Whatever her thoughts and memories may have been, they were interrupted
presently by the knock of the mulatto woman who came to bear away the
gilt coffee cup and pile of ravaged novels. The sound of the woman’s
shuffling approach aroused Julia Shane who opened her eyes and said,
“Here, Sarah. Give me a hand. I’ve slipped down.”
Sarah helped lift her once more into a sitting posture. The old woman
raised herself scornfully as if there was between her indomitable spirit
and her wrecked body no bond of any sort, as if she had only contempt
for the body as a thing unworthy of her, a thing which had failed her,
over which she had neither control nor responsibility.
The mulatto woman bent to pick up the scattered novels, and as she stood
up, her mistress, chuckling, said, “My God. They’re tiresome, Sarah.
They never write about anything but _l’amour_. You’d think there was
nothing else in the world. Even _l’amour_ gets to be a bore after a
time.”
The mulatto woman waited obediently. “Yes, Mis’ Shane. I guess you’re
right,” she said presently. At which the old woman smiled.
“And Sarah,” the mistress continued. “When Miss Irene comes in, tell her
I should like to see her. It’s important.”
The servant hesitated for an instant. “But Miss Irene don’t come in till
after midnight, Mis’ Shane.” She spoke with the manner of concealing
something. In her soft voice there was a thin trace of insinuating
suspicion, almost of servile accusation. “That foreign fella brings her
home,” she added.
“It’s all right,” replied the old woman. “I shall be awake.” And then in
a cold voice she added, “I’m sure it’s good of him to bring her home. I
shouldn’t want her wandering about alone at that hour of the night. It’s
very thoughtful of him.”
At midnight, true to her word, she was still awake. She had even managed
to gain her feet painfully and to make her way with unsteady step across
the room to the drawer which held her cigarettes. These too the doctor
had forbidden her.
On the way back to her vast bed, she passed by the window and, drawing
aside the curtain for a moment, she looked out over the hot panorama of
glowing furnaces and tall black chimneys. As she stood there, she saw
entering the wrought iron gates two figures sharply outlined against the
glare of the white arc light in Halsted Street. The woman was Irene. She
was accompanied by Krylenko.
Quietly the old woman extinguished the candle on the table beside her.
The room became a vault of darkness. Beneath her window at the turn in
the drive, the pair halted and stood talking in voices so low that what
they said was inaudible even through the open window. After a time Irene
seated herself wearily on the horseblock. Her frail body sagged with
fatigue. She leaned against the cast iron Cupid who held in one
outstretched hand an iron ring. Krylenko bent over her and his hands,
with the curious, eloquent gestures of an alien, pantomimed their tale
against the distant arc light. Above them in the recessed window the
mother, clinging all the while to the heavy curtains for support,
watched silently. She could hear nothing. She could only keep watch. At
length Irene arose and lifting the ugly black hat from her head, ran her
finger through her loose hair all damp with the terrible heat. Now was
the moment. The old woman, awaiting proof, leaned against the table by
her side.
But there was no proof. There was no embrace, not even the faintest
exchange of intimacies. Krylenko chastely took Irene’s hand, bade her
good-night and turned with his swinging powerful stride down the long
drive. Irene, passing along the gallery by the drawing room, slipped her
key into the lock and entered the house.
Above stairs she found her mother sitting up in bed, lost again in the
midst of _Les Anges Gardiens_. Still carrying the worn hat in her hand,
the daughter came over to the bed. With the increasing illness of the
old woman, Irene’s manner had become more gentle. She even smiled a
tired smile.
“What?” she said playfully. “Are you still awake? Skimming again, I
see.”
Yet her manner was not the manner of a daughter with a mother. Rather it
was that of a casual friend. It was too playful, too forced. The chasm
of thirty years and more was not to be bridged by any amount of strained
cordiality.
Julia Shane put down her reading glass. “I couldn’t sleep, so I tried to
read,” she said.
Irene drew up a chair and sat by the bed. She appeared worn and
exhausted, as though the August heat had drained to the dregs all her
intense, self-inspired vitality.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better ... much better except for the ache in my back.”
Irene’s face grew serious. “You’ve been smoking again,” she said, “after
the doctor forbade you.” The old woman, quite prepared to lie, started
to protest, shaking her head in negation. “It’s no use, Mama ... I saw
you ... I saw the glow of your cigarette at the window.”
(So Irene knew that she had been watched, and there was no need to
protest.) The old woman sat still for a moment twisting the silver
reading glass round and round, her brow contracted in an angry frown as
though she resented bitterly the decay of body which gave any one
authority over her. (That Julia Shane should ever take orders from a
doctor or stand reproved by her own daughter!) It was this angry emotion
that stood revealed and transparent in every line of her face, in the
very defiance of her thin body. At length the frown melted slowly away.
“What sort of a man is he, Irene?” she asked looking straight into her
daughter’s tired eyes. Irene moved uneasily.
“What man?” she asked, “I don’t know who you mean.”
“That foreigner ... I don’t remember his name. You’ve never told me....
You might have told your mother.” There was a note of peevishness in her
voice which sounded queer and alien, almost a portent.
“Oh, Krylenko,” said Irene, twisting her black hat with her thin hands.
“Krylenko.” Then she waited for a moment. “He’s a fine man ... a
wonderful man. He has given up everything for his people.”
“But they are not _your_ people,” observed her mother looking at her
sharply.
“They are my people,” replied Irene softly. “All of them down to the
last baby. If they are not my people, who are?”
The old woman, opposed once more by the inevitable wall of Irene’s
obsessions, frowned. “You are wealthy,” she said. “You were born to a
position.”
In Irene’s smile there was a shade of bitterness. “In this Town?” she
inquired scornfully. “Oh! No! Position in this Town! That’s almost
funny.” She leaned forward a little, pressing her hand against her
forehead. “My people?” she said in a hushed voice. “My people.... Why, I
don’t even know where my father came from.”
The mother, half-buried among the heavy pillows raised herself slowly as
if a wave of new vigor had taken possession of her worn-out body. “Get
me a cigarette, Irene.”
The girl opened her lips to protest, but her mother silenced her.
“Please, Irene, do as I say. It can’t possibly matter what I do now.”
“Please, Mama,” began Irene once more. “The doctor has forbidden it.”
Then Julia Shane gave her daughter a terrible look pregnant with all the
old arrogance and power.
“Will you do as I say, Irene, or must I send for Sarah? She at least
still obeys me.”
For a second, authority hung in the balance. It was the authority of a
lifetime grounded upon a terrific force of will and sustained by the
eternal and certain precedent of obedience. It was the old woman who won
the struggle. It was her last victory. The daughter rose and obediently
brought the cigarettes, even holding the candle to light it. She held
the flame at arm’s length with a gesture of supreme distaste as if she
had been ordered to participate in some unspeakable sin. After she had
replaced the candle, her mother puffed thoughtfully for a time.
“Your father,” she said presently, “was born in Marseilles. His mother
was Spanish and his father Irish. He came to this country because he had
to run away. That’s all I know. He might have told me more if he had not
died suddenly. It’s not likely that any of us will ever know his story,
no matter how hard we try. Life isn’t a story book, you know. In life
there are some things that we never know, even about our own friends,
our own children. Each man’s soul is a secret, which even himself is not
able to reveal.”
For an instant the light of triumph swept Irene’s pale countenance. “You
see!” she said. “I am just like the rest ... like Stepan Krylenko and
all the others. My father was a foreigner.”
The mother’s lips curved in a sudden, scornful smile. “But he was a
gentleman, Irene.... That is something. And your mother was an American.
Her grandfather was the first settler in the wilderness.... The Town was
named for him. Have you no pride?”
“No,” replied Irene, “to be proud is a vice.... I have killed it. I am
not proud. I am like all the others.” And yet there was a fierce pride
in her voice, a smug, fierce, pride in not being proud.
“You are perverse,” said her mother. “You are beyond me. You talk like a
fool....” Irene raised her head to speak but the will of the old woman
swept her back. “I know,” she continued. “You think it is saintly. Does
it ever occur to you that it might only be smugness?”
The old eyes flashed with anger and resentment, emotions which merely
shattered themselves against the barrier of Irene’s smiling and fanatic
sense of righteousness. A look of obstinacy entered her face. (She
regarded herself as superior to Julia Shane! Incredible!)
“You amaze me, Irene. Your hardness is beyond belief. If you could be
soft for a moment, gentle and generous ... like Lily.”
The daughter’s hands tightened about the battered old hat.
“It’s always Lily,” she said bitterly. “It’s always Lily.... Lily this
and Lily that. She’s everywhere. Every one praises her ... even Cousin
Hattie.” The stubborn look of smugness again descended upon her face.
“Well, let them praise her ... I know that it is I who am right, I who
am good in the sight of God.” And then for the first time in all the
memory of Julia Shane, a look of anger, cold and unrelenting came into
the eyes of her daughter. “Lily! Lily!” she cried scornfully, “I hate
Lily.... May God forgive me!”