Tante

"False, and absolutely false!" Madame von Marwitz repeated. "How could I keep my mouth shut--as you delicately put it--when I saw that Karen saw?

How keep my mouth shut without warping her relation to me? I spoke to her with lightest, most tender understanding, so that she should know that my heart was with her while never dreaming of the chasms that I saw in her happiness. It was he who forced me to an open declaration and he who forced me to leave; for how was happiness possible for Karen if I remained with them? No. He hated me, and was devoured by jealousy of Karen"s love for me."

"I guess if it comes to jealousy you"ve got enough for two in any situation. It don"t do for you to talk to me about jealousy, Mercedes,"

Mrs. Talcott returned, "I"ve seen too much of you. You can"t persuade me it wasn"t your fault, not if you were to talk till the cows come home. I don"t deny but what it was pretty hard for you to see that Mr. Jardine didn"t admire you. I make allowances for that; but my gracious me," said Mrs. Talcott with melancholy emphasis, "was that any reason for a big middle-aged woman like you behaving like a spiteful child? Was it any reason for your setting to work to spoil Karen"s life? No, Mercedes, you"ve done about as mean a thing as any I"ve seen you up to and what I want to know now is what you"re going to do about it."

"Do about it?" Madame von Marwitz wrathfully repeated. "What more can I do? I open my house and my heart to the child. I take her back. I mend the life that he has broken. What more do you expect of me?"

"Don"t talk that sort of stage talk to me, Mercedes. What I want you to do is to make it possible so as he can get her back."

"He is welcome to get her back if he can. I shall not stand in his way.

It would be a profound relief to me were he to get her back."

"I can see that well enough. But how"ll you help standing in his way?

The only thing you could do to get out of his way would be to help Karen to be quit of you. Make her see that you"re just as bad as he thinks you. I guess if you told her some things about yourself she"d begin to see that her husband wasn"t so far wrong about you."

"_Par exemple!_" said Madame von Marwitz with a short laugh. She raised herself to give her pillow a blow and turning on her side and contemplating more directly her ancient monitress she said, "I sometimes wonder what I keep you here for."

"I do, too, sometimes," said Mrs. Talcott, "and I make it out that you need me."

"I make it out," Madame von Marwitz repeated the phrase with a n.o.ble dignity of manner, "that I am too kind of heart, too aware of what I owe you in grat.i.tude, to resent, as I have every right to do, the license you allow yourself in speaking to me."

"Yes; you"ll always get plain speaking from me, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott remarked, "just as long as you have anything to do with me."

"Indeed I shall. I am but too well aware of the fact," said Madame von Marwitz, "and I only tolerate it because of our life-long tie."

"You"ll go on tolerating it, I guess, Mercedes. You"d feel mighty queer, I expect, if the one person in the world who knew you through and through and had stood by you through everything wasn"t there to fall back on."

"I deny that you know me through and through," Madame von Marwitz declared, but with a drop from her high manner; sulkily rather than with conviction. "You have always seen me with the eye of a lizard." Her simile amused her and she suddenly laughed. "You have somewhat the vision of a lizard, Tallie. You scrutinize the cracks and the fissures, but of the mountain itself you are unaware. I have cracks and fissures, no doubt, like all the rest of our sad humanity; but, _bon Dieu!_--I am a mountain, and you, Tallie," she went on, laughing softly, "are a lizard on the mountain. As for Mr. Jardine, he is a mole. But if you think that Karen will be happier burrowing underground with him than here with me, I will do my best. Yes;" she reflected; "I will write to Mrs. Forrester. She shall see the mole and tell him that when he sends me an apology I send him Karen. It is a wild thing to leave one"s husband like this. I will make her see it."

"Now you see here, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, rising and fixing an acute gaze upon her, "don"t you go and make things worse than they are.

Don"t you go interfering between Karen and her husband. The first move"s got to come from them. I don"t trust you round the corner where your vanity comes in, and I guess what you"ve got in your mind now is that you"d like to make it out to your friends how you"ve tried to reconcile Karen and her husband after he"s treated you so bad. If you want to tell Karen that he was right in all the things he believed about you and that this isn"t the first time by a long shot that you"ve wrecked people with your jealousy, and that he loves her ten times more than you do, that"s a different thing, and I"ll stand by you through it. But I won"t have you meddling any more with those two poor young things, so you may as well take it in right here."

Madame von Marwitz"s good humour fell away. "And for you, may I ask you kindly to mind your own business?" she demanded.

"I"ll make this affair of Karen"s my business if you ain"t real careful, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, standing solid and thick and black, in the centre of the room. "Yes, you"d better go slow and sure or you"ll find there are some things I can"t put up with. This affair of Karen has made me feel pretty sick, I can tell you. I"ve seen you do a sight of mean things in your life, but I don"t know as I"ve seen you do a meaner. I guess," Mrs. Talcott continued, turning her eyes on the evening sea outside, "it would make your friends sit up--all these folks who admire you so much--if they could know a thing or two you"ve done."

"Leave the room," said Madame von Marwitz, now raising herself on her elbow and pointing to the door. "Leave the room at once. I refuse to lie here and be threatened and insulted and brow-beaten by you. Out of my sight."

Mrs. Talcott looked at the sea for a moment longer, in no provocative manner, but rather as if she had hardly heard the words addressed to her; and then she looked at Mercedes, who, still raised on her elbow, still held her arm very effectively outstretched. This, too, was no doubt a scene to which she was fully accustomed.

"All right," she said, "I"m going." She moved towards the door. At the door she halted, turned and faced Madame von Marwitz again. "But don"t you forget, Mercedes Okraska," she said, "that I"ll make it my affair if you ain"t careful."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

Karen, during the two or three days that followed her strange conversation with Mrs. Talcott, felt that while she pitied and cared for Mrs. Talcott as she had never yet pitied and cared for her, she was also afraid of her. Mrs. Talcott had spoken no further word and her eyes rested on her with no more than their customary steadiness; but Karen knew that there were many words she could speak. What were they? What was it that Mrs. Talcott knew? What secrets were they that she carried about in her lonely, ancient heart?

Mrs. Talcott loomed before her like a veiled figure of destiny bearing an urn within which lay the ashes of dead hopes. Mrs. Talcott"s eyes looked at her above the urn. It was always with them. When they gardened together it was as if Mrs. Talcott set it down on the ground between them and as if she took it up again with a sigh of fatigue--it was heavy--when they turned to go. Karen felt herself tremble as she scrutinized the funereal shape. There was no refuge with Mrs. Talcott.

Mrs. Talcott holding her urn was worse than the lonely fears.

And, for those two or three days of balmy, melancholy spring, the lonely fears did not press so closely. They wheeled far away against the blue.

Tante was kinder to her and was more aware of her. She almost seemed a little ashamed of the scene with the piano. She spoke to Karen of it, flushing a little, explaining that she had slept badly and that Karen"s rendering of the Bach had made her nervous, emphasizing, too, the rule, new in its explicitness, that the grand piano was only to be played on by Karen when it was left open. "You did not understand. But it is well to understand rules, is it not, my child?" said Madame von Marwitz. "And this one, I know, you will not transgress again."

Karen said that she understood. She had something of her rocky manner in receiving these implicit apologies and commands, yet her guardian could see an almost sick relief rising in her jaded young eyes.

Other things were different. Tante seemed now to wish very constantly to have her there when Mr. Drew was with her. She made much of her to Mr.

Drew. She called his attention to her skill in gardening, to her directness of speech, to her individuality of taste in dress. These expositions made Karen uncomfortable, yet they seemed an expression of Tante"s desire to make amends. And Mr. Drew, with his vague, impenetrable regard, helped her to bear them. It was as if, a clumsy child, she were continually pushed forward by a fond, tactless mother, and as if, mildly shaking her hand, the guest before whom she was displayed showed her, by kind, inattentive eyes, that he was paying very little attention to her. Mr. Drew put her at her ease and Tante embarra.s.sed her. She became, even, a little grateful to Mr. Drew. But now, aware of this strange bond, it was more difficult to talk to him when they were alone and when, once or twice, he met her in the garden or house, she made always an excuse to leave him. She and Mr. Drew could have nothing to say to each other when Tante was not there.

One evening, returning to Les Solitudes after a walk along the cliffs, Karen found that tea was over, as she had intended that it should be, Tante and Mr. Drew not yet come in from their motoring, and Mrs. Talcott safely busied in the garden. There was not one of them with whom she could be happily alone, and she was glad to find the morning-room empty.

Mrs. Talcott had left the kettle boiling for her on the tea-table and the small tea-pot, which they used in their usual _tete-a-tete_, ready, and Karen made herself a cup.

She was tired. She sat down, when she had had her tea, near the window and looked out over the ranged white flowers growing in their low white pots on the window-seat, at the pale sea and sky. She sat quietly, her cheek on one hand, the other in her lap, and from time to time a great involuntary sigh lifted her breast. It seemed nearer peace than fear, this mood of immeasurable, pale sorrow. It folded her round like the twilight falling outside.

The room was dim when she heard the sound of the returning motor and she sat on, believing that here she would be undisturbed. Tante rarely came to the morning-room. But it was Tante who presently appeared, wearing still her motoring cloak and veil, the nun-like veil bound round her head. Karen thought, as she rose, and looked at her, that she was like one of the ghost-like white flowers. And there was no joy for her in seeing her. She seemed to be part of the sadness.

She turned and closed the door with some elaboration, and as she came nearer Karen recognized in her eyes the piteous look of quelled watchfulness.

"You are sitting here, alone, my child?" she said, laying her hand, but for a moment only, on Karen"s shoulder. Karen had resumed her seat, and Tante moved away at once to take up a vase of flowers from the mantelpiece, smell the flowers, and set it back. "Where is Tallie?"

"Still in the garden, I think. I worked with her this morning and before tea. Since tea I have had a walk."

"Where did you walk?" Madame von Marwitz inquired, moving now over to the upright piano and bending to examine in the dusk the music that stood on it. Karen described her route.

"But it is lonely, very lonely, for you, is it not?" Tante murmured after a moment"s silence. Karen said nothing and she went on, "And it will be still more lonely if, as I think probable, I must leave you here before long. I shall be going; perhaps to Italy."

A sensation of oppression that she could not have a.n.a.lyzed pa.s.sed over Karen. Why was Tante going to Italy? Why must she leave Les Solitudes?

Her mind could not rest on the supposition that her own presence drove Tante forth, that the broken _tete-a-tete_ was to be resumed under less disturbing circ.u.mstances. She could not ask Tante if Mr. Drew was to be in Italy; yet this was the question that pressed on her heart.

"Oh, but I am very used to Les Solitudes," she said.

"Used to it. Yes. Too used to it," said Madame von Marwitz, seating herself now near Karen, her eyes still moving about the room. "But it is not right, it is not fitting, that you should spend your youth here.

That was not the destiny I had hoped for you. I came here to find you, Karen, so that I might talk to you." Her fingers slightly tapped her chair-arm. "We must talk. We must see what is to be done."

"Do you mean about me, Tante?" Karen asked after a moment. The look of the ghostly room and of the white, enfolded figure seated before her with its restless eyes seemed part of the chill that Tante"s words brought.

"About you. Yes. About who else, _parbleu_!" said Madame von Marwitz with a slight laugh, her eyes shifting about the room; and with a change of tone she added: "I have it on my heart--your situation--day and night. Something must be done and I am prepared to do it."

"To do what?" asked Karen. Her voice, too, had changed, but not, as Madame von Marwitz"s, to a greater sweetness.

"Well, to save it--the situation; to help you." Madame von Marwitz"s ear was quick to catch the change. "And I have come, my Karen, to consult with you. It is a matter, many would say, for my pride to consider; but I will not count my pride. Your happiness, your dignity, your future are the things that weigh with me. I am prostrated, made ill, by the miserable affair; you see it, you see that I am not myself. I cannot sleep. It haunts me--you and your broken life. And what I have to propose," Tante looked down at her tapping fingers while she spoke, "is that I offer myself as intermediary. Your husband will not take the first step forward. So be it. I will take it. I will write to Mrs.

Forrester. I will tell her that if your husband will but offer me the formal word of apology I will myself induce you to return to him. What do you say, my Karen? Oh, to me, as you know, the forms are indifferent; it is of you and your dignity that I think. I know you; without that apology from him to me you could not contemplate a reconciliation. But he has now had his lesson, your young man, and when he knows that, through me, you would hold out the olive-branch, he will, I predict, spring to grasp it. After all, he is in love with you and has had time to find it out; and even if he were not, his mere man"s pride must writhe to see himself abandoned. And you, too, have had your lesson, my poor Karen, and have seen that romance is a treacherous sand to build one"s life upon. Dignity, fitness, one"s rightful place in life have their claims. You are one, as I told you, to work out your destiny in the world, not in the wilderness. What do you say, Karen? I would not write without consulting you. _Hein!_ What is it?"

Karen had risen, and Madame von Marwitz"s eyelashes fluttered a little in looking up at her.

"I will never forgive you, I will never forgive you," said Karen in a harsh voice, "if you speak of this again."