She made no mention of this letter to Lily, but before she left the
house late the same afternoon she went to Lily’s room, a thing which she
had never done before. She found her sister lying on the bed in her
darkened room.
“What is it, Irene?”
Irene standing in the doorway, hesitated for an instant.
“Nothing,” she said presently. “I just stopped to see if you were all
right.” Again there was a little pause. “You aren’t afraid ... alone
here in the evenings, are you?”
Out of the darkness came the sound of Lily’s laughter.
“Afraid? Lord, no! What is there to be afraid of? I’m all right.” And
Irene went away, down the long drive into Halsted street which lay in
thick blackness because the strikers had cut the wires of the street
lights.
On the same evening Lily had dinner on a lacquer table before the fire
in the drawing-room. She ate languidly, leaning back in her rosewood
armchair, dividing her attention between the food and the pages of Henri
Bordeaux. Save for a chair or two and the great piano, the room was
still in camphor, the furniture swathed in linen coverings, the Aubusson
carpet rolled up in its corner. Dawdling between the food and the book,
she managed to consume an hour and a half before she finished her coffee
and cigarette. Despite the aspect of the room there was something
pleasant about it, a certain indefinable warmth and sense of space which
the library lacked utterly.
The business of the will was virtually settled. She had announced her
intention of leaving within a day or two. Two of her bags were already
packed. One of them she had not troubled herself to unpack because she
had not the faintest need of clothes unless she wished to dress each
night for her lonely dinner as if she expected a dozen guests. And being
indolent she preferred to lounge about comfortably in the black kimono
embroidered in silver with a design of wistaria. Yet in her lounging
there was nothing of sloppiness. She was too much a woman of taste. She
was comfortable; but she was trim and smart, from her bronze hair so
well done, to the end of her neat silver-slippered toe.
When she had finished her cigarette she rose and went to the piano where
she played for a long time, rather sentimentally and without her usual
ecstatic dash. She played as if a yearning sadness had descended upon
her. It may have been the thought of quitting the old house which had
come to the end of the road. In another week its only occupants would be
Sarah and Hennery. The others would have vanished.... Irene, Lily, even
the black servants. There was no such thing as age or tradition. The
Town had no time for such things. There was no longer room for Cypress
Hill. It stood in the way of progress. The Town council was eager to buy
and destroy it in order to raise on its site a new railway station, more
vast and pretentious than any in the state.
It may have been this which made her sad.
Certainly her mood drove her to the depths, for she played such music as
the Liebesträume and a pair of sentimental German waltzes. And gradually
she played more and more softly until at length her hands slipped from
the keyboard to her lap and she sat with bowed head regarding the pink
tips of her polished finger-nails.
The curtains were drawn across the windows so that no sound penetrated
from the outside. In the grate the fire of cannel coal crackled softly
and new flames leapt up.
Presently she returned to her chair and novel, but she did not read. She
remained staring into the fire in the same distracted fashion.