REBECCA.”

* * * * *

The note troubled her, so that when Lily rose, and murmuring something,

went into the house to dress, Ellen took no notice of her but got up and

walked, in her slim black riding habit with the skirt pinned high (she

did not ride astride, because she thought it ugly) down the steps into

the garden.

If Rebecca failed her now, either through Aunt Lina or otherwise, she

felt that she would not have courage to go on. She would kill herself

because there would be nothing left. She fancied the humiliation of

playing before row upon row of empty seats. If fate played her such a

dirty trick, she would put herself out of fate’s way. She was sick to

death of being buffeted about, this way and that, achieving neither

success nor happiness.

Angrily she beat her skirt with her riding crop. If Schneidermann went

to London, it would only put her hopelessly in his debt. She might have

to marry him out of gratitude, and she wanted no more weak husbands to

clutter up her life.

And then this business of Wyck turning up suddenly as a lodger in her

mother’s house! It could be no one else; her mother’s description fitted

him too perfectly ... _a man whose family had been rich once, who worked

with an electrical company, who talked a great deal of past splendors_.

He had reappeared, armed with her secret. She could fancy her mother

caring for him, making him comfortable, giving him all the attentions he

yearned for and never received in a world which kicked him about. She

could trust Fergus, but Mr. Wyck was nasty, feminine. Still he had not

betrayed his acquaintance either with her or poor Clarence. If he had

done that, her mother would have spoken of it in her letter.... A friend

of one of Hattie’s children would be like a child of her own. It may

have been that he felt as guilty as she herself felt; if that were true,

he would not be likely to betray her. She thought of his shifting green

eyes, his mincing manner and his habit of talking perpetually of the

past. He was a worm ... something one might find on lifting a stone!

Twice she had made the round of the garden, indifferent now in the

midst of her own worries to the nearness of the guilty pavilion, when

she saw Augustine, the maid, coming toward her with a card. For some

reason, she was overcome by a sudden feeling that this bit of paper

which the red-faced Breton girl held in her hand was of immense

importance. She found herself hurrying forward to meet her. She found

herself reading the name and then, looking up, she saw in one of the

tall windows that opened on the terrace, the figure of Sabine Cane ...

Sabine Callendar ... standing in the brilliant sunlight, dressed all in

gray, superbly, with a gray veil that fell over her shoulders ... the

same Sabine, poised, indifferent, striking. Nothing had changed save

that she looked old, surprisingly so considering the perfection of her

make-up.

The call must indeed be important, since Sabine had followed Augustine

straight into the garden.

* * * * *

They sat in the long drawing-room where they might look out over the

sun-drenched garden with its blue flame of irises lighting up the

expanses of gray stone.

“What a lovely house!” remarked Sabine as she drew off her gloves. “I

suppose it is your cousin’s.”

The speech was stiff, constrained by the vague shadow of hostility that

had enveloped them, almost at once--an intangible thing, which it is

probable both women felt but failed to understand, because each fancied

herself too intelligent to be the victim of jealousy.

“Yes. It belongs to Madame Shane.”

Sabine laughed. “It’s the sort of house I would like. You see we live,

when we’re in Paris, in a sort of World’s Fair exhibit in the Avenue du

Bois.”

It surprised Ellen to find that a single, small word such as “we” could

cause her any feeling. She found too that the presence of Sabine had

turned back the years; she was watching her now, as she might watch an

enemy, as she had watched her in the days when she had gone, a young

and awkward girl, to the big house on Murray Hill. She had not “watched”

people in quite this fashion for a long time now.

She felt herself quite a match for the worldly woman who sat, carefully,

with the brilliant light at her back; she could no longer be taken at a

disadvantage.

“It is strange,” said Ellen, “that we have not met before.”

Sabine’s scarlet lips curved in a bright hard smile. “I saw you once, in

the distance, at the Ritz. It was nearly four years ago. You went out

before I was able to speak to you.” She coughed, nervously. “So I lost

trace of you. I was sorry, because I was interested to know how you had

come to Paris so soon.”

“I just came. There was nothing strange about it.”

“But I thought there were so many difficulties.”

“They happened to disappear very quickly ... through a series of

chances.”

The old Sabine, the one Ellen had known so well, the Sabine who was

always prying into the affairs of other people, showed itself now, yet

there was a difference, impossible to define save that now her interest

seemed to be more personal, more intense, not so cold and abstract.

“You see,” she continued, “Mrs. Callendar found your address through

Madame de Cyon.”

(So Mrs. Callendar had known all along that she was in Paris.)

“I have not seen her,” said Ellen, “since I left New York.”

For a moment, the shadow of a mocking, bitter smile crossed Sabine’s

face.

“She is just the same.... Just as vigorous, just as determined.”

“I should like to see her again.... Perhaps she will be interested to

know that I make my début in London in June.”

At this, even the indifferent mask of Sabine betrayed a flicker of

surprise. “So you’re still working at your music.”

Ellen laughed. “Of course. What did you think?”

“But it has taken a long time.”

“Naturally. It meant work. I was taking no chances.”

So they talked, rather stupidly, fencing with each other, making no

progress. It was clear that Sabine had not called at such an hour simply

through politeness, nor was it likely that she called because she sought

to renew an old acquaintance. Both women were too intelligent to have

misunderstood each other. As for Ellen, she found herself excited by the

consciousness of a shadowy struggle; there was a devilish satisfaction

in finding herself with an advantage over so experienced a woman as

Sabine. The visitor wanted something; beneath all her indifference, she

was clearly excited and nervous. Once Ellen caught her pulling a button

from her gray gloves.

It occurred to her suddenly to be bold and strike at what might be the

root of the matter.

“How is Mr. Callendar?” she asked, amused at the thought of speaking

thus of him.

“He is well,” Sabine replied with a terrible quietness, and then, after

a little pause. “Do you see him frequently?”

For an instant Ellen was very near to losing her temper, a thing she

might easily have done now that she found herself a match for Sabine.

But she did not; instead she waited and said, “What do you mean? How

could I have seen him? I have not seen him since I came to Paris.”

The answer was so honest, so obviously true, that even Sabine was

discountenanced. She looked at the floor and murmured, “I didn’t know. I

thought perhaps you had.”

“Why didn’t you ask him?” suggested Ellen.

“It would have done no good. Besides he would have thought me jealous.”

There was something pitiful in the terrible control exercised by the

woman. Even Ellen forgot suddenly the strange sense of enmity. She kept

silent and it was Sabine who spoke.

“Besides,” she said. “You never spoke of him or of Mrs. Callendar to

Madame de Cyon. That made me think you might have seen him.”

“It would only have made complications,” replied Ellen. “If you knew

Madame de Cyon, you would understand.” Her voice suddenly grew cold.

“Did you think,” she asked, “that he had brought me to Paris? Did you

think I was carrying on an affair ... secretly?”

The more they talked, the clearer grew the likeness of the one to the

other. They were in both the same restraint, the same watchfulness, the

same determination that the world should not hurt her.

When Ellen looked at her visitor again she saw that she had been

weeping, silently; she was putting a handkerchief, stealthily, to her

eyes, ashamed clearly that she should have so revealed her unhappiness.

“I have been wretched all day,” she said. “You see little Thérèse and I

... that’s my little daughter, she’s three years old ... found a

starving kitten yesterday. It had fleas and we washed it with carbolic

soap. It’s sick. I’m afraid we’ve hurt it and it may die. Little Thérèse

is very fond of it.”

Then, quite silently, the tears began to stream down her face. It was

the only sign she gave. She did not sob. Her hands did not tremble. She

simply wept.

It was a terrible sight, because Ellen understood plainly that the

kitten had nothing to do with the tears.

* * * * *

Presently, after she had had a glass of port, Sabine took Ellen’s hand

and murmured, “You must forgive me. I was spiteful and rude ... and

unjust too. But you see there were so many things. You knew my husband a

little, so you can guess perhaps something of the story.”

Then pressing her hand to her head, she was silent for a time. “You see

I have had a child ... a daughter ... and I can never have another. Mrs.

Callendar and Richard want a son ... I know that.... The old woman

wants some one to care for all her money. You see, he’s no good at it.

They’ve never said anything, but I know she wants me to divorce him so

that he can marry again. I can feel all their will working against

me.... It’s horrible. It’s sinister. It’s always concealed by smiles and

smooth words. I can’t do that.... I can’t.... Not yet ... perhaps some

day.” The tears began to flow again, for even Sabine could not keep from

pitying herself. “And I know there are other women.... I think I am a

little mad to behave in this fashion ... to come to you, like this.” She

coughed nervously. “You were always so strong and so independent. So was

I ... once.”

She rose and dried her eyes and powdered her nose. “Now,” she said, “I

look presentable again.” Then she took Ellen’s hand and murmured:

“You’ll forgive me, won’t you? I’ve been a fool.... And you’ll say

nothing?”

Ellen moved with her toward the long stairs that led up to the door

opening upon the street. Together they climbed them, quite close to each

other in the friendliest fashion, and from the doorway Ellen watched

her, composed once more, chic and worldly, step into her tiny motor and

drive away.

As she turned from the door and descended the stairs, it occurred to her

suddenly that save for chance she might have been the unhappy woman

entering the motor. It was amazing what Callendar had done to Sabine.

Last night she had been envying her, and to-day Sabine had come to her

almost, one might say, seeking help.... Sabine who had been so cold and

impregnable and aloof.

And in a strange way, in spite even of Sabine’s insults, she had given

her sympathy. It was as if they had, tacitly, become allies in the

battle against him.

45

Aunt Lina did not interrupt the plans, for she spent only two weeks in

Paris and left declaring that it had changed for the worse during the

twenty-five years that had passed since her last visit. The new houses

looked just like the houses in Vienna; her friends had died or gone

away; in fact she could see no reason at all for ever having left

Vienna. So Rebecca went over to London to make the arrangements and

Schneidermann did what he could in Paris.

Between them, they set in motion a caravan of gossip and small talk

which found its way through devious channels into Berlin, Munich,

London, Rome and New York. Sometimes news of this new pianist (who was

so remarkable) was carried by word of mouth; sometimes it was relayed by

letter to the members of Rebecca’s tribe scattered across the face of

Europe. After a conference in the Rue Raynouard, attended by Lily,

Schneidermann, Rebecca, Ellen and César (who took part resentfully until

it occurred to him that if Ellen could be made famous he might be free

of her forever), a name was chosen. “Ellen Tolliver” was commonplace and

carried no implications that were not solid, respectable and bourgeois.

The name which emerged after three hours of frantic argument was “Lilli

Barr,” a name compounded out of Lily’s name and the name of old Jacob

Barr ... a name that might be anything, a name that had a slight turn

toward the Hungarian, a name that was abundant of implications. A

musician called Lilli Barr could have no past that was not glamorous and

romantic; and between them, Rebecca and Schneidermann proceeded to

invent just such a past by creating out of nothing the most amazing

tales.

In all the hubbub and preparations Sabine was forgotten, but the memory

of Callendar remained. Ellen, now Lilli Barr, prayed that he might

reappear for just one night.

The success of the concert in Wigmore Street is now a part of musical

history. In London Rebecca drafted the services of an immense family

connection; fully one half the seats were taken by Bettelheims,

Rakonitzes, Czelovars, Schönbergs and Abramsons; there were even one or

two Rothschilds present in a box. Schneidermann recruited another group,

less numerous but more cynical and hostile, from the musical world.

Pictures of Lilli Barr (who photographed splendidly) appeared in the

illustrated papers, and the critics, instead of sending their second or

third assistants to the concert, appeared in person.

It was all admirably managed. The shrewd brain of Rebecca forgot

nothing. In those busy days the friendly little Jewess with the red hair

and ferrety eyes stood forth for the first time in all the glory of her

rôle as impresaria; and when the concert was over and the notices read,

it was clear that she had been right in the instinct that had led her to

speak to the pale, disagreeable girl in black who had paced the deck of

the _City of Paris_ five years before. Rebecca had loved music always;

she had wished earnestly all her life to be an artist of one sort or

another; she had spent years in rushing madly from one capital to

another in search of diversion or occupation, and now she was settled.

She had found her place as “the exploitress,” as Schneidermann expressed

it, of Lilli Barr, the new star upon the horizon of music.

But there was one thing of which Rebecca knew nothing and which Ellen

chose to keep a secret because it could have been of interest to none

save herself. After she had played the first group on her program and

returned to the platform in response to the applause, she caught a

glimpse among the shadows in the back of the hall of a dark, familiar

face. It astonished her that she should have noticed it at all, and once

she had seen it, the rest of the audience failed to trouble her; it no

longer had any existence. From that moment there had been a strange lift

apparent in her music, a wild sort of ecstasy which carried every one

with it. She played for one person. Among the shadows at the back of

the hall Callendar sat, listening, his dark sleek head bent forward a

little. He was alone.

It was Rebecca who saw to it, in the months which followed, that Ellen

was seen at the proper places, dressed with just a touch of fantasy so

that she might attract notice and yet not be taken for a demi-mondaine;

it was Rebecca who saw to it that Ellen’s fierce dark beauty (so

confident now in her triumph so arrogant) was set down for posterity by

the most fashionable portrait painter in England, a man with a romantic

reputation whom the gullible public would in time connect with Lilli

Barr in some hazy intrigue which had never existed. It was Rebecca who

saw to it that Ellen was photographed beside this composer and that one,

and that the photographs, skilfully made with an eye to public

attention, fell into proper hands and traveled to America where they

looked forth from the pages of the Sunday supplements into the startled,

proud faces of Charles and Hattie Tolliver and Fergus and Robert. They

even found their way, after the rest of the family had exhausted the

possibilities of the papers, into the cell of Gramp Tolliver who

chuckled with wicked satisfaction over the spectacle of the ruthless

granddaughter who had, after all, escaped.

And they found their way back to the Town where Mrs. Herman Biggs (née

Seton and now the mother of three children) clipped them and showed them

to the neighbors and to her brother Jimmy, a spindly, nervous youth of

nineteen, who in his childhood had been honored more than once by cuffs

from the hands of Lilli Barr which the newspapers said (via Miss

Schönberg) were insured for one hundred thousand dollars.

In her boarding house, Cousin Eva Barr, last of the family, dominated

the greasy meals for more than a week by the stories of the childhood of

Lilli Barr. Under the spell of the reflected glamour, she forgot even

the charities she administered so grimly, and spent most of her day at

meetings and walking along streets where she would be likely to

encounter people who would ask about her cousin. For in all the

excitement, it seemed that in some way she herself had at last escaped

the tradition that made a vigorous, unmarried woman into a grim,

forbidding dreadnought.

Miss Ogilvie too shared the triumph though in a different fashion. It

was she, after all, who had discovered Lilli Barr; but it was not this

which warmed her fluttering heart so much as the old secret of the

missing five hours, which even now she shared with no one. It was Miss

Ogilvie--poor, timid, Miss Ogilvie--trapped like Cousin Eva Barr in the

tradition of an earlier generation, who had helped this Lilli Barr to

escape. And in her thoughts (she being a sentimental creature and

knowing nothing of the truth) the little parlor took on a new glow of

romance and glamour. At times, when her secret seemed almost too

difficult to keep, she fancied that some day, after she herself was

dead, they might place on the front of her house a little tablet with an

inscription which read, “It was from this house on the Fifth of January,

1903, that Lilli Barr (then Ellen Tolliver) eloped ... etc. etc.”

* * * * *

So, in the first years of her fame, Ellen remained a little dazed by her

success. She moved, terrified always on the eve of a concert, going

between concerts her hard-working, secretive way, so that there grew up

about her, in addition to all Rebecca’s marvelous lies, a legend of

mystery. Few people knew her or anything at all of her real life. There

were only the gaudy stories of Rebecca’s fabrication which people

believed and yet did not believe because there were so many of them and

they were all so conflicting. In place of the old coldness and

restraint, which melted only when Ellen’s fingers touched the keyboard

of a Bechstein or a Steinway, Rebecca managed to create such a sense of

splendor and unmorality that presently the newspapers, as old Sanson had

done long ago, came to speak of her as a second Teresa Carreño.

She caught too from Rebecca something of the latter’s contagious sense

of showmanship and came to understand presently that if one wished to be

sensationally successful it was necessary not only to be a fine musician

but something of a charlatan as well. She learned not simply to walk out

upon the platform; she made an entrance. In Paris, where Rebecca managed

to buy up most of the press, she had a great following. Women came to

the concerts for no other reason than to see her clothes and to study

the youthful perfection of her figure.

Success and triumph flared up in her path in whatever direction she

turned, yet there were times when the old doubts, the old self-reproach,

assailed her bitterly.

One night, as she left the Salle Gaveau after a concert, and stood

waiting with Rebecca for Schneidermann’s motor to come up, the sight of

an _affiche_ bearing the name LILLI BARR in great letters filled her

with a kind of terror. Silently she gazed at it, fascinated by the name

and the program in small letters beneath it ... Bach, Schumann,

Moussorgsky, Chopin, Debussy ... all the great names dwarfed beneath the

gigantic LILLI BARR. She knew that on the sidewalk, almost within arm’s

length of her, there stood students, hungry and a little threadbare, who

waited by the door to catch a glimpse of her as she left the hall. She

knew that this Lilli Barr, whose name was set forth in letters so

gigantic, had every reason to be content. Lilli Barr ... Lilli Barr....

She stared at the name with a curious sensation of strangeness, of

detachment. Lilli Barr was herself now, and Ellen Tolliver was dead,

swallowed up by a fantastic creature whom Rebecca and Schneidermann

between them had created. To the world Ellen Tolliver had no existence;

she had never lived at all, and she had now to play a rôle--to put on a

false face--that the world might not discover it had been deceived. She

was still playing the mountebank, the charlatan, as she had done in the

drawing-room on Murray Hill behind a painted screen with a Russian tenor

and a Javanese dancer. For a moment she hated Lilli Barr with a

passionate hatred. She had lost possession forever of Ellen Tolliver. In

the midst of her pride there had always been the grain of humility,

fiercely hidden from the world, which made her in spite of everything an

artist.

The voice of Rebecca, shrewd and sleek with her success as an

“exploitress,” sounded in her ear.

“Here’s the motor.... We’ll be late and the others will have arrived

without you.” (Always hustling ... Rebecca ... always pushing from one

thing to another.)

César, for all his hopes, had not yet lost her. At that very moment the

house in the Rue Raynouard was filled with people whom Schneidermann and

Rebecca had called in ... actresses, writers, rich bankers with a fancy

for art, musicians, perhaps even a demi-mondaine or two ... all the rag,

tag and bobtail gathered from a dozen cities of Europe. What was she

doing among them? She? Ellen Tolliver? Had she lost possession of

herself?--that precious self she had guarded always with such secrecy?

It was not Ellen Tolliver who was going to this noisy party. It was

Lilli Barr, a creature who had been made out of nothing. Ellen Tolliver

would have gone to her room and wept a little over her loneliness.

The voice of Rebecca again....

“Ravel is coming to-night. He wants to speak with you about the new

suite he has done.... It is important. Be nice to him.”

It was all a long way from Walker’s Pond.

* * * * *

For two years she lived, thus, almost in public, sustained always by the

glorious vitality descended to her from Hattie Tolliver and guided by

Rebecca who allowed her to miss no opportunity. She was tireless. She

appeared everywhere. Yet there was a remoteness about her which none

penetrated, save perhaps Callendar whose dark face appeared now and then

in the back of some concert hall, now in Paris, now in London, now in

Rome, wherever his path chanced to cross that of Lilli Barr. Sometimes

as she came upon the stage she caught a fleeting glimpse of him,

watching her as he had watched on that first awful evening in Wigmore

Street, when so much had hung in the balance. He was always alone.

During the second summer she set out with Rebecca to visit Vienna and

exploit Aunt Lina and her friends, and to play in Salzburg; but they

never arrived, for on the day they left Paris the Archduke Ferdinand was

shot in Serajevo.

On the same day Fergus sailed for London.

46

It was Fergus who first called Gramp The Everlasting. The name was not

original; he found it in one of the seed catalogues which his father

brought into the apartment; for Charles Tolliver, shut up all day in a

government office and all night in a city flat, led vicariously a life

which in happier times had been a reality. The living room was cluttered

with the catalogues of gardening houses and journals which dealt with

agriculture, stock breeding and horses. The outward life of the gentle

man was scarcely more than an illusion; a man with Charles Tolliver’s

face and dressed in Charles Tolliver’s clothes lived at an address in

the east Seventies of New York City; the same man worked at the Customs

House, eating his lunch modestly in one of the little restaurants where

Clarence and Mr. Wyck had once taken their gloomy meals. But the real

Charles Tolliver was not to be found in any of these places. He lived

perpetually among the farms of a county in the Midlands, or in the hotel

bars and parlors of the Town, talking endlessly of the Grand Circuit

races. And sometimes he was to be found seated with a fishing rod on the

banks of a clear stream a thousand miles from the greasy current of the

North River. When he was not in such places, he could be found among the

catalogues which displayed gay colored pictures of gigantic beets and

ears of sweet corn, or in the pages of journals which had splendid

pictures of prize cows and great herds of cattle grazing knee deep in

alfalfa. Sometimes he found pictures of his old friend Judge Wilkins’

prize shorthorns and on such occasions he grew sentimental and talked of

the county as an old man talks of the love affairs of his youth. One

would have thought that the triumph of each new blue ribbon won by Judge

Wilkins’ prize bull, Herkimer Sextant, was a personal triumph of Charles

Tolliver. The city had for him no reality; it was a dreary episode, a

nightmare from which he would in time awake as he awaked reluctantly

from the pleasant dreams he had when, carefully tucked in on the divan

by Hattie’s capable hand, he escaped for a little while from the

ugliness of the hard, unreal city. Since he had come from the Town, the

habit of sleep had grown upon him: it was a drug ... hashish or opium.

It was in one of his garden catalogues that Fergus found the name.

Seizing the booklet in hilarious triumph, he bore it to his mother and,

holding it open, he showed her a large picture in color of a gigantic

raspberry advertised as bearing throughout the season. Underneath in

bold letters there stood forth in an amazing coincidence the

name--TOLLIVER’S EVERLASTING. The name stuck and from then on the family

referred to Gramp with humorous disrespect by that name. At length the

old man himself overheard it and was delighted. He resolved then to see

his hundredth birthday. In the solitude of his room, he felt amazingly

brittle and young. Time rushed past him; tremendous things happened to

the family, but he remained passive, unchanged because he had no

emotions left to exhaust him.

* * * * *

The war that trapped Ellen and Rebecca Schönberg somewhere in the

neighborhood of Trieste dawned upon the Tollivers in the most

conventional fashion. At first they talked of it as impossible and

absurd, and for the first time in years Gramp emerged from his seclusion

to discuss with Robert (for whom he had an intense dislike) the Siege of

Paris, which he had lived through in his youth. Indeed his interest

attained such a magnitude that he very nearly revealed a secret hope

that one day he might be taken, a millstone about his daughter-in-law’s

neck, back to the city where he had spent what she would have called “a

profligate youth.” But he took care not to mention the wish for fear

that Hattie, in revenge for so many defeats over so many years, would do

all in her power to thwart it. At ninety he wanted to see Paris again.

He developed a passion for the military maps which appeared in the

newspapers and used up all the pins in the house tracing the advance of

the Germans toward the Marne.

As for Hattie, she gave small heed to his eccentricities, for she was

occupied with other things. Her son, her best-beloved, was in England;

she could not trust him. He might join in the war. She knew him well

enough to know that he would not stop to weigh the chances of death;

such a spectacle would fascinate him. And she knew that her daughter, in

the company of an unearthly creature called Rebecca Schönberg (whom she

had come to regard darkly as a sort of procuress), was lost somewhere in

Austria. Until now, these foreign nations had meant little to her save

that they were in the part of the world from which came the hordes of

aliens who jostled her in the street. But now all was changed; a great

war was no longer a distant affair to be treated with indifference. Her

children were involved. She fancied Fergus already ill and wounded. She

saw Ellen taken for a spy and immured in the sort of a dungeon one saw

in the lurid pictures of the Sunday papers.

The news that came at last into the midst of her frantic anxiety brought

her no peace. The two letters arrived by the same mail. The one from

Fergus contained the information that he had gone to France, that

vaguely he was trying to find a place where he might see the war. He was

all right, he wrote. She must remember his excellent luck. It was all

terrible, tragic, incredible ... the sights he had already seen, the

things he had already heard. Yet it was magnificent too; somehow between

the lines of a letter which he had meant to be reassuring and a little

cold, she caught a sense of his reckless enthusiasm. She understood that

he saw the war as a great spectacle. She remembered him as a little

boy, wild with excitement at the glitter and pomp of a circus parade,

intoxicated by the splendor, captured by the romance.

And she knew that she could not stop him. She knew that all the ink in

the world and all the words she might write with it would not hold him

back. It was all so clear in his letter. The image returned to her again

and again ... a little boy, running recklessly, wildly toward the gaudy

parade.... Only this time the parade was tragic and wound its length

half way across the face of Europe. And because it was so gigantic, it

was all the more powerful, all the more glamorous. What could she do

against it?

Sometimes she cursed Gramp, The Everlasting, for the wandering spirit he

had passed on to her children, and sometimes she reproached her own

people for their strength and energy. If her children had been poor weak

things she would never have lost them; she could have guarded them

always. Sometimes when her worry and despair became overwhelming, she

had a terrible premonition that in the end she would be left, alone,

with that terrible sardonic old man, her father-in-law.

* * * * *

But Ellen was coming home! Ellen was coming home! She wrote from a place

called Genoa to say that she was sailing in two days with Rebecca

Schönberg, whom Hattie pictured as sallow, dark and sinister. Ellen had

escaped from Austria, out of the midst of the war! She had been arrested

with the dangerously international Miss Schönberg, but in the end, due

to Miss Schönberg’s Aunt Lina and Uncle Otto, everything had been set

right and they were allowed to go by boat from Pola into Italy. It was a

wretched experience. The police, the soldiers ... every one was stupid

and a little insane. Ellen would, she wrote, be thankful to get away

from such a madhouse as Europe had become. _Damn them!_ she wrote, _for

starting a war just when I had planned a tour of Austria and Germany!_

There was hardness in that one line, of a new and amazing kind.

The entry into New York was made, due to Rebecca’s shrewdness, the

proper sort of event. Two women straight (as the newspaper men managed

to make it seem) from the front line! Two women who had been detained as

spies! Two women who were good for at least two columns of space, paid

for at so much a line, not to speak of the large photograph showing them

on the deck of the _Giuseppe Verdi_ with a great black Swiss shepherd

dog that belonged to Lilli Barr! Two women with (almost) the dust of the

trenches on their shoulders! The papers were full of Lilli Barr, and

Miss Rebecca Schönberg, her manager. Every one got something out of it.

Lilli Barr got a vast amount of attention. Rebecca Schönberg found

herself in the newspapers and rose correspondingly in the eyes of all

the relatives and acquaintances, (there were Bettelheims and Czelovars

and Schönbergs in New York as well as in London and Paris and Vienna) to

whom she had been known until now as Raoul Schönberg’s eccentric niece.

The newspaper men earned extra money on space and the public had a first

hand account of the war. It was all arranged magnificently. Lilli Barr

got in under the line before the hundreds of other musicians who

likewise damned the war and turned their faces toward a new world that

had suddenly acquired an enormous importance.

Hattie Tolliver, dressed in shabby black, and weeping with joy, was on

the pier, and with her, Robert, stolid and a little cynical of the grand

manner with which his arrogant sister descended the gangplank. Seven

trunks were gone through by customs men. Hattie Tolliver discovered that

Miss Schönberg, instead of being a dark, sinister species of procuress,

was red-haired, good-natured and immensely excited and triumphant.

Robert, to his disgust, was told that he was quite a man, and Hattie was

told that she was not a day older, that she must have a new hat ... a

half-dozen new hats ... at once. And, at length, under the eyes of

bedazzled fellow-passengers, the entire party, with immense gusto, got

under way.

It was all different from the damp December day when a lonely young

widow, secretly terrified, waved farewell to Fergus as the doddering old

_City of Paris_ slipped away from the pier. It was not Ellen Tolliver

who was returning. She had been left behind somewhere in Europe. It was

Lilli Barr.

* * * * *

The seven trunks did not go to the apartment in the Seventies; they were

sent instead to the Ritz, to the rooms arranged by Raoul Schönberg, the

diamond merchant, in accordance with instructions from his niece. Miss

Schönberg went with the trunks and the wolf-like dog, but Ellen, with

her hand clasped in both her mother’s, smiling in triumph beneath the

gaze of her mother’s tear-stained eyes, went straight to the apartment.

All the way Robert sat opposite them, stolidly. He was the bourgeois

member of the family. For him there were no transports of joy and

sorrow, no wild soarings of delight, no gay irresponsibility, no intense

passions, no violent depressions, no fierce desire to set off wandering

about the earth. And so it happened that he, the most dependable, the

most unselfish, was the one whom all the others took for granted. For

him there would never be any celebration to mark the prodigal’s return.

Darkly he knew all this, and was in his quiet way, content. Somehow he

had escaped the heritage of The Everlasting. Secretly he thought there

was a great deal of bunk about Miss Schönberg and his sister Ellen; he

suspected that their adventures had not been, in fact, so exciting as

Miss Schönberg, with a magnificent embroidery of detail, made them seem.

Still, he knew nothing about their profession. Such nonsense might be

necessary. Thank God, it was not necessary in the bond business to

behave like a three ring circus!

It was long after midnight when Ellen at last joined her manager at the

Ritz. Dressed in the smart clothes in which she left the ship, she

remained at the apartment surrounded by her family, talking, laughing,

even weeping a bit when the rich, violent emotion of her mother engulfed

them all save Robert and The Everlasting in a sort of sentimental orgy.

Gramp joined them too, for in a city apartment it was no longer

possible to keep him shut away as they had done in the days when he

occupied a room above the kitchen.

There was but one thing to sadden the reunion; it was the absence of

Fergus. Ellen learned for the first time, when she asked for him, that

he had gone to Europe. It was rotten luck, because in the depths of her

heart he was the one she had wanted to see above all the others. He

would have appreciated the grandiose triumph of her return; he would

have laughed at it but he would have understood the importance of the

spectacle. He would have known how well it was done. She needed his

little touch of mocking humor, his complete sympathy.... And now he was

gone. There was even a chance that she might never see him again.

The others had no interest in the spectacle. Her mother, it was clear,

was proud that she was famous; but she really cared nothing at all for

Lilli Barr. It was Ellen Tolliver who absorbed them all. They wanted to

recapture Ellen Tolliver, pin her down and keep her with them forever.

And that, of course, could not be done, because there was so little of

Ellen and so much of Lilli.

Once, as they talked frantically, she caught a sudden twinkle in the eye

of The Everlasting as he sat, silent and mocking, a little beyond the

border of the family group. It was a brief twinkle, which vanished as

quickly as it had come, but it told her that he, like Fergus,

understood. He knew that she had carried the war into the enemy’s

country and had won. They hadn’t, after all, pulled her down and clipped

her wings.

And then, during a brief silence, in the flood of talk there sounded

through the room the familiar echo of his demoniacal chuckle. He was

thinking, perhaps, of the winter night when he threw a fit and so

allowed Ellen to escape.

The occasion was so great that Gramp was allowed to have his dinner with

the rest of the family, a privilege which had not been granted in more

than fifteen years; for on that first night Hattie would have welcomed

the devil himself and placed him on her right hand. Sitting there with

his dim spectacles tilted on the end of his high thin nose, he watched

them all without taking any part in the celebration. He listened while

Ellen described Lily’s house in the Rue Raynouard, and he understood,

what the others failed to understand, that of course the Baron was

Lily’s lover. He saw quickly enough that Ellen had closed her eyes to

all that took place in the lovely old house. And he knew what the others

did not ... that Ellen had not really returned to them at all, that she

had learned the wisdom of going her own way and allowing others to do

the same. She had, in short, discovered freedom; she had found her way

about in a strange world and had learned the tricks which gave her the

upper hand. He was proud of her to have been so smart, to have learned

so quickly.

This was no longer the stormy, unhappy Ellen who had run away with a

drummer. This was Lilli Barr, a woman of the world, hard, successful,

with smooth edges. She glittered a bit. She was too slippery ever to

recapture. She sat there, in her chic, expensive clothes,

self-possessed, remote, smiling, and a little restless, as if she were

impatient to be gone already back into the nervous, superficial clatter

of the life which had swallowed her.

The others would discover all this in time, later on. The Everlasting

knew it at once.

* * * * *

At one o’clock, Robert summoned a taxi and drove with her to the Ritz.

It was a strange, silent ride in which the brother and sister scarcely

addressed each other. They were tired, and they were separated in age by

nearly ten years. (Robert had been but ten when Ellen eloped.) The one

was an artist, caught up for the moment in the delirium of success. The

other sold bonds and was working at it with a desperate, plodding

persistence. They might, indeed, have been strangers.

Ellen, watching in silence the silhouette of her brother’s snub nose and

unruly red hair against the window of the taxicab, began to understand,

with a perception almost as sharp as the old man’s, what it was that had

happened. It made her sad and a little fearful lest she should discover

that Rebecca had already gone to bed and she would find herself alone in

the gaudy hotel. She was afraid, more and more of late, to be left

alone.

Still, she reflected, there would be Hansi ... for company ... Hansi, a

big, black, wolfish dog who devoted himself to her with a fanatic

affection.

And the thought of Hansi turned her memories in the direction of Paris,

which lay safe for the time being from the Germans; for Hansi reminded

her always of Callendar and the day, just before they left for Vienna,

when a fat little old man brought the dog with a note to the house in

the Rue Raynouard.... A note which read ... “I send you Hansi because he

is like you. He will look well by your side and be devoted to you. He

may remind you sometimes of me, even in the midst of wild applause. It

would be easy now to forget one who has known since the beginning that

you were a great artist.