Tante Part 25

Betty joined her brother-in-law. "Dear me, Gregory," she said. "We've had the tragic muse to supper, haven't we. What is the matter, what has been the matter with Madame von Marwitz? Is she ill?"

"She says she's tired," said Gregory.

"It was disconcerting, wasn't it, her trailing suddenly out of the dining-room in that singular fashion," said Betty. "Do you know, Gregory, that I'm getting quite vexed with Madame von Marwitz."

"Really? Why, Betty?"

"Well, it has been acc.u.mulating. I'm a very easy-going person, you know; but I've been noticing that whenever I want Karen, Madame von Marwitz always nips in and cuts me out, so that I have hardly seen her at all since her guardian came to London. And then it did rather rile me, I confess, to find that the one hat in Karen's trousseau that I specially chose for her is the one--the only one--that Madame von Marwitz objects to. Karen never wears it now. She certainly behaved very absurdly to-night, Gregory. I suppose she expected us to sit round in a circle and stare."

"Perhaps she did," Gregory acquiesced. "Perhaps we should have."

He was anxious to maintain the appearance of bland lightness before Betty. Karen had re-entered as they spoke and Betty called her to them.

"Tell me, Karen dear, is Madame von Marwitz ill? She didn't give me a chance to say good-night to her." Betty had the air of wishing to exonerate herself.

"She isn't ill," said Karen, whose face was grave. "But very tired."

"Now what made her tired, I wonder?" Betty mused. "She looks such a robust person."

It was bad of Betty, and as Karen stood before them, looking from one to the other, Gregory saw that she suspected them. Her face hardened. "A great artist needs to be robust," she said. "My guardian works every day at her piano for five or six hours."

"Dear me," Betty murmured. "How splendid. I'd no idea the big ones had to keep it up like that."

"There is great ignorance about an artist's life," Karen continued coldly to inform her. "Do you not know what von Bulow said: If I miss my practising for one day I notice it; if for two days my friends notice it; if I miss it for three days the public notices it. The artist is like an acrobat, juggling always, intent always on his three golden b.a.l.l.s kept flying in the air. That is what it is like. Every atom of their strength is used. People, like my guardian, literally give their lives for the world."

"Oh, yes, it is wonderful, of course," Betty a.s.sented. "But of course they must enjoy it; it can hardly be called a sacrifice."

"Enjoy is a very small word to apply to such a great thing," said Karen.

"You may say also, if you like, that the saint enjoys his life of suffering for others. It is his life to give himself to goodness; it is the artist's life to give himself to beauty. But it is beauty and goodness they seek, not enjoyment; we must not try to measure these great people by our standards."

Before this arraignment Betty showed a tact for which Gregory was grateful to her. He, as so often, found Karen, in her innocent sententiousness, at once absurd and adorable, but he could grant that to Betty she might seem absurd only.

"Don't be cross with me, Karen," she said. "I suppose I am feeling sore at being snubbed by Madame von Marwitz."

"But indeed she did not mean to snub you, Betty," said Karen earnestly.

"And I am not cross; please do not think that. Only I cannot bear to hear some of the things that are said of artists."

"Well, prove that you're not cross," said Betty, smiling, "by at last giving me an afternoon when we can do something together. Will you come and see the pictures at Burlington House with me to-morrow and have tea with me afterwards? I've really seen nothing of you for so long."

"To-morrow is promised to Tante, Betty. I'm so sorry. Her great concert is to be on Friday, you know; and till then, and on the Sat.u.r.day, I have said that I will be with her. She gets so very tired. And I know how to take care of her when she is tired like that."

"Oh, dear!" Betty sighed. "There is no hope for us poor little people, is there, while Madame von Marwitz is in London. Well, on Monday, then, Karen. Will you promise me Monday afternoon?"

"Monday is free, and I shall like so very much to come, Betty," Karen replied.

When Gregory and his wife were left alone together, they stood for some moments without speaking on either side of the fire, and, as Karen's eyes were on the flames, Gregory, looking at her carefully, read on her face the signs of stress and self-command. The irony, the irritation and the oppression that Madame von Marwitz had aroused in him this evening merged suddenly, as he looked at Karen into intense anger. What had she not done to them already, sinister woman? It was because of her that constraint, reticence and uncertainty were rising again between him and Karen.

"Darling," he said, putting out his hand and drawing her to him; "you look very tired."

She came, he fancied, with at first a little reluctance, but, as he put his arm around her, she leaned her head against his shoulder with a sigh. "I am tired, Gregory."

They stood thus for some moments and then, as if the confident tenderness their att.i.tude expressed forced her to face with him their difficulty, she said carefully: "Gregory, dear, did you say anything to depress Tante this evening?"

"Why do you ask, darling?" Gregory, after a slight pause, also carefully inquired.

"Only that she seemed depressed, very much depressed. I thought, I hoped that you and she were talking so nicely, so happily."

There was another little pause and then Gregory said: "She rather depressed me, I think."

"Depressed you? But how, Gregory?"

He must indeed be very careful. It was far too late, now, for simple frankness; simple frankness had, perhaps, from the beginning been impossible and in that fact lay the insecurity of his position, and the immense advantage of Madame von Marwitz's. And as he paused and sought his words it was as if, in the image of the Bouddha, looking down upon him and Karen, Madame von Marwitz were with them now, a tranquil and ironic witness of his discomfiture. "Well," he said, "she made me feel that I had only a very dingy sort of life to offer you and that my friends were all very tiresome--_borne_ was the word she used. That did rather--well--dash my spirits."

Standing there within his arm, of her face, seen from above, only the brow, the eyelashes, the cheek visible, she was very still for a long moment. Then, gently, she said--and in the gentleness he felt that she put aside the too natural suspicion that he was complaining of Tante behind her back: "She doesn't realise that I don't care at all about people. And they are rather _bornes_, aren't they, Gregory."

"I don't find them so," said Gregory, reasonably. "They aren't geniuses, of course, or acrobats, or saints, or anything of that sort; but they seem to me, on the whole, a very nice lot of people."

"Very nice indeed, Gregory. But I don't think it is saints and geniuses that Tante misses here; she misses minds that are able to recognise genius." Her quick ear had caught the involuntary irony of his quotation.

"Ah, but, dear, you mustn't expect to find the average nice person able to pay homage at a dinner-party. There is a time and a place for everything, isn't there."

"It was not that I meant, Gregory, or that Tante meant. There is always a place for intelligence. It wasn't an interesting dinner, you must have felt that as well as I, not the sort of dinner Tante would naturally expect. They were only interested in their own things, weren't they? And quite apart from homage, there is such a thing as realisation. Mr.

Fraser talked to Tante--I saw it all quite well--as he might have talked to the next dowager he met. Tante isn't used to being talked to as if she were _toute comme une autre_; she isn't _toute comme une autre_."

"But one must pretend to be, at a dinner-party," Gregory returned. To have to defend his friends when it was Tante who stood so lamentably in need of defence had begun to work upon his nerves. "And some dowagers are as interesting as anybody. There are all sorts of ways of being interesting. Dowagers are as intelligent as geniuses sometimes." His lightness was not unprovocative.

"It isn't funny, Gregory, to see Tante put into a false position."

"But, my dear, we did the best we could for her."

"I know that we did; and our best isn't good enough for her. That is all that I ask you to realise," said Karen.

She was angry, and from the depths of his anger against Madame von Marwitz Gregory felt a little gush of anger against Karen rise. "You are telling me what she told me," he said; "that my best isn't good enough for her. You may say it and think it, of course; but it's a thing that Madame von Marwitz has no right to say."

Karen moved away from his arm. Something more than the old girlish sternness was in the look with which she faced him, though that flashed at him, a shield rather than a weapon. He recognised the hidden pain and astonishment and his anger faded in tenderness. How could she but resent and repell any hint that belittled Tante's claims and justifications?

how could she hear but with dismay the half threat of his last words, the intimation that from her he would accept what he would not accept from Tante? The sudden compunction of his comprehension almost brought the tears to his eyes. Karen saw that his resistance melted and the sternness fell from her look. "But Gregory," she said, her voice a little trembling, "Tante did not say that. Please don't make mistakes.

It is so dreadful to misunderstand; nothing frightens me so much. I say it; that our best isn't good enough, and I am thinking of Tante; only of Tante; but she--too sweetly and mistakenly--was thinking of me. Tante doesn't care, for herself, about our world; why should she? And she is mistaken to care about it for me; because it makes no difference, none at all, to me, if it is _borne_. All that I care about, you know that, Gregory, is you and Tante."

Gregory had his arms around her. "Do forgive me, darling," he said.

"But was I horrid?" Karen asked.

"No. It was I who was stupid," he said. "Do you know, I believe we were almost quarrelling, Karen."

"And we can quarrel safely--you and I, Gregory, can't we?" Karen said, her voice still trembling.

He leaned his head against her hair. "Of course we can. Only--don't let us quarrel--ever. It is so dreadful."

"Isn't it dreadful, Gregory. But we must not let it frighten us, ever, because of course we must quarrel now and then. And we often have already, haven't we," she went on, rea.s.suring him, and herself. "Do you remember, in the Tyrol, about the black bread!--And I was right that time.--And the terrible conflict in Paris, about _La Gaine d'Or_; when I said you were a Philistine."