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Tante

<h2>CHAPTER XXXI</h2> Karen's boxes arrived next day, neatly packed by Mrs. Barker. And not only her clothes were in them. She had left behind her the jewel-box with the pearl necklace that Gregory had given her, the pearl and sapphire ring, the old enamel brooch and clasp and chain, his presents all. The box was kept locked, and in a cupboard of which Gregory had the key; so that he must have given it to Mrs. Barker. The photographs, too, from their room, not those of him, but those of Tante; of her father; and a half a dozen little porcelain and silver trinkets from the drawing-room, presents and purchases particularly hers. It was right, quite right, that he should send them. She knew it. It was right that he should accept their parting as final. Yet that he should so accurately select and send to her everything that could remind him of her seemed to roll the stone before the tomb. She looked at the necklace, the ring, all the pretty things, and shut the box. Impossible that she should keep them yet impossible to send them back as if in a bandying of rebuffs. She would wait for some years to pass and then they should be returned without comment. And the clothes, all these dear clothes of her married life; every dress and hat was associated with Gregory. She could never wear them again. And it felt, not so much that she was locking them away, as that Gregory had locked her out into darkness and loneliness. She took up the round of the days. She practised; she gardened, she walked and read. Of Tante she saw little. She was accustomed to seeing little of Tante, even when Tante was there; quite accustomed to Tante's preoccupations. Yet, through the fog of her own unhappiness, it came to her, like an object dimly perceived, that in this preoccupation of Tante's there was a difference. It showed, itself in a high-pitched restlessness, verging now and again on irritation—not with her, Karen, but with Mr. Drew. To Karen she was brightly, punctually tender, yet it was a tenderness that held her away rather than drew her near. Karen did not need to be put aside. She had always known how to efface herself; she needed no atonement for the so apparent fact that Tante wanted to be left alone with Mr. Drew as much as possible. The difficulty in leaving her came with perceiving that though Tante wanted her to go she did not want to seem to want it. She caressed Karen; she addressed her talk to her; she kept her; yet, under the smile of the eyes, there was an intentness that Karen could interpret. It devolved upon her to find the excuse, the necessity, for withdrawal. Mrs. Talcott, in the morning-room, was a solution. Karen could go to her almost directly after dinner, as soon as coffee had been served; for on the first occasion when she rose, saying that she would have her coffee with Mrs. Talcott, Tante said with some sharpness—after a hesitation: "No; you will have your coffee here. Tallie does not have coffee." Groping her way, Karen seemed to touch strange forms. Tante cared so much about this young man; so much that it was almost as if she would be willing to abandon her dignity for him. It was more than the indulgent, indolent interest, wholly Olympian, that she had so often seen her bestow. She really cared. And the strangeness for Karen was in part made up of pain for Tante; for it almost seemed that Tante cared more than Mr. Drew did. Karen had seen so many men care for Tante; so many who were, obviously, in love with her; but she had seen Tante always throned high above the prostrate adorers, idly kind; holding out a hand, perhaps, for them to kiss; smiling, from time to time, if they, fortunately, pleased her; but never, oh never, stepping down towards them. It seemed to her now that she had seen Tante stepping down. It was only a step; she could never become the suppliant, the pursuing goddess; and, as if with her hand still laid on the arm of her throne, she kept all her air of high command. But had she kept its power? Mr. Drew's demeanour reminded Karen sometimes of a cat's. Before the glance and voice of authority he would, metaphorically, pace away; pausing to blink up at some object that attracted his attention or to interest himself in the furbishing of flank or chest. At a hint of anger or coercion, he would tranquilly disappear. Tante, controlling indignation, was left to stare after him and to regain the throne as best she might, and at these moments Karen felt that Tante's eye turned on her, gauging her power of interpretation, ready, did she not feign the right degree of unconsciousness, to wreak on her something of the controlled emotion. The fear that had come on the night of her arrival pressed closely on Karen then, but, more closely still, the pain for Tante. Tante's clear dignity was blurred; her image, in its rebuffed and ineffectual autocracy, became hovering, uncertain, piteous. And, in seeing and feeling all these things, as if with a lacerated sensitiveness, Karen was aware that, in this last week of her life, she had grown much older. She felt herself in some ways older than her guardian. It was on the morning of her seventh day at Les Solitudes that she met Mr. Drew walking early in the garden. The sea was glittering blue and gold; the air was melancholy in its sweetness; birds whistled. Karen examined Mr. Drew as he approached her along the sunny upper terrace. With his dense, dark eyes, delicate face and golden hair, his white clothes and loose black tie, she was able to recognize in him an object that might charm and even subjugate. To Karen he seemed but one among the many strange young men she had seen surrounding Tante; yet this morning, clearly, and for the first time, she saw why he subjugated Tante and why she resented her subjugation. There was more in him than mere pose and peculiarity; he had some power; the power of the cat: he was sincerely indifferent to anything that did not attract him. And at the same time he was unimportant; insignificant in all but his sincerity. He was not a great writer; Tante could never make a great writer out of him. And he was, when all was said and done, but one among many strange young men. "Good morning," he said. He doffed his hat. He turned and walked beside her. They were in full view of the house. "I hoped that I might find you. Let us go up to the flagged garden," he suggested; "the sea is glittering like a million scimitars. One has a better view up there." "But it is not so warm," said Karen. "I am walking here to be in the sun." Mr. Drew had also been walking there to be in the sun; but they were in full view of the house and he was aware of a hand at Madame von Marwitz's window-curtain. He continued, however, to walk beside Karen up and down the terrace. "I think of you," he said, "as a person always in the sun. You suggest glaciers and fields of snow and meadows full of flowers—the sun pouring down on all of them. I always imagine Apollo as a Norse God. Are you really a Norwegian?" Karen was, as we have said, accustomed to young men who talked in a fantastic manner. She answered placidly: "Yes. I am half Norwegian." "Your name, then, is really yours?—your untamed, yet intimate, name. It is like a wild bird that feeds out of one's hand." "Yes; it is really mine. It is quite a common name in Norway." "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 attitude to passion, preoccupied him, practically, more than any other. His art dealt mainly in themes of emotion as an end in itself. The possibilities of passion 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 passion, 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 assure 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 reassured. "Yes. That is so," she said. And she continued to play. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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