Tante Part 38

She imagined that Tante would find it best that she should live, permanently now, in Cornwall with Mrs. Talcott. It could hardly be convenient for her to take about with her a wife who had left her husband. Karen quite realized that her status must be a very different one from that of the unshadowed young girl.

And it would be strange to take up the old life again and to look back from it at the months of life with Gregory--that mirage of happiness receding as if to a blur of light seen over a stretch of desert. Still with her quiet and unrevealing young face turned towards the evening landscape, Karen felt as if she had grown very old and were looking back, after a life-time without Gregory, at the mirage. How faint and far it would seem to be when she was really old--like a nebulous star trembling on the horizon. But it would never grow invisible; she would never forget it; oh never; nor the dreadful pain of loss. To the very end of life, she was sure of it, she would keep the pang of the shining memory.

When they reached Helston, dusk had fallen. She found a carriage that would drive her the twelve miles to the coast. It was a quiet, grey evening and as they jolted slowly along the dusty roads and climbed the steep hills at a snail's pace, she leaned back too tired to feel anything any longer. And now they were out upon the moors where the gorse was breaking into flowers; and now, over the sea, she saw at last the great beacon of the Lizard lighthouse sweeping the country with its vast, desolate, yet benignant beam.

They reached the long road and the stile where, a year before, she had met Gregory. Here was the hedge of fuchsia; here the tamarisks on their high bank; here the entrance to Les Solitudes. The steeply pitched grey roofs rose before her, and the white walls with their squares of orange light glimmered among the trees.

She alighted, paid the man, and rang.

A maid, unknown to her, came to the door and showed surprise at seeing her there with her bag.

Yes; Madame von Marwitz was within. Karen had entered with the asking.

"Whom shall I announce, Madam?" the maid inquired.

Karen looked at her vaguely. "She is in the music-room? I do not need to be announced. That will go to my room." She put down the bag and crossed the hall.

She was not aware of feeling any emotion; yet a sob had taken her by the throat and tears had risen to her eyes; she opened them widely as she entered the dusky room, presenting a strange face.

Madame von Marwitz rose from a distant sofa.

In her astonishment, she stood still for a moment; then, like a great, white, widely-winged moth, she came forward, rapidly, yet with hesitant, reconnoitring pauses, her eyes on the girl who stood in the doorway looking blindly towards her.

"Karen!" she exclaimed sharply. "What brings you here?"

"I have come back to you, Tante," said Karen.

Tante stood before her, not taking her into her arms, not taking her hands.

"Come back to me? What do you mean?"

"I have left Gregory," said Karen. She was bewildered now. What had happened? She did not know; but it was something that made it impossible to throw herself in Tante's arms and weep.

Then she saw that another person was with them. A man was seated on the distant sofa. He rose, wandering slowly down the room, and revealed himself in the dim light that came from the evening sky and sea as Mr.

Claude Drew. Pausing at some little distance he fixed his eyes on Karen, and in the midst of all the impressions, striking like chill, moulding blows on the melted iron of her mood, she was aware of these large, dark eyes of Mr. Drew's and of their intent curiosity.

The predominant impression, however, was of a changed aspect in everything, and as Tante, now holding her hands, still stood silent, also looking at her with intent curiosity, the impression vaguely and terribly shaped itself for her as a piercing question: Was Tante not glad to have her back?

There came from Tante in another moment a more accustomed note.

"You have left your husband--because of me--my poor child?"

Karen nodded. Mr. Drew's presence made speech impossible.

"He made it too difficult for you?"

Karen nodded again.

"And you have come back to me." Madame von Marwitz summed it up rather than inquired. And then, after another pause, she folded Karen in her arms.

The piercing question seemed answered. Yet Karen could not now have wept. A dry, hard desolation filled her. "May I go to my room, Tante?"

"Yes, my child. Go to your room. You will find Tallie. Tallie is in the house, I think--or did I send her in to Helston?--no, that was for to-morrow." She held Karen's hand at a stretch of her arm while she seemed, with difficulty still, to collect her thoughts. "But I will come with you myself. Yes; that is best. Wait here, Claude." This to the silent, dusky figure behind them.

"Do not let me be a trouble." Karen controlled the trembling of her voice. "I know my way."

"No trouble, my child; no trouble. Or none that I am not glad to take."

Tante had her now on the stair--her arm around her shoulders. "You will find us at sixes and sevens; a household hastily organized, but Tallie, directed by wires, has done wonders. So. My poor Karen. You have left him. For good? Or is it only to punish him that you come to me?"

"I have left him for good."

"So," Madame von Marwitz repeated.

With all the veils and fluctuations, one thing was growing clear to Karen. Tante might be glad to have her back; but she was confused, trying to think swiftly, to adjust her thoughts. They were in Karen's little room overlooking the trees at the corner of the house. It was dismantled; a bare dressing-table, the ewer upturned in the basin, the bed and its piled bedding covered with a sheet. Madame von Marwitz sat down on the bed and drew Karen beside her.

"But is not that to punish him too much?"

"It is not to punish him. I cannot live with him any longer."

"I see; I see;" said Madame von Marwitz, with a certain briskness, as though, still, to give herself time to think. "It might have been wiser to wait--to wait for a little. I would have written to you. We could have consulted. It is serious, you know, my Karen, very serious, to leave one's husband. I went away so that this should not come to you."

"I could not wait. I could not stay with him any longer," said Karen heavily.

"There is more, you mean. You had words? He hates me more than you thought?"

Karen paused, and then a.s.sented: "Yes; more than I thought."

Above the girl's head, which she held pressed down on her shoulder, Madame von Marwitz pondered for some moments. "Alas!" she then uttered in a deep voice. And, Karen saying nothing, she repeated on a yet more melancholy note: "Alas!"

Karen now raised herself from Tante's shoulder; but, at the gesture of withdrawal, Madame von Marwitz caught her close again and embraced her.

"I feared it," she said. "I saw it. I hoped to hide it by my flight. My poor child! My beloved Karen!"

They held each other for some silent moments. Then Madame von Marwitz rose. "You are weary, my Karen; you must rest; is it not so? I will send Tallie to you. You will see Tallie--she is a perfection of discretion; you do not shrink from Tallie. And you need tell her nothing; she will not question you. Between ourselves; is it not so? Yes; that is best.

For the present. I will come again, later--I have guests, a guest, you see. Rest here, my Karen." She moved towards the door.

Karen looked after her. An intolerable fear pressed on her. She could not bear, in her physical weakness, to be left alone with it. "Tante!"

she exclaimed.

Madame von Marwitz turned. "My child?"

"Tante--you are glad to have me back?"

Her pride broke in a sob. She hid her face in her hands.

Madame von Marwitz returned to the bed.

"Glad, my child?" she said. "For all the sorrow that it means? and to know that I am the cause? How can I be glad for my child's unhappiness?"