The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 74
INSIDE, the old priest at the sound of her knock looked up from his reading and took off his spectacles.
"Come in," he said, and Lily stepped uncertainly through the door, her eyes blinded by the bright flame of the petrol light. M. Dupont, regarding her with an expression of amazement, rose from his chair.
"It is I, Madame Shane," said Lily. "The friend of Madame Gigon."
"Ah, yes, I remember you well."
Before this night there had passed between them occasional greetings when he came to the lodge to play piquet with Madame Gigon, when he passed Lily riding through the wood in the early morning.
"Won't you sit down?" and then, "Why are you here? You know the Germans may come any time now. Surely before morning."
"As soon as that?" asked Lily indifferently. She had not thought of the Germans. Perhaps they would come. It did not matter greatly.
The old man bent his head over the table and began to turn the pages of the book. "Our soldiers are brave, Madame," he said. "But there is too much against them. They were not ready. In the end we will win. . . . For the present . . ." He finished with a gesture implying that the matter lay in the hands of the good God. He was a simple man, a peasant trained for the priesthood by devout and adoring parents.
"It would be better if you would go away," he said after a sudden pause. "I imagine it will not be pleasant."
Lily laughed softly. For a moment something of her old gay indifference appeared to return, even a shade of the spirit with which she had met another adventure years before in the park at Cypress Hill.
"There is Madame Gigon," she said. M. Dupont again bent over the table silently. It was a gesture of assent, of resignation, of agreement.
"Besides," continued Lily, "I am not afraid. I think I may even enjoy the experience. . . . I should like to know what war is like." And then, as if she feared that he did not understand her, she added, "Not, of course, because I like war. Oh! not at all! But you understand what it means for the men. . . . I have men in it." She shivered a little and drew the black cape more closely about her. "I think it might be easier for the women if they could go into battle as well. It would be easier than waiting . . . at home . . . alone."
The man closed his book. "Madame is a beautiful woman," he said, softly.
Again Lily smiled faintly. "Oh, I understand what you mean . . . perfectly." A thoughtful expression entered her dark eyes. She seemed suddenly to be listening to the faint and distant thunder. "Yes," she said with a sigh, "I understand. Fortunately I have no temptation to run away. I could not go if I chose. Madame Gigon, you understand, has given up her life to me. . . . It would be impossible to desert her now."
She sat now with her back to the whitewashed wall of the little room; her black cape and her red hair carried the quality of a beautiful painting. All the color was gone from her face and beneath her eyes hung dark circles which somehow increased the brilliance of her eyes and the whiteness of her skin. She looked old but it was the oldness of beauty, possessing a clear refinement and delicacy.
"She is a good woman . . . Madame Gigon," said the priest.
M. Dupont spoke in a low voice, respectful, scarcely audible, but the words exerted upon his visitor an extraordinary effect. All at once she leaned forward resting her elbows on the table. The cloak slipped to the floor. She began to talk passionately with a kind of fierce melancholy in her voice.
"Ah, she is a good woman," she said. "She has given her life to me. She has lived with me for twenty years. She has been everything to me. You understand . . . a friend . . . a companion, even a mother."
And then, without warning, she poured out the whole story of her life, incident by incident, chapter by chapter, reserving nothing, disguising nothing. Before the eyes of the astonished old priest she recreated the house at Cypress Hill, the Mills, the Town, the figures of her bizarre father, her cynical mother, the hysterical Irene, all the kaleidoscopic picture of a wandering, aimless life. She told him of Jean. She even related bit by bit the long tale of her love for the Baron. She told him that in her heart she had even sinned for the sake of a common laborer . . . Krylenko.
"And yet," she said, "he was not exactly that. He was a great deal more. He was, you understand, something of a martyr. He gave up everything for his people. He would have given his life had it been necessary. . . . It hurts me, even now, to think of him. He was a powerful man . . . a good man . . . a noble man."
It was of him that she talked for a long time, wildly, passionately invoking him in her enthusiasm before the stricken eyes of the old priest. He stood there for a long time in the bare, whitewashed room, powerful, austere, suffering, as he had been on the night of the slaughter in the park at Cypress Hill.
"He was a good man. . . . He still is," she said. She talked breathlessly with a bright exalted light in her eyes. "I have never told this to any one. . . . There was no sin between us . . . nothing unless to love deeply is a sin."
As if turned to stone, M. Dupont sat listening quietly. Only once did he speak and that was when she mentioned the Baron. Then he stirred uneasily and peered at her closely as if he suspected her of lying.
"Incredible!" he murmured to himself. "Incredible!" And after a little pause. "Only God can know what lies in the darkness of men's hearts. Only God. . . . It is impossible to know. . . . It is impossible to know!"
But Lily swept past the interruption. The torrent of her revelations flowed on. She talked eagerly, with a kind of wild delight; yet what she said lacked the quality of a confession. She seemed to have no profound consciousness of sin. She was even unrepentant. She told the story breathlessly with a kind of wonder at herself, at the tragedy of her own soul, that she loved so easily. Instead of confessing, she appeared to be pouring out to the trembling old man secrets, too long confined, which she found herself driven to reveal.
At last she drew to a conclusion. "You understand now," she said, "why to me the war is inexpressibly tragic. You understand what Madame Gigon has been to me."
She picked up the fallen cloak and, shivering, wrapped it about her and sank back in the stiff little chair with a weary air of finality and resignation. "You see, it is not only the war . . . Madame Gigon is dying. The war has taken everything. You understand I shall be alone . . . completely one."
M. Dupont made no reply. He kept his head bowed. He was repeating a prayer as Irene had done in the old days. They prayed for Lily, who had not been inside a church in more than seven years.
"I came to fetch you to her," continued Lily, "She is dying now. . . . I am certain she cannot live much longer."
When the priest at last raised his head, it was to say, "Come. If she is dying we must waste no time," in so gentle a voice that the tears welled in Lily's eyes. She took out her handkerchief, already wet.
"I thought," she said, "that I was through with weeping. I must have a great many tears." (Lily who never wept.)