"Why Baroness, by all means, but you needn't shake my head off," said Mrs. Slifer, not without dignity, raising her free hand to straighten her hat. "We've never heard a word about it. Why this is perfectly providential.—Baroness—I must ask you not to go on shaking me like that. I've got a very delicate stomach and the least thing upsets my digestion."

"Justes cieux!" Madame von Marwitz cried, dropping Mrs. Slifer's arm and raising her hands to her head, while, in the background, Miss Beatrice's kodak gave a click—"Will the woman drive me mad! Karen! My child! Where is she!"

"Why, we saw her at the station at Brockenhurst—in the New Forest—didn't we Maude," said Mrs. Slifer, "and it must have been—now let me see—" poor Mrs. Slifer collected her wits, a bent forefinger at her lips. "To-day's Thursday and we got to Mullion yesterday—and we stopped at Winchester for a day and night on our way to the New Forest, it was on Saturday last of course. We'd been having a drive about that part of the forest and we were taking the train and they had just come and we saw them on the opposite platform. He was just helping her out of the train and we didn't have any time to go round and speak to them—"

"They!" Madame von Marwitz nearly shouted. "She was with a man! Last Saturday! Who was it? Describe him to me! Was he slender—with fair hair—dark eyes—the air of a poet?" She panted. And her aspect was so singular that Miss Beatrice, startled out of her professional readiness, failed to snap it.

"Why no," said Mrs. Slifer, keeping her clue. "I shouldn't say a poetical looking man, should you, Maude? A fleshy man—very big and fleshy, and he was taking such good care of her and looked so kind of tender and worried that I concluded he was her husband. She looked like a very sick woman, Baroness."

"Fleshy?" Madame von Marwitz repeated, and the word, in her moan, was almost graceful. "Fleshy, you say? An old man? A stout old man?" she held her hands distractedly pressed to her head. "What stout old man does Karen know? Is it a stranger she has met?"

"No, he wasn't old. This was a young man, Baroness. He had—now let me see—his hair was sort of red—I remember noticing his hair; and he wore knee-pants and a soft hat with a feather in it and was very high coloured."

"Bon Dieu!" Madame von Marwitz gasped. She had again, while Mrs. Slifer spoke, seized her by the arm as though afraid that she might escape her and she now gazed with a fixed gaze above Mrs. Slifer's head and through the absorbed Maude and Beatrice. "Red hair?—A large young man?—Was he clean shaven? Did he wear eyeglasses? Had he the face of a musician? Did he look like an Englishman—an English gentleman?"

Mrs. Slifer, nodding earnest assent to the first questions, shook her head at the latter. "No, he didn't. What I said to Maude and Beatrice was that Mr. Jardine looked more German than English. He looked just like a German student, Baroness."

"Franz Lippheim!" cried Madame von Marwitz. She sank back upon the seat from which she had risen, putting a hand before her eyes.

Victor, at her knees, laid a paw upon her lap and whined an interrogative sympathy. The three American ladies gathered near and gazed in silence upon the great woman, and Beatrice, carefully adjusting her camera, again took a snap. The picture of Madame von Marwitz, with her hand before her eyes, her anxious dog at her knees, found its way into the American press and illustrated touchingly the story of the lost adopted child. Madame von Marwitz was not sorry when, among a batch of press-cuttings, she came across the photograph and saw that her most genuine emotion had been thus made public.

She looked up at last, and the dizziness of untried and perilous freedom 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 Muetterchen 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: "Suesses Kind! Unglueckliches Kind! Oh—der schoene 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, gnaedige 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, gnaedige 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, gnaedige 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 Muetterchen, 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 Muetterchen 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, gnaedige 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, gnaedige 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, gnaedige Frau, the good landlady knows us all and knows that Lotta, Minna and Elizabeth are the only daughters that the Muetterchen has—besides the little ones. I remembered that the Muetterchen had told her this; she talked much with her; it was but three years ago, gnaedige 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, gnaedige 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, gnaedige 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, gnaedige 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 devote, 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, gnaedige Frau. You believe that all is for the best. But Karen—gnaedige 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 Muetterchen 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, gnaedige Frau. It will be to accept disgrace for her. We must defend her from this accusation, for it is not true. Ah, gnaedige 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, gnaedige 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, gnaedige 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 paean 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.