The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 87
SHE must have been sitting there for half an hour when the smile vanished suddenly and the fingers fumbling with the silver bag grew still. Her face assumed an expression of rigidity, the look of one who has seen something in which he is not quite able to believe.
Moving toward her down the long vista of crystal and brocade curtains came a man. He was a big man, tall, massive, handsome in a florid way. He must have been in his middle fifties, although there was but little gray in the thick black hair which he wore rather long in a fashion calculated to attract the notice of passersby. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles and a flowing black tie in striking contrast to the gray neatness of his cutaway and checkered waistcoat. Unmistakably he was an American. His manner carried the same freedom, the identical naïve simplicity which characterized the figure of the vigorous Ellen. He possessed the same overflowing vitality. Even as Lily stood, silently, with her back to the tragic spectacle of the square, the vitality overflowed suddenly in a great explosive laugh and a slap on the back of a friend he had encountered in the throng. Above the subdued murmur, the sound of his booming voice reached her.
"Well, well, well! . . . And what are you doing in wicked Paris? Come to fix up the peace, I suppose!"
The answer of the stranger was not audible. The pair withdrew from the path of the procession and talked for a moment. The conversation was punctuated from time to time by the sudden bursts of laughter from the man in the checkered waistcoat.
In her corner Lily leaned forward a little in order to see more clearly the figure which had fascinated her. Presently he turned, bade his friend good-by and moved away again, coming directly down the vista toward Lily. He walked with a swinging stride, and as he approached his large face beamed with satisfaction. He turned his head from side to side with a patronizing air, an air which to Lily must have been startlingly familiar. Even twenty years could not have dissipated the memory of it. It was this which identified him beyond all doubt. He beamed to right and to left. His whole figure betrayed an enormous self-satisfaction. It was impossible any longer to doubt. The man was the Governor. His success was written upon a face now grown heavy and dark.
When he had advanced to within a few paces of Lily's corner, she rose and moved toward him. Only once did she hesitate and then at the very moment he passed by her. Putting out her hand in a furtive movement, she withdrew it hastily. He passed and was on his way to disappearing once more in the throng. For a second she leaned against the wall and then, as if she could no longer resist the temptation, she moved quickly forward and touched his shoulder.
"Henry," she said softly and waited.
The Governor turned and for an instant his face was clouded by a look of bewilderment. Then slowly, almost breathlessly, he recovered himself. The beaming look vanished completely, replaced by an expression of the greatest gravity.
"Lily . . . !" he said. "Lily Shane. . . . For the love of God!"
She drew him aside out of the path of the procession.
"Then you remember me?" she said with a faint, amused smile. "Twenty years is not such a long time."
Again he looked at her. "Lily . . . Lily Shane!" he said. And he took her hand and pressed it with a savage, startled warmth.
"I knew you," she said. "I knew you at once. . . . There are some things about a person which never change . . . little things which are the person . . . not much . . . a gesture perhaps. . . . You were unmistakable."
And when he had recovered a little from his astonishment, he managed to say, "It's the last place I'd expect to see you."
Lily laughed at him, in a fashion which must have destroyed suddenly the wall of twenty years. It was a fashion of laughing which belonged to her alone. It was provocative, faintly mocking. Willie Harrison knew it well. "I've lived in Paris for the last twenty years," she retorted with an amused grimace, "and I'm still here. I will be until I die."
Spontaneity does not come easily to a conversation between persons reunited unexpectedly after twenty years; and it was plain that the circumstances surrounding the separation contributed nothing to the facility of the conversation. Lily appeared to have forgotten, or at least to have disregarded the night following the garden party at Cypress Hill. Her manner was that of an old friend, nothing more, nothing less. If she knew any shame, she concealed it admirably. Plainly it was not so easy for her companion. The sudden pallor which had attacked his florid face gave place to a blushing scarlet. He was like a little boy caught in a shameful act.
"You haven't changed much," she said as if to clear the way, "I mean you yourself have not changed . . . not your figure."
He laughed. "I'm fatter . . . much fatter."
It was true.
What had once been clearly a barrel-like chest was sunk to the low estate of a stomach. "But you," he continued, "You haven't changed at all. You're as young as ever."
"You still say the right thing, Henry. But it isn't the truth. I use rouge now. . . . I even dye my hair a little. We can't pretend we're not growing old. It's no use. It's written. . . . It's in our faces."
The Governor thrust a hand into his pocket and fell to jingling a few francs and a key ring. With the other hand he took out his watch. "Couldn't we find some place to sit?" he said. "We might talk for a little while." He coughed nervously. "I haven't much time."
At this she again laughed at him. Her laugh had not grown old. It remained unchanged, still ringing with the same good humor.
"I've no intention of keeping you," she said. "You may go whenever you like." For an instant she cast down her eyes. "When I saw you, I couldn't resist. . . . I had to speak to you. Nothing could have prevented it. I felt, you see, as if I were possessed."
And then she led him back to the corner by the tall window over-looking the misty square. It had grown darker and the cold fog now veiled completely the buildings on the far side of the river. There was only the great square filled with cannon and helmets and shattered planes and above the mass of trophies the rigid, eternal obelisk piercing the mist like a sword.
There they settled themselves to talk, lost in a throng which paid no heed to the middle-aged couple in the alcove. The Governor remained ill at ease, sitting forward upon the edge of his chair as if prepared to spring up and escape at the first opportunity. Lily, so calm, so placid, appeared only to inspire him with confusion. It may have been that she aroused a whole train of memories which he had succeeded in forgetting.
For a time, the conversation flowed along the most stiff and conventional of channels. There were polite inquiries after each other's health. Lily told him of her mother's death, of the fire at Cypress Hill, of the fact that she had severed the last tie with the Town and would never return to it.
"Never?" asked the Governor. "Never?"
"No. Why should I? It is not the same. I have nothing there to call me back. My life is here now. I shall probably die here. The Town is nothing to me."
The Governor's face lighted suddenly. He struck his thigh—a thigh which had once been so handsome and now was flabby with fat—a sharp blow.
"No, it is not the same. You've no idea how it has grown. I was there about six months ago. It's twice as big as in the old days. You know, it's now one of the greatest steel towns in the world. You've a right to be proud of it."
But Lily said nothing. She was looking out of the tall window into the white square.
"And Ellen," the Governor continued, "I hear she has become famous." He laughed. "Who would have thought it? I remember her as a bad-tempered little girl with pigtails. Of course I know nothing about music. It's not in my line. But they say she's great."
When she did not answer him, he regarded her silently for a time and presently he coughed as if to attract her attention. At last he leaned forward a little and said, "What are you thinking?"
For an instant, an unexpected note of tenderness entered his voice. He peered at her closely, examining her soft white skin, the soft hair that escaped from beneath her toque, the exquisite poise of her throat and head. To this scrutiny Lily put an end by turning with a smile to say, "Thinking? I was thinking that there is something hopelessly sad about having no happy realities in the place where you spent your childhood. You see, if I were to go back, I should find nothing. Cypress Hill burned. . . . My Uncle Jacob's farm buried under new houses, each one like its neighbor, in ugly cheap rows . . . the brook ruined by oil and filth. Why, even the people aren't the same. There's no one I should like to see except perhaps Willie Harrison, and it's a long way to go just to see one person. I was thinking that if I'd been born in France, I would have had memories of a village and green country and pleasant stone houses. The people would be the same always. . . . I couldn't go back to the Town now. I couldn't . . . I have memories of it. I wouldn't want them spoiled." For an instant the tears appeared in her eyes. She leaned toward him and touched his hand. "It's not that I'm disloyal, Henry. Don't think that. It's that I have nothing to be loyal to . . . nothing that I can cherish but memories. I couldn't be happy there because there's nothing but noise and ugliness. I suppose that somewhere in America there are towns full of realities that one could love, but they aren't in my part of the country. There's nothing there." There was a little pause and she added, "It's all happened so quickly. Think of it—it's all happened since I was a little girl."
All this the Governor, it seemed, failed to understand. He looked at her with a hopeless expression of bewilderment. But he said, "Yes, I understand." And again an awkward silence enveloped them.
At last Lily turned to him. "Tell me," she said, "you've been successful. Tell me about yourself."
The Governor leaned back a little in his chair. "But you must have heard all that," he said with astonishment. "It's been in the newspapers. If you're in politics you can't keep out of the press." The beaming look returned to his eyes and with it the old manner of condescension.
But you forget," replied Lily. "I haven't read American newspapers. I've been away from America for a long time."
"To be sure . . . to be sure." He coughed nervously. "There isn't much to tell. I've been elected senator now for five terms running. I guess I can go on being elected as long as I live. I've gotten what I've set out for. . . . I'm a success in my party. I helped to frame the tariff bill that protected American industry and gave the Town a bigger boom than it ever had before. Oh, I've done my share! . . . Perhaps more than my share! We have a good life in Washington, my wife and I. She's prominent, you know. She's chairman of the State Woman's Republican Committee. Oh, she's very prominent . . . a born leader and a splendid politician. You should hear her make a speech."
Lily listened with an air of profound interest. She was smiling again. As Willie Harrison said, "It was impossible to know what Lily thought. She was always smiling."
The Governor was over-zealous; somehow it seemed that he protested too much.
"Isn't that fine?" she said. "You see, Henry, it has worked out as I told you it would. I should have made you a wretched wife. I would have been no good in politics."
This, it seemed, made him nervous again. He sat forward on the edge of his chair. It was clear that he became terrified when the conversation turned too abruptly toward certain incidents of his youth. It was impossible for him to talk simply and easily. Something kept intruding. Lily may have guessed what it was, for she was a woman of experience in such things. Her companion was merely uncomfortable. He stood up and looked out into the misty square where the lights had begun to show through the fog in little globes of indefinite yellow.
"Extraordinary," he said, "the number of motors in the square." He turned toward her with a sudden enthusiasm. "There you have it! There's America for you . . . motor upon motor! There are more motors with the American High Commission than with any other two combined. We're a rich country, Lily. The war has made us powerful. We can rule the world and do as we please. It's ours from now on. . . . The future is ours if these fools on the American commission don't spoil everything."
Lily smiled again. "Yes. It's quite wonderful. We ought to be proud."
"But you are, aren't you?" he asked severely.
"Yes."
"That's one reason I came over here . . . to put an end to this league of nations nonsense. We won the war and now they're trying to wriggle out. There's no reason we should be mixed up in their troubles. . . . There's no reason we should suffer for it. It's none of our affair."
He drew himself up until his stomach came near to regaining its old place as a chest. His manner became pompous. It was the identical manner Julia Shane had greeted with derision more than twenty years before in the paneled dining-room at Cypress Hill. It was astounding how little the years had softened him. They had, it seemed, brought him nothing of gentleness, nothing of humor, nothing of wisdom . . . only a certain vulgar shrewdness.
"No," he continued, shaking a finger at her, "I've no intention of letting this nonsense pass. There's no reason why we should help them out of what they themselves created."
Lily's eyes grew large and bright. The smile, mysterious, faintly mocking, persisted. "You're wonderful, Henry," she said. "I always knew what you would be like. Do you remember? I told you once. You are just like that . . . just like my prediction."
From her voice or her manner it was impossible to discover what she meant by this cryptic statement. The Governor interpreted it in his own fashion.
"Well," he said, "I have no intention of seeing the American nation being made a dupe just because we're rich and prosperous and the others have ruined themselves. My wife believes I am quite right. She too expects to make a speaking tour." He became enthusiastic again. "You should hear her speak. She has an excellent voice, and great power."
"Yes," said Lily softly. "I would never be able to do all that. I would have been such a failure. . . ."
"She's here with me now . . . in Paris," continued the Governor. "She'd never been abroad. I thought she would enjoy the sights, too, so I brought her along."
"Is she here to-day?" asked Lily. Again the Governor betrayed signs of an overwhelming confusion.
"Yes," he said, "Yes." And suddenly became silent.
For a moment Lily watched him as if the sight of his confusion provided her with some secret amusement. At length she said, "I'd like to see her. I don't ask to meet her, of course. That would be questionable taste. Besides, why should we meet? We could mean nothing to each other."
"No, perhaps not."
Again he began staring out of the window. Lily glanced at the watch on her wrist.
"I shall be forced to leave soon myself," she said. "My husband will be waiting for me."
With a start her companion turned from the window toward her.
"So you're married," he said. "And you never told me."
"You never asked me about myself. I didn't think you were interested in what my life had been."
He thrust out a great hand. "I must congratulate you!" he said with an overflowing enthusiasm. "I must congratulate you! I knew you'd marry some day. How long has it been?" The news appeared to furnish him with a genuine delight. Perhaps he felt more secure now, less frightened of Lily.
She shook hands with him quietly.
"Not for long. . . . Since three months."
"And what is his name?"
"De Cyon . . . René de Cyon. He is in the new ministry. . . . You see I married a politician after all."
She laughed again in that same mysterious, half-mocking, half-cynical fashion. It was impossible to penetrate the barrier of her composure. She was invulnerable. One could not hazard the faintest guess at what she was thinking.
"That is why I am here to-day." And then for the space of an instant she betrayed herself. "Think of it," she said. "What a long way from Cypress Hill to being the wife of a French cabinet minister. We've both traveled a long way since we last met, Henry. A great deal has happened to both of us. On my side, I wouldn't change a thing. There are lives and lives, of course. Some like one sort and some another. I know you've been thinking what a lot I've missed by not marrying you." He moved as if to interrupt her. "Oh, I know you didn't say so openly. It's good of you to be so generous . . . to want me to have shared it." She cast down her eyes suddenly and her voice grew more gentle although it still carried that same devilish note of raillery. "I appreciate all that. . . . But I wouldn't have changed anything. I wouldn't have married you anyway."
Again the Governor coughed and looked out of the window.
"We all come to it sooner or later," he said. "It's a good thing to be married."
"Yes . . . a lonely old age isn't pleasant."
And here a deadlock arose once more in the conversation.
The crowd had begun to thin a little. Down the long vista of rooms it was possible now to distinguish a figure here and there in the throng. Outside the darkness had descended, veiling completely the white square. There was nothing now but the faint globes of light and the dim shooting rays of the passing motors.
The Governor turned suddenly and opened his mouth to speak. Then he closed it again sharply. It was clear that he had intended to say something and had lost his courage. He spoke at last, evading clearly what he had intended to say.
"Tell me . . . Where's Irene?"
"She's buried. . . . She's been buried these eleven years."
The Governor frowned.
"I'd no idea," he stammered. "I wouldn't have asked if I had known." He was sinking deeper in his confusion. There was something almost pitiful in his manrer, so empty now of pompousness, so devoid of complacency.
Lily smiled. "Oh, she's not dead. She's a nun. She's in the Carmelite convent at Lisieux . . . I meant that she was buried so far as life is concerned. She's lost to the world. She never leaves the convent, you know. It's part of her vow. She's buried there . . . alive! It's a living death." All at once she cast down her eyes and shuddered. "Perhaps she is dead. . . . When one's faith is killed one is not alive any more. You see, I killed her faith in this world. That's all I meant. She's really buried, . . . alive, you understand."
The Governor made a low whistling sound. "I'm not surprised."
As if she did not hear him, Lily said, "I used to think that it was possible to live by one's self, alone . . . without touching the lives of others. It isn't possible, is it? Life is far too complicated."
The Governor flushed slowly. He turned the speech nervously once more to Irene. "You don't forget how she acted on the night . . ." Suddenly he choked. It was too late now and he finished the speech, inarticulately. "On the night of the garden party!"