The Jardines did not come back to London till October. They had spent a
month in Scotland and a month in Italy and two weeks in France,
returning by way of Paris, where Gregory passed through the ordeal of
the Belots. He saw Madame Belot clasp Karen to her breast and the long
line of little Belots swarm up to be kissed successively, Monsieur
Belot, a short, stout, ruddy man, with outstanding grey hair and a
square grey beard, watching the scene benignantly, his palette on his
thumb. Madame Belot didn't any longer suggest Chantefoy's picture; she
suggested nothing artistic and everything domestic. From a wistful
Burne-Jones type with large eyes and a drooping mouth she had relapsed
to her plebeian origins and now, fat, kind, cheerful, she was nothing
but wife and mother, with a figure like a sack and cheap tortoiseshell
combs stuck, apparently at random, in the untidy _bandeaux_ of her hair.
Following Karen and Monsieur Belot about the big studio, among canvases
on easels and canvases leaned against the walls, Gregory felt himself
rather bewildered, and not quite as he had expected to be bewildered.
They might be impossible, Madame Belot of course was impossible; but
they were not vulgar and they were extremely intelligent, and their
intelligence displayed itself in realms to which he was almost
disconcertingly a stranger. Even Madame Belot, holding a stalwart,
brown-fisted baby on her arm, could comment on her husband's work with a
discerning aptness of phrase which made his own appreciation seem very
trite and tentative. He might be putting up with the Belots, but it was
quite as likely, he perceived, that they might be putting up with him.
He realized, in this world of the Belots, the significance, the
laboriousness, the high level of vitality, and he realized that to the
Belots his own world was probably seen as a dull, half useful, half
obstructive fact, significant mainly for its purchasing power. For its
power of appreciation they had no respect at all. "_Il radote, ma
chèrie_," Monsieur Belot said to Karen of a famous person, now, after
years of neglect, loudly acclaimed in London at the moment when, by
fellow-artists, he was seen as defunct. "He no longer lives; he repeats
himself. Ah, it is the peril," Monsieur Belot turned kindly including
eyes on Gregory; "if one is not born anew, continually, the artist dies;
it becomes machinery."
Karen was at home among the Belot's standards. She talked with Belot, of
processes, methods, technique, the talk of artists, not artistic talk.
"_Et la grande Tante?_" he asked her, when they were all seated at a
nondescript meal about a long table of uncovered oak, the children
unpleasantly clamorous and Madame Belot dispensing, from one end,
strange, tepid tea, but excellent chocolate, while Belot, from the
other, sent round plates of fruit and buttered rolls. Karen was laughing
with _la petite Margot_, whom she held in her lap.
"She is coming," said Karen. "At last. In three weeks I shall see her
now. She has been spending the summer in America, you know; among the
mountains."
One of the boys inquired whether there were not danger to Madame von
Marwitz from _les Peaux-Rouges_, and when he was reassured and the
question of buffaloes disposed of Madame Belot was able to make herself
heard, informing Karen that the Lippheims, Franz, Frau Lippheim, Lotta,
Minna and Elizabeth, were to give three concerts in Paris that winter.
"You have not seen them yet, Karen?" she asked. "They have not yet met
Monsieur Jardine?" And when Karen said no, not yet; but that she had
heard from Frau Lippheim that they were to come to London after Paris,
Madame Belot suggested that the young couple might have time now to
travel up to Leipsig and take the Lippheims by surprise. "_Voilà de
braves gens et de bons artistes_," said Monsieur Belot.
"You did like my dear Belots," Karen said, as she and Gregory drove
away. She had, since her marriage, grown in perception; Gregory would
have found it difficult, now, to hide ironies and antipathies from her.
Even retrospectively she saw things which at the time she had not seen,
saw, for instance, that the idea of the Belots had not been alluring to
him. He knew, too, that she would have considered dislike of the Belots
as showing defect in him not in them, but cheerfully, if with a touch of
her severity. She had an infinite tolerance for the defects and foibles
of those she loved. He was glad to be able to reply with full sincerity:
"_Ils sont de braves gens et de bons artistes._"
"But," Karen said, looking closely at him, and with a smile, "you would
not care to pass your life with them. And you were quite disturbed lest
I should say that I wanted to go and take the Lippheims by surprise at
Leipsig. You like _les gens du monde_ better than artists, Gregory."
"What are you?" Gregory smiled back at her. "I like you better."
"I? I am _gens du monde manqué_ and _artiste manqué_. I am neither fish,
flesh nor fowl," said Karen. "I'm only--positively--my husband's wife
and Tante's ward. And that quite satisfies me."
He knew that it did. Their happiness was flawless; flawless as far as
her husband's wife was concerned. It was in regard to Tante's ward that
Gregory was more and more conscious of keeping something from Karen,
while more and more it grew difficult to keep anything from her.
Already, if sub-consciously, she must have become aware that her
guardian's unabated mournfulness did not affect her husband as it did
herself. She had showed him no more of Tante's letters, and they had
been quite frequent. She had told him while they were in Scotland that
it had hurt Tante very much that they should not have waited till her
return; but she did not enlarge on the theme; and Gregory knew why; to
enlarge would have been to reproach him. Karen had yielded, against her
own wishes, to his entreaties. She had agreed that their marriage should
not be so postponed at the last minute. In his vehemence Gregory had
been skilful; he had said not one word of reproach against Madame von
Marwitz for her disconcerting change of plan. It was not surprising to
him; it was what he had expected of Madame von Marwitz, that she would
put Karen aside for a whim. Karen would not see her guardian's action in
this light; yet she must know that her beloved was vulnerable to the
charge, at all events, of inconsiderateness, and she had been grateful
to him, no doubt, for showing no consciousness of it. She had consented,
perhaps, partly through gratitude, though she had felt her pledged word,
too, as binding. Once she had consented, whatever the results, Gregory
knew that she would not visit them on him. It was of her own
responsibility that she was thinking when, with a grave face, she had
told him of Tante's hurt. "After all, dearest," Gregory had ventured,
"we did want her, didn't we? It was really she who chose not to come,
wasn't it?"
"I am sure that Tante wanted to see me married," said Karen, touching on
her own hidden wound.
He helped her there, knowing, in his guile, that to exonerate Tante was
to help not only Karen but himself. "Of course; but she doesn't think
things out, does she? She is accustomed to having things arranged for
her. I suppose she didn't a bit realise all that had been settled over
here, nor what an impatient lover it was who held you to your word."
Her face cleared as he showed her that he recognised Tante's case as so
explicable. "I'm so glad that you see it all," she said. "For you do.
She is oh! so unpractical, poor darling; she would forget everything,
you know, unless I or Mrs. Talcott were there to keep reminding
her--except her music, of course; but that is like breathing to her. And
I am so sorry, so dreadfully sorry; because, of course, to know that she
hurt me by not coming must hurt her more. But we will make it up to her.
And oh! Gregory, only think, she says she may come and stay with us."
One of her first exclamations on going over his flat with him was that
they could put up Tante, if she would come. The drawing-room could be
devoted to her music; for there was ample room for the grand
piano--which accompanied Madame von Marwitz as invariably as her
tooth-brush; and the spare-bedroom had a dressing-room attached that
would do nicely for Louise. Now there seemed hope of this dream being
realised.
Karen had not yet received a wedding-present from her guardian, but in
Paris, on the homeward way, she heard that it had been dispatched from
New York and would be awaiting her in London, and it was of this gift
that she had been talking as she and Gregory drove from the station to
St. James's on a warm October evening. Tante had not told her what the
present was, but had written that Karen would care for it very much. "To
find her present waiting for us is like having Tante to welcome us,"
Karen said. After her surmise about the present she relapsed into happy
musings and Gregory, too, was silent, able only to give a side-glance of
gratitude, as it were, at the thought that Tante was to welcome them by
proxy.
His mood was one of almost tremulous elation. He was bringing her home
after bridal wanderings that had never lost their element of dream-like
unreality. There had always been the feeling that he might wake any day
to find Italy and Karen both equally illusory. But to see Karen in his
home, taking her place in his accustomed life, would be to feel his joy
linking itself securely with reality.
The look of London at this sunny hour of late afternoon and at this
autumnal season matched his consciousness of a tranquil metamorphosis.
Idle still and empty of its more vivid significance, one yet felt in it
the soft stirrings of a re-entering tide of life. Cabs passed, piled
with brightly badged luggage; the drowsily reminiscent shop-windows
showed here and there an adventurous forecast, and a house or two, among
the rows of dumb, sleeping faces, opened wide eyes at the leisurely
streets. The pale, high pinks of the sky drooped and melted into the
greys and whites and buffs below, and blurred the heavy greens of the
park with falling veils of rose. The scene seemed drawn in flat delicate
tones of pastel.
Karen sat beside him in the cab and, while she gazed before her, she had
slipped her hand into his. She had preserved much of the look of the
unmarried Karen in her dress. The difference was in the achievement of
an ideal rather than in a change. The line of her little grey travelling
hat above her brows was still unusual; with her grey gloves and long
grey silken coat she had an air, cool, competent, prepared for any
emergency of travel. She would have looked equally appropriate dozing
under the hooded light in a railway carriage, taking her place at a
_table d'hôte_ in a provincial French town, or walking in the wind and
sun along a foreign _plage_. After looking at the London to which he
brought her, Gregory looked at her. Marriage had worked none of its even
superficial disenchantments in him. After three months of intimacy,
Karen still constantly arrested him with a sense of the undiscovered,
the unforeseen. What it consisted in he could not have defined; she was
simple, even guileless, still; she had no reticences; yet she seemed to
express so much of which she was unaware that he felt himself to be
continually making her acquaintance. That quiet slipping now of her hand
into his, while her gaze maintained its calm detachment, the charm of
her mingled tenderness and independence, had its vague sting for
Gregory. She accepted him and whatever he might mean with something of
the happy matter-of-fact with which she accepted all that was hers. She
loved him with a completeness and selflessness that had made the world
suddenly close round him with gentle arms; but Gregory often wondered if
she were in love with him. Rapture, restlessness and fear all seemed
alien to her, and to turn from thoughts of her and of their love to
Karen herself was like passing from dreams of poignant, starry ecstasy
to a clear, white dawn, with dew on the grass and a lark rising and the
waking sweetness of a world at once poetical and practical about one.
She strengthened and stilled his passion for her. And she seemed unaware
of passion.
They arrived at the great, hive-like mansion and in the lift, which took
them almost to the top, Karen, standing near him, again put her hand in
his and smiled at him. She was not feeling his tremor, but she was
limpidly happy and as conscious as he of an epoch-making moment.
Barker opened the door to them, murmuring a decorous welcome and they
went down the passage towards the drawing-room. They must at once
inaugurate their home-coming, Gregory said, by going out on the balcony
and looking at the view together.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said Barker, who followed after them, "but I
hope you and Mrs. Jardine will think it best what I've done with the
large case, sir, that has come. I didn't know where you'd like it put,
and it was a job getting it in anywhere. There wasn't room to leave it
standing here."
"Tante's present!" Karen exclaimed. "Oh, where is it?"
"I had it put in the drawing-room, Ma'am," said Barker. "It made a hole
in the wall and knocked down two prints, sir; I'm very sorry, but there
was no handling it conveniently."
They turned down the next passage; the drawing-room was at the end.
Gregory threw open the door and he and Karen paused upon the threshold.
Standing in the middle of the room, high and dark against the
half-obliterated windows, was a huge packing-case, an incredibly huge
packing-case. At a first glance it had blotted out the room. The
furniture, huddled in the corners, seemed to have drawn back from the
apparition, scared and startled, and Gregory, in confronting it, felt an
actual twinge of fear. The vast, unexpected form loomed to his
imagination, for a moment, like a tidal-wave rising terrifically in
familiar surroundings and poised in menace above him and his wife. He
controlled an exclamation of dismay, and the ominous simile receded
before a familiar indignation; that, too, he controlled; he could not
say: "How stupid!"
"Is it a piano?" Karen, after their long pause, asked in a hushed,
tentative voice.
"It's too high for a piano, darling," said Gregory, who had her arm in
his--"and I have my little upright, you see. I can't imagine."
"Shall I get the porter, sir, to help open it while you and Mrs. Jardine
have tea?" Barker asked. "I laid tea in the dining-room, Ma'am."
"Yes; let us have it opened at once," said Karen. "But I must be here
when it is opened." She drew her arm from Gregory's and made the tour of
the case. "It is probably something very fragile and that is why it is
packed in such a great box; it cannot itself be so big."
"Barker will begin peeling off the outer husks while we get ready for
tea; we shall have plenty of time," said Gregory. "Get the porter up at
once, Barker. I'm afraid your guardian has an exaggerated idea of the
size of our domain, darling. The present looks as if only baronial halls
could accommodate it."
She glanced up at him while he led her to their room and he knew that
something in his voice struck her; he hadn't been able to control it and
it sounded like ill-temper. Perhaps it was ill-temper. It was with a
feeling of relief, and almost of escape, that he shut the door of the
room upon tidal-waves and put his arms around his wife. "Darling," he
said, "this is really it--at last--our home-coming."
She returned his clasp and kiss with her frank, sweet fervour, though he
saw in her eyes a slight bewilderment. He insisted--he had often during
their travels been her maid--on taking off her hat and shoes for her
before going into his adjoining dressing-room. Karen always protested.
"It is so dear and foolish; I am so used to waiting on myself; I am so
unused to being the fine idle lady." And she protested now, adding, as
he knelt before her, and putting her hand on his head: "And besides, I
believe that in some ways I am stronger than you. It should not be you
to take care of me."
"Stronger? In what ways? Upon my word, Madam!" Gregory exclaimed smiling
up at her, "Do you know that I was one of the best men of my time at
Oxford?"
"I don't mean in body, I mean in feelings, in nerves," said Karen. "It
is more like Tante."
He wondered, while in his little dressing-room he splashed restoringly
in hot water, what she quite did mean. Did she guess at the queer,
morbid moment that had struck at his blissful mood? It was indeed
disconcerting to have her find him like Tante.
"Do you mind," said Karen, when he joined her again, smiling at him and
clasping her hands in playful entreaty, "seeing at once what the present
is before we have tea? I do not know how I could eat tea while I had not
seen it."
"Mind? I'm eager to see it, too," said Gregory, with a pang of
self-reproach. "Of course we must wait tea."
The porter, in the passage, was carrying away the outer boards of the
packing-case and in the drawing-room they found Barker, knee deep in
straw, ripping the heavy sacking covering that enveloped a much
diminished but still enormous parcel.
Gregory came to his aid. They drew forth fine shavings and unwrapped
layers of paper, neatly secured; slowly the core of the mystery
disclosed itself in a temple-like form with a roof of dull black lacquer
and dimly gilded inner walls, a thickly swathed figure wedged between
them. The gift was, they now perceived, a Chinese Bouddha in his shrine,
and, as Gregory and Barker disengaged the figure and laid it upon the
ground, amusement, though still of an acrid sort, overcame Gregory's
vexation. "A Bouddha, upon my word!" he said. "This is a gorgeous gift."
Karen stooped to help unroll as if from a mummy, the multitudinous
bandages of fine paper; the passive bronze visage of the idol was
revealed, and by degrees, the seated figure, ludicrously prone. They
moved the temple to the end of the room, where two pictures were taken
down and a sofa pushed away to make room for it; the Bouddha was
hoisted, with difficulty, on to its lotus, and there, dark on its
glimmering background of gold, it sat and ambiguously blessed them.
Karen had worked with them neatly and expeditionary, and in silence, and
Gregory, glancing at her face from time to time, felt sure that she was
adjusting herself to a mingled bewilderment and disappointment; to the
wish also, that she might be worthy of her new possession. She stood now
before the Bouddha and gazed at it.
They had turned up the electric lights, but the curtains were not drawn
and the scent, and light, and vague, diffused roar of London at this
evening hour came in at the open windows. Barker, the porter and the
housemaid were carrying away the litter of paper and straw. The bright
cheerful room with its lovable banality and familiar comfort smiled its
welcome; and there, in the midst, the majestic and alien presence sat,
overpowering, and grotesque in its inappropriateness.
Karen now turned her eyes on her husband and slightly smiled. "It is
very wonderful," she said, "but I feel as if Tante expected a great deal
of me in giving it to me--a great deal more than is in me. It ought to
be a very deep and mystic person to have that Bouddha."
"Yes, it's a wonderful thing; quite awesome. Perhaps she expects you to
become deep and mystic," said Gregory. "Please don't."
"There is no danger of that," said Karen. "Of course it is the beauty of
it and the strangeness, that made Tante care for it. It is the sort of
thing she would love to have herself."
"Where on earth is he to go?" Gregory surmised. "Yes, he might look well
in that big music-room at Les Solitudes, or in some vast hall where he
would be more of an episode and less of a white elephant. I hardly think
he'll fit anywhere into the passage," he ventured.
Karen had been looking from him to the Bouddha. "But Gregory, of course
he must stay here," she said, "in the room we live in. Tante, I am sure,
meant that." Her voice had a tremor. "I am sure it would hurt her
dreadfully if we put him out of the way."
Barker was now gone and Gregory put his arm around her. "But it makes
all the room wrong, doesn't it? It will make us all wrong--that's what I
rather feel. We aren't _à la hauteur_." He remembered, after speaking
them, that these were the words he had used of his one colloquy with
Madame von Marwitz.
"I don't think," said Karen after a moment, "that you are quite kind."
"Darling--I'm only teasing you," said Gregory. "I'll like the thing if
you want me to, and make offerings to him every morning--he looks in
need of sacrifices and offerings, doesn't he? And what a queer Oriental
scent is in the air. Rather nice, that."
"Please don't call it the 'thing,'" said Karen. He saw into her divided
loyalty. And his comfort was to know that she didn't like the Bouddha
either.
"I won't," he promised. "It isn't a thing, but a duty, a privilege, a
responsibility. He shall stay here, where he is. He really won't crowd
us too impossibly, and that sofa can go."
"You see," said Karen, and tears now came to her eyes, "it would hurt
her so dreadfully if she could dream that we did not love it very, very
much."
"I know," said Gregory, kissing her. "I perfectly understand. We will
love it very, very much. Come now, you must be hungry; let us have our
tea."