The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 30
AT breakfast on the following morning, the mulatto woman laid before Lily's plate a cablegram. It read simply, "Jean has measles."
Trunks were packed with desperate haste. The entire household was thrown into an uproar, all save old Julia Shane who continued to move about with the same unruffled calm, with the same acceptancy of whatever came to her. At midnight Lily boarded the express for the East. It was not until the middle of the week, when the drawing-room had been wrapped once more in cheesecloth and scented with camphor, that the Town learned of Lily's sudden return to Paris. It was impossible, people decided, to calculate the whims of her existence.
Three months after her sudden departure, she sat one early spring afternoon on the terrace of her garden in the Rue Raynouard, when old Madame Gigon, in a bizarre gown of maroon poplin, with the fat and aging Fifi at her heels, brought her a letter from Julia Shane.
Tearing it open, Lily began to read.
"Of course the biggest bit of news is Ellen's escapade. She has eloped with a completely commonplace young man named Clarence Murdock, a traveling salesman for an electrical company, who I believe was engaged to May Seton . . . the Setons who own the corset factory east of the Harrison Mills. They have gone to New York to live and now, I suppose, Ellen will have her chance to go on with her music. Knowing Ellen, I am certain she does not love this absurd man. As for Hattie she is distraught and feels that Ellen has committed some terrible sin. Nothing I can say is able to alter her mind. To be sure, the fellow has nothing to commend him, but I'm willing to let Ellen work it out. She's no fool. None of our family is that. Hattie thinks it was the gowns you gave Ellen which turned her head. But I suspect that Ellen saw this young drummer simply as a means of escape . . . a way out of all her troubles. Of course the Town is in a buzz. Miss Abercrombie says nothing so unrespectable has happened in years. More power to Ellen . . . !"
For a moment Lily put down the letter and sat thinking. In the last sentence there was a delicious echo of that wicked chuckle which had marked the departure of the discomfited Judge Weissman and Mrs. Julis Harrison from Cypress Hill . . . the merest echo of triumph over another mark in the long score of the old against the new.
For a time Lily sat listening quietly to the distant sounds from the river . . . the whistling of the steamer bound for St. Cloud, the faint clop-clop of hoofs in the Rue de Passy and the ugly chug-chug of one of the new motor wagons which were to be seen with growing frequency along the boulevards. Whatever she was thinking, her thoughts were interrupted suddenly by a little boy, very handsome and neat, in a sailor suit, who dragged behind him across the flagged terrace a stuffed toy bear. He climbed into her lap and began playing with the warm fur piece she had thrown over her shoulders.
"Mama," he cried. "J'ai faim. . . . Je veux un biscuit!"
Lily gathered him into her arms, pressing his soft face against hers. "Bien, petit . . . va chercher la bonne Madame Gigon."
She seized him more closely and kissed him again and again with all the passion of a savage, miserly possession.
"Je t'aime, Mama . . . tellement," whispered the little fellow, and climbed down to run into the big house in search of kind Madame Gigon and her cakes. The gaze of Lily wandered after his sturdy little body and her dark eyes grew bright with a triumphant love.
When he had disappeared through one of the tall windows, she took up the letter once more and continued her reading.
"Irene," wrote her mother, "seems more content now that you are gone. I confess that I understand her less and less every day. Sometimes I think she must be not quite well . . . a little touched perhaps by a religious mania. She is giving her life, her strength, her soul, to these foreigners in the Flats. What for? Because it brings her peace, I suppose. But still I cannot understand her. There is one man . . . Krylenko, by name, I believe, whom she has made into a sort of disciple. I only hope that news of him won't reach the Town. God knows what sort of a tale they would make out of it. I'm afraid too of her becoming involved in the troubles at the Mills. Some day there will be open warfare in the Flats."
When Lily had finished reading, she tore the letter slowly into bits after a custom of long standing and tossed the torn fragments into one of the stone urns that bordered the terrace. . . . Then she rose and pulling her fur cloak closer about her began to walk up and down restlessly as if some profound and stirring memory had taken possession of her. The rain began to fall gently and darkness to descend upon the garden. In the house behind her the servants lighted the lamps. Still she paced up and down tirelessly.
After a time she went down from the terrace to the gravel path of the garden and there continued her walking until the gate in the garden wall opened suddenly and a man stepped in, his erect soldierly figure black against the lamps of the Rue de Passy. It was the Baron, Madame Gigon's cousin. He came toward her quickly and took her into his arms, embracing her passionately for a long time in silence.
When at last he freed her, a frown crossed his dark face, and he said, "What is it? What is distracting you? Are you troubled about something?"
Lily thrust her arm through his and leaned against him, but she avoided his gaze. "Nothing," she said. "It's nothing."
And thus they walked through the rain until they reached the pavilion designed by Lenôtre which stood at a distance from the house. Here they halted and the Baron, taking from his pocket a key, unlocked the door and they went in silently.
Once inside, he kissed her again and presently he said, "What is it? There is something between us. There is a difference."
"Nothing," she murmured stubbornly, "It is nothing. You must be imagining things."