Upstairs Lily made her way, after a toilette which occupied two hours,
to the room of Madame Gigon. It was, amid the elegance of the house, a
black-sheep of a room, its walls covered with books, its corners
cluttered with broken fragments of Gothic saints and virgins, the sole
legacy of the distant and obscure M. Gigon, curator at the Cluny Museum.
In the center stood a table covered with dark red rep, heavily
embroidered and cluttered with inkpots, pens and all the paraphernalia
of writing. Bits of faded brocade ornamented the wall save for a space
opposite the door where hung an immense engraving of the First Napoleon,
dominating a smaller portrait of Napoleon the Little in all the glory of
his mustaches and imperial. An engraving of the Eugènie by Winterhalter
stood over the washstand, a convenience to which Madame Gigon clung even
after Lily’s installation of the most elaborate American plumbing.
Madame Gigon huddled like a benevolent old witch among the bedclothes of
her diminutive bed. At the foot, in a bright patch of sunlight, lay
Criquette and Michou amiably close to each other and both quite stuffed
with toasted rolls and hot chocolate.
Lily came in looking fresh and radiant in a severe suit and smart hat.
They exchanged greetings.
“How are you this morning, Tante Louise?” she inquired of the old woman.
“Not so well ... not so well. I slept badly. The pain in my hip.”
Lily went and sat on the bed, taking the old woman’s hand which she
caressed as she felt her pulse.
“You have everything you want?” she inquired.
“Oui ... everything.” There was a little pause and Madame Gigon peered
at her with dim eyes. “I’ve been thinking how lucky I am.”
Lily smiled.
“I mean that I’m not left poor and alone. You’ve been good to me.”
Lily’s smile expanded into a laugh. “Nonsense.... Nonsense. It’s given
me enough pleasure....”
“It seems like the hand of God,” said the old woman very piously.
“It may be,” said Lily. “Mees Ellen has been telling me it’s the hand of
man.”
And Madame Gigon, not having heard the talk on the terrace, was puzzled.
Secretly she disapproved Mees Ellen’s lack of piety.
“Mees Ellen plays well this morning ... beautifully,” said Madame Gigon.
“She is an artist ... a true artist. Will you ask her a favor?”
Lily nodded.
“Will you ask her to play something of Offenbach? I’ve been hungry for
it.” She looked feeble and appealing somewhat confused by violence of
the life with which she found herself surrounded since the advent of
Mees Ellen and the grown-up Jean.
“Of course,” said Lily.
“And one more thing,” said Madame Gigon. “This I must ask of you.... I’m
too ill to go to Madame Blaise this afternoon. I want you to go and
explain why I have not come. Tell her I am too ill.” A slight frown
crossed Lily’s brow. Madame Gigon, with her dim eyes could not possibly
have seen it, yet she said, “Madame Blaise admires you.... She thinks
you are all that a woman should be ... a perfect woman.”
If Lily had felt any genuine hesitation, the faint flattery destroyed
it, for she replied, “I’ll go, certainly. I’m lunching out and I’ll go
there late and tell her.”
“Not too late.... She is easily offended,” said Madame Gigon. “You know
she is a little ...” She made a comic gesture indicating that Madame
Blaise was a little cracked.
Then Lily read to her for a time out of Faure’s History of Art which
undoubtedly bored her but gave Madame Gigon the greatest pleasure; and
at last she left for her mysterious lunch. A little while later there
arose from below stairs the tinkling melodies of the overture to Orpheus
in the Underworld. Somewhere among the piles of old music in the
drawing-room closet, Ellen had discovered the whole score and she played
it now in a wild good humor. Sometimes the music became actually noisy
in its triumphant violence. It was the playing of a woman who had
achieved a victory.