Page:Possession (1926).pdf/509

 eyes. The Town, the black Mills, the Callendars, poor Clarence and the green-eyed Mr. Wyck. . . all these were forgotten. She was freed at last of all those old bonds, possessed now only by the beauty of the sounds she made. But, on the high pinnacle she had built with her own hands, she was alone. . . the woman whom Fergus had seen for a moment in a queer flash of clairvoyance on the night of his death.

She was playing thus when Lily came in quietly to stand listening in the shadows. . ..

The white villa, as old Madame Gigon had said, was not in Nice proper but in Cimiez, high on the slope overlooking Villefranche and the Bay of Angels. To approach it one was forced to descend from the carriage and climb past the statue of Queen Victoria, carved in the manner of Thorvaldsen with an umbrella in one hand and a reticule in the other—a reticule which Gramp believed was the one (embroidered with a poodle-dog in gold thread) which she had carried on the visit that was designed to make Eugènie respectable in the eyes of royal Europe. Beyond the Queen, there was a little flight of steps leading to a gateway covered with bougainvillea and shaded by an ancient tree of mimosa.

It was up this exotic path that the little procession made its way two days after Lily bade it farewell in the Gare de Lyon. Jean went ahead and after him Hattie, with her grandson in her arms, followed closely by The Everlasting, the gigantic, abundant Frédegonde and her child. At the approach of evening they were settled and under the mimosa tree Hattie sat by the side of little Fergus, triumphant and content, singing him to sleep as she had once done with her own Fergus. Nothing had changed, for in Hattie there was a quality of the eternal concerned only with love and birth and death.

While she sang thus in a low voice, The Everlasting, with a great book under his arm, appeared in the doorway and moved toward her. By the side of the baby he halted for a moment,