The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 39
AT the close of this long speech, the old woman fell into a fit of coughing and her niece rose quickly to bring more medicine and water. If Hattie Tolliver had understood even for a moment these metaphysical theories, they were forgotten in the confusion of the coughing fit. It is more than probable that she understood nothing of the speech and probable that she was too far lost in thoughts of Ellen to have heard it. In any case, she was, like most good mothers and housewives, a pure realist who dealt in terms of the material. At least she gave no sign, and when the coughing fit was over, she returned at once to the main thread of the conversation.
"These careers," she said, "may be all right but I think that Ellen might be happier if she had something more sound . . . like a husband and children and a home."
It was useless to argue with her. Like all women whose domestic life has been happy and successful, she could not be convinced that there was anything in the world more desirable than the love of a good husband and children. With her it was indeed something even stronger—a tribal instinct upon which life itself is founded. She was a fundamental person beside whom Irene and Lily, even her own daughter Ellen, were sports in the biological sense. They were removed by at least two generations from the soil. In them the struggle for life had become transvalued into a pursuit of the arts, of religion, of pleasure itself.
In the gathering twilight, Hattie Tolliver brought a lamp and lighted it to work by. Julia Shane watched her silently for a time, observing the strong neck, the immaculate full curve of her niece's figure, the certainty with which the strong worn fingers moved about their delicate work.
"You remember," she said, "that Lily mentioned a boy . . . a young boy, in her letter?"
"Yes," replied Hattie Tolliver, without glancing from her work. "The child of a friend. I thought she might have passed him by to come home to her mother. . . . Funny how children can forget you."
Julia Shane stirred softly in the deep bed. "I thought you might be thinking that," she said. "I thought it would be better to tell you the truth. I wanted you to know anyway. The truth is, Hattie, that the child is her own. She is more interested in him than in me, and that's natural enough and quite proper."
The strong fingers paused abruptly in their work and lay motionless against the white linen. Hattie Tolliver's face betrayed her amazement; yet clearly she was a little amused.
"Charles always said there was something mysterious about Lily," she said. "But I never guessed she'd been secretly married."
The old woman, hesitating, coughed before she replied, as though the supremely respectable innocence of her niece somehow made her inarticulate. At last she summoned strength.
"But she's never been married, Hattie. There never was any ceremony."
"Then how . . ." In Mrs. Tolliver's face the amazement spread until her countenance was one great interrogation.
"Children," interrupted her aunt in a voice filled with tremulous calm, "can be born without marriage certificates. They have nothing to do with legal processes."
For a long time the niece kept silent, fingering the while the half finished pillow case. It appeared that she found some new and marvelous quality in it. She fingered the stuff as though she were in the act of purchasing it across a counter. At last she raised her head.
"Then it was true . . . that old story?" she asked.
"What story?"
"The one they told in the Town . . . about Lily's having to go away to Paris."
"Yes. . . . But no one ever really knew. They only guessed. They knew nothing at all. And they know nothing more to-day." The old woman paused for a second as though to give her words emphasis. "I'm trusting you never to tell, Hattie. I wanted you to know because if ever it was necessary, I wanted Lily to come to you for help. It never will be. It isn't likely."
Hattie Tolliver sat up very stiff and red. "Tell!" she said, "Tell! Who should I ever tell in the Town? Why should I tell any of them?" The tribal instinct rose in triumph. It was a matter of her family against the Mills, the Town, all the world if necessary. Torture could not have dragged from her the truth.
Yet Hattie Tolliver was not unmoved by the confession. It may even have been that she herself long ago had suspicions of the truth which had withered and died since from too much doubt. To a woman of her nature the news of a thousand strikes, of murder and of warfare was as nothing beside the thing Julia Shane revealed. For a long time she said nothing at all, but her strong fingers spoke for her. They worked faster and more skilfully than ever, as if all her agitation was pouring itself out through their tips. The fingers and the flying needle said, "That this should have happened in our family! I can't believe it. Perhaps Aunt Julia is so sick that her mind is weakened. Surely she must imagine this tale. Such things happen only to servant girls. All this is unreal. It cannot be true. Lily could not be so happy, so buoyant if this were true. Sinners can only suffer and be miserable."
All this time she remained silent, breathing heavily, and when at last she spoke, it was to ask, "Who was the man?" in so terrible a voice that the old woman on the bed started for a moment and then averted her face lest her niece see the ghost of a smile which slipped out unwilled.
"It was the Governor," the aunt replied at last.
And then, "Why would he not marry her?" in a voice filled with accumulations of hatred and scorn for the ravishers of women.
This time Julia Shane did not smile. Her pride,—the old fierce and arrogant pride—was touched.
"Oh," she replied, "it was not that. It was Lily who refused to marry him. He begged her . . . on his knees he begged her. I saw him. He would have been glad enough to have her."
And this led only to a "Why?" to which the old woman answered that she did not know except that Lily had said she wished to be herself and go her own way, that she was content and would not marry him even if he became president. "Beyond that, I do not know," she said. "That is where a mother does not know even her own daughter. I don't believe Lily knows herself. Can you tell why it is that Ellen must go on studying and studying, why she cannot help it? Can I know why Irene wants only to be left in peace to go her own way? No, we never really know any one."
All this swept over the head of Hattie Tolliver. She returned to one thing. "It would not have been a bad match. He is a senator now."
It had grown quite dark during their talk and from inside the barrier of the Mills the searchlights began to operate, at first furtively and in jerky fashion and then slowly with greater and greater deliberation, sweeping in gigantic arcs the sky and the squalid area of the Flats. A dozen times in their course the hard white beams swept the walls of the barren old house, penetrating even the room where Julia Shane lay slowly dying. The flashes of light came suddenly, bathing in an unearthly glow and with a dazzling clarity the walls and the furniture. At last, as the beams swept the face of the ormulu clock, Hattie Tolliver, rising, folded her pillow case and thrust it into the black bag she carried.
"I must go now," she said. "Charlie will be wanting his supper."
The old woman asked her to bend down while she kissed her. It was the first time she had ever made such a request and she passed over the extraordinary event by hastily begging her niece to draw the curtains.
"The lights make me nervous," she said. "I don't know why, but they are worse than the noise the Mills used to make."
And when this operation was completed she summoned her niece again to her side. "Would you like to see a picture of Lily's boy?"
Hattie Tolliver nodded.
"It is in the top drawer of the chiffonier. Will you fetch it to me?"
Her niece brought the picture and for a time the two women regarded it silently. It was the photograph of a handsome child, singularly like Lily although there was something of the Governor's rather florid good looks, particularly about the high sweeping forehead.
"He is a fine child, isn't he?" the old woman remarked. "I never expected to have a grandchild named Shane."
Still regarding the picture with a sort of fascination, Mrs. Tolliver replied, "He is a darling, isn't he? Does she call him that?"
"Of course. What would she call him?"
"Yes, he is a fine lad. He looks like our family." And then after a long pause she added, "I'm glad you told me all the story. I'm glad Lily did what she did deliberately. I should hate to think that any of us would be weak enough to let a man take advantage of her. That makes a great difference."
After she had put on her small black hat trimmed with worn and stubby ostrich plumes, she turned for the last time. "If you have another of those pictures, Aunt Julia, I would like to have one. I'd like to show it to Charles. He's always admired Lily. It's funny what a way she has with men."
There was no sting in the remark. It was a simple declaration, spoken as though the truth of it had occurred to her for the first time. She was too direct and vigorous to be feline.
As she closed the door the voice of her aunt trailed weakly after. "You needn't worry about Ellen. All her strength and character is your strength and character, Hattie. She can take care of herself."
The niece turned in the doorway, her thick strong figure blocking the shower of dim light from the hall. "No," she said. "It's not as though Lily were bad. She isn't bad. I've always had an idea that she knew what she was about. I suppose she has her own ideas on life. Perhaps she lives up to them. I can't say they're my ideas." For a second she leaned against the frame of the door, searching with an air of physical effort for words to express her thoughts. "No, she isn't bad," she continued. "No one who ever knew her can say she is a bad woman. I can't explain what I mean, but I suppose she believes in what she does."
And with this wise and mysterious observation Mrs. Tolliver returned to the world of the concrete—her own world—swept down the long stairway and into the kitchen where she reclaimed her basket, and left the house without waiting for the hostile mulatto woman to open the door.