Possession (Bromfield)/Chapter 47
SCARCELY a week after the landing of Ellen and Rebecca, Thérèse Callendar landed in New York, almost willingly and with a sense of relief. In the solid house on Murray Hill, the usual army of charwomen arrived and put the place in order against her coming, but on her arrival she closed most of the rooms and chose to live between her bed-room and the library. She was, oddly enough, confused and a little weary. She had been, all her life, a match and more for the shrewdest of men; she had outwitted bankers and brokers and even swindlers, and now she stood confronted by a catastrophe which she was unable to dominate. A third or more of a vast fortune stood in danger . . . that part of it which she had been unable to save when the maelstrom broke over Europe. Much of it, fortunately, was transferred into safety. Through bits of information and advice picked up here and there in the course of her wanderings, she had divined that one day there was certain to be a war, and accordingly she had taken money out of Germany and placed it in England, disposed of Russian bonds and reinvested the money in America, shifted credits from Vienna to Paris. Yet there still remained a great sum which, for the time being, was lost in the confusion . . . part of the fortune she had tended with the care of a gardener for his most prized orchid.
In the midst of the turmoil she had stayed for days in the office of her lawyer in Paris, wiring now to London, now to Trieste, now in New York—sitting with him, a shrewd, bearded man, in conference with bankers, brokers and men who simply juggled money into more money. And in the end even she, Thérèse Callendar, had been no match for the war. She wakened one morning to find the Germans at the gates of Paris and the Government fled to Bordeaux. She was alone; Richard and Sabine and little Thérèse were in England. So alone she had paced the tesselated floors of the monstrous house in the Avenue du Bois, until all had been done which could be done. And at last, glad to leave the Europe which Ellen had called a madhouse, she turned back for the first time in her life with pleasure and relief to the quiet of the brownstone house on Murray Hill.
She had come to New York, as may be said of great people, incognita. Only her banker and her lawyer knew she was in town—a strange state of affairs for a woman who had lived always in public, going from one capital to another, seeing scores of people day by day.
It was not the money alone which troubled her. There was the matter of Sabine for which there seemed to be no solution. As she sat alone in the dark library three days after her arrival, she turned the matter over in her mind.
She thought of the interview which took place with Richard a day or two before the Archduke was shot in Serajevo . . . an interview which occurred after lunch in the house in the Avenue du Bois before he took the Boulogne express to join Sabine in Hertfordshire. Over her coffee, she saw him again . . . a dark handsome son of whom a mother might have been proud if he had cared more for the things which were the foundation of her life. There was bitter disappointment in all that . . . his neglect of business and his indifference to money. Here he was, a man of thirty-five, who did nothing but amuse himself. He gambled a bit, he bought a picture now and then, he had a passion for music, he fenced and swam and rode beautifully. Yet there seemed to be no core to his existence, no foundation, unless the satisfaction of his own desire for pleasure might be called the dominant thread of his character. It was satisfaction—no more than that: it was never satiation. If he had been weak or dissipated or a waster, there would have been more to be said against him; but he was none of these things. In this, fortunately, he took after her own people. He had not, like young Americans who had money, gone to pieces. He took good care of himself. He had no habit which had become a vice. He had all the curious strength that comes of an old race.
Sitting over her coffee, she saw him again as he stood with the old mocking smile on his too red lips while she argued across the spaces of Wolff's house in the Avenue du Bois. He stood, rocking a bit on his toes, with the easy grace which came of a supple strength, looking down at her out of the mocking gray eyes.
"But there is no one whom I want to marry," he had said, "even if Sabine would divorce me."
At which she had grown angry and retorted, "Women interest you. It would be easy enough. . . ."
"It would be a nasty, unpleasant business. She is not a bad wife. I might do much worse. I am sorry that she can't have more children, but that is none of my doing. I do not want to hurt her. I might not have another wife as satisfactory."
To which Thérèse had replied, "She is unhappy. I know she is. She can't stand indifference forever, even if she is a cold woman. Besides she's in love with you. She can't go on always living with you and yet not living with you. She'd be happier free . . . to marry some one else."
Then he had mocked her out of the depths of his own security. "Do you think love is such a simple thing that it can be turned on and off like water from a tap?" (She knew that love with him was just that . . . something which could be turned on and off, like water from a tap.)
"Besides, it was you who wanted me to marry her. I had other ideas."
"You mean Ellen Tolliver?" she asked. And then, "You would not have married her if you could have escaped it . . . if you could have got her in any other way."
But she saw that the look of mockery had faded a little at the sound of the girl's name. (She was of course no longer a girl but a successful woman of thirty or more.)
"I don't know . . ." he had said, "I don't know what I should have done. Only I fancy that if I had married her there would have been a great many little heirs running about."
She had delivered herself into his hands. As a woman of affairs she knew that one could not argue sensibly about what might have happened; and for what had happened she herself was responsible. In that he had been right.
"Would you marry her to-day?"
"How can I answer that? Probably she wouldn't have me. Why should she? We're both different now. . . . It's been years. . . . She's rich now . . . successful . . . famous. It isn't the same."
"People don't change as much as that . . . especially if they not seen each other. They are likely to keep a memory of that sort always fresh. It's likely to grow strong instead of weak."
"I've seen her since . . . several times . . . at her concerts."
She saw, with her small piercing eyes, that she had uncovered a weak place in his armor . . . a single chance on which to pin all her hopes.
"Have you talked to her?"
"No."
She knew too that he was, in a sense, invincible. Sabine, so far as the world was concerned, made an excellent wife. She was worldly, distinguished, clever. So far as he was himself concerned, she gave him no trouble. She did not make scenes and she did not indulge in passionate outbreaks of jealousy. She did not even speak of the love which he sought outside his marriage . . . the intrigues that were always taking place and now made him invincible in the face of her argument. She effaced herself, and as she had done once before, waited. But on that occasion she had waited for marriage, and had won. Now she was waiting for love, which was quite a different matter.
"If it's an heir you want, I have one already." He smiled. "He must be nearly twelve by now. Of course, he is the grandson of a janitor and the son of a music hall singer. . . . Still, he is an heir. We might legitimatize him."
By this stroke he had won, for he had made her angry . . . the thing he had been seeking to do all the while.
"I hear from him twice a year . . . when my lawyer sends his mother money."
"You'd do well to forget his existence."
And then they had talked for a time without arriving anywhere.
As usual it was Richard who had won. He had gone back to Sabine as if nothing at all had occurred.
Thérèse drank the last of her coffee and then laid her dumpy figure down on the divan in the dark library. She was tired for the first time in her life, as if she had not the strength to go on fighting. She might have but a few years longer to live and she must hurry and settle this matter. There must be an heir to whom she might pass on the fortune . . . not a sickly girl like little Thérèse but a man who could manage a responsibility so enormous.
Though her body was weary, her mind was alert. There still remained a chance. In the gathering darkness, she knew that the chance depended upon two things . . . the hope that Ellen Tolliver still loved Richard as she had so clearly loved him on the night years earlier when the girl had talked to her in this very room; and the hope that Lilli Barr was as honest, as respectable, as bourgeois as Ellen Tolliver had been.
She got up and in the darkness made her way to the bell. When the butler appeared and switched on the lights, she said, "Please get me a box for the concert of Lilli Barr. . . . It's a week from to-morrow." And, as he was leaving, she added, "I shall give a dinner that night. See to it that the rest of the house is got ready."
This was the first step.