Possession

by Louis Bromfield

At the lovely old house in the Rue Raynouard there were always the friends of Lily and Madame Gigon, dowdy, bourgeois and dull, among whom Lily moved with the calm of perfect security, as the one American who had ever penetrated with any success the inmost circle about the doddering Prince Bonaparte. The presence of so vigorous and arrogant a creature as Ellen they resented bitterly and sometimes openly, so that Ellen in the end was thrown for companionship, a thing of which she stood very little in need, upon Rebecca Schönberg, Schneidermann and all their hodgepodge of musicians, artists, writers and patrons of art.

Rebecca, as the months turned into years, had come to devote more and more of her time to the house in the Rue Raynouard. When she returned from Danzig, or Rome, or Vienna or wherever it happened to be, she came day after day to Numéro Dix where it was her habit to sit quietly in the big empty music room and listen with extraordinary attention while Ellen played hour upon hour. She watched Ellen’s progress with an interest of such intensity that Ellen at times grew ill-tempered and wished heartily that the sandy haired creature would disappear forever. She would, doubtless, have committed some act to sever their relationship forever save that always in the back of her mind was the certainty that the Jewess was valuable to her.

It was really the sense of Rebecca’s domination which at once annoyed and confused her; otherwise she liked her well enough. It was Rebecca who suggested the number of hours which she should practise; it was Rebecca who bullied her into going out in the world; it was Rebecca who insisted on helping her choose her clothes; it was Rebecca who even brought to the Rue Raynouard people who sent Madame Gigon into the most distant part of the house where she would be safe from the noise of their violent, modern music. It was Rebecca who at times set the house by the ears and threatened to bring about an open quarrel between Ellen and the Baron.

For a long time the enmity between these two had grown less and less concealed. Lily must have sensed conflict and in her quiet, indolent way have chosen to pretend that no strain existed. There was irony in the fact that a woman who sought only quiet and leave to do as she pleased should have found herself suddenly the battleground between two natures so violent. In dealing either with insolence or domination Lily had no difficulty; always she had gone quietly her own way achieving in the end by some unviolent coup her own desire. When she chose, even the dark, bumptious César obeyed her as a pet dog might have obeyed. She was even able to cope with Ellen (though she seldom interfered) in the very midst of the girl’s most stubborn moods. Yet when César and her cousin came into conflict, she grew helpless; it was like living perpetually on the edge of a volcano. She knew, perhaps by instinct, what it was that caused the trouble ... that each of them sought to rule the household.

So the peace had gone presently from the lovely old house. On one side were ranged César and his aunt, the blind old Madame Gigon, reënforced by the cohorts of crêpe-laden old women who came to her salons and impressed upon her the sense of her injury. On the other were ranged Ellen and her ally, the shrewd Rebecca. Between the opposing armies stood Lily who wished only peace and luxury and indolence.

One night early in May, before Lily’s household had moved to Germigny, Rebecca failed to appear for a concert they had planned to attend. There had been good reason; an aunt of Rebecca’s, very rich, had arrived without warning from Vienna. Yet Ellen was unreasonable and believed that Rebecca had failed her deliberately. She had gone out for a time to walk sullenly along the Seine and when she returned, she went silently to her room and locked the door. The disappointment, the softness of the evening, the look of the lights floating in the river ... all these things created an overwhelming and terrible nostalgia.

Once inside the room she flung herself down on the canopied bed, her blue black hair all tossed and disheveled, and, weeping, reproached herself bitterly. She was, she believed, a horrible creature. She had treated her mother cruelly; she had forgotten the existence of her brother—of Fergus, with his humorous blue eyes and magical sympathy and his uncanny way of understanding what it was that terrified her, what it was that made her unhappy, what it was that drove her on and on without rest or peace. She saw too her father, a mild man who loved her without making any claim, without once speaking of love. On all these she had turned her back in a heartless fashion.

And Clarence ... poor Clarence ... was always with her in these terrible moments of solitude. She knew him then as she had never known him in life; she saw him with a terrible clarity, moving about meekly with the awful look of pleading in his near-sighted eyes. He had not been like that in the beginning; he had changed while he lived with her, changed, as it were, beneath her very eyes. And she saw him too as he lay for the last time on the divan of the little flat in the Babylon Arms, peaceful at last and untormented by a woman who always eluded him, a woman whom he loved so much that he made way with himself that he might hinder her no longer. And him she could never repay; it was impossible even to explain or to beg for forgiveness, though he would have said, no doubt, that there was nothing to forgive.

Then growing a little more quiet, she asked herself in one of her rare moments of reflection what power had driven her to act as she had done. To this there was no answer; it was quite beyond her. She knew, as indeed she had always known, that she must go her way, solitary and ruthless, to fulfil a rather shadowy ambition, a confused desire for vindication, a hunger for the sight of the world at her feet.

It would do no good now to turn back, because such a course could only create disaster. Sitting up among the pillows of the canopied bed she fell to staring hopelessly into the darkness. For a long time she sat thus, pale and disheveled, her long black hair streaming over the crimson peignoir. She had discovered an awful thing. She, Ellen Tolliver, who had wanted only to be free, was entangled and caught beyond all escape. She could not turn back. She could only go forward along the path which she herself had chosen, and it was a lonely path, a path so enveloped in solitude that she fell to weeping again over the desolate waste of its loneliness.