Possession

by Louis Bromfield

In these days his daughter-in-law rarely addressed him, and less and less frequently she came to see that his room was in order. There were other cares to occupy her energy. There was a husband, working now, and two growing boys and her own father to care for; in addition to all these she had taken to sewing, secretly, for friends whose fortunes were better. (She was a magnificent needle-woman.) And she had each day to write a long letter to Ellen, though the letters in return came but weekly and sometimes not so often.

They kept her informed of the bare facts of her daughter’s life. They told her, in a new, amusing and somewhat cynical fashion of Ellen’s adventures among the music teachers of the city ... of weeks spent wandering through the bleak and drafty corridors of studio buildings, tormented with the sounds made by aspiring young musicians. They described the charlatans, the frauds, which she found on every side, teachers who offered every sort of trick and method by which fame and fortune could be reached by the one and only short cut. There were women called Madame Tessitura and Madame Scarlatti, who had been born Smith or Jones and knew less of music than May Seton, and men who wore velveteen jackets and insisted upon being called “Maestro.” There were the usual adventures (alarming to Hattie Tolliver who saw her daughter still as a little girl) with lecherous old men. Indeed, in this connection Ellen wrote with a certain hard mockery that was utterly strange and carried overtones of an unmoral point of view, as if such things were to be treated more as preposterous jokes than as “grave offenses.” And in this Mrs. Tolliver fancied she discerned some traces of Lily’s influence. To a woman like Lily, such things didn’t matter. She took them too lightly, as a part of the day’s experience ... carefree, charming, indolent Lily, so impossible to combat.

And at last, wrote Ellen, she had stumbled upon the proper person ... an old man, a Frenchman, who bore the name of Sanson. He knew what music could be, and so she had settled with him, working under his guidance. In his youth he had known Liszt, and he had been a friend of Teresa Carreño, until a quarrel with that temperamental beauty ended the friendship. Ellen, he had hinted, might one day become as famous as Carreño (she was like her in a way) but she must work, work, work and not lose her head. It would be a long hard path with Paris at the end! (It was always this thought which filled Mrs. Tolliver with a nameless dread. Paris! Paris! And Lily!)

But what troubled her most was the absence of any comment upon Clarence beyond a simple statement that he was well. By now she must have realized that Ellen had no love for him. From her letters it was clear that she had not found him actually offensive. He was a good enough husband; he did everything for Ellen. It was, indeed, clear that he worshiped her. But on her side there appeared to be only a great void, a colossal emptiness where there should have been the emotion that was the very foundation of her mother’s life.

Mrs. Tolliver worried too about the expenses of her daughter’s household. In such matters, distance made no difference. It was her habit to remark to her husband, “If only I could be near Ellen I could teach her so much about managing. Clarence must make a great deal of money to have such a flat and pay for her lessons too.”

And when she questioned Ellen in her letters, she received the reply that Ellen had spoken to her husband and been told that there was no need to worry. He had, he said, plenty of money ... eight thousand a year.

It is possible of course that Ellen never loved him for an instant; it is probable that the state of her affections never progressed beyond the stage of the kindly pity which is akin to love. She was not a bad wife. She cared for him admirably. She kept his house in order. She even cooked for him delicacies which she had learned from her mother. He insisted that she have a servant, declaring that he could easily afford it. She gave him all that he asked, even of herself, and yet there was a difference ... a difference with altered everything. It was that difference which Hattie Tolliver, expert in such things, sensed in the letters of her daughter. It filled her with a vague suspicion that Ellen had sold herself to satisfy a thing no greater than mere ambition.

Of Clarence’s sentiments there could have been no doubt. He sang his wife’s praises to the men at the Superba Electrical Company, to the men whom he met on those trips into the west when Ellen was left behind alone in the Babylon Arms. He bought her present after present until, at length, the whole aspect of their little apartment was changed. Bit by bit the furniture altered its character. First there was a small grand piano, and then a sofa and presently a chair or two, and at last the brass beds which he and Bunce had once occupied gave place to twin beds of pale green ornamented with garlands of salmon pink roses. And strangely enough as the apartment brightened, the little man himself appeared slowly to fade. In contrast with his handsome and energetic wife, he grew more and more pale. It was as if he were being devoured by some inward malady. Yet there was nothing wrong. Doctors could discover nothing save the usual weakness of his heart.

If he desired a more demonstrative affection than that given him by Ellen, he said nothing of the desire. He never spoke of love. Indeed, long afterward, when Ellen followed back her memories of their life together she was unable to recall any mention of the word. If he desired her passionately he sought her silently and with timidity, as if each caress she gave him were far beyond that which he had any reason to expect. He was a shy man and with Ellen it was impossible to speak of such things; there was a coolness about her, a chastity of the sort which surrounds some women regardless of everything. And always it was she who dominated, always she who gave, coldly and without passion, as if she felt that in all honor she owed him a debt.

With the passing of the months the breach between Ellen and Mr. Wyck became complete. The other friends came sometimes to the Babylon Arms where Clarence, with a sudden expansion of temperament, entertained them in lordly fashion and beamed with pride in his wife. But Mr. Wyck no longer came. There had been no open quarrel, not even a hasty word. Quietly he had dropped from the habit of seeing Clarence at home. It was a change so imperceptible that before Clarence understood it, it was complete.