Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/155

 And this led only to a "Why?" to which the old woman answered that she did not know except that Lily had said she wished to be herself and go her own way, that she was content and would not marry him even if he became president. "Beyond that, I do not know," she said. "That is where a mother does not know even her own daughter. I don't believe Lily knows herself. Can you tell why it is that Ellen must go on studying and studying, why she cannot help it? Can I know why Irene wants only to be left in peace to go her own way? No, we never really know any one."

All this swept over the head of Hattie Tolliver. She returned to one thing. "It would not have been a bad match. He is a senator now."

It had grown quite dark during their talk and from inside the barrier of the Mills the searchlights began to operate, at first furtively and in jerky fashion and then slowly with greater and greater deliberation, sweeping in gigantic arcs the sky and the squalid area of the Flats. A dozen times in their course the hard white beams swept the walls of the barren old house, penetrating even the room where Julia Shane lay slowly dying. The flashes of light came suddenly, bathing in an unearthly glow and with a dazzling clarity the walls and the furniture. At last, as the beams swept the face of the ormulu clock, Hattie Tolliver, rising, folded her pillow case and thrust it into the black bag she carried.

"I must go now," she said. "Charlie will be wanting his supper."

The old woman asked her to bend down while she kissed her. It was the first time she had ever made such a request and she passed over the extraordinary event by hastily begging her niece to draw the curtains.

"The lights make me nervous," she said. "I don't know why, but they are worse than the noise the Mills used to make."

And when this operation was completed she summoned her niece again to her side. "Would you like to see a picture of Lily's boy?"

Hattie Tolliver nodded.

"It is in the top drawer of the chiffonier. Will you fetch it to me?"