The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 27
IRENE'S room was less vast and shadowy. In place of brocade the windows were curtained with white stuff. In one corner stood a prie dieu before a little paint and plaster image of the Virgin and child—all blue and pink and gilt,—which Lily had sent her sister from Florence. The bed was small and narrow and the white table standing near by was covered with books and papers neatly arranged—the paraphernalia of Irene's work among the people of the Flats. Here Lily discovered her when she came in, flushed and radiant, to sit on the edge of the white bed and talk with her sister until the guests arrived.
She found Irene at the white table, the neat piles of books and papers pushed aside to make room for a white tray laden with food, for Irene was having dinner alone in her room. There had been no question of her coming to the ball. "I couldn't bear it," she told her mother. "I would be miserable. I don't want to come. Why do you want to torture me?" She had fallen, of late, into using the most exaggerating words, out of all proportion with truth or dignity. But Julia Shane, accustomed more and more to yielding to the whims of her younger daughter, permitted her to remain away.
"Have you anything to read?" began Lily. "Because if you haven't, my small trunk is full of books."
"I've plenty, and besides, I'm going out."
"Where?" asked Lily, suddenly curious.
"To Welcome House. It's my night to teach. I should think you would have remembered that." Her voice sounded weary and strained. She turned to her sister with a look of disapproval, so intense that it seemed to accuse Lily of some unspeakable sin.
"I didn't remember," Lily replied. "How should I?" And then rising she went to her sister's side and put one arm about her shoulders, a gesture of affection which appeared to inspire a sudden abhorrence in the woman, for she shivered suddenly at the touch of the warm bare arm. "You shouldn't go out to-night. You are too tired!"
"I must go," Irene replied. "They're counting on me."
"What are you eating? . . ." remarked Lily, picking up a bit of cake from the tray, "Peas, potatoes, rice, dessert, milk. . . . Why you've no meat, Irene. You should eat meat. It is what you need more than anything. You're too pale."
Irene's pale brow knitted into a frown. "I've given it up," she said. "I'm not eating meat any longer."
"And why not?" Lily moved away from her and stood looking down with the faintest of mocking smiles. The transparent cheek of her sister flushed slightly.
"Because I don't believe in it. I believe it's wrong."
"Well, I'm going to speak to Mama about it. It's nonsense. You'll kill yourself with such a diet. Really, Irene . . ." Her voice carried a note of irritation, but she got no further for Irene turned on her suddenly, like a beaten dog which after long abuse snaps suddenly at the offending hand.
"Why can't you leave me in peace? You and Mama treat me like a child. I am a grown woman. I want to do as I please. I am harming no one but myself . . . no one . . . I'm sick of it, I tell you. I'm sick of it!"
And suddenly she began to weep, softly and hysterically, her thin shoulders shaking as the sobs tore her body. "I want to go away," she moaned. "I want to be alone, where I can think and pray. I want to be alone!" Her sobbing was at once pitiful and terrible, the dry, parched sobbing of a misery long pent up. For a moment Lily stood helplessly by her side and then, all at once, she went down on her knees in the peacock blue gown and put her lovely bare arms about her sister, striving to comfort her. The effort failed strangely. Irene only drew away and sobbed the more. "If you would only let me have peace . . . I could find it alone!"
Lily said nothing but knelt by her sister's side kissing and caressing the thin white hands until Irene's sobbing subsided a little and she fell forward among the books and papers, burying her head in her arms. The misery of the soul and spirit in some way appalled Lily. She watched her sister with a look of bewilderment in her eyes as if she had discovered all at once a world of which she had been ignorant up to now. The spectacle stifled quickly the high spirits of a moment before. The bawdy French ballads were forgotten. She had become suddenly grave and serious, the lines in her beautiful face grown hard. She was sitting on the floor, her head in Irene's lap, when a knock and the sound of her name roused her.
"Miss Lily," came the mulatto woman's voice, "Mis' Shane says the guests are a-coming and you must come down."
"All right Sarah. . . . I'll be down at once."
Lily, struggling with the tight satin dress, rose slowly, kissed her sister and said, "Please, dear, stay home to-night and rest."
But Irene, still sobbing softly as if entranced by the sensual satisfaction of weeping, did not answer her. She remained leaning over the table, her face buried in her arms. But she was more quiet now, with the voluptuous stillness of one who has passed through a great emotional outburst.
Lily, once more before the mirror in her own room, rearranged her ruffled hair listening to the murmur of talk that arose from the well of the stairs. It was not until she had fastened the pin set with brilliants for a second time that she discovered with sudden horror that the peacock blue gown was split and ripped at one side from the arm to the waist. In the sudden outburst of affection for her sister, she had flung herself to her knees abandoning all thought of vanity. The gown was ruined.
From below stairs the murmur grew in volume as carriage after carriage arrived. Lily swore beneath her breath in French, tore off the gown and brought from her closet another of a pale yellow-green, the color of chartreuse. The process of dressing began all over again and in half an hour, after the mulatto woman had called twice and been sent away and the guests had gone in to dinner, Lily stood once more before the mirror, radiant and beautiful. The gown was cut lower than the one she had tossed aside, and the yellow-green blended with the tawny red of her hair so that there was something nude and voluptuous in her appearance. The smile returned to her face, a smile which seemed to say, "The Town will see something the like of which it has never seen before."
Before going down she went to Irene's room once more, only to find it dark and empty. Clad in the gray suit and the plain black hat Irene had made her way silently to the stairs at the back of the house and thence through the gallery that led past the drawing-room windows into the dead park. The austere and empty chamber appeared to rouse a sudden shame in Lily, for she returned to her room before descending the long stairs and took from the trunk a great fan of black ostrich feathers to shield her bare breasts alike from the stares of the impudent and the disapproving.
The ball was a great success. The orchestra, placed in the little alcove by the gallery, played a quadrille followed by waltzes, two-steps and polkas. Until ten o'clock the carriages made their way along Halsted street past the Mills and the squalid houses through the wrought iron gates into the park; and at midnight they began to roll away again carrying the guests to their homes. Lily, all graciousness and charm, moved among the dancers distributing her favors equitably save in the single instance of Willie Harrison, who looked so downcast and prematurely old in his black evening clothes that she danced with him three times and sat out a waltz and a polka. And all the Town, ignorant of the truth, whispered that Willie's chances once more appeared good.
Ellen Tolliver was there, in a dress made at home by her mother, and she spent much of the evening by the side of her aunt Julia who sat in black jet and amethysts at one end of the drawing-room leaning on her stick and looking for all the world like a wicked duchess. At the sound of the music and the sight of the dancers, the old gleam returned for a little time to her tired eyes.
Ellen was younger than the other guests and knew most of them only by sight but she had partners none the less, for she was handsome despite her badly made gown and her absurd pompadour, and she danced with a barbaric and energetic grace. When she was not dancing her demeanor carried no trace of the drooping wall-flower. She regarded the dancers with a expression of defiance and scorn. None could have taken her for a poor relation.