She stood for a moment, with her hand resting on the lintel, and she
surveyed an apparently unexpected audience with contemplative
melancholy. If she was not pleased to find them so many, she was, at all
events unresentful, and Gregory imagined, from Mrs. Forrester's bright
flutter in rising, that resentment from the sun-goddess was a peril to
be reckoned with. Smiling, though languidly smiling, she advanced up the
room, after her graceful and involuntary pause. White fringes rippled
softly round her; a white train trailed behind her; on her breast the
silken cloak that she wore over a transparent under-robe was clasped
with pearls and silver. She was very lovely, very stately, very simple;
but she struck her one hypercritical observer as somewhat prepared;
calculated and conscious, as well.
"Thanks, dearest friend," she said to Mrs. Forrester, who, meeting her
halfway down the room and taking her hand, asked her solicitously how
she did; "I am now a little rested; but it has been a bad night and a
busy morning." She spoke with a slightly foreign accent in a voice at
once fatigued and sonorous. Her eyes, clear, penetrating and singularly
steady, passed over the assembled faces, turned, all of them, towards
herself.
She greeted Sir Alliston with a welcoming smile and a lift of the
strange crooked eyebrows, and to Miss Scrotton, who, eager and
illuminated, was beside her: "_Ah, ma chérie_," she said, resting her
hand affectionately on her shoulder. Mrs. Forrester had her other hand,
and, so standing between her two friends, she bowed gravely and
graciously to Lady Campion, to Miss Harding, to Mrs. Harding--who, in
the stress of this fulfilment had become plum-coloured--and to Gregory
Jardine. Then she was seated. Mrs. Forrester poured out her tea, Miss
Harding passed her cake and bread-and-butter, Lady Campion bent to her
with frank and graceful compliments, Miss Scrotton sat at her feet on a
low settle, and Sir Alliston, leaning on the back of her chair, looked
down at her with eyes of antique devotion. Gregory was left on the
outskirts of the group and his attention was attracted by the face of
little Mrs. Harding, who, all unnoticed and unseated, gazed upon Madame
Okraska with the intent liquid eye of a pious dog; the wavering,
uncertain smile that played upon her lips was like the humble thudding
of the dog's tail. Gregory remembered her face now as one of those, rapt
and hypnotized, that he had seen on the platform the night before. In
the ovation that Madame Okraska had received at the end of the concert
he had noticed this same plum-coloured little lady seizing and kissing
the great woman's hand. Shy, by temperament, as he saw, to the point of
suffering, he felt sure that only the infection of the crowd had carried
her to the act of uncharacteristic daring. He watched her now, finding
her piteous and absurd.
But someone beside himself was aware of Mrs. Harding. Miss Woodruff
approached her, smiling impersonally, with rather the air of a kindly
verger at a church. Yes, she seemed to say, she could find a seat for
her. She pointed to the one she had risen from. Mrs. Harding, almost
tearful in her gratitude, slid into it with the precaution of the
reverent sight-seer who fears to disturb a congregation at prayer, and
Miss Woodruff, moving away, went to a table and began to turn over the
illustrated papers that lay upon it. Her manner, retired and cheerful,
had no humility, none of the poor dependent's unobtrusiveness; rather,
Gregory felt, it showed a happy pride, as if, a fortunate priestess in
the temple, she had opportunities and felicities denied to mere
worshippers. She was interested in her papers. She examined the pictures
with something of a child's attentive pleasure.
Gregory came up to her and raising her eyes she smiled at him as though,
on the basis of last night's encounter, she took him for granted as
potentially a friend.
"What are you looking at?" he asked her, as he might have asked a
friendly child.
She turned the paper to him. "The Great Wall of China. They are
wonderful pictures."
Gregory stood beside her and looked. The photographs were indeed
impressive. The sombre landscape, the pallid sky, and, winding as if for
ever over hill and valley, the astonishing structure, like an infinite
lonely consciousness. "I should like to see that," said Miss Woodruff.
"Well, you travel a great deal, don't you?" said Gregory. "No doubt
Madame Okraska will go to China some day."
Miss Woodruff contemplated the desolate wall. "But this is thousands and
thousands of miles from the places where concerts could be given; and I
do not know that my guardian has ever thought of China; no, it is not
probable that she will ever go there. And then, unfortunately, I do not
always go with her. I travel a great deal; but I stop at home a great
deal, too. My guardian likes best to be called von Marwitz in private
life, by those who know her personally," Miss Woodruff added, smiling
again as she presented him with the authorized liturgy.
Gregory was slightly taken aback. He couldn't have defined Miss
Woodruff's manner as assured, yet it was singularly competent; and no
one could have been in less need of benevolent attentions.
"I see," he said. "She looks so much more Polish than German, doesn't
she? What do you call home?" he added. "Have you lived much in England?"
"By home I mean Cornwall," said Miss Woodruff, who was evidently used to
being asked questions. "My guardian has a house there; but it has not
been for long. It used to be in Germany, and then for a little in Italy;
she has only had Les Solitudes for four years." She looked across at the
group under the chandelier. "There is still room for a chair." Her
glance indicated a gap in Madame von Marwitz's circle.
This kindly solicitude amused Gregory very much. She had him on her mind
as a sight-seer, as she had had Mrs. Harding; and she was full of
sympathy for sight-seers. "Oh--thanks--no," he said, his eyes following
hers. "I won't go crowding in."
"She won't mind. She will not even notice;" Miss Woodruff assured him.
"Oh, well, I like to be noticed if I do crowd," Gregory returned
smiling.
His slight irony was lost upon her; yet, he was sure of it, she was not
dull. Her smile showed him that she congratulated him on an ambitious
spirit. "Well, later, then, we will hope," she said. "You would of
course rather talk with her. And here is Mr. Drew, so that this chance
is gone."
"Who is that singular young man?" Gregory inquired watching with Miss
Woodruff the newcomer, who found a place at once in the gap near Madame
von Marwitz and was greeted by her with a brighter interest than she had
yet shown.
"Mr. Claude Drew?" Miss Woodruff replied with some surprise. "Do you not
know? I thought that everybody in London knew him. He is quite a famous
writer. He has written poetry and essays. 'Artemis Wedded' is by
him--that is poetry; and 'The Bow of Ulysses'--the essay on my guardian
comes in that. Oh, he is quite well known."
Mr. Claude Drew was suave and elegant, and his high, stock-like collar
and folded satin neck-gear gave him a somewhat recondite appearance.
With his dark eyes, pale skin, full, smooth, golden hair, and the vivid
red of an advancing Hapsburgian lip, he had the look of a young French
dandy drawn by Ingres.
"My guardian is very much interested in him," Miss Woodruff went on.
"She believes that he has a great future. She is always interested in
promising young men." This, no doubt, was why Miss Woodruff had so
kindly encouraged him to take his chances.
"He looks a clever fellow," said Gregory.
"Do you like his face?" Miss Woodruff inquired. Mr. Drew, as if aware of
their scrutiny, had turned his eyes upon them for a moment. They were
large, jaded eyes, lustrous, yet with the lustre of a surface rather
than of depth; dense, velvety and impenetrable.
"Well, no, I don't," said Gregory, genially decisive. "He looks
unwholesome, I think."
"Oh! Unwholesome?" Miss Woodruff repeated the word thoughtfully rather
than interrogatively. "Yes; perhaps it is that. It is a danger of
talented modern young men, isn't it. They are not strong enough to be so
intelligent; one must be very strong--in character, I mean--if one is to
be so intelligent. Perhaps he is not strong in character. Perhaps that
is what one feels. Because I do not like his face, either; and I go
greatly by faces."
"So do I," said Gregory. After a moment, in which they both continued to
look at Mr. Drew, he went on. "I wondered last night what nationality
you belonged to. I had been wondering about you for a long while before
you looked round at me."
"You had heard about me?" she asked.
He was pleased to be able to say: "Oh, I wondered about you before I
heard."
"People are so often interested in me because of my guardian," said Miss
Woodruff; "everything about her interests them. But I am an American--if
you were not told; that is to say my father was an American--and my
mother was a Norwegian; but though I have never been to America I count
myself as an American, and with right, I think," she added. "We always
spoke English when I was a child, and I remember so many of my father's
friends. Some day I hope I may go to America. Have you been there? Do
you know New England? My father came from New England."
"No; I've never been there. I'm very insular and untravelled."
"Are you? It is a pity not to travel, isn't it," Miss Woodruff remarked.
"But you like it here in England?"
"Yes, I like it here, with Mrs. Forrester; and in Cornwall. But here
with Mrs. Forrester always seems to me more like the life of Europe.
English life, as a rule, is, I think, rather like boxes one inside the
other." She was perfectly sweet and undogmatic, but her air of
cosmopolitan competence amused Gregory, serenely of opinion, for his
part, that English was the only life.
"Well, the great thing is that the boxes should fit comfortably into one
another, isn't it," he observed; "and I think that on the whole we've
come to fit pretty well in England. And we all come out of our boxes,
don't we," he added, pleased with his application of her simile, "for a
Madame von Marwitz."
"Yes, I know," said Miss Woodruff, also, evidently, pleased. "That is
quite true; you all come out of your boxes for her. But, as a nation,
they are not artists, the English, are they? They are kind to the
beautiful things; they like to see them; they will take great trouble to
see them; but they do not make them. Beauty does not grow here--that is
what I mean. It is in its box, too, and it is taken out and passed round
from time to time. You do not mind my saying this? You, perhaps, are
yourself an artist?"
"Dear me, no; I'm only a lawyer. I'm shut up in the tightest of the
boxes," said Gregory.
Miss Woodruff scrutinized him with a smile. "I should not think that of
you," she said. "You do not look like an artist, it is true; few of us
can be artists; but you do not look shut into a box, either. Beauty, to
you, is something real; not a pastime, a fashion; no, I cannot think it.
When I saw your face last night I thought: Here is one who cares. One
counts those faces on one's fingers--even at a great concert. So many
think they care who only want to care. To you art is a serious thing and
an artist the greatest thing a country can produce. Is not that so?"
Gregory continued to be amused by what he felt to be Miss Woodruff's
_naiveté_. He was inclined to think that artists, however admirable in
their functions, were undesirable in their persons, and the reverent
enthusiasm that Miss Woodruff imagined in him was singularly
uncharacteristic. He didn't quite know how to tell her so without
seeming rude, so he contented himself with confessing that beauty, in
his life, was kept, he feared, very much in its box.
They, went on talking, going to an adjacent sofa where Miss Woodruff,
while they talked, stroked the deep fur of an immense Persian cat,
Hieronimus by name, who established himself between them. Gregory found
her very easy to talk to, though they had so few themes in common, and
her face he discovered to be even more charming than he had thought it
the night before. She was not at all beautiful and he imagined that in
her world of artists she would not be particularly appreciated; nor
would she be appreciated in his own world of convention--a girl with
such a thick waist, such queer clothes, a face so broad, so brown, so
abruptly modelled. She was, he felt, a grave and responsible young
person, and something in her face suggested that she might have been
through a great deal; but she was very cheerful and she laughed with
facility at things he said and that she herself said; and when she
laughed her eyes nearly closed and the tip of her tongue was caught,
with an effect of child-like gaiety, between her teeth. The darkness of
her skin made her lips, by contrast, of a pale rose, and her hair, where
it grew thickly around her brows and neck, of an almost infantile
fairness. Her broad, brown eyebrows lay far apart and her grey eyes were
direct, deliberate and limpid.
From where Gregory sat he had Madame von Marwitz in profile and he
observed that once or twice, when they laughed, she turned her head and
looked at them. Presently she leaned a little to question Mrs. Forrester
and then, rather vexed at a sequence, natural but unforeseen, he saw
that Mrs. Forrester got up to fetch him.
"Tante has sent for you!" Miss Woodruff exclaimed. "I am so glad."
It really vexed him a little that he should still be supposed to be
pining for an introduction; he would so much rather have stayed talking
to her. On the sofa she continued to stroke Hieronimus and to keep a
congratulatory gaze upon him while he was conducted to a seat beside the
great woman.
Madame von Marwitz was very lovely. She was the type of woman with whom,
as a boy, he would have fallen desperately in love, seeing her as poetry
personified. And she was the type of woman, all indolent and indifferent
as she was, who took it for granted that people would fall desperately
in love with her. Her long gaze, now, told him that. It seemed to give
him time, as it were, to take her in and to arrange with himself how
best to adjust himself to a changed life. It was not the glance of a
flirt; it held no petty consciousness; it was the gaze of an enchantress
aware of her own inevitable power. Gregory met the cold, sweet,
melancholy eyes. But as she gazed, as she slowly smiled, he was aware,
with a perverse pleasure, that his present seasoned self was completely
immune from her magic. He opposed commonplace to enchantment, and in him
Madame von Marwitz would find no victim.
"I have never seen you here before, I think," she said. She spoke with a
beautiful precision; that of the foreigner perfectly at ease in an alien
tongue, yet not loving it sufficiently to take liberties with it.
Gregory said, no, she had never seen him there before.
"Mrs. Forrester is, it seems, a mutual friend," said Madame von Marwitz.
"She has known you since boyhood. You have been very fortunate."
Gregory assented.
"She tells me that you are in the law," Madame von Marwitz pursued; "a
barrister. I should not have thought that. A diplomat; a soldier, it
should have been. Is it not so?"
Gregory had not wanted to be a barrister. It did not please him that
Madame von Marwitz should guess so accurately at a disappointment that
had made his youth bitter. "I'm a younger son, you see," he said. "And I
had to make my living."
When Madame von Marwitz's gaze grew more intent she did not narrow her
eyes, but opened them more widely. She opened them more widely now,
putting back her head a little. "Ah," she said. "That was hard. That
meant suffering. You are caged in a calling you do not care for."
"Oh, no," said Gregory, smiling; "I'm very well off; I'm quite
contented."
"Contented?" she raised her crooked eyebrow. "Are you indeed so
fortunate?--or so unfortunate?"
To this large question Gregory made no reply, continuing to offer her
the non-committal coolness of his smile. He was not liking Madame von
Marwitz, and he was becoming aware that if one didn't like her one did
not appear to advantage in talking with her. He cast about in his mind
for an excuse to get away.
"The law," Madame von Marwitz mused, her eyes dwelling on him. "It is
stony; yet with stone one builds. You would not be content, I think,
with the journeyman's work of the average lawyer. You shape; you create;
you have before you the vision of the strong fortress to be built where
the weak may find refuge. You are an architect, not a mason. Only so
could you find contentment in your calling."
"I'm afraid that I don't think about it like that," said Gregory. "I
should say that the fortress is built already."
There was now a change in her cold sweetness; her smile became a little
ambiguous. "You remind me," she said, "that I was speaking in somewhat
pretentious similes. I was not asking you what had been done, but what
you hoped to do. I was asking--it was that that interested me in you, as
it does in all the young men I meet--what was the ideal you brought to
your calling."
It was as though, with all her sweetness, she had seen through his
critical complacency and were correcting the manners of a conceited boy.
Gregory was a good deal taken aback. And it was with a touch of boyish
sulkiness that he replied: "I don't think, really, that I can claim
ideals."
Definitely, now, the light of mockery shone in her eye. In evading her,
in refusing to be drawn within her magic circle, he had aroused an irony
that matched his own. She was not the mere phrase-making woman; by no
means the mere siren. "How afraid you English are of your ideals," she
said. "You live by them, but you will not look at them. I could say to
you--as Statius to Virgil in the Purgatorio--that you carry your light
behind you so that you light those who follow, but walk yourselves in
darkness. You will not claim them; no, and above all, you will not talk
about them. Do not be afraid, my young friend; I shall not tamper with
your soul." So she spoke, sweetly, deliberately, yet tersely, too, as
though to make him feel that she had done all she could for him and that
he had proved himself not worth her trouble. Mr. Claude Drew was still
on her other hand, carrying on an obviously desultory conversation with
Miss Scrotton, and to him Madame von Marwitz turned, saying: "And what
is it you wished to tell me of your Carducci? You will send me the
proofs? Good. Oh, I shall not be too tired to read what you have
written."
Here was a young man, evidently, who was worth her trouble. Gregory sat
disposed of and a good deal discomposed, the more so since he had to own
that he had opened himself to the rebuff. He rose and moved away,
looking about and seeing that Miss Woodruff had left the room; but Mrs.
Forrester came to him, her brilliant little face somewhat clouded.
"What is it, my dear Gregory?" she questioned. "She asked to have you
brought. Haven't you pleased her?"
Mrs. Forrester, who had known not only himself, but his father in
boyhood, was fond of him, but was not disposed to think of him as
important. And she expected the unimportant to know, in a sense, their
place and to show the important that they did know it. There was a hint,
now, of severity, in her countenance.
It would sound, he knew, merely boyish and sulky to say: "She hasn't
pleased me." But he couldn't resist: "I wasn't _à la hauteur_."
Mrs. Forrester, at this, looked at him hard for a moment. She then
diagnosed his case as one of bad temper rather than of malice, and
could forgive it in one who had failed to interest the great woman and
been discarded in consequence; Mercedes, she knew, could discard with
decision.
"Well, when you talk to a woman like Madame von Marwitz, you must try to
be worthy of your opportunities," she commented, tempering her severity
with understanding. "You really had an opportunity. Your face interested
her, and your kindness to little Karen. She always likes people who are
kind to little Karen."
It was pleasantly open to him now to say: "Little Karen has been kind to
me."
"A dear, good child," said Mrs. Forrester. "I am glad that you talked to
her. You pleased Mercedes in that."
"She is a delightful girl," said Gregory.
He now took his departure. But he was again to encounter Miss Woodruff.
She was in the hall, talking French to a sallow little woman in black,
evidently a ladies' maid, who had the oppressed, anxious countenance and
bright, melancholy eyes of a monkey.
"_Allons_," Miss Woodruff was saying in encouraging tones, while she
paused on the first step of the stairs, her hand on the banister; "_ce
n'est pas une cause perdue, Louise; nous arrangerons la chose_."
"_Ah, Mademoiselle, c'est que Madame ne sera pas contente, pas contente
du tout quand elle verra la robe_," was Louise's mournful reply as
Gregory came up.
"I hoped we might go on with our talk," he said. He still addressed her
somewhat as one addresses a friendly child; "I wanted to hear the end of
that story about the Hungarian student."
"He died, in Davos, poor boy," said Miss Woodruff, looking down at him
from her slightly higher place, while Louise stood by dejectedly. "He
wrote to my guardian and we went to him there and she played to him. It
made him so happy. We were with him till he died."
"Shall I see you again?" Gregory asked. "Will you be here for any time?
Are you staying in London?"
"My guardian goes to America next week--did you not know?--with Miss
Scrotton."
"Oh yes, Eleanor told me. And you're not going too? You're not to see
America yet?"
"No; not this time. I go to Cornwall."
"You are to be alone with Mrs. Talcott all the winter?"
"You know Mrs. Talcott?" Miss Woodruff exclaimed in pleased
astonishment.
"No; I don't know her; Eleanor told me about her, too."
"It is not being alone," said Miss Woodruff. "She and I have a most
happy time together. I thought it strange that you should know Mrs.
Talcott. I never met anyone who knew her unless they knew my guardian
very well."
"And when are you coming back?"
"From Cornwall? I do not know. I am afraid we shall not see each
other--oh, for a very long time," said Miss Woodruff. She smiled. She
gave him her hand, leaning down to him from behind the banister. Gregory
said that he had friends in Cornwall and that he might run down and see
them one day--and then he might see her and Les Solitudes, too. And Miss
Woodruff said that that would be very nice.
He heard the last words of the colloquy with Louise as his coat was put
on in the hall. "_Alors il ne faut pas renvoyer la robe, Mademoiselle?_"
"_Mais non, mais non; nous nous tirerons d'affaire_," Miss Woodruff
replied, springing gaily up the stairs, her arm, with a sort of
dignified familiarity, in which was encouragement and protection, cast
round Louise's shoulders.