The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 58
SCHNEIDERMANN was Alsatian, and Jew on his father's side, rich, for his family owned steel mills at Toul and Nancy and in the very environs of Paris, as well as coal mines in the neighborhood of St. Quentin and La Bassee. Schneidermann, tall, handsome, swarthy . . . was beautiful in an austere, sensual fashion as only Jews can be beautiful. He came sometimes to play the 'cello with "Mees Ellen," choosing queer music they called "modern" that had none of the beauty and melody of Offenbach and Gounod.
The voice of "Mees Ellen" joining the pair in the dining-room. . . . "War! . . . War! . . . Nonsense! There can't be any war. I must play in Berlin and Munich next season." Her voice rang with genuine conviction, as if she really believed that war itself dared not interfere with still more amazing successes. Madame Blaise' cynical laugh answered her.
"Ah, you young people . . . you young people. What do you know of war and politics? I have been through wars, through revolutions, you understand. I know about these things. I am as old as time."
The old woman was talking in her most fantastic vein. It was her habit to talk thus as if she were wise beyond all people. She was, as Madame Gigon said, a little cracked on this side of her.
"I know . . . I know," she continued to mutter in the most sinister fashion until an unusually large madeleine put an end to her talk.
"How much did you say . . . eight francs?" It was the peevish voice of Madame de Cyon settling her bridge debts.
"Eight francs," came the gruff reply of Captain Marchand. "Eight francs, I tell you." And then the tinkling of the Russian's woman's innumerable gold bangles as she thrust her fat bejeweled hand into a small purse to wrench loose from it the precious eight francs. "I had no luck to-day . . . no luck at all," she observed in the same irritable voice. "No cards at all. What can one do without cards? Now last week I won. . . ." And she fell to recounting past victories while Captain Marchand's chair scraped the floor savagely.
And then the voice of Madame Blaise quite close at hand, bidding Madame Gigon good-by.
"On Tuesday, then, Louise. I shall expect you."
"On Tuesday," repeated Madame Gigon.
"And bring Madame Shane if she wishes to come. But not 'Mees Tolliver.' I can't bear her and her American ways." The old harridan bent lower, her reticule shaking with the aged trembling of her thin body. "That Schneidermann!" she observed scornfully. "He is a fool! The men I knew when I was young were interested in revolutions and politics . . . not music. Music! Bah!" And to show her disgust she spat on the bare floor. . . . Then she made a hissing noise and swept up the long dim stairway, her boots squeaking as she walked.
Then the confusion of farewells as the last guests departed, Madame de Cyon passing by, still in bad humor over her losses.
"On Friday, Madame Gigon," she said. "My husband will—be there. He is home from the Balkans and full of news."
"Of the wars I suppose. . . . On Friday, Madame."
"And tell Madame Shane she is expected also."
Then Captain Marchand and Madame Marchand, also in a bad humor because they got on badly. Madame Marchand's day fell on Monday and she too asked the old woman to bring Madame Shane. Her invitation was made in the same oblique fashion as the other. "Bring Madame Shane if she cares to come."
At last there remained no one save those whom Lily, in her vague, lazy fashion called "the family." These were old Madame Gigon, Ellen Tolliver, Jean, herself and the Baron.
As the blond little Captain Marchand, pompously clanking his spurs as he walked, disappeared up the darkening reaches of the long stairway, Jean, who had been reading in a corner reserved for himself, sprang up with the bound of a young animal and ran across to Ellen and Schneidermann.
"Alors! Viens donc . . . la musique!" he cried, seizing her by the hand while she struggled against his youthful strength, and Schneiderman laughed at his exuberance. She resisted, bracing her strong slim body and indulging in a mock struggle.
"Not a sound from me," she replied. "Unless we talk English. I can make no more effort with this waiter's chatter."
It was a price which she exacted frequently, for she spoke French badly, though with great vigor, and with an accent so atrocious that it seemed quite beyond hope of improvement. Her English carried the drawling tang of the middle west. She called "dog" dawg and "water" watter.
Jean resembled his mother. His hair, like hers, was red though less soft and more carroty. His nose was short, straight, and conveyed an impression of good humor and high spirits. He was tall for his age and strongly built with a slim figure which gave every promise of one day growing into the bulky strength of the Governor. He possessed a restless, noisy, energy quite incomprehensible to Lily. To-day he wore the uniform of a cadet at the cavalry school at St. Cyr. It was the idea of the Baron, himself a cuirassier, that Jean should be trained for the cavalry. "If he does not like it, he may quit," he told Lily. As for Jean, he appeared to like it well enough. He was as eager for a war as Madame Blaise had been certain of one.
"Come along, Nell," he cried. "Be a good cousin, and play that four-handed stuff with me."
Madame Gigon, with Michou and Criquette waddling amiably after her, stole quietly away to her room to lock her door against the hideous sounds which Ellen, Schneidermann and Jean made when they played what they called modern "music."
From the shelter of a divan placed between two of the tall windows, Lily and the Baron watched the three noisy musicians. On the verge of middle-age, her beauty appeared to have reached its height. There are those who would have preferred her as a young girl, fresher, more gentle and more naïve. But likewise there are those who find the greatest beauty in the opulent women of Titian, and it was this beauty which Lily now possessed. She wore a black tea-gown, loosely and curiously made with a collar which came high about her throat and emphasized the ivory green tint of her skin and the copper red of her hair. She lay back among the cushions watching Jean with the triumphant, possessive look which strayed into her dark eyes whenever her son was with her. It was an expression so intense as to be almost tragic.
The Baron smiled too, but his smile was concealed somewhat by the fierce black military mustaches that adorned his face. They were the mustaches of the French army, very long, very luxurious, and purposely rather ill-kempt. There was nothing silky about them. On the contrary they were the mustaches of an homme de guerre—stiff, bristling and full of vitality. He was a dark, wiry Frenchman, with strong, nervous hands and very bright black eyes which clouded easily with anger. He was perhaps four or five years older than Lily and did not look his age. Indeed his figure was youthful and muscular with the hard, fierce masculinity which belongs to some men of the Latin race.
Whenever he regarded Ellen, it was with a stern glance that was almost hostile. They did not get on well. Even Lily, indifferent and unobservant, must have seen the hidden clash of their two strong natures. It appeared that he resented Ellen's wilfulness and even the masculine simplicity of her clothes. On this evening she was at her best. Her dark hair she no longer wore in the manner of Lily. It was drawn straight back from her high forehead with an uncompromising severity and done in a knot low on the back of her strong, well-shaped neck. Jean dragged her by sheer force of strength to the piano where the two sat down noisily, the boy searching through the music while Ellen played the most amazing, delicate and agile roulades and cascades of notes on the polished ivory keyboard. Schneidermann, thrown a little into the background by the wild exuberance of the pair, drew up a chair and waited quietly until it was time for him to turn the pages.
And during these preliminaries Lily and the Baron rose and made their way silently through one of the tall windows on to the terrace and thence into the garden. Lily herself confessed that she could not abide the new music.
"I do not understand it," she told her cousin. "And I do not find it beautiful. It is beyond me, I confess. I cannot see what you and Jean find in it. I suppose it is because I am growing old. You and Jean belong to the same generation. I am too old for new ideas." And for the first time her laugh was not all geniality and warmth. It carried a fine edge of bitterness, scarcely to be discerned but none the less unmistakable.
And now in the soft spring twilight of the garden she and the Baron walked along the neat gravel paths until they reached the wall shutting out the Rue de Passy. Here they sat for a time on a stone bench saying nothing, remaining quite still and silent. And at last as the darkness grew more heavy they rose and wandered off again, aimlessly and slowly, until in the shadow of a laburnum tree, the man seized her suddenly and kissed her, long and passionately. And after a little while when it was quite dark they entered the pavilion hidden by shrubbery where Jean lived when he was home on a holiday.
The garden lay breathless and silent. Even the rumbling noises from the street beyond the wall had died away with the coming of darkness. From the distant Seine arose the faint whistle of the St. Cloud steamer, and through the tall window drifted in wild fragments the savage, barbaric chords of Stravinsky's music.