Part 41

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....

* * * * *