Here was a young man, evidently, who was worth her trouble. Gregory sat disposed of and a good deal discomposed, the more so since he had to own that he had opened himself to the rebuff. He rose and moved away, looking about and seeing that Miss Woodruff had left the room; but Mrs. Forrester came to him, her brilliant little face somewhat clouded.
"What is it, my dear Gregory?" she questioned. "She asked to have you brought. Haven't you pleased her?"
Mrs. Forrester, who had known not only himself, but his father in boyhood, was fond of him, but was not disposed to think of him as important. And she expected the unimportant to know, in a sense, their place and to show the important that they did know it. There was a hint, now, of severity, in her countenance.
It would sound, he knew, merely boyish and sulky to say: "She hasn't pleased me." But he couldn't resist: "I wasn't à la hauteur."
Mrs. Forrester, at this, looked at him hard for a moment. She then diagnosed his case as one of bad temper rather than of malice, and could forgive it in one who had failed to interest the great woman and been discarded in consequence; Mercedes, she knew, could discard with decision.
"Well, when you talk to a woman like Madame von Marwitz, you must try to be worthy of your opportunities," she commented, tempering her severity with understanding. "You really had an opportunity. Your face interested her, and your kindness to little Karen. She always likes people who are kind to little Karen."
It was pleasantly open to him now to say: "Little Karen has been kind to me."
"A dear, good child," said Mrs. Forrester. "I am glad that you talked to her. You pleased Mercedes in that."
"She is a delightful girl," said Gregory.
He now took his departure. But he was again to encounter Miss Woodruff. She was in the hall, talking French to a sallow little woman in black, evidently a ladies' maid, who had the oppressed, anxious countenance and bright, melancholy eyes of a monkey.
"Allons," Miss Woodruff was saying in encouraging tones, while she paused on the first step of the stairs, her hand on the banister; "ce n'est pas une cause perdue, Louise; nous arrangerons la chose."
"Ah, Mademoiselle, c'est que Madame ne sera pas contente, pas contente du tout quand elle verra la robe," was Louise's mournful reply as Gregory came up.
"I hoped we might go on with our talk," he said. He still addressed her somewhat as one addresses a friendly child; "I wanted to hear the end of that story about the Hungarian student."
"He died, in Davos, poor boy," said Miss Woodruff, looking down at him from her slightly higher place, while Louise stood by dejectedly. "He wrote to my guardian and we went to him there and she played to him. It made him so happy. We were with him till he died."
"Shall I see you again?" Gregory asked. "Will you be here for any time? Are you staying in London?"
"My guardian goes to America next week—did you not know?—with Miss Scrotton."
"Oh yes, Eleanor told me. And you're not going too? You're not to see America yet?"
"No; not this time. I go to Cornwall."
"You are to be alone with Mrs. Talcott all the winter?"
"You know Mrs. Talcott?" Miss Woodruff exclaimed in pleased astonishment.
"No; I don't know her; Eleanor told me about her, too."
"It is not being alone," said Miss Woodruff. "She and I have a most happy time together. I thought it strange that you should know Mrs. Talcott. I never met anyone who knew her unless they knew my guardian very well."
"And when are you coming back?"
"From Cornwall? I do not know. I am afraid we shall not see each other—oh, for a very long time," said Miss Woodruff. She smiled. She gave him her hand, leaning down to him from behind the banister. Gregory said that he had friends in Cornwall and that he might run down and see them one day—and then he might see her and Les Solitudes, too. And Miss Woodruff said that that would be very nice.
He heard the last words of the colloquy with Louise as his coat was put on in the hall. "Alors il ne faut pas renvoyer la robe, Mademoiselle?"
"Mais non, mais non; nous nous tirerons d'affaire," Miss Woodruff replied, springing gaily up the stairs, her arm, with a sort of dignified familiarity, in which was encouragement and protection, cast round Louise's shoulders.
CHAPTER V
Gregory walked at a brisk pace from Mrs. Forrester's house in Wilton Crescent to Hyde Park Corner, and from there, through St. James's Park, to Queen Anne's Mansions where he had a flat. He had moved into it from dismal rooms when prosperity had first come to him, five or six years ago, and was much attached to it. It was high up in the large block of buildings and its windows looked over the greys and greens and silvers of the park, the water shining in the midst, and the dim silhouettes of Whitehall rising in stately significance on the evening sky. Gregory went to the balcony and overhung his view contemplatively for a while. The fog had lifted, and all London was alight.
The drawing-room behind him expressed an accepted convention rather than a personal predilection. It was not the room of a young man of conscious tastes. It was solid, cheerful and somewhat naif. There was a great deal of very clean white paint and a great deal of bright wall-paper. There were deep chairs covered with brighter chintz. There were blue and white tiles around the fireplace and heavy, polished brass before. On the tables lay buff and blue reviews and folded evening papers, massive paper-cutters and large silver boxes. Photographs in silver frames also stood there, of female relatives in court dress and of male relatives in uniform. Behind the photographs were pots of growing flowers; and on the walls etchings and engravings after well-known landscapes. It was the room of a young man uninfluenced by Whistler, unaware of Chinese screens and indifferent to the rival claims of Jacobean and Chippendale furniture. It was civilised, not cultivated; and it was thoroughly commonplace.
Gregory thought of himself as the most commonplace of types;—the younger son whose father hadn't been able to do anything for him beyond educating him; the younger son who, after years of uncongenial drudgery had emerged, tough, stringy, professional, his boyish dreams dead and his boyish tastes atrophied; a useful hard-working, clear-sighted member of society. And there was truth in this conception of himself. There was truth, too, in Madame von Marwitz's probe. He had more than the normal English sensitiveness where ideals were concerned and more than the normal English instinct for a protective literalness. He didn't intend that anybody should lay their hand on his heart and tell him of lofty aims that it would have made him feel awkward to look at by himself; his fastidiousness was far from commonplace, and so were his disdains; they made cheap successes and cheap ambitions impossible to him. He would never make a fortune out of the law; yet already he was distinguished among the younger men at the bar. With nothing of the air of a paladin he brought into the courts a flavour of classic calm and courtesy. He was punctiliously fair. He never frightened or bullied or confused. His impartiality could become alarming at times to his own clients, and shady cases passed him by. Everybody respected Gregory Jardine and a good many people disliked him. A few old friends, comrades at Eton and Oxford, were devoted to him and looked upon him, in spite of his reputation for almost merciless common-sense, as still potentially Quixotic. As a boy he had been exceptionally tender-hearted; but now he was hard, or thought himself so. He had no vanity and looked upon his own resolution and dignity as the heritage of all men worth their salt; in consequence he was inclined