It gave Fergus the strangest shock. He found himself turning abruptly

away and hiding in the stairway with an air of having witnessed

something obscene. It was all spoiled now, all the entrance he had

planned, the hope of finding her alone, the mocking, teasing, grandiose

speeches he had planned. The stranger had taken possession of her,

placed himself there between them as a barrier. It was ridiculous....

Feeling like a small boy who had been caught eavesdropping, he coughed

and scuffled his feet and then made a second entrance. This time they

turned and Ellen, rising to her feet, stared at him for a moment and

then rushed toward him crying, “Fergus! Fergus! You should have told me

you had leave!”

He knew at once that she guessed he had seen them. Her face was flushed

with shame and hurt pride. He knew the fierce _pudeur_ (there was no

other word for it) that enveloped her. It was a part of her savage

unwillingness to surrender, to reveal, anything of herself.

Her beauty astonished him. He had seen photographs of her, but in them

he had seen nothing of the proud domination that gave her that look of

swooping down on one. It occurred to him in a flash that old Julia

Shane, Lily’s mother, must have looked like this in her youth. Only she

had worn crinolines and Ellen was all in black in a tight gown that made

her look like (the old simile returned, the inevitable one) like a

greyhound. She had changed enormously; the awkwardness had vanished.

This was no girl who hurried toward him; it was a woman, superb,

splendid, full of fire.

“Fergus!” she cried, and ignoring the mimosa she crushed the bright gold

blossoms against his blue tunic so that the yellow pollen clung to it

and dimmed the silver wings. She kissed him passionately and held him in

her arms for a long time. She was excited. He had never seen her like

this. The shyness, the restraint was gone, for the moment at least. He

felt a quick satisfaction of vanity, almost as if he had been her

husband instead of her brother. She was a creature to be proud of. No

wonder this stranger....

The dark man had risen now and stood waiting quietly for them to join

him by the fire. He was a handsome fellow of perhaps thirty-five, though

he may have been older, thin perhaps from the hardships of war. And in

the olive skin were set the strangest pair of gray eyes, which looked on

now with an expression of mild amusement. They were eyes which

fascinated you, which you were certain had the power of seeing things

which other eyes had not.

“Richard,” said Ellen, “this is my brother Fergus ... Mr. Callendar.”

Her voice trembled a little with excitement. It may have been that this

was the moment for which she had returned. She had them together now,

with her, in the very same room, the two men--indeed, the two

persons--whom she cherished above all others in the world. She had not

been, after all, too late.

* * * * *

It must have been clear to Fergus, even in the disappointment of the

moment, that he had stumbled awkwardly into the midst of some queer

situation. He understood now why she had sent Augustine off to bed. It

explained too the excitement of her manner and the sudden falling away

of the reserve which she had always held before her as a warrior his

shield. She still blushed, and she lighted a cigarette with a comically

obvious air of covering her confusion. It was amazing to find in this

woman who was by nature so self-possessed, so cold, a sudden air of

school girl coquetry. This was an Ellen whom her brother had never seen,

whom perhaps no one had seen until now.

And the stranger? He still stood with his feet well apart, finishing the

last of his Chartreuse, balancing himself lightly on his toes, quite

calm and smiling a little in a fashion that would have been warm and

friendly save for the expression in the gray eyes. In their obscure,

blank depths, there lay something sinister ... “catlike” was the word.

They were eyes like those of a cat, proud, sensual, indifferent, aloof,

and incapable of smiling.

They sat down and for a moment Fergus was tempted to blurt out sharply

that he had spied upon them unwittingly, that he knew exactly the mood

into which he had blundered so clumsily. It would perhaps have shattered

the tension and cleared the air, reducing them to a common ground of

meeting upon which they might laugh and talk like old friends. It did

not occur to him that Callendar might be his sister’s lover because, in

spite even of her blushes and confusion, he knew that such a thing was

impossible. Besides, their manner toward each other was not that of

lovers; it lacked the hidden intimacies which come of only one

experience. They were a little formal, a little strange. The flame that

leapt between them was not quite clear and white and unhindered; there

were obstructions, misunderstandings. It was a complicated relationship,

one could see at a glance, and a little ridiculous. Even Callendar, so

clearly a man of the world, so clearly a man who was neither an innocent

nor a yokel, was not at his ease.

“Mr. Callendar,” said Ellen, “is an old friend of mine. Until the other

day I had not seen him for years.”

But for Fergus this could have been no explanation. It told nothing of

all that passed in those missing years, nothing of the intriguing of old

Thérèse, nothing of the slow passion, fed upon absence and memories that

instead of dying had, as Thérèse knew, gained strength. It revealed

nothing of all the forces, conscious or blundering and obscure, which

had been at work weaving the slow web that was now near to its end.

Fergus alone guessed how nearly it was finished. It came to him in a

return of that sudden flight of clairvoyance which had seized him in the

dark street outside the door. He understood with an unearthly certainty

that this was the man whom fate (that nonsensical force) had marked for

his sister. This was the man destined to know all the tempestuous sweep

of her fierce energy, her vast capacity for devotion, all the forces

that until now had lain buried and dormant. This perilous man ... (It

was strange that strong women were likely to be unhappy in love, to make

so often a choice which all the world, even the stupidest fellow, could

have told her was wrong.)

It was this current of thought which ran beneath the surface of all

their polite conversation, made so scrupulously, with such labor in

defiance of that strain which none--not even Callendar, who perhaps

chose to make no such effort--could dissipate. For Ellen’s moment had

passed swiftly as such moments, awaited so long, are likely to pass.

There had been a quick flare of delight in the possession of them both

and then this confused disappointment and sense of ill-ease clouding

everything.

The tension lessened a little when Fergus, seeking in his amiable way

one subject after another to pierce the indifference of the stranger,

stumbled upon Loos and Amiens which Callendar knew as thoroughly from

the ground as Fergus knew them from the air. But this led to nothing

because it was now Ellen who found herself thrust outside the pale and

left to grow sulky while they talked of this sector and of that one,

each discovering with a swift heightening of interest that they had

taken part in the same drive.

“My battery,” said Callendar, “lay just back of Hill 408, in the curve

of the road beyond Jouy....”

“It was at Jouy,” interrupted Fergus, his good-natured face flushing

with interest, “that we broke up a German escadrille ... four of them

shot down.”

“Did you ever see Reymont?” asked Callendar.... “The general of our

division?... A pompous ass!”

“He was at St. Pol while I was there. He reviewed the division when it

came in from the east.... I saw him on a balcony....”

And so on, talking of this spectacle which Ellen despised as much

because she could have no part in it as for any other reason. She would,

at that moment, have preferred the spectacle to all the success, all the

triumph; but it was no good. She was, for all her strength, all her

power, simply a woman, thrust outside the experience which had enkindled

Callendar and her brother. They had slipped away from her into a world

of which she knew nothing.

* * * * *

At last, turning in pique from their talk, she went out and herself

fetched them whiskey and soda, and when she had interrupted them long

enough to pour out a glass for each she turned to the piano and fell to

playing softly, as if to draw them quietly back to her. It was a plan

which proved successful, for presently their talk abated a little and

finally ceased; the war was put to rout and it was Ellen once more who

held the center of the stage. The two men leaned back in their chairs,

scrupulously silent, listening while she played for them in a fashion

she had not done in years. And for a time she recaptured a little of

the joy that had escaped so quickly.

She played the things she knew would please Fergus, the music which he

had loved in the days of the house in Sycamore Street and the flat in

the Babylon Arms, music she had played for him alone at the moments when

Clarence was not there to disturb her with the silent, unrelieved

pleading of his dim eyes. She played the simple old March from The Ruins

of Athens, and one or two Chopin waltzes and the Marche Funèbre, which

to Hattie would always be McKinley’s Funeral March and which to Fergus

invoked memories of Shane’s Castle and Ellen in shirtwaist and skirt

wearing at her belt a jingling thing they called a chatelaine. And she

wooed them with such success that, hypnotized by the spell, they did not

hear the first screams of the sirens rushing through distant streets nor

the faint popping of the guns far away on the summit of Montmartre.

* * * * *

It was not until she paused, her hands resting thoughtfully on the ivory

keys, that Callendar stirred himself and murmured in French, “The Boches

are here.... Listen. The siren!”

And from the street nearby--perhaps from the Place Passy--the shriek of

a fire engine penetrated the room, even through the heavy brocade

curtains that muffled the windows. There was one more scream and then

another and another, and then the faint, distant popping of guns, like a

barrage of tiny fire-crackers. Fergus stood up and glanced at his wrist.

“I must go,” he said. “I’m late already.”

“Not now,” protested Ellen, turning abruptly. “Not now in the midst of a

raid. You can spend the night here.... There is plenty of room.” She

trembled a little, as if in terror of losing him so soon.

Fergus smiled. “I can’t,” he said. “You see, I have a rendezvous ...

with a man from my escadrille. He is waiting for me now.”

“He won’t be expecting you ... not now.”

“I can’t help it, Ellen. He’ll be waiting. Great Heavens! I’ve been

through a hundred raids. They’ve tried to blow us up every night....”

She had taken his hand now and was pleading anxiously. “But this is

different.”

Fergus laughed. “It _is_ different,” he said. “There’s not one chance in

a million here....”

Callendar merely smiled, as if to confirm the statement of Fergus that

it was ridiculous to suppose there were any danger. He had, of course,

no reason for wanting him to remain. It was Fergus who won in the end,

merely by persistence--a strange thing, for usually it was the

strong-minded Ellen who had her way. To-night he was firm and certain of

his purpose. She thought perhaps that it was the war, the years that had

passed since she last saw him, which had so hardened him and given

strength to his will.

She went with him to the door and on the stairs, when they had turned

out of the big room, she said, “You are not going back to the front

to-morrow?”

“No. I shall come back here. I shall be in Paris for a week. Perhaps

I’ll spend a night or two with you here.”

In their manner there was still an air of strangeness and formality, as

if Callendar had in some way followed them out of the room and walked

between them up the polished stairs. She helped him into his greatcoat

and kissed him affectionately.

“To-morrow,” she said, “it will be better. We can be alone.” And then in

a low voice she added, as if in explanation, “His permission is over

to-morrow.”

Extinguishing the candles, Fergus opened the door and looked out. The

rain had ceased and far above them beyond the roofs of the houses on the

opposite side of the street, the searchlights fingered a sky that, save

for one or two clouds, was blue and luminous like the street lamps.

“Look,” said Fergus, softly. “They’ve spotted one of them.” And they

both stood in the open door fascinated by the sight of a Gotha turned

to a silver dragon fly by a long finger of light. Far away in another

part of the city there sounded a faint crash and then another and

another. The sirens still screamed, now on one side of them, now on

another.

“It is magnificent,” said Ellen, breathlessly.

“You see, they’re not dropping them anywhere near us. They are trying to

hit the bridges and the government buildings. I’m only going around the

corner ... into the Avenue Kléber.”

They were speaking in hushed voices, caught again in that mood of

insignificance. One might have thought that in the blackness of the

empty street there were figures listening. In the eyes of Fergus there

was the light of fascination ... a bird held captive by a glittering

snake.

“I must go,” murmured Fergus still watching the silver dragon fly. “I’m

late already.”

She stood in the doorway until the darkness had swallowed him up and

then, turning, slowly closed the door and went thoughtfully down the

stairs. The sound of guns, the scream of the sirens and the echo of the

distant, reverberating crashes grew fainter and fainter as she

descended.

* * * * *

In the long drawing-room, standing before the fire with his glass in his

hand Callendar was awaiting her. As she came toward him, she said, “I am

proud of my brother,” with the air of making a challenge, as if she

reproached him for his indifference.

“I have heard of him,” he said, quietly. “He is well known in the

Division Reymont.”

To this she made no reply. She drew her chair nearer to the fire and sat

staring for a time silently into the bright blaze. There was no sound

save for the asthmatic breathing of Criquette, the grunts of comfort

from Hansi, who had flung down his great black body by her side, and the

distant echoes from somewhere in the direction of the Champ de Mars.

At length he murmured, “Perhaps we had better go into the cellar. The

last one was nearer.”

But she refused. “No. Why should I?” For she understood well enough that

to Callendar it was a matter of complete indifference. She knew his

whole philosophy could be expressed in a single sentence--“If one died,

one died.” The thing was to live while one was alive. “No,” she

repeated. “Why should I be afraid? You and Fergus aren’t frightened.”

“It’s not the same,” he said softly.

“There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be.”

For a moment it may have seemed to her that she too was playing a part

in the spectacle. She too might for once undertake a little of the

danger they had known, the one with indifference, the other with a kind

of fierce excitement.

“It is much easier,” she murmured, “to be with you both than to be here

alone, not knowing what may happen to you.”

Under the heavy, sensuous lids Callendar’s gray eyes revealed a sudden

sparkle of admiration for the fierce and sullen defiance of her mood. He

must have known that she would have walked carelessly through the

street, as carelessly as Fergus had done, that she would in her present

mood have gone into an attack with a serene indifference; because she

was angry now, angry at the war for which she had such a contempt, at

circumstance, at the whole muddled business of living. She was angry and

defiant with an Olympian anger, careless of cost or consequence.

There was another crash, nearer this time in the direction of the

Trocadéro, and again Callendar’s eyelids flickered with slow admiration.

She did not move. She still sat with one hand on Hansi’s head looking

into the fire.

“I am not thinking about myself,” she observed suddenly with the air of

answering a question which he had not spoken. “It is my brother.”

“He must be safe by now at his rendezvous. The Avenue Kléber is not

far.”

* * * * *

She was thinking too, in a dazed fashion, of all that had happened in

the hour before Fergus blundered in upon them. Callendar had told her

that at last Sabine was divorcing him. He had not asked her to do it.

She had told him that she could endure the situation no longer. For the

part which Thérèse played in the affair, he could not answer. “I don’t

know,” he had said, smiling. “Sabine will say nothing and my mother

denies having spoken of the matter. But if she saw fit she would not

hesitate to lie deliberately. Sometimes I think she is not clever, and

then afterward I find she has been stupid only because it suited her,

because her stupidity was dictated by a devilish shrewdness.”

And then he had told her of all the tricks Thérèse had played to bring

about his remarriage, of how she had written him glowing letters about

Ellen. “All she wrote,” he added, “was true, of course. You can hardly

doubt that. Still, it was not the way to bring it about.”

And Ellen too had laughed and told of her interview with Thérèse in the

library of the house at Murray Hill on the night of her concert, and at

last she had asked abruptly, “Am I to interpret all this as a proposal?”

“My mother knew that there was no one else whom I would think of

marrying. There was no need to marry at all.”

After this speech she had been silent for a time and when at last she

looked up at him it was to ask, “And you want to marry me because it is

the only way you can have me?”

“No.”

Her mind wandered back to the hot afternoon in the Babylon Arms when he

had so nearly swept away all her self-possession. He had been different

then, more ardent, more overwhelming, and yet she knew that the danger

then had not been so great as it was in this very moment when he sat

beside her in the big room, quiet and thoughtful, watching her with a

fierce concentration.

“But there was a time,” she said slowly, “when you would have taken me

in any way possible without marrying me.”

He was sitting with his body bent forward, his elbows on his knees, his

hands clasped. The hands were tense so that the knuckles showed through

the tanned, dark skin.

“No,” he said softly. “That is not true. I would have married you then.

I wanted to marry you, and I was younger then and not so wise. I fancied

then that I could get anything I wanted in this world for the asking.

And yet it was marriage that I had in mind. I have always had ...

everything. I will be honest. I have always had women if I wanted them

badly enough ... all save you.... And you are the only one I ever

_wanted_ to marry. I swear to God that what I am saying is true.”

Watching him, she could not believe that he was lying. She saw the

clenched hands. She saw that the mockery had gone out of him. She saw,

with a queer tragic catch of memory, the little vein in his throat

throbbing as she had seen the same vein throb in the throat of Clarence.

It was all so different now. There was no headlong recklessness, no

wild, sudden torrent of passion. He had not seized her now and tormented

her with caresses that assailed all her resistance. They talked calmly

in a fashion that might have been called calculating and cold-blooded

save that underneath it there lay a current which ran more deep and more

powerful than any emotion they had known on that sultry afternoon in the

Babylon Arms. It was all changed now. They were older, and wiser, and in

some ways more understanding. And the world about them had changed ...

the shabby little flat had given way to the old, beautiful, glowing

room. This calm, grave Richard was far more dangerous than the young and

ardent one had been. It was more perilous now, for she was assailed

through all her senses, and time was rushing on and on, past her....

She did not answer him, and presently in the same low voice he

continued. “You are a woman of the world now,” he said, “so you are not

likely to believe what you believed then. I do not make excuses for

myself. I did not love Sabine. I have never loved her. It was an

arranged, a proper marriage like thousands of others, but it turned out

badly.... I could not make myself love. No one can do that.” He paused

for a moment. “And she could not save herself....”

This last speech he made with such a sad humility that there was no air

of conceit in it. Besides Ellen knew its truth; she had seen Sabine with

her own eyes, weeping, suffering in a fashion she had once believed

impossible, and pretending all the while that such suffering had been

caused by a sick kitten. Yet it was this which somehow frightened her;

she was afraid lest one day she herself might be humbled in the same

fashion.

“My mother,” he was saying, “is as you know, a Greek, and there is a

great deal of the Greek in me. Sometimes I fancy I am Oriental ...

utterly, completely. An eastern man admires a woman of beauty and of

spirit. He wants such a woman for the mother of his children.” He

unclasped his hands and took her hand in his. “But don’t fancy that I

love you in that way only. Sabine was a fine match in a worldly sense.

She was rich. She was fashionable. But I too am that, so what could it

mean to me? It was more than that which I wanted. I still want it. I

want you to marry me as soon as it is possible.”

She did not free her hand, though the touch made her faint as it had

done so many years before. She was conscious suddenly that the old sense

of conflict was gone, the old feeling of a hidden antagonism between

them. Could it be that it was because he was humble now, asking

something of her rather than coming boldly to her to claim it?

“And still,” she heard herself saying, “I am not certain that it would

work out. I don’t know.... You must give me time.”

Then he had kissed her hand and murmured, “We have not so much time as

we once had.... Perhaps I have even less than I know now.”

To this she had chosen to make no answer. Instead, she had played for

him until Fergus blundered in upon them.

* * * * *

It was in the midst of these thoughts that she heard Callendar say, as

he stood balancing himself before the fire, “We could go to the south

to-morrow, if you like. I could arrange to have my permission extended.

De Cyon could do it for me. We could have a week together there.”

He must have known that it was too late now to ask such a thing. An hour

earlier, before Fergus had intruded upon them, he might have succeeded.

But everything was changed now. For an instant, during the time Fergus

had been there, she had caught a glimpse of the old, familiar Richard,

the mocking one; and the sense of conflict had risen once more sharply

between them.

“How could I do that?” she asked, and after a moment’s silence, “I can’t

do that sort of thing. It is impossible for me....”

He smiled. “But the world believes it of you already. The world will not

care. The world expects it of you. It can make no difference ... and

when the divorce is finished we will be married.”

Her answer was colored with a sudden bitterness. “You would not have

said such a thing to me once.”

It was true. There was a difference now, of a kind she had not thought

of before. It was a difference which had to do with age and all the slow

hardening which had come with each year that stood between them and the

hot afternoon in the Babylon Arms. Something had gone from them both ...

the warmth, the gallantry, the glow that had made him then so reckless,

so willing to marry her, a poor nobody, in the face of all his world. It

was gone from her too.... She knew exactly what it was now. It was the

thing which she had felt slip from her as a cloak on the night she sat

talking with Thérèse in the dark library on Murray Hill. They were no

longer young. They weighed chances now, cynically looking upon their

problem without regard for honor. The tragedy was that they could never

go back. What was gone was gone forever. And in the memory of the

fierce, youthful passion, so fresh and turbulent, this new love seemed

to her an obscene and middle-aged emotion.

“No,” she repeated. “I can’t do that. It is to myself that it

matters.... What the world thinks does not interest me.”

* * * * *

Long after midnight Callendar at last stirred himself and bade her good

night. They had talked, long and passionately, over the same ground

again and again, seeing it now in this light, now in that, arriving in

the end nowhere at all; and through it all, Ellen must have caught once

more the awful sense of his patience. He could wait; in the end he would

have what he desired. And this she knew with an understanding that lay

deeper than the mere surface of her consciousness.

Only it was all different now, even the significance of his patience,

because time was rushing on and on past her. She was no longer a young

girl; she was, as he had said, a woman of the world and therefore,

perhaps, all the more desirable in her unchallenged, unbroken spirit.

“It is very late,” said Callendar gently, as the black dog stirred

himself and, yawning, rubbed his head against Ellen’s hand. “And

to-morrow....”

But she did not permit him to say, “And to-morrow I shall be back at the

front.” She was afraid of his saying it, because all the evening she had

been fighting just this thought. She understood that it was his

strongest weapon, the one thing which might demolish the wall of her

resistance. It was not a fair weapon, but he would not hesitate to use

it where his own desire was concerned.

“It’s not late,” she said, “not late for me....” Yet she wanted him to

go because she was afraid. She wanted to be alone, to feel her old

strength return to her.

The dog followed them as they moved through the big room and up the

stairs. The last of the sounds had died away--the terrifying screech of

the sirens, the faint popping of the guns and the ominous shattering

crash of the falling bombs. The house and the city beyond it lay in

silence now, dark once more save for the showers of blue light from the

street lamps.

At the top of the stairs, which lay too in darkness, he put on his

greatcoat in silence, took up his cap and then faced her. He said

nothing; he simply looked at her, and after a moment she murmured in a

voice that was scarcely audible, “No, I cannot do it. The things which

stand in the way are much stronger than we are.” And bending her head,

as if she had in some way been accused, she added, “I will write you.”

He did not speak. Instead he simply placed his arms about her and in

silence kissed her. In the same fashion, her white hand grew tense once

more, just as it had done when Fergus came upon her unaware, to

understand all that was happening.

As he stepped into the street, she lingered in the doorway until, in the

direction of the Café des Tourelles, the darkness swallowed him. She was

alone again, and when she had closed the door she did not return to the

drawing-room but sat down weakly on the top step of the long stairs and

presently, overcome by the terrible sense of loneliness, she began to

weep in silence. She was (she thought scornfully) in spite of

everything, only a poor, weak, feminine creature.

Hansi flung his heavy body against her and, whimpering a little, put his

black head affectionately on her knee.

* * * * *

She was sitting thus when the dog leapt to his feet and barked savagely

at the sound of a sharp, sudden knock upon the door. It was the knock of

some one in haste. The sound, shattering the dead stillness, grew

terrifying, as if the one who knocked desired in some way to communicate

his terror to those inside the house.

Ellen sprang up. “Je viens! Je viens!” she cried, and to the dog, “Tais

toi! Hansi.” She cried “Je viens!” as if by arresting the efforts of the

knocker she might also destroy the foreboding in her heart.

Opening the door, she discerned dimly in the darkness the figure of a

fat, bent little old man with white mustaches that caught the faint

light emerging from the staircase. “Yes,” she said, in French. “What is

it you want?”

A voice which trembled a little with fright and carried the ring of an

accent from the Midi answered her. “You are Mees Tolliver. I come from

your brother. I am sent by him to fetch you.”

For a moment she stood without speaking to the queer, bent figure,

regarding him with the air of utter incredulity. He could not be quite

real ... this gnome with the enormous white mustaches. And unaccountably

there flashed through her mind a fragment of the letter Lily had written

her long ago--_And then he rode away into the darkness. I am certain

that he is dead._

“He is hurt,” said Ellen. “Something has happened to him!”

The old man answered simply. “Yes. There was an accident. He is

wounded.”

Without questioning him further, she wrapped herself in a fur coat and

holding to the collar of Hansi she went out, after locking the door on

the silent house, to follow the old man.

As they walked there were times when the darkness was so profound that

she could not see him at all and was forced to call out for guidance. It

was Hansi who aided her. He kept close to the heels of the old man.

She had a sense of passing through the Place Passy into the Rue

Franklin.

“Who are you, mon vieux?” she asked.

The old man coughed. He went rapidly for one so old, but she fancied it

was terror that gave speed to his fat legs, terror that the Gothas might

return.

“I am the concierge of the building where Madame Nozières has an

apartment. It was she who sent me. It is close at hand ... in the Avenue

Kléber.”

Vaguely in the darkness, black against the deep blue of the sky, the

ugly towers of the Trocadéro appeared a little on the right. “What is it

that happened? Is he wounded ... gravely, seriously, ... my brother?”

The old man grunted. “I don’t know. I know nothing. There was a bomb

fell in the Avenue Kléber.” He raised his head and sniffed like a shaggy

old dog. “Smell,” he commanded. “You can smell the bomb.”

It was true. The faint odor of picric acid filled the damp night air. As

they walked the odor grew more and more intense. In the darkness Ellen’s

guide pointed to the left.

“The bomb fell over there,” he observed, “full in the street.”

“Who is this Madame Nozières?” asked Ellen.

“I don’t know,” her companion repeated. “I know nothing. She has an

apartment. She comes there sometimes. She is rich. She is generous. She

does not live there always. She only comes now and then ... when

Monsieur has permission from the front.”

“Monsieur Nozières?”

In the darkness, the old man was silent for a time. He was breathless

from the effort of their haste. “No,” he replied. “Monsieur ... your

brother.”

This then was the rendezvous for which Fergus had left the house in the

Rue Raynouard. There was some one then--some woman--who had the power of

taking him from her on the very night he had returned after so many

years. It must have been strong, this force, stronger than the power

which Callendar himself exerted. She understood his persistence. Against

such a power, she was, of course, helpless.

“It is here,” said her guide abruptly. “Follow me.”

He led the way through a corridor into an open court filled with summer

furniture, stacked now in the corners against the empty stone urns. In

the dim light that filtered through the shutters on the far side, she

was able to discern the outlines of chairs and tables, piled

helter-skelter, as if they too had felt the force of a bomb that hurled

them into a corner.

The old man knocked on a door that led into the apartment from which the

light showed itself. From inside the murmur of voices came to them,

distantly. And at last the door opened.

Against the dim light, Ellen was able to discern the figure of a small

woman, dressed in a trim dark suit. She wore no hat and her blonde hair,

cut short, stood about her head in a halo of ringlets which caught and

reflected the glow behind her. She had been weeping. Even in the emotion

of the moment, Ellen saw with a feminine instinct that she had chic, and

when she spoke she divined also that “Madame Nozières” was not a

cocotte but a lady. She had been weeping and something of the grief

carried over into her voice.

“You are Mees Tolliver,” she said. “I am Madame Nozières. I have heard

you play ... many times, but I did not know until to-night that you were

his sister. You do not know me, of course.”

There was a quality almost comic in the formality with which the

stranger went about the business of introductions. In the hallway, she

continued in a low voice, “I have known your brother for a long time. We

are very good friends.” And then she began to weep again. As Lily had

done in the letter written after César’s death, the woman made no

pretenses, thinking perhaps as Lily had thought, that at such a time

there was place only for the truth.

To Ellen the whole affair was shot through with the light of unreality.

Standing in the dark hallway, with this strange woman weeping beside

her--a woman who in some vague way had been brought close to her because

she too loved Fergus--she leaned back against the wall for a moment

trying frantically to bring her mind back to the truth. This could not

be.... It was unreal, fantastic....

The door opened and she saw, with a clarity that stamped the scene

forever on her brain, a big room furnished with luxury, and in the midst

of all the feminine softness--the pillows, the gilt chairs, the mirrors

and the satin--Fergus lying very white and very still upon a bed of

white and gilt with gilded swans on each of its four posts. At the side

of the bed stood a tall, grave man with a black beard who wore the

uniform of an army surgeon. He bowed to her and Madame Nozières

murmured, “Doctor Chausson.”

The name struck some chord of memory in Ellen’s brain, but before she

could trace it to its source, Fergus opened his eyes, and grinning a

little, said in a low voice, “Well, this is a pretty mess!” (This was

the old Fergus. She knew it at once. All the strangeness had gone....)

She asked no questions because from the look of the doctor and the tears

of Madame Nozières she understood that there was only one answer. She

wanted suddenly to weep, to beat her head against the wall, to cry out.

But she was silent. She approached the bed and pressed his hand.

They had taken off the blue tunic with the silver wings and he lay now

in his white shirt and the blue trousers with the silver braid along the

seam. Around his waist he wore a woolen ceinture of brilliant yellow.

The shirt was open and on his breast where the silver wings had been

there was a little spot of red ... a tiny spot, scarcely as large as a

strawberry.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “But you see I couldn’t come to-morrow ... as

I promised.”

She could find nothing to say. She could only press his hand more and

more tightly.

“I’m glad you brought the dog,” he continued. “It will be less lonely

for you.” And then he beckoned to the doctor and asked him and Madame

Nozières to leave the room for a moment. When they had gone, he drew

Ellen nearer to him and said, “You must not be hard with her. She is a

lady. Madame Nozières is not her name. It is I who am to blame if any

one. I wanted to marry her.... I’m not talking rot. We had planned it.”

And then for a time he was silent as if too weak to go on.

Pressing his hand more tightly, she whispered, “How could I be hard?

Nothing matters ... only one thing.”

He coughed and continued. “She has done everything. She has risked the

rest of her life to save me. Chausson is the great Chausson ... the

surgeon from Neuilly. She knows him and he knows her husband. They are

old friends. That was why he came. He is a busy man and a great surgeon.

You see, she risked everything ... her reputation, her future ...

everything. She did not hesitate to send for him.”

She knew now why the name had been familiar. She had heard it

everywhere in the journals, from her friends in Paris. If the great

Chausson believed there was no hope....

“She is a good woman ... a charming woman, Ellen. Madame Nozières is not

her name. If she chooses to tell you who she is, be good to her, because

I loved her.”

“I will do what you wish.”

He grinned again suddenly. “Think of it ... to get it now, after three

years ... to get it now on the asphalt a block from the Trocadéro!” And

then his face grew bitter. “It’s a joke ... that is!” And then, dimly,

sleepily, he murmured, “We must hurry ... we must hurry.”

Ellen, still silent, found that she was praying idiotically for a thing

which could never be. She knew now, sharply and cruelly, what the war,

that grand parade, had been. Fergus who had loved life so passionately,

who found pleasure and excitement everywhere! Fergus whom they had all

loved so that they had spoiled him! Fergus lying there with his blond,

curly head against the white pillows under the flying gilt swans! Those

voluptuous, sensual swans! Eagles they should have been!

She could do nothing but wait. The minutes rushed past her, furiously.

(We must hurry, he had said.) On the gilt dressing table one of the

candles had begun to gutter and fade.

“Call them back,” he said faintly. And she rose and opened the door.

Outside Doctor Chausson had taken both Madame Nozières’ small, exquisite

hands and was talking to her, in a soft low voice, warm with a sort of

understanding that moved Ellen queerly. They were so absorbed that they

did not even notice her as she opened the door.

“Madame Nozières,” she said softly, and the woman turned toward her. She

was beautiful, more beautiful than Ellen had supposed, even with the

tears swimming in her blue eyes. She was small and beautiful and

exquisite like a bit of Dresden china. She understood the whole thing

clearly; she understood perhaps even the profundity of the love which

Madame Nozières had for Fergus.

Doctor Chausson refused to come in with them. “I will stay here....

There is nothing I can do.” And so they left him, pale and hollow-eyed

from work and want of sleep, to wait in the dark hallway.

Inside the room the one candle had gone out and the only light came from

the single flame before the tall mirror. Fergus had closed his eyes once

more, and the lids showed against the dead whiteness of the skin in a

faint shade of purple. The two women sat one on each side of the gilded

bed, watching in silence. Presently he opened his eyes and looking at

Ellen said in English:

“This man....” He had grown weaker now and spoke with difficulty. “This

man ... Callendar. Are you going to marry him?”

“I don’t know.”

He smiled. “I saw you when I came in.... That’s how I knew. I saw your

hand.” And after a pause. “It’s funny ... I knew this was coming ... I

knew it as I stood outside your door.”

Then he closed his eyes once more and when he spoke again it was to say

weakly, “You must tell Ma.... It will be hard.... And you must not....

You must not tell her the truth.... She could never face the truth. She

has never faced it.”

He reached out weakly and took the hand, on one side of Ellen and on the

other of Madame Nozières. Raising himself, he grinned again and murmured

in French this time, “My life.... It’s running away ... inside me. You

can hear it.... I hear it ... now.” And then for a moment there was an

echo of triumph, a sudden flash of Gramp whom Fergus himself had named

The Everlasting. He grinned again and said, “It was a good life.... I

missed nothing ... nothing at all.”

And again slowly ... “This man Callendar ... this man....”

But he never finished the sentence. He sighed and slipped back into the

pillows of the bed surmounted by the four gilded swans. Madame Nozières

began to weep wildly and flung herself upon him, kissing him again and

again. For Ellen there was no such relief. She sat now, stark upright

and tragic, bound by all the years in which she had shown a proud and

scornful face to the world. No, there was no such relief for her. She

knew it. She could only sit there, quietly cold and white, and all the

time she wanted to scream, to cry out, to beat her head against the

stone floor of the corridor where Doctor Chausson stood waiting gravely.

She could only sit and watch while Madame Nozières wept out her heart.

* * * * *

It was the sound of weeping, wild and passionate, that summoned Doctor

Chausson. The two women had forgotten him, but the good man knew well

enough what the sound signified. Softly he opened the door and came into

the frivolous room. There beside the gilded bed he saw the sister, a

strange, silent, handsome woman, dressed in black with her fur coat

slipped to the floor at her feet, a woman (he thought) _bien Anglaise_,

who could not weep. He knew that she suffered more than the other, more

than Colette who had flung herself on the boy to weep hysterically.

Colette, the charming, the fastidious, the beautiful, flung down in

utter disarray, her eyes red and swollen with weeping, her golden hair

all disheveled.... Colette whom he had seen but two nights before

flushed and radiant at the Princesse de Guermantes’. He understood now

why she had been so beautiful and so happy. But the boy could not see

her now, and so nothing mattered.

He stood for a moment in silence, as if in respect for the grief of the

two women. All this he had seen before, many times, ... a young man, a

boy, who had loved life as this one had loved it, who could jest, as

this one had jested, with his very last breath. A boy whom women loved

as these two women, the one so wildly, the other so profoundly, with

such an intense, secret flame. It was cruel ... hideous....

He moved forward and touched Madame Nozières on her slim shoulder. And

all the while he was conscious that the eyes of the other woman were

watching him, stony and cold and tragic.

“Colette,” he said softly. “Colette.... You must not.... You must be

quiet.” With a gentle strength he lifted her from the bed. “Colette, it

is nearly dawn.... You must be discreet. There will be questions asked.”

But she paid no heed. She was sobbing now, bitterly and without shame.

“You must be discreet,” he repeated.

“What difference does that make now?... It is nothing ... less than

nothing....” And she fell to weeping once more.

He mixed for her a powder and forced her to drink it, saying, “There is

the necessary business. You must not be seen here ... like this.”

But she would not go. It was Ellen who at last stirred herself and

succeeded in quieting Madame Nozières. “I will take him to my house,”

she said, quietly. “You may come there.... You may stay there if you

like. It is a big house ... in the Rue Raynouard.... No one will ever

know.”

She drew Doctor Chausson aside and gave him the address. “I will take

care of things,” she said. “I will stay here if you will arrange for the

rest. I would like to stay ... alone. It was good of you.... There is

nothing I can say.”

So at last, in care of the great Doctor Chausson, Madame Nozières, pale

and with swollen eyes and disheveled hair, was led away, across the

stone courtyard, gray now with the faint rising light of dawn, into the

big gray motor that had followed him from Neuilly to the Avenue Kléber.

Ellen watched them as they crossed the yard between the empty stone urns

and summer chairs piled high in the corners.

* * * * *

When they had gone, she returned to the room and, locking the door, sat

down to wait. Slowly, in the gray solitude, the relief of tears came to

her. She wept silently. She understood now her fear of returning too

late, that vague, nameless fear for which there had been no explanation

until now. She had come so near to being late ... only a matter of a

few hours, of a single night. For he had escaped them all now, forever.

They would never possess him again....

She looked at him, lying here white and still in the gay blue trousers

with the silver braid and the yellow sash, and she understood why it was

that he had seemed so young. It was because he had never really belonged

to any of them. He had not even had a country of his own. He had gone

out into a war which was none of his concern. There was nothing which

tied him down, not even the nonsense which people talked of “la gloire”

and “la patrie.” For she, in her aloofness, had known it for the

nonsense it was, just as he in his good-nature and love for all the

world had known it. She remembered what he had once written her.... “_A

man of our generation who has missed the war will not have lived at

all.... He will be a poor thing compared to the others. It is a game in

which one must take a chance. It is better to die than to have missed

it._”

He had believed that to the very end. Perhaps this was the secret of Old

Gramp who had roamed the world and lived in this very Paris under the

Second Empire. He had lived. He had done everything, and now in his old

age he had a stock of memories that would last forever, a life which

none of the others ever knew. He had been certain of only one life and

he had made the most of it, so that he was ready when his time came to

die with satisfaction, to take his chance on what lay beyond.

And as she sat there with the black dog by her side, in the slow, gray

light, it occurred to her that perhaps the end of Fergus had not been

after all so tragic. He had died in the very midst of life with the

woman he loved at his side. If he had lived.... Who could tell? There

was small place in the world for men like him. He never had the

strength, the fierce aloofness of Old Gramp, the savage contempt of the

old man for the drones and grubbers of life.

It was all a strange business, surely. Strange and confused and without

sense. In the beginning, when she had first come into this frivolous

room (so cold and dead now in the gray light) she had been angry and

jealous at his deception, and bitter at Madame Nozières for having

caused his death. She had thought, “If he had not been going to meet

her, he would not have been killed.”

But she knew better now. She had been a fool. It was absurd and

monstrous that any one, even herself, should fancy he could bend fate to

his own ends. It was too imbecile, too senseless. No, she was wiser now.

She was not the headlong fool she had once been. In the face of all that

had happened in this one terrible night, she was utterly humbled. Who

was she to question the behavior of this brother who lay dead under the

gilded swans? Who was she, a cold, hard woman, to question a love of

which she knew nothing? And what did it matter now? She was glad

suddenly, with a strange, wild happiness, that he had known this Madame

Nozières. Her blondeness, her beauty, her fine clothes, her spirit ...

all these things had made him happy, on how many leaves in Paris?

What did it matter now? One lived but an instant, frantically, and time

rushed on and on....

But he was right. Their mother must never know the truth.

* * * * *

She thought too of Callendar, for he was with her all the time, almost

as if he had never gone away. The old foreboding returned to her--that

phrase out of Lily’s letter--_And then he rode away into the darkness. I

am certain he is dead._ He had gone away and she did not know where.

Perhaps she had been wrong to refuse him, cruel to have denied him the

happiness that Madame Nozières had given to Fergus. Things mattered so

little now. It seemed to her that she stood somewhere on a lofty

pinnacle, looking down on the spectacle ... a pitiful spectacle, so full

of “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The old quotation came back to

her out of the dim memories of the past when she had hated Shakespeare

with an intense passion. “Sound and fury, signifying nothing.” That was

it. It was far better to be like her mother, the invincible Hattie, who

never mounted to the heights but kept her eyes always on the ground,

frantically occupied with a thousand tiny things, never willing, as

Fergus had said, to face the truth. And now that he was gone, her

favorite of them all, what would she do? There remained nothing now

except the one truth which none could in the end escape.

It was daylight and the ghastly smell of picric acid had died away

before she stirred herself. The morning sun, pouring in at the window,

seemed to say, “This is another day. We must all go on. This is not the

end of everything.”

(The sun, she thought bitterly, which Fergus had always loved even as a

baby.)

So she had stirred herself wearily and gone over to the little

escritoire which stood in one corner of the room. There, with the pen of

gold and mother-of-pearl that belonged to Madame Nozières, she seated

herself and wrote, one letter to Callendar and one to her mother. To

Callendar she wrote that she would marry him as soon as it was possible.

To her mother she wrote a lie. She wrote that Fergus had died in the

house in the Rue Raynouard, alone with herself and Doctor Chausson who

was a great doctor and came only because he was a friend of hers.

Everything had been done which could be done. He would be buried not in

a grave at the front nor in a lonely Paris graveyard but at Trilport, in

the friendly cemetery where Madame Gigon lay, a little way off from

Germigny l’Evec where Lily went in the summer.

And in the end she added another lie, because she knew it was the one

thing above all else that Hattie Tolliver would want to hear. She even

framed the sentence shrewdly, sentimentally, though it was false to her

very nature. She wrote, “He died thinking of you. Your name was the last

word he said.”

For Hattie had at last to face the truth, and one must make it as easy

as possible for her.

Almost the last word he had said was, “Callendar.... This man ...

Callendar.” ... And she would never know now what it was that he had

meant to say.

There was a knock at the door. She knew what it was ... the men sent by

Doctor Chausson.

Ignoring it, she knelt beside the bed and pressed her cheek close to the

cold face of her brother. She was alone now, more alone than she had

ever been in all her life, where none could see her. Then as she stood,

looking down at him, it occurred to her that this death had been in a

strange way a perfect thing.... He had escaped in the midst of life,

happier than he had ever been before.... There were worse things than

death. It was only to those who remained that death was cruel.... It was

cruel to understand, in that frivolous room with the bright spring sun

streaming in at the window, that she had come to know him only when he

was dead. There had never been time before.... There had been only the

business of fame and glory and success.

When at last she opened the door, the men sent by Doctor Chausson saw a

handsome woman hard and cold, without sympathy, who stood holding by his

collar a great black dog who growled at them savagely.

* * * * *

In the days that followed Madame Nozières came twice to the Rue

Raynouard, once on foot and once in a taxicab though it was quite clear

that she was far more used to a motor of her own--a small, very

expensive motor like that of Sabine. She it was who had candles placed

in the room with Fergus and had masses said for him. And to all this,

which old Jacob Barr would have called “popery” and denounced as

rubbish, Ellen offered no resistance; for, not being sure any longer

that she herself believed in anything, she saw no harm so long as it

gave comfort to others. Fergus himself, she knew, would have smiled and

allowed it.

Madame Nozières wept and thanked Ellen and made her ill at ease and

miserable, but she did not say who she was or whence she came. Indeed,

Ellen learned no more of her identity than she had discovered from

Fergus himself, as he lay dying. She was a lady, a _femme du monde_, a

creature of charm and (despite her grief) of gaiety. She came out of

mystery and returned to it. “Madame Nozières” was a label, perhaps as

good as any other. Twice, long afterward, Ellen fancied that she saw

her,--once walking in the Bois and talking earnestly with Doctor

Chausson and once in the establishment of Reboux, but she could not be

certain because each time she turned quickly away lest Madame Nozières

should recognize her. She respected the mystery; she was afraid to

intrude upon it. In some way it seemed better to leave the tragedy with

its proper ending--in that frivolous room by candlelight in the Avenue

Kléber. It had been in its way a complete, a perfect thing. To follow it

further could lead only into triviality and disillusionment. She had no

desire to know too much of Madame Nozières.

But the sense of mystery fascinated her and, in the lonely days in the

Rue Raynouard, it appeared to change and soften all her beliefs. She saw

now that mystery had its place in the scheme of things, that it

possessed a beauty of its own which lent fascination to all life. There

were others, she knew, besides Callendar who were never to be understood

completely, never to be pinned down and taken apart as this or that. In

all her haste, she had fancied that life was thus and so, that people

were easy to fathom and understand. She doubted now whether she would

ever know any one--even Lily or Rebecca. There was always something

which escaped knowledge, something which lay hidden deep beneath layer

upon layer of caution, of shyness, of deceit, or mockery, of a thousand

things ... the something which in the end was one’s own self, the same

self she had guarded with savagery through so many years.

For all that people might say or think, she understood that this Fergus,

the one who stood in the candlelit room in the Avenue Kléber, had been

more beautiful than any other ... as he lay there clasping with one hand

his sister and with the other Madame Nozières!

57

It is true that Ellen in life and even Fergus in death did not really

know their own mother. They had said that she would not be able to face

the truth; yet she had done it, bravely and with a dignity that none of

them would have recognized; for they had not seen her on the day she

forced Judge Weissman, her enemy, to aid her because her children were

the ones at stake.

So the premonition which had troubled her for so long came now to be a

reality. With Ellen in Paris, Robert joined up with his own army, and

Fergus (her beloved Fergus) dead, there remained only Gramp, cold and

aloof and ageless, in his chamber surrounded by books.

It was the grim old man who found her lying in the darkness of the tiny

living room of the flat with Ellen’s letter crushed in her hand. In his

unearthly fashion he had divined the tragedy. He saw that she did not

weep; she did not even moan. She lay quite still, unconscious that he

stood there in the shadows watching her. It is impossible to imagine

what his thoughts could have been. For a time at least the hardness

which had protected him for so long must have melted a little; for

Fergus had been of all the family his favorite. It was Fergus to whom he

lent his precious books. It was Fergus who had seemed at times the very

incarnation of his own youth--so remote now, so buried beneath all his

intolerant scorn of those who were afraid to live.

For a long time he stood there watching his daughter-in-law, silently

and with an intense concentration as if he were obsessed by a desire to

study her sorrow with the passion of an anatomist. And then he had gone

up to her and quietly taken the damp, crumpled letter with a strange

gentleness out of the strong, worn hand. She did not resist; she did not

even stir. She lay quite still while he held the letter close to the

light and peering at it read it through, though he knew all the time

what was in it.

When he had finished he laid it again by her side and said in a low

voice, “The boy loved life, Hattie. And for those who die, death is not

hard. There are worse things.”

In thirty years it was the first time there had passed between the two

any speech purified of anger or resentment.

* * * * *

To one of Hattie’s nature there is consolation in the possession of the

dead. The grim small tasks, the polite and empty phrases of condolence,

the coming and going of those who care for the dead ... all this empty

hubbub and commerce serves in a fashion to conceal and break the anguish

of loss. But for Hattie there were not even these things. She was left

alone with Gramp in a flat which, though it had seemed empty before, now

achieved a desolation beyond all belief. She (who had lived only in her

children) had no friends about her; the very flat was not in the proper

sense a home, such as the house in Sycamore Street had been. It was a

barren, inhuman cave occupied before her by a procession of strangers

which, when she left, would again close over the brief years of her

tenancy. She found herself alone save for that ancient man her

father-in-law, in a strange city, without even the body of her son for a

bitter consolation.

So this woman, who had lived her life so richly ... a life florid and

overflowing with sentiment, a life that churned and raced along in an

overwhelming current of vitality, achieved in the face of tragedy a calm

and a dignity which she had never shown before. She understood, in the

primitive depths of her nature, that this truth which she must face was

the final one, from which there was no appeal. Always before there had

been some hope ahead, some chance of turning events by a vast energy and

a crude wilfulness to her own ends. There was nothing now ... nothing

save a few old clothes, some books and the Bible she had given him on

his tenth birthday. To these she clung with the tenacity of a savage,

and they were pitiful remnants to a woman whose love demanded the very

bodies of her children.

For Hattie there were none of those shades of grief and joy which are

the lot of those more completely civilized. She had no capacity for

seeing herself, or, like Ellen, for finding in the death of Fergus an

illumination which served in a mysterious fashion to light up the long

progression of her life. In her sorrow, Hattie no longer even pitied

herself; and this, of course, may have been the secret of her dignity.

Hattie, the martyr, who bore her cross and flung herself before her

family like the Pope before the Visigoths, no longer existed. In her

place there was a strong, almost grim woman, who was silent and did not

complain.

Nor had she, like the more civilized, the pleasure of books and of

philosophic reflection. Her life since the very beginning had been far

too active for such things; and now, when at last there was time, when

she had no one to care for save the independent old man, she could not

read, she could not reflect. Books were poor pale things by comparison

with the ferocious activity of life itself. There were no stockings to

darn, no one for whom she might make meringues, no dog to place upon his

mat before locking up the house. (To the apartment there was but one

door and it locked of itself. It was, properly speaking, no real home at

all.) So she came to invent things for herself to do. She lingered over

her work and took (though she was rich now) to such pale tasks as

embroidery and knitting, only to find that the objects of her labor,

having been created for no real purpose, accumulated dismally in the

drawers and cupboards.

She had letters both from Ellen and Robert which she kept in the family

Bible to read over and over again; and sometimes a shameful, bitter

thought crept into the recesses of her active mind. It was a terrible

thought, which she thrust hastily aside as impious and touched with

blasphemy; but it returned nevertheless again and again to torment her.

She thought, “If only it had been Robert instead of Fergus!” (Robert who

was so steadfast and reliable, who already was the youngest captain of

his division). She was proud of him too, but in a different way. She

could not say how....

The awful thought would not die. She would have given Robert to keep

Fergus, though in the solitude of the empty flat she sometimes cried

out, “It is not true. I could not think such a horrible thing!”

The squabbling with Gramp came quietly to an end, though neither of them

ever made any allusion to the change. They lived together for the most

part in silence but the old man ceased to torment and worry her. And on

her side without ever knowing why, she came to treat him in a new way,

almost to cherish and protect him like some brittle piece of glass, as

all that remained of the old life. She even made for him little

delicacies and had him to eat at the table with her. At such times they

sat, awkwardly, and without conversation, each perhaps abashed by the

weakness that lay in this strange truce.

In the long empty days there came to Hattie a mysterious sense of having

turned a corner, of having stepped from one room into another. The door

between had, she knew, closed forever, though she did not understand

why. She had come now into the borders of Gramp’s country. She was

growing old and so she came to understand a little the old man’s vast

indifference.

* * * * *

Before he sailed, Robert, dressed in his captain’s uniform, neat and

spotless, every button properly arranged, came to bid farewell. She

could feel certain of him. There would be no mad exploits, no wild

surges of temperament ending in disaster, no idle heroics undertaken for

their own selfish thrill. These things Robert would never understand.

As he sat talking to her (trying bravely in his solid, unspectacular way

to take the place of Fergus) he seemed square and massive and eternal as

her father, old Jacob Barr, had been. There was reassurance in the snub

nose, the solid jaw and the unruly red hair. Where Fergus had not even

been able to look out for himself, she knew that this other son would

care for his men with a detached and efficient thoroughness. There was

nothing in the death of Fergus which could be counted as a material

loss, even to herself. It was Robert who had earned money when it was

most needed; it was Robert who looked out for her and stood between her

and the world. It was upon men like Robert that the whole world rested;

he was a foundation, the beginning and end of all order and worth. And

yet.... And yet.... Even while he sat there doing his clumsy best to

make up for the loss of his brother, the old wicked thought kept

tormenting her.... She wanted to tear it out by its roots, to destroy it

forever; but there it was, always with her.... _If only it had been

Robert._

“You need not worry over me,” he assured her. “I will take no chances.

There’s nothing romantic about war ... at least not about this one. It’s

simply business. The side which is most efficient is bound to win. There

won’t be any nonsense. I’ll look out for myself.”

She said to him almost with indifference, “You’re all I have left,

because I don’t see much of Ellen any more. She’s too busy.”

But she was not thinking of what she said: she was thinking that war

_was_ romantic. It must be so else it would not excite men as it excited

Fergus. It was the romance that was the bait in the trap ... romance and

the excitement. So long as these things existed, there would be wars,

for there would be men like Fergus who did not take their places

efficiently but went because (she remembered one of the phrases he had

used again and again in the face of her reproaches) “it was too big a

show to be missed.” It was not men like Robert who made war possible; it

was men like Fergus. She saw it all with a vision uncluttered by talk of

economics and politics; and so in her own fashion she came far nearer to

the truth than this solid, logical son of hers.

But he was sure of himself, Robert. You could fancy him ordering his men

about, ably and dispassionately, leading them admirably when it was

necessary, as his grandfather Barr, the Citizen, had done before him in

the Civil War. He would make a good job of it. You could see that he

would quietly and thoroughly win distinction, not as Fergus had done,

without once thinking of it, but because he had arranged it so. You

could see him being decorated with medals, as his brother had been

decorated, again and again; but not for the same reason. He would not

wear them as Fergus had done, with a swagger. He would cherish them, in

neat leather cases, and bring them out to show his children and his

grandchildren, because he could not tell them what the war was like,

give them the feel of it, as Fergus could have done ... Fergus who (if

he had lived) would have lost the medals or thrown them away long ago in

disgust like his Grandfather Tolliver, who found the Siege of Paris more

romantic than Bull Run or Gettysburg. He had, one fancied, already

counted his medals. One could see that he was cut out for a good

officer.

“I will see Ellen as soon as I have leave,” he murmured and thought,

“And I will not be walking about the streets during an air raid as if I

were at a church sociable.”

Yet he was not bitter because Fergus was the better loved; that fact he

had come long since to accept. He was scornful only because it seemed to

him an idiotic thing to be wandering carelessly into the midst of

danger. There could be no reason for it ... none on earth.

Before he left, Hattie burdened him with a great bundle of sweaters and

socks, all admirably made in the hours when she had been distracted by

her terror of idleness.

“You must wear them all yourself,” she said. “You’ll need them in time.

They’ll wear out and you’ll lose them. I’ll send you others from time to

time. It’s all I have to do nowadays.”

And on the way past the cell occupied by The Everlasting he must have

heard the squeaking of his grandfather’s chair as the old man rocked and

rocked, lost again in a torrent of memories; but he did not stop.

“Say good-by for me to The Everlasting,” he said and then, after kissing

her abruptly, he turned and disappeared quickly down the stairs, so that

she could not see his tears. For Robert was, unlike the others,

sentimental, though he had never once allowed his mother the joy of

discovering it. It was a thing which he thought shameful.

Even he had caught a sense of her terrible desolation.

* * * * *

There is a rhythm in life, a certain beauty which operates by a

variation of lights and shadows, happiness alternating with sorrow,

content with discontent, distilling in this process of contrast a sense

of satisfaction, of richness that can be captured and pinned down only

by those who possess the gift of awareness. Old Gramp in his solitude

knew well its workings, and Ellen, in Paris, had become, as the tempo of

her own life began to lose its intensity, to understand it dimly. For

Hattie, in the fretful ebb and flow of her existence there could never

be such knowledge. This rhythm, this beauty, existed outside her, a

thing apart, beyond the wall of her consciousness.

Gramp, in his solitude, knew too that there were in each life hills and

valleys and, rising above them all, one peak which pierced the clouds.

Out of the depths of his uncanny perception he came to understand that

Hattie’s life had passed its solitary peak. It had begun now to slip

down the other side; what remained could be but a gradual falling away,

a gentle decline until the end. What he knew from the summit of a

monstrous detachment came to Hattie vaguely through her senses; she knew

it as she knew the approach of damp weather by its effect upon her

rheumatism. It was that sense of having passed from one room into

another, with the door behind her closed and bolted forever.

And Ellen.... She too stood now on the summit, for ambition had been the

beginning and end of her existence. She had accomplished; she had won.

There would never be another peak so lofty, so enveloped in heady

invigorating air; nor one so lonely. But there remained the things which

lie always on the opposite slope of the peak--the things which the wise,

like Gramp, place above all the hurry, the scramble, the headlong

turmoil of the long ascent. There were the gentle pastures of

reflection, of kindliness, of warmth and fine thoughts, all the rewards

which succeed the terrible struggle. Ellen, he knew, had crossed the

summit; and she was still a young woman.

58

One bright spring morning as Hattie sat looking out into the street

while she sewed and thought, round and and round, over and over again,

those same thoughts which stole in upon her so frequently in these days

of idleness, the postman brought a letter from Ellen. It was a brief

letter, written it seemed in haste, but it contained two bits of news

that changed the whole face of the world.

Ellen was to be married, and she wanted Hattie to come to Paris and make

her home there.

“I have talked it over with Lily,” she wrote, “and she is delighted with

the plan. Her house here is enormous and comfortable, and Lily is rarely

in it save in the spring and autumn. You could do as you chose with no

one to annoy you. And you need never think or worry about housekeeping.

I am sending a cheque, and Rebecca’s uncle Mr. Schönberg is arranging

for tickets. It is difficult to travel nowadays, but I have talked to

Mrs. Callendar and she has written to a friend of hers, Malcolm Travers,

the banker, who will arrange passports for you. You will hear from him

within a few days after this letter.”

And about her own plans she wrote, “I am marrying Richard Callendar, the

son of the same Mrs. Callendar. You remember her? You met her on the

night of my first concert in America, a small, fat dark woman covered

with dirty diamonds. You may have read of the family in the papers, for

they are well known. They are very rich. He is four years older than me.

I have known him for nearly ten years. He wanted to marry me before,

years ago. (And then a sudden flash of the old Ellen who had walked

away in the sunlight to skate on Walker’s Pond.) Fancy me, marrying a

millionaire!”

So, in an instant, everything was changed and Hattie’s world grew bright

once more. It was all so preposterous--to have Ellen arranging

everything in this grand manner, the tickets, the passports, as if her

mother were a queen whose journey was to be made as simple and free of

trouble as possible. And the cheque and the millionaire husband! Yet,

when the sense of excitement had abated a little, she remembered that

she had always known her children were not of ordinary flesh and blood.

There had been something extraordinary about them. Look at Ellen! Famous

and rich and now marrying a millionaire.

But her satisfaction was not free from the old doubts. Was he--this

Callendar--good enough for her? Clarence had never been. It was a good

thing, she reflected, that he had died. What could she have done with

him during all these years ... Clarence, a poor thing at best, always

complaining of his health.

But this Callendar. Who was he and why had she never spoken of him

before? Surely she was a strange girl who kept such secrets so

passionately hidden. Where had he come from? Was he of good healthy

stock? What had his life been? For a time she paced up and down the room

in a ferment of curiosity. She tried to imagine what sort of man Ellen

would choose to marry. (This time she must be marrying only for love;

there could be no other reason.) She tried again and again to picture

him and she found herself baffled. It was impossible to imagine....

And when she had grown more calm and the sense of the dreary flat was

borne in upon her once more, she remembered The Everlasting. He was

ninety-five, and yet not really an old man; his mind had never faltered

in its course. But he was feeble and needed care. She could not desert

him now. She deceived herself into believing that it was her duty to

care for him until he died; and only the Almighty knew when that would

be. No, she must take him with her. She could not leave him, as Ellen

suggested, in some home for the aged. That would be wrong; it would be,

in a sense, indecent. He was after all the father of her husband, the

grandfather of her children. One could not do a thing like that. She

debated the matter with herself for hours, thinking, strangely enough,

only of reasons why she _should_ take him; and it never once occurred to

her that she really had no desire _not_ to take him. The arguments

against it were simply the habit of an intermittent civil war that had

endured for more than thirty years. She could not bear to leave him

behind, any more than she could have borne it to leave behind the old

clothes, the worn shoes, and the Bible she had given Fergus on his tenth

birthday. Gramp was a fixture now, a part of the past. Without him she

would feel lost and lonely.

When she told him the intoxicating news, the old man, with a wariness

that placed no trust in their unreal truce, looked at her sharply and

said, doubtfully, “I don’t know, Hattie. I’m too old and too feeble. I

think perhaps I’d better stay behind.” He opposed the idea in the belief

that if he opposed it she would insist upon its being carried through.

But she was firm. She would not even argue the matter. He must go with

her to Paris. He would be quite as well off there as anywhere else and

he would at least be where she could look after him.

“Much better off,” thought Gramp, whose only desire was to see Paris

again before he died. But he still maintained a resentful air as if he

opposed the idea with his last breath but was far too feeble to offer

any real resistance.

59

In Paris the house in the Rue Raynouard was got ready for the arrival.

It had begun again to take on a little of the old gaiety and sense of

life, for it had passed through the depths of its depression in the days

which first Lily and then Ellen had spent there alone in their sorrow.

All things pass in time and so the grief and loneliness had begun to

pass from the house. Lily, as the shrewd Rebecca predicted during her

first quarrel with Ellen, found in time some one to console her for the

loss of César. It was impossible that one so simple, so without

complexities, should have gone on mourning; Lily lived as much in the

present as Ellen lived in the future. Her consoler was the grave,

dignified Monsieur de Cyon (the same white-haired gentleman connected

with the government, whom Fergus had met at tea) the widower of “Tiens!

Tiens!” de Cyon, whom Ellen had loathed long ago when she first came to

the Rue Raynouard. He was glad no doubt to have been freed by death from

the crêpe-laden “Tiens! Tiens!” and satisfied to have found so agreeable

a creature as Lily--a woman whom he described to his friends as

dignified, worldly, cultivated and beautiful, not omitting the fact that

she was very rich and that she was an American, a factor of political

importance at a moment when America was so necessary to Europe in

general and to France in particular.

And Lily too was, in her casual way, content with such a marriage. In

the room, smelling of scent and powder, where she had exchanged other

confidences with Ellen, she said, “He is a gentleman and distinguished.

Perhaps he may be in the next cabinet. I am rich. I can help him. And as

for me....” She laughed softly, with a touch of the old abandon in her

voice. “He will not bother me much. He is an old man.” But she was grave

too when she spoke again. “And I ... I am no longer young. I am

forty-three. I must begin to look about for something to take the place

of youth. I shall make him a good wife. I shall be able to entertain and

give dinners that will help him and I will have a position that I have

never had before.”

And then she grew thoughtful and added, “It will be good for Jean too.

It is time he had a father ... a thing he has never had. It is time that

I stepped out of the picture and made way for him.”

She had lived, if not a life beyond reproach, one that was at least

discreet and marked by good taste, and so the other things, since the

world is as it is, did not matter. Of those who had really known her

secret only three remained ... Ellen and Hattie and Jean. César and

Madame Gigon and Old Julia were dead. It did not, of course, occur to

her to include The Everlasting, who had known all the while.

* * * * *

Jean too was happier now, for he had grown used to wandering about on

crutches and had become accustomed to a new leg, made so admirably that

he could still ride as much as he liked. It would have been impossible

for him to have remained depressed; there was too much of Lily in him

and, it must not be forgotten, he resembled Fergus greatly. The old

friendship between him and Ellen waxed stronger than ever. It seemed to

her at times that Fergus had returned or had never died at all. In the

evenings while his mother sat talking quietly in the big soft drawing

room with Monsieur de Cyon, Ellen joined him at the piano in playing

with four hands the wildest songs out of the music halls. Rebecca in

rare moments of good humor added to the gaiety with imitations of poor

old Sarah Bernhardt or Mistinguette or Spinelly.

Rebecca had long since come to make herself at home in the big house.

She was settled now in one of the rooms opening on the long gallery and

she was perpetually with them, for it never occurred to Lily to offer

objections to one more guest; but, having nothing to occupy her time,

she grew irritable and restless. Her occupation had gone suddenly and

there remained nothing to absorb her energy. Ellen remained stubborn and

mysterious. She would not return to America where there was a fortune

awaiting her.

“I have enough,” she said. “I need not work myself to death. I am rich

now. I am through with struggling. Whenever I see fit I can return.”

But to Rebecca, it must have seemed that Ellen had slipped somehow out

of her reach, beyond the control which she had once held over her. She

would not even quarrel as they had once done so often and with such

vigor. She would simply repeat, “No. When I am ready, I will tell you. I

am going to rest for a time.”

It was her contentment that clearly had the power of disturbing Rebecca.

She seemed at times almost happy. The old wilfulness and caprice were

gone, and when she sat at the piano with Jean, there were times when it

even seemed that she was enveloped by a hard, bright gaiety, touched, it

is true, by hysteria and bitterness. She was unmanageable in a way she

had never been.

“You are deceiving me,” Rebecca reproached her. “There is something that

I don’t know. You are keeping something from me.” And she would grow

tearful and descend to the rich depths of Oriental sentiment. “Me,” she

would repeat, beating her thin breast, “who have given my life for you

... who have worked myself to the bone ... given all my time.... For no

other reason than to make you a success. It is shameful.”

And Ellen, in her new wisdom, might have answered, “Because you have

found the thing you were born to do. Because you were aimless till you

fastened upon me.... Because you found happiness in taking possession of

me and my life.”

But she said none of these things because it seemed to her that

quarreling was useless. She only laughed and replied, “And you told the

most wonderful lies about me.... You created Lilli Barr but Lilli Barr

is having a rest now. I am being myself ... Ellen Tolliver ... for a

little time.”

Still Rebecca, too wise to be put off with such answers, only looked at

her with suspicion and remained sulky. She could not run off now to

visit Uncle Otto and Aunt Lina in Vienna nor the aunt in Riga nor the

cousins in Trieste. She could not even make a round of the watering

places, for all those which were not closed or filled with wounded

soldiers lay on the other side of the circus parade that had begun to

draw near to the end. One could almost hear the distant toots of the

steam calliope, manned and manipulated by politicians, that fetched up

the rear.

July had passed and with it the last peril to Paris, but still Callendar

did not return. She heard from him whenever he had time to write. They

were busy now (he wrote). They were beginning to look toward the end.

The arrival of the Americans had done much for the French, not that they

counted for much because there were not enough of them, but because,

simply, they were _there_. He had kept on the _qui vive_ for her other

brother--Robert--but he had not come across him. It was not strange

since his own division was nowhere near the Americans. Still he might

see him.... One could never tell.... They expected to be shifted soon

eastward in the direction of the (here the word was deleted), quite near

to the Americans. It was easy for him to make himself acquainted since

he was, after all, half-American.

And he would write again and again, “Do not worry about me. I have the

most incredible luck--always. There are some men who go through the

thing _knowing_ that nothing will ever happen to them. I _know_ it. It’s

a feeling that is in the bones. In the worst messes, I have that feeling

... so strong that it is physical. ‘Nothing will happen to me ...

nothing whatever,’ I find myself repeating over and over again.”

And as she read this, it occurred to her again that such a belief

belonged to the part of him which had always been strange to her--the

part which escaped in some nameless fashion even the limits of her

imagination. It was mystical and profound and uncanny. At the very

moment that she knew he must be right in his faith, she was terrified

too because he was so certain. She could not believe with such intensity

save in herself. Her beliefs were related always to the power, the force

which she herself had at her own command; and in all the senseless,

miserable killing there was no power which lay in one’s self. It was

simply a monstrous game of chance with the odds all against one.

But she found a happiness in those letters of a sort which she had never

imagined. It seemed to her that in some way a part of herself was there

with him enduring the same hardships and dangers, and for the first

time in all her life she touched the borders of the satisfaction which

comes of sharing an experience. She was troubled no longer by doubts;

now that she had given her word, it never occurred to her to change.

There was relief in the knowledge that all the years of indecision were

at an end. There was satisfaction in feeling that the thing had been

settled.

But she was abashed at the bold passion with which he wrote,

shamelessly, assailing the wall of her fierce reserve. She was abashed

and yet triumphant, for in all the years of struggle she had forgotten

at times that she was a woman and young. His letters made her know for a

little time some of the joy which Lily had possessed since the

beginning.

He wrote at length that Sabine’s divorce was completed. “I am free now

and will have a leave soon, so we can try then to make up for all the

wasted years. Because they have been wasted. We should have been married

long ago. We should have been courageous enough to have cut through the

tangle and set things right. We were cowardly then. It is tragic that we

only learn through long experience that wastes so much of joy, so much

of happiness. But you are mine now ... mine forever. I shall never lose

you again....”

But the letter troubled her strangely; it invoked with each line some

disturbing memory of the past. The allusion to courage.... Who could say

what had been courage and what cowardice? If the matter had rested with

Callendar alone, it would have been solved because he had had what he

believed was courage. He would have thrust poor Clarence aside and

trampled upon him, to take ruthlessly what he himself desired. It had

been a courage different from hers, whose foundations stood rooted in

self-denial. Yet she had saved no one in the end, not even Clarence.

Some power, in which Callendar placed such faith, had brought them

together in the end, destroying Clarence despite anything she could do

to save him. And it seemed to her that all the trouble, all the sorrow

went back to that winter evening on the shore of Walker’s Pond when she

had said “Yes” to Clarence and felt for him at the same moment a queer,

inarticulate pity--a pity which she was beginning at last to understand.

She experienced again a fierce satisfaction, almost a pleasure, which

Callendar, in the strangeness of his blood, would never know. It was the

satisfaction in having dominated even one’s own body.

But in the last lines there lay an echo of the old conflict. _You will

be mine ... mine forever. I will never lose you again._ It was an

arrogant speech, so like the way he had come to her years ago in the

Babylon Arms, not asking what she desired but simply taking for granted

that she would do as he wished. The memory of that afternoon disturbed

her again with the sense that this love of which he wrote was an

obscene, middle-aged emotion worn by a too great experience. The

freshness was gone and with it all the glow of their meetings in the

open windows of Sherry’s and the walks through the Spring in Central

Park.... It was this knowledge perhaps more than any other, that made

his passionate phrases seem shameful. All of that first youth was gone

from them, yet he posed, he wrote her still in the same ardent phrases,

grown threadbare and unconvincing, of a love that had once been clean

and fresh and despite all that she knew, even then, virginal. There was

a touch now that bordered upon the professional....

He told her that Sabine was in Paris and might pay her a call, as much

out of a gossip’s curiosity as from her curious passion for knowing the

truth, for knowing with a blazing clarity exactly how things stood.

Sabine did call, in her small, expensive motor, accompanied by little

Thérèse, an awkward, sickly girl of ten, but Ellen sent word that she

was out. She had no desire to see Sabine, perhaps because she feared

what Sabine had to tell her. And she could not turn back now; for too

many years she had followed a straight unswerving path.

60

It was a fantastic journey for Hattie and The Everlasting. On passports

arranged by Thérèse Callendar they were borne along a way made easy by

all the power behind Thérèse Callendar’s fortune, through all the hubbub

and turmoil of the war. Their companions on shipboard were

correspondents and doctors and nurses and soldiers and congressmen

(bound for the front to garner out of the very graves material for new

campaigns). The others aboard the ship must have found them a strange

pair concerning whom it was possible to speculate endlessly--this

handsome, grim woman and the old, old man in her charge. It is probable

that no one ever learned precisely who they were or whither they were

bound, for Hattie was a suspicious traveler who placed no trust in

fellow voyagers. She warned them away by her looks; and Gramp, of

course, had not the faintest desire to enter upon conversation. He read

his books and once a day made a circuit, under the escort of Hattie, of

the entire deck, his coonskin coat (from which he refused to be

separated) blowing in and out against his skinny old body. He never

spoke, even to Hattie, even in reply to such remarks as, “Now, Grandpa,

you must not eat that,” or “Now, Grandpa, you had best move your chair,

there’s a draft in that corner.”

(All this to Gramp who had never denied himself anything and had a

perfect digestion; who had never thought of drafts since he was born.)

Indeed, there was something touching in the spectacle of the middle-aged

woman, tending so carefully the old, old man. It was as if she feared

that he might by some ill chance be blown from the deck into the open

sea or fall down a companionway and shatter forever the brittle old

bones that had defied time itself. No one could have guessed that they

were enemies, that despite the temporary truce they could never be

anything but enemies by the very nature of things. Hattie treated him

still as if he were some fragile piece of old glass which she must

deliver safely to Lily’s house in the Rue Raynouard.

It was only after she had seen him safely to bed in his cabin that she

was able to give range to all her passionate energy and walk round and

round the deck, her ostrich plumes blowing in the gale, her strong,

buxom figure outlined against the luminous blue of the Atlantic night.

At such times she was almost happy again for it seemed to her that in

the winds and fogs Fergus was somewhere close at hand, just beyond

reach, waiting for her.

And she was going now to take up once more the threads of life. Ellen

was to be married.... Ellen was to be married.... She must have a

child.... She must have a child.... These things she thought over and

over again until she came at length to repeat them aloud to herself as

she walked, bracing her body against the gale, through the darkness. She

had joined Thérèse Callendar in this passionate desire for a grandchild,

but it was not for the same reason. To Hattie a grandchild would alter

everything. It would be for her like being young again, almost like

bearing a child of her own.

She had never traveled before; she knew not a word of French and The

Everlasting saw fit not to reveal his knowledge of the tongue; but she

was undaunted. In some way, by an heroic effort touched with a profound

scorn for a nation which chattered such an abominable tongue, she

managed everything ... the customs at Havre, the accommodations in

hotels already crowded to the doors and, last of all, the journey from

the port into the Gare du Nord. (Lily had sent a courier to meet her but

the meeting never occurred.) She was indomitable and she was almost

happy again in all the business of managing tickets and meals and

luggage, shepherding The Everlasting and his precious books. For Hattie

believed that nothing was impossible....

From the corridor of the crowded train, where she stood protecting Gramp

and jostling her fellow passengers, Hattie saw them standing on the

platform of the smoking cave called the Gare du Nord.... Ellen and Lily

and a dark man in a blue uniform; and as the train jolted to a halt, her

own car (for she thought of it thus) stopped almost abreast of them so

that she was able to see that they talked earnestly with grave faces and

an air of preoccupation. Wedged between a poilu slung round with a dozen

musettes and wine bottles, and a trim English colonel with white

mustaches and a red face, she was held immovable, unable to signal to

them though she pounded upon the glass and shouted to them through

windows open by some miracle against the stifling September heat. To

Hattie, nothing existed in all that echoing cavern save those three

figures, standing together amid mountains of luggage.

In the resounding shed steam hissed and engines squealed in ridiculous

Gallic fashion; soldiers shouted to one another and a cocotte just

beneath her window cried ribald jests to a lover somewhere in the same

car who joined in the shouts of laughter. They looked up and down the

platform--those three. It seemed that years passed before Lily, turning

languidly in the heat, caught a glimpse of Hattie’s red and agitated

face and Gramp’s sharp nose and inscrutable eyes.

They moved toward her; the English colonel whose toes had been trampled

gave way in indignation and Hattie, bearing an immense amount of luggage

and followed indifferently by Gramp, descended to the platform.

Ellen kissed her and then Lily, and at last she heard Ellen saying,

“This is Richard, Ma. He is on leave.”

Above all the flurry and the conversation, she and Callendar regarded

each other searchingly, the one with a piercing gaze of appraisal, the

other with an air almost of astonishment. He had not, perhaps, pictured

her as such a handsome woman, nor one, despite the grimness on which one

could not put one’s finger, of such immense gusto. She accounted for

Ellen’s strength and vitality, but there was clearly nothing subtle in

her and nothing cold: the answer to all that lay elsewhere--perhaps in

the ancient man who peered at them all like a spiteful mouse through

his dim spectacles.

As for Hattie, her eyes asked only one thing, “Was he--this man--good

enough for Ellen?” His foreign blood showed itself more plainly than she

had expected. It troubled her that her daughter should be marrying a man

of foreign blood; for, vaguely, all foreigners were associated in her

mind with those dark, sullen, violent men who worked in the black Mills

surrounding Shane’s Castle.

There flashed between the two--Callendar and Hattie--no spark either of

understanding or enmity. Rather it seemed that the opinions of both were

colored by surprise and a touch of suspicion. In Hattie’s eyes there was

a fire of pride and possession, the look of one who would fight for her

children, passionately; and in the gray eyes of Callendar there was only

the opaque, inscrutable expression which only Ellen, of them all, had

ever seen dissolve or change.

But they were grave, all of them, in a fashion that presently entered

Hattie’s spirit and made her feel that their welcome was lacking in

enthusiasm. Perhaps (she thought) it was the war; they were so close to

it and Ellen, like herself, must be thinking always of Fergus. Perhaps

they did not really want her there ... any of them. Yet they had written

her with so much eagerness. It was a doubt that filled her with a sharp

terror of growing old and useless and dependent.

Lily (whom she had not seen in years, Lily who was now Madame de Cyon)

seemed scarcely changed at all. She could not be (Hattie, watching her,

hastily calculated the years) she could not be a day less than

forty-five; yet there she was, a woman who had sinned, looking young,

almost fresh, scarcely a day older than Ellen who was twelve years

younger ... more plump than Ellen and, strangely enough, more soft.

Still, Hattie reflected, with a grim satisfaction, she had painted her

face, and her hair, it was certain, had been “touched up.”

Perhaps in Paris all life was different; perhaps such a life as Lily’s

made not too great a difference. Looking at her cousin, so beautiful, so

charming and so unnaturally young, all the deep rooted respectability of

Hattie’s nature rose and bristled. And as she stood on the steps of the

Gare du Nord waiting for Callendar to fetch the gray blue Government

motor to drive them to the Rue Raynouard, it swept over her that it was

a strange and ridiculous turn of affairs which had brought her of all

people “into the wickedest city in the world,” to live in the house of

Lily whom she had always distrusted. She had not thought of it until

this moment when she stood looking out across the Place Roubaix.

The motor came abreast of them with Callendar--a stranger, a

foreigner--at the wheel, driving with a cool recklessness. It was all

weird and unreal, so preposterous that Hattie grew suddenly frightened.

She was aware briefly of a terror at the spectacle of this new, strange

city where every one spoke an ungodly language. A little while before

she would not even have thought of such things. It occurred to her that

she must be growing old.

“I never felt younger in my life,” she repeated aloud to Lily who stood

waiting for her to enter the motor.

* * * * *

All this time The Everlasting had said nothing. Watching the others he

had kept his own silence, but he had not overlooked the Paris that lay

all about him, so changed now, so different, from the Paris of his

youth. He heard none of their talk, made almost laboriously against the

inexplicable depression, as they drove through the Rue Lafayette. How

could it have interested him who was concerned with another world ...? A

world of gaslight and crinoline, imperials and the waltzes of Strauss

and Waldteufel? To him, who had no future, this new Paris must have been

less than nothing ... this new Paris in which Lily with all her money

out of the black mills in the Middle West had a house and lived as if

she had been born a Parisian; this new Paris in which his own

granddaughter played a brilliant part. It was a Paris.... How could one

describe it?

Yet, as he rode over the sweltering asphalt, his eyes, his ears, his

nose drank in the sights and sounds and smells ... the sudden cry of

“L’Intran!... L’Intran!” and “Le Petit Parisien!” the withered dying

chestnut trees of the Boulevard Haussmann (he could remember when it was

new), the little tables.... Because youth was after an insidious fashion

returning to him, Gramp, the bitter, the aloof, grew sentimental. It had

been here, in this Paris, that he had climbed to the pinnacle of all his

life, the summit from which all else had been a gentle decline. He had

not died like Fergus. He had gone on and on until at last life itself

had lost all its savor....

They had turned now round Arc de Triomphe, and Ellen, sitting quietly by

the side of Callendar, frowned. She had been silent throughout the

drive, thinking, thinking, thinking bitterly with a savage secrecy

because she dared not betray herself even by the flicker of an eyelid.

She sat there silently, pondering how she might break the news which she

herself and no other must in the end relate. It seemed to her that the

whole affair was too cruel, too horrible. It was not possible that she

should be forced twice to do the same terrible thing.

The sound of her mother’s voice, cheerful and rich, as she talked to

Lily came to her over her shoulder.... “And the man wouldn’t open the

window so in the end I opened it myself and then he began to chatter and

yell at me in some ridiculous language ... French perhaps.”

“How was he dressed?” asked Lily, and Hattie described his uniform.

“Oh,” replied Lily in mirth. “He was Portuguese.... You must never mind

the Portuguese.”

“Well, I don’t know whether Portuguese smell worse than other

nationalities but the air in that train was enough to suffocate a strong

man.”

... And now they were coming nearer and nearer to the Trocadéro. They

were quite near now. Ellen turned away her eyes. They had passed the

house in the Avenue Kléber. She caught a swift glimpse of the doorway

which she had not seen since the bright morning she closed the door on

the frivolous little room of Madame Nozières. Ah, she knew how it

looked! She knew each tiny thing about it, and the gray courtyard with

the summer furniture heaped into one corner. It was cruel, incredible

... what she had to do.

Before they drew up to the door of the house in the Rue Raynouard,

Hattie too had grown silent under the gray depression which claimed all

the little party.

* * * * *

They had tea on the white terrace where they found the black dog and

poor tottering old Criquette and were joined by Jean and Monsieur de

Cyon, and Rebecca, whose sulkiness did nothing to raise the spirits of

the party. It was, Lily remarked, as she sat behind a table laden with

silver and flowers sent up from Germigny and the most delicate

sandwiches of pâté and cheese and jam, like a great family reunion. The

big house was full now; Lily was married, even with distinction. There

were no more secrets. In some ways life had grown simple, yet in others

its complexity had been increased, again and again.

Ellen, sitting there in her own pool of tragic silence, watched them all

with the old knowledge that their lives were all in some way entangled

and bound up together ... all that absurd and ill assorted group,

Monsieur de Cyon, gentle and white haired, Hattie, Rebecca, Jean, Lily,

Callendar and herself; and even Gramp who had disappeared already into

the solitude of the room which Lily had given him. Here they all were,

most of them--even de Cyon, himself, a foreigner--living on the wealth

poured out by the black mills of a town in the Midlands of America. And

she it was who had brought them together.

Watching her mother, it occurred to her that the indomitable Hattie was

no longer young. She would ask presently to be shown the room where

Fergus had died, and Ellen, still lying, would show it to her, and her

mother would weep and be satisfied in a pitiful fashion with the

deception. It was better sometimes to lie, better to deceive.

But the other thing.... She rose presently and walked away down into the

garden where she was joined after a little time by Jean on his crutches

and Hansi, panting and restless at being kept in the summer heat of the

city. And when she had gone Rebecca drifted away with an air of

resentful martyrdom. She would have been nasty to Hattie, if she had

dared, just as she had been nasty to Callendar who was only amused by

her and took pains to show her in a thousand small ways that Ellen

belonged to him now, and that she, Rebecca, no longer counted. But

Rebecca could wait; there was the same blood in both and Rebecca

understood how his game was played. She could wait, she thought

bitterly, as she went up to her own room. The game was not yet over and

she had not yielded the victory. She knew, perhaps better than any of

the others, even Ellen, what to expect of Callendar. There was no part

of him which remained a mystery to her, for she knew the men of her own

family ... the Uncle Ottos and Maximilians and Gustaves, all with a

touch of the Levant. But Ellen would never believe her; she would

believe only that Rebecca was jealous of him (which was true) and that

what she said was uttered only out of spite. She would not believe that

he was really cruel and domineering and thought of women as creatures

who belonged in a harem.... Sabine could have helped her, but Sabine

whom she had never met had been turned away from the door.

No, she had not yet lost the battle. She must save Ellen as much because

she herself needed her as on Ellen’s own account. She climbed the long

stairs and left Lily and de Cyon, Hattie and Callendar together on the

terrace, talking under the guidance of Callendar, who led them

gracefully here and there, finding, it seemed, a strange satisfaction in

ignoring the terrible knowledge which he shared only with Lily and

Ellen. Lily, watching him, must have thought him inhumanly cold. Perhaps

it occurred to her again, in the depths of her wisdom and experience,

that this marriage of Ellen could end in only one way.

* * * * *

Meanwhile under the old plane trees Ellen, who had been walking up and

down in silence with Jean and the dogs, took the departure of Monsieur

de Cyon for the white pavilion (which Lily had had fitted up for him as

a sort of study) as a signal to return. On the terrace she said to

Callendar, “I shan’t come down until dinner. If you want to see your

mother before she sails, you had best go now. I’ll be free later,” and

so dismissed him.

Then, turning to her mother, she said, “Come Ma, we’ll go up and get you

settled in your room,” and led her away leaving the garden to Lily and

Jean and fat old Criquette.

Hattie, who had noticed nothing either in the streets or in the house

itself (for, as Ellen knew, she did not see its beauty but saw it only

as the house which it might be said belonged to Ellen), noticed as she

walked through the big drawing-room that it resembled Shane’s Castle in

its warm, soft beauty. The portrait of old John Shane with a white

setter at his feet, and the glowing Venice of Mr. Turner which had once

hung in the house among the Mills now found places against the satinwood

paneling. She fancied too that she recognized the Aubusson carpet,

connected dimly in her memory with the picture of old Julia, hawk-like

and bitter, tracing the outlines of the extravagant flowers with her

stick of ebony and silver.

“It’s like the castle,” she murmured to Ellen, who hurried on up the

stairs without heeding her.

They turned off along the gallery and, as they passed one of the doors,

the squeaking of Gramp’s rocking chair (unpacked and long since placed

in readiness by Lily) came to them through the paneling. Time went on.

People were born and people died, but The Everlasting and his rocking

chair remained the same.

“He’s better now than he used to be,” observed Hattie. She did not

mention him by name, for Ellen knew well enough whom she meant; together

they had passed his door, together they had heard the same rhythmical

squeaking a thousand times. In a sense the sound of the decrepit rocker

bound them to each other in a way that nothing else could have done. It

was the one thing that remained constant, unchanged, out of all the

past.

Hattie’s room--the room to which she had come to spend the rest of her

life--was large and airy with two tall windows which opened on the

garden where Lily had taken Ellen’s place and was now walking up and

down, up and down, with her tall red-haired son. He was a man now and it

made Hattie tremble to think how little difference his improper

existence had made. There in the garden, under the old trees, it seemed

of no importance that he had never had, in the proper sense, a father.

He belonged there, with Lily. There was a rightness about the whole

thing which Hattie sensed from afar off but was unable to explain ... a

vague feeling that Lily’s life had been, despite everything, a life

complete and in the proper key, like a beautiful painting superbly drawn

and executed with all the boldness of a sure hand. Lily perhaps had led

the life for which she was born. Hattie saw that she was telling the boy

something which had led her to weep, for she lifted her handkerchief to

her eyes and the boy halted to face her with his brow crinkled into

little furrows. He was so like Fergus....

And in the next instant she knew what it was that Lily had said. Ellen

put her arms about her mother and murmured in a low voice, “I have some

bad news, Ma.”

And Hattie, looking at her in a queer stony fashion, replied, “I know

what it is. Robert too is dead.”

* * * * *

It was true. Little by little, while her mother sat listening in the

same stony silence, Ellen told the whole story. It was Callendar who had

brought the news. He had come from the front on leave this very morning.

There--somewhere in the Argonne--he had come across Robert’s regiment

and there they had become acquainted. And then on the night before

Callendar left, he had been sent for by one of the Americans. He had

gone to a dressing station, but Robert was dead when he arrived. He had

been wounded while saving one of his own men caught among the barbed

wire between the German lines and his own. The man had been saved; he

would live. It was he who had told Callendar the whole story, he who in

a sort of delirium had described the whole affair with a fantastic

poetry ... the fog that had settled over the lines, the swift, brilliant

flare of the Veery lights, the faint, malicious, pop! pop! of the gas

shells as they buried their noses so neatly in the earth. It was in this

wild, unearthly setting that Robert had given up his life. Robert

(thought Hattie) who had said, “There’s nothing romantic about war....

The side which is the most efficient.... There won’t be any nonsense....

I’ll look out for myself.”

When Ellen had finished they were both silent for a time and at last,

Hattie, still dry eyed, said in a firm voice, “It is a judgment ... I

love my children too well ... better than my own God and now they have

been taken from me.”

(_If only it had been Robert_.... And now it was Robert too.)

She lay down on the great bed, a strange, incongruous figure--this grim,

primitive, black-clad woman--in the midst of all the luxury that Lily

had provided. And presently she said, “I’d like to be alone for a time,

Ellen. I’ll call you ... later on.”

So Ellen left her mother in solitude, but as the door closed behind her

she knew that it was herself upon whom the remnants of her

family--Hattie and The Everlasting--now depended. It was she who, after

all these years in which she had neglected and forgotten them, had

become the rock, the foundation. And she knew too that there could no

longer be any doubt about marrying Callendar. She would have to marry

now.... Now that Robert, too, was gone there were new reasons. There

remained only one thing that she could do for her mother. It might as

well be Callendar as any other man.

61

They were married a month before the armistice, quietly with only

Monsieur de Cyon and Lily and Jean and Hattie at the ceremony. It was

the family once more (the remnants of the vigorous family which had once

filled the drawing-room at Shane’s Castle) which dominated all else in

fitting fashion at such events as births and deaths and weddings.

Thérèse was not present, for Ellen had decided quickly and there was not

time for her to return from New York. Nor was Rebecca there. A week

before the wedding there had been a scene in which Rebecca played all

her cards in a forlorn hope of winning the game against Callendar. She

had told Ellen that she herself was a Jewess and knew what men like

Callendar were like. She had told her that he was cruel and domineering

and that all his patience, all his quiet aloofness only covered the

steel of a will which she would come in time to know too well. She said

that in the end he would do his best to destroy her, not alone as a

musician but as a woman. And Ellen listened quietly, secure against it

all in the knowledge of the new duty that lay before her. It was not

until Rebecca in a perfect debauch of fury screamed at her, “He is

marrying you only to break your will ... to destroy you. It is that

which lies behind it all.... A conflict.... I know.... A conflict. He

has wanted it all these years,” that Ellen grew white and terrifying and

told her to go.