As Julia Shane grew weaker, it was Cousin Hattie Tolliver who “took
hold” of the establishment at Shane’s Castle. It was always Mrs.
Tolliver, capable and housewifely, who “took hold” in a family crisis.
She managed funerals, weddings and christenings. Cousins came to die at
her shabby house in the Town. She gathered into her large strong hands
the threads of life and death that stretched themselves through a family
scattered from Paris to Australia. Her relatives embroiled themselves in
scrapes, they grew ill, they lost or made fortunes, they succumbed to
all the weaknesses to which the human flesh is prone; and always, at the
definitive moment, they turned to Hattie Tolliver as to a house built
upon a rock.
Irene, so capable in succoring the miserable inhabitants of the Flats,
grew helpless when death peered in at the tall windows of Shane’s
Castle. Besides, she had her own work to do. As the strike progressed
she came to spend days and nights in the squalid houses of Halsted
street, returning at midnight to inquire after her mother. She knew
nothing of managing a house and Hattie Tolliver knew these things
intimately. More than that, Mrs. Tolliver enjoyed “taking hold”; and she
extracted, beyond all doubt, a certain faintly malicious satisfaction in
taking over the duties which should have fallen upon Irene, while Irene
spent her strength, her very life, in helping people unrelated to her,
people who were not even Americans.
So it was Hattie Tolliver, wearing a spotless apron and bearing a
dustcloth, who opened the door when Hennery, returning from his solitary
and heroic venture outside the gates, drove Lily up from the dirty red
brick station, bringing this time no great trunks covered with gay
labels of Firenze and Sorrento but a pair of black handbags and a small
trunk neatly strapped. It may have been that Hennery, as Irene hinted
bitterly, made that perilous journey through the riots of Halsted street
only because it was Mis’ Lily who was returning. Certainly no other
cause had induced him to venture outside the barren park.
The encounter, for Hattie Tolliver, was no ordinary one. From her manner
it was clear that she was opening the door to a woman ... her own cousin
... who had lived in sin, who had borne a child out of wedlock. Indeed
the woman might still be living in sin. Paris was a Babylon where it was
impossible to know any one’s manner of living. Like all the others, Mrs.
Tolliver had lived all her life secure in the belief that she knew Lily.
She remembered the day of her cousin’s birth ... a snowy blustering day.
She knew Lily throughout her childhood. She knew her as a woman. “Lily,”
she undoubtedly told herself, “was thus and so. If any one knows Lily, I
know her.” And then all this knowledge had been upset suddenly by a
single word from Lily’s mother. It was necessary to create a whole new
pattern. The woman who stood on the other side of the door was not Lily
at all--at least not the old Lily--but a new woman, a stranger, whom she
did not know. There might be, after all, something in what Aunt Julia
said about never really knowing any one.
All this her manner declared unmistakably during the few strained
seconds that she stood in the doorway facing her cousin. For an instant,
while the two women, the worldly and the provincial, faced each other,
the making of family history hung in the balance. It was Mrs. Tolliver
who decided the issue. Suddenly she took her beautiful cousin into her
arms, encircling her in an embrace so warm and so filled with defiance
of all the world that Lily’s black hat, trimmed with camelias, was
knocked awry.
“Your poor mother!” were Cousin Hattie’s first words. “She is very low
indeed. She has been asking for you.”
And so Lily won another victory in her long line of conquests, a victory
which she must have known was a real triumph in which to take a profound
pride.
Then while Lily took off her hat and set her fine hair in order, her
cousin poured out the news of the last few days. It was news of a sort
that warmed the heart of Mrs. Tolliver ... news of Julia Shane’s illness
delivered gravely with a vast embroidery of detail, a long account of
the mulatto woman’s insolence and derelictions which increased as the
old woman grew weaker; and, last of all, an eloquent and denunciatory
account of Irene’s behavior.
“She behaves,” said Mrs. Tolliver, “as though a daughter had no
obligations toward her own mother.” Her face grew scarlet with
indignation at this flouting of family ties. “She spends all her time in
the Flats among those foreigners and never sees her own mother more than
a minute or two a day. There she lies, a sick and dying woman, grieving
because her daughter neglects her. You’d think Irene loved the strikers
more ... especially one young fellow who is the leader,” she added
darkly.
Lily, knowing her mother, must have guessed that Cousin Hattie’s account
suffered from a certain emotional exaggeration. The picture of old Julia
Shane, grieving because her daughter neglected her, was not a convincing
one. The old woman was too self reliant for that sort of behavior. She
expected too little from the world.
But Lily said nothing. She unstrapped her bag and brought out a fresh
handkerchief and a bottle of scent. Then she raised her lovely head and
looked sharply at her cousin. “I suppose it’s this same Krylenko,” she
said. “D’you think she’s in love with him?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Tolliver shrewdly, “I don’t think she loves anybody
or anything but her own soul. She’s like a machine. She has an idea she
loves the strikers but that’s only because she thinks she’s saving her
soul by good works. I suppose it makes her happy. Only yesterday I told
her, thinking it would be a hint, that charity begins at home.” For a
moment Mrs. Tolliver waited thoughtfully, and then she added, “You know,
sometimes Irene looks at her mother as if she wanted her to make haste
with her dying. I’ve noticed the look--more than once.”
And so they talked for a time, as people always talked of Irene, as if
she were a stranger, a curiosity, something which stood outside the
realm of human understanding. And out of the ruin of Irene’s character,
Hattie Tolliver rose phoenix-like, triumphant, as the heroine who had
seen Irene’s duty and taken it upon herself.
“You know, I’m nursing your mother,” she continued. “She wouldn’t have a
nurse because she couldn’t bear to have a stranger in the house. She has
that one idea now ... seeing no one but the doctor and her own family.
Now that you’ve come, I suppose she won’t even see the doctor any more.
She’s asleep now, so I came down-stairs to put the house into some sort
of order. Heaven knows what it would have been like if the drawing-room
had been open too. That mulatto woman,” she added bitterly, “hasn’t
touched a thing in weeks.”
Silently, thoughtfully, Lily pushed open the double doors into the
drawing-room.
“It’s not been opened since you left,” continued Mrs. Tolliver. “Not
even for the Christmas party. But that wasn’t necessary because there
aren’t many of us left. You could put all of us into the library.
There’s only Eva Barr and Charles and me. The old ones are all dead and
the young ones have gone away.” For a moment she paused, for Lily
appeared not to be listening. Then she added softly, “But I guess you
know all that. I’d forgotten Ellen was living with you.”
For the time being, the conversation ended while the two women, Lily in
her smart suit from the Rue de la Paix and Hattie Tolliver in shiny
black alpaca with apron and dustcloth, stood in the doorway reverently
surveying the vast old room, so dead now and so full of memories. The
rosewood chairs, shrouded like ghosts, appeared dimly in the light that
filtered through the curtained windows. In the far end, before the long
mirror, the piano with its shapeless covering resembled some crouching,
prehistoric animal. Above the mantelpiece, the flaming Venice of Mr.
Turner glowed vaguely beneath layers of dust. Cobwebs hung from the
crystal chandeliers and festooned the wall sconces; and beneath the
piano the Aubusson carpet, rolled into a long coil, waited like a
python. The room was the mute symbol of something departed from the
Town.
Silently the two women regarded the spectacle and when Lily at length
turned away, her dark eyes were shining with tears. She was
inexpressibly lovely, all softened now by the melancholy sight.
“I suppose it will never be opened again,” observed Mrs Tolliver in a
solemn voice. “But I mean to clean it thoroughly the first time I have
an opportunity. Just look at the dust.” And with her competent finger
she traced her initials on the top of a lacquer table.
For a moment Lily made no reply. At last she said, “No. I suppose it is
closed for good.”
“You wouldn’t come back here to live?” probed her cousin with an air of
hopefulness.
“No. Why should I?” And a second later Lily added, “But how quiet it is.
You can almost hear the stillness.”
Mrs. Tolliver closed the door, seizing at the same time the opportunity
to polish the knobs on the hallway side. “Yes, it’s a relief not to hear
the Mills. But there are other noises now ... riots and machine guns,
and at night there are searchlights. Only last night the police clubbed
an old woman to death at the foot of the drive. She was a Polish woman
... hadn’t been harming any one. I wonder you didn’t see the blood. It’s
smeared on the gates. Irene can tell you all about it.” For a moment she
polished thoughtfully; then she straightened her vigorous body and said,
“But I got back at them. I gave one of the hired policeman a poke he
won’t soon forget. It’s a crime the way they behave.... It’s murder. No
decent community would allow it.” And she told Lily the story of the
rescue at the corner saloon.
As Lily made her way up the long stairway, Mrs. Tolliver paused in her
work to watch the ascending figure until it reached the top. Her large
honest face was alive with interest, her eyes shining as if she now
really saw Lily for the first time, as if the old Lily had been simply
an illusion. The beautiful stranger climbed the stairs languidly, the
long, lovely lines of her body showing through the trim black suit. Her
red hair glowed in the dim light of the hallway. She was incredibly
young and happy, so unbelievably fresh and lovely that Mrs. Tolliver,
after Lily had disappeared at the turn of the stair, moved away shaking
her head and making the clucking sound which primitive women use to
indicate a disturbance of their suspicions.
And when she returned to dusting the library under the handsome,
malignant face of John Shane she worked in silence, abandoning her usual
habit of humming snatches of old ballads. After the Ball was Over and
The Baggage Coach Ahead were forgotten. Presently, when she had finished
polishing the little ornaments of jade and crystal, she fell to
regarding the portrait with a profound interest. She stood thus, with
her arms akimbo, for many minutes regarding the man in the picture as if
he too had become a stranger to her. She discovered, it appeared,
something more than a temperamental and clever old reprobate who had
been indulgent toward her. Her manner was that of a person who stands
before a suddenly opened door in the presence of magnificent and
incomprehensible wonders.
Lily found her there when she came down-stairs.
“You know,” observed Mrs. Tolliver, “I must be getting old. I have such
funny thoughts lately ... the kind of thoughts a normal healthy woman
doesn’t have.”