The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 33
ON the evening of the day that Mrs. Harrison called for the last time at Cypress Hill, Miss Abercrombie was invited to dine with her in the ugly sandstone house on the Hill. The call was Mrs. Harrison's final gesture in an effort to patch up the feud which had grown so furiously since the affair over the taxes. Of its significance Miss Abercrombie had been told in advance, so it must have been with a beating, expectant heart that she arrived at the Harrison mansion.
The two women dined alone in a vast dining-room finished in golden oak, beneath a gigantic brass chandelier fitted with a score of pendant brass globes. They sat at either end of a table so long that shouting was almost a necessity.
"William is absent," explained Mrs. Harrison in a loud, deep voice. "There is a big corporation from the east that wants to buy the Mills. It wants to absorb them at a good price with a large block of stock for William and me. Of course, I oppose it . . . with all my strength. As I told William, the Mills are the Harrisons . . . I will never see them out of the family . . . Judge Weissman has gone east with William to see that he does nothing rash. Neither of them ought to be away, I told Willie, with all this trouble brewing in the Flats." Here she paused for a long breath. "Why, only this afternoon, some of those Polish brats threw stones at my victoria, right at the foot of Julia's drive. . . . Imagine that in the old days!"
This long and complicated speech, she made with but a single pause for breath. She had grown even more stout, and her stupendous masculine spirit had suffered a certain weakening. A light stroke of paralysis she had passed over heroically, dismissing it by sheer force of her tremendous will. The misfortune left no trace save a slight limp as she dragged her body across the floor and settled it heavily in the plush covered arm chair at one end of the table.
The butler—Mrs. Harrison used a butler as the symbol of her domination in the Town, wearing him as a sort of crest—noiselessly brought the thick mushroom soup, his eye gleaming at the sight of the two women. He was an old man with white hair and the appearance of a gentleman.
"How dreadful!" exclaimed Miss Abercrombie, and then unable longer to restrain herself, she said, "Tell me! Do tell me about Julia!"
Mrs. Harrison drank from her water glass, set it down slowly and then said impressively, "She did not receive me!"
"I feared so," rejoined Miss Abercrombie, winking with nervous impatience.
"It is the end! No one can say that I have not done my part toward a reconciliation." This statement she uttered with all the majesty of an empress declaring war. "And to think," she added mournfully, "that such an old friendship should come to such an end."
"It's just the way I feel," replied Miss Abercrombie. "And you know, my friendship was even older. I knew her before you. Why, I can remember when she was only a farmer girl." Here her illness forced her to wink as if there were something obscene in her simple statement.
"Well," said Mrs. Harrison, "I don't suppose any one in the Town was ever closer to Julia than I was. D'you know? That mulatto woman actually turned me away to-day, and I must say her manner was insolent. She said Julia was not feeling well enough to see me. Imagine, not well enough to see me, her oldest friend!" This statement the sycophantic Miss Abercrombie allowed to pass unchallenged. "Heaven knows," continued Mrs. Harrison. "It was only friendship that prompted me. I certainly would not go prying about for the sake of curiosity. You know that, Pearl. Why, I wasn't allowed to set my foot inside the door. You'd have thought I was diseased."
After this a silence descended during which the room vibrated with unsaid things. At the memory of her reception, Mrs. Harrison's face grew more and more flushed. The gentlemanly butler removed the soup and brought on whitefish nicely browned and swimming in butter.
"It's a queer household," remarked Miss Abercrombie, with an air of hinting at unspeakable things and feeling her way cautiously toward a letting down of all bars. Undoubtedly it was unfortunate that they had disputed the position of "oldest friend." In a way it tied both their hands.
"It has always been queer," replied the hostess. "Even since the house was built."
Again a pregnant silence, and then Miss Abercrombie with another unwilled and obscene wink added, "I must say I can't understand Irene's behavior." About this effort, there was something oblique and yet effective. It marked another step.
"Or Lily's," rejoined Mrs. Harrison, taking a third step.
"They say," said Miss Abercrombie, pulling fishbones from her mouth, "that there is a common mill worker who is very attentive to Irene. Surely she can't be considering marriage with him."
"No, from what I hear, she isn't," observed Mrs. Harrison. After this dark hint she paused for a moment tottering upon the edge of new revelations with the air of a swimmer about to dive into cold water. At last she plunged.
"They say," she murmured in a lowered voice, "that there is more between them than most people guess . . . more than is proper."
Miss Abercrombie leaned forward. "You know," she said, "that's funny. I've heard the same thing."
"Well, I heard it from Thomas, the coachman. Of course, I reproved him for even hinting at such things. I must say he only hinted . . . very delicately. He was discreet. If I hadn't guessed there was something of the sort going on, I should never have known what he was driving at."
Miss Abercrombie bridled and leaned back for the butler te remove her fish plate. "Imagine!" she said, "Imagine a child of yours being the subject of gossip among servants!"
Her hostess gave a wicked chuckle. "You've forgotten John Shane. When he was alive, his behavior was the talk of every one. But how could you have forgotten the talk that went the rounds? It was common property . . . common property."
Miss Abercombie sighed deeply. "I know . . . I know. Julia's life has not been happy." And into the sigh she put a thousand implications of the superior happiness of virgins.
"Of course," said Mrs. Harrison, "he was insane. There's no doubt about it. People may talk, but facts are facts. John Shane was insane . . . certainly toward the end he was insane."
The butler brought the roast fowl, and until his back was turned once more both women kept silence. When he had gone out of the room, they found themselves striving for first place in the race. Both spoke at once but Mrs. Harrison overwhelmed the sycophantic Abercrombie.
"Of course," she said, "I think Julia herself is a little queer at times. I've noticed it for years . . . ever since . . . well . . . ever since Lily went to Paris to live."
"Yes," observed Miss Abercrombie, moving toward something more definite. "Ever since the Governor's garden party. All that was very queer . . . very queer."
Here again they found themselves halted by the immensity of the unspoken. Mrs. Harrison veered aside.
"The house has gone to ruin. Even the gate is hanging by one hinge. Nothing is kept up any longer."
"Have you seen this lover of Irene's?" asked Miss Abercrombie, calling a spade a spade and endeavoring to keep to one thing at a time.
"I've seen him once . . . William pointed him out to me at the Mills. He's one of the men who have been making trouble there."
"Is he good looking?" asked Miss Abercrombie.
"Yes and no," replied her companion.
"Well, what does that mean?"
"Well, he's tall and has a handsome face . . . a little evil perhaps. The real trouble is that I should call him common. Yes, commen is the word I should use, decidedly common."
Miss Abercrombie raised her eyebrows and smiled, "But, my dear, after all he is nothing but a workman."
"Yes," replied Mrs. Harrison, "he is." In a manner which put an end to all doubt in the matter.
"Do you really think?" asked Miss Abercrombie, "that there is anything in it?"
Mrs. Harrison poised her fork and gave her guest a knowing look. "Well, of course I can't see what he sees in her . . . pale and haggard as she is. Now with him it's different. He's . . . well." She halted suddenly, adding, "This fowl is tough, Pearl . . . I'm sorry it happened when you were dining with me." And then, "I suppose it's money he's after. She must be very rich."
The butler, after bringing more rich food, disappeared again and this time, Miss Abercrombie, casting to the winds all restraint, rose and said, "I'm going to bring my chair nearer, Belle. I can't talk all the way from this end of the table."
And she moved her chair and plate to a more strategic position so that when the butler returned, he found the two women sitting quite close to each other, their heads together, their voices lowered to the most confidential of pitches. Fragments of their talk reached an ear long trained to eavesdropping upon old women.
"But Lily is the one," drifted to the ear. "I'd really like to know the truth about her. Of course blood is thicker than water. They say she . . ." Mrs. Harrison rattled the ice in her glass, thus destroying the remainder of the sentence.
So they sat until near midnight—two old women, one of them at the end of a life barren of love, the other abandoned by love forever and cast aside, a slowly decaying mass of fat—pawing over the affairs of two women for whom the force of love in some manifestation or other was still a radiant reality. They knew nothing; they possessed only suspicions and fragments of gossip, but out of these they succeeded in patching together a mosaic which glowed with all the colors of the most glamorous sin and the most romantic passion.