"He was a cat's-paw, Lilly. Never believe otherwise. My boy was caught and trapped in the filthy cesspool of politics. There are men in this city—men whom I named at the trial, all the good it did me, living and prospering for doing worse than my boy died for. You wouldn't know of my boy, Lilly; you were too young then. The whole country knew him, eleven years ago. Lon Elaine. It's easier Blair; no questions asked. It was the beginning of a cleanup that my boy blazed the way for. He went to the gallows, Lilly—my boy—"
"No! No!"
"He died a gunman. Thank God his child was born dead. But he lies in my heart, Lilly like a saint washed clean. He sinned for love, and because stronger forces than he wanted him for a tool. May every man on his jury live to carry that truth to his grave. He killed in self-defense and he sinned for love. I'll exonerate him in a play, yet! I will! I'll tell them! I'll tell them!"
Told without hysteria, her tale had almost a droning quality on the twilight. She was grim in her tragedy, and her lips were as twisted and dried as paint tubes, yet Lilly crept closer, laying her cheek rather timidly against the corduroyed one.
"Ida Blair," she said. "I see now. 'The Web'! Oh—Ida Blair."
They fell silent, the two of them, dry-eyed, cheek to cheek, drowning back into a long twilight that finally blackened.
"I don't know why I've told you all this. It's been ten years since I've talked it. But your telling me that you threw it all over—that little home out there, and a man that was driving down deeply the stakes of his home—threw it over because the black spot from his collar button made you feel hysterical—Oh, I tell you there is a grin through the scheme of things. A laugh. What old man Metz used to call a belly laugh."
Chin cupped in hand, Lilly stared out into a back yard that was filled with the tulle of winding mist, the lighted rear windows of the houses opposite blurry, as if seen through tears.
"Just the same," she said, her lips in the straight line peculiar to this not infrequent reiteration, "I'd do the same if I had it to do over again."
"How do you know that some day your child is not going to turn upon you with the bitterest reproaches?"