Scrotton said. "The epitome of the commonplace. She looks like some of the queer old American women one sees in the National Gallery with Baedekers in their hands and bags at their belts; fat, sallow, provincial, with defective grammar and horrible twangs; the kind of American, you know," said Miss Scrotton, warming to her description as she felt that she was amusing Gregory Jardine, "that the other kind always tell you they never by any chance would meet at home."
"And what kind of American is Miss Woodruff? The other kind or Mrs. Talcott's kind?"
"By the other kind I mean Lady Jardine's," said Miss Scrotton; "or—no; she constitutes a further variety; the rarest of all; the kind who would never think about Mrs. Talcott one way or the other. But surely Karen is no kind at all. Could you call her an American? She has never been there. She is a sort of racial waif. The only root, the only nationality she seems to have is Mercedes; her very character is constituted by her relation to Mercedes; her only charm is her devotion—for she is indeed sincerely and wholeheartedly devoted. Mercedes is a sort of fairy-godmother to her, a sun-goddess, who lifted her out of the dust and whirled her away in her chariot. But she isn't interesting," Miss Scrotton again assured him. "She is literal and unemotional, and, in some ways, distinctly dull. I have seen the poor fairy-godmother sigh and shrug sometimes over her inordinately long letters. She writes to her with relentless regularity and I really believe that she imagines that Mercedes quite depends on hearing from her. No; I don't mean that she is conceited; it's not that exactly; she is only dull; very, very dull; and I don't know how Mercedes endures having her so much with her. She feels that the girl depends on her, of course, and she is helplessly generous."
Gregory Jardine listened to these elucidations, leaning back in the sofa, a hand clasping his ankle, his eyes turning now on Miss Scrotton and now on the subject of their conversation. Miss Scrotton had amused him. She was entertainingly simple if at moments entertainingly intelligent, and he had divined that she was jealous of the crumbs that fell to Miss Woodruff's share from the table of Madame von Marwitz's bounty. A slight malice that had gathered in him during his talk with Eleanor Scrotton found expression in his next remark. "She is certainly charming looking; anyone so charming looking has a right to be dull." But Miss Scrotton did not heed him. She had risen to her feet. "Here she is!" she exclaimed, looking towards the door in radiant satisfaction. "You will meet her after all. I'll do my very best so that you shall have a little talk with her."
The door had been thrown open and Madame Okraska had appeared upon the threshold.
CHAPTER IV
She stood for a moment, with her hand resting on the lintel, and she surveyed an apparently unexpected audience with contemplative melancholy. If she was not pleased to find them so many, she was, at all events unresentful, and Gregory imagined, from Mrs. Forrester's bright flutter in rising, that resentment from the sun-goddess was a peril to be reckoned with. Smiling, though languidly smiling, she advanced up the room, after her graceful and involuntary pause. White fringes rippled softly round her; a white train trailed behind her; on her breast the silken cloak that she wore over a transparent under-robe was clasped with pearls and silver. She was very lovely, very stately, very simple; but she struck her one hypercritical observer as somewhat prepared; calculated and conscious, as well.
"Thanks, dearest friend," she said to Mrs. Forrester, who, meeting her halfway down the room and taking her hand, asked her solicitously how she did; "I am now a little rested; but it has been a bad night and a busy morning." She spoke with a slightly foreign accent in a voice at once fatigued and sonorous. Her eyes, clear, penetrating and singularly steady, passed over the assembled faces, turned, all of them, towards herself.
She greeted Sir Alliston with a welcoming smile and a lift of the strange crooked eyebrows, and to Miss Scrotton, who, eager and illuminated, was beside her: "Ah, ma chérie," she said, resting her hand affectionately on her shoulder. Mrs. Forrester had her other hand, and, so standing between her two friends, she bowed gravely and graciously to Lady Campion, to Miss Harding, to Mrs. Harding—who, in the stress of this fulfilment had become plum-coloured—and to Gregory Jardine. Then she was seated. Mrs. Forrester poured out her tea, Miss Harding passed her cake and bread-and-butter, Lady Campion bent to her with frank and graceful compliments, Miss Scrotton sat at her feet on a low settle, and Sir Alliston, leaning on the back of her chair, looked down at her with eyes of antique devotion. Gregory was left on the outskirts of the group and his attention was attracted by the face of little Mrs. Harding, who, all unnoticed and unseated, gazed upon Madame Okraska with the intent liquid eye of a pious dog; the wavering, uncertain smile that played upon her lips was like the humble thudding of the dog's tail. Gregory remembered her face now as one of those, rapt and hypnotized, that he had seen on the platform the night before. In the ovation that Madame Okraska had received at the end of the concert he had noticed this same plum-coloured little lady seizing and kissing the great woman's hand. Shy, by temperament, as he saw, to the point of suffering, he felt sure that only the infection of the crowd had carried her to the act of uncharacteristic daring. He watched her now, finding her piteous and absurd.
But someone beside himself was aware of Mrs. Harding. Miss Woodruff approached her, smiling impersonally, with rather the air of a kindly verger at a church. Yes, she seemed to say, she could find a seat for her. She pointed to the one she had risen from. Mrs. Harding, almost tearful in her gratitude, slid into it with the precaution of the reverent sight-seer who fears to disturb a congregation at prayer, and Miss Woodruff, moving away, went to a table and began to turn over the illustrated papers that lay upon it. Her manner, retired and cheerful, had no humility, none of the poor dependent's unobtrusiveness; rather, Gregory felt, it showed a happy pride, as if, a fortunate priestess in the temple, she had opportunities and felicities denied to mere worshippers. She was interested in her papers. She examined the pictures with something of a child's attentive pleasure.
Gregory came up to her and raising her eyes she smiled at him as though, on the basis of last night's encounter, she took him for granted as potentially a friend.
"What are you looking at?" he asked her, as he might have asked a friendly child.
She turned the paper to him. "The Great Wall of China. They are wonderful pictures."
Gregory stood beside her and looked. The photographs were indeed impressive. The sombre landscape, the pallid sky, and, winding as if for ever over hill and valley, the astonishing structure, like an infinite lonely consciousness. "I should like to see that," said Miss Woodruff.
"Well, you travel a great deal, don't you?" said Gregory. "No doubt Madame Okraska will go to China some day."
Miss Woodruff contemplated the desolate wall. "But this is thousands and thousands of miles from the places where concerts could be given; and I do not know that my guardian has ever thought of China; no, it is not probable that she will ever go there. And then, unfortunately, I do not always go with her. I travel a great deal; but I stop at home a great deal, too. My guardian likes best to be called von Marwitz in private life, by those who know her personally," Miss Woodruff added, smiling again as she presented him with the authorized liturgy.
Gregory was slightly taken aback. He couldn't have defined Miss Woodruff's manner as assured, yet it was singularly competent; and no one could have been in less need of benevolent attentions.
"I see," he said. "She looks so much more Polish than German, doesn't she? What do you call home?" he added. "Have you lived much in England?"
"By home I mean Cornwall," said Miss Woodruff, who was evidently used to being asked questions. "My guardian has a house there; but it has not been for long. It used to be in Germany, and then for a little in Italy; she has only had Les Solitudes for four years."
