Possession (Bromfield)/Chapter 66
THE thing happened on a hot breathless night in September when the shimmer of heat dying away with the fall of evening left the garden cool and dark save for the light that streamed from the windows of the long drawing room and from a single window of the white pavilion. The English nurse was there, waiting, and the doctor had come and gone to return in a little while. Everything went well, save that the patient (so the nurse explained to Hattie and Thérèse) was not accepting the ordeal in the proper mood. She had insisted upon playing bridge, when she should have been walking up and down, up and down, to hasten the birth of the child. She sat now in the drawing-room at a table with Lily, Jean and Rebecca, angry at not being allowed to smoke, desperate that she had no control over what was happening to her. She sat, holding her cards stiffly before her, clad in a peignoir of coral silk, her black hair drawn tightly back as she had worn it at her concerts.
"Two spades," she said, and glared at Rebecca when the latter doubled. There was a dew of perspiration on her high smooth forehead and she bit her lips from time to time. She was magnificent and dominating (thought Lily). Really it was an amazing kind of fierce beauty.
In one corner de Cyon, ousted from the pavilion, sat reading his foreign newspapers—the threads which kept him in touch with the world of foreign politics. They lay spread out before him . . . Le Journal de Genève, Il Seccolo of Milan, La Tribuna of Rome, the London Post, the London Times, the New York Times, Le Figaro, L'Echo de Paris, Le Petit Parisien, Le Matin, L'Œuvre . . . in a neat pile, from which he lifted them calmly in turn, to read them through and clip now here, now there, with the long silver scissors a bit of news, a king's remarks, a prime minister's speech or the leader of some Socialist editor. Ensconced behind the gilt table, he appeared cool and aloof, with his white hair and his pink face. What was going on almost at his side had no interest for him. His first wife had been barren and his second he had married too late. He clipped and clipped, the lean scissors snipping their way through words in Italian, Spanish, German, French and English. Snip . . . snip . . . snip . . . they ran. . . .
A dozen feet from him and well away from the bridge table where at the command of Ellen the others played in a disheartened fashion, Hattie and Thérèse sat side by side, the one knitting energetically at a blue and white carriage robe, the other nibbling at a biscuit. They both waited . . . they both fidgeted, not daring to risk an explosion from Ellen. She was not to be crossed at this moment.
"When Richard was born," Thérèse was saying . . . "I suffered for twenty-six hours . . . but they do things better nowadays."
And then Hattie, in a low voice lest she disturb the bridge players, "I'm not sure that nature's way isn't the best. I don't believe in hurrying things." And then in the hot silence, the click, click, click of her knitting needles.
"She ought to be walking up and down," said Thérèse anxiously. "Do you think we ought to speak to her?"
"It will do no good. . . . In a moment she won't be able to sit there playing bridge. She'll have to walk up and down. . . . I remember when my last child was born, the doctor said. . . ."
And so they went on, turning over and over again incidents appropriate to the occasion, two prospective grandmothers, each of them passionately interested in what lay ahead. Thérèse, despite her swarthy skin, looked pale, and her fat hand trembled as she nibbled the biscuit. . . . Hattie only knit more and more furiously, raising her head from time to time to glance at her daughter who sat like a Spartan playing with Jean as a partner and winning steadily from Lily and Rebecca.
Snip! Snip! Snip! ran the silver scissors. Click! Click! Click! the knitting needles. Hattie halted for a moment to wipe her red, hot face. And then the cool, desperate voice of Ellen again, saying, "Five tricks and thirty-six in honors."
"It's our rubber," said Jean, white and nervous with the strain. And in his blue eyes the old light of admiration appeared. Ellen had always been like this even in the days when she had taken him, a little boy, to the Bois.
It was ten o'clock when Ellen at last pushed back her chair and rose as the doctor entered the room. "I will walk for a time," she said and went with him out on to the terrace.
In their corner Hattie and old Thérèse grew silent and fell simply to watching for the figures of Ellen, in the coral peignoir, the doctor and the black dog, to pass and repass the tall windows. Jean smoked and quarreled in a low voice with Rebecca, and Lily going over to the side of de Cyon sat down and fell to reading the lace-like remnants of the newspapers that her husband tossed aside with the regularity of a machine. Presently, Augustine, her peasant's face beaming with the significance of the occasion, brought champagne which all save Hattie, who refused it sternly, drank against the heat.
The sounds in the distant street began to die away and the echo of the boat whistles on the Seine grew fainter and fainter. On the terrace Ellen and the doctor were joined by a second nurse, still in her cape, who had come in by the garden side.
And at half-past ten Callendar appeared at the foot of the long stairs, looking worn and old, but cool despite all the heat. At his entrance Hattie ignored him, Thérèse nodded, and the others, save de Cyon who did not notice him at all, bowed without any trace of warmth. He was an enemy; it was clear that they looked upon him thus, even old Thérèse whose only interest lay now in the child. He seated himself and fell to talking with Lily, who could not for long be disagreeable to any man, and presently Ellen appeared in one of the windows and said, "Rebecca, you and Jean play the piano . . . I can't bear to look at you all sitting like statues." And then she beckoned to Callendar who rose and went over to her.
As he left the room, Rebecca watched him with a queer expression of apprehension in her eyes. She did not trust him. He might turn the circumstances to his own advantage. He might cast a spell over Ellen at the moment when she was least able to resist. With Jean she went reluctantly to the piano where they fell to playing with four hands and with a mathematical precision they had long since perfected a variety of music hall songs. And as she played she stole a glance now and then over her shoulders at the tall windows past which Ellen and Callendar moved with a clock-like regularity. But she was not the only one who watched. There was Hattie too and even old Thérèse. Each of them desired from Ellen a different thing, and each of them was resolved to have her own will in the matter.
Outside the windows the husband and the wife with the black dog at their heels walked up and down while Ellen, looking tall and pale and desperate, talked earnestly.
"The child," she said firmly, "is to be mine. I will fight until the end for that. I have made up my mind. I will not have him go to you. . . . You are not fit."
He said nothing in reply. It was not possible to argue at such a time. She was fighting now, as he had always done, unscrupulously, to achieve what she desired. They turned at the end of the terrace and moved back once more past the windows where Rebecca and Hattie and Thérèse kept peering out. It was (thought Ellen in a peaceful moment) like bearing one's child in public . . . as the French Queens had done, with a whole crowd looking on. . . . (But she must bring her mind back to the business at hand.)
"And if anything happens to me," she said to Callendar, "if I should die and the child live . . . he is to be brought up by my mother. I have talked to my lawyers. It is possible to arrange all that. There is plenty of evidence against you . . . even a French court—" She gasped for breath and turned again. "Even a French court would uphold me in that. Besides Rebecca has promised me that she will carry on the fight. I tell you all this, because I want you to know that I am finished forever." She was walking rapidly now and made a sudden passionate gesture in the direction of the windows. "Rebecca need not look at us so anxiously. There is no question about it. . . . And I will not leave a child of mine in such an atmosphere as you and your mother are able to provide." She drew another quick, sharp breath and added, "I gave you every chance . . . and you were a rotter always. I loved you and I would love you still if I thought there was any chance of redemption . . . but there is none."
And then, before turning toward the pavilion, she said, "You did not win in the end, you see. . . . It was I who won . . . I and Sabine too. . . . And I will go on fighting, even if I should die. It has all been arranged. And now," she said, dismissing him, "will you tell my mother to come with me to the pavilion? I want none of the others . . . only her."
So it was Callendar who summonded Hattie at the moment Ellen needed her most. In the end she belonged to Hattie alone of all those people who sat waiting . . . Hattie, whose whole life had been concerned with love and birth and death.
When they had gone away, Callendar sat on the stone balustrade smoking in silence, conquered now beyond all doubt. He had been dismissed once and for all. Ellen would return now into the world out of which she had come to him . . . a world in which she belonged to Rebecca and her public. Perhaps as he sat there in the hot, still air, waiting for his child to be born, he knew the last of his adventures to which there was any savor had come to an end.
Through the windows he saw de Cyon rise presently and go up the long stairs. He saw Lily (a fascinating woman, he thought, who must have been very beautiful in her youth) talking to his mother who still nibbled at her biscuit. Jean and Rebecca had ceased their music and sat now playing double patience with a fierce, unnatural absorption.
Augustine came in presently with a message. Mrs. Cane Callendar (Sabine) would like to know if there was any news. She went away again with the message Lily gave her: Everything was going well, but there was no news yet.
They were all waiting, waiting, waiting. . . .
Callendar held tight the heavy collar of Hansi, who squirmed and moaned pitifully because he could not follow his mistress.
Rebecca found him there when at last she tired of her game and wandered out into the garden to smoke. She passed him without speaking and as he looked after her, he saw that she had taken to walking round and round the white pavilion as if she had set herself to guard it from him.
Presently he returned to the drawing-room and opening another bottle of champagne, sat silently by the side of Lily, who alone behaved with any kindliness toward him. Old Thérèse watched him, desperately, as the time drew nearer and nearer. She was pale now with terror lest Madame de Thèbes had been wrong. If the child were a girl it would be the end of everything. . . . She had even stopped nibbling her biscuits. The reticule had fallen to the floor. Her fat body rested on the edge of her chair . . . tense and strained in her passionate anxiety.
The whole room, the whole house, the whole garden stood breathless in the heat with the terrible stillness that surrounded the waiting. . . .
Somewhere in the direction of the Trocadéro a clock struck midnight, booming faintly, each stroke hanging on the hot still air to confuse the stroke which followed. The sound swam in the big room. Callendar rose and went again into the garden, into a distant corner well away from Rebecca whose progress round and round the pavilion was marked by the tiny glow at the end of her cigarette.
Thérèse, unable to bear the silence any longer, rose too and went out onto the terrace to watch the light in the pavilion. A breeze came up and the leaves of the plane trees fell to rustling. Lily and Jean talked together quietly in the corner by de Cyon's desk. From the window on the second floor which opened into Gramp's room there was a light still burning. Rebecca, looking up at it from her vigil, saw the figure of the old man show black and thin against the glow, as he leaned out and peered over the garden.
An hour passed and the distant clock struck one. A bell sounded faintly in the house and Augustine appeared. It was Mrs. Cane Callendar once more. Was there any news?
"She must have a violent curiosity," thought Lily, "to be staying up all night."
Thérèse, in the black shadow of the house, began to pray, as if it were still not too late for a miracle. She had never been religious, but like Voltaire she believed in trying everything. . . . After she had prayed for a time she grew hungry, took another biscuit from the reticule and went into the drawing-room for a glass of champagne. So it happened that before she was able to return to her watching and praying the door of the pavilion opened and the tiny lights that in the darkness marked the positions of Callendar and Rebecca moved hastily in its direction.
In the doorway stood Hattie, larger than either of them, red-faced, triumphant and with a wild light in her eyes. As first Rebecca and then Callendar emerged from the shadows, she said, "It is all over. . . . Everything is fine. . . . It is a boy!"
The news was borne by Rebecca into the drawing-room where Thérèse in her excitement put down her glass of champagne into sheer space instead of on the table, leaving it to break and spill its contents over the Aubusson carpet. On short fat legs she waddled through the window to the pavilion where Hattie, who had in the excitement of the moment forgotten her hatred, was delivering to Callendar a detailed and vivid account of the accouchement.
Thérèse forgot even her English. "Eet ees a boy," she squealed. "Eet ees a boy. God is good. He has answered my prayers . . . and what is it he weighs?"
"Seven pounds," replied Hattie. "A fine baby, though none of my children weighed less than ten."
A kind of hysteria swept them all. The waiting was over. Thérèse had an heir, Hattie had a grandchild and Callendar, at last, a son whom he would perhaps never possess as his own. From a window above their heads, the sound of a cracked shrill voice shot at them.
"Is the child born? What is it?" . . . And then with irritation. "For Heaven's sake!"
It was Gramp. Lily answered him, and the bony head was withdrawn again, the light extinguished and the room left to silence.
They must all see the child. They must come to the very door of the pavilion where Hattie, holding them at bay like a royal nurse exhibiting the heir to the populace, thrust toward them a lusty, tomato-colored child which appeared to cry, "Ala-as! Ala-as! Ala-as!" over and over again, monotonously. She allowed no one to touch it, not even old Thérèse who, kept at bay by the threatening manner of the royal nurse, bent over it murmuring, "The darling! Isn't he beautiful? The precious darling! Qu'il est mignon! And he looks for all the world like Richard, the precious darling."
"You can't tell what he looks like," said Hattie with a savage indignation. "That's nonsense! You can't tell for a long time!"
Callendar, thrust aside by this regiment of women, regarded his son with a faint light in his gray eyes. He said nothing. He waited. Perhaps for an instant he wished that he might see Ellen, as a father, a husband should have done. But he was given no chance, for Hattie said, "She wants to see Lily. The doctor says she may see no one else."
Ensconced in the pavilion Hattie became a despot, a tyrant. The child at the moment it entered the world became a part of her family, swallowed up by it remorselessly.
Inside the pavilion, a pale, handsome Ellen looked up at Lily and murmured, smiling a little, "You must call Sabine. Tell her that she was right. Just tell I am a good gambler. I have been successful. Old Thérèse is satisfied."
One by one they drifted away until only Callendar was left sitting in the darkness, smoking and thinking. A little way off in the shadow where she could not be seen Rebecca waited too, watching him; and when at length he rose and went out of the gate into the Rue de Passy, she followed and stood looking after him as he climbed the slope and disappeared around a corner beneath the glare of a street lamp. He seemed not so tall and not so formidable as he had once been. The fine shoulders sagged a little; and Rebecca, looking after him, knew whither he was bound. For she had taken the trouble to find out. She had herself hunted down his infidelity. Ellen, she knew, would never forgive him and she (Rebecca) had the proof. It was the seal upon his defeat.
And as she stood there she looked not down the Rue de Passy but down the corridor of the years, and at the end she saw a defeated and bitter sensualist buying with money what had once come to him through beauty and charm and the glow of youth.
She closed the gate and turned back into the garden. The dawn had begun to filter in through the trees and to turn the pavilion from gray to white. To-morrow she must begin to work on the plans for Ellen's return. It must be triumphant, spectacular, worthy of such an artist as Lilli Barr. For Ellen belonged again to Rebecca Schönberg.