of the new. What lay in the past—murder, disgrace, conspiracy—must remain hidden, the secret of the dead and of a mad old woman who in her youth and beauty had been his mistress at the very moment that his bride struggled in the school at St. Cloud to learn the tricks of a great lady. Out of all the mystery only one thing seemed clear—that Lily was his favorite child; and now the reason seemed clear enough. By some whim of Fate she was like The Girl in the Hat, the lovely creature who was now Madame Blaise.
So thecrise de nerfspersisted throughout the summer. Indeed there were times when it appeared that Lily was on the verge of a settled melancholia, times when she would walk in solitude for hours along the towpaths beneath the mottled limbs of the plane trees. Yet her beautypersisted. She might have been a goddess ... Ceres ... as she walked along the green path, bordered on one side by the Marne and on the other by waving fields of yellow grain.
As the weeks passed she suffered increasing annoyance through the persistent efforts of the Town to acquire the property at Cypress Hill. A dozen times a month letters arrived from Folsom and Jones, pressing letters that carried threats which Folsom and Jones passed along smoothly with all the suavity of true lawyers playing both ends against the middle. Indeed, from the tone of certain of the communications it appeared that they too, although they were Lily’s agents and paid by her, believed that the interests of the Town surmounted those of their client. Its growth, they wrote, was stupendous. It was rapidly becoming one of the greatest steel centers in the world. If she could only be induced to return for a visit, she would understand the anxiety of the Town council to acquire the holdings at Cypress Hill. Surely she could understand that while sentiment was a commendable thing, it had its place. One could be too sentimental about a situation. The price offered was excellent. (“But not so excellent as it will be in another five years,” thought Lily with a certain malice.) The house brought her no return. She only paid taxes on it. And so on, for page after page, letter after letter.
All this, no doubt, sounded reasonable enough, but Lily reading those letters aloud to Madame Gigon, who desired to be read aloud to no matter what the material, would murmur irritably, “Why the devil can’t they leave me in peace? Go back and visit that place? My God! What for?” And then sarcastically, “To see Eva Barr, I suppose. I’m sure I’m not interested in their prosperity.”
And she would write again that she had no intention of selling and that the more they annoyed her the less she was likely to alter her decision.
It may have been that she enjoyed the sense of power with which the possession of Cypress Hill endowed her ... a feature she had not realized until it was shown her by Ellen. It may have been that she was simply tired and a little perverse and ill-natured. And it was true that she had not the slightest interest in the money involved. Indeed she had no idea how rich she was. Each year she spent what she desired tospend, and never did she come to the end of her income. What more could she desire? What could she do with more money?
But it is also more than probable that somewhere far back in the dark recesses of her consciousness, there were memories which kindled as she grew older, new fires of resentment against the Mills and the Town and all the things they stood for ... memories of her mother’s open hatred for the Harrisons and Judge Weissman, memories of a terrible night when men and women were shot down under the dead trees of the park, memories of an heroic, unattainable figure, wounded and bloody, but undefeated ... a figure which doubtless grew in fascination as it receded into the past. It is true, too, that there is sometimes greater peace, even greater happiness, in renunciation than in fulfilment. What has never been a reality, may remain a fine dream. Krylenko had never been more than this.
And so the affair ran on until one evening in September Eustache, the farmer’s boy, brought back from Meaux a small envelope bearing the post mark of the Town and addressed in the scrawled, illiterate handwriting of old Hennery. It recounted briefly the end of the house of Cypress Hill. It had caught fire mysteriously in the night and before dawn nothing remained save a hole in the ground filled with the scorched and blackened fragments of fine old carpets, mirrors, jade, crystals, carved chests and old chairs, all the beautiful things which encumbered the site of the proposed railroad station.
The mulatto woman, Hennery wrote with difficulty and the most atrocious spelling, swore that she saw two men running away from the house after the fire began. The police, he added, had been able to find no trace of them.
And the following day Lily received a polite letter from Folsom and Jones giving her a brief account of the catastrophe. They also mentioned the story told by the mulatto woman. They believed, however, that it was simply the crazy imagining of a demented old woman.
“Perhaps now,” the letter concluded, “Miss Shane would desire to rid herself of a property that could no longer hold her even by ties of sentiment.”
LILY did not sell and for a time the letters of Folsom and Jones ceased to arrive regularly. Since all her property in the Town was sold save the site of the house at Cypress Hill, there remained no cause for correspondence. Her money she invested through the American banks in Paris. She heard nothing more of the Town until November when she returned to the city. The prospect of a winter in Paris appeared to revive her spirits, and she went, as usual, to hear Ellen play her first concert of the season. That year Lilli Barr played a new Poem with the Colonne Orchestra under the bâton of the elegant Gabriel Pierné. The performance was not a great success. There was too little sympathy between the scholarly soul of the conductor and the vigorous, barbaric temperament of the pianist. Yet it was Ellen who came off best, bearing all the laurels, with all the simpering critics trotting attendance. “Mlle. Barr,” they said, “has the perfect temperament for it ... the superb adjustment of soul and intellect indispensable to the interpretation of such febrile music. It is music which requires a certain coldness of brain, a perception delicate and piercing ... a thing of the nerves.” And so they ran on, wallowing in their delight for themot juste, praising more extravagantly than was either honest or in good taste. One or two saw an opportunity in the praise of hitting a back handed slap at the conductor and his orchestra.
It was M. Galivant, critic of the Journal des Arts Modernes, who hit upon the phrases “febrile music” and “delicate perception.” He showed Lilli Barr the article in the salon after the concert, with the keys of the great piano barely cool from her hot fingers.
“Pish! Tosh!” she remarked to Lily who waited for her in the dressing room. “Did you see what Galivant has written?It’s too exquisite for me. To hear them talk, you’d think I took the veil for months at a time just to meditate what my music is all about. I know what it’s about and I don’t want praise that’s written before they hear me play, just because I help their modern music along. Nerves! Nerves! I haven’t got such things!”
Yet she was, as always after a concert, tense and nervous, filled with a terrible energy which would not let her sleep until dawn. To-night she wore a long tight gown of cloth of silver, without sleeves and girdled by a single chain of rhinestones. With her dark hair drawn tightly back, she resembled a fine greyhound—lean, muscular, quivering.
“At least they liked it,” said Lily, “judging from the applause.” She sat waiting in a long cloak of black velvet, held together with silver clasps.
There was a sudden knock at the door and Lily murmured “Come in.” It was the porter, a lean, sallow, man with a stoop and enormous black mustaches.
“There is a gentleman to see Madame l’artiste,” he said.
Ellen turned. “Who is it?”
The man grimaced. “How should I know? He says he knows you.”
A shadow of irritation crossed Ellen’s smooth brow. “If he wants to see me, tell him to send in his name.” And then to Lily as the porter withdrew, “You see what fame is. The porter doesn’t even know my name. He calls me Madame l’artiste ... Madame indeed! He hasn’t even bothered to read the bills.”
The fellow returned again, this time opening the door without the courtesy of a knock.
“His name, Madame, is ’arrisong.”
Ellen pursed her lips thoughtfully and struck a match on the sole of her slipper, holding the flame to the cigarette in her strong slim fingers.
“Harrison?... Harrison?” she repeated, holding the cigarette between her lips and the lighted match poised. “I don’t know any Harrison.... Tell him to come in.”
The stranger must have been waiting just outside the door, for at the word he stepped timidly inside. He was dressed inblack and wore a derby hat set well on the back of his head. Over one arm hung an umbrella. He was rather sallow and macabre despite his plumpness. There was the faint air of an undertaker about him. He might have been any age.
As he advanced he smiled and, observing Lily, his countenance assumed an expression of surprise. Ellen gave no sign of recognition. It was Lily who stirred suddenly and stood up, her face glowing with a genuine spontaneous pleasure.
“Willie Harrison!” she cried. “Where haveyoucome from?”
At the sound of his name Ellen’s smooth brow wrinkled in a slight frown. “Willie Harrison,” she murmured, and then joined Lily in welcoming him.
For a moment he stood awkwardly regarding the two women. Then he said, “I came to your concert, Ellen.... I saw it advertised in the Herald. I knew you were Lilli Barr.” He chortled nervously. “Funny how famous you are now! Nobody ever would have thought it!”
The sight of Willie appeared suddenly to loosen all Ellen’s taut nerves. She sat down, leaned back in the chair, and laughed. “Yes. I fooled them, didn’t I?” she said. “I fooled them.” And a sort of grim satisfaction entered her voice.
Lily was smiling now, out of sheer pleasure at the sight of Willie. It amused her probably more than anything that could have happened to her at that moment.
“But what on earth are you doing in Paris?”
From the tone of her voice, it was clear that she regarded his presence as a sort of miracle.... That Willie Harrison should have had the energy to cross the Atlantic and wander about alone in Paris.
Willie sat down, rather stiffly, and told his story. He was with a Cook’s party. His tour included London, Paris, the château country and Switzerland. He was leaving shortly.
“It’s been a wonderful trip,” he remarked, his plump face all aglow. “I’d no idea how much country there was over here.”
“Yes,” said Ellen, “there’s a good deal, taking it all in all.” She said this with an undisguised air of patronizing him. It was she who was great now, she who held the whip hand. She was no longer an awkward girl in a home-made ballgown so unpretentious that men like Willie Harrison failed to notice her.
But Willie failed to understand. He was childishly excited over Paris. “It’s a great city!” he observed, fingering nervously the ruby clasp of his watch chain. “A great city!”
Lily stood up suddenly.
“Willie,” she said, “come home and have supper with us.” And turning to Ellen she added, “Paul will be waiting for us. He must be there already.” And to Willie, “Paul is Monsieur Schneidermann, a friend of Ellen’s and mine.”
Willie rose. “I don’t know,” he said timidly. “Maybe you aren’t prepared for me. Maybe I’d be in the way. I didn’t mean to force my way in on anything when I called. It was just for the sake of old times.”
Lily, moved toward the door trailing the magnificent cloak of black and silver. She thrust her arm through his. “Come along, Willie,” she said. “No nonsense. Why, we grew up together.”
And they went out, Ellen following them in her plum-colored wrap, to the motor which bore on its polished door the crest of the Baron.
Throughout the journey Willie kept poking his head in and out of the closed motor, drinking in the sights along the way ... the hushed, shadowy mass of the Madeleine, the warm glow before Maxims’, the ghostly spaces of the Place de la Concorde, the white palaces of the Champs Elysées. Ellen in her corner remained sulky and taciturn, smoking savagely. Lily talked merrily, pointing out from time to time sights which she deemed worthy of Willie’s appreciation. He seemed not to be listening.
“It’s a wonderful place,” he kept saying over and over again. “It’s a wonderful place.” And a kind of pathetic and beautiful awe crept into his thin voice. It seemed that he had no other words than “wonderful.” He kept repeating it again and again like a drunken man holding a conversation with himself.
At Numero Dix, Rue Raynouard, Willie underwent the experience of every stranger. He entered by the unpretentious door and found himself suddenly at the top of a long, amazing stairway which led down to a drawing-room all rosy with theglow of warm light. Half-way down the stairs candles burned in sconces against the dull paneling. From below drifted the faint sound of music ... a Debussy nocturne being played with caressing fingers in the shadowy, dim-lit spaces of the drawing-room.
“Paul is here,” observed Ellen and led the way down the long stairs.
Lily followed and close at her silver heels Willie Harrison, divested now of his derby and umbrella. Half-way down, he paused for a moment and Lily, conscious that he had ceased to follow her, waited too. As she turned she saw that he was listening. There was a strange blurred look in his pale eyes ... the look of one awaking from a long sleep.
“It’s beautiful,” he said reverently. “My God! It’s beautiful!” A kind of dignity seized him. He was no longer gauche and timid. He stared at Lily who stood with her back to a mirror, the black and silver cloak thrown carelessly back from her voluptuous white shoulders, her handsome head crowned with gold bronze hair. And then all at once the tears shone in his eyes. He leaned against the paneling.
“I understand now,” he said softly. “I understand ... everything. I know now how little I must have counted.... me and all the Mills together.”
And in Lily’s eyes there was mirrored another picture ... that of a vast resounding shed bright with flames and thick with the odor of soot and half-naked bodies ... Willie, eternally fingering the ruby clasp of his watch chain, herself turning the rings round and round on her slim fingers, and in the distance the white, stalwart body of a young Ukrainian steel worker ... a mere boy ... but beautiful. Krylenko was his name ... Krylenko ... Krylenko ... It was a long time ago, more than fourteen years. How time flew!
Lily’s dusky blue eyes darkened suddenly and the tears brimmed over. Perhaps it came to her then for the first time ... a sense of life, of a beautiful yet tragic unity, of a force which swept both of them along helplessly.
All at once she held her handkerchief, quite shamelessly, to her eyes. “We are beginning to be old, Willie,” she said softly. “Do you feel it too?”
And she turned and led the way downwards. The music had ceased and the voices of Ellen and Paul Schneidermann rose in dispute. They were arguing with a youthful fire over the merits of the new concerto.
“Here,” came Ellen’s voice. “This part. It is superb!” And then the sound of a wild, ecstatic sweep of music, terrifying and beautiful. “You understand the strings help a great deal. Part of it lies in the accompaniment.” And she began singing the accompaniment as she played.
But Lily with her companion trooping along behind her, did not interrupt the discussion. They made their way, enveloped in a peaceful silence, into the dining-room where supper waited them—some sort of hot stuff in a silver dish with an alcohol flame burning beneath it, an urn steaming with hot chocolate, a bowl of whipped cream, a few sandwiches—superlatively French sandwiches, very thin and crustless with the faintest edge of buff colored paté showing between the transparent slices of white bread. It was all exquisite, perfect, flawless.
“Sit down,” said Lily, as she flung off the black and silver cloak. “Sit down and tell me all about yourself.”
Willie drew up a chair. “I shan’t be able to stay very late,” he said. “You see, I’m leaving early in the morning.” He watched Lily fumbling with the lamp beneath the urn. She was plumper than he had expected. Indeed she was almost fat. There was a faint air of middle-age about her, indiscernable but unmistakably present.
“What about yourself?” he asked politely. “What has your life been?”
Lily kept on turning and pushing at the silver burner. “My life?” she said. “Well, you see it all about you, Willie.” She made a little gesture to include the long, softly glittering rooms, Ellen, the piano, Paul Schneidermann. “It’s just been this,” she said. “Nothing more ... nothing less. Not much has happened.” For a moment she stopped her fumbling and sat thoughtful. “Not much has happened,” and then after another pause, “No, scarcely anything.”
There was a sudden, sharp silence, filled by the sound ofEllen’s music. She had become absorbed in it, utterly. It was impossible to say when she would come in to supper.
Then Willie, in an attempt at courtliness, strained the truth somewhat. “You don’t look a day older, Lily ... not a day.... Just the same. It’s remarkable.”
His companion lifted the lid of the chafing dish. “Some hot chicken, Willie?” she asked, and when he nodded, “I must say you look younger ... ten years younger than the last time I saw you. Why, you look as though you’d forgotten the Mills ... completely.”
Willie laughed. It was a curious elated laugh, a little wild for all its softness.
“I have,” he said. “You see I’m out of the Mills for good. I’ve been out of them for almost seven years.”
Lily looked at him. “Seven years,” she said, “seven years! Why that’s since the strike. You must have gotten out at the same time.”
“I did,” he replied, “I own some stock. That’s all. Judge Weissman is dead, you know. When mother died, the old crowd went out of it for good. All the Mills are now a part of the Amalgamated.”
THUS in a few words, he sketched the passing of one epoch and its succession by another. The day of the small private enterprise in the Town had passed, succeeded by the day of the great corporation. Everything was owned now by capitalists, by stockholders who never saw the Mills, to whom the workers of the Flats were little more than mythical creatures, animated engines without minds or souls, whose only symbol of existence was the dividend twice a year. Machines they were ... machines ... dim machines ... not in the least real or human.
Most of the tale Willie omitted. He did not tell of the monkey-faced little man who came to the Town representing the Amalgamated. Nor did he tell of the monkey-faced man’s address to the Chamber of Commerce in which he talked a great deal of Jesus and declared that religion was what the world most needed, religion and a sense of fellowship between men. He did not tell of how the Amalgamated broke the strike by buying all the wretched houses and turning out the strikers, men, women and children. He omitted the blacklisting, the means by which the strikers were prevented from obtaining work elsewhere. He did not observe that the power which money gave Judge Weissman, himself and his mother, was as nothing compared to the power of the Amalgamated—a vast incalculable power founded upon gold and the possession of property. Nor did he say that the passing of the Mills had killed Mrs. Julis Harrison ... a thing which was as true as truth. These things were to him of no importance. He was now simply “an average citizen” minding his own business.
All Willie said was, “When mother died, the old crowd went out of it for good.”
In the drawing-room Ellen had been completely captured by the concerto. She was playing it all over again, from beginning to end, rapturously, savagely. Schneidermann lay amongthe cushions of the divan, his lean figure sprawled languidly, his dark eyes closed.
“And what do you do now?” asked Lily. “You must do something to occupy yourself.”
Willie’s plump face brightened. “I have a farm,” he said. “I raise ducks and chickens.” A slow smile crept over Lily’s face. “It’s a success too,” he continued. “You needn’t laugh at it. I make it pay. Why, I made this trip on last year’s profits. And I have a great deal of fun out of it.” He smiled again with an air of supreme contentment. “It’s the first time I’ve ever done what I wanted to do.”
Lily regarded him with a faint air of surprise. It may have been that she guessed then for the first time, that he was not after all a complete fool. He, too, like Ellen, like herself, even like Irene, had escaped in spite of everything.
They had been talking thus for half an hour when Ellen, followed by Paul Schneidermann, joined them. Willie stood up nervously.
“Paul,” said Lily, “Mr. Harrison—Mr. Harrison, Monsieur Schneidermann.” They bowed. “You are both steel manufacturers,” she added with a touch of irony, “You will find much in common.”
Willie protested. “No longer,” he said. “Now I am a farmer.”
“And I,” said Schneidermann, “have never been. I am a musician....” Ellen laughed scornfully and he turned to her with a curious blushing look of self-effacement, “Perhaps,” he said, “dilettante is a better word.”
For a time they talked—the stupid, polite conversation that occurs between strangers; and then, the proprieties satisfied, Ellen and Paul drifted quickly back into the realm of music. Lily devoted herself to Willie Harrison.
“It was too bad,” he remarked, “about the house at Cypress Hill.”
Lily leaned forward on the table holding up one white wrist to shield her eyes from the light of the candles. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry ... sentimentally, I suppose. I should never have gone back to it. It was perfectly useless to me. But I’m sorry it’s gone. I suppose it, too, was changed.”
“You would never have known it,” said Willie. “It was completely black ... even the white trimmings.” He leaned forward confidentially. “Do you know what they say? They say in the Town that some one was hired to burn it, so that you would be willing to sell.”
For a moment Lily remained silent. Her hand trembled a little. She looked across at Ellen to see whether she had been listening. Her cousin was plainly absorbed in her argument.
“They can have it now,” said Lily, with an intense bitterness. “I begrudge them even the taxes I have to pay on it. But they’ll have to pay a good price,” she added quietly. “I’ll squeeze the last cent out of them.”
It was the end of their conversation, for Willie glancing at his watch, announced that he must leave. Lily accompanied him up the long stairs to the unpretentious door. There he hesitated for a moment on bidding her good night.
“You have changed,” he said. “I can see it now.”
Lily smiled vaguely, “How?”
He fell to fumbling with the ruby clasp. “I don’t know. More calm, I think.... You’re not so impatient. And you’re like a Frenchwoman.... Why, you even speak English with an accent.”
“Oh, no, Willie ... I’m not like a Frenchwoman. I’m still American. There’s a good deal of my mother in me. I’ve realized it lately. It’s that desire to run things. You understand what I mean.... Perhaps it’s because I’m getting to the age where one can’t live upon the food of youth.” She laughed suddenly. “We Americans don’t change. What I mean is that I’m growing old.”
Willie shook hands politely and went out, leaving Lily in the doorway to watch his neat figure, silhouetted against the glow of light from the Café des Tourelles, until he reached the corner and disappeared.
It was the last time she ever saw him so it was impossible for her to have known the vagaries of his progress after he left the door of Numero Dix. Yet this progress held a certain interest. At the corner of the Rue Franklin, Willie hailed with his umbrella a passing taxicab and bade the driver take him to an address in the Rue du Bac. It was not the addressof the American Hotel; on the contrary it designated a three story house with a café on the first floor and lodgings above. In one of these lived a discreet lady who frequented the Louvre by day and employed Art as a means of making the acquaintance of quiet gentlemen hanging about the fringes of tourist parties. Indeed, she could have written an interesting compendium on the effect of art and Paris upon the behavior of soberly dressed, mousy gentlemen.
For Willie, with the death of his mother and the passing of the Mills, had begun to live ... in his own awkward timid fashion, to be sure ... but none the less he had begun to live.
As he sped on his way in the crazy taxicab, it became more and more evident that his mood was changed by the encounter with Lily. He sat well back in the cab, quietly, immersed in the thought. The dim white squares, empty and deserted now; the flamboyant houses of the section near the Étoile, the light-bordered Seine, the tall black skeleton of the Eiffel Tower ... all these things now left him, for some strange reason, unmoved. They swept by the windows of the cab unnoticed. Willie was thinking of something else.
As the taxi turned into the ghostly spaces of the Place de la Concord, Willie stirred himself suddenly and thrust his head out of the window.
“Cocher! Cocher! Chauffeur!” he cried suddenly in atrocious French. “Allez a l’hotel Americain.”
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.