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"It will stay here, I suppose, as long as Madame von Marwitz and Karen go on caring for each other. With all my griefs and suspicions I hope that the Bouddha is a fixture." He felt, after Betty had gone, that he had burned a good many of his boats in thus making her, to some extent, his confidant.
They passed along to the kitchen; she was speaking to Mrs. Barker Gregory had a shoot of surface thought for Mrs. Barker's astonishment; they entered the hall again, the hall door closed behind them. Gregory stood looking at the Bouddha. The tears kept mounting to his throat and eyes and, furiously, he choked them back. He did not see the Bouddha.
But I cannot live with a man who believes these things." She still gazed at the Bouddha and again Gregory stared at her. His face hardened. "Don't be absurd, Karen. You cannot mean what you say." "I am going to-night. Now," said Karen. "Going? Where?" "To Cornwall, back to my guardian. She will take care of me again. I will not live with you."
It was a question of an officer of dragoons and a beauty: " The beauty pouted, and the dragoon " Here she interrupted herself to wipe her glasses. "Bouddha and the Dragon," struck in M. Mabeuf in a low voice. "Yes, it is true that there was a dragon, which, from the depths of its cave, spouted flame through his maw and set the heavens on fire.
Cadwallader, the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were sometimes seated on garden-chairs, sometimes walking to meet little Arthur, who was being drawn in his chariot, and, as became the infantine Bouddha, was sheltered by his sacred umbrella with handsome silken fringe. The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully. Mrs.
"It is very wonderful," she said, "but I feel as if Tante expected a great deal of me in giving it to me a great deal more than is in me. It ought to be a very deep and mystic person to have that Bouddha." "Yes, it's a wonderful thing; quite awesome. Perhaps she expects you to become deep and mystic," said Gregory. "Please don't." "There is no danger of that," said Karen.
To her husband's eye, newly aware of æsthetic discriminations, Karen seemed to interpret and justify her surroundings, to show their commonplace as part of their charm and to make the Bouddha and Madame von Marwitz herself, in all their portentous distinction, look like incidental ornaments.
Karen did not feel that Gregory's drawing-room required apologies and Tante had been so mild and sweet, if also a little absent, that she trusted her to show leniency. She had, as yet, to-day, said nothing about the Bouddha or the background on which she found him. She talked to Gregory, while they waited for tea, asking him a great many questions, not seeming, always, to listen to his answers.
And as he paused and sought his words it was as if, in the image of the Bouddha, looking down upon him and Karen, Madame von Marwitz were with them now, a tranquil and ironic witness of his discomfiture. "Well," he said, "she made me feel that I had only a very dingy sort of life to offer you and that my friends were all very tiresome borné was the word she used.
In the late sunlight it was as gay and as crisp as ever, but for the lack of flowers, and the Bouddha still sat presiding in his golden niche. "Mr. Jardine is in the smoking-room, Madam," said Barker, and, gauging still further the peculiar significance of this guest whose name he now recovered as one familiar to him on letters, he added in a low voice: "He has not used this room since Mrs.
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