Tante Part 58

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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body. 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 rea.s.sured 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 k.n.o.b; "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