Tante Part 57

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 a.s.sented 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 sh.o.r.es. 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 pa.s.sed 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.