THE German laughed softly. “You are a primitive woman, Madame. It refreshes me to find a woman so charmingly direct, so completely feminine. There are not many left. It is a quality which should always accompany beauty. If a woman is not beautiful, it does not matter.” He paused waiting for her to speak and when she said nothing, he continued. “I envy your lover. He is a fortunate man.”
At this Lily stirred once more. It was a faint movement, yet it carried a warning of anger.
“Of course, you may say and do what you please,” she said. “I am completely helpless.”
The Uhlan rattled his spurs in the darkness. “Come ... come, now. I have no intention of harming you. I told you that before. It seems to me that this once ... on a night such as this ... we might talk honestly ... as if there was no nonsense in the world. I do not know your name and you do not know mine. We shall never meet again, for I, no doubt, will be dead before many days. You have admitted that you have a lover.” He leaned across the table with a curious pleading gesture. “You see, I am tired. I mean to say that I am wearied of keeping up deceits. Has it ever occurred to you how many barriers surround us all ... even those friends whom we know very well. The countless secrets which lie behind them ... the things which we never know, even about our dearest friends. For once ... just once, it would be a delight to talk without pretense ... to speak as if each one of us were free, quite free, to do as he pleased ... to answer to no one, to fear no one. There is no more freedom in the world. There are too many people in the world. And the life of no one is any longer his own.” He paused and passed a thin, nervous hand across his brow as ifhe would clear away some entanglement which had entrapped his thoughts. “I cannot say what I mean. I, like all the others, have kept my secrets hidden for too long a time. You see, if it were possible for us to talk thus with freedom ... we might separate, you knowing me and I knowing you, better than any one else in the world.” He laughed and his mood changed quickly from a resigned weariness back to the old mocking flippancy. “It is an interesting idea, but impossible of course ... because we no longer know even ourselves. We have sacrificed ourselves to those who crowd in upon us, who dare not share our secrets ... because the crowd is too stupid ... too cowardly ... too weak ... too bereft of understanding. The crowd is like sheep. They must be protected by little shepherd laws ... against themselves. And so the strong are sacrificed to the weak. That will put an end to us all some day ... an end to all this blessed civilization. Ah, if you knew how stupid sheep can be. I have a farm in Silesia, Madame. I can tell you all about sheep.” For an instant he paused, considering the imbecility of sheep. “And socialism! It’s no better, Madame. It simply buries the individual deeper under layers of muck. No, it is all wrong from the bottom up. We must kill ... kill ... you understand ... until there is room to breathe! Until the earth is freed of the sheep! Then we can be free! Then we can find solitude!”
Again his voice rang with subdued frenzy. Inside the house the frivolous gilt traveling clock struck midnight, and far away in the direction of Trilport there arose again the faint crackling sound like the brush fires. It rose and fell, tossed about at the caprice of the night wind.
“They have begun again,” said the Uhlan. “In a little while I shall be forced to leave. You see, we cannot remain here. We have pushed in too far.” He leaned forward and drew with his lighted cigarette upon the top of the table between them a V shaped line. “You see,” he said, indicating the point of the V. “We have been pushed in here.... We cannot possibly remain. It is as far as we shall advance. We have come too far already. Any fool could see it. Any fool but Von Kluck.... Why, my boot boy would know it.” Helaughed again. “But my boot boy is not a general. He is not stupid enough.”
He kept wriggling, wriggling helplessly, like a butterfly impaled by a pin ... an individualist, a lonely man, caught by the savage rush of the mob.
WHAT he said appeared to pass ignored by Lily, for when he had finished she began to talk once more. “I can understand the bravery of fighting for that which you believe,” she said. “I cannot understand yielding without a fight to the monster you despise. I knew a man....” For a second she hesitated. “He fought for what he believed. He gave up everything for the fight ... his health, his friends, his work, his money. He was beaten and bloody and wounded. He would have given his life if it had been necessary. He was a poor, ignorant Ukrainian peasant ... a Russian who could barely read. Yet he fought. He fought and learned ... up from nothing.” Again she paused and the distant crackling sound filled in the silence, this time more distinct and sharp, nearer at hand. “You see, I am telling you this because it is the very monster that you hate which he too fought. He is still fighting it. In the end he will win.... If one could not believe such things, one could not live. He will go on fighting because there is inside him something which will not let him stop. But there are not many like him. There are too many like you.”
Her voice carried the ring of supreme scorn. There was a quality of iciness in it, penetrating, contemptuous, acid.
Suddenly she covered her face with her hands. “In times like this,” she said, “I think of him. It helps one to live.” And after a moment, she added bitterly. “He would not have gone off to kill!”
“I can see, Madame,” said the stranger, “that you despise me.”
“It is more than that,” answered Lily, her face still covered by her white hands. “I am certain now that I hate you.”
The Uhlan frowned. “I am sorry,” he said, “I thought you were sympathetic.”
The only answer was a laugh, incredibly cold and savage from so beautiful a woman.
Within the château more lights appeared, and in the courtyard there rose the sound of hoofs striking the cobblestones and of orders being shouted back and forth in guttural German. Far away to the east a solitary cannon barked. The noise ripped the blue stillness with the sound of a tapestry being torn.
“You have forgotten,” said Lily, “that I have a son and a lover in the war. You understand, they too are in the cavalry.”
She had scarcely finished speaking when the air was shattered by the terrific rattle of a dozen rifles fired simultaneously below the terrace somewhere among the buildings of the farm. A faint glare trembled above the iron bridge and then a second volley, terrifying and abrupt, and a second brief glare.
The Uhlan did not move but Lily sat up suddenly. They remained thus for some time, the woman in an attitude of listening. It appeared that she was straining every nerve, every muscle, lest the faintest sound escape her. When the volley was not repeated she turned her head, slowly and scornfully, in the direction of her companion. In her eyes there was a look of terrible accusation, a look charged with contempt and hatred. The stranger watched her as if fascinated and unable to remove his eyes from her face. At last she spoke, slowly and distinctly, in an awed, breathless whisper.
“What was that?”
The face of the Uhlan remained smooth and empty of all expression, as clean of all emotion as a bit of smooth white paper. In the flickering light from the lanterns which moved among the trees, the countenance appeared vague and lineless, almost imbecile in its negation. Then slowly his lips moved.
“It is the curé, Madame.... They have shot the curé.” The voice was as smooth as the face. It carried the hard, mocking cruelty of indifference. “They caught him signaling with his lantern from the steeple of the church.”
Without a sound Lily lay back once more and buried her face in her cloak. Her body shook silently.
“I could do nothing else,” continued the smooth voice. It came out from the thin lipped mouth as a serpent from a crevice in a rock. “It was not I who killed. I had nothing to say in the matter. I did what I could not help doing.Enfin, it was the monster!”
Across the fields of wheat from the direction of Meaux the faint crackling sound came nearer and nearer. It was as if the grain had caught fire and the flames were rushing toward them. Lily still lay with her eyes covered as if to shut out the picture which had risen in her imagination. M. Dupont ... the friend of dying Madame Gigon, the priest to whom she had told her life ... M. Dupont dead among the dungheaps of the farmyard!
Somewhere in the direction of the Trilport bridge, the solitary cannon fired again and as though it had summoned Madame Gigon back to life, they heard her speaking suddenly inside the lodge. She was talking rapidly in a low voice.
“You need not worry, Henri. To-morrow there will be fresh vegetables in from the barrier. At dark, a balloon with two passengers will be released at the Gare St. Lazare. Gabriel himself told me.” And then for a time she muttered incoherently and when her speech became clear again, she was saying, “There is a notice on the Rue de Rivoli that they are selling animals in the Jardin de Plantes. For food you understand ... I hear at ten sous the pound.” Again more mumbling and then, “Ah, that one was close. Yesterday a shell exploded in the Boulevard Montparnasse. We must place our faith in God.... Yes, we must pray, Henri. There is not enough God in the world.”
Then she became silent for a time and the Uhlan said, “Madame is delirious. She is living through 1870.... You see we have not progressed at all. It is merely turn about, first the French, and then we take a turn.” He laughed a nervous laugh devoid of mirth. “Ah, it is a pretty business, Madame ... a pretty business. The sooner we are all killed off the better. The animals could manage this world better than we have done.”
He had not finished speaking when a sudden rattle of rifles sounded somewhere near at hand, a little to the east by the copse in the long meadow. At the same time the confusion in the stables and the little park redoubled. A horse whinneyed. Men shouted. Water pails were overturned. Out of the darkness a man in rough gray uniform appeared and addressed the Captain in excited, guttural German. The Uhlans hadbegun to leave the stable. They were making their way through the black trees over the neatly ordered flowers to the gate in the garden wall.
The stranger talked for a moment with the soldier and then rising, he said, “Good-by, Madame. It is not likely that we shall ever meet again. I thank you for the conversation. It saved the night for an insomniac. It is more stimulating to talk with a beautiful woman than with common soldiers.”
Lily lay buried in her cloak. She did not even uncover her face, but the Uhlan bowed in a polite ironic fashion and slipped away through the trees, vanishing at once like a shadow. The uproar in the château gardens and in the stable increased. It swallowed the stranger.
As the sound of his footsteps died away, she raised herself cautiously and looked about her. The sound of firing continued. The air was full of an unearthly red glow. Supporting herself on one elbow she saw that the light came from the opposite side of the river. The farm had been fired by the departing troops. For a time she watched the flames, eating their way slowly at the windows and along the eaves, growing always in intensity. The iron bridge was filled with retreating Uhlans, all black against the red haze. The thunder of hoofs on the planks again filled the air.
THUS she remained as if under a spell, ignoring the uproar that had arisen all about her, in the fields, in the château garden and along the tow-path. When at last she moved, it was to sit up and place her feet upon the ground where they struck some hard object that made a clicking, metallic sound as it grated against the stone. Reaching down, her fingers closed over the cold metal of a lugar pistol. In the confusion and the shouting it had slipped from its holster. The stranger had forgotten it. Slowly she raised the weapon and held it up in the glow of the burning farm. For a long time she regarded the pistol as if it held some sinister fascination and presently, leaning upon the back of her chair, she rose slowly and concealed it in the folds of her cloak. When she had gained a full sense of her balance, she moved off from the terrace through the black trees in the direction of the iron bridge.
The firing had increased. There were cries in French and in guttural German, and from the shrubbery along the garden wall the low moan of a wounded soldier. With the long cloak trailing across the dewy grass she continued to move in an unswerving line to the garden gate. As she passed through it a stray bullet, striking the wall beside her, chipped the ancient mortar into her face and her thick, disordered hair. Outside on the towpath she walked until she stood on the little knoll above the iron bridge.
In the center of the structure could be discerned the figures of three men silhouetted against the flames of the burning farm. Two were kneeling at work on some object which absorbed all their attention. The third stood upright shielding his eyes from the glow, keeping watch and urging them to hurry. He was slim and very neat, and carried himself with a singular air of scorn. Unmistakably he was the visitor, the stranger upon theterrace. At the far end of the bridge, three horses, held in check by the rider of a fourth horse, curvetted and neighed in terror at the leaping flames.
All this Lily saw from the eminence of the low knoll. And when she had watched it for some time she raised her arm, holding the lugar pistol, and slowly took careful aim. The cloak slipped from her shoulders into the grass. Once she fired and then again and again. The slim, neat man stumbled suddenly, struck his head against an iron girder of the bridge and slipped struggling into the river. There was a faint splash and he disappeared. Of the other two men, one fell upon his face, struggled up again and, aided by his companion, crawled painfully toward the terrified horses. The flames roared wildly. The horses leapt and curvetted for a moment and then disappeared with their riders, followed by the horse whose rider lay at the bottom of the Marne.
On the low knoll the pistol dropped from Lily’s hand and slipped quietly into the river. A party of three French infantrymen coming suddenly out of the sedges along the river discovered her lying in the thick wet grass. Bending over her they talked volubly for a time and at last carried her back through the gate into the lodge. They could wring from her no sort of rational speech. She kept talking in the strangest manner, repeating over and over again, “It is simply a matter of chance ... like roulette ... but one of a million chances ... but one ... but one.... Still one chance is too many.”
Inside the lodge, one of the soldiers struck a sulphur match and discovered in the bed by the window the body of an old woman. He summoned his companions and they too leaned over the body. Beyond all doubt the old woman was dead.
FROM that night on the sound of firing grew steadily more faint and the glow in the sky more dim. There were times when Lily, lying delirious in the lodge under the care of Madame Borgue, the farmer’s wife, behaved in the wildest manner. When the wind blew from the north, it carried the sound of the guns across forests and wheatfields into the park at Germigny and the barrage, no longer confused and close at hand, took on a pulsing regular throb like the beating of surf upon a beach of hard shingle. At such times Lily would sit up and talk wildly in a mixture of French and English of Mills and monsters, of cauldrons, of white hot metal that absorbed the very bodies of men. The distant rumbling was for all the world like the pounding which had enveloped Cypress Hill in the days of Lily’s youth. But Madame Borgue, knowing nothing of all this, could make no sense of the ravings of her patient.
She remained a long time ill. While she lay unconscious with the fever, Madame Gigon was buried among the beadedcouronnesof the cemetery at Trilport between her obscure husband, the curator, and the father who had been ruined by his loyalty to Napoleon the Little.
It happened that on the very day of the lonely funeral, Madame de Cyon died in Paris of indigestion brought on by overeating and the loss of twenty francs at bridge, played secretly to be sure, for in those days no one played bridge in Paris. So Madame Gigon, by dying first, was cheated out of her triumphant, “I told you so!” Of course, it may have been that in another world she knew this satisfaction; for it was true that Nadine “went off just like that.”
And in early October, on the first day that Lily ventured from the lodge out upon the green terrace, she read in the Figaro that she had been decorated with the Croix de Guerre. The citation appeared in the midst of the military news.
“Shane, Madame Lily. Widow. American by birth. Decorated for valor at Germigny l’Evec during the Battle of the Marne, when she prevented a detachment of Uhlans from destroying an iron bridge of the utmost importance to our troops.”
This she read aloud to Madame Borgue. It was tiny paragraph, printed in very small black type, and it caused Lily to laugh, bitterly, mirthlessly. Letting fall the Figaro by the side of her chair, she lay back.
“As if,” she said, “I had ever thought of the bridge! As if I even knew that they were trying to destroy it!”
And when Madame Borgue, alarmed by this outburst, sought to lead her back into the house, Lily said, “I am not delirious.... Truly ... I am not. It is so absurdly funny!” And she laughed again and again.
She never knew that it was M. de Cyon who brought the affair to the attention of the Ministry of War and secured her the distinction.
Slowly it became clear that fate had not allotted to the dead Uhlan the chance of Césaire’s death. She received no news of him. Even M. de Cyon, in the government at Paris, could discover nothing. The hours grew into days and the days into months until, at last, she was able to leave the lodge and visit Jean in the hospital at Neuilly. There came at length a day when there was no longer any doubt. The Baron was simply among the missing ... the great number concerning whom there was no news. It was as if he had bade her farewell at the vine-covered gate and galloped off on the black horse into a darkness which swallowed him forever.
In Paris, the house in the Rue Raynouard acquired an air of complete desolation. There was no one, not even Jean who lay at the hospital in Neuilly with his right leg amputated at the knee, to share it with Lily. The mirrors reflected nothing save the figures of the mistress, the servants and M. de Cyon who appeared to find consolation for his recent loss in visits to the big house at Numero Dix.
Ellen, escaped at last from Central Europe, had returned to America. Madame Gigon was dead. Of her friends none remained. Madame de Cyon was in her grave. Madame Blaise still lived in a polite madhouse, convinced that the war wasonly a revolution which would place her friend, the wine merchant, upon the throne of a glorified and triumphant France. The others? Some had gone into the provinces, and of those who remained, all were interested in their own families. They had sons, brothers, nephews, cousins, at the front.... There were no moresalons. It was impossible to go alone to the theater. There remained nothing to do but visit Jean (a sad business though he seemed cheerful enough) and sit in the big empty house, so silent now, so empty of chatter, of music, of laughter. Even the great piano under the glowing Venice of Mr. Turner remained closed and silent save in the rare moments when Lily, as if unable any longer to endure the silence, opened it and played with only half a heart the tunes which once had filled the house and overflowed into the garden. It was clear that it required more than mirrors, jades, pictures and old carpets to make a dwelling endurable. As Lily remarked to M. de Cyon at tea one afternoon in early November, these things, each one the reminder of some precious association, only rendered Numero Dix the more unbearable.
“I can understand,” she said, “that sometimes my mother must have died of loneliness in the house at Cypress Hill.”
She told M. de Cyon the history of the burned house, bit by bit, from the day it was built until the day it was destroyed. Indeed she told him all the story of her father, of her own childhood, of the Mills and the Town. She even told him something of Irene’s story, though not enough to be sure for him to evolve the whole truth, for there were certain barriers beyond which she allowed no one to penetrate; no one save an old village priest who was, after all, not a man but an agent of God himself. And he was dead now.
In those days the pair drew more closely to each other, as if they found in the friendship a consolation for the melancholy and overwhelming loneliness. And it is true that Lily had grown more sympathetic. The old carefree gaiety had given place to a new and more gentle understanding. The indolence, it seemed, had vanished before a new determination to dominate her own aimless existence. She had grown more calm. Indeed there were times now when she became wholly grave and serious, even pensive, as she sat quietly with the pleasant, white-haired Frenchman who found her company so agreeable that he seldom permitted a day to pass without calling at Numero Dix on his way from the Ministry of War. She became, as she had observed to Willie Harrison, more and more like her mother.
Each day was like the one before, and this monotony to Lily must have been a new and painful experience. The only variation occurred when Paul Schneidermann, returning from a hospital in Cannes, arrived in Paris and became a second visitor at the house in the Rue Raynouard. But even in this there was an inexpressible sadness, for the bullet which had wounded Schneidermann paralyzed forever his left arm. He was never again able to play the piano in the long drawing-room nor the cello he had brought to the house when Ellen was there.
With Ellen gone, the American newspapers no longer found their way into the house. Indeed it seemed impossible to obtain them anywhere in Paris, even if Lily had been capable of such an effort. So there were no more clippings for the enameled box. The last one bore the date of the first month of the war. Since then there had been nothing. It was as if Krylenko, too,—the Krylenko whose progress Lily watched from so great a distance—had died or gone away like all the others. There remained only the wreckage of a life which had once been complete, content, even magnificent in its quiet way.
When at last Jean was able to leave the hospital, he secured through M. de Cyon an appointment at the Ministry of War. As for Lily, she undertook presently the establishment of a soup kitchen for soldiers who passed through Paris on leave. But at this diversion she was no more successful than she had been at knitting socks for the strikers; and after a few months she abandoned it completely to the care of women less wealthy and more capable. She continued, however, until the end to supply it lavishly with money. In her enthusiasm for the charities of the war she succeeded in exhausting for the first time her annual income. She even dipped into her principal. The two hundred thousand dollars which the Town paid her for Cypress Hill she used to provide food and comfort for the soldiers of another nation.
IN the Town no new railway station raised its splendors because in those years the Town and the Mills were too busy making money. In all the haste even the new railway station was forgotten. The deserted park became a storing place for the shells which the Mills turned out in amazing numbers. Gas shells, high explosives, shrapnel cases ... all these things were piled high along the brick paths where delphiniums and irises once flourished. Even the Venus of Cydnos and the Apollo Belvedere, cracked and smudged in the niches of the dead hedge, were completely buried beneath munitions. Because somewhere in the world men were being killed, the Mills did an enormous business. The Town grew as it had never before grown. Prices were tremendous. The place reeked with prosperity and progress. People even said that the war would finish Germany, that no longer would she be able to compete in the great steel markets of the world. And that, of course, meant more prosperity, more riches.
The flames leapt high above the furnaces. The great sheds echoed with such a pounding as had never before been heard upon this earth. Girls in gas masks worked long hours filling shells with corroding acids which turned their faces haggard, and yellow as the aprons they wore. Little clerks acquired automobiles. Men who dealt in real estate grew rich. Every one would have been content, save for an insatiable appetite for even greater wealth.
Once, to be sure, there occurred an explosion which was for all the world like the end of everything. Forty-seven blackened bodies were carried out under white sheets which clung to the scorched flesh. Of seventeen others nothing at all was found save a few bones, a hand or a foot, a bit of blackened skin; and from these it was impossible to construct any thing. So they were dumped into great trenches, and when the earth hadcovered them, the world rushed merrily on. The flames leapt higher and redder than ever. The sheds fairly split with the sound of hammering. The little clerks dashed about madly in the sudden luxury of their motors. Every one had money. The Town was prosperous. It grew until it was the biggest in the state. Progress rattled on like everything, so nothing else mattered.
In Paris the war came to an end. One or two statesmen and a whole flock of politicians, after swooping about for a time, descended upon the peace.
In those days Paris acquired an insane and desperate gaiety such as it knew neither before nor since. The bright boulevards swarmed with the soldiers of fourteen nations clad in ten times as many gay uniforms. It became gay and frantic with the neurotic excitement of a madhouse. Street walkers from the provinces, even from Italy and England and Spain, rushed to Paris because business there was so good. In dives and cabarets a barbaric abandon reigned. Every one learned new vices and depravities. Brutes, vulgarians, savages stalked the avenues. Overnight boys became old men, burdened with a corroding wisdom which otherwise they might never have known.
And in the Town people shook their heads sagely and said that war was a great thing when it was fought in a just cause. “It purifies!” they said. “It brings out the finest side of men!”
What was prosperous was right. Wasn’t success its own vindication? About this there could be no argument. Money talks, my boy! Money talks! What is successful is right, Germany, the bully among nations! Germany, the greedy materialistic Germany, was done in forever.
Of course it may have been that when they spoke of War as the Great Purifier, they were thinking of the vast army of the Dead.
WHEN politicians gather it is necessary to have conventions, receptions, or some sort of a congregation where they may talk or at least make of themselves a spectacle. And so it happened that Paris, where most of the politicians in the world had congregated, began to break out as if suffering from a disease with receptions at this hotel, or that embassy or this palace. It was important that every one should see every one else. It was an opportunity not to be overlooked.
And so it happened that Lily Shane, one gray afternoon in the late winter, found herself for the first time in years surrounded by her countrymen. Rather weary, confused, and a little breathless, she discovered a refuge from the throng in a little alcove of the Hotel Crillon by a window which gave out upon the wide spaces of the Place de la Concorde. The white square was filled now with trophies. High on the terrace of the Tuileries gardens lay a row of shattered aeroplanes—hawklike Gothas, Fokkers like chimney swifts, all torn and battered now, their bright wings bedraggled by the mud and grease of victory. At intervals along the parapet rose great pyramids of German helmets, empty, ghastly, like the heaps of skulls strewn by Ghengis Khan to mark his triumphant progress across the face of Europe. Near the obelisk—so ancient, so withdrawn, so aloof, survivor of a dozen civilizations—the captured guns crouched together pointing their steel muzzles mutely toward the low gray sky. Some came from the great furnaces of the Krupps, some from the celebrated Skoda mills. In the circle marked by the seven proud cities of France, the statues of Lille and Strasbourg, no longer veiled in crêpe, stood impassive, buried beneath heaps of wreaths and flowers. The whole square appeared dimly through the mists that rose from the Seine. The fog hung low and gray, clinging in torn veils about the silentguns, settling low upon the pyramids of empty, skull-like helmets, caressing the hard, smooth granite of the eternal obelisk that stood aloof, mocking, ironic, silent.
Lily sat alone watching the spectacle of the square, as if conscious that in that moment she was at the very heart of the world. Behind her at a little distance moved a procession of figures, confused, grotesque, in the long crystal-hung corridors. It circulated restlessly through the big rooms, moving about the gilt furniture, past the gilt framed mirrors, brushing the heavy curtains. There were British, French, Belgians, Italians, Portuguese, triumphant Japanese, smiling secretly perhaps at the spectacle in the misty Place de la Concorde. There was, of course, a vast number of Americans, ... politicians, senators, congressmen, mere meddlers, some in neat cutaways, some in gray or blue suits. There were women among them ... a great many women, brave in mannish clothes, dominating and active in manner.
In all the crowd, so merry, so talkative over the victory, the figure of Lily, withdrawn and silent, carried an inexpressible air of loneliness. It was as if she imitated the obelisk and turned a scornful back upon the restless, gaudy spectacle. She was dressed all in black in a neat suit and a close fitting hat that covered all but a narrow band of amber hair. About her full white throat she wore a tight collar of big pearls. She was no longer young. The voluptuous curves had vanished. She was thinner and, despite the rouge on her lips and cheeks, appeared old. The youthful sparkle of her dark eyes had given place to a curious, hard brilliance. The old indolence appeared to have vanished forever. She sat upright, and at the moment the poise of her body carried a curious sense of likeness to the defiance which had been her mother’s. Yet despite all these things she was beautiful. It was impossible to deny her beauty, even though its quality of flamboyance was gone forever. The new beauty was serene, distinguished, worldly—above all else calm. Even the weariness of her face could not destroy a beauty which had to do as much with spirit as with body. She was, after all, no pretty blond thing of the sort which fades into a haggard old age. She was a fine woman, a magnificent woman, not to be overlooked even with youth gone forever.
After a time she turned away from the window and fell to watching the procession of figures. Her rouged lips were curved in the faintest of mocking smiles,—a smile which conveyed a hint of scoffing at some colossal futility, a smile above all else of sophistication and weariness, as if she were at once amused and saddened by the spectacle. Yet it was a kindly smile, tolerant, sympathetic, colored by a hint of some secret, profound, and instinctive wisdom. Motionless, she sat thus for a long time stirring only to fumble with the clasp of the silver bag that lay in her lap. No one noticed her, for she took no part in the spectacle. She sat apart, a little in the shadow, in a backwater, while the noisy tempestuous throng pushed its way through the long vista of gilded, rococo rooms.
SHE must have been sitting there for half an hour when the smile vanished suddenly and the fingers fumbling with the silver bag grew still. Her face assumed an expression of rigidity, the look of one who has seen something in which he is not quite able to believe.
Moving toward her down the long vista of crystal and brocade curtains came a man. He was a big man, tall, massive, handsome in a florid way. He must have been in his middle fifties, although there was but little gray in the thick black hair which he wore rather long in a fashion calculated to attract the notice of passersby. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles and a flowing black tie in striking contrast to the gray neatness of his cutaway and checkered waistcoat. Unmistakably he was an American. His manner carried the same freedom, the identical naive simplicity which characterized the figure of the vigorous Ellen. He possessed the same overflowing vitality. Even as Lily stood, silently, with her back to the tragic spectacle of the square, the vitality overflowed suddenly in a great explosive laugh and a slap on the back of a friend he had encountered in the throng. Above the subdued murmur, the sound of his booming voice reached her.
“Well, well, well!... And what are you doing in wicked Paris? Come to fix up the peace, I suppose!”
The answer of the stranger was not audible. The pair withdrew from the path of the procession and talked for a moment. The conversation was punctuated from time to time by the sudden bursts of laughter from the man in the checkered waistcoat.
In her corner Lily leaned forward a little in order to see more clearly the figure which had fascinated her. Presently he turned, bade his friend good-by and moved away again, coming directly down the vista toward Lily. He walked witha swinging stride, and as he approached his large face beamed with satisfaction. He turned his head from side to side with a patronizing air, an air which to Lily must have been startlingly familiar. Even twenty years could not have dissipated the memory of it. It was this which identified him beyond all doubt. He beamed to right and to left. His whole figure betrayed an enormous self-satisfaction. It was impossible any longer to doubt. The man was the Governor. His success was written upon a face now grown heavy and dark.
When he had advanced to within a few paces of Lily’s corner, she rose and moved toward him. Only once did she hesitate and then at the very moment he passed by her. Putting out her hand in a furtive movement, she withdrew it hastily. He passed and was on his way to disappearing once more in the throng. For a second she leaned against the wall and then, as if she could no longer resist the temptation, she moved quickly forward and touched his shoulder.
“Henry,” she said softly and waited.
The Governor turned and for an instant his face was clouded by a look of bewilderment. Then slowly, almost breathlessly, he recovered himself. The beaming look vanished completely, replaced by an expression of the greatest gravity.
“Lily ...!” he said. “Lily Shane.... For the love of God!”
She drew him aside out of the path of the procession.
“Then you remember me?” she said with a faint, amused smile. “Twenty years is not such a long time.”
Again he looked at her. “Lily.... Lily Shane!” he said. And he took her hand and pressed it with a savage, startled warmth.
“I knew you,” she said. “I knew you at once.... There are some things about a person which never change ... little things whicharethe person ... not much ... a gesture perhaps.... You were unmistakable.”
And when he had recovered a little from his astonishment, he managed to say, “It’s the last place I’d expect to see you.”
Lily laughed at him, in a fashion which must have destroyed suddenly the wall of twenty years. It was a fashion of laughing which belonged to her alone. It was provocative, faintlymocking. Willie Harrison knew it well. “I’ve lived in Paris for the last twenty years,” she retorted with an amused grimace, “and I’m still here. I will be until I die.”
Spontaneity does not come easily to a conversation between persons reunited unexpectedly after twenty years; and it was plain that the circumstances surrounding the separation contributed nothing to the facility of the conversation. Lily appeared to have forgotten, or at least to have disregarded the night following the garden party at Cypress Hill. Her manner was that of an old friend, nothing more, nothing less. If she knew any shame, she concealed it admirably. Plainly it was not so easy for her companion. The sudden pallor which had attacked his florid face gave place to a blushing scarlet. He was like a little boy caught in a shameful act.
“You haven’t changed much,” she said as if to clear the way, “I mean you yourself have not changed ... not your figure.”
He laughed. “I’m fatter ... much fatter.”
It was true.
What had once been clearly a barrel-like chest was sunk to the low estate of a stomach. “But you,” he continued, “You haven’t changed at all. You’re as young as ever.”
“You still say the right thing, Henry. But it isn’t the truth. I use rouge now.... I even dye my hair a little. We can’t pretend we’re not growing old. It’s no use. It’s written.... It’s in our faces.”
The Governor thrust a hand into his pocket and fell to jingling a few francs and a key ring. With the other hand he took out his watch. “Couldn’t we find some place to sit?” he said. “We might talk for a little while.” He coughed nervously. “I haven’t much time.”
At this she again laughed at him. Her laugh had not grown old. It remained unchanged, still ringing with the same good humor.
“I’ve no intention of keeping you,” she said. “You may go whenever you like.” For an instant she cast down her eyes. “When I saw you, I couldn’t resist.... I had to speak to you. Nothing could have prevented it. I felt, you see, as if I were possessed.”
And then she led him back to the corner by the tall window overlooking the misty square. It had grown darker and the cold fog now veiled completely the buildings on the far side of the river. There was only the great square filled with cannon and helmets and shattered planes and above the mass of trophies the rigid, eternal obelisk piercing the mist like a sword.
There they settled themselves to talk, lost in a throng which paid no heed to the middle-aged couple in the alcove. The Governor remained ill at ease, sitting forward upon the edge of his chair as if prepared to spring up and escape at the first opportunity. Lily, so calm, so placid, appeared only to inspire him with confusion. It may have been that she aroused a whole train of memories which he had succeeded in forgetting.
For a time, the conversation flowed along the most stiff and conventional of channels. There were polite inquiries after each other’s health. Lily told him of her mother’s death, of the fire at Cypress Hill, of the fact that she had severed the last tie with the Town and would never return to it.
“Never?” asked the Governor. “Never?”
“No. Why should I? It is not the same. I have nothing there to call me back. My life is here now. I shall probably die here. The Town is nothing to me.”
The Governor’s face lighted suddenly. He struck his thigh—a thigh which had once been so handsome and now was flabby with fat—a sharp blow.
“No, it is not the same. You’ve no idea how it has grown. I was there about six months ago. It’s twice as big as in the old days. You know, it’s now one of the greatest steel towns in the world. You’ve a right to be proud of it.”
But Lily said nothing. She was looking out of the tall window into the white square.
“And Ellen,” the Governor continued, “I hear she has become famous.” He laughed. “Who would have thought it? I remember her as a bad-tempered little girl with pigtails. Of course I know nothing about music. It’s not in my line. But they say she’s great.”
When she did not answer him, he regarded her silently for a time and presently he coughed as if to attract her attention.At last he leaned forward a little and said, “What are you thinking?”
For an instant, an unexpected note of tenderness entered his voice. He peered at her closely, examining her soft white skin, the soft hair that escaped from beneath her toque, the exquisite poise of her throat and head. To this scrutiny Lily put an end by turning with a smile to say, “Thinking? I was thinking that there is something hopelessly sad about having no happy realities in the place where you spent your childhood. You see, if I were to go back, I should find nothing. Cypress Hill burned.... My Uncle Jacob’s farm buried under new houses, each one like its neighbor, in ugly cheap rows ... the brook ruined by oil and filth. Why, even the people aren’t the same. There’s no one I should like to see except perhaps Willie Harrison, and it’s a long way to go just to see one person. I was thinking that if I’d been born in France, I would have had memories of a village and green country and pleasant stone houses. The people would be the same always.... I couldn’t go back to the Town now. I couldn’t.... I have memories of it. I wouldn’t want them spoiled.” For an instant the tears appeared in her eyes. She leaned toward him and touched his hand. “It’s not that I’m disloyal, Henry. Don’t think that. It’s that I have nothing to be loyal to ... nothing that I can cherish but memories. I couldn’t be happy there because there’s nothing but noise and ugliness. I suppose that somewhere in America there are towns full of realities that one could love, but they aren’t in my part of the country. There’s nothing there.” There was a little pause and she added, “It’s all happened so quickly. Think of it—it’s all happened since I was a little girl.”
All this the Governor, it seemed, failed to understand. He looked at her with a hopeless expression of bewilderment. But he said, “Yes, I understand.” And again an awkward silence enveloped them.
At last Lily turned to him. “Tell me,” she said, “you’ve been successful. Tell me about yourself.”
The Governor leaned back a little in his chair. “But you must have heard all that,” he said with astonishment. “It’s been in the newspapers. If you’re in politics you can’t keep out of the press.” The beaming look returned to his eyes and with it the old manner of condescension.
“But you forget,” replied Lily. “I haven’t read American newspapers. I’ve been away from America for a long time.”
“To be sure ... to be sure.” He coughed nervously. “There isn’t much to tell. I’ve been elected senator now for five terms running. I guess I can go on being elected as long as I live. I’ve gotten what I’ve set out for.... I’m a success in my party. I helped to frame the tariff bill that protected American industry and gave the Town a bigger boom than it ever had before. Oh, I’ve done my share!... Perhaps more than my share! We have a good life in Washington, my wife and I. She’s prominent, you know. She’s chairman of the State Woman’s Republican Committee. Oh, she’s very prominent ... a born leader and a splendid politician. You should hear her make a speech.”
Lily listened with an air of profound interest. She was smiling again. As Willie Harrison said, “It was impossible to know what Lily thought. She was always smiling.”
The Governor was over-zealous; somehow it seemed that he protested too much.
“Isn’t that fine?” she said. “You see, Henry, it has worked out as I told you it would. I should have made you a wretched wife. I would have been no good in politics.”
This, it seemed, made him nervous again. He sat forward on the edge of his chair. It was clear that he became terrified when the conversation turned too abruptly toward certain incidents of his youth. It was impossible for him to talk simply and easily. Something kept intruding. Lily may have guessed what it was, for she was a woman of experience in such things. Her companion was merely uncomfortable. He stood up and looked out into the misty square where the lights had begun to show through the fog in little globes of indefinite yellow.
“Extraordinary,” he said, “the number of motors in the square.” He turned toward her with a sudden enthusiasm. “There you have it! There’s America for you ... motor upon motor! There are more motors with the American HighCommission than with any other two combined. We’re a rich country, Lily. The war has made us powerful. We can rule the world and do as we please. It’s ours from now on.... The future is ours if these fools on the American commission don’t spoil everything.”
Lily smiled again. “Yes. It’s quite wonderful. We ought to be proud.”
“But you are, aren’t you?” he asked severely.
“Yes.”
“That’s one reason I came over here ... to put an end to this league of nations nonsense. We won the war and now they’re trying to wriggle out. There’s no reason we should be mixed up in their troubles.... There’s no reason we should suffer for it. It’s none of our affair.”
He drew himself up until his stomach came near to regaining its old place as a chest, His manner became pompous. It was the identical manner Julia Shane had greeted with derision more than twenty years before in the paneled dining-room at Cypress Hill. It was astounding how little the years had softened him. They had, it seemed, brought him nothing of gentleness, nothing of humor, nothing of wisdom ... only a certain vulgar shrewdness.
“No,” he continued, shaking a finger at her, “I’ve no intention of letting this nonsense pass. There’s no reason why we should help them out of what they themselves created.”
Lily’s eyes grew large and bright. The smile, mysterious, faintly mocking, persisted. “You’re wonderful, Henry,” she said. “I always knew what you would be like. Do you remember? I told you once. You are just like that ... just like my prediction.”
From her voice or her manner it was impossible to discover what she meant by this cryptic statement. The Governor interpreted it in his own fashion.
“Well,” he said, “I have no intention of seeing the American nation being made a dupe just because we’re rich and prosperous and the others have ruined themselves. My wife believes I am quite right. She too expects to make a speaking tour.” He became enthusiastic again. “You should hear her speak. She has an excellent voice, and great power.”
“Yes,” said Lily softly. “I would never be able to do all that. I would have been such a failure....”
“She’s here with me now ... in Paris,” continued the Governor. “She’d never been abroad. I thought she would enjoy the sights, too, so I brought her along.”
“Is she here to-day?” asked Lily. Again the Governor betrayed signs of an overwhelming confusion.
“Yes,” he said, “Yes.” And suddenly became silent.
For a moment Lily watched him as if the sight of his confusion provided her with some secret amusement. At length she said, “I’d like to see her. I don’t ask to meet her, of course. That would be questionable taste. Besides, why should we meet? We could mean nothing to each other.”
“No, perhaps not.”
Again he began staring out of the window. Lily glanced at the watch on her wrist.
“I shall be forced to leave soon myself,” she said. “My husband will be waiting for me.”
With a start her companion turned from the window toward her.
“So you’re married,” he said. “And you never told me.”
“You never asked me about myself. I didn’t think you were interested in what my life had been.”
He thrust out a great hand. “I must congratulate you!” he said with an overflowing enthusiasm. “I must congratulate you! I knew you’d marry some day. How long has it been?” The news appeared to furnish him with a genuine delight. Perhaps he felt more secure now, less frightened of Lily.
She shook hands with him quietly.
“Not for long.... Since three months.”
“And what is his name?”
“De Cyon ... René de Cyon. He is in the new ministry.... You see I married a politician after all.”
She laughed again in that same mysterious, half-mocking half-cynical fashion. It was impossible to penetrate the barrier of her composure. She was invulnerable. One could not hazard the faintest guess at what she was thinking.
“That is why I am here to-day.” And then for the space of an instant she betrayed herself. “Think of it,” she said.“What a long way from Cypress Hill to being the wife of a French cabinet minister. We’ve both traveled a long way since we last met, Henry. A great deal has happened to both of us. On my side, I wouldn’t change a thing. There are lives and lives, of course. Some like one sort and some another. I know you’ve been thinking what a lot I’ve missed by not marrying you.” He moved as if to interrupt her. “Oh, I know you didn’t say so openly. It’s good of you to be so generous ... to want me to have shared it.” She cast down her eyes suddenly and her voice grew more gentle although it still carried that same devilish note of raillery. “I appreciate all that.... But I wouldn’t have changed anything. I wouldn’t have married you anyway.”
Again the Governor coughed and looked out of the window.
“We all come to it sooner or later,” he said. “It’s a good thing to be married.”
“Yes ... a lonely old age isn’t pleasant.”
And here a deadlock arose once more in the conversation.
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, youknow. 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!”
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 theunwitting 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 flowingveils. 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.
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, BIGGESTCITY IN THE STATEEIGHT STEEL MILLSANDSIXTY-SEVEN OTHER INDUSTRIESWATCH 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 wasone 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.