Besides it was impossible to flee with a sick old woman and no means of conveyance. She laughed again and said bitterly, “What do they think ... that I am a magician?”
Lying there in the deep grass, it must have occurred to her all at once that her whole life had been pillaged and destroyed because an Austrian archduke was shot in a little hole called Serajevo. Madame Gigon dying. Césaire and Jean on their way to destruction. Who remained? What remained? De Cyon, perhaps. No one else. No one in all the world. The years of her life come to an end like this ... that everything she loved, everything she cherished, might be swept away over-night like so much rubbish into a dustbin. As if she were no more than a poor forsaken flower vender or charwoman! What was money now? What were beautiful things? What was all her life?
And she flung herself down once more, sobbing wildly as she had sobbed another time in the old house at Cypress Hill, when all at once, she had sensed the tragedy of a whole lifetime, as if she stood in a vast plain surrounded only by loneliness.
At dusk she arose slowly and, from long habit put her hair in order, smoothed her dress, and set out upon her homeward journey, walking slowly, with feet from which all youth had gone. When she arrived at the lodge, the traces of her weeping had disappeared and she entered proudly and in silence. For a moment there came into her pale lovely face a fleeting likeness to her mother, a certain determination that was inseparable from the rugged countenance of the stoic Julia Shane.
The house was still because old Madame Gigon had slipped out of her bed and was lying asleep on the floor. When Lily attempted to rouse the old woman, she discovered that she was not sleeping at all but unconscious, and suddenly Lily too slipped to the floor, buried her face in her hands and wept noisily and without restraint. The sound of her sobbing penetrated the breathless garden and the distant empty rooms of the château, but there was no one to answer it. The only sound was the triumphant, ironic whistle of a steel locomotive, its belly hot with red flames, its nostrils breathing fire and smoke.
At last she lifted Madame Gigon into the bed by the window and, lying by the side of the unconscious old woman, she fell into a profound sleep.
LXXIII
IT was dark when she awoke and rose wearily to light a lamp. The first flame of the match illuminated the room. It revealed all the familiar furniture ... the chintz covered chairs, the bright curtains of toile de Juouy, the bowl of ghostly white phloxes by the window. Everything was the same save that Madame Gigon ... old Tante Louise ... lay unconscious upon the bed, and the house was so still that the silence was suffocating.
She went into the kitchen and prepared a mixture of egg, milk and brandy which she fed the old woman through a tube. She understood the care of Madame Gigon. The old woman had been like this before. Lily, herself, ate nothing, but took from the cupboard by the window a bottle of port and drank a brimming glass. And after a time she went outside to listen to the silence.
With her black cloak wrapped about her she sat there for a long time. The farm, the tiny inn, the houses of the village were black and silent. There hung in the atmosphere the ghostly feeling of a house suddenly deserted by its inhabitants, standing empty and alone. The mournfulness was overwhelming. After a time she lighted a cigarette and smoked it, holding the ember away from her and regarding it at a little distance as if the faint light in some way dissipated the loneliness.