The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 11
AFTER Lily had rested in the room just beneath the dove cote, the pair, assisted by a red-cheeked farm girl, set themselves to putting the place in order.
With the approach of evening, Madame Gigon took off her wig, donned a lace cap, and they were settled until the month of October.
When they had finished a supper of omelette, potatoes and wine, they seated themselves on the terrace and Madame Gigon at length approached the matter, delicately and with circumspection. It was a blue, misty evening of the sort frequent in the Isle de France, when the stillness becomes acute and tangible, when the faintest sound is sharply audible for an amazing distance across the waving fields of wheat. From the opposite side of the river arose the faint tinkling of a bell as a pair of white oxen made their way slowly from the farm to the sedge-bordered river. Overhead among the vines on the roof of the lodge, the pigeons stirred sleepily, cooing and preening themselves. The evening was beautiful unbelievably calm, with the placidity of a marvelous dream.
After a long silence, Madame Gigon began to gossip once more and presently, she said, "To be sure, it has happened before in this world. It will happen again. The trouble is that you are too pretty, dear Lily, and you lose your head. You are too generous. I always told Mademoiselle you were more like our girls than the English or Americans."
Lily said nothing. It appeared that she heard nothing old Madame Gigon said. Wrapped in her black cloak against the chill of the faint mist which swam above the Marne, she seemed lost in the breathless beauty of the evening.
"Why, in my family, it has happened. There was my cousin . . . a sister of the Baron who lives here in the Chateau. . . . And Madame Gigon moved from one case to another, justifying Lily's strange behavior. When she had finished with a long series, she shook her head gently and said, "I know, I know . . . ," smiling all the while as though she had known many lovers and been as seductive as Cleopatra. She drank the last of her coffee, drying her mustache when she had finished.
"I brought down some fine lawn and some lace from Paris," she said, "I remember that you always sewed beautifully. We shall be busy this winter in the little flat."
And then Lily stirred for the first time, moving her body indolently with her eyes half-closed, her head resting on the back of the chair. "We shan't live in the little flat, Madame Gigon. . . . We shall have a house. . . . I know just the one, in the Rue Raynouard. You see, I am going to live in Paris always. I am never going back to America to live."
The old Frenchwoman said nothing, either in approval or disagreement, but she grew warm suddenly with pleasure. The house in the Rue Raynouard captured her imagination. It meant that she would have the dignity of surroundings suitable to one who received signed cards from the Prince Bonaparte to his lectures. She could have a salon. She knew that Lily Shane, like all Americans, was very rich.
A little while later they went inside and Lily in her room just under the dove-cote lighted a candle and settled herself to writing letters. One she addressed to the convent where Irene was stopping, one to Cypress Hill, and the last, very short and formal, she addressed the Governor. It was the first line she had written him. Also it was the last.