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Tante

<h2>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> Mrs. Forrester remained among her canaries and jonquils, thinking. She was seriously perturbed. She was, as she had said, fond of Gregory, but she was fonder, far, of Mercedes von Marwitz, whom Gregory had caused to suffer and whom he would, evidently, cause to suffer still more. She controlled the impulse to telephone to Eleanor Scrotton and consult with her; a vague instinct of loyalty towards Gregory restrained her from that. Eleanor would, in a day or two, hear from Cornwall and what she would hear could not be so bad as what Mrs. Forrester herself could tell her. After thinking for the rest of the morning, Mrs. Forrester decided to go and see Karen. She was not very fond of Karen. She had always been inclined to think that Mercedes exaggerated the significance of the girl's devotion, and Gregory's exaggeration, now, of her general significance—explicable as it might be in an infatuated young husband—disposed her the less kindly towards her. She felt that Karen had been clumsy, dull, in the whole affair. She felt that, at bottom, she was somewhat responsible for it. How had Gregory been able, living with Karen, to have formed such an insensate conception of Mercedes? The girl was stupid, acquiescent; she had shown no tact, no skill, no clarifying courage. Mrs. Forrester determined to show them all—to talk to Karen. She drove to St. James's at four o'clock that afternoon and Barker told her that Mrs. Jardine was in the drawing-room. Visitors, evidently, were with her, and it affected Mrs. Forrester very unpleasantly, as Barker led her along the passage, to hear rich harmonies of music filling the flat. She had expected to be perhaps ushered into a darkened bedroom; to administer comfort and sympathy to a shattered creature before administering reproof and counsel. But Karen not only was up; she was not alone. The strains were those of chamber-music, and a half-perplexed delight mingled with Mrs. Forrester's displeasure as she recognized the heavenly melodies of Schumann's Pianoforte Quintet. The performers were in the third movement. Karen rose, as Barker announced her, from the side of a stout lady at the piano, and Mrs. Forrester, nodding, her finger at her lips, dropped into a chair and listened. The stout lady at the piano had a pale, fat, pear-shaped face, her grizzled hair parted above it and twisted to a large outstanding knob behind. She wore eyeglasses and peered through them at her music with intelligent intensity and profound humility. The violin was played by an enormous young man with red hair, and the viola, second violin and 'cello by three young women, all of the black-and-tan Semitic type. Mrs. Forrester was too much preoccupied with her wonder to listen as she would have wished to, but by the time the end of the movement was come she had realized that they played extremely well. Karen came forward in the interval. She was undoubtedly pale and heavy-eyed; but in her little dress of dark blue silk, with her narrow lawn ruffles and locket and shining hair, she showed none of the desperate signs appropriate to her circumstances nor any embarrassment at the incongruous situation in which Mrs. Forrester found her. "This is Frau Lippheim, Mrs. Forrester," she said. "And these are Fräulein Lotta and Minna and Elizabeth, and this is Herr Franz. I think you have often heard Tante speak of our friends." Her ears buzzing with the name of Lippheim since the night before, Mrs. Forrester was aware that she showed confusion, also that for a brief, sharp instant, while her eyes rested on Herr Franz, a pang of perverse sympathy for Gregory, in a certain aspect of his wickedness, disintegrated her state of mind. He was singular looking indeed, this untidy young man, whose ill-kept clothes had a look of insecurity, like arrested avalanches on a mountain. "No, I can feel for Gregory somewhat in this," Mrs. Forrester said to herself. "We are having some music, you see," said Karen. "Herr Lippheim promised me yesterday that they would all come and play to me. Can you stay and listen for a little while? They must go before tea, for they have a rehearsal for their concert," she added, as though to let Mrs. Forrester know that she was not unconscious of the matter that must have brought her. There was really no reason why she shouldn't stay. She could not very well ask to have the Lippheims and their instruments turned out. Moreover she was very fond of the Quintet. Mrs. Forrester said that she would be glad to stay. When they went on to the fourth movement, and while she listened, giving her mind to the music, Mrs. Forrester's disintegration slowly recomposed itself. It was not only that the music was heavenly and that they played so well. She liked these people; they were the sort of people she had always liked. She forgot Herr Franz's uncouth and mountainous aspect. His great head leaning sideways, his eyes half closed, with the musician's look of mingled voluptuous rapture and cold, grave, listening intellect, he had a certain majesty. The mother, too, all devout concentration, was an artist of the right sort; the girls had the gentle benignity that comes of sincere self-dedication. They pleased Mrs. Forrester greatly and, as she listened, her severity towards Gregory shaped itself anew and more forcibly. Narrow, blind, bigoted young man. And it was amusing to think, as a comment on his fierce consciousness of Herr Lippheim's unfitness, that here Herr Lippheim was, admitted to the very heart of Karen's sorrow. It was inconceivable that anyone but very near and dear friends should have been tolerated by her to-day. Karen, too, after her fashion, was an artist. The music, no doubt, was helpful to her. Soft thoughts of her great, lacerated friend, speeding now towards her solitudes, filled Mrs. Forrester's eyes more than once with tears. They finished and Frau Lippheim, rubbing her hands with her handkerchief, stood smiling near-sightedly, while Mrs. Forrester expressed her great pleasure and asked all the Lippheims to come and see her. She planned already a musical. Karen's face showed a pale beam of gladness. "And now, my dear child," said Mrs. Forrester, when the Lippheims had departed and she and Karen were alone and seated side by side on the sofa, "we must talk. I have come, of course you know, to talk about this miserable affair." She put her hand on Karen's; but already something in the girl's demeanour renewed her first displeasure. She looked heavy, she looked phlegmatic; there was no response, no softness in her glance. "You have perhaps a message to me, Mrs. Forrester, from Tante," she said. "No, Karen, no," Mrs. Forrester with irrepressible severity returned. "I have no message for you. Any message, I think should come from your husband and not from your guardian." Karen sat silent, her eyes moving away from her visitor's face and fixing themselves on the wall above her head. The impulse that had brought Mrs. Forrester was suffering alterations. Gregory had revealed the case to her as worse than she had supposed; Karen emphasized the revelation. And what of Mercedes between these two young egoists? "I must ask you, Karen," she said, "whether you realise how Gregory has behaved, to the woman to whom you, and he, owe so much?" Karen continued to look fixedly at the wall and after a moment of deliberation replied: "Tante did not speak rightly to Gregory, Mrs. Forrester. She lost her temper very much. You know that Tante can lose her temper." Mrs. Forrester, at this, almost lost hers. "You surprise me, Karen. Your husband had spoken insultingly of her friends—and yours—to her. Why attempt to shield him? I heard the whole story, in detail, from your guardian, you must remember." Again Karen withdrew into a considering silence; but, though her face remained impassive, Mrs. Forrester observed that a slight flush rose to her cheeks. "Gregory did not intend Tante to overhear what he said," she produced at last. "It was said to me—and I had questioned him—not to her. Tante came in by chance. It is not likely, Mrs. Forrester, that my version would differ in any way from hers." "You mustn't take offence at what I say, Karen," Mrs. Forrester spoke with more severity; "your version does differ. To my astonishment you seem actually to defend your husband." "Yes; from what is not true: that is not to differ from Tante as to what took place." Karen brought her eyes to Mrs. Forrester's. "From what is not true. Very well. You will not deny that he so intensely dislikes your guardian and has shown it so plainly to her that she has had to leave you. You will not deny that, Karen?" "No. I will not deny that," Karen replied. "My poor child—it is true, and it is only a small part of the truth. I don't know what Gregory has said to you in private, but even Mercedes had not prepared me for what he said to me this morning." "What did he say to you this morning, Mrs. Forrester?" "He believes her to be a bad woman, Karen; do you realise that; has he told you that; can you bear it? Dangerous, unscrupulous, tyrannous, devoured by egotism, were the words he used of her. I shall not forget them. He accused her of hypocrisy in her feeling for you. He hoped that you might never see her again. It is terrible, Karen. Terrible. It puts us all—all of us who love Mercedes, and you through her, into the most impossible position." Karen sat, her head erect, her eyes downcast, with a rigidity of expression almost torpid. "Do you see the position he puts us in, Karen?" Mrs. Forrester went on with insistence. "Have you had the matter out with Gregory? Did you realise its gravity? I must really beg you to answer me." "I have not yet spoken with my husband," said Karen, in a chill, lifeless tone. "But you will? You cannot let it pass?" "No, Mrs. Forrester. I will not let it pass." "You will insist that he shall make a full apology to Mercedes?" "Is he to apologise to her for hating her?" Karen at this asked suddenly. "For hating her? What do you mean?" Mrs. Forrester was taken aback. "If he is to apologise," said Karen, in a still colder, still more lifeless voice, "it must be for something that can be changed. How can he apologise to her for hating her if he continues to hate her?" "He can apologise for having spoken insultingly to her." "He has not done that. It was Tante who overheard what she was not intended to hear. And it was Tante who spoke with violence." "It amazes me to hear you put it on her shoulders, Karen. He can apologise, then, for what he has said to me," said Mrs. Forrester with indignation. "You will not deny that what he said of her to me was insulting." "He is to tell her that he has said those words and then apologise, Mrs. Forrester? Oh, no; you do not think what you say." "Really, my dear Karen, you have a most singular fashion of speaking to a person three times your age!" Mrs. Forrester exclaimed, the more incensed for the confusion of thought into which the girl's persistence threw her. "The long and short of it is that he must make it possible for Mercedes to meet him, with decency, in the future." "But I do not know how that can be," said Karen, rising as Mrs. Forrester rose; "I do not know how Tante, now, can see him. If he thinks these things and does not say them, there may be pretence; but if he says them, to Tante's friends, how can there be pretence?" There was no appeal in her voice. She put the facts, so evident to herself, before her visitor and asked her to look at them. Mrs. Forrester was suddenly aware that her advice might have been somewhat hasty. She also felt suddenly as though, on a reconnoitring march down a rough but open path, she found herself merging in the gloomy mysteries of a forest. There were hidden things in Karen's voice. "Well, well," she said, taking the girl's hand and casting about in her mind for a retreat; "that's to see it as hopeless, isn't it, and we don't want to do that, do we? We want to bring Gregory to reason, and you are the person best fitted to do that. We want to clear up these dreadful ideas he has got into his head, heaven knows how. And no one but you can do it. No one in the world, my dear Karen, is more fitted than you to make him understand what our wonderful Tante really is. There is the trouble, Karen," said Mrs. Forrester, finding now the original clue with which she had started on her expedition; "he shouldn't have been able, living with you, seeing your devotion, seeing from your life, as you must have told him of it, what it was founded on, he shouldn't have been able to form such a monstrous conception of our great, dear one. You have been in fault there, my dear, you see it now, I am sure. At the first hint you should have made things clear to him. I know that it is hard for a young wife to oppose the man she loves; but love mustn't make us cowardly," Mrs. Forrester murmured on more cheerfully as they moved down the passage, "and Gregory will only love you more wisely and deeply if he is made to recognize, once for all, that you will not sacrifice your guardian to please him." They were now at the door and Karen had not said a word. "Well, good-bye, my dear," said Mrs. Forrester. Oddly she did not feel able to urge more strongly upon Karen that she should not sacrifice her guardian to her husband. "I hope I've made things clearer by coming. It was better that you should, realize just what your guardian's friends felt—and would feel—about it, wasn't it?" Karen still made no reply and on the threshold Mrs. Forrester paused to add, with some urgency: "It was right, you see that, don't you, Karen, that you should know what Gregory is really feeling?" "Yes," Karen now assented. "It is better that I should know that." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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