Meanwhile the Town grew. The farm where Julia Shane spent her youth
disappeared entirely, broken up into checker board allotments, crossed
by a fretwork of crude concrete sidewalks. Houses, uniform and
unvaryingly ugly in architecture and cheap in construction, sprang up in
clusters like fungi to house the clerks and the petty officials of the
Mills. In the Flats, which included all that district taken over by the
factories, hundreds of alien workmen drifted in to fill the already
overcrowded houses beyond endurance. Croats, Slovenes, Russians, Poles,
Italians, Negroes took up their abodes in the unhealthy lowlands, in the
shadows of the furnace towers and the resounding steel sheds, under the
very hedges of Shane’s Castle. In Halsted street, next door to the
corner saloon, a handful of worthy citizens, moved by the gravity of
conditions in the district, opened an establishment which they gave the
sentimental name of Welcome House, using it to aid the few aliens who
were not hostile and suspicious of volunteer workers from the Town.
All this, Julia Shane, living in another world, ignored. She saw nothing
of what happened beneath her very windows.
It was true that she found no satisfaction in her daughter Irene. On the
return of the girl from a long rest at the convent, there took place
between mother and daughter a terrible battle which did not end in a
sudden, decisive victory but dragged its length across many weeks. Irene
returned with her thin pretty face pale and transparent, her ash blond
hair drawn back tightly from her forehead in severe nunlike fashion. She
wore a suit of black stuff, plainly made and ornamented only by a plain
collar of white lawn.
On the first evening at home, the mother and daughter sat until midnight
in the library, a room which they used after dinner on evenings when
they were alone. The little French clock struck twelve before the girl
was able to summon courage to address her mother, and when at last she
succeeded, she was forced to interrupt the old woman in the midst of a
new book by Collette Willy, sent her by Lily, which she was reading with
the aid of a silver mounted glass.
“Mother,” began Irene gently. “Mother....”
Julia Shane put down the glass and looked up. “What is it?”
“Mother, I’ve decided to enter the church.”
It was an announcement far from novel, a hope expressed year after year
only to be trodden under foot by the will of the old woman. But this
time there was a new quality in Irene’s voice, a shade of firmness and
determination that was not at all in keeping with the girl’s usual
humility. The mother’s face grew stern, almost hard. Cheri slipped
gently to the floor where it lay forgotten.
“Is this my reward for letting you go back to the convent?” The voice
was cold, dominating, a voice which always brought Irene into a
trembling submission. The church to both meant but one thing--the Roman
Catholic church--which John Shane, a Romanist turned scoffer, had mocked
all his life, a church which to his Presbyterian widow was always the
Scarlet Woman of Rome.
The girl said nothing but kept her eyes cast down, fingering all the
while the carving on the arm of her rosewood chair. She had grown
desperately pale. Her thin fingers trembled.
“Has this anything to do with Lily?” asked the mother with a sudden air
of suspicion, and Irene answered “No! No!” with such intensity that
Julia Shane, convinced that she still knew nothing, tried a new tack.
“You know how I feel,” she said. “I am old and I am tired. I have had
enough unhappiness, Irene. This would be the last.”
Tears came into the eyes of the girl, and the trembling grew and spread
until her whole body was shaking. “It is all I have,” she cried.
“Don’t be morbid!”
The eagle look came into Mrs. Shane’s face--the look with which she
faced down all the world save her own family.
“I won’t hear of it,” she added. “I’ve told you often enough, Irene....
I won’t have a daughter of mine sell herself to the devil if I can
prevent it.” She spoke with a rising intensity of feeling that was akin
to hatred. “You shall not do it as long as I live and never after I am
dead, if I can help it.”
The girl tried not to sob. The new defiance in her soul gave her a
certain spiritual will to oppose her mother. Never before had she dared
even to argue her case. “If it were Lily ...” she began weakly.
“It would make no difference. Besides, it could never be Lily. That is
out of the question. Lily is no fool....”
The accusation of Irene was an old one, secret, cherished always in the
depths of a lonely submissive heart. It was born now from the depths of
her soul, a cry almost of passion, a protest against a sister whom every
one pardoned, whom every one admired, whom all the world loved. It was
an accusation directed against the mother who was so sympathetic toward
Lily, so uncomprehending toward Irene.
“I suppose they have been talking to you ... the sisters,” continued
Julia Shane. And when the girl only buried her face miserably in her
arms, she added more gently, “Come here, Irene.... Come over here to
me.”
Quietly the daughter came to her side where she knelt down clasping the
fingers covered with rings that were so cold against her delicate,
transparent skin. For an instant the mother frowned as if stricken by
some physical pain. “My God!” she said, “Why is it so hard to live?” But
her weakness passed quickly. She stiffened her tired body, sighed, and
began again. “Now,” she said gruffly. “We must work this out.... We must
understand each other better, my dear. If you could manage to confide in
me ... to let me help you. I am your mother. Whatever comes to you comes
to me as well ... everything. There are three of us, you and Lily and
me.” Her manner grew slowly more tender, more affectionate. “We must
keep together. You might say that we stood alone ... three women with
the world against us. When I die, I want to leave you and Lily closer to
each other than you and I have been. If there is anything that you want
to confess ... if you have any secret, tell it to me and not to the
sisters.”
By now Irene was sobbing hysterically, clinging all the while to the
hand of her mother. “There is nothing ... nothing!” she cried, “I don’t
know why I am so miserable.”
“Then promise me one thing ... that you will do nothing until we have
talked the matter out thoroughly.” She fell to stroking the girl’s blond
hair with her thin veined hand, slowly, with a hypnotic gesture.
“Yes.... Yes.... I promise!” And gradually the sobbing ebbed and the
girl became still and calm.
For a time they sat thus listening to the mocking frivolous tick-tick of
the little French clock over the fireplace. A greater sound, rumbling
and regular like the pounding of giant hammers they did not hear because
it had become so much a part of their lives that it was no longer
audible. The throb of the Mills, working day and night, had become a
part of the very stillness.
At last Julia Shane stirred and said with a sudden passion, “Come,
Irene!... Come up to my room. There is no peace here.” And the pair rose
and hurried away, the mother hobbling along with the aid of her ebony
stick, never once glancing behind her at the portrait whose handsome
malignant eyes appeared to follow them with a wicked delight.