Tante Part 5

Forrester's...o...b..t, that was evident, as a tiny satellite in attendance on the streaming comet. In the wake of the comet she touched, it was true, larger orbits than the artistic; but it was in this accidental and transitory fas.h.i.+on, and his accurate knowledge of the world saw in the nameless and penniless girl the probable bride of some second-rate artist, some wandering, dishevelled musician, or ill-educated, ill-regulated poet. Girls like that, who had the aristocrat's a.s.surance and simplicity and unconsciousness of worldly lore, without the aristocrat's secure standing in the world, were peculiarly in danger of sinking below the level of their own type.

He went in to dress. He was dining with the Armytages and after thinking of Miss Woodruff it was indeed like pa.s.sing from memories of larch-woods into the chintzes and metals and potted flowers of the drawing-room to think of Constance Armytage. Yet Gregory thought of her very contentedly while he dressed. She was well-dowered, well-educated, well-bred; an extremely nice and extremely pretty young woman with whom he had danced, dined and boated frequently during her first two seasons. The Armytages had a house at Pangbourne and he spent several week-ends with them every summer. Constance liked him and he liked her. He was not in love with her; but he wondered if he might not be. To get married to somebody like Constance seemed the next step in his sensible career. He could see her established most appropriately in the flat. He could see her beautifully burnished chestnut hair, her pretty profile and bright blue eyes above the tea-table; he could see her at the end of the dinner-table presiding charmingly at a dinner. She would be a charming mother, too; the children, when babies, would wear blue sashes and would grow up doing all the proper things at the proper times, from the French _bonne_ and the German _Fraulein_ to Eton and Oxford and dances and happy marriages.

She would continue all the traditions of his outer life, would fulfil it and carry it on peacefully and honourably into the future.

The Armytages lived in a large house in Queen's Gate Gardens. They were not interesting people, but Gregory liked them none the less for that.

He approved of the Armytage type--the kind, courageous, intolerant old General who managed to find Gladstone responsible for every misfortune that befell the Empire--blithe, easy-going Lady Armytage, the two sons in the army and the son in the navy and the two unmarried girls, of whom Constance was one and the other still in the school-room. It was a small dinner-party that night; most of the family were there and they had music after it, Constance singing very prettily--she was taking lessons--the last two songs she had learned, one by Widor and one by Tosti.

Yet as he drove home late Gregory was aware that Constance still remained a pleasant possibility to contemplate and that he had come no nearer to being in love with her. It might be easier, he mused, if only she could offer some trivial trick or imperfection, if she had been freckled, say, or had had a stammer, or prominent teeth. He could imagine being married to her so much more easily than being in love with her, and he was a little vexed with himself for his own insusceptibility.

Constance was the last thing that he thought of before going to sleep; yet it was not of her he dreamed. He dreamed, very strangely, of the little cosmopolitan waif whom he had met that afternoon. He was walking down a road in a forest. The sky above was blue, with white clouds heaving above the dark tree-tops, and it was a still, clear day. His mood was the boyish mood of romance and expectancy, touched with a little fear. At a turning of the road he came suddenly upon Karen Woodruff. She was standing at the edge of the forest as if waiting for him, and she held a basket of berries, not wild-strawberry and not bramble, but a fairy-tale fruit that a Hans Andersen heroine might have gathered, and she looked like such a heroine herself, young, and strange, and kind, and wearing the funny little dress of the concert, the white dress with the flat blue bows. She held out the basket to him as he approached, and, smiling at each other in silence, they ate the fruit with its wild, sweet savour. Then, as if he had spoken and she were answering him, she said: "And I love you."

Gregory woke with this. He lay for some moments still half dreaming, with no surprise, conscious only of a peaceful wonder. He had forgotten the dream in the morning; but it returned to him later in the day, and often afterwards. It persisted in his memory like a cl.u.s.ter of unforgettable sensations. The taste of the berries, the scent of the pine-trees, the sweetness of the girl's smile, these things, rather than any significance that they embodied, remained with him like one of the deep impressions of his boyhood.

CHAPTER VI

On the morning that Gregory Jardine had waked from his dream, Madame von Marwitz sat at her writing-table tearing open, with an air of impatient melancholy, note after note and letter after letter, and dropping the envelopes into a waste-paper basket beside her. A cigarette was between her lips; her hair, not dressed, was coiled loosely upon her head; she wore a white silk _peignoir_ bordered with white fur and girdled with a sash of silver tissue. She had just come from her bath and her face, though weary, had the freshness of a prolonged toilet.

The room where she sat, with its grand piano and its deep chairs, its sofa and its capacious writing-table, was accurately adjusted to her needs. It, too, was all in white, carpet, curtains and dimity coverings.

Madame von Marwitz laughed at her own vagary; but it had had only once to be clearly expressed, and the greens and pinks that had adorned her sitting-room at Mrs. Forrester's were banished as well as the rose-sprigged toilet set and hangings of the bedroom. "I cannot breathe among colours," she had said. "They seem to press upon me. White is like the air; to live among colours, with all their beauty, is like swimming under the water; I can only do it with comfort for a little while."

Madame von Marwitz looked up presently at a wonderful little clock of gold and enamel that stood before her and then struck, not impatiently, but with an intensification of the air of melancholy, an antique silver bell that stood beside the clock. Louise entered.

"Where is Mademoiselle?" Madame von Marwitz asked, speaking in French.

Louise answered that Mademoiselle had gone out to take Victor for his walk, Victor being Madame von Marwitz's St. Bernard who remained in England during his mistress's absences.

"You should have taken Victor yourself, Louise," said Madame von Marwitz, not at all unkindly, but with decisive condemnation. "You know that I like Mademoiselle to help me with my letters in the morning."

Louise, her permanent plaintiveness enhanced, murmured that she had a bad headache and that Mademoiselle had kindly offered to take Victor, had said that she would enjoy taking him.

"Moreover," Madame von Marwitz pursued, as though these excuses were not worthy of reply, "I do not care for Mademoiselle to be out alone in such a fog. You should have known that, too. As for the dress, don't fail to send it back this morning--as you should have done last night."

"Mademoiselle thought we might arrange it to please Madame."

"You should have known better, if Mademoiselle did not. Mademoiselle has very little taste in such matters, as you are well aware. Do my feet now; I think that the nails need a little polis.h.i.+ng; but very little; I do not wish you to make them look as though they had been varnished; it is a trick of yours."

Madame von Marwitz then resumed her cigarette and her letters while Louise, fetching files and scissors, powders and polishers, mournfully knelt before her mistress, and, drawing the _mule_ from a beautifully undeformed white foot, began to bring each nail to a state of perfected art. In the midst of this ceremony Karen Woodruff appeared. She led the great dog by a leash and was still wearing her cap and coat.

"I hope I am not late, Tante," she said, speaking in English and going to kiss her guardian's cheek, while Victor stood by, majestically benignant.

"You are late, my Karen, and you had no business to take out Victor at this hour. If you want to walk with him let it be in the afternoon.

_Ae! ae!_ Louise! what are you doing? Have mercy I beg of you!" Louise had used the file awkwardly. "What is that you have, Karen?" Madame von Marwitz went on. Miss Woodruff held in her hand a large bouquet enveloped in white paper.

"An offering, Tante; they just arrived as I came in. Roses, I think."

"I have already sent half a dozen boxes downstairs for Mrs. Forrester to dispose of in the drawing-room. You will take off your things now, child, and help me, please, with all these weary people. _Bon Dieu!_ do they really imagine that I am going to answer their inept effusions?"

Miss Woodruff had unwrapped a magnificent bunch of pink roses and laid them beside her guardian. "From that good little dark-faced lady of yesterday, Tante."

Madame von Marwitz, pausing meditatively over a note, glanced at them.

"The dark-faced lady?"

"Don't you remember? Mrs. Harding. Here is her card. She sat and gazed at you, so devoutly, while you talked to Mr. Drew and Lady Campion. And she looked very poor. It must mean a great deal for her to buy roses in January--_un supreme effort_," Miss Woodruff quoted, she and her guardian having a host of such playful allusions.

"I see her now," said Madame von Marwitz. "I see her face; _congestionnee d'emotion, n'est-ce-pas_." She read the card that Karen presented.

"Silly woman. Take them away, child."

"But no, Tante, it is not silly; it is very touching, I think; and you have liked pink roses sometimes. It makes me sorry for that good little lady that you shouldn't even look at her roses."

"No. I see her. Dark red and very foolish. I do not like her or her flowers. They look stupid flowers--thick and pink, like fat, smiling cheeks. Take them away."

"You have read what she says, Tante, here on the back? I call that very pretty."

"I see it. I see it too often. No. Go now, and take your hat off. Good heavens, child, why did you wear that ancient sealskin cap?"

Karen paused at the door, the rejected roses in her arms. "Why, Tante, it was snowing a little; I didn't want to wear my best hat for a morning walk."

"Have you no other hat beside the best?"

"No, Tante. And I like my little cap. You gave it to me--years ago--don't you remember; the first time that we went to Russia together."

"Years ago, indeed, I should imagine from its appearance. Well; it makes no difference; you will soon be leaving town and it will do for Cornwall and Tallie."

When Karen returned, Madame von Marwitz, whose feet were now finished, took her place in an easy chair and said: "Now to work. Leave the accounts for Schultz. I've glanced at some of them this morning and, as usual, I seem to be spending twice as much as I make. How the money runs away I cannot imagine. And Tallie sends me a great batch of bills from Cornwall, _bon Dieu_!" _Bon Dieu_ was a frequent e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n with Madame von Marwitz, often half sighed, and with the stress laid on the first word.

"Never mind, you will soon be making a great deal more money," said Karen.

"It would be more to the point if I could manage to keep a little of what I make. Schultz tells me that my investments in the Chinese railroads are going badly, too. Put aside the bills. We will go through the rest of the letters."

For some time they worked at the pile of correspondence. Karen would open each letter and read the signature; letters from those known to Madame von Marwitz, or from her friends, were handed to her; the letters signed by unknown names Karen read aloud:--begging letters; letters requesting an autograph; letters recommending to the great woman's kindly notice some budding genius, and letters of sheer adulation, listened to, these last, sometimes with a dreamy indifference to the end, interrupted sometimes with a sudden "_a.s.sez_."

There were a dozen such letters this morning and when Karen read the signature of the last: "Your two little adorers Gladys and Ethel Boc.o.c.k," Madame von Marwitz remarked: "We need not have that. Put it into the basket."

"But, Tante," Karen protested, looking round at her with a smile, "you must hear it; it is so funny and so nice."

"So stupid I call it, my dear. They should not be encouraged."

"But you must be kind, you will be kind, even to the stupid. See, here are two of your photographs, they ask you to sign them. There is a stamped and addressed envelope to return them in. Such love, Tante! such torrents of love! You must listen."

Madame von Marwitz resigned herself, her eyes fixed absently on the smoke curling from her cigarette as if, in its fluctuating evanescence, she saw a symbol of human folly. Gladys and Ethel lived in Clapham and told her that they came in to all her concerts and sat for hours waiting on the stairs. Their letter ended: "Everyone adores you, but no one can adore you like we do. Oh, would you tell us the colour of your eyes?

Gladys thinks deep, dark grey, but I think velvety brown; we talk and talk about it and can't decide. We mustn't take up any more of your precious time.--Your two little adorers, Gladys and Ethel Boc.o.c.k."

"Boc.o.c.k," Madame von Marwitz commented. "No one can adore me like they do. Let us hope not. _Pet.i.tes sottes._"

"You will sign the photographs, Tante--and you will say, yes, you must--'To my kind little admirers.' Now be merciful."