Part 26

There was a moon which painted all the garden outside with a pale green light; the pastry-cake pavilion of Le Nôtre had turned to silver and the leaves of the old plane trees, rustling together now in the soft spring air, cast black shadows across the white terrace. Lured by the faint stream of silver that spilled in through the darkness at the tall window, Ellen rose presently and, sitting on the chaise longue, looked out over the garden. To-night the familiar, distant sound of the boat whistles along the Seine seemed very close. The hoofs of a horse passing along the cobblestones of the Rue de Passy struck up a slow tattoo that leapt the garden wall and came up to the very window. It was a foreign horse, passing along a foreign street and the garden had become remote and melancholy with a new sort of beauty. It was as if she suffered from an enchantment, as if all that had happened since the day she had gone off to skate alone on Walke’s Pond had been an hallucination, detached from all reality. She might wake and find herself once more in the shabby comfortable sitting room of the house on Sycamore Street. Still it could not be a dream; because if she returned to that shabby room, she would find it occupied by strangers she had never seen. Her mother would no longer be there, darning in the firelight, nor her father sleeping on the great divan, nor Fergus, nor Robert. They were all gone now ... gone, strange to say, in pursuit of herself. Perhaps one day they would come as far as this lovely garden. Ma would like it only because her children were there, but Fergus would know its meaning, how much of old beauty that was beyond expression lay in the silver pavilion, in the mottled trunks of the old trees and in the black filigree of shadows across the white terrace. If only Fergus could be there she would not be lonely....

And for the first time in all her life, she became sharply aware of the passing of time. She heard it rushing past her and knew that slowly, like a tide rising upon a beach of shingle, the years were stealing upon her, the years and a desperate haunting loneliness which it seemed impossible ever to escape.

* * * * *

Sitting there in the moonlight, the whole of the past rose up in a queer, muddled procession. There had been in the progression of events neither rule nor reason. Fate, one might call it, but fate was a silly name. It meant nothing; it could not explain how Clarence had turned toward her and so changed all the course of her existence; it did not explain Mr. Wyck and his muddled part in the suicide of Clarence; it did not solve that sudden, passionate interval with Richard Callendar. It was all senseless and muddled.

People might judge her as hard and cold and calculating but that, she thought, would be unjust. She had been forced to make her own way, to clear her path by the best means at hand. She had tried always to do it without harm to others. She was not, like Sabine Cane, born with all that one needed in this world. If she had been born, having those things, she might have been more happy, less lonely, less aloof. Sabine, she reflected bitterly, had everything ... wealth and friends and happiness. Even her husband had been delivered into her hands, a man who, if chance had been less cruel, might not have been hers. She envied Sabine.

So she fell to thinking of Callendar. What might have happened if she had hurt Clarence deliberately and gone away with her lover? Callendar would have married her. She would have been rich. She would have been free. There would have been no more of this struggle.

But she could not be certain. For the first time, thinking of him now out of the detachment of her loneliness, she doubted him. He might not have married her, after all. Why should he have done it? And if he had married her he might not have been stronger than this other thing which kept driving her on, this terrible ambition that was like a disease with which one was born.

What would love have been with a man like Callendar? She trembled a little at the memory of him, grown softer now with the passing of time and more sentimental. With Clarence love had been a poor timid growth, choked and inarticulate, a thing that somehow he made shameful. Callendar was not like that. Love with him must be a great glowing passion that would overwhelm all else, even her own terrible awareness.

She sighed and bound up her hair. All that had passed long ago and was done. She might die now without ever knowing anything more wonderful than the stifled, timid embraces of Clarence.

Idly, out of nowhere, into her brain there strayed presently a memory of old Julia Shane. It had happened when Ellen was a little girl and she could not think why she had remembered it, yet unaccountably it was there in her head, very clear, like an old photograph found by chance after many years. She saw old Julia sitting in the big drawing-room of Shane’s Castle on a Christmas day talking with Grandpa Barr. She was thin and hawklike and leaned forward now and then on her ebony stick to give the coals in the grate an angry poke. She had been quarreling with the vigorous old man and presently she said sharply, poking the fire for emphasis, “Fate! Pooh! Robert! Fate is no great tide that sweeps everything before it. It is a river that goes this way and that, and the smart fellow is the one who jumps when it turns in his direction!”

Aunt Julia has been right. Fate was like that and, Ellen reflected, she had jumped when she saw it coming her way, but by ill luck she had jumped sometimes full into the midst of the stream and been swept along by it.

* * * * *

Lost in this sudden memory she was interrupted sharply by a murmur of voices arising from the garden. Without stirring she listened and, presently, recognizing that one was Lily’s and the other that of the Baron, she made no attempt to move out of hearing. Once, a long time ago when she had first come to Paris, she would have moved away or have let them know by some sign that she was nearby, watching and listening; but that time had long gone by. She listened now either because she was shameless or because in the mood of the moment it did not matter what things she learned. And in some way the sight of the two dark figures, moving so close to each other up and down the white terrace, dissipated the terrible loneliness.

The pair below her knew, no doubt, that Madame Gigon was long since snoring among the gimcracks of her bedroom, and they believed that she herself was out, at the theater with Rebecca. In the French manner, the servants did not matter; it is probable that of all the people in the house they knew most of Lily and her life.

The Baron’s voice, deep and rich, drifted up to the open window.

“Jean, you say, will be back from school in June?”

He wore his uniform, and the perfection of its lines emphasized all the trim, masculine hardness of his slight figure. Beside him in her black gown, with the stole of sable thrown round her for warmth, Lily was soft and lovely. His voice it seemed, caressed her.

“He is growing big now ... fourteen. Think of it....” He laughed softly. “_You_ with a big boy of fourteen! It is impossible ... _incroyable!_”

Lily said something which was not audible and then, “Yes. We must be more careful. He will begin to see things.”

“In England boys are not so sharp ... at least not about affairs between men and women.”

In silence they walked for a time, once up and once down the terrace. The leaves of the plane trees rustled and a boat far below in the Seine whistled faintly. Once more they passed beneath the window.

“June is more than a month away,” said the Baron. “We could go to Nice for three long weeks.”

Lily, it seemed, was unwilling, for he argued with her, saying in a voice that would have melted steel, “Think of it.... We have not been alone for months. Think of it ... the mornings ... waking together ... looking out over the bay.... Alone ... alone.” He paused suddenly and seizing her in his arms kissed her. For a long time they stood thus. Ellen could see them quite plainly, standing in the shadow of one of the white urns, Lily with her head against his shoulder while he kissed her again and again.

Then slowly, with the air of waking from a dream, Lily raised her head and passing her hand against her eyes, murmured, “I should not like Ellen to know.”

At this he laughed and a new note, one of hard anger, entered his voice. “She knows already if she is not a fool.”

At the intonation Lily withdrew and leaned against one of the white urns. “She doesn’t. I’m sure of it. She has said nothing.”

Again he laughed, scornfully. “She’s no fool. She knows it would be more unpleasant for her than for you. She needs a home and money ... just now. She’ll not open her eyes so long as it might harm her plans.”

Sitting there in the darkness, Ellen succumbed to a slow anger that rose to her head like a fever. She had believed that he spoke against her; now she was sure of it. She hated him vaguely, because he dared even to say such a thing to her cousin. He was so sure of himself, the amorous beast.

She was hurt too, as if some one had struck her, because what César had said was so near to the truth.

But Lily turned away from him. “I won’t have you say such things,” she said. “It is ridiculous and unjust.”

He did not use words in defense of himself, perhaps because words were to him such weak and awkward weapons. Instead, he simply took Lily once more in his arms, and beneath his kisses, Ellen saw that all resistance, all anger melted from her. It was like a bit of wax touched suddenly by a flame.... An amazing sight which seemed to illumine sharply the whole of Lily’s strange life.

After a moment, he placed his arm about her waist and they moved away down the steps into the shadow of the plane trees. Once they halted for a time while he kissed her again and then, resuming their way in the same state of enchantment, they disappeared through the filigree of black shadows into the white pavilion, silvered by the moon.

And in the room above the terrace, Ellen slipped from the chaise longue to the floor where she lay flung out, weeping passionately. The loneliness returned now more terribly than ever before.

44

In the morning, after coffee and brandy, Ellen rose at dawn to ride in the Bois. She went purposely without Schneidermann, leaving him to a vain pursuit, in order that she might be alone; and when she returned she found that Lily was already awake and had come down from her room to breakfast on the terrace. The May sunlight poured into the garden and beat against the stone of the façade, enveloping her with its reflected warmth, as she sat at the iron table before a bowl of hot chocolate, a dish of rolls and two piles of letters. One heap had been opened and the contents lay scattered over the table and on the flagging beneath. As Ellen, tall and slim in her riding habit and hard hat, stepped through the tall window Lily put down a letter and said, “I brought your mail out here. It isn’t interesting this morning ... mostly bills.”

Ellen throwing down her crop and hat, ran her fingers through her dark hair and seated herself on the opposite side of the table, while Lily sent for more chocolate and hot rolls.

“You look tired,” observed Lily. “Were you out late?”

“No. Rebecca couldn’t go with me, and I was tired so I didn’t go at all. But I slept badly.”

Lily turned the page of the note she was reading. “You work too hard,” she said. “Try taking a rest. Come down to the country with me in June.”

“No, I can’t do that.... I’m going to play in London. Rebecca and Schneidermann have arranged it. It will be my début.”

She announced the news abruptly, without any show of emotion.

Lily put down the letter and leaned toward her. “You didn’t tell me it would be so soon.”

“I only knew it for certain last night. I’m superstitious about speaking of things until they’re certain. I’m to play in Wigmore Street on the third.”

Her cousin was all interest now. She drew her chair a little nearer and carelessly pushed her letters off the edge of the table.

“Have you chosen a gown? We’ll send for the motor and choose one this morning. That’s important, you know ... especially in England where they recognize good clothes but never wear them.”

“I can’t go this morning.... I’m going to Philippe.”

“To-morrow then,” said Lily. “I shall go over to London for the concert and bring Jean back with me.... Perhaps César can go too.”

“Not him!” Ellen interrupted sullenly. “He’d spoil everything.”

For a moment the two cousins regarded each other in silence. In Ellen’s face there was a look of bitterness that appeared more and more frequently of late, a sort of devil-may-care expression that puzzled Lily and disturbed her. They had never recognized the breach before ... not, at least, openly.

“Why shan’t César come?” she put forward gently.

“He hates me! I know that!”

Lily endeavored to pour oil on the waters. “It’s not true. You’re rude to each other ... both of you. Why is it? There’s no reason. He doesn’t really dislike you?”

For a time, Ellen came very close to being unpleasant; she was tempted to reveal all she had seen and heard from the window above the moonlit garden. The memory of César’s words rang in her ears, a taunt in which there was too much of truth. But she could not say that she hated César because he never allowed her any peace of mind. She could not say that she never saw him without thinking of Callendar.

“It’s nothing ... nonsense, I daresay, on both sides.” The power of Lily’s eager friendliness overwhelmed her. “I’m sorry,” she added, “that I’m disagreeable sometimes.... I’ve been worried lately. I know the quarrel is my fault too.” She tore open one of her letters and then, looking very pale, she added, “Bring him, if he would like to come.... It won’t matter.”

And Lily never knew what it was that softened her so abruptly. She did not know, of course, that Ellen was thinking of Callendar, hoping desperately that he could be there to listen to her music as he had listened so many times, with all the passionate abandon which meant so much to her. She needed Fergus too, for she was frightened now that the chance, awaited so long, was at hand. With César present she would at least be reminded of Callendar. It would be the next best thing to having him or Fergus in a cold audience of strangers.

* * * * *

On the top of the little pile of letters was one from her mother from which she read portions aloud to her cousin.

“We are settled now in seven rooms in East Seventieth Street. There is room for Fergus and Robert and Papa and I, and a room for Gramp and his books, which he would not leave behind. And an extra room which I have let to a young man who works with an electrical company. He has nice manners and seems to be of a very good family. He talks a great deal about them. It seems that his family was rich once, a long time ago. He was very unhappy in a boarding house, but he likes it here....”

Lily, who had been listening closely to the news, looked up as Ellen suddenly stopped reading and allowed the letter to slip to the ground. She saw that her cousin reached down hastily and recovered it, as if she wished to conceal her agitation.

“Not bad news?” asked Lily.

“No. I was just surprised for a moment by something in the letter. I think ... I think I know the young man she writes of. Still I can’t understand what chance brought him and Ma together.... It’s an idiotic world.... There’s no sense in it.” She lighted a cigarette, and after a thoughtful silence added, “Ma is a remarkable woman. Think of her, tearing a whole family up by its roots and transplanting it without a thought.”

Then she continued reading. The family, she learned, were all very comfortable in their new home. Fergus might be going abroad in a year or two ... some sort of writing work, with a newspaper. Hattie had recaptured him only to lose him again at once. Robert was the same, the plodder of the family, silent, unbrilliant, a sort of rock and foundation as old Jacob Barr had been before him. They were hoping to see Ellen soon now. She must come home, now that they were settled in New York. And in the end there was the usual refrain. _I am looking forward to the day when I can make a home for all my children_.

When she had finished reading, they both sat for a time in silence and at last Lily said simply, “She’ll never give up, will she?”

* * * * *

In the same pile there was a note from Rebecca sent by hand from the Regina where she was stopping. It read:

“I’m sorry about last night but it couldn’t be helped. How was I to know that Aunt Lina was arriving from Vienna and hadn’t been in Paris for twenty-five years? She had to be looked after and will take a great deal of my time, I suppose, as she plans to stay a month if I cannot get her off before that. She is important because she is very rich and has no children. Uncle Otto owns a sapphire mine in Cambodia. And I am her god-daughter. (Her real name is Rebecca, but in the family they call her Lina because there are so many Rebeccas.) Besides, some day she may be of use to us in Vienna, especially when the time comes for you to play there. She is rich and has myriads of rich friends who all spend money on the arts.

“I won’t let her interfere with the plans for London. I’ve talked to Schneidermann and in case I can’t get away at once, he will go over and arrange things in plenty of time. He knows the ropes. Don’t let Lily help to choose your gown without my being there. She has beautiful taste but it’s too quiet for an artist. The public, especially in England and America, expects something spectacular from a musician. I’ll try to run out for a moment to-day if I can get rid of Aunt Lina. Perhaps I can make her believe she is tired from the journey and stay in bed all day. Here’s to the triumph in London!

REBECCA.”

* * * * *

The note troubled her, so that when Lily rose, and murmuring something, went into the house to dress, Ellen took no notice of her but got up and walked, in her slim black riding habit with the skirt pinned high (she did not ride astride, because she thought it ugly) down the steps into the garden.

If Rebecca failed her now, either through Aunt Lina or otherwise, she felt that she would not have courage to go on. She would kill herself because there would be nothing left. She fancied the humiliation of playing before row upon row of empty seats. If fate played her such a dirty trick, she would put herself out of fate’s way. She was sick to death of being buffeted about, this way and that, achieving neither success nor happiness.

Angrily she beat her skirt with her riding crop. If Schneidermann went to London, it would only put her hopelessly in his debt. She might have to marry him out of gratitude, and she wanted no more weak husbands to clutter up her life.

And then this business of Wyck turning up suddenly as a lodger in her mother’s house! It could be no one else; her mother’s description fitted him too perfectly ... _a man whose family had been rich once, who worked with an electrical company, who talked a great deal of past splendors_. He had reappeared, armed with her secret. She could fancy her mother caring for him, making him comfortable, giving him all the attentions he yearned for and never received in a world which kicked him about. She could trust Fergus, but Mr. Wyck was nasty, feminine. Still he had not betrayed his acquaintance either with her or poor Clarence. If he had done that, her mother would have spoken of it in her letter.... A friend of one of Hattie’s children would be like a child of her own. It may have been that he felt as guilty as she herself felt; if that were true, he would not be likely to betray her. She thought of his shifting green eyes, his mincing manner and his habit of talking perpetually of the past. He was a worm ... something one might find on lifting a stone!

Twice she had made the round of the garden, indifferent now in the midst of her own worries to the nearness of the guilty pavilion, when she saw Augustine, the maid, coming toward her with a card. For some reason, she was overcome by a sudden feeling that this bit of paper which the red-faced Breton girl held in her hand was of immense importance. She found herself hurrying forward to meet her. She found herself reading the name and then, looking up, she saw in one of the tall windows that opened on the terrace, the figure of Sabine Cane ... Sabine Callendar ... standing in the brilliant sunlight, dressed all in gray, superbly, with a gray veil that fell over her shoulders ... the same Sabine, poised, indifferent, striking. Nothing had changed save that she looked old, surprisingly so considering the perfection of her make-up.

The call must indeed be important, since Sabine had followed Augustine straight into the garden.

* * * * *

They sat in the long drawing-room where they might look out over the sun-drenched garden with its blue flame of irises lighting up the expanses of gray stone.

“What a lovely house!” remarked Sabine as she drew off her gloves. “I suppose it is your cousin’s.”

The speech was stiff, constrained by the vague shadow of hostility that had enveloped them, almost at once--an intangible thing, which it is probable both women felt but failed to understand, because each fancied herself too intelligent to be the victim of jealousy.

“Yes. It belongs to Madame Shane.”

Sabine laughed. “It’s the sort of house I would like. You see we live, when we’re in Paris, in a sort of World’s Fair exhibit in the Avenue du Bois.”

It surprised Ellen to find that a single, small word such as “we” could cause her any feeling. She found too that the presence of Sabine had turned back the years; she was watching her now, as she might watch an enemy, as she had watched her in the days when she had gone, a young and awkward girl, to the big house on Murray Hill. She had not “watched” people in quite this fashion for a long time now.

She felt herself quite a match for the worldly woman who sat, carefully, with the brilliant light at her back; she could no longer be taken at a disadvantage.

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

Sabine’s scarlet lips curved in a bright hard smile. “I saw you once, in the distance, at the Ritz. It was nearly four years ago. You went out before I was able to speak to you.” She coughed, nervously. “So I lost trace of you. I was sorry, because I was interested to know how you had come to Paris so soon.”

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

“But I thought there were so many difficulties.”

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

The old Sabine, the one Ellen had known so well, the Sabine who was always prying into the affairs of other people, showed itself now, yet there was a difference, impossible to define save that now her interest seemed to be more personal, more intense, not so cold and abstract.

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

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

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

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

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

“I should like to see her again.... Perhaps she will be interested to know that I make my début in London in June.”

At this, even the indifferent mask of Sabine betrayed a flicker of surprise. “So you’re still working at your music.”

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

“But it has taken a long time.”

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