Tante Part 50

And now, hiding her face in her hands and leaning back in her cushions, Madame von Marwitz began to weep with the soft reiterated sobbing of a miserable child. "I have no one left. I am alone," she sobbed. "Even you have turned against me."

"No, I haven't turned against you," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm here." And presently, while Mercedes wept, Mrs. Talcott took her hand and held it.

They reached Helston and climbed the steep, stony road to the station.

There was no sign of Karen. Mrs. Talcott got out and made inquiries. She might have gone to London by the train that left at dawn; but no one had noticed such a young lady. Mrs. Talcott came back to the car with her fruitless story.

Mercedes, by this time, had dried her eyes and was regaining, apparently, her more normal energies. "Not here? Not seen? Not heard of?" she repeated. "But where is she then?"

Mrs. Talcott stood at the door of the car and looked at her charge.

"Well, I'm afraid she made off in the night, straight away, after I'd talked to her."

"Made off in the night?" A dark colour suddenly suffused Madame von Marwitz's face.

"Yes, that's it, I reckon. I must have said something to scare her about her going back to her husband. Perhaps she thought I'd bring him down without her knowing, and perhaps she wasn't far wrong. I'm afraid I've played the fool. She thought I'd round on her in some way and so she just lit out."

Madame von Marwitz stared at her. The expression of her face had entirely altered; there was no trace of the dazed and wretched child.

Dark forces lit her eyes and the relaxed lines of her lips tightened.

"Get in," she commanded. "Tell him to drive back, and get in." And when Mrs. Talcott had taken her place beside her she went on in a low, concentrated voice: "Is it not possible that she has joined that vile seducer?"

Mrs. Talcott eyed her with the fixity of a lion-tamer. Their moment of instinctive closeness had pa.s.sed. "Now see here, Mercedes," she said; "I advise you to be careful what you say."

"Careful! I am half mad! Between you all you will drive me mad!" said Madame von Marwitz with intensity of fury. "You fill Karen's mind with lies about my past--oh, there are two sides to every story! she shall hear my side!--you drive her forth with your threats to hand her over to the man she loathes, and she takes refuge--where else?--with that miscreant. Why not? Where else had she to go? You say that she had no money. We call now at the hotel. If he is gone, and if within the day we do not hear that she is with Lise, we will send at once for detectives."

"You'd better control yourself, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. "If Karen ain't found it'll be a mighty ugly story for you to face up to, and if she's found it won't be all plain sailing for you either; you've got to pay the price for what you've done. But if it gets round that you drove her out and then spread scandal about her, you'll do for yourself--just keep your mind on that if you can."

"Scandal! What scandal shall I spread? If he disappears and she with him, will the facts not shriek aloud? If she is found she will be found by me. I will wire at once to Lise."

"We'll wire to Lise and we'll wire to Mr. Jardine, that's what we'll do.

Karen may have changed her mind. She may have felt shy of telling me she had. She may have come to see that he's the thing she's got to hang on to. What I hope for is that if she ain't in London already with him, she's hiding somewhere about here and has sent for him herself."

"Ah, I understand your hope; it is of a piece with all your treachery,"

said Madame von Marwitz in a voice suffocated by conflicting angers. "If she is with her husband he, too, will hear the story--the false, garbled story of my crimes. He is my enemy, you know it; my malignant enemy; you know that he will spread this affair broadcast. And you can rejoice in this! You are glad for my disgrace and ruin!" Tears again streamed from her eyes.

"Don't take on so, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. "If Karen's with her husband all they're likely to be thinking about is that he was right and has got her back again. Karen's bound to tell him something about what happened, and you can depend upon Karen for saying as little as she can.

But if you imagine that you're going to be let off from being found out by that young man, you're letting yourself in for a big disappointment, and you can take my word for it. It's because he's right about you that Karen'll go back to him."

Madame von Marwitz turned her head away and fixed her eyes on the landscape.

They reached the little village near Les Solitudes, and at the little hotel, with its drowsy, out-of-season air, Mrs. Talcott descended, leaving Mercedes proudly seated in the car, indifferent to the possible gaze from above of her faithless devotee. Mrs. Talcott returned with the information that Mr. Drew was upstairs and not yet awake. "Go up. Go up to him," said the tormented woman, after a moment of realized relief or disappointment--who can say? "He may have seen her. He may have given her money for her journey. They may have arranged to meet later."

Mrs. Talcott again disappeared and she only returned after some ten minutes. "Home," she then said to Burton, climbing heavily into the car.

"Yes, there he was, sleeping as peaceful as a dormouse in his silk pyjamas," she remarked. "I startled him some, I reckon, when I waked him up. No, he don't know anything about her. Wanted to jump up and look for her when I told him she was missing. Keep still, Mercedes--what do you mean by bouncing about like that--folks can see you. I talked to him pretty short and sharp, that young man, and I told him the best thing he could do now was to pack his grip-sack and clear out. He's going right away and he promised to send me a telegram from London to-night. He can catch the second train."

Madame von Marwitz leaned back. She closed her eyes. The car had climbed to the entrance of Les Solitudes and the fuchsia hedge was pa.s.sing on each side. Mrs. Talcott, looking at her companion, saw that she had either actually fainted or was simulating a very realistic fainting-fit.

Mercedes often had fainting-fits at moments of crisis; but she was a robust woman, and Mrs. Talcott had no reason to believe that any of them had been genuine. She did not believe that this one was genuine, yet she had to own, looking at the leaden eyelids and ashen face, that Mercedes had been through enough in the last twelve hours to break down a stronger person. And it was appropriate that she should return to her desolate home in a prostrate condition.

Mrs. Talcott, as often before, played her part. The maids were summoned; they supported Madame von Marwitz's body; Burton took her shoulders and Mrs. Talcott her feet. So the afflicted woman was carried into the house and upstairs and laid upon her bed.

Mrs. Talcott then went and sent telegrams to Frau Lippheim and to Gregory Jardine. She asked them to let her know if Karen arrived in London during the day. She had her answers that evening. That from Gregory ran--"Not seen or heard of Karen. What has happened? Write by return. Or shall I come to you?" The other was from the Lippheims'

landlady and said that the Lippheims had returned to Germany four days before and that no one had arrived to see them.

The evening post had gone. Mrs. Talcott went out and answered Gregory by wire: "Writing to-morrow morning. We think Karen is in London. Stay where you are."

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

Mrs. Talcott went early to Madame von Marwitz's room next morning, as soon, in fact, as she had seen her breakfast-tray carried away. She had shown Mercedes her telegrams the evening before, and Mercedes, lying on her bed where she had pa.s.sed the day in heavy slumbers, had muttered, "Let me sleep. The post is gone. We can do nothing more till to-morrow."

Like a wounded creature she was regaining strength and wholeness in oblivion. When Mrs. Talcott had gone softly into her room at bedtime, she had found her soundly sleeping.

But the fumes and torpors of grief and pain were this morning dispersed.

Mercedes sat at the desk in her bedroom attired in a _robe-de-chambre_, and rapidly and feverishly wrote.

"I'm glad to see you're feeling better, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, closing the door and coming to her side. "We've got a lot to talk over this morning. I guess we'll have to send for those detectives. What are you writing there?"

Madame von Marwitz, whose face had the sodden, slumbrous look that follows long repose, drew the paper quickly to one side and replied: "You may mind your affairs and leave me to mind my own. I write to my friend. I write to Mrs. Forrester."

"You hand me that letter, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, in a mild but singularly determined tone, and after a moment Madame von Marwitz did hand it to her.

Mrs. Talcott perused the first page. Then she lifted her eyes to her companion, who, averting hers with a sullen look, fixed them on the sea outside. It was raining and the sea was leaden.

"Now just you listen to me, Mercedes Okraska," said Mrs. Talcott, heavily emphasizing her words and leaning the hand that held the letter on the writing-table, "I'll go straight up to London and tell the whole story to Mr. Jardine and Mrs. Forrester--the same as I told it to Karen with all that's happened here besides--I will as sure as my name's Hannah Talcott--if you write one word of that shameful idea to your friends. Lay down that pen."

Madame von Marwitz did not lay it down, but she turned in her chair and confronted her accuser, though with averted eyes. "You say 'shameful.' I say, yes; shameful, and true. She has not gone to her husband. She has not gone to the Lippheims. I believe that he has joined her. I believe that it was arranged. I believe that she is with him now."

"You can't look me in the eye and say you believe it, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott.

Madame von Marwitz looked her in the eye, sombrely, and she then varied her former statement. "He has pursued her. He has found her. He will try to keep her. He is a depraved and dangerous man."

"We'll let him alone. We're done with him for good and all, I guess. My point is this: don't you write any lies to your friends thinking that you're going to whiten yourself by blackening Karen. I'm speaking the sober truth when I say I'll go straight off to London and tell Mr.

Jardine and Mrs. Forrester the whole story, unless you write a letter, right now, as you sit here, that I can pa.s.s."

Again averting her eyes, Madame von Marwitz clutched her pen in rigid fingers and sat silent.

"It is blackmail! Tyranny!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed presently.

"All right. Call it any name you like. But my advice to you, Mercedes, is to pull yourself together and see this thing straight for your own sake. I know what's the matter with you, you pitiful, silly thing; it's this young man; it makes you behave like a distracted creature. But don't you see as plain as can be that what Karen's probably done is to go to London and that Mr. Jardine'll find her in a day or two. Now when those two young people come together again, what kind of a story will Karen tell her husband about you--what'll he think of you--what'll your friends think of you--if they all find out that in addition to behaving like a wild-cat to that poor child because you were fairly daft with jealousy, and driving her away--oh, yes you did, Mercedes, it don't do any good to deny it now--if in addition to all that they find out that you've been trying to save your face by blackening her character? Why, they'll think you're the meanest skunk that ever walked on two legs; and they'll be about right. Whereas, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott had been standing square and erect for some time in front of her companion, and now, as her tone became more argumentative and persuasive, she allowed her tired old body to sag and rest heavily on one hip--"whereas if you write a nice, kind, loving, self-reproachful letter, all full of your dreadful anxiety and affection--why, if Karen ever sees it it'll soften her towards you perhaps; and it'll make all your friends sorry for you, too, and inclined to hush things up if Mr. Drew spreads the story around--won't it, Mercedes?"--Madame von Marwitz had turned in her chair and was staring before her with a deeply thoughtful eye.--"Why, it's as plain as can be, Mercedes, that that's your line."

"True," Madame von Marwitz now said. "True." Her voice was deep and almost solemn. "You are right. Yes; you are right, Tallie."

She leaned her forehead on her hand, shading her eyes as she pondered.

"A letter of n.o.ble admission; of sorrow; of love. Ah! you recall me to my better self. It will touch her, Tallie; it is bound to touch her, is it not? She cannot feel the bitterness she now feels if she reads such a letter; is not that so, Tallie?"

"That's so. You've got it," said Mrs. Talcott.

Madame von Marwitz, however, continued to lean on her desk and to shade her eyes, and some moments of silence pa.s.sed thus. Then, as she leaned, the abjectness of her own position seemed suddenly borne in upon her.