At the close of this long speech, the old woman fell into a fit of
coughing and her niece rose quickly to bring more medicine and water. If
Hattie Tolliver had understood even for a moment these metaphysical
theories, they were forgotten in the confusion of the coughing fit. It
is more than probable that she understood nothing of the speech and
probable that she was too far lost in thoughts of Ellen to have heard
it. In any case, she was, like most good mothers and housewives, a pure
realist who dealt in terms of the material. At least she gave no sign,
and when the coughing fit was over, she returned at once to the main
thread of the conversation.
“These careers,” she said, “may be all right but I think that Ellen
might be happier if she had something more sound ... like a husband and
children and a home.”
It was useless to argue with her. Like all women whose domestic life has
been happy and successful, she could not be convinced that there was
anything in the world more desirable than the love of a good husband and
children. With her it was indeed something even stronger--a tribal
instinct upon which life itself is founded. She was a fundamental person
beside whom Irene and Lily, even her own daughter Ellen, were sports in
the biological sense. They were removed by at least two generations from
the soil. In them the struggle for life had become transvalued into a
pursuit of the arts, of religion, of pleasure itself.
In the gathering twilight, Hattie Tolliver brought a lamp and lighted it
to work by. Julia Shane watched her silently for a time, observing the
strong neck, the immaculate full curve of her niece’s figure, the
certainty with which the strong worn fingers moved about their delicate
work.
“You remember,” she said, “that Lily mentioned a boy ... a young boy, in
her letter?”
“Yes,” replied Hattie Tolliver, without glancing from her work. “The
child of a friend. I thought she might have passed him by to come home
to her mother.... Funny how children can forget you.”
Julia Shane stirred softly in the deep bed. “I thought you might be
thinking that,” she said. “I thought it would be better to tell you the
truth. I wanted you to know anyway. The truth is, Hattie, that the child
is her own. She is more interested in him than in me, and that’s natural
enough and quite proper.”
The strong fingers paused abruptly in their work and lay motionless
against the white linen. Hattie Tolliver’s face betrayed her amazement;
yet clearly she was a little amused.
“Charles always said there was something mysterious about Lily,” she
said. “But I never guessed she’d been secretly married.”
The old woman, hesitating, coughed before she replied, as though the
supremely respectable innocence of her niece somehow made her
inarticulate. At last she summoned strength.
“But she’s never been married, Hattie. There never was any ceremony.”
“Then how ...” In Mrs. Tolliver’s face the amazement spread until her
countenance was one great interrogation.
“Children,” interrupted her aunt in a voice filled with tremulous calm,
“can be born without marriage certificates. They have nothing to do with
legal processes.”
For a long time the niece kept silent, fingering the while the half
finished pillow case. It appeared that she found some new and marvelous
quality in it. She fingered the stuff as though she were in the act of
purchasing it across a counter. At last she raised her head.
“Then it was true ... that old story?” she asked.
“What story?”
“The one they told in the Town ... about Lily’s _having_ to go away to
Paris.”
“Yes.... But no one ever really knew. They only guessed. They knew
nothing at all. And they know nothing more to-day.” The old woman paused
for a second as though to give her words emphasis. “I’m trusting you
never to tell, Hattie. I wanted you to know because if ever it was
necessary, I wanted Lily to come to you for help. It never will be. It
isn’t likely.”
Hattie Tolliver sat up very stiff and red. “Tell!” she said, “Tell! Who
should I ever tell in the Town? Why should I tell any of them?” The
tribal instinct rose in triumph. It was a matter of her family against
the Mills, the Town, all the world if necessary. Torture could not have
dragged from her the truth.
Yet Hattie Tolliver was not unmoved by the confession. It may even have
been that she herself long ago had suspicions of the truth which had
withered and died since from too much doubt. To a woman of her nature
the news of a thousand strikes, of murder and of warfare was as nothing
beside the thing Julia Shane revealed. For a long time she said nothing
at all, but her strong fingers spoke for her. They worked faster and
more skilfully than ever, as if all her agitation was pouring itself out
through their tips. The fingers and the flying needle said, “That this
should have happened in our family! I can’t believe it. Perhaps Aunt
Julia is so sick that her mind is weakened. Surely she must imagine this
tale. Such things happen only to servant girls. All this is unreal. It
cannot be true. Lily could not be so happy, so buoyant if this were
true. Sinners can only suffer and be miserable.”
All this time she remained silent, breathing heavily, and when at last
she spoke, it was to ask, “Who was the man?” in so terrible a voice that
the old woman on the bed started for a moment and then averted her face
lest her niece see the ghost of a smile which slipped out unwilled.
“It was the Governor,” the aunt replied at last.
And then, “Why would he not marry her?” in a voice filled with
accumulations of hatred and scorn for the ravishers of women.
This time Julia Shane did not smile. Her pride,--the old fierce and
arrogant pride--was touched.
“Oh,” she replied, “it was not that. It was Lily who refused to marry
him. He begged her ... on his knees he begged her. I saw him. He would
have been glad enough to have her.”
And this led only to a “Why?” to which the old woman answered that she
did not know except that Lily had said she wished to be herself and go
her own way, that she was content and would not marry him even if he
became president. “Beyond that, I do not know,” she said. “That is where
a mother does not know even her own daughter. I don’t believe Lily knows
herself. Can you tell why it is that Ellen must go on studying and
studying, why she cannot help it? Can I know why Irene wants only to be
left in peace to go her own way? No, we never really know any one.”
All this swept over the head of Hattie Tolliver. She returned to one
thing. “It would not have been a bad match. He is a senator now.”
It had grown quite dark during their talk and from inside the barrier of
the Mills the searchlights began to operate, at first furtively and in
jerky fashion and then slowly with greater and greater deliberation,
sweeping in gigantic arcs the sky and the squalid area of the Flats. A
dozen times in their course the hard white beams swept the walls of the
barren old house, penetrating even the room where Julia Shane lay slowly
dying. The flashes of light came suddenly, bathing in an unearthly glow
and with a dazzling clarity the walls and the furniture. At last, as the
beams swept the face of the ormulu clock, Hattie Tolliver, rising,
folded her pillow case and thrust it into the black bag she carried.
“I must go now,” she said. “Charlie will be wanting his supper.”
The old woman asked her to bend down while she kissed her. It was the
first time she had ever made such a request and she passed over the
extraordinary event by hastily begging her niece to draw the curtains.
“The lights make me nervous,” she said. “I don’t know why, but they are
worse than the noise the Mills used to make.”
And when this operation was completed she summoned her niece again to
her side. “Would you like to see a picture of Lily’s boy?”
Hattie Tolliver nodded.
“It is in the top drawer of the chiffonier. Will you fetch it to me?”
Her niece brought the picture and for a time the two women regarded it
silently. It was the photograph of a handsome child, singularly like
Lily although there was something of the Governor’s rather florid good
looks, particularly about the high sweeping forehead.
“He is a fine child, isn’t he?” the old woman remarked. “I never
expected to have a grandchild named Shane.”
Still regarding the picture with a sort of fascination, Mrs. Tolliver
replied, “He is a darling, isn’t he? Does she call him that?”
“Of course. What would she call him?”
“Yes, he is a fine lad. He looks like our family.” And then after a long
pause she added, “I’m glad you told me all the story. I’m glad Lily did
what she did deliberately. I should hate to think that any of us would
be weak enough to let a man take advantage of her. That makes a great
difference.”
After she had put on her small black hat trimmed with worn and stubby
ostrich plumes, she turned for the last time. “If you have another of
those pictures, Aunt Julia, I would like to have one. I’d like to show
it to Charles. He’s always admired Lily. It’s funny what a way she has
with men.”
There was no sting in the remark. It was a simple declaration, spoken as
though the truth of it had occurred to her for the first time. She was
too direct and vigorous to be feline.
As she closed the door the voice of her aunt trailed weakly after. “You
needn’t worry about Ellen. All her strength and character is your
strength and character, Hattie. She can take care of herself.”
The niece turned in the doorway, her thick strong figure blocking the
shower of dim light from the hall. “No,” she said. “It’s not as though
Lily were bad. She isn’t bad. I’ve always had an idea that she knew what
she was about. I suppose she has her own ideas on life. Perhaps she
lives up to them. I can’t say they’re my ideas.” For a second she leaned
against the frame of the door, searching with an air of physical effort
for words to express her thoughts. “No, she isn’t bad,” she continued.
“No one who ever knew her can say she is a bad woman. I can’t explain
what I mean, but I suppose she believes in what she does.”
And with this wise and mysterious observation Mrs. Tolliver returned to
the world of the concrete--her own world--swept down the long stairway
and into the kitchen where she reclaimed her basket, and left the house
without waiting for the hostile mulatto woman to open the door.