Part 32

But Marguerite would not stir. She grew arch and hung her head. She threatened to sob. Her mother coaxed and argued and pleaded but nothing happened. Marguerite would have none of The Jolly Farmer. It was Rebecca who saved the situation by coming in.

“My God!” she said, on entering, but the rest of her sentence was lost forever because the sight of May and her offspring silenced her.

“Miss Schönberg,” said Ellen, “this is Mrs. Biggs.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said May, staring at the exotic figure of Rebecca, and then after a strained silence, “I must go now. Baby wants her supper.”

Ellen went with the party to the door and as she bade them farewell and the little procession got under way, she saw that May hung behind with a curious air of embarrassment until the three older children were half way down the neat brick path. With only the baby left to hear her, she turned abruptly to Ellen and with a blush, said, “There was one thing I wanted to ask you and I never had a chance until now. It’s about Clarence.” She hesitated and then with a supreme effort managed to say, “There was a story that he shot himself.... That wasn’t true, was it?”

Ellen did not answer at once. She took the hand of the baby in hers, and looking away, replied in a low voice, “No, it wasn’t true.... You remember he had a weak heart. It was his heart that killed him.”

“I’m glad,” said May softly. “I always liked him. I wouldn’t want to think he’d committed suicide.”

She stood in the doorway, unconscious of the cold until the figure of May, swaying from side to side and surrounded by the phalanx of offspring, had disappeared among the shadows of the lilacs.

In the hallway, Rebecca was awaiting her.

“Thank God, that’s over,” she said with a laugh, but she must have noticed that Ellen did not respond.

“She was a friend of mine,” Ellen observed gravely. “I grew up with her.”

Again Rebecca laughed in that same hard, worldly fashion. “I must say she has been more abundant than you.”

This time Ellen made no answer at all. She was hypnotized by the memory of the look that had come into May’s eyes at the mention of Clarence. It was an embarrassed, shy look, but it glowed all the same with a fire that had never burned for Herman Biggs. And Ellen understood then for the first time that she had been wrong after all, for Clarence--poor, meek, inarticulate Clarence, who had been dead for years--was to May a romantic figure, a fascinating creature. May had thought of him always ... perhaps in the same fashion in which she herself thought of Callendar.

It had been all wrong since the beginning. There was no longer any doubt. It was May whom he should have married. And she wondered again for the thousandth time what it was that had turned him toward herself.

But the dog was still howling in loneliness. She walked along the tiny hall and as she opened the door he leapt at her in a frenzy of devotion.

“Hansi, old fellow,” she murmured and pressed her face against his sleek black head.

54

It was six years now, through the evil chance that led them to pass each other unknowingly in mid-Atlantic, since Fergus had seen his sister. From afar, even in the turmoil and excitement of the war he had watched her progress, now in the letters from his mother (which he discounted because he knew she was inclined to exaggerate when her children were concerned) now in the letters from Ellen, and sometimes in the newspapers which filtered through, weeks old, to his escadrille at the front. As Ellen had guessed, he understood the ascent perfectly; he saw her working at it doggedly with one eye always upon the lucky chance. From afar he had admired the whole campaign and developed a passionate curiosity to know this Rebecca Schönberg who stood so cleverly in the background of the whole affair. She too had genius.

The great distance which separated them--even the years which had passed since he saw her, aboard the greasy old _City of Paris_, slip away into the winter mists of the North River--had not altered the transcendent quality of their understanding. Their tie was not, like the love of Hattie, a thing which emotionally demanded a close and breathless contact. It was less a matter of the senses and more a matter of the mind. Each had known always what to expect from the other, above all else a frank and unabashed honesty. They were very like each other, save that Fergus (and he knew it ruefully) lacked his sister’s stiff, inflexible wilfulness. It was these qualities, he understood well enough, which had given her the advantage. It had made of her a conqueror. The lack of it had left him a charming, happy-go-lucky fellow. But it gave him too a savor in life, a wild enjoyment, which she could never know.

The war suited him. As his mother had believed, it was to him a great show, a sort of masquerade in which he was at once a participant and a spectator; and it gave rein to impulses and inheritances which otherwise might never have been awakened--such strains as a passion for adventure that had its origin in wild cattle-thieving highland ancestors, and a love for the excitement to be found in battle high in the air above a world that lay spread out beneath him mapwise and miserably dwarfed. A little of this he managed to pin down in the eager, hurried letters he wrote to Ellen, so that she understood what it was that made him content and happy. It was a satisfaction very like her own, the satisfaction of triumph over great odds, of gambling for high stakes, of finding oneself absorbed utterly and passionately in the thing at hand. It was that queer streak again--the same queer streak which had made of Sam Barr a pauper and of Old Julia Shane a woman fabulously rich, the streak to which the clumsy perpetual motion machine rusting in a corn field of the middle-west stood as an eternal monument. It was the old fever to gobble up all of life, not alone mere stupid contentment, but danger and sorrow and even tragedy--a strange unworldly greed to get the most of a life which each of them knew in his very marrow was bitterly brief.

It was easy to see in the glowing letters of Fergus that he was wildly happy in those days. It was easy to see that the old restlessness, so long without a way to turn, at last had found its goal. The old adventurous blood had come into its own.

From a great distance he had watched his sister’s triumphs but, unlike the others, he had no awe of her imperious way of riding roughshod over those who stood in her path. To him Ellen Tolliver would always exist, concealed perhaps inside the shell of Lilli Barr, but alive none the less and ready to be called forth. The core, the heart was eternal. It did not change. He saw her still, in the rare moments when he had peace enough for reflection, as he had always seen her--a wilful, smolderingly brilliant, disagreeable sister with whom he could do as he chose, no matter what her mood or temper. It did not occur to him that she had grown older, in some ways more mellow and in some ways harder than she had ever been.

It was from Ellen that he heard first of his father’s death. She wrote him that the gentle man had gone to sleep on the night after her first concert in America and that afterward he had never really awakened. There had been moments when for a time he had recognized his wife and talked to her, though he did not seem quite clear and mixed the past and the present in a strange and touching confusion. And at the end she had written, in her bold, sprawling hand, “None of the doctors appeared to know what it was that killed him. But I knew what it was. He died simply of homesickness. He hated the city. He was born to hate it. But you must never say this to Ma, for it was she who forced him to leave the Town. And it was our fault in the end ... yours and mine, because it was us whom she was pursuing. She’ll never stop. She’s an extraordinary woman. Time has no effect upon her, no more than it has upon The Everlasting. He is ninety-four and though he looks as old as Methuselah, he is as spry and as clear in the head as a boy. He has learned how to protect himself. Oh! So admirably! Sometimes, I fancy he will outlive us all ... sitting in his room, rocking and chuckling! He has discovered a secret which none of us know! And he’ll never tell us.”

Thus Charles Tolliver had died, peacefully and without resentment, indifferent to the triumphs of his children so long as they were lost to him; for long ago he had recognized the loss, a thing his wife would never do. And he had lost not only his children but the very life he had loved. He had gone now from a sleep that had been fitful, from dreams which had been awakened harshly each morning by the noises of a hostile city, into a long unbroken sleep. Quietly and gently he had lived, a friend to all the world, serving for his part as little more than the father of Hattie’s children, passing on to them the qualities of old Gramp to unite with the qualities of Hattie and produce such offspring as Ellen and Fergus. They had never belonged to him, even for a moment. They had been Hattie’s always, and old Gramp’s....

55

Nearly three years passed before Ellen, having meanwhile added Australia and South America to the list of her triumphs, returned to the Paris which she had not seen since the day she left with Rebecca for the Vienna they had never reached and now never would reach; because, as Rebecca said, the old Vienna was gone now, forever. Ellen would never know it as it had been in the days when Rebecca had visited Uncle Otto who owned a sapphire mine in Cambodia.

In the end she went back to Paris over the protests of her mother and against the advice of Rebecca, who saw the return simply as a great bundle of money thrown to the winds. But she could not have done otherwise. She had to return. She was unable to explain the instinct, but she trusted it shrewdly as wise persons trust instinct for its value as accumulated experience over any mere process of logic. She had to see Lily again and the beautiful house (so saddened and changed) in the Rue Raynouard. And there were times too when she became obsessed by an inexplicable fear that if she did not go at once, she might be too late.... Too late for what? This she could not answer, save that vaguely it must have to do with Fergus and Callendar. Lily was in no danger; she lived quietly in the Rue Raynouard or in the white villa at Nice.

For two years she had allowed herself to be ruled by circumstance and by Rebecca Schönberg, the high priestess of opportunity. She would wait no longer now. And so, after a terrible scene with Rebecca in which they both descended to the level of fishwives, she had embarked to return to a city which could mean nothing now so far as her success was concerned, a barren city that lay dark and blue with the coming of nightfall.

The old fear possessed her now for days at a time. Life was rushing past her on and on.... She might be too late.

56

It was a wet night of the early spring when Fergus got down from the Metro at Passy bound for the house in the Rue Raynouard. He had been there before, many times, for Lily, pleased perhaps to have him in a house which seemed now so empty and desolate, had given him one of the rooms opening upon the long gallery to use as he saw fit. But the visits had not been too cheerful. He had found Lily alone in the house, mourning for old Madame Gigon and her nephew, the Baron. The old beauty of the place had not faded; even Lily had not changed greatly. She was still young, amazingly so, but she appeared saddened and more quiet than in the days when, bedazzled, he had sat by her side at the family dinners in Shane’s Castle. There was left of Madame Gigon’s pets only Criquette, the Aberdeen, old and fat and quizzical, who followed at the heels of Augustine, the maid, and sniffed continually at Madame Gigon’s chair before the fire.

He had met there Lily’s son Jean, his own cousin, whom he had never seen before--a tall, red haired boy, impatient and wild over the mutilation that kept him in Paris shut up in the offices of the Ministry of War. It was strange to see one’s own cousin (and Jean resembled Fergus amazingly in many ways) a Frenchman, a foreigner who spoke English with an accent. He had met there at tea a Monsieur de Cyon who seemed devoted to Lily and who was connected in some way with the government--a distinguished, white haired man recently become a widower. It was all very queer and foreign, yet when one thought of it, not so different from Shane’s Castle which in the midst of the Mills had always had its own strange air of the old world. It was Lily, the sinner of the family, the one who had surrounded herself with luxury and mystery, who explained it all. Knowing her, you could understand how there could be a bond between that smoky city of the Midlands and this quiet, beautiful house in the Rue Raynouard. She belonged to both and yet in a way to neither ... a woman of the sort which had existed since the beginning of time. Fergus knew women rather better than most men, for they were attracted easily to him, but he knew of none who approached Lily in the perfection of her rôle. He understood Lily now.... He was no longer a little boy sitting fascinated by her side in the gloomy dining room of Shane’s Castle. He knew the world now. Experience had come his way.

He thought of all this for the hundredth time as he emerged from the Metro into the drifting mist that obscured the tall white houses of the Square Alboni. In one sense he had changed. He was a man now, though he appeared little older than on the day he bade Ellen farewell. His features were more firmly molded; he had grown more handsome. But he was young still; it was the sense of youth which always impressed people, a reckless, headlong youth, of the sort which has no value in a worldly sense but glorifies all who are sensible to its glow. And he walked with a slight swagger born not of any pomp but of an excess of animal spirits, of a great vitality.

As he stepped out into the darkness the figure of the old flower woman sitting beneath her umbrella in a mist of rain and mimosa blossoms took form in the shadows. In the faint blue light from the darkened street lamp he stooped and bought from her a great armful of golden, powdery blossoms. (The mimosa was in full blossom now in Nice, showering Lily’s white villa with its scented dust.)

Touched and warmed by his youth, the old woman chuckled. “Pour votre marraine?” she asked. (She had sold him flowers before now.)

“No,” he told her. “Not this time. They are for my sister.”

It was Ellen whom he was to see in the Rue Raynouard, Ellen whom he had not seen in years.... Ellen who was famous now, a great musician.

As he moved away, it struck him as luck that he had come by chance on the flower woman. For a musician, an artist, flowers were the thing ... an enormous bunch of flowers. Ellen would appreciate the gesture. She would play up to it. She would, he fancied, even expect it.

In the blue darkness (it was an excellent night, he thought, for an air raid) he turned the corner past the Café des Tourelles and the blind, steel-shuttered magasin. The houses stood forbidding and black. The Rue Raynouard between the magasin and the tobacconist’s shop gaped like the mouth of Avernus. It would be difficult to find the house, turning its deceptive, insignificant face to the street, so lost among its commonplace neighbors. From far away, on the slope that led down toward the Seine, the sound of footsteps, muffled by the damp, came to him across the cobblestones. But the solitary walker turned away and the sound died presently into silence.

A hundred paces from the square he halted before a house to search for the number. In the darkness it remained invisible; it was impossible to find it even by sense of touch. Puzzled, he stood for an instant looking up and down the street, and then through the thick stillness there rose the faint sound of music, distant and fragmentary. Listening, he found presently that the melody took form: the fragments joined into a pattern of sound. It was the Appassionata. Only the crescendos were swept toward him through the damp night air, only the moments when the music rose into a wild abandon. There could be no mistaking it ... the music was Ellen’s, more magnificent than it had ever been.

As he stood there in the thin mist upon the doorstep the sound, coming distantly from inside the house up the long paneled stairs, had upon him an amazing effect. It was a sensation bordering upon clairvoyance; he no longer stood on the dripping cobblestones before a solid door, his feet upon solid earth. It was as if he existed in space alone at a great height; rather as if he had died. There was in the feeling something of terror at the immensity which surrounded him, an emotion which he had known once or twice before when, flying at night, there had been for a time no earth below him, nothing solid in all creation--a time when, if he existed at all, it was as an atom lost in all time and space. It was, he felt dimly, like being dead ... a reverent, humbled feeling.

And yet in a confused fashion all life had suddenly achieved an amazing clarity. He knew himself suddenly, honestly, for what he was--a man who had harmed none, who had achieved nothing, who had asked only to find pleasure in living. And the others--He saw them too with the same terrifying brilliance.... Ellen, who for all her faults was so much more worthy, who had in her the elements of a great nobility; his mother, passionate and bursting with vitality, a little somber and tragic save that she would never recognize tragedy when it came her way; and Lily, who had lived by some plan which she had never revealed, choosing instead to hide it away among the other mysteries of her life; and Jean, whom he scarcely knew until this moment, Jean who was neither French nor American nor even an honest child. He saw Jean’s life too and its queer, inarticulate tragedy. And Old Gramp, who stood outside them all, aloof and cold, uncaught by the web that bound them all together.... Gramp hugging his secret passionately to him. But it was Ellen whom he saw more clearly than all the others, struggling, fighting with a strange unconquerable courage, using the weapons which she found at hand, weapons which were not always fair. Some day she would choose the honest ones and then....

Far away, somewhere in the blanket of darkness the music died away and presently he stood again before the door on the cobblestones, rubbing the sleeve of his blue greatcoat across his face with the gesture of one awaking from a profound sleep. The great bunch of mimosa lay at his feet. It was amazing. He had been for a moment dead, quite outside this world. The street was still again with a blue, dripping silence. Under each lamp there was a pool of blue light that was not light at all, but only another kind of darkness.

He gathered up the damp flowers and knocked loudly. It was too dark to find the bell and he stood there for a long time before the door was opened by Augustine who it seemed had gone to bed in the belief that no one could be out on such a night. She stood in a sort of wrapper ornamented with a gay design of Cupids, holding up her black hair with one hand. He saw with an amazing clarity each tiny detail, even the veins in her big red feet half-muffled in gigantic purple slippers.

“Ah!” she said. “It’s you, M’sieu Tolliver.... Madame Shane is not here. She is in Nice.”

And again the sense of having returned from the dead swept over him. Augustine was as astonished as if she had opened the door upon a phantom. Yet there was nothing extraordinary in calling at ten o’clock in the evening, even on a night like this.

“It is my sister I’ve come to see ... Miss Tolliver.”

“She is here ... in the salon. She told me I might go to bed. There is a gentleman with her.”

Clearly it was impossible for Augustine, in her state of attire, to announce him. He took off his greatcoat while the Breton girl, her eyes shining in admiration for a young aviateur, stood by holding the mimosa. He was straight and tall in his blue uniform with the silver wings glittering on his breast. He had his effect upon Augustine ... the blue eyes, the blond curling hair, the spoiled mouth.

“I’ll go in myself,” he said, taking the flowers from her once more. “It’s all right, I know.”

And he started down the long stairs where the candles glowed dimly against the satinwood paneling. Half way down, where the gallery led off on both sides, the sound of music reached him once more. This time it was different; there were no passionate crescendos of sound, no tides of melody that swept high. The music was low and gentle and filled with pathos. And presently he heard a voice--Ellen’s voice--begin to sing in a clear contralto of unsuspected beauty. He went slowly, step by step, his shoulders brushing the satinwood beneath the dull flare of the candles. Out of the depths of the warm old room the sound came to him with the same amazing clarity which seemed to affect all his senses....

_Nous n’avons plus de maisons,_ _Les ennemis ont tout pris, tout pris, tout pris_ _Jusqu’à notre petit lit._ _Ils ont brulé l’école et notre maître aussi._ _Ils ont brulé l’église et Monsieur Jésus Christ_ _Et le vieux pauvre qui n’a pas pu s’en aller!_

She sang gently, with an infinite sadness.... Ellen who had damned the war, Ellen who had striven to ignore it, Ellen who had turned her back and taken no part in all the vast parade. What could she have known of it? What of Christmas and “les petits enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons.”

_Les ennemis ont tout pris, tout pris, tout pris...._ _Noël! Écoutez-nous, nous n’avons plus de petits sabots._ _Noël! Noël!... Surtout pas de joujoux._

And yet, listening, Fergus understood that she did know. This new Ellen, the artist, knew it as she knew all things because she was, in spite of Rebecca Schönberg, in spite of shrewd lighting and bouquets sent by the management, in spite of all the clap-trap, an artist. Standing there in the shadows of the stair, he knew without having seen her that she was changed. Something had happened to her.

_Les ennemis ont tout pris, tout pris, tout pris ..._ _Jusqu’à notre petit lit...._

The simple frail refrain echoed through the great rooms. It was a child who sang it--a simple naïve child. He knew for an instant what a strange, idiotic, pitiful affair this war had been. He had not known until now.

_Mais donnez la victoire aux enfants de France!..._

Fergus moved down from the last step of the long stairs. The green music of Debussy died away, and as he entered the room he saw that Ellen was not alone. She sat at the piano in the far end near the bright fire where she had sat on that first day when she had entered from the same stairway to discover Madame Gigon, little Jean and the dogs. There was only Criquette left now, lying fat and lonely before the fire, and Hansi, the great black wolf. Beside her, with his back towards the stairs, sat a man with dark hair in a uniform blue like the one Fergus himself wore; and while he stood, silent in his surprise, he saw the stranger lean forward and, taking Ellen in his arms, kiss her. He saw too that her arms were about the stranger, but it was not the embrace that astonished him; it was the sight of Ellen’s strong, white hand, clenched as if in resistance, as if in pain. Yet she did not struggle. It was only the hand ... clenched, white, as if all her will, all her resistance were centered in it.