But there was one part of the story which she did not tell. It was that part which concerned her elopement and all that had followed it. She said simply, “And so I came to New York to study, and luckily fell into the hands of Sanson....”
Richard Callendar stood up suddenly and poked the fire. His mother said, “You could not have done better,” and Sabine observed, “Here in New York we forget that the rest of the country exists.... I’ve never been out of New York except to go to Europe or to some summer place.”
To-night, instead of being a performer, one who played in public, she was the guest, the center of the evening.
She played for them the Moonlight Sonata and while she played, she became conscious again of the curious, breathless way in which Richard Callendar listened. It seemed, for a time, that he existed only in a single spirit which somehow enveloped her and the music of Beethoven. All the evening he had been silent and watchful, as silent and as watchful as herself, save in the moment when she was carried away by her own story. When she had finished playing she was conscious of another fact, perhaps even more interesting. It was that Sabine had noticed a difference and was regarding the handsome Callendar with a look so intent that Ellen, turning sharply, caught her unaware.
This new world was a world of shadows, of hints, of insinuations, a world of curious restraints and disguises. Out of these, in the very instant she turned from the piano, she understood that the relation between Sabine and young Callendar was more than a casual friendship. Sabine was in love with him, passionately, perhaps without even knowing it, for it must have required a terrible force to lead a woman so circumspect into such a betrayal.
That night, for a second time, Ellen left the house in company with Sabine and Richard Callendar. It came about that, as they were preparing to leave, young Callendar proposed to accompany them and without further discussion entered the carriage. In the past it had been the custom to send Ellen home in the cabriolet while Callendar followed in the brougham with Sabine. Sometimes these two walked to Sabine’s house. She lived in Park Avenue, a half dozen blocks away, in a tall narrow house, exceedingly stiff and formal in appearance ... a house which one could not but say suited her admirably.
On the way, they talked music for a time and when the cabriolet approached Sabine’s corner, she said simply, “I am tired. You can drop me at home.”
So she bade them good night without further ado and disappeared into the narrow house. It was a strange thing for her to have done. Ellen and Callendar must have expected her to accompany them all the way to the Babylon Arms and to return alone with him; that would have been the order of things. But she was more subtle than they imagined. If she understood, as Ellen was certain she had, that there was some new thing come into the relations that existed among them all, she was clever. She did not attempt to change or even interrupt this new current; wise in the depths of her shrewd mind she saw that to be an obstacle was not the same as to be a goal. So she left Richard Callendar with the stranger who had become her rival. It may have caused her sleeplessness and torment; she may have felt a keen jealousy, but it was impossible to know. It may also have been that, knowing the continental ideas of Callendar, she was not concerned over her ultimate victory. By the rule of the very tradition which had shut her in, Callendar could not marry this stranger.
29
AS Callendar reëntered the cabriolet, Ellen settled back into her corner to wait. She watched, as always, but this time she was conscious that there was another who was watching. It seemed for the first time that there had risen up in her path a person, perhaps even an enemy, who played the same waiting game. Callendar sat in his corner, his dark face visible now and then as a streak of light from the lamps entered the door, and in that uncertain and shifting illumination, Ellen studied him closely for the first time.