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<h2>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2> Mrs. Talcott had a broken night and it was like a continuation of some difficult and troubled dream when she heard the voice of Mercedes saying to her: "Tallie, Tallie, wake up. Tallie, will you wake! Bon Dieu! how she sleeps!" The voice of Mercedes when she had heard it last had been the voice of passion and desperation, but its tone was changed this morning; it was fretful, feverishly irritable, rather than frantic. Mrs. Talcott opened her eyes and sat up in bed. She wore a Jaeger nightgown and her head, with its white hair coiled at the top, was curiously unaltered by its informal setting. "What do you mean by coming waking me up like this after the night you've given me," she demanded, fully awakened now. "Go right straight away or I'll put you out." "Don't be a fool, Tallie," said Madame von Marwitz, who, in a silken dressing-gown and with her hair unbound, had an appearance at once childish and damaged. "Where is Karen? I've been to her room and she is not there. The door downstairs is unbolted. Is she gone out to walk so early?" Mrs. Talcott sat still and upright in her bed. "What time is it?" she asked. "It is seven. I have been awake since dawn. Do you imagine that I have had a pleasant night?" Mrs. Talcott did not answer this query. She sprang out of bed. "Perhaps she's gone to meet the bus at the cross-roads. But I told her I was going to take her. Tell Burton to come round with the car as quick as he can. I'll go after her and see that she's all right. Why, the child hasn't got any money," Mrs. Talcott muttered, deftly drawing on her clothes beneath her nightgown which she held by the edge of the neck between her teeth. Madame von Marwitz listened to her impeded utterance frowning. "The bus? What do you mean? Why is she meeting the bus?" "To take her to London where she's going to the Lippheims," said Mrs. Talcott, casting aside the nightgown and revealing herself in chemise and petticoat. "You go and order that car, Mercedes," she added, as she buckled together her sturdy, widely-waisted stays. "This ain't no time for talk." Madame von Marwitz looked at her for another moment and then rang the bell. She put her head outside the door to await the housemaid and, as this person made some delay, shouted in a loud voice: "Handcock! Jane! Louise! Where are you? Fainéantes!" she stamped her foot, and, as the housemaid appeared, running; "Burton," she commanded. "The car. At once. And tell Louise to bring me my tea-gown, my shoes and stockings, my fur cloak, at once; but at once; make haste!" "What are you up to, Mercedes?" Mrs. Talcott inquired, as Madame von Marwitz thrust her aside from the dressing-table and began to wind up her hair before the mirror. "I am getting ready to go with you, parbleu!" Madame von Marwitz replied. "Is that you, Louise? Come in. You have the things? Put on my shoes and stockings; quickly; mais dépêchez-vous donc! The tea-gown—yes, over this—over it I say! So. Now bring me a motor-veil and gloves. I shall do thus." Mrs. Talcott, while Louise with an air of profoundest gloom arrayed her mistress, kept silence, but when Louise had gone in search of the motor-veil she remarked in a low but imperative voice: "You'll get out at the roadside and wait for me, that's what you'll do. I won't have you along when I meet Karen. She couldn't bear the sight of you." "Peace!" Madame von Marwitz commanded, adjusting the sash of her tea-gown. "I shall see Karen. The deplorable misunderstanding of last night shall be set right. Her behaviour has been undignified and underhanded; but I misunderstood her, and, pierced to the heart by the treachery of a man I trusted, I spoke wildly, without thought. Karen will understand. I know my Karen." It was not the moment for dispute. Louise had re-entered with the veil and Madame von Marwitz bound it about her head, standing before the mirror, and gazing at herself, fixedly and unseeingly, with dark eyes set in purpled orbits. She turned then and swept from the room, and Mrs. Talcott, pinning on her hat as she went, followed her. Not until they were speeding through the fresh, chill air, did Mrs. Talcott speak. Madame von Marwitz, leaning to one side of the open car, scanned the stretch of road before them, melancholy and monotonous under the pale morning sky, and Mrs. Talcott, moving round determinedly in her corner, faced her. "I want to tell you, right now, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, "that Karen's done with you. There's no use in your coming, for you'll never get her back. I've told her all about you, Mercedes;—yes, I ain't afraid of you and you know it;—I told her. I made up my mind to it last night after I'd seen you and heard all your shameful story and how you'd treated her. I made up my mind that you shouldn't get hold of her again, not if I could help it. The time had come to tell that child that her husband was right all along and that you ain't a woman to be trusted. She'd seen for herself what you could do, and I made a sure thing of it. I've held my tongue for all my life, but I spoke out last night. I want her to be quit of you for good. I want her to go back to her husband. Yes, Mercedes; I've burst up the whole concern." Madame von Marwitz, her hand holding tightly the side of the car and her eyes like large, dark stones in her white face, was sitting upright and was staring at her. She could not speak and Mrs. Talcott went on. "She knows all about you now; about you and Baldwin Tanner and you and Ernst, and about that pitiful young Russian. She knows how you treated them. She knows how it wasn't you but Ernst who was her real friend, and how you didn't want her to live with you. She knows that you're a mighty unfortunate creature and a mighty dangerous one; and what I advise you to do, Mercedes, is to get out here and go right home. Karen won't ever come back to you again, I'm as sure of it as I'm sure my name's Hannah Talcott." They sped, with softly singing speed, through the chill morning air. The hard, tight, dark eyeballs still fixed themselves on the old woman almost lifelessly, and still she sat grasping the side of the car. She had the look of a creature shot through the heart and maintaining the poise and pride of its startled and arrested life. Mechanical forces rather than volition seemed to sustain her. "Say, Mercedes, will you get out?" Mrs. Talcott repeated. And the rigid figure then moved its head slightly in negation. They reached the cross-roads where a few carts and an ancient fly stood waiting for the arrival of the omnibus that plied between the Lizard and Helston. Karen was nowhere to be seen. "Perhaps she went across the fields and got into the bus at the Lizard," said Mrs. Talcott. "We'll wait and see, and if she isn't in the bus we'll go on to Helston. Perhaps she's walking." Madame von Marwitz continued to say nothing, and in a moment they heard behind them the clashing and creaking of the omnibus. It drew up at the halt and Karen was not in it. "To Helston," said Mrs. Talcott, standing up to speak to the chauffeur. They sped on before the omnibus had resumed its journey. Tints of azure and purple crept over the moors; the whitening sky showed rifts of blue; it was a beautiful morning. Mrs. Talcott, keeping a keen eye on the surrounding country, became aware presently that Mercedes had turned her gaze upon her and was examining her. She looked round. There was no anger, no resentment, even, on the pallid face. It seemed engaged, rather, in a deep perplexity—that of a child struck down by the hand that, till then, had cherished it. It brooded in sick wonder on Mrs. Talcott, and Mrs. Talcott looked back with her ancient, weary eyes. Madame von Marwitz broke the silence. She spoke in a toneless voice. "Tallie—how could you?" she said. "Oh, Tallie—how could you have told her?" "Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, gently but implacably, "I had to. It was right to make sure you shouldn't get hold of her again. She had to go, and she had to go for good. If you want me to go, too, I will, but it's only fair to tell you that I never felt much sorrier for you than I do at this minute." "There have been tragedies in my life," Madame von Marwitz went on in the low, dulled voice. "I have been a passion-tossed woman. Yes, I have not been guiltless. But how could you cut out my heart with all its scars and show it to my child?" "It was right to do it, Mercedes, so as you shouldn't ruin her life. She's not your child, and you've shown her she's not. A mother don't behave so to her child, however off her head she goes." "I was mad last night." The tears ran slowly down Madame von Marwitz's cheeks. "I can tell that to Karen. I can explain. I can throw myself on her mercy. I loved him and my heart was broken. One is not responsible. It is the animal, wounded to death, that shrieks and tears at the spear it feels entering its flesh." "I'm awful sorry for you, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. And now, hiding her face in her hands and leaning back in her cushions, Madame von Marwitz began to weep with the soft reiterated sobbing of a miserable child. "I have no one left. I am alone," she sobbed. "Even you have turned against me." "No, I haven't turned against you," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm here." And presently, while Mercedes wept, Mrs. Talcott took her hand and held it. They reached Helston and climbed the steep, stony road to the station. There was no sign of Karen. Mrs. Talcott got out and made inquiries. She might have gone to London by the train that left at dawn; but no one had noticed such a young lady. Mrs. Talcott came back to the car with her fruitless story. Mercedes, by this time, had dried her eyes and was regaining, apparently, her more normal energies. "Not here? Not seen? Not heard of?" she repeated. "But where is she then?" Mrs. Talcott stood at the door of the car and looked at her charge. "Well, I'm afraid she made off in the night, straight away, after I'd talked to her." "Made off in the night?" A dark colour suddenly suffused Madame von Marwitz's face. "Yes, that's it, I reckon. I must have said something to scare her about her going back to her husband. Perhaps she thought I'd bring him down without her knowing, and perhaps she wasn't far wrong. I'm afraid I've played the fool. She thought I'd round on her in some way and so she just lit out." Madame von Marwitz stared at her. The expression of her face had entirely altered; there was no trace of the dazed and wretched child. Dark forces lit her eyes and the relaxed lines of her lips tightened. "Get in," she commanded. "Tell him to drive back, and get in." And when Mrs. Talcott had taken her place beside her she went on in a low, concentrated voice: "Is it not possible that she has joined that vile seducer?" Mrs. Talcott eyed her with the fixity of a lion-tamer. Their moment of instinctive closeness had passed. "Now see here, Mercedes," she said; "I advise you to be careful what you say." "Careful! I am half mad! Between you all you will drive me mad!" said Madame von Marwitz with intensity of fury. "You fill Karen's mind with lies about my past—oh, there are two sides to every story! she shall hear my side!—you drive her forth with your threats to hand her over to the man she loathes, and she takes refuge—where else?—with that miscreant. Why not? Where else had she to go? You say that she had no money. We call now at the hotel. If he is gone, and if within the day we do not hear that she is with Lise, we will send at once for detectives." "You'd better control yourself, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. "If Karen ain't found it'll be a mighty ugly story for you to face up to, and if she's found it won't be all plain sailing for you either; you've got to pay the price for what you've done. But if it gets round that you drove her out and then spread scandal about her, you'll do for yourself—just keep your mind on that if you can." "Scandal! What scandal shall I spread? If he disappears and she with him, will the facts not shriek aloud? If she is found she will be found by me. I will wire at once to Lise." "We'll wire to Lise and we'll wire to Mr. Jardine, that's what we'll do. Karen may have changed her mind. She may have felt shy of telling me she had. She may have come to see that he's the thing she's got to hang on to. What I hope for is that if she ain't in London already with him, she's hiding somewhere about here and has sent for him herself." "Ah, I understand your hope; it is of a piece with all your treachery," said Madame von Marwitz in a voice suffocated by conflicting angers. "If she is with her husband he, too, will hear the story—the false, garbled story of my crimes. He is my enemy, you know it; my malignant enemy; you know that he will spread this affair broadcast. And you can rejoice in this! You are glad for my disgrace and ruin!" Tears again streamed from her eyes. "Don't take on so, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. "If Karen's with her husband all they're likely to be thinking about is that he was right and has got her back again. Karen's bound to tell him something about what happened, and you can depend upon Karen for saying as little as she can. But if you imagine that you're going to be let off from being found out by that young man, you're letting yourself in for a big disappointment, and you can take my word for it. It's because he's right about you that Karen'll go back to him." Madame von Marwitz turned her head away and fixed her eyes on the landscape. They reached the little village near Les Solitudes, and at the little hotel, with its drowsy, out-of-season air, Mrs. Talcott descended, leaving Mercedes proudly seated in the car, indifferent to the possible gaze from above of her faithless devotee. Mrs. Talcott returned with the information that Mr. Drew was upstairs and not yet awake. "Go up. Go up to him," said the tormented woman, after a moment of realized relief or disappointment—who can say? "He may have seen her. He may have given her money for her journey. They may have arranged to meet later." Mrs. Talcott again disappeared and she only returned after some ten minutes. "Home," she then said to Burton, climbing heavily into the car. "Yes, there he was, sleeping as peaceful as a dormouse in his silk pyjamas," she remarked. "I startled him some, I reckon, when I waked him up. No, he don't know anything about her. Wanted to jump up and look for her when I told him she was missing. Keep still, Mercedes—what do you mean by bouncing about like that—folks can see you. I talked to him pretty short and sharp, that young man, and I told him the best thing he could do now was to pack his grip-sack and clear out. He's going right away and he promised to send me a telegram from London to-night. He can catch the second train." Madame von Marwitz leaned back. She closed her eyes. The car had climbed to the entrance of Les Solitudes and the fuchsia hedge was passing on each side. Mrs. Talcott, looking at her companion, saw that she had either actually fainted or was simulating a very realistic fainting-fit. Mercedes often had fainting-fits at moments of crisis; but she was a robust woman, and Mrs. Talcott had no reason to believe that any of them had been genuine. She did not believe that this one was genuine, yet she had to own, looking at the leaden eyelids and ashen face, that Mercedes had been through enough in the last twelve hours to break down a stronger person. And it was appropriate that she should return to her desolate home in a prostrate condition. Mrs. Talcott, as often before, played her part. The maids were summoned; they supported Madame von Marwitz's body; Burton took her shoulders and Mrs. Talcott her feet. So the afflicted woman was carried into the house and upstairs and laid upon her bed. Mrs. Talcott then went and sent telegrams to Frau Lippheim and to Gregory Jardine. She asked them to let her know if Karen arrived in London during the day. She had her answers that evening. That from Gregory ran—"Not seen or heard of Karen. What has happened? Write by return. Or shall I come to you?" The other was from the Lippheims' landlady and said that the Lippheims had returned to Germany four days before and that no one had arrived to see them. The evening post had gone. Mrs. Talcott went out and answered Gregory by wire: "Writing to-morrow morning. We think Karen is in London. Stay where you are." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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