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Tante

<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> Madame von Marwitz was sitting on the great terrace of a country-house in Massachusetts, opening and reading her post, as we have already seen her do. Impatient and weary as the occupation often made her, she yet depended upon the morning waves of adulation that lapped in upon her from every quarter of the earth. To miss the fullness of the tide gave her, when by chance there was deficiency, the feeling that badly made café au lait gave her at the beginning of the day; something was wrong; the expected stimulant lacked in force or in flavour, and coffee that was not strong and sweet and aromatic was a mishap so unusual that, when it occurred, it became an offence almost gross and unnatural, as did a post that brought few letters of homage and appreciation. To-day the mental coffee was as strong and as perfumed as that of which she had shortly before partaken in her lovely little Louis Quinze boudoir, after she had come in from her bath. The bath-room was like that of a Roman Empress, all white marble, with a square of emerald water into which one descended down shallow marble steps. Madame von Marwitz was amused by the complexities of luxury among which she found herself, some of which, even to her, were novel. "Eh, eh, ma chère," she had said to Miss Scrotton, "beautiful if you will, and very beautiful; but its nails are too much polished, its hair too much ondulé. I prefer a porcelain to a marble bath-tub." But the ingenuities of hospitality which the Aspreys—earnest and accomplished millionaires—lavished upon their guests made one, she owned, balmily comfortable. And as she sat now in her soft white draperies under a great silken sunshade, raised on a stand above her and looking in the sunlight like a silver bell, the beauty of her surroundings—the splendid Italian gardens, a miracle of achievement even if lacking, as the miraculous may, an obvious relation with its surroundings; the landscape with its inlaid lake and wood and hill and great arch of bluest sky; the tall, transparent, Turneresque trees in the middle distance;—all this stately serenity seemed to have wrought in her an answering suavity and gladness. There was almost a latent gaiety in her glance, as, with her large, white, securely moving hands, which seemed to express their potential genius in every deft and delicate gesture, she took up and cut open and unfolded her letters, pausing between them now and then to tweak off and eat a grape as large as a plum from the bunch lying on its leaves in a Veronese-like silver platter beside her. This suavity, this gladness and even gaiety of demeanour were apparent to Miss Eleanor Scrotton when she presently emerged from the house and advanced slowly along the terrace, pausing at intervals beside its balustrade to gaze with a somewhat melancholy eye over the prospect. Miss Scrotton was struggling with a half formulated sense of grievance. It was she who had brought Madame von Marwitz and the Aspreys together. Madame von Marwitz already knew, of course, most of the people in America who were worth knowing; if she hadn't met them there she had met them in Europe; but the Aspreys she had, till then, never met, and they had been, indisputably, Miss Scrotton's possession. Miss Scrotton had known them slightly for several years; her father and Mr. Asprey had corresponded on some sociological theme and the Aspreys had called on him in London in a mood of proper deference and awe. She had written to the Aspreys before sailing with Mercedes, had found that they were wintering in Egypt, but would be back in America in Spring, ready to receive Madame von Marwitz and herself with open arms; and within those arms she had, a week ago, placed her treasure. No doubt someone else would have done it if she hadn't; and perhaps she had been too eager in her determination that no one else should do it. Perhaps she was altogether a little too eager. Madame von Marwitz liked people to care for her and showed a pretty gratitude for pains endured on her behalf; at least she usually did so; but it may well have been that the great woman, at once vaguely aloof and ironically observant, had become a little irked, or bored, or merely amused at hearing so continually, as it were, her good Scrotton panting beside her, tense, determined and watchful of opportunity. However that may have been, Miss Scrotton, as Madame von Marwitz's glance now lifted and rested upon herself, detected the sharper gaiety defined by the French as "malice," lighting, though ever so mildly, her friend's eyes and lips. Like most devotees Miss Scrotton had something of the valet in her composition, and with the valet's capacity for obsequiousness went a valet-like shrewdness of perception. She hadn't spent four months travelling about America with Madame von Marwitz without seeing her in undress. She had long since become uncomfortably aware that when Madame von Marwitz found one a little ridiculous she could be unkind, and that when one added plaintiveness to folly she often amused herself by giving one, to speak metaphorically, soft yet sharp little pinches that left one nervously uncertain of whether a caress or an aggression had been intended. Miss Scrotton was plaintive, and she could not conceal it. Glory as she might in the rôle of second fiddle, she was very tenaciously aware of what was due to that subservient but by no means insignificant performer; and the Aspreys had not shown themselves enough aware, Mercedes had not shown herself aware at all, of what they all owed to her sustaining, discreet and harmonious accompaniment. In the carefully selected party assembled at Belle Vue for Madame von Marwitz's delectation, she had been made a little to feel that she was but one of the indistinguishable orchestra that plucked out from accommodating strings a mellow bass to the one thrilling solo. Not for one moment did she grudge any of the recognitions that were her great friend's due; but she did expect to bask beside her; she did expect to find transmitted to her an important satellite's share of beams; and, it wasn't to be denied, Mercedes had been too much occupied with other people—and with one other in particular—to shine upon her in any distinguishing degree. Mercedes had the faculty, chafe against it as one might—and her very fondness, her very familiarity were a part of the effect—of making one show as an unimportant satellite, as something that would revolve when wanted and be contentedly invisible when that was fitting. "I might almost as well be a paid dame de compagnie," Miss Scrotton had more than once murmured to herself with a lip that trembled; and, obscurely, she realised that close association with the great might reveal one as insignificant rather than as glorified. It was therefore with her air of melancholy that she paused in her advance along the terrace to gaze out at the prospect, and with an air of emphasized calm and dignity that she finally came towards her friend; and, as she came, thus armed, the blitheness deepened in the great woman's eyes. "Well, ma chèrie," she remarked, "How goes it?" She spoke in French. "Very well, ma bien aimée," Miss Scrotton replied in the same language. Her French was correct, but Mercedes often made playful sallies at the expense of her accent. She preferred not to talk in French. And when Madame von Marwitz went on to ask her where her fellow convives were, it was in English that she answered, "I don't know where they all are—I have been busy writing letters; Mrs. Asprey and Lady Rose are driving, I know, and Mr. Asprey and Mr. Drew I saw in the smoking-room as I passed. The Marquis I don't think is down yet, nor Mrs. Furnivall; the young people are playing tennis, I suppose." Miss Scrotton looked about the terrace with its rhythmic tubs of flowering trees, its groups of chairs, its white silk parasols, and then wandered to the parapet to turn and glance up at the splendid copy of an Italian villa that rose above it. "It is really very beautiful, Mercedes," she observed. "It becomes the more significant from being so isolated, so divorced from what we are accustomed to find in Europe as a setting for such a place, doesn't it? Just as, I always think, the people of the Asprey type, the best this country has to offer, are more significant, too, for being picked out from so much that is indistinguishable. I do flatter myself, darling, that in this visit, at least, I've been able to offer you something really worth your while, something that adds to your experience of people and places. You are enjoying yourself," said Miss Scrotton with a manner of sad satisfaction. "Yes; truly," Madame von Marwitz made genial reply. "The more so for finding myself surrounded by so many old acquaintances. It is a particular pleasure to see again Lady Rose and the vivacious and intelligent Mrs. Furnivall; it was in Venice that we last met; her Palazzo there you must one day see. Monsieur de Hautefeuille and Mr. Drew I counted already as friends in Europe." "And Mrs. Asprey you will soon count as one, I hope. She is really a somewhat remarkable woman. She comes, you know, of one of their best and oldest families." "Oh, for that, no; not remarkable. Good, if you will—bon comme du pain; it strikes me much, that goodness, among these American rich whom we are accustomed to hear so crudely caricatured in Europe;—and it is quite a respectable little aristocracy. They ally themselves, as we see here in our excellent host and hostess, with what there is of old blood in the country and win tradition to guide their power. They are not the flaunting, vulgar rich, of whom we hear so much from those who do not know them, but the anxious, thoughtful, virtuous rich, oppressed by their responsibilities and all studying so hard, poor dears, at stiff, deep books, in order to fulfil them worthily. They all go to conférences, these ladies, it seems, and study sociology. They take life with a seriousness that I have never seen equalled. Mrs. Asprey is like them all; good, oh, but yes. And I am pleased to know her, too. Mrs. Furnivall had promised her long since, she tells me, that it should be. She and Mrs. Furnivall are old school-mates." Miss Scrotton, all her merit thus mildly withdrawn from her, stood silent for some moments looking away at the lake and the Turneresque trees. "It was so very kind of you, Mercedes, to have had Mr. Drew asked here," she observed at last, very casually. "It is a real opportunity for a young bohemian of that type; you are a true fairy-godmother to him; first Mrs. Forrester and now the Aspreys. Curious, wasn't it, his appearing over here so suddenly?" "Curious? It did not strike me so," said Madame von Marwitz, showing no consciousness of the thrust her friend had ventured to essay. "People come to America a great deal, do they not; and often suddenly. It is the country of suddenness. His books are much read here, it seems, and he had business with his publishers. He knew, too, that I was here; and that to him was also an attraction. Why curious, my Scrotton?" Miss Scrotton disliked intensely being called "my Scrotton;" but she had never yet found the necessary courage to protest against the appellation. "Oh, only because I had had no hint of it until he appeared," she returned. "And I wondered if you had had. Yes; I suppose he would be a good deal read over here. It is a very derivative and artificial talent, don't you think, darling?" "Rather derivative; rather artificial," Madame von Marwitz replied serenely. "He doesn't look well, does he?" Miss Scrotton pursued, after a little pause. "I don't like that puffiness about the eyelids and chin. It will be fatal for him to become fat." "No," said Madame von Marwitz, as serenely as before, her eyes now on a letter that she held. "Ah, no; he could rise above fat, that young man. I can see him fat with impunity. Would it become, then, somewhat the Talleyrand type? How many distinguished men have been fat. Napoleon, Renan, Gibbon, Dr. Johnson—" she turned her sheet as she mildly brought out the desultory list. "And all seem to end in n, do they not? I am glad that I asked Mr. Drew. He flavours the dish like an aromatic herb; and what a success he has been; hein? But he is the type of personal success. He is independent, indifferent, individual." "Ah, my dear, you are too generous to that young man," Miss Scrotton mused. "It's beautiful, it's wonderful to watch; but you are, indeed, too kind to him." She mused, she was absent, yet she knew, and knew that Mercedes knew, that never before in all their intercourse had she ventured on such a speech. It implied watchfulness; it implied criticism; it implied, even, anxiety; it implied all manner of things that it was not permitted for a satellite to say. The Baroness's eyes were on her letter, and though she did not raise them her dark brows lifted. "Tiens," she continued, "you find that I am too kind to him?" Miss Scrotton, to keep up the appearance of ingenuousness, was forced to further definition. "I don't think, darling, that in your sympathy, your solicitude, where young talent is concerned, you quite realize how much you give, how much you can be made use of. The man admires you, of course, and has, of course, talent of a sort. Yet, when I see you together, I confess that I receive sometimes the impression of a scattering of pearls." Madame von Marwitz laid down her letter. "Ah! ah!—oh! oh!—ma bonne," she said. She laughed out. Her eyes were lit with dancing sparks. "Do you know you speak as if you were very, very jealous of this young man who is found so charming?" "Jealous, my dear Mercedes?" Miss Scrotton's emotion showed itself in a dark flush. "Mais oui; mais oui; you tell me that my friend is a swine. Does that not mean that you, of late, have received too few pearls?" "My dear Mercedes! Who called him a swine?" "One doesn't speak of scattered pearls without rousing these associations." Her tone was beaming. Was it possible to swallow such an affront? Was it possible not to? And she had brought it upon herself. There was comfort and a certain restoration of dignity in this thought. Miss Scrotton, struggling inwardly, feigned lightness. "So few of us are worthy of your pearls, dear. Unworthiness doesn't, I hope, consign us to the porcine category. Perhaps it is that being, like him, a little person, I'm able to see Mr. Drew's merits and demerits more impartially than you do. That is all. I really ought to know a good deal about Mr. Drew," Miss Scrotton pursued, regaining more self-control, now that she had steered her way out of the dreadful shoals where her friend's words had threatened to sink her; "I've known him since the days when he was at Oxford and I used to stay there with my uncle the Dean. He was sitting, then, at the feet of Pater. It's a derivative, a parvenu talent, and, I do feel it, I confess I do, a derivative personality altogether, like that of so many of these clever young men nowadays. He is, you know, of anything but distinguished antecedents, and his reaction from his own milieu has been, perhaps, from the first, a little marked. Unfortunately his marriage is there to remind people of it, and I never see Mr. Drew dans le monde without, irrepressibly, thinking of the dismal little wife in Surbiton whom I once called upon, and his swarms—but swarms, my dear—of large-mouthed children." Miss Scrotton wondered, as she proceeded, whether she had again too far abandoned discretion. The Baroness examined her next letter for a moment before opening it and if she, too, had received her sting, she abandoned nothing. She answered with complete, though perhaps ominous, mildness: "He is rather like Shelley, I always think, a sophisticated Shelley who had sat at the feet of Pater. Shelley, too, had swarms of children, and it is possible that they were large-mouthed. The plebeian origin that you tell me of rather attracts me. I care, especially, for the fine flame that mounts from darkness; and I, too, on one side, as you will remember, ma bonne, am du peuple." "My dear Mercedes! Your father was an artist, a man of genius; and if your parents had risen from the gutter, you, by your own genius, transcend the question of rank as completely as a Shakespeare." The continued mildness was alarming Miss Scrotton; an eagerness to make amends was in her eye. "Ah—but did he, poor man!" Madame von Marwitz mused, rather irrelevantly, her eyes on her letter. "One hears now, not. But thank you, my Scrotton, you mean to be consoling. I have, however, no dread of the gutter. Tiens," she turned a page, "here is news indeed." Miss Scrotton had now taken a chair beside her and her fingers tapped a little impatiently as the Baroness's eye—far from the thought of pearls and swine—went over the letter. "Tiens, tiens," Madame von Marwitz repeated; "the little Karen is sought in marriage." "Really," said Miss Scrotton, "how very fortunate for the poor little thing. Who is the young man, and how, in heaven's name, has she secured a young man in the wilds of Cornwall?" Madame von Marwitz made no reply. She was absorbed in another letter. And Miss Scrotton now perceived, with amazement and indignation, that the one laid down was written in the hand of Gregory Jardine. "You don't mean to tell me," Miss Scrotton said, after some moments of hardly held patience, "that it's Gregory?" Madame von Marwitz, having finished her second letter, was gazing before her with a somewhat ambiguous expression. "Tallie speaks well of him," she remarked at last. "He has made a very good impression on Tallie." "Are you speaking of Gregory Jardine, Mercedes?" Miss Scrotton repeated. Madame von Marwitz now looked at her and as she looked the tricksy light of malice again grew in her eye. "Mais oui; mais oui. You have guessed correctly, my Scrotton," she said. "And you may read his letter. It is pleasant to me to see that stiff, self-satisfied young man brought to his knees. Read it, ma chère, read it. It is an excellent letter." Miss Scrotton read, and, while she read, Madame von Marwitz's cold, deep eyes rested on her, still vaguely smiling. "How very extraordinary," said Miss Scrotton. She handed back the letter. "Extraordinary? Now, why, ma bonne?" her friend inquired, all limpid frankness. "He looked indeed, a stockish, chill young man, of the cold-nosed type—ah, que je n'aime pas ça!—but he is a good young man; a most unimpeachable young man; and our little Karen has melted him; how much his letter shows." "Gregory Jardine is a very able and a very distinguished person," said Miss Scrotton, "and of an excellent county family. His mother and mine were cousins, as you know, and I have always taken the greatest interest in him. One can't but wonder how the child managed it." Mercedes, she knew, was drawing a peculiar satisfaction from her displeasure; but she couldn't control it. "Ah, the child is not a manager. She is so far from managing it, you see, that she leaves it to me to manage. It touches and surprises me, I confess, to find that her devotion to me rules her even at a moment like this. Yes; Karen has pleased me very much." "Of course that old-fashioned formality would in itself charm Gregory. He is very conventional. But I do hope, my dear Mercedes, that you will think it over a little before giving your consent. It is really a most unsuitable match. Karen's feelings are, evidently, not at all deeply engaged and with Gregory it must be a momentary infatuation. He will get over it in time and thank you for saving him; and Karen will marry Herr Lippheim, as you hoped she would." "Now upon my word, my Scrotton," said Madame von Marwitz in a manner as near insolence as its grace permitted, "I do not follow you. A barrister, a dingy little London barrister, to marry my ward? You call that an unsuitable marriage? I protest that I do not follow you and I assert, to the contrary, that he has played his cards well. Who is he? A nobody. You speak of your county families; what do they signify outside their county? Karen in herself is, I grant you, also a nobody; but she stands to me in a relation almost filial—if I chose to call it so; and I signify more than the families of many counties put together. Let us be frank. He opens no doors to Karen. She opens doors to him." Miss Scrotton, addressed in these measured and determined tones, changed colour. "My dear Mercedes, of course you are right there. Of course in one sense, if you take Gregory in as you have taken Karen in, you open doors to him. I only meant that a young man in his position, with his way to make in the world, ought to marry some well-born woman with a little money. He must have money if he is to get on. He ought to be in parliament one day; and Karen is without a penny, you have often told me so, as well as illegitimate. Of course if you intend to make her a large allowance, that is a different matter; but can you really afford to do that, darling?" "I consider your young man very fortunate to get Karen without one penny," Madame von Marwitz pursued, in the same measured tones, "and I shall certainly make him no present of my hard-earned money. Let him earn the money for Karen, now, as I have done for so many years. Had she married my good Franz, it would have been a very different thing. This young man is well able to support her in comfort. No; it all comes most opportunely. I wanted Karen to settle and to settle soon. I shall cable my consent and my blessings to them at once. Will you kindly find me a servant, ma chère." Miss Scrotton, as she rose automatically to carry out this request, was feeling that it is possible almost to hate one's idols. She had transgressed, and she knew it, and Mercedes had been aware of what she had done and had punished her for it. She even wondered if the quick determination to accept Gregory as Karen's suitor hadn't been part of the punishment. Mercedes knew that she had a pride in her cousin and had determined to humble it. She had perhaps herself to thank for having riveted this most disastrous match upon him. It was with a bitter heart that she walked on into the house. As she went in Mr. Claude Drew came out and Miss Scrotton gave him a chill greeting. She certainly hated Mr. Claude Drew. Claude Drew blinked a little in the bright sunlight and had somewhat the air of a graceful, nocturnal bird emerging into the day. He was dressed with an appropriateness to the circumstances of stately villégiature so exquisite as to have a touch of the fantastic. Madame von Marwitz sat with her back to him in the limpid shadow of the great white parasol and was again looking, not at Karen's, but at Gregory Jardine's, letter. One hand hung over the arm of her chair. Mr. Drew approached with quiet paces and, taking this hand, before Madame von Marwitz could see him, he bowed over it and kissed it. The manner of the salutation made of it at once a formality and a caress. Madame von Marwitz looked up quickly and withdrew her hand. "You startled me, my young friend," she said. In her gaze was a mingled severity and softness and she smiled as if irrepressibly. Mr. Drew smiled back. "I've been wearying to escape from our host and come to you," he said. "He will talk to me about the reform of American politics. Why reform them? They are much more amusing unreformed, aren't they? And why talk to me about them. I think he wants me to write about them. If I were to write a book for the Americans, I would tell them that it is their mission to be amusing. Democracies must be either absurd or uninteresting. America began by being uninteresting; and now it has quite taken its place as absurd. I love to hear about their fat, bribed, clean-shaven senators; just as I love to read the advertisements of tooth-brushes and breakfast foods and underwear in their magazines, written in the language of persuasive, familiar fraternity. It was difficult not to confess this to Mr. Asprey; but I do not think he would have understood me." Mr. Drew spoke in a soft, slightly sibilant voice, with little smiling pauses between sentences that all seemed vaguely shuffled together. He paused now, smiling, and looking down at Madame von Marwitz. "You speak foolishly," said Madame von Marwitz. "But he would have thought you wicked." "Because I like beauty and don't like democracy. I suppose so." Still smiling at her he added, "One forgets democracies when one looks at you. You are very beautiful this morning." "I am not, this morning, in a mood for unconventionalities," Madame von Marwitz returned, meeting his gaze with her mingled severity and softness. And again, with composure, he ignored her severity and returned her smile. It would have been unfair to say that there was effrontery in Mr. Drew's gaze; it merely had its way with you and, if you didn't like its way, passed from you unperturbed. With all his rather sickly grace and ambiguous placidity, Mr. Drew was not lacking in character. He had risen superior to a good many things, the dismal wife at Surbiton and the large-mouthed children perhaps among them, and he had won his detachment. The homage he offered was not unalloyed by humour. To a person of Madame von Marwitz's calibre, he seemed to say, he would not pretend to raptures or reverences they had both long since seen through. It would bore him to be rapturous or reverent, and if you didn't like him, so his whole demeanour mildly demonstrated, you could leave him, or, rather, he could leave you. So that when Madame von Marwitz sought to quell him she found herself met with a gentle unawareness, even a gentle indifference. Cogitation and a certain disquiet were often in her eye when it rested on this devotee. "Does one make conventional speeches to the moon?" he now remarked, taking a chair beside her and turning the brim of his white hat over his eyes so that of his face only the sensual, delicate mouth and chin were in sunlight. "I shouldn't want to make speeches to you if you were conventional. You are done with your letters? I may talk to you?" "Yes, I have done. You may talk, as foolishly as you please, but not unconventionally; whether I am or am not conventional is not a matter that concerns you. I have had good news to-day. My little Karen is to marry." "Your little Karen? Which of all the myriads is this adorer?" "The child you saw with me in London. The one who stays in Cornwall." "You mean the fair, square girl who calls you Tante? I only remember of her that she was fair and square and called you Tante." "That is she. She is to marry an excellent young man, a young man," said Madame von Marwitz, slightly smiling at him, "who would never wish to make speeches to the moon, who is, indeed, not aware of the moon. But he is very much aware of Karen; so much so," and she continued to smile, as if over an amusing if still slightly perplexing memory, "that when she is there he is not aware of me. What do you say to that?" "I say," Mr. Drew replied, "that the barbarians will always be many and the civilized few. Who is this barbarian?" "A Mr. Gregory Jardine." "Jardine? Connais-pas," said Mr. Drew. "He is a cousin of our Scrotton's," said Madame von Marwitz, "and a man of law. Very stiff and clean like a roll of expensive paper. He has asked me very nicely if he may inscribe the name of Mrs. Jardine upon a page of it. He is the sort of young man of law, I think I distinguish," Madame von Marwitz mused, her eyes on the landscape, "who does not smoke a briar wood pipe and ride on an omnibus, but who keeps good cigars in a silver box and always takes a hansom. He will make Karen comfortable and, I gather from her letter, happy. It will be a strange change of milieu for the child, but I have, I think, made her independent of milieus. She will write more than Mrs. Jardine on his scroll. It is a child of character." "And she will no longer be in Cornwall," Mr. Drew observed. "I am glad of that." "Why, pray? I am not glad of it. I shall miss my Karen at Les Solitudes." "But I, you see, don't want to have other worshippers there when I go to stay with you," said Mr. Drew; "for, you know, you are going to let me stay a great deal with you in Cornwall. You will play to me, and I will write something that you will, perhaps, care to read. And the moon will be very kind and listen to many speeches. You know," he added, with a change of tone, "that I am in love with you. I must be alone with you at Les Solitudes." "Let us have none of that, if you please," said Madame von Marwitz. She looked away from him along the sunny stretches of the terrace and she frowned slightly, though smiling on, as if with tolerant affection. And in her look was something half dazed and half resentful like the look of a fierce wild bird, subdued by the warmth and firmness of an enclosing hand. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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