Tante Part 42

"Wild birds are common," Mr. Drew observed, smiling softly.

He found her literalness charming. He was finding her altogether charming. From the moment that she had appeared at the door in the dusk, with her white, blind, searching face, she had begun to interest him.

She was stupid and delightful; a limpid and indomitable young creature who, in a clash of loyalties, had chosen, without a hesitation, to leave the obvious one. Also she was married yet unawakened, and this, to Mr.

Drew, was a pre-eminently charming combination. The question of the awakened and the unawakened, of the human att.i.tude to pa.s.sion, preoccupied him, practically, more than any other. His art dealt mainly in themes of emotion as an end in itself.

The possibilities of pa.s.sion in Madame von Marwitz, as artist and genius, had strongly attracted him. He had genuinely been in love with Madame von Marwitz. But the mere woman, as she more and more helplessly revealed herself, was beginning to oppress and bore him.

He had amused himself, of late, by imaging his relation to her in the fable of the sun and the traveller. Her beams from their high, sublime solitudes had filled him with delight and exhilaration. Then the radiance had concentrated itself, had begun to follow him--rather in the manner of stage sunlight--very unflaggingly. He had wished for intervals of shade. He had been aware, even during his long absence in America, of sultriness brooding over him, and now, at these close quarters, he had begun to throw off his cloak of allegiance. She bored him. It wasn't good enough. She pretended to be sublime and far; but she wasn't sublime and far; she was near and watchful and exacting; as watchful and exacting as a mistress and as haughty as a Diana. She was not, and had, evidently, no intention of being, his mistress, and for the mere pleasure of adoring her Mr. Drew found the price too high to pay. He did not care to proffer, indefinitely, a reverent pa.s.sion, and he did not like people, when he showed his weariness, to lose their tempers with him. Already Madame von Marwitz had lost hers. He did not forget what she looked like nor what she said on these occasions. She had mentioned the large-mouthed children at Wimbledon--facts that he preferred to forget as much as possible--and he did not know that he forgave her.

There was a tranquil malice in realizing that as Madame von Marwitz became more and more displeasing to him, Mrs. Jardine, more and more, became pleasing. A new savour had come into his life since her appearance and he had determined to postpone a final rupture with his great friend and remain on for some time longer at Les Solitudes. He wondered if it would be possible to awaken Mrs. Jardine.

"Haven't I heard you practising, once or twice lately?" he asked her now, as they turned at the end of the terrace and walked back.

"Yes," said Karen; "I practise every morning."

"I'd no idea you played, too."

"It is hardly a case of 'too', is it," Karen said, mildly amused.

"I don't know. Perhaps it is. One may look at a Memling after a Michael Angelo, you know. I wish you'd play to me."

"I am no Memling, I a.s.sure you."

"You can't, until I hear you. Do play to me. Brahms; a little Brahms."

"I have practised no Brahms for a long time. I find him too difficult."

"I heard you doing a Bach prelude yesterday; play that."

"Certainly, if you wish it, I will play it to you," said Karen, "though I do not think that you will much enjoy it."

Mrs. Talcott was in the morning-room over accounts; so Karen went with the young man into the music-room and opened the grand piano there.

She then played her prelude, delicately, carefully, composedly. She knew Mr. Drew to be musicianly; she did not mind playing to him.

More and more, Mr. Drew reflected, looking down at her, she reminded him of flower-brimmed, inaccessible mountain-slopes. He must discover some method of ascent; for the music brought her no nearer; he was aware, indeed, that it removed her. She quite forgot him as she played.

The last bars had been reached when the door opened suddenly and Madame von Marwitz appeared.

She had come in haste--that was evident--and a mingled fatigue and excitement was on her face. Her white cheeks had soft, sodden depressions and under her eyes were little pinches in the skin, as though hot fingers had nipped her there. She looked almost old, and she smiled a determined, adjusted smile, with heavy eyes. "_Tiens, tiens_,"

she said, and, turning elaborately, she shut the door.

Karen finished her bars and rose.

"This is a new departure," said Madame von Marwitz. She came swiftly to them, her loose lace sleeves flowing back from her bare arms. "I do not like my piano touched, you know, Karen, unless permission is given. No matter, no matter, my child. Let it not occur again, that is all. You have not found the right balance of that phrase," she stooped and reiterated with emphasis a fragment of the prelude. "And now I will begin my work, if you please. Tallie waits for you, I think, in the garden, and would be glad of your help. Tallie grows old. It does not do to forget her."

"Am I to go into the garden, too?" Mr. Drew inquired, as Madame von Marwitz seated herself and ran her fingers over the keys. "I thought we were to motor this morning."

"We will motor when I have done my work. Go into the garden, by all means, if you wish to."

"May I come into the garden with you? May I help you there?" Mr. Drew serenely drawled, addressing Karen, who, with a curious, concentrated look, stood gazing at her guardian.

She turned her eyes on him and her glance put him far, far away, like an object scarcely perceived. "I am not going into the garden," she said.

"Mrs. Talcott is working in the morning-room and does not need me yet."

"Ah. She is in the morning-room," Madame von Marwitz murmured, still not raising her eyes, and still running loud and soft scales up and down.

Karen left the room.

As the door closed upon her, Madame von Marwitz, with a singular effect of control, began to weave a spider's-web of intricate, nearly impalpable, sound. "Go, if you please," she said to Mr. Drew.

He stood beside her, placid. "Why are you angry?" he asked.

"I am not pleased that my rules should be broken. Karen has many privileges. She must learn not to take, always, the extra inch when the ell is so gladly granted."

He leaned on the piano. Her controlled face, bent with absorption above the lacey pattern of sound that she evoked, interested him.

"When you are angry and harness your anger to your art like this, you become singularly beautiful," he remarked. He felt it; and, after all, if he were to remain at Les Solitudes and attempt to scale those Alpine slopes he must keep on good terms with Madame von Marwitz.

"So," was her only reply. Yet her eyes softened.

He raised the lace wing of her sleeve and kissed it, keeping it in his hand.

"No foolishness if you please," said Madame von Marwitz. "Of what have you and Karen been talking?"

"I can't get her to talk," said Mr. Drew. "But I like to hear her play."

"She plays with right feeling," said Madame von Marwitz. "She is not a child to express herself in speech. Her music reveals her more truly."

"_Nur wo du bist sei alles, immer kindlich_," Mr. Drew mused. "That is what she makes me think of." With anybody of Madame von Marwitz's intelligence, frankness was far more likely to allay suspicion than guile. And for very pride now she was forced to seem rea.s.sured. "Yes.

That is so," she said. And she continued to play.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

Karen meanwhile made her way to the cliff-path and, seating herself on a gra.s.sy slope, she clasped her knees with her hands and gazed out over the sea. She was thinking hard of something, and trying to think only of that. It was true, the permission had been that she was to play on the grand-piano when it was left open. There had been no rule set; it had not been said that she was not to play at other times and indeed, on many occasions, she had played unrebuked, before Tante came down. But the thing to remember now, with all her power, was that, technically, Tante had been right. To hold fast to that thought was to beat away a fear that hovered about her, like a horrible bird of prey. She sat there for a long time, and she became aware at last that though she held so tightly to her thought, it had, as it were, become something lifeless, inefficacious, and that fear had invaded her. Tante had been unkind, unjust, unloving.

It was as though, in taking refuge with Tante, she had leaped from a great height, seeing security beneath, and as though, alighting, she slipped and stumbled on a sloping surface with no foothold anywhere.

Since she came, there had been only this sliding, sliding, and now it seemed to be down to unseen depths. For this was more and worse than the first fear of her coming. Tante had been unkind, and she so loved Mr.

Drew that she forgot herself when he bestowed his least attention elsewhere.

Karen rose to her feet suddenly, aware that she was trembling.

She looked over the sea and the bright day was dreadful to her. Where was she and what was she, and what was Tante, if this fear were true?

Not even on that far day of childhood when she had lost herself in the forest had such a horror of loneliness filled her. She was a lost, an unwanted creature.

She turned from the unanswering immensities and ran down the cliff-path towards Les Solitudes. She could not be alone. To think these things was to feel herself drowning in fear.