The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 5
FOR a little while the room grew silent save for the distant pounding of the Mills, regular and reverberant, monotonous and unceasing. The wind from the South bore a smell of soot which smothered the scent of wis taria and iris. All at once a cry rang out and the Governor, very red and handsome in his tight coat, fell on his knees before her, his arms about her waist. The girl remained sitting quietly, her face quite white now against the black of her cloak.
"Please . . . please, Lily," the man cried. "I will give up everything . . . I will do as you like. I will be your slave." He became incoherent and muddled, repeating over and over again the arguments he had used in the afternoon by the old well. For a long time he talked, while the girl sat as still as an image carved from marble, regarding him curiously as though the whole scene were a nightmare and not reality at all. At last he stopped talking, kissed her hand and stood up once more. The old woman seated under the portrait said nothing. She regarded the pair silently with wise, narrowed eyes.
It was Lily who spoke. "It is no use. . . . How can I explain to you? I would not be a good wife. I know . . . you see, I know because I know myself. I love you, I suppose, but not better than myself. It is my affair." A note almost of stubbornness entered her voice. "Two days ago I might have married you. I cannot now, because I know. I wanted to know, you see." She looked up suddenly with a strange smile. "Would you have preferred me to take a lover from the streets?"
For the first time the mother stirred in her chair. "Lily . . . Lily . . . How can you say such a thing?"
The girl rose and stood waiting in a respectful attitude. "There is nothing more to be said. . . . May I go?" Then turning to the Governor. "Do you want to kiss me. . . . I think it would please me."
For a second there was a terrific struggle between the desire of the man and his dignity. It was clear then beyond all doubt that he loved her passionately. He trembled. His face grew scarlet. At last, with a terrible effort he turned suddenly from her. He did not even say farewell.
"You see," said the mother, "I can do nothing. There is too much of her father in her." A shade of bitterness crept into her voice, a quality of hardness aroused by a man who no longer existed save in the gray portrait behind her. "If it had been Irene," she continued and then, checking herself, "but what am I thinking of? It could never have been Irene."
Quietly Lily opened the door and stole away, the black cloak trailing behind her across the polished floor, the sound of her footsteps dying slowly away as she ascended the stairs.
At midnight Hennery brought the carriage round from the stables, the Governor climbed in, and from the shelter of the piazza Julia Shane, leaning on her stick, watched him drive furiously away down the long drive through the iron gates and into the street bordered by the miserable shacks and boarding houses occupied by foreigners. At the corner the jangling music of the mechanical piano drifted through the swinging doors of the saloon where a mob of steel puddlers, in from the night shift, drank away the memories of the hot furnaces.
Thus the long association of the Governor with the old house at Cypress Hill came abruptly to an end.
He left behind him three women. Of these Lily was already asleep in the great Italian bed. In an adjoining room her mother lay awake staring into the darkness, planning how to keep the knowledge of the affair from Irene. It was impossible to predict the reaction which it might have upon the girl. It might drive her, delicate and neurotic, into any one of a score of hysterical paths. The room was gray with the light of dawn before Julia Shane at last fell asleep.
As for the third—Irene—she too lay awake praying to the Blessed Virgin for strength to keep her terrible secret. She closed her eyes; she buried her face in her pillow; but none of these things could destroy the picture of the Governor stealthily opening the door of Lily's room.