Possession (Bromfield)/Chapter 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. . . .
Afterward in the big reception room lined with the mirrors used by the dancers of the ballet before a performance, she waited to receive all those who came to welcome her back into their world. There were actresses and millionaires, demi-mondaines and composers, musicians and painters, the Duc de Guermantes and M. de Charlus, patrons of art and adventuresses who came and went under the brilliant, triumphant glitter of Rebecca's ferrety eyes. And last of all there was Thérèse, untidy and covered with diamonds, and her friend, Ella Nattatorini, and Sabine who had in tow Janey Champion whom, as one of the Virgins, Ellen had seen so long ago through the crevice of the lacquered screen in the Callendar drawing-room. Janey was breathless and excited now, her hair all in disarray; for Sabine had kept her promise and Janey, for the first time in all her forty-six barren years, had escaped and was seeing life.
Ellen received them all with something of the old savor of triumph, but it was not the same. As Gramp had known, she had passed the peak of all her existence. All this array, this chatter, this confusion had begun a little to bore her.
And when they had gone she sat down to wait for Lily who had gone to the Gare de Lyon to speed a party consisting of Hattie and Old Gramp and the baby, Augustine and a gigantic Breton wet nurse with the preposterous name of Frédegonde, on their journey to the white villa in Nice where Lily had gone so many times while César was alive. For Lily, who had always followed the sun, no longer had any use for the white villa. Her place now was in damp and chilly Paris by the side of her husband.
Wrapped in her sable cloak, Ellen leaned back in her chair and closing her eyes, lost herself in this new and comfortable peace which had enveloped her since that hot terrible night in the pavilion. It seemed to her that she had never really rested before in all her life. It was over and finished. She had begun to forget a little what Callendar had been, to remember only what she desired to remember. She thought of him as dead; and it is true that the Callendar who came to her in the Babylon Arms had died long ago. She had done her duty, the one thing that she could have done, the one thing that had remained. She had borne a child and delivered it to Hattie for her own, to possess until she died or the child grew up and escaped from her. But by that time, Hattie would be so old that it would not greatly matter. She would be willing to sit by the fire in the long drawing-room as old Madame Gigon had done. And presently she rose and throwing off her cloak seated herself at the big piano in the corner of the room. She began to play softly, marvelously, and the wild savage fire which had persisted through everything began once more to shine in her eyes. The Town, the black Mills, the Callendars, poor Clarence and the green-eyed Mr. Wyck . . . all these were forgotten. She was freed at last of all those old bonds, possessed now only by the beauty of the sounds she made. But, on the high pinnacle she had built with her own hands, she was alone . . . the woman whom Fergus had seen for a moment in a queer flash of clairvoyance on the night of his death.
She was playing thus when Lily came in quietly to stand listening in the shadows. . . .
The white villa, as old Madame Gigon had said, was not in Nice proper but in Cimiez, high on the slope overlooking Villefranche and the Bay of Angels. To approach it one was forced to descend from the carriage and climb past the statue of Queen Victoria, carved in the manner of Thorvaldsen with an umbrella in one hand and a reticule in the other—a reticule which Gramp believed was the one (embroidered with a poodle-dog in gold thread) which she had carried on the visit that was designed to make Eugènie respectable in the eyes of royal Europe. Beyond the Queen, there was a little flight of steps leading to a gateway covered with bougainvillea and shaded by an ancient tree of mimosa.
It was up this exotic path that the little procession made its way two days after Lily bade it farewell in the Gare de Lyon. Jean went ahead and after him Hattie, with her grandson in her arms, followed closely by The Everlasting, the gigantic, abundant Frédegonde and her child. At the approach of evening they were settled and under the mimosa tree Hattie sat by the side of little Fergus, triumphant and content, singing him to sleep as she had once done with her own Fergus. Nothing had changed, for in Hattie there was a quality of the eternal concerned only with love and birth and death.
While she sang thus in a low voice, The Everlasting, with a great book under his arm, appeared in the doorway and moved toward her. By the side of the baby he halted for a moment, adjusted his spectacles and peered closely. He said nothing and presently his thin old lips expanded into a grin—a grin which said, "You've a lot of trouble before you, but what a good time you will have!" It was a grin, strange to say, of envy.
And as he stood there, he saw dimly the figure of a fat, untidy, bedizened old woman making her way painfully up the slope past the statue of Queen Victoria. It was Thérèse, who had altered the whole course of her journey to Trieste in order to see this precious, incomparable grandchild. Silently, lest she rouse the infant, she took her place by the side of the cradle. But little Fergus showed no signs of falling asleep. He was a fine baby. He lay looking up at them with the inscrutable gray eyes which had come from Callendar. But he had a fine pretty nose, that showed every sign of developing those handsome curves which gave Ellen and, before her, Old Julia Shane a proud look of domination. Presently in the hope of diverting him Thérèse bent down and took from her fat old fingers the carved emerald which, legend had it, had been saved during the Sack of Constantinople. The baby turned it round and round, peering at it with his wise gray eyes, until at last, letting it slip from his chubby fingers, he fell asleep under the jealous guard of the two powerful women who had called him into existence almost by the very force of will. They stood there in adoring silence, the one so primitive, the other so old and wise, that in the end they were very like each other.
Meanwhile The Everlasting, having turned his steps up the hill, sat now among the ruins of the ancient Roman arena overlooking the bay. As a substitute for his rocking chair, he had chosen an overturned stone and there he sat, his book open on his knees, peering out over the Mediterranean. After a time he took from his pocket an apple and bit into it with teeth that were still strong despite the approach of his hundredth birthday. It was a small bitter apple from Brittany, and not half so good as the apples which grew in the orchards of Ohio. Scornfully he spat the pieces from his mouth and, adjusting his spectacles once more, he bent over with a peering look and began again to read in triumph the Decline and Fall.
Ispswich, Mass.
August 6, 1923.
Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island.
May 15, 1925.