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

embarrassed 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 _tête-à-tête_, 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 analyzed passed 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 _tête-à-tête_ was to be resumed under less

disturbing circumstances. 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."

"What is this that you say to me, Karen?" Madame von Marwitz, too, rose.

"Never speak to me of this again," said Karen.

In the darkening room they looked at each other as they had never in all

their lives looked before. They were equals in maturity of demand.

For a strange moment sheer fury struggled with subtler emotions in

Madame von Marwitz's face, and then self-pity, overpowering, engulfing

all else. "And is this the return you make me for my love?" she cried.

Her voice broke in desperate sobs and long-pent misery found relief. She

sank into her chair.

"I asked for no reconciliation," said Karen. "I left him and we knew

that we were parting forever. There is no love between us. Have you no

understanding at all, and no thought of my pride?"

It was woman addressing woman. The child Karen was gone.

"Your pride?" Madame von Marwitz repeated in her sobs. "And what of

mine? Was it not for you, stony-hearted girl? Is it not your happiness I

seek? If I have been mistaken in my hopes for you, is that a reason for

turning upon me like a serpent!"

Karen had walked to the long window that opened to the verandah and

looked out, pressing her forehead to the pane. "You must forgive me if I

was unkind. What you said burned me."

"Ah, it is well for you to speak of burnings!" Madame von Marwitz

sobbed, aware that Karen's wrath was quelled. "I am scorched by all of

you! by all of you!" she repeated incoherently. "All the burdens fall

upon me and, in reward, I am spurned and spat upon by those I seek to

serve!"

"I am sorry, Tante. It was what you said. That you should think it

possible."

"Sorry! Sorry! It is easy to say that you are sorry when you have rolled

me in the dust of your insults and your ingratitude!" Yet the sobs were

quieter.

"Let us say, then, that it has been misunderstanding," said Karen. She

still stood in the window, but as she spoke the words she drew back

suddenly. She had found herself looking into Mr. Drew's eyes. His face,

gazing in oddly upon her, was at the other side of the pane, and, in the

apparition, its suddenness, its pallor, rising from the dusk, there was

something almost horrible.

"Who is that?" came Tante's voice, as Karen drew away. She had turned in

her chair.

It seemed to Karen, then, that the room was filled with the whirring

wings of wild emotions, caught and crushed together. Tante had sprung up

and came with long, swift strides to the window. She, too, pressed her

face against the pane. "Ah! It is Claude," she said, in a hushed strange

voice, "and he did not see that I was here. What does he mean by looking

in like that?" she spoke now angrily, drying her eyes as she spoke. She

threw open the window. "Claude. Come here."

Mr. Drew, whose face seemed to have sunk, like a drowned face, back into

dark water, returned to the threshold and paused, arrested by his

friend's wretched aspect. "Come in. Enter," said Madame von Marwitz,

with a withering stateliness of utterance. "You have the manner of a

spy. Did you think that Karen and I were quarrelling?"

"I couldn't think that," said Mr. Drew, stepping into the room, "for I

didn't see that you were here."

"We have had a misunderstanding," said Madame von Marwitz. "No more. And

now we understand again. Is it not so, my Karen? You are going?"

"I think I will go to my room," said Karen, who looked at neither Madame

von Marwitz nor Mr. Drew. "You will not mind if I do not come to dinner

to-night."

"Certainly not. No. Do as you please. You are tired. I see it. And I,

too, am tired." She followed Karen to the door, murmuring: "_Sans

rancune, n'est-ce-pas?_"

"Yes, Tante."

As the door closed upon Karen, Madame von Marwitz turned to Mr. Drew.

"If you wish to see her, why not seek her openly? Who makes it difficult

for you to approach her?" Her voice had the sharpness of splintering

ice.

"Why, no one, _ma chére_," said Mr. Drew. "I wasn't seeking her."

"No? And what did it mean, then, your face pressed close to hers, there

at the window?"

"It meant that I couldn't see who it was who stood there. Just as I can

hardly now see more than that you are unhappy. What is the matter, my

dear and beautiful friend?" His voice was solicitous.

Madame von Marwitz dropped again into her chair and leaning forward, her

hands hanging clasped between her knees, she again wept. "The matter is

the old one," she sobbed. "Ingratitude! Ingratitude on every hand! My

crime now has been that I have sought--at the sacrifice of my own

pride--to bring a reconciliation between that stubborn child and her

husband, and for my reward she overwhelms me with abuse!"

"Tell me about it," said Mr. Drew, seating himself beside her and,

unreproved, taking her hand.

CHAPTER XXXV

Karen did not go to her room. She was afraid that Mrs. Talcott would

come to her there. She asked the cook for a few sandwiches and going to

one of the lower terraces she found a seat there and sat down. She felt

ill. Her mind was sore and vague. She sat leaning her head on her hand,

as she had sat in the morning-room, her eyes closed, and did not try to

think.

She had escaped something--mercifully. Yes, the supreme humiliation that

Tante had prepared for her was frustrated. And she had been strangely

hard and harsh to Tante and in return Tante had been piteous yet

unmoving. Her heart was dulled towards Tante. She felt that she saw her

from a great distance.

The moon had risen and was shining brightly when she at last got up and

climbed the winding paths up to the house.

A definite thought, after the hours that she had sat there, had at last

risen through the dull waters of her mind. Why should Tante go away? Why

should not she herself go? There need be no affront to Tante, no

alienation. But, for a time, at least, would it not be well to prove to

Tante that she could be something more than a problem and a burden?

Could she not go to the Lippheims in Germany and teach English and

French and Italian there--she knew them all--and make a little money,

and, when Tante wanted her again to come to Les Solitudes, come as an

independent person?

It was a curious thought. It contradicted the assumptions upon which her

life was founded; for was she not Tante's child and Tante's home her

home? So curious it was that she contemplated it like an intricate

weapon laid in her hand, its oddity concealing its significance.

She turned the weapon over. She might be Tante's child and Tante's home

might be hers; yet a child could gain its own bread, could it not? What

was there to pierce and shatter in the thought that it would be well for

her to gain her bread? "Tante has worked for me too long," she said to

herself. She was not pierced or shattered. Something very strange was in

her hand, but she was only reasonable.

She had stood still, in the midst of her swift climbing towards the

house, to think it all out clearly, and it was as she stood there that

she saw the light of a cigarette approaching her. It was Mr. Drew and he

had seen her. Karen was aware of a deep stirring of displeasure and

weariness. "But, please," he said, as, slightly bowing her head, and

murmuring, "Good-night," she passed him; "I want--I very particularly

want--to see you." He turned to walk beside her, tossing away his

cigarette. "There is something I particularly want to say."

His tone was grave and kind and urgent. It reproached her impatient

impulse. He might have come with a message from Tante.

"Where is my guardian?" she asked.

"She has gone to bed. She has a horrible headache, poor thing," said Mr.

Drew, who was leading her through the little copse of trees and along

the upper paths. "Here, shall we sit down here? You are not cold?"

They were in the flagged garden. Karen, vaguely expectant, sat down on

the rustic bench and Mr. Drew sat beside her. The moonlight shone

through the trees and fell fantastically on the young man's face and

figure and on Karen, sitting upright, her little shawl of white knitted

wool drawn closely about her shoulders and enfolding her arms. "Not for

long, please," she said. "It is growing late and although I am not cold

I am tired. What have you to say, Mr. Drew?"

He had so much to say and it was, so obviously, his opportunity, his

complete opportunity at last, that, before the exquisite and perilous

task of awakening this creature of flowers and glaciers, Mr. Drew

collected his resources with something of the skill and composure of an

artist preparing canvas and palette. He must begin delicately and

discreetly, and then he must be sudden and decisive.

"I want to make you feel, in the first place, if I can," he said,

leaning forward to look into her face and observing with satisfaction

that she made no movement of withdrawal as he came a little nearer in so

doing, "that I'm your friend. Can I, do you think, succeed in making you

feel that?" His experience had told him that it really didn't matter so

much what one said. To come near was the point, and to look deeply.

"I've had so few chances of showing you how much your friend I am."

"Thank you," said Karen. "You are kind." She did not say that he would

succeed in making her feel him a friend.

"We have been talking about you, talking a great deal, since you left

us, your guardian and I," Mr. Drew continued, and he looked at the one

of Karen's hands that was visible, emerging from the shawl to clasp her

elbow, the left hand with its wedding-ring, "and ludicrous as it may

seem to you, I can't but feel that I understand you a great deal better

than she does. She still thinks of you as a child--a child whose little

problems can be solved by facile solutions. Forgive me, I know it may

sound fatuous to you, but I see what she does not see, that you are a

suffering woman, and that for some problems there are no solutions." His

eyes now came back to hers and found them fixed on him with a wide

astonished gaze.

"Has my guardian asked you to say anything to me?" she said.

"No, not exactly that," said Mr. Drew, a little disconcerted by her tone

and look, while at the same time he was marvelling at the greater and

greater beauty he found in the impassive moonlit face--how had he been

so unconscionably stupid as not to see for so long how beautiful she

was!--"No, she certainly hasn't asked me to say anything to you. She is

going away, you know, to Italy; it's a sudden decision and she's been

telling me about it. I can't go with her. I don't think it a good plan.

I can stay on here, but I can't go to Italy. Perhaps she'll give it up.

She didn't find me altogether sympathetic and I'm afraid we've had

something of a disagreement. I am sure you've seen since you've been

here that if your guardian doesn't understand you she doesn't understand

me, either."

"But I cannot speak of my guardian to you," said Karen. She had kept her

eyes steadily upon him waiting to hear what he might have to say, but

now the thought of Tante in her rejected queenliness broke insufferably

upon her making her sick with pity. This man did not love Tante. She

rose as she spoke.

"Do not speak of her to me," she said.

"But we will not speak of her. I do not wish to speak of her," said Mr.

Drew, also rising, a stress of excitement and anxiety making itself felt

in his soft, sibilant, hurried tones; "I understand every exquisite

loyalty that hedges your path. And I'm hedged, too; you see that. Wait,

wait--please listen. We won't speak of her. What I want to speak of is

you. I want to ask you to make use of me. I want to ask you to trust me.

You love her, but how can you depend on her? She is a child, an

undisciplined, capricious child, and she is displeased with you,

seriously displeased. Who is there in the world you can depend on? You

are unutterably alone. And I ask you to turn to me."

Her frosty scrutiny disconcerted him. He had not touched her in the

least.

"These are things you cannot say to me," she said. "There is nothing

that you can do for me. I only know you as my guardian's friend; you

forgot that, I think, when you brought me here." She turned from him.

"Oh, but you do not understand! I have made you angry! Oh, please, Mrs.

Jardine;" his voice rose to sharp distress. He caught her hand with a

supplicating yet determined grasp. "You can't understand. You are so

inconceivably unaware. It is because of you; all because of you. Haven't

you really seen or understood? She can't forgive you because I love you.

I love you, you adorable child. I have only stayed on and borne with her

because of you!"

His passion flamed before her frozen face. And as, for a transfixed

moment of stupor, she stood still, held by him, he read into her

stillness the pause of the woman to whom the apple of the tree of life

is proffered, amazed, afraid, yet thrilled through all her being,

tempted by the very suddenness, incapable of swift repudiation. He threw

his arms around her, taking, in a draught of delight, the impression of

silvery, glacial loveliness that sent dancing stars of metaphor

streaming in his head, and pressed his lips to her cheek.

It was but one moment of attainment. The thrust that drove him from her

was that, indeed, of the strong young goddess, implacable and outraged.

Yet even as he read his deep miscalculation in her aspect he felt that

the moment had been worth it. Not many men, not even many poets, could

say that they had held, in such a scene, on such a night, an unwilling

goddess to their breast.

She did not speak. Her eyes did not pause to wither. They passed over

him. He had an image of the goddess wheeling to mount some chariot of

the sky as, with no indignity of haste, she turned from him. She turned.

And in the path, in the entrance to the flagged garden, Tante stood

confronting them.

She stood before them in the moonlight with a majesty at once

magnificent and ludicrous. She had come swiftly, borne on the wings of a

devouring suspicion, and she maintained for a long moment her Medusa

stare of horror. Then, it was the ugliest thing that Karen had ever

seen, the mask broke. Hatred, fury, malice, blind, atavistic passions

distorted her face. It was to fall from one nightmare to another and a

worse; for Tante seized her by the shoulders and shook and shook and

shook her, till the blood sprang and rang in her ears and eyeballs, and

her teeth chattered together, and her hair, loosened by the great jerks,

fell down upon her shoulders and about her face. And while she shook

her, Tante snarled--seeming to crush the words between her grinding

teeth, "Ah! _perfide! perfide! perfide!_"

From behind, other hands grasped Karen's shoulders. Mr. Drew grappled

with Tante for possession of her.

"Leave me--with my guardian," she gathered her broken breath to say. She

repeated it and Mr. Drew, invisible to her, replied, "I can't. She'll

tear you to pieces."

"Ah! You have still to hear from me--vile seducer!" Madame von Marwitz

cried, addressing the young man over Karen's shoulder. "Do you dare

dispute my right to save her from you--foul serpent! Leave us! Does she

not tell you to leave us?"

"I'll see her safely out of your hands before I leave her," said Mr.

Drew. "How dare you speak of perfidy when you saw her repulse me? You'd

have found it easier to forgive, no doubt, if she hadn't."

These insolent words, hurled at it, convulsed the livid face that

fronted Karen. And suddenly, holding Karen's shoulders and leaning

forward, Madame von Marwitz broke into tears, horrible tears--in all her

life Karen had never pitied her as she pitied her then--sobbing with

raking breaths: "No, no; it is too much. Have I not loved him with a

saintly love, seeking to uplift what would draw me down? Has he not

loved me? Has he not sought to be my lover? And he can spit upon me in

the dust!" She raised her head. "Did you believe me blind, infatuated?

Did you think by your tricks and pretences to evade me? Did I not see,

from the moment that she came, that your false heart had turned from

me?" Her eyes came back to Karen's face and fury again seized her. "And

as for you, ungrateful girl--perfidious, yes, and insolent one--you

deserve to be denounced to the world. Oh, we understand those retreats.

What more alluring to the man who pursues than the woman who flees? What

more inflaming than the pose of white, idiotic innocence? You did not

know. You did not understand--" fiercely, in a mincing voice, she

mimicked a supposed exculpation. "You are so young, so ignorant of

life--so _immer kindlich_! Ah!" she laughed, half strangled, "until the

man seizes you in his arms you are quite unaware--but quite, quite

unaware--of what he seeks from you. Little fool! And more than fool.

Have I not seen your wiles? From day to day have I not watched you? Now

it is the piano. You must play him your favourite little piece; so

small; you have so little talent; but you will do your best. Now the

chance meeting in the garden; you are so fond of flowers; you so love

the open air, the sea, the wandering on the cliffs; such a free, wild

creature you are. And now we have the frustrated _rendezvous_ of this

evening; he should find you dreaming, among your flowers, in the dusk.

The pretty picture. And no, you want no dinner; you will go to your own

room. But you are not to be found in your own room. Oh, no; it is again

the garden; the moon; the sea and solitude that you seek! Be silent!"

this was almost shouted at Claude Drew, who broke in with savage

denials. "Do you think still to impose on me--you traitor?--No," her

eyes burned on Karen's face. "No; you are wiser. You do not speak. You

know that the time for insolence has passed. What! You take refuge with

me here. You fly from your husband and throw yourself on my hands and

say to me,"--again she assumed the mincing tones--"Yes, here I am again.

Continue, pray, to work for me; continue, pray, to clothe and feed and

lodge me; continue to share your life with me and all of rich and wide

and brilliant it can offer; continue, in a word, to hold me high--but

very high--above the gutter from which I came--and I take you, I receive

you in my arms, I shelter you from malicious tongues, I humble myself in

seeking to mend your shattered life; and for my reward you steal from me

the heart of the one creature in the world I loved--the one--the only

one! Until you came he was mine. Until you came he yearned for me--only

for me. Oh, my heart is broken! broken! broken!" She leaned forward,

wildly sobbing, and raising herself she shook the girl with all her

force, crying: "Out of my sight! Be off! Let me see no more of you!"

Covering her face with her hands, she reeled back, and Karen fled down

the path, hearing a clamour of sobs and outcries behind her.

She fled along the cliff-path and an incomparable horror was in her

soul. Her life had been struck from her. It seemed a ghost that ran,

watched by the moon, among the trees.

On the open cliff-path it was very light. The sky was without a cloud.

The sea lay like a vast cloth of silk, diapered in silver.

Karen ran to where the path led to a rocky verge.

From here, in daylight, one looked down into a vast hollow in the coast

and saw at the bottom, far beneath, a stony beach, always sad, and set

with rocks. To-night the enormous cup was brimmed with blackness.

Karen, pausing and leaning forward, resting on her hands, stared across

the appalling gulf of inky dark, and down into the nothingness.

Horror had driven her to the spot, and horror, like a presence, rose

from the void, and beckoned her down to oblivion. Why not? Why not? The

question of despair seemed, like a vast pendulum, to swing her to and

fro between the sky and the blackness, so that, blind and deaf and dumb,

she felt only the horror, and her own pulse of life suspended over

annihilation. And while her fingers clutched tightly at the rock, the

thought of Gregory's face, as it had loved her, dimly, like a far

beacon, flashed before her. Their love was dead. He did not love her.

But they had loved. She moved back, trembling. She did not want to die.

She lay down with her face to the ground on the grassy cliff.

When she raised herself it was as if after a long slumber. She was

immensely weary, with leaden limbs. Horror was spent; but a dull

oppression urged her up and on. There was something that she must never

see again; something that would open before her again the black abyss of

nothingness; something like the moon, that once had lived, but was now a

ghost, white, ghastly, glittering. She must go. At once. And, as if far

away, a tiny picture rose before her of some little German town, where

she might earn a living and be hidden and forgotten.

But first she must see Mrs. Talcott. She must say good-bye to Mrs.

Talcott. There was nothing now that Mrs. Talcott could show her.

She went back softly and carefully, pausing to listen, pushing through

unused, overgrown paths and among thickets of gorse and stunted Cornish

elms. In the garden all was still; the dreadful clamour had ceased. By

the back way she stole up to her room.

A form rose to meet her as she opened the door. Mrs. Talcott had been

waiting for her. Taking her hand, Mrs. Talcott drew her in and closed

the door.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Mrs. Talcott sat down on the bed and Karen knelt before her with her

head in her lap. The old woman's passed quietly over her hair while she

wept, and the homely gentleness, like the simplicity of milk to famished

lips, flowed into her horror-haunted mind.

She tried to tell Mrs. Talcott what had happened. "She does not love me,

Mrs. Talcott. She has turned me out. Tante has told me to go."

"I've seen her," said Mrs. Talcott, stroking on. "I was just going out

to look for you if you didn't come in. Did she tear your hair down like

this? It's all undone."

"It was when she shook me, Mrs. Talcott. She found me with Mr. Drew. He

had kissed me. I could not help it. She knew that I could not help it.

She knows that I am not a bad woman."

"You mustn't take Mercedes at her word when she's in a state like that,

Karen. She's in an awful state. She's parted from that young man."

"And I am going, Mrs. Talcott."

"Well, I've wanted you to go, from the first. Now you've found her out,

this ain't any place for you. You can't go hanging on for all your life,

like I've done."

"But Mrs. Talcott--what does it mean? What have I found out? What is

Tante?" Karen sobbed. "For all these years so beautiful--so

beautiful--to me, and suddenly to become my enemy--someone I do not

know."

"You never got in her way before. She's got no mercy, Mercedes hasn't,

if you get in her way. Where'd you thought of going, Karen?"

"To Frau Lippheim. She is still in London, I think. I could join her

there. You could lend me a little money, Mrs. Talcott. Enough to take me

to London."

Mrs. Talcott was silent for a moment. "Come up here, on the bed, Karen,"

she then said. "Here, wrap this cloak around you; you're awful cold.

That's right. Now I want you to sit quiet while I explain things to you

the best I can. I've made up my mind to do it. Mercedes will be in her

right mind to-morrow and frantic to get hold of you again and get you to

forgive her. Oh, I know her. And I don't want her to get hold of you

again. I want you to be quit of her. I want you to see, as clear as day,

how your husband was right about Mercedes, all along."

"Oh, do not speak of him--" Karen moaned, covering her face as she sat on

the bed beside Mrs. Talcott.

"I ain't going to speak about him. I'm going to tell you about me and

Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm going to explain Mercedes. And I'm

going way back to the very beginning to do it."

"Explain it to me. What is she? Has it all been false--all her

loveliness?"

"I don't know about false," said Mrs. Talcott. "Mercedes ain't all bad;

not by a long shot. She feels good sometimes, like most folks, when it

ain't too much trouble. You know how it began, Karen. You know how I'm a

sort of connection of Mercedes's mother and I've told you about Dolores.

The prettiest creature you ever set eyes on. Mercedes looks like her;

only it was a softer face than Mercedes's with great, big black eyes. I

can see her now, walking round the galleries of that lovely house in New

Orleans with a big white camellia in her black hair and a white muslin

dress, standing out round her--like they wore then; singing--singing--so

young and happy--it almost breaks my heart to think about her. I've told

you about Mercedes's father, too, Pavelek Okraski, and how he came out

to New Orleans and gave lessons to Dolores Bastida and made love to her

on the sly and got her to run away with him--poor silly thing. When I

think it all over I seem to piece things out and see how Mercedes came

to be what she is. Her mother was just as sweet and loving as she could

be, but scatter-brained and hot-tempered. And Pavelek was a mighty mean

man and a mighty bad man, too, a queer, tricky, sly sort of man; but

geniusy, with very attractive manners. Mercedes has got his eyes and his

way of laughing; she shows her teeth just like he used to do when he

laughed. Well, he took Dolores off to Poland and spent all her money as

fast as he could get it, and then Señor Bastida and the two boys--nice,

hot-tempered boys they were and perfect pictures--all got killed in a

vendetta they had with another family in Louisiana, and poor Señora

Bastida got sick and died and all the family fortunes went to pieces and

there was no more home and no more money either, for Dolores. She just

lost everything straight off.

"She sent for me then. Her baby was coming and Pavelek had gone off and

she didn't know where he was and she was about distracted. I'd been

married before she ran away with Pavelek, but Homer only lived four

years and I was a widow then. I had folks left still in Maine; but no

one very near and there wasn't anybody I seemed to take to so much as I

always had to Dolores. You may say she had a sort of fascination for me.

So I sold out what I had and came. My, what a queer journey that was. I

don't know how I got to Cracow. I only spoke English and travelling

wasn't what it is nowadays. But I got there somehow and found that poor

child. She was the wretchedest creature you ever set eyes on; thin as

thin; and all haggard and wild. Pavelek neglected her and ran after

other women and drank, and when he got drunk and she used to fly out at

him--for she was as hot-tempered as she could be--he used to beat her.

Yes; that man used to beat Dolores." A note of profound and enduring

anger was in Mrs. Talcott's voice.

"He came back after I got there. I guess he thought I'd brought some

money, and he came in drunk one day and tried to hit her before me. He

didn't ever try it again after that. I just got up and struck him with

all my might and main right in the face and he fell down and hurt his

head pretty bad and Dolores began to shriek and said I'd killed her

husband; but he didn't try it again. He was sort of scared of me, I

guess. No: I ain't forgiven Pavelek Okraski yet and I reckon I never

shall. I don't seem to want to forgive him, neither in this world nor

the next--if there is a next," Mrs. Talcott commented.

"Well, the time for the baby came and on the day Mercedes was born the

Austrians bombarded Cracow; it was in '48. I took Dolores down to the

cellar and all day long we heard the shells bursting, and the people

screeching. And that was the time Mercedes came into the world. Dolores

most died, but she got through. But afterwards I couldn't get proper

care for her, or food either. She just pined off and died five months

after the baby came. Pavelek most went off his head. He was always fond

of her in his own mean way, and I guess he suffered considerable when

she died. He went off, saying he'd send some money for me and the baby,

but precious little of it did I ever see. I made some by sewing and

giving lessons in English--I reckon some of those young Poles got queer

ways of speaking from me, I was never what you'd call a polished

speaker--and I scraped on. Time and time again we were near starving.

My! that little garret room, and that big church--Panna Marya they

called it--where I'd go and sit with the baby when the services were on

to see if I could keep warm in the crowd! And the big fire in '50, when

I carried the baby out in a field with lots of other people and slept

out. It lasted for ten days that fire.

"It seems like a dream sometimes, all that time," Mrs. Talcott mused,

and the distant sorrow of her voice was like the blowing of a winter

wind. "It seems like a dream to think I got through with the child

alive, and that my sweet, pretty little Dolores went under. There's some

things that don't bear thinking about. Well, I kept that baby warm and I

kept it fat, and it got to be the prettiest, proudest thing you ever set

eyes on. She might have been a queen from the very beginning. And as for

Pavelek, she just ruled him from the time she began to have any sense.

It was mighty queer to see that man, who had behaved so bad to her

mother, cringing before that child. He doted on her, and she didn't care

a button for him. It used to make me feel almost sorry for Pavelek,

sometimes. She'd look at him, when he tried to please her and amuse her,

like he was a performing dog. It kept Pavelek in order, I can tell you,

and made things easier for me. She'd just say she wanted things and if

she didn't get them straight off she'd go into a black rage, and he'd be

scared out of his life and go and work and get 'em for her. And then she

began to show she was a prodigy. Pavelek taught her the violin first and

then the piano and when he realized she was a genius he most went off

his head with pride. Why that man--the selfishest, laziest creature by

nature--worked himself to skin and bone so that she should have the best

lessons and everything she needed. We both held our noses to the

grindstone just as tight as ever we could, and Mercedes was brought up

pretty well, I think, considering.

"She gave that first concert in Warsaw--we'd moved to Warsaw--and then

Pavelek seemed to go to pieces. He just drank himself to death. Well,

after that, rich relations of Mercedes's turned up--cousins of the

Bastidas', who lived in Paris. They hadn't lifted a finger to help

Dolores, or me with the baby after Dolores died; but they remembered

about us now Mercedes was famous and made us come to live with them in

Paris and said they had first claim on Mercedes. I didn't take to the

Bastidas. But I stayed on because of Mercedes. I got to be a sort of

nurse for her, you may say. Well, as she got older, and prettier and

prettier, and everyone just crazy about her, I saw she didn't have much

use for me. I didn't judge her too hard; but I began to see through her

then. She'd behaved mighty bad to me again and again, she used to fly at

me and bite me and tear my hair, when she was a child, if I thwarted

her; but I always believed she really loved me; perhaps she did, as much

as she can. But after these rich folks turned up and her life got so

bright and easy she just seemed to forget all about me. So I went home.

"I stayed home for four or five years and then Mercedes sent for me. She

used to write now and then to her 'Dearest Tallie' as she always called

me, and I'd heard all about how she'd come out in Paris and Vienna as a

great pianist, and how she'd quarrelled with her relations and how she'd

run away with a young English painter and got married to him. It was an

awful silly match, and they'd all opposed it; but it pleased me somehow.

I thought it showed that Mercedes was soft-hearted like her mother, and

unworldly. Well, she wrote that she was miserable and that her husband

was a fiend and broke her heart and that she hated all her relations and

they'd all behaved like serpents to her--Mercedes is always running

across serpents--and how I was the only true friend she had and the only

one who understood her, and how she longed for her dear Tallie. So I

sold out again--I'd just started a sort of little farm near the old

place in Maine, raising chickens and making jam--and came over again. I

don't know what it is about Mercedes, but she gets a hold over you. And

guess I always felt like she was my own baby. I had a baby, but it died

when it was born. Well, she was living in Paris then and they had a fine

flat and a big studio, and when Mercedes got into a passion with her

husband she'd take a knife and slash up his canvases. She quarrelled

with him day and night, and I wasn't long with them before I saw that it

was all her fault and that he was a weak, harmless sort of young

creature--he had yellow hair, longish, and used to wear a black velvet

cap and paint sort of dismal pictures of girls with long necks and wild

sort of eyes--but that the truth was she was sick of him and wanted to

marry the Baron von Marwitz.

"You can commence to get hold of the story now, Karen. You remember the

Baron. A sad, stately man he was, as cultured and intellectual as could

be and going in the best society. Mercedes had found pretty quick that

there wasn't much fun in being married to a yellow-haired boy who lived

on the money she made and wasn't a mite in society. And the Baron was

just crazy over her in his dignified, reverential way. Poor fellow!"

said Mrs. Talcott pausing in a retrospect over this vanished figure,

"Poor fellow! I guess he came to rue the day he ever set eyes on her.

Well, Mercedes made out to him how terrible her life was and how she was

tied to a dissipated, worthless man who lived on her and was unfaithful

to her. And it's true that Baldwin Tanner behaved as he shouldn't; but

he was a weak creature and she'd disillusionized him so and made him so

miserable that he just got reckless. And he'd never asked any more than

to live in a garret with her and adore her, and paint his lanky people

and eat bread and cheese; he told me so, poor boy; he just used to lay

his head down on my lap and cry like a baby sometimes. But Mercedes made

it out that she was a victim and he was a serpent; and she believed it,

too; that's the power of her; she's just determined to be in the right

always. So at last she made it all out. She couldn't divorce Baldwin,

being a Catholic; but she made it out that she wasn't really married to

him. It appears he didn't get baptized by his folks; they hadn't

believed in baptizing; they were free-thinkers. And the Baron got his

powerful friends to help and they all set to work at the Pope, and they

got him to fix it up, and Mercedes's marriage was annulled and she was

free to marry again. That's what was in her mind in sending for me, you

see; she'd quarrelled with her folks and she wanted a steady respectable

person who knew all about her to stand by her and chaperon her while she

was getting rid of Baldwin. Mercedes has always been pretty careful

about her reputation; she's hardly ever taken any risks.

"Well, she was free and she married the Baron, and poor Baldwin got a

nice young English girl to marry him, and she reformed him, and they're

alive and happy to this day, and I guess he paints pretty poor pictures.

And it makes Mercedes awful mad to hear about how happy they are; she

has a sort of idea, I imagine, that Baldwin didn't have any right to get

married again. I've always had a good deal of satisfaction over

Baldwin," said Mrs. Talcott. "It's queer to realize that Mercedes was

once just plain Mrs. Baldwin Tanner, ain't it? It was a silly match and

no mistake. Well, it took two or three years to work it all out, and

Mercedes was twenty-five when she married the Baron. I didn't see much

of them for a while. They put me around in their houses to look after

things and be there when Mercedes wanted me. She'd found out she

couldn't get along without me in those two or three years. Mercedes was

the most beautiful creature alive at that time, I do believe, and all

Europe was wild about her. She and the Baron went about and she gave

concerts, and it was just a triumphal tour. But after a spell I began to

see that things weren't going smooth. Mercedes is the sort of person

who's never satisfied with what she's got. And the Baron was beginning

to find her out. My! I used to be sorry for that man. I'll never forget

his white, sick face the first time she flew out at him and made one of

her scenes. '_Emprisonné ma jeunesse_,'" Mrs. Talcott quoted with a

heavy accent. "That's what she said he'd done to her. He was twenty

years older than Mercedes, the Baron. Mercedes always liked to have men

who were in love with her hanging about, and that's what the trouble was

over. The more they cared the worse she treated them, and the Baron was

a very dignified man and didn't like having them around. And she was

dreadful jealous of him, too, and used to fly out at him if he so much

as looked at another woman; in her way I guess he was the person

Mercedes cared for most in all her life; she respected him, too, and she

knew he was as clever as she was and more so, and as for him, in spite

of everything, he always stayed in love with her. They used to have

reconciliations, and when he'd look at her sort of scornful and loving

and sad all together, it would make her go all to pieces. She'd throw

herself in his arms and cry and cry. No, she ain't all bad, Mercedes.

And she thought she could make things all right with him after she'd let

herself go; she depended on his caring for her so much and being sorry

for her. But I saw well enough as the years went on that he got more and

more depressed. He was a depressed man by nature, I reckon, and he read

a sight of philosophy of the gloomy kind--that writer Schopenhauer was a

favourite of his, I recollect, and Mercedes thought a sight of him,

too--and after ten years or so of Mercedes I expect the Baron was pretty

sick of life.

"Well, you came. You thought it was Mercedes who was so good to you, and

it was in a way. But it was poor Ernst who really cared. He took to you

the moment he set eyes on you, and he'd liked your father. And he wanted

to have you to live with them and be their adopted daughter and inherit

their money when they died. It had always been a grief to him that

Mercedes wouldn't have any children. She just had a horror of having

children, and he had to give up any hope of it. Well, the moment

Mercedes realized how he cared for you she got jealous and they had a

scene over you right off, in that hotel at Fontainebleau. She took on

like her heart would break and put it that she couldn't bear to have any

one with them for good, she loved him so. It was true in a way. I didn't

count of course. He looked at her, sick and scornful and loving, and he

gave way. That was why you were put to school. She tried to make up by

being awful nice to you when you came for your holidays now and then;

but she never liked having you round much and Ernst saw it and never

showed how much he cared for you. But he did care. You had a real friend

in him, Karen. Well, after that came the worst thing Mercedes ever did."

Mrs. Talcott paused, gazing before her in the dimly lighted room. "Poor

things! Poor Mercedes! It nearly killed her. She's never been the same

since. And it was all her fault and she knows it and that's why she's

afraid. That's why," she added in a lower voice, "you're sorry for her

and put up with everything, because you know she's a miserable woman and

it wouldn't do for her to be alone.

"A young man turned up. His name don't matter now, poor fellow. He was

just a clever all-over-the-place young man like so many of them,

thinking they know more about everything than God Almighty;--like this

young man in a way, only not a bad young man like him;--and downright

sick with love of Mercedes. He followed her about all over Europe and

went to every concert she gave and laid himself out to please her in all

the ways he could. And he had a great charm of manner--he was a Russian

and very high-bred--and he sort of fascinated her, and she liked it all,

I can tell you. Her youth was beginning to go, and the Baron was mighty

gloomy, and she just basked in this young man's love, and pretty soon

she began to think she was in love with him--perhaps she was--and had

never loved before, and she certainly worked herself up to suffer

considerably. Well, the Baron saw it. He saw she didn't treat him the

way she'd treated the others; she was kind of humble and tender and

distracted all the time. The Baron saw it all, but she never noticed

that he was getting gloomier and gloomier. I sometimes wonder if things

might have been different if he'd been willing to confide in me some. It

does folks a sight of good if there's someone they can tell things to.

But the Baron was very reserved and never said a word. And at last she

burst out with a dreadful scene. You were with them; yes, it was that

summer at Felsenschloss; but you didn't know anything about it of

course. I was pretty much in the thick of it all, as far as Mercedes

went, and I tried to make her see reason and told her she was a sinful

woman to treat her husband so; but I couldn't hold her back. She broke

out at him one day and told him he was like a jailor to her, and that he

suffocated her talent and that he hung on her like a vampire and sucked

her youth, and that she loved the other man. I can see her now, rushing

up and down that long saloon on that afternoon, with the white blinds

drawn down and the sun filtering through them, snatching with her hands

at her dress and waving her arms up and down in the air. And the Baron

sat on a sofa leaning on his elbow with his hand up over his eyes and

watched her under it. And he didn't say one word. When she fell down on

another sofa and cried and cried, he got up and looked at her for a

moment; but it wasn't the scornful, loving look; it was a queer, dark,

dead way. And he just went out. And we never saw him alive again.

"You know the rest, Karen. You found him. But no one knows why he did

it, no one but you and me. He put an end to himself, because he couldn't

stand it any longer, and to set her free. They called it suicidal mania

and the doctors said he must have had melancholia for years. But I

shan't ever forget his face when he went out, and no more will Mercedes.

After he was gone she thought she'd never cared for anything in the

world but him. She never saw that young man again. She wrote him a

letter and laid the blame on him, and said he'd tried to take her from

her adored husband and that she'd never forgive him and loathed the

thought of him, and that he had made her the most wretched of women, and

he went and blew his brains out and that was the end of him. I had

considerable difficulty in getting hold of that letter. It was on him

when he killed himself. But I managed to talk over the police and hush

it up. Mercedes gave me plenty of money to manage with. I don't know

what she thinks about that poor fellow; she's never named his name since

that day. And she went on like a mad thing for two years or more. You

remember about that, Karen. She said she'd never play the piano again or

see anybody and wanted to go and be a nun. But she had a friend who was

a prioress of a convent, and she advised her not to. I guess poor

Mercedes wouldn't have stayed long in a convent. And the reason she was

nice to you was because the Baron had been fond of you and she wanted to

make up all she could for that dreadful thing in her life. She had you

to come and live with her. You didn't interfere with anything any longer

and it sort of soothed her to think it was what he'd have liked. She's

fond of you, too. She wouldn't have put up with you for so long if she

hadn't been. She'd have found some excuse for being quit of you. But as

for loving you, Karen child, like you thought she did, or like you love

her, why it's pitiful. I used to wonder how long it would be before you

found her out."

Karen's face was hidden; she had rested it upon her hands, leaning

forward, her elbows on her knees, and she had not moved while Mrs.

Talcott told her story. Now, as Mrs. Talcott sat silent, she stirred

slightly.

"Tante! Tante!" she muttered. "My beautiful!"

Mrs. Talcott did not reply to this for some moments; then she laid her

hand on Karen's shoulder. "That's it," she said. "She's beautiful and it

most kills us to find out how cruel and bad she can be. But I guess we

can't judge people like Mercedes, Karen. When you go through life like a

mowing-machine and see everyone flatten out before you, you must get

kind of exalted ideas about yourself. If anything happens that makes a

hitch, or if anybody don't flatten out, why it must seem to you as if

they were wrong in some way, doing you an injury. That's the way it is

with Mercedes. She don't mean to be cruel, she don't mean to be bad; but

she's a mowing-machine and if you get in her way she'll cut you up fine

and leave you behind. And the thing for you to do, Karen, is to get out

of her way as quick as you can."

"Yes, I am going," said Karen.

Again Mrs. Talcott sat silent. "I'd like to talk to you about that,

Karen," she then said. "I want to ask you to give up going to Frau

Lippheim. There ain't any sense in that. It's a poor plan. What you

ought to do, Karen, is to go right back to your nice young husband."

Karen, who sat on as if crushed beyond the point where anything could

crush her further, shook her head. "Do not ask me that, Mrs. Talcott,"

she said. "I can never go back to him."

"But, Karen, I guess you've got to own now that he was right and you

were wrong in that quarrel of yours. I guess you'll have to own that it

must have made him pretty sick to see her putting him in the wrong with

you all the time and spoiling everything; and there's no one on earth

can do that better than Mercedes."

"I see it all," said Karen. "But that does not change what happened

between Gregory and me. He does not love me. I saw it plainly. If he had

me back it would only be because he cares for conventions. He said cruel

things to me."

"I guess you said cruel things to him, Karen."

Karen shook her head slightly, with weariness rather than impatience.

"No, for he saw that it was my loyalty to her--my love of her--that he

was wounding. And he never understood. He never helped me. I can never

go back to him, for he does not love me."

"Now, see here, Karen," said Mrs. Talcott, after a pause, "you just let

me work it out. You'll have a good sleep and to-morrow morning I'll see

you off, before Mercedes is up, to a nice little farm near here that I

know about--just a little way by train--and there you'll stay, nice and

quiet, and I'll not let Mercedes know where you are. And I'll write to

Mr. Jardine and tell him just what's happened and what you meant to do,

and that you want to go to Frau Lippheim; and you mark my words, Karen,

that nice young husband of yours'll be here quicker than you can say

Jack Robinson."

Karen had dropped her hands and was looking at her old friend intently.

"Mrs. Talcott, you do not understand," she said. "You cannot write to

him. Have I not told you that he does not love me?"

"Shucks!" said Mrs. Talcott. "He'll love you fast enough now that

Mercedes is out of the way."

"But, Mrs. Talcott," said Karen, rising and looking down at the old

woman, whose face, in the dim light, had assumed to her reeling mind an

aspect of dangerous infatuation--"I do not think you know what you are

saying. What do I want of a man who only loves me when I cease to love

my guardian?"

"Well, say you give up love, then," Mrs. Talcott persisted, and a panic

seized Karen as she heard the unmoved tones. "Say you don't love him and

he don't love you. You can have conventions, then--he wants that you

say, and so can you--and a good home and a nice husband who won't treat

you bad in any way. That's better than batting about the world all by

yourself, Karen; you take my word for it. And you can take my word for

it, too, that if you behave sensible and do as I say, you'll find out

that all this is just a miserable mistake and that he loves you just as

much as ever. Now, see here," Mrs. Talcott, also, had risen, and stood

in her habitual attitude, resting heavily on one hip, "you're not fit to

talk and I'm not going to worry you any more. You go to sleep and we'll

see about what to do to-morrow. You go right to sleep, Karen," she

patted the girl's shoulder.

The panic was deepening in Karen. She saw guile on Mrs. Talcott's

storm-beaten and immutable face; and she heard specious reassurance in

her voice. Mrs. Talcott was dangerous. She had set her heart on this

last desire of her passionless, impersonal life and had determined that

she and Gregory should come together again. It was this desire that had

unsealed her lips: she would never relinquish, it. She might write to

Gregory; she might appeal to him and put before him the desperate plight

in which his wife was placed. And he might come. What were a wife's

powers if she was homeless and penniless, and a husband claimed her?

Karen did not know; but panic breathed upon her, and she felt that she

must fly. She, too, could use guile. "Yes," she said. "I will go to

sleep. And to-morrow we will talk. But what you hope cannot be.

Good-night, Mrs. Talcott."

"Good-night, child," said Mrs. Talcott.

They had joined hands and the strangeness of this farewell, the

knowledge that she might never see Mrs. Talcott again, and that she was

leaving her to a life empty of all that she had believed it to contain,

rose up in Karen so strongly that it blotted out for a moment her own

terror.

"You have been so good to me," she said, in a trembling voice. "Never

shall I forget what you have done for me, Mrs. Talcott. May I kiss you

good-night?"

They had never kissed.

Mrs. Talcott's eyes blinked rapidly, and a curious contortion puckered

her mouth and chin. Karen thought that she was going to cry and her own

eyes filled with tears.

But Mrs. Talcott in another moment had mastered her emotion, or, more

probably, it could find no outlet. The silent, stoic years had sealed

the fount of weeping. Only that dry contortion of her face spoke of her

deep feeling. Karen put her arms around her and they kissed each other.

"Good-night, child," Mrs. Talcott then said in a muffled voice, and

disengaging herself she went out quickly.

Karen stood listening to the sound of her footsteps passing down the

corridor. They went down the little flight of stairs that led to another

side of the house and faded away. All was still.

She did not pause or hesitate. She did not seem to think. Swiftly and

accurately she found her walking-shoes and put them on, her hat and

cloak; her purse with its half-crown, its sixpence and its few coppers.

Swiftly she laid together a change of underwear and took from her

dressing-table its few toilet appurtenances. She paused then, looking at

the ornaments of her girlhood. She must have money. She must sell

something; yet all these her guardian had given her.

No; not all. Her little gold watch ticked peacefully, lying on the table

beside her bed as it had lain beside her for so many years; her

beautiful little watch, treasured by her since the distant birthday when

Onkel Ernst had given it.

She clutched it tightly in her hand and it seemed to her, as she had

once said to Gregory, that the iron drove deep into her heart and turned

up not only dark forgotten things but dark and dreadful things never

seen before.

She leaned against the table, putting the hand that held Onkel Ernst's

watch to her eyes, and his agony became part of her own. How he had

suffered. And the other man, the young, forgotten Russian. Mrs.

Talcott's story became real to her as it had not yet been. It entered

her; it filled her past; it linked itself with everything that she had

been and done and believed. And the iron drove down deeper, until of her

heart there seemed only to be left a deep black hole.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Mrs. Talcott had a broken night and it was like a continuation of some

difficult and troubled dream when she heard the voice of Mercedes saying

to her: "Tallie, Tallie, wake up. Tallie, will you wake! _Bon Dieu!_ how

she sleeps!"

The voice of Mercedes when she had heard it last had been the voice of

passion and desperation, but its tone was changed this morning; it was

fretful, feverishly irritable, rather than frantic.

Mrs. Talcott opened her eyes and sat up in bed. She wore a Jaeger

nightgown and her head, with its white hair coiled at the top, was

curiously unaltered by its informal setting.

"What do you mean by coming waking me up like this after the night

you've given me," she demanded, fully awakened now. "Go right straight

away or I'll put you out."

"Don't be a fool, Tallie," said Madame von Marwitz, who, in a silken

dressing-gown and with her hair unbound, had an appearance at once

childish and damaged. "Where is Karen? I've been to her room and she is

not there. The door downstairs is unbolted. Is she gone out to walk so

early?"

Mrs. Talcott sat still and upright in her bed. "What time is it?" she

asked.

"It is seven. I have been awake since dawn. Do you imagine that I have

had a pleasant night?"

Mrs. Talcott did not answer this query. She sprang out of bed.

"Perhaps she's gone to meet the bus at the cross-roads. But I told her I

was going to take her. Tell Burton to come round with the car as quick

as he can. I'll go after her and see that she's all right. Why, the

child hasn't got any money," Mrs. Talcott muttered, deftly drawing on

her clothes beneath her nightgown which she held by the edge of the neck

between her teeth.

Madame von Marwitz listened to her impeded utterance frowning.

"The bus? What do you mean? Why is she meeting the bus?"

"To take her to London where she's going to the Lippheims," said Mrs.

Talcott, casting aside the nightgown and revealing herself in chemise

and petticoat. "You go and order that car, Mercedes," she added, as she

buckled together her sturdy, widely-waisted stays. "This ain't no time

for talk."

Madame von Marwitz looked at her for another moment and then rang the

bell. She put her head outside the door to await the housemaid and, as

this person made some delay, shouted in a loud voice: "Handcock! Jane!

Louise! Where are you? _Fainéantes!_" she stamped her foot, and, as the

housemaid appeared, running; "Burton," she commanded. "The car. At once.

And tell Louise to bring me my tea-gown, my shoes and stockings, my fur

cloak, at once; but at once; make haste!"

"What are you up to, Mercedes?" Mrs. Talcott inquired, as Madame von

Marwitz thrust her aside from the dressing-table and began to wind up

her hair before the mirror.

"I am getting ready to go with you, _parbleu_!" Madame von Marwitz

replied. "Is that you, Louise? Come in. You have the things? Put on my

shoes and stockings; quickly; _mais dépêchez-vous donc_! The

tea-gown--yes, over this--over it I say! So. Now bring me a motor-veil

and gloves. I shall do thus."

Mrs. Talcott, while Louise with an air of profoundest gloom arrayed her

mistress, kept silence, but when Louise had gone in search of the

motor-veil she remarked in a low but imperative voice: "You'll get out

at the roadside and wait for me, that's what you'll do. I won't have you

along when I meet Karen. She couldn't bear the sight of you."

"Peace!" Madame von Marwitz commanded, adjusting the sash of her

tea-gown. "I shall see Karen. The deplorable misunderstanding of last

night shall be set right. Her behaviour has been undignified and

underhanded; but I misunderstood her, and, pierced to the heart by the

treachery of a man I trusted, I spoke wildly, without thought. Karen

will understand. I know my Karen."

It was not the moment for dispute. Louise had re-entered with the veil

and Madame von Marwitz bound it about her head, standing before the

mirror, and gazing at herself, fixedly and unseeingly, with dark eyes

set in purpled orbits. She turned then and swept from the room, and Mrs.

Talcott, pinning on her hat as she went, followed her.

Not until they were speeding through the fresh, chill air, did Mrs.

Talcott speak. Madame von Marwitz, leaning to one side of the open car,

scanned the stretch of road before them, melancholy and monotonous under

the pale morning sky, and Mrs. Talcott, moving round determinedly in her

corner, faced her.

"I want to tell you, right now, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, "that

Karen's done with you. There's no use in your coming, for you'll never

get her back. I've told her all about you, Mercedes;--yes, I ain't

afraid of you and you know it;--I told her. I made up my mind to it last

night after I'd seen you and heard all your shameful story and how you'd

treated her. I made up my mind that you shouldn't get hold of her again,

not if I could help it. The time had come to tell that child that her

husband was right all along and that you ain't a woman to be trusted.

She'd seen for herself what you could do, and I made a sure thing of it.

I've held my tongue for all my life, but I spoke out last night. I want

her to be quit of you for good. I want her to go back to her husband.

Yes, Mercedes; I've burst up the whole concern."

Madame von Marwitz, her hand holding tightly the side of the car and her

eyes like large, dark stones in her white face, was sitting upright and

was staring at her. She could not speak and Mrs. Talcott went on.

"She knows all about you now; about you and Baldwin Tanner and you and

Ernst, and about that pitiful young Russian. She knows how you treated

them. She knows how it wasn't you but Ernst who was her real friend, and

how you didn't want her to live with you. She knows that you're a mighty

unfortunate creature and a mighty dangerous one; and what I advise you

to do, Mercedes, is to get out here and go right home. Karen won't ever

come back to you again, I'm as sure of it as I'm sure my name's Hannah

Talcott."

They sped, with softly singing speed, through the chill morning air. The

hard, tight, dark eyeballs still fixed themselves on the old woman

almost lifelessly, and still she sat grasping the side of the car. She

had the look of a creature shot through the heart and maintaining the

poise and pride of its startled and arrested life. Mechanical forces

rather than volition seemed to sustain her.

"Say, Mercedes, will you get out?" Mrs. Talcott repeated. And the rigid

figure then moved its head slightly in negation.

They reached the cross-roads where a few carts and an ancient fly stood

waiting for the arrival of the omnibus that plied between the Lizard and

Helston. Karen was nowhere to be seen.

"Perhaps she went across the fields and got into the bus at the Lizard,"

said Mrs. Talcott. "We'll wait and see, and if she isn't in the bus

we'll go on to Helston. Perhaps she's walking."

Madame von Marwitz continued to say nothing, and in a moment they heard

behind them the clashing and creaking of the omnibus. It drew up at the

halt and Karen was not in it.

"To Helston," said Mrs. Talcott, standing up to speak to the chauffeur.

They sped on before the omnibus had resumed its journey.

Tints of azure and purple crept over the moors; the whitening sky showed

rifts of blue; it was a beautiful morning. Mrs. Talcott, keeping a keen

eye on the surrounding country, became aware presently that Mercedes had

turned her gaze upon her and was examining her.

She looked round.

There was no anger, no resentment, even, on the pallid face. It seemed

engaged, rather, in a deep perplexity--that of a child struck down by

the hand that, till then, had cherished it. It brooded in sick wonder on

Mrs. Talcott, and Mrs. Talcott looked back with her ancient, weary eyes.

Madame von Marwitz broke the silence. She spoke in a toneless voice.

"Tallie--how could you?" she said. "Oh, Tallie--how could you have told

her?"

"Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, gently but implacably, "I had to. It was

right to make sure you shouldn't get hold of her again. She had to go,

and she had to go for good. If you want me to go, too, I will, but it's

only fair to tell you that I never felt much sorrier for you than I do

at this minute."

"There have been tragedies in my life," Madame von Marwitz went on in

the low, dulled voice. "I have been a passion-tossed woman. Yes, I have

not been guiltless. But how could you cut out my heart with all its

scars and show it to my child?"

"It was right to do it, Mercedes, so as you shouldn't ruin her life.

She's not your child, and you've shown her she's not. A mother don't

behave so to her child, however off her head she goes."

"I was mad last night." The tears ran slowly down Madame von Marwitz's

cheeks. "I can tell that to Karen. I can explain. I can throw myself on

her mercy. I loved him and my heart was broken. One is not responsible.

It is the animal, wounded to death, that shrieks and tears at the spear

it feels entering its flesh."

"I'm awful sorry for you, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott.

And now, hiding her face in her hands and leaning back in her cushions,

Madame von Marwitz began to weep with the soft reiterated sobbing of a

miserable child. "I have no one left. I am alone," she sobbed. "Even you

have turned against me."

"No, I haven't turned against you," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm here." And

presently, while Mercedes wept, Mrs. Talcott took her hand and held it.

They reached Helston and climbed the steep, stony road to the station.

There was no sign of Karen. Mrs. Talcott got out and made inquiries. She

might have gone to London by the train that left at dawn; but no one had

noticed such a young lady. Mrs. Talcott came back to the car with her

fruitless story.

Mercedes, by this time, had dried her eyes and was regaining,

apparently, her more normal energies. "Not here? Not seen? Not heard

of?" she repeated. "But where is she then?"

Mrs. Talcott stood at the door of the car and looked at her charge.

"Well, I'm afraid she made off in the night, straight away, after I'd

talked to her."

"Made off in the night?" A dark colour suddenly suffused Madame von

Marwitz's face.

"Yes, that's it, I reckon. I must have said something to scare her about

her going back to her husband. Perhaps she thought I'd bring him down

without her knowing, and perhaps she wasn't far wrong. I'm afraid I've

played the fool. She thought I'd round on her in some way and so she

just lit out."

Madame von Marwitz stared at her. The expression of her face had

entirely altered; there was no trace of the dazed and wretched child.

Dark forces lit her eyes and the relaxed lines of her lips tightened.

"Get in," she commanded. "Tell him to drive back, and get in." And when

Mrs. Talcott had taken her place beside her she went on in a low,

concentrated voice: "Is it not possible that she has joined that vile

seducer?"

Mrs. Talcott eyed her with the fixity of a lion-tamer. Their moment of

instinctive closeness had passed. "Now see here, Mercedes," she said; "I

advise you to be careful what you say."

"Careful! I am half mad! Between you all you will drive me mad!" said

Madame von Marwitz with intensity of fury. "You fill Karen's mind with

lies about my past--oh, there are two sides to every story! she shall

hear my side!--you drive her forth with your threats to hand her over to

the man she loathes, and she takes refuge--where else?--with that

miscreant. Why not? Where else had she to go? You say that she had no

money. We call now at the hotel. If he is gone, and if within the day we

do not hear that she is with Lise, we will send at once for detectives."

"You'd better control yourself, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. "If Karen

ain't found it'll be a mighty ugly story for you to face up to, and if

she's found it won't be all plain sailing for you either; you've got to

pay the price for what you've done. But if it gets round that you drove

her out and then spread scandal about her, you'll do for yourself--just

keep your mind on that if you can."

"Scandal! What scandal shall I spread? If he disappears and she with

him, will the facts not shriek aloud? If she is found she will be found

by me. I will wire at once to Lise."

"We'll wire to Lise and we'll wire to Mr. Jardine, that's what we'll do.

Karen may have changed her mind. She may have felt shy of telling me she

had. She may have come to see that he's the thing she's got to hang on

to. What I hope for is that if she ain't in London already with him,

she's hiding somewhere about here and has sent for him herself."

"Ah, I understand your hope; it is of a piece with all your treachery,"

said Madame von Marwitz in a voice suffocated by conflicting angers. "If

she is with her husband he, too, will hear the story--the false, garbled

story of my crimes. He is my enemy, you know it; my malignant enemy; you

know that he will spread this affair broadcast. And you can rejoice in

this! You are glad for my disgrace and ruin!" Tears again streamed from

her eyes.

"Don't take on so, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. "If Karen's with her

husband all they're likely to be thinking about is that he was right and

has got her back again. Karen's bound to tell him something about what

happened, and you can depend upon Karen for saying as little as she can.

But if you imagine that you're going to be let off from being found out

by that young man, you're letting yourself in for a big disappointment,

and you can take my word for it. It's because he's right about you that

Karen'll go back to him."

Madame von Marwitz turned her head away and fixed her eyes on the

landscape.

They reached the little village near Les Solitudes, and at the little

hotel, with its drowsy, out-of-season air, Mrs. Talcott descended,

leaving Mercedes proudly seated in the car, indifferent to the possible

gaze from above of her faithless devotee. Mrs. Talcott returned with the

information that Mr. Drew was upstairs and not yet awake. "Go up. Go up

to him," said the tormented woman, after a moment of realized relief or

disappointment--who can say? "He may have seen her. He may have given

her money for her journey. They may have arranged to meet later."

Mrs. Talcott again disappeared and she only returned after some ten

minutes. "Home," she then said to Burton, climbing heavily into the car.

"Yes, there he was, sleeping as peaceful as a dormouse in his silk

pyjamas," she remarked. "I startled him some, I reckon, when I waked him

up. No, he don't know anything about her. Wanted to jump up and look for

her when I told him she was missing. Keep still, Mercedes--what do you

mean by bouncing about like that--folks can see you. I talked to him

pretty short and sharp, that young man, and I told him the best thing he

could do now was to pack his grip-sack and clear out. He's going right

away and he promised to send me a telegram from London to-night. He can

catch the second train."

Madame von Marwitz leaned back. She closed her eyes. The car had climbed

to the entrance of Les Solitudes and the fuchsia hedge was passing on

each side. Mrs. Talcott, looking at her companion, saw that she had

either actually fainted or was simulating a very realistic fainting-fit.

Mercedes often had fainting-fits at moments of crisis; but she was a

robust woman, and Mrs. Talcott had no reason to believe that any of them

had been genuine. She did not believe that this one was genuine, yet she

had to own, looking at the leaden eyelids and ashen face, that Mercedes

had been through enough in the last twelve hours to break down a

stronger person. And it was appropriate that she should return to her

desolate home in a prostrate condition.

Mrs. Talcott, as often before, played her part. The maids were summoned;

they supported Madame von Marwitz's body; Burton took her shoulders and

Mrs. Talcott her feet. So the afflicted woman was carried into the house

and upstairs and laid upon her bed.

Mrs. Talcott then went and sent telegrams to Frau Lippheim and to

Gregory Jardine. She asked them to let her know if Karen arrived in

London during the day. She had her answers that evening. That from

Gregory ran--"Not seen or heard of Karen. What has happened? Write by

return. Or shall I come to you?" The other was from the Lippheims'

landlady and said that the Lippheims had returned to Germany four days

before and that no one had arrived to see them.

The evening post had gone. Mrs. Talcott went out and answered Gregory by

wire: "Writing to-morrow morning. We think Karen is in London. Stay

where you are."

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Mrs. Talcott went early to Madame von Marwitz's room next morning, as

soon, in fact, as she had seen her breakfast-tray carried away. She had

shown Mercedes her telegrams the evening before, and Mercedes, lying on

her bed where she had passed the day in heavy slumbers, had muttered,

"Let me sleep. The post is gone. We can do nothing more till to-morrow."

Like a wounded creature she was regaining strength and wholeness in

oblivion. When Mrs. Talcott had gone softly into her room at bedtime,

she had found her soundly sleeping.

But the fumes and torpors of grief and pain were this morning dispersed.

Mercedes sat at the desk in her bedroom attired in a _robe-de-chambre_,

and rapidly and feverishly wrote.

"I'm glad to see you're feeling better, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott,

closing the door and coming to her side. "We've got a lot to talk over

this morning. I guess we'll have to send for those detectives. What are

you writing there?"

Madame von Marwitz, whose face had the sodden, slumbrous look that

follows long repose, drew the paper quickly to one side and replied:

"You may mind your affairs and leave me to mind my own. I write to my

friend. I write to Mrs. Forrester."

"You hand me that letter, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, in a mild but

singularly determined tone, and after a moment Madame von Marwitz did

hand it to her.

Mrs. Talcott perused the first page. Then she lifted her eyes to her

companion, who, averting hers with a sullen look, fixed them on the sea

outside. It was raining and the sea was leaden.

"Now just you listen to me, Mercedes Okraska," said Mrs. Talcott,

heavily emphasizing her words and leaning the hand that held the letter

on the writing-table, "I'll go straight up to London and tell the whole

story to Mr. Jardine and Mrs. Forrester--the same as I told it to Karen

with all that's happened here besides--I will as sure as my name's

Hannah Talcott--if you write one word of that shameful idea to your

friends. Lay down that pen."

Madame von Marwitz did not lay it down, but she turned in her chair and

confronted her accuser, though with averted eyes. "You say 'shameful.' I

say, yes; shameful, and true. She has not gone to her husband. She has

not gone to the Lippheims. I believe that he has joined her. I believe

that it was arranged. I believe that she is with him now."

"You can't look me in the eye and say you believe it, Mercedes," said

Mrs. Talcott.

Madame von Marwitz looked her in the eye, sombrely, and she then varied

her former statement. "He has pursued her. He has found her. He will try

to keep her. He is a depraved and dangerous man."

"We'll let him alone. We're done with him for good and all, I guess. My

point is this: don't you write any lies to your friends thinking that

you're going to whiten yourself by blackening Karen. I'm speaking the

sober truth when I say I'll go straight off to London and tell Mr.

Jardine and Mrs. Forrester the whole story, unless you write a letter,

right now, as you sit here, that I can pass."

Again averting her eyes, Madame von Marwitz clutched her pen in rigid

fingers and sat silent.

"It is blackmail! Tyranny!" she ejaculated presently.

"All right. Call it any name you like. But my advice to you, Mercedes,

is to pull yourself together and see this thing straight for your own

sake. I know what's the matter with you, you pitiful, silly thing; it's

this young man; it makes you behave like a distracted creature. But

don't you see as plain as can be that what Karen's probably done is to

go to London and that Mr. Jardine'll find her in a day or two. Now when

those two young people come together again, what kind of a story will

Karen tell her husband about you--what'll he think of you--what'll your

friends think of you--if they all find out that in addition to behaving

like a wild-cat to that poor child because you were fairly daft with

jealousy, and driving her away--oh, yes you did, Mercedes, it don't do

any good to deny it now--if in addition to all that they find out that

you've been trying to save your face by blackening her character? Why,

they'll think you're the meanest skunk that ever walked on two legs; and

they'll be about right. Whereas, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott had been

standing square and erect for some time in front of her companion, and

now, as her tone became more argumentative and persuasive, she allowed

her tired old body to sag and rest heavily on one hip--"whereas if you

write a nice, kind, loving, self-reproachful letter, all full of your

dreadful anxiety and affection--why, if Karen ever sees it it'll soften

her towards you perhaps; and it'll make all your friends sorry for you,

too, and inclined to hush things up if Mr. Drew spreads the story

around--won't it, Mercedes?"--Madame von Marwitz had turned in her chair

and was staring before her with a deeply thoughtful eye.--"Why, it's as

plain as can be, Mercedes, that that's your line."

"True," Madame von Marwitz now said. "True." Her voice was deep and

almost solemn. "You are right. Yes; you are right, Tallie."

She leaned her forehead on her hand, shading her eyes as she pondered.

"A letter of noble admission; of sorrow; of love. Ah! you recall me to

my better self. It will touch her, Tallie; it is bound to touch her, is

it not? She cannot feel the bitterness she now feels if she reads such a

letter; is not that so, Tallie?"

"That's so. You've got it," said Mrs. Talcott.

Madame von Marwitz, however, continued to lean on her desk and to shade

her eyes, and some moments of silence passed thus. Then, as she leaned,

the abjectness of her own position seemed suddenly borne in upon her.

She pushed back her chair and clutching the edge of the desk with both

hands, gave a low cry.

Mrs. Talcott looked at her, inquiring, but unmoved.

"Oh--it is easy for you--standing there--watching my humiliation--making

your terms!" Madame von Marwitz exclaimed in bitter, trembling tones.

"You see me in the dust,--and it is you who strike me there. I am to

drag myself--with precautions--apologies--to that child's feet--that

waif!--that bastard!--that thing I picked up and made! I am to be glad

because I may hope to move her to mercy! Ah!--it is too much! too much!

I curse the day that I saw her! I had a presentiment--I remember it

now--as I saw her standing there in the forest with her foolish face. I

felt in my inmost soul that she was to bring me sorrow. She takes him

from me! She puts me to shame before the world! And I am to implore her

to take pity on me!"

She had extended her clenched hand in speaking and now struck it

violently on the desk. The silver blotter, the candlesticks, the

pen-tray and ink-stand leaped in their places and the ink, splashing up,

spattered her white silk robe.

"There now," said Mrs. Talcott, eyeing her impassively, "you've gone and

spoiled your nice dress."

"Damn the dress!" said Madame von Marwitz. Leaning her elbows on the

desk and her face on her hands, she wept; the tears trickled between her

fingers.

But in a very little while the storm passed. She straightened herself,

found her lace-edged handkerchief and dried her eyes and cheeks; then,

taking a long breath, she drew forward a pad of paper.

"I am a fool, am I not, Tallie," she remarked. "And you are wise; a

traitor, yet wise. I will do as you say. Wait there and you shall see."

Mrs. Talcott now subsided heavily into a chair and for some fifteen

minutes there was no sound but the scratching of Madame von Marwitz's

pen and the deep sighs that from time to time she heaved.

Then: "So: will that do?" she asked, leaning back with the deepest of

the sighs and handing the pages to Mrs. Talcott.

Her dark, cold eyes, all clouded with weeping, had a singularly

child-like expression as she thus passed on her letter for inspection.

And--as when she had stretched out her legs for Mrs. Talcott to put on

her stockings--one saw beyond the instinctively confiding gesture a long

series of scenes reaching back to childhood, scenes where, in crises,

her own craft and violence and unscrupulous resource having undone her,

she had fallen back in fundamental dependence on the one stable and

inalienable figure in her life.

Mrs. Talcott read:

"My Friend--Dearest and best Beloved,--I am in the straits of a

terrible grief.--I am blind with weeping, dazed from a sleepless

night and a day of anguish.--My child, my Karen, is gone and, oh my

friend, I am in part to blame.--I am hot of blood, quick of tongue,

as you know, and you know that Karen is haughty, resentful,

unwilling to brook reproof even from me. But I do not attempt to

exonerate myself. I will open my heart to you and my friend will

read aright and interpret the broken words. You know that I cared

for Claude Drew; you guessed perhaps how strong was the hold upon

me of the frail, ambiguous, yet so intelligent modern spirit. It

was to feel the Spring blossom once more on my frosty branches when

this young life fell at my knees and seemed to find in me its

source and goal. Mine was a sacred love and pain mingled with my

maternal tenderness when he revealed himself to me as seeking from

me the lesser things of love, the things I could not give, that

elemental soil of sense and passion without which a man's devotion

so strangely withers,--I could give him water from the wells and

light from the air; I could not give him earth. My friend, he was

here when Karen came, and, already I had seen it, his love was

passing from me. Her youth, her guilelessness, her courage and the

loyalty of her return to me, aroused his curiosity, his indolent

and--you will remember--his unsatisfied, passion. I saw at once,

and I saw danger. I knew him to be a man believing in neither good

nor evil, seeking only beauty and the satisfaction of desire. Not

once--but twice, thrice, did I warn Karen, and she resented my

warnings. She is a creature profoundly pure and profoundly simple

and her stubborn spirit rests in security upon its own assurances.

She resented my warnings and she repulsed my attempts to lead and

guard her. Another difference had also come between us. I hoped to

effect a reconciliation between her and her husband; I suggested to

Karen that I should write to you and offer myself as an

intermediary; I could not bear to see her young life ruined for my

sake. Karen was not kind to me; the thought of her husband is

intolerable to her and she turned upon me with bitterness. I was

hurt and I told her so. She brought me to tears. My friend, it was

late on the night of that day--the night before last--that I found

her with Claude Drew in the garden; and found her in his arms. Do

not misunderstand; she had not returned his love; she repulsed him

as I came upon them; but I, in my consternation, my anger, my

dismay, snatched her from him and spoke to them both with

passionate reproof. I sent Karen to the house and remained behind

to deal with the creature who had so betrayed my trust. He is now

my avowed enemy. So be it. I do not see him again.

"At dawn, after a sleepless night, I went to Karen's room to take

her in my arms and to ask her pardon for my harsh words. She was

gone. Gone, my friend. Tallie tells me that she believed me to have

said that unless she could obey me I must forbid her to remain

under my roof. These were not my words; but she had misunderstood

and had fiercely resented my displeasure. She told Tallie that she

would go to the Lippheims,--for them, as I have told you, she has a

deep affection. Tallie urged upon her that she should communicate

with her husband, let him know what had happened, return to

him--even if it were to blacken me in his eyes--and would to God

that it had been so!--But she repulsed the suggestion with

bitterness. It must also have filled her with terror lest we should

ourselves make some further attempt to bring about a

reconciliation; for it was in the night, and immediately after her

talk with Tallie, that she went, although she and Tallie had

arranged that she was to go to the Lippheims next day.

"We have wired to the Lippheims and find that they have left

England. And we have wired to Mr. Jardine, and she is not with him.

She may be on her way to Germany; she may be concealed in the

country near here; she may be in London. Unless we have news of her

to-morrow I send for a detective. Oh, to hold her in my arms! I am

crushed to the earth with sorrow and remorse. Show this letter to

her husband. I have no thought of pride.

"Your devoted and unhappy Mercedes."

Mrs. Talcott read and remained for some moments reflecting after she had

read. "Well, I suppose that's got to do," she commented, "though I don't

call it a satisfactory letter. You've fixed it up real smart, but it's a

long way off the truth."

Madame von Marwitz, while Mrs. Talcott read, had been putting back the

disordered strands of her hair, adjusting her laces, and dabbing vaguely

with her handkerchief at the splashes of ink that disfigured the front

of her dress--thereby ruining the handkerchief; she looked up sharply

now.

"I deny that it is a long way off the truth."

"A long way off," Mrs. Talcott repeated colourlessly; "but I guess it'll

have to do. I'm willing you should make the best story out for yourself

you can to your friends, so long as Karen knows the truth and so long as

you don't spread scandal about her. Now I'll write to Mr. Jardine."

Madame von Marwitz's eyes were still fixed sharply on her and a sudden

suspicion leapt to them. "Here then!" she exclaimed. "You write in my

presence as I have done in yours. And we go to the village together that

I may see you post the self-same letter. I have had enough of

betrayals!"

Mrs. Talcott allowed a grim smile to touch her lips. "My, but you're

silly, Mercedes," she said. "Get up, then, and let me sit there. I'd

just as leave I'm sure. You know I'm determined that Karen shall go back

to her husband and that I'm going to do all I can so as she shall. So

there's nothing I want to hide."

She took up the pen and Madame von Marwitz leaned over her shoulder and

read as she wrote:

"Dear Mr. Jardine,--Mercedes and Karen have had a disagreement and

Karen took it very hard and has made off, we don't know where. Go

round to Mrs. Forrester and see what Mercedes has got to say about

it. Karen will tell you her side when you see her. She feels very

bad about you yet; and thinks things are over between you; but you

hang on, Mr. Jardine, and it'll all come right. You'd better find

out whether Karen's called at the Lippheims' and get a detective

and try and trace her out. If she's with them in Germany I advise

you to go right over and see her.--Yours sincerely,

"Hannah Talcott."

Mrs. Talcott, as she finished, heard that the breathing of Mercedes,

close upon her, had become heavier. She did not look at her. She knew

what Mercedes was feeling, and dreading; and that Mercedes was helpless.

"There's no reason under the sun why Handcock shouldn't take these

letters as usual," she remarked; "but if you're set on it that you're

being betrayed, put on your shoes and dress and we'll walk down and mail

them together."

CHAPTER XXXIX

It was on the second morning after this that the letters were brought in

to Madame von Marwitz while she and Mrs. Talcott sat in the music-room

together.

The two days had told upon them both. The face of Mercedes was like a

beautiful fruit, rain-sodden and gnawed at the heart by a worm. Mrs.

Talcott's was more bleached, more desolate, more austere.

The one letter that Handcock brought to Mrs. Talcott was from Gregory

Jardine:

"Dear Mrs. Talcott," it said, "Thank you for your kind note. I am

very unhappy and only a little less unhappy than when Karen left

me. One cause of our estrangement is, perhaps, removed; but the

fact borne in upon me at the time of that parting was that, while

she was everything in life to me, she hardly knew the meaning of

the words love and marriage. I need not tell you that I will do all

in my power to induce her to return to me, and all in my power to

win her heart. It was useless to make any attempt at reconciliation

while her guardian stood between us. I cannot pretend that I feel

more kindly towards Madame von Marwitz now; rather the reverse. It

is plain to me that she has treated Karen shamefully. You must

forgive me for my frankness.--Sincerely yours,

"Gregory Jardine."

Mrs. Talcott when she looked up from this letter saw that Mercedes was

absorbed in hers. Her expression had stiffened as she read, and when she

had finished the hand holding it dropped to her side. She sat looking

down in a dark contemplation.

Mrs. Talcott asked no question. United in the practical exigencies of

their search for Karen, united in their indestructible relation of

respective dependence and stability, which the last catastrophe had

hardly touched--for Mercedes had accepted her betrayal with a singular

passivity, as if it had been a force of nature that had overtaken

her--there was yet a whole new region of distrust between them. She and

Mercedes, as Mrs. Talcott cheerlessly imaged it, were like a constable

and his captive adrift, by a curious turn of fortune, on the waters of a

sudden inundation. Together they baled out water and worked at the oar,

but both were aware that when the present peril was past a sentence had

still to be carried out on one of them. Mercedes could not evade her

punishment. If Karen were found Gregory Jardine must come to know that

her guardian had, literally, driven her from her home. In that case it

rested with Gregory's sense of mercy whether Mercedes should be exposed

to the world or not. And after reading Gregory's letter Mrs. Talcott

reflected that there was not much to hope of mercy from him. So she

showed a tactful consideration of her companion's state of nerves by

pressing her no further than was necessary.

On this occasion, however, there was no need for pressure; Mercedes, in

her dismal plight, turned to her with the latest development of it.

"Ah," she said, while she still continued to gaze down fixedly, "this it

is to have true friends. This is human loyalty. It is well."

"What's the matter, Mercedes?" Mrs. Talcott asked, as she was evidently

invited to do.

"Read if you will," said Madame von Marwitz. She held out the letter

which Mrs. Talcott rose to take.

It was from Mrs. Forrester and was full of sympathy for her afflicted

friend, and full of sympathy for foolish, headstrong little Karen. The

mingled sympathies rang strangely. She avowed self-reproach. She was

afraid that she had precipitated the rupture between Karen and her

husband, not quite, perhaps, understanding the facts. She had seen

Gregory, she was very sorry for him. She was, apparently, sorry for

everyone; except of course, Mr. Drew, the villain of the piece; but of

Mr. Drew and of Mercedes's sacred love for him, she made no mention.

Mrs. Forrester was fond, but she was wary. She had received, evidently,

her dim thrust of disillusion. Mercedes had blamed herself and Mrs.

Forrester did not deny that Mercedes must be to blame.

"Yes; she's feeling pretty sick," Mrs. Talcott commented when she had

read. "The trouble is that anybody who knows how much Karen loved you

knows that she wouldn't have made off like that without you'd treated

her ugly. That'll be the trouble with most of your friends, I reckon.

Who's your other letter from?"

Madame von Marwitz roused herself from her state of contemplation. She

opened the second letter saying, tersely: "Scrotton."

"She ain't likely to take sides with Karen," Mrs. Talcott observed,

inserting her hand once more in the stocking she was darning, these

homely occupations having for the last few days been brought into the

music-room, since Mercedes would not be left alone. "She was always just

as jealous of Karen as could be."

She proceeded to darn and Madame von Marwitz to read, and as she read a

dark flush mounted to her face. Clenching her hand on Miss Scrotton's

letter, she brought it down heavily on the back of the chair she sat in.

Then, without speaking, she got up, tossed the letter to Mrs. Talcott,

and began to pace the room, setting the furniture that she encountered

out of her way with vindictive violence.

"My Darling, Darling Mercedes," Miss Scrotton wrote, "This is too

terrible. Shall I come to you at once? I thought this morning after

I had seen Mrs. Forrester and read your heartbreaking letter that I

would start to-day; but let me hear from you, you may be coming up

to town. If you stay in Cornwall, Mercedes, you must not be alone;

you must not; and I am, as you know, devoted heart and soul. If all

the world turned against you, Mercedes, I should keep my faith in

you. I need hardly tell you what is being said. Claude Drew is in

London and though, naturally, he does not dare face your friends

with his story, rumours are abroad. Betty Jardine does not know

him, but already she has heard; I met her only a few hours ago and

the miserable little creature was full of malicious satisfaction.

The story that she has heard--and believes--and that London will

believe--is the crude, gross one that facts, so disastrously, have

lent colour to; you, in a fit of furious jealousy, driving Karen

away. My poor, great, suffering friend, I need not tell you that I

understand. Your letter rings true to me in every line, and is but

too magnanimous.--Oh Mercedes!--had you but listened to my warnings

about that wretched man. Do you remember that I told you that you

were scattering your pearls before swine? And your exculpation of

Karen did not convince me as it seemed to do Mrs. Forrester. A

really guileless woman is not found--late at night--in a man's

arms. I cannot forget Karen's origins. There must be in her the

element of reckless passion. Mr. Drew is spreading a highly

idealised account of her and says that to see you together was to

see Antigone in the clutches of Clytemnestra. There is some

satisfaction in knowing that the miserable man is quite distracted

and is haunted by the idea that Karen may have committed suicide.

Betty Jardine says that in that case you and he would have to

appear at the inquest.--Oh, my poor Mercedes!--But I feel sure that

this is impossible. Temper, not tragedy, drove Karen from you and

it was on her part a dastardly action. I am seeing everybody that I

can; they shall have my version. The Duchess is in the country; I

have wired to her that I will go to her at once if you do not send

for me; it is important that she should have the facts as I see

them before these abominable rumours reach her. Dear Mrs. Forrester

means, I am sure, to do loyally; you may count upon her to listen

to no scandal; but its breath alarms and chills her: she does not

interpret your letter as I do.

"Good-bye, my dear one. Wire to me please, at once. Ever and always

_ton Eleanor devouée_."

"Well," Mrs. Talcott commented warily, folding the letter and glancing

at Madame von Marwitz; "she don't let any grass grow under her feet,

does she? Do you want her down?"

"Want her! Why should I want her! The insufferable fool!" cried Madame

von Marwitz still striding to and fro with tigerish regularity. "Does

she think me, too, a fool, to be taken in by her grimaces of loyalty

when it is as apparent as the day that delight is her chief emotion.

Here is her opportunity--_parbleu!_--At last! I am in the dust--and if

also in the dock so much the better. She will stand by me when others

fall away. She will defend the prostrate Titaness from the vultures that

prey upon her and gain at last the significance she has, for so long, so

eagerly and so fruitlessly pursued. Ah!--_par exemple!_ Let her come to

me expecting gratitude. I will spurn her from me like a dog!" Madame von

Marwitz, varying her course, struck a chair aside as she spoke.

"Well, I shouldn't fly out at her if I was you," said Mrs. Talcott.

"She's as silly as they make 'em, I allow, but it's all to the good if

her silliness keeps her sticking to you through thick and thin. It's

just as well to have someone around to drive off the vultures, even if

it's only a scarecrow--and Miss Scrotton is better than that. She's a

pretty brainy woman, for all her silliness, and she's pretty fond of

you, too, only you haven't treated her as well as she thinks you ought

to have, and it makes her feel kind of spry and cheerful to see that her

time's come to show you what a fine fellow she is. Most folks are like

that, I guess," Mrs. Talcott mused, returning to her stocking, "they

don't suffer so powerful over their friends' misfortunes if it gives

them a chance of showing what fine fellows they are."

"Friends!" Madame von Marwitz repeated with scorching emphasis.

"Friends! Truly I have proved them, these friends of mine. Cowards and

traitors all, or crouching hounds. I am to be left, I perceive, with the

Scrotton as my sole companion." But now she paused in her course, struck

by a belated memory. "You had a letter. You have heard from the

husband."

"Yes, I have," said Mrs. Talcott, "and you may as well see it." She drew

forth Gregory's letter from under the heap of darning appliances on her

lap.

Madame von Marwitz snatched it from her and read it, once rapidly, once

slowly; and then, absorbed again in dark meditations, she stood holding

it, her eyes fixed on the ground.

"He ain't as violent as might be expected, is he?" Mrs. Talcott

suggested. Distrust was abroad in the air between her and Mercedes; she

offered the fact of Gregory's temperateness as one that might mitigate

some anticipations.

"He is as insolent as might be expected," said Madame von Marwitz. She

flung the letter back to Mrs. Talcott, resuming her pacing, with a

bitter laugh. "And to think," she said presently, "that I hoped--but

truly hoped--with all my heart--to reconcile them! To think that I

offered myself to Karen as an intermediary. It was true--yes, literally

true--what I told Mrs. Forrester--that I spoke to Karen of it--with all

love and gentleness and that she turned upon me like a tigress."

"And you'll recollect," said Mrs. Talcott, "that I told you to keep your

hands off them and that you'd made enough mischief as it was. Why I

guess you did hope she'd go back. You wanted to get rid of Karen and to

have that young man to yourself; that's the truth, but you didn't tell

that to Mrs. Forrester."

"I deny it," said Madame von Marwitz; but mechanically; her thoughts

were elsewhere. She still paced.

"Well," said Mrs. Talcott, "you'd better send that telegram to Miss

Scrotton, telling her not to come, or you'll have her down here as soon

as she's seen the Duchess."

"Send it; send it at once," said Madame von Marwitz. "Tell her that I do

not need her. Tell her that I will write." The force of her fury had

passed; counsels of discretion were making themselves felt. "Go at once

and send it."

She paused again as Mrs. Talcott rose. "If Karen is not found within

three days, Tallie, I go to London. I believe that she is in London."

Mrs. Talcott faced her. "If she's in London she'll be found as soon by

Mr. Jardine as by you."

"Yes; that may be," said Mercedes, and discretion, now, had evidently

the mastery; "but Karen will not refuse to see me. I must see her. I

must implore her forgiveness. You would not oppose that, would you,

Tallie?"

"No, I'd not oppose your asking her to forgive you," Mrs. Talcott

conceded, "when she's got back to her husband. Only I advise you to stay

where you are till you hear she's found."

"I will do as you say, Tallie," said Madame von Marwitz meekly. She went

to the piano, and seating herself began to play the _Wohltemperirtes

Clavier_.

CHAPTER XL

Six days had passed since Karen's disappearance. The country had been

searched; London, still, was being examined, and the papers were

beginning to break into portraits of the missing girl. Karen became

remote, non-existent, more than dead, it seemed, when her face, like

that of some heroine of a newspaper novelette, gazed at one from the

breakfast-table. The first time that this happened, Madame von Marwitz,

flinging the sheet from her, had burst into a violent storm of weeping.

She sat, on the afternoon of the sixth day, in a sunny corner of the

lower terrace and turned the leaves of a book with a listless hand. She

was to be alone till dinner-time; Tallie had gone in to Helston by bus,

and she had the air of one who feels solitude at once an oppression and

a relief. She read little, raising her eyes to gaze unseeingly over the

blue expanses stretched beneath her or to look down as vaguely into the

eyes of Victor, who lay at her feet. The restless spirit of the house

had reached Victor. He lay with his head on his extended paws in an

attitude of quiescence; but his ears were pricked to watchfulness, his

eyes, as he turned them now and again up to his mistress, were troubled.

Aware of his glance, on one occasion, Madame von Marwitz stooped and

caressed his head, murmuring: "_Nous sommes des infortunés, hein, mon

chien._" Her voice was profoundly sad. Victor understood her. Slightly

thudding his tail he gave a soft responsive groan; and it was then,

while she still leaned to him and still caressed his head, that shrill,

emphatic voices struck on Madame von Marwitz's ear.

The gravelled nook where she sat, her garden chair, with its adjusted

cushions, set against a wall, was linked by ascending paths and terraces

to the cliff-path, and this again, though only through a way overgrown

with gorse and bramble, to the public coast-guards' path along the

cliff-top. The white stones that marked the way for the coast-guards

made a wide _détour_ behind Madame von Marwitz's property and this

nearer egress to the cliff was guarded by a large placard warning off

trespassers. Yet, looking in the direction of the voices, Madame von

Marwitz, to her astonishment, saw that three ladies, braving the

interdict, were actually marching down in single file upon her.

One was elderly and two were young; they wore travelling dress, and, as

she gazed at them in chill displeasure, the features of the first became

dimly familiar to her. Where, she could not have said, yet she had seen

that neat, grey head before, that box-like hat with its depending veil,

that firmly corseted, matronly form, with its silver-set pouch,

suggesting, typical of the travelling American lady as it was, a

marsupial species. She did not know where she had seen this lady; but

she was a travelling American; she accosted one in determined tones,

and, at some time in the past, she had waylaid and inconvenienced her.

Madame von Marwitz, as the three trooped down upon her, did not rise.

She pointed to the lower terrace. "This is private property," she said,

and her aspect might well have turned the unwary visitors, Acteon-like,

into stags, "I must ask you to leave it at once. You see the small door

in the garden wall below; it is unlocked and it leads to the village.

Good-day to you."

But, with a singularly bright and puckered look, the look of a

surf-bather, who measures with swift eye the height of the rolling

breaker and plunges therein, the elderly lady addressed her with

extraordinary volubility.

"Baroness, you don't remember us--but we've met before, we have a mutual

friend:--Mrs. General Tollman of St. Paul's, Minnesota.--Allow me to

introduce myself again:--Mrs. Slifer--Mrs. Hamilton K. Slifer:--my

girls, Maude and Beatrice. We had the privilege of making your

acquaintance over a year ago, Baroness, at the station in London, just

before you sailed, and we had some talks on the steamer to that

perfectly charming woman, Miss Scrotton. I hope she's well. We're over

again this year, you see; we pine for dear old England and come just as

often as we can. We feel we belong here more than over there sometimes,

I'm afraid,"--Mrs. Slifer laughed swiftly and deprecatingly.--"My girls

are so often taken for English girls, the Burne-Jones type you know.

We've got friends staying at Mullion, so we thought we'd just drop down

on Cornwall for a little tour after we landed at Southampton, and we

drove over this afternoon and came down by the cliff--we are just crazy

about your scenery, Baroness--it's just the right setting for you--we've

been saying so all day--to have a peek at the house we've heard so much

about; and we don't want to disturb you, but it's the greatest possible

pleasure, Baroness, to have this beautiful glimpse of you--with your

splendid dog--how d' ye do, Victor--why I do believe he remembers me; we

petted him so much at the station when your niece was holding him. We

saw Mrs. Jardine the other day, Baroness--such a pleasant surprise that

was, too--only we're sorry to see she's so delicate. The New Forest will

be just the place for her. We stayed there three days after landing,

because my Beatrice here was very sea-sick and I wanted her to have a

little rest. We were simply crazy over it. I do hope Mrs. Jardine's

getting better."

All this had been delivered with such speed, such an air of decision and

purpose, that Madame von Marwitz, who had risen in her bewildered

indignation and stood, her book beneath her arm, her white cloak caught

about her, had found no opportunity to check the torrent of speech, and

as these last words came as swiftly and as casually as the rest she

could hardly, for a moment, collect her faculties.

"My niece? Mrs. Jardine?" she repeated, with a wild, wan utterance.

"What do you say of her?"

It was at this moment that Miss Beatrice began, in the background, to

adjust her camera. She told her mother and sister afterwards that she

seemed to feel it in her bones that something was doing.

Mrs. Slifer, emerging from her breaker in triumph, struck out, blinking

and smiling affably. "We heard all about the wedding in America," she

said, "and we thought we might call upon her in London and see that

splendid temple you'd given her--we heard all about that, too. I never

saw a picture of him, but I knew her in a minute, naturally, though she

did look so pulled down. Why, Baroness--what's the matter!"

Madame von Marwitz had suddenly clutched Mrs. Slifer's arm with an

almost appalling violence of mien and gesture.

"What is the matter?" Madame von Marwitz repeated, shaking Mrs. Slifer's

arm. "Do you know what you are saying? My niece has been lost for a

week! The whole country is searching for her! Where have you seen her?

When was it? Answer me at once!"

"Why Baroness, by all means, but you needn't shake my head off," said

Mrs. Slifer, not without dignity, raising her free hand to straighten

her hat. "We've never heard a word about it. Why this is perfectly

providential.--Baroness--I must ask you not to go on shaking me like

that. I've got a very delicate stomach and the least thing upsets my

digestion."

"_Justes cieux!_" Madame von Marwitz cried, dropping Mrs. Slifer's arm

and raising her hands to her head, while, in the background, Miss

Beatrice's kodak gave a click--"Will the woman drive me mad! Karen! My

child! Where is she!"

"Why, we saw her at the station at Brockenhurst--in the New

Forest--didn't we Maude," said Mrs. Slifer, "and it must have been--now

let me see--" poor Mrs. Slifer collected her wits, a bent forefinger at

her lips. "To-day's Thursday and we got to Mullion yesterday--and we

stopped at Winchester for a day and night on our way to the New Forest,

it was on Saturday last of course. We'd been having a drive about that

part of the forest and we were taking the train and they had just come

and we saw them on the opposite platform. He was just helping her out of

the train and we didn't have any time to go round and speak to them--"

"They!" Madame von Marwitz nearly shouted. "She was with a man! Last

Saturday! Who was it? Describe him to me! Was he slender--with fair

hair--dark eyes--the air of a poet?" She panted. And her aspect was so

singular that Miss Beatrice, startled out of her professional readiness,

failed to snap it.

"Why no," said Mrs. Slifer, keeping her clue. "I shouldn't say a

poetical looking man, should you, Maude? A fleshy man--very big and

fleshy, and he was taking such good care of her and looked so kind of

tender and worried that I concluded he was her husband. She looked like

a very sick woman, Baroness."

"Fleshy?" Madame von Marwitz repeated, and the word, in her moan, was

almost graceful. "Fleshy, you say? An old man? A stout old man?" she

held her hands distractedly pressed to her head. "What stout old man

does Karen know? Is it a stranger she has met?"

"No, he wasn't old. This was a young man, Baroness. He had--now let me

see--his hair was sort of red--I remember noticing his hair; and he wore

knee-pants and a soft hat with a feather in it and was very high

coloured."

"_Bon Dieu!_" Madame von Marwitz gasped. She had again, while Mrs.

Slifer spoke, seized her by the arm as though afraid that she might

escape her and she now gazed with a fixed gaze above Mrs. Slifer's head

and through the absorbed Maude and Beatrice. "Red hair?--A large young

man?--Was he clean shaven? Did he wear eyeglasses? Had he the face of a

musician? Did he look like an Englishman--an English gentleman?"

Mrs. Slifer, nodding earnest assent to the first questions, shook her

head at the latter. "No, he didn't. What I said to Maude and Beatrice

was that Mr. Jardine looked more German than English. He looked just

like a German student, Baroness."

"Franz Lippheim!" cried Madame von Marwitz. She sank back upon the seat

from which she had risen, putting a hand before her eyes.

Victor, at her knees, laid a paw upon her lap and whined an

interrogative sympathy. The three American ladies gathered near and

gazed in silence upon the great woman, and Beatrice, carefully adjusting

her camera, again took a snap. The picture of Madame von Marwitz, with

her hand before her eyes, her anxious dog at her knees, found its way

into the American press and illustrated touchingly the story of the lost

adopted child. Madame von Marwitz was not sorry when, among a batch of

press-cuttings, she came across the photograph and saw that her most

genuine emotion had been thus made public.