Possession (Bromfield)/Chapter 49
ON the night of the concert Ellen wore a gown of crimson velvet, according to a plan of Rebecca who determined that the occasion should be a sensational one not to be forgotten. The house was filled and when Lilli Barr came through the door at the back of the stage there was a quick hush, a sudden breathlessness, caused not so much by her beauty (for she was never really beautiful in the sense that Lily was beautiful) but by the whole perfection of the picture. The crimson dress fitted her tightly and was sleeveless and cut low to show the perfection of her strong, handsome shoulders. Her black hair, so black that in the brilliant light which showered upon her from overhead (a device of Rebecca's) it appeared blue as the traditional raven's wing. She wore it pulled back tightly from her smooth forehead and done in a small knot at the nape of the neck. In her ears she wore old Portuguese rings of paste and silver. She was superb, glittering, slender, strong, and possessed of the old brilliant power to distract thought and concentrate attention.
In that instant the battle was half won. There were those in the audience who felt that the mere sight of her was enough.
In her box on the first tier, Mrs. Callendar sat up with a start, raised her lorgnettes and said "Tiens! Quel chic!"
Beside her Mrs. Mallinson (the lady novelist) murmured, "Superb creature!" and the Honorable Emma Hawksby (back again to live off the Americans on the strength of being a niece to the disreputable Duke of Middlebottom) thought again that the big feet of Englishwomen were a serious hindrance and that perhaps her countrywomen went in too much for walking. The elderly rake, Wickham Chase, sighed bitterly at the tragedy of old age and the loss of vigor. Bishop Smallwood (whom Sabine had dubbed the Apostle to the Genteel) thought, "She looks like my wa'am friend, Mrs. Sigourney," but, considering the impression, thought better of it and said nothing, since Mrs. Sigourney had long since overplayed her game and become utterly déclassée. And the third, a nondescript bachelor, strove to peer between Mrs. Mallinson's supporting dog-collar and the bony back of the Honorable Emma Hawksby. If he had any thoughts at all, they were not very interesting; for thirty years he had been sitting in the back of boxes at plays, concerts and the opera, peering between plump backs and skinny ones.
Below them the audience stretched away row upon row, in dim lines marshaled into neat columns like an advancing army seen through a mist.
Mrs. Callendar thought, "Ah! She is magnificent. The transformation scarcely seems possible. . . . Still, the girl had it in her always." And a little voice kept saying to her, "You will win. She is an admirable pawn. You will succeed. You will get what you want if you work hard enough and are clever about it."
Down among the dim rows spread out below them sat Hattie Tolliver, in a new gown chosen by Ellen. Large and vigorous she sat, looking a little like a powerful and eccentric duchess, by the side of Miss Ogilvie in her mauve taffeta with the corals and cameos, her thin hair done elaborately in a fashion she had not worn since she was a girl. They sat there, the eagle and the linnet, trembling with excitement, the tears very close to the surface of the emotional Hattie.
Presently, as Ellen took her place at the piano and struck a few crashing chords, Hattie could bear it no longer. She leaned toward the stranger at her side, a woman with short hair and an umbrella, and said in triumph, "That's my daughter who's playing."
The stranger stared at her for an instant and murmured, "Is it indeed?" And the music began.
Hattie really wanted to tell them all—the row upon row of strangers, obscured now by the darkness.
Charles Tolliver at his end of the row closed his eyes and slipped presently into the borderland between sleep and consciousness, a country where there is no reality and all is covered by a rosy mist. Through this the music came to him distantly. He fancied he was back once more in the shabby living room with Ellen playing sullenly at the upright piano. And for a little time he was happy.
Robert, who had no ear for music, felt uncomfortable and disapproved of his sister's low-cut gown. Robert was a prig; he took after his grandfather Barr, "the citizen."
The Everlasting was not to be seen. He had been left at home, because it was impossible to say how he would behave on such an occasion. One dared not take the risk.
In the mind of Hattie, sitting there in the shadows of the great hall, there could be no question of failure. Was it not her Ellen, her little girl whom she had once held upon her knee, who now sat, as it were, upon a throne before a world which listened breathlessly? All those people who filled the seats about her and above her might have risen and left, but to Hattie the evening would have been a great success, a triumph in which the judgment of the world had been wrong. They did not leave; instead they sat, leaning forward a bit or slipped down in their seats with closed eyes, bedazzled as much by the perfection and grace of this new musician as by the music itself.
Rebecca, standing in the darkness at the back of the great hall, understood all that. She knew that in part the triumph was her own, for had she not tricked them, hypnotized them? They would not be able to forget. She, like Hattie, felt with every fiber of her body, the very sensations of all those people who listened—people from great houses of the rich who had heard of Lilli Barr from friends in Europe, people from the suburbs who would rush away in frantic haste for the last train home, people—young people—like the one who sat next to Hattie, in shabby clothes and worn shoes, who were fighting now desperately, as Ellen had once fought, to reach that same platform, that same brilliant shower of light. They listened, enchanted by the sound, caught by the spell of one woman's genius and another's brilliant trickery. Possessed they were, for the moment.
And presently the tears began to stream down Hattie's face. They dropped to the hands worn and red, concealed now by the expensive gloves which cramped her uncomfortably.
The applause rose and fell in great waves, sweeping over her with the roaring of a great surf heard far away, and through it the voice of Miss Ogilvie, saying gently, "Who would have believed it?"
And then at length, when the sound of the last number had died away, an overwhelming surf which would not die even when the woman in crimson appeared again and again under the brilliant shower of light; until at last Lilli Barr seated herself before the great satiny piano and the crowd, which had pushed forward to the stage, grew quiet and stood listening, waiting, silent and expectant . . . the people from great houses, the people from the suburbs, the young people with worn shoes and shabby clothes. And into the air there rang a shower of spangled notes, gay and sparkling, embracing a rhythm older than any of them. For Lilli Barr—(or was it Ellen Tolliver)—was playing now The Beautiful Blue Danube. It was not the old simple waltz that Hattie had picked out upon the organ in her father's parlor, but an extravagant, brilliant arrangement which beneath the strong, white fingers became fantastical and beautiful beyond description.
Hattie Tolliver wept because she understood. It was as if Ellen—the proud, silent Ellen—had been suddenly stripped of all the old inarticulate pride, as if suddenly she had grown eloquent and all the barriers, like the walls of Jericho, had tumbled down. Hattie Tolliver understood. Her daughter was speaking to her now across all the gulf of years, across the hundred walls which stood between them. This was her reward. She understood and wept at the sudden revelation of the mysterious thread that ran through all life. All this triumph, this beauty, all this splendor had its beginning long ago on the harmonium in the parlor of old Jacob Barr's farm.
When the lights went up and Hattie, drying her eyes and suffering her hand to be patted by Miss Ogilvie, was able to look about her, she saw with a feeling of horror among the figures crowded in a group before the stage a coonskin coat and a sharp old face that was familiar. It was The Everlasting. He had come, after all, alone, aloof, as he had always lived. He stood with his bony old head tilted back a little, peering through his steel rimmed spectacles at the brilliant figure of his granddaughter.
For an instant Hattie thought, triumphantly, "Now he can see that my child is great. That she is famous. He will see," she thought, "what a good mother I have been."
But her sense of triumph was dimmed a little because she knew that Ellen belonged also to him . . . all that part which she had never been able to understand. It was Gramp's triumph as well as Hattie's. To her horror she heard him shouting, "Bravo! Bravo!" in a thin, cracked voice, as if he were a young man again listening while Liszt played to an audience of foreigners.
In the box, looking down on the crowd below, Thérèse Callendar waited to the end. She sent Mrs. Mallinson, the Honorable Emma Hawksby, the Apostle to the Genteel, Wickham Chase and the nondescript bachelor away in her motor, bidding the driver return for her. She sat peering down through her lorgnettes, plump and secure in her sables and dirty diamonds, a little bedazzled like all the others but still enough in control of her senses to be interested in the figures below. Among them she too noticed the extraordinary figure of a skinny old man in a coonskin coat, who stood a little apart from the others with a triumphant smile on his sharp, wrinkled face.
At the moment she was in an optimistic mood because there had occurred in the course of the concert an incident which, with all the rich superstition of her nature, she interpreted as a good omen. Between the two parts of the program when dozens of bouquets (mostly purchased by Rebecca) were rushed forward to the platform, she saw that Lilli Barr leaned down and chose a great bunch of yellow roses. It was the bouquet which Thérèse had sent. It was an omen. If there had been any wavering in the mind of Thérèse it vanished at once. Ellen could not consciously have chosen it. She was sure now that she would succeed.
Behind the stage whither she turned her steps when the last of the applause had died away and the lights were turned out, she found Ellen standing surrounded by a noisy throng. Among them she recognized only Sanson, who had grown feeble and white since last she saw him. And there was an extraordinary, powerful woman, handsome in a large way, who wore her white gloves awkwardly; and beside her a little old spinster in an absurd gown of mauve taffeta adorned with cameos and coral pins. These two stood beside the musician, the one proud and smiling, the other a little frightened, as a bird might be.
It was all exciting. Thérèse waited on the edge of the throng until all had gone save the big handsome woman and the little spinster in mauve. Then she stepped forward and saw that Ellen recognized her.
"Ah," said Ellen, coldly. "Mrs. Callendar! Were you here too?"
Thérèse did not say that the concert was magnificent. She knew better than to add one more to the heap of garish compliments. She said, "It was the first time I have been where I could hear you. I knew you would do it some day. . . . You remember, I told you so."
There was a look in Ellen's eye which said, "Ah! You forgot me for years. Now that I am successful everything is different." Then drawing her black cloak about her crimson dress, she laid a hand on the arm of the big, handsome woman.
"This is my mother . . . Mrs. Callendar," she said. "And this is Miss Ogilvie, my first music teacher."
Mrs. Tolliver eyed Thérèse with suspicion, and Miss Ogilvie simpered and bowed.
"I came back to ask you to come home to supper with me," said Mrs. Callendar to Ellen. "We could have a sandwich and a glass of sherry and talk for a time. I've opened the house."
For a moment the air was filled with a sense of conflict. The suspicion of Hattie, as she saw her daughter slipping from her, rose into hostility. In the end she lost, for Ellen said, "Yes, I'll come for a little time." And then turning to her mother, she added, "You and Miss Ogilvie go to the Ritz. I'll come there later. Rebecca has ordered supper."
But it was not Thérèse Callendar who won. It was some one who was not there at all . . . a dark man of whose very existence Hattie Tolliver had never heard.