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Tante

<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> Karen and he had walked back to the house in silence, and at the door, where she stood to see him off, it had been arranged that he was to lunch at Les Solitudes next day and that she was to show him a favourite headland, one not far away, but that he had never yet been shown. From the sweetness, yet gravity, of her look and voice he could infer nothing but that she recognized change and a new significance. Her manner had neither the confusion nor the pretended unconsciousness of ordinary girlhood. She was calm, but with a new thoughtfulness. He arrived a little early next day and found Mrs. Talcott alone in the morning-room writing letters. He noticed, as she rose from the bureau, her large, immature, considered writing. "Karen'll be down in a minute or two, I guess," she said. "Take a chair." "Don't let me interrupt you," said Gregory, as Mrs. Talcott seated herself before him, her hands folded at her waist. But Mrs. Talcott, remarking briefly, "Don't mention it," did not move back to her former place. She examined him and he examined her and he felt that she probed through his composure to his unrest. "I wanted a little talk," she observed presently. "You've gotten pretty fond of Karen, haven't you, Mr. Jardine?" This was to come at once to the point. "Very fond," said Gregory, wondering if she had been diagnosing his fondness in a letter to Madame von Marwitz. "She hasn't got many friends," Mrs. Talcott, after another moment of contemplation, went on. "She's always been a lonesome sort of child." "That's what has struck me, too," said Gregory. "Sometimes Mercedes takes her along; but sometimes she don't," Mrs. Talcott pursued. "It ain't a particularly lively sort of life for a young girl, going on in an out-of-the-way place like this with an old woman like me. She's spent most of her time with me, when you come to reckon it up." There was no air of criticism or confidence in Mrs. Talcott. She put forward these remarks with unbiassed placidity. "I suppose Madame von Marwitz couldn't arrange always to take her?" Gregory asked after a pause. "It ain't always convenient toting a young girl round with you," said Mrs. Talcott. "Sometimes Mercedes feels like it and sometimes she don't. Karen and I stay at home, now that I'm too old to go about with her, and we see her when she's home. That's the idea. But she ain't much at home. She's mostly travelling and staying around with folks." "It isn't a particularly lively time, it seems to me, for either of you," said Gregory. It was his instinct to blame Madame von Marwitz for the featureless lives led by her dependents, though he could but own that it might, perhaps, be difficult to fit them into the vagabondage of a great pianist's existence. "Well, it's good enough for me," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm very contented if it comes to that; and so is Karen. She's known so much that's worse, the same as I have. But she's known what's better, too; she was a pretty big girl when her Poppa died and she was a companion to him and I reckon that without figuring it up much to herself she's lonesome a good deal." Gregory for a moment was silent. Then he found it quite natural to say to Mrs. Talcott: "What I hope is that she will marry me." "I hope so, too," said Mrs. Talcott with no alteration of tone. "I hoped so the moment I set eyes on you. I saw that you were a good young man and that you'd make her a good kind husband." "Thanks, very much," said Gregory, smiling yet deeply touched. "I hope I may be. I intend to be if she will have me." "The child is mighty fond of you," said Mrs. Talcott. "And it's not as if she took easy to people. She don't. She's never seemed to need folks. But I can see that she's mighty fond of you, and what I want to say is, even if it don't seem to work out like you want it to right away, you hang on, Mr. Jardine; that's my advice; an old woman like me understands young girls better than they understand themselves. Karen is so wrapped up in Mercedes and thinks such a sight of her that perhaps she'll feel she don't want to leave her and that sort of thing; but just you hang on." "I intend to," said Gregory. "I can't say how much I thank you for being on my side." "Yes; I'm on your side, and I'm on Karen's side; and I want to see this thing put through," said Mrs. Talcott. Something seemed to hover between them now, a fourth figure that must be added to the trio they made. He wondered, if he did hang on successfully and if it did work out as he intended that it should, how that fourth figure would work in. He couldn't see a shared life with Karen from which it could be eliminated, nor did he, of course, wish to see it eliminated; but he did not see himself, either, as forming one of a band of satellites, and the main fact about the fourth figure seemed to be that any relation to it involved one, apparently, in discipleship. There seemed even some disloyalty to Mrs. Talcott in accepting her sympathy while anxieties and repudiations such as these were passing through his mind; for she, no doubt, saw in Karen's relation to Madame von Marwitz the chief asset with which she could present a husband; and he expected Mrs. Talcott, now, to make some reference to this asset; but none came; and if she expected from him some recognition of it, no expectancy was visible in the old blue eyes fixed on his face. A silence fell between them, and as it grew longer it grew the more consoling. Into their compact of understanding she let him see, he could almost fancy, that the question of Madame von Marwitz was not to enter. Karen, when she appeared, was looking preoccupied, and after shaking his hand and giving him, for a moment, the sweet, grave smile with which they had parted, she glanced at the writing-table. "You are writing to Tante, Mrs. Talcott?" she said. "You heard from her this morning?" "Yes; I heard from her," said Mrs. Talcott. Gregory at once inferred that Madame von Marwitz had been writing for information concerning himself. She must by now have become aware of his correspondence with Karen and its significant continuity. "Are there any messages?—any news?" asked Karen, and she could not keep dejection from her voice. She had had no letter. "It's only a business note," said Mrs. Talcott. "Hasn't Miss Scrotton written?" "Does my cousin keep you posted as a rule?" Gregory asked, as Karen shook her head. "No; but Tante asks her to write sometimes, when she is too tired or rushed; and I had a letter from her, giving me their plans, only a few days ago; so that I know that all is well. It is only that I am always greedy for Tante's letters, and this is the day on which they often come." They went in to lunch. Karen spoke little during the meal. Gregory and Mrs. Talcott carried on a desultory conversation about hotels and the different merits of different countries in this respect. Mrs. Talcott had a vast experience of hotels. From Germany to Australia, from New York to St. Petersburg, they were known to her. After lunch he and Karen started on their walk. It had been a morning of white fog and the mist still lay thickly over the sea, so that from the high cliff-path, a clear, pale sky above them, they looked down into milky gulfs of space. Then, as the sun shone softly and a gentle breeze arose, a rift of dark, still blue appeared below, as the sky appears behind dissolving clouds, and fold upon fold, slumbrously, the mist rolled back upon itself. The sea lay like a floor of polished sapphire beneath the thick, soft webs. Far below, in a cavern, the sound of lapping water clucked, and a sea-gull, indolently intent, drifted by slowly on dazzling wings. Karen and Gregory reached their headland and, seating themselves on the short, warm turf, looked out over the sea. During the walk they had hardly spoken, and he had wondered whether her thoughts were with him and with their last words yesterday, or dwelling still on her disappointment. But presently, as if her preoccupation had drifted from her as the fog had drifted from the sea, Karen turned tranquil eyes upon him and said: "I suddenly thought, and the stillness made me think it, and Mrs. Talcott's hotels, too, perhaps, of all that is going on in the world while we sit here so lonely and so peaceful. Frenchmen with fat cheeks and flat-brimmed silk hats sitting at little tin tables in boulevards; isn't it difficult to realize that they exist? and Arabs on camels crossing deserts; they are quite imaginable; and nuns praying in convent cells; and stokers, all stripped and sweating, under the engines of great steamers; and a little Japanese artist carving so carefully the soles of the feet of some tiny image; there they are, all going on; as real to themselves as we are, at the very moment that we sit here and feel that only we, in all the world, are real." She might almost have been confiding her fancies to a husband whose sympathy had been tested by years of fond companionship. Gregory, wondering at her, loving her, pulled at the short turf as he lay, propped on an elbow, beside her, and said: "What nice thoughts you have." "You have them, too, I think," said Karen, smiling down at him. "And nicer ones. Mine are usually only amusing, like those; but yours are often beautiful. I see that in your face, you know. It is a face that makes me think always of a cold, clear, steely pool;—that is what it looks like if one does not look down into it but only across it, as it were; but if one bends over and looks down, deep down, one sees the sky and passing white clouds and boughs of trees. I saw deep down at once. That is why," her eyes rested upon him, "we were friends from the first." "It's what you bring that you see," said Gregory; "you make me think of all those things." "Ah, but you think them for yourself, too; when you are alone you think them." "But when I am alone and think them, without you in the thought of them, it's always with sadness, for something I've lost. You bring them back, with happiness. The thought of you is always happy. I have never known anyone who seemed to me so peacefully happy as you do. You are very happy, aren't you?" Gregory looked down at his little tufts of turf as he asked this question. "I am glad I seem to you like that," said Karen. "I think I am usually quiet and gay and full of confidence; I sometimes wonder at my confidence. But it is not always so. No, I am not always happy. Sometimes, when I think and remember, it is like feeling a great hole being dug in my heart—as if the iron went down and turned up dark forgotten things. I have that feeling sometimes; and then I wonder that I can ever be happy." "What things, dear Karen?" "You know, I think." Karen looked out at the sea. "Tante's face when I found her husband's body. And my father's face when he was dying; he did not know what was to become of me; he was quite weak, like a little child, and he cried on my breast. And my mother's face when she died. I have not told you anything of my mother." "Will you? I want to hear everything about you; everything," said Gregory. "This is her locket," Karen said, putting her hand over it. "Her face is in it; would you like to see it?" He held out his hand, and slipping the ribbon over her head she pressed the little spring and laid the open locket in it. He saw the tinted photograph of a young girl's head, a girl younger than Karen and with her fair hair and straight brows and square chin; but it was a gentler face and a clumsier, and strange with its alien nationality. "I always feel as if she were my child and I her mother when I look at that," said Karen. "It was taken before I was born. She had a happy life, and yet my memory of her breaks my heart. She was so very young and it frightened her so much to die; she could not bear to leave us." Gregory, holding the little locket, looked at it silently. Then he put it to his lips. "You care for me, don't you, Karen?" he said. "You know, I think," said Karen, repeating her former words. He laid the locket in her hand, and the moment had for him a sacramental holiness so that the locket was like a wedding-ring; holding it and her hand together he said, lifting his eyes to hers, "I love you. Do you love me?" Her eyes had filled with tears when he had kissed her mother's face, and there was young awe in her gaze; but no shadow, no surprise. "Yes," she said, unhesitatingly. "Yes, I love you, dear Gregory." The simplicity, the inevitableness of his bliss overwhelmed him. He held her hand and looked down at it. All about them was the blue. All her past, its beauty, its dark, forgotten things, she had given to him. She was his for ever. "Oh, my darling Karen," he murmured. She bent down to look at him now, smiling and unclosing her hand from his gently, so that she could look at her mother's face. "How glad she would be if she could know," she said. "Perhaps she does know. Do you not think so?" "Dear—I don't know what I think about those hopes. I hope." "Oh, it is more than hope, my belief that she is there; that she is not lost. Only one cannot tell how or when or where it all may be. For that, yes, it can be only hope. She, too, would love you, I am sure," Karen continued. "Would she? I'm glad you think so, darling." "We are so much alike, you see, that it is natural to feel sure that we should think alike. Do you not think that her face is much like mine? What happiness! I am glad it is not a day of rain for our happiness." And she then added, "I hope we may be married." "Why, we are to be married, dear child," Gregory said, smiling at her. "There is no 'may' about it, since you love me." "Only one," said Karen, who still looked at her mother's face. "And perhaps it will be well not to speak much of our love till we can know. But I feel sure that she will say this happiness is for me." "She?" Gregory repeated. For a moment he imagined that she meant some superstition connected with her mother. Karen, slipping the ribbon over her head, had returned the locket to its place. "Yes; Tante," she said, still with the locket in her hand. "Tante?" Gregory repeated. At his tone, its change, she lifted startled eyes to his. "What has she to do with it?" Gregory asked after a moment in which she continued to gaze at him. "What has Tante to do with it?" said Karen in a wondering voice. "Do you think I could marry without Tante's consent?" "But you love me?" "I do not understand you. Was it wrong of me to have said so before I had her consent? Was that not right? Not fair to you?" "Since you love me you ought to be willing to marry me whether you have your guardian's consent or not." His voice strove to control its bitterness; but the day had darkened; all his happiness was blurred. He felt as if a great injury had been done him. Karen continued to gaze at him in astonishment. "Would you have expected me to marry you without my mother's consent? She is in my mother's place." "If you loved me I should certainly expect you to say that you would marry me whether your mother consented or not. You are of age. There is nothing against me. Those aren't English ideas at all, Karen." "But I am not English," said Karen, "my guardian is not English. They are our ideas." "You mean, you seriously mean, that, loving me, you would give me up if she told you to?" "Yes," said Karen, now with the heaviness of their recognized division. "She would not refuse her consent unless it were right that I should give you up." For some moments after this Gregory, in silence, looked down at the grass between them, clasping his knees; for he now sat upright. Then, controlling his anger to argumentative rationality, he said, while again wrenching away at the strongly rooted tufts: "If she did refuse, what reason could she give for refusing? As I say, there's absolutely nothing against me." Karen had kept her troubled eyes on his downcast face. "There might be things she did not like; things she would not believe for my happiness in married life," she replied. "And you would take her word against mine?" "You forget, I think," he had lifted his eyes to hers and she looked back at him, steadily, with no entreaty, but with all the perplexity of her deep pain. "She has known me for eleven years. I have only known you for three months." He could not now control the bitterness or the dismay; for, coldly, cuttingly he knew it, it was quite possible that Madame von Marwitz would not "like things" in him. Their one encounter had not been of a nature to endear him to her. "It simply means," he said, looking into her eyes, "that you haven't any conception of what love is. It means that you don't love me." They looked at each other for a moment and then Karen said, "That is hard." And after another moment she rose to her feet. Gregory got up and they went down the cliff-path towards Les Solitudes. He had not spoken recklessly. His words expressed his sense of her remoteness. He could not imagine what sort of love it was that could so composedly be put aside. And making no feminine appeal or protest, she walked steadily, in silence, before him. Only at a turning of the way did he see that her lips were compressed and tears upon her cheeks. "Karen," he said, looking into her face as he now walked beside her; "won't you talk it over? You astonish me so unspeakably. Can she destroy our friendship, too? Would you give me up as a friend if she didn't like things in me?" The tears expressed no yielding, for she answered "Yes." "And how far do you push submission? If she told you to marry someone she chose for you, would you consent, whether you loved him or not?" "It is not submission," said Karen. "It is our love, hers and mine. She would not wish me to marry a man I did not love. The contrary is true. My guardian before she went away spoke to me of a young man she had chosen for me, someone for whom she had the highest regard and affection; and I, too, am very fond of him. She felt that it would be for my happiness to marry him, and she hoped that I would consent. But I did not love him. I told her that I could never love him; and so it ended immediately. You do her injustice in your thoughts of her; and you do me injustice, too, if you think of me as a person who would marry where I did not love." He walked beside her, bitterly revolving the sorry comfort of this last speech. "Who was the young man?" he asked. Not that he really cared to know. "His name is Herr Franz Lippheim," said Karen, gravely. "He is a young musician." "Herr Franz Lippheim," Gregory repeated, with an irritation glad to wreak itself on this sudden object presented opportunely. "How could you have been imagined as marrying someone called Lippheim?" "Why not, pray?" "Is he a German Jew?" Gregory inquired after a moment. "He is, indeed, of Joachim's nationality," Karen answered, in a voice from which the tears were gone. They walked on, side by side, the estrangement cutting deep between their new-won nearness. Yet in the estrangement was an intimacy deeper than that of the merely blissful state. They seemed in the last miserable half hour to have advanced by years their knowledge of each other. Mrs. Talcott and tea were waiting for them in the morning-room. The old woman fixed her eyes upon each face in turn and then gave her attention to her tea-pot. "I am sorry, Mrs. Talcott, that we are so late," Karen said. Her composure was kept only by an effort that gave to her tones a stately conventionality. "Don't mention it," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm only just in myself." "Has it not been a beautiful afternoon?" Karen continued. "What have you been doing in the garden, Mrs. Talcott?" "I sowed a big bed of mignonette down by the arbour, and Mitchell and I set out a good lot of plants." Mrs. Talcott made her replies to the questions that Karen continued to ask, in an even voice in which Gregory, who kept his dismal eyes upon her, detected a melancholy patience. Mrs. Talcott must perceive his state to be already one of "hanging on." Of her sympathy he was, at all events, assured. She showed it by rising as soon as he and Karen had drunk their tea. "I've got some more things to do," she said. "Good-bye, Mr. Jardine. Are you coming over to-morrow?" "No," said Gregory taking Mrs. Talcott's hand. "My holiday is over. I shall be going back to town to-morrow." Mrs. Talcott looked into his eyes. "Well, that's too bad," she observed. "Isn't it? I'd far rather stay here, I can assure you," said Gregory. "We'll miss you, I guess," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm very glad to have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance." "And I of making yours." Mrs. Talcott departed and Gregory turned to Karen. She was standing near the window, looking at him. "We must say good-bye, too, I suppose," said Gregory, mastering his grief. "You will give me your guardian's address so that I can write to her at once?" Her face had worn the aspect of a grey, passive sheet of water; a radiant pallor now seemed struck from its dulled surface. "You are going to write to Tante?" she said. "Isn't that the next step?" Gregory asked. "You will write, too, won't you? Or is it part of my ordeal that I'm to plead my cause alone?" Karen had clasped her hands together on her breast and, in the eyes fixed on his, tears gathered. "Do not speak harshly," she said. "I am so sorry there must be the ordeal. But so happy, too—so suddenly. Because I believed that you were going to leave me since you thought me so wrong and so unloving." "Going to leave you, Karen?" Gregory repeated in amazement. Desperate amusement struggled in his face with self-reproach. "My darling child, what must you think of me? And, actually, you'd have let me go?" He had come to her and taken her hands in his. "What else could I do?" "Such an idiot would have deserved it? Could you believe me such an idiot? Darling, you so astonish me. What a strange, indomitable creature you are." "What else could I do, Gregory?" she repeated, looking into his face and not smiling in answer to his smiling, frowning gaze. "Love me more; that's what you could have done—a great deal more," said Gregory. "That's what you must do, Karen. I can't bear to think that you wouldn't marry me without her consent. I can't bear to think that you don't love me enough. But leave you because you don't love me as much as I want you to love me! My darling, how little you understand." "You seemed very angry," said Karen. "I was so unhappy. I don't know how I should have borne it if you had gone away and left me like this. But love should not make one weak, Gregory. There you are wrong, to think it is because I do not love you." "Ah, you'll find out if I'm wrong!" Gregory exclaimed with tender conviction. "You'll find out how much more you are to love me. Oh, yes, I will kiss you good-bye, Karen. I don't care if all the Tantes in the world forbid it!" In thinking afterwards of these last moments that they had had together, the discomfitures and dismays of the afternoon tended to resolve themselves for Gregory into the memory of the final yielding. She had let him take her into his arms, and with the joy was the added sweetness of knowing that in permitting and reciprocating his unauthorized kiss she sacrificed some principles, at all events, for his sake. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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