The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 35
WHATEVER her thoughts and memories may have been, they were interrupted presently by the knock of the mulatto woman who came to bear away the gilt coffee cup and pile of ravaged novels. The sound of the woman's shuffling approach aroused Julia Shane who opened her eyes and said, "Here, Sarah. Give me a hand. I've slipped down."
Sarah helped lift her once more into a sitting posture. The old woman raised herself scornfully as if there was between her indomitable spirit and her wrecked body no bond of any sort, as if she had only contempt for the body as a thing unworthy of her, a thing which had failed her, over which she had neither control nor responsibility.
The mulatto woman bent to pick up the scattered novels, and as she stood up, her mistress, chuckling, said, "My God. They're tiresome, Sarah. They never write about anything but l'amour. You'd think there was nothing else in the world. Even l'amour gets to be a bore after a time."
The mulatto woman waited obediently. "Yes, Mis' Shane. I guess you're right," she said presently. At which the old woman smiled.
"And Sarah," the mistress continued. "When Miss Irene comes in, tell her I should like to see her. It's important."
The servant hesitated for an instant. "But Miss Irene don't come in till after midnight, Mis' Shane." She spoke with the manner of concealing something. In her soft voice there was a thin trace of insinuating suspicion, almost of servile accusation. "That foreign fella brings her home," she added.
"It's all right," replied the old woman. "I shall be awake." And then in a cold voice she added, "I'm sure it's good of him to bring her home. I shouldn't want her wandering about alone at that hour of the night. It's very thoughtful of him."
At midnight, true to her word, she was still awake. She had even managed to gain her feet painfully and to make her way with unsteady step across the room to the drawer which held her cigarettes. These too the doctor had forbidden her.
On the way back to her vast bed, she passed by the window and, drawing aside the curtain for a moment, she looked out over the hot panorama of glowing furnaces and tall black chimneys. As she stood there, she saw entering the wrought iron gates two figures sharply outlined against the glare of the white are light in Halsted Street. The woman was Irene. She was accompanied by Krylenko.
Quietly the old woman extinguished the candle on the table beside her. The room became a vault of darkness. Beneath her window at the turn in the drive, the pair halted and stood talking in voices so low that what they said was inaudible even through the open window. After a time Irene seated herself wearily on the horseblock. Her frail body sagged with fatigue. She leaned against the cast iron Cupid who held in one outstretched hand an iron ring. Krylenko bent over her and his hands, with the curious, eloquent gestures of an alien, pantomimed their tale against the distant are light. Above them in the recessed window the mother, clinging all the while to the heavy curtains for support, watched silently. She could hear nothing. She could only keep watch. At length Irene arose and lifting the ugly black hat from her head, ran her finger through her loose hair all damp with the terrible heat. Now was the moment. The old woman, awaiting proof, leaned against the table by her side.
But there was no proof. There was no embrace, not even the faintest exchange of intimacies. Krylenko chastely took Irene's hand, bade her good-night and turned with his swinging powerful stride down the long drive. Irene, passing along the gallery by the drawing room, slipped her key into the lock and entered the house.
Above stairs she found her mother sitting up in bed, lost again in the midst of Les Anges Gardiens. Still carrying the worn hat in her hand, the daughter came over to the bed. With the increasing illness of the old woman, Irene's manner had become more gentle. She even smiled a tired smile.
"What?" she said playfully. "Are you still awake? Skimming again, I see."
Yet her manner was not the manner of a daughter with a mother. Rather it was that of a casual friend. It was too playful, too forced. The chasm of thirty years and more was not to be bridged by any amount of strained cordiality.
Julia Shane put down her reading glass. "I couldn't sleep, so I tried to read," she said.
Irene drew up a chair and sat by the bed. She appeared worn and exhausted, as though the August heat had drained to the dregs all her intense, self-inspired vitality.
"How are you feeling?"
"Better . . . much better except for the ache in my back."
Irene's face grew serious. "You've been smoking again," she said, "after the doctor forbade you." The old woman, quite prepared to lie, started to protest, shaking her head in negation. "It's no use. Mama . . . I saw you . . . I saw the glow of your cigarette at the window."
(So Irene knew that she had been watched, and there was no need to protest.) The old woman sat still for a moment twisting the silver reading glass round and round, her brow contracted in an angry frown as though she resented bitterly the decay of body which gave any one authority over her. (That Julia Shane should ever take orders from a doctor or stand reproved by her own daughter!) It was this angry emotion that stood revealed and transparent in every line of her face, in the very defiance of her thin body. At length the frown melted slowly away.
"What sort of a man is he, Irene?" she asked looking straight into her daughter's tired eyes. Irene moved uneasily.
"What man?" she asked, "I don't know who you mean."
"That foreigner . . . I don't remember his name. You've never told me. . . . You might have told your mother." There was a note of peevishness in her voice which sounded queer and alien, almost a portent.
"Oh, Krylenko," said Irene, twisting her black hat with her thin hands. "Krylenko." Then she waited for a moment. "He's a fine man . . . a wonderful man. He has given up everything for his people."
"But they are not your people," observed her mother looking at her sharply.
"They are my people," replied Irene softly. "All of them down to the last baby. If they are not my people, who are?"
The old woman, opposed once more by the inevitable wall of Irene's obsessions, frowned. "You are wealthy," she said. "You were born to a position."
In Irene's smile there was a shade of bitterness. "In this Town?" she inquired scornfully. "Oh! No! Position in this Town! That's almost funny." She leaned forward a little, pressing her hand against her forehead. "My people?" she said in a hushed voice. "My people. . . . Why, I don't even know where my father came from."
The mother, half-buried among the heavy pillows raised herself slowly as if a wave of new vigor had taken possession of her worn-out body. "Get me a cigarette, Irene."
The girl opened her lips to protest, but her mother silenced her. "Please, Irene, do as I say. It can't possibly matter what I do now."
"Please, Mama," began Irene once more. "The doctor has forbidden it." Then Julia Shane gave her daugher a terrible look pregnant with all the old arrogance and power.
"Will you do as I say, Irene, or must I send for Sarah? She at least still obeys me."
For a second, authority hung in the balance. It was the authority of a lifetime grounded upon a terrific force of will and sustained by the eternal and certain precedent of obedience. It was the old woman who won the struggle. It was her last victory. The daughter rose and obediently brought the cigarettes, even holding the candle to light it. She held the flame at arm's length with a gesture of supreme distaste as if she had been ordered to participate in some unspeakable sin. After she had replaced the candle, her mother puffed thoughtfully for a time.
"Your father," she said presently, "was born in Marseilles. His mother was Spanish and his father Irish. He came to this country because he had to run away. That's all I know. He might have told me more if he had not died suddenly. It's not likely that any of us will ever know his story, no matter how hard we try. Life isn't a story book, you know. In life there are some things that we never know, even about our own friends, our own children. Each man's soul is a secret, which even himself is not able to reveal."
For an instant the light of triumph swept Irene's pale countenance. "You see!" she said. "I am just like the rest . . . like Stepan Krylenko and all the others. My father was a foreigner."
The mother's lips curved in a sudden, scornful smile. "But he was a gentleman, Irene. . . . That is something. And your mother was an American. Her grandfather was the first settler in the wilderness. . . . The Town was named for him. Have you no pride?"
"No," replied Irene, "to be proud is a vice. . . . I have killed it. I am not proud. I am like all the others." And yet there was a fierce pride in her voice, a smug, fierce, pride in not being proud.
"You are perverse," said her mother. "You are beyond me. You talk like a fool. . . ." Irene raised her head to speak but the will of the old woman swept her back. "I know," she continued. "You think it is saintly. Does it ever occur to you that it might only be smugness?"
The old eyes flashed with anger and resentment, emotions which merely shattered themselves against the barrier of Irene's smiling and fanatic sense of righteousness. A look of obstinacy entered her face. (She regarded herself as superior to Julia Shane! Incredible!)
"You amaze me, Irene. Your hardness is beyond belief. If you could be soft for a moment, gentle and generous . . . like Lily."
The daughter's hands tightened about the battered old hat.
"It's always Lily," she said bitterly. "It's always Lily . . . Lily this and Lily that. She's everywhere. Every one praises her . . . even Cousin Hattie." The stubborn look of smugness again descended upon her face. "Well, let them praise her . . . I know that it is I who am right, I who am good in the sight of God." And then for the first time in all the memory of Julia Shane, a look of anger, cold and unrelenting came into the eyes of her daughter. "Lily! Lily!" she cried, scornfully, "I hate Lily. . . . May God forgive me!"