Mrs. Tolliver shifted nervously and put down her coffee cup. “Really, Lily,” she said, “I don’t understand you. You talk as though being married was wrong.” Her manner, for the first time, had become completely cold and disapproving. She behaved as though at any moment she might rise and turn her back forever upon Lily.
“Oh, don’t think, Cousin Hattie, that people get married because they like being tied together by law. Most people get married because it is the only way they can live together and still be respected by the community. Most people would like to change now and then. It’s true. They’re like that in their deepest hearts ... far down where no one ever sees.”
She said this so passionately that Mrs. Tolliver was swept into silence. Books the good woman never read because there was no time; and even now with her children gone, she did not read because it was too late in life to develop a love for books. Immersed always in respectability, such thoughts as these had never occurred to her; and certainly no one had ever talked thus in her presence.
“I don’t understand,” she was able to articulate weakly after a long pause. “I don’t understand.” And then as if she saw opportunity escaping from her into spaces from which it might never be recovered, she said, “Tell me, Lily. Have you ever had any idea from where your father came?”
The faint glint of amusement vanished from her cousin’s eyes and her face grew thoughtful. “No. Nothing save that his mother was Spanish and his father Irish. He was born in Marseilles.”
“And where’s that?” asked Mrs. Tolliver, aglow with interest.
“It’s in the south of France. It’s a great city and an evil one ... one of the worst in the world. Mamma says we’ll never know the truth. I think perhaps she is right.”
After this the conversation returned to the minutiae of the household for a time and, at length, as the bronze clock struck three the two women rose and left the room to make their way upstairs to the chamber of the dying old woman. In the hall, Lily turned, “I’ve never talked like this to any one,” she said. “I’d never really thought it all out before. I’ve told you more than I’ve ever told any one, Cousin Hattie ... even my mother.”
Upstairs Mrs. Tolliver opened the door of the darkened room, Lily followed her on tiptoe. In the gray winter light, old Julia Shane lay back among the pillows sleeping peacefully.
“Will you wake her for her medicine?” whispered Lily.