Tante Part 17

"I say," Mr. Drew replied, "that the barbarians will always be many and the civilized few. Who is this barbarian?"

"A Mr. Gregory Jardine."

"Jardine? _Connais-pas_," said Mr. Drew.

"He is a cousin of our Scrotton's," said Madame von Marwitz, "and a man of law. Very stiff and clean like a roll of expensive paper. He has asked me very nicely if he may inscribe the name of Mrs. Jardine upon a page of it. He is the sort of young man of law, I think I distinguish,"

Madame von Marwitz mused, her eyes on the landscape, "who does not smoke a briar wood pipe and ride on an omnibus, but who keeps good cigars in a silver box and always takes a hansom. He will make Karen comfortable and, I gather from her letter, happy. It will be a strange change of _milieu_ for the child, but I have, I think, made her independent of _milieus_. She will write more than Mrs. Jardine on his scroll. It is a child of character."

"And she will no longer be in Cornwall," Mr. Drew observed. "I am glad of that."

"Why, pray? I am not glad of it. I shall miss my Karen at Les Solitudes."

"But I, you see, don't want to have other worshippers there when I go to stay with you," said Mr. Drew; "for, you know, you are going to let me stay a great deal with you in Cornwall. You will play to me, and I will write something that you will, perhaps, care to read. And the moon will be very kind and listen to many speeches. You know," he added, with a change of tone, "that I am in love with you. I must be alone with you at Les Solitudes."

"Let us have none of that, if you please," said Madame von Marwitz. She looked away from him along the sunny stretches of the terrace and she frowned slightly, though smiling on, as if with tolerant affection. And in her look was something half dazed and half resentful like the look of a fierce wild bird, subdued by the warmth and firmness of an enclosing hand.

CHAPTER XIII

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 doc.u.ments 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sumptions 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 pet.i.te_ 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 a.s.sociates. 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.