“I never want to see you again,” she said. “I am grateful for what you

have done, but you cannot arrange all my life for me. What you say is a

lie.... It isn’t true. You say it all because you can no longer plan my

whole life.”

So Rebecca had gone, her bright ferret eyes red and savage. On the long

stairs she met Callendar coming in but she did not so much as glance at

him. In her heart she had not yet yielded the victory. She would defeat

him in the end. She would let him defeat himself, for she knew he was

certain to do it.

* * * * *

It was de Cyon himself who arranged the transfer of Callendar to the

African service, and so it happened that they went to Tunis for the

honeymoon to a villa on the outskirts of the city which belonged to one

of Thérèse’s Greek cousins, a man who served as head of the

Mediterranean banks of Leopopulos et Cie. Ellen wrote to them regularly,

letters which were like all the others she had ever written her mother

since that first one from the Babylon Arms, restrained, careful and

filled with a host of details from which one could gather nothing, and

at the end always the same comment on the weather and the beauty of

their garden with a brief line to the effect that “we are well and

happy.”

In the Rue Raynouard, Gramp lived the same life that he had lived for

thirty years. He had his books (for Hattie was rich now and expense no

longer mattered) and he had his rocking chair placed absurdly among the

Empire furniture of the room which Lily had given him. Nothing had

changed save that his windows looked out upon a garden laid out by Le

Nôtre and that he could hear the whistles of the boats on the Seine and

that he went sometimes afoot on solitary expeditions through the

neighboring streets, once as far as the Invalides. It was his habit to

steal away secretly through the gate in the garden wall leading into the

Rue de Passy. He remained inscrutable, uncommunicative and aloof, save

with Jean for whom he displayed a fancy. And none of them knew that the

thing he was looking for on these solitary meanderings was a youth which

had returned to him now with an unearthly clarity, though there were

moments when he was childish and could not remember that he was in Paris

or what had happened to him only yesterday.

And Hattie, living now with Lily, began slowly to regain her interest in

life. She took to inspecting the big house room by room to see that it

was properly cared for; she quarreled in a stifled, incoherent fashion

with Augustine and the other servants; she fussed about the garden,

insensible to its beauty, and interested only in its order. She even

undertook after a time to do the marketing herself when she discovered

with horror that the shopkeepers paid old Mélanie the housekeeper a

commission on what she purchased.

So Lily, for a third time, turned over the possession of her house to

another. Madame Gigon had once treated it as her own and after her César

and Ellen had quarreled over it. And now, willingly, she delivered it

into the keeping of Hattie who had greater need of it than any of the

others. She told the servants that they must not mind Madame Tolliver’s

eccentric behavior and she made up to old Mélanie the amount of her

commissions. But even if she had not done these things, they would not

have left her, for Lily understood servants and had a way with them. Old

Mélanie had been with her for more than twenty years, since Lily had

come to Madame Gigon, a little frightened but resolved, none the less,

never to marry Jean’s father.

62

Sabine, in her defeat, did not complain. In all the business of the

divorce, she conducted herself as she had always done, with an amazing

control; so that no one, not even Thérèse, was able to discover whether

she was willing or not to release the pretense of a possession she had

held over Callendar for so many years. They talked it over quite calmly,

arranging all the details in the most business-like and efficient

fashion, under the guidance of that short, frumpy, powerful old woman,

Thérèse, who appeared to know the law as thoroughly as she knew the

world of banking. There was no word spoken in anger or in haste. The

withdrawal of Sabine from the position of wife was executed with as

superb an air of indifference as her entrance into the rôle.

“I want no settlement and no allowance,” she had said as the three of

them sat about the tea table in the small sitting room of the house in

the Avenue du Bois. “Whatever you care to do for little Thérèse is, of

course, your own affair. She is yours as much as mine. (A lie, she

thought, because they did not care for her at all.) I have all I want.”

And the leave-taking had been like the departure of a woman from the

office of her lawyer. There was no anger and there were no tears. Sabine

rose and said, “I will go now.... I have taken a house in the Rue

Tilsit. I shall be there in case you want me. I do not know the

telephone but I will send it to you.”

Thérèse bent over the table and, gathering up the papers with her fat

glittering fingers, thrust them into the reticule in which she kept her

important documents ... a moldy old bag continually in a state of

confusion, from which she was able by a sort of magic to produce on a

moment’s notice any paper she required. As she sat watching her, it

occurred to Sabine that the old woman’s Levantine blood had begun to

claim her entirely. It was not only the diamonds and emeralds which now

stood in need of cleaning; the heavy black clothes which Thérèse wore

even in the hottest weather were now sometimes stained and discolored,

and she had taken to carrying fragments of biscuits among the papers of

her reticule, which she took out from time to time and nibbled with the

furtive air of a fat squirrel. She was more near-sighted than ever and

squinted up her eyes until they became mere slits through which appeared

the glitter of two tiny brilliant lights. All the charm was slipping

slowly away from her eccentricity; the queer abrupt manner, which in the

height of her power had seemed amusing and original, was slowly turning

into the queerness of an untidy old Greek woman.

Watching her, she thought, “God willing, I shall never turn into such a

grubby old woman. I shall care for myself to the very end. I shall die,

handsomely dressed, with my hair in perfect order and with my corsets

on. She is a Levantine after all. She might be an old woman with a fruit

stand in the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge.”

(Thérèse with the glitter in her dark almond eyes, poking about in a

reticule that contained a vast fortune in securities.)

Callendar walked with her through the comic opera hallway and out to her

motor where, with a great courtliness, he saw her step in and closed the

door after her.

“Good-by,” he murmured quietly. “If there is anything you want, let me

know.”

So although for a time it had seemed that all the cards were turning up

for her, she had in the end lost her game of patience. She had lost it,

she reflected, to Ellen Tolliver whom she had neglected to respect

sufficiently--a crude, uncivilized mountebank brought in to amuse the

guests in the house on Murray Hill. What was the secret that lay behind

all the mystery?

* * * * *

As the motor drove away, it occurred to her that the parting had been

like one between strangers. She had been to them, then, nothing at all;

she might have been a clerk employed in some branch of the Leopopulos

bank, a creature who had been of use to them and whom they sent away

when her usefulness was ended, willing to pension her if she desired it,

like an old family employee. More than twelve years she had given to

them ... years in which she tried, desperately, heart-breakingly to

establish some bond that was too strong to be broken in this cold,

matter-of-fact fashion. More than twelve years she had struggled against

something which was stronger, far stronger, than her own will and

self-possession. And now they sent her away without more than a formal

good-by.... Thérèse had her fortune still, vaster than it had ever been.

Nothing else mattered.

She took out the mirror from the side of her motor and fell to examining

her face. Here at least the twelve years had not taken the toll that

might have been expected. There was no gray in the brick-red hair that

lay under the small, chic gray hat. The narrow intelligent eyes, set

close together, were as bright as they had ever been, and the white

skin, like the thick petals of a camelia, was as perfect as ever beneath

the superbly disguised powder and rouge. She touched the tip of her long

nose with an immaculately gloved finger, and it occurred to her that the

face which looked out of the tiny rectangle of glass was a mask,

really,--an admirably fashioned mask which concealed effectively a

turbulence none would ever have imagined lay beneath it. They managed

things better in these days: once she would have been expected to retire

from the field with a broken heart, to exploit, as it were, her own

suffering; to swoon and weep ... like Lady Byron.

She looked, she felt, remarkably young; but not young enough. She could

not, she thought, begin all over again; there was not time. She was past

forty now. She might marry again ... a man her own age or older, but

that would not be the same. She had given what youth she possessed

(beneath that hard, controlled exterior) to Callendar and Thérèse. There

was not a chance of her ever being young in the way she had once been,

of loving with a fierce abandon that her pride had forced her to

conceal. (She fancied that they had never discovered how much and how

shamefully she had loved him, yet she could not be certain. Probably he

knew this too.)

She put away the mirror and, leaning back, fell to thinking, with all

her cold honesty, that she would even return to him now if he so much as

lifted a finger in her direction. There had been in all their life

together no memory of a violent scene, no memory of blows or accusations

... nothing about which she could build up a hatred or sense of

repulsion. There had been nothing since little Thérèse was born save

that aloof, courteous indifference which it had been impossible to

shatter. And for a time she tried to imagine what would have happened if

once--only once--he had for a moment melted and behaved toward her as

if she had been more than a mere institution, more than a wife whom one

protected and to whom one was always courteous.

And old Thérèse.... Once Sabine had fancied that they were friends. They

had been, she remembered, congenial, almost alike in their point of

view, in the angle from which they looked out upon the world. And then

Thérèse had slipped away, slowly, imperceptibly in a fashion that it was

impossible to define. There had been no quarrel, no bandying of words,

yet they had come somehow to hate each other, coldly and with an ironic

polish. She knew what it was that had come between them. It was that

fortune and the need of an heir. And now in the end Thérèse was becoming

slowly an untidy, disgusting old Levantine woman helpless in the power

of her obsession.

If she had not married Callendar she might have been a friend even now,

not alone of Thérèse but of Callendar himself. But that would have been

unbearable ... much worse than this. At least in this there was a sense

of finality.

So she tried as she had tried many times before, to pull those twelve

years apart and pick from among the ruins the elements which had been

the heart of her passion for him; but she found it impossible. She could

not say why she would have returned to him now if he had asked her. Over

all the years there hung a faint aura of evil (an evil which she told

herself was not evil at all, but simply seemed so because she had been

brought up to believe that sort of love was evil). It was desire which

she felt, perhaps nothing more than that; yet it was, she was certain,

not such a simple and uncomplicated thing. It was sinister, perhaps

entangled in all her passion for _knowing_ what people were, for taking

them apart (she smiled to herself) to look at the works. No, this

mystery was quite beyond her....

So (she thought) in the end she had not been able to compete with Ellen

Tolliver. He would have her now, as he had always wanted to have her.

She (Sabine) had then not been so wrong in the instinct that led her,

years before, to call at the house in Rue Raynouard. There had been

nothing to discover, and yet everything. What was true now of Callendar

and Ellen Tolliver was true then, as they sat in the long beautiful

drawing-room, just as true as it had been in the days when the girl had

come to the house on Murray Hill. It was only that they themselves had

changed and here (she thought almost with satisfaction) might lie the

seeds of one more disaster. For Lilli Barr could not possibly be the

same as the awkward, obscure Ellen Tolliver, and Callendar had hardened

slowly in all the qualities which made him impossible. Ellen Tolliver

would not submit to the unhappiness she herself had known; Ellen

Tolliver would not wait patiently to achieve her own desire. She was

capable of stormy scenes; she had clearly a genius for success, for

having her own way. He had, perhaps, in all his watching never

discovered this. And yet, as she thought it over and over on the drive

to the Rue Tilsit, it occurred to her that it might be just this and

nothing more that was the very core of that inexplicable, persistent

attraction between them.

Lilli Barr ... Lilli Barr ... Lilli Barr.... She kept repeating the name

to herself. She still felt no resentment. If she herself could not have

Callendar, there was no reason why Lilli Barr should not have him. There

was, she knew, nothing more to be done.

The voice of Amedé, the driver, roused her as he opened the door. She

stepped out, bade him wait for orders, and turning, she saw little

Thérèse standing in the window with the governess. It reminded her that

she must see Thérèse’s friend Ella Nattatorini about the lease for the

house at Houlgate.... The sea would do little Thérèse good. And there

were servants to be engaged and the packing to be done....

The ocean of small things which made it possible to endure unhappiness

rose and swept over her.

63

The news of the wedding came to Sabine the following autumn while she

was staying in Newport. Even the war had not crowded out of the journals

an event of such interest. The bride, she read, was well known to the

public as a pianist. She had described herself as Ellen Tolliver,

American by birth, age thirty-four years. (It was the first time that

the world knew Lilli Barr was American, for Rebecca and the forgotten

Schneidermann had done their work well.) The bridegroom was prominent

and the member of many clubs, the last of his family, and had not lived

in America for more than ten years. He was a captain in the French army

and would be stationed in Tunis where they were to spend the honeymoon.

Laying aside the _Times_ and resuming her breakfast, she discovered that

her only response to the news was one of shock at the haste with which

the wedding had followed the divorce. It was almost as if they said that

all these years she had stood between them, and now that Callendar was

free, they must lose no time. Vaguely she felt that she should feel

insulted. It was not until evening, when she drove over to dine with

Mrs. Champion at The Cedars, that the sense of depression abated a

little.

It was a gloomy place--the Cedars--built in the Seventies in the ornate

style in favor at that time, and the presence of Mrs. Champion and the

Virgins did nothing to raise the tone. Janey and Margaret (it seemed to

her when she saw them in the dark cool rooms that she had known them

always) were, as she calculated it, now forty-two and forty-five

respectively and had reached the stage in which any spark that may have

dwelt within their narrow-chested frames was now sublimated into an

interest in garden clubs and work among the sailors. Things had changed

... enormously, but Janey and Margaret had gone on and on, living in the

gloomy Cedars with their mother, perpetually shocked and stimulated by

the stories of the oil magnates and financial adventurers who had taken

possession of the Casino. It was these stories which provided the

opening barrage of conversation at dinner.

“There is one woman who they say gives enormous parties,” Janey told her

at dinner, “who was once the cook for a cousin of Mrs. Mallinson.”

They assured her, although she knew it well enough, that Newport was not

the same. It had lost its tone; and in losing it (thought Sabine) it had

left Mrs. Champion and the Virgins far behind. Bishop Smallwood, the

Apostle to the Genteel, who came sometimes to spend a week with his

“wa’am friend” Mrs. Champion, shared their disgust on Sabine’s right and

expressed properly outraged sentiments.

If America were anything, Sabine thought, over her guinea fowl, it was

change ... change ... change. And God help those who didn’t keep up with

it! All the conversation gave her a curious sense of having passed poor

Janey and Margaret and the Apostle and left them far behind. They seemed

very far away. She felt that she was being kind to them in having come

to dine at The Cedars. And once Mrs. Champion’s word had been law in

that tight little world which was now exploded, leaving them stranded,

remote and helpless and pitiful, pretending all the while that it was

_their_ world, after all, which really counted.

She knew that they would find a bitter triumph in the news that had come

with the morning _Times_, for they could not have forgotten how she

stole Richard Callendar (by the lucky turn of events which they would

never know) from under the noses of all of them. There had been so

little excitement in their lives; certainly they had not forgotten,

certainly they would not miss an opportunity for which they had waited

so long. Yet they seemed so remote and negligible to her that she did

not even wince when at last Mrs. Champion sidled up to the subject.

She was able to tell them and Bishop Smallwood, who in the decline of

the season was fairly panting for gossip, that Lilli Barr _was_ the same

girl who had played at that scandalous party of Thérèse Callendar’s.

(Did they remember the naked Javanese--or was it Senegalese--dancer?

asked Mrs. Champion. She had commanded Janey and Margaret to shield

their faces with their fans). Lilli Barr _was_ the same girl with whom

Richard Callendar had lunched so many times in the open window at

Sherry’s. She saw fit to pass over the implication, thrust in slyly by

Mrs. Champion, that he was making the girl, after so many years, an

honest woman. Because she herself did not really know.

And speaking of the divorce, she remarked brazenly, “It was all settled

without difficulty. I knew that he was planning to marry her. We talked

it over and thought it the best solution.”

At which Mrs. Champion shook her head and made a clucking sound to

indicate, as clearly as she dared, that the cold-blooded behavior of

Sabine’s generation in such matters was obscene and immoral. And the

Apostle to the Genteel, in obeisance to his high church opinions and his

disapproval of divorce, looked gravely and silently into the depths of

his sherbet, but with an air of believing that there was much to be said

on both sides. (It would not be wise to offend so rich and fashionable a

woman as Sabine Callendar.) Janey and Margaret only stared at her, with

the round, stupid eyes of little girls.

And when she left (a little after nine when she could endure the party

no longer) Mrs. Champion was able at last to deliver the blow which she

had held in reserve all the evening. As they stood in the porte cochère

waiting for Sabine’s motor to come up, she murmured under the protection

of the darkness, “I could have warned you long ago, my dear. You should

never have married Richard Callendar. If you had a mother--” She sighed

and continued. “I should never have allowed Janey or Margaret to accept

a proposal from him.”

Such a speech would have made her angry once and have aroused the sharp

tongue for which she had been famous; but it made no difference to her

now, save that it amused her to think of Janey or Margaret standing

there, a pair of Alices in Wonderland, as the wife of Richard. And she

reflected that she possessed an experience which they would never know.

It was better to have been the wife of Callendar than to have dried up

in the pale, shriveled fashion of Janey and Margaret (and they had been

pretty once, in a silly, pink and white fashion). And she knew, with a

curious pang of pity, that as they stood there in the shadow of their

powerful mother, they too were thinking the same thing. They had never

escaped that dowdy, stupid old woman....

“Good night,” she said. “I shan’t see you again. I am sailing on

Friday.”

And then for the first time in her life, the wall of cold common sense

collapsed and she exposed herself deliberately to the peril of boredom.

“If you do decide to come to Paris, Janey, you must pay me a visit.” For

there was something unbearable to her in the thought of Janey, free for

the first time from the dominion of her mother, alone in Paris. It would

be like a bird set free which no longer knows how to fly....

In the darkness Janey stammered and gushed like a girl of seventeen

(Janey who would never see forty again), “It’s kind of you, Sabine. It’s

wonderful. You see I’ve never been in Paris before without mother ...

and I wouldn’t know just what to do ... I’ll come.” And she subsided

into a chaos of maidenly gurglings.

But as Sabine drove away from the barren shadows of the Cedars, she

reproached herself for having succumbed so weakly. Something had

happened to her. A year ago she would not have done such a stupid

thing.... “Perhaps,” she thought, above the distant roar of the surf, “I

am growing old....”

* * * * *

As the months passed and she returned to Paris--a Paris gay and gaudy

with the excitement of the last days of the peace conference--she came

to understand the satisfaction which lies of knowing that a thing is

finished. She would no longer go through the torture of seeing Callendar

day after day, always at hand and yet remote as the summit of a cold

mountain peak. All that was over, finished; and in the sense of finality

there was peace. Until now she had never known how terribly the

monstrous house in the Avenue du Bois had oppressed her. It was only

since she had her own house in the Rue Tilsit, a house filled with all

the exquisite things she cherished and which meant so much to her, that

she understood completely the torture of the house which she had called

“a sort of World’s Fair exhibit.”

For she had never, in all the years of their life together, been able to

escape from it. Always Callendar had resisted silently, quietly in the

way he had, until she had come in the end to accept the place without

complaint. She had been silent in the hope that he might appreciate her

silence and her virtue in submitting to his will. But he had simply

taken it as a matter of course. She had never been able properly to

entertain because the house was so awful that one could not even forget

its shame in the hollow pretense that it was bizarre and consequently

chic. And she knew now beyond all doubt that he liked the house. It

satisfied him in the way it satisfied his mother. And she understood

that he belonged in it just as Thérèse belonged there, more than ever

since her Levantine blood had come into its own.

There in the Rue Tilsit, in her own house, among the things chosen by

her own fastidious taste, she began once more to take up her own life,

to descend from the unreal, extravagant level of the Callendars to a

plane where she might exist in her proper relation to all about her. For

more than twelve years, she came to realize, her life had not been her

own, even for a moment. It had been Callendar’s to do with as he

chose.... She had been his possession. It was only now that she was

beginning again to be free....

In the beginning, after that day when she had said good-by so formally

to Richard and his mother, when all the arrangements had been completed

and Thérèse had stuffed all her papers back into her reticule, she could

not bring herself to reënter the house, even to return for the

possessions--pictures, bits of jade and silver and silk--which she had

left behind her. It was only now, long afterward, when she had come to

feel the full sense of her freedom that she considered going to fetch

them.

At last, after she had been in Paris for weeks, she rang up the house

and learning from Victorine that it was empty and that no one was

expected (Thérèse was in London, Victorine told her, and Richard and

Ellen still in Tunis) she arranged to call for the things late that

afternoon.

64

It was a cold gray afternoon in the spring when the sun, breaking

through the clouds, picked out for brief moments the faint green on the

trees of the little park in the Avenue du Bois. Side by side the white

houses stood, withdrawn a little from the street, flamboyant yet cold,

ornate but barren. Sabine, watching them from the window of her tiny

motor, was thankful again in a comfortable indefinite fashion that she

had escaped from their insufferable pomp into the tiny, exquisite house

in the Rue Tilsit.

Of late she had come at times to forget all the secret misery of the

twelve years; she had been almost happy, as nearly happy as it was

possible for her to be. It seemed to her now that circumstances had been

cruel. She should have been born a man; and as a man, with a freedom

from all the world of Mrs. Champion and her Virgins, she would have

turned her mind to science. It was that sort of a mind; and it was only

recently that she had come to believe it wasted ... frittered away on

tiny, nonsensical things, things which in the end only ate into her own

chance for happiness. In all her life there had been nothing which had

taken possession of her--nothing save the barren, futile passion for her

husband. Her life, she reflected, had been a wasted one. As a man, she

would have been free ... free in the same fashion as Ellen Tolliver. She

could have done as she liked, waiting upon no one. It seemed to her that

her whole life had been spent in going from place to place, always in a

tiny, expensive motor, arriving nowhere in the end. She was neither one

thing nor the other; she had fallen somewhere between the sterility of

Janey and Margaret Champion and the fierce activity of Ellen Tolliver.

Ellen Tolliver had been free, without background, without friends,

alone, an adventuress (not at all in the evil sense) but one who had

gone unhindered toward the thing which possessed her. Perhaps Ellen

Tolliver would succeed now where she had failed. None, thought Sabine,

knew the perils which lay ahead so well as herself and the old curiosity

began to assail her; she wanted passionately to see Ellen Tolliver, to

find out from her in any fashion possible, scrupulous or otherwise, what

had happened in those months since she said good-by to Callendar and

Thérèse. Perhaps Ellen saw him more clearly than herself; perhaps she

had discovered his secret ... the nature of him. She had come to respect

Ellen Tolliver.

The car halted. Amedé, neat and mustachioed, stood holding the door for

her. With an effort of will she wrapped her fur cloak about her and

stepped on to the pavement.

“Wait for me,” she said. “I may want you to carry some things. I’ll send

Victorine when I want you.”

The big ornate house had the look of a place closed and deserted; the

shutters were up and the shades drawn save in the entresol. At the door,

Victorine, who had been clearly watching for her, stood waiting with a

gleam in her eye which Sabine, from long association, was able to read.

It was a look with which Victorine triumphantly announced household

calamities. As Sabine stepped into the great hall, the housekeeper put

her finger to her mustachioed lips and murmured, “Madame Callendar is

here....” And then, with the air of turning the morsel about, she added,

“The _young_ Madame Callendar.” And again, when her former mistress

seemed not to be sufficiently shocked, she continued, “The _new_ Mrs.

Callendar.”

For a moment Sabine stood hesitating, as if deciding whether to turn and

run; it would have been an excellent excuse for never entering the house

again. But far back in her consciousness, the old, insatiable curiosity

gnawed and gnawed.

“Why has she returned?” she asked. “Where is Monsieur Callendar?”

Victorine shrugged her fat shoulders. “I don’t know, Madame. None of us

knows anything. A cable came at noon to-day with the news that she was

arriving ... to make things ready. I telephoned you.... I sent messages.

The word came that you did not return for lunch and no one knew where

you were.” With an air of drama, she said again, “The new Madame

Callendar came in an hour ago.”

Sabine stood biting her crimson lips. If Ellen Tolliver had returned

from Tunis, it was not likely that she would be going away soon, and it

would be awkward to ask her permission to enter the house. Why had she

returned? Why had Callendar not come with her? She turned to Victorine.

“Where is she now?”

“Resting,” replied Victorine, “in the boudoir.”

(That terrible room with the bearskin rugs and the mirrors sending back

and forth innumerable reflections, as if the place were filled with a

host of people ... a host of personalities all of whom were in the end

contained within the flesh of the on-looker.... Many persons in each of

us, thought Sabine. It was comic to think of Ellen Tolliver, so

distinguished, so self-possessed, so cold, in the midst of all that

cheap demi-mondaine splendor.)

“Are my things ready?”

“I was not sure, Madame, how many things you wished to take away with

you. I got ready the things I _knew_. There may be others.”

Sabine made her decision. “I will come in and get them now. Say nothing

to Madame Callendar. If she’s resting, I’ll hurry away without her

knowing that I’ve come.”

She slipped a ten franc note into the insinuating palm of Victorine who

promptly said, “It’s good to see you again, Madame,” in a voice which

carried another meaning--“We would much prefer you to the new Mrs.

Callendar.”

Sabine ignored her. “And Monsieur Callendar?” she asked again.

“He did not return, Madame. Nothing was said of him.”

* * * * *

In the boudoir everhead Ellen lay, with her black dog by her side,

staring resentfully at the reflections. She was unable to rest. Lying on

the Egyptian chaise longue she surveyed the room and decided that she

would have the indecent mirrors taken down to-morrow. She was certain

that Sabine was not responsible for them; she suspected, out of the

knowledge that had come to her in the past six months, that they were

perhaps an idea of Callendar. They were unhealthy, she thought; all the

house, for that matter, was unhealthy, even the hall and the glimpse of

the darkened drawing room she had been able to snatch on her way up the

marble stairs with the red plush rail. It was unhealthy to be stared at,

accused day in and day out by these innumerable stupid reflections. It

was, truly, an amazing house, and so like Thérèse. Why, she wondered,

had Sabine not changed it? Sabine, with her faultless taste, her

reserve, her ironic shell, must have hated it, always. Perhaps ...

perhaps she had not dared to oppose him. Perhaps he too, like his

mother, had been fond of the house. Perhaps he had looked at Sabine

(smiling with his mouth but not his eyes) and said, “We will let it rest

for the present. Some day ...” and so slipped away in that inexplicable,

unconquerable fashion he had revealed in the villa at Tunis. Perhaps....

She began to understand a little of what Sabine’s life had been. Out of

her own short, vivid experience, she was able to reconstruct bits of it,

here and there. And Sabine had endured it for more than twelve years....

The mirrors put her nerves on edge. She loathed the reflections staring

back at her from every wall. They were like faces peering in at her ...

her own face repeated over and over again, tiresomely, for she was not

vain and wasted no time over mirrors. No, she would have them down at

once. If this was to be her home, she would not be prevented by old

Thérèse or Richard himself.

Her body ached from the fatigue of the journey from Marseilles yet it

was impossible to rest. Her mind was awake, nervous, irritable, now

angry, now frustrated, now cold and resolute, but always in its depths

uncertain and muddled in a way it had never been before. Could it be

that she was losing her grip upon life? That she was being swallowed up?

Always she had known exactly what it was she wanted, what it was she

would do. But now....

At length the restlessness became unbearable and, followed by the black

dog, she rose and set out to explore the rest of the house. She went

from room to room and returned at length to the stairway. The rooms,

each one, were associated in some way with Thérèse, with Callendar, with

Sabine. In her weariness and confusion, she could not drive them from

her mind. They tormented her as she turned down the marble steps. She

kept thinking of the night when Sabine had allowed Callendar and herself

to drive home together from the house on Murray Hill. She understood now

how wise Sabine had been, how subtle. She must have known then who it

was that Callendar loved; she must have thought that in the end

Callendar would never marry that struggling, gauche young girl who had

fascinated him. Neither of them (she thought with satisfaction) had

known the strength of that raw young girl. They had thought her,

perhaps, stupid and unable to protect herself against such a rich and

glamorous lover....

Half down the stairs, in the very midst of these thoughts, she was

interrupted by the sound of voices which came from the drawing-room. The

shutters had been opened and the curtains flung back and in the twilight

which filtered through she saw dimly two figures bending over a little

pile of bric-à-brac. The one was Victorine. The other figure was

familiar--she could not say in what way. Halting for a moment she

watched them and, as they became aware of her presence, the stranger

turned toward her and she saw that it was Sabine, materialized, one

might have said, out of her very thoughts.

* * * * *

She would have turned back, pretending she had seen nothing (perhaps

Sabine would have hidden herself in a closet or behind a sofa, anywhere)

but it was too late now. They had seen each other; they had stood for a

time staring. It was impossible now to behave in any such idiotic

fashion. Ellen smiled and, moving on down the stairs, was certain now of

what she had suspected an hour earlier when the housekeeper greeted

her--that old Victorine was devoted to the first Mrs. Callendar and

looked upon herself as an intruder. Victorine, she fancied, had

conspired to let Sabine into the house without announcing her.

Halting only to cuff Hansi and stop his growling, she crossed the great

black and white squares of the tesselated hall and stepped into the

drawing-room. She smiled and held out her hand.

“No one told me you had come in,” she said. “It’s pleasant to see

you.... I arrived only an hour ago from Marseilles.”

She found herself taking Sabine’s hand. Their greeting was like one

between two men, old friends--a symbol of the curious understanding

which had existed between them since the very beginning. It seemed that

they were neither friends, nor enemies, but something in between. They

were always being thrown together, though neither would have said that

she sought the company of the other.

Sabine laughed, with a disarming air of honesty. “I feel a fool,” she

said, and then explained how it was she had to come in. “I took a chance

of being able to escape without your knowing it, but I am an unlucky

gambler. I’ve never had any luck. I’m sorry.” She laughed again and

added, “I’ve no doubt (indicating Victorine) that she is enjoying it all

immensely.”

It was true. Victorine stood riveted to the floor, her eyes bright with

curiosity. Clearly she was confused and annoyed that they spoke English,

which she could not understand.

“I’ll go then,” continued Sabine. “I shan’t steal anything which doesn’t

belong to me.”

At this Ellen laughed. “I’ve seen nothing in the house that you mightn’t

steal ... gladly, for all of me.”

“The boudoir ...” murmured Sabine with understanding as she gathered up

her parcels. She might have added, “Callendar and Thérèse think it a

beautiful house. It suits them.” But because she knew the remark would

have a feline sound, she kept silent. Besides it was probable that Ellen

already knew it, perfectly. She bade Victorine summon Amedé and when the

housekeeper was gone, Ellen moved a little nearer and said in a low

voice, “You mustn’t go. You must stay for a little time.... Stay for a

cup of tea.”

But Sabine declined, protesting. “No.... I’ve a score of errands. I

really must go ... and honestly it seems to me an absurd situation.”

Ellen laid one hand on her shoulder and, looking at her closely,

repeated, “You _must_ stay.... I must talk to some one.... There is so

much to discuss.”

Slowly Sabine put down her parcels, subdued once more by the old

curiosity. (How could she resist the promise of such revelations?) Amedé

appeared to carry away the larger bundles and she said to him, “Wait for

me. I’m having tea with Mrs. Callendar.”

And the eyes of Amedé grew as bright, as filled with curiosity as those

of Victorine. In the hallway the housekeeper said to him with a grimace,

“These Americans! What a cold blooded lot! The first wife and the second

having tea in the husband’s house!”

* * * * *

In the little sitting room where a year ago Thérèse had swept the papers

from the table into her untidy reticule, Sabine and Ellen settled

themselves to talk, Ellen looking worn and tired, as if a part of her

tremendous spirit had been subdued or had slipped away from her, Sabine

refreshed, worldly, elegant, mistress of herself ... the Sabine who had

existed in the first days of the house on Murray Hill. The odd sense of

comradeship persisted. It was the same spirit that had united them on

the morning, long ago, when Sabine called at the Rue Raynouard, arriving

as an enemy and departing as a friend. (She had been right in the

instinct that led her into that call. Ellen belonged to him now, after

all those years, as much of her as any mere process of law could deliver

into his hands.)

It was Victorine who broke the precedent of fifteen years by bringing

the tea with her own hands. Victorine, the housekeeper, the head of the

entire ménage in the Avenue du Bois, bent her dignity, stepped down from

her pedestal to carry a tea tray, because she feared that some morsel of

fascinating interest might escape her ears. How could she resist this

spectacle? This occasion? This friendly encounter (“Figure-toi,” she

would say in the servants’ hall) between the two wives of her master.

These Americans....

But she strained her ears and summoned in vain a youthful uncertain

memory of English, for neither of the wives said anything of importance

while she was in the room. They discussed the lateness of the spring,

and even the political conditions, as if there were nothing at all

extraordinary in the situation. (The cabinet, said the new Mrs.

Callendar, in which M. de Cyon had served, was gone to the wall and all

his gentle intrigues come to nothing.)

When Victorine, having exhausted all the possibilities of delay by

poking and fussing over the tea tray, was forced by decency to quit the

room, Sabine rose and said, “I know the habits of Victorine. She is at

this minute standing outside the door.”

To prove it she walked quickly to the door and, flinging it open, saw

Victorine sidle away with a pompous air of having many duties upon her

mind.

“She has listened like that before ... many times. It is her curiosity

and one can’t blame her for that. If I had been born a servant I should

have spent all my time at keyholes. All the same she should have been

sent away long ago. One has only to shoo her off whenever there is

anything important in the air.”

It was her way of opening a discussion for which she hungered with a

violence that made the curiosity of Victorine pale in comparison. But

Ellen said nothing. She poured the tea and continued to talk of politics

and the spring. It was not easy for her, who had never confided in any

one. She sat behind the tea tray in the amazing, baroque room conscious

that she was in the midst of a fantastic situation, yet unable to take

one step in the direction she desired. She looked tall and handsome and

dignified, but a little sad and weary. It was the sadness which conveyed

to Sabine what was in the air.

“And Richard,” she asked abruptly. “How is he?”

“I have left him,” Ellen replied slowly, “for a time, at any rate.”

She spoke with her eyes cast down, as if it shamed her to confess that

she had not made of the marriage a complete success. She pretended to be

busily engaged with the flame beneath the silver teakettle. “I do not

know whether I shall go back. I am thinking it out ... trying to

decide.”

Sabine, too wise to interrupt, lighted a cigarette, threw back her fur

coat and waited.

“I have to decide, you see, between two things.... Between myself and

him, you might say. Or better perhaps, whether I shall exist only in

relation to him.” She looked up suddenly, with an air of assurance which

must have fascinated Sabine, who sat thinking of Ellen as she had been

in the days of Murray Hill. “It is not only my music ... my career. He

hates that and he hates it because, in spite of anything he can do, I

shall always be known to the world as Lilli Barr and not as Mrs.

Callendar. I think he forgot to take that into consideration. He is very

confident, very sure of himself.”

Sabine still smiled faintly.

“I think you understand what it is I mean. I have been married only six

months but I realize that one of us must die ... either Lilli Barr or

Mrs. Callendar. I am trying to decide which it must be. It is hard

because both of them are very much alive and neither of them is still in

her first youth. That’s what makes it difficult. I don’t know whether it

is worth while to kill Lilli Barr in order that Mrs. Callendar may live

and (she made a wry face) be all that is to be expected of a lady in her

position ... the wife of Richard Callendar. I fancy you understand what

I mean.” She leaned forward and asked, “Will you have another cup?...

No?”

She discussed the problem coldly, with an air of utter detachment; these

two creatures--Lilli Barr and the second Mrs. Callendar--might have

existed without any relation to herself. Sabine, understanding perhaps

that it was only in such a fashion that she was able to discuss the

affair at all, took her cue and said, “The first Mrs. Callendar is dead.

She has been dying for some months, but she is dead, completely dead.

And Sabine Cane is alive again, more alive than she has ever been ...

and free. My God! How free!”

For a time Ellen sat thoughtfully staring into the fire and when at

length she spoke, it was to say, “Ah! I know what you mean by being

free. I know perfectly. I can imagine what it must have been.... I’ve

seen it myself.”

And while she talked thus, calmly, with the one woman in the world who

had every reason to hate her, a woman whom she had defeated but who

still seemed in some outlandish fashion a friend and ally, she kept

seeing the villa and the white-walled garden in Tunis. She kept seeing

her husband (who had once been Sabine’s husband) walking up and down in

the cool of the evening, a few feet from her chair yet as remote as if

he had been on the opposite side of the white desert beyond the walls.

She saw him walking and smoking and ignoring her, his strong brown hands

clasped behind him, absorbed always in some mystery which had nothing to

do with her, and yet conscious (he must have been conscious) of a

shadowy conflict that would neither vanish nor be pinned down--a man

who shut her out of his existence and yet treated her as a possession.

She kept seeing the handsome face, the curved red lips, the finely

arched nose, the dark mustaches and above all the cold, gray,

unfathomable eyes. (If only once he had given way for a moment. If only

once that inhuman aloofness had melted, not into a fierce, glowing

passion, but into a touching, simple affection....)

“I know what it is,” she repeated slowly. “I wondered sometimes ... in

the long evenings, how you endured it. And I wondered too whether I

should ever be able to endure it. You see, the difficulty is that I have

no time now to experiment. I must decide. If I gave twelve years of my

life, I should be....” She thought for a second. “I should be

forty-seven. I dare not risk failure at that age. That would be

unbearable because there would be nothing ahead.” Again she was silent

for a time and then murmured, “I wanted to talk with you. I should have

come to you if we had not met here.... I could not have helped it. It

was impossible to talk of him with any one who has not known him ... who

has not lived with him. Such a person could not understand what he was

like....”

Sabine sat on the edge of her gilt chair, hungrily, with the air of a

woman whose most passionate desire was at last being satisfied. For

years she had waited. Only once before--on the morning she called at the

Rue Raynouard--had she even spoken of the thing. She had said on that

occasion, “You know my husband ... a little. So you can guess perhaps a

little of the story.” (It was a different Sabine who sat here saying,

“My God! How free!”)

The cigarette had burned until it scorched her gray gloves. “But it is

different with you. He is in love with you. He never loved me. It was

you that he loved always. I know that.” And with a pained ironic smile,

she added, “Sabine Cane dares say what Mrs. Callendar could not even

think.”

* * * * *

Outside the house the twilight had come down gently over the trees in

the little park. Beside Sabine’s tiny motor, Amedé waited, smoking

cigarette after cigarette. Belowstairs Victorine regaled the servants’

hall with an embroidered description of what she had witnessed, but when

pressed for details became vague and unsatisfactory.

Sabine stirred and murmured: “Besides, I don’t fancy you are

entirely.... How shall I say it? I don’t wish to be offensive.... I

don’t fancy perhaps that you are completely in love with him. I mean

that you have not lost your head. If you gave him up, it would not be

the end of everything....”

Ellen sat up very straight, her mouth almost hard. “No,” she said. “It

would not be the end of everything!” And then relaxing a bit, she

continued, “No. But I am in love with him. I do love him. I can’t

describe it.... It’s a kind of hypnotism.”

It was impossible to be angry with Sabine. She was so calm, so obviously

honest; it was impossible not to respect that incredible passion for the

truth.

“I know what it is ... I know,” murmured Sabine thoughtfully.

“I think at times that I could give him up,” and Ellen snapped her

fingers, “like that ... quickly, without a qualm, without so much as a

backward look, and then something reaches out and takes possession of

me, and in the next moment I know it is impossible. Once you are

entangled, it is not easy to be free.” She threw her cigarette

half-smoked into the mouth of the fireplace, a monstrous, ornate affair

out of all proportion to the room. “My God!” she added with a quick

passion. “What is it that he does to us?... To women like you and me,

who are intelligent women, independent ... not fools? What is it he does

to most women? I have seen them in the hotel at Tunis looking at him. I

have seen that look come into his eyes....”

Sabine put down her teacup, leaned forward and said, “It is an animal

thing ... what he does to us. If we are to be honest, it is that. You

see, women like you and me never think of that.... We take it for

granted there is no such thing.... But there is, just the same. It is

in all of us who are women at all. The power he possesses is the power

of most men multiplied many times.... Latin women, who are more honest,

can deal with it.... French women ... some French women ... are cynical

and rational.... And they are better protected than ourselves, because

they know what they are about.... A woman like old Thérèse could never

have been hurt by him. They are protected from suffering, at least a

certain kind of suffering. They would not be caught as we have been ...

stupidly.”

French women! (thought Ellen). There was Madame Nozières. Had it

protected her? Still, her suffering had not been of this sort. It was a

different thing. What Sabine said about women like themselves was true.

Somehow Sabine had cleared the air. She (Ellen) had always thought of

him thus in the moments when her head had been quite clear ... as an

animal, a handsome, docile cat. It explained too why she had always had

a small, secret terror of him; why she had always been shocked by the

fierceness of his love. When he had come to her in the Babylon Arms the

distaste had not been so strong; but he had been more fresh then, less

conscious of what he was. When he returned to her, it was with the

freshness gone, with the romance worn away so that only the other thing

showed through, naked yet fascinating to a woman who (she was honest

with herself) ... a woman who had never known anything but the timid,

pitiful love of Clarence.

And there was one thing she could not endure--that she, Ellen Tolliver,

the part of her which she had guarded so jealously, should ever be

destroyed by losing control over her own body.

And again she kept seeing him, dark and secret, this time as he sat

across from her at the table in the small white room overlooking the

Mediterranean, with the old sense of conflict rising sharply between

them. She was conscious of watching him, as he watched her, of wondering

how long she could go on thus, imprisoned. She saw again the gray eyes

watching her, stubbornly, as if she were a proud animal which they had

set themselves to subdue. It was all confused and hateful because one

could never know what he was thinking--whether behind those opaque gray

eyes there were thoughts of love or of hatred. There were no intimacies

of feeling, or even of taste. He was not a husband such as Fergus would

have been, eager and naïvely honest, not stolid and dependable like

Robert.... He was not like any man she could think of. He was an alien

... an outsider. She remembered the taunt Rebecca had flung at her, “He

is marrying you only to break your will ... to destroy you. He has

waited all these years.”

But he had not done it! He had not done it! There were times when she

hated only and felt powerful and strong, but times too when her strength

oozed from her, leaving her only a poor, silly, feminine creature eager

to please and fascinate him--a contemptible creature like those women in

the corridors of the hotel in Tunis. No, she would not be destroyed

thus!

“Sometimes,” observed Sabine, in her cold, measured voice, “I think that

men and women are born to be enemies, that even in the happiest of loves

there is an element of conflict. One must possess and the other be

possessed. There is no helping it. It seems to me that we are always

fighting, fighting, to save the part of us which is ourself.”

She laughed. “Why, we’re doing it now, you know ... the two of us.

Richard, you may say, is the embodiment of all that part of men which we

can never bring ourselves to accept ... women like you and me.”

“We quarreled,” continued Ellen absorbed in her own trouble. “We had

terrible scenes and terrible reconciliations. I am certain that he has

already been unfaithful. In the end I came away, but until I stepped on

the ship I was not certain that I had the courage.... Imagine that!...

Imagine me not having the courage simply to go from one place to

another. I did not tell him I was going until the morning I sailed.

There was time then for a quarrel, but not time for a reconciliation,

and so I got off.” She looked out of the window and continued in a low

voice. “And now ... now I don’t know what I’m to do. I came here to this

house because I am still his wife. I wanted time to think it over ...

away from him. It would have been absurd to run away and hide like a

schoolgirl.”

“He will not change,” observed Sabine. “I knew him for twelve years. He

did not change.” She flicked the ash from her cigarette and sighed.

“Still, in all that time, we never quarreled. He would never have

quarreled over my leaving him.... You see, he did not care enough.”

* * * * *

It was quite dark now and the only light in the room came from the blaze

in the huge fireplace. Sabine was drawing on her gloves. She gathered

her fur cloak about her and set her small hat at exactly the right

angle.

“Do you know the history of this house?” she asked. “It might interest

you. You see, it was built originally by a German banker named Wolff to

house his mistress. When he killed himself and she disappeared, it fell

into the possession of the Callendars. Richard brought me here.... I

followed the mistress in the possession of the boudoir ... and now it is

yours.”

Ellen leaned back silently in her chair. There was something about this

house which she had disliked since the moment she entered it ...

something lush and Oriental. So it had been built by a German Jew to

please his mistress and after that it had sheltered first Sabine and

then herself! The history seemed in some way to throw a light upon her

own confusion. The house, it appeared, still carried on its traditions.

She and Sabine were ladies. It was impossible to know what the mistress

had been. She was dead or retired now, no doubt, in some respectable

quarter of a provincial town, or perhaps become the proprietress of a

café, or a bad variety actress. It was fascinating to speculate upon

what had become of her. What would happen to Sabine? What would happen

to herself?

Sabine interrupted her thoughts by saying, “It is ridiculous for me in

my position to give you advice. Besides, even if matters were different

I’m not sure that I’d do it. Advice means nothing and people seldom take

it because they never tell the whole truth. There is always something

which they keep concealed, and because it is concealed it is the most

important element of all and influences them far more than anything an

outsider can say.” She stood up and walked over to the fire. “No,

there’s nothing I can say save that it would be a pity for the world to

lose Lilli Barr. She is far more important than Mrs. Callendar, and in

the end I think would be the happier of the two.”

Across the room Ellen watched the back of her visitor, speculating upon

what she could have meant by the long speech. Was it possible that

Sabine knew there was something she had not revealed? She grew suddenly

jealous and suspicious. Had Sabine been too clever for her? Had all this

strange feeling of an alliance between them been simply an illusion

tricked up by a shrewd adversary? Did Sabine, standing there with her

foot on the fender, fancy that if Callendar were free again she might

have him back?

“You see, one of the complications,” she said quietly, “is that I am

going to have a baby.”

At the announcement Sabine turned sharply, with a queer look in her

eyes. Years before in this very room, she had made the identical speech

to Callendar, and he had turned and kissed her with a new sort of

tenderness. But the child had been a girl ... a poor, sickly little

girl. Sabine closed her eyes, and turning, rested her head for a moment

against the high mantelpiece. She had the manner of one who had been

hurt suddenly.

“It is the heir they wanted,” she said sardonically.

“But it may be a girl.”

She smiled again, bitterly, and said, “Oh, no! I am certain it will be a

boy. You have a genius for success, my dear. You were never a bad

gambler. I’m certain you will not fail old Thérèse.”

* * * * *

At the door it was Victorine (who had been waiting in the shadows) who

opened for them. The two Mrs. Callendars said good-by.

“There is only one thing ...” said Sabine. “I wonder whether he is

really worth all this trouble and anxiety. When one thinks of the matter

coldly, there is nothing to commend him. He has no virtues either as a

husband or a lover. Sometimes I think him merely a stupid animal with

immense powers of attraction.”

“But none of that makes any difference,” said Ellen. “That’s the queer

thing! It never does.”

She watched Sabine until she saw her disappear into the tiny motor whose

lights made two bright sparks in the spring darkness, and when she

returned to the sitting room she knew suddenly that she had left

Callendar for good. There was no longer any doubt about it. If she had

not, in her heart, thought of him as a part of the past, she could not

have talked as she did with Sabine. And Sabine had been right in knowing

that there was something which she had concealed. It was this--that in

the months spent in the Tunisian villa there had been moments when she

fancied that her eyes were taking on the dumb, pleading look which had

always been in the near-sighted eyes of Clarence. The memory came back

to her now across all the years. He had beseeched her with his eyes for

all that she could not give him, pled with her not to escape forever

from his life. And what was his poor, pale love in comparison with this

wild, devouring emotion that sometimes took possession of her? For

Clarence was not dead yet; he still had the power of returning to her.

The past, which she had tried always to forget, arose again and again.

She even wondered sometimes what had become of poor, forlorn Mr. Wyck

and those other figures, so dim now that they seemed to belong to some

earlier life. She could see Clarence once more ... his pale, tormented

eyes, his dumb adoration. It seemed to her that it was this adoration,

this abasement which had been the essence of his whole existence.

No, she could not face such a thing!

Hansi, lying by the fire, watched her with his gold eyes while she paced

up and down in wild agitation.

It was intolerable, loathsome, impossible that she should ever become

possessed ... possessed as Clarence had once been. She had been free

always and it was too late now to change.

* * * * *

She had dinner alone in the same room where she had talked with Sabine,

and when she had finished she sent for Victorine and told her that she

was leaving the house. If there were any messages (for she knew well

enough that there would be, perhaps cable after cable) they could be

forwarded to the Rue Raynouard where she would be with Madame de Cyon.

She was returning now to Lily, as she had done so many times before.

A little before midnight she drove away for the last time from the house

in the Avenue du Bois, having spent but ten hours of her life within its

flamboyant walls. And by the time the taxicab arrived at Lily’s quiet,

unobtrusive door her nerves were in a state of panic. She was filled

with a dim sense of fleeing from some invisible, nameless thing as she

had fled when a child through the dark halls of the house in Sycamore

Street.

Lily and Hattie were waiting her, though she had sent no word of her

coming. They were not surprised. There had been a cable from Tunis

addressed to her, which they had opened and read,

“Sail to-morrow. R. C.”

After she had told them, abruptly and without explanation, that she had

left Callendar forever, she locked herself in her room and looked at the

cable again and again to make certain that she was not out of her

senses. She had told him that she would stay at the house in the Avenue

du Bois. How could he have known that she would escape so soon from that

opulent, fleshly house to the refuge of Lily?

No, it was unbearable. One could not live with a man like that.

65

As the weeks passed in the quiet of the big house in the Rue Raynouard,

they did not annoy her. To Hattie, Ellen’s mood--her sulkiness, her

silence--had a familiarity that was comforting; Ellen had been silent

and sulky as a girl, she had behaved thus throughout that last happy

winter before she escaped forever in company with poor Clarence. Hattie,

in the midst of caring for a big house which ran much better when left

to itself, went about mothering Ellen, respecting her silences, happy

that for a little time her daughter seemed to have some need of her.

And Lily ... Lily was far too wise ever to pry into the affairs of any

one. In time, she knew, everything became clear, everything would stand

revealed. Besides there had been for her no element of surprise in the

whole trouble. She had known men like Callendar; indeed, it was men like

Callendar who had always been attracted to her (save only in the case of

de Cyon with whom it was not a question of love). What puzzled her was

the reason why a man like Callendar--a man capable of such intense

passion, a man of such fascination and elusive masculinity--should ever

have loved so persistently and in the end married a creature so

independent, so fierce-willed as her cousin. One might as well have

expected César to love Ellen; and César had hated her always with a

passion which she returned. The whole affair had been wrong since the

beginning ... perverse and unnatural. Any one could have known that they

would be unhappy. And in a quiet, gentle fashion Lily found satisfaction

in the spectacle of a humbled, unhappy Ellen married to a man who was a

match for her, perhaps more than a match--a man who stood aside and

watched her coldly in the way she had watched people all her life. It

was almost as if the first poor, pale husband, whom Lily had met so long

ago on the crowded train bound for the Town, was by some turn of

circumstances being avenged.

Callendar, she knew, had come to the house not once but several times.

He had talked with Ellen while they walked up and down the long garden

beneath the mottled plane trees. She had watched them, secretly,

wondering at the calm fashion in which they talked and at the inhuman

hardness of Ellen. (She herself would have weakened and yielded long

ago.) And each time he had gone away defeated, she knew, for the time

being.

And then, slowly, bit by bit, the story came to her. She heard it even

before Hattie heard it, how they had quarreled and how he had even gone

so far as to strike her in a sudden gust of wild and unsuspected anger.

She heard too of the women in the hotel at Tunis and of another woman,

the wife of a French official living in a villa near them. Ellen had

seen them walking together one night when she had stolen from the house

to follow him.

“Think of it!” she cried to Lily. “I descended even to that ... even to

spying. Oh, he is a monster. You have no idea the sort of a man he is.”

And yet (thought Lily) she loves him, or she would not feel so

violently. And Lily _did_ have an idea what sort of a man he was; she

knew far more than Ellen imagined, for she was a woman of great

experience, however discreet she may have been. That was perhaps the

reason why every one bore their confidences to Lily first of all.

“And yet,” continued Ellen as they sat late one night in the long

drawing-room, “there are times when for a moment I can see how perfect a

husband, how perfect a lover he could be, if he but chose to be. Once we

could have been happy, for I was the stronger then and I know that I

could have changed him. He is in love with me in a queer fashion. He has

behaved like this with no other woman.... I am certain of it.... I could

have changed him once, but it is too late now.” And she, Ellen Tolliver,

began to weep. “I am crying,” she said, “because I have missed so much.

I know that I shall never have another chance at happiness ... of that

sort.”

She is crying (thought Lily) because she is a child who wants

everything in the world, a child who will never be satisfied.

“None of us,” she said aloud, “has everything. No one life is long

enough to encompass it all. We can only try to have as much as

possible.”

She might have added, “You have fame and wealth. Is not that enough?”

But she kept silent because she knew that Ellen had taken account of

these things and would, just then, have given them all in exchange for

this other happiness. For Ellen could not bear the thought of having

failed.

* * * * *

Lily was busy too in those days with her own affairs, for in the

collapse of de Cyon’s party she found it necessary to entertain, to go

about, to meet new people, to make new friends. She gave dinner after

dinner and invited Americans who might be of importance to her husband;

and because she was a woman whose life existed only in relation to the

men who surrounded her, she did it all gladly, though it ran against all

the indolence of her nature. It would help de Cyon and it would be good

too for Jean. Lily, who no longer put up bulwarks against age--Lily, who

had allowed the gray to come into her tawny hair, was stepping aside to

make way for others.

In her tactful fashion she managed somehow to coördinate all the coming

and going in the big house. When Ellen told her about the baby, she

insisted that it be born in her house.

“It is the center of the family now and it has been my home for so long

that I seem always to have lived here. It will be no trouble to any one.

We will move de Cyon’s books out of the pavilion and turn it over to

you. Jean used it for his own when he came home from school. De Cyon

will not mind. He can have a room on the second floor.”

Indeed the news of the child altered the life of the entire household

until the preparations took on the proportions of a royal arrival.

Callendar sent flowers daily (which Ellen could not be forever sending

away) and she accepted them because the child was his too. This thought

saddened her and made her gentle with him when he came sometimes to

call, respectfully, with a new tenderness of manner which she had never

suspected. It might have weakened her will in the end and defeated her

if she had not understood, as Sabine had done before her, that it was

born in reality of his own vanity. He was being gentle with her now

because she was the potential mother of _his_ child, of _his_ heir. At

other times it maddened her to think that he should treat her gently and

tenderly because there was the child to be considered. He had never

thought of her at all. There had never been any real tenderness. She had

suspicions too that it was only another way of attacking her will.

As for Hattie, the news appeared to change the whole tone and color of

her life. Besides running the house she began to fuss and fidget over

her Ellen. She recommended this and that; she was always advising her on

the subject of prenatal influence. “You must remember,” she said, “that

I planned you should be a musician long before you were born. You can

mold the whole life of the child.”

She did not care whether the child was a girl or a boy. It was enough

that she was to have a grandchild.

* * * * *

On the other side of the Atlantic, old Thérèse received only the

calamitous news that there had been a separation. Instantly she had

wound up her affairs, closed the house on Murray Hill and engaged a

cabin. There was no time to be lost. Richard and Ellen must be

reconciled at once. They must be brought together again. If this last

chance failed, it would be the end of everything. There would be no more

Callendars and no more men to care for the Callendar fortune and the

ancient banking firm of Leopopulos et Cie. In an agony of uncertainty,

the fat, bedizened, energetic old woman crossed the Atlantic and rushed

by motor from Havre to Paris. In her heart, she had known all along that

the marriage could not endure. She had played all her stakes on the

chance that it would endure long enough to accomplish her purpose.

Still in ignorance of the prospects, she arrived in Paris late in the

afternoon and went straight to the house in the Avenue du Bois where her

son waited her in the small sitting room. Black and untidy, with her

precious reticule swung over her fat arm, she closed the door behind her

and faced him in a fury. She did not greet him. She did not even wait

for him to speak.

“What is it you have done now? I know it is your fault. You have ruined

everything.” Her beady eyes glittered and she panted for breath as she

flung herself down, thinking “After I work for years to accomplish this

marriage.”

He smiled at her. “I have done nothing,” he said. “I do not know why she

ran away.”

But she knew he was lying. “You _do_ know,” she cried. “You _do_ know.

It is another woman.... Why can’t you leave women alone? You,” she

mocked, “who thought yourself so wise, so clever with women, have ruined

everything again.” Her fury mounted and she began to shriek at him

incoherently like a mad woman. “She will never divorce you as Sabine

did.... Of what use are you to any one? Who would regret it if you died?

You are worthless.... You are a waster ... a devil.” She beat her

reticule with her fat bejeweled hands and gasped for breath. “I spend

all my life caring for your fortune and you only waste it and run after

women.... What sort of a man are you? You cannot even give me an

heir.... There is a curse on you.”

Callendar stood by the open window looking out, his back the picture of

a cold and maddening indifference. It must have been clear to him that

she cared more for her fortune than for her son. Her fortune.... It was

the one thing left her now, and what could she do with it? She could not

take it into her grave. She could not even rest there knowing that it

was being wasted and would in the end be broken up into small bits and

distributed among obscure cousins she had never seen ... the fortune

which her family, the family of the green-eyed old banker of Pera, had

built up over centuries....

“Does all that mean nothing to you? Does nothing have any meaning for

you?” she cried.

They were in open warfare now, the mother and the son, and after all

that had been said nothing would ever again be the same between them.

They stood there naked in combat, stripped of all pretense and

intriguing.

Presently the old woman became more calm and in a low voice, that was

strangely soft after all her harsh catalogue of accusations, murmured,

as if speaking to herself, “I do not see how you can be the son of your

father.... If I did not _know_.... If I did not _know_, I could never

believe it.”

And then Callendar turned from the window and looked at her with an

insolent smile.

“Where is Ellen?” she asked. “Where is she?”

“She is in the Rue Raynouard with Madame de Cyon. If you had waited,” he

spoke slowly now, with a tantalizing slowness. “If you had given me a

moment or allowed me to speak, I should have told you.... Ellen is with

child.”

For a moment the old woman, gasping, peered at him in silence, and then

she began to weep. It was the first time that any one had ever seen

tears flow from those shrewd, glittering eyes. She took her reticule and

pressed it against her breast as if it had been a child. “My little

boy!” she said, through her tears. “My little boy.... My Richard....

Forgive me.... Everything then is saved.” Brightening, she continued,

“And it will be a boy, _hein_? I have prayed, I have burned candles ...

I must go to Madame de Thèbes and find out for certain. I cannot

wait.... I cannot wait.... She can tell everything by reading the

crystal. I cannot wait.”

Still clutching her reticule, she rose and, drying her tears on a dirty

handkerchief of exquisite texture, she waddled to the door. As she

opened it, the plump figure of Victorine vanished around a corner of the

great hall. She had heard everything this time, for Thérèse and her son

spoke French when they were together.

In the drawing-room at the Rue Raynouard, Ellen sat with her mother and

Lily having tea when Thérèse was announced. To them she said, “If you

don’t mind, I’d best see her alone.... I don’t know what it means. She

has come perhaps to persuade me to return. She won’t give up easily.”

So Lily and Hattie left and a moment later at the foot of the stairs the

figure of old Thérèse appeared, hot and untidy, peering with her eyes

squinted, in search of her daughter-in-law. For a time Ellen waited in

the cool shadows, watching. It was incredible (she thought) how Thérèse

had changed. She was a figure of fun as she stood there, clutching her

precious reticule, disheveled and bizarre, peering into the dim room.

This was not the eccentric, worldly Thérèse of the house on Murray Hill.

It was an old harridan, obsessed by a single idea--her fortune and what

would become of it.

“Mrs. Callendar,” she said softly, moving forward.

“Ah, there you are.... My dear! My darling!” She waddled toward her

daughter-in-law and embraced her.

(She has taken to oiling her hair, thought Ellen. She will be running a

fruit stand soon.)

“I have heard the news.... I have heard the news.... You are to have a

leetle baby.”

She sat down, her fat old face all soft and beaming now, her diamonds

glittering dimly as they had always glittered.

“Did Richard tell you?” asked Ellen.

“I only landed yesterday.... I motored all the way from Le Havre. I did

not know the news then. I only knew that you had run away from him. What

is it? What has happened?”

Ellen, watching her, knew that in the recesses of her Oriental mind the

old woman thought her a fool for running away. Thérèse believed that any

woman could make a good wife. It was a woman’s duty to put up with

anything, as Sabine had done until she was thrust aside as barren and

useless. As Sabine had said, Thérèse could have protected herself from

a man like Callendar. She had been born old and wise, expecting nothing.

She could not argue with Thérèse. The old woman would have thought her

crazy.

“I have left him,” she said. “I shall not go back.”

“Perhaps the baby....” And Thérèse put her head on one side in a queer

foreign fashion and smirked. “Perhaps the baby will change things.” Then

she leaned forward and patted Ellen’s hand. “Never mind, we won’t speak

of it now, my darling.... It would disturb you ... in your condition.”

She kept returning again and again to the idea of the baby.

Then, settling back in her chair, she took a biscuit from the reticule

and began to nibble it. “We need not worry now,” she continued. “To

think of it ... a baby ... a grandson.”

Ellen could not resist the perverse temptation. It was this old woman

who, after all, had forced the marriage. She said, “Perhaps it will be a

granddaughter.”

But Thérèse was confident. “No, I have said prayers. I have burned

candles. I have done everything.... I have paid an astrologer.... I have

overlooked nothing. I am sure it will be a grandson. It is all arranged.

You have made me happy, my child. I must arrange to reward you.”

(So Ellen had made two women fantastically happy ... her own mother and

old Thérèse.)

“I will make a settlement on you. I will give you a present ... a

magnificent present.” And she began to finger her reticule again as if

she might draw from it a bag of great gold pieces. “I will send

to-morrow for a lawyer. We will arrange it.”

And then, like Hattie, she began to offer piece after piece of advice,

bits of good sense and weird snatches of ancient, tribal superstition.

Ellen must do thus and so to make certain the child was a boy. She must

eat this and that. And she must have the proper doctors ... the very

best. They must take no risks. “I will pay for everything ...” she

repeated. “You can charge it all to me. What is a little money to

Thérèse Callendar?”

And at last she left, still excited and chattering. At the foot of the

stairs, she turned, “I am going now to Madame de Thèbes to find out if

it will be a boy.... But I am certain ... I am sure.” And she waddled up

the long stairs and climbed again into the motor which drove her away on

a round of fortune tellers.

* * * * *

The next morning she returned bringing her lawyer and with Ellen they

sat for an hour in de Cyon’s study arranging the settlement. It was

shrewdly managed. Thérèse made a fine gift, but with many strings to it.

Ellen was not to be allowed to touch the principal. The income would be

hers whether the child was a boy or a girl. If it was a boy the

principal would go to him on the death of his mother; if a girl it would

return to the estate. The money, whatever became of it, was never to

escape from the Callendar-Leopopulos fortune; but the income was large

enough to support Ellen in comfort for the rest of her life. She

accepted it because it made her position impregnable; it protected her,

it gave her possession over the boy (for she too was certain it would be

a boy) to do with as she saw fit. And she need never again know the old

terror of being poor.

It was not until two days later, when she examined the settlement

carefully, that she discovered a part of it was in real estate and

included the flamboyant Babylon Arms, fallen now upon evil days, grown

shabby and no longer respectable. The house where poor Clarence had

lived until he destroyed himself was to be the property of her child ...

a child whose father was Richard Callendar.

* * * * *

Slowly the whole life in the big house came to revolve about Ellen and

the coming child. June passed and July. The gentle de Cyon was moved

with all his books and files and papers from the pavilion into a room

on the second floor. (No man save one with the resistance of old Gramp

had any chance in this household of women.) Thérèse, untidy, her eyes

brighter and brighter with the reassurance given her by Madame de Thèbes

and a dozen other soothsayers, came daily and bore Ellen away to a

variety of doctors. Callendar came sometimes on calls which grew more

and more formal as time passed; and Sabine called and sent baskets of

fruit. Musicians, actresses, composers passed in and out. Through it

all, Hattie moved in her triumphant way, older now but scarcely less

subdued than she had been in the days when she sat darning, surrounded

by her family in the shabby sitting room on Sycamore street. In Hattie

there were elements of the eternal which took no account of changes in

the life about her. It is possible that nothing in the whole spectacle

seemed in the least strange to her. She appeared to accept its absurdity

as a matter of course ... the presence of Lily’s French husband, of Jean

who had had no father, the glittering dinners given in the Louis Quinze

dining room which she never attended, the comings and goings of the

untidy old woman who ate biscuits out of a handbag, the visits of the

fastidious and fashionable Sabine, and even the occasional calls of

Callendar himself, a man whom she regarded as a sinister and immoral

creature, who would have ruined the life of any one of less character

than a child of hers. She was busy. She had no time for memories. She

had no longer to invent tasks for herself, and so she was happy. She was

caught up again in the wild scurry and confusion of life.

Only Lily and old Gramp took the affair with calmness, the one gently

with the air of knowing that in all the confusion some one must keep her

head and smooth out all the little difficulties which arose from so

strange a mélange of characters, the old man with an indifference which

placed small value upon the arrival of one more child in a world already

too well filled, a world in which there could no longer be any solitude

save in one’s own soul. He came and went as he chose through the garden

gate opening into the Rue de Passy, encountering on his way now Sabine,

now old Thérèse, now de Cyon, now a doctor or two, all of whom regarded

him with the air of looking upon a specter. It was impossible to believe

that so old a man could still be alive. He passed them all without so

much as a glance, absorbed always in his search for the youth which had

escaped him forever. In him too there were elements of the eternal,

which nothing could alter or change in any way. To Gramp, Sycamore

Street and the Rue Raynouard were in the end the same.

And then one morning a taxicab appeared at the door and discharged into

the midst of the confusion a triumphant Rebecca Schönberg, bustling and

with a new light in her ferrety eyes, her mind full of schemes for fresh

triumphs and new concert tours; for the news of the débâcle had come to

her through the gentle and forgotten Schneidermann in Vienna where she

had gone to visit Uncle Otto and Aunt Lina. Already, before even she had

seen Ellen, she had started under way news of the return of Lilli Barr

to the concert stage. (She knew well enough that Ellen would never

return to Callendar. She knew that in the end he had defeated himself.

He had hung himself with his own rope; but he had done it so much sooner

than she expected.)

She bribed Augustine to let her know when Callendar came to the house,

and when he arrived she took care that he did not escape without seeing

her. She met him at the foot of the stairs. She did not flaunt her

triumph; she was far too subtle for that. The same blood flowed in her

veins and she understood how best to mock him.

She said, “Ah! It’s you. I hadn’t expected to see _you_ here.” And

holding out her hand with the air of a mourner, she murmured with sad

looks and a bogus sincerity, “I’m _so_ sorry it turned out badly. I had

hoped you would be successful this time. I wanted you to know that I am

full of sympathy.... But, of course, Ellen could not have done

otherwise.”

And so she left him nothing to say. She sent him away, bedraggled and a

little ridiculous, in defeat; for by the light in her eye he could not

fail to see that she was jeering him. He had not subdued Lilli Barr. She

belonged once more to Rebecca and to the world. And in the end it was

women who defeated him--women who had always been his obsession, the

women who surrounded Ellen--Lily and Hattie and Rebecca, the subtle

Sabine and even Thérèse with her gift that made Ellen unpregnably

secure. He had not broken her spirit, for he had never possessed her

even for a moment; it was her awareness which had baffled him, standing

like a wall across his path.

The perverse experiment had failed; there had not even been much

pleasure in it. Youth lay behind him. What lay ahead? As he stepped from

Lily’s door there were lines in the handsome, insolent face which no

amount of exercise or massage could ever smooth away.... He was growing

old. It was as if these women had banded together and, placing Ellen in

their midst, now mocked him.... Women.... Women.... Women.... One could

come to hate them all in the end.

* * * * *

So Rebecca too, in the wholly false supposition that she had come for a

brief visit, was given a room that opened off the gallery and so joined

all the colony which centered about Ellen in a world founded upon

dividends from the black Mills in the Midlands.

And Ellen waited, growing more and more calm as her time approached. She

found pleasure in the fantastic spectacle of Lily’s house. She was the

center of it, and the old intoxication, so familiar to Lilli Barr, began

slowly to claim her again.

66

The thing happened on a hot breathless night in September when the

shimmer of heat dying away with the fall of evening left the garden cool

and dark save for the light that streamed from the windows of the long

drawing room and from a single window of the white pavilion. The

English nurse was there, waiting, and the doctor had come and gone to

return in a little while. Everything went well, save that the patient

(so the nurse explained to Hattie and Thérèse) was not accepting the

ordeal in the proper mood. She had insisted upon playing bridge, when

she should have been walking up and down, up and down, to hasten the

birth of the child. She sat now in the drawing-room at a table with

Lily, Jean and Rebecca, angry at not being allowed to smoke, desperate

that she had no control over what was happening to her. She sat, holding

her cards stiffly before her, clad in a peignoir of coral silk, her

black hair drawn tightly back as she had worn it at her concerts.

“Two spades,” she said, and glared at Rebecca when the latter doubled.

There was a dew of perspiration on her high smooth forehead and she bit

her lips from time to time. She was magnificent and dominating (thought

Lily). Really it was an amazing kind of fierce beauty.

In one corner de Cyon, ousted from the pavilion, sat reading his foreign

newspapers--the threads which kept him in touch with the world of

foreign politics. They lay spread out before him ... _Le Journal de

Genève_, _Il Seccolo_ of Milan, _La Tribuna_ of Rome, the _London Post_,

the _London Times_, the _New York Times_, _Le Figaro_, _L’Echo de

Paris_, _Le Petit Parisien_, _Le Matin_, _L’Œuvre_ ... in a neat pile,

from which he lifted them calmly in turn, to read them through and clip

now here, now there, with the long silver scissors a bit of news, a

king’s remarks, a prime minister’s speech or the leader of some

Socialist editor. Ensconced behind the gilt table, he appeared cool and

aloof, with his white hair and his pink face. What was going on almost

at his side had no interest for him. His first wife had been barren and

his second he had married too late. He clipped and clipped, the lean

scissors snipping their way through words in Italian, Spanish, German,

French and English. Snip ... snip ... snip ... they ran....

A dozen feet from him and well away from the bridge table where at the

command of Ellen the others played in a disheartened fashion, Hattie and

Thérèse sat side by side, the one knitting energetically at a blue and

white carriage robe, the other nibbling at a biscuit. They both waited

... they both fidgeted, not daring to risk an explosion from Ellen. She

was not to be crossed at this moment.

“When Richard was born,” Thérèse was saying ... “I suffered for

twenty-six hours ... but they do things better nowadays.”

And then Hattie, in a low voice lest she disturb the bridge players,

“I’m not sure that nature’s way isn’t the best. I don’t believe in

hurrying things.” And then in the hot silence, the click, click, click

of her knitting needles.

“She ought to be walking up and down,” said Thérèse anxiously. “Do you

think we ought to speak to her?”

“It will do no good.... In a moment she won’t be able to sit there

playing bridge. She’ll have to walk up and down.... I remember when my

last child was born, the doctor said....”

And so they went on, turning over and over again incidents appropriate

to the occasion, two prospective grandmothers, each of them passionately

interested in what lay ahead. Thérèse, despite her swarthy skin, looked

pale, and her fat hand trembled as she nibbled the biscuit.... Hattie

only knit more and more furiously, raising her head from time to time to

glance at her daughter who sat like a Spartan playing with Jean as a

partner and winning steadily from Lily and Rebecca.

Snip! Snip! Snip! ran the silver scissors. Click! Click! Click! the

knitting needles. Hattie halted for a moment to wipe her red, hot face.

And then the cool, desperate voice of Ellen again, saying, “Five tricks

and thirty-six in honors.”

“It’s our rubber,” said Jean, white and nervous with the strain. And in

his blue eyes the old light of admiration appeared. Ellen had always

been like this even in the days when she had taken him, a little boy, to

the Bois.

It was ten o’clock when Ellen at last pushed back her chair and rose as

the doctor entered the room. “I will walk for a time,” she said and went

with him out on to the terrace.

In their corner Hattie and old Thérèse grew silent and fell simply to

watching for the figures of Ellen, in the coral peignoir, the doctor and

the black dog, to pass and repass the tall windows. Jean smoked and

quarreled in a low voice with Rebecca, and Lily going over to the side

of de Cyon sat down and fell to reading the lace-like remnants of the

newspapers that her husband tossed aside with the regularity of a

machine. Presently, Augustine, her peasant’s face beaming with the

significance of the occasion, brought champagne which all save Hattie,

who refused it sternly, drank against the heat.

The sounds in the distant street began to die away and the echo of the

boat whistles on the Seine grew fainter and fainter. On the terrace

Ellen and the doctor were joined by a second nurse, still in her cape,

who had come in by the garden side.

And at half-past ten Callendar appeared at the foot of the long stairs,

looking worn and old, but cool despite all the heat. At his entrance

Hattie ignored him, Thérèse nodded, and the others, save de Cyon who did

not notice him at all, bowed without any trace of warmth. He was an

enemy; it was clear that they looked upon him thus, even old Thérèse

whose only interest lay now in the child. He seated himself and fell to

talking with Lily, who could not for long be disagreeable to any man,

and presently Ellen appeared in one of the windows and said, “Rebecca,

you and Jean play the piano ... I can’t bear to look at you all sitting

like statues.” And then she beckoned to Callendar who rose and went over

to her.

As he left the room, Rebecca watched him with a queer expression of

apprehension in her eyes. She did not trust him. He might turn the

circumstances to his own advantage. He might cast a spell over Ellen at

the moment when she was least able to resist. With Jean she went

reluctantly to the piano where they fell to playing with four hands and

with a mathematical precision they had long since perfected a variety of

music hall songs. And as she played she stole a glance now and then

over her shoulders at the tall windows past which Ellen and Callendar

moved with a clock-like regularity. But she was not the only one who

watched. There was Hattie too and even old Thérèse. Each of them desired

from Ellen a different thing, and each of them was resolved to have her

own will in the matter.

* * * * *

Outside the windows the husband and the wife with the black dog at their

heels walked up and down while Ellen, looking tall and pale and

desperate, talked earnestly.

“The child,” she said firmly, “is to be mine. I will fight until the end

for that. I have made up my mind. I will not have him go to you.... You

are not fit.”

He said nothing in reply. It was not possible to argue at such a time.

She was fighting now, as he had always done, unscrupulously, to achieve

what she desired. They turned at the end of the terrace and moved back

once more past the windows where Rebecca and Hattie and Thérèse kept

peering out. It was (thought Ellen in a peaceful moment) like bearing

one’s child in public ... as the French Queens had done, with a whole

crowd looking on.... (But she must bring her mind back to the business

at hand.)

“And if anything happens to me,” she said to Callendar, “if I should die

and the child live ... he is to be brought up by my mother. I have

talked to my lawyers. It is possible to arrange all that. There is

plenty of evidence against you ... even a French court--” She gasped for

breath and turned again. “Even a French court would uphold me in that.

Besides Rebecca has promised me that she will carry on the fight. I tell

you all this, because I want you to know that I am finished forever.”

She was walking rapidly now and made a sudden passionate gesture in the

direction of the windows. “Rebecca need not look at us so anxiously.

There is no question about it.... And I will not leave a child of mine

in such an atmosphere as you and your mother are able to provide.” She

drew another quick, sharp breath and added, “I gave you every chance

... and you were a rotter always. I loved you and I would love you still

if I thought there was any chance of redemption ... but there is none.”

And then, before turning toward the pavilion, she said, “You did not win

in the end, you see.... It was I who won.... I and Sabine too.... And I

will go on fighting, even if I should die. It has all been arranged. And

now,” she said, dismissing him, “will you tell my mother to come with me

to the pavilion? I want none of the others ... only her.”

So it was Callendar who summoned Hattie at the moment Ellen needed her

most. In the end she belonged to Hattie alone of all those people who

sat waiting ... Hattie, whose whole life had been concerned with love

and birth and death.

* * * * *

When they had gone away, Callendar sat on the stone balustrade smoking

in silence, conquered now beyond all doubt. He had been dismissed once

and for all. Ellen would return now into the world out of which she had

come to him ... a world in which she belonged to Rebecca and her public.

Perhaps as he sat there in the hot, still air, waiting for his child to

be born, he knew the last of his adventures to which there was any savor

had come to an end.

Through the windows he saw de Cyon rise presently and go up the long

stairs. He saw Lily (a fascinating woman, he thought, who must have been

very beautiful in her youth) talking to his mother who still nibbled at

her biscuit. Jean and Rebecca had ceased their music and sat now playing

double patience with a fierce, unnatural absorption.

Augustine came in presently with a message. Mrs. Cane Callendar (Sabine)

would like to know if there was any news. She went away again with the

message Lily gave her: Everything was going well, but there was no news

yet.

They were all waiting, waiting, waiting....

Callendar held tight the heavy collar of Hansi, who squirmed and moaned

pitifully because he could not follow his mistress.

Rebecca found him there when at last she tired of her game and wandered

out into the garden to smoke. She passed him without speaking and as he

looked after her, he saw that she had taken to walking round and round

the white pavilion as if she had set herself to guard it from him.

Presently he returned to the drawing-room and opening another bottle of

champagne, sat silently by the side of Lily, who alone behaved with any

kindliness toward him. Old Thérèse watched him, desperately, as the time

drew nearer and nearer. She was pale now with terror lest Madame de

Thèbes had been wrong. If the child were a girl it would be the end of

everything.... She had even stopped nibbling her biscuits. The reticule

had fallen to the floor. Her fat body rested on the edge of her chair

... tense and strained in her passionate anxiety.

The whole room, the whole house, the whole garden stood breathless in

the heat with the terrible stillness that surrounded the waiting....

* * * * *

Somewhere in the direction of the Trocadéro a clock struck midnight,

booming faintly, each stroke hanging on the hot still air to confuse the

stroke which followed. The sound swam in the big room. Callendar rose

and went again into the garden, into a distant corner well away from

Rebecca whose progress round and round the pavilion was marked by the

tiny glow at the end of her cigarette.

Thérèse, unable to bear the silence any longer, rose too and went out

onto the terrace to watch the light in the pavilion. A breeze came up

and the leaves of the plane trees fell to rustling. Lily and Jean talked

together quietly in the corner by de Cyon’s desk. From the window on the

second floor which opened into Gramp’s room there was a light still

burning. Rebecca, looking up at it from her vigil, saw the figure of the

old man show black and thin against the glow, as he leaned out and

peered over the garden.

An hour passed and the distant clock struck one. A bell sounded faintly

in the house and Augustine appeared. It was Mrs. Cane Callendar once

more. Was there any news?

“She must have a violent curiosity,” thought Lily, “to be staying up all

night.”

Thérèse, in the black shadow of the house, began to pray, as if it were

still not too late for a miracle. She had never been religious, but like

Voltaire she believed in trying everything.... After she had prayed for

a time she grew hungry, took another biscuit from the reticule and went

into the drawing-room for a glass of champagne. So it happened that

before she was able to return to her watching and praying the door of

the pavilion opened and the tiny lights that in the darkness marked the

positions of Callendar and Rebecca moved hastily in its direction.

In the doorway stood Hattie, larger than either of them, red-faced,

triumphant and with a wild light in her eyes. As first Rebecca and then

Callendar emerged from the shadows, she said, “It is all over....

Everything is fine.... It is a boy!”

* * * * *

The news was borne by Rebecca into the drawing-room where Thérèse in her

excitement put down her glass of champagne into sheer space instead of

on the table, leaving it to break and spill its contents over the

Aubusson carpet. On short fat legs she waddled through the window to the

pavilion where Hattie, who had in the excitement of the moment forgotten

her hatred, was delivering to Callendar a detailed and vivid account of

the accouchement.

Thérèse forgot even her English. “Eet ees a boy,” she squealed. “Eet ees

a boy. God is good. He has answered my prayers ... and what is it he

weighs?”

“Seven pounds,” replied Hattie. “A fine baby, though none of my children

weighed less than ten.”

A kind of hysteria swept them all. The waiting was over. Thérèse had an

heir, Hattie had a grandchild and Callendar, at last, a son whom he

would perhaps never possess as his own. From a window above their

heads, the sound of a cracked shrill voice shot at them.

“Is the child born? What is it?” ... And then with irritation. “For

Heaven’s sake!”

It was Gramp. Lily answered him, and the bony head was withdrawn again,

the light extinguished and the room left to silence.

They must all see the child. They must come to the very door of the

pavilion where Hattie, holding them at bay like a royal nurse exhibiting

the heir to the populace, thrust toward them a lusty, tomato-colored

child which appeared to cry, “Ala-as! Ala-as! Ala-as!” over and over

again, monotonously. She allowed no one to touch it, not even old

Thérèse who, kept at bay by the threatening manner of the royal nurse,

bent over it murmuring, “The darling! Isn’t he beautiful? The precious

darling! _Qu’il est mignon!_ And he looks for all the world like

Richard, the precious darling.”

“You can’t tell what he looks like,” said Hattie with a savage

indignation. “That’s nonsense! You can’t tell for a long time!”

Callendar, thrust aside by this regiment of women, regarded his son with

a faint light in his gray eyes. He said nothing. He waited. Perhaps for

an instant he wished that he might see Ellen, as a father, a husband

should have done. But he was given no chance, for Hattie said, “She

wants to see Lily. The doctor says she may see no one else.”

Ensconced in the pavilion Hattie became a despot, a tyrant. The child at

the moment it entered the world became a part of her family, swallowed

up by it remorselessly.

Inside the pavilion, a pale, handsome Ellen looked up at Lily and

murmured, smiling a little, “You must call Sabine. Tell her that she was

right. Just tell I am a good gambler. I have been successful. Old

Thérèse is satisfied.”

* * * * *

One by one they drifted away until only Callendar was left sitting in

the darkness, smoking and thinking. A little way off in the shadow

where she could not be seen Rebecca waited too, watching him; and when

at length he rose and went out of the gate into the Rue de Passy, she

followed and stood looking after him as he climbed the slope and

disappeared around a corner beneath the glare of a street lamp. He

seemed not so tall and not so formidable as he had once been. The fine

shoulders sagged a little; and Rebecca, looking after him, knew whither

he was bound. For she had taken the trouble to find out. She had herself

hunted down his infidelity. Ellen, she knew, would never forgive him and

she (Rebecca) had the proof. It was the seal upon his defeat.

And as she stood there she looked not down the Rue de Passy but down the

corridor of the years, and at the end she saw a defeated and bitter

sensualist buying with money what had once come to him through beauty

and charm and the glow of youth.

She closed the gate and turned back into the garden. The dawn had begun

to filter in through the trees and to turn the pavilion from gray to

white. To-morrow she must begin to work on the plans for Ellen’s return.

It must be triumphant, spectacular, worthy of such an artist as Lilli

Barr. For Ellen belonged again to Rebecca Schönberg.

67

On a night, five months after the breathless waiting in the garden of

the house in the Rue Raynouard, Lilli Barr, under the management of the

energetic and now happy Rebecca, returned in triumph. She played with

the Pasdeloup Orchestra in the Theatre Champs-Elysées, a new concerto

written by one of the young composers who came so often to disturb the

quiet of Lily’s house. From the great spaces of the dim theatre they saw

her enter, making her way slowly and with a great dignity through the

players of the orchestra; and as she passed them, one by one the

musicians appeared to draw from her a queer inexplicable fire, a new,

strange vitality. She was dressed as she had been on that first night in

New York--in crimson velvet and diamonds with her black hair drawn back

tightly from the pale, handsome face.

At sight of her, a faint hush fell upon the audience and then the slow,

subdued murmur of admiration. The white faces, row upon row, extended

far back into the dim reaches of the theatre until at length they became

blurred and misty, indistinguishable. It was all more than she had

imagined in the days when she had played savagely and sullenly in the

shabby room on Sycamore Street.

The conductor rose, a black slim figure against the lights of the

orchestra. He raised his baton and Lilli Barr touched the first chords

of the barbaric concerto. There was no doubt any longer. She reached out

in some mysterious fashion and took possession of the great audience.

She was more magnificent than she had ever been, for in this performance

there was no longer any trickery. It was the music of a great artist.

The orchestra swept into a great crescendo, triumphant, overwhelming,

above which the sound of the piano rose clear and crystalline....

* * * * *

Afterward in the big reception room lined with the mirrors used by the

dancers of the ballet before a performance, she waited to receive all

those who came to welcome her back into their world. There were

actresses and millionaires, demi-mondaines and composers, musicians and

painters, the Duc de Guermantes and M. de Charlus, patrons of art and

adventuresses who came and went under the brilliant, triumphant glitter

of Rebecca’s ferrety eyes. And last of all there was Thérèse, untidy and

covered with diamonds, and her friend, Ella Nattatorini, and Sabine who

had in tow Janey Champion whom, as one of the Virgins, Ellen had seen so

long ago through the crevice of the lacquered screen in the Callendar

drawing-room. Janey was breathless and excited now, her hair all in

disarray; for Sabine had kept her promise and Janey, for the first time

in all her forty-six barren years, had escaped and was seeing life.

Ellen received them all with something of the old savor of triumph, but

it was not the same. As Gramp had known, she had passed the peak of all

her existence. All this array, this chatter, this confusion had begun a

little to bore her.

And when they had gone she sat down to wait for Lily who had gone to the

Gare de Lyon to speed a party consisting of Hattie and Old Gramp and the

baby, Augustine and a gigantic Breton wet nurse with the preposterous

name of Frédegonde, on their journey to the white villa in Nice where

Lily had gone so many times while César was alive. For Lily, who had

always followed the sun, no longer had any use for the white villa. Her

place now was in damp and chilly Paris by the side of her husband.

Wrapped in her sable cloak, Ellen leaned back in her chair and closing

her eyes, lost herself in this new and comfortable peace which had

enveloped her since that hot terrible night in the pavilion. It seemed

to her that she had never really rested before in all her life. It was

over and finished. She had begun to forget a little what Callendar had

been, to remember only what she desired to remember. She thought of him

as dead; and it is true that the Callendar who came to her in the

Babylon Arms had died long ago. She had done her duty, the one thing

that she could have done, the one thing that had remained. She had borne

a child and delivered it to Hattie for her own, to possess until she

died or the child grew up and escaped from her. But by that time, Hattie

would be so old that it would not greatly matter. She would be willing

to sit by the fire in the long drawing-room as old Madame Gigon had

done. And presently she rose and throwing off her cloak seated herself

at the big piano in the corner of the room. She began to play softly,

marvelously, and the wild savage fire which had persisted through

everything began once more to shine in her eyes. The Town, the black

Mills, the Callendars, poor Clarence and the green-eyed Mr. Wyck ... all

these were forgotten. She was freed at last of all those old bonds,

possessed now only by the beauty of the sounds she made. But, on the

high pinnacle she had built with her own hands, she was alone ... the

woman whom Fergus had seen for a moment in a queer flash of clairvoyance

on the night of his death.

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

shadows....

* * * * *

The white villa, as old Madame Gigon had said, was not in Nice proper

but in Cimiez, high on the slope overlooking Villefranche and the Bay of

Angels. To approach it one was forced to descend from the carriage and

climb past the statue of Queen Victoria, carved in the manner of

Thorvaldsen with an umbrella in one hand and a reticule in the other--a

reticule which Gramp believed was the one (embroidered with a poodle-dog

in gold thread) which she had carried on the visit that was designed to

make Eugènie respectable in the eyes of royal Europe. Beyond the Queen,

there was a little flight of steps leading to a gateway covered with

bougainvillea and shaded by an ancient tree of mimosa.

It was up this exotic path that the little procession made its way two

days after Lily bade it farewell in the Gare de Lyon. Jean went ahead

and after him Hattie, with her grandson in her arms, followed closely by

The Everlasting, the gigantic, abundant Frédegonde and her child. At the

approach of evening they were settled and under the mimosa tree Hattie

sat by the side of little Fergus, triumphant and content, singing him to

sleep as she had once done with her own Fergus. Nothing had changed, for

in Hattie there was a quality of the eternal concerned only with love

and birth and death.

While she sang thus in a low voice, The Everlasting, with a great book

under his arm, appeared in the doorway and moved toward her. By the side

of the baby he halted for a moment, adjusted his spectacles and peered

closely. He said nothing and presently his thin old lips expanded into a

grin--a grin which said, “You’ve a lot of trouble before you, but what a

good time you will have!” It was a grin, strange to say, of envy.

And as he stood there, he saw dimly the figure of a fat, untidy,

bedizened old woman making her way painfully up the slope past the

statue of Queen Victoria. It was Thérèse, who had altered the whole

course of her journey to Trieste in order to see this precious,

incomparable grandchild. Silently, lest she rouse the infant, she took

her place by the side of the cradle. But little Fergus showed no signs

of falling asleep. He was a fine baby. He lay looking up at them with

the inscrutable gray eyes which had come from Callendar. But he had a

fine pretty nose, that showed every sign of developing those handsome

curves which gave Ellen and, before her, Old Julia Shane a proud look of

domination. Presently in the hope of diverting him Thérèse bent down and

took from her fat old fingers the carved emerald which, legend had it,

had been saved during the Sack of Constantinople. The baby turned it

round and round, peering at it with his wise gray eyes, until at last,

letting it slip from his chubby fingers, he fell asleep under the

jealous guard of the two powerful women who had called him into

existence almost by the very force of will. They stood there in adoring

silence, the one so primitive, the other so old and wise, that in the

end they were very like each other.

* * * * *

Meanwhile The Everlasting, having turned his steps up the hill, sat now

among the ruins of the ancient Roman arena overlooking the bay. As a

substitute for his rocking chair, he had chosen an overturned stone and

there he sat, his book open on his knees, peering out over the

Mediterranean. After a time he took from his pocket an apple and bit

into it with teeth that were still strong despite the approach of his

hundredth birthday. It was a small bitter apple from Brittany, and not

half so good as the apples which grew in the orchards of Ohio.

Scornfully he spat the pieces from his mouth and, adjusting his

spectacles once more, he bent over with a peering look and began again

to read in triumph the Decline and Fall.

Ispswich, Mass.

August 6, 1923.

Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island.

May 15, 1925.

* * * * *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: