"Les Solitudes,"February 2nd."Dear Mr. Jardine,—How very, very kind of you. I could hardly believe it when Mrs. Talcott told me that a box was here for me. I could think of nothing to explain it. Then when we opened it and saw, row upon row, those beautiful things like pearls in a casket—it made me feel quite dazed. Nectarines are not things that you expect to have, in rows, all to yourself. Mrs. Talcott and I ate two at once, standing there in the hall where we opened them; we couldn't wait for chairs and plates and silver knives; things taste best of all when eaten greedily, I think, and I think that these will all be eaten greedily. It is so kind of you. I thank you very much.—Yours sincerely,"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"February 2nd.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,—How very, very kind of you. I could hardly believe it when Mrs. Talcott told me that a box was here for me. I could think of nothing to explain it. Then when we opened it and saw, row upon row, those beautiful things like pearls in a casket—it made me feel quite dazed. Nectarines are not things that you expect to have, in rows, all to yourself. Mrs. Talcott and I ate two at once, standing there in the hall where we opened them; we couldn't wait for chairs and plates and silver knives; things taste best of all when eaten greedily, I think, and I think that these will all be eaten greedily. It is so kind of you. I thank you very much.—Yours sincerely,
"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"February 9th."Dear Mr. Jardine,—It is most kind of you to write me this nice note and to send me these reviews. I often have to miss the things that come out in the reviews about my guardian, for the press-cuttings go to her. Mr. Drew says many clever things, does he not; he understands music and he understands—at least almost—what my guardian is to music; but he does not, of course, understand her. He only sees the greatness and sees it made out of great things. When one knows a great person intimately one sees all the little things that make them great; often such very little things; things that Mr. Drew could not know. That is why his article is, to me, rather pretentious; nor will you like it, I think. He fills up with subtleties the gaps in his knowledge, and that makes it all so artificial. But I am most glad to have, it.—Sincerely yours,"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"February 9th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,—It is most kind of you to write me this nice note and to send me these reviews. I often have to miss the things that come out in the reviews about my guardian, for the press-cuttings go to her. Mr. Drew says many clever things, does he not; he understands music and he understands—at least almost—what my guardian is to music; but he does not, of course, understand her. He only sees the greatness and sees it made out of great things. When one knows a great person intimately one sees all the little things that make them great; often such very little things; things that Mr. Drew could not know. That is why his article is, to me, rather pretentious; nor will you like it, I think. He fills up with subtleties the gaps in his knowledge, and that makes it all so artificial. But I am most glad to have, it.—Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"February 18th."Dear Mr. Jardine,—The beautiful great box of fruit arrived to-day. It is too good and kind of you. I am wondering now whether muscatel grapes are not even more my favourites than nectarines! This is a day of rain and wind, soft rain blowing in gusts and the wind almost warm. Victor and I have come in very wet and now we are both before the large wood fire. London seems so far away that New York hardly seems further. You heard of the great ovation that my guardian had. I had a note from her yesterday and two of the New York papers. If you care to read them I will gladly send them; they tell in full about the first great concert she has given and the criticism is good. I will ask you to let me have them back when you have read them.—With many, many thanks.—Sincerely yours,"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"February 18th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,—The beautiful great box of fruit arrived to-day. It is too good and kind of you. I am wondering now whether muscatel grapes are not even more my favourites than nectarines! This is a day of rain and wind, soft rain blowing in gusts and the wind almost warm. Victor and I have come in very wet and now we are both before the large wood fire. London seems so far away that New York hardly seems further. You heard of the great ovation that my guardian had. I had a note from her yesterday and two of the New York papers. If you care to read them I will gladly send them; they tell in full about the first great concert she has given and the criticism is good. I will ask you to let me have them back when you have read them.—With many, many thanks.—Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"February 28th."Dear Mr. Jardine,—I am glad that you liked the box of snowdrops and that they reached you safely, packed in their moss. I got them in a little copse a few miles from here. The primroses will soon be coming now and, if you like, I will send you some of them. I know one gets them early in London; but don't you like best to open yourself a box from the country and see them lying in bunches with their leaves. I like even the slight flatness they have; but mine are very little flattened; I am good at packing flowers! My guardian always tells me so! You are probably right in not caring to see the papers; they are always much alike in what they say. It was only the glimpse of the great enthusiasm they gave that I thought might have interested you. Next week she goes to Chicago. I am afraid she will be very tired. But Miss Scrotton will take care of her.—Sincerely yours,"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"February 28th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,—I am glad that you liked the box of snowdrops and that they reached you safely, packed in their moss. I got them in a little copse a few miles from here. The primroses will soon be coming now and, if you like, I will send you some of them. I know one gets them early in London; but don't you like best to open yourself a box from the country and see them lying in bunches with their leaves. I like even the slight flatness they have; but mine are very little flattened; I am good at packing flowers! My guardian always tells me so! You are probably right in not caring to see the papers; they are always much alike in what they say. It was only the glimpse of the great enthusiasm they gave that I thought might have interested you. Next week she goes to Chicago. I am afraid she will be very tired. But Miss Scrotton will take care of her.—Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"March 17th."Dear Mr. Jardine,—I have taken up my pen for only two purposes since I left London—to write my weekly letter to my guardian—and to thank you over and over again. Only now you have quite spoiled Mrs. Talcott and me for our stewed dried fruit that we used to think so nice before we lived on grapes and nectarines. Indeed I have not forgotten the primroses and I shall be so delighted to pick them for you when the time comes, though I suspect it is sheer kindness in you that gives me the pleasure of sending you something. Your nice letter interested me very much. Yes, we have 'Dominique' in the library here, and I will perhaps soon read it; I say perhaps, because I am reading 'Wilhelm Meister'—my guardian was quite horrified with me when she found I had never read it—and must finish that first, and it is very long. Is 'Dominique' indeed your favourite French novel? My guardian places Stendahl and Flaubert first. For myself I do not care much for French novels. I like the Russians best.—Sincerely yours,"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"March 17th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,—I have taken up my pen for only two purposes since I left London—to write my weekly letter to my guardian—and to thank you over and over again. Only now you have quite spoiled Mrs. Talcott and me for our stewed dried fruit that we used to think so nice before we lived on grapes and nectarines. Indeed I have not forgotten the primroses and I shall be so delighted to pick them for you when the time comes, though I suspect it is sheer kindness in you that gives me the pleasure of sending you something. Your nice letter interested me very much. Yes, we have 'Dominique' in the library here, and I will perhaps soon read it; I say perhaps, because I am reading 'Wilhelm Meister'—my guardian was quite horrified with me when she found I had never read it—and must finish that first, and it is very long. Is 'Dominique' indeed your favourite French novel? My guardian places Stendahl and Flaubert first. For myself I do not care much for French novels. I like the Russians best.—Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"April 2nd."Dear Mr. Jardine,—You make a charming picture of the primroses in the blue and white bowls for me. And of your view over the park. London can be so beautiful; I, too, care for it very much. It is beautiful here now; the hedges all white with blackthorn and the woods full of primroses. My guardian must now be in San Francisco! She is back in New York in May, and is to give three more great concerts there. I am impatiently waiting for my next letter from her. I am so glad you like the primroses. Many, many thanks for the fruit.—Yours sincerely,"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"April 2nd.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,—You make a charming picture of the primroses in the blue and white bowls for me. And of your view over the park. London can be so beautiful; I, too, care for it very much. It is beautiful here now; the hedges all white with blackthorn and the woods full of primroses. My guardian must now be in San Francisco! She is back in New York in May, and is to give three more great concerts there. I am impatiently waiting for my next letter from her. I am so glad you like the primroses. Many, many thanks for the fruit.—Yours sincerely,
"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"April 5th."Dear Mr. Jardine,—What you say makes me feel quite troubled. I know you write playfully, yet sometimes one candire la vérité en riant, and it is as if you had found my letters very empty and unresponsive. I did not mean them to be that of course; but I am not at all in the habit of writing letters except to people I am very intimate with. Indeed, I am in the habit only of writing to my guardian, and it is difficult for me to think that other people will be interested in the things I am doing. And in one way I do so little here. Nothing that I could believe interesting to you; nothing really but have walks and practise my music and read; and talk sometimes with Mrs. Talcott. About once in two months the vicar's wife has tea with us, and about once in two months we have tea with her; that is all. And I am sure you cannot like descriptions of landscapes. I love to look at landscapes and dislike reading what other people have to say about them; and is not that the same with you? It is quite different that you should write to me of things and people; for you see so many and you do so much and you know that to someone in the depths of the country all this must be very interesting. So do not punish me for my dullness by ceasing to write to me.—Sincerely yours,"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"April 5th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,—What you say makes me feel quite troubled. I know you write playfully, yet sometimes one candire la vérité en riant, and it is as if you had found my letters very empty and unresponsive. I did not mean them to be that of course; but I am not at all in the habit of writing letters except to people I am very intimate with. Indeed, I am in the habit only of writing to my guardian, and it is difficult for me to think that other people will be interested in the things I am doing. And in one way I do so little here. Nothing that I could believe interesting to you; nothing really but have walks and practise my music and read; and talk sometimes with Mrs. Talcott. About once in two months the vicar's wife has tea with us, and about once in two months we have tea with her; that is all. And I am sure you cannot like descriptions of landscapes. I love to look at landscapes and dislike reading what other people have to say about them; and is not that the same with you? It is quite different that you should write to me of things and people; for you see so many and you do so much and you know that to someone in the depths of the country all this must be very interesting. So do not punish me for my dullness by ceasing to write to me.—Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"April 10th."Dear Mr. Jardine,—Of course I will write you descriptions of landscapes!—and of all my daily routine, if you really care to hear. No; I am not lonely, though of course I miss my guardian very much. I have the long, long walks with Victor, in wet weather over the inland moors along the roads, and in fine weather along the high cliff paths; sometimes we walk ten miles in an afternoon and come back very tired for tea. In the evenings I sit with Mrs. Talcott over the fire. You ask me to describe Mrs. Talcott to you, and to tell you all about her. She is with me now, and we are in the morning room, where we always sit; for the great music-room that opens on the verandah and fronts the sea is shut when my guardian is not here. This room looks over the sea, too, but from the side of the house and through an arabesque of trees. The walls are filled with books and flowering bulbs stand in the windows. We have had our tea and the sunlight slants in over the white freesia and white hyacinths. There are primroses everywhere, too, and they make the room seem more full of sunlight. You could hardly see a more beautiful room. Mrs. Talcott sits before the fire with her skirt turned up and her feet in square-toed shoes on the fender and looks into the fire. She is short and thick and very old, but she does not seem old; she is hard; not soft and withered. She has a large, calm face with very yellow skin, and very light blue eyes set deeply under white eyebrows. Her hair is white and drawn up tightly to a knot at the top of her head. She wears no cap and dresses always in black; very plain, with, in the daytime, a collar of white lawn turning over a black silk stock and bow, such as young girls wear, and, in the evening, a little fichu of white net, very often washed, and thin and starchy. And since her skirts are always very short, and her figure so square, she makes one think of a funny little girl as well as of an old woman. She comes from the State of Maine, and she remembers a striving, rough existence in a little town on the edge of wildernesses. She is a very distant relation of my guardian's. My guardian's maternal grandparents were Spanish and lived in New Orleans, and a sister of Señor Bastida's (Bastida was the name of my guardian's grandfather)—married a New Englander, from Vermont—and that New Englander was an uncle of Mrs. Talcott's—do you follow!—her uncle married my guardian's aunt, you see. Mrs. Talcott, in her youth, stayed sometimes in New Orleans, and dearly loved the beautiful Dolores Bastida who left her home to follow Pavelek Okraska. Poor Dolores Okraska had many sorrows. Her husband was not a good husband and her parents died. She was very unhappy and before her baby came—she was in Poland then,—she sent for Mrs. Talcott. Mrs. Talcott had been married, too, and had lost her husband and was very poor. But she left everything and crossed to Europe in the steerage—and what it must have been in those days!—imagine!—to join her unfortunate relative. My guardian has told me of it; she calls Mrs. Talcott: 'Un coeur d'or dans un corps de bois.' She stayed with Dolores Okraska until she died a little time after. She brought up her child. They were in great want; my guardian remembers that she had sometimes not enough to eat. When she was older and had already become famous, some relatives of the Bastidas heard of her and helped; but those were years of great struggle for Mrs. Talcott; and it is so strange to think of that provincial, simple American woman with her rustic ways and accent, living in Cracow and Warsaw, and Vienna, and steadily doing what she had set herself to do. She speaks French with a most funny accent even yet, though she spent so many years abroad, so many in Paris. I do not know what would have become of my guardian if it had not been for her. Her father loved her, but was very erratic and undisciplined. Mrs. Talcott has been with my guardian for almost all the time ever since. It is a great and silent devotion. She is very reticent. She never speaks of herself. She talks to me sometimes in the evenings about her youth in Maine, and the long white winters and the sleigh-rides; and the tapping of the maple-trees in Spring; and the nutting parties in the fall of the year. I think that she likes to remember all this; and I love to hear her, for it reminds me of what my father used to tell me of his youth; and I love especially to hear of the trailing arbutus, that lovely little flower that grows beneath the snow; how one brushes back the snow in early Spring and finds the waxen, sweet, pink flowers and dark, shining leaves under it. And I always imagine that it is a doubled nostalgia that I feel and that my mother's Norway in Spring was like it, with snow and wet woods. There is a line that brings it all over me: 'In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes.' It is by Emerson. The Spring here is very lovely, too, but it has not the sweetness that arises from snow and a long winter. Through the whole winter the fuchsias keep their green against the white walls of the little village, huddled in between the headlands at the edge of the sea beneath us. You know this country, don't you? The cliffs are so beautiful. I love best the great headlands towards the Lizard, black rock or grey, all spotted with rosettes of orange lichen with sweeps of grey-green sward sloping to them. Victor becomes quite intoxicated with the wind on these heights and goes in circles round and round, like a puppy. Later on, all the slopes are veiled in the delicate little pink thrift, and the stone walls are festooned with white campion."Then Mrs. Talcott and I have a great deal to do about the little farm. Mrs. Talcott is so clever at this. She makes it pay besides giving my guardian all the milk and eggs and bacon, too, she needs. There is a farmer and his wife, and a gardener and a boy; but with the beautiful garden we have here it takes most of the day to see to everything. The farmer's wife is a stern looking woman, but really very gentle, and she sings hymns all the day long while she works. She has a very good voice, so that it is sweet to hear her. Yes; I do play. I have a piano here in the morning-room, and I am very fond of my music. And, as I have told you, I read a good deal, too. So there you have all the descriptions and the details. I liked so much what you told me of the home of your boyhood. When I saw you, I knew that you were a person who cared for all these things, even if you were not an artist. What you tell me, too, of the law-courts and the strange people you see there, and the ugly, funny side of human life amused me, though it seems to me more sorrowful than you perhaps feel it. People amuse me very much sometimes, too; but I have not your eye for their foibles. You draw them rather as Forain does; I should do it, I suspect, with more sentimentality. The fruit comes regularly once a week, and punctual thanks seem inappropriate for what has become an institution. But you know how grateful I am. And for the weeklyPunch;—sogemütlichandbien pensantand, often, very, very funny, with a funniness that the Continental papers never give one; their jests are never the jests of thebien pensant. It is the acrid atmosphere of the café they bring, not that of the dinner party, or, better still, forPunch, the picnic. The reviews, too, are very interesting. Mrs. Talcott reads them a good deal, she who seldom reads. She says sometimes very acute and amusing things about politics. My guardian has a horror of politics; but they rather interest Mrs. Talcott. I know nothing of them; but I do not think that my guardian would agree with what you say; I think that she would belong more to your party of freedom and progress. What a long letter I have written to you! I have never written such a long one in my life before, except to my guardian.—Sincerely yours,"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"April 10th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,—Of course I will write you descriptions of landscapes!—and of all my daily routine, if you really care to hear. No; I am not lonely, though of course I miss my guardian very much. I have the long, long walks with Victor, in wet weather over the inland moors along the roads, and in fine weather along the high cliff paths; sometimes we walk ten miles in an afternoon and come back very tired for tea. In the evenings I sit with Mrs. Talcott over the fire. You ask me to describe Mrs. Talcott to you, and to tell you all about her. She is with me now, and we are in the morning room, where we always sit; for the great music-room that opens on the verandah and fronts the sea is shut when my guardian is not here. This room looks over the sea, too, but from the side of the house and through an arabesque of trees. The walls are filled with books and flowering bulbs stand in the windows. We have had our tea and the sunlight slants in over the white freesia and white hyacinths. There are primroses everywhere, too, and they make the room seem more full of sunlight. You could hardly see a more beautiful room. Mrs. Talcott sits before the fire with her skirt turned up and her feet in square-toed shoes on the fender and looks into the fire. She is short and thick and very old, but she does not seem old; she is hard; not soft and withered. She has a large, calm face with very yellow skin, and very light blue eyes set deeply under white eyebrows. Her hair is white and drawn up tightly to a knot at the top of her head. She wears no cap and dresses always in black; very plain, with, in the daytime, a collar of white lawn turning over a black silk stock and bow, such as young girls wear, and, in the evening, a little fichu of white net, very often washed, and thin and starchy. And since her skirts are always very short, and her figure so square, she makes one think of a funny little girl as well as of an old woman. She comes from the State of Maine, and she remembers a striving, rough existence in a little town on the edge of wildernesses. She is a very distant relation of my guardian's. My guardian's maternal grandparents were Spanish and lived in New Orleans, and a sister of Señor Bastida's (Bastida was the name of my guardian's grandfather)—married a New Englander, from Vermont—and that New Englander was an uncle of Mrs. Talcott's—do you follow!—her uncle married my guardian's aunt, you see. Mrs. Talcott, in her youth, stayed sometimes in New Orleans, and dearly loved the beautiful Dolores Bastida who left her home to follow Pavelek Okraska. Poor Dolores Okraska had many sorrows. Her husband was not a good husband and her parents died. She was very unhappy and before her baby came—she was in Poland then,—she sent for Mrs. Talcott. Mrs. Talcott had been married, too, and had lost her husband and was very poor. But she left everything and crossed to Europe in the steerage—and what it must have been in those days!—imagine!—to join her unfortunate relative. My guardian has told me of it; she calls Mrs. Talcott: 'Un coeur d'or dans un corps de bois.' She stayed with Dolores Okraska until she died a little time after. She brought up her child. They were in great want; my guardian remembers that she had sometimes not enough to eat. When she was older and had already become famous, some relatives of the Bastidas heard of her and helped; but those were years of great struggle for Mrs. Talcott; and it is so strange to think of that provincial, simple American woman with her rustic ways and accent, living in Cracow and Warsaw, and Vienna, and steadily doing what she had set herself to do. She speaks French with a most funny accent even yet, though she spent so many years abroad, so many in Paris. I do not know what would have become of my guardian if it had not been for her. Her father loved her, but was very erratic and undisciplined. Mrs. Talcott has been with my guardian for almost all the time ever since. It is a great and silent devotion. She is very reticent. She never speaks of herself. She talks to me sometimes in the evenings about her youth in Maine, and the long white winters and the sleigh-rides; and the tapping of the maple-trees in Spring; and the nutting parties in the fall of the year. I think that she likes to remember all this; and I love to hear her, for it reminds me of what my father used to tell me of his youth; and I love especially to hear of the trailing arbutus, that lovely little flower that grows beneath the snow; how one brushes back the snow in early Spring and finds the waxen, sweet, pink flowers and dark, shining leaves under it. And I always imagine that it is a doubled nostalgia that I feel and that my mother's Norway in Spring was like it, with snow and wet woods. There is a line that brings it all over me: 'In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes.' It is by Emerson. The Spring here is very lovely, too, but it has not the sweetness that arises from snow and a long winter. Through the whole winter the fuchsias keep their green against the white walls of the little village, huddled in between the headlands at the edge of the sea beneath us. You know this country, don't you? The cliffs are so beautiful. I love best the great headlands towards the Lizard, black rock or grey, all spotted with rosettes of orange lichen with sweeps of grey-green sward sloping to them. Victor becomes quite intoxicated with the wind on these heights and goes in circles round and round, like a puppy. Later on, all the slopes are veiled in the delicate little pink thrift, and the stone walls are festooned with white campion.
"Then Mrs. Talcott and I have a great deal to do about the little farm. Mrs. Talcott is so clever at this. She makes it pay besides giving my guardian all the milk and eggs and bacon, too, she needs. There is a farmer and his wife, and a gardener and a boy; but with the beautiful garden we have here it takes most of the day to see to everything. The farmer's wife is a stern looking woman, but really very gentle, and she sings hymns all the day long while she works. She has a very good voice, so that it is sweet to hear her. Yes; I do play. I have a piano here in the morning-room, and I am very fond of my music. And, as I have told you, I read a good deal, too. So there you have all the descriptions and the details. I liked so much what you told me of the home of your boyhood. When I saw you, I knew that you were a person who cared for all these things, even if you were not an artist. What you tell me, too, of the law-courts and the strange people you see there, and the ugly, funny side of human life amused me, though it seems to me more sorrowful than you perhaps feel it. People amuse me very much sometimes, too; but I have not your eye for their foibles. You draw them rather as Forain does; I should do it, I suspect, with more sentimentality. The fruit comes regularly once a week, and punctual thanks seem inappropriate for what has become an institution. But you know how grateful I am. And for the weeklyPunch;—sogemütlichandbien pensantand, often, very, very funny, with a funniness that the Continental papers never give one; their jests are never the jests of thebien pensant. It is the acrid atmosphere of the café they bring, not that of the dinner party, or, better still, forPunch, the picnic. The reviews, too, are very interesting. Mrs. Talcott reads them a good deal, she who seldom reads. She says sometimes very acute and amusing things about politics. My guardian has a horror of politics; but they rather interest Mrs. Talcott. I know nothing of them; but I do not think that my guardian would agree with what you say; I think that she would belong more to your party of freedom and progress. What a long letter I have written to you! I have never written such a long one in my life before, except to my guardian.—Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"April 15th."Dear Mr. Jardine,—How very nice to hear that you are coming to Cornwall for Easter and will be near us—at least Falmouth is quite near with a motor. It is beautiful country there, too; I have driven there with my guardian, and it is a beautiful town to see, lying in a wide curve around its blue bay. It is softer and milder than here. A bend of the coast makes so much difference. But why am I telling you all this, when of course you know it! I forget that anyone knows Cornwall but Mrs. Talcott and my guardian and me. But you have not seen this bit of the coast, and it excites me to think that I shall introduce you to our cliffs and to Les Solitudes. If only my guardian were here! It is not itself, this place, without her. It is not to see Les Solitudes if you do not see the great music-room opening its four long windows on the sea and sky; and my guardian sitting in the shade of the verandah looking over the sea. But Mrs. Talcott and I will do the honours as best we may and tell you everything about my guardian that you will wish to know. Let us hear beforehand the day you are coming; for the cook makes excellent cakes, and we will have some baked specially for you. How very nice to see you again.—Sincerely yours,"Karen Woodruff."
"Les Solitudes,"April 15th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,—How very nice to hear that you are coming to Cornwall for Easter and will be near us—at least Falmouth is quite near with a motor. It is beautiful country there, too; I have driven there with my guardian, and it is a beautiful town to see, lying in a wide curve around its blue bay. It is softer and milder than here. A bend of the coast makes so much difference. But why am I telling you all this, when of course you know it! I forget that anyone knows Cornwall but Mrs. Talcott and my guardian and me. But you have not seen this bit of the coast, and it excites me to think that I shall introduce you to our cliffs and to Les Solitudes. If only my guardian were here! It is not itself, this place, without her. It is not to see Les Solitudes if you do not see the great music-room opening its four long windows on the sea and sky; and my guardian sitting in the shade of the verandah looking over the sea. But Mrs. Talcott and I will do the honours as best we may and tell you everything about my guardian that you will wish to know. Let us hear beforehand the day you are coming; for the cook makes excellent cakes, and we will have some baked specially for you. How very nice to see you again.—Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
On a chill, sunny morning in April, Gregory Jardine went out on to his balcony before breakfast and stood leaning there as was his wont, looking down over his view. The purpling tree-tops in the park emerged from a light morning mist. The sky, of the palest blue, seemed very high and was streaked with white. Spring was in the air and he could see daffodils shining here and there on the slopes of green.
He had just read Karen Woodruff's last letter, and he was in the mood, charmed, amused and touched, that her letters always brought. Never, he thought, had there been such sweet and such funny letters; so frank and so impersonal; so simple and so mature. During these months of their correspondence the thought of her had been constantly in his mind, mingling now not only with his own deep and distant memories, but, it seemed, with hers, so that while she still walked with him over the hills of his boyhood and stooped to look with him at the spring gushing from under the bracken, they also brushed together the dry, soft snow from the trailing arbutus, or stood above the sea on the Cornish headlands. Never in his life had he so possessed the past and been so aware of it. His youth was with him, even though he still thought of his relation to Karen Woodruff as a paternal and unequal one; imagining a crisis in which his wisdom and knowledge of the world might serve her; a foolish love-affair, perhaps, that he would disentangle; or a disaster connected with the great woman under whose protection she lived; he could so easily imagine disasters befalling Madame von Marwitz and involving everyone around her. And now in a week's time he would be in Cornwall and seeing again the little Hans Andersen heroine. This was the thought that emerged from the sweet vagrancy of his mood; and, as it came, he was pierced suddenly with a strange rapture and fear that had in it the very essence of the spring-time.
Gregory had continued to think of the girl he was to marry in the guise of a Constance Armytage, and although Constance Armytage's engagement to another man found him unmoved, except with relief for the solution of what had really ceased to be a perplexity—since, apparently, he could not manage to fall in love with her—this fact had not been revealing, since he still continued to think of Constance as the type, if she had ceased to be the person. Karen Woodruff was almost the last type he could have fixed upon. She fitted nowhere into his actual life. She only fitted into the life of dreams and memories.
So now, still looking down at the trees and daffodils, he drew a long breath and tried to smile over what had been a trick of the imagination and to relegate Karen to the place of half-humorous dreams. He tried to think calmly of her. He visualized her in her oddity and child-likeness; seeing the flat blue bows of the concert; the old-fashioned gold locket of the tea; the sealskin cap of the station. But still, it was apparent, the infection of the season was working in him; for these trivial bits of her personality had become overwhelmingly sweet and wonderful. The essential Karen infused them. Her limpid grey eyes looked into his. She said, so ridiculously, so adorably: "My guardian likes best to be called von Marwitz by those who know her personally." She laughed, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. From the place of dream and memory, the living longing for her actual self emerged indomitably.
Gregory turned from the balcony and went inside. He was dazed. Her primroses stood about the room in the white and blue bowls. He wanted to kiss them. Controlling the impulse, which seemed to him almost insane, he looked at them instead and argued with himself. In love? But one didn't fall in love like that between shaving and breakfast. What possessed him was a transient form ofidée fixe, and he had behaved very foolishly in playing fairy-godfather to a dear little girl. But at this relegating phrase his sense of humour rose to mock him. He could not relegate Karen Woodruff as a dear little girl. It was he who had behaved like a boy, while she had maintained the calm simplicities of the mature. He hadn't the faintest right to hope that she saw anything in his correspondence but what she had herself brought to it. Fear fell more strongly upon him. He sat down to his breakfast, his thoughts in inextricable confusion. And while he drank his coffee and glanced nervously down the columns of his newspaper, a hundred little filaments of memory ran back and linked the beginning to the present. It had not been so sudden. It had been there beside him, in him; and he had not seen it. The meeting of their eyes in the long, grave interchange at the concert had been full of presage. And why had he gone to tea at Mrs. Forrester's? And why, above all why, had he dreamed that dream? It was his real self who had felt no surprise when, at the edge of the forest, she had said: "And I love you." The words had been spoken in answer to his love.
Gregory laid down his paper and stared before him. He was in love. Should he get over it? Did he want to get over it? Was it possible to get over it if he did want to? And, this was the culmination, would she have him? These questions drove him forth.
When Barker, his man, came to clear away the breakfast things he found that the bacon and eggs had not been eaten. Barker was a stone-grey personage who looked like a mid-Victorian Liberal statesman. His gravity often passed into an air of despondent responsibility. "Mr. Jardine hasn't eaten his breakfast," he said to his wife, who was Gregory's cook. "It's this engagement of Miss Armytage's. He was more taken with her than we'd thought."
Gregory had intended to motor down to Cornwall, still a rare opportunity in those days; a friend who was going abroad had placed his car at his disposal. But he sent the car ahead of him and, on the first day of his freedom, started by train. Next day he motored over to the little village near the Lizard.
It was a pale, crystalline Spring day. From heights, where the car seemed to poise like a bird in mid-air, one saw the tranquil blue of the sea. The woods were veiled in young green and the hedges thickly starred with blackthorn. Over the great Goonhilly Downs a silvery sheen trembled with impalpable colour and the gorse everywhere was breaking into gold. It was a day of azure, illimitable distances; of exultation and delight. Even if one were not in love one would feel oneself a lover on such a day.
Gregory had told himself that he would be wise; that he would go discreetly and make sure not only that he was really in love, but that there was in his love a basis for life. Marriage must assure and secure his life, not disturb and disintegrate it; and a love resisted and put aside unspoken may soon be relegated to the place of fond and transient dream. Perhaps the little Hans Andersen heroine would settle happily into such a dream. How little he had seen of her. But while he thus schooled himself, while the white roads curved and beckoned and unrolled their long ribbons, the certainties he needed of himself merged more and more into the certainties he needed of her. And he felt his heart, in the singing speed, lift and fly towards the beloved.
He had written to her and told her the hour of his arrival, and at a turning he suddenly saw her standing above the road on one of the stone stiles of the country. Dressed in white and poised against the blue, while she kept watch for his coming, she was like a calm, far-gazing figure-head on a ship, and the ship that bore her seemed to have soared into sight.
She was new, yet unchanged. Her attitude, her smile, as she held up an arresting hand to the chauffeur, filled him with delight and anxiety. It disconcerted him to find how new she was. He felt that he spoke confusedly to her when she came to shake his hand.
"People often lose their way in coming to see Tante," she said, and it struck him, even in the midst of his preoccupation with her, as too sweetly absurd that the first sentence she spoke to him should sound the familiar chime. "They have gone mistakenly down the lane that leads to the cliff path, that one there, or the road that leads out to the moors. And one poor man was quite lost and never found his way to us at all. It meant, for he had only a day or two to spend in England, that he did not see her for another year. Tante has had signs put up since then; but even now people can go wrong."
She mounted beside the chauffeur so that she could guide him down the last bit of road, sitting sideways, her arm laid along the back of the seat. From time to time she smiled at Gregory.
She was a person who accepted the unusual easily and with no personal conjecture. She was so accustomed, no doubt, to the sudden appearance of all sorts of people, that she had no discriminations to apply to his case. There was no shyness and no surmise in her manner. She smiled at him as composedly as she had smiled over the Great Wall of China in Mrs. Forrester's drawing-room, and her pleasure in seeing him was neither less frank nor more intimate.
She wore a broad hat of sun-burnt straw and a white serge coat and skirt that looked as if they had shrunk in frequent washings. Her white blouse had the little frills at neck and wrists and around her throat was the gold locket on its black ribbon. Her eyes, when she turned them on him and smiled, seemed to open distances like the limitlessness of the moorland. Her tawny skin and shining golden hair were like the gorse and primroses and she in her serenity and gladness like the day personified.
They did not attempt to talk through the loudly purring monotones of the car, which picked its way swiftly and delicately down the turning road and then skimmed lightly on the level ground between hedges of fuchsia and veronica. As the prospect opened Karen pointed to the golden shoulder of a headland bathed in sunlight and the horizon line of the sea beyond. They turned among wind-bitten Cornish elms, leaning inland, and Gregory saw among them the glimmer of Les Solitudes.
It was a white-walled house with a high-pitched roof of grey shingles, delicately rippling; a house almost rustic, yet more nearly noble, very beautiful; simple, yet unobtrusively adapted to luxury. Simplicity reigned within, though one felt luxury there in a chrysalis condition, folded exquisitely and elaborately away and waiting the return of the enchantress.
Karen led him across the shining spaces of the hall and into the morning-room. Books, flowers and sunlight seemed to furnish it, and, with something austere and primitive, to make it the most fitting background for herself. But while her presence perfected it for him, it was her guardian's absence that preoccupied Karen. Again, and comically, she reminded Gregory of the sacristan explaining to the sight-seer that the famous altar-piece had been temporarily removed and that he could not really judge the chapel without its culminating and consecrating object. "If only Tante were here!" she said. "It seems so strange that anyone should see Les Solitudes who has not seen her in it. I do not remember that it has ever happened before. This is the dining-room—yes, I like to show it all to you—she planned it all herself, you know—is it not a beautiful room? You see, though we are Les Solitudes, we can seat a large dinner-party and Tante has sometimes many guests; not often though; this is her place of peace and rest. She collected all this Jacobean furniture; connoisseurs say that it is very beautiful. The music-room, alas, is closed; but I will show you the garden—and Mrs. Talcott in it. I am eager for you and Mrs. Talcott to meet."
He would rather have stayed and talked to her in the morning-room; but she compelled him, rather as a sacristan compels the slightly bewildered sight-seer, to pass on to the next point of interest. She led him out to the upper terrace of the garden, which dropped, ledge by ledge, with low walls and winding hedges, down the cliff-side. She pointed out to him the sea-front of the house, with its wide verandah and clustered trees and the beautiful dip of the roof over the upper windows, far gazing little dormer windows above these. Tante, she told him, had designed the house. "That is her room, the corner one," she said. "She can see the sunrise from her bed."
Gregory was interested neither in Madame von Marwitz's advantages nor in her achievements. He asked Karen where her own room was. It was at the back of the house, she said; a dear little room, far up. She, too, had a glimpse of the Eastern headland and of the sunrise.
They were walking along the paths, their borders starred as yet frugally with hints of later glories; but already the aubrietia and arabis made bosses of white or purple on the walls, and in a little copse daffodils grew thickly.
"There is Mrs. Talcott," said Karen, quickening her pace. Evidently she considered Mrs. Talcott, in her relation to Tante, as an important feature of Les Solitudes.
It was her relation to Karen that caused Gregory to look with interest at the stout old lady, dressed in black alpaca, who was stooping over a flower-border at a little distance from them. He had often wondered what this sole companion of Karen's cloistered life was like. Mrs. Talcott's skirts were short; her shoes thick-soled and square-toed, fastening with a strap and button over white stockings at the ankle. She wore a round straw hat, like a child's, and had a basket of gardening implements beside her.
"Mrs. Talcott, here is Mr. Jardine," Karen announced, as they approached her.
Mrs. Talcott raised herself slowly and turned to them, drawing off her gardening gloves. She was a funny looking old woman, funnier than Karen had prepared him for finding her, and uglier. Her large face, wallet-shaped and sallow, was scattered over with white moles, or rather, warts, one of which, on her eyelid, caused it to droop over her eye and to blink sometimes, suddenly. She had a short, indefinite nose and long, large lips firmly folded. With its updrawn hair and impassivity her face recalled that of a Chinese image; but more than of anything else she gave Gregory the impression, vaguely and incongruously tragic, of an old shipwrecked piece of oaken timber, washed up, finally, out of reach of the waves, on some high, lonely beach; battered, though still so solid; salted through and through; crusted with brine, and with odd, bleached excrescences, like barnacles, adhering to it. Her look of almost inhuman cleanliness added force to the simile.
"Mr. Jardine heard Tante last winter, you know," said Karen, "and met her at Mrs. Forrester's."
"I'm very happy to make your acquaintance, Sir," said Mrs. Talcott, giving Gregory her hand.
"Mrs. Talcott is a great gardener," Karen went on. "Tante has the ideas and Mrs. Talcott carries them out. And sometimes they aren't easy to carry out, are they, Mrs. Talcott!"
Mrs. Talcott, her hands folded at her waist, contemplated her work.
"Mitchell made a mistake about the campanulas, Karen," she remarked. "He's put the clump of blue over yonder, instead of the white."
"Oh, Mrs. Talcott!" Karen turned to look. "And Tante specially wanted the white there so that they should be against the sea. How very stupid of Mitchell."
"They'll have to come out, I presume," said Mrs. Talcott, but without emotion.
"And where is thepyramidalis alba?"
"Well, he's got that up in the flagged garden where she wanted the blue," said Mrs. Talcott.
"And it will be so bad for them to move them again! What a pity! They have been sent for specially," Karen explained to Gregory. "My guardian heard of a particularly beautiful kind, and the white were to be for this corner of the wall, you see that they would look very lovely against the sea, and the blue were to be among the white veronica and white lupins in the flagged garden. And now they are all planted wrong, and so accurately and solidly wrong," she walked ahead of Mrs. Talcott examining the offending plants. "Are you quite sure they're wrong, Mrs. Talcott?"
"Dead sure," Mrs. Talcott made reply. "He did it this morning when I was in the dairy. He didn't understand, or got muddled, or something. I'll commence changing them round as soon as I've done this weeding. It'll be a good two hours' work."
"No, you must not do it till I can help you," said Karen. "To-morrow morning." She had a manner at once deferential and masterful of addressing the old lady. They were friendly without being intimate. "Now promise me that you will wait till I can help you."
"Well, I guess I won't promise. I like to get things off my mind right away," said Mrs. Talcott. If Karen was masterful, she was not yielding. "I'll see how the time goes after tea. Don't you bother about it."
They left her bending again over her beds. "She is very strong, but I think sometimes she works too hard," said Karen.
By a winding way she led him to the high flagged garden with its encompassing trees and far blue prospect, and here they sat for a little while in the sunlight and talked. "How different all this must be from your home in Northumberland," said Karen. "I have never been to Northumberland. Is your brother much there? Is he like you? Have you brothers and sisters?"
She questioned him with the frank interest with which he wished to question her. He told her about Oliver and said that he wasn't like himself. A faint flavour of irony came into his voice in speaking of his elder brother and finding Karen's calm eyes dwelling on him he wondered if she thought him unfair. "We always get on well enough," he said, "but we haven't much in common. He is a good, dull fellow, half alive."
"And you are very much alive."
"Yes, on the whole, I think so," he answered, smiling, but sensitively aware of a possible hint of irony in her. But she had intended none. She continued to look at him calmly. "You are making use of all of yourself; that is to be alive, Tante always says; and I feel that it is true of you. And his wife? the wife of the dull hunting brother? Does she hunt too and think of foxes most?"
He could assure her that Betty quite made up in the variety of her activities for Oliver's deficiencies. Karen was interested in the American Betty and especially in hearing that she had been at the concert from which their own acquaintance dated. She asked him, walking back to the house, if he had seen Mrs. Forrester. "She is an old friend of yours, isn't she?" she said.
"That must be nice. She was so kind to me that last day in London. Tante is very fond of her; very, very fond. I hardly think there is anyone of all her friends she has more feeling for. Here is Victor, come to greet you. You remember Victor, and how he nearly missed the train."
The great, benignant dog came down the path to them and as they walked Karen laid her hand upon his head, telling Gregory that Sir Alliston had given him to Tante when he was quite a tiny puppy. "You saw Sir Alliston, that sad, gentle poet? There is another person that Tante loves." It was with a slight stir of discomfort that Gregory realised more fully from these assessments how final for Karen was the question of Tante's likes and dislikes.
They were on the verandah when she paused. "But I think, though the music-room is closed, that you must see the portrait."
"The portrait? Of you?" Actually, and sincerely, he was off the track.
"Of me? Oh no," said Karen, laughing a little. "Why should it be of me? Of my guardian, of course. Perhaps you know it. It is by Sargent and was in the Royal Academy some years ago."
"I must have missed it. Am I to see it now?"
"Yes. I will ask Mrs. Talcott for the key and we will draw all the blinds and you shall see it." They walked back to the garden in search of Mrs. Talcott.
"Do you like it?" Gregory asked.
Karen reflected for a moment and then said; "He understands her better than Mr. Drew does, or, at all events, does not try to make up for what he does not understand by elaborations. But there are blanks!—oh blanks!—However, it is a very magnificent picture and you shall see. Mrs. Talcott, may I have the key of the music-room? I want to show the Sargent to Mr. Jardine."
They had come to the old woman again, and again she slowly righted herself from her stooping posture. "It's in my room, I'll come and get it," said Mrs. Talcott, and on Karen's protesting against this, she observed that it was about tea-time, anyway. She preceded them to the house.
"But I do beg," Karen stopped her in the hall. "Let me get it. You shall tell me where it is."
Mrs. Talcott yielded. "In my left top drawer on the right hand side under the pile of handkerchiefs," she recited. "Thanks, Karen."
While Karen was gone, Mrs. Talcott in the hall stood in front of Gregory and looked past him in silence into the morning-room. She did not seem to feel it in any sense incumbent upon her to entertain him, though there was nothing forbidding in her manner. But happening presently, while they waited, to glance at the droll old woman, he found her eyes fixed on him in a singularly piercing, if singularly impassive, gaze. She looked away again with no change of expression, shifting her weight from one hip to the other, and something in the attitude suggested to Gregory that she had spent a great part of her life in waiting. She had a capacity, he inferred, for indefinite waiting. Karen came happily running down the stairs, holding the key.
They went into the dim, white room where swathed presences stood as if austerely welcoming them. Karen drew up the blind and Mrs. Talcott, going to the end of the room, mounted a chair and dexterously twitched from its place the sheet that covered the great portrait. Then, standing beside it, and still holding its covering, she looked, not at it, but, meditatively, out at the sea that crossed with its horizon line the four long windows. Karen, also in silence, came and stood beside Gregory.
It was indeed a remarkable picture; white and black; silver and green. To a painter's eye the arresting balance of these colours would have first appealed and the defiant charm with which the angular surfaces of the grand piano and the soft curves of the woman seated at it were combined. The almost impalpable white of an azalea with its flame-green foliage, and a silver statuette, poised high on a slender column of white chalcedony, were the only accessories. But after the first delighted draught of wonder it was the face of Madame Okraska—pre-eminently Madame Okraska in this portrait—that compelled one to concentration. She sat, turning from the piano, her knees crossed, one arm cast over them, the other resting along the edge of the key-board. The head drooped slightly and the eyes looked out just below the spectator's eyes, so that in poise and glance it recalled somewhat Michael Angelo's Lorenzo da Medici. And something that Gregory had felt in her from the first, and that had roused in him dim hostilities and ironies, was now more fully revealed. The artist seemed to have looked through the soft mask of the woman's flesh, through the disturbing and compelling forces of her own consciousness, to the very structure and anatomy of her character. Atavistic, sub-conscious revelations were in the face. It was to see, in terms of art, a scientific demonstration of race, temperament, and the results of their interplay with environment. The languors, the feverish indolences, the caprice of generations of Spanish exiles were there, and the ambiguity, the fierceness of Slav ancestry. And, subtly interwoven, were the marks of her public life upon her. The face, so moulded to indifference, was yet so aware of observation, so adjusted to it, so insatiable of it, that, sitting there, absorbed and brooding, lovely with her looped pearls and diamonds, her silver broideries and silken fringes, she was a product of the public, a creature reared on adulation, breathing it in softly, peacefully, as the white flowers beside her breathed in light and air. Her craftsmanship, her genius, though indicated, were submerged in this pervasive quality of an indifference based securely on the ever present consciousness that none could be indifferent to her. And more than the passive acceptance and security was indicated. Strange, sleeping potentialities lurked in the face; as at the turn of a kaleidoscope, Gregory could fancy it suddenly transformed, by some hostile touch, some menace, to a savage violence and rapacity. He was aware, standing between the girl who worshipped her and the devoted old woman, of the pang of a curious anxiety.
"Well," said Karen at last, and she looked from the picture to him. "What do you think of it?"
"It's splendid," said Gregory. "It's very fine. And beautiful."
"But does it altogether satisfy you?" Her eyes were again on the portrait. "What is lacking, I cannot say; but it seems to me that it is painted with intelligence only, not with love. It is Madame Okraska, the great genius; but it is not Tante; it is not even Madame von Marwitz."
The portrait seemed to Gregory to go so much further and so much deeper than what he had himself seen that it was difficult to believe that hers might be the deepest vision, but he was glad to take refuge in the possibility. "It does seem to me wonderfully like," he said. "But then I don't know 'Tante.'"
Karen now glanced at Mrs. Talcott. "It is a great bone of contention between us," she said, smiling at the old lady, yet smiling, Gregory observed, with a touch of challenge. "She feels it quite complete. That, in someone who does know Tante, I cannot understand."
Mrs. Talcott, making no reply, glanced up at the portrait and then, again, out at the sea.
Gregory looked at her with awakened curiosity. This agreement was an unexpected prop for him. "You, too, think it a perfect likeness?" he asked her. Her old blue eyes, old in the antique tranquillity of their regard, yet still of such a vivid, unfaded turquoise, turned on him and again he had that impression of an impassive piercing.
"It seems to me about as good a picture as anyone's likely to get," said Mrs. Talcott.
"Yes, but, oh Mrs. Talcott"—with controlled impatience Karen took her up—"surely you see,—it isn't Tante. It is a genius, a great woman, a beautiful woman, a beautiful and poetic creature, of course;—he has seen all that—who wouldn't? but it is almost a woman without a heart. There is something heartless there. I always feel it. And when one thinks of Tante!" And Mrs. Talcott remaining silent, she insisted: "Can you really say you don't see what I mean?"
"Well, I never cared much about pictures anyway," Mrs. Talcott now remarked.
"Well, but you care for this one more than I do!" Karen returned, with a laugh of vexation. "It isn't a question of pictures; it's a question of a likeness. You really think that this does Tante justice? It's that I can't understand."
Mrs. Talcott, thus pursued, again looked up at the portrait, and continued, now, to look at it for several moments. And as she stood there, looking up, she suddenly and comically reminded Gregory of the Frog gardener before the door in "Alice," with his stubborn and deliberate misunderstanding. He could almost have expected to see Mrs. Talcott advance her thumb and rub the portrait, as if to probe the cause of her questioner's persistence. When she finally spoke it was only to vary her former judgment: "It seems to me about as good a picture as Mercedes is likely to get taken," she said. She pronounced the Spanish name: "Mursadees."
Karen, after this, abandoned her attempt to convince Mrs. Talcott. Tea was ready, and they went into the morning-room. Here Mrs. Talcott presided at the tea-table, and for all his dominating preoccupation she continued to engage a large part of Gregory's attention. She sat, leaning back in her chair, slowly eating, her eyes, like tiny, blue stones, immeasurably remote, immeasurably sad, fixed on the sea.
"Is it long since you were in America?" he asked her. He felt drawn to Mrs. Talcott.
"Why, I guess it's getting on for twenty-five years now," she replied, after considering for a moment; "since I've lived there. I've been over three or four times with Mercedes; on tours."
"Twenty-five years since you came over here? That is a long time."
"Oh, it's more than that since I came," said Mrs. Talcott. "Twenty-five years since I lived at home. I came over first nearly fifty years ago. Yes; it's a long time."
"Dear me; you have lived most of your life here, then."
"Yes; you may say I have."
"And don't you ever want to go back to America to stay?"
"I don't know as I do," said Mrs. Talcott.
"You're fonder of it over here, like so many of your compatriots?"
"Well, I don't know as I am," Mrs. Talcott, who had a genius it seemed for non-committal statements, varied; and then, as though aware that her answers might seem ungracious, she added: "All my folks are dead. There's no reason for my wanting to go home that I can think of."
"Besides, Mrs. Talcott," Karen now helped her on, "home to you is where Tante is, isn't it. Mrs. Talcott has lived with Tante ever since Tante was born. No one in the world knows her as well as she does. It is rather wonderful to think about." She had the air, finding Mrs. Talcott appreciated, of putting forward for her her great claim to distinction.
"Yes; I know Mercedes pretty well," Mrs. Talcott conceded.
"How I love to hear about it," said Karen; "about her first concert, you know, Mrs. Talcott, when you curled her hair—such long, bright brown hair, she had, and so thick, falling below her waist, didn't it?" Mrs. Talcott nodded with a certain complacency. "And she wore a little white muslin frock and white shoes and a blue sash; she was only nine years old; it was a great concert in Warsaw. And she didn't want her hair curled, and combed it all out with her fingers just before going on to the platform—didn't she?"
Mrs. Talcott was slightly smiling over these reminiscences. "Smart little thing," she commented. "She did it the last minute so as it was too late for me to fix it again. It made me feel dreadful her going on to the platform with her head all mussed up like that. She looked mighty pretty all the same."
"And she was right, too, wasn't she?" said Karen, elated, evidently, at having so successfully drawn Mrs. Talcott out. "Her hair was never curly, was it. It looked better straight, I'm sure."
"Well, I don't know about that," said Mrs. Talcott. "I always like it curled best, when she was little. But I had to own to myself she looked mighty pretty, though I was so mad at her."
"Tante has always had her own way, I imagine," said Karen, "about anything she set her mind on. She had her way about being an infant prodigy; though you were so right about that—she has often said so, hasn't she, and how thankful she is that you were able to stop it before it did her harm. I must show you our photographs of Tante, Mr. Jardine. We have volumes and volumes, and boxes and boxes of them. They are far more like her, I think, many of them, than the portrait. Some of them too dear and quaint—when she was quite tiny."
Tea was over and Karen, rising, looked towards the shelves where, evidently, the volumes and boxes were kept.
"I really think I'd rather see some more of this lovely place, first," said Gregory. "Do take me further along the cliff. I could see the photographs, you know, the next time I come."
He, too, had risen and was smiling at her with a little constraint.
Karen, arrested on her way to the photographs, looked at him in surprise. "Will you come again? You are to be in Cornwall so long?"
"I'm to be here about a fortnight and I should like to come often, if I may." She was unaware, disconcertingly unaware; yet her surprise showed the frankest pleasure.
"How very nice," she said. "I did not think that you could come all that way more than once."
While they spoke, Mrs. Talcott's ancient, turquoise eyes were upon them, and in her presence Gregory found it easier to say things than it would have been to say them to Karen alone. Already, he felt sure, Mrs. Talcott understood, and if it was easy to say things in her presence might that not be because he guessed that she sympathised? "But I came down to Cornwall to see you," he said, leaning on his chair back and tilting it a little while he smiled at Karen.
Her pleasure rose in a flush to her cheek. "To see me?"
"Yes; I felt from our letters that we ought to become great friends."
She looked at him, pondering the unlooked-for possibility he put before her. "Great friends?" she repeated. "I have never had a great friend of my own. Friends, of course; the Lippheims and the Belots; and Strepoff; and you, of course, Mrs. Talcott; but never, really, a great friend quite of my own, for they are Tante's friends first and come through Tante. Of course you have come through Tante, too," said Karen, with evident satisfaction; "only not quite in the same way."
"Not at all in the same way," said Gregory. "Don't forget. We met at the concert, and without any introduction! It has nothing to do with Madame von Marwitz this time. It's quite on our own."
"Oh, but I would so much rather have it come through her, if we are to be great friends," Karen returned, smiling, though reflectively. "I think we are to be, for I felt you to be my friend from that first moment. But it was at the concert that we met and it was Tante's concert. So that it was not quite on our own. I want it to be through Tante," she went on, "because it pleases me very much to think that we may be great friends, and my happy things have come to me through Tante, always."
He came next day and every day. They were favoured with the rarely given gift of a perfect spring. They walked along the cliffs and headlands. They sat and talked in the garden. He took her with Mrs. Talcott for long drives to distant parts of the coast which he and Karen would explore, while Mrs. Talcott in the car sat, with apparently interminable patience, waiting for them.
Karen played to him in the morning-room; and this was a new revelation of her. She was not a finished performer and her music was limited by her incapacity; but she had the gift for imparting, with transparent sincerity and unfailing sensitiveness, the very heart of what she played. There were Arias from Schubert Sonatas, and Bach Preludes, and loving little pieces of Schumann, that Gregory thought he had never heard so beautifully played before. Everything they had to say was said, though, it might be, said very softly. He told her that he cared more for her music than for any he had listened to, and Karen laughed, not at all taking him seriously. "But you do care for music, though you are no musician," she said. "I like to play to you; and to someone who does not care it is impossible."
Her acceptances of their bond might give ground for all hope or for none. As for himself there had been, from the moment of seeing her again, of knowing in her presence that fear and that delight, no further doubt as to his own state and its finality. Yet his first perplexities lingered and could at moments become painful.
He felt the beloved creature to be at once inappropriate and inevitable. With all that was deepest and most instinctive in him her nature chimed; the surfaces, the prejudices, the principles of his life she contradicted and confused. She talked to him a great deal, in answer to his questions, about her past life, and what she told him was often disconcerting. The protective tenderness he had felt for her from the first was troubled by his realisation of the books she had placidly read—under Tante's guidance—the people whose queer relationships she placidly took for granted as in no need of condonation. When he intimated to her that he disapproved of such contacts and customs, she looked at him, puzzled, and then said, with an air of kindly maturity at once touching and vexatious: "But that is the morality of the Philistines."
It was, of course, and Gregory considered it the very best of moralities; but remembering her mother he could not emphasize to her how decisively he held by it.
It was in no vulgar or vicious world that her life, as the child of the unconventional sculptor, as theprotégéeof the great pianist, had been passed. But it was a world without religion, without institutions, without order. Gregory, though his was not the religious temperament, had his reasoned beliefs in the spiritual realities expressed in institutions and he had his inherited instincts of reverence for the rituals that embodied the spiritual life of his race. He was impatient with dissent and with facile scepticisms. He did not expect a woman to have reasoned beliefs, nor did he ask a credulous, uncritical orthodoxy; but he did want the Christian colouring of mind, the Christian outlook; he did want his wife to be a woman who would teach her children to say their prayers at her knees. It was with something like dismay that he gathered from Karen that her conception of life was as untouched by any consciousness of creed as that of a noble young pagan. He was angry at himself for feeling it and when he found himself applying his rules and measures to her; for what had it been from the first but her spiritual strength and loveliness that had drawn him to her? Yet he longed to make her accept the implications of the formulated faiths that she lived by. "Oh, no, you're not," he said to her when, turning unperturbed eyes upon him, she assured him: "Oh yes, I am quite, quite a pagan." "I don't think you know what you mean when you say you're a pagan," Gregory continued.
"But, yes," she returned. "I have no creed. I was brought up to think of beauty as the only religion. That is my guardian's religion. It is the religion, she says, of all free souls. And my father thought so, too." It was again the assurance of a wisdom, not her own, yet possessed by her, a wisdom that she did not dream of anybody challenging. Was it not Tante's?
"Well," he remarked, "beauty is a large term. Perhaps it includes more than you think."
Karen looked at him with approbation. "That is what Tante says; that it includes everything." And she went on, pleased to reveal to him still more of Tante's treasure, since he had proved himself thus understanding; "Tante, you know, belongs to the Catholic Church; it is the only church of beauty, she says. But she is notpratiquante; notcroyantein any sense. Art is her refuge."
"I see," said Gregory. "And what is your refuge?"
Karen, at this, kept silence for a moment, and then said: "It is not that; not art. I do not feel, perhaps, that I need refuges. And I am happier than my dear guardian. I believe in immortality; oh yes, indeed." She looked round gravely at him—they were sitting on the turf of a headland above the sea. "I believe, that is, in everything that is beautiful and loving going on for ever."
He felt abashed before her. The most dependent and child-like of creatures where her trust and love were engaged, she was, as well, the most serenely independent. Even Tante, he felt, could not touch her faiths.
"You mustn't say that you are a pagan, you see," he said.
"But Plato believed in immortality," Karen returned, smiling. "And you will not tell me that Plato waspratiquantorcroyant."
He could not claim Plato as a member of the Church of England, though he felt quite ready to demonstrate, before a competent body of listeners, that, as a nineteenth century Englishman, Plato would have been. Karen was not likely to follow such an argument. She would smile at his seeming sophistries.
No; he must accept it, and as a very part of her lovableness, that she could not be made to fit into the plan of his life as he had imagined it. She would not carry on its traditions, for she would not understand them. To win her would be, in a sense, to relinquish something of that orderly progression as a professional and social creature that he had mapped out for himself, though he knew himself to be, through his experience of her, already a creature more human, a creature enriched. Karen, if she came to love him, would be, through love, infinitely malleable, but in the many adjustments that would lie before them it would be his part to foresee complications and to do the adjusting. Change in her would be a gradual growth, and never towards mere conformity.
He felt it to be the first step towards adjustments when he motored Karen and Mrs. Talcott to Guillian House to lunch with his friends the Lavingtons. The occasion must mark for him the subtle altering of an old tie. Karen and the Lavingtons could never be to each other what he and the Lavingtons had been. It was part of her breadth that congeniality could never for her be based on the half automatic affinities of caste and occupation; and it was part of her narrowness, or, rather, of her inexperience, that she could see people only as individuals and would not recognize the real charm of the Lavingtons, which consisted in their being, like their house and park, part of the landscape and of an established order of things. Yet, once he had her there, he watched the metamorphosis that her presence worked in his old associations with pleasure rather than pain. It pleased him, intimately, that the Lavingtons should see in him a lover as yet uncertain of his chances. It pleased him that they should not find in Karen the type that they must have expected the future Mrs. Jardine to be, the type of Constance Armytage and the type of Evelyn Lavington, Colonel and Mrs. Lavington's unmarried daughter, who, but for Karen, might well have become Mrs. Jardine one day. He observed, with a lover's fond pride, that Karen, in her shrunken white serge and white straw hat, Karen, with her pleasant imperturbability, her mingled simplicity and sophistication, did, most decisively, make the Lavingtons seem flavourless. Among them, while Mrs. Lavington walked her round the garden and Evelyn elicited with kindly concern that she played neither golf, hockey nor tennis, and had never ridden to hounds, her demeanour was that of a little rustic princess benignly doing her social duty. The only reason why she did not appear like this to the Lavingtons was that, immutably unimaginative as they were, they knew that she wasn't a princess, was, indeed, only the odd appendage of an odd celebrity with whom their friend had chosen, oddly, to fall in love. They weren't perplexed, because, since he had fallen in love with her, she was placed. But they, in the complete contrast they offered, had little recognition of individual values and judged a dish by the platter it was served on. A princess was a princess, and an appendage an appendage, and a future Mrs. Jardine a very recognizable person; just as, had a subtlecharlotte russebeen brought up to lunch in company with the stewed rhubarb they would have eaten it without comment and hardly been aware that it wasn't an everyday milk-pudding.
"Did you and Mrs. Lavington and Evelyn and Mrs. Haverfield find much to talk of after lunch?" Gregory asked, as he motored Mrs. Talcott and Karen back to Les Solitudes.
"Yes; we talked of a good many things," said Karen. "But I know about so few of their things and they about so few of mine. Miss Lavington was very much surprised to think that I had never been to a fox-hunt; and I," Karen smiled, "was very much surprised to think that they had never heard Tante play."
"They hardly ever get up to town, you see," said Gregory. "But surely they knew about her?"
"Not much," said Karen. "Mrs. Lavington asked me about her—for something pleasant to say—and they were such strange questions; as though one should be asked whether Mr. Arthur Balfour were a Russian nihilist or Metchnikoff an Italian poet." Karen spoke quite without grievance or irony.
"And after your Sargent," said Gregory, "you must have been pained by that portrait of Mrs. Haverfield in the drawing-room."
"Mrs. Lavington pointed it out to me specially," said Karen, laughing, "and told me that it had been in the Academy. What a sad thing; with all those eyelashes! And yet opposite to it hung the beautiful Gainsborough of a great-grandmother. Mrs. Lavington saw no difference, I think."
"They haven't been trained to see differences," said Gregory, and he summed up the Lavingtons in the aphorism to himself as well as to Karen; "only to accept samenesses." He hoped indeed, by sacrificing the æsthetic quality of the Lavingtons, to win some approbation of their virtues; but Karen, though not inclined to proffer unasked criticism, found, evidently, no occasion for commendation. Later on, when they were back at Les Solitudes and walking in the garden, she returned to the subject of his friends and said: "I was a little disturbed about Mrs. Talcott; did you notice? no one talked to her at all, hardly. It was as if they thought her mydame de compagnie. She isn't mydame de compagnie; and if she were, I think that she should have been talked to."
Gregory had observed this fact and had hoped that it might have escaped Karen's notice. To the Lavingtons Mrs. Talcott's platter had been unrecognizable and they had tended to let its contents alone.
"It's as I said, you know," he put forward a mitigation; "they've not been trained to see differences; she is very different, isn't she?"
"Well, but so am I," said Karen, "and they talked to me. I don't mean to complain of your friends; that would be very rude when they were so nice and kind; and, besides, are your friends. But people's thoughtlessness displeases me, not that I am not often very thoughtless myself."
Gregory was anxious to exonerate himself. "I hope she didn't feel left out;" he said. "I did notice that she wasn't talking. I found her in the garden, alone—she seemed to be enjoying that, too—and she and I went about for quite a long time together."
"I know you did," said Karen. "You are not thoughtless. As for her, one never knows what she feels. I don't think that she does feel things of that sort at all; she has been used to it all her life, one may say; but there's very little she doesn't notice and understand. She understands—oh, perfectly well—that she is a queer old piece of furniture standing in the background, and one has to remember not to treat her like a piece of furniture. It's a part of grace and tact, isn't it, not to take such obvious things for granted. You didn't take them for granted with her, or with me," said Karen, smiling her recognition at him. "For, of course, to most people I am furniture, too; and if Tante is about, there is, of course, nothing to blame in that; everybody becomes furniture when Tante is there."
"Oh no; I can't agree to that," said Gregory. "Not everybody."
"You know what I mean," Karen rejoined. "If you will not agree to it for me, it is because from the first you felt me to be your friend; that is different." They were walking in the flagged garden where the blue campanulas were now safely established in their places and the low afternoon sun slanted in among the trees. Karen still wore her hat and motoring veil and the smoky grey substance flowed softly back about her shoulders. Her face seemed to emerge from a cloud. It had always to Gregory's eyes the air of steadfast advance; the way in which her hair swept back and up from her brows gave it a wind-blown, lifted look. He glanced at her now from time to time, while, in a meditative and communicative mood, she continued to share her reflections with him. Gregory was very happy.
"Even Tante doesn't always remember enough about Mrs. Talcott," she went on. "That is of course because Mrs. Talcott is so much a part of her life that she sometimes hardly sees her. Sheis, for her, the dear old restful chair that she sinks back into and forgets about. Besides, some people have a right not to see things. One doesn't ask from giants the same sort of perception that one does from pygmies."
This was indeed hard on the Lavingtons; but Gregory was not thinking of the Lavingtons, who could take care of themselves. He was wondering, as he more and more wondered, about Madame von Marwitz, and what she saw and what she permitted herself not to see.
"You aren't invisible to her sometimes?" he inquired.
Her innocence before his ironies made him ashamed always of having spoken them. "It is just that that makes me feel sometimes so badly about Mrs. Talcott," she answered now; "just because she is, in a sense, sometimes invisible, and I'm not. Mrs. Talcott, of course, counts for a great deal more in the way of comfort and confidence than I do; I don't believe that Tante really is as intimate with anybody in the world as with Mrs. Talcott; but she doesn't count as much as I do, I am nearly sure, in the way of tenderness. I really think that in the way of tenderness I am nearer than anybody."
They left the flagged garden now, and came down to a lower terrace. Here the sun shone fully; they walked to and fro in the radiance. "Of course," Karen continued to define and confide, "as far as interest goes any one of her real friends counts for more than I do, and you mustn't think that I mean to say that I believe myself the most loved; not at all. But I am the tender, home thing in her life; the thing to pet and care for and find waiting. It is that that is so beautiful for me and so tragic for her."
"Why tragic?"
"Oh, but you do not feel it? A woman like that, such a heart, and such a spirit—and no one nearer than I am? That she should have no husband and no child? I am a makeshift for all that she has lost, or never had."
"And Mrs. Talcott?" said Gregory after a moment. "Is it Mrs. Talcott's tragedy to have missed even a makeshift?"
Karen now turned her eyes on him, and her face, as she scrutinized him, showed a slight severity. "Hardly that. She has Tante."
"Has her as the chair has her, you mean?" He couldn't for the life of him control the question. It seemed indeed due to their friendship that he should not conceal from her the fact that he found disproportionate elements in her devotion. Yet it was not the right way in which to be frank, and Karen showed him so in her reply. "I mean that Tante is everything to her and that, in the nature of things, she cannot be so much to Tante. You mustn't take quite literally what I said of the chair, you know. It can hardly be a makeshift to have somebody like Tante to love and care for. I don't quite know what you mean by speaking like that," Karen said. Her gaze, in meeting his, had become almost stern. She seemed to scan him from a distance.
Gregory, though he felt a pang of disquietude, felt no disposition to retreat. He intended that she should be made to understand what he meant. "I think that what it comes to is that it is you I am thinking of, rather than of Mrs. Talcott," he said. "I don't know your guardian, and I do know you, and it is what she gets rather than what she gives that is most apparent to me."
"Gets? From me? What may that be?" Karen continued to return his gaze almost with haughtiness.
"The most precious thing I can imagine," said Gregory. "Your love. I hope that she is properly grateful for it."
She looked at him and the slow colour mounted to her cheeks; but it was as if in unconscious response to his feeling; it hardly, even yet, signified self-consciousness. She had stood still in asking her last question and she still did not move as she said: "I do not like to hear you speak so. It shows me that you understand nothing."
"Does it? I want to understand everything."
"You care for me," said Karen, standing still, her eyes on his, "and I care for you; but what I most wish in such a friend is that he should see and understand. May I tell you something? Will you wait while I tell you about my life?"
"Please tell me."
"I want you to see and understand Tante," said Karen. "And how much I love her; and why."
They walked on, from the terrace to the cliff-path. Karen stopped when they had gone a little way and leaned her elbows on the stone wall looking out at the sea. "She has been everything to me," she said. "Everything."
He was aware, as he leaned beside her in the mellow evening light, of a great uneasiness mingling with the beautiful gravity of the moment. She was near him as she had never yet been near. She had almost recognized his love. It was there between them, and it was as if, not turning from it, she yet pointed to something beyond and above it, something that it was his deep instinct to evade and hers to show him. He must not take a step towards her, she seemed to tell him, until he had proved to her that he had seen what she did. And nothing she could say would, he felt sure of it, alter his fundamental distrust of Madame von Marwitz.
"I want to tell you about my life," said Karen, looking out at the sea from between her hands. "You have heard my story, of course; people are always told it; but you have never heard it from my side. You have heard no doubt about my father and mother, and how she left the man she did not love for him. My mother died when I was quite little; so, though I remember her well she does not come into the part of my story that I want to tell you. But I was thirteen years old when my father died, and that begins the part that leads to Tante. It was in Rome, in winter when he died; and I was alone with him; and there was no money, and I had more to bear than a child's mind and heart should have. He died. And then there were dreadful days. Cold, coarse people came and took me and put me in a convent in Paris. That convent was like hell to me. I was so miserable. And I had never known restraint or unkindness, and the French girls, so sly and so small in their thoughts, were hateful to me. And I did not like the nuns. I was punished and punished—rightly no doubt. I was fierce and sullen, I remember, and would not obey. Then I heard, by chance, from a girl whose family had been to her concert in Paris, that Madame Okraska was with her husband at Fontainebleau. Of her I knew nothing but the lovely face in the shop-windows. But her husband's name brought back distant days to me. He had known my father; I remembered him—the fair, large, kindly smiling, very sad man—in my father's studio among the clay and marble. He bought once a little head my father had done of me when I was a child. So I ran away from the convent—oh, it was very bad; I knocked down a nun and escaped the portress, and hid for a long time in the streets. And I made my way through Paris and walked for a day and night to Fontainebleau; and there in the forest, in the evening, I was lost, and almost dead with hunger and fatigue. And as I stood by the road I saw the carriage approaching from very far away and saw sitting in it, as it came nearer, the beautiful woman. Shall I ever forget it? The dark forest and the evening sky above and her face looking at me—looking, looking, full of pity and wonder. She has told me that I was the most unhappy thing that she had ever seen. My father's friend was with her; but though I saw him and knew that I was safe, I had eyes only for her. Her face was like heaven opening. When the carriage stopped and she leaned to me, I sprang to her and she put her arms around me. They have been round me ever since," said Karen, joining her fingers over her eyes and leaning her forehead upon them so that her face was hidden; and for a moment she did not speak. "Ever since," she went on presently, "she has been joy and splendour and beauty. What she has given me is nothing. It is what she is herself that lifts the lives of other people. Those who do not know her seem to me to have lives so sad and colourless compared to mine. You cannot imagine it, anyone so great, yet at the same time so little and so sweet. She is merry like no one else, and witty, and full of cajoleries, like a child. One cannot be dull with her, not for one moment. And there is through it all her genius, the great flood of wonderful music; can you think what it is like to live with that? And under-lying everything is the great irremediable sorrow. I was with her when it came; the terrible thing. I did not live with them while he was alive, you know, my Onkel Ernst; he was so good and kind—always the kindest of friends to me; but he loved her too deeply to be able to share their life, and how well one understands that in her husband. He had me put at a school in Dresden. I did not like that much, either. But, even if I were lonely, I knew that my wonderful friends—my Tante and my Onkel—were there, like the sun behind the grey day, and I tried to study and be dutiful to please them. And in my holidays I was always with them, twice it was, at their beautiful estate in Germany. And it was there that the horror came that wrecked her life; her husband's death, his death that cannot be explained or understood. He drowned himself. We never say it, but we know it. That is the fear, the mystery. All his joy with her, his love and happiness—to leave them;—it was madness; he had always been a sad man; one saw that in his face; the doctors said it was madness. He disappeared without a word one day. For three weeks—nothing. Tante was like a creature crying out on the rack. And it was I who found him by the lake-edge one morning. She was walking in the park, I knew; she used to walk and walk fast, fast, quite silent; and with horrible fear I thought: If I can keep her from seeing. I turned—and she was beside me. I could not save her. Ah—poor woman!" Karen closed her hands over her face.