Inside, the old priest at the sound of her knock looked up from his
reading and took off his spectacles.
“Come in,” he said, and Lily stepped uncertainly through the door, her
eyes blinded by the bright flame of the petrol light. M. Dupont,
regarding her with an expression of amazement, rose from his chair.
“It is I, Madame Shane,” said Lily. “The friend of Madame Gigon.”
“Ah, yes, I remember you well.”
Before this night there had passed between them occasional greetings
when he came to the lodge to play piquet with Madame Gigon, when he
passed Lily riding through the wood in the early morning.
“Won’t you sit down?” and then, “Why are you here? You know the Germans
may come any time now. Surely before morning.”
“As soon as that?” asked Lily indifferently. She had not thought of the
Germans. Perhaps they would come. It did not matter greatly.
The old man bent his head over the table and began to turn the pages of
the book. “Our soldiers are brave, Madame,” he said. “But there is too
much against them. They were not ready. In the end we will win.... For
the present....” He finished with a gesture implying that the matter lay
in the hands of the good God. He was a simple man, a peasant trained for
the priesthood by devout and adoring parents.
“It would be better if you would go away,” he said after a sudden pause.
“I imagine it will not be pleasant.”
Lily laughed softly. For a moment something of her old gay indifference
appeared to return, even a shade of the spirit with which she had met
another adventure years before in the park at Cypress Hill.
“There is Madame Gigon,” she said. M. Dupont again bent over the table
silently. It was a gesture of assent, of resignation, of agreement.
“Besides,” continued Lily, “I am not afraid. I think I may even enjoy
the experience.... I should like to know what war is like.” And then, as
if she feared that he did not understand her, she added, “Not, of
course, because I like war. Oh! not at all! But you understand what it
means for the men.... I have men in it.” She shivered a little and drew
the black cape more closely about her. “I think it might be easier for
the women if they could go into battle as well. It would be easier than
waiting ... at home ... alone.”
The man closed his book. “Madame is a beautiful woman,” he said, softly.
Again Lily smiled faintly. “Oh, I understand what you mean ...
perfectly.” A thoughtful expression entered her dark eyes. She seemed
suddenly to be listening to the faint and distant thunder. “Yes,” she
said with a sigh, “I understand. Fortunately I have no temptation to run
away. I could not go if I chose. Madame Gigon, you understand, has given
up her life to me.... It would be impossible to desert her now.”
She sat now with her back to the whitewashed wall of the little room;
her black cape and her red hair carried the quality of a beautiful
painting. All the color was gone from her face and beneath her eyes hung
dark circles which somehow increased the brilliance of her eyes and the
whiteness of her skin. She looked old but it was the oldness of beauty,
possessing a clear refinement and delicacy.
“She is a good woman ... Madame Gigon,” said the priest.
M. Dupont spoke in a low voice, respectful, scarcely audible, but the
words exerted upon his visitor an extraordinary effect. All at once she
leaned forward resting her elbows on the table. The cloak slipped to the
floor. She began to talk passionately with a kind of fierce melancholy
in her voice.
“Ah, she _is_ a good woman,” she said. “She has given her life to me.
She has lived with me for twenty years. She has been everything to me.
You understand ... a friend ... a companion ... even a mother.”
And then, without warning, she poured out the whole story of her life,
incident by incident, chapter by chapter, reserving nothing, disguising
nothing. Before the eyes of the astonished old priest she recreated the
house at Cypress Hill, the Mills, the Town, the figures of her bizarre
father, her cynical mother, the hysterical Irene, all the kaleidoscopic
picture of a wandering, aimless life. She told him of Jean. She even
related bit by bit the long tale of her love for the Baron. She told him
that in her heart she had even sinned for the sake of a common laborer
... Krylenko.
“And yet,” she said, “he was not exactly that. He was a great deal more.
He was, you understand, something of a martyr. He gave up everything for
his people. He would have given his life had it been necessary.... It
hurts me, even now, to think of him. He was a powerful man ... a good
man ... a noble man.”
It was of him that she talked for a long time, wildly, passionately
invoking him in her enthusiasm before the stricken eyes of the old
priest. He stood there for a long time in the bare, whitewashed room,
powerful, austere, suffering, as he had been on the night of the
slaughter in the park at Cypress Hill.
“He was a good man.... He still is,” she said. She talked breathlessly
with a bright exalted light in her eyes. “I have never told this to any
one.... There was no sin between us ... nothing unless to love deeply is
a sin.”
As if turned to stone, M. Dupont sat listening quietly. Only once did he
speak and that was when she mentioned the Baron. Then he stirred
uneasily and peered at her closely as if he suspected her of lying.
“Incredible!” he murmured to himself. “Incredible!” And after a little
pause. “Only God can know what lies in the darkness of men’s hearts.
Only God.... It is impossible to know.... It is impossible to know!”
But Lily swept past the interruption. The torrent of her revelations
flowed on. She talked eagerly, with a kind of wild delight; yet what she
said lacked the quality of a confession. She seemed to have no profound
consciousness of sin. She was even unrepentant. She told the story
breathlessly with a kind of wonder at herself, at the tragedy of her own
soul, that she loved so easily. Instead of confessing, she appeared to
be pouring out to the trembling old man secrets, too long confined,
which she found herself driven to reveal.
At last she drew to a conclusion. “You understand now,” she said, “why
to me the war is inexpressibly tragic. You understand what Madame Gigon
has been to me.”
She picked up the fallen cloak and, shivering, wrapped it about her and
sank back in the stiff little chair with a weary air of finality and
resignation. “You see, it is not only the war.... Madame Gigon is dying.
The war has taken everything. You understand I shall be alone ...
completely alone.”
M. Dupont made no reply. He kept his head bowed. He was repeating a
prayer as Irene had done in the old days. They prayed for Lily, who had
not been inside a church in more than seven years.
“I came to fetch you to her,” continued Lily, “She is dying now.... I am
certain she cannot live much longer.”
When the priest at last raised his head, it was to say, “Come. If she is
dying we must waste no time,” in so gentle a voice that the tears welled
in Lily’s eyes. She took out her handkerchief, already wet.
“I thought,” she said, “that I was through with weeping. I must have a
great many tears.” (Lily who never wept.)