Tante Part 16

"Jealous, my dear Mercedes?" Miss Scrotton's emotion showed itself in a dark flush.

"_Mais oui; mais oui_; you tell me that my friend is a swine. Does that not mean that you, of late, have received too few pearls?"

"My dear Mercedes! Who called him a swine?"

"One doesn't speak of scattered pearls without rousing these a.s.sociations." Her tone was beaming.

Was it possible to swallow such an affront? Was it possible not to? And she had brought it upon herself. There was comfort and a certain restoration of dignity in this thought. Miss Scrotton, struggling inwardly, feigned lightness. "So few of us are worthy of your pearls, dear. Unworthiness doesn't, I hope, consign us to the porcine category.

Perhaps it is that being, like him, a little person, I'm able to see Mr.

Drew's merits and demerits more impartially than you do. That is all. I really ought to know a good deal about Mr. Drew," Miss Scrotton pursued, regaining more self-control, now that she had steered her way out of the dreadful shoals where her friend's words had threatened to sink her; "I've known him since the days when he was at Oxford and I used to stay there with my uncle the Dean. He was sitting, then, at the feet of Pater. It's a derivative, a _parvenu_ talent, and, I do feel it, I confess I do, a derivative personality altogether, like that of so many of these clever young men nowadays. He is, you know, of anything but distinguished antecedents, and his reaction from his own _milieu_ has been, perhaps, from the first, a little marked. Unfortunately his marriage is there to remind people of it, and I never see Mr. Drew _dans le monde_ without, irrepressibly, thinking of the dismal little wife in Surbiton whom I once called upon, and his swarms--but swarms, my dear--of large-mouthed children."

Miss Scrotton wondered, as she proceeded, whether she had again too far abandoned discretion.

The Baroness examined her next letter for a moment before opening it and if she, too, had received her sting, she abandoned nothing.

She answered with complete, though perhaps ominous, mildness: "He is rather like Sh.e.l.ley, I always think, a sophisticated Sh.e.l.ley who had sat at the feet of Pater. Sh.e.l.ley, too, had swarms of children, and it is possible that they were large-mouthed. The plebeian origin that you tell me of rather attracts me. I care, especially, for the fine flame that mounts from darkness; and I, too, on one side, as you will remember, _ma bonne_, am _du peuple_."

"My dear Mercedes! Your father was an artist, a man of genius; and if your parents had risen from the gutter, you, by your own genius, transcend the question of rank as completely as a Shakespeare."

The continued mildness was alarming Miss Scrotton; an eagerness to make amends was in her eye.

"Ah--but did he, poor man!" Madame von Marwitz mused, rather irrelevantly, her eyes on her letter. "One hears now, not. But thank you, my Scrotton, you mean to be consoling. I have, however, no dread of the gutter. _Tiens_," she turned a page, "here is news indeed."

Miss Scrotton had now taken a chair beside her and her fingers tapped a little impatiently as the Baroness's eye--far from the thought of pearls and swine--went over the letter.

"_Tiens, tiens_," Madame von Marwitz repeated; "the little Karen is sought in marriage."

"Really," said Miss Scrotton, "how very fortunate for the poor little thing. Who is the young man, and how, in heaven's name, has she secured a young man in the wilds of Cornwall?"

Madame von Marwitz made no reply. She was absorbed in another letter.

And Miss Scrotton now perceived, with amazement and indignation, that the one laid down was written in the hand of Gregory Jardine.

"You don't mean to tell me," Miss Scrotton said, after some moments of hardly held patience, "that it's Gregory?"

Madame von Marwitz, having finished her second letter, was gazing before her with a somewhat ambiguous expression.

"Tallie speaks well of him," she remarked at last. "He has made a very good impression on Tallie."

"Are you speaking of Gregory Jardine, Mercedes?" Miss Scrotton repeated.

Madame von Marwitz now looked at her and as she looked the tricksy light of malice again grew in her eye. "_Mais oui; mais oui._ You have guessed correctly, my Scrotton," she said. "And you may read his letter. It is pleasant to me to see that stiff, self-satisfied young man brought to his knees. Read it, _ma chere_, read it. It is an excellent letter."

Miss Scrotton read, and, while she read, Madame von Marwitz's cold, deep eyes rested on her, still vaguely smiling.

"How very extraordinary," said Miss Scrotton. She handed back the letter.

"Extraordinary? Now, why, _ma bonne_?" her friend inquired, all limpid frankness. "He looked indeed, a stockish, chill young man, of the cold-nosed type--_ah, que je n'aime pas ca!_--but he is a good young man; a most unimpeachable young man; and our little Karen has melted him; how much his letter shows."

"Gregory Jardine is a very able and a very distinguished person," said Miss Scrotton, "and of an excellent county family. His mother and mine were cousins, as you know, and I have always taken the greatest interest in him. One can't but wonder how the child managed it." Mercedes, she knew, was drawing a peculiar satisfaction from her displeasure; but she couldn't control it.

"Ah, the child is not a manager. She is so far from managing it, you see, that she leaves it to me to manage. It touches and surprises me, I confess, to find that her devotion to me rules her even at a moment like this. Yes; Karen has pleased me very much."

"Of course that old-fashioned formality would in itself charm Gregory.

He is very conventional. But I do hope, my dear Mercedes, that you will think it over a little before giving your consent. It is really a most unsuitable match. Karen's feelings are, evidently, not at all deeply engaged and with Gregory it must be a momentary infatuation. He will get over it in time and thank you for saving him; and Karen will marry Herr Lippheim, as you hoped she would."

"Now upon my word, my Scrotton," said Madame von Marwitz in a manner as near insolence as its grace permitted, "I do not follow you. A barrister, a dingy little London barrister, to marry my ward? You call that an unsuitable marriage? I protest that I do not follow you and I a.s.sert, to the contrary, that he has played his cards well. Who is he? A n.o.body. You speak of your county families; what do they signify outside their county? Karen in herself is, I grant you, also a n.o.body; but she stands to me in a relation almost filial--if I chose to call it so; and I signify more than the families of many counties put together. Let us be frank. He opens no doors to Karen. She opens doors to him."

Miss Scrotton, addressed in these measured and determined tones, changed colour. "My dear Mercedes, of course you are right there. Of course in one sense, if you take Gregory in as you have taken Karen in, you open doors to him. I only meant that a young man in his position, with his way to make in the world, ought to marry some well-born woman with a little money. He must have money if he is to get on. He ought to be in parliament one day; and Karen is without a penny, you have often told me so, as well as illegitimate. Of course if you intend to make her a large allowance, that is a different matter; but can you really afford to do that, darling?"

"I consider your young man very fortunate to get Karen without one penny," Madame von Marwitz pursued, in the same measured tones, "and I shall certainly make him no present of my hard-earned money. Let him earn the money for Karen, now, as I have done for so many years. Had she married my good Franz, it would have been a very different thing. This young man is well able to support her in comfort. No; it all comes most opportunely. I wanted Karen to settle and to settle soon. I shall cable my consent and my blessings to them at once. Will you kindly find me a servant, _ma chere_."

Miss Scrotton, as she rose automatically to carry out this request, was feeling that it is possible almost to hate one's idols. She had transgressed, and she knew it, and Mercedes had been aware of what she had done and had punished her for it. She even wondered if the quick determination to accept Gregory as Karen's suitor hadn't been part of the punishment. Mercedes knew that she had a pride in her cousin and had determined to humble it. She had perhaps herself to thank for having riveted this most disastrous match upon him. It was with a bitter heart that she walked on into the house.

As she went in Mr. Claude Drew came out and Miss Scrotton gave him a chill greeting. She certainly hated Mr. Claude Drew.

Claude Drew blinked a little in the bright sunlight and had somewhat the air of a graceful, nocturnal bird emerging into the day. He was dressed with an appropriateness to the circ.u.mstances of stately _villegiature_ so exquisite as to have a touch of the fantastic.

Madame von Marwitz sat with her back to him in the limpid shadow of the great white parasol and was again looking, not at Karen's, but at Gregory Jardine's, letter. One hand hung over the arm of her chair.

Mr. Drew approached with quiet paces and, taking this hand, before Madame von Marwitz could see him, he bowed over it and kissed it. The manner of the salutation made of it at once a formality and a caress.

Madame von Marwitz looked up quickly and withdrew her hand. "You startled me, my young friend," she said. In her gaze was a mingled severity and softness and she smiled as if irrepressibly.

Mr. Drew smiled back. "I've been wearying to escape from our host and come to you," he said. "He will talk to me about the reform of American politics. Why reform them? They are much more amusing unreformed, aren't they? And why talk to me about them. I think he wants me to write about them. If I were to write a book for the Americans, I would tell them that it is their mission to be amusing. Democracies must be either absurd or uninteresting. America began by being uninteresting; and now it has quite taken its place as absurd. I love to hear about their fat, bribed, clean-shaven senators; just as I love to read the advertis.e.m.e.nts of tooth-brushes and breakfast foods and underwear in their magazines, written in the language of persuasive, familiar fraternity. It was difficult not to confess this to Mr. Asprey; but I do not think he would have understood me." Mr. Drew spoke in a soft, slightly sibilant voice, with little smiling pauses between sentences that all seemed vaguely shuffled together. He paused now, smiling, and looking down at Madame von Marwitz.

"You speak foolishly," said Madame von Marwitz. "But he would have thought you wicked."

"Because I like beauty and don't like democracy. I suppose so." Still smiling at her he added, "One forgets democracies when one looks at you.

You are very beautiful this morning."

"I am not, this morning, in a mood for unconventionalities," Madame von Marwitz returned, meeting his gaze with her mingled severity and softness.

And again, with composure, he ignored her severity and returned her smile. It would have been unfair to say that there was effrontery in Mr.

Drew's gaze; it merely had its way with you and, if you didn't like its way, pa.s.sed from you unperturbed. With all his rather sickly grace and ambiguous placidity, Mr. Drew was not lacking in character. He had risen superior to a good many things, the dismal wife at Surbiton and the large-mouthed children perhaps among them, and he had won his detachment. The homage he offered was not unalloyed by humour. To a person of Madame von Marwitz's calibre, he seemed to say, he would not pretend to raptures or reverences they had both long since seen through.

It would bore him to be rapturous or reverent, and if you didn't like him, so his whole demeanour mildly demonstrated, you could leave him, or, rather, he could leave you. So that when Madame von Marwitz sought to quell him she found herself met with a gentle unawareness, even a gentle indifference. Cogitation and a certain disquiet were often in her eye when it rested on this devotee.

"Does one make conventional speeches to the moon?" he now remarked, taking a chair beside her and turning the brim of his white hat over his eyes so that of his face only the sensual, delicate mouth and chin were in sunlight. "I shouldn't want to make speeches to you if you were conventional. You are done with your letters? I may talk to you?"

"Yes, I have done. You may talk, as foolishly as you please, but not unconventionally; whether I am or am not conventional is not a matter that concerns you. I have had good news to-day. My little Karen is to marry."

"Your little Karen? Which of all the myriads is this adorer?"

"The child you saw with me in London. The one who stays in Cornwall."

"You mean the fair, square girl who calls you Tante? I only remember of her that she was fair and square and called you Tante."

"That is she. She is to marry an excellent young man, a young man," said Madame von Marwitz, slightly smiling at him, "who would never wish to make speeches to the moon, who is, indeed, not aware of the moon. But he is very much aware of Karen; so much so," and she continued to smile, as if over an amusing if still slightly perplexing memory, "that when she is there he is not aware of me. What do you say to that?"