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Tante

<h2>CHAPTER XXXII</h2> Karen meanwhile made her way to the cliff-path and, seating herself on a grassy slope, she clasped her knees with her hands and gazed out over the sea. She was thinking hard of something, and trying to think only of that. It was true, the permission had been that she was to play on the grand-piano when it was left open. There had been no rule set; it had not been said that she was not to play at other times and indeed, on many occasions, she had played unrebuked, before Tante came down. But the thing to remember now, with all her power, was that, technically, Tante had been right. To hold fast to that thought was to beat away a fear that hovered about her, like a horrible bird of prey. She sat there for a long time, and she became aware at last that though she held so tightly to her thought, it had, as it were, become something lifeless, inefficacious, and that fear had invaded her. Tante had been unkind, unjust, unloving. It was as though, in taking refuge with Tante, she had leaped from a great height, seeing security beneath, and as though, alighting, she slipped and stumbled on a sloping surface with no foothold anywhere. Since she came, there had been only this sliding, sliding, and now it seemed to be down to unseen depths. For this was more and worse than the first fear of her coming. Tante had been unkind, and she so loved Mr. Drew that she forgot herself when he bestowed his least attention elsewhere. Karen rose to her feet suddenly, aware that she was trembling. She looked over the sea and the bright day was dreadful to her. Where was she and what was she, and what was Tante, if this fear were true? Not even on that far day of childhood when she had lost herself in the forest had such a horror of loneliness filled her. She was a lost, an unwanted creature. She turned from the unanswering immensities and ran down the cliff-path towards Les Solitudes. She could not be alone. To think these things was to feel herself drowning in fear. Emerging from the higher trees she caught sight below her of Mrs. Talcott's old straw hat moving among the borders; and, in the midst of the emptiness, the sight was strength and hope. The whole world seemed to narrow to Mrs. Talcott. She was secure and real. She was a spar to be clung to. The nightmare would reveal itself as illusion if she kept near Mrs. Talcott. She ran down to her. Mrs. Talcott was slaying slugs. She had placed pieces of orange-peel around cherished young plants to attract the depredators and she held a jar of soot; into the soot the slugs were dropped as she discovered them. The sight of her was like a draught of water to parching lips. Reality slowly grew round Karen once more. Tante had been hasty, even unkind; but she was piteous, absorbed in this great devotion; and Tante loved her. She walked beside Mrs. Talcott and helped her with the slugs. "Been out for a walk, Karen?" Mrs. Talcott inquired. They had reached the end of the border and moved on to a higher one. "Only to the cliff," said Karen. "You look kind of tired," Mrs. Talcott remarked, and Karen owned that she felt tired. "It's so warm to-day," she said. "Yes; it's real hot. Let's walk under the trees." Mrs. Talcott took out her handkerchief and wiped her large, saffron-coloured forehead. They walked slowly in the thin shadow of the young foliage. "You're staying on for a while, aren't you?" Mrs. Talcott inquired presently. She had as yet asked Karen no question and Karen felt that something in her own demeanour had caused this one. "For more than a while," she said. "I am not going away again." In the sound of the words she found a curious reassurance. Was it not her home, Les Solitudes? Mrs. Talcott said nothing for some moments, stooping to nip a drooping leaf from a plant they passed. Then she questioned further: "Is Mr. Jardine coming down here?" "I have left my husband," said Karen. For some moments, Mrs. Talcott, again, said nothing, but she no longer had an eye for the plants. Neither did she look at Karen; her gaze was fixed before her. "Is that so," was at last her comment. The phrase might have expressed amazement, commiseration or protest; its sound remained ambiguous. They had come to a rustic bench. "Let's sit down for a while," she said; "I'm not as young as I was." They sat down, the old woman heavily, and she drew a sigh of relief. Looking at her Karen saw that she, too, was very tired. And she, too—was it not strange that to-day she should see it for the first time?—was very lonely. A sudden pity, profound and almost passionate, filled her for Mrs. Talcott. "You'll not mind having me here—for all the time now—again, will you?" she asked, smiling a little, with determination, for she did not wish Mrs. Talcott to guess what she had seen. "No," said Mrs. Talcott, continuing to gaze before her, and shaking her head. "No, I'll be glad of that. We get on real well together, I think." And, after another moment of silence, she went on in the same contemplative tone: "I used to quarrel pretty bad with my husband when I was first married, Karen. He was the nicest, mildest kind of man, as loving as could be. But I guess most young things find it hard to get used to each other all at once. It ain't easy, married life; at least not at the beginning. You expect such a high standard of each other and everything seems to hurt. After a while you get so discouraged, perhaps, finding it isn't like what you expected, that you commence to think you don't care any more and it was all a mistake. I guess every young wife thinks that in the first year, and it makes you feel mighty sick. Why, if marriage didn't tie people up so tight, most of 'em would fly apart in the first year and think they just hated each other, and that's why it's such a good thing that they're tied so tight. Why I remember once the only thing that seemed to keep me back was thinking how Homer—Homer was my husband's name, Homer G. Talcott—sort of snorted when he laughed. I was awful mad with him and it seemed as if he'd behaved so mean and misunderstood me so that I'd got to go; but when I thought of that sort of childish snort he'd give sometimes, I felt I couldn't leave him. It's mighty queer, human nature, and the teeny things that seem to decide your mind for you; I guess they're not as teeny as they seem. But those hurt feelings are almost always a mistake—I'm pretty sure of it. Any two people find it hard to live together and get used to each other; it don't make any difference how much in love they are." There was no urgency in Mrs. Talcott's voice and no pathos of retrospect. Its contemplative placidity might have been inviting another sad and wise old woman to recognize these facts of life with her. Karen's mood, while she listened to her, was hardening to the iron of her final realization, the realization that had divided her and Gregory. "It isn't so with us, Mrs. Talcott," she said. "He has shown himself a man I cannot live with. None of our feelings are the same. All my sacred things he despises." "Mercedes, you mean?" Mrs. Talcott suggested after a moment's silence. "Yes. And more." Karen could not name her mother. Mrs. Talcott sat silent. "Has Tante not told you why I was here?" Karen presently asked. "No," said Mrs. Talcott. "I haven't had a real talk with Mercedes since she got back. Her mind is pretty well taken up with this young man." To this Karen, glancing at Mrs. Talcott in a slight bewilderment, was able to say nothing, and Mrs. Talcott pursued, resuming her former tone: "There's another upsetting thing about marriage, Karen, and that is that you can't expect your families to feel about each other like you feel. It isn't in nature that they should, and that's one of the things that young married people can't make up their minds to. Now Mr. Jardine isn't the sort of young man to care about many people; few and far between they are, I should infer, and Mercedes ain't one of them. Mercedes wouldn't appeal to him one mite. I saw that as plain as could be from the first." "He should have told me so," said Karen, with her rocky face and voice. "Well, he didn't tell you he found her attractive, did he?" "No. But though I saw that there was blindness, I thought it was because he did not know her. I thought that when he knew her he would care for her. And I could forgive his not caring. I could forgive so much. But it is worse, far worse than that. He accuses Tante of dreadful things. It is hatred that he feels for her. He has confessed it." The colour had risen to Karen's cheeks and burned there as she spoke. "Well now!" Mrs. Talcott imperturbably ejaculated. "You can see that I could not live with a man who hated Tante," said Karen. "What sort of things for instance?" Mrs. Talcott took up her former statement. "How can I tell you, Mrs. Talcott. It burns me to think of them. Hypocrisy in her feeling for me; selfishness and tyranny and deceit. It is terrible. In his eyes she is a malignant woman." "Tch! Tch!" Mrs. Talcott made an indeterminate cluck with her tongue. "I struggled not to see," said Karen, and her voice took on a sombre energy, "and Tante struggled, too, for me. She, too, saw from the very first what it might mean. She asked me, on the very first day that they met, Mrs. Talcott, when she came back, she asked me to try and make him like her. She was so sweet, so magnanimous," her voice trembled. Oh the deep relief, so deep that it seemed to cut like a knife—of remembering, pressing to her, what Tante had done for her, endured for her! "So sweet, so magnanimous, Mrs. Talcott. She did all that she could—and so did I—to give him time. For it was not that I lacked love for my husband. No. I loved him. More, even more, than I loved Tante. There was perhaps the wrong. I was perhaps cowardly, for his sake. I would not see. And it was all useless. It grew worse and worse. He was not rude to her. It was not that. It was worse. He was so careful—oh I see it now—not to put himself in the wrong. He tried, instead, to put her in the wrong. He misread every word and look. He sneered—oh, I saw it, and shut my eyes—at her little foibles and weaknesses; why should she not have them as well as other people, Mrs. Talcott? And he was blind—blind—blind," Karen's voice trembled more violently, "to all the rest. So that it had to end," she went on in broken sentences. "Tante went because she could bear it no longer. And because she saw that I could bear it no longer. She hoped, by leaving me, to save my happiness. But that could not be. Mrs. Talcott, even then I might have tried to go on living with that chasm—between Tante and my husband—in my life; but I learned the whole truth as even I hadn't seen it; as even she hadn't seen it. Mrs. Forrester came to me, Mrs. Talcott, and told me what Gregory had said to her of Tante. He believes her a malignant woman," said Karen, repeating her former words and rising as she spoke. "And to me he did not deny it. Everything, then, was finished for us. We saw that we did not love each other any longer." She stood before Mrs. Talcott in the path, her hands hanging at her sides, her eyes fixed on the wall above Mrs. Talcott's head. Mrs. Talcott did not rise. She sat silent, looking up at Karen, and so for some moments they said nothing, while in the spring sunshine about them the birds whistled and an early white butterfly dipped and fluttered by. "I feel mighty tired, Karen," Mrs. Talcott then said. Her eyelid with the white mole twitched over her eye, the lines of her large, firm old mouth were relaxed. Karen's eyes went to her and pity filled her. "It is my miserable story," she said. "I am so sorry." "Yes, I feel mighty tired," Mrs. Talcott repeated, looking away and out at the sea. "It's discouraging. I thought you were fixed up all safe and happy for life." "Dear Mrs. Talcott," said Karen, earnestly. "I don't like to see things that ought to turn out right turning out wrong," Mrs. Talcott continued, "and I've seen a sight too many of them in my life. Things turning out wrong that were meant to go right. Things spoiled. People, nice, good people, like you and Mr. Jardine, all upset and miserable. I've seen worse things, too," Mrs. Talcott slowly rose as she spoke. "Yes, I've seen about as bad things happen as can happen, and it's always been when Mercedes is about." She stood still beside Karen, her bleak, intense old gaze fixed on the sea. Karen thought that she had misheard her last words. "When Tante is about?" she repeated. "You mean that dreadful things happen to her? That is one of the worst parts of it now, Mrs. Talcott—only that I am so selfish that I do not think of it enough—to know that I have added to Tante's troubles." "No." Mrs. Talcott now said, and with a curious mildness and firmness. "No, that ain't what I mean. Mercedes has had a sight of trouble. I don't deny it, but that ain't what I mean. She makes trouble. She makes it for herself and she makes it for other people. There's always trouble going, of some sort or other, when Mercedes is about." "I don't understand you, Mrs. Talcott," said Karen. An uncanny feeling had crept over her while the old woman spoke. It was as if, helplessly, she were listening to a sleep-walker who, in tranced unconsciousness, spoke forth mildly the hidden thought of his waking life. "No, you don't understand, yet," said Mrs. Talcott. "Perhaps it's fair that you don't. Perhaps she can't help it. She was born so, I guess." Mrs. Talcott turned and walked towards the house. The panic of the cliff was rising in Karen again. Mrs. Talcott was worse than the cliff and the unanswering immensities. She walked beside her, trying to control her terror. "You mean, I think," she said, "that Tante is a tragic person and people who love her must suffer because of all that she has had to suffer." "Yes, she's tragic all right," said Mrs. Talcott. "She's had about as bad a time as they make 'em—off and on. But she spoils things. And it makes me tired to see it going on. I've had too much of it," said Mrs. Talcott, "and if this can't come right—this between you and your nice young husband—I don't feel like I could get over it somehow." Leaning on Karen's arm with both hands she had paused and looked intently down at the path. "But Mrs. Talcott," Karen's voice trembled; it was incredible, yet one was forced by Mrs. Talcott's whole demeanour to ask the question without indignation—"you speak as if you were blaming Tante for something. You do not blame her, do you?" Mrs. Talcott still paused and still looked down, as if deeply pondering. "I've done a lot of thinking about that very point, Karen," she said. "And I don't know as I've made up my mind yet. It's a mighty intricate question. Perhaps we've all got only so much will-power and when most of it is ladled out into one thing there's nothing left to ladle out into the others. That's the way I try, sometimes, to figure it out to myself. Mercedes has got a powerful sight of will-power; but look at all she's got to use up in her piano-playing. There she is, working up to the last notch all the time, taking it out of herself, getting all wrought up. Well, to live so as you won't be spoiling things for other people needs about as much will-power as piano-playing, I guess, when you're as big a person as Mercedes and want as many things. And if you ain't got any will-power left you just do the easiest thing; you just take what you've a mind to; you just let yourself go in every other way to make up for the one way you held yourself in. That's how it is, perhaps." "But Mrs. Talcott," said Karen in a low voice, "all this—about me and my husband—has come because Tante has thought too much of us and too little of herself. It would have been much easier for her to let us alone and not try and make Gregory like her. I do not recognise her in what you are saying. You are saying dreadful things." "Well, dreadful things have happened, I guess," said Mrs. Talcott. "I want you to go back to your nice husband, Karen." "No; no. Never. I can never go back to him," said Karen, walking on. "Because he hates Mercedes?" "Not only that. No. He is not what I thought. Do not ask me, Mrs. Talcott. We do not love each other any longer. It is over." "Well, I won't say anything about it, then," said Mrs. Talcott, who, walking beside her, kept her hand on her arm. "Only I liked Mr. Jardine. I took to him right off, and I don't take to people so easy. And I take to you, Karen, more than you know, I guess. And I'll lay my bottom dollar there's some mistake between you and him, and that Mercedes is the reason of it." They had reached the house. "But wait," said Karen, turning to her. She laid both her hands on the old woman's arm while she steadied her voice to speak this last thought. "Wait. You are so kind to me, Mrs. Talcott; but you have made everything strange—and dreadful. I must ask you—one question, Mrs. Talcott. You have been with Tante all her life. No one knows her as you do. Tell me, Mrs. Talcott. You love Tante?" They faced each other at the top of the steps, on the verandah. And the young eyes plunged deep into the old eyes, passionately searching. For a moment Mrs. Talcott did not reply. When she did speak, it was decisively as if, while recognising Karen's right to ask, Karen must recognise that the answer must suffice. "I'd be pretty badly off if I didn't love Mercedes. She's all I've got in the world." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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