Then for a long time a silence descended upon the room. Julia Shane
crushed out the embers of her cigarette and fell once more to turning
the silver mounted reading glass round and round, regarding it fixedly
with the look of one hypnotized. At last she turned again to her
daughter.
“Are you going to marry him?” she asked.
“No, of course not.”
“I should be satisfied, if he is as fine as you say he is. I would
rather see you married before I die, Irene.”
The daughter shook her head stubbornly. “I shall never marry any one.”
The old woman smiled shrewdly. “You are wrong, my girl. You are wrong. I
haven’t had a very happy time, but I wouldn’t have given it up. It is a
part of life, knowing love and having children.... Love can be so many
things, but at least it is part of life ... the greatest part of all.
Without it life is nothing.”
For a long time Irene remained silent. She kept her eyes cast down and
when she spoke again it was without raising them. “But Lily ...” she
began shrewdly. “She has never married.” It was the old retort, always
Lily. Her mother saw fit to ignore it, perhaps because, knowing what she
knew, it was impossible to answer it.
“You’ve been seeing a great deal of this Krylenko,” she said. “It’s been
going on for years ... since before Lily was here the last time. That’s
years ago.”
Irene looked up suddenly and a glint of anger lighted her pale eyes.
“Who’s been talking to you about me?... I know. It’s Cousin Hattie. She
was here to-day. Oh, why can’t people let me alone? I harm no one. I
want to be left in peace.”
Then Julia Shane, perhaps because she already knew too well the
antipathy between her coldly virginal daughter and her niece whose whole
life was her children, deliberately lied.
“Cousin Hattie did not even mention it.” She turned her eyes away from
the light. “I would like to see you married, Irene,” she repeated. It
was clear that for some reason the old hope, forgotten since that
tumultuous visit of the Governor, was revived again. It occupied the old
woman’s mind to the exclusion of all else.
“There is nothing between us, Mama,” said Irene. “Nothing at all. Can’t
you see. We’ve been friends all along. I taught him to read English. I
got him books.” Her voice wavered a little and her hands trembled. It
was as if she had become a little girl again, the same girl who, in a
white muslin dress with a blue sash, sobbed alone on the sofa in the
library beneath John Shane’s portrait. “I’ve made him what he is,” she
continued. “Don’t you see. I’m proud of him. When I found him, he was
nothing ... only a stupid Ukrainian boy who was rebellious and rude to
me. And now he works with me. He’s willing to sacrifice himself for
those people. We understand each other. All we want is to be left alone,
Don’t you understand? I’m just proud of him because I’ve made him what
he is. I’m nothing,” she stammered. “I’m nothing to him in that way at
all. That would spoil everything ... like something evil, intruding upon
us.”
The pale tired face glowed with a kind of religious fervor. For an
instant there was something maternal and exalted in her look. All the
plainness vanished, replaced suddenly by a feverish beauty. The plain,
exhausted old maid had disappeared.
“Why haven’t you told me this before?” asked the old woman.
“You never asked me.... You never wanted to know what I was doing. You
were always interested in Lily. How could you ever have thought I’d
marry him? I’m years older.” Suddenly she extended her arms with a
curious exhibitive gesture like a gesture Lily sometimes made when she
was looking her loveliest. “Look at me. I’m old and battered and ugly.
How could he ever love me in that way? He is young.”
The thin hands dropped listlessly into her lap and lay against the worn
black serge. She fell silent, all exhausted by the emotion. Her mother
stared at her with the look of one who has just penetrated the soul of a
stranger. Irene, it appeared, was suddenly revealed to her.
“Why, you know he’s never looked at a woman,” Irene continued in a
lowered voice. “He’s lived in the Flats all these years and he’s never
looked at a woman. Do you know what that means in the Flats?” Her voice
dropped still lower. “Of course, you don’t know, because you know
nothing about the Flats,” she added with a shade of bitterness.
At this her mother smiled. “The rest of the world is not so different,
Irene.”
But Irene ignored her. “He’s worked hard all these years to make himself
worth while and to help his people. He’s never had time to be bad.” Her
mother smiled faintly again. Perhaps she smiled at the spinsterish word
by which Irene chose to designate fornication.
“He’s pure,” continued Irene. “He’s fine and noble and pure. I want to
keep him so.”
“You are making of him a saint,” observed the old woman drily.
“He is a saint! That’s just what he is,” cried Irene. “And you mock him,
you and Lily.... Oh, I know ... I know you both. He’s been driven from
the Mills for what he’s done for the people in the Flats. He’s been put
on a black list so he can never get work in any other Mill. He told me
so to-night. That’s what he was telling me when you stood watching us.”
A look of supreme triumph came into her face once more. “But it’s too
late!” she cried. “It’s too late.... They’ve voted to strike. It begins
to-morrow. Stepan is the one behind it.”
It was as if a terrible war, long hanging in the balance, had suddenly
become a reality. Julia Shane, propped among the pillows, turned
restlessly and sighed.
“What fools men are!” she said, almost to herself. “What fools!” And
then to Irene. “It won’t be easy, Irene. It’ll be cruel. You’d best go
to bed now, dear. You look desperately tired. You’ll have plenty of work
before you.”
Irene pressed a cold, distant kiss on the ivory cheek of her mother and
turned to leave.
“Shall I put out the light?”
“Yes, please.”
The room subsided into darkness and Irene, opening the door, suddenly
heard her mother’s voice.
“Oh, Irene.” The voice was weary, listless. “I’ve written for Lily to
come home. The doctor told me to-day that I could not possibly live
longer than Christmas. I forced it out of him. There was no use in
having nonsense. I wanted to know.”
And Irene, instead of going to her own room, returned and knelt by the
side of her mother’s bed. The hardness melted and she sobbed, perhaps
because the old woman who faced death with such proud indifference was
so far beyond the need of prayer and comfort.
Yet when the smoky dawn appeared at last, it found Irene in her own
chaste room still kneeling in prayer before the pink and blue Sienna
Virgin.
“Oh, Blessed Virgin,” she prayed, from the summit of her complacency.
“Forgive my mother her sins of pride and her lack of charity. Forgive my
sister her weakness of the flesh. Enter into their hearts and make them
good women. Make them worthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Enter into
the heart of my sister and cleanse her. Make her a good woman ... a pure
woman, loving only those things which are holy. Cleanse her of the lusts
of the flesh!”
Her pale eyes were wet with tears. Although she prayed to a plaster
Virgin in pink gilt, she used the sonorous rolling words drawn all
unconsciously from the memories of a Presbyterian childhood. And the
Lily for whom she prayed ... the Lily who had been sent for ... was
there in the old house just as she was always in the Town and in the
memories of those who knew her beauty, her tolerance and her charm.
There were, indeed, times when Krylenko, caught perhaps in the memory of
a night when he stood in the melting snow peering into the windows of
Shane’s Castle, spoke of her; and these were times when Irene turned
away from him, frightened by the shadow of something in his eyes.