Part 34

It was true. There was a difference now, of a kind she had not thought of before. It was a difference which had to do with age and all the slow hardening which had come with each year that stood between them and the hot afternoon in the Babylon Arms. Something had gone from them both ... the warmth, the gallantry, the glow that had made him then so reckless, so willing to marry her, a poor nobody, in the face of all his world. It was gone from her too.... She knew exactly what it was now. It was the thing which she had felt slip from her as a cloak on the night she sat talking with Thérèse in the dark library on Murray Hill. They were no longer young. They weighed chances now, cynically looking upon their problem without regard for honor. The tragedy was that they could never go back. What was gone was gone forever. And in the memory of the fierce, youthful passion, so fresh and turbulent, this new love seemed to her an obscene and middle-aged emotion.

“No,” she repeated. “I can’t do that. It is to myself that it matters.... What the world thinks does not interest me.”

* * * * *

Long after midnight Callendar at last stirred himself and bade her good night. They had talked, long and passionately, over the same ground again and again, seeing it now in this light, now in that, arriving in the end nowhere at all; and through it all, Ellen must have caught once more the awful sense of his patience. He could wait; in the end he would have what he desired. And this she knew with an understanding that lay deeper than the mere surface of her consciousness.

Only it was all different now, even the significance of his patience, because time was rushing on and on past her. She was no longer a young girl; she was, as he had said, a woman of the world and therefore, perhaps, all the more desirable in her unchallenged, unbroken spirit.

“It is very late,” said Callendar gently, as the black dog stirred himself and, yawning, rubbed his head against Ellen’s hand. “And to-morrow....”

But she did not permit him to say, “And to-morrow I shall be back at the front.” She was afraid of his saying it, because all the evening she had been fighting just this thought. She understood that it was his strongest weapon, the one thing which might demolish the wall of her resistance. It was not a fair weapon, but he would not hesitate to use it where his own desire was concerned.

“It’s not late,” she said, “not late for me....” Yet she wanted him to go because she was afraid. She wanted to be alone, to feel her old strength return to her.

The dog followed them as they moved through the big room and up the stairs. The last of the sounds had died away--the terrifying screech of the sirens, the faint popping of the guns and the ominous shattering crash of the falling bombs. The house and the city beyond it lay in silence now, dark once more save for the showers of blue light from the street lamps.

At the top of the stairs, which lay too in darkness, he put on his greatcoat in silence, took up his cap and then faced her. He said nothing; he simply looked at her, and after a moment she murmured in a voice that was scarcely audible, “No, I cannot do it. The things which stand in the way are much stronger than we are.” And bending her head, as if she had in some way been accused, she added, “I will write you.”

He did not speak. Instead he simply placed his arms about her and in silence kissed her. In the same fashion, her white hand grew tense once more, just as it had done when Fergus came upon her unaware, to understand all that was happening.

As he stepped into the street, she lingered in the doorway until, in the direction of the Café des Tourelles, the darkness swallowed him. She was alone again, and when she had closed the door she did not return to the drawing-room but sat down weakly on the top step of the long stairs and presently, overcome by the terrible sense of loneliness, she began to weep in silence. She was (she thought scornfully) in spite of everything, only a poor, weak, feminine creature.

Hansi flung his heavy body against her and, whimpering a little, put his black head affectionately on her knee.

* * * * *

She was sitting thus when the dog leapt to his feet and barked savagely at the sound of a sharp, sudden knock upon the door. It was the knock of some one in haste. The sound, shattering the dead stillness, grew terrifying, as if the one who knocked desired in some way to communicate his terror to those inside the house.

Ellen sprang up. “Je viens! Je viens!” she cried, and to the dog, “Tais toi! Hansi.” She cried “Je viens!” as if by arresting the efforts of the knocker she might also destroy the foreboding in her heart.

Opening the door, she discerned dimly in the darkness the figure of a fat, bent little old man with white mustaches that caught the faint light emerging from the staircase. “Yes,” she said, in French. “What is it you want?”

A voice which trembled a little with fright and carried the ring of an accent from the Midi answered her. “You are Mees Tolliver. I come from your brother. I am sent by him to fetch you.”

For a moment she stood without speaking to the queer, bent figure, regarding him with the air of utter incredulity. He could not be quite real ... this gnome with the enormous white mustaches. And unaccountably there flashed through her mind a fragment of the letter Lily had written her long ago--_And then he rode away into the darkness. I am certain that he is dead._

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

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

Without questioning him further, she wrapped herself in a fur coat and holding to the collar of Hansi she went out, after locking the door on the silent house, to follow the old man.

As they walked there were times when the darkness was so profound that she could not see him at all and was forced to call out for guidance. It was Hansi who aided her. He kept close to the heels of the old man.

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

“Who are you, mon vieux?” she asked.

The old man coughed. He went rapidly for one so old, but she fancied it was terror that gave speed to his fat legs, terror that the Gothas might return.

“I am the concierge of the building where Madame Nozières has an apartment. It was she who sent me. It is close at hand ... in the Avenue Kléber.”

Vaguely in the darkness, black against the deep blue of the sky, the ugly towers of the Trocadéro appeared a little on the right. “What is it that happened? Is he wounded ... gravely, seriously, ... my brother?”

The old man grunted. “I don’t know. I know nothing. There was a bomb fell in the Avenue Kléber.” He raised his head and sniffed like a shaggy old dog. “Smell,” he commanded. “You can smell the bomb.”

It was true. The faint odor of picric acid filled the damp night air. As they walked the odor grew more and more intense. In the darkness Ellen’s guide pointed to the left.

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

“Who is this Madame Nozières?” asked Ellen.

“I don’t know,” her companion repeated. “I know nothing. She has an apartment. She comes there sometimes. She is rich. She is generous. She does not live there always. She only comes now and then ... when Monsieur has permission from the front.”

“Monsieur Nozières?”

In the darkness, the old man was silent for a time. He was breathless from the effort of their haste. “No,” he replied. “Monsieur ... your brother.”

This then was the rendezvous for which Fergus had left the house in the Rue Raynouard. There was some one then--some woman--who had the power of taking him from her on the very night he had returned after so many years. It must have been strong, this force, stronger than the power which Callendar himself exerted. She understood his persistence. Against such a power, she was, of course, helpless.

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

He led the way through a corridor into an open court filled with summer furniture, stacked now in the corners against the empty stone urns. In the dim light that filtered through the shutters on the far side, she was able to discern the outlines of chairs and tables, piled helter-skelter, as if they too had felt the force of a bomb that hurled them into a corner.

The old man knocked on a door that led into the apartment from which the light showed itself. From inside the murmur of voices came to them, distantly. And at last the door opened.

Against the dim light, Ellen was able to discern the figure of a small woman, dressed in a trim dark suit. She wore no hat and her blonde hair, cut short, stood about her head in a halo of ringlets which caught and reflected the glow behind her. She had been weeping. Even in the emotion of the moment, Ellen saw with a feminine instinct that she had chic, and when she spoke she divined also that “Madame Nozières” was not a cocotte but a lady. She had been weeping and something of the grief carried over into her voice.

“You are Mees Tolliver,” she said. “I am Madame Nozières. I have heard you play ... many times, but I did not know until to-night that you were his sister. You do not know me, of course.”

There was a quality almost comic in the formality with which the stranger went about the business of introductions. In the hallway, she continued in a low voice, “I have known your brother for a long time. We are very good friends.” And then she began to weep again. As Lily had done in the letter written after César’s death, the woman made no pretenses, thinking perhaps as Lily had thought, that at such a time there was place only for the truth.

To Ellen the whole affair was shot through with the light of unreality. Standing in the dark hallway, with this strange woman weeping beside her--a woman who in some vague way had been brought close to her because she too loved Fergus--she leaned back against the wall for a moment trying frantically to bring her mind back to the truth. This could not be.... It was unreal, fantastic....

The door opened and she saw, with a clarity that stamped the scene forever on her brain, a big room furnished with luxury, and in the midst of all the feminine softness--the pillows, the gilt chairs, the mirrors and the satin--Fergus lying very white and very still upon a bed of white and gilt with gilded swans on each of its four posts. At the side of the bed stood a tall, grave man with a black beard who wore the uniform of an army surgeon. He bowed to her and Madame Nozières murmured, “Doctor Chausson.”

The name struck some chord of memory in Ellen’s brain, but before she could trace it to its source, Fergus opened his eyes, and grinning a little, said in a low voice, “Well, this is a pretty mess!” (This was the old Fergus. She knew it at once. All the strangeness had gone....)

She asked no questions because from the look of the doctor and the tears of Madame Nozières she understood that there was only one answer. She wanted suddenly to weep, to beat her head against the wall, to cry out. But she was silent. She approached the bed and pressed his hand.

They had taken off the blue tunic with the silver wings and he lay now in his white shirt and the blue trousers with the silver braid along the seam. Around his waist he wore a woolen ceinture of brilliant yellow. The shirt was open and on his breast where the silver wings had been there was a little spot of red ... a tiny spot, scarcely as large as a strawberry.

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

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

“I’m glad you brought the dog,” he continued. “It will be less lonely for you.” And then he beckoned to the doctor and asked him and Madame Nozières to leave the room for a moment. When they had gone, he drew Ellen nearer to him and said, “You must not be hard with her. She is a lady. Madame Nozières is not her name. It is I who am to blame if any one. I wanted to marry her.... I’m not talking rot. We had planned it.” And then for a time he was silent as if too weak to go on.

Pressing his hand more tightly, she whispered, “How could I be hard? Nothing matters ... only one thing.”

He coughed and continued. “She has done everything. She has risked the rest of her life to save me. Chausson is the great Chausson ... the surgeon from Neuilly. She knows him and he knows her husband. They are old friends. That was why he came. He is a busy man and a great surgeon. You see, she risked everything ... her reputation, her future ... everything. She did not hesitate to send for him.”

She knew now why the name had been familiar. She had heard it everywhere in the journals, from her friends in Paris. If the great Chausson believed there was no hope....

“She is a good woman ... a charming woman, Ellen. Madame Nozières is not her name. If she chooses to tell you who she is, be good to her, because I loved her.”

“I will do what you wish.”

He grinned again suddenly. “Think of it ... to get it now, after three years ... to get it now on the asphalt a block from the Trocadéro!” And then his face grew bitter. “It’s a joke ... that is!” And then, dimly, sleepily, he murmured, “We must hurry ... we must hurry.”

Ellen, still silent, found that she was praying idiotically for a thing which could never be. She knew now, sharply and cruelly, what the war, that grand parade, had been. Fergus who had loved life so passionately, who found pleasure and excitement everywhere! Fergus whom they had all loved so that they had spoiled him! Fergus lying there with his blond, curly head against the white pillows under the flying gilt swans! Those voluptuous, sensual swans! Eagles they should have been!

She could do nothing but wait. The minutes rushed past her, furiously. (We must hurry, he had said.) On the gilt dressing table one of the candles had begun to gutter and fade.

“Call them back,” he said faintly. And she rose and opened the door. Outside Doctor Chausson had taken both Madame Nozières’ small, exquisite hands and was talking to her, in a soft low voice, warm with a sort of understanding that moved Ellen queerly. They were so absorbed that they did not even notice her as she opened the door.

“Madame Nozières,” she said softly, and the woman turned toward her. She was beautiful, more beautiful than Ellen had supposed, even with the tears swimming in her blue eyes. She was small and beautiful and exquisite like a bit of Dresden china. She understood the whole thing clearly; she understood perhaps even the profundity of the love which Madame Nozières had for Fergus.

Doctor Chausson refused to come in with them. “I will stay here.... There is nothing I can do.” And so they left him, pale and hollow-eyed from work and want of sleep, to wait in the dark hallway.

Inside the room the one candle had gone out and the only light came from the single flame before the tall mirror. Fergus had closed his eyes once more, and the lids showed against the dead whiteness of the skin in a faint shade of purple. The two women sat one on each side of the gilded bed, watching in silence. Presently he opened his eyes and looking at Ellen said in English:

“This man....” He had grown weaker now and spoke with difficulty. “This man ... Callendar. Are you going to marry him?”

“I don’t know.”

He smiled. “I saw you when I came in.... That’s how I knew. I saw your hand.” And after a pause. “It’s funny ... I knew this was coming ... I knew it as I stood outside your door.”

Then he closed his eyes once more and when he spoke again it was to say weakly, “You must tell Ma.... It will be hard.... And you must not.... You must not tell her the truth.... She could never face the truth. She has never faced it.”

He reached out weakly and took the hand, on one side of Ellen and on the other of Madame Nozières. Raising himself, he grinned again and murmured in French this time, “My life.... It’s running away ... inside me. You can hear it.... I hear it ... now.” And then for a moment there was an echo of triumph, a sudden flash of Gramp whom Fergus himself had named The Everlasting. He grinned again and said, “It was a good life.... I missed nothing ... nothing at all.”

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

But he never finished the sentence. He sighed and slipped back into the pillows of the bed surmounted by the four gilded swans. Madame Nozières began to weep wildly and flung herself upon him, kissing him again and again. For Ellen there was no such relief. She sat now, stark upright and tragic, bound by all the years in which she had shown a proud and scornful face to the world. No, there was no such relief for her. She knew it. She could only sit there, quietly cold and white, and all the time she wanted to scream, to cry out, to beat her head against the stone floor of the corridor where Doctor Chausson stood waiting gravely. She could only sit and watch while Madame Nozières wept out her heart.

* * * * *

It was the sound of weeping, wild and passionate, that summoned Doctor Chausson. The two women had forgotten him, but the good man knew well enough what the sound signified. Softly he opened the door and came into the frivolous room. There beside the gilded bed he saw the sister, a strange, silent, handsome woman, dressed in black with her fur coat slipped to the floor at her feet, a woman (he thought) _bien Anglaise_, who could not weep. He knew that she suffered more than the other, more than Colette who had flung herself on the boy to weep hysterically. Colette, the charming, the fastidious, the beautiful, flung down in utter disarray, her eyes red and swollen with weeping, her golden hair all disheveled.... Colette whom he had seen but two nights before flushed and radiant at the Princesse de Guermantes’. He understood now why she had been so beautiful and so happy. But the boy could not see her now, and so nothing mattered.

He stood for a moment in silence, as if in respect for the grief of the two women. All this he had seen before, many times, ... a young man, a boy, who had loved life as this one had loved it, who could jest, as this one had jested, with his very last breath. A boy whom women loved as these two women, the one so wildly, the other so profoundly, with such an intense, secret flame. It was cruel ... hideous....

He moved forward and touched Madame Nozières on her slim shoulder. And all the while he was conscious that the eyes of the other woman were watching him, stony and cold and tragic.

“Colette,” he said softly. “Colette.... You must not.... You must be quiet.” With a gentle strength he lifted her from the bed. “Colette, it is nearly dawn.... You must be discreet. There will be questions asked.”

But she paid no heed. She was sobbing now, bitterly and without shame. “You must be discreet,” he repeated.

“What difference does that make now?... It is nothing ... less than nothing....” And she fell to weeping once more.

He mixed for her a powder and forced her to drink it, saying, “There is the necessary business. You must not be seen here ... like this.”

But she would not go. It was Ellen who at last stirred herself and succeeded in quieting Madame Nozières. “I will take him to my house,” she said, quietly. “You may come there.... You may stay there if you like. It is a big house ... in the Rue Raynouard.... No one will ever know.”

She drew Doctor Chausson aside and gave him the address. “I will take care of things,” she said. “I will stay here if you will arrange for the rest. I would like to stay ... alone. It was good of you.... There is nothing I can say.”

So at last, in care of the great Doctor Chausson, Madame Nozières, pale and with swollen eyes and disheveled hair, was led away, across the stone courtyard, gray now with the faint rising light of dawn, into the big gray motor that had followed him from Neuilly to the Avenue Kléber. Ellen watched them as they crossed the yard between the empty stone urns and summer chairs piled high in the corners.

* * * * *

When they had gone, she returned to the room and, locking the door, sat down to wait. Slowly, in the gray solitude, the relief of tears came to her. She wept silently. She understood now her fear of returning too late, that vague, nameless fear for which there had been no explanation until now. She had come so near to being late ... only a matter of a few hours, of a single night. For he had escaped them all now, forever. They would never possess him again....

She looked at him, lying here white and still in the gay blue trousers with the silver braid and the yellow sash, and she understood why it was that he had seemed so young. It was because he had never really belonged to any of them. He had not even had a country of his own. He had gone out into a war which was none of his concern. There was nothing which tied him down, not even the nonsense which people talked of “la gloire” and “la patrie.” For she, in her aloofness, had known it for the nonsense it was, just as he in his good-nature and love for all the world had known it. She remembered what he had once written her.... “_A man of our generation who has missed the war will not have lived at all.... He will be a poor thing compared to the others. It is a game in which one must take a chance. It is better to die than to have missed it._”

He had believed that to the very end. Perhaps this was the secret of Old Gramp who had roamed the world and lived in this very Paris under the Second Empire. He had lived. He had done everything, and now in his old age he had a stock of memories that would last forever, a life which none of the others ever knew. He had been certain of only one life and he had made the most of it, so that he was ready when his time came to die with satisfaction, to take his chance on what lay beyond.

And as she sat there with the black dog by her side, in the slow, gray light, it occurred to her that perhaps the end of Fergus had not been after all so tragic. He had died in the very midst of life with the woman he loved at his side. If he had lived.... Who could tell? There was small place in the world for men like him. He never had the strength, the fierce aloofness of Old Gramp, the savage contempt of the old man for the drones and grubbers of life.

It was all a strange business, surely. Strange and confused and without sense. In the beginning, when she had first come into this frivolous room (so cold and dead now in the gray light) she had been angry and jealous at his deception, and bitter at Madame Nozières for having caused his death. She had thought, “If he had not been going to meet her, he would not have been killed.”

But she knew better now. She had been a fool. It was absurd and monstrous that any one, even herself, should fancy he could bend fate to his own ends. It was too imbecile, too senseless. No, she was wiser now. She was not the headlong fool she had once been. In the face of all that had happened in this one terrible night, she was utterly humbled. Who was she to question the behavior of this brother who lay dead under the gilded swans? Who was she, a cold, hard woman, to question a love of which she knew nothing? And what did it matter now? She was glad suddenly, with a strange, wild happiness, that he had known this Madame Nozières. Her blondeness, her beauty, her fine clothes, her spirit ... all these things had made him happy, on how many leaves in Paris?

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

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

* * * * *