The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 91
THE pavilion in the garden Lily gave to M. de Cyon for a study. Here it was her habit to meet him daily on his return from the Ministry when his motor, a gift from her, left him at the gate on the Rue de Passy.
One bright October day of the same year, she went as usual to the pavilion to amuse herself until he arrived by reading the newspapers which were placed upon his table. They lay in a neat pile . . . Le Journal de Genève, Il Seccolo of Milan, La Tribuna of Roma, the London Post, the London Times, Le Figaro, L'Echo de Paris, Le Petit Parisien, Le Matin, L'Oeuvre.
She skimmed through them, reading snatches of news, of the opera, and the theater, of society, of politics, of races, the personals in the London Times . . . this or that, whatever caught her fancy.
In the drawing-room Ellen and Jean, with his crutches by his side, sat at the piano playing with four hands snatches of music from the operettas of the moment, from Phi-Phi and La Reine Joyeuse. They sang and laughed as they played. The sound of their gaiety drifted out across the garden.
Lily read the journals until she grew bored. Something had delayed M. de Cyon. Already he was late by half an hour. She came at last, languidly, to the bottom of the pile, to L'Oeuvre which lay buried beneath the more pompous and expensive papers. This she never read because it was a socialist daily and therefore dull. Doubtless she would have passed it by again for the hundredth time but a name, buried in one corner in the smallest of print, caught her attention. It must have struck her suddenly with all the force of a blow in the face, for she closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. The paper slipped to the floor forgotten.
It was a brief paragraph, not more than three or four lines. It recounted the death of one Stepan Krylenko, a man well known as a leader in international labor circles. He died, according to the despatch, of typhus in Moscow whither he had been deported by the American government.
(Perhaps, after all, the Uhlan was right. The Monster would devour them all in the end.)
After a time Lily rose and went out of the pavilion into the garden where she walked slowly up and down for a long time, seating herself at last on the bench under the laburnum tree.
Inside the house the wild merriment persisted. Ellen was singing now in a rich contralto voice a valse which she played with an exaggerated sweep of sentimentality. From the peak of her hard and cynical intelligence, she mocked the song. She sang,
de la première etreinte
qu'on risque avec timidité
et presque avec contrainte
Le contact vous fait frisonner. . . ."
In a wild burst of mocking laughter, the song came abruptly to an end. The shattered chords floated out into the garden where Lily sat leaning against the laburnum tree, silent and thoughtful, her eyes filled with sorrow and wonder. She was in that moment more beautiful than she had ever been before . . . a symbol of that which is above all else eternal, which knows no bonds, which survives cities and mills and even nations, which is in itself the beginning and end of all things, without which the world itself must fail.
And presently, far down among the plane trees, the gate in the high wall swung gently open and, against the distant lights of the Rue de Passy, the figure of the white haired M. de Cyon came into the garden.
The End