For an hour longer they sat talking over the coffee while Lily smoked
indolently cigarette after cigarette beneath the disapproving eye of her
cousin. They discussed the affairs of the household, the news in the
papers of Mrs. Julis Harrison’s second stroke, of Ellen, and Jean from
whom Lily had a letter only that morning.
“Has the Governor ever asked for him?” inquired Mrs. Tolliver, with the
passionate look of a woman interested in details.
“No,” said Lily, “I have not heard from him in years. He has never seen
the boy. You see Jean is mine alone because even if the Governor wanted
him he dares not risk a scandal. He is as much my own as if I had
created him alone out of my own body. He belongs to me and to me alone,
do you see? I can make him into what I will. I shall make him into a man
who will know everything and be everything. He shall be stronger than I
and cleverer. He is handsome enough. He is everything to me. A queen
would be proud to have him for her son.”
As she spoke a light kindled in her eyes and a look of exultation spread
over her face. It was an expression of passionate triumph.
“You see,” she added, “it is a wonderful thing to have some one who
belongs to you alone, who loves you alone and no one else. He owns me
and I own him. There is no one else who counts. If we were left alone on
a desert island, we would be content.” The look faded slowly and gave
place to a mocking smile that arched the corners of her red lips. “If I
had married the Governor, the boy might have become anything.... I
should have seen him becoming crude and common under my very eyes. I
should have hated his father and I could have done nothing. As it is,
his father is only a memory ... pleasant enough, a handsome man who
loved me, but never owned me ... even for an instant ... not even the
instant of my child’s conception!”
During this speech the manner of Mrs. Tolliver became more and more
agitated. With each bold word a new wave of color swept her large face,
until at the climax of Lily’s confession she was struck mute, rendered
incapable of either thought or action. It was a long time before she
recovered even a faint degree of her usual composure. At last she
managed to articulate, “I don’t see, Lily, how you can say such things.
I really don’t. The words would burn my throat!”
Her cousin’s smile was defiant, almost brazen. “You see, Cousin Hattie,
I have lived among the French. With them such things are no more than
food and drink ... except perhaps that they prefer love to everything
else,” she added, with a mischievous twinkle in her dark eyes.
“And besides,” continued Mrs. Tolliver, “I don’t know what you mean. I’m
sure Charles has never _owned_ me.”
“No, my dear,” said Lily, “He never has. On the contrary it is you who
have always owned him. It is always one thing or the other. The trouble
is that at first women like to be owned.” She raised her hand. “Oh, I
know. The Governor would have owned me sooner or later. There are some
men who are like that. You know them at once. I know how my father owned
my mother and you know as well as I that she was never a weak, clinging
woman. If she had been as rich as I, she would have left him ... long
ago. She could not because he owned her.”
“But that was different,” parried Mrs. Tolliver. “He was a foreigner.”
They were treading now upon that which in the family had been forbidden
ground. No one discussed John Shane with his wife or children because
they had kept alive for more than thirty years a lie, a pretense. John
Shane had been accepted silently and unquestioningly as all that a
husband should be. Now the manner of Mrs. Tolliver brightened visibly at
the approach of an opening for which she had waited more years than she
was able to count.
“But he was a man and she was a woman,” persisted Lily. “I know that
most American women own their husbands, but the strange thing is that I
could never have married a man whom I could own. You see that is the
trouble with marriage. It is difficult to be rid of a husband.”
Mrs. Tolliver shifted nervously and put down her coffee cup. “Really,
Lily,” she said, “I don’t understand you. You talk as though being
married was wrong.” Her manner, for the first time, had become
completely cold and disapproving. She behaved as though at any moment
she might rise and turn her back forever upon Lily.
“Oh, don’t think, Cousin Hattie, that people get married because they
like being tied together by law. Most people get married because it is
the only way they can live together and still be respected by the
community. Most people would like to change now and then. It’s true.
They’re like that in their deepest hearts ... far down where no one ever
sees.”
She said this so passionately that Mrs. Tolliver was swept into silence.
Books the good woman never read because there was no time; and even now
with her children gone, she did not read because it was too late in life
to develop a love for books. Immersed always in respectability, such
thoughts as these had never occurred to her; and certainly no one had
ever talked thus in her presence.
“I don’t understand,” she was able to articulate weakly after a long
pause. “I don’t understand.” And then as if she saw opportunity escaping
from her into spaces from which it might never be recovered, she said,
“Tell me, Lily. Have you ever had any idea from where your father came?”
The faint glint of amusement vanished from her cousin’s eyes and her
face grew thoughtful. “No. Nothing save that his mother was Spanish and
his father Irish. He was born in Marseilles.”
“And where’s that?” asked Mrs. Tolliver, aglow with interest.
“It’s in the south of France. It’s a great city and an evil one ... one
of the worst in the world. Mamma says we’ll never know the truth. I
think perhaps she is right.”
After this the conversation returned to the minutiae of the household
for a time and, at length, as the bronze clock struck three the two
women rose and left the room to make their way upstairs to the chamber
of the dying old woman. In the hall, Lily turned, “I’ve never talked
like this to any one,” she said. “I’d never really thought it all out
before. I’ve told you more than I’ve ever told any one, Cousin Hattie
... even my mother.”
Upstairs Mrs. Tolliver opened the door of the darkened room, Lily
followed her on tiptoe. In the gray winter light, old Julia Shane lay
back among the pillows sleeping peacefully.
“Will you wake her for her medicine?” whispered Lily.
“Of course,” replied her cousin, moving to the bedside, where she shook
the old woman gently and softly called her name.
“Aunt Julia! Aunt Julia!” she called again and again. But there was no
answer as Mrs. Tolliver’s powerful figure bent over the bed. She felt
for the weakened pulse and then passed her vigorous hand over the face,
so white now and so transparent. Then she stood back and regarded the
bony, relentless old countenance and Lily drew nearer until her warm
full breasts brushed her cousin’s shoulder. The hands of the two women
clasped silently in a sort of fearful awe.
“She has gone away,” said Mrs. Tolliver, “in her sleep. It could not
have been better.”
And together the two women set about preparing Julia Shane for the
grave, forgetful of all the passionate talk of an hour before. In the
face of death, it counted for nothing.