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Global Power Shift

Sarah Kirchberger
Svenja Sinjen
Nils Wörmer Editors

Russia-China
Relations
Emerging Alliance or Eternal Rivals?
Global Power Shift

Series Editor
Xuewu Gu, Center for Global Studies, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Advisory Editors
G. John Ikenberry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
Canrong Jin, Renmin University of Beijing, Beijing, China
Srikanth Kondapalli, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Beate Neuss, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany
Carla Norrlof, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Dingli Shen, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Kazuhiko Togo, Kyoto Sanyo University, Tokyo, Japan
Roberto Zoboli, Catholic University of Milan, Milano, Italy

Managing Editor
Hendrik W. Ohnesorge, Center for Global Studies, University of Bonn, Bonn,
Germany
Ample empirical evidence points to recent power shifts in multiple areas of interna-
tional relations taking place between industrialized countries and emerging powers,
as well as between states and non-state actors. However, there is a dearth of
theoretical interpretation and synthesis of these findings, and a growing need for
coherent approaches to understand and measure the transformation. The central
issues to be addressed include theoretical questions and empirical puzzles: How
can studies of global power shift and the rise of ‘emerging powers’ benefit from
existing theories, and which alternative aspects and theoretical approaches might be
suitable? How can the meanings, perceptions, dynamics, and consequences of global
power shift be determined and assessed? This edited series will include highly
innovative research on these topics. It aims to bring together scholars from all
major world regions as well as different disciplines, including political science,
economics and human geography. The overall aim is to discuss and possibly blend
their different approaches and provide new frameworks for understanding global
affairs and the governance of global power shifts.
All titles in this series are peer-reviewed.
***
This book series is indexed in Scopus.
Sarah Kirchberger • Svenja Sinjen • Nils Wörmer
Editors

Russia-China Relations
Emerging Alliance or Eternal Rivals?
Editors
Sarah Kirchberger Svenja Sinjen
Institute for Security Policy at Kiel Foundation for Science & Democracy (SWuD)
University (ISPK) Kiel, Germany
Kiel, Germany

Nils Wörmer
Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung
Berlin, Germany

ISSN 2198-7343 ISSN 2198-7351 (electronic)

Global Power Shift
ISBN 978-3-030-97011-6 ISBN 978-3-030-97012-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97012-3

Funding Information: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022. This book is an open access publication.
Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation,
distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the
original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes
were made.
The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license,
unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative
Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted
use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
In memoriam
Hannes Adomeit
(1942–2022)
Acknowledgments

This volume is the outcome of a 2-year research process in which several dozen
people from all over the globe were involved in some form or other, and that took
place largely during a global pandemic. A publication project of this type typically
resembles a marathon that ends in a sprint, and this was no exception. Therefore, the
editors are extremely grateful to each and every type of contribution to this project
that they received along the way, whether large or small, and what follows below is
by no means an exhaustive listing.
Above all, we would like to thank the contributors of this volume, who were all in
some way or other detrimentally affected by the pandemic—some in a rather severe
way—and yet, nonetheless, found the time to contribute their extremely valuable
knowledge and energy to this project. We are hugely grateful to them for prioritizing
this project among the manifold obligations and challenges they faced along the
way, and hope very much that they are pleased with the outcome.
Svenja Sinjen of SWuD and Sarah Kirchberger of ISPK are especially grateful to
the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) for its extremely generous financial and
intellectual support of their project idea from mid-2019. KAS provided the major
portion of the funding for an expert in-person workshop in Berlin in mid-January
2020 and hosted two further in-person events, one in Berlin and another workshop in
Brussels, all of which were decisive for sharpening the research agenda of this
project. KAS also provided several active participants to the workshop discussions,
including several moderators, and also very generously funded the production of this
volume as an open-access publication. At KAS, the editors would particularly like to
thank Daniela Braun for her constant, enthusiastic support of this research project
right from the outset, as well as during the workshop in Berlin in January 2020 and
during the publication process. Further KAS colleagues who collaborated with us
during this process include Frank Priess, Philipp Dienstbier, Thomas Yoshimura,
and David Merkle, who all attended and contributed to the Berlin workshop, and
Denis Schrey and Susanne Conrad of the KAS Brussels office who hosted the
Brussels workshop. We also owe Elisabeth Bauer of the KAS Office for the Baltic
states many thanks for her help in identifying interesting experts. The various forms

vii
viii Acknowledgments

of support from KAS, whether financial, organizational, or in terms of expert input

and content, were truly invaluable for the success of this project.
At SWuD, we are indebted in particular to Astrid Kuhn, whose support of this
research as part of the SWuD’s “Global Transformation & German Foreign Policy”
project was instrumental in allowing us to generate an initial concept for the research
agenda and follow it through. We gratefully acknowledge the SWuD funding we
received for the 2020 Berlin workshop. At ISPK, the editors would like to thank
Stefan Hansen for his equally decisive support of this research project and the
funding we received in support of the publication process.
The editors are especially grateful to all the Russia, China, and security experts
who participated in various roles during the research of this project, whether as
discussion partners, workshop presenters, peer reviewers, or sparring partners in
heated discussions. We particularly benefited from our interactions with Heinrich
Brauss, Mathieu Duchâtel, Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, Phillip Karber, Holger
Mey, Hanna Katharina Müller, and Timothy Reilly, and are grateful for their
extremely valuable input.
It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the debt to our contributor, advisor,
and collaborator Hannes Adomeit who on April 25, 2022, passed away after a brief
illness. He had taken part already in our first project workshop in January 2020, and
besides penning the opening chapter for this volume also served as a reviewer and
commentator. We were privileged to work so closely with him during the past two
years, are immensely grateful for all his expert contributions to our project, and
mourn the loss of a great scholar and dear colleague whose clearsighted and
uncorruptible analyses will be sorely missed, especially in times such as these.
We would also like to thank the many officials from several different nations who
participated in our related Berlin and Brussels workshops and offered us their
questions, observations, and remarks. All this input helped us to refine the agenda,
sharpen our questions, shape our outlook, and ultimately allowed us to form some
conclusions that hopefully have value for their own work.
Related to the production of this volume, at Springer Nature, Johannes Glaeser,
Niko Chtouris, and Parthiban Kannan were enthusiastic yet patient and incredibly
helpful supporters of this publication project. We kindly thank the editors of the
Global Power Shift series at Springer for accepting this volume as part of their series.
We would also like to offer our thanks to the group of peer reviewers who have
worked with us on helping the authors refine the contributions for this volume. Steen
Gilbertson has done a fantastic job of copyediting the contributions, of which only a
minority were written by English native speakers. Stella Kim at ISPK has rendered
us invaluable editorial assistance and watched over our adherence to the style guide.
Lastly, the editors would like to thank their families and friends for their constant
patience and support throughout the past two years. Juggling family obligations with
work was particularly challenging during the times of lockdown, and has demanded
unprecedented adaptability from everyone. We are therefore grateful for all the help
and understanding we received along the way.
Acknowledgments ix

We submitted this volume to the printers in late 2021. While we now complete
the final proofreading stage in mid-April 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine that
began on February 24, 2022, is still ongoing and its outcome uncertain. Much as this
Russian war of aggression and the ensuing Western sanctions have dramatically
changed the security landscape of Europe, and as much as the course of this war will
prove to be an important test case regarding the depth of the Sino-Russian strategic
partnership, only minor changes to our text were still possible at this stage of the
publication process, with only cursory and preliminary remarks inserted here and
there. The readers of our volume are kindly asked to bear this in mind.
Contents

Introduction: Analyzing the Shifts in Sino-Russian Strategic

Cooperation Since 2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Sarah Kirchberger, Svenja Sinjen, and Nils Wörmer

Part I Mutual Perceptions and Narratives

Russia’s Strategic Outlook and Policies: What Role for China? . . . . . . . 17
Hannes Adomeit
Imperialist Master, Comrade in Arms, Foe, Partner, and Now
Ally? China’s Changing Views of Russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Jo Inge Bekkevold
Domestic Politics: A Forgotten Factor in the Russian-Chinese
Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Marcin Kaczmarski

Part II The Military Dimension of Sino-Russian Cooperation: Case

Studies
Russian-Chinese Military-Technological Cooperation and the
Ukrainian Factor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Sarah Kirchberger
Russia-China Naval Partnership and Its Significance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix
Chinese and Russian Military Modernization and the Fourth
Industrial Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Richard A. Bitzinger and Michael Raska
China-Russia Cooperation in Nuclear Deterrence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Brian G. Carlson

xi
xii Contents

Part III Spatial and Multilateral Aspects of Sino-Russian Cooperation:

Case Studies
Digital Authoritarianism and Technological Cooperation
in Sino-Russian Relations: Common Goals and Diverging
Standpoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Elina Sinkkonen and Jussi Lassila
Sino-Russian Scientific Cooperation in the Arctic: From Deep
Sea to Deep Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Frank Jüris
Partnership Without Substance: Sino-Russian Relations
in Central and Eastern Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Edward Lucas and Bobo Lo
Cooperation Between Russia and China in Multilateral
Organizations: A Tactical or a Strategic Alliance? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Olaf Wientzek

Part IV The Way Forward: How Could the West Cope with
Russia and China?
What a Military Alliance Between Russia and China Would Mean
for NATO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Rainer Meyer zum Felde
Options for Dealing with Russia and China: A US Perspective . . . . . . . . 267
Andrew A. Michta
The Way Forward: How Should Europe Deal with Russia
and China? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Joachim Krause
Conclusion: Connecting the Dots and Defining the Challenge . . . . . . . . . 293
Barry Pavel, Sarah Kirchberger, and Svenja Sinjen

Select Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Sarah Kirchberger is the Head of Asia-Pacific Strategy & Security at ISPK. She
also serves as Vice President of the German Maritime Institute (DMI) and is a
Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. She has published on China’s
Navy and defence economy, transatlantic China strategy, Russian-Chinese--
Ukrainian arms-industrial cooperation, the South China Sea issue, emerging tech-
nologies in naval warfare, and China’s and Taiwan’s political systems. She
previously served as Assistant Professor of Sinology at the University of Hamburg
and as a naval analyst with shipbuilder TKMS. Kirchberger holds a PhD and an MA
in Sinology from the University of Hamburg.

Svenja Sinjen is head of science communication at the Foundation for Science and
Democracy (SWuD) and an editor at the journal SIRIUS. In addition, she leads the
SWuD’s project “Global Transformation & German Foreign Policy.” Previously,
she was head of the Future Forum Berlin at the German Council on Foreign
Relations, focusing on security and defense policy, transatlantic relations, and
NATO. She was also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Defense
and Strategic Studies at Southwest Missouri State University/USA. She holds a
master’s degree in political science and is a board member of the German Atlantic
Society.

Nils Wörmer is head of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s International and Security

Affairs Department since September 2018. Previously he was in charge of the
Stiftung’s Syria/Iraq office and its Afghanistan office. Prior to this, Nils Wörmer
was a Senior Associate in the Middle East and North Africa Division of the German
Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). He obtained his degrees in
political science and Islamic studies in 2005 after studying at the Helmut Schmidt

xiii
xiv Editors and Contributors

University of the German Federal Armed Forces and the University of Hamburg.
Nils Wörmer is a lieutenant colonel in the reserve army of the Bundeswehr.

Contributors
Hannes Adomeit was a Senior Research Fellow at ISPK specializing in Russian
foreign policy and military affairs. He holds a PhD “with distinction” from Columbia
University. Adomeit previously taught Soviet, Russian, and East European Studies
at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston and the Natolin (Warsaw)
campus of the College of Europe. His research affiliations have included the German
Institute for International Politics and Security (SWP) in Berlin, Harvard
University’s Russian Research Center, and the International Institute for Strategic
Studies (IISS) in London.

Jo Inge Bekkevold is Senior Advisor at the Norwegian Institute for Defence

Studies. His recent publications include India’s Great Power Politics: Managing
China’s Rise co-edited with S. Kalyanaraman (Routledge, 2021), Sino-Russian
Relations in the 21st Century co-edited with Bobo Lo (Palgrave Macmillan,
2019), China in the Era of Xi Jinping: Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges with
Robert S. Ross (Georgetown University Press, 2016), and International Order
at Sea: How it is challenged. How it is maintained with Geoffrey Till (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016). Bekkevold is a former career diplomat in the Norwegian Foreign
Service, with several postings to East Asia.

Richard A. Bitzinger is a Visiting Research Fellow with the Military Transforma-

tions Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). His work
has focused on security and defense issues relating to the Asia-Pacific region,
including military modernization and force transformation, regional defense indus-
tries and local armaments production, and weapons proliferation. He was previously
a Senior Fellow at RSIS from 2006 to 2018 and headed up the Military Trans-
formations Program from 2012 to 2018. He has written several books, monographs,
and book chapters, and his articles have appeared in such journals as International
Security, Orbis, China Quarterly, and Survival.

Brian G. Carlson is head of the Global Security Team of the Think Tank at the
Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zürich. He holds a Ph.D. in International
Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
in Washington, D.C. He was previously a Trans-Atlantic Post-doc in International
Relations and Security (TAPIR) fellow at CSS, SWP in Berlin, and RAND in
Washington, D.C. His research focuses on the China-Russia relationship and the
foreign policies of both countries. He speaks both Chinese and Russian.

Frank Jüris is a Research Fellow at the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute at the
ICDS. His research focuses on China’s domestic and foreign policy and on
Editors and Contributors xv

EU-China and Sino-Russian relations. Jüris studied in Estonia and Taiwan and has
lectured at the universities of Tartu and Tallinn. In recent publications for EFPI and
Sinopsis, he has exposed the involvement of party-state agencies in Arctic infra-
structure projects and Estonian politics. Jüris holds a BA from Tallinn University
and an MA from the University of Tartu as well as an MA in Asia-Pacific Studies
from Taiwan National Chengchi University.

Marcin Kaczmarski is Lecturer in Security Studies in the School of Social and

Political Sciences, University of Glasgow. Dr. Kaczmarski is the author of -
Russia-China Relations in the Post-Crisis International Order (Routledge 2015).
He published articles in leading academic journals, including International Affairs,
Survival, International Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, and Problems of Post-Com-
munism. He was a visiting scholar at the Chengchi University in Taiwan, the Slavic-
Eurasian Research Center in Japan, the Aleksanteri Institute in Finland, the Kennan
Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Shanghai International Studies University in
China.

Joachim Krause is Director of the Institute for Security Policy at the University of
Kiel since 2002. He was Professor for International Relations at Kiel University
from 2001 to 2016. Before that, he was Deputy Director of the Research Institute of
the German Council on Foreign Relations (Bonn and Berlin), and in an earlier
capacity, he was senior scholar at the Research Institute for International Affairs
and Security of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Ebenhausen near
Munich. Professor Dr. Krause has published more than 40 books and more than
300 articles in journals and edited volumes.

Jussi Lassila (adjunct professor, University of Jyväskylä) is Senior Research Fel-

low at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. His research interests are related
to Russian domestic politics and post-communism, in particular political move-
ments, identity politics, nationalism, populism, and political communication. He
has published extensively on these issues, for instance, “An Unattainable Ideal:
Youth and Patriotism in Russia,” in Nexus of Patriotism and Militarism in Russia:
A Quest for Internal Cohesion. Ed. by K. Pynnöniemi (HUP 2021), and “Putin as a
Non-populist Autocrat,” Russian Politics 2018, and co-edited and coauthored the
volume War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (Palgrave
Macmillan 2017).

Bobo Lo is a nonresident Senior Fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at

the Center for European Policy Analysis and an independent international relations
analyst. He is also an Associate Research Fellow with the Russia/NIS Center at IFRI
and a nonresident Fellow with the Lowy Institute, Sydney, Australia. Previously, he
was Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and Deputy Head
of Mission at the Australian Embassy in Moscow.
xvi Editors and Contributors

Edward Lucas is a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy
Analysis. He was formerly a senior editor at The Economist. Lucas has covered
Central and Eastern European affairs since 1986, writing, broadcasting, and speak-
ing on the politics, economics, and security of the region. He is campaigning to win a
central London parliamentary constituency as a Liberal Democrat, on an anti-
kleptocracy ticket.

Rainer Meyer zum Felde Brig. Gen. (ret.) is Senior Fellow at ISPK. From 2013 to
2017, he was Senior Defence Advisor at the Permanent Delegation of Germany to
NATO and the German Representative in NATO’s Defence Policy and Planning
Committee. He previously served in various NATO postings at NATO HQ in
Brussels and Strategic Command Headquarters in Mons and Norfolk VA. In the
German MOD, he worked in the Minister’s Policy Planning and Advisory Staff
(1996–98; 2006–09) and in the Politico-Military Department (1989–1991). He holds
a degree in educational science and a degree in security policy (University of
Geneva/GCSP, 1996).

Andrew A. Michta is Dean of the College of International and Security Studies at

the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. He was Professor of
National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, the M.W. Buckman Distin-
guished Professor of International Studies at Rhodes College, a Senior Fellow at the
Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C., a Senior Transatlantic
Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS), and the
founding director of the GMFUS Warsaw office, among others. He holds a Ph.D.
in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University.

Barry Pavel is Senior Vice President and Founding Director of the Scowcroft
Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, where he focuses on
geopolitics, strategy and foresight, national security and defense, and advanced
technologies. From 2008 to 2010, he served as the Special Assistant to the President
and Senior Director for Defense Policy and Strategy on the National Security
Council staff for President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. Pavel
holds an MA in security studies and an MPA in international relations from
Princeton University and a BA in applied mathematics/economics from Brown
University.

Michael Raska is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Military Transforma-

tions Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang
Technological University in Singapore. His research interests focus on East Asian
security and defense, including theoretical and policy-oriented aspects of military
innovation, force modernization, information conflicts, and cyberwarfare. He is the
author of Military Innovation and Small States: Creating Reverse Asymmetry
(Routledge, 2016) and co-editor of Security, Strategy and Military Change in the
21st Century Cross-Regional Perspectives (Routledge, 2015). He holds a Ph.D.
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 This was no longer the stormy, unhappy Ellen who had run away with a
drummer. This was Lilli Barr, a woman of the world, hard, successful, with
smooth edges. She glittered a bit. She was too slippery ever to recapture.
She sat there, in her chic, expensive clothes, self-possessed, remote,
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The others would discover all this in time, later on. The Everlasting
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At one o’clock, Robert summoned a taxi and drove with her to the Ritz.
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addressed each other. They were tired, and they were separated in age by
nearly ten years. (Robert had been but ten when Ellen eloped.) The one was
an artist, caught up for the moment in the delirium of success. The other
sold bonds and was working at it with a desperate, plodding persistence.
They might, indeed, have been strangers.
Ellen, watching in silence the silhouette of her brother’s snub nose and
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Rebecca had already gone to bed and she would find herself alone in the
gaudy hotel. She was afraid, more and more of late, to be left alone.
Still, she reflected, there would be Hansi ... for company ... Hansi, a big,
black, wolfish dog who devoted himself to her with a fanatic affection.
And the thought of Hansi turned her memories in the direction of Paris,
which lay safe for the time being from the Germans; for Hansi reminded her
always of Callendar and the day, just before they left for Vienna, when a fat
little old man brought the dog with a note to the house in the Rue
Raynouard.... A note which read ... “I send you Hansi because he is like
you. He will look well by your side and be devoted to you. He may remind
you sometimes of me, even in the midst of wild applause. It would be easy
now to forget one who has known since the beginning that you were a great
artist.
C”
 That was all ... just a line or two, but enough to remind her of what she
had forgotten—the awful sense of his patience, which seemed always to say
with a shrug that all life was merely a matter of waiting.
The solid voice of Robert roused her.
“Here we are,” he said, and stepping from the cab, she was washed for
an instant by the brilliant white glare of electricity and then vanished
through the whirling doors into the Ritz.

In all the hubbub of those busy, noisy days there were intervals when, for
a moment, she found time for reflection ... odd moments between tea and
dinner, or in the hours after midnight when the roar of the city and the small
revealing sounds of the great hotel had abated a little; or moments when
Rebecca, buoyant, triumphant and full of business interviewed in the sitting
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with his head against her knee, his green eyes fastened on her face with a
look of adoration. She stroked the fine black head and murmured, “You
never told me his name.”
 “His name was Wyck,” said Hattie. “We grew to be very fond of him. He
was no trouble at all, though he did sometimes talk too much concerning his
family. Still, I can see that he had nothing else to talk about. He didn’t seem
to have any friends but us. Fergus was the only one who didn’t like him.”
Ellen looked up suddenly. She had forgotten Fergus. She had forgotten
that Wyck had seen him on the morning when Clarence lay dead on the
divan in the Babylon Arms. Perhaps they did not remember each other.
Certainly it was clear that Hattie knew nothing. Fergus must have known
and, distrusting the nasty little man, have kept his secret. It was a strange
world.
There was champagne that day for lunch because Rebecca had asked her
uncle Raoul and his daughter, a handsome dark Jewess. Together they sat
about a table laden with food which was rich and bizarre to Hattie Tolliver.
The sunlight streamed in at the windows and the waiters bobbed in and out
of the room serving her daughter. The champagne she refused to drink and
when the diamond merchant filled Ellen’s glass, she frowned and said, “I
wish you wouldn’t drink, Ellen. You never know what it leads to.”
And when Mr. Schönberg, after telling one or two risqué stories, held a
match to Ellen’s cigarette, Hattie frowned again and the old look of
suspicion came into her eyes. It was Lily Shane who had taught her
daughter to behave like a fast woman. She knew that.

It was only when the first excitement of Ellen’s return had worn away
that Hattie began to feel the dull ache of an unhappiness which she could
neither understand nor define. With all the vast optimism of her nature she
had fancied the return of Ellen as something quite different from the reality.
A hundred times during the long years while her daughter was away, she
lived through the experience in her imagination; she saw Ellen taking her
place once more in the midst of the family, quarreling cheerfully with
Robert, helping her mother about the house, going and coming as the mood
struck her. She fancied that Ellen would be, as in the old days, sullen and
sometimes unhappy but always dependent just the same, always a rather
sulky little girl who would play the piano by the hour while her mother saw
to it that there was no work, no annoyance to disturb her.
And now it was quite different. She scarcely saw Ellen save when she
went to the Ritz to eat a hurried lunch of fancy, rich foods under the bright
eyes of the cheerful Miss Schönberg. The old piano stood in the apartment,
silent save when Hattie herself picked out her old tunes in a desperate attack
of nostalgia. Ellen had played for her a half dozen times but always on the
great piano in her sitting room at the Ritz; it was not the same as in the
sentimental, happy days when Hattie, as ruler of her household, sat darning
with her family all about her. There was no time for anything. And Ellen
herself ... she had become slippery somehow, happier than in the old days,
but also more remote, more independent, more “complete” as Lily had said.
She had no need of any one.
There were days too when Hattie felt the absence of Mr. Wyck. Of all
those who had at one time or another depended upon her ... old Julia,
Fergus, Ellen, Wyck and all the others ... none remained save her husband.
And somehow she had come to lose him too. Here in the city, living in his
farm papers and in his memories, he had escaped her in a way she failed to
understand. He slept more and more so that there were times when she was
worried lest he might really be ill. Robert and The Everlasting were aloof
and independent; they were no help whatever. But Mr. Wyck had come to
her, wanting desperately all the little attentions which she gave so lavishly.
And now he was gone, almost secretly and without gratitude. It hurt her
because she could not understand why he had run away.
At times it seemed that with no one to lean upon her, the very
foundations of her existence had melted away; there were moments when,
for the first time in all her troubled and vigorous life, she feared that the
world into which she had come might at last defeat her.
 47

S CARCELY a week after the landing of Ellen and Rebecca, Thérèse

Callendar landed in New York, almost willingly and with a sense of
relief. In the solid house on Murray Hill, the usual army of charwomen
arrived and put the place in order against her coming, but on her arrival she
closed most of the rooms and chose to live between her bed-room and the
library. She was, oddly enough, confused and a little weary. She had been,
all her life, a match and more for the shrewdest of men; she had outwitted
bankers and brokers and even swindlers, and now she stood confronted by a
catastrophe which she was unable to dominate. A third or more of a vast
fortune stood in danger ... that part of it which she had been unable to save
when the maelstrom broke over Europe. Much of it, fortunately, was
transferred into safety. Through bits of information and advice picked up
here and there in the course of her wanderings, she had divined that one day
there was certain to be a war, and accordingly she had taken money out of
Germany and placed it in England, disposed of Russian bonds and
reinvested the money in America, shifted credits from Vienna to Paris. Yet
there still remained a great sum which, for the time being, was lost in the
confusion ... part of the fortune she had tended with the care of a gardener
for his most prized orchid.
In the midst of the turmoil she had stayed for days in the office of her
lawyer in Paris, wiring now to London, now to Trieste, now in New York—
sitting with him, a shrewd, bearded man, in conference with bankers,
brokers and men who simply juggled money into more money. And in the
end even she, Thérèse Callendar, had been no match for the war. She
wakened one morning to find the Germans at the gates of Paris and the
Government fled to Bordeaux. She was alone; Richard and Sabine and little
Thérèse were in England. So alone she had paced the tesselated floors of
the monstrous house in the Avenue du Bois, until all had been done which
could be done. And at last, glad to leave the Europe which Ellen had called
a madhouse, she turned back for the first time in her life with pleasure and
relief to the quiet of the brownstone house on Murray Hill.
She had come to New York, as may be said of great people, incognita.
Only her banker and her lawyer knew she was in town—a strange state of
affairs for a woman who had lived always in public, going from one capital
to another, seeing scores of people day by day.
It was not the money alone which troubled her. There was the matter of
Sabine for which there seemed to be no solution. As she sat alone in the
dark library three days after her arrival, she turned the matter over in her
mind.
She thought of the interview which took place with Richard a day or two
before the Archduke was shot in Serajevo ... an interview which occurred
after lunch in the house in the Avenue du Bois before he took the Boulogne
express to join Sabine in Hertfordshire. Over her coffee, she saw him again
... a dark handsome son of whom a mother might have been proud if he had
cared more for the things which were the foundation of her life. There was
bitter disappointment in all that ... his neglect of business and his
indifference to money. Here he was, a man of thirty-five, who did nothing
but amuse himself. He gambled a bit, he bought a picture now and then, he
had a passion for music, he fenced and swam and rode beautifully. Yet there
seemed to be no core to his existence, no foundation, unless the satisfaction
of his own desire for pleasure might be called the dominant thread of his
character. It was satisfaction—no more than that: it was never satiation. If
he had been weak or dissipated or a waster, there would have been more to
be said against him; but he was none of these things. In this, fortunately, he
took after her own people. He had not, like young Americans who had
money, gone to pieces. He took good care of himself. He had no habit
which had become a vice. He had all the curious strength that comes of an
old race.
Sitting over her coffee, she saw him again as he stood with the old
mocking smile on his too red lips while she argued across the spaces of
Wolff’s house in the Avenue du Bois. He stood, rocking a bit on his toes,
with the easy grace which came of a supple strength, looking down at her
out of the mocking gray eyes.
“But there is no one whom I want to marry,” he had said, “even if Sabine
would divorce me.”
At which she had grown angry and retorted, “Women interest you. It
would be easy enough....”
“It would be a nasty, unpleasant business. She is not a bad wife. I might
do much worse. I am sorry that she can’t have more children, but that is
none of my doing. I do not want to hurt her. I might not have another wife
as satisfactory.”
To which Thérèse had replied, “She is unhappy. I know she is. She can’t
stand indifference forever, even if she is a cold woman. Besides she’s in
love with you. She can’t go on always living with you and yet not living
with you. She’d be happier free ... to marry some one else.”
Then he had mocked her out of the depths of his own security. “Do you
think love is such a simple thing that it can be turned on and off like water
from a tap?” (She knew that love with him was just that ... something which
could be turned on and off, like water from a tap.)
“Besides, it was you who wanted me to marry her. I had other ideas.”
“You mean Ellen Tolliver?” she asked. And then, “You would not have
married her if you could have escaped it ... if you could have got her in any
other way.”
But she saw that the look of mockery had faded a little at the sound of
the girl’s name. (She was of course no longer a girl but a successful woman
of thirty or more.)
“I don’t know ...” he had said, “I don’t know what I should have done.
Only I fancy that if I had married her there would have been a great many
little heirs running about.”
She had delivered herself into his hands. As a woman of affairs she knew
that one could not argue sensibly about what might have happened; and for
what had happened she herself was responsible. In that he had been right.
“Would you marry her to-day?”
“How can I answer that? Probably she wouldn’t have me. Why should
she? We’re both different now.... It’s been years.... She’s rich now ...
successful ... famous. It isn’t the same.”
“People don’t change as much as that ... especially if they not seen each
other. They are likely to keep a memory of that sort always fresh. It’s likely
to grow strong instead of weak.”
“I’ve seen her since ... several times ... at her concerts.”
She saw, with her small piercing eyes, that she had uncovered a weak
place in his armor ... a single chance on which to pin all her hopes.
“Have you talked to her?”
“No.”
 She knew too that he was, in a sense, invincible. Sabine, so far as the
world was concerned, made an excellent wife. She was worldly,
distinguished, clever. So far as he was himself concerned, she gave him no
trouble. She did not make scenes and she did not indulge in passionate
outbreaks of jealousy. She did not even speak of the love which he sought
outside his marriage ... the intrigues that were always taking place and now
made him invincible in the face of her argument. She effaced herself, and as
she had done once before, waited. But on that occasion she had waited for
marriage, and had won. Now she was waiting for love, which was quite a
different matter.
“If it’s an heir you want, I have one already.” He smiled. “He must be
nearly twelve by now. Of course, he is the grandson of a janitor and the son
of a music hall singer.... Still, he is an heir. We might legitimatize him.”
By this stroke he had won, for he had made her angry ... the thing he had
been seeking to do all the while.
“I hear from him twice a year ... when my lawyer sends his mother
money.”
“You’d do well to forget his existence.”
And then they had talked for a time without arriving anywhere.
As usual it was Richard who had won. He had gone back to Sabine as if
nothing at all had occurred.

Thérèse drank the last of her coffee and then laid her dumpy figure down
on the divan in the dark library. She was tired for the first time in her life, as
if she had not the strength to go on fighting. She might have but a few years
longer to live and she must hurry and settle this matter. There must be an
heir to whom she might pass on the fortune ... not a sickly girl like little
Thérèse but a man who could manage a responsibility so enormous.
Though her body was weary, her mind was alert. There still remained a
chance. In the gathering darkness, she knew that the chance depended upon
two things ... the hope that Ellen Tolliver still loved Richard as she had so
clearly loved him on the night years earlier when the girl had talked to her
in this very room; and the hope that Lilli Barr was as honest, as respectable,
as bourgeois as Ellen Tolliver had been.
 She got up and in the darkness made her way to the bell. When the butler
appeared and switched on the lights, she said, “Please get me a box for the
concert of Lilli Barr.... It’s a week from to-morrow.” And, as he was
leaving, she added, “I shall give a dinner that night. See to it that the rest of
the house is got ready.”
This was the first step.
 48

O N the very same night in her weathered house sheltered by lilacs and
syringas in the Town Miss Ogilvie, trembling and fluttering like a
canary set free and preening itself in the sun, packed her trunk for the
trip to the East. Any one looking on might have believed her, save for the
wrinkled rosy cheeks and the slight spare figure, a young girl on the eve of
her first party. After all, it was an event ... the first trip she had made to the
East since the Seventies when she had sailed as a girl for Munich. And she
was going East to hear Ellen Tolliver play ... Ellen who had been a chit of a
girl when she had last seen her, Ellen who was now Lilli Barr, whose name
and picture appeared everywhere in the papers, Ellen who had hidden on
the night she fled the Town in the nest-like parlor of this very house.
Miss Ogilvie, packing her best taffeta with its corals and cameos to wear
at the concert, indulged in an orgy of memories ... memories that went back
to the years before Ellen was born, to the days in Munich when for a
delirious week, until the heavy hand of her father intervened, she had
fancied she would become a great musician and play in public.
Pausing beside the old tin-bound trunk, she thought, “No, I never could
have done it. I was too much a coward. But Ellen has ... Ellen has.... And to
think that I advised her to do it, that I told her to go ahead.”
In the long span of a gentle life in which there had been no heights and
no valleys, this occasion eclipsed all else ... even the day she had herself
sailed on the black paquebot for Europe.
“It happens like that ... in the most unexpected places, in villages, in
towns.... Why, even in a dirty mill town like this.”
It all came back to her now, all the conversation between herself and
Ellen on that last day when, weeping, she said to the girl, “I no longer count
for anything. You are beyond me. Who am I to instruct you?”
And she remembered too with a sudden warmth the old bond between
them, the hatred of this awful, sooty Town ... a desert from which Ellen had
boldly escaped, which Miss Ogilvie had accepted, hiding always in her
heart her loathing of the place.
 “And to think that she remembered me ... a poor, insignificant old
woman like me! To think that she even paid my way!”
For Miss Ogilvie could not have come otherwise. As the years passed
she had grown poorer and poorer in her house behind the trees.
Her conscience pricked the old lady. “I wonder,” she thought, sitting on
the edge of her chair before the old trunk. “I wonder if I should confess to
Hattie Tolliver that it was I who helped them to escape. It would be more
honest, since I am going to stay with her.”
And then she grew worried for fear Ellen might be ashamed of her in her
old-fashioned taffeta with coral and cameo pins. Ellen had been living in
Paris with Lily Shane; she would know all about the latest thing in clothes.
And to convince herself that the dress was not too bad, she put it on and
pinning fast the coral and cameos, stood before her glass, frizzing her hair
and pulling the dress this way and that.
In the midst of these preparations, she was interrupted by the distant
jangle of the bell and the sound caused her to blush and start as if she, an
old dried-up woman, had been caught by an intruder coquetting before her
mirror.
She knew who was at the door. It was Eva Barr and May Biggs come to
send messages to Ellen, for they too shared a little her excitement. They
would talk, the three of them, about Ellen as they remembered her until
long after midnight; for all three hoped that Ellen might be induced to play
in the Town, especially since there was such a fine new auditorium. They
too had claims upon her, claims of friendship and blood and old
associations.
 49

O N the night of the concert Ellen wore a gown of crimson velvet,

according to a plan of Rebecca who determined that the occasion
should be a sensational one not to be forgotten. The house was filled
and when Lilli Barr came through the door at the back of the stage there
was a quick hush, a sudden breathlessness, caused not so much by her
beauty (for she was never really beautiful in the sense that Lily was
beautiful) but by the whole perfection of the picture. The crimson dress
fitted her tightly and was sleeveless and cut low to show the perfection of
her strong, handsome shoulders. Her black hair, so black that in the brilliant
light which showered upon her from overhead (a device of Rebecca’s) it
appeared blue as the traditional raven’s wing. She wore it pulled back
tightly from her smooth forehead and done in a small knot at the nape of the
neck. In her ears she wore old Portuguese rings of paste and silver. She was
superb, glittering, slender, strong, and possessed of the old brilliant power
to distract thought and concentrate attention.
In that instant the battle was half won. There were those in the audience
who felt that the mere sight of her was enough.
In her box on the first tier, Mrs. Callendar sat up with a start, raised her
lorgnettes and said “Tiens! Quel chic!”
Beside her Mrs. Mallinson (the lady novelist) murmured, “Superb
creature!” and the Honorable Emma Hawksby (back again to live off the
Americans on the strength of being a niece to the disreputable Duke of
Middlebottom) thought again that the big feet of Englishwomen were a
serious hindrance and that perhaps her countrywomen went in too much for
walking. The elderly rake, Wickham Chase, sighed bitterly at the tragedy of
old age and the loss of vigor. Bishop Smallwood (whom Sabine had dubbed
the Apostle to the Genteel) thought, “She looks like my wa’am friend, Mrs.
Sigourney,” but, considering the impression, thought better of it and said
nothing, since Mrs. Sigourney had long since overplayed her game and
become utterly déclassée. And the third, a nondescript bachelor, strove to
peer between Mrs. Mallinson’s supporting dog-collar and the bony back of
the Honorable Emma Hawksby. If he had any thoughts at all, they were not
very interesting; for thirty years he had been sitting in the back of boxes at
plays, concerts and the opera, peering between plump backs and skinny
ones.
Below them the audience stretched away row upon row, in dim lines
marshaled into neat columns like an advancing army seen through a mist.
Mrs. Callendar thought, “Ah! She is magnificent. The transformation
scarcely seems possible.... Still, the girl had it in her always.” And a little
voice kept saying to her, “You will win. She is an admirable pawn. You will
succeed. You will get what you want if you work hard enough and are
clever about it.”
Down among the dim rows spread out below them sat Hattie Tolliver, in
a new gown chosen by Ellen. Large and vigorous she sat, looking a little
like a powerful and eccentric duchess, by the side of Miss Ogilvie in her
mauve taffeta with the corals and cameos, her thin hair done elaborately in a
fashion she had not worn since she was a girl. They sat there, the eagle and
the linnet, trembling with excitement, the tears very close to the surface of
the emotional Hattie.
Presently, as Ellen took her place at the piano and struck a few crashing
chords, Hattie could bear it no longer. She leaned toward the stranger at her
side, a woman with short hair and an umbrella, and said in triumph, “That’s
my daughter who’s playing.”
The stranger stared at her for an instant and murmured, “Is it indeed?”
And the music began.
Hattie really wanted to tell them all—the row upon row of strangers,
obscured now by the darkness.
Charles Tolliver at his end of the row closed his eyes and slipped
presently into the borderland between sleep and consciousness, a country
where there is no reality and all is covered by a rosy mist. Through this the
music came to him distantly. He fancied he was back once more in the
shabby living room with Ellen playing sullenly at the upright piano. And for
a little time he was happy.
Robert, who had no ear for music, felt uncomfortable and disapproved of
his sister’s low-cut gown. Robert was a prig; he took after his grandfather
Barr, “the citizen.”
The Everlasting was not to be seen. He had been left at home, because it
was impossible to say how he would behave on such an occasion. One
dared not take the risk.
 In the mind of Hattie, sitting there in the shadows of the great hall, there
could be no question of failure. Was it not her Ellen, her little girl whom she
had once held upon her knee, who now sat, as it were, upon a throne before
a world which listened breathlessly? All those people who filled the seats
about her and above her might have risen and left, but to Hattie the evening
would have been a great success, a triumph in which the judgment of the
world had been wrong. They did not leave; instead they sat, leaning forward
a bit or slipped down in their seats with closed eyes, bedazzled as much by
the perfection and grace of this new musician as by the music itself.
Rebecca, standing in the darkness at the back of the great hall,
understood all that. She knew that in part the triumph was her own, for had
she not tricked them, hypnotized them? They would not be able to forget.
She, like Hattie, felt with every fiber of her body, the very sensations of all
those people who listened—people from great houses of the rich who had
heard of Lilli Barr from friends in Europe, people from the suburbs who
would rush away in frantic haste for the last train home, people—young
people—like the one who sat next to Hattie, in shabby clothes and worn
shoes, who were fighting now desperately, as Ellen had once fought, to
reach that same platform, that same brilliant shower of light. They listened,
enchanted by the sound, caught by the spell of one woman’s genius and
another’s brilliant trickery. Possessed they were, for the moment.
And presently the tears began to stream down Hattie’s face. They
dropped to the hands worn and red, concealed now by the expensive gloves
which cramped her uncomfortably.
The applause rose and fell in great waves, sweeping over her with the
roaring of a great surf heard far away, and through it the voice of Miss
Ogilvie, saying gently, “Who would have believed it?”
And then at length, when the sound of the last number had died away, an
overwhelming surf which would not die even when the woman in crimson
appeared again and again under the brilliant shower of light; until at last
Lilli Barr seated herself before the great satiny piano and the crowd, which
had pushed forward to the stage, grew quiet and stood listening, waiting,
silent and expectant ... the people from great houses, the people from the
suburbs, the young people with worn shoes and shabby clothes. And into
the air there rang a shower of spangled notes, gay and sparkling, embracing
a rhythm older than any of them. For Lilli Barr—(or was it Ellen Tolliver)
—was playing now The Beautiful Blue Danube. It was not the old simple
waltz that Hattie had picked out upon the organ in her father’s parlor, but an
extravagant, brilliant arrangement which beneath the strong, white fingers
became fantastical and beautiful beyond description.
Hattie Tolliver wept because she understood. It was as if Ellen—the
proud, silent Ellen—had been suddenly stripped of all the old inarticulate
pride, as if suddenly she had grown eloquent and all the barriers, like the
walls of Jericho, had tumbled down. Hattie Tolliver understood. Her
daughter was speaking to her now across all the gulf of years, across the
hundred walls which stood between them. This was her reward. She
understood and wept at the sudden revelation of the mysterious thread that
ran through all life. All this triumph, this beauty, all this splendor had its
beginning long ago on the harmonium in the parlor of old Jacob Barr’s
farm.
When the lights went up and Hattie, drying her eyes and suffering her
hand to be patted by Miss Ogilvie, was able to look about her, she saw with
a feeling of horror among the figures crowded in a group before the stage a
coonskin coat and a sharp old face that was familiar. It was The Everlasting.
He had come, after all, alone, aloof, as he had always lived. He stood with
his bony old head tilted back a little, peering through his steel rimmed
spectacles at the brilliant figure of his granddaughter.
For an instant Hattie thought, triumphantly, “Now he can see that my
child is great. That she is famous. He will see,” she thought, “what a good
mother I have been.”
But her sense of triumph was dimmed a little because she knew that
Ellen belonged also to him ... all that part which she had never been able to
understand. It was Gramp’s triumph as well as Hattie’s. To her horror she
heard him shouting, “Bravo! Bravo!” in a thin, cracked voice, as if he were
a young man again listening while Liszt played to an audience of
foreigners.

In the box, looking down on the crowd below, Thérèse Callendar waited
to the end. She sent Mrs. Mallinson, the Honorable Emma Hawksby, the
Apostle to the Genteel, Wickham Chase and the nondescript bachelor away
in her motor, bidding the driver return for her. She sat peering down
through her lorgnettes, plump and secure in her sables and dirty diamonds, a
little bedazzled like all the others but still enough in control of her senses to
be interested in the figures below. Among them she too noticed the
extraordinary figure of a skinny old man in a coonskin coat, who stood a
little apart from the others with a triumphant smile on his sharp, wrinkled
face.
At the moment she was in an optimistic mood because there had
occurred in the course of the concert an incident which, with all the rich
superstition of her nature, she interpreted as a good omen. Between the two
parts of the program when dozens of bouquets (mostly purchased by
Rebecca) were rushed forward to the platform, she saw that Lilli Barr
leaned down and chose a great bunch of yellow roses. It was the bouquet
which Thérèse had sent. It was an omen. If there had been any wavering in
the mind of Thérèse it vanished at once. Ellen could not consciously have
chosen it. She was sure now that she would succeed.
Behind the stage whither she turned her steps when the last of the
applause had died away and the lights were turned out, she found Ellen
standing surrounded by a noisy throng. Among them she recognized only
Sanson, who had grown feeble and white since last she saw him. And there
was an extraordinary, powerful woman, handsome in a large way, who wore
her white gloves awkwardly; and beside her a little old spinster in an absurd
gown of mauve taffeta adorned with cameos and coral pins. These two
stood beside the musician, the one proud and smiling, the other a little
frightened, as a bird might be.
It was all exciting. Thérèse waited on the edge of the throng until all had
gone save the big handsome woman and the little spinster in mauve. Then
she stepped forward and saw that Ellen recognized her.
“Ah,” said Ellen, coldly. “Mrs. Callendar! Were you here too?”
Thérèse did not say that the concert was magnificent. She knew better
than to add one more to the heap of garish compliments. She said, “It was
the first time I have been where I could hear you. I knew you would do it
some day.... You remember, I told you so.”
There was a look in Ellen’s eye which said, “Ah! You forgot me for
years. Now that I am successful everything is different.” Then drawing her
black cloak about her crimson dress, she laid a hand on the arm of the big,
handsome woman.
 “This is my mother ... Mrs. Callendar,” she said. “And this is Miss
Ogilvie, my first music teacher.”
Mrs. Tolliver eyed Thérèse with suspicion, and Miss Ogilvie simpered
and bowed.
“I came back to ask you to come home to supper with me,” said Mrs.
Callendar to Ellen. “We could have a sandwich and a glass of sherry and
talk for a time. I’ve opened the house.”
For a moment the air was filled with a sense of conflict. The suspicion of
Hattie, as she saw her daughter slipping from her, rose into hostility. In the
end she lost, for Ellen said, “Yes, I’ll come for a little time.” And then
turning to her mother, she added, “You and Miss Ogilvie go to the Ritz. I’ll
come there later. Rebecca has ordered supper.”
But it was not Thérèse Callendar who won. It was some one who was
not there at all ... a dark man of whose very existence Hattie Tolliver had
never heard.
 50

M EANWHILE in the front of the concert hall a little man whom none of
them had seen slipped away before the lights came up, into the
protecting darkness of the street. He had come in late to sit far back in
the shadow beneath the balcony. Rebecca had noticed him, for he sat almost
beside her and behaved in a queer fashion; but never having seen him
before, she gave the matter no further thought. In the midst of the concert
he had suddenly begun to weep, snuffling and drying his eyes with a furtive
shame. He was a small man with a sallow face and shifting eyes which
looked at you in a trembling, apologetic fashion (a trick that had come over
him in the years since he had been driven from the comfortable flat on the
top floor of the Babylon Arms). Rebecca, of course, had never heard of Mr.
Wyck, yet she noticed him now because he fidgeted with his umbrella and
because his hands trembled violently when he held his handkerchief to his
eyes. He appeared, in his sniveling, frightened way, to be deeply affected by
the music.
He went out quickly, among the first, looking behind him as if he stood
in terror of being recognized and accused before all those people. Once in
the street, he drew his shabby overcoat close about him, and turned his steps
southward with such speed that at times the passers-by glared at him for
jostling them at the crossings. They must have thought too, when he looked
at them, that there was a reflection of madness in the staring eyes. He
plunged south into the glare of light that pierced the darkness above
Broadway like a pillar of fire.
He had seen her again ... the one woman whom he hated above all
persons on earth. He would have killed her. It would have given him
pleasure to see her die, but as he ran, he knew that he had not the courage.
He thought, “I could not bear to face her even for the moment before I
struck. I could not bear the look in her eyes” ... (the old look of contempt
and accusation, as if she knew what it was he had told Clarence)....
He was gone now ... Clarence. Perhaps one might find him on the other
side.
On and on he ran past brilliant pools of light, red and purple, green and
yellow; past lurid posters adorning movie palaces showing men in death
cells and women being carried down ladders in the midst of flames; past
billboards on which extravagantly beautiful women kicked naked legs high
in the air (they were not for him, whose only knowledge of love was that
feeble flicker of affection he had had for Clarence); past rich motors filled
with furs and painted women; past restaurants and hotels glittering with
light from which drifted faintly the sounds of wild music; past all this until
he emerged at last from the phantasmagoria in which he had no part, into
the protective murkiness of a street which led west toward the North River
... a street which began in delicatessen and clothing shops and degenerated
slowly into rows of shabby brownstone houses, down-at-the-heel and
neglected, with the placards of chiropractors and midwives and beauty
doctors thrust behind dusty lace curtains.
He hurried now, more rapidly than ever, with the air of a terrified animal
seeking its burrow, to hide away from all that world of success and wealth
and vigor that lay behind him.
She had come (he thought) out of the middle west, knowing nothing,
bringing nothing, to destroy Clarence and win all that he had seen to-night.
She had trampled them all beneath her feet. And what had he? Mr. Wyck?
Nothing! Nothing! Only the obscenities of a boarding house into which she
had driven him a second time. It was like all women. They preyed upon
men. They destroyed them. And she had been vulgar and stupid and
awkward....
At last he turned in at a house which bore a placard “Rooms to Let.”
There he let himself in with a key and hurried up the gas-lit stairs pursued
by a gigantic shadow cast by the flickering of a flame turned economically
low.
His room lay at the end of the top floor passage beyond the antiquated
bathroom with its tin tub. Once inside, he bolted the door and flung himself
down on the blankets of his bed to weep. A light, brilliant but far away, cast
the crooked outline of an ailanthus tree against the faded greasy paper of the
room. A cat, lean and adventurous, moved across the sill, and a cat fifty
times its size moved in concert across the wall at the foot of the bed. Amid
the faint odors of onions and dust, Mr. Wyck wept pitifully, silently.
For a long time he lay thus, tormented by memories of what he had seen
... the crowd cheering and applauding, the woman in crimson and diamonds
(an evil creature, symbol of all the cruelties which oppressed him). There
were memories too that went back to the days at the Babylon Arms before
she had come out of the west to destroy everything, days when Clarence,
succumbing to the glamour of a name, had treated him as if he were human
... days which had marked the peak of happiness. Since then everything had
been a decline, a slipping downward slowly into a harsh world where there
was no place for him....
After a time, he grew more calm and lay with the quiet of a dead man,
staring at the shadows on the wall until at last he raised himself and sat on
the edge of the bed, holding his head in his thin hands. It was midnight ... (a
clock somewhere in the distance among all those lights sounded the hour
slowly) ... when he again stirred and, taking up from the bed an old
newspaper, set himself to tearing it slowly into strips. He worked with all
the concentration of a man hypnotized, until at last the whole thing had
been torn into bits. Then he went to the window and with great care stuffed
each tiny crevice in the rattling frame. In the same fashion he sealed the
cracks about the sagging door. And when he had done this he approached
the jet on which he was accustomed to heat the milk which made him sleep.
But to-night the bottle of milk was left in its corner, untouched. He glanced
at it and, after a moment’s thought, reached up and slowly turned the knob
of the jet until the gas began to hiss forth into the tiny room. When he had
done all this he returned to the bed and, wrapping himself in his overcoat,
lay down in peace. He did not weep now. He was quite calm. He came very
close to achieving dignity. He waited....
Outside the adventurous cat set up an amorous wail. The shadows
danced across the wall-paper in a fantastic procession, and presently as if by
a miracle their place was taken by another procession quite different—a
procession in which there were ladies in crinolines out of the portraits
which had once known the grandeur of a house on lower Fifth Avenue, and
men in trousers strapped beneath their boots and even a carriage or two
drawn by bright, prancing horses ... a dim procession out of the past. And
presently the second procession faded like the first. The walls of the room
melted away. There was a great oblivion, a peace, an endless space where
one stood alone, very tall and very powerful.... A great light and through a
rosy mist the sound of a tom cat’s amorous wail, more and more distant,
raised in an ironic hymn of love to accompany the passing of Mr. Wyck, for
whom there was no place in this world.
 51

T HE sound of the same clock striking midnight failed to penetrate the

thick old curtains muffling the library on Murray Hill. Here Thérèse and
Ellen sat talking, almost, one might have said, as if nothing had
happened since Ellen last passed through the bronze door on her way to the
Babylon Arms. Under the long, easy flow of Thérèse’s talk her irritation had
dissolved until now, two hours after the concert, they faced each other much
as they had done long ago. It was Ellen who had changed; Thérèse was
older, a little weary, and a trifle more untidy but otherwise the same—
shrewd, talkative, her brisk mind darting now here, now there, like a bright
minnow, seeking always to penetrate the shiny, brittle surfaces which
people held before them as their characters. She found, no doubt, that Ellen
had learned the trick of the shiny, brittle surface; she understood that it was
by no means as easy as it had been to probe to the depths the girl’s inmost
thoughts. She had learned to protect herself; nothing could hurt her now
unless she chose to reveal a weakness in her armor. Thérèse understood at
once that if her plan was to succeed, it must turn upon Ellen’s own volition;
the girl (she was no longer a girl but Thérèse still thought of her in that
fashion) could not be tricked into a bargain. Beyond all doubt she
understood that Richard was dangerous, that he had the power of causing
pain.
As they talked, far into the night, Thérèse fancied that Ellen sat there—
so handsome in the long crimson gown, so self-possessed, so protected by
the shiny, brittle surface—weighing in her mind the question of ever seeing
him again. They did not approach the topic openly; for a long time Thérèse
chattered, in the deceptive way she had, of a thousand things which had
very little to do with the case.
“You have seen Sabine now and then,” she put forward, cautiously.
“Two or three times. She called on me.”
Thérèse chuckled quietly. “She must admire you. It is unusual for her to
make an advance of that sort.”
The observation drew just the answer she had hoped for, just the answer
which Ellen, thinking perhaps that the whole matter should be brought out
into the light, saw fit to give.
 “It was not altogether admiration,” she said. “It was more fear. You see,
she had imagined a wonderful story ... a story that he had brought me to
Paris, and that I was his mistress.”
For a moment Ellen felt a twinge of conscience at breaking the pledge of
confidence she had given Sabine. Still, she must use the weapons at hand.
She understood perfectly that there was something they wanted of her; she
understood that any of them (save only Callendar himself) would have
sacrificed her to their own schemes. He would sacrifice her only to himself.
“She was a little out of her head, I think ... for a long time after little
Thérèse was born. She grieved too because she could never have another
child. She wanted to give Dick an heir.... She was very much in love with
him ... then.” The last word she added, as if by an afterthought.
At this Ellen thrust forward another pawn, another bit of knowledge
which had come to her from Sabine. “He neglects her badly, doesn’t he?”
Thérèse pursed her lips and frowned, as if for a moment the game had
gotten out of hand. “I don’t fancy it’s a case of neglect.... They’re simply
not happy. You see, it was not....” She smiled with deprecation. “Shall I be
quite frank? It was not a matter of love in the beginning.... It was a mariage
de convenance.”
“Yes. He told me that ... himself. Before the wedding took place.”
There was a light now in Ellen’s eye, a wicked gleam as if the game
were amusing her tremendously, as if she found a mischievous delight in
baiting this shrewd old woman with bits of knowledge which showed her
how little she really knew of all that had taken place.
“Of course,” Thérèse continued, “she fell in love with him after a time....
But for him it was impossible.... You see, there is only one person with
whom he has ever really been in love. It was a case of fascination....”
Ellen did not ask who this person was because she knew now, beyond all
doubt. She had a strange sense of having lived all this scene before, and she
knew that it was her sense of drama which was again giving her the
advantage; once before it had saved her when her will, her conscious will,
had come near to collapse. (Long ago it was ... in the preposterous Babylon
Arms which Clarence had thought so grand.)
“He gave me a dog,” she said, by way of letting Mrs. Callendar know
that she understood who the mysterious person was. “Just before I left for
Vienna.... I have him here with me, at the Ritz. He is very like Richard....”
 Mrs. Callendar poured out more sherry. She felt the need of something to
aid her. And then she emerged abruptly, after the law of tactics which she
usually followed, into the open.
“I don’t mind saying, my dear, that you’re the one who has fascinated
him ... always.”
Ellen smiled coldly. “He is not what one might call a passionate lover.”
“He is faithful.”
Ellen’s smile expanded into a gentle laugh. “One might call it, I suppose,
... a fidelity of the soul, ... of the spirit, a sublimated fidelity.” There crept
into her voice a thin thread of mockery, roused perhaps by the memory of
Sabine’s confidences.
Thérèse shrugged her fat shoulders and the movement set the plastron of
dirty diamonds all a-glitter. “That is that,” she observed. “You know him as
well as I do.”
(“Better,” thought Ellen, “so much better, because I know how
dangerous he is.”) But she kept silent.
“I think he would marry you to-morrow ... if you would have him.”
For an instant Ellen came very near to betraying herself. She felt the
blood rise into her face. She felt a sudden faintness that emerged dimly
from the memories of him as a lover, so charming, so subtle, so given to
fierce, quick waves of passion.
“Did he send you to tell me that?” she asked in a low voice.
“No.... But I know it just the same. I have talked to him ... not openly, of
course.”
(“No,” thought Ellen, “not openly, but like this, like the way you are
talking to me.” It was dangerous, this business of insinuation.)
“It is remarkable that the feeling has lasted so long ... so many years,”
Thérèse continued. “It has not been like that with any other woman. I think
he is fascinated by your will, your power, your determination.”
“You make me a great person,” observed Ellen with irony, “but not a
very seductive one.”
“There are ways and ways of seduction. What seduces one man passes
over the head of another.”
“It is a perverse attraction....”
 “Perhaps.... But most attractions are.”
Thérèse had seen the sudden change at the mention of her son’s name,
just as she had seen the change in her son when Ellen’s name had been
brought into the light. She meditated for a time in silence and then
observed, “You are looking tired to-night.”
There were dark circles under Ellen’s eyes, pale evidences of the strain,
the excitement which had not abated for an instant since they embarked for
Vienna.
“I am tired,” she said, “very tired.”
“You should rest,” pursued Thérèse. “You could go to the place on Long
Island. You could be alone there, if you liked. I shouldn’t bother you. I shall
be busy in town until this tangle over money is settled.”
Ellen stirred and sighed. “No, that’s impossible. It’s good of you to offer
it, but I can’t accept.... I can’t stop now. You see the ball has been started
rolling. One must take advantage of success while it’s at hand. Never let a
chance slip past. I know that ... by experience. You see, Miss Schönberg—
she’s my manager—has arranged a great many engagements.”
“Whenever you want a place to rest,” continued Thérèse, “let me know.”
It was true that she was tired, bitterly tired; and more troubling, more
enduring than the mere exhaustion was the obscure feeling that she had
passed from one period of her life into another, that she had left behind
somewhere in these three exciting years a milestone that marked the
borderland of youth, of that first, fresh, exuberant youth which, at bottom,
had been the source of all her success. It had slipped away somehow, in the
night, without her knowing it. She was still strong (she knew that well
enough), still filled with energy, but something was gone, a faint rosy mist
perhaps, which had covered all life, even in the bitterest moments, with a
glow that touched everything with a glamorous unreality, which made each
new turning seem a wild adventure. It was gone; life was slipping past.
Here she sat, a woman little past thirty, and what had she gained in
exchange? Fame, perhaps? And wealth, which lay just around the next
corner? Something had escaped her; something which in her mind was
associated dimly with Lily and the memory of the pavilion silvered by the
moon.
She stirred suddenly. “I must go. My mother and Miss Ogilvie are
waiting at the Ritz.”
 She rose and Thérèse pulled herself with an heroic effort from the depths
of her chair. Together they walked through the bleak, shadowy hall and at
the door Mrs. Callendar said, “You will come to dinner with me some night
... yes? I will ring you up to-morrow.”
And as Ellen moved away down the steps, she added, “Remember, you
must not overwork.... You must care for yourself. You are not as young as
you were once.”
It was that final speech You are not as young as you were once which,
like a barbed arrow, remained in her mind and rankled there as she drove in
the Callendar motor through the streets to the Ritz where she found her
mother and Miss Ogilvie sitting sleepily with an air of disapproval while
Sanson and Rebecca and Uncle Raoul drank champagne and labored to be
gay in celebration of the triumph.
It was about this hour that the amorous wailing of the tom-cat died
forever upon the ears of Mr. Wyck.

In the morning the newspapers printed, in the column devoted to

murders, suicides and crimes of violence, a single paragraph——
“Herbert Wyck, aged forty-three, single, committed suicide last night by
inhaling gas in his room in a boarding house at —— West 35th street. The
only existing relative is Miss Sophronia Wyck residing in Yonkers. It is said
that the dead man’s family once played a prominent part in the life of New
York in the Seventies.”
But no one saw it ... not Hattie Tolliver, nor her husband, nor Robert, nor
Ellen; they were all busy reading the triumphant notices of the concert at
which, more than one critic said, a new Tèresa Carreño had arrived.
Thus passed Mr. Wyck whose one happiness was desolated because Lily
Shane had encountered Clarence Murdock in the dining car of a
transcontinental train. “Women like that,” Harvey Seton had said....

Ellen went to dine in the ugly dining room copied from the Duc de
Morny not once but many times and she met there those people—Mrs.
Mallinson, the Honorable Emma, the Apostle to the Genteel, Mr. Wickham
Chase and scores of others—who had once sat on the opposite side of the
lacquered screen waiting for the Russian tenor, the Javanese dancer and the
unknown young American girl. She sat at dinner between bankers and
bishops, between fashionable young men and elderly millionaires. She was
a success, for she possessed an indifference bordering upon rudeness which
allowed her dinner companions to talk as much as they pleased about
themselves and led them into extraordinary efforts to win a gleam of
interest from her clear blue eyes. And she learned that many things had
changed since she last dined in the Callendar house. She learned that Mrs.
Sigourney was no longer fashionable but merely material for the
newspapers, and that Mrs. Champion and her Virgins had sunk into a
brownstone obscurity in the face of a new age which no longer had a great
interest in virginity; and that artists, musicians and writers were becoming
the thing, that no dinner was complete without them. But it was amazing
how little the whole spectacle interested her. She knew that it had all been
arranged with a purpose; the indomitable Thérèse, for all her fatigue and
worry, was preparing for the next step. These dinners gave Lilli Barr a place
in the world of the Honorable Emma and the Apostle to the Genteel; they
fixed her.
 52

T HE first letter from Lily since Ellen had left the house in the Rue
Raynouard for Vienna arrived on the eve of her departure from New
York for the West. It was a sad letter, tragic and strangely subdued for
one so buoyant, so happy as Lily to have written. Still, there were reasons ...
reasons which piled one upon another in a crescendo of sorrow and tragedy.
It was, as Ellen remarked to Rebecca while they sat at breakfast in the
bright sitting room, as if the very foundations of Lily’s life had collapsed.
César was missing. “I have given up hope,” wrote Lily, “of seeing him
again. Something tells me that he is dead, that even if he were a prisoner I
should have heard from him. I know he is gone. I saw him on the night he
went into action. His troop passed through Meaux in the direction of the
Germans and he stopped for five minutes ... five precious minutes ... at
Germigny. And then he rode away into the darkness.... I am certain that he
is dead.”
Nor was this all. Madame Gigon too was dead. With Lily she had been
trapped in the house at Germigny, too ill to flee. The Germans had entered
the park and the château and spent a night there. Before morning they were
driven out again. During that night Madame Gigon had died. She was
buried now in the family grave at Trilport, nearby.
And Jean ... the Jean (eighteen now) who was such a friend of Ellen’s,
who had ridden wildly through the Bois and through the fields at Germigny,
was in the hospital. He had been with César’s troop. César had pledged
himself to look out for the boy. But César had vanished during the first
skirmish with the Uhlans. Jean had lost him, and now Jean lay in the
hospital at Neuilly with his left leg amputated at the knee.
“I am back in the Rue Raynouard,” wrote Lily, “but you can imagine that
it is not a happy place. I am alone all day and when I go out, I see no one
because all the others are busy with the war, with their own friends and
relations. Many of them have gone to the country because living has
become very dear in Paris. We are safe again, but I am alone. There is not
much pleasure here. I too have been very ill. I know now what a stranger I
have always been. I am American still, despite everything. They know it too
and have left me alone.”
 When Rebecca had gone, bustling and rather hard, out into the streets,
Ellen sat for a long time with Hansi beside her, holding the sad letter in her
hands. This, then, was what had happened to Lily’s world, a world which,
protected by wealth, had seemed so secure, so far beyond destruction. In a
single night it was gone, swept away like so much rubbish out of an open
door. Only Jean was left; and Jean, who loved life and activity and
movement, was crippled now forever.
Moved by an overwhelming sadness, Ellen reproached herself for having
been rude to old Madame Gigon, for having quarreled with César. She had
been unpleasant to them because (she considered the thing honestly now,
perhaps for the first time) because the one had been of no use to her and the
other had threatened to stand in her way. She knew too for the first time
how much Lily had loved her César. In her letter she made no pretenses; she
was quite frank, as if after what had happened it was nonsense, pitiful
nonsense, any longer to pretend. They were lovers; they had loved each
other for years ... it must have been nearly twelve years of love which stood
blocked by César’s sickly wife. There was, Ellen owned, something
admirable in such devotion, still more when there was no arbitrary tie to
bind them, the one to the other.
She rose presently and began to pace up and down the sunlit room, the
black dog following close at her heels, up and down, up and down, up and
down. And the weariness, the strange lack of zest, which she had spoken of
to Mrs. Callendar, took possession of her once more. She was, in the midst
of her triumph, surrounded by the very clippings which acclaimed her,
afraid with that curious fear of life which had troubled her since the
beginning. It was a hostile world in which one must fight perpetually, only
to be defeated in the end by some sinister thrust of circumstance ... a thrust
such as had destroyed all Lily’s quiet security. It was well indeed to have
humility.
She remembered too that Fergus was caught up in the torrent which had
swept away so much that Lily held dear.... Fergus and (she halted abruptly
in her restless pacing and grew thoughtful) Fergus and Callendar, the two
persons in all the world whom she loved best. In the terror of the moment,
she was completely honest. She loved Callendar. If there had ever been any
doubt, she knew it now. She did not, even to save her own emotions, to
shield her own vanity, put the thing out of her mind. She gave herself up to
the idea.
 In her restless pacing, she fancied that she must do something. She must
save them—Callendar and Fergus—by some means; but like Thérèse in her
anxiety over her fortune, like Hattie in her desperation, she found herself
defeated. There was nothing to be done. This gaudy show, this spectacle,
this glittering circus parade which crossed the face of Europe could not be
blocked. She could not save them because they preferred the spectacle to
anything in all the world. Ah, she knew them both!... She knew what it was
in them that was captured and held fast by the spectacle. She knew that if
she had been a man, she too would have been there by their side. They must
be in the center of things, where there was the most going on, the one aloof,
the other fairly saturated in the color, the feel, the very noise of the whole
affair. It was a thirst for life, for a sense of its splendor.... She knew what it
was because she too was possessed by it. It had nothing to do with
patriotism; that sort of emotion was good enough for the French.
Like Hattie, like Thérèse, like a million other women she was helpless,
and the feeling terrified her, who had never been really helpless before. This
war, which she had damned for a nuisance that interrupted her own
triumphant way, became a monster, overwhelming and bestial, before which
she was powerless. And in her terror she was softened by a new sort of
humanity. She became merely a woman whose men were at war, a woman
who could do nothing, who must sit behind and suffer in terror and in
doubt.

Rebecca found her there when she returned at three o’clock, still pacing
up and down, up and down, the great black dog following close at her heels.
She had not lunched; she had not thought of eating.
“The letter from Lily,” she told Rebecca, with an air of repression, “has
upset me. I don’t know what I’m to do. I want to go back to Paris.”
The statement so astounded Rebecca that she dropped the novels and
papers she was carrying and stood staring.
“What!” she cried, “Go back now? Sacrifice everything we have worked
for? Ruin everything? Give up all these engagements? You must be mad.”
It was plain that Ellen had thought of all this, that the struggle which she
saw taking form with Rebecca had already occurred in her own soul. She
knew what she was sacrificing ... if she returned.
“Lily is alone there, and in trouble. Some one should go to her.”
 So that was it! Rebecca’s tiny, bright ferret’s eyes grew red with anger.
“Lily! Lily!” she said. “Don’t worry about Lily. I’ll wager by this time she
has found some one to console her.”
Ellen moved toward her like a thunder cloud, powerful, menacing in a
kind of dignity that was strange and even terrifying to Rebecca. “You can’t
say that of her. I won’t have you. How can you when it was Lily who has
helped me more than any one in the world? I won’t have it. Who are you to
speak like that of Lily ... my own cousin?”
“Lily who has helped you!” screamed Rebecca. “And what of me? What
of me?” She began to beat her thin breasts in a kind of fury. Her nose
became a beak, her small eyes red and furious. “Have I done nothing? Am I
no one, to be cast aside like this? What of the work I have done, the
slaving?”
For a moment they stood facing each other, silent and furious, close in a
primitive fashion to blows. There was silence because their anger had
reached a point beyond all words and here each held herself in check. It was
Ellen who broke the silence. She began to laugh, softly and bitterly.
“Perhaps you’re right,” she said in a low voice. “I do owe you a great
deal ... as much, really, as I owe to Lily. It has given you the right to a
certain hold upon me.”
(But the difference, she knew, was this—that Lily would never exert her
right of possession.)
“You can’t go,” continued Rebecca, “not now. Think of it ... all the years
of sacrifice and work, gone for nothing. Can’t you see that fate has
delivered triumph into your hands. If you turn your back upon it now, you’d
be nothing less than a fool.” She saw in a sudden flash another argument
and thrust it into the conflict. “Always you have taken advantage of
opportunity.... You told me so yourself.... And now when the greatest
chance of all is at hand, you turn your back on it. I can’t understand you.
Why should you suddenly be so thoughtful of Lily?”
Ellen sat down and fell to looking out of the window. “Perhaps you’re
right,” she said. “I’ll think it out ... more clearly perhaps.”
There was, after all, nothing that she could do. The old despair swept
over her, taking the place of her pessimistic anger. She could not go to the
front, among the soldiers, to comfort Callendar. He would have been the
last to want her there.