Part 10 (1/2)

”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.

”Mitch.e.l.l 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 Mitch.e.l.l.”

”They'll have to come out, I presume,” said Mrs. Talcott, but without emotion.

”And where is the _pyramidalis 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 encompa.s.sing 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sessments 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?”