Part 20

They passed the summer at Germigny-l’Evec in the lodge on the terrace above the winding Marne. The little house at Houlgate kept its shutters up all through the hot months. It is true that the health of Madame Gigon was none too good. It is true too that she might have benefited by the sea air. Although Lily mentioned the migration once or twice as the summer advanced she did not insist upon it. Madame Gigon, it appeared, preferred the house where she had always passed her summers, and Lily was content to remain there as the weeks passed through June and into a hot and breathless July. It seemed that, for the first time, she was tired. Indolent by nature, she had reserves of energy which could be roused when the occasion arose. But it appeared that this occasion was not one of sufficient importance; so she remained quietly, reading, walking by the Marne; sometimes in the early morning when the weather was not too hot, she even rode one of the Baron’s horses along the paths of the wood on the opposite side of the river near Trilport.

For diversion the pair were visited by Jean who came romping down from St. Cyr for a brief holiday now and then, always looking handsome and behaving with the ferocity appropriate to a budding cavalryman. Ellen came too, but her visits tired her cousin, especially during the hot months. While she was there Lily pretended that she did not ride because Ellen made riding impossible for her. Ellen insisted upon riding at top speed. She searched for stone walls to jump. She even swam her horse through the Marne on one hot morning in July. Unlike Lily she made no effort to preserve her complexion. She became as tanned as an Indian and as hard as an athlete. Jean admired her enormously, and together they careered wildly across country; for Ellen sat her saddle lightly and as well as any man. Indeed she was as good as a boy for a companion. She even enjoyed the risqué barracks jokes which Jean told her. She listened to the ballads he sang, the bawdy ballads of the cavalry, old songs filled with the traditions of Napoleon’s army ... the same ballads which Lily sang to herself as she dressed for the last ball ever given at Cypress Hill.

Ellen could swear too, in English or in bad French. They became great friends. Lily saw them off in the mornings from her window, looking after them with an expression of mingled envy and regret in her dusky blue eyes. She must have envied the pair their youth. She was jealous of Ellen as she was always jealous of any one for whom Jean showed affection.

But an end came to the early morning excursions when Ellen in August sailed for New York to spend a month with her mother and father. They lived in a little house on Long Island; for Hattie Tolliver, since her children had become successful, no longer kept a rooming house in Manhattan.

“Pa is content now,” Ellen said. “He’s got a horse and a garden and chickens. That’s what he always wanted. Ma is too. But it’s different with her. She ought to have another complete family of children. She’s never gotten over being a mother. She wants us to stay with her always. She can’t bear having us grown up.”

It was true. The more successful her children became, the less Hattie Tolliver saw of them.

“It is a warning,” said Ellen, “never to be too fond of your children.” She laughed ironically. “And yet, if it hadn’t been for Ma, I don’t suppose I’d be where I am ... or Fergus or Robert either. She brought us up well. She made us ambitious.” And she concluded the speech with the remark that “it was a damned funny world anyway.” She had never seen any one who was content.

There had been a time, even a little while before, when she might have said that Lily was the supreme example of contentment, but that time seemed to have passed. Lily was clearly unhappy during that summer. She became more grave and quiet. She was content only when the Baron came down to stay for a week or two and rode with her through the mists of the early summer mornings. When he had gone again, the vague restlessness returned.

Madame Gigon grew to be more and more of a care; and added to the calamities, Criquette on short notice gave birth to a family of puppies of which it appeared the black and tan at the farm was the father. Somehow Madame Gigon took this as a betrayal on the part of the hitherto virginal Criquette. She complained of it as if Criquette had been her own daughter, as indeed she might well have been for the affection and care lavished upon her by the blind old woman. She succumbed completely to her arthritis and lay most of the day in a chair under the clipped linden trees, wearing an injured, fretful air when Lily was not by her side to talk or read to her. Indeed it appeared that between the riotous visits of Jean and Nellie a grayness had descended upon the lodge.

LXVII

It may have been that Madame Blaise played her part in the depression. After the night that Lily ran out of her house, she never saw the crazy old woman again, for a day or two later Madame Blaise, in a purple hat and a bright Venetian shawl, was led away on the promise of a wonderful adventure to a house in Versailles where well-to-do lunatics were cared for and allowed to indulge to the utmost their idiosyncrasies. Her guardian was none other than the handsome and distinguished M. de Cyon, who with his brother, a lawyer, looked after the old woman’s property. She seemed completely happy in the new establishment, so M. de Cyon reported, because she found there an elderly wine merchant who believed himself descended from Henri Quatre and Diane de Poitiers, and therefore the rightful heir to the French throne. Together they spent their days plotting intrigues and revolutions by which he was to be set upon the throne with Madame Blaise as his consort. So there was no opportunity for Lily to wring from the old woman any further information regarding the photograph of the handsome gentleman in the black beard. The photograph together with the hundreds of other pictures, was packed away in a cavernous storehouse in Montparnasse when the furniture was cleared out of the chalet in the enclosure near the Trocadero and it was let to an Englishwoman interested in art. Life, as old Julia Shane said, was after all no story book in which everything was revealed. Every man had secrets which he carried into the grave.

But before Madame Blaise was led away, she kept her threat and sent round to the house in the Rue Raynouard The Byzantine Empress and The Girl in the Hat. The pictures were left there by the driver of a battered fiacre who went off immediately. To Lily, the pictures had become objects of horror. She would not see them. She bade the housekeeper put them away in the top room of the house where she could not possibly find them. When they arrived she was still in bed, suffering from a wild headache that did not leave her for days after the experience with Madame Blaise.

“It was horrible,” she told Ellen. “More horrible than you can imagine, to see that old devil dancing before me like an omen ... a warning of old age. If you had seen her ... so like me in the pictures ... so like me even in the reality, like me as I might easily be some day. It was horrible ... horrible!” And she buried her face in her hands.

Ellen, as usual, consulted Madame Gigon.

“She is really ill, this time,” she said. “It isn’t that she’s just tired. She’s frightened by something. She’s much worse than she’s ever been before.”

And they sent for a physician, a great bearded man, recommended by Madame de Cyon, who diagnosed the case as a _crise de nerfs_ and bade her go at once to the lodge in the country. The servants remarked that Madame seemed ill and tired for the first time in her life.

After a time she appeared to forget the mysterious photograph. It was clear that her father was destined to remain, as he had always been, a solitary, fascinating, malevolent figure translated by some turn of circumstance from the intrigues of the old world into the frontier life of the new. What lay in the past--murder, disgrace, conspiracy--must remain hidden, the secret of the dead and of a mad old woman who in her youth and beauty had been his mistress at the very moment that his bride struggled in the school at St. Cloud to learn the tricks of a great lady. Out of all the mystery only one thing seemed clear--that Lily was his favorite child; and now the reason seemed clear enough. By some whim of Fate she was like The Girl in the Hat, the lovely creature who was now Madame Blaise.

So the _crise de nerfs_ persisted throughout the summer. Indeed there were times when it appeared that Lily was on the verge of a settled melancholia, times when she would walk in solitude for hours along the towpaths beneath the mottled limbs of the plane trees. Yet her beauty persisted. She might have been a goddess ... Ceres ... as she walked along the green path, bordered on one side by the Marne and on the other by waving fields of yellow grain.

As the weeks passed she suffered increasing annoyance through the persistent efforts of the Town to acquire the property at Cypress Hill. A dozen times a month letters arrived from Folsom and Jones, pressing letters that carried threats which Folsom and Jones passed along smoothly with all the suavity of true lawyers playing both ends against the middle. Indeed, from the tone of certain of the communications it appeared that they too, although they were Lily’s agents and paid by her, believed that the interests of the Town surmounted those of their client. Its growth, they wrote, was stupendous. It was rapidly becoming one of the greatest steel centers in the world. If she could only be induced to return for a visit, she would understand the anxiety of the Town council to acquire the holdings at Cypress Hill. Surely she could understand that while sentiment was a commendable thing, it had its place. One could be too sentimental about a situation. The price offered was excellent. (“But not so excellent as it will be in another five years,” thought Lily with a certain malice.) The house brought her no return. She only paid taxes on it. And so on, for page after page, letter after letter.

All this, no doubt, sounded reasonable enough, but Lily reading those letters aloud to Madame Gigon, who desired to be read aloud to no matter what the material, would murmur irritably, “Why the devil can’t they leave me in peace? Go back and visit that place? My God! What for?” And then sarcastically, “To see Eva Barr, I suppose. I’m sure I’m not interested in their prosperity.”

And she would write again that she had no intention of selling and that the more they annoyed her the less she was likely to alter her decision.

It may have been that she enjoyed the sense of power with which the possession of Cypress Hill endowed her ... a feature she had not realized until it was shown her by Ellen. It may have been that she was simply tired and a little perverse and ill-natured. And it was true that she had not the slightest interest in the money involved. Indeed she had no idea how rich she was. Each year she spent what she desired to spend, and never did she come to the end of her income. What more could she desire? What could she do with more money?

But it is also more than probable that somewhere far back in the dark recesses of her consciousness, there were memories which kindled as she grew older, new fires of resentment against the Mills and the Town and all the things they stood for ... memories of her mother’s open hatred for the Harrisons and Judge Weissman, memories of a terrible night when men and women were shot down under the dead trees of the park, memories of an heroic, unattainable figure, wounded and bloody, but undefeated ... a figure which doubtless grew in fascination as it receded into the past. It is true, too, that there is sometimes greater peace, even greater happiness, in renunciation than in fulfilment. What has never been a reality, may remain a fine dream. Krylenko had never been more than this.

And so the affair ran on until one evening in September Eustache, the farmer’s boy, brought back from Meaux a small envelope bearing the post mark of the Town and addressed in the scrawled, illiterate handwriting of old Hennery. It recounted briefly the end of the house of Cypress Hill. It had caught fire mysteriously in the night and before dawn nothing remained save a hole in the ground filled with the scorched and blackened fragments of fine old carpets, mirrors, jade, crystals, carved chests and old chairs, all the beautiful things which encumbered the site of the proposed railroad station.

The mulatto woman, Hennery wrote with difficulty and the most atrocious spelling, swore that she saw two men running away from the house after the fire began. The police, he added, had been able to find no trace of them.

And the following day Lily received a polite letter from Folsom and Jones giving her a brief account of the catastrophe. They also mentioned the story told by the mulatto woman. They believed, however, that it was simply the crazy imagining of a demented old woman.

“Perhaps now,” the letter concluded, “Miss Shane would desire to rid herself of a property that could no longer hold her even by ties of sentiment.”

LXVIII

Lily did not sell and for a time the letters of Folsom and Jones ceased to arrive regularly. Since all her property in the Town was sold save the site of the house at Cypress Hill, there remained no cause for correspondence. Her money she invested through the American banks in Paris. She heard nothing more of the Town until November when she returned to the city. The prospect of a winter in Paris appeared to revive her spirits, and she went, as usual, to hear Ellen play her first concert of the season. That year Lilli Barr played a new Poem with the Colonne Orchestra under the bâton of the elegant Gabriel Pierné. The performance was not a great success. There was too little sympathy between the scholarly soul of the conductor and the vigorous, barbaric temperament of the pianist. Yet it was Ellen who came off best, bearing all the laurels, with all the simpering critics trotting attendance. “Mlle. Barr,” they said, “has the perfect temperament for it ... the superb adjustment of soul and intellect indispensable to the interpretation of such febrile music. It is music which requires a certain coldness of brain, a perception delicate and piercing ... a thing of the nerves.” And so they ran on, wallowing in their delight for the _mot juste_, praising more extravagantly than was either honest or in good taste. One or two saw an opportunity in the praise of hitting a back handed slap at the conductor and his orchestra.

It was M. Galivant, critic of the Journal des Arts Modernes, who hit upon the phrases “febrile music” and “delicate perception.” He showed Lilli Barr the article in the salon after the concert, with the keys of the great piano barely cool from her hot fingers.

“Pish! Tosh!” she remarked to Lily who waited for her in the dressing room. “Did you see what Galivant has written? It’s too exquisite for me. To hear them talk, you’d think I took the veil for months at a time just to meditate what my music is all about. I know what it’s about and I don’t want praise that’s written before they hear me play, just because I help their modern music along. Nerves! Nerves! I haven’t got such things!”

Yet she was, as always after a concert, tense and nervous, filled with a terrible energy which would not let her sleep until dawn. To-night she wore a long tight gown of cloth of silver, without sleeves and girdled by a single chain of rhinestones. With her dark hair drawn tightly back, she resembled a fine greyhound--lean, muscular, quivering.

“At least they liked it,” said Lily, “judging from the applause.” She sat waiting in a long cloak of black velvet, held together with silver clasps.

There was a sudden knock at the door and Lily murmured “Come in.” It was the porter, a lean, sallow, man with a stoop and enormous black mustaches.

“There is a gentleman to see Madame l’artiste,” he said.

Ellen turned. “Who is it?”

The man grimaced. “How should I know? He says he knows you.”

A shadow of irritation crossed Ellen’s smooth brow. “If he wants to see me, tell him to send in his name.” And then to Lily as the porter withdrew, “You see what fame is. The porter doesn’t even know my name. He calls me Madame l’artiste ... Madame indeed! He hasn’t even bothered to read the bills.”

The fellow returned again, this time opening the door without the courtesy of a knock.

“His name, Madame, is ’arrisong.”

Ellen pursed her lips thoughtfully and struck a match on the sole of her slipper, holding the flame to the cigarette in her strong slim fingers.

“Harrison?... Harrison?” she repeated, holding the cigarette between her lips and the lighted match poised. “I don’t know any Harrison.... Tell him to come in.”

The stranger must have been waiting just outside the door, for at the word he stepped timidly inside. He was dressed in black and wore a derby hat set well on the back of his head. Over one arm hung an umbrella. He was rather sallow and macabre despite his plumpness. There was the faint air of an undertaker about him. He might have been any age.

As he advanced he smiled and, observing Lily, his countenance assumed an expression of surprise. Ellen gave no sign of recognition. It was Lily who stirred suddenly and stood up, her face glowing with a genuine spontaneous pleasure.

“Willie Harrison!” she cried. “Where have _you_ come from?”

At the sound of his name Ellen’s smooth brow wrinkled in a slight frown. “Willie Harrison,” she murmured, and then joined Lily in welcoming him.

For a moment he stood awkwardly regarding the two women. Then he said, “I came to your concert, Ellen.... I saw it advertised in the Herald. I knew you were Lilli Barr.” He chortled nervously. “Funny how famous you are now! Nobody ever would have thought it!”

The sight of Willie appeared suddenly to loosen all Ellen’s taut nerves. She sat down, leaned back in the chair, and laughed. “Yes. I fooled them, didn’t I?” she said. “I fooled them.” And a sort of grim satisfaction entered her voice.

Lily was smiling now, out of sheer pleasure at the sight of Willie. It amused her probably more than anything that could have happened to her at that moment.

“But what on earth are you doing in Paris?”

From the tone of her voice, it was clear that she regarded his presence as a sort of miracle.... That Willie Harrison should have had the energy to cross the Atlantic and wander about alone in Paris.

Willie sat down, rather stiffly, and told his story. He was with a Cook’s party. His tour included London, Paris, the château country and Switzerland. He was leaving shortly.

“It’s been a wonderful trip,” he remarked, his plump face all aglow. “I’d no idea how much country there was over here.”

“Yes,” said Ellen, “there’s a good deal, taking it all in all.” She said this with an undisguised air of patronizing him. It was she who was great now, she who held the whip hand. She was no longer an awkward girl in a home-made ball gown so unpretentious that men like Willie Harrison failed to notice her.

But Willie failed to understand. He was childishly excited over Paris. “It’s a great city!” he observed, fingering nervously the ruby clasp of his watch chain. “A great city!”

Lily stood up suddenly.

“Willie,” she said, “come home and have supper with us.” And turning to Ellen she added, “Paul will be waiting for us. He must be there already.” And to Willie, “Paul is Monsieur Schneidermann, a friend of Ellen’s and mine.”

Willie rose. “I don’t know,” he said timidly. “Maybe you aren’t prepared for me. Maybe I’d be in the way. I didn’t mean to force my way in on anything when I called. It was just for the sake of old times.”

Lily, moved toward the door trailing the magnificent cloak of black and silver. She thrust her arm through his. “Come along, Willie,” she said. “No nonsense. Why, we grew up together.”

And they went out, Ellen following them in her plum-colored wrap, to the motor which bore on its polished door the crest of the Baron.

Throughout the journey Willie kept poking his head in and out of the closed motor, drinking in the sights along the way ... the hushed, shadowy mass of the Madeleine, the warm glow before Maxims’, the ghostly spaces of the Place de la Concorde, the white palaces of the Champs Elysées. Ellen in her corner remained sulky and taciturn, smoking savagely. Lily talked merrily, pointing out from time to time sights which she deemed worthy of Willie’s appreciation. He seemed not to be listening.

“It’s a wonderful place,” he kept saying over and over again. “It’s a wonderful place.” And a kind of pathetic and beautiful awe crept into his thin voice. It seemed that he had no other words than “wonderful.” He kept repeating it again and again like a drunken man holding a conversation with himself.

At Numero Dix, Rue Raynouard, Willie underwent the experience of every stranger. He entered by the unpretentious door and found himself suddenly at the top of a long, amazing stairway which led down to a drawing-room all rosy with the glow of warm light. Half-way down the stairs candles burned in sconces against the dull paneling. From below drifted the faint sound of music ... a Debussy nocturne being played with caressing fingers in the shadowy, dim-lit spaces of the drawing-room.

“Paul is here,” observed Ellen and led the way down the long stairs.

Lily followed and close at her silver heels Willie Harrison, divested now of his derby and umbrella. Half-way down, he paused for a moment and Lily, conscious that he had ceased to follow her, waited too. As she turned she saw that he was listening. There was a strange blurred look in his pale eyes ... the look of one awaking from a long sleep.

“It’s beautiful,” he said reverently. “My God! It’s beautiful!” A kind of dignity seized him. He was no longer gauche and timid. He stared at Lily who stood with her back to a mirror, the black and silver cloak thrown carelessly back from her voluptuous white shoulders, her handsome head crowned with gold bronze hair. And then all at once the tears shone in his eyes. He leaned against the paneling.

“I understand now,” he said softly. “I understand ... everything. I know now how little I must have counted.... me and all the Mills together.”

And in Lily’s eyes there was mirrored another picture ... that of a vast resounding shed bright with flames and thick with the odor of soot and half-naked bodies ... Willie, eternally fingering the ruby clasp of his watch chain, herself turning the rings round and round on her slim fingers, and in the distance the white, stalwart body of a young Ukrainian steel worker ... a mere boy ... but beautiful. Krylenko was his name ... Krylenko ... Krylenko ... It was a long time ago, more than fourteen years. How time flew!

Lily’s dusky blue eyes darkened suddenly and the tears brimmed over. Perhaps it came to her then for the first time ... a sense of life, of a beautiful yet tragic unity, of a force which swept both of them along helplessly.

All at once she held her handkerchief, quite shamelessly, to her eyes. “We are beginning to be old, Willie,” she said softly. “Do you feel it too?”

And she turned and led the way downwards. The music had ceased and the voices of Ellen and Paul Schneidermann rose in dispute. They were arguing with a youthful fire over the merits of the new concerto.

“Here,” came Ellen’s voice. “This part. It is superb!” And then the sound of a wild, ecstatic sweep of music, terrifying and beautiful. “You understand the strings help a great deal. Part of it lies in the accompaniment.” And she began singing the accompaniment as she played.