Mrs. Forrester remained among her canaries and jonquils, thinking. She
was seriously perturbed. She was, as she had said, fond of Gregory, but
she was fonder, far, of Mercedes von Marwitz, whom Gregory had caused to
suffer and whom he would, evidently, cause to suffer still more.
She controlled the impulse to telephone to Eleanor Scrotton and consult
with her; a vague instinct of loyalty towards Gregory restrained her
from that. Eleanor would, in a day or two, hear from Cornwall and what
she would hear could not be so bad as what Mrs. Forrester herself could
tell her. After thinking for the rest of the morning, Mrs. Forrester
decided to go and see Karen. She was not very fond of Karen. She had
always been inclined to think that Mercedes exaggerated the significance
of the girl's devotion, and Gregory's exaggeration, now, of her general
significance--explicable as it might be in an infatuated young
husband--disposed her the less kindly towards her. She felt that Karen
had been clumsy, dull, in the whole affair. She felt that, at bottom,
she was somewhat responsible for it. How had Gregory been able, living
with Karen, to have formed such an insensate conception of Mercedes? The
girl was stupid, acquiescent; she had shown no tact, no skill, no
clarifying courage. Mrs. Forrester determined to show them all--to talk
to Karen.
She drove to St. James's at four o'clock that afternoon and Barker told
her that Mrs. Jardine was in the drawing-room. Visitors, evidently, were
with her, and it affected Mrs. Forrester very unpleasantly, as Barker
led her along the passage, to hear rich harmonies of music filling the
flat. She had expected to be perhaps ushered into a darkened bedroom; to
administer comfort and sympathy to a shattered creature before
administering reproof and counsel. But Karen not only was up; she was
not alone. The strains were those of chamber-music, and a half-perplexed
delight mingled with Mrs. Forrester's displeasure as she recognized the
heavenly melodies of Schumann's Pianoforte Quintet. The performers were
in the third movement.
Karen rose, as Barker announced her, from the side of a stout lady at
the piano, and Mrs. Forrester, nodding, her finger at her lips, dropped
into a chair and listened.
The stout lady at the piano had a pale, fat, pear-shaped face, her
grizzled hair parted above it and twisted to a large outstanding knob
behind. She wore eyeglasses and peered through them at her music with
intelligent intensity and profound humility. The violin was played by an
enormous young man with red hair, and the viola, second violin and
'cello by three young women, all of the black-and-tan Semitic type.
Mrs. Forrester was too much preoccupied with her wonder to listen as she
would have wished to, but by the time the end of the movement was come
she had realized that they played extremely well.
Karen came forward in the interval. She was undoubtedly pale and
heavy-eyed; but in her little dress of dark blue silk, with her narrow
lawn ruffles and locket and shining hair, she showed none of the
desperate signs appropriate to her circumstances nor any embarrassment
at the incongruous situation in which Mrs. Forrester found her.
"This is Frau Lippheim, Mrs. Forrester," she said. "And these are
Fräulein Lotta and Minna and Elizabeth, and this is Herr Franz. I think
you have often heard Tante speak of our friends."
Her ears buzzing with the name of Lippheim since the night before, Mrs.
Forrester was aware that she showed confusion, also that for a brief,
sharp instant, while her eyes rested on Herr Franz, a pang of perverse
sympathy for Gregory, in a certain aspect of his wickedness,
disintegrated her state of mind. He was singular looking indeed, this
untidy young man, whose ill-kept clothes had a look of insecurity, like
arrested avalanches on a mountain. "No, I can feel for Gregory somewhat
in this," Mrs. Forrester said to herself.
"We are having some music, you see," said Karen. "Herr Lippheim promised
me yesterday that they would all come and play to me. Can you stay and
listen for a little while? They must go before tea, for they have a
rehearsal for their concert," she added, as though to let Mrs. Forrester
know that she was not unconscious of the matter that must have brought
her.
There was really no reason why she shouldn't stay. She could not very
well ask to have the Lippheims and their instruments turned out.
Moreover she was very fond of the Quintet. Mrs. Forrester said that she
would be glad to stay.
When they went on to the fourth movement, and while she listened, giving
her mind to the music, Mrs. Forrester's disintegration slowly recomposed
itself. It was not only that the music was heavenly and that they played
so well. She liked these people; they were the sort of people she had
always liked. She forgot Herr Franz's uncouth and mountainous aspect.
His great head leaning sideways, his eyes half closed, with the
musician's look of mingled voluptuous rapture and cold, grave, listening
intellect, he had a certain majesty. The mother, too, all devout
concentration, was an artist of the right sort; the girls had the gentle
benignity that comes of sincere self-dedication. They pleased Mrs.
Forrester greatly and, as she listened, her severity towards Gregory
shaped itself anew and more forcibly. Narrow, blind, bigoted young man.
And it was amusing to think, as a comment on his fierce consciousness of
Herr Lippheim's unfitness, that here Herr Lippheim was, admitted to the
very heart of Karen's sorrow. It was inconceivable that anyone but very
near and dear friends should have been tolerated by her to-day. Karen,
too, after her fashion, was an artist. The music, no doubt, was helpful
to her. Soft thoughts of her great, lacerated friend, speeding now
towards her solitudes, filled Mrs. Forrester's eyes more than once with
tears.
They finished and Frau Lippheim, rubbing her hands with her
handkerchief, stood smiling near-sightedly, while Mrs. Forrester
expressed her great pleasure and asked all the Lippheims to come and see
her. She planned already a musical. Karen's face showed a pale beam of
gladness.
"And now, my dear child," said Mrs. Forrester, when the Lippheims had
departed and she and Karen were alone and seated side by side on the
sofa, "we must talk. I have come, of course you know, to talk about this
miserable affair." She put her hand on Karen's; but already something in
the girl's demeanour renewed her first displeasure. She looked heavy,
she looked phlegmatic; there was no response, no softness in her glance.
"You have perhaps a message to me, Mrs. Forrester, from Tante," she
said.
"No, Karen, no," Mrs. Forrester with irrepressible severity returned. "I
have no message for you. Any message, I think should come from your
husband and not from your guardian."
Karen sat silent, her eyes moving away from her visitor's face and
fixing themselves on the wall above her head.
The impulse that had brought Mrs. Forrester was suffering alterations.
Gregory had revealed the case to her as worse than she had supposed;
Karen emphasized the revelation. And what of Mercedes between these two
young egoists? "I must ask you, Karen," she said, "whether you realise
how Gregory has behaved, to the woman to whom you, and he, owe so much?"
Karen continued to look fixedly at the wall and after a moment of
deliberation replied: "Tante did not speak rightly to Gregory, Mrs.
Forrester. She lost her temper very much. You know that Tante can lose
her temper."
Mrs. Forrester, at this, almost lost hers. "You surprise me, Karen. Your
husband had spoken insultingly of her friends--and yours--to her. Why
attempt to shield him? I heard the whole story, in detail, from your
guardian, you must remember."
Again Karen withdrew into a considering silence; but, though her face
remained impassive, Mrs. Forrester observed that a slight flush rose to
her cheeks.
"Gregory did not intend Tante to overhear what he said," she produced at
last. "It was said to me--and I had questioned him--not to her. Tante
came in by chance. It is not likely, Mrs. Forrester, that my version
would differ in any way from hers."
"You mustn't take offence at what I say, Karen," Mrs. Forrester spoke
with more severity; "your version does differ. To my astonishment you
seem actually to defend your husband."
"Yes; from what is not true: that is not to differ from Tante as to what
took place." Karen brought her eyes to Mrs. Forrester's.
"From what is not true. Very well. You will not deny that he so
intensely dislikes your guardian and has shown it so plainly to her that
she has had to leave you. You will not deny that, Karen?"
"No. I will not deny that," Karen replied.
"My poor child--it is true, and it is only a small part of the truth. I
don't know what Gregory has said to you in private, but even Mercedes
had not prepared me for what he said to me this morning."
"What did he say to you this morning, Mrs. Forrester?"
"He believes her to be a bad woman, Karen; do you realise that; has he
told you that; can you bear it? Dangerous, unscrupulous, tyrannous,
devoured by egotism, were the words he used of her. I shall not forget
them. He accused her of hypocrisy in her feeling for you. He hoped that
you might never see her again. It is terrible, Karen. Terrible. It puts
us all--all of us who love Mercedes, and you through her, into the most
impossible position."
Karen sat, her head erect, her eyes downcast, with a rigidity of
expression almost torpid.
"Do you see the position he puts us in, Karen?" Mrs. Forrester went on
with insistence. "Have you had the matter out with Gregory? Did you
realise its gravity? I must really beg you to answer me."
"I have not yet spoken with my husband," said Karen, in a chill,
lifeless tone.
"But you will? You cannot let it pass?"
"No, Mrs. Forrester. I will not let it pass."
"You will insist that he shall make a full apology to Mercedes?"
"Is he to apologise to her for hating her?" Karen at this asked
suddenly.
"For hating her? What do you mean?" Mrs. Forrester was taken aback.
"If he is to apologise," said Karen, in a still colder, still more
lifeless voice, "it must be for something that can be changed. How can
he apologise to her for hating her if he continues to hate her?"
"He can apologise for having spoken insultingly to her."
"He has not done that. It was Tante who overheard what she was not
intended to hear. And it was Tante who spoke with violence."
"It amazes me to hear you put it on her shoulders, Karen. He can
apologise, then, for what he has said to me," said Mrs. Forrester with
indignation. "You will not deny that what he said of her to me was
insulting."
"He is to tell her that he has said those words and then apologise, Mrs.
Forrester? Oh, no; you do not think what you say."
"Really, my dear Karen, you have a most singular fashion of speaking to
a person three times your age!" Mrs. Forrester exclaimed, the more
incensed for the confusion of thought into which the girl's persistence
threw her. "The long and short of it is that he must make it possible
for Mercedes to meet him, with decency, in the future."
"But I do not know how that can be," said Karen, rising as Mrs.
Forrester rose; "I do not know how Tante, now, can see him. If he thinks
these things and does not say them, there may be pretence; but if he
says them, to Tante's friends, how can there be pretence?"
There was no appeal in her voice. She put the facts, so evident to
herself, before her visitor and asked her to look at them. Mrs.
Forrester was suddenly aware that her advice might have been somewhat
hasty. She also felt suddenly as though, on a reconnoitring march down a
rough but open path, she found herself merging in the gloomy mysteries
of a forest. There were hidden things in Karen's voice.
"Well, well," she said, taking the girl's hand and casting about in her
mind for a retreat; "that's to see it as hopeless, isn't it, and we
don't want to do that, do we? We want to bring Gregory to reason, and
you are the person best fitted to do that. We want to clear up these
dreadful ideas he has got into his head, heaven knows how. And no one
but you can do it. No one in the world, my dear Karen, is more fitted
than you to make him understand what our wonderful Tante really is.
There is the trouble, Karen," said Mrs. Forrester, finding now the
original clue with which she had started on her expedition; "he
shouldn't have been able, living with you, seeing your devotion, seeing
from your life, as you must have told him of it, what it was founded on,
he shouldn't have been able to form such a monstrous conception of our
great, dear one. You have been in fault there, my dear, you see it now,
I am sure. At the first hint you should have made things clear to him. I
know that it is hard for a young wife to oppose the man she loves; but
love mustn't make us cowardly," Mrs. Forrester murmured on more
cheerfully as they moved down the passage, "and Gregory will only love
you more wisely and deeply if he is made to recognize, once for all,
that you will not sacrifice your guardian to please him."
They were now at the door and Karen had not said a word.
"Well, good-bye, my dear," said Mrs. Forrester. Oddly she did not feel
able to urge more strongly upon Karen that she should not sacrifice her
guardian to her husband. "I hope I've made things clearer by coming. It
was better that you should, realize just what your guardian's friends
felt--and would feel--about it, wasn't it?" Karen still made no reply
and on the threshold Mrs. Forrester paused to add, with some urgency:
"It was right, you see that, don't you, Karen, that you should know what
Gregory is really feeling?"
"Yes," Karen now assented. "It is better that I should know that."