The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 44
FOR an hour longer they sat talking over the coffee while Lily smoked indolently cigarette after cigarette beneath the disapproving eye of her cousin. They discussed the affairs of the household, the news in the papers of Mrs. Julis Harrison's second stroke, of Ellen, and Jean from whom Lily had a letter only that morning.
"Has the Governor ever asked for him?" inquired Mrs. Tolliver, with the passionate look of a woman interested in details.
"No," said Lily, "I have not heard from him in years. He has never seen the boy. You see Jean is mine alone because even if the Governor wanted him he dares not risk a scandal. He is as much my own as if I had created him alone out of my own body. He belongs to me and to me alone, do you see? I can make him into what I will. I shall make him into a man who will know everything and be everything. He shall be stronger than I and cleverer. He is handsome enough. He is everything to me. A queen would be proud to haye him for her son."
As she spoke a light kindled in her eyes and a look of exultation spread over her face. It was an expression of passionate triumph.
"You see," she added, "it is a wonderful thing to have some one who belongs to you alone, who loves you alone and no one else. He owns me and I own him. There is no one else who counts. If we were left alone on a desert island, we would be content." The look faded slowly and gave place to a mocking smile that arched the corners of her red lips. "If I had married the Governor, the boy might have become anything. . . . I should have seen him becoming crude and common under my very eyes. I should have hated his father and I could have done nothing. As it is, his father is only a memory . . . pleasant enough, a handsome man who loved me, but never owned me . . . even for an instant . . . not even the instant of my child's conception!"
During this speech the manner of Mrs. Tolliver became more and more agitated. With each bold word a new wave of color swept her large face, until at the climax of Lily's confession she was struck mute, rendered incapable of either thought or action. It was a long time before she recovered even a faint degree of her usual composure. At last she managed to articulate, "I don't see, Lily, how you can say such things. I really don't. The words would burn my throat!"
Her cousin's smile was defiant, almost brazen. "You see, Cousin Hattie, I have lived among the French. With them such things are no more than food and drink . . . except perhaps that they prefer love to everything else," she adde, with a mischievous twinkle in her dark eyes.
"And besides," continued Mrs. Tolliver, "I don't know what you mean. I'm sure Charles has never owned me."
"No, my dear," said Lily, "He never has. On the contrary it is you who have always owned him. It is always one thing or the other. The trouble is that at first women like to be owned." She raised her hand. "Oh, I know. The Governor would have owned me sooner or later. There are some men who are like that. You know them at once. I know how my father owned my mother and you know as well as I that she was never a weak, clinging woman. If she had been as rich as I, she would have left him . . . long ago. She could not because he owned her."
"But that was different," parried Mrs. Tolliver. "He was a foreigner."
They were treading now upon that which in the family had been forbidden ground. No one discussed John Shane with his wife or children because they had kept alive for more than thirty years a lie, a pretense. John Shane had been accepted silently and unquestioningly as all that a husband should be. Now the manner of Mrs. Tolliver brightened visibly at the approach of an opening for which she had waited more years than she was able to count.
"But he was a man and she was a woman," persisted Lily. "I know that most American women own their husbands, but the strange thing is that I could never have married a man whom I could own. You see that is the trouble with marriage. It is difficult to be rid of a husband."
Mrs. Tolliver shifted nervously and put down her coffee cup. "Really, Lily," she said, "I don't understand you. You talk as though being married was wrong." Her manner, for the first time, had become completely cold and disapproving. She behaved as though at any moment she might rise and turn her back forever upon Lily.
"Oh, don't think, Cousin Hattie, that people get married because they like being tied together by law. Most people get married because it is the only way they can live together and still be respected by the community. Most people would like to change now and then. It's true. They're like that in their deepest hearts . . . far down where no one ever sees."
She said this so passionately that Mrs. Tolliver was swept inta silence. Books the good woman never read because there was no time; and even now with her children gone, she did not read because it was too late in life to develop a love for books. Immersed always in respectability, such thoughts as these had never occurred to her; and certainly no one had ever talked thus in her presence.
"I don't understand," she was able to articulate weakly after a long pause. "I don't understand." And then as if she saw opportunity escaping from her into spaces from which it might never be recovered, she said, "Tell me, Lily. Have you ever had any idea from where your father came?"
The faint glint of amusement vanished from her cousin's eyes and her face grew thoughtful. "No. Nothing save that his mother was Spanish and his father Irish. He was born in Marseilles."
"And where's that?" asked Mrs. Tolliver, aglow with interest.
"It's in the south of France. It's a great city and an evil one . . . one of the worst in the world. Mamma says we'll never know the truth. I think perhaps she is right."
After this the conversation returned to the minutiae of the household for a time and, at length, as the bronze clock struck three the two women rose and left the room to make their way upstairs to the chamber of the dying old woman. In the hall, Lily turned, "I've never talked like this to any one," she said. "I'd never really thought it all out before. I've told you more than I've ever told any one, Cousin Hattie . . . even my mother."
Upstairs Mrs. Tolliver opened the door of the darkened room, Lily followed her on tiptoe. In the gray winter light, old Julia Shane lay back among the pillows sleeping peacefully.
"Will you wake her for her medicine?" whispered Lily.
"Of course," replied her cousin, moving to the bedside, where she shook the old woman gently and softly called her name.
"Aunt Julia! Aunt Julia!" she called again and again. But there was no answer as Mrs. Tolliver's powerful figure bent over the bed. She felt for the weakened pulse and then passed her vigorous hand over the face, so white now and so transparent. Then she stood back and regarded the bony, relentless old countenance and Lily drew nearer until her warm full breasts brushed her cousin's shoulder. The hands of the two women clasped silently in a sort of fearful awe.
"She has gone away," said Mrs. Tolliver, "in her sleep. It could not have been better."
And together the two women set about preparing Julia Shane for the grave, forgetful of all the passionate talk of an hour before. In the face of death, it counted for nothing.