Tante

CHAPTER IV

She stood for a moment, with her hand resting on the lintel, and she surveyed an apparently unexpected audience with contemplative melancholy. If she was not pleased to find them so many, she was, at all events unresentful, and Gregory imagined, from Mrs. Forrester"s bright flutter in rising, that resentment from the sun-G.o.ddess was a peril to be reckoned with. Smiling, though languidly smiling, she advanced up the room, after her graceful and involuntary pause. White fringes rippled softly round her; a white train trailed behind her; on her breast the silken cloak that she wore over a transparent under-robe was clasped with pearls and silver. She was very lovely, very stately, very simple; but she struck her one hypercritical observer as somewhat prepared; calculated and conscious, as well.

"Thanks, dearest friend," she said to Mrs. Forrester, who, meeting her halfway down the room and taking her hand, asked her solicitously how she did; "I am now a little rested; but it has been a bad night and a busy morning." She spoke with a slightly foreign accent in a voice at once fatigued and sonorous. Her eyes, clear, penetrating and singularly steady, pa.s.sed over the a.s.sembled faces, turned, all of them, towards herself.

She greeted Sir Alliston with a welcoming smile and a lift of the strange crooked eyebrows, and to Miss Scrotton, who, eager and illuminated, was beside her: "_Ah, ma cherie_," she said, resting her hand affectionately on her shoulder. Mrs. Forrester had her other hand, and, so standing between her two friends, she bowed gravely and graciously to Lady Campion, to Miss Harding, to Mrs. Harding--who, in the stress of this fulfilment had become plum-coloured--and to Gregory Jardine. Then she was seated. Mrs. Forrester poured out her tea, Miss Harding pa.s.sed her cake and bread-and-b.u.t.ter, Lady Campion bent to her with frank and graceful compliments, Miss Scrotton sat at her feet on a low settle, and Sir Alliston, leaning on the back of her chair, looked down at her with eyes of antique devotion. Gregory was left on the outskirts of the group and his attention was attracted by the face of little Mrs. Harding, who, all unnoticed and unseated, gazed upon Madame Okraska with the intent liquid eye of a pious dog; the wavering, uncertain smile that played upon her lips was like the humble thudding of the dog"s tail. Gregory remembered her face now as one of those, rapt and hypnotized, that he had seen on the platform the night before. In the ovation that Madame Okraska had received at the end of the concert he had noticed this same plum-coloured little lady seizing and kissing the great woman"s hand. Shy, by temperament, as he saw, to the point of suffering, he felt sure that only the infection of the crowd had carried her to the act of uncharacteristic daring. He watched her now, finding her piteous and absurd.

But someone beside himself was aware of Mrs. Harding. Miss Woodruff approached her, smiling impersonally, with rather the air of a kindly verger at a church. Yes, she seemed to say, she could find a seat for her. She pointed to the one she had risen from. Mrs. Harding, almost tearful in her grat.i.tude, slid into it with the precaution of the reverent sight-seer who fears to disturb a congregation at prayer, and Miss Woodruff, moving away, went to a table and began to turn over the ill.u.s.trated papers that lay upon it. Her manner, retired and cheerful, had no humility, none of the poor dependent"s un.o.btrusiveness; rather, Gregory felt, it showed a happy pride, as if, a fortunate priestess in the temple, she had opportunities and felicities denied to mere worshippers. She was interested in her papers. She examined the pictures with something of a child"s attentive pleasure.

Gregory came up to her and raising her eyes she smiled at him as though, on the basis of last night"s encounter, she took him for granted as potentially a friend.

"What are you looking at?" he asked her, as he might have asked a friendly child.

She turned the paper to him. "The Great Wall of China. They are wonderful pictures."

Gregory stood beside her and looked. The photographs were indeed impressive. The sombre landscape, the pallid sky, and, winding as if for ever over hill and valley, the astonishing structure, like an infinite lonely consciousness. "I should like to see that," said Miss Woodruff.

"Well, you travel a great deal, don"t you?" said Gregory. "No doubt Madame Okraska will go to China some day."

Miss Woodruff contemplated the desolate wall. "But this is thousands and thousands of miles from the places where concerts could be given; and I do not know that my guardian has ever thought of China; no, it is not probable that she will ever go there. And then, unfortunately, I do not always go with her. I travel a great deal; but I stop at home a great deal, too. My guardian likes best to be called von Marwitz in private life, by those who know her personally," Miss Woodruff added, smiling again as she presented him with the authorized liturgy.

Gregory was slightly taken aback. He couldn"t have defined Miss Woodruff"s manner as a.s.sured, yet it was singularly competent; and no one could have been in less need of benevolent attentions.

"I see," he said. "She looks so much more Polish than German, doesn"t she? What do you call home?" he added. "Have you lived much in England?"

"By home I mean Cornwall," said Miss Woodruff, who was evidently used to being asked questions. "My guardian has a house there; but it has not been for long. It used to be in Germany, and then for a little in Italy; she has only had Les Solitudes for four years." She looked across at the group under the chandelier. "There is still room for a chair." Her glance indicated a gap in Madame von Marwitz"s circle.

This kindly solicitude amused Gregory very much. She had him on her mind as a sight-seer, as she had had Mrs. Harding; and she was full of sympathy for sight-seers. "Oh--thanks--no," he said, his eyes following hers. "I won"t go crowding in."

"She won"t mind. She will not even notice;" Miss Woodruff a.s.sured him.

"Oh, well, I like to be noticed if I do crowd," Gregory returned smiling.

His slight irony was lost upon her; yet, he was sure of it, she was not dull. Her smile showed him that she congratulated him on an ambitious spirit. "Well, later, then, we will hope," she said. "You would of course rather talk with her. And here is Mr. Drew, so that this chance is gone."

"Who is that singular young man?" Gregory inquired watching with Miss Woodruff the newcomer, who found a place at once in the gap near Madame von Marwitz and was greeted by her with a brighter interest than she had yet shown.

"Mr. Claude Drew?" Miss Woodruff replied with some surprise. "Do you not know? I thought that everybody in London knew him. He is quite a famous writer. He has written poetry and essays. "Artemis Wedded" is by him--that is poetry; and "The Bow of Ulysses"--the essay on my guardian comes in that. Oh, he is quite well known."

Mr. Claude Drew was suave and elegant, and his high, stock-like collar and folded satin neck-gear gave him a somewhat recondite appearance.

With his dark eyes, pale skin, full, smooth, golden hair, and the vivid red of an advancing Hapsburgian lip, he had the look of a young French dandy drawn by Ingres.

"My guardian is very much interested in him," Miss Woodruff went on.

"She believes that he has a great future. She is always interested in promising young men." This, no doubt, was why Miss Woodruff had so kindly encouraged him to take his chances.

"He looks a clever fellow," said Gregory.

"Do you like his face?" Miss Woodruff inquired. Mr. Drew, as if aware of their scrutiny, had turned his eyes upon them for a moment. They were large, jaded eyes, l.u.s.trous, yet with the l.u.s.tre of a surface rather than of depth; dense, velvety and impenetrable.

"Well, no, I don"t," said Gregory, genially decisive. "He looks unwholesome, I think."

"Oh! Unwholesome?" Miss Woodruff repeated the word thoughtfully rather than interrogatively. "Yes; perhaps it is that. It is a danger of talented modern young men, isn"t it. They are not strong enough to be so intelligent; one must be very strong--in character, I mean--if one is to be so intelligent. Perhaps he is not strong in character. Perhaps that is what one feels. Because I do not like his face, either; and I go greatly by faces."

"So do I," said Gregory. After a moment, in which they both continued to look at Mr. Drew, he went on. "I wondered last night what nationality you belonged to. I had been wondering about you for a long while before you looked round at me."

"You had heard about me?" she asked.

He was pleased to be able to say: "Oh, I wondered about you before I heard."

"People are so often interested in me because of my guardian," said Miss Woodruff; "everything about her interests them. But I am an American--if you were not told; that is to say my father was an American--and my mother was a Norwegian; but though I have never been to America I count myself as an American, and with right, I think," she added. "We always spoke English when I was a child, and I remember so many of my father"s friends. Some day I hope I may go to America. Have you been there? Do you know New England? My father came from New England."

"No; I"ve never been there. I"m very insular and untravelled."

"Are you? It is a pity not to travel, isn"t it," Miss Woodruff remarked.

"But you like it here in England?"

"Yes, I like it here, with Mrs. Forrester; and in Cornwall. But here with Mrs. Forrester always seems to me more like the life of Europe.

English life, as a rule, is, I think, rather like boxes one inside the other." She was perfectly sweet and undogmatic, but her air of cosmopolitan competence amused Gregory, serenely of opinion, for his part, that English was the only life.

"Well, the great thing is that the boxes should fit comfortably into one another, isn"t it," he observed; "and I think that on the whole we"ve come to fit pretty well in England. And we all come out of our boxes, don"t we," he added, pleased with his application of her simile, "for a Madame von Marwitz."

"Yes, I know," said Miss Woodruff, also, evidently, pleased. "That is quite true; you all come out of your boxes for her. But, as a nation, they are not artists, the English, are they? They are kind to the beautiful things; they like to see them; they will take great trouble to see them; but they do not make them. Beauty does not grow here--that is what I mean. It is in its box, too, and it is taken out and pa.s.sed round from time to time. You do not mind my saying this? You, perhaps, are yourself an artist?"

"Dear me, no; I"m only a lawyer. I"m shut up in the tightest of the boxes," said Gregory.

Miss Woodruff scrutinized him with a smile. "I should not think that of you," she said. "You do not look like an artist, it is true; few of us can be artists; but you do not look shut into a box, either. Beauty, to you, is something real; not a pastime, a fashion; no, I cannot think it.

When I saw your face last night I thought: Here is one who cares. One counts those faces on one"s fingers--even at a great concert. So many think they care who only want to care. To you art is a serious thing and an artist the greatest thing a country can produce. Is not that so?"

Gregory continued to be amused by what he felt to be Miss Woodruff"s _naivete_. He was inclined to think that artists, however admirable in their functions, were undesirable in their persons, and the reverent enthusiasm that Miss Woodruff imagined in him was singularly uncharacteristic. He didn"t quite know how to tell her so without seeming rude, so he contented himself with confessing that beauty, in his life, was kept, he feared, very much in its box.

They, went on talking, going to an adjacent sofa where Miss Woodruff, while they talked, stroked the deep fur of an immense Persian cat, Hieronimus by name, who established himself between them. Gregory found her very easy to talk to, though they had so few themes in common, and her face he discovered to be even more charming than he had thought it the night before. She was not at all beautiful and he imagined that in her world of artists she would not be particularly appreciated; nor would she be appreciated in his own world of convention--a girl with such a thick waist, such queer clothes, a face so broad, so brown, so abruptly modelled. She was, he felt, a grave and responsible young person, and something in her face suggested that she might have been through a great deal; but she was very cheerful and she laughed with facility at things he said and that she herself said; and when she laughed her eyes nearly closed and the tip of her tongue was caught, with an effect of child-like gaiety, between her teeth. The darkness of her skin made her lips, by contrast, of a pale rose, and her hair, where it grew thickly around her brows and neck, of an almost infantile fairness. Her broad, brown eyebrows lay far apart and her grey eyes were direct, deliberate and limpid.

From where Gregory sat he had Madame von Marwitz in profile and he observed that once or twice, when they laughed, she turned her head and looked at them. Presently she leaned a little to question Mrs. Forrester and then, rather vexed at a sequence, natural but unforeseen, he saw that Mrs. Forrester got up to fetch him.

"Tante has sent for you!" Miss Woodruff exclaimed. "I am so glad."

It really vexed him a little that he should still be supposed to be pining for an introduction; he would so much rather have stayed talking to her. On the sofa she continued to stroke Hieronimus and to keep a congratulatory gaze upon him while he was conducted to a seat beside the great woman.

Madame von Marwitz was very lovely. She was the type of woman with whom, as a boy, he would have fallen desperately in love, seeing her as poetry personified. And she was the type of woman, all indolent and indifferent as she was, who took it for granted that people would fall desperately in love with her. Her long gaze, now, told him that. It seemed to give him time, as it were, to take her in and to arrange with himself how best to adjust himself to a changed life. It was not the glance of a flirt; it held no petty consciousness; it was the gaze of an enchantress aware of her own inevitable power. Gregory met the cold, sweet, melancholy eyes. But as she gazed, as she slowly smiled, he was aware, with a perverse pleasure, that his present seasoned self was completely immune from her magic. He opposed commonplace to enchantment, and in him Madame von Marwitz would find no victim.

"I have never seen you here before, I think," she said. She spoke with a beautiful precision; that of the foreigner perfectly at ease in an alien tongue, yet not loving it sufficiently to take liberties with it.

Gregory said, no, she had never seen him there before.

"Mrs. Forrester is, it seems, a mutual friend," said Madame von Marwitz.

"She has known you since boyhood. You have been very fortunate."