Part 44 (1/2)
”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, pa.s.sionately 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.”
CHAPTER x.x.xIII