Possession (Bromfield)/Chapter 58
ONE bright spring morning as Hattie sat looking out into the street while she sewed and thought, round and and round, over and over again, those same thoughts which stole in upon her so frequently in these days of idleness, the postman brought a letter from Ellen. It was a brief letter, written it seemed in haste, but it contained two bits of news that changed the whole face of the world.
Ellen was to be married, and she wanted Hattie to come to Paris and make her home there.
"I have talked it over with Lily," she wrote, "and she is delighted with the plan. Her house here is enormous and comfortable, and Lily is rarely in it save in the spring and autumn. You could do as you chose with no one to annoy you. And you need never think or worry about housekeeping. I am sending a cheque, and Rebecca's uncle Mr. Schönberg is arranging for tickets. It is difficult to travel nowadays, but I have talked to Mrs. Callendar and she has written to a friend of hers, Malcolm Travers, the banker, who will arrange passports for you. You will hear from him within a few days after this letter."
And about her own plans she wrote, "I am marrying Richard Callendar, the son of the same Mrs. Callendar. You remember her? You met her on the night of my first concert in America, a small, fat dark woman covered with dirty diamonds. You may have read of the family in the papers, for they are well known. They are very rich. He is four years older than me. I have known him for nearly ten years. He wanted to marry me before, years ago. (And then a sudden flash of the old Ellen who had walked away in the sunlight to skate on Walker's Pond.) Fancy me, marrying a millionaire!"
So, in an instant, everything was changed and Hattie's world grew bright once more. It was all so preposterous—to have Ellen arranging everything in this grand manner, the tickets, the passports, as if her mother were a queen whose journey was to be made as simple and free of trouble as possible. And the cheque and the millionaire husband! Yet, when the sense of excitement had abated a little, she remembered that she had always known her children were not of ordinary flesh and blood. There had been something extraordinary about them. Look at Ellen! Famous and rich and now marrying a millionaire.
But her satisfaction was not free from the old doubts. Was he—this Callendar—good enough for her? Clarence had never been. It was a good thing, she reflected, that he had died. What could she have done with him during all these years . . . Clarence, a poor thing at best, always complaining of his health.
But this Callendar. Who was he and why had she never spoken of him before? Surely she was a strange girl who kept such secrets so passionately hidden. Where had he come from? Was he of good healthy stock? What had his life been? For a time she paced up and down the room in a ferment of curiosity. She tried to imagine what sort of man Ellen would choose to marry. (This time she must be marrying only for love; there could be no other reason.) She tried again and again to picture him and she found herself baffled. It was impossible to imagine. . . .
And when she had grown more calm and the sense of the dreary flat was borne in upon her once more, she remembered The Everlasting. He was ninety-five, and yet not really an old man; his mind had never faltered in its course. But he was feeble and needed care. She could not desert him now. She deceived herself into believing that it was her duty to care for him until he died; and only the Almighty knew when that would be. No, she must take him with her. She could not leave him, as Ellen suggested, in some home for the aged. That would be wrong; it would be, in a sense, indecent. He was after all the father of her husband, the grandfather of her children. One could not do a thing like that. She debated the matter with herself for hours, thinking, strangely enough, only of reasons why she should take him; and it never once occurred to her that she really had no desire not to take him. The arguments against it were simply the habit of an intermittent civil war that had endured for more than thirty years. She could not bear to leave him behind, any more than she could have borne it to leave behind the old clothes, the worn shoes, and the Bible she had given Fergus on his tenth birthday. Gramp was a fixture now, a part of the past. Without him she would feel lost and lonely.
When she told him the intoxicating news, the old man, with a wariness that placed no trust in their unreal truce, looked at her sharply and said, doubtfully, "I don't know, Hattie. I'm too old and too feeble. I think perhaps I'd better stay behind." He opposed the idea in the belief that if he opposed it she would insist upon its being carried through.
But she was firm. She would not even argue the matter. He must go with her to Paris. He would be quite as well off there as anywhere else and he would at least be where she could look after him.
"Much better off," thought Gramp, whose only desire was to see Paris again before he died. But he still maintained a resentful air as if he opposed the idea with his last breath but was far too feeble to offer any real resistance.