Chapter VII: Part 7

When she had finished she was forced to return because overtones of all this wild emotion had filtered vaguely into the very heart of the restless, distracted audience on stiff collapsible chairs. They applauded; it was as if she had suddenly claimed them.

Then she played savagely the Revolutionary Prelude and disappeared behind the lacquered screen. There was a hush and then more talk and then a sudden excitement which began at the screen and ran in little ripples through all the stiff gathering. From the alcove there emerged the bass rumbling of the Russian, stirred suddenly into somnolent activity, and again a wild tinkling of little bells and a torrent of French in the shrill voice of the Javanese dancer. The screen parted and the dancer, half naked, covered only by the heavy gold ornaments and a wrapper of scarlet silk, emerged chattering French and gesticulating. She addressed Mrs. Callendar who stirred herself into a sudden dull glitter of movement. The son left the ugly Sabine and joined his mother, calm but with a fierce, bright look in his eyes. The American girl ... the unknown pianist had fainted!

24

When at length Ellen became conscious of her surroundings, it was with the faint odor of stables in her nostrils and in her ears the jingling of harness and the steady, brisk clop! clop! made by the hoofs of spirited horses upon wet asphalt. The cabriolet, flitting through the streaks of light made by street lamps on the wet pavement, was passing through an open space where the light shone on the bare branches of trees and banks of wet and dirty snow. Otherwise everything was silent.

When she stirred presently and moved into an upright posture, she saw by her side a mass of sable, the sudden glint of a brilliant yellow dress, captured and fixed by a stray beam of light and then the face and bright lips of the bizarre woman with red hair, who stirred and murmured,

“It’s all right. I’m Miss Cane. On the other side is Mr. Callendar ... Mrs. Callendar’s son.”

The dark man removed his top hat and bowed. “We’re taking you home,” he said, “to the Babylon Arms.... That’s right, isn’t it?”

There was a faint trace of accent in his voice ... vaguely familiar, confused somehow with a memory of mimosa and the figure of Lily standing beneath the glowing Venice in the drawing room of Shane’s Castle. The same sort of accent....

“That’s right, isn’t it?” continued the voice of the dark young man. “The Babylon Arms?”

Then for the first time, Ellen spoke, slowly and with a certain shyness. “Yes. I live there.... But how did you know?”

The man laughed. “Two reasons,” he said. “First. Sanson told my mother. Second. My mother owns the Babylon Arms.”

Again a wandering ray of light flitted across the window of the cabriolet illuminating for an instant the brilliant lips of Miss Cane. The lips were smiling, as if conscious that they were shielded by the darkness, but it was a mocking smile and the memory of it haunted Ellen long afterward. It was as if the painted lips were really speaking and said, “The Babylon Arms is a preposterous pretentious place.” And for the first time, perhaps, Ellen doubted the magnificence of that vast pile.

Her next speech was dictated by the careful precepts of Hattie Tolliver. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have fainted.... It ruined everything.”

There was a stifled laugh from Sabine Cane. “Nonsense! It gave us a chance to get into the air.”

Then silence once more and the echoing clop! clop! clop! clop! regular as the beams of light which flashed past the open door of Thérèse Callendar’s cabriolet.

* * * * *

Long after midnight the carriage came to a halt before the gigantic Syrian lions of cast iron that ornamented the entrance to the Babylon Arms. It was young Callendar who descended first, lending his arm with a grave and alien grace to Ellen who, having recovered entirely, emerged with a sure and vigorous step. The third occupant, instead of remaining behind as she might well have been expected to do, followed them, driven by an overpowering desire to miss nothing. So with Ellen between them, Callendar in a top hat, and Sabine Cane, muffled in sables and holding her full yellow train high above the wet pavements, descended upon the astonished negro who ran the elevator.

Here Ellen bade them good night. “I’m all right now.... It was good of you to have come.”

But they insisted upon accompanying her. There were protests, into which there entered a sudden note of desperation as if the girl were striving to conceal something which lay hidden at the top of the flamboyant apartment.

“But you might faint again,” protested Sabine firmly. “I shan’t be satisfied until I see you safe in your flat.”

“Besides,” observed young Callendar, smiling, “some day the Babylon Arms will be mine. I should like to see what it looks like, abovestairs.”

So they pressed her until at last she yielded and in their company was borne aloft in the swaying elevator. As it jolted to a halt, she bade them good night once more, saying, “The elevator only runs this far and I live two flights above. I’ll go the rest of the way alone.”

But they went with her through the red painted corridors under the light of the flickering gas up the flights of stairs to a door which she opened with her own key. There at last the farewells were made, for she did not invite them to enter.

“My mother will call in the morning,” said Callendar, “to see that you are not really ill.... Oh yes! You couldn’t prevent her! You don’t know her as well as I do!”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

And as the door closed they caught a sudden glimpse of a man, standing timidly in the dim light of an inner room, listening with an air of curiosity to their talk. He was a small man and rather thin, and stood dressed in a shirt and trousers. His hair was rumpled; obviously he had been “sitting up.” Behind him there was a table covered with papers and accounts. All this the shrewd eye of Sabine captured in one swift instant.

As they descended under the guidance of the negro, Callendar said, “The man ... who was he?”

“Some one ... perhaps her lover. Musicians have lovers....”

Her companion turned sharply. “No ...” he said, “not a lover. A woman with such spirit wouldn’t have that sort of lover.”

Sabine laughed softly and with a hint of wickedness in her voice. “You don’t know women ... how queer they can be. Besides....” And she indicated with a nod of her red head the listening negro. “One must be careful.” But she regarded Callendar with a new interest and during the long ride back through the park she remained silent save to comment now and then upon the bits of gossip which he discussed. Knowing him so well, perhaps she understood that a new source of disturbance had crossed his path. There was between them a remarkable sense of intimacy, as if each expected the other to understand him perfectly.

By the time they reached the solid house on Murray Hill the party was already on the wane and the guests had begun, in a motley stream, to leave. Mrs. Champion and her daughters disappeared among the first after Mrs. Callendar had the audacity to bring forward the artists and beg them to join the guests. The Russian tenor stood awkwardly alone and in a corner and the tiny dancer, in a turban and gown of crimson and gold brocade, sat surrounded by young men. She had learned the business of entertaining during those early days in Alexandria.

25

The prediction of young Callendar came true, for in the morning, while Ellen sat in a purple wrapper practising her scales, the bell rang suddenly and into the room came Mrs. Callendar, dressed coquettishly in a very tight black suit, a hat much too large for her short, plump figure, and a voluminous stole of sable. The climb up the two flights of stairs above the elevator had been very nearly too much for her and she greeted Ellen with much panting and blowing.

“Good morning, my dear,” she said. “I hope you’re none the worse for last night’s experience.”

Ellen smiled respectfully and bade her guest seat herself in the padded arm chair that was the property of Clarence. “I’m all right again. I can’t imagine what could have made me faint. I’m sorry. It must have spoiled the party.”

At this Mrs. Callendar, settling herself in the chair, chuckled, “Not at all. Not at all. They’ll talk of it for days. You could not have done better. It was dramatic ... dramatic.”

“I’m all right. You needn’t have come. It is good of you.”

“Perhaps you lace too tightly,” suggested Mrs. Callendar, returning to the subject of Ellen’s collapse.

“I don’t lace at all,” said Ellen. “I can’t play if I’m all boxed in.”

Mrs. Callendar threw back her stole and nodded her head sagely. “You’re much wiser, my dear. Much wiser. When I was a girl I was famous for my waist. Sixteen inches it was ... only sixteen inches.” And she brought together her plump fingers in a gesture which implied that once she might have encircled her waist with her two hands. “But I fainted.... I used to faint daily. I don’t lace tightly any more, but it makes no difference. It’s just stayed that way. You see, my corsets are quite loose.” And she thrust a finger into the space between her ample bosom and her corset to prove her statement. “I know my figure is bad in these days. Too many curves and too little height. But I’m past forty and it doesn’t matter so much.”

Secretly Ellen must have compared the figure of her guest with that of her own vigorous mother. Mrs. Tolliver was ten years the older, yet her appearance was that of a woman much younger than Mrs. Callendar. It was in this difference that the Levantine blood of the latter betrayed her. She was a friendly woman, certainly, and one who was quite sure of herself, fortified clearly by the conviction that the king can do no wrong.

“You shouldn’t have climbed the stairs just to see if I was all right.”

“But you see,” said Mrs. Callendar, “I’m interested in you. Sanson tells me you have a great future. He doesn’t tell me such things if he doesn’t believe them.... But don’t let that turn your head. Nothing comes without work ... least of all, anything to do with the arts.”

For a moment Ellen did not reply. At last she said, thoughtfully, “I know that.”

“You are bitter,” observed Mrs. Callendar, “and perhaps unhappy,” she added with a shrewd glance of her near sighted eyes. “Well, that’s a good thing. It shows character, and no artist ever existed without character. Character is the thing that counts.” Here, having regained her breath, she rose and placing the lorgnettes against her slanting eyes, she wandered to the window. “It’s a fine view you have from here,” and after a moment’s consideration, “Not so fine as it appears at first. Too many locomotives and signboards. You see,” she added, turning toward the girl, “I came here this morning for other reasons too. I own the Babylon Arms.”

“So your son told me.”

“But I’ve never seen it before. I’m only in New York for a month or two at a time. I own a great deal of property here and there. I don’t have to look at it. I have a good agent ... a young Jew, trustworthy ... a fellow who knows values up and down. I pay him well and he knows that if he played me a trick, I’d throw him out at once. Oh, I can trust him. Besides, I’m a Levantine myself and in every Levantine there is a Jew hidden away. We understand each other ... Minsky and I. It’s a fine building but the elevator ought to run all the way up. Then I could charge you more rent. I suppose there’s no room for it. The architect made these upper floors too fancy. No eye for comfort and common sense.”

And having uttered this torrent of opinions, she returned to the plush chair and said, “But tell me about yourself. I have a terrible curiosity about people. You’re American, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” replied Ellen. There was about this preposterous visitor a quality that was irresistible. It was impossible to know whether you liked or disliked her, because she gave you no time to consider. Even if you decided against her, it availed nothing; she swept over you with the persuasion of a mountain torrent ... a powerful woman and one whose friendliness was disarming. For a moment or two, the absurd thought that she might have been drinking lingered in Ellen’s mind.

“Well,” observed Mrs. Callendar, “some day this raw country is going to produce a superb art. Maybe you’re one of the first artists. Who can say?” Fumbling in the reticule of black jet she brought out at last a tiny cigarette case, made of onyx with the name Thérèse in small diamonds, a bizarre box which in the possession of a woman less powerful and less foreign would have been vulgar. “I suppose you smoke?”

“No,” said Ellen, “I never have.”

“Well, you will.” And she thrust the case back into the reticule. “You don’t mind if I do?”

“Certainly not.” Ellen brought out the small table consecrated to the smoking apparatus of her husband. It was a violation of Clarence’s principles. On this subject he had spoken to Ellen many times, saying always, “Women who smoke are all of one kind.”

“Wouldn’t you have a cup of tea or a bit of cake?” asked Ellen. “I owe you something for the climb up the stairs.”

“Thank you, no. Not at this hour of the day, and besides there is my figure to consider. It is real suffering to possess at the same time a tendency toward fat and an appetite for rich food.”

She paused for a moment to breathe in the smoke of the tiny scented cigarette. All this time her eyes, aided by the lorgnettes, had been roving the room, as if somewhere within its walls she might find other clues to Ellen’s history. To Ellen this action must have been disconcerting, especially since the drooping lid which half concealed one eye of the visitor made it impossible ever to know in what direction or in what object she was interested.

“But tell me about yourself,” she continued. “You like Sanson?”

“He is a good teacher.”

“No monkey business about him ... no fanfaronade and nonsense. I’ve known him a great many years. I see him in Paris more often than here. He’s not so busy over there.”

Ellen sat on the edge of her chair, like a school girl in the presence of an elderly aunt. In the age and self-possession of her guest there was some quality which caused her to feel an awful sense of youth and inexperience. “I’m going to Paris to study in a year or two,” she said modestly. It was almost as if Mrs. Callendar had the power of making her enact a rôle.

“Of course. So you must. Nobody here would pay to hear an American musician. And you must take a foreign name. That’s important. Some day it won’t be. But it is now. We’re still afraid to trust ourselves. People spend money for names as well as music. You must have a good foreign name, the fancier the better so long as it doesn’t sound like a music hall. Have you any friends over there?”

“I have a cousin.” Her manner was better now, a little more contained and far less shy, for the amazing friendliness of Mrs. Callendar had begun to accomplish the inevitable effect. This dowager was perhaps the first woman in all the city who had been friendly toward her, the first woman who had not been a little on her guard, a little uncertain ... the way Bunce’s wife was uncertain and hostile. And there was something in the manner of Mrs. Callendar which must have reminded Ellen of her mother ... a certain recklessness, a quality that was quite beyond barriers of any sort.

“Is the cousin male or female?” asked Mrs. Callendar, “because in Paris it makes a difference.”

“Female,” replied Ellen.

“Indeed! Perhaps I know her?”

“Her name is Shane,” said Ellen. “Lily Shane.”

For a time Mrs. Callendar regarded the blue smoke of her cigarette in silence, thoughtfully. “Shane,” she murmured. “Shane? I don’t think I know any one named Shane? I know most of the Americans in Paris. Has she lived there long?”

“Many years.”

“Shane? Shane?” Mrs. Callendar continued to murmur with an air of searching the recesses of her excessively active brain; and then, all at once, she grew alert. “Shane! Shane! Of course. Reddish hair. Tall. Beautiful. Madame Shane. I’ve never met her, but I’ve seen her somewhere. She’s been pointed out to me ... maybe at the races, maybe at the Opéra. Madame Shane ... to be sure. A beauty! A widow, isn’t she?”

There was in Ellen’s reply no haste: indeed she waited for a long time as if turning the simple inquiry over and over in her mind. Lily a widow! Lily who had never been married! She did not, as her mother might have done, spring impulsively to a blundering answer. Perhaps out of her memory there emerged old thoughts, old gossip, bits of instinct and emotion which presently fashioned itself into a comprehensible pattern--such things as her own pride of race, the tribal sense that was so strong in her family, the memory of gossip about a child, indeed all those fragments of mystery which surrounded the existence of her cousin. When she replied it was calmly in a manner that protected Lily. “Yes,” she said, “a widow. That’s the one,” as if nothing had occurred that was in the least surprising.

“A beautiful woman,” continued Mrs. Callendar crushing out the ember of her cigarette upon the tray dedicated to the ashes of Clarence. “And now,” she added, “coming to the point, I wanted to know whether you would come sometimes and play for me in the evenings.... Not a performance, you understand, but simply to play once in a while for me and perhaps my son and Miss Cane and one or two friends.... Miss Cane--you may remember her--came home with you last night ... a clever woman. I’d pay you well ... understand that. I’d like to have you once or twice a week. I don’t go out frequently. I love music but I dislike musicians. You’ll understand that when you come to see more of them.”

For Ellen it was, of course, the opening of a new world in which she might become independent, a world such as she had imagined the city to be. It was as if, overnight, the whole course of her life had been changed. There were chances now, subtle, hidden gambits for which she had an instinct.

“Yes,” she replied quietly. “I think I could arrange it to come.”

“And very likely,” said Mrs. Callendar, “I could get other engagements for you.” She had risen now and was wrapping the sable stole about her short fat neck. “I’ll let you know when I’ll want you to come. I’ll write you a note that will be a sort of contract between us. I believe in contracts. Never trust the human race.... And now good-by, Miss Tolliver. I’m glad you’re all right again. You may have fainted out of fright. There were people there last night ... stupid people ... who would have frightened Rubinstein himself.”

So Ellen thanked her, bade her good-by and walked with her to the top of the stairs. Half way down, Mrs. Callendar turned. “I suppose,” she said with a rising inflection, “that you live here alone.”

“No,” said Ellen; but that was all she said, and Mrs. Callendar, smiling to herself, disappeared amused, no doubt, by the memory of the story which Sabine Cane had told her when she had returned across the park from the Babylon Arms.

* * * * *

Once the door was closed, Ellen flung herself into a chair and sat staring out of the window into the gray clouds that swept across the sky high above the North River. It must have occurred to her then that Mrs. Callendar had departed with an amazing amount of information ... knowledge which concerned herself and her family, her future, her plans, even the details of the very flat in which she lived. Her guest had, after a fashion, absorbed her and her life much as a sponge absorbs water. By now Mrs. Callendar could doubtless have drawn a detailed and accurate picture of the flat and written a history of its occupant. Indeed she had very nearly tripped Ellen into one unfortunate truthfulness. That was a fascinating thought ... Lily and her strange foreign life. Lily a widow? What were her morals? How did she live in Paris? Surely no one in the Town could have had the faintest idea. But _Madame_ Shane! Still Mrs. Callendar might have been mistaken. It would have been, under the circumstances, a natural error. It was as though Lily was destined in some unreal fashion to play a part in Ellen’s own life. Always she was there, or at least some hint of her. Even Clarence talked of her in a way he did not use when speaking of other women. Yet no one knew anything of Lily.

Smiling dimly she rose, and before returning to her music she took the brass ash tray containing the remains of Mrs. Callendar’s scented cigarette and cleaned it thoroughly, taking care to bury the offending morsels well out of sight where Clarence could never find them. Certainly she performed this act through no fear of him. Rather it was with an air of secrecy as if already she and her visitor had entered into a conspiracy. It may have been only a touch of that curious understanding which flashes sometimes between persons of great character.

26

The life of Mr. Wyck was no longer of interest to any one; yet there were times, usually after a stronger dose than usual of his wife’s power and independence, when Clarence sought the company of Wyck with the air of a man in need of refreshment and rest. For she had brought into the lives of both men a sense of strain which, during the days of their amiable companionship on the top floor of the Babylon Arms, had been utterly lacking. To Clarence, this new condition of affairs remained a mystery; but Wyck, with an intuition that was feminine, must sometimes have come close to the real reason.

He knew, beyond all doubt, that Ellen, for all her indifference, was his enemy--an enemy who never once considered her foe, an enemy who in her towering self-sufficiency had not troubled to include him in her reckoning. There were times, during the lunches the two men had together in a tiny restaurant in Liberty Street, when he came very close to speaking the truth, so close that Clarence, moved by a shadowy and pathetic loyalty, turned the talk of his companion into other channels. People said that a wife made a difference with one’s friends, that marriage ended old friendships and began new ones. There were, to be sure, old ones that had come very near to the end of the path, but in their place there were no new ones. It was wonderful how Ellen appeared to exist without friends.

“She is busy, I suppose,” he confided in admiration to Wyck over the greasy table, “and she is more independent than most women but still I don’t see how she stands it. She might have had Bunce’s wife for a friend.”

Wyck said, “Oh, no! _She’s_ not good enough for her.” And then as if he had spoken too bitterly, he added, “I can understand that. Bunce’s wife is a vulgar woman.” He had never forgiven the contractor’s daughter the theft of Bunce. He hated her so strongly that in order to disparage her, it was necessary by comparison to reflect praise upon another enemy.

There were at times long silences when neither man spoke at all, for even their talk of shop came to an end after it had been turned over and over a hundred times. What thoughts occurred in those tragic silences neither one could have revealed to the other because they were in the realm of those things which friends, or even those who cling to the rags of friendship, cannot afford to tell each other.

Clarence with his nose-glasses and neat white collar drank his thin coffee and thought, “Wyck is a dull fellow. How could I ever have liked him? Funny how men grow apart.”

And across the table Wyck, finishing his apple sauce, thought, “Ah, if only there was some way to save him. That woman is destroying him slowly, bit by bit. He should never have married her. If only I could get him back where he would be happy again.”

* * * * *

There were in these thoughts the vestiges of truth. At one time they were more filled with truth than at another, for no thing is true persistently and unutterably. Yet in their truth Clarence was the happier of the two because he had discovered in his marriage a freedom of a new and different sort; through Ellen he was strong enough to yield nothing to the shabby little man who sat opposite him. In some way he had caught a sense of her independence, a knowledge that she was not as other women, or even as most men. She belonged to the ruthless and the elect. As for Wyck, he had only his sense of loss, for which there was no reward, and a pang which he was resolved one day to heal by some revenge, as yet vague and unplanned. And in his heart he believed that friendship between men was a bond far finer, far more pure than any relation between a man and woman.

“See!” he thought, over his apple sauce, “what it is doing to Clarence. It is destroying him. His love for her is consuming him.”

And when they had finished eating and had paid the yellow-haired cashier who sat enthroned behind the till, it was their habit to saunter into the streets and lose themselves in the noon crowds of lower Broadway. Sometimes they wandered as far as the Battery to sit on a bench and watch the fine ships going proudly across a bay of brilliant blue out to the open sea. But there was not much pleasure in their promenade. It ended always in the same fashion with Clarence looking at his watch to observe, “It’s time we started back.”

And so they would return, back the same way over the same streets and over the same doorstep. There were times when the sight of the blue sea and the great ships sliding silently through the green water filled the heart of Mr. Wyck with a wild turbulence which was beyond his understanding. Those were times when he hated both his friend and the woman who held him prisoner.

But no one was really interested in Mr. Wyck. In the evening when he returned to the gas-lit bed room in Lexington Avenue there was nothing for him to do. He read sometimes, but not frequently, and on warm nights he sat on the doorstep watching the passers-by and exchanging a word now and then with the grim woman who was his landlady. There were long hours in which there was nothing to do but to think, and not even the gray cat, watching the shadow of her tail against the decaying brownstone of the doorstep, could have guessed the dark trend of those secret thoughts.

His life, his happiness had been ruined by a stranger who scorned even to think of him.

* * * * *

Other changes came in the life of Clarence.

Once he had been a great one for organizations. He had been vice president of the Mutual Benefit Association of the Superba Electrical Company and a member of no less than three lodges. In the days before his marriage the duties concerned with all these organizations had required much of his time, but when Ellen arrived he came to stay more and more at home, and little by little these gaieties too lost their place in his life. It seemed that he was content to remain in the flat reading the newspaper, working over his accounts and now and then merely listening to his wife’s music with a strange expression of bewilderment as if it were impossible for him ever to understand her; and that little vein in his throat, which Lily had observed with such interest, throbbed and throbbed with a desire which sometimes must have terrified him.

Sitting there in the long evenings, silhouetted as she played, against the brilliant blue of a sky that stretched out interminably beyond the windows of the Babylon Arms, she had an air of lofty magnificence, an aloofness that was unconquerable. There were times when she seemed a very symbol of all that was unattainable; and always she was related to the wild dreams that became gradually less and less turbulent.

When she told him of these new engagements to play for Mrs. Callendar, he frowned and said, “But what of me? What am I to do?”

“It means more money for us ... and we need money. You see, Mrs. Callendar pays me well. My music will cost me nothing. Perhaps I shall be able to put something aside. Besides there is the experience which must not be overlooked.”

These things were true, and of late the mention of the money she might earn seemed not so unpleasant to Clarence as it had once been. He was, it appeared, more troubled by the fear of her escaping him, for he said, “I don’t think it’s wise to go too much with these people. They’re not our sort.... I’ve heard stories of how they live. They’re society people.”

At which Ellen mocked him, laughing, to say, “But I have nothing to do with them. I work for them. I entertain them ... that’s all.”

“And Wyck says that young Callendar has a reputation for being a bad one.”

Ellen laughed again, scornfully. “How does he know anything about young Callendar? Wyck and his boarding house. It’s because he hates me. I know what he’s like ... a mean, nasty little man who hates me.”

“He has friends.... His family was rich once in New York.”

What Clarence said was true. Wyck did know because, although he had long since ceased to have any existence for such people as the Callendars, there were channels by way of housemaids and distant relatives through which news of their world penetrated at last, somewhat distorted and magnified, to the spinster aunts in Yonkers, and so at length to Mr. Wyck himself. For the old ladies had known young Callendar’s father as a boy and they still lived in the world of those early days when, ensconced on lower Fifth Avenue behind plush curtains ornamented with ball fringe, they had received the Sunday procession of fashionables. The vulgar, new city of this early twentieth century, for all its noise and show, did not exist for them any more than they, for all their thin blooded pride, existed for the Callendars. It was after all an affair merely of dollars and cents. The Callendars had increased their fortune; the Wycks had lost theirs.

“I shall go to the Callendars’ and play for them because it is necessary,” said Ellen. “I am not a fool. I can take care of myself.”

To this abrupt statement, Clarence found no answer. He yielded quietly and, presently, on the nights when Ellen played in the great house on Murray Hill, he found himself going back once more to his three lodges and the Mutual Benefit Association of the Superba Electrical Company. There were members of the latter organization who thought it queer that their vice president attended the annual ball, held that year in a Brooklyn Hotel, as he had always done, alone, without his wife. It happened that she played that night in the solid house on Murray Hill.

* * * * *

And what then of Ellen herself? She was not, surely, unconscious of all that was happening so slowly, so imperceptibly about her. It is true that she was one of those who are born to success, one for whom the past does not exist and the present has reality only in so far as it provides a step into the future. Indeed, during those years in the city, even the Town itself became a very distant and shadowy memory. She was concerned, desperately, with what lay before her, confused perhaps by a sense of imminent disaster so vague that it could have for her no real meaning or significance.

But of course she never spoke of these things to her husband, perhaps because she was conscious that he might not understand them. At times the old pity for him, the same pity which had seized her so unaccountably upon the night of their flight, overwhelmed her, and at such moments it was her habit to be tender with him in a fashion that sent him into extravagant flights of happiness. But these moments became, after a while, conscious things on the part of Ellen so that presently she used them cheaply to quiet his unhappiness as one might use a gaudy stick of candy to quiet an unhappy child. Such little things made him happy.

* * * * *

Sometimes in the night she would lie in one of the green beds ornamented with garlands of salmon pink roses, listening to the sounds of the city that lay far beneath them ... the distant rumble which rose and mingled somehow with the glow of light that filled all the dome of the sky, a rumble pierced sharply by the sudden shrill cry of a city child playing late in the streets, or the faint clop! clop! of hoofs upon asphalt blurred now and again by the ghostly boom of a great ship’s whistle rising from the fog-veiled river ... marvelous, splendorous sounds of a great world close at hand. There lay in these sounds a wonderful sense of the crowd--in which she herself was not a part. Lying there, her fingers would clutch the bedclothes tightly and presently she would become conscious that in her listening she was not alone, that beside her, separated by the little chasm which divided the two green beds, Clarence too lay awake ... listening. She must have known in those hours an unreal consciousness of something that was waiting ... a Thing destined not to become clear until long afterward ... a Thing which waited silently and with a terrible patience. It was an experience that was not rare; it happened many nights, so that presently she came to be happy in the weeks when Clarence, traveling through the night hundreds of miles from her, was not there at all.

Sometimes her hand would steal out and in the darkness be touched and clasped by another hand that trembled and clung to hers in a sort of terror.

27

Ellen’s awareness of Richard Callendar came over her slowly, a sensation neither desired nor anticipated, but one which stole upon her in some obscure fashion through the corridors of her own music. It would have been impossible to fix the moment at which this awareness took form; certainly it was not during that first damp drive through the park, when, wedged between his slim body and that of the yellow-clad Sabine, she had her first view of him. On that occasion she had remarked him merely as a young man perhaps of thirty (in this she was wrong by five years) who possessed a beauty of a kind new to her, a beauty of which there were traces to be found among certain of the workers in the Mills that hugged the dying hedges of Shane’s Castle. It was, in short, a kind of mystical, unearthly beauty born of an old, old race that was sensual and filled with an intense capacity for suffering ... a kind of beauty never to be found among her own Scotch and English friends and relatives. It had its determining quality in the extraordinary blackness of his hair, the dark olive of his skin and the unreality of gray eyes so queerly placed in so much darkness.

Sabine Cane, so completely civilized, so disillusioned, understood this beauty with the mind of one capable of an amazing detachment and power of analysis, for she had an extraordinary power of pulling herself up short in the midst of her emotions and saying, “This is indeed interesting. Here am I giving way to a good wholesome passion. Well! Well!...” and then, “It’s all very good so long as I don’t allow myself to be hurt by it.” For Sabine had the sort of intelligence which is the equipment of every potential sensualist.

This awareness on the part of Ellen forced its way through a torrent of impressions and emotions into a consciousness never too well organized. At the “parties” of Mrs. Callendar, there were, as the amusing woman predicted, never more than three or four people. There was always herself and usually her son. Sometimes Sabine Cane, whose relationship to the older woman was that of one who shares a complete understanding, was present, and now and then an elderly beau or two, of the sort which appears at concerts and the opera where they sit in the rear of boxes obscured somewhat by bedizened dowagers.

These entertainments, referred to variously by Thérèse Callendar as musicales, parties and soirées, were held in the vast drawing room where Ellen appeared on that first evening. While she played, the others, flanked by brocade curtains of immense dimensions, rows of Callendar family portraits and cases filled with bronze Buddhas and jade tear bottles, sat about respectful, listening, prepared to speak only in hushed voices, for it was true that all of them were wholly devoted to music ... all perhaps, save Sabine who, it might be said, was present as much because she found Thérèse Callendar amusing and had a profound curiosity regarding the shy, handsome girl who came to entertain them.

Ellen had a capacity for “feeling her audience.” She had not played many times before she knew exactly the degree and quality of appreciation in each of those who listened. She came to know that Sabine neither understood music nor cared very greatly for it, and that Mrs. Callendar preferred the compositions which were a little wild and barbaric. In the dark young Richard Callendar there was a quality altogether different from any of the others. It was a kind of appreciation which she had experienced only twice before. Lily listened in that fashion and her own brother Fergus. It was as if they abandoned themselves completely to the sound, as if they became in all their senses quite immersed. For a long time after the music ceased it was difficult for them to return wholly to the world of reality. She herself knew the intoxication; it was an emotion quite beyond the realm of drunkenness; it might be perhaps comparable to the effect of certain drugs. Richard Callendar listened in that fashion, and understanding this she came at length to play for him alone, moved only by an instinct of profound gratitude.

Even Sabine Cane, with all her sharp intelligence, failed to understand what was happening before her green eyes. She knew, vaguely, that there were times when the girl outdid herself, when the sounds she made possessed a beauty unusual in degree and quality, but her penetration seldom progressed beyond this point, because, by virtue of that strange and mystical bond, the other two were raised into a world quite beyond her. If there was a difference it lay in this ... that to Sabine one would have said that nothing could ever happen, because she guarded herself so carefully.

* * * * *

In the beginning, Ellen had come in only to play in the evenings at nine o’clock when the others had finished dinner and were sitting in the walnut-paneled library over cigarettes, coffee and liqueurs. She came, as a mountebank, to entertain. It was her habit to arrive quietly, to greet Mrs. Callendar and then sit modestly a little apart from the others until the moment came for her to play. They were kind to her, and sometimes quite cordial--even Sabine who, out of an awkwardness born of a nature really shy, talked with her in the most confused and disjointed fashion, sometimes, under the stress of temptation, striving even to pry into the details of her life. Perhaps Sabine, in the recesses of her clear intelligence, speculated regarding the origins, the background, the very surroundings of Ellen. Her own life had been one ordered and held in check by a rigid tradition ... a nurse, a day school kept by an affected and clever old harridan in impoverished circumstances, a year abroad and at last a coming-out ball. The independence she possessed lay altogether in her own thoughts, a thing hid away deeply. It moved like a mountain torrent confined placidly within the walls of a canal. It manifested itself only in a sharpness of tongue, a restless and malicious desire for gossip. She encouraged her imagination to rebuild the lives of her friends according to some pattern more exciting than that of the straight-laced world by which she was submerged. It was this, perhaps, which drew her to old Thérèse Callendar and her son. In them she found a freedom, a sophistication that elsewhere was lacking. Richard Callendar was not unwilling to discuss such things as mistresses. Thérèse did not treat her as if she were a spotless virgin to be protected against the realities of the world. They provided release to an intelligence bound in upon all sides by the corseted bejetted traditions of the day. They treated her with respect, as an individual. They possessed candor.

And so in the beginning her curiosity had seemed to Ellen, not understanding all this, an impudent thing, to be snubbed quietly in the proud way she had. She understood, well enough, that Sabine possessed the advantage ... at least in the world of Mrs. Callendar’s drawing-room. Sabine was at home there. She had lived always in such drawing-rooms. And yet there came a night when Sabine turned with her strange abruptness and said apropos of nothing, “I envy you.”

At which Ellen smiled and asked, “Why?”

“Because,” continued the abrupt Sabine, “you will always have the advantage over us (she was quite frank in admitting that they belonged to different worlds). It is always so with those who make their way by their wits.”

Once Ellen might have pondered such a speech, wondering whether she should consider herself insulted by it. But in the experience of many talks with Sabine, she came to understand that there lay at the bottom of the observation no more than a complete honesty. Indeed, the remark was so honest that in the very moment it was made, Ellen saw not only its honesty but its truth. She _was_ making her way by her wits. Sabine had nothing to make ... nothing to expect save a marriage which would occur in due time according to the plan that controlled all Sabine’s life. And the artist in Ellen leapt at once to assume the rôle. She would make her way by her wits, from now on, consciously. That placed her. It provided her with a certain definiteness of personality.

“People like that are always more sure of themselves,” Sabine continued. “I’ve noticed it. Take Mrs. Sigourney. She’s done it. She’s outraged some people but she’s got what she wanted.... She was nobody and now she’s chic. It’s her wits, always her wits.... She never does the wrong thing ... never puts herself in a place where she can be hurt.”

At the end of the speech, Sabine’s voice dropped suddenly. There was even a little echo of something ... perhaps a faint sigh, as if it came somewhere from deep within her. She _had_ been hurt then, perhaps a long time ago. Perhaps her flawless clothes, her sharp and witty tongue, her air of entering a room, were all no more than an armor she had raised about herself. She was not, like Ellen, isolated, independent, free ... belonging to nothing, to no one, save only herself. Her friendship with Richard Callendar may only have been a bit of bravado, to flaunt in the face of the others who desired him.

Ellen saw it, clearly now. In the Town she would have been like Sabine. There, in a community all her own, they could have hurt her. Here in this world there was no one who could do her any injury. Alone, isolated, she was stronger than she had been in the very midst of all those who had known her since the beginning.

“I wish,” continued Sabine, “that you would tell me about yourself some time.... Tell me and Richard. He’s interested in such things.”

“But I must play now,” said Ellen.

* * * * *

On the same night when the hour came for Ellen to be sent home in Mrs. Callendar’s cabriolet, the plump woman said, “The next time.... Let’s see, it’s Thursday, isn’t it?... You must come for dinner.... I’ll send Wilkes at twenty to eight.”

28

That there was any such thing as kindliness involved in all these complicated, new relationships had never occurred to Ellen, perhaps because she had never for a moment expected it. It was only with the invitation to dinner, in itself a tacit recognition of her individuality as something more than a mere music box, that the real state of affairs first became clear to her. It was as if she had progressed a step in the world, as if she had achieved a little already of the vast things she had set out to accomplish. She tried, in her direct, unsubtle way of speaking, to convey something of the idea to Clarence. She wanted him, as always, desperately to understand her actions. She wanted him, perhaps dishonestly, to believe that she could not help acting as she did, that it was not from choice but from a desire to brighten both their lives that she left him now and then to venture forth into regions which it was impossible for him to penetrate. And in her own fashion, as she had done so often with her mother, she told him the truth selectively, so that although she did not lie she managed to achieve an effect that was not the truth.

The great thing which she neglected to admit was this ... that she had come now to the point where it was no longer possible to take him with her. Even his fantastic dreams could not make him more than he was, and that was not enough. He had come to the end of his tether. She had barely begun. Imagine him in Mrs. Callendar’s drawing-room! Fancy the abrupt Sabine Cane talking to him as she talked to Ellen! He, she knew, would suffer more than any one.

She said to him, “I’m sorry, but on Thursday I shall be out for dinner.... I’ve got to dine with Mrs. Callendar.... It’s business, dear.... I must do these things.”

And at the speech, Clarence assumed that hurt and crestfallen look which touched her sense of pity. It was the one thing which could alter her determination; indeed there were times when she must have suspected that he used it consciously, as his only weapon. It moved her even now, so that she went so far as to kiss him and say, “It’s just one night.”

“But it’s a beginning.” He saw it perhaps, clearly enough, more clearly than she ever imagined. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

And then she explained to him again the things which it was necessary for her to do in order to win what she must have. She talked long and eloquently, for she was earnest and she pitied him. It was clear that her dishonesty arose not so much out of any evil calculation as out of a desire to have everything, to go her way and still leave Clarence unharmed and happy. It was a thing impossible, of course, yet it never seemed so to her. There was in her so much of her indomitable mother that she was never able to believe in the impossible.

So she talked eloquently and at length she even arranged it for him that he should dine on Thursday night with Mr. and Mrs. Bunce. Thus, by a single act, she accomplished another thing. She dined with the Bunces without having to dine with them. She knew too that they would be happier with Clarence there alone. It would be like the old days, without strain, an evening when the three of them,--Clarence and Harry Bunce and his rosy wife,--could dine, as one might say, in peace. There would be no strain, no sense of an intruder in their midst. For she was a stranger, always; they were never quite at ease with her.

Thus Clarence found the evening arranged, and he was content in his way, for he liked the Bunces.

Afterward Ellen’s clearest memory of the evening was the voice of Sabine drifting from the drawing-room as she entered the hall, saying, “The trouble with Boston people is that they are all descended from middle class immigrants and they’ve been proud of it ever since.”

This speech became fixed somehow in her brain as a symbol of Sabine’s queer worldliness, of a strangely cynical honesty that would color her whole point of view up to the very end. If Sabine thought it idiotic to take pride in being middle class, if she thought it absurd not to strive after distinction, she would say it, whether or not people thought her a snob. The world to her was thus and so; it moved according to an ancient pattern. All the orations in the world upon the subject of democracy could not alter the rule of things. Besides, it was a good enough rule. Why pretend it wasn’t? Sabine, of course, could afford to take such a position. In a worldly sense, she had nothing to strive for. She had been born to those things.

Ellen, removing the squirrel coat Clarence had given her, turned these considerations over in her mind as she entered the room. She was watching them all to-night as she had watched them once before through the crack in the lacquered screen, cautiously, with an air of an enemy laying siege to their fortress.

There was, beneath the gaze of the Callendar ancestors, only Mrs. Callendar in a dress of jet and sequins, Sabine in a brilliant green gown and Richard Callendar, handsome and dark in his black and white clothes. Richard rose and came forward to meet her.

“Mama,” he said, smiling, “has just been talking of you. She believes that one day you will be a great personality.”

“We are dining alone, the four of us,” said Mrs. Callendar abruptly. It was clear that she meant to keep Ellen forever in ignorance of what she had said.

* * * * *

The dining room was done in the grand manner of the Second Empire, a room copied at the behest of young Callendar’s grandfather from a house built by the Duc de Morny for one of his mistresses. It was grandiose, with columns of white and gilt, centering upon a massive table and a group of chairs with backs which ended a foot or two sooner than they should have ended. On the four panels of the walls there hung pictures of Venice in the dry, hard manner of Canaletto ... Venice at Dawn, Venice at Sunset, Venice at Carnival Time and Venice in Mourning for the Pope. On the huge table stood a silver épergne filled to overflowing with the most opulent of fruits ... mangoes, persimmons, red bananas, Homberg grapes and pomegranates. It was as if Thérèse Callendar had built this monument of fruit to recapture something of her own Oriental background--the rest of the room was so bad, so filled with the shadows of Cockney demi-mondaines and snuffbox adventures out of the Second Empire. At the four corners of the vast épergne stood four huge candelabra of silver.