was in her eyes; but curious, now, of other objects, they took in,
weighed and measured the little group before her; power grew in them, an
upwelling of force and strategy.
She smiled upon the Slifers and she rose.
"You have done me an immeasurable service," she said, and as she spoke
she took Mrs. Slifer's hand with a noble dignity. "You have lifted me
from despair. It is blessed news that you bring. My child is safe with a
good, a talented man; one for whom I have the deepest affection. And in
the New Forest--at Brockenhurst--on Saturday. Ah, I shall soon have her
in my arms."
Still holding Mrs. Slifer's hand she led them up the terraces and
towards the house. "The poor child is ill, distraught. She had parted
from her husband--fled from him. Ah, it has been a miserable affair,
that marriage. But now, all will be well. _Bon Dieu!_ what joy! What
peace of heart you have brought me! I shall be with her to-morrow. I
start at once. And you, my good friends, let me hear your plans. Let me
be of service to you. Come with me for the last stage of your journey. I
will not part with you willingly."
"It's all simply too wonderful, Baroness," Mrs. Slifer gasped, as she
skipped along on her short legs beside the goddess-like stride of the
great woman, who held her--who held her very tightly. "We were just
going to drift along up to Tintagel and then work up to London, taking
in all the cathedrals we could on our way."
"And you will change your route in order to give me the pleasure of your
company. You will forfeit Tintagel: is it not so?" Madame von Marwitz
smiled divinely. "You will come with me in my car to Truro where we take
the train and I will drop you to-night at the feet of a cathedral. So.
Your luggage is at Mullion? That is simple. We wire to your friends to
pack and send it on at once. Leave it to me. You are in my hands. It is
a kindness that you will do me. I need you, Mrs. Slifer," she pressed
the lady's arm. "My old friend, who lives with me, has left me for the
day, and, moreover, she is too old to travel. I must not be alone. I
need you. It is a kindness that you will do me. Now you will wait for me
here and tea will be brought to you. I shall keep you waiting but for a
few moments."
It was to be lifted on the back of a genie. She had wafted them up,
along the garden paths, across the verandah, into the serenity and
spaciousness and dim whites and greens and silvers of the great
music-room, with a backward gaze that had, in all its sweetness,
something of hypnotic force and fixity.
She left them with the Sargent portrait looking down at them and the
room in its strangeness and beauty seemed part of the spell she laid
upon them. The Slifers, herded together in the middle of it, gazed about
them half awe-struck and spoke almost in whispers.
"Why, girls," said Mrs. Slifer, who was the first to find words, "this
is the most thrilling thing I ever came across."
"You've pulled it off this time, mother, and no mistake," said Maude,
glancing somewhat furtively up at the Sargent. "Do look at that
perfectly lovely dress she has on in that picture. Did you ever see such
pearls; and the eyes seem to follow you, don't they?"
"The poor, distracted thing just clings to us," said Mrs. Slifer. "I
shouldn't wonder if she was as lonely as could be."
"All the same," Beatrice, the doubting Thomas of the group, now
commented, "I don't think however excited she was she ought to have
shaken you like that, mother." Beatrice had examined the appurtenances
of the great room with a touch of nonchalance. It was she whom Gregory
had seen at the station, seated on the pile of luggage.
"That's petty of you, Bee," said Mrs. Slifer gravely. "Real small and
petty. It's a great soul at white heat we've been looking at."
Handcock at this point brought in tea, and after she had placed the tray
and disposed the plates of cake and bread-and-butter and left the
Slifers alone again, Mrs. Slifer went on under her breath, seating
herself to pour out the tea. "And do look at this tea-pot, girls; isn't
it too cute for words. My! What will the Jones say when they hear about
this! They'd give their eye-teeth to be with us now."
The Slifers, indeed, were never to forget their adventure. It was to be
impressed upon their minds not only by its supreme enviableness but by
its supreme discomfort. It was almost five when, like three Ganymedes
uplifted by the talons of a fierce, bright bird, they soared with Madame
von Marwitz towards Truro, and at Truro, in spite of a reckless speed
which desperately dishevelled their hair and hats, they arrived too late
to catch the 6.40 train for Exeter.
Madame von Marwitz strode majestically along the platform, her white
cloak trailing in the dust, called for station-masters, demanded special
trains, fixed haughty, uncomprehending eyes upon the officials who
informed her that she could not possibly get a train until ten, resigned
herself, with sundry exclamations of indignation and stamps of the foot,
to the tedious wait, sailed into the refreshment room only to sail out
again, mounted the car not yet dismissed, bore the Slifers to a hotel
where they had a dinner over which she murmured at intervals "_Bon Dieu,
est-ce-donc possible!_" and then, in the chill, dark evening, toured
about in the adjacent country until ten, when Burton was sent back to
Les Solitudes and when they all got into the train for Exeter.
She had never in all her life travelled alone before. She hardly knew
how to procure her ticket, and her helplessness in regard to box and
dressing-case was so apparent that Mrs. Slifer saw to the one and Maude
carried the other, together with the fur-lined coat when this was thrown
aside.
The hours that they passed with her in the train were the strangest that
the Slifers had ever passed. They were chilled, they were sleepy, they
were utterly exhausted; but they kept their eyes fixed on the
perplexing, resplendent object that upbore them.
Beatrice, it is true, showed by degrees, a slight sulkiness. She had not
liked it when, at Truro, Madame von Marwitz had supervised their wires
to the Jones, and she liked it less when Madame von Marwitz explained to
them in the train that she relied upon them not to let the Jones--or
anybody for the present--know anything about Mrs. Jardine. Something in
Madame von Marwitz's low-toned and richly murmured confidences as she
told Maude and Mrs. Slifer that it was important for Mrs. Jardine's
peace of mind, and for her very sanity, that her dreaded husband should
not hear of her whereabouts, made Beatrice, as she expressed it to
herself, "tired."
She looked out of the window while her mother and sister murmured, "Why
certainly, Baroness; why yes; we perfectly understand," leaning forward
in the illuminated carriage like docile conspirators.
After this Madame von Marwitz said that she would try to sleep; but,
propped in her corner, she complained so piteously of discomfort that
Mrs. Slifer and Maude finally divested themselves of their jackets and
contrived a pillow for her out of them. They assured her that they were
not cold and Madame von Marwitz, reclining now at full length, murmured
"_Mille remerciements_." Soon she fell asleep and Mrs. Slifer and Maude,
very cold and very unresentful, sat and watched her slumbers. From time
to time she softly snored. She was very comfortable in her fur-lined
cloak.
It was one o'clock when they reached Exeter and drove, dazed and numbed,
to a hotel. Here Madame von Marwitz further availed herself of the
services of Maude and Mrs. Slifer, for she was incapable of unpacking
her box and dressing-case. Mrs. Slifer maided her while Maude, with
difficulty at the late hour, procured her hot water, bouillon and toast.
Beatrice meanwhile, callously avowing her unworthiness, said that she
was "dead tired" and went to bed.
Madame von Marwitz bade Mrs. Slifer and Maude the kindest good-night,
smiling dimly at them over her bedroom candlestick as she ushered them
to the door. "So," she said; "I leave you to your cathedral."
When the Slifers arose next day, late, for they were very weary, they
found that Madame von Marwitz had departed by an early train.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, at Les Solitudes, old Mrs. Talcott turned from side to side
all night, sleepless. Her heart was heavy with anxiety.
Karen was found and to-morrow Mercedes would be with her; she had sent
for Mercedes, so the note pinned to Mrs. Talcott's dressing-table had
informed her, and Mercedes would write.
What had happened? Who were the unknown ladies who had appeared from no
one knew where during her absence at Helston and departed with Mercedes
for Truro?
"Something's wrong. Something's wrong," Mrs. Talcott muttered to herself
during the long hours. "I don't believe she's sent for Mercedes--not
unless she's gone crazy."
At dawn she fell at last into an uneasy sleep. She dreamed that she and
Mercedes were walking in the streets of Cracow, and Mercedes was a
little child. She jumped beside Mrs. Talcott, holding her by the hand.
The scene was innocent, yet the presage of disaster filled it with a
strange horror. Mrs. Talcott woke bathed in sweat.
"I'll get an answer to my telegram this morning," she said to herself.
She had telegraphed to Gregory last night, at once: "Karen is found.
Mercedes has gone to her. That's all I know yet."
She clung to the thought of Gregory's answer. Perhaps he, too, had news.
But she had no answer to her telegram. The post, instead, brought her a
letter from Gregory that had been written the morning before.
"Dear Mrs. Talcott," it ran. "Karen is found. The detectives
discovered that Mr. Franz Lippheim had not gone to Germany with his
family. They traced him to an inn in the New Forest. Karen is with
him and has taken his name. May I ask you, if possible, to keep
this fact from her guardian for the present.--Yours sincerely,
"Gregory Jardine."
When Mrs. Talcott had read this she felt herself overcome by a sudden
sickness and trembling. She had not yet well recovered from her illness
of the Spring. She crept upstairs to her room and went to bed.
CHAPTER XLI
It seemed to Karen, after hours had passed, that she had ceased to be
tired and that her body, wafted by an involuntary rhythm, was as light
as thistle-down on the wind.
She had crossed the Goonhilly Downs where the moonlight, spreading far
and wide with vast unearthly brightness, filled all the vision with
immensities of space and brought memories of strains from Schubert's
symphonies, silver monotonies of never-ending sound.
She had plunged down winding roads, blackly shadowed by their hedgerow
trees, passing sometimes a cottage that slept between its clumps of
fuchsia and veronica. She had climbed bare hill-sides where abandoned
mines or quarries had left desolate mementoes that looked in the
moonlight like ancient tombs and catacombs.
Horror lay behind her at Les Solitudes, a long, low cloud on the horizon
to which she had turned her back. The misery that had overpowered and
made her one with its dread realities lay beneath her feet. She was
lifted above it in a strange, disembodied enfranchisement all the night,
and the steady blowing of the wind, the leagues of silver, the mighty
sky with its far, high priestess, were part of an ecstasy of sadness,
impersonal, serene, hallucinated, like that of the music that
accompanied the rhythm of her feet.
The night was almost over and dawn was coming, when, on a long uphill
road, she felt her heart flag and her footsteps stagger.
The moon still rode sharp and high, but its light seemed concentrated in
its own glittering disk and the world was visible in an uncanny darkness
that was not dark. The magic of the night had vanished and the beat of
vast, winding melodies melted from Karen's mind leaving her dry and
brittle and empty, like a shell from which the tides have drawn away.
She knew what she had still to do. At the top of the road she was to
turn and cut across fields to a headland above Falmouth--from which a
path she knew led to the town. She had not gone to Helston, but had
taken this cross-country way to Falmouth because she knew that at any
hour of the night she might be missed and followed and captured. They
would not think of Falmouth; they would not dream that she could walk so
far. In the town she would pawn Onkel Ernst's watch and take the early
train to London and by evening she would be with Frau Lippheim. So she
had seen it all, in flashes, last night.
But now, toiling up the interminable road, clots of darkness floating
before her eyes, cold sweats standing on her forehead, the sense of her
exhaustion crushed down upon her. She tried to fix her thoughts on the
trivial memories and forecasts that danced in her mind. The odd blinking
of Mrs. Talcott's eyelid as she had told her story; the pattern of the
breakfast set that she and Gregory had used--ah, no!--not that! she must
not fix that memory!--the roofs and chimneys of some little German town
where she was to find a refuge; for though it was to join the Lippheims
that she fled, she did not see her life as led with theirs. Leaning upon
these pictures as if upon a staff she held, she reached the hill-top.
Her head now seemed to dance like a balloon, buffeted by the great
throbs of her blood. She trailed with leaden feet across the fields. In
the last high meadow she paused and looked down at the bend of the great
bay under the pallid sky and at the town lying like a scattering of
shells along its edge. How distant it was. How like a mirage.
A little tree was beside her and its leaves in the uncanny light looked
like crisp black metal. The sea was grey. The sunrise was still far off.
Karen sank beneath the tree and leaned her head against it. What should
she do if she were unable to walk on? There was still time--hours and
hours of time--till the train left Falmouth; but how was she to reach
Falmouth? Fears rolled in upon her like dark breakers, heaping
themselves one upon the other, stealthy, swift, not to be escaped. She
saw the horrible kindness in Mrs. Talcott's eyes, relegated, not
relinquished. She saw herself pursued, entrapped, confronted by Gregory,
equally entrapped, forced by her need, her helplessness, to come to her
and coldly determined--as she had seen him on that dreadful evening of
their parting--to do his duty by her, to make her and to keep her safe,
and his own dignity secure. To see him again, to strive against him
again, weaponless, now, without refuge, and revealed to herself and to
him as a creature whose whole life had been founded on illusion, to
strive not only against his ironic authority but, worst of all, against
a longing, unavowed, unlooked at, a longing that crippled and unstrung
her, and that ran under everything like a hidden river under granite
hills--she would die, she felt, rather than endure it.
She had closed her eyes as she leaned her head against the tree and when
she opened them she saw that the leaves of the tree had turned from
black to green and that the grass was green and the sea and sky faintly
blue. Above her head the long, carved ripples of the morning cirri
flushed with a heavenly pink and there came from a thicket of a little
wood the first soft whistle of a wakened bird. Another came and then
another, and suddenly the air was full of an almost jangling sweetness.
Karen felt herself trembling. Shudders ran over her. She was ravished to
life, yet without the answering power of life. Her longing, her
loneliness, her fear, were part of the intolerable loveliness and they
pierced her through and through.
She struggled to her feet, holding the tree in her clasp, and, after the
galvanised effort, she closed her eyes again, and again leaned her head
upon the bark.
Then it was that she heard footsteps, sudden footsteps, near. For a
moment a paralysis of fear held down her eyelids. "_Ach Gott!_" she
heard. And opening her eyes, she saw Franz Lippheim before her.
Franz Lippheim was dressed, very strangely dressed, in tweeds and
knicker-bockers and wore a soft round hat with a quill in it--the oddest
of hats--and had a knapsack on his back. The colours of the coming day
were caricatured in his ruddy face and red-gold hair, his bright green
stockings and bright red tie. He was Germanic, flagrant, incredible, and
a Perseus, an undreamed of, God-sent Perseus.
"_Ach Gott!_ Can it be so!" he was saying, as he approached her, walking
softly as though in fear of dispersing a vision.
And as, not speaking, still clasping her tree, she held out her hand to
him, he saw the extremity of her exhaustion and put his arm around her.
She did not faint; she kept her consciousness of the blue sky and the
cirri--golden now--and even of Franz's tie and eyeglasses, glistening
golden in the rising sunlight; but he had lowered her gently to the
ground, kneeling beside her, and was supporting her shoulders and
putting brandy to her lips. After a little while he made her drink some
milk and then she could speak to him.
She must speak and she must tell him that she had left her guardian. She
must speak of Tante. But what to say of her? The shame and pity that had
gone with her for days laid their fingers on her lips as she thought of
Tante and of why she had left her. Her mind groped for some availing
substitute.
"Franz," she said, "you must help me. I have left Tante. You will not
question me. There is a breach between us; she has been unkind to me. I
can never see her again." And now with clearer thought she found a
sufficient truth. "She has not understood about me and my husband. She
has tried to make me go back to him; and I have fled from her because I
was afraid that she would send for him. She is not as fond of me as I
thought she was, Franz, and I was a burden to her when I came. Franz,
will you take me to London, to your mother? I am going with you all to
Germany. I am going to earn my living there."
"_Du lieber Gott!_" Herr Lippheim ejaculated. He stared at Karen in
consternation. "Our great lady--our great Tante--has been unkind to you?
Is it then possible, Karen?"
"Yes, Franz; you must believe me. You must not question me."
"Trust me, my Karen," said Herr Lippheim now; "do not fear. It shall be
as you say. But I cannot take you to the Mütterchen in London, for she
is not there. They have gone back to Germany, Karen, and it is to
Germany that we must go."
"Can you take me there, Franz, at once? I have no money; but I am going
to pawn this watch that Onkel Ernst gave me."
"That is all simple, my Karen. I have money. I took with me the money
for my tour; I was on a walking-tour, do you see, and reached Falmouth
last night and had but started now to pay my respects at Les Solitudes.
I wished to see you, Karen, and to see if you were well. But it is very
far to your village. How have you come so far, at night?"
"I walked. I have walked all night. I am so tired, Franz. So tired. I do
not know how I shall go any further." She closed her eyes; her head
rested against his shoulder.
Franz Lippheim looked down at her with an infinite compassion and
gentleness. "It will all be well, my Karen; do not fear," he said. "The
train does not go from Falmouth for three hours still. We will take it
then and go to Southampton and sail for Germany to-night. And for now,
you will drink this milk--so, yes; that is well;--and eat this
chocolate;--you cannot; it will be for later then. And you will lie
still with my cloak around you, so; and you will sleep. And I will sit
beside you and you will have no troubled thoughts. You are with your
friends, my Karen." While he spoke he had wrapped her round and laid her
head softly on a folded garment that he drew from his knapsack; and in a
few moments he saw that she slept, the profound sleep of complete
exhaustion.
Franz Lippheim sat above her, not daring to light his pipe for fear of
waking her. He, watched the glory of the sunrise. It was perhaps the
most wonderful hour in Franz's life.
Phrases of splendid music passed through his mind, mingling with the
sound of the sea. No personal pain and no personal hope was in his
heart. He was uplifted, translated, with the beauty of the hour and its
significance.
Karen needed him. Karen was to come to them. He was to see her
henceforward in his life. He was to guard and help her. He was her
friend. The splendour and the peace of the golden sky and golden sea
were the angels of a great initiation. Nothing could henceforth be as it
had been. His brain stirred with exquisite intuitions, finding form for
them in the loved music that, henceforth, he would play as he had never
before played it. And when he looked from the sea and sky down at the
sleeping face beside him, wasted and drawn and piteous in its repose,
large tears rose in his eyes and flowed down his cheeks, and the sadness
was more beautiful than any joy that he had known.
What she had suffered!--the dear one. What they must help her to forget!
To her, also, the hour would send it angels: she would wake to a new
life.
He turned his eyes again to the rising sun, and his heart silently
chanted its love and pride and sadness in the phrases of Beethoven, of
Schubert and of Brahms, and from time to time, softly, he muttered to
himself, this stout young German Jew with the red neck-tie and the
strange round hat: "_Süsses Kind! Unglückliches Kind! Oh--der schöne
Tag!_"
CHAPTER XLII
Madame Von Marwitz looked out from her fly at the ugly little wayside
inn with its narrow lawn and its bands of early flowers. Trees rose
round it, the moors of the forest stretched before. It was remote and
very silent.
Here it was, she had learned at the station, some miles away, that the
German lady and gentleman were staying, and the lady was said to be very
ill. Madame von Marwitz's glance, as it rested upon the goal of her
journey, had in it the look of vast, constructive power, as when, for
the first time, it rested on a new piece of music, realized it, mastered
it, possessed it, actual, in her mind, before her fingers gave it to the
world. So, now, she realized and mastered and possessed the scene that
was to be enacted.
She got out of the fly and told the man to carry in her box and
dressing-case and then to wait. She opened the little gate, and as she
did so, glancing up, she saw Franz Lippheim standing looking out at her
from a ground-floor window. His gaze was stark in its astonishment. She
returned it with a solemn smile. In another moment she had put the
landlady aside with benign authority and was in the little sitting-room.
"My Franz!" she exclaimed in German. "Thank God!" She threw her arms
around his neck and burst into sobs.
Franz, holding a pipe extended in his hand, stood for a moment in
silence his eyes still staring their innocent dismay over her shoulder.
Then he said: "How have you come here, _gnädige Frau_?"
"Come, Franz!" Madame von Marwitz echoed, weeping: "Have I not been
seeking my child for the last six days! Love such as mine is a torch
that lights one's path! Come! Yes; I am come. I have found her! She is
safe, and with my Franz!"
"But Karen is ill, very ill indeed," said Franz, speaking with some
difficulty, locked as he was in the great woman's arms. "The doctor
feared for her life three days ago. She has been delirious. And it is
you, _gnädige Frau_, whom she fears;--you and her husband."
Madame von Marwitz leaned back her head to draw her hand across her
eyes, clearing them of tears.
"But do I not know it, Franz?" she said, smiling a trembling smile at
him. "Do I not know it? I have been in fault; yes; and I will make
confession to you. But--oh!--my child has punished me too cruelly. To
leave me without a word! At night! It was the terror of her husband that
drove her to it, Franz. Yes; it has been a delirium of terror. She was
ill when she went from me."
She had released him now, though keeping his hands in hers, and she
still held them as they sat down at the centre table in the little room,
he on one side, she on the other, she leaning to him across it; and she
read in his face his deep discomfort.
"But you see, _gnädige Frau_," Franz again took up his theme; "she
believes that you wish to send her back to him; she has said it; she
could not trust you. And so she fled from you. And I have promised to
take care of her. I am to take her to my mother in Germany as soon as
she can travel. We were on our way to Southampton and would have been,
days since, with the Mütterchen, if in the train Karen had not become so
ill--so very ill. It was a fever that grew on her, and delirium. I did
not know what was best to do. And I remembered this little inn where the
Mütterchen and we four stayed some years ago, when we came first to
England. The landlady was very good; and so I thought of her and brought
Karen here. But when she is better I must take her to Germany, _gnädige
Frau_. I have promised it."
While Franz thus spoke a new steadiness had come to Madame von Marwitz's
eyes. They dilated singularly, and with them her nostrils, as though she
drew a deep new breath of realisation. It was as if Franz had let down a
barrier; pointed out a way. There was no confession to be made to Franz.
Karen had spared her.
She looked at him, looked and looked, and she shook her head with
infinite gentleness. "But Franz," she said, "I do not wish her to go
back to her husband. I was in fault, yes, grave fault, to urge it upon
her; but Karen's terror was her mistake, her delirium. It was for my
sake that she had left him, Franz, because to me he had shown insolence
and insult;--for your sake, too, Franz, for he tried to part her from
all her friends and of you he spoke with an unworthy jealousy. But
though my heart bled that Karen should be tied to such a man, I knew him
to be not a bad man; hard, narrow, but in his narrowness upright, and
fond, I truly believed it, of his wife. And I could not let her break
her marriage--do you not see, Franz,--if it were for my sake. I could
not see her young life ruined in its dawn. I wished to write to my good
friend Mrs. Forrester--who is also Karen's friend, and his, and I
offered myself as intermediary, as intercessor from him to Karen, if
need be. Was it so black, my fault? For it was this that Karen resented
so cruelly, Franz. Our Karen can be harsh and quick, you know that,
Franz. But no! Can she--can you, believe for one moment that I would now
have her return to him, if, indeed, it were any longer possible? No,
Franz; no; no; no; Karen shall never see that man again. Only over my
dead body should he pass to her. I swear it, not only to you, but to
myself. And Franz, dear Franz, what I think of now is you, and your love
and loyalty to my Karen. You have saved her; you have saved me; it is
life you bring--a new life, Franz," and smiling upon him, her cheeks
still wet with tears, she softly sang Tristan's phrase to Kurvenal:
"_Holder! Treuer!--wie soll dir Tristan danken!_"
Her joy, her ecstasy of gratitude, shone upon him. She was the tutelary
goddess of his family. Trust, for himself and for his loved Karen, went
out to her and took refuge beneath the great wings she spread. And as
she held his hands and smiled upon him he told her in his earnest,
honest German, all that had happened to him and Karen; of his
walking-tour; and of the meeting on the Falmouth headland at dawn; and
of their journey here. "And one thing, _gnädige Frau_," he said, "that
troubled me, but that will now be well, since you are come to us, is
that I have told them here that Karen is my wife. See you, _gnädige
Frau_, the good landlady knows us all and knows that Lotta, Minna and
Elizabeth are the only daughters that the Mütterchen has--besides the
little ones. I remembered that the Mütterchen had told her this; she
talked much with her; it was but three years ago, _gnädige Frau_; it was
not time enough for a very little one to grow up; so I could not say
that Karen was my sister; and I have to be much with her; I sit beside
her all through the night--for she is afraid to be alone, the _armes
Kind_; and the good landlady and the maid must sleep. So it seemed to me
that it was right to tell them that Karen was my wife. You think so,
too, _nicht wahr, gnädige Frau_?"
Madame von Marwitz had listened, her deeply smiling eyes following,
understanding all; and as the last phase of the story came they deepened
to only a greater sweetness. They showed no surprise. A content almost
blissful shone on Franz Lippheim.
"It is well, Franz," she said. "Yes, you have done rightly. All is well;
more well than you yet perhaps see. Karen is safe, and Karen shall be
free. What has happened is God-sent. The situation is in our hands."
For a further moment, silent and weighty, she gazed at him and then she
added: "There need be no fear for you and Karen. I will face all pain
and difficulty for you both. You are to marry Karen, Franz."
The shuttle that held the great gold thread of her plan was thrown. She
saw the pattern stretch firm and fair before her. Silently and sweetly,
with the intentness of a sibyl who pours and holds forth a deep potion,
she smiled at him across the table.
Franz, who all this time had been leaning on his arms, his hands in
hers, his eyes, through their enlarging pince-nez, fixed on her, did not
move for some moments after the astounding statement reached him. His
stillness and his look of arrested stupor suggested, indeed, a large
blue-bottle slung securely in the subtle threads of a spider's web and
reduced to torpid acquiescence by the spider's stealthy ministrations.
He gazed with mildness, almost with blandness, upon the enchantress, as
if some prodigy of nature overtopping all human power of comment had
taken place before him. Then in a small, feeble voice he said: "_Wass
meinen Sie, gnädige Frau?_"
"Dear, dear Franz," Madame von Marwitz murmured, pressing his hands with
maternal solicitude, and thus giving him more time to adjust himself to
his situation. "It is not as strange as your humility finds it. And it
is now inevitable. You do not I think realize the position in which you
and Karen are placed. I am not the only witness; the landlady, the
doctor, the maid, and who knows who else,--all will testify that you
have been here with Karen as your wife, that you have been with her day
and night. Do not imagine that Mr. Jardine has sought to take Karen back
or would try to. He has made no movement to get her back. He has most
completely acquiesced in their estrangement. And when he hears that she
has fled with you, that she has passed here, for a week almost, as your
wife, he will be delighted--but delighted, with all his anger against
you--to seize the opportunity for divorcing her and setting himself
free."
But while she spoke Franz's large and ruddy face had paled. He had drawn
his hands from hers though she tried to retain them. He rose from his
chair. "But, _gnädige Frau_," he said, "that is not right. No; that is
wrong. He may not divorce Karen."
"How will you prevent him from divorcing her, Franz?" Madame von Marwitz
returned, holding him with her eye, while, in great agitation, he passed
his hand repeatedly over his forehead and hair. "You have been seen. I
have been told by those who had seen you that you and Karen were here.
Already Karen's husband must know it. And if you could prevent it, would
you wish to, Franz? Would you wish, if you could, to bind her to this
man for life? Try to think clearly, my friend. It is Karen's happiness
that hangs in the balance. It is upon that that we must fix our eyes. My
faith forbids divorce; but I am not _dévote_, and Karen is not of my
faith, nor is her husband, nor are you. I take my stand beside Karen. I
say that one so young, so blameless, so unfortunate, shall not have her
life wrecked by one mistake. With me as your champion you and Karen can
afford to snap your fingers at the world's gross verdict. Karen will be
with me. I will take her abroad. I will cherish her as never child was
cherished. We make no defence. In less than a year the case is over.
Then you will come for Karen and you will be married from my house. I
will give Karen a large dot; she shall want for nothing in her life. And
you and she will live in Germany, with your friends and your great
music, and your babies, Franz. What I had hoped for two years ago shall
come to pass and this bad dream shall be forgotten."
Franz, looking dazedly about him while she spoke, now dropped heavily on
his chair and joining his hands before his eyes leaned his head upon
them. He muttered broken ejaculations. "_Ach Gott! Unbegreiflich!_ Such
happiness is not to think on! You are kind, kind, _gnädige Frau_. You
believe that all is for the best. But Karen--_gnädige Frau_, our little
Karen! She does not love me. How could she be happy with me? Never for
one moment have I hoped. It was against my wish that the Mütterchen
wrote to you that time two years ago. No; always I saw it; she had
kindness only for me and friendliness; but no love; never any love. And
it will be to smirch our Karen's name, _gnädige Frau_. It will be to
accept disgrace for her. We must defend her from this accusation, for it
is not true. Ah, _gnädige Frau_, you are powerful in the world. Can you
not make it known that it is untrue, that Karen did not come to me?"
He leaned his forehead on his clasped hands, protesting, appealing,
expostulating, and Madame von Marwitz, leaning slightly back in her
chair, resting her cheek against her finger, scrutinized his bent head
with a change of expression. Intently, almost fiercely, with half-closed
lids, she examined Franz's crisp upstanding hair, the thick rims of his
ruddy ears, the thick fingers with their square and rather dirty nails
and the large turquoise that adorned one of them. Cogitation,
self-control and fierce determination were in her gaze; then it veiled
itself again in gentleness and, with a steady and insistent patience,
she said: "You are astray, my friend, much astray, and very ignorant.
Look with me at fact, and then say, if you can, that we can make it
known that it is untrue. You are known to be in love with Karen; you are
known to have asked me for her hand. Karen makes a marriage that is
unhappy; it is known that she is not happy with her husband. Did you not
yourself see that all was not well with them? It has been known for
long. You arrive in London; Karen sees you again; next day she flies
from Mr. Jardine and takes refuge with you at your lodgings. Yes, you
will say, but your mother, your sisters, too, were there. Yes, the world
will answer, and she came to me to wait till they were gone and you free
to join her. In a fortnight's time she seizes a pretext for leaving
me--I speak of what the world will say Franz--and meets you. Will the
world, will Karen's husband, believe that it was by chance? She is found
hidden with you here, those who see you come to me; it is so I find you,
and she is here bearing your name. Come, my friend, it is no question of
saving Karen from smirches; the world will say that it is your duty as
an honourable man to marry Karen. Better that she should be known as
your wife than as your abandoned mistress. So speaks the world, Franz.
And though we know that it speaks falsely we have no power to undeceive
it. But now, mark me, my friend; I have no wish to undeceive it. I do
not see the story, told even in these terms, as disgraceful; I do not
see my Karen smirched. I am not one who weighs the human heart and its
needs in the measures of convention. Bravely and in truth, Karen frees
herself. So be it. You say that she does not love you. I say, Franz, how
do you know that? I say that if she does not love you yet, she will love
you; and I add, Franz, for the full ease of your conscience, that if
Karen, when she is free, does not wish to marry you, then--it is very
simple--she remains with me and does not marry. But what I ask of you
now is bravery and discretion, for our Karen's sake. She must be freed;
in your heart you know that it is well that Karen should be freed. In
your heart you know that Karen must not be bound till death to this man
she loathes and dreads and will never see again. If not you, Franz, is
it not possible that Karen may love another man one day? But it is you
that she will love; nay, it is you she loves. I know my Karen's heart.
Tell me, Franz, am I not right in what I say?"
For some time now Franz had been looking at her and her voice grew more
tender and more soft as she saw that he found no word of protest. He sat
upright, still, at intervals, running his fingers through his hair,
breathing deeply, near tears, yet arrested and appeased. And hope,
beautiful, strange hope, linking itself to the intuitions of the dawn
when he had sat above Karen's sleep, stole into his heart. Why could it
not be true? Why should not Karen come to love him? She would be with
him, free, knowing how deep and tender was his love for her, and that it
made no claim. Would not her heart answer his one day? And as if
guessing at his thoughts Madame von Marwitz added, the dimness of tears
in her own eyes: "See, my Franz, let it be in this wise. I bring Karen
to your mother in a few days; she will be strong enough for travel in a
few days, is it not so? She will then be with you and yours in Germany,
and I watching over you. So you will see her from day to day? So you
will gently mend the torn young heart and come to read it. And you may
trust a wise old woman, Franz, when I prophesy to you that Karen's heart
will turn and grow to yours. You may trust one wise in hearts when she
tells you that Karen is to be your loving wife."
She rose, and the sincerity of her voice was unfeigned. She was moved,
deeply moved, by the beauty of the pattern she wove. She was deeply
convinced by her own creation.
Franz, too, got up, stumbling.
"And now, Franz," she said, "we say _au revoir_. I have come and it is
not seemly that you remain here longer. You go to Germany to make ready
for us and I write to your mother to-day. Ah!--the dear Lise! Her heart
will rejoice! Where is your room, Franz, and where is Karen's?"
There were three doors in the little sitting-room. She had entered from
the passage by one. She looked now towards the others.
Franz opened one, it showed a flight of stairs. "Karen's room is up
those stairs," he said, closing it very softly. "And mine is here, next
this one where we are. We are very quiet, you see, and shut in to
ourselves. There is no other way to Karen's room but this, and her room
is at the back, so that no disturbance reaches her. I think that she
still sleeps, _gnädige Frau_; we must not wake her if she sleeps. I will
take you to her as soon as she is awake."
Madame von Marwitz, with her unchanging smile, was pressing him towards
the door of his own room.
"I will wait. I will wait until she wakes, Franz. Your luggage? It is
here? I will help you to pack, my Franz."
She had drawn him into his room, her arm passed into his, and, even
while she spoke, she pointed out the few effects scattered here and
there. And, with his torpid look of a creature hypnotized, Franz obeyed
her, taking from her hands the worn brush, the shaving appliances, the
socks and book and nightshirt.
When all were laid together in his knapsack and he had drawn the straps,
he turned to her, still with the dazzled gaze. "But this may wait," he
said, "until I have said good-bye to Karen."
Madame von Marwitz looked at him with an almost musing sweetness. She
had the aspect of a conjuror who, with a last light puff of breath or
touch of a magic finger, puts forth the final resource of a stupefying
dexterity. So delicately, so softly, with a calm that knew no doubt or
hesitation, she shook her head. "No; no farewells, now, my Franz. That
would not be well. That would agitate her. She could not listen to all
our story. She could not understand. Later, when she is in my arms, at
peace, I will tell her all and that you are gone to wait for us, and
give her your adieu."
He gazed at the conjuror. "But, _gnädige Frau_, may I not say good-bye
to Karen? Together we could tell her. It will be strange to her to wake
and find that I am gone."
Her arm was passed in his again. She was leading him through the
sitting-room. And she repeated with no change of voice: "No, my Franz. I
know these illnesses. A little agitation is very bad. You will write to
her daily. She shall have your letters, every day. You promise me--but I
need not ask it of our Franz--to write. In three days, or in four, we
will be with you."
She had got him out of his room, out of the sitting-room, into the
passage. The cab still waited, the cabman dozed on his box in the spring
sunlight. Before the landlady Madame von Marwitz embraced Franz and
kissed and blessed him. She kept an arm round him till she had him at
the cab-door. She almost lifted him in.
"You will tell Karen--that you did not find it right--that I should say
good-bye to her," he stammered.
And with a last long pressure of the hand she said: "I will tell her,
Franz. We will talk much of you, Karen and I. Trust me, I am with you
both. In my hands you are safe."
The cab rolled away and Franz's face, from under the round hat and the
quill, looked back at the triumphant conjuror, dulled and dazed rather
than elated, by the spectacle of her inconceivable skill.
CHAPTER XLIII
Karen lay sleeping in the little room above. She had slept so much since
they had carried her, Franz, and the two women with kind faces, into
this little room; deep draughts of sleep, as though her exhausted nature
could never rest enough. Fever still drowsed in her blood and a haze of
half delirious visions often accompanied her waking. They seemed to
gather round her now, as, in confused and painful dreams, she rose from
the depths towards consciousness again. Dimly she heard the sound of
voices and her dream wove them into images of fear and sorrow.
She was running along the cliff-top. She had run for miles and it was
night and beside her yawned the black gulfs of the cliff-edge. And from
far below, in the darkness, she heard a voice wailing as if from some
creature lost upon the rocky beach. It was Gregory in some great peril.
Pity and fear beat upon her like black wings as she ran, and whether it
was to escape him or to succour him she did not know.
Then from the waking world came distinctly the sound of rolling wheels,
and opening her eyes she looked out upon her room, its low uneven
ceiling, its coloured print of Queen Victoria over the mantelpiece, its
text above the washhand-stand and chest of drawers. On the little table
beside her bed Onkel Ernst's watch ticked softly. The window was open
and a tree rustled outside. And through these small, familiar sounds she
still heard the rolling of retreating wheels. The terror of her dream
fastened upon this sound until another seemed to strike, like a soft,
stealthy blow, upon her consciousness.
Footsteps were mounting the stairs to her room. Not Franz's footsteps,
nor the doctor's, nor the landlady's, nor Annie the housemaid's. She
knew all these.
Who was it then who mounted, softly rustling, towards her? The terror of
the dream vanished in a tense, frozen panic of actuality.
She wished to scream, and could not; she wished to leap up and fly, but
there was no way of escape. It was Tante who came, slowly, softly,
rustling in silken fabrics; the very scent of her garments seemed wafted
before her, and Karen's heart stopped in its heavy beating as the door
handle gently turned and Tante stood within the room.
Karen looked at her and Madame von Marwitz looked back, and Madame von
Marwitz's face was almost as white as the death-like face on the pillow.
She said no word, nor did Karen, and in the long stillness delirium
again flickered through Karen's brain, and Tante, standing there, became
a nightmare presence, dead, gazing, immutable. Then she moved again, and
the slow, soft moving was more dreadful than the stillness, and coming
forward Tante fell on her knees beside the bed and hid her face in the
bed-clothes.
Karen gave a strange hoarse cry. She heard herself crying, and the sound
of her own voice seemed to waken her again to reality: "Franz! Franz!
Franz!"
Madame von Marwitz was weeping; her large white shoulders shook with
sobs. "Karen," she said, "forgive me! Karen, it is I. Forgive me!"
"Franz!" Karen repeated, turning her head away on the pillow.
"Karen, you know me?" said Madame von Marwitz. She had lifted her head
and she gazed through her tears at the strange, changed, yet so
intimately known, profile. It was as if Karen were the more herself,
reduced to the bare elements of personality; rocky, wasted, alienated.
"Do not kill me, my child," she sobbed, "Listen to me, Karen! I have
come to explain all, and to implore for your forgiveness." She possessed
herself of one of the hot, emaciated hands. Karen drew it away, but she
turned her head towards her.
Tante's tears, her words and attitude of abjection, dispersed the
nightmare horror. She understood that Tante had come not as a ghastly
wraith; not as a pursuing fury; but as a suppliant. Her eyes rested on
her guardian and their gaze, now, was like cold, calm daylight. "Why are
you here?" she asked.
Madame von Marwitz's sobs, at this, broke forth more violently. "You
remember our parting, my child! You remember my mad and shameful words!
How could I not come!" she articulated brokenly. "Oh, I have sought you
in terror, in unspeakable longing! My child--it was a madness. Did you
not see it? I went to you at dawn that day to kneel before you, as I
kneel now, and to implore your pardon. And you were gone! Oh, Karen--you
will listen to me now!"
"You need not tell me," said Karen. "I understand."
"Ah, no: ah, no:" said Madame von Marwitz, laying her supplicating hand
on the sleeve of Karen's nightdress. "You do not understand. How could
you--young and cold and flawless--understand my heart, my wild, stained
heart, Karen, my fierce and desolate and broken heart. You are air and
water; I am earth and fire; how could you understand my darkness and my
rage?" She spoke, sobbing, with a sincerity dreadful and irrefragable,
as if she stripped herself and showed a body scarred and burning. With
all the forces of her nature she threw herself on Karen's pity, tearing
from herself, with a humility far above pride and shame, the glamour
that had held Karen's heart to hers. Deep instinct guided her
spontaneity. Her glamour, now, must consist in having none; her nobility
must consist in abasement, her greatness in being piteous.
"Listen to me, Karen," she sobbed, "The world knows but one side of
me--you have known but one side;--even Tallie, who knows so much, who
understands so much--does not know the other--the dark and tortured
soul. I am not a good woman, Karen, the blood that flows in my veins is
tainted, ambiguous. I have sinned. I have been savage and dastardly; but
it has always been in a madness when I could not seize my better self:
flames seem to sweep me on. Listen, Karen, you are so strong, so calm,
how could you dream of what a woman's last wild passion can be, a woman
whose whole soul is passion? Love! it is all that I have craved. Love!
love! all my inner life has been enmeshed in it--in craving, in seeking,
in destroying. It is like a curse upon me, Karen. You will not
understand; yet that love of love, is it not so with all us wretched
women; do we not long, always, all of us, for the great flame to which
we may surrender, the flame that will appease and exalt us, annihilate
us, yet give us life in its supremacy? So I have always longed; and not
grossly; mine has never been the sensual passion; it has been beauty and
the heights of life that I have sought. And my curse has been that for
me has come no appeasement, no exaltation, but only, always, a dark
smouldering of joylessness. With my own hand I broke the great and
sacred devotion that blessed my life, because I was thus cursed.
Jealousy, the craving for a more complete possession, for the ecstasy I
had not found, blind forces in my blood, drove me on to the destruction
of that precious thing. I wrecked myself, I killed him. Oh, Karen, you
know of whom I speak." Convulsively, the blackness of her memories
assailing her in their old forms of horror, Madame von Marwitz sobbed,
burying her face in the bed-clothes, her hand forgetting to clutch at
Karen's sleeve. She lifted her face and the tears streamed from under
her closed lids. "Let me not think of it or I shall go mad. How could I,
having known that devotion, sink to the place where you have seen me? Be
pitiful. He needed me so much--I believed. My youth was fading; I was
growing old. Soon the time was to come when no man's heart would turn to
me. Be pitiful. You do not know what it is to look without and see life
slowly growing dark and look within and see only sinister memories. It
came to me like late sunlight--like cool, sweet water--his love. I
believed in it. I loved him. Oh--" she sobbed, "how I loved him, Karen!
How my heart was torn with sick jealousy when I saw that his had turned
from me to you. I loved you, Karen, yet I hated you. Open your generous
heart to me, my child; do not spurn me from you. Understand how it may
be that one can strike at the thing one loves. I knew myself in the
grasp of an evil passion, but I could not tear it from me. I even
feared, with a savage fear that seemed to eat into my brain, that you
responded to his love. Oh, Karen, it was not I who spoke those shameful
words, when I found you with him, but a creature maddened with pain and
jealousy, who for days had fought against her madness and knew when she
spoke that she was mad. When I had sent him from me, when he was gone
from my life, and I knew that all was over, the evil fury passed from my
brain like a mist. I knew myself again. I saw again the sweet and sacred
places of my life. I saw you, Karen. Oh, my child," again the pleading
hand trembled on Karen's sleeve, "it has not all been misplaced, your
love for me; not all illusion. I am still the woman who has loved you
through so many years. You will not let one hour of frenzy efface our
happy years together?"
The words, the sobbing questions that waited for no answer, the wailing
supplications, had been poured forth in one great upwelling. Through the
tears that streamed she had seen Karen's face in blurred glimpses, lying
in profile to her on its pillow. Now, when all had been said and her
mind was empty, waiting, she passed her hand over her eyes, clearing
them of tears, and fixed them on Karen.
And silence followed. So long a silence that wonder came. Had she
understood? Was she half unconscious? Had all the long appeal been
wasted?
But Karen at last spoke and the words, in their calm, seemed to the
listening woman to pass like a cold wind over buds and tendrils of
reviving life, blighting them.
"I am sorry for you," said Karen. "And I understand."
Madame von Marwitz stared at her for another silent moment. "Yes," she
then said, "you are sorry for me. You understand. It is my child's great
heart. And you forgive me, Karen?"
Again came silence; then, restlessly turning her head as if the effort
to think pained her, Karen said, "What do you mean by forgiveness?"
"I mean pity, Karen," said Madame von Marwitz. "And compassion, and
tenderness. To be forgiven is to be taken back."
"Taken back?" Karen repeated. "But I do not feel that I love you any
longer." She spoke in a dull, calm voice.
Madame von Marwitz remained kneeling for some moments longer. Then a
dark flush mounted to her face. She became aware that her knees were
stiff with kneeling and her cheeks salt with tears. Her head ached and a
feeling of nausea made her giddy. She rose and looked about her with dim
eyes.
A small wooden chair stood against the wall at a little distance from
the bed. She went to it and sank down upon it, and leaning her head upon
her hand she wept softly to herself. Her desolation was extreme.
Karen listened to her for a long time, and without any emotion. Now that
the horror had passed, her only feeling was one of sorrow and
oppression. She was very sorry for the weeping woman; but she wished
that she would go away. And her mind at last wandered from the thought
of Tante. "Where is Franz?" she asked.
The fount of Madame von Marwitz's tears was exhausted. She dried her
eyes and cheeks. She blew her nose. She gathered together her thoughts.
"Karen," she said, "I will not speak of myself. You say that you do not
love me. I can only pray that my love for you may in time win you to me
again. Never again, I know it, can I stand before you, untarnished, as I
stood before; but I will trust my child's deep heart as strength once
more comes to her. Pity will grow to love. I will love you; that will be
enough. But I have come to you not only as a mother to her child. I have
come to you as a friend to whom your welfare is of the first importance.
I have much to say to you, Karen."
Madame von Marwitz rose. She went to the washhand-stand and bathed her
face. The triumph that she had held in her hand seemed melting through
her fingers; but, thinking rapidly and deeply, she drew the scattered
threads of the plan together once more, faced her peril and computed her
resources.
The still face on the pillow was unchanged, its eyes still calmly
closed. She could not attempt to take the hand of this alien Karen, nor
even to touch her sleeve. She went back to her chair.
"Karen," she said, "if you cannot love me, you can still think of me as
your friend and counsellor. I am glad to hear you speak of our Franz.
That lights my way. I have had much talk with our good and faithful
Franz. Together we have faced all that there is of difficult and sad to
face. My child shall be spared all that could trouble her. Franz and I
are beside you through it all. Your husband, Karen, is to divorce you
because of Franz. You are to be set free, my child."
A strange thing happened then. If Madame von Marwitz had plunged a
dagger into Karen's heart, the change that transformed her deathly face
could hardly have been more violent. It was as if all the amazed and
desperate life fled to her eyes and lips and cheeks. Colour flooded her.
Her eyes opened and shone. Her lips parted, trembled, uttered a loud
cry. She turned her head and looked at her guardian. Her dream was with
her. What was that loud cry for help, hers or his?
Madame von Marwitz looked back and her face, too, was changed.
Realizations, till then evaded, flashed over it as though from Karen's
it caught the bright up-flaming of the truth. Fear followed, darkening
it. Karen's truth threatened the whole fabric of the plan, threatened
her life in all that it held of value. Resentment for a moment convulsed
it. Then, with a steady mastery, yet the glance, sunken, sickened, of
one who holds off disabling pity while he presses out a fluttering life
beneath his hand, she said: "Yes, my child. Your wild adventure is
known. You have been here for days and nights with this young man who
loves you and he has given you his name. Your husband seizes the
opportunity to free himself. Can you not rejoice, Karen, that it is to
set you free also? It is of that only that I have thought. I have
rejoiced for you. And I have told Franz that I will stand by you and by
him so that no breath of shame or difficulty shall touch you. In me you
have the staunchest friend."
Madame von Marwitz, while she addressed these remarks to the strange,
vivid face that stared at her with wide and shining eyes, was aware of a
sense of nausea and giddiness so acute that she feared she might succumb
to sickness. She put her hand before her eyes, reflecting that she must
have some food if she were to think clearly. She sat thus for some
moments, struggling against the invading weakness. When she looked up
again, the flame whose up-leaping had so arrested her, which had, to be
just, so horrified her, was fallen to ashes.
Karen's eyes were closed. A bitter composure, like that sometimes seen
on the face of the dead, folded her lips.
Madame von Marwitz, suddenly afraid, rose and went to her and stooped
over her. And, for a dreadful moment, she did not know whether it was
with fear or hope that she scanned the deathly face. Abysses of horror
seemed to fall within her as she thus bent over Karen and wondered
whether she had died.
It had been a foolish fear. The child had not even fainted. Madame von
Marwitz's breath came back to her, almost in a sob, as, not opening her
eyes, Karen repeated her former question: "Where is Franz?"
"He will be back soon; Franz will soon be here," said Madame von Marwitz
gently and soothingly.
"I must see him," said Karen.
"You shall. You shall see him, my Karen," said Madame von Marwitz. "You
are with those who love you. Have no fear. Franz is of my mind in this
matter, Karen. You will not wish to defend yourself against your
husband's suit, is it not so? Defence, I fear, my Karen, would be
useless. The chain of evidence against you is complete. But even if it
were not, if there were defence to make, you would not wish to sue to
your husband to take you back?"
Karen still with closed eyes, turned her head away on the pillow. "Let
him be free," she said. "He knows that I wished him to be free. When I
left him I told him that I hoped to set him free. Let him believe that I
have done so."
Madame von Marwitz still leaned above her and, as when Franz had
imparted the unlooked-for tidings of Karen's reticence, so now her eyes
dilated with a deepened hope.
"You told him so, Karen?" she repeated gently, after a moment.
"Yes," said Karen, "I told him so. I shall make no defence. Will you go
now? I am tired. And will you send Franz to me when he comes back?"
"Yes, my child; yes," said Madame von Marwitz. "It is well. I will be
below. I will watch over you." She raised herself at last. "There is
nothing that I can do for you, my Karen?"
"Nothing," said Karen. Her voice, too, seemed sinking into ashes.
Madame von Marwitz opened the door to the dark little staircase and
closed it. In the cloaking darkness she paused and leaned against the
wall. "_Bon Dieu!_" she murmured to herself "_Bon Dieu!_"
She felt sick. She wished to sleep. But she could not sleep yet. She
must eat and restore her strength. And she had letters to write; a
letter to Mrs. Forrester, a letter to Frau Lippheim, and a note to
Tallie. It was as if she had thrown her shuttle across a vast loom that,
drawing her after the thread she held, enmeshed her now with all the
others in its moving web. She no longer wove; she was being woven into
the pattern. Even if she would she could not extricate herself.
The thought of this overmastering destiny sustained and fortified her.
She went on down the stairs and into the little sitting-room.
CHAPTER XLIV
The days that passed after her arrival at the inn were to live in Madame
von Marwitz's memory as a glare of intolerable anxiety, obliterating all
details in its heat and urgency. She might, during the hours when she
knelt supplicating beside Karen's bed, have been imaged as a furnace and
Karen as a corpse lying in it, strangely unconsumed, passive and
unresponsive. There was no cruelty in Karen's coldness, no unkindness
even. Pity and comprehension were there; but they were rocks against
which Madame von Marwitz dashed herself in vain.
When she would slip from her kneeling position and lie grovelling and
groaning on the ground, Karen sometimes would say: "Please get up.
Please don't cry," in a tone of distress. But when the question,
repeated in every key, came: "Karen, will you not love me again?"
Karen's answer was a helpless silence.
Schooling the fury of her eagerness, and in another mood, Madame von
Marwitz, after long cogitations in the little sitting-room, would mount
to point out to Karen that to persist in her refusal to marry Franz,
when she was freed, would be to disgrace herself and him, and to this
Karen monotonously and immovably would reply that she would not marry
Franz.
Madame von Marwitz had not been able to keep from her beyond the evening
of the first day that Franz had gone. "To Germany, my Karen, where he
will wait for you." Karen's eyes had dwelt widely, but dully, on her
when she made this announcement and she had spoken no word; nor had she
made any comment on Madame von Marwitz's further explanations.
"He felt it right to go at once, now that I had come, and bring no
further scandal on your head. He would not have you waked to say
good-bye."
Karen lay silent, but the impassive bitterness deepened on her lips.
When Franz's first letter to Karen arrived Madame von Marwitz opened,
read and destroyed it. It revealed too plainly, in its ingenuous
solicitude and sorrow, the coercion under which Franz had departed. Yes;
the plan was there and they were all enmeshed in it; but what was to
happen if Karen would not marry Franz? How could that be made to match
the story she had now written to Mrs. Forrester? And what was to happen
if Karen refused to come with her? It would not do, Madame von Marwitz
saw that clearly, for an alienated Karen to be taken to the Lippheims'.
Comparisons and disclosures would ensue that would send the loom, with a
mighty whirr, weaving rapidly in an opposite direction to that of the
plan. Franz, in Germany, must be pacified, and Karen be carried off to
some lovely, lonely spot until the husband's suit was safely won. It was
not fatal to the plan that Karen should be supposed, finally, to refuse
to marry Franz; that might be mitigated, explained away when the time
came; but a loveless Karen at large in the world was a figure only less
terrifying than a Karen reunited to her husband. She felt as if she had
drawn herself up from the bottom of the well where Karen's flight had
precipitated her and as if, breathing the air, seeing the light of the
happy world, she swung in a circle, clutching her wet rope, horrible
depths below her and no helping hand put out to draw her to the brink.
Gregory's letter in answer to the letter she had sent to Mrs. Forrester,
with the request that he should be informed of its contents, came on the
second morning. It fortified her. There was no questioning; no doubt. He
formally assured her that he would at once take steps to set Karen free.
"Ah, he does not love her, that is evident," said Madame von Marwitz to
herself, and with a sense of quieted pulses. The letter was shown to
Karen.
Mrs. Forrester's note was not quite reassuring. It, also, accepted her
story; but its dismay constituted a lack of sympathy, even, Madame von
Marwitz felt, a reproach.
She wrote of Gregory's broken heart. She lamented the breach that had
come between him and Karen and made this disaster possible.
Miss Scrotton's pæan was what it inevitably would be. From Tallie came
no word, and this implied that Tallie, too, was convinced, though
Tallie, no doubt, was furious, and would, as usual, lay the blame on
her.
Danger, however, lurked in Tallie's direction, and until she was safely
out of England with Karen she should not feel herself secure.
Pertinaciously and blandly she insisted to the doctor that Frau Lippheim
was now quite well enough to make a short sea voyage. She would secure
the best of yachts and the best of trained nurses, and a little voyage
would be the very thing for her. The doctor was recalcitrant, and Madame
von Marwitz was in terror lest, during the moments they spent by her
bedside, Karen should burst forth in a sudden appeal to him.
A change for the worse, very much for the worse, had, he said, come over
his patient. He was troubled and perplexed. "Has anything happened to
disturb her?" he asked in the little sitting-room, and something in his
chill manner reminded her unpleasantly of Gregory Jardine;--"her
husband's sudden departure?"
Madame von Marwitz felt it advisable, then, to take the doctor into her
confidence. He grew graver as she spoke. He looked at her with eyes more
scrutinizing, more troubled and more perplexed. But, reluctantly, he saw
her point. The unfortunate young woman upstairs, a fugitive from her
husband, must be spared the shock of a possible brutal encounter.
Perhaps, in a day or two, it might be possible to move her. She could be
taken in her bed to Southampton and carried on board the yacht.
Madame von Marwitz wired at once and secured the yacht.
It was after this interview with the doctor, after the sending of the
wire, that she mounted the staircase to Karen's room with the most
difficult part of her task still before her. She had as yet not openly
broached to Karen the question of what the immediate future should be.
She approached it now by a circuitous way, seating herself near Karen's
bed and unfolding and handing to her a letter she had that morning
received from Franz. It was a letter she could show. Franz was in
Germany.
"The dear Franz. The good Franz," Madame von Marwitz mused, when Karen
had finished and her weak hand dropped with the letter to the sheet. "No
woman had ever a truer friend than Franz. You see how he writes, Karen.
He will never trouble you with his hopes."
"No; Franz will never trouble me," said Karen.
"Poor Franz," Madame von Marwitz repeated. "He will be seen by the world
as a man who refuses to marry his mistress when she is freed."
"I am not his mistress," said Karen, who, for all her apathy, could show
at moments a disconcerting vehemence.
"You will be thought so, my child."
"Not by him," said Karen.
"No; not by him," Madame von Marwitz assented with melancholy.
"Not by his mother and sisters," said Karen. "And not by Mrs. Talcott."
"Nor by me, my Karen," said Madame von Marwitz with a more profound
gloom.
"No; not by you. No one who knows me will think so," said Karen.
Madame von Marwitz paused after this for a few moments. Experience had
taught her that to abandon herself to her grief was not the way to move
Karen. When she spoke again it was in a firm, calm voice.
"Listen, my Karen," she said. "I see that you are fixed in this resolve
and I will plead with you no further. I will weary you no more. Remember
only, in fairness, that it is for your sake that I have pleaded. You
will be divorced; so be it. And you will not marry Franz. But after this
Karen? and until this?"
Karen lay silent for a moment and then turned her head restlessly away.
"Why do you ask me? How can I tell?" she said. "I wish to go to Frau
Lippheim. When I am well again I wish to work and make my living."
"But, my Karen," said Madame von Marwitz with great gentleness, "do you
not see that for you to go to Franz's mother now, in her joy and belief
in you, is a cruelty? Later on, yes; you could then perhaps go to her,
though it will be at any time, with this scandal behind you, to place
our poor Lise, our poor Franz, in an ambiguous position indeed. But now,
Karen? While the case is going on? Your husband says, you remember, that
he starts proceedings at once."
Karen lay still. And suddenly the tears ran down her cheeks. "Why cannot
I see Franz?" she said. "Why do you ask me questions that I cannot
answer? How do I know what I shall do?" She sobbed, quick, dry, alarming
sobs.
"Karen--my Karen," Madame von Marwitz murmured, "do not weep, my dear
one. You exhaust yourself. Do not speak so harshly to me, Karen. Will
you let me think for you? See, my child, I accept all. I ask for
nothing. You do not forgive me--oh, not truely--you do not love me. Our
old life is dead. I have killed it with my own hand. I see it all,
Karen. And I accept my doom. But even so, can you not be merciful to me
and let me help you now? Do not break my heart, my child. Do not crush
me down into the dust. Come with me. I will take you to quiet and
beautiful shores. I will trouble you in nothing. There will be no more
pleading; no more urgency. You shall do as it pleases you in all things,
and I will ask only to watch over you. Let me do this until you are free
and can choose your own life. Do not tell me that you hate me so much
that you will not do this for me."
Her voice was weighted with its longing, its humility, its tenderness.
The sound of it seemed to beat its way to Karen through mists that lay
about her as Tante's cries and tears had not done. A sharper thrust of
pity pierced her. "I do not hate you," she said. "You must not think
that. I understand and I am very sorry. But I do not love you. I shall
not love you again. And how could I come with you? You said--what did
you say that night?" She put her hand before her eyes in the effort of
memory. "That I was ungrateful;--that you fed and clothed me;--that I
took all and gave nothing. And other, worse things; you said them to me.
How can that be again? How could I come with a person who said those
things to me?"
"Oh--but--my child--" Madame von Marwitz's voice trembled in its hope and
fear, though she restrained herself from rising and bending to the girl:
"did I not make you believe me when I told you that I was mad? Do you
not know that the vile words were the weapons I took up against you in
my madness? That you gave nothing, Karen? When you are my only stay in
life, the only thing near me in the world--you and Tallie--the thing
that I have thought of as mine--as if you were my child. And if you came
to me now you would give still more. If it is known that you will not
return--that you will not forgive me and come with me--I am disgraced,
my child. All the world will believe that I have been cruel to you. All
the world will believe that you hate me and that hatred is all that I
have deserved from you."
Karen again had put her hand to her head. "What do you mean?" she
questioned faintly. "Will it help you if I come with you?"
Madame von Marwitz steadied her voice that now shook with rising sobs.
"If you will not come I am ruined."
"You ask to have me to come--though I do not love you?"
"I ask you to come--on any terms, my Karen. And because I love you;
because you will always be the thing dearest in the world to me."
"I could go to Frau Lippheim, if you would help to send me to her," said
Karen, still holding her hand to her head; "I could, I am sure, explain
to her and to Franz so that they would not blame me. But people must not
think that I hate you."
"No; no?" Madame von Marwitz hardly breathed.
"They must not think that; for it is not true. I do not love you, but I
have no hatred for you," said Karen.
"You will come then, Karen?"
Still with her eyes hidden the girl hesitated as if bewildered by the
pressure of new realisations. "You would leave me much alone? You would
not talk to me? I should be quiet?"
"Oh, my Karen--quiet--quiet--" Madame von Marwitz was now sobbing. "You
will send for me if you feel that you can see me; unless you send I do
not obtrude myself on you. You will have an attendant of your own. All
shall be as you wish."
"And when I am free I may choose my own life?"
"Free! free! the world before you! all that I have at your feet, to
spurn or stoop to!" Tante moaned incoherently.
"When will it be--that we must go?" Karen then, more faintly, asked.
Madame von Marwitz had risen to her feet. In her ecstasy of gladness she
could have clapped her hands above her head and danced. And the strong
control she put upon herself gave to her face almost the grimace of a
child that masters its weeping. She was drawn from her well. She stood
upon firm ground. "In two days, my child, if you are strong enough. In
two days we will set sail."
"In two days," Karen repeated. And, dully, she repeated again; "I come
with you in two days."
Madame von Marwitz now noticed that tears ran from under the hand. These
tears of Karen's alarmed her. She had not wept at all before to-day.
"My child is worn and tired. She would rest. Is it not so? Shall I leave
her?" she leaned above the girl to ask.
"Yes; I am tired," said Karen.
And leaning there, above the hidden face, above the heart wrung with its
secret agony, in all her ecstasy and profound relief, Madame von Marwitz
knew one of the bitterest moments of her life. She had gained safety.
But what was her loss, her irreparable loss? In the dark little
staircase she leaned, as on the day of her coming, against the wall, and
murmured, as she had murmured then: "_Bon Dieu! Bon Dieu!_" But the
words were broken by the sobs that, now uncontrollably, shook her as she
stumbled on in the darkness.
CHAPTER XLV
Some years had passed since Mrs. Talcott had been in London, and it
seemed to her, coming up from her solitudes, noisier, more crowded, more
oppressive than when she had seen it last. She had a jaded yet an acute
eye for its various aspects, as she drove from Paddington towards St.
James's, and a distaste, born of her many years of life in cities, took
more definite shape in her, even while the excitement of the movement
and uproar accompanied not inappropriately the strong impulses that
moved her valorous soul.
Mrs. Talcott wore a small, round, black straw hat trimmed with a black
bow. It was the shape that she had worn for years; it was unaffected by
the weather and indifferent to the shifting of fashion. Her neck-gear
was the one invariable with her in the daytime; a collar of lawn turned
down over a black silk stock. About her shoulders was a black cloth
cape. Sitting there in her hansom, she looked very old, and she looked
also very national and typical; the adventurous, indomitable old girl of
America, bent on seeing all that there was to see, emerged for the first
time in her life from her provinces, and carrying, it might have been, a
Baedeker under her arm.
It was many years since Mrs. Talcott had passed beyond the need of
Baedekers, and her provinces were a distant memory; yet she, too, was
engaged, like the old American girl, in the final adventure of her life.
She did not know, as she drove along in her hansom with her shabby
little box on the roof, whether she were ever to see Les Solitudes
again.
"Carry it right up," she said to the porter at the mansions in St.
James's when she arrived there. "I've come for the night, I expect."
The porter had told her that Mr. Jardine had come in. And he looked at
Mrs. Talcott curiously.
At the door of Gregory's flat Mrs. Talcott encountered a check. Barker,
mournful and low-toned as an undertaker, informed her firmly that Mr.
Jardine was seeing nobody. He fixed an astonished eye upon Mrs.
Talcott's box which was being taken from the lift.
"That's all right," said Mrs. Talcott. "Mr. Jardine'll see me. You tell
him that Mrs. Talcott is here."
She had walked past Barker into the hall and her box was placed beside
her.
Barker was very much disconcerted, yet he felt Mrs. Talcott to be a
person of weight. He ushered her into the drawing-room.
In the late sunlight it was as gay and as crisp as ever, but for the
lack of flowers, and the Bouddha still sat presiding in his golden
niche.
"Mr. Jardine is in the smoking-room, Madam," said Barker, and, gauging
still further the peculiar significance of this guest whose name he now
recovered as one familiar to him on letters, he added in a low voice:
"He has not used this room since Mrs. Jardine left us."
"Is that so?" said Mrs. Talcott gravely. "Well, you go and bring him
here right away."
Mrs. Talcott stood in the centre of the room when Barker had gone and
gazed at the Bouddha. And again her figure strongly suggested that of
the sight-seer, unperturbed and adequate amidst strange and alien
surroundings. Gregory found her before the Bouddha when he came in. If
Mrs. Talcott had been in any doubt as to one of the deep intuitions that
had, from the first, sustained her, Gregory's face would have reassured
her. It had a look of suffocated grief; it was ravaged; it asked nothing
and gave nothing; it was fixed on its one devouring preoccupation.
"How do you do, Mrs. Talcott," he said. They shook hands. His voice was
curiously soft.
"I've come up, you see," said Mrs. Talcott. "I've come up to see you,
Mr. Jardine."
"Yes?" said Gregory gently. He had placed a chair for her but, when she
sat down, he remained standing. He did not, it was evident, imagine her
errand to be one that would require a prolonged attention from him.
"Mr. Jardine," said Mrs. Talcott, "what was your idea when you first
found out about Karen from the detective and asked me not to tell?"
Gregory collected his thoughts, with difficulty. "I don't know that I
had any idea," he answered. "I was stunned. I wanted time to think."
"And you hoped it wasn't true, perhaps?"
"No; I hadn't any hope. I knew it was true. Karen had said things to me
that made it nothing of a surprise. But perhaps my idea was that she
would be sorry for what she had done and write to me, or to you. I think
I wanted to give Karen time."
"Well, and then?" Mrs. Talcott asked. "If she had written?"
"Well, then, I'd have gone to her."
"You'd have taken her back?"
"If she would have come, of course," said Gregory, in his voice of
wraith-like gentleness.
"You wanted her back if she'd gone off with another man like that and
didn't love you any more?"
Gregory was silent for a moment and she saw that her persistence
troubled and perplexed him.
"As to love," he said, "Karen was a child in some things. I believe that
she would have grown to love me if her guardian hadn't come between us.
And it might have been to escape from her guardian as well as with the
idea of freeing herself from me that she took refuge with this man. I am
convinced that her guardian behaved badly to her. It's rather difficult
for me to talk to you, Mrs. Talcott," said Gregory, "though I am
grateful for your kindness, because I so inexpressibly detest a person
whom you care for."
"Mr. Jardine," said Mrs. Talcott, fixing her eyes upon him, "I want to
say something right here, so as there shan't be any mistake about it.
You were right about Mercedes, all along; do you take that in? I don't
want to say any more about Mercedes than I've got to; I've cut loose
from my moorings, but I guess I do care more about Mercedes than
anyone's ever done who's known her as well as I do. But you were right
about her. And I'm your friend and I'm Karen's friend, and it pretty
near killed me when all this happened."
Gregory now had taken a chair before her and his eyes, with a new look,
gazed deeply into hers as she went on: "I wouldn't have accepted what
your letter said, not for a minute, if I hadn't got Mercedes's next
thing and if I hadn't seen that Mercedes, for a wonder, wasn't telling
lies. I was a mighty sick woman, Mr. Jardine, for a few days; I just
seemed to give up. But then I got to thinking. I got to thinking, and
the more I thought the more I couldn't lie there and take it. I thought
about Mercedes, and what she's capable of; and I thought about you and
how I felt dead sure you loved Karen; and I thought about that poor
child and all she'd gone through; and the long and short of it was that
I felt it in my bones that Mercedes was up to mischief. Karen sent for
her, she said; but I don't believe Karen sent for her;--I believe she
got wind somehow of where Karen was and lit out before I could stop her;
yes, I was away that day, Mr. Jardine, and when I came back I found that
three ladies had come for Mercedes and she'd made off with them. It may
be true about Karen; she may have done this wicked thing; but if she's
done it I don't believe it's the way Mercedes says she has. And I've
worked it out to this: you must see Karen, Mr. Jardine; you must have it
from her own mouth that she loves Franz and wants to go off with him and
marry him before you give her up."
Gregory's face, as these last words were spoken, showed a delicate
stiffening. "She won't see me," he said.
"Who says so?" asked Mrs. Talcott.
"Don't imagine that I'd have accepted her guardian's word for it," said
Gregory, "but everything Madame von Marwitz has written has been merely
corroborative. She told us that Karen was there with this man and I knew
it already. She said that Karen had begun to look to him as a rescuer
from me on the day she saw him here in London, and what I remembered of
that day bore it out. She said that I should remember that on the night
we parted Karen told me that she would try to set herself free. Karen
has confided in her; it was true. And it's true, isn't it, that Karen
was in terror of falling into my hands. You can't deny this, can you?
Why should I torture Karen and myself by seeing her?" said Gregory. He
had averted his eyes as he spoke.
"But do you want her back, Mr. Jardine?" Mrs. Talcott had faced his
catalogue of evidence immovably.
"Not if she loves this man," said Gregory. "And that's the final fact. I
know Karen; she couldn't have done this unless she loved him. The
provocation wasn't extreme enough otherwise. She wouldn't, from sheer
generosity, disgrace herself to free me, especially since she knew that
I considered that that would be to disgrace me, too. No; her guardian's
story has all the marks of truth on it. She loves the man and she had
planned to meet him. And all I've got to do now is to see that she is
free to marry him as soon as possible." He got up as he spoke and walked
up and down the room.
Mrs. Talcott's eye followed him and his despair seemed a fuel to her
faith. "Mr. Jardine," she said, after a moment of silence, "I'll stake
my life on it you're wrong. I know Karen better than you do; I guess
women understand each other better than a man ever understands them. The
bed-rock fact about a woman is that she'll hide the thing she feels most
and she'll say what she hopes ain't true so as to give the man a chance
for convincing her it ain't true. And the blamed foolishness of the man
is that he never does. He just goes off, sick and mournful, and leaves
her to fight it out the best she can. Karen don't love Franz Lippheim,
Mr. Jardine; nothing'll make me believe she loves him. And nothing'll
make me believe but what you could have got her to stay that time she
left you if you'd understood women better. She loves you, Mr. Jardine,
though she mayn't know it, and it's on the cards she knows it so well
that she's dead scared of showing it. Because Karen's a wife through and
through; can't you see it in her face? You're youngish yet, and a man,
so I don't feel as angry with you as you deserve, perhaps, for not
understanding better and for letting Karen get it into her head you
didn't love her any more; for that's what she believes, Mr. Jardine. And
what I'm as sure of as that my name's Hannah Talcott is that she'll
never get over you. She's that kind of woman; a rare kind; rocky; she
don't change. And if she's gone and done this thing, like it appears she
has, it isn't in the way Mercedes says; it's only to set you free and to
get away from the fear of being handed over to a man who don't love her.
For she didn't understand, either, Mr. Jardine. Women are blamed foolish
in their way, too."
Gregory had stopped in his walk and was standing before Mrs. Talcott
looking down at her; and while Mrs. Talcott fixed the intense blue of
her eyes upon him he became aware of an impression almost physical in
its vividness. It was as if Mrs. Talcott were the most wise, most
skilful, most benevolent of doctors who, by some miraculous modern
invention, were pumping blood into his veins from her own
superabundance. It seemed to find its way along hardened arteries, to
creep, to run, to tingle; to spread with a radiant glow through all his
chilled and weary body. Hope and fear mounted in him suddenly.
He could not have said, after that, exactly what happened, but he could
afterwards recall, brokenly, that he must have shed tears; for his first
distinct recollection was that he was leaning against the end of the
piano and that Mrs. Talcott, who had risen, was holding him by the hand
and saying: "There now, yes, I guess you've had a pretty bad time. You
hang on, Mr. Jardine, and we'll get her back yet."
He wanted to put his head on Mrs. Talcott's shoulder and be held by her
to her broad breast for a long time; but, since such action would have
been startlingly uncharacteristic of them both, he only, when he could
speak, thanked her.
"What shall I do, now?" he asked. He was in Mrs. Talcott's hands. "It's
no good writing to Karen. Madame von Marwitz will intercept my letter if
what you believe is true. Shall we go down to the New Forest directly?
Shall I force my way in on Karen?"
"That's just what you'll have to do; I don't doubt it," said Mrs.
Talcott. "And I'll go with you, to manage Mercedes while you get hold of
Karen. And I'm not fit for it till I've had a night's rest, so we'll go
down first thing to-morrow, Mr. Jardine. I'm spending the night here so
as we can talk it all out to-night. But first I'm going round to Mrs.
Forrester's. If I'm right, Mr. Jardine, and there ain't any 'if' about
it in my own mind, it's important that people should know what the truth
is now, before we go. We don't want to have to seem to work up a story
to shield Karen if she comes back to you. I'm going to Mrs. Forrester's
and I'm going to that mighty silly woman, Miss Scrotton, and I'll have
to tell them a thing or two that'll make them sit up."
"But wait first, you must be so tired. Do have some tea first," Gregory
urged, as the indomitable old woman made her way towards the door. "And
what can you say to them, after all? We are sure of nothing."
Mrs. Talcott paused with her hand on the door knob; "I'm sure of one
thing, and they've got to hear it; and that is that Mercedes treated
Karen so bad she had to go. Mercedes isn't going to get let off that. I
told her so. I told her I'd come right up and tell her friends about her
if she stole a march on me, and that's what she's done. Yes," said Mrs.
Talcott, opening the door, "I've cut loose from my moorings and
Mercedes's friends have got to hear the truth of that story and I'm
going to see that they do right away. Good-bye, Mr. Jardine. I don't
want any tea; I'll be back in time for dinner, I guess."
CHAPTER XLVI
Peace had descended upon the little room where Karen lay, cold, still
peace. There were no longer any tears or clamour, no appeals and
agonies. Tante was often with her; but she seldom spoke now and Karen
had ceased to feel more than a dull discomfort when she came into the
room.
Tante smiled at her with the soft, unmurmuring patience of her exile,
she tended her carefully, she told her that in a day or two, at
furthest, they would be out at sea in the most beautiful of yachts. "All
has been chosen for my child," she said. "The nurse meets us at
Southampton and we wing our way straight to Sicily."
Karen was willing that anything should be done with her except the one
thing. It had surprised her to find how much it meant to Tante that she
should consent to go back to her. It had not been difficult to consent,
when she understood that that was all that Tante wanted and why she
wanted it so much. It was the easier since in her heart she believed
that she was dying.
All these days it had been like holding her way through a whirlpool. The
foam and uproar of the water had beat upon her fragile bark of life, had
twisted it and turned it again and again to the one goal where she would
not be. Tante had been the torrent, at once stealthy and impetuous, and
the goal where she had wished to drive her had been marriage to Franz.
Karen had known no fear of yielding, it would have been impossible to
her to yield; yet she had thought sometimes that the bark would crack
under the onslaught of the torrent and she be dragged down finally to
unconsciousness.
All that torment was over. She seemed to be sliding rapidly and smoothly
down a misty river. She could see no banks, no sky; all was white, soft,
silent. There was no strength left in her with which to struggle against
the thought of death, no strength with which to fear it.
But, as she lay in the little room, her hands folded on her breast,
corpse-like already in her placidity, something wailed within her and
lamented. And sometimes tears rose slowly and swelled her eyelids and
she felt herself a creature coffined and underground, put away and
forgotten, though not yet a creature dead. Her heart in the darkness
still lived and throbbed. Thoughts of Gregory were with her always,
memories of him and of their life together which, now that she had lost
him forever, she might cherish. She felt, though she lay so still, that
she put out her hands always, in supplication, to Gregory. He would
forget her, or remember her only as his disgrace. It seemed to her that
if she could feel Gregory lean to her and kiss her forehead in
tenderness and reconciliation her breath could sweetly cease.
The day before the departure was come and it was a warm, quiet
afternoon. Tante had been with her in the morning, engaged in
preparations for the journey. She had brought to show to Karen the
exquisite nightgowns and wrappers, of softest wool and silk, that she
was to wear on the yacht. The long cloak, too, of silk all lined with
swansdown, such a garment as the tenderest, most cherished of mortals
should wear. This was for Karen when she lay on deck in the sun. And
there was a heavier fur-lined cloak for chilly days and the loveliest of
shoes and stockings and scarves. All these things Tante had sent for for
Karen, and Karen thanked her, as she displayed them before her, gently
and coldly. She felt that Tante was piteous at these moments, but
nothing in her was moved towards her. Already she was dead to Tante.
She was alone now, again, and she would not see Tante till tea-time.
Tante had asked her if she could sleep and she had said yes. She lay
with eyes closed, vaguely aware of the sounds that rose to her from the
room beneath, where Tante was engaged with the landlady in arranging the
new possessions in boxes, and of the fainter sounds from the road in
front of the house. Wheels rolled up and stopped. They often came,
during these last days; Tante's purchases were arriving by every post.
And the voices below seemed presently to alter in pitch and rhythm,
mounting to her in a sonorous murmur, dully rising and falling. Karen
listened in indifference.
But suddenly there came another sound and this was sharp and near.
There was only one window in the little room; it was open, and it looked
out at the back of the house over a straggling garden set round with
trees and shrubberies. The sound was outside the window, below it and
approaching it, the strangest sound, scratching, cautious, deliberate.
Karen opened her eyes and fixed them on the window. The tree outside
hardly stirred against the blue spring sky. Someone was climbing up to
her window.
She felt no fear and little surprise. She wondered, placidly, fixing her
eyes upon the patterned square of blue and green. And upon this
background, like that of some old Italian picture, there rose the head
and shoulders of Mrs. Talcott.
Karen raised herself on her elbow and stared. The river stopped in its
gliding; the mists rolled away; the world rocked and swayed and settled
firmly into a solid, visible reality; Mrs. Talcott's face and her round
black straw hat and her black caped shoulders, hoisting themselves up to
the window-sill. Never in her life was she to forget the silhouette on
the sky and the branching tree, nor Mrs. Talcott's resolute, large, old,
face, nor the gaze that Mrs. Talcott's eyes fixed on her as she came.
Mrs. Talcott put her knee on the window-sill and then struggled for a
moment, her foot engaged in the last rung of the ladder; then she turned
and stepped down backwards into the room.
Karen, raised on her elbow, was trembling.
"Lay down, honey," said Mrs. Talcott, gently and gravely, as they looked
at each other; and, as she came towards the bed, Karen obeyed her and
joined her hands together. "Oh, will you come with us?" she breathed.
"Will you stay with me? I can live if you stay with me, Mrs.
Talcott--dear Mrs. Talcott."
She stretched out her hands to her, and Mrs. Talcott, sitting down on
the bed beside her, took her in her arms.
"You're all right, now, honey. I'm not going to leave you," she said,
stroking back Karen's hair.
Karen leaned her head against her breast, and closed her eyes.
"Listen, honey," said Mrs. Talcott, who spoke in low, careful tones: "I
want to ask you something. Do you love Franz Lippheim? Just answer me
quiet and easy now. I'm right here, and you're as safe as safe can be."
Karen, on Mrs. Talcott's breast, shook her head. "Oh, no, Mrs. Talcott;
you could not believe that. Why should I love dear Franz?"
"Then it's only so as to set your husband free that you're marrying
Franz?" Mrs. Talcott went on in the same even voice.
"But no, Mrs. Talcott," said Karen, "I am not going to marry Franz." And
now she lifted her head and looked at Mrs. Talcott. "Why do you ask me
that? Who has told you that I am to marry Franz?"
Mrs. Talcott, keeping an arm around her, laid her back on the pillow.
"But, Karen, if you run off like that with Franz and come here and stay
as his wife," she said, "and get your husband to divorce you by acting
so, it's natural that people should think that you're going to marry the
young man, ain't it?"
A burning red had mounted to Karen's wasted cheeks. Her sunken eyes
dwelt on Mrs. Talcott with a sort of horror. "It is true," she said. "He
may think that; he must think that; because unless he does he cannot
divorce me and set himself free, and he must be free, Mrs. Talcott; he
has said that he wishes to be free. But I did not run away with Franz. I
met him, on the headland, that morning, and he was to take me to his
mother, and I was so ill that he brought me here. That was all."
Mrs. Talcott smoothed back her hair. "Take it easy, honey," she said.
"There's nothing to worry over one mite. And now I've asked my questions
and had my answers, and I've got something to tell. Karen, child, it's
all been a pack of lies that Mercedes has told so as to get hold of you,
and so as he shouldn't--so as your husband shouldn't, Karen. Listen,
honey: your husband loves you just for all he's worth. I've seen him. I
went up to him. And he told me how you were all the world to him, and
how, if only you didn't love this young man and didn't want to be free,
he'd do anything to get you back, and how if you'd done the wicked thing
he'd been told and then gotten sorry, he'd want you back just the same
because you were his dear wife, and the one woman he loved. But he
couldn't force himself on you if you loved someone else and hated him.
So I just told him that I didn't believe you loved Franz; and I got him
to hope it, too, and we came down together, Karen, and Mercedes is like
a lion at bay downstairs, and she's in front of that door that leads up
here and swears it'll kill you to see us; and I'd seen the ladder
leaning on the wall and I just nipped out while she was talking, and
brought it round to what I calculated would be your window and climbed
up, and that's what I've come to tell you, Karen, that he loves you, and
that he's downstairs, and that he's waiting to know whether you'll see
him."
Mrs. Talcott rose and stood by the bed looking down into Karen's eyes.
"Honey, I can bring him up, can't I?" she asked.
Karen's eyes looked up at her with an intensity that had passed beyond
joy or appeal. Her life was concentrated in her gaze.
"You would not lie to me?" she said. "It is not pity? He loves me?"
"No, I wouldn't lie to you, dearie," said Mrs. Talcott, with infinite
tenderness; "lies ain't my line. It's not pity. He loves you, Karen."
"Bring him," Karen whispered. "I have always loved him. Don't let me die
before he comes."
CHAPTER XLVII
Mrs. Talcott, as she descended the staircase, heard in the little
sitting-room a voice, the voice of Mercedes, speaking on and on, in a
deep-toned, continuous roll of vehement demonstration, passionate
protest, subtle threat and pleading. Gregory's voice she did not hear.
No doubt he stood where she had left him, at the other side of the
table, confronting his antagonist.
Mrs. Talcott turned the knob of the door and slightly pushed it. A heavy
weight at once was flung against it.
"You shall not come in! You shall not! I forbid it! I will not be
disturbed!" cried the voice of Mercedes, who must, in the moment, have
guessed that she had been foiled.
"Quit that foolishness," said Mrs. Talcott sternly. She leaned against
the door and forced it open, and Mercedes, dishevelled, with eyes that
seemed to pant on her like eyes from some dangerous jungle, flung
herself once more upon the door and stood with her back against it.
"Mr. Jardine," said Mrs. Talcott, not looking at her recovered captive,
"Karen is upstairs and wants to see you. She doesn't love Franz Lippheim
and she isn't going to marry him. She didn't run away with him; she met
him when she'd run away from her guardian and he was going to take her
to his mother, only she got sick and he had to bring her here. She was
told that you wanted to divorce her and wanted to be free. She loves
you, Mr. Jardine, and she's waiting up there; only be mighty gentle with
her, because she's been brought to death's door by all that she's been
through."
"I forbid it! I forbid it!" shrieked Madame von Marwitz from her place
before the door, spreading her arms across it. "She is mad! She is
delirious! The doctor has said so! I have promised Franz that you shall
not come to her unless across my dead body. I have sworn it! I keep my
promise to Franz!"
Gregory advanced to the door, eyeing her. "Let me pass," he said. "Let
me go to my wife."
"No! no! and no!" screamed the desperate woman. "You shall not! It will
kill her! You shall be arrested! You wish to kill a woman who has fled
from you! Help! Help!" He had her by the wrists and her teeth seized his
hands. She fought him with incredible fury.
"Hold on tight, Mr. Jardine," Mrs. Talcott's voice came to him from
below. "There; I've got hold of her ankles. Put her down."
With a loud, clashing wail through clenched and grinding teeth, Madame
von Marwitz, like a pine-tree uprooted, was laid upon the floor. Mrs.
Talcott knelt at her feet, pinioning them. She looked along the large
white form to Gregory at the other end, who was holding down Madame von
Marwitz's shoulders. "Go on, Mr. Jardine," she said. "Right up those
stairs. She'll calm down now. I've had her like this before."
Gregory rose, yet paused, torn by his longing, yet fearful of leaving
the old woman with the demoniac creature. But Madame von Marwitz lay as
if in a trance. Her lids were closed. Her breast rose and fell with
heavy, regular breaths.
"Go on, Mr. Jardine," said Mrs. Talcott. So he left them there.
He went up the little stairs, dark and warm, and smelling--he was never
to forget the smell--of apples and dust, and entered a small, light room
where a window made a square of blue and green. Beyond it in a narrow
bed lay Karen. She did not move or speak; her eyes were fixed on his;
she did not smile. And as he looked at her Mrs. Talcott's words flashed
in his mind: "Karen's that kind: rocky: she don't change."
But she had changed. She was his as she had never been, never could have
been, if the sinister presence lying there downstairs had not finally
revealed itself. He knelt beside her and she was in his arms and his
head was laid in the old sacred way beside his darling's head. They did
not seem to speak to each other for a long time nor did they look into
each other's eyes. He held her hand and looked at that, and sometimes
kissed it gently. But after words had come and their eyes had dared to
meet in joy, Karen said to him: "And I must tell you of Franz, Gregory,
dear Franz. He is suffering, I know. He, too, was lied to, and he was
sent away without seeing me again. We will write to Franz at once. And
you will care for my Franz, Gregory?"
"Yes; I will care for your Franz; bless your Franz," said Gregory, with
tears, his lips on her hand.
"He came to me like an angel that morning," Karen said in her breath of
voice; "and he has been like a beautiful mother to me; he has taken care
of me like a mother. It was on the headland over Falmouth--that he came.
Oh, Gregory," she turned her face to her husband's breast, "the birds
were beginning to sing and I thought that I should never see you again."
CHAPTER XLVIII
When the door had shut behind Gregory, Madame von Marwitz spoke, her
eyes still closed:
"Am I now permitted to rise?"
Mrs. Talcott released her ankles and stood up.
"You've made a pretty spectacle of yourself, Mercedes," she remarked as
Madame von Marwitz raised herself with extraordinary stateliness. "I've
seen you behave like you were a devil before, but I never saw you behave
like you were quite such a fool. What made you fight him and bite him
like that? What did you expect to gain by it I'd like to know? As if you
could keep that strong young man from his wife."
Madame von Marwitz had walked to the small mirror over the mantelpiece
and was adjusting her hair. Her face, reflected between a blue and gold
shepherd and shepherdess holding cornucopias of dried honesty, was still
ashen, but she possessed all her faculties. "This is to kill Karen," she
now said. "And yours will be the responsibility."
"Taken," Mrs. Talcott replied, but with no facetiousness.
Several of the large tortoiseshell pins that held Madame von Marwitz's
abundant locks were scattered on the floor. She turned and looked for
them, stooped and picked them up. Then returning to the mirror she
continued, awkwardly, to twist up and fasten her hair. She was
unaccustomed to doing her own hair and even the few days without a maid
had given her no facility.
Mrs. Talcott watched her for a moment and then remarked: "You're getting
it all screwed round to one side, Mercedes. You'd better let me do it
for you."
Madame von Marwitz for a moment made no reply. Her eyes fixed upon her
own mirrored eyes, she continued to insert the pins with an air of
stubborn impassivity; but when a large loop fell to her neck she allowed
her arms to drop. She sank upon a chair and, still with unflawed
stateliness, presented the back of her head to Mrs. Talcott's skilful
manipulations. Mrs. Talcott, in silence, wreathed and coiled and pinned
and the beautiful head resumed its usual outlines.
When this was accomplished Madame von Marwitz rose. "Thank you," she
uttered. She moved towards the door of her room.
"What are you going to do now, Mercedes?" Mrs. Talcott inquired. Her
eyes, which deepened and darkened, as if all her years of silent
watchfulness opened long vistas in them, were fixed upon Mercedes.
"I am going to pack and return to my home," Madame von Marwitz replied.
"Well," said Mrs. Talcott, "you'll want me to pack for you, I expect."
Madame von Marwitz had opened her door and her hand was on the
door-knob. She paused so and again, for a long moment, she made no
reply. "Thank you," she then repeated. But she turned and looked at Mrs.
Talcott. "You have been a traitor to me," she said after she had
contemplated her for some moments, "you, in whom I completely trusted.
You have ruined me in the eyes of those I love."
"Yes, I've gone back on you, Mercedes, that's a fact," said Mrs.
Talcott.
"You have handed Karen over to bondage," Madame von Marwitz went on.
"She and this man are utterly unsuited. I would have freed her and given
her to a more worthy mate." Her voice had the dignity of a disinterested
and deep regret.
Mrs. Talcott made no reply. The long vistas of her eyes dwelt on
Mercedes. After another moment of this mutual contemplation Madame von
Marwitz closed the door, though she still kept her hand on the
door-knob.
"May I ask what you have been saying of me to Mrs. Forrester, to Mr.
Jardine?"
"Well, as to Mr. Jardine, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, "there was no
need of saying anything, was there, if I turned out right in what I told
him I suspected. He sees I'm right. He'd been fed up, along with the
rest of them, on lies, and Karen can help him out with the details if he
wants to ask for them. As for the old lady, I gave her the truth of the
story about Karen running away. I made her see, and see straight, that
your one idea was to keep Karen's husband from getting her back because
you knew that if he did the truth about you would come out. I let you
down as easy as I could and put it that you weren't responsible exactly
for the things you said when you went off your head in a rage and that
you were awful sorry when you found Karen had taken you at your word and
made off. But that old lady feels mighty sick, Mercedes, and I allow
she'll feel sicker when she's seen Mr. Jardine. As for Miss Scrotton, I
saw her, too, and she's come out strong; you've got a friend there,
Mercedes, sure; she won't believe anything against her beloved
Mercedes," a dry smile touched Mrs. Talcott's grave face as she echoed
Miss Scrotton's phraseology, "until she hears from her own lips what she
has to say in explanation of the story. You'll be able to fix her up all
right, Mercedes, and most of the others, too, I expect. I'd advise you
to lie low for a while and let it blow over. People are mighty glad to
be given the chance for forgetting things against anyone like you. It'll
simmer down and work out, I expect, to a bad quarrel you had with Karen
that's parted you. And as for the outside world, why it won't mind a
mite what you do. Why you can murder your grandmother and eat her, I
expect, and the world'll manage to overlook it, if you're a genius."
"I thank you," said Madame von Marwitz, her hand clasping and unclasping
the door-knob. "I thank you indeed for your reassurance. I have murdered
and eaten my grandmother, but I am to escape hanging because I am a
genius. That is a most gratifying piece of information. You, personally,
I infer, consider that the penalty should be paid, however gifted the
criminal."
"I don't know, Mercedes, I don't know," said Mrs. Talcott in a voice of
profound sadness. "I don't know who deserves penalties and who don't, if
you begin to argue it out to yourself." Mrs. Talcott, who had seated
herself at the other side of the table, laid an arm upon it, looking
before her and not at Mercedes, as she spoke. "You're a bad woman; that
ain't to be denied. You're a bad, dangerous woman, and perhaps what
you've been trying to do now is the worst thing you've ever done. But I
guess I'm way past feeling angry at anything you do. I guess I'm way
past wanting you to get come up with. I can't make out how to think
about a person like you. Maybe you figured it all out to yourself
different from the way it looks. Maybe you persuaded yourself to believe
that Karen would be better off apart from her husband. I guess that's
the way with most criminals, don't you? They figure things out different
from the way other people do. I expect you can't help it. I expect you
were born so. And I guess you can't change. Some bad folks seem to
manage to get religion and that brings 'em round; but I expect you ain't
that kind."
Madame von Marwitz, while Mrs. Talcott thus shared her psychological
musings with her, was not looking at the old woman: her eyes were fixed
on the floor and she seemed to consider.
"No," she said presently. "I am not that kind."
She raised her eyes and they met Mrs. Talcott's. "What are you going to
do now?" she asked.
"Well," said Mrs. Talcott, drawing a long sigh of fatigue, "I've been
thinking that over and I guess I'll stay over here. There ain't any
place for me in America now; all my folks are dead. You know that money
my Uncle Adam left me a long time ago that I bought the annuity with.
Well, I've saved most of that annuity; I'd always intended that Karen
should have what I'd saved when I died. But Karen don't need it now.
It'll buy me a nice little cottage somewhere and I can settle down and
have a garden and chickens and live on what I've got."
"How much was it, the annuity?" Madame von Marwitz asked after a moment.
"A hundred and ten pounds a year," said Mrs. Talcott.
"But you cannot live on that," Madame von Marwitz, after another moment,
said.
"Why, gracious sakes, of course I can, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott replied,
smiling dimly.
Again there was silence and then Madame von Marwitz said, in a voice a
little forced: "You have not got much out of life, have you, Tallie?"
"Well, no; I don't expect you would say as I had," Mrs. Talcott
acquiesced, showing a slight surprise.
"You haven't even got me--now--have you," Madame von Marwitz went on,
looking down at her door-knob and running her hand slowly round it while
she spoke. "Not even the criminal. But that is a gain, you feel, no
doubt, rather than a loss."
"No, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott mildly; "I don't feel that way. I feel
it's a loss, I guess. You see you're all the family I've got left."
"And you," said Madame von Marwitz, still looking down at her knob, "are
all the family I have left."
Mrs. Talcott now looked at her. Mercedes did not raise her eyes. Her
face was sad and very pale and it had not lost its stateliness. Mrs.
Talcott looked at her for what seemed to be a long time and the vistas
of her eyes deepened with a new acceptance.
It was without any elation and yet without any regret that she said in
her mild voice: "Do you want me to come back with you, Mercedes?"
"Will you?" Madame von Marwitz asked in a low voice.
"Why, yes, of course I'll come if you want me, Mercedes," said Mrs.
Talcott.
Madame von Marwitz now opened her door. "Thank you, Tallie," she said.
"You look pretty tired," Mrs. Talcott, following her into the bedroom,
remarked. "You'd better lie down and take a rest while I do the packing.
Let's clear out as soon as we can."