Karen, her arm still in his, stood looking over the heaped up luggage and now pointed out her box to the porter. Then, as they turned away and went towards their cab, she said, more gently and more determinedly: "Yes; she did know we had planned it. I wrote and told her so, and that is why she wrote back so quickly to ask if we could not put off Mrs.

Talcott for her; because she will be leaving London very soon and it will be, this next week, her only chance of being with us. Mrs. Talcott did not mind at all. I don't think she really wanted to come so much, Gregory. It is as Tante says, you know," Karen settled herself in a corner of the hansom, "she really does not like leaving Les Solitudes."

Gregory had the feeling of being enmeshed. Why had Madame von Marwitz thrown this web? Had she really divined in a flash his hope and his intention? Was there any truth in her sudden statement that this was the only week she could give them? "Oh! Really," was all that he found to say to Karen's explanations, and then, "Where is Madame von Marwitz going when she leaves us then?"

"To the Riviera, with the d.u.c.h.ess of Bannister, I think it is arranged.

I may wire to her, then, Gregory, at once, and say that she is to come?"

"Of course. How long are we to have the pleasure of entertaining her?"

"She did not say; for a week at least, I hope. Perhaps, even, for a fortnight if that will be convenient for you. It will be a great joy to me," Karen went on, "if only"--she was speaking with that determined steadiness, looking before her as they drove; now, suddenly, she turned her eyes on him "if only you will try to enjoy it, too, Gregory."

It was, in a sense, a challenge, yet it was, too, almost an appeal, and it brought them nearer than they had been for weeks.

Gregory's hand caught hers and, holding it tightly, smiling at her rather tremulously, he said: "I enjoy anything, darling, that makes you happy."

"Ah, but," said Karen, her voice keeping its earnest control, "I cannot be happy with you and Tante unless you can enjoy her for yourself. Try to know Tante, Gregory," she went on, now with a little breathlessness; "she wants that so much. One of the first things she asked me when she came back was that I should try to make you care for her. She felt at once--and oh! so did I, Gregory--that something was not happy between you."

Her hand holding his tightly, her earnest eyes on his, Gregory felt his blood turn a little cold as he recognized once more the soft, unremitting pressure. It had begun, then, so early. She had asked Karen that when she first came back. "But you see, dearest," he said, trying to keep his head between realizations of Madame von Marwitz's craft and Karen's candour, "I've never been able to feel that Madame von Marwitz wanted me to care for her or to come in at all, as it were. I don't mean anything unkind; only that I imagined that what she did ask of me was to keep outside and leave your relation and hers alone. And that's what I've tried to do."

"Oh, you mistake Tante, Gregory, you mistake her." Karen's hand grasped his more tightly in the urgency of her opportunity. "She cared for me too much--yes, it is there that you do not understand--to feel what you think. For she knows that I cannot be happy while you shut yourself away from her."

"Then it's not she who shuts me out?" he tried to smile.

"No; no; oh, no, Gregory."

"I must push in, even when I seem to feel I'm not wanted?"

She would not yield to his attempted lightness. "You mustn't push in; you must be in; with us, with Tante and me."

"Do you mean literally? I'm to be a third at your _tete-a-tetes_?"

"No, Gregory, I do not mean that; but in thought, in sympathy. You will try to know Tante. You will make her feel that you and I are not parted when she is there."

She saw it all, all Tante's side, with a dreadful clearness. And it was impossible that she should see what he did. He must submit to seeming blurred and dull, to pretending not to see anything. At all events her hand was in his. He felt able to face the duel at close quarters with Madame von Marwitz as long as Karen let him keep her hand.

CHAPTER XXIII

Tante arrived on Monday afternoon and the arrival reminded Gregory of the Bouddha's installation; but, whereas the Bouddha had overflowed the drawing-room only, Madame von Marwitz overflowed the flat.

A mult.i.tude of boxes were borne into the pa.s.sages where, end to end, like a good's train on a main line, they stood impeding traffic.

Louise, hara.s.sed and sallow, hurried from room to room, expostulating, explaining, replying in shrill tones to Madame von Marwitz's sonorous orders. Victor, led by Mrs. Forrester's footman, made his appearance shortly after his mistress, and, set at large, penetrated unerringly to the kitchen where he lapped up a dish of custard; while Mrs. Barker, in the drawing-room, already with signs of resentment on her face, was receiving minute directions from Madame von Marwitz in regard to a cup of chocolate. In the dining-room, Gregory found two strange-looking men, to whom Barker, also clouded, had served whisky and soda; one of these was Madame von Marwitz's secretary, Schultz; the other a concert impresario. They greeted Gregory with a disconcerting affability.

In the midst of the confusion Madame von Marwitz moved, weary and benignant, her arm around Karen's shoulders, or seated herself at the piano to run her fingers appraisingly over it in a majestic surge of arpeggios. Gregory found her hat and veil tossed on the bed in his and Karen's room, and when he went into his dressing-room he stumbled over three band-boxes, just arrived from a modiste's, and hastily thrust there by Louise.

Victor bounded to greet him as he sought refuge in the library, and overturned a table that stood in the hall with two fine pieces of oriental china upon it. The splintering crash of crockery filled the flat. Mrs. Barker had taken the chocolate to the drawing-room some time since, and Madame von Marwitz, the cup in her hand, appeared upon the threshold with Karen. "Alas! The bad dog!" she said, surveying the wreckage while she sipped her chocolate.

Rose was summoned to sweep up the pieces and Karen stooped over them with murmured regret.

"Were they wedding-presents, my Karen?" Madame von Marwitz asked.

"Console yourself; they were not of a good period--I noticed them. I will give you better."

The vases had belonged to Gregory's mother. He was aware that he stood rather blankly looking at the fragments, as Rose collected them. "Oh, Gregory, I am so sorry," said Karen, taking upon herself the responsibility for Victor's mischance. "I am afraid they are broken to bits. See, this is the largest piece of all. They can't be mended. No, Tante, they were not wedding-presents; they belonged to Gregory and we were very fond of them."

"Alas!" said Madame von Marwitz above her chocolate, and on a deeper note.

Gregory was convinced that she had known they were not wedding-presents.

But her manner was flawless and he saw that she intended to keep it so.

She dined with them alone and at the table addressed her talk to him, fixing, as ill-luck would have it, on the theatre as her theme, and on _La Gaine d'Or_ as the piece which, in Paris, had particularly interested her. "You and Karen, of course, saw it when you were there,"

she said.

It was the piece of sinister fame to which he had refused to take Karen.

He owned that they had not seen it.

"Ah, but that is a pity, truly a pity," said Madame von Marwitz. "How did it happen? You cannot have failed to hear of it."

Unable to plead Karen as the cause for his abstention since Madame von Marwitz regretted that Karen had missed the piece, Gregory said that he had heard too much perhaps. "I don't believe I should care for anything the man wrote," he confessed.

"_Tiens!_" said Madame von Marwitz, opening her eyes. "You know him?"

"Heaven forbid!" Gregory e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, smiling with some tartness.

"But why this rigour? What have you against M. Saumier?"

It was difficult for a young Englishman of conventional tastes to formulate what he had against M. Saumier. Gregory took refuge in evasions. "Oh, I've glanced at reviews of his plays; seen his face in ill.u.s.trated papers. One gets an idea of a man's personality and the kind of thing he's likely to write."

"A great artist," Madame von Marwitz mildly suggested. "One of our greatest."

"Is he really? I'd hardly grasped that. I had an idea that he was merely one of the clever lot. But I never can see why one should put oneself, through a man's art, into contact with the sort of person one would avoid having anything to do with in life."

Madame von Marwitz listened attentively. "Do you refuse to look at a Cellini bronze?"

"Literature is different, isn't it? It's more personal. There's more life in it. If a man's a low fellow I don't interest myself in his interpretation of life. He's seen nothing that I'm likely to want to see."

Madame von Marwitz smiled, now with a touch of irony. "But you frighten me. How am I to tell you that I know M. Saumier?"

Gregory was decidedly taken back. "That's a penalty you have to pay for being a celebrity, no doubt," he said. "All celebrities know each other, I suppose."

"By no means. I allow no one to be thrust upon me, I a.s.sure you. And I have the greatest admiration for M. Saumier's talent. A great artist cannot be a low fellow; if he were one he would be so much more than that that the social defect would be negligible. Few great artists, I imagine, have been of such a character as would win the approval of a garden party at Lambeth Palace. I am sorry, indeed sorry, that you and Karen missed _La Gaine d'Or_. It is not a play for the _jeune fille_; no; though, holding as I do that nothing so fortifies and arms the taste as liberty, I should have allowed Karen to see it even before her marriage. It is a play cruel and acrid and beautiful. Yes; there is great beauty, and it flowers, as so often, on a bitter root. Ah, well, you will waive your scruples now, I trust. I will take Karen with me to see it when we are next in Paris together, and that must be soon. We will go for a night or two. You would like to see Paris with me again; _pas vrai, cherie?_"

Gregory had been uncomfortably aware of Karen's contemplation while he defended his prejudices, and he was prepared for an open espousal of her guardian's point of view; it was, he knew, her own. But he received once more, as he had received already on several occasions, an unexpected and gratifying proof of Karen's recognition of marital responsibility. "I should like to be in Paris with you again, Tante," she said, "but not to go to that play. I agreed not to go to it when Gregory and I were there.

I should not care to go when he so much dislikes it." Her eyes met her guardian's while she spoke. They were gentle and non-committal; they gave Gregory no cause for triumph, nor Tante for humiliation; they expressed merely her own recognition of a bond.

Madame von Marwitz rose to the occasion, but--oh, it was there, the soft pressure, never more present to Gregory's consciousness than when it seemed most absent--she rose too emphatically, as if to a need. Her eyes mused on the girl's face, tenderly brooded and understood. And Karen's voice and look had asked her not to understand.