Tante

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

"Well," said Mrs. Talcott, "you'll want me to pack for you, I expect."

Madame von Marwitz had opened her door and her hand was on the door-knob. She paused so and again, for a long moment, she made no reply. "Thank you," she then repeated. But she turned and looked at Mrs. Talcott. "You have been a traitor to me," she said after she had contemplated her for some moments, "you, in whom I completely trusted. You have ruined me in the eyes of those I love."

"Yes, I've gone back on you, Mercedes, that's a fact," said Mrs. Talcott.

"You have handed Karen over to bondage," Madame von Marwitz went on. "She and this man are utterly unsuited. I would have freed her and given her to a more worthy mate." Her voice had the dignity of a disinterested and deep regret.

Mrs. Talcott made no reply. The long vistas of her eyes dwelt on Mercedes. After another moment of this mutual contemplation Madame von Marwitz closed the door, though she still kept her hand on the door-knob.

"May I ask what you have been saying of me to Mrs. Forrester, to Mr. Jardine?"

"Well, as to Mr. Jardine, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, "there was no need of saying anything, was there, if I turned out right in what I told him I suspected. He sees I'm right. He'd been fed up, along with the rest of them, on lies, and Karen can help him out with the details if he wants to ask for them. As for the old lady, I gave her the truth of the story about Karen running away. I made her see, and see straight, that your one idea was to keep Karen's husband from getting her back because you knew that if he did the truth about you would come out. I let you down as easy as I could and put it that you weren't responsible exactly for the things you said when you went off your head in a rage and that you were awful sorry when you found Karen had taken you at your word and made off. But that old lady feels mighty sick, Mercedes, and I allow she'll feel sicker when she's seen Mr. Jardine. As for Miss Scrotton, I saw her, too, and she's come out strong; you've got a friend there, Mercedes, sure; she won't believe anything against her beloved Mercedes," a dry smile touched Mrs. Talcott's grave face as she echoed Miss Scrotton's phraseology, "until she hears from her own lips what she has to say in explanation of the story. You'll be able to fix her up all right, Mercedes, and most of the others, too, I expect. I'd advise you to lie low for a while and let it blow over. People are mighty glad to be given the chance for forgetting things against anyone like you. It'll simmer down and work out, I expect, to a bad quarrel you had with Karen that's parted you. And as for the outside world, why it won't mind a mite what you do. Why you can murder your grandmother and eat her, I expect, and the world'll manage to overlook it, if you're a genius."

"I thank you," said Madame von Marwitz, her hand clasping and unclasping the door-knob. "I thank you indeed for your reassurance. I have murdered and eaten my grandmother, but I am to escape hanging because I am a genius. That is a most gratifying piece of information. You, personally, I infer, consider that the penalty should be paid, however gifted the criminal."

"I don't know, Mercedes, I don't know," said Mrs. Talcott in a voice of profound sadness. "I don't know who deserves penalties and who don't, if you begin to argue it out to yourself." Mrs. Talcott, who had seated herself at the other side of the table, laid an arm upon it, looking before her and not at Mercedes, as she spoke. "You're a bad woman; that ain't to be denied. You're a bad, dangerous woman, and perhaps what you've been trying to do now is the worst thing you've ever done. But I guess I'm way past feeling angry at anything you do. I guess I'm way past wanting you to get come up with. I can't make out how to think about a person like you. Maybe you figured it all out to yourself different from the way it looks. Maybe you persuaded yourself to believe that Karen would be better off apart from her husband. I guess that's the way with most criminals, don't you? They figure things out different from the way other people do. I expect you can't help it. I expect you were born so. And I guess you can't change. Some bad folks seem to manage to get religion and that brings 'em round; but I expect you ain't that kind."

Madame von Marwitz, while Mrs. Talcott thus shared her psychological musings with her, was not looking at the old woman: her eyes were fixed on the floor and she seemed to consider.