Tante arrived on Monday afternoon and the arrival reminded Gregory of
the Bouddha's installation; but, whereas the Bouddha had overflowed the
drawing-room only, Madame von Marwitz overflowed the flat.
A multitude of boxes were borne into the passages where, end to end,
like a good's train on a main line, they stood impeding traffic.
Louise, harassed and sallow, hurried from room to room, expostulating,
explaining, replying in shrill tones to Madame von Marwitz's sonorous
orders. Victor, led by Mrs. Forrester's footman, made his appearance
shortly after his mistress, and, set at large, penetrated unerringly to
the kitchen where he lapped up a dish of custard; while Mrs. Barker, in
the drawing-room, already with signs of resentment on her face, was
receiving minute directions from Madame von Marwitz in regard to a cup
of chocolate. In the dining-room, Gregory found two strange-looking men,
to whom Barker, also clouded, had served whisky and soda; one of these
was Madame von Marwitz's secretary, Schultz; the other a concert
impresario. They greeted Gregory with a disconcerting affability.
In the midst of the confusion Madame von Marwitz moved, weary and
benignant, her arm around Karen's shoulders, or seated herself at the
piano to run her fingers appraisingly over it in a majestic surge of
arpeggios. Gregory found her hat and veil tossed on the bed in his and
Karen's room, and when he went into his dressing-room he stumbled over
three band-boxes, just arrived from a modiste's, and hastily thrust
there by Louise.
Victor bounded to greet him as he sought refuge in the library, and
overturned a table that stood in the hall with two fine pieces of
oriental china upon it. The splintering crash of crockery filled the
flat. Mrs. Barker had taken the chocolate to the drawing-room some time
since, and Madame von Marwitz, the cup in her hand, appeared upon the
threshold with Karen. "Alas! The bad dog!" she said, surveying the
wreckage while she sipped her chocolate.
Rose was summoned to sweep up the pieces and Karen stooped over them
with murmured regret.
"Were they wedding-presents, my Karen?" Madame von Marwitz asked.
"Console yourself; they were not of a good period--I noticed them. I
will give you better."
The vases had belonged to Gregory's mother. He was aware that he stood
rather blankly looking at the fragments, as Rose collected them. "Oh,
Gregory, I am so sorry," said Karen, taking upon herself the
responsibility for Victor's mischance. "I am afraid they are broken to
bits. See, this is the largest piece of all. They can't be mended. No,
Tante, they were not wedding-presents; they belonged to Gregory and we
were very fond of them."
"Alas!" said Madame von Marwitz above her chocolate, and on a deeper
note.
Gregory was convinced that she had known they were not wedding-presents.
But her manner was flawless and he saw that she intended to keep it so.
She dined with them alone and at the table addressed her talk to him,
fixing, as ill-luck would have it, on the theatre as her theme, and on
_La Gaine d'Or_ as the piece which, in Paris, had particularly
interested her. "You and Karen, of course, saw it when you were there,"
she said.
It was the piece of sinister fame to which he had refused to take Karen.
He owned that they had not seen it.
"Ah, but that is a pity, truly a pity," said Madame von Marwitz. "How
did it happen? You cannot have failed to hear of it."
Unable to plead Karen as the cause for his abstention since Madame von
Marwitz regretted that Karen had missed the piece, Gregory said that he
had heard too much perhaps. "I don't believe I should care for anything
the man wrote," he confessed.
"_Tiens!_" said Madame von Marwitz, opening her eyes. "You know him?"
"Heaven forbid!" Gregory ejaculated, smiling with some tartness.
"But why this rigour? What have you against M. Saumier?"
It was difficult for a young Englishman of conventional tastes to
formulate what he had against M. Saumier. Gregory took refuge in
evasions. "Oh, I've glanced at reviews of his plays; seen his face in
illustrated papers. One gets an idea of a man's personality and the kind
of thing he's likely to write."
"A great artist," Madame von Marwitz mildly suggested. "One of our
greatest."
"Is he really? I'd hardly grasped that. I had an idea that he was merely
one of the clever lot. But I never can see why one should put oneself,
through a man's art, into contact with the sort of person one would
avoid having anything to do with in life."
Madame von Marwitz listened attentively. "Do you refuse to look at a
Cellini bronze?"
"Literature is different, isn't it? It's more personal. There's more
life in it. If a man's a low fellow I don't interest myself in his
interpretation of life. He's seen nothing that I'm likely to want to
see."
Madame von Marwitz smiled, now with a touch of irony. "But you frighten
me. How am I to tell you that I know M. Saumier?"
Gregory was decidedly taken back. "That's a penalty you have to pay for
being a celebrity, no doubt," he said. "All celebrities know each other,
I suppose."
"By no means. I allow no one to be thrust upon me, I assure you. And I
have the greatest admiration for M. Saumier's talent. A great artist
cannot be a low fellow; if he were one he would be so much more than
that that the social defect would be negligible. Few great artists, I
imagine, have been of such a character as would win the approval of a
garden party at Lambeth Palace. I am sorry, indeed sorry, that you and
Karen missed _La Gaine d'Or_. It is not a play for the _jeune fille_;
no; though, holding as I do that nothing so fortifies and arms the taste
as liberty, I should have allowed Karen to see it even before her
marriage. It is a play cruel and acrid and beautiful. Yes; there is
great beauty, and it flowers, as so often, on a bitter root. Ah, well,
you will waive your scruples now, I trust. I will take Karen with me to
see it when we are next in Paris together, and that must be soon. We
will go for a night or two. You would like to see Paris with me again;
_pas vrai, chérie?_"
Gregory had been uncomfortably aware of Karen's contemplation while he
defended his prejudices, and he was prepared for an open espousal of her
guardian's point of view; it was, he knew, her own. But he received once
more, as he had received already on several occasions, an unexpected and
gratifying proof of Karen's recognition of marital responsibility. "I
should like to be in Paris with you again, Tante," she said, "but not to
go to that play. I agreed not to go to it when Gregory and I were there.
I should not care to go when he so much dislikes it." Her eyes met her
guardian's while she spoke. They were gentle and non-committal; they
gave Gregory no cause for triumph, nor Tante for humiliation; they
expressed merely her own recognition of a bond.
Madame von Marwitz rose to the occasion, but--oh, it was there, the soft
pressure, never more present to Gregory's consciousness than when it
seemed most absent--she rose too emphatically, as if to a need. Her eyes
mused on the girl's face, tenderly brooded and understood. And Karen's
voice and look had asked her not to understand.
"Ah, that is right; that is a wife," she murmured. "Though, believe me,
_chérie_, I did not know that I was so transgressing." And turning her
glance on Gregory, "_Je vous fais mes compliments_," she added.
Karen said that he must bring his cigar into the drawing-room, for Tante
would smoke her cigarette with him, and there, until bedtime, things
went as well as they had at dinner--or as badly; for part of their
badness, Gregory more and more resentfully became aware, was that they
were made to seem to go well, from her side, not from his.
She had a genius, veritably uncanny for, with all sweetness and
hesitancy, revealing him as stiff and unresponsively complacent. It was
impossible for him to talk freely with a person uncongenial to him of
the things he felt deeply; and, pertinaciously, over her coffee and
cigarettes, it was the deep things that she softly wooed him to share
with her.
He might be stiff and stupid, but he flattered himself that he wasn't
once short or sharp--as he would have been over and over again with any
other woman who so bothered him. And he was sincerely unaware that his
courtesy, in its dry evasiveness, was more repudiating than rudeness.
When Karen went with her guardian to her room that night, the little
room that looked so choked and overcrowded with the great woman's
multiplied necessities, Madame von Marwitz, sinking on the sofa, drew
her to her and looked closely at her, with an intentness almost tragic,
tenderly smoothing back her hair.
Karen looked back at her very firmly.
"Tell me, my child," Madame von Marwitz said, as if, suddenly, taking
refuge in the inessential from the pressure of her own thoughts, "how
did you find our Tallie? I have not heard of that from you yet."
"She is looking rather pale and thin, Tante; but she is quite well
again; already she will go out into the garden," Karen answered, with,
perhaps, an evident relief.
"That is well," said Madame von Marwitz with quiet satisfaction. "That
is well. I cannot think of Tallie as ill. She is never ill. It is
perhaps the peaceful, happy life she leads--_povera_--that preserves
her. And the air, the wonderful air of our Cornwall. I fixed on Cornwall
for the sake of Tallie, in great part; I sought for a truly halcyon spot
where that faithful one might end her days in joy. You knew that,
Karen?"
"No, Tante; you never told me that."
"It is so," Madame von Marwitz continued to muse, her eyes on the fire,
"It is so. I have given great thought to my Tallie's happiness. She has
earned it." And after a moment, in the same quiet tone, she went on.
"This idea of yours, my Karen, of bringing Tallie up to town; was it
wise, do you think?"
Karen, also, had been looking at the flames. She brought her eyes now
back to her guardian. "Wasn't it wise, Tante? We had asked her to come
and stay--long ago, you know."
"Had she seemed eager?"
"Eager? No; I can't imagine Mrs. Talcott eager about anything. We hoped
we could persuade her, that was all. Why not wise, Tante?"
"Only, my child, that after the quiet life there, the solitude that she
loves and that I chose for her sake, the pure sea air and the life among
her flowers, London, I fear, would much weary and fatigue her. Tallie is
getting old. We must not forget that Tallie is very old. This illness
warns us. It does not seem to me a good plan. It was your plan, Karen?"
Karen was listening, with a little bewilderment. "It seemed, to me very
good. I had not thought of Mrs. Talcott as so old as that. I always
think of her as old, but so strong and tough. It was Gregory who
suggested it, in the first place, and this time, too. When I told him
that I was going he thought of our plan at once and told me that now I
must persuade her to come to us for a good long visit. He is really very
fond of Mrs. Talcott, Tante, and she of him, I think. It would please
you to see them together."
Karen spoke on innocently; but, as she spoke, she became aware from a
new steadiness in her guardian's look, that her words had conveyed some
significance of which she was herself unconscious.
Madame von Marwitz's hand had tightened on hers. "Ah," she said after a
moment. She looked away.
"What is it, Tante?" Karen asked.
Madame von Marwitz had begun to draw deep, slow breaths. Karen knew the
sound; it meant a painful control. "Tante, what is it?" she repeated.
"Nothing. Nothing, my child." Madame von Marwitz laid her arm around
Karen's shoulders and continued to look away from her.
"But it isn't nothing," said Karen, after a little pause. "Something
that I have said troubles or hurts you."
"Is it so? Perhaps you say the truth, my child. Hurts are not new to me.
No, my Karen, no. It is nothing for us to speak of. I understand. But
your husband, Karen, he must have found it thoughtless in me,
indelicate, to force myself in when he had hoped so strongly for another
guest."
A slow flush mounted to Karen's cheek. She kept silence for a moment,
then in a careful voice she said: "No, Tante; I do not believe that."
"No?" said Madame von Marwitz. "No, my Karen?"
"He knew, on the contrary, that I hoped to have you soon--at any time
that you could come," said Karen, in slightly trembling tones.
Madame von Marwitz nodded. "He knew that, as you tell me; and, knowing
it, he asked Tallie; hoping that with her installed--for a long
visit--my stay might be prevented. Do not let us hide from each other,
my Karen. We have hidden too long and it is the beginning of the end if
we may not say to each other what we see."
Sitting with downcast eyes, Karen was silent, struggling perhaps with
new realisations.
Madame von Marwitz bent to kiss her forehead and then, resuming the
tender stroking of her hair, she went on: "Your husband dislikes me. Let
us look the ugly thing full in the face. You know it, and I know it,
and--_parbleu!_--he knows it well. There; the truth is out. Ah, the
brave little heart; it sought to hide its sorrow from me. But Tante is
not so dull a person. The loneliness of heart must cease for you. And
the sorrow, too, may pass away. Be patient, Karen. You will see. He may
come to feel more kindly towards the woman who so loves his wife.
Strange, is it not, and a chastisement for my egotism, if I have still
any of that frothy element lingering in my nature, that I should find,
suddenly, at the end of my life--so near me, bound to me by such
ties--one who is unwilling to trust me, oh, for the least little bit; so
unwilling to accept me at merely my face value. Most people," she added,
"have loved me easily."
Karen sat on in silence. Her guardian knew this apathetic silence, and
that it was symptomatic in her of deep emotion. And, the contagion of
the suffering beside her gaining upon her, her own fictitious calm
wavered. She bent again to look into the girl's averted face. "Karen,
_chérie_," she said, and now with a quicker utterance; "it is not worse
than I yet realise? You do not hide something that I have not yet seen.
It is dislike; I accept it. It is aversion, even. But his love for you;
that is strong, sincere? He will not make it too difficult for me? I am
not wrong in coming here to be with my child?"
Karen at length turned her eyes on her guardian with a heavy look. "What
would you find too difficult?" she asked.
Madame von Marwitz hesitated slightly, taken aback. But she grasped in
an instant her advantage. "That by being here I should feel that I came
between you and your husband. That by being here I made it more
difficult for you."
"I should not be happier if you were away--if what you think is true,
should I?" said Karen.
"Yes, my child," Madame von Marwitz returned, and now almost with
severity. "You would. You would not so sharply feel your husband's
aversion for me if I were not here. You would not have it in your ears;
before your eyes."
"I thought that you talked together quite easily to-night," Karen
continued. "I saw, of course, that you did not understand each other;
but with time that might be. I thought that if you were here he would by
degrees come to know you, for he does not know you yet."
"We talked easily, did we not, my child, to shield you, and you were not
more deceived by the ease than he or I. He does not understand me? I
hope so indeed. But to say that I do not understand him shows already
your wish to shield him, and at my expense. I do understand him; too
well. And if there is this repugnance in him now, may it not grow with
the enforced intimacy? That is my fear, my dread."
"He has never said that he disliked you."
"Said it? To you? I should imagine not, _parbleu_!"
"He has only said," Karen pursued with a curious doggedness, "that he
did not feel that you cared for him to care."
"Ah! Is it so? You have talked of it, then? And he has said that? And
did you believe it? Of me?"
But the growing passion and urgency of her voice seemed to shut Karen
more closely in upon herself rather than sweep her into impulsive
confidence. There was a hot exasperation in Madame von Marwitz's eye as
it studied the averted, stubborn head. "No," was the reply she received.
"No, no, indeed. It was not the truth that he said to you and you know
that it was not the truth. Oh, I make no accusation against your
husband; he believed it the truth; but you cannot believe that I would
rest satisfied with what must make you unhappy. And how can you be happy
if your husband does not care for me? How can you be happy if he feels
repugnance for me? You cannot be. Is it not so? Or am I wrong?"
"No," Karen again repeated.
"Then," said Madame von Marwitz, and a sob now lifted her voice, "then
do not let him put it upon me. Not that! Oh promise me, my Karen! For
that would be the end."
Karen turned to her suddenly, and passed her arms around her.
"Tante--Tante," she said; "what are you saying? The end? There could not
be an end for us! Do not speak so. Do not. Do not." She was trembling.
"Ah--could there not! Could there not!" With the words Madame von
Marwitz broke into violent sobs. "Has it not been my doom,
always--always to have what I love taken from me! You love this man who
hates me! You defend him! He will part you from me! I foresee it! From
the first it has been my dread!"
"No one can ever part us, Tante. No one. Ever." Karen whispered, holding
her tightly, and her face, bending above the sobbing woman, was suddenly
old and stricken in its tormented and almost maternal love. "Tante;
remember your own words. You gave me courage. Will you not be patient?
For my sake? Be patient, Tante. Be patient. He does not know you yet."