Gregory went down to Cornwall again only nine days after he had left it.
He and Karen met as if under an arch of infinite blessings. He had his
cable to show her and she hers to show him, and, although Gregory did
not see them as the exquisite documents that Karen felt them to be, they
did for him all that he asked Madame von Marwitz to do.
"I give her to you. Be worthy of my trust. Mercedes von Marwitz"--his
read. And Karen's: "I could only yield you to a greater joy than you can
find with me--but it could not be to a greater love. Do not forget me in
your happiness. You are mine, my beloved child, not less but more than
ever.--Tante."
Karen's joy was unshadowed. It made him think of primroses and crystal
springs. She was not shy; he was shyer than she, made a little dumb, a
little helpless, by his man's reverence, his man's awed sense of the
beloved's dawn-like wonder. She was not changed; any change in Karen
would come as quiet growth, not as transformation. Gregory's gladness
had not this simplicity. It revealed to him a new world, a world newly
beautiful but newly perilous, and a changed self,--the self of boyhood,
renewed yet transformed, through whose joy ran the reactionary
melancholy that, in a happiness attained, glances at fear, and at a
climax of life, is aware of gulfs of sorrow as yet unsounded. More than
his lover's passion was a tenderness for her and for her unquestioning
acceptances that seemed near tears. Karen was in character so wrought
and in nature so simple. Her subtleties were all objective, subtleties
of sympathy, of recognition, of adaptation to the requirements of
devoted action; her simplicity was that of a whole-heartedness unaware
at high moments of all but the essential.
She had to tell him fully, holding his hand and looking into his eyes,
all about her side of it; what she had thought when she saw him at the
concert--certain assumptions there gave Gregory his stir of
uneasiness--"You were caring just as much as I was--in the same way--for
her music"; what she had thought at Mrs. Forrester's, and at the railway
station, and when the letters went on and on. She had of course seen
what was coming that evening after they had been to the Lavington's;
"When you didn't understand about me and Tante, you know; and I made you
understand." And then he had made her understand how much he cared for
her and she for him; only it had all come so quietly; "I did not think a
great deal about it, or wonder; it sank into me--like stars one sees in
a still lake, so that next day it was no surprise at all, when you told
me; it was like looking up and seeing all the real stars in the sky.
Afterwards it was dreadful for a little while, wasn't it?" Karen held
his hand for a moment to her cheek.
When all the past had been looked at together, Gregory asked her if she
would not marry him quite soon; he hoped, indeed, that it might be
within the month. "You see, why not?" he said. "I miss you so dreadfully
and I can't be here; and why should you be? Let me come down and marry
you in that nice little church on the other side of the village as soon
as our banns can be called."
But, for the first time, a slight anxiety showed in her eyes. "I miss
you dreadfully, too," she said. "But you forget, Tante will not be back
till July. We must wait for Tante, Gregory. We are in May now, it is not
so far to July. You will not mind too much?"
He felt, sitting under the arch of blessings as he was, that it would be
most ungrateful and inappropriate to mind. But then, he said, if they
must put it off like that, Karen would have to come to London. She must
come and stay with Betty. "And get your trousseau"; this was a brilliant
idea. "You'll have to get your trousseau, you know, and Betty is an
authority on clothes."
"Oh, but clothes. I never have clothes in that sense," said Karen. "A
little seamstress down here makes most of them and Louise helps her
sometimes if she has time. Tante gave me twenty pounds before she went
away; would twenty pounds do for a trousseau?"
"Betty would think twenty pounds just about enough for your gloves and
stockings, I imagine," said Gregory.
"And will you expect me to be so luxurious? You are not rich? We shall
not live richly?"
"I'm not at all rich; but I want you to have pretty things--layers and
layers of the nice, white, soft things brides always have, and a great
many new hats and dresses. Couldn't I give you a little tip--to begin
the trousseau?"
"Ah, it can wait, can't it?" said Karen easily. "No; you can't give me a
tip. Tante, I am sure, will see that I have a nice trousseau. She may
even give me a little _dot_ when I marry. I have no money at all; not
one penny, you know. Do you mind?"
"I'd far rather have you without a penny because I want to give you
everything. If Tante doesn't give you the little _dot_, I shall."
Karen was pondering a little seriously. "I don't know what Tante will
feel since you have enough for us both. It was when she wished me to
marry Franz that she spoke of a _dot_. And Franz is of course very poor
and has a great family of brothers and sisters to help support. You will
know Franz one day. You did not speak very nicely of Franz that time,
you know; that was another reason why I thought you were so angry. And
it made me angry, too," said Karen, smiling at him.
"Wasn't I nice? I am sure Franz is."
"Oh, so good and kind and true. And very talented. And his mother would
be a wonderful musician if she had not so many children to take care of;
that has harmed her music. And she, too, is a golden-hearted person; she
used often to help me with my dresses. Do you remember that little white
silk dress of mine? perhaps so; I wore it at the concert, such a pretty
dress, I think. Frau Lippheim helped me with that--she and a little
German seamstress in Leipsig. I see us now, all bending over the
rustling silk, round the table with the lamp on it. We had to make it so
quickly. Tante had sent for me to come to her in Vienna and I had
nothing to wear at the great concert she was to give. We sat up till
twelve to finish it. Franz and Lotta cooked our supper for us and we
only stopped long enough to eat. Dear Frau Lippheim. Some day you will
know all the Lippheims."
He listened to her with dreamy, amused delight, seeing her bending in
the ugly German room over the little white silk dress and only vaguely
aware of the queer figures she put before him. He had no inclination to
know Franz and his mother, and no curiosity about them. But Karen
continued. "That is the one, the only thing I can give you," she said,
reflecting. "You know so few artists, don't you; so few people of
talent. As to people, your life is narrow, isn't it so? I have met so
many great people in my life, first through my father and then through
Tante. Painters, poets, musicians. You will probably know them now, too;
some of them certainly, for some are also friends of mine. Strepoff, for
example; oh--how I shall like you to meet him. You have read him, of
course, and about his escape from Siberia and his long exile."
"Strepoff? Yes, I think so. A dismal sort of fellow, isn't he?"
Gregory's delight was merging now in a more definite amusement, tinged,
it may be confessed, with alarm. He remembered to have seen a photograph
of this celebrity, very turbulently haired and very fixed and fiery of
eye. He remembered a large bare throat and a defiant neck-tie. He had no
wish to make Strepoff's acquaintance. It was quite enough to read about
him in the magazines and admire his exploits from a distance.
"Dismal?" Karen had repeated, with a touch of severity. "Who would not
be after such a life? Yes, he is a sad man, and the thought of Russia
never leaves him. But he is full of gaiety, too. He spent some months
with us two years ago at the Italian lakes and I grew so fond of him. We
had great jokes together, he and I. And he sometimes writes to me now,
such teasing, funny letters. The last was from San Francisco. He is
giving lectures out there, raising money; for he never ceases the
struggle. He calls me Liebchen. He is very fond of me."
"What do you call him?" Gregory inquired.
"Just Strepoff; everybody calls him that. Dear Belot, too," Karen
pursued. "He could not fail to interest you. Perhaps you have already
met him. He has been in London."
"Belot? Does he write poetry?"
"Poetry? No. Belot is a painter; a great painter. Surely you have heard
of Belot?"
"Well, I'm afraid that if I have I've forgotten. You see, as you say, I
live so out of the world of art."
"Did you not see his portrait of Susanne Mauret--the great French
actress? It has been exhibited through all the world."
"Of course I have. Belot of course. The impressionist painter. It looked
to me, I confess, awfully queer; but I could see that it was very
clever."
"Impressionist? No; Belot would not rank himself among the
impressionists. And he would not like to hear his work called clever; I
warn you of that. He has a horror of cleverness. It was not a clever
picture, but sober, strange, beautiful. Well, I know Belot and his wife
quite intimately. They are great friends of the Lippheims, too, and call
themselves the Franco-Prussian alliance. Madame Belot is a dear little
woman. You must have often seen his pictures of her and the children. He
has numbers of children and adores them. _La petite_ Margot is my
special pet and she always sends me a little present on my birthday.
Madame Belot was once his model," Karen added, "and is quite _du
peuple_, and I believe that some of his friends were sorry that he
married her; but she makes him very happy. That beautiful nude in the
Luxembourg by Chantefoy is of her--long before she married, of course.
She does not sit for the _ensemble_ now, and indeed I fear it has lost
all its beauty, for she is very fat. It would be nice to go to Paris on
our wedding-tour and see the Belots," said Karen.
Gregory made an evasive answer. He reflected that once he had married
her it would probably be easy to detach Karen from these most
undesirable associates. He hoped that she would take to Betty. Betty
would be an excellent antidote. "And you think your sister-in-law will
want me?" said Karen, when he brought her from the Belots back to Betty.
"She doesn't know me."
"She must begin to know you as soon as possible. You will have Mrs.
Forrester at hand, you see, if my family should oppress you too much.
Barring Betty, who hardly counts as one of them, they aren't
interesting, I warn you."
"I may oppress them," said Karen, with the shrewdness that often
surprised him. "Who will they take refuge with?"
"Oh, they have all London to fall back upon. They do nothing when
they're up but go out. That's my plan; that they should leave you a good
deal when they go out, and leave you to me."
"That will be nice," said Karen. "But Mrs. Forrester, you know," she
went on, "is not exactly an intimate of mine that I could fall back
upon. I am, in her eyes, only a little appendage of Tante's."
"Ah, but you have ceased, now, to be an appendage of Tante's. And Mrs.
Forrester is an intimate, an old one, of mine."
"She'll take me in as your appendage," Karen smiled.
"Not at all. It's you, now, who are the person to whom the appendage
belongs. I'm your appendage. That quite alters the situation. You will
have to stand in the foreground and do all the conventional things."
"Shall I?" smiled Karen, unperturbed. She was, as he knew, not to be
disconcerted by any novel social situation. She had witnessed so many
situations and such complicated ones that the merely conventional were,
in her eyes, relatively insignificant and irrevelant. There would be for
her none of the débutante's sense of awkwardness or insufficiency. Again
she reminded him of the rustic little princess, unaware of alien
customs, and ready to learn and to laugh at her own blunders.
It was arranged, Mrs. Talcott's appearance helping to decisions, that as
soon as Karen heard from her guardian, who might have plans to suggest,
she should come up to London and stay with Lady Jardine.
Mrs. Talcott, on entering, had grasped Gregory's hand and shaken it
vigorously, remarking: "I'm very pleased to see you back again."
"I didn't tell Mrs. Talcott anything, Gregory," said Karen. "But I am
sure she guessed."
"Mrs. Talcott and I had our understandings," said Gregory, "but I'm sure
she guessed from the moment she saw me down here. She was much quicker
than you, Karen."
"I've seen a good many young folks in my time," Mrs. Talcott conceded.
Gregory's sense of the deepened significance in all things lent a
special pathos to his conjectures to-day about Mrs. Talcott. He did not
know how far her affection for Karen went and whether it were more than
the mere kindly solicitude of the aged for the young; but the girl's
presence in her life must give at least interest and colour, and after
Mrs. Talcott had spoken her congratulations and declared that she
believed they'd be real happy together, he said, the idea striking him
as an apt one, "And Mrs. Talcott, you must come up and stay with us in
London sometimes, won't you?"
"Oh, Mrs. Talcott--yes, yes;" said Karen, delighted. He had never seen
her kiss Mrs. Talcott, but she now clasped her arm, standing beside her.
Mrs. Talcott did not smile; but, after a moment, the aspect of her face
changed; it always took some moments for Mrs. Talcott's expression to
change. Now it was like seeing the briny old piece of shipwrecked oak
mildly illuminated with sunlight on its lonely beach.
"That's real kind of you; real kind," said Mrs. Talcott reflectively. "I
don't expect I'll get up there. I'm not much of a traveller these days.
But it's real kind of you to have thought of it."
"But it must be," Karen declared. "Only think; I should pour out your
coffee for you in the morning, after all these years when you've poured
out mine; and we would walk in the park--Gregory's flat overlooks the
park you know--and we would drive in hansoms--don't you like
hansoms--and go to the play in the evening. But yes, indeed, you shall
come."
Mrs. Talcott listened to these projects, still with her mild
illumination, remarking when Karen had done, "I guess not, Karen; I
guess I'll stay here. I've been moving round considerable all my life
long and now I expect I'll just stay put. There's no one to look after
things here but me and they'd get pretty muddled if I was away, I
expect. Mitchell isn't a very bright man."
"The real difficulty is," said Karen, holding Mrs. Talcott's arm and
looking at her with affectionate exasperation, "that she doesn't like to
leave Les Solitudes lest she should miss a moment of Tante. Tante
sometimes turns up almost at a moment's notice. We shall have to get
Tante safely away to Russia, or America again, before we can ask you;
isn't that the truth, Mrs. Talcott?"
"Well, I don't know. Perhaps there's something in it," Mrs. Talcott
admitted. "Mercedes likes to know I'm here seeing to things. She
mightn't feel easy in her mind if I was away."
"We'll lay it before her, then," said Karen. "I know she will say that
you must come."