diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | 42428-0.txt | 384 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 42428-8.txt | 11078 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 42428-8.zip | bin | 222734 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 42428-h.zip | bin | 317170 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 42428.txt | 11078 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 42428.zip | bin | 222643 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/42428-8.txt | 11078 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/42428-8.zip | bin | 222734 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/42428-h.zip | bin | 317170 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/42428-h/42428-h.htm | 11103 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/42428-h/images/colophon.png | bin | 8010 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/42428-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 75325 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/42428.txt | 11078 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/42428.zip | bin | 222643 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/readme.htm | 13 |
15 files changed, 2 insertions, 55810 deletions
diff --git a/42428-0.txt b/42428-0.txt index 042e4b3..a39afd5 100644 --- a/42428-0.txt +++ b/42428-0.txt @@ -1,23 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Adrienne Toner - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42428] - -Language: English - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42428 *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was @@ -10712,365 +10693,4 @@ to be in the right. {pg 241} End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - -***** This file should be named 42428-8.txt or 42428-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/2/42428/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project -Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you -charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you -do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the -rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose -such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and -research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do -practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is -subject to the trademark license, especially commercial -redistribution. - - - -*** START: FULL LICENSE *** - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project -Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at -http://gutenberg.org/license). - - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy -all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. -If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the -terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or -entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement -and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" -or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the -collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an -individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are -located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from -copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative -works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg -are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project -Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by -freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of -this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with -the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by -keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project -Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in -a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check -the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement -before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or -creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project -Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning -the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United -States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate -access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently -whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, -copied or distributed: - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived -from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is -posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied -and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees -or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work -with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the -work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 -through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the -Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or -1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional -terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked -to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the -permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any -word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or -distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than -"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version -posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), -you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a -copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon -request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other -form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided -that - -- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is - owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he - has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the - Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments - must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you - prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax - returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and - sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the - address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to - the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." - -- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or - destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium - and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of - Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any - money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days - of receipt of the work. - -- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set -forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from -both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael -Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the -Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm -collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain -"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or -corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual -property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a -computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by -your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with -your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with -the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a -refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity -providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to -receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy -is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further -opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER -WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO -WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. -If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the -law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be -interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by -the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any -provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance -with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, -promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, -harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, -that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do -or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm -work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any -Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. - - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers -including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists -because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from -people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. -To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 -and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive -Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at -http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent -permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. -Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered -throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at -809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email -business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact -information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official -page at http://pglaf.org - -For additional contact information: - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To -SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any -particular state visit http://pglaf.org - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. -To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate - - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm -concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared -with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project -Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. - - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. -unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42428 *** diff --git a/42428-8.txt b/42428-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 922896c..0000000 --- a/42428-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11078 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Adrienne Toner - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42428] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER -_A Novel_ - -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt) - -AUTHOR OF "CHRISTMAS ROSES, AND OTHER STORIES," "TANTE" -"FRANKLIN KANE," "THE ENCOUNTER," ETC. - -[Illustration: colophon] - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge - -COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SÉLINCOURT -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - -THIRD IMPRESSION, MAY, 1922 - -The Riverside Press -CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS -PRINTED IN THE U . S . A. - - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER - - - - -PART I - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -"Come down to Coldbrooks next week-end, will you, Roger?" said Barney -Chadwick. He had been wandering around the room, pausing once to glance -at the César Franck on the piano and once at the window to look down at -the Thames, and his voice now, though desultory in intention, betrayed -to his friend preoccupation and even anxiety. "There is going to be an -interesting girl with us: American; very original and charming." - -Roger Oldmeadow sat at his writing-bureau in the window, and his high -dark head was silhouetted against the sky. It had power and even beauty, -with moments of brooding melancholy; but the type to which it most -conformed was that of the clever, cantankerous London bachelor; and if -he sometimes looked what he was, the scholar who had taken a double -first at Balliol and gave brain and sinew to an eminent review, he -looked more often what he was not, a caustic, cautious solicitor, -clean-shaved and meticulously neat, with the crisp bow at his collar, -single eyeglass, and thin, wry smile. - -There was a cogitative kindness in his eyes and a latent irony on his -lips as he now scrutinized Barney Chadwick, who had come finally to lean -against the mantelpiece, and it was difficult before Roger Oldmeadow's -gaze at such moments not to feel that you were giving yourself away. -This was evidently what Barney was trying not to feel, or, at all -events, not to show. He tapped his cigarette-end, fixing his eyes upon -it and frowning a little. He had ruffled his brown hair with the nervous -hand passed through it during his ramble, but ruffled or sleek Barney -could never look anything but perfection, just as, whether he smiled or -frowned, he could never look anything but charming. In his spring-tide -grey, with a streak of white inside his waistcoat and a tie of petunia -silk that matched his socks, he was a pleasant figure of fashion; and he -was more than that; more than the mere London youth of 1913, who danced -the tango and cultivated Post-Impressionism and the Russian ballet. He -was perhaps not much more; but his difference, if slight, made him -noticeable. It came back, no doubt, to the fact of charm. He was radiant -yet reserved; confident yet shy. He had a slight stammer, and his smile -seemed to ask you to help him out. His boyhood, at twenty-nine, still -survived in his narrow face, clumsy in feature and delicate in contour, -with long jaw, high temples and brown eyes, half sweet, half sleepy. The -red came easily to his brown cheek, and he had the sensitive, stubborn -lips of the little boy at the preparatory school whom Oldmeadow had met -and befriended now many years ago. - -In Oldmeadow's eyes he had always remained the "little Barney" he had -then christened him--even Barney's mother had almost forgotten that his -real name was Eustace--and he could not but know that Barney depended -upon him more than upon anyone in the world. To Barney his negations -were more potent than other people's affirmations, and though he had -sometimes said indignantly, "You leave one nothing to agree about, -Roger, except Plato and Church-music," he was never really happy or -secure in his rebellions from what he felt or suspected to be -Oldmeadow's tastes and judgments. Oldmeadow had seen him through many -admirations, not only for books and pictures, but for original girls. -Barney thought that he liked the unusual. He was a devotee of the -ballet, and had in his rooms cushions and curtains from the Omega shop -and a drawing by Wyndham Lewis. But Oldmeadow knew that he really -preferred the photograph of a Burne-Jones, a survival from Oxford days, -that still bravely, and irrelevantly, hung opposite it, and he waited to -see the Wyndham Lewis replaced by a later portent. Barney could remain -stubbornly faithful to old devotions, but he was easily drawn into new -orbits; and it was a new star, evidently, that he had come to describe -and justify. - -"What have I to do with charming American girls?" Oldmeadow inquired, -turning his eyes on the blurred prospect of factory-chimneys and -warehouses that the farther waterside of Chelsea affords. One had to go -to the window and look out to see the grey and silver river flowing, in -the placidity that revealed so little power. Oldmeadow lived in a flat -on the Embankment; but he was not an admirer of Chelsea, just as he was -not an admirer of Whistler nor--and Barney had always suspected it--of -Burne-Jones. His flat gave him, at a reasonable cost, fresh air, -boiling-hot water and a walk in Battersea Park; these, with his piano, -were his fundamental needs; though he owned, for the mean little stream -it was, that the Thames could look pretty enough by morning sunlight -and--like any river--magical under stars. After Plato and Bach, -Oldmeadow's passions were the rivers of France. - -"She'll have something to do with you," said Barney, and he seemed -pleased with the retort. "I met her at the Lumleys. They think her the -marvel of the age." - -"Well, that doesn't endear her to me," said Oldmeadow. "And I don't like -Americans." - -"Come, you're not quite so hide-bound as all that," said Barney, vexed. -"What about Mrs. Aldesey? I've heard you say she's the most charming -woman you know." - -"Except Nancy," Oldmeadow amended. - -"No one could call Nancy a charming woman," said Barney, looking a -little more vexed. "She's a dear, of course; but she's a mere girl. What -do you know about Americans, anyway--except Mrs. Aldesey?" - -"What she tells me about them--the ones she doesn't know," said -Oldmeadow, leaning back in his chair with a laugh. "But I own that I'm -merely prejudiced. Tell me about your young lady, and why you want her -to have something to do with me. Is she a reformer of some sort?" - -"She's a wonderful person, really," said Barney, availing himself with -eagerness of his opportunity. "Not a reformer. Only a sort of mixture of -saint and fairy-princess. She cured Charlie Lumley of insomnia, three -years ago, at Saint Moritz. Nothing psychic or theatrical, you know. -Just sat by him and smiled--she's a most extraordinary smile--and laid -her hand on his head. He'd not slept for nights and went off like a -lamb. Lady Lumley almost cries when she tells about it. They thought -Charlie might lose his mind if he went on not sleeping." - -"My word! She's a Christian Science lady? A medium? What?" - -"Call her what you like. You'll see. She does believe in spiritual -forces. It's not only that. She's quite lovely. In every way. Nancy and -Meg will worship her. The Lumley girls do." - -Oldmeadow's thoughts were already dwelling in rueful surmise on Nancy. -He had always thought her the nicest young creature he had ever known, -nicer even than Barney; and he had always wanted them to marry. She was -Barney's second cousin, and she and her mother lived near the Chadwicks -in Gloucestershire. - -"Oh, Nancy will worship her, will she? She must be all right, then. -What's her name?" he asked. - -Barney had given up trying to be desultory, and his conscious firmness -was now not lost upon his friend as he answered, stammering a little, -"Adrienne. Adrienne Toner." - -"Why Adrienne?" Oldmeadow mildly inquired. "Has she French blood?" - -"Not that I know of. It's a pretty name, I think, Adrienne. One hears -more inane names given to girls every day. Her mother loved France--just -as you do, Roger. Adrienne was born in Paris, I think." - -"Oh, a very pretty name," said Oldmeadow, noting Barney's already -familiar use of it. "Though it sounds more like an actress's than a -saint's." - -"There was something dramatic about the mother, I fancy," said Barney, -sustained, evidently, by his own detachment. "A romantic, rather absurd, -but very loveable person. Adrienne worshipped her and, naturally, can't -see the absurdity. She died out in California. On a boat," said Barney -stammering again, over the _b_. - -"On a boat?" - -"Yes. Awfully funny. But touching, too. That's what she wanted, when she -died: the sea and sky about her. They carried her on her yacht--doctors, -nurses, all the retinue--and sailed far out from shore. It's beautiful, -too, in a way you know, to be able to do that sort of thing quite simply -and unself-consciously. Adrienne sat beside her, and they smiled at each -other and held hands until the end." - -Oldmeadow played with his penholder. He was disconcerted; and most of -all by the derivative emotion in Barney's voice. They had gone far, -then, already, the young people. Nancy could have not the ghost of a -chance. And the nature of what touched Barney left him singularly dry. -He was unable to credit so much simplicity or unself-consciousness. He -coughed shortly, and after a decently respectful interval inquired: "Is -Miss Toner very wealthy?" - -"Yes, very," said Barney, relapsing now into a slight sulkiness. "At -least, perhaps not very, as rich Americans go. She gave away a lot of -her fortune, I know, when her mother died. She founded a place for -children--a convalescent home, or crèche--out in California. And she did -something in Chicago, too." - -And Miss Toner had evidently done something in London at the Lumleys'. -It couldn't be helped about Nancy, and if the American girl was pretty -and, for all her nonsense, well-bred, it might not be a bad thing, since -there was so much money. The Chadwicks were not at all well off, and -Coldbrooks was only kept going by Mrs. Chadwick's economies and Barney's -labours at his uncle's stock-broking firm in the city. Oldmeadow could -see Eleanor Chadwick's so ingenuous yet so practical eye fixed on Miss -Toner's gold, and he, too, could fix his. Miss Toner sounded benevolent, -and it was probable that her presence as mistress of Coldbrooks would be -of benefit to all Barney's relatives. All the same, she sounded as -irrelevant in his life as the Wyndham Lewis. - -"Adrienne Toner," he heard himself repeating aloud, for he had a trick, -caught, no doubt, from his long loneliness, of relapsing into -absent-minded and audible meditations. The cadence of it worried him. It -was an absurd name. "You know each other pretty well already, it seems," -he said. - -"Yes; it's extraordinary how one seems to know her. One doesn't have any -formalities to get through with her, as it were," said Barney. "Either -you are there, or you are not there." - -"Either on the yacht, or not on the yacht, eh?" Oldmeadow reached out -for his pipe. - -"Put it like that if you choose. It's awfully jolly to be on the yacht, -I can tell you. It _is_ like a voyage, a great adventure, to know her." - -"And what's it like to be off the yacht? Suppose I'm not there? Suppose -she doesn't like me?" Oldmeadow suggested. "What am I to talk to her -about--of course I'll come, if you really want me. But she frightens me -a little, I confess. I'm not an adventurous person." - -"But neither am I, you know!" Barney exclaimed, "and that's just what -she does to you: makes you adventurous. She'll be immensely interested -in you, of course. You can talk to her about anything. It was down at a -week-end at the Lumleys' I first met her, and there were some tremendous -big-wigs there, political, you know, and literary, and all that sort of -thing; and she had them all around her. She'd have frightened me, too, -if I hadn't seen at once that she took to me and wouldn't mind my being -just ordinary. She likes everybody; that's just it. She takes to -everybody, big and little. She's just like sunshine," Barney stammered a -little over his _s_'s. "That's what she makes one think of straight off; -shining on everything." - -"On the clean and the unclean. I see," said Oldmeadow. "I feel it in my -bones that I shall come into the unclean category with her. But it'll do -me the more good to have her shine on me." - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -Roger Oldmeadow went to have tea with Mrs. Aldesey next afternoon. She -was, after the Chadwicks, his nearest friend, and his relation to the -Chadwicks was one of affection rather than affinity. They had been -extraordinarily kind to him since the time that he had befriended Barney -at the preparatory school, hiding, under his grim jocularities, the -bewilderment of a boy's first great bereavement. His love for his mother -had been an idolatry, and his childhood had been haunted by her -ill-health. She died when he was thirteen, and in some ways he knew -that, even now, he had never got over it. His unfortunate and frustrated -love-affair in early manhood had been, when all was said and done, a -trivial grief compared to it. Coldbrooks had become, after that, his -only home, for he had lost his father as a very little boy, and the -whole family had left the country parsonage and been thrown on the -mercies of an uncle and aunt who lived in a grim provincial town. -Oldmeadow's most vivid impression of home was the high back bedroom -where the worn carpet was cold to the feet and the fire a sulky spot of -red, and the windows looked out over smoky chimney-pots. Here his -stricken mother lay in bed with her cherished cat beside her and read -aloud to him. There was always a difficulty about feeding poor Effie, -Aunt Aggie declaring that cats should live below stairs and on mice; and -Roger, at midday dinner, became adroit at slipping bits of meat from -his plate into a paper held in his lap and carried triumphantly to his -mother's room afterwards. "Oh, darling, you _oughtn't_ to," she would -say with her loving, girlish smile, and he would reply, "But I went -without, Mummy; so it's quite all right." His two little sisters were -kept in the nursery, as they were noisy, high-spirited children, and -tired their mother too much. Roger was her companion, her comrade; her -only comrade in the world, really, beside Effie. It had been Mrs. -Chadwick who had saved Effie from the lethal chamber after her -mistress's death. Roger never spoke about his mother, but he did speak -about Effie when she was thus threatened, and he had never forgotten, -never, never, Mrs. Chadwick's eager cry of, "But bring her here, my dear -Roger. I _like_ idle cats! Bring her here, and I promise you that we'll -make her happy. Animals are _so_ happy at Coldbrooks." To see Effie -cherished, petted, occupying the best chairs during all the years that -followed, had been to see his mother, in this flickering little ghost, -remembered in the only way he could have borne to see her explicitly -remembered, and it was because of Effie that he had most deeply loved -Coldbrooks. It remained always his refuge during a cheerless and -harassed youth, when, with his two forceful, black-browed sisters to -settle in life, he had felt himself pant and strain under the harness. -He was fonder of them than they of him, for they were hard, cheerful -young women, inheriting harshness of feature and manner from their -father, with their father's black eyes. It was from his mother that -Oldmeadow had his melancholy blue ones, and he had never again met his -mother's tenderness. - -Both sisters were now settled, one in India and one, very prosperously, -in London; but he seldom turned for tea into Cadogan Gardens and -Trixie's brisk Chippendale drawing-room; though Cadogan Gardens was -obviously more convenient than Somer's Place, where, on the other side -of the park, Mrs. Aldesey lived. He had whims, and did not know whether -it was because he more disliked her husband or her butler that he went -so seldom to see Trixie. Her husband was jovial and familiar, and the -butler had a face like a rancid ham and a surreptitious manner. One had -always to be encountered at the door, and the other was too often in the -drawing-room, and Trixie was vexatiously satisfied with both; Trixie -also had four turbulent, intelligent children, in whom complacent -parental theories of uncontrol manifested themselves unpleasantly, and -altogether she was too much hedged in by obstacles to be tempting; even -had she been tempting in herself. Intercourse with Trixie, when it did -take place, consisted usually of hard-hearted banter. She bantered him a -great deal about Mrs. Aldesey, who, she averred, snubbed her. Not that -Trixie minded being snubbed by anybody. - -It was a pleasant walk across the park on this spring day when the -crocuses were fully out in the grass, white, purple and gold, and the -trees just scantly stitched with green, and, as always, it was with a -slight elation that he approached his friend. However dull or jaded -oneself or the day, the thought of her cheered one as did the thought of -tea. She made him think of her own China tea. She suggested delicate -ceremoniousness. Though familiar, there was always an aroma of -unexpectedness about her; a slight, sweet shock of oddity and surprise. - -Mrs. Aldesey was unlike the traditional London American. She was neither -rich nor beautiful nor noticeably well-dressed. One became gradually -aware, after some time spent in her company, that her clothes, -soft-tinted and silken, were pleasing, as were her other appurtenances; -the narrow front of her little house, painted freshly in white and green -and barred by boxes of yellow wallflower; the serenely unfashionable -water-colours of Italy, painted by her mother, on the staircase; and her -drawing-room, grey-green and primrose-yellow, with eighteenth-century -fans, of which she had a collection, displayed in cabinets, and good old -glass. - -Mrs. Aldesey herself, behind her tea-table, very faded, very thin, with -what the French term a _souffreteux_ little face--an air of just not -having taken drugs to make her sleep, but of having certainly taken -tabloids to make her digest--seemed already to belong to a passing order -of things; an order still sustained, if lightly, by stays, and keeping a -prayer-book as punctually in use as a card-case. - -Oldmeadow owed her, if indirectly, to the Chadwicks, as he owed so much, -even if it was entirely on his own merits that he had won her regard. -They had met, years ago, in France; an entirely chance encounter, and -probably a futureless one, had it not been for the presence in the hotel -at Amboise of the Lumleys. They both slightly knew the Lumleys, and the -Lumleys and the Chadwicks were old friends. So it had come about; and if -he associated Mrs. Aldesey with tea, he associated her also with perfect -omelettes and the Loire. He had liked her at once so much, that, had it -not been for an always unseen yet never-repudiated husband in New York, -he would certainly, at the beginning, have fallen in love with her. But -the unrepudiated husband made as much a part of Mrs. Aldesey's -environment as her stays and her prayer-book. The barrier was so evident -that one did not even reflect on what one might have done had it not -been there; and indeed, Mrs. Aldesey, he now seemed, after many pleasant -years of friendship, to recognize, for all the sense of sweetness and -exhilaration she gave him, had not enough substance to rouse or sustain -his heart. She was, like the tea again, all savour. - -She lifted to-day her attentive blue eyes--with age they would become -shrewd--and gave him her fine little hand, blue-veined and ornamented -with pearls and diamonds in old settings. She wore long earrings and a -high, transparent collar of net and lace. Her earrings and her -elaborately dressed hair, fair and faded, seemed as much a part of her -personality as her eyes, her delicate nose and her small, slightly -puckered mouth that dragged provocatively and prettily at one corner -when she smiled. Oldmeadow sometimes wondered if she were happy; but -never because of anything she said or did. - -"I want to hear about some people called Toner," he said, dropping into -the easy-chair on the opposite side of the tea-table. It was almost -always thus that he and Mrs. Aldesey met. He rarely dined out. "I'm -rather perturbed. I think that Barney--you remember young Chadwick--is -going to marry a Miss Toner--a Miss Adrienne Toner. And I hope you'll -have something to her advantage to tell me. As you know, I'm devoted to -Barney and his family." - -"I know. The Lumleys' Chadwicks. I remember perfectly. The dear boy with -the innocent eyes and sulky mouth. Why don't you bring him to see me? -He's dancing the tango in all his spare moments, I suppose, and doesn't -care about old ladies." Mrs. Aldesey was not much over forty, but always -thus alluded to herself. "Toner," she took up, pouring out his tea. "Why -perturbed? Do you know anything against them? Americans, you mean. We -poor expatriates are always seen as keepers to so many curious -brethren.--Toner. _Celà ne me dit rien_." - -"I know nothing against them except that Mrs. Toner, the girl's mother, -died, by arrangement, out at sea, on her yacht--in sunlight. Does that -say anything? People don't do that in America, do they, as a rule? A -very opulent lady, I inferred." - -"Oh, dear!" Mrs. Aldesey now ejaculated, as if enlightened. "Can it be? -Do you mean, I wonder, the preposterous Mrs. Toner, of whom, fifteen -years ago, I had a glimpse, and used to hear vague rumours? She wandered -about the world. She dressed in the Empire period: Queen Louise of -Prussia, white gauze bound beneath her chin. She had a harp, and warbled -to monarchs. She had an astral body, and a Yogi and a yacht and -everything handsome about her. The typical spiritual _cabotine_ of our -epoch--though I'm sure they must always have existed. Of course it must -be she. No one else could have died like that. Has she died, poor woman? -On a yacht. Out at sea. In sunlight. How uncomfortable!" - -"Yes, she's dead," said Oldmeadow resignedly. "Yes; it's she, evidently. -And her daughter is coming down to Coldbrooks this week-end. I'm afraid -that unless Barney has too many rivals, he'll certainly marry her. But -what you say leads me to infer that he will have rivals and to hope they -may be successful. She will, no doubt, marry a prince." - -"Something Italian, perhaps. Quite a small fortune will do that. -Certainly your nice Barney wouldn't have been at all Mrs. Toner's -_affaire_. The girl on her own may think differently, for your Barney -is, I remember, very engaging, and has a way with him. I don't know -anything about the girl. I didn't know there was one. There's no reason -why she may not be charming. Our wonderful people have the gift of -picking up experience in a generation and make excellent princesses." - -"But she's that sort, you think. The sort that marries princes and has -no traditions. Where did they come from? Do you know that?" - -"I haven't an idea. Yet, stay. Was it not tooth-paste?--Toner's Peerless -Tooth-Paste. Obsolete; yet I seem to see, reminiscently, in far-away -nursery days, the picture of a respectable old gentleman with -side-whiskers, on a tube. A pretty pink glazed tube with a gilt top to -it. Perhaps it's that. Since it was Toner's it would be the father's -side; not the warbling mother's. Well, many of us might wish for as -unambiguous an origin nowadays. And, in America, we did all sorts of -useful things when we first, all of us, came over in the Mayflower!" -said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile. - -Oldmeadow gazed upon his friend with an ironically receptive eye. "Have -they ever known anyone decent? Anyone like yourself? I don't mean over -here. I mean in America." - -"No one like me, I imagine; if I'm decent. Mrs. Toner essayed a season -in New York one winter, and it was then I had my glimpse of her, at the -opera, in the Queen Louise dress. A pretty woman, dark, with a sort of -soulful and eminently respectable coquetry about her; surrounded by -swarms of devotees--all male, to me unknown; and with something in a -turban that I took to be a Yogi in the background. She only tried the -one winter. She knew what she wanted and where she couldn't get it. We -are very dry in New York--such of us as survive. Very little moved by -warblings or astral bodies or millions. As you intimate, she'll have -done much better over here. You _are_ a strange mixture of materialism -and ingenuousness, you know." - -"It's only that we have fewer Mrs. Toners to amuse us and more to do -with millions than you have," said Oldmeadow; but Mrs. Aldesey, shaking -her head with a certain sadness, said that it wasn't as simple as all -that. - -"Have you seen her? Have you seen Adrienne?" she took up presently, -making him his second cup of tea. "Is she pretty? Is he very much in -love?" - -"I'm going down to Coldbrooks on Saturday to see her," said Oldmeadow, -"and I gather that it's not to subject her to any test that Barney wants -me; it's to subject me, rather. He's quite sure of her. He thinks she's -irresistible. He merely wants to make assurance doubly sure by seeing me -bowled over. I don't know whether she's pretty. She has powers, -apparently, that make her independent of physical attractions. She lays -her hands on people's heads and cures them. She cured Charlie Lumley of -insomnia at Saint Moritz three years ago." - -Mrs. Aldesey, at this, looked at him for some moments in silence. -"Yes," she assented, and in her pause she seemed to have recognized and -placed a familiar object. "Yes. She would. That's just what Mrs. Toner's -daughter would do. I hope she doesn't warble, too. Laying on hands is -better than warbling." - -"I see you think it hopeless," said Oldmeadow, pushing back his chair -and yielding, as he thrust his hands into his pockets and stretched out -his legs, to an avowed chagrin. "What a pity it is! A thousand pities. -They are such dear, good, simple people, and Barney, though he doesn't -know it, is as simple as any of them. What will become of them with this -overwhelming cuckoo in their nest." - -At this Mrs. Aldesey became serious. "I don't think it hopeless at all. -You misunderstand me. Isn't the fact that he's in love with her -reassuring in itself? He may be simple, but he's a delicate, discerning -creature, and he couldn't fall in love with some one merely pretentious -and absurd. She may be charming. I can perfectly imagine her as -charming, and there's no harm in laying on hands; there may be good. -Don't be narrow, Roger. Don't go down there feeling dry." - -"I am narrow, and I do feel dry; horribly dry," said Oldmeadow. "How -could the child of such a mother, and of tooth-paste, be charming? Don't -try specious consolation, now, after having more than justified all my -suspicions." - -"I'm malicious, not specious; and I can't resist having my fling. But -you mustn't be narrow and take me _au pied de la lettre_. I assert that -she may be charming. I assert that I can see it all working out most -happily. She'll lay her hands on them and they'll love her. What I -really want to say is this: don't try to set Barney against her. He'll -marry her all the same and never forgive you." - -"Ah; there we have the truth of it. But Barney would always forgive me," -said Oldmeadow. - -"Well then, she won't. And you'd lose him just as surely. And she'll -know. Let me warn you of that. She'll know perfectly." - -"I'll keep my hands off her," said Oldmeadow, "if she doesn't try to lay -hers on me." - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -The Chadwicks all had a certain sulkiness in their charming looks, and -where in Barney it mingled with sweetness, in Palgrave, his younger -brother, it mingled with brilliancy. It was Palgrave who, at the -station, met the family friend and counsellor in the shabby, inexpensive -family car. He was still a mere boy, home from Marlborough for the -Easter holidays; fond of Oldmeadow, as all the Chadwicks were; but more -resentful of his predominance than Barney and more indifferent to his -brotherly solicitude. He had Barney's long, narrow face and Barney's -eyes and lips; but the former were proud and the latter petulant. -To-day, as he sat beside him in the car, Oldmeadow was aware of -something at once fixed and vibrating in his bearing. He wanted to say -something, and he had resolved to be silent. During their last encounter -at Coldbrooks, he and Oldmeadow had had a long, antagonistic political -discussion, and Palgrave's resentment still, no doubt, survived. - -Coldbrooks lay among the lower Cotswolds, three miles from the station, -and near the station was the village of Chelford where Nancy Averil and -her mother lived. Nancy was at Coldbrooks; Aunt Monica--she was called -aunt by the Chadwick children, though she and Mrs. Chadwick were first -cousins--was away. So Palgrave informed him. But he did not speak again -until the chill, green curve of arable hill-side was climbed and a -stretch of wind-swept country lay before them. Then suddenly he -volunteered: "The American girl is at Coldbrooks." - -"Oh! Is she? When did she come?" Somehow Oldmeadow had expected the -later train for Miss Toner. - -"Yesterday. She and Barney came down together in her car." - -"So you've welcomed her already," said Oldmeadow, curious of the -expression on the boy's face. "How does she fit into Coldbrooks? Does -she like you all and do you like her?" - -For a moment Palgrave was silent. "You mean it makes a difference -whether we do or not?" he then inquired. - -"I don't know that I meant that. Though if people come into your life it -does make a difference." - -"And is she going to come into our lives?" Palgrave asked, and Oldmeadow -felt pressure of some sort behind the question. "That's what I mean. Has -Barney told you? He's said nothing to us. Not even to Mother." - -"Has Barney told me he's going to marry her? No; he hasn't. But it's -evident he hopes to. Perhaps it depends on whether she likes Coldbrooks -and Coldbrooks likes her." - -"Oh, no, it doesn't. It doesn't depend on anything at all except whether -she likes Barney," said Palgrave. "She's the sort of person who doesn't -depend on anything or anybody except herself. She cuts through -circumstance like a knife through cheese. And if she's not going to take -him I wish she'd never come," he added, frowning and turning, under the -peak of his cap, his jewel-like eyes upon his companion. "It's a case of -all or nothing with a person like that. It's too disturbing--just for a -glimpse." - -Oldmeadow felt himself disconcerted. Oddly enough, for the boy was -capricious and extravagant, Palgrave's opinion had more weight with him -than Barney's. Barney, for one thing, was sexually susceptible and -Palgrave was not. Though so young, Oldmeadow felt him already of a -poetic temperament, passionate in mind and cold in blood. - -"She's so charming? You can't bear to lose her now you've seen her?" he -asked. - -"I don't know about charming. No; I don't think her charming. At least -not if you mean something little by the word. She's disturbing. She -changes everything." - -"But if she stays she'll be more disturbing. She'll change more." - -"Oh, I shan't mind that! I shan't mind change," Palgrave declared. "If -it's her change and she's there to see it through." And, relapsing to -muteness, he bent to his brakes and they slid down among the woods of -Coldbrooks. - -For the life of him and with the best will in the world, he couldn't -make it out. That was Oldmeadow's first impression as, among the -familiar group gathered in the hall about the tea-table, Miss Toner was -at last made manifest to him. She was, he felt sure, in his first shrewd -glance at her, merely what Lydia Aldesey would have placed as a -third-rate American girl, and her origins in commercial enterprise were -eminently appropriate. - -She got up to meet him, as if recognizing in him some special -significance or, indeed, as it might be her ingenuous habit to do in -meeting any older person. But he was not so much older if it came to -that; for, after he had met the direct and dwelling gaze of her large, -light eyes, the second impression was that she was by no means so young -as Barney had led him to expect. She was certainly as old as Barney. - -There were none of the obvious marks of wealth upon her. She wore a -dark-blue dress tying on the breast over white. She was small in stature -and, in manner, composed beyond anything he had ever encountered. With -an irony, kindly enough, yet big, he knew, with unfavourable inferences, -he even recognized, reconstructing the moment in the light of those that -followed, that in rising to meet him as he was named to her, it had -been, rather than in shyness or girlishness, in the wish to welcome him -and draw him the more happily into a group she had already made her own. - -They were all sitting round the plentiful table, set with home-made -loaves and cakes, jams and butter, and a Leeds bowl of primroses; Miss -Toner just across from him, Barney on one side of her--his was an air of -tranquil ecstasy--and little Barbara on the other, and they all seemed -to emanate a new radiance; almost, thought Oldmeadow, with an -irritability that was still genial, like innocent savages on a remote -seashore gathered with intent eyes and parted lips round the newly -disembarked Christopher Columbus. Mrs. Chadwick, confused, as usual, -among her tea-cups, sending hasty relays of sugar after the unsugared or -recalling those sugared in error, specially suggested the simile. She -could, indeed, hardly think of her tea. Her wide, startled gaze turned -incessantly on the new-comer and to Oldmeadow, for all his nearly filial -affection, the eyes of Eleanor Chadwick looked like nothing in the -world so much as those of the March Hare in Tenniel's evocation of the -endearing creature. Unlike her children, she was fair, with a thin, -high, ridiculously distinguished nose; but her mouth and chin had -Barney's irresolution and sweetness, and her untidy locks Meg's beauty. -Meg was a beauty in every way, rose, pearl and russet, a Romney touched -with pride and daring, and the most sophisticated of all the Chadwicks; -yet she, too, brooded, half merrily, half sombrely, on Miss Toner, her -elbows on the table for the better contemplation. Palgrave's absorption -was manifest; but he did not brood. He held his head high, frowned and, -for the most part, looked out of the window. - -Oldmeadow sat between Palgrave and Nancy and it was with Nancy that the -magic ended. Nancy did not share in the radiance. She smiled and was -very busy cutting the bread and butter; but she was pale; not puzzled, -but preoccupied. Poor darling Nancy; always his special pet; to him -always the dearest and most loveable of girls. Not at all a Romney. With -her pale, fresh face, dark hair and beautiful hands she suggested, -rather, a country lady of the seventeenth century painted by Vandyck. A -rural Vandyck who might have kept a devout and merry journal, surprising -later generations by its mixture of ingenuousness and wisdom. Her lips -were meditative, and her grey eyes nearly closed when she smiled in a -way that gave to her gaiety and extraordinary sweetness and intimacy. -Nancy always looked as if she loved you when she smiled at you; and -indeed she did love you. She had spent her life among people she loved -and if she could not be intimate she was remote and silent. - -But there was no hope for Nancy. He saw that finally, as he drank his -tea in silence and looked across the primroses at the marvel of the age. - -Miss Toner's was an insignificant little head, if indeed it could be -called little, since it was too large for her body, and her way of -dressing her hair in wide braids, pinned round it and projecting over -the ears, added to the top-heavy effect. The hair was her only -indubitable beauty, fine and fair and sparkling like the palest, purest -metal. It was cut in a light fringe across a projecting forehead and her -mouth and chin projected, too; so that, as he termed it to himself, it -was a squashed-in face, ugly in structure, the small nose, from its -depressed bridge, jutting forward in profile, the lips, in profile, flat -yet prominent. Nevertheless he owned, studying her over his tea-cup, -that the features, ugly, even trivial in detail, had in their assemblage -something of unexpected force. Her tranquil smile had potency and he -suddenly became aware of her flat, gentle voice, infrequent, yet oddly -dominating. Sensitive as he was to voices, he saw it as a bland, blue -ribbon rolled out among broken counters of colour, and listened to its -sound before he listened to what it said. All the other voices went up -and down; all the others half said things and let them drop or trail. -She said things to the end: when the ribbon began it was unrolled; and -it seemed, always, to make a silence in which it could be watched. - -"We went up high into the sunlight," she said, "and one saw nothing but -snow and sky. The bells were ringing on the mountains beneath; one heard -no other sound. I have never forgotten the moment. It seemed an -inspiration of joy and peace and strength." - -"You've walked so much in the Alps, haven't you, Roger?" said Mrs. -Chadwick. "Miss Toner has motored over every pass." - -"In the French Alps. I don't like Switzerland," said Oldmeadow. - -"I think I love the mountains everywhere," said Miss Toner, "when they -go so high into the sky and have the sun and snow on their summits. But -I love the mountains of Savoy and Jura best." - -It vexed him that she should. She was a person to stay in and prefer -Switzerland. "Joy and peace and strength," echoed in his ears and with -the words, rudely, and irrelevantly, the image of the pink glazed tube -with the gilt stopper. Miss Toner's teeth were as white as they were -benignant. - -"I wish I could see those flowers," said Mrs. Chadwick. "I've only been -to Vevey in the summer; oh, years and years ago. So dull. Fields of -flowers. You've seen them, too, of course, Roger. All the things we grow -with such pains. My Saint Brigid anemones never really do--though what I -put in of leaf-mould!" - -"You'll see anemones, fields of them, in the Alpine meadows; and violets -and lilies; the little lilies of Saint Bruno that look like freesias. I -love them best of all," the bland, blue ribbon unrolled. "You shall go -with me some day, Mrs. Chadwick. We'll go together." And, smiling at her -as if they had, already, a happy secret between them, Miss Toner -continued: "We'll go this very summer, if you will. We'll motor all the -way. I'll come and get you here. For a whole month you shall forget that -you've ever had a family to bring up or a house to take care of or -anemones that won't grow properly--even in leaf-mould." - -Her eyes, as they rested on her hostess, seemed to impart more than her -words. They imparted something to Oldmeadow. He had not before -conjectured that Eleanor Chadwick might be bored or tired, nor realized -that since Barbara's birth, fourteen years ago, she had not left -Coldbrooks except to go to London for a week's shopping, or to stay with -friends in the English country. He had taken Eleanor Chadwick's life for -granted. It seemed Miss Toner's function not to take things that could -be changed for granted. It was easy to do that of course, when you had a -large banking account behind you; and yet he felt that Miss Toner would -have had the faculty of altering accepted standards, even had she been -materially unequipped. She and Mrs. Chadwick continued to look at each -other for a moment and the older woman, half bashfully, seemed, with -what softness, compelled to a tacit confession. She'd never known before -that she was tired. Springs of adventure and girlishness within her were -perhaps unsealed by Miss Toner's gaze. - -"And where do the rest of us come in!" Barney ejaculated. He was so -happy in the triumph of his beloved that his eyes, their sleepiness -banished, were almost as brilliant as Palgrave's. - -"But you're always coming in with Mrs. Chadwick," said Miss Toner. She -looked at him, if with a touch of tender humour, exactly as she looked -at his mother; but then she looked at them both as if they were precious -to her. "I don't want you to come in at all for that month. I want her -to forget you ever existed. There ought to be waters of Lethe for -everyone every now and then, even in this life. We come out, after the -plunge into forgetfulness, far brighter and stronger and with a -renovated self to love the better with. Afterwards--after she's had her -dip--you'll all come in, if you want to, with me. I'll get a car big -enough. You, too, Miss Averil; and Mr. Oldmeadow; though he and Barney -and Palgrave may have to take turns sitting on the portmanteaus." - -"Barney" and "Palgrave" already. Her unpretentious mastery alarmed -almost as much as it amused him. He thanked her, with his dry smile, -saying that he really preferred to see the Alps on his legs and asked, -to temper the possible acerbity, "Do you drive yourself?" for it seemed -in keeping with his picture of her as an invading providence that she -should with her own hand conduct the car of fate. He could see her, -somehow, taking the hairpin curves on the Galibier. - -But Miss Toner said she did not drive. "One can't see flowers if one -drives oneself; and it would hurt dear Macfarlane's feelings so. -Macfarlane is my chauffeur and he's been with me for years; from the -time we first began to have motors, my mother and I, out in California. -Apart from that, I should like it, I think, with the sense of risk and -venture it must give. I like the sense of high adventure--of 'Childe -Roland to the dark tower came'; don't you, Palgrave? It's life, isn't -it? The pulse of life. Danger and venture and conquest. And then -resting, on the heights, while one hears the bells beneath one." - -This, thought Oldmeadow, as he adjusted his glass the better to examine -Miss Toner, must prove itself too much, even for Palgrave to swallow. -But Palgrave swallowed it without a tremor. His eyes on hers he -answered: "Yes, I feel life like that, too." - -"Oh, dear!" sighed Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldmeadow blessed her antidote to -the suffocating sweetness: "I'm afraid I don't! I don't think I know -anything about risks and dangers; or about conquest either. I'm sure -I've never conquered anything; though I have been dreadfully afraid of -ill-tempered servants--if that counts, and never let them see it. -Barbara had such an odious nurse. She tried, simply, to keep me out of -the nursery; but she didn't succeed. And there was a Scotch cook once, -with red hair--that so often goes with a bad temper, doesn't it? Do you -remember, Barney?--your dear father had to go down to the kitchen when -she was found lying quite, quite drunk under the table. But cooks and -nurses can't be called risks--and I've never cared for hunting." - -Miss Toner was quietly laughing, and indeed everybody laughed. - -"Dear Mrs. Chadwick," she said. And then she added: "How can a mother -say she has not known risks and dangers? I think you've thought only of -other people for all your life and never seen yourself at all. Alpine -passes aren't needed to prove people's courage and endurance." - -Oldmeadow now saw, from the sudden alarm and perplexity of Mrs. -Chadwick's expression, that she was wondering if the marvellous guest -alluded to the perils of child-birth. Perhaps she did. She was ready, he -imagined, to allude to anything. - -"You're right about her never having seen herself," said Palgrave, -nodding across at Miss Toner. "She never has. She's incapable of -self-analysis." - -"But she's precious sharp when it comes to analysing other people, -aren't you, Mummy dear!" said Barney. - -"I don't think she is," said Meg. "I think Mummy sees people rather as -she sees flowers; things to be fed and staked and protected." - -"You're always crabbing Mummy, Meg. It's a shame!--Isn't it a shame, -Mummy dear!" Barbara protested, and Barney tempered the apparent -criticism--peacemaker as he usually was--with: "But you have to -understand flowers jolly well to make them grow. And we do her credit, -don't we!" - -Miss Toner looked from one to the other as they spoke, with her clear, -benignant, comprehending gaze, and Mrs. Chadwick stared with her March -Hare ingenuousness that had its full share, too, of March Hare -shrewdness. She undertook no self-justification, commenting merely, in -the pause that followed Barney's contribution: "I don't know what you -mean by self-analysis unless it's thinking about yourself and mothers -certainly haven't much time for that. You're quite right there, my -dear," she nodded at Miss Toner, adding in a tone intended specially for -her: "But young people often exaggerate things that are quite, quite -simple when they come." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -"Come out and have a stroll," said Oldmeadow to Nancy. Tea was over and -a primrose-coloured sunset filled the sky. They walked up and down the -gravelled terrace before the house. - -Coldbrooks stood high, yet encircled by still higher stretches of bare -or wooded upland. Its walled garden, where vegetable beds and lines of -cordon apple-trees were pleasingly diversified by the herbaceous borders -that ran beneath the walls, lay behind it; most of the bedroom windows -looked down into the garden. Before it, to the south, lawns and meadows -dropped to a lake fed by the brooks that gave the place its name. Beyond -the lake were lower copses, tinkling now with the musical run of water -and climbing softly on either side, so that from the terrace one had a -vast curved space of sky before one. The sun was setting over the woods. - -It was Barney's grandfather, enriched by large shipping enterprises in -Liverpool, who had bought the pleasant old house, half farm, half manor, -and Barney's father had married the daughter of a local squire. But the -family fortunes were much dwindled, and though Barney still nursed the -project of returning one day to farm his own land there was little -prospect of such a happy restoration. In spite of the Russian ballet and -London portents, he was fonder, far, of Coldbrooks than of all of them -put together. But he could afford neither time nor money for hunting, -and his home was his only for week-ends and holidays. It was the most -loveable of homes, more stately without than within, built of grey-gold -Cotswold stone with beautiful stone chimneys and mullioned windows and -three gables facing the southern sky. Within, everything was rather bare -and shabby. There was no central heating, and no bathrooms. The -tiger-skin that lay on the stone flags of the hall had lost all its -hair. The piano rattled and wheezed in many of its notes. The patterns -of the drawing-room chintzes were faded to a mere dim rosy riot, and -stuffing protruded from the angles of the leather arm-chairs in the -smoking-room. But it was, all the same, a delightful house to stay in. -Eleanor Chadwick's shrewdness showed itself in her housekeeping. She -knew what were the essentials. There was always a blazing fire in one's -bedroom in the evening and the hottest of water with one's bath in the -morning. Under the faded chintz, every chair in the drawing-room was -comfortable. The toast was always crisp; the tea always made with -boiling water; the servants cheerful. Mrs. Chadwick had a great gift -with servants. She could reprove with extreme plaintiveness, yet never -wound a susceptibility, and the servants' hall, as she often remarked -with justice, was smarter and prettier than the drawing-room. Johnson, -the old butler, had been at Coldbrooks since before her marriage, and -the grey-haired parlourmaid had come with her when she had come as a -bride. These familiar faces added depth to the sense of intimacy that -was the gift of Coldbrooks. Oldmeadow loved the place as much as any of -the Chadwicks did, and was as much at home in it. - -"There is a blackcap," said Nancy, "down in the copse. I felt sure I -heard one this morning." - -"So it is," said Oldmeadow. They paused to listen. - -"It's the happiest of all," said Nancy. - -He had been wondering about Nancy ever since he had come. It was not her -voice, gentle and meditative, that told him now she was unhappy. It was -rather in contrast to the bird's clear ecstasy that he felt the -heaviness of her heart. - -"It's wilder than the thrush and blackbird, isn't it?" he said. "Less -conscious. The thrush is always listening to himself, I feel. Do you -want to go to the Alps with Miss Toner, Nancy?" - -Nancy would not see Miss Toner as an angelic being and he wanted to know -how she did see her. The others, it was evident, thought her angelic by -a sort of group suggestion. She thought herself so, to begin with; snow, -flowers, bells and all the rest of it; and they, ingenuous creatures, -saw the mango-tree rising to heaven as the calm-eyed Yogi willed they -should. But Nancy did not see the mango-tree. She was outside the group -consciousness--with him. - -"Oh, no!" she now said quickly; and she added: "I don't mean that I -don't like her. It's only that I don't know her. How can she want us? -She came only yesterday." - -"But, you see, she means you to know her. And when she's known she -couldn't imagine that anyone wouldn't like her." - -"I don't think she's conceited, if you mean that, Roger." - -"Conceit," he rejoined, "may be of an order so monstrous that it loses -all pettiness. You've seen more of her than I have, of course." - -"I think she's good. She wants to do good. She wants to make people -happy; and she does," said Nancy. - -"By taking them about in motors, you mean." - -"In every way. She's always thinking about pleasing them. In big and -little ways. Aunt Eleanor loves her already. They had a long talk last -night in Aunt Eleanor's room. She's given Meg the most beautiful little -pendant--pearl and amethyst, an old Italian setting. She had it on last -night and Meg said how lovely it was and she simply lifted it off her -own neck and put it around Meg's. Meg had to keep it. She gave it in -such a way that one would have to keep it." - -"Rather useful, mustn't it be, to have pendants so plentifully about you -that you can hand them out to the first young lady who takes a fancy to -them? Has she given you anything, Nancy?" - -"I'm sure she would. But I shall be more careful than Meg was." - -"Perhaps Meg will practise carelessness, since it's so remunerative. -What has she given Palgrave? He seems absorbed." - -"Isn't it wonderful," said Nancy. "It's wonderful for Palgrave, you -know, Roger, because he is rather sad and bitter, really, just now; and -I think she will make him much happier. They went off to the woods -together directly after breakfast." - -"What's he sad and bitter about? You mean his socialism and all the rest -of it?" - -"Yes; and religion. You remember; when you were here at Christmas." - -"I remember that he was very foolish and made me lose my temper. Is -there a chance of Miss Toner turning him into a good capitalist and -churchman?" - -Nancy smiled, but very faintly. "It's serious, you know, Roger." - -"What she's done to them already, you mean?" - -"Yes. What she's done already. She had Meg, after lunch, in her room. -Meg looked quite different when she came out. It's very strange, Roger. -It's as if she'd changed them all. I almost feel," Nancy looked round at -the happy house and up at the tranquil elms where the rooks were noisily -preparing for bed, "as if nothing could be the same again, since she's -come." Her clear profile revealed little of the trouble in her heart. -They had not named Barney; but he must be named. - -"It's white magic," said Oldmeadow. "You and I will keep our heads, my -dear. We don't want to be changed, do we? What has she done to Barney? -He is in love with her, of course." - -"Of course," said Nancy. - -He had never been sure before that she was in love with Barney. She was -nine years younger and had been a child during years of his manhood. -Oldmeadow had thought it in his own fond imagination only that the link -between them was so close. But now he knew what Nancy herself, perhaps, -had hardly known till then. The colour did not rise in her cheek, but -through her voice, through her bearing, went a subtle steadying of -herself. "Of course he is in love with her," she repeated and he felt -that she forced herself to face the truth. - -They stopped at the end of the terrace. A little path turned aside -towards the copse and the grass beneath the trees was scattered with the -pale radiance of primroses. Nancy seemed to look at the flowers, but she -sought no refuge in comment on them; and as they looked in silence, -while the rooks, circling and cawing above, settled on their nests, a -sense of arrested time came to Oldmeadow, and a phrase of music, -blissful in its sadness, where gentle German words went to a gentle -German strain, passed through his mind. Something of Schubert's--Young -Love--First Grief. It seemed to pierce to him from the young girl's -heart and he knew that he would never forget and that Nancy would never -forget the moment; the rooks; the primroses; the limpid sky. The -blackcap's flitting melody had ceased. - -"Do you think she may make him happy?" he asked. It was sweet to him to -know that she had no need of a refuge from him. She could take counsel -with him as candidly as if there had been no tacit avowal between them. -She looked round at him as they went on walking and he saw pain and -perplexity in her eyes. - -"What do you think, Roger?" she said. "Can she?" - -"Well, might she, if Barney is stupid enough?" - -"I don't feel he would have to be stupid to be happy with her, Roger. -You are not fair to her. What I wonder is whether he will be strong -enough not to be quite swept away." - -"You think she'll overpower him? Leave him with no mind of his own?" - -"Something like that perhaps. Because she's very strong. And she is so -different. Everything in her is different. She has nothing--nothing with -us, or we with her. We haven't done the same things or seen the same -sights or thought the same thoughts. I hardly feel as if the trees could -look the same to her as they do to us or the birds sound the same. And -she'll want such different things." - -"Perhaps she'll want his things," Oldmeadow mused. "She seems to like -them quite immensely already." - -"Ah, but only because she's going to do something to them," said Nancy. -"Only because she's going to change them. I don't think she'd like -anything she could do nothing for." - -Nancy had quite grown up. She had seen further than he had. He felt her -quiet comment big with intuitive wisdom. - -"You see deep, my dear," he said. "There's something portentous in your -picture, you know." - -"There is something portentous about her, Roger. That is just what I -feel. That is just what troubles me." - -"She may be portentous, in relation to us, and what she may do to us," -said Oldmeadow, "but I'm convinced, for all her marvels, that she's a -very ordinary young person. Don't let us magnify her. If she's not -magnified she won't work so many marvels. They're largely an affair, I'm -sure of it, of motors and pendants. She's ordinary. That's what I take -my stand on." - -"If she's ordinary, why do you feel, too, that she'll sweep Barney -away?" Nancy was not at all convinced by his demonstration. - -"Why, because he's in love with her. That's all. Her only menace is in -her difference; her complacency. What it comes to, I suppose, is that we -must hope, if they're to be happy, that he'll like her things." - -"Yes; but what it comes to then, Roger, is that we shall lose Barney," -Nancy said. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -Miss Toner did not come down to breakfast next morning and Oldmeadow was -conscious of a feeling of disproportionate relief at not finding her in -the big, bare, panelled dining-room where a portrait of Mrs. Chadwick in -court dress presided over one wall and Meg and Barney played with -rabbits, against an imitation Gainsborough background, on another. Both -pictures were an affliction to Barney; but to Mrs. Chadwick's eye they -left nothing to be desired in beauty, and, when Barney was not there to -protest, she would still fondly point out the length of eyelash that the -artist had so faithfully captured in the two children. - -The sense of change and foreboding that he and Nancy, with differences, -had recognized in their talk, must have haunted Oldmeadow's slumbers, -for he had dreamed of Miss Toner, coming towards him along the terrace, -in white, as she had been at dinner, with the beautiful pearls she had -worn, lifting her hand and saying as the rooks cawed overhead--for the -rooks cawed though the moon was brightly shining: "I can hear them, -too." - -There had been nothing to suggest such a dream in her demeanour at -dinner; nothing portentous, that is. Simple for all her competence, -girlish for all the splendour of her white array, she had spoken little, -looking at them all, and listening, gravely sometimes, but with a -pervading gentleness; and once or twice he had found her eyes on his; -those large, light eyes, dispassionately and impersonally benignant, -giving him, with their suggestion of seeing around but also very far -beyond you, a curious sense of space. Once or twice he had felt himself -a little at a loss as he met their gaze--it had endeared her to him the -less that she should almost discompose him--and he had felt anew the -presence of power in her ugly little face and even of beauty in her -colourless skin, her colourless yet so living eyes, and her crown of -wondrous gold. It had been, no doubt, this element of aesthetic -significance, merging with Nancy's words, that had built up the figure -of his dream; for so he had seen her, grey and white and gold in the -unearthly light, while the rooks cawed overhead. - -His friends this morning, though they were all talking of her, possessed -in their gaiety and lightness of heart an exorcising quality. So much -gaiety and lightness couldn't be quenched or quelled--if that was what -Miss Toner's influence menaced. Between them all they would manage to -quench and quell Miss Toner, rather, and he recovered his sense of her -fundamental absurdity as he felt anew their instinctive and -unself-conscious wisdom. - -"Isn't it odd, Roger, she hardly knows England at all," said Mrs. -Chadwick, as he finished his porridge, made his tea at the side-table, -and took his place beside her. "She's been so little here, although she -seems to have travelled everywhere and lived everywhere." - -"Except in her own country," Oldmeadow ventured the surmise, but -urbanely, for Barney sat opposite him. - -"Oh, but she's travelled there, too, immensely," said Barney. "She's -really spent most of her life in America, I think, Mother. She has a -little sort of bungalow on the coast in California, orange-trees and -roses and all the rest of it; a fairy-tale place; and a house in the -mountains in New England, high up among the pine-woods." - -"And a private train, I suppose, to carry her from one to the other. -What splendid pearls," said Oldmeadow, buttering his toast. "Haven't you -asked for them yet, Meg?" - -Meg was not easily embarrassed. "Not yet," she said. "I'm waiting for -them, though. Meanwhile this is pretty, isn't it?" The pendant hung on -her breast. - -"I believe she would give Meg her pearls, or any of us. I believe she'd -give _anything_ to _anyone_," sighed Mrs. Chadwick. "She doesn't seem to -think about money or things of that sort, material things you know, at -all. I do wish I could get the map of America straight. All being in -those uneven squares, like Turkish Delight, makes it so difficult. One -can't remember which lump is which--though Texas, in my geography, was -pale green. The nice tinned things come from California, don't they? And -New England is near Boston--the hub of the universe, that dear, droll -Oliver Wendell Holmes used to call it. I suppose they _are_ very clever -there. She has been wonderfully educated. There's nothing she doesn't -seem to have learned. And her maid adores her, Roger. I was talking to -her just now. Such a nice French woman with quite beautiful dark eyes, -but very melancholy; we make a mistake, I believe, in imagining that the -French are a gay people. I always think that's such a good sign. So kind -about my dreadful accent." - -"A good sign to have your maid like you, Mummy, or to have melancholy -eyes?" Meg inquired. "I think she's a rather ill-tempered looking woman. -But of course anybody would adore Adrienne. She's an angel of patience, -I'm sure. I never met such an angel. We don't grow them here," said Meg, -while Barney's triumphant eyes said: "I told you so," to Oldmeadow -across the table. - -After breakfast, in the sunlight on the terrace, Mrs. Chadwick confided -her hopes to him. "She really is an angel, Roger. I never met anyone in -the least like her. So good, and gifted, too, and all that money. Only -think what it would mean for dear Barney. He could take back the farm; -the lease falls in next year, and come back here to live." - -"You think she cares for him?" - -"Yes; indeed I do. She cares for us all, already, as you can see. But I -believe it's because she's adopting us all, as her family. And she said -to me yesterday that she disapproved so much of our English way of -turning out mothers and thought families ought to love each other and -live together, young and old. That's from being so much in France, -perhaps. I told her _I_ shouldn't have liked it at all if old Mrs. -Chadwick had wanted to come and live with Francis and me. She was such a -masterful old lady, Roger, very Low Church, and quite dreadfully jealous -of Francis. And eldest sons should inherit, of course, or what would -become of estates? My dear father used always to say that the greatness -of England was founded on landed estates. I told her that. But she -looked at me quite gravely as if she hardly understood when I tried to -explain--it all goes in with Waterloo being won on the fields of Eton, -doesn't it? It's quite curious the feeling of restfulness she gives me, -about Barney--a sort of Nunc Dimittis feeling, you know." - -"Only she doesn't want you to depart. Well, that's certainly all to the -good and let's hope England's greatness won't suffer from the -irregularity. Has she told you much about her life? her people?" -Oldmeadow asked. He could not find it in his heart to shadow such -ingenuous contentment. And after all what was there to say against Miss -Toner, except that she would change things? - -"Oh, a great deal. Everything I asked; for I thought it best, quite -casually you know, to find out what I could. Not people of any position, -you know, Roger, though I think her mother was better in that way than -her father; for _his_ father made tooth-paste. It's from the tooth-paste -all the money comes. But it's always puzzling about Americans, isn't it? -And it doesn't really make any difference, once they're over here, does -it?" - -"Not if they've got the money," he could not suppress; it was for his -own personal enjoyment and Mrs. Chadwick cloudlessly concurred: "No, not -if they have the money. And she has, you see. And besides that she's -good and gifted and has had such a wonderful education. Her mother died -five years ago. She showed me two pictures of her. A beautiful woman; -very artistic-looking. Rather one's idea of Corinne, though Corinne was -really Madame de Staël, I believe; and she was very plain." - -"Was she dressed like Queen Louise of Prussia; coming down the steps, -you know, in the Empire dress with white bound round her head?" - -"Yes; she was. How did you know, Roger? Extremely picturesque; but quite -a lady, too. At least"--Mrs. Chadwick hesitated, perplexed between -kindliness and candour--"almost." - -"I heard about her from Mrs. Aldesey. You remember my American friend. -She didn't know her, but had seen her years ago in New York in that -romantic costume." - -Mrs. Chadwick felt perhaps the slight irony in his voice, for she -rejoined, though not at all provocatively: "Why shouldn't people look -romantic if they can? I should think Mrs. Toner had a much more romantic -life than Mrs. Aldesey. _She's_ gone on just as we have, hasn't she, -seeing always the same people; and being conventional. Whereas Adrienne -and her mother seem to have known everyone strange and interesting -wherever they went; great scientists and thinkers, you know; and poets -and pianists. Adrienne told me that her mother always seemed to her to -have great wings and that's just what I felt about her when I looked at -her. She'd flown everywhere." As she spoke Miss Toner appeared upon the -doorstep. - -Although it was Sunday she had not varied her dress, which was still the -simple dress of dim, dark-blue; but over it she wore a silk jacket, and -a straw hat trimmed with a lighter shade of blue was tied, in -summer-like fashion, beneath her chin. She carried a sunshade and a -small basket filled with letters. - -Mrs. Chadwick, both hands outstretched, went to meet her. Oldmeadow had -never before seen her kiss an acquaintance of two days' standing. "I do -hope you slept well, my dear," she said. - -"Very well," said Miss Toner, including Oldmeadow in her smile. "Except -for a little while when I woke up and lay awake and couldn't get the -cawing of your rooks out of my mind. I seemed to hear them going on and -on." - -"Oh, dear! How unfortunate! But surely they weren't cawing in the -night!" cried Mrs. Chadwick, and Miss Toner, laughing and holding her -still by the hands, turned to tell Barney, who closely followed her, -that his mother was really afraid, because she had thought of rooks in -the night, that their Coldbrooks birds had actually been inhospitable -enough to keep her awake with their cawings. Meg and Barbara and Nancy -had all now emerged and there was much laughter and explanation. - -"You see, Mummy thinks you might work miracles--even among the rooks," -said Barney, while Oldmeadow testily meditated on his own discomfort. It -might have been mere coincidence, or it might--he must admit it--have -been Miss Toner's thoughts travelling into his dream or his dream -troubling her thoughts; of the two last alternatives he didn't know -which he disliked the more. - -"It's time to get ready for church, children," said Mrs. Chadwick, when, -after much merriment at her expense, the rooks and their occult -misdemeanours were disposed of. "Where is Palgrave? I do hope he won't -miss again. It does so hurt dear Mr. Bodman's feelings. Are you coming -with us, my dear?" she asked Miss Toner. - -Miss Toner, smiling upon them all, her sunshade open on her shoulder, -said that if they did not mind she did not think she would come. "I only -go to church when friends get married or their babies christened," she -said, "or something of that sort. I was never brought up to it, you see. -Mother never went." - -Mrs. Chadwick's March Hare eyes dwelt on her. "You aren't a -Churchwoman?" - -"Oh, dear, no!" said Miss Toner, and the very suggestion seemed to amuse -her. - -Mrs. Chadwick hesitated: "A Dissenter?" she ventured. "There are so many -sects in America I've heard. Though I met a very charming American -bishop once." - -"No--not a Dissenter; if you mean by that a Presbyterian or a Methodist -or a Swedenborgian," said Miss Toner, shaking her head. - -Palgrave had now joined them and stood on the step above her. She smiled -round and up at him. - -Mrs. Chadwick, her distress alleviated yet her perplexity deepened, -ventured further: "You are a Christian, I hope, dear?" - -"Oh, not at all," said Miss Toner gravely now and very kindly. "Not in -any orthodox way, I mean. Not in any way that an American bishop or your -Mr. Bodman would acknowledge. I recognize Christ as a great teacher, as -a great human soul; one of the very greatest; gone on before. But I -don't divide the human from the divine in the way the churches do; -creeds mean nothing to me, and I'd rather say my prayers out of doors on -a day like this, in the sunlight, than in any church. I feel nearer God -alone in His great world, than in any church built with human hands. But -we must all follow our own light." She spoke in her flat, soft voice, -gravely but very simply; and she looked affectionately at her hostess as -she added: "You wouldn't want me to come with you from mere conformity." - -Poor Mrs. Chadwick, standing, her brood about her, in the sweet Sabbath -sunlight, had to Oldmeadow's eye an almost comically arrested air. How -was a creedless, churchless mistress of Coldbrooks to be fitted in to -her happy vision of Barney's future? What would the village say to a -squiress who never went to church and who said her prayers in the -sunlight alone? "But, of course, better alone," he seemed to hear her -cogitate, "than that anyone should see her doing such a very curious -thing." And aloud she did murmur: "Of course not; of course not, dear. -And if you go into the little arbour down by the lake no one will -disturb you, I'm sure. Must it be quite in the open? Mere conformity is -such a shallow thing. But all the same I should like the rector to come -and talk things over with you. He's such a good man and very, very -broad-minded. He brings science so often into his sermons--sometimes I -think the people don't quite follow it all; and only the other day he -said to me, about modern unrest and scepticism: - - 'There is more faith in honest doubt, - Believe me, than in half the creeds.' - -Mamma met Lord Tennyson once and felt him to be a deeply religious -man--though rather ill-tempered; he was really very rude to her, I -always thought, and I do so dislike rudeness.--And travelling about so -much, dear, you probably had so little teaching." - -Miss Toner's eyes were incapable of irony and they only deepened now in -benevolence as they rested on her hostess. "But I haven't any doubts," -she said, shaking her head and smiling: "No doubts at all. You reach the -truth through your church and I reach it through nature and love and -life. And the beautiful thing is that it's the same truth, really; the -same beautiful truth that God loves us all, and that we are all the -children of God. I should be very pleased to meet your rector, of -course, because I like meeting anyone who is good and true. But I was -taught. My mother taught me always. And she was the freest, wisest soul -I have ever known." - -"I'll stay with you," said Palgrave suddenly from his place on the step -above her. His eyes, over her shoulder, had met Oldmeadow's and perhaps -what he saw in the old friend's face determined his testimony. "Church -means nothing to me, either; and less than nothing. I'm not so -charitable as you are, and don't think all roads lead to truth. Some -lead away, I think. You know perfectly well, Mummy, that the dear old -rector is a regular duffer and you slept all through the sermon the last -time I went; you did, really! I was too amused to sleep. He was trying -to explain original sin without mentioning Adam or Eve or the Garden of -Eden. It was most endearing! Like some one trying to avoid the eye of an -old acquaintance whom they'd come to the conclusion they really must -cut! I do so like the idea of Adam and Eve becoming unsuitable -acquaintances for the enlightened clergy!" - -"There is no sin," said Miss Toner. Barney was not quite comfortable; -Oldmeadow saw that. He kicked about in the gravel, a little flushed, -and when, once or twice, the old family friend met his eye, it was -quickly averted. "God is Good; and everything else is mortal -mind--mistake--illusion." - -"You are a sound Platonist, Miss Toner," Oldmeadow observed, and his -kindness hardly cloaked his irony. - -"Am I?" she said. When she looked at one she never averted her eyes. -She looked until she had seen all that she wished to see. "I am not fond -of metaphysics." - -"Socrates defined sin as ignorance, you know, and in a sense it may be. -All the same," said Oldmeadow, and he felt that they were all listening -and that in the eyes of his old friends it was more than unlikely that -he would get the better of Miss Toner--"there's mortal mind to be -accounted for, isn't there, and why it gets us continually into such a -mess. Whatever name you call it by, there is something that does get us -into a mess and mightn't it be a wholesome discipline to hear it -denounced once a week?" - -"Not by some one more ignorant than I am!" said Miss Toner, laughing -gently. "I'll go to church for love of Mrs. Chadwick, but not for the -sake of the discipline!" - -"Mr. Bodman never denounces. Roger is giving you quite a wrong idea," -said Mrs. Chadwick. She had stood looking from one to the other, -distressed and bewildered, and she now prepared to leave them. "And -Palgrave is very, very unjust. Of course you must not come, dear. It -would make me quite unhappy. But Mr. Bodman is not a duffer. If Palgrave -feels like that he must certainly stay away. Perhaps you can teach him -to be more charitable. It's easy to see the mote in our neighbour's -eye." Mrs. Chadwick's voice slightly trembled. She had been much moved -by her son's defection. - -"Come, Mummy, you're not going to say _I'm_ a duffer!" Palgrave passed -an affectionately bantering arm round her shoulders. "Dufferism isn't -_my_ beam!" - -But very sadly Mrs. Chadwick drew away, saying as she turned into the -house: "No; that isn't your beam. But pride may be, Palgrave. Spiritual -pride." - -Oldmeadow remained standing in the sunlight with Miss Toner and the two -young men. The girls had followed Mrs. Chadwick, Meg casting a laughing -glance of appreciation at him as she went. Religious scruples would -never keep Meg from church if she had a pretty spring dress to wear. - -"After all," he carried on, mildly, the altercation--if that was what it -was between him and Miss Toner--"good Platonists as we may be, we -haven't reached the stage of Divine Contemplation yet and things do -happen that are difficult to account for, if sin is nothing more -positive than illusion and mistake. All the forms of _ôte-toi que je m'y -mette_. All the forms of jealousy and malice. Deliberate cruelties. -History is full of horrors, isn't it? There's a jealousy of goodness in -the human heart, as well as a love. The betrayal of Christ by Judas is -symbolic." - -He had screwed his eyeglass into his eye the better to see Miss Toner -and looked very much like a solicitor trying to coax dry facts out of a -romantic client. And in the transparent shadow of her hat Miss Toner, -with her incomparable composure, gave him all her attention. - -"I don't account. I don't account for anything. Do you?" she said. "I -only feel and know. But even the dreadful things, the things that seem -to us so dreadful--isn't it always ignorance? Ignorance of what is -really good and happy--and the illusion of a separate self? When we are -all, really, one. All, really, together." She held out her arms, her -little basket hanging from her wrist. "And if we feel that at last, and -know it, those dreadful things can't happen any more." - -"Your 'if' is the standing problem of metaphysics and ethics. Why don't -we feel and know it? That's the question? And since we most of us, for -most of the time, don't feel and know it, don't we keep closer to the -truth if we accept the traditional phraseology and admit that there's -something in the texture of life, something in ourselves, that tempts -us, or impedes us, or crushes us, and call it sin--evil?" - -He was looking at her, still with his latent irony though kindly enough -indeed, and he had, as he looked, an intuition about her. She had never -been tempted, she had never been impeded, she had never been crushed. -That was her power. She was, in a fashion, sinless. It was as if she had -been hypnotized in infancy to be good. And while the fact made her in -one sense so savourless, it made her in another so significant. She -would go much further than most people in any direction she wanted to go -simply because she was not aware of obstacles and had no inhibitions. - -"Call it what you like," said Miss Toner. She still smiled--but more -gravely. Barney had ceased to stroll and kick. He had come to a -standstill beside them, and, his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on -his beloved, showed himself as completely reassured. Palgrave still -stood on the step above her and seemed to watch the snowy, piled-up -clouds that adorned the tranquil sky. "I feel it a mistake to make -unreal things seem real by giving them big names. We become afraid of -them and fear is what impedes us most of all in life. For so many -generations humanity has seen ghosts in the evening mists and taken its -indigestion for the promptings of a demon. We've got away from all that -now, Mr. Oldmeadow. We see that mists are mists and indigestion -indigestion, and that there aren't such things as ghosts and demons. -We've come out, all together, hand in hand, on the Open Road and we -don't want, ever any more, to be reminded, even, of the Dark Ages." - -Before her fluency, Oldmeadow felt himself grow less kindly. "You grant -there have been dark ages, then? I count that a concession. Things may -not be evil now, but they were once." - -"Not a concession at all," said Miss Toner. "Only an explanation of what -has happened--an explanation of what you call the mess, Mr. Oldmeadow." - -"So that when we find ourselves misbehaving to one another as we march -along the Open Road, we may know it's only indigestion and take a pill." - -She didn't like badinage. That, at all events, was evident to him, even -in her imperturbability. She took it calmly--not lightly; and if she was -not already beginning to dislike him, it was because disliking people -was a reality she didn't recognize. "We don't misbehave if we are on the -Open Road," she said. - -"Oh, but you're falling back now on good old-fashioned theology," -Oldmeadow retorted. "The sheep, saved and well-behaved, keeping to the -road, and the goats--all those who misbehave and stray--classed with the -evening mists." - -"No," said Miss Toner eyeing him, "I don't class them with the evening -mists; I class them with the sick, whom we must be kind to and take care -of." - -Mrs. Chadwick was now emerging in her new spring hat, which was not very -successful and gave emphasis to her general air of strain. Meg's hat was -very successful, as Meg's hats always were; and if Nancy's did not shine -beside it, it was, at all events, exceedingly becoming to her. Nancy's -eyes went to Barney. Barney, in the past, had been very appreciative of -becoming hats. But he had no eyes for Nancy now. He had drawn Miss Toner -aside and Oldmeadow heard their colloquy: - -"Would you rather I didn't go?" - -"I'd rather, always, you followed your light, dear friend." - -"I do like going here, you know. It seems to belong with it all--and -Mummy can't bear our not going." - -"It makes your dear mother happy. It all means love to you." - -"Not only that"--Oldmeadow imagined that Barney blushed, and he heard -his stammer: "I don't know what I believe about everything; but the -service goes much deeper than anything I could think for myself." Their -voices dropped. All that came further to Oldmeadow was from Miss Toner: -"It makes you nearer than if you stayed." - -"Confound her ineffability!" he thought. "It rests with her, then, -whether he should go or stay." - -It certainly did. Barney moved away with them all, leaving Palgrave to -the more evident form of proximity. - -"You know," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to Oldmeadow as they went, between -the primroses, down the little path and through a wicket-gate that led -to the village--"you know, Roger, it's _quite_ possible that they may -say their prayers together. It's like Quakers, isn't it--or Moravians; -or whoever those curious people are who are buried standing up--so -dismal and uncomfortable, I always think. But it's better that Palgrave -should say his prayers with some one, and somewhere, isn't it, than that -he shouldn't say them at all?" - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -"Mother's got the most poisonous headache," said Meg. "I don't think -she'll be able to come down to tea." - -She had joined Oldmeadow on the rickety old bench where he sat reading -and smoking in a sunny corner of the garden. A band of golden -wallflowers behind them exhaled the deep fragrance that he always -associated with spring and Sunday and Coldbrooks, and the old stone wall -behind the flowers exhaled a warmth that was like a fragrance. - -"Adrienne is with her," Meg added. She had seated herself and put her -elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands as though she intended a -solid talk. - -"Will that be likely to help her head?" Oldmeadow inquired. "I should -say not, if she's going to continue the discourse of this morning." - -"Did you think all that rather silly?" Meg inquired, tapping her smart -toes on the ground and watching them. "You looked as if you did. But -then you usually do look as though you thought most things and people -silly. I didn't--I mean, not in her. I quite saw what you did; at least -I think so. But she can say things that would be silly in other people. -Now Palgrave is silly. There's just the difference. Is it because he -always feels he's scoring off somebody and she doesn't?" Meg was -evidently capable, for all her devotion, of dispassionate inquiry. - -"She's certainly more secure than Palgrave," said Oldmeadow. "But I -feel that's only because she's less intelligent. Palgrave is aware, -keenly, of a critical and probably hostile world; and Miss Toner is -unaware of everything except her own benevolence, and the need for it." - -Meg meditated. Then she laughed. "You _are_ spiteful, Roger. Oh--I don't -mean about Adrienne in particular. But you always see the weak spots in -people, first go. It's rather jolly, all the same, if you come to think -it over, to be like that. Perhaps that's all she is aware of; but it -takes you a good way--wanting to help people and seeing how they can be -helped." - -"Yes; it does take you a good way. I don't deny that Miss Toner will go -far." - -"And make us go too far, perhaps?" Meg mused. "Well, I'm quite ready for -a move. I think we're all rather stodgy, really, down here. And up in -London, too, if it comes to that. I'm rather disappointed in London, you -know, Roger, and what it does for one. Just a different kind of sheep, -it seems to me, from the kind we are in the country; noisy skipping -sheep instead of silent, slow ones. But they all follow each other about -in just the same way. And what one likes is to see someone who isn't -following." - -"Yes; that's true, certainly," Oldmeadow conceded. "Miss Toner isn't a -sheep. She's the sort of person who sets the sheep moving. I'm not so -sure that she knows where she is going, all the same." - -"You mean--Be careful; don't you?" said Meg, looking up at him sideways -with her handsome eyes. "I'm not such a sheep myself, when it comes to -that, you know, Roger. I look before I leap--even after Adrienne," she -laughed; and Oldmeadow, looking back at her, laughed too--pleased with -her, yet a little disconcerted by what she revealed of experience. - -"The reason I like her so awfully," Meg went on--while he reflected -that, after all, she was now twenty-five--"and it's a good thing I do, -isn't it, since it's evident she's going to take Barney; but the reason -is that she's so interested in one. More than anyone I ever knew--far -and far away. Of course Mother's interested; but it's _for_ one; _about_ -one; not _in_ one, as it were. And then darling old Mummy isn't exactly -intelligent, is she; or only in such unexpected spots that it's never -much good to one; one can never count on it beforehand. Whereas Adrienne -is so interested in you that she makes you feel more interested in -yourself than you ever dreamed you could feel. Do you know what I mean? -Is it because she's American, do you think? English people aren't -interested in themselves, off their own bat, perhaps; or in other people -either! I don't mean we're not selfish all right!" Meg laughed. - -"Selfish and yet impersonal," Oldmeadow mused. "With less of our social -consciousness in use, with more of it locked up in automatism, -possibly." - -"There's nothing locked up in Adrienne; absolutely nothing," Meg -declared. "It's all there--out in the shop-window. And it's a big window -too, even though some of the hats and scarves, so to speak, may strike -us as funny. But, seriously, what is it about her, do you think? How can -she care so much?--about everybody?" - -He remembered Nancy's diagnosis. "Not about everybody. Only about people -she can do something for. You'll find she won't care about me." - -"Why should she? You don't care for her. Why should she waste herself on -people who don't need her?" Meg's friendliness of glance did not -preclude a certain hardness. - -"Why indeed? It could never occur to her, of course, that she might need -somebody. I don't mean that spitefully. She is strong. She doesn't -need." - -"Exactly. Like you," said Meg. "She's quite right to pay no attention to -the other strong people. For of course you are very strong, Roger, and -frightfully clever; and good, too. Only one has to be cleverer, no -doubt, than we are to see your goodness as easily as Adrienne's. It's -the shop-window again. She shows her goodness all the time; and you -don't."' - -Oldmeadow knocked the ashes out of his pipe and felt for his -tobacco-pouch. "I show my spite. No; you mustn't count me among the -good. I suppose your mother's headache came on this morning after she -found out that Miss Toner doesn't go to church." - -"Of course it was that. You saw that she was thinking about it all -through the service, didn't you?" said Meg. "And once, poor lamb, she -said, 'Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners' instead of Amen. Did you -notice? It will bother her frightfully, of course. But after all it's -not so bad as if Adrienne were a Dissenter and wanted to go to chapel! -Mummy in her heart of hearts would much rather you were a pagan than a -Dissenter. I don't think it will make a bit of difference really. So -long as she gives money to the church, and is nice to the village -people. Mother will get over it," said Meg. - -He thought so too. His own jocose phrase returned to him. As long as the -money was there it didn't make any difference. But Meg's security on -that score interested him. With all her devotion to the new friend she -struck him, fundamentally, as less kind than Nancy, who had none. But -that, no doubt, was because Meg, fundamentally, was hard and Nancy -loving. It was because of Miss Toner's interest in herself that Meg was -devoted. "You're so sure, then, that she's going to take Barney?" he -asked. - -"Quite sure," said Meg. "Surer than he is. Surer than she is. She's in -love with him all right; more than she knows herself, poor dear. No -doubt she thinks she's making up her mind and choosing. Weighing Barney -in the balance and counting up his virtues. But it's all decided -already; and not by his virtues; it never is," said Meg, again with her -air of unexpected experience. "It's something much more important than -virtues; it's the thickness of his eyelashes and the way his teeth show -when he smiles, and all his pretty ways and habits. Things like that. -She loves looking at him and more than that, even, she loves having him -look at her. I have an idea that she's not had people very much in love -with her before; not people with eyelashes and teeth like Barney. In -spite of all her money. And she's getting on, too. She's as old as -Barney, you know. It's the one, real romance that's ever come to her, -poor dear. Funny you don't see it. Men don't see that sort of thing I -suppose. But she _couldn't_ give Barney up now, simply. It's because of -that, you know"--Meg glanced behind them and lowered her voice--"that -she doesn't like Nancy." - -"Doesn't like Nancy!" Oldmeadow's instant indignation was in his voice. -"What has Nancy to do with it?" - -"She might have had a great deal, poor darling little Nancy; and it's -that Adrienne feels. She felt it at once. I saw she did; that Nancy and -Barney had been very near each other; that there was an affinity, a -sympathy, call it what you like, that would have led to something more. -It wouldn't have done at all, of course; at least I suppose not. They -knew each other too well; and, until the last year or two, she's been -too young for him. And then, above all, she's hardly any money. But all -the same, if he hadn't come across Adrienne and been bowled over like -this, Barney would have fallen in love with Nancy. She's getting to be -so lovely looking, for one thing, isn't she? And Barney's so susceptible -to looks. He was falling in love with her last winter and she knew it as -well as I did. It's rather rotten luck for Nancy because I'm afraid she -cares; but then women do have rotten luck about love affairs," said Meg, -now sombrely. "The dice are loaded against them every time." - -Oldmeadow sat smoking in silence for some moments, making no effort to -master his strong resentment; taking, rather, full possession of its -implications. "Somewhat of a flaw in your angel you must admit," he said -presently. "She doesn't like people who are as strong as she is and she -doesn't like people who might have been loved instead of herself. It -narrows the scale of her benevolence, you know. It makes her look -perilously like a jealous prig, and a prig without any excuse for -jealousy into the bargain." - -"Temper, Roger," Meg observed, casting her hard, friendly glance round -at him; "I know you think there's no one quite to match Nancy; and I -think you're not far wrong. She's the straightest, sweetest-tempered -girl who ever stepped on two feet. But all the same Adrienne isn't a -prig, and if she's jealous she can't help herself. She _wants_ to love -Nancy; she thinks she does love her; she'll always be heavenly to her. -She can do a lot for Nancy, you know. She will do a lot for her, even if -Nancy holds her off. But she wishes frightfully that she was old and -ugly. She wishes that Barney weren't so fond of her without thinking -about her. She's jealous and she can't help herself--like all the rest -of us!" Meg laughed grimly. "When it comes to that we're none of us -angels." - -It was tea-time and the dear old gong sounded balmily from the house. As -they went along the path the rooks again were cawing overhead and dimly, -like the hint of evening in the air, he remembered his dream and the -sense of menace. "You know, it's not like all the rest of you," he said. -"It's not like Nancy, for instance. Nancy wouldn't dislike a person -because she was jealous of them. In fact I don't believe Nancy could be -jealous. She'd only be hurt." - -"It's rather a question of degree, that, isn't it?" said Meg. "In one -form of it you're poisoned and in the other you're cut with a knife; and -the latter is the prettier way of suffering; doesn't make you come out -in a rash and feel sick. Nancy is cut with the knife; and if she's not -jealous in the ugly sense, she dislikes Adrienne all right." - -"Why should she like her?" Oldmeadow retorted, and Meg's simile seemed -to cut into him, too. "She doesn't need her money or her interest or her -love. She doesn't dislike her. She merely wishes she were somewhere -else--as I do." - -The garden path led straight into the house. One entered a sort of -lobby, where coats and hats and rackets and gardening baskets were kept, -and from the lobby went into the hall. Tea was, as always, laid there -and Mrs. Chadwick, as Meg and Oldmeadow came in, was descending the -staircase at the further end, leaning on Adrienne Toner's arm. - -"You see. She's done it!" Meg murmured. She seemed to bear him no -ill-will for his expressed aversion. "I never knew one of Mother's -headaches go so quickly." - -"I expect she'd rather have stayed quietly upstairs," said Oldmeadow; -"she looks puzzled. As if she didn't know what had happened to her." - -"Like a rabbit when it comes out of the conjuror's hat," said the -irreverent daughter. - -That was precisely what poor Eleanor Chadwick did look like and for the -moment his mind was diverted by amusement at her appearance from its -bitter preoccupation. Mrs. Chadwick was the rabbit and Miss Toner was -the conjuror indeed; bland and secure and holding her trophy in a firm -but gentle grasp. Not until they were all seated did Barney and Nancy -appear and then it was evident to him that if Miss Toner were jealous of -Nancy she did not fear her, for it was she who had arranged the walk -from which the young couple had just returned. - -"Was it lovely?" she asked Barney, as he took the place beside her. "Oh, -I do wish I could have come; but I knew your Mother needed me." - -"The primroses are simply ripping in the wood," said Barney. - -Nancy carried a large bunch of primroses. - -"Ripping," said Miss Toner, laughing gently. - -"How absurd of you, Barney. Could anything be less ripping than -primroses? How beautiful they are and what a lovely bunch. One sees that -Miss Averil loves them from the way she has picked them." If she did not -call Nancy by her Christian name it was, Oldmeadow knew, not her but -Nancy's fault. - -Nancy still stood beside the table and from the fact of standing, while -all the rest of them were seated, from the fact of being called Miss -Averil, she seemed, for the moment, oddly an outsider; as if she hardly -belonged to the circle of which Miss Toner was the centre. "Do come and -sit near us," said Miss Toner. "For I had to miss you, too, you see, as -well as the primroses." - -"I'd crowd you there," said Nancy, smiling. "I'll sit here near Aunt -Eleanor." From something in her eyes Oldmeadow felt suddenly sure that -not till now had she realized that it had not, really, been her and -Barney's walk. She offered the primroses to Mrs. Chadwick as she took -the chair beside her, saying, "They'll fill your white bowl in the -morning-room, Aunt Eleanor." - -"Oh, I say; but I meant those for Adrienne, Nancy!" Barney exclaimed, -and as he did so Meg's eyes met Oldmeadow's over the household loaf. -"She didn't see them in the wood, so she ought to have them. Mummy is -suffocated with primroses already." - -But Nancy showed no rash and only an acute Meg could have guessed a cut -as she answered: "I'll pick another bunch to-morrow for Miss Toner, -Barney. They'll be fresher to take to London. These are really Aunt -Eleanor's. I always fill that bowl for her." - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -"I do so want a talk with you, Roger," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to him -when tea was over. The dining-room opened at one end of the hall and the -drawing-room at the other and the morning-room, Mrs. Chadwick's special -retreat, into which she now drew him, was tucked in behind the -dining-room and looked out at an angle of the garden wall and at the -dove-cot that stood there. Mrs. Chadwick's doves were usually fluttering -about the window and even, when it was open, entering the room, where -she sometimes fondly fed them, causing thereby much distress of mind to -Turner, the good old parlourmaid. A pleasant little fire was burning -there and, after placing her primroses in the white bowl, Mrs. Chadwick -drew her chair to it, casting a glance, as she did so, up at the large -portrait of her husband in hunting dress that hung above the -mantelpiece. It was painted with the same glib unintelligence as the -dining-room portraits, but the painter had been unable to miss entirely -the whimsical daring of the eyes or to bring into conformity with his -own standard of good looks the charm of the irregular and narrow face. -Francis Chadwick had been an impulsive, idle, endearing man, and, -remaining always in love with his wife, had fondly cherished all her -absurdities. Since his death poor Mrs. Chadwick had been perplexed by -her effort to associate with gravity and inspiration one who had always -been a laughing incentive to inconsequence. Oldmeadow reflected, as he, -too, looked up at him, that Francis Chadwick would neither have needed -nor have liked Miss Toner. - -"It's so very, very strange, Roger, I really must tell you," Mrs. -Chadwick said. Her hair, still bright and abundant, was very untidy. She -had evidently not brushed it since rising from her sofa. "I had one of -my dreadful headaches, you know. It came on at church this morning and I -really couldn't attend to Mr. Bodman at all. Perhaps you saw." - -"I heard. Yes. Miss Toner had disturbed you a good deal." - -"I did feel so bewildered and unhappy about it all," said Mrs. Chadwick, -fixing her blue eyes upon the family friend. Eleanor Chadwick's eyes -could show the uncanny ingenuousness and the uncanny wisdom of a baby's. -"Nothing so innocent or so sharp was ever seen outside a perambulator," -her husband had once said of them. "About her, you know, Roger," she -continued, "and Barney and Palgrave. The influence. I could not bear -them to lose their faith in the church of their fathers." - -"No," said Oldmeadow. "But you must be prepared to see it shift a good -deal. Faiths have to shift nowadays if they're to stand." - -"Well. Yes. I know what you mean, Roger. But it isn't a question of -shifting, is it? I'm very broad. I've always been all for breadth. And -the broader you are the firmer you ought to be, oughtn't you?" - -"Well, Miss Toner's broad and firm," Oldmeadow suggested. "I never saw -anyone more so." - -"But in such a queer way, Roger. Like saying one's prayers out of doors -and thinking oneself as good as Christ. Oh, it all made me perfectly -wretched and after lunch my head was so bad that I went and lay down in -the dark; and it raged, simply. Oh, dear, I thought; this means a day -and night of misery. They go on like that once they begin. Mamma used -to have them in precisely the same way. Absolutely incapacitating. I can -never see how anybody can deny heredity. That's another point, Roger. -I've always accepted evolution. I gave up Adam and Eve long ago; gave -them up as white and good-looking, I mean; because we must have begun -_somewhere_, mustn't we? And Darwin was such a good man; though you -remember he came not to care anything at all about music. That may mean -a great deal, if one could think it all out; it's the most religious of -the arts, isn't it? But there's no end to thinking things out!" Mrs. -Chadwick pressed her hand against her forehead, closing her eyes for a -moment. "And Adrienne is very musical." - -"You were at your headache," Oldmeadow reminded her. It was customary in -the family circle thus to shepherd Mrs. Chadwick's straying thoughts. - -"Yes, I know. But it all hangs together. Heredity and Mamma and my -headaches; and Adrienne's mother, who was musical, too, and played on a -harp. Well, it was raging and I was lying there, when there came a -little rap at the door. I knew at once who it was and she asked in such -a gentle voice if she might come in. It's a very soothing voice, isn't -it? But do you know I felt for a moment quite frightened, as if I simply -couldn't see her. But I had to say yes, and she came in so softly and -sat down beside me and said: 'I used to help Mother, sometimes, with her -headaches. May I help you?' She didn't want to talk about things, as I'd -feared. Such a relief it was. So I said: 'Oh, do my dear,' and she laid -her hand on my forehead and said: 'You will soon feel better. It will -soon quite pass away.' And then not another word. Only sitting there in -the dark, with her hand on my forehead. And do you know, Roger, almost -at once the pain began to melt away. You know how a dish of junket melts -after you cut into it. It was like that. 'Junket, junket,' I seemed to -hear myself saying; and such a feeling of peace and contentment. And -before I knew anything more I fell into the most delicious sleep and -slept till now, just before tea. She was sitting there still, in the -dark beside me and I said: 'Oh, my dear, to think of your having stayed -in on this lovely afternoon!' But she went to pull up the blinds and -said that she loved sitting quietly in the dark with some one she cared -for, sleeping. 'I think souls come very close together, then,' she said. -Wasn't it beautiful of her, Roger? Like astral bodies, you know, and -auras and things of that sort. She _is_ beautiful. I made up my mind to -that, then. She gives me such a feeling of trust. How can one help it? -It's like what one reads of Roman Catholic saints and people in the -Bible. The gift of healing. The laying on of hands. We don't seem to -have any of them and we can't count _her_, since she doesn't believe in -the church. But if only they'd give up the Pope, I don't see why we -shouldn't accept their saints; such dear, good people, most of them. And -the Pope is quite an excellent man just now, I believe. But isn't it -very strange, Roger? For a person who can do that to one can't be -irreligious, can they?" - -Mrs. Chadwick's eye was now fixed upon him, less wistfully and more -intently, and he knew that something was expected of him. - -"Hypnotic doctors can do it, you know. You needn't be a saint to do it," -he said. "Though I suppose you must have some power of concentration -that implies faith. However," he had to say all his thought, though most -of it would be wasted upon poor Eleanor Chadwick, "Miss Toner is -anything but irreligious. You may be sure of that." - -"You feel it, too, Roger. I'm so, so glad." - -"But her religion is not as your religion," he had to warn her, "nor her -ways your ways. You must be prepared to have the children unsettled; -everyone of them; because she has great power and is far more religious -than most people. She believes in her creed and acts on it. You must -give the children their heads. It's no good trying to circumvent or -oppose them." - -"But they mustn't do wrong things, Roger. How can I give them their -heads if it's to do wrong things? I don't know what Mamma would have -said to their not going to church--especially in the country. She would -have thought it very wrong, simply. Sinful and dangerous." - -"Hardly that," Oldmeadow smiled. "Even in the country. You don't think -Miss Toner does wrong things. If they take up Miss Toner's creed instead -of going to church, they won't come to much harm. The principal thing is -that there should be something to take up. After all," he was reassuring -himself as well as Mrs. Chadwick, "it hasn't hurt her. It's made her a -little foolish; but it hasn't hurt her. And your children will never be -foolish. They'll get all the good of it and, perhaps, be able to combine -it with going to church. - -"Foolish, Roger?" Mrs. Chadwick, relieved of her headache, but not of -her perplexity, gazed wanly at him. "You think Adrienne foolish?" - -"A little. Now and then. You mustn't accept anything she says to you -just because she can cure you of a headache." - -"But how can you say foolish, Roger? She's had a most wonderful -education?" - -"Everything that makes her surer of herself and makes other people surer -of her puts her in more danger of being foolish. One can be too sure of -oneself. Unless one is a saint--and even then. And though I don't think -she's irreligious I don't think she's a saint. Not by any means." - -"I don't see how anyone can be more of one, nowadays, Roger. She heals -people and she says prayers, and she is always good and gentle and never -thinks of herself. I'm sure I can't think what you want more." - -A touch of plaintiveness and even of protest had come into Mrs. -Chadwick's voice. - -"Perhaps what I want is less," he laughed. "Perhaps she's too much of a -saint for my taste. I think she's a little too much of one for your -taste, really--if you were to be quite candid with yourself. Has she -spoken to you at all about Barney? Are you quite sure you'll have to -reckon with her for yourself and the children?" - -At this Mrs. Chadwick showed a frank alarm. "Oh, quite, quite sure!" she -said. "She couldn't be so lovely to us all if she didn't mean to take -him! Why do you ask, Roger? You haven't any reason for thinking she -won't?" - -"None whatever. Quite the contrary." He didn't want to put poor Mrs. -Chadwick to the cruel test of declaring whether she would rather have -the children go to church and lose Miss Toner and all her money or have -them stay away and keep Miss Toner. After all such a test was not to be -asked of her. Miss Toner wanted people to follow their own light. "I -only wondered if she talked to you about him. Asked any girlish leading -questions." - -"None, none whatever," said Mrs. Chadwick. "But I feel that's because -she thinks she knows him far better than I do and that he's told her -everything already. It's rather hard to be a mother, Roger. For of -course, though she is so much better and cleverer than I am, I feel sure -that no one understands Barney as I do." - -"She'd be a little cleverer still if she could see that, wouldn't she?" - -"Well, I don't know. Girls never do. I was just the same when I was -engaged to Francis. Even now I can't think that old Mrs. Chadwick really -understood him as I did. It's very puzzling, isn't it? Very difficult to -see things from other people's point of view. When she pulled up the -blind this afternoon, she told me that Nancy and Barney were down in the -copse and she seemed pleased." - -"Oh, did she?" - -"I told her that they'd always been like brother and sister, for I was -just a little afraid, you know, that she might imagine Barney had ever -cared about Nancy." - -"I see. You think she wouldn't like that?" - -"What woman would, Roger?" And he imagined that Mrs. Chadwick, for all -her folly, was cleverer than Miss Toner guessed, as she added: "And then -she told me that she'd made Barney go without her. She wanted me to see, -you know, that it depended on her. That's another reason why I feel sure -she is going to take him." - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -He sat, for the first time, next Miss Toner that night at dinner and -Nancy sat across from them next Barney. Nancy was pale, and now that he -could scrutinize her he imagined that the walk had been more of an -ordeal than a pleasure. Barney, no doubt, with the merciless blindness -of his state, had talked to her all the time of Adrienne. But Nancy -would not have minded that. She was of the type that hides its cut for -ever and may become aunt and guardian-angel to the other woman's -children. It had not been Barney's preoccupation that had so drained her -of warmth and colour, but its character, its object. Her grey eyes had -the considering look with which they might have measured the height of a -difficult hedge in hunting, and, resting on Oldmeadow once or twice, -seemed to tell him that the walk had shown her more clearly than ever -that, if Barney married Miss Toner, they must lose him. He felt sure -that she had lain down since tea with a headache to which had come no -ministering angel. - -She and Barney did not talk to each other now, for he had eyes and ears -only for Miss Toner. At any former time they would have kept up the -happiest interchange, and Oldmeadow would have seen Nancy's eyelashes -close together as she smiled her loving smile. There was a dim family -likeness between her face and Barney's, for both were long and narrow, -and both had the singular sweetness in the very structure of the smile. -But where Barney was clumsy, Nancy was clear, and her skin was as fair -as his was brown. To the fond onlooker at both, they were destined mates -and only an insufferable accident had parted them. - -Nancy was as much a part of the Coldbrooks country as the primroses and -the blackcaps in the woods. Her life had risen from the familiar soil to -the familiar sky, as preordained to fitness, as ordered by instinct and -condition as theirs, and from her security of type she had gained not -lost in savour. The time that unfinished types must give to growing -conscious roots and building conscious nests, Nancy had all free for -spontaneities of flight and song. Beside her, to his hostile eye, Miss -Toner was as a wide-spread water-weed, floating, rootless and scentless, -upon chance currents: A creature of surfaces, of caprice and hazard. If -the multiplicity of her information constituted mental wealth, its -impersonality constituted mental poverty. She was as well furnished and -as deadening as a catalogue, and as he listened to her, receiving an -impression of continual, considered movings-on, earnest pursuits, across -half the globe, of further experience, he saw her small, questing figure -on a background of railways, giant lines stretching forth across plain -and mountain, climbing, tunnelling, curving; stopping at great capitals, -and passing on again to glitter on their endless way under the sun and -moon. That was what he seemed to see as Miss Toner talked: and -sleeping-berths and wardrobe-boxes and luxurious suites in vast hotels. - -She wore again her white dress, contrasting in its richness of texture -with the simplicity of her daytime blue, and, rather stupidly, an -artificial white rose had been placed, in her braids, over each ear. -Her pearls were her only other ornament, and her pearls, he supposed, -were surprising. - -Oldmeadow was aware, in his close proximity to her, while she ate beside -him with a meticulous nicety that made the manners of the rest of them, -by contrast, seem a little casual and slovenly, of the discomfort that -had visited him in his dream. Yet the feeling she evoked was not all -discomfort. It was as if from her mere physical presence he were -subjected to some force that had in its compulsion a dim, conjectural -charm. It was for this reason no doubt that he seemed to be aware of -everything about her. Her hands were small and white, but had no beauty -of form or gesture. She moved them slowly and without grace, rather like -a young child handling unfamiliar objects in a kindergarten, and this in -spite of the singular perfection of her table manners. She could have -made little use of them, ever, in games of skill or in any art requiring -swift accuracy and firmness. It was as if her mind, overtrained in -receptivity and retentiveness, had only dull tentacles to spare for her -finger-tips. He was aware of these hands beside him all through dinner -and their fumbling deliberation brought to him, again and again, a -mingled annoyance, and satisfaction. There was something positive and -characteristic about her scentlessness, for if she smelt of anything it -was of Fuller's Earth--a funny, chalky smell--and beside Meg, who -foolishly washed liquid powder over her silvery skin, Miss Toner's -colourlessness was sallow. She had hardly talked at all the night -before, but to-night she talked continuously. It was Meg who questioned -her, and Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldmeadow guessed that his ingenuous -friend, still perplexed by his use of the word foolish, was drawing out -and displaying her future daughter-in-law for his benefit. - -Miss Toner and her mother had been to Russia, to India, to China and -Japan. They had visited Stevenson's grave at Vailima and in describing -it she quoted "Under the wide and starry sky." They had studied every -temple in Greece and Sicily and talked of the higher education with -ladies in Turkish harems. "But it was always Paris we came back to," she -said, "when we were not at home. Home was, and is, a great many places: -California and Chicago--where my father's people live, and New England. -But Paris was, after it, closest to our hearts. Yes, we knew a great -many French people; but it was for study rather than friendship we went -there. It is such a treasure-house of culture. Mother worked very hard -at French diction for several winters. She had lessons from Mademoiselle -Jouffert--you know perhaps--though she has not acted for so many years -now. Our friendship with her was a great privilege, for she was a rare -and noble woman and had a glorious gift. Phèdre was her favourite rôle -and I shall never forget her rendering of it: - - Ariane ma soeur! de quel amour blessée - Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée! - -She taught Mother to recite Phèdre's great speeches with such fire and -passion. There could hardly be a better training for French," said Miss -Toner, repeating the lines with a curious placidity and perfection. "I -preferred Mademoiselle Jouffert's rendering to Bernhardt's. Her Phèdre -was, with all the fire, more tender and womanly." - -"Do you care about Racine?" Oldmeadow asked her, while the lines rang in -his ears--rather as in his dream the rooks' cawing had done--with an -evocative sadness that hung, irrelevantly, about their speaker. "It's -not easy for our English ears to hear the fire and passion, is it; but -they are there." - -"He is very perfect and accomplished," said Miss Toner. "But I always -feel him small beside our Shakespeare. He lacks heart, doesn't he?" - -"There's heart in those lines you've just recited." - -"Yes," said Miss Toner. "Those lines are certainly very beautiful. It's -the mere music of them, I think. They make me feel--" she paused. It was -unlike her to pause and he wondered what she made of Ariane, off her own -bat, without Mademoiselle Jouffert to help her. - -"They make you feel?" he questioned. - -"They are so sad--so terribly melancholy. The sound of them. They make -me want to cry when I hear them. But I think it's the sound; for their -meaning makes me indignant. There is such weakness in them; such -acceptance of destiny. I want to revolt and protest, too--for women. She -should not have died." - -Oldmeadow involuntarily glanced across at Nancy. She was looking at Miss -Toner and if she had been pale before, she was paler now. Nancy would -never think of herself in connection with Ariane and tragic grief; yet -something in the lines, something in Miss Toner's disavowal of their -applicability, had touched the hidden cut. And, once again, it was Meg's -eyes that met his, showing him that what he saw she saw, too. Barney saw -nothing. All his solicitude was for Miss Toner in her imaginary plight. -"I'm sure you never would!" he exclaimed. "Never die, I mean!" - -"You think Miss Toner would have come to terms with Bacchus," Oldmeadow -suggested. He didn't want to take it out of Barney, though he was vexed -with him, nor to take it out of Miss Toner, either. He only wanted to -toss and twist the theme and make it gay where Miss Toner made it -solemn. - -"Come to terms with Bacchus!" Barney quite stared, taken aback by the -irreverence. "Why should she! She'd have found somebody more worth while -than either of the ruffians." - -Miss Toner smiled over at him. - -"I'm sure that if Bacchus had been fortunate enough to meet Miss Toner -she'd have converted him to total abstinence in a jiffy and made a model -husband of him. He was a fine, exhilarating fellow; no ruffian at all; -quite worth reforming." Oldmeadow, as he thus embroidered his theme, was -indulging in his own peculiar form of mirth. - -He saw Miss Toner laying her hand on the head of Bacchus; Miss Toner -very picturesque on the rugged sea-shore in her white and pearls and -roses, and Bacchus dazed and penitent, his very leopards tamed to a -cat-like docility. His laugh was visible rather than audible and that -Miss Toner had never before been the subject of such mirth was evident -to him. - -She met whatever she saw or guessed of irreverence, however, as -composedly as she would have met Bacchus; perhaps already, he reflected, -she was beginning to think of him in the light of an undesirable -wine-bibber. Perhaps even, she was beginning to think of him as a -ruffian. He didn't mind in the least, so long as he succeeded in keeping -off her solemnity. - -"I should have been quite willing to try and reform him," she said; -"though it takes much longer than a jiffy to reform people, Mr. -Oldmeadow; but I shouldn't have been willing to marry him. There are -other things in life, aren't there, than love-stories--even for women." - -"Bravo!" said Oldmeadow. He felt as well as uttered it. She wasn't being -solemn, and she had returned his shuttlecock smartly. "But are there?" -he went on. He had adjusted his eyeglass for a clearer confrontation of -her. - -Miss Toner's large eyes, enlarged still further by the glass, met his, -not solemnly, but with a considering gravity. - -"You are a sceptic, Mr. Oldmeadow," she observed. "A satirist. Do you -find that satire and scepticism take you very far in reading human -hearts?" - -"There's one for you, Roger!" cried Barney. - -Oldmeadow kept his gaze fixed on Miss Toner. "You think that Ariane -might prefer Infant Welfare work or Charity Organization to a -love-story?" - -"Not those necessarily." She returned his gaze. "Though I have known -very fine big people who did prefer them. But they are not the only -alternatives to love-stories." - -"I am sceptical," said Oldmeadow. "I am, if you like, satirical. I don't -believe there are any alternatives to love-stories; only palliatives to -disappointment." - -Barney leaned forward: "Adrienne, you see, doesn't accept that -old-fashioned, sentimentalizing division of the sexes. She doesn't -accept the merely love-story, hearth-side rôle for women." - -"Oh, well," Oldmeadow played with his fork, smiling with the wryness -that accompanied his reluctant sincerities, "I don't divide the sexes as -far as love-stories are concerned. We are all in the same boat. For us, -too, Barney, it's love-story or palliative. You don't agree? If you were -disappointed in love? Hunting? Farming? Politics? Post-Impressionism? -Would any of them fill the gap?" - -It wasn't at all the line he had intended the talk to take. He knew that -as he glanced across at Nancy. Saying nothing, as if its subject could -not concern her, and with a dim little smile, she listened, and he knew -that for her, though she wouldn't die of it, there would be only -palliatives. If only Barney, confound him, hadn't been so charming. - -Barney did not know how to answer the last assault, and, boyishly, -looked across at his beloved for succour. She gave it instantly. - -"Sadness, sorrow, tragedy, even, isn't despair," she said. "Barney, I -believe, if sorrow overtook him, would mould the rough clay of his -occupation to some higher beauty than the beauty he'd lost. To lie down -and die; to resign oneself to palliatives. Oh, no. That's not the -destiny of the human soul." - -"Roger's pulling your leg, Barney, as usual," Palgrave put in -scornfully. He had been listening with his elbows on the table, his eyes -on the table-cloth. "He knows as well as I do that there's only one -love. The sort you're all talking about--the Theseus and Ariane -affair--is merely an ebullition of youth and as soon as nature has -perpetuated the species by means of it, it settles down, if there's any -reality under the ebullition, to grow into the other--the divine love; -the love of the soul for the Good, the True and the Beautiful," Palgrave -declared, growing very red as he said it. - -"Really--my dear child!" Mrs. Chadwick murmured. She had never heard -such themes broached at her table and glanced nervously up at old -Johnson to see if he had followed. "That is a very, very materialistic -view!" - -Oldmeadow at this began to laugh, audibly as well as visibly, and -Palgrave, as their eyes met in a glance of communicated comedy, could -not withhold an answering smile. But Barney's face showed that he -preferred to see Palgrave's interpretation as materialistic and even -Miss Toner looked thoughtfully at her champion. - -"But we need the symbol of youth and nature," she suggested. "The divine -love, yes, Palgrave, is the only real one; but then all love is divine -and human love sometimes brings the deepest revelation of all. Browning -saw that so wonderfully." - -"Browning, my dear!" Palgrave returned with a curious mingling of -devotion, intimacy and aloofness, "Browning never got nearer God than a -woman's breast!" - -At this, almost desperately, Mrs. Chadwick broke in: "Did you ever see -our Ellen Terry act, Adrienne? I liked her much better than Madame -Bernhardt who had such a very artificial face, I think. I can't imagine -her as Rosalind, can you? While Miss Terry was a perfect Rosalind. I met -her once with Henry Irving at a garden-party in London and she was as -charming off as on the stage and I'm sure I can't see why anybody -should wish to act Phèdre--poor, uncontrolled creature. Rhubarb-tart, -dear, and custard? or wine-jelly and cream? How beautifully you speak -French. How many languages do you speak?" Mrs. Chadwick earnestly -inquired, still turning the helm firmly away from the unbecoming topic. - -Miss Toner kept her head very creditably and, very tactfully, at once -accepted her hostess's hint. "Rhubarb-tart, please, dear Mrs. Chadwick. -Not so very many, really. My German has never been good; though French -and Italian I do know well, and enough Spanish for Don Quixote. But," -she went on, while Mrs. Chadwick looked gratefully at her, "Mother and I -were always working. We never wasted any of our precious hours together. -She couldn't bear the thought of _missing_ anything in life; and she -missed very little, I think. Music, poetry, painting--all the -treasure-houses of the human spirit--were open to her. And what she won -and made her own, she gave out again with greater radiance. How I wish -you could all have known her!" said Miss Toner, looking round at them -with an unaccustomed touch of wistfulness. "She was radiance -personified. She never let unhappiness _rest_ on her. I remember once, -when she had had a cruel blow from a person she loved and trusted--in -the middle of her sadness she looked at me and saw how sad she was -making me; and she sprang up and seized my hands and cried: 'Let's -dance! Let's dance and dance and dance!' And we did, up and down the -terrace--it was at San Remo--she in her white dress, with the blue sky -and sea and the orange-trees all in bloom. I can see her now. And then -she rushed to get music, her harp, and flowers and fruit, to take to an -invalid friend, and we spent the afternoon with her, mother surpassing -herself in charm and witchery. She was always like that. She would have -found something, oh, very beautiful, to make from her sorrow if Theseus -had abandoned her! But no one," said Miss Toner, looking round at -Oldmeadow, now with a mild playfulness, "could ever have abandoned -Mother." - -There was something to Oldmeadow appealing in her playfulness; her -confidence, when it took on this final grace, was really touching. For -Mrs. Toner the light-giver he knew that he had conceived a rooted -aversion. And he wondered if she would go on, over the rhubarb-tart, to -tell, after the dancing on the terrace, of the death at sea. But he was -spared that. - -"And your father died when you were very young, didn't he, dear?" said -Mrs. Chadwick, fearful of the reference to Theseus. "I think your mother -must often have been so very lonely; away from home for such a great -part of the time and with so few relatives." - -Miss Toner shook her head. "We were always together, she and I, so we -could never, either of us, be lonely. And wherever we went she made -friends. People were always so much more than mere people to her. She -saw them always, at once, high and low, prince and peasant, as souls, -and they felt it always, and opened to her. Then, until I was quite big, -we had my lovely grandmother. Mother came from Maine and it was such a -joy to go and stay there with Grandma. It was a very simple little home. -It was always high thinking and plain living, with Grandma; and though, -when she married and became rich, Mother showered beautiful things upon -her, Grandma stayed always in the little house, doing for her poor -neighbours, as she had always done, and dusting her parlour--a real New -England parlour--and making her own griddle cakes--such wonderful cakes -she made! I was fifteen when she died; but the tie was so close and -spiritual that she did not seem gone away from us." - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -"Rather nice to think that there are so many good and innocent people in -the world, isn't it," Barney remarked, when he, Palgrave and Oldmeadow -were left to their wine and cigars. It was evident that he would have -preferred to omit the masculine interlude, but Oldmeadow was resolved on -the respite. She had touched him because she was so unaware; but he was -weary and disconcerted. How could Barney be unaware? And was he? -Altogether? His comment seemed to suggest a suspicion that Miss Toner's -flow might have aroused irony or require justification. - -"Miss Toner and her mother seem to have found the noble and the gifted -under every bush," he remarked, and he was not sure that he wished to -avoid irony though he knew that he did wish to conceal it from Barney. -"It's very good and innocent to be able to do that; but one may keep -one's goodness at the risk of one's discrimination. Not that Miss Toner -is at all stupid." - -Palgrave neither smoked nor drank. He had again leaned his elbows on the -table and his head on his fists, but, while Oldmeadow spoke, he lifted -and kept his gaze on him. "You don't like her," he said suddenly. He and -Oldmeadow had, irrepressibly, over Mrs. Chadwick's conception of -materialism, interchanged their smile at dinner; but since the morning -Oldmeadow had known that Palgrave suspected him of indifference, perhaps -even hostility, towards the new-comer. "Why don't you like her?" the -boy went on and with a growing resentment as his suspicions found voice. -"She _isn't_ stupid; that's just it. She's good and noble and innocent; -and gifted, too. Why should we pretend to be too sophisticated to -recognize such beauty when we meet it? Why should we be ashamed of -beauty--afraid of it?" - -Barney, flushing deeply, looked down into his wine-glass. - -"My dear Palgrave, I don't understand you," said Oldmeadow. But he did. -He seemed to hear the loud beating of Palgrave's heart. "I don't dislike -Miss Toner. How should I? I don't know her." - -"You do know her. That's an evasion. It's all there. She can't be seen -without being known. It's all there; at once. I don't know why you don't -like her. It's what I want to know." - -"Drop it, Palgrave," Barney muttered. "Let Roger alone. He and Adrienne -get on very well together. It's no good forcing things." - -"I'm not forcing anything. It's Roger who forces his scepticism and his -satire on us," Palgrave declared. - -"I'm sorry to have displeased you," said Oldmeadow with a slight -severity. "I am unaware of having displayed my disagreeable qualities -more than is usual with me." - -"Of course not. What rot, Palgrave! Roger is always disagreeable, bless -him!" Barney declared with a forced laugh. "Adrienne understands him -perfectly. As he says: she isn't stupid." - -"Oh, all right. I'm sorry," Palgrave rose, thrusting his hands in his -pockets and looking down at the two as he stood above them. He hesitated -and then went on: "All I know is that for the first time in my -life--the very first time, mind you--all the things we are told about in -religion, all the things we read about in poetry, the things we're -supposed to care for and live by, have been made real to me--outside of -books and churches. What do we ever see of them at home here, with dear -Mummy and the girls? What do we ever talk of, all of us--but the -everlasting round--hunting, gardening, cricket, hay; village treats and -village charities. A lot of chatter about people--What a rotter -So-and-so is; and How perfectly sweet somebody else: and a little about -politics--Why doesn't somebody shoot Lloyd George?--and How wicked Home -Rulers are. That's about all it amounts to. Oh, I know we're not as -stupid as we sound. _She_ sees that. We can feel things and see things -though we express ourselves like savages. But we're too comfortable to -think; that's what's the trouble with us. We don't want to change; and -thought means change. And we're shy; idiotically shy; afraid to express -anything as it really comes to us; so that I sometimes wonder if things -will go on coming; if we shan't become like the Chinese--a sort of -_objet d'art_ set of people, living by rote, in a rut. Well. That's all -I mean. With her one isn't ashamed or afraid to know and say what one -feels. With her one wants to feel more. And I, for one, reverence her -and am grateful to her for having made beauty and goodness real to me." -Having so delivered himself, Palgrave, who had, after his deep flush, -become pale, turned away and marched out of the room. - -The older men sat silent for a moment, Oldmeadow continuing to smoke and -Barney turning the stem of his wine-glass in his fingers. "I'm awfully -sorry," he said at last. "I can't think what's got into the boy. He's in -rather a moil just now, I fancy." - -"He's a dear boy," said Oldmeadow. "There's any amount of truth in what -he says. He's at an age when one sees these things, if one is ever going -to see them. I hope he'll run straight. He ought to amount to -something." - -"That's what Adrienne says," said Barney. "She says he's a poet. You -think, too, then, that we're all in such a rut; living Chinese lives; -automata?" - -"It's the problem of civilization, isn't it, to combine automatism with -freedom. Without a rut to walk in you reach nowhere--if we're to walk -together. And yet we must manage to ramble, too; individuals must; -that's what it comes to, I suppose. Individuals must take the risk of -rambling and alter the line of the rut for the others. Palgrave may be a -rambler. But I hope he won't go too far afield." - -"You do like her, Roger, don't you?" said Barney suddenly. - -It had had to come. Oldmeadow knew that, as the depth of silence fell -about them. It was inevitable between them, of course. Yet he wished it -might have been avoided, since now it must be too late. He pressed out -the glow of his cigar and leaned his arms on the table, not looking at -his friend while he meditated, and he said finally--and it might seem, -he knew, another evasion--"Look here, Barney, I must tell you something. -You know how much I care about Nancy. Well, that's the trouble. It's -Nancy I wanted you to marry." - -Barney had held himself ready and a deep, involuntary sigh of relief, or -of postponed suspense, now escaped him. "I see. I didn't realize that," -he said. And how he hoped, poor Barney! it was all there was to realize! -"Of course I'm very fond of Nancy." - -"You realize, of course, how fond she is of you." - -"Well; yes; of course. We're both awfully good pals," said Barney, -confused. - -"That's what Palgrave would call speaking like a savage, Barney. Own to -it that if Miss Toner hadn't appeared upon the scene you could have -hoped to make Nancy your wife. I don't say you made love to her or -misled her in any way. I'm sure you never meant to at any rate. But the -fact remains that you were both so fond of each other that you would -certainly have married. So you'll understand that when I come down here -and find Miss Toner installed as tutelary goddess over you all, what I'm -mainly conscious of is grief for my dear little relegated nymph." - -Still deeply flushed, but still feeling his relief, Barney turned his -wine-glass and murmured: "I see. I quite understand. Yes; I should have -been in love with her, I own. I nearly was, last winter. As to her being -in love with me, that's a different matter. I've no reason to think she -was in love. It would just be a difference of degree, with Nancy, -wouldn't it; she loves us all so much, and she's really such a child, -still. Of course that's what she seems to me now, since Adrienne's come; -just a darling child." - -"I suppose so. But you understand what I feel, too. I feel her much more -than a darling child, and it's difficult for me to like anybody who has -dispossessed her. I perfectly recognize Miss Toner's remarkable -qualities and hope to count myself among her friends one day; but, being -a satirist and a sceptic, I rebel instinctively against goddesses of -whatever brand. Nymphs are good enough for me; and I can't help wishing, -irrepressibly, that nymphs had remained good enough for you, my dear -boy." - -"It isn't a question of nymphs; it isn't a question of goddesses," -Barney said, glancing up now at his friend. "I'm awfully sorry about -Nancy; but of course she'll find some one far better than I am; she's -such a dear. You're not quite straight with me, Roger. I don't see -Adrienne as a goddess at all; I'm not like Palgrave, a silly boy, bowled -over. It's something quite different she does to me. She makes me feel -safe; safe and happy in a way I never imagined possible. It's like -having the sunlight fall about one; it's like life, new life, to be with -her. She's not a goddess; but she's the woman it would break my heart to -part with. I never met such loveliness." - -"My dear boy," Oldmeadow murmured. He still leaned on the table and he -still looked down. "I do wish you every happiness, as you know." He was -deeply touched and Barney's quiet words troubled him as he had not -before been troubled. - -"Thanks. I know you do. I know you care for my happiness. And I can't -imagine anything coming into my life that would make a difference to us. -That's just it." Barney paused. "It won't, will it, Roger?" - -The crisis was again upon them. Oldmeadow did not look up as he said: -"That depends on her, doesn't it?" - -"No; it depends on you," Barney quickly replied. - -"She likes you, quite immensely, already. She says you make her think of -one of Meredith's dry, deep-hearted heroes," Barney gave a slightly -awkward laugh, deprecating the homage as he offered it. "She says you -are the soul of truth. There's no reason, none whatever, why you -shouldn't be the best of friends, as far as she is concerned. It's all -she asks." - -"It's all I ask, of course." - -"Yes, I know. But if you don't meet her half-way? Sometimes I do see -what Palgrave means. Sometimes you misunderstand her." - -"Very likely. It takes time really to understand people, doesn't it." - -But poor Barney was embarked and could not but push on. "As just now, -you know, about finding nobility behind every bush and paying for one's -goodness by losing one's discrimination. There are deep realities and -superficial realities, aren't there, and she sees the deep ones first. -It's more than that. Palgrave says she makes reality. He didn't say it -to me, because I don't think he feels me to be worthy of her. He said it -to Mother, and puzzled her by it. But I know what he means. It's because -of that he feels her to be a sort of saint. Do be straight with me, -Roger. Say what you really think. I'd rather know; much. You've never -kept things from me before," Barney added in a sudden burst of boyish -distress. - -"My dear Barney," Oldmeadow murmured. - -It had to come, then. He pushed back his chair and turned in it, resting -an arm on the table; and he passed his hand over his head and kept it -there while he stared for a moment hard at the ceiling. - -"I think you've made a mistake," he then said. - -"A mistake?" Barney faltered blushing. It was not anger; it was pain, -simple, boyish pain that thus confessed itself. - -"Yes; a mistake," Oldmeadow repeated, not looking at him, "and since I -fear it's gone too far to be mended, I think it would have been better -if you'd not pressed me, my dear boy." - -"How do you mean? I'd rather know, you see," Barney murmured, after a -moment. - -"I don't mean about the goodness, or the power," said Oldmeadow. "She is -good, and she has power; but that's in part, I feel, because she has no -inhibitions--no doubts. To know reality we must do more than blow -soap-bubbles with it. It must break us to be known. She's never been -broken. Perhaps she never will be. And in that case she'll go on blind." - -Barney was silent for a moment, and that it was not as bad as he had -feared it might be was apparent from the attempted calm with which he -asked, presently: "Why shouldn't you be blind to evil and absurdity if -you can see much further than most people into goodness? Perhaps one -must be one-sided to go far." - -"Perhaps. But it's dangerous to be one-sided--to oneself and others. And -does she see further? That's the question. Doesn't she tend, rather, to -accept as first-rate what you incline to find second? You're less strong -than she is, Barney, and less good, no doubt. But you can't deny that -you're less blind. So what you must ask yourself is whether you can be -sure of being happy with a wife who'll never doubt herself and who'll -not see absurdity where you see it. Put it at that. Will you be happy -with her?" - -He was, he knew, justified of Miss Toner's commendation, for truth -between friends could go no further and, in the silence, while he -sickened for his friend, he felt it searching Barney's heart. How it -searched, how many echoes it found awaiting it, was proved by the -prolongation of the silence. - -"I think you exaggerate," said Barney at length, and in the words -Oldmeadow read his refusal to examine further the truths revealed to -him. "You see all the defects and none of the beauty. It can't be a -mistake if I can see both. She'll learn a little from me, that's what it -comes to, for all the lot I'll have to learn from her. I'll be happy -with her if I'm worthy of her. What it comes to, you see, as I said at -the beginning, is that I can't be happy without her." He rose and -Oldmeadow, rising also, knew that they closed upon an unresolved -discord. Yet these final words of Barney's pleased him so much that he -could not leave it quite at that. - -"Mine may be the mistake, after all," he said. "Only you must give me -time to find it out. I began by telling you I couldn't be really -dispassionate; and I feel much better for our talk, if that's any -satisfaction to you. If you can learn from each other and see the truth -together, you'll be happy. You're right there, Barney. That is what it -comes to." They moved towards the door. "Try not to dislike me for my -truth too much," he added. - -"My dear old fellow," Barney muttered. He laid his hand for a moment on -his friend's shoulder, standing back for him to pass first. "Nothing can -ever alter things between you and me." - -But things were altered already. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -Palgrave had not gone to the drawing-room, and that, at all events, was -a comfort. A wood fire burned on the hearth and near it Nancy was -holding wool for Mrs. Chadwick to wind. Barbara had been sent to bed and -Meg and Miss Toner sat on the sofa hand in hand. Even in the pressure of -his distress and anxiety Oldmeadow could but be aware of amusement at -seeing Meg thus. It had, of course, been Miss Toner who had taken her -hand. But no one else could have taken it. No one else could have been -allowed to go on holding it placidly before on-lookers of whose mirthful -impressions Meg must be well aware. She didn't mind in the least. That -was what Miss Toner had done to her. She enjoyed having her hand held by -anyone so much interested in her. - -Barney walked to the fireplace and stood before it. He had no faculty -for concealing his emotions and the painful ones through which he had -just passed were visible on his sensitive face. - -"Give us a song, Meg," Oldmeadow suggested. He did not care for Meg's -singing, which conveyed, in a rich, sweet medium, a mingled fervour and -shallowness of feeling. But to hear her sing would be better than to see -her holding Miss Toner's hand. - -Barney crossed at once to the seat Meg vacated and dropped down into it, -no doubt thanking his friend for what he imagined to be a display of -tact, and Oldmeadow saw the quiet, firm look that flowed over and took -possession of him. Miss Toner knew, of course, that Barney had been -having painful emotions; and she probably knew that they had been caused -by the dry, deep-hearted Meredithian hero. But after the long look she -did not speak to him. She sat in her pearls and whiteness and gave -careful attention to the music. - -Oldmeadow accompanied Meg, tolerantly, and a trifle humorously, throwing -a touch of mockery into his part. Meg's preference to-night seemed to be -for gardens; Gardens of Sleep; Gardens of Love; God's Gardens. "What a -wretch you are, Roger," she said, when she had finished. "You despise -feeling." - -"I thought I was wallowing in it," Oldmeadow returned. "Did I stint -you?" - -"No; you helped me to wallow. That's why you're such a wretch. Always -showing one that one is wallowing when one thinks one's soaring. It's -your turn, now, Adrienne. Let's see if he'll manage to make fun of you." - -"Does Miss Toner sing, too? Now do you know, Meg," said Oldmeadow, -keeping up the friendly banter, "I'm sure she doesn't sing the sort of -rubbish you do." - -"I think they're beautiful songs," Mrs. Chadwick murmured from her wool, -"and I think Roger played them most beautifully. Why should you say he -is making fun of you, Meg?" - -"Because he makes you think something's beautiful that he thinks -rubbish, Mummy. Come along, Adrienne. You will, won't you? I expect my -voice sounds all wrong to you. I've had no proper training." - -"It's a very lovely voice, Meg, used in a poor cause," said Miss Toner -smiling. "And it is badly placed. I think I could help you there. I've -no voice at all, but I have been taught how to sing. It would be more to -the point, though, if Mr. Oldmeadow were to play to us, for I hear that -he is an accomplished musician." - -"I'm really anything but accomplished," said Oldmeadow; "but I can play -accompaniments cleverly. Do sing to us. I know you'll give us something -worth accompanying." - -Miss Toner rose and came to the piano with her complete and unassuming -confidence. She turned the pages of the music piled there and asked him -if he cared for Schubert's songs. Yes; she was a watch wound to go -accurately and she could rely on herself, always, to the last tick. Even -if she knew--and he was sure she knew--that he had been undermining her, -she would never show a shadow or a tremor; and she would always know -what was the best music. Only, as she selected "Litanei" and placed it -before him, he felt that over him, also, flowed the quiet, firm look. - -"Litanei" was one of his favourites in a composer he loved, and, as she -sang there above him, he found the song emerging unharmed from her -interpretation. It was as she had said--no voice to speak of; the -dryest, flattest little thread of sound; and no feeling, either (what a -relief after Meg!), except the feeling for scrupulous accuracy. Yet her -singing was what he found in her to like best. It was disciplined; it -accepted its own limits; it fulfilled an order. There was no desecration -of the heavenly song, for, intelligently after all, she made no attempt -upon its heart. - -When she had finished, she looked down at him. They were removed by half -the length of the room from the fireside group. The lamps were behind -them. Only the candles set in the piano-rack illumined Miss Toner; and -while the white roses over her ears struck him anew as foolish, her eyes -anew struck him as powerful. - -"Thank you. That was a pleasure," he said. - -It was a pleasure. It was almost a link. He had found a ground to meet -her on. He saw himself in the future accompanying Barney's wife. He -need, then, so seldom talk to her. But, alas! she stepped at once from -the safe frame of art. - -"If we can rise from loss to feel like that, if we can lift our sorrows -like that, we need never turn to palliatives, need we, Mr. Oldmeadow?" -she said. - -Stupidity, complacency, or power, whatever it was, it completely -disenchanted him. It left him also bereft of repartee. What he fell back -upon, as he looked up at her and then down at the keys again, was a mere -schoolboy mutter of "Come now!" - -After all a schoolboy mutter best expressed what he felt. She was not -accustomed to having her ministrations met with such mutters and she did -not like it. That was apparent to him as she turned away and went back -to the sofa and Barney. She had again tried him and again found him -wanting. - - * * * * * - -Barney and Miss Toner left in her motor next morning shortly after -breakfast, and though with his friend Oldmeadow had no further exchange, -he had, with Miss Toner, a curious encounter that was, he felt sure, a -direct result of her impressions of the night before. They met in the -dining-room a few moments before breakfast, and as she entered, wearing -already her motoring hat, closely bound round her face with a veil, he -was aware that she looked, if that were possible, more composed than he -had ever seen her. He felt sure that she had waited for her opportunity, -and had followed him downstairs, knowing that she would find him alone; -and he realized then that she was more composed, because she had an -intention or, rather, since it was more definite, a determination. -Determination in her involved no effort: it imparted, merely, the added -calm of an assured aim. - -She gave him her hand and said good morning with the same air of -scrupulous accuracy that she had given to the rendering of "Litanei" and -then, standing before the fire, her hands clasped behind her, her eyes -raised to his, she said: "Mr. Oldmeadow, I want to say something to -you." - -It was the gentle little voice, unaltered, yet he knew that he was in -for something he would very much rather have avoided; something with -anybody else unimaginable, but with her, he saw it now, quite -inevitable. Yet he tried, even at this last moment, to avoid it and -said, adjusting his eyeglass and moving to the sideboard: "But not -before we've had our tea, surely. Can't I get you some? Will you trust -me to pour it out?" - -"Thanks; I take coffee--not tea," said Miss Toner from her place at the -fire, "and neither has been brought in yet." - -He had just perceived, to his discomfiture, that they had not. There was -nothing for it but to turn from the ungarnished sideboard and face her -again. - -"It's about Barney, Mr. Oldmeadow," Miss Toner said, unmoved by his -patent evasion. "It's because I know you love Barney and care for his -happiness. And it's because I hope that you and I are to be friends, and -friendship can only be built on truth. Try to trust more; will you? -That's all I want to say. Try to trust. You will be happier if you do -and make other people happier." - -Oldmeadow had never experienced such an assault upon his personality, -and he met it gagged and bound, for, assuredly, this was to be Barney's -wife. A slow flush mounted to his face. - -"I'm afraid I seem very strange and unconventional to you," Adrienne -Toner went on. "You've lived in a world where people don't care enough -for each other to say the real things. They must be felt if they've to -be said, mustn't they? Yet you do care for people. I have seen that, -watching you here; and you care for real things. It's a crust of caution -and convention that is about you. You are afraid of expression. You are -afraid of feeling. You are afraid of being taken in and of wasting -yourself. Don't be afraid, Mr. Oldmeadow. We never lose ourselves by -trusting. We never lose ourselves by giving. It's a realer self that -comes. And with you, I see it clearly, if you let the crust grow -thicker, it will shut life and light and joy away from you; and when -light cannot visit our hearts, they wither within us. That is your -danger. I want to be your friend, so I must say the truth to you." - -He knew, though he had to struggle not to laugh, that he was very angry -and that he must not show anger; though it would really be better to -show that than his intense amusement; and it took him a moment, during -which they confronted each other, to find words; dry, donnish words; -words of caution and convention. They were the only ones he had -available for the situation. "My dear young lady," he said, "you take -too much upon yourself." - -She was not in the least disconcerted. She met his eyes steadily. "You -mean that I am presumptuous, Mr. Oldmeadow?" - -"You take too much upon yourself," he repeated. "As you say, I hope we -may be friends." - -"Is that really all, Mr. Oldmeadow?" she said, looking at him with such -a depth of thoughtfulness that he could not for the life of him make out -whether she found him odious or merely pitiful. - -"Yes; that's really all," he returned. - -The dining-room was very bright and the little blue figure before the -fire was very still. The moment fixed itself deep in his consciousness -with that impression of stillness and brightness. It was an -uncomfortable impression. Her little face, uplifted to his, absurd, yet -not uncharming, was, in its still force, almost ominous. - -"I'm sorry," was all she said, and she turned and went forward to greet -Mrs. Chadwick. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -It was a soft June day and Oldmeadow was strolling about Mrs. Averil's -garden admiring her herbaceous borders. It was a day that smelt of -ripening strawberries, of warm grass and roses, and the air was full of -a medley of bird voices, thrushes and blackbirds, sweet as grass and -strawberries, and the bubbling rattle of the chaffinch as happy as the -sunlight. - -Adrienne Toner was Mrs. Chadwick now, and she and Eleanor Chadwick and -Barney were motoring together in the French Alps. Coldbrooks was empty, -and he had come to stay with Nancy and her mother. - -They lived in a small stone house with a Jacobean front that looked, -over a stone wall, at Chelford Green, and had behind it a delightfully -unexpected length of lawn and orchard and kitchen-garden, all enclosed -by higher walls and presided over by a noble cedar. Seen from the garden -The Little House was merely mid-Victorian, but the modern additions were -masked by climbing roses and a great magnolia-tree opened its -lemon-scented cups at the highest bedroom windows. The morning-room was -in the modern part, and from one of its windows, presently, Mrs. Averil -emerged, opening her sunshade as she crossed the grass to join her -guest. She wore a white straw garden hat, tipping over her eyes and -tying, behind, over her thick knot of hair, in a manner that always -recalled to Oldmeadow a lady out of Trollope. Her face was pale, like -Nancy's, and her eyes grey; but rather than blackcaps and primroses she -suggested lace tippets and porcelain tea-sets, and though it was from -her Nancy had her pretty trick of closing her eyes when she smiled, Mrs. -Averil's smile was cogitative and impersonal, and in her always -temperate mirth there was an edge of grimness. - -"Well, Roger, I want to hear what you thought about the wedding," she -said. She had not gone to church that morning with Nancy and it was, he -knew, because she wanted an interchange of frank impressions. She had -been prevented from attending Miss Toner's London nuptials by a touch of -influenza and, as she now went on to say, she had got little from Nancy, -who had no eye for pageants and performances. "Eleanor was so absorbed," -she went on, "in the fact that the Bishop had indigestion and had, at -her suggestion, taken magnesia with his breakfast, that I could not get -much else out of her. She seemed to have seen the Bishop's symptoms -rather than Adrienne and Barney. Now from you I expect all the relevant -details." - -"Well, if you call it a detail, Nancy was lovely," said Oldmeadow. "She -looked like a silver-birch in her white and green." - -"And pearls," said Mrs. Averil. "You noticed, of course, the necklaces -Adrienne gave them; quite the gift of a princess, yet so innocent and -unobtrusive looking, too. She has great taste in such matters. Did she -look well? Eleanor did say that she, like the Bishop, was very pale." - -"She was pale; but not a bit nervous. She rather looked as if she had -been married every day of her life. Nothing ever puts her out, you know. -She was very grave and benign; but she wasn't an imposing bride and the -wreath of orange-blossoms aged her. Nancy and Meg and Barbara and the -Lumley girl aged her, too. She must be older than Barney." - -"Yes; she is. A year older. But she's the sort of woman who will wear," -said Mrs. Averil, pausing before a bed of rose-trees to snip off a -fading flower. "She'll not look very differently at fifty, you know; and -her hair is the sort that may never turn grey. I can see her at seventy -with those big golden braids and all her teeth. There's something very -indestructible about her. Like a doll made of white leather compared to -one made of porcelain. She'll last and last," said Mrs. Averil. "She'll -outlast us all. Barney was radiant, of course." - -"Yes. But he _was_ nervous; like a little boy frightened by the -splendour of his Christmas-tree. He looked as though he were arm in arm -with the Christmas-tree itself as he came down the nave. A rather dumpy -little Christmas-tree, but exquisitely lighted and garnished." - -"Well, he ought to be radiant," Mrs. Averil observed. "With all that -money, it's an extremely good match for him. The fact of her being -nobody in particular makes no difference, really, since she's an -American. And she has, I gather, no tiresome relations to come -bothering." - -"She's very unencumbered, certainly. There's something altogether very -solitary about her," Oldmeadow agreed, watching Mrs. Averil snip off the -withered roses. "I felt that even as she came down the nave on Barney's -arm. It's not a bit about the money he's radiant," he added. - -"Oh, I know. Of course not. That was only my own gross satisfaction -expressing itself. He's as in love as it's possible to be. And with -every good reason." - -"You took to her as much as they all did, then?" - -"That would be rather difficult, wouldn't it? And Barney's reasons would -hardly be those of a dry old aunt. She was very nice and kind to Nancy -and me and she's evidently going to do everything for them. Barbara's -already, you know, been sent to that admirable school that was too -expensive for Eleanor; riding and singing and all the rest of it. And -Meg's been given a perfect trousseau of fine clothes for her London -season. Naturally I don't feel very critically towards her." - -"Don't you? Well, if she weren't a princess distributing largess, -wouldn't you? After all, she's not given Nancy a trousseau. So why be -mute with an old friend?" - -"Ah, but she's given her the pearls," said Mrs. Averil. "Nancy couldn't -but accept a bridesmaid's gift. And she would give her a trousseau if -she wanted it and would take it. However, I'll own, though decency -should keep me mute, that I should find myself a little bored if I had -to see too much of her. I'm an everyday person and I like to talk about -everyday things." - -"I can hear her asking you, in answer to that, if there is anything more -everyday than the human soul. I wish I could have seen you _aux prises_ -with her," Oldmeadow remarked. "Did she come down here? Did she like -your drawing-room and garden?" - -Mrs. Averil's drawing-room and garden lay very near her heart. Eleanor -Chadwick sometimes accused her of caring more about her china and her -roses than about anything else in the world except Nancy. - -"I don't think she saw them; not what I call see," Mrs. Averil now said. -"Oh, yes; she came several times and recognized, very appreciatively, -the periods of my Queen Anne furniture and my Lowestoft. Beyond their -period I don't think she went. She said the garden was old-world," Mrs. -Averil added, looking about her and twirling her parasol on her -shoulder. - -"She would," Oldmeadow agreed. "That's just what she would call it. And -she'd call you a true, deep-hearted woman and Nancy a gifted girl. How -do she and Nancy hit it off? It's that I want most of all to hear -about." - -"They haven't much in common, have they?" said Mrs. Averil. "She's never -hunted and doesn't, I imagine, know a wren from a hedge-sparrow. She -_does_ know a skylark when she hears one, for she said 'Hail to thee, -blithe spirit' while one was singing. But I felt, somehow, it was like -the Queen Anne and the Lowestoft--a question of the label." - -Oldmeadow at this began to laugh with an open and indulged mirth. He and -Mrs. Averil, at all events, saw eye to eye. "If you'd tie the correct -label to the hedge-sparrow she'd know that, too," he said. "Poor girl. -The trouble with her isn't that she doesn't know the birds, but that she -wouldn't know the poets, either, without their labels. It's a mind made -up of labels. No; I don't think it likely that Nancy, who hasn't a label -about her, will get much out of her--beyond necklaces." - -"I wish Nancy _had_ a few labels," said Mrs. Averil. "I wish she could -have travelled and studied as Miss Toner--Adrienne that is--has done. -She is such a little ignoramus. Adrienne may bore you and me, but Nancy -will never interest anyone--except you and me." - -It was always amusing to Oldmeadow, if a little sardonically so, to note -that any conception of himself as a possible suitor for Nancy had never -entered Mrs. Averil's mind. As a friend he was everything a mother could -desire; as a match for Nancy almost unimaginable. Well, he could not -give a wife even one hunter and he never had had any intention of -falling in love with his dear nymph; yet that other people might not do -so was a suggestion he repudiated with warmth. - -"Oh; in love, yes," Mrs. Averil agreed. "I don't deny that she's very -loveable and I hope she may marry well. But that's not the same thing as -being interesting, is it? A man may be in love with a woman who doesn't -interest him." - -"I dispute that statement." - -"I'm sure dear Eleanor never interested her husband--devoted to the day -of his death as he was. There's something in my idea. To be interesting -one must offer something new. If Nancy had been interesting to Barney -she would now, I think, have been in Adrienne's place. Not that it would -have been a marriage to be desired for either of them." - -So he and Mrs. Averil had been thinking the same thoughts. - -"And you contend that if Nancy had been to China and read Goethe and -Dante in the originals he'd have been interested? I think he was quite -sufficiently interested and that if Miss Toner hadn't come barging into -our lives he'd have known he was in love." - -"Going to China is a figure of speech and stands for all the things she -hasn't got and doesn't know. My poor little Nancy. All the same, _she_ -isn't a bore!" said Mrs. Averil with as near an approach to acerbity as -she could show. - -"No; she isn't a bore. The things she knows have to be found out, by -degrees, through living with her. Barney hasn't been to China, either, -so, according to your theory, Nancy didn't find him interesting." - -At this Mrs. Averil's eyes met his and, after a moment of contemplation, -they yielded up to him the secret they saw to be shared. "If only it -were the same for women! But they don't need the new. She's young. -She'll get over it. I don't believe in broken hearts. All the same," -Mrs. Averil stopped in their walk, ostensibly to examine the growth of a -fine pink lupin, "it hasn't endeared Adrienne to me. I'm too -_terre-à-terre_, about that, too, not to feel vexation, on Nancy's -account. And what I'm afraid of is that she knows she's not endeared to -me. That she guesses. She's a bore; but she's not a bit stupid, you -know." - -"You don't think she's spiteful?" Oldmeadow suggested after a moment, -while Mrs. Averil still examined her lupin. - -"Dear me, no! I wish she could be! It's that smooth surface of hers -that's so tiresome. She's not spiteful. But she's human. She'll want to -keep Barney away and Nancy will be hurt." - -"Want to keep him away when she's got him so completely?" - -"Something of that sort. I felt it once or twice." - -"My first instinct about her was right, then," said Oldmeadow. "She's a -bore and an interloper, and she'll spoil things." - -"Oh, perhaps not. She'll mend some things. Have you heard about Captain -Hayward?" - -"Do you mean that stupid, big, tawny fellow? What about him?" - -"You may well ask. I've been spoken to about him and Meg by more than -one person. They are making themselves conspicuous, and it's been going -on for some time." - -"You don't mean that Meg's in love with him?" - -"He's in love with her, at all events, and, as you know, he's a married -man. I questioned Nancy, who was with Meg for a few weeks in London, and -she owns that Meg's unhappy." - -"And they're seeing each other in London now?" Oldmeadow was deeply -discomposed. - -"No. He's away just now. And Meg is going to meet the bridal party in -Paris at the end of July. Nancy feels that when Meg gets back under -Adrienne's influence there'll be nothing to fear." - -"We depend on her, then, so much, already," he murmured. He was -reviewing, hastily, his last impressions of Meg and they were not -reassuring. The only thing that was reassuring was to reflect on his -impressions of Adrienne. "Grandma's parlour" returned to him with its -assurance of deep security. Above everything else Adrienne was -respectable. - -"Yes. That's just it," Mrs. Averil agreed. "We depend on her. And I feel -we're going to depend more and more. She's the sort of person who mends -things. So we mustn't think of what she spoils." - -What Adrienne Toner had spoiled was, however, to be made very plain next -morning both to Nancy's old friend and to her mother. Beside her plate -at breakfast was a letter addressed in Barney's evident hand, a letter -in a narrow envelope stamped with the name of a French hotel and -showing, over the address, an engraving of peaks against the sky. Nancy -met the occasion with perfect readiness, saying as she looked at the -letter, waiting to open it till she had made the tea--Nancy always made -the tea in the morning while her mother sat behind the bacon and eggs at -the other end of the table--"How nice; from Barney. Now we shall have -news of them." - -Nothing less like an Ariane could be imagined than Nancy as she stood -there in her pink dress above the pink, white and gold tea-cups. One -might have supposed from her demeanour that a letter from Barney was but -a happy incident in a happy day. But, when she dropped into her chair -and read, it was evident that she was not prepared for what she found. -She read steadily, in silence, while Oldmeadow cut bread at the -sideboard and Mrs. Averil distributed her viands, and, when the last -page was reached, they both could not fail to see that Nancy was -blushing, blushing so deeply that, as she thus felt herself betray her -emotion, tears came thickly into her downcast eyes. - -"I'll have my tea now, dear," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you wait a little -longer, Roger?" She tided Nancy over. - -But Nancy was soon afloat. "The letter is for us all," she said. "Do -read it aloud, Roger, while I have my breakfast." - -Barney's letters, in the past, had, probably, always been shared and -Nancy was evidently determined that her own discomposure was not to -introduce a new precedent. Oldmeadow took up the sheets and read. - - * * * * * - -"DEAREST NANCY,--How I wish you were with us up here. It's the most -fantastically lovely place. One feels as if one could sail off into it. -I dug up some roots of saxifrage for your wall yesterday, such pretty -pink stuff. It's gone off in a box wrapped in damp moss and I hope will -reach you safely. A horrid, vandal thing to do; but for you and Aunt -Monica I felt it justified, and there are such masses of it. I saw a -snow-bunting yesterday, much higher up than the saxifrage; such a jolly, -composed little fellow on a field of snow. The birds would drive you -absolutely mad, except that you're such a sensible young person you'd no -doubt keep your head even when you saw a pair of golden eagles, as we -did, floating over a ravine. I walked around the Lac d'Annecy this -morning, before breakfast, and did wish you were with me. I thought of -our bird-walks at dawn last summer. There were two or three darling -warblers singing, kinds we haven't got at home; and black redstarts and -a peregrine falcon high in the air. I could write all day if I'd the -time, about the birds and flowers. You remember Adrienne telling us that -afternoon when she first came to Coldbrooks about the flowers. But I -mustn't go on now. We're stopping for tea in a little valley among the -mountains with flowers thick all around us and I've only time to give -our news to you and Aunt Monica and to send our love. Mother is -extremely fit and jolly, though rather scared at the hairpin curves; -Adrienne has to hold her hand. I'm too happy for words and feel as if -I'd grown wings. How is Chummie's foot? Did the liniment help? Those -traps are beastly things. I feel just as you do about the rabbits. -Adrienne reads aloud to us in the evenings; a man called Claudel; -awfully stiff French to follow but rather beautiful. I think you'd like -him. Not a bit like Racine! Best love to you and Aunt Monica. Here's -Adrienne, who wants to have her say." - -Had it been written in compunction for _Ariane aux bords laissée_? or, -rather, in a happy reversion to sheer spontaneity, a turning, without -any self-consciousness, to the comrade of the bird-walks who would, -after all, best feel with him about snow-buntings and redstarts? -Oldmeadow paused for the surmise, not looking up, before he went on from -Barney's neat, firm script to his wife's large, clear clumsy hand. - - "DEAREST NANCY," ran the postscript, and it had been at the - postscript, Oldmeadow now could gauge, that Nancy had first found - herself unprepared. "I, too, am thinking of you, with Barney. It is - a great joy to feel that where, he says, I've given him golden - eagles and snow-buntings he's given me--among so many other dear, - wonderful people--a Nancy. I get the best of the bargain, don't I? - I can't see much of the birds for looking at the peaks--_my_ peaks, - so familiar yet, always, so new again. 'Stern daughters of the - voice of God' that they are. Radiantly white against a cloudless - sky we find them to-day. Barney's profile is beautiful against - them--but his nose is badly sun-burned! _All_ our noses are - sun-burned! That's what one pays for flying among the Alps. - - "Mother Nell--we've decided that that's what I'm to call - her--looks ten years younger all the same, as I knew she would. We - talk of you all so often--of you and Meg and Palgrave and Barbara, - and half a dozen times a day Barney wishes that one or the other of - you were with us to see this or that. It's specially you for the - birds I notice. You must take me for some bird-walks at dawn some - day and teach me to know all your lovely English songsters.... Dear - little Cousin-Sister, I send you my love with his and, with him, - hold you warmly in my heart. Will 'Aunt Monica' accept my - affectionate and admiring homages? - - "Yours ever - - "ADRIENNE" - - - -Oldmeadow had not expected that she could write such a human letter; yet -it explained Nancy's blush. Barney's spontaneous affection she could -have faced, but she had not been able to face his wife's determined -tenderness. Adrienne had meant it well, no doubt--Oldmeadow gazed on -after he had finished, but she had no business to mean so well, no -business to thrust herself, in this community of intimacy, into what was -Barney's place alone. There was more in it, he knew, with Meg and Mrs. -Averil to help him, than the quite successful playfulness. She was to be -more intimate than Barney, that was what it came to; more, much more -tender if Barney was to be allowed intimacy and tenderness. That was -really what she intended Nancy to see, and that Barney had no place at -all where she, Adrienne, did not also belong. - -"Very sweet; very sweet and pretty," Mrs. Averil's voice broke in, and -he realized that he had allowed himself to drop into a grim and -tactless reverie; "I didn't know she had such a sense of humour. -Sun-burned noses and 'Stern daughters of the voice of God.' Well done. I -didn't think Adrienne would ever look as low as noses. They must be -having a delightful tour. I know black redstarts. There was one that -used to wake me every morning at four, one summer, in Normandy, with the -most foolish, creaking song; just outside my window. Give Barney my love -when you write and return my niece's affectionate and admiring homages. -Mother Nell. I shouldn't care to be called Mother Nell somehow." - -So Mrs. Averil's vexation expressed itself and so she floated Nancy -along. But Nancy, long since, had pulled herself together and was able -to look at Oldmeadow, while her lashes closed together in her own smile, -and to say that she'd almost be willing to lose her nose for the sake of -hearing the new warblers. Mrs. Averil opened her "Times" and over -marmalade Nancy and Oldmeadow planned the trip that they would take some -day, when their ship came in, the three of them, a bird-trip to the -French Alps. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -Oldmeadow sat beside Adrienne Chadwick and knew that from the other end -of the room, where he talked to Mrs. Aldesey, Barney's eyes were on -them, though he tried to keep them off. It was the first dinner-party -the young couple had given since they had come up to town, for though -they were established at Coldbrooks in the communal family life Adrienne -seemed to find to her taste, and though Barney had at once immersed -himself in country pursuits, they had taken and furnished this large -house in Connaught Square and it was, apparently, settled that the -winter months were to be spent in London. How that was to be combined -with farming at Coldbrooks, or whether Barney intended to take a header -into politics and felt a London house, big enough for entertaining, part -of the programme, Oldmeadow hadn't an idea, and for the rather sinister -reason that he had hardly laid his eyes on Barney since his return from -his wedding-journey. Even though asked to tea once or twice, while, -established in an hotel, they were finding and furnishing the house, he -had never found them alone and either Barney had made no opportunity, or -his wife had seen to it that none should be made, for having a -_tête-à-tête_ with his old friend. - -Oldmeadow could not associate Barney with ambitions, either social or -political, nor, he was bound to say, as he looked round the -dinner-table, where Adrienne sat at one end with Lord Lumley and Barney -at the other with Lady Lumley, could one infer from its disparate and -irrelevant elements any such ambitions in Adrienne. He had taken Mrs. -Aldesey down and had felt her at moments to be almost too resourceful, -her air of graceful skill in keeping the ball rolling seeming too much -to emphasize its tendency to drop. Without Mrs. Aldesey, without -Meg--vividly engaged at one corner with a fair young American--without -himself, for he had aided and abetted Lydia to the best of his ability, -the dinner would have been a dull one and he was not sure that even -their enterprise had redeemed it. Adrienne had not any air of fearing -dullness or of being in need of assistance. Oldmeadow saw that the blue -ribbon was frequently unrolled and that, as always, it made a silence in -which it could be watched. Lord Lumley, his handsome, official head bent -in an attitude of chivalrous devotion, watched earnestly, and the fair -young American paused in the midst of whatever he might be saying to Meg -to take almost reverent note; but Oldmeadow fancied more than once that -he caught startled eyes fixed upon it, especially when there emerged a -lustrous loop of quotation:-- - - "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, - Never doubted clouds would break,--" - -The silence for that had been so general that even Barney, far away, and -protected by Mrs. Aldesey, was aware of it. - -"How wonderfully he _wears_, doesn't he, dear old Browning," said Mrs. -Aldesey, and in the glance that Barney cast upon her was an oddly -mingled gratitude and worry. The fair young American, he was very fair -and had clear, charming eyes, finished the verse in a low voice to Meg -and Meg looked at him affectionately the while. He was evidently one of -Adrienne's appurtenances. - -It was a dull dinner. Pretty, festive Mrs. Pope and young Mr. Haviland, -reputed to be a wit and one of Meg's young men as Mrs. Pope was one of -Barney's young women, would not with any eagerness again attend a board -where the hostess quoted Browning and didn't know better than to send -you down, the first with a stern young socialist who sat silent for the -most part and frowned when addressed, and the second with a jocular, -middle-aged lady from California, the mother, Oldmeadow gathered, of the -clear-eyed youth, from whose ample bosom Mr. Haviland's subtle arrows -glanced aside leaving him helplessly exposed to the stout bludgeonings -of her humour. Adrienne paused once or twice in her conversation to -smile approval upon her compatriot and to draw Lord Lumley's attention -to her special brand of merriment, good Lord Lumley adjusting his -glasses obediently to take it in. - -And now they were all assembled in the drawing-room. Like everything -about Adrienne, it was simple and rather splendid. Barney had wisely -kept his modernities for his own study and it was a pity, Oldmeadow -reflected, that Adrienne had not kept for her own boudoir the large -portrait of herself that hung over the mantelpiece, since it was a note -more irrelevant than any Post Impressionist could have been and cast a -shade of surmise over the taste displayed in the Chippendale furniture -and the Chinese screens. - -"Rather sweet, isn't it; pastoral and girlish, you know," Barney had -suggested tentatively as Mrs. Aldesey had placed herself before it. -"Done in Paris a good many years ago; the man was very much the fashion -then. Adrienne was only sixteen. It's an extraordinarily perfect -likeness still, isn't it?" - -To which Mrs. Aldesey, all old lace and exquisite evasion, had murmured, -her lorgnette uplifted: "Quite dear and ingenuous. Such a relief after -your arid Cubists. What would they make of Mrs. Barney _en bergère_, I'd -like to know? A jumble of packing-cases with something twisted in a -corner to signify a bleat." - -For the picture, painted with glib assurance and abounding in pink and -azure, portrayed Adrienne dressed as a shepherdess and carrying a -flower-wreathed crook. - -Adrienne, to-night at all events, was looking very unlike the -shepherdess, but that might be because of the approaches of her -maternity. Mrs. Chadwick, when he had last been at Coldbrooks, had told -him that the baby was expected in May and that Adrienne was wonderful -about it, dedicating herself to its perfection in thought and deed with -every conscious hour. - -"If only I'd thought about my babies before they came like that, who -knows what they might have turned out!" she had surmised. "But I was -very silly, I'm afraid, and the only thing I really did think of was how -I should dress them. I've always loved butcher's-blue linen for children -and I must say that mine did look very nice in it. For everyday, you -know." - -Oldmeadow found it extremely difficult to think of Adrienne as a mother; -it was much easier to think of her as a shepherdess. Such solidities of -experience gave her even a certain pathos in his eyes, though he was in -no whit dislodged from his hostility to her. She was as mild, as -satisfied, apparently, with herself and with existence, as ever, yet her -eyes and lips expressed fatigue and a purely physical sadness that was -uncharacteristic, and it was uncharacteristic that she should be rather -thickly powdered. - -They had not really met since the morning of her adjuration to him at -Coldbrooks and he wondered if she remembered that little scene as -vividly as he did. She would be very magnanimous did she not remember it -unpleasantly; and he could imagine her as very magnanimous; yet from the -fact that she had kept Barney from him he could not believe that she was -feeling magnanimously. - -She watched Barney and Mrs. Aldesey now, as they stood before her -portrait, and he fancied that the sadness in her eyes, whatever might be -its cause, deepened a little. When she turned them on him it was with an -effect of being patiently ready for him. Perhaps, really, she had been -more patient than pleased all evening. - -"So you are settled here for the winter?" he said. "Have you and Barney -any plans? I've hardly seen anything of him of late." - -"We have been so very, very busy, you know," said Adrienne, as if quite -accepting his right to an explanation. - -She was dressed in pale blue and wore, with her pearl necklace, a little -wreath of pearls in her hair. In her hands she turned, as they talked, a -small eighteenth-century fan painted in pink and grey and blue, and he -was aware, as he had been at Coldbrooks, of those slow and rather -fumbling movements. - -"We couldn't well ask friends," she went on, "even the dearest, to come -and sit on rolls of carpet with us while we drank our tea, could we? -We've kept our squalor for the family circle. Meg's been with us; so -dear and helpful; but only Meg and a flying visit once or twice from -Mother Nell. Nancy couldn't come. But nothing, it seems, will tear Nancy -from hunting. I feel that strange and rather sad; the absorption of a -fine young life in such primitiveness." - -"Oh, well; it's not her only interest, you know," said Oldmeadow, very -determined not to allow himself vexation. "Nancy is a creature of such -deep country roots. Not the kind that grow in London." - -"I know," said Adrienne. "And it is just those roots that I want to -prevent my Barney's growing. Roots like that tie people to routine; -convention; acceptance. I want Barney to find a wider, freer life. I -hope he will go into politics. If we have left Coldbrooks and the dear -people there for these winter months it's because I feel he will be -better able to form opinions here than in the country. I saw quite well, -there, that people didn't form opinions; only accepted traditions. I -want Barney to be free of tradition and to form opinions for himself. He -has none now," she smiled. - -She had been clear before, and secure; but he felt now the added weight -of her matronly authority. He felt, too, that, while ready for him and, -perhaps, benevolently disposed, she was far more indifferent to his -impressions than she had been at Coldbrooks. She had possessed Barney -before; but how much more deeply she possessed him now and how much -more definitely she saw what she intended to do with him. - -"You must equip him with your opinions," said Oldmeadow, and his voice -was a good match for hers in benevolence. "I know that you have so many -well-formed ones." - -"Oh, no; never that," said Adrienne. "That's how country vegetables are -grown; first in frames and then in plots; all guided and controlled. He -must find his own opinions; quite for himself; quite freely of -influence. That is the rock upon which Democracy is founded. Nothing is -more arresting to development than living by other people's opinions." - -"But we must get our opinions from somebody and somewhere. The danger of -democracy is that we don't grow them at all; merely catch them, like -influenza, from a mob. Not that I disbelieve in democracy." - -"Don't you, Mr. Oldmeadow?" She turned her little fan and smiled on him. -"You believe in liberty, equality, fraternity? That surprises me." - -"Democracy isn't incompatible with recognizing that other people are -wiser than oneself and letting them guide us; quite the contrary. Why -surprised? Have I seemed so autocratic?" - -"It would surprise me very much to learn that you believed in equality, -to start with that alone"; Adrienne smiled on. - -"Well, I own that I don't believe in people who have no capacity for -opinions being impowered to act as if they had. That's the fallacy -that's playing the mischief with us, all over the world." - -"They never will have opinions worth having unless they are given the -liberty to look for them. You don't believe in liberty, either, when you -say that." - -"No; not for everybody. Some of our brothers are too young and others -too stupid to be trusted with it." - -"They'll take it for themselves if you don't trust them with it," said -Adrienne, and he was again aware that though she might be absurd she, at -all events, was not stupid. "All that we can do in life is to trust, and -help, and open doors. Only experience teaches. People must follow their -own lights." - -He moved forward another pawn, and though he did not find her stupid he -was not taking her seriously. "Most people have no lights to follow. -It's a choice for them between following other people's or resenting and -trampling on them. That, again, is what we can see happening all over -the world." - -"So it is, you must own, just as I thought; you don't even believe in -fraternity," said Adrienne, and she continued to smile her weary, -tranquil smile upon him; "for we cannot feel towards men as towards -brothers, and trust them, unless we believe that the light shines into -each human soul." - -He saw now that unless they went much deeper, deeper than he could be -willing, ever, to go with Adrienne Toner, he must submit to letting -himself appear as worsted. He knew where he believed the roots of trust -to grow and he did not intend, no never, to say to Adrienne Toner that -only through the love of God could one at once distrust and love the -species to which one belonged. He could have shuddered at the thought of -what she would certainly have found to say about God. - -"You've got all sorts of brothers here to-night, haven't you," he -remarked, putting aside the abstract theme and adjusting his glass. -"Some of them look as though they didn't recognize the relationship. -Where did you find our young socialist over there in the corner? He -looks very menacing. Most of the socialists I've known have been the -mildest of men." - -"He is a friend of Palgrave's. Palgrave brought him to see me. Oh, I'm -so glad--Gertrude is going to take care of him. She always sees at once -if anyone looks lonely. That's all right, then." - -Oldmeadow was not so sure it was as he observed the eye with which Mr. -Besley measured the beaming advance of the lady from California. - -"I wonder if you would like my dear old friend, Mrs. Prentiss," Adrienne -continued, watching her method with Mr. Besley. "The Laughing -Philosopher, Mother used to call her. She is a very rare, strong soul. -That is her son, talking to Lady Lumley. He's been studying architecture -in Paris for the past three years. A radiant person. Mrs. Prentiss runs -a settlement in San Francisco and has a brilliant literary and artistic -salon. She is a real force in the life of our country." - -"Why should you question my appreciation of rarity and strength? I can -see that she is very kind and that if anybody can melt Mr. Besley she -will." - -"Gertrude would have melted Diogenes," said Adrienne with a fond -assurance that, though it took the form of playfulness, lacked its -substance. "I hope they will find each other, for he is rare and strong, -too. What he needs is warmth and happiness. He makes me think of Shelley -when he talks." - -"He's too well up in statistics to make me think of Shelley," Oldmeadow -commented. Barney, he saw, from his place beside Mrs. Aldesey at the -other end of the room, was still watching them, pleased now, it was -evident, by the appearance of friendly, drifting converse they -presented. "He's not altogether unknown to me for we often, in our -review, get our windows broken by his stones; well-thrown, too. He's -very able. So you thought it might do the British Empire good to face -him? Well, I suppose it may." - -"Which are the British Empire?" asked Adrienne. "You. To begin with." - -"Oh, no. Count me out. I'm only a snappy, snuffy scribbler. Good old -Lord Lumley, of course, with all his vast, well-governed provinces -shimmering in the Indian sun behind him. And Sir Archibald, who talks so -loudly in the House. Palgrave didn't bring him, I'll be bound." - -"No. Lady Lumley brought him. He and Lord Lumley are certainly more than -odds and ends." She had an air of making no attempt to meet his -badinage, if it was that, but of mildly walking past it. "They are, both -of them, rather splendid people, in spite of their limitations. They've -accepted tradition, you see, instead of growing opinion. That is their -only trouble. I was afraid you were going to say Mr. Haviland. He is -certainly an odd and end." - -Mr. Haviland and Mrs. Pope had found each other and were indulging in -mirthful repartee in the back drawing-room. "I feel safe with Lord -Lumley and Sir Archibald," Adrienne added. - -"I'd certainly rather trust myself in their hands than in Mr. Besley's. -I'd almost rather trust myself in the hands of Mr. Haviland." - -"You mean that they would, at least, keep you comfortable and that Mr. -Besley wouldn't." She, too, had her forms of repartee. - -"I expect it's just what I do mean," he assented. "If Mr. Besley and his -friends had their way, I for instance, and workers of my type, would -soon, I suspect, have to forego our tobacco and our chamber-music. We're -only marketable in a comfortable world. And there are more comfortable -people, I maintain, under Lord Lumley, than there would be under Mr. -Besley." - -"'Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive,'" said Adrienne. -"All revolutions must begin by burning away the evil and the refuse. Not -that I am a revolutionist, or even a socialist." - -"You can't separate good from evil by burning," he said. "You burn them -both. That's what the French did in their lamentable bonfire, for which -they've been paying in poorer brains and poorer blood ever since. We -don't want revolutions. All we want is slow, good-tempered reform. -Revolutions are always ill-tempered, aren't they, and nothing worth -doing was ever done in an ill-temper. You are making me very didactic." - -"Oh, but I prefer that so much to persiflage," said Adrienne, with her -tranquillity. "And I am glad to hear what you really believe. But it is -sad to me that you should see no ardour or glory in anything. With all -its excesses and errors, I have always felt the French Revolution to be -a sublime expression of the human spirit." - -"It might have been; if they could only have kept their -heads--metaphorically as well as literally. But the glory and ardour -were too mixed with hatred and ignorance. I'm afraid I do tend to -distrust those states of feeling. They tend so easily to -self-deception." - -She was looking at him, quietly and attentively, and he was, for the -first time since their initial meeting, perhaps, feeling quite -benevolently towards her; quite as the British Empire might feel towards -a subject race. It was, therefore, the more difficult to feel anything -but exasperation when she said, having, evidently, summed up her -impressions and found her verdict: "Yes. You distrust them. We always -come back to that, don't we? You distrust yourself, too. So that, when -you tell me what you believe, you can only do it in the form of making -fun of my beliefs. I feel about you, Mr. Oldmeadow, what I felt that -morning when I tried to come near you and you wouldn't let me. I feel it -more the more I see you; and it makes me sad. It isn't only that you -distrust ardour and glory, all the sunlight and splendour of life; but -you are afraid of them; afraid to open your heart to trust. You shut -your door upon the sunlight and take up your caustic pen; and you don't -see how the shadows fall about you." - -It was indeed a dusty tumble from the quite civilized pavement of their -interchange, and it was unfortunate that upon his moment of -discomfiture, when he saw himself as trying to clap the dust off his -knees and shoulders in time to be presentable, Barney and Mrs. Aldesey -should have chosen to approach them. Barney, no doubt, imagined it a -propitious moment in which to display to Mrs. Aldesey his wife's and his -friend's amity. - -Adrienne was perfectly composed. She had borne her testimony and, again, -done her best for him, pointing out to him that the first step towards -enfranchisement was to open his door to the sunlight that she could so -bountifully supply. She turned a clear, competent eye upon her husband -and his companion. - -"Well, dear, and what have you and Roger been so deep in?" Barney -inquired, looking down at her with a fondness in which, all the same, -Oldmeadow detected the anxiety that had hovered in his eye all evening. -"You've seemed frightfully deep." - -"We have been," said Adrienne, looking up at him. "In liberty, equality -and fraternity; all the things I believe in and that Mr. Oldmeadow -doesn't. I can't imagine how he gets on at all, he believes in so few -things. It must be such a sad, dim, groping world to live in when there -are no stars above to look at and no hands below to hold." - -"Oh, well, you see," said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile, "his -ancestors didn't sign the Declaration of Independence." - -"We don't need ancestors to do that," Adrienne smiled back. "All of us -sign it for ourselves--all of us who have accepted our birthright and -taken the gifts that our great, modern, deep-hearted world hold out to -us. You are an American, Mrs. Aldesey, so you find it easy to believe in -freedom, don't you?" - -"Very easy; for myself; but not for other people," Mrs. Aldesey replied -and Oldmeadow saw at once, with an added discomfort, that she -underestimated, because of Adrienne's absurdity, Adrienne's -intelligence. "But then the very name of any abstraction--freedom, -humanity, what you will--has always made me feel, at once, dreadfully -sleepy. It's not ever having had my mind trained, Mrs. Barney. Now -yours was, beautifully, I can see." - -Adrienne looked up at her, for Mrs. Aldesey, her lace about her -shoulders, her lorgnette in her hands, had not seated herself, and it -was further evident to Oldmeadow that she weighed Mrs. Aldesey more -correctly than Mrs. Aldesey weighed her. "Very carefully, if not -beautifully," she said. "Have I made you sleepy already? But I don't -want to go on talking about abstractions. I want to talk about Mr. -Oldmeadow. The truth is, Barney," and her voice, as she again turned her -eyes on her husband, had again the form but not the substance of gaiety, -"the truth is that he's a lonely, lonely bachelor and that we ought to -arrange a marriage for him, you and I. Since he doesn't believe in -freedom, he won't mind having a marriage arranged, will he?--if we can -find a rare, sweet, gifted girl." - -Barney had become red. "Roger's been teasing you, darling. Nobody -believes in freedom more. Don't let him take you in. He's an awful old -humbug with his Socratic method. He upsets you before you know where you -are. He's always been like that." - -"Yes; hasn't he," Mrs. Aldesey murmured. - -"But he hasn't upset me at all," said Adrienne. "I grant that he was -trying to, that he was doing his very best to give me a tumble; but I -quite see through him and he doesn't conceal himself from me in the very -least. He doesn't really believe in freedom, however much he may have -taken _you_ in, Barney; he'd think it wholesome, of course, that you -should believe in it. That's his idea, you see; to give people what he -thinks wholesome; to choose for them. It's the lack of faith all -through. But the reason is that he's lonely; dreadfully lonely, and -because of that he's grown to be, as he says, snappy and snuffy; so that -we must borrow a page from his book and find what is wholesome for him. -I know all the symptoms so well. I've had friends just like that. It's a -starved heart and having nobody to be fonder of than anyone else; no one -near at all. He must be happily married as soon as possible. A happy -marriage is the best gift of life, isn't it, Mrs. Aldesey? If we haven't -known that we haven't known our best selves, have we?" - -"It may be; we mayn't have," said Mrs. Aldesey, cheerfully; but she was -not liking it. "I can't say. Am I to have a hand in choosing his bride? -I know his tastes, I think. We're quite old friends, you see." - -"No one who doesn't believe in freedom for other people may help to -choose her," said Adrienne, with a curious blitheness. "That's why he -mayn't choose her himself. We must go quite away to find her; away from -ceilings and conventions and out into the sunlight. I don't believe -happiness is found under ceilings. And it's what we all need more than -anything else. Even tobacco and chamber-music don't make you a bit -happy, do they, Mr. Oldmeadow? and if one isn't happy one can't know -anything about anything. Not really." - -"Alas!" sighed Mrs. Aldesey, keeping up her end, but not very -successfully, while Barney fixed his eyes upon his wife. "And I thought -I'd found it this evening, under this ceiling. Well, I shall cherish my -illusion, since you tell me it's only that, and thank you for it, Mrs. -Barney. The Lumleys are going to give me a lift and I see that their car -has been announced." - -"Stay on a bit, Roger," Barney murmured, as the Lumleys approached. -"I've seen nothing of you for ages." - -Adrienne rose to greet her parting guests. - -"Darling Adrienne, good-night. It's been perfectly delightful, your -little party," said Lady Lumley, who was large, light and easily -pleased; an English equivalent of the lady from California, but without -the sprightliness. "Your dear young Mr. Prentiss is a treasure. He's -been telling me about Sicilian temples. We _must_ get there one day. -Mrs. Prentiss says they will come to us for a week-end before they go. -How extraordinarily interesting she is. Don't forget that you are coming -on the fifteenth." - -"I shall get up a headache, first thing!" Lord Lumley stated in a loud, -jocular whisper, reverting to a favourite jest on Adrienne's powers. -"That's the thing to go in for, eh? I won't let Charlie cut me out this -time. Not a night's sleep till you come!" - -"Go in for as many as you like, dear Lord Lumley," said Adrienne, -smiling her assurance of being able to deal with a series. - -"Good-night, Mrs. Barney," said Mrs. Aldesey. "Leave me a little -standing-room under the stars, won't you." - -"There's always standing-room under the stars," said Adrienne. "We don't -exclude each other there." - -The party showed no other signs of breaking up. The Laughing Philosopher -had melted, or, at all events, mastered Mr. Besley, and talked to him -with, now and again, a maternal hand laid on his knee. Mr. Haviland and -Mrs. Pope still laughed in the back drawing-room, Meg and Mr. Prentiss -had come together again and Sir Archibald was engaged with a pretty -girl. After looking around upon them all, Adrienne, with the appearance -of a deeper fatigue, sank back upon her sofa. - -"You know, darling," Barney smiled candidly upon his wife, "you rather -put your foot in it just now. Mrs. Aldesey's marriage isn't happy. I -ought to have warned you." - -"How do you mean not happy, Barney?" Adrienne looked up at him. "Isn't -Mr. Aldesey dead?" - -"Not at all dead. She left him some years ago, didn't she, Roger? He -lives in New York. It's altogether a failure." - -Adrienne looked down at her fan. "I didn't know. But one can't avoid -speaking of success sometimes, even to failures." - -"Of course not. Another time you will know." - -Adrienne seemed to meditate, but without compunction. "That was what she -meant, then, by saying she believed in freedom for herself but not for -other people." - -"Meant? How do you mean? She was joking." - -"If she left him. It was she who left him?" - -"I don't know anything about it," Barney spoke now with definite -vexation and Oldmeadow, in his corner of the sofa, his arms folded, his -eyes on the cornice, gave him no help. "Except that, yes, certainly; -it's she who left him. She's not a deserted wife. Anything but." - -"It's only Mr. Aldesey who is the deserted husband," Adrienne turned her -fan and kept her eyes on it. "It's only he who can't be free. Forgive me -if she's a special friend of yours, Mr. Oldmeadow; but it explains. I -felt something so brittle, so unreal in her, charming and gracious as -she is. It is so very wrong for a woman to do that, I think." - -"Wrong?" Barney echoed, staring at Oldmeadow while this firm hand was -laid upon his Egeria. "What the dickens do you mean, darling? She is a -special friend of Roger's. You don't surely mean to say a woman must, -under all circumstances, stick to a man she doesn't love?" - -"Anything but that, Barney. I think that she should leave him and set -him free. It's quite plain to me that if a wife will not live with her -husband it is her duty to divorce him. Then, at any rate, he can try for -happiness again." - -"Divorce him, my dear child!" Barney was trying to keep up appearances -but the note of marital severity came through and as it sounded Adrienne -raised her eyes to his: "It's not so easy as all that! Aldesey, whatever -his faults, may have given her no cause to divorce him, and I take it -you'll not suggest that Mrs. Aldesey should give him cause to divorce -her." - -On her sofa, more pallid under her powder, more sunken than before, and -with the queer squashed-in look emphasized, Adrienne kept steady eyes -uplifted to her husband. "Not at all, dear Barney," she returned and -Oldmeadow, though hardened against the pathos of her physical -disability, saw that she spoke with difficulty, "but I think that you -confuse the real with the conventional wrong. Mrs. Aldesey would not -care to face any unconventionality; that is quite apparent. She would -draw her skirts aside from any conventional wrong-doing. But the real -wrong she would be blind to; the wrong of keeping anyone bound in the -emptiness you have made for them. Setting free is not so strange and -terrible a matter as you seem to imagine. It's quite easy for brave, -unshackled people." - -"Well, I must really be off," Oldmeadow now seized the occasion to -declare. "I believe, as a matter of fact, that Mr. Aldesey lives very -contentedly in New York, collecting French prints and giving excellent -dinners. Anything open and scandalous would be as distasteful to him as -to his wife. They are, both of them, happier apart; that's all it comes -to. So you must read your lessons, even by proxy, to more authentic -misdemeanants, Mrs. Barney. All right, Barney. Don't come down. I'll -hope to see you both again quite soon." - -So he got away, concealing as best he might, his sense of tingling -anger. But it died away to a sense of chill as he walked down Park Lane. -Was not Barney unhappy, already? What did she say to him when she got -him to herself? He felt sure that she had never bargained for a husband -who could look at her with ill-temper. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - -"Roger, see here, I've only come to say one word--about the absurd -little-matter of last night. Only one; and then we'll never speak of it -again," said poor Barney. - -He had come as soon as the very next day--to exonerate, not to -apologize; that was evident at once. Oldmeadow had not long to wait -before learning what she had said to him when she got him to herself, -nor long to wait before realizing that if Barney had been unhappy last -night he thought himself happy to-day. - -"Really, my dear boy," he said, "it's not worth talking about." - -"Oh, but we must talk about it," said Barney. He was red and spoke -quickly. "It upset her frightfully; it made her perfectly miserable. She -cried for hours, Roger," Barney's voice dropped to a haggard note. "You -know, though she bears up so marvellously, she's ill. She doesn't admit -illness and that makes it harder for her, because it simply bewilders -her when she finds herself on edge like this and her body refusing to -obey her. The baby is coming in May, you know." - -"I know, my dear Barney. The evening was very fatiguing for her. I saw -it all I think. I noticed from the beginning how tired she looked." - -"Horribly tired. Horribly fatiguing. I'm glad you saw it. For that's -really what I came to explain. She was tired to begin with and Mrs. -Aldesey put her on edge. I think I saw that myself at dinner--and, oh, -before that; on the day we had tea with her, when we first came up, in -November--Adrienne felt then that Mrs. Aldesey didn't understand or care -for her. You know she is so full of love and sympathy for everybody -herself that she is literally sickened when she is treated in that -artificial, worldly way. And you know, Roger, Mrs. Aldesey _is_ -artificial and worldly." - -That was how she had put it to Barney, of course. But Oldmeadow saw -further than Mrs. Aldesey and her artificiality. He saw a dishevelled -and weeping Adrienne stricken to the heart by the sense of threatened -foundations, aghast by what she had seen in her husband's eyes; and he -was aware, even while he resented having it put upon Lydia, of a -curious, reluctant pity for the pale, weeping figure. Lydia had, -obviously, displeased her; but Lydia had been the mere occasion; she -could have dealt easily enough with Lydia. It had been the revelation -that Barney could oppose her, could almost, for a moment, dislike her, -that had set her universe rocking. Her first taste of reality, then. The -thought came rather grimly, with the pity. After all it was their best -chance of happiness; that she should learn to accept herself as a person -who could be opposed, even disliked, in flashes, while still loved. He -had sat silent while he thought, one of his silences which, when he -emerged from them, he often recognized as over-long. Barney must have -felt the weight of all he did not say when all that he found to say was: -"What it comes to, doesn't it, is that they neither of them take much to -each other. Lydia is certainly conventional." - -"Ah, but Lady Lumley is conventional, too," said Barney with an -irrepressible air of checkmate. "Hordes of conventional people adore -Adrienne. It's a question of the heart. There are people who are -conventional without being worldly. It's worldliness that stifles -Adrienne. It's what she was saying last night: 'They have only ceilings; -I must have the sky.' Not that she thinks _you_ worldly, dear old boy." - -"I hope you try to interpret me to her kindly," said Oldmeadow, smiling. -Even at the moment when Barney, all innocently, was revealing to him -Adrienne's tactics, the fragments of her vocabulary imbedded in his -speech were affording him amusement. "You must try and persuade her that -I've quite a fondness for the sky myself, and even published a volume of -verse in my youth." - -"I do. Of course I do," said Barney eagerly. "And I gave her your poems, -long ago. She loved them. It's your sardonic pessimism she doesn't -understand--in anyone who could have written like that when they were -young. She never met anything like it before in her life. And the way -you never seem to take anything seriously. It makes her dreadfully sorry -for you, even while she finds it so hard to accept in anyone she cares -for--because she really does so care for you, Roger"--there was a note -of appeal in Barney's voice--"and does so long to find a way out for -you. It was a joke, of course; but all the same we've often wished you -could find the right woman to marry." - -Barney, as he had done last night, grew very red again, so that it was -apparent to Oldmeadow that not only the marriage but the woman--the -rare, gifted girl--had been discussed between him and his wife. - -"Adrienne thinks everyone ought to be married, you see," he tried to -pass it off. "Since we are so happy ourselves." - -"I see," said Oldmeadow. "There's another thing you must try to persuade -her of: that I'm not at all _un jeune homme à marier_, and that if I -ever seek a companion it will probably be some one like myself, some one -sardonic and pessimistic. If I fixed my affections on the lovely girl, -you see, it isn't likely they'd be reciprocated." - -"Oh, but"--Barney's eagerness again out-stepped his -discretion--"wouldn't the question of money count there, Roger? If she -had plenty of money, you know, or you had; enough for both; and a place -in the country? Of course, it's all fairy-tale; but Adrienne is a -fairy-tale person; material things don't count with her at all. She -waves them away and wants other people to wave them away, too. What she -always says is: 'What does my money _mean_ unless it's to open doors for -people I love?' She's starting that young Besley, you know, just because -of Palgrave; setting him up as editor of a little review--rotten it is, -I think--but Adrienne says people must follow their own lights. And it's -just that; she'd love to open doors for you, if it could make you -happy." - -Oldmeadow at this, after a moment of receptivity, began to laugh softly; -but the humour of the situation grew upon him until he at last threw -back his head and indulged in open and prolonged mirth. Barney watched -him bashfully. "You're not angry, I see," he ventured. "You don't think -it most awful cheek, I mean?" - -"I think it is most awful cheek; but I'm not angry; not a bit," said -Oldmeadow. "Fairy-godmothers are nothing if not cheeky; are they? Oh, I -know you meant your, not her, cheek. But it's the fault of the -fairy-godmother, all the same, and you must convince her that I'm not in -love with anybody, and that if ever I am she'll have to content herself -with my small earnings and a flat in Chelsea." - -So he jested; but, when his friend was gone, he realized that he was a -little angry all the same and he feared that his mirth had not been able -to conceal from Barney that what he really found it was confounded -impudence. Barney's face had worn, as he departed, the look of mingled -gratitude and worry and Barney must feel, as well as he felt, that their -interview hadn't really cleared up anything--except his own readiness to -overlook the absurdities of Barney's wife. What became more and more -clear to himself was that unless he could enable Adrienne to enroll his -name on her banner she would part him from Barney and that her very -benevolence was a method. The more he thought of it the more -uncomfortable he felt, and his inner restlessness became at length an -impulse urging him out to take counsel or, rather, seek solace, with the -friend from whom Adrienne could never part him. He would go and have tea -with Lydia Aldesey and with the more eagerness from the fact that he was -aware of a slight dissatisfaction in regard to Lydia. She had not -altogether pleased him last night. She had put herself in the wrong; she -had blundered; she hadn't behaved with the skill and tact requisite; and -to elicit from her a confession of ineptitude would make his sense of -solace the more secure. - -The day was a very different day from the one in April when he had -first gone to ask Mrs. Aldesey for information about people called -Toner. It was early February, dull and cold and damp. No rain was -falling, but the trees were thick with moisture and Oldmeadow had his -hands deep in his pockets and the collar of his coat turned up about his -ears. As he crossed the Serpentine, an electric brougham passed him, -going slowly, and he had a glimpse within it, short but very vivid, of -Adrienne, Meg, and Captain Hayward. - -Adrienne, wearing a small arrangement of black velvet that came down -over her brows, was holding Meg's hand and, while she spoke, was looking -steadily at her, her face as white as that of a Pierrot. Meg listened, -gloomily it seemed, and Captain Hayward's handsome countenance, turned -for refuge towards the window, showed an extreme embarrassment. - -They passed and Oldmeadow pursued his way, filled with a disagreeable -astonishment though, absurdly, his mind was at first occupied only in an -attempt to recover a submerged memory that Captain Hayward's demeanour -suggested. It came at last in an emancipating flash and he saw again, -after how many years, the golden-brown head of his rather silly setter, -John, turned aside in shy yet dignified repudiation, that still, by a -dim, sick smile, attempted to conceal distress and to enter into the -spirit of the game--as a kitten was held up for his contemplation. A -kitten was a very inadequate analogy, no doubt, for the theme of -Adrienne's discourse; yet Captain Hayward's reaction to a situation for -which he found himself entirely unprepared was markedly like John's. And -he, like John, had known that the game was meant to be at his expense. -John and Captain Hayward got Oldmeadow out of the park before he had -taken full possession of his astonishment and could ask himself why, if -Adrienne were engaged in rescuing Meg from her illicit attachment, she -should do it in the company of the young man. Yet, strangely enough, he -felt, as he walked, a growing sense of reassurance. For an emergency -like this, after all, given amenable subjects, Adrienne was the right -person. He hadn't dreamed it to be such an emergency; but since it was, -Adrienne would pull them through. As she would have laid her hand on the -head of Bacchus and reformed him, so she would lay it on the head of -Captain Hayward. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - - -The incident put Mrs. Aldesey quite out of his mind, and it was not till -he stood on her doorstep and rang her bell that he remembered his -grievance against her and realized that it had been made more definite -by this glimpse of Adrienne's significance. That his friend was prepared -for him was evident at his first glance; she had even, he saw, been -expecting him, for she broke out at once with: "Oh, my dear Roger--what -_are_ you going to do with her?" - -He was actually pleased to find himself putting her, with some grimness, -in her place. "What is she going to do with us? you mean. You underrate -Mrs. Barney's capacity, let me tell you, my dear friend." - -But Mrs. Aldesey was not easily quelled. "Underrate her! Not I! She's a -Juggernaut if ever there was one. Her capacity is immense. She'll roll -on and she'll crush flat. That poor Barney! She is as blind as a -Juggernaut, but _he_ will come to see--alas! he is seeing -already--though you and I danced round him with veils and cymbals--that -people won't stand being pelted with platitudes from soup to dessert. -The Lumleys will, of course; it's their natural diet; though even they -like their platitudes served with a touch of _sauce piquante_; but -Rosamund Pope told me that she felt black and blue all over and Cuthbert -Haviland--malicious toad--imitates her already to perfection: dreadful -little voice, dreadful little smile, dreadful little quotations and all. -It will be one of his London gags. That shepherdess! My dear Roger, -don't pretend to me that _you_ don't see it!" - -Oldmeadow, sunken in the chair opposite her, surveyed her over his -clasped hands with an air of discouragement. - -"What I'm most seeing at the moment is that she's made you angry," he -remarked. "If what you say were all the truth, why should she make you -angry? She's not as blind as a Juggernaut. That's where you made your -mistake. She'll only crush the people who don't lie down before her. She -knows perfectly well where she is going--and over whom. So be careful, -that is my advice, and keep out of her way; unless you want to lose a -toe or a finger." - -Mrs. Aldesey showed, at this, that he had arrested her. In spite of the -element of truth in Adrienne's verdict upon her he knew her to be, when -veils and cymbals were cast aside, a sincere and gallant creature. She -did not attempt to hide from him now and, after a moment of mutual -contemplation, she laughed a little, with not unreal mirth and said: "I -suppose I am angry. I suppose I'm even spiteful. It's her patronage, you -know. Her suffocating superiority. To have to stand there, for his sake, -and _take_ it! You overrate her, Roger. No woman not abysmally stupid -could say the things she says." - -"Your mistake again. She's able to say them because she's never met -irony or criticism. She's not stupid," he found his old verdict. "Only -absurd. You know, you gave yourself away to her. You showed her what you -thought of her. You patronized _her_." - -"Is _no_ retaliation permitted?" Mrs. Aldesey moaned. "Must one accept -it all? Be scourged with the stars and Browning and then bow one's head -to her caresses? After all, Barney is your friend, not mine, and it's -as your friend that I've tried to be decent to his wife. But she hates -me like poison. She gave herself away, too, you know. I liked the way -she excluded me from her prospects for your welfare. And of course she -knew my marriage wasn't a happy one." - -"I don't think that she did. No; I don't think so. You _are_ poison to -her--cold poison," said Oldmeadow. "Don't imagine for a moment she -didn't see that you were dancing about him with veils and cymbals. She -didn't give herself away, for she had nothing to conceal. She was candid -and you weren't. She didn't pretend that you were under the stars with -her; while you kept up appearances." - -"But what's to become of your Barney if we don't keep them up!" Mrs. -Aldesey cried. "Is he to be allowed to see that nobody can stand -her--except people he can't stand? He'll have to live, then, with Mrs. -and Mr. Prentiss. Did you try to talk to Mrs. Prentiss? Do you know that -she told me that death was 'perfectly sublime'?" - -"Perhaps it is. Perhaps she'll find it so. They all seem to think well -of death, out in California"--Oldmeadow allowed himself to relax from -his admonitory severity. "Mrs. Prentiss isn't as silly as she seems, I -expect. And you exaggerate Barney's sensitiveness. He'd get on very well -with Mrs. Prentiss if you weren't there to show him you found her a -bore. He has a very simple side and we must hope it may become simpler. -The only chance for Barney, I see it more and more, is that we should -efface ourselves as much as possible. The people who find the Prentisses -a bore, I mean. And it won't be difficult for us to do that. She will -see to it that we are effaced. Only, of course, it's a grief. I'm so -fond of him"; and as Oldmeadow stretched forth his legs and put his -hands in his pockets there drifted across his mind, in a thin, sharp, -knife-like stroke, the memory of Barney--tall eighteen-year-old -Barney--with dear old Effie, luxuriously upturned in his arms, being -softly scratched--Barney's hand with a cat was that of an expert--and -told that she was the best and most beautiful of cats. - -"It's a great shame," said Mrs. Aldesey; "I've been thinking my spiteful -thoughts, too, instead of sympathizing with you. Of course, if it's any -consolation to you, one usually does lose one's friends when they marry. -But it needn't have been as bad as this. What a thousand pities he -couldn't have fallen in love with a nice girl of his own kind. You -couldn't do anything about it when you went down in the spring?" - -Oldmeadow had never said anything to Mrs. Aldesey about his hopes for -Nancy. He had a secretive instinct for keeping his friendships in -compartments and discussed only those portions that overflowed. -"Nothing," he said. "And the mischief was that I went down hostile, as -you warned me against doing. Barney saw at once that I didn't care for -her; and she saw it at once. He even forced a sort of expression of -opinion from me and I know now that it's always glooming there at the -back of his mind when he sees me. It was quite useless. Once he'd fallen -under her spell it was all up with him. She has her singular power and, -for a man in love with her, her singular charm. Even I, you know, -understand that." - -Mrs. Aldesey contemplated him. "I confess I can't," she said. "She is so -desperately usual. I've seen her everywhere, ever since I can remember. -Attending lectures at the Sorbonne; listening to Wagner at Bayreuth; -having dresses tried on at Worth's; sitting in the halls of a hundred -European hotels. She is the most unescapable form of the American woman; -only not _du peuple_ because of the money and opportunity that has also -extirpated everything racy, provincial and individual." - -"I don't know," said Oldmeadow. He mused, his hands clasped behind his -head. "She's given me all sorts of new insights." His eyes, after his -wont, were on the cornice and his friend's contemplation, relaxed a -little from its alert responsiveness, allowed itself a certain -conjectural softness as she watched him. "I feel," he went on, "since -knowing her, that I understand America, her America, better than you do. -You're engaged in avoiding rather than in understanding it, aren't you? -What you underrate, what Americans of your type don't see--because, as -you say, it's so oppressively usual--is the power of her type. If it is -a type; if she is as ordinary as you say. It's something bred into them -by the American assumption of the fundamental rightness of life; a -confidence unknown before in the history of the world. An individual, -not an institutional or social, confidence. They do, actually, seem to -take their stand on the very universe itself. Whereas the rest of us -have always had churches or classes to uphold us. They have all the -absurdities and crudities of mere individualism. They have all the -illusions of their ignorance. Yet I sometimes imagine, after I've seen -her, that it's a power we haven't in the least taken into our -reckoning. Isn't it the only racial thing that America has produced--the -only thing that makes them a race? It makes them independent of us, when -we've always imagined, in our complacency, that they were dependent. It -enables them to take what we have to give, but to do with it what they, -not we, think best. And by Jove, who knows how far it will carry them! -Not you, my dear Lydia. You'll stay where you are--with us." - -His eyes had come back and down to her, and her gaze resumed its -alertness and showed him that she found the picture he drew disquieting. -"You mean it's a new kind of civilization that will menace ours?" - -"It's not a civilization; that's just what it's not. It's a state of -mind. Perhaps it will menace us. Perhaps it does. We've underrated it; -of that I'm sure; and underrated power is always dangerous. It will be -faith without experience against experience without faith. What we must -try for, if we're not to be worsted, is to have both--to keep experience -and to keep faith, too. Only so shall we be able to hold our own against -Mrs. Barney. And even so we shan't be able to prevent her doing things -to us--and for us. She'll do things for us that we can't do for -ourselves." His mind reverted to the faces of the brougham. "In that way -she's bound to worst us. We'll have to accept things from her." - -Oldmeadow's eyes had gone back to the cornice and, in the silence that -followed, Mrs. Aldesey, as she sat with folded arms, played absently -with the lace ruffle at her wrist. The lace was an heirloom, like her -rings, and the contemplation of them may have afforded her some -sustainment. "She's made you feel all that, then," she remarked. "With -her crook and her hat and her rose-wreathed lamb. If such a sardonic -old lion as you does really grow bodeful before the rose-wreathed lamb -there is, I own, reason to fear for the future. I'm glad I'm growing -old. It would hurt me to see her cutting your claws." - -"Oh, she won't hurt us!" Oldmeadow smiled at her. "It's rather we who -will hurt her--by refusing to lie down with her lamb. If that's any -comfort to you." - -"Not in the least. I'm not being malicious. You don't call it hurt, -then, to be effaced?" - -"Smothered in rose-leaves, eh?" he suggested. "It would be suffocating -rather than suffering. She does give me that feeling. But you'll make -her suffer--you have, you know--rather than she you." - -"I really don't know about that," said Mrs. Aldesey. "You make me quite -uncomfortable, Roger. You make me superstitious. She's done that to me -already. I refuse to take her seriously, but I shall avoid her. That's -what it comes to. Like not giving the new moon a chance to look at you -over your left shoulder." - - - - -CHAPTER XV - - -On a morning in early March Oldmeadow found, among the letters waiting -for him on his breakfast-table, one from Nancy. Nancy and he, with all -their fondness, seldom wrote to each other and he was aware, on seeing -her writing, of the presage of something disagreeable that the -unexpected often brings. - - "Dear Roger," he read, and in his first glance he saw his presage - fulfilled. "We are in great trouble. Aunt Eleanor has asked me to - write because she is too ill and it is to me as well as to her that - Meg has written and she wants you to see Barney at once. Here are - Meg's letters. She has gone away with Captain Hayward. Aunt Eleanor - and Mother think that Barney may be able to persuade Adrienne to - bring her back. No one else, we feel convinced, will have any - influence with her. Do anything, anything you can, dear Roger. - Mother and I are almost frightened for Aunt Eleanor. She walks - about wringing her hands and crying, and she goes up to Meg's room - and opens the door and looks in--as if she could not believe she - would not find her there. It is heart-breaking to see her. We - depend on you, dear Roger. - - "Yours ever - - "NANCY." - - - -"Good Lord!" Oldmeadow muttered while, in lightning flashes, there -passed across his mind the face of John the setter and a Pierrot's face, -white under a low line of black velvet. He took up Meg's letters, -written from a Paris hotel. - - "DARLING MOTHER, I know it will make you frightfully miserable and - I can't forgive myself for that; but it had to be. Eric and I cared - too much and it wasn't life at all, going on as we were apart. Try, - darling Mother, to see it as we do see things nowadays. Adrienne - will explain it all--and you must believe her. You know what a - saint she is and she has been with us in it all, understanding - everything and helping us to be straight. Everything will come - right. Iris Hayward will set Eric free, of course; she doesn't care - one bit for him and has made him frightfully unhappy ever since - they married, and she wants to marry some one else herself--only of - course she'd never be brave enough to do it this way. When Eric is - free, we will marry at once and come home, and, you will see, there - are so many sensible people nowadays; we shall not have a bad time - at all. Everything will come right, I'm sure; and even if it - didn't, in that conventional way--I could not give him up. No one - will ever love me as he does. - - "Your devoted child - - "MEG." - - - -That was the first: the second ran: - - "DEAREST NANCY,--I know you'll think it frightfully wrong; you are - such an old-fashioned little dear and you told me often enough that - I oughtn't to see so much of Eric. Only of course that couldn't - have prepared you for this and I expect Aunt Monica won't let you - come and stay with us for ages. Never mind; when you marry, you'll - see, I'm sure. Love is the _only_ thing, really. But I should hate - to feel I'd lost you and I'm sure I haven't. I want to ask you, - Nancy dear, to do all you can to make Mother _take_ it. I feel, - just because you will think it so wrong, that you may be more good - to her than Adrienne--who doesn't think it wrong at all--at least - not in Mother's way. It would be frightfully unfair if Mother - blamed Adrienne. She did all she could to show us where we stood - and to make us play the game, and it would be pretty hard luck if - people were to be down on her now because we _have_ played it. We - might have been really rotters if it hadn't been for Adrienne; - cheats and hypocrites, I mean; stealing our happiness. I know - Adrienne can bring Barney round. It's only Mother who troubles me, - just because she is such a child that it's almost impossible to - make her see reason. She doesn't recognize right and wrong unless - they're in the boxes she's accustomed to. Everything is in a box - for poor, darling old Mummy. But I mustn't go on. Be the dear old - pal you always have and help me out as well as you can. - - "Your loving - - "MEG." - - - -"Good Lord," Oldmeadow muttered once more. He pushed back his chair and -rose from the table in the bright spring sunlight. He had the feeling, -almost paternal, of disgrace and a public stripping. He saw Eleanor -Chadwick stopping at Meg's door to look in at the forsaken room, -distraught in her grief and incomprehension. He saw Nancy's pale, -troubled face and Monica Averil's, pinched and dry in its sober dismay. -And then again, lighted by a flare at once tawdry and menacing, the -face of Adrienne Toner, the intruder, the insufferable meddler and -destroyer, a Pierrot among fire-works that had, at last, set fire to the -house. He found a taxi on the Embankment and drove to Connaught Square. -Freshly decorated with window-boxes, the pleasant, spacious house had a -specially smiling air of welcome, but the butler's demeanour told him -that something of the calamity had already penetrated. Adrienne, if she -had not heard before, would have had her letters; Barney, who had been -kept in the dark, would have been enlightened, and the irrepressible -exclamations that must have passed between them seemed dimly reflected -on the man's formal countenance. Mrs. Chadwick, he told Oldmeadow, was -breakfasting upstairs with Mr. Chadwick, and he ushered him into -Barney's study. - -Oldmeadow waited for some time among the Post Impressionist pictures, -one of which remained for ever afterwards vividly fixed in his memory of -the moment; a chaotic yet determined picture; featureless yet, as it -were, conveying through its unrecognizable elements the meaning of a -grin. And, as he stood in the centre of the room and looked away from -the derisive canvas, he saw on Barney's desk photographs of Adrienne, -three photographs of her; one as a child, a sickly looking but beaming -child; one in early girlhood, singularly childlike still; and one in her -bridal dress of only the other day, it seemed, mild and radiant in her -unbecoming veil and wreath. - -It was Barney who came to him. Poor Barney. He was more piteously boyish -than ever before to his friend's eye; so beautifully arrayed, all in -readiness for a happy London day with his angel, so pale, so haggard -and perplexed. "Look here, Roger," were his first words, "do you mind -coming upstairs to Adrienne's room? She's not dressed yet; not very -well, you know. You've heard, then, too?" - -"I've just heard from Nancy. Why upstairs? I'd rather not. We'd better -talk this over alone, Barney. All the more if your wife isn't well." - -"Yes; yes; I know. I told her it would be better. But she insists." - -The effect of a general misery Barney gave was heightened now by his -unhappy flush. "She doesn't want us to talk it over without her, you -see. She comes into it all too much. From Nancy, did you say? What's -Nancy got to do with this odious affair?" - -"Only what Meg has put upon her--to interpret her as kindly as she can -to your mother. Here are the letters. I'd really rather not go -upstairs." - -"I know you'll hold Adrienne responsible--partly at least. She expects -that. She knows that I do, too; she's quite prepared. I only heard half -an hour ago and of course it knocked me up frightfully. Meg! My little -sister! Why she's hardly more than a child!" - -"I'm afraid she's a good deal more than a child. I'm afraid we can't -hold Meg to be not responsible, though, obviously, she'd never have -taken such a step unaided and unabetted. Just read these letters, -Barney; it won't take a moment to decide what's best to be done. I'll go -down to your mother and you must be off, at once, to Paris, and see if -you can fetch Meg back." - -But after Barney, with a hesitating hand and an uncertain glance, had -taken the letters and begun to read them, the door was opened with -decorous deliberation and Adrienne's French maid appeared, the tall, -sallow, capable-looking woman whom Oldmeadow remembered having seen at -Coldbrooks a year ago. - -"Madame requests that _ces Messieurs_ should come up at once; she awaits -them," Joséphine announced in unemphatic but curiously potent accents. -Adrienne's potency, indeed, was of a sort that flowed through all her -agents and Oldmeadow thought that he detected, in the melancholy gaze -bent upon Barney, reprobation for his failure to attain the standard set -for him by a devotion wholehearted and reverential. Mrs. Chadwick, he -remembered, had said that Adrienne's maid adored her. - -"Yes, yes. We're coming at once, Joséphine," said Barney. Reading the -letters as he went, he moved to the door and Oldmeadow found himself, -perforce, following. - -He had not yet visited the morning-room and even before his eyes rested -on Adrienne they saw, hanging above her head where she sat on a little -sofa, a full-length portrait of Mrs. Toner; in white, standing against a -stone balustrade and holding lilies; seagulls above her and a background -of blue sea. - -Adrienne was also in white, but she wore over her long, loose dress a -little jacket of pink silk edged with swan's down and the lace cap -falling about her neck was rosetted with pink ribbon. It was curious to -see her in this almost frivolous array, recalling the shepherdess, when -her face expressed, for the first time in his experience of her, an -anger and an agitation all the more apparent for its control. She was -pale yet flushed, odd streaks of colour running up from her throat and -dying in the pallor of her cheeks. Her condition had evidently much -affected her complexion and her nose, through its layer of powder, -showed a pinched and reddened tint. It made Oldmeadow uncomfortable to -look at her; her mask of calm was held at such a cost; she was at once -so determinedly herself and so helplessly altered; and it was not with -an automatic courtesy only that he went up to her and held out his hand. -An impulse of irrelevant yet irrepressible pity stirred him. - -She had fixed her eyes on him as he entered, but now looking at her -husband and not moving, she said: "I do not think you want to take my -hand, Mr. Oldmeadow. You will think me a criminal too, as Barney does." - -"Darling! Don't talk such nonsense!" Barney cried. "I haven't blamed -you, not by a word. I know you've done what you think right. Look, -darling; Roger has had these letters. Just read them. You see what Meg -writes--there--to Nancy--about your having done all you could to keep -them straight. You haven't been fair to yourself in talking to me just -now." - -Adrienne, without speaking, took the letters and Oldmeadow moved away to -the window and stood looking down at the little garden at the back of -the house where a tall almond-tree delicately and vividly bloomed -against the pale spring sky. He heard behind him the flicker of the fire -in the grate, the pacing of Barney's footsteps as he walked up and -down, and the even turning of the pages in Adrienne's hands. Then he -heard her say: "Meg contradicts nothing that I have said to you, Barney. -She writes bravely and truly; as I knew that she would write." - -Barney stopped in his pacing. "But darling; what she says about -straightness?" It was feeble of Barney and he must know it. Feeble of -him even to think that Adrienne might wish to avail herself of the -loophole or that she considered herself in any need of a shield. - -"You can't misunderstand so much as that, Barney," she said. "Meg and I -mean but one thing by straightness; and that is truth. That was the way -I tried to help them; it is the only way in which I can ever help -people. I showed them the truth and kept it before their eyes when they -were in danger of forgetting it. I said to them that if they were to be -worthy of their love they must be brave enough to make sacrifices for -it. I did not hide from them that there would be sacrifices--if that is -what you mean." - -"It's not what I mean, darling! Of course it's not!" broke from poor -Barney almost in a wail. "Didn't you try at all to dissuade them? Didn't -you show them that it was desperate, and ruinous, and wrong? Didn't you -tell Meg that it would break Mother's heart!" - -The blue ribbon was again unrolled and Oldmeadow, listening with rising -exasperation, heard that the sound of her own solemn cadences sustained -her. "I don't think anything in life is desperate or ruinous or wrong, -Barney, except turning away from one's own light. Meg met a reality and -was brave enough to face it. I regret, deeply, that it came to her -tragically, not happily; but happiness can grow from tragedy if we are -brave and true and Meg is brave and true in her love. It won't break -your mother's heart. Hers is a small, but not such a feeble, heart as -that. I believe that the experience may strengthen and ennoble her. She -has led too sheltered a life." - -Oldmeadow at this turned from the window and met Barney's miserable -eyes. "There's really no reason for my staying on, Barney," he said, and -his voice as well as his look excluded Adrienne from their interchange. -"I'll take the 1.45 to Coldbrooks. What shall I tell your mother? That -you've gone to Paris this morning?" - -"Yes, that I've gone to Paris. That I'll do my best, you know. That I -hope to bring Meg back. Tell her to keep up her courage. It'll only be a -day or two after all, and we may be able to hush it up." - -"Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne in a grave, commanding tone. It was -impossible before it to march out of the room and shut the door, though -that was what his forcibly arrested attitude showed that he wished to -do. "You as well as Barney must hear my protest," said Adrienne, and she -fixed her sombre eyes upon him. "Meg is with the man she loves. In the -eyes of heaven he is her husband. It would be real as contrasted with -conventional disgrace were she to leave him now. She will not leave him. -I know her better than you do. I ask you"--her gaze now turned on -Barney--"I desire you, not to go to her on such an unworthy errand." - -"But, Adrienne," Barney, flushed and hesitating, pleaded, "it's for -Mother's sake. Mother's too old to be enlarged like that--that's really -nonsense, you know, darling. You see what Nancy says. They are -frightened about her. It's not only convention. It's a terrible mistake -Meg's made and she may be feeling it now and only too glad to have the -way made easy for her to come back. I promise you to be as gentle as -possible. I won't reproach her in any way. I'll tell her that we're all -only waiting to forgive her and take her back." - -"Forgive her, Barney? For what? It is only in the eyes of the world that -she has done wrong and I have lifted her above that fear. Convention -does not weigh for a moment with me beside the realities of the human -heart; nor would it with you, Barney, if it were not for the influence -of Mr. Oldmeadow. I have warned you before; it is easy to be -worldly-wise and cynical and to keep to the broad road; it is easy to be -safe. But withering lies that way: withering and imprisonment, and--" - -"Come, come, Mrs. Barney," Oldmeadow interposed, addressing her for the -first time and acidly laughing. "Really we haven't time for sermons. You -oughtn't to have obliged me to come up if you wanted to influence Barney -all by yourself. He sees quite clearly for himself the rights and the -wrongs of this affair, as it happens. If I were to preach for a moment -in my turn I might ask you how it was that you didn't see that it was -your duty to tell Meg's mother and brother how things were going and let -them judge. You're not as wise as you imagine--far from it. Some things -you can't judge at all. Meg and Hayward aren't people of enough -importance to have a right to break laws; that's all that it comes to; -there's nothing to be gained by their breaking laws; not only for other -people, but for themselves. They're neither of them capable of being -happy in the ambiguous sort of life they'd have to lead. There's a -reality you didn't see at all in your haste to flout convention. Barney -could have dealt with Hayward, and Meg could have been packed off to the -country and kept there till she'd learned to think a little more about -other people's hearts and a little less about her own. What business had -you, after all, to have secrets from your husband and to plot with the -two young fools behind his back? Isn't Meg his sister rather than -yours?" His bitterness betrayed him and conscious hostility rose in him, -answering the menace that measured him in her eyes. "What business had -you, a new-comer among us, to think yourself capable of managing all -their lives and to set yourself up above them all in wisdom? You take -too much upon yourself"; his lips found the old phrase: "Really you do. -It's been your mistake from the beginning." - -He could not have believed that a face so framed for gentleness could -show itself at once so calm and so convulsed. He knew that something had -happened to her that had never happened to her before in her life. She -kept her eyes steadily on him and he wondered if she were not reciting -some incantation, some exorcism, derived from the seagulled lady above -her: Power in Repose--Power in Love--Power in Light. Her mouth and eyes -and nostrils were dark on her pallor and he felt that she held back all -the natural currents of her being in order to face and quell him with -the supernatural. - -"Never mind all that, Roger," Barney was sickly murmuring. "I don't -feel like that. I know Adrienne didn't for a moment mean to deceive me." - -"We will mind it, Barney," said Adrienne, breathing with difficulty. "I -had, Mr. Oldmeadow, the business, first, of loyalty to another human -soul who, in the crisis of its destiny, confided in me. I have been -nearer Meg than any of you have guessed, from my first meeting with her. -You were all blind. I saw at once that she was tossed and tormented. I -am nearer, far nearer her, than her brother and mother. In them she -would never have dreamed of confiding and she came to me because she -felt that in me she would find reality and in them mere formulas. I do -not look upon women as chattels to be handed about by their male -relatives and locked up if they do not love according to rule and -precedent. I look upon them as the equals of men in every respect, as -free as men to shape their lives and to direct their destinies. You -speak a mediæval language, Mr. Oldmeadow. The world, our great, modern, -deep-hearted world, has outstripped you." - -"Darling," Barney forestalled, breathlessly, as she paused, any reply -that Oldmeadow might have been tempted to make, "don't mind if Roger -speaks harshly. He's like that and no one cares for us more. He doesn't -mean conventionality at all, or anything mediæval. You don't understand -him. He puts his finger on the spot about Meg and Hayward. It's exactly -as he says; they're not of enough importance to have a right to break -laws. If you could have confided in me, it would have been better; you -must own that. We'd have given Meg a chance to pull herself together. -We'd have sent Hayward about his business. It's a question, as Roger -says, of your wisdom; of your knowledge of the world. You didn't -understand them. They're neither of them idealists like you. They can't -be happy doing what you might be big enough to do. Just because they're -not big. Try to take it in, darling. And we really needn't go on talking -about it any longer, need we? It isn't a question of influence. All we -have to decide on is what's to be done. Roger must go to Mother and tell -her I'm starting this morning to try and fetch Meg back. Imagine Mother -with a divorce case on! It would kill her, simply. That's all. Isn't it, -Roger?" - -"Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, again. She rose as she spoke. As -he saw her stand before them, her approaching maternity dominated for a -moment all his impressions of her. Veiled and masked adroitly as it was, -its very uncouthness curiously became her. Her head, for once, looked -small. Like an archaic statue, straight and short and thick, her altered -form had dignity and amplitude and her face, heavy with its menace, hard -with its control, might have been that of some austere and threatening -priestess of fruitfulness. - -"Barney, wait," she said. Her arms hung straight beside her, but she -slightly lifted a hand as she spoke and Oldmeadow noted that it was -tightly clenched. "It is I, not your friend, whom you must question as -to what it is right that you should do. I do not consent to his reading -of my unwisdom and unworthiness. I ask you not to consent to it. I ask -you again not to go. I ask you again to respect my judgment rather than -his." - -"Darling," the unfortunate husband supplicated; "it's not because it's -Roger's judgment. You know it's what I felt right myself--from the -moment you told me what had happened. You say people must follow their -own light. It _is_ my light. I must do what Mother asks and try to bring -Meg back." - -"It is not your light, Barney. It is craft and caution and fear. More -than that, do you not see, must I make plain to you what it is you do to -me in going? You insult me. You treat what I have believed right for Meg -to do as a crime from which she must be rescued. You drag me in the dust -with her. Understand me, Barney"--the streaks of colour deepened on her -neck, her breath came thickly--"if you go, you drag me in the dust." - -"How can it drag you in the dust, Mrs. Barney, if Meg wants to come -back?" Oldmeadow interposed in the tone of a caustic doctor addressing a -malingering patient. "We're not talking of crimes; only of follies. -Come; be reasonable. Don't make it so painful for Barney to do what's -his plain duty. You're not a child. You have, I hope, courage enough and -humour enough to own that you can make mistakes--like other people." - -"Yes, yes, Adrienne, that's just it," broke painfully from Barney, and, -as he seized the clue thus presented to him, Adrienne turned her head -slowly, with an ominous stillness, and again rested her eyes upon him. -"It's childish, you know, darling. It's not like you. And of course I -understand why; and Roger does. You're not yourself; you're -over-strained and off-balance and I'm so frightfully sorry all this has -fallen upon you at such a time. I don't want to oppose you in anything, -darling--do try to believe me. Only you must give me the credit for my -own convictions. I do feel I must go. I do feel Roger must take that -message to Mother. After all, darling," and now in no need of helping -clues he found his own and the irrepressible note of grief vibrated in -his voice, "you do owe me something, don't you? You do owe us all -something--to make up, I mean. Because, without you, Meg would never -have behaved like this and disgraced us all. Oh--I don't mean to -reproach you!" - -"Good-bye then, I'm off," said Oldmeadow. "I'm very sorry you made me -come up. Good-bye, Mrs. Barney." She had not spoken, nor moved, nor -turned her eyes from Barney's face. - -"Good-bye. Thanks so much, Roger." Barney followed him, with a quickness -to match his own, to the door. But Adrienne, this time, did not call him -back. She remained standing stock-still in front of her sofa. - -"Tell Mother I'm off," said Barney, grasping his hand. "Tell her she'll -hear at once, as soon as I know anything. Thanks so awfully," he -repeated. "You've been a great help." - -It was unfortunate, perhaps, that Barney should say that, Oldmeadow -reflected as he sped down the stairs. "But she's met reality at last," -he muttered, wondering how she and Barney faced each other above and -hearing again the words that must echo so strangely in her ears: -"Disgraced us all." And, mingled with his grim satisfaction, was, again, -the sense of irrelevant and reluctant pity. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - - -It was Saturday and he had to wire to Mrs. Aldesey that he could not go -with her next day to the Queen's Hall concert they had planned to hear -together. - -Nancy was waiting for him at the station in her own little pony-cart and -as he got in she said: "Is Barney gone?" - -"Yes; he'll have gone by now," said Oldmeadow and, as he said it, he -felt a sudden sense of relief and clarity. The essential thing, he saw -it as he answered Nancy's question, was that he should be able to say -that Barney had gone. And he knew that if he hadn't been there to back -him up, he wouldn't have gone. So that was all right, wasn't it? - -As he had sped past the sun-swept country the reluctant pity had -struggled in him, striving, unsuccessfully, to free itself from the -implications of that horrid word: "Disgraced." It was Adrienne who had -disgraced them; that was what Barney's phrase had really meant, though -he hadn't intended it to mean it. She, the stranger, the new-comer, had -disgraced them. And it was true. Yet he wished Barney hadn't stumbled on -the phrase--just because she was a stranger and a new-comer. And Barney -would never have found it had he not been there. But now came the sense -of relief. If he hadn't been there, Barney wouldn't have gone. - -"Aunt Eleanor is longing to see you," said Nancy. "Her one hope, you -know, is that he may bring Meg back." Nancy's eyes had a strained look, -as though she had lain awake all night. - -"You think she may come back?" - -He felt, himself, unable to form any conjectures as to what Meg was -likely to do. What she had done was so strangely unlike her. - -"Not if it means leaving Captain Hayward for good," said Nancy. "But -Aunt Eleanor and Mother both think that she may be willing to come till -they can marry." - -"That's better than nothing, isn't it," said Oldmeadow, and Nancy then -surprised him by saying, as she looked round at him: "I don't want her -to come back." - -"Don't want her to come back? But you wanted Barney to go?" - -"Yes. He had to go. Just so that everything might be done. So that it -might be put before her. And to satisfy Aunt Eleanor. But, don't you -see, Roger, it would really make it far more difficult for Aunt Eleanor -to have her here. What would she do with her?--since she won't give up -Captain Hayward? She can love Meg and grieve and yearn over her now. But -if she were here she couldn't. It would be all grief and bitterness." - -Nancy had evidently been thinking to some purpose during her sleepless -night and he owned that her conclusion was the sound one. What -disconcerted him was her assurance that Meg would not leave her lover. -After Adrienne, Nancy was likely to have the most authentic impressions -of Meg's attitude; and, as they drove towards Chelford, he was further -disconcerted by hearing her murmur, half to herself: "It would be silly -to leave him now, wouldn't it." - -"Not if she's sorry and frightened at what she's done," he protested. -"After all the man's got a wife who may be glad to have him back." - -But Nancy said: "I don't think she would. I think she'll be glad not to -have him back. Meg may be frightened; but I don't believe she'll be -sorry; yet." - -He meditated, somewhat gloomily, as they drove, on the unexpectedness of -the younger generation. He had never thought of Nancy as belonging, in -any but the chronological sense, to that category; yet here she was, -accepting, if not condoning, the rebellion against law and morality. - -Mrs. Averil had driven down to the Little House where she was to be -picked up and, as they turned the corner to the Green, they saw her -waiting at the gate, her furs turned up around her ears, her neat little -face pinched and dry, as he had known that he would find it, and showing -a secure if controlled indignation, rather than Nancy's sad perplexity. - -"Well, Roger, you find us in a pleasant predicament," she observed as -Oldmeadow settled the rug around her knees. "Somehow one never thinks of -things like this happening in one's own family. Village girls misbehave -and people in the next county run away sometimes with other people's -wives; but one never expects such adventures to come walking in to one's -own breakfast-table." - -"Disagreeable things do have a way of happening at breakfast-time, don't -they," Oldmeadow assented. The comfort of Mrs. Averil was that even on -her death-bed she would treat her own funeral lightly: "I wonder it -remains such a comfortable meal, all the same." - -"I suppose you've had lunch on the train," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you -believe it? Poor Eleanor was worrying about that this morning. She's -got some coffee and sandwiches waiting for you, in case you haven't. I'm -so thankful you've come. It will help her. Poor dear. She's begun to -think of all the other things now. Of what people will say and how they -will hear. Lady Cockerell is very much on her mind. You know what a -meddlesome gossip she is, and only the other day Eleanor snubbed her -when she was criticizing Barbara's new school. The thought of her is -disturbing her dreadfully now." - -"I suppose these leech-bites do help to alleviate the pain of the real -wound," said Oldmeadow. - -"Not in the least. They envenom it," Mrs. Averil replied. "I'd like to -strangle Lady Cockerell myself before the news reaches her." - -Nancy drove on, her eyes fixed on the pony's ears. "I don't believe -people will talk nearly as much as you and Aunt Eleanor imagine," she -now remarked. "I've told her so; and so must you, Mother." - -"You are admirable with her, Nancy. Far better than I am. I sit grimly -swallowing my curses, or wringing my hands. Neither wringing nor cursing -is much good, I suppose." - -"Not a bit of good. It's better she should think of what people say than -of Meg; but when it comes to agonizing over them I believe the truth is -that people nowadays _do_ get over it; far more than they used to; -especially if Aunt Eleanor can show them that _she_ gets over it." - -"But she can't get over it, my dear child!" said Mrs. Averil, gazing at -her daughter in a certain alarm. "How can one get over disgrace like -that or lift one's head again--unless one is an Adrienne Toner! Oh, when -I think of that woman and of what she's done! For she is responsible -for it all! Every bit of it. Meg was a good girl, at heart; always. In -spite of that silly liquid powder. And so I tell Eleanor. Adrienne is -responsible for it all." - -"I don't, Mother; that's not my line at all," said Nancy. "I tell her -that what Meg says is true." Nancy touched the pony with the whip. "If -it hadn't been for Adrienne she might have done much worse." - -"Really, my dear!" Mrs. Averil murmured. - -"Come, Nancy," Oldmeadow protested; "that was a retrospective threat of -Meg's. Without Adrienne she'd never have considered such an -adventure--or its worse alternative. Encourage your aunt to curse -Adrienne. Your Mother's instinct is sound there." - -But Nancy shook her head. "I don't know, Roger," she said. "Perhaps Meg -would have considered the alternative. Girls do consider all sorts of -things nowadays that Mother and Aunt Eleanor, in their girlhood, would -have thought simply wicked. They _are_ wicked; but not simply. That's -the difference between now and then. And don't you think that it's -better for Meg and Captain Hayward to go away so that they can be -married than to be, as she says, really rotters; than to be, as she -says, cheats and hypocrites and steal their happiness?" - -"My dear child!" Mrs. Averil again murmured, while Oldmeadow, finding -it, after all, a comfort to have a grown-up Nancy to discuss it with, -said, "My contention is that, left to herself, Meg would have thought -them both wicked." - -"Perhaps," Nancy said again; "but even old-fashioned girls did things -they knew to be wicked sometimes. The difference Adrienne has made is -that Meg doesn't think herself wicked at all. She thinks herself rather -noble. And that's what I mean about Aunt Eleanor. It will comfort her if -she can feel a little as Adrienne feels--that Meg isn't one bit the -worse, morally, for what she's done." - -"Are you trying to persuade us that Meg isn't guilty, my dear?" Mrs. -Averil inquired dryly. "Are you trying to persuade us that Adrienne has -done us all a service? You surely can't deny that she's behaved -atrociously, and first and foremost, to Barney. Barney could have known -nothing about it, and can you conceive a woman keeping such a thing from -her husband?" - -But Nancy was feeling the pressure of her own realizations and was not -to be scolded out of them. "If Meg is guilty, and doesn't know it, she -will suffer dreadfully when she finds out, won't she? It all depends on -whether she has deceived herself or not, doesn't it? I'm not justifying -her or Adrienne, Mother; only trying to see the truth about them. How -could Adrienne tell Barney when it was Meg's secret? We may feel it -wrong; but she thought she was justified." The colour rose in Nancy's -cheek as she named Barney, but she kept her tired eyes on her mother and -added, "I don't believe it was easy for her to keep it from him." - -"My dear, anything is easy for her that flatters her self-importance!" -cried Mrs. Averil impatiently. "I'll own, if you like, that she's more -fool than knave--as Meg may be; though Meg never struck me as a fool. -Things haven't changed so much since my young days as all that; it's -mainly a matter of names. If girls who behave like Meg find it -pleasanter to be called fools than knaves, they are welcome to the -alternative. Noble they never were nor will be, whatever the fashion." - -Oldmeadow did not want the sandwiches, so, as soon as they reached -Coldbrooks, he was led upstairs to Mrs. Chadwick's room. He found his -poor friend lying on the sofa, the blinds drawn down and a wet -handkerchief on her forehead. She burst out crying as he entered. -Oldmeadow sat down beside her and took her hand and, as he listened to -her sobs, felt that he need not trouble to pity Adrienne. - -"What I cannot, cannot understand, Roger," she was at last able to say, -and he realized that it was of Adrienne, not Meg, that she was speaking, -"is how she can bear to treat us so. We all loved and trusted her. You -know how I loved her, Roger. I felt Meg as safe in her hands as in my -own. Oh, that wicked, wicked man! I hardly know him by sight. That makes -it all so much more dreadful. All I do know is that his wife is a -daughter of poor Evelyn Madderley, who broke her back out hunting." - -"I don't believe there's much harm in him, you know," Oldmeadow -suggested. "And I believe that he is sincerely devoted to Meg." - -"Harm, Roger!" poor Mrs. Chadwick wailed, "when he is a married man and -Meg only a girl! Oh, if there is harm in anything there is in that! -Running away with a girl and ruining her life! Barney will make him feel -what he has done. Barney _has_ gone?" - -"Yes, he's gone, and I am sure we can rely on him to speak his mind to -Hayward." - -"And don't you think he may bring Meg back, Roger? Nancy says I must not -set my mind on it; but don't you think she may be repenting already? My -poor little Meg! She was hot-tempered and could speak very crossly if -she was thwarted; but I think of her incessantly as she was when she was -a tiny child. Self-willed; but so sweet and coaxing in her ways, with -beautiful golden hair and those dark eyes. I always thought of Meg, with -her beauty, as sure to marry happily; near us, I hoped"--Mrs. Chadwick -began to sob again. "And now!--Will he find them in Paris? Will they not -have moved on?" - -"In any case he'll be able to follow them up. I don't imagine they'll -think of hiding." - -"No; I'm afraid they won't. That is the worst of it! They won't hide and -every one will come to know and then what good will there be in her -coming back! If only I'd had her presented last year, Roger! She can -never go to court now," Mrs. Chadwick wept, none the less piteously for -her triviality. "To think that Francis's daughter cannot go to court! -She would have looked so beautiful, with my pearls and the feathers. The -feathers are becoming to so few girls. Nancy could not wear them nearly -so well. Nancy can go and my daughter can't!" - -"I don't think the lack of feathers will weigh seriously upon Meg's -future, my dear friend." - -"Oh, but it's what they stand for, Roger, that will weigh!" Mrs. -Chadwick, even in her grief, retained her shrewdness. "It's easy to -laugh at the feathers, but you might really as well laugh at -wedding-rings! To think that Francis's daughter is travelling about with -a man and without a wedding-ring! Or do you suppose they'll have thought -of it and bought one? It would be a lie, of course; but don't you think -that a lie would be justifiable under the circumstances?" - -"I don't think it really makes any difference, until they can come home -and be married." - -"I suppose she must marry him now--if they won't hide--and will be proud -of what they've done; she seems quite proud of it!--everyone will hear, -so that they will have to marry. Oh--I don't know what to hope or what -to fear! How can you expect me to have tea, Nancy!" she wept, as Nancy -entered carrying the little tray. "It's so good of you, my dear, but how -can I eat?--I can hardly face the servants, Roger. They will all hear. -And Meg was always such a pet of Johnson's; his favourite of all my -children. He used to give her very rich, unwholesome things in the -pantry and once, when her father punished her for disobeying him and put -her in the corner, in the drawing-room, one day, after lunch, Johnson -nearly dropped the coffee, when he came in. It upset him dreadfully and -he would hardly speak to Francis for a week afterwards. I know he will -think it all our fault, when he hears, now. And so it is, for having -trusted to a stranger. I can't drink tea, Nancy." - -"Yes, you can, for Meg's sake, Aunt Eleanor, and eat some tea-cake, -too," said Nancy. "If you aren't brave for her, who will be. And you -can't be brave unless you eat. I remember so well, when I was little, -Uncle Francis saying that when it came to the pinch you were the bravest -woman he knew. You'll see, darling; it will all come out better than you -fear. Johnson and all of us will help you to make it come out better." - -"She is such a comfort to me, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick with a summoned -smile. "Somehow, when I see her, I feel that things _will_ come out -better. _You_ will have to go to court, dear, next spring. We can't -have none of our girls going. And you shall wear my pearls." Mrs. -Chadwick's tears fell, but she took up the tea-cup. - -Nancy more and more was striking Oldmeadow as the wisest person in the -house. He walked with her on the terrace after tea; it was an old custom -of his and Nancy's to step outside then, whatever the weather, and have -a few turns. This was a clear, chill evening and Nancy had wrapped a -woollen scarf closely round her neck and shoulders. Her chin was sunken -in its folds as she held it together on her breast, and with her dropped -profile, her sad, meditative eyes, it was as if she saw a clue and, far -more clearly than he did, knew where they all stood. - -"Adrienne was bitterly opposed to Barney's going," he said. "She seemed -unable to grasp the fact that she herself had been in error." - -Nancy turned her eyes on him. "Did Barney tell you she was bitterly -opposed?" - -"He didn't tell me. I was with them. It was most unfortunate. She -insisted on my coming up." - -"Oh, dear," said Nancy. She even stopped for a moment to face him with -her dismay. "Yes, I see," she then said, walking on, "she would." - -"Why would she? Unless she was sure of getting her own way? The only -point in having me up was to show me that she could always get her own -way with Barney." - -"Of course. And to make it quite clear to herself, too. She's not afraid -of you, Roger. She's not afraid of anything but Barney." - -"I don't think she had any reason to be afraid of him this morning. He -was badly upset, of course. But if I hadn't gone up, I imagine she'd -have kept him from going. And you own that that would have been a pity, -don't you?" - -"Yes. Oh, yes. He had to go," said Nancy, absently. And she added. "Were -you very rough and scornful?" - -"Rough and scornful? I don't think so. I think I kept my temper very -well, considering all things. I showed her pretty clearly, I suppose, -that I considered her a meddling ass. I don't suppose she'll forgive me -easily for that." - -"Well, you can't wonder at it, can you?" said Nancy. "Especially if she -suspects that you made Barney consider her one, too." - -"But it's necessary, isn't it, that she should be made to suspect it -herself? I don't wonder at her not forgiving me for showing her up -before Barney, and upholding him against her, but I do wonder that one -can never make her see she's wrong. It's that that's so really monstrous -about her." - -"Do you think that anyone can ever make us see we are wrong unless they -love us?" Nancy asked. - -"Well, Barney loves her," said Oldmeadow after a moment. - -"Yes; but he's afraid of her, too, isn't he? He'd never have quite the -courage to try and make her see, would he?--off his own bat I mean. He'd -never really have quite the courage to see, himself, how wrong she was, -unless he were angry. And to have anyone who is angry with you trying to -make you see, only pushes you further and further back into yourself, -doesn't it, and away from seeing?" - -"You've grown very wise in the secrets of the human heart, my dear," -Oldmeadow observed. "It's true. He hasn't courage with her--unless some -one is there to give it to him. But, you know, I don't think she'd -forgive him if he had. I don't think she'd forgive anyone who made her -see." - -"I don't know," Nancy pondered. "I don't love her, yet I feel as if I -understood her; better, perhaps, than you do. I think she's good, you -know. I mean, I think she might be good, if she could ever see." - -"She's too stupid ever, really, to see," said Oldmeadow, and it was with -impatience. "She's encased in self-love like a rhinoceros in its hide. -One can't penetrate anywhere. You say she's afraid of Barney and I can't -imagine what you mean by that. It's true, when I'm by, she's afraid of -losing his admiration. But that's not being afraid of him." - -Nancy still pondered; but not, now, in any perplexity. "She's afraid -because she cares so much. She's afraid because she _can_ care so much. -It's difficult to explain; but I feel as if I understood her. She's -never cared so much before for just one other person. It's always been -for people altogether; and because she was doing something for them. But -Barney does something for her. He makes her happy. Perhaps she never -knew before what it was to be really happy. You know, she didn't give me -the feeling of a really happy person. It's something quite, quite new -for her. It makes her feel uncertain of herself and almost bewildered -sometimes. Oh, I'm sure of it the more I think of it. And you know, -sometimes," Nancy turned her deep, sweet eyes on him, "I feel very sorry -for her, Roger. I can't help it; although I don't love her at all." - -Yes. It must be true. Though he had seen Adrienne's vanity rather than -her love. Nancy and Meg were united in their assurance and that must be, -he saw, because they both, in their so different ways, knew what it was -to care; to care so much that you were frightened. It was strange that -the pang of pity that came with his new perception should be for -Adrienne rather than for his dear little Nancy herself. Nancy had -suffered, he knew, and her life was perhaps permanently scarred; yet, -clear-eyed and unduped, he saw her as mistress of the very fate that had -maimed her. Whereas Adrienne was blindfolded; a creature swayed and -surrounded by forces of which she was unaware. - -Nancy had deepened his sense of perplexity, his sense of taking refuge -from something, and what it was came fully upon him that night when he -was at last alone. Meg and her misdemeanour sank into a mere background -for the image of the cold, convulsed face that he had seen that morning. -Almost angrily he felt himself pushing it back, pushing it down, as if -he pushed it down to drown, and again and again it re-emerged to look at -him. - -He fell asleep at last; but as, a year ago, on the first night of his -meeting with her, he had dreamed of her, so to-night he dreamed again. - -He did not see her, but she was in some dreadful plight and the sense of -her panic and bewilderment broke upon him in shocks of suffering. He -could not see her, but he was aware of her, horribly aware. All remained -a broken, baffled confusion, but it was as though, unable to shape and -assert itself, he yet felt her very being wrestling with extinction. - -The sharpness had gone out of the sunlight next day and Mrs. Chadwick -consented to come and sit with them in the warmest corner of the garden, -the corner where, a year ago, Oldmeadow remembered, Meg had sat with him -and explained to him the secret of Adrienne's power. Pitifully, with -swollen eyes and trembling fingers, Mrs. Chadwick resumed her -interrupted stocking while Oldmeadow read aloud from a Sunday paper the -leading article on the critical situation in Ireland. "I suppose every -one in London will be talking about Ulster and Sir Edward Carson, won't -they?" said Mrs. Chadwick, and it was evident that she derived a dim -comfort from the thought. The situation in Ireland, Oldmeadow reflected, -had, at all events, been of so much service. - -Upon this quiet scene there broke suddenly the sound of a motor's horn -and a motor's wheels turned into the front entrance. - -Mrs. Chadwick dropped her stocking and laid her hand on Nancy's arm. -"Dear Aunt Eleanor--you know he couldn't possibly be back yet," said -Nancy. "And if it's anyone to call, Johnson knows you're not at home." - -"Lady Cockerell is capable of anything. She might sit down in the hall -and wait. She must have heard by now," poor Mrs. Chadwick murmured. -"That married girl of hers in London must have written. With the -projecting teeth." - -"I'll soon get rid of her, if it's really she," said Mrs. Averil; but -she had hardly risen when the door at the back of the house opened and -they saw Johnson usher forth a hurrying female figure, obviously not -Lady Cockerell's; a figure so encumbered by its motoring wraps, so -swathed in veils, that only Mrs. Chadwick's ejaculation enlightened -Oldmeadow as to its identity. - -"Joséphine!" cried Mrs. Chadwick and then, between the narrow framing of -purple gauze, he recognized the dramatic, melancholy eyes and pale, -pinched lips of Adrienne's maid. - -"Oh, Madame! Madame!" Joséphine was exclaiming as she came towards them -down the path. Her face wore the terrible intensity of expression so -alien to the British countenance. "Oh, Madame! Madame!" she repeated. -They had all risen and stood to await her. "He is dead! The little child -is dead! And she is alone. Monsieur left her yesterday. Quite, quite -alone, and her child born dead." - -Mrs. Chadwick faced her in pallid stupefaction. - -"The baby, Aunt Eleanor," said Nancy, for she looked indeed as if she -had not understood. "Barney's baby. It has been born and it is dead. -Oh--poor Barney. And poor, poor Adrienne." - -"Yes, dead!" Joséphine, regardless of all but her exhaustion and her -grief, dropped down into one of the garden-chairs and put her hands -before her face. "Born dead last night. A beautiful little boy. The -doctors could not save it and fear for her life. They will not let me -stay with her. Only the doctors and the nurses--strangers--are with -her." Joséphine was sobbing. "Ah, it was not right to leave her so. -Already she was ill. It could be seen that already she was very ill when -Monsieur left her. I came to her when he was gone. She did not say a -word to me. She tried to smile. _Mais j'ai bien vu qu'elle avait la mort -dans l'âme._" - -"Good heavens," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, while Joséphine, now, let her -tears flow unchecked. "She is alone and Barney has left her! Oh, this -is terrible! At such a time!" - -"He had to go, Aunt Eleanor. You know he had to go. We will send for him -at once," said Nancy, and Joséphine, catching the words, sobbed on in -her woe and her resentment: "But where to send for him? No one knows -where to send. The doctors sent a wire yesterday, at once, when she was -taken ill; to the Paris hotel. But no answer came. He must have left -Paris. That is why I have come. No telegrams for Sunday. No trains in -time. I took the car. The doctor said, Yes, it was well that I should -come. Some one who cares for Madame should return with me. If she is to -die she must not die alone." - -"But she shall not die!" cried Mrs. Chadwick with sudden and surprising -energy. "Oh, the poor baby! It might have lived had I been there. No -doctor, no nurse, can understand like a mother. And I shall be able to -help with Adrienne. I must go. I must go at once. Mademoiselle will see -that you have something to eat and drink, my poor Joséphine, and then -you and I will return together. It will not take me a moment to get -ready." - -"It will be the best thing for them all," Oldmeadow murmured to Mrs. -Averil, as, taking Joséphine's arm, Mrs. Chadwick hurried her along the -path. "And I'll go with them." - -A little later, while Mrs. Chadwick made ready above and Joséphine, in -the hall, ate the meal that Johnson had brought for her, Oldmeadow and -Nancy stood outside near the empty waiting car. - -"I'll wire to you at once, of course, how she is," he said. Adrienne had -put Meg out of all their thoughts. "But it's rather grotesque," he -added, "if poor Barney is to be blamed." - -Nancy stood and looked before her, wrapped, as she had been the day -before, in her woollen scarf. "Roger," she said after a moment, "no one -can be blamed; yet, if she dies, I shall feel that we have killed her." - -"Killed her! What nonsense, my dear! What do you mean?" He spoke angrily -because something in his heart, shaken by his dream, echoed her. The -dreaming had now revealed itself as definitely uncanny. What had he to -do with Adrienne Toner that his sub-consciousness should be aware of her -extremity? - -"I can't explain," said Nancy. "We couldn't help it. It's even all her -fault. But she never asked to come to us. She never sought us out. She -had her life and we had ours. It was we who sought her and drew her in -and worshipped her. She never hid what she was; never in the least -little way. It was for what she was, because she was so different and -believed so in herself, that Barney loved her. And now because she has -gone on believing in herself, we have struck her down." - -The rooks were cawing overhead and Oldmeadow was remembering his dream -of a year ago, how Adrienne had come to him along the terrace saying, as -she lifted her hand: "I can hear them, too." They had drawn her in. Yet -she had loved their life. She had wanted to understand it and to be part -of it. He wished he could get the pale, streaked, drowning face out of -his mind. "It's generous of you, my dear child," he said, "to say 'we.' -You mean 'you.' If anyone struck her down it was I." - -"You spoke for us all, Roger. And you only spoke for us. You were always -outside. I count myself with them. I can't separate myself from them. I -received her love--with them all." - -"Did you?" he looked at her. "I don't think so, Nancy." - -Nancy did not pretend not to understand. "I know," she said. "But I'm -part of it. And she tried to love me." - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - - -Oldmeadow sat in Barney's study, Mrs. Chadwick beside him. It was -Tuesday and the only news of Barney had been a letter to his mother, -from Paris, where he had not found Meg, and two wires from the South of -France, one to Oldmeadow and one to his wife, saying that he had found -Meg and was returning alone. He had not, it was evident, received the -doctor's messages. - -Oldmeadow had not seen his old friend since the Sunday night when he had -left her and Joséphine in Connaught Square, and in his first glance at -her this morning he saw that for her, too, Adrienne's peril had actually -effaced Meg's predicament. It had done more. Faint and feeble as she -must be, scarcely able to take possession of her returning life and, as -Mrs. Chadwick told him, not yet out of danger, Adrienne had already -drawn her mother-in-law back into the circle of her influence. - -"You see, Roger," she said, sitting there on the absurdly incongruous -background of the Post Impressionist pictures and tightly squeezing her -handkerchief first in one hand and then in the other, "You see, when one -is with her one _has_ to trust her. I don't know why it is, but almost -at once I felt all my bitterness against her die quite away. I knew, -whatever she had done, that she believed it to be right; to be really -_best_ for Meg, you know. And oh, Roger, Barney has hurt her so -terribly! She can't speak of him without crying. I never saw her cry -before. I never imagined Adrienne crying. She feels, she can't help -feeling, that it is because of that they have lost their baby." - -Oldmeadow ordered with difficulty his astonished and indignant thoughts. -"That is absolutely unfair to Barney," he said. "I was with them. No one -could have been gentler or more patient." - -"I know you were with them. It would seem like that to you, Roger, -because you are a man and men still think of women as a sort of chattel. -That's how it looks to Adrienne. So much more independence, you know, -than we ever had.--Oh, I don't say it's a good thing! I feel that we are -weaker and need guidance." - -"Chattels? Where do chattels come in here? She said that to you. Barney -merely pleaded with her so that he could do what you wanted him to do." - -"I know--I know, Roger. Don't get angry. But if I had been here and seen -her I should have known that he must not go. I should have seen that she -was in danger. A woman would have understood. No; you didn't treat -Adrienne like a chattel; no one could treat Adrienne like one. It was -poor little Meg I meant. I see now how wrong it was to think of taking -her from the man she loves; when she _has_ gone, you know, so that -everyone must know and there can be no good in it. And they probably -_have_ bought a wedding-ring. Oh, Roger, she does comfort me about Meg. -She makes me feel the deeper things, the things conventions blind us to. -She makes me feel that the great thing, the only thing, is to follow -one's own light and that Meg did do that. And after all, you know, -Roger, Jowett had George Eliot and Lewes to breakfast and they were -never married." - -"Ha! ha! ha!" Oldmeadow laughed. He could not repress his bitter mirth. -"Follow your light if there's breakfast with a clergyman at the end of -it!" he cruelly suggested. Yet he was too much amused, while so -incensed, for there to be much cruelty, and Mrs. Chadwick, gazing at him -as if from under her twisted straw, murmured: "He _was_ a sort of -clergyman, Roger; and if people do what _seems_ to them right, why -should they be punished?" - -He saw it all. He heard it all, in her echoes. The potent influence had -been poured through her, all the more irresistible for the appeal of -Adrienne's peril. Adrienne, bereaved and dying; yet magnanimous, gentle -and assured; always assured. How could Mrs. Chadwick's feathers and -wedding-rings stand a chance against her? They had been swept away, or -nearly away, and what Nancy had seen as a possible hope was now an -accomplished fact. Mrs. Chadwick had been brought to feel about Meg as -Adrienne felt about her, and Oldmeadow, for his part, was not sure that -the game was worth the candle. There was something more than absurd in -his poor friend's attempts to adjust herself to the new standards. They -were pitiable and even a little unseemly. She began presently softly to -weep. "Such a pretty baby it was, Roger. A lovely little creature--that -was the first thing she said to me--'Oh, Mother Nell, it was such a -pretty baby.' And all that she said this morning--when it was taken -away--was: 'I wish Barney could have been in time to see our baby.' Oh, -it is terrible, terrible, Roger, that he is not here! Her heart is -broken by it. How can she ever forget that he left her alone at such a -time. And she begged him not to go. She told me that she almost knelt to -him." - -The tears, irrepressibly, had risen to Oldmeadow's eyes; but as Mrs. -Chadwick's sentence meandered on, his thoughts were roughly jolted from -their pity. "But I tell you that that is absolutely unfair!" he -repeated, fixing his glass to look his protest the more firmly at her. -"I tell you that I was there and saw it all. It wasn't for the baby. She -was thinking of the baby as little as Barney was; less than he was. What -she was thinking of was her power over Barney. She was determined that -she should not seem to be put in the wrong by his going." - -Like the March Hare Mrs. Chadwick was wild yet imperturbable. "Of course -she was determined. How could she be anything else? It did put her in -the wrong. And it put Meg in the wrong. That's where we were so blind. -Oh, I blame myself as much as anybody. But Barney is her husband; and he -was with her and should have seen and felt. How could she beg him to -stay for her danger when he would not stay for her love?" - -Yes; Adrienne had her very firmly. She had even imparted to her, when it -came to the issue, something of coherency. She was building up, in -Barney's absence, strange ramparts against him. Barney had dragged her -in the dust and there she intended to drag him. Wasn't that it? -Oldmeadow asked himself as he eyed his altered friend, muttering -finally: "I'm every bit as responsible as Barney, if it comes to that. I -upheld him, completely, in his decision. I do still. Adrienne may turn -you all upside down; but she won't turn me; and I hope she won't turn -Barney." - -"I think, Roger, that you might at all events remember that she's not -out of danger," said Mrs. Chadwick. "She may die yet and give you no -more trouble. You have never cared for her; I know that, and so does -she; and I do think it's unfeeling of you to speak as you do when she's -lying there above us. And she looks so lovely in bed," Mrs. Chadwick -began to weep again. "I never saw such thick braids; like Marguerite in -Faust. Her hands on the sheets so thin and white and her eyes enormous. -I don't think even you could have the heart to jibe and laugh if you saw -her." - -"I didn't laugh at Adrienne, you know," Oldmeadow reminded her, rising -and buttoning his overcoat. "I laughed at you and Jowett. No; Adrienne -is no laughing matter. But she won't die. I can assure you of that now. -She's too much life in her to die. And though I'm very sorry for -her--difficult as you may find it to believe--I shall reserve my pity -for Barney." - -Barney needed all his pity and the sight of him on the following Sunday -evening, as he appeared on his threshold, would have exorcised for -Oldmeadow, if Mrs. Chadwick had not already done so, the memory of the -pale, drowning face. He looked like a dog that has been beaten for a -fault it cannot recognize. There was bewilderment in his eyes and -acceptance, and a watchful humility. To see them there made Oldmeadow -angry. - -Barney had sent a line to say that he was back; but his friend had been -prepared not to see him. Once engulfed in the house of mourning it was -but too likely that he would not emerge for many days. And besides, what -would Barney have to say to him now? But here he was, with his hollow -eyes and faded cheeks, and it was with an echo of his old boyish manner -of dropping in when beset by some perplexity that, without speaking, he -crossed the room and sank on the sofa by the fireplace. But he had not -come to seek counsel or sustainment. Oldmeadow saw that, as, after he -had offered cigarettes, which Barney refused, and lighted his own pipe, -he walked to and fro and watched him while Barney watched the flames. He -had not come with a purpose at all. It was, again, precisely like the -unhappy dog who wanders forth aimlessly, guided merely by a dim yearning -towards warmth and kindliness. Barney had come where he would be -understood. But it was not because he believed himself to be -misunderstood that he came. - -"I went to Coldbrooks, first, you know," he said presently, and with an -effect of irrelevance. "I thought I'd find Mother there. So it was only -on that Thursday night I got back here. None of the wires caught me." - -"I know," said Oldmeadow. "It was most unfortunate. But you couldn't -have got back sooner, could you, once you'd gone on from Paris." - -"Not possibly. I went on from Paris that very night, you see. I caught -the night express to the Riviera. They'd left Cannes as an address, but -when I got there I found they'd moved on to San Remo. It was Tuesday -before I found them. My one idea was to find them as soon as possible, -of course. No; I suppose it couldn't be helped; once I'd gone." - -"And it was quite useless? You'd no chance with Meg at all?" - -"None whatever. Quite useless. Never was such a wild-goose chase. It was -exactly as Adrienne had said." - -"Still it couldn't have been foreseen so securely by anyone but -Adrienne. Many girls would have jumped at the chance." - -"Not if they'd had Adrienne to help them. We might have realized that. -That's what armed Meg. I heard Adrienne in everything she said. Even -Mother thinks Adrienne was right, now, you know, Roger. And it was all -for Mother, wasn't it? that I went. That makes it all so particularly -ironic. Only dear Mummy was never very strong at logic. She takes the -line now that we're narrow-minded conventionalists, you and I, for -thinking that a girl oughtn't to go off with a married man. I can't feel -that, you know, Roger," said Barney in his listless tone. "I can't help -feeling that Meg has done something shameful. You ought to have seen -her! Positively smug! sitting there with that ass of a fellow in that -damned Riviera hotel! I had the horridest feeling, too, that Meg had -brought him rather than he her. I don't mean he doesn't care for her--he -does; I'll say that for him. He's a stupid fellow, but honest; and he -came outside and tried to tell me what he felt and how it would be all -right and that he was going to devote his life to her. But I think he -feels pretty sick, really. While Meg treated me as if I were a silly -little boy. If anyone can carry the thing through, Meg will." - -"It won't prove her right because she carries it through, you know," -Oldmeadow observed. - -"No," said Barney, "but it will make us seem more wrong. Not that you -have any responsibility in it, dear old boy. I did what I felt I must do -and mine was the mistake. It's not only Mother who thinks I've wronged -Adrienne," he went on after a moment, lifting his arms as though he -felt a weight upon them and clasping them behind his head. "Even Nancy, -though she was so sorry for me, made me feel that I'd done something -very dreadful." - -"Nancy? How did you come to see Nancy?" - -"Why, at Coldbrooks. She's still there with Aunt Monica. That was just -it. It was my going there first, seeing her first, that upset her so. -She couldn't understand, till I could explain, how it came about. She -was thinking of Adrienne, you see. And I, knowing nothing, had been -thinking of Mother all the time. It was too late, then, to go back at -once. The next train wasn't for three hours. So I had to stay." - -"And it was Nancy who had to tell you everything?" - -"Yes; Nancy," said Barney, staring at the ceiling. There was a note, -now, of control in his voice and Oldmeadow knew that if he had said no -word of what must be foremost in both their thoughts it was because he -could not trust himself to speak of it. And he went on quickly, taking -refuge from his invading emotion, "Aunt Monica wasn't there. I didn't -even see Johnson. I went right through the house and into the garden and -there was Nancy, planting something in the border. Everything looked so -natural. I just went up to her and said 'Hello, Nancy,' and then, when -she looked up at me, I thought she was going to faint. Poor little -Nancy. I knew something terrible had happened from the way she looked at -me." - -"Poor little Nancy. But I'm glad it was she who told you, Barney." - -"No one could have been sweeter," said Barney, talking on quickly. "She -kept saying, 'Oh, you oughtn't to be here, Barney. You oughtn't to be -here.' But no one could have been sweeter. We sat down on the old bench, -you know, and she told me. That Adrienne had nearly died. That the baby -was dead. I could hardly believe her, at first. I stared at her, I know, -and I kept saying, 'What do you mean, Nancy?--what do you mean?' And she -began to cry and I cried, too. Men do feel, Roger, all the same, even -though they haven't the mother's claim to feel. I thought about our baby -so much. I loved it, too. And now--to think it's dead; and that I never -saw it; and that it's my fault"--his voice had shaken more and more; he -had put his hand before his eyes, and, then, suddenly, he leaned forward -and buried his head on the arm of the sofa. - -"My poor Barney! My dear boy!" Oldmeadow muttered. He came and sat down -beside him; he laid his arm around his shoulders. "It's not your fault," -he said. - -"Oh, don't say that, Roger!" sobbed Barney. "It's no good trying to -comfort me. I've broken her heart. She doesn't say so. She's too angelic -to say it; but she lies there and looks it. My poor darling! My poor, -courageous darling; what she has been through! It can't be helped. I -must face it. I'm her husband. I ought to have understood. She -supplicated me, and I rejected her, and the child is dead." - -"The child's death is a calamity for which no one can be held -responsible unless it is Adrienne herself," said Oldmeadow. While Barney -sobbed he was thinking intently, for this was a turning-point in -Barney's destiny. He would remain in subjugation to Adrienne's -conception of the wrong done her or he must be enabled to regain the -sense of innocence to which he had every right. "She forced the -situation on you. She chose to break rather than bend," he said. "Listen -to me, Barney. I don't speak in any enmity to your wife; but listen to -me and try to think it out. Don't you remember how you once said that -your marriage couldn't be a mistake if you were able to see the defects -as well as the beauty of the woman you love. Don't you remember that you -said she'd have to learn a little from you for the much you'd have to -learn from her. Nothing more reassured me than what you said that night. -And I was reassured the other day by your firmness. It implies no -disloyalty in you to see the defects now. It was power over you she -wanted the other day and to see herself put in the right, before me; and -to see me worsted, before you. You know it, Barney; you know it in your -heart. And she knows it too. There was no failure of love in what you -said. There was only failure of homage. You were right in opposing her. -She was wrong in the issue she made. She was wrong from the first of the -miserable affair in having concealed it from you. If you'd stayed behind -as she wanted you to do, you'd have shown yourself a weakling and she'd -have been further than ever from knowing herself in error. There is the -truth; and the sooner you see it, the sooner she will." - -For some time after his friend had ended, Barney lay silent, his face -still hidden. But his sobs had ceased. And his silence, at last, grew -too long for any disclaimer to be possible to him. He had been brought, -Oldmeadow knew it from the very rhythm of his breathing, to the -passionless contemplation where alone truth is visible. And what he said -at last was: "She'll never see it like that." - -"Oh, yes, she will," said Oldmeadow. And he remembered Nancy's wisdom. -"If you hold to it firmly and tenderly and make her feel you love her -while you make her feel you think her wrong." - -"She'll never see it," Barney repeated, and Oldmeadow now suspected, and -with a deep uneasiness, that Barney might be seeing further than -himself. "She can't." - -"You mean that she's incapable of thinking herself wrong?" - -"Yes, incapable," said Barney. "Because all she's conscious of is the -wish to do right. And she is right so often, she is so good and -beautiful, that it must be like that with her. She can break; but she -can't bend." - -Oldmeadow was silent for a moment and Barney, on the arm of the sofa, -was silent. "Of course," Oldmeadow then said, "the less you say about it -the better. Things will take their place gradually." - -"I've not said anything about it," said Barney. "I've only thought of -comforting and cherishing her. But it's not enough. I'll never say -anything; but she'll know I'm keeping something back. She knows it -already. I see that now. And I didn't know it till you put it to me." - -"She'll have to accept it; or to live with it unaccepted, then. You -can't consider yourself a criminal to give her moral ease." - -"No," said Barney after a pause. "No; I can't do that. Though that's -what Mummy wants me to do. But I can be horribly sorry." - -"Horribly sorry. Let the rest sink into the unspoken. When people love -each other they can, I'm sure, live over any amount of unspoken things." - -"It hasn't been unspoken between you and me, though, has it, Roger?" -said Barney, and he raised himself and got upon his feet as he said it. -"There's the trouble. There's where I _am_ wrong. For she'd feel it an -intolerable wrong if she knew that it hadn't been unspoken between you -and me. And she'd be right. When people love each other such reticences -and exclusions wrong their love." - -"But since you say she knows," Oldmeadow suggested after another moment. - -Barney stood staring out of the twilight window. - -"She doesn't know that I tell you," he said. - -"You've told me nothing," said Oldmeadow. - -"Well, she doesn't know what I listen to, then," said Barney. - -Oldmeadow was again conscious of the deep uneasiness. "It's quite true -I've no call to meddle in your affairs," he said. "The essential thing -is that you love each other. Let rights and wrongs go hang." - -"You haven't meddled, Roger." Barney moved towards the door. "You've -been in my affairs, and haven't been allowed to keep out. Yes. We love -each other. But rights and wrongs never go hang with Adrienne." - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - - -Oldmeadow did not see Barney again for some months. He met Eleanor -Chadwick towards the end of April, in the park, he on his way to Mrs. -Aldesey's, she, apparently, satisfying her country appetite for -exercise, since she seemed to be walking fast and at random. He almost -thought for a moment that she was going to pretend not to see him and -hurry down a path that led away from his; but his resolute eye perhaps -checked the impulse. She faltered and then came forward, holding out her -hand and looking rather wildly about her, and she said that London was -really suffocating, wasn't it? - -"You've been here for so long, haven't you," said Oldmeadow. "Or have -you been here all this time? I've had no news of any of you, you see." - -"It's all been such a troubled, busy time, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick. -"Yes, I've been here ever since. But, thank goodness, the doctors say -she may be moved now, and she and I and Barney are going down to -Devonshire next week. To Torquay. Such a dismal place, I think; but -perhaps that's because so many of my relations have died there. I never -have liked that red Devonshire soil. But the primroses will be out. That -makes up a little." - -"I'm glad that Mrs. Barney is better. When will you all be back at -Coldbrooks?" - -"In June, I hope. Yes; she is better. But so feeble, still; so frail. -And quite, quite changed from her old bright self. It's all very -depressing, Roger. Very depressing and wearing," said Mrs. Chadwick, -opening her eyes very wide and staring before her in a way -characteristic of her when she repressed tears. "Sometimes I hardly know -how to keep up at all. For nothing cheers her. And Barney isn't really -much help. He has very little power of fighting against depression." - -"You've all been too much shut up with each other, I'm afraid." - -Mrs. Chadwick still held her eyes widely opened. "I don't think it's -that, Roger. Being alone wouldn't have helped us to be happier, after -what's happened." - -"Being with other people might. You must get back to Coldbrooks as soon -as possible and see Nancy and Mrs. Averil and your neighbours. That will -help to change the current of your thoughts." - -"People don't forget so easily as that, Roger," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, -and it was now with severity, as though she suspected him of triviality. -"When something terrible has happened to people they are _in_ the -current and Nancy and the neighbours are not going to change it. Poor -Nancy; she feels it all as much as we do, I'm sure." - -And that Mrs. Chadwick thought of him as unfeeling he saw. She thought -of him, too, with Barney, as criminal; as responsible for the -catastrophe. The old phrase of presage floated back into his mind: -"She'll spoil things." She had spoiled, for ever perhaps, this deepest, -dearest relation of his life. What was Coldbrooks to become to him with -Adrienne Toner in possession? He said, and he was unable to keep a -certain dryness that must sound like lightness, from his voice: "You are -in it but you needn't keep your heads under it, you know. That's what -people tend to do when they shut themselves up with their misfortunes. -You and Barney and Mrs. Barney, I suspect, are engaged in drowning each -other. If one of you puts their head up the others pull it down." - -"I suppose you mean Adrienne does," said Mrs. Chadwick. He had not meant -it at all; but now he felt sure that so, exactly, did it happen. Poor -Mrs. Chadwick left to herself would have drifted to the shore by this -time and Barney, at all events, would be swimming with his head up; it -was Adrienne, of course, that kept them suffocating under the surface. -"Well, I think it a pity you three should go off to Torquay alone," he -evaded. "What's happening to the farm all this time?" - -"Nancy is seeing to it for Barney," said Mrs. Chadwick. "She understands -those things so well. Barney would not dream of letting the farm come -between him and Adrienne at a time like this. He wants to be with her of -course." - -"Of course. All I mean is that I wish he could be with her at -Coldbrooks. I suppose the doctor knows what's best, however." - -"I'm glad to hear you own that anybody can know what's best, Roger, -except yourself," said Mrs. Chadwick with her singularly unprovocative -severity. "Of course she must go to the sea and of course Barney and I -must be with her. She has two excellent nurses; but I would never trust -the best nurse for certain things. I remember so well when I was ill -myself once and saw the nurse behind a screen, eating raspberry jam out -of the pot with her finger. You can't trust anybody, really." And that -was all he got out of Eleanor Chadwick. Adrienne had spoiled things. - -It was in June that he heard from Mrs. Averil that she and Nancy were in -London for a few days staying with an old aunt in Eccleston Square. Mrs. -Averil asked him to come to tea and he asked her and Nancy to do a play -with him; but before these meetings took place he saw them both. It was -at a Queen's Hall concert on Sunday afternoon that Mrs. Aldesey called -his attention to his friends and, to his surprise, Oldmeadow saw that -Barney was with them. They sat across the gangway at some little -distance and his first impression of the three was that they were not -happy. - -"Did you know he was in town?" asked Mrs. Aldesey. "How ill he looks. I -suppose he was frightfully upset about the baby, poor fellow." - -Mrs. Aldesey knew nothing of the catastrophes that had followed the -baby's death. He had instinctively avoided any reference to the latest -progress of the Juggernaut. - -"She's much better now, you know," he said, and he wasn't aware that he -was exonerating Barney. "And they're all back at Coldbrooks." - -"She's not at Coldbrooks," said Mrs. Aldesey. "She's well enough to pay -visits and Lady Lumley told me she was coming down to them for this -week-end. I wonder he hasn't gone with her." - -Oldmeadow was wondering too. There was something about Barney's attitude -as he sat there beside his cousin, silent and absent-minded it seemed, -listening as little to the music as he looked little at her, that he -would rather Lydia Aldesey had not been there to observe. They had a -curiously marital appearance, the young couple, or, rather, Barney had; -the air of being safe with some one with whom no explanations were -needed and for whom no appearances must be kept up; some one, even, with -whom he was so identified that he was hardly conscious of her. Nancy was -not so unconscious. Once, when Barney leaned over to look at the -programme, she drew away a little; and Oldmeadow even fancied a slight -constraint in her glance when, now and then, he spoke to her. Had -Adrienne spoiled things there, too? Mrs. Averil next day, in Eccleston -Square, enlightened him as to Barney's presence. "It's been most -unfortunate. He had planned to come up to this concert for a long time. -He wanted Nancy to hear the César Franck with him. And then it appeared -that Adrienne had made an engagement for them with the Lumleys. He -refused to go, I'm afraid, and she made an issue of it and, from what -poor Eleanor told me, there was rather a row. So Adrienne has gone off -alone and Barney is here till this evening. He's gone out now with Nancy -to show her some pictures by a friend of his. It had all been arranged. -So what were we to do about it, Roger?" - -"Do about it? Why just what you have done. Why shouldn't she go with -him?" - -"Why indeed? Except that Adrienne has made the issue. It's awkward, of -course, when you know there's been a row, to go on as if nothing had -happened." - -Oldmeadow meditated. His friend's little face had been pinched by the -family's distress when he had last seen it; it was clouded now by a -closer, a more personal perplexity. "I suppose she made the issue on -purpose so that Barney shouldn't come up," he said at length. - -"I really don't know. Perhaps it had been arranged first with the -Lumleys. If it was to keep him from coming, that didn't come out. She -wouldn't let it come out; not into the open; of course." - -"So things are going very badly. I'd imagined, with all Barney's -contrition, that they might have worked out well." - -"They've worked out as badly, I'm afraid, as they could. He was full of -contrition. He was as devoted as possible, when they came back in May. -But nothing altered her unflagging melancholy. And I suppose what -happened was that he got tired. Barney was always like that, from the -time he was in the nursery. He'd go on being patient and good-tempered -until, suddenly, everything would break down and he would sulk for days. -It's when he's pushed too far. And she has pushed him too far. She's set -them all against him." - -"Who is them?" Oldmeadow asked. "I saw, when we met in London, that Mrs. -Chadwick actually had been brought to look upon Barney as a sort of -miscreant and Adrienne as a martyr. Who else is there?" - -"Well, no one else except Palgrave and Barbara. Palgrave can be very -exasperating, as you know, and he takes the attitude now that Barney has -done Adrienne an irreparable injury. As you may imagine it isn't a -pleasant life Barney leads among them all." - -"I see," said Oldmeadow. "I think I see it all. What happens now is that -Barney more and more takes refuge with you and Nancy, and Adrienne more -and more can't bear it." - -"That is precisely it, Roger," said Mrs. Averil. "And what are we to do? -How can I shut my door against Barney? Yet it is troubling me more than -I can say. We are forced to seem on his side and against her. And -Adrienne has her eye upon them." - -"Let her keep it on them," said Oldmeadow in strong indignation. "And -much good may it do her!" - -"Oh, it won't do her any good--nor us!" said Mrs. Averil. "She's sick -with jealousy, Roger. Sick. I'm almost sorry for her when I see it and -see her trying to hide it, and see it always, coming in by the back door -when she shuts the front door on it--as it always does, you know. And -Nancy sees it, of course; and is quite as sick as she is; and Barney, of -course, remains as blind as a bat." - -"Well, as long as he remains blind--" - -"Yes. As long as he does. But Adrienne will make him see. She'll pick -and pull at their friendship until Nancy will be forced into drawing -back, and if she draws back Barney will see. What it's already come to -is that she has to stand still, and smile, while Adrienne scratches her, -lest Barney should see she's scratched; and once or twice of late I've -had a suspicion that he has seen. It doesn't endear Nancy to Adrienne -that Barney should scowl at her when he's caught her scratching." - -"What kind of scratches?" Oldmeadow asked, but Mrs. Averil had only time -to say, "Oh, all kinds; she's wonderful at scratches," when the -door-bell rang and Nancy, a moment after, came in. - -Nancy, if anything so fresh and neat could be so called, was looking -rather dowdy, and he suspected that some self-effacing motive lay behind -her choice of clothes. - -"Oh, Roger, Barney was so sorry to have to miss you," she said. And, at -all events, whatever else Adrienne had spoiled, she had not spoiled -Nancy's loving smile for him. "He had to catch the 4.45 to Coldbrooks, -you know. There's a prize heifer arriving this evening and he must be -there to welcome it. You must see his herd of Holsteins, Roger." -Friesians were, at that date, still Holsteins. - -"I'd like to," said Oldmeadow. "But I don't know when I shall, for, to -tell you the truth, I've not been asked to Coldbrooks this summer. The -first time since I've known them." - -Nancy looked at him in silence. - -"You'll come to us, of course," said Mrs. Averil. - -"Do you really think I'd better, all things considered?" Oldmeadow -asked. - -"Why, of course you'd better. What possible reasons could there be for -your not coming, except ones we don't accept?" - -"It won't seem to range us too much in a hostile camp?" - -"Not more than we're ranged already. Nancy and I are not going to give -you up, my dear Roger, because Adrienne considers herself a martyr." - -"I hope not, indeed. But it makes my exclusion from Coldbrooks more -marked, perhaps, if I go to you. I imagine, though I am so much in her -black books, that poor Mrs. Chadwick doesn't want my exclusion to be -marked." - -"You're quite right there. You are in her black books; but she doesn't -want it marked; she'd like to have you, really, if Adrienne weren't -there and if she didn't feel shy. And I really think it will make it -easier for her if you come to us instead. It will tide it over a -little. She'll be almost able to feel you are with them. After all, you -do come to us, often." - -"And I'll go up with you to Coldbrooks as if nothing had happened? I -confess I have a curiosity to see how Mrs. Barney takes me." - -"She's very good at taking things, you know," said Nancy. - -Mrs. Averil cast a glance upon him. "It may be really something of a -relief to their minds, Roger," she said, "if you turn up as if nothing -had happened. They are in need of distractions. They are all dreadfully -on edge, though they won't own to it, about Meg. The case is coming on -quite soon now. Mrs. Hayward has lost no time, and poor Eleanor only -keeps up because Adrienne is there to hold her up." - -"Where is Meg? Do they hear from her?" - -"They hear from her constantly. She's still on the Continent. She writes -very easily and confidently. I can't help imagining, all the same, that -Adrienne is holding her up, too. She's written to Nancy and Nancy hasn't -shown me her letters." - -"There is nothing to hide, Mother," said Nancy, and Oldmeadow had never -seen her look so dejected. "Nothing at all, except that she's not as -easy and confident as she wants to appear. Adrienne does hold her up. -Poor Meg." - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - - -The picture of Adrienne holding them up was spread before Oldmeadow's -eyes on the hot July day when Mrs. Averil drove him up from the Little -House to Coldbrooks. The shade of the great lime-tree on the lawn was -like a canvas, only old Johnson, as he moved to and fro with tea-table, -silver and strawberries, stepping from its cool green atmosphere into -the framing sunshine. The Chadwick family, seated or lying in the shade, -were all nearly as still as in a picture, and Adrienne was its centre. -She sat in a high-backed wicker chair, her hands lying listlessly in her -lap, a scarf about her shoulders, and in her black-veiled white, her -wide, transparent hat, she was like a clouded moon. There was something -even of daring, to Oldmeadow's imagination, in their approach across the -sunny spaces. Her eyes had so rested upon them from the moment that they -had driven up, that they might have been bold wayfarers challenging the -magic of a Circe in her web. Palgrave, in his white flannels, lay -stretched at her feet, and he had been reading aloud to her; Barbara and -Mrs. Chadwick sat listening while they worked on either hand. Only -Barney was removed, sitting at some little distance, his back half -turned, a pipe between his teeth and his eyes on a magazine that lay -upon his knee. But the influence, the magic, was upon him too. He was -consciously removed. - -Mrs. Chadwick sprang up to greet them. "This is nice!" she cried, and -her knitting trailed behind her as she came so that Barbara, laughing, -stooped to catch and pick it up as she followed her; "I was expecting -you! How nice and dear of you! On this hot day! I always think the very -fishes must feel warm on a day like this! Or could they, do you -think?--Dear Roger!" There was an evident altering in Mrs. Chadwick's -manner towards him since the meeting in the Park. She was, with all her -fluster, manifestly glad to see him. - -Palgrave had hoisted himself to his feet and now stood beside Adrienne, -eyeing them as a faithful hound eyes suspicious visitors. - -"Isn't it lovely in the shade," Mrs. Chadwick continued, drawing them -into it. "Adrienne darling, Aunt Monica after all. And we were afraid -the heat might keep you away. I suppose the hill was very hot, Monica?" -Adrienne was still, apparently, something of an invalid, for she did not -rise to greet them. Neither did she speak as she held out her hand to -each of them in turn, and while an enveloping smile dwelt fondly on Mrs. -Averil, she made no attempt to smile at Oldmeadow. - -He found himself observing her with a sort of wonder. All the flaws and -deformities of her maternity had fallen from her and she had the -appearance almost of beauty. Yet he had never so little liked her face. -Her dimly patterned features made him think of a Chinese picture he had -once seen where, on a moth-wing background, pale chrysanthemums, -mauvy-pink, a disk of carved jade with cord and tassel and a narrow -ivory box softly spotted with darkness, conveyed in their seeming -triviality an impression almost sinister of impersonality and magic. -There was as little feeling in her face. It was like a mask. - -"Where's Nancy?" Barney asked. He had got up and joined them, giving -Oldmeadow's hand, as they met, a curiously lifeless shake. - -"She had letters to write," said Mrs. Averil. - -"Why, I thought we'd arranged she was to come up and walk round the farm -after tea with me," said Barney and as he spoke Oldmeadow noted that -Adrienne turned her head slowly, somewhat as she had done on the ominous -morning in March, and rested her eyes upon him. - -"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Averil cheerfully. "She must have -misunderstood. She had these letters to finish for the post." - -Barbara was reconnoitring at the tea-table. "Strawberries!" she -announced. "Who said they'd be over? Oh, what a shame of Nancy not to -come! Roger, why aren't you staying here rather than with Aunt Monica, -I'd like to know? Aren't we grand enough for you since she's had that -bathroom put in!" Barbara had advanced to a lively flapperdom. - -"You see, by this plan, I get the bath with her and get you when she -brings me up," Oldmeadow retorted. - -"And leave Nancy behind! I call it a shame when we're having the last -strawberries--and you may have a bathroom with Aunt Monica, but her -strawberries are over. Letters! Who ever heard of Nancy writing -letters--except to you, Barney. She was always writing to you when you -were living in London--before you married. And what screeds you used to -send her--all about art!" said Barbara, and that her liveliness cast a -spell of silence was apparent to everyone but herself. - -Mrs. Chadwick took Oldmeadow's arm and drew him aside. "You'll be able -to come later and be quite with us, won't you, Roger?" she said -"September is really a lovelier month, don't you think? Adrienne is -going to take Palgrave and Barbara for a motor-trip in September. Won't -it be lovely for them?" Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a swiftness that did -not veil a sense of insecurity. "Barbara's never seen the Alps. They are -going to the Tyrol." - -"If we don't have a European war by then," Oldmeadow suggested. "What is -Barney going to do?" - -"Oh, Barney is going to the Barclay's in Scotland, to shoot. He loves -that. A war, Roger? What do you mean? All those tiresome Serbians? Why, -they won't go into the Tyrol, will they?" - -"Perhaps not the Tyrol; but they may make it difficult for other people -to go there." - -"Do you hear what Roger is saying?" Mrs. Chadwick turned to her family. -"That the Serbians may make war by September and that it might interfere -with the trip. But I'm sure Sir Edward will quiet them. He always does. -Though he is a Liberal, I've always felt him to be such a good man," -said Mrs. Chadwick, "and really patriotic. Simply sitting round a table -with him cools their heads more than one would believe possible. -Dreadfully violent people, I believe, killing their kings and queens and -throwing them out of the window. I always think there's nothing in the -world for controlling people's tempers like getting them to sit together -round a table. I wonder why it is. Something to do with having your legs -out of the way, perhaps. People don't look nearly so threatening if -their legs are hidden, do they? My poor cousin, Fanny Jocelyn, used -always to say that if any of the clergymen in Fred's diocese got very -troublesome her one recipe was to ask them to lunch, or, if they were -very bad, to dinner. But she had wonderful tact--that gift, you know, -for seeming to care simply _immensely_ for the person she was talking -to. Francis used to tell her that when she looked at you as if you were -the only person in the world she loved she was really working out her -next menu." - -"I'm afraid if war comes it won't be restricted to people, like Serbians -and clergymen, who can be quieted by being asked to dinner," said -Oldmeadow laughing. "We'll be fighting, too." - -"And who will we fight?" Palgrave inquired. After passing tea, he had -resumed his place at Adrienne's feet. "Who has been getting in our way -now?" - -"Don't you read the papers?" Oldmeadow asked him. - -"Not when I can avoid it," said Palgrave. "They'll be bellowing out the -same old Jingo stuff on the slightest provocation, of course. As far as -I can make out the Serbians are the most awful brutes and Russia is -egging them on. But when it comes to a crime against humanity like war, -every one is responsible." - -"Are you ready for strawberries, Aunt Monica," Barbara interposed. "If -there is a war, I hope we may be in it so that I can do some of my first -aid on real people at last." - -She was carrying strawberries now to Adrienne who, as she leaned down, -took her gently by the wrist, and said some low-toned words to her. "I -know, my angel. Horrid of me!" said Barbara. "But one can't take war -seriously, can one!" - -"I can," said Mrs. Averil. "Too many of my friends had their sons and -husbands killed in South Africa." - -"And it's human nature," said Mrs. Chadwick, eating her strawberries -mournfully. "Like the poor: whom you have always with you, you know." - -"Human nature is altered already a good deal more than governments -imagine," said Palgrave, "and they'll find themselves pretty well dished -if they try to bring on a capitalist war now. The workers all over the -world are beginning to see whose the hands are that pull the strings and -they'll refuse to dance to their piping. They'll down weapons just as -they've learned, at last, to down tools; and without them you can do -nothing. That's the way human nature will end war." - -"A spirited plan, no doubt," said Oldmeadow, "and effective if all the -workers came to be of the same mind simultaneously. But if those of one -country downed weapons and those of another didn't, the first would get -their throats cut for their pains." - -"It's easy to sneer," Palgrave retorted. "As a matter of principle, I'd -rather have my throat cut by a hired ruffian than kill an innocent -man--even if he did belong to a nation that happened to be cleverer and -more efficient than my own. That's a crime, of course, that we can't -forgive." - -"Don't talk such rot, Palgrave," Barney now remarked in a tone of -apathetic disgust. - -"I beg your pardon," Palgrave sat up instantly, flushing all over his -face. "I think it's truth and sanity." - -"It's not truth and sanity. It's rot and stupid rot," said Barney. "Some -more tea, please, Barbara." - -"Calling names isn't argument," said Palgrave. "I could call names, too, -if it came to that. It's calling names that is stupid. I merely happen -to believe in what Christ said." - -"Oh, but, dear--Christ drove the money-lenders out of the Temple very, -very roughly," Mrs. Chadwick interposed with the head-long irrelevance -characteristic of her in such crises. "Thongs must hurt so much, mustn't -they? He surely believed in punishing people who did wrong." - -"Which nation doesn't do wrong, Mummy? Which nation is a Christ with a -right to punish another? It's farcical. And punishing isn't killing. -Christ didn't kill malefactors." - -"The Gadarene swine," Mrs. Chadwick murmured. "They were killed. So -painfully, too, poor things. I never could understand about that. I hope -the Higher Criticism will manage to get rid of it, for it doesn't really -seem kind. They had done no wrong at all and I've always been specially -fond of pigs myself." - -"Ah, but you never saw a pig with a devil in it," Oldmeadow suggested, -to which Mrs. Chadwick murmured, "I'm sure they seem to have devils in -them, sometimes, poor dears, when they won't let themselves be caught. -Do get some more cream, Barbara. It's really too hot for arguments, -isn't it," and Mrs. Chadwick sighed with the relief of having rounded -that dangerous corner. - -Barbara went away with the cream-jug and Johnson emerged bearing the -afternoon post. - -"Ah. Letters. Good." Palgrave sat up to take his and Adrienne's share. -"One for you, Adrienne; from Meg. Now we shall see what she says about -meeting us in the Tyrol." His cheeks were still flushed and his eyes -brilliant with anger. Though his words were for Adrienne his voice was -for Barney, at whom he did not glance. - -Adrienne unfolded the foreign sheets, and held them so that Palgrave, -leaning against her knee, could read with her. - -Mrs. Chadwick had grown crimson. She looked at Oldmeadow. "Dear Meg is -having such an interesting time," she told him. "She and Eric are seeing -all manner of delightful places and picking up some lovely bits of old -furniture." Oldmeadow bowed assent. He had his eyes on Adrienne and he -was wondering about Barbara. - -"What news is there, dear?" Mrs. Chadwick continued in the same badly -controlled voice. Palgrave's face had clouded. - -"I'm afraid it may be bad news, Mother Nell," said Adrienne looking up. - -It was the first time Oldmeadow had heard her voice that afternoon and -he could hardly have believed it the voice that had once reminded him of -a blue ribbon. It was still slow, still deliberate and soft; but it had -now the steely thrust and intention of a dagger. - -"It's this accursed war talk!" Palgrave exclaimed. "Eric evidently -thinks it serious and he has to come home at once. What rotten luck." - -Adrienne handed the sheets to Mrs. Chadwick. "It will all have blown -over by September," she said. "As Mother Nell says, we can trust Sir -Edward to keep us out of anything so wicked as a war. I am so completely -with you in all you say about the wickedness of war, Paladin, although I -do not see its causes quite so simply, perhaps." - -It was the first time that Oldmeadow had heard the new name for her -knight. - -"For my part," said Barney, casting a glance at the house, Barbara not -having yet reappeared, "I shall be grateful to the war if it dishes your -trip to the Tyrol. It's most unsuitable for Barbara." - -He did not look at his wife as he spoke. His hat brim pulled down over -his eyes, he sat with folded arms and stared in front of him. - -"You find it unsuitable for one sister to meet another?" Adrienne -inquired. Her eyes were on Barney, but Oldmeadow could not interpret -their gaze. - -"Most unsuitable, to use no stronger word," said Barney, "while one -sister is living with a man whose name she doesn't bear." - -"You mean to say," said Palgrave, sitting cross-legged at Adrienne's -feet and grasping his ankles with both hands, "that Meg, until she's -legally married, isn't fit for her little sister to associate with?" - -"Just what I do mean, Palgrave. Precisely what I do mean," said Barney, -and his face, reddening, took on its rare but characteristic expression -of sullen anger. "And I'll thank you--in my house, after all--to keep -out of an argument that doesn't concern you." - -"Barney; Palgrave," murmured Mrs. Chadwick supplicatingly. Adrienne, -not moving her eyes from her husband's face, laid her hand on Palgrave's -shoulder. - -"It does concern me," said Palgrave, and he put up his hand and grasped -Adrienne's. "Barbara's well-being concerns me as much as it does you; -and your wife's happiness concerns me a good deal more. I can promise -you that I wouldn't trouble your hospitality for another day if it -weren't for her--and Mother. It's perfectly open to you, of course, to -turn me out of my home whenever you like to make use of your legal -privilege. But until I'm turned out I stay--for their sakes." - -"You young ass! You unmitigated young ass!" Barney snarled, springing to -his feet. "All right, Mother. Don't bother. I'll leave you to your -protector for the present. I only wish he were young enough to be given -what he needs--a thorough good hiding. I'll go down and see Nancy. Don't -expect me back to dinner." - -"Nancy is busy, my dear," poor Mrs. Averil, deeply flushing, interposed, -while Palgrave, under his breath, yet audibly, murmured: "Truly -Kiplingesque! Home and Hidings! Our Colonial history summed up!" - -"She would be here if she weren't busy," said Mrs. Averil. - -"I won't bother her," said Barney. "I'll sit in the garden and read. -It's more peaceful than being here." - -"Please tell dear Nancy that it's ten days at least since _I've_ seen -her," said Adrienne, "and that I miss her and beg that she'll give me, -sometime, a few of her spare moments." - -At that Barney stopped short, and looked at his wife. "No, Adrienne, I -won't," he said with a startling directness. "I'll take no messages -whatever from you to Nancy. Let Nancy alone--do you see? That's all I've -got to ask of you. Let her alone. She and Aunt Monica are the only -people you haven't set against me and I don't intend to quarrel with -Nancy to please you, I promise you." - -Sitting motionless and upright, her hand laid on Palgrave's shoulder, -her face as unalterable as a little mask, Adrienne received these -well-aimed darts as a Saint Sebastian might have received the arrows. -Barney stared hard at her for a moment, then turned his back and marched -out into the sunlight and Oldmeadow, as he saw him go, felt that he -witnessed the end, as he had, little more than a year ago, witnessed the -beginning, of an epoch. What was there left to build on after such a -scene? And what must have passed between husband and wife during their -hours of intimacy to make it credible? Barney was not a brute. - -When Barney had turned through the entrance gates and -disappeared--Adrienne's eyes dropped to Palgrave's. "I think I'll go in, -Paladin," she said, and it was either with faintness or with the mere -stillness of her rage. "I think I'll lie down for a little while." - -Palgrave had leaped to his feet and, as she rose, drew her hand within -his arm, and Mrs. Chadwick, her eyes staring wide, hastened to her: but -Adrienne gently put her away. "No, no, dearest Mother Nell. Paladin will -help me. You must stay with Aunt Monica and Mr. Oldmeadow." Her hand -rested for a moment on Mrs. Chadwick's shoulder and she looked into her -eyes. "I'm so sorry, Mother Nell. I meant no harm." - -"Oh, my darling child! As if I did not know that!" Mrs. Chadwick moaned -and, as Adrienne moved away, she turned as if half distraught to her two -friends. "Oh, it's dreadful! dreadful!" she nearly wept. "Oh, how can he -treat her so--before you all! It's breaking my heart!" - -Barbara came running out with the cream. "Great Scott!" she exclaimed, -stopping short. "What's become of everybody?" - -"They've all gone, dear. Yes, we've all finished. No one wants any more -strawberries. Take yours away, will you, dear, we want to have a little -talk, Aunt Monica, Roger and I." - -"I suppose it's Barney again," said Barbara, standing still and gazing -indignantly around her. "Where's Adrienne?" - -"She has gone to lie down, dear. Yes. Barney has been very unkind." - -"About my trip, I suppose? He's been too odious about my trip and it's -only the other day he made Adrienne cry. What possible business is it of -Barney's, I'd like to know? One would think he imagined that wives and -sisters were a sort of chattel. Why mayn't I stay, Mother--if you're -going to talk about my trip? Adrienne has explained everything to me and -I think Meg was quite right and I'd do the same myself if I were in her -place. So I'm perfectly able to understand." - -"I know, dear; I know; Adrienne is so wonderful. But don't say things -like that, I beg of you, for it makes me very, very unhappy. And please -run away for a little while, for we have other things to talk of. I'm -afraid there may be no trip at all, Barbara; Meg may be coming home at -once. The letters had news about it, and Eric has to go to the war--if -there is a war, you see." Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a supplicatory note -very unlike her usual placid if complaining authority. - -"But I'd like to hear about the letters, then. Do we really have to give -up the trip? I'm sure it's Barney at the bottom of it. He's been trying -to dish it from the first and I simply won't stand it from him." - -"It's not Barney at all, Barbara. You shall hear all that there is to -hear. And you mustn't, really, forget that Barney is your elder brother -and has some right to say what you should do--even though we mayn't -agree with him." - -"No, he hasn't. Not an atom," Barbara declared. "If anyone has any -right, except you, it's Adrienne, because she's a bigger, wiser person -than any of us." - -"And since you've borne your testimony, Barbara," Oldmeadow suggested, -"you might obey your mother and give us the benefit of your experience -on an occasion when it's invited." - -"Oh, I know you're against Adrienne, Roger," said Barbara, but with a -sulkiness that showed surrender. "I shan't force myself on you, I assure -you, and girls of fifteen aren't quite the infants in arms you may -imagine. If Adrienne weren't here to stand up for me I don't know where -I'd be. Because, you know, you _are_ weak, Mother. Yes you are. You've -been really wobbling like anything about my trip and trying to wriggle -out of it whenever you had a loop-hole, and Adrienne thinks you're weak, -I know, for she told me so, and said we must help you to be brave and -strong and that you belonged to a generation that had its eyes tightly -bandaged from birth. So there!" And delivering this effective shot, -Barbara marched away, not forgetting to pick up her plate of -strawberries as she passed the table. - -Mrs. Chadwick attempted to conceal her confusion by following her -child's retreating figure with grave disapprobation and Oldmeadow seized -the propitious moment to remark: "I can't help feeling that there's -something to be said for Barney, all the same. His wife _has_ set you -all against him, hasn't she? I suspect Barbara's right, too, my dear -friend, and that in your heart of hearts you dislike this trip of hers -as much as he does. Certainly Barbara isn't a very pleasing example of -Adrienne's influence." - -"She is very naughty, very naughty and rebellious," poor Mrs. Chadwick -murmured, twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. "I know I've not a -strong character, but I never spoiled my children and dear Adrienne -does, I feel, spoil Barbara by taking her so seriously and talking to -her as if she were grown up, you know. I had an aunt who married at -sixteen; but it didn't turn out at all happily. They quarrelled -constantly and she had two sets of twins, poor thing--almost like a -judgment, dear Mamma used to say. But of course Barbara is really too -young to understand; and so I've told dear Adrienne. Not that she isn't -perfectly frank about it. She's told me over and over again that -weakness was my besetting danger and that I must stand up straight and -let the winds of freedom blow away my cobwebs. So dear and original, -always, you know. And of course I see her point of view and Barbara -will, no doubt, be a bigger, finer person"--Mrs. Chadwick's voice -trailed off in its echo. "But I don't agree with you, Roger; I don't -agree with you at all!" she took up with sudden vehemence, "about the -trip. I don't agree that my poor Meg is a leper to be avoided until a -legal ceremony has been performed. I think that a cruel -convention--cruel, base and cowardly. She must have suffered so much -already. Nothing will give her so much courage as for us to be seen -standing by her. Adrienne has explained all that most beautifully to -Barbara. And how true love is the most sacred thing in life." - -"My dear friend, Meg isn't a leper, of course, and we all intend to -stand by her. But it is certainly best that a young girl like Barbara -shouldn't be asked to meet, or understand, or exonerate such difficult -situations." - -"That's what I've tried to say to Eleanor," Mrs. Averil murmured. - -"And why not, Roger! Why not!" Mrs. Chadwick cried, surprisingly yet not -convincingly aroused. "Nothing develops the character so much as facing -and understanding difficulty. And as for exoneration--I don't agree with -you, and Adrienne doesn't agree. You and Monica are conventionalists and -we must live on a higher plane than convention. I'm sure I try to, -though it's very hard sometimes, but the noblest things are hardest. -There is nothing to exonerate. Meg was following her own light in doing -what she did." - -"It's not a question of Meg, but of her situation," Oldmeadow returned. - -"And because of her situation, because she is so in need of help and -loyalty, you ask that Barbara should draw back her skirts from her! Oh! -I knew it!" cried Mrs. Chadwick, "I knew that you would feel like that! -That is why I felt it would be happier if you were not here with -Adrienne." - -"You need hardly tell me that," said Oldmeadow smiling. "But it's not a -question of convention, except in so far as convention means right -feeling and good taste. Meg, whatever her lights--and personally I don't -believe that she followed them--has done something that involves pain -and humiliation for all concerned with her, and whether she was or was -not justified in doing it is a moral problem that a child shouldn't be -asked to meet. Such problems should be kept from her until she is old -enough to understand them." - -Mrs. Chadwick's vehemence had only fictitiously sustained her. It -dropped from her now and for a little while she sat silent, and the -confusion of her heart was piteously revealed to her friend as she said -at last, "If there _is_ a war, it will all settle itself, won't it, for -then Barbara couldn't go. I don't try to wriggle out of it. That's most -unfair and untrue. I've promised Adrienne and I agree with Adrienne -about it. I can't explain it clearly, as she does; it's all quite, quite -different when Adrienne explains it. She seems to hold me up and you and -Monica pull me down--oh, yes, you do, Roger. Of course it would kill -me--I know that I should die, if Barbara were to do what Meg has done; -you mustn't think Adrienne _wants_ her to behave like that, you know. -Adrienne only wants people to be brave and follow their light; but your -light needn't be a married man, need it? And sometimes I think it isn't -_really_ so serious--falling in love, you know. I'm sure I thought _I_ -was in love half a dozen times before Francis proposed. It's a question -of seeing what's best for you all round, isn't it, and it can't be best -if it's a married man, can it? Oh! I know I'm saying what Adrienne -wouldn't like, now; because it sounds so worldly and as if I believed in -the French way. But I don't at all. I think love's everything, too. Only -it always seemed to me when I was a girl that love meant white satin and -orange-blossoms; and my poor, poor Meg can never wear those now. I -should feel miserable, quite miserable about her, of course, if Adrienne -weren't here to make me see the big, real things instead of the little -ones. And Barney has been so unkind. Sneering and scoffing at -everything"--her voice quivered. "However, if there's a war, that will -settle it. Barbara couldn't go if there was a war." - - - - -CHAPTER XX - - -The war thus had its uses to Mrs. Chadwick. Barbara did not go to the -Tyrol. By the end of September Oldmeadow and Barney were in training, -one on the Berkshire and one on the Wiltshire downs, and Meg was -ambiguously restored to her family at Coldbrooks. - -Oldmeadow had not seen Barney for many days, when they met one afternoon -at Paddington and travelled together as far as Didcot. They had the -carriage to themselves and though Barney's demeanour was reticent there -were many things about which, it was evident, he found it a relief to be -communicative. It was from him that Oldmeadow learned of Meg's return. - -"She'll be in a pretty box, won't she, if Hayward is killed," he said, -smoking his cigarette and not looking at his friend. "He's over there, -you know, and for my part I think there's very little chance of any of -them coming back alive." - -They both smoked in silence for a little while after this, contemplating -the ordeal in which their country was involved rather than their own -relation to it; but Oldmeadow's mind returned presently to Barney's -difficulties and he asked him if it had been to see Hayward off that -he'd just been up to London. - -Barney, at this, had a quiet sardonic laugh. "Good heavens, no," he -said. "Hayward went in the first week and Adrienne and Palgrave went up -with Meg to see him off. Even if I'd wanted to, I'd have been allowed to -have no hand in that. Adrienne is seeing to it all. Lawyers, money, I -don't know what. No; I went up to spend my leave with old Boyd at his -place in Chelsea. I didn't want to go home. Home is the last place I -want to be just now." - -Oldmeadow at this maintained a silence that could not pretend surprise -and Barney continued in a moment. "Palgrave isn't coming in, you know." - -"You mean he's carrying out his pacifist ideas?" - -"If they are his," said Barney in his colourless yet sardonic voice. -"Any ideas of Palgrave's are likely to be Adrienne's, you know. She got -hold of him from the first." - -"Well, after all," Oldmeadow after another moment felt impelled to say, -"She got hold of you, too. In the same way; by believing in herself and -by understanding you. She thinks she's right." - -"Ha! ha!" laughed Barney and for a moment, an acutely uncomfortable one -for Oldmeadow, he turned his eyes on his friend. "Thinks she's right! -You needn't tell me that, Roger!" - -It had indeed, Oldmeadow felt, hardly been decent of him. - -"I know. Of course she would. But, all the same, people must be allowed -to hold their own opinions." - -"Must they?" said Barney. "At a time like this? Adrienne must, of -course; as a woman she doesn't come into it; she brings other people in, -that is to say, and keeps out herself. Besides she's an American. But -Palgrave shouldn't be allowed the choice. He's dishonouring us all--as -Meg has done. Poor, foolish, wretched Mother! She's seeing it at last, -though she won't allow herself to say it, or, rather, Adrienne won't -allow her--" He checked himself. - -"Dishonour is a strong word, Barney. Palgrave is hardly more than a -boy." - -"Jim Errington is a year younger than Palgrave, and Peter Layard six -months. They're both in. I don't think nineteen is too young to -dishonour your family. If Palgrave committed a murder, he'd be hanged. -But it will no doubt come to conscription and then we'll see where he'll -find himself. Herded in as a Tommy. All this talk of a few months is -folly." - -"I know. Yes. Folly," said Oldmeadow absently. "Have you tried to have -it out with Palgrave, Barney? If he only hears Adrienne's side what can -you expect of him? If you leave them all to sink or swim without you, -you mustn't blame Adrienne for steering as best she can." - -"Sink or swim without me!" Barney echoed. "Why they'd none of them -listen to me. You saw well enough how it was with them that day in July -when you came up. Adrienne is twice as strong as I am when it comes to -anything like a struggle and she has them all firmly under her thumb. -She steers because she intends to steer and intends I shan't. I've tried -nothing with Palgrave, except to keep my hands off him. Mother's talked -to him, and Meg's talked to him; but nothing does any good. Oh, yes; Meg -hangs on Adrienne because she's got nothing else to hang to; but she's -frightfully down on Palgrave all the same. They're all united against -me, but they're not united among themselves by any means. It's not a -peaceful family party at Coldbrooks, I promise you. Poor Mother spends -most of her time shut up in her room crying." - -Barney offered no further information on this occasion and Oldmeadow -asked for no more. It was from Mrs. Aldesey, some weeks later, that he -heard that Eric Hayward had been killed. Mrs. Aldesey was his most -punctual correspondent and her letters, full of pungent, apposite -accounts of how the war was affecting London, the pleasantest -experiences that came to him on the Berkshire downs, where, indeed, he -did not find life unpleasant. Mrs. Aldesey made time for these long -letters after tiring days spent among Belgian refugees and his sense of -comradeship had been immensely deepened by the vast, new experience they -were, from their different angles, sharing. It was difficult, on the -soft October day, to dissociate the mere pleasure of reading her letter -from the miserable news she gave. Yet he knew, stretched at ease after -strenuous exercise, the canvas of his tent idly flapping above him and -the sunlight falling across his feet, that it was very miserable news -indeed and must miserably affect his friends at Coldbrooks. What was to -become of poor Meg now? And after his mind had paused on poor Meg a pang -of memory brought back the face of his setter John. Poor Hayward. - -"She must, of course, find some work at once," Mrs. Aldesey wrote. "The -war does help to solve problems of this sort as nothing else before ever -could. She must nurse, or drive an ambulance and perhaps by the time -it's all over we'll have forgotten irrelevancies that happened so long -ago. Sometimes it feels like that to me and I know I'm much too old to -face the world that will have grown up out of the wreckage of the world -I knew." Mrs. Aldesey, still, always spoke of herself as antique, -relegated and on the shelf. Rather absurd of her, as her friend pointed -out in his reply, when she was obviously one of the people who were -going to make the new world. She was organizing the Belgians in the most -remarkable manner. - -As to Coldbrooks he hesitated. He could hardly see himself writing to -Mrs. Chadwick or to Meg. Of Nancy he felt a little shy. There would be -too much to say to Nancy if he said anything and he allowed the -anonymous calamity that had overtaken his friends to pass without -comment or condolence. But after an interval of some weeks it was from -Nancy herself that he heard. Nancy seemed always to be selected as the -vehicle for other people's emergencies. - -"Dear Roger," she wrote. "You have heard how very unhappy we all are. It -is dreadful to see poor Meg, and Aunt Eleanor makes it really worse for -her. Meg wears mourning, like a widow, and she is terribly bitter about -Palgrave, and about Adrienne, too. Doesn't that seem to you very strange -and unjust? Adrienne is doing for Palgrave what she did for -Meg--standing by him. It is all more unhappy than you can imagine. -Palgrave is at New College, now, you know, and I'm writing, because Aunt -Eleanor's one hope is that you may be able to talk to him. Kindly, you -know, Roger; and not as if you thought him a criminal or a coward; that -is worse than useless, naturally. Palgrave is very arrogant; but you -know what a tender heart he really has and I am sure that he is very -lonely and unhappy. So be kind and understanding, won't you? He really -cares for you and trusts you more than he likes to show; and of course -he would expect you to be against him." - -Oldmeadow was going into Oxford in a week's time and he wrote to -Palgrave and asked him to give him tea. "I've got to talk to you, if -you'll let me," he said, "but I shan't make myself a nuisance, I promise -you. I only want to satisfy myself that you have thought everything out, -and if you have I'll be able to tell your people that they must give up -tormenting themselves and you about it. I shall like talking over your -work with you, too, if I may, and renewing my own Oxford memories." So -conciliatory, so affectionate (and he found it easy to be affectionate -to poor Palgrave) was the tone of the letter that he had a swift reply. -Palgrave would be very glad to see him. - -It was a melancholy, deserted Oxford into which Oldmeadow drove his -little car on a late October afternoon. Most of the youths he saw were -of a nondescript variety, a type to whom Oxford means scholastic -opportunity and nothing more. There were dark-skinned lads from distant -parts of the Empire looking, to Oldmeadow's eye, rather pitiful and -doomed to disappointment, and a hurrying, absorbed little Jap had an -almost empty Broad as a setting for his alien figure. - -Palgrave's name was freshly painted at the bottom of a staircase in the -Garden Quad and Oldmeadow mounted to rooms that most delightfully -overlooked the garden and its catalpa-tree. - -Palgrave was ready for him. The tea was laid and he stood at the table -cutting a cake as Oldmeadow entered. But some one else, too, was ready, -for there, in the window-seat, her gaze fixed on the waning golds and -russets beneath, sat Adrienne Toner. Oldmeadow, very much and very -disagreeably affected, paused at the door. - -"Come in, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, and there was a strange, jaded -eagerness in the gaze she fixed on him. "I've only come for tea. I have -to go directly afterwards. I am staying in Oxford, now, you know. To be -near Palgrave." - -"Meg's turned her out of Coldbrooks," Palgrave announced, standing -still, over the tea-tray, his hands in his pockets while, with bent -head, he looked from under his brows at Oldmeadow. "Meg, you understand; -for whose sake she's gone through everything. We're pariahs together, -now; she and I." - -"It's not quite true or fair to say that, Palgrave," said Adrienne, -whose eyes had returned to the garden. "Meg hasn't turned me out. I felt -it would be happier for her if I weren't there; and for your -Mother--since they feel as they do about what has happened; and happier -for you and me to be together. You can't be surprised at Meg. She is -nearly beside herself with grief." - -Adrienne was very much altered. The magic of the lime-tree scene no -longer lay about her. Her skin was sallow, her eyes sunken, her -projecting mouth was at once stubborn, weary and relaxed. She had been -almost beautiful on that July day and to-day she was definitely ugly. -Oldmeadow saw that some intent inner preoccupation held her thoughts. - -"I _am_ surprised at her; very much surprised," said Palgrave, "though I -might have warned you that Meg wasn't a person worth risking a great -deal for. Oh, yes, she's nearly beside herself all right. She's lost the -man she cared for and she can't, now, ever be made 'respectable.' Oh, I -see further into Meg's grief than you do, my poor Adrienne. She's just -as conventional and unheroic at heart as Mother; and that's what _she_ -minds--more than anything." - -Oldmeadow, sunken in the deep chair Palgrave had drawn for him to the -table, watched the curious interchange, and after a pause, in her jaded -voice, Adrienne from the window-seat commented: "I understand her rage -and misery. It's because her grief is divided and spoiled and tainted -like that that she is distracted." - -"Will you pour out tea?" Palgrave asked her gloomily. "You'll see -anyone's side, always, except your own." - -To this Adrienne, rising and coming forward to the table, made no reply. -She wore a dark dress that recalled to Oldmeadow the one in which he had -first seen her; the short jacket tying across white in front and white -ruffles falling about her neck and hands. A small, dark hat was bent -down about her face. - -Strange, brooding face. What was she thinking of, Oldmeadow wondered, as -he watched her hands, impeded by the falling ruffles, moving with the -old, fumbling gestures among the tea-things; she had constantly to throw -back the ruffles, and the tea-pot, after all, was too heavy for her. It -slipped on one side as she lifted it and the hot tea poured over her -hand. She kept her hold bravely and Oldmeadow rescued her. - -"How stupid I am!" she said, biting her lip. - -"You've scalded your hand," said Palgrave, eyeing her with his air no -longer of rapturous but of gloomy devotion. - -They made Oldmeadow think of comrade political prisoners moving off -together in a convoy to Siberia. There was something as bleak, as -heavy, as uninspired in their aspect. He could not think that Palgrave -could now catch much light or flame from such a companion. They would -trudge through the snow; condemned, but together; to be together was the -best thing, now, that life offered them. - -She said that the scald was nothing and asked to be trusted to go on -with the tea, grasping the handle with resolution. Oldmeadow, however, -standing beside her, insisted on filling the cups for her. - -"You can be allowed to put in the milk and sugar, you see," he said. He -was aware, as he thus succoured and rallied her, of an influx of feeling -like the feeling that came with the uncanny dreams. Here she was, and -reality had caught her. She deserved to be caught, of course; tragic, -meddling Pierrot. But his heart was heavy and gentle; as in his dreams. - -They sat round the table together. On the mantelpiece was a large, -framed photograph of Adrienne; on the walls photographs of a Botticelli -Madonna, a Mantegna from Padua and the da Vinci drawing for the Christ -of the Last Supper. Seeing Oldmeadow's eyes on them Palgrave said: -"Adrienne gave me those. And lots of the books." - -"And don't forget the beautiful cushions, Palgrave," said Adrienne, with -a flicker of her old, contented playfulness. "I'm sure good cushions are -the foundation of a successful study of philosophy." - -The cushions were certainly very good; and very beautiful, as Oldmeadow -commented. "That gorgeous chair, too," said Palgrave. "It ought to make -a Plato of me." - -It was curious, the sense they gave him of trusting him. Were they -aware, if only sub-consciously, that he was feeling Adrienne, her -follies and misdeeds thick upon her, ill-used? Or was it only that they -had come down to such fundamental securities as were left to them and -felt that with him, at all events, they were in the hands of an -impartial judge? - -"It's a happy life Meg and Mother lead at Coldbrooks, as you may -imagine," Palgrave took up the theme that preoccupied him. "They only -see Nancy and Aunt Monica, of course. Barbara is at school and Barney, -as you are probably aware, never comes near his disgraced sister. Would -you believe it, Roger," Palgrave went on, while Oldmeadow saw that a -dull colour crept up to Adrienne's face and neck as her husband was thus -mentioned, "Meg blames Adrienne now for the whole affair! About Eric and -herself! Actually! On the one hand Eric is her hero for whom she'll -mourn for ever and on the other Adrienne is responsible for the fact -that she's not 'respectable' and can't claim to be his widow. Oh, don't -ask me how she contrives to work it out! Women like Meg don't need logic -when they've a thong in their hands and want to use it. And Adrienne's -shoulders are bared for the lash! God! It makes me fairly mad to think -of it!" - -"Please, Palgrave!" Adrienne supplicated in a low voice. She did not -eat. She had drunk her tea and sat looking down at her plate. "Don't -think of it any more. Meg is very, very unhappy. We can hardly imagine -what the misery and confusion of Meg's heart must be." - -"Oh, you'll make excuses for anyone, Adrienne! You're not a shining -example of happiness either, if it comes to that. It's atrocious of Meg -to treat you as she does. Atrocious of her to hold you responsible." - -"But I am responsible," said Adrienne, while the dull flush still dyed -her face. "I've always said that I was responsible. It was I who -persuaded them to go." - -"Yes. To go. Instead of staying and being lovers secretly. I know all -about it. And no doubt Meg would rather it had been so now. And so would -Mother!" Palgrave ground his teeth on a laugh. "That's where morality -lands them! Pretty, isn't it!" - -A silence fell and then Adrienne rose and said that Mr. Jackson would be -waiting for her. "He's coming at half-past five," she said, and, with -his gloomy tenderness, Palgrave informed Oldmeadow that she was reading -logic and Plato; "to keep up with me, you know." - -Adrienne, smiling faintly, laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder as -she went past his chair. "Come in to-night, after dinner, and tell me -what you decide," she said. - -"I'll have no news for you," Palgrave replied. - -Oldmeadow had gone to hold the door open for her and, as she paused -there to give him her hand, he heard her murmur: "Will you come down -with me?" - -"Let me see you to the bottom of the stair," he seized the intimation, -and, as she went before him, she said, still in the low, purposeful -voice, and he felt sure now that this had been her intention in coming -to tea: "It's only so that you shan't think I'll oppose you. If you can -persuade him, I shall not oppose it. I think he's right. But it's too -hard. I mean, I hope you can persuade him that it's right to go." - -She had stepped out on to the threshold at the foot of the stairs and he -paused behind her, astonished. "You want me to persuade him of what you -think wrong?" - -She stood still looking out at the sunny quadrangle. "People must think -for themselves. I don't know who is right or who is wrong. Perhaps I've -influenced Palgrave. Perhaps he wouldn't have felt like this if it -hadn't been for me. I don't know. But if you can make him feel it right -to go, I shall be glad." She stepped out into the quadrangle. - -"You mean," said Oldmeadow, following her, and strangely moved, "that -you'd rather have him killed than stay behind like this?" - -"It would be much happier for him, wouldn't it," she said. "If he could -feel it right to go." - -They were under the arch of the Library, she still going slowly, before -him, and Oldmeadow stopped her there. "Mrs. Barney, forgive me--may I -ask you something?" He had put his hand on her shoulder and she paused -and faced him. "It's something personal, and I've no right to be -personal with you, as I know. But--have you been to see Barney at -Tidworth?" - -As Oldmeadow spoke these Words, Adrienne turned away vehemently, and -then stood still, as though arrested in her impulse of flight by an -irresistible desire to listen. "Barney does not want to see me," she -said, speaking with difficulty. - -"You think so," said Oldmeadow. "And he may think so. But you ought to -see each other at a time like this. He may be ordered to France at any -time now." He could not see her face. - -"Do you mean," she said, after a moment, keeping the rigidity of her -listening poise, "that he won't come to say good-bye?" - -"I know nothing at all," said Oldmeadow. "I can only infer how far the -mischief between you has gone. And I'm most frightfully sorry for it. -I've been sorry for Barney; but now I'm sorry for you, too. I think -you're being unfairly treated. But yours have been the mistakes, Mrs. -Barney, and it's for you to take the first step." - -"Barney doesn't want to see me," she repeated, and she went on, while he -heard, growing in her voice, the note of the old conviction: "He has -made mistakes, too. He has treated me unfairly, too. I can't take the -first step." - -"Don't you love him, then?" said Oldmeadow, and in his voice was the -note of the old harshness. - -"Does he love me?" she retorted, turning now, with sudden fire, and -fixing her eyes upon him. "Why should he think I want to see him if he -doesn't want to see me? Why should I love, if he doesn't? Why should I -sue to Barney?" - -"Oh," Oldmeadow almost groaned. "Don't take that line; don't, I beg of -you. You're both young. And you've hurt him so. You've meant to hurt -him; I've seen it! I've seen it, Mrs. Barney. If you'll put by your -pride everything can grow again." - -"No! no! no!" she cried almost violently, and he saw that she was -trembling. "Some things don't grow again! It's not like plants, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Some things are like living creatures; and they can die. They -can die," she repeated, now walking rapidly away from him out into the -large quadrangle with its grass plot cut across by the late sunshine. He -followed her for a moment and he heard her say, as she went: "It's -worse, far worse, not to mean to hurt. It's worse to care so little that -you don't know when you are hurting." - -"No, it's not," said Oldmeadow. "That's only being stupid; not cruel." - -"It's not thinking that is cruel; it's not caring that is cruel," she -repeated, passionately, half muttering the words, and whether with tears -of fury he could not say. - -He stood still at the doorway. "Good-bye, then," he said. And not -looking behind her, as she went out swiftly into New College Lane, she -answered, still on the same note of passionate protest: "Good-bye, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Good-bye." He watched her small, dark figure hurry along in -the shadow of the wall until the turning hid it from view. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - - -Palgrave, apparently, had formed no conjectures as to their conversation -and was thinking still of Adrienne's wrongs rather than of his own -situation. "Did you take her home?" he said. "I see you're sorry for -her, Roger. It's really too abominable, you know. I really can't say -before her what I think, I really can't say before you what I think of -Barney's treatment of her; because I know you agree with him." - -Oldmeadow felt all the more able, shaken though he was by the interview -below, to remember, because of it, what he thought. "If you mean that I -don't consider Barney in the very least responsible for the death of the -baby, I do agree with him," he said. - -"Apart from that, apart from the baby," said Palgrave, controlling his -temper, it was evident, in his wish to keep the ear of the impartial -judge, "though what the loss of a child means to a woman like Adrienne I -don't believe you can guess; apart from whose was the responsibility, he -ought to have seen, towards the end, at all events, if he'd eyes in his -head and a heart in his breast, that all she asked was to forgive him -and take him back. She was proud, of course. What woman of her power and -significance wouldn't have been? She couldn't be the first to move. But -Barney must have seen that her heart was breaking." - -"Well," said Oldmeadow, taking in, with some perplexity, this new -presentation of Adrienne Toner; "what about his heart? She'd led it a -pretty dance. And you forget that I don't consider she had anything to -forgive him." - -"His heart!" Palgrave echoed scornfully, yet with a sorrowful scorn; "He -mended his heart quick enough. Went and fell in love with Nancy, who -only asks to be let alone." - -"He's always loved Nancy. She's always been like a sister to him. -Adrienne has infected you with her groundless jealousy." - -"Groundless indeed!" Palgrave reached for his pipe and began to stuff it -vindictively. "Nancy sees well enough, poor dear! She's had to keep him -off by any device she could contrive. She's a good deal more than a -sister to him, now. She's the only person in the world for him. You can -call it jealousy if you like. That's only another name for a broken -heart." - -"I don't know what Barney's feeling may be, Palgrave, but I do know, it -was quite plain to me, that Adrienne was jealous long before she had any -ground for jealousy. If Nancy's all Barney's got left now, it's simply -because Adrienne has taken everything else from him. You don't seem to -realize that Adrienne drove him from her with her airs of martyrdom. -Took vengeance on him, too; what else was the plan for Barbara going -abroad with you? I don't want to speak unkindly of her. It's quite true; -I'm sorry for her. I've never liked her so well. But the reason is that -she's beginning, I really believe, to find out that her own feet are of -clay, while her mistake all along has been to imagine herself above -ordinary humanity. All our feet are of clay, and we never get very far -unless we are aware of the weakness in our structure and look out for a -continual tendency to crumble. You don't get over it by pretending you -don't need to walk and imagining you have wings instead of feet." - -Palgrave, drawing stiffly at his pipe during this little homily, -listened, gloomily yet without resentment. "You see, where you make -_your_ mistake--if you'll allow the youthful ass you consider me to say -so--is that you've always imagined Adrienne to be a self-righteous prig -who sets herself up above others. She doesn't; she doesn't," Palgrave -repeated with conviction. "She'd accept the feet of clay if you'll grant -her the heart of flame--for everybody; the wings--for everybody. There's -your mistake, Roger. Adrienne believes that everybody has wings as well -as herself; and the only difference she sees in people is that some have -learned and some haven't how to use them. She may be mortal woman--bless -her--and have made mistakes; but they're the mistakes of flame; not of -earthiness." - -"You are not an ass, Palgrave," said Oldmeadow, after a moment. "You are -wise in everything but experience; and you see deep. Suppose we come to -a compromise. You've owned that Adrienne may make mistakes and I own -that I may misjudge her. I see what you believe about her and I see why -you believe it. I've seen her at her worst, no doubt, and to you she's -been able to show only her best. So let it rest at that. What I came to -talk about, you know, was you." - -"I know," said Palgrave, and he gave a deep sigh. - -"Be patient with me," said Oldmeadow. "After all, we belong to the same -generation. You can't pretend that I'm an old fogey who's lost the -inspirations of his youth and has marched so far down towards the grave -that the new torches coming up over the horizon are hidden from him." - -"That's rather nice, you know, Roger," Palgrave smiled faintly. "No; -you're not an old fogey. But all the same there's not much torch about -you." - -"It's rather sad, isn't it," Oldmeadow mused, "that we should always -seem to begin with torches and then to spend the rest of our lives in -quenching them. It may be, you know, that we're only trying to hold them -straight, so that the wind shan't blow them out. However!--you'll let me -talk. That's the point." - -"Of course you may. You've been awfully decent," Palgrave murmured. - -"Well, then, it seems to me you're not seeing straight," said Oldmeadow. -"It's not crude animal patriotism--as you'd put it--that's asked of you. -It's a very delicate discrimination between ideals." - -"I know! I know!" said Palgrave. The traces of mental anguish were on -his worn young face. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose to -lean against the mantelpiece." I don't suppose I can explain," he said, -staring out at the sky. "I suppose that with me the crude animal thing -is the personal inhibition. I can't do it. I'd rather, far, be killed -than have to kill other men. That's the unreasoning part, the -instinctive part, but it's a part of one's nature that I don't believe -one can violate without violating one's very spirit. I've always been -different, I know, from most fellows of my age and class. I've always -hated sport--shooting and hunting. The fox, the stag, the partridge, -have always spoiled it for me. Oh, I know they have to be killed--poor -brutes! I know that; but I can't myself be the butcher." - -"You'll own, though, that there must be butchers," said Oldmeadow, after -a little meditation. He felt himself in the presence of something -delicate, distorted and beautiful. "And you'll own, won't you, when it -comes to a war like this, when not only our national honour but our -national existence is at stake, that some men must kill others. Isn't it -then, baldly, that you profit, personally, by other people doing what -you won't do? You'll eat spring lamb as long as there are butchers to -kill the lamb for you, and you'll be an Englishman and take from England -all that she has to give you--including Oxford and Coldbrooks--and let -other men do the nasty work that makes the survival of England and -Oxford and Coldbrooks possible. That's what it comes to, you know. -That's all I ask you to look at squarely." - -"I know, I know," Palgrave repeated. He had looked at little else, poor -boy. Oldmeadow saw that. "But that's where the delicate discrimination -between ideals comes in, Roger. That's where I have to leave intuition, -which says 'No,' and turn to reason. And the trouble is that for me -reason says 'No,' too. Because humanity--all of it that counts--has -outgrown war. That's what it comes to. It's a conflict between a -national and an humanitarian ideal. There are enough of us in the world -to stop war, if we all act together; and why, because others don't, -should I not do what I feel right? Others may follow if only a few of us -stand out. If no one stands out, no one will ever follow. And you can't -kill England like that. England is more than men and institutions," -Palgrave still gazed at the sky. "It's an idea that will survive; -perhaps the more truly in the spirit for perishing in the flesh, if it -really came to that. Look at Greece. She's dead, if you like; yet what -existing nation lives as truly? It is Grecian minds we think with and -Grecian eyes we see with. It's Plato's conception of the just man being -the truly happy man--even if the whole world's against him--that is the -very meaning of our refusal to go with the world." - -"You'll never stop war by refusal so long as the majority of men still -believe in it," said Oldmeadow. "There are not enough of you to stop it -now. The time to stop it is before it comes; not while it's on. It's -before it begins that you must bring the rest of humanity not to behave -in ways that make it inevitable. I'm inclined to think that ideas can -perish," he went on, as Palgrave, to this, made no reply, "as far as -their earthly manifestation goes, that is, if enough men and -institutions are destroyed. If Germany could conquer and administer -England, I'm inclined to think the English idea would perish. And war -need not be unspiritual. Killing our fellow-men need not mean hating -them. There's less hatred in war, I imagine, than in some of the -contests of peaceful civilian life. Put it fairly on the ground of -humanitarianism, then, Palgrave; not of nationality. It's the whole -world that is threatened by a hateful idea, by the triumph of all you -most fear and detest, and unless we strive against it with all we are -and have it seems to me that we fall short of our duty not only as -Englishmen, but as humanitarians. Put it at that, Palgrave: would you -really have had England stand by and not lift a finger when Belgium was -invaded and France menaced?" - -Palgrave was not ready with his reply and he turned away while he looked -for it and shuffled the papers on his desk with a nervous hand. "Yes, I -would," he said at last. "Hateful as it is to have to say it--I would -have stood by." He came back to his place at the mantelpiece and looked -down at Oldmeadow as he spoke. "The choice, of course, is hateful; but I -think we should have stood by and helped the sufferers and let France -and Germany fight it out. It always comes back to them, doesn't it? -They're always fighting it out; they always will, till they find it's no -good and that they can't annihilate each other; which is what they both -want to do. Oh, I've read too many of the young French neo-Catholics to -be able to believe that the hateful idea was all on one side. Their -ideals don't differ much, once you strip them of their theological -tinsel, from those of the Germans. Germany happens to be the aggressor -now; but if the militarist party in France had had the chance, they'd -have struck as quickly." - -"The difference--and it's an immense one--is that the militarist party -in France wouldn't have had the chance. The difference is that it -doesn't govern and mould public opinion. It's not a menace to the world. -It's only a sort of splendid pet, kept in a Zoo, for the delectation of -a certain class and party. Whereas Germany's the _bona fide_ hungry -tigress at large. What you really ask of England, Palgrave, is that she -should be a Buddha and lie down and let the tigress, after finishing -France, devour her, too. It really comes to that. Buddhism is the only -logical basis for your position, and I don't believe, however sorry one -may be for hungry tigresses, that the right way to deal with them is to -let them eat you. The Christian philosophy of the incarnation is the -true one. Matter does make a spiritual difference. It does make a -difference, a real difference, that the ideal should be made flesh. It's -important to the world, spiritually, that the man rather than the -tigress should survive." - -"Christ gave his life," said Palgrave, after a moment. - -"I'm not speaking of historical personages; but of eternal truths," said -Oldmeadow. - -But he knew already that he spoke in vain. Palgrave had turned away his -eyes again and on his sad young face he read the fixity of a fanatic -idealism. He had not moved him, though he had troubled him. No one would -move Palgrave. He doubted, now, whether Adrienne herself had had much -influence over him. It was with the sense of pleading a lost cause that -he said, presently, "Adrienne hopes you'll feel it right to go." - -Palgrave at this turned a profound gaze upon him. "I know it," he said. -"Though she's never told me so. It's the weakness of her love, its -yearning and tenderness, not its strength, that makes her want it. -Because she knows it would be so much easier. But she can't go back on -what she's meant to me. It's because of that, in part at all events, -that I've been able to see steadily what I mean to myself. That's what -she helps one to do, you know. Hold to yourself; your true, deep self. -It's owing to her that I can only choose in one way--even if I can't -defend it properly. It seems to come back to metaphysics, doesn't it?" - -"Like everything else," said Oldmeadow. - -"Yes. Like everything else. It would take a four-years' course in Greats -to argue it out, Roger. Come back to me--if you're here and I'm here -then--and we'll see what we can make of it." - -"I will," said Oldmeadow, rising, for the room was growing dark. "And -before that, I hope." - -"After all, you know," Palgrave observed, "England isn't in any danger -of becoming Buddhistic; there's not much nihilism about her, is there, -but hardly much Christianity, either. England has evolved all sorts of -things besides Oxford and Coldbrooks. She's evolved industrialism and -factory-towns." - -"I don't consider industrialism and factory-towns incompatible with -Christianity, you know," Oldmeadow observed. "Good-bye, my dear boy." - -"Good-bye, Roger," Palgrave grasped his hand. "You've been most awfully -kind." - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - - -"Isn't it becoming to him, Mother? And how tall he looks!" said Nancy, -holding Oldmeadow off in his khaki for displayal. - -He had only written a line of his failure and that he would come as soon -as he could and see them all and tell in full of his interview with -Palgrave. And he had motored over to The Little House this afternoon in -early November. - -Nancy was showing an unexpected gaiety. "What a nice grilled-salmon -colour you are, too," she said. - -He divined the self-protective instinct under the gaiety. Most of the -women in England were being gayer and more talkative at this time, in -order to keep up. Nancy was thin and white; but she was keeping up. And -she had put on a charming dress to receive him in. - -"I've been grilled all right; out on the downs," he said. "But it's more -like cold storage just now, with these frosts at night. Yes; the big -cup, please. I'm famished for tea. Ah! that's something like! It smells -like your rose outside. I sniffed it as I waited at the door. Wonderful -for such a late blooming." - -"Isn't it," said Mrs. Averil. "And I only put it in last autumn. It's -doing beautifully; but I've cherished it. And now tell us about -Palgrave." - -He felt reluctant to tell about Palgrave. The impression that remained -with him of Palgrave was that impression of beauty and distortion and he -did not want to have to disentangle his feelings or to seem to put -Palgrave in the wrong. It was so sweet, too, after the long, chilly -drive over the empty uplands, to sit here and forget the war, although -it was for scenes like this, for girls like Nancy, women like Mrs. -Averil--with so much else--that the war was so worth fighting. He turned -his thoughts back to the realities that underlay the happy appearances -and was aware, as he forced himself to tell, of what must seem a note of -advocacy in his voice. "He can't think differently, I'm afraid," he -said. "It's self-sacrifice, not selfishness, that is moving him." - -"He can't think differently while Adrienne is living there," said Mrs. -Averil. "He didn't tell you, I suppose, that she has now taken up her -abode in Oxford in order to study philosophy with him?" - -He was rather uncomfortably aware of the disingenuousness that must now -be made apparent in his avoidance of all mention of Adrienne. - -"I saw her," he said, and he knew that it was lamely. "She was there -when I got there." - -"You saw her!" Mrs. Averil exclaimed. "But then, of course you didn't -convince him. I might have known it. Of course she would not let you see -him alone." - -"But she did let me see him alone. That was what she wanted. And she was -there only in order to tell me what she wanted. She wants him to go." - -Mrs. Averil was eyeing him with such astonishment that he turned to -Nancy with his explanations. But Mrs. Averil would not leave him to -Nancy's sympathy. "It's rather late in the day for her to want him to -go," she said. "She may be sorry for what she's done; but it's her -work." - -"Well, she's sorry for her work. That's what it comes to. And I'm sorry -for her," said Oldmeadow. - -"Good heavens! The cleverness of that woman!" Mrs. Averil exclaimed. "If -she can't be powerful, she'll be pitiful! She's worked on your feelings; -I can see that, Roger. And I thought you, at least, were immune. Well; -she does not work on mine. I am not in the least sorry for her." - -"She's being unfairly treated," said Oldmeadow. "It's grotesque that Meg -should have turned upon her." - -"And Eleanor has, too, you know," said Mrs. Averil. "It's grotesque, if -you like; but I see a grim justice in it. She made them do things and -believe things that weren't natural to them and now she's lost her power -and they see things as they are." - -"It's because she's failed that they've turned against her," said Nancy. -"If she'd succeeded they would have gone on accepting what she told them -and making her their idol." - -"Adrienne mustn't fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only justification -for Adrienne is to be in the right. If the blood of Saint Januarius -doesn't liquefy, why should you keep it in a shrine? She's a woman who -has quarrelled with her husband and disgraced her sister and -brother-in-law, and broken her mother-in-law's heart. You can't go on -making an idol of a saint who behaves like that." - -"She never claimed worldly success," said Nancy. "She never told Meg to -go so that she could get married afterwards; she never told Palgrave -that war was wrong because it was easier not to fight." - -"Oh, yes, she did claim worldly success, really," said Mrs. Averil, -while her eyes rested on her daughter with a tenderness that contrasted -with her tone. "Her whole point was that if you were right -spiritually--'poised' she called it, you remember--all those other -things would be added unto you. I've heard her claim that if you were -poised you could get anything you really wanted. I asked her once if I -should find a ten-pound note under the sofa-cushion every morning after -breakfast if I could get poised sufficiently!" Mrs. Averil laughed, -still more dryly while she still maintained her tender gaze and Nancy -said, smiling a little: "She might have put it there for you if she'd -been sure you were poised." - -"Well, let us bury Adrienne for the present," said Mrs. Averil. "Tell -Roger about your nursing plans. She may go to London, Roger, this -winter, and I'm to be left alone." - -"You're to be left to take care of Aunt Eleanor, if I do go," said -Nancy; and Mrs. Averil said that there must certainly be some one left -to take care of poor Eleanor. - -Oldmeadow went up to Coldbrooks next morning. The first person he saw -was old Johnson at the door and he remembered Eleanor Chadwick's griefs -on his account. Nothing, now, could have been kept from Johnson and his -face bore the marks of the family calamities. He was aged and whitened -and his voice had armed itself, since the downfall of his grave, -vicarious complacency, with solemn cadences. - -"Yes, sir. The ladies will be very glad to see you, sir. These are sad -days for them--the family dispersed as it is." - -Johnson defined the situation as he felt that it could be most fittingly -defined and Oldmeadow inwardly applauded his "dispersed." - -The drawing-room, into which Johnson ushered him, had, for the first -time in his memory of it, a mournful air. It had always been shabby, and -these were the same faded chintzes, the same worn rugs; but now, -fireless and flowerless, it neither spoke nor smiled and, with the sense -it gave of an outlived epoch, it was almost spectral. The photographs -all looked like the photographs of dead people and the only similitude -of life was the loud, silly ticking of the French clock on the -mantelpiece; Mrs. Chadwick's cherished clock; one of her -wedding-presents. - -"I'm afraid it's rather chilly, sir," said Johnson. "No one has sat here -of an evening now for a long time." He put a match to the ranged logs, -drew the blinds up farther so that the autumnal sunlight might more -freely enter, and left him. - -Oldmeadow went to the window and turned over the magazines, a month old, -that lay on a table there. - -He was standing so when Meg entered, and she had half the length of the -room to traverse before they met. She was in black, in deep black; but -more beautiful than he had ever seen her; her tossed auburn locks bound -low on her forehead with a black ribbon, her white throat upright, her -eyes hard with their readiness, their resource. Beautiful and -distressing. It distressed him terribly to see that hardness in her -eyes. - -"How do you do, Roger," she said, giving him her hand. "It's good to see -you. Mother will be glad." - -They seated themselves on one of the capacious sofas and she questioned -him quickly, competently, while the hard eyes seemed to measure him lest -he measure her. It was almost the look of the _déclassée_ woman who -forestalls withdrawal in an interlocutor. But, as he answered her -quietly, his fond regard upon her, her defences began to fall. "It's the -only life, a soldier's, isn't it?" she said. "At all times, really. But, -at a time like this, anything else seems despicable, doesn't it; -contemptibly smug and safe. The uniform is so becoming to you. You look -a soldier already. One feels that men will trust and follow you. Didn't -you burn with rage and shame, too, when, for those four days, it seemed -we might not come in?" - -"I felt too sure we should come in, to burn with rage and shame," said -Oldmeadow. - -"Ah! but it was not so sure, I'm afraid," said Meg, and in her eyes, no -longer hard, wild lights seemed to pass and repass. "I'm afraid that -there are nearly enough fools and knaves in England to wreck us. Not -quite enough, thank heaven! But, for those four days, Eric was terribly -afraid. He was killed, you know, Roger, very splendidly, leading his -men." - -"I know, Meg. My dear Meg," Oldmeadow murmured. - -"Oh! I don't regret it! I don't regret it!" Meg cried, while her colour -rose and her young breast lifted. "It's the soldier's death! The -consecrating, heroic death! He was ready. And deaths like that -atone--for the others. He was not killed instantaneously, Roger." - -"I didn't know," said Oldmeadow, looking at her with a pitying, troubled -gaze. - -"He lived for a day and night afterwards," said Meg, looking back, -tearless. "They carried him to a barn. Only his man was with him. There -was no one to dress his dreadful wound; no food. The man got him some -water, at the risk of his own life. He was conscious until the end and -he suffered terribly." - -Oldmeadow dropped his eyes before her fierce stare while, strangely, -dimly, there passed through his mind the memory of the embarrassed, -empty, handsome young face in the brougham and, again, the memory of his -dog John. He had seen John die and his eyes of wistful appeal. So Eric -Hayward's eyes might have looked as he lay in the barn dying. - -"Oh, Roger!" Meg said suddenly, seizing his hand. "Kill them! Kill them! -Oh, revenge him! I was not with him! Think of it! I would have had no -right to have been with him--had it been possible. I did not know till a -week later. He was buried there. His man buried him." - -"My poor, poor child," said Oldmeadow, clasping her hands. - -But, at once, taking refuge from his pity and from her own desperate -pain: "So you've seen Palgrave," she said. "And he isn't going. I knew -it was useless. I told Mother it was useless--with that stranger--that -American, with him. She has disgraced us all.--Wretched boy! Hateful -woman!" - -"Meg, Meg; be soldierly. He wouldn't have spoken like that." - -"He never liked her! Never!" she cried. "I knew he didn't, even at the -time she was flattering and cajoling us. I saw that she bewildered him -and that he accepted her only because she was mine. How I loathe myself -for having listened to her! How I loathe her! All that she ever wanted -was power! Power over other people's lives! She'd commit any crime for -that!" - -"You seem to me cruelly unfair," he said. - -"No! no! I'm not unfair! You know I'm not!" she cried. "You always saw -the truth about her--from the very beginning. You never fell down and -worshipped her, like the rest of us. And she knew that you were her -enemy and warned us against you. Oh--why did Barney marry her!" - -"I never worshipped her; but I never thought her base and hateful." - -"You never knew her as I did; that was all. And I never knew her until I -came back and found her doing to Palgrave what she had done to us. -Paladin! Did you hear her call him Paladin? Always flattery! Always to -make one think one was wonderful, important, mysterious! She forced us -to go away, Roger. Sometimes I think it was hypnotism; that she uses her -will-power consciously. We did not want to go. We did not want the -divorce and the scandal." - -"What did you want, then, Meg?" - -She felt the gravity of his tone but, like a fierce Maenad, she snatched -at the torch, not caring how it revealed her. "What of it! What if we -had been secret lovers! Who would have known! Who would have been -harmed! Some people go on for years and years. His wife loved another -man. He had no one. Why should we have been pushed--such pitiful fools -we were--into displaying our love to the world and being crushed by it! -Oh, he was so loyal, so brave; but it made him very, very unhappy. Oh, I -was cruel to him sometimes! I used to reproach him sometimes! Oh, Roger! -Roger!--" She broke into wild tears and stumbled to her feet. - -As she reached the door, covering her face with her hands, her mother -opened it and, meeting her on the threshold, Meg, with almost the effect -of beating her aside with the other impediments to her rage and grief, -pushed past her so that the knitting Mrs. Chadwick held was flung to the -floor, the ball of khaki wool running rapidly away under a sofa and the -socks and needles dangling at her feet. - -She stood looking down at them with a curious apathy and, as Oldmeadow -went to help and greet her, he saw that as much as Meg was wild she was -dulled and quiet. - -"Meg is so very, very violent," she said, as he disentangled the wool -and restored her sock and ball to her. She spoke with listlessness -rather than sympathy. - -"Poor child," said Oldmeadow. "One can hardly wonder at it. But it makes -a wretched existence for you, I'm afraid. You and she oughtn't to be -alone together." - -He drew her to a chair and, seating herself, her faded face and eyes -that had lost their old look of surprise turned to the light, Mrs. -Chadwick assented, "It's very fatiguing to live with, certainly. -Sometimes I really think I must go away for a little while and have a -change. Nancy would come and stay with Meg, you know. But I can't miss -Barney's last weeks. He comes to us, now, again. And it might not be -right to leave Meg. One must not think of oneself at a time like this, -must one?" The knitting lay in her lap and she was twisting and -untwisting her handkerchief after her old fashion; but her fingers -moved slowly and without agitation and Oldmeadow saw that some spring of -life in her had been broken. - -"The best plan would be that Meg should, as soon as possible, take up -some work," he said, "and that you and Nancy should go away. Work is the -only thing for Meg now. She'll dash herself to pieces down here; and you -with her. There'll soon be plenty to do. Nursing and driving -ambulances." - -"Nancy is going to nurse, you know," said Mrs. Chadwick. "But she won't -go as long as we need her here. She has promised me that. I don't know -what I should do without Nancy. I shouldn't care to be nursed by Meg -myself, if I were a wounded soldier. She is so very restless and would -probably forget quite simple things like giving one a handkerchief or -seeing that hot-water-bottles were wrapped up before she put them to -one's feet. A friend of mine--Amy Hatchard--such a pretty woman, though -her hair was bright, bright red--and I never cared for that--had the -soles of her feet nearly scorched off once by a careless nurse. Dear -Nancy. I often think of Nancy now, Roger. I believe, you know, that if -Adrienne had not come Nancy and Barney might have married. How happy we -should all have been; though she has so little money." - -"I wish you could all think a little more kindly of Adrienne," said -Oldmeadow after a silence. Mrs. Chadwick had begun to knit. "I must tell -you that I myself feel differently about her." - -"Do you, Roger?" said Mrs. Chadwick, without surprise. "You have a very -judicious and balanced mind, I know; even when you were hardly more -than a boy Francis noticed it and said that he'd rather go by your -opinion than by that of most of the men he knew. I always remembered -that, afterwards. Till she came. And then I believed in her rather than -in you. You thought us all far too fond of her from the very first. And -now we have certainly changed. Meg is certainly very violent; much more -violent than I could ever be.... I am sorry for Adrienne. I don't think -she meant to do us any harm--as Meg believes." - -"She only meant to do you good, I am sure of it. I saw her in Oxford, -let me tell you about it, when I went in to see Palgrave. She is very -unhappy. She wants Palgrave to go. She wants him to feel it right to go. -It's not she, really, who is keeping him back now." - -"My poor Palgrave. Meg is very unkind about him; very bitter and unkind; -her own brother. But it was very wrong of Adrienne to go and set up -housekeeping in Oxford near him. You must own that, Roger. She may not -be keeping him back; but she is aiding and abetting him always. It made -Barney even more miserable and disgusted than he was before. And it -looks so very odd. Though I don't think that anyone could ever gossip -about Adrienne. There is something about her that makes that -impossible." - -"There certainly is. I am glad she is with Palgrave, poor boy." - -"I am glad you are sorry for him, Roger"--Mrs. Chadwick dropped a -needle. "How clumsy I am. My fingers seem all to have turned to thumbs. -Thank you so much. I try to make as many socks as I can for our poor -men; fingering wool; not wheeling, which is so much rougher to the -feet. I'm sure I'd rather march, and, if it came to that, die in -fingering than in wheeling. Just as I've always felt, foolish as it may -sound, that if I had to be drowned I'd rather it were in warm, soapy -water than in cold salt. Not that one is very likely, ever, to drown in -one's bath. But tell me about Adrienne and Palgrave, Roger, and what -they said." - -Mrs. Chadwick's discourse seemed, beforehand, to make anything he might -have to tell irrelevant and, even while he tried to make her see what he -had seen, he felt it to be a fruitless effort. - -There was indeed no enmity to plead against. Only a deep exhaustion. -Adrienne had pressed too heavily on the spring and it was broken. - -"I'm sure she is very sorry to have made so much mischief, but she isn't -what I thought her, Roger," she said, shaking her head, when he had -finished. "I'm sorry for her, but I used to believe her to be a sort of -saint and now I know that she is very far indeed from being one." - -"The mere fact of failure doesn't deprive you of sainthood," said -Oldmeadow, remembering Nancy's plea. "You haven't less reason now than -you had then for believing her one." - -But even with her broken spring Mrs. Chadwick had not lost all her -shrewdness. It flickered in the sad eyes she lifted from the khaki sock. -"Some kinds of failure do, Roger. That gift of healing, you remember; -all she could do for people in that way; she has quite, quite lost it. -That is a reason. It's that more than anything that has made me feel -differently about her." - -"Lost it?" He felt strangely discomposed, little as the gift of healing -had ever impressed him. - -"Quite," Mrs. Chadwick repeated. "I think it distressed her dreadfully -herself. I think she counted upon it more than upon anything, perhaps -without knowing she did. It must have made her seem so sure to herself, -mustn't it? The first time was before the war, just a little after you -were here that day in the summer--dear me, how long ago it seems; and I -had one of my headaches, one of the worst I ever had. I was so -dreadfully troubled, you know, about Barbara and Meg. And Adrienne came -and sat by me as she used to and put her hand on my forehead; and I know -it wasn't my lack of faith, for I quite believed it would get well; but -instead of the peaceful feeling, it grew much worse; oh, _much_. As if -red hot needles were darting through my eyes and an iron weight pressing -down on my head. And such tumult and distress. I had to tell her. I had -to ask her to take away her hand. Oh, she felt it very much, poor thing, -and grew very white and said it must be because she was still not -strong; not quite herself. But I knew then that it was because she was -not _right_; not what I had thought her. I began to suspect, from that -very moment, that I had been mistaken; because hypnotizing people isn't -the same as being a saint, is it, Roger? and--I think you said so once, -long ago; and that was all that she had done; hypnotized us all to think -her good and wonderful. Later on, after Meg had come, I let her try once -more, though it quite frightened me; she looked so strange. And!--oh, -dear--it was dreadful. It distressed me dreadfully. She suddenly put her -hands before her face and sat quite still and then she burst into tears -and got up and ran out of the room, crying. It made me feel quite ill. -And of course I knew there could be nothing saintly about a person who -made you feel like that--who could feel like that themselves, and break -down." - -"Even saints have their times of darkness and dryness," Oldmeadow found -after a little time had passed. The picture she put before him hurt him. -"It was an error of judgment to have believed her a saint because she -could hypnotize you--if that was what it was; but the fact that she -can't hypnotize you any longer--that she's too unhappy to have any power -of that sort--doesn't prove she's not a saint. Of course she's not. Why -should she be?" - -"I'm sure I don't know why she should be; but she used to behave as if -she were one, didn't she? And when I saw that she wasn't one in that way -I began to see that she wasn't in other ways, too. It was she who made -me so unjust, so unkind to poor Barney. _She_ was so unjust and so -unkind; and I never saw it till then. I was blind till then; though you -saw very well, that day you came to Connaught Square, that it was a sort -of spell she cast. It was a spell, Roger. The moment I saw her, after -the baby's death, I forgot everything she'd done and felt I loved her -again. She willed me to. So as to get power over me. Everything, always, -with her, was to get power over other people's lives," said Mrs. -Chadwick, and as he had, in the past, heard echoes of Adrienne in all -she said, now he heard echoes of Meg, "It's by willing it, you know. -Some people practise it like five-finger exercises. You have to sit -quite still and shut your eyes and concentrate. Meg has heard how it's -done. I don't pretend to understand; but that must have been her way. -And she made poor Barney miserable and set me against him at once; you -said so yourself, Roger, and blinded me to all the cruel things she did. -It was to punish him, you know. To make him feel he was dreadfully wrong -and she quite right; about Meg, and everything else; for you came in, -too. It used to be so dreadful at Torquay. I knew it would be sad there; -but I never guessed how sad it would be--with that horrid blue, blue -sea. She used to sit, day after day, on the terrace of the house, and -gaze and gaze at the sea and if Barney would come, so lovingly, and ask -her what he could do for her and take her hand, oh, it was more and more -mournful, the way she would look at him; that dreadful, loving look that -didn't mean love at all, but only trying to break him down and make him -_say_ that he was down. I begged Barney's pardon, Roger, for having -treated him as I did. We treated him dreadfully, all of us; because she -put him, always, in the wrong. Oh, no, Roger, I'm sorry for her, but -she's a dangerous woman; or _was_ dangerous. For now she has lost it all -and has become like everybody else; quite ordinary and unhappy." - -He felt, in the little silence that, again, followed, that he could -hardly better this summing-up. That was precisely what poor Adrienne -Toner had become; ordinary and unhappy. The two things she would have -believed herself least capable of becoming. There was nothing to be -gained in urging extenuating circumstances, especially since he was not -sure that there were any. Mrs. Chadwick, at bottom, saw as clearly as he -did. He asked her presently, leaving the theme of Adrienne, whether she -would not seriously consider going away for a little while with Nancy. -"Meg could go down to The Little House," he said. - -"Oh, no, she couldn't, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick, "she won't go -anywhere. She'll hardly speak to Monica. She just sits out-of-doors, all -day, wrapped in a cloak, in the corner of the garden, staring in front -of her, and she pays not the slightest attention to anything I say. And -at night, in her room, I hear her sobbing, sobbing, as if her heart -would break. I can't think hardly of Eric any longer, Roger. Isn't it -strange; but it's almost as if he were my son that had been killed. And -Barney may be killed," the poor mother's lip and chin began to tremble. -"And you, too, Roger. I don't know how we shall live through all that we -must bear and I keep thinking of the foolish little things, like your -having cold feet and wearing the same clothes day after day in those -horrible trenches. He suffered it all, poor Eric. No, I can't think -hardly of him. All the same," she sobbed, "my heart is broken when I -remember that they can never be married now." - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - - -"That's the way Mummy surprises one," said Barney as he and Oldmeadow -went together through the Coldbrooks woods. "One feels her, usually, -such a darling goose and then, suddenly, she shows one that she can be a -heroine." - -Barney was going to France in two days' time and Oldmeadow within the -fortnight, and the Coldbrooks good-byes had just been said. It had been -poor Meg who had broken down and clung and cried. Mrs. Chadwick had, to -the very last, talked with grave cheerfulness of Barney's next leave and -given wise advice as if he had been merely leaving them for a rather -perilous mountain-climbing feat. Oldmeadow could hardly believe her the -same woman that he had seen ten days before. - -He was staying at The Little House and had come up on this afternoon of -Barney's departure to join him at Coldbrooks and walk down with him. -Barney had not yet seen or said good-bye to Nancy and her mother, and -Oldmeadow had seized this, his only chance, of a talk with him. But, as -they left the woods and began to climb the bare hill-side, Barney went -on: - -"I've wanted a talk, too, Roger. I'm glad you managed this." - -"It doesn't rob anyone of you, does it," said Oldmeadow. "We'll get to -Chelford in time to give you a good half-hour with them before your car -comes for you." - -"That will be enough for Nancy," said Barney. "The less she sees of me, -the better she's pleased. I've lots of things I want to say, Roger. Of -course you understand that in every way it's a relief to be going out." - -"It settles things; or seems to settle them," said Oldmeadow. "They take -another place at all events." - -"Yes; just that. They take another place. What difference does it make, -after all, if a fellow has made a mess of his personal life when his -personal life has ceased to count. I'm not talking mawkish sentiment -when I say I hope I'll be killed--if I can be of some use first. I see -no other way out of it. I'm sorry for Adrienne, after a fashion, for -she's dished herself, too. We made a hopeless mistake in getting married -and she knows it as well as I do; and when a man and woman don't love -each other any longer it's the man's place to get out if he can." - -"It was about Adrienne I wanted to talk to you, Barney." For the first -time in their long friendship Oldmeadow felt that he spoke to an equal. -Barney had at last ceased to be a boy. "I've seen her, since seeing you -that last time in the train." - -"Well?" Barney inquired, as Oldmeadow paused. "What have you got to say -to me about Adrienne, Roger? You've not said very much, from the -beginning; but everything you have said has been true and I've forgotten -none of it. I'm the more inclined," and he smiled with a slight -bitterness, "to listen to you now." - -"That's just the trouble," Oldmeadow muttered. "You've forgotten -nothing. That's what I feel, with remorse. That it was I who helped to -spoil things for you both, from the beginning. You'd not have seen her -defects as you did if I hadn't shown them to you; and if you hadn't seen -them you'd have adjusted yourselves to each other and have found them -out together. She'd not have resented your finding them out in the -normal course of your shared lives. It's been my opinion of her, in the -background of both your minds, that has envenomed everything." - -Barney listened quietly. "Yes," he assented. "That's all true enough. As -far as it goes. I mightn't have seen if you hadn't shown me. But I can't -regret you did show me, for anything else would have been to have gone -through life blind; as blind as Adrienne is herself. And it's because -she can't stand being seen through that she revealed so much more; so -much that you didn't see and that I had to find out for myself. What you -saw was absurdity and inexperience; they're rather loveable defects; I -think I accepted them from the beginning, because of all the other -things I believed in her. You said, too, you remember, that she'd never -know she was wrong. Well, it's worse than that. She'll never know she's -wrong and she won't bear it that you should think her anything but -right. She's rapacious. She's insatiable. Nothing but everything will -satisfy her. You must be down on your knees, straight down, before her; -and if you're not, she has no use for you. She turns to stone and you -break your head and your heart against her. It's hatred Adrienne has -felt for me, Roger, and I'm afraid I've felt it for her, too. She's done -things and said things that I couldn't have believed her capable of; -mean things; clever things; cruelly clever that get you right on the -raw; things I can't forget. There's much more in her than you saw at the -beginning. I was right rather than you about that; only they weren't -the things I thought." - -Oldmeadow walked, cutting at the withered way-side grasses with his -cane. Barney's short, slow sentences seemed to sting him as they came. -He had to adjust himself to their smart; to adjust himself to the -thought of this malignant Adrienne. Yet what he felt was not all -surprise; he had foreseen, suspected, even this. "I know," he said at -last; "I mean, I can see that it would happen just like that." - -"It did happen just like that," said Barney. "I don't claim to have been -an angel or anything like one. I gave her as good as I got, or nearly, -sometimes, no doubt. But I know that it wasn't my fault. I know it was -Adrienne who spoiled everything." - -They had come out now on the upland road. The country dropped away -beneath them wrapped in the dull mole-colour, the distant, dull -ultramarines of the November afternoon. The smell of burning weeds was -in the air and, in the west, a long, melancholy sheet of advancing -rain-cloud hid the sun. Oldmeadow wondered if he and Barney would ever -walk there together again, and his mind plunged deep into the past, the -many years of friendship to which this loved country had been a -background. - -"Barney," he said, "what I wanted to say is this: All that you feel is -true; I'm sure of it. But other things are true, too. I've seen her and -I've changed about her. If I was right before, I'm right now. She's been -blind because she didn't know she could be broken. Well, she's beginning -to break." - -"Is she?" said Barney, and his quiet was implacable. "I can quite -imagine that, you know. Everyone, except poor Palgrave--all the rest of -us, have found out that she's not the beautiful benignant being she -thought she was, and that bewilders her and makes her pretty wretched, -no doubt." - -Oldmeadow waited a moment. "I want you to see her," he said. "Don't be -cruel. You are a little cruel, you know. It's because you are thinking -of her abstractly; remembering only how she has hurt you. If you could -see her, see how unhappy she is, you'd feel differently. That's what I -want you to do. That's what I beg you to do, Barney." - -"I can't," said Barney after a moment. "That I can't do, Roger. It's -over. She might want me back if she could get me back adoring her. It's -only so she'd want me. But it's over. It's more than over. There's -something else." Barney's face showed no change from its sad fixity. -"You were right about that, too. It's Nancy I ought to have married. -It's Nancy I love. And Adrienne knows it." - -At this there passed before Oldmeadow's mind the memory of the small, -dark, hurrying figure, the memory of the words she had spoken: "Some -things are like living creatures; and they can die. They can die." - -He felt rather sick. "In that case, how can you blame your wife?" he -muttered. "Doesn't that explain it all?" - -"No, it doesn't explain it all." There was no fire of self-justification -in Barney's voice. It was as fixed and sad as his face. "It was only -after Adrienne made me so wretched I began to find it out. She was -jealous of Nancy from the beginning, of course. But then she was jealous -of everything that wasn't, every bit of it, hers. She had no reason for -jealousy. No man was ever more in love than I was with Adrienne. Even -now I don't feel for Nancy what I felt for her. It's something, I -believe, one only feels once and if it burns out it burns out for ever. -With Nancy, it's as if I had come home; and Adrienne and I were parted -before I knew that I was turning to her." - -They had begun the final descent into Chelford and the wind now brought -a fine rain against their faces. Neither spoke again until the grey -roofs of the village came into sight at a turning of the road. "About -money matters, Roger," Barney said. "Mother and Meg and Barbara. If you -get through, and I don't, will you see to them for me? I've appointed -you my trustee. I told Adrienne last summer that I couldn't take any of -her money any longer, so that, of course, with my having thrown up the -city job and taken on the farms, my affairs are in a bit of a mess. But -I hope they'll be able to go on at Coldbrooks all right. Palgrave will -have Coldbrooks if I don't come back, and perhaps you'll be able to -prevent him handing it over to his Socialist friends." - -"Palgrave would be safely human if it came to taking care of his mother -and sisters," said Oldmeadow. - -"Would he?" said Barney. "I don't know." - -Across the village green the lights of The Little House shone at them. -The curtains were still undrawn and, as they waited at the door, they -could see Nancy in the drawing-room, sitting by the fire alone. - -"I want you to come in with me, please, Roger," said Barney. "Nancy -hasn't felt it right to be very kind to me of late and she'll be able -to be kinder if you are there. You'll know, you'll see if a chance comes -for me to say what I want to say to her. You might leave us for a moment -then." - -"You have hardly more than a half-hour, you know," said Oldmeadow. - -"One can say a good deal in a half-hour," Barney replied. - -Nancy had risen and, as they entered, she came forward, trying to smile -and holding out her hand to each. But Oldmeadow was staying there. He -was not going in half an hour. There was no reason why Nancy should give -him her hand and Barney, quietly, took both her hands in his. "It's -good-bye, then, Nancy, isn't it?" he said. - -They stood there in the firelight together, his dear young people, both -so pale, both so fixedly looking at each other, and Nancy still tried to -smile as she said, "It's dear of you to have come." But her face -betrayed her. It was sick with the fear that, in conquering her own -heart, she should hurt Barney's; Barney's, whom she might never see -again. Oldmeadow went on to the fire and stood, his back to them, -looking down at it. - -"Oh, no, it's not; not dear at all," Barney returned. "You knew I'd come -to say good-bye, of course. Why haven't you been over to see me, you and -Aunt Monica? I've asked you often enough." - -"You mustn't scold me to-day, Barney, since it's good-bye. We couldn't -come," said Nancy. - -"It's never I who scold you. It's you who scold me. Not openly, I know," -said Barney, "but by implication; punish me, by implication. I quite -understood why you haven't come. Well, I want things to be clear now. -Roger's here, and I want to say them before him, because he's been in it -all since the beginning. It's because of Adrienne you've never come; and -changed so much in every way towards me." - -He had kept her hands till then, but Oldmeadow heard now that she drew -away from him. For a moment she did not speak; and then it was not to -answer him. "Have you said good-bye to her, Barney?" - -"No; I haven't," Barney answered. "I'm not going to say good-bye to -Adrienne, Nancy. It must be plain to you by this time that Adrienne and -I have parted. What did it all mean but that?" - -"It didn't mean that to her. She never dreamed it was meaning that," -said Nancy. - -"Well, she said it, often enough," Barney retorted. - -"Barney, please listen to me," said Nancy. "You must let me speak. She -never dreamed it was meaning that. If she was unkind to you it was -because she could not believe it would ever mean parting. She had -started wrong; by holding you to blame; after the baby; when you and -Roger so hurt her pride. And then she wasn't able to go back. She wasn't -able to see it all so differently--just to get you back. It would have -seemed wrong to her; a weakness, just because she longed so. And then, -most of all, she believed you loved her enough to come of yourself." - -"I tried to," said Barney, in the sad, bitter voice of the hill-side -talk with Oldmeadow. "You see, you don't know everything, Nancy, though -you know so much. I tried to again and again." - -"Yes. I know you did. But only on your own terms. And by then I had come -in. Oh, yes, I had, Barney. You didn't know it. It was long, long before -you knew. But I knew it; and so did she and it was more than she could -bear. What woman could bear it? I couldn't have, in her place." Tears -were in Nancy's voice. - -"It's queer, Nancy," said Barney, "that--barring Palgrave, who doesn't -count--you and Roger are the only two people she has left to stick up -for her. Roger's just been saying all that to me, you know. The two she -tried to crab whenever she got a chance. Well, say it's my fault, then. -Say that I've been faithless to my wife and fallen in love with another -woman. The fact is there, and you've said it now yourself. I don't love -her any longer. I shall never love her again. And I love you. I love -you, Nancy, and it's you I ought to have married; would have married, I -believe, if I hadn't been a blinded fool. I love you, and I can say it -now because this may be the end of everything. Don't let her spoil this, -too. Nancy darling, look at me. Can't you consent to forget Adrienne for -this one time, when we may never see each other again?" - -"I can't forget her! I can't forget her!" Nancy sobbed. "I mustn't. -She's miserable. She hasn't stopped loving you. And she's your wife." - -"Do you want to make me hate her?" - -"Oh, Barney--that is cruel of you." - -There was a silence and in it Oldmeadow heard Barney's car draw up at -the gate. He took out his watch. There were only a few more moments left -them. Not turning to them he said. "It does her no good, you know, Nancy -dear." - -"No. It does her no good," Barney repeated. "But forgive me. I was -cruel. I don't hate her. I'm sorry for her. It's simply that we ought -never to have married. Forget it, Nancy, and forget her. Don't let it -be, then, that I love you and don't love my wife. Let it be in the old -way. As if she'd never come. As if I'd come to say good-bye to my -cousin; to my dearest friend on earth. Look at me. Give me your hands. -It's your face I want to take with me." - -"Five minutes, Barney," Oldmeadow whispered, as he went past them. Nancy -had given him her hands; she had lifted her face to his, and Barney's -arms had closed around her. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - - -Mrs. Averil was in the hall. "Give them another moment," he said. "I'm -going outside." - -Tears were in his own eyes. He stepped out on to the flagged path of the -little plot in front of the house where strips of turf and rose-beds ran -between the house and the high wall. Between the clipped holly-trees at -the gate he saw Barney's car, and its lights, the wall between, cast a -deep shadow over the garden. - -The rain was falling thickly now and he stood, feeling it on his face, -filled with a sense of appeasement, of accomplishment. They were -together at last. It was not too late. At such a time, when all the -world hung on the edge of an abyss, to be together for a moment might -sum up more of real living than many happy years. They knew each other's -hearts and what more could life give its creatures than that -recognition. - -Suddenly, how he did not know, for there was no apparent movement and -his eyes were fixed on the pallid sky, he became aware that a figure was -leaning against the house in the shadow beside him. His eyes found it -and it was familiar. Yet he could not believe his eyes. - -She was leaning back, her hands against the wall on either side, and he -saw, with the upper layer of perception that so often blunts a violent -emotion, that her feet were sunken in the mould of Mrs. Averil's -rose-bed and that the cherished shoots of the new climbing rose were -tangled in her clothes. The open window was but a step away. - -She had come since they had come. She had crept up. She had looked -in--for how long?--and had fallen back, casting out her arms so that it -might not be to the ground. Her eyes were closed; but she had heard and -seen him. As he stood before her, aghast, unable to find a word, he -heard her mutter: "Take me away, please." - -Barney's car blocked the egress of the gate and Barney might emerge at -any moment. He leaned towards her and found that she was intricately -caught in the rose. Her hat with its veil, her sleeve, her hair, were -all entangled. - -Dumbly, patiently, she stood, while, with fumbling fingers and terror -lest they should be heard within--Mrs. Averil's voice now reached him -from the drawing-room--Oldmeadow released her and, his fingers deeply -torn by the thorns, he was aware, in all the tumult of his thought, more -than of the pain, of the wet fragrance of the roses that surrounded her. -He shared what he felt to be her panic. - -She had come hoping to see Barney; she had come to say good-bye to -Barney, who would not come to her; and his heart sickened for her at the -shameful seeming of her plight. She knew now that it must be her hope -never to see Barney again. - -There was a narrow passage, leading to the lawn and garden, between the -house and the stable walls. Thickly grown with ivy, showing only a -narrow opening above, where chimneys and gables cut against the sky, it -was nearly as dark as a tunnel, and into this place of hiding he half -led, half carried the unfortunate woman. - -With the darkness, the pungent smell of the wet ivy closed thickly, -ominously about them. It was as if he and Adrienne Toner were buried -there together. He heard a maid laugh far away and a boy passed on the -green stridently whistling "Tipperary." It was like hearing, in the -grave, the sounds of the upper world. - -Adrienne leaned against the wall. The ivy closing round her, nearly -obliterated her, but he could dimly see the grey disk of her face, -showing the unexpectedness of contour that reveals itself in the faces -of the dead. The trivial features were erased and only a shape of grief -remained, strangely august and emotionless. - -An eternity seemed to pass before the front door opened and Mrs. -Averil's voice, steadied to a galvanized cheerfulness, came, half -obliterated to a wordless rhythm. Barney's voice answered her, and his -steps echoed on the flagged path. "Say good-bye to Roger for me if I -don't see him on the road!" he called out from the gate. Then the car -coughed, panted; the horn croaked out its cry and, above them, a shaft -of light across the ivy, of which he had till then been unaware, flitted -suddenly away, leaving the darkness more visible. - -He heard then that she was weeping. - -Putting his arm behind her, for the rain fell heavily and the ivy was -drenched with it, he drew her forward and for a little while it was -almost against his breast that she lay while her very heart dissolved -itself in tears. - -She had come, he knew it all, with a breakdown of her pride, with a last -wild hope and, perhaps, a longing to atone, believing that she might -snatch a word somewhere with her husband, and find her way, at this -last moment, back to the heart she had so alienated. She had seen all. -She had heard all. He was sure of it. It had been as an outcast that he -had found her leaning there. He understood her through and through and -the tender heaviness that had already so often visited his heart flooded -it to suffocation. - -Among her sobs, he heard her, at last, speaking to him. "Even Palgrave -doesn't know. He told me--only this afternoon--that Barney was here. I -thought I might find him. I was going to wait in the road. And when I -got here there was no car and I was afraid that there was a mistake. -That I had missed him. And I went up to the house; to the open window; -and looked in; to see if he was there. It was not jealousy: not now. I -did not mean to be an eavesdropper. But, when I saw them, I stayed and -listened. It was not jealousy," she repeated. "It was because I had to -know that there was no more hope." - -"Yes," said Oldmeadow gently, while, with long pauses, she spoke on and -on; to the impartial judge, to the one sure refuge; and he said "Yes" -again, gently, after she had finished; a long time after. She still half -lay against his breast. He had never felt such an infinite tenderness -towards any creature; not since his boyhood and his mother's death. - -She drew away from him at last. "Take me," she said. "There is a train; -back to Oxford." She had ceased to weep. Her voice was hoarse and faint. - -"Did you walk up from the station? You're not fit to walk back. I can -get a trap. There's a man just across the green." - -"No. Walking, please. I would be recognized. They might know me. I can -walk. If you will help me." - -He drew her arm through his. "Lean on me," he said. "We'll go slowly." - -They went past the drawing-room windows and, softly opening, softly -shutting, through the gate. The road, when it turned the corner, left -the village behind; between its rarely placed trees, vague silhouettes -against the sky that seemed of one texture with them, it showed its -mournful pallor for only a little space before them; there was not -enough light left in the sky to glimmer on its pools. The fields, on -either side, vanished into obscurity. Pale cattle, once, over a hedge, -put disconsolate heads and lowed and a garrulous dog, as they passed by, -ran out from a way-side farm-yard, smelt at their heels, growled -perfunctorily and, having satisfied his sense of duty, went back to his -post. The sense of dumb emptiness was so complete that it was only after -they had gone a long way that he knew that she was weeping and the soft, -stifling sounds seemed only a part of nature's desolation. - -Her head bent down, she stumbled on, leaning on his arm, and from time -to time she raised her handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth and -nose. He did not say a word; nor did she. - -As he led her along, submissive to her doom, it was another feeling of -accomplishment that overwhelmed him; the dark after the radiant; after -Nancy and Barney, he and Adrienne. It was this, from their first -meeting, that he had been destined to mean to her. She was his appointed -victim. He had killed, as really as if with a knife, the girl whom he -had seen at Coldbrooks, in the sunlight, on that Sunday morning in -spring, knowing no doubts. She had then held the world in her hands and -a guileless, untried heaven had filled her heart. Between her and this -crushed and weeping woman there seemed no longer any bond; unless it was -the strange aching that, in his heart, held them both together. - - - - - -PART II - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -Oldmeadow sat in Mrs. Aldesey's drawing-room and, the tea-table between -them, Mrs. Aldesey poured out his tea. So it was, after three years, -that they found each other. So it was, all over the world, Oldmeadow -said to himself, that the tea-table, or its equivalent, reasserted -itself in any interval where the kindly amenities of human intercourse -could root themselves; though the world rocked and flames of anarchy -rimmed its horizons. - -It was more real, he felt that now, to sit and look at Lydia over her -tea than to parch on Eastern sands and shiver in Western trenches; from -the mere fact that the one experience became a nightmare while the other -was as natural as waking at dawn. Horrors became the dropped stitches of -life; and though if there were too many of them they would destroy the -stocking, the stocking itself was made up of tea-table talks and walks -in the woods with Nancy. He had just come from Coldbrooks. - -So he put it, trivially, to himself, and he felt the need of clinging to -triviality. The dropped stitches had been almost too much for him and -the nightmare, at times, had seemed the only reality. At times he had -known a final despair of life and even now he remembered that the worst -might still come. One might be called upon to face the death of the -whole order of civilization. Faith required one, perhaps, to recognize -that the human spirit was bound up, finally, with no world order and -unless one could face its destruction as one had to face the death of a -loved individual, one was not secure of the spiritual order that -transcended all mundane calamity. He believed, or hoped, that during -these last three years, in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, when, to the -last fibre, he had felt his faiths tested, he had learned to be ready -for the great relinquishment, should it be required of him; and it was -therefore the easier to doff that consciousness, as he might have doffed -a sword, and think of Lydia and of the order that still survived and -that she still stood for. - -Lydia did not look the worse for the war; indeed she looked the better. -She looked as if, in spite of long days in the hospital, she digested -better and, in spite of air-raids, slept better, and as they talked, -finding their way back to intimacy by the comparing of such -superficialities, she told him that for years she hadn't been so strong -or well. "Nothing is so good for you, I've found out, as to feel that -you are being used; being used by something worth while. People like -myself must keep still about our experiences, for we've had none that -bear talking of. But even the others, even the people bereaved -unspeakably, are strangely lifted up. And I believe that the populace -enjoys the air-raids rather than the reverse; they give them a chance of -feeling that they are enduring something, too; with good-humour and -pluck. If anyone is pessimistic about the effect of war on average human -nature, I should only ask them to come and talk to our men at the -hospital. Of course, under it all, there's the ominous roar in one's -ears all the time." - -"Do you mean the air-raids?" he asked her and, shaking her head, -showing him that she, too, had seen with him and, he believed, with him -accepted: "No; I mean the roar of nation after nation collapsing into -the abyss. A sort of tumbril roar of civilization, Roger. And, for that, -there's always the last resource of going gallantly to the guillotine. -But all the same, I believe we shall pull through." - -It was the spring of 1918 and one needed faith to believe it. She asked -him presently about his friends at Coldbrooks. He had gone to Coldbrooks -for three days of his one week's leave. After this he went to France. - -"What changes for you there, poor Roger," said Mrs. Aldesey. - -"Yes. Terrible changes. Palgrave dead and Barney broken. Yet, do you -know, it's not as sad as it was. Something's come back to it. Nancy sits -by him and holds his hand and is his joy and comfort." - -"Will he recover?" - -"Not in the sense of being really mended. He'll go on crutches, always, -if he gets up. But the doctors now hope that the injury to the back -isn't permanent." - -"And Meg's married," said Mrs. Aldesey after a little pause. "Have you -seen her?" - -"No. She runs a hospital in the country, at her husband's place, Nancy -tells me; and is very happy." - -"Very. Has a fine boy, and is completely reinstated. It's a remarkable -ending to the story, isn't it? She met him at the front, you know, -driving her ambulance; and he has twice as much in him as poor Eric -Hayward." - -"Remarkable. Yet Meg's a person who only needs her chance. She's the -sort that always comes out on top." - -"Does it comfort her mother a little for all she's suffered to see her -on top?" - -"It almost comically comforts her. All the same, Eleanor Chadwick has -her depths. Nothing will ever comfort her for Palgrave's death." - -"I understand that," said Mrs. Aldesey. "Nothing could. How she must -envy the happy mothers whose boys were killed at the front. To have -one's boy die in prison as a conscientious objector must be the -bitterest thing the war has given any mother to bear." - -"He was a dear boy," said Oldmeadow. "Heroically wrong-minded." He could -hardly bear to think of Palgrave. - -"He wasn't alone, you know," said Mrs. Aldesey after a moment. Something -was approaching that he would rather not have to speak of; a name he -would so much rather not name. And, evading it, feebly, he said, "His -mother got to him in time, I know." - -"Yes. But all the time. She went and lived near the prison. Adrienne -Toner I mean." - -Her eyes were on him and he hoped that no readjustment of his features -was visible. "Oh, yes. Nancy told me that," he said. - -"What's become of her, Roger?" Mrs. Aldesey asked. "Since Charlie was -killed the Lumleys have lived in the country and I hardly see them. I -haven't heard a word of her for years." - -He was keeping his eyes on her and he knew from her expression that he -showed some strain or some distress. - -"Nor have I. Nancy said that they hadn't either. She went away, after -Palgrave's death. Disappeared completely." - -"Nancy told you, of course, about the money; the little fortune she gave -Palgrave, so that he could leave it to his mother?" - -"Oh, yes. Nancy wrote to me of that." - -"It was cleverly contrived, wasn't it. They are quite tied up to it, -aren't they; whatever they may feel. No one could object to her giving a -fortune to the boy she'd ruined. I admired that in her, I must confess; -the way she managed it. And then her disappearance." - -"Very clever indeed," said Oldmeadow. "All that remains for her to do -now is to manage to get killed. And that's easily managed. Perhaps she -is killed." - -He did not intend that his voice should be emptier or dryer, yet Lydia -looked at him with a closer attention. - -"Barney and Nancy could get married then," she said. - -"Yes. Exactly. They could get married." - -"That's what you want, isn't it, Roger?" - -"Want her to be killed, or them to be married?" - -"Well, as you say, so many people _are_ being killed. One more or less, -if it's in such a good cause as their marriage--" - -"It's certainly a good cause. But I don't like the dilemma," said -Oldmeadow. - -He knew from the way she looked at him, discreet and disguised as her -recognition was, that he was hiding something from her. Casting about -his mind, in the distress that took the form of confusion, he could -himself find nothing that he hid, or wished to hide, unless it was the -end of Adrienne's story as Barney's wife. That wasn't for him to show; -ever; to anyone. - -"Perhaps she's gone back to America," said Mrs. Aldesey presently, -"California, you know. Or Chicago. She may very well be engaged in great -enterprises out there that we never hear of. They'd be sure to be great, -wouldn't they." - -"I suppose they would." - -"You saw her once more, didn't you, at the time you saw Palgrave," Mrs. -Aldesey went on. "Lady Lumley told me of that. And how kind you had -been. Adrienne had spoken of it. You were sorry for them both, I -suppose; for her as well as for him, in spite of everything. Or did she -merely take it for granted that the kindness to him extended to her?" - -"Not at all. It was for her too," said Oldmeadow, staring a little and -gathering together, after this lapse of time that seemed so immense, his -memories of that other tea-table set up in the chaos: Palgrave's -tea-table on that distant day in Oxford. What was so confusing him was -his consciousness that it hadn't been the last time he had seen -Adrienne. "I was as sorry for her as for him," he went on. "Sorrier. -There was so much more in her than I'd supposed. She was capable of -intense suffering." - -"In losing her husband's affections, you mean? You never suspected her -of being inhuman, surely? Lady Lumley blamed poor Barney for all that -sad story. But, even from her account, I could see his side very -plainly." - -"Perhaps I did think her inhuman. At all events I thought her -invulnerable." - -"Yes. I remember. With all her absurdity you thought she had great -power." Mrs. Aldesey looked at him thoughtfully. "And it was when you -found she hadn't that you could be sorry for her." - -"Not at all," said Oldmeadow again. "I still think she has great power. -People can have power and go to pieces." - -"Did she go to pieces? That day in Oxford? I can't imagine her in -pieces, you know." - -He had a feeling of drawing back; or of drawing Adrienne back. "In the -sense of being so unhappy, so obviously unhappy, over Palgrave," he -said. - -He saw that Lydia would have liked to go on questioning, as, of course, -it would have been perfectly natural for her to do. Was not Adrienne -Toner and her absurdity one of their pet themes? Yet she desisted. She -desisted and it was because she felt some change in him; some shrinking -and some pain. "Well, let's hope that she is happy, now, or as happy as -she can be, poor thing, doing great deeds in America," she said. And she -turned the talk back to civilization and its danger. - -They talked a good deal about civilization during their last three days -together. He wanted things, during these three days of mingled recovery -and farewell, to be as happy as possible between him and his friend, for -he knew that Lydia's heart was heavy, for him and not for civilization. -The front to which he was going was more real to her, because it was -much nearer, and his peril was more real than during his absence in -distant climes. He felt himself that the French front, at this special -time, would probably make an end of him and, for the first time since -their early friendship, he knew conjecture as to his relation with -Lydia; wondered, if it had not been for Mr. Aldesey in New York, whether -Lydia might have been in love with him, and realized, with a curious -sense of anxiety and responsibility, that her friendship for him now was -the closest tie in her life. The war might to her, too, mean irreparable -loss. And he was sorry that it was so; sorry to think that the easy, -happy intercourse had this hidden depth of latent suffering. - -Lydia's feeling, and its implications, became the clearer to him when, -on their last evening together, she said to him suddenly: "Perhaps -you'll see her over there." - -He could not pretend not to know whom she meant, nor could he pretend to -himself not to see that if it troubled Lydia that he should be sorry for -Adrienne that could only be because she cared far more for him than he -had ever guessed. - -He said, as easily as he could manage it, for the pressure of his -realizations made him feel a little queer: "Not if she's in America." - -"Ah, but perhaps she's come back from America," said Mrs. Aldesey. -"She's a great traveller. What will you do with her if you do find her? -Bring her back to Barney?" - -"Hardly that," he said. "There'd be no point in bringing her back to -Barney, would there?" - -"Well, then, what would you do with her?" Mrs. Aldesey smiled, as if -with a return to their old light dealing with the theme, while, still in -her nurse's coiffe and dress, she leaned back against her chair. - -"What would she do with me, rather, isn't it?" he asked. And he, too, -tried to be light. - -"She'll be mended then, you think? Able to do things to people again?" - -"I'm not at all afraid of her, you know. She never did me any harm," he -said. - -"Because you were as strong as she, you mean. She did other people harm, -surely. You warned me once to keep away from her unless I wanted to lose -my toes and fingers," Mrs. Aldesey still smiled. "She does make people -lose things, doesn't she?" - -"Well, she makes them gain things, too. Fortunes for instance. Perhaps -if I find her, she'll give me a fortune." - -"But that's only when she's ruined you," she reminded him. - -"And it's she who's ruined now," he felt bound to remind her; no longer -lightly. - -Leaning back in her chair, her faded little face framed in white, Mrs. -Aldesey looked at once younger yet more tired than he had ever seen her -look and she sat for a little while silent; as if she had forgotten -Adrienne Toner and were thinking only of their parting. But all her -gaiety had fallen from her as she said at last: "I can be sorry for her, -too; if she's really ruined. If she still loves him when he has ceased -to care for her. Does she, do you think?" - -With the question he seemed to see a fire-lit room and lovers who had -found each other and to smell wet roses. Lydia was coming too near; too -near the other figure, outside the window, fallen back with outstretched -arms against the roses. And again he felt himself softly, cautiously, -disentangle the sleeve, the hair, felt himself draw Adrienne away into -the darkness where the smell was now of wet ivy and where he could see -only the shape of an accepting grief. - -"How could I know?" he said. "She was very unhappy when I last saw her. -But three years have passed and people can mend in three years." - -"Especially in America," Mrs. Aldesey suggested. "It's a wonderful place -for mending. Let's hope she's there. Let's hope that we shall never, any -of us, ever hear of her again. That would be much the happiest thing, -wouldn't it?" - -He was obliged to say that it would certainly be much the happiest -thing; and he was too unhappy about Lydia to be able to feel angry with -her. He knew how tired she must be when, for the first time in their -long friendship, she must know that she was not pleasing him, yet not be -able to help herself. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -"Good Lord!" Oldmeadow heard himself groaning. - -Even as he took possession of his physical suffering he knew that there -was satisfaction in suffering, at last, himself. Until now the worst -part of war had been to see the sufferings of others. This was at last -the real thing; but it was so mingled with acquiescence that it ceased -to be the mere raw fact. "We're all together, now," he thought, and he -felt himself, even as he groaned, lifted on a wave of beatitude. - -Until now he had not, as a consciousness, known anything. There was a -shape in his memory, a mere immense black blot shot with fiery lights. -It must symbolize the moment when the shell struck him, bending, in the -trench, over his watch and his calculations. And after that there were -detached visions, the ceiling of a train where he had swung in a hammock -bed, looking up; clean sheets, miraculously clean and the face of a -black-browed nurse who reminded him of Trixie. The smell of chloroform -was over everything. It bound everything together so that days might -have passed since the black blot and since he lay here, again in clean -sheets, the sweet, thick smell closing round him and a raging thirst in -his throat. He knew that he had just been carried in from the operating -room and he groaned again "Good Lord," feeling the pain snatch as if -with fangs and claws at his thigh and belly, and muttered, "Water!" - -Something sweet, but differently sweet from the smell, sharp, too, and -insidious, touched his lips and opening them obediently, as a young bird -opens its bill to the parent bird, he felt a swab passed round his -parched mouth and saw the black-browed nurse. "Not water, yet, you -know," she said. "This is lemon and glycerine and will help you -wonderfully." - -He wanted to ask something about Paris and the long-distance gun firing -on it every day and he seemed to see it over the edge of the trench, far -away on the horizon of No-man's-land, a tiny city flaming far into the -sky. But other words bubbled up and he heard himself crying: "Mother! -Mother!" and remembered, stopping himself with an act of will, that they -all said that when they were dying. But as he closed his eyes he felt -her very near and knew that it would be sweet to die and find her. - -A long time must have passed. Was it days or only the time of daylight? -It was night now and a shaded light shone from a recess behind him and -thoughts, visions, memories raced through his mind. Nancy; Barney; he -would never see them again, then: poor Lydia and civilization. -"Civilization will see me out," he thought and he wondered if they had -taken off the wings of the Flying Victory when they packed her. - -A rhythm was beating in his brain. Music was it? Something of Bach's? It -gathered words to itself and shaped itself sentence by sentence into -something he had heard? or read? Ah, he was glad to have found it. -"Under the orders of your devoted officers you will march against the -enemy or fall where you stand, facing the foe. To those who die I say: -You will not die: you will enter living into immortality, and God will -receive you into his bosom." He seemed to listen to the words as he -lay, quietly smiling. But it was music after all for, as he listened, -they merged into the "St. Matthew Passion." He had heard it, of course, -with Lydia, at the Temple. But Lydia did not really care very much for -Bach. She might care more for "Litanei." She had sung it standing beside -him with foolish white roses over her ears. How unlike Lydia to wear -those roses. And was it Lydia who stood there? A mental perplexity -mingled with the physical pain and spoiled his peace. It was not -Lydia's, that white face in the coffin with wet ivy behind it. What -suffering was this that beat upon his heart? The music had faded all -away and he saw faces everywhere, dying faces; and blood and terrible -mutilations. All the suffering of the war, worse, far worse than the -mere claws and fangs that tore at him. Dying boys choked out their -breaths in agonies of conscious loneliness, yearning for faces they -would never see again. Oh, how many he had seen die like that! -Intolerable to watch them. And could one do nothing? "Cigarettes. Give -them cigarettes," he tried to tell somebody. "And marmalade for -breakfast; and phonographs, and then they will enter living into -immortality"--No: he did not mean that. What did he mean? He could catch -at nothing now. Thoughts were tossed and tumbled like the rubbish of -wreckage from an inundated town on the deep currents of his anguish. A -current that raced and seethed and carried him away. He saw it. Its -breathless speed was like the fever in his blood. If it went faster he -would lose his breath. Church-bells ringing on the banks lost theirs as -he sped past so swiftly and made a trail of whining sound.--Effie! -Effie! It was poor little Effie, drowning. He saw her wild, small face, -battling. Bubbles boiled up about his cry. - -Suddenly the torrent was stilled. Without commotion, without tumult, it -was stilled. There was a dam somewhere; it had stopped racing; he could -get his breath. Still and slow; oh! it was delicious to feel that quiet -hand on his forehead; his mother's hand, and to know that Effie was -safe. He lay with closed eyes and saw a smooth waterfall sliding and -curving with green grey depths into the lower currents of the stream. He -remembered the stream well, now; one of his beloved French rivers; one -of the smaller, sylvan rivers, too small for majesty; with silver -poplars spaced against the sky on either bank and a small town, white -and pink and pearly-grey, clear on the horizon. Tranquil sails were -above him and the bells from the distant church-tower floated to him -across the fields. Soundlessly, slowly, he felt himself borne into -oblivion. - -The black-browed nurse was tending him next morning. "You are better," -she said, smiling at him. "You slept all night. No; it's a shame, but -you mayn't have water yet." She put the lemon and glycerine to his lips. -"The pain is easier, isn't it?" - -He said it was. He felt that he must not stir an inch so as to keep it -easier, but he could not have stirred had he wanted to, for he was all -tightly swathed and bandaged. He remembered something he wanted -specially to ask: "Paris? They haven't got it yet?" - -"They'll never get it!" she smiled proudly. "Everything is going -splendidly." - -The English surgeon was such a nice fellow. He had spectacles on a -square-tipped nose and a square, chubby face; yet his hair was nearly -white. Oldmeadow remembered, as if of days before the flood, that his -name was a distinguished one. Perhaps it was morphia they gave him, -after his wound was dressed, or perhaps he fainted. The day passed in a -hot and broken stupor and at night the tides of fever rose again and -carried him away. But, again, before he had lost his breath, before he -had quite gone down into delirium, the quiet hand came and sent him, -under sails, to sleep. - -Next day Oldmeadow knew, from the way the surgeon looked at him, that -his case was grave. His face was grim as he bent over the dressing and -he hurt horribly. They told him, when it was over, that he had been very -brave, and, like a child, he was pleased that they should tell him so. -But the pain was worse all day and the sense of the submerging fever -imminent, and he lay with closed eyes and longed for the night that -brought the hand. Hours, long hours passed before it came. Hours of -sunlight when, behind his eyelids, he saw red, and hours of twilight -when he saw mauve. Then, for a little while, it was a soft, dense grey -he saw, like a bat's wing, and then the small light shone across his -bed; he knew that the night had come, and felt, at last, the hand fall -softly on his head. - -He lay for some time feeling the desired peace flow into him and then, -through its satisfaction, another desire pushed up into his -consciousness and he remembered that, more than about Paris, he had -wanted to speak to the nurse about what she did for him and thank her. - -"It's you who make me sleep, isn't it," he said, lying with closed eyes -under the soft yet insistent pressure. "I've never thanked you." - -She did not reply. She did not want him to talk. But he still wanted to. - -"I couldn't thank you last night," he said, "I can't keep hold of my -thoughts. And when morning comes I seem to have forgotten everything -about the night. You are the nurse who takes care of me in the daytime, -too, aren't you?" - -Again, for a moment, there was no reply; and then a voice came. "No; I -am the night nurse. Go to sleep now." - -It was a voice gentle, cold and soft, like snow. It was not an English -voice and he had heard it before. Where had he heard it? Rooks were -cawing and he saw a blue ribbon rolling, rolling out across a -spring-tide landscape. This voice was not like a blue ribbon; it was -like snow. Yet, when he turned his head under her hand, he looked round -at Adrienne Toner. - -The first feeling that came uppermost in the medley that filled him at -the sight of her was one of amused vexation. It was as if he went back -to his beginnings with her, back to the rooks and the blue ribbon. "At -it again!" was what he said to himself, and what he said aloud, -absurdly, was: "Oh, come, now!" - -She did not lift her hand, but there was trouble on her face as she -looked back at him. "I hoped you wouldn't see me, Mr. Oldmeadow," she -said. - -He was reminded of Bacchus and the laying on of hands; but a classical -analogy, even more ridiculous, came to him with her words. "Like Cupid -and Psyche," he said. "The other way round. It's I who mustn't look." - -The trouble on her face became more marked and he saw that she imagined -him to be delirious. He was not quite himself, certainly, or he would -not have greeted Adrienne Toner thus, and he made an effort to be more -decorous and rational as he said, "I'm very glad to see you again. Safe -and sound: you know." - -She had always had a singular little face, but it had never looked so -singular as now, seen from below with shadows from the light behind cast -so oddly over it. The end of her nose jutted from a blue shadow and her -eyes lay in deep hollows of blue. All that he was sure of in her -expression was the gravity with which she made up her mind to humour -him. "We want you to be safe and sound, too. Please shut your eyes and -go to sleep." - -"All right; all right, Psyche," he murmured, and he knew it wasn't quite -what he intended to say, yet in his flippancy he was taking refuge from -something; from the flood of suffering that had broken over him the -other night after he had seen that dead face with white roses over its -ears. This queer face, half dissolved in blue and yellow, was not dead -and the white coiffe came closely down about it. If he obeyed her he -knew that she would keep the other faces away and he closed his eyes -obediently and lay very still, seeing himself again as the good little -boy being praised. This was Psyche; not Ariane. "Ariane ma soeur," he -murmured. It was Ariane who had the white roses--or was it wet ivy? and -after her face pressed all the other dying faces. "You'll keep them -away, won't you?" he murmured, and he heard her say: "Yes; I'll keep -them quite away," and, softly, a curtain of sleep fell before his eyes -crossed by a thin drift of mythological figures. - -"I thought it was you who sent me to sleep," he said to the English -nurse next day. He could hardly, in the morning light, believe it was -not a dream. - -She smiled with an air of vicarious pride. "No indeed. I can't send -people to sleep. It's our wonderful Mrs. Chadwick. She does a good deal -more than put people to sleep. She cures people--oh, I wouldn't have -believed it myself, till I saw it--who are at death's door. It's lucky -for you and the others that we've got her here for a little while." - -"Where's here?" he asked after a moment. - -"Here's Boulogne. Didn't you know?" - -"I thought I heard the sea sometimes. It's for cases too bad, then, to -be taken home. Get her here from where?" - -"From her hospital in the firing-line. Now that we're advancing at the -front everything there is changed and she could come away for a little. -Sir Kenneth's been begging her to come ever since he saw her. He knew -she would work marvels here, too." The nice young nurse was exuberant in -her darkness and rosiness with a Jewish streak of fervour in her lips -and eyes. "It's a sort of rest for her," she added. "She's been badly -wounded once. You can just see the scar, under her cap, on her forehead. -And she nearly died of fever out in Salonika. She had a travelling -ambulance there before she came to France." - -"It must be very restful for her," Oldmeadow remarked with a touch of -his grim mirth, "if she has to sit up putting all your bad cases to -sleep. Why haven't I heard of her and her hospital?" - -"It's not run in her name. It's an American hospital--she is -American--called after her mother, I believe. The Pearl Ambulance is -what it's called and everybody here knows about it; all of us nurses and -doctors, I mean. Her organizing power is as wonderful as her cures; her -influence over her staff. They all worship the ground she walks on." - -"Pearl, Pearl Toner," Oldmeadow was saying to himself. How complete, how -perfect it was. And the nurse went on, delighted, evidently, to talk of -an idol, and rather as if she were speaking of a special cure they had -installed, a sort of Carrel treatment not to be found anywhere else: -"Everything's been different since she came. It's almost miraculous to -see what the mere touch of her hand can do. Matron says she wouldn't be -surprised if it turned out she was a sort of nun and wore a hair shirt -under her dress. Whatever she is, it makes one feel better and stronger -just to see her and one would do anything for her just to have her smile -at one. She has the most heavenly smile." - -It was all very familiar. - -"Ah, you haven't abandoned me after all, though I have found you out," -he said to Adrienne Toner that night. - -He was able at last to see her clearly as she came in, so softly that it -was like a dream sliding into one's sleep. She was like a dream in her -nurse's dress which, though so familiar on other women, seemed to -isolate and make her strange. Her face was smaller than he had -remembered it and had the curious look, docile yet stubborn, that one -sees on the faces of dumb-mutes. She might have looked like that had -she been deafened by the sound of so many bursting shells and lost the -faculty of speech through doing much and saying nothing among scenes of -horror. But she spoke to him, after all, as naturally as he spoke to -her, saying, though with no touch of his lightness: "You mustn't talk, -you know, if I come to make you sleep. Sir Kenneth wants sleep for you -more than anything else." - -"I promise you to be good," said Oldmeadow. "But I'm really better, -aren't I? and can talk a little first." - -"You are really better. But it will take a long time. A great deal of -sleeping." - -"No one knew what had become of you," said Oldmeadow, and he remembered -that he ought to be sorry that Adrienne Toner had not been killed. - -She hesitated, and then sat down beside him. He thought that she had -been going to ask him something and then checked herself. "I can't let -you talk," she said, and in her voice he heard the new authority; an -authority gained by long submission to discipline. - -"Another night, then. We must talk another night," he murmured, closing -his eyes, for he knew that he must not disobey her. All the same it was -absurd that Adrienne Toner should be doing this for him; absurd but -heavenly to feel her hand fall softly, like a warm, light bird, and -brood upon his forehead. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -They never spoke of Coldbrooks, nor of Barney, nor of Palgrave; not -once. Not once during all those nights that she sat beside him and made -him sleep. - -He had heard from Coldbrooks, of course; letters came often now. And the -dark young nurse had written for him since he could not yet write for -himself. He had said no word of seeing Adrienne. Nor had he let them -know how near to death he had been and, perhaps, still was. He would -have liked to have seen Lydia and Nancy if he were to die; but most of -all he wanted to be sure of not losing Adrienne. And he knew that were -he to tell them, were they to come, Adrienne would go. - -She never spoke to him at all, he remembered--as getting stronger with -every day, he pieced his memories of these nights together--unless he -spoke to her; and she never smiled. And it came upon him one morning -after he had read letters that brought so near the world from which she -was now shut out, that she had, perhaps, never forgiven him. After all, -though he could not see that he had been wrong, she had everything to -forgive him and the thought made him restless. That night, for the first -time, she volunteered a remark. His temperature had gone up a little. He -must be very quiet and go to sleep directly. - -"Yes; I know," he said. "It's because of you. Things I want to say. I'm -really so much better. We can't go on like this, can we," he said, -looking up at her as she sat beside him. "Why, you might slip out of my -life any day, and I might never hear of you again." - -She sat looking down at him, a little askance, though gentle still, if -gentle was the word for her changed face. "That's what I mean to do," -she said. - -"Oh, but--" Oldmeadow actually, in his alarm and resentment, struggled -up on an elbow--"that won't do. I want to see you, really see you, now -that I'm myself again. I want to talk with you--now that I can talk -coherently. I want to ask you; well, I won't ask it now." She had put -out her hand, her small, potent hand, and quietly pressed him back, and -down upon his pillow while her face took on its look of almost stern -authority. "I'll be good. But promise me you'll not go without telling -me. And haven't you questions to ask, too?" - -Her face kept its severity, but, as he found this last appeal, her eyes -widened, darkened, looked, for a moment, almost frightened. - -"I know that Barney is safe," she said. "I have nothing to ask." - -"Well; no; I see." He felt that he had been guilty of a blunder and it -made him fretful. "For me, then. Not for you. Promise me. I won't be -good unless you promise me. You can't go off and leave me like that." - -With eyes still dilated, she contemplated this rebellion. - -"You must promise me something, then," she said after a moment. - -He felt proud, delighted, as if he had gained a victory over her. - -"Done. If it's not too hard. What is it?" - -"You won't write to anybody. You won't tell anybody that you've seen me. -Only Lady Lumley knows that I am here. And she has promised not to tell. -Probably, soon, I shall have left France for ever." - -"I won't tell. I won't write. I can keep secrets as well as Lady Lumley. -She does keep them, you know. So it's a compact." - -"Yes. It's a compact. You'll never tell them; and I won't go without -letting you know. I promise. Now go to sleep." - -She laid her hand on his forehead, but, for a little while, he heard her -breathing deeply and quickly and the sense of his blundering stayed with -him so that sleep was longer in coming. - -All the same he was much better next day. He was able to sit up and had -the glory and excitement of a chop for his midday dinner. And when the -pleasant hour of tea arrived it was Adrienne herself who came in -carrying the little tray. - -He had not seen her in daylight before and his first feeling was one of -alarm, for, if she were afoot like this, in daylight, must it not mean -that she was soon to leave the hospital? He felt shy of her, too, for, -altered as she was by night, the day showed her as far more altered. -Whether she seemed much older or much younger he could not have said. -The coiffe, covering her forehead, and bound under her chin in a way -peculiar to her, left only, as it were, the means of expression visible. - -She sat down by the window and looked out, glancing round from time to -time as he drank his tea and it was she who found the calm little -sentences, about the latest news from the front, the crashing of -Bulgaria, that carried them on until he had finished. When he had pushed -down his tray she turned her chair and faced him, folding her hands -together on her white apron, and she said, and he knew that she had come -to say it, "What was it you wanted to ask me?" - -He had had, while she sat at the window, her profile with the jutting -nose, and her face, as it turned upon him now, made him think suddenly -of a seagull. Questing, lonely, with vigilant eyes, it seemed to have -great spaces before it; to be flying forth into empty spaces and to an -unseen goal. - -"Are you going away, then?" He had not dared, somehow, to ask her -before. He felt now that he could not talk until he knew. - -"Not yet," she said. "But I shall be going soon. The hospital is -emptying and my nights on duty are very short. I have, really, only you -and two others to take care of. That's why I am up so early to-day. And -you are so much better that we can have a little talk; if you have -anything to ask me." - -"It's this, of course," said Oldmeadow. "It seems to me you ought to -dislike me. I misunderstood you in many ways. And now I owe you my life. -Before we part I want to thank you and to ask you to forgive me." - -Her eyes, seen in daylight, were of the colour of distance, of arctic -distances. That had always been their colour, though he had never before -identified it. - -"But there is nothing to thank me for," she said. "I am here to take -care of people." - -"Even people who misunderstood you. Even people you dislike. I know." -He flushed, feeling that he had been duly snubbed. "But though you take -care of everyone, anyone may thank you, too, mayn't they?" - -"I don't dislike you, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said after a moment. "And you -didn't misunderstand me." - -"Oh," he murmured, more abashed than before. "I think so. Not, perhaps, -what you did; but what you were. I didn't see you as you really were. -That's what I mean." - -The perplexity, which had grown, even, to amazement, had left her eyes -and she was intently looking at him. "There is nothing for you to be -sorry for," she said. "Nothing for me to forgive. You were always -right." - -"Always right? I can't take that, you know," said Oldmeadow, deeply -discomposed. "You were blind, of course, and more sure of yourself than -any of us can safely afford to be; but I wasn't always right." - -"Always. Always," she repeated. "I was blinder than you knew. I was more -sure of myself." - -He lay looking at her and she looked back at him, but with a look that -invited neither argument not protest. It remained remote and vigilant. -She might have been the seagull looking down and noting, as she flew -onward, that the small figure on the beach so far below had ceased to be -that of an assailant in its attitude. How remote she was, white strange, -fleeting creature! How near she had been once! The memory of how near -rushed over his mind. He had, despite the delirious visions of her -stricken face, hardly thought at all, since really seeing her again, of -that last time. Everything had fitted itself on, rather, to his earliest -memories of her, tinged all of them, it was true, with a deeper meaning, -but not till this moment consciously admitting it. It rushed in now, -poignant with the recovered smell of wet, dark ivy, the recovered sound -of her stifled sobs as she had stumbled, broken, beside him in the rain. -And with the memory came the desire that she should again be near. - -"Tell me," he said, "what are you going to do? You said you might be -leaving France for ever. Shall you go back to America?" - -"I don't think so. Not for a long time," she answered. "There will be -things to do over here, out of France, for a great many years I -imagine." - -He hesitated, then took a roundabout way. "And when I get home, if, -owing to you, I ever get there, may I not tell them that you're safe and -sound? It would be happier for them to know that, wouldn't it?" - -Her vigilance still dwelt upon him as though she suspected in this -sudden change of subject some craft of approach, but she answered -quietly: - -"No; I think it will be happier for them to forget me. They will be told -if I die. I have arranged for that." - -"They can't very well forget you," said Oldmeadow after a moment. "They -must always wonder." - -"I know." She glanced away and trouble came into her face. "I know. But -as much as possible. You must not make me real again by telling them. -You have promised. You care for them. You know what I mean." - -"Yes; I've promised. And I see what you mean. But," said Oldmeadow -suddenly, and this, of course, was what he had been coming to. "I don't -want to forget. I want you to stay real. You must let me know what -becomes of you, always, please." - -Astonishment, now, effaced her trouble. "You? Why?" she asked. - -He smiled a little. "Well, because, if you'll let me say it, I'm fond of -you. I feel responsible for you. I've been too deeply in your life, -you've been too deeply in mine, for us to disappear from each other. -Don't you remember," he said, and he found it with a sense of -achievement, ridiculous as it might sound, "how I held the tea-pot for -you? That's what I mean. You must let me go on holding it." - -But she could feel no amusement. She was pressing her hands tightly -together in her lap, her eyes were wide and her astonishment, he seemed -to see, almost brought tears to them. "Fond? You?" she said. "Of me? Oh, -no, Mr. Oldmeadow, I can't believe that. You are sorry, I know. You are -very sorry. But you can't be fond." - -"And why not?" said Oldmeadow, and he raised himself on his elbow the -more directly to challenge her. "Why shouldn't I be fond of you, pray? -You must swallow it, for it's the truth and I've a right to my own -feelings, I hope." - -She put aside the playfulness in which his grim earnest veiled itself. -"Because you saw. Because you know. All about me. From the first." - -"Well?" he questioned after a moment, still raised on his elbow but now -with the grimness unalloyed. "What of it?" - -"You remember what I was. You remember what you saw. You would have -saved them from me if you could; and you couldn't. How can you be fond -of a person who has ruined all their lives?" - -"Upon my soul," said Oldmeadow laughing, his eyes on hers, "you talk as -though you'd been a Lucrezia Borgia! What were you worse than an -exalted, stubborn, rather conceited girl? Things went wrong, I know, and -partly because of me. But it wasn't all your fault, I'll swear it. And -if it was, it was your mistake; not your crime." - -"Oh, no, no, no," said Adrienne, and the compulsion of his feeling had -brought a note of anguish to her voice. "It wasn't that. It was worse -than that. Don't forget. Don't think you are fond of me because I can -make you sleep. It's always been so; I see it now--the power I've had -over people; the horrible power. For power is horrible unless one is -good; unless one is using it for goodness." - -"Well, so you were," Oldmeadow muttered, falling back on his pillow, her -vehemence, her strange passion, almost daunting him. "It's not because -you make me go to sleep that I'm fond of you. What utter rubbish!" - -"It is! it is!" she repeated. "I've seen it happen too often. It always -happens. It binds people to me. It makes them cling to me as if I could -give them life. It makes them believe me to be a sort of saint!" - -"Well, if you can help them with it? You have helped them. The war's -your great chance in that, you'll admit. No one can accuse you of trying -to get power over people now." - -"Perhaps not. I'm not thinking of what I may be accused of, but of what -happens." - -"It doesn't happen with me. I was fond of you--well, we won't go back to -that. And you did use it for goodness. Power came by the way and you -took it. Of course." - -"I thought I was using it for goodness. I thought I was good. That was -the foundation of everything. We must go back, Mr. Oldmeadow. You don't -see as I thought you did. You don't understand. I didn't mean to set -myself up above other people. I thought they were good, too. I was happy -in my goodness, and when they weren't happy it seemed to me they missed -something I had and that it was a mistake that I could set right for -them. I'm going back to the very beginning. Long before you ever knew -me. Everything fell into my hand. I loved people, or thought I did, and -if they didn't love me I thought it their mistake. That was the way it -looked to me, for my whole life long, until you came. I couldn't -understand at first, when you came. I couldn't see what you thought. I -believed that I could make you love me, too, and when I saw, for you -made it plain, that you disliked me, it seemed to me worse than mistake. -I thought that you must be against goodness; dangerous; the way you -pushed me back--back--and showed me always something I had not thought I -meant at the bottom of everything I did. I felt that I wanted to turn -away from you and to turn people who loved me away from you, lest you -should infect them. And all the while, all the while I was trying to -escape--the truth that you saw and that I didn't." She stopped for a -moment while, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow stared at her. Her breath -seemed to fail her, and she leaned forward and put her elbows on her -knees and bent her forehead on her joined hands. "It came at last. You -remember how it came," she said, and the passion of protest had fallen -from her voice. She spoke with difficulty. "Partly through you, and, -partly, through my failure; I had never failed before. My failure with -Barney. My failure to keep him and to get him back. I couldn't believe -it at first. I struggled and struggled. You saw me. Everything turned -against me. It was as if the world had changed its shape and colour when -I struggled against it. Everything went down. And when I felt I wasn't -loved, when I felt myself going down, with all the rest, I became bad. -Bad, bad," she repeated, and her voice, heavy with its slow reiteration, -was like a clenched hand of penitence beating on a breast: "really bad -at last, for I had not known before what I was and the truth was there, -staring me in the face. I did dreadful things, then. Mean things; cruel, -hateful things, shutting my eyes, stopping my ears, so that I should not -see what I was doing. I ran about and crouched and hid--from myself; do -you follow my meaning?--from God. And then at last, when I was stripped -bare, I had to look at Him." - -She raised herself and leaned back in her chair. Her voice had trembled -more and more with the intensity of the feeling that upheld her and she -put her handkerchief to her lips and pressed it to them, looking across -at him. And, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow looked back at her, -motionless and silent. - -Was it sympathy, pity or tenderness that almost overwhelmed him as he -gazed at her? He could not have said, though knowing that the unity that -was in them both, the share of the eternal that upheld their lives, -flowed out from his eyes into hers as he looked and from hers to his. -They were near at last; near as it is rarely given to human beings to -experience nearness, and the awe of such a partaking was perhaps the -ground of all he felt. - -"You see," he said, and a long time had passed, "I was mistaken." - -She did not answer him. Perhaps she did not understand. - -"I never knew you were a person who could come to the truth like that," -he said. - -Still holding her handkerchief to her lips, she slightly shook her head. - -"Even you never thought that I was bad." - -"I thought everybody was bad," said Oldmeadow, "until they came to know -that goodness doesn't lie in themselves. The reason you angered me so -was that you didn't see you were like the rest of us. And only people -capable of great goodness can know such an agony of self-recognition." - -"No," she repeated. "Everyone is not bad like me. You know that's not -true. You know that some people, people you love--are not like that. -They need no agony of recognition, for nothing could ever make them mean -and cruel." - -He thought for a moment. "That's because you expected so much more of -yourself; because you'd believed so much more, and were, of course, more -wrong. Your crash was so much greater because your spiritual pride was -so great. And I thought you were a person a crash would do for; that -there'd be nothing left of you if you came a crash. That was my mistake; -for see what there is left." - -She rose to her feet. His words seemed to press her too far. "You are -kind," she said in a hurried voice. "I understand. You are so sorry. -I've talked and talked. It's very thoughtless of me. I must go now." - -She came and took the tray, but he put his hand on her arm, detaining -her. "You'll own you're not bad now? You'll own there's something real -for me to be fond of? Wait. I want you to acknowledge it, to accept -it--my fondness. Don't try to run away." - -She stood above him, holding the tray, while he kept his hold on her -arm. "All I need to know," she said, after a moment, and she did not -look at him, "is that no one is ever safe--unless they always remember." - -"That's it, of course," said Oldmeadow gravely, "and that you must die -to live; and you did die. But you live now, really, and life comes -through you again. Your gift, you know, of which you were so much afraid -just now, lest it had enveigled me. Don't you see it? How can I put it -for you? You had a sort of wholeness before. There must be wholeness of -a sort if life is to come through; harmony of a sort, and faith. It -wasn't an illusion even then. When you were shattered you lost your -gift. The light can't shine through shattered things; and that was when -you recognized that without God we are a nothingness; a nothingness and -a restlessness mingled. You know. There are no words for it, though so -many people have found it and tried to say it. I know, too, after a -fashion. I've had crashes, too. But now your gift has come back, for you -are whole again; built up on an entirely new principle. You see, it's -another you I am fond of. You must believe in her, too. You do believe -in her. If you didn't you could not have found your gift." - -She had stood quite still while he spoke, looking down, not at him but -at the little tray between her hands, and he saw that she was near -tears. Her voice was scarcely audible as she said: "Thank you." And she -made an effort over herself to add: "What you say is true." - -"We must talk," said Oldmeadow. He felt extraordinarily happy. "There -are so many things I want to ask you about." And he went on, his hand -still on her arm, seeing that she struggled not to cry and helping her -to recover: "You're not going away for some time, yet, I hope. Please -don't. There'll soon be no need of hospitals of this sort, anywhere, -will there? and you must manage to stay on here a little longer. I -shan't get on if you go. You won't leave me just as you've saved me, -will you, Mrs. Barney?" - -At the name, over-taxed as she was already, a pitiful colour flooded her -face and before his blunder made visible his own blood answered hers, -mounting hotly to his forehead. "Oh, I'm so sorry," he murmured, -helpless and hating himself, while his hand dropped. She stood over him, -holding herself there so as not to hurt him by the aspect of flight. She -even, in a moment, forced herself to smile. It was the first smile he -had seen on her face. "You've nothing to be sorry for, Mr. Oldmeadow," -she said, as she had said before. "You're very kind to me. I wish I -could tell you how kind I feel you are." And as she turned away, -carrying the tray, she added: "No; I won't go yet." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -He did not see her again for two days; and she did not even come at -night. But he now kept possession of his new strength and slept without -her help. The sense of happiness brooded upon him. He did not remember -ever having felt so happy. His life was irradiated and enhanced as if by -some supreme experience. - -It was already late afternoon when, on the second day, she appeared; but -in this month of August his room was still filled with the reflection of -the sunlight and the warm colour bathed her as she entered. She wore a -blue cloak over her white linen dress and she had perhaps been walking, -for there was a slight flush on her cheeks and a look almost of -excitement in her eyes. - -She unfastened her cloak and put it aside and then, taking the chair -near the window, clasping her hands, as before, in her lap, she said, -without preamble and with a peculiar vehemence: "You hear often from -Barney, don't you?" - -Oldmeadow felt himself colouring. "Only once, directly. It rather tires -him to sit up, you know. But he's getting on wonderfully and the doctors -think he'll soon be able to walk a little--with a crutch, of course." - -"But you do hear, constantly, from Nancy, don't you," said Adrienne, -clasping and unclasping her hands but speaking with a steadiness he felt -to be rehearsed. "He is at Coldbrooks, I know, and Nancy is with him, -and his mother and Mrs. Averil. It all seems almost happy, doesn't it? -as happy as it can be, now, with Palgrave dead and Barney shackled." - -Startled as he was by her directness Oldmeadow managed to meet it. - -"Yes; almost happy," he said. "I was with them before I came out this -last time and felt that about them. Poor Mrs. Chadwick is a good deal -changed; but even she is reviving." - -"She has had too much to bear," said Adrienne. "I saw her again, too, at -the end, when she came to Palgrave. She can never forgive me. Meg is -happy now, but she will never forgive me either. I wrought havoc in -their lives, didn't I?" - -"Well, you or fate. I don't blame you for any of that, you know," said -Oldmeadow. - -"I don't say that I blame myself for it," said Adrienne. "I may have -been right or I may have been wrong. I don't know. It is not in things -like that that I was bad. But what we must face is that I wrought havoc; -that if it hadn't been for me they might all, now, be really happy. -Completely happy. If I had not been there Palgrave would not have been -so sure of himself. And if I had not been there Nancy and Barney would -have married." - -"I don't know," said Oldmeadow. "If Barney hadn't fallen in love with -you he might very probably have fallen in love with some one else, not -Nancy." - -"Perhaps, not probably," said Adrienne. "And if he had he would have -stayed in love with her, for Barney is a faithful person. And it may -have been because I was so completely the wrong person for him that he -came to know so quickly that Nancy was completely the right one. What I -feel is that anybody but Nancy would always have been, really, wrong. -And now that he loves her but is shackled, there's only one thing more -that can be done. I have often thought of it; I needn't tell you that. -But, till now, I could never see my way. It's you who have shown it to -me. In what you said the other day. It's wonderful the way you come into -my life, Mr. Oldmeadow. You made me feel that I had a friend in you; a -true, true friend. And I know what a friend Nancy and Barney have. So -the way opens. We must set Barney free, Mr. Oldmeadow. He and Nancy must -be free to marry. You and I can do it for them and only you and I." - -"What do you mean?" Oldmeadow murmured as, after her words, the silence -had grown deep between them. He repeated, using now the name inevitably -and forgetting the other day. "What do you mean, Mrs. Barney?" - -To-day she did not flush, but to-day there was a reason for her -acceptance. It was, he saw in her next words, only as Barney's wife that -she could help him. - -"He must divorce me," she said. "You and I could go away together and he -could divorce me. Oh, I know, it's a dreadful thing to ask of you, his -friend. I've thought of all that. Wait. Let me finish. I've thought of -nothing else since the other day. It came to me in the night after you -had been so wonderful to me; after that wonderful thing had happened to -us. You felt it, too, I know. It was as if we had taken a sacrament -together. I'm not a Christian. You know what I mean. We felt the deepest -things together, didn't we. And it's because of that that I can ask -this of you. No one else would understand. No one else would care for me -enough, or for him. And then, you could explain it all to him and no one -else could do that. You could explain that it had been to set him free. -To set _me_ free. Because they'd have to think and believe it was for my -sake, too, that you did it, wouldn't they? so as to have it really happy -for them; so that it shouldn't hurt. When it was all over you could go -and explain why you had done it. All we have to do, you know, is to stay -in a hotel together; I bearing your name. It's very simple, really." - -He lay staring at her, overwhelmed. The tears had risen to his eyes as -her beauty and her absurdity were thus revealed to him, and as she spoke -of their sacrament; but amazement blurred all his faculties. He had -never in his life been so amazed. And when he began to emerge, to take -possession of himself again, it was only of her he could think; not of -himself or Nancy and Barney. Only of her and of her beauty and -absurdity. - -"Dear Mrs. Barney," he said at last, and he did not know what to say; -"it's you who are wonderful, you alone. I'd do anything, anything for -you that I could. Anything but this. Because, truly, this is -impossible." - -"Why impossible?" she asked, and her voice was almost stern. - -"You can't smirch yourself like that." It was only one reason; but it -was the first that came to him. - -"I?" she stared. "I don't think it is to be smirched. I shall know why I -do it." - -"Other people won't know. Other people will think you smirched." - -"No one I care for. Everyone I care for will understand." - -"But to the world at large? Your name? Your reputation?" Oldmeadow -protested. "Do they mean nothing to you?" - -A faintly bitter humour touched her lips. "You've always taken the side -of the world in all our controversies, haven't you, Mr. Oldmeadow? and -you were probably right and I was probably wrong; but not because of -what the world would think. I know I'm right now, and those words: name: -reputation--mean nothing to me. The world and I haven't much to do with -each other. A divorced wife can run soup-kitchens and fever hospitals -just as well as the most unsmirched woman of the world. I'm not likely -to want to be presented at courts, am I? Don't think of me, please. It's -not a question of me. Only of you. Will you do it?" - -"I couldn't possibly do it," said Oldmeadow, and he was still hardly -taking her monstrous proposal seriously. - -"Why not?" she asked, scrutinizing him. "It's not that you mind about -your name and reputation, is it?" - -"Not much. Perhaps not much," said Oldmeadow; "but about theirs. That's -what you don't see. That it would be impossible for them. You don't see -how unique you are; how unlike other people. Nancy and Barney couldn't -marry on a fake. The only way out," said Oldmeadow, looking at her with -an edge of ironic grimness in his contemplation, "if one were really to -consider it, would be for you to marry me afterwards and for us to -disappear." - -She gazed at him and he saw that she weighed the idea. "But you'd be -shackled then," she said, and her thoughts were evidently clear. "It -would mean, besides, that you would lose them." - -"As to being shackled," Oldmeadow, still grimly, met the difficulty, -"that's of no moment. I'm the snuffy, snappy bachelor type, you -remember, and I don't suppose I'd ever have married. As to losing them, -I certainly should." - -"We mustn't think of it then," said Adrienne. "You and Barney and Nancy -mustn't lose each other." - -"But we should in either way. I could hardly take up my friendship with -them again after Barney had divorced you on account of me, even if you -and I didn't marry. It would give the whole thing away, if it were -possible for them to meet me again. As I say, they'd feel they had no -right to their freedom on such a fake as that." - -"They couldn't feel really free unless some one had really committed -adultery for their sakes?" Again Adrienne smiled with her faint -bitterness and he wondered if a man and woman had ever before had a more -astonishing conversation. "That seems to me to be asking for a little -too much icing on your cake. Of course it couldn't be a nice, new, snowy -wedding-cake; poor Mrs. Chadwick wouldn't like it at all, nor Mrs. -Averil; but it would be the best we could do for them; and I should -think that when people love each other and are the right people for each -other they'd be thankful for any kind of cake. Even if it were a good -deal burned around the edges," Adrienne finished, her slight bitterness -evidently finding satisfaction in the simile. - -"But they wouldn't see it at all like that," said Oldmeadow, now with -unalloyed gravity. "They'd see it as a cake they had stolen; a cake they -had no right to. It's a question of the laws we live under. Not of -personal, but of public integrity. They couldn't profit by a hoodwinked -law. It's that that would spoil things for them. According to the law -they'd have no right to their freedom. And, now that I am speaking -seriously, it's that I feel, too. What you are asking of me, my dear -friend, is no more nor less than a felony." - -She meditated, unmoved, still almost sternly, turning her eyes from him -and leaning her elbow on the window-sill, her head upon her hand. "I -see," she said at last. "For people who mind about the law, I see that -it would spoil it. I don't mind. I think the law's there to force us to -be kind and just to each other if we won't be by ourselves. If the law -gets tied up in such a foolish knot as to say that people may sin to set -other people free, but mayn't pretend to sin, I think we have a right to -help it out and to make it do good against its own will. I don't mind -the law; luckily for them. Because I won't go back from it now. I won't -leave them there, loving each other but never knowing the fullness of -love. I won't give up a thing I feel right because other people feel it -wrong. So I must find somebody else." - -Oldmeadow looked at her in a culminated and wholly unpleasant -astonishment. "Somebody else? Who could there be?" - -"You may well ask," Adrienne remarked, glancing round at him with a -touch of mild asperity. "You are the only completely right person, -because only you and I feel enough for them to do it for them. What I -must do now is to find some one who would feel enough, just for me, to -do it for me. It makes it more unfair for him, doesn't it. He'll have -only the one friend to help. But on the other hand it will leave them -without a scruple. They'd know from the beginning that with you and me -it was a fake; but with him it might seem quite probable. Yes; it's -strange; I had a letter from him only yesterday. I shouldn't have -thought of him otherwise. I might have had to give up. But the more I -think," Adrienne meditated intently, her head on her hand, her eyes -turned on the prospect outside, "the more I seem to see that Hamilton -Prentiss is the only other chance." - -"Hamilton Prentiss?" Oldmeadow echoed faintly. - -"You met him once," said Adrienne, looking round at him again. "But -you've probably forgotten. At the dinner we gave, Barney and I, in -London, so long ago. Tall, fair, distinguished looking. The son of my -Californian friend; the one you and Mrs. Aldesey thought so tiresome." - -He felt himself colouring, but he could give little thought to the minor -discomfiture, so deeply was his mind engaged with the major one. - -"Did we?" he said. - -"And you thought I didn't see it," said Adrienne. "It made me dreadfully -angry with you both, though I didn't know I was angry; I thought I was -only grieved. I behaved spitefully to Mrs. Aldesey that night, you will -remember, though I didn't know I was spiteful. I did know, however, that -she was separated from her husband"--again Adrienne looked, calmly, -round at him--"and it was a lie I told Barney when I said I didn't. -Sometimes I think that lie was the beginning of everything; that it was -when I told it that I began to hide from myself. However--" She passed -from the personal theme. "Yes; Hamilton is, I believe, big enough and -beautiful and generous enough to do it." - -"Oh, he is, is he?" said Oldmeadow. "And I'm not, I take it. You're -horribly unkind. But I don't want to talk about myself. What I want to -talk about is you. You must drop this preposterous idea of yours. Really -you must. You've had ideas like it before. Remember Meg; what a mess you -made there. I told you then that you were wrong and I tell you you're -wrong now. You must give it up. Do you see? We're always quarrelling, -aren't we?" - -"But I don't at all know that I was wrong about Meg, Mr. Oldmeadow," -said Adrienne. "And if I was, it was because I didn't understand her. I -do understand myself, and I don't agree that I'm wrong or that my plan -is preposterous. You won't call it preposterous, I suppose, if it -succeeds and makes Barney and Nancy happy. No; I'm not going to drop it. -Nothing you could say could make me drop it. As for Hamilton, I don't -set him above you; not in any way. It's only that you and he have -different lights. I know why you can't do this. You've shown me why. And -I wouldn't for anything not have you follow your own light." - -"And you seriously mean," cried Oldmeadow, "that you'd ask this young -fellow--I remember him perfectly and I'm sure he's capable of any degree -of ingenuousness--you'd ask him to go about with you as though he were -your husband? Why, for one thing, he'd be sure to fall head over heels -in love with you, and where would you be then?" - -Adrienne examined him. "But from the point of view of hoodwinking, that -would be all to the good, wouldn't it?" she inquired; "though -unfortunate for Hamilton. He won't, however," she went on, her dreadful -lucidity revealing to him the hopelessness of any protest he might still -have found to make. "There's a very lovely girl out in California he's -devoted to; a young poetess. He'll have to write to her about it first, -of course; Hamilton's at the front now, you see; and I must write to his -mother. She and Carola Brown are very near each other and will talk it -out together and I feel sure they will see it as I do. They'll see it as -something big I'm asking them to do for me--to set me free. I'm sure I -can count on Gertrude and I'm sure Hamilton can count on Carola. She's a -very rare, strong spirit." - -Oldmeadow, suddenly, was feeling exhausted, and a clutch of hysterical -laughter, as she spoke these last words, held his throat for a moment. -He laid his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes, while he saw -Adrienne and Hamilton Prentiss wandering by the banks of a French river -where poplars stood against a silver sky. He knew that he had accepted -nothing when he said at last: "Shall we talk about it another time? -To-morrow? I mean, don't take any steps, will you, until we've talked. -Don't write to your beautiful, big friend." - -"You always make fun of me a little, don't you," said Adrienne -tranquilly. She seemed aware of some further deep discomposure in him -and willing, though not comprehending it, to meet it with friendly -tolerance. "If he is big and beautiful, why shouldn't I say it? But I -won't write until we've talked again. It can't be, anyway, until the war -is over. And I've had already to wait for four years." - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -She might feel that he had cruelly failed her; but when she came at the -same hour next day it was evident to him from her demeanour that she -imagined him resigned, if not converted, to her alternative plan. She -carried a bunch of late roses and said that she had been having a lovely -drive with a dear old friend from Denver, who had managed to get to -Boulogne to see her. - -"Your friends all come from such distant places," said Oldmeadow with a -pretended fretfulness that veiled an indescribable restlessness. -"California, Denver, Chicago. They have, all of them, an implacably -remote sound, as if they were carrying you, already, off to other -planets." - -"Well, it doesn't take so long, really, to get to any of them," said -Adrienne, placing the roses in a glass of water by his side, a close, -funny little bunch, red roses in the middle and white ones all round. -She had taken off her cloak and laid a newspaper down on the little -table, seating herself, then, in the window and keeping in her hands a -pocket-book that, in its flatness and length and the way she held it, -reminded him of the little blue and grey fan of the dinner-party where -she had told her first lie. His mind was emptied of thought. Only -pictures crossed it, pictures of Adrienne and the tall, fair youth with -the ingenuous eyes, wandering by the French river; and, again, Adrienne -on that night, now as distant as California, when, with her fan and -pearl-wreathed hair, she had met his persiflage with her rebuking -imperturbability. But under the pictures a sense of violent tension made -his breathing shallow. He fixed his eyes on the pocket-book and wondered -how she had nursed people with those ineffectual-looking hands. - -"Where were you trained for nursing?" he asked her suddenly. "Out here? -or in England?" - -"In England. In Oxford. Before Palgrave was taken," said Adrienne. "I -gave up my philosophy very soon for that. I worked in a hospital there." - -"And how came you to go out to Salonika? Tell me about it. And about -your hospital here," he went on with a growing sense of keeping -something off. "It's your own hospital I hear, and wonderfully run. Sir -Kenneth was talking to me about you this morning." - -"What a fine person he is," said Adrienne. "Yes, he came to see us and -liked the way it was done." She was pleased, he saw, to tell him -anything he chose to ask about. She told him about her hospital and of -all its adventures--they had been under fire so often that it had become -an everyday event; and about how admirable a staff she had -organized--"rare, devoted people"--and about their wounded, their -desperately wounded _poilus_ and how they came to love them all. He -remembered, as she talked, that she was rich; even richer than he had -thought, since she could leave a fortune to Palgrave and yet equip -hospitals in France and in Salonika. She told him about Salonika, too. -It had been a fever hospital there and the misery and suffering had -seemed worse than the suffering here in France. Yes; she had caught the -fever herself and had nearly died. - -She had no gift for the apt or vivid word. Her nature had been revealed -to him as barbarous, or sublime, in its unconventionality, yet it -expressed itself only in the medium of trite convention. But his time of -jibbing at her platitudes was long since passed. He listened, rather, -with a tender, if superficial interest, seeing her heroic little figure -moving, unconcerned, among pestilences and bombardments. "It's not only -what you tell me," he said, when she had brought her recital up to date. -"I heard so much from Sir Kenneth. You are one of the great people of -the war." - -"Am I?" she said. That, too, unfeignedly, left her unconcerned. - -"You've the gift of leadership. The gift for big things generally." - -She nodded. "I'm only fit for big things." - -"Only? How do you mean?" - -"Little ones are more difficult, aren't they. My feet get tangled in -them. To be fit for daily life and all the tangles; that's the real -test, isn't it? That's just the kind of thing you see so clearly, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Big things and the people who do them are just the kind of -things you see through." - -"Oh, but you misunderstood me--or misunderstand," said Oldmeadow. "Big -things are the condition of life; the little things can only be built up -on them. One must fight wars and save the world before one can set up -one's tea-tables." He remembered having thought of something like this -at Lydia's tea-table. "Tea-tables are important, I know, and the things -that happen round them. But if one can nurse a ward of typhus patients -single-handed one must be forgiven for letting the tea-pot slip. Really -I never imagined you capable of all you've done." - -"I always thought I was capable of anything," said Adrienne smiling -slightly, her eyes meeting his in a tranquil partaking of the jest, that -must be at her expense. "You helped me to find that out about -myself--with all the rest. And I was right enough in thinking that I -could face things and lead people. But I wasn't capable of the most -important things. I wasn't capable of being a wise and happy wife. I -wasn't even capable of being truthful in drawing-rooms when other women -made me angry. But I can go on battle-fields and found hospitals and -tend the sick and dying. Shells and pestilences"--her smile was -gone--"if people knew how trivial they are--compared to seeing your -husband look at you with hatred." - -She had turned her eyes away as she was thus betrayed into revealing the -old bitternesses of her heart and he dropped his to the little -pocket-book that now lay still between her hands. The feeling in her -voice, the suffering it revealed to him, with the bitterness, woke an -unendurable feeling in himself. He did not clearly see what the test was -to which he put himself; but he knew that what he must say to her was -the most difficult thing he had ever had to say; and he found it only -after the silence had grown long. - -"Mrs. Barney--everything has changed, hasn't it; you've changed; I've -changed; Barney may have changed. It was only, after all, a moment of -miserable misunderstanding between you. He never really knew what you -were feeling. He thought you didn't care for him any longer, when, -really, you were finding out how much you cared. Don't you think, -before you take final decisions, that you ought to see Barney again? -Don't you think you ought to give him another chance? I could arrange it -all for you, when I got home." - -The flood of colour, deep and sick, had mounted to her face, masking it -strangely, painfully, to where the white linen cut across her brow and -bound her chin. And, almost supplicatingly, since he saw that she could -not speak, he murmured: "You can be a wise and happy wife now; and he -loved you so dearly." - -She did not lift her eyes. She sat there, looking down, tightly holding -the pocket-book in her lap. - -"Let me tell him, when I get home, that I've seen you again," he -supplicated. "Let me arrange a meeting." - -Slowly, not lifting her eyes, she shook her head and he heard her, just -heard her say: "It's not pride. Don't think that." - -"No; no; I know it's not. Good heavens, I couldn't think it that. You -feel it's no good. You feel that his heart is occupied. It is. I can't -pretend to hide from you that it is. But your place in it was supreme. -There would be no unfairness if you took it again. Nancy would be the -first person to want you to take it. You know that that is true of -Nancy." - -"I know. I heard her plead for me," said Adrienne. - -The sentence fell, soft and trenchant; and he remembered, in the silence -that followed, what she had heard. He drew a long breath, feeling half -suffocated. But he had met his test. It was inevitable, he knew it now, -that she should say "Barney and I are parted for ever." - -Silence dropped again between them. He did not know what was passing -behind its curtain and whether bitterness or only grief was in her -heart. - -He lay, drawing the slow, careful breaths of his recovery, and saw her -presently put out her hand and take up her _New York Herald_ and unfold -it. She looked down the columns unseeingly; but the little feint of -interest helped her. - -Slowly the colour faded from her face and it was as if the curtain -lifted when, laying the paper down, she said, and he knew that she was -finding words to comfort him: "Really everything is quite clear before -me now. I shall write at once to Hamilton, and to his mother. If he -agrees, if they all agree, he and I can go away very soon I think. -Afterwards, I shall stay over here. I've quite made up my mind to that. -There'll be so much to do; for years and years; for all one's lifetime. -Ways will open. When one is big," she smiled the smile at once so gentle -and so bitter, "and has plenty of money, ways always do. I'm a -_déracinée_ creature; I never had any roots, you know; and I can't do -better, I'm sure, than to make soil for the uprooted people to grow in -again. That's what's most needed now, isn't it? Soil. It's the -fundamental things of life, its bare possibilities, that have been so -terribly destroyed over here. America has, still, more soil than she can -use, and since I'm an American, and a rich one, my best plan is to use -America, in my fortune and my person, for Europe. Because I love them -both and because they both need each other." - -She had quite recovered herself Her face had found again its pale, fawn -tints and she was looking at him with her quietest contemplation while -he, in silence, lay looking at her. - -"It's not about the things I shall do that I'm perplexed, ever," she -went on. "But I'm sometimes perplexed about myself. I sometimes wish I -were a Roman Catholic. In an order of some kind. Under direction. To put -oneself in the hands of a wise director, it must be so peaceful. Like -French friends I have; such wise, fine women; so poised and so secure. I -often envy them. But that can't be for me." - -She must feel in his silence now the quality of some extreme emotion, -and that she believed it to be pity was evident to him as she went on, -seeking to comfort him; and troubled by his trouble: "You mustn't be -sorry. I am not unhappy. I am a happy person. Do you remember that -Sunday morning at Coldbrooks, long ago? How I said to Mother--to Mrs. -Chadwick--that I had no doubts? You thought me fatuous. I dimly saw that -you thought me fatuous. But it's still true of me. I must tell you, so -that you shan't think I'm unhappy. I've been, it seems to me, through -everything since then. I've had doubts--every doubt: of myself; of life; -of all the things I trusted. Doubt at last, when the dreadful darknesses -came--Barney's hatred, Palgrave's death--of God. We've never spoken of -Palgrave, have we? I was with him, you had heard, and at the very end it -was he who helped me rather than I him. He held me up. When he was dying -he held me up. He made me promise him that I would not kill myself--for -he guessed what I was thinking; he made me promise to go on. And he -saved me. The light began to come back to me while I sat beside him -after he had died." - -She had not looked at him while she spoke, but down at her hands that, -trembling, turned and returned the little pocket-book. And controlling -her voice as she sought to control the trembling of her hands, she said: -"Perhaps it is always like that. When one confesses one's sin and hates -it in oneself, even if it is still there, tempting one, the light begins -to come back. After that it came more and more. What you call my gift is -part of it. Isn't it strange that I should have had that gift when I was -so blind? But what you said was true. I had a sort of wholeness then, -because I was blind. And now that I see, it's a better wholeness and a -safer gift. That is what I wanted to say, really. To explain, so that -you shan't be sorry. No one who can find that light can be unhappy. It -comes to me now, always, when I need it. I can make it shine in other -people--as Palgrave made it shine in me. Love does it. Isn't it -wonderful that it should be so? Nothing else is real beside it. Nothing -is real without it. And when it happens, when one feels it come through -and shine further, it is more, far more, than happiness." - -All the while that she had spoken, pale, and with her trembling hands, -he had lain looking at her in silence, a silence that was dividing him, -as if by a vast chasm, from all his former life. - -He and Adrienne stood on one side of this chasm, and, while it seemed to -widen with a dizzying rapidity, he saw that on the other stood Barney, -Nancy, Coldbrooks, and Lydia--poor Lydia--and that they were being borne -away from him for ever. He saw nothing before him but Adrienne; and for -how long was he to keep her? That was his supreme risk; but he could -not allay it or step back to the further brink. It was his very life -that had fallen in two while she had spoken and without the sense of -choice; though he dimly saw that, in the restlessness and urgency of the -hours since he had seen her last, the choice had been preparing. - -He was taking the only step possible for him to take on the narrow -foothold of the present when he said, in a voice so quiet that she might -even be unaware of his seeming gross irrelevance, "Do you know, about -your plan--for Barney and Nancy--I've been thinking it over and I've -decided that it must be I, not Hamilton." - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -Her eyes met his for a long time before he realized that she might find -not only irrelevance but even irreverence. She had shown him her very -soul and he had answered with this announcement. Of course it had been -because of what she told him that he had seen at last his own necessity; -but he could not tell her that. - -"I'm not sorry for you," he said. "I envy you. You are one of the few -really happy people in the world." - -"But I'd quite given that idea up, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said. "What has -made you change?" - -He saw the trouble in her face, the suspicion of her power and its -compulsion over the lives of others. He took the bull by the horns. - -"You, of course. I can't pretend that it's anything else. I want to do -it for you and with you." - -"But it's for Barney and Nancy that it's to be done," she said, and her -gravity had deepened. "It's just the same for them--and you explained -yesterday that it would spoil it for them." - -"It may spoil it somewhat," said Oldmeadow, contemplating her with a -curious tranquillity; she was now all that was left him in life to -contemplate; and she was all he needed. "But it won't prevent it. I -still think it a wrong thing to do. I still think it a felony. But, -since I can't turn you from it, what I've come to see is that it's, as -you said, for you and me, who care for them, to do. It's not right, not -decent or becoming, that anyone who doesn't even know them should be -asked to do such a thing." - -"But Hamilton wouldn't do it for them," she said. "It would be for me he -would do it. And he wouldn't think it a felony." - -"All the more reason that his innocence shouldn't be taken advantage of. -I can't stand by and see it done. It's for my friends the felony will be -committed and it's I who will bear the burden for them. As to his doing -it for you, I know you better than he possibly can know you, and care -for you more than he possibly can. If you're determined on committing a -crime, I'll share the responsibility with you." - -"I know you care more. You are a wonderful friend. You are my best -friend in the world." She gazed at him and he saw that for once he had -troubled and perplexed her. "And it's wonderful of you to say you'll do -it. But Hamilton won't feel it a burden; not as you will; and for him to -do it won't spoil it for them. If you do it, it will spoil it for them. -You said so. And how can I let you do a thing you feel so wrong for my -sake?" - -"You'll have to. I won't have Hamilton sacrificed in order that their -cake shall have no burnt edges. They'll have to pay something for it in -social and moral discomfort. It would be nothing to the discomfort of -Miss Brown, would it? I shall be able to put it clearly to Barney when I -write and tell him that it's for your sake as well as his and that he -and Nancy, who have never sought anything or hoped for anything, are in -no way involved by our misdemeanour. I won't emphasize to Barney what I -feel about that side of it. He's pretty ingenuous, too. It will be a -less tidy happiness they'll have to put up with. That's all it comes to, -as far as they are concerned." - -She was looking at him with the trouble and perplexity and she said: - -"They'll have to pay in far more than social and moral discomfort." - -"Well? In what way? How?" he challenged her. - -"You said they'd lose you." - -"Only, if you married me," he reminded her. - -But she remembered more accurately. "No. They'd lose you anyway. You -said so. You said that if they could ever see you again it would make it -too blatantly a fake. And it's true. I see it now. How could you turn up -quietly, as if nothing had happened, after Barney had divorced me with -you as co-respondent? There's Lady Cockerell," said Adrienne, and, -though she was so grave, so troubled, it was with a touch of mild -malice. "There's Mr. Bodman and Johnson, to say nothing of Mrs. Chadwick -and Nancy's mother. No, I really don't see you facing them all at -Coldbrooks after we'd come out in the 'Daily Mail' with head-lines and -pictures." - -Her lucidity could indeed disconcert him when it sharpened itself like -this with the apt use of his vocabulary. He had to stop to think. - -"There won't, at all events, be pictures," he paused by the triviality -to remark. "We shan't appear. It will be an hotel over here and the case -will be undefended. We needn't, really, consider all that too closely. -At the worst, if they do lose me, it's not a devastating loss. They'll -have each other." - -"Ah, but who will you have?" Adrienne inquired. "Hamilton will have -Carola and they will have each other. But who will you have?" - -He lay and looked at her. There was only one answer to that question -and he could not make it. He was aware of the insufficiency of his -substitute. "I'd have your friendship," he said. - -"You have that now," said Adrienne. "And though I'm so your friend, I'll -be leaving you, soon, probably for ever. We'll probably never meet -again, Mr. Oldmeadow. Our paths lie so apart, don't they? My friendship -will do you very little good." - -Her words cut into him, but he kept a brave countenance. "I'd have the -joy of knowing I'd done something worth while for you. How easily I -might have died here, if it hadn't been for you. My life is yours in a -sense and I want you to use it rather than Hamilton's. I have my work, -you know; lots of things I'm interested in to go back to some day. As -you remarked, a divorced wife can run soup-kitchens and in the same way -a co-respondent can write articles and go to concerts." - -"I know. I know what a fine, big life you have," she murmured, and the -trouble on her face had deepened. "But how can I take it from you? A -felony? How can I let you do, for my sake, something you feel to be so -wrong?" - -"Give it up then," said Oldmeadow. And if he had found it difficult to -make his plea for Barney a little while before, how much more difficult -he found it to say this, and to mean it, now. "Give it up. That's your -choice, and your only choice. You owe that to me. Indeed you do. To give -it up or to accept me as your companion in iniquity. I'm not going to -pretend I don't think it iniquity to give you ease. You're not a person -who needs ease. And I can do without it, too. For your sake. So there -you have it." - -"Not quite. Not quite," she really almost pleaded. "I couldn't ask it of -Hamilton if he felt about it in the least little way as you do. And -Carola doesn't care a bit about the law either. She's an Imagist, you -know."--Adrienne offered this fact as if it would help to elucidate -Carola's complaisances. "She's written some very original poetry. If it -were Hamilton no one would lose anything, and Barney and Nancy would be -free. Indeed, indeed I can't give it up when it's all there, before me, -with everything to gain and nothing to lose for anybody, if it's -Hamilton." - -"Then it must be me, you see," said Oldmeadow. "And I shan't talk to you -about the iniquity again, I promise you. I've made my protest and -civilization must get on as best it can. You're a terrible person, you -know"--he smiled a little at her, finding the banter so that she should -not guess at the commotion of his heart. "But I like you just as you -are. Now where shall we go?" - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -He could not have believed that it would be so delicious to live with -Adrienne Toner. - -Even at the moment when he had known that he loved her, he had been, -though filled with the sense of a present heaven, as aware as ever of -the discrepancies between them, and during the three months that -separated them, he at Cannes, she nursing in Paris, he knew many doubts; -never of his love, but of what it was making him do and of where it was -going to lead them. He couldn't for the life of him imagine what was to -become of them if his hopes were fulfilled, for he hardly saw himself -following her off to Central Europe--it was to Serbia, her letters -informed him, that her thoughts were turning--nor saw them established -in London under the astonished gaze of Lydia Aldesey. - -She had selected Lyons as their place of meeting, because of the work -for the _rapatriés_ that she wished to inspect there, and from the -moment that he saw her descend from the Paris express, dressed in dark -civilian clothes and carrying, with such an air of competence, her rug -and dressing-case, all doubts were allayed and all restlessness -dispelled. - -He had arrived the day before and had found an old-fashioned hotel with -spacious rooms overlooking the Saône, and, as they drove to it on that -November evening, she expressed herself, scrutinizing him with a -professional eye, as dissatisfied with his recovery. - -It was because of the restlessness, of course, that he had not got as -well as he should have, and he knew that he must, in the stress of -feeling that now beset him, look strangely, and he promised her, feeling -that he spoke the truth, that now that he had his nurse again complete -recovery would be only a matter of days. - -"I want you to see our view," he said to her when the porter had carried -up her little box and they were left alone in the brocaded and gilded -salon that separated their rooms; "I chose this place for the view; it's -the loveliest in Lyons, I think." - -There was still a little twilight, and standing at the window they -looked down at the lighted quai with its double row of lofty plane-trees -and across the jade-green Saône at St. Jean, the grey cathedral, and at -the beautiful white _archevêché_ glimmering in a soft, dimmed atmosphere -that made him think of London. - -"There's a horrible modern cathedral up on the hill," he said; "but we -don't need to see it. We need only see the river and the _archevêché_ -and St. Jean. And in the mornings there's a market below, a mile of it, -all under huge mushroom-coloured umbrellas; flowers and cheeses and -every kind of country produce. I think you'll like it here." - -"I like it very much. I think it's beautiful," said Adrienne. "I like -our room, too," and she turned and looked up at the painted ceiling and -round at the consoles and mirrors, inlaid tables and richly curved, -brocaded chairs. "Isn't it splendid." - -"Madame Récamier is said to have lived here," Oldmeadow told her. "And -this is said to have been her room." - -"And now it's mine," said Adrienne, smiling slightly as though she -found the juxtaposition amusing. - -Already the stealing sense of deliciousness was breathing over him. The -very way in which she said, "our room," was part of it. Even the way in -which she said that made him feel the peace, comfort, and charm of a -shared life as he had never before felt it. And the sense grew and grew -on that first evening. - -It was delicious to hear the waiters address her as Madame, and to know -that it was his madame they imagined her to be, when he sat opposite to -her at their little table in the dining-room. She wore a grey dress now -and, with her quiet, her calm glances cast about her, might indeed have -been the veritable Madame Oldmeadow inscribed at the _bureau_. If they -had the aspect of a devoted, long-mated couple, it was because of her -calm. But she would have been as unperturbed, he felt sure, had she been -stopping there under her own name instead of his and looked upon as his -well-established mistress. Situations would never embarrass her as long -as she knew what she was doing with them. That night when she gave him -her hand at bedtime she said, looking at him with the affectionate, -professional eyes: "I'll come and put you to sleep if you need me; be -sure to let me know." - -But he had no need to call her. He slept as soundly as though she sat -beside him with her hand upon his brow. - -So the mirage of conjugal felicity was evoked about him. - -She poured out his coffee for him in the morning wearing a silk -_négligé_ edged with fur, and said, as they buttered their rolls, that -they must buy some honey for their breakfasts. She said, too, that they -must do a great deal of sight-seeing in the afternoons. "There is so -much to be seen in Lyons. And I shall finish with my _rapatrié_ work in -the mornings." He asked if he might not come with her to the _rapatrié_ -work, but was told that he was not yet strong enough for more than one -walk in the day. "In our evenings, after tea," she went on, "I thought -perhaps you'd like to study Dante a little with me. My Dante is getting -so rusty and I've brought a very fine edition. Are you good at Italian?" - -He said he wasn't, but would love to read Dante with her. - -"And we must get a piano," she finished, "and have music after dinner. -It will be a wonderful holiday for me." - -So the days fell at once into a series of rituals. He saw that she had -always mapped them out conscientiously, as Mrs. Toner had doubtlessly -taught her to do, careful of the treasure of time--as Mrs. Toner would -have said--entrusted to each soul by life. So, no doubt, Adrienne would -put it still. And what he would, in first knowing her, have found part -of her absurdity, he found now part of her charm. - -That was what it all came back to. He saw, reconstructing their past, -that from the beginning she had had her deep charm for him. - -It was the trivial word for the great fact; the compulsion of -personality; the overflow of vitality; the secret at once of the saint -and of the successful music-hall singer. Her own absorption in life was -so intense that it communicated itself. Her confidence was so secure -that it begot confidence. Her power was implicit in all she did. It was -not only the _rapatriés_ she dealt with, as, at the first, she had dealt -with the wounded. She dealt as successfully and as accurately with the -little things of life. Honey was on their breakfast-table; flowers on -the consoles; music on the piano. The gilded hotel salon became a home. - -She was still, in demeanour, the cultured, travelled American, equipped -always, for their walks, with a guide-book or history, from which she -often read to him as they paused to lean on the parapets of the splendid -quais. There were few salient facts in the history of the potent city -that were not imparted to him; and with anyone else what a bore it would -have been to have to listen! But he was more than content that she -should tell him about the Romans or Richelieu. It was everything to him -to feel that they shared it all, from the honey to Richelieu. - -And with all the intimacy went the extreme reserve. - -She had showed him, when it was necessary for their understanding as -friends, the centre of her life; yet she remained, while so gentle, so -absorbed, and even loving, as remote, as inaccessible, as he had felt -her to be on those first days in the hospital. She never referred to her -own personal situation not to any emotion connected with it. She never -referred to herself or expressed a taste or an opinion touched with -personal ardour. He did not know what she was really feeling, ever. -Though, when he looked at her, sitting opposite him in her grey and -addressed by the assiduities of the waiters, he could imagine that he -was living with a wife, he could imagine more often that he was living -with a nun. Her control and her selflessness were cloistral. He could -not think her in any need of a director. - -They walked one afternoon along the Quai des Brotteaux, returning from -the park of the Tête d'Or, where they had wandered on the gravel under -the tall, melancholy trees and fed the deer. The ugly yet magnificent -city was spread before them in one of its most splendid aspects, -climbing steeply, on the further banks of the Rhône, to the cliff-like -heights of the Croix Rousse and marching, as it followed the grandiose -curve of the river, into a sunset sky where the cupola of the Hospice -hung like a dark bubble against the gold and the Alps, not visible from -the river level, seemed yet to manifest themselves in the illumined -clouds ranged high above the horizon. - -Ten days of their appointed fortnight had now passed and while Oldmeadow -kept a half unseeing yet appraising eye upon the turbulent glories of -the river, he was wondering when and how he should make his revelation -and his appeal. If her reserve made it more difficult to imagine, her -intimacy did not make it more easy. It was because she was so intimate -that she had remained so unaware. For all his self-command he felt sure -that in any other circumstances she could not, for these ten days, have -remained so blind. - -Here she walked beside him, the Madame Oldmeadow of the hotel, looking -before her as she walked and thinking, he would have wagered, not of him -but of Serbia. - -She wore a beautifully adjusted little costume, conveying in its sober -darkness the impression of richness and simplicity that her clothes had -always given him. Fur was turned up about her ears and a small hat of -fur and velvet was turned down over her eyes as she had always worn her -hats. The straight fringe of gold showed under its brim and under the -gold were those calm, those questing, melancholy eyes. - -Or perhaps--he carried further his rueful reverie--she was thinking -about the date of the Hospice. He had the guide-book in his pocket. - -"Isn't it jolly?" he suggested, as she looked up at him, indicating the -prospect spread before them and adding, since he knew that his English -instinct for boyish understatement still puzzled her: "Like a great, -grim queen in shabby clothes; raised on such a throne and crowned with -such jewels that one feels her glorious rather than ugly." - -Adrienne studied the shabby queen attentively and then looked back at -him. Perhaps something dwelling in his eyes, something for her only and -not at all for Lyons, caught her more special attention, for she said -suddenly, and so unexpectedly that, with a sort of terror, he felt that -his crisis might be coming: "You've been very dear to me, Mr. Oldmeadow, -in all our time here. I feel it to have been a great privilege, you -know; a great opportunity." - -"Really? In what way?" He could at all events keep his voice quiet and -light. "I thought it had been you who made all the opportunities." - -"Oh, no. I never make any of the opportunities I am thinking of," said -Adrienne. "I only know how to take them. It isn't only that you are more -widely and deeply cultured than I am--though your Italian accent isn't -good!"--she smiled; "but I always feel that you see far more in -everything than I do, even when you seem to be seeing less. I have to go -carefully and pick up fact by fact, while you see things in a sort of -vision and they are all related as they enter your mind. That's where my -privilege comes in. You make me share your vision sometimes. You have -the artistic mind, and I am not really artistic at all--though Mother -always wanted that for me more than anything; with all that goes with -it." - -She was speaking of herself--though it was only in order to express more -exactly her gratitude, and, as he walked beside her, he was filled with -the mingled hope and terror. After all he had still four more days of -her. It would be terrible to spoil them. - -"No; you aren't artistic," he agreed. "And I don't know that I am, -either. Whether I am or not, I feel mine to have been the opportunity -and the privilege." - -"I can't understand that at all," she said, with her patent candour. - -"It may be part of the artistic temperament to feel things one can't -understand. Though I do understand why I feel it," he added. - -"And it's part of the artistic temperament not to try"--Adrienne turned -their theme to its more impersonal aspect. "Never to try to enjoy -anything that you don't enjoy naturally. I don't believe I ever enjoy -any of the artistic things quite naturally. I've always been trained to -enjoy and I've always tried to enjoy; because I thought it was right to -try. But since I've been here with you I've come to feel that what I've -enjoyed has been my own effort and my mastery of the mere study, and I -seem to feel that it might be as well to give up trying and training and -fall back on the things that come naturally; scenery artists would think -sentimental, and babies; and patriotic songs." She smiled a little as -she found her list. But she was grave, too, thinking it out and adding -another to her discovered futilities. - -"It may be as well to limit your attention to the sentimental scenery -and the babies, since you've so many other things to do with it," he -acquiesced. "We come back to big people again, you see; they haven't -time to be artistic; don't need to be." - -"Ah, but it's not a question of time at all," said Adrienne, and he -remembered that long ago, from the very first, he had said that she -wasn't stupid. "It's a question of how you're born. That's a thing I -would never have admitted in my old days, you know. I would never have -admitted that any human soul was really shut out from anything. Perhaps -we're not, any of us, if we are to have all eternity to grow in. But as -far as this life is concerned I see quite clearly now that some people -are shut out from all sorts of things, and that the sort of mistake I -made in my old time was in thinking that anyone who had the will could -force eternity into any given fragment of our temporal life. I did do a -little philosophy, you see! That's what I mean and you understand, I -know. All the same I wish I weren't one of the shut-out people. I wish I -were artistic. I'd have liked to have that side of life to meet people -with. I sometimes think that one doesn't get far with people, really, if -all that one has to give are the fundamental things like the care of -their minds and bodies. One goes deep, of course; but one doesn't go -far. You can do something for them; but there's nothing, afterwards, -that they can do _with_ you; and it makes it rather lonely in a -way--when one has time to be lonely." - -He did not know, indeed, whether she saw the beauty of the scene spread -before them as they walked, and he was remembering, with a sort of -tranced tenderness, the flower-wreathed shepherdess and her crook; and -Mrs. Toner with her lilies and seagulls. But why should she see beauty -when she made it? It was all that he could see in her now. - -"What you can do for them afterwards is to pour out their coffee for -them in the most enhancing way," he suggested, "and make sight-seeing a -pleasure, and arrange flowers and place chairs and tables so that a -hotel salon becomes loveable. If you find the person to whom you can -give the fundamental things and do all sorts of homely things with -afterwards, why be lonely? We are very happy together, aren't we? We get -a great deal out of each other. I can speak for myself, at all events; -and you've just told me that I give something, too. So why should you go -off to Central Europe next week? Why not go back with me to the South," -he finished, "and wander about together enjoying, quite naturally, the -sentimental scenery?" - -He held his breath after he had thus spoken, wondering with intensity, -while he felt his heartbeats, what she would make of it. He knew what he -could make of it, seizing his opportunity on the instant, if only she -would recognize the meaning that underlay the easy words. And framed in -the little hat on the background of transfigured Lyons, Adrienne's face -was turned towards him and, after he had made his suggestion, she -studied him in silence for what seemed to him a long lapse of time. Then -she said, overwhelmingly: - -"That's perfectly lovely of you, Mr. Oldmeadow." - -"Not at all; not perfectly lovely at all," he stammered as he -contradicted her and he heard that his voice sounded angry. "It's what I -want. I want it very much." - -"Yes. I know you do. And that's what's so lovely," said Adrienne. "I -know you want it. You are sorry for me all the time. And you want to -cheer me up. Because you feel I've lost so much. But, you know; you -remember; I told you the truth that time. I don't need cheering. I'm not -unhappy. One can be lonely without being unhappy." - -"I'm not sorry for you," poor Oldmeadow rejoined, still in the angry -voice. "I'm not thinking of you at all. I'm thinking of myself. I'm -lonely, too, and I am unhappy, even if you aren't." - -She stopped short in her walk. He saw in her eyes the swift, almost -diagnosing solicitude that measured his need and her own capacity. It -was as though his temperature had gone up alarmingly. - -"Dear Mr. Oldmeadow," she said; and then she faltered; she paused. She -no longer found her remedies easily. "It's because you are separated -from your own life," she did find. "It's because all this is so bitter -to you; what you are doing now--how could I not understand?--and the -war, that has torn us all. But when it's over, when you can go home -again and take up your own big life-work and find your own roots, -happiness will come back; I'm sure of it. We are all unhappy sometimes, -aren't we? We must be; with our minds and hearts. Our troubled minds; -our lonely hearts. But you know as well as I do, dear Mr. Oldmeadow, -that our souls can find the way out." - -Her nature expressed itself in platitudes; yet sometimes she had -phrases, rising from her heart as if from a fountain fed by unseen -altitudes, that shook him in their very wording. "Our troubled minds. -Our lonely hearts," echoed in his ears while, bending his head -downwards, he muttered stubbornly: "My soul can't, without you." - -She still stood, not moving forward, her eyes raised to his. "Please -don't say that," she murmured, and he heard the trouble in her voice. -"It can't be so, except for this time that you are away from everybody. -You have so many things to live for. So many people near you. You are -such a big, rare person. It's what I was afraid of, you know. It happens -so often with me; that people feel that. But you can't really need me -any longer." - -He said nothing, still not raising his eyes to hers, and she went on -after a moment. "And I have so many things to live for, too. You've -never really thought about that side of my life, I know. Why should you? -You think of any woman's life--isn't it true?--as not seriously -important except on its domestic side. And you know how important I -think that. But it isn't so with me, you see. I have no hearth and I -have no home; I have only my big, big life and it's more important than -you could believe unless you could see it all. When I'm in it it takes -all my mind and all my strength and I'm bound to it, yes, just as -finally, just as irrevocably as a wife who loves is bound by her -marriage vows; because I love it. Do you see? They are waiting for me -now. They need me now. There are starving people, dying people; and -confusion; terrible confusion. I have a gift for all that. I can deal -with it. Those are just the things I can deal with. And I mustn't put it -off any longer--when our time is up. I must leave you, my dear, dear -friend, however much I'd love to stay." - -She was speaking at last with ardour, and about herself. And what she -said was true. He had never thought about her work except in the sense -that he thought her a saint and knew that saints did good deeds. That -she was needed, sorely needed, by the starving and dying, was a fact, -now that it was put before him, silencing and even shaming him. It gave -him, too, a new fear. If she had her blindness, he had his. His hopes -and fears, after all, were all that he had to think of; she had the -destinies of thousands. He remembered Sir Kenneth's tone in speaking of -her; its deep respect. Not the respect of the man for the -tender-hearted, merciful woman; but the respect of a professional expert -for another expert; respect for the proved organizer and leader of men. - -"I have been stupid," he said after a moment. "It's true that I've been -thinking about you solely in relation to myself. Would you really love -to stay? If it wasn't for your work? It would be some comfort to believe -that." - -"Of course I'd love to stay," she said, eagerly scanning his face. "I'd -love to travel with you--to pour out your coffee in Avignon, Nîmes, -Cannes--anywhere you liked. I'd love our happy time here to go on and -on. If life could be like that; if I didn't want other things more. You -remember how Blake saw it all: - - 'He who bends to himself a joy - Doth the winged life destroy.' - -I mustn't try to bend and keep this lovely time. I must let it fly--and -bless it as it goes. And so it will bless me." - -She seldom made quotations nowadays. For this one he felt a gratitude -such as his life had rarely known. - -"It's been a joy to you, too, then?" - -"Of course it has," said Adrienne smiling at him and turning at last -towards the bridge that they must cross. "It's been one of the most -beautiful things that has ever happened to me." - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -Oldmeadow sat at the inlaid table in the gilded salon on the afternoon -of the last day. He had two letters to write, for, as he had put off -speaking to Adrienne till their last evening, so he had put off writing -to Barney and to Lydia Aldesey till this last afternoon, and he saw now -how difficult it would be to write coherently while his thoughts -stretched themselves forward to those few hours of the night when his -fate would be decided. - -Adrienne had gone out. She had written her short communication to Barney -and brought it in with its envelope and laid it before him, asking him -in the voice that, again, made him think of snow: "Is that quite right?" - -It was, quite, he told her, after glancing through it swiftly. It -stated, in the most colourless terms, the facts that Barney was to take -to his solicitor. "Quite right," he repeated, looking up at her. "Are -you going out? Will you post it?--or shall I?" - -"Will you post it with yours? Yes. I must go out. But I'll try to be -back by tea-time. It's very disappointing; our last afternoon. But that -poor woman from Roubaix--the one with consumption up at the Croix -Rousse--is dying. They've sent for me. All the little children, you -remember I told you. I'm going to wire to Joséphine and ask her if she -can come down and look after them for a little while." - -"Joséphine?" he questioned. He had, till now, entirely forgotten -Joséphine. Adrienne told him that she was with her parents in a -provincial town. "They lost their only son and are very sad. Fine, brave -old people. He is a baker, the old father, and makes the most wonderful -bread. I went to see them last summer." - -Their packing was done and the room denuded; the men had taken away the -piano that morning. He had his letters to write; so there was really no -reason why she should not go. And there was, besides, nothing that they -had to say to each other, except the one thing he had to say. - -The silence that overtakes parting friends on a station platform had -overtaken them since the morning, though, at lunch, Adrienne had talked -with some persistence of her immediate plans and prospects and about the -unit of doctors and nurses who were to meet her in Italy. There was no -reason why she should not go, and he would even rather she did. He would -rather see no more of her until evening when everything but the one -thing would be over and done with. And so he was left with his letters, -leaning his elbows on the table over the hotel paper and staring out at -the Saône and the white _archevêché_. - -Both letters were difficult to write; but beside the one to Lydia, the -one to Barney was easy. Barney, after all, was to gain everything from -what he had to tell him, and Lydia was to lose; how much was Lydia to -lose? He recalled their last evening together and its revelations and -saw that the old laughing presage was now more than fulfilled. Lydia was -to lose more than her toes and fingers; in any case. Even if he returned -to her alone, she cared for him too much not to feel, always, the shadow -of his crippled heart; his heart not only crippled, but occupied, so -occupied that friendships, however near, became, in a sense, -irrelevancies. And if he returned with Adrienne--but could he return -with Adrienne? What kind of a life could he and Adrienne lead in -London?--even if Lydia's door, generously, was opened to them, as he -believed it would be--knowing her generous. - -He laid down his pen and fixed his eyes on the river and he tried to see -Lydia and Adrienne together. But it was a useless effort. From this -strange haven of the Lyons hotel where he had spent the happiest -fortnight of his life, he could not see himself into any future with -familiar features. He could only see himself and Adrienne, alone, at -hotels. To attempt to place her in Lydia's generous drawing-room was to -measure more accurately than he had yet measured it the abyss that -separated him from his former life. If it could be spanned; if Adrienne -could be placed there, on the background of eighteenth-century fans and -old glass, she became a clipped and tethered seagull in a garden, -awkward, irrelevant, melancholy. Lydia might cease to find her -third-rate and absurd; but she wouldn't know what to do with her any -more than she would have known what to do with the seagull. So what, if -Adrienne became his wife, remained of his friendship with Lydia? - -He put aside the unresolved perplexity and took Barney first. - -"My dear Barney," he wrote,--"I don't think that the letter Adrienne has -written to you will surprise you as much as this letter of mine. You -will understand from hers that she wishes to free herself and to free -you. You will understand that that is my wish, too. She only tells you -that she has been staying here with me, for a fortnight, as my wife; -that's for your solicitor; you will read between the lines and know that -it seemed worth while to both of us to make the necessary sacrifice in -order to gain so much for you and for her. I hope that you and my dear -Nancy will feel that we are justified, and that you will take your -happiness as bravely as we secure it for you. You'll know that our step -hasn't been taken lightly. - -"But, now, dear Barney, comes my absolutely personal contribution. It is -a contribution, for it will make you and Nancy happier to know that I -have as much to gain as you and she. I have fallen in love with Adrienne -and I hope that I may win her consent to be my wife. Yes, dear Barney, -unbelievable as it will look to you, there it is; and she dreams of it -as little as you could have dreamed of it. I met her again, as her -letter informs you, at the Boulogne hospital. She asked me to say -nothing about our meeting. She wanted to disappear out of your lives. -She saved my life, I think, and I saw a great deal of her. What I found -in her that I had not seen before I need not say. - -"My great difficulty, my burden and perplexity now, lie in the fact that -she has no trace of feeling for me that might give me hope. We became, -at Boulogne, the best of friends; such friends that this plan suggested -itself to her; and we remain, after our fortnight here, the best of -friends; and that is all. Yet I have hope, unjustified and groundless -though it may be, and had I not had it from the beginning I couldn't -have entered upon the enterprise; not even for you and Nancy. From one -point of view it's possible that you may feel that I've entered upon it -in spite of you and Nancy. You may feel inclined to repudiate and disown -the whole affair and to remain unaware of it. In that case it would come -down to an appeal from me to you to carry it through for my sake. But -from another point of view it makes it easier for you; easier for you to -accept, since my hope gives integrity to the situation. That's another -thing that decided me. If it had been mere sham I don't think I could -have undertaken it. Adrienne felt none of my scruples on this score. She -walked over legal and conventional commandments like a saint over hot -ploughshares. But I haven't her immunities. I should have felt myself -badly scorched, and felt that I'd scorched you and Nancy, if my hope -hadn't given everything its character of _bona fides_. - -"Dear Barney, dear Nancy, please forgive me if I've been selfish. It -hasn't all been selfishness, that I promise you; it was in hopes for -you, too; and I have to face sacrifices. The worst of them will be that -if Adrienne takes me I'll have to lose you. You can measure the depth of -my feeling for her from the fact that I can make such sacrifices. -Perhaps you'll feel that even if she doesn't take me I'll have to lose -you. I hope not. I hope, in that case, that mitigations and refuges will -be found for me and that some day you'll perhaps be able to make a -corner in your lives where I may creep and feel my wounds less aching. -In any case, after Adrienne, you are the creatures dearest to me in the -world and I am always and for ever your devoted friend, - - ROGER." - - * * * * * - -And now Lydia. There was no use in thinking about it. The plunge must be -taken. - -"My dear Lydia," he wrote,--"I have fallen in love with Adrienne Toner. -I feel that with such a friend as you it's better to begin with the -bomb-shell. She doesn't know it, and if we are here in this Lyons hotel -together, it's only, she imagines, because she wishes to set Barney free -and that I've undertaken, for her sake and for Barney's, a repugnant -task. It is a repugnant task, in spite of what it may mean to me of -happiness. I hate it for her, and for Barney and for myself. But since -she was determined on it and since, if it wasn't I it was to be another -friend, and since I have fallen in love with her, I saw that it was only -decent that the co-respondent in the case should be the man who married -her afterwards. For I hope to become her husband, and I haven't one jot -of ground for my hope. We are studying Dante together, and she shows me -the sights of Lyons. She is just the same. Yet completely altered. - -"I don't know whether you'll feel you can ever see me again, with or -without her. I don't want to cast myself too heavily on your compassion, -so I'll only remind you that even if I return to England alone I shall -probably have to lose Nancy and Barney and that you will be my only -refuge. It will be the culmination of my misfortunes if I have to lose -you. - -"Dear Lydia, I am always your devoted - - "ROGER" - - * * * * * - -But he hadn't lost her. He knew he hadn't lost her; in any case. And the -taste of what he did was sharp and bitter to him, for she was generous -and loyal and he had cut off her very limbs. When he had addressed and -stamped the letters he went downstairs, and, for the sense of greater -finality, carried them to the post instead of dropping them into the -hotel-box. - -He had almost the sense of disembodiment as he returned to the empty and -dismantled room. He seemed to have become a mere consciousness suspended -between two states of being. The past was gone. He had dropped it into -the post-box. And he saw no future. He felt, for the moment, no hopes. -At the moment it seemed absurd to think that Adrienne could ever love -him. He tried to picture Coldbrooks and Somer's Place when the -bomb-shell struck them. Would Barney show Nancy the letter? Nancy would -be pale, aghast, silent. Barney would have to wait for days, perhaps, -before saying to her: "But, after all, it's for their sakes, too, Nancy -dear. See what Roger says." Mrs. Averil would cast up her hands and cry -"That woman!"--but, perhaps, with as much admiration as repudiation, and -Meg, if she were summoned to the scene of confusion, would say, "So -she's got hold of Roger, too." Funnily enough it was the dear March -Hare, he felt sure, who would be the first one to stretch out a hand -towards the tarnished freedom. "After all, you know," he could hear her -murmuring, "it would be much _nicer_ for Barney and Nancy to be married, -wouldn't it? And Adrienne wasn't a Christian, you know, so probably the -first marriage doesn't _really_ count. We mustn't be conventional, -Monica." Yes, perhaps it would go like that at Coldbrooks. But at -Somer's Place Lydia would sit among her fans and glass and wish that -they had never seen Adrienne Toner. - -He paced up and down before the windows and he had never been so lonely -in his life. He was so lonely that he became aware at last that his mere -negative state was passing into a positive and that grief at the -severance of old ties had become fear of losing Adrienne. The fear and -the loneliness seemed actualized when, at five, the waiter appeared -bearing the tea-tray on his shoulder. He had never had tea alone before -in this strange, foreign room. Adrienne always made a complicated and -charming ritual of the occasion, boiling the water on their own little -spirit-kettle and measuring the tea from her own caddy--the very same -kettle and caddy, she told him, that had accompanied herself and her -mother on all their travels. And to see the cups and bread and butter -and not to have her there, added a poignant taste of abandonment to his -loneliness. - -She kept the kettle in her room and when the boy was gone he softly -opened the door and went in. It would keep his heart up to have the -water boiling in readiness for her arrival. He recognized, as he stood, -then, and looked about him, that his instinct had also been that of -taking refuge. In her room he could more closely recover the sense of -her presence. - -She had finished all the essentials of her packing and her box stood -with its lid open ready for the last disposals. Yet the room seemed -still full of her personality. He noted it all gazing around him with -eyes almost those of a solemn little boy permitted to glance in at a -Christmas-tree. - -Her dressing-table, improvised from the mantelpiece, was neatly laid out -with small, worn, costly, and immaculate appurtenances. He moved forward -and looked at them, not touching. The initials intertwined on the backs -of the ivory brushes were her girlish ones: A. T. She had discarded, -long since, no doubt, her wedding toilet set. - -If he became her husband, the thought crossed his mind and quickened his -heart, he might brush her hair for her, that wonderful golden hair, -before many months were over. - -Near the ivory hand-glass stood two photographs in a folding frame of -faded blue leather. He stooped to look and saw that one was of Mrs. and -the other certainly of Mr. Toner, in their early days. Remote, -mysterious and alien, their formally directed eyes looked back at him -and in the father's ingenuous young countenance, surmounted by a roll of -hair that was provincial without being exactly rural, the chin resting -upon a large, peculiar collar, he could strangely retrace Adrienne's -wide brow and steadfast light-filled eyes. Mrs. Toner wore a ruffled -dress and of her face little remained distinct but the dark -gaze--forceful and ambiguously gentle. - -The room was full of the fragrance that was not a fragrance and that -had, long ago, reminded him of Fuller's earth. A pair of small blue -satin _mules_ stood under a chair near the bed. - -Only after he had withdrawn, gently closing the door behind him, did he -realize that he had forgotten the kettle and then he felt that he could -not go back again. A moment after the boy returned with a note, sent, by -hand, he was informed, from the Croix Rousse. - -"I am so dreadfully sorry, so disappointed," he read. "Our last -afternoon, but I can't get away yet. Don't wait dinner for me, if I -should be late, even for that. I won't be very late, I promise, and we -will have our evening." - -The note had no address. He rushed forth and down to find the messenger -gone. Had he only known where to seek her in the vast, high, melancholy -district of the Croix Rousse he would have gone to join her. His sense -of loneliness was almost a panic. - -Of course, he tried to fix his mind on that realization, as he went back -to the salon, her rapatriés had no doubt preoccupied her mind, from the -first, quite as much as their own situation. She had spoken to him in -especial of this family and of their sorrows. One child they had left -dead at Evian and the mother, on the eve of their return to their -Northern home, had become too desperately ill to travel. "Such dear, -good, _gentle_ people," he recalled her saying. No; he must not repine. -After all he had only the one thing to say to her; and the evening would -be long enough for that. - -It was nearly seven when he heard her quick footstep outside. When she -entered, the brim of her little hat, in the electric light, cast a sharp -shadow over her eyes, but he saw at once that she had been crying. - -She came in so quickly that he had not time to rise and, going to him, -behind his chair, she put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him -down, saying: "I'm so sorry to have left you all alone." - -It was astonishingly comforting to have her put these fraternal hands -upon him like this. She had never done it before. Yet there was a salty -smart in her words to him. What else did she intend to do but leave him -all alone for always? - -"I'm dreadfully lonely, I confess," he said, "and I see that you're -dreadfully tired." - -She went round to the other side of the table and sat down, not looking -at him and said, in a low voice: "Oh--the seas--the seas of misery." - -"You are completely worn out," he said. He was not thinking so much of -the seas of misery as of his few remaining hours. Were they to be -spoiled by her fatigue? - -"No; not worn out. Not at all worn out," said Adrienne, stretching her -arms along the table in front of her as she sat, and though she had wept -he could see something of ardour, of a strength renewed, in the lines of -her pallid lips. "I've sat quite still all afternoon. I've been with -him. She died soon after I got there. At the end she was talking about -the little girl's grave at Evian. I was able to comfort her about that. -She was so afraid it would not be tended. That it would have no flowers. -Joséphine will go to Evian afterwards and see about it. There are always -dear nuns to do those things. There was a nun with her to-day. That was -the greatest comfort of all; and the priest who came. But I was with the -father and the five poor little children; so frightened and miserable. I -could not leave them, you see. He talked and talked and talked. It -helped him to talk and tell me about their home and how they had had -everything so nice and bright. Linen, a garden, a goat and fowls. Oh, if -only she could have seen her home again! That was what he kept saying -and saying. They were full of hope when they got to Evian. He told me -how the children sang at dawn when the train panted up the mountain -among the golden trees. Like birds, he said, and _Vive la France_! They -all believed they were to be safe and happy. _Et, Madame, c'était notre -calvaire qui commencait alors seulement._" - -She spoke, not really thinking of him, he saw, absorbed still in the -suffering she had just left, measuring her power against such problems -and the worse ones to which she was travelling to-morrow. - -"Joséphine will be with them, I hope," she went on presently, "in three -or four days. She will help them to get home and then she will come back -and go to see about the grave at Evian. Joséphine is a tower of strength -for me." - -Her eyes were raised to him now, and, as they rested, he saw the -compunction, the solicitude, with which they had met him on her -entrance, return to them. "I'm not so very late, am I?" she said, -rising. "I'll take off my hat and be ready in a moment." - -"Don't hurry," said Oldmeadow. - -She was tired, more tired than she knew. During dinner she hardly spoke, -and, finding the resolve suddenly, he said, as they came back to their -salon: "Do you know what you must do now. Go and lie down and rest for -an hour. Until nine. It's not unselfishness. I'd rather have half of you -to talk to for our last talk, than none of you at all." - -"How dear of you," she said. She looked at him with gratitude and, -still, with the compunction. "It would be a great rest. It would be -better for our talk. I can go to sleep at once, you know. Like -Napoleon," she added with a flicker of her playfulness. - -When she had gone into her room Oldmeadow went out and walked along the -quai. The night was dark and dimmed with fog, but there was a moon and -as he walked he watched it glimmer on the windows of St. Jean. He seemed -to see the august form of the cathedral through a watery element and the -grey and silver patterns of the glass were like the scales of some vast -fish. A sort of whale waiting to swallow up the Jonah that was himself, -he reflected, and, leaning his elbows on the parapet of the quai, the -analogy carried him further and he saw the cathedral like a symbol of -Adrienne's life--her "big, big" life--looming there before him, -becoming, as the moon rose higher, more and more visible in its austere -and menacing majesty. What was his love to measure itself against such a -vocation?--for that was what it came to, as she had said. She was as -involved, as harnessed, as passionately preoccupied as a Saint Theresa. -How could he be fitted in with Serbia and all the hordes of human need -and wretchedness that he saw her sailing forward to succour? He knew a -discouragement deeper than any he had felt, for he was not a doctor and -his physical strength was crippled by his wounds; and, shaking his -shoulders in the chilly November air, he turned his back on the -cathedral and leaned against the parapet to look up through leafless -branches where the plane tassels still hung, at the lighted windows of -the hotel; their hotel, where the room, still theirs, waited for them. -He felt himself take refuge in the banal lights. After all, she wasn't -really a Saint Theresa. There was human misery everywhere to succour. -Couldn't she, after a winter in Serbia, found crêches and visit slums in -London? The masculine scepticism she had detected in him had its -justification. Women weren't meant to go on, once the world's crisis -past, doing feats of heroism; they weren't meant for austere careers -that gave no leisure and no home. The trivial yet radiant vision of -intimacy rose again before him. She slept there above him and he was -guarding her slumber. He would always watch over her and guard her. He -would follow her round the world, if need be, and brush her hair for her -in Serbia or California. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -The gilt clock on the mantelpiece pointed to nine, but when he went to -Adrienne's door and listened there was no sound within her room, and his -heart sank as he wondered if she might not sleep on, in her fatigue, -sleep past all possible hour for their colloquy. Yet he did not feel -that he could go in and wake her. The analogy of the cathedral loomed -before him. It would be like waking Saint Theresa. - -He walked up and down the empty, glittering salon; walked and walked -until the clock struck ten. Desperation nerved him then and he went -again to her door and knocked. - -With hardly a pause her voice answered him; yet he knew that he had -awakened her and it echoed for him with the pathos of so many past -scenes of emergency when it must so have answered a summons from -oblivion: "Coming, coming." Among bombings, he reflected; and sudden -terrible influxes of dying men from the front. - -"Coming," he heard her repeat, on a note of dismay. She had sprung up, -turned on her light and seen the hour. - -He was reminded vividly, as he saw her enter--and it was as if a great -interval of time had separated them--of his first meeting with her. She -was so changed; but now as then she was more composed than anyone he had -ever met. - -But it was of much more than the first meeting that the pale, still face -reminded him. His dreams were in it; the dream where she had come to -him along the terrace, lifting her hand in the moonlight; and the dream -of horror when he had again and again pushed it down to drown. - -"I'm so ashamed," she said, and he saw that it was with an effort she -smiled. The traces of her weeping were now, after her sleep, far more -visible, ageing her, yet making her, too, look younger; like a child -with swollen lids and lips. "I didn't know I was so tired. I slept and -slept. I didn't stir until I heard your knock. Never mind. We'll talk -till midnight." - -She was very sorry for him. - -She sat down at the table and under the electric chandelier her braided -hair showed itself all ruffled and disarranged. She had on her dark -travelling dress and she had thrust her feet into the pale blue satin -_mules_. The disparity of costume in one so accurate, her air of -readiness for the morrow, made him feel her transitoriness almost more -than her presence, though his sense of that pressed upon him with a -stifling imminence. Even though she sat there the room kept its look of -desolate, glittering emptiness and more than their shared life in it he -remembered the far places from which she had come and to which she was -going. It was as if she had just arrived and were pausing for the night -_en route_. - -As he had seen them years ago, so he saw again the monster engines -crossing the prairies at night and flying illumined pennons of smoke -against the sky as they bore her away from blue seas, golden sands, a -land where the good and gifted lurked behind every bush; and before her -stretched the shining rails, miles and miles of them, running through -ruin and desolation, that were to bear her ever onwards into the -darkness. This was what life had brought her to. She had been only a -sojourner among them at Coldbrooks. The linked life of order and family -affection had cast her forth and he saw her, for ever now, unless he -could rescue her, with only hotels to live in and only the chaos she was -to mould, to live for. She seemed already, as she sat there under the -light with her ruffled hair, to be sitting in the train that was to bear -her from him. - -"I think you owe me till midnight, at least," he said. He had not sat -down. He stood at some little distance from her leaning, his arms -folded, against a gilded and inlaid console. "We've lots of things to -talk about." - -"Have we?" Adrienne asked, smiling gently, but as if she humoured an -extravagance. "We'll be together, certainly, even if we don't talk much. -But I have some things to say, too." - -She had dropped her eyes to her hands which lay, lightly crossed, on the -table before her, and she seemed to reflect how best to begin. "It's -about Nancy and Barney," she said. "I wanted, before we part, to talk to -you a little about them. There are things that trouble me and you are -the only person with whom I can keep in touch. You will know how I shall -be longing to hear, everything. You'll let me know at once, won't you?" - -"At once," said Oldmeadow. - -"There might be delays and difficulties," Adrienne went on. "I shall be -very troubled until all that is clear. And then the money. You know -about the money? Barney isn't well off and he was worse off after I'd -come and gone. I tried to arrange that as best I could. Palgrave -understood and entered into all my feelings." - -"Yes; I'd heard. You arranged it all very cleverly," said Oldmeadow. - -He moved away now and, at the other end of the room, his back to her, -came to a standstill, while his eyes dwelt on a large gilt-framed -engraving that hung there; some former Salon triumph; a festive, -spring-tide scene where young women in bustles and bonnets offered sugar -to race-horses in a meadow, admired by young men in silk hats. - -"Do you think this may make a difficulty?" Adrienne asked. "Make him -more reluctant to take what is to come to him? It's Mrs. Chadwick's now, -you know." - -"You've arranged it all so well," said Oldmeadow, noting the gardenias -in the young men's button-holes, "that I don't think they can get away -from it." - -"But will they hate it dreadfully?" she insisted, and he felt that her -voice in its added urgency protested, though unconsciously, against his -distance; "I seem to see that they might. If they can't take it as a -sign of accepted love, won't they hate it?" - -"Well," said Oldmeadow, trying to reflect, though his mind was far from -Barney and Nancy, "dear Eleanor Chadwick doesn't mind taking it, -whatever it's a sign of. And since it will come to Barney through her, I -don't think there'll be enough personality left hanging about it to hurt -much." - -"I wish they could take it as a sign of accepted love," Adrienne -murmured. - -"Perhaps they will," he said. "I'll do my best that they shall, I -promise you." - -It was one thing to promise it and another to know his hope that it -might be a promise never to be redeemed. The cross-currents in his own -thought made him light-headed as he stood there, his back to her, and -examined the glossy creatures in the meadow. "Do you think it will all -take a long time?" Adrienne added, after a little pause. "Will they be -able to marry in six or eight months, say?" - -"It depends on how soon Barney takes action. Say about a year," he -suggested. "They'd wait a little first, wouldn't they?" - -"I hope not. They've waited so long already. I hope it will be as soon -as possible. I shall feel so much more peaceful when I hear they're -married. Could you, perhaps, make them see that, too?" - -And again he promised. "I'll make them see everything I can." - -He turned to her at last. She sat, her face still downcast in its -shadow, while the light glittered on her wreaths of hair. Her hands -still lay before her on the table, and the light fell on her -wedding-ring. Perhaps she was looking at the ring. - -"It all depends on something else," he heard himself say suddenly. - -She turned her head and looked round at him. His attitude, his distance -from her, drew her attention rather than his words, for she repeated -mildly: "On something else?" - -"Whether I can keep those promises, you know," said Oldmeadow. "Yes, it -all depends on something else. That's what I want to talk to you about." - -He hardly knew what he was saying as he approached the table and pushed -the brocaded chair, companion to the one in which she sat, a little -from its place. He leaned on its back and looked down at her hands and -Adrienne kept her eyes on him, attentive rather than perplexed. - -"May I talk to you about it now?" he asked. "It's something quite -different." - -"Oh, do," said Adrienne. She drew her hands into her lap and sat -upright, in readiness. And, suddenly, as he was silent, she added: -"About yourself? I've been forgetting that, haven't I? I've only been -thinking of my side. You have quite other plans, perhaps. Perhaps you're -not going back to England for ever so long. Is it an appointment?" - -"No; not an appointment," he muttered, still looking down, at the table -now, since her hands were no longer there. "But perhaps I shan't be -going back for a long time. I hope not." - -"Oh," she murmured. And now he had perplexed her. After what he had just -promised her, his hope must perplex and even trouble her. "Do tell me," -she said. - -"It's something I want to ask you," said Oldmeadow--"And it will -astonish you. You may find it hard to forgive; because I've meant to ask -it from the beginning; from our deciding to go away together. As far -back as the time in the hospital." - -"But you may ask anything. Anything at all," she almost urged upon him. -"After what I've asked you--you have every right. If there's anything I -can do in the wide, wide world for you--oh! you know how glad and proud -I should be. As for forgiveness"--he heard the smile in her voice, she -was troubled, yet tranquil, too--"you're forgiven in advance." - -"Am I? Wait and see." He, too, tried to smile, as he used the tag; but -it was a mechanical smile and he felt his heart knocking against the -chair-back as he went on: "Because I haven't done what you asked me to -do as you asked me to do it. I haven't done it from the motive you -supposed. It's been for Barney and for Nancy and for you; but it's been -most of all for myself." He screwed his glass into his eye as he spoke -with a gesture as mechanical as the smile had been and he looked at her -at last, thus brought nearer. "I want you not to go on to-morrow." It -was the first, the evident, the most palpable desire that rose to his -lips. "I want you never to go on again, alone. If you can't stay with -me, I want you to let me follow you. When the time comes I want you to -marry me. I love you." - -The light as it fell on her seemed suddenly strange, almost portentous -in its brilliancy. Or was it her stillness, as she sat and gazed at him -after he had spoken the words, that was strange and portentous? It was -as if they arrested the currents of her being and she sat tranced, -frozen into the fixed shape of an astonishment too deep for emotion. Her -eyes did not alter in their gentleness; but the gentleness became tragic -and pitiful, like the inappropriate calm on the mask of a dead face at -Pompeii, fixed in an eternal unreadiness by the engulfing lava. - -She put up her hand at last and pushed back her hair. With her forehead -bared she became more like the photograph of her father. When she spoke -her voice was slow and feeble, like the voice of a person dangerously -ill. "I don't understand you." - -"Try to," said Oldmeadow. "You must begin far back." - -She still kept her hand pressed upon her hair. "You don't mean that it's -the conventionally honourable thing to do? Oh, no; you don't mean that?" -Her face in its effort to understand was appalled. - -"No; I don't mean anything conventional," he returned. "I'm thinking -only of you. Of my love. I'll come with you to Serbia to-morrow--if -you'll let me. I could kneel and worship you as you sit there." - -"Oh," she more feebly murmured. She sank back in her chair. - -"My darling, my saint," said Oldmeadow, gazing at her; "if you must -leave me, you'll take that with you; that the man who destroyed you is -your lover; that you are dearer to him than anything on earth." - -"Oh," she murmured again, and she put her hands before her face. Her -eyes were hidden; she had spoken no word of reproach and he could not -keep himself from her. He knelt beside her, grasping the chair across, -behind her. She was so near that he could have laid his head upon her -breast. "Don't leave me," he heard his pleading voice, but she seemed so -much nearer than his own voice; "or let me come. Everything shall be as -you wish and when you wish. Tell me that you care, too; or that you can -come to care. Tell me that you can think of me as your husband." - -She was there, with her hidden eyes, within his arms, and inevitably -they closed around her, and though he heard her murmur, "Please, please, -please," he could not relinquish her. She was free and he was free. -They had cut themselves off from the world. They were alone in the -strange city; in the strange, bright, hallucinated room; and he knew -from the ache and rapture of her nearness how he had craved it. - -But, gently, he heard her say again, "Please," and gently she put him -from her and he saw her face, and her eyes full of grief and gentleness. -"Forgive me," she said. - -"My darling. For what?" he almost groaned. "Don't say you're going to -break my heart." - -She kept her hand on his breast, holding him from her while she looked -into his eyes. "It is so beautiful to be loved," she said, and her voice -was still the slow, feeble voice of exhaustion. "Even when one has no -right to be. Don't misunderstand. Even when one may not love back; not -in that way. Forgive me; not in that way; my dearest friend." - -"Why mayn't you love back? Why not in that way? If it's beautiful, why -mayn't you?" - -"Sit there, will you? Yes; keep my hand. How weak I've been, and cruel. -It can't be. Don't you know? Haven't you seen? It has always been for -him. He must be free; but I can never be free." - -"Oh, no. No. That's impossible," Oldmeadow said, leaning towards her -across the table and keeping her hand in both of his. "I can't stand -that. I could stand your work, your vocation, better. But not Barney, -who loves another woman. That's impossible." - -"But it is so," she said, softly, looking at him. "Really it is so." - -"No, no," Oldmeadow repeated, and he raised her hand to his lips and -kept it there, a talisman against the menace of her words. "He lost -you. He's gone. I've found you and you care for me. You can't hide from -me that you care for me. Just now. For those moments. You were mine." - -"No," she repeated. "I was weak and cruel, but I was not yours." - -She had been incredibly near so short a time ago before. Now, looking at -him, with her difficult breaths and gentle, inflexible eyes, she was -incredibly remote. "I am his, only his," she said. "I love him and I -shall always love him. It makes no difference. He loves Nancy, but it -makes no difference. He is my husband. The father of my baby." - -She tried to speak on steadily while she thus gave him the truth that -ended all his hope; but the desperate emotion with which he received it -made real and overpowering to her her outlived yet living sorrow. With -all that she must relinquish laid bare to her in the passion of his eyes -she could measure all that she had lost, as she had, perhaps, till then, -never measured it. "Don't you know?" she said. "Don't you see? My heart -is broken, broken, broken." - -She put her head down on her arms as she said the words and he heard her -bitter weeping. - -He knew, as he listened, that it was all over with him. Dimly, in the -terrible suffering that wrenched at him, he received his further -revelation of the nature already nearer him than any in the world. Her -strength would be in all she did and felt. She had loved Barney and she -would always love him. Her marriage had been to her an ultimate and -indissoluble experience. That was why she had been so blind. She could -not have thought of herself as a woman to be again loved and wooed. - -Her hair lay against his hands, still holding hers, and he found himself -stroking it, without tenderness or solicitude it seemed. It seemed to be -only automatically that his fingers passed across it, while he noted its -warmth and fineness and bright, lovely colour, remembering that he had -thought it at the first her one indubitable beauty. - -They sat there thus for a long time. The gilt clock paused, choked, then -in a voice of hurrying, hoarsened silver rang out eleven strokes. -Footsteps passed and faded up the corridor; doors closed. A tramway on -the quai clashed and clanged, came to a noisy standstill, and moved on -again with a rattling of cables and raucous blasts from a horn; and in -the profound silence that followed he seemed to hear the deep old river -flowing. - -"Really, you see, it's broken," said Adrienne. She had ceased to weep, -but she still leaned forward, her head upon her folded arms. "You saw it -happen," she said. "That night when you found me in the rain." - -"I've seen everything happen to you, haven't I?" said Oldmeadow. - -"Yes," she assented. "Everything. And I've made you suffer, too. Isn't -that strange; everybody who comes near me I make suffer." - -"Well, in different ways," he said. "Some because you are near and -others because you won't be." - -His voice was colourless. His hand still passed across her hair. - -"Don't you see," she said, after a moment, "that it couldn't have been. -Try to see that and to accept it. Not you and me. Not Barney's friend -and Barney's wife. In every way it couldn't have done, really. It makes -no difference for me. I'm a _déracinée_, as I said. A wanderer. But what -would have become of you, all full of roots as you are? You can live it -down without me. You never could have with. And how could you have -wandered with me? For that must be my life." - -"You know, it's no good trying to comfort me," said Oldmeadow. "What I -feel is that any roots I have are in you." - -"They will grow again. The others will grow again." - -"I don't want others, darling," said Oldmeadow. "You see, my heart is -broken, too." - -She lifted her head at last and he saw her marred and ravaged face. - -"It can't be helped," he tried to smile at her. "You weren't there to be -recognized when I first met you and now that you are there, I've come -too late. I believe that if I'd come before Barney, you'd have loved me. -It's my only comfort." - -"Who can say," said Adrienne. Her gaze, as she looked at him, was deep -with the mystery of her acceptance. "Perhaps. It seems to me all this -was needed to bring us where we are--enmity and bitterness and grief. -And my love for Barney, too. Let me tell you. It's in the past that I -think of him. As if he were dead. It's something over; done with for -ever; yet something always there. How can one be a mother and forget? -Even when he is Nancy's husband and when she is a mother, I shall not -cease to feel myself his wife. Perhaps you think that strange, after Meg -and what I believed right for her. But it is quite clear to me, and -simple. It isn't a thing of laws and commandments; only of our own -hearts. If we can love again, we may. But for me it would be impossible. -With me everything was involved. I couldn't, ever, be twice a wife." - -Silence fell between them. - -"I'll see about the little girl's grave," said Oldmeadow suddenly. He -did not know what had made him think of it. Perhaps something that had -gone on echoing in him after she had spoken of her maternity. "I'll go -to Evian to-morrow. It will spare Joséphine the journey and give me -something to do. You'll tell me the name and give me the directions -before you go." - -Tears filled her eyes as she looked at him; but they did not fall. They -could need no controlling. The springs of weeping must be nearly -drained. "Thank you," she said, and she looked away, seeming to think -intently. - -It was now too late for the tramways. They had ceased to crash and -rattle by, but a sound of belated singing passed along the quais, -melancholy in its induced and extravagant mirth. - -The horrible sense of human suffering that had beaten in upon him at the -hospital, pressed again upon his heart. He saw himself departing next -day to find the abandoned grave and he saw himself standing beside her -train and measuring along the shining rails the vast distances that were -to bear her away for ever. - -"That's the worst," he said. "You're suffering too. I must see you go -away and know that you are unhappy. I must think of you as unhappy. With -a broken heart." - -Her eyes, after she had thanked him, had been fixed in the intent -reverie. She, too, perhaps, had been seeing those tides of misery, the -sea of which she had spoken, breaking in tragic waves for ever; so -unchanged by all the alleviations that love or mercy could bring; and it -was perhaps with despair that she saw herself as one with it. Her eyes -as she turned them on him were full of distance and of depth and, with -sickening grief, he felt that a woman with a broken heart could do -nothing more for herself or for him. - -But her thought, whatever the voids of darkness it had visited, drew -nearer and nearer to his need as she looked at him. Something of her own -strong vigilance was in the look, bringing the seagull to his mind. The -seagull caught and battered by the waves, with sodden wings, half -dragged down, yet summoning its strength to rise from the submerging -sea. - -"But you can be happy with a broken heart," she said. Their hands had -fallen apart long since. She stretched out hers now and took his in her -small, firm grasp. - -"Can you?" he asked. - -"You mustn't think of me like this," she said, and it was as if she read -his thoughts and their imagery. "I went down, I know; like drowning. -Sometimes the waves break over you and pull you down, and there seems -nothing else in all the world but yourself and what you've suffered. But -it doesn't last. Something brings you up again." - -Something had brought her up again now. His darkness. His misery. It was -as if he saw her spread her wings and saw her eyes measuring, for them -both, the spaces of sea and sky. - -He remembered a picture in a book he had loved as a little boy: little -Diamond held to the breast of the North Wind as she flies forth in her -streaming hair against a sky of stars. So he felt himself lying on her -breast and lifted with her. - -"I've told you how happy I can be. It's all true," she said. "It's all -there. The light, the peace, the strength. I shall find them. And so -will you." - -"Shall I?" he questioned gently. "Without you?" - -"Yes. Without me. You will find them. But you won't be without me," said -Adrienne. - -Already she was finding them. He knew that, for, as she looked at him, -he felt an influence passing from her to him like the laying of her hand -upon his brow. But it was closer than that. It was to her breast that -her eyes held him while, in a long silence, the compulsion of her faith -flowed into him. First quietness; then peace; then a lifting radiance. - -"Promise me," he heard her say. - -He did not know what it was he must promise, but he seemed to feel it -all without knowing and he said: "I promise." - -She rose and stood above him. "You mustn't regret. You mustn't want." - -She laid her hands upon his shoulders as she spoke and looked down at -him, so austere, so radiant. "Anything else would have spoiled it. We -were only meant to find each other like this and then to part." - -"I'll be good," said Oldmeadow. It was like saying one's prayers at -one's mother's knees and his lips found the child-like formula. - -"We must part," said Adrienne. "I have my life and you have yours and -they take different ways. But you won't be without me, I won't be -without you. How can we be, when we will never, never forget each other -and our love?" - -He looked up at her. He had put out his hands and they grasped her dress -as a donor in a votive altarpiece grasps the Madonna's healing garment. -It was not, he knew, to keep her. It was rather in an accepting -relinquishment that he held her thus for their last communion, receiving -through touch and sight and hearing her final benison. - -"I will think of you every day, until I die," she said. "I will pray for -you every day. Dear friend--dearest friend--God bless and keep you." - -She had stooped to him and for a transcending moment he was taken into -her strong, life-giving embrace. The climax of his life was come as he -felt her arms close round him and her kiss upon his forehead. And as she -held him thus he believed all that she had said and all for which she -could have found no words. That he should find the light and more and -more feel their unity in it: that the thought of her would be strength -to him always; as the thought of him and of his love would be strength -to her. - -After she had gone, he sat for a long time bathed in the sense of her -life, and tasting, for that span of time, her own security of eternal -goodness. - -THE END - - -Typographical error was corrected by the etext transcriber: - -"Adriennes mustn't fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only -justification for Adriennes is to be in the right. => "Adrienne mustn't -fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only justification for Adrienne is -to be in the right. {pg 241} - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - -***** This file should be named 42428-8.txt or 42428-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/2/42428/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project -Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you -charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you -do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the -rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose -such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and -research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do -practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is -subject to the trademark license, especially commercial -redistribution. - - - -*** START: FULL LICENSE *** - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project -Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at -http://gutenberg.org/license). - - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy -all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. -If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the -terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or -entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement -and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" -or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the -collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an -individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are -located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from -copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative -works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg -are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project -Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by -freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of -this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with -the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by -keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project -Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in -a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check -the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement -before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or -creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project -Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning -the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United -States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate -access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently -whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, -copied or distributed: - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived -from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is -posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied -and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees -or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work -with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the -work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 -through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the -Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or -1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional -terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked -to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the -permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any -word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or -distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than -"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version -posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), -you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a -copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon -request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other -form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided -that - -- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is - owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he - has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the - Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments - must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you - prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax - returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and - sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the - address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to - the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." - -- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or - destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium - and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of - Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any - money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days - of receipt of the work. - -- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set -forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from -both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael -Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the -Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm -collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain -"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or -corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual -property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a -computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by -your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with -your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with -the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a -refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity -providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to -receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy -is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further -opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER -WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO -WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. -If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the -law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be -interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by -the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any -provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance -with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, -promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, -harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, -that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do -or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm -work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any -Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. - - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers -including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists -because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from -people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. -To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 -and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive -Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at -http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent -permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. -Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered -throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at -809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email -business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact -information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official -page at http://pglaf.org - -For additional contact information: - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To -SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any -particular state visit http://pglaf.org - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. -To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate - - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm -concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared -with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project -Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. - - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. -unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/42428-8.zip b/42428-8.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 32dc137..0000000 --- a/42428-8.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/42428-h.zip b/42428-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index a920ca8..0000000 --- a/42428-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/42428.txt b/42428.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 50bf389..0000000 --- a/42428.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11078 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Adrienne Toner - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42428] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER -_A Novel_ - -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Selincourt) - -AUTHOR OF "CHRISTMAS ROSES, AND OTHER STORIES," "TANTE" -"FRANKLIN KANE," "THE ENCOUNTER," ETC. - -[Illustration: colophon] - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge - -COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SELINCOURT -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - -THIRD IMPRESSION, MAY, 1922 - -The Riverside Press -CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS -PRINTED IN THE U . S . A. - - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER - - - - -PART I - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -"Come down to Coldbrooks next week-end, will you, Roger?" said Barney -Chadwick. He had been wandering around the room, pausing once to glance -at the Cesar Franck on the piano and once at the window to look down at -the Thames, and his voice now, though desultory in intention, betrayed -to his friend preoccupation and even anxiety. "There is going to be an -interesting girl with us: American; very original and charming." - -Roger Oldmeadow sat at his writing-bureau in the window, and his high -dark head was silhouetted against the sky. It had power and even beauty, -with moments of brooding melancholy; but the type to which it most -conformed was that of the clever, cantankerous London bachelor; and if -he sometimes looked what he was, the scholar who had taken a double -first at Balliol and gave brain and sinew to an eminent review, he -looked more often what he was not, a caustic, cautious solicitor, -clean-shaved and meticulously neat, with the crisp bow at his collar, -single eyeglass, and thin, wry smile. - -There was a cogitative kindness in his eyes and a latent irony on his -lips as he now scrutinized Barney Chadwick, who had come finally to lean -against the mantelpiece, and it was difficult before Roger Oldmeadow's -gaze at such moments not to feel that you were giving yourself away. -This was evidently what Barney was trying not to feel, or, at all -events, not to show. He tapped his cigarette-end, fixing his eyes upon -it and frowning a little. He had ruffled his brown hair with the nervous -hand passed through it during his ramble, but ruffled or sleek Barney -could never look anything but perfection, just as, whether he smiled or -frowned, he could never look anything but charming. In his spring-tide -grey, with a streak of white inside his waistcoat and a tie of petunia -silk that matched his socks, he was a pleasant figure of fashion; and he -was more than that; more than the mere London youth of 1913, who danced -the tango and cultivated Post-Impressionism and the Russian ballet. He -was perhaps not much more; but his difference, if slight, made him -noticeable. It came back, no doubt, to the fact of charm. He was radiant -yet reserved; confident yet shy. He had a slight stammer, and his smile -seemed to ask you to help him out. His boyhood, at twenty-nine, still -survived in his narrow face, clumsy in feature and delicate in contour, -with long jaw, high temples and brown eyes, half sweet, half sleepy. The -red came easily to his brown cheek, and he had the sensitive, stubborn -lips of the little boy at the preparatory school whom Oldmeadow had met -and befriended now many years ago. - -In Oldmeadow's eyes he had always remained the "little Barney" he had -then christened him--even Barney's mother had almost forgotten that his -real name was Eustace--and he could not but know that Barney depended -upon him more than upon anyone in the world. To Barney his negations -were more potent than other people's affirmations, and though he had -sometimes said indignantly, "You leave one nothing to agree about, -Roger, except Plato and Church-music," he was never really happy or -secure in his rebellions from what he felt or suspected to be -Oldmeadow's tastes and judgments. Oldmeadow had seen him through many -admirations, not only for books and pictures, but for original girls. -Barney thought that he liked the unusual. He was a devotee of the -ballet, and had in his rooms cushions and curtains from the Omega shop -and a drawing by Wyndham Lewis. But Oldmeadow knew that he really -preferred the photograph of a Burne-Jones, a survival from Oxford days, -that still bravely, and irrelevantly, hung opposite it, and he waited to -see the Wyndham Lewis replaced by a later portent. Barney could remain -stubbornly faithful to old devotions, but he was easily drawn into new -orbits; and it was a new star, evidently, that he had come to describe -and justify. - -"What have I to do with charming American girls?" Oldmeadow inquired, -turning his eyes on the blurred prospect of factory-chimneys and -warehouses that the farther waterside of Chelsea affords. One had to go -to the window and look out to see the grey and silver river flowing, in -the placidity that revealed so little power. Oldmeadow lived in a flat -on the Embankment; but he was not an admirer of Chelsea, just as he was -not an admirer of Whistler nor--and Barney had always suspected it--of -Burne-Jones. His flat gave him, at a reasonable cost, fresh air, -boiling-hot water and a walk in Battersea Park; these, with his piano, -were his fundamental needs; though he owned, for the mean little stream -it was, that the Thames could look pretty enough by morning sunlight -and--like any river--magical under stars. After Plato and Bach, -Oldmeadow's passions were the rivers of France. - -"She'll have something to do with you," said Barney, and he seemed -pleased with the retort. "I met her at the Lumleys. They think her the -marvel of the age." - -"Well, that doesn't endear her to me," said Oldmeadow. "And I don't like -Americans." - -"Come, you're not quite so hide-bound as all that," said Barney, vexed. -"What about Mrs. Aldesey? I've heard you say she's the most charming -woman you know." - -"Except Nancy," Oldmeadow amended. - -"No one could call Nancy a charming woman," said Barney, looking a -little more vexed. "She's a dear, of course; but she's a mere girl. What -do you know about Americans, anyway--except Mrs. Aldesey?" - -"What she tells me about them--the ones she doesn't know," said -Oldmeadow, leaning back in his chair with a laugh. "But I own that I'm -merely prejudiced. Tell me about your young lady, and why you want her -to have something to do with me. Is she a reformer of some sort?" - -"She's a wonderful person, really," said Barney, availing himself with -eagerness of his opportunity. "Not a reformer. Only a sort of mixture of -saint and fairy-princess. She cured Charlie Lumley of insomnia, three -years ago, at Saint Moritz. Nothing psychic or theatrical, you know. -Just sat by him and smiled--she's a most extraordinary smile--and laid -her hand on his head. He'd not slept for nights and went off like a -lamb. Lady Lumley almost cries when she tells about it. They thought -Charlie might lose his mind if he went on not sleeping." - -"My word! She's a Christian Science lady? A medium? What?" - -"Call her what you like. You'll see. She does believe in spiritual -forces. It's not only that. She's quite lovely. In every way. Nancy and -Meg will worship her. The Lumley girls do." - -Oldmeadow's thoughts were already dwelling in rueful surmise on Nancy. -He had always thought her the nicest young creature he had ever known, -nicer even than Barney; and he had always wanted them to marry. She was -Barney's second cousin, and she and her mother lived near the Chadwicks -in Gloucestershire. - -"Oh, Nancy will worship her, will she? She must be all right, then. -What's her name?" he asked. - -Barney had given up trying to be desultory, and his conscious firmness -was now not lost upon his friend as he answered, stammering a little, -"Adrienne. Adrienne Toner." - -"Why Adrienne?" Oldmeadow mildly inquired. "Has she French blood?" - -"Not that I know of. It's a pretty name, I think, Adrienne. One hears -more inane names given to girls every day. Her mother loved France--just -as you do, Roger. Adrienne was born in Paris, I think." - -"Oh, a very pretty name," said Oldmeadow, noting Barney's already -familiar use of it. "Though it sounds more like an actress's than a -saint's." - -"There was something dramatic about the mother, I fancy," said Barney, -sustained, evidently, by his own detachment. "A romantic, rather absurd, -but very loveable person. Adrienne worshipped her and, naturally, can't -see the absurdity. She died out in California. On a boat," said Barney -stammering again, over the _b_. - -"On a boat?" - -"Yes. Awfully funny. But touching, too. That's what she wanted, when she -died: the sea and sky about her. They carried her on her yacht--doctors, -nurses, all the retinue--and sailed far out from shore. It's beautiful, -too, in a way you know, to be able to do that sort of thing quite simply -and unself-consciously. Adrienne sat beside her, and they smiled at each -other and held hands until the end." - -Oldmeadow played with his penholder. He was disconcerted; and most of -all by the derivative emotion in Barney's voice. They had gone far, -then, already, the young people. Nancy could have not the ghost of a -chance. And the nature of what touched Barney left him singularly dry. -He was unable to credit so much simplicity or unself-consciousness. He -coughed shortly, and after a decently respectful interval inquired: "Is -Miss Toner very wealthy?" - -"Yes, very," said Barney, relapsing now into a slight sulkiness. "At -least, perhaps not very, as rich Americans go. She gave away a lot of -her fortune, I know, when her mother died. She founded a place for -children--a convalescent home, or creche--out in California. And she did -something in Chicago, too." - -And Miss Toner had evidently done something in London at the Lumleys'. -It couldn't be helped about Nancy, and if the American girl was pretty -and, for all her nonsense, well-bred, it might not be a bad thing, since -there was so much money. The Chadwicks were not at all well off, and -Coldbrooks was only kept going by Mrs. Chadwick's economies and Barney's -labours at his uncle's stock-broking firm in the city. Oldmeadow could -see Eleanor Chadwick's so ingenuous yet so practical eye fixed on Miss -Toner's gold, and he, too, could fix his. Miss Toner sounded benevolent, -and it was probable that her presence as mistress of Coldbrooks would be -of benefit to all Barney's relatives. All the same, she sounded as -irrelevant in his life as the Wyndham Lewis. - -"Adrienne Toner," he heard himself repeating aloud, for he had a trick, -caught, no doubt, from his long loneliness, of relapsing into -absent-minded and audible meditations. The cadence of it worried him. It -was an absurd name. "You know each other pretty well already, it seems," -he said. - -"Yes; it's extraordinary how one seems to know her. One doesn't have any -formalities to get through with her, as it were," said Barney. "Either -you are there, or you are not there." - -"Either on the yacht, or not on the yacht, eh?" Oldmeadow reached out -for his pipe. - -"Put it like that if you choose. It's awfully jolly to be on the yacht, -I can tell you. It _is_ like a voyage, a great adventure, to know her." - -"And what's it like to be off the yacht? Suppose I'm not there? Suppose -she doesn't like me?" Oldmeadow suggested. "What am I to talk to her -about--of course I'll come, if you really want me. But she frightens me -a little, I confess. I'm not an adventurous person." - -"But neither am I, you know!" Barney exclaimed, "and that's just what -she does to you: makes you adventurous. She'll be immensely interested -in you, of course. You can talk to her about anything. It was down at a -week-end at the Lumleys' I first met her, and there were some tremendous -big-wigs there, political, you know, and literary, and all that sort of -thing; and she had them all around her. She'd have frightened me, too, -if I hadn't seen at once that she took to me and wouldn't mind my being -just ordinary. She likes everybody; that's just it. She takes to -everybody, big and little. She's just like sunshine," Barney stammered a -little over his _s_'s. "That's what she makes one think of straight off; -shining on everything." - -"On the clean and the unclean. I see," said Oldmeadow. "I feel it in my -bones that I shall come into the unclean category with her. But it'll do -me the more good to have her shine on me." - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -Roger Oldmeadow went to have tea with Mrs. Aldesey next afternoon. She -was, after the Chadwicks, his nearest friend, and his relation to the -Chadwicks was one of affection rather than affinity. They had been -extraordinarily kind to him since the time that he had befriended Barney -at the preparatory school, hiding, under his grim jocularities, the -bewilderment of a boy's first great bereavement. His love for his mother -had been an idolatry, and his childhood had been haunted by her -ill-health. She died when he was thirteen, and in some ways he knew -that, even now, he had never got over it. His unfortunate and frustrated -love-affair in early manhood had been, when all was said and done, a -trivial grief compared to it. Coldbrooks had become, after that, his -only home, for he had lost his father as a very little boy, and the -whole family had left the country parsonage and been thrown on the -mercies of an uncle and aunt who lived in a grim provincial town. -Oldmeadow's most vivid impression of home was the high back bedroom -where the worn carpet was cold to the feet and the fire a sulky spot of -red, and the windows looked out over smoky chimney-pots. Here his -stricken mother lay in bed with her cherished cat beside her and read -aloud to him. There was always a difficulty about feeding poor Effie, -Aunt Aggie declaring that cats should live below stairs and on mice; and -Roger, at midday dinner, became adroit at slipping bits of meat from -his plate into a paper held in his lap and carried triumphantly to his -mother's room afterwards. "Oh, darling, you _oughtn't_ to," she would -say with her loving, girlish smile, and he would reply, "But I went -without, Mummy; so it's quite all right." His two little sisters were -kept in the nursery, as they were noisy, high-spirited children, and -tired their mother too much. Roger was her companion, her comrade; her -only comrade in the world, really, beside Effie. It had been Mrs. -Chadwick who had saved Effie from the lethal chamber after her -mistress's death. Roger never spoke about his mother, but he did speak -about Effie when she was thus threatened, and he had never forgotten, -never, never, Mrs. Chadwick's eager cry of, "But bring her here, my dear -Roger. I _like_ idle cats! Bring her here, and I promise you that we'll -make her happy. Animals are _so_ happy at Coldbrooks." To see Effie -cherished, petted, occupying the best chairs during all the years that -followed, had been to see his mother, in this flickering little ghost, -remembered in the only way he could have borne to see her explicitly -remembered, and it was because of Effie that he had most deeply loved -Coldbrooks. It remained always his refuge during a cheerless and -harassed youth, when, with his two forceful, black-browed sisters to -settle in life, he had felt himself pant and strain under the harness. -He was fonder of them than they of him, for they were hard, cheerful -young women, inheriting harshness of feature and manner from their -father, with their father's black eyes. It was from his mother that -Oldmeadow had his melancholy blue ones, and he had never again met his -mother's tenderness. - -Both sisters were now settled, one in India and one, very prosperously, -in London; but he seldom turned for tea into Cadogan Gardens and -Trixie's brisk Chippendale drawing-room; though Cadogan Gardens was -obviously more convenient than Somer's Place, where, on the other side -of the park, Mrs. Aldesey lived. He had whims, and did not know whether -it was because he more disliked her husband or her butler that he went -so seldom to see Trixie. Her husband was jovial and familiar, and the -butler had a face like a rancid ham and a surreptitious manner. One had -always to be encountered at the door, and the other was too often in the -drawing-room, and Trixie was vexatiously satisfied with both; Trixie -also had four turbulent, intelligent children, in whom complacent -parental theories of uncontrol manifested themselves unpleasantly, and -altogether she was too much hedged in by obstacles to be tempting; even -had she been tempting in herself. Intercourse with Trixie, when it did -take place, consisted usually of hard-hearted banter. She bantered him a -great deal about Mrs. Aldesey, who, she averred, snubbed her. Not that -Trixie minded being snubbed by anybody. - -It was a pleasant walk across the park on this spring day when the -crocuses were fully out in the grass, white, purple and gold, and the -trees just scantly stitched with green, and, as always, it was with a -slight elation that he approached his friend. However dull or jaded -oneself or the day, the thought of her cheered one as did the thought of -tea. She made him think of her own China tea. She suggested delicate -ceremoniousness. Though familiar, there was always an aroma of -unexpectedness about her; a slight, sweet shock of oddity and surprise. - -Mrs. Aldesey was unlike the traditional London American. She was neither -rich nor beautiful nor noticeably well-dressed. One became gradually -aware, after some time spent in her company, that her clothes, -soft-tinted and silken, were pleasing, as were her other appurtenances; -the narrow front of her little house, painted freshly in white and green -and barred by boxes of yellow wallflower; the serenely unfashionable -water-colours of Italy, painted by her mother, on the staircase; and her -drawing-room, grey-green and primrose-yellow, with eighteenth-century -fans, of which she had a collection, displayed in cabinets, and good old -glass. - -Mrs. Aldesey herself, behind her tea-table, very faded, very thin, with -what the French term a _souffreteux_ little face--an air of just not -having taken drugs to make her sleep, but of having certainly taken -tabloids to make her digest--seemed already to belong to a passing order -of things; an order still sustained, if lightly, by stays, and keeping a -prayer-book as punctually in use as a card-case. - -Oldmeadow owed her, if indirectly, to the Chadwicks, as he owed so much, -even if it was entirely on his own merits that he had won her regard. -They had met, years ago, in France; an entirely chance encounter, and -probably a futureless one, had it not been for the presence in the hotel -at Amboise of the Lumleys. They both slightly knew the Lumleys, and the -Lumleys and the Chadwicks were old friends. So it had come about; and if -he associated Mrs. Aldesey with tea, he associated her also with perfect -omelettes and the Loire. He had liked her at once so much, that, had it -not been for an always unseen yet never-repudiated husband in New York, -he would certainly, at the beginning, have fallen in love with her. But -the unrepudiated husband made as much a part of Mrs. Aldesey's -environment as her stays and her prayer-book. The barrier was so evident -that one did not even reflect on what one might have done had it not -been there; and indeed, Mrs. Aldesey, he now seemed, after many pleasant -years of friendship, to recognize, for all the sense of sweetness and -exhilaration she gave him, had not enough substance to rouse or sustain -his heart. She was, like the tea again, all savour. - -She lifted to-day her attentive blue eyes--with age they would become -shrewd--and gave him her fine little hand, blue-veined and ornamented -with pearls and diamonds in old settings. She wore long earrings and a -high, transparent collar of net and lace. Her earrings and her -elaborately dressed hair, fair and faded, seemed as much a part of her -personality as her eyes, her delicate nose and her small, slightly -puckered mouth that dragged provocatively and prettily at one corner -when she smiled. Oldmeadow sometimes wondered if she were happy; but -never because of anything she said or did. - -"I want to hear about some people called Toner," he said, dropping into -the easy-chair on the opposite side of the tea-table. It was almost -always thus that he and Mrs. Aldesey met. He rarely dined out. "I'm -rather perturbed. I think that Barney--you remember young Chadwick--is -going to marry a Miss Toner--a Miss Adrienne Toner. And I hope you'll -have something to her advantage to tell me. As you know, I'm devoted to -Barney and his family." - -"I know. The Lumleys' Chadwicks. I remember perfectly. The dear boy with -the innocent eyes and sulky mouth. Why don't you bring him to see me? -He's dancing the tango in all his spare moments, I suppose, and doesn't -care about old ladies." Mrs. Aldesey was not much over forty, but always -thus alluded to herself. "Toner," she took up, pouring out his tea. "Why -perturbed? Do you know anything against them? Americans, you mean. We -poor expatriates are always seen as keepers to so many curious -brethren.--Toner. _Cela ne me dit rien_." - -"I know nothing against them except that Mrs. Toner, the girl's mother, -died, by arrangement, out at sea, on her yacht--in sunlight. Does that -say anything? People don't do that in America, do they, as a rule? A -very opulent lady, I inferred." - -"Oh, dear!" Mrs. Aldesey now ejaculated, as if enlightened. "Can it be? -Do you mean, I wonder, the preposterous Mrs. Toner, of whom, fifteen -years ago, I had a glimpse, and used to hear vague rumours? She wandered -about the world. She dressed in the Empire period: Queen Louise of -Prussia, white gauze bound beneath her chin. She had a harp, and warbled -to monarchs. She had an astral body, and a Yogi and a yacht and -everything handsome about her. The typical spiritual _cabotine_ of our -epoch--though I'm sure they must always have existed. Of course it must -be she. No one else could have died like that. Has she died, poor woman? -On a yacht. Out at sea. In sunlight. How uncomfortable!" - -"Yes, she's dead," said Oldmeadow resignedly. "Yes; it's she, evidently. -And her daughter is coming down to Coldbrooks this week-end. I'm afraid -that unless Barney has too many rivals, he'll certainly marry her. But -what you say leads me to infer that he will have rivals and to hope they -may be successful. She will, no doubt, marry a prince." - -"Something Italian, perhaps. Quite a small fortune will do that. -Certainly your nice Barney wouldn't have been at all Mrs. Toner's -_affaire_. The girl on her own may think differently, for your Barney -is, I remember, very engaging, and has a way with him. I don't know -anything about the girl. I didn't know there was one. There's no reason -why she may not be charming. Our wonderful people have the gift of -picking up experience in a generation and make excellent princesses." - -"But she's that sort, you think. The sort that marries princes and has -no traditions. Where did they come from? Do you know that?" - -"I haven't an idea. Yet, stay. Was it not tooth-paste?--Toner's Peerless -Tooth-Paste. Obsolete; yet I seem to see, reminiscently, in far-away -nursery days, the picture of a respectable old gentleman with -side-whiskers, on a tube. A pretty pink glazed tube with a gilt top to -it. Perhaps it's that. Since it was Toner's it would be the father's -side; not the warbling mother's. Well, many of us might wish for as -unambiguous an origin nowadays. And, in America, we did all sorts of -useful things when we first, all of us, came over in the Mayflower!" -said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile. - -Oldmeadow gazed upon his friend with an ironically receptive eye. "Have -they ever known anyone decent? Anyone like yourself? I don't mean over -here. I mean in America." - -"No one like me, I imagine; if I'm decent. Mrs. Toner essayed a season -in New York one winter, and it was then I had my glimpse of her, at the -opera, in the Queen Louise dress. A pretty woman, dark, with a sort of -soulful and eminently respectable coquetry about her; surrounded by -swarms of devotees--all male, to me unknown; and with something in a -turban that I took to be a Yogi in the background. She only tried the -one winter. She knew what she wanted and where she couldn't get it. We -are very dry in New York--such of us as survive. Very little moved by -warblings or astral bodies or millions. As you intimate, she'll have -done much better over here. You _are_ a strange mixture of materialism -and ingenuousness, you know." - -"It's only that we have fewer Mrs. Toners to amuse us and more to do -with millions than you have," said Oldmeadow; but Mrs. Aldesey, shaking -her head with a certain sadness, said that it wasn't as simple as all -that. - -"Have you seen her? Have you seen Adrienne?" she took up presently, -making him his second cup of tea. "Is she pretty? Is he very much in -love?" - -"I'm going down to Coldbrooks on Saturday to see her," said Oldmeadow, -"and I gather that it's not to subject her to any test that Barney wants -me; it's to subject me, rather. He's quite sure of her. He thinks she's -irresistible. He merely wants to make assurance doubly sure by seeing me -bowled over. I don't know whether she's pretty. She has powers, -apparently, that make her independent of physical attractions. She lays -her hands on people's heads and cures them. She cured Charlie Lumley of -insomnia at Saint Moritz three years ago." - -Mrs. Aldesey, at this, looked at him for some moments in silence. -"Yes," she assented, and in her pause she seemed to have recognized and -placed a familiar object. "Yes. She would. That's just what Mrs. Toner's -daughter would do. I hope she doesn't warble, too. Laying on hands is -better than warbling." - -"I see you think it hopeless," said Oldmeadow, pushing back his chair -and yielding, as he thrust his hands into his pockets and stretched out -his legs, to an avowed chagrin. "What a pity it is! A thousand pities. -They are such dear, good, simple people, and Barney, though he doesn't -know it, is as simple as any of them. What will become of them with this -overwhelming cuckoo in their nest." - -At this Mrs. Aldesey became serious. "I don't think it hopeless at all. -You misunderstand me. Isn't the fact that he's in love with her -reassuring in itself? He may be simple, but he's a delicate, discerning -creature, and he couldn't fall in love with some one merely pretentious -and absurd. She may be charming. I can perfectly imagine her as -charming, and there's no harm in laying on hands; there may be good. -Don't be narrow, Roger. Don't go down there feeling dry." - -"I am narrow, and I do feel dry; horribly dry," said Oldmeadow. "How -could the child of such a mother, and of tooth-paste, be charming? Don't -try specious consolation, now, after having more than justified all my -suspicions." - -"I'm malicious, not specious; and I can't resist having my fling. But -you mustn't be narrow and take me _au pied de la lettre_. I assert that -she may be charming. I assert that I can see it all working out most -happily. She'll lay her hands on them and they'll love her. What I -really want to say is this: don't try to set Barney against her. He'll -marry her all the same and never forgive you." - -"Ah; there we have the truth of it. But Barney would always forgive me," -said Oldmeadow. - -"Well then, she won't. And you'd lose him just as surely. And she'll -know. Let me warn you of that. She'll know perfectly." - -"I'll keep my hands off her," said Oldmeadow, "if she doesn't try to lay -hers on me." - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -The Chadwicks all had a certain sulkiness in their charming looks, and -where in Barney it mingled with sweetness, in Palgrave, his younger -brother, it mingled with brilliancy. It was Palgrave who, at the -station, met the family friend and counsellor in the shabby, inexpensive -family car. He was still a mere boy, home from Marlborough for the -Easter holidays; fond of Oldmeadow, as all the Chadwicks were; but more -resentful of his predominance than Barney and more indifferent to his -brotherly solicitude. He had Barney's long, narrow face and Barney's -eyes and lips; but the former were proud and the latter petulant. -To-day, as he sat beside him in the car, Oldmeadow was aware of -something at once fixed and vibrating in his bearing. He wanted to say -something, and he had resolved to be silent. During their last encounter -at Coldbrooks, he and Oldmeadow had had a long, antagonistic political -discussion, and Palgrave's resentment still, no doubt, survived. - -Coldbrooks lay among the lower Cotswolds, three miles from the station, -and near the station was the village of Chelford where Nancy Averil and -her mother lived. Nancy was at Coldbrooks; Aunt Monica--she was called -aunt by the Chadwick children, though she and Mrs. Chadwick were first -cousins--was away. So Palgrave informed him. But he did not speak again -until the chill, green curve of arable hill-side was climbed and a -stretch of wind-swept country lay before them. Then suddenly he -volunteered: "The American girl is at Coldbrooks." - -"Oh! Is she? When did she come?" Somehow Oldmeadow had expected the -later train for Miss Toner. - -"Yesterday. She and Barney came down together in her car." - -"So you've welcomed her already," said Oldmeadow, curious of the -expression on the boy's face. "How does she fit into Coldbrooks? Does -she like you all and do you like her?" - -For a moment Palgrave was silent. "You mean it makes a difference -whether we do or not?" he then inquired. - -"I don't know that I meant that. Though if people come into your life it -does make a difference." - -"And is she going to come into our lives?" Palgrave asked, and Oldmeadow -felt pressure of some sort behind the question. "That's what I mean. Has -Barney told you? He's said nothing to us. Not even to Mother." - -"Has Barney told me he's going to marry her? No; he hasn't. But it's -evident he hopes to. Perhaps it depends on whether she likes Coldbrooks -and Coldbrooks likes her." - -"Oh, no, it doesn't. It doesn't depend on anything at all except whether -she likes Barney," said Palgrave. "She's the sort of person who doesn't -depend on anything or anybody except herself. She cuts through -circumstance like a knife through cheese. And if she's not going to take -him I wish she'd never come," he added, frowning and turning, under the -peak of his cap, his jewel-like eyes upon his companion. "It's a case of -all or nothing with a person like that. It's too disturbing--just for a -glimpse." - -Oldmeadow felt himself disconcerted. Oddly enough, for the boy was -capricious and extravagant, Palgrave's opinion had more weight with him -than Barney's. Barney, for one thing, was sexually susceptible and -Palgrave was not. Though so young, Oldmeadow felt him already of a -poetic temperament, passionate in mind and cold in blood. - -"She's so charming? You can't bear to lose her now you've seen her?" he -asked. - -"I don't know about charming. No; I don't think her charming. At least -not if you mean something little by the word. She's disturbing. She -changes everything." - -"But if she stays she'll be more disturbing. She'll change more." - -"Oh, I shan't mind that! I shan't mind change," Palgrave declared. "If -it's her change and she's there to see it through." And, relapsing to -muteness, he bent to his brakes and they slid down among the woods of -Coldbrooks. - -For the life of him and with the best will in the world, he couldn't -make it out. That was Oldmeadow's first impression as, among the -familiar group gathered in the hall about the tea-table, Miss Toner was -at last made manifest to him. She was, he felt sure, in his first shrewd -glance at her, merely what Lydia Aldesey would have placed as a -third-rate American girl, and her origins in commercial enterprise were -eminently appropriate. - -She got up to meet him, as if recognizing in him some special -significance or, indeed, as it might be her ingenuous habit to do in -meeting any older person. But he was not so much older if it came to -that; for, after he had met the direct and dwelling gaze of her large, -light eyes, the second impression was that she was by no means so young -as Barney had led him to expect. She was certainly as old as Barney. - -There were none of the obvious marks of wealth upon her. She wore a -dark-blue dress tying on the breast over white. She was small in stature -and, in manner, composed beyond anything he had ever encountered. With -an irony, kindly enough, yet big, he knew, with unfavourable inferences, -he even recognized, reconstructing the moment in the light of those that -followed, that in rising to meet him as he was named to her, it had -been, rather than in shyness or girlishness, in the wish to welcome him -and draw him the more happily into a group she had already made her own. - -They were all sitting round the plentiful table, set with home-made -loaves and cakes, jams and butter, and a Leeds bowl of primroses; Miss -Toner just across from him, Barney on one side of her--his was an air of -tranquil ecstasy--and little Barbara on the other, and they all seemed -to emanate a new radiance; almost, thought Oldmeadow, with an -irritability that was still genial, like innocent savages on a remote -seashore gathered with intent eyes and parted lips round the newly -disembarked Christopher Columbus. Mrs. Chadwick, confused, as usual, -among her tea-cups, sending hasty relays of sugar after the unsugared or -recalling those sugared in error, specially suggested the simile. She -could, indeed, hardly think of her tea. Her wide, startled gaze turned -incessantly on the new-comer and to Oldmeadow, for all his nearly filial -affection, the eyes of Eleanor Chadwick looked like nothing in the -world so much as those of the March Hare in Tenniel's evocation of the -endearing creature. Unlike her children, she was fair, with a thin, -high, ridiculously distinguished nose; but her mouth and chin had -Barney's irresolution and sweetness, and her untidy locks Meg's beauty. -Meg was a beauty in every way, rose, pearl and russet, a Romney touched -with pride and daring, and the most sophisticated of all the Chadwicks; -yet she, too, brooded, half merrily, half sombrely, on Miss Toner, her -elbows on the table for the better contemplation. Palgrave's absorption -was manifest; but he did not brood. He held his head high, frowned and, -for the most part, looked out of the window. - -Oldmeadow sat between Palgrave and Nancy and it was with Nancy that the -magic ended. Nancy did not share in the radiance. She smiled and was -very busy cutting the bread and butter; but she was pale; not puzzled, -but preoccupied. Poor darling Nancy; always his special pet; to him -always the dearest and most loveable of girls. Not at all a Romney. With -her pale, fresh face, dark hair and beautiful hands she suggested, -rather, a country lady of the seventeenth century painted by Vandyck. A -rural Vandyck who might have kept a devout and merry journal, surprising -later generations by its mixture of ingenuousness and wisdom. Her lips -were meditative, and her grey eyes nearly closed when she smiled in a -way that gave to her gaiety and extraordinary sweetness and intimacy. -Nancy always looked as if she loved you when she smiled at you; and -indeed she did love you. She had spent her life among people she loved -and if she could not be intimate she was remote and silent. - -But there was no hope for Nancy. He saw that finally, as he drank his -tea in silence and looked across the primroses at the marvel of the age. - -Miss Toner's was an insignificant little head, if indeed it could be -called little, since it was too large for her body, and her way of -dressing her hair in wide braids, pinned round it and projecting over -the ears, added to the top-heavy effect. The hair was her only -indubitable beauty, fine and fair and sparkling like the palest, purest -metal. It was cut in a light fringe across a projecting forehead and her -mouth and chin projected, too; so that, as he termed it to himself, it -was a squashed-in face, ugly in structure, the small nose, from its -depressed bridge, jutting forward in profile, the lips, in profile, flat -yet prominent. Nevertheless he owned, studying her over his tea-cup, -that the features, ugly, even trivial in detail, had in their assemblage -something of unexpected force. Her tranquil smile had potency and he -suddenly became aware of her flat, gentle voice, infrequent, yet oddly -dominating. Sensitive as he was to voices, he saw it as a bland, blue -ribbon rolled out among broken counters of colour, and listened to its -sound before he listened to what it said. All the other voices went up -and down; all the others half said things and let them drop or trail. -She said things to the end: when the ribbon began it was unrolled; and -it seemed, always, to make a silence in which it could be watched. - -"We went up high into the sunlight," she said, "and one saw nothing but -snow and sky. The bells were ringing on the mountains beneath; one heard -no other sound. I have never forgotten the moment. It seemed an -inspiration of joy and peace and strength." - -"You've walked so much in the Alps, haven't you, Roger?" said Mrs. -Chadwick. "Miss Toner has motored over every pass." - -"In the French Alps. I don't like Switzerland," said Oldmeadow. - -"I think I love the mountains everywhere," said Miss Toner, "when they -go so high into the sky and have the sun and snow on their summits. But -I love the mountains of Savoy and Jura best." - -It vexed him that she should. She was a person to stay in and prefer -Switzerland. "Joy and peace and strength," echoed in his ears and with -the words, rudely, and irrelevantly, the image of the pink glazed tube -with the gilt stopper. Miss Toner's teeth were as white as they were -benignant. - -"I wish I could see those flowers," said Mrs. Chadwick. "I've only been -to Vevey in the summer; oh, years and years ago. So dull. Fields of -flowers. You've seen them, too, of course, Roger. All the things we grow -with such pains. My Saint Brigid anemones never really do--though what I -put in of leaf-mould!" - -"You'll see anemones, fields of them, in the Alpine meadows; and violets -and lilies; the little lilies of Saint Bruno that look like freesias. I -love them best of all," the bland, blue ribbon unrolled. "You shall go -with me some day, Mrs. Chadwick. We'll go together." And, smiling at her -as if they had, already, a happy secret between them, Miss Toner -continued: "We'll go this very summer, if you will. We'll motor all the -way. I'll come and get you here. For a whole month you shall forget that -you've ever had a family to bring up or a house to take care of or -anemones that won't grow properly--even in leaf-mould." - -Her eyes, as they rested on her hostess, seemed to impart more than her -words. They imparted something to Oldmeadow. He had not before -conjectured that Eleanor Chadwick might be bored or tired, nor realized -that since Barbara's birth, fourteen years ago, she had not left -Coldbrooks except to go to London for a week's shopping, or to stay with -friends in the English country. He had taken Eleanor Chadwick's life for -granted. It seemed Miss Toner's function not to take things that could -be changed for granted. It was easy to do that of course, when you had a -large banking account behind you; and yet he felt that Miss Toner would -have had the faculty of altering accepted standards, even had she been -materially unequipped. She and Mrs. Chadwick continued to look at each -other for a moment and the older woman, half bashfully, seemed, with -what softness, compelled to a tacit confession. She'd never known before -that she was tired. Springs of adventure and girlishness within her were -perhaps unsealed by Miss Toner's gaze. - -"And where do the rest of us come in!" Barney ejaculated. He was so -happy in the triumph of his beloved that his eyes, their sleepiness -banished, were almost as brilliant as Palgrave's. - -"But you're always coming in with Mrs. Chadwick," said Miss Toner. She -looked at him, if with a touch of tender humour, exactly as she looked -at his mother; but then she looked at them both as if they were precious -to her. "I don't want you to come in at all for that month. I want her -to forget you ever existed. There ought to be waters of Lethe for -everyone every now and then, even in this life. We come out, after the -plunge into forgetfulness, far brighter and stronger and with a -renovated self to love the better with. Afterwards--after she's had her -dip--you'll all come in, if you want to, with me. I'll get a car big -enough. You, too, Miss Averil; and Mr. Oldmeadow; though he and Barney -and Palgrave may have to take turns sitting on the portmanteaus." - -"Barney" and "Palgrave" already. Her unpretentious mastery alarmed -almost as much as it amused him. He thanked her, with his dry smile, -saying that he really preferred to see the Alps on his legs and asked, -to temper the possible acerbity, "Do you drive yourself?" for it seemed -in keeping with his picture of her as an invading providence that she -should with her own hand conduct the car of fate. He could see her, -somehow, taking the hairpin curves on the Galibier. - -But Miss Toner said she did not drive. "One can't see flowers if one -drives oneself; and it would hurt dear Macfarlane's feelings so. -Macfarlane is my chauffeur and he's been with me for years; from the -time we first began to have motors, my mother and I, out in California. -Apart from that, I should like it, I think, with the sense of risk and -venture it must give. I like the sense of high adventure--of 'Childe -Roland to the dark tower came'; don't you, Palgrave? It's life, isn't -it? The pulse of life. Danger and venture and conquest. And then -resting, on the heights, while one hears the bells beneath one." - -This, thought Oldmeadow, as he adjusted his glass the better to examine -Miss Toner, must prove itself too much, even for Palgrave to swallow. -But Palgrave swallowed it without a tremor. His eyes on hers he -answered: "Yes, I feel life like that, too." - -"Oh, dear!" sighed Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldmeadow blessed her antidote to -the suffocating sweetness: "I'm afraid I don't! I don't think I know -anything about risks and dangers; or about conquest either. I'm sure -I've never conquered anything; though I have been dreadfully afraid of -ill-tempered servants--if that counts, and never let them see it. -Barbara had such an odious nurse. She tried, simply, to keep me out of -the nursery; but she didn't succeed. And there was a Scotch cook once, -with red hair--that so often goes with a bad temper, doesn't it? Do you -remember, Barney?--your dear father had to go down to the kitchen when -she was found lying quite, quite drunk under the table. But cooks and -nurses can't be called risks--and I've never cared for hunting." - -Miss Toner was quietly laughing, and indeed everybody laughed. - -"Dear Mrs. Chadwick," she said. And then she added: "How can a mother -say she has not known risks and dangers? I think you've thought only of -other people for all your life and never seen yourself at all. Alpine -passes aren't needed to prove people's courage and endurance." - -Oldmeadow now saw, from the sudden alarm and perplexity of Mrs. -Chadwick's expression, that she was wondering if the marvellous guest -alluded to the perils of child-birth. Perhaps she did. She was ready, he -imagined, to allude to anything. - -"You're right about her never having seen herself," said Palgrave, -nodding across at Miss Toner. "She never has. She's incapable of -self-analysis." - -"But she's precious sharp when it comes to analysing other people, -aren't you, Mummy dear!" said Barney. - -"I don't think she is," said Meg. "I think Mummy sees people rather as -she sees flowers; things to be fed and staked and protected." - -"You're always crabbing Mummy, Meg. It's a shame!--Isn't it a shame, -Mummy dear!" Barbara protested, and Barney tempered the apparent -criticism--peacemaker as he usually was--with: "But you have to -understand flowers jolly well to make them grow. And we do her credit, -don't we!" - -Miss Toner looked from one to the other as they spoke, with her clear, -benignant, comprehending gaze, and Mrs. Chadwick stared with her March -Hare ingenuousness that had its full share, too, of March Hare -shrewdness. She undertook no self-justification, commenting merely, in -the pause that followed Barney's contribution: "I don't know what you -mean by self-analysis unless it's thinking about yourself and mothers -certainly haven't much time for that. You're quite right there, my -dear," she nodded at Miss Toner, adding in a tone intended specially for -her: "But young people often exaggerate things that are quite, quite -simple when they come." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -"Come out and have a stroll," said Oldmeadow to Nancy. Tea was over and -a primrose-coloured sunset filled the sky. They walked up and down the -gravelled terrace before the house. - -Coldbrooks stood high, yet encircled by still higher stretches of bare -or wooded upland. Its walled garden, where vegetable beds and lines of -cordon apple-trees were pleasingly diversified by the herbaceous borders -that ran beneath the walls, lay behind it; most of the bedroom windows -looked down into the garden. Before it, to the south, lawns and meadows -dropped to a lake fed by the brooks that gave the place its name. Beyond -the lake were lower copses, tinkling now with the musical run of water -and climbing softly on either side, so that from the terrace one had a -vast curved space of sky before one. The sun was setting over the woods. - -It was Barney's grandfather, enriched by large shipping enterprises in -Liverpool, who had bought the pleasant old house, half farm, half manor, -and Barney's father had married the daughter of a local squire. But the -family fortunes were much dwindled, and though Barney still nursed the -project of returning one day to farm his own land there was little -prospect of such a happy restoration. In spite of the Russian ballet and -London portents, he was fonder, far, of Coldbrooks than of all of them -put together. But he could afford neither time nor money for hunting, -and his home was his only for week-ends and holidays. It was the most -loveable of homes, more stately without than within, built of grey-gold -Cotswold stone with beautiful stone chimneys and mullioned windows and -three gables facing the southern sky. Within, everything was rather bare -and shabby. There was no central heating, and no bathrooms. The -tiger-skin that lay on the stone flags of the hall had lost all its -hair. The piano rattled and wheezed in many of its notes. The patterns -of the drawing-room chintzes were faded to a mere dim rosy riot, and -stuffing protruded from the angles of the leather arm-chairs in the -smoking-room. But it was, all the same, a delightful house to stay in. -Eleanor Chadwick's shrewdness showed itself in her housekeeping. She -knew what were the essentials. There was always a blazing fire in one's -bedroom in the evening and the hottest of water with one's bath in the -morning. Under the faded chintz, every chair in the drawing-room was -comfortable. The toast was always crisp; the tea always made with -boiling water; the servants cheerful. Mrs. Chadwick had a great gift -with servants. She could reprove with extreme plaintiveness, yet never -wound a susceptibility, and the servants' hall, as she often remarked -with justice, was smarter and prettier than the drawing-room. Johnson, -the old butler, had been at Coldbrooks since before her marriage, and -the grey-haired parlourmaid had come with her when she had come as a -bride. These familiar faces added depth to the sense of intimacy that -was the gift of Coldbrooks. Oldmeadow loved the place as much as any of -the Chadwicks did, and was as much at home in it. - -"There is a blackcap," said Nancy, "down in the copse. I felt sure I -heard one this morning." - -"So it is," said Oldmeadow. They paused to listen. - -"It's the happiest of all," said Nancy. - -He had been wondering about Nancy ever since he had come. It was not her -voice, gentle and meditative, that told him now she was unhappy. It was -rather in contrast to the bird's clear ecstasy that he felt the -heaviness of her heart. - -"It's wilder than the thrush and blackbird, isn't it?" he said. "Less -conscious. The thrush is always listening to himself, I feel. Do you -want to go to the Alps with Miss Toner, Nancy?" - -Nancy would not see Miss Toner as an angelic being and he wanted to know -how she did see her. The others, it was evident, thought her angelic by -a sort of group suggestion. She thought herself so, to begin with; snow, -flowers, bells and all the rest of it; and they, ingenuous creatures, -saw the mango-tree rising to heaven as the calm-eyed Yogi willed they -should. But Nancy did not see the mango-tree. She was outside the group -consciousness--with him. - -"Oh, no!" she now said quickly; and she added: "I don't mean that I -don't like her. It's only that I don't know her. How can she want us? -She came only yesterday." - -"But, you see, she means you to know her. And when she's known she -couldn't imagine that anyone wouldn't like her." - -"I don't think she's conceited, if you mean that, Roger." - -"Conceit," he rejoined, "may be of an order so monstrous that it loses -all pettiness. You've seen more of her than I have, of course." - -"I think she's good. She wants to do good. She wants to make people -happy; and she does," said Nancy. - -"By taking them about in motors, you mean." - -"In every way. She's always thinking about pleasing them. In big and -little ways. Aunt Eleanor loves her already. They had a long talk last -night in Aunt Eleanor's room. She's given Meg the most beautiful little -pendant--pearl and amethyst, an old Italian setting. She had it on last -night and Meg said how lovely it was and she simply lifted it off her -own neck and put it around Meg's. Meg had to keep it. She gave it in -such a way that one would have to keep it." - -"Rather useful, mustn't it be, to have pendants so plentifully about you -that you can hand them out to the first young lady who takes a fancy to -them? Has she given you anything, Nancy?" - -"I'm sure she would. But I shall be more careful than Meg was." - -"Perhaps Meg will practise carelessness, since it's so remunerative. -What has she given Palgrave? He seems absorbed." - -"Isn't it wonderful," said Nancy. "It's wonderful for Palgrave, you -know, Roger, because he is rather sad and bitter, really, just now; and -I think she will make him much happier. They went off to the woods -together directly after breakfast." - -"What's he sad and bitter about? You mean his socialism and all the rest -of it?" - -"Yes; and religion. You remember; when you were here at Christmas." - -"I remember that he was very foolish and made me lose my temper. Is -there a chance of Miss Toner turning him into a good capitalist and -churchman?" - -Nancy smiled, but very faintly. "It's serious, you know, Roger." - -"What she's done to them already, you mean?" - -"Yes. What she's done already. She had Meg, after lunch, in her room. -Meg looked quite different when she came out. It's very strange, Roger. -It's as if she'd changed them all. I almost feel," Nancy looked round at -the happy house and up at the tranquil elms where the rooks were noisily -preparing for bed, "as if nothing could be the same again, since she's -come." Her clear profile revealed little of the trouble in her heart. -They had not named Barney; but he must be named. - -"It's white magic," said Oldmeadow. "You and I will keep our heads, my -dear. We don't want to be changed, do we? What has she done to Barney? -He is in love with her, of course." - -"Of course," said Nancy. - -He had never been sure before that she was in love with Barney. She was -nine years younger and had been a child during years of his manhood. -Oldmeadow had thought it in his own fond imagination only that the link -between them was so close. But now he knew what Nancy herself, perhaps, -had hardly known till then. The colour did not rise in her cheek, but -through her voice, through her bearing, went a subtle steadying of -herself. "Of course he is in love with her," she repeated and he felt -that she forced herself to face the truth. - -They stopped at the end of the terrace. A little path turned aside -towards the copse and the grass beneath the trees was scattered with the -pale radiance of primroses. Nancy seemed to look at the flowers, but she -sought no refuge in comment on them; and as they looked in silence, -while the rooks, circling and cawing above, settled on their nests, a -sense of arrested time came to Oldmeadow, and a phrase of music, -blissful in its sadness, where gentle German words went to a gentle -German strain, passed through his mind. Something of Schubert's--Young -Love--First Grief. It seemed to pierce to him from the young girl's -heart and he knew that he would never forget and that Nancy would never -forget the moment; the rooks; the primroses; the limpid sky. The -blackcap's flitting melody had ceased. - -"Do you think she may make him happy?" he asked. It was sweet to him to -know that she had no need of a refuge from him. She could take counsel -with him as candidly as if there had been no tacit avowal between them. -She looked round at him as they went on walking and he saw pain and -perplexity in her eyes. - -"What do you think, Roger?" she said. "Can she?" - -"Well, might she, if Barney is stupid enough?" - -"I don't feel he would have to be stupid to be happy with her, Roger. -You are not fair to her. What I wonder is whether he will be strong -enough not to be quite swept away." - -"You think she'll overpower him? Leave him with no mind of his own?" - -"Something like that perhaps. Because she's very strong. And she is so -different. Everything in her is different. She has nothing--nothing with -us, or we with her. We haven't done the same things or seen the same -sights or thought the same thoughts. I hardly feel as if the trees could -look the same to her as they do to us or the birds sound the same. And -she'll want such different things." - -"Perhaps she'll want his things," Oldmeadow mused. "She seems to like -them quite immensely already." - -"Ah, but only because she's going to do something to them," said Nancy. -"Only because she's going to change them. I don't think she'd like -anything she could do nothing for." - -Nancy had quite grown up. She had seen further than he had. He felt her -quiet comment big with intuitive wisdom. - -"You see deep, my dear," he said. "There's something portentous in your -picture, you know." - -"There is something portentous about her, Roger. That is just what I -feel. That is just what troubles me." - -"She may be portentous, in relation to us, and what she may do to us," -said Oldmeadow, "but I'm convinced, for all her marvels, that she's a -very ordinary young person. Don't let us magnify her. If she's not -magnified she won't work so many marvels. They're largely an affair, I'm -sure of it, of motors and pendants. She's ordinary. That's what I take -my stand on." - -"If she's ordinary, why do you feel, too, that she'll sweep Barney -away?" Nancy was not at all convinced by his demonstration. - -"Why, because he's in love with her. That's all. Her only menace is in -her difference; her complacency. What it comes to, I suppose, is that we -must hope, if they're to be happy, that he'll like her things." - -"Yes; but what it comes to then, Roger, is that we shall lose Barney," -Nancy said. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -Miss Toner did not come down to breakfast next morning and Oldmeadow was -conscious of a feeling of disproportionate relief at not finding her in -the big, bare, panelled dining-room where a portrait of Mrs. Chadwick in -court dress presided over one wall and Meg and Barney played with -rabbits, against an imitation Gainsborough background, on another. Both -pictures were an affliction to Barney; but to Mrs. Chadwick's eye they -left nothing to be desired in beauty, and, when Barney was not there to -protest, she would still fondly point out the length of eyelash that the -artist had so faithfully captured in the two children. - -The sense of change and foreboding that he and Nancy, with differences, -had recognized in their talk, must have haunted Oldmeadow's slumbers, -for he had dreamed of Miss Toner, coming towards him along the terrace, -in white, as she had been at dinner, with the beautiful pearls she had -worn, lifting her hand and saying as the rooks cawed overhead--for the -rooks cawed though the moon was brightly shining: "I can hear them, -too." - -There had been nothing to suggest such a dream in her demeanour at -dinner; nothing portentous, that is. Simple for all her competence, -girlish for all the splendour of her white array, she had spoken little, -looking at them all, and listening, gravely sometimes, but with a -pervading gentleness; and once or twice he had found her eyes on his; -those large, light eyes, dispassionately and impersonally benignant, -giving him, with their suggestion of seeing around but also very far -beyond you, a curious sense of space. Once or twice he had felt himself -a little at a loss as he met their gaze--it had endeared her to him the -less that she should almost discompose him--and he had felt anew the -presence of power in her ugly little face and even of beauty in her -colourless skin, her colourless yet so living eyes, and her crown of -wondrous gold. It had been, no doubt, this element of aesthetic -significance, merging with Nancy's words, that had built up the figure -of his dream; for so he had seen her, grey and white and gold in the -unearthly light, while the rooks cawed overhead. - -His friends this morning, though they were all talking of her, possessed -in their gaiety and lightness of heart an exorcising quality. So much -gaiety and lightness couldn't be quenched or quelled--if that was what -Miss Toner's influence menaced. Between them all they would manage to -quench and quell Miss Toner, rather, and he recovered his sense of her -fundamental absurdity as he felt anew their instinctive and -unself-conscious wisdom. - -"Isn't it odd, Roger, she hardly knows England at all," said Mrs. -Chadwick, as he finished his porridge, made his tea at the side-table, -and took his place beside her. "She's been so little here, although she -seems to have travelled everywhere and lived everywhere." - -"Except in her own country," Oldmeadow ventured the surmise, but -urbanely, for Barney sat opposite him. - -"Oh, but she's travelled there, too, immensely," said Barney. "She's -really spent most of her life in America, I think, Mother. She has a -little sort of bungalow on the coast in California, orange-trees and -roses and all the rest of it; a fairy-tale place; and a house in the -mountains in New England, high up among the pine-woods." - -"And a private train, I suppose, to carry her from one to the other. -What splendid pearls," said Oldmeadow, buttering his toast. "Haven't you -asked for them yet, Meg?" - -Meg was not easily embarrassed. "Not yet," she said. "I'm waiting for -them, though. Meanwhile this is pretty, isn't it?" The pendant hung on -her breast. - -"I believe she would give Meg her pearls, or any of us. I believe she'd -give _anything_ to _anyone_," sighed Mrs. Chadwick. "She doesn't seem to -think about money or things of that sort, material things you know, at -all. I do wish I could get the map of America straight. All being in -those uneven squares, like Turkish Delight, makes it so difficult. One -can't remember which lump is which--though Texas, in my geography, was -pale green. The nice tinned things come from California, don't they? And -New England is near Boston--the hub of the universe, that dear, droll -Oliver Wendell Holmes used to call it. I suppose they _are_ very clever -there. She has been wonderfully educated. There's nothing she doesn't -seem to have learned. And her maid adores her, Roger. I was talking to -her just now. Such a nice French woman with quite beautiful dark eyes, -but very melancholy; we make a mistake, I believe, in imagining that the -French are a gay people. I always think that's such a good sign. So kind -about my dreadful accent." - -"A good sign to have your maid like you, Mummy, or to have melancholy -eyes?" Meg inquired. "I think she's a rather ill-tempered looking woman. -But of course anybody would adore Adrienne. She's an angel of patience, -I'm sure. I never met such an angel. We don't grow them here," said Meg, -while Barney's triumphant eyes said: "I told you so," to Oldmeadow -across the table. - -After breakfast, in the sunlight on the terrace, Mrs. Chadwick confided -her hopes to him. "She really is an angel, Roger. I never met anyone in -the least like her. So good, and gifted, too, and all that money. Only -think what it would mean for dear Barney. He could take back the farm; -the lease falls in next year, and come back here to live." - -"You think she cares for him?" - -"Yes; indeed I do. She cares for us all, already, as you can see. But I -believe it's because she's adopting us all, as her family. And she said -to me yesterday that she disapproved so much of our English way of -turning out mothers and thought families ought to love each other and -live together, young and old. That's from being so much in France, -perhaps. I told her _I_ shouldn't have liked it at all if old Mrs. -Chadwick had wanted to come and live with Francis and me. She was such a -masterful old lady, Roger, very Low Church, and quite dreadfully jealous -of Francis. And eldest sons should inherit, of course, or what would -become of estates? My dear father used always to say that the greatness -of England was founded on landed estates. I told her that. But she -looked at me quite gravely as if she hardly understood when I tried to -explain--it all goes in with Waterloo being won on the fields of Eton, -doesn't it? It's quite curious the feeling of restfulness she gives me, -about Barney--a sort of Nunc Dimittis feeling, you know." - -"Only she doesn't want you to depart. Well, that's certainly all to the -good and let's hope England's greatness won't suffer from the -irregularity. Has she told you much about her life? her people?" -Oldmeadow asked. He could not find it in his heart to shadow such -ingenuous contentment. And after all what was there to say against Miss -Toner, except that she would change things? - -"Oh, a great deal. Everything I asked; for I thought it best, quite -casually you know, to find out what I could. Not people of any position, -you know, Roger, though I think her mother was better in that way than -her father; for _his_ father made tooth-paste. It's from the tooth-paste -all the money comes. But it's always puzzling about Americans, isn't it? -And it doesn't really make any difference, once they're over here, does -it?" - -"Not if they've got the money," he could not suppress; it was for his -own personal enjoyment and Mrs. Chadwick cloudlessly concurred: "No, not -if they have the money. And she has, you see. And besides that she's -good and gifted and has had such a wonderful education. Her mother died -five years ago. She showed me two pictures of her. A beautiful woman; -very artistic-looking. Rather one's idea of Corinne, though Corinne was -really Madame de Stael, I believe; and she was very plain." - -"Was she dressed like Queen Louise of Prussia; coming down the steps, -you know, in the Empire dress with white bound round her head?" - -"Yes; she was. How did you know, Roger? Extremely picturesque; but quite -a lady, too. At least"--Mrs. Chadwick hesitated, perplexed between -kindliness and candour--"almost." - -"I heard about her from Mrs. Aldesey. You remember my American friend. -She didn't know her, but had seen her years ago in New York in that -romantic costume." - -Mrs. Chadwick felt perhaps the slight irony in his voice, for she -rejoined, though not at all provocatively: "Why shouldn't people look -romantic if they can? I should think Mrs. Toner had a much more romantic -life than Mrs. Aldesey. _She's_ gone on just as we have, hasn't she, -seeing always the same people; and being conventional. Whereas Adrienne -and her mother seem to have known everyone strange and interesting -wherever they went; great scientists and thinkers, you know; and poets -and pianists. Adrienne told me that her mother always seemed to her to -have great wings and that's just what I felt about her when I looked at -her. She'd flown everywhere." As she spoke Miss Toner appeared upon the -doorstep. - -Although it was Sunday she had not varied her dress, which was still the -simple dress of dim, dark-blue; but over it she wore a silk jacket, and -a straw hat trimmed with a lighter shade of blue was tied, in -summer-like fashion, beneath her chin. She carried a sunshade and a -small basket filled with letters. - -Mrs. Chadwick, both hands outstretched, went to meet her. Oldmeadow had -never before seen her kiss an acquaintance of two days' standing. "I do -hope you slept well, my dear," she said. - -"Very well," said Miss Toner, including Oldmeadow in her smile. "Except -for a little while when I woke up and lay awake and couldn't get the -cawing of your rooks out of my mind. I seemed to hear them going on and -on." - -"Oh, dear! How unfortunate! But surely they weren't cawing in the -night!" cried Mrs. Chadwick, and Miss Toner, laughing and holding her -still by the hands, turned to tell Barney, who closely followed her, -that his mother was really afraid, because she had thought of rooks in -the night, that their Coldbrooks birds had actually been inhospitable -enough to keep her awake with their cawings. Meg and Barbara and Nancy -had all now emerged and there was much laughter and explanation. - -"You see, Mummy thinks you might work miracles--even among the rooks," -said Barney, while Oldmeadow testily meditated on his own discomfort. It -might have been mere coincidence, or it might--he must admit it--have -been Miss Toner's thoughts travelling into his dream or his dream -troubling her thoughts; of the two last alternatives he didn't know -which he disliked the more. - -"It's time to get ready for church, children," said Mrs. Chadwick, when, -after much merriment at her expense, the rooks and their occult -misdemeanours were disposed of. "Where is Palgrave? I do hope he won't -miss again. It does so hurt dear Mr. Bodman's feelings. Are you coming -with us, my dear?" she asked Miss Toner. - -Miss Toner, smiling upon them all, her sunshade open on her shoulder, -said that if they did not mind she did not think she would come. "I only -go to church when friends get married or their babies christened," she -said, "or something of that sort. I was never brought up to it, you see. -Mother never went." - -Mrs. Chadwick's March Hare eyes dwelt on her. "You aren't a -Churchwoman?" - -"Oh, dear, no!" said Miss Toner, and the very suggestion seemed to amuse -her. - -Mrs. Chadwick hesitated: "A Dissenter?" she ventured. "There are so many -sects in America I've heard. Though I met a very charming American -bishop once." - -"No--not a Dissenter; if you mean by that a Presbyterian or a Methodist -or a Swedenborgian," said Miss Toner, shaking her head. - -Palgrave had now joined them and stood on the step above her. She smiled -round and up at him. - -Mrs. Chadwick, her distress alleviated yet her perplexity deepened, -ventured further: "You are a Christian, I hope, dear?" - -"Oh, not at all," said Miss Toner gravely now and very kindly. "Not in -any orthodox way, I mean. Not in any way that an American bishop or your -Mr. Bodman would acknowledge. I recognize Christ as a great teacher, as -a great human soul; one of the very greatest; gone on before. But I -don't divide the human from the divine in the way the churches do; -creeds mean nothing to me, and I'd rather say my prayers out of doors on -a day like this, in the sunlight, than in any church. I feel nearer God -alone in His great world, than in any church built with human hands. But -we must all follow our own light." She spoke in her flat, soft voice, -gravely but very simply; and she looked affectionately at her hostess as -she added: "You wouldn't want me to come with you from mere conformity." - -Poor Mrs. Chadwick, standing, her brood about her, in the sweet Sabbath -sunlight, had to Oldmeadow's eye an almost comically arrested air. How -was a creedless, churchless mistress of Coldbrooks to be fitted in to -her happy vision of Barney's future? What would the village say to a -squiress who never went to church and who said her prayers in the -sunlight alone? "But, of course, better alone," he seemed to hear her -cogitate, "than that anyone should see her doing such a very curious -thing." And aloud she did murmur: "Of course not; of course not, dear. -And if you go into the little arbour down by the lake no one will -disturb you, I'm sure. Must it be quite in the open? Mere conformity is -such a shallow thing. But all the same I should like the rector to come -and talk things over with you. He's such a good man and very, very -broad-minded. He brings science so often into his sermons--sometimes I -think the people don't quite follow it all; and only the other day he -said to me, about modern unrest and scepticism: - - 'There is more faith in honest doubt, - Believe me, than in half the creeds.' - -Mamma met Lord Tennyson once and felt him to be a deeply religious -man--though rather ill-tempered; he was really very rude to her, I -always thought, and I do so dislike rudeness.--And travelling about so -much, dear, you probably had so little teaching." - -Miss Toner's eyes were incapable of irony and they only deepened now in -benevolence as they rested on her hostess. "But I haven't any doubts," -she said, shaking her head and smiling: "No doubts at all. You reach the -truth through your church and I reach it through nature and love and -life. And the beautiful thing is that it's the same truth, really; the -same beautiful truth that God loves us all, and that we are all the -children of God. I should be very pleased to meet your rector, of -course, because I like meeting anyone who is good and true. But I was -taught. My mother taught me always. And she was the freest, wisest soul -I have ever known." - -"I'll stay with you," said Palgrave suddenly from his place on the step -above her. His eyes, over her shoulder, had met Oldmeadow's and perhaps -what he saw in the old friend's face determined his testimony. "Church -means nothing to me, either; and less than nothing. I'm not so -charitable as you are, and don't think all roads lead to truth. Some -lead away, I think. You know perfectly well, Mummy, that the dear old -rector is a regular duffer and you slept all through the sermon the last -time I went; you did, really! I was too amused to sleep. He was trying -to explain original sin without mentioning Adam or Eve or the Garden of -Eden. It was most endearing! Like some one trying to avoid the eye of an -old acquaintance whom they'd come to the conclusion they really must -cut! I do so like the idea of Adam and Eve becoming unsuitable -acquaintances for the enlightened clergy!" - -"There is no sin," said Miss Toner. Barney was not quite comfortable; -Oldmeadow saw that. He kicked about in the gravel, a little flushed, -and when, once or twice, the old family friend met his eye, it was -quickly averted. "God is Good; and everything else is mortal -mind--mistake--illusion." - -"You are a sound Platonist, Miss Toner," Oldmeadow observed, and his -kindness hardly cloaked his irony. - -"Am I?" she said. When she looked at one she never averted her eyes. -She looked until she had seen all that she wished to see. "I am not fond -of metaphysics." - -"Socrates defined sin as ignorance, you know, and in a sense it may be. -All the same," said Oldmeadow, and he felt that they were all listening -and that in the eyes of his old friends it was more than unlikely that -he would get the better of Miss Toner--"there's mortal mind to be -accounted for, isn't there, and why it gets us continually into such a -mess. Whatever name you call it by, there is something that does get us -into a mess and mightn't it be a wholesome discipline to hear it -denounced once a week?" - -"Not by some one more ignorant than I am!" said Miss Toner, laughing -gently. "I'll go to church for love of Mrs. Chadwick, but not for the -sake of the discipline!" - -"Mr. Bodman never denounces. Roger is giving you quite a wrong idea," -said Mrs. Chadwick. She had stood looking from one to the other, -distressed and bewildered, and she now prepared to leave them. "And -Palgrave is very, very unjust. Of course you must not come, dear. It -would make me quite unhappy. But Mr. Bodman is not a duffer. If Palgrave -feels like that he must certainly stay away. Perhaps you can teach him -to be more charitable. It's easy to see the mote in our neighbour's -eye." Mrs. Chadwick's voice slightly trembled. She had been much moved -by her son's defection. - -"Come, Mummy, you're not going to say _I'm_ a duffer!" Palgrave passed -an affectionately bantering arm round her shoulders. "Dufferism isn't -_my_ beam!" - -But very sadly Mrs. Chadwick drew away, saying as she turned into the -house: "No; that isn't your beam. But pride may be, Palgrave. Spiritual -pride." - -Oldmeadow remained standing in the sunlight with Miss Toner and the two -young men. The girls had followed Mrs. Chadwick, Meg casting a laughing -glance of appreciation at him as she went. Religious scruples would -never keep Meg from church if she had a pretty spring dress to wear. - -"After all," he carried on, mildly, the altercation--if that was what it -was between him and Miss Toner--"good Platonists as we may be, we -haven't reached the stage of Divine Contemplation yet and things do -happen that are difficult to account for, if sin is nothing more -positive than illusion and mistake. All the forms of _ote-toi que je m'y -mette_. All the forms of jealousy and malice. Deliberate cruelties. -History is full of horrors, isn't it? There's a jealousy of goodness in -the human heart, as well as a love. The betrayal of Christ by Judas is -symbolic." - -He had screwed his eyeglass into his eye the better to see Miss Toner -and looked very much like a solicitor trying to coax dry facts out of a -romantic client. And in the transparent shadow of her hat Miss Toner, -with her incomparable composure, gave him all her attention. - -"I don't account. I don't account for anything. Do you?" she said. "I -only feel and know. But even the dreadful things, the things that seem -to us so dreadful--isn't it always ignorance? Ignorance of what is -really good and happy--and the illusion of a separate self? When we are -all, really, one. All, really, together." She held out her arms, her -little basket hanging from her wrist. "And if we feel that at last, and -know it, those dreadful things can't happen any more." - -"Your 'if' is the standing problem of metaphysics and ethics. Why don't -we feel and know it? That's the question? And since we most of us, for -most of the time, don't feel and know it, don't we keep closer to the -truth if we accept the traditional phraseology and admit that there's -something in the texture of life, something in ourselves, that tempts -us, or impedes us, or crushes us, and call it sin--evil?" - -He was looking at her, still with his latent irony though kindly enough -indeed, and he had, as he looked, an intuition about her. She had never -been tempted, she had never been impeded, she had never been crushed. -That was her power. She was, in a fashion, sinless. It was as if she had -been hypnotized in infancy to be good. And while the fact made her in -one sense so savourless, it made her in another so significant. She -would go much further than most people in any direction she wanted to go -simply because she was not aware of obstacles and had no inhibitions. - -"Call it what you like," said Miss Toner. She still smiled--but more -gravely. Barney had ceased to stroll and kick. He had come to a -standstill beside them, and, his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on -his beloved, showed himself as completely reassured. Palgrave still -stood on the step above her and seemed to watch the snowy, piled-up -clouds that adorned the tranquil sky. "I feel it a mistake to make -unreal things seem real by giving them big names. We become afraid of -them and fear is what impedes us most of all in life. For so many -generations humanity has seen ghosts in the evening mists and taken its -indigestion for the promptings of a demon. We've got away from all that -now, Mr. Oldmeadow. We see that mists are mists and indigestion -indigestion, and that there aren't such things as ghosts and demons. -We've come out, all together, hand in hand, on the Open Road and we -don't want, ever any more, to be reminded, even, of the Dark Ages." - -Before her fluency, Oldmeadow felt himself grow less kindly. "You grant -there have been dark ages, then? I count that a concession. Things may -not be evil now, but they were once." - -"Not a concession at all," said Miss Toner. "Only an explanation of what -has happened--an explanation of what you call the mess, Mr. Oldmeadow." - -"So that when we find ourselves misbehaving to one another as we march -along the Open Road, we may know it's only indigestion and take a pill." - -She didn't like badinage. That, at all events, was evident to him, even -in her imperturbability. She took it calmly--not lightly; and if she was -not already beginning to dislike him, it was because disliking people -was a reality she didn't recognize. "We don't misbehave if we are on the -Open Road," she said. - -"Oh, but you're falling back now on good old-fashioned theology," -Oldmeadow retorted. "The sheep, saved and well-behaved, keeping to the -road, and the goats--all those who misbehave and stray--classed with the -evening mists." - -"No," said Miss Toner eyeing him, "I don't class them with the evening -mists; I class them with the sick, whom we must be kind to and take care -of." - -Mrs. Chadwick was now emerging in her new spring hat, which was not very -successful and gave emphasis to her general air of strain. Meg's hat was -very successful, as Meg's hats always were; and if Nancy's did not shine -beside it, it was, at all events, exceedingly becoming to her. Nancy's -eyes went to Barney. Barney, in the past, had been very appreciative of -becoming hats. But he had no eyes for Nancy now. He had drawn Miss Toner -aside and Oldmeadow heard their colloquy: - -"Would you rather I didn't go?" - -"I'd rather, always, you followed your light, dear friend." - -"I do like going here, you know. It seems to belong with it all--and -Mummy can't bear our not going." - -"It makes your dear mother happy. It all means love to you." - -"Not only that"--Oldmeadow imagined that Barney blushed, and he heard -his stammer: "I don't know what I believe about everything; but the -service goes much deeper than anything I could think for myself." Their -voices dropped. All that came further to Oldmeadow was from Miss Toner: -"It makes you nearer than if you stayed." - -"Confound her ineffability!" he thought. "It rests with her, then, -whether he should go or stay." - -It certainly did. Barney moved away with them all, leaving Palgrave to -the more evident form of proximity. - -"You know," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to Oldmeadow as they went, between -the primroses, down the little path and through a wicket-gate that led -to the village--"you know, Roger, it's _quite_ possible that they may -say their prayers together. It's like Quakers, isn't it--or Moravians; -or whoever those curious people are who are buried standing up--so -dismal and uncomfortable, I always think. But it's better that Palgrave -should say his prayers with some one, and somewhere, isn't it, than that -he shouldn't say them at all?" - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -"Mother's got the most poisonous headache," said Meg. "I don't think -she'll be able to come down to tea." - -She had joined Oldmeadow on the rickety old bench where he sat reading -and smoking in a sunny corner of the garden. A band of golden -wallflowers behind them exhaled the deep fragrance that he always -associated with spring and Sunday and Coldbrooks, and the old stone wall -behind the flowers exhaled a warmth that was like a fragrance. - -"Adrienne is with her," Meg added. She had seated herself and put her -elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands as though she intended a -solid talk. - -"Will that be likely to help her head?" Oldmeadow inquired. "I should -say not, if she's going to continue the discourse of this morning." - -"Did you think all that rather silly?" Meg inquired, tapping her smart -toes on the ground and watching them. "You looked as if you did. But -then you usually do look as though you thought most things and people -silly. I didn't--I mean, not in her. I quite saw what you did; at least -I think so. But she can say things that would be silly in other people. -Now Palgrave is silly. There's just the difference. Is it because he -always feels he's scoring off somebody and she doesn't?" Meg was -evidently capable, for all her devotion, of dispassionate inquiry. - -"She's certainly more secure than Palgrave," said Oldmeadow. "But I -feel that's only because she's less intelligent. Palgrave is aware, -keenly, of a critical and probably hostile world; and Miss Toner is -unaware of everything except her own benevolence, and the need for it." - -Meg meditated. Then she laughed. "You _are_ spiteful, Roger. Oh--I don't -mean about Adrienne in particular. But you always see the weak spots in -people, first go. It's rather jolly, all the same, if you come to think -it over, to be like that. Perhaps that's all she is aware of; but it -takes you a good way--wanting to help people and seeing how they can be -helped." - -"Yes; it does take you a good way. I don't deny that Miss Toner will go -far." - -"And make us go too far, perhaps?" Meg mused. "Well, I'm quite ready for -a move. I think we're all rather stodgy, really, down here. And up in -London, too, if it comes to that. I'm rather disappointed in London, you -know, Roger, and what it does for one. Just a different kind of sheep, -it seems to me, from the kind we are in the country; noisy skipping -sheep instead of silent, slow ones. But they all follow each other about -in just the same way. And what one likes is to see someone who isn't -following." - -"Yes; that's true, certainly," Oldmeadow conceded. "Miss Toner isn't a -sheep. She's the sort of person who sets the sheep moving. I'm not so -sure that she knows where she is going, all the same." - -"You mean--Be careful; don't you?" said Meg, looking up at him sideways -with her handsome eyes. "I'm not such a sheep myself, when it comes to -that, you know, Roger. I look before I leap--even after Adrienne," she -laughed; and Oldmeadow, looking back at her, laughed too--pleased with -her, yet a little disconcerted by what she revealed of experience. - -"The reason I like her so awfully," Meg went on--while he reflected -that, after all, she was now twenty-five--"and it's a good thing I do, -isn't it, since it's evident she's going to take Barney; but the reason -is that she's so interested in one. More than anyone I ever knew--far -and far away. Of course Mother's interested; but it's _for_ one; _about_ -one; not _in_ one, as it were. And then darling old Mummy isn't exactly -intelligent, is she; or only in such unexpected spots that it's never -much good to one; one can never count on it beforehand. Whereas Adrienne -is so interested in you that she makes you feel more interested in -yourself than you ever dreamed you could feel. Do you know what I mean? -Is it because she's American, do you think? English people aren't -interested in themselves, off their own bat, perhaps; or in other people -either! I don't mean we're not selfish all right!" Meg laughed. - -"Selfish and yet impersonal," Oldmeadow mused. "With less of our social -consciousness in use, with more of it locked up in automatism, -possibly." - -"There's nothing locked up in Adrienne; absolutely nothing," Meg -declared. "It's all there--out in the shop-window. And it's a big window -too, even though some of the hats and scarves, so to speak, may strike -us as funny. But, seriously, what is it about her, do you think? How can -she care so much?--about everybody?" - -He remembered Nancy's diagnosis. "Not about everybody. Only about people -she can do something for. You'll find she won't care about me." - -"Why should she? You don't care for her. Why should she waste herself on -people who don't need her?" Meg's friendliness of glance did not -preclude a certain hardness. - -"Why indeed? It could never occur to her, of course, that she might need -somebody. I don't mean that spitefully. She is strong. She doesn't -need." - -"Exactly. Like you," said Meg. "She's quite right to pay no attention to -the other strong people. For of course you are very strong, Roger, and -frightfully clever; and good, too. Only one has to be cleverer, no -doubt, than we are to see your goodness as easily as Adrienne's. It's -the shop-window again. She shows her goodness all the time; and you -don't."' - -Oldmeadow knocked the ashes out of his pipe and felt for his -tobacco-pouch. "I show my spite. No; you mustn't count me among the -good. I suppose your mother's headache came on this morning after she -found out that Miss Toner doesn't go to church." - -"Of course it was that. You saw that she was thinking about it all -through the service, didn't you?" said Meg. "And once, poor lamb, she -said, 'Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners' instead of Amen. Did you -notice? It will bother her frightfully, of course. But after all it's -not so bad as if Adrienne were a Dissenter and wanted to go to chapel! -Mummy in her heart of hearts would much rather you were a pagan than a -Dissenter. I don't think it will make a bit of difference really. So -long as she gives money to the church, and is nice to the village -people. Mother will get over it," said Meg. - -He thought so too. His own jocose phrase returned to him. As long as the -money was there it didn't make any difference. But Meg's security on -that score interested him. With all her devotion to the new friend she -struck him, fundamentally, as less kind than Nancy, who had none. But -that, no doubt, was because Meg, fundamentally, was hard and Nancy -loving. It was because of Miss Toner's interest in herself that Meg was -devoted. "You're so sure, then, that she's going to take Barney?" he -asked. - -"Quite sure," said Meg. "Surer than he is. Surer than she is. She's in -love with him all right; more than she knows herself, poor dear. No -doubt she thinks she's making up her mind and choosing. Weighing Barney -in the balance and counting up his virtues. But it's all decided -already; and not by his virtues; it never is," said Meg, again with her -air of unexpected experience. "It's something much more important than -virtues; it's the thickness of his eyelashes and the way his teeth show -when he smiles, and all his pretty ways and habits. Things like that. -She loves looking at him and more than that, even, she loves having him -look at her. I have an idea that she's not had people very much in love -with her before; not people with eyelashes and teeth like Barney. In -spite of all her money. And she's getting on, too. She's as old as -Barney, you know. It's the one, real romance that's ever come to her, -poor dear. Funny you don't see it. Men don't see that sort of thing I -suppose. But she _couldn't_ give Barney up now, simply. It's because of -that, you know"--Meg glanced behind them and lowered her voice--"that -she doesn't like Nancy." - -"Doesn't like Nancy!" Oldmeadow's instant indignation was in his voice. -"What has Nancy to do with it?" - -"She might have had a great deal, poor darling little Nancy; and it's -that Adrienne feels. She felt it at once. I saw she did; that Nancy and -Barney had been very near each other; that there was an affinity, a -sympathy, call it what you like, that would have led to something more. -It wouldn't have done at all, of course; at least I suppose not. They -knew each other too well; and, until the last year or two, she's been -too young for him. And then, above all, she's hardly any money. But all -the same, if he hadn't come across Adrienne and been bowled over like -this, Barney would have fallen in love with Nancy. She's getting to be -so lovely looking, for one thing, isn't she? And Barney's so susceptible -to looks. He was falling in love with her last winter and she knew it as -well as I did. It's rather rotten luck for Nancy because I'm afraid she -cares; but then women do have rotten luck about love affairs," said Meg, -now sombrely. "The dice are loaded against them every time." - -Oldmeadow sat smoking in silence for some moments, making no effort to -master his strong resentment; taking, rather, full possession of its -implications. "Somewhat of a flaw in your angel you must admit," he said -presently. "She doesn't like people who are as strong as she is and she -doesn't like people who might have been loved instead of herself. It -narrows the scale of her benevolence, you know. It makes her look -perilously like a jealous prig, and a prig without any excuse for -jealousy into the bargain." - -"Temper, Roger," Meg observed, casting her hard, friendly glance round -at him; "I know you think there's no one quite to match Nancy; and I -think you're not far wrong. She's the straightest, sweetest-tempered -girl who ever stepped on two feet. But all the same Adrienne isn't a -prig, and if she's jealous she can't help herself. She _wants_ to love -Nancy; she thinks she does love her; she'll always be heavenly to her. -She can do a lot for Nancy, you know. She will do a lot for her, even if -Nancy holds her off. But she wishes frightfully that she was old and -ugly. She wishes that Barney weren't so fond of her without thinking -about her. She's jealous and she can't help herself--like all the rest -of us!" Meg laughed grimly. "When it comes to that we're none of us -angels." - -It was tea-time and the dear old gong sounded balmily from the house. As -they went along the path the rooks again were cawing overhead and dimly, -like the hint of evening in the air, he remembered his dream and the -sense of menace. "You know, it's not like all the rest of you," he said. -"It's not like Nancy, for instance. Nancy wouldn't dislike a person -because she was jealous of them. In fact I don't believe Nancy could be -jealous. She'd only be hurt." - -"It's rather a question of degree, that, isn't it?" said Meg. "In one -form of it you're poisoned and in the other you're cut with a knife; and -the latter is the prettier way of suffering; doesn't make you come out -in a rash and feel sick. Nancy is cut with the knife; and if she's not -jealous in the ugly sense, she dislikes Adrienne all right." - -"Why should she like her?" Oldmeadow retorted, and Meg's simile seemed -to cut into him, too. "She doesn't need her money or her interest or her -love. She doesn't dislike her. She merely wishes she were somewhere -else--as I do." - -The garden path led straight into the house. One entered a sort of -lobby, where coats and hats and rackets and gardening baskets were kept, -and from the lobby went into the hall. Tea was, as always, laid there -and Mrs. Chadwick, as Meg and Oldmeadow came in, was descending the -staircase at the further end, leaning on Adrienne Toner's arm. - -"You see. She's done it!" Meg murmured. She seemed to bear him no -ill-will for his expressed aversion. "I never knew one of Mother's -headaches go so quickly." - -"I expect she'd rather have stayed quietly upstairs," said Oldmeadow; -"she looks puzzled. As if she didn't know what had happened to her." - -"Like a rabbit when it comes out of the conjuror's hat," said the -irreverent daughter. - -That was precisely what poor Eleanor Chadwick did look like and for the -moment his mind was diverted by amusement at her appearance from its -bitter preoccupation. Mrs. Chadwick was the rabbit and Miss Toner was -the conjuror indeed; bland and secure and holding her trophy in a firm -but gentle grasp. Not until they were all seated did Barney and Nancy -appear and then it was evident to him that if Miss Toner were jealous of -Nancy she did not fear her, for it was she who had arranged the walk -from which the young couple had just returned. - -"Was it lovely?" she asked Barney, as he took the place beside her. "Oh, -I do wish I could have come; but I knew your Mother needed me." - -"The primroses are simply ripping in the wood," said Barney. - -Nancy carried a large bunch of primroses. - -"Ripping," said Miss Toner, laughing gently. - -"How absurd of you, Barney. Could anything be less ripping than -primroses? How beautiful they are and what a lovely bunch. One sees that -Miss Averil loves them from the way she has picked them." If she did not -call Nancy by her Christian name it was, Oldmeadow knew, not her but -Nancy's fault. - -Nancy still stood beside the table and from the fact of standing, while -all the rest of them were seated, from the fact of being called Miss -Averil, she seemed, for the moment, oddly an outsider; as if she hardly -belonged to the circle of which Miss Toner was the centre. "Do come and -sit near us," said Miss Toner. "For I had to miss you, too, you see, as -well as the primroses." - -"I'd crowd you there," said Nancy, smiling. "I'll sit here near Aunt -Eleanor." From something in her eyes Oldmeadow felt suddenly sure that -not till now had she realized that it had not, really, been her and -Barney's walk. She offered the primroses to Mrs. Chadwick as she took -the chair beside her, saying, "They'll fill your white bowl in the -morning-room, Aunt Eleanor." - -"Oh, I say; but I meant those for Adrienne, Nancy!" Barney exclaimed, -and as he did so Meg's eyes met Oldmeadow's over the household loaf. -"She didn't see them in the wood, so she ought to have them. Mummy is -suffocated with primroses already." - -But Nancy showed no rash and only an acute Meg could have guessed a cut -as she answered: "I'll pick another bunch to-morrow for Miss Toner, -Barney. They'll be fresher to take to London. These are really Aunt -Eleanor's. I always fill that bowl for her." - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -"I do so want a talk with you, Roger," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to him -when tea was over. The dining-room opened at one end of the hall and the -drawing-room at the other and the morning-room, Mrs. Chadwick's special -retreat, into which she now drew him, was tucked in behind the -dining-room and looked out at an angle of the garden wall and at the -dove-cot that stood there. Mrs. Chadwick's doves were usually fluttering -about the window and even, when it was open, entering the room, where -she sometimes fondly fed them, causing thereby much distress of mind to -Turner, the good old parlourmaid. A pleasant little fire was burning -there and, after placing her primroses in the white bowl, Mrs. Chadwick -drew her chair to it, casting a glance, as she did so, up at the large -portrait of her husband in hunting dress that hung above the -mantelpiece. It was painted with the same glib unintelligence as the -dining-room portraits, but the painter had been unable to miss entirely -the whimsical daring of the eyes or to bring into conformity with his -own standard of good looks the charm of the irregular and narrow face. -Francis Chadwick had been an impulsive, idle, endearing man, and, -remaining always in love with his wife, had fondly cherished all her -absurdities. Since his death poor Mrs. Chadwick had been perplexed by -her effort to associate with gravity and inspiration one who had always -been a laughing incentive to inconsequence. Oldmeadow reflected, as he, -too, looked up at him, that Francis Chadwick would neither have needed -nor have liked Miss Toner. - -"It's so very, very strange, Roger, I really must tell you," Mrs. -Chadwick said. Her hair, still bright and abundant, was very untidy. She -had evidently not brushed it since rising from her sofa. "I had one of -my dreadful headaches, you know. It came on at church this morning and I -really couldn't attend to Mr. Bodman at all. Perhaps you saw." - -"I heard. Yes. Miss Toner had disturbed you a good deal." - -"I did feel so bewildered and unhappy about it all," said Mrs. Chadwick, -fixing her blue eyes upon the family friend. Eleanor Chadwick's eyes -could show the uncanny ingenuousness and the uncanny wisdom of a baby's. -"Nothing so innocent or so sharp was ever seen outside a perambulator," -her husband had once said of them. "About her, you know, Roger," she -continued, "and Barney and Palgrave. The influence. I could not bear -them to lose their faith in the church of their fathers." - -"No," said Oldmeadow. "But you must be prepared to see it shift a good -deal. Faiths have to shift nowadays if they're to stand." - -"Well. Yes. I know what you mean, Roger. But it isn't a question of -shifting, is it? I'm very broad. I've always been all for breadth. And -the broader you are the firmer you ought to be, oughtn't you?" - -"Well, Miss Toner's broad and firm," Oldmeadow suggested. "I never saw -anyone more so." - -"But in such a queer way, Roger. Like saying one's prayers out of doors -and thinking oneself as good as Christ. Oh, it all made me perfectly -wretched and after lunch my head was so bad that I went and lay down in -the dark; and it raged, simply. Oh, dear, I thought; this means a day -and night of misery. They go on like that once they begin. Mamma used -to have them in precisely the same way. Absolutely incapacitating. I can -never see how anybody can deny heredity. That's another point, Roger. -I've always accepted evolution. I gave up Adam and Eve long ago; gave -them up as white and good-looking, I mean; because we must have begun -_somewhere_, mustn't we? And Darwin was such a good man; though you -remember he came not to care anything at all about music. That may mean -a great deal, if one could think it all out; it's the most religious of -the arts, isn't it? But there's no end to thinking things out!" Mrs. -Chadwick pressed her hand against her forehead, closing her eyes for a -moment. "And Adrienne is very musical." - -"You were at your headache," Oldmeadow reminded her. It was customary in -the family circle thus to shepherd Mrs. Chadwick's straying thoughts. - -"Yes, I know. But it all hangs together. Heredity and Mamma and my -headaches; and Adrienne's mother, who was musical, too, and played on a -harp. Well, it was raging and I was lying there, when there came a -little rap at the door. I knew at once who it was and she asked in such -a gentle voice if she might come in. It's a very soothing voice, isn't -it? But do you know I felt for a moment quite frightened, as if I simply -couldn't see her. But I had to say yes, and she came in so softly and -sat down beside me and said: 'I used to help Mother, sometimes, with her -headaches. May I help you?' She didn't want to talk about things, as I'd -feared. Such a relief it was. So I said: 'Oh, do my dear,' and she laid -her hand on my forehead and said: 'You will soon feel better. It will -soon quite pass away.' And then not another word. Only sitting there in -the dark, with her hand on my forehead. And do you know, Roger, almost -at once the pain began to melt away. You know how a dish of junket melts -after you cut into it. It was like that. 'Junket, junket,' I seemed to -hear myself saying; and such a feeling of peace and contentment. And -before I knew anything more I fell into the most delicious sleep and -slept till now, just before tea. She was sitting there still, in the -dark beside me and I said: 'Oh, my dear, to think of your having stayed -in on this lovely afternoon!' But she went to pull up the blinds and -said that she loved sitting quietly in the dark with some one she cared -for, sleeping. 'I think souls come very close together, then,' she said. -Wasn't it beautiful of her, Roger? Like astral bodies, you know, and -auras and things of that sort. She _is_ beautiful. I made up my mind to -that, then. She gives me such a feeling of trust. How can one help it? -It's like what one reads of Roman Catholic saints and people in the -Bible. The gift of healing. The laying on of hands. We don't seem to -have any of them and we can't count _her_, since she doesn't believe in -the church. But if only they'd give up the Pope, I don't see why we -shouldn't accept their saints; such dear, good people, most of them. And -the Pope is quite an excellent man just now, I believe. But isn't it -very strange, Roger? For a person who can do that to one can't be -irreligious, can they?" - -Mrs. Chadwick's eye was now fixed upon him, less wistfully and more -intently, and he knew that something was expected of him. - -"Hypnotic doctors can do it, you know. You needn't be a saint to do it," -he said. "Though I suppose you must have some power of concentration -that implies faith. However," he had to say all his thought, though most -of it would be wasted upon poor Eleanor Chadwick, "Miss Toner is -anything but irreligious. You may be sure of that." - -"You feel it, too, Roger. I'm so, so glad." - -"But her religion is not as your religion," he had to warn her, "nor her -ways your ways. You must be prepared to have the children unsettled; -everyone of them; because she has great power and is far more religious -than most people. She believes in her creed and acts on it. You must -give the children their heads. It's no good trying to circumvent or -oppose them." - -"But they mustn't do wrong things, Roger. How can I give them their -heads if it's to do wrong things? I don't know what Mamma would have -said to their not going to church--especially in the country. She would -have thought it very wrong, simply. Sinful and dangerous." - -"Hardly that," Oldmeadow smiled. "Even in the country. You don't think -Miss Toner does wrong things. If they take up Miss Toner's creed instead -of going to church, they won't come to much harm. The principal thing is -that there should be something to take up. After all," he was reassuring -himself as well as Mrs. Chadwick, "it hasn't hurt her. It's made her a -little foolish; but it hasn't hurt her. And your children will never be -foolish. They'll get all the good of it and, perhaps, be able to combine -it with going to church. - -"Foolish, Roger?" Mrs. Chadwick, relieved of her headache, but not of -her perplexity, gazed wanly at him. "You think Adrienne foolish?" - -"A little. Now and then. You mustn't accept anything she says to you -just because she can cure you of a headache." - -"But how can you say foolish, Roger? She's had a most wonderful -education?" - -"Everything that makes her surer of herself and makes other people surer -of her puts her in more danger of being foolish. One can be too sure of -oneself. Unless one is a saint--and even then. And though I don't think -she's irreligious I don't think she's a saint. Not by any means." - -"I don't see how anyone can be more of one, nowadays, Roger. She heals -people and she says prayers, and she is always good and gentle and never -thinks of herself. I'm sure I can't think what you want more." - -A touch of plaintiveness and even of protest had come into Mrs. -Chadwick's voice. - -"Perhaps what I want is less," he laughed. "Perhaps she's too much of a -saint for my taste. I think she's a little too much of one for your -taste, really--if you were to be quite candid with yourself. Has she -spoken to you at all about Barney? Are you quite sure you'll have to -reckon with her for yourself and the children?" - -At this Mrs. Chadwick showed a frank alarm. "Oh, quite, quite sure!" she -said. "She couldn't be so lovely to us all if she didn't mean to take -him! Why do you ask, Roger? You haven't any reason for thinking she -won't?" - -"None whatever. Quite the contrary." He didn't want to put poor Mrs. -Chadwick to the cruel test of declaring whether she would rather have -the children go to church and lose Miss Toner and all her money or have -them stay away and keep Miss Toner. After all such a test was not to be -asked of her. Miss Toner wanted people to follow their own light. "I -only wondered if she talked to you about him. Asked any girlish leading -questions." - -"None, none whatever," said Mrs. Chadwick. "But I feel that's because -she thinks she knows him far better than I do and that he's told her -everything already. It's rather hard to be a mother, Roger. For of -course, though she is so much better and cleverer than I am, I feel sure -that no one understands Barney as I do." - -"She'd be a little cleverer still if she could see that, wouldn't she?" - -"Well, I don't know. Girls never do. I was just the same when I was -engaged to Francis. Even now I can't think that old Mrs. Chadwick really -understood him as I did. It's very puzzling, isn't it? Very difficult to -see things from other people's point of view. When she pulled up the -blind this afternoon, she told me that Nancy and Barney were down in the -copse and she seemed pleased." - -"Oh, did she?" - -"I told her that they'd always been like brother and sister, for I was -just a little afraid, you know, that she might imagine Barney had ever -cared about Nancy." - -"I see. You think she wouldn't like that?" - -"What woman would, Roger?" And he imagined that Mrs. Chadwick, for all -her folly, was cleverer than Miss Toner guessed, as she added: "And then -she told me that she'd made Barney go without her. She wanted me to see, -you know, that it depended on her. That's another reason why I feel sure -she is going to take him." - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -He sat, for the first time, next Miss Toner that night at dinner and -Nancy sat across from them next Barney. Nancy was pale, and now that he -could scrutinize her he imagined that the walk had been more of an -ordeal than a pleasure. Barney, no doubt, with the merciless blindness -of his state, had talked to her all the time of Adrienne. But Nancy -would not have minded that. She was of the type that hides its cut for -ever and may become aunt and guardian-angel to the other woman's -children. It had not been Barney's preoccupation that had so drained her -of warmth and colour, but its character, its object. Her grey eyes had -the considering look with which they might have measured the height of a -difficult hedge in hunting, and, resting on Oldmeadow once or twice, -seemed to tell him that the walk had shown her more clearly than ever -that, if Barney married Miss Toner, they must lose him. He felt sure -that she had lain down since tea with a headache to which had come no -ministering angel. - -She and Barney did not talk to each other now, for he had eyes and ears -only for Miss Toner. At any former time they would have kept up the -happiest interchange, and Oldmeadow would have seen Nancy's eyelashes -close together as she smiled her loving smile. There was a dim family -likeness between her face and Barney's, for both were long and narrow, -and both had the singular sweetness in the very structure of the smile. -But where Barney was clumsy, Nancy was clear, and her skin was as fair -as his was brown. To the fond onlooker at both, they were destined mates -and only an insufferable accident had parted them. - -Nancy was as much a part of the Coldbrooks country as the primroses and -the blackcaps in the woods. Her life had risen from the familiar soil to -the familiar sky, as preordained to fitness, as ordered by instinct and -condition as theirs, and from her security of type she had gained not -lost in savour. The time that unfinished types must give to growing -conscious roots and building conscious nests, Nancy had all free for -spontaneities of flight and song. Beside her, to his hostile eye, Miss -Toner was as a wide-spread water-weed, floating, rootless and scentless, -upon chance currents: A creature of surfaces, of caprice and hazard. If -the multiplicity of her information constituted mental wealth, its -impersonality constituted mental poverty. She was as well furnished and -as deadening as a catalogue, and as he listened to her, receiving an -impression of continual, considered movings-on, earnest pursuits, across -half the globe, of further experience, he saw her small, questing figure -on a background of railways, giant lines stretching forth across plain -and mountain, climbing, tunnelling, curving; stopping at great capitals, -and passing on again to glitter on their endless way under the sun and -moon. That was what he seemed to see as Miss Toner talked: and -sleeping-berths and wardrobe-boxes and luxurious suites in vast hotels. - -She wore again her white dress, contrasting in its richness of texture -with the simplicity of her daytime blue, and, rather stupidly, an -artificial white rose had been placed, in her braids, over each ear. -Her pearls were her only other ornament, and her pearls, he supposed, -were surprising. - -Oldmeadow was aware, in his close proximity to her, while she ate beside -him with a meticulous nicety that made the manners of the rest of them, -by contrast, seem a little casual and slovenly, of the discomfort that -had visited him in his dream. Yet the feeling she evoked was not all -discomfort. It was as if from her mere physical presence he were -subjected to some force that had in its compulsion a dim, conjectural -charm. It was for this reason no doubt that he seemed to be aware of -everything about her. Her hands were small and white, but had no beauty -of form or gesture. She moved them slowly and without grace, rather like -a young child handling unfamiliar objects in a kindergarten, and this in -spite of the singular perfection of her table manners. She could have -made little use of them, ever, in games of skill or in any art requiring -swift accuracy and firmness. It was as if her mind, overtrained in -receptivity and retentiveness, had only dull tentacles to spare for her -finger-tips. He was aware of these hands beside him all through dinner -and their fumbling deliberation brought to him, again and again, a -mingled annoyance, and satisfaction. There was something positive and -characteristic about her scentlessness, for if she smelt of anything it -was of Fuller's Earth--a funny, chalky smell--and beside Meg, who -foolishly washed liquid powder over her silvery skin, Miss Toner's -colourlessness was sallow. She had hardly talked at all the night -before, but to-night she talked continuously. It was Meg who questioned -her, and Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldmeadow guessed that his ingenuous -friend, still perplexed by his use of the word foolish, was drawing out -and displaying her future daughter-in-law for his benefit. - -Miss Toner and her mother had been to Russia, to India, to China and -Japan. They had visited Stevenson's grave at Vailima and in describing -it she quoted "Under the wide and starry sky." They had studied every -temple in Greece and Sicily and talked of the higher education with -ladies in Turkish harems. "But it was always Paris we came back to," she -said, "when we were not at home. Home was, and is, a great many places: -California and Chicago--where my father's people live, and New England. -But Paris was, after it, closest to our hearts. Yes, we knew a great -many French people; but it was for study rather than friendship we went -there. It is such a treasure-house of culture. Mother worked very hard -at French diction for several winters. She had lessons from Mademoiselle -Jouffert--you know perhaps--though she has not acted for so many years -now. Our friendship with her was a great privilege, for she was a rare -and noble woman and had a glorious gift. Phedre was her favourite role -and I shall never forget her rendering of it: - - Ariane ma soeur! de quel amour blessee - Vous mourutes aux bords ou vous futes laissee! - -She taught Mother to recite Phedre's great speeches with such fire and -passion. There could hardly be a better training for French," said Miss -Toner, repeating the lines with a curious placidity and perfection. "I -preferred Mademoiselle Jouffert's rendering to Bernhardt's. Her Phedre -was, with all the fire, more tender and womanly." - -"Do you care about Racine?" Oldmeadow asked her, while the lines rang in -his ears--rather as in his dream the rooks' cawing had done--with an -evocative sadness that hung, irrelevantly, about their speaker. "It's -not easy for our English ears to hear the fire and passion, is it; but -they are there." - -"He is very perfect and accomplished," said Miss Toner. "But I always -feel him small beside our Shakespeare. He lacks heart, doesn't he?" - -"There's heart in those lines you've just recited." - -"Yes," said Miss Toner. "Those lines are certainly very beautiful. It's -the mere music of them, I think. They make me feel--" she paused. It was -unlike her to pause and he wondered what she made of Ariane, off her own -bat, without Mademoiselle Jouffert to help her. - -"They make you feel?" he questioned. - -"They are so sad--so terribly melancholy. The sound of them. They make -me want to cry when I hear them. But I think it's the sound; for their -meaning makes me indignant. There is such weakness in them; such -acceptance of destiny. I want to revolt and protest, too--for women. She -should not have died." - -Oldmeadow involuntarily glanced across at Nancy. She was looking at Miss -Toner and if she had been pale before, she was paler now. Nancy would -never think of herself in connection with Ariane and tragic grief; yet -something in the lines, something in Miss Toner's disavowal of their -applicability, had touched the hidden cut. And, once again, it was Meg's -eyes that met his, showing him that what he saw she saw, too. Barney saw -nothing. All his solicitude was for Miss Toner in her imaginary plight. -"I'm sure you never would!" he exclaimed. "Never die, I mean!" - -"You think Miss Toner would have come to terms with Bacchus," Oldmeadow -suggested. He didn't want to take it out of Barney, though he was vexed -with him, nor to take it out of Miss Toner, either. He only wanted to -toss and twist the theme and make it gay where Miss Toner made it -solemn. - -"Come to terms with Bacchus!" Barney quite stared, taken aback by the -irreverence. "Why should she! She'd have found somebody more worth while -than either of the ruffians." - -Miss Toner smiled over at him. - -"I'm sure that if Bacchus had been fortunate enough to meet Miss Toner -she'd have converted him to total abstinence in a jiffy and made a model -husband of him. He was a fine, exhilarating fellow; no ruffian at all; -quite worth reforming." Oldmeadow, as he thus embroidered his theme, was -indulging in his own peculiar form of mirth. - -He saw Miss Toner laying her hand on the head of Bacchus; Miss Toner -very picturesque on the rugged sea-shore in her white and pearls and -roses, and Bacchus dazed and penitent, his very leopards tamed to a -cat-like docility. His laugh was visible rather than audible and that -Miss Toner had never before been the subject of such mirth was evident -to him. - -She met whatever she saw or guessed of irreverence, however, as -composedly as she would have met Bacchus; perhaps already, he reflected, -she was beginning to think of him in the light of an undesirable -wine-bibber. Perhaps even, she was beginning to think of him as a -ruffian. He didn't mind in the least, so long as he succeeded in keeping -off her solemnity. - -"I should have been quite willing to try and reform him," she said; -"though it takes much longer than a jiffy to reform people, Mr. -Oldmeadow; but I shouldn't have been willing to marry him. There are -other things in life, aren't there, than love-stories--even for women." - -"Bravo!" said Oldmeadow. He felt as well as uttered it. She wasn't being -solemn, and she had returned his shuttlecock smartly. "But are there?" -he went on. He had adjusted his eyeglass for a clearer confrontation of -her. - -Miss Toner's large eyes, enlarged still further by the glass, met his, -not solemnly, but with a considering gravity. - -"You are a sceptic, Mr. Oldmeadow," she observed. "A satirist. Do you -find that satire and scepticism take you very far in reading human -hearts?" - -"There's one for you, Roger!" cried Barney. - -Oldmeadow kept his gaze fixed on Miss Toner. "You think that Ariane -might prefer Infant Welfare work or Charity Organization to a -love-story?" - -"Not those necessarily." She returned his gaze. "Though I have known -very fine big people who did prefer them. But they are not the only -alternatives to love-stories." - -"I am sceptical," said Oldmeadow. "I am, if you like, satirical. I don't -believe there are any alternatives to love-stories; only palliatives to -disappointment." - -Barney leaned forward: "Adrienne, you see, doesn't accept that -old-fashioned, sentimentalizing division of the sexes. She doesn't -accept the merely love-story, hearth-side role for women." - -"Oh, well," Oldmeadow played with his fork, smiling with the wryness -that accompanied his reluctant sincerities, "I don't divide the sexes as -far as love-stories are concerned. We are all in the same boat. For us, -too, Barney, it's love-story or palliative. You don't agree? If you were -disappointed in love? Hunting? Farming? Politics? Post-Impressionism? -Would any of them fill the gap?" - -It wasn't at all the line he had intended the talk to take. He knew that -as he glanced across at Nancy. Saying nothing, as if its subject could -not concern her, and with a dim little smile, she listened, and he knew -that for her, though she wouldn't die of it, there would be only -palliatives. If only Barney, confound him, hadn't been so charming. - -Barney did not know how to answer the last assault, and, boyishly, -looked across at his beloved for succour. She gave it instantly. - -"Sadness, sorrow, tragedy, even, isn't despair," she said. "Barney, I -believe, if sorrow overtook him, would mould the rough clay of his -occupation to some higher beauty than the beauty he'd lost. To lie down -and die; to resign oneself to palliatives. Oh, no. That's not the -destiny of the human soul." - -"Roger's pulling your leg, Barney, as usual," Palgrave put in -scornfully. He had been listening with his elbows on the table, his eyes -on the table-cloth. "He knows as well as I do that there's only one -love. The sort you're all talking about--the Theseus and Ariane -affair--is merely an ebullition of youth and as soon as nature has -perpetuated the species by means of it, it settles down, if there's any -reality under the ebullition, to grow into the other--the divine love; -the love of the soul for the Good, the True and the Beautiful," Palgrave -declared, growing very red as he said it. - -"Really--my dear child!" Mrs. Chadwick murmured. She had never heard -such themes broached at her table and glanced nervously up at old -Johnson to see if he had followed. "That is a very, very materialistic -view!" - -Oldmeadow at this began to laugh, audibly as well as visibly, and -Palgrave, as their eyes met in a glance of communicated comedy, could -not withhold an answering smile. But Barney's face showed that he -preferred to see Palgrave's interpretation as materialistic and even -Miss Toner looked thoughtfully at her champion. - -"But we need the symbol of youth and nature," she suggested. "The divine -love, yes, Palgrave, is the only real one; but then all love is divine -and human love sometimes brings the deepest revelation of all. Browning -saw that so wonderfully." - -"Browning, my dear!" Palgrave returned with a curious mingling of -devotion, intimacy and aloofness, "Browning never got nearer God than a -woman's breast!" - -At this, almost desperately, Mrs. Chadwick broke in: "Did you ever see -our Ellen Terry act, Adrienne? I liked her much better than Madame -Bernhardt who had such a very artificial face, I think. I can't imagine -her as Rosalind, can you? While Miss Terry was a perfect Rosalind. I met -her once with Henry Irving at a garden-party in London and she was as -charming off as on the stage and I'm sure I can't see why anybody -should wish to act Phedre--poor, uncontrolled creature. Rhubarb-tart, -dear, and custard? or wine-jelly and cream? How beautifully you speak -French. How many languages do you speak?" Mrs. Chadwick earnestly -inquired, still turning the helm firmly away from the unbecoming topic. - -Miss Toner kept her head very creditably and, very tactfully, at once -accepted her hostess's hint. "Rhubarb-tart, please, dear Mrs. Chadwick. -Not so very many, really. My German has never been good; though French -and Italian I do know well, and enough Spanish for Don Quixote. But," -she went on, while Mrs. Chadwick looked gratefully at her, "Mother and I -were always working. We never wasted any of our precious hours together. -She couldn't bear the thought of _missing_ anything in life; and she -missed very little, I think. Music, poetry, painting--all the -treasure-houses of the human spirit--were open to her. And what she won -and made her own, she gave out again with greater radiance. How I wish -you could all have known her!" said Miss Toner, looking round at them -with an unaccustomed touch of wistfulness. "She was radiance -personified. She never let unhappiness _rest_ on her. I remember once, -when she had had a cruel blow from a person she loved and trusted--in -the middle of her sadness she looked at me and saw how sad she was -making me; and she sprang up and seized my hands and cried: 'Let's -dance! Let's dance and dance and dance!' And we did, up and down the -terrace--it was at San Remo--she in her white dress, with the blue sky -and sea and the orange-trees all in bloom. I can see her now. And then -she rushed to get music, her harp, and flowers and fruit, to take to an -invalid friend, and we spent the afternoon with her, mother surpassing -herself in charm and witchery. She was always like that. She would have -found something, oh, very beautiful, to make from her sorrow if Theseus -had abandoned her! But no one," said Miss Toner, looking round at -Oldmeadow, now with a mild playfulness, "could ever have abandoned -Mother." - -There was something to Oldmeadow appealing in her playfulness; her -confidence, when it took on this final grace, was really touching. For -Mrs. Toner the light-giver he knew that he had conceived a rooted -aversion. And he wondered if she would go on, over the rhubarb-tart, to -tell, after the dancing on the terrace, of the death at sea. But he was -spared that. - -"And your father died when you were very young, didn't he, dear?" said -Mrs. Chadwick, fearful of the reference to Theseus. "I think your mother -must often have been so very lonely; away from home for such a great -part of the time and with so few relatives." - -Miss Toner shook her head. "We were always together, she and I, so we -could never, either of us, be lonely. And wherever we went she made -friends. People were always so much more than mere people to her. She -saw them always, at once, high and low, prince and peasant, as souls, -and they felt it always, and opened to her. Then, until I was quite big, -we had my lovely grandmother. Mother came from Maine and it was such a -joy to go and stay there with Grandma. It was a very simple little home. -It was always high thinking and plain living, with Grandma; and though, -when she married and became rich, Mother showered beautiful things upon -her, Grandma stayed always in the little house, doing for her poor -neighbours, as she had always done, and dusting her parlour--a real New -England parlour--and making her own griddle cakes--such wonderful cakes -she made! I was fifteen when she died; but the tie was so close and -spiritual that she did not seem gone away from us." - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -"Rather nice to think that there are so many good and innocent people in -the world, isn't it," Barney remarked, when he, Palgrave and Oldmeadow -were left to their wine and cigars. It was evident that he would have -preferred to omit the masculine interlude, but Oldmeadow was resolved on -the respite. She had touched him because she was so unaware; but he was -weary and disconcerted. How could Barney be unaware? And was he? -Altogether? His comment seemed to suggest a suspicion that Miss Toner's -flow might have aroused irony or require justification. - -"Miss Toner and her mother seem to have found the noble and the gifted -under every bush," he remarked, and he was not sure that he wished to -avoid irony though he knew that he did wish to conceal it from Barney. -"It's very good and innocent to be able to do that; but one may keep -one's goodness at the risk of one's discrimination. Not that Miss Toner -is at all stupid." - -Palgrave neither smoked nor drank. He had again leaned his elbows on the -table and his head on his fists, but, while Oldmeadow spoke, he lifted -and kept his gaze on him. "You don't like her," he said suddenly. He and -Oldmeadow had, irrepressibly, over Mrs. Chadwick's conception of -materialism, interchanged their smile at dinner; but since the morning -Oldmeadow had known that Palgrave suspected him of indifference, perhaps -even hostility, towards the new-comer. "Why don't you like her?" the -boy went on and with a growing resentment as his suspicions found voice. -"She _isn't_ stupid; that's just it. She's good and noble and innocent; -and gifted, too. Why should we pretend to be too sophisticated to -recognize such beauty when we meet it? Why should we be ashamed of -beauty--afraid of it?" - -Barney, flushing deeply, looked down into his wine-glass. - -"My dear Palgrave, I don't understand you," said Oldmeadow. But he did. -He seemed to hear the loud beating of Palgrave's heart. "I don't dislike -Miss Toner. How should I? I don't know her." - -"You do know her. That's an evasion. It's all there. She can't be seen -without being known. It's all there; at once. I don't know why you don't -like her. It's what I want to know." - -"Drop it, Palgrave," Barney muttered. "Let Roger alone. He and Adrienne -get on very well together. It's no good forcing things." - -"I'm not forcing anything. It's Roger who forces his scepticism and his -satire on us," Palgrave declared. - -"I'm sorry to have displeased you," said Oldmeadow with a slight -severity. "I am unaware of having displayed my disagreeable qualities -more than is usual with me." - -"Of course not. What rot, Palgrave! Roger is always disagreeable, bless -him!" Barney declared with a forced laugh. "Adrienne understands him -perfectly. As he says: she isn't stupid." - -"Oh, all right. I'm sorry," Palgrave rose, thrusting his hands in his -pockets and looking down at the two as he stood above them. He hesitated -and then went on: "All I know is that for the first time in my -life--the very first time, mind you--all the things we are told about in -religion, all the things we read about in poetry, the things we're -supposed to care for and live by, have been made real to me--outside of -books and churches. What do we ever see of them at home here, with dear -Mummy and the girls? What do we ever talk of, all of us--but the -everlasting round--hunting, gardening, cricket, hay; village treats and -village charities. A lot of chatter about people--What a rotter -So-and-so is; and How perfectly sweet somebody else: and a little about -politics--Why doesn't somebody shoot Lloyd George?--and How wicked Home -Rulers are. That's about all it amounts to. Oh, I know we're not as -stupid as we sound. _She_ sees that. We can feel things and see things -though we express ourselves like savages. But we're too comfortable to -think; that's what's the trouble with us. We don't want to change; and -thought means change. And we're shy; idiotically shy; afraid to express -anything as it really comes to us; so that I sometimes wonder if things -will go on coming; if we shan't become like the Chinese--a sort of -_objet d'art_ set of people, living by rote, in a rut. Well. That's all -I mean. With her one isn't ashamed or afraid to know and say what one -feels. With her one wants to feel more. And I, for one, reverence her -and am grateful to her for having made beauty and goodness real to me." -Having so delivered himself, Palgrave, who had, after his deep flush, -become pale, turned away and marched out of the room. - -The older men sat silent for a moment, Oldmeadow continuing to smoke and -Barney turning the stem of his wine-glass in his fingers. "I'm awfully -sorry," he said at last. "I can't think what's got into the boy. He's in -rather a moil just now, I fancy." - -"He's a dear boy," said Oldmeadow. "There's any amount of truth in what -he says. He's at an age when one sees these things, if one is ever going -to see them. I hope he'll run straight. He ought to amount to -something." - -"That's what Adrienne says," said Barney. "She says he's a poet. You -think, too, then, that we're all in such a rut; living Chinese lives; -automata?" - -"It's the problem of civilization, isn't it, to combine automatism with -freedom. Without a rut to walk in you reach nowhere--if we're to walk -together. And yet we must manage to ramble, too; individuals must; -that's what it comes to, I suppose. Individuals must take the risk of -rambling and alter the line of the rut for the others. Palgrave may be a -rambler. But I hope he won't go too far afield." - -"You do like her, Roger, don't you?" said Barney suddenly. - -It had had to come. Oldmeadow knew that, as the depth of silence fell -about them. It was inevitable between them, of course. Yet he wished it -might have been avoided, since now it must be too late. He pressed out -the glow of his cigar and leaned his arms on the table, not looking at -his friend while he meditated, and he said finally--and it might seem, -he knew, another evasion--"Look here, Barney, I must tell you something. -You know how much I care about Nancy. Well, that's the trouble. It's -Nancy I wanted you to marry." - -Barney had held himself ready and a deep, involuntary sigh of relief, or -of postponed suspense, now escaped him. "I see. I didn't realize that," -he said. And how he hoped, poor Barney! it was all there was to realize! -"Of course I'm very fond of Nancy." - -"You realize, of course, how fond she is of you." - -"Well; yes; of course. We're both awfully good pals," said Barney, -confused. - -"That's what Palgrave would call speaking like a savage, Barney. Own to -it that if Miss Toner hadn't appeared upon the scene you could have -hoped to make Nancy your wife. I don't say you made love to her or -misled her in any way. I'm sure you never meant to at any rate. But the -fact remains that you were both so fond of each other that you would -certainly have married. So you'll understand that when I come down here -and find Miss Toner installed as tutelary goddess over you all, what I'm -mainly conscious of is grief for my dear little relegated nymph." - -Still deeply flushed, but still feeling his relief, Barney turned his -wine-glass and murmured: "I see. I quite understand. Yes; I should have -been in love with her, I own. I nearly was, last winter. As to her being -in love with me, that's a different matter. I've no reason to think she -was in love. It would just be a difference of degree, with Nancy, -wouldn't it; she loves us all so much, and she's really such a child, -still. Of course that's what she seems to me now, since Adrienne's come; -just a darling child." - -"I suppose so. But you understand what I feel, too. I feel her much more -than a darling child, and it's difficult for me to like anybody who has -dispossessed her. I perfectly recognize Miss Toner's remarkable -qualities and hope to count myself among her friends one day; but, being -a satirist and a sceptic, I rebel instinctively against goddesses of -whatever brand. Nymphs are good enough for me; and I can't help wishing, -irrepressibly, that nymphs had remained good enough for you, my dear -boy." - -"It isn't a question of nymphs; it isn't a question of goddesses," -Barney said, glancing up now at his friend. "I'm awfully sorry about -Nancy; but of course she'll find some one far better than I am; she's -such a dear. You're not quite straight with me, Roger. I don't see -Adrienne as a goddess at all; I'm not like Palgrave, a silly boy, bowled -over. It's something quite different she does to me. She makes me feel -safe; safe and happy in a way I never imagined possible. It's like -having the sunlight fall about one; it's like life, new life, to be with -her. She's not a goddess; but she's the woman it would break my heart to -part with. I never met such loveliness." - -"My dear boy," Oldmeadow murmured. He still leaned on the table and he -still looked down. "I do wish you every happiness, as you know." He was -deeply touched and Barney's quiet words troubled him as he had not -before been troubled. - -"Thanks. I know you do. I know you care for my happiness. And I can't -imagine anything coming into my life that would make a difference to us. -That's just it." Barney paused. "It won't, will it, Roger?" - -The crisis was again upon them. Oldmeadow did not look up as he said: -"That depends on her, doesn't it?" - -"No; it depends on you," Barney quickly replied. - -"She likes you, quite immensely, already. She says you make her think of -one of Meredith's dry, deep-hearted heroes," Barney gave a slightly -awkward laugh, deprecating the homage as he offered it. "She says you -are the soul of truth. There's no reason, none whatever, why you -shouldn't be the best of friends, as far as she is concerned. It's all -she asks." - -"It's all I ask, of course." - -"Yes, I know. But if you don't meet her half-way? Sometimes I do see -what Palgrave means. Sometimes you misunderstand her." - -"Very likely. It takes time really to understand people, doesn't it." - -But poor Barney was embarked and could not but push on. "As just now, -you know, about finding nobility behind every bush and paying for one's -goodness by losing one's discrimination. There are deep realities and -superficial realities, aren't there, and she sees the deep ones first. -It's more than that. Palgrave says she makes reality. He didn't say it -to me, because I don't think he feels me to be worthy of her. He said it -to Mother, and puzzled her by it. But I know what he means. It's because -of that he feels her to be a sort of saint. Do be straight with me, -Roger. Say what you really think. I'd rather know; much. You've never -kept things from me before," Barney added in a sudden burst of boyish -distress. - -"My dear Barney," Oldmeadow murmured. - -It had to come, then. He pushed back his chair and turned in it, resting -an arm on the table; and he passed his hand over his head and kept it -there while he stared for a moment hard at the ceiling. - -"I think you've made a mistake," he then said. - -"A mistake?" Barney faltered blushing. It was not anger; it was pain, -simple, boyish pain that thus confessed itself. - -"Yes; a mistake," Oldmeadow repeated, not looking at him, "and since I -fear it's gone too far to be mended, I think it would have been better -if you'd not pressed me, my dear boy." - -"How do you mean? I'd rather know, you see," Barney murmured, after a -moment. - -"I don't mean about the goodness, or the power," said Oldmeadow. "She is -good, and she has power; but that's in part, I feel, because she has no -inhibitions--no doubts. To know reality we must do more than blow -soap-bubbles with it. It must break us to be known. She's never been -broken. Perhaps she never will be. And in that case she'll go on blind." - -Barney was silent for a moment, and that it was not as bad as he had -feared it might be was apparent from the attempted calm with which he -asked, presently: "Why shouldn't you be blind to evil and absurdity if -you can see much further than most people into goodness? Perhaps one -must be one-sided to go far." - -"Perhaps. But it's dangerous to be one-sided--to oneself and others. And -does she see further? That's the question. Doesn't she tend, rather, to -accept as first-rate what you incline to find second? You're less strong -than she is, Barney, and less good, no doubt. But you can't deny that -you're less blind. So what you must ask yourself is whether you can be -sure of being happy with a wife who'll never doubt herself and who'll -not see absurdity where you see it. Put it at that. Will you be happy -with her?" - -He was, he knew, justified of Miss Toner's commendation, for truth -between friends could go no further and, in the silence, while he -sickened for his friend, he felt it searching Barney's heart. How it -searched, how many echoes it found awaiting it, was proved by the -prolongation of the silence. - -"I think you exaggerate," said Barney at length, and in the words -Oldmeadow read his refusal to examine further the truths revealed to -him. "You see all the defects and none of the beauty. It can't be a -mistake if I can see both. She'll learn a little from me, that's what it -comes to, for all the lot I'll have to learn from her. I'll be happy -with her if I'm worthy of her. What it comes to, you see, as I said at -the beginning, is that I can't be happy without her." He rose and -Oldmeadow, rising also, knew that they closed upon an unresolved -discord. Yet these final words of Barney's pleased him so much that he -could not leave it quite at that. - -"Mine may be the mistake, after all," he said. "Only you must give me -time to find it out. I began by telling you I couldn't be really -dispassionate; and I feel much better for our talk, if that's any -satisfaction to you. If you can learn from each other and see the truth -together, you'll be happy. You're right there, Barney. That is what it -comes to." They moved towards the door. "Try not to dislike me for my -truth too much," he added. - -"My dear old fellow," Barney muttered. He laid his hand for a moment on -his friend's shoulder, standing back for him to pass first. "Nothing can -ever alter things between you and me." - -But things were altered already. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -Palgrave had not gone to the drawing-room, and that, at all events, was -a comfort. A wood fire burned on the hearth and near it Nancy was -holding wool for Mrs. Chadwick to wind. Barbara had been sent to bed and -Meg and Miss Toner sat on the sofa hand in hand. Even in the pressure of -his distress and anxiety Oldmeadow could but be aware of amusement at -seeing Meg thus. It had, of course, been Miss Toner who had taken her -hand. But no one else could have taken it. No one else could have been -allowed to go on holding it placidly before on-lookers of whose mirthful -impressions Meg must be well aware. She didn't mind in the least. That -was what Miss Toner had done to her. She enjoyed having her hand held by -anyone so much interested in her. - -Barney walked to the fireplace and stood before it. He had no faculty -for concealing his emotions and the painful ones through which he had -just passed were visible on his sensitive face. - -"Give us a song, Meg," Oldmeadow suggested. He did not care for Meg's -singing, which conveyed, in a rich, sweet medium, a mingled fervour and -shallowness of feeling. But to hear her sing would be better than to see -her holding Miss Toner's hand. - -Barney crossed at once to the seat Meg vacated and dropped down into it, -no doubt thanking his friend for what he imagined to be a display of -tact, and Oldmeadow saw the quiet, firm look that flowed over and took -possession of him. Miss Toner knew, of course, that Barney had been -having painful emotions; and she probably knew that they had been caused -by the dry, deep-hearted Meredithian hero. But after the long look she -did not speak to him. She sat in her pearls and whiteness and gave -careful attention to the music. - -Oldmeadow accompanied Meg, tolerantly, and a trifle humorously, throwing -a touch of mockery into his part. Meg's preference to-night seemed to be -for gardens; Gardens of Sleep; Gardens of Love; God's Gardens. "What a -wretch you are, Roger," she said, when she had finished. "You despise -feeling." - -"I thought I was wallowing in it," Oldmeadow returned. "Did I stint -you?" - -"No; you helped me to wallow. That's why you're such a wretch. Always -showing one that one is wallowing when one thinks one's soaring. It's -your turn, now, Adrienne. Let's see if he'll manage to make fun of you." - -"Does Miss Toner sing, too? Now do you know, Meg," said Oldmeadow, -keeping up the friendly banter, "I'm sure she doesn't sing the sort of -rubbish you do." - -"I think they're beautiful songs," Mrs. Chadwick murmured from her wool, -"and I think Roger played them most beautifully. Why should you say he -is making fun of you, Meg?" - -"Because he makes you think something's beautiful that he thinks -rubbish, Mummy. Come along, Adrienne. You will, won't you? I expect my -voice sounds all wrong to you. I've had no proper training." - -"It's a very lovely voice, Meg, used in a poor cause," said Miss Toner -smiling. "And it is badly placed. I think I could help you there. I've -no voice at all, but I have been taught how to sing. It would be more to -the point, though, if Mr. Oldmeadow were to play to us, for I hear that -he is an accomplished musician." - -"I'm really anything but accomplished," said Oldmeadow; "but I can play -accompaniments cleverly. Do sing to us. I know you'll give us something -worth accompanying." - -Miss Toner rose and came to the piano with her complete and unassuming -confidence. She turned the pages of the music piled there and asked him -if he cared for Schubert's songs. Yes; she was a watch wound to go -accurately and she could rely on herself, always, to the last tick. Even -if she knew--and he was sure she knew--that he had been undermining her, -she would never show a shadow or a tremor; and she would always know -what was the best music. Only, as she selected "Litanei" and placed it -before him, he felt that over him, also, flowed the quiet, firm look. - -"Litanei" was one of his favourites in a composer he loved, and, as she -sang there above him, he found the song emerging unharmed from her -interpretation. It was as she had said--no voice to speak of; the -dryest, flattest little thread of sound; and no feeling, either (what a -relief after Meg!), except the feeling for scrupulous accuracy. Yet her -singing was what he found in her to like best. It was disciplined; it -accepted its own limits; it fulfilled an order. There was no desecration -of the heavenly song, for, intelligently after all, she made no attempt -upon its heart. - -When she had finished, she looked down at him. They were removed by half -the length of the room from the fireside group. The lamps were behind -them. Only the candles set in the piano-rack illumined Miss Toner; and -while the white roses over her ears struck him anew as foolish, her eyes -anew struck him as powerful. - -"Thank you. That was a pleasure," he said. - -It was a pleasure. It was almost a link. He had found a ground to meet -her on. He saw himself in the future accompanying Barney's wife. He -need, then, so seldom talk to her. But, alas! she stepped at once from -the safe frame of art. - -"If we can rise from loss to feel like that, if we can lift our sorrows -like that, we need never turn to palliatives, need we, Mr. Oldmeadow?" -she said. - -Stupidity, complacency, or power, whatever it was, it completely -disenchanted him. It left him also bereft of repartee. What he fell back -upon, as he looked up at her and then down at the keys again, was a mere -schoolboy mutter of "Come now!" - -After all a schoolboy mutter best expressed what he felt. She was not -accustomed to having her ministrations met with such mutters and she did -not like it. That was apparent to him as she turned away and went back -to the sofa and Barney. She had again tried him and again found him -wanting. - - * * * * * - -Barney and Miss Toner left in her motor next morning shortly after -breakfast, and though with his friend Oldmeadow had no further exchange, -he had, with Miss Toner, a curious encounter that was, he felt sure, a -direct result of her impressions of the night before. They met in the -dining-room a few moments before breakfast, and as she entered, wearing -already her motoring hat, closely bound round her face with a veil, he -was aware that she looked, if that were possible, more composed than he -had ever seen her. He felt sure that she had waited for her opportunity, -and had followed him downstairs, knowing that she would find him alone; -and he realized then that she was more composed, because she had an -intention or, rather, since it was more definite, a determination. -Determination in her involved no effort: it imparted, merely, the added -calm of an assured aim. - -She gave him her hand and said good morning with the same air of -scrupulous accuracy that she had given to the rendering of "Litanei" and -then, standing before the fire, her hands clasped behind her, her eyes -raised to his, she said: "Mr. Oldmeadow, I want to say something to -you." - -It was the gentle little voice, unaltered, yet he knew that he was in -for something he would very much rather have avoided; something with -anybody else unimaginable, but with her, he saw it now, quite -inevitable. Yet he tried, even at this last moment, to avoid it and -said, adjusting his eyeglass and moving to the sideboard: "But not -before we've had our tea, surely. Can't I get you some? Will you trust -me to pour it out?" - -"Thanks; I take coffee--not tea," said Miss Toner from her place at the -fire, "and neither has been brought in yet." - -He had just perceived, to his discomfiture, that they had not. There was -nothing for it but to turn from the ungarnished sideboard and face her -again. - -"It's about Barney, Mr. Oldmeadow," Miss Toner said, unmoved by his -patent evasion. "It's because I know you love Barney and care for his -happiness. And it's because I hope that you and I are to be friends, and -friendship can only be built on truth. Try to trust more; will you? -That's all I want to say. Try to trust. You will be happier if you do -and make other people happier." - -Oldmeadow had never experienced such an assault upon his personality, -and he met it gagged and bound, for, assuredly, this was to be Barney's -wife. A slow flush mounted to his face. - -"I'm afraid I seem very strange and unconventional to you," Adrienne -Toner went on. "You've lived in a world where people don't care enough -for each other to say the real things. They must be felt if they've to -be said, mustn't they? Yet you do care for people. I have seen that, -watching you here; and you care for real things. It's a crust of caution -and convention that is about you. You are afraid of expression. You are -afraid of feeling. You are afraid of being taken in and of wasting -yourself. Don't be afraid, Mr. Oldmeadow. We never lose ourselves by -trusting. We never lose ourselves by giving. It's a realer self that -comes. And with you, I see it clearly, if you let the crust grow -thicker, it will shut life and light and joy away from you; and when -light cannot visit our hearts, they wither within us. That is your -danger. I want to be your friend, so I must say the truth to you." - -He knew, though he had to struggle not to laugh, that he was very angry -and that he must not show anger; though it would really be better to -show that than his intense amusement; and it took him a moment, during -which they confronted each other, to find words; dry, donnish words; -words of caution and convention. They were the only ones he had -available for the situation. "My dear young lady," he said, "you take -too much upon yourself." - -She was not in the least disconcerted. She met his eyes steadily. "You -mean that I am presumptuous, Mr. Oldmeadow?" - -"You take too much upon yourself," he repeated. "As you say, I hope we -may be friends." - -"Is that really all, Mr. Oldmeadow?" she said, looking at him with such -a depth of thoughtfulness that he could not for the life of him make out -whether she found him odious or merely pitiful. - -"Yes; that's really all," he returned. - -The dining-room was very bright and the little blue figure before the -fire was very still. The moment fixed itself deep in his consciousness -with that impression of stillness and brightness. It was an -uncomfortable impression. Her little face, uplifted to his, absurd, yet -not uncharming, was, in its still force, almost ominous. - -"I'm sorry," was all she said, and she turned and went forward to greet -Mrs. Chadwick. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -It was a soft June day and Oldmeadow was strolling about Mrs. Averil's -garden admiring her herbaceous borders. It was a day that smelt of -ripening strawberries, of warm grass and roses, and the air was full of -a medley of bird voices, thrushes and blackbirds, sweet as grass and -strawberries, and the bubbling rattle of the chaffinch as happy as the -sunlight. - -Adrienne Toner was Mrs. Chadwick now, and she and Eleanor Chadwick and -Barney were motoring together in the French Alps. Coldbrooks was empty, -and he had come to stay with Nancy and her mother. - -They lived in a small stone house with a Jacobean front that looked, -over a stone wall, at Chelford Green, and had behind it a delightfully -unexpected length of lawn and orchard and kitchen-garden, all enclosed -by higher walls and presided over by a noble cedar. Seen from the garden -The Little House was merely mid-Victorian, but the modern additions were -masked by climbing roses and a great magnolia-tree opened its -lemon-scented cups at the highest bedroom windows. The morning-room was -in the modern part, and from one of its windows, presently, Mrs. Averil -emerged, opening her sunshade as she crossed the grass to join her -guest. She wore a white straw garden hat, tipping over her eyes and -tying, behind, over her thick knot of hair, in a manner that always -recalled to Oldmeadow a lady out of Trollope. Her face was pale, like -Nancy's, and her eyes grey; but rather than blackcaps and primroses she -suggested lace tippets and porcelain tea-sets, and though it was from -her Nancy had her pretty trick of closing her eyes when she smiled, Mrs. -Averil's smile was cogitative and impersonal, and in her always -temperate mirth there was an edge of grimness. - -"Well, Roger, I want to hear what you thought about the wedding," she -said. She had not gone to church that morning with Nancy and it was, he -knew, because she wanted an interchange of frank impressions. She had -been prevented from attending Miss Toner's London nuptials by a touch of -influenza and, as she now went on to say, she had got little from Nancy, -who had no eye for pageants and performances. "Eleanor was so absorbed," -she went on, "in the fact that the Bishop had indigestion and had, at -her suggestion, taken magnesia with his breakfast, that I could not get -much else out of her. She seemed to have seen the Bishop's symptoms -rather than Adrienne and Barney. Now from you I expect all the relevant -details." - -"Well, if you call it a detail, Nancy was lovely," said Oldmeadow. "She -looked like a silver-birch in her white and green." - -"And pearls," said Mrs. Averil. "You noticed, of course, the necklaces -Adrienne gave them; quite the gift of a princess, yet so innocent and -unobtrusive looking, too. She has great taste in such matters. Did she -look well? Eleanor did say that she, like the Bishop, was very pale." - -"She was pale; but not a bit nervous. She rather looked as if she had -been married every day of her life. Nothing ever puts her out, you know. -She was very grave and benign; but she wasn't an imposing bride and the -wreath of orange-blossoms aged her. Nancy and Meg and Barbara and the -Lumley girl aged her, too. She must be older than Barney." - -"Yes; she is. A year older. But she's the sort of woman who will wear," -said Mrs. Averil, pausing before a bed of rose-trees to snip off a -fading flower. "She'll not look very differently at fifty, you know; and -her hair is the sort that may never turn grey. I can see her at seventy -with those big golden braids and all her teeth. There's something very -indestructible about her. Like a doll made of white leather compared to -one made of porcelain. She'll last and last," said Mrs. Averil. "She'll -outlast us all. Barney was radiant, of course." - -"Yes. But he _was_ nervous; like a little boy frightened by the -splendour of his Christmas-tree. He looked as though he were arm in arm -with the Christmas-tree itself as he came down the nave. A rather dumpy -little Christmas-tree, but exquisitely lighted and garnished." - -"Well, he ought to be radiant," Mrs. Averil observed. "With all that -money, it's an extremely good match for him. The fact of her being -nobody in particular makes no difference, really, since she's an -American. And she has, I gather, no tiresome relations to come -bothering." - -"She's very unencumbered, certainly. There's something altogether very -solitary about her," Oldmeadow agreed, watching Mrs. Averil snip off the -withered roses. "I felt that even as she came down the nave on Barney's -arm. It's not a bit about the money he's radiant," he added. - -"Oh, I know. Of course not. That was only my own gross satisfaction -expressing itself. He's as in love as it's possible to be. And with -every good reason." - -"You took to her as much as they all did, then?" - -"That would be rather difficult, wouldn't it? And Barney's reasons would -hardly be those of a dry old aunt. She was very nice and kind to Nancy -and me and she's evidently going to do everything for them. Barbara's -already, you know, been sent to that admirable school that was too -expensive for Eleanor; riding and singing and all the rest of it. And -Meg's been given a perfect trousseau of fine clothes for her London -season. Naturally I don't feel very critically towards her." - -"Don't you? Well, if she weren't a princess distributing largess, -wouldn't you? After all, she's not given Nancy a trousseau. So why be -mute with an old friend?" - -"Ah, but she's given her the pearls," said Mrs. Averil. "Nancy couldn't -but accept a bridesmaid's gift. And she would give her a trousseau if -she wanted it and would take it. However, I'll own, though decency -should keep me mute, that I should find myself a little bored if I had -to see too much of her. I'm an everyday person and I like to talk about -everyday things." - -"I can hear her asking you, in answer to that, if there is anything more -everyday than the human soul. I wish I could have seen you _aux prises_ -with her," Oldmeadow remarked. "Did she come down here? Did she like -your drawing-room and garden?" - -Mrs. Averil's drawing-room and garden lay very near her heart. Eleanor -Chadwick sometimes accused her of caring more about her china and her -roses than about anything else in the world except Nancy. - -"I don't think she saw them; not what I call see," Mrs. Averil now said. -"Oh, yes; she came several times and recognized, very appreciatively, -the periods of my Queen Anne furniture and my Lowestoft. Beyond their -period I don't think she went. She said the garden was old-world," Mrs. -Averil added, looking about her and twirling her parasol on her -shoulder. - -"She would," Oldmeadow agreed. "That's just what she would call it. And -she'd call you a true, deep-hearted woman and Nancy a gifted girl. How -do she and Nancy hit it off? It's that I want most of all to hear -about." - -"They haven't much in common, have they?" said Mrs. Averil. "She's never -hunted and doesn't, I imagine, know a wren from a hedge-sparrow. She -_does_ know a skylark when she hears one, for she said 'Hail to thee, -blithe spirit' while one was singing. But I felt, somehow, it was like -the Queen Anne and the Lowestoft--a question of the label." - -Oldmeadow at this began to laugh with an open and indulged mirth. He and -Mrs. Averil, at all events, saw eye to eye. "If you'd tie the correct -label to the hedge-sparrow she'd know that, too," he said. "Poor girl. -The trouble with her isn't that she doesn't know the birds, but that she -wouldn't know the poets, either, without their labels. It's a mind made -up of labels. No; I don't think it likely that Nancy, who hasn't a label -about her, will get much out of her--beyond necklaces." - -"I wish Nancy _had_ a few labels," said Mrs. Averil. "I wish she could -have travelled and studied as Miss Toner--Adrienne that is--has done. -She is such a little ignoramus. Adrienne may bore you and me, but Nancy -will never interest anyone--except you and me." - -It was always amusing to Oldmeadow, if a little sardonically so, to note -that any conception of himself as a possible suitor for Nancy had never -entered Mrs. Averil's mind. As a friend he was everything a mother could -desire; as a match for Nancy almost unimaginable. Well, he could not -give a wife even one hunter and he never had had any intention of -falling in love with his dear nymph; yet that other people might not do -so was a suggestion he repudiated with warmth. - -"Oh; in love, yes," Mrs. Averil agreed. "I don't deny that she's very -loveable and I hope she may marry well. But that's not the same thing as -being interesting, is it? A man may be in love with a woman who doesn't -interest him." - -"I dispute that statement." - -"I'm sure dear Eleanor never interested her husband--devoted to the day -of his death as he was. There's something in my idea. To be interesting -one must offer something new. If Nancy had been interesting to Barney -she would now, I think, have been in Adrienne's place. Not that it would -have been a marriage to be desired for either of them." - -So he and Mrs. Averil had been thinking the same thoughts. - -"And you contend that if Nancy had been to China and read Goethe and -Dante in the originals he'd have been interested? I think he was quite -sufficiently interested and that if Miss Toner hadn't come barging into -our lives he'd have known he was in love." - -"Going to China is a figure of speech and stands for all the things she -hasn't got and doesn't know. My poor little Nancy. All the same, _she_ -isn't a bore!" said Mrs. Averil with as near an approach to acerbity as -she could show. - -"No; she isn't a bore. The things she knows have to be found out, by -degrees, through living with her. Barney hasn't been to China, either, -so, according to your theory, Nancy didn't find him interesting." - -At this Mrs. Averil's eyes met his and, after a moment of contemplation, -they yielded up to him the secret they saw to be shared. "If only it -were the same for women! But they don't need the new. She's young. -She'll get over it. I don't believe in broken hearts. All the same," -Mrs. Averil stopped in their walk, ostensibly to examine the growth of a -fine pink lupin, "it hasn't endeared Adrienne to me. I'm too -_terre-a-terre_, about that, too, not to feel vexation, on Nancy's -account. And what I'm afraid of is that she knows she's not endeared to -me. That she guesses. She's a bore; but she's not a bit stupid, you -know." - -"You don't think she's spiteful?" Oldmeadow suggested after a moment, -while Mrs. Averil still examined her lupin. - -"Dear me, no! I wish she could be! It's that smooth surface of hers -that's so tiresome. She's not spiteful. But she's human. She'll want to -keep Barney away and Nancy will be hurt." - -"Want to keep him away when she's got him so completely?" - -"Something of that sort. I felt it once or twice." - -"My first instinct about her was right, then," said Oldmeadow. "She's a -bore and an interloper, and she'll spoil things." - -"Oh, perhaps not. She'll mend some things. Have you heard about Captain -Hayward?" - -"Do you mean that stupid, big, tawny fellow? What about him?" - -"You may well ask. I've been spoken to about him and Meg by more than -one person. They are making themselves conspicuous, and it's been going -on for some time." - -"You don't mean that Meg's in love with him?" - -"He's in love with her, at all events, and, as you know, he's a married -man. I questioned Nancy, who was with Meg for a few weeks in London, and -she owns that Meg's unhappy." - -"And they're seeing each other in London now?" Oldmeadow was deeply -discomposed. - -"No. He's away just now. And Meg is going to meet the bridal party in -Paris at the end of July. Nancy feels that when Meg gets back under -Adrienne's influence there'll be nothing to fear." - -"We depend on her, then, so much, already," he murmured. He was -reviewing, hastily, his last impressions of Meg and they were not -reassuring. The only thing that was reassuring was to reflect on his -impressions of Adrienne. "Grandma's parlour" returned to him with its -assurance of deep security. Above everything else Adrienne was -respectable. - -"Yes. That's just it," Mrs. Averil agreed. "We depend on her. And I feel -we're going to depend more and more. She's the sort of person who mends -things. So we mustn't think of what she spoils." - -What Adrienne Toner had spoiled was, however, to be made very plain next -morning both to Nancy's old friend and to her mother. Beside her plate -at breakfast was a letter addressed in Barney's evident hand, a letter -in a narrow envelope stamped with the name of a French hotel and -showing, over the address, an engraving of peaks against the sky. Nancy -met the occasion with perfect readiness, saying as she looked at the -letter, waiting to open it till she had made the tea--Nancy always made -the tea in the morning while her mother sat behind the bacon and eggs at -the other end of the table--"How nice; from Barney. Now we shall have -news of them." - -Nothing less like an Ariane could be imagined than Nancy as she stood -there in her pink dress above the pink, white and gold tea-cups. One -might have supposed from her demeanour that a letter from Barney was but -a happy incident in a happy day. But, when she dropped into her chair -and read, it was evident that she was not prepared for what she found. -She read steadily, in silence, while Oldmeadow cut bread at the -sideboard and Mrs. Averil distributed her viands, and, when the last -page was reached, they both could not fail to see that Nancy was -blushing, blushing so deeply that, as she thus felt herself betray her -emotion, tears came thickly into her downcast eyes. - -"I'll have my tea now, dear," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you wait a little -longer, Roger?" She tided Nancy over. - -But Nancy was soon afloat. "The letter is for us all," she said. "Do -read it aloud, Roger, while I have my breakfast." - -Barney's letters, in the past, had, probably, always been shared and -Nancy was evidently determined that her own discomposure was not to -introduce a new precedent. Oldmeadow took up the sheets and read. - - * * * * * - -"DEAREST NANCY,--How I wish you were with us up here. It's the most -fantastically lovely place. One feels as if one could sail off into it. -I dug up some roots of saxifrage for your wall yesterday, such pretty -pink stuff. It's gone off in a box wrapped in damp moss and I hope will -reach you safely. A horrid, vandal thing to do; but for you and Aunt -Monica I felt it justified, and there are such masses of it. I saw a -snow-bunting yesterday, much higher up than the saxifrage; such a jolly, -composed little fellow on a field of snow. The birds would drive you -absolutely mad, except that you're such a sensible young person you'd no -doubt keep your head even when you saw a pair of golden eagles, as we -did, floating over a ravine. I walked around the Lac d'Annecy this -morning, before breakfast, and did wish you were with me. I thought of -our bird-walks at dawn last summer. There were two or three darling -warblers singing, kinds we haven't got at home; and black redstarts and -a peregrine falcon high in the air. I could write all day if I'd the -time, about the birds and flowers. You remember Adrienne telling us that -afternoon when she first came to Coldbrooks about the flowers. But I -mustn't go on now. We're stopping for tea in a little valley among the -mountains with flowers thick all around us and I've only time to give -our news to you and Aunt Monica and to send our love. Mother is -extremely fit and jolly, though rather scared at the hairpin curves; -Adrienne has to hold her hand. I'm too happy for words and feel as if -I'd grown wings. How is Chummie's foot? Did the liniment help? Those -traps are beastly things. I feel just as you do about the rabbits. -Adrienne reads aloud to us in the evenings; a man called Claudel; -awfully stiff French to follow but rather beautiful. I think you'd like -him. Not a bit like Racine! Best love to you and Aunt Monica. Here's -Adrienne, who wants to have her say." - -Had it been written in compunction for _Ariane aux bords laissee_? or, -rather, in a happy reversion to sheer spontaneity, a turning, without -any self-consciousness, to the comrade of the bird-walks who would, -after all, best feel with him about snow-buntings and redstarts? -Oldmeadow paused for the surmise, not looking up, before he went on from -Barney's neat, firm script to his wife's large, clear clumsy hand. - - "DEAREST NANCY," ran the postscript, and it had been at the - postscript, Oldmeadow now could gauge, that Nancy had first found - herself unprepared. "I, too, am thinking of you, with Barney. It is - a great joy to feel that where, he says, I've given him golden - eagles and snow-buntings he's given me--among so many other dear, - wonderful people--a Nancy. I get the best of the bargain, don't I? - I can't see much of the birds for looking at the peaks--_my_ peaks, - so familiar yet, always, so new again. 'Stern daughters of the - voice of God' that they are. Radiantly white against a cloudless - sky we find them to-day. Barney's profile is beautiful against - them--but his nose is badly sun-burned! _All_ our noses are - sun-burned! That's what one pays for flying among the Alps. - - "Mother Nell--we've decided that that's what I'm to call - her--looks ten years younger all the same, as I knew she would. We - talk of you all so often--of you and Meg and Palgrave and Barbara, - and half a dozen times a day Barney wishes that one or the other of - you were with us to see this or that. It's specially you for the - birds I notice. You must take me for some bird-walks at dawn some - day and teach me to know all your lovely English songsters.... Dear - little Cousin-Sister, I send you my love with his and, with him, - hold you warmly in my heart. Will 'Aunt Monica' accept my - affectionate and admiring homages? - - "Yours ever - - "ADRIENNE" - - - -Oldmeadow had not expected that she could write such a human letter; yet -it explained Nancy's blush. Barney's spontaneous affection she could -have faced, but she had not been able to face his wife's determined -tenderness. Adrienne had meant it well, no doubt--Oldmeadow gazed on -after he had finished, but she had no business to mean so well, no -business to thrust herself, in this community of intimacy, into what was -Barney's place alone. There was more in it, he knew, with Meg and Mrs. -Averil to help him, than the quite successful playfulness. She was to be -more intimate than Barney, that was what it came to; more, much more -tender if Barney was to be allowed intimacy and tenderness. That was -really what she intended Nancy to see, and that Barney had no place at -all where she, Adrienne, did not also belong. - -"Very sweet; very sweet and pretty," Mrs. Averil's voice broke in, and -he realized that he had allowed himself to drop into a grim and -tactless reverie; "I didn't know she had such a sense of humour. -Sun-burned noses and 'Stern daughters of the voice of God.' Well done. I -didn't think Adrienne would ever look as low as noses. They must be -having a delightful tour. I know black redstarts. There was one that -used to wake me every morning at four, one summer, in Normandy, with the -most foolish, creaking song; just outside my window. Give Barney my love -when you write and return my niece's affectionate and admiring homages. -Mother Nell. I shouldn't care to be called Mother Nell somehow." - -So Mrs. Averil's vexation expressed itself and so she floated Nancy -along. But Nancy, long since, had pulled herself together and was able -to look at Oldmeadow, while her lashes closed together in her own smile, -and to say that she'd almost be willing to lose her nose for the sake of -hearing the new warblers. Mrs. Averil opened her "Times" and over -marmalade Nancy and Oldmeadow planned the trip that they would take some -day, when their ship came in, the three of them, a bird-trip to the -French Alps. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -Oldmeadow sat beside Adrienne Chadwick and knew that from the other end -of the room, where he talked to Mrs. Aldesey, Barney's eyes were on -them, though he tried to keep them off. It was the first dinner-party -the young couple had given since they had come up to town, for though -they were established at Coldbrooks in the communal family life Adrienne -seemed to find to her taste, and though Barney had at once immersed -himself in country pursuits, they had taken and furnished this large -house in Connaught Square and it was, apparently, settled that the -winter months were to be spent in London. How that was to be combined -with farming at Coldbrooks, or whether Barney intended to take a header -into politics and felt a London house, big enough for entertaining, part -of the programme, Oldmeadow hadn't an idea, and for the rather sinister -reason that he had hardly laid his eyes on Barney since his return from -his wedding-journey. Even though asked to tea once or twice, while, -established in an hotel, they were finding and furnishing the house, he -had never found them alone and either Barney had made no opportunity, or -his wife had seen to it that none should be made, for having a -_tete-a-tete_ with his old friend. - -Oldmeadow could not associate Barney with ambitions, either social or -political, nor, he was bound to say, as he looked round the -dinner-table, where Adrienne sat at one end with Lord Lumley and Barney -at the other with Lady Lumley, could one infer from its disparate and -irrelevant elements any such ambitions in Adrienne. He had taken Mrs. -Aldesey down and had felt her at moments to be almost too resourceful, -her air of graceful skill in keeping the ball rolling seeming too much -to emphasize its tendency to drop. Without Mrs. Aldesey, without -Meg--vividly engaged at one corner with a fair young American--without -himself, for he had aided and abetted Lydia to the best of his ability, -the dinner would have been a dull one and he was not sure that even -their enterprise had redeemed it. Adrienne had not any air of fearing -dullness or of being in need of assistance. Oldmeadow saw that the blue -ribbon was frequently unrolled and that, as always, it made a silence in -which it could be watched. Lord Lumley, his handsome, official head bent -in an attitude of chivalrous devotion, watched earnestly, and the fair -young American paused in the midst of whatever he might be saying to Meg -to take almost reverent note; but Oldmeadow fancied more than once that -he caught startled eyes fixed upon it, especially when there emerged a -lustrous loop of quotation:-- - - "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, - Never doubted clouds would break,--" - -The silence for that had been so general that even Barney, far away, and -protected by Mrs. Aldesey, was aware of it. - -"How wonderfully he _wears_, doesn't he, dear old Browning," said Mrs. -Aldesey, and in the glance that Barney cast upon her was an oddly -mingled gratitude and worry. The fair young American, he was very fair -and had clear, charming eyes, finished the verse in a low voice to Meg -and Meg looked at him affectionately the while. He was evidently one of -Adrienne's appurtenances. - -It was a dull dinner. Pretty, festive Mrs. Pope and young Mr. Haviland, -reputed to be a wit and one of Meg's young men as Mrs. Pope was one of -Barney's young women, would not with any eagerness again attend a board -where the hostess quoted Browning and didn't know better than to send -you down, the first with a stern young socialist who sat silent for the -most part and frowned when addressed, and the second with a jocular, -middle-aged lady from California, the mother, Oldmeadow gathered, of the -clear-eyed youth, from whose ample bosom Mr. Haviland's subtle arrows -glanced aside leaving him helplessly exposed to the stout bludgeonings -of her humour. Adrienne paused once or twice in her conversation to -smile approval upon her compatriot and to draw Lord Lumley's attention -to her special brand of merriment, good Lord Lumley adjusting his -glasses obediently to take it in. - -And now they were all assembled in the drawing-room. Like everything -about Adrienne, it was simple and rather splendid. Barney had wisely -kept his modernities for his own study and it was a pity, Oldmeadow -reflected, that Adrienne had not kept for her own boudoir the large -portrait of herself that hung over the mantelpiece, since it was a note -more irrelevant than any Post Impressionist could have been and cast a -shade of surmise over the taste displayed in the Chippendale furniture -and the Chinese screens. - -"Rather sweet, isn't it; pastoral and girlish, you know," Barney had -suggested tentatively as Mrs. Aldesey had placed herself before it. -"Done in Paris a good many years ago; the man was very much the fashion -then. Adrienne was only sixteen. It's an extraordinarily perfect -likeness still, isn't it?" - -To which Mrs. Aldesey, all old lace and exquisite evasion, had murmured, -her lorgnette uplifted: "Quite dear and ingenuous. Such a relief after -your arid Cubists. What would they make of Mrs. Barney _en bergere_, I'd -like to know? A jumble of packing-cases with something twisted in a -corner to signify a bleat." - -For the picture, painted with glib assurance and abounding in pink and -azure, portrayed Adrienne dressed as a shepherdess and carrying a -flower-wreathed crook. - -Adrienne, to-night at all events, was looking very unlike the -shepherdess, but that might be because of the approaches of her -maternity. Mrs. Chadwick, when he had last been at Coldbrooks, had told -him that the baby was expected in May and that Adrienne was wonderful -about it, dedicating herself to its perfection in thought and deed with -every conscious hour. - -"If only I'd thought about my babies before they came like that, who -knows what they might have turned out!" she had surmised. "But I was -very silly, I'm afraid, and the only thing I really did think of was how -I should dress them. I've always loved butcher's-blue linen for children -and I must say that mine did look very nice in it. For everyday, you -know." - -Oldmeadow found it extremely difficult to think of Adrienne as a mother; -it was much easier to think of her as a shepherdess. Such solidities of -experience gave her even a certain pathos in his eyes, though he was in -no whit dislodged from his hostility to her. She was as mild, as -satisfied, apparently, with herself and with existence, as ever, yet her -eyes and lips expressed fatigue and a purely physical sadness that was -uncharacteristic, and it was uncharacteristic that she should be rather -thickly powdered. - -They had not really met since the morning of her adjuration to him at -Coldbrooks and he wondered if she remembered that little scene as -vividly as he did. She would be very magnanimous did she not remember it -unpleasantly; and he could imagine her as very magnanimous; yet from the -fact that she had kept Barney from him he could not believe that she was -feeling magnanimously. - -She watched Barney and Mrs. Aldesey now, as they stood before her -portrait, and he fancied that the sadness in her eyes, whatever might be -its cause, deepened a little. When she turned them on him it was with an -effect of being patiently ready for him. Perhaps, really, she had been -more patient than pleased all evening. - -"So you are settled here for the winter?" he said. "Have you and Barney -any plans? I've hardly seen anything of him of late." - -"We have been so very, very busy, you know," said Adrienne, as if quite -accepting his right to an explanation. - -She was dressed in pale blue and wore, with her pearl necklace, a little -wreath of pearls in her hair. In her hands she turned, as they talked, a -small eighteenth-century fan painted in pink and grey and blue, and he -was aware, as he had been at Coldbrooks, of those slow and rather -fumbling movements. - -"We couldn't well ask friends," she went on, "even the dearest, to come -and sit on rolls of carpet with us while we drank our tea, could we? -We've kept our squalor for the family circle. Meg's been with us; so -dear and helpful; but only Meg and a flying visit once or twice from -Mother Nell. Nancy couldn't come. But nothing, it seems, will tear Nancy -from hunting. I feel that strange and rather sad; the absorption of a -fine young life in such primitiveness." - -"Oh, well; it's not her only interest, you know," said Oldmeadow, very -determined not to allow himself vexation. "Nancy is a creature of such -deep country roots. Not the kind that grow in London." - -"I know," said Adrienne. "And it is just those roots that I want to -prevent my Barney's growing. Roots like that tie people to routine; -convention; acceptance. I want Barney to find a wider, freer life. I -hope he will go into politics. If we have left Coldbrooks and the dear -people there for these winter months it's because I feel he will be -better able to form opinions here than in the country. I saw quite well, -there, that people didn't form opinions; only accepted traditions. I -want Barney to be free of tradition and to form opinions for himself. He -has none now," she smiled. - -She had been clear before, and secure; but he felt now the added weight -of her matronly authority. He felt, too, that, while ready for him and, -perhaps, benevolently disposed, she was far more indifferent to his -impressions than she had been at Coldbrooks. She had possessed Barney -before; but how much more deeply she possessed him now and how much -more definitely she saw what she intended to do with him. - -"You must equip him with your opinions," said Oldmeadow, and his voice -was a good match for hers in benevolence. "I know that you have so many -well-formed ones." - -"Oh, no; never that," said Adrienne. "That's how country vegetables are -grown; first in frames and then in plots; all guided and controlled. He -must find his own opinions; quite for himself; quite freely of -influence. That is the rock upon which Democracy is founded. Nothing is -more arresting to development than living by other people's opinions." - -"But we must get our opinions from somebody and somewhere. The danger of -democracy is that we don't grow them at all; merely catch them, like -influenza, from a mob. Not that I disbelieve in democracy." - -"Don't you, Mr. Oldmeadow?" She turned her little fan and smiled on him. -"You believe in liberty, equality, fraternity? That surprises me." - -"Democracy isn't incompatible with recognizing that other people are -wiser than oneself and letting them guide us; quite the contrary. Why -surprised? Have I seemed so autocratic?" - -"It would surprise me very much to learn that you believed in equality, -to start with that alone"; Adrienne smiled on. - -"Well, I own that I don't believe in people who have no capacity for -opinions being impowered to act as if they had. That's the fallacy -that's playing the mischief with us, all over the world." - -"They never will have opinions worth having unless they are given the -liberty to look for them. You don't believe in liberty, either, when you -say that." - -"No; not for everybody. Some of our brothers are too young and others -too stupid to be trusted with it." - -"They'll take it for themselves if you don't trust them with it," said -Adrienne, and he was again aware that though she might be absurd she, at -all events, was not stupid. "All that we can do in life is to trust, and -help, and open doors. Only experience teaches. People must follow their -own lights." - -He moved forward another pawn, and though he did not find her stupid he -was not taking her seriously. "Most people have no lights to follow. -It's a choice for them between following other people's or resenting and -trampling on them. That, again, is what we can see happening all over -the world." - -"So it is, you must own, just as I thought; you don't even believe in -fraternity," said Adrienne, and she continued to smile her weary, -tranquil smile upon him; "for we cannot feel towards men as towards -brothers, and trust them, unless we believe that the light shines into -each human soul." - -He saw now that unless they went much deeper, deeper than he could be -willing, ever, to go with Adrienne Toner, he must submit to letting -himself appear as worsted. He knew where he believed the roots of trust -to grow and he did not intend, no never, to say to Adrienne Toner that -only through the love of God could one at once distrust and love the -species to which one belonged. He could have shuddered at the thought of -what she would certainly have found to say about God. - -"You've got all sorts of brothers here to-night, haven't you," he -remarked, putting aside the abstract theme and adjusting his glass. -"Some of them look as though they didn't recognize the relationship. -Where did you find our young socialist over there in the corner? He -looks very menacing. Most of the socialists I've known have been the -mildest of men." - -"He is a friend of Palgrave's. Palgrave brought him to see me. Oh, I'm -so glad--Gertrude is going to take care of him. She always sees at once -if anyone looks lonely. That's all right, then." - -Oldmeadow was not so sure it was as he observed the eye with which Mr. -Besley measured the beaming advance of the lady from California. - -"I wonder if you would like my dear old friend, Mrs. Prentiss," Adrienne -continued, watching her method with Mr. Besley. "The Laughing -Philosopher, Mother used to call her. She is a very rare, strong soul. -That is her son, talking to Lady Lumley. He's been studying architecture -in Paris for the past three years. A radiant person. Mrs. Prentiss runs -a settlement in San Francisco and has a brilliant literary and artistic -salon. She is a real force in the life of our country." - -"Why should you question my appreciation of rarity and strength? I can -see that she is very kind and that if anybody can melt Mr. Besley she -will." - -"Gertrude would have melted Diogenes," said Adrienne with a fond -assurance that, though it took the form of playfulness, lacked its -substance. "I hope they will find each other, for he is rare and strong, -too. What he needs is warmth and happiness. He makes me think of Shelley -when he talks." - -"He's too well up in statistics to make me think of Shelley," Oldmeadow -commented. Barney, he saw, from his place beside Mrs. Aldesey at the -other end of the room, was still watching them, pleased now, it was -evident, by the appearance of friendly, drifting converse they -presented. "He's not altogether unknown to me for we often, in our -review, get our windows broken by his stones; well-thrown, too. He's -very able. So you thought it might do the British Empire good to face -him? Well, I suppose it may." - -"Which are the British Empire?" asked Adrienne. "You. To begin with." - -"Oh, no. Count me out. I'm only a snappy, snuffy scribbler. Good old -Lord Lumley, of course, with all his vast, well-governed provinces -shimmering in the Indian sun behind him. And Sir Archibald, who talks so -loudly in the House. Palgrave didn't bring him, I'll be bound." - -"No. Lady Lumley brought him. He and Lord Lumley are certainly more than -odds and ends." She had an air of making no attempt to meet his -badinage, if it was that, but of mildly walking past it. "They are, both -of them, rather splendid people, in spite of their limitations. They've -accepted tradition, you see, instead of growing opinion. That is their -only trouble. I was afraid you were going to say Mr. Haviland. He is -certainly an odd and end." - -Mr. Haviland and Mrs. Pope had found each other and were indulging in -mirthful repartee in the back drawing-room. "I feel safe with Lord -Lumley and Sir Archibald," Adrienne added. - -"I'd certainly rather trust myself in their hands than in Mr. Besley's. -I'd almost rather trust myself in the hands of Mr. Haviland." - -"You mean that they would, at least, keep you comfortable and that Mr. -Besley wouldn't." She, too, had her forms of repartee. - -"I expect it's just what I do mean," he assented. "If Mr. Besley and his -friends had their way, I for instance, and workers of my type, would -soon, I suspect, have to forego our tobacco and our chamber-music. We're -only marketable in a comfortable world. And there are more comfortable -people, I maintain, under Lord Lumley, than there would be under Mr. -Besley." - -"'Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive,'" said Adrienne. -"All revolutions must begin by burning away the evil and the refuse. Not -that I am a revolutionist, or even a socialist." - -"You can't separate good from evil by burning," he said. "You burn them -both. That's what the French did in their lamentable bonfire, for which -they've been paying in poorer brains and poorer blood ever since. We -don't want revolutions. All we want is slow, good-tempered reform. -Revolutions are always ill-tempered, aren't they, and nothing worth -doing was ever done in an ill-temper. You are making me very didactic." - -"Oh, but I prefer that so much to persiflage," said Adrienne, with her -tranquillity. "And I am glad to hear what you really believe. But it is -sad to me that you should see no ardour or glory in anything. With all -its excesses and errors, I have always felt the French Revolution to be -a sublime expression of the human spirit." - -"It might have been; if they could only have kept their -heads--metaphorically as well as literally. But the glory and ardour -were too mixed with hatred and ignorance. I'm afraid I do tend to -distrust those states of feeling. They tend so easily to -self-deception." - -She was looking at him, quietly and attentively, and he was, for the -first time since their initial meeting, perhaps, feeling quite -benevolently towards her; quite as the British Empire might feel towards -a subject race. It was, therefore, the more difficult to feel anything -but exasperation when she said, having, evidently, summed up her -impressions and found her verdict: "Yes. You distrust them. We always -come back to that, don't we? You distrust yourself, too. So that, when -you tell me what you believe, you can only do it in the form of making -fun of my beliefs. I feel about you, Mr. Oldmeadow, what I felt that -morning when I tried to come near you and you wouldn't let me. I feel it -more the more I see you; and it makes me sad. It isn't only that you -distrust ardour and glory, all the sunlight and splendour of life; but -you are afraid of them; afraid to open your heart to trust. You shut -your door upon the sunlight and take up your caustic pen; and you don't -see how the shadows fall about you." - -It was indeed a dusty tumble from the quite civilized pavement of their -interchange, and it was unfortunate that upon his moment of -discomfiture, when he saw himself as trying to clap the dust off his -knees and shoulders in time to be presentable, Barney and Mrs. Aldesey -should have chosen to approach them. Barney, no doubt, imagined it a -propitious moment in which to display to Mrs. Aldesey his wife's and his -friend's amity. - -Adrienne was perfectly composed. She had borne her testimony and, again, -done her best for him, pointing out to him that the first step towards -enfranchisement was to open his door to the sunlight that she could so -bountifully supply. She turned a clear, competent eye upon her husband -and his companion. - -"Well, dear, and what have you and Roger been so deep in?" Barney -inquired, looking down at her with a fondness in which, all the same, -Oldmeadow detected the anxiety that had hovered in his eye all evening. -"You've seemed frightfully deep." - -"We have been," said Adrienne, looking up at him. "In liberty, equality -and fraternity; all the things I believe in and that Mr. Oldmeadow -doesn't. I can't imagine how he gets on at all, he believes in so few -things. It must be such a sad, dim, groping world to live in when there -are no stars above to look at and no hands below to hold." - -"Oh, well, you see," said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile, "his -ancestors didn't sign the Declaration of Independence." - -"We don't need ancestors to do that," Adrienne smiled back. "All of us -sign it for ourselves--all of us who have accepted our birthright and -taken the gifts that our great, modern, deep-hearted world hold out to -us. You are an American, Mrs. Aldesey, so you find it easy to believe in -freedom, don't you?" - -"Very easy; for myself; but not for other people," Mrs. Aldesey replied -and Oldmeadow saw at once, with an added discomfort, that she -underestimated, because of Adrienne's absurdity, Adrienne's -intelligence. "But then the very name of any abstraction--freedom, -humanity, what you will--has always made me feel, at once, dreadfully -sleepy. It's not ever having had my mind trained, Mrs. Barney. Now -yours was, beautifully, I can see." - -Adrienne looked up at her, for Mrs. Aldesey, her lace about her -shoulders, her lorgnette in her hands, had not seated herself, and it -was further evident to Oldmeadow that she weighed Mrs. Aldesey more -correctly than Mrs. Aldesey weighed her. "Very carefully, if not -beautifully," she said. "Have I made you sleepy already? But I don't -want to go on talking about abstractions. I want to talk about Mr. -Oldmeadow. The truth is, Barney," and her voice, as she again turned her -eyes on her husband, had again the form but not the substance of gaiety, -"the truth is that he's a lonely, lonely bachelor and that we ought to -arrange a marriage for him, you and I. Since he doesn't believe in -freedom, he won't mind having a marriage arranged, will he?--if we can -find a rare, sweet, gifted girl." - -Barney had become red. "Roger's been teasing you, darling. Nobody -believes in freedom more. Don't let him take you in. He's an awful old -humbug with his Socratic method. He upsets you before you know where you -are. He's always been like that." - -"Yes; hasn't he," Mrs. Aldesey murmured. - -"But he hasn't upset me at all," said Adrienne. "I grant that he was -trying to, that he was doing his very best to give me a tumble; but I -quite see through him and he doesn't conceal himself from me in the very -least. He doesn't really believe in freedom, however much he may have -taken _you_ in, Barney; he'd think it wholesome, of course, that you -should believe in it. That's his idea, you see; to give people what he -thinks wholesome; to choose for them. It's the lack of faith all -through. But the reason is that he's lonely; dreadfully lonely, and -because of that he's grown to be, as he says, snappy and snuffy; so that -we must borrow a page from his book and find what is wholesome for him. -I know all the symptoms so well. I've had friends just like that. It's a -starved heart and having nobody to be fonder of than anyone else; no one -near at all. He must be happily married as soon as possible. A happy -marriage is the best gift of life, isn't it, Mrs. Aldesey? If we haven't -known that we haven't known our best selves, have we?" - -"It may be; we mayn't have," said Mrs. Aldesey, cheerfully; but she was -not liking it. "I can't say. Am I to have a hand in choosing his bride? -I know his tastes, I think. We're quite old friends, you see." - -"No one who doesn't believe in freedom for other people may help to -choose her," said Adrienne, with a curious blitheness. "That's why he -mayn't choose her himself. We must go quite away to find her; away from -ceilings and conventions and out into the sunlight. I don't believe -happiness is found under ceilings. And it's what we all need more than -anything else. Even tobacco and chamber-music don't make you a bit -happy, do they, Mr. Oldmeadow? and if one isn't happy one can't know -anything about anything. Not really." - -"Alas!" sighed Mrs. Aldesey, keeping up her end, but not very -successfully, while Barney fixed his eyes upon his wife. "And I thought -I'd found it this evening, under this ceiling. Well, I shall cherish my -illusion, since you tell me it's only that, and thank you for it, Mrs. -Barney. The Lumleys are going to give me a lift and I see that their car -has been announced." - -"Stay on a bit, Roger," Barney murmured, as the Lumleys approached. -"I've seen nothing of you for ages." - -Adrienne rose to greet her parting guests. - -"Darling Adrienne, good-night. It's been perfectly delightful, your -little party," said Lady Lumley, who was large, light and easily -pleased; an English equivalent of the lady from California, but without -the sprightliness. "Your dear young Mr. Prentiss is a treasure. He's -been telling me about Sicilian temples. We _must_ get there one day. -Mrs. Prentiss says they will come to us for a week-end before they go. -How extraordinarily interesting she is. Don't forget that you are coming -on the fifteenth." - -"I shall get up a headache, first thing!" Lord Lumley stated in a loud, -jocular whisper, reverting to a favourite jest on Adrienne's powers. -"That's the thing to go in for, eh? I won't let Charlie cut me out this -time. Not a night's sleep till you come!" - -"Go in for as many as you like, dear Lord Lumley," said Adrienne, -smiling her assurance of being able to deal with a series. - -"Good-night, Mrs. Barney," said Mrs. Aldesey. "Leave me a little -standing-room under the stars, won't you." - -"There's always standing-room under the stars," said Adrienne. "We don't -exclude each other there." - -The party showed no other signs of breaking up. The Laughing Philosopher -had melted, or, at all events, mastered Mr. Besley, and talked to him -with, now and again, a maternal hand laid on his knee. Mr. Haviland and -Mrs. Pope still laughed in the back drawing-room, Meg and Mr. Prentiss -had come together again and Sir Archibald was engaged with a pretty -girl. After looking around upon them all, Adrienne, with the appearance -of a deeper fatigue, sank back upon her sofa. - -"You know, darling," Barney smiled candidly upon his wife, "you rather -put your foot in it just now. Mrs. Aldesey's marriage isn't happy. I -ought to have warned you." - -"How do you mean not happy, Barney?" Adrienne looked up at him. "Isn't -Mr. Aldesey dead?" - -"Not at all dead. She left him some years ago, didn't she, Roger? He -lives in New York. It's altogether a failure." - -Adrienne looked down at her fan. "I didn't know. But one can't avoid -speaking of success sometimes, even to failures." - -"Of course not. Another time you will know." - -Adrienne seemed to meditate, but without compunction. "That was what she -meant, then, by saying she believed in freedom for herself but not for -other people." - -"Meant? How do you mean? She was joking." - -"If she left him. It was she who left him?" - -"I don't know anything about it," Barney spoke now with definite -vexation and Oldmeadow, in his corner of the sofa, his arms folded, his -eyes on the cornice, gave him no help. "Except that, yes, certainly; -it's she who left him. She's not a deserted wife. Anything but." - -"It's only Mr. Aldesey who is the deserted husband," Adrienne turned her -fan and kept her eyes on it. "It's only he who can't be free. Forgive me -if she's a special friend of yours, Mr. Oldmeadow; but it explains. I -felt something so brittle, so unreal in her, charming and gracious as -she is. It is so very wrong for a woman to do that, I think." - -"Wrong?" Barney echoed, staring at Oldmeadow while this firm hand was -laid upon his Egeria. "What the dickens do you mean, darling? She is a -special friend of Roger's. You don't surely mean to say a woman must, -under all circumstances, stick to a man she doesn't love?" - -"Anything but that, Barney. I think that she should leave him and set -him free. It's quite plain to me that if a wife will not live with her -husband it is her duty to divorce him. Then, at any rate, he can try for -happiness again." - -"Divorce him, my dear child!" Barney was trying to keep up appearances -but the note of marital severity came through and as it sounded Adrienne -raised her eyes to his: "It's not so easy as all that! Aldesey, whatever -his faults, may have given her no cause to divorce him, and I take it -you'll not suggest that Mrs. Aldesey should give him cause to divorce -her." - -On her sofa, more pallid under her powder, more sunken than before, and -with the queer squashed-in look emphasized, Adrienne kept steady eyes -uplifted to her husband. "Not at all, dear Barney," she returned and -Oldmeadow, though hardened against the pathos of her physical -disability, saw that she spoke with difficulty, "but I think that you -confuse the real with the conventional wrong. Mrs. Aldesey would not -care to face any unconventionality; that is quite apparent. She would -draw her skirts aside from any conventional wrong-doing. But the real -wrong she would be blind to; the wrong of keeping anyone bound in the -emptiness you have made for them. Setting free is not so strange and -terrible a matter as you seem to imagine. It's quite easy for brave, -unshackled people." - -"Well, I must really be off," Oldmeadow now seized the occasion to -declare. "I believe, as a matter of fact, that Mr. Aldesey lives very -contentedly in New York, collecting French prints and giving excellent -dinners. Anything open and scandalous would be as distasteful to him as -to his wife. They are, both of them, happier apart; that's all it comes -to. So you must read your lessons, even by proxy, to more authentic -misdemeanants, Mrs. Barney. All right, Barney. Don't come down. I'll -hope to see you both again quite soon." - -So he got away, concealing as best he might, his sense of tingling -anger. But it died away to a sense of chill as he walked down Park Lane. -Was not Barney unhappy, already? What did she say to him when she got -him to herself? He felt sure that she had never bargained for a husband -who could look at her with ill-temper. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - -"Roger, see here, I've only come to say one word--about the absurd -little-matter of last night. Only one; and then we'll never speak of it -again," said poor Barney. - -He had come as soon as the very next day--to exonerate, not to -apologize; that was evident at once. Oldmeadow had not long to wait -before learning what she had said to him when she got him to herself, -nor long to wait before realizing that if Barney had been unhappy last -night he thought himself happy to-day. - -"Really, my dear boy," he said, "it's not worth talking about." - -"Oh, but we must talk about it," said Barney. He was red and spoke -quickly. "It upset her frightfully; it made her perfectly miserable. She -cried for hours, Roger," Barney's voice dropped to a haggard note. "You -know, though she bears up so marvellously, she's ill. She doesn't admit -illness and that makes it harder for her, because it simply bewilders -her when she finds herself on edge like this and her body refusing to -obey her. The baby is coming in May, you know." - -"I know, my dear Barney. The evening was very fatiguing for her. I saw -it all I think. I noticed from the beginning how tired she looked." - -"Horribly tired. Horribly fatiguing. I'm glad you saw it. For that's -really what I came to explain. She was tired to begin with and Mrs. -Aldesey put her on edge. I think I saw that myself at dinner--and, oh, -before that; on the day we had tea with her, when we first came up, in -November--Adrienne felt then that Mrs. Aldesey didn't understand or care -for her. You know she is so full of love and sympathy for everybody -herself that she is literally sickened when she is treated in that -artificial, worldly way. And you know, Roger, Mrs. Aldesey _is_ -artificial and worldly." - -That was how she had put it to Barney, of course. But Oldmeadow saw -further than Mrs. Aldesey and her artificiality. He saw a dishevelled -and weeping Adrienne stricken to the heart by the sense of threatened -foundations, aghast by what she had seen in her husband's eyes; and he -was aware, even while he resented having it put upon Lydia, of a -curious, reluctant pity for the pale, weeping figure. Lydia had, -obviously, displeased her; but Lydia had been the mere occasion; she -could have dealt easily enough with Lydia. It had been the revelation -that Barney could oppose her, could almost, for a moment, dislike her, -that had set her universe rocking. Her first taste of reality, then. The -thought came rather grimly, with the pity. After all it was their best -chance of happiness; that she should learn to accept herself as a person -who could be opposed, even disliked, in flashes, while still loved. He -had sat silent while he thought, one of his silences which, when he -emerged from them, he often recognized as over-long. Barney must have -felt the weight of all he did not say when all that he found to say was: -"What it comes to, doesn't it, is that they neither of them take much to -each other. Lydia is certainly conventional." - -"Ah, but Lady Lumley is conventional, too," said Barney with an -irrepressible air of checkmate. "Hordes of conventional people adore -Adrienne. It's a question of the heart. There are people who are -conventional without being worldly. It's worldliness that stifles -Adrienne. It's what she was saying last night: 'They have only ceilings; -I must have the sky.' Not that she thinks _you_ worldly, dear old boy." - -"I hope you try to interpret me to her kindly," said Oldmeadow, smiling. -Even at the moment when Barney, all innocently, was revealing to him -Adrienne's tactics, the fragments of her vocabulary imbedded in his -speech were affording him amusement. "You must try and persuade her that -I've quite a fondness for the sky myself, and even published a volume of -verse in my youth." - -"I do. Of course I do," said Barney eagerly. "And I gave her your poems, -long ago. She loved them. It's your sardonic pessimism she doesn't -understand--in anyone who could have written like that when they were -young. She never met anything like it before in her life. And the way -you never seem to take anything seriously. It makes her dreadfully sorry -for you, even while she finds it so hard to accept in anyone she cares -for--because she really does so care for you, Roger"--there was a note -of appeal in Barney's voice--"and does so long to find a way out for -you. It was a joke, of course; but all the same we've often wished you -could find the right woman to marry." - -Barney, as he had done last night, grew very red again, so that it was -apparent to Oldmeadow that not only the marriage but the woman--the -rare, gifted girl--had been discussed between him and his wife. - -"Adrienne thinks everyone ought to be married, you see," he tried to -pass it off. "Since we are so happy ourselves." - -"I see," said Oldmeadow. "There's another thing you must try to persuade -her of: that I'm not at all _un jeune homme a marier_, and that if I -ever seek a companion it will probably be some one like myself, some one -sardonic and pessimistic. If I fixed my affections on the lovely girl, -you see, it isn't likely they'd be reciprocated." - -"Oh, but"--Barney's eagerness again out-stepped his -discretion--"wouldn't the question of money count there, Roger? If she -had plenty of money, you know, or you had; enough for both; and a place -in the country? Of course, it's all fairy-tale; but Adrienne is a -fairy-tale person; material things don't count with her at all. She -waves them away and wants other people to wave them away, too. What she -always says is: 'What does my money _mean_ unless it's to open doors for -people I love?' She's starting that young Besley, you know, just because -of Palgrave; setting him up as editor of a little review--rotten it is, -I think--but Adrienne says people must follow their own lights. And it's -just that; she'd love to open doors for you, if it could make you -happy." - -Oldmeadow at this, after a moment of receptivity, began to laugh softly; -but the humour of the situation grew upon him until he at last threw -back his head and indulged in open and prolonged mirth. Barney watched -him bashfully. "You're not angry, I see," he ventured. "You don't think -it most awful cheek, I mean?" - -"I think it is most awful cheek; but I'm not angry; not a bit," said -Oldmeadow. "Fairy-godmothers are nothing if not cheeky; are they? Oh, I -know you meant your, not her, cheek. But it's the fault of the -fairy-godmother, all the same, and you must convince her that I'm not in -love with anybody, and that if ever I am she'll have to content herself -with my small earnings and a flat in Chelsea." - -So he jested; but, when his friend was gone, he realized that he was a -little angry all the same and he feared that his mirth had not been able -to conceal from Barney that what he really found it was confounded -impudence. Barney's face had worn, as he departed, the look of mingled -gratitude and worry and Barney must feel, as well as he felt, that their -interview hadn't really cleared up anything--except his own readiness to -overlook the absurdities of Barney's wife. What became more and more -clear to himself was that unless he could enable Adrienne to enroll his -name on her banner she would part him from Barney and that her very -benevolence was a method. The more he thought of it the more -uncomfortable he felt, and his inner restlessness became at length an -impulse urging him out to take counsel or, rather, seek solace, with the -friend from whom Adrienne could never part him. He would go and have tea -with Lydia Aldesey and with the more eagerness from the fact that he was -aware of a slight dissatisfaction in regard to Lydia. She had not -altogether pleased him last night. She had put herself in the wrong; she -had blundered; she hadn't behaved with the skill and tact requisite; and -to elicit from her a confession of ineptitude would make his sense of -solace the more secure. - -The day was a very different day from the one in April when he had -first gone to ask Mrs. Aldesey for information about people called -Toner. It was early February, dull and cold and damp. No rain was -falling, but the trees were thick with moisture and Oldmeadow had his -hands deep in his pockets and the collar of his coat turned up about his -ears. As he crossed the Serpentine, an electric brougham passed him, -going slowly, and he had a glimpse within it, short but very vivid, of -Adrienne, Meg, and Captain Hayward. - -Adrienne, wearing a small arrangement of black velvet that came down -over her brows, was holding Meg's hand and, while she spoke, was looking -steadily at her, her face as white as that of a Pierrot. Meg listened, -gloomily it seemed, and Captain Hayward's handsome countenance, turned -for refuge towards the window, showed an extreme embarrassment. - -They passed and Oldmeadow pursued his way, filled with a disagreeable -astonishment though, absurdly, his mind was at first occupied only in an -attempt to recover a submerged memory that Captain Hayward's demeanour -suggested. It came at last in an emancipating flash and he saw again, -after how many years, the golden-brown head of his rather silly setter, -John, turned aside in shy yet dignified repudiation, that still, by a -dim, sick smile, attempted to conceal distress and to enter into the -spirit of the game--as a kitten was held up for his contemplation. A -kitten was a very inadequate analogy, no doubt, for the theme of -Adrienne's discourse; yet Captain Hayward's reaction to a situation for -which he found himself entirely unprepared was markedly like John's. And -he, like John, had known that the game was meant to be at his expense. -John and Captain Hayward got Oldmeadow out of the park before he had -taken full possession of his astonishment and could ask himself why, if -Adrienne were engaged in rescuing Meg from her illicit attachment, she -should do it in the company of the young man. Yet, strangely enough, he -felt, as he walked, a growing sense of reassurance. For an emergency -like this, after all, given amenable subjects, Adrienne was the right -person. He hadn't dreamed it to be such an emergency; but since it was, -Adrienne would pull them through. As she would have laid her hand on the -head of Bacchus and reformed him, so she would lay it on the head of -Captain Hayward. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - - -The incident put Mrs. Aldesey quite out of his mind, and it was not till -he stood on her doorstep and rang her bell that he remembered his -grievance against her and realized that it had been made more definite -by this glimpse of Adrienne's significance. That his friend was prepared -for him was evident at his first glance; she had even, he saw, been -expecting him, for she broke out at once with: "Oh, my dear Roger--what -_are_ you going to do with her?" - -He was actually pleased to find himself putting her, with some grimness, -in her place. "What is she going to do with us? you mean. You underrate -Mrs. Barney's capacity, let me tell you, my dear friend." - -But Mrs. Aldesey was not easily quelled. "Underrate her! Not I! She's a -Juggernaut if ever there was one. Her capacity is immense. She'll roll -on and she'll crush flat. That poor Barney! She is as blind as a -Juggernaut, but _he_ will come to see--alas! he is seeing -already--though you and I danced round him with veils and cymbals--that -people won't stand being pelted with platitudes from soup to dessert. -The Lumleys will, of course; it's their natural diet; though even they -like their platitudes served with a touch of _sauce piquante_; but -Rosamund Pope told me that she felt black and blue all over and Cuthbert -Haviland--malicious toad--imitates her already to perfection: dreadful -little voice, dreadful little smile, dreadful little quotations and all. -It will be one of his London gags. That shepherdess! My dear Roger, -don't pretend to me that _you_ don't see it!" - -Oldmeadow, sunken in the chair opposite her, surveyed her over his -clasped hands with an air of discouragement. - -"What I'm most seeing at the moment is that she's made you angry," he -remarked. "If what you say were all the truth, why should she make you -angry? She's not as blind as a Juggernaut. That's where you made your -mistake. She'll only crush the people who don't lie down before her. She -knows perfectly well where she is going--and over whom. So be careful, -that is my advice, and keep out of her way; unless you want to lose a -toe or a finger." - -Mrs. Aldesey showed, at this, that he had arrested her. In spite of the -element of truth in Adrienne's verdict upon her he knew her to be, when -veils and cymbals were cast aside, a sincere and gallant creature. She -did not attempt to hide from him now and, after a moment of mutual -contemplation, she laughed a little, with not unreal mirth and said: "I -suppose I am angry. I suppose I'm even spiteful. It's her patronage, you -know. Her suffocating superiority. To have to stand there, for his sake, -and _take_ it! You overrate her, Roger. No woman not abysmally stupid -could say the things she says." - -"Your mistake again. She's able to say them because she's never met -irony or criticism. She's not stupid," he found his old verdict. "Only -absurd. You know, you gave yourself away to her. You showed her what you -thought of her. You patronized _her_." - -"Is _no_ retaliation permitted?" Mrs. Aldesey moaned. "Must one accept -it all? Be scourged with the stars and Browning and then bow one's head -to her caresses? After all, Barney is your friend, not mine, and it's -as your friend that I've tried to be decent to his wife. But she hates -me like poison. She gave herself away, too, you know. I liked the way -she excluded me from her prospects for your welfare. And of course she -knew my marriage wasn't a happy one." - -"I don't think that she did. No; I don't think so. You _are_ poison to -her--cold poison," said Oldmeadow. "Don't imagine for a moment she -didn't see that you were dancing about him with veils and cymbals. She -didn't give herself away, for she had nothing to conceal. She was candid -and you weren't. She didn't pretend that you were under the stars with -her; while you kept up appearances." - -"But what's to become of your Barney if we don't keep them up!" Mrs. -Aldesey cried. "Is he to be allowed to see that nobody can stand -her--except people he can't stand? He'll have to live, then, with Mrs. -and Mr. Prentiss. Did you try to talk to Mrs. Prentiss? Do you know that -she told me that death was 'perfectly sublime'?" - -"Perhaps it is. Perhaps she'll find it so. They all seem to think well -of death, out in California"--Oldmeadow allowed himself to relax from -his admonitory severity. "Mrs. Prentiss isn't as silly as she seems, I -expect. And you exaggerate Barney's sensitiveness. He'd get on very well -with Mrs. Prentiss if you weren't there to show him you found her a -bore. He has a very simple side and we must hope it may become simpler. -The only chance for Barney, I see it more and more, is that we should -efface ourselves as much as possible. The people who find the Prentisses -a bore, I mean. And it won't be difficult for us to do that. She will -see to it that we are effaced. Only, of course, it's a grief. I'm so -fond of him"; and as Oldmeadow stretched forth his legs and put his -hands in his pockets there drifted across his mind, in a thin, sharp, -knife-like stroke, the memory of Barney--tall eighteen-year-old -Barney--with dear old Effie, luxuriously upturned in his arms, being -softly scratched--Barney's hand with a cat was that of an expert--and -told that she was the best and most beautiful of cats. - -"It's a great shame," said Mrs. Aldesey; "I've been thinking my spiteful -thoughts, too, instead of sympathizing with you. Of course, if it's any -consolation to you, one usually does lose one's friends when they marry. -But it needn't have been as bad as this. What a thousand pities he -couldn't have fallen in love with a nice girl of his own kind. You -couldn't do anything about it when you went down in the spring?" - -Oldmeadow had never said anything to Mrs. Aldesey about his hopes for -Nancy. He had a secretive instinct for keeping his friendships in -compartments and discussed only those portions that overflowed. -"Nothing," he said. "And the mischief was that I went down hostile, as -you warned me against doing. Barney saw at once that I didn't care for -her; and she saw it at once. He even forced a sort of expression of -opinion from me and I know now that it's always glooming there at the -back of his mind when he sees me. It was quite useless. Once he'd fallen -under her spell it was all up with him. She has her singular power and, -for a man in love with her, her singular charm. Even I, you know, -understand that." - -Mrs. Aldesey contemplated him. "I confess I can't," she said. "She is so -desperately usual. I've seen her everywhere, ever since I can remember. -Attending lectures at the Sorbonne; listening to Wagner at Bayreuth; -having dresses tried on at Worth's; sitting in the halls of a hundred -European hotels. She is the most unescapable form of the American woman; -only not _du peuple_ because of the money and opportunity that has also -extirpated everything racy, provincial and individual." - -"I don't know," said Oldmeadow. He mused, his hands clasped behind his -head. "She's given me all sorts of new insights." His eyes, after his -wont, were on the cornice and his friend's contemplation, relaxed a -little from its alert responsiveness, allowed itself a certain -conjectural softness as she watched him. "I feel," he went on, "since -knowing her, that I understand America, her America, better than you do. -You're engaged in avoiding rather than in understanding it, aren't you? -What you underrate, what Americans of your type don't see--because, as -you say, it's so oppressively usual--is the power of her type. If it is -a type; if she is as ordinary as you say. It's something bred into them -by the American assumption of the fundamental rightness of life; a -confidence unknown before in the history of the world. An individual, -not an institutional or social, confidence. They do, actually, seem to -take their stand on the very universe itself. Whereas the rest of us -have always had churches or classes to uphold us. They have all the -absurdities and crudities of mere individualism. They have all the -illusions of their ignorance. Yet I sometimes imagine, after I've seen -her, that it's a power we haven't in the least taken into our -reckoning. Isn't it the only racial thing that America has produced--the -only thing that makes them a race? It makes them independent of us, when -we've always imagined, in our complacency, that they were dependent. It -enables them to take what we have to give, but to do with it what they, -not we, think best. And by Jove, who knows how far it will carry them! -Not you, my dear Lydia. You'll stay where you are--with us." - -His eyes had come back and down to her, and her gaze resumed its -alertness and showed him that she found the picture he drew disquieting. -"You mean it's a new kind of civilization that will menace ours?" - -"It's not a civilization; that's just what it's not. It's a state of -mind. Perhaps it will menace us. Perhaps it does. We've underrated it; -of that I'm sure; and underrated power is always dangerous. It will be -faith without experience against experience without faith. What we must -try for, if we're not to be worsted, is to have both--to keep experience -and to keep faith, too. Only so shall we be able to hold our own against -Mrs. Barney. And even so we shan't be able to prevent her doing things -to us--and for us. She'll do things for us that we can't do for -ourselves." His mind reverted to the faces of the brougham. "In that way -she's bound to worst us. We'll have to accept things from her." - -Oldmeadow's eyes had gone back to the cornice and, in the silence that -followed, Mrs. Aldesey, as she sat with folded arms, played absently -with the lace ruffle at her wrist. The lace was an heirloom, like her -rings, and the contemplation of them may have afforded her some -sustainment. "She's made you feel all that, then," she remarked. "With -her crook and her hat and her rose-wreathed lamb. If such a sardonic -old lion as you does really grow bodeful before the rose-wreathed lamb -there is, I own, reason to fear for the future. I'm glad I'm growing -old. It would hurt me to see her cutting your claws." - -"Oh, she won't hurt us!" Oldmeadow smiled at her. "It's rather we who -will hurt her--by refusing to lie down with her lamb. If that's any -comfort to you." - -"Not in the least. I'm not being malicious. You don't call it hurt, -then, to be effaced?" - -"Smothered in rose-leaves, eh?" he suggested. "It would be suffocating -rather than suffering. She does give me that feeling. But you'll make -her suffer--you have, you know--rather than she you." - -"I really don't know about that," said Mrs. Aldesey. "You make me quite -uncomfortable, Roger. You make me superstitious. She's done that to me -already. I refuse to take her seriously, but I shall avoid her. That's -what it comes to. Like not giving the new moon a chance to look at you -over your left shoulder." - - - - -CHAPTER XV - - -On a morning in early March Oldmeadow found, among the letters waiting -for him on his breakfast-table, one from Nancy. Nancy and he, with all -their fondness, seldom wrote to each other and he was aware, on seeing -her writing, of the presage of something disagreeable that the -unexpected often brings. - - "Dear Roger," he read, and in his first glance he saw his presage - fulfilled. "We are in great trouble. Aunt Eleanor has asked me to - write because she is too ill and it is to me as well as to her that - Meg has written and she wants you to see Barney at once. Here are - Meg's letters. She has gone away with Captain Hayward. Aunt Eleanor - and Mother think that Barney may be able to persuade Adrienne to - bring her back. No one else, we feel convinced, will have any - influence with her. Do anything, anything you can, dear Roger. - Mother and I are almost frightened for Aunt Eleanor. She walks - about wringing her hands and crying, and she goes up to Meg's room - and opens the door and looks in--as if she could not believe she - would not find her there. It is heart-breaking to see her. We - depend on you, dear Roger. - - "Yours ever - - "NANCY." - - - -"Good Lord!" Oldmeadow muttered while, in lightning flashes, there -passed across his mind the face of John the setter and a Pierrot's face, -white under a low line of black velvet. He took up Meg's letters, -written from a Paris hotel. - - "DARLING MOTHER, I know it will make you frightfully miserable and - I can't forgive myself for that; but it had to be. Eric and I cared - too much and it wasn't life at all, going on as we were apart. Try, - darling Mother, to see it as we do see things nowadays. Adrienne - will explain it all--and you must believe her. You know what a - saint she is and she has been with us in it all, understanding - everything and helping us to be straight. Everything will come - right. Iris Hayward will set Eric free, of course; she doesn't care - one bit for him and has made him frightfully unhappy ever since - they married, and she wants to marry some one else herself--only of - course she'd never be brave enough to do it this way. When Eric is - free, we will marry at once and come home, and, you will see, there - are so many sensible people nowadays; we shall not have a bad time - at all. Everything will come right, I'm sure; and even if it - didn't, in that conventional way--I could not give him up. No one - will ever love me as he does. - - "Your devoted child - - "MEG." - - - -That was the first: the second ran: - - "DEAREST NANCY,--I know you'll think it frightfully wrong; you are - such an old-fashioned little dear and you told me often enough that - I oughtn't to see so much of Eric. Only of course that couldn't - have prepared you for this and I expect Aunt Monica won't let you - come and stay with us for ages. Never mind; when you marry, you'll - see, I'm sure. Love is the _only_ thing, really. But I should hate - to feel I'd lost you and I'm sure I haven't. I want to ask you, - Nancy dear, to do all you can to make Mother _take_ it. I feel, - just because you will think it so wrong, that you may be more good - to her than Adrienne--who doesn't think it wrong at all--at least - not in Mother's way. It would be frightfully unfair if Mother - blamed Adrienne. She did all she could to show us where we stood - and to make us play the game, and it would be pretty hard luck if - people were to be down on her now because we _have_ played it. We - might have been really rotters if it hadn't been for Adrienne; - cheats and hypocrites, I mean; stealing our happiness. I know - Adrienne can bring Barney round. It's only Mother who troubles me, - just because she is such a child that it's almost impossible to - make her see reason. She doesn't recognize right and wrong unless - they're in the boxes she's accustomed to. Everything is in a box - for poor, darling old Mummy. But I mustn't go on. Be the dear old - pal you always have and help me out as well as you can. - - "Your loving - - "MEG." - - - -"Good Lord," Oldmeadow muttered once more. He pushed back his chair and -rose from the table in the bright spring sunlight. He had the feeling, -almost paternal, of disgrace and a public stripping. He saw Eleanor -Chadwick stopping at Meg's door to look in at the forsaken room, -distraught in her grief and incomprehension. He saw Nancy's pale, -troubled face and Monica Averil's, pinched and dry in its sober dismay. -And then again, lighted by a flare at once tawdry and menacing, the -face of Adrienne Toner, the intruder, the insufferable meddler and -destroyer, a Pierrot among fire-works that had, at last, set fire to the -house. He found a taxi on the Embankment and drove to Connaught Square. -Freshly decorated with window-boxes, the pleasant, spacious house had a -specially smiling air of welcome, but the butler's demeanour told him -that something of the calamity had already penetrated. Adrienne, if she -had not heard before, would have had her letters; Barney, who had been -kept in the dark, would have been enlightened, and the irrepressible -exclamations that must have passed between them seemed dimly reflected -on the man's formal countenance. Mrs. Chadwick, he told Oldmeadow, was -breakfasting upstairs with Mr. Chadwick, and he ushered him into -Barney's study. - -Oldmeadow waited for some time among the Post Impressionist pictures, -one of which remained for ever afterwards vividly fixed in his memory of -the moment; a chaotic yet determined picture; featureless yet, as it -were, conveying through its unrecognizable elements the meaning of a -grin. And, as he stood in the centre of the room and looked away from -the derisive canvas, he saw on Barney's desk photographs of Adrienne, -three photographs of her; one as a child, a sickly looking but beaming -child; one in early girlhood, singularly childlike still; and one in her -bridal dress of only the other day, it seemed, mild and radiant in her -unbecoming veil and wreath. - -It was Barney who came to him. Poor Barney. He was more piteously boyish -than ever before to his friend's eye; so beautifully arrayed, all in -readiness for a happy London day with his angel, so pale, so haggard -and perplexed. "Look here, Roger," were his first words, "do you mind -coming upstairs to Adrienne's room? She's not dressed yet; not very -well, you know. You've heard, then, too?" - -"I've just heard from Nancy. Why upstairs? I'd rather not. We'd better -talk this over alone, Barney. All the more if your wife isn't well." - -"Yes; yes; I know. I told her it would be better. But she insists." - -The effect of a general misery Barney gave was heightened now by his -unhappy flush. "She doesn't want us to talk it over without her, you -see. She comes into it all too much. From Nancy, did you say? What's -Nancy got to do with this odious affair?" - -"Only what Meg has put upon her--to interpret her as kindly as she can -to your mother. Here are the letters. I'd really rather not go -upstairs." - -"I know you'll hold Adrienne responsible--partly at least. She expects -that. She knows that I do, too; she's quite prepared. I only heard half -an hour ago and of course it knocked me up frightfully. Meg! My little -sister! Why she's hardly more than a child!" - -"I'm afraid she's a good deal more than a child. I'm afraid we can't -hold Meg to be not responsible, though, obviously, she'd never have -taken such a step unaided and unabetted. Just read these letters, -Barney; it won't take a moment to decide what's best to be done. I'll go -down to your mother and you must be off, at once, to Paris, and see if -you can fetch Meg back." - -But after Barney, with a hesitating hand and an uncertain glance, had -taken the letters and begun to read them, the door was opened with -decorous deliberation and Adrienne's French maid appeared, the tall, -sallow, capable-looking woman whom Oldmeadow remembered having seen at -Coldbrooks a year ago. - -"Madame requests that _ces Messieurs_ should come up at once; she awaits -them," Josephine announced in unemphatic but curiously potent accents. -Adrienne's potency, indeed, was of a sort that flowed through all her -agents and Oldmeadow thought that he detected, in the melancholy gaze -bent upon Barney, reprobation for his failure to attain the standard set -for him by a devotion wholehearted and reverential. Mrs. Chadwick, he -remembered, had said that Adrienne's maid adored her. - -"Yes, yes. We're coming at once, Josephine," said Barney. Reading the -letters as he went, he moved to the door and Oldmeadow found himself, -perforce, following. - -He had not yet visited the morning-room and even before his eyes rested -on Adrienne they saw, hanging above her head where she sat on a little -sofa, a full-length portrait of Mrs. Toner; in white, standing against a -stone balustrade and holding lilies; seagulls above her and a background -of blue sea. - -Adrienne was also in white, but she wore over her long, loose dress a -little jacket of pink silk edged with swan's down and the lace cap -falling about her neck was rosetted with pink ribbon. It was curious to -see her in this almost frivolous array, recalling the shepherdess, when -her face expressed, for the first time in his experience of her, an -anger and an agitation all the more apparent for its control. She was -pale yet flushed, odd streaks of colour running up from her throat and -dying in the pallor of her cheeks. Her condition had evidently much -affected her complexion and her nose, through its layer of powder, -showed a pinched and reddened tint. It made Oldmeadow uncomfortable to -look at her; her mask of calm was held at such a cost; she was at once -so determinedly herself and so helplessly altered; and it was not with -an automatic courtesy only that he went up to her and held out his hand. -An impulse of irrelevant yet irrepressible pity stirred him. - -She had fixed her eyes on him as he entered, but now looking at her -husband and not moving, she said: "I do not think you want to take my -hand, Mr. Oldmeadow. You will think me a criminal too, as Barney does." - -"Darling! Don't talk such nonsense!" Barney cried. "I haven't blamed -you, not by a word. I know you've done what you think right. Look, -darling; Roger has had these letters. Just read them. You see what Meg -writes--there--to Nancy--about your having done all you could to keep -them straight. You haven't been fair to yourself in talking to me just -now." - -Adrienne, without speaking, took the letters and Oldmeadow moved away to -the window and stood looking down at the little garden at the back of -the house where a tall almond-tree delicately and vividly bloomed -against the pale spring sky. He heard behind him the flicker of the fire -in the grate, the pacing of Barney's footsteps as he walked up and -down, and the even turning of the pages in Adrienne's hands. Then he -heard her say: "Meg contradicts nothing that I have said to you, Barney. -She writes bravely and truly; as I knew that she would write." - -Barney stopped in his pacing. "But darling; what she says about -straightness?" It was feeble of Barney and he must know it. Feeble of -him even to think that Adrienne might wish to avail herself of the -loophole or that she considered herself in any need of a shield. - -"You can't misunderstand so much as that, Barney," she said. "Meg and I -mean but one thing by straightness; and that is truth. That was the way -I tried to help them; it is the only way in which I can ever help -people. I showed them the truth and kept it before their eyes when they -were in danger of forgetting it. I said to them that if they were to be -worthy of their love they must be brave enough to make sacrifices for -it. I did not hide from them that there would be sacrifices--if that is -what you mean." - -"It's not what I mean, darling! Of course it's not!" broke from poor -Barney almost in a wail. "Didn't you try at all to dissuade them? Didn't -you show them that it was desperate, and ruinous, and wrong? Didn't you -tell Meg that it would break Mother's heart!" - -The blue ribbon was again unrolled and Oldmeadow, listening with rising -exasperation, heard that the sound of her own solemn cadences sustained -her. "I don't think anything in life is desperate or ruinous or wrong, -Barney, except turning away from one's own light. Meg met a reality and -was brave enough to face it. I regret, deeply, that it came to her -tragically, not happily; but happiness can grow from tragedy if we are -brave and true and Meg is brave and true in her love. It won't break -your mother's heart. Hers is a small, but not such a feeble, heart as -that. I believe that the experience may strengthen and ennoble her. She -has led too sheltered a life." - -Oldmeadow at this turned from the window and met Barney's miserable -eyes. "There's really no reason for my staying on, Barney," he said, and -his voice as well as his look excluded Adrienne from their interchange. -"I'll take the 1.45 to Coldbrooks. What shall I tell your mother? That -you've gone to Paris this morning?" - -"Yes, that I've gone to Paris. That I'll do my best, you know. That I -hope to bring Meg back. Tell her to keep up her courage. It'll only be a -day or two after all, and we may be able to hush it up." - -"Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne in a grave, commanding tone. It was -impossible before it to march out of the room and shut the door, though -that was what his forcibly arrested attitude showed that he wished to -do. "You as well as Barney must hear my protest," said Adrienne, and she -fixed her sombre eyes upon him. "Meg is with the man she loves. In the -eyes of heaven he is her husband. It would be real as contrasted with -conventional disgrace were she to leave him now. She will not leave him. -I know her better than you do. I ask you"--her gaze now turned on -Barney--"I desire you, not to go to her on such an unworthy errand." - -"But, Adrienne," Barney, flushed and hesitating, pleaded, "it's for -Mother's sake. Mother's too old to be enlarged like that--that's really -nonsense, you know, darling. You see what Nancy says. They are -frightened about her. It's not only convention. It's a terrible mistake -Meg's made and she may be feeling it now and only too glad to have the -way made easy for her to come back. I promise you to be as gentle as -possible. I won't reproach her in any way. I'll tell her that we're all -only waiting to forgive her and take her back." - -"Forgive her, Barney? For what? It is only in the eyes of the world that -she has done wrong and I have lifted her above that fear. Convention -does not weigh for a moment with me beside the realities of the human -heart; nor would it with you, Barney, if it were not for the influence -of Mr. Oldmeadow. I have warned you before; it is easy to be -worldly-wise and cynical and to keep to the broad road; it is easy to be -safe. But withering lies that way: withering and imprisonment, and--" - -"Come, come, Mrs. Barney," Oldmeadow interposed, addressing her for the -first time and acidly laughing. "Really we haven't time for sermons. You -oughtn't to have obliged me to come up if you wanted to influence Barney -all by yourself. He sees quite clearly for himself the rights and the -wrongs of this affair, as it happens. If I were to preach for a moment -in my turn I might ask you how it was that you didn't see that it was -your duty to tell Meg's mother and brother how things were going and let -them judge. You're not as wise as you imagine--far from it. Some things -you can't judge at all. Meg and Hayward aren't people of enough -importance to have a right to break laws; that's all that it comes to; -there's nothing to be gained by their breaking laws; not only for other -people, but for themselves. They're neither of them capable of being -happy in the ambiguous sort of life they'd have to lead. There's a -reality you didn't see at all in your haste to flout convention. Barney -could have dealt with Hayward, and Meg could have been packed off to the -country and kept there till she'd learned to think a little more about -other people's hearts and a little less about her own. What business had -you, after all, to have secrets from your husband and to plot with the -two young fools behind his back? Isn't Meg his sister rather than -yours?" His bitterness betrayed him and conscious hostility rose in him, -answering the menace that measured him in her eyes. "What business had -you, a new-comer among us, to think yourself capable of managing all -their lives and to set yourself up above them all in wisdom? You take -too much upon yourself"; his lips found the old phrase: "Really you do. -It's been your mistake from the beginning." - -He could not have believed that a face so framed for gentleness could -show itself at once so calm and so convulsed. He knew that something had -happened to her that had never happened to her before in her life. She -kept her eyes steadily on him and he wondered if she were not reciting -some incantation, some exorcism, derived from the seagulled lady above -her: Power in Repose--Power in Love--Power in Light. Her mouth and eyes -and nostrils were dark on her pallor and he felt that she held back all -the natural currents of her being in order to face and quell him with -the supernatural. - -"Never mind all that, Roger," Barney was sickly murmuring. "I don't -feel like that. I know Adrienne didn't for a moment mean to deceive me." - -"We will mind it, Barney," said Adrienne, breathing with difficulty. "I -had, Mr. Oldmeadow, the business, first, of loyalty to another human -soul who, in the crisis of its destiny, confided in me. I have been -nearer Meg than any of you have guessed, from my first meeting with her. -You were all blind. I saw at once that she was tossed and tormented. I -am nearer, far nearer her, than her brother and mother. In them she -would never have dreamed of confiding and she came to me because she -felt that in me she would find reality and in them mere formulas. I do -not look upon women as chattels to be handed about by their male -relatives and locked up if they do not love according to rule and -precedent. I look upon them as the equals of men in every respect, as -free as men to shape their lives and to direct their destinies. You -speak a mediaeval language, Mr. Oldmeadow. The world, our great, modern, -deep-hearted world, has outstripped you." - -"Darling," Barney forestalled, breathlessly, as she paused, any reply -that Oldmeadow might have been tempted to make, "don't mind if Roger -speaks harshly. He's like that and no one cares for us more. He doesn't -mean conventionality at all, or anything mediaeval. You don't understand -him. He puts his finger on the spot about Meg and Hayward. It's exactly -as he says; they're not of enough importance to have a right to break -laws. If you could have confided in me, it would have been better; you -must own that. We'd have given Meg a chance to pull herself together. -We'd have sent Hayward about his business. It's a question, as Roger -says, of your wisdom; of your knowledge of the world. You didn't -understand them. They're neither of them idealists like you. They can't -be happy doing what you might be big enough to do. Just because they're -not big. Try to take it in, darling. And we really needn't go on talking -about it any longer, need we? It isn't a question of influence. All we -have to decide on is what's to be done. Roger must go to Mother and tell -her I'm starting this morning to try and fetch Meg back. Imagine Mother -with a divorce case on! It would kill her, simply. That's all. Isn't it, -Roger?" - -"Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, again. She rose as she spoke. As -he saw her stand before them, her approaching maternity dominated for a -moment all his impressions of her. Veiled and masked adroitly as it was, -its very uncouthness curiously became her. Her head, for once, looked -small. Like an archaic statue, straight and short and thick, her altered -form had dignity and amplitude and her face, heavy with its menace, hard -with its control, might have been that of some austere and threatening -priestess of fruitfulness. - -"Barney, wait," she said. Her arms hung straight beside her, but she -slightly lifted a hand as she spoke and Oldmeadow noted that it was -tightly clenched. "It is I, not your friend, whom you must question as -to what it is right that you should do. I do not consent to his reading -of my unwisdom and unworthiness. I ask you not to consent to it. I ask -you again not to go. I ask you again to respect my judgment rather than -his." - -"Darling," the unfortunate husband supplicated; "it's not because it's -Roger's judgment. You know it's what I felt right myself--from the -moment you told me what had happened. You say people must follow their -own light. It _is_ my light. I must do what Mother asks and try to bring -Meg back." - -"It is not your light, Barney. It is craft and caution and fear. More -than that, do you not see, must I make plain to you what it is you do to -me in going? You insult me. You treat what I have believed right for Meg -to do as a crime from which she must be rescued. You drag me in the dust -with her. Understand me, Barney"--the streaks of colour deepened on her -neck, her breath came thickly--"if you go, you drag me in the dust." - -"How can it drag you in the dust, Mrs. Barney, if Meg wants to come -back?" Oldmeadow interposed in the tone of a caustic doctor addressing a -malingering patient. "We're not talking of crimes; only of follies. -Come; be reasonable. Don't make it so painful for Barney to do what's -his plain duty. You're not a child. You have, I hope, courage enough and -humour enough to own that you can make mistakes--like other people." - -"Yes, yes, Adrienne, that's just it," broke painfully from Barney, and, -as he seized the clue thus presented to him, Adrienne turned her head -slowly, with an ominous stillness, and again rested her eyes upon him. -"It's childish, you know, darling. It's not like you. And of course I -understand why; and Roger does. You're not yourself; you're -over-strained and off-balance and I'm so frightfully sorry all this has -fallen upon you at such a time. I don't want to oppose you in anything, -darling--do try to believe me. Only you must give me the credit for my -own convictions. I do feel I must go. I do feel Roger must take that -message to Mother. After all, darling," and now in no need of helping -clues he found his own and the irrepressible note of grief vibrated in -his voice, "you do owe me something, don't you? You do owe us all -something--to make up, I mean. Because, without you, Meg would never -have behaved like this and disgraced us all. Oh--I don't mean to -reproach you!" - -"Good-bye then, I'm off," said Oldmeadow. "I'm very sorry you made me -come up. Good-bye, Mrs. Barney." She had not spoken, nor moved, nor -turned her eyes from Barney's face. - -"Good-bye. Thanks so much, Roger." Barney followed him, with a quickness -to match his own, to the door. But Adrienne, this time, did not call him -back. She remained standing stock-still in front of her sofa. - -"Tell Mother I'm off," said Barney, grasping his hand. "Tell her she'll -hear at once, as soon as I know anything. Thanks so awfully," he -repeated. "You've been a great help." - -It was unfortunate, perhaps, that Barney should say that, Oldmeadow -reflected as he sped down the stairs. "But she's met reality at last," -he muttered, wondering how she and Barney faced each other above and -hearing again the words that must echo so strangely in her ears: -"Disgraced us all." And, mingled with his grim satisfaction, was, again, -the sense of irrelevant and reluctant pity. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - - -It was Saturday and he had to wire to Mrs. Aldesey that he could not go -with her next day to the Queen's Hall concert they had planned to hear -together. - -Nancy was waiting for him at the station in her own little pony-cart and -as he got in she said: "Is Barney gone?" - -"Yes; he'll have gone by now," said Oldmeadow and, as he said it, he -felt a sudden sense of relief and clarity. The essential thing, he saw -it as he answered Nancy's question, was that he should be able to say -that Barney had gone. And he knew that if he hadn't been there to back -him up, he wouldn't have gone. So that was all right, wasn't it? - -As he had sped past the sun-swept country the reluctant pity had -struggled in him, striving, unsuccessfully, to free itself from the -implications of that horrid word: "Disgraced." It was Adrienne who had -disgraced them; that was what Barney's phrase had really meant, though -he hadn't intended it to mean it. She, the stranger, the new-comer, had -disgraced them. And it was true. Yet he wished Barney hadn't stumbled on -the phrase--just because she was a stranger and a new-comer. And Barney -would never have found it had he not been there. But now came the sense -of relief. If he hadn't been there, Barney wouldn't have gone. - -"Aunt Eleanor is longing to see you," said Nancy. "Her one hope, you -know, is that he may bring Meg back." Nancy's eyes had a strained look, -as though she had lain awake all night. - -"You think she may come back?" - -He felt, himself, unable to form any conjectures as to what Meg was -likely to do. What she had done was so strangely unlike her. - -"Not if it means leaving Captain Hayward for good," said Nancy. "But -Aunt Eleanor and Mother both think that she may be willing to come till -they can marry." - -"That's better than nothing, isn't it," said Oldmeadow, and Nancy then -surprised him by saying, as she looked round at him: "I don't want her -to come back." - -"Don't want her to come back? But you wanted Barney to go?" - -"Yes. He had to go. Just so that everything might be done. So that it -might be put before her. And to satisfy Aunt Eleanor. But, don't you -see, Roger, it would really make it far more difficult for Aunt Eleanor -to have her here. What would she do with her?--since she won't give up -Captain Hayward? She can love Meg and grieve and yearn over her now. But -if she were here she couldn't. It would be all grief and bitterness." - -Nancy had evidently been thinking to some purpose during her sleepless -night and he owned that her conclusion was the sound one. What -disconcerted him was her assurance that Meg would not leave her lover. -After Adrienne, Nancy was likely to have the most authentic impressions -of Meg's attitude; and, as they drove towards Chelford, he was further -disconcerted by hearing her murmur, half to herself: "It would be silly -to leave him now, wouldn't it." - -"Not if she's sorry and frightened at what she's done," he protested. -"After all the man's got a wife who may be glad to have him back." - -But Nancy said: "I don't think she would. I think she'll be glad not to -have him back. Meg may be frightened; but I don't believe she'll be -sorry; yet." - -He meditated, somewhat gloomily, as they drove, on the unexpectedness of -the younger generation. He had never thought of Nancy as belonging, in -any but the chronological sense, to that category; yet here she was, -accepting, if not condoning, the rebellion against law and morality. - -Mrs. Averil had driven down to the Little House where she was to be -picked up and, as they turned the corner to the Green, they saw her -waiting at the gate, her furs turned up around her ears, her neat little -face pinched and dry, as he had known that he would find it, and showing -a secure if controlled indignation, rather than Nancy's sad perplexity. - -"Well, Roger, you find us in a pleasant predicament," she observed as -Oldmeadow settled the rug around her knees. "Somehow one never thinks of -things like this happening in one's own family. Village girls misbehave -and people in the next county run away sometimes with other people's -wives; but one never expects such adventures to come walking in to one's -own breakfast-table." - -"Disagreeable things do have a way of happening at breakfast-time, don't -they," Oldmeadow assented. The comfort of Mrs. Averil was that even on -her death-bed she would treat her own funeral lightly: "I wonder it -remains such a comfortable meal, all the same." - -"I suppose you've had lunch on the train," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you -believe it? Poor Eleanor was worrying about that this morning. She's -got some coffee and sandwiches waiting for you, in case you haven't. I'm -so thankful you've come. It will help her. Poor dear. She's begun to -think of all the other things now. Of what people will say and how they -will hear. Lady Cockerell is very much on her mind. You know what a -meddlesome gossip she is, and only the other day Eleanor snubbed her -when she was criticizing Barbara's new school. The thought of her is -disturbing her dreadfully now." - -"I suppose these leech-bites do help to alleviate the pain of the real -wound," said Oldmeadow. - -"Not in the least. They envenom it," Mrs. Averil replied. "I'd like to -strangle Lady Cockerell myself before the news reaches her." - -Nancy drove on, her eyes fixed on the pony's ears. "I don't believe -people will talk nearly as much as you and Aunt Eleanor imagine," she -now remarked. "I've told her so; and so must you, Mother." - -"You are admirable with her, Nancy. Far better than I am. I sit grimly -swallowing my curses, or wringing my hands. Neither wringing nor cursing -is much good, I suppose." - -"Not a bit of good. It's better she should think of what people say than -of Meg; but when it comes to agonizing over them I believe the truth is -that people nowadays _do_ get over it; far more than they used to; -especially if Aunt Eleanor can show them that _she_ gets over it." - -"But she can't get over it, my dear child!" said Mrs. Averil, gazing at -her daughter in a certain alarm. "How can one get over disgrace like -that or lift one's head again--unless one is an Adrienne Toner! Oh, when -I think of that woman and of what she's done! For she is responsible -for it all! Every bit of it. Meg was a good girl, at heart; always. In -spite of that silly liquid powder. And so I tell Eleanor. Adrienne is -responsible for it all." - -"I don't, Mother; that's not my line at all," said Nancy. "I tell her -that what Meg says is true." Nancy touched the pony with the whip. "If -it hadn't been for Adrienne she might have done much worse." - -"Really, my dear!" Mrs. Averil murmured. - -"Come, Nancy," Oldmeadow protested; "that was a retrospective threat of -Meg's. Without Adrienne she'd never have considered such an -adventure--or its worse alternative. Encourage your aunt to curse -Adrienne. Your Mother's instinct is sound there." - -But Nancy shook her head. "I don't know, Roger," she said. "Perhaps Meg -would have considered the alternative. Girls do consider all sorts of -things nowadays that Mother and Aunt Eleanor, in their girlhood, would -have thought simply wicked. They _are_ wicked; but not simply. That's -the difference between now and then. And don't you think that it's -better for Meg and Captain Hayward to go away so that they can be -married than to be, as she says, really rotters; than to be, as she -says, cheats and hypocrites and steal their happiness?" - -"My dear child!" Mrs. Averil again murmured, while Oldmeadow, finding -it, after all, a comfort to have a grown-up Nancy to discuss it with, -said, "My contention is that, left to herself, Meg would have thought -them both wicked." - -"Perhaps," Nancy said again; "but even old-fashioned girls did things -they knew to be wicked sometimes. The difference Adrienne has made is -that Meg doesn't think herself wicked at all. She thinks herself rather -noble. And that's what I mean about Aunt Eleanor. It will comfort her if -she can feel a little as Adrienne feels--that Meg isn't one bit the -worse, morally, for what she's done." - -"Are you trying to persuade us that Meg isn't guilty, my dear?" Mrs. -Averil inquired dryly. "Are you trying to persuade us that Adrienne has -done us all a service? You surely can't deny that she's behaved -atrociously, and first and foremost, to Barney. Barney could have known -nothing about it, and can you conceive a woman keeping such a thing from -her husband?" - -But Nancy was feeling the pressure of her own realizations and was not -to be scolded out of them. "If Meg is guilty, and doesn't know it, she -will suffer dreadfully when she finds out, won't she? It all depends on -whether she has deceived herself or not, doesn't it? I'm not justifying -her or Adrienne, Mother; only trying to see the truth about them. How -could Adrienne tell Barney when it was Meg's secret? We may feel it -wrong; but she thought she was justified." The colour rose in Nancy's -cheek as she named Barney, but she kept her tired eyes on her mother and -added, "I don't believe it was easy for her to keep it from him." - -"My dear, anything is easy for her that flatters her self-importance!" -cried Mrs. Averil impatiently. "I'll own, if you like, that she's more -fool than knave--as Meg may be; though Meg never struck me as a fool. -Things haven't changed so much since my young days as all that; it's -mainly a matter of names. If girls who behave like Meg find it -pleasanter to be called fools than knaves, they are welcome to the -alternative. Noble they never were nor will be, whatever the fashion." - -Oldmeadow did not want the sandwiches, so, as soon as they reached -Coldbrooks, he was led upstairs to Mrs. Chadwick's room. He found his -poor friend lying on the sofa, the blinds drawn down and a wet -handkerchief on her forehead. She burst out crying as he entered. -Oldmeadow sat down beside her and took her hand and, as he listened to -her sobs, felt that he need not trouble to pity Adrienne. - -"What I cannot, cannot understand, Roger," she was at last able to say, -and he realized that it was of Adrienne, not Meg, that she was speaking, -"is how she can bear to treat us so. We all loved and trusted her. You -know how I loved her, Roger. I felt Meg as safe in her hands as in my -own. Oh, that wicked, wicked man! I hardly know him by sight. That makes -it all so much more dreadful. All I do know is that his wife is a -daughter of poor Evelyn Madderley, who broke her back out hunting." - -"I don't believe there's much harm in him, you know," Oldmeadow -suggested. "And I believe that he is sincerely devoted to Meg." - -"Harm, Roger!" poor Mrs. Chadwick wailed, "when he is a married man and -Meg only a girl! Oh, if there is harm in anything there is in that! -Running away with a girl and ruining her life! Barney will make him feel -what he has done. Barney _has_ gone?" - -"Yes, he's gone, and I am sure we can rely on him to speak his mind to -Hayward." - -"And don't you think he may bring Meg back, Roger? Nancy says I must not -set my mind on it; but don't you think she may be repenting already? My -poor little Meg! She was hot-tempered and could speak very crossly if -she was thwarted; but I think of her incessantly as she was when she was -a tiny child. Self-willed; but so sweet and coaxing in her ways, with -beautiful golden hair and those dark eyes. I always thought of Meg, with -her beauty, as sure to marry happily; near us, I hoped"--Mrs. Chadwick -began to sob again. "And now!--Will he find them in Paris? Will they not -have moved on?" - -"In any case he'll be able to follow them up. I don't imagine they'll -think of hiding." - -"No; I'm afraid they won't. That is the worst of it! They won't hide and -every one will come to know and then what good will there be in her -coming back! If only I'd had her presented last year, Roger! She can -never go to court now," Mrs. Chadwick wept, none the less piteously for -her triviality. "To think that Francis's daughter cannot go to court! -She would have looked so beautiful, with my pearls and the feathers. The -feathers are becoming to so few girls. Nancy could not wear them nearly -so well. Nancy can go and my daughter can't!" - -"I don't think the lack of feathers will weigh seriously upon Meg's -future, my dear friend." - -"Oh, but it's what they stand for, Roger, that will weigh!" Mrs. -Chadwick, even in her grief, retained her shrewdness. "It's easy to -laugh at the feathers, but you might really as well laugh at -wedding-rings! To think that Francis's daughter is travelling about with -a man and without a wedding-ring! Or do you suppose they'll have thought -of it and bought one? It would be a lie, of course; but don't you think -that a lie would be justifiable under the circumstances?" - -"I don't think it really makes any difference, until they can come home -and be married." - -"I suppose she must marry him now--if they won't hide--and will be proud -of what they've done; she seems quite proud of it!--everyone will hear, -so that they will have to marry. Oh--I don't know what to hope or what -to fear! How can you expect me to have tea, Nancy!" she wept, as Nancy -entered carrying the little tray. "It's so good of you, my dear, but how -can I eat?--I can hardly face the servants, Roger. They will all hear. -And Meg was always such a pet of Johnson's; his favourite of all my -children. He used to give her very rich, unwholesome things in the -pantry and once, when her father punished her for disobeying him and put -her in the corner, in the drawing-room, one day, after lunch, Johnson -nearly dropped the coffee, when he came in. It upset him dreadfully and -he would hardly speak to Francis for a week afterwards. I know he will -think it all our fault, when he hears, now. And so it is, for having -trusted to a stranger. I can't drink tea, Nancy." - -"Yes, you can, for Meg's sake, Aunt Eleanor, and eat some tea-cake, -too," said Nancy. "If you aren't brave for her, who will be. And you -can't be brave unless you eat. I remember so well, when I was little, -Uncle Francis saying that when it came to the pinch you were the bravest -woman he knew. You'll see, darling; it will all come out better than you -fear. Johnson and all of us will help you to make it come out better." - -"She is such a comfort to me, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick with a summoned -smile. "Somehow, when I see her, I feel that things _will_ come out -better. _You_ will have to go to court, dear, next spring. We can't -have none of our girls going. And you shall wear my pearls." Mrs. -Chadwick's tears fell, but she took up the tea-cup. - -Nancy more and more was striking Oldmeadow as the wisest person in the -house. He walked with her on the terrace after tea; it was an old custom -of his and Nancy's to step outside then, whatever the weather, and have -a few turns. This was a clear, chill evening and Nancy had wrapped a -woollen scarf closely round her neck and shoulders. Her chin was sunken -in its folds as she held it together on her breast, and with her dropped -profile, her sad, meditative eyes, it was as if she saw a clue and, far -more clearly than he did, knew where they all stood. - -"Adrienne was bitterly opposed to Barney's going," he said. "She seemed -unable to grasp the fact that she herself had been in error." - -Nancy turned her eyes on him. "Did Barney tell you she was bitterly -opposed?" - -"He didn't tell me. I was with them. It was most unfortunate. She -insisted on my coming up." - -"Oh, dear," said Nancy. She even stopped for a moment to face him with -her dismay. "Yes, I see," she then said, walking on, "she would." - -"Why would she? Unless she was sure of getting her own way? The only -point in having me up was to show me that she could always get her own -way with Barney." - -"Of course. And to make it quite clear to herself, too. She's not afraid -of you, Roger. She's not afraid of anything but Barney." - -"I don't think she had any reason to be afraid of him this morning. He -was badly upset, of course. But if I hadn't gone up, I imagine she'd -have kept him from going. And you own that that would have been a pity, -don't you?" - -"Yes. Oh, yes. He had to go," said Nancy, absently. And she added. "Were -you very rough and scornful?" - -"Rough and scornful? I don't think so. I think I kept my temper very -well, considering all things. I showed her pretty clearly, I suppose, -that I considered her a meddling ass. I don't suppose she'll forgive me -easily for that." - -"Well, you can't wonder at it, can you?" said Nancy. "Especially if she -suspects that you made Barney consider her one, too." - -"But it's necessary, isn't it, that she should be made to suspect it -herself? I don't wonder at her not forgiving me for showing her up -before Barney, and upholding him against her, but I do wonder that one -can never make her see she's wrong. It's that that's so really monstrous -about her." - -"Do you think that anyone can ever make us see we are wrong unless they -love us?" Nancy asked. - -"Well, Barney loves her," said Oldmeadow after a moment. - -"Yes; but he's afraid of her, too, isn't he? He'd never have quite the -courage to try and make her see, would he?--off his own bat I mean. He'd -never really have quite the courage to see, himself, how wrong she was, -unless he were angry. And to have anyone who is angry with you trying to -make you see, only pushes you further and further back into yourself, -doesn't it, and away from seeing?" - -"You've grown very wise in the secrets of the human heart, my dear," -Oldmeadow observed. "It's true. He hasn't courage with her--unless some -one is there to give it to him. But, you know, I don't think she'd -forgive him if he had. I don't think she'd forgive anyone who made her -see." - -"I don't know," Nancy pondered. "I don't love her, yet I feel as if I -understood her; better, perhaps, than you do. I think she's good, you -know. I mean, I think she might be good, if she could ever see." - -"She's too stupid ever, really, to see," said Oldmeadow, and it was with -impatience. "She's encased in self-love like a rhinoceros in its hide. -One can't penetrate anywhere. You say she's afraid of Barney and I can't -imagine what you mean by that. It's true, when I'm by, she's afraid of -losing his admiration. But that's not being afraid of him." - -Nancy still pondered; but not, now, in any perplexity. "She's afraid -because she cares so much. She's afraid because she _can_ care so much. -It's difficult to explain; but I feel as if I understood her. She's -never cared so much before for just one other person. It's always been -for people altogether; and because she was doing something for them. But -Barney does something for her. He makes her happy. Perhaps she never -knew before what it was to be really happy. You know, she didn't give me -the feeling of a really happy person. It's something quite, quite new -for her. It makes her feel uncertain of herself and almost bewildered -sometimes. Oh, I'm sure of it the more I think of it. And you know, -sometimes," Nancy turned her deep, sweet eyes on him, "I feel very sorry -for her, Roger. I can't help it; although I don't love her at all." - -Yes. It must be true. Though he had seen Adrienne's vanity rather than -her love. Nancy and Meg were united in their assurance and that must be, -he saw, because they both, in their so different ways, knew what it was -to care; to care so much that you were frightened. It was strange that -the pang of pity that came with his new perception should be for -Adrienne rather than for his dear little Nancy herself. Nancy had -suffered, he knew, and her life was perhaps permanently scarred; yet, -clear-eyed and unduped, he saw her as mistress of the very fate that had -maimed her. Whereas Adrienne was blindfolded; a creature swayed and -surrounded by forces of which she was unaware. - -Nancy had deepened his sense of perplexity, his sense of taking refuge -from something, and what it was came fully upon him that night when he -was at last alone. Meg and her misdemeanour sank into a mere background -for the image of the cold, convulsed face that he had seen that morning. -Almost angrily he felt himself pushing it back, pushing it down, as if -he pushed it down to drown, and again and again it re-emerged to look at -him. - -He fell asleep at last; but as, a year ago, on the first night of his -meeting with her, he had dreamed of her, so to-night he dreamed again. - -He did not see her, but she was in some dreadful plight and the sense of -her panic and bewilderment broke upon him in shocks of suffering. He -could not see her, but he was aware of her, horribly aware. All remained -a broken, baffled confusion, but it was as though, unable to shape and -assert itself, he yet felt her very being wrestling with extinction. - -The sharpness had gone out of the sunlight next day and Mrs. Chadwick -consented to come and sit with them in the warmest corner of the garden, -the corner where, a year ago, Oldmeadow remembered, Meg had sat with him -and explained to him the secret of Adrienne's power. Pitifully, with -swollen eyes and trembling fingers, Mrs. Chadwick resumed her -interrupted stocking while Oldmeadow read aloud from a Sunday paper the -leading article on the critical situation in Ireland. "I suppose every -one in London will be talking about Ulster and Sir Edward Carson, won't -they?" said Mrs. Chadwick, and it was evident that she derived a dim -comfort from the thought. The situation in Ireland, Oldmeadow reflected, -had, at all events, been of so much service. - -Upon this quiet scene there broke suddenly the sound of a motor's horn -and a motor's wheels turned into the front entrance. - -Mrs. Chadwick dropped her stocking and laid her hand on Nancy's arm. -"Dear Aunt Eleanor--you know he couldn't possibly be back yet," said -Nancy. "And if it's anyone to call, Johnson knows you're not at home." - -"Lady Cockerell is capable of anything. She might sit down in the hall -and wait. She must have heard by now," poor Mrs. Chadwick murmured. -"That married girl of hers in London must have written. With the -projecting teeth." - -"I'll soon get rid of her, if it's really she," said Mrs. Averil; but -she had hardly risen when the door at the back of the house opened and -they saw Johnson usher forth a hurrying female figure, obviously not -Lady Cockerell's; a figure so encumbered by its motoring wraps, so -swathed in veils, that only Mrs. Chadwick's ejaculation enlightened -Oldmeadow as to its identity. - -"Josephine!" cried Mrs. Chadwick and then, between the narrow framing of -purple gauze, he recognized the dramatic, melancholy eyes and pale, -pinched lips of Adrienne's maid. - -"Oh, Madame! Madame!" Josephine was exclaiming as she came towards them -down the path. Her face wore the terrible intensity of expression so -alien to the British countenance. "Oh, Madame! Madame!" she repeated. -They had all risen and stood to await her. "He is dead! The little child -is dead! And she is alone. Monsieur left her yesterday. Quite, quite -alone, and her child born dead." - -Mrs. Chadwick faced her in pallid stupefaction. - -"The baby, Aunt Eleanor," said Nancy, for she looked indeed as if she -had not understood. "Barney's baby. It has been born and it is dead. -Oh--poor Barney. And poor, poor Adrienne." - -"Yes, dead!" Josephine, regardless of all but her exhaustion and her -grief, dropped down into one of the garden-chairs and put her hands -before her face. "Born dead last night. A beautiful little boy. The -doctors could not save it and fear for her life. They will not let me -stay with her. Only the doctors and the nurses--strangers--are with -her." Josephine was sobbing. "Ah, it was not right to leave her so. -Already she was ill. It could be seen that already she was very ill when -Monsieur left her. I came to her when he was gone. She did not say a -word to me. She tried to smile. _Mais j'ai bien vu qu'elle avait la mort -dans l'ame._" - -"Good heavens," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, while Josephine, now, let her -tears flow unchecked. "She is alone and Barney has left her! Oh, this -is terrible! At such a time!" - -"He had to go, Aunt Eleanor. You know he had to go. We will send for him -at once," said Nancy, and Josephine, catching the words, sobbed on in -her woe and her resentment: "But where to send for him? No one knows -where to send. The doctors sent a wire yesterday, at once, when she was -taken ill; to the Paris hotel. But no answer came. He must have left -Paris. That is why I have come. No telegrams for Sunday. No trains in -time. I took the car. The doctor said, Yes, it was well that I should -come. Some one who cares for Madame should return with me. If she is to -die she must not die alone." - -"But she shall not die!" cried Mrs. Chadwick with sudden and surprising -energy. "Oh, the poor baby! It might have lived had I been there. No -doctor, no nurse, can understand like a mother. And I shall be able to -help with Adrienne. I must go. I must go at once. Mademoiselle will see -that you have something to eat and drink, my poor Josephine, and then -you and I will return together. It will not take me a moment to get -ready." - -"It will be the best thing for them all," Oldmeadow murmured to Mrs. -Averil, as, taking Josephine's arm, Mrs. Chadwick hurried her along the -path. "And I'll go with them." - -A little later, while Mrs. Chadwick made ready above and Josephine, in -the hall, ate the meal that Johnson had brought for her, Oldmeadow and -Nancy stood outside near the empty waiting car. - -"I'll wire to you at once, of course, how she is," he said. Adrienne had -put Meg out of all their thoughts. "But it's rather grotesque," he -added, "if poor Barney is to be blamed." - -Nancy stood and looked before her, wrapped, as she had been the day -before, in her woollen scarf. "Roger," she said after a moment, "no one -can be blamed; yet, if she dies, I shall feel that we have killed her." - -"Killed her! What nonsense, my dear! What do you mean?" He spoke angrily -because something in his heart, shaken by his dream, echoed her. The -dreaming had now revealed itself as definitely uncanny. What had he to -do with Adrienne Toner that his sub-consciousness should be aware of her -extremity? - -"I can't explain," said Nancy. "We couldn't help it. It's even all her -fault. But she never asked to come to us. She never sought us out. She -had her life and we had ours. It was we who sought her and drew her in -and worshipped her. She never hid what she was; never in the least -little way. It was for what she was, because she was so different and -believed so in herself, that Barney loved her. And now because she has -gone on believing in herself, we have struck her down." - -The rooks were cawing overhead and Oldmeadow was remembering his dream -of a year ago, how Adrienne had come to him along the terrace saying, as -she lifted her hand: "I can hear them, too." They had drawn her in. Yet -she had loved their life. She had wanted to understand it and to be part -of it. He wished he could get the pale, streaked, drowning face out of -his mind. "It's generous of you, my dear child," he said, "to say 'we.' -You mean 'you.' If anyone struck her down it was I." - -"You spoke for us all, Roger. And you only spoke for us. You were always -outside. I count myself with them. I can't separate myself from them. I -received her love--with them all." - -"Did you?" he looked at her. "I don't think so, Nancy." - -Nancy did not pretend not to understand. "I know," she said. "But I'm -part of it. And she tried to love me." - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - - -Oldmeadow sat in Barney's study, Mrs. Chadwick beside him. It was -Tuesday and the only news of Barney had been a letter to his mother, -from Paris, where he had not found Meg, and two wires from the South of -France, one to Oldmeadow and one to his wife, saying that he had found -Meg and was returning alone. He had not, it was evident, received the -doctor's messages. - -Oldmeadow had not seen his old friend since the Sunday night when he had -left her and Josephine in Connaught Square, and in his first glance at -her this morning he saw that for her, too, Adrienne's peril had actually -effaced Meg's predicament. It had done more. Faint and feeble as she -must be, scarcely able to take possession of her returning life and, as -Mrs. Chadwick told him, not yet out of danger, Adrienne had already -drawn her mother-in-law back into the circle of her influence. - -"You see, Roger," she said, sitting there on the absurdly incongruous -background of the Post Impressionist pictures and tightly squeezing her -handkerchief first in one hand and then in the other, "You see, when one -is with her one _has_ to trust her. I don't know why it is, but almost -at once I felt all my bitterness against her die quite away. I knew, -whatever she had done, that she believed it to be right; to be really -_best_ for Meg, you know. And oh, Roger, Barney has hurt her so -terribly! She can't speak of him without crying. I never saw her cry -before. I never imagined Adrienne crying. She feels, she can't help -feeling, that it is because of that they have lost their baby." - -Oldmeadow ordered with difficulty his astonished and indignant thoughts. -"That is absolutely unfair to Barney," he said. "I was with them. No one -could have been gentler or more patient." - -"I know you were with them. It would seem like that to you, Roger, -because you are a man and men still think of women as a sort of chattel. -That's how it looks to Adrienne. So much more independence, you know, -than we ever had.--Oh, I don't say it's a good thing! I feel that we are -weaker and need guidance." - -"Chattels? Where do chattels come in here? She said that to you. Barney -merely pleaded with her so that he could do what you wanted him to do." - -"I know--I know, Roger. Don't get angry. But if I had been here and seen -her I should have known that he must not go. I should have seen that she -was in danger. A woman would have understood. No; you didn't treat -Adrienne like a chattel; no one could treat Adrienne like one. It was -poor little Meg I meant. I see now how wrong it was to think of taking -her from the man she loves; when she _has_ gone, you know, so that -everyone must know and there can be no good in it. And they probably -_have_ bought a wedding-ring. Oh, Roger, she does comfort me about Meg. -She makes me feel the deeper things, the things conventions blind us to. -She makes me feel that the great thing, the only thing, is to follow -one's own light and that Meg did do that. And after all, you know, -Roger, Jowett had George Eliot and Lewes to breakfast and they were -never married." - -"Ha! ha! ha!" Oldmeadow laughed. He could not repress his bitter mirth. -"Follow your light if there's breakfast with a clergyman at the end of -it!" he cruelly suggested. Yet he was too much amused, while so -incensed, for there to be much cruelty, and Mrs. Chadwick, gazing at him -as if from under her twisted straw, murmured: "He _was_ a sort of -clergyman, Roger; and if people do what _seems_ to them right, why -should they be punished?" - -He saw it all. He heard it all, in her echoes. The potent influence had -been poured through her, all the more irresistible for the appeal of -Adrienne's peril. Adrienne, bereaved and dying; yet magnanimous, gentle -and assured; always assured. How could Mrs. Chadwick's feathers and -wedding-rings stand a chance against her? They had been swept away, or -nearly away, and what Nancy had seen as a possible hope was now an -accomplished fact. Mrs. Chadwick had been brought to feel about Meg as -Adrienne felt about her, and Oldmeadow, for his part, was not sure that -the game was worth the candle. There was something more than absurd in -his poor friend's attempts to adjust herself to the new standards. They -were pitiable and even a little unseemly. She began presently softly to -weep. "Such a pretty baby it was, Roger. A lovely little creature--that -was the first thing she said to me--'Oh, Mother Nell, it was such a -pretty baby.' And all that she said this morning--when it was taken -away--was: 'I wish Barney could have been in time to see our baby.' Oh, -it is terrible, terrible, Roger, that he is not here! Her heart is -broken by it. How can she ever forget that he left her alone at such a -time. And she begged him not to go. She told me that she almost knelt to -him." - -The tears, irrepressibly, had risen to Oldmeadow's eyes; but as Mrs. -Chadwick's sentence meandered on, his thoughts were roughly jolted from -their pity. "But I tell you that that is absolutely unfair!" he -repeated, fixing his glass to look his protest the more firmly at her. -"I tell you that I was there and saw it all. It wasn't for the baby. She -was thinking of the baby as little as Barney was; less than he was. What -she was thinking of was her power over Barney. She was determined that -she should not seem to be put in the wrong by his going." - -Like the March Hare Mrs. Chadwick was wild yet imperturbable. "Of course -she was determined. How could she be anything else? It did put her in -the wrong. And it put Meg in the wrong. That's where we were so blind. -Oh, I blame myself as much as anybody. But Barney is her husband; and he -was with her and should have seen and felt. How could she beg him to -stay for her danger when he would not stay for her love?" - -Yes; Adrienne had her very firmly. She had even imparted to her, when it -came to the issue, something of coherency. She was building up, in -Barney's absence, strange ramparts against him. Barney had dragged her -in the dust and there she intended to drag him. Wasn't that it? -Oldmeadow asked himself as he eyed his altered friend, muttering -finally: "I'm every bit as responsible as Barney, if it comes to that. I -upheld him, completely, in his decision. I do still. Adrienne may turn -you all upside down; but she won't turn me; and I hope she won't turn -Barney." - -"I think, Roger, that you might at all events remember that she's not -out of danger," said Mrs. Chadwick. "She may die yet and give you no -more trouble. You have never cared for her; I know that, and so does -she; and I do think it's unfeeling of you to speak as you do when she's -lying there above us. And she looks so lovely in bed," Mrs. Chadwick -began to weep again. "I never saw such thick braids; like Marguerite in -Faust. Her hands on the sheets so thin and white and her eyes enormous. -I don't think even you could have the heart to jibe and laugh if you saw -her." - -"I didn't laugh at Adrienne, you know," Oldmeadow reminded her, rising -and buttoning his overcoat. "I laughed at you and Jowett. No; Adrienne -is no laughing matter. But she won't die. I can assure you of that now. -She's too much life in her to die. And though I'm very sorry for -her--difficult as you may find it to believe--I shall reserve my pity -for Barney." - -Barney needed all his pity and the sight of him on the following Sunday -evening, as he appeared on his threshold, would have exorcised for -Oldmeadow, if Mrs. Chadwick had not already done so, the memory of the -pale, drowning face. He looked like a dog that has been beaten for a -fault it cannot recognize. There was bewilderment in his eyes and -acceptance, and a watchful humility. To see them there made Oldmeadow -angry. - -Barney had sent a line to say that he was back; but his friend had been -prepared not to see him. Once engulfed in the house of mourning it was -but too likely that he would not emerge for many days. And besides, what -would Barney have to say to him now? But here he was, with his hollow -eyes and faded cheeks, and it was with an echo of his old boyish manner -of dropping in when beset by some perplexity that, without speaking, he -crossed the room and sank on the sofa by the fireplace. But he had not -come to seek counsel or sustainment. Oldmeadow saw that, as, after he -had offered cigarettes, which Barney refused, and lighted his own pipe, -he walked to and fro and watched him while Barney watched the flames. He -had not come with a purpose at all. It was, again, precisely like the -unhappy dog who wanders forth aimlessly, guided merely by a dim yearning -towards warmth and kindliness. Barney had come where he would be -understood. But it was not because he believed himself to be -misunderstood that he came. - -"I went to Coldbrooks, first, you know," he said presently, and with an -effect of irrelevance. "I thought I'd find Mother there. So it was only -on that Thursday night I got back here. None of the wires caught me." - -"I know," said Oldmeadow. "It was most unfortunate. But you couldn't -have got back sooner, could you, once you'd gone on from Paris." - -"Not possibly. I went on from Paris that very night, you see. I caught -the night express to the Riviera. They'd left Cannes as an address, but -when I got there I found they'd moved on to San Remo. It was Tuesday -before I found them. My one idea was to find them as soon as possible, -of course. No; I suppose it couldn't be helped; once I'd gone." - -"And it was quite useless? You'd no chance with Meg at all?" - -"None whatever. Quite useless. Never was such a wild-goose chase. It was -exactly as Adrienne had said." - -"Still it couldn't have been foreseen so securely by anyone but -Adrienne. Many girls would have jumped at the chance." - -"Not if they'd had Adrienne to help them. We might have realized that. -That's what armed Meg. I heard Adrienne in everything she said. Even -Mother thinks Adrienne was right, now, you know, Roger. And it was all -for Mother, wasn't it? that I went. That makes it all so particularly -ironic. Only dear Mummy was never very strong at logic. She takes the -line now that we're narrow-minded conventionalists, you and I, for -thinking that a girl oughtn't to go off with a married man. I can't feel -that, you know, Roger," said Barney in his listless tone. "I can't help -feeling that Meg has done something shameful. You ought to have seen -her! Positively smug! sitting there with that ass of a fellow in that -damned Riviera hotel! I had the horridest feeling, too, that Meg had -brought him rather than he her. I don't mean he doesn't care for her--he -does; I'll say that for him. He's a stupid fellow, but honest; and he -came outside and tried to tell me what he felt and how it would be all -right and that he was going to devote his life to her. But I think he -feels pretty sick, really. While Meg treated me as if I were a silly -little boy. If anyone can carry the thing through, Meg will." - -"It won't prove her right because she carries it through, you know," -Oldmeadow observed. - -"No," said Barney, "but it will make us seem more wrong. Not that you -have any responsibility in it, dear old boy. I did what I felt I must do -and mine was the mistake. It's not only Mother who thinks I've wronged -Adrienne," he went on after a moment, lifting his arms as though he -felt a weight upon them and clasping them behind his head. "Even Nancy, -though she was so sorry for me, made me feel that I'd done something -very dreadful." - -"Nancy? How did you come to see Nancy?" - -"Why, at Coldbrooks. She's still there with Aunt Monica. That was just -it. It was my going there first, seeing her first, that upset her so. -She couldn't understand, till I could explain, how it came about. She -was thinking of Adrienne, you see. And I, knowing nothing, had been -thinking of Mother all the time. It was too late, then, to go back at -once. The next train wasn't for three hours. So I had to stay." - -"And it was Nancy who had to tell you everything?" - -"Yes; Nancy," said Barney, staring at the ceiling. There was a note, -now, of control in his voice and Oldmeadow knew that if he had said no -word of what must be foremost in both their thoughts it was because he -could not trust himself to speak of it. And he went on quickly, taking -refuge from his invading emotion, "Aunt Monica wasn't there. I didn't -even see Johnson. I went right through the house and into the garden and -there was Nancy, planting something in the border. Everything looked so -natural. I just went up to her and said 'Hello, Nancy,' and then, when -she looked up at me, I thought she was going to faint. Poor little -Nancy. I knew something terrible had happened from the way she looked at -me." - -"Poor little Nancy. But I'm glad it was she who told you, Barney." - -"No one could have been sweeter," said Barney, talking on quickly. "She -kept saying, 'Oh, you oughtn't to be here, Barney. You oughtn't to be -here.' But no one could have been sweeter. We sat down on the old bench, -you know, and she told me. That Adrienne had nearly died. That the baby -was dead. I could hardly believe her, at first. I stared at her, I know, -and I kept saying, 'What do you mean, Nancy?--what do you mean?' And she -began to cry and I cried, too. Men do feel, Roger, all the same, even -though they haven't the mother's claim to feel. I thought about our baby -so much. I loved it, too. And now--to think it's dead; and that I never -saw it; and that it's my fault"--his voice had shaken more and more; he -had put his hand before his eyes, and, then, suddenly, he leaned forward -and buried his head on the arm of the sofa. - -"My poor Barney! My dear boy!" Oldmeadow muttered. He came and sat down -beside him; he laid his arm around his shoulders. "It's not your fault," -he said. - -"Oh, don't say that, Roger!" sobbed Barney. "It's no good trying to -comfort me. I've broken her heart. She doesn't say so. She's too angelic -to say it; but she lies there and looks it. My poor darling! My poor, -courageous darling; what she has been through! It can't be helped. I -must face it. I'm her husband. I ought to have understood. She -supplicated me, and I rejected her, and the child is dead." - -"The child's death is a calamity for which no one can be held -responsible unless it is Adrienne herself," said Oldmeadow. While Barney -sobbed he was thinking intently, for this was a turning-point in -Barney's destiny. He would remain in subjugation to Adrienne's -conception of the wrong done her or he must be enabled to regain the -sense of innocence to which he had every right. "She forced the -situation on you. She chose to break rather than bend," he said. "Listen -to me, Barney. I don't speak in any enmity to your wife; but listen to -me and try to think it out. Don't you remember how you once said that -your marriage couldn't be a mistake if you were able to see the defects -as well as the beauty of the woman you love. Don't you remember that you -said she'd have to learn a little from you for the much you'd have to -learn from her. Nothing more reassured me than what you said that night. -And I was reassured the other day by your firmness. It implies no -disloyalty in you to see the defects now. It was power over you she -wanted the other day and to see herself put in the right, before me; and -to see me worsted, before you. You know it, Barney; you know it in your -heart. And she knows it too. There was no failure of love in what you -said. There was only failure of homage. You were right in opposing her. -She was wrong in the issue she made. She was wrong from the first of the -miserable affair in having concealed it from you. If you'd stayed behind -as she wanted you to do, you'd have shown yourself a weakling and she'd -have been further than ever from knowing herself in error. There is the -truth; and the sooner you see it, the sooner she will." - -For some time after his friend had ended, Barney lay silent, his face -still hidden. But his sobs had ceased. And his silence, at last, grew -too long for any disclaimer to be possible to him. He had been brought, -Oldmeadow knew it from the very rhythm of his breathing, to the -passionless contemplation where alone truth is visible. And what he said -at last was: "She'll never see it like that." - -"Oh, yes, she will," said Oldmeadow. And he remembered Nancy's wisdom. -"If you hold to it firmly and tenderly and make her feel you love her -while you make her feel you think her wrong." - -"She'll never see it," Barney repeated, and Oldmeadow now suspected, and -with a deep uneasiness, that Barney might be seeing further than -himself. "She can't." - -"You mean that she's incapable of thinking herself wrong?" - -"Yes, incapable," said Barney. "Because all she's conscious of is the -wish to do right. And she is right so often, she is so good and -beautiful, that it must be like that with her. She can break; but she -can't bend." - -Oldmeadow was silent for a moment and Barney, on the arm of the sofa, -was silent. "Of course," Oldmeadow then said, "the less you say about it -the better. Things will take their place gradually." - -"I've not said anything about it," said Barney. "I've only thought of -comforting and cherishing her. But it's not enough. I'll never say -anything; but she'll know I'm keeping something back. She knows it -already. I see that now. And I didn't know it till you put it to me." - -"She'll have to accept it; or to live with it unaccepted, then. You -can't consider yourself a criminal to give her moral ease." - -"No," said Barney after a pause. "No; I can't do that. Though that's -what Mummy wants me to do. But I can be horribly sorry." - -"Horribly sorry. Let the rest sink into the unspoken. When people love -each other they can, I'm sure, live over any amount of unspoken things." - -"It hasn't been unspoken between you and me, though, has it, Roger?" -said Barney, and he raised himself and got upon his feet as he said it. -"There's the trouble. There's where I _am_ wrong. For she'd feel it an -intolerable wrong if she knew that it hadn't been unspoken between you -and me. And she'd be right. When people love each other such reticences -and exclusions wrong their love." - -"But since you say she knows," Oldmeadow suggested after another moment. - -Barney stood staring out of the twilight window. - -"She doesn't know that I tell you," he said. - -"You've told me nothing," said Oldmeadow. - -"Well, she doesn't know what I listen to, then," said Barney. - -Oldmeadow was again conscious of the deep uneasiness. "It's quite true -I've no call to meddle in your affairs," he said. "The essential thing -is that you love each other. Let rights and wrongs go hang." - -"You haven't meddled, Roger." Barney moved towards the door. "You've -been in my affairs, and haven't been allowed to keep out. Yes. We love -each other. But rights and wrongs never go hang with Adrienne." - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - - -Oldmeadow did not see Barney again for some months. He met Eleanor -Chadwick towards the end of April, in the park, he on his way to Mrs. -Aldesey's, she, apparently, satisfying her country appetite for -exercise, since she seemed to be walking fast and at random. He almost -thought for a moment that she was going to pretend not to see him and -hurry down a path that led away from his; but his resolute eye perhaps -checked the impulse. She faltered and then came forward, holding out her -hand and looking rather wildly about her, and she said that London was -really suffocating, wasn't it? - -"You've been here for so long, haven't you," said Oldmeadow. "Or have -you been here all this time? I've had no news of any of you, you see." - -"It's all been such a troubled, busy time, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick. -"Yes, I've been here ever since. But, thank goodness, the doctors say -she may be moved now, and she and I and Barney are going down to -Devonshire next week. To Torquay. Such a dismal place, I think; but -perhaps that's because so many of my relations have died there. I never -have liked that red Devonshire soil. But the primroses will be out. That -makes up a little." - -"I'm glad that Mrs. Barney is better. When will you all be back at -Coldbrooks?" - -"In June, I hope. Yes; she is better. But so feeble, still; so frail. -And quite, quite changed from her old bright self. It's all very -depressing, Roger. Very depressing and wearing," said Mrs. Chadwick, -opening her eyes very wide and staring before her in a way -characteristic of her when she repressed tears. "Sometimes I hardly know -how to keep up at all. For nothing cheers her. And Barney isn't really -much help. He has very little power of fighting against depression." - -"You've all been too much shut up with each other, I'm afraid." - -Mrs. Chadwick still held her eyes widely opened. "I don't think it's -that, Roger. Being alone wouldn't have helped us to be happier, after -what's happened." - -"Being with other people might. You must get back to Coldbrooks as soon -as possible and see Nancy and Mrs. Averil and your neighbours. That will -help to change the current of your thoughts." - -"People don't forget so easily as that, Roger," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, -and it was now with severity, as though she suspected him of triviality. -"When something terrible has happened to people they are _in_ the -current and Nancy and the neighbours are not going to change it. Poor -Nancy; she feels it all as much as we do, I'm sure." - -And that Mrs. Chadwick thought of him as unfeeling he saw. She thought -of him, too, with Barney, as criminal; as responsible for the -catastrophe. The old phrase of presage floated back into his mind: -"She'll spoil things." She had spoiled, for ever perhaps, this deepest, -dearest relation of his life. What was Coldbrooks to become to him with -Adrienne Toner in possession? He said, and he was unable to keep a -certain dryness that must sound like lightness, from his voice: "You are -in it but you needn't keep your heads under it, you know. That's what -people tend to do when they shut themselves up with their misfortunes. -You and Barney and Mrs. Barney, I suspect, are engaged in drowning each -other. If one of you puts their head up the others pull it down." - -"I suppose you mean Adrienne does," said Mrs. Chadwick. He had not meant -it at all; but now he felt sure that so, exactly, did it happen. Poor -Mrs. Chadwick left to herself would have drifted to the shore by this -time and Barney, at all events, would be swimming with his head up; it -was Adrienne, of course, that kept them suffocating under the surface. -"Well, I think it a pity you three should go off to Torquay alone," he -evaded. "What's happening to the farm all this time?" - -"Nancy is seeing to it for Barney," said Mrs. Chadwick. "She understands -those things so well. Barney would not dream of letting the farm come -between him and Adrienne at a time like this. He wants to be with her of -course." - -"Of course. All I mean is that I wish he could be with her at -Coldbrooks. I suppose the doctor knows what's best, however." - -"I'm glad to hear you own that anybody can know what's best, Roger, -except yourself," said Mrs. Chadwick with her singularly unprovocative -severity. "Of course she must go to the sea and of course Barney and I -must be with her. She has two excellent nurses; but I would never trust -the best nurse for certain things. I remember so well when I was ill -myself once and saw the nurse behind a screen, eating raspberry jam out -of the pot with her finger. You can't trust anybody, really." And that -was all he got out of Eleanor Chadwick. Adrienne had spoiled things. - -It was in June that he heard from Mrs. Averil that she and Nancy were in -London for a few days staying with an old aunt in Eccleston Square. Mrs. -Averil asked him to come to tea and he asked her and Nancy to do a play -with him; but before these meetings took place he saw them both. It was -at a Queen's Hall concert on Sunday afternoon that Mrs. Aldesey called -his attention to his friends and, to his surprise, Oldmeadow saw that -Barney was with them. They sat across the gangway at some little -distance and his first impression of the three was that they were not -happy. - -"Did you know he was in town?" asked Mrs. Aldesey. "How ill he looks. I -suppose he was frightfully upset about the baby, poor fellow." - -Mrs. Aldesey knew nothing of the catastrophes that had followed the -baby's death. He had instinctively avoided any reference to the latest -progress of the Juggernaut. - -"She's much better now, you know," he said, and he wasn't aware that he -was exonerating Barney. "And they're all back at Coldbrooks." - -"She's not at Coldbrooks," said Mrs. Aldesey. "She's well enough to pay -visits and Lady Lumley told me she was coming down to them for this -week-end. I wonder he hasn't gone with her." - -Oldmeadow was wondering too. There was something about Barney's attitude -as he sat there beside his cousin, silent and absent-minded it seemed, -listening as little to the music as he looked little at her, that he -would rather Lydia Aldesey had not been there to observe. They had a -curiously marital appearance, the young couple, or, rather, Barney had; -the air of being safe with some one with whom no explanations were -needed and for whom no appearances must be kept up; some one, even, with -whom he was so identified that he was hardly conscious of her. Nancy was -not so unconscious. Once, when Barney leaned over to look at the -programme, she drew away a little; and Oldmeadow even fancied a slight -constraint in her glance when, now and then, he spoke to her. Had -Adrienne spoiled things there, too? Mrs. Averil next day, in Eccleston -Square, enlightened him as to Barney's presence. "It's been most -unfortunate. He had planned to come up to this concert for a long time. -He wanted Nancy to hear the Cesar Franck with him. And then it appeared -that Adrienne had made an engagement for them with the Lumleys. He -refused to go, I'm afraid, and she made an issue of it and, from what -poor Eleanor told me, there was rather a row. So Adrienne has gone off -alone and Barney is here till this evening. He's gone out now with Nancy -to show her some pictures by a friend of his. It had all been arranged. -So what were we to do about it, Roger?" - -"Do about it? Why just what you have done. Why shouldn't she go with -him?" - -"Why indeed? Except that Adrienne has made the issue. It's awkward, of -course, when you know there's been a row, to go on as if nothing had -happened." - -Oldmeadow meditated. His friend's little face had been pinched by the -family's distress when he had last seen it; it was clouded now by a -closer, a more personal perplexity. "I suppose she made the issue on -purpose so that Barney shouldn't come up," he said at length. - -"I really don't know. Perhaps it had been arranged first with the -Lumleys. If it was to keep him from coming, that didn't come out. She -wouldn't let it come out; not into the open; of course." - -"So things are going very badly. I'd imagined, with all Barney's -contrition, that they might have worked out well." - -"They've worked out as badly, I'm afraid, as they could. He was full of -contrition. He was as devoted as possible, when they came back in May. -But nothing altered her unflagging melancholy. And I suppose what -happened was that he got tired. Barney was always like that, from the -time he was in the nursery. He'd go on being patient and good-tempered -until, suddenly, everything would break down and he would sulk for days. -It's when he's pushed too far. And she has pushed him too far. She's set -them all against him." - -"Who is them?" Oldmeadow asked. "I saw, when we met in London, that Mrs. -Chadwick actually had been brought to look upon Barney as a sort of -miscreant and Adrienne as a martyr. Who else is there?" - -"Well, no one else except Palgrave and Barbara. Palgrave can be very -exasperating, as you know, and he takes the attitude now that Barney has -done Adrienne an irreparable injury. As you may imagine it isn't a -pleasant life Barney leads among them all." - -"I see," said Oldmeadow. "I think I see it all. What happens now is that -Barney more and more takes refuge with you and Nancy, and Adrienne more -and more can't bear it." - -"That is precisely it, Roger," said Mrs. Averil. "And what are we to do? -How can I shut my door against Barney? Yet it is troubling me more than -I can say. We are forced to seem on his side and against her. And -Adrienne has her eye upon them." - -"Let her keep it on them," said Oldmeadow in strong indignation. "And -much good may it do her!" - -"Oh, it won't do her any good--nor us!" said Mrs. Averil. "She's sick -with jealousy, Roger. Sick. I'm almost sorry for her when I see it and -see her trying to hide it, and see it always, coming in by the back door -when she shuts the front door on it--as it always does, you know. And -Nancy sees it, of course; and is quite as sick as she is; and Barney, of -course, remains as blind as a bat." - -"Well, as long as he remains blind--" - -"Yes. As long as he does. But Adrienne will make him see. She'll pick -and pull at their friendship until Nancy will be forced into drawing -back, and if she draws back Barney will see. What it's already come to -is that she has to stand still, and smile, while Adrienne scratches her, -lest Barney should see she's scratched; and once or twice of late I've -had a suspicion that he has seen. It doesn't endear Nancy to Adrienne -that Barney should scowl at her when he's caught her scratching." - -"What kind of scratches?" Oldmeadow asked, but Mrs. Averil had only time -to say, "Oh, all kinds; she's wonderful at scratches," when the -door-bell rang and Nancy, a moment after, came in. - -Nancy, if anything so fresh and neat could be so called, was looking -rather dowdy, and he suspected that some self-effacing motive lay behind -her choice of clothes. - -"Oh, Roger, Barney was so sorry to have to miss you," she said. And, at -all events, whatever else Adrienne had spoiled, she had not spoiled -Nancy's loving smile for him. "He had to catch the 4.45 to Coldbrooks, -you know. There's a prize heifer arriving this evening and he must be -there to welcome it. You must see his herd of Holsteins, Roger." -Friesians were, at that date, still Holsteins. - -"I'd like to," said Oldmeadow. "But I don't know when I shall, for, to -tell you the truth, I've not been asked to Coldbrooks this summer. The -first time since I've known them." - -Nancy looked at him in silence. - -"You'll come to us, of course," said Mrs. Averil. - -"Do you really think I'd better, all things considered?" Oldmeadow -asked. - -"Why, of course you'd better. What possible reasons could there be for -your not coming, except ones we don't accept?" - -"It won't seem to range us too much in a hostile camp?" - -"Not more than we're ranged already. Nancy and I are not going to give -you up, my dear Roger, because Adrienne considers herself a martyr." - -"I hope not, indeed. But it makes my exclusion from Coldbrooks more -marked, perhaps, if I go to you. I imagine, though I am so much in her -black books, that poor Mrs. Chadwick doesn't want my exclusion to be -marked." - -"You're quite right there. You are in her black books; but she doesn't -want it marked; she'd like to have you, really, if Adrienne weren't -there and if she didn't feel shy. And I really think it will make it -easier for her if you come to us instead. It will tide it over a -little. She'll be almost able to feel you are with them. After all, you -do come to us, often." - -"And I'll go up with you to Coldbrooks as if nothing had happened? I -confess I have a curiosity to see how Mrs. Barney takes me." - -"She's very good at taking things, you know," said Nancy. - -Mrs. Averil cast a glance upon him. "It may be really something of a -relief to their minds, Roger," she said, "if you turn up as if nothing -had happened. They are in need of distractions. They are all dreadfully -on edge, though they won't own to it, about Meg. The case is coming on -quite soon now. Mrs. Hayward has lost no time, and poor Eleanor only -keeps up because Adrienne is there to hold her up." - -"Where is Meg? Do they hear from her?" - -"They hear from her constantly. She's still on the Continent. She writes -very easily and confidently. I can't help imagining, all the same, that -Adrienne is holding her up, too. She's written to Nancy and Nancy hasn't -shown me her letters." - -"There is nothing to hide, Mother," said Nancy, and Oldmeadow had never -seen her look so dejected. "Nothing at all, except that she's not as -easy and confident as she wants to appear. Adrienne does hold her up. -Poor Meg." - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - - -The picture of Adrienne holding them up was spread before Oldmeadow's -eyes on the hot July day when Mrs. Averil drove him up from the Little -House to Coldbrooks. The shade of the great lime-tree on the lawn was -like a canvas, only old Johnson, as he moved to and fro with tea-table, -silver and strawberries, stepping from its cool green atmosphere into -the framing sunshine. The Chadwick family, seated or lying in the shade, -were all nearly as still as in a picture, and Adrienne was its centre. -She sat in a high-backed wicker chair, her hands lying listlessly in her -lap, a scarf about her shoulders, and in her black-veiled white, her -wide, transparent hat, she was like a clouded moon. There was something -even of daring, to Oldmeadow's imagination, in their approach across the -sunny spaces. Her eyes had so rested upon them from the moment that they -had driven up, that they might have been bold wayfarers challenging the -magic of a Circe in her web. Palgrave, in his white flannels, lay -stretched at her feet, and he had been reading aloud to her; Barbara and -Mrs. Chadwick sat listening while they worked on either hand. Only -Barney was removed, sitting at some little distance, his back half -turned, a pipe between his teeth and his eyes on a magazine that lay -upon his knee. But the influence, the magic, was upon him too. He was -consciously removed. - -Mrs. Chadwick sprang up to greet them. "This is nice!" she cried, and -her knitting trailed behind her as she came so that Barbara, laughing, -stooped to catch and pick it up as she followed her; "I was expecting -you! How nice and dear of you! On this hot day! I always think the very -fishes must feel warm on a day like this! Or could they, do you -think?--Dear Roger!" There was an evident altering in Mrs. Chadwick's -manner towards him since the meeting in the Park. She was, with all her -fluster, manifestly glad to see him. - -Palgrave had hoisted himself to his feet and now stood beside Adrienne, -eyeing them as a faithful hound eyes suspicious visitors. - -"Isn't it lovely in the shade," Mrs. Chadwick continued, drawing them -into it. "Adrienne darling, Aunt Monica after all. And we were afraid -the heat might keep you away. I suppose the hill was very hot, Monica?" -Adrienne was still, apparently, something of an invalid, for she did not -rise to greet them. Neither did she speak as she held out her hand to -each of them in turn, and while an enveloping smile dwelt fondly on Mrs. -Averil, she made no attempt to smile at Oldmeadow. - -He found himself observing her with a sort of wonder. All the flaws and -deformities of her maternity had fallen from her and she had the -appearance almost of beauty. Yet he had never so little liked her face. -Her dimly patterned features made him think of a Chinese picture he had -once seen where, on a moth-wing background, pale chrysanthemums, -mauvy-pink, a disk of carved jade with cord and tassel and a narrow -ivory box softly spotted with darkness, conveyed in their seeming -triviality an impression almost sinister of impersonality and magic. -There was as little feeling in her face. It was like a mask. - -"Where's Nancy?" Barney asked. He had got up and joined them, giving -Oldmeadow's hand, as they met, a curiously lifeless shake. - -"She had letters to write," said Mrs. Averil. - -"Why, I thought we'd arranged she was to come up and walk round the farm -after tea with me," said Barney and as he spoke Oldmeadow noted that -Adrienne turned her head slowly, somewhat as she had done on the ominous -morning in March, and rested her eyes upon him. - -"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Averil cheerfully. "She must have -misunderstood. She had these letters to finish for the post." - -Barbara was reconnoitring at the tea-table. "Strawberries!" she -announced. "Who said they'd be over? Oh, what a shame of Nancy not to -come! Roger, why aren't you staying here rather than with Aunt Monica, -I'd like to know? Aren't we grand enough for you since she's had that -bathroom put in!" Barbara had advanced to a lively flapperdom. - -"You see, by this plan, I get the bath with her and get you when she -brings me up," Oldmeadow retorted. - -"And leave Nancy behind! I call it a shame when we're having the last -strawberries--and you may have a bathroom with Aunt Monica, but her -strawberries are over. Letters! Who ever heard of Nancy writing -letters--except to you, Barney. She was always writing to you when you -were living in London--before you married. And what screeds you used to -send her--all about art!" said Barbara, and that her liveliness cast a -spell of silence was apparent to everyone but herself. - -Mrs. Chadwick took Oldmeadow's arm and drew him aside. "You'll be able -to come later and be quite with us, won't you, Roger?" she said -"September is really a lovelier month, don't you think? Adrienne is -going to take Palgrave and Barbara for a motor-trip in September. Won't -it be lovely for them?" Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a swiftness that did -not veil a sense of insecurity. "Barbara's never seen the Alps. They are -going to the Tyrol." - -"If we don't have a European war by then," Oldmeadow suggested. "What is -Barney going to do?" - -"Oh, Barney is going to the Barclay's in Scotland, to shoot. He loves -that. A war, Roger? What do you mean? All those tiresome Serbians? Why, -they won't go into the Tyrol, will they?" - -"Perhaps not the Tyrol; but they may make it difficult for other people -to go there." - -"Do you hear what Roger is saying?" Mrs. Chadwick turned to her family. -"That the Serbians may make war by September and that it might interfere -with the trip. But I'm sure Sir Edward will quiet them. He always does. -Though he is a Liberal, I've always felt him to be such a good man," -said Mrs. Chadwick, "and really patriotic. Simply sitting round a table -with him cools their heads more than one would believe possible. -Dreadfully violent people, I believe, killing their kings and queens and -throwing them out of the window. I always think there's nothing in the -world for controlling people's tempers like getting them to sit together -round a table. I wonder why it is. Something to do with having your legs -out of the way, perhaps. People don't look nearly so threatening if -their legs are hidden, do they? My poor cousin, Fanny Jocelyn, used -always to say that if any of the clergymen in Fred's diocese got very -troublesome her one recipe was to ask them to lunch, or, if they were -very bad, to dinner. But she had wonderful tact--that gift, you know, -for seeming to care simply _immensely_ for the person she was talking -to. Francis used to tell her that when she looked at you as if you were -the only person in the world she loved she was really working out her -next menu." - -"I'm afraid if war comes it won't be restricted to people, like Serbians -and clergymen, who can be quieted by being asked to dinner," said -Oldmeadow laughing. "We'll be fighting, too." - -"And who will we fight?" Palgrave inquired. After passing tea, he had -resumed his place at Adrienne's feet. "Who has been getting in our way -now?" - -"Don't you read the papers?" Oldmeadow asked him. - -"Not when I can avoid it," said Palgrave. "They'll be bellowing out the -same old Jingo stuff on the slightest provocation, of course. As far as -I can make out the Serbians are the most awful brutes and Russia is -egging them on. But when it comes to a crime against humanity like war, -every one is responsible." - -"Are you ready for strawberries, Aunt Monica," Barbara interposed. "If -there is a war, I hope we may be in it so that I can do some of my first -aid on real people at last." - -She was carrying strawberries now to Adrienne who, as she leaned down, -took her gently by the wrist, and said some low-toned words to her. "I -know, my angel. Horrid of me!" said Barbara. "But one can't take war -seriously, can one!" - -"I can," said Mrs. Averil. "Too many of my friends had their sons and -husbands killed in South Africa." - -"And it's human nature," said Mrs. Chadwick, eating her strawberries -mournfully. "Like the poor: whom you have always with you, you know." - -"Human nature is altered already a good deal more than governments -imagine," said Palgrave, "and they'll find themselves pretty well dished -if they try to bring on a capitalist war now. The workers all over the -world are beginning to see whose the hands are that pull the strings and -they'll refuse to dance to their piping. They'll down weapons just as -they've learned, at last, to down tools; and without them you can do -nothing. That's the way human nature will end war." - -"A spirited plan, no doubt," said Oldmeadow, "and effective if all the -workers came to be of the same mind simultaneously. But if those of one -country downed weapons and those of another didn't, the first would get -their throats cut for their pains." - -"It's easy to sneer," Palgrave retorted. "As a matter of principle, I'd -rather have my throat cut by a hired ruffian than kill an innocent -man--even if he did belong to a nation that happened to be cleverer and -more efficient than my own. That's a crime, of course, that we can't -forgive." - -"Don't talk such rot, Palgrave," Barney now remarked in a tone of -apathetic disgust. - -"I beg your pardon," Palgrave sat up instantly, flushing all over his -face. "I think it's truth and sanity." - -"It's not truth and sanity. It's rot and stupid rot," said Barney. "Some -more tea, please, Barbara." - -"Calling names isn't argument," said Palgrave. "I could call names, too, -if it came to that. It's calling names that is stupid. I merely happen -to believe in what Christ said." - -"Oh, but, dear--Christ drove the money-lenders out of the Temple very, -very roughly," Mrs. Chadwick interposed with the head-long irrelevance -characteristic of her in such crises. "Thongs must hurt so much, mustn't -they? He surely believed in punishing people who did wrong." - -"Which nation doesn't do wrong, Mummy? Which nation is a Christ with a -right to punish another? It's farcical. And punishing isn't killing. -Christ didn't kill malefactors." - -"The Gadarene swine," Mrs. Chadwick murmured. "They were killed. So -painfully, too, poor things. I never could understand about that. I hope -the Higher Criticism will manage to get rid of it, for it doesn't really -seem kind. They had done no wrong at all and I've always been specially -fond of pigs myself." - -"Ah, but you never saw a pig with a devil in it," Oldmeadow suggested, -to which Mrs. Chadwick murmured, "I'm sure they seem to have devils in -them, sometimes, poor dears, when they won't let themselves be caught. -Do get some more cream, Barbara. It's really too hot for arguments, -isn't it," and Mrs. Chadwick sighed with the relief of having rounded -that dangerous corner. - -Barbara went away with the cream-jug and Johnson emerged bearing the -afternoon post. - -"Ah. Letters. Good." Palgrave sat up to take his and Adrienne's share. -"One for you, Adrienne; from Meg. Now we shall see what she says about -meeting us in the Tyrol." His cheeks were still flushed and his eyes -brilliant with anger. Though his words were for Adrienne his voice was -for Barney, at whom he did not glance. - -Adrienne unfolded the foreign sheets, and held them so that Palgrave, -leaning against her knee, could read with her. - -Mrs. Chadwick had grown crimson. She looked at Oldmeadow. "Dear Meg is -having such an interesting time," she told him. "She and Eric are seeing -all manner of delightful places and picking up some lovely bits of old -furniture." Oldmeadow bowed assent. He had his eyes on Adrienne and he -was wondering about Barbara. - -"What news is there, dear?" Mrs. Chadwick continued in the same badly -controlled voice. Palgrave's face had clouded. - -"I'm afraid it may be bad news, Mother Nell," said Adrienne looking up. - -It was the first time Oldmeadow had heard her voice that afternoon and -he could hardly have believed it the voice that had once reminded him of -a blue ribbon. It was still slow, still deliberate and soft; but it had -now the steely thrust and intention of a dagger. - -"It's this accursed war talk!" Palgrave exclaimed. "Eric evidently -thinks it serious and he has to come home at once. What rotten luck." - -Adrienne handed the sheets to Mrs. Chadwick. "It will all have blown -over by September," she said. "As Mother Nell says, we can trust Sir -Edward to keep us out of anything so wicked as a war. I am so completely -with you in all you say about the wickedness of war, Paladin, although I -do not see its causes quite so simply, perhaps." - -It was the first time that Oldmeadow had heard the new name for her -knight. - -"For my part," said Barney, casting a glance at the house, Barbara not -having yet reappeared, "I shall be grateful to the war if it dishes your -trip to the Tyrol. It's most unsuitable for Barbara." - -He did not look at his wife as he spoke. His hat brim pulled down over -his eyes, he sat with folded arms and stared in front of him. - -"You find it unsuitable for one sister to meet another?" Adrienne -inquired. Her eyes were on Barney, but Oldmeadow could not interpret -their gaze. - -"Most unsuitable, to use no stronger word," said Barney, "while one -sister is living with a man whose name she doesn't bear." - -"You mean to say," said Palgrave, sitting cross-legged at Adrienne's -feet and grasping his ankles with both hands, "that Meg, until she's -legally married, isn't fit for her little sister to associate with?" - -"Just what I do mean, Palgrave. Precisely what I do mean," said Barney, -and his face, reddening, took on its rare but characteristic expression -of sullen anger. "And I'll thank you--in my house, after all--to keep -out of an argument that doesn't concern you." - -"Barney; Palgrave," murmured Mrs. Chadwick supplicatingly. Adrienne, -not moving her eyes from her husband's face, laid her hand on Palgrave's -shoulder. - -"It does concern me," said Palgrave, and he put up his hand and grasped -Adrienne's. "Barbara's well-being concerns me as much as it does you; -and your wife's happiness concerns me a good deal more. I can promise -you that I wouldn't trouble your hospitality for another day if it -weren't for her--and Mother. It's perfectly open to you, of course, to -turn me out of my home whenever you like to make use of your legal -privilege. But until I'm turned out I stay--for their sakes." - -"You young ass! You unmitigated young ass!" Barney snarled, springing to -his feet. "All right, Mother. Don't bother. I'll leave you to your -protector for the present. I only wish he were young enough to be given -what he needs--a thorough good hiding. I'll go down and see Nancy. Don't -expect me back to dinner." - -"Nancy is busy, my dear," poor Mrs. Averil, deeply flushing, interposed, -while Palgrave, under his breath, yet audibly, murmured: "Truly -Kiplingesque! Home and Hidings! Our Colonial history summed up!" - -"She would be here if she weren't busy," said Mrs. Averil. - -"I won't bother her," said Barney. "I'll sit in the garden and read. -It's more peaceful than being here." - -"Please tell dear Nancy that it's ten days at least since _I've_ seen -her," said Adrienne, "and that I miss her and beg that she'll give me, -sometime, a few of her spare moments." - -At that Barney stopped short, and looked at his wife. "No, Adrienne, I -won't," he said with a startling directness. "I'll take no messages -whatever from you to Nancy. Let Nancy alone--do you see? That's all I've -got to ask of you. Let her alone. She and Aunt Monica are the only -people you haven't set against me and I don't intend to quarrel with -Nancy to please you, I promise you." - -Sitting motionless and upright, her hand laid on Palgrave's shoulder, -her face as unalterable as a little mask, Adrienne received these -well-aimed darts as a Saint Sebastian might have received the arrows. -Barney stared hard at her for a moment, then turned his back and marched -out into the sunlight and Oldmeadow, as he saw him go, felt that he -witnessed the end, as he had, little more than a year ago, witnessed the -beginning, of an epoch. What was there left to build on after such a -scene? And what must have passed between husband and wife during their -hours of intimacy to make it credible? Barney was not a brute. - -When Barney had turned through the entrance gates and -disappeared--Adrienne's eyes dropped to Palgrave's. "I think I'll go in, -Paladin," she said, and it was either with faintness or with the mere -stillness of her rage. "I think I'll lie down for a little while." - -Palgrave had leaped to his feet and, as she rose, drew her hand within -his arm, and Mrs. Chadwick, her eyes staring wide, hastened to her: but -Adrienne gently put her away. "No, no, dearest Mother Nell. Paladin will -help me. You must stay with Aunt Monica and Mr. Oldmeadow." Her hand -rested for a moment on Mrs. Chadwick's shoulder and she looked into her -eyes. "I'm so sorry, Mother Nell. I meant no harm." - -"Oh, my darling child! As if I did not know that!" Mrs. Chadwick moaned -and, as Adrienne moved away, she turned as if half distraught to her two -friends. "Oh, it's dreadful! dreadful!" she nearly wept. "Oh, how can he -treat her so--before you all! It's breaking my heart!" - -Barbara came running out with the cream. "Great Scott!" she exclaimed, -stopping short. "What's become of everybody?" - -"They've all gone, dear. Yes, we've all finished. No one wants any more -strawberries. Take yours away, will you, dear, we want to have a little -talk, Aunt Monica, Roger and I." - -"I suppose it's Barney again," said Barbara, standing still and gazing -indignantly around her. "Where's Adrienne?" - -"She has gone to lie down, dear. Yes. Barney has been very unkind." - -"About my trip, I suppose? He's been too odious about my trip and it's -only the other day he made Adrienne cry. What possible business is it of -Barney's, I'd like to know? One would think he imagined that wives and -sisters were a sort of chattel. Why mayn't I stay, Mother--if you're -going to talk about my trip? Adrienne has explained everything to me and -I think Meg was quite right and I'd do the same myself if I were in her -place. So I'm perfectly able to understand." - -"I know, dear; I know; Adrienne is so wonderful. But don't say things -like that, I beg of you, for it makes me very, very unhappy. And please -run away for a little while, for we have other things to talk of. I'm -afraid there may be no trip at all, Barbara; Meg may be coming home at -once. The letters had news about it, and Eric has to go to the war--if -there is a war, you see." Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a supplicatory note -very unlike her usual placid if complaining authority. - -"But I'd like to hear about the letters, then. Do we really have to give -up the trip? I'm sure it's Barney at the bottom of it. He's been trying -to dish it from the first and I simply won't stand it from him." - -"It's not Barney at all, Barbara. You shall hear all that there is to -hear. And you mustn't, really, forget that Barney is your elder brother -and has some right to say what you should do--even though we mayn't -agree with him." - -"No, he hasn't. Not an atom," Barbara declared. "If anyone has any -right, except you, it's Adrienne, because she's a bigger, wiser person -than any of us." - -"And since you've borne your testimony, Barbara," Oldmeadow suggested, -"you might obey your mother and give us the benefit of your experience -on an occasion when it's invited." - -"Oh, I know you're against Adrienne, Roger," said Barbara, but with a -sulkiness that showed surrender. "I shan't force myself on you, I assure -you, and girls of fifteen aren't quite the infants in arms you may -imagine. If Adrienne weren't here to stand up for me I don't know where -I'd be. Because, you know, you _are_ weak, Mother. Yes you are. You've -been really wobbling like anything about my trip and trying to wriggle -out of it whenever you had a loop-hole, and Adrienne thinks you're weak, -I know, for she told me so, and said we must help you to be brave and -strong and that you belonged to a generation that had its eyes tightly -bandaged from birth. So there!" And delivering this effective shot, -Barbara marched away, not forgetting to pick up her plate of -strawberries as she passed the table. - -Mrs. Chadwick attempted to conceal her confusion by following her -child's retreating figure with grave disapprobation and Oldmeadow seized -the propitious moment to remark: "I can't help feeling that there's -something to be said for Barney, all the same. His wife _has_ set you -all against him, hasn't she? I suspect Barbara's right, too, my dear -friend, and that in your heart of hearts you dislike this trip of hers -as much as he does. Certainly Barbara isn't a very pleasing example of -Adrienne's influence." - -"She is very naughty, very naughty and rebellious," poor Mrs. Chadwick -murmured, twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. "I know I've not a -strong character, but I never spoiled my children and dear Adrienne -does, I feel, spoil Barbara by taking her so seriously and talking to -her as if she were grown up, you know. I had an aunt who married at -sixteen; but it didn't turn out at all happily. They quarrelled -constantly and she had two sets of twins, poor thing--almost like a -judgment, dear Mamma used to say. But of course Barbara is really too -young to understand; and so I've told dear Adrienne. Not that she isn't -perfectly frank about it. She's told me over and over again that -weakness was my besetting danger and that I must stand up straight and -let the winds of freedom blow away my cobwebs. So dear and original, -always, you know. And of course I see her point of view and Barbara -will, no doubt, be a bigger, finer person"--Mrs. Chadwick's voice -trailed off in its echo. "But I don't agree with you, Roger; I don't -agree with you at all!" she took up with sudden vehemence, "about the -trip. I don't agree that my poor Meg is a leper to be avoided until a -legal ceremony has been performed. I think that a cruel -convention--cruel, base and cowardly. She must have suffered so much -already. Nothing will give her so much courage as for us to be seen -standing by her. Adrienne has explained all that most beautifully to -Barbara. And how true love is the most sacred thing in life." - -"My dear friend, Meg isn't a leper, of course, and we all intend to -stand by her. But it is certainly best that a young girl like Barbara -shouldn't be asked to meet, or understand, or exonerate such difficult -situations." - -"That's what I've tried to say to Eleanor," Mrs. Averil murmured. - -"And why not, Roger! Why not!" Mrs. Chadwick cried, surprisingly yet not -convincingly aroused. "Nothing develops the character so much as facing -and understanding difficulty. And as for exoneration--I don't agree with -you, and Adrienne doesn't agree. You and Monica are conventionalists and -we must live on a higher plane than convention. I'm sure I try to, -though it's very hard sometimes, but the noblest things are hardest. -There is nothing to exonerate. Meg was following her own light in doing -what she did." - -"It's not a question of Meg, but of her situation," Oldmeadow returned. - -"And because of her situation, because she is so in need of help and -loyalty, you ask that Barbara should draw back her skirts from her! Oh! -I knew it!" cried Mrs. Chadwick, "I knew that you would feel like that! -That is why I felt it would be happier if you were not here with -Adrienne." - -"You need hardly tell me that," said Oldmeadow smiling. "But it's not a -question of convention, except in so far as convention means right -feeling and good taste. Meg, whatever her lights--and personally I don't -believe that she followed them--has done something that involves pain -and humiliation for all concerned with her, and whether she was or was -not justified in doing it is a moral problem that a child shouldn't be -asked to meet. Such problems should be kept from her until she is old -enough to understand them." - -Mrs. Chadwick's vehemence had only fictitiously sustained her. It -dropped from her now and for a little while she sat silent, and the -confusion of her heart was piteously revealed to her friend as she said -at last, "If there _is_ a war, it will all settle itself, won't it, for -then Barbara couldn't go. I don't try to wriggle out of it. That's most -unfair and untrue. I've promised Adrienne and I agree with Adrienne -about it. I can't explain it clearly, as she does; it's all quite, quite -different when Adrienne explains it. She seems to hold me up and you and -Monica pull me down--oh, yes, you do, Roger. Of course it would kill -me--I know that I should die, if Barbara were to do what Meg has done; -you mustn't think Adrienne _wants_ her to behave like that, you know. -Adrienne only wants people to be brave and follow their light; but your -light needn't be a married man, need it? And sometimes I think it isn't -_really_ so serious--falling in love, you know. I'm sure I thought _I_ -was in love half a dozen times before Francis proposed. It's a question -of seeing what's best for you all round, isn't it, and it can't be best -if it's a married man, can it? Oh! I know I'm saying what Adrienne -wouldn't like, now; because it sounds so worldly and as if I believed in -the French way. But I don't at all. I think love's everything, too. Only -it always seemed to me when I was a girl that love meant white satin and -orange-blossoms; and my poor, poor Meg can never wear those now. I -should feel miserable, quite miserable about her, of course, if Adrienne -weren't here to make me see the big, real things instead of the little -ones. And Barney has been so unkind. Sneering and scoffing at -everything"--her voice quivered. "However, if there's a war, that will -settle it. Barbara couldn't go if there was a war." - - - - -CHAPTER XX - - -The war thus had its uses to Mrs. Chadwick. Barbara did not go to the -Tyrol. By the end of September Oldmeadow and Barney were in training, -one on the Berkshire and one on the Wiltshire downs, and Meg was -ambiguously restored to her family at Coldbrooks. - -Oldmeadow had not seen Barney for many days, when they met one afternoon -at Paddington and travelled together as far as Didcot. They had the -carriage to themselves and though Barney's demeanour was reticent there -were many things about which, it was evident, he found it a relief to be -communicative. It was from him that Oldmeadow learned of Meg's return. - -"She'll be in a pretty box, won't she, if Hayward is killed," he said, -smoking his cigarette and not looking at his friend. "He's over there, -you know, and for my part I think there's very little chance of any of -them coming back alive." - -They both smoked in silence for a little while after this, contemplating -the ordeal in which their country was involved rather than their own -relation to it; but Oldmeadow's mind returned presently to Barney's -difficulties and he asked him if it had been to see Hayward off that -he'd just been up to London. - -Barney, at this, had a quiet sardonic laugh. "Good heavens, no," he -said. "Hayward went in the first week and Adrienne and Palgrave went up -with Meg to see him off. Even if I'd wanted to, I'd have been allowed to -have no hand in that. Adrienne is seeing to it all. Lawyers, money, I -don't know what. No; I went up to spend my leave with old Boyd at his -place in Chelsea. I didn't want to go home. Home is the last place I -want to be just now." - -Oldmeadow at this maintained a silence that could not pretend surprise -and Barney continued in a moment. "Palgrave isn't coming in, you know." - -"You mean he's carrying out his pacifist ideas?" - -"If they are his," said Barney in his colourless yet sardonic voice. -"Any ideas of Palgrave's are likely to be Adrienne's, you know. She got -hold of him from the first." - -"Well, after all," Oldmeadow after another moment felt impelled to say, -"She got hold of you, too. In the same way; by believing in herself and -by understanding you. She thinks she's right." - -"Ha! ha!" laughed Barney and for a moment, an acutely uncomfortable one -for Oldmeadow, he turned his eyes on his friend. "Thinks she's right! -You needn't tell me that, Roger!" - -It had indeed, Oldmeadow felt, hardly been decent of him. - -"I know. Of course she would. But, all the same, people must be allowed -to hold their own opinions." - -"Must they?" said Barney. "At a time like this? Adrienne must, of -course; as a woman she doesn't come into it; she brings other people in, -that is to say, and keeps out herself. Besides she's an American. But -Palgrave shouldn't be allowed the choice. He's dishonouring us all--as -Meg has done. Poor, foolish, wretched Mother! She's seeing it at last, -though she won't allow herself to say it, or, rather, Adrienne won't -allow her--" He checked himself. - -"Dishonour is a strong word, Barney. Palgrave is hardly more than a -boy." - -"Jim Errington is a year younger than Palgrave, and Peter Layard six -months. They're both in. I don't think nineteen is too young to -dishonour your family. If Palgrave committed a murder, he'd be hanged. -But it will no doubt come to conscription and then we'll see where he'll -find himself. Herded in as a Tommy. All this talk of a few months is -folly." - -"I know. Yes. Folly," said Oldmeadow absently. "Have you tried to have -it out with Palgrave, Barney? If he only hears Adrienne's side what can -you expect of him? If you leave them all to sink or swim without you, -you mustn't blame Adrienne for steering as best she can." - -"Sink or swim without me!" Barney echoed. "Why they'd none of them -listen to me. You saw well enough how it was with them that day in July -when you came up. Adrienne is twice as strong as I am when it comes to -anything like a struggle and she has them all firmly under her thumb. -She steers because she intends to steer and intends I shan't. I've tried -nothing with Palgrave, except to keep my hands off him. Mother's talked -to him, and Meg's talked to him; but nothing does any good. Oh, yes; Meg -hangs on Adrienne because she's got nothing else to hang to; but she's -frightfully down on Palgrave all the same. They're all united against -me, but they're not united among themselves by any means. It's not a -peaceful family party at Coldbrooks, I promise you. Poor Mother spends -most of her time shut up in her room crying." - -Barney offered no further information on this occasion and Oldmeadow -asked for no more. It was from Mrs. Aldesey, some weeks later, that he -heard that Eric Hayward had been killed. Mrs. Aldesey was his most -punctual correspondent and her letters, full of pungent, apposite -accounts of how the war was affecting London, the pleasantest -experiences that came to him on the Berkshire downs, where, indeed, he -did not find life unpleasant. Mrs. Aldesey made time for these long -letters after tiring days spent among Belgian refugees and his sense of -comradeship had been immensely deepened by the vast, new experience they -were, from their different angles, sharing. It was difficult, on the -soft October day, to dissociate the mere pleasure of reading her letter -from the miserable news she gave. Yet he knew, stretched at ease after -strenuous exercise, the canvas of his tent idly flapping above him and -the sunlight falling across his feet, that it was very miserable news -indeed and must miserably affect his friends at Coldbrooks. What was to -become of poor Meg now? And after his mind had paused on poor Meg a pang -of memory brought back the face of his setter John. Poor Hayward. - -"She must, of course, find some work at once," Mrs. Aldesey wrote. "The -war does help to solve problems of this sort as nothing else before ever -could. She must nurse, or drive an ambulance and perhaps by the time -it's all over we'll have forgotten irrelevancies that happened so long -ago. Sometimes it feels like that to me and I know I'm much too old to -face the world that will have grown up out of the wreckage of the world -I knew." Mrs. Aldesey, still, always spoke of herself as antique, -relegated and on the shelf. Rather absurd of her, as her friend pointed -out in his reply, when she was obviously one of the people who were -going to make the new world. She was organizing the Belgians in the most -remarkable manner. - -As to Coldbrooks he hesitated. He could hardly see himself writing to -Mrs. Chadwick or to Meg. Of Nancy he felt a little shy. There would be -too much to say to Nancy if he said anything and he allowed the -anonymous calamity that had overtaken his friends to pass without -comment or condolence. But after an interval of some weeks it was from -Nancy herself that he heard. Nancy seemed always to be selected as the -vehicle for other people's emergencies. - -"Dear Roger," she wrote. "You have heard how very unhappy we all are. It -is dreadful to see poor Meg, and Aunt Eleanor makes it really worse for -her. Meg wears mourning, like a widow, and she is terribly bitter about -Palgrave, and about Adrienne, too. Doesn't that seem to you very strange -and unjust? Adrienne is doing for Palgrave what she did for -Meg--standing by him. It is all more unhappy than you can imagine. -Palgrave is at New College, now, you know, and I'm writing, because Aunt -Eleanor's one hope is that you may be able to talk to him. Kindly, you -know, Roger; and not as if you thought him a criminal or a coward; that -is worse than useless, naturally. Palgrave is very arrogant; but you -know what a tender heart he really has and I am sure that he is very -lonely and unhappy. So be kind and understanding, won't you? He really -cares for you and trusts you more than he likes to show; and of course -he would expect you to be against him." - -Oldmeadow was going into Oxford in a week's time and he wrote to -Palgrave and asked him to give him tea. "I've got to talk to you, if -you'll let me," he said, "but I shan't make myself a nuisance, I promise -you. I only want to satisfy myself that you have thought everything out, -and if you have I'll be able to tell your people that they must give up -tormenting themselves and you about it. I shall like talking over your -work with you, too, if I may, and renewing my own Oxford memories." So -conciliatory, so affectionate (and he found it easy to be affectionate -to poor Palgrave) was the tone of the letter that he had a swift reply. -Palgrave would be very glad to see him. - -It was a melancholy, deserted Oxford into which Oldmeadow drove his -little car on a late October afternoon. Most of the youths he saw were -of a nondescript variety, a type to whom Oxford means scholastic -opportunity and nothing more. There were dark-skinned lads from distant -parts of the Empire looking, to Oldmeadow's eye, rather pitiful and -doomed to disappointment, and a hurrying, absorbed little Jap had an -almost empty Broad as a setting for his alien figure. - -Palgrave's name was freshly painted at the bottom of a staircase in the -Garden Quad and Oldmeadow mounted to rooms that most delightfully -overlooked the garden and its catalpa-tree. - -Palgrave was ready for him. The tea was laid and he stood at the table -cutting a cake as Oldmeadow entered. But some one else, too, was ready, -for there, in the window-seat, her gaze fixed on the waning golds and -russets beneath, sat Adrienne Toner. Oldmeadow, very much and very -disagreeably affected, paused at the door. - -"Come in, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, and there was a strange, jaded -eagerness in the gaze she fixed on him. "I've only come for tea. I have -to go directly afterwards. I am staying in Oxford, now, you know. To be -near Palgrave." - -"Meg's turned her out of Coldbrooks," Palgrave announced, standing -still, over the tea-tray, his hands in his pockets while, with bent -head, he looked from under his brows at Oldmeadow. "Meg, you understand; -for whose sake she's gone through everything. We're pariahs together, -now; she and I." - -"It's not quite true or fair to say that, Palgrave," said Adrienne, -whose eyes had returned to the garden. "Meg hasn't turned me out. I felt -it would be happier for her if I weren't there; and for your -Mother--since they feel as they do about what has happened; and happier -for you and me to be together. You can't be surprised at Meg. She is -nearly beside herself with grief." - -Adrienne was very much altered. The magic of the lime-tree scene no -longer lay about her. Her skin was sallow, her eyes sunken, her -projecting mouth was at once stubborn, weary and relaxed. She had been -almost beautiful on that July day and to-day she was definitely ugly. -Oldmeadow saw that some intent inner preoccupation held her thoughts. - -"I _am_ surprised at her; very much surprised," said Palgrave, "though I -might have warned you that Meg wasn't a person worth risking a great -deal for. Oh, yes, she's nearly beside herself all right. She's lost the -man she cared for and she can't, now, ever be made 'respectable.' Oh, I -see further into Meg's grief than you do, my poor Adrienne. She's just -as conventional and unheroic at heart as Mother; and that's what _she_ -minds--more than anything." - -Oldmeadow, sunken in the deep chair Palgrave had drawn for him to the -table, watched the curious interchange, and after a pause, in her jaded -voice, Adrienne from the window-seat commented: "I understand her rage -and misery. It's because her grief is divided and spoiled and tainted -like that that she is distracted." - -"Will you pour out tea?" Palgrave asked her gloomily. "You'll see -anyone's side, always, except your own." - -To this Adrienne, rising and coming forward to the table, made no reply. -She wore a dark dress that recalled to Oldmeadow the one in which he had -first seen her; the short jacket tying across white in front and white -ruffles falling about her neck and hands. A small, dark hat was bent -down about her face. - -Strange, brooding face. What was she thinking of, Oldmeadow wondered, as -he watched her hands, impeded by the falling ruffles, moving with the -old, fumbling gestures among the tea-things; she had constantly to throw -back the ruffles, and the tea-pot, after all, was too heavy for her. It -slipped on one side as she lifted it and the hot tea poured over her -hand. She kept her hold bravely and Oldmeadow rescued her. - -"How stupid I am!" she said, biting her lip. - -"You've scalded your hand," said Palgrave, eyeing her with his air no -longer of rapturous but of gloomy devotion. - -They made Oldmeadow think of comrade political prisoners moving off -together in a convoy to Siberia. There was something as bleak, as -heavy, as uninspired in their aspect. He could not think that Palgrave -could now catch much light or flame from such a companion. They would -trudge through the snow; condemned, but together; to be together was the -best thing, now, that life offered them. - -She said that the scald was nothing and asked to be trusted to go on -with the tea, grasping the handle with resolution. Oldmeadow, however, -standing beside her, insisted on filling the cups for her. - -"You can be allowed to put in the milk and sugar, you see," he said. He -was aware, as he thus succoured and rallied her, of an influx of feeling -like the feeling that came with the uncanny dreams. Here she was, and -reality had caught her. She deserved to be caught, of course; tragic, -meddling Pierrot. But his heart was heavy and gentle; as in his dreams. - -They sat round the table together. On the mantelpiece was a large, -framed photograph of Adrienne; on the walls photographs of a Botticelli -Madonna, a Mantegna from Padua and the da Vinci drawing for the Christ -of the Last Supper. Seeing Oldmeadow's eyes on them Palgrave said: -"Adrienne gave me those. And lots of the books." - -"And don't forget the beautiful cushions, Palgrave," said Adrienne, with -a flicker of her old, contented playfulness. "I'm sure good cushions are -the foundation of a successful study of philosophy." - -The cushions were certainly very good; and very beautiful, as Oldmeadow -commented. "That gorgeous chair, too," said Palgrave. "It ought to make -a Plato of me." - -It was curious, the sense they gave him of trusting him. Were they -aware, if only sub-consciously, that he was feeling Adrienne, her -follies and misdeeds thick upon her, ill-used? Or was it only that they -had come down to such fundamental securities as were left to them and -felt that with him, at all events, they were in the hands of an -impartial judge? - -"It's a happy life Meg and Mother lead at Coldbrooks, as you may -imagine," Palgrave took up the theme that preoccupied him. "They only -see Nancy and Aunt Monica, of course. Barbara is at school and Barney, -as you are probably aware, never comes near his disgraced sister. Would -you believe it, Roger," Palgrave went on, while Oldmeadow saw that a -dull colour crept up to Adrienne's face and neck as her husband was thus -mentioned, "Meg blames Adrienne now for the whole affair! About Eric and -herself! Actually! On the one hand Eric is her hero for whom she'll -mourn for ever and on the other Adrienne is responsible for the fact -that she's not 'respectable' and can't claim to be his widow. Oh, don't -ask me how she contrives to work it out! Women like Meg don't need logic -when they've a thong in their hands and want to use it. And Adrienne's -shoulders are bared for the lash! God! It makes me fairly mad to think -of it!" - -"Please, Palgrave!" Adrienne supplicated in a low voice. She did not -eat. She had drunk her tea and sat looking down at her plate. "Don't -think of it any more. Meg is very, very unhappy. We can hardly imagine -what the misery and confusion of Meg's heart must be." - -"Oh, you'll make excuses for anyone, Adrienne! You're not a shining -example of happiness either, if it comes to that. It's atrocious of Meg -to treat you as she does. Atrocious of her to hold you responsible." - -"But I am responsible," said Adrienne, while the dull flush still dyed -her face. "I've always said that I was responsible. It was I who -persuaded them to go." - -"Yes. To go. Instead of staying and being lovers secretly. I know all -about it. And no doubt Meg would rather it had been so now. And so would -Mother!" Palgrave ground his teeth on a laugh. "That's where morality -lands them! Pretty, isn't it!" - -A silence fell and then Adrienne rose and said that Mr. Jackson would be -waiting for her. "He's coming at half-past five," she said, and, with -his gloomy tenderness, Palgrave informed Oldmeadow that she was reading -logic and Plato; "to keep up with me, you know." - -Adrienne, smiling faintly, laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder as -she went past his chair. "Come in to-night, after dinner, and tell me -what you decide," she said. - -"I'll have no news for you," Palgrave replied. - -Oldmeadow had gone to hold the door open for her and, as she paused -there to give him her hand, he heard her murmur: "Will you come down -with me?" - -"Let me see you to the bottom of the stair," he seized the intimation, -and, as she went before him, she said, still in the low, purposeful -voice, and he felt sure now that this had been her intention in coming -to tea: "It's only so that you shan't think I'll oppose you. If you can -persuade him, I shall not oppose it. I think he's right. But it's too -hard. I mean, I hope you can persuade him that it's right to go." - -She had stepped out on to the threshold at the foot of the stairs and he -paused behind her, astonished. "You want me to persuade him of what you -think wrong?" - -She stood still looking out at the sunny quadrangle. "People must think -for themselves. I don't know who is right or who is wrong. Perhaps I've -influenced Palgrave. Perhaps he wouldn't have felt like this if it -hadn't been for me. I don't know. But if you can make him feel it right -to go, I shall be glad." She stepped out into the quadrangle. - -"You mean," said Oldmeadow, following her, and strangely moved, "that -you'd rather have him killed than stay behind like this?" - -"It would be much happier for him, wouldn't it," she said. "If he could -feel it right to go." - -They were under the arch of the Library, she still going slowly, before -him, and Oldmeadow stopped her there. "Mrs. Barney, forgive me--may I -ask you something?" He had put his hand on her shoulder and she paused -and faced him. "It's something personal, and I've no right to be -personal with you, as I know. But--have you been to see Barney at -Tidworth?" - -As Oldmeadow spoke these Words, Adrienne turned away vehemently, and -then stood still, as though arrested in her impulse of flight by an -irresistible desire to listen. "Barney does not want to see me," she -said, speaking with difficulty. - -"You think so," said Oldmeadow. "And he may think so. But you ought to -see each other at a time like this. He may be ordered to France at any -time now." He could not see her face. - -"Do you mean," she said, after a moment, keeping the rigidity of her -listening poise, "that he won't come to say good-bye?" - -"I know nothing at all," said Oldmeadow. "I can only infer how far the -mischief between you has gone. And I'm most frightfully sorry for it. -I've been sorry for Barney; but now I'm sorry for you, too. I think -you're being unfairly treated. But yours have been the mistakes, Mrs. -Barney, and it's for you to take the first step." - -"Barney doesn't want to see me," she repeated, and she went on, while he -heard, growing in her voice, the note of the old conviction: "He has -made mistakes, too. He has treated me unfairly, too. I can't take the -first step." - -"Don't you love him, then?" said Oldmeadow, and in his voice was the -note of the old harshness. - -"Does he love me?" she retorted, turning now, with sudden fire, and -fixing her eyes upon him. "Why should he think I want to see him if he -doesn't want to see me? Why should I love, if he doesn't? Why should I -sue to Barney?" - -"Oh," Oldmeadow almost groaned. "Don't take that line; don't, I beg of -you. You're both young. And you've hurt him so. You've meant to hurt -him; I've seen it! I've seen it, Mrs. Barney. If you'll put by your -pride everything can grow again." - -"No! no! no!" she cried almost violently, and he saw that she was -trembling. "Some things don't grow again! It's not like plants, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Some things are like living creatures; and they can die. They -can die," she repeated, now walking rapidly away from him out into the -large quadrangle with its grass plot cut across by the late sunshine. He -followed her for a moment and he heard her say, as she went: "It's -worse, far worse, not to mean to hurt. It's worse to care so little that -you don't know when you are hurting." - -"No, it's not," said Oldmeadow. "That's only being stupid; not cruel." - -"It's not thinking that is cruel; it's not caring that is cruel," she -repeated, passionately, half muttering the words, and whether with tears -of fury he could not say. - -He stood still at the doorway. "Good-bye, then," he said. And not -looking behind her, as she went out swiftly into New College Lane, she -answered, still on the same note of passionate protest: "Good-bye, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Good-bye." He watched her small, dark figure hurry along in -the shadow of the wall until the turning hid it from view. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - - -Palgrave, apparently, had formed no conjectures as to their conversation -and was thinking still of Adrienne's wrongs rather than of his own -situation. "Did you take her home?" he said. "I see you're sorry for -her, Roger. It's really too abominable, you know. I really can't say -before her what I think, I really can't say before you what I think of -Barney's treatment of her; because I know you agree with him." - -Oldmeadow felt all the more able, shaken though he was by the interview -below, to remember, because of it, what he thought. "If you mean that I -don't consider Barney in the very least responsible for the death of the -baby, I do agree with him," he said. - -"Apart from that, apart from the baby," said Palgrave, controlling his -temper, it was evident, in his wish to keep the ear of the impartial -judge, "though what the loss of a child means to a woman like Adrienne I -don't believe you can guess; apart from whose was the responsibility, he -ought to have seen, towards the end, at all events, if he'd eyes in his -head and a heart in his breast, that all she asked was to forgive him -and take him back. She was proud, of course. What woman of her power and -significance wouldn't have been? She couldn't be the first to move. But -Barney must have seen that her heart was breaking." - -"Well," said Oldmeadow, taking in, with some perplexity, this new -presentation of Adrienne Toner; "what about his heart? She'd led it a -pretty dance. And you forget that I don't consider she had anything to -forgive him." - -"His heart!" Palgrave echoed scornfully, yet with a sorrowful scorn; "He -mended his heart quick enough. Went and fell in love with Nancy, who -only asks to be let alone." - -"He's always loved Nancy. She's always been like a sister to him. -Adrienne has infected you with her groundless jealousy." - -"Groundless indeed!" Palgrave reached for his pipe and began to stuff it -vindictively. "Nancy sees well enough, poor dear! She's had to keep him -off by any device she could contrive. She's a good deal more than a -sister to him, now. She's the only person in the world for him. You can -call it jealousy if you like. That's only another name for a broken -heart." - -"I don't know what Barney's feeling may be, Palgrave, but I do know, it -was quite plain to me, that Adrienne was jealous long before she had any -ground for jealousy. If Nancy's all Barney's got left now, it's simply -because Adrienne has taken everything else from him. You don't seem to -realize that Adrienne drove him from her with her airs of martyrdom. -Took vengeance on him, too; what else was the plan for Barbara going -abroad with you? I don't want to speak unkindly of her. It's quite true; -I'm sorry for her. I've never liked her so well. But the reason is that -she's beginning, I really believe, to find out that her own feet are of -clay, while her mistake all along has been to imagine herself above -ordinary humanity. All our feet are of clay, and we never get very far -unless we are aware of the weakness in our structure and look out for a -continual tendency to crumble. You don't get over it by pretending you -don't need to walk and imagining you have wings instead of feet." - -Palgrave, drawing stiffly at his pipe during this little homily, -listened, gloomily yet without resentment. "You see, where you make -_your_ mistake--if you'll allow the youthful ass you consider me to say -so--is that you've always imagined Adrienne to be a self-righteous prig -who sets herself up above others. She doesn't; she doesn't," Palgrave -repeated with conviction. "She'd accept the feet of clay if you'll grant -her the heart of flame--for everybody; the wings--for everybody. There's -your mistake, Roger. Adrienne believes that everybody has wings as well -as herself; and the only difference she sees in people is that some have -learned and some haven't how to use them. She may be mortal woman--bless -her--and have made mistakes; but they're the mistakes of flame; not of -earthiness." - -"You are not an ass, Palgrave," said Oldmeadow, after a moment. "You are -wise in everything but experience; and you see deep. Suppose we come to -a compromise. You've owned that Adrienne may make mistakes and I own -that I may misjudge her. I see what you believe about her and I see why -you believe it. I've seen her at her worst, no doubt, and to you she's -been able to show only her best. So let it rest at that. What I came to -talk about, you know, was you." - -"I know," said Palgrave, and he gave a deep sigh. - -"Be patient with me," said Oldmeadow. "After all, we belong to the same -generation. You can't pretend that I'm an old fogey who's lost the -inspirations of his youth and has marched so far down towards the grave -that the new torches coming up over the horizon are hidden from him." - -"That's rather nice, you know, Roger," Palgrave smiled faintly. "No; -you're not an old fogey. But all the same there's not much torch about -you." - -"It's rather sad, isn't it," Oldmeadow mused, "that we should always -seem to begin with torches and then to spend the rest of our lives in -quenching them. It may be, you know, that we're only trying to hold them -straight, so that the wind shan't blow them out. However!--you'll let me -talk. That's the point." - -"Of course you may. You've been awfully decent," Palgrave murmured. - -"Well, then, it seems to me you're not seeing straight," said Oldmeadow. -"It's not crude animal patriotism--as you'd put it--that's asked of you. -It's a very delicate discrimination between ideals." - -"I know! I know!" said Palgrave. The traces of mental anguish were on -his worn young face. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose to -lean against the mantelpiece." I don't suppose I can explain," he said, -staring out at the sky. "I suppose that with me the crude animal thing -is the personal inhibition. I can't do it. I'd rather, far, be killed -than have to kill other men. That's the unreasoning part, the -instinctive part, but it's a part of one's nature that I don't believe -one can violate without violating one's very spirit. I've always been -different, I know, from most fellows of my age and class. I've always -hated sport--shooting and hunting. The fox, the stag, the partridge, -have always spoiled it for me. Oh, I know they have to be killed--poor -brutes! I know that; but I can't myself be the butcher." - -"You'll own, though, that there must be butchers," said Oldmeadow, after -a little meditation. He felt himself in the presence of something -delicate, distorted and beautiful. "And you'll own, won't you, when it -comes to a war like this, when not only our national honour but our -national existence is at stake, that some men must kill others. Isn't it -then, baldly, that you profit, personally, by other people doing what -you won't do? You'll eat spring lamb as long as there are butchers to -kill the lamb for you, and you'll be an Englishman and take from England -all that she has to give you--including Oxford and Coldbrooks--and let -other men do the nasty work that makes the survival of England and -Oxford and Coldbrooks possible. That's what it comes to, you know. -That's all I ask you to look at squarely." - -"I know, I know," Palgrave repeated. He had looked at little else, poor -boy. Oldmeadow saw that. "But that's where the delicate discrimination -between ideals comes in, Roger. That's where I have to leave intuition, -which says 'No,' and turn to reason. And the trouble is that for me -reason says 'No,' too. Because humanity--all of it that counts--has -outgrown war. That's what it comes to. It's a conflict between a -national and an humanitarian ideal. There are enough of us in the world -to stop war, if we all act together; and why, because others don't, -should I not do what I feel right? Others may follow if only a few of us -stand out. If no one stands out, no one will ever follow. And you can't -kill England like that. England is more than men and institutions," -Palgrave still gazed at the sky. "It's an idea that will survive; -perhaps the more truly in the spirit for perishing in the flesh, if it -really came to that. Look at Greece. She's dead, if you like; yet what -existing nation lives as truly? It is Grecian minds we think with and -Grecian eyes we see with. It's Plato's conception of the just man being -the truly happy man--even if the whole world's against him--that is the -very meaning of our refusal to go with the world." - -"You'll never stop war by refusal so long as the majority of men still -believe in it," said Oldmeadow. "There are not enough of you to stop it -now. The time to stop it is before it comes; not while it's on. It's -before it begins that you must bring the rest of humanity not to behave -in ways that make it inevitable. I'm inclined to think that ideas can -perish," he went on, as Palgrave, to this, made no reply, "as far as -their earthly manifestation goes, that is, if enough men and -institutions are destroyed. If Germany could conquer and administer -England, I'm inclined to think the English idea would perish. And war -need not be unspiritual. Killing our fellow-men need not mean hating -them. There's less hatred in war, I imagine, than in some of the -contests of peaceful civilian life. Put it fairly on the ground of -humanitarianism, then, Palgrave; not of nationality. It's the whole -world that is threatened by a hateful idea, by the triumph of all you -most fear and detest, and unless we strive against it with all we are -and have it seems to me that we fall short of our duty not only as -Englishmen, but as humanitarians. Put it at that, Palgrave: would you -really have had England stand by and not lift a finger when Belgium was -invaded and France menaced?" - -Palgrave was not ready with his reply and he turned away while he looked -for it and shuffled the papers on his desk with a nervous hand. "Yes, I -would," he said at last. "Hateful as it is to have to say it--I would -have stood by." He came back to his place at the mantelpiece and looked -down at Oldmeadow as he spoke. "The choice, of course, is hateful; but I -think we should have stood by and helped the sufferers and let France -and Germany fight it out. It always comes back to them, doesn't it? -They're always fighting it out; they always will, till they find it's no -good and that they can't annihilate each other; which is what they both -want to do. Oh, I've read too many of the young French neo-Catholics to -be able to believe that the hateful idea was all on one side. Their -ideals don't differ much, once you strip them of their theological -tinsel, from those of the Germans. Germany happens to be the aggressor -now; but if the militarist party in France had had the chance, they'd -have struck as quickly." - -"The difference--and it's an immense one--is that the militarist party -in France wouldn't have had the chance. The difference is that it -doesn't govern and mould public opinion. It's not a menace to the world. -It's only a sort of splendid pet, kept in a Zoo, for the delectation of -a certain class and party. Whereas Germany's the _bona fide_ hungry -tigress at large. What you really ask of England, Palgrave, is that she -should be a Buddha and lie down and let the tigress, after finishing -France, devour her, too. It really comes to that. Buddhism is the only -logical basis for your position, and I don't believe, however sorry one -may be for hungry tigresses, that the right way to deal with them is to -let them eat you. The Christian philosophy of the incarnation is the -true one. Matter does make a spiritual difference. It does make a -difference, a real difference, that the ideal should be made flesh. It's -important to the world, spiritually, that the man rather than the -tigress should survive." - -"Christ gave his life," said Palgrave, after a moment. - -"I'm not speaking of historical personages; but of eternal truths," said -Oldmeadow. - -But he knew already that he spoke in vain. Palgrave had turned away his -eyes again and on his sad young face he read the fixity of a fanatic -idealism. He had not moved him, though he had troubled him. No one would -move Palgrave. He doubted, now, whether Adrienne herself had had much -influence over him. It was with the sense of pleading a lost cause that -he said, presently, "Adrienne hopes you'll feel it right to go." - -Palgrave at this turned a profound gaze upon him. "I know it," he said. -"Though she's never told me so. It's the weakness of her love, its -yearning and tenderness, not its strength, that makes her want it. -Because she knows it would be so much easier. But she can't go back on -what she's meant to me. It's because of that, in part at all events, -that I've been able to see steadily what I mean to myself. That's what -she helps one to do, you know. Hold to yourself; your true, deep self. -It's owing to her that I can only choose in one way--even if I can't -defend it properly. It seems to come back to metaphysics, doesn't it?" - -"Like everything else," said Oldmeadow. - -"Yes. Like everything else. It would take a four-years' course in Greats -to argue it out, Roger. Come back to me--if you're here and I'm here -then--and we'll see what we can make of it." - -"I will," said Oldmeadow, rising, for the room was growing dark. "And -before that, I hope." - -"After all, you know," Palgrave observed, "England isn't in any danger -of becoming Buddhistic; there's not much nihilism about her, is there, -but hardly much Christianity, either. England has evolved all sorts of -things besides Oxford and Coldbrooks. She's evolved industrialism and -factory-towns." - -"I don't consider industrialism and factory-towns incompatible with -Christianity, you know," Oldmeadow observed. "Good-bye, my dear boy." - -"Good-bye, Roger," Palgrave grasped his hand. "You've been most awfully -kind." - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - - -"Isn't it becoming to him, Mother? And how tall he looks!" said Nancy, -holding Oldmeadow off in his khaki for displayal. - -He had only written a line of his failure and that he would come as soon -as he could and see them all and tell in full of his interview with -Palgrave. And he had motored over to The Little House this afternoon in -early November. - -Nancy was showing an unexpected gaiety. "What a nice grilled-salmon -colour you are, too," she said. - -He divined the self-protective instinct under the gaiety. Most of the -women in England were being gayer and more talkative at this time, in -order to keep up. Nancy was thin and white; but she was keeping up. And -she had put on a charming dress to receive him in. - -"I've been grilled all right; out on the downs," he said. "But it's more -like cold storage just now, with these frosts at night. Yes; the big -cup, please. I'm famished for tea. Ah! that's something like! It smells -like your rose outside. I sniffed it as I waited at the door. Wonderful -for such a late blooming." - -"Isn't it," said Mrs. Averil. "And I only put it in last autumn. It's -doing beautifully; but I've cherished it. And now tell us about -Palgrave." - -He felt reluctant to tell about Palgrave. The impression that remained -with him of Palgrave was that impression of beauty and distortion and he -did not want to have to disentangle his feelings or to seem to put -Palgrave in the wrong. It was so sweet, too, after the long, chilly -drive over the empty uplands, to sit here and forget the war, although -it was for scenes like this, for girls like Nancy, women like Mrs. -Averil--with so much else--that the war was so worth fighting. He turned -his thoughts back to the realities that underlay the happy appearances -and was aware, as he forced himself to tell, of what must seem a note of -advocacy in his voice. "He can't think differently, I'm afraid," he -said. "It's self-sacrifice, not selfishness, that is moving him." - -"He can't think differently while Adrienne is living there," said Mrs. -Averil. "He didn't tell you, I suppose, that she has now taken up her -abode in Oxford in order to study philosophy with him?" - -He was rather uncomfortably aware of the disingenuousness that must now -be made apparent in his avoidance of all mention of Adrienne. - -"I saw her," he said, and he knew that it was lamely. "She was there -when I got there." - -"You saw her!" Mrs. Averil exclaimed. "But then, of course you didn't -convince him. I might have known it. Of course she would not let you see -him alone." - -"But she did let me see him alone. That was what she wanted. And she was -there only in order to tell me what she wanted. She wants him to go." - -Mrs. Averil was eyeing him with such astonishment that he turned to -Nancy with his explanations. But Mrs. Averil would not leave him to -Nancy's sympathy. "It's rather late in the day for her to want him to -go," she said. "She may be sorry for what she's done; but it's her -work." - -"Well, she's sorry for her work. That's what it comes to. And I'm sorry -for her," said Oldmeadow. - -"Good heavens! The cleverness of that woman!" Mrs. Averil exclaimed. "If -she can't be powerful, she'll be pitiful! She's worked on your feelings; -I can see that, Roger. And I thought you, at least, were immune. Well; -she does not work on mine. I am not in the least sorry for her." - -"She's being unfairly treated," said Oldmeadow. "It's grotesque that Meg -should have turned upon her." - -"And Eleanor has, too, you know," said Mrs. Averil. "It's grotesque, if -you like; but I see a grim justice in it. She made them do things and -believe things that weren't natural to them and now she's lost her power -and they see things as they are." - -"It's because she's failed that they've turned against her," said Nancy. -"If she'd succeeded they would have gone on accepting what she told them -and making her their idol." - -"Adrienne mustn't fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only justification -for Adrienne is to be in the right. If the blood of Saint Januarius -doesn't liquefy, why should you keep it in a shrine? She's a woman who -has quarrelled with her husband and disgraced her sister and -brother-in-law, and broken her mother-in-law's heart. You can't go on -making an idol of a saint who behaves like that." - -"She never claimed worldly success," said Nancy. "She never told Meg to -go so that she could get married afterwards; she never told Palgrave -that war was wrong because it was easier not to fight." - -"Oh, yes, she did claim worldly success, really," said Mrs. Averil, -while her eyes rested on her daughter with a tenderness that contrasted -with her tone. "Her whole point was that if you were right -spiritually--'poised' she called it, you remember--all those other -things would be added unto you. I've heard her claim that if you were -poised you could get anything you really wanted. I asked her once if I -should find a ten-pound note under the sofa-cushion every morning after -breakfast if I could get poised sufficiently!" Mrs. Averil laughed, -still more dryly while she still maintained her tender gaze and Nancy -said, smiling a little: "She might have put it there for you if she'd -been sure you were poised." - -"Well, let us bury Adrienne for the present," said Mrs. Averil. "Tell -Roger about your nursing plans. She may go to London, Roger, this -winter, and I'm to be left alone." - -"You're to be left to take care of Aunt Eleanor, if I do go," said -Nancy; and Mrs. Averil said that there must certainly be some one left -to take care of poor Eleanor. - -Oldmeadow went up to Coldbrooks next morning. The first person he saw -was old Johnson at the door and he remembered Eleanor Chadwick's griefs -on his account. Nothing, now, could have been kept from Johnson and his -face bore the marks of the family calamities. He was aged and whitened -and his voice had armed itself, since the downfall of his grave, -vicarious complacency, with solemn cadences. - -"Yes, sir. The ladies will be very glad to see you, sir. These are sad -days for them--the family dispersed as it is." - -Johnson defined the situation as he felt that it could be most fittingly -defined and Oldmeadow inwardly applauded his "dispersed." - -The drawing-room, into which Johnson ushered him, had, for the first -time in his memory of it, a mournful air. It had always been shabby, and -these were the same faded chintzes, the same worn rugs; but now, -fireless and flowerless, it neither spoke nor smiled and, with the sense -it gave of an outlived epoch, it was almost spectral. The photographs -all looked like the photographs of dead people and the only similitude -of life was the loud, silly ticking of the French clock on the -mantelpiece; Mrs. Chadwick's cherished clock; one of her -wedding-presents. - -"I'm afraid it's rather chilly, sir," said Johnson. "No one has sat here -of an evening now for a long time." He put a match to the ranged logs, -drew the blinds up farther so that the autumnal sunlight might more -freely enter, and left him. - -Oldmeadow went to the window and turned over the magazines, a month old, -that lay on a table there. - -He was standing so when Meg entered, and she had half the length of the -room to traverse before they met. She was in black, in deep black; but -more beautiful than he had ever seen her; her tossed auburn locks bound -low on her forehead with a black ribbon, her white throat upright, her -eyes hard with their readiness, their resource. Beautiful and -distressing. It distressed him terribly to see that hardness in her -eyes. - -"How do you do, Roger," she said, giving him her hand. "It's good to see -you. Mother will be glad." - -They seated themselves on one of the capacious sofas and she questioned -him quickly, competently, while the hard eyes seemed to measure him lest -he measure her. It was almost the look of the _declassee_ woman who -forestalls withdrawal in an interlocutor. But, as he answered her -quietly, his fond regard upon her, her defences began to fall. "It's the -only life, a soldier's, isn't it?" she said. "At all times, really. But, -at a time like this, anything else seems despicable, doesn't it; -contemptibly smug and safe. The uniform is so becoming to you. You look -a soldier already. One feels that men will trust and follow you. Didn't -you burn with rage and shame, too, when, for those four days, it seemed -we might not come in?" - -"I felt too sure we should come in, to burn with rage and shame," said -Oldmeadow. - -"Ah! but it was not so sure, I'm afraid," said Meg, and in her eyes, no -longer hard, wild lights seemed to pass and repass. "I'm afraid that -there are nearly enough fools and knaves in England to wreck us. Not -quite enough, thank heaven! But, for those four days, Eric was terribly -afraid. He was killed, you know, Roger, very splendidly, leading his -men." - -"I know, Meg. My dear Meg," Oldmeadow murmured. - -"Oh! I don't regret it! I don't regret it!" Meg cried, while her colour -rose and her young breast lifted. "It's the soldier's death! The -consecrating, heroic death! He was ready. And deaths like that -atone--for the others. He was not killed instantaneously, Roger." - -"I didn't know," said Oldmeadow, looking at her with a pitying, troubled -gaze. - -"He lived for a day and night afterwards," said Meg, looking back, -tearless. "They carried him to a barn. Only his man was with him. There -was no one to dress his dreadful wound; no food. The man got him some -water, at the risk of his own life. He was conscious until the end and -he suffered terribly." - -Oldmeadow dropped his eyes before her fierce stare while, strangely, -dimly, there passed through his mind the memory of the embarrassed, -empty, handsome young face in the brougham and, again, the memory of his -dog John. He had seen John die and his eyes of wistful appeal. So Eric -Hayward's eyes might have looked as he lay in the barn dying. - -"Oh, Roger!" Meg said suddenly, seizing his hand. "Kill them! Kill them! -Oh, revenge him! I was not with him! Think of it! I would have had no -right to have been with him--had it been possible. I did not know till a -week later. He was buried there. His man buried him." - -"My poor, poor child," said Oldmeadow, clasping her hands. - -But, at once, taking refuge from his pity and from her own desperate -pain: "So you've seen Palgrave," she said. "And he isn't going. I knew -it was useless. I told Mother it was useless--with that stranger--that -American, with him. She has disgraced us all.--Wretched boy! Hateful -woman!" - -"Meg, Meg; be soldierly. He wouldn't have spoken like that." - -"He never liked her! Never!" she cried. "I knew he didn't, even at the -time she was flattering and cajoling us. I saw that she bewildered him -and that he accepted her only because she was mine. How I loathe myself -for having listened to her! How I loathe her! All that she ever wanted -was power! Power over other people's lives! She'd commit any crime for -that!" - -"You seem to me cruelly unfair," he said. - -"No! no! I'm not unfair! You know I'm not!" she cried. "You always saw -the truth about her--from the very beginning. You never fell down and -worshipped her, like the rest of us. And she knew that you were her -enemy and warned us against you. Oh--why did Barney marry her!" - -"I never worshipped her; but I never thought her base and hateful." - -"You never knew her as I did; that was all. And I never knew her until I -came back and found her doing to Palgrave what she had done to us. -Paladin! Did you hear her call him Paladin? Always flattery! Always to -make one think one was wonderful, important, mysterious! She forced us -to go away, Roger. Sometimes I think it was hypnotism; that she uses her -will-power consciously. We did not want to go. We did not want the -divorce and the scandal." - -"What did you want, then, Meg?" - -She felt the gravity of his tone but, like a fierce Maenad, she snatched -at the torch, not caring how it revealed her. "What of it! What if we -had been secret lovers! Who would have known! Who would have been -harmed! Some people go on for years and years. His wife loved another -man. He had no one. Why should we have been pushed--such pitiful fools -we were--into displaying our love to the world and being crushed by it! -Oh, he was so loyal, so brave; but it made him very, very unhappy. Oh, I -was cruel to him sometimes! I used to reproach him sometimes! Oh, Roger! -Roger!--" She broke into wild tears and stumbled to her feet. - -As she reached the door, covering her face with her hands, her mother -opened it and, meeting her on the threshold, Meg, with almost the effect -of beating her aside with the other impediments to her rage and grief, -pushed past her so that the knitting Mrs. Chadwick held was flung to the -floor, the ball of khaki wool running rapidly away under a sofa and the -socks and needles dangling at her feet. - -She stood looking down at them with a curious apathy and, as Oldmeadow -went to help and greet her, he saw that as much as Meg was wild she was -dulled and quiet. - -"Meg is so very, very violent," she said, as he disentangled the wool -and restored her sock and ball to her. She spoke with listlessness -rather than sympathy. - -"Poor child," said Oldmeadow. "One can hardly wonder at it. But it makes -a wretched existence for you, I'm afraid. You and she oughtn't to be -alone together." - -He drew her to a chair and, seating herself, her faded face and eyes -that had lost their old look of surprise turned to the light, Mrs. -Chadwick assented, "It's very fatiguing to live with, certainly. -Sometimes I really think I must go away for a little while and have a -change. Nancy would come and stay with Meg, you know. But I can't miss -Barney's last weeks. He comes to us, now, again. And it might not be -right to leave Meg. One must not think of oneself at a time like this, -must one?" The knitting lay in her lap and she was twisting and -untwisting her handkerchief after her old fashion; but her fingers -moved slowly and without agitation and Oldmeadow saw that some spring of -life in her had been broken. - -"The best plan would be that Meg should, as soon as possible, take up -some work," he said, "and that you and Nancy should go away. Work is the -only thing for Meg now. She'll dash herself to pieces down here; and you -with her. There'll soon be plenty to do. Nursing and driving -ambulances." - -"Nancy is going to nurse, you know," said Mrs. Chadwick. "But she won't -go as long as we need her here. She has promised me that. I don't know -what I should do without Nancy. I shouldn't care to be nursed by Meg -myself, if I were a wounded soldier. She is so very restless and would -probably forget quite simple things like giving one a handkerchief or -seeing that hot-water-bottles were wrapped up before she put them to -one's feet. A friend of mine--Amy Hatchard--such a pretty woman, though -her hair was bright, bright red--and I never cared for that--had the -soles of her feet nearly scorched off once by a careless nurse. Dear -Nancy. I often think of Nancy now, Roger. I believe, you know, that if -Adrienne had not come Nancy and Barney might have married. How happy we -should all have been; though she has so little money." - -"I wish you could all think a little more kindly of Adrienne," said -Oldmeadow after a silence. Mrs. Chadwick had begun to knit. "I must tell -you that I myself feel differently about her." - -"Do you, Roger?" said Mrs. Chadwick, without surprise. "You have a very -judicious and balanced mind, I know; even when you were hardly more -than a boy Francis noticed it and said that he'd rather go by your -opinion than by that of most of the men he knew. I always remembered -that, afterwards. Till she came. And then I believed in her rather than -in you. You thought us all far too fond of her from the very first. And -now we have certainly changed. Meg is certainly very violent; much more -violent than I could ever be.... I am sorry for Adrienne. I don't think -she meant to do us any harm--as Meg believes." - -"She only meant to do you good, I am sure of it. I saw her in Oxford, -let me tell you about it, when I went in to see Palgrave. She is very -unhappy. She wants Palgrave to go. She wants him to feel it right to go. -It's not she, really, who is keeping him back now." - -"My poor Palgrave. Meg is very unkind about him; very bitter and unkind; -her own brother. But it was very wrong of Adrienne to go and set up -housekeeping in Oxford near him. You must own that, Roger. She may not -be keeping him back; but she is aiding and abetting him always. It made -Barney even more miserable and disgusted than he was before. And it -looks so very odd. Though I don't think that anyone could ever gossip -about Adrienne. There is something about her that makes that -impossible." - -"There certainly is. I am glad she is with Palgrave, poor boy." - -"I am glad you are sorry for him, Roger"--Mrs. Chadwick dropped a -needle. "How clumsy I am. My fingers seem all to have turned to thumbs. -Thank you so much. I try to make as many socks as I can for our poor -men; fingering wool; not wheeling, which is so much rougher to the -feet. I'm sure I'd rather march, and, if it came to that, die in -fingering than in wheeling. Just as I've always felt, foolish as it may -sound, that if I had to be drowned I'd rather it were in warm, soapy -water than in cold salt. Not that one is very likely, ever, to drown in -one's bath. But tell me about Adrienne and Palgrave, Roger, and what -they said." - -Mrs. Chadwick's discourse seemed, beforehand, to make anything he might -have to tell irrelevant and, even while he tried to make her see what he -had seen, he felt it to be a fruitless effort. - -There was indeed no enmity to plead against. Only a deep exhaustion. -Adrienne had pressed too heavily on the spring and it was broken. - -"I'm sure she is very sorry to have made so much mischief, but she isn't -what I thought her, Roger," she said, shaking her head, when he had -finished. "I'm sorry for her, but I used to believe her to be a sort of -saint and now I know that she is very far indeed from being one." - -"The mere fact of failure doesn't deprive you of sainthood," said -Oldmeadow, remembering Nancy's plea. "You haven't less reason now than -you had then for believing her one." - -But even with her broken spring Mrs. Chadwick had not lost all her -shrewdness. It flickered in the sad eyes she lifted from the khaki sock. -"Some kinds of failure do, Roger. That gift of healing, you remember; -all she could do for people in that way; she has quite, quite lost it. -That is a reason. It's that more than anything that has made me feel -differently about her." - -"Lost it?" He felt strangely discomposed, little as the gift of healing -had ever impressed him. - -"Quite," Mrs. Chadwick repeated. "I think it distressed her dreadfully -herself. I think she counted upon it more than upon anything, perhaps -without knowing she did. It must have made her seem so sure to herself, -mustn't it? The first time was before the war, just a little after you -were here that day in the summer--dear me, how long ago it seems; and I -had one of my headaches, one of the worst I ever had. I was so -dreadfully troubled, you know, about Barbara and Meg. And Adrienne came -and sat by me as she used to and put her hand on my forehead; and I know -it wasn't my lack of faith, for I quite believed it would get well; but -instead of the peaceful feeling, it grew much worse; oh, _much_. As if -red hot needles were darting through my eyes and an iron weight pressing -down on my head. And such tumult and distress. I had to tell her. I had -to ask her to take away her hand. Oh, she felt it very much, poor thing, -and grew very white and said it must be because she was still not -strong; not quite herself. But I knew then that it was because she was -not _right_; not what I had thought her. I began to suspect, from that -very moment, that I had been mistaken; because hypnotizing people isn't -the same as being a saint, is it, Roger? and--I think you said so once, -long ago; and that was all that she had done; hypnotized us all to think -her good and wonderful. Later on, after Meg had come, I let her try once -more, though it quite frightened me; she looked so strange. And!--oh, -dear--it was dreadful. It distressed me dreadfully. She suddenly put her -hands before her face and sat quite still and then she burst into tears -and got up and ran out of the room, crying. It made me feel quite ill. -And of course I knew there could be nothing saintly about a person who -made you feel like that--who could feel like that themselves, and break -down." - -"Even saints have their times of darkness and dryness," Oldmeadow found -after a little time had passed. The picture she put before him hurt him. -"It was an error of judgment to have believed her a saint because she -could hypnotize you--if that was what it was; but the fact that she -can't hypnotize you any longer--that she's too unhappy to have any power -of that sort--doesn't prove she's not a saint. Of course she's not. Why -should she be?" - -"I'm sure I don't know why she should be; but she used to behave as if -she were one, didn't she? And when I saw that she wasn't one in that way -I began to see that she wasn't in other ways, too. It was she who made -me so unjust, so unkind to poor Barney. _She_ was so unjust and so -unkind; and I never saw it till then. I was blind till then; though you -saw very well, that day you came to Connaught Square, that it was a sort -of spell she cast. It was a spell, Roger. The moment I saw her, after -the baby's death, I forgot everything she'd done and felt I loved her -again. She willed me to. So as to get power over me. Everything, always, -with her, was to get power over other people's lives," said Mrs. -Chadwick, and as he had, in the past, heard echoes of Adrienne in all -she said, now he heard echoes of Meg, "It's by willing it, you know. -Some people practise it like five-finger exercises. You have to sit -quite still and shut your eyes and concentrate. Meg has heard how it's -done. I don't pretend to understand; but that must have been her way. -And she made poor Barney miserable and set me against him at once; you -said so yourself, Roger, and blinded me to all the cruel things she did. -It was to punish him, you know. To make him feel he was dreadfully wrong -and she quite right; about Meg, and everything else; for you came in, -too. It used to be so dreadful at Torquay. I knew it would be sad there; -but I never guessed how sad it would be--with that horrid blue, blue -sea. She used to sit, day after day, on the terrace of the house, and -gaze and gaze at the sea and if Barney would come, so lovingly, and ask -her what he could do for her and take her hand, oh, it was more and more -mournful, the way she would look at him; that dreadful, loving look that -didn't mean love at all, but only trying to break him down and make him -_say_ that he was down. I begged Barney's pardon, Roger, for having -treated him as I did. We treated him dreadfully, all of us; because she -put him, always, in the wrong. Oh, no, Roger, I'm sorry for her, but -she's a dangerous woman; or _was_ dangerous. For now she has lost it all -and has become like everybody else; quite ordinary and unhappy." - -He felt, in the little silence that, again, followed, that he could -hardly better this summing-up. That was precisely what poor Adrienne -Toner had become; ordinary and unhappy. The two things she would have -believed herself least capable of becoming. There was nothing to be -gained in urging extenuating circumstances, especially since he was not -sure that there were any. Mrs. Chadwick, at bottom, saw as clearly as he -did. He asked her presently, leaving the theme of Adrienne, whether she -would not seriously consider going away for a little while with Nancy. -"Meg could go down to The Little House," he said. - -"Oh, no, she couldn't, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick, "she won't go -anywhere. She'll hardly speak to Monica. She just sits out-of-doors, all -day, wrapped in a cloak, in the corner of the garden, staring in front -of her, and she pays not the slightest attention to anything I say. And -at night, in her room, I hear her sobbing, sobbing, as if her heart -would break. I can't think hardly of Eric any longer, Roger. Isn't it -strange; but it's almost as if he were my son that had been killed. And -Barney may be killed," the poor mother's lip and chin began to tremble. -"And you, too, Roger. I don't know how we shall live through all that we -must bear and I keep thinking of the foolish little things, like your -having cold feet and wearing the same clothes day after day in those -horrible trenches. He suffered it all, poor Eric. No, I can't think -hardly of him. All the same," she sobbed, "my heart is broken when I -remember that they can never be married now." - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - - -"That's the way Mummy surprises one," said Barney as he and Oldmeadow -went together through the Coldbrooks woods. "One feels her, usually, -such a darling goose and then, suddenly, she shows one that she can be a -heroine." - -Barney was going to France in two days' time and Oldmeadow within the -fortnight, and the Coldbrooks good-byes had just been said. It had been -poor Meg who had broken down and clung and cried. Mrs. Chadwick had, to -the very last, talked with grave cheerfulness of Barney's next leave and -given wise advice as if he had been merely leaving them for a rather -perilous mountain-climbing feat. Oldmeadow could hardly believe her the -same woman that he had seen ten days before. - -He was staying at The Little House and had come up on this afternoon of -Barney's departure to join him at Coldbrooks and walk down with him. -Barney had not yet seen or said good-bye to Nancy and her mother, and -Oldmeadow had seized this, his only chance, of a talk with him. But, as -they left the woods and began to climb the bare hill-side, Barney went -on: - -"I've wanted a talk, too, Roger. I'm glad you managed this." - -"It doesn't rob anyone of you, does it," said Oldmeadow. "We'll get to -Chelford in time to give you a good half-hour with them before your car -comes for you." - -"That will be enough for Nancy," said Barney. "The less she sees of me, -the better she's pleased. I've lots of things I want to say, Roger. Of -course you understand that in every way it's a relief to be going out." - -"It settles things; or seems to settle them," said Oldmeadow. "They take -another place at all events." - -"Yes; just that. They take another place. What difference does it make, -after all, if a fellow has made a mess of his personal life when his -personal life has ceased to count. I'm not talking mawkish sentiment -when I say I hope I'll be killed--if I can be of some use first. I see -no other way out of it. I'm sorry for Adrienne, after a fashion, for -she's dished herself, too. We made a hopeless mistake in getting married -and she knows it as well as I do; and when a man and woman don't love -each other any longer it's the man's place to get out if he can." - -"It was about Adrienne I wanted to talk to you, Barney." For the first -time in their long friendship Oldmeadow felt that he spoke to an equal. -Barney had at last ceased to be a boy. "I've seen her, since seeing you -that last time in the train." - -"Well?" Barney inquired, as Oldmeadow paused. "What have you got to say -to me about Adrienne, Roger? You've not said very much, from the -beginning; but everything you have said has been true and I've forgotten -none of it. I'm the more inclined," and he smiled with a slight -bitterness, "to listen to you now." - -"That's just the trouble," Oldmeadow muttered. "You've forgotten -nothing. That's what I feel, with remorse. That it was I who helped to -spoil things for you both, from the beginning. You'd not have seen her -defects as you did if I hadn't shown them to you; and if you hadn't seen -them you'd have adjusted yourselves to each other and have found them -out together. She'd not have resented your finding them out in the -normal course of your shared lives. It's been my opinion of her, in the -background of both your minds, that has envenomed everything." - -Barney listened quietly. "Yes," he assented. "That's all true enough. As -far as it goes. I mightn't have seen if you hadn't shown me. But I can't -regret you did show me, for anything else would have been to have gone -through life blind; as blind as Adrienne is herself. And it's because -she can't stand being seen through that she revealed so much more; so -much that you didn't see and that I had to find out for myself. What you -saw was absurdity and inexperience; they're rather loveable defects; I -think I accepted them from the beginning, because of all the other -things I believed in her. You said, too, you remember, that she'd never -know she was wrong. Well, it's worse than that. She'll never know she's -wrong and she won't bear it that you should think her anything but -right. She's rapacious. She's insatiable. Nothing but everything will -satisfy her. You must be down on your knees, straight down, before her; -and if you're not, she has no use for you. She turns to stone and you -break your head and your heart against her. It's hatred Adrienne has -felt for me, Roger, and I'm afraid I've felt it for her, too. She's done -things and said things that I couldn't have believed her capable of; -mean things; clever things; cruelly clever that get you right on the -raw; things I can't forget. There's much more in her than you saw at the -beginning. I was right rather than you about that; only they weren't -the things I thought." - -Oldmeadow walked, cutting at the withered way-side grasses with his -cane. Barney's short, slow sentences seemed to sting him as they came. -He had to adjust himself to their smart; to adjust himself to the -thought of this malignant Adrienne. Yet what he felt was not all -surprise; he had foreseen, suspected, even this. "I know," he said at -last; "I mean, I can see that it would happen just like that." - -"It did happen just like that," said Barney. "I don't claim to have been -an angel or anything like one. I gave her as good as I got, or nearly, -sometimes, no doubt. But I know that it wasn't my fault. I know it was -Adrienne who spoiled everything." - -They had come out now on the upland road. The country dropped away -beneath them wrapped in the dull mole-colour, the distant, dull -ultramarines of the November afternoon. The smell of burning weeds was -in the air and, in the west, a long, melancholy sheet of advancing -rain-cloud hid the sun. Oldmeadow wondered if he and Barney would ever -walk there together again, and his mind plunged deep into the past, the -many years of friendship to which this loved country had been a -background. - -"Barney," he said, "what I wanted to say is this: All that you feel is -true; I'm sure of it. But other things are true, too. I've seen her and -I've changed about her. If I was right before, I'm right now. She's been -blind because she didn't know she could be broken. Well, she's beginning -to break." - -"Is she?" said Barney, and his quiet was implacable. "I can quite -imagine that, you know. Everyone, except poor Palgrave--all the rest of -us, have found out that she's not the beautiful benignant being she -thought she was, and that bewilders her and makes her pretty wretched, -no doubt." - -Oldmeadow waited a moment. "I want you to see her," he said. "Don't be -cruel. You are a little cruel, you know. It's because you are thinking -of her abstractly; remembering only how she has hurt you. If you could -see her, see how unhappy she is, you'd feel differently. That's what I -want you to do. That's what I beg you to do, Barney." - -"I can't," said Barney after a moment. "That I can't do, Roger. It's -over. She might want me back if she could get me back adoring her. It's -only so she'd want me. But it's over. It's more than over. There's -something else." Barney's face showed no change from its sad fixity. -"You were right about that, too. It's Nancy I ought to have married. -It's Nancy I love. And Adrienne knows it." - -At this there passed before Oldmeadow's mind the memory of the small, -dark, hurrying figure, the memory of the words she had spoken: "Some -things are like living creatures; and they can die. They can die." - -He felt rather sick. "In that case, how can you blame your wife?" he -muttered. "Doesn't that explain it all?" - -"No, it doesn't explain it all." There was no fire of self-justification -in Barney's voice. It was as fixed and sad as his face. "It was only -after Adrienne made me so wretched I began to find it out. She was -jealous of Nancy from the beginning, of course. But then she was jealous -of everything that wasn't, every bit of it, hers. She had no reason for -jealousy. No man was ever more in love than I was with Adrienne. Even -now I don't feel for Nancy what I felt for her. It's something, I -believe, one only feels once and if it burns out it burns out for ever. -With Nancy, it's as if I had come home; and Adrienne and I were parted -before I knew that I was turning to her." - -They had begun the final descent into Chelford and the wind now brought -a fine rain against their faces. Neither spoke again until the grey -roofs of the village came into sight at a turning of the road. "About -money matters, Roger," Barney said. "Mother and Meg and Barbara. If you -get through, and I don't, will you see to them for me? I've appointed -you my trustee. I told Adrienne last summer that I couldn't take any of -her money any longer, so that, of course, with my having thrown up the -city job and taken on the farms, my affairs are in a bit of a mess. But -I hope they'll be able to go on at Coldbrooks all right. Palgrave will -have Coldbrooks if I don't come back, and perhaps you'll be able to -prevent him handing it over to his Socialist friends." - -"Palgrave would be safely human if it came to taking care of his mother -and sisters," said Oldmeadow. - -"Would he?" said Barney. "I don't know." - -Across the village green the lights of The Little House shone at them. -The curtains were still undrawn and, as they waited at the door, they -could see Nancy in the drawing-room, sitting by the fire alone. - -"I want you to come in with me, please, Roger," said Barney. "Nancy -hasn't felt it right to be very kind to me of late and she'll be able -to be kinder if you are there. You'll know, you'll see if a chance comes -for me to say what I want to say to her. You might leave us for a moment -then." - -"You have hardly more than a half-hour, you know," said Oldmeadow. - -"One can say a good deal in a half-hour," Barney replied. - -Nancy had risen and, as they entered, she came forward, trying to smile -and holding out her hand to each. But Oldmeadow was staying there. He -was not going in half an hour. There was no reason why Nancy should give -him her hand and Barney, quietly, took both her hands in his. "It's -good-bye, then, Nancy, isn't it?" he said. - -They stood there in the firelight together, his dear young people, both -so pale, both so fixedly looking at each other, and Nancy still tried to -smile as she said, "It's dear of you to have come." But her face -betrayed her. It was sick with the fear that, in conquering her own -heart, she should hurt Barney's; Barney's, whom she might never see -again. Oldmeadow went on to the fire and stood, his back to them, -looking down at it. - -"Oh, no, it's not; not dear at all," Barney returned. "You knew I'd come -to say good-bye, of course. Why haven't you been over to see me, you and -Aunt Monica? I've asked you often enough." - -"You mustn't scold me to-day, Barney, since it's good-bye. We couldn't -come," said Nancy. - -"It's never I who scold you. It's you who scold me. Not openly, I know," -said Barney, "but by implication; punish me, by implication. I quite -understood why you haven't come. Well, I want things to be clear now. -Roger's here, and I want to say them before him, because he's been in it -all since the beginning. It's because of Adrienne you've never come; and -changed so much in every way towards me." - -He had kept her hands till then, but Oldmeadow heard now that she drew -away from him. For a moment she did not speak; and then it was not to -answer him. "Have you said good-bye to her, Barney?" - -"No; I haven't," Barney answered. "I'm not going to say good-bye to -Adrienne, Nancy. It must be plain to you by this time that Adrienne and -I have parted. What did it all mean but that?" - -"It didn't mean that to her. She never dreamed it was meaning that," -said Nancy. - -"Well, she said it, often enough," Barney retorted. - -"Barney, please listen to me," said Nancy. "You must let me speak. She -never dreamed it was meaning that. If she was unkind to you it was -because she could not believe it would ever mean parting. She had -started wrong; by holding you to blame; after the baby; when you and -Roger so hurt her pride. And then she wasn't able to go back. She wasn't -able to see it all so differently--just to get you back. It would have -seemed wrong to her; a weakness, just because she longed so. And then, -most of all, she believed you loved her enough to come of yourself." - -"I tried to," said Barney, in the sad, bitter voice of the hill-side -talk with Oldmeadow. "You see, you don't know everything, Nancy, though -you know so much. I tried to again and again." - -"Yes. I know you did. But only on your own terms. And by then I had come -in. Oh, yes, I had, Barney. You didn't know it. It was long, long before -you knew. But I knew it; and so did she and it was more than she could -bear. What woman could bear it? I couldn't have, in her place." Tears -were in Nancy's voice. - -"It's queer, Nancy," said Barney, "that--barring Palgrave, who doesn't -count--you and Roger are the only two people she has left to stick up -for her. Roger's just been saying all that to me, you know. The two she -tried to crab whenever she got a chance. Well, say it's my fault, then. -Say that I've been faithless to my wife and fallen in love with another -woman. The fact is there, and you've said it now yourself. I don't love -her any longer. I shall never love her again. And I love you. I love -you, Nancy, and it's you I ought to have married; would have married, I -believe, if I hadn't been a blinded fool. I love you, and I can say it -now because this may be the end of everything. Don't let her spoil this, -too. Nancy darling, look at me. Can't you consent to forget Adrienne for -this one time, when we may never see each other again?" - -"I can't forget her! I can't forget her!" Nancy sobbed. "I mustn't. -She's miserable. She hasn't stopped loving you. And she's your wife." - -"Do you want to make me hate her?" - -"Oh, Barney--that is cruel of you." - -There was a silence and in it Oldmeadow heard Barney's car draw up at -the gate. He took out his watch. There were only a few more moments left -them. Not turning to them he said. "It does her no good, you know, Nancy -dear." - -"No. It does her no good," Barney repeated. "But forgive me. I was -cruel. I don't hate her. I'm sorry for her. It's simply that we ought -never to have married. Forget it, Nancy, and forget her. Don't let it -be, then, that I love you and don't love my wife. Let it be in the old -way. As if she'd never come. As if I'd come to say good-bye to my -cousin; to my dearest friend on earth. Look at me. Give me your hands. -It's your face I want to take with me." - -"Five minutes, Barney," Oldmeadow whispered, as he went past them. Nancy -had given him her hands; she had lifted her face to his, and Barney's -arms had closed around her. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - - -Mrs. Averil was in the hall. "Give them another moment," he said. "I'm -going outside." - -Tears were in his own eyes. He stepped out on to the flagged path of the -little plot in front of the house where strips of turf and rose-beds ran -between the house and the high wall. Between the clipped holly-trees at -the gate he saw Barney's car, and its lights, the wall between, cast a -deep shadow over the garden. - -The rain was falling thickly now and he stood, feeling it on his face, -filled with a sense of appeasement, of accomplishment. They were -together at last. It was not too late. At such a time, when all the -world hung on the edge of an abyss, to be together for a moment might -sum up more of real living than many happy years. They knew each other's -hearts and what more could life give its creatures than that -recognition. - -Suddenly, how he did not know, for there was no apparent movement and -his eyes were fixed on the pallid sky, he became aware that a figure was -leaning against the house in the shadow beside him. His eyes found it -and it was familiar. Yet he could not believe his eyes. - -She was leaning back, her hands against the wall on either side, and he -saw, with the upper layer of perception that so often blunts a violent -emotion, that her feet were sunken in the mould of Mrs. Averil's -rose-bed and that the cherished shoots of the new climbing rose were -tangled in her clothes. The open window was but a step away. - -She had come since they had come. She had crept up. She had looked -in--for how long?--and had fallen back, casting out her arms so that it -might not be to the ground. Her eyes were closed; but she had heard and -seen him. As he stood before her, aghast, unable to find a word, he -heard her mutter: "Take me away, please." - -Barney's car blocked the egress of the gate and Barney might emerge at -any moment. He leaned towards her and found that she was intricately -caught in the rose. Her hat with its veil, her sleeve, her hair, were -all entangled. - -Dumbly, patiently, she stood, while, with fumbling fingers and terror -lest they should be heard within--Mrs. Averil's voice now reached him -from the drawing-room--Oldmeadow released her and, his fingers deeply -torn by the thorns, he was aware, in all the tumult of his thought, more -than of the pain, of the wet fragrance of the roses that surrounded her. -He shared what he felt to be her panic. - -She had come hoping to see Barney; she had come to say good-bye to -Barney, who would not come to her; and his heart sickened for her at the -shameful seeming of her plight. She knew now that it must be her hope -never to see Barney again. - -There was a narrow passage, leading to the lawn and garden, between the -house and the stable walls. Thickly grown with ivy, showing only a -narrow opening above, where chimneys and gables cut against the sky, it -was nearly as dark as a tunnel, and into this place of hiding he half -led, half carried the unfortunate woman. - -With the darkness, the pungent smell of the wet ivy closed thickly, -ominously about them. It was as if he and Adrienne Toner were buried -there together. He heard a maid laugh far away and a boy passed on the -green stridently whistling "Tipperary." It was like hearing, in the -grave, the sounds of the upper world. - -Adrienne leaned against the wall. The ivy closing round her, nearly -obliterated her, but he could dimly see the grey disk of her face, -showing the unexpectedness of contour that reveals itself in the faces -of the dead. The trivial features were erased and only a shape of grief -remained, strangely august and emotionless. - -An eternity seemed to pass before the front door opened and Mrs. -Averil's voice, steadied to a galvanized cheerfulness, came, half -obliterated to a wordless rhythm. Barney's voice answered her, and his -steps echoed on the flagged path. "Say good-bye to Roger for me if I -don't see him on the road!" he called out from the gate. Then the car -coughed, panted; the horn croaked out its cry and, above them, a shaft -of light across the ivy, of which he had till then been unaware, flitted -suddenly away, leaving the darkness more visible. - -He heard then that she was weeping. - -Putting his arm behind her, for the rain fell heavily and the ivy was -drenched with it, he drew her forward and for a little while it was -almost against his breast that she lay while her very heart dissolved -itself in tears. - -She had come, he knew it all, with a breakdown of her pride, with a last -wild hope and, perhaps, a longing to atone, believing that she might -snatch a word somewhere with her husband, and find her way, at this -last moment, back to the heart she had so alienated. She had seen all. -She had heard all. He was sure of it. It had been as an outcast that he -had found her leaning there. He understood her through and through and -the tender heaviness that had already so often visited his heart flooded -it to suffocation. - -Among her sobs, he heard her, at last, speaking to him. "Even Palgrave -doesn't know. He told me--only this afternoon--that Barney was here. I -thought I might find him. I was going to wait in the road. And when I -got here there was no car and I was afraid that there was a mistake. -That I had missed him. And I went up to the house; to the open window; -and looked in; to see if he was there. It was not jealousy: not now. I -did not mean to be an eavesdropper. But, when I saw them, I stayed and -listened. It was not jealousy," she repeated. "It was because I had to -know that there was no more hope." - -"Yes," said Oldmeadow gently, while, with long pauses, she spoke on and -on; to the impartial judge, to the one sure refuge; and he said "Yes" -again, gently, after she had finished; a long time after. She still half -lay against his breast. He had never felt such an infinite tenderness -towards any creature; not since his boyhood and his mother's death. - -She drew away from him at last. "Take me," she said. "There is a train; -back to Oxford." She had ceased to weep. Her voice was hoarse and faint. - -"Did you walk up from the station? You're not fit to walk back. I can -get a trap. There's a man just across the green." - -"No. Walking, please. I would be recognized. They might know me. I can -walk. If you will help me." - -He drew her arm through his. "Lean on me," he said. "We'll go slowly." - -They went past the drawing-room windows and, softly opening, softly -shutting, through the gate. The road, when it turned the corner, left -the village behind; between its rarely placed trees, vague silhouettes -against the sky that seemed of one texture with them, it showed its -mournful pallor for only a little space before them; there was not -enough light left in the sky to glimmer on its pools. The fields, on -either side, vanished into obscurity. Pale cattle, once, over a hedge, -put disconsolate heads and lowed and a garrulous dog, as they passed by, -ran out from a way-side farm-yard, smelt at their heels, growled -perfunctorily and, having satisfied his sense of duty, went back to his -post. The sense of dumb emptiness was so complete that it was only after -they had gone a long way that he knew that she was weeping and the soft, -stifling sounds seemed only a part of nature's desolation. - -Her head bent down, she stumbled on, leaning on his arm, and from time -to time she raised her handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth and -nose. He did not say a word; nor did she. - -As he led her along, submissive to her doom, it was another feeling of -accomplishment that overwhelmed him; the dark after the radiant; after -Nancy and Barney, he and Adrienne. It was this, from their first -meeting, that he had been destined to mean to her. She was his appointed -victim. He had killed, as really as if with a knife, the girl whom he -had seen at Coldbrooks, in the sunlight, on that Sunday morning in -spring, knowing no doubts. She had then held the world in her hands and -a guileless, untried heaven had filled her heart. Between her and this -crushed and weeping woman there seemed no longer any bond; unless it was -the strange aching that, in his heart, held them both together. - - - - - -PART II - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -Oldmeadow sat in Mrs. Aldesey's drawing-room and, the tea-table between -them, Mrs. Aldesey poured out his tea. So it was, after three years, -that they found each other. So it was, all over the world, Oldmeadow -said to himself, that the tea-table, or its equivalent, reasserted -itself in any interval where the kindly amenities of human intercourse -could root themselves; though the world rocked and flames of anarchy -rimmed its horizons. - -It was more real, he felt that now, to sit and look at Lydia over her -tea than to parch on Eastern sands and shiver in Western trenches; from -the mere fact that the one experience became a nightmare while the other -was as natural as waking at dawn. Horrors became the dropped stitches of -life; and though if there were too many of them they would destroy the -stocking, the stocking itself was made up of tea-table talks and walks -in the woods with Nancy. He had just come from Coldbrooks. - -So he put it, trivially, to himself, and he felt the need of clinging to -triviality. The dropped stitches had been almost too much for him and -the nightmare, at times, had seemed the only reality. At times he had -known a final despair of life and even now he remembered that the worst -might still come. One might be called upon to face the death of the -whole order of civilization. Faith required one, perhaps, to recognize -that the human spirit was bound up, finally, with no world order and -unless one could face its destruction as one had to face the death of a -loved individual, one was not secure of the spiritual order that -transcended all mundane calamity. He believed, or hoped, that during -these last three years, in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, when, to the -last fibre, he had felt his faiths tested, he had learned to be ready -for the great relinquishment, should it be required of him; and it was -therefore the easier to doff that consciousness, as he might have doffed -a sword, and think of Lydia and of the order that still survived and -that she still stood for. - -Lydia did not look the worse for the war; indeed she looked the better. -She looked as if, in spite of long days in the hospital, she digested -better and, in spite of air-raids, slept better, and as they talked, -finding their way back to intimacy by the comparing of such -superficialities, she told him that for years she hadn't been so strong -or well. "Nothing is so good for you, I've found out, as to feel that -you are being used; being used by something worth while. People like -myself must keep still about our experiences, for we've had none that -bear talking of. But even the others, even the people bereaved -unspeakably, are strangely lifted up. And I believe that the populace -enjoys the air-raids rather than the reverse; they give them a chance of -feeling that they are enduring something, too; with good-humour and -pluck. If anyone is pessimistic about the effect of war on average human -nature, I should only ask them to come and talk to our men at the -hospital. Of course, under it all, there's the ominous roar in one's -ears all the time." - -"Do you mean the air-raids?" he asked her and, shaking her head, -showing him that she, too, had seen with him and, he believed, with him -accepted: "No; I mean the roar of nation after nation collapsing into -the abyss. A sort of tumbril roar of civilization, Roger. And, for that, -there's always the last resource of going gallantly to the guillotine. -But all the same, I believe we shall pull through." - -It was the spring of 1918 and one needed faith to believe it. She asked -him presently about his friends at Coldbrooks. He had gone to Coldbrooks -for three days of his one week's leave. After this he went to France. - -"What changes for you there, poor Roger," said Mrs. Aldesey. - -"Yes. Terrible changes. Palgrave dead and Barney broken. Yet, do you -know, it's not as sad as it was. Something's come back to it. Nancy sits -by him and holds his hand and is his joy and comfort." - -"Will he recover?" - -"Not in the sense of being really mended. He'll go on crutches, always, -if he gets up. But the doctors now hope that the injury to the back -isn't permanent." - -"And Meg's married," said Mrs. Aldesey after a little pause. "Have you -seen her?" - -"No. She runs a hospital in the country, at her husband's place, Nancy -tells me; and is very happy." - -"Very. Has a fine boy, and is completely reinstated. It's a remarkable -ending to the story, isn't it? She met him at the front, you know, -driving her ambulance; and he has twice as much in him as poor Eric -Hayward." - -"Remarkable. Yet Meg's a person who only needs her chance. She's the -sort that always comes out on top." - -"Does it comfort her mother a little for all she's suffered to see her -on top?" - -"It almost comically comforts her. All the same, Eleanor Chadwick has -her depths. Nothing will ever comfort her for Palgrave's death." - -"I understand that," said Mrs. Aldesey. "Nothing could. How she must -envy the happy mothers whose boys were killed at the front. To have -one's boy die in prison as a conscientious objector must be the -bitterest thing the war has given any mother to bear." - -"He was a dear boy," said Oldmeadow. "Heroically wrong-minded." He could -hardly bear to think of Palgrave. - -"He wasn't alone, you know," said Mrs. Aldesey after a moment. Something -was approaching that he would rather not have to speak of; a name he -would so much rather not name. And, evading it, feebly, he said, "His -mother got to him in time, I know." - -"Yes. But all the time. She went and lived near the prison. Adrienne -Toner I mean." - -Her eyes were on him and he hoped that no readjustment of his features -was visible. "Oh, yes. Nancy told me that," he said. - -"What's become of her, Roger?" Mrs. Aldesey asked. "Since Charlie was -killed the Lumleys have lived in the country and I hardly see them. I -haven't heard a word of her for years." - -He was keeping his eyes on her and he knew from her expression that he -showed some strain or some distress. - -"Nor have I. Nancy said that they hadn't either. She went away, after -Palgrave's death. Disappeared completely." - -"Nancy told you, of course, about the money; the little fortune she gave -Palgrave, so that he could leave it to his mother?" - -"Oh, yes. Nancy wrote to me of that." - -"It was cleverly contrived, wasn't it. They are quite tied up to it, -aren't they; whatever they may feel. No one could object to her giving a -fortune to the boy she'd ruined. I admired that in her, I must confess; -the way she managed it. And then her disappearance." - -"Very clever indeed," said Oldmeadow. "All that remains for her to do -now is to manage to get killed. And that's easily managed. Perhaps she -is killed." - -He did not intend that his voice should be emptier or dryer, yet Lydia -looked at him with a closer attention. - -"Barney and Nancy could get married then," she said. - -"Yes. Exactly. They could get married." - -"That's what you want, isn't it, Roger?" - -"Want her to be killed, or them to be married?" - -"Well, as you say, so many people _are_ being killed. One more or less, -if it's in such a good cause as their marriage--" - -"It's certainly a good cause. But I don't like the dilemma," said -Oldmeadow. - -He knew from the way she looked at him, discreet and disguised as her -recognition was, that he was hiding something from her. Casting about -his mind, in the distress that took the form of confusion, he could -himself find nothing that he hid, or wished to hide, unless it was the -end of Adrienne's story as Barney's wife. That wasn't for him to show; -ever; to anyone. - -"Perhaps she's gone back to America," said Mrs. Aldesey presently, -"California, you know. Or Chicago. She may very well be engaged in great -enterprises out there that we never hear of. They'd be sure to be great, -wouldn't they." - -"I suppose they would." - -"You saw her once more, didn't you, at the time you saw Palgrave," Mrs. -Aldesey went on. "Lady Lumley told me of that. And how kind you had -been. Adrienne had spoken of it. You were sorry for them both, I -suppose; for her as well as for him, in spite of everything. Or did she -merely take it for granted that the kindness to him extended to her?" - -"Not at all. It was for her too," said Oldmeadow, staring a little and -gathering together, after this lapse of time that seemed so immense, his -memories of that other tea-table set up in the chaos: Palgrave's -tea-table on that distant day in Oxford. What was so confusing him was -his consciousness that it hadn't been the last time he had seen -Adrienne. "I was as sorry for her as for him," he went on. "Sorrier. -There was so much more in her than I'd supposed. She was capable of -intense suffering." - -"In losing her husband's affections, you mean? You never suspected her -of being inhuman, surely? Lady Lumley blamed poor Barney for all that -sad story. But, even from her account, I could see his side very -plainly." - -"Perhaps I did think her inhuman. At all events I thought her -invulnerable." - -"Yes. I remember. With all her absurdity you thought she had great -power." Mrs. Aldesey looked at him thoughtfully. "And it was when you -found she hadn't that you could be sorry for her." - -"Not at all," said Oldmeadow again. "I still think she has great power. -People can have power and go to pieces." - -"Did she go to pieces? That day in Oxford? I can't imagine her in -pieces, you know." - -He had a feeling of drawing back; or of drawing Adrienne back. "In the -sense of being so unhappy, so obviously unhappy, over Palgrave," he -said. - -He saw that Lydia would have liked to go on questioning, as, of course, -it would have been perfectly natural for her to do. Was not Adrienne -Toner and her absurdity one of their pet themes? Yet she desisted. She -desisted and it was because she felt some change in him; some shrinking -and some pain. "Well, let's hope that she is happy, now, or as happy as -she can be, poor thing, doing great deeds in America," she said. And she -turned the talk back to civilization and its danger. - -They talked a good deal about civilization during their last three days -together. He wanted things, during these three days of mingled recovery -and farewell, to be as happy as possible between him and his friend, for -he knew that Lydia's heart was heavy, for him and not for civilization. -The front to which he was going was more real to her, because it was -much nearer, and his peril was more real than during his absence in -distant climes. He felt himself that the French front, at this special -time, would probably make an end of him and, for the first time since -their early friendship, he knew conjecture as to his relation with -Lydia; wondered, if it had not been for Mr. Aldesey in New York, whether -Lydia might have been in love with him, and realized, with a curious -sense of anxiety and responsibility, that her friendship for him now was -the closest tie in her life. The war might to her, too, mean irreparable -loss. And he was sorry that it was so; sorry to think that the easy, -happy intercourse had this hidden depth of latent suffering. - -Lydia's feeling, and its implications, became the clearer to him when, -on their last evening together, she said to him suddenly: "Perhaps -you'll see her over there." - -He could not pretend not to know whom she meant, nor could he pretend to -himself not to see that if it troubled Lydia that he should be sorry for -Adrienne that could only be because she cared far more for him than he -had ever guessed. - -He said, as easily as he could manage it, for the pressure of his -realizations made him feel a little queer: "Not if she's in America." - -"Ah, but perhaps she's come back from America," said Mrs. Aldesey. -"She's a great traveller. What will you do with her if you do find her? -Bring her back to Barney?" - -"Hardly that," he said. "There'd be no point in bringing her back to -Barney, would there?" - -"Well, then, what would you do with her?" Mrs. Aldesey smiled, as if -with a return to their old light dealing with the theme, while, still in -her nurse's coiffe and dress, she leaned back against her chair. - -"What would she do with me, rather, isn't it?" he asked. And he, too, -tried to be light. - -"She'll be mended then, you think? Able to do things to people again?" - -"I'm not at all afraid of her, you know. She never did me any harm," he -said. - -"Because you were as strong as she, you mean. She did other people harm, -surely. You warned me once to keep away from her unless I wanted to lose -my toes and fingers," Mrs. Aldesey still smiled. "She does make people -lose things, doesn't she?" - -"Well, she makes them gain things, too. Fortunes for instance. Perhaps -if I find her, she'll give me a fortune." - -"But that's only when she's ruined you," she reminded him. - -"And it's she who's ruined now," he felt bound to remind her; no longer -lightly. - -Leaning back in her chair, her faded little face framed in white, Mrs. -Aldesey looked at once younger yet more tired than he had ever seen her -look and she sat for a little while silent; as if she had forgotten -Adrienne Toner and were thinking only of their parting. But all her -gaiety had fallen from her as she said at last: "I can be sorry for her, -too; if she's really ruined. If she still loves him when he has ceased -to care for her. Does she, do you think?" - -With the question he seemed to see a fire-lit room and lovers who had -found each other and to smell wet roses. Lydia was coming too near; too -near the other figure, outside the window, fallen back with outstretched -arms against the roses. And again he felt himself softly, cautiously, -disentangle the sleeve, the hair, felt himself draw Adrienne away into -the darkness where the smell was now of wet ivy and where he could see -only the shape of an accepting grief. - -"How could I know?" he said. "She was very unhappy when I last saw her. -But three years have passed and people can mend in three years." - -"Especially in America," Mrs. Aldesey suggested. "It's a wonderful place -for mending. Let's hope she's there. Let's hope that we shall never, any -of us, ever hear of her again. That would be much the happiest thing, -wouldn't it?" - -He was obliged to say that it would certainly be much the happiest -thing; and he was too unhappy about Lydia to be able to feel angry with -her. He knew how tired she must be when, for the first time in their -long friendship, she must know that she was not pleasing him, yet not be -able to help herself. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -"Good Lord!" Oldmeadow heard himself groaning. - -Even as he took possession of his physical suffering he knew that there -was satisfaction in suffering, at last, himself. Until now the worst -part of war had been to see the sufferings of others. This was at last -the real thing; but it was so mingled with acquiescence that it ceased -to be the mere raw fact. "We're all together, now," he thought, and he -felt himself, even as he groaned, lifted on a wave of beatitude. - -Until now he had not, as a consciousness, known anything. There was a -shape in his memory, a mere immense black blot shot with fiery lights. -It must symbolize the moment when the shell struck him, bending, in the -trench, over his watch and his calculations. And after that there were -detached visions, the ceiling of a train where he had swung in a hammock -bed, looking up; clean sheets, miraculously clean and the face of a -black-browed nurse who reminded him of Trixie. The smell of chloroform -was over everything. It bound everything together so that days might -have passed since the black blot and since he lay here, again in clean -sheets, the sweet, thick smell closing round him and a raging thirst in -his throat. He knew that he had just been carried in from the operating -room and he groaned again "Good Lord," feeling the pain snatch as if -with fangs and claws at his thigh and belly, and muttered, "Water!" - -Something sweet, but differently sweet from the smell, sharp, too, and -insidious, touched his lips and opening them obediently, as a young bird -opens its bill to the parent bird, he felt a swab passed round his -parched mouth and saw the black-browed nurse. "Not water, yet, you -know," she said. "This is lemon and glycerine and will help you -wonderfully." - -He wanted to ask something about Paris and the long-distance gun firing -on it every day and he seemed to see it over the edge of the trench, far -away on the horizon of No-man's-land, a tiny city flaming far into the -sky. But other words bubbled up and he heard himself crying: "Mother! -Mother!" and remembered, stopping himself with an act of will, that they -all said that when they were dying. But as he closed his eyes he felt -her very near and knew that it would be sweet to die and find her. - -A long time must have passed. Was it days or only the time of daylight? -It was night now and a shaded light shone from a recess behind him and -thoughts, visions, memories raced through his mind. Nancy; Barney; he -would never see them again, then: poor Lydia and civilization. -"Civilization will see me out," he thought and he wondered if they had -taken off the wings of the Flying Victory when they packed her. - -A rhythm was beating in his brain. Music was it? Something of Bach's? It -gathered words to itself and shaped itself sentence by sentence into -something he had heard? or read? Ah, he was glad to have found it. -"Under the orders of your devoted officers you will march against the -enemy or fall where you stand, facing the foe. To those who die I say: -You will not die: you will enter living into immortality, and God will -receive you into his bosom." He seemed to listen to the words as he -lay, quietly smiling. But it was music after all for, as he listened, -they merged into the "St. Matthew Passion." He had heard it, of course, -with Lydia, at the Temple. But Lydia did not really care very much for -Bach. She might care more for "Litanei." She had sung it standing beside -him with foolish white roses over her ears. How unlike Lydia to wear -those roses. And was it Lydia who stood there? A mental perplexity -mingled with the physical pain and spoiled his peace. It was not -Lydia's, that white face in the coffin with wet ivy behind it. What -suffering was this that beat upon his heart? The music had faded all -away and he saw faces everywhere, dying faces; and blood and terrible -mutilations. All the suffering of the war, worse, far worse than the -mere claws and fangs that tore at him. Dying boys choked out their -breaths in agonies of conscious loneliness, yearning for faces they -would never see again. Oh, how many he had seen die like that! -Intolerable to watch them. And could one do nothing? "Cigarettes. Give -them cigarettes," he tried to tell somebody. "And marmalade for -breakfast; and phonographs, and then they will enter living into -immortality"--No: he did not mean that. What did he mean? He could catch -at nothing now. Thoughts were tossed and tumbled like the rubbish of -wreckage from an inundated town on the deep currents of his anguish. A -current that raced and seethed and carried him away. He saw it. Its -breathless speed was like the fever in his blood. If it went faster he -would lose his breath. Church-bells ringing on the banks lost theirs as -he sped past so swiftly and made a trail of whining sound.--Effie! -Effie! It was poor little Effie, drowning. He saw her wild, small face, -battling. Bubbles boiled up about his cry. - -Suddenly the torrent was stilled. Without commotion, without tumult, it -was stilled. There was a dam somewhere; it had stopped racing; he could -get his breath. Still and slow; oh! it was delicious to feel that quiet -hand on his forehead; his mother's hand, and to know that Effie was -safe. He lay with closed eyes and saw a smooth waterfall sliding and -curving with green grey depths into the lower currents of the stream. He -remembered the stream well, now; one of his beloved French rivers; one -of the smaller, sylvan rivers, too small for majesty; with silver -poplars spaced against the sky on either bank and a small town, white -and pink and pearly-grey, clear on the horizon. Tranquil sails were -above him and the bells from the distant church-tower floated to him -across the fields. Soundlessly, slowly, he felt himself borne into -oblivion. - -The black-browed nurse was tending him next morning. "You are better," -she said, smiling at him. "You slept all night. No; it's a shame, but -you mayn't have water yet." She put the lemon and glycerine to his lips. -"The pain is easier, isn't it?" - -He said it was. He felt that he must not stir an inch so as to keep it -easier, but he could not have stirred had he wanted to, for he was all -tightly swathed and bandaged. He remembered something he wanted -specially to ask: "Paris? They haven't got it yet?" - -"They'll never get it!" she smiled proudly. "Everything is going -splendidly." - -The English surgeon was such a nice fellow. He had spectacles on a -square-tipped nose and a square, chubby face; yet his hair was nearly -white. Oldmeadow remembered, as if of days before the flood, that his -name was a distinguished one. Perhaps it was morphia they gave him, -after his wound was dressed, or perhaps he fainted. The day passed in a -hot and broken stupor and at night the tides of fever rose again and -carried him away. But, again, before he had lost his breath, before he -had quite gone down into delirium, the quiet hand came and sent him, -under sails, to sleep. - -Next day Oldmeadow knew, from the way the surgeon looked at him, that -his case was grave. His face was grim as he bent over the dressing and -he hurt horribly. They told him, when it was over, that he had been very -brave, and, like a child, he was pleased that they should tell him so. -But the pain was worse all day and the sense of the submerging fever -imminent, and he lay with closed eyes and longed for the night that -brought the hand. Hours, long hours passed before it came. Hours of -sunlight when, behind his eyelids, he saw red, and hours of twilight -when he saw mauve. Then, for a little while, it was a soft, dense grey -he saw, like a bat's wing, and then the small light shone across his -bed; he knew that the night had come, and felt, at last, the hand fall -softly on his head. - -He lay for some time feeling the desired peace flow into him and then, -through its satisfaction, another desire pushed up into his -consciousness and he remembered that, more than about Paris, he had -wanted to speak to the nurse about what she did for him and thank her. - -"It's you who make me sleep, isn't it," he said, lying with closed eyes -under the soft yet insistent pressure. "I've never thanked you." - -She did not reply. She did not want him to talk. But he still wanted to. - -"I couldn't thank you last night," he said, "I can't keep hold of my -thoughts. And when morning comes I seem to have forgotten everything -about the night. You are the nurse who takes care of me in the daytime, -too, aren't you?" - -Again, for a moment, there was no reply; and then a voice came. "No; I -am the night nurse. Go to sleep now." - -It was a voice gentle, cold and soft, like snow. It was not an English -voice and he had heard it before. Where had he heard it? Rooks were -cawing and he saw a blue ribbon rolling, rolling out across a -spring-tide landscape. This voice was not like a blue ribbon; it was -like snow. Yet, when he turned his head under her hand, he looked round -at Adrienne Toner. - -The first feeling that came uppermost in the medley that filled him at -the sight of her was one of amused vexation. It was as if he went back -to his beginnings with her, back to the rooks and the blue ribbon. "At -it again!" was what he said to himself, and what he said aloud, -absurdly, was: "Oh, come, now!" - -She did not lift her hand, but there was trouble on her face as she -looked back at him. "I hoped you wouldn't see me, Mr. Oldmeadow," she -said. - -He was reminded of Bacchus and the laying on of hands; but a classical -analogy, even more ridiculous, came to him with her words. "Like Cupid -and Psyche," he said. "The other way round. It's I who mustn't look." - -The trouble on her face became more marked and he saw that she imagined -him to be delirious. He was not quite himself, certainly, or he would -not have greeted Adrienne Toner thus, and he made an effort to be more -decorous and rational as he said, "I'm very glad to see you again. Safe -and sound: you know." - -She had always had a singular little face, but it had never looked so -singular as now, seen from below with shadows from the light behind cast -so oddly over it. The end of her nose jutted from a blue shadow and her -eyes lay in deep hollows of blue. All that he was sure of in her -expression was the gravity with which she made up her mind to humour -him. "We want you to be safe and sound, too. Please shut your eyes and -go to sleep." - -"All right; all right, Psyche," he murmured, and he knew it wasn't quite -what he intended to say, yet in his flippancy he was taking refuge from -something; from the flood of suffering that had broken over him the -other night after he had seen that dead face with white roses over its -ears. This queer face, half dissolved in blue and yellow, was not dead -and the white coiffe came closely down about it. If he obeyed her he -knew that she would keep the other faces away and he closed his eyes -obediently and lay very still, seeing himself again as the good little -boy being praised. This was Psyche; not Ariane. "Ariane ma soeur," he -murmured. It was Ariane who had the white roses--or was it wet ivy? and -after her face pressed all the other dying faces. "You'll keep them -away, won't you?" he murmured, and he heard her say: "Yes; I'll keep -them quite away," and, softly, a curtain of sleep fell before his eyes -crossed by a thin drift of mythological figures. - -"I thought it was you who sent me to sleep," he said to the English -nurse next day. He could hardly, in the morning light, believe it was -not a dream. - -She smiled with an air of vicarious pride. "No indeed. I can't send -people to sleep. It's our wonderful Mrs. Chadwick. She does a good deal -more than put people to sleep. She cures people--oh, I wouldn't have -believed it myself, till I saw it--who are at death's door. It's lucky -for you and the others that we've got her here for a little while." - -"Where's here?" he asked after a moment. - -"Here's Boulogne. Didn't you know?" - -"I thought I heard the sea sometimes. It's for cases too bad, then, to -be taken home. Get her here from where?" - -"From her hospital in the firing-line. Now that we're advancing at the -front everything there is changed and she could come away for a little. -Sir Kenneth's been begging her to come ever since he saw her. He knew -she would work marvels here, too." The nice young nurse was exuberant in -her darkness and rosiness with a Jewish streak of fervour in her lips -and eyes. "It's a sort of rest for her," she added. "She's been badly -wounded once. You can just see the scar, under her cap, on her forehead. -And she nearly died of fever out in Salonika. She had a travelling -ambulance there before she came to France." - -"It must be very restful for her," Oldmeadow remarked with a touch of -his grim mirth, "if she has to sit up putting all your bad cases to -sleep. Why haven't I heard of her and her hospital?" - -"It's not run in her name. It's an American hospital--she is -American--called after her mother, I believe. The Pearl Ambulance is -what it's called and everybody here knows about it; all of us nurses and -doctors, I mean. Her organizing power is as wonderful as her cures; her -influence over her staff. They all worship the ground she walks on." - -"Pearl, Pearl Toner," Oldmeadow was saying to himself. How complete, how -perfect it was. And the nurse went on, delighted, evidently, to talk of -an idol, and rather as if she were speaking of a special cure they had -installed, a sort of Carrel treatment not to be found anywhere else: -"Everything's been different since she came. It's almost miraculous to -see what the mere touch of her hand can do. Matron says she wouldn't be -surprised if it turned out she was a sort of nun and wore a hair shirt -under her dress. Whatever she is, it makes one feel better and stronger -just to see her and one would do anything for her just to have her smile -at one. She has the most heavenly smile." - -It was all very familiar. - -"Ah, you haven't abandoned me after all, though I have found you out," -he said to Adrienne Toner that night. - -He was able at last to see her clearly as she came in, so softly that it -was like a dream sliding into one's sleep. She was like a dream in her -nurse's dress which, though so familiar on other women, seemed to -isolate and make her strange. Her face was smaller than he had -remembered it and had the curious look, docile yet stubborn, that one -sees on the faces of dumb-mutes. She might have looked like that had -she been deafened by the sound of so many bursting shells and lost the -faculty of speech through doing much and saying nothing among scenes of -horror. But she spoke to him, after all, as naturally as he spoke to -her, saying, though with no touch of his lightness: "You mustn't talk, -you know, if I come to make you sleep. Sir Kenneth wants sleep for you -more than anything else." - -"I promise you to be good," said Oldmeadow. "But I'm really better, -aren't I? and can talk a little first." - -"You are really better. But it will take a long time. A great deal of -sleeping." - -"No one knew what had become of you," said Oldmeadow, and he remembered -that he ought to be sorry that Adrienne Toner had not been killed. - -She hesitated, and then sat down beside him. He thought that she had -been going to ask him something and then checked herself. "I can't let -you talk," she said, and in her voice he heard the new authority; an -authority gained by long submission to discipline. - -"Another night, then. We must talk another night," he murmured, closing -his eyes, for he knew that he must not disobey her. All the same it was -absurd that Adrienne Toner should be doing this for him; absurd but -heavenly to feel her hand fall softly, like a warm, light bird, and -brood upon his forehead. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -They never spoke of Coldbrooks, nor of Barney, nor of Palgrave; not -once. Not once during all those nights that she sat beside him and made -him sleep. - -He had heard from Coldbrooks, of course; letters came often now. And the -dark young nurse had written for him since he could not yet write for -himself. He had said no word of seeing Adrienne. Nor had he let them -know how near to death he had been and, perhaps, still was. He would -have liked to have seen Lydia and Nancy if he were to die; but most of -all he wanted to be sure of not losing Adrienne. And he knew that were -he to tell them, were they to come, Adrienne would go. - -She never spoke to him at all, he remembered--as getting stronger with -every day, he pieced his memories of these nights together--unless he -spoke to her; and she never smiled. And it came upon him one morning -after he had read letters that brought so near the world from which she -was now shut out, that she had, perhaps, never forgiven him. After all, -though he could not see that he had been wrong, she had everything to -forgive him and the thought made him restless. That night, for the first -time, she volunteered a remark. His temperature had gone up a little. He -must be very quiet and go to sleep directly. - -"Yes; I know," he said. "It's because of you. Things I want to say. I'm -really so much better. We can't go on like this, can we," he said, -looking up at her as she sat beside him. "Why, you might slip out of my -life any day, and I might never hear of you again." - -She sat looking down at him, a little askance, though gentle still, if -gentle was the word for her changed face. "That's what I mean to do," -she said. - -"Oh, but--" Oldmeadow actually, in his alarm and resentment, struggled -up on an elbow--"that won't do. I want to see you, really see you, now -that I'm myself again. I want to talk with you--now that I can talk -coherently. I want to ask you; well, I won't ask it now." She had put -out her hand, her small, potent hand, and quietly pressed him back, and -down upon his pillow while her face took on its look of almost stern -authority. "I'll be good. But promise me you'll not go without telling -me. And haven't you questions to ask, too?" - -Her face kept its severity, but, as he found this last appeal, her eyes -widened, darkened, looked, for a moment, almost frightened. - -"I know that Barney is safe," she said. "I have nothing to ask." - -"Well; no; I see." He felt that he had been guilty of a blunder and it -made him fretful. "For me, then. Not for you. Promise me. I won't be -good unless you promise me. You can't go off and leave me like that." - -With eyes still dilated, she contemplated this rebellion. - -"You must promise me something, then," she said after a moment. - -He felt proud, delighted, as if he had gained a victory over her. - -"Done. If it's not too hard. What is it?" - -"You won't write to anybody. You won't tell anybody that you've seen me. -Only Lady Lumley knows that I am here. And she has promised not to tell. -Probably, soon, I shall have left France for ever." - -"I won't tell. I won't write. I can keep secrets as well as Lady Lumley. -She does keep them, you know. So it's a compact." - -"Yes. It's a compact. You'll never tell them; and I won't go without -letting you know. I promise. Now go to sleep." - -She laid her hand on his forehead, but, for a little while, he heard her -breathing deeply and quickly and the sense of his blundering stayed with -him so that sleep was longer in coming. - -All the same he was much better next day. He was able to sit up and had -the glory and excitement of a chop for his midday dinner. And when the -pleasant hour of tea arrived it was Adrienne herself who came in -carrying the little tray. - -He had not seen her in daylight before and his first feeling was one of -alarm, for, if she were afoot like this, in daylight, must it not mean -that she was soon to leave the hospital? He felt shy of her, too, for, -altered as she was by night, the day showed her as far more altered. -Whether she seemed much older or much younger he could not have said. -The coiffe, covering her forehead, and bound under her chin in a way -peculiar to her, left only, as it were, the means of expression visible. - -She sat down by the window and looked out, glancing round from time to -time as he drank his tea and it was she who found the calm little -sentences, about the latest news from the front, the crashing of -Bulgaria, that carried them on until he had finished. When he had pushed -down his tray she turned her chair and faced him, folding her hands -together on her white apron, and she said, and he knew that she had come -to say it, "What was it you wanted to ask me?" - -He had had, while she sat at the window, her profile with the jutting -nose, and her face, as it turned upon him now, made him think suddenly -of a seagull. Questing, lonely, with vigilant eyes, it seemed to have -great spaces before it; to be flying forth into empty spaces and to an -unseen goal. - -"Are you going away, then?" He had not dared, somehow, to ask her -before. He felt now that he could not talk until he knew. - -"Not yet," she said. "But I shall be going soon. The hospital is -emptying and my nights on duty are very short. I have, really, only you -and two others to take care of. That's why I am up so early to-day. And -you are so much better that we can have a little talk; if you have -anything to ask me." - -"It's this, of course," said Oldmeadow. "It seems to me you ought to -dislike me. I misunderstood you in many ways. And now I owe you my life. -Before we part I want to thank you and to ask you to forgive me." - -Her eyes, seen in daylight, were of the colour of distance, of arctic -distances. That had always been their colour, though he had never before -identified it. - -"But there is nothing to thank me for," she said. "I am here to take -care of people." - -"Even people who misunderstood you. Even people you dislike. I know." -He flushed, feeling that he had been duly snubbed. "But though you take -care of everyone, anyone may thank you, too, mayn't they?" - -"I don't dislike you, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said after a moment. "And you -didn't misunderstand me." - -"Oh," he murmured, more abashed than before. "I think so. Not, perhaps, -what you did; but what you were. I didn't see you as you really were. -That's what I mean." - -The perplexity, which had grown, even, to amazement, had left her eyes -and she was intently looking at him. "There is nothing for you to be -sorry for," she said. "Nothing for me to forgive. You were always -right." - -"Always right? I can't take that, you know," said Oldmeadow, deeply -discomposed. "You were blind, of course, and more sure of yourself than -any of us can safely afford to be; but I wasn't always right." - -"Always. Always," she repeated. "I was blinder than you knew. I was more -sure of myself." - -He lay looking at her and she looked back at him, but with a look that -invited neither argument not protest. It remained remote and vigilant. -She might have been the seagull looking down and noting, as she flew -onward, that the small figure on the beach so far below had ceased to be -that of an assailant in its attitude. How remote she was, white strange, -fleeting creature! How near she had been once! The memory of how near -rushed over his mind. He had, despite the delirious visions of her -stricken face, hardly thought at all, since really seeing her again, of -that last time. Everything had fitted itself on, rather, to his earliest -memories of her, tinged all of them, it was true, with a deeper meaning, -but not till this moment consciously admitting it. It rushed in now, -poignant with the recovered smell of wet, dark ivy, the recovered sound -of her stifled sobs as she had stumbled, broken, beside him in the rain. -And with the memory came the desire that she should again be near. - -"Tell me," he said, "what are you going to do? You said you might be -leaving France for ever. Shall you go back to America?" - -"I don't think so. Not for a long time," she answered. "There will be -things to do over here, out of France, for a great many years I -imagine." - -He hesitated, then took a roundabout way. "And when I get home, if, -owing to you, I ever get there, may I not tell them that you're safe and -sound? It would be happier for them to know that, wouldn't it?" - -Her vigilance still dwelt upon him as though she suspected in this -sudden change of subject some craft of approach, but she answered -quietly: - -"No; I think it will be happier for them to forget me. They will be told -if I die. I have arranged for that." - -"They can't very well forget you," said Oldmeadow after a moment. "They -must always wonder." - -"I know." She glanced away and trouble came into her face. "I know. But -as much as possible. You must not make me real again by telling them. -You have promised. You care for them. You know what I mean." - -"Yes; I've promised. And I see what you mean. But," said Oldmeadow -suddenly, and this, of course, was what he had been coming to. "I don't -want to forget. I want you to stay real. You must let me know what -becomes of you, always, please." - -Astonishment, now, effaced her trouble. "You? Why?" she asked. - -He smiled a little. "Well, because, if you'll let me say it, I'm fond of -you. I feel responsible for you. I've been too deeply in your life, -you've been too deeply in mine, for us to disappear from each other. -Don't you remember," he said, and he found it with a sense of -achievement, ridiculous as it might sound, "how I held the tea-pot for -you? That's what I mean. You must let me go on holding it." - -But she could feel no amusement. She was pressing her hands tightly -together in her lap, her eyes were wide and her astonishment, he seemed -to see, almost brought tears to them. "Fond? You?" she said. "Of me? Oh, -no, Mr. Oldmeadow, I can't believe that. You are sorry, I know. You are -very sorry. But you can't be fond." - -"And why not?" said Oldmeadow, and he raised himself on his elbow the -more directly to challenge her. "Why shouldn't I be fond of you, pray? -You must swallow it, for it's the truth and I've a right to my own -feelings, I hope." - -She put aside the playfulness in which his grim earnest veiled itself. -"Because you saw. Because you know. All about me. From the first." - -"Well?" he questioned after a moment, still raised on his elbow but now -with the grimness unalloyed. "What of it?" - -"You remember what I was. You remember what you saw. You would have -saved them from me if you could; and you couldn't. How can you be fond -of a person who has ruined all their lives?" - -"Upon my soul," said Oldmeadow laughing, his eyes on hers, "you talk as -though you'd been a Lucrezia Borgia! What were you worse than an -exalted, stubborn, rather conceited girl? Things went wrong, I know, and -partly because of me. But it wasn't all your fault, I'll swear it. And -if it was, it was your mistake; not your crime." - -"Oh, no, no, no," said Adrienne, and the compulsion of his feeling had -brought a note of anguish to her voice. "It wasn't that. It was worse -than that. Don't forget. Don't think you are fond of me because I can -make you sleep. It's always been so; I see it now--the power I've had -over people; the horrible power. For power is horrible unless one is -good; unless one is using it for goodness." - -"Well, so you were," Oldmeadow muttered, falling back on his pillow, her -vehemence, her strange passion, almost daunting him. "It's not because -you make me go to sleep that I'm fond of you. What utter rubbish!" - -"It is! it is!" she repeated. "I've seen it happen too often. It always -happens. It binds people to me. It makes them cling to me as if I could -give them life. It makes them believe me to be a sort of saint!" - -"Well, if you can help them with it? You have helped them. The war's -your great chance in that, you'll admit. No one can accuse you of trying -to get power over people now." - -"Perhaps not. I'm not thinking of what I may be accused of, but of what -happens." - -"It doesn't happen with me. I was fond of you--well, we won't go back to -that. And you did use it for goodness. Power came by the way and you -took it. Of course." - -"I thought I was using it for goodness. I thought I was good. That was -the foundation of everything. We must go back, Mr. Oldmeadow. You don't -see as I thought you did. You don't understand. I didn't mean to set -myself up above other people. I thought they were good, too. I was happy -in my goodness, and when they weren't happy it seemed to me they missed -something I had and that it was a mistake that I could set right for -them. I'm going back to the very beginning. Long before you ever knew -me. Everything fell into my hand. I loved people, or thought I did, and -if they didn't love me I thought it their mistake. That was the way it -looked to me, for my whole life long, until you came. I couldn't -understand at first, when you came. I couldn't see what you thought. I -believed that I could make you love me, too, and when I saw, for you -made it plain, that you disliked me, it seemed to me worse than mistake. -I thought that you must be against goodness; dangerous; the way you -pushed me back--back--and showed me always something I had not thought I -meant at the bottom of everything I did. I felt that I wanted to turn -away from you and to turn people who loved me away from you, lest you -should infect them. And all the while, all the while I was trying to -escape--the truth that you saw and that I didn't." She stopped for a -moment while, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow stared at her. Her breath -seemed to fail her, and she leaned forward and put her elbows on her -knees and bent her forehead on her joined hands. "It came at last. You -remember how it came," she said, and the passion of protest had fallen -from her voice. She spoke with difficulty. "Partly through you, and, -partly, through my failure; I had never failed before. My failure with -Barney. My failure to keep him and to get him back. I couldn't believe -it at first. I struggled and struggled. You saw me. Everything turned -against me. It was as if the world had changed its shape and colour when -I struggled against it. Everything went down. And when I felt I wasn't -loved, when I felt myself going down, with all the rest, I became bad. -Bad, bad," she repeated, and her voice, heavy with its slow reiteration, -was like a clenched hand of penitence beating on a breast: "really bad -at last, for I had not known before what I was and the truth was there, -staring me in the face. I did dreadful things, then. Mean things; cruel, -hateful things, shutting my eyes, stopping my ears, so that I should not -see what I was doing. I ran about and crouched and hid--from myself; do -you follow my meaning?--from God. And then at last, when I was stripped -bare, I had to look at Him." - -She raised herself and leaned back in her chair. Her voice had trembled -more and more with the intensity of the feeling that upheld her and she -put her handkerchief to her lips and pressed it to them, looking across -at him. And, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow looked back at her, -motionless and silent. - -Was it sympathy, pity or tenderness that almost overwhelmed him as he -gazed at her? He could not have said, though knowing that the unity that -was in them both, the share of the eternal that upheld their lives, -flowed out from his eyes into hers as he looked and from hers to his. -They were near at last; near as it is rarely given to human beings to -experience nearness, and the awe of such a partaking was perhaps the -ground of all he felt. - -"You see," he said, and a long time had passed, "I was mistaken." - -She did not answer him. Perhaps she did not understand. - -"I never knew you were a person who could come to the truth like that," -he said. - -Still holding her handkerchief to her lips, she slightly shook her head. - -"Even you never thought that I was bad." - -"I thought everybody was bad," said Oldmeadow, "until they came to know -that goodness doesn't lie in themselves. The reason you angered me so -was that you didn't see you were like the rest of us. And only people -capable of great goodness can know such an agony of self-recognition." - -"No," she repeated. "Everyone is not bad like me. You know that's not -true. You know that some people, people you love--are not like that. -They need no agony of recognition, for nothing could ever make them mean -and cruel." - -He thought for a moment. "That's because you expected so much more of -yourself; because you'd believed so much more, and were, of course, more -wrong. Your crash was so much greater because your spiritual pride was -so great. And I thought you were a person a crash would do for; that -there'd be nothing left of you if you came a crash. That was my mistake; -for see what there is left." - -She rose to her feet. His words seemed to press her too far. "You are -kind," she said in a hurried voice. "I understand. You are so sorry. -I've talked and talked. It's very thoughtless of me. I must go now." - -She came and took the tray, but he put his hand on her arm, detaining -her. "You'll own you're not bad now? You'll own there's something real -for me to be fond of? Wait. I want you to acknowledge it, to accept -it--my fondness. Don't try to run away." - -She stood above him, holding the tray, while he kept his hold on her -arm. "All I need to know," she said, after a moment, and she did not -look at him, "is that no one is ever safe--unless they always remember." - -"That's it, of course," said Oldmeadow gravely, "and that you must die -to live; and you did die. But you live now, really, and life comes -through you again. Your gift, you know, of which you were so much afraid -just now, lest it had enveigled me. Don't you see it? How can I put it -for you? You had a sort of wholeness before. There must be wholeness of -a sort if life is to come through; harmony of a sort, and faith. It -wasn't an illusion even then. When you were shattered you lost your -gift. The light can't shine through shattered things; and that was when -you recognized that without God we are a nothingness; a nothingness and -a restlessness mingled. You know. There are no words for it, though so -many people have found it and tried to say it. I know, too, after a -fashion. I've had crashes, too. But now your gift has come back, for you -are whole again; built up on an entirely new principle. You see, it's -another you I am fond of. You must believe in her, too. You do believe -in her. If you didn't you could not have found your gift." - -She had stood quite still while he spoke, looking down, not at him but -at the little tray between her hands, and he saw that she was near -tears. Her voice was scarcely audible as she said: "Thank you." And she -made an effort over herself to add: "What you say is true." - -"We must talk," said Oldmeadow. He felt extraordinarily happy. "There -are so many things I want to ask you about." And he went on, his hand -still on her arm, seeing that she struggled not to cry and helping her -to recover: "You're not going away for some time, yet, I hope. Please -don't. There'll soon be no need of hospitals of this sort, anywhere, -will there? and you must manage to stay on here a little longer. I -shan't get on if you go. You won't leave me just as you've saved me, -will you, Mrs. Barney?" - -At the name, over-taxed as she was already, a pitiful colour flooded her -face and before his blunder made visible his own blood answered hers, -mounting hotly to his forehead. "Oh, I'm so sorry," he murmured, -helpless and hating himself, while his hand dropped. She stood over him, -holding herself there so as not to hurt him by the aspect of flight. She -even, in a moment, forced herself to smile. It was the first smile he -had seen on her face. "You've nothing to be sorry for, Mr. Oldmeadow," -she said, as she had said before. "You're very kind to me. I wish I -could tell you how kind I feel you are." And as she turned away, -carrying the tray, she added: "No; I won't go yet." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -He did not see her again for two days; and she did not even come at -night. But he now kept possession of his new strength and slept without -her help. The sense of happiness brooded upon him. He did not remember -ever having felt so happy. His life was irradiated and enhanced as if by -some supreme experience. - -It was already late afternoon when, on the second day, she appeared; but -in this month of August his room was still filled with the reflection of -the sunlight and the warm colour bathed her as she entered. She wore a -blue cloak over her white linen dress and she had perhaps been walking, -for there was a slight flush on her cheeks and a look almost of -excitement in her eyes. - -She unfastened her cloak and put it aside and then, taking the chair -near the window, clasping her hands, as before, in her lap, she said, -without preamble and with a peculiar vehemence: "You hear often from -Barney, don't you?" - -Oldmeadow felt himself colouring. "Only once, directly. It rather tires -him to sit up, you know. But he's getting on wonderfully and the doctors -think he'll soon be able to walk a little--with a crutch, of course." - -"But you do hear, constantly, from Nancy, don't you," said Adrienne, -clasping and unclasping her hands but speaking with a steadiness he felt -to be rehearsed. "He is at Coldbrooks, I know, and Nancy is with him, -and his mother and Mrs. Averil. It all seems almost happy, doesn't it? -as happy as it can be, now, with Palgrave dead and Barney shackled." - -Startled as he was by her directness Oldmeadow managed to meet it. - -"Yes; almost happy," he said. "I was with them before I came out this -last time and felt that about them. Poor Mrs. Chadwick is a good deal -changed; but even she is reviving." - -"She has had too much to bear," said Adrienne. "I saw her again, too, at -the end, when she came to Palgrave. She can never forgive me. Meg is -happy now, but she will never forgive me either. I wrought havoc in -their lives, didn't I?" - -"Well, you or fate. I don't blame you for any of that, you know," said -Oldmeadow. - -"I don't say that I blame myself for it," said Adrienne. "I may have -been right or I may have been wrong. I don't know. It is not in things -like that that I was bad. But what we must face is that I wrought havoc; -that if it hadn't been for me they might all, now, be really happy. -Completely happy. If I had not been there Palgrave would not have been -so sure of himself. And if I had not been there Nancy and Barney would -have married." - -"I don't know," said Oldmeadow. "If Barney hadn't fallen in love with -you he might very probably have fallen in love with some one else, not -Nancy." - -"Perhaps, not probably," said Adrienne. "And if he had he would have -stayed in love with her, for Barney is a faithful person. And it may -have been because I was so completely the wrong person for him that he -came to know so quickly that Nancy was completely the right one. What I -feel is that anybody but Nancy would always have been, really, wrong. -And now that he loves her but is shackled, there's only one thing more -that can be done. I have often thought of it; I needn't tell you that. -But, till now, I could never see my way. It's you who have shown it to -me. In what you said the other day. It's wonderful the way you come into -my life, Mr. Oldmeadow. You made me feel that I had a friend in you; a -true, true friend. And I know what a friend Nancy and Barney have. So -the way opens. We must set Barney free, Mr. Oldmeadow. He and Nancy must -be free to marry. You and I can do it for them and only you and I." - -"What do you mean?" Oldmeadow murmured as, after her words, the silence -had grown deep between them. He repeated, using now the name inevitably -and forgetting the other day. "What do you mean, Mrs. Barney?" - -To-day she did not flush, but to-day there was a reason for her -acceptance. It was, he saw in her next words, only as Barney's wife that -she could help him. - -"He must divorce me," she said. "You and I could go away together and he -could divorce me. Oh, I know, it's a dreadful thing to ask of you, his -friend. I've thought of all that. Wait. Let me finish. I've thought of -nothing else since the other day. It came to me in the night after you -had been so wonderful to me; after that wonderful thing had happened to -us. You felt it, too, I know. It was as if we had taken a sacrament -together. I'm not a Christian. You know what I mean. We felt the deepest -things together, didn't we. And it's because of that that I can ask -this of you. No one else would understand. No one else would care for me -enough, or for him. And then, you could explain it all to him and no one -else could do that. You could explain that it had been to set him free. -To set _me_ free. Because they'd have to think and believe it was for my -sake, too, that you did it, wouldn't they? so as to have it really happy -for them; so that it shouldn't hurt. When it was all over you could go -and explain why you had done it. All we have to do, you know, is to stay -in a hotel together; I bearing your name. It's very simple, really." - -He lay staring at her, overwhelmed. The tears had risen to his eyes as -her beauty and her absurdity were thus revealed to him, and as she spoke -of their sacrament; but amazement blurred all his faculties. He had -never in his life been so amazed. And when he began to emerge, to take -possession of himself again, it was only of her he could think; not of -himself or Nancy and Barney. Only of her and of her beauty and -absurdity. - -"Dear Mrs. Barney," he said at last, and he did not know what to say; -"it's you who are wonderful, you alone. I'd do anything, anything for -you that I could. Anything but this. Because, truly, this is -impossible." - -"Why impossible?" she asked, and her voice was almost stern. - -"You can't smirch yourself like that." It was only one reason; but it -was the first that came to him. - -"I?" she stared. "I don't think it is to be smirched. I shall know why I -do it." - -"Other people won't know. Other people will think you smirched." - -"No one I care for. Everyone I care for will understand." - -"But to the world at large? Your name? Your reputation?" Oldmeadow -protested. "Do they mean nothing to you?" - -A faintly bitter humour touched her lips. "You've always taken the side -of the world in all our controversies, haven't you, Mr. Oldmeadow? and -you were probably right and I was probably wrong; but not because of -what the world would think. I know I'm right now, and those words: name: -reputation--mean nothing to me. The world and I haven't much to do with -each other. A divorced wife can run soup-kitchens and fever hospitals -just as well as the most unsmirched woman of the world. I'm not likely -to want to be presented at courts, am I? Don't think of me, please. It's -not a question of me. Only of you. Will you do it?" - -"I couldn't possibly do it," said Oldmeadow, and he was still hardly -taking her monstrous proposal seriously. - -"Why not?" she asked, scrutinizing him. "It's not that you mind about -your name and reputation, is it?" - -"Not much. Perhaps not much," said Oldmeadow; "but about theirs. That's -what you don't see. That it would be impossible for them. You don't see -how unique you are; how unlike other people. Nancy and Barney couldn't -marry on a fake. The only way out," said Oldmeadow, looking at her with -an edge of ironic grimness in his contemplation, "if one were really to -consider it, would be for you to marry me afterwards and for us to -disappear." - -She gazed at him and he saw that she weighed the idea. "But you'd be -shackled then," she said, and her thoughts were evidently clear. "It -would mean, besides, that you would lose them." - -"As to being shackled," Oldmeadow, still grimly, met the difficulty, -"that's of no moment. I'm the snuffy, snappy bachelor type, you -remember, and I don't suppose I'd ever have married. As to losing them, -I certainly should." - -"We mustn't think of it then," said Adrienne. "You and Barney and Nancy -mustn't lose each other." - -"But we should in either way. I could hardly take up my friendship with -them again after Barney had divorced you on account of me, even if you -and I didn't marry. It would give the whole thing away, if it were -possible for them to meet me again. As I say, they'd feel they had no -right to their freedom on such a fake as that." - -"They couldn't feel really free unless some one had really committed -adultery for their sakes?" Again Adrienne smiled with her faint -bitterness and he wondered if a man and woman had ever before had a more -astonishing conversation. "That seems to me to be asking for a little -too much icing on your cake. Of course it couldn't be a nice, new, snowy -wedding-cake; poor Mrs. Chadwick wouldn't like it at all, nor Mrs. -Averil; but it would be the best we could do for them; and I should -think that when people love each other and are the right people for each -other they'd be thankful for any kind of cake. Even if it were a good -deal burned around the edges," Adrienne finished, her slight bitterness -evidently finding satisfaction in the simile. - -"But they wouldn't see it at all like that," said Oldmeadow, now with -unalloyed gravity. "They'd see it as a cake they had stolen; a cake they -had no right to. It's a question of the laws we live under. Not of -personal, but of public integrity. They couldn't profit by a hoodwinked -law. It's that that would spoil things for them. According to the law -they'd have no right to their freedom. And, now that I am speaking -seriously, it's that I feel, too. What you are asking of me, my dear -friend, is no more nor less than a felony." - -She meditated, unmoved, still almost sternly, turning her eyes from him -and leaning her elbow on the window-sill, her head upon her hand. "I -see," she said at last. "For people who mind about the law, I see that -it would spoil it. I don't mind. I think the law's there to force us to -be kind and just to each other if we won't be by ourselves. If the law -gets tied up in such a foolish knot as to say that people may sin to set -other people free, but mayn't pretend to sin, I think we have a right to -help it out and to make it do good against its own will. I don't mind -the law; luckily for them. Because I won't go back from it now. I won't -leave them there, loving each other but never knowing the fullness of -love. I won't give up a thing I feel right because other people feel it -wrong. So I must find somebody else." - -Oldmeadow looked at her in a culminated and wholly unpleasant -astonishment. "Somebody else? Who could there be?" - -"You may well ask," Adrienne remarked, glancing round at him with a -touch of mild asperity. "You are the only completely right person, -because only you and I feel enough for them to do it for them. What I -must do now is to find some one who would feel enough, just for me, to -do it for me. It makes it more unfair for him, doesn't it. He'll have -only the one friend to help. But on the other hand it will leave them -without a scruple. They'd know from the beginning that with you and me -it was a fake; but with him it might seem quite probable. Yes; it's -strange; I had a letter from him only yesterday. I shouldn't have -thought of him otherwise. I might have had to give up. But the more I -think," Adrienne meditated intently, her head on her hand, her eyes -turned on the prospect outside, "the more I seem to see that Hamilton -Prentiss is the only other chance." - -"Hamilton Prentiss?" Oldmeadow echoed faintly. - -"You met him once," said Adrienne, looking round at him again. "But -you've probably forgotten. At the dinner we gave, Barney and I, in -London, so long ago. Tall, fair, distinguished looking. The son of my -Californian friend; the one you and Mrs. Aldesey thought so tiresome." - -He felt himself colouring, but he could give little thought to the minor -discomfiture, so deeply was his mind engaged with the major one. - -"Did we?" he said. - -"And you thought I didn't see it," said Adrienne. "It made me dreadfully -angry with you both, though I didn't know I was angry; I thought I was -only grieved. I behaved spitefully to Mrs. Aldesey that night, you will -remember, though I didn't know I was spiteful. I did know, however, that -she was separated from her husband"--again Adrienne looked, calmly, -round at him--"and it was a lie I told Barney when I said I didn't. -Sometimes I think that lie was the beginning of everything; that it was -when I told it that I began to hide from myself. However--" She passed -from the personal theme. "Yes; Hamilton is, I believe, big enough and -beautiful and generous enough to do it." - -"Oh, he is, is he?" said Oldmeadow. "And I'm not, I take it. You're -horribly unkind. But I don't want to talk about myself. What I want to -talk about is you. You must drop this preposterous idea of yours. Really -you must. You've had ideas like it before. Remember Meg; what a mess you -made there. I told you then that you were wrong and I tell you you're -wrong now. You must give it up. Do you see? We're always quarrelling, -aren't we?" - -"But I don't at all know that I was wrong about Meg, Mr. Oldmeadow," -said Adrienne. "And if I was, it was because I didn't understand her. I -do understand myself, and I don't agree that I'm wrong or that my plan -is preposterous. You won't call it preposterous, I suppose, if it -succeeds and makes Barney and Nancy happy. No; I'm not going to drop it. -Nothing you could say could make me drop it. As for Hamilton, I don't -set him above you; not in any way. It's only that you and he have -different lights. I know why you can't do this. You've shown me why. And -I wouldn't for anything not have you follow your own light." - -"And you seriously mean," cried Oldmeadow, "that you'd ask this young -fellow--I remember him perfectly and I'm sure he's capable of any degree -of ingenuousness--you'd ask him to go about with you as though he were -your husband? Why, for one thing, he'd be sure to fall head over heels -in love with you, and where would you be then?" - -Adrienne examined him. "But from the point of view of hoodwinking, that -would be all to the good, wouldn't it?" she inquired; "though -unfortunate for Hamilton. He won't, however," she went on, her dreadful -lucidity revealing to him the hopelessness of any protest he might still -have found to make. "There's a very lovely girl out in California he's -devoted to; a young poetess. He'll have to write to her about it first, -of course; Hamilton's at the front now, you see; and I must write to his -mother. She and Carola Brown are very near each other and will talk it -out together and I feel sure they will see it as I do. They'll see it as -something big I'm asking them to do for me--to set me free. I'm sure I -can count on Gertrude and I'm sure Hamilton can count on Carola. She's a -very rare, strong spirit." - -Oldmeadow, suddenly, was feeling exhausted, and a clutch of hysterical -laughter, as she spoke these last words, held his throat for a moment. -He laid his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes, while he saw -Adrienne and Hamilton Prentiss wandering by the banks of a French river -where poplars stood against a silver sky. He knew that he had accepted -nothing when he said at last: "Shall we talk about it another time? -To-morrow? I mean, don't take any steps, will you, until we've talked. -Don't write to your beautiful, big friend." - -"You always make fun of me a little, don't you," said Adrienne -tranquilly. She seemed aware of some further deep discomposure in him -and willing, though not comprehending it, to meet it with friendly -tolerance. "If he is big and beautiful, why shouldn't I say it? But I -won't write until we've talked again. It can't be, anyway, until the war -is over. And I've had already to wait for four years." - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -She might feel that he had cruelly failed her; but when she came at the -same hour next day it was evident to him from her demeanour that she -imagined him resigned, if not converted, to her alternative plan. She -carried a bunch of late roses and said that she had been having a lovely -drive with a dear old friend from Denver, who had managed to get to -Boulogne to see her. - -"Your friends all come from such distant places," said Oldmeadow with a -pretended fretfulness that veiled an indescribable restlessness. -"California, Denver, Chicago. They have, all of them, an implacably -remote sound, as if they were carrying you, already, off to other -planets." - -"Well, it doesn't take so long, really, to get to any of them," said -Adrienne, placing the roses in a glass of water by his side, a close, -funny little bunch, red roses in the middle and white ones all round. -She had taken off her cloak and laid a newspaper down on the little -table, seating herself, then, in the window and keeping in her hands a -pocket-book that, in its flatness and length and the way she held it, -reminded him of the little blue and grey fan of the dinner-party where -she had told her first lie. His mind was emptied of thought. Only -pictures crossed it, pictures of Adrienne and the tall, fair youth with -the ingenuous eyes, wandering by the French river; and, again, Adrienne -on that night, now as distant as California, when, with her fan and -pearl-wreathed hair, she had met his persiflage with her rebuking -imperturbability. But under the pictures a sense of violent tension made -his breathing shallow. He fixed his eyes on the pocket-book and wondered -how she had nursed people with those ineffectual-looking hands. - -"Where were you trained for nursing?" he asked her suddenly. "Out here? -or in England?" - -"In England. In Oxford. Before Palgrave was taken," said Adrienne. "I -gave up my philosophy very soon for that. I worked in a hospital there." - -"And how came you to go out to Salonika? Tell me about it. And about -your hospital here," he went on with a growing sense of keeping -something off. "It's your own hospital I hear, and wonderfully run. Sir -Kenneth was talking to me about you this morning." - -"What a fine person he is," said Adrienne. "Yes, he came to see us and -liked the way it was done." She was pleased, he saw, to tell him -anything he chose to ask about. She told him about her hospital and of -all its adventures--they had been under fire so often that it had become -an everyday event; and about how admirable a staff she had -organized--"rare, devoted people"--and about their wounded, their -desperately wounded _poilus_ and how they came to love them all. He -remembered, as she talked, that she was rich; even richer than he had -thought, since she could leave a fortune to Palgrave and yet equip -hospitals in France and in Salonika. She told him about Salonika, too. -It had been a fever hospital there and the misery and suffering had -seemed worse than the suffering here in France. Yes; she had caught the -fever herself and had nearly died. - -She had no gift for the apt or vivid word. Her nature had been revealed -to him as barbarous, or sublime, in its unconventionality, yet it -expressed itself only in the medium of trite convention. But his time of -jibbing at her platitudes was long since passed. He listened, rather, -with a tender, if superficial interest, seeing her heroic little figure -moving, unconcerned, among pestilences and bombardments. "It's not only -what you tell me," he said, when she had brought her recital up to date. -"I heard so much from Sir Kenneth. You are one of the great people of -the war." - -"Am I?" she said. That, too, unfeignedly, left her unconcerned. - -"You've the gift of leadership. The gift for big things generally." - -She nodded. "I'm only fit for big things." - -"Only? How do you mean?" - -"Little ones are more difficult, aren't they. My feet get tangled in -them. To be fit for daily life and all the tangles; that's the real -test, isn't it? That's just the kind of thing you see so clearly, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Big things and the people who do them are just the kind of -things you see through." - -"Oh, but you misunderstood me--or misunderstand," said Oldmeadow. "Big -things are the condition of life; the little things can only be built up -on them. One must fight wars and save the world before one can set up -one's tea-tables." He remembered having thought of something like this -at Lydia's tea-table. "Tea-tables are important, I know, and the things -that happen round them. But if one can nurse a ward of typhus patients -single-handed one must be forgiven for letting the tea-pot slip. Really -I never imagined you capable of all you've done." - -"I always thought I was capable of anything," said Adrienne smiling -slightly, her eyes meeting his in a tranquil partaking of the jest, that -must be at her expense. "You helped me to find that out about -myself--with all the rest. And I was right enough in thinking that I -could face things and lead people. But I wasn't capable of the most -important things. I wasn't capable of being a wise and happy wife. I -wasn't even capable of being truthful in drawing-rooms when other women -made me angry. But I can go on battle-fields and found hospitals and -tend the sick and dying. Shells and pestilences"--her smile was -gone--"if people knew how trivial they are--compared to seeing your -husband look at you with hatred." - -She had turned her eyes away as she was thus betrayed into revealing the -old bitternesses of her heart and he dropped his to the little -pocket-book that now lay still between her hands. The feeling in her -voice, the suffering it revealed to him, with the bitterness, woke an -unendurable feeling in himself. He did not clearly see what the test was -to which he put himself; but he knew that what he must say to her was -the most difficult thing he had ever had to say; and he found it only -after the silence had grown long. - -"Mrs. Barney--everything has changed, hasn't it; you've changed; I've -changed; Barney may have changed. It was only, after all, a moment of -miserable misunderstanding between you. He never really knew what you -were feeling. He thought you didn't care for him any longer, when, -really, you were finding out how much you cared. Don't you think, -before you take final decisions, that you ought to see Barney again? -Don't you think you ought to give him another chance? I could arrange it -all for you, when I got home." - -The flood of colour, deep and sick, had mounted to her face, masking it -strangely, painfully, to where the white linen cut across her brow and -bound her chin. And, almost supplicatingly, since he saw that she could -not speak, he murmured: "You can be a wise and happy wife now; and he -loved you so dearly." - -She did not lift her eyes. She sat there, looking down, tightly holding -the pocket-book in her lap. - -"Let me tell him, when I get home, that I've seen you again," he -supplicated. "Let me arrange a meeting." - -Slowly, not lifting her eyes, she shook her head and he heard her, just -heard her say: "It's not pride. Don't think that." - -"No; no; I know it's not. Good heavens, I couldn't think it that. You -feel it's no good. You feel that his heart is occupied. It is. I can't -pretend to hide from you that it is. But your place in it was supreme. -There would be no unfairness if you took it again. Nancy would be the -first person to want you to take it. You know that that is true of -Nancy." - -"I know. I heard her plead for me," said Adrienne. - -The sentence fell, soft and trenchant; and he remembered, in the silence -that followed, what she had heard. He drew a long breath, feeling half -suffocated. But he had met his test. It was inevitable, he knew it now, -that she should say "Barney and I are parted for ever." - -Silence dropped again between them. He did not know what was passing -behind its curtain and whether bitterness or only grief was in her -heart. - -He lay, drawing the slow, careful breaths of his recovery, and saw her -presently put out her hand and take up her _New York Herald_ and unfold -it. She looked down the columns unseeingly; but the little feint of -interest helped her. - -Slowly the colour faded from her face and it was as if the curtain -lifted when, laying the paper down, she said, and he knew that she was -finding words to comfort him: "Really everything is quite clear before -me now. I shall write at once to Hamilton, and to his mother. If he -agrees, if they all agree, he and I can go away very soon I think. -Afterwards, I shall stay over here. I've quite made up my mind to that. -There'll be so much to do; for years and years; for all one's lifetime. -Ways will open. When one is big," she smiled the smile at once so gentle -and so bitter, "and has plenty of money, ways always do. I'm a -_deracinee_ creature; I never had any roots, you know; and I can't do -better, I'm sure, than to make soil for the uprooted people to grow in -again. That's what's most needed now, isn't it? Soil. It's the -fundamental things of life, its bare possibilities, that have been so -terribly destroyed over here. America has, still, more soil than she can -use, and since I'm an American, and a rich one, my best plan is to use -America, in my fortune and my person, for Europe. Because I love them -both and because they both need each other." - -She had quite recovered herself Her face had found again its pale, fawn -tints and she was looking at him with her quietest contemplation while -he, in silence, lay looking at her. - -"It's not about the things I shall do that I'm perplexed, ever," she -went on. "But I'm sometimes perplexed about myself. I sometimes wish I -were a Roman Catholic. In an order of some kind. Under direction. To put -oneself in the hands of a wise director, it must be so peaceful. Like -French friends I have; such wise, fine women; so poised and so secure. I -often envy them. But that can't be for me." - -She must feel in his silence now the quality of some extreme emotion, -and that she believed it to be pity was evident to him as she went on, -seeking to comfort him; and troubled by his trouble: "You mustn't be -sorry. I am not unhappy. I am a happy person. Do you remember that -Sunday morning at Coldbrooks, long ago? How I said to Mother--to Mrs. -Chadwick--that I had no doubts? You thought me fatuous. I dimly saw that -you thought me fatuous. But it's still true of me. I must tell you, so -that you shan't think I'm unhappy. I've been, it seems to me, through -everything since then. I've had doubts--every doubt: of myself; of life; -of all the things I trusted. Doubt at last, when the dreadful darknesses -came--Barney's hatred, Palgrave's death--of God. We've never spoken of -Palgrave, have we? I was with him, you had heard, and at the very end it -was he who helped me rather than I him. He held me up. When he was dying -he held me up. He made me promise him that I would not kill myself--for -he guessed what I was thinking; he made me promise to go on. And he -saved me. The light began to come back to me while I sat beside him -after he had died." - -She had not looked at him while she spoke, but down at her hands that, -trembling, turned and returned the little pocket-book. And controlling -her voice as she sought to control the trembling of her hands, she said: -"Perhaps it is always like that. When one confesses one's sin and hates -it in oneself, even if it is still there, tempting one, the light begins -to come back. After that it came more and more. What you call my gift is -part of it. Isn't it strange that I should have had that gift when I was -so blind? But what you said was true. I had a sort of wholeness then, -because I was blind. And now that I see, it's a better wholeness and a -safer gift. That is what I wanted to say, really. To explain, so that -you shan't be sorry. No one who can find that light can be unhappy. It -comes to me now, always, when I need it. I can make it shine in other -people--as Palgrave made it shine in me. Love does it. Isn't it -wonderful that it should be so? Nothing else is real beside it. Nothing -is real without it. And when it happens, when one feels it come through -and shine further, it is more, far more, than happiness." - -All the while that she had spoken, pale, and with her trembling hands, -he had lain looking at her in silence, a silence that was dividing him, -as if by a vast chasm, from all his former life. - -He and Adrienne stood on one side of this chasm, and, while it seemed to -widen with a dizzying rapidity, he saw that on the other stood Barney, -Nancy, Coldbrooks, and Lydia--poor Lydia--and that they were being borne -away from him for ever. He saw nothing before him but Adrienne; and for -how long was he to keep her? That was his supreme risk; but he could -not allay it or step back to the further brink. It was his very life -that had fallen in two while she had spoken and without the sense of -choice; though he dimly saw that, in the restlessness and urgency of the -hours since he had seen her last, the choice had been preparing. - -He was taking the only step possible for him to take on the narrow -foothold of the present when he said, in a voice so quiet that she might -even be unaware of his seeming gross irrelevance, "Do you know, about -your plan--for Barney and Nancy--I've been thinking it over and I've -decided that it must be I, not Hamilton." - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -Her eyes met his for a long time before he realized that she might find -not only irrelevance but even irreverence. She had shown him her very -soul and he had answered with this announcement. Of course it had been -because of what she told him that he had seen at last his own necessity; -but he could not tell her that. - -"I'm not sorry for you," he said. "I envy you. You are one of the few -really happy people in the world." - -"But I'd quite given that idea up, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said. "What has -made you change?" - -He saw the trouble in her face, the suspicion of her power and its -compulsion over the lives of others. He took the bull by the horns. - -"You, of course. I can't pretend that it's anything else. I want to do -it for you and with you." - -"But it's for Barney and Nancy that it's to be done," she said, and her -gravity had deepened. "It's just the same for them--and you explained -yesterday that it would spoil it for them." - -"It may spoil it somewhat," said Oldmeadow, contemplating her with a -curious tranquillity; she was now all that was left him in life to -contemplate; and she was all he needed. "But it won't prevent it. I -still think it a wrong thing to do. I still think it a felony. But, -since I can't turn you from it, what I've come to see is that it's, as -you said, for you and me, who care for them, to do. It's not right, not -decent or becoming, that anyone who doesn't even know them should be -asked to do such a thing." - -"But Hamilton wouldn't do it for them," she said. "It would be for me he -would do it. And he wouldn't think it a felony." - -"All the more reason that his innocence shouldn't be taken advantage of. -I can't stand by and see it done. It's for my friends the felony will be -committed and it's I who will bear the burden for them. As to his doing -it for you, I know you better than he possibly can know you, and care -for you more than he possibly can. If you're determined on committing a -crime, I'll share the responsibility with you." - -"I know you care more. You are a wonderful friend. You are my best -friend in the world." She gazed at him and he saw that for once he had -troubled and perplexed her. "And it's wonderful of you to say you'll do -it. But Hamilton won't feel it a burden; not as you will; and for him to -do it won't spoil it for them. If you do it, it will spoil it for them. -You said so. And how can I let you do a thing you feel so wrong for my -sake?" - -"You'll have to. I won't have Hamilton sacrificed in order that their -cake shall have no burnt edges. They'll have to pay something for it in -social and moral discomfort. It would be nothing to the discomfort of -Miss Brown, would it? I shall be able to put it clearly to Barney when I -write and tell him that it's for your sake as well as his and that he -and Nancy, who have never sought anything or hoped for anything, are in -no way involved by our misdemeanour. I won't emphasize to Barney what I -feel about that side of it. He's pretty ingenuous, too. It will be a -less tidy happiness they'll have to put up with. That's all it comes to, -as far as they are concerned." - -She was looking at him with the trouble and perplexity and she said: - -"They'll have to pay in far more than social and moral discomfort." - -"Well? In what way? How?" he challenged her. - -"You said they'd lose you." - -"Only, if you married me," he reminded her. - -But she remembered more accurately. "No. They'd lose you anyway. You -said so. You said that if they could ever see you again it would make it -too blatantly a fake. And it's true. I see it now. How could you turn up -quietly, as if nothing had happened, after Barney had divorced me with -you as co-respondent? There's Lady Cockerell," said Adrienne, and, -though she was so grave, so troubled, it was with a touch of mild -malice. "There's Mr. Bodman and Johnson, to say nothing of Mrs. Chadwick -and Nancy's mother. No, I really don't see you facing them all at -Coldbrooks after we'd come out in the 'Daily Mail' with head-lines and -pictures." - -Her lucidity could indeed disconcert him when it sharpened itself like -this with the apt use of his vocabulary. He had to stop to think. - -"There won't, at all events, be pictures," he paused by the triviality -to remark. "We shan't appear. It will be an hotel over here and the case -will be undefended. We needn't, really, consider all that too closely. -At the worst, if they do lose me, it's not a devastating loss. They'll -have each other." - -"Ah, but who will you have?" Adrienne inquired. "Hamilton will have -Carola and they will have each other. But who will you have?" - -He lay and looked at her. There was only one answer to that question -and he could not make it. He was aware of the insufficiency of his -substitute. "I'd have your friendship," he said. - -"You have that now," said Adrienne. "And though I'm so your friend, I'll -be leaving you, soon, probably for ever. We'll probably never meet -again, Mr. Oldmeadow. Our paths lie so apart, don't they? My friendship -will do you very little good." - -Her words cut into him, but he kept a brave countenance. "I'd have the -joy of knowing I'd done something worth while for you. How easily I -might have died here, if it hadn't been for you. My life is yours in a -sense and I want you to use it rather than Hamilton's. I have my work, -you know; lots of things I'm interested in to go back to some day. As -you remarked, a divorced wife can run soup-kitchens and in the same way -a co-respondent can write articles and go to concerts." - -"I know. I know what a fine, big life you have," she murmured, and the -trouble on her face had deepened. "But how can I take it from you? A -felony? How can I let you do, for my sake, something you feel to be so -wrong?" - -"Give it up then," said Oldmeadow. And if he had found it difficult to -make his plea for Barney a little while before, how much more difficult -he found it to say this, and to mean it, now. "Give it up. That's your -choice, and your only choice. You owe that to me. Indeed you do. To give -it up or to accept me as your companion in iniquity. I'm not going to -pretend I don't think it iniquity to give you ease. You're not a person -who needs ease. And I can do without it, too. For your sake. So there -you have it." - -"Not quite. Not quite," she really almost pleaded. "I couldn't ask it of -Hamilton if he felt about it in the least little way as you do. And -Carola doesn't care a bit about the law either. She's an Imagist, you -know."--Adrienne offered this fact as if it would help to elucidate -Carola's complaisances. "She's written some very original poetry. If it -were Hamilton no one would lose anything, and Barney and Nancy would be -free. Indeed, indeed I can't give it up when it's all there, before me, -with everything to gain and nothing to lose for anybody, if it's -Hamilton." - -"Then it must be me, you see," said Oldmeadow. "And I shan't talk to you -about the iniquity again, I promise you. I've made my protest and -civilization must get on as best it can. You're a terrible person, you -know"--he smiled a little at her, finding the banter so that she should -not guess at the commotion of his heart. "But I like you just as you -are. Now where shall we go?" - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -He could not have believed that it would be so delicious to live with -Adrienne Toner. - -Even at the moment when he had known that he loved her, he had been, -though filled with the sense of a present heaven, as aware as ever of -the discrepancies between them, and during the three months that -separated them, he at Cannes, she nursing in Paris, he knew many doubts; -never of his love, but of what it was making him do and of where it was -going to lead them. He couldn't for the life of him imagine what was to -become of them if his hopes were fulfilled, for he hardly saw himself -following her off to Central Europe--it was to Serbia, her letters -informed him, that her thoughts were turning--nor saw them established -in London under the astonished gaze of Lydia Aldesey. - -She had selected Lyons as their place of meeting, because of the work -for the _rapatries_ that she wished to inspect there, and from the -moment that he saw her descend from the Paris express, dressed in dark -civilian clothes and carrying, with such an air of competence, her rug -and dressing-case, all doubts were allayed and all restlessness -dispelled. - -He had arrived the day before and had found an old-fashioned hotel with -spacious rooms overlooking the Saone, and, as they drove to it on that -November evening, she expressed herself, scrutinizing him with a -professional eye, as dissatisfied with his recovery. - -It was because of the restlessness, of course, that he had not got as -well as he should have, and he knew that he must, in the stress of -feeling that now beset him, look strangely, and he promised her, feeling -that he spoke the truth, that now that he had his nurse again complete -recovery would be only a matter of days. - -"I want you to see our view," he said to her when the porter had carried -up her little box and they were left alone in the brocaded and gilded -salon that separated their rooms; "I chose this place for the view; it's -the loveliest in Lyons, I think." - -There was still a little twilight, and standing at the window they -looked down at the lighted quai with its double row of lofty plane-trees -and across the jade-green Saone at St. Jean, the grey cathedral, and at -the beautiful white _archeveche_ glimmering in a soft, dimmed atmosphere -that made him think of London. - -"There's a horrible modern cathedral up on the hill," he said; "but we -don't need to see it. We need only see the river and the _archeveche_ -and St. Jean. And in the mornings there's a market below, a mile of it, -all under huge mushroom-coloured umbrellas; flowers and cheeses and -every kind of country produce. I think you'll like it here." - -"I like it very much. I think it's beautiful," said Adrienne. "I like -our room, too," and she turned and looked up at the painted ceiling and -round at the consoles and mirrors, inlaid tables and richly curved, -brocaded chairs. "Isn't it splendid." - -"Madame Recamier is said to have lived here," Oldmeadow told her. "And -this is said to have been her room." - -"And now it's mine," said Adrienne, smiling slightly as though she -found the juxtaposition amusing. - -Already the stealing sense of deliciousness was breathing over him. The -very way in which she said, "our room," was part of it. Even the way in -which she said that made him feel the peace, comfort, and charm of a -shared life as he had never before felt it. And the sense grew and grew -on that first evening. - -It was delicious to hear the waiters address her as Madame, and to know -that it was his madame they imagined her to be, when he sat opposite to -her at their little table in the dining-room. She wore a grey dress now -and, with her quiet, her calm glances cast about her, might indeed have -been the veritable Madame Oldmeadow inscribed at the _bureau_. If they -had the aspect of a devoted, long-mated couple, it was because of her -calm. But she would have been as unperturbed, he felt sure, had she been -stopping there under her own name instead of his and looked upon as his -well-established mistress. Situations would never embarrass her as long -as she knew what she was doing with them. That night when she gave him -her hand at bedtime she said, looking at him with the affectionate, -professional eyes: "I'll come and put you to sleep if you need me; be -sure to let me know." - -But he had no need to call her. He slept as soundly as though she sat -beside him with her hand upon his brow. - -So the mirage of conjugal felicity was evoked about him. - -She poured out his coffee for him in the morning wearing a silk -_neglige_ edged with fur, and said, as they buttered their rolls, that -they must buy some honey for their breakfasts. She said, too, that they -must do a great deal of sight-seeing in the afternoons. "There is so -much to be seen in Lyons. And I shall finish with my _rapatrie_ work in -the mornings." He asked if he might not come with her to the _rapatrie_ -work, but was told that he was not yet strong enough for more than one -walk in the day. "In our evenings, after tea," she went on, "I thought -perhaps you'd like to study Dante a little with me. My Dante is getting -so rusty and I've brought a very fine edition. Are you good at Italian?" - -He said he wasn't, but would love to read Dante with her. - -"And we must get a piano," she finished, "and have music after dinner. -It will be a wonderful holiday for me." - -So the days fell at once into a series of rituals. He saw that she had -always mapped them out conscientiously, as Mrs. Toner had doubtlessly -taught her to do, careful of the treasure of time--as Mrs. Toner would -have said--entrusted to each soul by life. So, no doubt, Adrienne would -put it still. And what he would, in first knowing her, have found part -of her absurdity, he found now part of her charm. - -That was what it all came back to. He saw, reconstructing their past, -that from the beginning she had had her deep charm for him. - -It was the trivial word for the great fact; the compulsion of -personality; the overflow of vitality; the secret at once of the saint -and of the successful music-hall singer. Her own absorption in life was -so intense that it communicated itself. Her confidence was so secure -that it begot confidence. Her power was implicit in all she did. It was -not only the _rapatries_ she dealt with, as, at the first, she had dealt -with the wounded. She dealt as successfully and as accurately with the -little things of life. Honey was on their breakfast-table; flowers on -the consoles; music on the piano. The gilded hotel salon became a home. - -She was still, in demeanour, the cultured, travelled American, equipped -always, for their walks, with a guide-book or history, from which she -often read to him as they paused to lean on the parapets of the splendid -quais. There were few salient facts in the history of the potent city -that were not imparted to him; and with anyone else what a bore it would -have been to have to listen! But he was more than content that she -should tell him about the Romans or Richelieu. It was everything to him -to feel that they shared it all, from the honey to Richelieu. - -And with all the intimacy went the extreme reserve. - -She had showed him, when it was necessary for their understanding as -friends, the centre of her life; yet she remained, while so gentle, so -absorbed, and even loving, as remote, as inaccessible, as he had felt -her to be on those first days in the hospital. She never referred to her -own personal situation not to any emotion connected with it. She never -referred to herself or expressed a taste or an opinion touched with -personal ardour. He did not know what she was really feeling, ever. -Though, when he looked at her, sitting opposite him in her grey and -addressed by the assiduities of the waiters, he could imagine that he -was living with a wife, he could imagine more often that he was living -with a nun. Her control and her selflessness were cloistral. He could -not think her in any need of a director. - -They walked one afternoon along the Quai des Brotteaux, returning from -the park of the Tete d'Or, where they had wandered on the gravel under -the tall, melancholy trees and fed the deer. The ugly yet magnificent -city was spread before them in one of its most splendid aspects, -climbing steeply, on the further banks of the Rhone, to the cliff-like -heights of the Croix Rousse and marching, as it followed the grandiose -curve of the river, into a sunset sky where the cupola of the Hospice -hung like a dark bubble against the gold and the Alps, not visible from -the river level, seemed yet to manifest themselves in the illumined -clouds ranged high above the horizon. - -Ten days of their appointed fortnight had now passed and while Oldmeadow -kept a half unseeing yet appraising eye upon the turbulent glories of -the river, he was wondering when and how he should make his revelation -and his appeal. If her reserve made it more difficult to imagine, her -intimacy did not make it more easy. It was because she was so intimate -that she had remained so unaware. For all his self-command he felt sure -that in any other circumstances she could not, for these ten days, have -remained so blind. - -Here she walked beside him, the Madame Oldmeadow of the hotel, looking -before her as she walked and thinking, he would have wagered, not of him -but of Serbia. - -She wore a beautifully adjusted little costume, conveying in its sober -darkness the impression of richness and simplicity that her clothes had -always given him. Fur was turned up about her ears and a small hat of -fur and velvet was turned down over her eyes as she had always worn her -hats. The straight fringe of gold showed under its brim and under the -gold were those calm, those questing, melancholy eyes. - -Or perhaps--he carried further his rueful reverie--she was thinking -about the date of the Hospice. He had the guide-book in his pocket. - -"Isn't it jolly?" he suggested, as she looked up at him, indicating the -prospect spread before them and adding, since he knew that his English -instinct for boyish understatement still puzzled her: "Like a great, -grim queen in shabby clothes; raised on such a throne and crowned with -such jewels that one feels her glorious rather than ugly." - -Adrienne studied the shabby queen attentively and then looked back at -him. Perhaps something dwelling in his eyes, something for her only and -not at all for Lyons, caught her more special attention, for she said -suddenly, and so unexpectedly that, with a sort of terror, he felt that -his crisis might be coming: "You've been very dear to me, Mr. Oldmeadow, -in all our time here. I feel it to have been a great privilege, you -know; a great opportunity." - -"Really? In what way?" He could at all events keep his voice quiet and -light. "I thought it had been you who made all the opportunities." - -"Oh, no. I never make any of the opportunities I am thinking of," said -Adrienne. "I only know how to take them. It isn't only that you are more -widely and deeply cultured than I am--though your Italian accent isn't -good!"--she smiled; "but I always feel that you see far more in -everything than I do, even when you seem to be seeing less. I have to go -carefully and pick up fact by fact, while you see things in a sort of -vision and they are all related as they enter your mind. That's where my -privilege comes in. You make me share your vision sometimes. You have -the artistic mind, and I am not really artistic at all--though Mother -always wanted that for me more than anything; with all that goes with -it." - -She was speaking of herself--though it was only in order to express more -exactly her gratitude, and, as he walked beside her, he was filled with -the mingled hope and terror. After all he had still four more days of -her. It would be terrible to spoil them. - -"No; you aren't artistic," he agreed. "And I don't know that I am, -either. Whether I am or not, I feel mine to have been the opportunity -and the privilege." - -"I can't understand that at all," she said, with her patent candour. - -"It may be part of the artistic temperament to feel things one can't -understand. Though I do understand why I feel it," he added. - -"And it's part of the artistic temperament not to try"--Adrienne turned -their theme to its more impersonal aspect. "Never to try to enjoy -anything that you don't enjoy naturally. I don't believe I ever enjoy -any of the artistic things quite naturally. I've always been trained to -enjoy and I've always tried to enjoy; because I thought it was right to -try. But since I've been here with you I've come to feel that what I've -enjoyed has been my own effort and my mastery of the mere study, and I -seem to feel that it might be as well to give up trying and training and -fall back on the things that come naturally; scenery artists would think -sentimental, and babies; and patriotic songs." She smiled a little as -she found her list. But she was grave, too, thinking it out and adding -another to her discovered futilities. - -"It may be as well to limit your attention to the sentimental scenery -and the babies, since you've so many other things to do with it," he -acquiesced. "We come back to big people again, you see; they haven't -time to be artistic; don't need to be." - -"Ah, but it's not a question of time at all," said Adrienne, and he -remembered that long ago, from the very first, he had said that she -wasn't stupid. "It's a question of how you're born. That's a thing I -would never have admitted in my old days, you know. I would never have -admitted that any human soul was really shut out from anything. Perhaps -we're not, any of us, if we are to have all eternity to grow in. But as -far as this life is concerned I see quite clearly now that some people -are shut out from all sorts of things, and that the sort of mistake I -made in my old time was in thinking that anyone who had the will could -force eternity into any given fragment of our temporal life. I did do a -little philosophy, you see! That's what I mean and you understand, I -know. All the same I wish I weren't one of the shut-out people. I wish I -were artistic. I'd have liked to have that side of life to meet people -with. I sometimes think that one doesn't get far with people, really, if -all that one has to give are the fundamental things like the care of -their minds and bodies. One goes deep, of course; but one doesn't go -far. You can do something for them; but there's nothing, afterwards, -that they can do _with_ you; and it makes it rather lonely in a -way--when one has time to be lonely." - -He did not know, indeed, whether she saw the beauty of the scene spread -before them as they walked, and he was remembering, with a sort of -tranced tenderness, the flower-wreathed shepherdess and her crook; and -Mrs. Toner with her lilies and seagulls. But why should she see beauty -when she made it? It was all that he could see in her now. - -"What you can do for them afterwards is to pour out their coffee for -them in the most enhancing way," he suggested, "and make sight-seeing a -pleasure, and arrange flowers and place chairs and tables so that a -hotel salon becomes loveable. If you find the person to whom you can -give the fundamental things and do all sorts of homely things with -afterwards, why be lonely? We are very happy together, aren't we? We get -a great deal out of each other. I can speak for myself, at all events; -and you've just told me that I give something, too. So why should you go -off to Central Europe next week? Why not go back with me to the South," -he finished, "and wander about together enjoying, quite naturally, the -sentimental scenery?" - -He held his breath after he had thus spoken, wondering with intensity, -while he felt his heartbeats, what she would make of it. He knew what he -could make of it, seizing his opportunity on the instant, if only she -would recognize the meaning that underlay the easy words. And framed in -the little hat on the background of transfigured Lyons, Adrienne's face -was turned towards him and, after he had made his suggestion, she -studied him in silence for what seemed to him a long lapse of time. Then -she said, overwhelmingly: - -"That's perfectly lovely of you, Mr. Oldmeadow." - -"Not at all; not perfectly lovely at all," he stammered as he -contradicted her and he heard that his voice sounded angry. "It's what I -want. I want it very much." - -"Yes. I know you do. And that's what's so lovely," said Adrienne. "I -know you want it. You are sorry for me all the time. And you want to -cheer me up. Because you feel I've lost so much. But, you know; you -remember; I told you the truth that time. I don't need cheering. I'm not -unhappy. One can be lonely without being unhappy." - -"I'm not sorry for you," poor Oldmeadow rejoined, still in the angry -voice. "I'm not thinking of you at all. I'm thinking of myself. I'm -lonely, too, and I am unhappy, even if you aren't." - -She stopped short in her walk. He saw in her eyes the swift, almost -diagnosing solicitude that measured his need and her own capacity. It -was as though his temperature had gone up alarmingly. - -"Dear Mr. Oldmeadow," she said; and then she faltered; she paused. She -no longer found her remedies easily. "It's because you are separated -from your own life," she did find. "It's because all this is so bitter -to you; what you are doing now--how could I not understand?--and the -war, that has torn us all. But when it's over, when you can go home -again and take up your own big life-work and find your own roots, -happiness will come back; I'm sure of it. We are all unhappy sometimes, -aren't we? We must be; with our minds and hearts. Our troubled minds; -our lonely hearts. But you know as well as I do, dear Mr. Oldmeadow, -that our souls can find the way out." - -Her nature expressed itself in platitudes; yet sometimes she had -phrases, rising from her heart as if from a fountain fed by unseen -altitudes, that shook him in their very wording. "Our troubled minds. -Our lonely hearts," echoed in his ears while, bending his head -downwards, he muttered stubbornly: "My soul can't, without you." - -She still stood, not moving forward, her eyes raised to his. "Please -don't say that," she murmured, and he heard the trouble in her voice. -"It can't be so, except for this time that you are away from everybody. -You have so many things to live for. So many people near you. You are -such a big, rare person. It's what I was afraid of, you know. It happens -so often with me; that people feel that. But you can't really need me -any longer." - -He said nothing, still not raising his eyes to hers, and she went on -after a moment. "And I have so many things to live for, too. You've -never really thought about that side of my life, I know. Why should you? -You think of any woman's life--isn't it true?--as not seriously -important except on its domestic side. And you know how important I -think that. But it isn't so with me, you see. I have no hearth and I -have no home; I have only my big, big life and it's more important than -you could believe unless you could see it all. When I'm in it it takes -all my mind and all my strength and I'm bound to it, yes, just as -finally, just as irrevocably as a wife who loves is bound by her -marriage vows; because I love it. Do you see? They are waiting for me -now. They need me now. There are starving people, dying people; and -confusion; terrible confusion. I have a gift for all that. I can deal -with it. Those are just the things I can deal with. And I mustn't put it -off any longer--when our time is up. I must leave you, my dear, dear -friend, however much I'd love to stay." - -She was speaking at last with ardour, and about herself. And what she -said was true. He had never thought about her work except in the sense -that he thought her a saint and knew that saints did good deeds. That -she was needed, sorely needed, by the starving and dying, was a fact, -now that it was put before him, silencing and even shaming him. It gave -him, too, a new fear. If she had her blindness, he had his. His hopes -and fears, after all, were all that he had to think of; she had the -destinies of thousands. He remembered Sir Kenneth's tone in speaking of -her; its deep respect. Not the respect of the man for the -tender-hearted, merciful woman; but the respect of a professional expert -for another expert; respect for the proved organizer and leader of men. - -"I have been stupid," he said after a moment. "It's true that I've been -thinking about you solely in relation to myself. Would you really love -to stay? If it wasn't for your work? It would be some comfort to believe -that." - -"Of course I'd love to stay," she said, eagerly scanning his face. "I'd -love to travel with you--to pour out your coffee in Avignon, Nimes, -Cannes--anywhere you liked. I'd love our happy time here to go on and -on. If life could be like that; if I didn't want other things more. You -remember how Blake saw it all: - - 'He who bends to himself a joy - Doth the winged life destroy.' - -I mustn't try to bend and keep this lovely time. I must let it fly--and -bless it as it goes. And so it will bless me." - -She seldom made quotations nowadays. For this one he felt a gratitude -such as his life had rarely known. - -"It's been a joy to you, too, then?" - -"Of course it has," said Adrienne smiling at him and turning at last -towards the bridge that they must cross. "It's been one of the most -beautiful things that has ever happened to me." - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -Oldmeadow sat at the inlaid table in the gilded salon on the afternoon -of the last day. He had two letters to write, for, as he had put off -speaking to Adrienne till their last evening, so he had put off writing -to Barney and to Lydia Aldesey till this last afternoon, and he saw now -how difficult it would be to write coherently while his thoughts -stretched themselves forward to those few hours of the night when his -fate would be decided. - -Adrienne had gone out. She had written her short communication to Barney -and brought it in with its envelope and laid it before him, asking him -in the voice that, again, made him think of snow: "Is that quite right?" - -It was, quite, he told her, after glancing through it swiftly. It -stated, in the most colourless terms, the facts that Barney was to take -to his solicitor. "Quite right," he repeated, looking up at her. "Are -you going out? Will you post it?--or shall I?" - -"Will you post it with yours? Yes. I must go out. But I'll try to be -back by tea-time. It's very disappointing; our last afternoon. But that -poor woman from Roubaix--the one with consumption up at the Croix -Rousse--is dying. They've sent for me. All the little children, you -remember I told you. I'm going to wire to Josephine and ask her if she -can come down and look after them for a little while." - -"Josephine?" he questioned. He had, till now, entirely forgotten -Josephine. Adrienne told him that she was with her parents in a -provincial town. "They lost their only son and are very sad. Fine, brave -old people. He is a baker, the old father, and makes the most wonderful -bread. I went to see them last summer." - -Their packing was done and the room denuded; the men had taken away the -piano that morning. He had his letters to write; so there was really no -reason why she should not go. And there was, besides, nothing that they -had to say to each other, except the one thing he had to say. - -The silence that overtakes parting friends on a station platform had -overtaken them since the morning, though, at lunch, Adrienne had talked -with some persistence of her immediate plans and prospects and about the -unit of doctors and nurses who were to meet her in Italy. There was no -reason why she should not go, and he would even rather she did. He would -rather see no more of her until evening when everything but the one -thing would be over and done with. And so he was left with his letters, -leaning his elbows on the table over the hotel paper and staring out at -the Saone and the white _archeveche_. - -Both letters were difficult to write; but beside the one to Lydia, the -one to Barney was easy. Barney, after all, was to gain everything from -what he had to tell him, and Lydia was to lose; how much was Lydia to -lose? He recalled their last evening together and its revelations and -saw that the old laughing presage was now more than fulfilled. Lydia was -to lose more than her toes and fingers; in any case. Even if he returned -to her alone, she cared for him too much not to feel, always, the shadow -of his crippled heart; his heart not only crippled, but occupied, so -occupied that friendships, however near, became, in a sense, -irrelevancies. And if he returned with Adrienne--but could he return -with Adrienne? What kind of a life could he and Adrienne lead in -London?--even if Lydia's door, generously, was opened to them, as he -believed it would be--knowing her generous. - -He laid down his pen and fixed his eyes on the river and he tried to see -Lydia and Adrienne together. But it was a useless effort. From this -strange haven of the Lyons hotel where he had spent the happiest -fortnight of his life, he could not see himself into any future with -familiar features. He could only see himself and Adrienne, alone, at -hotels. To attempt to place her in Lydia's generous drawing-room was to -measure more accurately than he had yet measured it the abyss that -separated him from his former life. If it could be spanned; if Adrienne -could be placed there, on the background of eighteenth-century fans and -old glass, she became a clipped and tethered seagull in a garden, -awkward, irrelevant, melancholy. Lydia might cease to find her -third-rate and absurd; but she wouldn't know what to do with her any -more than she would have known what to do with the seagull. So what, if -Adrienne became his wife, remained of his friendship with Lydia? - -He put aside the unresolved perplexity and took Barney first. - -"My dear Barney," he wrote,--"I don't think that the letter Adrienne has -written to you will surprise you as much as this letter of mine. You -will understand from hers that she wishes to free herself and to free -you. You will understand that that is my wish, too. She only tells you -that she has been staying here with me, for a fortnight, as my wife; -that's for your solicitor; you will read between the lines and know that -it seemed worth while to both of us to make the necessary sacrifice in -order to gain so much for you and for her. I hope that you and my dear -Nancy will feel that we are justified, and that you will take your -happiness as bravely as we secure it for you. You'll know that our step -hasn't been taken lightly. - -"But, now, dear Barney, comes my absolutely personal contribution. It is -a contribution, for it will make you and Nancy happier to know that I -have as much to gain as you and she. I have fallen in love with Adrienne -and I hope that I may win her consent to be my wife. Yes, dear Barney, -unbelievable as it will look to you, there it is; and she dreams of it -as little as you could have dreamed of it. I met her again, as her -letter informs you, at the Boulogne hospital. She asked me to say -nothing about our meeting. She wanted to disappear out of your lives. -She saved my life, I think, and I saw a great deal of her. What I found -in her that I had not seen before I need not say. - -"My great difficulty, my burden and perplexity now, lie in the fact that -she has no trace of feeling for me that might give me hope. We became, -at Boulogne, the best of friends; such friends that this plan suggested -itself to her; and we remain, after our fortnight here, the best of -friends; and that is all. Yet I have hope, unjustified and groundless -though it may be, and had I not had it from the beginning I couldn't -have entered upon the enterprise; not even for you and Nancy. From one -point of view it's possible that you may feel that I've entered upon it -in spite of you and Nancy. You may feel inclined to repudiate and disown -the whole affair and to remain unaware of it. In that case it would come -down to an appeal from me to you to carry it through for my sake. But -from another point of view it makes it easier for you; easier for you to -accept, since my hope gives integrity to the situation. That's another -thing that decided me. If it had been mere sham I don't think I could -have undertaken it. Adrienne felt none of my scruples on this score. She -walked over legal and conventional commandments like a saint over hot -ploughshares. But I haven't her immunities. I should have felt myself -badly scorched, and felt that I'd scorched you and Nancy, if my hope -hadn't given everything its character of _bona fides_. - -"Dear Barney, dear Nancy, please forgive me if I've been selfish. It -hasn't all been selfishness, that I promise you; it was in hopes for -you, too; and I have to face sacrifices. The worst of them will be that -if Adrienne takes me I'll have to lose you. You can measure the depth of -my feeling for her from the fact that I can make such sacrifices. -Perhaps you'll feel that even if she doesn't take me I'll have to lose -you. I hope not. I hope, in that case, that mitigations and refuges will -be found for me and that some day you'll perhaps be able to make a -corner in your lives where I may creep and feel my wounds less aching. -In any case, after Adrienne, you are the creatures dearest to me in the -world and I am always and for ever your devoted friend, - - ROGER." - - * * * * * - -And now Lydia. There was no use in thinking about it. The plunge must be -taken. - -"My dear Lydia," he wrote,--"I have fallen in love with Adrienne Toner. -I feel that with such a friend as you it's better to begin with the -bomb-shell. She doesn't know it, and if we are here in this Lyons hotel -together, it's only, she imagines, because she wishes to set Barney free -and that I've undertaken, for her sake and for Barney's, a repugnant -task. It is a repugnant task, in spite of what it may mean to me of -happiness. I hate it for her, and for Barney and for myself. But since -she was determined on it and since, if it wasn't I it was to be another -friend, and since I have fallen in love with her, I saw that it was only -decent that the co-respondent in the case should be the man who married -her afterwards. For I hope to become her husband, and I haven't one jot -of ground for my hope. We are studying Dante together, and she shows me -the sights of Lyons. She is just the same. Yet completely altered. - -"I don't know whether you'll feel you can ever see me again, with or -without her. I don't want to cast myself too heavily on your compassion, -so I'll only remind you that even if I return to England alone I shall -probably have to lose Nancy and Barney and that you will be my only -refuge. It will be the culmination of my misfortunes if I have to lose -you. - -"Dear Lydia, I am always your devoted - - "ROGER" - - * * * * * - -But he hadn't lost her. He knew he hadn't lost her; in any case. And the -taste of what he did was sharp and bitter to him, for she was generous -and loyal and he had cut off her very limbs. When he had addressed and -stamped the letters he went downstairs, and, for the sense of greater -finality, carried them to the post instead of dropping them into the -hotel-box. - -He had almost the sense of disembodiment as he returned to the empty and -dismantled room. He seemed to have become a mere consciousness suspended -between two states of being. The past was gone. He had dropped it into -the post-box. And he saw no future. He felt, for the moment, no hopes. -At the moment it seemed absurd to think that Adrienne could ever love -him. He tried to picture Coldbrooks and Somer's Place when the -bomb-shell struck them. Would Barney show Nancy the letter? Nancy would -be pale, aghast, silent. Barney would have to wait for days, perhaps, -before saying to her: "But, after all, it's for their sakes, too, Nancy -dear. See what Roger says." Mrs. Averil would cast up her hands and cry -"That woman!"--but, perhaps, with as much admiration as repudiation, and -Meg, if she were summoned to the scene of confusion, would say, "So -she's got hold of Roger, too." Funnily enough it was the dear March -Hare, he felt sure, who would be the first one to stretch out a hand -towards the tarnished freedom. "After all, you know," he could hear her -murmuring, "it would be much _nicer_ for Barney and Nancy to be married, -wouldn't it? And Adrienne wasn't a Christian, you know, so probably the -first marriage doesn't _really_ count. We mustn't be conventional, -Monica." Yes, perhaps it would go like that at Coldbrooks. But at -Somer's Place Lydia would sit among her fans and glass and wish that -they had never seen Adrienne Toner. - -He paced up and down before the windows and he had never been so lonely -in his life. He was so lonely that he became aware at last that his mere -negative state was passing into a positive and that grief at the -severance of old ties had become fear of losing Adrienne. The fear and -the loneliness seemed actualized when, at five, the waiter appeared -bearing the tea-tray on his shoulder. He had never had tea alone before -in this strange, foreign room. Adrienne always made a complicated and -charming ritual of the occasion, boiling the water on their own little -spirit-kettle and measuring the tea from her own caddy--the very same -kettle and caddy, she told him, that had accompanied herself and her -mother on all their travels. And to see the cups and bread and butter -and not to have her there, added a poignant taste of abandonment to his -loneliness. - -She kept the kettle in her room and when the boy was gone he softly -opened the door and went in. It would keep his heart up to have the -water boiling in readiness for her arrival. He recognized, as he stood, -then, and looked about him, that his instinct had also been that of -taking refuge. In her room he could more closely recover the sense of -her presence. - -She had finished all the essentials of her packing and her box stood -with its lid open ready for the last disposals. Yet the room seemed -still full of her personality. He noted it all gazing around him with -eyes almost those of a solemn little boy permitted to glance in at a -Christmas-tree. - -Her dressing-table, improvised from the mantelpiece, was neatly laid out -with small, worn, costly, and immaculate appurtenances. He moved forward -and looked at them, not touching. The initials intertwined on the backs -of the ivory brushes were her girlish ones: A. T. She had discarded, -long since, no doubt, her wedding toilet set. - -If he became her husband, the thought crossed his mind and quickened his -heart, he might brush her hair for her, that wonderful golden hair, -before many months were over. - -Near the ivory hand-glass stood two photographs in a folding frame of -faded blue leather. He stooped to look and saw that one was of Mrs. and -the other certainly of Mr. Toner, in their early days. Remote, -mysterious and alien, their formally directed eyes looked back at him -and in the father's ingenuous young countenance, surmounted by a roll of -hair that was provincial without being exactly rural, the chin resting -upon a large, peculiar collar, he could strangely retrace Adrienne's -wide brow and steadfast light-filled eyes. Mrs. Toner wore a ruffled -dress and of her face little remained distinct but the dark -gaze--forceful and ambiguously gentle. - -The room was full of the fragrance that was not a fragrance and that -had, long ago, reminded him of Fuller's earth. A pair of small blue -satin _mules_ stood under a chair near the bed. - -Only after he had withdrawn, gently closing the door behind him, did he -realize that he had forgotten the kettle and then he felt that he could -not go back again. A moment after the boy returned with a note, sent, by -hand, he was informed, from the Croix Rousse. - -"I am so dreadfully sorry, so disappointed," he read. "Our last -afternoon, but I can't get away yet. Don't wait dinner for me, if I -should be late, even for that. I won't be very late, I promise, and we -will have our evening." - -The note had no address. He rushed forth and down to find the messenger -gone. Had he only known where to seek her in the vast, high, melancholy -district of the Croix Rousse he would have gone to join her. His sense -of loneliness was almost a panic. - -Of course, he tried to fix his mind on that realization, as he went back -to the salon, her rapatries had no doubt preoccupied her mind, from the -first, quite as much as their own situation. She had spoken to him in -especial of this family and of their sorrows. One child they had left -dead at Evian and the mother, on the eve of their return to their -Northern home, had become too desperately ill to travel. "Such dear, -good, _gentle_ people," he recalled her saying. No; he must not repine. -After all he had only the one thing to say to her; and the evening would -be long enough for that. - -It was nearly seven when he heard her quick footstep outside. When she -entered, the brim of her little hat, in the electric light, cast a sharp -shadow over her eyes, but he saw at once that she had been crying. - -She came in so quickly that he had not time to rise and, going to him, -behind his chair, she put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him -down, saying: "I'm so sorry to have left you all alone." - -It was astonishingly comforting to have her put these fraternal hands -upon him like this. She had never done it before. Yet there was a salty -smart in her words to him. What else did she intend to do but leave him -all alone for always? - -"I'm dreadfully lonely, I confess," he said, "and I see that you're -dreadfully tired." - -She went round to the other side of the table and sat down, not looking -at him and said, in a low voice: "Oh--the seas--the seas of misery." - -"You are completely worn out," he said. He was not thinking so much of -the seas of misery as of his few remaining hours. Were they to be -spoiled by her fatigue? - -"No; not worn out. Not at all worn out," said Adrienne, stretching her -arms along the table in front of her as she sat, and though she had wept -he could see something of ardour, of a strength renewed, in the lines of -her pallid lips. "I've sat quite still all afternoon. I've been with -him. She died soon after I got there. At the end she was talking about -the little girl's grave at Evian. I was able to comfort her about that. -She was so afraid it would not be tended. That it would have no flowers. -Josephine will go to Evian afterwards and see about it. There are always -dear nuns to do those things. There was a nun with her to-day. That was -the greatest comfort of all; and the priest who came. But I was with the -father and the five poor little children; so frightened and miserable. I -could not leave them, you see. He talked and talked and talked. It -helped him to talk and tell me about their home and how they had had -everything so nice and bright. Linen, a garden, a goat and fowls. Oh, if -only she could have seen her home again! That was what he kept saying -and saying. They were full of hope when they got to Evian. He told me -how the children sang at dawn when the train panted up the mountain -among the golden trees. Like birds, he said, and _Vive la France_! They -all believed they were to be safe and happy. _Et, Madame, c'etait notre -calvaire qui commencait alors seulement._" - -She spoke, not really thinking of him, he saw, absorbed still in the -suffering she had just left, measuring her power against such problems -and the worse ones to which she was travelling to-morrow. - -"Josephine will be with them, I hope," she went on presently, "in three -or four days. She will help them to get home and then she will come back -and go to see about the grave at Evian. Josephine is a tower of strength -for me." - -Her eyes were raised to him now, and, as they rested, he saw the -compunction, the solicitude, with which they had met him on her -entrance, return to them. "I'm not so very late, am I?" she said, -rising. "I'll take off my hat and be ready in a moment." - -"Don't hurry," said Oldmeadow. - -She was tired, more tired than she knew. During dinner she hardly spoke, -and, finding the resolve suddenly, he said, as they came back to their -salon: "Do you know what you must do now. Go and lie down and rest for -an hour. Until nine. It's not unselfishness. I'd rather have half of you -to talk to for our last talk, than none of you at all." - -"How dear of you," she said. She looked at him with gratitude and, -still, with the compunction. "It would be a great rest. It would be -better for our talk. I can go to sleep at once, you know. Like -Napoleon," she added with a flicker of her playfulness. - -When she had gone into her room Oldmeadow went out and walked along the -quai. The night was dark and dimmed with fog, but there was a moon and -as he walked he watched it glimmer on the windows of St. Jean. He seemed -to see the august form of the cathedral through a watery element and the -grey and silver patterns of the glass were like the scales of some vast -fish. A sort of whale waiting to swallow up the Jonah that was himself, -he reflected, and, leaning his elbows on the parapet of the quai, the -analogy carried him further and he saw the cathedral like a symbol of -Adrienne's life--her "big, big" life--looming there before him, -becoming, as the moon rose higher, more and more visible in its austere -and menacing majesty. What was his love to measure itself against such a -vocation?--for that was what it came to, as she had said. She was as -involved, as harnessed, as passionately preoccupied as a Saint Theresa. -How could he be fitted in with Serbia and all the hordes of human need -and wretchedness that he saw her sailing forward to succour? He knew a -discouragement deeper than any he had felt, for he was not a doctor and -his physical strength was crippled by his wounds; and, shaking his -shoulders in the chilly November air, he turned his back on the -cathedral and leaned against the parapet to look up through leafless -branches where the plane tassels still hung, at the lighted windows of -the hotel; their hotel, where the room, still theirs, waited for them. -He felt himself take refuge in the banal lights. After all, she wasn't -really a Saint Theresa. There was human misery everywhere to succour. -Couldn't she, after a winter in Serbia, found creches and visit slums in -London? The masculine scepticism she had detected in him had its -justification. Women weren't meant to go on, once the world's crisis -past, doing feats of heroism; they weren't meant for austere careers -that gave no leisure and no home. The trivial yet radiant vision of -intimacy rose again before him. She slept there above him and he was -guarding her slumber. He would always watch over her and guard her. He -would follow her round the world, if need be, and brush her hair for her -in Serbia or California. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -The gilt clock on the mantelpiece pointed to nine, but when he went to -Adrienne's door and listened there was no sound within her room, and his -heart sank as he wondered if she might not sleep on, in her fatigue, -sleep past all possible hour for their colloquy. Yet he did not feel -that he could go in and wake her. The analogy of the cathedral loomed -before him. It would be like waking Saint Theresa. - -He walked up and down the empty, glittering salon; walked and walked -until the clock struck ten. Desperation nerved him then and he went -again to her door and knocked. - -With hardly a pause her voice answered him; yet he knew that he had -awakened her and it echoed for him with the pathos of so many past -scenes of emergency when it must so have answered a summons from -oblivion: "Coming, coming." Among bombings, he reflected; and sudden -terrible influxes of dying men from the front. - -"Coming," he heard her repeat, on a note of dismay. She had sprung up, -turned on her light and seen the hour. - -He was reminded vividly, as he saw her enter--and it was as if a great -interval of time had separated them--of his first meeting with her. She -was so changed; but now as then she was more composed than anyone he had -ever met. - -But it was of much more than the first meeting that the pale, still face -reminded him. His dreams were in it; the dream where she had come to -him along the terrace, lifting her hand in the moonlight; and the dream -of horror when he had again and again pushed it down to drown. - -"I'm so ashamed," she said, and he saw that it was with an effort she -smiled. The traces of her weeping were now, after her sleep, far more -visible, ageing her, yet making her, too, look younger; like a child -with swollen lids and lips. "I didn't know I was so tired. I slept and -slept. I didn't stir until I heard your knock. Never mind. We'll talk -till midnight." - -She was very sorry for him. - -She sat down at the table and under the electric chandelier her braided -hair showed itself all ruffled and disarranged. She had on her dark -travelling dress and she had thrust her feet into the pale blue satin -_mules_. The disparity of costume in one so accurate, her air of -readiness for the morrow, made him feel her transitoriness almost more -than her presence, though his sense of that pressed upon him with a -stifling imminence. Even though she sat there the room kept its look of -desolate, glittering emptiness and more than their shared life in it he -remembered the far places from which she had come and to which she was -going. It was as if she had just arrived and were pausing for the night -_en route_. - -As he had seen them years ago, so he saw again the monster engines -crossing the prairies at night and flying illumined pennons of smoke -against the sky as they bore her away from blue seas, golden sands, a -land where the good and gifted lurked behind every bush; and before her -stretched the shining rails, miles and miles of them, running through -ruin and desolation, that were to bear her ever onwards into the -darkness. This was what life had brought her to. She had been only a -sojourner among them at Coldbrooks. The linked life of order and family -affection had cast her forth and he saw her, for ever now, unless he -could rescue her, with only hotels to live in and only the chaos she was -to mould, to live for. She seemed already, as she sat there under the -light with her ruffled hair, to be sitting in the train that was to bear -her from him. - -"I think you owe me till midnight, at least," he said. He had not sat -down. He stood at some little distance from her leaning, his arms -folded, against a gilded and inlaid console. "We've lots of things to -talk about." - -"Have we?" Adrienne asked, smiling gently, but as if she humoured an -extravagance. "We'll be together, certainly, even if we don't talk much. -But I have some things to say, too." - -She had dropped her eyes to her hands which lay, lightly crossed, on the -table before her, and she seemed to reflect how best to begin. "It's -about Nancy and Barney," she said. "I wanted, before we part, to talk to -you a little about them. There are things that trouble me and you are -the only person with whom I can keep in touch. You will know how I shall -be longing to hear, everything. You'll let me know at once, won't you?" - -"At once," said Oldmeadow. - -"There might be delays and difficulties," Adrienne went on. "I shall be -very troubled until all that is clear. And then the money. You know -about the money? Barney isn't well off and he was worse off after I'd -come and gone. I tried to arrange that as best I could. Palgrave -understood and entered into all my feelings." - -"Yes; I'd heard. You arranged it all very cleverly," said Oldmeadow. - -He moved away now and, at the other end of the room, his back to her, -came to a standstill, while his eyes dwelt on a large gilt-framed -engraving that hung there; some former Salon triumph; a festive, -spring-tide scene where young women in bustles and bonnets offered sugar -to race-horses in a meadow, admired by young men in silk hats. - -"Do you think this may make a difficulty?" Adrienne asked. "Make him -more reluctant to take what is to come to him? It's Mrs. Chadwick's now, -you know." - -"You've arranged it all so well," said Oldmeadow, noting the gardenias -in the young men's button-holes, "that I don't think they can get away -from it." - -"But will they hate it dreadfully?" she insisted, and he felt that her -voice in its added urgency protested, though unconsciously, against his -distance; "I seem to see that they might. If they can't take it as a -sign of accepted love, won't they hate it?" - -"Well," said Oldmeadow, trying to reflect, though his mind was far from -Barney and Nancy, "dear Eleanor Chadwick doesn't mind taking it, -whatever it's a sign of. And since it will come to Barney through her, I -don't think there'll be enough personality left hanging about it to hurt -much." - -"I wish they could take it as a sign of accepted love," Adrienne -murmured. - -"Perhaps they will," he said. "I'll do my best that they shall, I -promise you." - -It was one thing to promise it and another to know his hope that it -might be a promise never to be redeemed. The cross-currents in his own -thought made him light-headed as he stood there, his back to her, and -examined the glossy creatures in the meadow. "Do you think it will all -take a long time?" Adrienne added, after a little pause. "Will they be -able to marry in six or eight months, say?" - -"It depends on how soon Barney takes action. Say about a year," he -suggested. "They'd wait a little first, wouldn't they?" - -"I hope not. They've waited so long already. I hope it will be as soon -as possible. I shall feel so much more peaceful when I hear they're -married. Could you, perhaps, make them see that, too?" - -And again he promised. "I'll make them see everything I can." - -He turned to her at last. She sat, her face still downcast in its -shadow, while the light glittered on her wreaths of hair. Her hands -still lay before her on the table, and the light fell on her -wedding-ring. Perhaps she was looking at the ring. - -"It all depends on something else," he heard himself say suddenly. - -She turned her head and looked round at him. His attitude, his distance -from her, drew her attention rather than his words, for she repeated -mildly: "On something else?" - -"Whether I can keep those promises, you know," said Oldmeadow. "Yes, it -all depends on something else. That's what I want to talk to you about." - -He hardly knew what he was saying as he approached the table and pushed -the brocaded chair, companion to the one in which she sat, a little -from its place. He leaned on its back and looked down at her hands and -Adrienne kept her eyes on him, attentive rather than perplexed. - -"May I talk to you about it now?" he asked. "It's something quite -different." - -"Oh, do," said Adrienne. She drew her hands into her lap and sat -upright, in readiness. And, suddenly, as he was silent, she added: -"About yourself? I've been forgetting that, haven't I? I've only been -thinking of my side. You have quite other plans, perhaps. Perhaps you're -not going back to England for ever so long. Is it an appointment?" - -"No; not an appointment," he muttered, still looking down, at the table -now, since her hands were no longer there. "But perhaps I shan't be -going back for a long time. I hope not." - -"Oh," she murmured. And now he had perplexed her. After what he had just -promised her, his hope must perplex and even trouble her. "Do tell me," -she said. - -"It's something I want to ask you," said Oldmeadow--"And it will -astonish you. You may find it hard to forgive; because I've meant to ask -it from the beginning; from our deciding to go away together. As far -back as the time in the hospital." - -"But you may ask anything. Anything at all," she almost urged upon him. -"After what I've asked you--you have every right. If there's anything I -can do in the wide, wide world for you--oh! you know how glad and proud -I should be. As for forgiveness"--he heard the smile in her voice, she -was troubled, yet tranquil, too--"you're forgiven in advance." - -"Am I? Wait and see." He, too, tried to smile, as he used the tag; but -it was a mechanical smile and he felt his heart knocking against the -chair-back as he went on: "Because I haven't done what you asked me to -do as you asked me to do it. I haven't done it from the motive you -supposed. It's been for Barney and for Nancy and for you; but it's been -most of all for myself." He screwed his glass into his eye as he spoke -with a gesture as mechanical as the smile had been and he looked at her -at last, thus brought nearer. "I want you not to go on to-morrow." It -was the first, the evident, the most palpable desire that rose to his -lips. "I want you never to go on again, alone. If you can't stay with -me, I want you to let me follow you. When the time comes I want you to -marry me. I love you." - -The light as it fell on her seemed suddenly strange, almost portentous -in its brilliancy. Or was it her stillness, as she sat and gazed at him -after he had spoken the words, that was strange and portentous? It was -as if they arrested the currents of her being and she sat tranced, -frozen into the fixed shape of an astonishment too deep for emotion. Her -eyes did not alter in their gentleness; but the gentleness became tragic -and pitiful, like the inappropriate calm on the mask of a dead face at -Pompeii, fixed in an eternal unreadiness by the engulfing lava. - -She put up her hand at last and pushed back her hair. With her forehead -bared she became more like the photograph of her father. When she spoke -her voice was slow and feeble, like the voice of a person dangerously -ill. "I don't understand you." - -"Try to," said Oldmeadow. "You must begin far back." - -She still kept her hand pressed upon her hair. "You don't mean that it's -the conventionally honourable thing to do? Oh, no; you don't mean that?" -Her face in its effort to understand was appalled. - -"No; I don't mean anything conventional," he returned. "I'm thinking -only of you. Of my love. I'll come with you to Serbia to-morrow--if -you'll let me. I could kneel and worship you as you sit there." - -"Oh," she more feebly murmured. She sank back in her chair. - -"My darling, my saint," said Oldmeadow, gazing at her; "if you must -leave me, you'll take that with you; that the man who destroyed you is -your lover; that you are dearer to him than anything on earth." - -"Oh," she murmured again, and she put her hands before her face. Her -eyes were hidden; she had spoken no word of reproach and he could not -keep himself from her. He knelt beside her, grasping the chair across, -behind her. She was so near that he could have laid his head upon her -breast. "Don't leave me," he heard his pleading voice, but she seemed so -much nearer than his own voice; "or let me come. Everything shall be as -you wish and when you wish. Tell me that you care, too; or that you can -come to care. Tell me that you can think of me as your husband." - -She was there, with her hidden eyes, within his arms, and inevitably -they closed around her, and though he heard her murmur, "Please, please, -please," he could not relinquish her. She was free and he was free. -They had cut themselves off from the world. They were alone in the -strange city; in the strange, bright, hallucinated room; and he knew -from the ache and rapture of her nearness how he had craved it. - -But, gently, he heard her say again, "Please," and gently she put him -from her and he saw her face, and her eyes full of grief and gentleness. -"Forgive me," she said. - -"My darling. For what?" he almost groaned. "Don't say you're going to -break my heart." - -She kept her hand on his breast, holding him from her while she looked -into his eyes. "It is so beautiful to be loved," she said, and her voice -was still the slow, feeble voice of exhaustion. "Even when one has no -right to be. Don't misunderstand. Even when one may not love back; not -in that way. Forgive me; not in that way; my dearest friend." - -"Why mayn't you love back? Why not in that way? If it's beautiful, why -mayn't you?" - -"Sit there, will you? Yes; keep my hand. How weak I've been, and cruel. -It can't be. Don't you know? Haven't you seen? It has always been for -him. He must be free; but I can never be free." - -"Oh, no. No. That's impossible," Oldmeadow said, leaning towards her -across the table and keeping her hand in both of his. "I can't stand -that. I could stand your work, your vocation, better. But not Barney, -who loves another woman. That's impossible." - -"But it is so," she said, softly, looking at him. "Really it is so." - -"No, no," Oldmeadow repeated, and he raised her hand to his lips and -kept it there, a talisman against the menace of her words. "He lost -you. He's gone. I've found you and you care for me. You can't hide from -me that you care for me. Just now. For those moments. You were mine." - -"No," she repeated. "I was weak and cruel, but I was not yours." - -She had been incredibly near so short a time ago before. Now, looking at -him, with her difficult breaths and gentle, inflexible eyes, she was -incredibly remote. "I am his, only his," she said. "I love him and I -shall always love him. It makes no difference. He loves Nancy, but it -makes no difference. He is my husband. The father of my baby." - -She tried to speak on steadily while she thus gave him the truth that -ended all his hope; but the desperate emotion with which he received it -made real and overpowering to her her outlived yet living sorrow. With -all that she must relinquish laid bare to her in the passion of his eyes -she could measure all that she had lost, as she had, perhaps, till then, -never measured it. "Don't you know?" she said. "Don't you see? My heart -is broken, broken, broken." - -She put her head down on her arms as she said the words and he heard her -bitter weeping. - -He knew, as he listened, that it was all over with him. Dimly, in the -terrible suffering that wrenched at him, he received his further -revelation of the nature already nearer him than any in the world. Her -strength would be in all she did and felt. She had loved Barney and she -would always love him. Her marriage had been to her an ultimate and -indissoluble experience. That was why she had been so blind. She could -not have thought of herself as a woman to be again loved and wooed. - -Her hair lay against his hands, still holding hers, and he found himself -stroking it, without tenderness or solicitude it seemed. It seemed to be -only automatically that his fingers passed across it, while he noted its -warmth and fineness and bright, lovely colour, remembering that he had -thought it at the first her one indubitable beauty. - -They sat there thus for a long time. The gilt clock paused, choked, then -in a voice of hurrying, hoarsened silver rang out eleven strokes. -Footsteps passed and faded up the corridor; doors closed. A tramway on -the quai clashed and clanged, came to a noisy standstill, and moved on -again with a rattling of cables and raucous blasts from a horn; and in -the profound silence that followed he seemed to hear the deep old river -flowing. - -"Really, you see, it's broken," said Adrienne. She had ceased to weep, -but she still leaned forward, her head upon her folded arms. "You saw it -happen," she said. "That night when you found me in the rain." - -"I've seen everything happen to you, haven't I?" said Oldmeadow. - -"Yes," she assented. "Everything. And I've made you suffer, too. Isn't -that strange; everybody who comes near me I make suffer." - -"Well, in different ways," he said. "Some because you are near and -others because you won't be." - -His voice was colourless. His hand still passed across her hair. - -"Don't you see," she said, after a moment, "that it couldn't have been. -Try to see that and to accept it. Not you and me. Not Barney's friend -and Barney's wife. In every way it couldn't have done, really. It makes -no difference for me. I'm a _deracinee_, as I said. A wanderer. But what -would have become of you, all full of roots as you are? You can live it -down without me. You never could have with. And how could you have -wandered with me? For that must be my life." - -"You know, it's no good trying to comfort me," said Oldmeadow. "What I -feel is that any roots I have are in you." - -"They will grow again. The others will grow again." - -"I don't want others, darling," said Oldmeadow. "You see, my heart is -broken, too." - -She lifted her head at last and he saw her marred and ravaged face. - -"It can't be helped," he tried to smile at her. "You weren't there to be -recognized when I first met you and now that you are there, I've come -too late. I believe that if I'd come before Barney, you'd have loved me. -It's my only comfort." - -"Who can say," said Adrienne. Her gaze, as she looked at him, was deep -with the mystery of her acceptance. "Perhaps. It seems to me all this -was needed to bring us where we are--enmity and bitterness and grief. -And my love for Barney, too. Let me tell you. It's in the past that I -think of him. As if he were dead. It's something over; done with for -ever; yet something always there. How can one be a mother and forget? -Even when he is Nancy's husband and when she is a mother, I shall not -cease to feel myself his wife. Perhaps you think that strange, after Meg -and what I believed right for her. But it is quite clear to me, and -simple. It isn't a thing of laws and commandments; only of our own -hearts. If we can love again, we may. But for me it would be impossible. -With me everything was involved. I couldn't, ever, be twice a wife." - -Silence fell between them. - -"I'll see about the little girl's grave," said Oldmeadow suddenly. He -did not know what had made him think of it. Perhaps something that had -gone on echoing in him after she had spoken of her maternity. "I'll go -to Evian to-morrow. It will spare Josephine the journey and give me -something to do. You'll tell me the name and give me the directions -before you go." - -Tears filled her eyes as she looked at him; but they did not fall. They -could need no controlling. The springs of weeping must be nearly -drained. "Thank you," she said, and she looked away, seeming to think -intently. - -It was now too late for the tramways. They had ceased to crash and -rattle by, but a sound of belated singing passed along the quais, -melancholy in its induced and extravagant mirth. - -The horrible sense of human suffering that had beaten in upon him at the -hospital, pressed again upon his heart. He saw himself departing next -day to find the abandoned grave and he saw himself standing beside her -train and measuring along the shining rails the vast distances that were -to bear her away for ever. - -"That's the worst," he said. "You're suffering too. I must see you go -away and know that you are unhappy. I must think of you as unhappy. With -a broken heart." - -Her eyes, after she had thanked him, had been fixed in the intent -reverie. She, too, perhaps, had been seeing those tides of misery, the -sea of which she had spoken, breaking in tragic waves for ever; so -unchanged by all the alleviations that love or mercy could bring; and it -was perhaps with despair that she saw herself as one with it. Her eyes -as she turned them on him were full of distance and of depth and, with -sickening grief, he felt that a woman with a broken heart could do -nothing more for herself or for him. - -But her thought, whatever the voids of darkness it had visited, drew -nearer and nearer to his need as she looked at him. Something of her own -strong vigilance was in the look, bringing the seagull to his mind. The -seagull caught and battered by the waves, with sodden wings, half -dragged down, yet summoning its strength to rise from the submerging -sea. - -"But you can be happy with a broken heart," she said. Their hands had -fallen apart long since. She stretched out hers now and took his in her -small, firm grasp. - -"Can you?" he asked. - -"You mustn't think of me like this," she said, and it was as if she read -his thoughts and their imagery. "I went down, I know; like drowning. -Sometimes the waves break over you and pull you down, and there seems -nothing else in all the world but yourself and what you've suffered. But -it doesn't last. Something brings you up again." - -Something had brought her up again now. His darkness. His misery. It was -as if he saw her spread her wings and saw her eyes measuring, for them -both, the spaces of sea and sky. - -He remembered a picture in a book he had loved as a little boy: little -Diamond held to the breast of the North Wind as she flies forth in her -streaming hair against a sky of stars. So he felt himself lying on her -breast and lifted with her. - -"I've told you how happy I can be. It's all true," she said. "It's all -there. The light, the peace, the strength. I shall find them. And so -will you." - -"Shall I?" he questioned gently. "Without you?" - -"Yes. Without me. You will find them. But you won't be without me," said -Adrienne. - -Already she was finding them. He knew that, for, as she looked at him, -he felt an influence passing from her to him like the laying of her hand -upon his brow. But it was closer than that. It was to her breast that -her eyes held him while, in a long silence, the compulsion of her faith -flowed into him. First quietness; then peace; then a lifting radiance. - -"Promise me," he heard her say. - -He did not know what it was he must promise, but he seemed to feel it -all without knowing and he said: "I promise." - -She rose and stood above him. "You mustn't regret. You mustn't want." - -She laid her hands upon his shoulders as she spoke and looked down at -him, so austere, so radiant. "Anything else would have spoiled it. We -were only meant to find each other like this and then to part." - -"I'll be good," said Oldmeadow. It was like saying one's prayers at -one's mother's knees and his lips found the child-like formula. - -"We must part," said Adrienne. "I have my life and you have yours and -they take different ways. But you won't be without me, I won't be -without you. How can we be, when we will never, never forget each other -and our love?" - -He looked up at her. He had put out his hands and they grasped her dress -as a donor in a votive altarpiece grasps the Madonna's healing garment. -It was not, he knew, to keep her. It was rather in an accepting -relinquishment that he held her thus for their last communion, receiving -through touch and sight and hearing her final benison. - -"I will think of you every day, until I die," she said. "I will pray for -you every day. Dear friend--dearest friend--God bless and keep you." - -She had stooped to him and for a transcending moment he was taken into -her strong, life-giving embrace. The climax of his life was come as he -felt her arms close round him and her kiss upon his forehead. And as she -held him thus he believed all that she had said and all for which she -could have found no words. That he should find the light and more and -more feel their unity in it: that the thought of her would be strength -to him always; as the thought of him and of his love would be strength -to her. - -After she had gone, he sat for a long time bathed in the sense of her -life, and tasting, for that span of time, her own security of eternal -goodness. - -THE END - - -Typographical error was corrected by the etext transcriber: - -"Adriennes mustn't fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only -justification for Adriennes is to be in the right. => "Adrienne mustn't -fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only justification for Adrienne is -to be in the right. {pg 241} - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - -***** This file should be named 42428.txt or 42428.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/2/42428/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project -Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you -charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you -do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the -rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose -such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and -research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do -practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is -subject to the trademark license, especially commercial -redistribution. - - - -*** START: FULL LICENSE *** - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project -Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at -http://gutenberg.org/license). - - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy -all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. -If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the -terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or -entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement -and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" -or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the -collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an -individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are -located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from -copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative -works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg -are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project -Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by -freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of -this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with -the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by -keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project -Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in -a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check -the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement -before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or -creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project -Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning -the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United -States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate -access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently -whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, -copied or distributed: - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived -from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is -posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied -and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees -or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work -with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the -work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 -through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the -Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or -1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional -terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked -to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the -permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any -word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or -distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than -"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version -posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), -you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a -copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon -request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other -form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided -that - -- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is - owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he - has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the - Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments - must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you - prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax - returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and - sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the - address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to - the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." - -- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or - destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium - and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of - Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any - money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days - of receipt of the work. - -- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set -forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from -both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael -Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the -Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm -collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain -"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or -corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual -property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a -computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by -your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with -your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with -the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a -refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity -providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to -receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy -is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further -opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER -WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO -WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. -If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the -law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be -interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by -the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any -provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance -with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, -promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, -harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, -that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do -or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm -work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any -Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. - - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers -including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists -because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from -people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. -To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 -and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive -Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at -http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent -permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. -Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered -throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at -809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email -business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact -information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official -page at http://pglaf.org - -For additional contact information: - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To -SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any -particular state visit http://pglaf.org - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. -To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate - - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm -concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared -with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project -Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. - - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. -unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/42428.zip b/42428.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 5bc9804..0000000 --- a/42428.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/42428-8.txt b/old/42428-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 922896c..0000000 --- a/old/42428-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11078 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Adrienne Toner - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42428] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER -_A Novel_ - -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt) - -AUTHOR OF "CHRISTMAS ROSES, AND OTHER STORIES," "TANTE" -"FRANKLIN KANE," "THE ENCOUNTER," ETC. - -[Illustration: colophon] - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge - -COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SÉLINCOURT -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - -THIRD IMPRESSION, MAY, 1922 - -The Riverside Press -CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS -PRINTED IN THE U . S . A. - - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER - - - - -PART I - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -"Come down to Coldbrooks next week-end, will you, Roger?" said Barney -Chadwick. He had been wandering around the room, pausing once to glance -at the César Franck on the piano and once at the window to look down at -the Thames, and his voice now, though desultory in intention, betrayed -to his friend preoccupation and even anxiety. "There is going to be an -interesting girl with us: American; very original and charming." - -Roger Oldmeadow sat at his writing-bureau in the window, and his high -dark head was silhouetted against the sky. It had power and even beauty, -with moments of brooding melancholy; but the type to which it most -conformed was that of the clever, cantankerous London bachelor; and if -he sometimes looked what he was, the scholar who had taken a double -first at Balliol and gave brain and sinew to an eminent review, he -looked more often what he was not, a caustic, cautious solicitor, -clean-shaved and meticulously neat, with the crisp bow at his collar, -single eyeglass, and thin, wry smile. - -There was a cogitative kindness in his eyes and a latent irony on his -lips as he now scrutinized Barney Chadwick, who had come finally to lean -against the mantelpiece, and it was difficult before Roger Oldmeadow's -gaze at such moments not to feel that you were giving yourself away. -This was evidently what Barney was trying not to feel, or, at all -events, not to show. He tapped his cigarette-end, fixing his eyes upon -it and frowning a little. He had ruffled his brown hair with the nervous -hand passed through it during his ramble, but ruffled or sleek Barney -could never look anything but perfection, just as, whether he smiled or -frowned, he could never look anything but charming. In his spring-tide -grey, with a streak of white inside his waistcoat and a tie of petunia -silk that matched his socks, he was a pleasant figure of fashion; and he -was more than that; more than the mere London youth of 1913, who danced -the tango and cultivated Post-Impressionism and the Russian ballet. He -was perhaps not much more; but his difference, if slight, made him -noticeable. It came back, no doubt, to the fact of charm. He was radiant -yet reserved; confident yet shy. He had a slight stammer, and his smile -seemed to ask you to help him out. His boyhood, at twenty-nine, still -survived in his narrow face, clumsy in feature and delicate in contour, -with long jaw, high temples and brown eyes, half sweet, half sleepy. The -red came easily to his brown cheek, and he had the sensitive, stubborn -lips of the little boy at the preparatory school whom Oldmeadow had met -and befriended now many years ago. - -In Oldmeadow's eyes he had always remained the "little Barney" he had -then christened him--even Barney's mother had almost forgotten that his -real name was Eustace--and he could not but know that Barney depended -upon him more than upon anyone in the world. To Barney his negations -were more potent than other people's affirmations, and though he had -sometimes said indignantly, "You leave one nothing to agree about, -Roger, except Plato and Church-music," he was never really happy or -secure in his rebellions from what he felt or suspected to be -Oldmeadow's tastes and judgments. Oldmeadow had seen him through many -admirations, not only for books and pictures, but for original girls. -Barney thought that he liked the unusual. He was a devotee of the -ballet, and had in his rooms cushions and curtains from the Omega shop -and a drawing by Wyndham Lewis. But Oldmeadow knew that he really -preferred the photograph of a Burne-Jones, a survival from Oxford days, -that still bravely, and irrelevantly, hung opposite it, and he waited to -see the Wyndham Lewis replaced by a later portent. Barney could remain -stubbornly faithful to old devotions, but he was easily drawn into new -orbits; and it was a new star, evidently, that he had come to describe -and justify. - -"What have I to do with charming American girls?" Oldmeadow inquired, -turning his eyes on the blurred prospect of factory-chimneys and -warehouses that the farther waterside of Chelsea affords. One had to go -to the window and look out to see the grey and silver river flowing, in -the placidity that revealed so little power. Oldmeadow lived in a flat -on the Embankment; but he was not an admirer of Chelsea, just as he was -not an admirer of Whistler nor--and Barney had always suspected it--of -Burne-Jones. His flat gave him, at a reasonable cost, fresh air, -boiling-hot water and a walk in Battersea Park; these, with his piano, -were his fundamental needs; though he owned, for the mean little stream -it was, that the Thames could look pretty enough by morning sunlight -and--like any river--magical under stars. After Plato and Bach, -Oldmeadow's passions were the rivers of France. - -"She'll have something to do with you," said Barney, and he seemed -pleased with the retort. "I met her at the Lumleys. They think her the -marvel of the age." - -"Well, that doesn't endear her to me," said Oldmeadow. "And I don't like -Americans." - -"Come, you're not quite so hide-bound as all that," said Barney, vexed. -"What about Mrs. Aldesey? I've heard you say she's the most charming -woman you know." - -"Except Nancy," Oldmeadow amended. - -"No one could call Nancy a charming woman," said Barney, looking a -little more vexed. "She's a dear, of course; but she's a mere girl. What -do you know about Americans, anyway--except Mrs. Aldesey?" - -"What she tells me about them--the ones she doesn't know," said -Oldmeadow, leaning back in his chair with a laugh. "But I own that I'm -merely prejudiced. Tell me about your young lady, and why you want her -to have something to do with me. Is she a reformer of some sort?" - -"She's a wonderful person, really," said Barney, availing himself with -eagerness of his opportunity. "Not a reformer. Only a sort of mixture of -saint and fairy-princess. She cured Charlie Lumley of insomnia, three -years ago, at Saint Moritz. Nothing psychic or theatrical, you know. -Just sat by him and smiled--she's a most extraordinary smile--and laid -her hand on his head. He'd not slept for nights and went off like a -lamb. Lady Lumley almost cries when she tells about it. They thought -Charlie might lose his mind if he went on not sleeping." - -"My word! She's a Christian Science lady? A medium? What?" - -"Call her what you like. You'll see. She does believe in spiritual -forces. It's not only that. She's quite lovely. In every way. Nancy and -Meg will worship her. The Lumley girls do." - -Oldmeadow's thoughts were already dwelling in rueful surmise on Nancy. -He had always thought her the nicest young creature he had ever known, -nicer even than Barney; and he had always wanted them to marry. She was -Barney's second cousin, and she and her mother lived near the Chadwicks -in Gloucestershire. - -"Oh, Nancy will worship her, will she? She must be all right, then. -What's her name?" he asked. - -Barney had given up trying to be desultory, and his conscious firmness -was now not lost upon his friend as he answered, stammering a little, -"Adrienne. Adrienne Toner." - -"Why Adrienne?" Oldmeadow mildly inquired. "Has she French blood?" - -"Not that I know of. It's a pretty name, I think, Adrienne. One hears -more inane names given to girls every day. Her mother loved France--just -as you do, Roger. Adrienne was born in Paris, I think." - -"Oh, a very pretty name," said Oldmeadow, noting Barney's already -familiar use of it. "Though it sounds more like an actress's than a -saint's." - -"There was something dramatic about the mother, I fancy," said Barney, -sustained, evidently, by his own detachment. "A romantic, rather absurd, -but very loveable person. Adrienne worshipped her and, naturally, can't -see the absurdity. She died out in California. On a boat," said Barney -stammering again, over the _b_. - -"On a boat?" - -"Yes. Awfully funny. But touching, too. That's what she wanted, when she -died: the sea and sky about her. They carried her on her yacht--doctors, -nurses, all the retinue--and sailed far out from shore. It's beautiful, -too, in a way you know, to be able to do that sort of thing quite simply -and unself-consciously. Adrienne sat beside her, and they smiled at each -other and held hands until the end." - -Oldmeadow played with his penholder. He was disconcerted; and most of -all by the derivative emotion in Barney's voice. They had gone far, -then, already, the young people. Nancy could have not the ghost of a -chance. And the nature of what touched Barney left him singularly dry. -He was unable to credit so much simplicity or unself-consciousness. He -coughed shortly, and after a decently respectful interval inquired: "Is -Miss Toner very wealthy?" - -"Yes, very," said Barney, relapsing now into a slight sulkiness. "At -least, perhaps not very, as rich Americans go. She gave away a lot of -her fortune, I know, when her mother died. She founded a place for -children--a convalescent home, or crèche--out in California. And she did -something in Chicago, too." - -And Miss Toner had evidently done something in London at the Lumleys'. -It couldn't be helped about Nancy, and if the American girl was pretty -and, for all her nonsense, well-bred, it might not be a bad thing, since -there was so much money. The Chadwicks were not at all well off, and -Coldbrooks was only kept going by Mrs. Chadwick's economies and Barney's -labours at his uncle's stock-broking firm in the city. Oldmeadow could -see Eleanor Chadwick's so ingenuous yet so practical eye fixed on Miss -Toner's gold, and he, too, could fix his. Miss Toner sounded benevolent, -and it was probable that her presence as mistress of Coldbrooks would be -of benefit to all Barney's relatives. All the same, she sounded as -irrelevant in his life as the Wyndham Lewis. - -"Adrienne Toner," he heard himself repeating aloud, for he had a trick, -caught, no doubt, from his long loneliness, of relapsing into -absent-minded and audible meditations. The cadence of it worried him. It -was an absurd name. "You know each other pretty well already, it seems," -he said. - -"Yes; it's extraordinary how one seems to know her. One doesn't have any -formalities to get through with her, as it were," said Barney. "Either -you are there, or you are not there." - -"Either on the yacht, or not on the yacht, eh?" Oldmeadow reached out -for his pipe. - -"Put it like that if you choose. It's awfully jolly to be on the yacht, -I can tell you. It _is_ like a voyage, a great adventure, to know her." - -"And what's it like to be off the yacht? Suppose I'm not there? Suppose -she doesn't like me?" Oldmeadow suggested. "What am I to talk to her -about--of course I'll come, if you really want me. But she frightens me -a little, I confess. I'm not an adventurous person." - -"But neither am I, you know!" Barney exclaimed, "and that's just what -she does to you: makes you adventurous. She'll be immensely interested -in you, of course. You can talk to her about anything. It was down at a -week-end at the Lumleys' I first met her, and there were some tremendous -big-wigs there, political, you know, and literary, and all that sort of -thing; and she had them all around her. She'd have frightened me, too, -if I hadn't seen at once that she took to me and wouldn't mind my being -just ordinary. She likes everybody; that's just it. She takes to -everybody, big and little. She's just like sunshine," Barney stammered a -little over his _s_'s. "That's what she makes one think of straight off; -shining on everything." - -"On the clean and the unclean. I see," said Oldmeadow. "I feel it in my -bones that I shall come into the unclean category with her. But it'll do -me the more good to have her shine on me." - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -Roger Oldmeadow went to have tea with Mrs. Aldesey next afternoon. She -was, after the Chadwicks, his nearest friend, and his relation to the -Chadwicks was one of affection rather than affinity. They had been -extraordinarily kind to him since the time that he had befriended Barney -at the preparatory school, hiding, under his grim jocularities, the -bewilderment of a boy's first great bereavement. His love for his mother -had been an idolatry, and his childhood had been haunted by her -ill-health. She died when he was thirteen, and in some ways he knew -that, even now, he had never got over it. His unfortunate and frustrated -love-affair in early manhood had been, when all was said and done, a -trivial grief compared to it. Coldbrooks had become, after that, his -only home, for he had lost his father as a very little boy, and the -whole family had left the country parsonage and been thrown on the -mercies of an uncle and aunt who lived in a grim provincial town. -Oldmeadow's most vivid impression of home was the high back bedroom -where the worn carpet was cold to the feet and the fire a sulky spot of -red, and the windows looked out over smoky chimney-pots. Here his -stricken mother lay in bed with her cherished cat beside her and read -aloud to him. There was always a difficulty about feeding poor Effie, -Aunt Aggie declaring that cats should live below stairs and on mice; and -Roger, at midday dinner, became adroit at slipping bits of meat from -his plate into a paper held in his lap and carried triumphantly to his -mother's room afterwards. "Oh, darling, you _oughtn't_ to," she would -say with her loving, girlish smile, and he would reply, "But I went -without, Mummy; so it's quite all right." His two little sisters were -kept in the nursery, as they were noisy, high-spirited children, and -tired their mother too much. Roger was her companion, her comrade; her -only comrade in the world, really, beside Effie. It had been Mrs. -Chadwick who had saved Effie from the lethal chamber after her -mistress's death. Roger never spoke about his mother, but he did speak -about Effie when she was thus threatened, and he had never forgotten, -never, never, Mrs. Chadwick's eager cry of, "But bring her here, my dear -Roger. I _like_ idle cats! Bring her here, and I promise you that we'll -make her happy. Animals are _so_ happy at Coldbrooks." To see Effie -cherished, petted, occupying the best chairs during all the years that -followed, had been to see his mother, in this flickering little ghost, -remembered in the only way he could have borne to see her explicitly -remembered, and it was because of Effie that he had most deeply loved -Coldbrooks. It remained always his refuge during a cheerless and -harassed youth, when, with his two forceful, black-browed sisters to -settle in life, he had felt himself pant and strain under the harness. -He was fonder of them than they of him, for they were hard, cheerful -young women, inheriting harshness of feature and manner from their -father, with their father's black eyes. It was from his mother that -Oldmeadow had his melancholy blue ones, and he had never again met his -mother's tenderness. - -Both sisters were now settled, one in India and one, very prosperously, -in London; but he seldom turned for tea into Cadogan Gardens and -Trixie's brisk Chippendale drawing-room; though Cadogan Gardens was -obviously more convenient than Somer's Place, where, on the other side -of the park, Mrs. Aldesey lived. He had whims, and did not know whether -it was because he more disliked her husband or her butler that he went -so seldom to see Trixie. Her husband was jovial and familiar, and the -butler had a face like a rancid ham and a surreptitious manner. One had -always to be encountered at the door, and the other was too often in the -drawing-room, and Trixie was vexatiously satisfied with both; Trixie -also had four turbulent, intelligent children, in whom complacent -parental theories of uncontrol manifested themselves unpleasantly, and -altogether she was too much hedged in by obstacles to be tempting; even -had she been tempting in herself. Intercourse with Trixie, when it did -take place, consisted usually of hard-hearted banter. She bantered him a -great deal about Mrs. Aldesey, who, she averred, snubbed her. Not that -Trixie minded being snubbed by anybody. - -It was a pleasant walk across the park on this spring day when the -crocuses were fully out in the grass, white, purple and gold, and the -trees just scantly stitched with green, and, as always, it was with a -slight elation that he approached his friend. However dull or jaded -oneself or the day, the thought of her cheered one as did the thought of -tea. She made him think of her own China tea. She suggested delicate -ceremoniousness. Though familiar, there was always an aroma of -unexpectedness about her; a slight, sweet shock of oddity and surprise. - -Mrs. Aldesey was unlike the traditional London American. She was neither -rich nor beautiful nor noticeably well-dressed. One became gradually -aware, after some time spent in her company, that her clothes, -soft-tinted and silken, were pleasing, as were her other appurtenances; -the narrow front of her little house, painted freshly in white and green -and barred by boxes of yellow wallflower; the serenely unfashionable -water-colours of Italy, painted by her mother, on the staircase; and her -drawing-room, grey-green and primrose-yellow, with eighteenth-century -fans, of which she had a collection, displayed in cabinets, and good old -glass. - -Mrs. Aldesey herself, behind her tea-table, very faded, very thin, with -what the French term a _souffreteux_ little face--an air of just not -having taken drugs to make her sleep, but of having certainly taken -tabloids to make her digest--seemed already to belong to a passing order -of things; an order still sustained, if lightly, by stays, and keeping a -prayer-book as punctually in use as a card-case. - -Oldmeadow owed her, if indirectly, to the Chadwicks, as he owed so much, -even if it was entirely on his own merits that he had won her regard. -They had met, years ago, in France; an entirely chance encounter, and -probably a futureless one, had it not been for the presence in the hotel -at Amboise of the Lumleys. They both slightly knew the Lumleys, and the -Lumleys and the Chadwicks were old friends. So it had come about; and if -he associated Mrs. Aldesey with tea, he associated her also with perfect -omelettes and the Loire. He had liked her at once so much, that, had it -not been for an always unseen yet never-repudiated husband in New York, -he would certainly, at the beginning, have fallen in love with her. But -the unrepudiated husband made as much a part of Mrs. Aldesey's -environment as her stays and her prayer-book. The barrier was so evident -that one did not even reflect on what one might have done had it not -been there; and indeed, Mrs. Aldesey, he now seemed, after many pleasant -years of friendship, to recognize, for all the sense of sweetness and -exhilaration she gave him, had not enough substance to rouse or sustain -his heart. She was, like the tea again, all savour. - -She lifted to-day her attentive blue eyes--with age they would become -shrewd--and gave him her fine little hand, blue-veined and ornamented -with pearls and diamonds in old settings. She wore long earrings and a -high, transparent collar of net and lace. Her earrings and her -elaborately dressed hair, fair and faded, seemed as much a part of her -personality as her eyes, her delicate nose and her small, slightly -puckered mouth that dragged provocatively and prettily at one corner -when she smiled. Oldmeadow sometimes wondered if she were happy; but -never because of anything she said or did. - -"I want to hear about some people called Toner," he said, dropping into -the easy-chair on the opposite side of the tea-table. It was almost -always thus that he and Mrs. Aldesey met. He rarely dined out. "I'm -rather perturbed. I think that Barney--you remember young Chadwick--is -going to marry a Miss Toner--a Miss Adrienne Toner. And I hope you'll -have something to her advantage to tell me. As you know, I'm devoted to -Barney and his family." - -"I know. The Lumleys' Chadwicks. I remember perfectly. The dear boy with -the innocent eyes and sulky mouth. Why don't you bring him to see me? -He's dancing the tango in all his spare moments, I suppose, and doesn't -care about old ladies." Mrs. Aldesey was not much over forty, but always -thus alluded to herself. "Toner," she took up, pouring out his tea. "Why -perturbed? Do you know anything against them? Americans, you mean. We -poor expatriates are always seen as keepers to so many curious -brethren.--Toner. _Celà ne me dit rien_." - -"I know nothing against them except that Mrs. Toner, the girl's mother, -died, by arrangement, out at sea, on her yacht--in sunlight. Does that -say anything? People don't do that in America, do they, as a rule? A -very opulent lady, I inferred." - -"Oh, dear!" Mrs. Aldesey now ejaculated, as if enlightened. "Can it be? -Do you mean, I wonder, the preposterous Mrs. Toner, of whom, fifteen -years ago, I had a glimpse, and used to hear vague rumours? She wandered -about the world. She dressed in the Empire period: Queen Louise of -Prussia, white gauze bound beneath her chin. She had a harp, and warbled -to monarchs. She had an astral body, and a Yogi and a yacht and -everything handsome about her. The typical spiritual _cabotine_ of our -epoch--though I'm sure they must always have existed. Of course it must -be she. No one else could have died like that. Has she died, poor woman? -On a yacht. Out at sea. In sunlight. How uncomfortable!" - -"Yes, she's dead," said Oldmeadow resignedly. "Yes; it's she, evidently. -And her daughter is coming down to Coldbrooks this week-end. I'm afraid -that unless Barney has too many rivals, he'll certainly marry her. But -what you say leads me to infer that he will have rivals and to hope they -may be successful. She will, no doubt, marry a prince." - -"Something Italian, perhaps. Quite a small fortune will do that. -Certainly your nice Barney wouldn't have been at all Mrs. Toner's -_affaire_. The girl on her own may think differently, for your Barney -is, I remember, very engaging, and has a way with him. I don't know -anything about the girl. I didn't know there was one. There's no reason -why she may not be charming. Our wonderful people have the gift of -picking up experience in a generation and make excellent princesses." - -"But she's that sort, you think. The sort that marries princes and has -no traditions. Where did they come from? Do you know that?" - -"I haven't an idea. Yet, stay. Was it not tooth-paste?--Toner's Peerless -Tooth-Paste. Obsolete; yet I seem to see, reminiscently, in far-away -nursery days, the picture of a respectable old gentleman with -side-whiskers, on a tube. A pretty pink glazed tube with a gilt top to -it. Perhaps it's that. Since it was Toner's it would be the father's -side; not the warbling mother's. Well, many of us might wish for as -unambiguous an origin nowadays. And, in America, we did all sorts of -useful things when we first, all of us, came over in the Mayflower!" -said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile. - -Oldmeadow gazed upon his friend with an ironically receptive eye. "Have -they ever known anyone decent? Anyone like yourself? I don't mean over -here. I mean in America." - -"No one like me, I imagine; if I'm decent. Mrs. Toner essayed a season -in New York one winter, and it was then I had my glimpse of her, at the -opera, in the Queen Louise dress. A pretty woman, dark, with a sort of -soulful and eminently respectable coquetry about her; surrounded by -swarms of devotees--all male, to me unknown; and with something in a -turban that I took to be a Yogi in the background. She only tried the -one winter. She knew what she wanted and where she couldn't get it. We -are very dry in New York--such of us as survive. Very little moved by -warblings or astral bodies or millions. As you intimate, she'll have -done much better over here. You _are_ a strange mixture of materialism -and ingenuousness, you know." - -"It's only that we have fewer Mrs. Toners to amuse us and more to do -with millions than you have," said Oldmeadow; but Mrs. Aldesey, shaking -her head with a certain sadness, said that it wasn't as simple as all -that. - -"Have you seen her? Have you seen Adrienne?" she took up presently, -making him his second cup of tea. "Is she pretty? Is he very much in -love?" - -"I'm going down to Coldbrooks on Saturday to see her," said Oldmeadow, -"and I gather that it's not to subject her to any test that Barney wants -me; it's to subject me, rather. He's quite sure of her. He thinks she's -irresistible. He merely wants to make assurance doubly sure by seeing me -bowled over. I don't know whether she's pretty. She has powers, -apparently, that make her independent of physical attractions. She lays -her hands on people's heads and cures them. She cured Charlie Lumley of -insomnia at Saint Moritz three years ago." - -Mrs. Aldesey, at this, looked at him for some moments in silence. -"Yes," she assented, and in her pause she seemed to have recognized and -placed a familiar object. "Yes. She would. That's just what Mrs. Toner's -daughter would do. I hope she doesn't warble, too. Laying on hands is -better than warbling." - -"I see you think it hopeless," said Oldmeadow, pushing back his chair -and yielding, as he thrust his hands into his pockets and stretched out -his legs, to an avowed chagrin. "What a pity it is! A thousand pities. -They are such dear, good, simple people, and Barney, though he doesn't -know it, is as simple as any of them. What will become of them with this -overwhelming cuckoo in their nest." - -At this Mrs. Aldesey became serious. "I don't think it hopeless at all. -You misunderstand me. Isn't the fact that he's in love with her -reassuring in itself? He may be simple, but he's a delicate, discerning -creature, and he couldn't fall in love with some one merely pretentious -and absurd. She may be charming. I can perfectly imagine her as -charming, and there's no harm in laying on hands; there may be good. -Don't be narrow, Roger. Don't go down there feeling dry." - -"I am narrow, and I do feel dry; horribly dry," said Oldmeadow. "How -could the child of such a mother, and of tooth-paste, be charming? Don't -try specious consolation, now, after having more than justified all my -suspicions." - -"I'm malicious, not specious; and I can't resist having my fling. But -you mustn't be narrow and take me _au pied de la lettre_. I assert that -she may be charming. I assert that I can see it all working out most -happily. She'll lay her hands on them and they'll love her. What I -really want to say is this: don't try to set Barney against her. He'll -marry her all the same and never forgive you." - -"Ah; there we have the truth of it. But Barney would always forgive me," -said Oldmeadow. - -"Well then, she won't. And you'd lose him just as surely. And she'll -know. Let me warn you of that. She'll know perfectly." - -"I'll keep my hands off her," said Oldmeadow, "if she doesn't try to lay -hers on me." - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -The Chadwicks all had a certain sulkiness in their charming looks, and -where in Barney it mingled with sweetness, in Palgrave, his younger -brother, it mingled with brilliancy. It was Palgrave who, at the -station, met the family friend and counsellor in the shabby, inexpensive -family car. He was still a mere boy, home from Marlborough for the -Easter holidays; fond of Oldmeadow, as all the Chadwicks were; but more -resentful of his predominance than Barney and more indifferent to his -brotherly solicitude. He had Barney's long, narrow face and Barney's -eyes and lips; but the former were proud and the latter petulant. -To-day, as he sat beside him in the car, Oldmeadow was aware of -something at once fixed and vibrating in his bearing. He wanted to say -something, and he had resolved to be silent. During their last encounter -at Coldbrooks, he and Oldmeadow had had a long, antagonistic political -discussion, and Palgrave's resentment still, no doubt, survived. - -Coldbrooks lay among the lower Cotswolds, three miles from the station, -and near the station was the village of Chelford where Nancy Averil and -her mother lived. Nancy was at Coldbrooks; Aunt Monica--she was called -aunt by the Chadwick children, though she and Mrs. Chadwick were first -cousins--was away. So Palgrave informed him. But he did not speak again -until the chill, green curve of arable hill-side was climbed and a -stretch of wind-swept country lay before them. Then suddenly he -volunteered: "The American girl is at Coldbrooks." - -"Oh! Is she? When did she come?" Somehow Oldmeadow had expected the -later train for Miss Toner. - -"Yesterday. She and Barney came down together in her car." - -"So you've welcomed her already," said Oldmeadow, curious of the -expression on the boy's face. "How does she fit into Coldbrooks? Does -she like you all and do you like her?" - -For a moment Palgrave was silent. "You mean it makes a difference -whether we do or not?" he then inquired. - -"I don't know that I meant that. Though if people come into your life it -does make a difference." - -"And is she going to come into our lives?" Palgrave asked, and Oldmeadow -felt pressure of some sort behind the question. "That's what I mean. Has -Barney told you? He's said nothing to us. Not even to Mother." - -"Has Barney told me he's going to marry her? No; he hasn't. But it's -evident he hopes to. Perhaps it depends on whether she likes Coldbrooks -and Coldbrooks likes her." - -"Oh, no, it doesn't. It doesn't depend on anything at all except whether -she likes Barney," said Palgrave. "She's the sort of person who doesn't -depend on anything or anybody except herself. She cuts through -circumstance like a knife through cheese. And if she's not going to take -him I wish she'd never come," he added, frowning and turning, under the -peak of his cap, his jewel-like eyes upon his companion. "It's a case of -all or nothing with a person like that. It's too disturbing--just for a -glimpse." - -Oldmeadow felt himself disconcerted. Oddly enough, for the boy was -capricious and extravagant, Palgrave's opinion had more weight with him -than Barney's. Barney, for one thing, was sexually susceptible and -Palgrave was not. Though so young, Oldmeadow felt him already of a -poetic temperament, passionate in mind and cold in blood. - -"She's so charming? You can't bear to lose her now you've seen her?" he -asked. - -"I don't know about charming. No; I don't think her charming. At least -not if you mean something little by the word. She's disturbing. She -changes everything." - -"But if she stays she'll be more disturbing. She'll change more." - -"Oh, I shan't mind that! I shan't mind change," Palgrave declared. "If -it's her change and she's there to see it through." And, relapsing to -muteness, he bent to his brakes and they slid down among the woods of -Coldbrooks. - -For the life of him and with the best will in the world, he couldn't -make it out. That was Oldmeadow's first impression as, among the -familiar group gathered in the hall about the tea-table, Miss Toner was -at last made manifest to him. She was, he felt sure, in his first shrewd -glance at her, merely what Lydia Aldesey would have placed as a -third-rate American girl, and her origins in commercial enterprise were -eminently appropriate. - -She got up to meet him, as if recognizing in him some special -significance or, indeed, as it might be her ingenuous habit to do in -meeting any older person. But he was not so much older if it came to -that; for, after he had met the direct and dwelling gaze of her large, -light eyes, the second impression was that she was by no means so young -as Barney had led him to expect. She was certainly as old as Barney. - -There were none of the obvious marks of wealth upon her. She wore a -dark-blue dress tying on the breast over white. She was small in stature -and, in manner, composed beyond anything he had ever encountered. With -an irony, kindly enough, yet big, he knew, with unfavourable inferences, -he even recognized, reconstructing the moment in the light of those that -followed, that in rising to meet him as he was named to her, it had -been, rather than in shyness or girlishness, in the wish to welcome him -and draw him the more happily into a group she had already made her own. - -They were all sitting round the plentiful table, set with home-made -loaves and cakes, jams and butter, and a Leeds bowl of primroses; Miss -Toner just across from him, Barney on one side of her--his was an air of -tranquil ecstasy--and little Barbara on the other, and they all seemed -to emanate a new radiance; almost, thought Oldmeadow, with an -irritability that was still genial, like innocent savages on a remote -seashore gathered with intent eyes and parted lips round the newly -disembarked Christopher Columbus. Mrs. Chadwick, confused, as usual, -among her tea-cups, sending hasty relays of sugar after the unsugared or -recalling those sugared in error, specially suggested the simile. She -could, indeed, hardly think of her tea. Her wide, startled gaze turned -incessantly on the new-comer and to Oldmeadow, for all his nearly filial -affection, the eyes of Eleanor Chadwick looked like nothing in the -world so much as those of the March Hare in Tenniel's evocation of the -endearing creature. Unlike her children, she was fair, with a thin, -high, ridiculously distinguished nose; but her mouth and chin had -Barney's irresolution and sweetness, and her untidy locks Meg's beauty. -Meg was a beauty in every way, rose, pearl and russet, a Romney touched -with pride and daring, and the most sophisticated of all the Chadwicks; -yet she, too, brooded, half merrily, half sombrely, on Miss Toner, her -elbows on the table for the better contemplation. Palgrave's absorption -was manifest; but he did not brood. He held his head high, frowned and, -for the most part, looked out of the window. - -Oldmeadow sat between Palgrave and Nancy and it was with Nancy that the -magic ended. Nancy did not share in the radiance. She smiled and was -very busy cutting the bread and butter; but she was pale; not puzzled, -but preoccupied. Poor darling Nancy; always his special pet; to him -always the dearest and most loveable of girls. Not at all a Romney. With -her pale, fresh face, dark hair and beautiful hands she suggested, -rather, a country lady of the seventeenth century painted by Vandyck. A -rural Vandyck who might have kept a devout and merry journal, surprising -later generations by its mixture of ingenuousness and wisdom. Her lips -were meditative, and her grey eyes nearly closed when she smiled in a -way that gave to her gaiety and extraordinary sweetness and intimacy. -Nancy always looked as if she loved you when she smiled at you; and -indeed she did love you. She had spent her life among people she loved -and if she could not be intimate she was remote and silent. - -But there was no hope for Nancy. He saw that finally, as he drank his -tea in silence and looked across the primroses at the marvel of the age. - -Miss Toner's was an insignificant little head, if indeed it could be -called little, since it was too large for her body, and her way of -dressing her hair in wide braids, pinned round it and projecting over -the ears, added to the top-heavy effect. The hair was her only -indubitable beauty, fine and fair and sparkling like the palest, purest -metal. It was cut in a light fringe across a projecting forehead and her -mouth and chin projected, too; so that, as he termed it to himself, it -was a squashed-in face, ugly in structure, the small nose, from its -depressed bridge, jutting forward in profile, the lips, in profile, flat -yet prominent. Nevertheless he owned, studying her over his tea-cup, -that the features, ugly, even trivial in detail, had in their assemblage -something of unexpected force. Her tranquil smile had potency and he -suddenly became aware of her flat, gentle voice, infrequent, yet oddly -dominating. Sensitive as he was to voices, he saw it as a bland, blue -ribbon rolled out among broken counters of colour, and listened to its -sound before he listened to what it said. All the other voices went up -and down; all the others half said things and let them drop or trail. -She said things to the end: when the ribbon began it was unrolled; and -it seemed, always, to make a silence in which it could be watched. - -"We went up high into the sunlight," she said, "and one saw nothing but -snow and sky. The bells were ringing on the mountains beneath; one heard -no other sound. I have never forgotten the moment. It seemed an -inspiration of joy and peace and strength." - -"You've walked so much in the Alps, haven't you, Roger?" said Mrs. -Chadwick. "Miss Toner has motored over every pass." - -"In the French Alps. I don't like Switzerland," said Oldmeadow. - -"I think I love the mountains everywhere," said Miss Toner, "when they -go so high into the sky and have the sun and snow on their summits. But -I love the mountains of Savoy and Jura best." - -It vexed him that she should. She was a person to stay in and prefer -Switzerland. "Joy and peace and strength," echoed in his ears and with -the words, rudely, and irrelevantly, the image of the pink glazed tube -with the gilt stopper. Miss Toner's teeth were as white as they were -benignant. - -"I wish I could see those flowers," said Mrs. Chadwick. "I've only been -to Vevey in the summer; oh, years and years ago. So dull. Fields of -flowers. You've seen them, too, of course, Roger. All the things we grow -with such pains. My Saint Brigid anemones never really do--though what I -put in of leaf-mould!" - -"You'll see anemones, fields of them, in the Alpine meadows; and violets -and lilies; the little lilies of Saint Bruno that look like freesias. I -love them best of all," the bland, blue ribbon unrolled. "You shall go -with me some day, Mrs. Chadwick. We'll go together." And, smiling at her -as if they had, already, a happy secret between them, Miss Toner -continued: "We'll go this very summer, if you will. We'll motor all the -way. I'll come and get you here. For a whole month you shall forget that -you've ever had a family to bring up or a house to take care of or -anemones that won't grow properly--even in leaf-mould." - -Her eyes, as they rested on her hostess, seemed to impart more than her -words. They imparted something to Oldmeadow. He had not before -conjectured that Eleanor Chadwick might be bored or tired, nor realized -that since Barbara's birth, fourteen years ago, she had not left -Coldbrooks except to go to London for a week's shopping, or to stay with -friends in the English country. He had taken Eleanor Chadwick's life for -granted. It seemed Miss Toner's function not to take things that could -be changed for granted. It was easy to do that of course, when you had a -large banking account behind you; and yet he felt that Miss Toner would -have had the faculty of altering accepted standards, even had she been -materially unequipped. She and Mrs. Chadwick continued to look at each -other for a moment and the older woman, half bashfully, seemed, with -what softness, compelled to a tacit confession. She'd never known before -that she was tired. Springs of adventure and girlishness within her were -perhaps unsealed by Miss Toner's gaze. - -"And where do the rest of us come in!" Barney ejaculated. He was so -happy in the triumph of his beloved that his eyes, their sleepiness -banished, were almost as brilliant as Palgrave's. - -"But you're always coming in with Mrs. Chadwick," said Miss Toner. She -looked at him, if with a touch of tender humour, exactly as she looked -at his mother; but then she looked at them both as if they were precious -to her. "I don't want you to come in at all for that month. I want her -to forget you ever existed. There ought to be waters of Lethe for -everyone every now and then, even in this life. We come out, after the -plunge into forgetfulness, far brighter and stronger and with a -renovated self to love the better with. Afterwards--after she's had her -dip--you'll all come in, if you want to, with me. I'll get a car big -enough. You, too, Miss Averil; and Mr. Oldmeadow; though he and Barney -and Palgrave may have to take turns sitting on the portmanteaus." - -"Barney" and "Palgrave" already. Her unpretentious mastery alarmed -almost as much as it amused him. He thanked her, with his dry smile, -saying that he really preferred to see the Alps on his legs and asked, -to temper the possible acerbity, "Do you drive yourself?" for it seemed -in keeping with his picture of her as an invading providence that she -should with her own hand conduct the car of fate. He could see her, -somehow, taking the hairpin curves on the Galibier. - -But Miss Toner said she did not drive. "One can't see flowers if one -drives oneself; and it would hurt dear Macfarlane's feelings so. -Macfarlane is my chauffeur and he's been with me for years; from the -time we first began to have motors, my mother and I, out in California. -Apart from that, I should like it, I think, with the sense of risk and -venture it must give. I like the sense of high adventure--of 'Childe -Roland to the dark tower came'; don't you, Palgrave? It's life, isn't -it? The pulse of life. Danger and venture and conquest. And then -resting, on the heights, while one hears the bells beneath one." - -This, thought Oldmeadow, as he adjusted his glass the better to examine -Miss Toner, must prove itself too much, even for Palgrave to swallow. -But Palgrave swallowed it without a tremor. His eyes on hers he -answered: "Yes, I feel life like that, too." - -"Oh, dear!" sighed Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldmeadow blessed her antidote to -the suffocating sweetness: "I'm afraid I don't! I don't think I know -anything about risks and dangers; or about conquest either. I'm sure -I've never conquered anything; though I have been dreadfully afraid of -ill-tempered servants--if that counts, and never let them see it. -Barbara had such an odious nurse. She tried, simply, to keep me out of -the nursery; but she didn't succeed. And there was a Scotch cook once, -with red hair--that so often goes with a bad temper, doesn't it? Do you -remember, Barney?--your dear father had to go down to the kitchen when -she was found lying quite, quite drunk under the table. But cooks and -nurses can't be called risks--and I've never cared for hunting." - -Miss Toner was quietly laughing, and indeed everybody laughed. - -"Dear Mrs. Chadwick," she said. And then she added: "How can a mother -say she has not known risks and dangers? I think you've thought only of -other people for all your life and never seen yourself at all. Alpine -passes aren't needed to prove people's courage and endurance." - -Oldmeadow now saw, from the sudden alarm and perplexity of Mrs. -Chadwick's expression, that she was wondering if the marvellous guest -alluded to the perils of child-birth. Perhaps she did. She was ready, he -imagined, to allude to anything. - -"You're right about her never having seen herself," said Palgrave, -nodding across at Miss Toner. "She never has. She's incapable of -self-analysis." - -"But she's precious sharp when it comes to analysing other people, -aren't you, Mummy dear!" said Barney. - -"I don't think she is," said Meg. "I think Mummy sees people rather as -she sees flowers; things to be fed and staked and protected." - -"You're always crabbing Mummy, Meg. It's a shame!--Isn't it a shame, -Mummy dear!" Barbara protested, and Barney tempered the apparent -criticism--peacemaker as he usually was--with: "But you have to -understand flowers jolly well to make them grow. And we do her credit, -don't we!" - -Miss Toner looked from one to the other as they spoke, with her clear, -benignant, comprehending gaze, and Mrs. Chadwick stared with her March -Hare ingenuousness that had its full share, too, of March Hare -shrewdness. She undertook no self-justification, commenting merely, in -the pause that followed Barney's contribution: "I don't know what you -mean by self-analysis unless it's thinking about yourself and mothers -certainly haven't much time for that. You're quite right there, my -dear," she nodded at Miss Toner, adding in a tone intended specially for -her: "But young people often exaggerate things that are quite, quite -simple when they come." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -"Come out and have a stroll," said Oldmeadow to Nancy. Tea was over and -a primrose-coloured sunset filled the sky. They walked up and down the -gravelled terrace before the house. - -Coldbrooks stood high, yet encircled by still higher stretches of bare -or wooded upland. Its walled garden, where vegetable beds and lines of -cordon apple-trees were pleasingly diversified by the herbaceous borders -that ran beneath the walls, lay behind it; most of the bedroom windows -looked down into the garden. Before it, to the south, lawns and meadows -dropped to a lake fed by the brooks that gave the place its name. Beyond -the lake were lower copses, tinkling now with the musical run of water -and climbing softly on either side, so that from the terrace one had a -vast curved space of sky before one. The sun was setting over the woods. - -It was Barney's grandfather, enriched by large shipping enterprises in -Liverpool, who had bought the pleasant old house, half farm, half manor, -and Barney's father had married the daughter of a local squire. But the -family fortunes were much dwindled, and though Barney still nursed the -project of returning one day to farm his own land there was little -prospect of such a happy restoration. In spite of the Russian ballet and -London portents, he was fonder, far, of Coldbrooks than of all of them -put together. But he could afford neither time nor money for hunting, -and his home was his only for week-ends and holidays. It was the most -loveable of homes, more stately without than within, built of grey-gold -Cotswold stone with beautiful stone chimneys and mullioned windows and -three gables facing the southern sky. Within, everything was rather bare -and shabby. There was no central heating, and no bathrooms. The -tiger-skin that lay on the stone flags of the hall had lost all its -hair. The piano rattled and wheezed in many of its notes. The patterns -of the drawing-room chintzes were faded to a mere dim rosy riot, and -stuffing protruded from the angles of the leather arm-chairs in the -smoking-room. But it was, all the same, a delightful house to stay in. -Eleanor Chadwick's shrewdness showed itself in her housekeeping. She -knew what were the essentials. There was always a blazing fire in one's -bedroom in the evening and the hottest of water with one's bath in the -morning. Under the faded chintz, every chair in the drawing-room was -comfortable. The toast was always crisp; the tea always made with -boiling water; the servants cheerful. Mrs. Chadwick had a great gift -with servants. She could reprove with extreme plaintiveness, yet never -wound a susceptibility, and the servants' hall, as she often remarked -with justice, was smarter and prettier than the drawing-room. Johnson, -the old butler, had been at Coldbrooks since before her marriage, and -the grey-haired parlourmaid had come with her when she had come as a -bride. These familiar faces added depth to the sense of intimacy that -was the gift of Coldbrooks. Oldmeadow loved the place as much as any of -the Chadwicks did, and was as much at home in it. - -"There is a blackcap," said Nancy, "down in the copse. I felt sure I -heard one this morning." - -"So it is," said Oldmeadow. They paused to listen. - -"It's the happiest of all," said Nancy. - -He had been wondering about Nancy ever since he had come. It was not her -voice, gentle and meditative, that told him now she was unhappy. It was -rather in contrast to the bird's clear ecstasy that he felt the -heaviness of her heart. - -"It's wilder than the thrush and blackbird, isn't it?" he said. "Less -conscious. The thrush is always listening to himself, I feel. Do you -want to go to the Alps with Miss Toner, Nancy?" - -Nancy would not see Miss Toner as an angelic being and he wanted to know -how she did see her. The others, it was evident, thought her angelic by -a sort of group suggestion. She thought herself so, to begin with; snow, -flowers, bells and all the rest of it; and they, ingenuous creatures, -saw the mango-tree rising to heaven as the calm-eyed Yogi willed they -should. But Nancy did not see the mango-tree. She was outside the group -consciousness--with him. - -"Oh, no!" she now said quickly; and she added: "I don't mean that I -don't like her. It's only that I don't know her. How can she want us? -She came only yesterday." - -"But, you see, she means you to know her. And when she's known she -couldn't imagine that anyone wouldn't like her." - -"I don't think she's conceited, if you mean that, Roger." - -"Conceit," he rejoined, "may be of an order so monstrous that it loses -all pettiness. You've seen more of her than I have, of course." - -"I think she's good. She wants to do good. She wants to make people -happy; and she does," said Nancy. - -"By taking them about in motors, you mean." - -"In every way. She's always thinking about pleasing them. In big and -little ways. Aunt Eleanor loves her already. They had a long talk last -night in Aunt Eleanor's room. She's given Meg the most beautiful little -pendant--pearl and amethyst, an old Italian setting. She had it on last -night and Meg said how lovely it was and she simply lifted it off her -own neck and put it around Meg's. Meg had to keep it. She gave it in -such a way that one would have to keep it." - -"Rather useful, mustn't it be, to have pendants so plentifully about you -that you can hand them out to the first young lady who takes a fancy to -them? Has she given you anything, Nancy?" - -"I'm sure she would. But I shall be more careful than Meg was." - -"Perhaps Meg will practise carelessness, since it's so remunerative. -What has she given Palgrave? He seems absorbed." - -"Isn't it wonderful," said Nancy. "It's wonderful for Palgrave, you -know, Roger, because he is rather sad and bitter, really, just now; and -I think she will make him much happier. They went off to the woods -together directly after breakfast." - -"What's he sad and bitter about? You mean his socialism and all the rest -of it?" - -"Yes; and religion. You remember; when you were here at Christmas." - -"I remember that he was very foolish and made me lose my temper. Is -there a chance of Miss Toner turning him into a good capitalist and -churchman?" - -Nancy smiled, but very faintly. "It's serious, you know, Roger." - -"What she's done to them already, you mean?" - -"Yes. What she's done already. She had Meg, after lunch, in her room. -Meg looked quite different when she came out. It's very strange, Roger. -It's as if she'd changed them all. I almost feel," Nancy looked round at -the happy house and up at the tranquil elms where the rooks were noisily -preparing for bed, "as if nothing could be the same again, since she's -come." Her clear profile revealed little of the trouble in her heart. -They had not named Barney; but he must be named. - -"It's white magic," said Oldmeadow. "You and I will keep our heads, my -dear. We don't want to be changed, do we? What has she done to Barney? -He is in love with her, of course." - -"Of course," said Nancy. - -He had never been sure before that she was in love with Barney. She was -nine years younger and had been a child during years of his manhood. -Oldmeadow had thought it in his own fond imagination only that the link -between them was so close. But now he knew what Nancy herself, perhaps, -had hardly known till then. The colour did not rise in her cheek, but -through her voice, through her bearing, went a subtle steadying of -herself. "Of course he is in love with her," she repeated and he felt -that she forced herself to face the truth. - -They stopped at the end of the terrace. A little path turned aside -towards the copse and the grass beneath the trees was scattered with the -pale radiance of primroses. Nancy seemed to look at the flowers, but she -sought no refuge in comment on them; and as they looked in silence, -while the rooks, circling and cawing above, settled on their nests, a -sense of arrested time came to Oldmeadow, and a phrase of music, -blissful in its sadness, where gentle German words went to a gentle -German strain, passed through his mind. Something of Schubert's--Young -Love--First Grief. It seemed to pierce to him from the young girl's -heart and he knew that he would never forget and that Nancy would never -forget the moment; the rooks; the primroses; the limpid sky. The -blackcap's flitting melody had ceased. - -"Do you think she may make him happy?" he asked. It was sweet to him to -know that she had no need of a refuge from him. She could take counsel -with him as candidly as if there had been no tacit avowal between them. -She looked round at him as they went on walking and he saw pain and -perplexity in her eyes. - -"What do you think, Roger?" she said. "Can she?" - -"Well, might she, if Barney is stupid enough?" - -"I don't feel he would have to be stupid to be happy with her, Roger. -You are not fair to her. What I wonder is whether he will be strong -enough not to be quite swept away." - -"You think she'll overpower him? Leave him with no mind of his own?" - -"Something like that perhaps. Because she's very strong. And she is so -different. Everything in her is different. She has nothing--nothing with -us, or we with her. We haven't done the same things or seen the same -sights or thought the same thoughts. I hardly feel as if the trees could -look the same to her as they do to us or the birds sound the same. And -she'll want such different things." - -"Perhaps she'll want his things," Oldmeadow mused. "She seems to like -them quite immensely already." - -"Ah, but only because she's going to do something to them," said Nancy. -"Only because she's going to change them. I don't think she'd like -anything she could do nothing for." - -Nancy had quite grown up. She had seen further than he had. He felt her -quiet comment big with intuitive wisdom. - -"You see deep, my dear," he said. "There's something portentous in your -picture, you know." - -"There is something portentous about her, Roger. That is just what I -feel. That is just what troubles me." - -"She may be portentous, in relation to us, and what she may do to us," -said Oldmeadow, "but I'm convinced, for all her marvels, that she's a -very ordinary young person. Don't let us magnify her. If she's not -magnified she won't work so many marvels. They're largely an affair, I'm -sure of it, of motors and pendants. She's ordinary. That's what I take -my stand on." - -"If she's ordinary, why do you feel, too, that she'll sweep Barney -away?" Nancy was not at all convinced by his demonstration. - -"Why, because he's in love with her. That's all. Her only menace is in -her difference; her complacency. What it comes to, I suppose, is that we -must hope, if they're to be happy, that he'll like her things." - -"Yes; but what it comes to then, Roger, is that we shall lose Barney," -Nancy said. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -Miss Toner did not come down to breakfast next morning and Oldmeadow was -conscious of a feeling of disproportionate relief at not finding her in -the big, bare, panelled dining-room where a portrait of Mrs. Chadwick in -court dress presided over one wall and Meg and Barney played with -rabbits, against an imitation Gainsborough background, on another. Both -pictures were an affliction to Barney; but to Mrs. Chadwick's eye they -left nothing to be desired in beauty, and, when Barney was not there to -protest, she would still fondly point out the length of eyelash that the -artist had so faithfully captured in the two children. - -The sense of change and foreboding that he and Nancy, with differences, -had recognized in their talk, must have haunted Oldmeadow's slumbers, -for he had dreamed of Miss Toner, coming towards him along the terrace, -in white, as she had been at dinner, with the beautiful pearls she had -worn, lifting her hand and saying as the rooks cawed overhead--for the -rooks cawed though the moon was brightly shining: "I can hear them, -too." - -There had been nothing to suggest such a dream in her demeanour at -dinner; nothing portentous, that is. Simple for all her competence, -girlish for all the splendour of her white array, she had spoken little, -looking at them all, and listening, gravely sometimes, but with a -pervading gentleness; and once or twice he had found her eyes on his; -those large, light eyes, dispassionately and impersonally benignant, -giving him, with their suggestion of seeing around but also very far -beyond you, a curious sense of space. Once or twice he had felt himself -a little at a loss as he met their gaze--it had endeared her to him the -less that she should almost discompose him--and he had felt anew the -presence of power in her ugly little face and even of beauty in her -colourless skin, her colourless yet so living eyes, and her crown of -wondrous gold. It had been, no doubt, this element of aesthetic -significance, merging with Nancy's words, that had built up the figure -of his dream; for so he had seen her, grey and white and gold in the -unearthly light, while the rooks cawed overhead. - -His friends this morning, though they were all talking of her, possessed -in their gaiety and lightness of heart an exorcising quality. So much -gaiety and lightness couldn't be quenched or quelled--if that was what -Miss Toner's influence menaced. Between them all they would manage to -quench and quell Miss Toner, rather, and he recovered his sense of her -fundamental absurdity as he felt anew their instinctive and -unself-conscious wisdom. - -"Isn't it odd, Roger, she hardly knows England at all," said Mrs. -Chadwick, as he finished his porridge, made his tea at the side-table, -and took his place beside her. "She's been so little here, although she -seems to have travelled everywhere and lived everywhere." - -"Except in her own country," Oldmeadow ventured the surmise, but -urbanely, for Barney sat opposite him. - -"Oh, but she's travelled there, too, immensely," said Barney. "She's -really spent most of her life in America, I think, Mother. She has a -little sort of bungalow on the coast in California, orange-trees and -roses and all the rest of it; a fairy-tale place; and a house in the -mountains in New England, high up among the pine-woods." - -"And a private train, I suppose, to carry her from one to the other. -What splendid pearls," said Oldmeadow, buttering his toast. "Haven't you -asked for them yet, Meg?" - -Meg was not easily embarrassed. "Not yet," she said. "I'm waiting for -them, though. Meanwhile this is pretty, isn't it?" The pendant hung on -her breast. - -"I believe she would give Meg her pearls, or any of us. I believe she'd -give _anything_ to _anyone_," sighed Mrs. Chadwick. "She doesn't seem to -think about money or things of that sort, material things you know, at -all. I do wish I could get the map of America straight. All being in -those uneven squares, like Turkish Delight, makes it so difficult. One -can't remember which lump is which--though Texas, in my geography, was -pale green. The nice tinned things come from California, don't they? And -New England is near Boston--the hub of the universe, that dear, droll -Oliver Wendell Holmes used to call it. I suppose they _are_ very clever -there. She has been wonderfully educated. There's nothing she doesn't -seem to have learned. And her maid adores her, Roger. I was talking to -her just now. Such a nice French woman with quite beautiful dark eyes, -but very melancholy; we make a mistake, I believe, in imagining that the -French are a gay people. I always think that's such a good sign. So kind -about my dreadful accent." - -"A good sign to have your maid like you, Mummy, or to have melancholy -eyes?" Meg inquired. "I think she's a rather ill-tempered looking woman. -But of course anybody would adore Adrienne. She's an angel of patience, -I'm sure. I never met such an angel. We don't grow them here," said Meg, -while Barney's triumphant eyes said: "I told you so," to Oldmeadow -across the table. - -After breakfast, in the sunlight on the terrace, Mrs. Chadwick confided -her hopes to him. "She really is an angel, Roger. I never met anyone in -the least like her. So good, and gifted, too, and all that money. Only -think what it would mean for dear Barney. He could take back the farm; -the lease falls in next year, and come back here to live." - -"You think she cares for him?" - -"Yes; indeed I do. She cares for us all, already, as you can see. But I -believe it's because she's adopting us all, as her family. And she said -to me yesterday that she disapproved so much of our English way of -turning out mothers and thought families ought to love each other and -live together, young and old. That's from being so much in France, -perhaps. I told her _I_ shouldn't have liked it at all if old Mrs. -Chadwick had wanted to come and live with Francis and me. She was such a -masterful old lady, Roger, very Low Church, and quite dreadfully jealous -of Francis. And eldest sons should inherit, of course, or what would -become of estates? My dear father used always to say that the greatness -of England was founded on landed estates. I told her that. But she -looked at me quite gravely as if she hardly understood when I tried to -explain--it all goes in with Waterloo being won on the fields of Eton, -doesn't it? It's quite curious the feeling of restfulness she gives me, -about Barney--a sort of Nunc Dimittis feeling, you know." - -"Only she doesn't want you to depart. Well, that's certainly all to the -good and let's hope England's greatness won't suffer from the -irregularity. Has she told you much about her life? her people?" -Oldmeadow asked. He could not find it in his heart to shadow such -ingenuous contentment. And after all what was there to say against Miss -Toner, except that she would change things? - -"Oh, a great deal. Everything I asked; for I thought it best, quite -casually you know, to find out what I could. Not people of any position, -you know, Roger, though I think her mother was better in that way than -her father; for _his_ father made tooth-paste. It's from the tooth-paste -all the money comes. But it's always puzzling about Americans, isn't it? -And it doesn't really make any difference, once they're over here, does -it?" - -"Not if they've got the money," he could not suppress; it was for his -own personal enjoyment and Mrs. Chadwick cloudlessly concurred: "No, not -if they have the money. And she has, you see. And besides that she's -good and gifted and has had such a wonderful education. Her mother died -five years ago. She showed me two pictures of her. A beautiful woman; -very artistic-looking. Rather one's idea of Corinne, though Corinne was -really Madame de Staël, I believe; and she was very plain." - -"Was she dressed like Queen Louise of Prussia; coming down the steps, -you know, in the Empire dress with white bound round her head?" - -"Yes; she was. How did you know, Roger? Extremely picturesque; but quite -a lady, too. At least"--Mrs. Chadwick hesitated, perplexed between -kindliness and candour--"almost." - -"I heard about her from Mrs. Aldesey. You remember my American friend. -She didn't know her, but had seen her years ago in New York in that -romantic costume." - -Mrs. Chadwick felt perhaps the slight irony in his voice, for she -rejoined, though not at all provocatively: "Why shouldn't people look -romantic if they can? I should think Mrs. Toner had a much more romantic -life than Mrs. Aldesey. _She's_ gone on just as we have, hasn't she, -seeing always the same people; and being conventional. Whereas Adrienne -and her mother seem to have known everyone strange and interesting -wherever they went; great scientists and thinkers, you know; and poets -and pianists. Adrienne told me that her mother always seemed to her to -have great wings and that's just what I felt about her when I looked at -her. She'd flown everywhere." As she spoke Miss Toner appeared upon the -doorstep. - -Although it was Sunday she had not varied her dress, which was still the -simple dress of dim, dark-blue; but over it she wore a silk jacket, and -a straw hat trimmed with a lighter shade of blue was tied, in -summer-like fashion, beneath her chin. She carried a sunshade and a -small basket filled with letters. - -Mrs. Chadwick, both hands outstretched, went to meet her. Oldmeadow had -never before seen her kiss an acquaintance of two days' standing. "I do -hope you slept well, my dear," she said. - -"Very well," said Miss Toner, including Oldmeadow in her smile. "Except -for a little while when I woke up and lay awake and couldn't get the -cawing of your rooks out of my mind. I seemed to hear them going on and -on." - -"Oh, dear! How unfortunate! But surely they weren't cawing in the -night!" cried Mrs. Chadwick, and Miss Toner, laughing and holding her -still by the hands, turned to tell Barney, who closely followed her, -that his mother was really afraid, because she had thought of rooks in -the night, that their Coldbrooks birds had actually been inhospitable -enough to keep her awake with their cawings. Meg and Barbara and Nancy -had all now emerged and there was much laughter and explanation. - -"You see, Mummy thinks you might work miracles--even among the rooks," -said Barney, while Oldmeadow testily meditated on his own discomfort. It -might have been mere coincidence, or it might--he must admit it--have -been Miss Toner's thoughts travelling into his dream or his dream -troubling her thoughts; of the two last alternatives he didn't know -which he disliked the more. - -"It's time to get ready for church, children," said Mrs. Chadwick, when, -after much merriment at her expense, the rooks and their occult -misdemeanours were disposed of. "Where is Palgrave? I do hope he won't -miss again. It does so hurt dear Mr. Bodman's feelings. Are you coming -with us, my dear?" she asked Miss Toner. - -Miss Toner, smiling upon them all, her sunshade open on her shoulder, -said that if they did not mind she did not think she would come. "I only -go to church when friends get married or their babies christened," she -said, "or something of that sort. I was never brought up to it, you see. -Mother never went." - -Mrs. Chadwick's March Hare eyes dwelt on her. "You aren't a -Churchwoman?" - -"Oh, dear, no!" said Miss Toner, and the very suggestion seemed to amuse -her. - -Mrs. Chadwick hesitated: "A Dissenter?" she ventured. "There are so many -sects in America I've heard. Though I met a very charming American -bishop once." - -"No--not a Dissenter; if you mean by that a Presbyterian or a Methodist -or a Swedenborgian," said Miss Toner, shaking her head. - -Palgrave had now joined them and stood on the step above her. She smiled -round and up at him. - -Mrs. Chadwick, her distress alleviated yet her perplexity deepened, -ventured further: "You are a Christian, I hope, dear?" - -"Oh, not at all," said Miss Toner gravely now and very kindly. "Not in -any orthodox way, I mean. Not in any way that an American bishop or your -Mr. Bodman would acknowledge. I recognize Christ as a great teacher, as -a great human soul; one of the very greatest; gone on before. But I -don't divide the human from the divine in the way the churches do; -creeds mean nothing to me, and I'd rather say my prayers out of doors on -a day like this, in the sunlight, than in any church. I feel nearer God -alone in His great world, than in any church built with human hands. But -we must all follow our own light." She spoke in her flat, soft voice, -gravely but very simply; and she looked affectionately at her hostess as -she added: "You wouldn't want me to come with you from mere conformity." - -Poor Mrs. Chadwick, standing, her brood about her, in the sweet Sabbath -sunlight, had to Oldmeadow's eye an almost comically arrested air. How -was a creedless, churchless mistress of Coldbrooks to be fitted in to -her happy vision of Barney's future? What would the village say to a -squiress who never went to church and who said her prayers in the -sunlight alone? "But, of course, better alone," he seemed to hear her -cogitate, "than that anyone should see her doing such a very curious -thing." And aloud she did murmur: "Of course not; of course not, dear. -And if you go into the little arbour down by the lake no one will -disturb you, I'm sure. Must it be quite in the open? Mere conformity is -such a shallow thing. But all the same I should like the rector to come -and talk things over with you. He's such a good man and very, very -broad-minded. He brings science so often into his sermons--sometimes I -think the people don't quite follow it all; and only the other day he -said to me, about modern unrest and scepticism: - - 'There is more faith in honest doubt, - Believe me, than in half the creeds.' - -Mamma met Lord Tennyson once and felt him to be a deeply religious -man--though rather ill-tempered; he was really very rude to her, I -always thought, and I do so dislike rudeness.--And travelling about so -much, dear, you probably had so little teaching." - -Miss Toner's eyes were incapable of irony and they only deepened now in -benevolence as they rested on her hostess. "But I haven't any doubts," -she said, shaking her head and smiling: "No doubts at all. You reach the -truth through your church and I reach it through nature and love and -life. And the beautiful thing is that it's the same truth, really; the -same beautiful truth that God loves us all, and that we are all the -children of God. I should be very pleased to meet your rector, of -course, because I like meeting anyone who is good and true. But I was -taught. My mother taught me always. And she was the freest, wisest soul -I have ever known." - -"I'll stay with you," said Palgrave suddenly from his place on the step -above her. His eyes, over her shoulder, had met Oldmeadow's and perhaps -what he saw in the old friend's face determined his testimony. "Church -means nothing to me, either; and less than nothing. I'm not so -charitable as you are, and don't think all roads lead to truth. Some -lead away, I think. You know perfectly well, Mummy, that the dear old -rector is a regular duffer and you slept all through the sermon the last -time I went; you did, really! I was too amused to sleep. He was trying -to explain original sin without mentioning Adam or Eve or the Garden of -Eden. It was most endearing! Like some one trying to avoid the eye of an -old acquaintance whom they'd come to the conclusion they really must -cut! I do so like the idea of Adam and Eve becoming unsuitable -acquaintances for the enlightened clergy!" - -"There is no sin," said Miss Toner. Barney was not quite comfortable; -Oldmeadow saw that. He kicked about in the gravel, a little flushed, -and when, once or twice, the old family friend met his eye, it was -quickly averted. "God is Good; and everything else is mortal -mind--mistake--illusion." - -"You are a sound Platonist, Miss Toner," Oldmeadow observed, and his -kindness hardly cloaked his irony. - -"Am I?" she said. When she looked at one she never averted her eyes. -She looked until she had seen all that she wished to see. "I am not fond -of metaphysics." - -"Socrates defined sin as ignorance, you know, and in a sense it may be. -All the same," said Oldmeadow, and he felt that they were all listening -and that in the eyes of his old friends it was more than unlikely that -he would get the better of Miss Toner--"there's mortal mind to be -accounted for, isn't there, and why it gets us continually into such a -mess. Whatever name you call it by, there is something that does get us -into a mess and mightn't it be a wholesome discipline to hear it -denounced once a week?" - -"Not by some one more ignorant than I am!" said Miss Toner, laughing -gently. "I'll go to church for love of Mrs. Chadwick, but not for the -sake of the discipline!" - -"Mr. Bodman never denounces. Roger is giving you quite a wrong idea," -said Mrs. Chadwick. She had stood looking from one to the other, -distressed and bewildered, and she now prepared to leave them. "And -Palgrave is very, very unjust. Of course you must not come, dear. It -would make me quite unhappy. But Mr. Bodman is not a duffer. If Palgrave -feels like that he must certainly stay away. Perhaps you can teach him -to be more charitable. It's easy to see the mote in our neighbour's -eye." Mrs. Chadwick's voice slightly trembled. She had been much moved -by her son's defection. - -"Come, Mummy, you're not going to say _I'm_ a duffer!" Palgrave passed -an affectionately bantering arm round her shoulders. "Dufferism isn't -_my_ beam!" - -But very sadly Mrs. Chadwick drew away, saying as she turned into the -house: "No; that isn't your beam. But pride may be, Palgrave. Spiritual -pride." - -Oldmeadow remained standing in the sunlight with Miss Toner and the two -young men. The girls had followed Mrs. Chadwick, Meg casting a laughing -glance of appreciation at him as she went. Religious scruples would -never keep Meg from church if she had a pretty spring dress to wear. - -"After all," he carried on, mildly, the altercation--if that was what it -was between him and Miss Toner--"good Platonists as we may be, we -haven't reached the stage of Divine Contemplation yet and things do -happen that are difficult to account for, if sin is nothing more -positive than illusion and mistake. All the forms of _ôte-toi que je m'y -mette_. All the forms of jealousy and malice. Deliberate cruelties. -History is full of horrors, isn't it? There's a jealousy of goodness in -the human heart, as well as a love. The betrayal of Christ by Judas is -symbolic." - -He had screwed his eyeglass into his eye the better to see Miss Toner -and looked very much like a solicitor trying to coax dry facts out of a -romantic client. And in the transparent shadow of her hat Miss Toner, -with her incomparable composure, gave him all her attention. - -"I don't account. I don't account for anything. Do you?" she said. "I -only feel and know. But even the dreadful things, the things that seem -to us so dreadful--isn't it always ignorance? Ignorance of what is -really good and happy--and the illusion of a separate self? When we are -all, really, one. All, really, together." She held out her arms, her -little basket hanging from her wrist. "And if we feel that at last, and -know it, those dreadful things can't happen any more." - -"Your 'if' is the standing problem of metaphysics and ethics. Why don't -we feel and know it? That's the question? And since we most of us, for -most of the time, don't feel and know it, don't we keep closer to the -truth if we accept the traditional phraseology and admit that there's -something in the texture of life, something in ourselves, that tempts -us, or impedes us, or crushes us, and call it sin--evil?" - -He was looking at her, still with his latent irony though kindly enough -indeed, and he had, as he looked, an intuition about her. She had never -been tempted, she had never been impeded, she had never been crushed. -That was her power. She was, in a fashion, sinless. It was as if she had -been hypnotized in infancy to be good. And while the fact made her in -one sense so savourless, it made her in another so significant. She -would go much further than most people in any direction she wanted to go -simply because she was not aware of obstacles and had no inhibitions. - -"Call it what you like," said Miss Toner. She still smiled--but more -gravely. Barney had ceased to stroll and kick. He had come to a -standstill beside them, and, his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on -his beloved, showed himself as completely reassured. Palgrave still -stood on the step above her and seemed to watch the snowy, piled-up -clouds that adorned the tranquil sky. "I feel it a mistake to make -unreal things seem real by giving them big names. We become afraid of -them and fear is what impedes us most of all in life. For so many -generations humanity has seen ghosts in the evening mists and taken its -indigestion for the promptings of a demon. We've got away from all that -now, Mr. Oldmeadow. We see that mists are mists and indigestion -indigestion, and that there aren't such things as ghosts and demons. -We've come out, all together, hand in hand, on the Open Road and we -don't want, ever any more, to be reminded, even, of the Dark Ages." - -Before her fluency, Oldmeadow felt himself grow less kindly. "You grant -there have been dark ages, then? I count that a concession. Things may -not be evil now, but they were once." - -"Not a concession at all," said Miss Toner. "Only an explanation of what -has happened--an explanation of what you call the mess, Mr. Oldmeadow." - -"So that when we find ourselves misbehaving to one another as we march -along the Open Road, we may know it's only indigestion and take a pill." - -She didn't like badinage. That, at all events, was evident to him, even -in her imperturbability. She took it calmly--not lightly; and if she was -not already beginning to dislike him, it was because disliking people -was a reality she didn't recognize. "We don't misbehave if we are on the -Open Road," she said. - -"Oh, but you're falling back now on good old-fashioned theology," -Oldmeadow retorted. "The sheep, saved and well-behaved, keeping to the -road, and the goats--all those who misbehave and stray--classed with the -evening mists." - -"No," said Miss Toner eyeing him, "I don't class them with the evening -mists; I class them with the sick, whom we must be kind to and take care -of." - -Mrs. Chadwick was now emerging in her new spring hat, which was not very -successful and gave emphasis to her general air of strain. Meg's hat was -very successful, as Meg's hats always were; and if Nancy's did not shine -beside it, it was, at all events, exceedingly becoming to her. Nancy's -eyes went to Barney. Barney, in the past, had been very appreciative of -becoming hats. But he had no eyes for Nancy now. He had drawn Miss Toner -aside and Oldmeadow heard their colloquy: - -"Would you rather I didn't go?" - -"I'd rather, always, you followed your light, dear friend." - -"I do like going here, you know. It seems to belong with it all--and -Mummy can't bear our not going." - -"It makes your dear mother happy. It all means love to you." - -"Not only that"--Oldmeadow imagined that Barney blushed, and he heard -his stammer: "I don't know what I believe about everything; but the -service goes much deeper than anything I could think for myself." Their -voices dropped. All that came further to Oldmeadow was from Miss Toner: -"It makes you nearer than if you stayed." - -"Confound her ineffability!" he thought. "It rests with her, then, -whether he should go or stay." - -It certainly did. Barney moved away with them all, leaving Palgrave to -the more evident form of proximity. - -"You know," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to Oldmeadow as they went, between -the primroses, down the little path and through a wicket-gate that led -to the village--"you know, Roger, it's _quite_ possible that they may -say their prayers together. It's like Quakers, isn't it--or Moravians; -or whoever those curious people are who are buried standing up--so -dismal and uncomfortable, I always think. But it's better that Palgrave -should say his prayers with some one, and somewhere, isn't it, than that -he shouldn't say them at all?" - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -"Mother's got the most poisonous headache," said Meg. "I don't think -she'll be able to come down to tea." - -She had joined Oldmeadow on the rickety old bench where he sat reading -and smoking in a sunny corner of the garden. A band of golden -wallflowers behind them exhaled the deep fragrance that he always -associated with spring and Sunday and Coldbrooks, and the old stone wall -behind the flowers exhaled a warmth that was like a fragrance. - -"Adrienne is with her," Meg added. She had seated herself and put her -elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands as though she intended a -solid talk. - -"Will that be likely to help her head?" Oldmeadow inquired. "I should -say not, if she's going to continue the discourse of this morning." - -"Did you think all that rather silly?" Meg inquired, tapping her smart -toes on the ground and watching them. "You looked as if you did. But -then you usually do look as though you thought most things and people -silly. I didn't--I mean, not in her. I quite saw what you did; at least -I think so. But she can say things that would be silly in other people. -Now Palgrave is silly. There's just the difference. Is it because he -always feels he's scoring off somebody and she doesn't?" Meg was -evidently capable, for all her devotion, of dispassionate inquiry. - -"She's certainly more secure than Palgrave," said Oldmeadow. "But I -feel that's only because she's less intelligent. Palgrave is aware, -keenly, of a critical and probably hostile world; and Miss Toner is -unaware of everything except her own benevolence, and the need for it." - -Meg meditated. Then she laughed. "You _are_ spiteful, Roger. Oh--I don't -mean about Adrienne in particular. But you always see the weak spots in -people, first go. It's rather jolly, all the same, if you come to think -it over, to be like that. Perhaps that's all she is aware of; but it -takes you a good way--wanting to help people and seeing how they can be -helped." - -"Yes; it does take you a good way. I don't deny that Miss Toner will go -far." - -"And make us go too far, perhaps?" Meg mused. "Well, I'm quite ready for -a move. I think we're all rather stodgy, really, down here. And up in -London, too, if it comes to that. I'm rather disappointed in London, you -know, Roger, and what it does for one. Just a different kind of sheep, -it seems to me, from the kind we are in the country; noisy skipping -sheep instead of silent, slow ones. But they all follow each other about -in just the same way. And what one likes is to see someone who isn't -following." - -"Yes; that's true, certainly," Oldmeadow conceded. "Miss Toner isn't a -sheep. She's the sort of person who sets the sheep moving. I'm not so -sure that she knows where she is going, all the same." - -"You mean--Be careful; don't you?" said Meg, looking up at him sideways -with her handsome eyes. "I'm not such a sheep myself, when it comes to -that, you know, Roger. I look before I leap--even after Adrienne," she -laughed; and Oldmeadow, looking back at her, laughed too--pleased with -her, yet a little disconcerted by what she revealed of experience. - -"The reason I like her so awfully," Meg went on--while he reflected -that, after all, she was now twenty-five--"and it's a good thing I do, -isn't it, since it's evident she's going to take Barney; but the reason -is that she's so interested in one. More than anyone I ever knew--far -and far away. Of course Mother's interested; but it's _for_ one; _about_ -one; not _in_ one, as it were. And then darling old Mummy isn't exactly -intelligent, is she; or only in such unexpected spots that it's never -much good to one; one can never count on it beforehand. Whereas Adrienne -is so interested in you that she makes you feel more interested in -yourself than you ever dreamed you could feel. Do you know what I mean? -Is it because she's American, do you think? English people aren't -interested in themselves, off their own bat, perhaps; or in other people -either! I don't mean we're not selfish all right!" Meg laughed. - -"Selfish and yet impersonal," Oldmeadow mused. "With less of our social -consciousness in use, with more of it locked up in automatism, -possibly." - -"There's nothing locked up in Adrienne; absolutely nothing," Meg -declared. "It's all there--out in the shop-window. And it's a big window -too, even though some of the hats and scarves, so to speak, may strike -us as funny. But, seriously, what is it about her, do you think? How can -she care so much?--about everybody?" - -He remembered Nancy's diagnosis. "Not about everybody. Only about people -she can do something for. You'll find she won't care about me." - -"Why should she? You don't care for her. Why should she waste herself on -people who don't need her?" Meg's friendliness of glance did not -preclude a certain hardness. - -"Why indeed? It could never occur to her, of course, that she might need -somebody. I don't mean that spitefully. She is strong. She doesn't -need." - -"Exactly. Like you," said Meg. "She's quite right to pay no attention to -the other strong people. For of course you are very strong, Roger, and -frightfully clever; and good, too. Only one has to be cleverer, no -doubt, than we are to see your goodness as easily as Adrienne's. It's -the shop-window again. She shows her goodness all the time; and you -don't."' - -Oldmeadow knocked the ashes out of his pipe and felt for his -tobacco-pouch. "I show my spite. No; you mustn't count me among the -good. I suppose your mother's headache came on this morning after she -found out that Miss Toner doesn't go to church." - -"Of course it was that. You saw that she was thinking about it all -through the service, didn't you?" said Meg. "And once, poor lamb, she -said, 'Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners' instead of Amen. Did you -notice? It will bother her frightfully, of course. But after all it's -not so bad as if Adrienne were a Dissenter and wanted to go to chapel! -Mummy in her heart of hearts would much rather you were a pagan than a -Dissenter. I don't think it will make a bit of difference really. So -long as she gives money to the church, and is nice to the village -people. Mother will get over it," said Meg. - -He thought so too. His own jocose phrase returned to him. As long as the -money was there it didn't make any difference. But Meg's security on -that score interested him. With all her devotion to the new friend she -struck him, fundamentally, as less kind than Nancy, who had none. But -that, no doubt, was because Meg, fundamentally, was hard and Nancy -loving. It was because of Miss Toner's interest in herself that Meg was -devoted. "You're so sure, then, that she's going to take Barney?" he -asked. - -"Quite sure," said Meg. "Surer than he is. Surer than she is. She's in -love with him all right; more than she knows herself, poor dear. No -doubt she thinks she's making up her mind and choosing. Weighing Barney -in the balance and counting up his virtues. But it's all decided -already; and not by his virtues; it never is," said Meg, again with her -air of unexpected experience. "It's something much more important than -virtues; it's the thickness of his eyelashes and the way his teeth show -when he smiles, and all his pretty ways and habits. Things like that. -She loves looking at him and more than that, even, she loves having him -look at her. I have an idea that she's not had people very much in love -with her before; not people with eyelashes and teeth like Barney. In -spite of all her money. And she's getting on, too. She's as old as -Barney, you know. It's the one, real romance that's ever come to her, -poor dear. Funny you don't see it. Men don't see that sort of thing I -suppose. But she _couldn't_ give Barney up now, simply. It's because of -that, you know"--Meg glanced behind them and lowered her voice--"that -she doesn't like Nancy." - -"Doesn't like Nancy!" Oldmeadow's instant indignation was in his voice. -"What has Nancy to do with it?" - -"She might have had a great deal, poor darling little Nancy; and it's -that Adrienne feels. She felt it at once. I saw she did; that Nancy and -Barney had been very near each other; that there was an affinity, a -sympathy, call it what you like, that would have led to something more. -It wouldn't have done at all, of course; at least I suppose not. They -knew each other too well; and, until the last year or two, she's been -too young for him. And then, above all, she's hardly any money. But all -the same, if he hadn't come across Adrienne and been bowled over like -this, Barney would have fallen in love with Nancy. She's getting to be -so lovely looking, for one thing, isn't she? And Barney's so susceptible -to looks. He was falling in love with her last winter and she knew it as -well as I did. It's rather rotten luck for Nancy because I'm afraid she -cares; but then women do have rotten luck about love affairs," said Meg, -now sombrely. "The dice are loaded against them every time." - -Oldmeadow sat smoking in silence for some moments, making no effort to -master his strong resentment; taking, rather, full possession of its -implications. "Somewhat of a flaw in your angel you must admit," he said -presently. "She doesn't like people who are as strong as she is and she -doesn't like people who might have been loved instead of herself. It -narrows the scale of her benevolence, you know. It makes her look -perilously like a jealous prig, and a prig without any excuse for -jealousy into the bargain." - -"Temper, Roger," Meg observed, casting her hard, friendly glance round -at him; "I know you think there's no one quite to match Nancy; and I -think you're not far wrong. She's the straightest, sweetest-tempered -girl who ever stepped on two feet. But all the same Adrienne isn't a -prig, and if she's jealous she can't help herself. She _wants_ to love -Nancy; she thinks she does love her; she'll always be heavenly to her. -She can do a lot for Nancy, you know. She will do a lot for her, even if -Nancy holds her off. But she wishes frightfully that she was old and -ugly. She wishes that Barney weren't so fond of her without thinking -about her. She's jealous and she can't help herself--like all the rest -of us!" Meg laughed grimly. "When it comes to that we're none of us -angels." - -It was tea-time and the dear old gong sounded balmily from the house. As -they went along the path the rooks again were cawing overhead and dimly, -like the hint of evening in the air, he remembered his dream and the -sense of menace. "You know, it's not like all the rest of you," he said. -"It's not like Nancy, for instance. Nancy wouldn't dislike a person -because she was jealous of them. In fact I don't believe Nancy could be -jealous. She'd only be hurt." - -"It's rather a question of degree, that, isn't it?" said Meg. "In one -form of it you're poisoned and in the other you're cut with a knife; and -the latter is the prettier way of suffering; doesn't make you come out -in a rash and feel sick. Nancy is cut with the knife; and if she's not -jealous in the ugly sense, she dislikes Adrienne all right." - -"Why should she like her?" Oldmeadow retorted, and Meg's simile seemed -to cut into him, too. "She doesn't need her money or her interest or her -love. She doesn't dislike her. She merely wishes she were somewhere -else--as I do." - -The garden path led straight into the house. One entered a sort of -lobby, where coats and hats and rackets and gardening baskets were kept, -and from the lobby went into the hall. Tea was, as always, laid there -and Mrs. Chadwick, as Meg and Oldmeadow came in, was descending the -staircase at the further end, leaning on Adrienne Toner's arm. - -"You see. She's done it!" Meg murmured. She seemed to bear him no -ill-will for his expressed aversion. "I never knew one of Mother's -headaches go so quickly." - -"I expect she'd rather have stayed quietly upstairs," said Oldmeadow; -"she looks puzzled. As if she didn't know what had happened to her." - -"Like a rabbit when it comes out of the conjuror's hat," said the -irreverent daughter. - -That was precisely what poor Eleanor Chadwick did look like and for the -moment his mind was diverted by amusement at her appearance from its -bitter preoccupation. Mrs. Chadwick was the rabbit and Miss Toner was -the conjuror indeed; bland and secure and holding her trophy in a firm -but gentle grasp. Not until they were all seated did Barney and Nancy -appear and then it was evident to him that if Miss Toner were jealous of -Nancy she did not fear her, for it was she who had arranged the walk -from which the young couple had just returned. - -"Was it lovely?" she asked Barney, as he took the place beside her. "Oh, -I do wish I could have come; but I knew your Mother needed me." - -"The primroses are simply ripping in the wood," said Barney. - -Nancy carried a large bunch of primroses. - -"Ripping," said Miss Toner, laughing gently. - -"How absurd of you, Barney. Could anything be less ripping than -primroses? How beautiful they are and what a lovely bunch. One sees that -Miss Averil loves them from the way she has picked them." If she did not -call Nancy by her Christian name it was, Oldmeadow knew, not her but -Nancy's fault. - -Nancy still stood beside the table and from the fact of standing, while -all the rest of them were seated, from the fact of being called Miss -Averil, she seemed, for the moment, oddly an outsider; as if she hardly -belonged to the circle of which Miss Toner was the centre. "Do come and -sit near us," said Miss Toner. "For I had to miss you, too, you see, as -well as the primroses." - -"I'd crowd you there," said Nancy, smiling. "I'll sit here near Aunt -Eleanor." From something in her eyes Oldmeadow felt suddenly sure that -not till now had she realized that it had not, really, been her and -Barney's walk. She offered the primroses to Mrs. Chadwick as she took -the chair beside her, saying, "They'll fill your white bowl in the -morning-room, Aunt Eleanor." - -"Oh, I say; but I meant those for Adrienne, Nancy!" Barney exclaimed, -and as he did so Meg's eyes met Oldmeadow's over the household loaf. -"She didn't see them in the wood, so she ought to have them. Mummy is -suffocated with primroses already." - -But Nancy showed no rash and only an acute Meg could have guessed a cut -as she answered: "I'll pick another bunch to-morrow for Miss Toner, -Barney. They'll be fresher to take to London. These are really Aunt -Eleanor's. I always fill that bowl for her." - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -"I do so want a talk with you, Roger," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to him -when tea was over. The dining-room opened at one end of the hall and the -drawing-room at the other and the morning-room, Mrs. Chadwick's special -retreat, into which she now drew him, was tucked in behind the -dining-room and looked out at an angle of the garden wall and at the -dove-cot that stood there. Mrs. Chadwick's doves were usually fluttering -about the window and even, when it was open, entering the room, where -she sometimes fondly fed them, causing thereby much distress of mind to -Turner, the good old parlourmaid. A pleasant little fire was burning -there and, after placing her primroses in the white bowl, Mrs. Chadwick -drew her chair to it, casting a glance, as she did so, up at the large -portrait of her husband in hunting dress that hung above the -mantelpiece. It was painted with the same glib unintelligence as the -dining-room portraits, but the painter had been unable to miss entirely -the whimsical daring of the eyes or to bring into conformity with his -own standard of good looks the charm of the irregular and narrow face. -Francis Chadwick had been an impulsive, idle, endearing man, and, -remaining always in love with his wife, had fondly cherished all her -absurdities. Since his death poor Mrs. Chadwick had been perplexed by -her effort to associate with gravity and inspiration one who had always -been a laughing incentive to inconsequence. Oldmeadow reflected, as he, -too, looked up at him, that Francis Chadwick would neither have needed -nor have liked Miss Toner. - -"It's so very, very strange, Roger, I really must tell you," Mrs. -Chadwick said. Her hair, still bright and abundant, was very untidy. She -had evidently not brushed it since rising from her sofa. "I had one of -my dreadful headaches, you know. It came on at church this morning and I -really couldn't attend to Mr. Bodman at all. Perhaps you saw." - -"I heard. Yes. Miss Toner had disturbed you a good deal." - -"I did feel so bewildered and unhappy about it all," said Mrs. Chadwick, -fixing her blue eyes upon the family friend. Eleanor Chadwick's eyes -could show the uncanny ingenuousness and the uncanny wisdom of a baby's. -"Nothing so innocent or so sharp was ever seen outside a perambulator," -her husband had once said of them. "About her, you know, Roger," she -continued, "and Barney and Palgrave. The influence. I could not bear -them to lose their faith in the church of their fathers." - -"No," said Oldmeadow. "But you must be prepared to see it shift a good -deal. Faiths have to shift nowadays if they're to stand." - -"Well. Yes. I know what you mean, Roger. But it isn't a question of -shifting, is it? I'm very broad. I've always been all for breadth. And -the broader you are the firmer you ought to be, oughtn't you?" - -"Well, Miss Toner's broad and firm," Oldmeadow suggested. "I never saw -anyone more so." - -"But in such a queer way, Roger. Like saying one's prayers out of doors -and thinking oneself as good as Christ. Oh, it all made me perfectly -wretched and after lunch my head was so bad that I went and lay down in -the dark; and it raged, simply. Oh, dear, I thought; this means a day -and night of misery. They go on like that once they begin. Mamma used -to have them in precisely the same way. Absolutely incapacitating. I can -never see how anybody can deny heredity. That's another point, Roger. -I've always accepted evolution. I gave up Adam and Eve long ago; gave -them up as white and good-looking, I mean; because we must have begun -_somewhere_, mustn't we? And Darwin was such a good man; though you -remember he came not to care anything at all about music. That may mean -a great deal, if one could think it all out; it's the most religious of -the arts, isn't it? But there's no end to thinking things out!" Mrs. -Chadwick pressed her hand against her forehead, closing her eyes for a -moment. "And Adrienne is very musical." - -"You were at your headache," Oldmeadow reminded her. It was customary in -the family circle thus to shepherd Mrs. Chadwick's straying thoughts. - -"Yes, I know. But it all hangs together. Heredity and Mamma and my -headaches; and Adrienne's mother, who was musical, too, and played on a -harp. Well, it was raging and I was lying there, when there came a -little rap at the door. I knew at once who it was and she asked in such -a gentle voice if she might come in. It's a very soothing voice, isn't -it? But do you know I felt for a moment quite frightened, as if I simply -couldn't see her. But I had to say yes, and she came in so softly and -sat down beside me and said: 'I used to help Mother, sometimes, with her -headaches. May I help you?' She didn't want to talk about things, as I'd -feared. Such a relief it was. So I said: 'Oh, do my dear,' and she laid -her hand on my forehead and said: 'You will soon feel better. It will -soon quite pass away.' And then not another word. Only sitting there in -the dark, with her hand on my forehead. And do you know, Roger, almost -at once the pain began to melt away. You know how a dish of junket melts -after you cut into it. It was like that. 'Junket, junket,' I seemed to -hear myself saying; and such a feeling of peace and contentment. And -before I knew anything more I fell into the most delicious sleep and -slept till now, just before tea. She was sitting there still, in the -dark beside me and I said: 'Oh, my dear, to think of your having stayed -in on this lovely afternoon!' But she went to pull up the blinds and -said that she loved sitting quietly in the dark with some one she cared -for, sleeping. 'I think souls come very close together, then,' she said. -Wasn't it beautiful of her, Roger? Like astral bodies, you know, and -auras and things of that sort. She _is_ beautiful. I made up my mind to -that, then. She gives me such a feeling of trust. How can one help it? -It's like what one reads of Roman Catholic saints and people in the -Bible. The gift of healing. The laying on of hands. We don't seem to -have any of them and we can't count _her_, since she doesn't believe in -the church. But if only they'd give up the Pope, I don't see why we -shouldn't accept their saints; such dear, good people, most of them. And -the Pope is quite an excellent man just now, I believe. But isn't it -very strange, Roger? For a person who can do that to one can't be -irreligious, can they?" - -Mrs. Chadwick's eye was now fixed upon him, less wistfully and more -intently, and he knew that something was expected of him. - -"Hypnotic doctors can do it, you know. You needn't be a saint to do it," -he said. "Though I suppose you must have some power of concentration -that implies faith. However," he had to say all his thought, though most -of it would be wasted upon poor Eleanor Chadwick, "Miss Toner is -anything but irreligious. You may be sure of that." - -"You feel it, too, Roger. I'm so, so glad." - -"But her religion is not as your religion," he had to warn her, "nor her -ways your ways. You must be prepared to have the children unsettled; -everyone of them; because she has great power and is far more religious -than most people. She believes in her creed and acts on it. You must -give the children their heads. It's no good trying to circumvent or -oppose them." - -"But they mustn't do wrong things, Roger. How can I give them their -heads if it's to do wrong things? I don't know what Mamma would have -said to their not going to church--especially in the country. She would -have thought it very wrong, simply. Sinful and dangerous." - -"Hardly that," Oldmeadow smiled. "Even in the country. You don't think -Miss Toner does wrong things. If they take up Miss Toner's creed instead -of going to church, they won't come to much harm. The principal thing is -that there should be something to take up. After all," he was reassuring -himself as well as Mrs. Chadwick, "it hasn't hurt her. It's made her a -little foolish; but it hasn't hurt her. And your children will never be -foolish. They'll get all the good of it and, perhaps, be able to combine -it with going to church. - -"Foolish, Roger?" Mrs. Chadwick, relieved of her headache, but not of -her perplexity, gazed wanly at him. "You think Adrienne foolish?" - -"A little. Now and then. You mustn't accept anything she says to you -just because she can cure you of a headache." - -"But how can you say foolish, Roger? She's had a most wonderful -education?" - -"Everything that makes her surer of herself and makes other people surer -of her puts her in more danger of being foolish. One can be too sure of -oneself. Unless one is a saint--and even then. And though I don't think -she's irreligious I don't think she's a saint. Not by any means." - -"I don't see how anyone can be more of one, nowadays, Roger. She heals -people and she says prayers, and she is always good and gentle and never -thinks of herself. I'm sure I can't think what you want more." - -A touch of plaintiveness and even of protest had come into Mrs. -Chadwick's voice. - -"Perhaps what I want is less," he laughed. "Perhaps she's too much of a -saint for my taste. I think she's a little too much of one for your -taste, really--if you were to be quite candid with yourself. Has she -spoken to you at all about Barney? Are you quite sure you'll have to -reckon with her for yourself and the children?" - -At this Mrs. Chadwick showed a frank alarm. "Oh, quite, quite sure!" she -said. "She couldn't be so lovely to us all if she didn't mean to take -him! Why do you ask, Roger? You haven't any reason for thinking she -won't?" - -"None whatever. Quite the contrary." He didn't want to put poor Mrs. -Chadwick to the cruel test of declaring whether she would rather have -the children go to church and lose Miss Toner and all her money or have -them stay away and keep Miss Toner. After all such a test was not to be -asked of her. Miss Toner wanted people to follow their own light. "I -only wondered if she talked to you about him. Asked any girlish leading -questions." - -"None, none whatever," said Mrs. Chadwick. "But I feel that's because -she thinks she knows him far better than I do and that he's told her -everything already. It's rather hard to be a mother, Roger. For of -course, though she is so much better and cleverer than I am, I feel sure -that no one understands Barney as I do." - -"She'd be a little cleverer still if she could see that, wouldn't she?" - -"Well, I don't know. Girls never do. I was just the same when I was -engaged to Francis. Even now I can't think that old Mrs. Chadwick really -understood him as I did. It's very puzzling, isn't it? Very difficult to -see things from other people's point of view. When she pulled up the -blind this afternoon, she told me that Nancy and Barney were down in the -copse and she seemed pleased." - -"Oh, did she?" - -"I told her that they'd always been like brother and sister, for I was -just a little afraid, you know, that she might imagine Barney had ever -cared about Nancy." - -"I see. You think she wouldn't like that?" - -"What woman would, Roger?" And he imagined that Mrs. Chadwick, for all -her folly, was cleverer than Miss Toner guessed, as she added: "And then -she told me that she'd made Barney go without her. She wanted me to see, -you know, that it depended on her. That's another reason why I feel sure -she is going to take him." - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -He sat, for the first time, next Miss Toner that night at dinner and -Nancy sat across from them next Barney. Nancy was pale, and now that he -could scrutinize her he imagined that the walk had been more of an -ordeal than a pleasure. Barney, no doubt, with the merciless blindness -of his state, had talked to her all the time of Adrienne. But Nancy -would not have minded that. She was of the type that hides its cut for -ever and may become aunt and guardian-angel to the other woman's -children. It had not been Barney's preoccupation that had so drained her -of warmth and colour, but its character, its object. Her grey eyes had -the considering look with which they might have measured the height of a -difficult hedge in hunting, and, resting on Oldmeadow once or twice, -seemed to tell him that the walk had shown her more clearly than ever -that, if Barney married Miss Toner, they must lose him. He felt sure -that she had lain down since tea with a headache to which had come no -ministering angel. - -She and Barney did not talk to each other now, for he had eyes and ears -only for Miss Toner. At any former time they would have kept up the -happiest interchange, and Oldmeadow would have seen Nancy's eyelashes -close together as she smiled her loving smile. There was a dim family -likeness between her face and Barney's, for both were long and narrow, -and both had the singular sweetness in the very structure of the smile. -But where Barney was clumsy, Nancy was clear, and her skin was as fair -as his was brown. To the fond onlooker at both, they were destined mates -and only an insufferable accident had parted them. - -Nancy was as much a part of the Coldbrooks country as the primroses and -the blackcaps in the woods. Her life had risen from the familiar soil to -the familiar sky, as preordained to fitness, as ordered by instinct and -condition as theirs, and from her security of type she had gained not -lost in savour. The time that unfinished types must give to growing -conscious roots and building conscious nests, Nancy had all free for -spontaneities of flight and song. Beside her, to his hostile eye, Miss -Toner was as a wide-spread water-weed, floating, rootless and scentless, -upon chance currents: A creature of surfaces, of caprice and hazard. If -the multiplicity of her information constituted mental wealth, its -impersonality constituted mental poverty. She was as well furnished and -as deadening as a catalogue, and as he listened to her, receiving an -impression of continual, considered movings-on, earnest pursuits, across -half the globe, of further experience, he saw her small, questing figure -on a background of railways, giant lines stretching forth across plain -and mountain, climbing, tunnelling, curving; stopping at great capitals, -and passing on again to glitter on their endless way under the sun and -moon. That was what he seemed to see as Miss Toner talked: and -sleeping-berths and wardrobe-boxes and luxurious suites in vast hotels. - -She wore again her white dress, contrasting in its richness of texture -with the simplicity of her daytime blue, and, rather stupidly, an -artificial white rose had been placed, in her braids, over each ear. -Her pearls were her only other ornament, and her pearls, he supposed, -were surprising. - -Oldmeadow was aware, in his close proximity to her, while she ate beside -him with a meticulous nicety that made the manners of the rest of them, -by contrast, seem a little casual and slovenly, of the discomfort that -had visited him in his dream. Yet the feeling she evoked was not all -discomfort. It was as if from her mere physical presence he were -subjected to some force that had in its compulsion a dim, conjectural -charm. It was for this reason no doubt that he seemed to be aware of -everything about her. Her hands were small and white, but had no beauty -of form or gesture. She moved them slowly and without grace, rather like -a young child handling unfamiliar objects in a kindergarten, and this in -spite of the singular perfection of her table manners. She could have -made little use of them, ever, in games of skill or in any art requiring -swift accuracy and firmness. It was as if her mind, overtrained in -receptivity and retentiveness, had only dull tentacles to spare for her -finger-tips. He was aware of these hands beside him all through dinner -and their fumbling deliberation brought to him, again and again, a -mingled annoyance, and satisfaction. There was something positive and -characteristic about her scentlessness, for if she smelt of anything it -was of Fuller's Earth--a funny, chalky smell--and beside Meg, who -foolishly washed liquid powder over her silvery skin, Miss Toner's -colourlessness was sallow. She had hardly talked at all the night -before, but to-night she talked continuously. It was Meg who questioned -her, and Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldmeadow guessed that his ingenuous -friend, still perplexed by his use of the word foolish, was drawing out -and displaying her future daughter-in-law for his benefit. - -Miss Toner and her mother had been to Russia, to India, to China and -Japan. They had visited Stevenson's grave at Vailima and in describing -it she quoted "Under the wide and starry sky." They had studied every -temple in Greece and Sicily and talked of the higher education with -ladies in Turkish harems. "But it was always Paris we came back to," she -said, "when we were not at home. Home was, and is, a great many places: -California and Chicago--where my father's people live, and New England. -But Paris was, after it, closest to our hearts. Yes, we knew a great -many French people; but it was for study rather than friendship we went -there. It is such a treasure-house of culture. Mother worked very hard -at French diction for several winters. She had lessons from Mademoiselle -Jouffert--you know perhaps--though she has not acted for so many years -now. Our friendship with her was a great privilege, for she was a rare -and noble woman and had a glorious gift. Phèdre was her favourite rôle -and I shall never forget her rendering of it: - - Ariane ma soeur! de quel amour blessée - Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée! - -She taught Mother to recite Phèdre's great speeches with such fire and -passion. There could hardly be a better training for French," said Miss -Toner, repeating the lines with a curious placidity and perfection. "I -preferred Mademoiselle Jouffert's rendering to Bernhardt's. Her Phèdre -was, with all the fire, more tender and womanly." - -"Do you care about Racine?" Oldmeadow asked her, while the lines rang in -his ears--rather as in his dream the rooks' cawing had done--with an -evocative sadness that hung, irrelevantly, about their speaker. "It's -not easy for our English ears to hear the fire and passion, is it; but -they are there." - -"He is very perfect and accomplished," said Miss Toner. "But I always -feel him small beside our Shakespeare. He lacks heart, doesn't he?" - -"There's heart in those lines you've just recited." - -"Yes," said Miss Toner. "Those lines are certainly very beautiful. It's -the mere music of them, I think. They make me feel--" she paused. It was -unlike her to pause and he wondered what she made of Ariane, off her own -bat, without Mademoiselle Jouffert to help her. - -"They make you feel?" he questioned. - -"They are so sad--so terribly melancholy. The sound of them. They make -me want to cry when I hear them. But I think it's the sound; for their -meaning makes me indignant. There is such weakness in them; such -acceptance of destiny. I want to revolt and protest, too--for women. She -should not have died." - -Oldmeadow involuntarily glanced across at Nancy. She was looking at Miss -Toner and if she had been pale before, she was paler now. Nancy would -never think of herself in connection with Ariane and tragic grief; yet -something in the lines, something in Miss Toner's disavowal of their -applicability, had touched the hidden cut. And, once again, it was Meg's -eyes that met his, showing him that what he saw she saw, too. Barney saw -nothing. All his solicitude was for Miss Toner in her imaginary plight. -"I'm sure you never would!" he exclaimed. "Never die, I mean!" - -"You think Miss Toner would have come to terms with Bacchus," Oldmeadow -suggested. He didn't want to take it out of Barney, though he was vexed -with him, nor to take it out of Miss Toner, either. He only wanted to -toss and twist the theme and make it gay where Miss Toner made it -solemn. - -"Come to terms with Bacchus!" Barney quite stared, taken aback by the -irreverence. "Why should she! She'd have found somebody more worth while -than either of the ruffians." - -Miss Toner smiled over at him. - -"I'm sure that if Bacchus had been fortunate enough to meet Miss Toner -she'd have converted him to total abstinence in a jiffy and made a model -husband of him. He was a fine, exhilarating fellow; no ruffian at all; -quite worth reforming." Oldmeadow, as he thus embroidered his theme, was -indulging in his own peculiar form of mirth. - -He saw Miss Toner laying her hand on the head of Bacchus; Miss Toner -very picturesque on the rugged sea-shore in her white and pearls and -roses, and Bacchus dazed and penitent, his very leopards tamed to a -cat-like docility. His laugh was visible rather than audible and that -Miss Toner had never before been the subject of such mirth was evident -to him. - -She met whatever she saw or guessed of irreverence, however, as -composedly as she would have met Bacchus; perhaps already, he reflected, -she was beginning to think of him in the light of an undesirable -wine-bibber. Perhaps even, she was beginning to think of him as a -ruffian. He didn't mind in the least, so long as he succeeded in keeping -off her solemnity. - -"I should have been quite willing to try and reform him," she said; -"though it takes much longer than a jiffy to reform people, Mr. -Oldmeadow; but I shouldn't have been willing to marry him. There are -other things in life, aren't there, than love-stories--even for women." - -"Bravo!" said Oldmeadow. He felt as well as uttered it. She wasn't being -solemn, and she had returned his shuttlecock smartly. "But are there?" -he went on. He had adjusted his eyeglass for a clearer confrontation of -her. - -Miss Toner's large eyes, enlarged still further by the glass, met his, -not solemnly, but with a considering gravity. - -"You are a sceptic, Mr. Oldmeadow," she observed. "A satirist. Do you -find that satire and scepticism take you very far in reading human -hearts?" - -"There's one for you, Roger!" cried Barney. - -Oldmeadow kept his gaze fixed on Miss Toner. "You think that Ariane -might prefer Infant Welfare work or Charity Organization to a -love-story?" - -"Not those necessarily." She returned his gaze. "Though I have known -very fine big people who did prefer them. But they are not the only -alternatives to love-stories." - -"I am sceptical," said Oldmeadow. "I am, if you like, satirical. I don't -believe there are any alternatives to love-stories; only palliatives to -disappointment." - -Barney leaned forward: "Adrienne, you see, doesn't accept that -old-fashioned, sentimentalizing division of the sexes. She doesn't -accept the merely love-story, hearth-side rôle for women." - -"Oh, well," Oldmeadow played with his fork, smiling with the wryness -that accompanied his reluctant sincerities, "I don't divide the sexes as -far as love-stories are concerned. We are all in the same boat. For us, -too, Barney, it's love-story or palliative. You don't agree? If you were -disappointed in love? Hunting? Farming? Politics? Post-Impressionism? -Would any of them fill the gap?" - -It wasn't at all the line he had intended the talk to take. He knew that -as he glanced across at Nancy. Saying nothing, as if its subject could -not concern her, and with a dim little smile, she listened, and he knew -that for her, though she wouldn't die of it, there would be only -palliatives. If only Barney, confound him, hadn't been so charming. - -Barney did not know how to answer the last assault, and, boyishly, -looked across at his beloved for succour. She gave it instantly. - -"Sadness, sorrow, tragedy, even, isn't despair," she said. "Barney, I -believe, if sorrow overtook him, would mould the rough clay of his -occupation to some higher beauty than the beauty he'd lost. To lie down -and die; to resign oneself to palliatives. Oh, no. That's not the -destiny of the human soul." - -"Roger's pulling your leg, Barney, as usual," Palgrave put in -scornfully. He had been listening with his elbows on the table, his eyes -on the table-cloth. "He knows as well as I do that there's only one -love. The sort you're all talking about--the Theseus and Ariane -affair--is merely an ebullition of youth and as soon as nature has -perpetuated the species by means of it, it settles down, if there's any -reality under the ebullition, to grow into the other--the divine love; -the love of the soul for the Good, the True and the Beautiful," Palgrave -declared, growing very red as he said it. - -"Really--my dear child!" Mrs. Chadwick murmured. She had never heard -such themes broached at her table and glanced nervously up at old -Johnson to see if he had followed. "That is a very, very materialistic -view!" - -Oldmeadow at this began to laugh, audibly as well as visibly, and -Palgrave, as their eyes met in a glance of communicated comedy, could -not withhold an answering smile. But Barney's face showed that he -preferred to see Palgrave's interpretation as materialistic and even -Miss Toner looked thoughtfully at her champion. - -"But we need the symbol of youth and nature," she suggested. "The divine -love, yes, Palgrave, is the only real one; but then all love is divine -and human love sometimes brings the deepest revelation of all. Browning -saw that so wonderfully." - -"Browning, my dear!" Palgrave returned with a curious mingling of -devotion, intimacy and aloofness, "Browning never got nearer God than a -woman's breast!" - -At this, almost desperately, Mrs. Chadwick broke in: "Did you ever see -our Ellen Terry act, Adrienne? I liked her much better than Madame -Bernhardt who had such a very artificial face, I think. I can't imagine -her as Rosalind, can you? While Miss Terry was a perfect Rosalind. I met -her once with Henry Irving at a garden-party in London and she was as -charming off as on the stage and I'm sure I can't see why anybody -should wish to act Phèdre--poor, uncontrolled creature. Rhubarb-tart, -dear, and custard? or wine-jelly and cream? How beautifully you speak -French. How many languages do you speak?" Mrs. Chadwick earnestly -inquired, still turning the helm firmly away from the unbecoming topic. - -Miss Toner kept her head very creditably and, very tactfully, at once -accepted her hostess's hint. "Rhubarb-tart, please, dear Mrs. Chadwick. -Not so very many, really. My German has never been good; though French -and Italian I do know well, and enough Spanish for Don Quixote. But," -she went on, while Mrs. Chadwick looked gratefully at her, "Mother and I -were always working. We never wasted any of our precious hours together. -She couldn't bear the thought of _missing_ anything in life; and she -missed very little, I think. Music, poetry, painting--all the -treasure-houses of the human spirit--were open to her. And what she won -and made her own, she gave out again with greater radiance. How I wish -you could all have known her!" said Miss Toner, looking round at them -with an unaccustomed touch of wistfulness. "She was radiance -personified. She never let unhappiness _rest_ on her. I remember once, -when she had had a cruel blow from a person she loved and trusted--in -the middle of her sadness she looked at me and saw how sad she was -making me; and she sprang up and seized my hands and cried: 'Let's -dance! Let's dance and dance and dance!' And we did, up and down the -terrace--it was at San Remo--she in her white dress, with the blue sky -and sea and the orange-trees all in bloom. I can see her now. And then -she rushed to get music, her harp, and flowers and fruit, to take to an -invalid friend, and we spent the afternoon with her, mother surpassing -herself in charm and witchery. She was always like that. She would have -found something, oh, very beautiful, to make from her sorrow if Theseus -had abandoned her! But no one," said Miss Toner, looking round at -Oldmeadow, now with a mild playfulness, "could ever have abandoned -Mother." - -There was something to Oldmeadow appealing in her playfulness; her -confidence, when it took on this final grace, was really touching. For -Mrs. Toner the light-giver he knew that he had conceived a rooted -aversion. And he wondered if she would go on, over the rhubarb-tart, to -tell, after the dancing on the terrace, of the death at sea. But he was -spared that. - -"And your father died when you were very young, didn't he, dear?" said -Mrs. Chadwick, fearful of the reference to Theseus. "I think your mother -must often have been so very lonely; away from home for such a great -part of the time and with so few relatives." - -Miss Toner shook her head. "We were always together, she and I, so we -could never, either of us, be lonely. And wherever we went she made -friends. People were always so much more than mere people to her. She -saw them always, at once, high and low, prince and peasant, as souls, -and they felt it always, and opened to her. Then, until I was quite big, -we had my lovely grandmother. Mother came from Maine and it was such a -joy to go and stay there with Grandma. It was a very simple little home. -It was always high thinking and plain living, with Grandma; and though, -when she married and became rich, Mother showered beautiful things upon -her, Grandma stayed always in the little house, doing for her poor -neighbours, as she had always done, and dusting her parlour--a real New -England parlour--and making her own griddle cakes--such wonderful cakes -she made! I was fifteen when she died; but the tie was so close and -spiritual that she did not seem gone away from us." - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -"Rather nice to think that there are so many good and innocent people in -the world, isn't it," Barney remarked, when he, Palgrave and Oldmeadow -were left to their wine and cigars. It was evident that he would have -preferred to omit the masculine interlude, but Oldmeadow was resolved on -the respite. She had touched him because she was so unaware; but he was -weary and disconcerted. How could Barney be unaware? And was he? -Altogether? His comment seemed to suggest a suspicion that Miss Toner's -flow might have aroused irony or require justification. - -"Miss Toner and her mother seem to have found the noble and the gifted -under every bush," he remarked, and he was not sure that he wished to -avoid irony though he knew that he did wish to conceal it from Barney. -"It's very good and innocent to be able to do that; but one may keep -one's goodness at the risk of one's discrimination. Not that Miss Toner -is at all stupid." - -Palgrave neither smoked nor drank. He had again leaned his elbows on the -table and his head on his fists, but, while Oldmeadow spoke, he lifted -and kept his gaze on him. "You don't like her," he said suddenly. He and -Oldmeadow had, irrepressibly, over Mrs. Chadwick's conception of -materialism, interchanged their smile at dinner; but since the morning -Oldmeadow had known that Palgrave suspected him of indifference, perhaps -even hostility, towards the new-comer. "Why don't you like her?" the -boy went on and with a growing resentment as his suspicions found voice. -"She _isn't_ stupid; that's just it. She's good and noble and innocent; -and gifted, too. Why should we pretend to be too sophisticated to -recognize such beauty when we meet it? Why should we be ashamed of -beauty--afraid of it?" - -Barney, flushing deeply, looked down into his wine-glass. - -"My dear Palgrave, I don't understand you," said Oldmeadow. But he did. -He seemed to hear the loud beating of Palgrave's heart. "I don't dislike -Miss Toner. How should I? I don't know her." - -"You do know her. That's an evasion. It's all there. She can't be seen -without being known. It's all there; at once. I don't know why you don't -like her. It's what I want to know." - -"Drop it, Palgrave," Barney muttered. "Let Roger alone. He and Adrienne -get on very well together. It's no good forcing things." - -"I'm not forcing anything. It's Roger who forces his scepticism and his -satire on us," Palgrave declared. - -"I'm sorry to have displeased you," said Oldmeadow with a slight -severity. "I am unaware of having displayed my disagreeable qualities -more than is usual with me." - -"Of course not. What rot, Palgrave! Roger is always disagreeable, bless -him!" Barney declared with a forced laugh. "Adrienne understands him -perfectly. As he says: she isn't stupid." - -"Oh, all right. I'm sorry," Palgrave rose, thrusting his hands in his -pockets and looking down at the two as he stood above them. He hesitated -and then went on: "All I know is that for the first time in my -life--the very first time, mind you--all the things we are told about in -religion, all the things we read about in poetry, the things we're -supposed to care for and live by, have been made real to me--outside of -books and churches. What do we ever see of them at home here, with dear -Mummy and the girls? What do we ever talk of, all of us--but the -everlasting round--hunting, gardening, cricket, hay; village treats and -village charities. A lot of chatter about people--What a rotter -So-and-so is; and How perfectly sweet somebody else: and a little about -politics--Why doesn't somebody shoot Lloyd George?--and How wicked Home -Rulers are. That's about all it amounts to. Oh, I know we're not as -stupid as we sound. _She_ sees that. We can feel things and see things -though we express ourselves like savages. But we're too comfortable to -think; that's what's the trouble with us. We don't want to change; and -thought means change. And we're shy; idiotically shy; afraid to express -anything as it really comes to us; so that I sometimes wonder if things -will go on coming; if we shan't become like the Chinese--a sort of -_objet d'art_ set of people, living by rote, in a rut. Well. That's all -I mean. With her one isn't ashamed or afraid to know and say what one -feels. With her one wants to feel more. And I, for one, reverence her -and am grateful to her for having made beauty and goodness real to me." -Having so delivered himself, Palgrave, who had, after his deep flush, -become pale, turned away and marched out of the room. - -The older men sat silent for a moment, Oldmeadow continuing to smoke and -Barney turning the stem of his wine-glass in his fingers. "I'm awfully -sorry," he said at last. "I can't think what's got into the boy. He's in -rather a moil just now, I fancy." - -"He's a dear boy," said Oldmeadow. "There's any amount of truth in what -he says. He's at an age when one sees these things, if one is ever going -to see them. I hope he'll run straight. He ought to amount to -something." - -"That's what Adrienne says," said Barney. "She says he's a poet. You -think, too, then, that we're all in such a rut; living Chinese lives; -automata?" - -"It's the problem of civilization, isn't it, to combine automatism with -freedom. Without a rut to walk in you reach nowhere--if we're to walk -together. And yet we must manage to ramble, too; individuals must; -that's what it comes to, I suppose. Individuals must take the risk of -rambling and alter the line of the rut for the others. Palgrave may be a -rambler. But I hope he won't go too far afield." - -"You do like her, Roger, don't you?" said Barney suddenly. - -It had had to come. Oldmeadow knew that, as the depth of silence fell -about them. It was inevitable between them, of course. Yet he wished it -might have been avoided, since now it must be too late. He pressed out -the glow of his cigar and leaned his arms on the table, not looking at -his friend while he meditated, and he said finally--and it might seem, -he knew, another evasion--"Look here, Barney, I must tell you something. -You know how much I care about Nancy. Well, that's the trouble. It's -Nancy I wanted you to marry." - -Barney had held himself ready and a deep, involuntary sigh of relief, or -of postponed suspense, now escaped him. "I see. I didn't realize that," -he said. And how he hoped, poor Barney! it was all there was to realize! -"Of course I'm very fond of Nancy." - -"You realize, of course, how fond she is of you." - -"Well; yes; of course. We're both awfully good pals," said Barney, -confused. - -"That's what Palgrave would call speaking like a savage, Barney. Own to -it that if Miss Toner hadn't appeared upon the scene you could have -hoped to make Nancy your wife. I don't say you made love to her or -misled her in any way. I'm sure you never meant to at any rate. But the -fact remains that you were both so fond of each other that you would -certainly have married. So you'll understand that when I come down here -and find Miss Toner installed as tutelary goddess over you all, what I'm -mainly conscious of is grief for my dear little relegated nymph." - -Still deeply flushed, but still feeling his relief, Barney turned his -wine-glass and murmured: "I see. I quite understand. Yes; I should have -been in love with her, I own. I nearly was, last winter. As to her being -in love with me, that's a different matter. I've no reason to think she -was in love. It would just be a difference of degree, with Nancy, -wouldn't it; she loves us all so much, and she's really such a child, -still. Of course that's what she seems to me now, since Adrienne's come; -just a darling child." - -"I suppose so. But you understand what I feel, too. I feel her much more -than a darling child, and it's difficult for me to like anybody who has -dispossessed her. I perfectly recognize Miss Toner's remarkable -qualities and hope to count myself among her friends one day; but, being -a satirist and a sceptic, I rebel instinctively against goddesses of -whatever brand. Nymphs are good enough for me; and I can't help wishing, -irrepressibly, that nymphs had remained good enough for you, my dear -boy." - -"It isn't a question of nymphs; it isn't a question of goddesses," -Barney said, glancing up now at his friend. "I'm awfully sorry about -Nancy; but of course she'll find some one far better than I am; she's -such a dear. You're not quite straight with me, Roger. I don't see -Adrienne as a goddess at all; I'm not like Palgrave, a silly boy, bowled -over. It's something quite different she does to me. She makes me feel -safe; safe and happy in a way I never imagined possible. It's like -having the sunlight fall about one; it's like life, new life, to be with -her. She's not a goddess; but she's the woman it would break my heart to -part with. I never met such loveliness." - -"My dear boy," Oldmeadow murmured. He still leaned on the table and he -still looked down. "I do wish you every happiness, as you know." He was -deeply touched and Barney's quiet words troubled him as he had not -before been troubled. - -"Thanks. I know you do. I know you care for my happiness. And I can't -imagine anything coming into my life that would make a difference to us. -That's just it." Barney paused. "It won't, will it, Roger?" - -The crisis was again upon them. Oldmeadow did not look up as he said: -"That depends on her, doesn't it?" - -"No; it depends on you," Barney quickly replied. - -"She likes you, quite immensely, already. She says you make her think of -one of Meredith's dry, deep-hearted heroes," Barney gave a slightly -awkward laugh, deprecating the homage as he offered it. "She says you -are the soul of truth. There's no reason, none whatever, why you -shouldn't be the best of friends, as far as she is concerned. It's all -she asks." - -"It's all I ask, of course." - -"Yes, I know. But if you don't meet her half-way? Sometimes I do see -what Palgrave means. Sometimes you misunderstand her." - -"Very likely. It takes time really to understand people, doesn't it." - -But poor Barney was embarked and could not but push on. "As just now, -you know, about finding nobility behind every bush and paying for one's -goodness by losing one's discrimination. There are deep realities and -superficial realities, aren't there, and she sees the deep ones first. -It's more than that. Palgrave says she makes reality. He didn't say it -to me, because I don't think he feels me to be worthy of her. He said it -to Mother, and puzzled her by it. But I know what he means. It's because -of that he feels her to be a sort of saint. Do be straight with me, -Roger. Say what you really think. I'd rather know; much. You've never -kept things from me before," Barney added in a sudden burst of boyish -distress. - -"My dear Barney," Oldmeadow murmured. - -It had to come, then. He pushed back his chair and turned in it, resting -an arm on the table; and he passed his hand over his head and kept it -there while he stared for a moment hard at the ceiling. - -"I think you've made a mistake," he then said. - -"A mistake?" Barney faltered blushing. It was not anger; it was pain, -simple, boyish pain that thus confessed itself. - -"Yes; a mistake," Oldmeadow repeated, not looking at him, "and since I -fear it's gone too far to be mended, I think it would have been better -if you'd not pressed me, my dear boy." - -"How do you mean? I'd rather know, you see," Barney murmured, after a -moment. - -"I don't mean about the goodness, or the power," said Oldmeadow. "She is -good, and she has power; but that's in part, I feel, because she has no -inhibitions--no doubts. To know reality we must do more than blow -soap-bubbles with it. It must break us to be known. She's never been -broken. Perhaps she never will be. And in that case she'll go on blind." - -Barney was silent for a moment, and that it was not as bad as he had -feared it might be was apparent from the attempted calm with which he -asked, presently: "Why shouldn't you be blind to evil and absurdity if -you can see much further than most people into goodness? Perhaps one -must be one-sided to go far." - -"Perhaps. But it's dangerous to be one-sided--to oneself and others. And -does she see further? That's the question. Doesn't she tend, rather, to -accept as first-rate what you incline to find second? You're less strong -than she is, Barney, and less good, no doubt. But you can't deny that -you're less blind. So what you must ask yourself is whether you can be -sure of being happy with a wife who'll never doubt herself and who'll -not see absurdity where you see it. Put it at that. Will you be happy -with her?" - -He was, he knew, justified of Miss Toner's commendation, for truth -between friends could go no further and, in the silence, while he -sickened for his friend, he felt it searching Barney's heart. How it -searched, how many echoes it found awaiting it, was proved by the -prolongation of the silence. - -"I think you exaggerate," said Barney at length, and in the words -Oldmeadow read his refusal to examine further the truths revealed to -him. "You see all the defects and none of the beauty. It can't be a -mistake if I can see both. She'll learn a little from me, that's what it -comes to, for all the lot I'll have to learn from her. I'll be happy -with her if I'm worthy of her. What it comes to, you see, as I said at -the beginning, is that I can't be happy without her." He rose and -Oldmeadow, rising also, knew that they closed upon an unresolved -discord. Yet these final words of Barney's pleased him so much that he -could not leave it quite at that. - -"Mine may be the mistake, after all," he said. "Only you must give me -time to find it out. I began by telling you I couldn't be really -dispassionate; and I feel much better for our talk, if that's any -satisfaction to you. If you can learn from each other and see the truth -together, you'll be happy. You're right there, Barney. That is what it -comes to." They moved towards the door. "Try not to dislike me for my -truth too much," he added. - -"My dear old fellow," Barney muttered. He laid his hand for a moment on -his friend's shoulder, standing back for him to pass first. "Nothing can -ever alter things between you and me." - -But things were altered already. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -Palgrave had not gone to the drawing-room, and that, at all events, was -a comfort. A wood fire burned on the hearth and near it Nancy was -holding wool for Mrs. Chadwick to wind. Barbara had been sent to bed and -Meg and Miss Toner sat on the sofa hand in hand. Even in the pressure of -his distress and anxiety Oldmeadow could but be aware of amusement at -seeing Meg thus. It had, of course, been Miss Toner who had taken her -hand. But no one else could have taken it. No one else could have been -allowed to go on holding it placidly before on-lookers of whose mirthful -impressions Meg must be well aware. She didn't mind in the least. That -was what Miss Toner had done to her. She enjoyed having her hand held by -anyone so much interested in her. - -Barney walked to the fireplace and stood before it. He had no faculty -for concealing his emotions and the painful ones through which he had -just passed were visible on his sensitive face. - -"Give us a song, Meg," Oldmeadow suggested. He did not care for Meg's -singing, which conveyed, in a rich, sweet medium, a mingled fervour and -shallowness of feeling. But to hear her sing would be better than to see -her holding Miss Toner's hand. - -Barney crossed at once to the seat Meg vacated and dropped down into it, -no doubt thanking his friend for what he imagined to be a display of -tact, and Oldmeadow saw the quiet, firm look that flowed over and took -possession of him. Miss Toner knew, of course, that Barney had been -having painful emotions; and she probably knew that they had been caused -by the dry, deep-hearted Meredithian hero. But after the long look she -did not speak to him. She sat in her pearls and whiteness and gave -careful attention to the music. - -Oldmeadow accompanied Meg, tolerantly, and a trifle humorously, throwing -a touch of mockery into his part. Meg's preference to-night seemed to be -for gardens; Gardens of Sleep; Gardens of Love; God's Gardens. "What a -wretch you are, Roger," she said, when she had finished. "You despise -feeling." - -"I thought I was wallowing in it," Oldmeadow returned. "Did I stint -you?" - -"No; you helped me to wallow. That's why you're such a wretch. Always -showing one that one is wallowing when one thinks one's soaring. It's -your turn, now, Adrienne. Let's see if he'll manage to make fun of you." - -"Does Miss Toner sing, too? Now do you know, Meg," said Oldmeadow, -keeping up the friendly banter, "I'm sure she doesn't sing the sort of -rubbish you do." - -"I think they're beautiful songs," Mrs. Chadwick murmured from her wool, -"and I think Roger played them most beautifully. Why should you say he -is making fun of you, Meg?" - -"Because he makes you think something's beautiful that he thinks -rubbish, Mummy. Come along, Adrienne. You will, won't you? I expect my -voice sounds all wrong to you. I've had no proper training." - -"It's a very lovely voice, Meg, used in a poor cause," said Miss Toner -smiling. "And it is badly placed. I think I could help you there. I've -no voice at all, but I have been taught how to sing. It would be more to -the point, though, if Mr. Oldmeadow were to play to us, for I hear that -he is an accomplished musician." - -"I'm really anything but accomplished," said Oldmeadow; "but I can play -accompaniments cleverly. Do sing to us. I know you'll give us something -worth accompanying." - -Miss Toner rose and came to the piano with her complete and unassuming -confidence. She turned the pages of the music piled there and asked him -if he cared for Schubert's songs. Yes; she was a watch wound to go -accurately and she could rely on herself, always, to the last tick. Even -if she knew--and he was sure she knew--that he had been undermining her, -she would never show a shadow or a tremor; and she would always know -what was the best music. Only, as she selected "Litanei" and placed it -before him, he felt that over him, also, flowed the quiet, firm look. - -"Litanei" was one of his favourites in a composer he loved, and, as she -sang there above him, he found the song emerging unharmed from her -interpretation. It was as she had said--no voice to speak of; the -dryest, flattest little thread of sound; and no feeling, either (what a -relief after Meg!), except the feeling for scrupulous accuracy. Yet her -singing was what he found in her to like best. It was disciplined; it -accepted its own limits; it fulfilled an order. There was no desecration -of the heavenly song, for, intelligently after all, she made no attempt -upon its heart. - -When she had finished, she looked down at him. They were removed by half -the length of the room from the fireside group. The lamps were behind -them. Only the candles set in the piano-rack illumined Miss Toner; and -while the white roses over her ears struck him anew as foolish, her eyes -anew struck him as powerful. - -"Thank you. That was a pleasure," he said. - -It was a pleasure. It was almost a link. He had found a ground to meet -her on. He saw himself in the future accompanying Barney's wife. He -need, then, so seldom talk to her. But, alas! she stepped at once from -the safe frame of art. - -"If we can rise from loss to feel like that, if we can lift our sorrows -like that, we need never turn to palliatives, need we, Mr. Oldmeadow?" -she said. - -Stupidity, complacency, or power, whatever it was, it completely -disenchanted him. It left him also bereft of repartee. What he fell back -upon, as he looked up at her and then down at the keys again, was a mere -schoolboy mutter of "Come now!" - -After all a schoolboy mutter best expressed what he felt. She was not -accustomed to having her ministrations met with such mutters and she did -not like it. That was apparent to him as she turned away and went back -to the sofa and Barney. She had again tried him and again found him -wanting. - - * * * * * - -Barney and Miss Toner left in her motor next morning shortly after -breakfast, and though with his friend Oldmeadow had no further exchange, -he had, with Miss Toner, a curious encounter that was, he felt sure, a -direct result of her impressions of the night before. They met in the -dining-room a few moments before breakfast, and as she entered, wearing -already her motoring hat, closely bound round her face with a veil, he -was aware that she looked, if that were possible, more composed than he -had ever seen her. He felt sure that she had waited for her opportunity, -and had followed him downstairs, knowing that she would find him alone; -and he realized then that she was more composed, because she had an -intention or, rather, since it was more definite, a determination. -Determination in her involved no effort: it imparted, merely, the added -calm of an assured aim. - -She gave him her hand and said good morning with the same air of -scrupulous accuracy that she had given to the rendering of "Litanei" and -then, standing before the fire, her hands clasped behind her, her eyes -raised to his, she said: "Mr. Oldmeadow, I want to say something to -you." - -It was the gentle little voice, unaltered, yet he knew that he was in -for something he would very much rather have avoided; something with -anybody else unimaginable, but with her, he saw it now, quite -inevitable. Yet he tried, even at this last moment, to avoid it and -said, adjusting his eyeglass and moving to the sideboard: "But not -before we've had our tea, surely. Can't I get you some? Will you trust -me to pour it out?" - -"Thanks; I take coffee--not tea," said Miss Toner from her place at the -fire, "and neither has been brought in yet." - -He had just perceived, to his discomfiture, that they had not. There was -nothing for it but to turn from the ungarnished sideboard and face her -again. - -"It's about Barney, Mr. Oldmeadow," Miss Toner said, unmoved by his -patent evasion. "It's because I know you love Barney and care for his -happiness. And it's because I hope that you and I are to be friends, and -friendship can only be built on truth. Try to trust more; will you? -That's all I want to say. Try to trust. You will be happier if you do -and make other people happier." - -Oldmeadow had never experienced such an assault upon his personality, -and he met it gagged and bound, for, assuredly, this was to be Barney's -wife. A slow flush mounted to his face. - -"I'm afraid I seem very strange and unconventional to you," Adrienne -Toner went on. "You've lived in a world where people don't care enough -for each other to say the real things. They must be felt if they've to -be said, mustn't they? Yet you do care for people. I have seen that, -watching you here; and you care for real things. It's a crust of caution -and convention that is about you. You are afraid of expression. You are -afraid of feeling. You are afraid of being taken in and of wasting -yourself. Don't be afraid, Mr. Oldmeadow. We never lose ourselves by -trusting. We never lose ourselves by giving. It's a realer self that -comes. And with you, I see it clearly, if you let the crust grow -thicker, it will shut life and light and joy away from you; and when -light cannot visit our hearts, they wither within us. That is your -danger. I want to be your friend, so I must say the truth to you." - -He knew, though he had to struggle not to laugh, that he was very angry -and that he must not show anger; though it would really be better to -show that than his intense amusement; and it took him a moment, during -which they confronted each other, to find words; dry, donnish words; -words of caution and convention. They were the only ones he had -available for the situation. "My dear young lady," he said, "you take -too much upon yourself." - -She was not in the least disconcerted. She met his eyes steadily. "You -mean that I am presumptuous, Mr. Oldmeadow?" - -"You take too much upon yourself," he repeated. "As you say, I hope we -may be friends." - -"Is that really all, Mr. Oldmeadow?" she said, looking at him with such -a depth of thoughtfulness that he could not for the life of him make out -whether she found him odious or merely pitiful. - -"Yes; that's really all," he returned. - -The dining-room was very bright and the little blue figure before the -fire was very still. The moment fixed itself deep in his consciousness -with that impression of stillness and brightness. It was an -uncomfortable impression. Her little face, uplifted to his, absurd, yet -not uncharming, was, in its still force, almost ominous. - -"I'm sorry," was all she said, and she turned and went forward to greet -Mrs. Chadwick. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -It was a soft June day and Oldmeadow was strolling about Mrs. Averil's -garden admiring her herbaceous borders. It was a day that smelt of -ripening strawberries, of warm grass and roses, and the air was full of -a medley of bird voices, thrushes and blackbirds, sweet as grass and -strawberries, and the bubbling rattle of the chaffinch as happy as the -sunlight. - -Adrienne Toner was Mrs. Chadwick now, and she and Eleanor Chadwick and -Barney were motoring together in the French Alps. Coldbrooks was empty, -and he had come to stay with Nancy and her mother. - -They lived in a small stone house with a Jacobean front that looked, -over a stone wall, at Chelford Green, and had behind it a delightfully -unexpected length of lawn and orchard and kitchen-garden, all enclosed -by higher walls and presided over by a noble cedar. Seen from the garden -The Little House was merely mid-Victorian, but the modern additions were -masked by climbing roses and a great magnolia-tree opened its -lemon-scented cups at the highest bedroom windows. The morning-room was -in the modern part, and from one of its windows, presently, Mrs. Averil -emerged, opening her sunshade as she crossed the grass to join her -guest. She wore a white straw garden hat, tipping over her eyes and -tying, behind, over her thick knot of hair, in a manner that always -recalled to Oldmeadow a lady out of Trollope. Her face was pale, like -Nancy's, and her eyes grey; but rather than blackcaps and primroses she -suggested lace tippets and porcelain tea-sets, and though it was from -her Nancy had her pretty trick of closing her eyes when she smiled, Mrs. -Averil's smile was cogitative and impersonal, and in her always -temperate mirth there was an edge of grimness. - -"Well, Roger, I want to hear what you thought about the wedding," she -said. She had not gone to church that morning with Nancy and it was, he -knew, because she wanted an interchange of frank impressions. She had -been prevented from attending Miss Toner's London nuptials by a touch of -influenza and, as she now went on to say, she had got little from Nancy, -who had no eye for pageants and performances. "Eleanor was so absorbed," -she went on, "in the fact that the Bishop had indigestion and had, at -her suggestion, taken magnesia with his breakfast, that I could not get -much else out of her. She seemed to have seen the Bishop's symptoms -rather than Adrienne and Barney. Now from you I expect all the relevant -details." - -"Well, if you call it a detail, Nancy was lovely," said Oldmeadow. "She -looked like a silver-birch in her white and green." - -"And pearls," said Mrs. Averil. "You noticed, of course, the necklaces -Adrienne gave them; quite the gift of a princess, yet so innocent and -unobtrusive looking, too. She has great taste in such matters. Did she -look well? Eleanor did say that she, like the Bishop, was very pale." - -"She was pale; but not a bit nervous. She rather looked as if she had -been married every day of her life. Nothing ever puts her out, you know. -She was very grave and benign; but she wasn't an imposing bride and the -wreath of orange-blossoms aged her. Nancy and Meg and Barbara and the -Lumley girl aged her, too. She must be older than Barney." - -"Yes; she is. A year older. But she's the sort of woman who will wear," -said Mrs. Averil, pausing before a bed of rose-trees to snip off a -fading flower. "She'll not look very differently at fifty, you know; and -her hair is the sort that may never turn grey. I can see her at seventy -with those big golden braids and all her teeth. There's something very -indestructible about her. Like a doll made of white leather compared to -one made of porcelain. She'll last and last," said Mrs. Averil. "She'll -outlast us all. Barney was radiant, of course." - -"Yes. But he _was_ nervous; like a little boy frightened by the -splendour of his Christmas-tree. He looked as though he were arm in arm -with the Christmas-tree itself as he came down the nave. A rather dumpy -little Christmas-tree, but exquisitely lighted and garnished." - -"Well, he ought to be radiant," Mrs. Averil observed. "With all that -money, it's an extremely good match for him. The fact of her being -nobody in particular makes no difference, really, since she's an -American. And she has, I gather, no tiresome relations to come -bothering." - -"She's very unencumbered, certainly. There's something altogether very -solitary about her," Oldmeadow agreed, watching Mrs. Averil snip off the -withered roses. "I felt that even as she came down the nave on Barney's -arm. It's not a bit about the money he's radiant," he added. - -"Oh, I know. Of course not. That was only my own gross satisfaction -expressing itself. He's as in love as it's possible to be. And with -every good reason." - -"You took to her as much as they all did, then?" - -"That would be rather difficult, wouldn't it? And Barney's reasons would -hardly be those of a dry old aunt. She was very nice and kind to Nancy -and me and she's evidently going to do everything for them. Barbara's -already, you know, been sent to that admirable school that was too -expensive for Eleanor; riding and singing and all the rest of it. And -Meg's been given a perfect trousseau of fine clothes for her London -season. Naturally I don't feel very critically towards her." - -"Don't you? Well, if she weren't a princess distributing largess, -wouldn't you? After all, she's not given Nancy a trousseau. So why be -mute with an old friend?" - -"Ah, but she's given her the pearls," said Mrs. Averil. "Nancy couldn't -but accept a bridesmaid's gift. And she would give her a trousseau if -she wanted it and would take it. However, I'll own, though decency -should keep me mute, that I should find myself a little bored if I had -to see too much of her. I'm an everyday person and I like to talk about -everyday things." - -"I can hear her asking you, in answer to that, if there is anything more -everyday than the human soul. I wish I could have seen you _aux prises_ -with her," Oldmeadow remarked. "Did she come down here? Did she like -your drawing-room and garden?" - -Mrs. Averil's drawing-room and garden lay very near her heart. Eleanor -Chadwick sometimes accused her of caring more about her china and her -roses than about anything else in the world except Nancy. - -"I don't think she saw them; not what I call see," Mrs. Averil now said. -"Oh, yes; she came several times and recognized, very appreciatively, -the periods of my Queen Anne furniture and my Lowestoft. Beyond their -period I don't think she went. She said the garden was old-world," Mrs. -Averil added, looking about her and twirling her parasol on her -shoulder. - -"She would," Oldmeadow agreed. "That's just what she would call it. And -she'd call you a true, deep-hearted woman and Nancy a gifted girl. How -do she and Nancy hit it off? It's that I want most of all to hear -about." - -"They haven't much in common, have they?" said Mrs. Averil. "She's never -hunted and doesn't, I imagine, know a wren from a hedge-sparrow. She -_does_ know a skylark when she hears one, for she said 'Hail to thee, -blithe spirit' while one was singing. But I felt, somehow, it was like -the Queen Anne and the Lowestoft--a question of the label." - -Oldmeadow at this began to laugh with an open and indulged mirth. He and -Mrs. Averil, at all events, saw eye to eye. "If you'd tie the correct -label to the hedge-sparrow she'd know that, too," he said. "Poor girl. -The trouble with her isn't that she doesn't know the birds, but that she -wouldn't know the poets, either, without their labels. It's a mind made -up of labels. No; I don't think it likely that Nancy, who hasn't a label -about her, will get much out of her--beyond necklaces." - -"I wish Nancy _had_ a few labels," said Mrs. Averil. "I wish she could -have travelled and studied as Miss Toner--Adrienne that is--has done. -She is such a little ignoramus. Adrienne may bore you and me, but Nancy -will never interest anyone--except you and me." - -It was always amusing to Oldmeadow, if a little sardonically so, to note -that any conception of himself as a possible suitor for Nancy had never -entered Mrs. Averil's mind. As a friend he was everything a mother could -desire; as a match for Nancy almost unimaginable. Well, he could not -give a wife even one hunter and he never had had any intention of -falling in love with his dear nymph; yet that other people might not do -so was a suggestion he repudiated with warmth. - -"Oh; in love, yes," Mrs. Averil agreed. "I don't deny that she's very -loveable and I hope she may marry well. But that's not the same thing as -being interesting, is it? A man may be in love with a woman who doesn't -interest him." - -"I dispute that statement." - -"I'm sure dear Eleanor never interested her husband--devoted to the day -of his death as he was. There's something in my idea. To be interesting -one must offer something new. If Nancy had been interesting to Barney -she would now, I think, have been in Adrienne's place. Not that it would -have been a marriage to be desired for either of them." - -So he and Mrs. Averil had been thinking the same thoughts. - -"And you contend that if Nancy had been to China and read Goethe and -Dante in the originals he'd have been interested? I think he was quite -sufficiently interested and that if Miss Toner hadn't come barging into -our lives he'd have known he was in love." - -"Going to China is a figure of speech and stands for all the things she -hasn't got and doesn't know. My poor little Nancy. All the same, _she_ -isn't a bore!" said Mrs. Averil with as near an approach to acerbity as -she could show. - -"No; she isn't a bore. The things she knows have to be found out, by -degrees, through living with her. Barney hasn't been to China, either, -so, according to your theory, Nancy didn't find him interesting." - -At this Mrs. Averil's eyes met his and, after a moment of contemplation, -they yielded up to him the secret they saw to be shared. "If only it -were the same for women! But they don't need the new. She's young. -She'll get over it. I don't believe in broken hearts. All the same," -Mrs. Averil stopped in their walk, ostensibly to examine the growth of a -fine pink lupin, "it hasn't endeared Adrienne to me. I'm too -_terre-à-terre_, about that, too, not to feel vexation, on Nancy's -account. And what I'm afraid of is that she knows she's not endeared to -me. That she guesses. She's a bore; but she's not a bit stupid, you -know." - -"You don't think she's spiteful?" Oldmeadow suggested after a moment, -while Mrs. Averil still examined her lupin. - -"Dear me, no! I wish she could be! It's that smooth surface of hers -that's so tiresome. She's not spiteful. But she's human. She'll want to -keep Barney away and Nancy will be hurt." - -"Want to keep him away when she's got him so completely?" - -"Something of that sort. I felt it once or twice." - -"My first instinct about her was right, then," said Oldmeadow. "She's a -bore and an interloper, and she'll spoil things." - -"Oh, perhaps not. She'll mend some things. Have you heard about Captain -Hayward?" - -"Do you mean that stupid, big, tawny fellow? What about him?" - -"You may well ask. I've been spoken to about him and Meg by more than -one person. They are making themselves conspicuous, and it's been going -on for some time." - -"You don't mean that Meg's in love with him?" - -"He's in love with her, at all events, and, as you know, he's a married -man. I questioned Nancy, who was with Meg for a few weeks in London, and -she owns that Meg's unhappy." - -"And they're seeing each other in London now?" Oldmeadow was deeply -discomposed. - -"No. He's away just now. And Meg is going to meet the bridal party in -Paris at the end of July. Nancy feels that when Meg gets back under -Adrienne's influence there'll be nothing to fear." - -"We depend on her, then, so much, already," he murmured. He was -reviewing, hastily, his last impressions of Meg and they were not -reassuring. The only thing that was reassuring was to reflect on his -impressions of Adrienne. "Grandma's parlour" returned to him with its -assurance of deep security. Above everything else Adrienne was -respectable. - -"Yes. That's just it," Mrs. Averil agreed. "We depend on her. And I feel -we're going to depend more and more. She's the sort of person who mends -things. So we mustn't think of what she spoils." - -What Adrienne Toner had spoiled was, however, to be made very plain next -morning both to Nancy's old friend and to her mother. Beside her plate -at breakfast was a letter addressed in Barney's evident hand, a letter -in a narrow envelope stamped with the name of a French hotel and -showing, over the address, an engraving of peaks against the sky. Nancy -met the occasion with perfect readiness, saying as she looked at the -letter, waiting to open it till she had made the tea--Nancy always made -the tea in the morning while her mother sat behind the bacon and eggs at -the other end of the table--"How nice; from Barney. Now we shall have -news of them." - -Nothing less like an Ariane could be imagined than Nancy as she stood -there in her pink dress above the pink, white and gold tea-cups. One -might have supposed from her demeanour that a letter from Barney was but -a happy incident in a happy day. But, when she dropped into her chair -and read, it was evident that she was not prepared for what she found. -She read steadily, in silence, while Oldmeadow cut bread at the -sideboard and Mrs. Averil distributed her viands, and, when the last -page was reached, they both could not fail to see that Nancy was -blushing, blushing so deeply that, as she thus felt herself betray her -emotion, tears came thickly into her downcast eyes. - -"I'll have my tea now, dear," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you wait a little -longer, Roger?" She tided Nancy over. - -But Nancy was soon afloat. "The letter is for us all," she said. "Do -read it aloud, Roger, while I have my breakfast." - -Barney's letters, in the past, had, probably, always been shared and -Nancy was evidently determined that her own discomposure was not to -introduce a new precedent. Oldmeadow took up the sheets and read. - - * * * * * - -"DEAREST NANCY,--How I wish you were with us up here. It's the most -fantastically lovely place. One feels as if one could sail off into it. -I dug up some roots of saxifrage for your wall yesterday, such pretty -pink stuff. It's gone off in a box wrapped in damp moss and I hope will -reach you safely. A horrid, vandal thing to do; but for you and Aunt -Monica I felt it justified, and there are such masses of it. I saw a -snow-bunting yesterday, much higher up than the saxifrage; such a jolly, -composed little fellow on a field of snow. The birds would drive you -absolutely mad, except that you're such a sensible young person you'd no -doubt keep your head even when you saw a pair of golden eagles, as we -did, floating over a ravine. I walked around the Lac d'Annecy this -morning, before breakfast, and did wish you were with me. I thought of -our bird-walks at dawn last summer. There were two or three darling -warblers singing, kinds we haven't got at home; and black redstarts and -a peregrine falcon high in the air. I could write all day if I'd the -time, about the birds and flowers. You remember Adrienne telling us that -afternoon when she first came to Coldbrooks about the flowers. But I -mustn't go on now. We're stopping for tea in a little valley among the -mountains with flowers thick all around us and I've only time to give -our news to you and Aunt Monica and to send our love. Mother is -extremely fit and jolly, though rather scared at the hairpin curves; -Adrienne has to hold her hand. I'm too happy for words and feel as if -I'd grown wings. How is Chummie's foot? Did the liniment help? Those -traps are beastly things. I feel just as you do about the rabbits. -Adrienne reads aloud to us in the evenings; a man called Claudel; -awfully stiff French to follow but rather beautiful. I think you'd like -him. Not a bit like Racine! Best love to you and Aunt Monica. Here's -Adrienne, who wants to have her say." - -Had it been written in compunction for _Ariane aux bords laissée_? or, -rather, in a happy reversion to sheer spontaneity, a turning, without -any self-consciousness, to the comrade of the bird-walks who would, -after all, best feel with him about snow-buntings and redstarts? -Oldmeadow paused for the surmise, not looking up, before he went on from -Barney's neat, firm script to his wife's large, clear clumsy hand. - - "DEAREST NANCY," ran the postscript, and it had been at the - postscript, Oldmeadow now could gauge, that Nancy had first found - herself unprepared. "I, too, am thinking of you, with Barney. It is - a great joy to feel that where, he says, I've given him golden - eagles and snow-buntings he's given me--among so many other dear, - wonderful people--a Nancy. I get the best of the bargain, don't I? - I can't see much of the birds for looking at the peaks--_my_ peaks, - so familiar yet, always, so new again. 'Stern daughters of the - voice of God' that they are. Radiantly white against a cloudless - sky we find them to-day. Barney's profile is beautiful against - them--but his nose is badly sun-burned! _All_ our noses are - sun-burned! That's what one pays for flying among the Alps. - - "Mother Nell--we've decided that that's what I'm to call - her--looks ten years younger all the same, as I knew she would. We - talk of you all so often--of you and Meg and Palgrave and Barbara, - and half a dozen times a day Barney wishes that one or the other of - you were with us to see this or that. It's specially you for the - birds I notice. You must take me for some bird-walks at dawn some - day and teach me to know all your lovely English songsters.... Dear - little Cousin-Sister, I send you my love with his and, with him, - hold you warmly in my heart. Will 'Aunt Monica' accept my - affectionate and admiring homages? - - "Yours ever - - "ADRIENNE" - - - -Oldmeadow had not expected that she could write such a human letter; yet -it explained Nancy's blush. Barney's spontaneous affection she could -have faced, but she had not been able to face his wife's determined -tenderness. Adrienne had meant it well, no doubt--Oldmeadow gazed on -after he had finished, but she had no business to mean so well, no -business to thrust herself, in this community of intimacy, into what was -Barney's place alone. There was more in it, he knew, with Meg and Mrs. -Averil to help him, than the quite successful playfulness. She was to be -more intimate than Barney, that was what it came to; more, much more -tender if Barney was to be allowed intimacy and tenderness. That was -really what she intended Nancy to see, and that Barney had no place at -all where she, Adrienne, did not also belong. - -"Very sweet; very sweet and pretty," Mrs. Averil's voice broke in, and -he realized that he had allowed himself to drop into a grim and -tactless reverie; "I didn't know she had such a sense of humour. -Sun-burned noses and 'Stern daughters of the voice of God.' Well done. I -didn't think Adrienne would ever look as low as noses. They must be -having a delightful tour. I know black redstarts. There was one that -used to wake me every morning at four, one summer, in Normandy, with the -most foolish, creaking song; just outside my window. Give Barney my love -when you write and return my niece's affectionate and admiring homages. -Mother Nell. I shouldn't care to be called Mother Nell somehow." - -So Mrs. Averil's vexation expressed itself and so she floated Nancy -along. But Nancy, long since, had pulled herself together and was able -to look at Oldmeadow, while her lashes closed together in her own smile, -and to say that she'd almost be willing to lose her nose for the sake of -hearing the new warblers. Mrs. Averil opened her "Times" and over -marmalade Nancy and Oldmeadow planned the trip that they would take some -day, when their ship came in, the three of them, a bird-trip to the -French Alps. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -Oldmeadow sat beside Adrienne Chadwick and knew that from the other end -of the room, where he talked to Mrs. Aldesey, Barney's eyes were on -them, though he tried to keep them off. It was the first dinner-party -the young couple had given since they had come up to town, for though -they were established at Coldbrooks in the communal family life Adrienne -seemed to find to her taste, and though Barney had at once immersed -himself in country pursuits, they had taken and furnished this large -house in Connaught Square and it was, apparently, settled that the -winter months were to be spent in London. How that was to be combined -with farming at Coldbrooks, or whether Barney intended to take a header -into politics and felt a London house, big enough for entertaining, part -of the programme, Oldmeadow hadn't an idea, and for the rather sinister -reason that he had hardly laid his eyes on Barney since his return from -his wedding-journey. Even though asked to tea once or twice, while, -established in an hotel, they were finding and furnishing the house, he -had never found them alone and either Barney had made no opportunity, or -his wife had seen to it that none should be made, for having a -_tête-à-tête_ with his old friend. - -Oldmeadow could not associate Barney with ambitions, either social or -political, nor, he was bound to say, as he looked round the -dinner-table, where Adrienne sat at one end with Lord Lumley and Barney -at the other with Lady Lumley, could one infer from its disparate and -irrelevant elements any such ambitions in Adrienne. He had taken Mrs. -Aldesey down and had felt her at moments to be almost too resourceful, -her air of graceful skill in keeping the ball rolling seeming too much -to emphasize its tendency to drop. Without Mrs. Aldesey, without -Meg--vividly engaged at one corner with a fair young American--without -himself, for he had aided and abetted Lydia to the best of his ability, -the dinner would have been a dull one and he was not sure that even -their enterprise had redeemed it. Adrienne had not any air of fearing -dullness or of being in need of assistance. Oldmeadow saw that the blue -ribbon was frequently unrolled and that, as always, it made a silence in -which it could be watched. Lord Lumley, his handsome, official head bent -in an attitude of chivalrous devotion, watched earnestly, and the fair -young American paused in the midst of whatever he might be saying to Meg -to take almost reverent note; but Oldmeadow fancied more than once that -he caught startled eyes fixed upon it, especially when there emerged a -lustrous loop of quotation:-- - - "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, - Never doubted clouds would break,--" - -The silence for that had been so general that even Barney, far away, and -protected by Mrs. Aldesey, was aware of it. - -"How wonderfully he _wears_, doesn't he, dear old Browning," said Mrs. -Aldesey, and in the glance that Barney cast upon her was an oddly -mingled gratitude and worry. The fair young American, he was very fair -and had clear, charming eyes, finished the verse in a low voice to Meg -and Meg looked at him affectionately the while. He was evidently one of -Adrienne's appurtenances. - -It was a dull dinner. Pretty, festive Mrs. Pope and young Mr. Haviland, -reputed to be a wit and one of Meg's young men as Mrs. Pope was one of -Barney's young women, would not with any eagerness again attend a board -where the hostess quoted Browning and didn't know better than to send -you down, the first with a stern young socialist who sat silent for the -most part and frowned when addressed, and the second with a jocular, -middle-aged lady from California, the mother, Oldmeadow gathered, of the -clear-eyed youth, from whose ample bosom Mr. Haviland's subtle arrows -glanced aside leaving him helplessly exposed to the stout bludgeonings -of her humour. Adrienne paused once or twice in her conversation to -smile approval upon her compatriot and to draw Lord Lumley's attention -to her special brand of merriment, good Lord Lumley adjusting his -glasses obediently to take it in. - -And now they were all assembled in the drawing-room. Like everything -about Adrienne, it was simple and rather splendid. Barney had wisely -kept his modernities for his own study and it was a pity, Oldmeadow -reflected, that Adrienne had not kept for her own boudoir the large -portrait of herself that hung over the mantelpiece, since it was a note -more irrelevant than any Post Impressionist could have been and cast a -shade of surmise over the taste displayed in the Chippendale furniture -and the Chinese screens. - -"Rather sweet, isn't it; pastoral and girlish, you know," Barney had -suggested tentatively as Mrs. Aldesey had placed herself before it. -"Done in Paris a good many years ago; the man was very much the fashion -then. Adrienne was only sixteen. It's an extraordinarily perfect -likeness still, isn't it?" - -To which Mrs. Aldesey, all old lace and exquisite evasion, had murmured, -her lorgnette uplifted: "Quite dear and ingenuous. Such a relief after -your arid Cubists. What would they make of Mrs. Barney _en bergère_, I'd -like to know? A jumble of packing-cases with something twisted in a -corner to signify a bleat." - -For the picture, painted with glib assurance and abounding in pink and -azure, portrayed Adrienne dressed as a shepherdess and carrying a -flower-wreathed crook. - -Adrienne, to-night at all events, was looking very unlike the -shepherdess, but that might be because of the approaches of her -maternity. Mrs. Chadwick, when he had last been at Coldbrooks, had told -him that the baby was expected in May and that Adrienne was wonderful -about it, dedicating herself to its perfection in thought and deed with -every conscious hour. - -"If only I'd thought about my babies before they came like that, who -knows what they might have turned out!" she had surmised. "But I was -very silly, I'm afraid, and the only thing I really did think of was how -I should dress them. I've always loved butcher's-blue linen for children -and I must say that mine did look very nice in it. For everyday, you -know." - -Oldmeadow found it extremely difficult to think of Adrienne as a mother; -it was much easier to think of her as a shepherdess. Such solidities of -experience gave her even a certain pathos in his eyes, though he was in -no whit dislodged from his hostility to her. She was as mild, as -satisfied, apparently, with herself and with existence, as ever, yet her -eyes and lips expressed fatigue and a purely physical sadness that was -uncharacteristic, and it was uncharacteristic that she should be rather -thickly powdered. - -They had not really met since the morning of her adjuration to him at -Coldbrooks and he wondered if she remembered that little scene as -vividly as he did. She would be very magnanimous did she not remember it -unpleasantly; and he could imagine her as very magnanimous; yet from the -fact that she had kept Barney from him he could not believe that she was -feeling magnanimously. - -She watched Barney and Mrs. Aldesey now, as they stood before her -portrait, and he fancied that the sadness in her eyes, whatever might be -its cause, deepened a little. When she turned them on him it was with an -effect of being patiently ready for him. Perhaps, really, she had been -more patient than pleased all evening. - -"So you are settled here for the winter?" he said. "Have you and Barney -any plans? I've hardly seen anything of him of late." - -"We have been so very, very busy, you know," said Adrienne, as if quite -accepting his right to an explanation. - -She was dressed in pale blue and wore, with her pearl necklace, a little -wreath of pearls in her hair. In her hands she turned, as they talked, a -small eighteenth-century fan painted in pink and grey and blue, and he -was aware, as he had been at Coldbrooks, of those slow and rather -fumbling movements. - -"We couldn't well ask friends," she went on, "even the dearest, to come -and sit on rolls of carpet with us while we drank our tea, could we? -We've kept our squalor for the family circle. Meg's been with us; so -dear and helpful; but only Meg and a flying visit once or twice from -Mother Nell. Nancy couldn't come. But nothing, it seems, will tear Nancy -from hunting. I feel that strange and rather sad; the absorption of a -fine young life in such primitiveness." - -"Oh, well; it's not her only interest, you know," said Oldmeadow, very -determined not to allow himself vexation. "Nancy is a creature of such -deep country roots. Not the kind that grow in London." - -"I know," said Adrienne. "And it is just those roots that I want to -prevent my Barney's growing. Roots like that tie people to routine; -convention; acceptance. I want Barney to find a wider, freer life. I -hope he will go into politics. If we have left Coldbrooks and the dear -people there for these winter months it's because I feel he will be -better able to form opinions here than in the country. I saw quite well, -there, that people didn't form opinions; only accepted traditions. I -want Barney to be free of tradition and to form opinions for himself. He -has none now," she smiled. - -She had been clear before, and secure; but he felt now the added weight -of her matronly authority. He felt, too, that, while ready for him and, -perhaps, benevolently disposed, she was far more indifferent to his -impressions than she had been at Coldbrooks. She had possessed Barney -before; but how much more deeply she possessed him now and how much -more definitely she saw what she intended to do with him. - -"You must equip him with your opinions," said Oldmeadow, and his voice -was a good match for hers in benevolence. "I know that you have so many -well-formed ones." - -"Oh, no; never that," said Adrienne. "That's how country vegetables are -grown; first in frames and then in plots; all guided and controlled. He -must find his own opinions; quite for himself; quite freely of -influence. That is the rock upon which Democracy is founded. Nothing is -more arresting to development than living by other people's opinions." - -"But we must get our opinions from somebody and somewhere. The danger of -democracy is that we don't grow them at all; merely catch them, like -influenza, from a mob. Not that I disbelieve in democracy." - -"Don't you, Mr. Oldmeadow?" She turned her little fan and smiled on him. -"You believe in liberty, equality, fraternity? That surprises me." - -"Democracy isn't incompatible with recognizing that other people are -wiser than oneself and letting them guide us; quite the contrary. Why -surprised? Have I seemed so autocratic?" - -"It would surprise me very much to learn that you believed in equality, -to start with that alone"; Adrienne smiled on. - -"Well, I own that I don't believe in people who have no capacity for -opinions being impowered to act as if they had. That's the fallacy -that's playing the mischief with us, all over the world." - -"They never will have opinions worth having unless they are given the -liberty to look for them. You don't believe in liberty, either, when you -say that." - -"No; not for everybody. Some of our brothers are too young and others -too stupid to be trusted with it." - -"They'll take it for themselves if you don't trust them with it," said -Adrienne, and he was again aware that though she might be absurd she, at -all events, was not stupid. "All that we can do in life is to trust, and -help, and open doors. Only experience teaches. People must follow their -own lights." - -He moved forward another pawn, and though he did not find her stupid he -was not taking her seriously. "Most people have no lights to follow. -It's a choice for them between following other people's or resenting and -trampling on them. That, again, is what we can see happening all over -the world." - -"So it is, you must own, just as I thought; you don't even believe in -fraternity," said Adrienne, and she continued to smile her weary, -tranquil smile upon him; "for we cannot feel towards men as towards -brothers, and trust them, unless we believe that the light shines into -each human soul." - -He saw now that unless they went much deeper, deeper than he could be -willing, ever, to go with Adrienne Toner, he must submit to letting -himself appear as worsted. He knew where he believed the roots of trust -to grow and he did not intend, no never, to say to Adrienne Toner that -only through the love of God could one at once distrust and love the -species to which one belonged. He could have shuddered at the thought of -what she would certainly have found to say about God. - -"You've got all sorts of brothers here to-night, haven't you," he -remarked, putting aside the abstract theme and adjusting his glass. -"Some of them look as though they didn't recognize the relationship. -Where did you find our young socialist over there in the corner? He -looks very menacing. Most of the socialists I've known have been the -mildest of men." - -"He is a friend of Palgrave's. Palgrave brought him to see me. Oh, I'm -so glad--Gertrude is going to take care of him. She always sees at once -if anyone looks lonely. That's all right, then." - -Oldmeadow was not so sure it was as he observed the eye with which Mr. -Besley measured the beaming advance of the lady from California. - -"I wonder if you would like my dear old friend, Mrs. Prentiss," Adrienne -continued, watching her method with Mr. Besley. "The Laughing -Philosopher, Mother used to call her. She is a very rare, strong soul. -That is her son, talking to Lady Lumley. He's been studying architecture -in Paris for the past three years. A radiant person. Mrs. Prentiss runs -a settlement in San Francisco and has a brilliant literary and artistic -salon. She is a real force in the life of our country." - -"Why should you question my appreciation of rarity and strength? I can -see that she is very kind and that if anybody can melt Mr. Besley she -will." - -"Gertrude would have melted Diogenes," said Adrienne with a fond -assurance that, though it took the form of playfulness, lacked its -substance. "I hope they will find each other, for he is rare and strong, -too. What he needs is warmth and happiness. He makes me think of Shelley -when he talks." - -"He's too well up in statistics to make me think of Shelley," Oldmeadow -commented. Barney, he saw, from his place beside Mrs. Aldesey at the -other end of the room, was still watching them, pleased now, it was -evident, by the appearance of friendly, drifting converse they -presented. "He's not altogether unknown to me for we often, in our -review, get our windows broken by his stones; well-thrown, too. He's -very able. So you thought it might do the British Empire good to face -him? Well, I suppose it may." - -"Which are the British Empire?" asked Adrienne. "You. To begin with." - -"Oh, no. Count me out. I'm only a snappy, snuffy scribbler. Good old -Lord Lumley, of course, with all his vast, well-governed provinces -shimmering in the Indian sun behind him. And Sir Archibald, who talks so -loudly in the House. Palgrave didn't bring him, I'll be bound." - -"No. Lady Lumley brought him. He and Lord Lumley are certainly more than -odds and ends." She had an air of making no attempt to meet his -badinage, if it was that, but of mildly walking past it. "They are, both -of them, rather splendid people, in spite of their limitations. They've -accepted tradition, you see, instead of growing opinion. That is their -only trouble. I was afraid you were going to say Mr. Haviland. He is -certainly an odd and end." - -Mr. Haviland and Mrs. Pope had found each other and were indulging in -mirthful repartee in the back drawing-room. "I feel safe with Lord -Lumley and Sir Archibald," Adrienne added. - -"I'd certainly rather trust myself in their hands than in Mr. Besley's. -I'd almost rather trust myself in the hands of Mr. Haviland." - -"You mean that they would, at least, keep you comfortable and that Mr. -Besley wouldn't." She, too, had her forms of repartee. - -"I expect it's just what I do mean," he assented. "If Mr. Besley and his -friends had their way, I for instance, and workers of my type, would -soon, I suspect, have to forego our tobacco and our chamber-music. We're -only marketable in a comfortable world. And there are more comfortable -people, I maintain, under Lord Lumley, than there would be under Mr. -Besley." - -"'Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive,'" said Adrienne. -"All revolutions must begin by burning away the evil and the refuse. Not -that I am a revolutionist, or even a socialist." - -"You can't separate good from evil by burning," he said. "You burn them -both. That's what the French did in their lamentable bonfire, for which -they've been paying in poorer brains and poorer blood ever since. We -don't want revolutions. All we want is slow, good-tempered reform. -Revolutions are always ill-tempered, aren't they, and nothing worth -doing was ever done in an ill-temper. You are making me very didactic." - -"Oh, but I prefer that so much to persiflage," said Adrienne, with her -tranquillity. "And I am glad to hear what you really believe. But it is -sad to me that you should see no ardour or glory in anything. With all -its excesses and errors, I have always felt the French Revolution to be -a sublime expression of the human spirit." - -"It might have been; if they could only have kept their -heads--metaphorically as well as literally. But the glory and ardour -were too mixed with hatred and ignorance. I'm afraid I do tend to -distrust those states of feeling. They tend so easily to -self-deception." - -She was looking at him, quietly and attentively, and he was, for the -first time since their initial meeting, perhaps, feeling quite -benevolently towards her; quite as the British Empire might feel towards -a subject race. It was, therefore, the more difficult to feel anything -but exasperation when she said, having, evidently, summed up her -impressions and found her verdict: "Yes. You distrust them. We always -come back to that, don't we? You distrust yourself, too. So that, when -you tell me what you believe, you can only do it in the form of making -fun of my beliefs. I feel about you, Mr. Oldmeadow, what I felt that -morning when I tried to come near you and you wouldn't let me. I feel it -more the more I see you; and it makes me sad. It isn't only that you -distrust ardour and glory, all the sunlight and splendour of life; but -you are afraid of them; afraid to open your heart to trust. You shut -your door upon the sunlight and take up your caustic pen; and you don't -see how the shadows fall about you." - -It was indeed a dusty tumble from the quite civilized pavement of their -interchange, and it was unfortunate that upon his moment of -discomfiture, when he saw himself as trying to clap the dust off his -knees and shoulders in time to be presentable, Barney and Mrs. Aldesey -should have chosen to approach them. Barney, no doubt, imagined it a -propitious moment in which to display to Mrs. Aldesey his wife's and his -friend's amity. - -Adrienne was perfectly composed. She had borne her testimony and, again, -done her best for him, pointing out to him that the first step towards -enfranchisement was to open his door to the sunlight that she could so -bountifully supply. She turned a clear, competent eye upon her husband -and his companion. - -"Well, dear, and what have you and Roger been so deep in?" Barney -inquired, looking down at her with a fondness in which, all the same, -Oldmeadow detected the anxiety that had hovered in his eye all evening. -"You've seemed frightfully deep." - -"We have been," said Adrienne, looking up at him. "In liberty, equality -and fraternity; all the things I believe in and that Mr. Oldmeadow -doesn't. I can't imagine how he gets on at all, he believes in so few -things. It must be such a sad, dim, groping world to live in when there -are no stars above to look at and no hands below to hold." - -"Oh, well, you see," said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile, "his -ancestors didn't sign the Declaration of Independence." - -"We don't need ancestors to do that," Adrienne smiled back. "All of us -sign it for ourselves--all of us who have accepted our birthright and -taken the gifts that our great, modern, deep-hearted world hold out to -us. You are an American, Mrs. Aldesey, so you find it easy to believe in -freedom, don't you?" - -"Very easy; for myself; but not for other people," Mrs. Aldesey replied -and Oldmeadow saw at once, with an added discomfort, that she -underestimated, because of Adrienne's absurdity, Adrienne's -intelligence. "But then the very name of any abstraction--freedom, -humanity, what you will--has always made me feel, at once, dreadfully -sleepy. It's not ever having had my mind trained, Mrs. Barney. Now -yours was, beautifully, I can see." - -Adrienne looked up at her, for Mrs. Aldesey, her lace about her -shoulders, her lorgnette in her hands, had not seated herself, and it -was further evident to Oldmeadow that she weighed Mrs. Aldesey more -correctly than Mrs. Aldesey weighed her. "Very carefully, if not -beautifully," she said. "Have I made you sleepy already? But I don't -want to go on talking about abstractions. I want to talk about Mr. -Oldmeadow. The truth is, Barney," and her voice, as she again turned her -eyes on her husband, had again the form but not the substance of gaiety, -"the truth is that he's a lonely, lonely bachelor and that we ought to -arrange a marriage for him, you and I. Since he doesn't believe in -freedom, he won't mind having a marriage arranged, will he?--if we can -find a rare, sweet, gifted girl." - -Barney had become red. "Roger's been teasing you, darling. Nobody -believes in freedom more. Don't let him take you in. He's an awful old -humbug with his Socratic method. He upsets you before you know where you -are. He's always been like that." - -"Yes; hasn't he," Mrs. Aldesey murmured. - -"But he hasn't upset me at all," said Adrienne. "I grant that he was -trying to, that he was doing his very best to give me a tumble; but I -quite see through him and he doesn't conceal himself from me in the very -least. He doesn't really believe in freedom, however much he may have -taken _you_ in, Barney; he'd think it wholesome, of course, that you -should believe in it. That's his idea, you see; to give people what he -thinks wholesome; to choose for them. It's the lack of faith all -through. But the reason is that he's lonely; dreadfully lonely, and -because of that he's grown to be, as he says, snappy and snuffy; so that -we must borrow a page from his book and find what is wholesome for him. -I know all the symptoms so well. I've had friends just like that. It's a -starved heart and having nobody to be fonder of than anyone else; no one -near at all. He must be happily married as soon as possible. A happy -marriage is the best gift of life, isn't it, Mrs. Aldesey? If we haven't -known that we haven't known our best selves, have we?" - -"It may be; we mayn't have," said Mrs. Aldesey, cheerfully; but she was -not liking it. "I can't say. Am I to have a hand in choosing his bride? -I know his tastes, I think. We're quite old friends, you see." - -"No one who doesn't believe in freedom for other people may help to -choose her," said Adrienne, with a curious blitheness. "That's why he -mayn't choose her himself. We must go quite away to find her; away from -ceilings and conventions and out into the sunlight. I don't believe -happiness is found under ceilings. And it's what we all need more than -anything else. Even tobacco and chamber-music don't make you a bit -happy, do they, Mr. Oldmeadow? and if one isn't happy one can't know -anything about anything. Not really." - -"Alas!" sighed Mrs. Aldesey, keeping up her end, but not very -successfully, while Barney fixed his eyes upon his wife. "And I thought -I'd found it this evening, under this ceiling. Well, I shall cherish my -illusion, since you tell me it's only that, and thank you for it, Mrs. -Barney. The Lumleys are going to give me a lift and I see that their car -has been announced." - -"Stay on a bit, Roger," Barney murmured, as the Lumleys approached. -"I've seen nothing of you for ages." - -Adrienne rose to greet her parting guests. - -"Darling Adrienne, good-night. It's been perfectly delightful, your -little party," said Lady Lumley, who was large, light and easily -pleased; an English equivalent of the lady from California, but without -the sprightliness. "Your dear young Mr. Prentiss is a treasure. He's -been telling me about Sicilian temples. We _must_ get there one day. -Mrs. Prentiss says they will come to us for a week-end before they go. -How extraordinarily interesting she is. Don't forget that you are coming -on the fifteenth." - -"I shall get up a headache, first thing!" Lord Lumley stated in a loud, -jocular whisper, reverting to a favourite jest on Adrienne's powers. -"That's the thing to go in for, eh? I won't let Charlie cut me out this -time. Not a night's sleep till you come!" - -"Go in for as many as you like, dear Lord Lumley," said Adrienne, -smiling her assurance of being able to deal with a series. - -"Good-night, Mrs. Barney," said Mrs. Aldesey. "Leave me a little -standing-room under the stars, won't you." - -"There's always standing-room under the stars," said Adrienne. "We don't -exclude each other there." - -The party showed no other signs of breaking up. The Laughing Philosopher -had melted, or, at all events, mastered Mr. Besley, and talked to him -with, now and again, a maternal hand laid on his knee. Mr. Haviland and -Mrs. Pope still laughed in the back drawing-room, Meg and Mr. Prentiss -had come together again and Sir Archibald was engaged with a pretty -girl. After looking around upon them all, Adrienne, with the appearance -of a deeper fatigue, sank back upon her sofa. - -"You know, darling," Barney smiled candidly upon his wife, "you rather -put your foot in it just now. Mrs. Aldesey's marriage isn't happy. I -ought to have warned you." - -"How do you mean not happy, Barney?" Adrienne looked up at him. "Isn't -Mr. Aldesey dead?" - -"Not at all dead. She left him some years ago, didn't she, Roger? He -lives in New York. It's altogether a failure." - -Adrienne looked down at her fan. "I didn't know. But one can't avoid -speaking of success sometimes, even to failures." - -"Of course not. Another time you will know." - -Adrienne seemed to meditate, but without compunction. "That was what she -meant, then, by saying she believed in freedom for herself but not for -other people." - -"Meant? How do you mean? She was joking." - -"If she left him. It was she who left him?" - -"I don't know anything about it," Barney spoke now with definite -vexation and Oldmeadow, in his corner of the sofa, his arms folded, his -eyes on the cornice, gave him no help. "Except that, yes, certainly; -it's she who left him. She's not a deserted wife. Anything but." - -"It's only Mr. Aldesey who is the deserted husband," Adrienne turned her -fan and kept her eyes on it. "It's only he who can't be free. Forgive me -if she's a special friend of yours, Mr. Oldmeadow; but it explains. I -felt something so brittle, so unreal in her, charming and gracious as -she is. It is so very wrong for a woman to do that, I think." - -"Wrong?" Barney echoed, staring at Oldmeadow while this firm hand was -laid upon his Egeria. "What the dickens do you mean, darling? She is a -special friend of Roger's. You don't surely mean to say a woman must, -under all circumstances, stick to a man she doesn't love?" - -"Anything but that, Barney. I think that she should leave him and set -him free. It's quite plain to me that if a wife will not live with her -husband it is her duty to divorce him. Then, at any rate, he can try for -happiness again." - -"Divorce him, my dear child!" Barney was trying to keep up appearances -but the note of marital severity came through and as it sounded Adrienne -raised her eyes to his: "It's not so easy as all that! Aldesey, whatever -his faults, may have given her no cause to divorce him, and I take it -you'll not suggest that Mrs. Aldesey should give him cause to divorce -her." - -On her sofa, more pallid under her powder, more sunken than before, and -with the queer squashed-in look emphasized, Adrienne kept steady eyes -uplifted to her husband. "Not at all, dear Barney," she returned and -Oldmeadow, though hardened against the pathos of her physical -disability, saw that she spoke with difficulty, "but I think that you -confuse the real with the conventional wrong. Mrs. Aldesey would not -care to face any unconventionality; that is quite apparent. She would -draw her skirts aside from any conventional wrong-doing. But the real -wrong she would be blind to; the wrong of keeping anyone bound in the -emptiness you have made for them. Setting free is not so strange and -terrible a matter as you seem to imagine. It's quite easy for brave, -unshackled people." - -"Well, I must really be off," Oldmeadow now seized the occasion to -declare. "I believe, as a matter of fact, that Mr. Aldesey lives very -contentedly in New York, collecting French prints and giving excellent -dinners. Anything open and scandalous would be as distasteful to him as -to his wife. They are, both of them, happier apart; that's all it comes -to. So you must read your lessons, even by proxy, to more authentic -misdemeanants, Mrs. Barney. All right, Barney. Don't come down. I'll -hope to see you both again quite soon." - -So he got away, concealing as best he might, his sense of tingling -anger. But it died away to a sense of chill as he walked down Park Lane. -Was not Barney unhappy, already? What did she say to him when she got -him to herself? He felt sure that she had never bargained for a husband -who could look at her with ill-temper. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - -"Roger, see here, I've only come to say one word--about the absurd -little-matter of last night. Only one; and then we'll never speak of it -again," said poor Barney. - -He had come as soon as the very next day--to exonerate, not to -apologize; that was evident at once. Oldmeadow had not long to wait -before learning what she had said to him when she got him to herself, -nor long to wait before realizing that if Barney had been unhappy last -night he thought himself happy to-day. - -"Really, my dear boy," he said, "it's not worth talking about." - -"Oh, but we must talk about it," said Barney. He was red and spoke -quickly. "It upset her frightfully; it made her perfectly miserable. She -cried for hours, Roger," Barney's voice dropped to a haggard note. "You -know, though she bears up so marvellously, she's ill. She doesn't admit -illness and that makes it harder for her, because it simply bewilders -her when she finds herself on edge like this and her body refusing to -obey her. The baby is coming in May, you know." - -"I know, my dear Barney. The evening was very fatiguing for her. I saw -it all I think. I noticed from the beginning how tired she looked." - -"Horribly tired. Horribly fatiguing. I'm glad you saw it. For that's -really what I came to explain. She was tired to begin with and Mrs. -Aldesey put her on edge. I think I saw that myself at dinner--and, oh, -before that; on the day we had tea with her, when we first came up, in -November--Adrienne felt then that Mrs. Aldesey didn't understand or care -for her. You know she is so full of love and sympathy for everybody -herself that she is literally sickened when she is treated in that -artificial, worldly way. And you know, Roger, Mrs. Aldesey _is_ -artificial and worldly." - -That was how she had put it to Barney, of course. But Oldmeadow saw -further than Mrs. Aldesey and her artificiality. He saw a dishevelled -and weeping Adrienne stricken to the heart by the sense of threatened -foundations, aghast by what she had seen in her husband's eyes; and he -was aware, even while he resented having it put upon Lydia, of a -curious, reluctant pity for the pale, weeping figure. Lydia had, -obviously, displeased her; but Lydia had been the mere occasion; she -could have dealt easily enough with Lydia. It had been the revelation -that Barney could oppose her, could almost, for a moment, dislike her, -that had set her universe rocking. Her first taste of reality, then. The -thought came rather grimly, with the pity. After all it was their best -chance of happiness; that she should learn to accept herself as a person -who could be opposed, even disliked, in flashes, while still loved. He -had sat silent while he thought, one of his silences which, when he -emerged from them, he often recognized as over-long. Barney must have -felt the weight of all he did not say when all that he found to say was: -"What it comes to, doesn't it, is that they neither of them take much to -each other. Lydia is certainly conventional." - -"Ah, but Lady Lumley is conventional, too," said Barney with an -irrepressible air of checkmate. "Hordes of conventional people adore -Adrienne. It's a question of the heart. There are people who are -conventional without being worldly. It's worldliness that stifles -Adrienne. It's what she was saying last night: 'They have only ceilings; -I must have the sky.' Not that she thinks _you_ worldly, dear old boy." - -"I hope you try to interpret me to her kindly," said Oldmeadow, smiling. -Even at the moment when Barney, all innocently, was revealing to him -Adrienne's tactics, the fragments of her vocabulary imbedded in his -speech were affording him amusement. "You must try and persuade her that -I've quite a fondness for the sky myself, and even published a volume of -verse in my youth." - -"I do. Of course I do," said Barney eagerly. "And I gave her your poems, -long ago. She loved them. It's your sardonic pessimism she doesn't -understand--in anyone who could have written like that when they were -young. She never met anything like it before in her life. And the way -you never seem to take anything seriously. It makes her dreadfully sorry -for you, even while she finds it so hard to accept in anyone she cares -for--because she really does so care for you, Roger"--there was a note -of appeal in Barney's voice--"and does so long to find a way out for -you. It was a joke, of course; but all the same we've often wished you -could find the right woman to marry." - -Barney, as he had done last night, grew very red again, so that it was -apparent to Oldmeadow that not only the marriage but the woman--the -rare, gifted girl--had been discussed between him and his wife. - -"Adrienne thinks everyone ought to be married, you see," he tried to -pass it off. "Since we are so happy ourselves." - -"I see," said Oldmeadow. "There's another thing you must try to persuade -her of: that I'm not at all _un jeune homme à marier_, and that if I -ever seek a companion it will probably be some one like myself, some one -sardonic and pessimistic. If I fixed my affections on the lovely girl, -you see, it isn't likely they'd be reciprocated." - -"Oh, but"--Barney's eagerness again out-stepped his -discretion--"wouldn't the question of money count there, Roger? If she -had plenty of money, you know, or you had; enough for both; and a place -in the country? Of course, it's all fairy-tale; but Adrienne is a -fairy-tale person; material things don't count with her at all. She -waves them away and wants other people to wave them away, too. What she -always says is: 'What does my money _mean_ unless it's to open doors for -people I love?' She's starting that young Besley, you know, just because -of Palgrave; setting him up as editor of a little review--rotten it is, -I think--but Adrienne says people must follow their own lights. And it's -just that; she'd love to open doors for you, if it could make you -happy." - -Oldmeadow at this, after a moment of receptivity, began to laugh softly; -but the humour of the situation grew upon him until he at last threw -back his head and indulged in open and prolonged mirth. Barney watched -him bashfully. "You're not angry, I see," he ventured. "You don't think -it most awful cheek, I mean?" - -"I think it is most awful cheek; but I'm not angry; not a bit," said -Oldmeadow. "Fairy-godmothers are nothing if not cheeky; are they? Oh, I -know you meant your, not her, cheek. But it's the fault of the -fairy-godmother, all the same, and you must convince her that I'm not in -love with anybody, and that if ever I am she'll have to content herself -with my small earnings and a flat in Chelsea." - -So he jested; but, when his friend was gone, he realized that he was a -little angry all the same and he feared that his mirth had not been able -to conceal from Barney that what he really found it was confounded -impudence. Barney's face had worn, as he departed, the look of mingled -gratitude and worry and Barney must feel, as well as he felt, that their -interview hadn't really cleared up anything--except his own readiness to -overlook the absurdities of Barney's wife. What became more and more -clear to himself was that unless he could enable Adrienne to enroll his -name on her banner she would part him from Barney and that her very -benevolence was a method. The more he thought of it the more -uncomfortable he felt, and his inner restlessness became at length an -impulse urging him out to take counsel or, rather, seek solace, with the -friend from whom Adrienne could never part him. He would go and have tea -with Lydia Aldesey and with the more eagerness from the fact that he was -aware of a slight dissatisfaction in regard to Lydia. She had not -altogether pleased him last night. She had put herself in the wrong; she -had blundered; she hadn't behaved with the skill and tact requisite; and -to elicit from her a confession of ineptitude would make his sense of -solace the more secure. - -The day was a very different day from the one in April when he had -first gone to ask Mrs. Aldesey for information about people called -Toner. It was early February, dull and cold and damp. No rain was -falling, but the trees were thick with moisture and Oldmeadow had his -hands deep in his pockets and the collar of his coat turned up about his -ears. As he crossed the Serpentine, an electric brougham passed him, -going slowly, and he had a glimpse within it, short but very vivid, of -Adrienne, Meg, and Captain Hayward. - -Adrienne, wearing a small arrangement of black velvet that came down -over her brows, was holding Meg's hand and, while she spoke, was looking -steadily at her, her face as white as that of a Pierrot. Meg listened, -gloomily it seemed, and Captain Hayward's handsome countenance, turned -for refuge towards the window, showed an extreme embarrassment. - -They passed and Oldmeadow pursued his way, filled with a disagreeable -astonishment though, absurdly, his mind was at first occupied only in an -attempt to recover a submerged memory that Captain Hayward's demeanour -suggested. It came at last in an emancipating flash and he saw again, -after how many years, the golden-brown head of his rather silly setter, -John, turned aside in shy yet dignified repudiation, that still, by a -dim, sick smile, attempted to conceal distress and to enter into the -spirit of the game--as a kitten was held up for his contemplation. A -kitten was a very inadequate analogy, no doubt, for the theme of -Adrienne's discourse; yet Captain Hayward's reaction to a situation for -which he found himself entirely unprepared was markedly like John's. And -he, like John, had known that the game was meant to be at his expense. -John and Captain Hayward got Oldmeadow out of the park before he had -taken full possession of his astonishment and could ask himself why, if -Adrienne were engaged in rescuing Meg from her illicit attachment, she -should do it in the company of the young man. Yet, strangely enough, he -felt, as he walked, a growing sense of reassurance. For an emergency -like this, after all, given amenable subjects, Adrienne was the right -person. He hadn't dreamed it to be such an emergency; but since it was, -Adrienne would pull them through. As she would have laid her hand on the -head of Bacchus and reformed him, so she would lay it on the head of -Captain Hayward. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - - -The incident put Mrs. Aldesey quite out of his mind, and it was not till -he stood on her doorstep and rang her bell that he remembered his -grievance against her and realized that it had been made more definite -by this glimpse of Adrienne's significance. That his friend was prepared -for him was evident at his first glance; she had even, he saw, been -expecting him, for she broke out at once with: "Oh, my dear Roger--what -_are_ you going to do with her?" - -He was actually pleased to find himself putting her, with some grimness, -in her place. "What is she going to do with us? you mean. You underrate -Mrs. Barney's capacity, let me tell you, my dear friend." - -But Mrs. Aldesey was not easily quelled. "Underrate her! Not I! She's a -Juggernaut if ever there was one. Her capacity is immense. She'll roll -on and she'll crush flat. That poor Barney! She is as blind as a -Juggernaut, but _he_ will come to see--alas! he is seeing -already--though you and I danced round him with veils and cymbals--that -people won't stand being pelted with platitudes from soup to dessert. -The Lumleys will, of course; it's their natural diet; though even they -like their platitudes served with a touch of _sauce piquante_; but -Rosamund Pope told me that she felt black and blue all over and Cuthbert -Haviland--malicious toad--imitates her already to perfection: dreadful -little voice, dreadful little smile, dreadful little quotations and all. -It will be one of his London gags. That shepherdess! My dear Roger, -don't pretend to me that _you_ don't see it!" - -Oldmeadow, sunken in the chair opposite her, surveyed her over his -clasped hands with an air of discouragement. - -"What I'm most seeing at the moment is that she's made you angry," he -remarked. "If what you say were all the truth, why should she make you -angry? She's not as blind as a Juggernaut. That's where you made your -mistake. She'll only crush the people who don't lie down before her. She -knows perfectly well where she is going--and over whom. So be careful, -that is my advice, and keep out of her way; unless you want to lose a -toe or a finger." - -Mrs. Aldesey showed, at this, that he had arrested her. In spite of the -element of truth in Adrienne's verdict upon her he knew her to be, when -veils and cymbals were cast aside, a sincere and gallant creature. She -did not attempt to hide from him now and, after a moment of mutual -contemplation, she laughed a little, with not unreal mirth and said: "I -suppose I am angry. I suppose I'm even spiteful. It's her patronage, you -know. Her suffocating superiority. To have to stand there, for his sake, -and _take_ it! You overrate her, Roger. No woman not abysmally stupid -could say the things she says." - -"Your mistake again. She's able to say them because she's never met -irony or criticism. She's not stupid," he found his old verdict. "Only -absurd. You know, you gave yourself away to her. You showed her what you -thought of her. You patronized _her_." - -"Is _no_ retaliation permitted?" Mrs. Aldesey moaned. "Must one accept -it all? Be scourged with the stars and Browning and then bow one's head -to her caresses? After all, Barney is your friend, not mine, and it's -as your friend that I've tried to be decent to his wife. But she hates -me like poison. She gave herself away, too, you know. I liked the way -she excluded me from her prospects for your welfare. And of course she -knew my marriage wasn't a happy one." - -"I don't think that she did. No; I don't think so. You _are_ poison to -her--cold poison," said Oldmeadow. "Don't imagine for a moment she -didn't see that you were dancing about him with veils and cymbals. She -didn't give herself away, for she had nothing to conceal. She was candid -and you weren't. She didn't pretend that you were under the stars with -her; while you kept up appearances." - -"But what's to become of your Barney if we don't keep them up!" Mrs. -Aldesey cried. "Is he to be allowed to see that nobody can stand -her--except people he can't stand? He'll have to live, then, with Mrs. -and Mr. Prentiss. Did you try to talk to Mrs. Prentiss? Do you know that -she told me that death was 'perfectly sublime'?" - -"Perhaps it is. Perhaps she'll find it so. They all seem to think well -of death, out in California"--Oldmeadow allowed himself to relax from -his admonitory severity. "Mrs. Prentiss isn't as silly as she seems, I -expect. And you exaggerate Barney's sensitiveness. He'd get on very well -with Mrs. Prentiss if you weren't there to show him you found her a -bore. He has a very simple side and we must hope it may become simpler. -The only chance for Barney, I see it more and more, is that we should -efface ourselves as much as possible. The people who find the Prentisses -a bore, I mean. And it won't be difficult for us to do that. She will -see to it that we are effaced. Only, of course, it's a grief. I'm so -fond of him"; and as Oldmeadow stretched forth his legs and put his -hands in his pockets there drifted across his mind, in a thin, sharp, -knife-like stroke, the memory of Barney--tall eighteen-year-old -Barney--with dear old Effie, luxuriously upturned in his arms, being -softly scratched--Barney's hand with a cat was that of an expert--and -told that she was the best and most beautiful of cats. - -"It's a great shame," said Mrs. Aldesey; "I've been thinking my spiteful -thoughts, too, instead of sympathizing with you. Of course, if it's any -consolation to you, one usually does lose one's friends when they marry. -But it needn't have been as bad as this. What a thousand pities he -couldn't have fallen in love with a nice girl of his own kind. You -couldn't do anything about it when you went down in the spring?" - -Oldmeadow had never said anything to Mrs. Aldesey about his hopes for -Nancy. He had a secretive instinct for keeping his friendships in -compartments and discussed only those portions that overflowed. -"Nothing," he said. "And the mischief was that I went down hostile, as -you warned me against doing. Barney saw at once that I didn't care for -her; and she saw it at once. He even forced a sort of expression of -opinion from me and I know now that it's always glooming there at the -back of his mind when he sees me. It was quite useless. Once he'd fallen -under her spell it was all up with him. She has her singular power and, -for a man in love with her, her singular charm. Even I, you know, -understand that." - -Mrs. Aldesey contemplated him. "I confess I can't," she said. "She is so -desperately usual. I've seen her everywhere, ever since I can remember. -Attending lectures at the Sorbonne; listening to Wagner at Bayreuth; -having dresses tried on at Worth's; sitting in the halls of a hundred -European hotels. She is the most unescapable form of the American woman; -only not _du peuple_ because of the money and opportunity that has also -extirpated everything racy, provincial and individual." - -"I don't know," said Oldmeadow. He mused, his hands clasped behind his -head. "She's given me all sorts of new insights." His eyes, after his -wont, were on the cornice and his friend's contemplation, relaxed a -little from its alert responsiveness, allowed itself a certain -conjectural softness as she watched him. "I feel," he went on, "since -knowing her, that I understand America, her America, better than you do. -You're engaged in avoiding rather than in understanding it, aren't you? -What you underrate, what Americans of your type don't see--because, as -you say, it's so oppressively usual--is the power of her type. If it is -a type; if she is as ordinary as you say. It's something bred into them -by the American assumption of the fundamental rightness of life; a -confidence unknown before in the history of the world. An individual, -not an institutional or social, confidence. They do, actually, seem to -take their stand on the very universe itself. Whereas the rest of us -have always had churches or classes to uphold us. They have all the -absurdities and crudities of mere individualism. They have all the -illusions of their ignorance. Yet I sometimes imagine, after I've seen -her, that it's a power we haven't in the least taken into our -reckoning. Isn't it the only racial thing that America has produced--the -only thing that makes them a race? It makes them independent of us, when -we've always imagined, in our complacency, that they were dependent. It -enables them to take what we have to give, but to do with it what they, -not we, think best. And by Jove, who knows how far it will carry them! -Not you, my dear Lydia. You'll stay where you are--with us." - -His eyes had come back and down to her, and her gaze resumed its -alertness and showed him that she found the picture he drew disquieting. -"You mean it's a new kind of civilization that will menace ours?" - -"It's not a civilization; that's just what it's not. It's a state of -mind. Perhaps it will menace us. Perhaps it does. We've underrated it; -of that I'm sure; and underrated power is always dangerous. It will be -faith without experience against experience without faith. What we must -try for, if we're not to be worsted, is to have both--to keep experience -and to keep faith, too. Only so shall we be able to hold our own against -Mrs. Barney. And even so we shan't be able to prevent her doing things -to us--and for us. She'll do things for us that we can't do for -ourselves." His mind reverted to the faces of the brougham. "In that way -she's bound to worst us. We'll have to accept things from her." - -Oldmeadow's eyes had gone back to the cornice and, in the silence that -followed, Mrs. Aldesey, as she sat with folded arms, played absently -with the lace ruffle at her wrist. The lace was an heirloom, like her -rings, and the contemplation of them may have afforded her some -sustainment. "She's made you feel all that, then," she remarked. "With -her crook and her hat and her rose-wreathed lamb. If such a sardonic -old lion as you does really grow bodeful before the rose-wreathed lamb -there is, I own, reason to fear for the future. I'm glad I'm growing -old. It would hurt me to see her cutting your claws." - -"Oh, she won't hurt us!" Oldmeadow smiled at her. "It's rather we who -will hurt her--by refusing to lie down with her lamb. If that's any -comfort to you." - -"Not in the least. I'm not being malicious. You don't call it hurt, -then, to be effaced?" - -"Smothered in rose-leaves, eh?" he suggested. "It would be suffocating -rather than suffering. She does give me that feeling. But you'll make -her suffer--you have, you know--rather than she you." - -"I really don't know about that," said Mrs. Aldesey. "You make me quite -uncomfortable, Roger. You make me superstitious. She's done that to me -already. I refuse to take her seriously, but I shall avoid her. That's -what it comes to. Like not giving the new moon a chance to look at you -over your left shoulder." - - - - -CHAPTER XV - - -On a morning in early March Oldmeadow found, among the letters waiting -for him on his breakfast-table, one from Nancy. Nancy and he, with all -their fondness, seldom wrote to each other and he was aware, on seeing -her writing, of the presage of something disagreeable that the -unexpected often brings. - - "Dear Roger," he read, and in his first glance he saw his presage - fulfilled. "We are in great trouble. Aunt Eleanor has asked me to - write because she is too ill and it is to me as well as to her that - Meg has written and she wants you to see Barney at once. Here are - Meg's letters. She has gone away with Captain Hayward. Aunt Eleanor - and Mother think that Barney may be able to persuade Adrienne to - bring her back. No one else, we feel convinced, will have any - influence with her. Do anything, anything you can, dear Roger. - Mother and I are almost frightened for Aunt Eleanor. She walks - about wringing her hands and crying, and she goes up to Meg's room - and opens the door and looks in--as if she could not believe she - would not find her there. It is heart-breaking to see her. We - depend on you, dear Roger. - - "Yours ever - - "NANCY." - - - -"Good Lord!" Oldmeadow muttered while, in lightning flashes, there -passed across his mind the face of John the setter and a Pierrot's face, -white under a low line of black velvet. He took up Meg's letters, -written from a Paris hotel. - - "DARLING MOTHER, I know it will make you frightfully miserable and - I can't forgive myself for that; but it had to be. Eric and I cared - too much and it wasn't life at all, going on as we were apart. Try, - darling Mother, to see it as we do see things nowadays. Adrienne - will explain it all--and you must believe her. You know what a - saint she is and she has been with us in it all, understanding - everything and helping us to be straight. Everything will come - right. Iris Hayward will set Eric free, of course; she doesn't care - one bit for him and has made him frightfully unhappy ever since - they married, and she wants to marry some one else herself--only of - course she'd never be brave enough to do it this way. When Eric is - free, we will marry at once and come home, and, you will see, there - are so many sensible people nowadays; we shall not have a bad time - at all. Everything will come right, I'm sure; and even if it - didn't, in that conventional way--I could not give him up. No one - will ever love me as he does. - - "Your devoted child - - "MEG." - - - -That was the first: the second ran: - - "DEAREST NANCY,--I know you'll think it frightfully wrong; you are - such an old-fashioned little dear and you told me often enough that - I oughtn't to see so much of Eric. Only of course that couldn't - have prepared you for this and I expect Aunt Monica won't let you - come and stay with us for ages. Never mind; when you marry, you'll - see, I'm sure. Love is the _only_ thing, really. But I should hate - to feel I'd lost you and I'm sure I haven't. I want to ask you, - Nancy dear, to do all you can to make Mother _take_ it. I feel, - just because you will think it so wrong, that you may be more good - to her than Adrienne--who doesn't think it wrong at all--at least - not in Mother's way. It would be frightfully unfair if Mother - blamed Adrienne. She did all she could to show us where we stood - and to make us play the game, and it would be pretty hard luck if - people were to be down on her now because we _have_ played it. We - might have been really rotters if it hadn't been for Adrienne; - cheats and hypocrites, I mean; stealing our happiness. I know - Adrienne can bring Barney round. It's only Mother who troubles me, - just because she is such a child that it's almost impossible to - make her see reason. She doesn't recognize right and wrong unless - they're in the boxes she's accustomed to. Everything is in a box - for poor, darling old Mummy. But I mustn't go on. Be the dear old - pal you always have and help me out as well as you can. - - "Your loving - - "MEG." - - - -"Good Lord," Oldmeadow muttered once more. He pushed back his chair and -rose from the table in the bright spring sunlight. He had the feeling, -almost paternal, of disgrace and a public stripping. He saw Eleanor -Chadwick stopping at Meg's door to look in at the forsaken room, -distraught in her grief and incomprehension. He saw Nancy's pale, -troubled face and Monica Averil's, pinched and dry in its sober dismay. -And then again, lighted by a flare at once tawdry and menacing, the -face of Adrienne Toner, the intruder, the insufferable meddler and -destroyer, a Pierrot among fire-works that had, at last, set fire to the -house. He found a taxi on the Embankment and drove to Connaught Square. -Freshly decorated with window-boxes, the pleasant, spacious house had a -specially smiling air of welcome, but the butler's demeanour told him -that something of the calamity had already penetrated. Adrienne, if she -had not heard before, would have had her letters; Barney, who had been -kept in the dark, would have been enlightened, and the irrepressible -exclamations that must have passed between them seemed dimly reflected -on the man's formal countenance. Mrs. Chadwick, he told Oldmeadow, was -breakfasting upstairs with Mr. Chadwick, and he ushered him into -Barney's study. - -Oldmeadow waited for some time among the Post Impressionist pictures, -one of which remained for ever afterwards vividly fixed in his memory of -the moment; a chaotic yet determined picture; featureless yet, as it -were, conveying through its unrecognizable elements the meaning of a -grin. And, as he stood in the centre of the room and looked away from -the derisive canvas, he saw on Barney's desk photographs of Adrienne, -three photographs of her; one as a child, a sickly looking but beaming -child; one in early girlhood, singularly childlike still; and one in her -bridal dress of only the other day, it seemed, mild and radiant in her -unbecoming veil and wreath. - -It was Barney who came to him. Poor Barney. He was more piteously boyish -than ever before to his friend's eye; so beautifully arrayed, all in -readiness for a happy London day with his angel, so pale, so haggard -and perplexed. "Look here, Roger," were his first words, "do you mind -coming upstairs to Adrienne's room? She's not dressed yet; not very -well, you know. You've heard, then, too?" - -"I've just heard from Nancy. Why upstairs? I'd rather not. We'd better -talk this over alone, Barney. All the more if your wife isn't well." - -"Yes; yes; I know. I told her it would be better. But she insists." - -The effect of a general misery Barney gave was heightened now by his -unhappy flush. "She doesn't want us to talk it over without her, you -see. She comes into it all too much. From Nancy, did you say? What's -Nancy got to do with this odious affair?" - -"Only what Meg has put upon her--to interpret her as kindly as she can -to your mother. Here are the letters. I'd really rather not go -upstairs." - -"I know you'll hold Adrienne responsible--partly at least. She expects -that. She knows that I do, too; she's quite prepared. I only heard half -an hour ago and of course it knocked me up frightfully. Meg! My little -sister! Why she's hardly more than a child!" - -"I'm afraid she's a good deal more than a child. I'm afraid we can't -hold Meg to be not responsible, though, obviously, she'd never have -taken such a step unaided and unabetted. Just read these letters, -Barney; it won't take a moment to decide what's best to be done. I'll go -down to your mother and you must be off, at once, to Paris, and see if -you can fetch Meg back." - -But after Barney, with a hesitating hand and an uncertain glance, had -taken the letters and begun to read them, the door was opened with -decorous deliberation and Adrienne's French maid appeared, the tall, -sallow, capable-looking woman whom Oldmeadow remembered having seen at -Coldbrooks a year ago. - -"Madame requests that _ces Messieurs_ should come up at once; she awaits -them," Joséphine announced in unemphatic but curiously potent accents. -Adrienne's potency, indeed, was of a sort that flowed through all her -agents and Oldmeadow thought that he detected, in the melancholy gaze -bent upon Barney, reprobation for his failure to attain the standard set -for him by a devotion wholehearted and reverential. Mrs. Chadwick, he -remembered, had said that Adrienne's maid adored her. - -"Yes, yes. We're coming at once, Joséphine," said Barney. Reading the -letters as he went, he moved to the door and Oldmeadow found himself, -perforce, following. - -He had not yet visited the morning-room and even before his eyes rested -on Adrienne they saw, hanging above her head where she sat on a little -sofa, a full-length portrait of Mrs. Toner; in white, standing against a -stone balustrade and holding lilies; seagulls above her and a background -of blue sea. - -Adrienne was also in white, but she wore over her long, loose dress a -little jacket of pink silk edged with swan's down and the lace cap -falling about her neck was rosetted with pink ribbon. It was curious to -see her in this almost frivolous array, recalling the shepherdess, when -her face expressed, for the first time in his experience of her, an -anger and an agitation all the more apparent for its control. She was -pale yet flushed, odd streaks of colour running up from her throat and -dying in the pallor of her cheeks. Her condition had evidently much -affected her complexion and her nose, through its layer of powder, -showed a pinched and reddened tint. It made Oldmeadow uncomfortable to -look at her; her mask of calm was held at such a cost; she was at once -so determinedly herself and so helplessly altered; and it was not with -an automatic courtesy only that he went up to her and held out his hand. -An impulse of irrelevant yet irrepressible pity stirred him. - -She had fixed her eyes on him as he entered, but now looking at her -husband and not moving, she said: "I do not think you want to take my -hand, Mr. Oldmeadow. You will think me a criminal too, as Barney does." - -"Darling! Don't talk such nonsense!" Barney cried. "I haven't blamed -you, not by a word. I know you've done what you think right. Look, -darling; Roger has had these letters. Just read them. You see what Meg -writes--there--to Nancy--about your having done all you could to keep -them straight. You haven't been fair to yourself in talking to me just -now." - -Adrienne, without speaking, took the letters and Oldmeadow moved away to -the window and stood looking down at the little garden at the back of -the house where a tall almond-tree delicately and vividly bloomed -against the pale spring sky. He heard behind him the flicker of the fire -in the grate, the pacing of Barney's footsteps as he walked up and -down, and the even turning of the pages in Adrienne's hands. Then he -heard her say: "Meg contradicts nothing that I have said to you, Barney. -She writes bravely and truly; as I knew that she would write." - -Barney stopped in his pacing. "But darling; what she says about -straightness?" It was feeble of Barney and he must know it. Feeble of -him even to think that Adrienne might wish to avail herself of the -loophole or that she considered herself in any need of a shield. - -"You can't misunderstand so much as that, Barney," she said. "Meg and I -mean but one thing by straightness; and that is truth. That was the way -I tried to help them; it is the only way in which I can ever help -people. I showed them the truth and kept it before their eyes when they -were in danger of forgetting it. I said to them that if they were to be -worthy of their love they must be brave enough to make sacrifices for -it. I did not hide from them that there would be sacrifices--if that is -what you mean." - -"It's not what I mean, darling! Of course it's not!" broke from poor -Barney almost in a wail. "Didn't you try at all to dissuade them? Didn't -you show them that it was desperate, and ruinous, and wrong? Didn't you -tell Meg that it would break Mother's heart!" - -The blue ribbon was again unrolled and Oldmeadow, listening with rising -exasperation, heard that the sound of her own solemn cadences sustained -her. "I don't think anything in life is desperate or ruinous or wrong, -Barney, except turning away from one's own light. Meg met a reality and -was brave enough to face it. I regret, deeply, that it came to her -tragically, not happily; but happiness can grow from tragedy if we are -brave and true and Meg is brave and true in her love. It won't break -your mother's heart. Hers is a small, but not such a feeble, heart as -that. I believe that the experience may strengthen and ennoble her. She -has led too sheltered a life." - -Oldmeadow at this turned from the window and met Barney's miserable -eyes. "There's really no reason for my staying on, Barney," he said, and -his voice as well as his look excluded Adrienne from their interchange. -"I'll take the 1.45 to Coldbrooks. What shall I tell your mother? That -you've gone to Paris this morning?" - -"Yes, that I've gone to Paris. That I'll do my best, you know. That I -hope to bring Meg back. Tell her to keep up her courage. It'll only be a -day or two after all, and we may be able to hush it up." - -"Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne in a grave, commanding tone. It was -impossible before it to march out of the room and shut the door, though -that was what his forcibly arrested attitude showed that he wished to -do. "You as well as Barney must hear my protest," said Adrienne, and she -fixed her sombre eyes upon him. "Meg is with the man she loves. In the -eyes of heaven he is her husband. It would be real as contrasted with -conventional disgrace were she to leave him now. She will not leave him. -I know her better than you do. I ask you"--her gaze now turned on -Barney--"I desire you, not to go to her on such an unworthy errand." - -"But, Adrienne," Barney, flushed and hesitating, pleaded, "it's for -Mother's sake. Mother's too old to be enlarged like that--that's really -nonsense, you know, darling. You see what Nancy says. They are -frightened about her. It's not only convention. It's a terrible mistake -Meg's made and she may be feeling it now and only too glad to have the -way made easy for her to come back. I promise you to be as gentle as -possible. I won't reproach her in any way. I'll tell her that we're all -only waiting to forgive her and take her back." - -"Forgive her, Barney? For what? It is only in the eyes of the world that -she has done wrong and I have lifted her above that fear. Convention -does not weigh for a moment with me beside the realities of the human -heart; nor would it with you, Barney, if it were not for the influence -of Mr. Oldmeadow. I have warned you before; it is easy to be -worldly-wise and cynical and to keep to the broad road; it is easy to be -safe. But withering lies that way: withering and imprisonment, and--" - -"Come, come, Mrs. Barney," Oldmeadow interposed, addressing her for the -first time and acidly laughing. "Really we haven't time for sermons. You -oughtn't to have obliged me to come up if you wanted to influence Barney -all by yourself. He sees quite clearly for himself the rights and the -wrongs of this affair, as it happens. If I were to preach for a moment -in my turn I might ask you how it was that you didn't see that it was -your duty to tell Meg's mother and brother how things were going and let -them judge. You're not as wise as you imagine--far from it. Some things -you can't judge at all. Meg and Hayward aren't people of enough -importance to have a right to break laws; that's all that it comes to; -there's nothing to be gained by their breaking laws; not only for other -people, but for themselves. They're neither of them capable of being -happy in the ambiguous sort of life they'd have to lead. There's a -reality you didn't see at all in your haste to flout convention. Barney -could have dealt with Hayward, and Meg could have been packed off to the -country and kept there till she'd learned to think a little more about -other people's hearts and a little less about her own. What business had -you, after all, to have secrets from your husband and to plot with the -two young fools behind his back? Isn't Meg his sister rather than -yours?" His bitterness betrayed him and conscious hostility rose in him, -answering the menace that measured him in her eyes. "What business had -you, a new-comer among us, to think yourself capable of managing all -their lives and to set yourself up above them all in wisdom? You take -too much upon yourself"; his lips found the old phrase: "Really you do. -It's been your mistake from the beginning." - -He could not have believed that a face so framed for gentleness could -show itself at once so calm and so convulsed. He knew that something had -happened to her that had never happened to her before in her life. She -kept her eyes steadily on him and he wondered if she were not reciting -some incantation, some exorcism, derived from the seagulled lady above -her: Power in Repose--Power in Love--Power in Light. Her mouth and eyes -and nostrils were dark on her pallor and he felt that she held back all -the natural currents of her being in order to face and quell him with -the supernatural. - -"Never mind all that, Roger," Barney was sickly murmuring. "I don't -feel like that. I know Adrienne didn't for a moment mean to deceive me." - -"We will mind it, Barney," said Adrienne, breathing with difficulty. "I -had, Mr. Oldmeadow, the business, first, of loyalty to another human -soul who, in the crisis of its destiny, confided in me. I have been -nearer Meg than any of you have guessed, from my first meeting with her. -You were all blind. I saw at once that she was tossed and tormented. I -am nearer, far nearer her, than her brother and mother. In them she -would never have dreamed of confiding and she came to me because she -felt that in me she would find reality and in them mere formulas. I do -not look upon women as chattels to be handed about by their male -relatives and locked up if they do not love according to rule and -precedent. I look upon them as the equals of men in every respect, as -free as men to shape their lives and to direct their destinies. You -speak a mediæval language, Mr. Oldmeadow. The world, our great, modern, -deep-hearted world, has outstripped you." - -"Darling," Barney forestalled, breathlessly, as she paused, any reply -that Oldmeadow might have been tempted to make, "don't mind if Roger -speaks harshly. He's like that and no one cares for us more. He doesn't -mean conventionality at all, or anything mediæval. You don't understand -him. He puts his finger on the spot about Meg and Hayward. It's exactly -as he says; they're not of enough importance to have a right to break -laws. If you could have confided in me, it would have been better; you -must own that. We'd have given Meg a chance to pull herself together. -We'd have sent Hayward about his business. It's a question, as Roger -says, of your wisdom; of your knowledge of the world. You didn't -understand them. They're neither of them idealists like you. They can't -be happy doing what you might be big enough to do. Just because they're -not big. Try to take it in, darling. And we really needn't go on talking -about it any longer, need we? It isn't a question of influence. All we -have to decide on is what's to be done. Roger must go to Mother and tell -her I'm starting this morning to try and fetch Meg back. Imagine Mother -with a divorce case on! It would kill her, simply. That's all. Isn't it, -Roger?" - -"Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, again. She rose as she spoke. As -he saw her stand before them, her approaching maternity dominated for a -moment all his impressions of her. Veiled and masked adroitly as it was, -its very uncouthness curiously became her. Her head, for once, looked -small. Like an archaic statue, straight and short and thick, her altered -form had dignity and amplitude and her face, heavy with its menace, hard -with its control, might have been that of some austere and threatening -priestess of fruitfulness. - -"Barney, wait," she said. Her arms hung straight beside her, but she -slightly lifted a hand as she spoke and Oldmeadow noted that it was -tightly clenched. "It is I, not your friend, whom you must question as -to what it is right that you should do. I do not consent to his reading -of my unwisdom and unworthiness. I ask you not to consent to it. I ask -you again not to go. I ask you again to respect my judgment rather than -his." - -"Darling," the unfortunate husband supplicated; "it's not because it's -Roger's judgment. You know it's what I felt right myself--from the -moment you told me what had happened. You say people must follow their -own light. It _is_ my light. I must do what Mother asks and try to bring -Meg back." - -"It is not your light, Barney. It is craft and caution and fear. More -than that, do you not see, must I make plain to you what it is you do to -me in going? You insult me. You treat what I have believed right for Meg -to do as a crime from which she must be rescued. You drag me in the dust -with her. Understand me, Barney"--the streaks of colour deepened on her -neck, her breath came thickly--"if you go, you drag me in the dust." - -"How can it drag you in the dust, Mrs. Barney, if Meg wants to come -back?" Oldmeadow interposed in the tone of a caustic doctor addressing a -malingering patient. "We're not talking of crimes; only of follies. -Come; be reasonable. Don't make it so painful for Barney to do what's -his plain duty. You're not a child. You have, I hope, courage enough and -humour enough to own that you can make mistakes--like other people." - -"Yes, yes, Adrienne, that's just it," broke painfully from Barney, and, -as he seized the clue thus presented to him, Adrienne turned her head -slowly, with an ominous stillness, and again rested her eyes upon him. -"It's childish, you know, darling. It's not like you. And of course I -understand why; and Roger does. You're not yourself; you're -over-strained and off-balance and I'm so frightfully sorry all this has -fallen upon you at such a time. I don't want to oppose you in anything, -darling--do try to believe me. Only you must give me the credit for my -own convictions. I do feel I must go. I do feel Roger must take that -message to Mother. After all, darling," and now in no need of helping -clues he found his own and the irrepressible note of grief vibrated in -his voice, "you do owe me something, don't you? You do owe us all -something--to make up, I mean. Because, without you, Meg would never -have behaved like this and disgraced us all. Oh--I don't mean to -reproach you!" - -"Good-bye then, I'm off," said Oldmeadow. "I'm very sorry you made me -come up. Good-bye, Mrs. Barney." She had not spoken, nor moved, nor -turned her eyes from Barney's face. - -"Good-bye. Thanks so much, Roger." Barney followed him, with a quickness -to match his own, to the door. But Adrienne, this time, did not call him -back. She remained standing stock-still in front of her sofa. - -"Tell Mother I'm off," said Barney, grasping his hand. "Tell her she'll -hear at once, as soon as I know anything. Thanks so awfully," he -repeated. "You've been a great help." - -It was unfortunate, perhaps, that Barney should say that, Oldmeadow -reflected as he sped down the stairs. "But she's met reality at last," -he muttered, wondering how she and Barney faced each other above and -hearing again the words that must echo so strangely in her ears: -"Disgraced us all." And, mingled with his grim satisfaction, was, again, -the sense of irrelevant and reluctant pity. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - - -It was Saturday and he had to wire to Mrs. Aldesey that he could not go -with her next day to the Queen's Hall concert they had planned to hear -together. - -Nancy was waiting for him at the station in her own little pony-cart and -as he got in she said: "Is Barney gone?" - -"Yes; he'll have gone by now," said Oldmeadow and, as he said it, he -felt a sudden sense of relief and clarity. The essential thing, he saw -it as he answered Nancy's question, was that he should be able to say -that Barney had gone. And he knew that if he hadn't been there to back -him up, he wouldn't have gone. So that was all right, wasn't it? - -As he had sped past the sun-swept country the reluctant pity had -struggled in him, striving, unsuccessfully, to free itself from the -implications of that horrid word: "Disgraced." It was Adrienne who had -disgraced them; that was what Barney's phrase had really meant, though -he hadn't intended it to mean it. She, the stranger, the new-comer, had -disgraced them. And it was true. Yet he wished Barney hadn't stumbled on -the phrase--just because she was a stranger and a new-comer. And Barney -would never have found it had he not been there. But now came the sense -of relief. If he hadn't been there, Barney wouldn't have gone. - -"Aunt Eleanor is longing to see you," said Nancy. "Her one hope, you -know, is that he may bring Meg back." Nancy's eyes had a strained look, -as though she had lain awake all night. - -"You think she may come back?" - -He felt, himself, unable to form any conjectures as to what Meg was -likely to do. What she had done was so strangely unlike her. - -"Not if it means leaving Captain Hayward for good," said Nancy. "But -Aunt Eleanor and Mother both think that she may be willing to come till -they can marry." - -"That's better than nothing, isn't it," said Oldmeadow, and Nancy then -surprised him by saying, as she looked round at him: "I don't want her -to come back." - -"Don't want her to come back? But you wanted Barney to go?" - -"Yes. He had to go. Just so that everything might be done. So that it -might be put before her. And to satisfy Aunt Eleanor. But, don't you -see, Roger, it would really make it far more difficult for Aunt Eleanor -to have her here. What would she do with her?--since she won't give up -Captain Hayward? She can love Meg and grieve and yearn over her now. But -if she were here she couldn't. It would be all grief and bitterness." - -Nancy had evidently been thinking to some purpose during her sleepless -night and he owned that her conclusion was the sound one. What -disconcerted him was her assurance that Meg would not leave her lover. -After Adrienne, Nancy was likely to have the most authentic impressions -of Meg's attitude; and, as they drove towards Chelford, he was further -disconcerted by hearing her murmur, half to herself: "It would be silly -to leave him now, wouldn't it." - -"Not if she's sorry and frightened at what she's done," he protested. -"After all the man's got a wife who may be glad to have him back." - -But Nancy said: "I don't think she would. I think she'll be glad not to -have him back. Meg may be frightened; but I don't believe she'll be -sorry; yet." - -He meditated, somewhat gloomily, as they drove, on the unexpectedness of -the younger generation. He had never thought of Nancy as belonging, in -any but the chronological sense, to that category; yet here she was, -accepting, if not condoning, the rebellion against law and morality. - -Mrs. Averil had driven down to the Little House where she was to be -picked up and, as they turned the corner to the Green, they saw her -waiting at the gate, her furs turned up around her ears, her neat little -face pinched and dry, as he had known that he would find it, and showing -a secure if controlled indignation, rather than Nancy's sad perplexity. - -"Well, Roger, you find us in a pleasant predicament," she observed as -Oldmeadow settled the rug around her knees. "Somehow one never thinks of -things like this happening in one's own family. Village girls misbehave -and people in the next county run away sometimes with other people's -wives; but one never expects such adventures to come walking in to one's -own breakfast-table." - -"Disagreeable things do have a way of happening at breakfast-time, don't -they," Oldmeadow assented. The comfort of Mrs. Averil was that even on -her death-bed she would treat her own funeral lightly: "I wonder it -remains such a comfortable meal, all the same." - -"I suppose you've had lunch on the train," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you -believe it? Poor Eleanor was worrying about that this morning. She's -got some coffee and sandwiches waiting for you, in case you haven't. I'm -so thankful you've come. It will help her. Poor dear. She's begun to -think of all the other things now. Of what people will say and how they -will hear. Lady Cockerell is very much on her mind. You know what a -meddlesome gossip she is, and only the other day Eleanor snubbed her -when she was criticizing Barbara's new school. The thought of her is -disturbing her dreadfully now." - -"I suppose these leech-bites do help to alleviate the pain of the real -wound," said Oldmeadow. - -"Not in the least. They envenom it," Mrs. Averil replied. "I'd like to -strangle Lady Cockerell myself before the news reaches her." - -Nancy drove on, her eyes fixed on the pony's ears. "I don't believe -people will talk nearly as much as you and Aunt Eleanor imagine," she -now remarked. "I've told her so; and so must you, Mother." - -"You are admirable with her, Nancy. Far better than I am. I sit grimly -swallowing my curses, or wringing my hands. Neither wringing nor cursing -is much good, I suppose." - -"Not a bit of good. It's better she should think of what people say than -of Meg; but when it comes to agonizing over them I believe the truth is -that people nowadays _do_ get over it; far more than they used to; -especially if Aunt Eleanor can show them that _she_ gets over it." - -"But she can't get over it, my dear child!" said Mrs. Averil, gazing at -her daughter in a certain alarm. "How can one get over disgrace like -that or lift one's head again--unless one is an Adrienne Toner! Oh, when -I think of that woman and of what she's done! For she is responsible -for it all! Every bit of it. Meg was a good girl, at heart; always. In -spite of that silly liquid powder. And so I tell Eleanor. Adrienne is -responsible for it all." - -"I don't, Mother; that's not my line at all," said Nancy. "I tell her -that what Meg says is true." Nancy touched the pony with the whip. "If -it hadn't been for Adrienne she might have done much worse." - -"Really, my dear!" Mrs. Averil murmured. - -"Come, Nancy," Oldmeadow protested; "that was a retrospective threat of -Meg's. Without Adrienne she'd never have considered such an -adventure--or its worse alternative. Encourage your aunt to curse -Adrienne. Your Mother's instinct is sound there." - -But Nancy shook her head. "I don't know, Roger," she said. "Perhaps Meg -would have considered the alternative. Girls do consider all sorts of -things nowadays that Mother and Aunt Eleanor, in their girlhood, would -have thought simply wicked. They _are_ wicked; but not simply. That's -the difference between now and then. And don't you think that it's -better for Meg and Captain Hayward to go away so that they can be -married than to be, as she says, really rotters; than to be, as she -says, cheats and hypocrites and steal their happiness?" - -"My dear child!" Mrs. Averil again murmured, while Oldmeadow, finding -it, after all, a comfort to have a grown-up Nancy to discuss it with, -said, "My contention is that, left to herself, Meg would have thought -them both wicked." - -"Perhaps," Nancy said again; "but even old-fashioned girls did things -they knew to be wicked sometimes. The difference Adrienne has made is -that Meg doesn't think herself wicked at all. She thinks herself rather -noble. And that's what I mean about Aunt Eleanor. It will comfort her if -she can feel a little as Adrienne feels--that Meg isn't one bit the -worse, morally, for what she's done." - -"Are you trying to persuade us that Meg isn't guilty, my dear?" Mrs. -Averil inquired dryly. "Are you trying to persuade us that Adrienne has -done us all a service? You surely can't deny that she's behaved -atrociously, and first and foremost, to Barney. Barney could have known -nothing about it, and can you conceive a woman keeping such a thing from -her husband?" - -But Nancy was feeling the pressure of her own realizations and was not -to be scolded out of them. "If Meg is guilty, and doesn't know it, she -will suffer dreadfully when she finds out, won't she? It all depends on -whether she has deceived herself or not, doesn't it? I'm not justifying -her or Adrienne, Mother; only trying to see the truth about them. How -could Adrienne tell Barney when it was Meg's secret? We may feel it -wrong; but she thought she was justified." The colour rose in Nancy's -cheek as she named Barney, but she kept her tired eyes on her mother and -added, "I don't believe it was easy for her to keep it from him." - -"My dear, anything is easy for her that flatters her self-importance!" -cried Mrs. Averil impatiently. "I'll own, if you like, that she's more -fool than knave--as Meg may be; though Meg never struck me as a fool. -Things haven't changed so much since my young days as all that; it's -mainly a matter of names. If girls who behave like Meg find it -pleasanter to be called fools than knaves, they are welcome to the -alternative. Noble they never were nor will be, whatever the fashion." - -Oldmeadow did not want the sandwiches, so, as soon as they reached -Coldbrooks, he was led upstairs to Mrs. Chadwick's room. He found his -poor friend lying on the sofa, the blinds drawn down and a wet -handkerchief on her forehead. She burst out crying as he entered. -Oldmeadow sat down beside her and took her hand and, as he listened to -her sobs, felt that he need not trouble to pity Adrienne. - -"What I cannot, cannot understand, Roger," she was at last able to say, -and he realized that it was of Adrienne, not Meg, that she was speaking, -"is how she can bear to treat us so. We all loved and trusted her. You -know how I loved her, Roger. I felt Meg as safe in her hands as in my -own. Oh, that wicked, wicked man! I hardly know him by sight. That makes -it all so much more dreadful. All I do know is that his wife is a -daughter of poor Evelyn Madderley, who broke her back out hunting." - -"I don't believe there's much harm in him, you know," Oldmeadow -suggested. "And I believe that he is sincerely devoted to Meg." - -"Harm, Roger!" poor Mrs. Chadwick wailed, "when he is a married man and -Meg only a girl! Oh, if there is harm in anything there is in that! -Running away with a girl and ruining her life! Barney will make him feel -what he has done. Barney _has_ gone?" - -"Yes, he's gone, and I am sure we can rely on him to speak his mind to -Hayward." - -"And don't you think he may bring Meg back, Roger? Nancy says I must not -set my mind on it; but don't you think she may be repenting already? My -poor little Meg! She was hot-tempered and could speak very crossly if -she was thwarted; but I think of her incessantly as she was when she was -a tiny child. Self-willed; but so sweet and coaxing in her ways, with -beautiful golden hair and those dark eyes. I always thought of Meg, with -her beauty, as sure to marry happily; near us, I hoped"--Mrs. Chadwick -began to sob again. "And now!--Will he find them in Paris? Will they not -have moved on?" - -"In any case he'll be able to follow them up. I don't imagine they'll -think of hiding." - -"No; I'm afraid they won't. That is the worst of it! They won't hide and -every one will come to know and then what good will there be in her -coming back! If only I'd had her presented last year, Roger! She can -never go to court now," Mrs. Chadwick wept, none the less piteously for -her triviality. "To think that Francis's daughter cannot go to court! -She would have looked so beautiful, with my pearls and the feathers. The -feathers are becoming to so few girls. Nancy could not wear them nearly -so well. Nancy can go and my daughter can't!" - -"I don't think the lack of feathers will weigh seriously upon Meg's -future, my dear friend." - -"Oh, but it's what they stand for, Roger, that will weigh!" Mrs. -Chadwick, even in her grief, retained her shrewdness. "It's easy to -laugh at the feathers, but you might really as well laugh at -wedding-rings! To think that Francis's daughter is travelling about with -a man and without a wedding-ring! Or do you suppose they'll have thought -of it and bought one? It would be a lie, of course; but don't you think -that a lie would be justifiable under the circumstances?" - -"I don't think it really makes any difference, until they can come home -and be married." - -"I suppose she must marry him now--if they won't hide--and will be proud -of what they've done; she seems quite proud of it!--everyone will hear, -so that they will have to marry. Oh--I don't know what to hope or what -to fear! How can you expect me to have tea, Nancy!" she wept, as Nancy -entered carrying the little tray. "It's so good of you, my dear, but how -can I eat?--I can hardly face the servants, Roger. They will all hear. -And Meg was always such a pet of Johnson's; his favourite of all my -children. He used to give her very rich, unwholesome things in the -pantry and once, when her father punished her for disobeying him and put -her in the corner, in the drawing-room, one day, after lunch, Johnson -nearly dropped the coffee, when he came in. It upset him dreadfully and -he would hardly speak to Francis for a week afterwards. I know he will -think it all our fault, when he hears, now. And so it is, for having -trusted to a stranger. I can't drink tea, Nancy." - -"Yes, you can, for Meg's sake, Aunt Eleanor, and eat some tea-cake, -too," said Nancy. "If you aren't brave for her, who will be. And you -can't be brave unless you eat. I remember so well, when I was little, -Uncle Francis saying that when it came to the pinch you were the bravest -woman he knew. You'll see, darling; it will all come out better than you -fear. Johnson and all of us will help you to make it come out better." - -"She is such a comfort to me, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick with a summoned -smile. "Somehow, when I see her, I feel that things _will_ come out -better. _You_ will have to go to court, dear, next spring. We can't -have none of our girls going. And you shall wear my pearls." Mrs. -Chadwick's tears fell, but she took up the tea-cup. - -Nancy more and more was striking Oldmeadow as the wisest person in the -house. He walked with her on the terrace after tea; it was an old custom -of his and Nancy's to step outside then, whatever the weather, and have -a few turns. This was a clear, chill evening and Nancy had wrapped a -woollen scarf closely round her neck and shoulders. Her chin was sunken -in its folds as she held it together on her breast, and with her dropped -profile, her sad, meditative eyes, it was as if she saw a clue and, far -more clearly than he did, knew where they all stood. - -"Adrienne was bitterly opposed to Barney's going," he said. "She seemed -unable to grasp the fact that she herself had been in error." - -Nancy turned her eyes on him. "Did Barney tell you she was bitterly -opposed?" - -"He didn't tell me. I was with them. It was most unfortunate. She -insisted on my coming up." - -"Oh, dear," said Nancy. She even stopped for a moment to face him with -her dismay. "Yes, I see," she then said, walking on, "she would." - -"Why would she? Unless she was sure of getting her own way? The only -point in having me up was to show me that she could always get her own -way with Barney." - -"Of course. And to make it quite clear to herself, too. She's not afraid -of you, Roger. She's not afraid of anything but Barney." - -"I don't think she had any reason to be afraid of him this morning. He -was badly upset, of course. But if I hadn't gone up, I imagine she'd -have kept him from going. And you own that that would have been a pity, -don't you?" - -"Yes. Oh, yes. He had to go," said Nancy, absently. And she added. "Were -you very rough and scornful?" - -"Rough and scornful? I don't think so. I think I kept my temper very -well, considering all things. I showed her pretty clearly, I suppose, -that I considered her a meddling ass. I don't suppose she'll forgive me -easily for that." - -"Well, you can't wonder at it, can you?" said Nancy. "Especially if she -suspects that you made Barney consider her one, too." - -"But it's necessary, isn't it, that she should be made to suspect it -herself? I don't wonder at her not forgiving me for showing her up -before Barney, and upholding him against her, but I do wonder that one -can never make her see she's wrong. It's that that's so really monstrous -about her." - -"Do you think that anyone can ever make us see we are wrong unless they -love us?" Nancy asked. - -"Well, Barney loves her," said Oldmeadow after a moment. - -"Yes; but he's afraid of her, too, isn't he? He'd never have quite the -courage to try and make her see, would he?--off his own bat I mean. He'd -never really have quite the courage to see, himself, how wrong she was, -unless he were angry. And to have anyone who is angry with you trying to -make you see, only pushes you further and further back into yourself, -doesn't it, and away from seeing?" - -"You've grown very wise in the secrets of the human heart, my dear," -Oldmeadow observed. "It's true. He hasn't courage with her--unless some -one is there to give it to him. But, you know, I don't think she'd -forgive him if he had. I don't think she'd forgive anyone who made her -see." - -"I don't know," Nancy pondered. "I don't love her, yet I feel as if I -understood her; better, perhaps, than you do. I think she's good, you -know. I mean, I think she might be good, if she could ever see." - -"She's too stupid ever, really, to see," said Oldmeadow, and it was with -impatience. "She's encased in self-love like a rhinoceros in its hide. -One can't penetrate anywhere. You say she's afraid of Barney and I can't -imagine what you mean by that. It's true, when I'm by, she's afraid of -losing his admiration. But that's not being afraid of him." - -Nancy still pondered; but not, now, in any perplexity. "She's afraid -because she cares so much. She's afraid because she _can_ care so much. -It's difficult to explain; but I feel as if I understood her. She's -never cared so much before for just one other person. It's always been -for people altogether; and because she was doing something for them. But -Barney does something for her. He makes her happy. Perhaps she never -knew before what it was to be really happy. You know, she didn't give me -the feeling of a really happy person. It's something quite, quite new -for her. It makes her feel uncertain of herself and almost bewildered -sometimes. Oh, I'm sure of it the more I think of it. And you know, -sometimes," Nancy turned her deep, sweet eyes on him, "I feel very sorry -for her, Roger. I can't help it; although I don't love her at all." - -Yes. It must be true. Though he had seen Adrienne's vanity rather than -her love. Nancy and Meg were united in their assurance and that must be, -he saw, because they both, in their so different ways, knew what it was -to care; to care so much that you were frightened. It was strange that -the pang of pity that came with his new perception should be for -Adrienne rather than for his dear little Nancy herself. Nancy had -suffered, he knew, and her life was perhaps permanently scarred; yet, -clear-eyed and unduped, he saw her as mistress of the very fate that had -maimed her. Whereas Adrienne was blindfolded; a creature swayed and -surrounded by forces of which she was unaware. - -Nancy had deepened his sense of perplexity, his sense of taking refuge -from something, and what it was came fully upon him that night when he -was at last alone. Meg and her misdemeanour sank into a mere background -for the image of the cold, convulsed face that he had seen that morning. -Almost angrily he felt himself pushing it back, pushing it down, as if -he pushed it down to drown, and again and again it re-emerged to look at -him. - -He fell asleep at last; but as, a year ago, on the first night of his -meeting with her, he had dreamed of her, so to-night he dreamed again. - -He did not see her, but she was in some dreadful plight and the sense of -her panic and bewilderment broke upon him in shocks of suffering. He -could not see her, but he was aware of her, horribly aware. All remained -a broken, baffled confusion, but it was as though, unable to shape and -assert itself, he yet felt her very being wrestling with extinction. - -The sharpness had gone out of the sunlight next day and Mrs. Chadwick -consented to come and sit with them in the warmest corner of the garden, -the corner where, a year ago, Oldmeadow remembered, Meg had sat with him -and explained to him the secret of Adrienne's power. Pitifully, with -swollen eyes and trembling fingers, Mrs. Chadwick resumed her -interrupted stocking while Oldmeadow read aloud from a Sunday paper the -leading article on the critical situation in Ireland. "I suppose every -one in London will be talking about Ulster and Sir Edward Carson, won't -they?" said Mrs. Chadwick, and it was evident that she derived a dim -comfort from the thought. The situation in Ireland, Oldmeadow reflected, -had, at all events, been of so much service. - -Upon this quiet scene there broke suddenly the sound of a motor's horn -and a motor's wheels turned into the front entrance. - -Mrs. Chadwick dropped her stocking and laid her hand on Nancy's arm. -"Dear Aunt Eleanor--you know he couldn't possibly be back yet," said -Nancy. "And if it's anyone to call, Johnson knows you're not at home." - -"Lady Cockerell is capable of anything. She might sit down in the hall -and wait. She must have heard by now," poor Mrs. Chadwick murmured. -"That married girl of hers in London must have written. With the -projecting teeth." - -"I'll soon get rid of her, if it's really she," said Mrs. Averil; but -she had hardly risen when the door at the back of the house opened and -they saw Johnson usher forth a hurrying female figure, obviously not -Lady Cockerell's; a figure so encumbered by its motoring wraps, so -swathed in veils, that only Mrs. Chadwick's ejaculation enlightened -Oldmeadow as to its identity. - -"Joséphine!" cried Mrs. Chadwick and then, between the narrow framing of -purple gauze, he recognized the dramatic, melancholy eyes and pale, -pinched lips of Adrienne's maid. - -"Oh, Madame! Madame!" Joséphine was exclaiming as she came towards them -down the path. Her face wore the terrible intensity of expression so -alien to the British countenance. "Oh, Madame! Madame!" she repeated. -They had all risen and stood to await her. "He is dead! The little child -is dead! And she is alone. Monsieur left her yesterday. Quite, quite -alone, and her child born dead." - -Mrs. Chadwick faced her in pallid stupefaction. - -"The baby, Aunt Eleanor," said Nancy, for she looked indeed as if she -had not understood. "Barney's baby. It has been born and it is dead. -Oh--poor Barney. And poor, poor Adrienne." - -"Yes, dead!" Joséphine, regardless of all but her exhaustion and her -grief, dropped down into one of the garden-chairs and put her hands -before her face. "Born dead last night. A beautiful little boy. The -doctors could not save it and fear for her life. They will not let me -stay with her. Only the doctors and the nurses--strangers--are with -her." Joséphine was sobbing. "Ah, it was not right to leave her so. -Already she was ill. It could be seen that already she was very ill when -Monsieur left her. I came to her when he was gone. She did not say a -word to me. She tried to smile. _Mais j'ai bien vu qu'elle avait la mort -dans l'âme._" - -"Good heavens," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, while Joséphine, now, let her -tears flow unchecked. "She is alone and Barney has left her! Oh, this -is terrible! At such a time!" - -"He had to go, Aunt Eleanor. You know he had to go. We will send for him -at once," said Nancy, and Joséphine, catching the words, sobbed on in -her woe and her resentment: "But where to send for him? No one knows -where to send. The doctors sent a wire yesterday, at once, when she was -taken ill; to the Paris hotel. But no answer came. He must have left -Paris. That is why I have come. No telegrams for Sunday. No trains in -time. I took the car. The doctor said, Yes, it was well that I should -come. Some one who cares for Madame should return with me. If she is to -die she must not die alone." - -"But she shall not die!" cried Mrs. Chadwick with sudden and surprising -energy. "Oh, the poor baby! It might have lived had I been there. No -doctor, no nurse, can understand like a mother. And I shall be able to -help with Adrienne. I must go. I must go at once. Mademoiselle will see -that you have something to eat and drink, my poor Joséphine, and then -you and I will return together. It will not take me a moment to get -ready." - -"It will be the best thing for them all," Oldmeadow murmured to Mrs. -Averil, as, taking Joséphine's arm, Mrs. Chadwick hurried her along the -path. "And I'll go with them." - -A little later, while Mrs. Chadwick made ready above and Joséphine, in -the hall, ate the meal that Johnson had brought for her, Oldmeadow and -Nancy stood outside near the empty waiting car. - -"I'll wire to you at once, of course, how she is," he said. Adrienne had -put Meg out of all their thoughts. "But it's rather grotesque," he -added, "if poor Barney is to be blamed." - -Nancy stood and looked before her, wrapped, as she had been the day -before, in her woollen scarf. "Roger," she said after a moment, "no one -can be blamed; yet, if she dies, I shall feel that we have killed her." - -"Killed her! What nonsense, my dear! What do you mean?" He spoke angrily -because something in his heart, shaken by his dream, echoed her. The -dreaming had now revealed itself as definitely uncanny. What had he to -do with Adrienne Toner that his sub-consciousness should be aware of her -extremity? - -"I can't explain," said Nancy. "We couldn't help it. It's even all her -fault. But she never asked to come to us. She never sought us out. She -had her life and we had ours. It was we who sought her and drew her in -and worshipped her. She never hid what she was; never in the least -little way. It was for what she was, because she was so different and -believed so in herself, that Barney loved her. And now because she has -gone on believing in herself, we have struck her down." - -The rooks were cawing overhead and Oldmeadow was remembering his dream -of a year ago, how Adrienne had come to him along the terrace saying, as -she lifted her hand: "I can hear them, too." They had drawn her in. Yet -she had loved their life. She had wanted to understand it and to be part -of it. He wished he could get the pale, streaked, drowning face out of -his mind. "It's generous of you, my dear child," he said, "to say 'we.' -You mean 'you.' If anyone struck her down it was I." - -"You spoke for us all, Roger. And you only spoke for us. You were always -outside. I count myself with them. I can't separate myself from them. I -received her love--with them all." - -"Did you?" he looked at her. "I don't think so, Nancy." - -Nancy did not pretend not to understand. "I know," she said. "But I'm -part of it. And she tried to love me." - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - - -Oldmeadow sat in Barney's study, Mrs. Chadwick beside him. It was -Tuesday and the only news of Barney had been a letter to his mother, -from Paris, where he had not found Meg, and two wires from the South of -France, one to Oldmeadow and one to his wife, saying that he had found -Meg and was returning alone. He had not, it was evident, received the -doctor's messages. - -Oldmeadow had not seen his old friend since the Sunday night when he had -left her and Joséphine in Connaught Square, and in his first glance at -her this morning he saw that for her, too, Adrienne's peril had actually -effaced Meg's predicament. It had done more. Faint and feeble as she -must be, scarcely able to take possession of her returning life and, as -Mrs. Chadwick told him, not yet out of danger, Adrienne had already -drawn her mother-in-law back into the circle of her influence. - -"You see, Roger," she said, sitting there on the absurdly incongruous -background of the Post Impressionist pictures and tightly squeezing her -handkerchief first in one hand and then in the other, "You see, when one -is with her one _has_ to trust her. I don't know why it is, but almost -at once I felt all my bitterness against her die quite away. I knew, -whatever she had done, that she believed it to be right; to be really -_best_ for Meg, you know. And oh, Roger, Barney has hurt her so -terribly! She can't speak of him without crying. I never saw her cry -before. I never imagined Adrienne crying. She feels, she can't help -feeling, that it is because of that they have lost their baby." - -Oldmeadow ordered with difficulty his astonished and indignant thoughts. -"That is absolutely unfair to Barney," he said. "I was with them. No one -could have been gentler or more patient." - -"I know you were with them. It would seem like that to you, Roger, -because you are a man and men still think of women as a sort of chattel. -That's how it looks to Adrienne. So much more independence, you know, -than we ever had.--Oh, I don't say it's a good thing! I feel that we are -weaker and need guidance." - -"Chattels? Where do chattels come in here? She said that to you. Barney -merely pleaded with her so that he could do what you wanted him to do." - -"I know--I know, Roger. Don't get angry. But if I had been here and seen -her I should have known that he must not go. I should have seen that she -was in danger. A woman would have understood. No; you didn't treat -Adrienne like a chattel; no one could treat Adrienne like one. It was -poor little Meg I meant. I see now how wrong it was to think of taking -her from the man she loves; when she _has_ gone, you know, so that -everyone must know and there can be no good in it. And they probably -_have_ bought a wedding-ring. Oh, Roger, she does comfort me about Meg. -She makes me feel the deeper things, the things conventions blind us to. -She makes me feel that the great thing, the only thing, is to follow -one's own light and that Meg did do that. And after all, you know, -Roger, Jowett had George Eliot and Lewes to breakfast and they were -never married." - -"Ha! ha! ha!" Oldmeadow laughed. He could not repress his bitter mirth. -"Follow your light if there's breakfast with a clergyman at the end of -it!" he cruelly suggested. Yet he was too much amused, while so -incensed, for there to be much cruelty, and Mrs. Chadwick, gazing at him -as if from under her twisted straw, murmured: "He _was_ a sort of -clergyman, Roger; and if people do what _seems_ to them right, why -should they be punished?" - -He saw it all. He heard it all, in her echoes. The potent influence had -been poured through her, all the more irresistible for the appeal of -Adrienne's peril. Adrienne, bereaved and dying; yet magnanimous, gentle -and assured; always assured. How could Mrs. Chadwick's feathers and -wedding-rings stand a chance against her? They had been swept away, or -nearly away, and what Nancy had seen as a possible hope was now an -accomplished fact. Mrs. Chadwick had been brought to feel about Meg as -Adrienne felt about her, and Oldmeadow, for his part, was not sure that -the game was worth the candle. There was something more than absurd in -his poor friend's attempts to adjust herself to the new standards. They -were pitiable and even a little unseemly. She began presently softly to -weep. "Such a pretty baby it was, Roger. A lovely little creature--that -was the first thing she said to me--'Oh, Mother Nell, it was such a -pretty baby.' And all that she said this morning--when it was taken -away--was: 'I wish Barney could have been in time to see our baby.' Oh, -it is terrible, terrible, Roger, that he is not here! Her heart is -broken by it. How can she ever forget that he left her alone at such a -time. And she begged him not to go. She told me that she almost knelt to -him." - -The tears, irrepressibly, had risen to Oldmeadow's eyes; but as Mrs. -Chadwick's sentence meandered on, his thoughts were roughly jolted from -their pity. "But I tell you that that is absolutely unfair!" he -repeated, fixing his glass to look his protest the more firmly at her. -"I tell you that I was there and saw it all. It wasn't for the baby. She -was thinking of the baby as little as Barney was; less than he was. What -she was thinking of was her power over Barney. She was determined that -she should not seem to be put in the wrong by his going." - -Like the March Hare Mrs. Chadwick was wild yet imperturbable. "Of course -she was determined. How could she be anything else? It did put her in -the wrong. And it put Meg in the wrong. That's where we were so blind. -Oh, I blame myself as much as anybody. But Barney is her husband; and he -was with her and should have seen and felt. How could she beg him to -stay for her danger when he would not stay for her love?" - -Yes; Adrienne had her very firmly. She had even imparted to her, when it -came to the issue, something of coherency. She was building up, in -Barney's absence, strange ramparts against him. Barney had dragged her -in the dust and there she intended to drag him. Wasn't that it? -Oldmeadow asked himself as he eyed his altered friend, muttering -finally: "I'm every bit as responsible as Barney, if it comes to that. I -upheld him, completely, in his decision. I do still. Adrienne may turn -you all upside down; but she won't turn me; and I hope she won't turn -Barney." - -"I think, Roger, that you might at all events remember that she's not -out of danger," said Mrs. Chadwick. "She may die yet and give you no -more trouble. You have never cared for her; I know that, and so does -she; and I do think it's unfeeling of you to speak as you do when she's -lying there above us. And she looks so lovely in bed," Mrs. Chadwick -began to weep again. "I never saw such thick braids; like Marguerite in -Faust. Her hands on the sheets so thin and white and her eyes enormous. -I don't think even you could have the heart to jibe and laugh if you saw -her." - -"I didn't laugh at Adrienne, you know," Oldmeadow reminded her, rising -and buttoning his overcoat. "I laughed at you and Jowett. No; Adrienne -is no laughing matter. But she won't die. I can assure you of that now. -She's too much life in her to die. And though I'm very sorry for -her--difficult as you may find it to believe--I shall reserve my pity -for Barney." - -Barney needed all his pity and the sight of him on the following Sunday -evening, as he appeared on his threshold, would have exorcised for -Oldmeadow, if Mrs. Chadwick had not already done so, the memory of the -pale, drowning face. He looked like a dog that has been beaten for a -fault it cannot recognize. There was bewilderment in his eyes and -acceptance, and a watchful humility. To see them there made Oldmeadow -angry. - -Barney had sent a line to say that he was back; but his friend had been -prepared not to see him. Once engulfed in the house of mourning it was -but too likely that he would not emerge for many days. And besides, what -would Barney have to say to him now? But here he was, with his hollow -eyes and faded cheeks, and it was with an echo of his old boyish manner -of dropping in when beset by some perplexity that, without speaking, he -crossed the room and sank on the sofa by the fireplace. But he had not -come to seek counsel or sustainment. Oldmeadow saw that, as, after he -had offered cigarettes, which Barney refused, and lighted his own pipe, -he walked to and fro and watched him while Barney watched the flames. He -had not come with a purpose at all. It was, again, precisely like the -unhappy dog who wanders forth aimlessly, guided merely by a dim yearning -towards warmth and kindliness. Barney had come where he would be -understood. But it was not because he believed himself to be -misunderstood that he came. - -"I went to Coldbrooks, first, you know," he said presently, and with an -effect of irrelevance. "I thought I'd find Mother there. So it was only -on that Thursday night I got back here. None of the wires caught me." - -"I know," said Oldmeadow. "It was most unfortunate. But you couldn't -have got back sooner, could you, once you'd gone on from Paris." - -"Not possibly. I went on from Paris that very night, you see. I caught -the night express to the Riviera. They'd left Cannes as an address, but -when I got there I found they'd moved on to San Remo. It was Tuesday -before I found them. My one idea was to find them as soon as possible, -of course. No; I suppose it couldn't be helped; once I'd gone." - -"And it was quite useless? You'd no chance with Meg at all?" - -"None whatever. Quite useless. Never was such a wild-goose chase. It was -exactly as Adrienne had said." - -"Still it couldn't have been foreseen so securely by anyone but -Adrienne. Many girls would have jumped at the chance." - -"Not if they'd had Adrienne to help them. We might have realized that. -That's what armed Meg. I heard Adrienne in everything she said. Even -Mother thinks Adrienne was right, now, you know, Roger. And it was all -for Mother, wasn't it? that I went. That makes it all so particularly -ironic. Only dear Mummy was never very strong at logic. She takes the -line now that we're narrow-minded conventionalists, you and I, for -thinking that a girl oughtn't to go off with a married man. I can't feel -that, you know, Roger," said Barney in his listless tone. "I can't help -feeling that Meg has done something shameful. You ought to have seen -her! Positively smug! sitting there with that ass of a fellow in that -damned Riviera hotel! I had the horridest feeling, too, that Meg had -brought him rather than he her. I don't mean he doesn't care for her--he -does; I'll say that for him. He's a stupid fellow, but honest; and he -came outside and tried to tell me what he felt and how it would be all -right and that he was going to devote his life to her. But I think he -feels pretty sick, really. While Meg treated me as if I were a silly -little boy. If anyone can carry the thing through, Meg will." - -"It won't prove her right because she carries it through, you know," -Oldmeadow observed. - -"No," said Barney, "but it will make us seem more wrong. Not that you -have any responsibility in it, dear old boy. I did what I felt I must do -and mine was the mistake. It's not only Mother who thinks I've wronged -Adrienne," he went on after a moment, lifting his arms as though he -felt a weight upon them and clasping them behind his head. "Even Nancy, -though she was so sorry for me, made me feel that I'd done something -very dreadful." - -"Nancy? How did you come to see Nancy?" - -"Why, at Coldbrooks. She's still there with Aunt Monica. That was just -it. It was my going there first, seeing her first, that upset her so. -She couldn't understand, till I could explain, how it came about. She -was thinking of Adrienne, you see. And I, knowing nothing, had been -thinking of Mother all the time. It was too late, then, to go back at -once. The next train wasn't for three hours. So I had to stay." - -"And it was Nancy who had to tell you everything?" - -"Yes; Nancy," said Barney, staring at the ceiling. There was a note, -now, of control in his voice and Oldmeadow knew that if he had said no -word of what must be foremost in both their thoughts it was because he -could not trust himself to speak of it. And he went on quickly, taking -refuge from his invading emotion, "Aunt Monica wasn't there. I didn't -even see Johnson. I went right through the house and into the garden and -there was Nancy, planting something in the border. Everything looked so -natural. I just went up to her and said 'Hello, Nancy,' and then, when -she looked up at me, I thought she was going to faint. Poor little -Nancy. I knew something terrible had happened from the way she looked at -me." - -"Poor little Nancy. But I'm glad it was she who told you, Barney." - -"No one could have been sweeter," said Barney, talking on quickly. "She -kept saying, 'Oh, you oughtn't to be here, Barney. You oughtn't to be -here.' But no one could have been sweeter. We sat down on the old bench, -you know, and she told me. That Adrienne had nearly died. That the baby -was dead. I could hardly believe her, at first. I stared at her, I know, -and I kept saying, 'What do you mean, Nancy?--what do you mean?' And she -began to cry and I cried, too. Men do feel, Roger, all the same, even -though they haven't the mother's claim to feel. I thought about our baby -so much. I loved it, too. And now--to think it's dead; and that I never -saw it; and that it's my fault"--his voice had shaken more and more; he -had put his hand before his eyes, and, then, suddenly, he leaned forward -and buried his head on the arm of the sofa. - -"My poor Barney! My dear boy!" Oldmeadow muttered. He came and sat down -beside him; he laid his arm around his shoulders. "It's not your fault," -he said. - -"Oh, don't say that, Roger!" sobbed Barney. "It's no good trying to -comfort me. I've broken her heart. She doesn't say so. She's too angelic -to say it; but she lies there and looks it. My poor darling! My poor, -courageous darling; what she has been through! It can't be helped. I -must face it. I'm her husband. I ought to have understood. She -supplicated me, and I rejected her, and the child is dead." - -"The child's death is a calamity for which no one can be held -responsible unless it is Adrienne herself," said Oldmeadow. While Barney -sobbed he was thinking intently, for this was a turning-point in -Barney's destiny. He would remain in subjugation to Adrienne's -conception of the wrong done her or he must be enabled to regain the -sense of innocence to which he had every right. "She forced the -situation on you. She chose to break rather than bend," he said. "Listen -to me, Barney. I don't speak in any enmity to your wife; but listen to -me and try to think it out. Don't you remember how you once said that -your marriage couldn't be a mistake if you were able to see the defects -as well as the beauty of the woman you love. Don't you remember that you -said she'd have to learn a little from you for the much you'd have to -learn from her. Nothing more reassured me than what you said that night. -And I was reassured the other day by your firmness. It implies no -disloyalty in you to see the defects now. It was power over you she -wanted the other day and to see herself put in the right, before me; and -to see me worsted, before you. You know it, Barney; you know it in your -heart. And she knows it too. There was no failure of love in what you -said. There was only failure of homage. You were right in opposing her. -She was wrong in the issue she made. She was wrong from the first of the -miserable affair in having concealed it from you. If you'd stayed behind -as she wanted you to do, you'd have shown yourself a weakling and she'd -have been further than ever from knowing herself in error. There is the -truth; and the sooner you see it, the sooner she will." - -For some time after his friend had ended, Barney lay silent, his face -still hidden. But his sobs had ceased. And his silence, at last, grew -too long for any disclaimer to be possible to him. He had been brought, -Oldmeadow knew it from the very rhythm of his breathing, to the -passionless contemplation where alone truth is visible. And what he said -at last was: "She'll never see it like that." - -"Oh, yes, she will," said Oldmeadow. And he remembered Nancy's wisdom. -"If you hold to it firmly and tenderly and make her feel you love her -while you make her feel you think her wrong." - -"She'll never see it," Barney repeated, and Oldmeadow now suspected, and -with a deep uneasiness, that Barney might be seeing further than -himself. "She can't." - -"You mean that she's incapable of thinking herself wrong?" - -"Yes, incapable," said Barney. "Because all she's conscious of is the -wish to do right. And she is right so often, she is so good and -beautiful, that it must be like that with her. She can break; but she -can't bend." - -Oldmeadow was silent for a moment and Barney, on the arm of the sofa, -was silent. "Of course," Oldmeadow then said, "the less you say about it -the better. Things will take their place gradually." - -"I've not said anything about it," said Barney. "I've only thought of -comforting and cherishing her. But it's not enough. I'll never say -anything; but she'll know I'm keeping something back. She knows it -already. I see that now. And I didn't know it till you put it to me." - -"She'll have to accept it; or to live with it unaccepted, then. You -can't consider yourself a criminal to give her moral ease." - -"No," said Barney after a pause. "No; I can't do that. Though that's -what Mummy wants me to do. But I can be horribly sorry." - -"Horribly sorry. Let the rest sink into the unspoken. When people love -each other they can, I'm sure, live over any amount of unspoken things." - -"It hasn't been unspoken between you and me, though, has it, Roger?" -said Barney, and he raised himself and got upon his feet as he said it. -"There's the trouble. There's where I _am_ wrong. For she'd feel it an -intolerable wrong if she knew that it hadn't been unspoken between you -and me. And she'd be right. When people love each other such reticences -and exclusions wrong their love." - -"But since you say she knows," Oldmeadow suggested after another moment. - -Barney stood staring out of the twilight window. - -"She doesn't know that I tell you," he said. - -"You've told me nothing," said Oldmeadow. - -"Well, she doesn't know what I listen to, then," said Barney. - -Oldmeadow was again conscious of the deep uneasiness. "It's quite true -I've no call to meddle in your affairs," he said. "The essential thing -is that you love each other. Let rights and wrongs go hang." - -"You haven't meddled, Roger." Barney moved towards the door. "You've -been in my affairs, and haven't been allowed to keep out. Yes. We love -each other. But rights and wrongs never go hang with Adrienne." - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - - -Oldmeadow did not see Barney again for some months. He met Eleanor -Chadwick towards the end of April, in the park, he on his way to Mrs. -Aldesey's, she, apparently, satisfying her country appetite for -exercise, since she seemed to be walking fast and at random. He almost -thought for a moment that she was going to pretend not to see him and -hurry down a path that led away from his; but his resolute eye perhaps -checked the impulse. She faltered and then came forward, holding out her -hand and looking rather wildly about her, and she said that London was -really suffocating, wasn't it? - -"You've been here for so long, haven't you," said Oldmeadow. "Or have -you been here all this time? I've had no news of any of you, you see." - -"It's all been such a troubled, busy time, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick. -"Yes, I've been here ever since. But, thank goodness, the doctors say -she may be moved now, and she and I and Barney are going down to -Devonshire next week. To Torquay. Such a dismal place, I think; but -perhaps that's because so many of my relations have died there. I never -have liked that red Devonshire soil. But the primroses will be out. That -makes up a little." - -"I'm glad that Mrs. Barney is better. When will you all be back at -Coldbrooks?" - -"In June, I hope. Yes; she is better. But so feeble, still; so frail. -And quite, quite changed from her old bright self. It's all very -depressing, Roger. Very depressing and wearing," said Mrs. Chadwick, -opening her eyes very wide and staring before her in a way -characteristic of her when she repressed tears. "Sometimes I hardly know -how to keep up at all. For nothing cheers her. And Barney isn't really -much help. He has very little power of fighting against depression." - -"You've all been too much shut up with each other, I'm afraid." - -Mrs. Chadwick still held her eyes widely opened. "I don't think it's -that, Roger. Being alone wouldn't have helped us to be happier, after -what's happened." - -"Being with other people might. You must get back to Coldbrooks as soon -as possible and see Nancy and Mrs. Averil and your neighbours. That will -help to change the current of your thoughts." - -"People don't forget so easily as that, Roger," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, -and it was now with severity, as though she suspected him of triviality. -"When something terrible has happened to people they are _in_ the -current and Nancy and the neighbours are not going to change it. Poor -Nancy; she feels it all as much as we do, I'm sure." - -And that Mrs. Chadwick thought of him as unfeeling he saw. She thought -of him, too, with Barney, as criminal; as responsible for the -catastrophe. The old phrase of presage floated back into his mind: -"She'll spoil things." She had spoiled, for ever perhaps, this deepest, -dearest relation of his life. What was Coldbrooks to become to him with -Adrienne Toner in possession? He said, and he was unable to keep a -certain dryness that must sound like lightness, from his voice: "You are -in it but you needn't keep your heads under it, you know. That's what -people tend to do when they shut themselves up with their misfortunes. -You and Barney and Mrs. Barney, I suspect, are engaged in drowning each -other. If one of you puts their head up the others pull it down." - -"I suppose you mean Adrienne does," said Mrs. Chadwick. He had not meant -it at all; but now he felt sure that so, exactly, did it happen. Poor -Mrs. Chadwick left to herself would have drifted to the shore by this -time and Barney, at all events, would be swimming with his head up; it -was Adrienne, of course, that kept them suffocating under the surface. -"Well, I think it a pity you three should go off to Torquay alone," he -evaded. "What's happening to the farm all this time?" - -"Nancy is seeing to it for Barney," said Mrs. Chadwick. "She understands -those things so well. Barney would not dream of letting the farm come -between him and Adrienne at a time like this. He wants to be with her of -course." - -"Of course. All I mean is that I wish he could be with her at -Coldbrooks. I suppose the doctor knows what's best, however." - -"I'm glad to hear you own that anybody can know what's best, Roger, -except yourself," said Mrs. Chadwick with her singularly unprovocative -severity. "Of course she must go to the sea and of course Barney and I -must be with her. She has two excellent nurses; but I would never trust -the best nurse for certain things. I remember so well when I was ill -myself once and saw the nurse behind a screen, eating raspberry jam out -of the pot with her finger. You can't trust anybody, really." And that -was all he got out of Eleanor Chadwick. Adrienne had spoiled things. - -It was in June that he heard from Mrs. Averil that she and Nancy were in -London for a few days staying with an old aunt in Eccleston Square. Mrs. -Averil asked him to come to tea and he asked her and Nancy to do a play -with him; but before these meetings took place he saw them both. It was -at a Queen's Hall concert on Sunday afternoon that Mrs. Aldesey called -his attention to his friends and, to his surprise, Oldmeadow saw that -Barney was with them. They sat across the gangway at some little -distance and his first impression of the three was that they were not -happy. - -"Did you know he was in town?" asked Mrs. Aldesey. "How ill he looks. I -suppose he was frightfully upset about the baby, poor fellow." - -Mrs. Aldesey knew nothing of the catastrophes that had followed the -baby's death. He had instinctively avoided any reference to the latest -progress of the Juggernaut. - -"She's much better now, you know," he said, and he wasn't aware that he -was exonerating Barney. "And they're all back at Coldbrooks." - -"She's not at Coldbrooks," said Mrs. Aldesey. "She's well enough to pay -visits and Lady Lumley told me she was coming down to them for this -week-end. I wonder he hasn't gone with her." - -Oldmeadow was wondering too. There was something about Barney's attitude -as he sat there beside his cousin, silent and absent-minded it seemed, -listening as little to the music as he looked little at her, that he -would rather Lydia Aldesey had not been there to observe. They had a -curiously marital appearance, the young couple, or, rather, Barney had; -the air of being safe with some one with whom no explanations were -needed and for whom no appearances must be kept up; some one, even, with -whom he was so identified that he was hardly conscious of her. Nancy was -not so unconscious. Once, when Barney leaned over to look at the -programme, she drew away a little; and Oldmeadow even fancied a slight -constraint in her glance when, now and then, he spoke to her. Had -Adrienne spoiled things there, too? Mrs. Averil next day, in Eccleston -Square, enlightened him as to Barney's presence. "It's been most -unfortunate. He had planned to come up to this concert for a long time. -He wanted Nancy to hear the César Franck with him. And then it appeared -that Adrienne had made an engagement for them with the Lumleys. He -refused to go, I'm afraid, and she made an issue of it and, from what -poor Eleanor told me, there was rather a row. So Adrienne has gone off -alone and Barney is here till this evening. He's gone out now with Nancy -to show her some pictures by a friend of his. It had all been arranged. -So what were we to do about it, Roger?" - -"Do about it? Why just what you have done. Why shouldn't she go with -him?" - -"Why indeed? Except that Adrienne has made the issue. It's awkward, of -course, when you know there's been a row, to go on as if nothing had -happened." - -Oldmeadow meditated. His friend's little face had been pinched by the -family's distress when he had last seen it; it was clouded now by a -closer, a more personal perplexity. "I suppose she made the issue on -purpose so that Barney shouldn't come up," he said at length. - -"I really don't know. Perhaps it had been arranged first with the -Lumleys. If it was to keep him from coming, that didn't come out. She -wouldn't let it come out; not into the open; of course." - -"So things are going very badly. I'd imagined, with all Barney's -contrition, that they might have worked out well." - -"They've worked out as badly, I'm afraid, as they could. He was full of -contrition. He was as devoted as possible, when they came back in May. -But nothing altered her unflagging melancholy. And I suppose what -happened was that he got tired. Barney was always like that, from the -time he was in the nursery. He'd go on being patient and good-tempered -until, suddenly, everything would break down and he would sulk for days. -It's when he's pushed too far. And she has pushed him too far. She's set -them all against him." - -"Who is them?" Oldmeadow asked. "I saw, when we met in London, that Mrs. -Chadwick actually had been brought to look upon Barney as a sort of -miscreant and Adrienne as a martyr. Who else is there?" - -"Well, no one else except Palgrave and Barbara. Palgrave can be very -exasperating, as you know, and he takes the attitude now that Barney has -done Adrienne an irreparable injury. As you may imagine it isn't a -pleasant life Barney leads among them all." - -"I see," said Oldmeadow. "I think I see it all. What happens now is that -Barney more and more takes refuge with you and Nancy, and Adrienne more -and more can't bear it." - -"That is precisely it, Roger," said Mrs. Averil. "And what are we to do? -How can I shut my door against Barney? Yet it is troubling me more than -I can say. We are forced to seem on his side and against her. And -Adrienne has her eye upon them." - -"Let her keep it on them," said Oldmeadow in strong indignation. "And -much good may it do her!" - -"Oh, it won't do her any good--nor us!" said Mrs. Averil. "She's sick -with jealousy, Roger. Sick. I'm almost sorry for her when I see it and -see her trying to hide it, and see it always, coming in by the back door -when she shuts the front door on it--as it always does, you know. And -Nancy sees it, of course; and is quite as sick as she is; and Barney, of -course, remains as blind as a bat." - -"Well, as long as he remains blind--" - -"Yes. As long as he does. But Adrienne will make him see. She'll pick -and pull at their friendship until Nancy will be forced into drawing -back, and if she draws back Barney will see. What it's already come to -is that she has to stand still, and smile, while Adrienne scratches her, -lest Barney should see she's scratched; and once or twice of late I've -had a suspicion that he has seen. It doesn't endear Nancy to Adrienne -that Barney should scowl at her when he's caught her scratching." - -"What kind of scratches?" Oldmeadow asked, but Mrs. Averil had only time -to say, "Oh, all kinds; she's wonderful at scratches," when the -door-bell rang and Nancy, a moment after, came in. - -Nancy, if anything so fresh and neat could be so called, was looking -rather dowdy, and he suspected that some self-effacing motive lay behind -her choice of clothes. - -"Oh, Roger, Barney was so sorry to have to miss you," she said. And, at -all events, whatever else Adrienne had spoiled, she had not spoiled -Nancy's loving smile for him. "He had to catch the 4.45 to Coldbrooks, -you know. There's a prize heifer arriving this evening and he must be -there to welcome it. You must see his herd of Holsteins, Roger." -Friesians were, at that date, still Holsteins. - -"I'd like to," said Oldmeadow. "But I don't know when I shall, for, to -tell you the truth, I've not been asked to Coldbrooks this summer. The -first time since I've known them." - -Nancy looked at him in silence. - -"You'll come to us, of course," said Mrs. Averil. - -"Do you really think I'd better, all things considered?" Oldmeadow -asked. - -"Why, of course you'd better. What possible reasons could there be for -your not coming, except ones we don't accept?" - -"It won't seem to range us too much in a hostile camp?" - -"Not more than we're ranged already. Nancy and I are not going to give -you up, my dear Roger, because Adrienne considers herself a martyr." - -"I hope not, indeed. But it makes my exclusion from Coldbrooks more -marked, perhaps, if I go to you. I imagine, though I am so much in her -black books, that poor Mrs. Chadwick doesn't want my exclusion to be -marked." - -"You're quite right there. You are in her black books; but she doesn't -want it marked; she'd like to have you, really, if Adrienne weren't -there and if she didn't feel shy. And I really think it will make it -easier for her if you come to us instead. It will tide it over a -little. She'll be almost able to feel you are with them. After all, you -do come to us, often." - -"And I'll go up with you to Coldbrooks as if nothing had happened? I -confess I have a curiosity to see how Mrs. Barney takes me." - -"She's very good at taking things, you know," said Nancy. - -Mrs. Averil cast a glance upon him. "It may be really something of a -relief to their minds, Roger," she said, "if you turn up as if nothing -had happened. They are in need of distractions. They are all dreadfully -on edge, though they won't own to it, about Meg. The case is coming on -quite soon now. Mrs. Hayward has lost no time, and poor Eleanor only -keeps up because Adrienne is there to hold her up." - -"Where is Meg? Do they hear from her?" - -"They hear from her constantly. She's still on the Continent. She writes -very easily and confidently. I can't help imagining, all the same, that -Adrienne is holding her up, too. She's written to Nancy and Nancy hasn't -shown me her letters." - -"There is nothing to hide, Mother," said Nancy, and Oldmeadow had never -seen her look so dejected. "Nothing at all, except that she's not as -easy and confident as she wants to appear. Adrienne does hold her up. -Poor Meg." - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - - -The picture of Adrienne holding them up was spread before Oldmeadow's -eyes on the hot July day when Mrs. Averil drove him up from the Little -House to Coldbrooks. The shade of the great lime-tree on the lawn was -like a canvas, only old Johnson, as he moved to and fro with tea-table, -silver and strawberries, stepping from its cool green atmosphere into -the framing sunshine. The Chadwick family, seated or lying in the shade, -were all nearly as still as in a picture, and Adrienne was its centre. -She sat in a high-backed wicker chair, her hands lying listlessly in her -lap, a scarf about her shoulders, and in her black-veiled white, her -wide, transparent hat, she was like a clouded moon. There was something -even of daring, to Oldmeadow's imagination, in their approach across the -sunny spaces. Her eyes had so rested upon them from the moment that they -had driven up, that they might have been bold wayfarers challenging the -magic of a Circe in her web. Palgrave, in his white flannels, lay -stretched at her feet, and he had been reading aloud to her; Barbara and -Mrs. Chadwick sat listening while they worked on either hand. Only -Barney was removed, sitting at some little distance, his back half -turned, a pipe between his teeth and his eyes on a magazine that lay -upon his knee. But the influence, the magic, was upon him too. He was -consciously removed. - -Mrs. Chadwick sprang up to greet them. "This is nice!" she cried, and -her knitting trailed behind her as she came so that Barbara, laughing, -stooped to catch and pick it up as she followed her; "I was expecting -you! How nice and dear of you! On this hot day! I always think the very -fishes must feel warm on a day like this! Or could they, do you -think?--Dear Roger!" There was an evident altering in Mrs. Chadwick's -manner towards him since the meeting in the Park. She was, with all her -fluster, manifestly glad to see him. - -Palgrave had hoisted himself to his feet and now stood beside Adrienne, -eyeing them as a faithful hound eyes suspicious visitors. - -"Isn't it lovely in the shade," Mrs. Chadwick continued, drawing them -into it. "Adrienne darling, Aunt Monica after all. And we were afraid -the heat might keep you away. I suppose the hill was very hot, Monica?" -Adrienne was still, apparently, something of an invalid, for she did not -rise to greet them. Neither did she speak as she held out her hand to -each of them in turn, and while an enveloping smile dwelt fondly on Mrs. -Averil, she made no attempt to smile at Oldmeadow. - -He found himself observing her with a sort of wonder. All the flaws and -deformities of her maternity had fallen from her and she had the -appearance almost of beauty. Yet he had never so little liked her face. -Her dimly patterned features made him think of a Chinese picture he had -once seen where, on a moth-wing background, pale chrysanthemums, -mauvy-pink, a disk of carved jade with cord and tassel and a narrow -ivory box softly spotted with darkness, conveyed in their seeming -triviality an impression almost sinister of impersonality and magic. -There was as little feeling in her face. It was like a mask. - -"Where's Nancy?" Barney asked. He had got up and joined them, giving -Oldmeadow's hand, as they met, a curiously lifeless shake. - -"She had letters to write," said Mrs. Averil. - -"Why, I thought we'd arranged she was to come up and walk round the farm -after tea with me," said Barney and as he spoke Oldmeadow noted that -Adrienne turned her head slowly, somewhat as she had done on the ominous -morning in March, and rested her eyes upon him. - -"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Averil cheerfully. "She must have -misunderstood. She had these letters to finish for the post." - -Barbara was reconnoitring at the tea-table. "Strawberries!" she -announced. "Who said they'd be over? Oh, what a shame of Nancy not to -come! Roger, why aren't you staying here rather than with Aunt Monica, -I'd like to know? Aren't we grand enough for you since she's had that -bathroom put in!" Barbara had advanced to a lively flapperdom. - -"You see, by this plan, I get the bath with her and get you when she -brings me up," Oldmeadow retorted. - -"And leave Nancy behind! I call it a shame when we're having the last -strawberries--and you may have a bathroom with Aunt Monica, but her -strawberries are over. Letters! Who ever heard of Nancy writing -letters--except to you, Barney. She was always writing to you when you -were living in London--before you married. And what screeds you used to -send her--all about art!" said Barbara, and that her liveliness cast a -spell of silence was apparent to everyone but herself. - -Mrs. Chadwick took Oldmeadow's arm and drew him aside. "You'll be able -to come later and be quite with us, won't you, Roger?" she said -"September is really a lovelier month, don't you think? Adrienne is -going to take Palgrave and Barbara for a motor-trip in September. Won't -it be lovely for them?" Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a swiftness that did -not veil a sense of insecurity. "Barbara's never seen the Alps. They are -going to the Tyrol." - -"If we don't have a European war by then," Oldmeadow suggested. "What is -Barney going to do?" - -"Oh, Barney is going to the Barclay's in Scotland, to shoot. He loves -that. A war, Roger? What do you mean? All those tiresome Serbians? Why, -they won't go into the Tyrol, will they?" - -"Perhaps not the Tyrol; but they may make it difficult for other people -to go there." - -"Do you hear what Roger is saying?" Mrs. Chadwick turned to her family. -"That the Serbians may make war by September and that it might interfere -with the trip. But I'm sure Sir Edward will quiet them. He always does. -Though he is a Liberal, I've always felt him to be such a good man," -said Mrs. Chadwick, "and really patriotic. Simply sitting round a table -with him cools their heads more than one would believe possible. -Dreadfully violent people, I believe, killing their kings and queens and -throwing them out of the window. I always think there's nothing in the -world for controlling people's tempers like getting them to sit together -round a table. I wonder why it is. Something to do with having your legs -out of the way, perhaps. People don't look nearly so threatening if -their legs are hidden, do they? My poor cousin, Fanny Jocelyn, used -always to say that if any of the clergymen in Fred's diocese got very -troublesome her one recipe was to ask them to lunch, or, if they were -very bad, to dinner. But she had wonderful tact--that gift, you know, -for seeming to care simply _immensely_ for the person she was talking -to. Francis used to tell her that when she looked at you as if you were -the only person in the world she loved she was really working out her -next menu." - -"I'm afraid if war comes it won't be restricted to people, like Serbians -and clergymen, who can be quieted by being asked to dinner," said -Oldmeadow laughing. "We'll be fighting, too." - -"And who will we fight?" Palgrave inquired. After passing tea, he had -resumed his place at Adrienne's feet. "Who has been getting in our way -now?" - -"Don't you read the papers?" Oldmeadow asked him. - -"Not when I can avoid it," said Palgrave. "They'll be bellowing out the -same old Jingo stuff on the slightest provocation, of course. As far as -I can make out the Serbians are the most awful brutes and Russia is -egging them on. But when it comes to a crime against humanity like war, -every one is responsible." - -"Are you ready for strawberries, Aunt Monica," Barbara interposed. "If -there is a war, I hope we may be in it so that I can do some of my first -aid on real people at last." - -She was carrying strawberries now to Adrienne who, as she leaned down, -took her gently by the wrist, and said some low-toned words to her. "I -know, my angel. Horrid of me!" said Barbara. "But one can't take war -seriously, can one!" - -"I can," said Mrs. Averil. "Too many of my friends had their sons and -husbands killed in South Africa." - -"And it's human nature," said Mrs. Chadwick, eating her strawberries -mournfully. "Like the poor: whom you have always with you, you know." - -"Human nature is altered already a good deal more than governments -imagine," said Palgrave, "and they'll find themselves pretty well dished -if they try to bring on a capitalist war now. The workers all over the -world are beginning to see whose the hands are that pull the strings and -they'll refuse to dance to their piping. They'll down weapons just as -they've learned, at last, to down tools; and without them you can do -nothing. That's the way human nature will end war." - -"A spirited plan, no doubt," said Oldmeadow, "and effective if all the -workers came to be of the same mind simultaneously. But if those of one -country downed weapons and those of another didn't, the first would get -their throats cut for their pains." - -"It's easy to sneer," Palgrave retorted. "As a matter of principle, I'd -rather have my throat cut by a hired ruffian than kill an innocent -man--even if he did belong to a nation that happened to be cleverer and -more efficient than my own. That's a crime, of course, that we can't -forgive." - -"Don't talk such rot, Palgrave," Barney now remarked in a tone of -apathetic disgust. - -"I beg your pardon," Palgrave sat up instantly, flushing all over his -face. "I think it's truth and sanity." - -"It's not truth and sanity. It's rot and stupid rot," said Barney. "Some -more tea, please, Barbara." - -"Calling names isn't argument," said Palgrave. "I could call names, too, -if it came to that. It's calling names that is stupid. I merely happen -to believe in what Christ said." - -"Oh, but, dear--Christ drove the money-lenders out of the Temple very, -very roughly," Mrs. Chadwick interposed with the head-long irrelevance -characteristic of her in such crises. "Thongs must hurt so much, mustn't -they? He surely believed in punishing people who did wrong." - -"Which nation doesn't do wrong, Mummy? Which nation is a Christ with a -right to punish another? It's farcical. And punishing isn't killing. -Christ didn't kill malefactors." - -"The Gadarene swine," Mrs. Chadwick murmured. "They were killed. So -painfully, too, poor things. I never could understand about that. I hope -the Higher Criticism will manage to get rid of it, for it doesn't really -seem kind. They had done no wrong at all and I've always been specially -fond of pigs myself." - -"Ah, but you never saw a pig with a devil in it," Oldmeadow suggested, -to which Mrs. Chadwick murmured, "I'm sure they seem to have devils in -them, sometimes, poor dears, when they won't let themselves be caught. -Do get some more cream, Barbara. It's really too hot for arguments, -isn't it," and Mrs. Chadwick sighed with the relief of having rounded -that dangerous corner. - -Barbara went away with the cream-jug and Johnson emerged bearing the -afternoon post. - -"Ah. Letters. Good." Palgrave sat up to take his and Adrienne's share. -"One for you, Adrienne; from Meg. Now we shall see what she says about -meeting us in the Tyrol." His cheeks were still flushed and his eyes -brilliant with anger. Though his words were for Adrienne his voice was -for Barney, at whom he did not glance. - -Adrienne unfolded the foreign sheets, and held them so that Palgrave, -leaning against her knee, could read with her. - -Mrs. Chadwick had grown crimson. She looked at Oldmeadow. "Dear Meg is -having such an interesting time," she told him. "She and Eric are seeing -all manner of delightful places and picking up some lovely bits of old -furniture." Oldmeadow bowed assent. He had his eyes on Adrienne and he -was wondering about Barbara. - -"What news is there, dear?" Mrs. Chadwick continued in the same badly -controlled voice. Palgrave's face had clouded. - -"I'm afraid it may be bad news, Mother Nell," said Adrienne looking up. - -It was the first time Oldmeadow had heard her voice that afternoon and -he could hardly have believed it the voice that had once reminded him of -a blue ribbon. It was still slow, still deliberate and soft; but it had -now the steely thrust and intention of a dagger. - -"It's this accursed war talk!" Palgrave exclaimed. "Eric evidently -thinks it serious and he has to come home at once. What rotten luck." - -Adrienne handed the sheets to Mrs. Chadwick. "It will all have blown -over by September," she said. "As Mother Nell says, we can trust Sir -Edward to keep us out of anything so wicked as a war. I am so completely -with you in all you say about the wickedness of war, Paladin, although I -do not see its causes quite so simply, perhaps." - -It was the first time that Oldmeadow had heard the new name for her -knight. - -"For my part," said Barney, casting a glance at the house, Barbara not -having yet reappeared, "I shall be grateful to the war if it dishes your -trip to the Tyrol. It's most unsuitable for Barbara." - -He did not look at his wife as he spoke. His hat brim pulled down over -his eyes, he sat with folded arms and stared in front of him. - -"You find it unsuitable for one sister to meet another?" Adrienne -inquired. Her eyes were on Barney, but Oldmeadow could not interpret -their gaze. - -"Most unsuitable, to use no stronger word," said Barney, "while one -sister is living with a man whose name she doesn't bear." - -"You mean to say," said Palgrave, sitting cross-legged at Adrienne's -feet and grasping his ankles with both hands, "that Meg, until she's -legally married, isn't fit for her little sister to associate with?" - -"Just what I do mean, Palgrave. Precisely what I do mean," said Barney, -and his face, reddening, took on its rare but characteristic expression -of sullen anger. "And I'll thank you--in my house, after all--to keep -out of an argument that doesn't concern you." - -"Barney; Palgrave," murmured Mrs. Chadwick supplicatingly. Adrienne, -not moving her eyes from her husband's face, laid her hand on Palgrave's -shoulder. - -"It does concern me," said Palgrave, and he put up his hand and grasped -Adrienne's. "Barbara's well-being concerns me as much as it does you; -and your wife's happiness concerns me a good deal more. I can promise -you that I wouldn't trouble your hospitality for another day if it -weren't for her--and Mother. It's perfectly open to you, of course, to -turn me out of my home whenever you like to make use of your legal -privilege. But until I'm turned out I stay--for their sakes." - -"You young ass! You unmitigated young ass!" Barney snarled, springing to -his feet. "All right, Mother. Don't bother. I'll leave you to your -protector for the present. I only wish he were young enough to be given -what he needs--a thorough good hiding. I'll go down and see Nancy. Don't -expect me back to dinner." - -"Nancy is busy, my dear," poor Mrs. Averil, deeply flushing, interposed, -while Palgrave, under his breath, yet audibly, murmured: "Truly -Kiplingesque! Home and Hidings! Our Colonial history summed up!" - -"She would be here if she weren't busy," said Mrs. Averil. - -"I won't bother her," said Barney. "I'll sit in the garden and read. -It's more peaceful than being here." - -"Please tell dear Nancy that it's ten days at least since _I've_ seen -her," said Adrienne, "and that I miss her and beg that she'll give me, -sometime, a few of her spare moments." - -At that Barney stopped short, and looked at his wife. "No, Adrienne, I -won't," he said with a startling directness. "I'll take no messages -whatever from you to Nancy. Let Nancy alone--do you see? That's all I've -got to ask of you. Let her alone. She and Aunt Monica are the only -people you haven't set against me and I don't intend to quarrel with -Nancy to please you, I promise you." - -Sitting motionless and upright, her hand laid on Palgrave's shoulder, -her face as unalterable as a little mask, Adrienne received these -well-aimed darts as a Saint Sebastian might have received the arrows. -Barney stared hard at her for a moment, then turned his back and marched -out into the sunlight and Oldmeadow, as he saw him go, felt that he -witnessed the end, as he had, little more than a year ago, witnessed the -beginning, of an epoch. What was there left to build on after such a -scene? And what must have passed between husband and wife during their -hours of intimacy to make it credible? Barney was not a brute. - -When Barney had turned through the entrance gates and -disappeared--Adrienne's eyes dropped to Palgrave's. "I think I'll go in, -Paladin," she said, and it was either with faintness or with the mere -stillness of her rage. "I think I'll lie down for a little while." - -Palgrave had leaped to his feet and, as she rose, drew her hand within -his arm, and Mrs. Chadwick, her eyes staring wide, hastened to her: but -Adrienne gently put her away. "No, no, dearest Mother Nell. Paladin will -help me. You must stay with Aunt Monica and Mr. Oldmeadow." Her hand -rested for a moment on Mrs. Chadwick's shoulder and she looked into her -eyes. "I'm so sorry, Mother Nell. I meant no harm." - -"Oh, my darling child! As if I did not know that!" Mrs. Chadwick moaned -and, as Adrienne moved away, she turned as if half distraught to her two -friends. "Oh, it's dreadful! dreadful!" she nearly wept. "Oh, how can he -treat her so--before you all! It's breaking my heart!" - -Barbara came running out with the cream. "Great Scott!" she exclaimed, -stopping short. "What's become of everybody?" - -"They've all gone, dear. Yes, we've all finished. No one wants any more -strawberries. Take yours away, will you, dear, we want to have a little -talk, Aunt Monica, Roger and I." - -"I suppose it's Barney again," said Barbara, standing still and gazing -indignantly around her. "Where's Adrienne?" - -"She has gone to lie down, dear. Yes. Barney has been very unkind." - -"About my trip, I suppose? He's been too odious about my trip and it's -only the other day he made Adrienne cry. What possible business is it of -Barney's, I'd like to know? One would think he imagined that wives and -sisters were a sort of chattel. Why mayn't I stay, Mother--if you're -going to talk about my trip? Adrienne has explained everything to me and -I think Meg was quite right and I'd do the same myself if I were in her -place. So I'm perfectly able to understand." - -"I know, dear; I know; Adrienne is so wonderful. But don't say things -like that, I beg of you, for it makes me very, very unhappy. And please -run away for a little while, for we have other things to talk of. I'm -afraid there may be no trip at all, Barbara; Meg may be coming home at -once. The letters had news about it, and Eric has to go to the war--if -there is a war, you see." Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a supplicatory note -very unlike her usual placid if complaining authority. - -"But I'd like to hear about the letters, then. Do we really have to give -up the trip? I'm sure it's Barney at the bottom of it. He's been trying -to dish it from the first and I simply won't stand it from him." - -"It's not Barney at all, Barbara. You shall hear all that there is to -hear. And you mustn't, really, forget that Barney is your elder brother -and has some right to say what you should do--even though we mayn't -agree with him." - -"No, he hasn't. Not an atom," Barbara declared. "If anyone has any -right, except you, it's Adrienne, because she's a bigger, wiser person -than any of us." - -"And since you've borne your testimony, Barbara," Oldmeadow suggested, -"you might obey your mother and give us the benefit of your experience -on an occasion when it's invited." - -"Oh, I know you're against Adrienne, Roger," said Barbara, but with a -sulkiness that showed surrender. "I shan't force myself on you, I assure -you, and girls of fifteen aren't quite the infants in arms you may -imagine. If Adrienne weren't here to stand up for me I don't know where -I'd be. Because, you know, you _are_ weak, Mother. Yes you are. You've -been really wobbling like anything about my trip and trying to wriggle -out of it whenever you had a loop-hole, and Adrienne thinks you're weak, -I know, for she told me so, and said we must help you to be brave and -strong and that you belonged to a generation that had its eyes tightly -bandaged from birth. So there!" And delivering this effective shot, -Barbara marched away, not forgetting to pick up her plate of -strawberries as she passed the table. - -Mrs. Chadwick attempted to conceal her confusion by following her -child's retreating figure with grave disapprobation and Oldmeadow seized -the propitious moment to remark: "I can't help feeling that there's -something to be said for Barney, all the same. His wife _has_ set you -all against him, hasn't she? I suspect Barbara's right, too, my dear -friend, and that in your heart of hearts you dislike this trip of hers -as much as he does. Certainly Barbara isn't a very pleasing example of -Adrienne's influence." - -"She is very naughty, very naughty and rebellious," poor Mrs. Chadwick -murmured, twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. "I know I've not a -strong character, but I never spoiled my children and dear Adrienne -does, I feel, spoil Barbara by taking her so seriously and talking to -her as if she were grown up, you know. I had an aunt who married at -sixteen; but it didn't turn out at all happily. They quarrelled -constantly and she had two sets of twins, poor thing--almost like a -judgment, dear Mamma used to say. But of course Barbara is really too -young to understand; and so I've told dear Adrienne. Not that she isn't -perfectly frank about it. She's told me over and over again that -weakness was my besetting danger and that I must stand up straight and -let the winds of freedom blow away my cobwebs. So dear and original, -always, you know. And of course I see her point of view and Barbara -will, no doubt, be a bigger, finer person"--Mrs. Chadwick's voice -trailed off in its echo. "But I don't agree with you, Roger; I don't -agree with you at all!" she took up with sudden vehemence, "about the -trip. I don't agree that my poor Meg is a leper to be avoided until a -legal ceremony has been performed. I think that a cruel -convention--cruel, base and cowardly. She must have suffered so much -already. Nothing will give her so much courage as for us to be seen -standing by her. Adrienne has explained all that most beautifully to -Barbara. And how true love is the most sacred thing in life." - -"My dear friend, Meg isn't a leper, of course, and we all intend to -stand by her. But it is certainly best that a young girl like Barbara -shouldn't be asked to meet, or understand, or exonerate such difficult -situations." - -"That's what I've tried to say to Eleanor," Mrs. Averil murmured. - -"And why not, Roger! Why not!" Mrs. Chadwick cried, surprisingly yet not -convincingly aroused. "Nothing develops the character so much as facing -and understanding difficulty. And as for exoneration--I don't agree with -you, and Adrienne doesn't agree. You and Monica are conventionalists and -we must live on a higher plane than convention. I'm sure I try to, -though it's very hard sometimes, but the noblest things are hardest. -There is nothing to exonerate. Meg was following her own light in doing -what she did." - -"It's not a question of Meg, but of her situation," Oldmeadow returned. - -"And because of her situation, because she is so in need of help and -loyalty, you ask that Barbara should draw back her skirts from her! Oh! -I knew it!" cried Mrs. Chadwick, "I knew that you would feel like that! -That is why I felt it would be happier if you were not here with -Adrienne." - -"You need hardly tell me that," said Oldmeadow smiling. "But it's not a -question of convention, except in so far as convention means right -feeling and good taste. Meg, whatever her lights--and personally I don't -believe that she followed them--has done something that involves pain -and humiliation for all concerned with her, and whether she was or was -not justified in doing it is a moral problem that a child shouldn't be -asked to meet. Such problems should be kept from her until she is old -enough to understand them." - -Mrs. Chadwick's vehemence had only fictitiously sustained her. It -dropped from her now and for a little while she sat silent, and the -confusion of her heart was piteously revealed to her friend as she said -at last, "If there _is_ a war, it will all settle itself, won't it, for -then Barbara couldn't go. I don't try to wriggle out of it. That's most -unfair and untrue. I've promised Adrienne and I agree with Adrienne -about it. I can't explain it clearly, as she does; it's all quite, quite -different when Adrienne explains it. She seems to hold me up and you and -Monica pull me down--oh, yes, you do, Roger. Of course it would kill -me--I know that I should die, if Barbara were to do what Meg has done; -you mustn't think Adrienne _wants_ her to behave like that, you know. -Adrienne only wants people to be brave and follow their light; but your -light needn't be a married man, need it? And sometimes I think it isn't -_really_ so serious--falling in love, you know. I'm sure I thought _I_ -was in love half a dozen times before Francis proposed. It's a question -of seeing what's best for you all round, isn't it, and it can't be best -if it's a married man, can it? Oh! I know I'm saying what Adrienne -wouldn't like, now; because it sounds so worldly and as if I believed in -the French way. But I don't at all. I think love's everything, too. Only -it always seemed to me when I was a girl that love meant white satin and -orange-blossoms; and my poor, poor Meg can never wear those now. I -should feel miserable, quite miserable about her, of course, if Adrienne -weren't here to make me see the big, real things instead of the little -ones. And Barney has been so unkind. Sneering and scoffing at -everything"--her voice quivered. "However, if there's a war, that will -settle it. Barbara couldn't go if there was a war." - - - - -CHAPTER XX - - -The war thus had its uses to Mrs. Chadwick. Barbara did not go to the -Tyrol. By the end of September Oldmeadow and Barney were in training, -one on the Berkshire and one on the Wiltshire downs, and Meg was -ambiguously restored to her family at Coldbrooks. - -Oldmeadow had not seen Barney for many days, when they met one afternoon -at Paddington and travelled together as far as Didcot. They had the -carriage to themselves and though Barney's demeanour was reticent there -were many things about which, it was evident, he found it a relief to be -communicative. It was from him that Oldmeadow learned of Meg's return. - -"She'll be in a pretty box, won't she, if Hayward is killed," he said, -smoking his cigarette and not looking at his friend. "He's over there, -you know, and for my part I think there's very little chance of any of -them coming back alive." - -They both smoked in silence for a little while after this, contemplating -the ordeal in which their country was involved rather than their own -relation to it; but Oldmeadow's mind returned presently to Barney's -difficulties and he asked him if it had been to see Hayward off that -he'd just been up to London. - -Barney, at this, had a quiet sardonic laugh. "Good heavens, no," he -said. "Hayward went in the first week and Adrienne and Palgrave went up -with Meg to see him off. Even if I'd wanted to, I'd have been allowed to -have no hand in that. Adrienne is seeing to it all. Lawyers, money, I -don't know what. No; I went up to spend my leave with old Boyd at his -place in Chelsea. I didn't want to go home. Home is the last place I -want to be just now." - -Oldmeadow at this maintained a silence that could not pretend surprise -and Barney continued in a moment. "Palgrave isn't coming in, you know." - -"You mean he's carrying out his pacifist ideas?" - -"If they are his," said Barney in his colourless yet sardonic voice. -"Any ideas of Palgrave's are likely to be Adrienne's, you know. She got -hold of him from the first." - -"Well, after all," Oldmeadow after another moment felt impelled to say, -"She got hold of you, too. In the same way; by believing in herself and -by understanding you. She thinks she's right." - -"Ha! ha!" laughed Barney and for a moment, an acutely uncomfortable one -for Oldmeadow, he turned his eyes on his friend. "Thinks she's right! -You needn't tell me that, Roger!" - -It had indeed, Oldmeadow felt, hardly been decent of him. - -"I know. Of course she would. But, all the same, people must be allowed -to hold their own opinions." - -"Must they?" said Barney. "At a time like this? Adrienne must, of -course; as a woman she doesn't come into it; she brings other people in, -that is to say, and keeps out herself. Besides she's an American. But -Palgrave shouldn't be allowed the choice. He's dishonouring us all--as -Meg has done. Poor, foolish, wretched Mother! She's seeing it at last, -though she won't allow herself to say it, or, rather, Adrienne won't -allow her--" He checked himself. - -"Dishonour is a strong word, Barney. Palgrave is hardly more than a -boy." - -"Jim Errington is a year younger than Palgrave, and Peter Layard six -months. They're both in. I don't think nineteen is too young to -dishonour your family. If Palgrave committed a murder, he'd be hanged. -But it will no doubt come to conscription and then we'll see where he'll -find himself. Herded in as a Tommy. All this talk of a few months is -folly." - -"I know. Yes. Folly," said Oldmeadow absently. "Have you tried to have -it out with Palgrave, Barney? If he only hears Adrienne's side what can -you expect of him? If you leave them all to sink or swim without you, -you mustn't blame Adrienne for steering as best she can." - -"Sink or swim without me!" Barney echoed. "Why they'd none of them -listen to me. You saw well enough how it was with them that day in July -when you came up. Adrienne is twice as strong as I am when it comes to -anything like a struggle and she has them all firmly under her thumb. -She steers because she intends to steer and intends I shan't. I've tried -nothing with Palgrave, except to keep my hands off him. Mother's talked -to him, and Meg's talked to him; but nothing does any good. Oh, yes; Meg -hangs on Adrienne because she's got nothing else to hang to; but she's -frightfully down on Palgrave all the same. They're all united against -me, but they're not united among themselves by any means. It's not a -peaceful family party at Coldbrooks, I promise you. Poor Mother spends -most of her time shut up in her room crying." - -Barney offered no further information on this occasion and Oldmeadow -asked for no more. It was from Mrs. Aldesey, some weeks later, that he -heard that Eric Hayward had been killed. Mrs. Aldesey was his most -punctual correspondent and her letters, full of pungent, apposite -accounts of how the war was affecting London, the pleasantest -experiences that came to him on the Berkshire downs, where, indeed, he -did not find life unpleasant. Mrs. Aldesey made time for these long -letters after tiring days spent among Belgian refugees and his sense of -comradeship had been immensely deepened by the vast, new experience they -were, from their different angles, sharing. It was difficult, on the -soft October day, to dissociate the mere pleasure of reading her letter -from the miserable news she gave. Yet he knew, stretched at ease after -strenuous exercise, the canvas of his tent idly flapping above him and -the sunlight falling across his feet, that it was very miserable news -indeed and must miserably affect his friends at Coldbrooks. What was to -become of poor Meg now? And after his mind had paused on poor Meg a pang -of memory brought back the face of his setter John. Poor Hayward. - -"She must, of course, find some work at once," Mrs. Aldesey wrote. "The -war does help to solve problems of this sort as nothing else before ever -could. She must nurse, or drive an ambulance and perhaps by the time -it's all over we'll have forgotten irrelevancies that happened so long -ago. Sometimes it feels like that to me and I know I'm much too old to -face the world that will have grown up out of the wreckage of the world -I knew." Mrs. Aldesey, still, always spoke of herself as antique, -relegated and on the shelf. Rather absurd of her, as her friend pointed -out in his reply, when she was obviously one of the people who were -going to make the new world. She was organizing the Belgians in the most -remarkable manner. - -As to Coldbrooks he hesitated. He could hardly see himself writing to -Mrs. Chadwick or to Meg. Of Nancy he felt a little shy. There would be -too much to say to Nancy if he said anything and he allowed the -anonymous calamity that had overtaken his friends to pass without -comment or condolence. But after an interval of some weeks it was from -Nancy herself that he heard. Nancy seemed always to be selected as the -vehicle for other people's emergencies. - -"Dear Roger," she wrote. "You have heard how very unhappy we all are. It -is dreadful to see poor Meg, and Aunt Eleanor makes it really worse for -her. Meg wears mourning, like a widow, and she is terribly bitter about -Palgrave, and about Adrienne, too. Doesn't that seem to you very strange -and unjust? Adrienne is doing for Palgrave what she did for -Meg--standing by him. It is all more unhappy than you can imagine. -Palgrave is at New College, now, you know, and I'm writing, because Aunt -Eleanor's one hope is that you may be able to talk to him. Kindly, you -know, Roger; and not as if you thought him a criminal or a coward; that -is worse than useless, naturally. Palgrave is very arrogant; but you -know what a tender heart he really has and I am sure that he is very -lonely and unhappy. So be kind and understanding, won't you? He really -cares for you and trusts you more than he likes to show; and of course -he would expect you to be against him." - -Oldmeadow was going into Oxford in a week's time and he wrote to -Palgrave and asked him to give him tea. "I've got to talk to you, if -you'll let me," he said, "but I shan't make myself a nuisance, I promise -you. I only want to satisfy myself that you have thought everything out, -and if you have I'll be able to tell your people that they must give up -tormenting themselves and you about it. I shall like talking over your -work with you, too, if I may, and renewing my own Oxford memories." So -conciliatory, so affectionate (and he found it easy to be affectionate -to poor Palgrave) was the tone of the letter that he had a swift reply. -Palgrave would be very glad to see him. - -It was a melancholy, deserted Oxford into which Oldmeadow drove his -little car on a late October afternoon. Most of the youths he saw were -of a nondescript variety, a type to whom Oxford means scholastic -opportunity and nothing more. There were dark-skinned lads from distant -parts of the Empire looking, to Oldmeadow's eye, rather pitiful and -doomed to disappointment, and a hurrying, absorbed little Jap had an -almost empty Broad as a setting for his alien figure. - -Palgrave's name was freshly painted at the bottom of a staircase in the -Garden Quad and Oldmeadow mounted to rooms that most delightfully -overlooked the garden and its catalpa-tree. - -Palgrave was ready for him. The tea was laid and he stood at the table -cutting a cake as Oldmeadow entered. But some one else, too, was ready, -for there, in the window-seat, her gaze fixed on the waning golds and -russets beneath, sat Adrienne Toner. Oldmeadow, very much and very -disagreeably affected, paused at the door. - -"Come in, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, and there was a strange, jaded -eagerness in the gaze she fixed on him. "I've only come for tea. I have -to go directly afterwards. I am staying in Oxford, now, you know. To be -near Palgrave." - -"Meg's turned her out of Coldbrooks," Palgrave announced, standing -still, over the tea-tray, his hands in his pockets while, with bent -head, he looked from under his brows at Oldmeadow. "Meg, you understand; -for whose sake she's gone through everything. We're pariahs together, -now; she and I." - -"It's not quite true or fair to say that, Palgrave," said Adrienne, -whose eyes had returned to the garden. "Meg hasn't turned me out. I felt -it would be happier for her if I weren't there; and for your -Mother--since they feel as they do about what has happened; and happier -for you and me to be together. You can't be surprised at Meg. She is -nearly beside herself with grief." - -Adrienne was very much altered. The magic of the lime-tree scene no -longer lay about her. Her skin was sallow, her eyes sunken, her -projecting mouth was at once stubborn, weary and relaxed. She had been -almost beautiful on that July day and to-day she was definitely ugly. -Oldmeadow saw that some intent inner preoccupation held her thoughts. - -"I _am_ surprised at her; very much surprised," said Palgrave, "though I -might have warned you that Meg wasn't a person worth risking a great -deal for. Oh, yes, she's nearly beside herself all right. She's lost the -man she cared for and she can't, now, ever be made 'respectable.' Oh, I -see further into Meg's grief than you do, my poor Adrienne. She's just -as conventional and unheroic at heart as Mother; and that's what _she_ -minds--more than anything." - -Oldmeadow, sunken in the deep chair Palgrave had drawn for him to the -table, watched the curious interchange, and after a pause, in her jaded -voice, Adrienne from the window-seat commented: "I understand her rage -and misery. It's because her grief is divided and spoiled and tainted -like that that she is distracted." - -"Will you pour out tea?" Palgrave asked her gloomily. "You'll see -anyone's side, always, except your own." - -To this Adrienne, rising and coming forward to the table, made no reply. -She wore a dark dress that recalled to Oldmeadow the one in which he had -first seen her; the short jacket tying across white in front and white -ruffles falling about her neck and hands. A small, dark hat was bent -down about her face. - -Strange, brooding face. What was she thinking of, Oldmeadow wondered, as -he watched her hands, impeded by the falling ruffles, moving with the -old, fumbling gestures among the tea-things; she had constantly to throw -back the ruffles, and the tea-pot, after all, was too heavy for her. It -slipped on one side as she lifted it and the hot tea poured over her -hand. She kept her hold bravely and Oldmeadow rescued her. - -"How stupid I am!" she said, biting her lip. - -"You've scalded your hand," said Palgrave, eyeing her with his air no -longer of rapturous but of gloomy devotion. - -They made Oldmeadow think of comrade political prisoners moving off -together in a convoy to Siberia. There was something as bleak, as -heavy, as uninspired in their aspect. He could not think that Palgrave -could now catch much light or flame from such a companion. They would -trudge through the snow; condemned, but together; to be together was the -best thing, now, that life offered them. - -She said that the scald was nothing and asked to be trusted to go on -with the tea, grasping the handle with resolution. Oldmeadow, however, -standing beside her, insisted on filling the cups for her. - -"You can be allowed to put in the milk and sugar, you see," he said. He -was aware, as he thus succoured and rallied her, of an influx of feeling -like the feeling that came with the uncanny dreams. Here she was, and -reality had caught her. She deserved to be caught, of course; tragic, -meddling Pierrot. But his heart was heavy and gentle; as in his dreams. - -They sat round the table together. On the mantelpiece was a large, -framed photograph of Adrienne; on the walls photographs of a Botticelli -Madonna, a Mantegna from Padua and the da Vinci drawing for the Christ -of the Last Supper. Seeing Oldmeadow's eyes on them Palgrave said: -"Adrienne gave me those. And lots of the books." - -"And don't forget the beautiful cushions, Palgrave," said Adrienne, with -a flicker of her old, contented playfulness. "I'm sure good cushions are -the foundation of a successful study of philosophy." - -The cushions were certainly very good; and very beautiful, as Oldmeadow -commented. "That gorgeous chair, too," said Palgrave. "It ought to make -a Plato of me." - -It was curious, the sense they gave him of trusting him. Were they -aware, if only sub-consciously, that he was feeling Adrienne, her -follies and misdeeds thick upon her, ill-used? Or was it only that they -had come down to such fundamental securities as were left to them and -felt that with him, at all events, they were in the hands of an -impartial judge? - -"It's a happy life Meg and Mother lead at Coldbrooks, as you may -imagine," Palgrave took up the theme that preoccupied him. "They only -see Nancy and Aunt Monica, of course. Barbara is at school and Barney, -as you are probably aware, never comes near his disgraced sister. Would -you believe it, Roger," Palgrave went on, while Oldmeadow saw that a -dull colour crept up to Adrienne's face and neck as her husband was thus -mentioned, "Meg blames Adrienne now for the whole affair! About Eric and -herself! Actually! On the one hand Eric is her hero for whom she'll -mourn for ever and on the other Adrienne is responsible for the fact -that she's not 'respectable' and can't claim to be his widow. Oh, don't -ask me how she contrives to work it out! Women like Meg don't need logic -when they've a thong in their hands and want to use it. And Adrienne's -shoulders are bared for the lash! God! It makes me fairly mad to think -of it!" - -"Please, Palgrave!" Adrienne supplicated in a low voice. She did not -eat. She had drunk her tea and sat looking down at her plate. "Don't -think of it any more. Meg is very, very unhappy. We can hardly imagine -what the misery and confusion of Meg's heart must be." - -"Oh, you'll make excuses for anyone, Adrienne! You're not a shining -example of happiness either, if it comes to that. It's atrocious of Meg -to treat you as she does. Atrocious of her to hold you responsible." - -"But I am responsible," said Adrienne, while the dull flush still dyed -her face. "I've always said that I was responsible. It was I who -persuaded them to go." - -"Yes. To go. Instead of staying and being lovers secretly. I know all -about it. And no doubt Meg would rather it had been so now. And so would -Mother!" Palgrave ground his teeth on a laugh. "That's where morality -lands them! Pretty, isn't it!" - -A silence fell and then Adrienne rose and said that Mr. Jackson would be -waiting for her. "He's coming at half-past five," she said, and, with -his gloomy tenderness, Palgrave informed Oldmeadow that she was reading -logic and Plato; "to keep up with me, you know." - -Adrienne, smiling faintly, laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder as -she went past his chair. "Come in to-night, after dinner, and tell me -what you decide," she said. - -"I'll have no news for you," Palgrave replied. - -Oldmeadow had gone to hold the door open for her and, as she paused -there to give him her hand, he heard her murmur: "Will you come down -with me?" - -"Let me see you to the bottom of the stair," he seized the intimation, -and, as she went before him, she said, still in the low, purposeful -voice, and he felt sure now that this had been her intention in coming -to tea: "It's only so that you shan't think I'll oppose you. If you can -persuade him, I shall not oppose it. I think he's right. But it's too -hard. I mean, I hope you can persuade him that it's right to go." - -She had stepped out on to the threshold at the foot of the stairs and he -paused behind her, astonished. "You want me to persuade him of what you -think wrong?" - -She stood still looking out at the sunny quadrangle. "People must think -for themselves. I don't know who is right or who is wrong. Perhaps I've -influenced Palgrave. Perhaps he wouldn't have felt like this if it -hadn't been for me. I don't know. But if you can make him feel it right -to go, I shall be glad." She stepped out into the quadrangle. - -"You mean," said Oldmeadow, following her, and strangely moved, "that -you'd rather have him killed than stay behind like this?" - -"It would be much happier for him, wouldn't it," she said. "If he could -feel it right to go." - -They were under the arch of the Library, she still going slowly, before -him, and Oldmeadow stopped her there. "Mrs. Barney, forgive me--may I -ask you something?" He had put his hand on her shoulder and she paused -and faced him. "It's something personal, and I've no right to be -personal with you, as I know. But--have you been to see Barney at -Tidworth?" - -As Oldmeadow spoke these Words, Adrienne turned away vehemently, and -then stood still, as though arrested in her impulse of flight by an -irresistible desire to listen. "Barney does not want to see me," she -said, speaking with difficulty. - -"You think so," said Oldmeadow. "And he may think so. But you ought to -see each other at a time like this. He may be ordered to France at any -time now." He could not see her face. - -"Do you mean," she said, after a moment, keeping the rigidity of her -listening poise, "that he won't come to say good-bye?" - -"I know nothing at all," said Oldmeadow. "I can only infer how far the -mischief between you has gone. And I'm most frightfully sorry for it. -I've been sorry for Barney; but now I'm sorry for you, too. I think -you're being unfairly treated. But yours have been the mistakes, Mrs. -Barney, and it's for you to take the first step." - -"Barney doesn't want to see me," she repeated, and she went on, while he -heard, growing in her voice, the note of the old conviction: "He has -made mistakes, too. He has treated me unfairly, too. I can't take the -first step." - -"Don't you love him, then?" said Oldmeadow, and in his voice was the -note of the old harshness. - -"Does he love me?" she retorted, turning now, with sudden fire, and -fixing her eyes upon him. "Why should he think I want to see him if he -doesn't want to see me? Why should I love, if he doesn't? Why should I -sue to Barney?" - -"Oh," Oldmeadow almost groaned. "Don't take that line; don't, I beg of -you. You're both young. And you've hurt him so. You've meant to hurt -him; I've seen it! I've seen it, Mrs. Barney. If you'll put by your -pride everything can grow again." - -"No! no! no!" she cried almost violently, and he saw that she was -trembling. "Some things don't grow again! It's not like plants, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Some things are like living creatures; and they can die. They -can die," she repeated, now walking rapidly away from him out into the -large quadrangle with its grass plot cut across by the late sunshine. He -followed her for a moment and he heard her say, as she went: "It's -worse, far worse, not to mean to hurt. It's worse to care so little that -you don't know when you are hurting." - -"No, it's not," said Oldmeadow. "That's only being stupid; not cruel." - -"It's not thinking that is cruel; it's not caring that is cruel," she -repeated, passionately, half muttering the words, and whether with tears -of fury he could not say. - -He stood still at the doorway. "Good-bye, then," he said. And not -looking behind her, as she went out swiftly into New College Lane, she -answered, still on the same note of passionate protest: "Good-bye, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Good-bye." He watched her small, dark figure hurry along in -the shadow of the wall until the turning hid it from view. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - - -Palgrave, apparently, had formed no conjectures as to their conversation -and was thinking still of Adrienne's wrongs rather than of his own -situation. "Did you take her home?" he said. "I see you're sorry for -her, Roger. It's really too abominable, you know. I really can't say -before her what I think, I really can't say before you what I think of -Barney's treatment of her; because I know you agree with him." - -Oldmeadow felt all the more able, shaken though he was by the interview -below, to remember, because of it, what he thought. "If you mean that I -don't consider Barney in the very least responsible for the death of the -baby, I do agree with him," he said. - -"Apart from that, apart from the baby," said Palgrave, controlling his -temper, it was evident, in his wish to keep the ear of the impartial -judge, "though what the loss of a child means to a woman like Adrienne I -don't believe you can guess; apart from whose was the responsibility, he -ought to have seen, towards the end, at all events, if he'd eyes in his -head and a heart in his breast, that all she asked was to forgive him -and take him back. She was proud, of course. What woman of her power and -significance wouldn't have been? She couldn't be the first to move. But -Barney must have seen that her heart was breaking." - -"Well," said Oldmeadow, taking in, with some perplexity, this new -presentation of Adrienne Toner; "what about his heart? She'd led it a -pretty dance. And you forget that I don't consider she had anything to -forgive him." - -"His heart!" Palgrave echoed scornfully, yet with a sorrowful scorn; "He -mended his heart quick enough. Went and fell in love with Nancy, who -only asks to be let alone." - -"He's always loved Nancy. She's always been like a sister to him. -Adrienne has infected you with her groundless jealousy." - -"Groundless indeed!" Palgrave reached for his pipe and began to stuff it -vindictively. "Nancy sees well enough, poor dear! She's had to keep him -off by any device she could contrive. She's a good deal more than a -sister to him, now. She's the only person in the world for him. You can -call it jealousy if you like. That's only another name for a broken -heart." - -"I don't know what Barney's feeling may be, Palgrave, but I do know, it -was quite plain to me, that Adrienne was jealous long before she had any -ground for jealousy. If Nancy's all Barney's got left now, it's simply -because Adrienne has taken everything else from him. You don't seem to -realize that Adrienne drove him from her with her airs of martyrdom. -Took vengeance on him, too; what else was the plan for Barbara going -abroad with you? I don't want to speak unkindly of her. It's quite true; -I'm sorry for her. I've never liked her so well. But the reason is that -she's beginning, I really believe, to find out that her own feet are of -clay, while her mistake all along has been to imagine herself above -ordinary humanity. All our feet are of clay, and we never get very far -unless we are aware of the weakness in our structure and look out for a -continual tendency to crumble. You don't get over it by pretending you -don't need to walk and imagining you have wings instead of feet." - -Palgrave, drawing stiffly at his pipe during this little homily, -listened, gloomily yet without resentment. "You see, where you make -_your_ mistake--if you'll allow the youthful ass you consider me to say -so--is that you've always imagined Adrienne to be a self-righteous prig -who sets herself up above others. She doesn't; she doesn't," Palgrave -repeated with conviction. "She'd accept the feet of clay if you'll grant -her the heart of flame--for everybody; the wings--for everybody. There's -your mistake, Roger. Adrienne believes that everybody has wings as well -as herself; and the only difference she sees in people is that some have -learned and some haven't how to use them. She may be mortal woman--bless -her--and have made mistakes; but they're the mistakes of flame; not of -earthiness." - -"You are not an ass, Palgrave," said Oldmeadow, after a moment. "You are -wise in everything but experience; and you see deep. Suppose we come to -a compromise. You've owned that Adrienne may make mistakes and I own -that I may misjudge her. I see what you believe about her and I see why -you believe it. I've seen her at her worst, no doubt, and to you she's -been able to show only her best. So let it rest at that. What I came to -talk about, you know, was you." - -"I know," said Palgrave, and he gave a deep sigh. - -"Be patient with me," said Oldmeadow. "After all, we belong to the same -generation. You can't pretend that I'm an old fogey who's lost the -inspirations of his youth and has marched so far down towards the grave -that the new torches coming up over the horizon are hidden from him." - -"That's rather nice, you know, Roger," Palgrave smiled faintly. "No; -you're not an old fogey. But all the same there's not much torch about -you." - -"It's rather sad, isn't it," Oldmeadow mused, "that we should always -seem to begin with torches and then to spend the rest of our lives in -quenching them. It may be, you know, that we're only trying to hold them -straight, so that the wind shan't blow them out. However!--you'll let me -talk. That's the point." - -"Of course you may. You've been awfully decent," Palgrave murmured. - -"Well, then, it seems to me you're not seeing straight," said Oldmeadow. -"It's not crude animal patriotism--as you'd put it--that's asked of you. -It's a very delicate discrimination between ideals." - -"I know! I know!" said Palgrave. The traces of mental anguish were on -his worn young face. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose to -lean against the mantelpiece." I don't suppose I can explain," he said, -staring out at the sky. "I suppose that with me the crude animal thing -is the personal inhibition. I can't do it. I'd rather, far, be killed -than have to kill other men. That's the unreasoning part, the -instinctive part, but it's a part of one's nature that I don't believe -one can violate without violating one's very spirit. I've always been -different, I know, from most fellows of my age and class. I've always -hated sport--shooting and hunting. The fox, the stag, the partridge, -have always spoiled it for me. Oh, I know they have to be killed--poor -brutes! I know that; but I can't myself be the butcher." - -"You'll own, though, that there must be butchers," said Oldmeadow, after -a little meditation. He felt himself in the presence of something -delicate, distorted and beautiful. "And you'll own, won't you, when it -comes to a war like this, when not only our national honour but our -national existence is at stake, that some men must kill others. Isn't it -then, baldly, that you profit, personally, by other people doing what -you won't do? You'll eat spring lamb as long as there are butchers to -kill the lamb for you, and you'll be an Englishman and take from England -all that she has to give you--including Oxford and Coldbrooks--and let -other men do the nasty work that makes the survival of England and -Oxford and Coldbrooks possible. That's what it comes to, you know. -That's all I ask you to look at squarely." - -"I know, I know," Palgrave repeated. He had looked at little else, poor -boy. Oldmeadow saw that. "But that's where the delicate discrimination -between ideals comes in, Roger. That's where I have to leave intuition, -which says 'No,' and turn to reason. And the trouble is that for me -reason says 'No,' too. Because humanity--all of it that counts--has -outgrown war. That's what it comes to. It's a conflict between a -national and an humanitarian ideal. There are enough of us in the world -to stop war, if we all act together; and why, because others don't, -should I not do what I feel right? Others may follow if only a few of us -stand out. If no one stands out, no one will ever follow. And you can't -kill England like that. England is more than men and institutions," -Palgrave still gazed at the sky. "It's an idea that will survive; -perhaps the more truly in the spirit for perishing in the flesh, if it -really came to that. Look at Greece. She's dead, if you like; yet what -existing nation lives as truly? It is Grecian minds we think with and -Grecian eyes we see with. It's Plato's conception of the just man being -the truly happy man--even if the whole world's against him--that is the -very meaning of our refusal to go with the world." - -"You'll never stop war by refusal so long as the majority of men still -believe in it," said Oldmeadow. "There are not enough of you to stop it -now. The time to stop it is before it comes; not while it's on. It's -before it begins that you must bring the rest of humanity not to behave -in ways that make it inevitable. I'm inclined to think that ideas can -perish," he went on, as Palgrave, to this, made no reply, "as far as -their earthly manifestation goes, that is, if enough men and -institutions are destroyed. If Germany could conquer and administer -England, I'm inclined to think the English idea would perish. And war -need not be unspiritual. Killing our fellow-men need not mean hating -them. There's less hatred in war, I imagine, than in some of the -contests of peaceful civilian life. Put it fairly on the ground of -humanitarianism, then, Palgrave; not of nationality. It's the whole -world that is threatened by a hateful idea, by the triumph of all you -most fear and detest, and unless we strive against it with all we are -and have it seems to me that we fall short of our duty not only as -Englishmen, but as humanitarians. Put it at that, Palgrave: would you -really have had England stand by and not lift a finger when Belgium was -invaded and France menaced?" - -Palgrave was not ready with his reply and he turned away while he looked -for it and shuffled the papers on his desk with a nervous hand. "Yes, I -would," he said at last. "Hateful as it is to have to say it--I would -have stood by." He came back to his place at the mantelpiece and looked -down at Oldmeadow as he spoke. "The choice, of course, is hateful; but I -think we should have stood by and helped the sufferers and let France -and Germany fight it out. It always comes back to them, doesn't it? -They're always fighting it out; they always will, till they find it's no -good and that they can't annihilate each other; which is what they both -want to do. Oh, I've read too many of the young French neo-Catholics to -be able to believe that the hateful idea was all on one side. Their -ideals don't differ much, once you strip them of their theological -tinsel, from those of the Germans. Germany happens to be the aggressor -now; but if the militarist party in France had had the chance, they'd -have struck as quickly." - -"The difference--and it's an immense one--is that the militarist party -in France wouldn't have had the chance. The difference is that it -doesn't govern and mould public opinion. It's not a menace to the world. -It's only a sort of splendid pet, kept in a Zoo, for the delectation of -a certain class and party. Whereas Germany's the _bona fide_ hungry -tigress at large. What you really ask of England, Palgrave, is that she -should be a Buddha and lie down and let the tigress, after finishing -France, devour her, too. It really comes to that. Buddhism is the only -logical basis for your position, and I don't believe, however sorry one -may be for hungry tigresses, that the right way to deal with them is to -let them eat you. The Christian philosophy of the incarnation is the -true one. Matter does make a spiritual difference. It does make a -difference, a real difference, that the ideal should be made flesh. It's -important to the world, spiritually, that the man rather than the -tigress should survive." - -"Christ gave his life," said Palgrave, after a moment. - -"I'm not speaking of historical personages; but of eternal truths," said -Oldmeadow. - -But he knew already that he spoke in vain. Palgrave had turned away his -eyes again and on his sad young face he read the fixity of a fanatic -idealism. He had not moved him, though he had troubled him. No one would -move Palgrave. He doubted, now, whether Adrienne herself had had much -influence over him. It was with the sense of pleading a lost cause that -he said, presently, "Adrienne hopes you'll feel it right to go." - -Palgrave at this turned a profound gaze upon him. "I know it," he said. -"Though she's never told me so. It's the weakness of her love, its -yearning and tenderness, not its strength, that makes her want it. -Because she knows it would be so much easier. But she can't go back on -what she's meant to me. It's because of that, in part at all events, -that I've been able to see steadily what I mean to myself. That's what -she helps one to do, you know. Hold to yourself; your true, deep self. -It's owing to her that I can only choose in one way--even if I can't -defend it properly. It seems to come back to metaphysics, doesn't it?" - -"Like everything else," said Oldmeadow. - -"Yes. Like everything else. It would take a four-years' course in Greats -to argue it out, Roger. Come back to me--if you're here and I'm here -then--and we'll see what we can make of it." - -"I will," said Oldmeadow, rising, for the room was growing dark. "And -before that, I hope." - -"After all, you know," Palgrave observed, "England isn't in any danger -of becoming Buddhistic; there's not much nihilism about her, is there, -but hardly much Christianity, either. England has evolved all sorts of -things besides Oxford and Coldbrooks. She's evolved industrialism and -factory-towns." - -"I don't consider industrialism and factory-towns incompatible with -Christianity, you know," Oldmeadow observed. "Good-bye, my dear boy." - -"Good-bye, Roger," Palgrave grasped his hand. "You've been most awfully -kind." - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - - -"Isn't it becoming to him, Mother? And how tall he looks!" said Nancy, -holding Oldmeadow off in his khaki for displayal. - -He had only written a line of his failure and that he would come as soon -as he could and see them all and tell in full of his interview with -Palgrave. And he had motored over to The Little House this afternoon in -early November. - -Nancy was showing an unexpected gaiety. "What a nice grilled-salmon -colour you are, too," she said. - -He divined the self-protective instinct under the gaiety. Most of the -women in England were being gayer and more talkative at this time, in -order to keep up. Nancy was thin and white; but she was keeping up. And -she had put on a charming dress to receive him in. - -"I've been grilled all right; out on the downs," he said. "But it's more -like cold storage just now, with these frosts at night. Yes; the big -cup, please. I'm famished for tea. Ah! that's something like! It smells -like your rose outside. I sniffed it as I waited at the door. Wonderful -for such a late blooming." - -"Isn't it," said Mrs. Averil. "And I only put it in last autumn. It's -doing beautifully; but I've cherished it. And now tell us about -Palgrave." - -He felt reluctant to tell about Palgrave. The impression that remained -with him of Palgrave was that impression of beauty and distortion and he -did not want to have to disentangle his feelings or to seem to put -Palgrave in the wrong. It was so sweet, too, after the long, chilly -drive over the empty uplands, to sit here and forget the war, although -it was for scenes like this, for girls like Nancy, women like Mrs. -Averil--with so much else--that the war was so worth fighting. He turned -his thoughts back to the realities that underlay the happy appearances -and was aware, as he forced himself to tell, of what must seem a note of -advocacy in his voice. "He can't think differently, I'm afraid," he -said. "It's self-sacrifice, not selfishness, that is moving him." - -"He can't think differently while Adrienne is living there," said Mrs. -Averil. "He didn't tell you, I suppose, that she has now taken up her -abode in Oxford in order to study philosophy with him?" - -He was rather uncomfortably aware of the disingenuousness that must now -be made apparent in his avoidance of all mention of Adrienne. - -"I saw her," he said, and he knew that it was lamely. "She was there -when I got there." - -"You saw her!" Mrs. Averil exclaimed. "But then, of course you didn't -convince him. I might have known it. Of course she would not let you see -him alone." - -"But she did let me see him alone. That was what she wanted. And she was -there only in order to tell me what she wanted. She wants him to go." - -Mrs. Averil was eyeing him with such astonishment that he turned to -Nancy with his explanations. But Mrs. Averil would not leave him to -Nancy's sympathy. "It's rather late in the day for her to want him to -go," she said. "She may be sorry for what she's done; but it's her -work." - -"Well, she's sorry for her work. That's what it comes to. And I'm sorry -for her," said Oldmeadow. - -"Good heavens! The cleverness of that woman!" Mrs. Averil exclaimed. "If -she can't be powerful, she'll be pitiful! She's worked on your feelings; -I can see that, Roger. And I thought you, at least, were immune. Well; -she does not work on mine. I am not in the least sorry for her." - -"She's being unfairly treated," said Oldmeadow. "It's grotesque that Meg -should have turned upon her." - -"And Eleanor has, too, you know," said Mrs. Averil. "It's grotesque, if -you like; but I see a grim justice in it. She made them do things and -believe things that weren't natural to them and now she's lost her power -and they see things as they are." - -"It's because she's failed that they've turned against her," said Nancy. -"If she'd succeeded they would have gone on accepting what she told them -and making her their idol." - -"Adrienne mustn't fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only justification -for Adrienne is to be in the right. If the blood of Saint Januarius -doesn't liquefy, why should you keep it in a shrine? She's a woman who -has quarrelled with her husband and disgraced her sister and -brother-in-law, and broken her mother-in-law's heart. You can't go on -making an idol of a saint who behaves like that." - -"She never claimed worldly success," said Nancy. "She never told Meg to -go so that she could get married afterwards; she never told Palgrave -that war was wrong because it was easier not to fight." - -"Oh, yes, she did claim worldly success, really," said Mrs. Averil, -while her eyes rested on her daughter with a tenderness that contrasted -with her tone. "Her whole point was that if you were right -spiritually--'poised' she called it, you remember--all those other -things would be added unto you. I've heard her claim that if you were -poised you could get anything you really wanted. I asked her once if I -should find a ten-pound note under the sofa-cushion every morning after -breakfast if I could get poised sufficiently!" Mrs. Averil laughed, -still more dryly while she still maintained her tender gaze and Nancy -said, smiling a little: "She might have put it there for you if she'd -been sure you were poised." - -"Well, let us bury Adrienne for the present," said Mrs. Averil. "Tell -Roger about your nursing plans. She may go to London, Roger, this -winter, and I'm to be left alone." - -"You're to be left to take care of Aunt Eleanor, if I do go," said -Nancy; and Mrs. Averil said that there must certainly be some one left -to take care of poor Eleanor. - -Oldmeadow went up to Coldbrooks next morning. The first person he saw -was old Johnson at the door and he remembered Eleanor Chadwick's griefs -on his account. Nothing, now, could have been kept from Johnson and his -face bore the marks of the family calamities. He was aged and whitened -and his voice had armed itself, since the downfall of his grave, -vicarious complacency, with solemn cadences. - -"Yes, sir. The ladies will be very glad to see you, sir. These are sad -days for them--the family dispersed as it is." - -Johnson defined the situation as he felt that it could be most fittingly -defined and Oldmeadow inwardly applauded his "dispersed." - -The drawing-room, into which Johnson ushered him, had, for the first -time in his memory of it, a mournful air. It had always been shabby, and -these were the same faded chintzes, the same worn rugs; but now, -fireless and flowerless, it neither spoke nor smiled and, with the sense -it gave of an outlived epoch, it was almost spectral. The photographs -all looked like the photographs of dead people and the only similitude -of life was the loud, silly ticking of the French clock on the -mantelpiece; Mrs. Chadwick's cherished clock; one of her -wedding-presents. - -"I'm afraid it's rather chilly, sir," said Johnson. "No one has sat here -of an evening now for a long time." He put a match to the ranged logs, -drew the blinds up farther so that the autumnal sunlight might more -freely enter, and left him. - -Oldmeadow went to the window and turned over the magazines, a month old, -that lay on a table there. - -He was standing so when Meg entered, and she had half the length of the -room to traverse before they met. She was in black, in deep black; but -more beautiful than he had ever seen her; her tossed auburn locks bound -low on her forehead with a black ribbon, her white throat upright, her -eyes hard with their readiness, their resource. Beautiful and -distressing. It distressed him terribly to see that hardness in her -eyes. - -"How do you do, Roger," she said, giving him her hand. "It's good to see -you. Mother will be glad." - -They seated themselves on one of the capacious sofas and she questioned -him quickly, competently, while the hard eyes seemed to measure him lest -he measure her. It was almost the look of the _déclassée_ woman who -forestalls withdrawal in an interlocutor. But, as he answered her -quietly, his fond regard upon her, her defences began to fall. "It's the -only life, a soldier's, isn't it?" she said. "At all times, really. But, -at a time like this, anything else seems despicable, doesn't it; -contemptibly smug and safe. The uniform is so becoming to you. You look -a soldier already. One feels that men will trust and follow you. Didn't -you burn with rage and shame, too, when, for those four days, it seemed -we might not come in?" - -"I felt too sure we should come in, to burn with rage and shame," said -Oldmeadow. - -"Ah! but it was not so sure, I'm afraid," said Meg, and in her eyes, no -longer hard, wild lights seemed to pass and repass. "I'm afraid that -there are nearly enough fools and knaves in England to wreck us. Not -quite enough, thank heaven! But, for those four days, Eric was terribly -afraid. He was killed, you know, Roger, very splendidly, leading his -men." - -"I know, Meg. My dear Meg," Oldmeadow murmured. - -"Oh! I don't regret it! I don't regret it!" Meg cried, while her colour -rose and her young breast lifted. "It's the soldier's death! The -consecrating, heroic death! He was ready. And deaths like that -atone--for the others. He was not killed instantaneously, Roger." - -"I didn't know," said Oldmeadow, looking at her with a pitying, troubled -gaze. - -"He lived for a day and night afterwards," said Meg, looking back, -tearless. "They carried him to a barn. Only his man was with him. There -was no one to dress his dreadful wound; no food. The man got him some -water, at the risk of his own life. He was conscious until the end and -he suffered terribly." - -Oldmeadow dropped his eyes before her fierce stare while, strangely, -dimly, there passed through his mind the memory of the embarrassed, -empty, handsome young face in the brougham and, again, the memory of his -dog John. He had seen John die and his eyes of wistful appeal. So Eric -Hayward's eyes might have looked as he lay in the barn dying. - -"Oh, Roger!" Meg said suddenly, seizing his hand. "Kill them! Kill them! -Oh, revenge him! I was not with him! Think of it! I would have had no -right to have been with him--had it been possible. I did not know till a -week later. He was buried there. His man buried him." - -"My poor, poor child," said Oldmeadow, clasping her hands. - -But, at once, taking refuge from his pity and from her own desperate -pain: "So you've seen Palgrave," she said. "And he isn't going. I knew -it was useless. I told Mother it was useless--with that stranger--that -American, with him. She has disgraced us all.--Wretched boy! Hateful -woman!" - -"Meg, Meg; be soldierly. He wouldn't have spoken like that." - -"He never liked her! Never!" she cried. "I knew he didn't, even at the -time she was flattering and cajoling us. I saw that she bewildered him -and that he accepted her only because she was mine. How I loathe myself -for having listened to her! How I loathe her! All that she ever wanted -was power! Power over other people's lives! She'd commit any crime for -that!" - -"You seem to me cruelly unfair," he said. - -"No! no! I'm not unfair! You know I'm not!" she cried. "You always saw -the truth about her--from the very beginning. You never fell down and -worshipped her, like the rest of us. And she knew that you were her -enemy and warned us against you. Oh--why did Barney marry her!" - -"I never worshipped her; but I never thought her base and hateful." - -"You never knew her as I did; that was all. And I never knew her until I -came back and found her doing to Palgrave what she had done to us. -Paladin! Did you hear her call him Paladin? Always flattery! Always to -make one think one was wonderful, important, mysterious! She forced us -to go away, Roger. Sometimes I think it was hypnotism; that she uses her -will-power consciously. We did not want to go. We did not want the -divorce and the scandal." - -"What did you want, then, Meg?" - -She felt the gravity of his tone but, like a fierce Maenad, she snatched -at the torch, not caring how it revealed her. "What of it! What if we -had been secret lovers! Who would have known! Who would have been -harmed! Some people go on for years and years. His wife loved another -man. He had no one. Why should we have been pushed--such pitiful fools -we were--into displaying our love to the world and being crushed by it! -Oh, he was so loyal, so brave; but it made him very, very unhappy. Oh, I -was cruel to him sometimes! I used to reproach him sometimes! Oh, Roger! -Roger!--" She broke into wild tears and stumbled to her feet. - -As she reached the door, covering her face with her hands, her mother -opened it and, meeting her on the threshold, Meg, with almost the effect -of beating her aside with the other impediments to her rage and grief, -pushed past her so that the knitting Mrs. Chadwick held was flung to the -floor, the ball of khaki wool running rapidly away under a sofa and the -socks and needles dangling at her feet. - -She stood looking down at them with a curious apathy and, as Oldmeadow -went to help and greet her, he saw that as much as Meg was wild she was -dulled and quiet. - -"Meg is so very, very violent," she said, as he disentangled the wool -and restored her sock and ball to her. She spoke with listlessness -rather than sympathy. - -"Poor child," said Oldmeadow. "One can hardly wonder at it. But it makes -a wretched existence for you, I'm afraid. You and she oughtn't to be -alone together." - -He drew her to a chair and, seating herself, her faded face and eyes -that had lost their old look of surprise turned to the light, Mrs. -Chadwick assented, "It's very fatiguing to live with, certainly. -Sometimes I really think I must go away for a little while and have a -change. Nancy would come and stay with Meg, you know. But I can't miss -Barney's last weeks. He comes to us, now, again. And it might not be -right to leave Meg. One must not think of oneself at a time like this, -must one?" The knitting lay in her lap and she was twisting and -untwisting her handkerchief after her old fashion; but her fingers -moved slowly and without agitation and Oldmeadow saw that some spring of -life in her had been broken. - -"The best plan would be that Meg should, as soon as possible, take up -some work," he said, "and that you and Nancy should go away. Work is the -only thing for Meg now. She'll dash herself to pieces down here; and you -with her. There'll soon be plenty to do. Nursing and driving -ambulances." - -"Nancy is going to nurse, you know," said Mrs. Chadwick. "But she won't -go as long as we need her here. She has promised me that. I don't know -what I should do without Nancy. I shouldn't care to be nursed by Meg -myself, if I were a wounded soldier. She is so very restless and would -probably forget quite simple things like giving one a handkerchief or -seeing that hot-water-bottles were wrapped up before she put them to -one's feet. A friend of mine--Amy Hatchard--such a pretty woman, though -her hair was bright, bright red--and I never cared for that--had the -soles of her feet nearly scorched off once by a careless nurse. Dear -Nancy. I often think of Nancy now, Roger. I believe, you know, that if -Adrienne had not come Nancy and Barney might have married. How happy we -should all have been; though she has so little money." - -"I wish you could all think a little more kindly of Adrienne," said -Oldmeadow after a silence. Mrs. Chadwick had begun to knit. "I must tell -you that I myself feel differently about her." - -"Do you, Roger?" said Mrs. Chadwick, without surprise. "You have a very -judicious and balanced mind, I know; even when you were hardly more -than a boy Francis noticed it and said that he'd rather go by your -opinion than by that of most of the men he knew. I always remembered -that, afterwards. Till she came. And then I believed in her rather than -in you. You thought us all far too fond of her from the very first. And -now we have certainly changed. Meg is certainly very violent; much more -violent than I could ever be.... I am sorry for Adrienne. I don't think -she meant to do us any harm--as Meg believes." - -"She only meant to do you good, I am sure of it. I saw her in Oxford, -let me tell you about it, when I went in to see Palgrave. She is very -unhappy. She wants Palgrave to go. She wants him to feel it right to go. -It's not she, really, who is keeping him back now." - -"My poor Palgrave. Meg is very unkind about him; very bitter and unkind; -her own brother. But it was very wrong of Adrienne to go and set up -housekeeping in Oxford near him. You must own that, Roger. She may not -be keeping him back; but she is aiding and abetting him always. It made -Barney even more miserable and disgusted than he was before. And it -looks so very odd. Though I don't think that anyone could ever gossip -about Adrienne. There is something about her that makes that -impossible." - -"There certainly is. I am glad she is with Palgrave, poor boy." - -"I am glad you are sorry for him, Roger"--Mrs. Chadwick dropped a -needle. "How clumsy I am. My fingers seem all to have turned to thumbs. -Thank you so much. I try to make as many socks as I can for our poor -men; fingering wool; not wheeling, which is so much rougher to the -feet. I'm sure I'd rather march, and, if it came to that, die in -fingering than in wheeling. Just as I've always felt, foolish as it may -sound, that if I had to be drowned I'd rather it were in warm, soapy -water than in cold salt. Not that one is very likely, ever, to drown in -one's bath. But tell me about Adrienne and Palgrave, Roger, and what -they said." - -Mrs. Chadwick's discourse seemed, beforehand, to make anything he might -have to tell irrelevant and, even while he tried to make her see what he -had seen, he felt it to be a fruitless effort. - -There was indeed no enmity to plead against. Only a deep exhaustion. -Adrienne had pressed too heavily on the spring and it was broken. - -"I'm sure she is very sorry to have made so much mischief, but she isn't -what I thought her, Roger," she said, shaking her head, when he had -finished. "I'm sorry for her, but I used to believe her to be a sort of -saint and now I know that she is very far indeed from being one." - -"The mere fact of failure doesn't deprive you of sainthood," said -Oldmeadow, remembering Nancy's plea. "You haven't less reason now than -you had then for believing her one." - -But even with her broken spring Mrs. Chadwick had not lost all her -shrewdness. It flickered in the sad eyes she lifted from the khaki sock. -"Some kinds of failure do, Roger. That gift of healing, you remember; -all she could do for people in that way; she has quite, quite lost it. -That is a reason. It's that more than anything that has made me feel -differently about her." - -"Lost it?" He felt strangely discomposed, little as the gift of healing -had ever impressed him. - -"Quite," Mrs. Chadwick repeated. "I think it distressed her dreadfully -herself. I think she counted upon it more than upon anything, perhaps -without knowing she did. It must have made her seem so sure to herself, -mustn't it? The first time was before the war, just a little after you -were here that day in the summer--dear me, how long ago it seems; and I -had one of my headaches, one of the worst I ever had. I was so -dreadfully troubled, you know, about Barbara and Meg. And Adrienne came -and sat by me as she used to and put her hand on my forehead; and I know -it wasn't my lack of faith, for I quite believed it would get well; but -instead of the peaceful feeling, it grew much worse; oh, _much_. As if -red hot needles were darting through my eyes and an iron weight pressing -down on my head. And such tumult and distress. I had to tell her. I had -to ask her to take away her hand. Oh, she felt it very much, poor thing, -and grew very white and said it must be because she was still not -strong; not quite herself. But I knew then that it was because she was -not _right_; not what I had thought her. I began to suspect, from that -very moment, that I had been mistaken; because hypnotizing people isn't -the same as being a saint, is it, Roger? and--I think you said so once, -long ago; and that was all that she had done; hypnotized us all to think -her good and wonderful. Later on, after Meg had come, I let her try once -more, though it quite frightened me; she looked so strange. And!--oh, -dear--it was dreadful. It distressed me dreadfully. She suddenly put her -hands before her face and sat quite still and then she burst into tears -and got up and ran out of the room, crying. It made me feel quite ill. -And of course I knew there could be nothing saintly about a person who -made you feel like that--who could feel like that themselves, and break -down." - -"Even saints have their times of darkness and dryness," Oldmeadow found -after a little time had passed. The picture she put before him hurt him. -"It was an error of judgment to have believed her a saint because she -could hypnotize you--if that was what it was; but the fact that she -can't hypnotize you any longer--that she's too unhappy to have any power -of that sort--doesn't prove she's not a saint. Of course she's not. Why -should she be?" - -"I'm sure I don't know why she should be; but she used to behave as if -she were one, didn't she? And when I saw that she wasn't one in that way -I began to see that she wasn't in other ways, too. It was she who made -me so unjust, so unkind to poor Barney. _She_ was so unjust and so -unkind; and I never saw it till then. I was blind till then; though you -saw very well, that day you came to Connaught Square, that it was a sort -of spell she cast. It was a spell, Roger. The moment I saw her, after -the baby's death, I forgot everything she'd done and felt I loved her -again. She willed me to. So as to get power over me. Everything, always, -with her, was to get power over other people's lives," said Mrs. -Chadwick, and as he had, in the past, heard echoes of Adrienne in all -she said, now he heard echoes of Meg, "It's by willing it, you know. -Some people practise it like five-finger exercises. You have to sit -quite still and shut your eyes and concentrate. Meg has heard how it's -done. I don't pretend to understand; but that must have been her way. -And she made poor Barney miserable and set me against him at once; you -said so yourself, Roger, and blinded me to all the cruel things she did. -It was to punish him, you know. To make him feel he was dreadfully wrong -and she quite right; about Meg, and everything else; for you came in, -too. It used to be so dreadful at Torquay. I knew it would be sad there; -but I never guessed how sad it would be--with that horrid blue, blue -sea. She used to sit, day after day, on the terrace of the house, and -gaze and gaze at the sea and if Barney would come, so lovingly, and ask -her what he could do for her and take her hand, oh, it was more and more -mournful, the way she would look at him; that dreadful, loving look that -didn't mean love at all, but only trying to break him down and make him -_say_ that he was down. I begged Barney's pardon, Roger, for having -treated him as I did. We treated him dreadfully, all of us; because she -put him, always, in the wrong. Oh, no, Roger, I'm sorry for her, but -she's a dangerous woman; or _was_ dangerous. For now she has lost it all -and has become like everybody else; quite ordinary and unhappy." - -He felt, in the little silence that, again, followed, that he could -hardly better this summing-up. That was precisely what poor Adrienne -Toner had become; ordinary and unhappy. The two things she would have -believed herself least capable of becoming. There was nothing to be -gained in urging extenuating circumstances, especially since he was not -sure that there were any. Mrs. Chadwick, at bottom, saw as clearly as he -did. He asked her presently, leaving the theme of Adrienne, whether she -would not seriously consider going away for a little while with Nancy. -"Meg could go down to The Little House," he said. - -"Oh, no, she couldn't, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick, "she won't go -anywhere. She'll hardly speak to Monica. She just sits out-of-doors, all -day, wrapped in a cloak, in the corner of the garden, staring in front -of her, and she pays not the slightest attention to anything I say. And -at night, in her room, I hear her sobbing, sobbing, as if her heart -would break. I can't think hardly of Eric any longer, Roger. Isn't it -strange; but it's almost as if he were my son that had been killed. And -Barney may be killed," the poor mother's lip and chin began to tremble. -"And you, too, Roger. I don't know how we shall live through all that we -must bear and I keep thinking of the foolish little things, like your -having cold feet and wearing the same clothes day after day in those -horrible trenches. He suffered it all, poor Eric. No, I can't think -hardly of him. All the same," she sobbed, "my heart is broken when I -remember that they can never be married now." - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - - -"That's the way Mummy surprises one," said Barney as he and Oldmeadow -went together through the Coldbrooks woods. "One feels her, usually, -such a darling goose and then, suddenly, she shows one that she can be a -heroine." - -Barney was going to France in two days' time and Oldmeadow within the -fortnight, and the Coldbrooks good-byes had just been said. It had been -poor Meg who had broken down and clung and cried. Mrs. Chadwick had, to -the very last, talked with grave cheerfulness of Barney's next leave and -given wise advice as if he had been merely leaving them for a rather -perilous mountain-climbing feat. Oldmeadow could hardly believe her the -same woman that he had seen ten days before. - -He was staying at The Little House and had come up on this afternoon of -Barney's departure to join him at Coldbrooks and walk down with him. -Barney had not yet seen or said good-bye to Nancy and her mother, and -Oldmeadow had seized this, his only chance, of a talk with him. But, as -they left the woods and began to climb the bare hill-side, Barney went -on: - -"I've wanted a talk, too, Roger. I'm glad you managed this." - -"It doesn't rob anyone of you, does it," said Oldmeadow. "We'll get to -Chelford in time to give you a good half-hour with them before your car -comes for you." - -"That will be enough for Nancy," said Barney. "The less she sees of me, -the better she's pleased. I've lots of things I want to say, Roger. Of -course you understand that in every way it's a relief to be going out." - -"It settles things; or seems to settle them," said Oldmeadow. "They take -another place at all events." - -"Yes; just that. They take another place. What difference does it make, -after all, if a fellow has made a mess of his personal life when his -personal life has ceased to count. I'm not talking mawkish sentiment -when I say I hope I'll be killed--if I can be of some use first. I see -no other way out of it. I'm sorry for Adrienne, after a fashion, for -she's dished herself, too. We made a hopeless mistake in getting married -and she knows it as well as I do; and when a man and woman don't love -each other any longer it's the man's place to get out if he can." - -"It was about Adrienne I wanted to talk to you, Barney." For the first -time in their long friendship Oldmeadow felt that he spoke to an equal. -Barney had at last ceased to be a boy. "I've seen her, since seeing you -that last time in the train." - -"Well?" Barney inquired, as Oldmeadow paused. "What have you got to say -to me about Adrienne, Roger? You've not said very much, from the -beginning; but everything you have said has been true and I've forgotten -none of it. I'm the more inclined," and he smiled with a slight -bitterness, "to listen to you now." - -"That's just the trouble," Oldmeadow muttered. "You've forgotten -nothing. That's what I feel, with remorse. That it was I who helped to -spoil things for you both, from the beginning. You'd not have seen her -defects as you did if I hadn't shown them to you; and if you hadn't seen -them you'd have adjusted yourselves to each other and have found them -out together. She'd not have resented your finding them out in the -normal course of your shared lives. It's been my opinion of her, in the -background of both your minds, that has envenomed everything." - -Barney listened quietly. "Yes," he assented. "That's all true enough. As -far as it goes. I mightn't have seen if you hadn't shown me. But I can't -regret you did show me, for anything else would have been to have gone -through life blind; as blind as Adrienne is herself. And it's because -she can't stand being seen through that she revealed so much more; so -much that you didn't see and that I had to find out for myself. What you -saw was absurdity and inexperience; they're rather loveable defects; I -think I accepted them from the beginning, because of all the other -things I believed in her. You said, too, you remember, that she'd never -know she was wrong. Well, it's worse than that. She'll never know she's -wrong and she won't bear it that you should think her anything but -right. She's rapacious. She's insatiable. Nothing but everything will -satisfy her. You must be down on your knees, straight down, before her; -and if you're not, she has no use for you. She turns to stone and you -break your head and your heart against her. It's hatred Adrienne has -felt for me, Roger, and I'm afraid I've felt it for her, too. She's done -things and said things that I couldn't have believed her capable of; -mean things; clever things; cruelly clever that get you right on the -raw; things I can't forget. There's much more in her than you saw at the -beginning. I was right rather than you about that; only they weren't -the things I thought." - -Oldmeadow walked, cutting at the withered way-side grasses with his -cane. Barney's short, slow sentences seemed to sting him as they came. -He had to adjust himself to their smart; to adjust himself to the -thought of this malignant Adrienne. Yet what he felt was not all -surprise; he had foreseen, suspected, even this. "I know," he said at -last; "I mean, I can see that it would happen just like that." - -"It did happen just like that," said Barney. "I don't claim to have been -an angel or anything like one. I gave her as good as I got, or nearly, -sometimes, no doubt. But I know that it wasn't my fault. I know it was -Adrienne who spoiled everything." - -They had come out now on the upland road. The country dropped away -beneath them wrapped in the dull mole-colour, the distant, dull -ultramarines of the November afternoon. The smell of burning weeds was -in the air and, in the west, a long, melancholy sheet of advancing -rain-cloud hid the sun. Oldmeadow wondered if he and Barney would ever -walk there together again, and his mind plunged deep into the past, the -many years of friendship to which this loved country had been a -background. - -"Barney," he said, "what I wanted to say is this: All that you feel is -true; I'm sure of it. But other things are true, too. I've seen her and -I've changed about her. If I was right before, I'm right now. She's been -blind because she didn't know she could be broken. Well, she's beginning -to break." - -"Is she?" said Barney, and his quiet was implacable. "I can quite -imagine that, you know. Everyone, except poor Palgrave--all the rest of -us, have found out that she's not the beautiful benignant being she -thought she was, and that bewilders her and makes her pretty wretched, -no doubt." - -Oldmeadow waited a moment. "I want you to see her," he said. "Don't be -cruel. You are a little cruel, you know. It's because you are thinking -of her abstractly; remembering only how she has hurt you. If you could -see her, see how unhappy she is, you'd feel differently. That's what I -want you to do. That's what I beg you to do, Barney." - -"I can't," said Barney after a moment. "That I can't do, Roger. It's -over. She might want me back if she could get me back adoring her. It's -only so she'd want me. But it's over. It's more than over. There's -something else." Barney's face showed no change from its sad fixity. -"You were right about that, too. It's Nancy I ought to have married. -It's Nancy I love. And Adrienne knows it." - -At this there passed before Oldmeadow's mind the memory of the small, -dark, hurrying figure, the memory of the words she had spoken: "Some -things are like living creatures; and they can die. They can die." - -He felt rather sick. "In that case, how can you blame your wife?" he -muttered. "Doesn't that explain it all?" - -"No, it doesn't explain it all." There was no fire of self-justification -in Barney's voice. It was as fixed and sad as his face. "It was only -after Adrienne made me so wretched I began to find it out. She was -jealous of Nancy from the beginning, of course. But then she was jealous -of everything that wasn't, every bit of it, hers. She had no reason for -jealousy. No man was ever more in love than I was with Adrienne. Even -now I don't feel for Nancy what I felt for her. It's something, I -believe, one only feels once and if it burns out it burns out for ever. -With Nancy, it's as if I had come home; and Adrienne and I were parted -before I knew that I was turning to her." - -They had begun the final descent into Chelford and the wind now brought -a fine rain against their faces. Neither spoke again until the grey -roofs of the village came into sight at a turning of the road. "About -money matters, Roger," Barney said. "Mother and Meg and Barbara. If you -get through, and I don't, will you see to them for me? I've appointed -you my trustee. I told Adrienne last summer that I couldn't take any of -her money any longer, so that, of course, with my having thrown up the -city job and taken on the farms, my affairs are in a bit of a mess. But -I hope they'll be able to go on at Coldbrooks all right. Palgrave will -have Coldbrooks if I don't come back, and perhaps you'll be able to -prevent him handing it over to his Socialist friends." - -"Palgrave would be safely human if it came to taking care of his mother -and sisters," said Oldmeadow. - -"Would he?" said Barney. "I don't know." - -Across the village green the lights of The Little House shone at them. -The curtains were still undrawn and, as they waited at the door, they -could see Nancy in the drawing-room, sitting by the fire alone. - -"I want you to come in with me, please, Roger," said Barney. "Nancy -hasn't felt it right to be very kind to me of late and she'll be able -to be kinder if you are there. You'll know, you'll see if a chance comes -for me to say what I want to say to her. You might leave us for a moment -then." - -"You have hardly more than a half-hour, you know," said Oldmeadow. - -"One can say a good deal in a half-hour," Barney replied. - -Nancy had risen and, as they entered, she came forward, trying to smile -and holding out her hand to each. But Oldmeadow was staying there. He -was not going in half an hour. There was no reason why Nancy should give -him her hand and Barney, quietly, took both her hands in his. "It's -good-bye, then, Nancy, isn't it?" he said. - -They stood there in the firelight together, his dear young people, both -so pale, both so fixedly looking at each other, and Nancy still tried to -smile as she said, "It's dear of you to have come." But her face -betrayed her. It was sick with the fear that, in conquering her own -heart, she should hurt Barney's; Barney's, whom she might never see -again. Oldmeadow went on to the fire and stood, his back to them, -looking down at it. - -"Oh, no, it's not; not dear at all," Barney returned. "You knew I'd come -to say good-bye, of course. Why haven't you been over to see me, you and -Aunt Monica? I've asked you often enough." - -"You mustn't scold me to-day, Barney, since it's good-bye. We couldn't -come," said Nancy. - -"It's never I who scold you. It's you who scold me. Not openly, I know," -said Barney, "but by implication; punish me, by implication. I quite -understood why you haven't come. Well, I want things to be clear now. -Roger's here, and I want to say them before him, because he's been in it -all since the beginning. It's because of Adrienne you've never come; and -changed so much in every way towards me." - -He had kept her hands till then, but Oldmeadow heard now that she drew -away from him. For a moment she did not speak; and then it was not to -answer him. "Have you said good-bye to her, Barney?" - -"No; I haven't," Barney answered. "I'm not going to say good-bye to -Adrienne, Nancy. It must be plain to you by this time that Adrienne and -I have parted. What did it all mean but that?" - -"It didn't mean that to her. She never dreamed it was meaning that," -said Nancy. - -"Well, she said it, often enough," Barney retorted. - -"Barney, please listen to me," said Nancy. "You must let me speak. She -never dreamed it was meaning that. If she was unkind to you it was -because she could not believe it would ever mean parting. She had -started wrong; by holding you to blame; after the baby; when you and -Roger so hurt her pride. And then she wasn't able to go back. She wasn't -able to see it all so differently--just to get you back. It would have -seemed wrong to her; a weakness, just because she longed so. And then, -most of all, she believed you loved her enough to come of yourself." - -"I tried to," said Barney, in the sad, bitter voice of the hill-side -talk with Oldmeadow. "You see, you don't know everything, Nancy, though -you know so much. I tried to again and again." - -"Yes. I know you did. But only on your own terms. And by then I had come -in. Oh, yes, I had, Barney. You didn't know it. It was long, long before -you knew. But I knew it; and so did she and it was more than she could -bear. What woman could bear it? I couldn't have, in her place." Tears -were in Nancy's voice. - -"It's queer, Nancy," said Barney, "that--barring Palgrave, who doesn't -count--you and Roger are the only two people she has left to stick up -for her. Roger's just been saying all that to me, you know. The two she -tried to crab whenever she got a chance. Well, say it's my fault, then. -Say that I've been faithless to my wife and fallen in love with another -woman. The fact is there, and you've said it now yourself. I don't love -her any longer. I shall never love her again. And I love you. I love -you, Nancy, and it's you I ought to have married; would have married, I -believe, if I hadn't been a blinded fool. I love you, and I can say it -now because this may be the end of everything. Don't let her spoil this, -too. Nancy darling, look at me. Can't you consent to forget Adrienne for -this one time, when we may never see each other again?" - -"I can't forget her! I can't forget her!" Nancy sobbed. "I mustn't. -She's miserable. She hasn't stopped loving you. And she's your wife." - -"Do you want to make me hate her?" - -"Oh, Barney--that is cruel of you." - -There was a silence and in it Oldmeadow heard Barney's car draw up at -the gate. He took out his watch. There were only a few more moments left -them. Not turning to them he said. "It does her no good, you know, Nancy -dear." - -"No. It does her no good," Barney repeated. "But forgive me. I was -cruel. I don't hate her. I'm sorry for her. It's simply that we ought -never to have married. Forget it, Nancy, and forget her. Don't let it -be, then, that I love you and don't love my wife. Let it be in the old -way. As if she'd never come. As if I'd come to say good-bye to my -cousin; to my dearest friend on earth. Look at me. Give me your hands. -It's your face I want to take with me." - -"Five minutes, Barney," Oldmeadow whispered, as he went past them. Nancy -had given him her hands; she had lifted her face to his, and Barney's -arms had closed around her. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - - -Mrs. Averil was in the hall. "Give them another moment," he said. "I'm -going outside." - -Tears were in his own eyes. He stepped out on to the flagged path of the -little plot in front of the house where strips of turf and rose-beds ran -between the house and the high wall. Between the clipped holly-trees at -the gate he saw Barney's car, and its lights, the wall between, cast a -deep shadow over the garden. - -The rain was falling thickly now and he stood, feeling it on his face, -filled with a sense of appeasement, of accomplishment. They were -together at last. It was not too late. At such a time, when all the -world hung on the edge of an abyss, to be together for a moment might -sum up more of real living than many happy years. They knew each other's -hearts and what more could life give its creatures than that -recognition. - -Suddenly, how he did not know, for there was no apparent movement and -his eyes were fixed on the pallid sky, he became aware that a figure was -leaning against the house in the shadow beside him. His eyes found it -and it was familiar. Yet he could not believe his eyes. - -She was leaning back, her hands against the wall on either side, and he -saw, with the upper layer of perception that so often blunts a violent -emotion, that her feet were sunken in the mould of Mrs. Averil's -rose-bed and that the cherished shoots of the new climbing rose were -tangled in her clothes. The open window was but a step away. - -She had come since they had come. She had crept up. She had looked -in--for how long?--and had fallen back, casting out her arms so that it -might not be to the ground. Her eyes were closed; but she had heard and -seen him. As he stood before her, aghast, unable to find a word, he -heard her mutter: "Take me away, please." - -Barney's car blocked the egress of the gate and Barney might emerge at -any moment. He leaned towards her and found that she was intricately -caught in the rose. Her hat with its veil, her sleeve, her hair, were -all entangled. - -Dumbly, patiently, she stood, while, with fumbling fingers and terror -lest they should be heard within--Mrs. Averil's voice now reached him -from the drawing-room--Oldmeadow released her and, his fingers deeply -torn by the thorns, he was aware, in all the tumult of his thought, more -than of the pain, of the wet fragrance of the roses that surrounded her. -He shared what he felt to be her panic. - -She had come hoping to see Barney; she had come to say good-bye to -Barney, who would not come to her; and his heart sickened for her at the -shameful seeming of her plight. She knew now that it must be her hope -never to see Barney again. - -There was a narrow passage, leading to the lawn and garden, between the -house and the stable walls. Thickly grown with ivy, showing only a -narrow opening above, where chimneys and gables cut against the sky, it -was nearly as dark as a tunnel, and into this place of hiding he half -led, half carried the unfortunate woman. - -With the darkness, the pungent smell of the wet ivy closed thickly, -ominously about them. It was as if he and Adrienne Toner were buried -there together. He heard a maid laugh far away and a boy passed on the -green stridently whistling "Tipperary." It was like hearing, in the -grave, the sounds of the upper world. - -Adrienne leaned against the wall. The ivy closing round her, nearly -obliterated her, but he could dimly see the grey disk of her face, -showing the unexpectedness of contour that reveals itself in the faces -of the dead. The trivial features were erased and only a shape of grief -remained, strangely august and emotionless. - -An eternity seemed to pass before the front door opened and Mrs. -Averil's voice, steadied to a galvanized cheerfulness, came, half -obliterated to a wordless rhythm. Barney's voice answered her, and his -steps echoed on the flagged path. "Say good-bye to Roger for me if I -don't see him on the road!" he called out from the gate. Then the car -coughed, panted; the horn croaked out its cry and, above them, a shaft -of light across the ivy, of which he had till then been unaware, flitted -suddenly away, leaving the darkness more visible. - -He heard then that she was weeping. - -Putting his arm behind her, for the rain fell heavily and the ivy was -drenched with it, he drew her forward and for a little while it was -almost against his breast that she lay while her very heart dissolved -itself in tears. - -She had come, he knew it all, with a breakdown of her pride, with a last -wild hope and, perhaps, a longing to atone, believing that she might -snatch a word somewhere with her husband, and find her way, at this -last moment, back to the heart she had so alienated. She had seen all. -She had heard all. He was sure of it. It had been as an outcast that he -had found her leaning there. He understood her through and through and -the tender heaviness that had already so often visited his heart flooded -it to suffocation. - -Among her sobs, he heard her, at last, speaking to him. "Even Palgrave -doesn't know. He told me--only this afternoon--that Barney was here. I -thought I might find him. I was going to wait in the road. And when I -got here there was no car and I was afraid that there was a mistake. -That I had missed him. And I went up to the house; to the open window; -and looked in; to see if he was there. It was not jealousy: not now. I -did not mean to be an eavesdropper. But, when I saw them, I stayed and -listened. It was not jealousy," she repeated. "It was because I had to -know that there was no more hope." - -"Yes," said Oldmeadow gently, while, with long pauses, she spoke on and -on; to the impartial judge, to the one sure refuge; and he said "Yes" -again, gently, after she had finished; a long time after. She still half -lay against his breast. He had never felt such an infinite tenderness -towards any creature; not since his boyhood and his mother's death. - -She drew away from him at last. "Take me," she said. "There is a train; -back to Oxford." She had ceased to weep. Her voice was hoarse and faint. - -"Did you walk up from the station? You're not fit to walk back. I can -get a trap. There's a man just across the green." - -"No. Walking, please. I would be recognized. They might know me. I can -walk. If you will help me." - -He drew her arm through his. "Lean on me," he said. "We'll go slowly." - -They went past the drawing-room windows and, softly opening, softly -shutting, through the gate. The road, when it turned the corner, left -the village behind; between its rarely placed trees, vague silhouettes -against the sky that seemed of one texture with them, it showed its -mournful pallor for only a little space before them; there was not -enough light left in the sky to glimmer on its pools. The fields, on -either side, vanished into obscurity. Pale cattle, once, over a hedge, -put disconsolate heads and lowed and a garrulous dog, as they passed by, -ran out from a way-side farm-yard, smelt at their heels, growled -perfunctorily and, having satisfied his sense of duty, went back to his -post. The sense of dumb emptiness was so complete that it was only after -they had gone a long way that he knew that she was weeping and the soft, -stifling sounds seemed only a part of nature's desolation. - -Her head bent down, she stumbled on, leaning on his arm, and from time -to time she raised her handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth and -nose. He did not say a word; nor did she. - -As he led her along, submissive to her doom, it was another feeling of -accomplishment that overwhelmed him; the dark after the radiant; after -Nancy and Barney, he and Adrienne. It was this, from their first -meeting, that he had been destined to mean to her. She was his appointed -victim. He had killed, as really as if with a knife, the girl whom he -had seen at Coldbrooks, in the sunlight, on that Sunday morning in -spring, knowing no doubts. She had then held the world in her hands and -a guileless, untried heaven had filled her heart. Between her and this -crushed and weeping woman there seemed no longer any bond; unless it was -the strange aching that, in his heart, held them both together. - - - - - -PART II - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -Oldmeadow sat in Mrs. Aldesey's drawing-room and, the tea-table between -them, Mrs. Aldesey poured out his tea. So it was, after three years, -that they found each other. So it was, all over the world, Oldmeadow -said to himself, that the tea-table, or its equivalent, reasserted -itself in any interval where the kindly amenities of human intercourse -could root themselves; though the world rocked and flames of anarchy -rimmed its horizons. - -It was more real, he felt that now, to sit and look at Lydia over her -tea than to parch on Eastern sands and shiver in Western trenches; from -the mere fact that the one experience became a nightmare while the other -was as natural as waking at dawn. Horrors became the dropped stitches of -life; and though if there were too many of them they would destroy the -stocking, the stocking itself was made up of tea-table talks and walks -in the woods with Nancy. He had just come from Coldbrooks. - -So he put it, trivially, to himself, and he felt the need of clinging to -triviality. The dropped stitches had been almost too much for him and -the nightmare, at times, had seemed the only reality. At times he had -known a final despair of life and even now he remembered that the worst -might still come. One might be called upon to face the death of the -whole order of civilization. Faith required one, perhaps, to recognize -that the human spirit was bound up, finally, with no world order and -unless one could face its destruction as one had to face the death of a -loved individual, one was not secure of the spiritual order that -transcended all mundane calamity. He believed, or hoped, that during -these last three years, in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, when, to the -last fibre, he had felt his faiths tested, he had learned to be ready -for the great relinquishment, should it be required of him; and it was -therefore the easier to doff that consciousness, as he might have doffed -a sword, and think of Lydia and of the order that still survived and -that she still stood for. - -Lydia did not look the worse for the war; indeed she looked the better. -She looked as if, in spite of long days in the hospital, she digested -better and, in spite of air-raids, slept better, and as they talked, -finding their way back to intimacy by the comparing of such -superficialities, she told him that for years she hadn't been so strong -or well. "Nothing is so good for you, I've found out, as to feel that -you are being used; being used by something worth while. People like -myself must keep still about our experiences, for we've had none that -bear talking of. But even the others, even the people bereaved -unspeakably, are strangely lifted up. And I believe that the populace -enjoys the air-raids rather than the reverse; they give them a chance of -feeling that they are enduring something, too; with good-humour and -pluck. If anyone is pessimistic about the effect of war on average human -nature, I should only ask them to come and talk to our men at the -hospital. Of course, under it all, there's the ominous roar in one's -ears all the time." - -"Do you mean the air-raids?" he asked her and, shaking her head, -showing him that she, too, had seen with him and, he believed, with him -accepted: "No; I mean the roar of nation after nation collapsing into -the abyss. A sort of tumbril roar of civilization, Roger. And, for that, -there's always the last resource of going gallantly to the guillotine. -But all the same, I believe we shall pull through." - -It was the spring of 1918 and one needed faith to believe it. She asked -him presently about his friends at Coldbrooks. He had gone to Coldbrooks -for three days of his one week's leave. After this he went to France. - -"What changes for you there, poor Roger," said Mrs. Aldesey. - -"Yes. Terrible changes. Palgrave dead and Barney broken. Yet, do you -know, it's not as sad as it was. Something's come back to it. Nancy sits -by him and holds his hand and is his joy and comfort." - -"Will he recover?" - -"Not in the sense of being really mended. He'll go on crutches, always, -if he gets up. But the doctors now hope that the injury to the back -isn't permanent." - -"And Meg's married," said Mrs. Aldesey after a little pause. "Have you -seen her?" - -"No. She runs a hospital in the country, at her husband's place, Nancy -tells me; and is very happy." - -"Very. Has a fine boy, and is completely reinstated. It's a remarkable -ending to the story, isn't it? She met him at the front, you know, -driving her ambulance; and he has twice as much in him as poor Eric -Hayward." - -"Remarkable. Yet Meg's a person who only needs her chance. She's the -sort that always comes out on top." - -"Does it comfort her mother a little for all she's suffered to see her -on top?" - -"It almost comically comforts her. All the same, Eleanor Chadwick has -her depths. Nothing will ever comfort her for Palgrave's death." - -"I understand that," said Mrs. Aldesey. "Nothing could. How she must -envy the happy mothers whose boys were killed at the front. To have -one's boy die in prison as a conscientious objector must be the -bitterest thing the war has given any mother to bear." - -"He was a dear boy," said Oldmeadow. "Heroically wrong-minded." He could -hardly bear to think of Palgrave. - -"He wasn't alone, you know," said Mrs. Aldesey after a moment. Something -was approaching that he would rather not have to speak of; a name he -would so much rather not name. And, evading it, feebly, he said, "His -mother got to him in time, I know." - -"Yes. But all the time. She went and lived near the prison. Adrienne -Toner I mean." - -Her eyes were on him and he hoped that no readjustment of his features -was visible. "Oh, yes. Nancy told me that," he said. - -"What's become of her, Roger?" Mrs. Aldesey asked. "Since Charlie was -killed the Lumleys have lived in the country and I hardly see them. I -haven't heard a word of her for years." - -He was keeping his eyes on her and he knew from her expression that he -showed some strain or some distress. - -"Nor have I. Nancy said that they hadn't either. She went away, after -Palgrave's death. Disappeared completely." - -"Nancy told you, of course, about the money; the little fortune she gave -Palgrave, so that he could leave it to his mother?" - -"Oh, yes. Nancy wrote to me of that." - -"It was cleverly contrived, wasn't it. They are quite tied up to it, -aren't they; whatever they may feel. No one could object to her giving a -fortune to the boy she'd ruined. I admired that in her, I must confess; -the way she managed it. And then her disappearance." - -"Very clever indeed," said Oldmeadow. "All that remains for her to do -now is to manage to get killed. And that's easily managed. Perhaps she -is killed." - -He did not intend that his voice should be emptier or dryer, yet Lydia -looked at him with a closer attention. - -"Barney and Nancy could get married then," she said. - -"Yes. Exactly. They could get married." - -"That's what you want, isn't it, Roger?" - -"Want her to be killed, or them to be married?" - -"Well, as you say, so many people _are_ being killed. One more or less, -if it's in such a good cause as their marriage--" - -"It's certainly a good cause. But I don't like the dilemma," said -Oldmeadow. - -He knew from the way she looked at him, discreet and disguised as her -recognition was, that he was hiding something from her. Casting about -his mind, in the distress that took the form of confusion, he could -himself find nothing that he hid, or wished to hide, unless it was the -end of Adrienne's story as Barney's wife. That wasn't for him to show; -ever; to anyone. - -"Perhaps she's gone back to America," said Mrs. Aldesey presently, -"California, you know. Or Chicago. She may very well be engaged in great -enterprises out there that we never hear of. They'd be sure to be great, -wouldn't they." - -"I suppose they would." - -"You saw her once more, didn't you, at the time you saw Palgrave," Mrs. -Aldesey went on. "Lady Lumley told me of that. And how kind you had -been. Adrienne had spoken of it. You were sorry for them both, I -suppose; for her as well as for him, in spite of everything. Or did she -merely take it for granted that the kindness to him extended to her?" - -"Not at all. It was for her too," said Oldmeadow, staring a little and -gathering together, after this lapse of time that seemed so immense, his -memories of that other tea-table set up in the chaos: Palgrave's -tea-table on that distant day in Oxford. What was so confusing him was -his consciousness that it hadn't been the last time he had seen -Adrienne. "I was as sorry for her as for him," he went on. "Sorrier. -There was so much more in her than I'd supposed. She was capable of -intense suffering." - -"In losing her husband's affections, you mean? You never suspected her -of being inhuman, surely? Lady Lumley blamed poor Barney for all that -sad story. But, even from her account, I could see his side very -plainly." - -"Perhaps I did think her inhuman. At all events I thought her -invulnerable." - -"Yes. I remember. With all her absurdity you thought she had great -power." Mrs. Aldesey looked at him thoughtfully. "And it was when you -found she hadn't that you could be sorry for her." - -"Not at all," said Oldmeadow again. "I still think she has great power. -People can have power and go to pieces." - -"Did she go to pieces? That day in Oxford? I can't imagine her in -pieces, you know." - -He had a feeling of drawing back; or of drawing Adrienne back. "In the -sense of being so unhappy, so obviously unhappy, over Palgrave," he -said. - -He saw that Lydia would have liked to go on questioning, as, of course, -it would have been perfectly natural for her to do. Was not Adrienne -Toner and her absurdity one of their pet themes? Yet she desisted. She -desisted and it was because she felt some change in him; some shrinking -and some pain. "Well, let's hope that she is happy, now, or as happy as -she can be, poor thing, doing great deeds in America," she said. And she -turned the talk back to civilization and its danger. - -They talked a good deal about civilization during their last three days -together. He wanted things, during these three days of mingled recovery -and farewell, to be as happy as possible between him and his friend, for -he knew that Lydia's heart was heavy, for him and not for civilization. -The front to which he was going was more real to her, because it was -much nearer, and his peril was more real than during his absence in -distant climes. He felt himself that the French front, at this special -time, would probably make an end of him and, for the first time since -their early friendship, he knew conjecture as to his relation with -Lydia; wondered, if it had not been for Mr. Aldesey in New York, whether -Lydia might have been in love with him, and realized, with a curious -sense of anxiety and responsibility, that her friendship for him now was -the closest tie in her life. The war might to her, too, mean irreparable -loss. And he was sorry that it was so; sorry to think that the easy, -happy intercourse had this hidden depth of latent suffering. - -Lydia's feeling, and its implications, became the clearer to him when, -on their last evening together, she said to him suddenly: "Perhaps -you'll see her over there." - -He could not pretend not to know whom she meant, nor could he pretend to -himself not to see that if it troubled Lydia that he should be sorry for -Adrienne that could only be because she cared far more for him than he -had ever guessed. - -He said, as easily as he could manage it, for the pressure of his -realizations made him feel a little queer: "Not if she's in America." - -"Ah, but perhaps she's come back from America," said Mrs. Aldesey. -"She's a great traveller. What will you do with her if you do find her? -Bring her back to Barney?" - -"Hardly that," he said. "There'd be no point in bringing her back to -Barney, would there?" - -"Well, then, what would you do with her?" Mrs. Aldesey smiled, as if -with a return to their old light dealing with the theme, while, still in -her nurse's coiffe and dress, she leaned back against her chair. - -"What would she do with me, rather, isn't it?" he asked. And he, too, -tried to be light. - -"She'll be mended then, you think? Able to do things to people again?" - -"I'm not at all afraid of her, you know. She never did me any harm," he -said. - -"Because you were as strong as she, you mean. She did other people harm, -surely. You warned me once to keep away from her unless I wanted to lose -my toes and fingers," Mrs. Aldesey still smiled. "She does make people -lose things, doesn't she?" - -"Well, she makes them gain things, too. Fortunes for instance. Perhaps -if I find her, she'll give me a fortune." - -"But that's only when she's ruined you," she reminded him. - -"And it's she who's ruined now," he felt bound to remind her; no longer -lightly. - -Leaning back in her chair, her faded little face framed in white, Mrs. -Aldesey looked at once younger yet more tired than he had ever seen her -look and she sat for a little while silent; as if she had forgotten -Adrienne Toner and were thinking only of their parting. But all her -gaiety had fallen from her as she said at last: "I can be sorry for her, -too; if she's really ruined. If she still loves him when he has ceased -to care for her. Does she, do you think?" - -With the question he seemed to see a fire-lit room and lovers who had -found each other and to smell wet roses. Lydia was coming too near; too -near the other figure, outside the window, fallen back with outstretched -arms against the roses. And again he felt himself softly, cautiously, -disentangle the sleeve, the hair, felt himself draw Adrienne away into -the darkness where the smell was now of wet ivy and where he could see -only the shape of an accepting grief. - -"How could I know?" he said. "She was very unhappy when I last saw her. -But three years have passed and people can mend in three years." - -"Especially in America," Mrs. Aldesey suggested. "It's a wonderful place -for mending. Let's hope she's there. Let's hope that we shall never, any -of us, ever hear of her again. That would be much the happiest thing, -wouldn't it?" - -He was obliged to say that it would certainly be much the happiest -thing; and he was too unhappy about Lydia to be able to feel angry with -her. He knew how tired she must be when, for the first time in their -long friendship, she must know that she was not pleasing him, yet not be -able to help herself. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -"Good Lord!" Oldmeadow heard himself groaning. - -Even as he took possession of his physical suffering he knew that there -was satisfaction in suffering, at last, himself. Until now the worst -part of war had been to see the sufferings of others. This was at last -the real thing; but it was so mingled with acquiescence that it ceased -to be the mere raw fact. "We're all together, now," he thought, and he -felt himself, even as he groaned, lifted on a wave of beatitude. - -Until now he had not, as a consciousness, known anything. There was a -shape in his memory, a mere immense black blot shot with fiery lights. -It must symbolize the moment when the shell struck him, bending, in the -trench, over his watch and his calculations. And after that there were -detached visions, the ceiling of a train where he had swung in a hammock -bed, looking up; clean sheets, miraculously clean and the face of a -black-browed nurse who reminded him of Trixie. The smell of chloroform -was over everything. It bound everything together so that days might -have passed since the black blot and since he lay here, again in clean -sheets, the sweet, thick smell closing round him and a raging thirst in -his throat. He knew that he had just been carried in from the operating -room and he groaned again "Good Lord," feeling the pain snatch as if -with fangs and claws at his thigh and belly, and muttered, "Water!" - -Something sweet, but differently sweet from the smell, sharp, too, and -insidious, touched his lips and opening them obediently, as a young bird -opens its bill to the parent bird, he felt a swab passed round his -parched mouth and saw the black-browed nurse. "Not water, yet, you -know," she said. "This is lemon and glycerine and will help you -wonderfully." - -He wanted to ask something about Paris and the long-distance gun firing -on it every day and he seemed to see it over the edge of the trench, far -away on the horizon of No-man's-land, a tiny city flaming far into the -sky. But other words bubbled up and he heard himself crying: "Mother! -Mother!" and remembered, stopping himself with an act of will, that they -all said that when they were dying. But as he closed his eyes he felt -her very near and knew that it would be sweet to die and find her. - -A long time must have passed. Was it days or only the time of daylight? -It was night now and a shaded light shone from a recess behind him and -thoughts, visions, memories raced through his mind. Nancy; Barney; he -would never see them again, then: poor Lydia and civilization. -"Civilization will see me out," he thought and he wondered if they had -taken off the wings of the Flying Victory when they packed her. - -A rhythm was beating in his brain. Music was it? Something of Bach's? It -gathered words to itself and shaped itself sentence by sentence into -something he had heard? or read? Ah, he was glad to have found it. -"Under the orders of your devoted officers you will march against the -enemy or fall where you stand, facing the foe. To those who die I say: -You will not die: you will enter living into immortality, and God will -receive you into his bosom." He seemed to listen to the words as he -lay, quietly smiling. But it was music after all for, as he listened, -they merged into the "St. Matthew Passion." He had heard it, of course, -with Lydia, at the Temple. But Lydia did not really care very much for -Bach. She might care more for "Litanei." She had sung it standing beside -him with foolish white roses over her ears. How unlike Lydia to wear -those roses. And was it Lydia who stood there? A mental perplexity -mingled with the physical pain and spoiled his peace. It was not -Lydia's, that white face in the coffin with wet ivy behind it. What -suffering was this that beat upon his heart? The music had faded all -away and he saw faces everywhere, dying faces; and blood and terrible -mutilations. All the suffering of the war, worse, far worse than the -mere claws and fangs that tore at him. Dying boys choked out their -breaths in agonies of conscious loneliness, yearning for faces they -would never see again. Oh, how many he had seen die like that! -Intolerable to watch them. And could one do nothing? "Cigarettes. Give -them cigarettes," he tried to tell somebody. "And marmalade for -breakfast; and phonographs, and then they will enter living into -immortality"--No: he did not mean that. What did he mean? He could catch -at nothing now. Thoughts were tossed and tumbled like the rubbish of -wreckage from an inundated town on the deep currents of his anguish. A -current that raced and seethed and carried him away. He saw it. Its -breathless speed was like the fever in his blood. If it went faster he -would lose his breath. Church-bells ringing on the banks lost theirs as -he sped past so swiftly and made a trail of whining sound.--Effie! -Effie! It was poor little Effie, drowning. He saw her wild, small face, -battling. Bubbles boiled up about his cry. - -Suddenly the torrent was stilled. Without commotion, without tumult, it -was stilled. There was a dam somewhere; it had stopped racing; he could -get his breath. Still and slow; oh! it was delicious to feel that quiet -hand on his forehead; his mother's hand, and to know that Effie was -safe. He lay with closed eyes and saw a smooth waterfall sliding and -curving with green grey depths into the lower currents of the stream. He -remembered the stream well, now; one of his beloved French rivers; one -of the smaller, sylvan rivers, too small for majesty; with silver -poplars spaced against the sky on either bank and a small town, white -and pink and pearly-grey, clear on the horizon. Tranquil sails were -above him and the bells from the distant church-tower floated to him -across the fields. Soundlessly, slowly, he felt himself borne into -oblivion. - -The black-browed nurse was tending him next morning. "You are better," -she said, smiling at him. "You slept all night. No; it's a shame, but -you mayn't have water yet." She put the lemon and glycerine to his lips. -"The pain is easier, isn't it?" - -He said it was. He felt that he must not stir an inch so as to keep it -easier, but he could not have stirred had he wanted to, for he was all -tightly swathed and bandaged. He remembered something he wanted -specially to ask: "Paris? They haven't got it yet?" - -"They'll never get it!" she smiled proudly. "Everything is going -splendidly." - -The English surgeon was such a nice fellow. He had spectacles on a -square-tipped nose and a square, chubby face; yet his hair was nearly -white. Oldmeadow remembered, as if of days before the flood, that his -name was a distinguished one. Perhaps it was morphia they gave him, -after his wound was dressed, or perhaps he fainted. The day passed in a -hot and broken stupor and at night the tides of fever rose again and -carried him away. But, again, before he had lost his breath, before he -had quite gone down into delirium, the quiet hand came and sent him, -under sails, to sleep. - -Next day Oldmeadow knew, from the way the surgeon looked at him, that -his case was grave. His face was grim as he bent over the dressing and -he hurt horribly. They told him, when it was over, that he had been very -brave, and, like a child, he was pleased that they should tell him so. -But the pain was worse all day and the sense of the submerging fever -imminent, and he lay with closed eyes and longed for the night that -brought the hand. Hours, long hours passed before it came. Hours of -sunlight when, behind his eyelids, he saw red, and hours of twilight -when he saw mauve. Then, for a little while, it was a soft, dense grey -he saw, like a bat's wing, and then the small light shone across his -bed; he knew that the night had come, and felt, at last, the hand fall -softly on his head. - -He lay for some time feeling the desired peace flow into him and then, -through its satisfaction, another desire pushed up into his -consciousness and he remembered that, more than about Paris, he had -wanted to speak to the nurse about what she did for him and thank her. - -"It's you who make me sleep, isn't it," he said, lying with closed eyes -under the soft yet insistent pressure. "I've never thanked you." - -She did not reply. She did not want him to talk. But he still wanted to. - -"I couldn't thank you last night," he said, "I can't keep hold of my -thoughts. And when morning comes I seem to have forgotten everything -about the night. You are the nurse who takes care of me in the daytime, -too, aren't you?" - -Again, for a moment, there was no reply; and then a voice came. "No; I -am the night nurse. Go to sleep now." - -It was a voice gentle, cold and soft, like snow. It was not an English -voice and he had heard it before. Where had he heard it? Rooks were -cawing and he saw a blue ribbon rolling, rolling out across a -spring-tide landscape. This voice was not like a blue ribbon; it was -like snow. Yet, when he turned his head under her hand, he looked round -at Adrienne Toner. - -The first feeling that came uppermost in the medley that filled him at -the sight of her was one of amused vexation. It was as if he went back -to his beginnings with her, back to the rooks and the blue ribbon. "At -it again!" was what he said to himself, and what he said aloud, -absurdly, was: "Oh, come, now!" - -She did not lift her hand, but there was trouble on her face as she -looked back at him. "I hoped you wouldn't see me, Mr. Oldmeadow," she -said. - -He was reminded of Bacchus and the laying on of hands; but a classical -analogy, even more ridiculous, came to him with her words. "Like Cupid -and Psyche," he said. "The other way round. It's I who mustn't look." - -The trouble on her face became more marked and he saw that she imagined -him to be delirious. He was not quite himself, certainly, or he would -not have greeted Adrienne Toner thus, and he made an effort to be more -decorous and rational as he said, "I'm very glad to see you again. Safe -and sound: you know." - -She had always had a singular little face, but it had never looked so -singular as now, seen from below with shadows from the light behind cast -so oddly over it. The end of her nose jutted from a blue shadow and her -eyes lay in deep hollows of blue. All that he was sure of in her -expression was the gravity with which she made up her mind to humour -him. "We want you to be safe and sound, too. Please shut your eyes and -go to sleep." - -"All right; all right, Psyche," he murmured, and he knew it wasn't quite -what he intended to say, yet in his flippancy he was taking refuge from -something; from the flood of suffering that had broken over him the -other night after he had seen that dead face with white roses over its -ears. This queer face, half dissolved in blue and yellow, was not dead -and the white coiffe came closely down about it. If he obeyed her he -knew that she would keep the other faces away and he closed his eyes -obediently and lay very still, seeing himself again as the good little -boy being praised. This was Psyche; not Ariane. "Ariane ma soeur," he -murmured. It was Ariane who had the white roses--or was it wet ivy? and -after her face pressed all the other dying faces. "You'll keep them -away, won't you?" he murmured, and he heard her say: "Yes; I'll keep -them quite away," and, softly, a curtain of sleep fell before his eyes -crossed by a thin drift of mythological figures. - -"I thought it was you who sent me to sleep," he said to the English -nurse next day. He could hardly, in the morning light, believe it was -not a dream. - -She smiled with an air of vicarious pride. "No indeed. I can't send -people to sleep. It's our wonderful Mrs. Chadwick. She does a good deal -more than put people to sleep. She cures people--oh, I wouldn't have -believed it myself, till I saw it--who are at death's door. It's lucky -for you and the others that we've got her here for a little while." - -"Where's here?" he asked after a moment. - -"Here's Boulogne. Didn't you know?" - -"I thought I heard the sea sometimes. It's for cases too bad, then, to -be taken home. Get her here from where?" - -"From her hospital in the firing-line. Now that we're advancing at the -front everything there is changed and she could come away for a little. -Sir Kenneth's been begging her to come ever since he saw her. He knew -she would work marvels here, too." The nice young nurse was exuberant in -her darkness and rosiness with a Jewish streak of fervour in her lips -and eyes. "It's a sort of rest for her," she added. "She's been badly -wounded once. You can just see the scar, under her cap, on her forehead. -And she nearly died of fever out in Salonika. She had a travelling -ambulance there before she came to France." - -"It must be very restful for her," Oldmeadow remarked with a touch of -his grim mirth, "if she has to sit up putting all your bad cases to -sleep. Why haven't I heard of her and her hospital?" - -"It's not run in her name. It's an American hospital--she is -American--called after her mother, I believe. The Pearl Ambulance is -what it's called and everybody here knows about it; all of us nurses and -doctors, I mean. Her organizing power is as wonderful as her cures; her -influence over her staff. They all worship the ground she walks on." - -"Pearl, Pearl Toner," Oldmeadow was saying to himself. How complete, how -perfect it was. And the nurse went on, delighted, evidently, to talk of -an idol, and rather as if she were speaking of a special cure they had -installed, a sort of Carrel treatment not to be found anywhere else: -"Everything's been different since she came. It's almost miraculous to -see what the mere touch of her hand can do. Matron says she wouldn't be -surprised if it turned out she was a sort of nun and wore a hair shirt -under her dress. Whatever she is, it makes one feel better and stronger -just to see her and one would do anything for her just to have her smile -at one. She has the most heavenly smile." - -It was all very familiar. - -"Ah, you haven't abandoned me after all, though I have found you out," -he said to Adrienne Toner that night. - -He was able at last to see her clearly as she came in, so softly that it -was like a dream sliding into one's sleep. She was like a dream in her -nurse's dress which, though so familiar on other women, seemed to -isolate and make her strange. Her face was smaller than he had -remembered it and had the curious look, docile yet stubborn, that one -sees on the faces of dumb-mutes. She might have looked like that had -she been deafened by the sound of so many bursting shells and lost the -faculty of speech through doing much and saying nothing among scenes of -horror. But she spoke to him, after all, as naturally as he spoke to -her, saying, though with no touch of his lightness: "You mustn't talk, -you know, if I come to make you sleep. Sir Kenneth wants sleep for you -more than anything else." - -"I promise you to be good," said Oldmeadow. "But I'm really better, -aren't I? and can talk a little first." - -"You are really better. But it will take a long time. A great deal of -sleeping." - -"No one knew what had become of you," said Oldmeadow, and he remembered -that he ought to be sorry that Adrienne Toner had not been killed. - -She hesitated, and then sat down beside him. He thought that she had -been going to ask him something and then checked herself. "I can't let -you talk," she said, and in her voice he heard the new authority; an -authority gained by long submission to discipline. - -"Another night, then. We must talk another night," he murmured, closing -his eyes, for he knew that he must not disobey her. All the same it was -absurd that Adrienne Toner should be doing this for him; absurd but -heavenly to feel her hand fall softly, like a warm, light bird, and -brood upon his forehead. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -They never spoke of Coldbrooks, nor of Barney, nor of Palgrave; not -once. Not once during all those nights that she sat beside him and made -him sleep. - -He had heard from Coldbrooks, of course; letters came often now. And the -dark young nurse had written for him since he could not yet write for -himself. He had said no word of seeing Adrienne. Nor had he let them -know how near to death he had been and, perhaps, still was. He would -have liked to have seen Lydia and Nancy if he were to die; but most of -all he wanted to be sure of not losing Adrienne. And he knew that were -he to tell them, were they to come, Adrienne would go. - -She never spoke to him at all, he remembered--as getting stronger with -every day, he pieced his memories of these nights together--unless he -spoke to her; and she never smiled. And it came upon him one morning -after he had read letters that brought so near the world from which she -was now shut out, that she had, perhaps, never forgiven him. After all, -though he could not see that he had been wrong, she had everything to -forgive him and the thought made him restless. That night, for the first -time, she volunteered a remark. His temperature had gone up a little. He -must be very quiet and go to sleep directly. - -"Yes; I know," he said. "It's because of you. Things I want to say. I'm -really so much better. We can't go on like this, can we," he said, -looking up at her as she sat beside him. "Why, you might slip out of my -life any day, and I might never hear of you again." - -She sat looking down at him, a little askance, though gentle still, if -gentle was the word for her changed face. "That's what I mean to do," -she said. - -"Oh, but--" Oldmeadow actually, in his alarm and resentment, struggled -up on an elbow--"that won't do. I want to see you, really see you, now -that I'm myself again. I want to talk with you--now that I can talk -coherently. I want to ask you; well, I won't ask it now." She had put -out her hand, her small, potent hand, and quietly pressed him back, and -down upon his pillow while her face took on its look of almost stern -authority. "I'll be good. But promise me you'll not go without telling -me. And haven't you questions to ask, too?" - -Her face kept its severity, but, as he found this last appeal, her eyes -widened, darkened, looked, for a moment, almost frightened. - -"I know that Barney is safe," she said. "I have nothing to ask." - -"Well; no; I see." He felt that he had been guilty of a blunder and it -made him fretful. "For me, then. Not for you. Promise me. I won't be -good unless you promise me. You can't go off and leave me like that." - -With eyes still dilated, she contemplated this rebellion. - -"You must promise me something, then," she said after a moment. - -He felt proud, delighted, as if he had gained a victory over her. - -"Done. If it's not too hard. What is it?" - -"You won't write to anybody. You won't tell anybody that you've seen me. -Only Lady Lumley knows that I am here. And she has promised not to tell. -Probably, soon, I shall have left France for ever." - -"I won't tell. I won't write. I can keep secrets as well as Lady Lumley. -She does keep them, you know. So it's a compact." - -"Yes. It's a compact. You'll never tell them; and I won't go without -letting you know. I promise. Now go to sleep." - -She laid her hand on his forehead, but, for a little while, he heard her -breathing deeply and quickly and the sense of his blundering stayed with -him so that sleep was longer in coming. - -All the same he was much better next day. He was able to sit up and had -the glory and excitement of a chop for his midday dinner. And when the -pleasant hour of tea arrived it was Adrienne herself who came in -carrying the little tray. - -He had not seen her in daylight before and his first feeling was one of -alarm, for, if she were afoot like this, in daylight, must it not mean -that she was soon to leave the hospital? He felt shy of her, too, for, -altered as she was by night, the day showed her as far more altered. -Whether she seemed much older or much younger he could not have said. -The coiffe, covering her forehead, and bound under her chin in a way -peculiar to her, left only, as it were, the means of expression visible. - -She sat down by the window and looked out, glancing round from time to -time as he drank his tea and it was she who found the calm little -sentences, about the latest news from the front, the crashing of -Bulgaria, that carried them on until he had finished. When he had pushed -down his tray she turned her chair and faced him, folding her hands -together on her white apron, and she said, and he knew that she had come -to say it, "What was it you wanted to ask me?" - -He had had, while she sat at the window, her profile with the jutting -nose, and her face, as it turned upon him now, made him think suddenly -of a seagull. Questing, lonely, with vigilant eyes, it seemed to have -great spaces before it; to be flying forth into empty spaces and to an -unseen goal. - -"Are you going away, then?" He had not dared, somehow, to ask her -before. He felt now that he could not talk until he knew. - -"Not yet," she said. "But I shall be going soon. The hospital is -emptying and my nights on duty are very short. I have, really, only you -and two others to take care of. That's why I am up so early to-day. And -you are so much better that we can have a little talk; if you have -anything to ask me." - -"It's this, of course," said Oldmeadow. "It seems to me you ought to -dislike me. I misunderstood you in many ways. And now I owe you my life. -Before we part I want to thank you and to ask you to forgive me." - -Her eyes, seen in daylight, were of the colour of distance, of arctic -distances. That had always been their colour, though he had never before -identified it. - -"But there is nothing to thank me for," she said. "I am here to take -care of people." - -"Even people who misunderstood you. Even people you dislike. I know." -He flushed, feeling that he had been duly snubbed. "But though you take -care of everyone, anyone may thank you, too, mayn't they?" - -"I don't dislike you, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said after a moment. "And you -didn't misunderstand me." - -"Oh," he murmured, more abashed than before. "I think so. Not, perhaps, -what you did; but what you were. I didn't see you as you really were. -That's what I mean." - -The perplexity, which had grown, even, to amazement, had left her eyes -and she was intently looking at him. "There is nothing for you to be -sorry for," she said. "Nothing for me to forgive. You were always -right." - -"Always right? I can't take that, you know," said Oldmeadow, deeply -discomposed. "You were blind, of course, and more sure of yourself than -any of us can safely afford to be; but I wasn't always right." - -"Always. Always," she repeated. "I was blinder than you knew. I was more -sure of myself." - -He lay looking at her and she looked back at him, but with a look that -invited neither argument not protest. It remained remote and vigilant. -She might have been the seagull looking down and noting, as she flew -onward, that the small figure on the beach so far below had ceased to be -that of an assailant in its attitude. How remote she was, white strange, -fleeting creature! How near she had been once! The memory of how near -rushed over his mind. He had, despite the delirious visions of her -stricken face, hardly thought at all, since really seeing her again, of -that last time. Everything had fitted itself on, rather, to his earliest -memories of her, tinged all of them, it was true, with a deeper meaning, -but not till this moment consciously admitting it. It rushed in now, -poignant with the recovered smell of wet, dark ivy, the recovered sound -of her stifled sobs as she had stumbled, broken, beside him in the rain. -And with the memory came the desire that she should again be near. - -"Tell me," he said, "what are you going to do? You said you might be -leaving France for ever. Shall you go back to America?" - -"I don't think so. Not for a long time," she answered. "There will be -things to do over here, out of France, for a great many years I -imagine." - -He hesitated, then took a roundabout way. "And when I get home, if, -owing to you, I ever get there, may I not tell them that you're safe and -sound? It would be happier for them to know that, wouldn't it?" - -Her vigilance still dwelt upon him as though she suspected in this -sudden change of subject some craft of approach, but she answered -quietly: - -"No; I think it will be happier for them to forget me. They will be told -if I die. I have arranged for that." - -"They can't very well forget you," said Oldmeadow after a moment. "They -must always wonder." - -"I know." She glanced away and trouble came into her face. "I know. But -as much as possible. You must not make me real again by telling them. -You have promised. You care for them. You know what I mean." - -"Yes; I've promised. And I see what you mean. But," said Oldmeadow -suddenly, and this, of course, was what he had been coming to. "I don't -want to forget. I want you to stay real. You must let me know what -becomes of you, always, please." - -Astonishment, now, effaced her trouble. "You? Why?" she asked. - -He smiled a little. "Well, because, if you'll let me say it, I'm fond of -you. I feel responsible for you. I've been too deeply in your life, -you've been too deeply in mine, for us to disappear from each other. -Don't you remember," he said, and he found it with a sense of -achievement, ridiculous as it might sound, "how I held the tea-pot for -you? That's what I mean. You must let me go on holding it." - -But she could feel no amusement. She was pressing her hands tightly -together in her lap, her eyes were wide and her astonishment, he seemed -to see, almost brought tears to them. "Fond? You?" she said. "Of me? Oh, -no, Mr. Oldmeadow, I can't believe that. You are sorry, I know. You are -very sorry. But you can't be fond." - -"And why not?" said Oldmeadow, and he raised himself on his elbow the -more directly to challenge her. "Why shouldn't I be fond of you, pray? -You must swallow it, for it's the truth and I've a right to my own -feelings, I hope." - -She put aside the playfulness in which his grim earnest veiled itself. -"Because you saw. Because you know. All about me. From the first." - -"Well?" he questioned after a moment, still raised on his elbow but now -with the grimness unalloyed. "What of it?" - -"You remember what I was. You remember what you saw. You would have -saved them from me if you could; and you couldn't. How can you be fond -of a person who has ruined all their lives?" - -"Upon my soul," said Oldmeadow laughing, his eyes on hers, "you talk as -though you'd been a Lucrezia Borgia! What were you worse than an -exalted, stubborn, rather conceited girl? Things went wrong, I know, and -partly because of me. But it wasn't all your fault, I'll swear it. And -if it was, it was your mistake; not your crime." - -"Oh, no, no, no," said Adrienne, and the compulsion of his feeling had -brought a note of anguish to her voice. "It wasn't that. It was worse -than that. Don't forget. Don't think you are fond of me because I can -make you sleep. It's always been so; I see it now--the power I've had -over people; the horrible power. For power is horrible unless one is -good; unless one is using it for goodness." - -"Well, so you were," Oldmeadow muttered, falling back on his pillow, her -vehemence, her strange passion, almost daunting him. "It's not because -you make me go to sleep that I'm fond of you. What utter rubbish!" - -"It is! it is!" she repeated. "I've seen it happen too often. It always -happens. It binds people to me. It makes them cling to me as if I could -give them life. It makes them believe me to be a sort of saint!" - -"Well, if you can help them with it? You have helped them. The war's -your great chance in that, you'll admit. No one can accuse you of trying -to get power over people now." - -"Perhaps not. I'm not thinking of what I may be accused of, but of what -happens." - -"It doesn't happen with me. I was fond of you--well, we won't go back to -that. And you did use it for goodness. Power came by the way and you -took it. Of course." - -"I thought I was using it for goodness. I thought I was good. That was -the foundation of everything. We must go back, Mr. Oldmeadow. You don't -see as I thought you did. You don't understand. I didn't mean to set -myself up above other people. I thought they were good, too. I was happy -in my goodness, and when they weren't happy it seemed to me they missed -something I had and that it was a mistake that I could set right for -them. I'm going back to the very beginning. Long before you ever knew -me. Everything fell into my hand. I loved people, or thought I did, and -if they didn't love me I thought it their mistake. That was the way it -looked to me, for my whole life long, until you came. I couldn't -understand at first, when you came. I couldn't see what you thought. I -believed that I could make you love me, too, and when I saw, for you -made it plain, that you disliked me, it seemed to me worse than mistake. -I thought that you must be against goodness; dangerous; the way you -pushed me back--back--and showed me always something I had not thought I -meant at the bottom of everything I did. I felt that I wanted to turn -away from you and to turn people who loved me away from you, lest you -should infect them. And all the while, all the while I was trying to -escape--the truth that you saw and that I didn't." She stopped for a -moment while, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow stared at her. Her breath -seemed to fail her, and she leaned forward and put her elbows on her -knees and bent her forehead on her joined hands. "It came at last. You -remember how it came," she said, and the passion of protest had fallen -from her voice. She spoke with difficulty. "Partly through you, and, -partly, through my failure; I had never failed before. My failure with -Barney. My failure to keep him and to get him back. I couldn't believe -it at first. I struggled and struggled. You saw me. Everything turned -against me. It was as if the world had changed its shape and colour when -I struggled against it. Everything went down. And when I felt I wasn't -loved, when I felt myself going down, with all the rest, I became bad. -Bad, bad," she repeated, and her voice, heavy with its slow reiteration, -was like a clenched hand of penitence beating on a breast: "really bad -at last, for I had not known before what I was and the truth was there, -staring me in the face. I did dreadful things, then. Mean things; cruel, -hateful things, shutting my eyes, stopping my ears, so that I should not -see what I was doing. I ran about and crouched and hid--from myself; do -you follow my meaning?--from God. And then at last, when I was stripped -bare, I had to look at Him." - -She raised herself and leaned back in her chair. Her voice had trembled -more and more with the intensity of the feeling that upheld her and she -put her handkerchief to her lips and pressed it to them, looking across -at him. And, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow looked back at her, -motionless and silent. - -Was it sympathy, pity or tenderness that almost overwhelmed him as he -gazed at her? He could not have said, though knowing that the unity that -was in them both, the share of the eternal that upheld their lives, -flowed out from his eyes into hers as he looked and from hers to his. -They were near at last; near as it is rarely given to human beings to -experience nearness, and the awe of such a partaking was perhaps the -ground of all he felt. - -"You see," he said, and a long time had passed, "I was mistaken." - -She did not answer him. Perhaps she did not understand. - -"I never knew you were a person who could come to the truth like that," -he said. - -Still holding her handkerchief to her lips, she slightly shook her head. - -"Even you never thought that I was bad." - -"I thought everybody was bad," said Oldmeadow, "until they came to know -that goodness doesn't lie in themselves. The reason you angered me so -was that you didn't see you were like the rest of us. And only people -capable of great goodness can know such an agony of self-recognition." - -"No," she repeated. "Everyone is not bad like me. You know that's not -true. You know that some people, people you love--are not like that. -They need no agony of recognition, for nothing could ever make them mean -and cruel." - -He thought for a moment. "That's because you expected so much more of -yourself; because you'd believed so much more, and were, of course, more -wrong. Your crash was so much greater because your spiritual pride was -so great. And I thought you were a person a crash would do for; that -there'd be nothing left of you if you came a crash. That was my mistake; -for see what there is left." - -She rose to her feet. His words seemed to press her too far. "You are -kind," she said in a hurried voice. "I understand. You are so sorry. -I've talked and talked. It's very thoughtless of me. I must go now." - -She came and took the tray, but he put his hand on her arm, detaining -her. "You'll own you're not bad now? You'll own there's something real -for me to be fond of? Wait. I want you to acknowledge it, to accept -it--my fondness. Don't try to run away." - -She stood above him, holding the tray, while he kept his hold on her -arm. "All I need to know," she said, after a moment, and she did not -look at him, "is that no one is ever safe--unless they always remember." - -"That's it, of course," said Oldmeadow gravely, "and that you must die -to live; and you did die. But you live now, really, and life comes -through you again. Your gift, you know, of which you were so much afraid -just now, lest it had enveigled me. Don't you see it? How can I put it -for you? You had a sort of wholeness before. There must be wholeness of -a sort if life is to come through; harmony of a sort, and faith. It -wasn't an illusion even then. When you were shattered you lost your -gift. The light can't shine through shattered things; and that was when -you recognized that without God we are a nothingness; a nothingness and -a restlessness mingled. You know. There are no words for it, though so -many people have found it and tried to say it. I know, too, after a -fashion. I've had crashes, too. But now your gift has come back, for you -are whole again; built up on an entirely new principle. You see, it's -another you I am fond of. You must believe in her, too. You do believe -in her. If you didn't you could not have found your gift." - -She had stood quite still while he spoke, looking down, not at him but -at the little tray between her hands, and he saw that she was near -tears. Her voice was scarcely audible as she said: "Thank you." And she -made an effort over herself to add: "What you say is true." - -"We must talk," said Oldmeadow. He felt extraordinarily happy. "There -are so many things I want to ask you about." And he went on, his hand -still on her arm, seeing that she struggled not to cry and helping her -to recover: "You're not going away for some time, yet, I hope. Please -don't. There'll soon be no need of hospitals of this sort, anywhere, -will there? and you must manage to stay on here a little longer. I -shan't get on if you go. You won't leave me just as you've saved me, -will you, Mrs. Barney?" - -At the name, over-taxed as she was already, a pitiful colour flooded her -face and before his blunder made visible his own blood answered hers, -mounting hotly to his forehead. "Oh, I'm so sorry," he murmured, -helpless and hating himself, while his hand dropped. She stood over him, -holding herself there so as not to hurt him by the aspect of flight. She -even, in a moment, forced herself to smile. It was the first smile he -had seen on her face. "You've nothing to be sorry for, Mr. Oldmeadow," -she said, as she had said before. "You're very kind to me. I wish I -could tell you how kind I feel you are." And as she turned away, -carrying the tray, she added: "No; I won't go yet." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -He did not see her again for two days; and she did not even come at -night. But he now kept possession of his new strength and slept without -her help. The sense of happiness brooded upon him. He did not remember -ever having felt so happy. His life was irradiated and enhanced as if by -some supreme experience. - -It was already late afternoon when, on the second day, she appeared; but -in this month of August his room was still filled with the reflection of -the sunlight and the warm colour bathed her as she entered. She wore a -blue cloak over her white linen dress and she had perhaps been walking, -for there was a slight flush on her cheeks and a look almost of -excitement in her eyes. - -She unfastened her cloak and put it aside and then, taking the chair -near the window, clasping her hands, as before, in her lap, she said, -without preamble and with a peculiar vehemence: "You hear often from -Barney, don't you?" - -Oldmeadow felt himself colouring. "Only once, directly. It rather tires -him to sit up, you know. But he's getting on wonderfully and the doctors -think he'll soon be able to walk a little--with a crutch, of course." - -"But you do hear, constantly, from Nancy, don't you," said Adrienne, -clasping and unclasping her hands but speaking with a steadiness he felt -to be rehearsed. "He is at Coldbrooks, I know, and Nancy is with him, -and his mother and Mrs. Averil. It all seems almost happy, doesn't it? -as happy as it can be, now, with Palgrave dead and Barney shackled." - -Startled as he was by her directness Oldmeadow managed to meet it. - -"Yes; almost happy," he said. "I was with them before I came out this -last time and felt that about them. Poor Mrs. Chadwick is a good deal -changed; but even she is reviving." - -"She has had too much to bear," said Adrienne. "I saw her again, too, at -the end, when she came to Palgrave. She can never forgive me. Meg is -happy now, but she will never forgive me either. I wrought havoc in -their lives, didn't I?" - -"Well, you or fate. I don't blame you for any of that, you know," said -Oldmeadow. - -"I don't say that I blame myself for it," said Adrienne. "I may have -been right or I may have been wrong. I don't know. It is not in things -like that that I was bad. But what we must face is that I wrought havoc; -that if it hadn't been for me they might all, now, be really happy. -Completely happy. If I had not been there Palgrave would not have been -so sure of himself. And if I had not been there Nancy and Barney would -have married." - -"I don't know," said Oldmeadow. "If Barney hadn't fallen in love with -you he might very probably have fallen in love with some one else, not -Nancy." - -"Perhaps, not probably," said Adrienne. "And if he had he would have -stayed in love with her, for Barney is a faithful person. And it may -have been because I was so completely the wrong person for him that he -came to know so quickly that Nancy was completely the right one. What I -feel is that anybody but Nancy would always have been, really, wrong. -And now that he loves her but is shackled, there's only one thing more -that can be done. I have often thought of it; I needn't tell you that. -But, till now, I could never see my way. It's you who have shown it to -me. In what you said the other day. It's wonderful the way you come into -my life, Mr. Oldmeadow. You made me feel that I had a friend in you; a -true, true friend. And I know what a friend Nancy and Barney have. So -the way opens. We must set Barney free, Mr. Oldmeadow. He and Nancy must -be free to marry. You and I can do it for them and only you and I." - -"What do you mean?" Oldmeadow murmured as, after her words, the silence -had grown deep between them. He repeated, using now the name inevitably -and forgetting the other day. "What do you mean, Mrs. Barney?" - -To-day she did not flush, but to-day there was a reason for her -acceptance. It was, he saw in her next words, only as Barney's wife that -she could help him. - -"He must divorce me," she said. "You and I could go away together and he -could divorce me. Oh, I know, it's a dreadful thing to ask of you, his -friend. I've thought of all that. Wait. Let me finish. I've thought of -nothing else since the other day. It came to me in the night after you -had been so wonderful to me; after that wonderful thing had happened to -us. You felt it, too, I know. It was as if we had taken a sacrament -together. I'm not a Christian. You know what I mean. We felt the deepest -things together, didn't we. And it's because of that that I can ask -this of you. No one else would understand. No one else would care for me -enough, or for him. And then, you could explain it all to him and no one -else could do that. You could explain that it had been to set him free. -To set _me_ free. Because they'd have to think and believe it was for my -sake, too, that you did it, wouldn't they? so as to have it really happy -for them; so that it shouldn't hurt. When it was all over you could go -and explain why you had done it. All we have to do, you know, is to stay -in a hotel together; I bearing your name. It's very simple, really." - -He lay staring at her, overwhelmed. The tears had risen to his eyes as -her beauty and her absurdity were thus revealed to him, and as she spoke -of their sacrament; but amazement blurred all his faculties. He had -never in his life been so amazed. And when he began to emerge, to take -possession of himself again, it was only of her he could think; not of -himself or Nancy and Barney. Only of her and of her beauty and -absurdity. - -"Dear Mrs. Barney," he said at last, and he did not know what to say; -"it's you who are wonderful, you alone. I'd do anything, anything for -you that I could. Anything but this. Because, truly, this is -impossible." - -"Why impossible?" she asked, and her voice was almost stern. - -"You can't smirch yourself like that." It was only one reason; but it -was the first that came to him. - -"I?" she stared. "I don't think it is to be smirched. I shall know why I -do it." - -"Other people won't know. Other people will think you smirched." - -"No one I care for. Everyone I care for will understand." - -"But to the world at large? Your name? Your reputation?" Oldmeadow -protested. "Do they mean nothing to you?" - -A faintly bitter humour touched her lips. "You've always taken the side -of the world in all our controversies, haven't you, Mr. Oldmeadow? and -you were probably right and I was probably wrong; but not because of -what the world would think. I know I'm right now, and those words: name: -reputation--mean nothing to me. The world and I haven't much to do with -each other. A divorced wife can run soup-kitchens and fever hospitals -just as well as the most unsmirched woman of the world. I'm not likely -to want to be presented at courts, am I? Don't think of me, please. It's -not a question of me. Only of you. Will you do it?" - -"I couldn't possibly do it," said Oldmeadow, and he was still hardly -taking her monstrous proposal seriously. - -"Why not?" she asked, scrutinizing him. "It's not that you mind about -your name and reputation, is it?" - -"Not much. Perhaps not much," said Oldmeadow; "but about theirs. That's -what you don't see. That it would be impossible for them. You don't see -how unique you are; how unlike other people. Nancy and Barney couldn't -marry on a fake. The only way out," said Oldmeadow, looking at her with -an edge of ironic grimness in his contemplation, "if one were really to -consider it, would be for you to marry me afterwards and for us to -disappear." - -She gazed at him and he saw that she weighed the idea. "But you'd be -shackled then," she said, and her thoughts were evidently clear. "It -would mean, besides, that you would lose them." - -"As to being shackled," Oldmeadow, still grimly, met the difficulty, -"that's of no moment. I'm the snuffy, snappy bachelor type, you -remember, and I don't suppose I'd ever have married. As to losing them, -I certainly should." - -"We mustn't think of it then," said Adrienne. "You and Barney and Nancy -mustn't lose each other." - -"But we should in either way. I could hardly take up my friendship with -them again after Barney had divorced you on account of me, even if you -and I didn't marry. It would give the whole thing away, if it were -possible for them to meet me again. As I say, they'd feel they had no -right to their freedom on such a fake as that." - -"They couldn't feel really free unless some one had really committed -adultery for their sakes?" Again Adrienne smiled with her faint -bitterness and he wondered if a man and woman had ever before had a more -astonishing conversation. "That seems to me to be asking for a little -too much icing on your cake. Of course it couldn't be a nice, new, snowy -wedding-cake; poor Mrs. Chadwick wouldn't like it at all, nor Mrs. -Averil; but it would be the best we could do for them; and I should -think that when people love each other and are the right people for each -other they'd be thankful for any kind of cake. Even if it were a good -deal burned around the edges," Adrienne finished, her slight bitterness -evidently finding satisfaction in the simile. - -"But they wouldn't see it at all like that," said Oldmeadow, now with -unalloyed gravity. "They'd see it as a cake they had stolen; a cake they -had no right to. It's a question of the laws we live under. Not of -personal, but of public integrity. They couldn't profit by a hoodwinked -law. It's that that would spoil things for them. According to the law -they'd have no right to their freedom. And, now that I am speaking -seriously, it's that I feel, too. What you are asking of me, my dear -friend, is no more nor less than a felony." - -She meditated, unmoved, still almost sternly, turning her eyes from him -and leaning her elbow on the window-sill, her head upon her hand. "I -see," she said at last. "For people who mind about the law, I see that -it would spoil it. I don't mind. I think the law's there to force us to -be kind and just to each other if we won't be by ourselves. If the law -gets tied up in such a foolish knot as to say that people may sin to set -other people free, but mayn't pretend to sin, I think we have a right to -help it out and to make it do good against its own will. I don't mind -the law; luckily for them. Because I won't go back from it now. I won't -leave them there, loving each other but never knowing the fullness of -love. I won't give up a thing I feel right because other people feel it -wrong. So I must find somebody else." - -Oldmeadow looked at her in a culminated and wholly unpleasant -astonishment. "Somebody else? Who could there be?" - -"You may well ask," Adrienne remarked, glancing round at him with a -touch of mild asperity. "You are the only completely right person, -because only you and I feel enough for them to do it for them. What I -must do now is to find some one who would feel enough, just for me, to -do it for me. It makes it more unfair for him, doesn't it. He'll have -only the one friend to help. But on the other hand it will leave them -without a scruple. They'd know from the beginning that with you and me -it was a fake; but with him it might seem quite probable. Yes; it's -strange; I had a letter from him only yesterday. I shouldn't have -thought of him otherwise. I might have had to give up. But the more I -think," Adrienne meditated intently, her head on her hand, her eyes -turned on the prospect outside, "the more I seem to see that Hamilton -Prentiss is the only other chance." - -"Hamilton Prentiss?" Oldmeadow echoed faintly. - -"You met him once," said Adrienne, looking round at him again. "But -you've probably forgotten. At the dinner we gave, Barney and I, in -London, so long ago. Tall, fair, distinguished looking. The son of my -Californian friend; the one you and Mrs. Aldesey thought so tiresome." - -He felt himself colouring, but he could give little thought to the minor -discomfiture, so deeply was his mind engaged with the major one. - -"Did we?" he said. - -"And you thought I didn't see it," said Adrienne. "It made me dreadfully -angry with you both, though I didn't know I was angry; I thought I was -only grieved. I behaved spitefully to Mrs. Aldesey that night, you will -remember, though I didn't know I was spiteful. I did know, however, that -she was separated from her husband"--again Adrienne looked, calmly, -round at him--"and it was a lie I told Barney when I said I didn't. -Sometimes I think that lie was the beginning of everything; that it was -when I told it that I began to hide from myself. However--" She passed -from the personal theme. "Yes; Hamilton is, I believe, big enough and -beautiful and generous enough to do it." - -"Oh, he is, is he?" said Oldmeadow. "And I'm not, I take it. You're -horribly unkind. But I don't want to talk about myself. What I want to -talk about is you. You must drop this preposterous idea of yours. Really -you must. You've had ideas like it before. Remember Meg; what a mess you -made there. I told you then that you were wrong and I tell you you're -wrong now. You must give it up. Do you see? We're always quarrelling, -aren't we?" - -"But I don't at all know that I was wrong about Meg, Mr. Oldmeadow," -said Adrienne. "And if I was, it was because I didn't understand her. I -do understand myself, and I don't agree that I'm wrong or that my plan -is preposterous. You won't call it preposterous, I suppose, if it -succeeds and makes Barney and Nancy happy. No; I'm not going to drop it. -Nothing you could say could make me drop it. As for Hamilton, I don't -set him above you; not in any way. It's only that you and he have -different lights. I know why you can't do this. You've shown me why. And -I wouldn't for anything not have you follow your own light." - -"And you seriously mean," cried Oldmeadow, "that you'd ask this young -fellow--I remember him perfectly and I'm sure he's capable of any degree -of ingenuousness--you'd ask him to go about with you as though he were -your husband? Why, for one thing, he'd be sure to fall head over heels -in love with you, and where would you be then?" - -Adrienne examined him. "But from the point of view of hoodwinking, that -would be all to the good, wouldn't it?" she inquired; "though -unfortunate for Hamilton. He won't, however," she went on, her dreadful -lucidity revealing to him the hopelessness of any protest he might still -have found to make. "There's a very lovely girl out in California he's -devoted to; a young poetess. He'll have to write to her about it first, -of course; Hamilton's at the front now, you see; and I must write to his -mother. She and Carola Brown are very near each other and will talk it -out together and I feel sure they will see it as I do. They'll see it as -something big I'm asking them to do for me--to set me free. I'm sure I -can count on Gertrude and I'm sure Hamilton can count on Carola. She's a -very rare, strong spirit." - -Oldmeadow, suddenly, was feeling exhausted, and a clutch of hysterical -laughter, as she spoke these last words, held his throat for a moment. -He laid his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes, while he saw -Adrienne and Hamilton Prentiss wandering by the banks of a French river -where poplars stood against a silver sky. He knew that he had accepted -nothing when he said at last: "Shall we talk about it another time? -To-morrow? I mean, don't take any steps, will you, until we've talked. -Don't write to your beautiful, big friend." - -"You always make fun of me a little, don't you," said Adrienne -tranquilly. She seemed aware of some further deep discomposure in him -and willing, though not comprehending it, to meet it with friendly -tolerance. "If he is big and beautiful, why shouldn't I say it? But I -won't write until we've talked again. It can't be, anyway, until the war -is over. And I've had already to wait for four years." - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -She might feel that he had cruelly failed her; but when she came at the -same hour next day it was evident to him from her demeanour that she -imagined him resigned, if not converted, to her alternative plan. She -carried a bunch of late roses and said that she had been having a lovely -drive with a dear old friend from Denver, who had managed to get to -Boulogne to see her. - -"Your friends all come from such distant places," said Oldmeadow with a -pretended fretfulness that veiled an indescribable restlessness. -"California, Denver, Chicago. They have, all of them, an implacably -remote sound, as if they were carrying you, already, off to other -planets." - -"Well, it doesn't take so long, really, to get to any of them," said -Adrienne, placing the roses in a glass of water by his side, a close, -funny little bunch, red roses in the middle and white ones all round. -She had taken off her cloak and laid a newspaper down on the little -table, seating herself, then, in the window and keeping in her hands a -pocket-book that, in its flatness and length and the way she held it, -reminded him of the little blue and grey fan of the dinner-party where -she had told her first lie. His mind was emptied of thought. Only -pictures crossed it, pictures of Adrienne and the tall, fair youth with -the ingenuous eyes, wandering by the French river; and, again, Adrienne -on that night, now as distant as California, when, with her fan and -pearl-wreathed hair, she had met his persiflage with her rebuking -imperturbability. But under the pictures a sense of violent tension made -his breathing shallow. He fixed his eyes on the pocket-book and wondered -how she had nursed people with those ineffectual-looking hands. - -"Where were you trained for nursing?" he asked her suddenly. "Out here? -or in England?" - -"In England. In Oxford. Before Palgrave was taken," said Adrienne. "I -gave up my philosophy very soon for that. I worked in a hospital there." - -"And how came you to go out to Salonika? Tell me about it. And about -your hospital here," he went on with a growing sense of keeping -something off. "It's your own hospital I hear, and wonderfully run. Sir -Kenneth was talking to me about you this morning." - -"What a fine person he is," said Adrienne. "Yes, he came to see us and -liked the way it was done." She was pleased, he saw, to tell him -anything he chose to ask about. She told him about her hospital and of -all its adventures--they had been under fire so often that it had become -an everyday event; and about how admirable a staff she had -organized--"rare, devoted people"--and about their wounded, their -desperately wounded _poilus_ and how they came to love them all. He -remembered, as she talked, that she was rich; even richer than he had -thought, since she could leave a fortune to Palgrave and yet equip -hospitals in France and in Salonika. She told him about Salonika, too. -It had been a fever hospital there and the misery and suffering had -seemed worse than the suffering here in France. Yes; she had caught the -fever herself and had nearly died. - -She had no gift for the apt or vivid word. Her nature had been revealed -to him as barbarous, or sublime, in its unconventionality, yet it -expressed itself only in the medium of trite convention. But his time of -jibbing at her platitudes was long since passed. He listened, rather, -with a tender, if superficial interest, seeing her heroic little figure -moving, unconcerned, among pestilences and bombardments. "It's not only -what you tell me," he said, when she had brought her recital up to date. -"I heard so much from Sir Kenneth. You are one of the great people of -the war." - -"Am I?" she said. That, too, unfeignedly, left her unconcerned. - -"You've the gift of leadership. The gift for big things generally." - -She nodded. "I'm only fit for big things." - -"Only? How do you mean?" - -"Little ones are more difficult, aren't they. My feet get tangled in -them. To be fit for daily life and all the tangles; that's the real -test, isn't it? That's just the kind of thing you see so clearly, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Big things and the people who do them are just the kind of -things you see through." - -"Oh, but you misunderstood me--or misunderstand," said Oldmeadow. "Big -things are the condition of life; the little things can only be built up -on them. One must fight wars and save the world before one can set up -one's tea-tables." He remembered having thought of something like this -at Lydia's tea-table. "Tea-tables are important, I know, and the things -that happen round them. But if one can nurse a ward of typhus patients -single-handed one must be forgiven for letting the tea-pot slip. Really -I never imagined you capable of all you've done." - -"I always thought I was capable of anything," said Adrienne smiling -slightly, her eyes meeting his in a tranquil partaking of the jest, that -must be at her expense. "You helped me to find that out about -myself--with all the rest. And I was right enough in thinking that I -could face things and lead people. But I wasn't capable of the most -important things. I wasn't capable of being a wise and happy wife. I -wasn't even capable of being truthful in drawing-rooms when other women -made me angry. But I can go on battle-fields and found hospitals and -tend the sick and dying. Shells and pestilences"--her smile was -gone--"if people knew how trivial they are--compared to seeing your -husband look at you with hatred." - -She had turned her eyes away as she was thus betrayed into revealing the -old bitternesses of her heart and he dropped his to the little -pocket-book that now lay still between her hands. The feeling in her -voice, the suffering it revealed to him, with the bitterness, woke an -unendurable feeling in himself. He did not clearly see what the test was -to which he put himself; but he knew that what he must say to her was -the most difficult thing he had ever had to say; and he found it only -after the silence had grown long. - -"Mrs. Barney--everything has changed, hasn't it; you've changed; I've -changed; Barney may have changed. It was only, after all, a moment of -miserable misunderstanding between you. He never really knew what you -were feeling. He thought you didn't care for him any longer, when, -really, you were finding out how much you cared. Don't you think, -before you take final decisions, that you ought to see Barney again? -Don't you think you ought to give him another chance? I could arrange it -all for you, when I got home." - -The flood of colour, deep and sick, had mounted to her face, masking it -strangely, painfully, to where the white linen cut across her brow and -bound her chin. And, almost supplicatingly, since he saw that she could -not speak, he murmured: "You can be a wise and happy wife now; and he -loved you so dearly." - -She did not lift her eyes. She sat there, looking down, tightly holding -the pocket-book in her lap. - -"Let me tell him, when I get home, that I've seen you again," he -supplicated. "Let me arrange a meeting." - -Slowly, not lifting her eyes, she shook her head and he heard her, just -heard her say: "It's not pride. Don't think that." - -"No; no; I know it's not. Good heavens, I couldn't think it that. You -feel it's no good. You feel that his heart is occupied. It is. I can't -pretend to hide from you that it is. But your place in it was supreme. -There would be no unfairness if you took it again. Nancy would be the -first person to want you to take it. You know that that is true of -Nancy." - -"I know. I heard her plead for me," said Adrienne. - -The sentence fell, soft and trenchant; and he remembered, in the silence -that followed, what she had heard. He drew a long breath, feeling half -suffocated. But he had met his test. It was inevitable, he knew it now, -that she should say "Barney and I are parted for ever." - -Silence dropped again between them. He did not know what was passing -behind its curtain and whether bitterness or only grief was in her -heart. - -He lay, drawing the slow, careful breaths of his recovery, and saw her -presently put out her hand and take up her _New York Herald_ and unfold -it. She looked down the columns unseeingly; but the little feint of -interest helped her. - -Slowly the colour faded from her face and it was as if the curtain -lifted when, laying the paper down, she said, and he knew that she was -finding words to comfort him: "Really everything is quite clear before -me now. I shall write at once to Hamilton, and to his mother. If he -agrees, if they all agree, he and I can go away very soon I think. -Afterwards, I shall stay over here. I've quite made up my mind to that. -There'll be so much to do; for years and years; for all one's lifetime. -Ways will open. When one is big," she smiled the smile at once so gentle -and so bitter, "and has plenty of money, ways always do. I'm a -_déracinée_ creature; I never had any roots, you know; and I can't do -better, I'm sure, than to make soil for the uprooted people to grow in -again. That's what's most needed now, isn't it? Soil. It's the -fundamental things of life, its bare possibilities, that have been so -terribly destroyed over here. America has, still, more soil than she can -use, and since I'm an American, and a rich one, my best plan is to use -America, in my fortune and my person, for Europe. Because I love them -both and because they both need each other." - -She had quite recovered herself Her face had found again its pale, fawn -tints and she was looking at him with her quietest contemplation while -he, in silence, lay looking at her. - -"It's not about the things I shall do that I'm perplexed, ever," she -went on. "But I'm sometimes perplexed about myself. I sometimes wish I -were a Roman Catholic. In an order of some kind. Under direction. To put -oneself in the hands of a wise director, it must be so peaceful. Like -French friends I have; such wise, fine women; so poised and so secure. I -often envy them. But that can't be for me." - -She must feel in his silence now the quality of some extreme emotion, -and that she believed it to be pity was evident to him as she went on, -seeking to comfort him; and troubled by his trouble: "You mustn't be -sorry. I am not unhappy. I am a happy person. Do you remember that -Sunday morning at Coldbrooks, long ago? How I said to Mother--to Mrs. -Chadwick--that I had no doubts? You thought me fatuous. I dimly saw that -you thought me fatuous. But it's still true of me. I must tell you, so -that you shan't think I'm unhappy. I've been, it seems to me, through -everything since then. I've had doubts--every doubt: of myself; of life; -of all the things I trusted. Doubt at last, when the dreadful darknesses -came--Barney's hatred, Palgrave's death--of God. We've never spoken of -Palgrave, have we? I was with him, you had heard, and at the very end it -was he who helped me rather than I him. He held me up. When he was dying -he held me up. He made me promise him that I would not kill myself--for -he guessed what I was thinking; he made me promise to go on. And he -saved me. The light began to come back to me while I sat beside him -after he had died." - -She had not looked at him while she spoke, but down at her hands that, -trembling, turned and returned the little pocket-book. And controlling -her voice as she sought to control the trembling of her hands, she said: -"Perhaps it is always like that. When one confesses one's sin and hates -it in oneself, even if it is still there, tempting one, the light begins -to come back. After that it came more and more. What you call my gift is -part of it. Isn't it strange that I should have had that gift when I was -so blind? But what you said was true. I had a sort of wholeness then, -because I was blind. And now that I see, it's a better wholeness and a -safer gift. That is what I wanted to say, really. To explain, so that -you shan't be sorry. No one who can find that light can be unhappy. It -comes to me now, always, when I need it. I can make it shine in other -people--as Palgrave made it shine in me. Love does it. Isn't it -wonderful that it should be so? Nothing else is real beside it. Nothing -is real without it. And when it happens, when one feels it come through -and shine further, it is more, far more, than happiness." - -All the while that she had spoken, pale, and with her trembling hands, -he had lain looking at her in silence, a silence that was dividing him, -as if by a vast chasm, from all his former life. - -He and Adrienne stood on one side of this chasm, and, while it seemed to -widen with a dizzying rapidity, he saw that on the other stood Barney, -Nancy, Coldbrooks, and Lydia--poor Lydia--and that they were being borne -away from him for ever. He saw nothing before him but Adrienne; and for -how long was he to keep her? That was his supreme risk; but he could -not allay it or step back to the further brink. It was his very life -that had fallen in two while she had spoken and without the sense of -choice; though he dimly saw that, in the restlessness and urgency of the -hours since he had seen her last, the choice had been preparing. - -He was taking the only step possible for him to take on the narrow -foothold of the present when he said, in a voice so quiet that she might -even be unaware of his seeming gross irrelevance, "Do you know, about -your plan--for Barney and Nancy--I've been thinking it over and I've -decided that it must be I, not Hamilton." - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -Her eyes met his for a long time before he realized that she might find -not only irrelevance but even irreverence. She had shown him her very -soul and he had answered with this announcement. Of course it had been -because of what she told him that he had seen at last his own necessity; -but he could not tell her that. - -"I'm not sorry for you," he said. "I envy you. You are one of the few -really happy people in the world." - -"But I'd quite given that idea up, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said. "What has -made you change?" - -He saw the trouble in her face, the suspicion of her power and its -compulsion over the lives of others. He took the bull by the horns. - -"You, of course. I can't pretend that it's anything else. I want to do -it for you and with you." - -"But it's for Barney and Nancy that it's to be done," she said, and her -gravity had deepened. "It's just the same for them--and you explained -yesterday that it would spoil it for them." - -"It may spoil it somewhat," said Oldmeadow, contemplating her with a -curious tranquillity; she was now all that was left him in life to -contemplate; and she was all he needed. "But it won't prevent it. I -still think it a wrong thing to do. I still think it a felony. But, -since I can't turn you from it, what I've come to see is that it's, as -you said, for you and me, who care for them, to do. It's not right, not -decent or becoming, that anyone who doesn't even know them should be -asked to do such a thing." - -"But Hamilton wouldn't do it for them," she said. "It would be for me he -would do it. And he wouldn't think it a felony." - -"All the more reason that his innocence shouldn't be taken advantage of. -I can't stand by and see it done. It's for my friends the felony will be -committed and it's I who will bear the burden for them. As to his doing -it for you, I know you better than he possibly can know you, and care -for you more than he possibly can. If you're determined on committing a -crime, I'll share the responsibility with you." - -"I know you care more. You are a wonderful friend. You are my best -friend in the world." She gazed at him and he saw that for once he had -troubled and perplexed her. "And it's wonderful of you to say you'll do -it. But Hamilton won't feel it a burden; not as you will; and for him to -do it won't spoil it for them. If you do it, it will spoil it for them. -You said so. And how can I let you do a thing you feel so wrong for my -sake?" - -"You'll have to. I won't have Hamilton sacrificed in order that their -cake shall have no burnt edges. They'll have to pay something for it in -social and moral discomfort. It would be nothing to the discomfort of -Miss Brown, would it? I shall be able to put it clearly to Barney when I -write and tell him that it's for your sake as well as his and that he -and Nancy, who have never sought anything or hoped for anything, are in -no way involved by our misdemeanour. I won't emphasize to Barney what I -feel about that side of it. He's pretty ingenuous, too. It will be a -less tidy happiness they'll have to put up with. That's all it comes to, -as far as they are concerned." - -She was looking at him with the trouble and perplexity and she said: - -"They'll have to pay in far more than social and moral discomfort." - -"Well? In what way? How?" he challenged her. - -"You said they'd lose you." - -"Only, if you married me," he reminded her. - -But she remembered more accurately. "No. They'd lose you anyway. You -said so. You said that if they could ever see you again it would make it -too blatantly a fake. And it's true. I see it now. How could you turn up -quietly, as if nothing had happened, after Barney had divorced me with -you as co-respondent? There's Lady Cockerell," said Adrienne, and, -though she was so grave, so troubled, it was with a touch of mild -malice. "There's Mr. Bodman and Johnson, to say nothing of Mrs. Chadwick -and Nancy's mother. No, I really don't see you facing them all at -Coldbrooks after we'd come out in the 'Daily Mail' with head-lines and -pictures." - -Her lucidity could indeed disconcert him when it sharpened itself like -this with the apt use of his vocabulary. He had to stop to think. - -"There won't, at all events, be pictures," he paused by the triviality -to remark. "We shan't appear. It will be an hotel over here and the case -will be undefended. We needn't, really, consider all that too closely. -At the worst, if they do lose me, it's not a devastating loss. They'll -have each other." - -"Ah, but who will you have?" Adrienne inquired. "Hamilton will have -Carola and they will have each other. But who will you have?" - -He lay and looked at her. There was only one answer to that question -and he could not make it. He was aware of the insufficiency of his -substitute. "I'd have your friendship," he said. - -"You have that now," said Adrienne. "And though I'm so your friend, I'll -be leaving you, soon, probably for ever. We'll probably never meet -again, Mr. Oldmeadow. Our paths lie so apart, don't they? My friendship -will do you very little good." - -Her words cut into him, but he kept a brave countenance. "I'd have the -joy of knowing I'd done something worth while for you. How easily I -might have died here, if it hadn't been for you. My life is yours in a -sense and I want you to use it rather than Hamilton's. I have my work, -you know; lots of things I'm interested in to go back to some day. As -you remarked, a divorced wife can run soup-kitchens and in the same way -a co-respondent can write articles and go to concerts." - -"I know. I know what a fine, big life you have," she murmured, and the -trouble on her face had deepened. "But how can I take it from you? A -felony? How can I let you do, for my sake, something you feel to be so -wrong?" - -"Give it up then," said Oldmeadow. And if he had found it difficult to -make his plea for Barney a little while before, how much more difficult -he found it to say this, and to mean it, now. "Give it up. That's your -choice, and your only choice. You owe that to me. Indeed you do. To give -it up or to accept me as your companion in iniquity. I'm not going to -pretend I don't think it iniquity to give you ease. You're not a person -who needs ease. And I can do without it, too. For your sake. So there -you have it." - -"Not quite. Not quite," she really almost pleaded. "I couldn't ask it of -Hamilton if he felt about it in the least little way as you do. And -Carola doesn't care a bit about the law either. She's an Imagist, you -know."--Adrienne offered this fact as if it would help to elucidate -Carola's complaisances. "She's written some very original poetry. If it -were Hamilton no one would lose anything, and Barney and Nancy would be -free. Indeed, indeed I can't give it up when it's all there, before me, -with everything to gain and nothing to lose for anybody, if it's -Hamilton." - -"Then it must be me, you see," said Oldmeadow. "And I shan't talk to you -about the iniquity again, I promise you. I've made my protest and -civilization must get on as best it can. You're a terrible person, you -know"--he smiled a little at her, finding the banter so that she should -not guess at the commotion of his heart. "But I like you just as you -are. Now where shall we go?" - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -He could not have believed that it would be so delicious to live with -Adrienne Toner. - -Even at the moment when he had known that he loved her, he had been, -though filled with the sense of a present heaven, as aware as ever of -the discrepancies between them, and during the three months that -separated them, he at Cannes, she nursing in Paris, he knew many doubts; -never of his love, but of what it was making him do and of where it was -going to lead them. He couldn't for the life of him imagine what was to -become of them if his hopes were fulfilled, for he hardly saw himself -following her off to Central Europe--it was to Serbia, her letters -informed him, that her thoughts were turning--nor saw them established -in London under the astonished gaze of Lydia Aldesey. - -She had selected Lyons as their place of meeting, because of the work -for the _rapatriés_ that she wished to inspect there, and from the -moment that he saw her descend from the Paris express, dressed in dark -civilian clothes and carrying, with such an air of competence, her rug -and dressing-case, all doubts were allayed and all restlessness -dispelled. - -He had arrived the day before and had found an old-fashioned hotel with -spacious rooms overlooking the Saône, and, as they drove to it on that -November evening, she expressed herself, scrutinizing him with a -professional eye, as dissatisfied with his recovery. - -It was because of the restlessness, of course, that he had not got as -well as he should have, and he knew that he must, in the stress of -feeling that now beset him, look strangely, and he promised her, feeling -that he spoke the truth, that now that he had his nurse again complete -recovery would be only a matter of days. - -"I want you to see our view," he said to her when the porter had carried -up her little box and they were left alone in the brocaded and gilded -salon that separated their rooms; "I chose this place for the view; it's -the loveliest in Lyons, I think." - -There was still a little twilight, and standing at the window they -looked down at the lighted quai with its double row of lofty plane-trees -and across the jade-green Saône at St. Jean, the grey cathedral, and at -the beautiful white _archevêché_ glimmering in a soft, dimmed atmosphere -that made him think of London. - -"There's a horrible modern cathedral up on the hill," he said; "but we -don't need to see it. We need only see the river and the _archevêché_ -and St. Jean. And in the mornings there's a market below, a mile of it, -all under huge mushroom-coloured umbrellas; flowers and cheeses and -every kind of country produce. I think you'll like it here." - -"I like it very much. I think it's beautiful," said Adrienne. "I like -our room, too," and she turned and looked up at the painted ceiling and -round at the consoles and mirrors, inlaid tables and richly curved, -brocaded chairs. "Isn't it splendid." - -"Madame Récamier is said to have lived here," Oldmeadow told her. "And -this is said to have been her room." - -"And now it's mine," said Adrienne, smiling slightly as though she -found the juxtaposition amusing. - -Already the stealing sense of deliciousness was breathing over him. The -very way in which she said, "our room," was part of it. Even the way in -which she said that made him feel the peace, comfort, and charm of a -shared life as he had never before felt it. And the sense grew and grew -on that first evening. - -It was delicious to hear the waiters address her as Madame, and to know -that it was his madame they imagined her to be, when he sat opposite to -her at their little table in the dining-room. She wore a grey dress now -and, with her quiet, her calm glances cast about her, might indeed have -been the veritable Madame Oldmeadow inscribed at the _bureau_. If they -had the aspect of a devoted, long-mated couple, it was because of her -calm. But she would have been as unperturbed, he felt sure, had she been -stopping there under her own name instead of his and looked upon as his -well-established mistress. Situations would never embarrass her as long -as she knew what she was doing with them. That night when she gave him -her hand at bedtime she said, looking at him with the affectionate, -professional eyes: "I'll come and put you to sleep if you need me; be -sure to let me know." - -But he had no need to call her. He slept as soundly as though she sat -beside him with her hand upon his brow. - -So the mirage of conjugal felicity was evoked about him. - -She poured out his coffee for him in the morning wearing a silk -_négligé_ edged with fur, and said, as they buttered their rolls, that -they must buy some honey for their breakfasts. She said, too, that they -must do a great deal of sight-seeing in the afternoons. "There is so -much to be seen in Lyons. And I shall finish with my _rapatrié_ work in -the mornings." He asked if he might not come with her to the _rapatrié_ -work, but was told that he was not yet strong enough for more than one -walk in the day. "In our evenings, after tea," she went on, "I thought -perhaps you'd like to study Dante a little with me. My Dante is getting -so rusty and I've brought a very fine edition. Are you good at Italian?" - -He said he wasn't, but would love to read Dante with her. - -"And we must get a piano," she finished, "and have music after dinner. -It will be a wonderful holiday for me." - -So the days fell at once into a series of rituals. He saw that she had -always mapped them out conscientiously, as Mrs. Toner had doubtlessly -taught her to do, careful of the treasure of time--as Mrs. Toner would -have said--entrusted to each soul by life. So, no doubt, Adrienne would -put it still. And what he would, in first knowing her, have found part -of her absurdity, he found now part of her charm. - -That was what it all came back to. He saw, reconstructing their past, -that from the beginning she had had her deep charm for him. - -It was the trivial word for the great fact; the compulsion of -personality; the overflow of vitality; the secret at once of the saint -and of the successful music-hall singer. Her own absorption in life was -so intense that it communicated itself. Her confidence was so secure -that it begot confidence. Her power was implicit in all she did. It was -not only the _rapatriés_ she dealt with, as, at the first, she had dealt -with the wounded. She dealt as successfully and as accurately with the -little things of life. Honey was on their breakfast-table; flowers on -the consoles; music on the piano. The gilded hotel salon became a home. - -She was still, in demeanour, the cultured, travelled American, equipped -always, for their walks, with a guide-book or history, from which she -often read to him as they paused to lean on the parapets of the splendid -quais. There were few salient facts in the history of the potent city -that were not imparted to him; and with anyone else what a bore it would -have been to have to listen! But he was more than content that she -should tell him about the Romans or Richelieu. It was everything to him -to feel that they shared it all, from the honey to Richelieu. - -And with all the intimacy went the extreme reserve. - -She had showed him, when it was necessary for their understanding as -friends, the centre of her life; yet she remained, while so gentle, so -absorbed, and even loving, as remote, as inaccessible, as he had felt -her to be on those first days in the hospital. She never referred to her -own personal situation not to any emotion connected with it. She never -referred to herself or expressed a taste or an opinion touched with -personal ardour. He did not know what she was really feeling, ever. -Though, when he looked at her, sitting opposite him in her grey and -addressed by the assiduities of the waiters, he could imagine that he -was living with a wife, he could imagine more often that he was living -with a nun. Her control and her selflessness were cloistral. He could -not think her in any need of a director. - -They walked one afternoon along the Quai des Brotteaux, returning from -the park of the Tête d'Or, where they had wandered on the gravel under -the tall, melancholy trees and fed the deer. The ugly yet magnificent -city was spread before them in one of its most splendid aspects, -climbing steeply, on the further banks of the Rhône, to the cliff-like -heights of the Croix Rousse and marching, as it followed the grandiose -curve of the river, into a sunset sky where the cupola of the Hospice -hung like a dark bubble against the gold and the Alps, not visible from -the river level, seemed yet to manifest themselves in the illumined -clouds ranged high above the horizon. - -Ten days of their appointed fortnight had now passed and while Oldmeadow -kept a half unseeing yet appraising eye upon the turbulent glories of -the river, he was wondering when and how he should make his revelation -and his appeal. If her reserve made it more difficult to imagine, her -intimacy did not make it more easy. It was because she was so intimate -that she had remained so unaware. For all his self-command he felt sure -that in any other circumstances she could not, for these ten days, have -remained so blind. - -Here she walked beside him, the Madame Oldmeadow of the hotel, looking -before her as she walked and thinking, he would have wagered, not of him -but of Serbia. - -She wore a beautifully adjusted little costume, conveying in its sober -darkness the impression of richness and simplicity that her clothes had -always given him. Fur was turned up about her ears and a small hat of -fur and velvet was turned down over her eyes as she had always worn her -hats. The straight fringe of gold showed under its brim and under the -gold were those calm, those questing, melancholy eyes. - -Or perhaps--he carried further his rueful reverie--she was thinking -about the date of the Hospice. He had the guide-book in his pocket. - -"Isn't it jolly?" he suggested, as she looked up at him, indicating the -prospect spread before them and adding, since he knew that his English -instinct for boyish understatement still puzzled her: "Like a great, -grim queen in shabby clothes; raised on such a throne and crowned with -such jewels that one feels her glorious rather than ugly." - -Adrienne studied the shabby queen attentively and then looked back at -him. Perhaps something dwelling in his eyes, something for her only and -not at all for Lyons, caught her more special attention, for she said -suddenly, and so unexpectedly that, with a sort of terror, he felt that -his crisis might be coming: "You've been very dear to me, Mr. Oldmeadow, -in all our time here. I feel it to have been a great privilege, you -know; a great opportunity." - -"Really? In what way?" He could at all events keep his voice quiet and -light. "I thought it had been you who made all the opportunities." - -"Oh, no. I never make any of the opportunities I am thinking of," said -Adrienne. "I only know how to take them. It isn't only that you are more -widely and deeply cultured than I am--though your Italian accent isn't -good!"--she smiled; "but I always feel that you see far more in -everything than I do, even when you seem to be seeing less. I have to go -carefully and pick up fact by fact, while you see things in a sort of -vision and they are all related as they enter your mind. That's where my -privilege comes in. You make me share your vision sometimes. You have -the artistic mind, and I am not really artistic at all--though Mother -always wanted that for me more than anything; with all that goes with -it." - -She was speaking of herself--though it was only in order to express more -exactly her gratitude, and, as he walked beside her, he was filled with -the mingled hope and terror. After all he had still four more days of -her. It would be terrible to spoil them. - -"No; you aren't artistic," he agreed. "And I don't know that I am, -either. Whether I am or not, I feel mine to have been the opportunity -and the privilege." - -"I can't understand that at all," she said, with her patent candour. - -"It may be part of the artistic temperament to feel things one can't -understand. Though I do understand why I feel it," he added. - -"And it's part of the artistic temperament not to try"--Adrienne turned -their theme to its more impersonal aspect. "Never to try to enjoy -anything that you don't enjoy naturally. I don't believe I ever enjoy -any of the artistic things quite naturally. I've always been trained to -enjoy and I've always tried to enjoy; because I thought it was right to -try. But since I've been here with you I've come to feel that what I've -enjoyed has been my own effort and my mastery of the mere study, and I -seem to feel that it might be as well to give up trying and training and -fall back on the things that come naturally; scenery artists would think -sentimental, and babies; and patriotic songs." She smiled a little as -she found her list. But she was grave, too, thinking it out and adding -another to her discovered futilities. - -"It may be as well to limit your attention to the sentimental scenery -and the babies, since you've so many other things to do with it," he -acquiesced. "We come back to big people again, you see; they haven't -time to be artistic; don't need to be." - -"Ah, but it's not a question of time at all," said Adrienne, and he -remembered that long ago, from the very first, he had said that she -wasn't stupid. "It's a question of how you're born. That's a thing I -would never have admitted in my old days, you know. I would never have -admitted that any human soul was really shut out from anything. Perhaps -we're not, any of us, if we are to have all eternity to grow in. But as -far as this life is concerned I see quite clearly now that some people -are shut out from all sorts of things, and that the sort of mistake I -made in my old time was in thinking that anyone who had the will could -force eternity into any given fragment of our temporal life. I did do a -little philosophy, you see! That's what I mean and you understand, I -know. All the same I wish I weren't one of the shut-out people. I wish I -were artistic. I'd have liked to have that side of life to meet people -with. I sometimes think that one doesn't get far with people, really, if -all that one has to give are the fundamental things like the care of -their minds and bodies. One goes deep, of course; but one doesn't go -far. You can do something for them; but there's nothing, afterwards, -that they can do _with_ you; and it makes it rather lonely in a -way--when one has time to be lonely." - -He did not know, indeed, whether she saw the beauty of the scene spread -before them as they walked, and he was remembering, with a sort of -tranced tenderness, the flower-wreathed shepherdess and her crook; and -Mrs. Toner with her lilies and seagulls. But why should she see beauty -when she made it? It was all that he could see in her now. - -"What you can do for them afterwards is to pour out their coffee for -them in the most enhancing way," he suggested, "and make sight-seeing a -pleasure, and arrange flowers and place chairs and tables so that a -hotel salon becomes loveable. If you find the person to whom you can -give the fundamental things and do all sorts of homely things with -afterwards, why be lonely? We are very happy together, aren't we? We get -a great deal out of each other. I can speak for myself, at all events; -and you've just told me that I give something, too. So why should you go -off to Central Europe next week? Why not go back with me to the South," -he finished, "and wander about together enjoying, quite naturally, the -sentimental scenery?" - -He held his breath after he had thus spoken, wondering with intensity, -while he felt his heartbeats, what she would make of it. He knew what he -could make of it, seizing his opportunity on the instant, if only she -would recognize the meaning that underlay the easy words. And framed in -the little hat on the background of transfigured Lyons, Adrienne's face -was turned towards him and, after he had made his suggestion, she -studied him in silence for what seemed to him a long lapse of time. Then -she said, overwhelmingly: - -"That's perfectly lovely of you, Mr. Oldmeadow." - -"Not at all; not perfectly lovely at all," he stammered as he -contradicted her and he heard that his voice sounded angry. "It's what I -want. I want it very much." - -"Yes. I know you do. And that's what's so lovely," said Adrienne. "I -know you want it. You are sorry for me all the time. And you want to -cheer me up. Because you feel I've lost so much. But, you know; you -remember; I told you the truth that time. I don't need cheering. I'm not -unhappy. One can be lonely without being unhappy." - -"I'm not sorry for you," poor Oldmeadow rejoined, still in the angry -voice. "I'm not thinking of you at all. I'm thinking of myself. I'm -lonely, too, and I am unhappy, even if you aren't." - -She stopped short in her walk. He saw in her eyes the swift, almost -diagnosing solicitude that measured his need and her own capacity. It -was as though his temperature had gone up alarmingly. - -"Dear Mr. Oldmeadow," she said; and then she faltered; she paused. She -no longer found her remedies easily. "It's because you are separated -from your own life," she did find. "It's because all this is so bitter -to you; what you are doing now--how could I not understand?--and the -war, that has torn us all. But when it's over, when you can go home -again and take up your own big life-work and find your own roots, -happiness will come back; I'm sure of it. We are all unhappy sometimes, -aren't we? We must be; with our minds and hearts. Our troubled minds; -our lonely hearts. But you know as well as I do, dear Mr. Oldmeadow, -that our souls can find the way out." - -Her nature expressed itself in platitudes; yet sometimes she had -phrases, rising from her heart as if from a fountain fed by unseen -altitudes, that shook him in their very wording. "Our troubled minds. -Our lonely hearts," echoed in his ears while, bending his head -downwards, he muttered stubbornly: "My soul can't, without you." - -She still stood, not moving forward, her eyes raised to his. "Please -don't say that," she murmured, and he heard the trouble in her voice. -"It can't be so, except for this time that you are away from everybody. -You have so many things to live for. So many people near you. You are -such a big, rare person. It's what I was afraid of, you know. It happens -so often with me; that people feel that. But you can't really need me -any longer." - -He said nothing, still not raising his eyes to hers, and she went on -after a moment. "And I have so many things to live for, too. You've -never really thought about that side of my life, I know. Why should you? -You think of any woman's life--isn't it true?--as not seriously -important except on its domestic side. And you know how important I -think that. But it isn't so with me, you see. I have no hearth and I -have no home; I have only my big, big life and it's more important than -you could believe unless you could see it all. When I'm in it it takes -all my mind and all my strength and I'm bound to it, yes, just as -finally, just as irrevocably as a wife who loves is bound by her -marriage vows; because I love it. Do you see? They are waiting for me -now. They need me now. There are starving people, dying people; and -confusion; terrible confusion. I have a gift for all that. I can deal -with it. Those are just the things I can deal with. And I mustn't put it -off any longer--when our time is up. I must leave you, my dear, dear -friend, however much I'd love to stay." - -She was speaking at last with ardour, and about herself. And what she -said was true. He had never thought about her work except in the sense -that he thought her a saint and knew that saints did good deeds. That -she was needed, sorely needed, by the starving and dying, was a fact, -now that it was put before him, silencing and even shaming him. It gave -him, too, a new fear. If she had her blindness, he had his. His hopes -and fears, after all, were all that he had to think of; she had the -destinies of thousands. He remembered Sir Kenneth's tone in speaking of -her; its deep respect. Not the respect of the man for the -tender-hearted, merciful woman; but the respect of a professional expert -for another expert; respect for the proved organizer and leader of men. - -"I have been stupid," he said after a moment. "It's true that I've been -thinking about you solely in relation to myself. Would you really love -to stay? If it wasn't for your work? It would be some comfort to believe -that." - -"Of course I'd love to stay," she said, eagerly scanning his face. "I'd -love to travel with you--to pour out your coffee in Avignon, Nîmes, -Cannes--anywhere you liked. I'd love our happy time here to go on and -on. If life could be like that; if I didn't want other things more. You -remember how Blake saw it all: - - 'He who bends to himself a joy - Doth the winged life destroy.' - -I mustn't try to bend and keep this lovely time. I must let it fly--and -bless it as it goes. And so it will bless me." - -She seldom made quotations nowadays. For this one he felt a gratitude -such as his life had rarely known. - -"It's been a joy to you, too, then?" - -"Of course it has," said Adrienne smiling at him and turning at last -towards the bridge that they must cross. "It's been one of the most -beautiful things that has ever happened to me." - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -Oldmeadow sat at the inlaid table in the gilded salon on the afternoon -of the last day. He had two letters to write, for, as he had put off -speaking to Adrienne till their last evening, so he had put off writing -to Barney and to Lydia Aldesey till this last afternoon, and he saw now -how difficult it would be to write coherently while his thoughts -stretched themselves forward to those few hours of the night when his -fate would be decided. - -Adrienne had gone out. She had written her short communication to Barney -and brought it in with its envelope and laid it before him, asking him -in the voice that, again, made him think of snow: "Is that quite right?" - -It was, quite, he told her, after glancing through it swiftly. It -stated, in the most colourless terms, the facts that Barney was to take -to his solicitor. "Quite right," he repeated, looking up at her. "Are -you going out? Will you post it?--or shall I?" - -"Will you post it with yours? Yes. I must go out. But I'll try to be -back by tea-time. It's very disappointing; our last afternoon. But that -poor woman from Roubaix--the one with consumption up at the Croix -Rousse--is dying. They've sent for me. All the little children, you -remember I told you. I'm going to wire to Joséphine and ask her if she -can come down and look after them for a little while." - -"Joséphine?" he questioned. He had, till now, entirely forgotten -Joséphine. Adrienne told him that she was with her parents in a -provincial town. "They lost their only son and are very sad. Fine, brave -old people. He is a baker, the old father, and makes the most wonderful -bread. I went to see them last summer." - -Their packing was done and the room denuded; the men had taken away the -piano that morning. He had his letters to write; so there was really no -reason why she should not go. And there was, besides, nothing that they -had to say to each other, except the one thing he had to say. - -The silence that overtakes parting friends on a station platform had -overtaken them since the morning, though, at lunch, Adrienne had talked -with some persistence of her immediate plans and prospects and about the -unit of doctors and nurses who were to meet her in Italy. There was no -reason why she should not go, and he would even rather she did. He would -rather see no more of her until evening when everything but the one -thing would be over and done with. And so he was left with his letters, -leaning his elbows on the table over the hotel paper and staring out at -the Saône and the white _archevêché_. - -Both letters were difficult to write; but beside the one to Lydia, the -one to Barney was easy. Barney, after all, was to gain everything from -what he had to tell him, and Lydia was to lose; how much was Lydia to -lose? He recalled their last evening together and its revelations and -saw that the old laughing presage was now more than fulfilled. Lydia was -to lose more than her toes and fingers; in any case. Even if he returned -to her alone, she cared for him too much not to feel, always, the shadow -of his crippled heart; his heart not only crippled, but occupied, so -occupied that friendships, however near, became, in a sense, -irrelevancies. And if he returned with Adrienne--but could he return -with Adrienne? What kind of a life could he and Adrienne lead in -London?--even if Lydia's door, generously, was opened to them, as he -believed it would be--knowing her generous. - -He laid down his pen and fixed his eyes on the river and he tried to see -Lydia and Adrienne together. But it was a useless effort. From this -strange haven of the Lyons hotel where he had spent the happiest -fortnight of his life, he could not see himself into any future with -familiar features. He could only see himself and Adrienne, alone, at -hotels. To attempt to place her in Lydia's generous drawing-room was to -measure more accurately than he had yet measured it the abyss that -separated him from his former life. If it could be spanned; if Adrienne -could be placed there, on the background of eighteenth-century fans and -old glass, she became a clipped and tethered seagull in a garden, -awkward, irrelevant, melancholy. Lydia might cease to find her -third-rate and absurd; but she wouldn't know what to do with her any -more than she would have known what to do with the seagull. So what, if -Adrienne became his wife, remained of his friendship with Lydia? - -He put aside the unresolved perplexity and took Barney first. - -"My dear Barney," he wrote,--"I don't think that the letter Adrienne has -written to you will surprise you as much as this letter of mine. You -will understand from hers that she wishes to free herself and to free -you. You will understand that that is my wish, too. She only tells you -that she has been staying here with me, for a fortnight, as my wife; -that's for your solicitor; you will read between the lines and know that -it seemed worth while to both of us to make the necessary sacrifice in -order to gain so much for you and for her. I hope that you and my dear -Nancy will feel that we are justified, and that you will take your -happiness as bravely as we secure it for you. You'll know that our step -hasn't been taken lightly. - -"But, now, dear Barney, comes my absolutely personal contribution. It is -a contribution, for it will make you and Nancy happier to know that I -have as much to gain as you and she. I have fallen in love with Adrienne -and I hope that I may win her consent to be my wife. Yes, dear Barney, -unbelievable as it will look to you, there it is; and she dreams of it -as little as you could have dreamed of it. I met her again, as her -letter informs you, at the Boulogne hospital. She asked me to say -nothing about our meeting. She wanted to disappear out of your lives. -She saved my life, I think, and I saw a great deal of her. What I found -in her that I had not seen before I need not say. - -"My great difficulty, my burden and perplexity now, lie in the fact that -she has no trace of feeling for me that might give me hope. We became, -at Boulogne, the best of friends; such friends that this plan suggested -itself to her; and we remain, after our fortnight here, the best of -friends; and that is all. Yet I have hope, unjustified and groundless -though it may be, and had I not had it from the beginning I couldn't -have entered upon the enterprise; not even for you and Nancy. From one -point of view it's possible that you may feel that I've entered upon it -in spite of you and Nancy. You may feel inclined to repudiate and disown -the whole affair and to remain unaware of it. In that case it would come -down to an appeal from me to you to carry it through for my sake. But -from another point of view it makes it easier for you; easier for you to -accept, since my hope gives integrity to the situation. That's another -thing that decided me. If it had been mere sham I don't think I could -have undertaken it. Adrienne felt none of my scruples on this score. She -walked over legal and conventional commandments like a saint over hot -ploughshares. But I haven't her immunities. I should have felt myself -badly scorched, and felt that I'd scorched you and Nancy, if my hope -hadn't given everything its character of _bona fides_. - -"Dear Barney, dear Nancy, please forgive me if I've been selfish. It -hasn't all been selfishness, that I promise you; it was in hopes for -you, too; and I have to face sacrifices. The worst of them will be that -if Adrienne takes me I'll have to lose you. You can measure the depth of -my feeling for her from the fact that I can make such sacrifices. -Perhaps you'll feel that even if she doesn't take me I'll have to lose -you. I hope not. I hope, in that case, that mitigations and refuges will -be found for me and that some day you'll perhaps be able to make a -corner in your lives where I may creep and feel my wounds less aching. -In any case, after Adrienne, you are the creatures dearest to me in the -world and I am always and for ever your devoted friend, - - ROGER." - - * * * * * - -And now Lydia. There was no use in thinking about it. The plunge must be -taken. - -"My dear Lydia," he wrote,--"I have fallen in love with Adrienne Toner. -I feel that with such a friend as you it's better to begin with the -bomb-shell. She doesn't know it, and if we are here in this Lyons hotel -together, it's only, she imagines, because she wishes to set Barney free -and that I've undertaken, for her sake and for Barney's, a repugnant -task. It is a repugnant task, in spite of what it may mean to me of -happiness. I hate it for her, and for Barney and for myself. But since -she was determined on it and since, if it wasn't I it was to be another -friend, and since I have fallen in love with her, I saw that it was only -decent that the co-respondent in the case should be the man who married -her afterwards. For I hope to become her husband, and I haven't one jot -of ground for my hope. We are studying Dante together, and she shows me -the sights of Lyons. She is just the same. Yet completely altered. - -"I don't know whether you'll feel you can ever see me again, with or -without her. I don't want to cast myself too heavily on your compassion, -so I'll only remind you that even if I return to England alone I shall -probably have to lose Nancy and Barney and that you will be my only -refuge. It will be the culmination of my misfortunes if I have to lose -you. - -"Dear Lydia, I am always your devoted - - "ROGER" - - * * * * * - -But he hadn't lost her. He knew he hadn't lost her; in any case. And the -taste of what he did was sharp and bitter to him, for she was generous -and loyal and he had cut off her very limbs. When he had addressed and -stamped the letters he went downstairs, and, for the sense of greater -finality, carried them to the post instead of dropping them into the -hotel-box. - -He had almost the sense of disembodiment as he returned to the empty and -dismantled room. He seemed to have become a mere consciousness suspended -between two states of being. The past was gone. He had dropped it into -the post-box. And he saw no future. He felt, for the moment, no hopes. -At the moment it seemed absurd to think that Adrienne could ever love -him. He tried to picture Coldbrooks and Somer's Place when the -bomb-shell struck them. Would Barney show Nancy the letter? Nancy would -be pale, aghast, silent. Barney would have to wait for days, perhaps, -before saying to her: "But, after all, it's for their sakes, too, Nancy -dear. See what Roger says." Mrs. Averil would cast up her hands and cry -"That woman!"--but, perhaps, with as much admiration as repudiation, and -Meg, if she were summoned to the scene of confusion, would say, "So -she's got hold of Roger, too." Funnily enough it was the dear March -Hare, he felt sure, who would be the first one to stretch out a hand -towards the tarnished freedom. "After all, you know," he could hear her -murmuring, "it would be much _nicer_ for Barney and Nancy to be married, -wouldn't it? And Adrienne wasn't a Christian, you know, so probably the -first marriage doesn't _really_ count. We mustn't be conventional, -Monica." Yes, perhaps it would go like that at Coldbrooks. But at -Somer's Place Lydia would sit among her fans and glass and wish that -they had never seen Adrienne Toner. - -He paced up and down before the windows and he had never been so lonely -in his life. He was so lonely that he became aware at last that his mere -negative state was passing into a positive and that grief at the -severance of old ties had become fear of losing Adrienne. The fear and -the loneliness seemed actualized when, at five, the waiter appeared -bearing the tea-tray on his shoulder. He had never had tea alone before -in this strange, foreign room. Adrienne always made a complicated and -charming ritual of the occasion, boiling the water on their own little -spirit-kettle and measuring the tea from her own caddy--the very same -kettle and caddy, she told him, that had accompanied herself and her -mother on all their travels. And to see the cups and bread and butter -and not to have her there, added a poignant taste of abandonment to his -loneliness. - -She kept the kettle in her room and when the boy was gone he softly -opened the door and went in. It would keep his heart up to have the -water boiling in readiness for her arrival. He recognized, as he stood, -then, and looked about him, that his instinct had also been that of -taking refuge. In her room he could more closely recover the sense of -her presence. - -She had finished all the essentials of her packing and her box stood -with its lid open ready for the last disposals. Yet the room seemed -still full of her personality. He noted it all gazing around him with -eyes almost those of a solemn little boy permitted to glance in at a -Christmas-tree. - -Her dressing-table, improvised from the mantelpiece, was neatly laid out -with small, worn, costly, and immaculate appurtenances. He moved forward -and looked at them, not touching. The initials intertwined on the backs -of the ivory brushes were her girlish ones: A. T. She had discarded, -long since, no doubt, her wedding toilet set. - -If he became her husband, the thought crossed his mind and quickened his -heart, he might brush her hair for her, that wonderful golden hair, -before many months were over. - -Near the ivory hand-glass stood two photographs in a folding frame of -faded blue leather. He stooped to look and saw that one was of Mrs. and -the other certainly of Mr. Toner, in their early days. Remote, -mysterious and alien, their formally directed eyes looked back at him -and in the father's ingenuous young countenance, surmounted by a roll of -hair that was provincial without being exactly rural, the chin resting -upon a large, peculiar collar, he could strangely retrace Adrienne's -wide brow and steadfast light-filled eyes. Mrs. Toner wore a ruffled -dress and of her face little remained distinct but the dark -gaze--forceful and ambiguously gentle. - -The room was full of the fragrance that was not a fragrance and that -had, long ago, reminded him of Fuller's earth. A pair of small blue -satin _mules_ stood under a chair near the bed. - -Only after he had withdrawn, gently closing the door behind him, did he -realize that he had forgotten the kettle and then he felt that he could -not go back again. A moment after the boy returned with a note, sent, by -hand, he was informed, from the Croix Rousse. - -"I am so dreadfully sorry, so disappointed," he read. "Our last -afternoon, but I can't get away yet. Don't wait dinner for me, if I -should be late, even for that. I won't be very late, I promise, and we -will have our evening." - -The note had no address. He rushed forth and down to find the messenger -gone. Had he only known where to seek her in the vast, high, melancholy -district of the Croix Rousse he would have gone to join her. His sense -of loneliness was almost a panic. - -Of course, he tried to fix his mind on that realization, as he went back -to the salon, her rapatriés had no doubt preoccupied her mind, from the -first, quite as much as their own situation. She had spoken to him in -especial of this family and of their sorrows. One child they had left -dead at Evian and the mother, on the eve of their return to their -Northern home, had become too desperately ill to travel. "Such dear, -good, _gentle_ people," he recalled her saying. No; he must not repine. -After all he had only the one thing to say to her; and the evening would -be long enough for that. - -It was nearly seven when he heard her quick footstep outside. When she -entered, the brim of her little hat, in the electric light, cast a sharp -shadow over her eyes, but he saw at once that she had been crying. - -She came in so quickly that he had not time to rise and, going to him, -behind his chair, she put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him -down, saying: "I'm so sorry to have left you all alone." - -It was astonishingly comforting to have her put these fraternal hands -upon him like this. She had never done it before. Yet there was a salty -smart in her words to him. What else did she intend to do but leave him -all alone for always? - -"I'm dreadfully lonely, I confess," he said, "and I see that you're -dreadfully tired." - -She went round to the other side of the table and sat down, not looking -at him and said, in a low voice: "Oh--the seas--the seas of misery." - -"You are completely worn out," he said. He was not thinking so much of -the seas of misery as of his few remaining hours. Were they to be -spoiled by her fatigue? - -"No; not worn out. Not at all worn out," said Adrienne, stretching her -arms along the table in front of her as she sat, and though she had wept -he could see something of ardour, of a strength renewed, in the lines of -her pallid lips. "I've sat quite still all afternoon. I've been with -him. She died soon after I got there. At the end she was talking about -the little girl's grave at Evian. I was able to comfort her about that. -She was so afraid it would not be tended. That it would have no flowers. -Joséphine will go to Evian afterwards and see about it. There are always -dear nuns to do those things. There was a nun with her to-day. That was -the greatest comfort of all; and the priest who came. But I was with the -father and the five poor little children; so frightened and miserable. I -could not leave them, you see. He talked and talked and talked. It -helped him to talk and tell me about their home and how they had had -everything so nice and bright. Linen, a garden, a goat and fowls. Oh, if -only she could have seen her home again! That was what he kept saying -and saying. They were full of hope when they got to Evian. He told me -how the children sang at dawn when the train panted up the mountain -among the golden trees. Like birds, he said, and _Vive la France_! They -all believed they were to be safe and happy. _Et, Madame, c'était notre -calvaire qui commencait alors seulement._" - -She spoke, not really thinking of him, he saw, absorbed still in the -suffering she had just left, measuring her power against such problems -and the worse ones to which she was travelling to-morrow. - -"Joséphine will be with them, I hope," she went on presently, "in three -or four days. She will help them to get home and then she will come back -and go to see about the grave at Evian. Joséphine is a tower of strength -for me." - -Her eyes were raised to him now, and, as they rested, he saw the -compunction, the solicitude, with which they had met him on her -entrance, return to them. "I'm not so very late, am I?" she said, -rising. "I'll take off my hat and be ready in a moment." - -"Don't hurry," said Oldmeadow. - -She was tired, more tired than she knew. During dinner she hardly spoke, -and, finding the resolve suddenly, he said, as they came back to their -salon: "Do you know what you must do now. Go and lie down and rest for -an hour. Until nine. It's not unselfishness. I'd rather have half of you -to talk to for our last talk, than none of you at all." - -"How dear of you," she said. She looked at him with gratitude and, -still, with the compunction. "It would be a great rest. It would be -better for our talk. I can go to sleep at once, you know. Like -Napoleon," she added with a flicker of her playfulness. - -When she had gone into her room Oldmeadow went out and walked along the -quai. The night was dark and dimmed with fog, but there was a moon and -as he walked he watched it glimmer on the windows of St. Jean. He seemed -to see the august form of the cathedral through a watery element and the -grey and silver patterns of the glass were like the scales of some vast -fish. A sort of whale waiting to swallow up the Jonah that was himself, -he reflected, and, leaning his elbows on the parapet of the quai, the -analogy carried him further and he saw the cathedral like a symbol of -Adrienne's life--her "big, big" life--looming there before him, -becoming, as the moon rose higher, more and more visible in its austere -and menacing majesty. What was his love to measure itself against such a -vocation?--for that was what it came to, as she had said. She was as -involved, as harnessed, as passionately preoccupied as a Saint Theresa. -How could he be fitted in with Serbia and all the hordes of human need -and wretchedness that he saw her sailing forward to succour? He knew a -discouragement deeper than any he had felt, for he was not a doctor and -his physical strength was crippled by his wounds; and, shaking his -shoulders in the chilly November air, he turned his back on the -cathedral and leaned against the parapet to look up through leafless -branches where the plane tassels still hung, at the lighted windows of -the hotel; their hotel, where the room, still theirs, waited for them. -He felt himself take refuge in the banal lights. After all, she wasn't -really a Saint Theresa. There was human misery everywhere to succour. -Couldn't she, after a winter in Serbia, found crêches and visit slums in -London? The masculine scepticism she had detected in him had its -justification. Women weren't meant to go on, once the world's crisis -past, doing feats of heroism; they weren't meant for austere careers -that gave no leisure and no home. The trivial yet radiant vision of -intimacy rose again before him. She slept there above him and he was -guarding her slumber. He would always watch over her and guard her. He -would follow her round the world, if need be, and brush her hair for her -in Serbia or California. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -The gilt clock on the mantelpiece pointed to nine, but when he went to -Adrienne's door and listened there was no sound within her room, and his -heart sank as he wondered if she might not sleep on, in her fatigue, -sleep past all possible hour for their colloquy. Yet he did not feel -that he could go in and wake her. The analogy of the cathedral loomed -before him. It would be like waking Saint Theresa. - -He walked up and down the empty, glittering salon; walked and walked -until the clock struck ten. Desperation nerved him then and he went -again to her door and knocked. - -With hardly a pause her voice answered him; yet he knew that he had -awakened her and it echoed for him with the pathos of so many past -scenes of emergency when it must so have answered a summons from -oblivion: "Coming, coming." Among bombings, he reflected; and sudden -terrible influxes of dying men from the front. - -"Coming," he heard her repeat, on a note of dismay. She had sprung up, -turned on her light and seen the hour. - -He was reminded vividly, as he saw her enter--and it was as if a great -interval of time had separated them--of his first meeting with her. She -was so changed; but now as then she was more composed than anyone he had -ever met. - -But it was of much more than the first meeting that the pale, still face -reminded him. His dreams were in it; the dream where she had come to -him along the terrace, lifting her hand in the moonlight; and the dream -of horror when he had again and again pushed it down to drown. - -"I'm so ashamed," she said, and he saw that it was with an effort she -smiled. The traces of her weeping were now, after her sleep, far more -visible, ageing her, yet making her, too, look younger; like a child -with swollen lids and lips. "I didn't know I was so tired. I slept and -slept. I didn't stir until I heard your knock. Never mind. We'll talk -till midnight." - -She was very sorry for him. - -She sat down at the table and under the electric chandelier her braided -hair showed itself all ruffled and disarranged. She had on her dark -travelling dress and she had thrust her feet into the pale blue satin -_mules_. The disparity of costume in one so accurate, her air of -readiness for the morrow, made him feel her transitoriness almost more -than her presence, though his sense of that pressed upon him with a -stifling imminence. Even though she sat there the room kept its look of -desolate, glittering emptiness and more than their shared life in it he -remembered the far places from which she had come and to which she was -going. It was as if she had just arrived and were pausing for the night -_en route_. - -As he had seen them years ago, so he saw again the monster engines -crossing the prairies at night and flying illumined pennons of smoke -against the sky as they bore her away from blue seas, golden sands, a -land where the good and gifted lurked behind every bush; and before her -stretched the shining rails, miles and miles of them, running through -ruin and desolation, that were to bear her ever onwards into the -darkness. This was what life had brought her to. She had been only a -sojourner among them at Coldbrooks. The linked life of order and family -affection had cast her forth and he saw her, for ever now, unless he -could rescue her, with only hotels to live in and only the chaos she was -to mould, to live for. She seemed already, as she sat there under the -light with her ruffled hair, to be sitting in the train that was to bear -her from him. - -"I think you owe me till midnight, at least," he said. He had not sat -down. He stood at some little distance from her leaning, his arms -folded, against a gilded and inlaid console. "We've lots of things to -talk about." - -"Have we?" Adrienne asked, smiling gently, but as if she humoured an -extravagance. "We'll be together, certainly, even if we don't talk much. -But I have some things to say, too." - -She had dropped her eyes to her hands which lay, lightly crossed, on the -table before her, and she seemed to reflect how best to begin. "It's -about Nancy and Barney," she said. "I wanted, before we part, to talk to -you a little about them. There are things that trouble me and you are -the only person with whom I can keep in touch. You will know how I shall -be longing to hear, everything. You'll let me know at once, won't you?" - -"At once," said Oldmeadow. - -"There might be delays and difficulties," Adrienne went on. "I shall be -very troubled until all that is clear. And then the money. You know -about the money? Barney isn't well off and he was worse off after I'd -come and gone. I tried to arrange that as best I could. Palgrave -understood and entered into all my feelings." - -"Yes; I'd heard. You arranged it all very cleverly," said Oldmeadow. - -He moved away now and, at the other end of the room, his back to her, -came to a standstill, while his eyes dwelt on a large gilt-framed -engraving that hung there; some former Salon triumph; a festive, -spring-tide scene where young women in bustles and bonnets offered sugar -to race-horses in a meadow, admired by young men in silk hats. - -"Do you think this may make a difficulty?" Adrienne asked. "Make him -more reluctant to take what is to come to him? It's Mrs. Chadwick's now, -you know." - -"You've arranged it all so well," said Oldmeadow, noting the gardenias -in the young men's button-holes, "that I don't think they can get away -from it." - -"But will they hate it dreadfully?" she insisted, and he felt that her -voice in its added urgency protested, though unconsciously, against his -distance; "I seem to see that they might. If they can't take it as a -sign of accepted love, won't they hate it?" - -"Well," said Oldmeadow, trying to reflect, though his mind was far from -Barney and Nancy, "dear Eleanor Chadwick doesn't mind taking it, -whatever it's a sign of. And since it will come to Barney through her, I -don't think there'll be enough personality left hanging about it to hurt -much." - -"I wish they could take it as a sign of accepted love," Adrienne -murmured. - -"Perhaps they will," he said. "I'll do my best that they shall, I -promise you." - -It was one thing to promise it and another to know his hope that it -might be a promise never to be redeemed. The cross-currents in his own -thought made him light-headed as he stood there, his back to her, and -examined the glossy creatures in the meadow. "Do you think it will all -take a long time?" Adrienne added, after a little pause. "Will they be -able to marry in six or eight months, say?" - -"It depends on how soon Barney takes action. Say about a year," he -suggested. "They'd wait a little first, wouldn't they?" - -"I hope not. They've waited so long already. I hope it will be as soon -as possible. I shall feel so much more peaceful when I hear they're -married. Could you, perhaps, make them see that, too?" - -And again he promised. "I'll make them see everything I can." - -He turned to her at last. She sat, her face still downcast in its -shadow, while the light glittered on her wreaths of hair. Her hands -still lay before her on the table, and the light fell on her -wedding-ring. Perhaps she was looking at the ring. - -"It all depends on something else," he heard himself say suddenly. - -She turned her head and looked round at him. His attitude, his distance -from her, drew her attention rather than his words, for she repeated -mildly: "On something else?" - -"Whether I can keep those promises, you know," said Oldmeadow. "Yes, it -all depends on something else. That's what I want to talk to you about." - -He hardly knew what he was saying as he approached the table and pushed -the brocaded chair, companion to the one in which she sat, a little -from its place. He leaned on its back and looked down at her hands and -Adrienne kept her eyes on him, attentive rather than perplexed. - -"May I talk to you about it now?" he asked. "It's something quite -different." - -"Oh, do," said Adrienne. She drew her hands into her lap and sat -upright, in readiness. And, suddenly, as he was silent, she added: -"About yourself? I've been forgetting that, haven't I? I've only been -thinking of my side. You have quite other plans, perhaps. Perhaps you're -not going back to England for ever so long. Is it an appointment?" - -"No; not an appointment," he muttered, still looking down, at the table -now, since her hands were no longer there. "But perhaps I shan't be -going back for a long time. I hope not." - -"Oh," she murmured. And now he had perplexed her. After what he had just -promised her, his hope must perplex and even trouble her. "Do tell me," -she said. - -"It's something I want to ask you," said Oldmeadow--"And it will -astonish you. You may find it hard to forgive; because I've meant to ask -it from the beginning; from our deciding to go away together. As far -back as the time in the hospital." - -"But you may ask anything. Anything at all," she almost urged upon him. -"After what I've asked you--you have every right. If there's anything I -can do in the wide, wide world for you--oh! you know how glad and proud -I should be. As for forgiveness"--he heard the smile in her voice, she -was troubled, yet tranquil, too--"you're forgiven in advance." - -"Am I? Wait and see." He, too, tried to smile, as he used the tag; but -it was a mechanical smile and he felt his heart knocking against the -chair-back as he went on: "Because I haven't done what you asked me to -do as you asked me to do it. I haven't done it from the motive you -supposed. It's been for Barney and for Nancy and for you; but it's been -most of all for myself." He screwed his glass into his eye as he spoke -with a gesture as mechanical as the smile had been and he looked at her -at last, thus brought nearer. "I want you not to go on to-morrow." It -was the first, the evident, the most palpable desire that rose to his -lips. "I want you never to go on again, alone. If you can't stay with -me, I want you to let me follow you. When the time comes I want you to -marry me. I love you." - -The light as it fell on her seemed suddenly strange, almost portentous -in its brilliancy. Or was it her stillness, as she sat and gazed at him -after he had spoken the words, that was strange and portentous? It was -as if they arrested the currents of her being and she sat tranced, -frozen into the fixed shape of an astonishment too deep for emotion. Her -eyes did not alter in their gentleness; but the gentleness became tragic -and pitiful, like the inappropriate calm on the mask of a dead face at -Pompeii, fixed in an eternal unreadiness by the engulfing lava. - -She put up her hand at last and pushed back her hair. With her forehead -bared she became more like the photograph of her father. When she spoke -her voice was slow and feeble, like the voice of a person dangerously -ill. "I don't understand you." - -"Try to," said Oldmeadow. "You must begin far back." - -She still kept her hand pressed upon her hair. "You don't mean that it's -the conventionally honourable thing to do? Oh, no; you don't mean that?" -Her face in its effort to understand was appalled. - -"No; I don't mean anything conventional," he returned. "I'm thinking -only of you. Of my love. I'll come with you to Serbia to-morrow--if -you'll let me. I could kneel and worship you as you sit there." - -"Oh," she more feebly murmured. She sank back in her chair. - -"My darling, my saint," said Oldmeadow, gazing at her; "if you must -leave me, you'll take that with you; that the man who destroyed you is -your lover; that you are dearer to him than anything on earth." - -"Oh," she murmured again, and she put her hands before her face. Her -eyes were hidden; she had spoken no word of reproach and he could not -keep himself from her. He knelt beside her, grasping the chair across, -behind her. She was so near that he could have laid his head upon her -breast. "Don't leave me," he heard his pleading voice, but she seemed so -much nearer than his own voice; "or let me come. Everything shall be as -you wish and when you wish. Tell me that you care, too; or that you can -come to care. Tell me that you can think of me as your husband." - -She was there, with her hidden eyes, within his arms, and inevitably -they closed around her, and though he heard her murmur, "Please, please, -please," he could not relinquish her. She was free and he was free. -They had cut themselves off from the world. They were alone in the -strange city; in the strange, bright, hallucinated room; and he knew -from the ache and rapture of her nearness how he had craved it. - -But, gently, he heard her say again, "Please," and gently she put him -from her and he saw her face, and her eyes full of grief and gentleness. -"Forgive me," she said. - -"My darling. For what?" he almost groaned. "Don't say you're going to -break my heart." - -She kept her hand on his breast, holding him from her while she looked -into his eyes. "It is so beautiful to be loved," she said, and her voice -was still the slow, feeble voice of exhaustion. "Even when one has no -right to be. Don't misunderstand. Even when one may not love back; not -in that way. Forgive me; not in that way; my dearest friend." - -"Why mayn't you love back? Why not in that way? If it's beautiful, why -mayn't you?" - -"Sit there, will you? Yes; keep my hand. How weak I've been, and cruel. -It can't be. Don't you know? Haven't you seen? It has always been for -him. He must be free; but I can never be free." - -"Oh, no. No. That's impossible," Oldmeadow said, leaning towards her -across the table and keeping her hand in both of his. "I can't stand -that. I could stand your work, your vocation, better. But not Barney, -who loves another woman. That's impossible." - -"But it is so," she said, softly, looking at him. "Really it is so." - -"No, no," Oldmeadow repeated, and he raised her hand to his lips and -kept it there, a talisman against the menace of her words. "He lost -you. He's gone. I've found you and you care for me. You can't hide from -me that you care for me. Just now. For those moments. You were mine." - -"No," she repeated. "I was weak and cruel, but I was not yours." - -She had been incredibly near so short a time ago before. Now, looking at -him, with her difficult breaths and gentle, inflexible eyes, she was -incredibly remote. "I am his, only his," she said. "I love him and I -shall always love him. It makes no difference. He loves Nancy, but it -makes no difference. He is my husband. The father of my baby." - -She tried to speak on steadily while she thus gave him the truth that -ended all his hope; but the desperate emotion with which he received it -made real and overpowering to her her outlived yet living sorrow. With -all that she must relinquish laid bare to her in the passion of his eyes -she could measure all that she had lost, as she had, perhaps, till then, -never measured it. "Don't you know?" she said. "Don't you see? My heart -is broken, broken, broken." - -She put her head down on her arms as she said the words and he heard her -bitter weeping. - -He knew, as he listened, that it was all over with him. Dimly, in the -terrible suffering that wrenched at him, he received his further -revelation of the nature already nearer him than any in the world. Her -strength would be in all she did and felt. She had loved Barney and she -would always love him. Her marriage had been to her an ultimate and -indissoluble experience. That was why she had been so blind. She could -not have thought of herself as a woman to be again loved and wooed. - -Her hair lay against his hands, still holding hers, and he found himself -stroking it, without tenderness or solicitude it seemed. It seemed to be -only automatically that his fingers passed across it, while he noted its -warmth and fineness and bright, lovely colour, remembering that he had -thought it at the first her one indubitable beauty. - -They sat there thus for a long time. The gilt clock paused, choked, then -in a voice of hurrying, hoarsened silver rang out eleven strokes. -Footsteps passed and faded up the corridor; doors closed. A tramway on -the quai clashed and clanged, came to a noisy standstill, and moved on -again with a rattling of cables and raucous blasts from a horn; and in -the profound silence that followed he seemed to hear the deep old river -flowing. - -"Really, you see, it's broken," said Adrienne. She had ceased to weep, -but she still leaned forward, her head upon her folded arms. "You saw it -happen," she said. "That night when you found me in the rain." - -"I've seen everything happen to you, haven't I?" said Oldmeadow. - -"Yes," she assented. "Everything. And I've made you suffer, too. Isn't -that strange; everybody who comes near me I make suffer." - -"Well, in different ways," he said. "Some because you are near and -others because you won't be." - -His voice was colourless. His hand still passed across her hair. - -"Don't you see," she said, after a moment, "that it couldn't have been. -Try to see that and to accept it. Not you and me. Not Barney's friend -and Barney's wife. In every way it couldn't have done, really. It makes -no difference for me. I'm a _déracinée_, as I said. A wanderer. But what -would have become of you, all full of roots as you are? You can live it -down without me. You never could have with. And how could you have -wandered with me? For that must be my life." - -"You know, it's no good trying to comfort me," said Oldmeadow. "What I -feel is that any roots I have are in you." - -"They will grow again. The others will grow again." - -"I don't want others, darling," said Oldmeadow. "You see, my heart is -broken, too." - -She lifted her head at last and he saw her marred and ravaged face. - -"It can't be helped," he tried to smile at her. "You weren't there to be -recognized when I first met you and now that you are there, I've come -too late. I believe that if I'd come before Barney, you'd have loved me. -It's my only comfort." - -"Who can say," said Adrienne. Her gaze, as she looked at him, was deep -with the mystery of her acceptance. "Perhaps. It seems to me all this -was needed to bring us where we are--enmity and bitterness and grief. -And my love for Barney, too. Let me tell you. It's in the past that I -think of him. As if he were dead. It's something over; done with for -ever; yet something always there. How can one be a mother and forget? -Even when he is Nancy's husband and when she is a mother, I shall not -cease to feel myself his wife. Perhaps you think that strange, after Meg -and what I believed right for her. But it is quite clear to me, and -simple. It isn't a thing of laws and commandments; only of our own -hearts. If we can love again, we may. But for me it would be impossible. -With me everything was involved. I couldn't, ever, be twice a wife." - -Silence fell between them. - -"I'll see about the little girl's grave," said Oldmeadow suddenly. He -did not know what had made him think of it. Perhaps something that had -gone on echoing in him after she had spoken of her maternity. "I'll go -to Evian to-morrow. It will spare Joséphine the journey and give me -something to do. You'll tell me the name and give me the directions -before you go." - -Tears filled her eyes as she looked at him; but they did not fall. They -could need no controlling. The springs of weeping must be nearly -drained. "Thank you," she said, and she looked away, seeming to think -intently. - -It was now too late for the tramways. They had ceased to crash and -rattle by, but a sound of belated singing passed along the quais, -melancholy in its induced and extravagant mirth. - -The horrible sense of human suffering that had beaten in upon him at the -hospital, pressed again upon his heart. He saw himself departing next -day to find the abandoned grave and he saw himself standing beside her -train and measuring along the shining rails the vast distances that were -to bear her away for ever. - -"That's the worst," he said. "You're suffering too. I must see you go -away and know that you are unhappy. I must think of you as unhappy. With -a broken heart." - -Her eyes, after she had thanked him, had been fixed in the intent -reverie. She, too, perhaps, had been seeing those tides of misery, the -sea of which she had spoken, breaking in tragic waves for ever; so -unchanged by all the alleviations that love or mercy could bring; and it -was perhaps with despair that she saw herself as one with it. Her eyes -as she turned them on him were full of distance and of depth and, with -sickening grief, he felt that a woman with a broken heart could do -nothing more for herself or for him. - -But her thought, whatever the voids of darkness it had visited, drew -nearer and nearer to his need as she looked at him. Something of her own -strong vigilance was in the look, bringing the seagull to his mind. The -seagull caught and battered by the waves, with sodden wings, half -dragged down, yet summoning its strength to rise from the submerging -sea. - -"But you can be happy with a broken heart," she said. Their hands had -fallen apart long since. She stretched out hers now and took his in her -small, firm grasp. - -"Can you?" he asked. - -"You mustn't think of me like this," she said, and it was as if she read -his thoughts and their imagery. "I went down, I know; like drowning. -Sometimes the waves break over you and pull you down, and there seems -nothing else in all the world but yourself and what you've suffered. But -it doesn't last. Something brings you up again." - -Something had brought her up again now. His darkness. His misery. It was -as if he saw her spread her wings and saw her eyes measuring, for them -both, the spaces of sea and sky. - -He remembered a picture in a book he had loved as a little boy: little -Diamond held to the breast of the North Wind as she flies forth in her -streaming hair against a sky of stars. So he felt himself lying on her -breast and lifted with her. - -"I've told you how happy I can be. It's all true," she said. "It's all -there. The light, the peace, the strength. I shall find them. And so -will you." - -"Shall I?" he questioned gently. "Without you?" - -"Yes. Without me. You will find them. But you won't be without me," said -Adrienne. - -Already she was finding them. He knew that, for, as she looked at him, -he felt an influence passing from her to him like the laying of her hand -upon his brow. But it was closer than that. It was to her breast that -her eyes held him while, in a long silence, the compulsion of her faith -flowed into him. First quietness; then peace; then a lifting radiance. - -"Promise me," he heard her say. - -He did not know what it was he must promise, but he seemed to feel it -all without knowing and he said: "I promise." - -She rose and stood above him. "You mustn't regret. You mustn't want." - -She laid her hands upon his shoulders as she spoke and looked down at -him, so austere, so radiant. "Anything else would have spoiled it. We -were only meant to find each other like this and then to part." - -"I'll be good," said Oldmeadow. It was like saying one's prayers at -one's mother's knees and his lips found the child-like formula. - -"We must part," said Adrienne. "I have my life and you have yours and -they take different ways. But you won't be without me, I won't be -without you. How can we be, when we will never, never forget each other -and our love?" - -He looked up at her. He had put out his hands and they grasped her dress -as a donor in a votive altarpiece grasps the Madonna's healing garment. -It was not, he knew, to keep her. It was rather in an accepting -relinquishment that he held her thus for their last communion, receiving -through touch and sight and hearing her final benison. - -"I will think of you every day, until I die," she said. "I will pray for -you every day. Dear friend--dearest friend--God bless and keep you." - -She had stooped to him and for a transcending moment he was taken into -her strong, life-giving embrace. The climax of his life was come as he -felt her arms close round him and her kiss upon his forehead. And as she -held him thus he believed all that she had said and all for which she -could have found no words. That he should find the light and more and -more feel their unity in it: that the thought of her would be strength -to him always; as the thought of him and of his love would be strength -to her. - -After she had gone, he sat for a long time bathed in the sense of her -life, and tasting, for that span of time, her own security of eternal -goodness. - -THE END - - -Typographical error was corrected by the etext transcriber: - -"Adriennes mustn't fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only -justification for Adriennes is to be in the right. => "Adrienne mustn't -fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only justification for Adrienne is -to be in the right. {pg 241} - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - -***** This file should be named 42428-8.txt or 42428-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/2/42428/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project -Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you -charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you -do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the -rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose -such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and -research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do -practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is -subject to the trademark license, especially commercial -redistribution. - - - -*** START: FULL LICENSE *** - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project -Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at -http://gutenberg.org/license). - - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy -all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. -If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the -terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or -entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement -and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" -or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the -collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an -individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are -located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from -copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative -works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg -are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project -Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by -freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of -this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with -the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by -keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project -Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in -a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check -the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement -before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or -creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project -Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning -the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United -States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate -access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently -whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, -copied or distributed: - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived -from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is -posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied -and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees -or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work -with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the -work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 -through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the -Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or -1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional -terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked -to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the -permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any -word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or -distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than -"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version -posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), -you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a -copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon -request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other -form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided -that - -- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is - owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he - has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the - Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments - must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you - prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax - returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and - sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the - address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to - the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." - -- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or - destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium - and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of - Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any - money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days - of receipt of the work. - -- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set -forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from -both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael -Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the -Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm -collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain -"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or -corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual -property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a -computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by -your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with -your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with -the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a -refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity -providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to -receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy -is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further -opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER -WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO -WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. -If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the -law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be -interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by -the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any -provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance -with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, -promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, -harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, -that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do -or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm -work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any -Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. - - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers -including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists -because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from -people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. -To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 -and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive -Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at -http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent -permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. -Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered -throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at -809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email -business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact -information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official -page at http://pglaf.org - -For additional contact information: - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To -SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any -particular state visit http://pglaf.org - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. -To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate - - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm -concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared -with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project -Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. - - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. -unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/42428-8.zip b/old/42428-8.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 32dc137..0000000 --- a/old/42428-8.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/42428-h.zip b/old/42428-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index a920ca8..0000000 --- a/old/42428-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/42428-h/42428-h.htm b/old/42428-h/42428-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index d9ede54..0000000 --- a/old/42428-h/42428-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11103 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" -"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> - <head> <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> -<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> -<title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick. -</title> -<style type="text/css"> - p {margin-top:.2em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.2em;text-indent:4%;} - -.c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} - -.cb {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold;} - -.cbb {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold; -margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%;} - -.eng {font-family: "Old English Text MT",fantasy,sans-serif;} - -.errata {color:red;text-decoration:underline;} - -.nind {text-indent:0%;} - -.r {text-align:right;margin-right: 5%;} - -small {font-size: 70%;} - - h1 {margin-top:5%;text-align:center;clear:both;} - - h2 {margin-top:5%;margin-bottom:2%;text-align:center;clear:both; - font-size:120%;} - - h3 {margin:8% auto 2% auto;text-align:center;clear:both;} - - hr.full {width: 80%;margin:5% auto 5% auto;border:4px double gray;} - - body{margin-left:2%;margin-right:2%;background:#fdfdfd;color:black;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;font-size:medium;} - -a:link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} - - link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} - -a:visited {background-color:#ffffff;color:purple;text-decoration:none;} - -a:hover {background-color:#ffffff;color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;} - -.smcap {font-variant:small-caps;font-size:95%;} - - img {border:none;} - -.blockquot {margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%;} - -.boxx {border:solid 2px black;padding:1%; -margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;max-width:23em;} - -.boxx1 {border:solid 2px black;padding:1%;} - -.figcenter {margin-top:3%;margin-bottom:3%; -margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} - -.poem {margin-left:25%;text-indent:0%;} -.poem .stanza {margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom:1em;} -.poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: .55em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -</style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Adrienne Toner - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42428] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="364" height="550" alt="bookcover" title="" /> -</p> - -<p class="cb">ADRIENNE TONER</p> - -<div class="boxx"> -<div class="boxx1"> -<h1>ADRIENNE TONER<br /> -<i>A Novel</i></h1> -<hr /> -<p class="cbb">BY<br /> -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK<br /> -(Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt)<br /> -<br /> -<small>AUTHOR OF “CHRISTMAS ROSES, AND OTHER STORIES,†“TANTEâ€<br /> -“FRANKLIN KANE,†“THE ENCOUNTER,†ETC.</small></p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/colophon.png" width="135" height="184" alt="colophon" title="" /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="cbb">BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br /> -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br /> -<span class="eng">The Riverside Press Cambridge</span></p> -</div> -</div> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<p class="c"> -COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SÉLINCOURT<br /> -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br /> -<br /> -THIRD IMPRESSION, MAY, 1922<br /> -<br /><br /> -<span class="eng">The Riverside Press</span><br /> -CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS<br /> -PRINTED IN THE U . S . A.</p> - -<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a> </p> - -<p><a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a> </p> - -<p class="c"> -<a href="#PART_I"><b>PART I</b></a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_I-a"><b>CHAPTER: I, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_II-a"><b>II, </b></a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_III-a"><b>III, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IV-a"><b>IV, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_V-a"><b>V, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VI-a"><b>VI, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VII-a"><b>VII, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-a"><b>VIII, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IX-a"><b>IX, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_X-a"><b>X, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XI-a"><b>XI, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XII-a"><b>XII, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII-a"><b>XIII, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV-a"><b>XIV, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XV-a"><b>XV, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI-a"><b>XVI, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII-a"><b>XVII, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII-a"><b>XVIII, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX-a"><b>XIX, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XX-a"><b>XX, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI-a"><b>XXI, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII-a"><b>XXII, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII-a"><b>XXIII, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV-a"><b>XXIV, </b></a><br /> -<a href="#PART_II"><b>PART II</b></a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_I-b"><b>CHAPTER: I, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_II-b"><b>II, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_III-b"><b>III, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IV-b"><b>IV, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_V-b"><b>V, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VI-b"><b>VI, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VII-b"><b>VII, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-b"><b>VIII, </b></a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IX-b"><b>IX</b></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p> - -<h2>ADRIENNE TONER<br /> -<a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I</h2> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-a" id="CHAPTER_I-a"></a>CHAPTER I</h3> - -<p class="nind">“C<small>OME</small> down to Coldbrooks next week-end, will you, Roger?†said Barney -Chadwick. He had been wandering around the room, pausing once to glance -at the César Franck on the piano and once at the window to look down at -the Thames, and his voice now, though desultory in intention, betrayed -to his friend preoccupation and even anxiety. “There is going to be an -interesting girl with us: American; very original and charming.â€</p> - -<p>Roger Oldmeadow sat at his writing-bureau in the window, and his high -dark head was silhouetted against the sky. It had power and even beauty, -with moments of brooding melancholy; but the type to which it most -conformed was that of the clever, cantankerous London bachelor; and if -he sometimes looked what he was, the scholar who had taken a double -first at Balliol and gave brain and sinew to an eminent review, he -looked more often what he was not, a caustic, cautious solicitor, -clean-shaved and meticulously neat, with the crisp bow at his collar, -single eyeglass, and thin, wry smile.</p> - -<p>There was a cogitative kindness in his eyes and a latent irony on his -lips as he now scrutinized Barney Chadwick, who had come finally to lean -against the<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> mantelpiece, and it was difficult before Roger Oldmeadow’s -gaze at such moments not to feel that you were giving yourself away. -This was evidently what Barney was trying not to feel, or, at all -events, not to show. He tapped his cigarette-end, fixing his eyes upon -it and frowning a little. He had ruffled his brown hair with the nervous -hand passed through it during his ramble, but ruffled or sleek Barney -could never look anything but perfection, just as, whether he smiled or -frowned, he could never look anything but charming. In his spring-tide -grey, with a streak of white inside his waistcoat and a tie of petunia -silk that matched his socks, he was a pleasant figure of fashion; and he -was more than that; more than the mere London youth of 1913, who danced -the tango and cultivated Post-Impressionism and the Russian ballet. He -was perhaps not much more; but his difference, if slight, made him -noticeable. It came back, no doubt, to the fact of charm. He was radiant -yet reserved; confident yet shy. He had a slight stammer, and his smile -seemed to ask you to help him out. His boyhood, at twenty-nine, still -survived in his narrow face, clumsy in feature and delicate in contour, -with long jaw, high temples and brown eyes, half sweet, half sleepy. The -red came easily to his brown cheek, and he had the sensitive, stubborn -lips of the little boy at the preparatory school whom Oldmeadow had met -and befriended now many years ago.</p> - -<p>In Oldmeadow’s eyes he had always remained the “little Barney†he had -then christened him—even Barney’s mother had almost forgotten that his -real name was Eustace—and he could not but know that Barney depended -upon him more than upon<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> anyone in the world. To Barney his negations -were more potent than other people’s affirmations, and though he had -sometimes said indignantly, “You leave one nothing to agree about, -Roger, except Plato and Church-music,†he was never really happy or -secure in his rebellions from what he felt or suspected to be -Oldmeadow’s tastes and judgments. Oldmeadow had seen him through many -admirations, not only for books and pictures, but for original girls. -Barney thought that he liked the unusual. He was a devotee of the -ballet, and had in his rooms cushions and curtains from the Omega shop -and a drawing by Wyndham Lewis. But Oldmeadow knew that he really -preferred the photograph of a Burne-Jones, a survival from Oxford days, -that still bravely, and irrelevantly, hung opposite it, and he waited to -see the Wyndham Lewis replaced by a later portent. Barney could remain -stubbornly faithful to old devotions, but he was easily drawn into new -orbits; and it was a new star, evidently, that he had come to describe -and justify.</p> - -<p>“What have I to do with charming American girls?†Oldmeadow inquired, -turning his eyes on the blurred prospect of factory-chimneys and -warehouses that the farther waterside of Chelsea affords. One had to go -to the window and look out to see the grey and silver river flowing, in -the placidity that revealed so little power. Oldmeadow lived in a flat -on the Embankment; but he was not an admirer of Chelsea, just as he was -not an admirer of Whistler nor—and Barney had always suspected it—of -Burne-Jones. His flat gave him, at a reasonable cost, fresh air, -boiling-hot water and a walk in Battersea Park; these, with his piano, -were his fundamental<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> needs; though he owned, for the mean little stream -it was, that the Thames could look pretty enough by morning sunlight -and—like any river—magical under stars. After Plato and Bach, -Oldmeadow’s passions were the rivers of France.</p> - -<p>“She’ll have something to do with you,†said Barney, and he seemed -pleased with the retort. “I met her at the Lumleys. They think her the -marvel of the age.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, that doesn’t endear her to me,†said Oldmeadow. “And I don’t like -Americans.â€</p> - -<p>“Come, you’re not quite so hide-bound as all that,†said Barney, vexed. -“What about Mrs. Aldesey? I’ve heard you say she’s the most charming -woman you know.â€</p> - -<p>“Except Nancy,†Oldmeadow amended.</p> - -<p>“No one could call Nancy a charming woman,†said Barney, looking a -little more vexed. “She’s a dear, of course; but she’s a mere girl. What -do you know about Americans, anyway—except Mrs. Aldesey?â€</p> - -<p>“What she tells me about them—the ones she doesn’t know,†said -Oldmeadow, leaning back in his chair with a laugh. “But I own that I’m -merely prejudiced. Tell me about your young lady, and why you want her -to have something to do with me. Is she a reformer of some sort?â€</p> - -<p>“She’s a wonderful person, really,†said Barney, availing himself with -eagerness of his opportunity. “Not a reformer. Only a sort of mixture of -saint and fairy-princess. She cured Charlie Lumley of insomnia, three -years ago, at Saint Moritz. Nothing psychic or theatrical, you know. -Just sat by him and smiled—she’s a most extraordinary smile—<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a>and laid -her hand on his head. He’d not slept for nights and went off like a -lamb. Lady Lumley almost cries when she tells about it. They thought -Charlie might lose his mind if he went on not sleeping.â€</p> - -<p>“My word! She’s a Christian Science lady? A medium? What?â€</p> - -<p>“Call her what you like. You’ll see. She does believe in spiritual -forces. It’s not only that. She’s quite lovely. In every way. Nancy and -Meg will worship her. The Lumley girls do.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow’s thoughts were already dwelling in rueful surmise on Nancy. -He had always thought her the nicest young creature he had ever known, -nicer even than Barney; and he had always wanted them to marry. She was -Barney’s second cousin, and she and her mother lived near the Chadwicks -in Gloucestershire.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Nancy will worship her, will she? She must be all right, then. -What’s her name?†he asked.</p> - -<p>Barney had given up trying to be desultory, and his conscious firmness -was now not lost upon his friend as he answered, stammering a little, -“Adrienne. Adrienne Toner.â€</p> - -<p>“Why Adrienne?†Oldmeadow mildly inquired. “Has she French blood?â€</p> - -<p>“Not that I know of. It’s a pretty name, I think, Adrienne. One hears -more inane names given to girls every day. Her mother loved France—just -as you do, Roger. Adrienne was born in Paris, I think.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, a very pretty name,†said Oldmeadow, noting Barney’s already -familiar use of it. “Though it sounds more like an actress’s than a -saint’s.â€</p> - -<p>“There was something dramatic about the mother,<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> I fancy,†said Barney, -sustained, evidently, by his own detachment. “A romantic, rather absurd, -but very loveable person. Adrienne worshipped her and, naturally, can’t -see the absurdity. She died out in California. On a boat,†said Barney -stammering again, over the <i>b</i>.</p> - -<p>“On a boat?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. Awfully funny. But touching, too. That’s what she wanted, when she -died: the sea and sky about her. They carried her on her yacht—doctors, -nurses, all the retinue—and sailed far out from shore. It’s beautiful, -too, in a way you know, to be able to do that sort of thing quite simply -and unself-consciously. Adrienne sat beside her, and they smiled at each -other and held hands until the end.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow played with his penholder. He was disconcerted; and most of -all by the derivative emotion in Barney’s voice. They had gone far, -then, already, the young people. Nancy could have not the ghost of a -chance. And the nature of what touched Barney left him singularly dry. -He was unable to credit so much simplicity or unself-consciousness. He -coughed shortly, and after a decently respectful interval inquired: “Is -Miss Toner very wealthy?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, very,†said Barney, relapsing now into a slight sulkiness. “At -least, perhaps not very, as rich Americans go. She gave away a lot of -her fortune, I know, when her mother died. She founded a place for -children—a convalescent home, or crèche—out in California. And she did -something in Chicago, too.â€</p> - -<p>And Miss Toner had evidently done something in<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> London at the Lumleys’. -It couldn’t be helped about Nancy, and if the American girl was pretty -and, for all her nonsense, well-bred, it might not be a bad thing, since -there was so much money. The Chadwicks were not at all well off, and -Coldbrooks was only kept going by Mrs. Chadwick’s economies and Barney’s -labours at his uncle’s stock-broking firm in the city. Oldmeadow could -see Eleanor Chadwick’s so ingenuous yet so practical eye fixed on Miss -Toner’s gold, and he, too, could fix his. Miss Toner sounded benevolent, -and it was probable that her presence as mistress of Coldbrooks would be -of benefit to all Barney’s relatives. All the same, she sounded as -irrelevant in his life as the Wyndham Lewis.</p> - -<p>“Adrienne Toner,†he heard himself repeating aloud, for he had a trick, -caught, no doubt, from his long loneliness, of relapsing into -absent-minded and audible meditations. The cadence of it worried him. It -was an absurd name. “You know each other pretty well already, it seems,†-he said.</p> - -<p>“Yes; it’s extraordinary how one seems to know her. One doesn’t have any -formalities to get through with her, as it were,†said Barney. “Either -you are there, or you are not there.â€</p> - -<p>“Either on the yacht, or not on the yacht, eh?†Oldmeadow reached out -for his pipe.</p> - -<p>“Put it like that if you choose. It’s awfully jolly to be on the yacht, -I can tell you. It <i>is</i> like a voyage, a great adventure, to know her.â€</p> - -<p>“And what’s it like to be off the yacht? Suppose I’m not there? Suppose -she doesn’t like me?†Oldmeadow suggested. “What am I to talk to her -about—of course I’ll come, if you really want me.<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> But she frightens me -a little, I confess. I’m not an adventurous person.â€</p> - -<p>“But neither am I, you know!†Barney exclaimed, “and that’s just what -she does to you: makes you adventurous. She’ll be immensely interested -in you, of course. You can talk to her about anything. It was down at a -week-end at the Lumleys’ I first met her, and there were some tremendous -big-wigs there, political, you know, and literary, and all that sort of -thing; and she had them all around her. She’d have frightened me, too, -if I hadn’t seen at once that she took to me and wouldn’t mind my being -just ordinary. She likes everybody; that’s just it. She takes to -everybody, big and little. She’s just like sunshine,†Barney stammered a -little over his <i>s</i>’s. “That’s what she makes one think of straight off; -shining on everything.â€</p> - -<p>“On the clean and the unclean. I see,†said Oldmeadow. “I feel it in my -bones that I shall come into the unclean category with her. But it’ll do -me the more good to have her shine on me.<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-a" id="CHAPTER_II-a"></a>CHAPTER II</h3> - -<p class="nind">R<small>OGER</small> O<small>LDMEADOW</small> went to have tea with Mrs. Aldesey next afternoon. She -was, after the Chadwicks, his nearest friend, and his relation to the -Chadwicks was one of affection rather than affinity. They had been -extraordinarily kind to him since the time that he had befriended Barney -at the preparatory school, hiding, under his grim jocularities, the -bewilderment of a boy’s first great bereavement. His love for his mother -had been an idolatry, and his childhood had been haunted by her -ill-health. She died when he was thirteen, and in some ways he knew -that, even now, he had never got over it. His unfortunate and frustrated -love-affair in early manhood had been, when all was said and done, a -trivial grief compared to it. Coldbrooks had become, after that, his -only home, for he had lost his father as a very little boy, and the -whole family had left the country parsonage and been thrown on the -mercies of an uncle and aunt who lived in a grim provincial town. -Oldmeadow’s most vivid impression of home was the high back bedroom -where the worn carpet was cold to the feet and the fire a sulky spot of -red, and the windows looked out over smoky chimney-pots. Here his -stricken mother lay in bed with her cherished cat beside her and read -aloud to him. There was always a difficulty about feeding poor Effie, -Aunt Aggie declaring that cats should live below stairs and on mice; and -Roger, at midday dinner, became adroit at slipping bits of meat from<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> -his plate into a paper held in his lap and carried triumphantly to his -mother’s room afterwards. “Oh, darling, you <i>oughtn’t</i> to,†she would -say with her loving, girlish smile, and he would reply, “But I went -without, Mummy; so it’s quite all right.†His two little sisters were -kept in the nursery, as they were noisy, high-spirited children, and -tired their mother too much. Roger was her companion, her comrade; her -only comrade in the world, really, beside Effie. It had been Mrs. -Chadwick who had saved Effie from the lethal chamber after her -mistress’s death. Roger never spoke about his mother, but he did speak -about Effie when she was thus threatened, and he had never forgotten, -never, never, Mrs. Chadwick’s eager cry of, “But bring her here, my dear -Roger. I <i>like</i> idle cats! Bring her here, and I promise you that we’ll -make her happy. Animals are <i>so</i> happy at Coldbrooks.†To see Effie -cherished, petted, occupying the best chairs during all the years that -followed, had been to see his mother, in this flickering little ghost, -remembered in the only way he could have borne to see her explicitly -remembered, and it was because of Effie that he had most deeply loved -Coldbrooks. It remained always his refuge during a cheerless and -harassed youth, when, with his two forceful, black-browed sisters to -settle in life, he had felt himself pant and strain under the harness. -He was fonder of them than they of him, for they were hard, cheerful -young women, inheriting harshness of feature and manner from their -father, with their father’s black eyes. It was from his mother that -Oldmeadow had his melancholy blue ones, and he had never again met his -mother’s tenderness.<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a></p> - -<p>Both sisters were now settled, one in India and one, very prosperously, -in London; but he seldom turned for tea into Cadogan Gardens and -Trixie’s brisk Chippendale drawing-room; though Cadogan Gardens was -obviously more convenient than Somer’s Place, where, on the other side -of the park, Mrs. Aldesey lived. He had whims, and did not know whether -it was because he more disliked her husband or her butler that he went -so seldom to see Trixie. Her husband was jovial and familiar, and the -butler had a face like a rancid ham and a surreptitious manner. One had -always to be encountered at the door, and the other was too often in the -drawing-room, and Trixie was vexatiously satisfied with both; Trixie -also had four turbulent, intelligent children, in whom complacent -parental theories of uncontrol manifested themselves unpleasantly, and -altogether she was too much hedged in by obstacles to be tempting; even -had she been tempting in herself. Intercourse with Trixie, when it did -take place, consisted usually of hard-hearted banter. She bantered him a -great deal about Mrs. Aldesey, who, she averred, snubbed her. Not that -Trixie minded being snubbed by anybody.</p> - -<p>It was a pleasant walk across the park on this spring day when the -crocuses were fully out in the grass, white, purple and gold, and the -trees just scantly stitched with green, and, as always, it was with a -slight elation that he approached his friend. However dull or jaded -oneself or the day, the thought of her cheered one as did the thought of -tea. She made him think of her own China tea. She suggested delicate -ceremoniousness. Though familiar, there was always an aroma of -unexpectedness<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> about her; a slight, sweet shock of oddity and surprise.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Aldesey was unlike the traditional London American. She was neither -rich nor beautiful nor noticeably well-dressed. One became gradually -aware, after some time spent in her company, that her clothes, -soft-tinted and silken, were pleasing, as were her other appurtenances; -the narrow front of her little house, painted freshly in white and green -and barred by boxes of yellow wallflower; the serenely unfashionable -water-colours of Italy, painted by her mother, on the staircase; and her -drawing-room, grey-green and primrose-yellow, with eighteenth-century -fans, of which she had a collection, displayed in cabinets, and good old -glass.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Aldesey herself, behind her tea-table, very faded, very thin, with -what the French term a <i>souffreteux</i> little face—an air of just not -having taken drugs to make her sleep, but of having certainly taken -tabloids to make her digest—seemed already to belong to a passing order -of things; an order still sustained, if lightly, by stays, and keeping a -prayer-book as punctually in use as a card-case.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow owed her, if indirectly, to the Chadwicks, as he owed so much, -even if it was entirely on his own merits that he had won her regard. -They had met, years ago, in France; an entirely chance encounter, and -probably a futureless one, had it not been for the presence in the hotel -at Amboise of the Lumleys. They both slightly knew the Lumleys, and the -Lumleys and the Chadwicks were old friends. So it had come about; and if -he associated Mrs. Aldesey with tea, he associated her also with perfect -omelettes and the Loire. He had liked her at once<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> so much, that, had it -not been for an always unseen yet never-repudiated husband in New York, -he would certainly, at the beginning, have fallen in love with her. But -the unrepudiated husband made as much a part of Mrs. Aldesey’s -environment as her stays and her prayer-book. The barrier was so evident -that one did not even reflect on what one might have done had it not -been there; and indeed, Mrs. Aldesey, he now seemed, after many pleasant -years of friendship, to recognize, for all the sense of sweetness and -exhilaration she gave him, had not enough substance to rouse or sustain -his heart. She was, like the tea again, all savour.</p> - -<p>She lifted to-day her attentive blue eyes—with age they would become -shrewd—and gave him her fine little hand, blue-veined and ornamented -with pearls and diamonds in old settings. She wore long earrings and a -high, transparent collar of net and lace. Her earrings and her -elaborately dressed hair, fair and faded, seemed as much a part of her -personality as her eyes, her delicate nose and her small, slightly -puckered mouth that dragged provocatively and prettily at one corner -when she smiled. Oldmeadow sometimes wondered if she were happy; but -never because of anything she said or did.</p> - -<p>“I want to hear about some people called Toner,†he said, dropping into -the easy-chair on the opposite side of the tea-table. It was almost -always thus that he and Mrs. Aldesey met. He rarely dined out. “I’m -rather perturbed. I think that Barney—you remember young Chadwick—is -going to marry a Miss Toner—a Miss Adrienne Toner. And I hope you’ll -have something to her advantage to tell me. As you know, I’m devoted to -Barney and his family.<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“I know. The Lumleys’ Chadwicks. I remember perfectly. The dear boy with -the innocent eyes and sulky mouth. Why don’t you bring him to see me? -He’s dancing the tango in all his spare moments, I suppose, and doesn’t -care about old ladies.†Mrs. Aldesey was not much over forty, but always -thus alluded to herself. “Toner,†she took up, pouring out his tea. “Why -perturbed? Do you know anything against them? Americans, you mean. We -poor expatriates are always seen as keepers to so many curious -brethren.—Toner. <i>Celà ne me dit rien</i>.â€</p> - -<p>“I know nothing against them except that Mrs. Toner, the girl’s mother, -died, by arrangement, out at sea, on her yacht—in sunlight. Does that -say anything? People don’t do that in America, do they, as a rule? A -very opulent lady, I inferred.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear!†Mrs. Aldesey now ejaculated, as if enlightened. “Can it be? -Do you mean, I wonder, the preposterous Mrs. Toner, of whom, fifteen -years ago, I had a glimpse, and used to hear vague rumours? She wandered -about the world. She dressed in the Empire period: Queen Louise of -Prussia, white gauze bound beneath her chin. She had a harp, and warbled -to monarchs. She had an astral body, and a Yogi and a yacht and -everything handsome about her. The typical spiritual <i>cabotine</i> of our -epoch—though I’m sure they must always have existed. Of course it must -be she. No one else could have died like that. Has she died, poor woman? -On a yacht. Out at sea. In sunlight. How uncomfortable!â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, she’s dead,†said Oldmeadow resignedly. “Yes; it’s she, evidently. -And her daughter is coming down to Coldbrooks this week-end. I’m afraid<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> -that unless Barney has too many rivals, he’ll certainly marry her. But -what you say leads me to infer that he will have rivals and to hope they -may be successful. She will, no doubt, marry a prince.â€</p> - -<p>“Something Italian, perhaps. Quite a small fortune will do that. -Certainly your nice Barney wouldn’t have been at all Mrs. Toner’s -<i>affaire</i>. The girl on her own may think differently, for your Barney -is, I remember, very engaging, and has a way with him. I don’t know -anything about the girl. I didn’t know there was one. There’s no reason -why she may not be charming. Our wonderful people have the gift of -picking up experience in a generation and make excellent princesses.â€</p> - -<p>“But she’s that sort, you think. The sort that marries princes and has -no traditions. Where did they come from? Do you know that?â€</p> - -<p>“I haven’t an idea. Yet, stay. Was it not tooth-paste?—Toner’s Peerless -Tooth-Paste. Obsolete; yet I seem to see, reminiscently, in far-away -nursery days, the picture of a respectable old gentleman with -side-whiskers, on a tube. A pretty pink glazed tube with a gilt top to -it. Perhaps it’s that. Since it was Toner’s it would be the father’s -side; not the warbling mother’s. Well, many of us might wish for as -unambiguous an origin nowadays. And, in America, we did all sorts of -useful things when we first, all of us, came over in the Mayflower!†-said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow gazed upon his friend with an ironically receptive eye. “Have -they ever known anyone decent? Anyone like yourself? I don’t mean over -here. I mean in America.â€</p> - -<p>“No one like me, I imagine; if I’m decent. Mrs.<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> Toner essayed a season -in New York one winter, and it was then I had my glimpse of her, at the -opera, in the Queen Louise dress. A pretty woman, dark, with a sort of -soulful and eminently respectable coquetry about her; surrounded by -swarms of devotees—all male, to me unknown; and with something in a -turban that I took to be a Yogi in the background. She only tried the -one winter. She knew what she wanted and where she couldn’t get it. We -are very dry in New York—such of us as survive. Very little moved by -warblings or astral bodies or millions. As you intimate, she’ll have -done much better over here. You <i>are</i> a strange mixture of materialism -and ingenuousness, you know.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s only that we have fewer Mrs. Toners to amuse us and more to do -with millions than you have,†said Oldmeadow; but Mrs. Aldesey, shaking -her head with a certain sadness, said that it wasn’t as simple as all -that.</p> - -<p>“Have you seen her? Have you seen Adrienne?†she took up presently, -making him his second cup of tea. “Is she pretty? Is he very much in -love?â€</p> - -<p>“I’m going down to Coldbrooks on Saturday to see her,†said Oldmeadow, -“and I gather that it’s not to subject her to any test that Barney wants -me; it’s to subject me, rather. He’s quite sure of her. He thinks she’s -irresistible. He merely wants to make assurance doubly sure by seeing me -bowled over. I don’t know whether she’s pretty. She has powers, -apparently, that make her independent of physical attractions. She lays -her hands on people’s heads and cures them. She cured Charlie Lumley of -insomnia at Saint Moritz three years ago.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Aldesey, at this, looked at him for some<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a> moments in silence. -“Yes,†she assented, and in her pause she seemed to have recognized and -placed a familiar object. “Yes. She would. That’s just what Mrs. Toner’s -daughter would do. I hope she doesn’t warble, too. Laying on hands is -better than warbling.â€</p> - -<p>“I see you think it hopeless,†said Oldmeadow, pushing back his chair -and yielding, as he thrust his hands into his pockets and stretched out -his legs, to an avowed chagrin. “What a pity it is! A thousand pities. -They are such dear, good, simple people, and Barney, though he doesn’t -know it, is as simple as any of them. What will become of them with this -overwhelming cuckoo in their nest.â€</p> - -<p>At this Mrs. Aldesey became serious. “I don’t think it hopeless at all. -You misunderstand me. Isn’t the fact that he’s in love with her -reassuring in itself? He may be simple, but he’s a delicate, discerning -creature, and he couldn’t fall in love with some one merely pretentious -and absurd. She may be charming. I can perfectly imagine her as -charming, and there’s no harm in laying on hands; there may be good. -Don’t be narrow, Roger. Don’t go down there feeling dry.â€</p> - -<p>“I am narrow, and I do feel dry; horribly dry,†said Oldmeadow. “How -could the child of such a mother, and of tooth-paste, be charming? Don’t -try specious consolation, now, after having more than justified all my -suspicions.â€</p> - -<p>“I’m malicious, not specious; and I can’t resist having my fling. But -you mustn’t be narrow and take me <i>au pied de la lettre</i>. I assert that -she may be charming. I assert that I can see it all working out most -happily. She’ll lay her hands on them and<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> they’ll love her. What I -really want to say is this: don’t try to set Barney against her. He’ll -marry her all the same and never forgive you.â€</p> - -<p>“Ah; there we have the truth of it. But Barney would always forgive me,†-said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“Well then, she won’t. And you’d lose him just as surely. And she’ll -know. Let me warn you of that. She’ll know perfectly.â€</p> - -<p>“I’ll keep my hands off her,†said Oldmeadow, “if she doesn’t try to lay -hers on me.<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-a" id="CHAPTER_III-a"></a>CHAPTER III</h3> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> Chadwicks all had a certain sulkiness in their charming looks, and -where in Barney it mingled with sweetness, in Palgrave, his younger -brother, it mingled with brilliancy. It was Palgrave who, at the -station, met the family friend and counsellor in the shabby, inexpensive -family car. He was still a mere boy, home from Marlborough for the -Easter holidays; fond of Oldmeadow, as all the Chadwicks were; but more -resentful of his predominance than Barney and more indifferent to his -brotherly solicitude. He had Barney’s long, narrow face and Barney’s -eyes and lips; but the former were proud and the latter petulant. -To-day, as he sat beside him in the car, Oldmeadow was aware of -something at once fixed and vibrating in his bearing. He wanted to say -something, and he had resolved to be silent. During their last encounter -at Coldbrooks, he and Oldmeadow had had a long, antagonistic political -discussion, and Palgrave’s resentment still, no doubt, survived.</p> - -<p>Coldbrooks lay among the lower Cotswolds, three miles from the station, -and near the station was the village of Chelford where Nancy Averil and -her mother lived. Nancy was at Coldbrooks; Aunt Monica—she was called -aunt by the Chadwick children, though she and Mrs. Chadwick were first -cousins—was away. So Palgrave informed him. But he did not speak again -until the chill, green curve of arable hill-side was climbed and a -stretch of wind-swept country lay before them. Then suddenly<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> he -volunteered: “The American girl is at Coldbrooks.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh! Is she? When did she come?†Somehow Oldmeadow had expected the -later train for Miss Toner.</p> - -<p>“Yesterday. She and Barney came down together in her car.â€</p> - -<p>“So you’ve welcomed her already,†said Oldmeadow, curious of the -expression on the boy’s face. “How does she fit into Coldbrooks? Does -she like you all and do you like her?â€</p> - -<p>For a moment Palgrave was silent. “You mean it makes a difference -whether we do or not?†he then inquired.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know that I meant that. Though if people come into your life it -does make a difference.â€</p> - -<p>“And is she going to come into our lives?†Palgrave asked, and Oldmeadow -felt pressure of some sort behind the question. “That’s what I mean. Has -Barney told you? He’s said nothing to us. Not even to Mother.â€</p> - -<p>“Has Barney told me he’s going to marry her? No; he hasn’t. But it’s -evident he hopes to. Perhaps it depends on whether she likes Coldbrooks -and Coldbrooks likes her.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, it doesn’t. It doesn’t depend on anything at all except whether -she likes Barney,†said Palgrave. “She’s the sort of person who doesn’t -depend on anything or anybody except herself. She cuts through -circumstance like a knife through cheese. And if she’s not going to take -him I wish she’d never come,†he added, frowning and turning, under the -peak of his cap, his jewel-like eyes upon his companion. “It’s a case of -all or nothing with a<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a> person like that. It’s too disturbing—just for a -glimpse.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow felt himself disconcerted. Oddly enough, for the boy was -capricious and extravagant, Palgrave’s opinion had more weight with him -than Barney’s. Barney, for one thing, was sexually susceptible and -Palgrave was not. Though so young, Oldmeadow felt him already of a -poetic temperament, passionate in mind and cold in blood.</p> - -<p>“She’s so charming? You can’t bear to lose her now you’ve seen her?†he -asked.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know about charming. No; I don’t think her charming. At least -not if you mean something little by the word. She’s disturbing. She -changes everything.â€</p> - -<p>“But if she stays she’ll be more disturbing. She’ll change more.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, I shan’t mind that! I shan’t mind change,†Palgrave declared. “If -it’s her change and she’s there to see it through.†And, relapsing to -muteness, he bent to his brakes and they slid down among the woods of -Coldbrooks.</p> - -<p>For the life of him and with the best will in the world, he couldn’t -make it out. That was Oldmeadow’s first impression as, among the -familiar group gathered in the hall about the tea-table, Miss Toner was -at last made manifest to him. She was, he felt sure, in his first shrewd -glance at her, merely what Lydia Aldesey would have placed as a -third-rate American girl, and her origins in commercial enterprise were -eminently appropriate.</p> - -<p>She got up to meet him, as if recognizing in him some special -significance or, indeed, as it might be her ingenuous habit to do in -meeting any older person.<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> But he was not so much older if it came to -that; for, after he had met the direct and dwelling gaze of her large, -light eyes, the second impression was that she was by no means so young -as Barney had led him to expect. She was certainly as old as Barney.</p> - -<p>There were none of the obvious marks of wealth upon her. She wore a -dark-blue dress tying on the breast over white. She was small in stature -and, in manner, composed beyond anything he had ever encountered. With -an irony, kindly enough, yet big, he knew, with unfavourable inferences, -he even recognized, reconstructing the moment in the light of those that -followed, that in rising to meet him as he was named to her, it had -been, rather than in shyness or girlishness, in the wish to welcome him -and draw him the more happily into a group she had already made her own.</p> - -<p>They were all sitting round the plentiful table, set with home-made -loaves and cakes, jams and butter, and a Leeds bowl of primroses; Miss -Toner just across from him, Barney on one side of her—his was an air of -tranquil ecstasy—and little Barbara on the other, and they all seemed -to emanate a new radiance; almost, thought Oldmeadow, with an -irritability that was still genial, like innocent savages on a remote -seashore gathered with intent eyes and parted lips round the newly -disembarked Christopher Columbus. Mrs. Chadwick, confused, as usual, -among her tea-cups, sending hasty relays of sugar after the unsugared or -recalling those sugared in error, specially suggested the simile. She -could, indeed, hardly think of her tea. Her wide, startled gaze turned -incessantly on the new-comer and to Oldmeadow, for all his nearly filial -affection, the<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> eyes of Eleanor Chadwick looked like nothing in the -world so much as those of the March Hare in Tenniel’s evocation of the -endearing creature. Unlike her children, she was fair, with a thin, -high, ridiculously distinguished nose; but her mouth and chin had -Barney’s irresolution and sweetness, and her untidy locks Meg’s beauty. -Meg was a beauty in every way, rose, pearl and russet, a Romney touched -with pride and daring, and the most sophisticated of all the Chadwicks; -yet she, too, brooded, half merrily, half sombrely, on Miss Toner, her -elbows on the table for the better contemplation. Palgrave’s absorption -was manifest; but he did not brood. He held his head high, frowned and, -for the most part, looked out of the window.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow sat between Palgrave and Nancy and it was with Nancy that the -magic ended. Nancy did not share in the radiance. She smiled and was -very busy cutting the bread and butter; but she was pale; not puzzled, -but preoccupied. Poor darling Nancy; always his special pet; to him -always the dearest and most loveable of girls. Not at all a Romney. With -her pale, fresh face, dark hair and beautiful hands she suggested, -rather, a country lady of the seventeenth century painted by Vandyck. A -rural Vandyck who might have kept a devout and merry journal, surprising -later generations by its mixture of ingenuousness and wisdom. Her lips -were meditative, and her grey eyes nearly closed when she smiled in a -way that gave to her gaiety and extraordinary sweetness and intimacy. -Nancy always looked as if she loved you when she smiled at you; and -indeed she did love you. She had spent her life among people she loved -and if she could not be intimate she was remote and silent.<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a></p> - -<p>But there was no hope for Nancy. He saw that finally, as he drank his -tea in silence and looked across the primroses at the marvel of the age.</p> - -<p>Miss Toner’s was an insignificant little head, if indeed it could be -called little, since it was too large for her body, and her way of -dressing her hair in wide braids, pinned round it and projecting over -the ears, added to the top-heavy effect. The hair was her only -indubitable beauty, fine and fair and sparkling like the palest, purest -metal. It was cut in a light fringe across a projecting forehead and her -mouth and chin projected, too; so that, as he termed it to himself, it -was a squashed-in face, ugly in structure, the small nose, from its -depressed bridge, jutting forward in profile, the lips, in profile, flat -yet prominent. Nevertheless he owned, studying her over his tea-cup, -that the features, ugly, even trivial in detail, had in their assemblage -something of unexpected force. Her tranquil smile had potency and he -suddenly became aware of her flat, gentle voice, infrequent, yet oddly -dominating. Sensitive as he was to voices, he saw it as a bland, blue -ribbon rolled out among broken counters of colour, and listened to its -sound before he listened to what it said. All the other voices went up -and down; all the others half said things and let them drop or trail. -She said things to the end: when the ribbon began it was unrolled; and -it seemed, always, to make a silence in which it could be watched.</p> - -<p>“We went up high into the sunlight,†she said, “and one saw nothing but -snow and sky. The bells were ringing on the mountains beneath; one heard -no other sound. I have never forgotten the moment. It seemed an -inspiration of joy and peace and strength.<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“You’ve walked so much in the Alps, haven’t you, Roger?†said Mrs. -Chadwick. “Miss Toner has motored over every pass.â€</p> - -<p>“In the French Alps. I don’t like Switzerland,†said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“I think I love the mountains everywhere,†said Miss Toner, “when they -go so high into the sky and have the sun and snow on their summits. But -I love the mountains of Savoy and Jura best.â€</p> - -<p>It vexed him that she should. She was a person to stay in and prefer -Switzerland. “Joy and peace and strength,†echoed in his ears and with -the words, rudely, and irrelevantly, the image of the pink glazed tube -with the gilt stopper. Miss Toner’s teeth were as white as they were -benignant.</p> - -<p>“I wish I could see those flowers,†said Mrs. Chadwick. “I’ve only been -to Vevey in the summer; oh, years and years ago. So dull. Fields of -flowers. You’ve seen them, too, of course, Roger. All the things we grow -with such pains. My Saint Brigid anemones never really do—though what I -put in of leaf-mould!â€</p> - -<p>“You’ll see anemones, fields of them, in the Alpine meadows; and violets -and lilies; the little lilies of Saint Bruno that look like freesias. I -love them best of all,†the bland, blue ribbon unrolled. “You shall go -with me some day, Mrs. Chadwick. We’ll go together.†And, smiling at her -as if they had, already, a happy secret between them, Miss Toner -continued: “We’ll go this very summer, if you will. We’ll motor all the -way. I’ll come and get you here. For a whole month you shall forget that -you’ve ever had a family to bring up or a house to take care of or -anemones that won’t grow properly—even in leaf-mould.<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Her eyes, as they rested on her hostess, seemed to impart more than her -words. They imparted something to Oldmeadow. He had not before -conjectured that Eleanor Chadwick might be bored or tired, nor realized -that since Barbara’s birth, fourteen years ago, she had not left -Coldbrooks except to go to London for a week’s shopping, or to stay with -friends in the English country. He had taken Eleanor Chadwick’s life for -granted. It seemed Miss Toner’s function not to take things that could -be changed for granted. It was easy to do that of course, when you had a -large banking account behind you; and yet he felt that Miss Toner would -have had the faculty of altering accepted standards, even had she been -materially unequipped. She and Mrs. Chadwick continued to look at each -other for a moment and the older woman, half bashfully, seemed, with -what softness, compelled to a tacit confession. She’d never known before -that she was tired. Springs of adventure and girlishness within her were -perhaps unsealed by Miss Toner’s gaze.</p> - -<p>“And where do the rest of us come in!†Barney ejaculated. He was so -happy in the triumph of his beloved that his eyes, their sleepiness -banished, were almost as brilliant as Palgrave’s.</p> - -<p>“But you’re always coming in with Mrs. Chadwick,†said Miss Toner. She -looked at him, if with a touch of tender humour, exactly as she looked -at his mother; but then she looked at them both as if they were precious -to her. “I don’t want you to come in at all for that month. I want her -to forget you ever existed. There ought to be waters of Lethe for -everyone every now and then, even in this life. We come out, after the -plunge into forgetfulness, far<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> brighter and stronger and with a -renovated self to love the better with. Afterwards—after she’s had her -dip—you’ll all come in, if you want to, with me. I’ll get a car big -enough. You, too, Miss Averil; and Mr. Oldmeadow; though he and Barney -and Palgrave may have to take turns sitting on the portmanteaus.â€</p> - -<p>“Barney†and “Palgrave†already. Her unpretentious mastery alarmed -almost as much as it amused him. He thanked her, with his dry smile, -saying that he really preferred to see the Alps on his legs and asked, -to temper the possible acerbity, “Do you drive yourself?†for it seemed -in keeping with his picture of her as an invading providence that she -should with her own hand conduct the car of fate. He could see her, -somehow, taking the hairpin curves on the Galibier.</p> - -<p>But Miss Toner said she did not drive. “One can’t see flowers if one -drives oneself; and it would hurt dear Macfarlane’s feelings so. -Macfarlane is my chauffeur and he’s been with me for years; from the -time we first began to have motors, my mother and I, out in California. -Apart from that, I should like it, I think, with the sense of risk and -venture it must give. I like the sense of high adventure—of ‘Childe -Roland to the dark tower came’; don’t you, Palgrave? It’s life, isn’t -it? The pulse of life. Danger and venture and conquest. And then -resting, on the heights, while one hears the bells beneath one.â€</p> - -<p>This, thought Oldmeadow, as he adjusted his glass the better to examine -Miss Toner, must prove itself too much, even for Palgrave to swallow. -But Palgrave swallowed it without a tremor. His eyes on hers he -answered: “Yes, I feel life like that, too.<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear!†sighed Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldmeadow blessed her antidote to -the suffocating sweetness: “I’m afraid I don’t! I don’t think I know -anything about risks and dangers; or about conquest either. I’m sure -I’ve never conquered anything; though I have been dreadfully afraid of -ill-tempered servants—if that counts, and never let them see it. -Barbara had such an odious nurse. She tried, simply, to keep me out of -the nursery; but she didn’t succeed. And there was a Scotch cook once, -with red hair—that so often goes with a bad temper, doesn’t it? Do you -remember, Barney?—your dear father had to go down to the kitchen when -she was found lying quite, quite drunk under the table. But cooks and -nurses can’t be called risks—and I’ve never cared for hunting.â€</p> - -<p>Miss Toner was quietly laughing, and indeed everybody laughed.</p> - -<p>“Dear Mrs. Chadwick,†she said. And then she added: “How can a mother -say she has not known risks and dangers? I think you’ve thought only of -other people for all your life and never seen yourself at all. Alpine -passes aren’t needed to prove people’s courage and endurance.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow now saw, from the sudden alarm and perplexity of Mrs. -Chadwick’s expression, that she was wondering if the marvellous guest -alluded to the perils of child-birth. Perhaps she did. She was ready, he -imagined, to allude to anything.</p> - -<p>“You’re right about her never having seen herself,†said Palgrave, -nodding across at Miss Toner. “She never has. She’s incapable of -self-analysis.â€</p> - -<p>“But she’s precious sharp when it comes to analysing other people, -aren’t you, Mummy dear!†said Barney.<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a></p> - -<p>“I don’t think she is,†said Meg. “I think Mummy sees people rather as -she sees flowers; things to be fed and staked and protected.â€</p> - -<p>“You’re always crabbing Mummy, Meg. It’s a shame!—Isn’t it a shame, -Mummy dear!†Barbara protested, and Barney tempered the apparent -criticism—peacemaker as he usually was—with: “But you have to -understand flowers jolly well to make them grow. And we do her credit, -don’t we!â€</p> - -<p>Miss Toner looked from one to the other as they spoke, with her clear, -benignant, comprehending gaze, and Mrs. Chadwick stared with her March -Hare ingenuousness that had its full share, too, of March Hare -shrewdness. She undertook no self-justification, commenting merely, in -the pause that followed Barney’s contribution: “I don’t know what you -mean by self-analysis unless it’s thinking about yourself and mothers -certainly haven’t much time for that. You’re quite right there, my -dear,†she nodded at Miss Toner, adding in a tone intended specially for -her: “But young people often exaggerate things that are quite, quite -simple when they come.<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-a" id="CHAPTER_IV-a"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3> - -<p class="nind">“C<small>OME</small> out and have a stroll,†said Oldmeadow to Nancy. Tea was over and -a primrose-coloured sunset filled the sky. They walked up and down the -gravelled terrace before the house.</p> - -<p>Coldbrooks stood high, yet encircled by still higher stretches of bare -or wooded upland. Its walled garden, where vegetable beds and lines of -cordon apple-trees were pleasingly diversified by the herbaceous borders -that ran beneath the walls, lay behind it; most of the bedroom windows -looked down into the garden. Before it, to the south, lawns and meadows -dropped to a lake fed by the brooks that gave the place its name. Beyond -the lake were lower copses, tinkling now with the musical run of water -and climbing softly on either side, so that from the terrace one had a -vast curved space of sky before one. The sun was setting over the woods.</p> - -<p>It was Barney’s grandfather, enriched by large shipping enterprises in -Liverpool, who had bought the pleasant old house, half farm, half manor, -and Barney’s father had married the daughter of a local squire. But the -family fortunes were much dwindled, and though Barney still nursed the -project of returning one day to farm his own land there was little -prospect of such a happy restoration. In spite of the Russian ballet and -London portents, he was fonder, far, of Coldbrooks than of all of them -put together. But he could afford neither time nor money for hunting, -and his home was his only for week-ends and holidays. It was the most -loveable of homes,<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> more stately without than within, built of grey-gold -Cotswold stone with beautiful stone chimneys and mullioned windows and -three gables facing the southern sky. Within, everything was rather bare -and shabby. There was no central heating, and no bathrooms. The -tiger-skin that lay on the stone flags of the hall had lost all its -hair. The piano rattled and wheezed in many of its notes. The patterns -of the drawing-room chintzes were faded to a mere dim rosy riot, and -stuffing protruded from the angles of the leather arm-chairs in the -smoking-room. But it was, all the same, a delightful house to stay in. -Eleanor Chadwick’s shrewdness showed itself in her housekeeping. She -knew what were the essentials. There was always a blazing fire in one’s -bedroom in the evening and the hottest of water with one’s bath in the -morning. Under the faded chintz, every chair in the drawing-room was -comfortable. The toast was always crisp; the tea always made with -boiling water; the servants cheerful. Mrs. Chadwick had a great gift -with servants. She could reprove with extreme plaintiveness, yet never -wound a susceptibility, and the servants’ hall, as she often remarked -with justice, was smarter and prettier than the drawing-room. Johnson, -the old butler, had been at Coldbrooks since before her marriage, and -the grey-haired parlourmaid had come with her when she had come as a -bride. These familiar faces added depth to the sense of intimacy that -was the gift of Coldbrooks. Oldmeadow loved the place as much as any of -the Chadwicks did, and was as much at home in it.</p> - -<p>“There is a blackcap,†said Nancy, “down in the copse. I felt sure I -heard one this morning.<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“So it is,†said Oldmeadow. They paused to listen.</p> - -<p>“It’s the happiest of all,†said Nancy.</p> - -<p>He had been wondering about Nancy ever since he had come. It was not her -voice, gentle and meditative, that told him now she was unhappy. It was -rather in contrast to the bird’s clear ecstasy that he felt the -heaviness of her heart.</p> - -<p>“It’s wilder than the thrush and blackbird, isn’t it?†he said. “Less -conscious. The thrush is always listening to himself, I feel. Do you -want to go to the Alps with Miss Toner, Nancy?â€</p> - -<p>Nancy would not see Miss Toner as an angelic being and he wanted to know -how she did see her. The others, it was evident, thought her angelic by -a sort of group suggestion. She thought herself so, to begin with; snow, -flowers, bells and all the rest of it; and they, ingenuous creatures, -saw the mango-tree rising to heaven as the calm-eyed Yogi willed they -should. But Nancy did not see the mango-tree. She was outside the group -consciousness—with him.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no!†she now said quickly; and she added: “I don’t mean that I -don’t like her. It’s only that I don’t know her. How can she want us? -She came only yesterday.â€</p> - -<p>“But, you see, she means you to know her. And when she’s known she -couldn’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t like her.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t think she’s conceited, if you mean that, Roger.â€</p> - -<p>“Conceit,†he rejoined, “may be of an order so monstrous that it loses -all pettiness. You’ve seen more of her than I have, of course.â€</p> - -<p>“I think she’s good. She wants to do good. She<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> wants to make people -happy; and she does,†said Nancy.</p> - -<p>“By taking them about in motors, you mean.â€</p> - -<p>“In every way. She’s always thinking about pleasing them. In big and -little ways. Aunt Eleanor loves her already. They had a long talk last -night in Aunt Eleanor’s room. She’s given Meg the most beautiful little -pendant—pearl and amethyst, an old Italian setting. She had it on last -night and Meg said how lovely it was and she simply lifted it off her -own neck and put it around Meg’s. Meg had to keep it. She gave it in -such a way that one would have to keep it.â€</p> - -<p>“Rather useful, mustn’t it be, to have pendants so plentifully about you -that you can hand them out to the first young lady who takes a fancy to -them? Has she given you anything, Nancy?â€</p> - -<p>“I’m sure she would. But I shall be more careful than Meg was.â€</p> - -<p>“Perhaps Meg will practise carelessness, since it’s so remunerative. -What has she given Palgrave? He seems absorbed.â€</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it wonderful,†said Nancy. “It’s wonderful for Palgrave, you -know, Roger, because he is rather sad and bitter, really, just now; and -I think she will make him much happier. They went off to the woods -together directly after breakfast.â€</p> - -<p>“What’s he sad and bitter about? You mean his socialism and all the rest -of it?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; and religion. You remember; when you were here at Christmas.â€</p> - -<p>“I remember that he was very foolish and made me lose my temper. Is -there a chance of Miss Toner turning him into a good capitalist and -churchman?<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Nancy smiled, but very faintly. “It’s serious, you know, Roger.â€</p> - -<p>“What she’s done to them already, you mean?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. What she’s done already. She had Meg, after lunch, in her room. -Meg looked quite different when she came out. It’s very strange, Roger. -It’s as if she’d changed them all. I almost feel,†Nancy looked round at -the happy house and up at the tranquil elms where the rooks were noisily -preparing for bed, “as if nothing could be the same again, since she’s -come.†Her clear profile revealed little of the trouble in her heart. -They had not named Barney; but he must be named.</p> - -<p>“It’s white magic,†said Oldmeadow. “You and I will keep our heads, my -dear. We don’t want to be changed, do we? What has she done to Barney? -He is in love with her, of course.â€</p> - -<p>“Of course,†said Nancy.</p> - -<p>He had never been sure before that she was in love with Barney. She was -nine years younger and had been a child during years of his manhood. -Oldmeadow had thought it in his own fond imagination only that the link -between them was so close. But now he knew what Nancy herself, perhaps, -had hardly known till then. The colour did not rise in her cheek, but -through her voice, through her bearing, went a subtle steadying of -herself. “Of course he is in love with her,†she repeated and he felt -that she forced herself to face the truth.</p> - -<p>They stopped at the end of the terrace. A little path turned aside -towards the copse and the grass beneath the trees was scattered with the -pale radiance of primroses. Nancy seemed to look at the flowers, but she -sought no refuge in comment on<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> them; and as they looked in silence, -while the rooks, circling and cawing above, settled on their nests, a -sense of arrested time came to Oldmeadow, and a phrase of music, -blissful in its sadness, where gentle German words went to a gentle -German strain, passed through his mind. Something of Schubert’s—Young -Love—First Grief. It seemed to pierce to him from the young girl’s -heart and he knew that he would never forget and that Nancy would never -forget the moment; the rooks; the primroses; the limpid sky. The -blackcap’s flitting melody had ceased.</p> - -<p>“Do you think she may make him happy?†he asked. It was sweet to him to -know that she had no need of a refuge from him. She could take counsel -with him as candidly as if there had been no tacit avowal between them. -She looked round at him as they went on walking and he saw pain and -perplexity in her eyes.</p> - -<p>“What do you think, Roger?†she said. “Can she?â€</p> - -<p>“Well, might she, if Barney is stupid enough?â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t feel he would have to be stupid to be happy with her, Roger. -You are not fair to her. What I wonder is whether he will be strong -enough not to be quite swept away.â€</p> - -<p>“You think she’ll overpower him? Leave him with no mind of his own?â€</p> - -<p>“Something like that perhaps. Because she’s very strong. And she is so -different. Everything in her is different. She has nothing—nothing with -us, or we with her. We haven’t done the same things or seen the same -sights or thought the same thoughts. I hardly feel as if the trees could -look the same to her<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> as they do to us or the birds sound the same. And -she’ll want such different things.â€</p> - -<p>“Perhaps she’ll want his things,†Oldmeadow mused. “She seems to like -them quite immensely already.â€</p> - -<p>“Ah, but only because she’s going to do something to them,†said Nancy. -“Only because she’s going to change them. I don’t think she’d like -anything she could do nothing for.â€</p> - -<p>Nancy had quite grown up. She had seen further than he had. He felt her -quiet comment big with intuitive wisdom.</p> - -<p>“You see deep, my dear,†he said. “There’s something portentous in your -picture, you know.â€</p> - -<p>“There is something portentous about her, Roger. That is just what I -feel. That is just what troubles me.â€</p> - -<p>“She may be portentous, in relation to us, and what she may do to us,†-said Oldmeadow, “but I’m convinced, for all her marvels, that she’s a -very ordinary young person. Don’t let us magnify her. If she’s not -magnified she won’t work so many marvels. They’re largely an affair, I’m -sure of it, of motors and pendants. She’s ordinary. That’s what I take -my stand on.â€</p> - -<p>“If she’s ordinary, why do you feel, too, that she’ll sweep Barney -away?†Nancy was not at all convinced by his demonstration.</p> - -<p>“Why, because he’s in love with her. That’s all. Her only menace is in -her difference; her complacency. What it comes to, I suppose, is that we -must hope, if they’re to be happy, that he’ll like her things.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; but what it comes to then, Roger, is that we shall lose Barney,†-Nancy said.<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-a" id="CHAPTER_V-a"></a>CHAPTER V</h3> - -<p class="nind">M<small>ISS</small> T<small>ONER</small> did not come down to breakfast next morning and Oldmeadow was -conscious of a feeling of disproportionate relief at not finding her in -the big, bare, panelled dining-room where a portrait of Mrs. Chadwick in -court dress presided over one wall and Meg and Barney played with -rabbits, against an imitation Gainsborough background, on another. Both -pictures were an affliction to Barney; but to Mrs. Chadwick’s eye they -left nothing to be desired in beauty, and, when Barney was not there to -protest, she would still fondly point out the length of eyelash that the -artist had so faithfully captured in the two children.</p> - -<p>The sense of change and foreboding that he and Nancy, with differences, -had recognized in their talk, must have haunted Oldmeadow’s slumbers, -for he had dreamed of Miss Toner, coming towards him along the terrace, -in white, as she had been at dinner, with the beautiful pearls she had -worn, lifting her hand and saying as the rooks cawed overhead—for the -rooks cawed though the moon was brightly shining: “I can hear them, -too.â€</p> - -<p>There had been nothing to suggest such a dream in her demeanour at -dinner; nothing portentous, that is. Simple for all her competence, -girlish for all the splendour of her white array, she had spoken little, -looking at them all, and listening, gravely sometimes, but with a -pervading gentleness; and once or twice he had found her eyes on his; -those large, light eyes, dispassionately and impersonally<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> benignant, -giving him, with their suggestion of seeing around but also very far -beyond you, a curious sense of space. Once or twice he had felt himself -a little at a loss as he met their gaze—it had endeared her to him the -less that she should almost discompose him—and he had felt anew the -presence of power in her ugly little face and even of beauty in her -colourless skin, her colourless yet so living eyes, and her crown of -wondrous gold. It had been, no doubt, this element of aesthetic -significance, merging with Nancy’s words, that had built up the figure -of his dream; for so he had seen her, grey and white and gold in the -unearthly light, while the rooks cawed overhead.</p> - -<p>His friends this morning, though they were all talking of her, possessed -in their gaiety and lightness of heart an exorcising quality. So much -gaiety and lightness couldn’t be quenched or quelled—if that was what -Miss Toner’s influence menaced. Between them all they would manage to -quench and quell Miss Toner, rather, and he recovered his sense of her -fundamental absurdity as he felt anew their instinctive and -unself-conscious wisdom.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it odd, Roger, she hardly knows England at all,†said Mrs. -Chadwick, as he finished his porridge, made his tea at the side-table, -and took his place beside her. “She’s been so little here, although she -seems to have travelled everywhere and lived everywhere.â€</p> - -<p>“Except in her own country,†Oldmeadow ventured the surmise, but -urbanely, for Barney sat opposite him.</p> - -<p>“Oh, but she’s travelled there, too, immensely,†said Barney. “She’s -really spent most of her life in America, I think, Mother. She has a -little sort of<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> bungalow on the coast in California, orange-trees and -roses and all the rest of it; a fairy-tale place; and a house in the -mountains in New England, high up among the pine-woods.â€</p> - -<p>“And a private train, I suppose, to carry her from one to the other. -What splendid pearls,†said Oldmeadow, buttering his toast. “Haven’t you -asked for them yet, Meg?â€</p> - -<p>Meg was not easily embarrassed. “Not yet,†she said. “I’m waiting for -them, though. Meanwhile this is pretty, isn’t it?†The pendant hung on -her breast.</p> - -<p>“I believe she would give Meg her pearls, or any of us. I believe she’d -give <i>anything</i> to <i>anyone</i>,†sighed Mrs. Chadwick. “She doesn’t seem to -think about money or things of that sort, material things you know, at -all. I do wish I could get the map of America straight. All being in -those uneven squares, like Turkish Delight, makes it so difficult. One -can’t remember which lump is which—though Texas, in my geography, was -pale green. The nice tinned things come from California, don’t they? And -New England is near Boston—the hub of the universe, that dear, droll -Oliver Wendell Holmes used to call it. I suppose they <i>are</i> very clever -there. She has been wonderfully educated. There’s nothing she doesn’t -seem to have learned. And her maid adores her, Roger. I was talking to -her just now. Such a nice French woman with quite beautiful dark eyes, -but very melancholy; we make a mistake, I believe, in imagining that the -French are a gay people. I always think that’s such a good sign. So kind -about my dreadful accent.â€</p> - -<p>“A good sign to have your maid like you, Mummy,<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> or to have melancholy -eyes?†Meg inquired. “I think she’s a rather ill-tempered looking woman. -But of course anybody would adore Adrienne. She’s an angel of patience, -I’m sure. I never met such an angel. We don’t grow them here,†said Meg, -while Barney’s triumphant eyes said: “I told you so,†to Oldmeadow -across the table.</p> - -<p>After breakfast, in the sunlight on the terrace, Mrs. Chadwick confided -her hopes to him. “She really is an angel, Roger. I never met anyone in -the least like her. So good, and gifted, too, and all that money. Only -think what it would mean for dear Barney. He could take back the farm; -the lease falls in next year, and come back here to live.â€</p> - -<p>“You think she cares for him?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; indeed I do. She cares for us all, already, as you can see. But I -believe it’s because she’s adopting us all, as her family. And she said -to me yesterday that she disapproved so much of our English way of -turning out mothers and thought families ought to love each other and -live together, young and old. That’s from being so much in France, -perhaps. I told her <i>I</i> shouldn’t have liked it at all if old Mrs. -Chadwick had wanted to come and live with Francis and me. She was such a -masterful old lady, Roger, very Low Church, and quite dreadfully jealous -of Francis. And eldest sons should inherit, of course, or what would -become of estates? My dear father used always to say that the greatness -of England was founded on landed estates. I told her that. But she -looked at me quite gravely as if she hardly understood when I tried to -explain—it all goes in with Waterloo being won on the fields of Eton, -doesn’t it? It’s quite curious the feeling of<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> restfulness she gives me, -about Barney—a sort of Nunc Dimittis feeling, you know.â€</p> - -<p>“Only she doesn’t want you to depart. Well, that’s certainly all to the -good and let’s hope England’s greatness won’t suffer from the -irregularity. Has she told you much about her life? her people?†-Oldmeadow asked. He could not find it in his heart to shadow such -ingenuous contentment. And after all what was there to say against Miss -Toner, except that she would change things?</p> - -<p>“Oh, a great deal. Everything I asked; for I thought it best, quite -casually you know, to find out what I could. Not people of any position, -you know, Roger, though I think her mother was better in that way than -her father; for <i>his</i> father made tooth-paste. It’s from the tooth-paste -all the money comes. But it’s always puzzling about Americans, isn’t it? -And it doesn’t really make any difference, once they’re over here, does -it?â€</p> - -<p>“Not if they’ve got the money,†he could not suppress; it was for his -own personal enjoyment and Mrs. Chadwick cloudlessly concurred: “No, not -if they have the money. And she has, you see. And besides that she’s -good and gifted and has had such a wonderful education. Her mother died -five years ago. She showed me two pictures of her. A beautiful woman; -very artistic-looking. Rather one’s idea of Corinne, though Corinne was -really Madame de Staël, I believe; and she was very plain.â€</p> - -<p>“Was she dressed like Queen Louise of Prussia; coming down the steps, -you know, in the Empire dress with white bound round her head?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; she was. How did you know, Roger? Extremely picturesque; but quite -a lady, too. At<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> least‗Mrs. Chadwick hesitated, perplexed between -kindliness and candour—“almost.â€</p> - -<p>“I heard about her from Mrs. Aldesey. You remember my American friend. -She didn’t know her, but had seen her years ago in New York in that -romantic costume.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick felt perhaps the slight irony in his voice, for she -rejoined, though not at all provocatively: “Why shouldn’t people look -romantic if they can? I should think Mrs. Toner had a much more romantic -life than Mrs. Aldesey. <i>She’s</i> gone on just as we have, hasn’t she, -seeing always the same people; and being conventional. Whereas Adrienne -and her mother seem to have known everyone strange and interesting -wherever they went; great scientists and thinkers, you know; and poets -and pianists. Adrienne told me that her mother always seemed to her to -have great wings and that’s just what I felt about her when I looked at -her. She’d flown everywhere.†As she spoke Miss Toner appeared upon the -doorstep.</p> - -<p>Although it was Sunday she had not varied her dress, which was still the -simple dress of dim, dark-blue; but over it she wore a silk jacket, and -a straw hat trimmed with a lighter shade of blue was tied, in -summer-like fashion, beneath her chin. She carried a sunshade and a -small basket filled with letters.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick, both hands outstretched, went to meet her. Oldmeadow had -never before seen her kiss an acquaintance of two days’ standing. “I do -hope you slept well, my dear,†she said.</p> - -<p>“Very well,†said Miss Toner, including Oldmeadow in her smile. “Except -for a little while when I woke up and lay awake and couldn’t get the<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> -cawing of your rooks out of my mind. I seemed to hear them going on and -on.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear! How unfortunate! But surely they weren’t cawing in the -night!†cried Mrs. Chadwick, and Miss Toner, laughing and holding her -still by the hands, turned to tell Barney, who closely followed her, -that his mother was really afraid, because she had thought of rooks in -the night, that their Coldbrooks birds had actually been inhospitable -enough to keep her awake with their cawings. Meg and Barbara and Nancy -had all now emerged and there was much laughter and explanation.</p> - -<p>“You see, Mummy thinks you might work miracles—even among the rooks,†-said Barney, while Oldmeadow testily meditated on his own discomfort. It -might have been mere coincidence, or it might—he must admit it—have -been Miss Toner’s thoughts travelling into his dream or his dream -troubling her thoughts; of the two last alternatives he didn’t know -which he disliked the more.</p> - -<p>“It’s time to get ready for church, children,†said Mrs. Chadwick, when, -after much merriment at her expense, the rooks and their occult -misdemeanours were disposed of. “Where is Palgrave? I do hope he won’t -miss again. It does so hurt dear Mr. Bodman’s feelings. Are you coming -with us, my dear?†she asked Miss Toner.</p> - -<p>Miss Toner, smiling upon them all, her sunshade open on her shoulder, -said that if they did not mind she did not think she would come. “I only -go to church when friends get married or their babies christened,†she -said, “or something of that sort. I was never brought up to it, you see. -Mother never went.<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick’s March Hare eyes dwelt on her. “You aren’t a -Churchwoman?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear, no!†said Miss Toner, and the very suggestion seemed to amuse -her.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick hesitated: “A Dissenter?†she ventured. “There are so many -sects in America I’ve heard. Though I met a very charming American -bishop once.â€</p> - -<p>“No—not a Dissenter; if you mean by that a Presbyterian or a Methodist -or a Swedenborgian,†said Miss Toner, shaking her head.</p> - -<p>Palgrave had now joined them and stood on the step above her. She smiled -round and up at him.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick, her distress alleviated yet her perplexity deepened, -ventured further: “You are a Christian, I hope, dear?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, not at all,†said Miss Toner gravely now and very kindly. “Not in -any orthodox way, I mean. Not in any way that an American bishop or your -Mr. Bodman would acknowledge. I recognize Christ as a great teacher, as -a great human soul; one of the very greatest; gone on before. But I -don’t divide the human from the divine in the way the churches do; -creeds mean nothing to me, and I’d rather say my prayers out of doors on -a day like this, in the sunlight, than in any church. I feel nearer God -alone in His great world, than in any church built with human hands. But -we must all follow our own light.†She spoke in her flat, soft voice, -gravely but very simply; and she looked affectionately at her hostess as -she added: “You wouldn’t want me to come with you from mere conformity.â€</p> - -<p>Poor Mrs. Chadwick, standing, her brood about her, in the sweet Sabbath -sunlight, had to Oldmeadow<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a>’s eye an almost comically arrested air. How -was a creedless, churchless mistress of Coldbrooks to be fitted in to -her happy vision of Barney’s future? What would the village say to a -squiress who never went to church and who said her prayers in the -sunlight alone? “But, of course, better alone,†he seemed to hear her -cogitate, “than that anyone should see her doing such a very curious -thing.†And aloud she did murmur: “Of course not; of course not, dear. -And if you go into the little arbour down by the lake no one will -disturb you, I’m sure. Must it be quite in the open? Mere conformity is -such a shallow thing. But all the same I should like the rector to come -and talk things over with you. He’s such a good man and very, very -broad-minded. He brings science so often into his sermons—sometimes I -think the people don’t quite follow it all; and only the other day he -said to me, about modern unrest and scepticism:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘There is more faith in honest doubt,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Believe me, than in half the creeds.’<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">Mamma met Lord Tennyson once and felt him to be a deeply religious -man—though rather ill-tempered; he was really very rude to her, I -always thought, and I do so dislike rudeness.—And travelling about so -much, dear, you probably had so little teaching.â€</p> - -<p>Miss Toner’s eyes were incapable of irony and they only deepened now in -benevolence as they rested on her hostess. “But I haven’t any doubts,†-she said, shaking her head and smiling: “No doubts at all. You reach the -truth through your church and I reach it through nature and love and -life. And the beautiful thing is that it’s the same truth, really;<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> the -same beautiful truth that God loves us all, and that we are all the -children of God. I should be very pleased to meet your rector, of -course, because I like meeting anyone who is good and true. But I was -taught. My mother taught me always. And she was the freest, wisest soul -I have ever known.â€</p> - -<p>“I’ll stay with you,†said Palgrave suddenly from his place on the step -above her. His eyes, over her shoulder, had met Oldmeadow’s and perhaps -what he saw in the old friend’s face determined his testimony. “Church -means nothing to me, either; and less than nothing. I’m not so -charitable as you are, and don’t think all roads lead to truth. Some -lead away, I think. You know perfectly well, Mummy, that the dear old -rector is a regular duffer and you slept all through the sermon the last -time I went; you did, really! I was too amused to sleep. He was trying -to explain original sin without mentioning Adam or Eve or the Garden of -Eden. It was most endearing! Like some one trying to avoid the eye of an -old acquaintance whom they’d come to the conclusion they really must -cut! I do so like the idea of Adam and Eve becoming unsuitable -acquaintances for the enlightened clergy!â€</p> - -<p>“There is no sin,†said Miss Toner. Barney was not quite comfortable; -Oldmeadow saw that. He kicked about in the gravel, a little flushed, and -when, once or twice, the old family friend met his eye, it was quickly -averted. “God is Good; and everything else is mortal -mind—mistake—illusion.â€</p> - -<p>“You are a sound Platonist, Miss Toner,†Oldmeadow observed, and his -kindness hardly cloaked his irony.</p> - -<p>“Am I?†she said. When she looked at one she<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> never averted her eyes. -She looked until she had seen all that she wished to see. “I am not fond -of metaphysics.â€</p> - -<p>“Socrates defined sin as ignorance, you know, and in a sense it may be. -All the same,†said Oldmeadow, and he felt that they were all listening -and that in the eyes of his old friends it was more than unlikely that -he would get the better of Miss Toner—“there’s mortal mind to be -accounted for, isn’t there, and why it gets us continually into such a -mess. Whatever name you call it by, there is something that does get us -into a mess and mightn’t it be a wholesome discipline to hear it -denounced once a week?â€</p> - -<p>“Not by some one more ignorant than I am!†said Miss Toner, laughing -gently. “I’ll go to church for love of Mrs. Chadwick, but not for the -sake of the discipline!â€</p> - -<p>“Mr. Bodman never denounces. Roger is giving you quite a wrong idea,†-said Mrs. Chadwick. She had stood looking from one to the other, -distressed and bewildered, and she now prepared to leave them. “And -Palgrave is very, very unjust. Of course you must not come, dear. It -would make me quite unhappy. But Mr. Bodman is not a duffer. If Palgrave -feels like that he must certainly stay away. Perhaps you can teach him -to be more charitable. It’s easy to see the mote in our neighbour’s -eye.†Mrs. Chadwick’s voice slightly trembled. She had been much moved -by her son’s defection.</p> - -<p>“Come, Mummy, you’re not going to say <i>I’m</i> a duffer!†Palgrave passed -an affectionately bantering arm round her shoulders. “Dufferism isn’t -<i>my</i> beam!<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a>â€</p> - -<p>But very sadly Mrs. Chadwick drew away, saying as she turned into the -house: “No; that isn’t your beam. But pride may be, Palgrave. Spiritual -pride.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow remained standing in the sunlight with Miss Toner and the two -young men. The girls had followed Mrs. Chadwick, Meg casting a laughing -glance of appreciation at him as she went. Religious scruples would -never keep Meg from church if she had a pretty spring dress to wear.</p> - -<p>“After all,†he carried on, mildly, the altercation—if that was what it -was between him and Miss Toner—“good Platonists as we may be, we -haven’t reached the stage of Divine Contemplation yet and things do -happen that are difficult to account for, if sin is nothing more -positive than illusion and mistake. All the forms of <i>ôte-toi que je m’y -mette</i>. All the forms of jealousy and malice. Deliberate cruelties. -History is full of horrors, isn’t it? There’s a jealousy of goodness in -the human heart, as well as a love. The betrayal of Christ by Judas is -symbolic.â€</p> - -<p>He had screwed his eyeglass into his eye the better to see Miss Toner -and looked very much like a solicitor trying to coax dry facts out of a -romantic client. And in the transparent shadow of her hat Miss Toner, -with her incomparable composure, gave him all her attention.</p> - -<p>“I don’t account. I don’t account for anything. Do you?†she said. “I -only feel and know. But even the dreadful things, the things that seem -to us so dreadful—isn’t it always ignorance? Ignorance of what is -really good and happy—and the illusion of a separate self? When we are -all, really, one. All, really, together.†She held out her arms, her -little<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> basket hanging from her wrist. “And if we feel that at last, and -know it, those dreadful things can’t happen any more.â€</p> - -<p>“Your ‘if’ is the standing problem of metaphysics and ethics. Why don’t -we feel and know it? That’s the question? And since we most of us, for -most of the time, don’t feel and know it, don’t we keep closer to the -truth if we accept the traditional phraseology and admit that there’s -something in the texture of life, something in ourselves, that tempts -us, or impedes us, or crushes us, and call it sin—evil?â€</p> - -<p>He was looking at her, still with his latent irony though kindly enough -indeed, and he had, as he looked, an intuition about her. She had never -been tempted, she had never been impeded, she had never been crushed. -That was her power. She was, in a fashion, sinless. It was as if she had -been hypnotized in infancy to be good. And while the fact made her in -one sense so savourless, it made her in another so significant. She -would go much further than most people in any direction she wanted to go -simply because she was not aware of obstacles and had no inhibitions.</p> - -<p>“Call it what you like,†said Miss Toner. She still smiled—but more -gravely. Barney had ceased to stroll and kick. He had come to a -standstill beside them, and, his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on -his beloved, showed himself as completely reassured. Palgrave still -stood on the step above her and seemed to watch the snowy, piled-up -clouds that adorned the tranquil sky. “I feel it a mistake to make -unreal things seem real by giving them big names. We become afraid of -them and fear is what<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a> impedes us most of all in life. For so many -generations humanity has seen ghosts in the evening mists and taken its -indigestion for the promptings of a demon. We’ve got away from all that -now, Mr. Oldmeadow. We see that mists are mists and indigestion -indigestion, and that there aren’t such things as ghosts and demons. -We’ve come out, all together, hand in hand, on the Open Road and we -don’t want, ever any more, to be reminded, even, of the Dark Ages.â€</p> - -<p>Before her fluency, Oldmeadow felt himself grow less kindly. “You grant -there have been dark ages, then? I count that a concession. Things may -not be evil now, but they were once.â€</p> - -<p>“Not a concession at all,†said Miss Toner. “Only an explanation of what -has happened—an explanation of what you call the mess, Mr. Oldmeadow.â€</p> - -<p>“So that when we find ourselves misbehaving to one another as we march -along the Open Road, we may know it’s only indigestion and take a pill.â€</p> - -<p>She didn’t like badinage. That, at all events, was evident to him, even -in her imperturbability. She took it calmly—not lightly; and if she was -not already beginning to dislike him, it was because disliking people -was a reality she didn’t recognize. “We don’t misbehave if we are on the -Open Road,†she said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, but you’re falling back now on good old-fashioned theology,†-Oldmeadow retorted. “The sheep, saved and well-behaved, keeping to the -road, and the goats—all those who misbehave and stray—classed with the -evening mists.â€</p> - -<p>“No,†said Miss Toner eyeing him, “I don’t class<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> them with the evening -mists; I class them with the sick, whom we must be kind to and take care -of.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick was now emerging in her new spring hat, which was not very -successful and gave emphasis to her general air of strain. Meg’s hat was -very successful, as Meg’s hats always were; and if Nancy’s did not shine -beside it, it was, at all events, exceedingly becoming to her. Nancy’s -eyes went to Barney. Barney, in the past, had been very appreciative of -becoming hats. But he had no eyes for Nancy now. He had drawn Miss Toner -aside and Oldmeadow heard their colloquy:</p> - -<p>“Would you rather I didn’t go?â€</p> - -<p>“I’d rather, always, you followed your light, dear friend.â€</p> - -<p>“I do like going here, you know. It seems to belong with it all—and -Mummy can’t bear our not going.â€</p> - -<p>“It makes your dear mother happy. It all means love to you.â€</p> - -<p>“Not only that‗Oldmeadow imagined that Barney blushed, and he heard -his stammer: “I don’t know what I believe about everything; but the -service goes much deeper than anything I could think for myself.†Their -voices dropped. All that came further to Oldmeadow was from Miss Toner: -“It makes you nearer than if you stayed.â€</p> - -<p>“Confound her ineffability!†he thought. “It rests with her, then, -whether he should go or stay.â€</p> - -<p>It certainly did. Barney moved away with them all, leaving Palgrave to -the more evident form of proximity.</p> - -<p>“You know,†Mrs. Chadwick murmured to Oldmeadow as they went, between -the primroses, down<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> the little path and through a wicket-gate that led -to the village—“you know, Roger, it’s <i>quite</i> possible that they may -say their prayers together. It’s like Quakers, isn’t it—or Moravians; -or whoever those curious people are who are buried standing up—so -dismal and uncomfortable, I always think. But it’s better that Palgrave -should say his prayers with some one, and somewhere, isn’t it, than that -he shouldn’t say them at all?<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-a" id="CHAPTER_VI-a"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3> - -<p class="nind">“M<small>OTHER’S</small> got the most poisonous headache,†said Meg. “I don’t think -she’ll be able to come down to tea.â€</p> - -<p>She had joined Oldmeadow on the rickety old bench where he sat reading -and smoking in a sunny corner of the garden. A band of golden -wallflowers behind them exhaled the deep fragrance that he always -associated with spring and Sunday and Coldbrooks, and the old stone wall -behind the flowers exhaled a warmth that was like a fragrance.</p> - -<p>“Adrienne is with her,†Meg added. She had seated herself and put her -elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands as though she intended a -solid talk.</p> - -<p>“Will that be likely to help her head?†Oldmeadow inquired. “I should -say not, if she’s going to continue the discourse of this morning.â€</p> - -<p>“Did you think all that rather silly?†Meg inquired, tapping her smart -toes on the ground and watching them. “You looked as if you did. But -then you usually do look as though you thought most things and people -silly. I didn’t—I mean, not in her. I quite saw what you did; at least -I think so. But she can say things that would be silly in other people. -Now Palgrave is silly. There’s just the difference. Is it because he -always feels he’s scoring off somebody and she doesn’t?†Meg was -evidently capable, for all her devotion, of dispassionate inquiry.</p> - -<p>“She’s certainly more secure than Palgrave,†said<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> Oldmeadow. “But I -feel that’s only because she’s less intelligent. Palgrave is aware, -keenly, of a critical and probably hostile world; and Miss Toner is -unaware of everything except her own benevolence, and the need for it.â€</p> - -<p>Meg meditated. Then she laughed. “You <i>are</i> spiteful, Roger. Oh—I don’t -mean about Adrienne in particular. But you always see the weak spots in -people, first go. It’s rather jolly, all the same, if you come to think -it over, to be like that. Perhaps that’s all she is aware of; but it -takes you a good way—wanting to help people and seeing how they can be -helped.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; it does take you a good way. I don’t deny that Miss Toner will go -far.â€</p> - -<p>“And make us go too far, perhaps?†Meg mused. “Well, I’m quite ready for -a move. I think we’re all rather stodgy, really, down here. And up in -London, too, if it comes to that. I’m rather disappointed in London, you -know, Roger, and what it does for one. Just a different kind of sheep, -it seems to me, from the kind we are in the country; noisy skipping -sheep instead of silent, slow ones. But they all follow each other about -in just the same way. And what one likes is to see someone who isn’t -following.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; that’s true, certainly,†Oldmeadow conceded. “Miss Toner isn’t a -sheep. She’s the sort of person who sets the sheep moving. I’m not so -sure that she knows where she is going, all the same.â€</p> - -<p>“You mean—Be careful; don’t you?†said Meg, looking up at him sideways -with her handsome eyes. “I’m not such a sheep myself, when it comes to -that, you know, Roger. I look before I leap—even after Adrienne,†she -laughed; and Oldmeadow, looking<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> back at her, laughed too—pleased with -her, yet a little disconcerted by what she revealed of experience.</p> - -<p>“The reason I like her so awfully,†Meg went on—while he reflected -that, after all, she was now twenty-five—“and it’s a good thing I do, -isn’t it, since it’s evident she’s going to take Barney; but the reason -is that she’s so interested in one. More than anyone I ever knew—far -and far away. Of course Mother’s interested; but it’s <i>for</i> one; <i>about</i> -one; not <i>in</i> one, as it were. And then darling old Mummy isn’t exactly -intelligent, is she; or only in such unexpected spots that it’s never -much good to one; one can never count on it beforehand. Whereas Adrienne -is so interested in you that she makes you feel more interested in -yourself than you ever dreamed you could feel. Do you know what I mean? -Is it because she’s American, do you think? English people aren’t -interested in themselves, off their own bat, perhaps; or in other people -either! I don’t mean we’re not selfish all right!†Meg laughed.</p> - -<p>“Selfish and yet impersonal,†Oldmeadow mused. “With less of our social -consciousness in use, with more of it locked up in automatism, -possibly.â€</p> - -<p>“There’s nothing locked up in Adrienne; absolutely nothing,†Meg -declared. “It’s all there—out in the shop-window. And it’s a big window -too, even though some of the hats and scarves, so to speak, may strike -us as funny. But, seriously, what is it about her, do you think? How can -she care so much?—about everybody?â€</p> - -<p>He remembered Nancy’s diagnosis. “Not about everybody. Only about people -she can do something for. You’ll find she won’t care about me.<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Why should she? You don’t care for her. Why should she waste herself on -people who don’t need her?†Meg’s friendliness of glance did not -preclude a certain hardness.</p> - -<p>“Why indeed? It could never occur to her, of course, that she might need -somebody. I don’t mean that spitefully. She is strong. She doesn’t -need.â€</p> - -<p>“Exactly. Like you,†said Meg. “She’s quite right to pay no attention to -the other strong people. For of course you are very strong, Roger, and -frightfully clever; and good, too. Only one has to be cleverer, no -doubt, than we are to see your goodness as easily as Adrienne’s. It’s -the shop-window again. She shows her goodness all the time; and you -don’t.â€â€™</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow knocked the ashes out of his pipe and felt for his -tobacco-pouch. “I show my spite. No; you mustn’t count me among the -good. I suppose your mother’s headache came on this morning after she -found out that Miss Toner doesn’t go to church.â€</p> - -<p>“Of course it was that. You saw that she was thinking about it all -through the service, didn’t you?†said Meg. “And once, poor lamb, she -said, ‘Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners’ instead of Amen. Did you -notice? It will bother her frightfully, of course. But after all it’s -not so bad as if Adrienne were a Dissenter and wanted to go to chapel! -Mummy in her heart of hearts would much rather you were a pagan than a -Dissenter. I don’t think it will make a bit of difference really. So -long as she gives money to the church, and is nice to the village -people. Mother will get over it,†said Meg.</p> - -<p>He thought so too. His own jocose phrase returned to him. As long as the -money was there it<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> didn’t make any difference. But Meg’s security on -that score interested him. With all her devotion to the new friend she -struck him, fundamentally, as less kind than Nancy, who had none. But -that, no doubt, was because Meg, fundamentally, was hard and Nancy -loving. It was because of Miss Toner’s interest in herself that Meg was -devoted. “You’re so sure, then, that she’s going to take Barney?†he -asked.</p> - -<p>“Quite sure,†said Meg. “Surer than he is. Surer than she is. She’s in -love with him all right; more than she knows herself, poor dear. No -doubt she thinks she’s making up her mind and choosing. Weighing Barney -in the balance and counting up his virtues. But it’s all decided -already; and not by his virtues; it never is,†said Meg, again with her -air of unexpected experience. “It’s something much more important than -virtues; it’s the thickness of his eyelashes and the way his teeth show -when he smiles, and all his pretty ways and habits. Things like that. -She loves looking at him and more than that, even, she loves having him -look at her. I have an idea that she’s not had people very much in love -with her before; not people with eyelashes and teeth like Barney. In -spite of all her money. And she’s getting on, too. She’s as old as -Barney, you know. It’s the one, real romance that’s ever come to her, -poor dear. Funny you don’t see it. Men don’t see that sort of thing I -suppose. But she <i>couldn’t</i> give Barney up now, simply. It’s because of -that, you know‗Meg glanced behind them and lowered her voice—“that -she doesn’t like Nancy.â€</p> - -<p>“Doesn’t like Nancy!†Oldmeadow’s instant indignation was in his voice. -“What has Nancy to do with it?<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“She might have had a great deal, poor darling little Nancy; and it’s -that Adrienne feels. She felt it at once. I saw she did; that Nancy and -Barney had been very near each other; that there was an affinity, a -sympathy, call it what you like, that would have led to something more. -It wouldn’t have done at all, of course; at least I suppose not. They -knew each other too well; and, until the last year or two, she’s been -too young for him. And then, above all, she’s hardly any money. But all -the same, if he hadn’t come across Adrienne and been bowled over like -this, Barney would have fallen in love with Nancy. She’s getting to be -so lovely looking, for one thing, isn’t she? And Barney’s so susceptible -to looks. He was falling in love with her last winter and she knew it as -well as I did. It’s rather rotten luck for Nancy because I’m afraid she -cares; but then women do have rotten luck about love affairs,†said Meg, -now sombrely. “The dice are loaded against them every time.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow sat smoking in silence for some moments, making no effort to -master his strong resentment; taking, rather, full possession of its -implications. “Somewhat of a flaw in your angel you must admit,†he said -presently. “She doesn’t like people who are as strong as she is and she -doesn’t like people who might have been loved instead of herself. It -narrows the scale of her benevolence, you know. It makes her look -perilously like a jealous prig, and a prig without any excuse for -jealousy into the bargain.â€</p> - -<p>“Temper, Roger,†Meg observed, casting her hard, friendly glance round -at him; “I know you think there’s no one quite to match Nancy; and I<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> -think you’re not far wrong. She’s the straightest, sweetest-tempered -girl who ever stepped on two feet. But all the same Adrienne isn’t a -prig, and if she’s jealous she can’t help herself. She <i>wants</i> to love -Nancy; she thinks she does love her; she’ll always be heavenly to her. -She can do a lot for Nancy, you know. She will do a lot for her, even if -Nancy holds her off. But she wishes frightfully that she was old and -ugly. She wishes that Barney weren’t so fond of her without thinking -about her. She’s jealous and she can’t help herself—like all the rest -of us!†Meg laughed grimly. “When it comes to that we’re none of us -angels.â€</p> - -<p>It was tea-time and the dear old gong sounded balmily from the house. As -they went along the path the rooks again were cawing overhead and dimly, -like the hint of evening in the air, he remembered his dream and the -sense of menace. “You know, it’s not like all the rest of you,†he said. -“It’s not like Nancy, for instance. Nancy wouldn’t dislike a person -because she was jealous of them. In fact I don’t believe Nancy could be -jealous. She’d only be hurt.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s rather a question of degree, that, isn’t it?†said Meg. “In one -form of it you’re poisoned and in the other you’re cut with a knife; and -the latter is the prettier way of suffering; doesn’t make you come out -in a rash and feel sick. Nancy is cut with the knife; and if she’s not -jealous in the ugly sense, she dislikes Adrienne all right.â€</p> - -<p>“Why should she like her?†Oldmeadow retorted, and Meg’s simile seemed -to cut into him, too. “She doesn’t need her money or her interest or her -love. She doesn’t dislike her. She merely wishes she were somewhere -else—as I do.<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a>â€</p> - -<p>The garden path led straight into the house. One entered a sort of -lobby, where coats and hats and rackets and gardening baskets were kept, -and from the lobby went into the hall. Tea was, as always, laid there -and Mrs. Chadwick, as Meg and Oldmeadow came in, was descending the -staircase at the further end, leaning on Adrienne Toner’s arm.</p> - -<p>“You see. She’s done it!†Meg murmured. She seemed to bear him no -ill-will for his expressed aversion. “I never knew one of Mother’s -headaches go so quickly.â€</p> - -<p>“I expect she’d rather have stayed quietly upstairs,†said Oldmeadow; -“she looks puzzled. As if she didn’t know what had happened to her.â€</p> - -<p>“Like a rabbit when it comes out of the conjuror’s hat,†said the -irreverent daughter.</p> - -<p>That was precisely what poor Eleanor Chadwick did look like and for the -moment his mind was diverted by amusement at her appearance from its -bitter preoccupation. Mrs. Chadwick was the rabbit and Miss Toner was -the conjuror indeed; bland and secure and holding her trophy in a firm -but gentle grasp. Not until they were all seated did Barney and Nancy -appear and then it was evident to him that if Miss Toner were jealous of -Nancy she did not fear her, for it was she who had arranged the walk -from which the young couple had just returned.</p> - -<p>“Was it lovely?†she asked Barney, as he took the place beside her. “Oh, -I do wish I could have come; but I knew your Mother needed me.â€</p> - -<p>“The primroses are simply ripping in the wood,†said Barney.</p> - -<p>Nancy carried a large bunch of primroses.</p> - -<p>“Ripping,†said Miss Toner, laughing gently.<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a></p> - -<p>“How absurd of you, Barney. Could anything be less ripping than -primroses? How beautiful they are and what a lovely bunch. One sees that -Miss Averil loves them from the way she has picked them.†If she did not -call Nancy by her Christian name it was, Oldmeadow knew, not her but -Nancy’s fault.</p> - -<p>Nancy still stood beside the table and from the fact of standing, while -all the rest of them were seated, from the fact of being called Miss -Averil, she seemed, for the moment, oddly an outsider; as if she hardly -belonged to the circle of which Miss Toner was the centre. “Do come and -sit near us,†said Miss Toner. “For I had to miss you, too, you see, as -well as the primroses.â€</p> - -<p>“I’d crowd you there,†said Nancy, smiling. “I’ll sit here near Aunt -Eleanor.†From something in her eyes Oldmeadow felt suddenly sure that -not till now had she realized that it had not, really, been her and -Barney’s walk. She offered the primroses to Mrs. Chadwick as she took -the chair beside her, saying, “They’ll fill your white bowl in the -morning-room, Aunt Eleanor.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, I say; but I meant those for Adrienne, Nancy!†Barney exclaimed, -and as he did so Meg’s eyes met Oldmeadow’s over the household loaf. -“She didn’t see them in the wood, so she ought to have them. Mummy is -suffocated with primroses already.â€</p> - -<p>But Nancy showed no rash and only an acute Meg could have guessed a cut -as she answered: “I’ll pick another bunch to-morrow for Miss Toner, -Barney. They’ll be fresher to take to London. These are really Aunt -Eleanor’s. I always fill that bowl for her.<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-a" id="CHAPTER_VII-a"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3> - -<p class="nind">“I <small>DO</small> so want a talk with you, Roger,†Mrs. Chadwick murmured to him -when tea was over. The dining-room opened at one end of the hall and the -drawing-room at the other and the morning-room, Mrs. Chadwick’s special -retreat, into which she now drew him, was tucked in behind the -dining-room and looked out at an angle of the garden wall and at the -dove-cot that stood there. Mrs. Chadwick’s doves were usually fluttering -about the window and even, when it was open, entering the room, where -she sometimes fondly fed them, causing thereby much distress of mind to -Turner, the good old parlourmaid. A pleasant little fire was burning -there and, after placing her primroses in the white bowl, Mrs. Chadwick -drew her chair to it, casting a glance, as she did so, up at the large -portrait of her husband in hunting dress that hung above the -mantelpiece. It was painted with the same glib unintelligence as the -dining-room portraits, but the painter had been unable to miss entirely -the whimsical daring of the eyes or to bring into conformity with his -own standard of good looks the charm of the irregular and narrow face. -Francis Chadwick had been an impulsive, idle, endearing man, and, -remaining always in love with his wife, had fondly cherished all her -absurdities. Since his death poor Mrs. Chadwick had been perplexed by -her effort to associate with gravity and inspiration one who had always -been a laughing incentive to inconsequence. Oldmeadow reflected, as he, -too, looked up at him, that Francis Chadwick would neither have needed -nor have liked Miss Toner.<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a></p> - -<p>“It’s so very, very strange, Roger, I really must tell you,†Mrs. -Chadwick said. Her hair, still bright and abundant, was very untidy. She -had evidently not brushed it since rising from her sofa. “I had one of -my dreadful headaches, you know. It came on at church this morning and I -really couldn’t attend to Mr. Bodman at all. Perhaps you saw.â€</p> - -<p>“I heard. Yes. Miss Toner had disturbed you a good deal.â€</p> - -<p>“I did feel so bewildered and unhappy about it all,†said Mrs. Chadwick, -fixing her blue eyes upon the family friend. Eleanor Chadwick’s eyes -could show the uncanny ingenuousness and the uncanny wisdom of a baby’s. -“Nothing so innocent or so sharp was ever seen outside a perambulator,†-her husband had once said of them. “About her, you know, Roger,†she -continued, “and Barney and Palgrave. The influence. I could not bear -them to lose their faith in the church of their fathers.â€</p> - -<p>“No,†said Oldmeadow. “But you must be prepared to see it shift a good -deal. Faiths have to shift nowadays if they’re to stand.â€</p> - -<p>“Well. Yes. I know what you mean, Roger. But it isn’t a question of -shifting, is it? I’m very broad. I’ve always been all for breadth. And -the broader you are the firmer you ought to be, oughtn’t you?â€</p> - -<p>“Well, Miss Toner’s broad and firm,†Oldmeadow suggested. “I never saw -anyone more so.â€</p> - -<p>“But in such a queer way, Roger. Like saying one’s prayers out of doors -and thinking oneself as good as Christ. Oh, it all made me perfectly -wretched and after lunch my head was so bad that I went and lay down in -the dark; and it raged, simply. Oh, dear, I thought; this means a day -and night of misery.<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> They go on like that once they begin. Mamma used -to have them in precisely the same way. Absolutely incapacitating. I can -never see how anybody can deny heredity. That’s another point, Roger. -I’ve always accepted evolution. I gave up Adam and Eve long ago; gave -them up as white and good-looking, I mean; because we must have begun -<i>somewhere</i>, mustn’t we? And Darwin was such a good man; though you -remember he came not to care anything at all about music. That may mean -a great deal, if one could think it all out; it’s the most religious of -the arts, isn’t it? But there’s no end to thinking things out!†Mrs. -Chadwick pressed her hand against her forehead, closing her eyes for a -moment. “And Adrienne is very musical.â€</p> - -<p>“You were at your headache,†Oldmeadow reminded her. It was customary in -the family circle thus to shepherd Mrs. Chadwick’s straying thoughts.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know. But it all hangs together. Heredity and Mamma and my -headaches; and Adrienne’s mother, who was musical, too, and played on a -harp. Well, it was raging and I was lying there, when there came a -little rap at the door. I knew at once who it was and she asked in such -a gentle voice if she might come in. It’s a very soothing voice, isn’t -it? But do you know I felt for a moment quite frightened, as if I simply -couldn’t see her. But I had to say yes, and she came in so softly and -sat down beside me and said: ‘I used to help Mother, sometimes, with her -headaches. May I help you?’ She didn’t want to talk about things, as I’d -feared. Such a relief it was. So I said: ‘Oh, do my dear,’ and she laid -her hand on my forehead and said: ‘You will soon feel better. It will -soon quite pass away.’ And then not another<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> word. Only sitting there in -the dark, with her hand on my forehead. And do you know, Roger, almost -at once the pain began to melt away. You know how a dish of junket melts -after you cut into it. It was like that. ‘Junket, junket,’ I seemed to -hear myself saying; and such a feeling of peace and contentment. And -before I knew anything more I fell into the most delicious sleep and -slept till now, just before tea. She was sitting there still, in the -dark beside me and I said: ‘Oh, my dear, to think of your having stayed -in on this lovely afternoon!’ But she went to pull up the blinds and -said that she loved sitting quietly in the dark with some one she cared -for, sleeping. ‘I think souls come very close together, then,’ she said. -Wasn’t it beautiful of her, Roger? Like astral bodies, you know, and -auras and things of that sort. She <i>is</i> beautiful. I made up my mind to -that, then. She gives me such a feeling of trust. How can one help it? -It’s like what one reads of Roman Catholic saints and people in the -Bible. The gift of healing. The laying on of hands. We don’t seem to -have any of them and we can’t count <i>her</i>, since she doesn’t believe in -the church. But if only they’d give up the Pope, I don’t see why we -shouldn’t accept their saints; such dear, good people, most of them. And -the Pope is quite an excellent man just now, I believe. But isn’t it -very strange, Roger? For a person who can do that to one can’t be -irreligious, can they?â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick’s eye was now fixed upon him, less wistfully and more -intently, and he knew that something was expected of him.</p> - -<p>“Hypnotic doctors can do it, you know. You needn’t be a saint to do it,†-he said. “Though I<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> suppose you must have some power of concentration -that implies faith. However,†he had to say all his thought, though most -of it would be wasted upon poor Eleanor Chadwick, “Miss Toner is -anything but irreligious. You may be sure of that.â€</p> - -<p>“You feel it, too, Roger. I’m so, so glad.â€</p> - -<p>“But her religion is not as your religion,†he had to warn her, “nor her -ways your ways. You must be prepared to have the children unsettled; -everyone of them; because she has great power and is far more religious -than most people. She believes in her creed and acts on it. You must -give the children their heads. It’s no good trying to circumvent or -oppose them.â€</p> - -<p>“But they mustn’t do wrong things, Roger. How can I give them their -heads if it’s to do wrong things? I don’t know what Mamma would have -said to their not going to church—especially in the country. She would -have thought it very wrong, simply. Sinful and dangerous.â€</p> - -<p>“Hardly that,†Oldmeadow smiled. “Even in the country. You don’t think -Miss Toner does wrong things. If they take up Miss Toner’s creed instead -of going to church, they won’t come to much harm. The principal thing is -that there should be something to take up. After all,†he was reassuring -himself as well as Mrs. Chadwick, “it hasn’t hurt her. It’s made her a -little foolish; but it hasn’t hurt her. And your children will never be -foolish. They’ll get all the good of it and, perhaps, be able to combine -it with going to church.</p> - -<p>“Foolish, Roger?†Mrs. Chadwick, relieved of her headache, but not of -her perplexity, gazed wanly at him. “You think Adrienne foolish?<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“A little. Now and then. You mustn’t accept anything she says to you -just because she can cure you of a headache.â€</p> - -<p>“But how can you say foolish, Roger? She’s had a most wonderful -education?â€</p> - -<p>“Everything that makes her surer of herself and makes other people surer -of her puts her in more danger of being foolish. One can be too sure of -oneself. Unless one is a saint—and even then. And though I don’t think -she’s irreligious I don’t think she’s a saint. Not by any means.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t see how anyone can be more of one, nowadays, Roger. She heals -people and she says prayers, and she is always good and gentle and never -thinks of herself. I’m sure I can’t think what you want more.â€</p> - -<p>A touch of plaintiveness and even of protest had come into Mrs. -Chadwick’s voice.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps what I want is less,†he laughed. “Perhaps she’s too much of a -saint for my taste. I think she’s a little too much of one for your -taste, really—if you were to be quite candid with yourself. Has she -spoken to you at all about Barney? Are you quite sure you’ll have to -reckon with her for yourself and the children?â€</p> - -<p>At this Mrs. Chadwick showed a frank alarm. “Oh, quite, quite sure!†she -said. “She couldn’t be so lovely to us all if she didn’t mean to take -him! Why do you ask, Roger? You haven’t any reason for thinking she -won’t?â€</p> - -<p>“None whatever. Quite the contrary.†He didn’t want to put poor Mrs. -Chadwick to the cruel test of declaring whether she would rather have -the children go to church and lose Miss Toner and all her money<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> or have -them stay away and keep Miss Toner. After all such a test was not to be -asked of her. Miss Toner wanted people to follow their own light. “I -only wondered if she talked to you about him. Asked any girlish leading -questions.â€</p> - -<p>“None, none whatever,†said Mrs. Chadwick. “But I feel that’s because -she thinks she knows him far better than I do and that he’s told her -everything already. It’s rather hard to be a mother, Roger. For of -course, though she is so much better and cleverer than I am, I feel sure -that no one understands Barney as I do.â€</p> - -<p>“She’d be a little cleverer still if she could see that, wouldn’t she?â€</p> - -<p>“Well, I don’t know. Girls never do. I was just the same when I was -engaged to Francis. Even now I can’t think that old Mrs. Chadwick really -understood him as I did. It’s very puzzling, isn’t it? Very difficult to -see things from other people’s point of view. When she pulled up the -blind this afternoon, she told me that Nancy and Barney were down in the -copse and she seemed pleased.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, did she?â€</p> - -<p>“I told her that they’d always been like brother and sister, for I was -just a little afraid, you know, that she might imagine Barney had ever -cared about Nancy.â€</p> - -<p>“I see. You think she wouldn’t like that?â€</p> - -<p>“What woman would, Roger?†And he imagined that Mrs. Chadwick, for all -her folly, was cleverer than Miss Toner guessed, as she added: “And then -she told me that she’d made Barney go without her. She wanted me to see, -you know, that it depended on her. That’s another reason why I feel sure -she is going to take him.<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-a" id="CHAPTER_VIII-a"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3> - -<p class="nind">H<small>E</small> sat, for the first time, next Miss Toner that night at dinner and -Nancy sat across from them next Barney. Nancy was pale, and now that he -could scrutinize her he imagined that the walk had been more of an -ordeal than a pleasure. Barney, no doubt, with the merciless blindness -of his state, had talked to her all the time of Adrienne. But Nancy -would not have minded that. She was of the type that hides its cut for -ever and may become aunt and guardian-angel to the other woman’s -children. It had not been Barney’s preoccupation that had so drained her -of warmth and colour, but its character, its object. Her grey eyes had -the considering look with which they might have measured the height of a -difficult hedge in hunting, and, resting on Oldmeadow once or twice, -seemed to tell him that the walk had shown her more clearly than ever -that, if Barney married Miss Toner, they must lose him. He felt sure -that she had lain down since tea with a headache to which had come no -ministering angel.</p> - -<p>She and Barney did not talk to each other now, for he had eyes and ears -only for Miss Toner. At any former time they would have kept up the -happiest interchange, and Oldmeadow would have seen Nancy’s eyelashes -close together as she smiled her loving smile. There was a dim family -likeness between her face and Barney’s, for both were long and narrow, -and both had the singular sweetness in the very structure of the smile. -But where Barney was<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> clumsy, Nancy was clear, and her skin was as fair -as his was brown. To the fond onlooker at both, they were destined mates -and only an insufferable accident had parted them.</p> - -<p>Nancy was as much a part of the Coldbrooks country as the primroses and -the blackcaps in the woods. Her life had risen from the familiar soil to -the familiar sky, as preordained to fitness, as ordered by instinct and -condition as theirs, and from her security of type she had gained not -lost in savour. The time that unfinished types must give to growing -conscious roots and building conscious nests, Nancy had all free for -spontaneities of flight and song. Beside her, to his hostile eye, Miss -Toner was as a wide-spread water-weed, floating, rootless and scentless, -upon chance currents: A creature of surfaces, of caprice and hazard. If -the multiplicity of her information constituted mental wealth, its -impersonality constituted mental poverty. She was as well furnished and -as deadening as a catalogue, and as he listened to her, receiving an -impression of continual, considered movings-on, earnest pursuits, across -half the globe, of further experience, he saw her small, questing figure -on a background of railways, giant lines stretching forth across plain -and mountain, climbing, tunnelling, curving; stopping at great capitals, -and passing on again to glitter on their endless way under the sun and -moon. That was what he seemed to see as Miss Toner talked: and -sleeping-berths and wardrobe-boxes and luxurious suites in vast hotels.</p> - -<p>She wore again her white dress, contrasting in its richness of texture -with the simplicity of her daytime blue, and, rather stupidly, an -artificial white<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> rose had been placed, in her braids, over each ear. -Her pearls were her only other ornament, and her pearls, he supposed, -were surprising.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow was aware, in his close proximity to her, while she ate beside -him with a meticulous nicety that made the manners of the rest of them, -by contrast, seem a little casual and slovenly, of the discomfort that -had visited him in his dream. Yet the feeling she evoked was not all -discomfort. It was as if from her mere physical presence he were -subjected to some force that had in its compulsion a dim, conjectural -charm. It was for this reason no doubt that he seemed to be aware of -everything about her. Her hands were small and white, but had no beauty -of form or gesture. She moved them slowly and without grace, rather like -a young child handling unfamiliar objects in a kindergarten, and this in -spite of the singular perfection of her table manners. She could have -made little use of them, ever, in games of skill or in any art requiring -swift accuracy and firmness. It was as if her mind, overtrained in -receptivity and retentiveness, had only dull tentacles to spare for her -finger-tips. He was aware of these hands beside him all through dinner -and their fumbling deliberation brought to him, again and again, a -mingled annoyance, and satisfaction. There was something positive and -characteristic about her scentlessness, for if she smelt of anything it -was of Fuller’s Earth—a funny, chalky smell—and beside Meg, who -foolishly washed liquid powder over her silvery skin, Miss Toner’s -colourlessness was sallow. She had hardly talked at all the night -before, but to-night she talked continuously. It was Meg who questioned -her, and Mrs.<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> Chadwick, and Oldmeadow guessed that his ingenuous -friend, still perplexed by his use of the word foolish, was drawing out -and displaying her future daughter-in-law for his benefit.</p> - -<p>Miss Toner and her mother had been to Russia, to India, to China and -Japan. They had visited Stevenson’s grave at Vailima and in describing -it she quoted “Under the wide and starry sky.†They had studied every -temple in Greece and Sicily and talked of the higher education with -ladies in Turkish harems. “But it was always Paris we came back to,†she -said, “when we were not at home. Home was, and is, a great many places: -California and Chicago—where my father’s people live, and New England. -But Paris was, after it, closest to our hearts. Yes, we knew a great -many French people; but it was for study rather than friendship we went -there. It is such a treasure-house of culture. Mother worked very hard -at French diction for several winters. She had lessons from Mademoiselle -Jouffert—you know perhaps—though she has not acted for so many years -now. Our friendship with her was a great privilege, for she was a rare -and noble woman and had a glorious gift. Phèdre was her favourite rôle -and I shall never forget her rendering of it:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Ariane ma sÅ“ur! de quel amour blessée<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée!<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">She taught Mother to recite Phèdre’s great speeches with such fire and -passion. There could hardly be a better training for French,†said Miss -Toner, repeating the lines with a curious placidity and perfection. “I -preferred Mademoiselle Jouffert’s rendering to Bernhardt’s. Her Phèdre -was, with all the fire, more tender and womanly.<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Do you care about Racine?†Oldmeadow asked her, while the lines rang in -his ears—rather as in his dream the rooks’ cawing had done—with an -evocative sadness that hung, irrelevantly, about their speaker. “It’s -not easy for our English ears to hear the fire and passion, is it; but -they are there.â€</p> - -<p>“He is very perfect and accomplished,†said Miss Toner. “But I always -feel him small beside our Shakespeare. He lacks heart, doesn’t he?â€</p> - -<p>“There’s heart in those lines you’ve just recited.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes,†said Miss Toner. “Those lines are certainly very beautiful. It’s -the mere music of them, I think. They make me feel—†she paused. It was -unlike her to pause and he wondered what she made of Ariane, off her own -bat, without Mademoiselle Jouffert to help her.</p> - -<p>“They make you feel?†he questioned.</p> - -<p>“They are so sad—so terribly melancholy. The sound of them. They make -me want to cry when I hear them. But I think it’s the sound; for their -meaning makes me indignant. There is such weakness in them; such -acceptance of destiny. I want to revolt and protest, too—for women. She -should not have died.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow involuntarily glanced across at Nancy. She was looking at Miss -Toner and if she had been pale before, she was paler now. Nancy would -never think of herself in connection with Ariane and tragic grief; yet -something in the lines, something in Miss Toner’s disavowal of their -applicability, had touched the hidden cut. And, once again, it was Meg’s -eyes that met his, showing him that what he saw she saw, too. Barney saw -nothing.<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> All his solicitude was for Miss Toner in her imaginary plight. -“I’m sure you never would!†he exclaimed. “Never die, I mean!â€</p> - -<p>“You think Miss Toner would have come to terms with Bacchus,†Oldmeadow -suggested. He didn’t want to take it out of Barney, though he was vexed -with him, nor to take it out of Miss Toner, either. He only wanted to -toss and twist the theme and make it gay where Miss Toner made it -solemn.</p> - -<p>“Come to terms with Bacchus!†Barney quite stared, taken aback by the -irreverence. “Why should she! She’d have found somebody more worth while -than either of the ruffians.â€</p> - -<p>Miss Toner smiled over at him.</p> - -<p>“I’m sure that if Bacchus had been fortunate enough to meet Miss Toner -she’d have converted him to total abstinence in a jiffy and made a model -husband of him. He was a fine, exhilarating fellow; no ruffian at all; -quite worth reforming.†Oldmeadow, as he thus embroidered his theme, was -indulging in his own peculiar form of mirth.</p> - -<p>He saw Miss Toner laying her hand on the head of Bacchus; Miss Toner -very picturesque on the rugged sea-shore in her white and pearls and -roses, and Bacchus dazed and penitent, his very leopards tamed to a -cat-like docility. His laugh was visible rather than audible and that -Miss Toner had never before been the subject of such mirth was evident -to him.</p> - -<p>She met whatever she saw or guessed of irreverence, however, as -composedly as she would have met Bacchus; perhaps already, he reflected, -she was beginning to think of him in the light of an undesirable -wine-bibber. Perhaps even, she was beginning<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a> to think of him as a -ruffian. He didn’t mind in the least, so long as he succeeded in keeping -off her solemnity.</p> - -<p>“I should have been quite willing to try and reform him,†she said; -“though it takes much longer than a jiffy to reform people, Mr. -Oldmeadow; but I shouldn’t have been willing to marry him. There are -other things in life, aren’t there, than love-stories—even for women.â€</p> - -<p>“Bravo!†said Oldmeadow. He felt as well as uttered it. She wasn’t being -solemn, and she had returned his shuttlecock smartly. “But are there?†-he went on. He had adjusted his eyeglass for a clearer confrontation of -her.</p> - -<p>Miss Toner’s large eyes, enlarged still further by the glass, met his, -not solemnly, but with a considering gravity.</p> - -<p>“You are a sceptic, Mr. Oldmeadow,†she observed. “A satirist. Do you -find that satire and scepticism take you very far in reading human -hearts?â€</p> - -<p>“There’s one for you, Roger!†cried Barney.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow kept his gaze fixed on Miss Toner. “You think that Ariane -might prefer Infant Welfare work or Charity Organization to a -love-story?â€</p> - -<p>“Not those necessarily.†She returned his gaze. “Though I have known -very fine big people who did prefer them. But they are not the only -alternatives to love-stories.â€</p> - -<p>“I am sceptical,†said Oldmeadow. “I am, if you like, satirical. I don’t -believe there are any alternatives to love-stories; only palliatives to -disappointment.â€</p> - -<p><a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a>Barney leaned forward: “Adrienne, you see, doesn’t accept that -old-fashioned, sentimentalizing division of the sexes. She doesn’t -accept the merely love-story, hearth-side rôle for women.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, well,†Oldmeadow played with his fork, smiling with the wryness -that accompanied his reluctant sincerities, “I don’t divide the sexes as -far as love-stories are concerned. We are all in the same boat. For us, -too, Barney, it’s love-story or palliative. You don’t agree? If you were -disappointed in love? Hunting? Farming? Politics? Post-Impressionism? -Would any of them fill the gap?â€</p> - -<p>It wasn’t at all the line he had intended the talk to take. He knew that -as he glanced across at Nancy. Saying nothing, as if its subject could -not concern her, and with a dim little smile, she listened, and he knew -that for her, though she wouldn’t die of it, there would be only -palliatives. If only Barney, confound him, hadn’t been so charming.</p> - -<p>Barney did not know how to answer the last assault, and, boyishly, -looked across at his beloved for succour. She gave it instantly.</p> - -<p>“Sadness, sorrow, tragedy, even, isn’t despair,†she said. “Barney, I -believe, if sorrow overtook him, would mould the rough clay of his -occupation to some higher beauty than the beauty he’d lost. To lie down -and die; to resign oneself to palliatives. Oh, no. That’s not the -destiny of the human soul.â€</p> - -<p>“Roger’s pulling your leg, Barney, as usual,†Palgrave put in -scornfully. He had been listening with his elbows on the table, his eyes -on the table-cloth. “He knows as well as I do that there’s only one -love. The sort you’re all talking about—the Theseus and Ariane -affair—is merely an ebullition of youth and as soon as nature has -perpetuated the<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> species by means of it, it settles down, if there’s any -reality under the ebullition, to grow into the other—the divine love; -the love of the soul for the Good, the True and the Beautiful,†Palgrave -declared, growing very red as he said it.</p> - -<p>“Really—my dear child!†Mrs. Chadwick murmured. She had never heard -such themes broached at her table and glanced nervously up at old -Johnson to see if he had followed. “That is a very, very materialistic -view!â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow at this began to laugh, audibly as well as visibly, and -Palgrave, as their eyes met in a glance of communicated comedy, could -not withhold an answering smile. But Barney’s face showed that he -preferred to see Palgrave’s interpretation as materialistic and even -Miss Toner looked thoughtfully at her champion.</p> - -<p>“But we need the symbol of youth and nature,†she suggested. “The divine -love, yes, Palgrave, is the only real one; but then all love is divine -and human love sometimes brings the deepest revelation of all. Browning -saw that so wonderfully.â€</p> - -<p>“Browning, my dear!†Palgrave returned with a curious mingling of -devotion, intimacy and aloofness, “Browning never got nearer God than a -woman’s breast!â€</p> - -<p>At this, almost desperately, Mrs. Chadwick broke in: “Did you ever see -our Ellen Terry act, Adrienne? I liked her much better than Madame -Bernhardt who had such a very artificial face, I think. I can’t imagine -her as Rosalind, can you? While Miss Terry was a perfect Rosalind. I met -her once with Henry Irving at a garden-party in London and she was as -charming off as on the stage and I’m sure I can’t see<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> why anybody -should wish to act Phèdre—poor, uncontrolled creature. Rhubarb-tart, -dear, and custard? or wine-jelly and cream? How beautifully you speak -French. How many languages do you speak?†Mrs. Chadwick earnestly -inquired, still turning the helm firmly away from the unbecoming topic.</p> - -<p>Miss Toner kept her head very creditably and, very tactfully, at once -accepted her hostess’s hint. “Rhubarb-tart, please, dear Mrs. Chadwick. -Not so very many, really. My German has never been good; though French -and Italian I do know well, and enough Spanish for Don Quixote. But,†-she went on, while Mrs. Chadwick looked gratefully at her, “Mother and I -were always working. We never wasted any of our precious hours together. -She couldn’t bear the thought of <i>missing</i> anything in life; and she -missed very little, I think. Music, poetry, painting—all the -treasure-houses of the human spirit—were open to her. And what she won -and made her own, she gave out again with greater radiance. How I wish -you could all have known her!†said Miss Toner, looking round at them -with an unaccustomed touch of wistfulness. “She was radiance -personified. She never let unhappiness <i>rest</i> on her. I remember once, -when she had had a cruel blow from a person she loved and trusted—in -the middle of her sadness she looked at me and saw how sad she was -making me; and she sprang up and seized my hands and cried: ‘Let’s -dance! Let’s dance and dance and dance!’ And we did, up and down the -terrace—it was at San Remo—she in her white dress, with the blue sky -and sea and the orange-trees all in bloom. I can see her now. And<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> then -she rushed to get music, her harp, and flowers and fruit, to take to an -invalid friend, and we spent the afternoon with her, mother surpassing -herself in charm and witchery. She was always like that. She would have -found something, oh, very beautiful, to make from her sorrow if Theseus -had abandoned her! But no one,†said Miss Toner, looking round at -Oldmeadow, now with a mild playfulness, “could ever have abandoned -Mother.â€</p> - -<p>There was something to Oldmeadow appealing in her playfulness; her -confidence, when it took on this final grace, was really touching. For -Mrs. Toner the light-giver he knew that he had conceived a rooted -aversion. And he wondered if she would go on, over the rhubarb-tart, to -tell, after the dancing on the terrace, of the death at sea. But he was -spared that.</p> - -<p>“And your father died when you were very young, didn’t he, dear?†said -Mrs. Chadwick, fearful of the reference to Theseus. “I think your mother -must often have been so very lonely; away from home for such a great -part of the time and with so few relatives.â€</p> - -<p>Miss Toner shook her head. “We were always together, she and I, so we -could never, either of us, be lonely. And wherever we went she made -friends. People were always so much more than mere people to her. She -saw them always, at once, high and low, prince and peasant, as souls, -and they felt it always, and opened to her. Then, until I was quite big, -we had my lovely grandmother. Mother came from Maine and it was such a -joy to go and stay there with Grandma. It was a very simple little home. -It was always high thinking and plain living, with Grandma; and though, -when she married and became<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> rich, Mother showered beautiful things upon -her, Grandma stayed always in the little house, doing for her poor -neighbours, as she had always done, and dusting her parlour—a real New -England parlour—and making her own griddle cakes—such wonderful cakes -she made! I was fifteen when she died; but the tie was so close and -spiritual that she did not seem gone away from us.<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-a" id="CHAPTER_IX-a"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3> - -<p class="nind">“R<small>ATHER</small> nice to think that there are so many good and innocent people in -the world, isn’t it,†Barney remarked, when he, Palgrave and Oldmeadow -were left to their wine and cigars. It was evident that he would have -preferred to omit the masculine interlude, but Oldmeadow was resolved on -the respite. She had touched him because she was so unaware; but he was -weary and disconcerted. How could Barney be unaware? And was he? -Altogether? His comment seemed to suggest a suspicion that Miss Toner’s -flow might have aroused irony or require justification.</p> - -<p>“Miss Toner and her mother seem to have found the noble and the gifted -under every bush,†he remarked, and he was not sure that he wished to -avoid irony though he knew that he did wish to conceal it from Barney. -“It’s very good and innocent to be able to do that; but one may keep -one’s goodness at the risk of one’s discrimination. Not that Miss Toner -is at all stupid.â€</p> - -<p>Palgrave neither smoked nor drank. He had again leaned his elbows on the -table and his head on his fists, but, while Oldmeadow spoke, he lifted -and kept his gaze on him. “You don’t like her,†he said suddenly. He and -Oldmeadow had, irrepressibly, over Mrs. Chadwick’s conception of -materialism, interchanged their smile at dinner; but since the morning -Oldmeadow had known that Palgrave suspected him of indifference, perhaps -even hostility, towards the new-comer. “Why don’t you like her?<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a>†the -boy went on and with a growing resentment as his suspicions found voice. -“She <i>isn’t</i> stupid; that’s just it. She’s good and noble and innocent; -and gifted, too. Why should we pretend to be too sophisticated to -recognize such beauty when we meet it? Why should we be ashamed of -beauty—afraid of it?â€</p> - -<p>Barney, flushing deeply, looked down into his wine-glass.</p> - -<p>“My dear Palgrave, I don’t understand you,†said Oldmeadow. But he did. -He seemed to hear the loud beating of Palgrave’s heart. “I don’t dislike -Miss Toner. How should I? I don’t know her.â€</p> - -<p>“You do know her. That’s an evasion. It’s all there. She can’t be seen -without being known. It’s all there; at once. I don’t know why you don’t -like her. It’s what I want to know.â€</p> - -<p>“Drop it, Palgrave,†Barney muttered. “Let Roger alone. He and Adrienne -get on very well together. It’s no good forcing things.â€</p> - -<p>“I’m not forcing anything. It’s Roger who forces his scepticism and his -satire on us,†Palgrave declared.</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry to have displeased you,†said Oldmeadow with a slight -severity. “I am unaware of having displayed my disagreeable qualities -more than is usual with me.â€</p> - -<p>“Of course not. What rot, Palgrave! Roger is always disagreeable, bless -him!†Barney declared with a forced laugh. “Adrienne understands him -perfectly. As he says: she isn’t stupid.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, all right. I’m sorry,†Palgrave rose, thrusting his hands in his -pockets and looking down at the two as he stood above them. He hesitated -and then<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> went on: “All I know is that for the first time in my -life—the very first time, mind you—all the things we are told about in -religion, all the things we read about in poetry, the things we’re -supposed to care for and live by, have been made real to me—outside of -books and churches. What do we ever see of them at home here, with dear -Mummy and the girls? What do we ever talk of, all of us—but the -everlasting round—hunting, gardening, cricket, hay; village treats and -village charities. A lot of chatter about people—What a rotter -So-and-so is; and How perfectly sweet somebody else: and a little about -politics—Why doesn’t somebody shoot Lloyd George?—and How wicked Home -Rulers are. That’s about all it amounts to. Oh, I know we’re not as -stupid as we sound. <i>She</i> sees that. We can feel things and see things -though we express ourselves like savages. But we’re too comfortable to -think; that’s what’s the trouble with us. We don’t want to change; and -thought means change. And we’re shy; idiotically shy; afraid to express -anything as it really comes to us; so that I sometimes wonder if things -will go on coming; if we shan’t become like the Chinese—a sort of -<i>objet d’art</i> set of people, living by rote, in a rut. Well. That’s all -I mean. With her one isn’t ashamed or afraid to know and say what one -feels. With her one wants to feel more. And I, for one, reverence her -and am grateful to her for having made beauty and goodness real to me.†-Having so delivered himself, Palgrave, who had, after his deep flush, -become pale, turned away and marched out of the room.</p> - -<p>The older men sat silent for a moment, Oldmeadow continuing to smoke and -Barney turning<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> the stem of his wine-glass in his fingers. “I’m awfully -sorry,†he said at last. “I can’t think what’s got into the boy. He’s in -rather a moil just now, I fancy.â€</p> - -<p>“He’s a dear boy,†said Oldmeadow. “There’s any amount of truth in what -he says. He’s at an age when one sees these things, if one is ever going -to see them. I hope he’ll run straight. He ought to amount to -something.â€</p> - -<p>“That’s what Adrienne says,†said Barney. “She says he’s a poet. You -think, too, then, that we’re all in such a rut; living Chinese lives; -automata?â€</p> - -<p>“It’s the problem of civilization, isn’t it, to combine automatism with -freedom. Without a rut to walk in you reach nowhere—if we’re to walk -together. And yet we must manage to ramble, too; individuals must; -that’s what it comes to, I suppose. Individuals must take the risk of -rambling and alter the line of the rut for the others. Palgrave may be a -rambler. But I hope he won’t go too far afield.â€</p> - -<p>“You do like her, Roger, don’t you?†said Barney suddenly.</p> - -<p>It had had to come. Oldmeadow knew that, as the depth of silence fell -about them. It was inevitable between them, of course. Yet he wished it -might have been avoided, since now it must be too late. He pressed out -the glow of his cigar and leaned his arms on the table, not looking at -his friend while he meditated, and he said finally—and it might seem, -he knew, another evasion—“Look here, Barney, I must tell you something. -You know how much I care about Nancy. Well, that’s the trouble. It’s -Nancy I wanted you to marry.<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Barney had held himself ready and a deep, involuntary sigh of relief, or -of postponed suspense, now escaped him. “I see. I didn’t realize that,†-he said. And how he hoped, poor Barney! it was all there was to realize! -“Of course I’m very fond of Nancy.â€</p> - -<p>“You realize, of course, how fond she is of you.â€</p> - -<p>“Well; yes; of course. We’re both awfully good pals,†said Barney, -confused.</p> - -<p>“That’s what Palgrave would call speaking like a savage, Barney. Own to -it that if Miss Toner hadn’t appeared upon the scene you could have -hoped to make Nancy your wife. I don’t say you made love to her or -misled her in any way. I’m sure you never meant to at any rate. But the -fact remains that you were both so fond of each other that you would -certainly have married. So you’ll understand that when I come down here -and find Miss Toner installed as tutelary goddess over you all, what I’m -mainly conscious of is grief for my dear little relegated nymph.â€</p> - -<p>Still deeply flushed, but still feeling his relief, Barney turned his -wine-glass and murmured: “I see. I quite understand. Yes; I should have -been in love with her, I own. I nearly was, last winter. As to her being -in love with me, that’s a different matter. I’ve no reason to think she -was in love. It would just be a difference of degree, with Nancy, -wouldn’t it; she loves us all so much, and she’s really such a child, -still. Of course that’s what she seems to me now, since Adrienne’s come; -just a darling child.â€</p> - -<p>“I suppose so. But you understand what I feel, too. I feel her much more -than a darling child, and it’s difficult for me to like anybody who has -dispossessed<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> her. I perfectly recognize Miss Toner’s remarkable -qualities and hope to count myself among her friends one day; but, being -a satirist and a sceptic, I rebel instinctively against goddesses of -whatever brand. Nymphs are good enough for me; and I can’t help wishing, -irrepressibly, that nymphs had remained good enough for you, my dear -boy.â€</p> - -<p>“It isn’t a question of nymphs; it isn’t a question of goddesses,†-Barney said, glancing up now at his friend. “I’m awfully sorry about -Nancy; but of course she’ll find some one far better than I am; she’s -such a dear. You’re not quite straight with me, Roger. I don’t see -Adrienne as a goddess at all; I’m not like Palgrave, a silly boy, bowled -over. It’s something quite different she does to me. She makes me feel -safe; safe and happy in a way I never imagined possible. It’s like -having the sunlight fall about one; it’s like life, new life, to be with -her. She’s not a goddess; but she’s the woman it would break my heart to -part with. I never met such loveliness.â€</p> - -<p>“My dear boy,†Oldmeadow murmured. He still leaned on the table and he -still looked down. “I do wish you every happiness, as you know.†He was -deeply touched and Barney’s quiet words troubled him as he had not -before been troubled.</p> - -<p>“Thanks. I know you do. I know you care for my happiness. And I can’t -imagine anything coming into my life that would make a difference to us. -That’s just it.†Barney paused. “It won’t, will it, Roger?â€</p> - -<p>The crisis was again upon them. Oldmeadow did not look up as he said: -“That depends on her, doesn’t it?â€</p> - -<p>“No; it depends on you,†Barney quickly replied.<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a></p> - -<p>“She likes you, quite immensely, already. She says you make her think of -one of Meredith’s dry, deep-hearted heroes,†Barney gave a slightly -awkward laugh, deprecating the homage as he offered it. “She says you -are the soul of truth. There’s no reason, none whatever, why you -shouldn’t be the best of friends, as far as she is concerned. It’s all -she asks.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s all I ask, of course.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know. But if you don’t meet her half-way? Sometimes I do see -what Palgrave means. Sometimes you misunderstand her.â€</p> - -<p>“Very likely. It takes time really to understand people, doesn’t it.â€</p> - -<p>But poor Barney was embarked and could not but push on. “As just now, -you know, about finding nobility behind every bush and paying for one’s -goodness by losing one’s discrimination. There are deep realities and -superficial realities, aren’t there, and she sees the deep ones first. -It’s more than that. Palgrave says she makes reality. He didn’t say it -to me, because I don’t think he feels me to be worthy of her. He said it -to Mother, and puzzled her by it. But I know what he means. It’s because -of that he feels her to be a sort of saint. Do be straight with me, -Roger. Say what you really think. I’d rather know; much. You’ve never -kept things from me before,†Barney added in a sudden burst of boyish -distress.</p> - -<p>“My dear Barney,†Oldmeadow murmured.</p> - -<p>It had to come, then. He pushed back his chair and turned in it, resting -an arm on the table; and he passed his hand over his head and kept it -there while he stared for a moment hard at the ceiling.<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a></p> - -<p>“I think you’ve made a mistake,†he then said.</p> - -<p>“A mistake?†Barney faltered blushing. It was not anger; it was pain, -simple, boyish pain that thus confessed itself.</p> - -<p>“Yes; a mistake,†Oldmeadow repeated, not looking at him, “and since I -fear it’s gone too far to be mended, I think it would have been better -if you’d not pressed me, my dear boy.â€</p> - -<p>“How do you mean? I’d rather know, you see,†Barney murmured, after a -moment.</p> - -<p>“I don’t mean about the goodness, or the power,†said Oldmeadow. “She is -good, and she has power; but that’s in part, I feel, because she has no -inhibitions—no doubts. To know reality we must do more than blow -soap-bubbles with it. It must break us to be known. She’s never been -broken. Perhaps she never will be. And in that case she’ll go on blind.â€</p> - -<p>Barney was silent for a moment, and that it was not as bad as he had -feared it might be was apparent from the attempted calm with which he -asked, presently: “Why shouldn’t you be blind to evil and absurdity if -you can see much further than most people into goodness? Perhaps one -must be one-sided to go far.â€</p> - -<p>“Perhaps. But it’s dangerous to be one-sided—to oneself and others. And -does she see further? That’s the question. Doesn’t she tend, rather, to -accept as first-rate what you incline to find second? You’re less strong -than she is, Barney, and less good, no doubt. But you can’t deny that -you’re less blind. So what you must ask yourself is whether you can be -sure of being happy with a wife who’ll never doubt herself and who’ll -not see absurdity where you<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> see it. Put it at that. Will you be happy -with her?â€</p> - -<p>He was, he knew, justified of Miss Toner’s commendation, for truth -between friends could go no further and, in the silence, while he -sickened for his friend, he felt it searching Barney’s heart. How it -searched, how many echoes it found awaiting it, was proved by the -prolongation of the silence.</p> - -<p>“I think you exaggerate,†said Barney at length, and in the words -Oldmeadow read his refusal to examine further the truths revealed to -him. “You see all the defects and none of the beauty. It can’t be a -mistake if I can see both. She’ll learn a little from me, that’s what it -comes to, for all the lot I’ll have to learn from her. I’ll be happy -with her if I’m worthy of her. What it comes to, you see, as I said at -the beginning, is that I can’t be happy without her.†He rose and -Oldmeadow, rising also, knew that they closed upon an unresolved -discord. Yet these final words of Barney’s pleased him so much that he -could not leave it quite at that.</p> - -<p>“Mine may be the mistake, after all,†he said. “Only you must give me -time to find it out. I began by telling you I couldn’t be really -dispassionate; and I feel much better for our talk, if that’s any -satisfaction to you. If you can learn from each other and see the truth -together, you’ll be happy. You’re right there, Barney. That is what it -comes to.†They moved towards the door. “Try not to dislike me for my -truth too much,†he added.</p> - -<p>“My dear old fellow,†Barney muttered. He laid his hand for a moment on -his friend’s shoulder, standing back for him to pass first. “Nothing can -ever alter things between you and me.â€</p> - -<p>But things were altered already.<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-a" id="CHAPTER_X-a"></a>CHAPTER X</h3> - -<p class="nind">P<small>ALGRAVE</small> had not gone to the drawing-room, and that, at all events, was -a comfort. A wood fire burned on the hearth and near it Nancy was -holding wool for Mrs. Chadwick to wind. Barbara had been sent to bed and -Meg and Miss Toner sat on the sofa hand in hand. Even in the pressure of -his distress and anxiety Oldmeadow could but be aware of amusement at -seeing Meg thus. It had, of course, been Miss Toner who had taken her -hand. But no one else could have taken it. No one else could have been -allowed to go on holding it placidly before on-lookers of whose mirthful -impressions Meg must be well aware. She didn’t mind in the least. That -was what Miss Toner had done to her. She enjoyed having her hand held by -anyone so much interested in her.</p> - -<p>Barney walked to the fireplace and stood before it. He had no faculty -for concealing his emotions and the painful ones through which he had -just passed were visible on his sensitive face.</p> - -<p>“Give us a song, Meg,†Oldmeadow suggested. He did not care for Meg’s -singing, which conveyed, in a rich, sweet medium, a mingled fervour and -shallowness of feeling. But to hear her sing would be better than to see -her holding Miss Toner’s hand.</p> - -<p>Barney crossed at once to the seat Meg vacated and dropped down into it, -no doubt thanking his friend for what he imagined to be a display of -tact, and Oldmeadow saw the quiet, firm look that flowed over and took -possession of him. Miss Toner knew,<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> of course, that Barney had been -having painful emotions; and she probably knew that they had been caused -by the dry, deep-hearted Meredithian hero. But after the long look she -did not speak to him. She sat in her pearls and whiteness and gave -careful attention to the music.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow accompanied Meg, tolerantly, and a trifle humorously, throwing -a touch of mockery into his part. Meg’s preference to-night seemed to be -for gardens; Gardens of Sleep; Gardens of Love; God’s Gardens. “What a -wretch you are, Roger,†she said, when she had finished. “You despise -feeling.â€</p> - -<p>“I thought I was wallowing in it,†Oldmeadow returned. “Did I stint -you?â€</p> - -<p>“No; you helped me to wallow. That’s why you’re such a wretch. Always -showing one that one is wallowing when one thinks one’s soaring. It’s -your turn, now, Adrienne. Let’s see if he’ll manage to make fun of you.â€</p> - -<p>“Does Miss Toner sing, too? Now do you know, Meg,†said Oldmeadow, -keeping up the friendly banter, “I’m sure she doesn’t sing the sort of -rubbish you do.â€</p> - -<p>“I think they’re beautiful songs,†Mrs. Chadwick murmured from her wool, -“and I think Roger played them most beautifully. Why should you say he -is making fun of you, Meg?â€</p> - -<p>“Because he makes you think something’s beautiful that he thinks -rubbish, Mummy. Come along, Adrienne. You will, won’t you? I expect my -voice sounds all wrong to you. I’ve had no proper training.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s a very lovely voice, Meg, used in a poor<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> cause,†said Miss Toner -smiling. “And it is badly placed. I think I could help you there. I’ve -no voice at all, but I have been taught how to sing. It would be more to -the point, though, if Mr. Oldmeadow were to play to us, for I hear that -he is an accomplished musician.â€</p> - -<p>“I’m really anything but accomplished,†said Oldmeadow; “but I can play -accompaniments cleverly. Do sing to us. I know you’ll give us something -worth accompanying.â€</p> - -<p>Miss Toner rose and came to the piano with her complete and unassuming -confidence. She turned the pages of the music piled there and asked him -if he cared for Schubert’s songs. Yes; she was a watch wound to go -accurately and she could rely on herself, always, to the last tick. Even -if she knew—and he was sure she knew—that he had been undermining her, -she would never show a shadow or a tremor; and she would always know -what was the best music. Only, as she selected “Litanei†and placed it -before him, he felt that over him, also, flowed the quiet, firm look.</p> - -<p>“Litanei†was one of his favourites in a composer he loved, and, as she -sang there above him, he found the song emerging unharmed from her -interpretation. It was as she had said—no voice to speak of; the -dryest, flattest little thread of sound; and no feeling, either (what a -relief after Meg!), except the feeling for scrupulous accuracy. Yet her -singing was what he found in her to like best. It was disciplined; it -accepted its own limits; it fulfilled an order. There was no desecration -of the heavenly song, for, intelligently after all, she made no attempt -upon its heart.<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a></p> - -<p>When she had finished, she looked down at him. They were removed by half -the length of the room from the fireside group. The lamps were behind -them. Only the candles set in the piano-rack illumined Miss Toner; and -while the white roses over her ears struck him anew as foolish, her eyes -anew struck him as powerful.</p> - -<p>“Thank you. That was a pleasure,†he said.</p> - -<p>It was a pleasure. It was almost a link. He had found a ground to meet -her on. He saw himself in the future accompanying Barney’s wife. He -need, then, so seldom talk to her. But, alas! she stepped at once from -the safe frame of art.</p> - -<p>“If we can rise from loss to feel like that, if we can lift our sorrows -like that, we need never turn to palliatives, need we, Mr. Oldmeadow?†-she said.</p> - -<p>Stupidity, complacency, or power, whatever it was, it completely -disenchanted him. It left him also bereft of repartee. What he fell back -upon, as he looked up at her and then down at the keys again, was a mere -schoolboy mutter of “Come now!â€</p> - -<p>After all a schoolboy mutter best expressed what he felt. She was not -accustomed to having her ministrations met with such mutters and she did -not like it. That was apparent to him as she turned away and went back -to the sofa and Barney. She had again tried him and again found him -wanting.</p> - -<p class="cb">. . . . . -. . . . . -. . . . . -. . . . . -. . . . . -. . . . . -. . . . .</p> - -<p>Barney and Miss Toner left in her motor next morning shortly after -breakfast, and though with his friend Oldmeadow had no further exchange, -he had, with Miss Toner, a curious encounter that was, he felt sure, a -direct result of her impressions of the night before. They met in the -dining-room a few<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> moments before breakfast, and as she entered, wearing -already her motoring hat, closely bound round her face with a veil, he -was aware that she looked, if that were possible, more composed than he -had ever seen her. He felt sure that she had waited for her opportunity, -and had followed him downstairs, knowing that she would find him alone; -and he realized then that she was more composed, because she had an -intention or, rather, since it was more definite, a determination. -Determination in her involved no effort: it imparted, merely, the added -calm of an assured aim.</p> - -<p>She gave him her hand and said good morning with the same air of -scrupulous accuracy that she had given to the rendering of “Litanei†and -then, standing before the fire, her hands clasped behind her, her eyes -raised to his, she said: “Mr. Oldmeadow, I want to say something to -you.â€</p> - -<p>It was the gentle little voice, unaltered, yet he knew that he was in -for something he would very much rather have avoided; something with -anybody else unimaginable, but with her, he saw it now, quite -inevitable. Yet he tried, even at this last moment, to avoid it and -said, adjusting his eyeglass and moving to the sideboard: “But not -before we’ve had our tea, surely. Can’t I get you some? Will you trust -me to pour it out?â€</p> - -<p>“Thanks; I take coffee—not tea,†said Miss Toner from her place at the -fire, “and neither has been brought in yet.â€</p> - -<p>He had just perceived, to his discomfiture, that they had not. There was -nothing for it but to turn from the ungarnished sideboard and face her -again.</p> - -<p>“It’s about Barney, Mr. Oldmeadow,†Miss Toner<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> said, unmoved by his -patent evasion. “It’s because I know you love Barney and care for his -happiness. And it’s because I hope that you and I are to be friends, and -friendship can only be built on truth. Try to trust more; will you? -That’s all I want to say. Try to trust. You will be happier if you do -and make other people happier.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow had never experienced such an assault upon his personality, -and he met it gagged and bound, for, assuredly, this was to be Barney’s -wife. A slow flush mounted to his face.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid I seem very strange and unconventional to you,†Adrienne -Toner went on. “You’ve lived in a world where people don’t care enough -for each other to say the real things. They must be felt if they’ve to -be said, mustn’t they? Yet you do care for people. I have seen that, -watching you here; and you care for real things. It’s a crust of caution -and convention that is about you. You are afraid of expression. You are -afraid of feeling. You are afraid of being taken in and of wasting -yourself. Don’t be afraid, Mr. Oldmeadow. We never lose ourselves by -trusting. We never lose ourselves by giving. It’s a realer self that -comes. And with you, I see it clearly, if you let the crust grow -thicker, it will shut life and light and joy away from you; and when -light cannot visit our hearts, they wither within us. That is your -danger. I want to be your friend, so I must say the truth to you.â€</p> - -<p>He knew, though he had to struggle not to laugh, that he was very angry -and that he must not show anger; though it would really be better to -show that than his intense amusement; and it took him a moment, during -which they confronted each other, to<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a> find words; dry, donnish words; -words of caution and convention. They were the only ones he had -available for the situation. “My dear young lady,†he said, “you take -too much upon yourself.â€</p> - -<p>She was not in the least disconcerted. She met his eyes steadily. “You -mean that I am presumptuous, Mr. Oldmeadow?â€</p> - -<p>“You take too much upon yourself,†he repeated. “As you say, I hope we -may be friends.â€</p> - -<p>“Is that really all, Mr. Oldmeadow?†she said, looking at him with such -a depth of thoughtfulness that he could not for the life of him make out -whether she found him odious or merely pitiful.</p> - -<p>“Yes; that’s really all,†he returned.</p> - -<p>The dining-room was very bright and the little blue figure before the -fire was very still. The moment fixed itself deep in his consciousness -with that impression of stillness and brightness. It was an -uncomfortable impression. Her little face, uplifted to his, absurd, yet -not uncharming, was, in its still force, almost ominous.</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry,†was all she said, and she turned and went forward to greet -Mrs. Chadwick.<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI-a" id="CHAPTER_XI-a"></a>CHAPTER XI</h3> - -<p class="nind">I<small>T</small> was a soft June day and Oldmeadow was strolling about Mrs. Averil’s -garden admiring her herbaceous borders. It was a day that smelt of -ripening strawberries, of warm grass and roses, and the air was full of -a medley of bird voices, thrushes and blackbirds, sweet as grass and -strawberries, and the bubbling rattle of the chaffinch as happy as the -sunlight.</p> - -<p>Adrienne Toner was Mrs. Chadwick now, and she and Eleanor Chadwick and -Barney were motoring together in the French Alps. Coldbrooks was empty, -and he had come to stay with Nancy and her mother.</p> - -<p>They lived in a small stone house with a Jacobean front that looked, -over a stone wall, at Chelford Green, and had behind it a delightfully -unexpected length of lawn and orchard and kitchen-garden, all enclosed -by higher walls and presided over by a noble cedar. Seen from the garden -The Little House was merely mid-Victorian, but the modern additions were -masked by climbing roses and a great magnolia-tree opened its -lemon-scented cups at the highest bedroom windows. The morning-room was -in the modern part, and from one of its windows, presently, Mrs. Averil -emerged, opening her sunshade as she crossed the grass to join her -guest. She wore a white straw garden hat, tipping over her eyes and -tying, behind, over her thick knot of hair, in a manner that always -recalled to Oldmeadow a lady out of Trollope. Her face was pale, like -Nancy’s, and her eyes grey; but rather than blackcaps and primroses she<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> -suggested lace tippets and porcelain tea-sets, and though it was from -her Nancy had her pretty trick of closing her eyes when she smiled, Mrs. -Averil’s smile was cogitative and impersonal, and in her always -temperate mirth there was an edge of grimness.</p> - -<p>“Well, Roger, I want to hear what you thought about the wedding,†she -said. She had not gone to church that morning with Nancy and it was, he -knew, because she wanted an interchange of frank impressions. She had -been prevented from attending Miss Toner’s London nuptials by a touch of -influenza and, as she now went on to say, she had got little from Nancy, -who had no eye for pageants and performances. “Eleanor was so absorbed,†-she went on, “in the fact that the Bishop had indigestion and had, at -her suggestion, taken magnesia with his breakfast, that I could not get -much else out of her. She seemed to have seen the Bishop’s symptoms -rather than Adrienne and Barney. Now from you I expect all the relevant -details.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, if you call it a detail, Nancy was lovely,†said Oldmeadow. “She -looked like a silver-birch in her white and green.â€</p> - -<p>“And pearls,†said Mrs. Averil. “You noticed, of course, the necklaces -Adrienne gave them; quite the gift of a princess, yet so innocent and -unobtrusive looking, too. She has great taste in such matters. Did she -look well? Eleanor did say that she, like the Bishop, was very pale.â€</p> - -<p>“She was pale; but not a bit nervous. She rather looked as if she had -been married every day of her life. Nothing ever puts her out, you know. -She was very grave and benign; but she wasn’t an imposing<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> bride and the -wreath of orange-blossoms aged her. Nancy and Meg and Barbara and the -Lumley girl aged her, too. She must be older than Barney.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; she is. A year older. But she’s the sort of woman who will wear,†-said Mrs. Averil, pausing before a bed of rose-trees to snip off a -fading flower. “She’ll not look very differently at fifty, you know; and -her hair is the sort that may never turn grey. I can see her at seventy -with those big golden braids and all her teeth. There’s something very -indestructible about her. Like a doll made of white leather compared to -one made of porcelain. She’ll last and last,†said Mrs. Averil. “She’ll -outlast us all. Barney was radiant, of course.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. But he <i>was</i> nervous; like a little boy frightened by the -splendour of his Christmas-tree. He looked as though he were arm in arm -with the Christmas-tree itself as he came down the nave. A rather dumpy -little Christmas-tree, but exquisitely lighted and garnished.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, he ought to be radiant,†Mrs. Averil observed. “With all that -money, it’s an extremely good match for him. The fact of her being -nobody in particular makes no difference, really, since she’s an -American. And she has, I gather, no tiresome relations to come -bothering.â€</p> - -<p>“She’s very unencumbered, certainly. There’s something altogether very -solitary about her,†Oldmeadow agreed, watching Mrs. Averil snip off the -withered roses. “I felt that even as she came down the nave on Barney’s -arm. It’s not a bit about the money he’s radiant,†he added.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I know. Of course not. That was only my own gross satisfaction -expressing itself. He’s as in<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> love as it’s possible to be. And with -every good reason.â€</p> - -<p>“You took to her as much as they all did, then?â€</p> - -<p>“That would be rather difficult, wouldn’t it? And Barney’s reasons would -hardly be those of a dry old aunt. She was very nice and kind to Nancy -and me and she’s evidently going to do everything for them. Barbara’s -already, you know, been sent to that admirable school that was too -expensive for Eleanor; riding and singing and all the rest of it. And -Meg’s been given a perfect trousseau of fine clothes for her London -season. Naturally I don’t feel very critically towards her.â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t you? Well, if she weren’t a princess distributing largess, -wouldn’t you? After all, she’s not given Nancy a trousseau. So why be -mute with an old friend?â€</p> - -<p>“Ah, but she’s given her the pearls,†said Mrs. Averil. “Nancy couldn’t -but accept a bridesmaid’s gift. And she would give her a trousseau if -she wanted it and would take it. However, I’ll own, though decency -should keep me mute, that I should find myself a little bored if I had -to see too much of her. I’m an everyday person and I like to talk about -everyday things.â€</p> - -<p>“I can hear her asking you, in answer to that, if there is anything more -everyday than the human soul. I wish I could have seen you <i>aux prises</i> -with her,†Oldmeadow remarked. “Did she come down here? Did she like -your drawing-room and garden?â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Averil’s drawing-room and garden lay very near her heart. Eleanor -Chadwick sometimes accused her of caring more about her china and her<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> -roses than about anything else in the world except Nancy.</p> - -<p>“I don’t think she saw them; not what I call see,†Mrs. Averil now said. -“Oh, yes; she came several times and recognized, very appreciatively, -the periods of my Queen Anne furniture and my Lowestoft. Beyond their -period I don’t think she went. She said the garden was old-world,†Mrs. -Averil added, looking about her and twirling her parasol on her -shoulder.</p> - -<p>“She would,†Oldmeadow agreed. “That’s just what she would call it. And -she’d call you a true, deep-hearted woman and Nancy a gifted girl. How -do she and Nancy hit it off? It’s that I want most of all to hear -about.â€</p> - -<p>“They haven’t much in common, have they?†said Mrs. Averil. “She’s never -hunted and doesn’t, I imagine, know a wren from a hedge-sparrow. She -<i>does</i> know a skylark when she hears one, for she said ‘Hail to thee, -blithe spirit’ while one was singing. But I felt, somehow, it was like -the Queen Anne and the Lowestoft—a question of the label.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow at this began to laugh with an open and indulged mirth. He and -Mrs. Averil, at all events, saw eye to eye. “If you’d tie the correct -label to the hedge-sparrow she’d know that, too,†he said. “Poor girl. -The trouble with her isn’t that she doesn’t know the birds, but that she -wouldn’t know the poets, either, without their labels. It’s a mind made -up of labels. No; I don’t think it likely that Nancy, who hasn’t a label -about her, will get much out of her—beyond necklaces.â€</p> - -<p>“I wish Nancy <i>had</i> a few labels,†said Mrs. Averil. “I wish she could -have travelled and studied as Miss<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> Toner—Adrienne that is—has done. -She is such a little ignoramus. Adrienne may bore you and me, but Nancy -will never interest anyone—except you and me.â€</p> - -<p>It was always amusing to Oldmeadow, if a little sardonically so, to note -that any conception of himself as a possible suitor for Nancy had never -entered Mrs. Averil’s mind. As a friend he was everything a mother could -desire; as a match for Nancy almost unimaginable. Well, he could not -give a wife even one hunter and he never had had any intention of -falling in love with his dear nymph; yet that other people might not do -so was a suggestion he repudiated with warmth.</p> - -<p>“Oh; in love, yes,†Mrs. Averil agreed. “I don’t deny that she’s very -loveable and I hope she may marry well. But that’s not the same thing as -being interesting, is it? A man may be in love with a woman who doesn’t -interest him.â€</p> - -<p>“I dispute that statement.â€</p> - -<p>“I’m sure dear Eleanor never interested her husband—devoted to the day -of his death as he was. There’s something in my idea. To be interesting -one must offer something new. If Nancy had been interesting to Barney -she would now, I think, have been in Adrienne’s place. Not that it would -have been a marriage to be desired for either of them.â€</p> - -<p>So he and Mrs. Averil had been thinking the same thoughts.</p> - -<p>“And you contend that if Nancy had been to China and read Goethe and -Dante in the originals he’d have been interested? I think he was quite -sufficiently interested and that if Miss Toner hadn’t come barging into -our lives he’d have known he was in love.<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Going to China is a figure of speech and stands for all the things she -hasn’t got and doesn’t know. My poor little Nancy. All the same, <i>she</i> -isn’t a bore!†said Mrs. Averil with as near an approach to acerbity as -she could show.</p> - -<p>“No; she isn’t a bore. The things she knows have to be found out, by -degrees, through living with her. Barney hasn’t been to China, either, -so, according to your theory, Nancy didn’t find him interesting.â€</p> - -<p>At this Mrs. Averil’s eyes met his and, after a moment of contemplation, -they yielded up to him the secret they saw to be shared. “If only it -were the same for women! But they don’t need the new. She’s young. -She’ll get over it. I don’t believe in broken hearts. All the same,†-Mrs. Averil stopped in their walk, ostensibly to examine the growth of a -fine pink lupin, “it hasn’t endeared Adrienne to me. I’m too -<i>terre-à -terre</i>, about that, too, not to feel vexation, on Nancy’s -account. And what I’m afraid of is that she knows she’s not endeared to -me. That she guesses. She’s a bore; but she’s not a bit stupid, you -know.â€</p> - -<p>“You don’t think she’s spiteful?†Oldmeadow suggested after a moment, -while Mrs. Averil still examined her lupin.</p> - -<p>“Dear me, no! I wish she could be! It’s that smooth surface of hers -that’s so tiresome. She’s not spiteful. But she’s human. She’ll want to -keep Barney away and Nancy will be hurt.â€</p> - -<p>“Want to keep him away when she’s got him so completely?â€</p> - -<p>“Something of that sort. I felt it once or twice.â€</p> - -<p>“My first instinct about her was right, then,†said<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> Oldmeadow. “She’s a -bore and an interloper, and she’ll spoil things.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, perhaps not. She’ll mend some things. Have you heard about Captain -Hayward?â€</p> - -<p>“Do you mean that stupid, big, tawny fellow? What about him?â€</p> - -<p>“You may well ask. I’ve been spoken to about him and Meg by more than -one person. They are making themselves conspicuous, and it’s been going -on for some time.â€</p> - -<p>“You don’t mean that Meg’s in love with him?â€</p> - -<p>“He’s in love with her, at all events, and, as you know, he’s a married -man. I questioned Nancy, who was with Meg for a few weeks in London, and -she owns that Meg’s unhappy.â€</p> - -<p>“And they’re seeing each other in London now?†Oldmeadow was deeply -discomposed.</p> - -<p>“No. He’s away just now. And Meg is going to meet the bridal party in -Paris at the end of July. Nancy feels that when Meg gets back under -Adrienne’s influence there’ll be nothing to fear.â€</p> - -<p>“We depend on her, then, so much, already,†he murmured. He was -reviewing, hastily, his last impressions of Meg and they were not -reassuring. The only thing that was reassuring was to reflect on his -impressions of Adrienne. “Grandma’s parlour†returned to him with its -assurance of deep security. Above everything else Adrienne was -respectable.</p> - -<p>“Yes. That’s just it,†Mrs. Averil agreed. “We depend on her. And I feel -we’re going to depend more and more. She’s the sort of person who mends -things. So we mustn’t think of what she spoils.â€</p> - -<p>What Adrienne Toner had spoiled was, however, to be made very plain next -morning both to Nancy<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a>’s old friend and to her mother. Beside her plate -at breakfast was a letter addressed in Barney’s evident hand, a letter -in a narrow envelope stamped with the name of a French hotel and -showing, over the address, an engraving of peaks against the sky. Nancy -met the occasion with perfect readiness, saying as she looked at the -letter, waiting to open it till she had made the tea—Nancy always made -the tea in the morning while her mother sat behind the bacon and eggs at -the other end of the table—“How nice; from Barney. Now we shall have -news of them.â€</p> - -<p>Nothing less like an Ariane could be imagined than Nancy as she stood -there in her pink dress above the pink, white and gold tea-cups. One -might have supposed from her demeanour that a letter from Barney was but -a happy incident in a happy day. But, when she dropped into her chair -and read, it was evident that she was not prepared for what she found. -She read steadily, in silence, while Oldmeadow cut bread at the -sideboard and Mrs. Averil distributed her viands, and, when the last -page was reached, they both could not fail to see that Nancy was -blushing, blushing so deeply that, as she thus felt herself betray her -emotion, tears came thickly into her downcast eyes.</p> - -<p>“I’ll have my tea now, dear,†said Mrs. Averil. “Will you wait a little -longer, Roger?†She tided Nancy over.</p> - -<p>But Nancy was soon afloat. “The letter is for us all,†she said. “Do -read it aloud, Roger, while I have my breakfast.â€</p> - -<p>Barney’s letters, in the past, had, probably, always been shared and -Nancy was evidently determined that her own discomposure was not to -introduce<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> a new precedent. Oldmeadow took up the sheets and read.</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p>“<span class="smcap">Dearest Nancy</span>,—How I wish you were with us up here. It’s the most -fantastically lovely place. One feels as if one could sail off into it. -I dug up some roots of saxifrage for your wall yesterday, such pretty -pink stuff. It’s gone off in a box wrapped in damp moss and I hope will -reach you safely. A horrid, vandal thing to do; but for you and Aunt -Monica I felt it justified, and there are such masses of it. I saw a -snow-bunting yesterday, much higher up than the saxifrage; such a jolly, -composed little fellow on a field of snow. The birds would drive you -absolutely mad, except that you’re such a sensible young person you’d no -doubt keep your head even when you saw a pair of golden eagles, as we -did, floating over a ravine. I walked around the Lac d’Annecy this -morning, before breakfast, and did wish you were with me. I thought of -our bird-walks at dawn last summer. There were two or three darling -warblers singing, kinds we haven’t got at home; and black redstarts and -a peregrine falcon high in the air. I could write all day if I’d the -time, about the birds and flowers. You remember Adrienne telling us that -afternoon when she first came to Coldbrooks about the flowers. But I -mustn’t go on now. We’re stopping for tea in a little valley among the -mountains with flowers thick all around us and I’ve only time to give -our news to you and Aunt Monica and to send our love. Mother is -extremely fit and jolly, though rather scared at the hairpin curves; -Adrienne has to hold her hand. I’m too happy for words and feel as if -I’d grown wings. How is Chummie<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a>’s foot? Did the liniment help? Those -traps are beastly things. I feel just as you do about the rabbits. -Adrienne reads aloud to us in the evenings; a man called Claudel; -awfully stiff French to follow but rather beautiful. I think you’d like -him. Not a bit like Racine! Best love to you and Aunt Monica. Here’s -Adrienne, who wants to have her say.â€</p> - -<p>Had it been written in compunction for <i>Ariane aux bords laissée</i>? or, -rather, in a happy reversion to sheer spontaneity, a turning, without -any self-consciousness, to the comrade of the bird-walks who would, -after all, best feel with him about snow-buntings and redstarts? -Oldmeadow paused for the surmise, not looking up, before he went on from -Barney’s neat, firm script to his wife’s large, clear clumsy hand.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Dearest Nancy</span>,†ran the postscript, and it had been at the -postscript, Oldmeadow now could gauge, that Nancy had first found -herself unprepared. “I, too, am thinking of you, with Barney. It is -a great joy to feel that where, he says, I’ve given him golden -eagles and snow-buntings he’s given me—among so many other dear, -wonderful people—a Nancy. I get the best of the bargain, don’t I? -I can’t see much of the birds for looking at the peaks—<i>my</i> peaks, -so familiar yet, always, so new again. ‘Stern daughters of the -voice of God’ that they are. Radiantly white against a cloudless -sky we find them to-day. Barney’s profile is beautiful against -them—but his nose is badly sun-burned! <i>All</i> our noses are -sun-burned! That’s what one pays for flying among the Alps.</p> - -<p>“Mother Nell—we’ve decided that that’s what<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> I’m to call -her—looks ten years younger all the same, as I knew she would. We -talk of you all so often—of you and Meg and Palgrave and Barbara, -and half a dozen times a day Barney wishes that one or the other of -you were with us to see this or that. It’s specially you for the -birds I notice. You must take me for some bird-walks at dawn some -day and teach me to know all your lovely English songsters.... Dear -little Cousin-Sister, I send you my love with his and, with him, -hold you warmly in my heart. Will ‘Aunt Monica’ accept my -affectionate and admiring homages?</p> - -<p class="r"> -“Yours ever <br /> -“<span class="smcap">Adrienne</span>â€</p> -</div> - -<p>Oldmeadow had not expected that she could write such a human letter; yet -it explained Nancy’s blush. Barney’s spontaneous affection she could -have faced, but she had not been able to face his wife’s determined -tenderness. Adrienne had meant it well, no doubt—Oldmeadow gazed on -after he had finished, but she had no business to mean so well, no -business to thrust herself, in this community of intimacy, into what was -Barney’s place alone. There was more in it, he knew, with Meg and Mrs. -Averil to help him, than the quite successful playfulness. She was to be -more intimate than Barney, that was what it came to; more, much more -tender if Barney was to be allowed intimacy and tenderness. That was -really what she intended Nancy to see, and that Barney had no place at -all where she, Adrienne, did not also belong.</p> - -<p>“Very sweet; very sweet and pretty,†Mrs. Averil’s voice broke in, and -he realized that he had allowed<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> himself to drop into a grim and -tactless reverie; “I didn’t know she had such a sense of humour. -Sun-burned noses and ‘Stern daughters of the voice of God.’ Well done. I -didn’t think Adrienne would ever look as low as noses. They must be -having a delightful tour. I know black redstarts. There was one that -used to wake me every morning at four, one summer, in Normandy, with the -most foolish, creaking song; just outside my window. Give Barney my love -when you write and return my niece’s affectionate and admiring homages. -Mother Nell. I shouldn’t care to be called Mother Nell somehow.â€</p> - -<p>So Mrs. Averil’s vexation expressed itself and so she floated Nancy -along. But Nancy, long since, had pulled herself together and was able -to look at Oldmeadow, while her lashes closed together in her own smile, -and to say that she’d almost be willing to lose her nose for the sake of -hearing the new warblers. Mrs. Averil opened her “Times†and over -marmalade Nancy and Oldmeadow planned the trip that they would take some -day, when their ship came in, the three of them, a bird-trip to the -French Alps.<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII-a" id="CHAPTER_XII-a"></a>CHAPTER XII</h3> - -<p class="nind">O<small>LDMEADOW</small> sat beside Adrienne Chadwick and knew that from the other end -of the room, where he talked to Mrs. Aldesey, Barney’s eyes were on -them, though he tried to keep them off. It was the first dinner-party -the young couple had given since they had come up to town, for though -they were established at Coldbrooks in the communal family life Adrienne -seemed to find to her taste, and though Barney had at once immersed -himself in country pursuits, they had taken and furnished this large -house in Connaught Square and it was, apparently, settled that the -winter months were to be spent in London. How that was to be combined -with farming at Coldbrooks, or whether Barney intended to take a header -into politics and felt a London house, big enough for entertaining, part -of the programme, Oldmeadow hadn’t an idea, and for the rather sinister -reason that he had hardly laid his eyes on Barney since his return from -his wedding-journey. Even though asked to tea once or twice, while, -established in an hotel, they were finding and furnishing the house, he -had never found them alone and either Barney had made no opportunity, or -his wife had seen to it that none should be made, for having a -<i>tête-à -tête</i> with his old friend.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow could not associate Barney with ambitions, either social or -political, nor, he was bound to say, as he looked round the -dinner-table, where Adrienne sat at one end with Lord Lumley and Barney -at the other with Lady Lumley, could one infer<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a> from its disparate and -irrelevant elements any such ambitions in Adrienne. He had taken Mrs. -Aldesey down and had felt her at moments to be almost too resourceful, -her air of graceful skill in keeping the ball rolling seeming too much -to emphasize its tendency to drop. Without Mrs. Aldesey, without -Meg—vividly engaged at one corner with a fair young American—without -himself, for he had aided and abetted Lydia to the best of his ability, -the dinner would have been a dull one and he was not sure that even -their enterprise had redeemed it. Adrienne had not any air of fearing -dullness or of being in need of assistance. Oldmeadow saw that the blue -ribbon was frequently unrolled and that, as always, it made a silence in -which it could be watched. Lord Lumley, his handsome, official head bent -in an attitude of chivalrous devotion, watched earnestly, and the fair -young American paused in the midst of whatever he might be saying to Meg -to take almost reverent note; but Oldmeadow fancied more than once that -he caught startled eyes fixed upon it, especially when there emerged a -lustrous loop of quotation:—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Never doubted clouds would break,—â€<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>The silence for that had been so general that even Barney, far away, and -protected by Mrs. Aldesey, was aware of it.</p> - -<p>“How wonderfully he <i>wears</i>, doesn’t he, dear old Browning,†said Mrs. -Aldesey, and in the glance that Barney cast upon her was an oddly -mingled gratitude and worry. The fair young American, he was very fair -and had clear, charming eyes, finished<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> the verse in a low voice to Meg -and Meg looked at him affectionately the while. He was evidently one of -Adrienne’s appurtenances.</p> - -<p>It was a dull dinner. Pretty, festive Mrs. Pope and young Mr. Haviland, -reputed to be a wit and one of Meg’s young men as Mrs. Pope was one of -Barney’s young women, would not with any eagerness again attend a board -where the hostess quoted Browning and didn’t know better than to send -you down, the first with a stern young socialist who sat silent for the -most part and frowned when addressed, and the second with a jocular, -middle-aged lady from California, the mother, Oldmeadow gathered, of the -clear-eyed youth, from whose ample bosom Mr. Haviland’s subtle arrows -glanced aside leaving him helplessly exposed to the stout bludgeonings -of her humour. Adrienne paused once or twice in her conversation to -smile approval upon her compatriot and to draw Lord Lumley’s attention -to her special brand of merriment, good Lord Lumley adjusting his -glasses obediently to take it in.</p> - -<p>And now they were all assembled in the drawing-room. Like everything -about Adrienne, it was simple and rather splendid. Barney had wisely -kept his modernities for his own study and it was a pity, Oldmeadow -reflected, that Adrienne had not kept for her own boudoir the large -portrait of herself that hung over the mantelpiece, since it was a note -more irrelevant than any Post Impressionist could have been and cast a -shade of surmise over the taste displayed in the Chippendale furniture -and the Chinese screens.</p> - -<p>“Rather sweet, isn’t it; pastoral and girlish, you know,†Barney had -suggested tentatively as Mrs.<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> Aldesey had placed herself before it. -“Done in Paris a good many years ago; the man was very much the fashion -then. Adrienne was only sixteen. It’s an extraordinarily perfect -likeness still, isn’t it?â€</p> - -<p>To which Mrs. Aldesey, all old lace and exquisite evasion, had murmured, -her lorgnette uplifted: “Quite dear and ingenuous. Such a relief after -your arid Cubists. What would they make of Mrs. Barney <i>en bergère</i>, I’d -like to know? A jumble of packing-cases with something twisted in a -corner to signify a bleat.â€</p> - -<p>For the picture, painted with glib assurance and abounding in pink and -azure, portrayed Adrienne dressed as a shepherdess and carrying a -flower-wreathed crook.</p> - -<p>Adrienne, to-night at all events, was looking very unlike the -shepherdess, but that might be because of the approaches of her -maternity. Mrs. Chadwick, when he had last been at Coldbrooks, had told -him that the baby was expected in May and that Adrienne was wonderful -about it, dedicating herself to its perfection in thought and deed with -every conscious hour.</p> - -<p>“If only I’d thought about my babies before they came like that, who -knows what they might have turned out!†she had surmised. “But I was -very silly, I’m afraid, and the only thing I really did think of was how -I should dress them. I’ve always loved butcher’s-blue linen for children -and I must say that mine did look very nice in it. For everyday, you -know.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow found it extremely difficult to think of Adrienne as a mother; -it was much easier to think of her as a shepherdess. Such solidities of -experience<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a> gave her even a certain pathos in his eyes, though he was in -no whit dislodged from his hostility to her. She was as mild, as -satisfied, apparently, with herself and with existence, as ever, yet her -eyes and lips expressed fatigue and a purely physical sadness that was -uncharacteristic, and it was uncharacteristic that she should be rather -thickly powdered.</p> - -<p>They had not really met since the morning of her adjuration to him at -Coldbrooks and he wondered if she remembered that little scene as -vividly as he did. She would be very magnanimous did she not remember it -unpleasantly; and he could imagine her as very magnanimous; yet from the -fact that she had kept Barney from him he could not believe that she was -feeling magnanimously.</p> - -<p>She watched Barney and Mrs. Aldesey now, as they stood before her -portrait, and he fancied that the sadness in her eyes, whatever might be -its cause, deepened a little. When she turned them on him it was with an -effect of being patiently ready for him. Perhaps, really, she had been -more patient than pleased all evening.</p> - -<p>“So you are settled here for the winter?†he said. “Have you and Barney -any plans? I’ve hardly seen anything of him of late.â€</p> - -<p>“We have been so very, very busy, you know,†said Adrienne, as if quite -accepting his right to an explanation.</p> - -<p>She was dressed in pale blue and wore, with her pearl necklace, a little -wreath of pearls in her hair. In her hands she turned, as they talked, a -small eighteenth-century fan painted in pink and grey and blue, and he -was aware, as he had been at Coldbrooks,<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> of those slow and rather -fumbling movements.</p> - -<p>“We couldn’t well ask friends,†she went on, “even the dearest, to come -and sit on rolls of carpet with us while we drank our tea, could we? -We’ve kept our squalor for the family circle. Meg’s been with us; so -dear and helpful; but only Meg and a flying visit once or twice from -Mother Nell. Nancy couldn’t come. But nothing, it seems, will tear Nancy -from hunting. I feel that strange and rather sad; the absorption of a -fine young life in such primitiveness.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, well; it’s not her only interest, you know,†said Oldmeadow, very -determined not to allow himself vexation. “Nancy is a creature of such -deep country roots. Not the kind that grow in London.â€</p> - -<p>“I know,†said Adrienne. “And it is just those roots that I want to -prevent my Barney’s growing. Roots like that tie people to routine; -convention; acceptance. I want Barney to find a wider, freer life. I -hope he will go into politics. If we have left Coldbrooks and the dear -people there for these winter months it’s because I feel he will be -better able to form opinions here than in the country. I saw quite well, -there, that people didn’t form opinions; only accepted traditions. I -want Barney to be free of tradition and to form opinions for himself. He -has none now,†she smiled.</p> - -<p>She had been clear before, and secure; but he felt now the added weight -of her matronly authority. He felt, too, that, while ready for him and, -perhaps, benevolently disposed, she was far more indifferent to his -impressions than she had been at Coldbrooks. She had possessed Barney -before; but how much<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> more deeply she possessed him now and how much -more definitely she saw what she intended to do with him.</p> - -<p>“You must equip him with your opinions,†said Oldmeadow, and his voice -was a good match for hers in benevolence. “I know that you have so many -well-formed ones.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, no; never that,†said Adrienne. “That’s how country vegetables are -grown; first in frames and then in plots; all guided and controlled. He -must find his own opinions; quite for himself; quite freely of -influence. That is the rock upon which Democracy is founded. Nothing is -more arresting to development than living by other people’s opinions.â€</p> - -<p>“But we must get our opinions from somebody and somewhere. The danger of -democracy is that we don’t grow them at all; merely catch them, like -influenza, from a mob. Not that I disbelieve in democracy.â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t you, Mr. Oldmeadow?†She turned her little fan and smiled on him. -“You believe in liberty, equality, fraternity? That surprises me.â€</p> - -<p>“Democracy isn’t incompatible with recognizing that other people are -wiser than oneself and letting them guide us; quite the contrary. Why -surprised? Have I seemed so autocratic?â€</p> - -<p>“It would surprise me very much to learn that you believed in equality, -to start with that aloneâ€; Adrienne smiled on.</p> - -<p>“Well, I own that I don’t believe in people who have no capacity for -opinions being impowered to act as if they had. That’s the fallacy -that’s playing the mischief with us, all over the world.<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“They never will have opinions worth having unless they are given the -liberty to look for them. You don’t believe in liberty, either, when you -say that.â€</p> - -<p>“No; not for everybody. Some of our brothers are too young and others -too stupid to be trusted with it.â€</p> - -<p>“They’ll take it for themselves if you don’t trust them with it,†said -Adrienne, and he was again aware that though she might be absurd she, at -all events, was not stupid. “All that we can do in life is to trust, and -help, and open doors. Only experience teaches. People must follow their -own lights.â€</p> - -<p>He moved forward another pawn, and though he did not find her stupid he -was not taking her seriously. “Most people have no lights to follow. -It’s a choice for them between following other people’s or resenting and -trampling on them. That, again, is what we can see happening all over -the world.â€</p> - -<p>“So it is, you must own, just as I thought; you don’t even believe in -fraternity,†said Adrienne, and she continued to smile her weary, -tranquil smile upon him; “for we cannot feel towards men as towards -brothers, and trust them, unless we believe that the light shines into -each human soul.â€</p> - -<p>He saw now that unless they went much deeper, deeper than he could be -willing, ever, to go with Adrienne Toner, he must submit to letting -himself appear as worsted. He knew where he believed the roots of trust -to grow and he did not intend, no never, to say to Adrienne Toner that -only through the love of God could one at once distrust and love the -species to which one belonged. He could have shuddered at the thought of -what she would certainly have found to say about God.<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a></p> - -<p>“You’ve got all sorts of brothers here to-night, haven’t you,†he -remarked, putting aside the abstract theme and adjusting his glass. -“Some of them look as though they didn’t recognize the relationship. -Where did you find our young socialist over there in the corner? He -looks very menacing. Most of the socialists I’ve known have been the -mildest of men.â€</p> - -<p>“He is a friend of Palgrave’s. Palgrave brought him to see me. Oh, I’m -so glad—Gertrude is going to take care of him. She always sees at once -if anyone looks lonely. That’s all right, then.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow was not so sure it was as he observed the eye with which Mr. -Besley measured the beaming advance of the lady from California.</p> - -<p>“I wonder if you would like my dear old friend, Mrs. Prentiss,†Adrienne -continued, watching her method with Mr. Besley. “The Laughing -Philosopher, Mother used to call her. She is a very rare, strong soul. -That is her son, talking to Lady Lumley. He’s been studying architecture -in Paris for the past three years. A radiant person. Mrs. Prentiss runs -a settlement in San Francisco and has a brilliant literary and artistic -salon. She is a real force in the life of our country.â€</p> - -<p>“Why should you question my appreciation of rarity and strength? I can -see that she is very kind and that if anybody can melt Mr. Besley she -will.â€</p> - -<p>“Gertrude would have melted Diogenes,†said Adrienne with a fond -assurance that, though it took the form of playfulness, lacked its -substance. “I hope they will find each other, for he is rare and strong, -too. What he needs is warmth and happiness. He makes me think of Shelley -when he talks.<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“He’s too well up in statistics to make me think of Shelley,†Oldmeadow -commented. Barney, he saw, from his place beside Mrs. Aldesey at the -other end of the room, was still watching them, pleased now, it was -evident, by the appearance of friendly, drifting converse they -presented. “He’s not altogether unknown to me for we often, in our -review, get our windows broken by his stones; well-thrown, too. He’s -very able. So you thought it might do the British Empire good to face -him? Well, I suppose it may.â€</p> - -<p>“Which are the British Empire?†asked Adrienne. “You. To begin with.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, no. Count me out. I’m only a snappy, snuffy scribbler. Good old -Lord Lumley, of course, with all his vast, well-governed provinces -shimmering in the Indian sun behind him. And Sir Archibald, who talks so -loudly in the House. Palgrave didn’t bring him, I’ll be bound.â€</p> - -<p>“No. Lady Lumley brought him. He and Lord Lumley are certainly more than -odds and ends.†She had an air of making no attempt to meet his -badinage, if it was that, but of mildly walking past it. “They are, both -of them, rather splendid people, in spite of their limitations. They’ve -accepted tradition, you see, instead of growing opinion. That is their -only trouble. I was afraid you were going to say Mr. Haviland. He is -certainly an odd and end.â€</p> - -<p>Mr. Haviland and Mrs. Pope had found each other and were indulging in -mirthful repartee in the back drawing-room. “I feel safe with Lord -Lumley and Sir Archibald,†Adrienne added.</p> - -<p>“I’d certainly rather trust myself in their hands than in Mr. Besley’s. -I’d almost rather trust myself in the hands of Mr. Haviland.<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“You mean that they would, at least, keep you comfortable and that Mr. -Besley wouldn’t.†She, too, had her forms of repartee.</p> - -<p>“I expect it’s just what I do mean,†he assented. “If Mr. Besley and his -friends had their way, I for instance, and workers of my type, would -soon, I suspect, have to forego our tobacco and our chamber-music. We’re -only marketable in a comfortable world. And there are more comfortable -people, I maintain, under Lord Lumley, than there would be under Mr. -Besley.â€</p> - -<p>“‘Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive,’†said Adrienne. -“All revolutions must begin by burning away the evil and the refuse. Not -that I am a revolutionist, or even a socialist.â€</p> - -<p>“You can’t separate good from evil by burning,†he said. “You burn them -both. That’s what the French did in their lamentable bonfire, for which -they’ve been paying in poorer brains and poorer blood ever since. We -don’t want revolutions. All we want is slow, good-tempered reform. -Revolutions are always ill-tempered, aren’t they, and nothing worth -doing was ever done in an ill-temper. You are making me very didactic.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, but I prefer that so much to persiflage,†said Adrienne, with her -tranquillity. “And I am glad to hear what you really believe. But it is -sad to me that you should see no ardour or glory in anything. With all -its excesses and errors, I have always felt the French Revolution to be -a sublime expression of the human spirit.â€</p> - -<p>“It might have been; if they could only have kept their -heads—metaphorically as well as literally. But the glory and ardour -were too mixed with<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> hatred and ignorance. I’m afraid I do tend to -distrust those states of feeling. They tend so easily to -self-deception.â€</p> - -<p>She was looking at him, quietly and attentively, and he was, for the -first time since their initial meeting, perhaps, feeling quite -benevolently towards her; quite as the British Empire might feel towards -a subject race. It was, therefore, the more difficult to feel anything -but exasperation when she said, having, evidently, summed up her -impressions and found her verdict: “Yes. You distrust them. We always -come back to that, don’t we? You distrust yourself, too. So that, when -you tell me what you believe, you can only do it in the form of making -fun of my beliefs. I feel about you, Mr. Oldmeadow, what I felt that -morning when I tried to come near you and you wouldn’t let me. I feel it -more the more I see you; and it makes me sad. It isn’t only that you -distrust ardour and glory, all the sunlight and splendour of life; but -you are afraid of them; afraid to open your heart to trust. You shut -your door upon the sunlight and take up your caustic pen; and you don’t -see how the shadows fall about you.â€</p> - -<p>It was indeed a dusty tumble from the quite civilized pavement of their -interchange, and it was unfortunate that upon his moment of -discomfiture, when he saw himself as trying to clap the dust off his -knees and shoulders in time to be presentable, Barney and Mrs. Aldesey -should have chosen to approach them. Barney, no doubt, imagined it a -propitious moment in which to display to Mrs. Aldesey his wife’s and his -friend’s amity.</p> - -<p>Adrienne was perfectly composed. She had borne her testimony and, again, -done her best for him,<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> pointing out to him that the first step towards -enfranchisement was to open his door to the sunlight that she could so -bountifully supply. She turned a clear, competent eye upon her husband -and his companion.</p> - -<p>“Well, dear, and what have you and Roger been so deep in?†Barney -inquired, looking down at her with a fondness in which, all the same, -Oldmeadow detected the anxiety that had hovered in his eye all evening. -“You’ve seemed frightfully deep.â€</p> - -<p>“We have been,†said Adrienne, looking up at him. “In liberty, equality -and fraternity; all the things I believe in and that Mr. Oldmeadow -doesn’t. I can’t imagine how he gets on at all, he believes in so few -things. It must be such a sad, dim, groping world to live in when there -are no stars above to look at and no hands below to hold.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, well, you see,†said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile, “his -ancestors didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence.â€</p> - -<p>“We don’t need ancestors to do that,†Adrienne smiled back. “All of us -sign it for ourselves—all of us who have accepted our birthright and -taken the gifts that our great, modern, deep-hearted world hold out to -us. You are an American, Mrs. Aldesey, so you find it easy to believe in -freedom, don’t you?â€</p> - -<p>“Very easy; for myself; but not for other people,†Mrs. Aldesey replied -and Oldmeadow saw at once, with an added discomfort, that she -underestimated, because of Adrienne’s absurdity, Adrienne’s -intelligence. “But then the very name of any abstraction—freedom, -humanity, what you will—has always made me feel, at once, dreadfully -sleepy.<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a> It’s not ever having had my mind trained, Mrs. Barney. Now -yours was, beautifully, I can see.â€</p> - -<p>Adrienne looked up at her, for Mrs. Aldesey, her lace about her -shoulders, her lorgnette in her hands, had not seated herself, and it -was further evident to Oldmeadow that she weighed Mrs. Aldesey more -correctly than Mrs. Aldesey weighed her. “Very carefully, if not -beautifully,†she said. “Have I made you sleepy already? But I don’t -want to go on talking about abstractions. I want to talk about Mr. -Oldmeadow. The truth is, Barney,†and her voice, as she again turned her -eyes on her husband, had again the form but not the substance of gaiety, -“the truth is that he’s a lonely, lonely bachelor and that we ought to -arrange a marriage for him, you and I. Since he doesn’t believe in -freedom, he won’t mind having a marriage arranged, will he?—if we can -find a rare, sweet, gifted girl.â€</p> - -<p>Barney had become red. “Roger’s been teasing you, darling. Nobody -believes in freedom more. Don’t let him take you in. He’s an awful old -humbug with his Socratic method. He upsets you before you know where you -are. He’s always been like that.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; hasn’t he,†Mrs. Aldesey murmured.</p> - -<p>“But he hasn’t upset me at all,†said Adrienne. “I grant that he was -trying to, that he was doing his very best to give me a tumble; but I -quite see through him and he doesn’t conceal himself from me in the very -least. He doesn’t really believe in freedom, however much he may have -taken <i>you</i> in, Barney; he’d think it wholesome, of course, that you -should believe in it. That’s his idea, you see; to give people what he -thinks wholesome; to choose for them. It’s the lack of faith all -through. But the reason is that<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a> he’s lonely; dreadfully lonely, and -because of that he’s grown to be, as he says, snappy and snuffy; so that -we must borrow a page from his book and find what is wholesome for him. -I know all the symptoms so well. I’ve had friends just like that. It’s a -starved heart and having nobody to be fonder of than anyone else; no one -near at all. He must be happily married as soon as possible. A happy -marriage is the best gift of life, isn’t it, Mrs. Aldesey? If we haven’t -known that we haven’t known our best selves, have we?â€</p> - -<p>“It may be; we mayn’t have,†said Mrs. Aldesey, cheerfully; but she was -not liking it. “I can’t say. Am I to have a hand in choosing his bride? -I know his tastes, I think. We’re quite old friends, you see.â€</p> - -<p>“No one who doesn’t believe in freedom for other people may help to -choose her,†said Adrienne, with a curious blitheness. “That’s why he -mayn’t choose her himself. We must go quite away to find her; away from -ceilings and conventions and out into the sunlight. I don’t believe -happiness is found under ceilings. And it’s what we all need more than -anything else. Even tobacco and chamber-music don’t make you a bit -happy, do they, Mr. Oldmeadow? and if one isn’t happy one can’t know -anything about anything. Not really.â€</p> - -<p>“Alas!†sighed Mrs. Aldesey, keeping up her end, but not very -successfully, while Barney fixed his eyes upon his wife. “And I thought -I’d found it this evening, under this ceiling. Well, I shall cherish my -illusion, since you tell me it’s only that, and thank you for it, Mrs. -Barney. The Lumleys are going to give me a lift and I see that their car -has been announced.<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Stay on a bit, Roger,†Barney murmured, as the Lumleys approached. -“I’ve seen nothing of you for ages.â€</p> - -<p>Adrienne rose to greet her parting guests.</p> - -<p>“Darling Adrienne, good-night. It’s been perfectly delightful, your -little party,†said Lady Lumley, who was large, light and easily -pleased; an English equivalent of the lady from California, but without -the sprightliness. “Your dear young Mr. Prentiss is a treasure. He’s -been telling me about Sicilian temples. We <i>must</i> get there one day. -Mrs. Prentiss says they will come to us for a week-end before they go. -How extraordinarily interesting she is. Don’t forget that you are coming -on the fifteenth.â€</p> - -<p>“I shall get up a headache, first thing!†Lord Lumley stated in a loud, -jocular whisper, reverting to a favourite jest on Adrienne’s powers. -“That’s the thing to go in for, eh? I won’t let Charlie cut me out this -time. Not a night’s sleep till you come!â€</p> - -<p>“Go in for as many as you like, dear Lord Lumley,†said Adrienne, -smiling her assurance of being able to deal with a series.</p> - -<p>“Good-night, Mrs. Barney,†said Mrs. Aldesey. “Leave me a little -standing-room under the stars, won’t you.â€</p> - -<p>“There’s always standing-room under the stars,†said Adrienne. “We don’t -exclude each other there.â€</p> - -<p>The party showed no other signs of breaking up. The Laughing Philosopher -had melted, or, at all events, mastered Mr. Besley, and talked to him -with, now and again, a maternal hand laid on his knee. Mr. Haviland and -Mrs. Pope still laughed in the back drawing-room, Meg and Mr. Prentiss -had<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> come together again and Sir Archibald was engaged with a pretty -girl. After looking around upon them all, Adrienne, with the appearance -of a deeper fatigue, sank back upon her sofa.</p> - -<p>“You know, darling,†Barney smiled candidly upon his wife, “you rather -put your foot in it just now. Mrs. Aldesey’s marriage isn’t happy. I -ought to have warned you.â€</p> - -<p>“How do you mean not happy, Barney?†Adrienne looked up at him. “Isn’t -Mr. Aldesey dead?â€</p> - -<p>“Not at all dead. She left him some years ago, didn’t she, Roger? He -lives in New York. It’s altogether a failure.â€</p> - -<p>Adrienne looked down at her fan. “I didn’t know. But one can’t avoid -speaking of success sometimes, even to failures.â€</p> - -<p>“Of course not. Another time you will know.â€</p> - -<p>Adrienne seemed to meditate, but without compunction. “That was what she -meant, then, by saying she believed in freedom for herself but not for -other people.â€</p> - -<p>“Meant? How do you mean? She was joking.â€</p> - -<p>“If she left him. It was she who left him?â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t know anything about it,†Barney spoke now with definite -vexation and Oldmeadow, in his corner of the sofa, his arms folded, his -eyes on the cornice, gave him no help. “Except that, yes, certainly; -it’s she who left him. She’s not a deserted wife. Anything but.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s only Mr. Aldesey who is the deserted husband,†Adrienne turned her -fan and kept her eyes on it. “It’s only he who can’t be free. Forgive me -if she’s a special friend of yours, Mr. Oldmeadow; but it explains. I -felt something so brittle, so unreal in<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a> her, charming and gracious as -she is. It is so very wrong for a woman to do that, I think.â€</p> - -<p>“Wrong?†Barney echoed, staring at Oldmeadow while this firm hand was -laid upon his Egeria. “What the dickens do you mean, darling? She is a -special friend of Roger’s. You don’t surely mean to say a woman must, -under all circumstances, stick to a man she doesn’t love?â€</p> - -<p>“Anything but that, Barney. I think that she should leave him and set -him free. It’s quite plain to me that if a wife will not live with her -husband it is her duty to divorce him. Then, at any rate, he can try for -happiness again.â€</p> - -<p>“Divorce him, my dear child!†Barney was trying to keep up appearances -but the note of marital severity came through and as it sounded Adrienne -raised her eyes to his: “It’s not so easy as all that! Aldesey, whatever -his faults, may have given her no cause to divorce him, and I take it -you’ll not suggest that Mrs. Aldesey should give him cause to divorce -her.â€</p> - -<p>On her sofa, more pallid under her powder, more sunken than before, and -with the queer squashed-in look emphasized, Adrienne kept steady eyes -uplifted to her husband. “Not at all, dear Barney,†she returned and -Oldmeadow, though hardened against the pathos of her physical -disability, saw that she spoke with difficulty, “but I think that you -confuse the real with the conventional wrong. Mrs. Aldesey would not -care to face any unconventionality; that is quite apparent. She would -draw her skirts aside from any conventional wrong-doing. But the real -wrong she would be blind to; the wrong of keeping anyone bound in the -emptiness you have<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> made for them. Setting free is not so strange and -terrible a matter as you seem to imagine. It’s quite easy for brave, -unshackled people.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, I must really be off,†Oldmeadow now seized the occasion to -declare. “I believe, as a matter of fact, that Mr. Aldesey lives very -contentedly in New York, collecting French prints and giving excellent -dinners. Anything open and scandalous would be as distasteful to him as -to his wife. They are, both of them, happier apart; that’s all it comes -to. So you must read your lessons, even by proxy, to more authentic -misdemeanants, Mrs. Barney. All right, Barney. Don’t come down. I’ll -hope to see you both again quite soon.â€</p> - -<p>So he got away, concealing as best he might, his sense of tingling -anger. But it died away to a sense of chill as he walked down Park Lane. -Was not Barney unhappy, already? What did she say to him when she got -him to herself? He felt sure that she had never bargained for a husband -who could look at her with ill-temper.<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIII-a" id="CHAPTER_XIII-a"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h3> - -<p class="nind">“R<small>OGER</small>, see here, I’ve only come to say one word—about the absurd -little-matter of last night. Only one; and then we’ll never speak of it -again,†said poor Barney.</p> - -<p>He had come as soon as the very next day—to exonerate, not to -apologize; that was evident at once. Oldmeadow had not long to wait -before learning what she had said to him when she got him to herself, -nor long to wait before realizing that if Barney had been unhappy last -night he thought himself happy to-day.</p> - -<p>“Really, my dear boy,†he said, “it’s not worth talking about.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, but we must talk about it,†said Barney. He was red and spoke -quickly. “It upset her frightfully; it made her perfectly miserable. She -cried for hours, Roger,†Barney’s voice dropped to a haggard note. “You -know, though she bears up so marvellously, she’s ill. She doesn’t admit -illness and that makes it harder for her, because it simply bewilders -her when she finds herself on edge like this and her body refusing to -obey her. The baby is coming in May, you know.â€</p> - -<p>“I know, my dear Barney. The evening was very fatiguing for her. I saw -it all I think. I noticed from the beginning how tired she looked.â€</p> - -<p>“Horribly tired. Horribly fatiguing. I’m glad you saw it. For that’s -really what I came to explain. She was tired to begin with and Mrs. -Aldesey put her on edge. I think I saw that myself at <a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a>dinner—and, oh, -before that; on the day we had tea with her, when we first came up, in -November—Adrienne felt then that Mrs. Aldesey didn’t understand or care -for her. You know she is so full of love and sympathy for everybody -herself that she is literally sickened when she is treated in that -artificial, worldly way. And you know, Roger, Mrs. Aldesey <i>is</i> -artificial and worldly.â€</p> - -<p>That was how she had put it to Barney, of course. But Oldmeadow saw -further than Mrs. Aldesey and her artificiality. He saw a dishevelled -and weeping Adrienne stricken to the heart by the sense of threatened -foundations, aghast by what she had seen in her husband’s eyes; and he -was aware, even while he resented having it put upon Lydia, of a -curious, reluctant pity for the pale, weeping figure. Lydia had, -obviously, displeased her; but Lydia had been the mere occasion; she -could have dealt easily enough with Lydia. It had been the revelation -that Barney could oppose her, could almost, for a moment, dislike her, -that had set her universe rocking. Her first taste of reality, then. The -thought came rather grimly, with the pity. After all it was their best -chance of happiness; that she should learn to accept herself as a person -who could be opposed, even disliked, in flashes, while still loved. He -had sat silent while he thought, one of his silences which, when he -emerged from them, he often recognized as over-long. Barney must have -felt the weight of all he did not say when all that he found to say was: -“What it comes to, doesn’t it, is that they neither of them take much to -each other. Lydia is certainly conventional.â€</p> - -<p>“Ah, but Lady Lumley is conventional, too,<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a>†said Barney with an -irrepressible air of checkmate. “Hordes of conventional people adore -Adrienne. It’s a question of the heart. There are people who are -conventional without being worldly. It’s worldliness that stifles -Adrienne. It’s what she was saying last night: ‘They have only ceilings; -I must have the sky.’ Not that she thinks <i>you</i> worldly, dear old boy.â€</p> - -<p>“I hope you try to interpret me to her kindly,†said Oldmeadow, smiling. -Even at the moment when Barney, all innocently, was revealing to him -Adrienne’s tactics, the fragments of her vocabulary imbedded in his -speech were affording him amusement. “You must try and persuade her that -I’ve quite a fondness for the sky myself, and even published a volume of -verse in my youth.â€</p> - -<p>“I do. Of course I do,†said Barney eagerly. “And I gave her your poems, -long ago. She loved them. It’s your sardonic pessimism she doesn’t -understand—in anyone who could have written like that when they were -young. She never met anything like it before in her life. And the way -you never seem to take anything seriously. It makes her dreadfully sorry -for you, even while she finds it so hard to accept in anyone she cares -for—because she really does so care for you, Roger‗there was a note -of appeal in Barney’s voice—“and does so long to find a way out for -you. It was a joke, of course; but all the same we’ve often wished you -could find the right woman to marry.â€</p> - -<p>Barney, as he had done last night, grew very red again, so that it was -apparent to Oldmeadow that not only the marriage but the woman—the -rare, gifted girl—had been discussed between him and his wife.<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a></p> - -<p>“Adrienne thinks everyone ought to be married, you see,†he tried to -pass it off. “Since we are so happy ourselves.â€</p> - -<p>“I see,†said Oldmeadow. “There’s another thing you must try to persuade -her of: that I’m not at all <i>un jeune homme à marier</i>, and that if I -ever seek a companion it will probably be some one like myself, some one -sardonic and pessimistic. If I fixed my affections on the lovely girl, -you see, it isn’t likely they’d be reciprocated.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, but‗Barney’s eagerness again out-stepped his -discretion—“wouldn’t the question of money count there, Roger? If she -had plenty of money, you know, or you had; enough for both; and a place -in the country? Of course, it’s all fairy-tale; but Adrienne is a -fairy-tale person; material things don’t count with her at all. She -waves them away and wants other people to wave them away, too. What she -always says is: ‘What does my money <i>mean</i> unless it’s to open doors for -people I love?’ She’s starting that young Besley, you know, just because -of Palgrave; setting him up as editor of a little review—rotten it is, -I think—but Adrienne says people must follow their own lights. And it’s -just that; she’d love to open doors for you, if it could make you -happy.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow at this, after a moment of receptivity, began to laugh softly; -but the humour of the situation grew upon him until he at last threw -back his head and indulged in open and prolonged mirth. Barney watched -him bashfully. “You’re not angry, I see,†he ventured. “You don’t think -it most awful cheek, I mean?â€</p> - -<p>“I think it is most awful cheek; but I’m not angry;<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a> not a bit,†said -Oldmeadow. “Fairy-godmothers are nothing if not cheeky; are they? Oh, I -know you meant your, not her, cheek. But it’s the fault of the -fairy-godmother, all the same, and you must convince her that I’m not in -love with anybody, and that if ever I am she’ll have to content herself -with my small earnings and a flat in Chelsea.â€</p> - -<p>So he jested; but, when his friend was gone, he realized that he was a -little angry all the same and he feared that his mirth had not been able -to conceal from Barney that what he really found it was confounded -impudence. Barney’s face had worn, as he departed, the look of mingled -gratitude and worry and Barney must feel, as well as he felt, that their -interview hadn’t really cleared up anything—except his own readiness to -overlook the absurdities of Barney’s wife. What became more and more -clear to himself was that unless he could enable Adrienne to enroll his -name on her banner she would part him from Barney and that her very -benevolence was a method. The more he thought of it the more -uncomfortable he felt, and his inner restlessness became at length an -impulse urging him out to take counsel or, rather, seek solace, with the -friend from whom Adrienne could never part him. He would go and have tea -with Lydia Aldesey and with the more eagerness from the fact that he was -aware of a slight dissatisfaction in regard to Lydia. She had not -altogether pleased him last night. She had put herself in the wrong; she -had blundered; she hadn’t behaved with the skill and tact requisite; and -to elicit from her a confession of ineptitude would make his sense of -solace the more secure.</p> - -<p>The day was a very different day from the one in<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> April when he had -first gone to ask Mrs. Aldesey for information about people called -Toner. It was early February, dull and cold and damp. No rain was -falling, but the trees were thick with moisture and Oldmeadow had his -hands deep in his pockets and the collar of his coat turned up about his -ears. As he crossed the Serpentine, an electric brougham passed him, -going slowly, and he had a glimpse within it, short but very vivid, of -Adrienne, Meg, and Captain Hayward.</p> - -<p>Adrienne, wearing a small arrangement of black velvet that came down -over her brows, was holding Meg’s hand and, while she spoke, was looking -steadily at her, her face as white as that of a Pierrot. Meg listened, -gloomily it seemed, and Captain Hayward’s handsome countenance, turned -for refuge towards the window, showed an extreme embarrassment.</p> - -<p>They passed and Oldmeadow pursued his way, filled with a disagreeable -astonishment though, absurdly, his mind was at first occupied only in an -attempt to recover a submerged memory that Captain Hayward’s demeanour -suggested. It came at last in an emancipating flash and he saw again, -after how many years, the golden-brown head of his rather silly setter, -John, turned aside in shy yet dignified repudiation, that still, by a -dim, sick smile, attempted to conceal distress and to enter into the -spirit of the game—as a kitten was held up for his contemplation. A -kitten was a very inadequate analogy, no doubt, for the theme of -Adrienne’s discourse; yet Captain Hayward’s reaction to a situation for -which he found himself entirely unprepared was markedly like John’s. And -he, like John, had<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> known that the game was meant to be at his expense. -John and Captain Hayward got Oldmeadow out of the park before he had -taken full possession of his astonishment and could ask himself why, if -Adrienne were engaged in rescuing Meg from her illicit attachment, she -should do it in the company of the young man. Yet, strangely enough, he -felt, as he walked, a growing sense of reassurance. For an emergency -like this, after all, given amenable subjects, Adrienne was the right -person. He hadn’t dreamed it to be such an emergency; but since it was, -Adrienne would pull them through. As she would have laid her hand on the -head of Bacchus and reformed him, so she would lay it on the head of -Captain Hayward.<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIV-a" id="CHAPTER_XIV-a"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h3> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> incident put Mrs. Aldesey quite out of his mind, and it was not till -he stood on her doorstep and rang her bell that he remembered his -grievance against her and realized that it had been made more definite -by this glimpse of Adrienne’s significance. That his friend was prepared -for him was evident at his first glance; she had even, he saw, been -expecting him, for she broke out at once with: “Oh, my dear Roger—what -<i>are</i> you going to do with her?â€</p> - -<p>He was actually pleased to find himself putting her, with some grimness, -in her place. “What is she going to do with us? you mean. You underrate -Mrs. Barney’s capacity, let me tell you, my dear friend.â€</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Aldesey was not easily quelled. “Underrate her! Not I! She’s a -Juggernaut if ever there was one. Her capacity is immense. She’ll roll -on and she’ll crush flat. That poor Barney! She is as blind as a -Juggernaut, but <i>he</i> will come to see—alas! he is seeing -already—though you and I danced round him with veils and cymbals—that -people won’t stand being pelted with platitudes from soup to dessert. -The Lumleys will, of course; it’s their natural diet; though even they -like their platitudes served with a touch of <i>sauce piquante</i>; but -Rosamund Pope told me that she felt black and blue all over and Cuthbert -Haviland—malicious toad—imitates her already to perfection: dreadful -little voice, dreadful little smile, dreadful little quotations and all. -It will be one of his London<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> gags. That shepherdess! My dear Roger, -don’t pretend to me that <i>you</i> don’t see it!â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow, sunken in the chair opposite her, surveyed her over his -clasped hands with an air of discouragement.</p> - -<p>“What I’m most seeing at the moment is that she’s made you angry,†he -remarked. “If what you say were all the truth, why should she make you -angry? She’s not as blind as a Juggernaut. That’s where you made your -mistake. She’ll only crush the people who don’t lie down before her. She -knows perfectly well where she is going—and over whom. So be careful, -that is my advice, and keep out of her way; unless you want to lose a -toe or a finger.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Aldesey showed, at this, that he had arrested her. In spite of the -element of truth in Adrienne’s verdict upon her he knew her to be, when -veils and cymbals were cast aside, a sincere and gallant creature. She -did not attempt to hide from him now and, after a moment of mutual -contemplation, she laughed a little, with not unreal mirth and said: “I -suppose I am angry. I suppose I’m even spiteful. It’s her patronage, you -know. Her suffocating superiority. To have to stand there, for his sake, -and <i>take</i> it! You overrate her, Roger. No woman not abysmally stupid -could say the things she says.â€</p> - -<p>“Your mistake again. She’s able to say them because she’s never met -irony or criticism. She’s not stupid,†he found his old verdict. “Only -absurd. You know, you gave yourself away to her. You showed her what you -thought of her. You patronized <i>her</i>.â€</p> - -<p>“Is <i>no</i> retaliation permitted?†Mrs. Aldesey moaned. “Must one accept -it all? Be scourged with the stars and Browning and then bow one’s head -to<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> her caresses? After all, Barney is your friend, not mine, and it’s -as your friend that I’ve tried to be decent to his wife. But she hates -me like poison. She gave herself away, too, you know. I liked the way -she excluded me from her prospects for your welfare. And of course she -knew my marriage wasn’t a happy one.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t think that she did. No; I don’t think so. You <i>are</i> poison to -her—cold poison,†said Oldmeadow. “Don’t imagine for a moment she -didn’t see that you were dancing about him with veils and cymbals. She -didn’t give herself away, for she had nothing to conceal. She was candid -and you weren’t. She didn’t pretend that you were under the stars with -her; while you kept up appearances.â€</p> - -<p>“But what’s to become of your Barney if we don’t keep them up!†Mrs. -Aldesey cried. “Is he to be allowed to see that nobody can stand -her—except people he can’t stand? He’ll have to live, then, with Mrs. -and Mr. Prentiss. Did you try to talk to Mrs. Prentiss? Do you know that -she told me that death was ‘perfectly sublime’?â€</p> - -<p>“Perhaps it is. Perhaps she’ll find it so. They all seem to think well -of death, out in California‗Oldmeadow allowed himself to relax from -his admonitory severity. “Mrs. Prentiss isn’t as silly as she seems, I -expect. And you exaggerate Barney’s sensitiveness. He’d get on very well -with Mrs. Prentiss if you weren’t there to show him you found her a -bore. He has a very simple side and we must hope it may become simpler. -The only chance for Barney, I see it more and more, is that we should -efface ourselves as much as possible. The people who find the Prentisses -a bore, I mean. And it won’t be difficult<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> for us to do that. She will -see to it that we are effaced. Only, of course, it’s a grief. I’m so -fond of himâ€; and as Oldmeadow stretched forth his legs and put his -hands in his pockets there drifted across his mind, in a thin, sharp, -knife-like stroke, the memory of Barney—tall eighteen-year-old -Barney—with dear old Effie, luxuriously upturned in his arms, being -softly scratched—Barney’s hand with a cat was that of an expert—and -told that she was the best and most beautiful of cats.</p> - -<p>“It’s a great shame,†said Mrs. Aldesey; “I’ve been thinking my spiteful -thoughts, too, instead of sympathizing with you. Of course, if it’s any -consolation to you, one usually does lose one’s friends when they marry. -But it needn’t have been as bad as this. What a thousand pities he -couldn’t have fallen in love with a nice girl of his own kind. You -couldn’t do anything about it when you went down in the spring?â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow had never said anything to Mrs. Aldesey about his hopes for -Nancy. He had a secretive instinct for keeping his friendships in -compartments and discussed only those portions that overflowed. -“Nothing,†he said. “And the mischief was that I went down hostile, as -you warned me against doing. Barney saw at once that I didn’t care for -her; and she saw it at once. He even forced a sort of expression of -opinion from me and I know now that it’s always glooming there at the -back of his mind when he sees me. It was quite useless. Once he’d fallen -under her spell it was all up with him. She has her singular power and, -for a man in love with her, her singular charm. Even I, you know, -understand that.<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Aldesey contemplated him. “I confess I can’t,†she said. “She is so -desperately usual. I’ve seen her everywhere, ever since I can remember. -Attending lectures at the Sorbonne; listening to Wagner at Bayreuth; -having dresses tried on at Worth’s; sitting in the halls of a hundred -European hotels. She is the most unescapable form of the American woman; -only not <i>du peuple</i> because of the money and opportunity that has also -extirpated everything racy, provincial and individual.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,†said Oldmeadow. He mused, his hands clasped behind his -head. “She’s given me all sorts of new insights.†His eyes, after his -wont, were on the cornice and his friend’s contemplation, relaxed a -little from its alert responsiveness, allowed itself a certain -conjectural softness as she watched him. “I feel,†he went on, “since -knowing her, that I understand America, her America, better than you do. -You’re engaged in avoiding rather than in understanding it, aren’t you? -What you underrate, what Americans of your type don’t see—because, as -you say, it’s so oppressively usual—is the power of her type. If it is -a type; if she is as ordinary as you say. It’s something bred into them -by the American assumption of the fundamental rightness of life; a -confidence unknown before in the history of the world. An individual, -not an institutional or social, confidence. They do, actually, seem to -take their stand on the very universe itself. Whereas the rest of us -have always had churches or classes to uphold us. They have all the -absurdities and crudities of mere individualism. They have all the -illusions of their ignorance. Yet I sometimes imagine, after I’ve seen -her, that it’s a power we haven’t in the<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a> least taken into our -reckoning. Isn’t it the only racial thing that America has produced—the -only thing that makes them a race? It makes them independent of us, when -we’ve always imagined, in our complacency, that they were dependent. It -enables them to take what we have to give, but to do with it what they, -not we, think best. And by Jove, who knows how far it will carry them! -Not you, my dear Lydia. You’ll stay where you are—with us.â€</p> - -<p>His eyes had come back and down to her, and her gaze resumed its -alertness and showed him that she found the picture he drew disquieting. -“You mean it’s a new kind of civilization that will menace ours?â€</p> - -<p>“It’s not a civilization; that’s just what it’s not. It’s a state of -mind. Perhaps it will menace us. Perhaps it does. We’ve underrated it; -of that I’m sure; and underrated power is always dangerous. It will be -faith without experience against experience without faith. What we must -try for, if we’re not to be worsted, is to have both—to keep experience -and to keep faith, too. Only so shall we be able to hold our own against -Mrs. Barney. And even so we shan’t be able to prevent her doing things -to us—and for us. She’ll do things for us that we can’t do for -ourselves.†His mind reverted to the faces of the brougham. “In that way -she’s bound to worst us. We’ll have to accept things from her.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow’s eyes had gone back to the cornice and, in the silence that -followed, Mrs. Aldesey, as she sat with folded arms, played absently -with the lace ruffle at her wrist. The lace was an heirloom, like her -rings, and the contemplation of them may have afforded her some -sustainment. “She’s made you feel all that, then,†she remarked. “With -her<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> crook and her hat and her rose-wreathed lamb. If such a sardonic -old lion as you does really grow bodeful before the rose-wreathed lamb -there is, I own, reason to fear for the future. I’m glad I’m growing -old. It would hurt me to see her cutting your claws.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, she won’t hurt us!†Oldmeadow smiled at her. “It’s rather we who -will hurt her—by refusing to lie down with her lamb. If that’s any -comfort to you.â€</p> - -<p>“Not in the least. I’m not being malicious. You don’t call it hurt, -then, to be effaced?â€</p> - -<p>“Smothered in rose-leaves, eh?†he suggested. “It would be suffocating -rather than suffering. She does give me that feeling. But you’ll make -her suffer—you have, you know—rather than she you.â€</p> - -<p>“I really don’t know about that,†said Mrs. Aldesey. “You make me quite -uncomfortable, Roger. You make me superstitious. She’s done that to me -already. I refuse to take her seriously, but I shall avoid her. That’s -what it comes to. Like not giving the new moon a chance to look at you -over your left shoulder.<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XV-a" id="CHAPTER_XV-a"></a>CHAPTER XV</h3> - -<p class="nind">O<small>N</small> a morning in early March Oldmeadow found, among the letters waiting -for him on his breakfast-table, one from Nancy. Nancy and he, with all -their fondness, seldom wrote to each other and he was aware, on seeing -her writing, of the presage of something disagreeable that the -unexpected often brings.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Dear Roger,†he read, and in his first glance he saw his presage -fulfilled. “We are in great trouble. Aunt Eleanor has asked me to -write because she is too ill and it is to me as well as to her that -Meg has written and she wants you to see Barney at once. Here are -Meg’s letters. She has gone away with Captain Hayward. Aunt Eleanor -and Mother think that Barney may be able to persuade Adrienne to -bring her back. No one else, we feel convinced, will have any -influence with her. Do anything, anything you can, dear Roger. -Mother and I are almost frightened for Aunt Eleanor. She walks -about wringing her hands and crying, and she goes up to Meg’s room -and opens the door and looks in—as if she could not believe she -would not find her there. It is heart-breaking to see her. We -depend on you, dear Roger.</p> - -<p class="r"> -“Yours ever <br /> -“<span class="smcap">Nancy</span>.â€</p> -</div> - -<p>“Good Lord!†Oldmeadow muttered while, in lightning flashes, there -passed across his mind the face of John the setter and a Pierrot’s face, -white<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a> under a low line of black velvet. He took up Meg’s letters, -written from a Paris hotel.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Darling Mother</span>, I know it will make you frightfully miserable and -I can’t forgive myself for that; but it had to be. Eric and I cared -too much and it wasn’t life at all, going on as we were apart. Try, -darling Mother, to see it as we do see things nowadays. Adrienne -will explain it all—and you must believe her. You know what a -saint she is and she has been with us in it all, understanding -everything and helping us to be straight. Everything will come -right. Iris Hayward will set Eric free, of course; she doesn’t care -one bit for him and has made him frightfully unhappy ever since -they married, and she wants to marry some one else herself—only of -course she’d never be brave enough to do it this way. When Eric is -free, we will marry at once and come home, and, you will see, there -are so many sensible people nowadays; we shall not have a bad time -at all. Everything will come right, I’m sure; and even if it -didn’t, in that conventional way—I could not give him up. No one -will ever love me as he does.</p> - -<p class="r"> -“Your devoted child <br /> -“<span class="smcap">Meg</span>.â€</p></div> - -<p>That was the first: the second ran:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Dearest Nancy</span>,—I know you’ll think it frightfully wrong; you are -such an old-fashioned little dear and you told me often enough that -I oughtn’t to see so much of Eric. Only of course that couldn’t -have prepared you for this and I expect Aunt Monica won’t let you -come and stay with us for ages. Never mind; when you marry, you’ll -see, I’m sure.<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a> Love is the <i>only</i> thing, really. But I should hate -to feel I’d lost you and I’m sure I haven’t. I want to ask you, -Nancy dear, to do all you can to make Mother <i>take</i> it. I feel, -just because you will think it so wrong, that you may be more good -to her than Adrienne—who doesn’t think it wrong at all—at least -not in Mother’s way. It would be frightfully unfair if Mother -blamed Adrienne. She did all she could to show us where we stood -and to make us play the game, and it would be pretty hard luck if -people were to be down on her now because we <i>have</i> played it. We -might have been really rotters if it hadn’t been for Adrienne; -cheats and hypocrites, I mean; stealing our happiness. I know -Adrienne can bring Barney round. It’s only Mother who troubles me, -just because she is such a child that it’s almost impossible to -make her see reason. She doesn’t recognize right and wrong unless -they’re in the boxes she’s accustomed to. Everything is in a box -for poor, darling old Mummy. But I mustn’t go on. Be the dear old -pal you always have and help me out as well as you can.</p> - -<p class="r"> -“Your loving <br /> -“<span class="smcap">Meg</span>.â€</p> -</div> - -<p>“Good Lord,†Oldmeadow muttered once more. He pushed back his chair and -rose from the table in the bright spring sunlight. He had the feeling, -almost paternal, of disgrace and a public stripping. He saw Eleanor -Chadwick stopping at Meg’s door to look in at the forsaken room, -distraught in her grief and incomprehension. He saw Nancy’s pale, -troubled face and Monica Averil’s, pinched and dry in its sober dismay. -And then again, lighted by a<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> flare at once tawdry and menacing, the -face of Adrienne Toner, the intruder, the insufferable meddler and -destroyer, a Pierrot among fire-works that had, at last, set fire to the -house. He found a taxi on the Embankment and drove to Connaught Square. -Freshly decorated with window-boxes, the pleasant, spacious house had a -specially smiling air of welcome, but the butler’s demeanour told him -that something of the calamity had already penetrated. Adrienne, if she -had not heard before, would have had her letters; Barney, who had been -kept in the dark, would have been enlightened, and the irrepressible -exclamations that must have passed between them seemed dimly reflected -on the man’s formal countenance. Mrs. Chadwick, he told Oldmeadow, was -breakfasting upstairs with Mr. Chadwick, and he ushered him into -Barney’s study.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow waited for some time among the Post Impressionist pictures, -one of which remained for ever afterwards vividly fixed in his memory of -the moment; a chaotic yet determined picture; featureless yet, as it -were, conveying through its unrecognizable elements the meaning of a -grin. And, as he stood in the centre of the room and looked away from -the derisive canvas, he saw on Barney’s desk photographs of Adrienne, -three photographs of her; one as a child, a sickly looking but beaming -child; one in early girlhood, singularly childlike still; and one in her -bridal dress of only the other day, it seemed, mild and radiant in her -unbecoming veil and wreath.</p> - -<p>It was Barney who came to him. Poor Barney. He was more piteously boyish -than ever before to his friend’s eye; so beautifully arrayed, all in -readiness<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> for a happy London day with his angel, so pale, so haggard -and perplexed. “Look here, Roger,†were his first words, “do you mind -coming upstairs to Adrienne’s room? She’s not dressed yet; not very -well, you know. You’ve heard, then, too?â€</p> - -<p>“I’ve just heard from Nancy. Why upstairs? I’d rather not. We’d better -talk this over alone, Barney. All the more if your wife isn’t well.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; yes; I know. I told her it would be better. But she insists.â€</p> - -<p>The effect of a general misery Barney gave was heightened now by his -unhappy flush. “She doesn’t want us to talk it over without her, you -see. She comes into it all too much. From Nancy, did you say? What’s -Nancy got to do with this odious affair?â€</p> - -<p>“Only what Meg has put upon her—to interpret her as kindly as she can -to your mother. Here are the letters. I’d really rather not go -upstairs.â€</p> - -<p>“I know you’ll hold Adrienne responsible—partly at least. She expects -that. She knows that I do, too; she’s quite prepared. I only heard half -an hour ago and of course it knocked me up frightfully. Meg! My little -sister! Why she’s hardly more than a child!â€</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid she’s a good deal more than a child. I’m afraid we can’t -hold Meg to be not responsible, though, obviously, she’d never have -taken such a step unaided and unabetted. Just read these letters, -Barney; it won’t take a moment to decide what’s best to be done. I’ll go -down to your mother and you must be off, at once, to Paris, and see if -you can fetch Meg back.â€</p> - -<p>But after Barney, with a hesitating hand and an<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a> uncertain glance, had -taken the letters and begun to read them, the door was opened with -decorous deliberation and Adrienne’s French maid appeared, the tall, -sallow, capable-looking woman whom Oldmeadow remembered having seen at -Coldbrooks a year ago.</p> - -<p>“Madame requests that <i>ces Messieurs</i> should come up at once; she awaits -them,†Joséphine announced in unemphatic but curiously potent accents. -Adrienne’s potency, indeed, was of a sort that flowed through all her -agents and Oldmeadow thought that he detected, in the melancholy gaze -bent upon Barney, reprobation for his failure to attain the standard set -for him by a devotion wholehearted and reverential. Mrs. Chadwick, he -remembered, had said that Adrienne’s maid adored her.</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes. We’re coming at once, Joséphine,†said Barney. Reading the -letters as he went, he moved to the door and Oldmeadow found himself, -perforce, following.</p> - -<p>He had not yet visited the morning-room and even before his eyes rested -on Adrienne they saw, hanging above her head where she sat on a little -sofa, a full-length portrait of Mrs. Toner; in white, standing against a -stone balustrade and holding lilies; seagulls above her and a background -of blue sea.</p> - -<p>Adrienne was also in white, but she wore over her long, loose dress a -little jacket of pink silk edged with swan’s down and the lace cap -falling about her neck was rosetted with pink ribbon. It was curious to -see her in this almost frivolous array, recalling the shepherdess, when -her face expressed, for the<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a> first time in his experience of her, an -anger and an agitation all the more apparent for its control. She was -pale yet flushed, odd streaks of colour running up from her throat and -dying in the pallor of her cheeks. Her condition had evidently much -affected her complexion and her nose, through its layer of powder, -showed a pinched and reddened tint. It made Oldmeadow uncomfortable to -look at her; her mask of calm was held at such a cost; she was at once -so determinedly herself and so helplessly altered; and it was not with -an automatic courtesy only that he went up to her and held out his hand. -An impulse of irrelevant yet irrepressible pity stirred him.</p> - -<p>She had fixed her eyes on him as he entered, but now looking at her -husband and not moving, she said: “I do not think you want to take my -hand, Mr. Oldmeadow. You will think me a criminal too, as Barney does.â€</p> - -<p>“Darling! Don’t talk such nonsense!†Barney cried. “I haven’t blamed -you, not by a word. I know you’ve done what you think right. Look, -darling; Roger has had these letters. Just read them. You see what Meg -writes—there—to Nancy—about your having done all you could to keep -them straight. You haven’t been fair to yourself in talking to me just -now.â€</p> - -<p>Adrienne, without speaking, took the letters and Oldmeadow moved away to -the window and stood looking down at the little garden at the back of -the house where a tall almond-tree delicately and vividly bloomed -against the pale spring sky. He heard behind him the flicker of the fire -in the grate, the pacing of Barney’s footsteps as he walked up<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a> and -down, and the even turning of the pages in Adrienne’s hands. Then he -heard her say: “Meg contradicts nothing that I have said to you, Barney. -She writes bravely and truly; as I knew that she would write.â€</p> - -<p>Barney stopped in his pacing. “But darling; what she says about -straightness?†It was feeble of Barney and he must know it. Feeble of -him even to think that Adrienne might wish to avail herself of the -loophole or that she considered herself in any need of a shield.</p> - -<p>“You can’t misunderstand so much as that, Barney,†she said. “Meg and I -mean but one thing by straightness; and that is truth. That was the way -I tried to help them; it is the only way in which I can ever help -people. I showed them the truth and kept it before their eyes when they -were in danger of forgetting it. I said to them that if they were to be -worthy of their love they must be brave enough to make sacrifices for -it. I did not hide from them that there would be sacrifices—if that is -what you mean.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s not what I mean, darling! Of course it’s not!†broke from poor -Barney almost in a wail. “Didn’t you try at all to dissuade them? Didn’t -you show them that it was desperate, and ruinous, and wrong? Didn’t you -tell Meg that it would break Mother’s heart!â€</p> - -<p>The blue ribbon was again unrolled and Oldmeadow, listening with rising -exasperation, heard that the sound of her own solemn cadences sustained -her. “I don’t think anything in life is desperate or ruinous or wrong, -Barney, except turning away from one’s own light. Meg met a reality and<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a> -was brave enough to face it. I regret, deeply, that it came to her -tragically, not happily; but happiness can grow from tragedy if we are -brave and true and Meg is brave and true in her love. It won’t break -your mother’s heart. Hers is a small, but not such a feeble, heart as -that. I believe that the experience may strengthen and ennoble her. She -has led too sheltered a life.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow at this turned from the window and met Barney’s miserable -eyes. “There’s really no reason for my staying on, Barney,†he said, and -his voice as well as his look excluded Adrienne from their interchange. -“I’ll take the 1.45 to Coldbrooks. What shall I tell your mother? That -you’ve gone to Paris this morning?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, that I’ve gone to Paris. That I’ll do my best, you know. That I -hope to bring Meg back. Tell her to keep up her courage. It’ll only be a -day or two after all, and we may be able to hush it up.â€</p> - -<p>“Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow,†said Adrienne in a grave, commanding tone. It was -impossible before it to march out of the room and shut the door, though -that was what his forcibly arrested attitude showed that he wished to -do. “You as well as Barney must hear my protest,†said Adrienne, and she -fixed her sombre eyes upon him. “Meg is with the man she loves. In the -eyes of heaven he is her husband. It would be real as contrasted with -conventional disgrace were she to leave him now. She will not leave him. -I know her better than you do. I ask you‗her gaze now turned on -Barney—“I desire you, not to go to her on such an unworthy errand.â€</p> - -<p>“But, Adrienne,†Barney, flushed and hesitating,<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> pleaded, “it’s for -Mother’s sake. Mother’s too old to be enlarged like that—that’s really -nonsense, you know, darling. You see what Nancy says. They are -frightened about her. It’s not only convention. It’s a terrible mistake -Meg’s made and she may be feeling it now and only too glad to have the -way made easy for her to come back. I promise you to be as gentle as -possible. I won’t reproach her in any way. I’ll tell her that we’re all -only waiting to forgive her and take her back.â€</p> - -<p>“Forgive her, Barney? For what? It is only in the eyes of the world that -she has done wrong and I have lifted her above that fear. Convention -does not weigh for a moment with me beside the realities of the human -heart; nor would it with you, Barney, if it were not for the influence -of Mr. Oldmeadow. I have warned you before; it is easy to be -worldly-wise and cynical and to keep to the broad road; it is easy to be -safe. But withering lies that way: withering and imprisonment, and—â€</p> - -<p>“Come, come, Mrs. Barney,†Oldmeadow interposed, addressing her for the -first time and acidly laughing. “Really we haven’t time for sermons. You -oughtn’t to have obliged me to come up if you wanted to influence Barney -all by yourself. He sees quite clearly for himself the rights and the -wrongs of this affair, as it happens. If I were to preach for a moment -in my turn I might ask you how it was that you didn’t see that it was -your duty to tell Meg’s mother and brother how things were going and let -them judge. You’re not as wise as you imagine—far from it. Some things -you can’t judge at all. Meg and Hayward aren’t people of enough -importance to have a right to break laws; that<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a>’s all that it comes to; -there’s nothing to be gained by their breaking laws; not only for other -people, but for themselves. They’re neither of them capable of being -happy in the ambiguous sort of life they’d have to lead. There’s a -reality you didn’t see at all in your haste to flout convention. Barney -could have dealt with Hayward, and Meg could have been packed off to the -country and kept there till she’d learned to think a little more about -other people’s hearts and a little less about her own. What business had -you, after all, to have secrets from your husband and to plot with the -two young fools behind his back? Isn’t Meg his sister rather than -yours?†His bitterness betrayed him and conscious hostility rose in him, -answering the menace that measured him in her eyes. “What business had -you, a new-comer among us, to think yourself capable of managing all -their lives and to set yourself up above them all in wisdom? You take -too much upon yourselfâ€; his lips found the old phrase: “Really you do. -It’s been your mistake from the beginning.â€</p> - -<p>He could not have believed that a face so framed for gentleness could -show itself at once so calm and so convulsed. He knew that something had -happened to her that had never happened to her before in her life. She -kept her eyes steadily on him and he wondered if she were not reciting -some incantation, some exorcism, derived from the seagulled lady above -her: Power in Repose—Power in Love—Power in Light. Her mouth and eyes -and nostrils were dark on her pallor and he felt that she held back all -the natural currents of her being in order to face and quell him with -the supernatural.</p> - -<p>“Never mind all that, Roger,†Barney was<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a> sickly murmuring. “I don’t -feel like that. I know Adrienne didn’t for a moment mean to deceive me.â€</p> - -<p>“We will mind it, Barney,†said Adrienne, breathing with difficulty. “I -had, Mr. Oldmeadow, the business, first, of loyalty to another human -soul who, in the crisis of its destiny, confided in me. I have been -nearer Meg than any of you have guessed, from my first meeting with her. -You were all blind. I saw at once that she was tossed and tormented. I -am nearer, far nearer her, than her brother and mother. In them she -would never have dreamed of confiding and she came to me because she -felt that in me she would find reality and in them mere formulas. I do -not look upon women as chattels to be handed about by their male -relatives and locked up if they do not love according to rule and -precedent. I look upon them as the equals of men in every respect, as -free as men to shape their lives and to direct their destinies. You -speak a mediæval language, Mr. Oldmeadow. The world, our great, modern, -deep-hearted world, has outstripped you.â€</p> - -<p>“Darling,†Barney forestalled, breathlessly, as she paused, any reply -that Oldmeadow might have been tempted to make, “don’t mind if Roger -speaks harshly. He’s like that and no one cares for us more. He doesn’t -mean conventionality at all, or anything mediæval. You don’t understand -him. He puts his finger on the spot about Meg and Hayward. It’s exactly -as he says; they’re not of enough importance to have a right to break -laws. If you could have confided in me, it would have been better; you -must own that. We’d have given Meg a chance to pull herself together. -We’d have sent Hayward about his business. It’s a question, as Roger -says, of your<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a> wisdom; of your knowledge of the world. You didn’t -understand them. They’re neither of them idealists like you. They can’t -be happy doing what you might be big enough to do. Just because they’re -not big. Try to take it in, darling. And we really needn’t go on talking -about it any longer, need we? It isn’t a question of influence. All we -have to decide on is what’s to be done. Roger must go to Mother and tell -her I’m starting this morning to try and fetch Meg back. Imagine Mother -with a divorce case on! It would kill her, simply. That’s all. Isn’t it, -Roger?â€</p> - -<p>“Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow,†said Adrienne, again. She rose as she spoke. As -he saw her stand before them, her approaching maternity dominated for a -moment all his impressions of her. Veiled and masked adroitly as it was, -its very uncouthness curiously became her. Her head, for once, looked -small. Like an archaic statue, straight and short and thick, her altered -form had dignity and amplitude and her face, heavy with its menace, hard -with its control, might have been that of some austere and threatening -priestess of fruitfulness.</p> - -<p>“Barney, wait,†she said. Her arms hung straight beside her, but she -slightly lifted a hand as she spoke and Oldmeadow noted that it was -tightly clenched. “It is I, not your friend, whom you must question as -to what it is right that you should do. I do not consent to his reading -of my unwisdom and unworthiness. I ask you not to consent to it. I ask -you again not to go. I ask you again to respect my judgment rather than -his.â€</p> - -<p>“Darling,†the unfortunate husband supplicated; “it’s not because it’s -Roger’s judgment. You know<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a> it’s what I felt right myself—from the -moment you told me what had happened. You say people must follow their -own light. It <i>is</i> my light. I must do what Mother asks and try to bring -Meg back.â€</p> - -<p>“It is not your light, Barney. It is craft and caution and fear. More -than that, do you not see, must I make plain to you what it is you do to -me in going? You insult me. You treat what I have believed right for Meg -to do as a crime from which she must be rescued. You drag me in the dust -with her. Understand me, Barney‗the streaks of colour deepened on her -neck, her breath came thickly—“if you go, you drag me in the dust.â€</p> - -<p>“How can it drag you in the dust, Mrs. Barney, if Meg wants to come -back?†Oldmeadow interposed in the tone of a caustic doctor addressing a -malingering patient. “We’re not talking of crimes; only of follies. -Come; be reasonable. Don’t make it so painful for Barney to do what’s -his plain duty. You’re not a child. You have, I hope, courage enough and -humour enough to own that you can make mistakes—like other people.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, Adrienne, that’s just it,†broke painfully from Barney, and, -as he seized the clue thus presented to him, Adrienne turned her head -slowly, with an ominous stillness, and again rested her eyes upon him. -“It’s childish, you know, darling. It’s not like you. And of course I -understand why; and Roger does. You’re not yourself; you’re -over-strained and off-balance and I’m so frightfully sorry all this has -fallen upon you at such a time. I don’t want to oppose you in anything, -darling—do try to believe me. Only you must give me the credit for my -own convictions. I do feel I must go. I do feel<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> Roger must take that -message to Mother. After all, darling,†and now in no need of helping -clues he found his own and the irrepressible note of grief vibrated in -his voice, “you do owe me something, don’t you? You do owe us all -something—to make up, I mean. Because, without you, Meg would never -have behaved like this and disgraced us all. Oh—I don’t mean to -reproach you!â€</p> - -<p>“Good-bye then, I’m off,†said Oldmeadow. “I’m very sorry you made me -come up. Good-bye, Mrs. Barney.†She had not spoken, nor moved, nor -turned her eyes from Barney’s face.</p> - -<p>“Good-bye. Thanks so much, Roger.†Barney followed him, with a quickness -to match his own, to the door. But Adrienne, this time, did not call him -back. She remained standing stock-still in front of her sofa.</p> - -<p>“Tell Mother I’m off,†said Barney, grasping his hand. “Tell her she’ll -hear at once, as soon as I know anything. Thanks so awfully,†he -repeated. “You’ve been a great help.â€</p> - -<p>It was unfortunate, perhaps, that Barney should say that, Oldmeadow -reflected as he sped down the stairs. “But she’s met reality at last,†-he muttered, wondering how she and Barney faced each other above and -hearing again the words that must echo so strangely in her ears: -“Disgraced us all.†And, mingled with his grim satisfaction, was, again, -the sense of irrelevant and reluctant pity.<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVI-a" id="CHAPTER_XVI-a"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h3> - -<p class="nind">I<small>T</small> was Saturday and he had to wire to Mrs. Aldesey that he could not go -with her next day to the Queen’s Hall concert they had planned to hear -together.</p> - -<p>Nancy was waiting for him at the station in her own little pony-cart and -as he got in she said: “Is Barney gone?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; he’ll have gone by now,†said Oldmeadow and, as he said it, he -felt a sudden sense of relief and clarity. The essential thing, he saw -it as he answered Nancy’s question, was that he should be able to say -that Barney had gone. And he knew that if he hadn’t been there to back -him up, he wouldn’t have gone. So that was all right, wasn’t it?</p> - -<p>As he had sped past the sun-swept country the reluctant pity had -struggled in him, striving, unsuccessfully, to free itself from the -implications of that horrid word: “Disgraced.†It was Adrienne who had -disgraced them; that was what Barney’s phrase had really meant, though -he hadn’t intended it to mean it. She, the stranger, the new-comer, had -disgraced them. And it was true. Yet he wished Barney hadn’t stumbled on -the phrase—just because she was a stranger and a new-comer. And Barney -would never have found it had he not been there. But now came the sense -of relief. If he hadn’t been there, Barney wouldn’t have gone.</p> - -<p>“Aunt Eleanor is longing to see you,†said Nancy. “Her one hope, you -know, is that he may bring Meg back.†Nancy’s eyes had a strained look, -as though she had lain awake all night.<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a></p> - -<p>“You think she may come back?â€</p> - -<p>He felt, himself, unable to form any conjectures as to what Meg was -likely to do. What she had done was so strangely unlike her.</p> - -<p>“Not if it means leaving Captain Hayward for good,†said Nancy. “But -Aunt Eleanor and Mother both think that she may be willing to come till -they can marry.â€</p> - -<p>“That’s better than nothing, isn’t it,†said Oldmeadow, and Nancy then -surprised him by saying, as she looked round at him: “I don’t want her -to come back.â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t want her to come back? But you wanted Barney to go?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. He had to go. Just so that everything might be done. So that it -might be put before her. And to satisfy Aunt Eleanor. But, don’t you -see, Roger, it would really make it far more difficult for Aunt Eleanor -to have her here. What would she do with her?—since she won’t give up -Captain Hayward? She can love Meg and grieve and yearn over her now. But -if she were here she couldn’t. It would be all grief and bitterness.â€</p> - -<p>Nancy had evidently been thinking to some purpose during her sleepless -night and he owned that her conclusion was the sound one. What -disconcerted him was her assurance that Meg would not leave her lover. -After Adrienne, Nancy was likely to have the most authentic impressions -of Meg’s attitude; and, as they drove towards Chelford, he was further -disconcerted by hearing her murmur, half to herself: “It would be silly -to leave him now, wouldn’t it.â€</p> - -<p>“Not if she’s sorry and frightened at what she<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a>’s done,†he protested. -“After all the man’s got a wife who may be glad to have him back.â€</p> - -<p>But Nancy said: “I don’t think she would. I think she’ll be glad not to -have him back. Meg may be frightened; but I don’t believe she’ll be -sorry; yet.â€</p> - -<p>He meditated, somewhat gloomily, as they drove, on the unexpectedness of -the younger generation. He had never thought of Nancy as belonging, in -any but the chronological sense, to that category; yet here she was, -accepting, if not condoning, the rebellion against law and morality.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Averil had driven down to the Little House where she was to be -picked up and, as they turned the corner to the Green, they saw her -waiting at the gate, her furs turned up around her ears, her neat little -face pinched and dry, as he had known that he would find it, and showing -a secure if controlled indignation, rather than Nancy’s sad perplexity.</p> - -<p>“Well, Roger, you find us in a pleasant predicament,†she observed as -Oldmeadow settled the rug around her knees. “Somehow one never thinks of -things like this happening in one’s own family. Village girls misbehave -and people in the next county run away sometimes with other people’s -wives; but one never expects such adventures to come walking in to one’s -own breakfast-table.â€</p> - -<p>“Disagreeable things do have a way of happening at breakfast-time, don’t -they,†Oldmeadow assented. The comfort of Mrs. Averil was that even on -her death-bed she would treat her own funeral lightly: “I wonder it -remains such a comfortable meal, all the same.â€</p> - -<p>“I suppose you’ve had lunch on the train,†said Mrs. Averil. “Will you -believe it? Poor Eleanor<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> was worrying about that this morning. She’s -got some coffee and sandwiches waiting for you, in case you haven’t. I’m -so thankful you’ve come. It will help her. Poor dear. She’s begun to -think of all the other things now. Of what people will say and how they -will hear. Lady Cockerell is very much on her mind. You know what a -meddlesome gossip she is, and only the other day Eleanor snubbed her -when she was criticizing Barbara’s new school. The thought of her is -disturbing her dreadfully now.â€</p> - -<p>“I suppose these leech-bites do help to alleviate the pain of the real -wound,†said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“Not in the least. They envenom it,†Mrs. Averil replied. “I’d like to -strangle Lady Cockerell myself before the news reaches her.â€</p> - -<p>Nancy drove on, her eyes fixed on the pony’s ears. “I don’t believe -people will talk nearly as much as you and Aunt Eleanor imagine,†she -now remarked. “I’ve told her so; and so must you, Mother.â€</p> - -<p>“You are admirable with her, Nancy. Far better than I am. I sit grimly -swallowing my curses, or wringing my hands. Neither wringing nor cursing -is much good, I suppose.â€</p> - -<p>“Not a bit of good. It’s better she should think of what people say than -of Meg; but when it comes to agonizing over them I believe the truth is -that people nowadays <i>do</i> get over it; far more than they used to; -especially if Aunt Eleanor can show them that <i>she</i> gets over it.â€</p> - -<p>“But she can’t get over it, my dear child!†said Mrs. Averil, gazing at -her daughter in a certain alarm. “How can one get over disgrace like -that or lift one’s head again—unless one is an Adrienne Toner! Oh, when -I think of that woman and of what<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> she’s done! For she is responsible -for it all! Every bit of it. Meg was a good girl, at heart; always. In -spite of that silly liquid powder. And so I tell Eleanor. Adrienne is -responsible for it all.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t, Mother; that’s not my line at all,†said Nancy. “I tell her -that what Meg says is true.†Nancy touched the pony with the whip. “If -it hadn’t been for Adrienne she might have done much worse.â€</p> - -<p>“Really, my dear!†Mrs. Averil murmured.</p> - -<p>“Come, Nancy,†Oldmeadow protested; “that was a retrospective threat of -Meg’s. Without Adrienne she’d never have considered such an -adventure—or its worse alternative. Encourage your aunt to curse -Adrienne. Your Mother’s instinct is sound there.â€</p> - -<p>But Nancy shook her head. “I don’t know, Roger,†she said. “Perhaps Meg -would have considered the alternative. Girls do consider all sorts of -things nowadays that Mother and Aunt Eleanor, in their girlhood, would -have thought simply wicked. They <i>are</i> wicked; but not simply. That’s -the difference between now and then. And don’t you think that it’s -better for Meg and Captain Hayward to go away so that they can be -married than to be, as she says, really rotters; than to be, as she -says, cheats and hypocrites and steal their happiness?â€</p> - -<p>“My dear child!†Mrs. Averil again murmured, while Oldmeadow, finding -it, after all, a comfort to have a grown-up Nancy to discuss it with, -said, “My contention is that, left to herself, Meg would have thought -them both wicked.â€</p> - -<p>“Perhaps,†Nancy said again; “but even old-fashioned girls did things -they knew to be wicked<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a> sometimes. The difference Adrienne has made is -that Meg doesn’t think herself wicked at all. She thinks herself rather -noble. And that’s what I mean about Aunt Eleanor. It will comfort her if -she can feel a little as Adrienne feels—that Meg isn’t one bit the -worse, morally, for what she’s done.â€</p> - -<p>“Are you trying to persuade us that Meg isn’t guilty, my dear?†Mrs. -Averil inquired dryly. “Are you trying to persuade us that Adrienne has -done us all a service? You surely can’t deny that she’s behaved -atrociously, and first and foremost, to Barney. Barney could have known -nothing about it, and can you conceive a woman keeping such a thing from -her husband?â€</p> - -<p>But Nancy was feeling the pressure of her own realizations and was not -to be scolded out of them. “If Meg is guilty, and doesn’t know it, she -will suffer dreadfully when she finds out, won’t she? It all depends on -whether she has deceived herself or not, doesn’t it? I’m not justifying -her or Adrienne, Mother; only trying to see the truth about them. How -could Adrienne tell Barney when it was Meg’s secret? We may feel it -wrong; but she thought she was justified.†The colour rose in Nancy’s -cheek as she named Barney, but she kept her tired eyes on her mother and -added, “I don’t believe it was easy for her to keep it from him.â€</p> - -<p>“My dear, anything is easy for her that flatters her self-importance!†-cried Mrs. Averil impatiently. “I’ll own, if you like, that she’s more -fool than knave—as Meg may be; though Meg never struck me as a fool. -Things haven’t changed so much since my young days as all that; it’s -mainly a matter of names. If girls who behave like Meg find it -pleasanter<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> to be called fools than knaves, they are welcome to the -alternative. Noble they never were nor will be, whatever the fashion.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow did not want the sandwiches, so, as soon as they reached -Coldbrooks, he was led upstairs to Mrs. Chadwick’s room. He found his -poor friend lying on the sofa, the blinds drawn down and a wet -handkerchief on her forehead. She burst out crying as he entered. -Oldmeadow sat down beside her and took her hand and, as he listened to -her sobs, felt that he need not trouble to pity Adrienne.</p> - -<p>“What I cannot, cannot understand, Roger,†she was at last able to say, -and he realized that it was of Adrienne, not Meg, that she was speaking, -“is how she can bear to treat us so. We all loved and trusted her. You -know how I loved her, Roger. I felt Meg as safe in her hands as in my -own. Oh, that wicked, wicked man! I hardly know him by sight. That makes -it all so much more dreadful. All I do know is that his wife is a -daughter of poor Evelyn Madderley, who broke her back out hunting.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe there’s much harm in him, you know,†Oldmeadow -suggested. “And I believe that he is sincerely devoted to Meg.â€</p> - -<p>“Harm, Roger!†poor Mrs. Chadwick wailed, “when he is a married man and -Meg only a girl! Oh, if there is harm in anything there is in that! -Running away with a girl and ruining her life! Barney will make him feel -what he has done. Barney <i>has</i> gone?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, he’s gone, and I am sure we can rely on him to speak his mind to -Hayward.â€</p> - -<p>“And don’t you think he may bring Meg back, Roger? Nancy says I must not -set my mind on it;<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> but don’t you think she may be repenting already? My -poor little Meg! She was hot-tempered and could speak very crossly if -she was thwarted; but I think of her incessantly as she was when she was -a tiny child. Self-willed; but so sweet and coaxing in her ways, with -beautiful golden hair and those dark eyes. I always thought of Meg, with -her beauty, as sure to marry happily; near us, I hoped‗Mrs. Chadwick -began to sob again. “And now!—Will he find them in Paris? Will they not -have moved on?â€</p> - -<p>“In any case he’ll be able to follow them up. I don’t imagine they’ll -think of hiding.â€</p> - -<p>“No; I’m afraid they won’t. That is the worst of it! They won’t hide and -every one will come to know and then what good will there be in her -coming back! If only I’d had her presented last year, Roger! She can -never go to court now,†Mrs. Chadwick wept, none the less piteously for -her triviality. “To think that Francis’s daughter cannot go to court! -She would have looked so beautiful, with my pearls and the feathers. The -feathers are becoming to so few girls. Nancy could not wear them nearly -so well. Nancy can go and my daughter can’t!â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t think the lack of feathers will weigh seriously upon Meg’s -future, my dear friend.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, but it’s what they stand for, Roger, that will weigh!†Mrs. -Chadwick, even in her grief, retained her shrewdness. “It’s easy to -laugh at the feathers, but you might really as well laugh at -wedding-rings! To think that Francis’s daughter is travelling about with -a man and without a wedding-ring! Or do you suppose they’ll have thought -of it and bought one? It would be a lie, of course; but don’t you think -that a lie would be justifiable under the circumstances?<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t think it really makes any difference, until they can come home -and be married.â€</p> - -<p>“I suppose she must marry him now—if they won’t hide—and will be proud -of what they’ve done; she seems quite proud of it!—everyone will hear, -so that they will have to marry. Oh—I don’t know what to hope or what -to fear! How can you expect me to have tea, Nancy!†she wept, as Nancy -entered carrying the little tray. “It’s so good of you, my dear, but how -can I eat?—I can hardly face the servants, Roger. They will all hear. -And Meg was always such a pet of Johnson’s; his favourite of all my -children. He used to give her very rich, unwholesome things in the -pantry and once, when her father punished her for disobeying him and put -her in the corner, in the drawing-room, one day, after lunch, Johnson -nearly dropped the coffee, when he came in. It upset him dreadfully and -he would hardly speak to Francis for a week afterwards. I know he will -think it all our fault, when he hears, now. And so it is, for having -trusted to a stranger. I can’t drink tea, Nancy.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, you can, for Meg’s sake, Aunt Eleanor, and eat some tea-cake, -too,†said Nancy. “If you aren’t brave for her, who will be. And you -can’t be brave unless you eat. I remember so well, when I was little, -Uncle Francis saying that when it came to the pinch you were the bravest -woman he knew. You’ll see, darling; it will all come out better than you -fear. Johnson and all of us will help you to make it come out better.â€</p> - -<p>“She is such a comfort to me, Roger,†said Mrs. Chadwick with a summoned -smile. “Somehow, when I see her, I feel that things <i>will</i> come out -better.<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> <i>You</i> will have to go to court, dear, next spring. We can’t -have none of our girls going. And you shall wear my pearls.†Mrs. -Chadwick’s tears fell, but she took up the tea-cup.</p> - -<p>Nancy more and more was striking Oldmeadow as the wisest person in the -house. He walked with her on the terrace after tea; it was an old custom -of his and Nancy’s to step outside then, whatever the weather, and have -a few turns. This was a clear, chill evening and Nancy had wrapped a -woollen scarf closely round her neck and shoulders. Her chin was sunken -in its folds as she held it together on her breast, and with her dropped -profile, her sad, meditative eyes, it was as if she saw a clue and, far -more clearly than he did, knew where they all stood.</p> - -<p>“Adrienne was bitterly opposed to Barney’s going,†he said. “She seemed -unable to grasp the fact that she herself had been in error.â€</p> - -<p>Nancy turned her eyes on him. “Did Barney tell you she was bitterly -opposed?â€</p> - -<p>“He didn’t tell me. I was with them. It was most unfortunate. She -insisted on my coming up.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear,†said Nancy. She even stopped for a moment to face him with -her dismay. “Yes, I see,†she then said, walking on, “she would.â€</p> - -<p>“Why would she? Unless she was sure of getting her own way? The only -point in having me up was to show me that she could always get her own -way with Barney.â€</p> - -<p>“Of course. And to make it quite clear to herself, too. She’s not afraid -of you, Roger. She’s not afraid of anything but Barney.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t think she had any reason to be afraid of<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> him this morning. He -was badly upset, of course. But if I hadn’t gone up, I imagine she’d -have kept him from going. And you own that that would have been a pity, -don’t you?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. Oh, yes. He had to go,†said Nancy, absently. And she added. “Were -you very rough and scornful?â€</p> - -<p>“Rough and scornful? I don’t think so. I think I kept my temper very -well, considering all things. I showed her pretty clearly, I suppose, -that I considered her a meddling ass. I don’t suppose she’ll forgive me -easily for that.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, you can’t wonder at it, can you?†said Nancy. “Especially if she -suspects that you made Barney consider her one, too.â€</p> - -<p>“But it’s necessary, isn’t it, that she should be made to suspect it -herself? I don’t wonder at her not forgiving me for showing her up -before Barney, and upholding him against her, but I do wonder that one -can never make her see she’s wrong. It’s that that’s so really monstrous -about her.â€</p> - -<p>“Do you think that anyone can ever make us see we are wrong unless they -love us?†Nancy asked.</p> - -<p>“Well, Barney loves her,†said Oldmeadow after a moment.</p> - -<p>“Yes; but he’s afraid of her, too, isn’t he? He’d never have quite the -courage to try and make her see, would he?—off his own bat I mean. He’d -never really have quite the courage to see, himself, how wrong she was, -unless he were angry. And to have anyone who is angry with you trying to -make you see, only pushes you further and further back into yourself, -doesn’t it, and away from seeing?â€</p> - -<p>“You’ve grown very wise in the secrets of the<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> human heart, my dear,†-Oldmeadow observed. “It’s true. He hasn’t courage with her—unless some -one is there to give it to him. But, you know, I don’t think she’d -forgive him if he had. I don’t think she’d forgive anyone who made her -see.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,†Nancy pondered. “I don’t love her, yet I feel as if I -understood her; better, perhaps, than you do. I think she’s good, you -know. I mean, I think she might be good, if she could ever see.â€</p> - -<p>“She’s too stupid ever, really, to see,†said Oldmeadow, and it was with -impatience. “She’s encased in self-love like a rhinoceros in its hide. -One can’t penetrate anywhere. You say she’s afraid of Barney and I can’t -imagine what you mean by that. It’s true, when I’m by, she’s afraid of -losing his admiration. But that’s not being afraid of him.â€</p> - -<p>Nancy still pondered; but not, now, in any perplexity. “She’s afraid -because she cares so much. She’s afraid because she <i>can</i> care so much. -It’s difficult to explain; but I feel as if I understood her. She’s -never cared so much before for just one other person. It’s always been -for people altogether; and because she was doing something for them. But -Barney does something for her. He makes her happy. Perhaps she never -knew before what it was to be really happy. You know, she didn’t give me -the feeling of a really happy person. It’s something quite, quite new -for her. It makes her feel uncertain of herself and almost bewildered -sometimes. Oh, I’m sure of it the more I think of it. And you know, -sometimes,†Nancy turned her deep, sweet eyes on him, “I feel very sorry -for her, Roger. I can’t help it; although I don’t love her at all.<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Yes. It must be true. Though he had seen Adrienne’s vanity rather than -her love. Nancy and Meg were united in their assurance and that must be, -he saw, because they both, in their so different ways, knew what it was -to care; to care so much that you were frightened. It was strange that -the pang of pity that came with his new perception should be for -Adrienne rather than for his dear little Nancy herself. Nancy had -suffered, he knew, and her life was perhaps permanently scarred; yet, -clear-eyed and unduped, he saw her as mistress of the very fate that had -maimed her. Whereas Adrienne was blindfolded; a creature swayed and -surrounded by forces of which she was unaware.</p> - -<p>Nancy had deepened his sense of perplexity, his sense of taking refuge -from something, and what it was came fully upon him that night when he -was at last alone. Meg and her misdemeanour sank into a mere background -for the image of the cold, convulsed face that he had seen that morning. -Almost angrily he felt himself pushing it back, pushing it down, as if -he pushed it down to drown, and again and again it re-emerged to look at -him.</p> - -<p>He fell asleep at last; but as, a year ago, on the first night of his -meeting with her, he had dreamed of her, so to-night he dreamed again.</p> - -<p>He did not see her, but she was in some dreadful plight and the sense of -her panic and bewilderment broke upon him in shocks of suffering. He -could not see her, but he was aware of her, horribly aware. All remained -a broken, baffled confusion, but it was as though, unable to shape and -assert itself, he yet felt her very being wrestling with extinction.</p> - -<p>The sharpness had gone out of the sunlight next<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a> day and Mrs. Chadwick -consented to come and sit with them in the warmest corner of the garden, -the corner where, a year ago, Oldmeadow remembered, Meg had sat with him -and explained to him the secret of Adrienne’s power. Pitifully, with -swollen eyes and trembling fingers, Mrs. Chadwick resumed her -interrupted stocking while Oldmeadow read aloud from a Sunday paper the -leading article on the critical situation in Ireland. “I suppose every -one in London will be talking about Ulster and Sir Edward Carson, won’t -they?†said Mrs. Chadwick, and it was evident that she derived a dim -comfort from the thought. The situation in Ireland, Oldmeadow reflected, -had, at all events, been of so much service.</p> - -<p>Upon this quiet scene there broke suddenly the sound of a motor’s horn -and a motor’s wheels turned into the front entrance.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick dropped her stocking and laid her hand on Nancy’s arm. -“Dear Aunt Eleanor—you know he couldn’t possibly be back yet,†said -Nancy. “And if it’s anyone to call, Johnson knows you’re not at home.â€</p> - -<p>“Lady Cockerell is capable of anything. She might sit down in the hall -and wait. She must have heard by now,†poor Mrs. Chadwick murmured. -“That married girl of hers in London must have written. With the -projecting teeth.â€</p> - -<p>“I’ll soon get rid of her, if it’s really she,†said Mrs. Averil; but -she had hardly risen when the door at the back of the house opened and -they saw Johnson usher forth a hurrying female figure, obviously not -Lady Cockerell’s; a figure so encumbered by its motoring wraps, so -swathed in veils, that only Mrs.<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> Chadwick’s ejaculation enlightened -Oldmeadow as to its identity.</p> - -<p>“Joséphine!†cried Mrs. Chadwick and then, between the narrow framing of -purple gauze, he recognized the dramatic, melancholy eyes and pale, -pinched lips of Adrienne’s maid.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Madame! Madame!†Joséphine was exclaiming as she came towards them -down the path. Her face wore the terrible intensity of expression so -alien to the British countenance. “Oh, Madame! Madame!†she repeated. -They had all risen and stood to await her. “He is dead! The little child -is dead! And she is alone. Monsieur left her yesterday. Quite, quite -alone, and her child born dead.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick faced her in pallid stupefaction.</p> - -<p>“The baby, Aunt Eleanor,†said Nancy, for she looked indeed as if she -had not understood. “Barney’s baby. It has been born and it is dead. -Oh—poor Barney. And poor, poor Adrienne.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, dead!†Joséphine, regardless of all but her exhaustion and her -grief, dropped down into one of the garden-chairs and put her hands -before her face. “Born dead last night. A beautiful little boy. The -doctors could not save it and fear for her life. They will not let me -stay with her. Only the doctors and the nurses—strangers—are with -her.†Joséphine was sobbing. “Ah, it was not right to leave her so. -Already she was ill. It could be seen that already she was very ill when -Monsieur left her. I came to her when he was gone. She did not say a -word to me. She tried to smile. <i>Mais j’ai bien vu qu’elle avait la mort -dans l’âme.</i>â€</p> - -<p>“Good heavens,†Mrs. Chadwick murmured, while Joséphine, now, let her -tears flow unchecked.<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> “She is alone and Barney has left her! Oh, this -is terrible! At such a time!â€</p> - -<p>“He had to go, Aunt Eleanor. You know he had to go. We will send for him -at once,†said Nancy, and Joséphine, catching the words, sobbed on in -her woe and her resentment: “But where to send for him? No one knows -where to send. The doctors sent a wire yesterday, at once, when she was -taken ill; to the Paris hotel. But no answer came. He must have left -Paris. That is why I have come. No telegrams for Sunday. No trains in -time. I took the car. The doctor said, Yes, it was well that I should -come. Some one who cares for Madame should return with me. If she is to -die she must not die alone.â€</p> - -<p>“But she shall not die!†cried Mrs. Chadwick with sudden and surprising -energy. “Oh, the poor baby! It might have lived had I been there. No -doctor, no nurse, can understand like a mother. And I shall be able to -help with Adrienne. I must go. I must go at once. Mademoiselle will see -that you have something to eat and drink, my poor Joséphine, and then -you and I will return together. It will not take me a moment to get -ready.â€</p> - -<p>“It will be the best thing for them all,†Oldmeadow murmured to Mrs. -Averil, as, taking Joséphine’s arm, Mrs. Chadwick hurried her along the -path. “And I’ll go with them.â€</p> - -<p>A little later, while Mrs. Chadwick made ready above and Joséphine, in -the hall, ate the meal that Johnson had brought for her, Oldmeadow and -Nancy stood outside near the empty waiting car.</p> - -<p>“I’ll wire to you at once, of course, how she is,†he said. Adrienne had -put Meg out of all their<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> thoughts. “But it’s rather grotesque,†he -added, “if poor Barney is to be blamed.â€</p> - -<p>Nancy stood and looked before her, wrapped, as she had been the day -before, in her woollen scarf. “Roger,†she said after a moment, “no one -can be blamed; yet, if she dies, I shall feel that we have killed her.â€</p> - -<p>“Killed her! What nonsense, my dear! What do you mean?†He spoke angrily -because something in his heart, shaken by his dream, echoed her. The -dreaming had now revealed itself as definitely uncanny. What had he to -do with Adrienne Toner that his sub-consciousness should be aware of her -extremity?</p> - -<p>“I can’t explain,†said Nancy. “We couldn’t help it. It’s even all her -fault. But she never asked to come to us. She never sought us out. She -had her life and we had ours. It was we who sought her and drew her in -and worshipped her. She never hid what she was; never in the least -little way. It was for what she was, because she was so different and -believed so in herself, that Barney loved her. And now because she has -gone on believing in herself, we have struck her down.â€</p> - -<p>The rooks were cawing overhead and Oldmeadow was remembering his dream -of a year ago, how Adrienne had come to him along the terrace saying, as -she lifted her hand: “I can hear them, too.†They had drawn her in. Yet -she had loved their life. She had wanted to understand it and to be part -of it. He wished he could get the pale, streaked, drowning face out of -his mind. “It’s generous of you, my dear child,†he said, “to say ‘we.’ -You mean ‘you.’ If anyone struck her down it was I.<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“You spoke for us all, Roger. And you only spoke for us. You were always -outside. I count myself with them. I can’t separate myself from them. I -received her love—with them all.â€</p> - -<p>“Did you?†he looked at her. “I don’t think so, Nancy.â€</p> - -<p>Nancy did not pretend not to understand. “I know,†she said. “But I’m -part of it. And she tried to love me.<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVII-a" id="CHAPTER_XVII-a"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h3> - -<p class="nind">O<small>LDMEADOW</small> sat in Barney’s study, Mrs. Chadwick beside him. It was -Tuesday and the only news of Barney had been a letter to his mother, -from Paris, where he had not found Meg, and two wires from the South of -France, one to Oldmeadow and one to his wife, saying that he had found -Meg and was returning alone. He had not, it was evident, received the -doctor’s messages.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow had not seen his old friend since the Sunday night when he had -left her and Joséphine in Connaught Square, and in his first glance at -her this morning he saw that for her, too, Adrienne’s peril had actually -effaced Meg’s predicament. It had done more. Faint and feeble as she -must be, scarcely able to take possession of her returning life and, as -Mrs. Chadwick told him, not yet out of danger, Adrienne had already -drawn her mother-in-law back into the circle of her influence.</p> - -<p>“You see, Roger,†she said, sitting there on the absurdly incongruous -background of the Post Impressionist pictures and tightly squeezing her -handkerchief first in one hand and then in the other, “You see, when one -is with her one <i>has</i> to trust her. I don’t know why it is, but almost -at once I felt all my bitterness against her die quite away. I knew, -whatever she had done, that she believed it to be right; to be really -<i>best</i> for Meg, you know. And oh, Roger, Barney has hurt her so -terribly! She can’t speak of him without crying. I never saw her cry -before. I never imagined Adrienne crying. She<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> feels, she can’t help -feeling, that it is because of that they have lost their baby.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow ordered with difficulty his astonished and indignant thoughts. -“That is absolutely unfair to Barney,†he said. “I was with them. No one -could have been gentler or more patient.â€</p> - -<p>“I know you were with them. It would seem like that to you, Roger, -because you are a man and men still think of women as a sort of chattel. -That’s how it looks to Adrienne. So much more independence, you know, -than we ever had.—Oh, I don’t say it’s a good thing! I feel that we are -weaker and need guidance.â€</p> - -<p>“Chattels? Where do chattels come in here? She said that to you. Barney -merely pleaded with her so that he could do what you wanted him to do.â€</p> - -<p>“I know—I know, Roger. Don’t get angry. But if I had been here and seen -her I should have known that he must not go. I should have seen that she -was in danger. A woman would have understood. No; you didn’t treat -Adrienne like a chattel; no one could treat Adrienne like one. It was -poor little Meg I meant. I see now how wrong it was to think of taking -her from the man she loves; when she <i>has</i> gone, you know, so that -everyone must know and there can be no good in it. And they probably -<i>have</i> bought a wedding-ring. Oh, Roger, she does comfort me about Meg. -She makes me feel the deeper things, the things conventions blind us to. -She makes me feel that the great thing, the only thing, is to follow -one’s own light and that Meg did do that. And after all, you know, -Roger, Jowett had George Eliot and Lewes to breakfast and they were -never married.<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Ha! ha! ha!†Oldmeadow laughed. He could not repress his bitter mirth. -“Follow your light if there’s breakfast with a clergyman at the end of -it!†he cruelly suggested. Yet he was too much amused, while so -incensed, for there to be much cruelty, and Mrs. Chadwick, gazing at him -as if from under her twisted straw, murmured: “He <i>was</i> a sort of -clergyman, Roger; and if people do what <i>seems</i> to them right, why -should they be punished?â€</p> - -<p>He saw it all. He heard it all, in her echoes. The potent influence had -been poured through her, all the more irresistible for the appeal of -Adrienne’s peril. Adrienne, bereaved and dying; yet magnanimous, gentle -and assured; always assured. How could Mrs. Chadwick’s feathers and -wedding-rings stand a chance against her? They had been swept away, or -nearly away, and what Nancy had seen as a possible hope was now an -accomplished fact. Mrs. Chadwick had been brought to feel about Meg as -Adrienne felt about her, and Oldmeadow, for his part, was not sure that -the game was worth the candle. There was something more than absurd in -his poor friend’s attempts to adjust herself to the new standards. They -were pitiable and even a little unseemly. She began presently softly to -weep. “Such a pretty baby it was, Roger. A lovely little creature—that -was the first thing she said to me—‘Oh, Mother Nell, it was such a -pretty baby.’ And all that she said this morning—when it was taken -away—was: ‘I wish Barney could have been in time to see our baby.’ Oh, -it is terrible, terrible, Roger, that he is not here! Her heart is -broken by it. How can she ever forget that he left her alone at such a -time. And she begged him not to go. She told me that she almost knelt to -him.<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a>â€</p> - -<p>The tears, irrepressibly, had risen to Oldmeadow’s eyes; but as Mrs. -Chadwick’s sentence meandered on, his thoughts were roughly jolted from -their pity. “But I tell you that that is absolutely unfair!†he -repeated, fixing his glass to look his protest the more firmly at her. -“I tell you that I was there and saw it all. It wasn’t for the baby. She -was thinking of the baby as little as Barney was; less than he was. What -she was thinking of was her power over Barney. She was determined that -she should not seem to be put in the wrong by his going.â€</p> - -<p>Like the March Hare Mrs. Chadwick was wild yet imperturbable. “Of course -she was determined. How could she be anything else? It did put her in -the wrong. And it put Meg in the wrong. That’s where we were so blind. -Oh, I blame myself as much as anybody. But Barney is her husband; and he -was with her and should have seen and felt. How could she beg him to -stay for her danger when he would not stay for her love?â€</p> - -<p>Yes; Adrienne had her very firmly. She had even imparted to her, when it -came to the issue, something of coherency. She was building up, in -Barney’s absence, strange ramparts against him. Barney had dragged her -in the dust and there she intended to drag him. Wasn’t that it? -Oldmeadow asked himself as he eyed his altered friend, muttering -finally: “I’m every bit as responsible as Barney, if it comes to that. I -upheld him, completely, in his decision. I do still. Adrienne may turn -you all upside down; but she won’t turn me; and I hope she won’t turn -Barney.â€</p> - -<p>“I think, Roger, that you might at all events remember that she’s not -out of danger,†said Mrs.<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> Chadwick. “She may die yet and give you no -more trouble. You have never cared for her; I know that, and so does -she; and I do think it’s unfeeling of you to speak as you do when she’s -lying there above us. And she looks so lovely in bed,†Mrs. Chadwick -began to weep again. “I never saw such thick braids; like Marguerite in -Faust. Her hands on the sheets so thin and white and her eyes enormous. -I don’t think even you could have the heart to jibe and laugh if you saw -her.â€</p> - -<p>“I didn’t laugh at Adrienne, you know,†Oldmeadow reminded her, rising -and buttoning his overcoat. “I laughed at you and Jowett. No; Adrienne -is no laughing matter. But she won’t die. I can assure you of that now. -She’s too much life in her to die. And though I’m very sorry for -her—difficult as you may find it to believe—I shall reserve my pity -for Barney.â€</p> - -<p>Barney needed all his pity and the sight of him on the following Sunday -evening, as he appeared on his threshold, would have exorcised for -Oldmeadow, if Mrs. Chadwick had not already done so, the memory of the -pale, drowning face. He looked like a dog that has been beaten for a -fault it cannot recognize. There was bewilderment in his eyes and -acceptance, and a watchful humility. To see them there made Oldmeadow -angry.</p> - -<p>Barney had sent a line to say that he was back; but his friend had been -prepared not to see him. Once engulfed in the house of mourning it was -but too likely that he would not emerge for many days. And besides, what -would Barney have to say to him now? But here he was, with his hollow -eyes and faded cheeks, and it was with an echo of his old boyish<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a> manner -of dropping in when beset by some perplexity that, without speaking, he -crossed the room and sank on the sofa by the fireplace. But he had not -come to seek counsel or sustainment. Oldmeadow saw that, as, after he -had offered cigarettes, which Barney refused, and lighted his own pipe, -he walked to and fro and watched him while Barney watched the flames. He -had not come with a purpose at all. It was, again, precisely like the -unhappy dog who wanders forth aimlessly, guided merely by a dim yearning -towards warmth and kindliness. Barney had come where he would be -understood. But it was not because he believed himself to be -misunderstood that he came.</p> - -<p>“I went to Coldbrooks, first, you know,†he said presently, and with an -effect of irrelevance. “I thought I’d find Mother there. So it was only -on that Thursday night I got back here. None of the wires caught me.â€</p> - -<p>“I know,†said Oldmeadow. “It was most unfortunate. But you couldn’t -have got back sooner, could you, once you’d gone on from Paris.â€</p> - -<p>“Not possibly. I went on from Paris that very night, you see. I caught -the night express to the Riviera. They’d left Cannes as an address, but -when I got there I found they’d moved on to San Remo. It was Tuesday -before I found them. My one idea was to find them as soon as possible, -of course. No; I suppose it couldn’t be helped; once I’d gone.â€</p> - -<p>“And it was quite useless? You’d no chance with Meg at all?â€</p> - -<p>“None whatever. Quite useless. Never was such a wild-goose chase. It was -exactly as Adrienne had said.<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Still it couldn’t have been foreseen so securely by anyone but -Adrienne. Many girls would have jumped at the chance.â€</p> - -<p>“Not if they’d had Adrienne to help them. We might have realized that. -That’s what armed Meg. I heard Adrienne in everything she said. Even -Mother thinks Adrienne was right, now, you know, Roger. And it was all -for Mother, wasn’t it? that I went. That makes it all so particularly -ironic. Only dear Mummy was never very strong at logic. She takes the -line now that we’re narrow-minded conventionalists, you and I, for -thinking that a girl oughtn’t to go off with a married man. I can’t feel -that, you know, Roger,†said Barney in his listless tone. “I can’t help -feeling that Meg has done something shameful. You ought to have seen -her! Positively smug! sitting there with that ass of a fellow in that -damned Riviera hotel! I had the horridest feeling, too, that Meg had -brought him rather than he her. I don’t mean he doesn’t care for her—he -does; I’ll say that for him. He’s a stupid fellow, but honest; and he -came outside and tried to tell me what he felt and how it would be all -right and that he was going to devote his life to her. But I think he -feels pretty sick, really. While Meg treated me as if I were a silly -little boy. If anyone can carry the thing through, Meg will.â€</p> - -<p>“It won’t prove her right because she carries it through, you know,†-Oldmeadow observed.</p> - -<p>“No,†said Barney, “but it will make us seem more wrong. Not that you -have any responsibility in it, dear old boy. I did what I felt I must do -and mine was the mistake. It’s not only Mother who thinks I’ve wronged -Adrienne,†he went on after a<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a> moment, lifting his arms as though he -felt a weight upon them and clasping them behind his head. “Even Nancy, -though she was so sorry for me, made me feel that I’d done something -very dreadful.â€</p> - -<p>“Nancy? How did you come to see Nancy?â€</p> - -<p>“Why, at Coldbrooks. She’s still there with Aunt Monica. That was just -it. It was my going there first, seeing her first, that upset her so. -She couldn’t understand, till I could explain, how it came about. She -was thinking of Adrienne, you see. And I, knowing nothing, had been -thinking of Mother all the time. It was too late, then, to go back at -once. The next train wasn’t for three hours. So I had to stay.â€</p> - -<p>“And it was Nancy who had to tell you everything?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; Nancy,†said Barney, staring at the ceiling. There was a note, -now, of control in his voice and Oldmeadow knew that if he had said no -word of what must be foremost in both their thoughts it was because he -could not trust himself to speak of it. And he went on quickly, taking -refuge from his invading emotion, “Aunt Monica wasn’t there. I didn’t -even see Johnson. I went right through the house and into the garden and -there was Nancy, planting something in the border. Everything looked so -natural. I just went up to her and said ‘Hello, Nancy,’ and then, when -she looked up at me, I thought she was going to faint. Poor little -Nancy. I knew something terrible had happened from the way she looked at -me.â€</p> - -<p>“Poor little Nancy. But I’m glad it was she who told you, Barney.â€</p> - -<p>“No one could have been sweeter,†said Barney,<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a> talking on quickly. “She -kept saying, ‘Oh, you oughtn’t to be here, Barney. You oughtn’t to be -here.’ But no one could have been sweeter. We sat down on the old bench, -you know, and she told me. That Adrienne had nearly died. That the baby -was dead. I could hardly believe her, at first. I stared at her, I know, -and I kept saying, ‘What do you mean, Nancy?—what do you mean?’ And she -began to cry and I cried, too. Men do feel, Roger, all the same, even -though they haven’t the mother’s claim to feel. I thought about our baby -so much. I loved it, too. And now—to think it’s dead; and that I never -saw it; and that it’s my fault‗his voice had shaken more and more; he -had put his hand before his eyes, and, then, suddenly, he leaned forward -and buried his head on the arm of the sofa.</p> - -<p>“My poor Barney! My dear boy!†Oldmeadow muttered. He came and sat down -beside him; he laid his arm around his shoulders. “It’s not your fault,†-he said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, don’t say that, Roger!†sobbed Barney. “It’s no good trying to -comfort me. I’ve broken her heart. She doesn’t say so. She’s too angelic -to say it; but she lies there and looks it. My poor darling! My poor, -courageous darling; what she has been through! It can’t be helped. I -must face it. I’m her husband. I ought to have understood. She -supplicated me, and I rejected her, and the child is dead.â€</p> - -<p>“The child’s death is a calamity for which no one can be held -responsible unless it is Adrienne herself,†said Oldmeadow. While Barney -sobbed he was thinking intently, for this was a turning-point in -Barney’s destiny. He would remain in subjugation<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> to Adrienne’s -conception of the wrong done her or he must be enabled to regain the -sense of innocence to which he had every right. “She forced the -situation on you. She chose to break rather than bend,†he said. “Listen -to me, Barney. I don’t speak in any enmity to your wife; but listen to -me and try to think it out. Don’t you remember how you once said that -your marriage couldn’t be a mistake if you were able to see the defects -as well as the beauty of the woman you love. Don’t you remember that you -said she’d have to learn a little from you for the much you’d have to -learn from her. Nothing more reassured me than what you said that night. -And I was reassured the other day by your firmness. It implies no -disloyalty in you to see the defects now. It was power over you she -wanted the other day and to see herself put in the right, before me; and -to see me worsted, before you. You know it, Barney; you know it in your -heart. And she knows it too. There was no failure of love in what you -said. There was only failure of homage. You were right in opposing her. -She was wrong in the issue she made. She was wrong from the first of the -miserable affair in having concealed it from you. If you’d stayed behind -as she wanted you to do, you’d have shown yourself a weakling and she’d -have been further than ever from knowing herself in error. There is the -truth; and the sooner you see it, the sooner she will.â€</p> - -<p>For some time after his friend had ended, Barney lay silent, his face -still hidden. But his sobs had ceased. And his silence, at last, grew -too long for any disclaimer to be possible to him. He had been brought, -Oldmeadow knew it from the very rhythm<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a> of his breathing, to the -passionless contemplation where alone truth is visible. And what he said -at last was: “She’ll never see it like that.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, she will,†said Oldmeadow. And he remembered Nancy’s wisdom. -“If you hold to it firmly and tenderly and make her feel you love her -while you make her feel you think her wrong.â€</p> - -<p>“She’ll never see it,†Barney repeated, and Oldmeadow now suspected, and -with a deep uneasiness, that Barney might be seeing further than -himself. “She can’t.â€</p> - -<p>“You mean that she’s incapable of thinking herself wrong?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, incapable,†said Barney. “Because all she’s conscious of is the -wish to do right. And she is right so often, she is so good and -beautiful, that it must be like that with her. She can break; but she -can’t bend.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow was silent for a moment and Barney, on the arm of the sofa, -was silent. “Of course,†Oldmeadow then said, “the less you say about it -the better. Things will take their place gradually.â€</p> - -<p>“I’ve not said anything about it,†said Barney. “I’ve only thought of -comforting and cherishing her. But it’s not enough. I’ll never say -anything; but she’ll know I’m keeping something back. She knows it -already. I see that now. And I didn’t know it till you put it to me.â€</p> - -<p>“She’ll have to accept it; or to live with it unaccepted, then. You -can’t consider yourself a criminal to give her moral ease.â€</p> - -<p>“No,†said Barney after a pause. “No; I can’t do that. Though that’s -what Mummy wants me to do. But I can be horribly sorry.<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Horribly sorry. Let the rest sink into the unspoken. When people love -each other they can, I’m sure, live over any amount of unspoken things.â€</p> - -<p>“It hasn’t been unspoken between you and me, though, has it, Roger?†-said Barney, and he raised himself and got upon his feet as he said it. -“There’s the trouble. There’s where I <i>am</i> wrong. For she’d feel it an -intolerable wrong if she knew that it hadn’t been unspoken between you -and me. And she’d be right. When people love each other such reticences -and exclusions wrong their love.â€</p> - -<p>“But since you say she knows,†Oldmeadow suggested after another moment.</p> - -<p>Barney stood staring out of the twilight window.</p> - -<p>“She doesn’t know that I tell you,†he said.</p> - -<p>“You’ve told me nothing,†said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“Well, she doesn’t know what I listen to, then,†said Barney.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow was again conscious of the deep uneasiness. “It’s quite true -I’ve no call to meddle in your affairs,†he said. “The essential thing -is that you love each other. Let rights and wrongs go hang.â€</p> - -<p>“You haven’t meddled, Roger.†Barney moved towards the door. “You’ve -been in my affairs, and haven’t been allowed to keep out. Yes. We love -each other. But rights and wrongs never go hang with Adrienne.<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII-a" id="CHAPTER_XVIII-a"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h3> - -<p class="nind">O<small>LDMEADOW</small> did not see Barney again for some months. He met Eleanor -Chadwick towards the end of April, in the park, he on his way to Mrs. -Aldesey’s, she, apparently, satisfying her country appetite for -exercise, since she seemed to be walking fast and at random. He almost -thought for a moment that she was going to pretend not to see him and -hurry down a path that led away from his; but his resolute eye perhaps -checked the impulse. She faltered and then came forward, holding out her -hand and looking rather wildly about her, and she said that London was -really suffocating, wasn’t it?</p> - -<p>“You’ve been here for so long, haven’t you,†said Oldmeadow. “Or have -you been here all this time? I’ve had no news of any of you, you see.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s all been such a troubled, busy time, Roger,†said Mrs. Chadwick. -“Yes, I’ve been here ever since. But, thank goodness, the doctors say -she may be moved now, and she and I and Barney are going down to -Devonshire next week. To Torquay. Such a dismal place, I think; but -perhaps that’s because so many of my relations have died there. I never -have liked that red Devonshire soil. But the primroses will be out. That -makes up a little.â€</p> - -<p>“I’m glad that Mrs. Barney is better. When will you all be back at -Coldbrooks?â€</p> - -<p>“In June, I hope. Yes; she is better. But so feeble, still; so frail. -And quite, quite changed from her old bright self. It’s all very -depressing, Roger. Very depressing and wearing,†said Mrs. Chadwick,<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> -opening her eyes very wide and staring before her in a way -characteristic of her when she repressed tears. “Sometimes I hardly know -how to keep up at all. For nothing cheers her. And Barney isn’t really -much help. He has very little power of fighting against depression.â€</p> - -<p>“You’ve all been too much shut up with each other, I’m afraid.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick still held her eyes widely opened. “I don’t think it’s -that, Roger. Being alone wouldn’t have helped us to be happier, after -what’s happened.â€</p> - -<p>“Being with other people might. You must get back to Coldbrooks as soon -as possible and see Nancy and Mrs. Averil and your neighbours. That will -help to change the current of your thoughts.â€</p> - -<p>“People don’t forget so easily as that, Roger,†Mrs. Chadwick murmured, -and it was now with severity, as though she suspected him of triviality. -“When something terrible has happened to people they are <i>in</i> the -current and Nancy and the neighbours are not going to change it. Poor -Nancy; she feels it all as much as we do, I’m sure.â€</p> - -<p>And that Mrs. Chadwick thought of him as unfeeling he saw. She thought -of him, too, with Barney, as criminal; as responsible for the -catastrophe. The old phrase of presage floated back into his mind: -“She’ll spoil things.†She had spoiled, for ever perhaps, this deepest, -dearest relation of his life. What was Coldbrooks to become to him with -Adrienne Toner in possession? He said, and he was unable to keep a -certain dryness that must sound like lightness, from his voice: “You are -in it but you needn’t keep your heads under it, you know.<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> That’s what -people tend to do when they shut themselves up with their misfortunes. -You and Barney and Mrs. Barney, I suspect, are engaged in drowning each -other. If one of you puts their head up the others pull it down.â€</p> - -<p>“I suppose you mean Adrienne does,†said Mrs. Chadwick. He had not meant -it at all; but now he felt sure that so, exactly, did it happen. Poor -Mrs. Chadwick left to herself would have drifted to the shore by this -time and Barney, at all events, would be swimming with his head up; it -was Adrienne, of course, that kept them suffocating under the surface. -“Well, I think it a pity you three should go off to Torquay alone,†he -evaded. “What’s happening to the farm all this time?â€</p> - -<p>“Nancy is seeing to it for Barney,†said Mrs. Chadwick. “She understands -those things so well. Barney would not dream of letting the farm come -between him and Adrienne at a time like this. He wants to be with her of -course.â€</p> - -<p>“Of course. All I mean is that I wish he could be with her at -Coldbrooks. I suppose the doctor knows what’s best, however.â€</p> - -<p>“I’m glad to hear you own that anybody can know what’s best, Roger, -except yourself,†said Mrs. Chadwick with her singularly unprovocative -severity. “Of course she must go to the sea and of course Barney and I -must be with her. She has two excellent nurses; but I would never trust -the best nurse for certain things. I remember so well when I was ill -myself once and saw the nurse behind a screen, eating raspberry jam out -of the pot with her finger. You can’t trust anybody, really.†And that -was all he got out of Eleanor Chadwick. Adrienne had spoiled things.<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a></p> - -<p>It was in June that he heard from Mrs. Averil that she and Nancy were in -London for a few days staying with an old aunt in Eccleston Square. Mrs. -Averil asked him to come to tea and he asked her and Nancy to do a play -with him; but before these meetings took place he saw them both. It was -at a Queen’s Hall concert on Sunday afternoon that Mrs. Aldesey called -his attention to his friends and, to his surprise, Oldmeadow saw that -Barney was with them. They sat across the gangway at some little -distance and his first impression of the three was that they were not -happy.</p> - -<p>“Did you know he was in town?†asked Mrs. Aldesey. “How ill he looks. I -suppose he was frightfully upset about the baby, poor fellow.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Aldesey knew nothing of the catastrophes that had followed the -baby’s death. He had instinctively avoided any reference to the latest -progress of the Juggernaut.</p> - -<p>“She’s much better now, you know,†he said, and he wasn’t aware that he -was exonerating Barney. “And they’re all back at Coldbrooks.â€</p> - -<p>“She’s not at Coldbrooks,†said Mrs. Aldesey. “She’s well enough to pay -visits and Lady Lumley told me she was coming down to them for this -week-end. I wonder he hasn’t gone with her.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow was wondering too. There was something about Barney’s attitude -as he sat there beside his cousin, silent and absent-minded it seemed, -listening as little to the music as he looked little at her, that he -would rather Lydia Aldesey had not been there to observe. They had a -curiously marital appearance, the young couple, or, rather, Barney had; -the air of being safe with some one with whom no<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a> explanations were -needed and for whom no appearances must be kept up; some one, even, with -whom he was so identified that he was hardly conscious of her. Nancy was -not so unconscious. Once, when Barney leaned over to look at the -programme, she drew away a little; and Oldmeadow even fancied a slight -constraint in her glance when, now and then, he spoke to her. Had -Adrienne spoiled things there, too? Mrs. Averil next day, in Eccleston -Square, enlightened him as to Barney’s presence. “It’s been most -unfortunate. He had planned to come up to this concert for a long time. -He wanted Nancy to hear the César Franck with him. And then it appeared -that Adrienne had made an engagement for them with the Lumleys. He -refused to go, I’m afraid, and she made an issue of it and, from what -poor Eleanor told me, there was rather a row. So Adrienne has gone off -alone and Barney is here till this evening. He’s gone out now with Nancy -to show her some pictures by a friend of his. It had all been arranged. -So what were we to do about it, Roger?â€</p> - -<p>“Do about it? Why just what you have done. Why shouldn’t she go with -him?â€</p> - -<p>“Why indeed? Except that Adrienne has made the issue. It’s awkward, of -course, when you know there’s been a row, to go on as if nothing had -happened.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow meditated. His friend’s little face had been pinched by the -family’s distress when he had last seen it; it was clouded now by a -closer, a more personal perplexity. “I suppose she made the issue on -purpose so that Barney shouldn’t come up,†he said at length.<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a></p> - -<p>“I really don’t know. Perhaps it had been arranged first with the -Lumleys. If it was to keep him from coming, that didn’t come out. She -wouldn’t let it come out; not into the open; of course.â€</p> - -<p>“So things are going very badly. I’d imagined, with all Barney’s -contrition, that they might have worked out well.â€</p> - -<p>“They’ve worked out as badly, I’m afraid, as they could. He was full of -contrition. He was as devoted as possible, when they came back in May. -But nothing altered her unflagging melancholy. And I suppose what -happened was that he got tired. Barney was always like that, from the -time he was in the nursery. He’d go on being patient and good-tempered -until, suddenly, everything would break down and he would sulk for days. -It’s when he’s pushed too far. And she has pushed him too far. She’s set -them all against him.â€</p> - -<p>“Who is them?†Oldmeadow asked. “I saw, when we met in London, that Mrs. -Chadwick actually had been brought to look upon Barney as a sort of -miscreant and Adrienne as a martyr. Who else is there?â€</p> - -<p>“Well, no one else except Palgrave and Barbara. Palgrave can be very -exasperating, as you know, and he takes the attitude now that Barney has -done Adrienne an irreparable injury. As you may imagine it isn’t a -pleasant life Barney leads among them all.â€</p> - -<p>“I see,†said Oldmeadow. “I think I see it all. What happens now is that -Barney more and more takes refuge with you and Nancy, and Adrienne more -and more can’t bear it.<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“That is precisely it, Roger,†said Mrs. Averil. “And what are we to do? -How can I shut my door against Barney? Yet it is troubling me more than -I can say. We are forced to seem on his side and against her. And -Adrienne has her eye upon them.â€</p> - -<p>“Let her keep it on them,†said Oldmeadow in strong indignation. “And -much good may it do her!â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, it won’t do her any good—nor us!†said Mrs. Averil. “She’s sick -with jealousy, Roger. Sick. I’m almost sorry for her when I see it and -see her trying to hide it, and see it always, coming in by the back door -when she shuts the front door on it—as it always does, you know. And -Nancy sees it, of course; and is quite as sick as she is; and Barney, of -course, remains as blind as a bat.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, as long as he remains blind—â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. As long as he does. But Adrienne will make him see. She’ll pick -and pull at their friendship until Nancy will be forced into drawing -back, and if she draws back Barney will see. What it’s already come to -is that she has to stand still, and smile, while Adrienne scratches her, -lest Barney should see she’s scratched; and once or twice of late I’ve -had a suspicion that he has seen. It doesn’t endear Nancy to Adrienne -that Barney should scowl at her when he’s caught her scratching.â€</p> - -<p>“What kind of scratches?†Oldmeadow asked, but Mrs. Averil had only time -to say, “Oh, all kinds; she’s wonderful at scratches,†when the -door-bell rang and Nancy, a moment after, came in.</p> - -<p>Nancy, if anything so fresh and neat could be so called, was looking -rather dowdy, and he suspected that some self-effacing motive lay behind -her choice of clothes.<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a></p> - -<p>“Oh, Roger, Barney was so sorry to have to miss you,†she said. And, at -all events, whatever else Adrienne had spoiled, she had not spoiled -Nancy’s loving smile for him. “He had to catch the 4.45 to Coldbrooks, -you know. There’s a prize heifer arriving this evening and he must be -there to welcome it. You must see his herd of Holsteins, Roger.†-Friesians were, at that date, still Holsteins.</p> - -<p>“I’d like to,†said Oldmeadow. “But I don’t know when I shall, for, to -tell you the truth, I’ve not been asked to Coldbrooks this summer. The -first time since I’ve known them.â€</p> - -<p>Nancy looked at him in silence.</p> - -<p>“You’ll come to us, of course,†said Mrs. Averil.</p> - -<p>“Do you really think I’d better, all things considered?†Oldmeadow -asked.</p> - -<p>“Why, of course you’d better. What possible reasons could there be for -your not coming, except ones we don’t accept?â€</p> - -<p>“It won’t seem to range us too much in a hostile camp?â€</p> - -<p>“Not more than we’re ranged already. Nancy and I are not going to give -you up, my dear Roger, because Adrienne considers herself a martyr.â€</p> - -<p>“I hope not, indeed. But it makes my exclusion from Coldbrooks more -marked, perhaps, if I go to you. I imagine, though I am so much in her -black books, that poor Mrs. Chadwick doesn’t want my exclusion to be -marked.â€</p> - -<p>“You’re quite right there. You are in her black books; but she doesn’t -want it marked; she’d like to have you, really, if Adrienne weren’t -there and if she didn’t feel shy. And I really think it will make it -easier for her if you come to us instead. It will<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> tide it over a -little. She’ll be almost able to feel you are with them. After all, you -do come to us, often.â€</p> - -<p>“And I’ll go up with you to Coldbrooks as if nothing had happened? I -confess I have a curiosity to see how Mrs. Barney takes me.â€</p> - -<p>“She’s very good at taking things, you know,†said Nancy.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Averil cast a glance upon him. “It may be really something of a -relief to their minds, Roger,†she said, “if you turn up as if nothing -had happened. They are in need of distractions. They are all dreadfully -on edge, though they won’t own to it, about Meg. The case is coming on -quite soon now. Mrs. Hayward has lost no time, and poor Eleanor only -keeps up because Adrienne is there to hold her up.â€</p> - -<p>“Where is Meg? Do they hear from her?â€</p> - -<p>“They hear from her constantly. She’s still on the Continent. She writes -very easily and confidently. I can’t help imagining, all the same, that -Adrienne is holding her up, too. She’s written to Nancy and Nancy hasn’t -shown me her letters.â€</p> - -<p>“There is nothing to hide, Mother,†said Nancy, and Oldmeadow had never -seen her look so dejected. “Nothing at all, except that she’s not as -easy and confident as she wants to appear. Adrienne does hold her up. -Poor Meg.<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIX-a" id="CHAPTER_XIX-a"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h3> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> picture of Adrienne holding them up was spread before Oldmeadow’s -eyes on the hot July day when Mrs. Averil drove him up from the Little -House to Coldbrooks. The shade of the great lime-tree on the lawn was -like a canvas, only old Johnson, as he moved to and fro with tea-table, -silver and strawberries, stepping from its cool green atmosphere into -the framing sunshine. The Chadwick family, seated or lying in the shade, -were all nearly as still as in a picture, and Adrienne was its centre. -She sat in a high-backed wicker chair, her hands lying listlessly in her -lap, a scarf about her shoulders, and in her black-veiled white, her -wide, transparent hat, she was like a clouded moon. There was something -even of daring, to Oldmeadow’s imagination, in their approach across the -sunny spaces. Her eyes had so rested upon them from the moment that they -had driven up, that they might have been bold wayfarers challenging the -magic of a Circe in her web. Palgrave, in his white flannels, lay -stretched at her feet, and he had been reading aloud to her; Barbara and -Mrs. Chadwick sat listening while they worked on either hand. Only -Barney was removed, sitting at some little distance, his back half -turned, a pipe between his teeth and his eyes on a magazine that lay -upon his knee. But the influence, the magic, was upon him too. He was -consciously removed.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick sprang up to greet them. “This is nice!†she cried, and -her knitting trailed behind<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a> her as she came so that Barbara, laughing, -stooped to catch and pick it up as she followed her; “I was expecting -you! How nice and dear of you! On this hot day! I always think the very -fishes must feel warm on a day like this! Or could they, do you -think?—Dear Roger!†There was an evident altering in Mrs. Chadwick’s -manner towards him since the meeting in the Park. She was, with all her -fluster, manifestly glad to see him.</p> - -<p>Palgrave had hoisted himself to his feet and now stood beside Adrienne, -eyeing them as a faithful hound eyes suspicious visitors.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it lovely in the shade,†Mrs. Chadwick continued, drawing them -into it. “Adrienne darling, Aunt Monica after all. And we were afraid -the heat might keep you away. I suppose the hill was very hot, Monica?†-Adrienne was still, apparently, something of an invalid, for she did not -rise to greet them. Neither did she speak as she held out her hand to -each of them in turn, and while an enveloping smile dwelt fondly on Mrs. -Averil, she made no attempt to smile at Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>He found himself observing her with a sort of wonder. All the flaws and -deformities of her maternity had fallen from her and she had the -appearance almost of beauty. Yet he had never so little liked her face. -Her dimly patterned features made him think of a Chinese picture he had -once seen where, on a moth-wing background, pale chrysanthemums, -mauvy-pink, a disk of carved jade with cord and tassel and a narrow -ivory box softly spotted with darkness, conveyed in their seeming -triviality an impression almost sinister of impersonality and magic. -There was as little feeling in her face. It was like a mask.<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a></p> - -<p>“Where’s Nancy?†Barney asked. He had got up and joined them, giving -Oldmeadow’s hand, as they met, a curiously lifeless shake.</p> - -<p>“She had letters to write,†said Mrs. Averil.</p> - -<p>“Why, I thought we’d arranged she was to come up and walk round the farm -after tea with me,†said Barney and as he spoke Oldmeadow noted that -Adrienne turned her head slowly, somewhat as she had done on the ominous -morning in March, and rested her eyes upon him.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m so sorry,†said Mrs. Averil cheerfully. “She must have -misunderstood. She had these letters to finish for the post.â€</p> - -<p>Barbara was reconnoitring at the tea-table. “Strawberries!†she -announced. “Who said they’d be over? Oh, what a shame of Nancy not to -come! Roger, why aren’t you staying here rather than with Aunt Monica, -I’d like to know? Aren’t we grand enough for you since she’s had that -bathroom put in!†Barbara had advanced to a lively flapperdom.</p> - -<p>“You see, by this plan, I get the bath with her and get you when she -brings me up,†Oldmeadow retorted.</p> - -<p>“And leave Nancy behind! I call it a shame when we’re having the last -strawberries—and you may have a bathroom with Aunt Monica, but her -strawberries are over. Letters! Who ever heard of Nancy writing -letters—except to you, Barney. She was always writing to you when you -were living in London—before you married. And what screeds you used to -send her—all about art!†said Barbara, and that her liveliness cast a -spell of silence was apparent to everyone but herself.<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a></p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick took Oldmeadow’s arm and drew him aside. “You’ll be able -to come later and be quite with us, won’t you, Roger?†she said -“September is really a lovelier month, don’t you think? Adrienne is -going to take Palgrave and Barbara for a motor-trip in September. Won’t -it be lovely for them?†Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a swiftness that did -not veil a sense of insecurity. “Barbara’s never seen the Alps. They are -going to the Tyrol.â€</p> - -<p>“If we don’t have a European war by then,†Oldmeadow suggested. “What is -Barney going to do?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, Barney is going to the Barclay’s in Scotland, to shoot. He loves -that. A war, Roger? What do you mean? All those tiresome Serbians? Why, -they won’t go into the Tyrol, will they?â€</p> - -<p>“Perhaps not the Tyrol; but they may make it difficult for other people -to go there.â€</p> - -<p>“Do you hear what Roger is saying?†Mrs. Chadwick turned to her family. -“That the Serbians may make war by September and that it might interfere -with the trip. But I’m sure Sir Edward will quiet them. He always does. -Though he is a Liberal, I’ve always felt him to be such a good man,†-said Mrs. Chadwick, “and really patriotic. Simply sitting round a table -with him cools their heads more than one would believe possible. -Dreadfully violent people, I believe, killing their kings and queens and -throwing them out of the window. I always think there’s nothing in the -world for controlling people’s tempers like getting them to sit together -round a table. I wonder why it is. Something to do with having your legs -out of the way, perhaps. People don’t look nearly so<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> threatening if -their legs are hidden, do they? My poor cousin, Fanny Jocelyn, used -always to say that if any of the clergymen in Fred’s diocese got very -troublesome her one recipe was to ask them to lunch, or, if they were -very bad, to dinner. But she had wonderful tact—that gift, you know, -for seeming to care simply <i>immensely</i> for the person she was talking -to. Francis used to tell her that when she looked at you as if you were -the only person in the world she loved she was really working out her -next menu.â€</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid if war comes it won’t be restricted to people, like Serbians -and clergymen, who can be quieted by being asked to dinner,†said -Oldmeadow laughing. “We’ll be fighting, too.â€</p> - -<p>“And who will we fight?†Palgrave inquired. After passing tea, he had -resumed his place at Adrienne’s feet. “Who has been getting in our way -now?â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t you read the papers?†Oldmeadow asked him.</p> - -<p>“Not when I can avoid it,†said Palgrave. “They’ll be bellowing out the -same old Jingo stuff on the slightest provocation, of course. As far as -I can make out the Serbians are the most awful brutes and Russia is -egging them on. But when it comes to a crime against humanity like war, -every one is responsible.â€</p> - -<p>“Are you ready for strawberries, Aunt Monica,†Barbara interposed. “If -there is a war, I hope we may be in it so that I can do some of my first -aid on real people at last.â€</p> - -<p>She was carrying strawberries now to Adrienne who, as she leaned down, -took her gently by the<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> wrist, and said some low-toned words to her. “I -know, my angel. Horrid of me!†said Barbara. “But one can’t take war -seriously, can one!â€</p> - -<p>“I can,†said Mrs. Averil. “Too many of my friends had their sons and -husbands killed in South Africa.â€</p> - -<p>“And it’s human nature,†said Mrs. Chadwick, eating her strawberries -mournfully. “Like the poor: whom you have always with you, you know.â€</p> - -<p>“Human nature is altered already a good deal more than governments -imagine,†said Palgrave, “and they’ll find themselves pretty well dished -if they try to bring on a capitalist war now. The workers all over the -world are beginning to see whose the hands are that pull the strings and -they’ll refuse to dance to their piping. They’ll down weapons just as -they’ve learned, at last, to down tools; and without them you can do -nothing. That’s the way human nature will end war.â€</p> - -<p>“A spirited plan, no doubt,†said Oldmeadow, “and effective if all the -workers came to be of the same mind simultaneously. But if those of one -country downed weapons and those of another didn’t, the first would get -their throats cut for their pains.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s easy to sneer,†Palgrave retorted. “As a matter of principle, I’d -rather have my throat cut by a hired ruffian than kill an innocent -man—even if he did belong to a nation that happened to be cleverer and -more efficient than my own. That’s a crime, of course, that we can’t -forgive.â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t talk such rot, Palgrave,†Barney now remarked in a tone of -apathetic disgust.</p> - -<p>“I beg your pardon,†Palgrave sat up instantly,<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> flushing all over his -face. “I think it’s truth and sanity.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s not truth and sanity. It’s rot and stupid rot,†said Barney. “Some -more tea, please, Barbara.â€</p> - -<p>“Calling names isn’t argument,†said Palgrave. “I could call names, too, -if it came to that. It’s calling names that is stupid. I merely happen -to believe in what Christ said.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, but, dear—Christ drove the money-lenders out of the Temple very, -very roughly,†Mrs. Chadwick interposed with the head-long irrelevance -characteristic of her in such crises. “Thongs must hurt so much, mustn’t -they? He surely believed in punishing people who did wrong.â€</p> - -<p>“Which nation doesn’t do wrong, Mummy? Which nation is a Christ with a -right to punish another? It’s farcical. And punishing isn’t killing. -Christ didn’t kill malefactors.â€</p> - -<p>“The Gadarene swine,†Mrs. Chadwick murmured. “They were killed. So -painfully, too, poor things. I never could understand about that. I hope -the Higher Criticism will manage to get rid of it, for it doesn’t really -seem kind. They had done no wrong at all and I’ve always been specially -fond of pigs myself.â€</p> - -<p>“Ah, but you never saw a pig with a devil in it,†Oldmeadow suggested, -to which Mrs. Chadwick murmured, “I’m sure they seem to have devils in -them, sometimes, poor dears, when they won’t let themselves be caught. -Do get some more cream, Barbara. It’s really too hot for arguments, -isn’t it,†and Mrs. Chadwick sighed with the relief of having rounded -that dangerous corner.<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a></p> - -<p>Barbara went away with the cream-jug and Johnson emerged bearing the -afternoon post.</p> - -<p>“Ah. Letters. Good.†Palgrave sat up to take his and Adrienne’s share. -“One for you, Adrienne; from Meg. Now we shall see what she says about -meeting us in the Tyrol.†His cheeks were still flushed and his eyes -brilliant with anger. Though his words were for Adrienne his voice was -for Barney, at whom he did not glance.</p> - -<p>Adrienne unfolded the foreign sheets, and held them so that Palgrave, -leaning against her knee, could read with her.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick had grown crimson. She looked at Oldmeadow. “Dear Meg is -having such an interesting time,†she told him. “She and Eric are seeing -all manner of delightful places and picking up some lovely bits of old -furniture.†Oldmeadow bowed assent. He had his eyes on Adrienne and he -was wondering about Barbara.</p> - -<p>“What news is there, dear?†Mrs. Chadwick continued in the same badly -controlled voice. Palgrave’s face had clouded.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid it may be bad news, Mother Nell,†said Adrienne looking up.</p> - -<p>It was the first time Oldmeadow had heard her voice that afternoon and -he could hardly have believed it the voice that had once reminded him of -a blue ribbon. It was still slow, still deliberate and soft; but it had -now the steely thrust and intention of a dagger.</p> - -<p>“It’s this accursed war talk!†Palgrave exclaimed. “Eric evidently -thinks it serious and he has to come home at once. What rotten luck.â€</p> - -<p>Adrienne handed the sheets to Mrs. Chadwick.<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> “It will all have blown -over by September,†she said. “As Mother Nell says, we can trust Sir -Edward to keep us out of anything so wicked as a war. I am so completely -with you in all you say about the wickedness of war, Paladin, although I -do not see its causes quite so simply, perhaps.â€</p> - -<p>It was the first time that Oldmeadow had heard the new name for her -knight.</p> - -<p>“For my part,†said Barney, casting a glance at the house, Barbara not -having yet reappeared, “I shall be grateful to the war if it dishes your -trip to the Tyrol. It’s most unsuitable for Barbara.â€</p> - -<p>He did not look at his wife as he spoke. His hat brim pulled down over -his eyes, he sat with folded arms and stared in front of him.</p> - -<p>“You find it unsuitable for one sister to meet another?†Adrienne -inquired. Her eyes were on Barney, but Oldmeadow could not interpret -their gaze.</p> - -<p>“Most unsuitable, to use no stronger word,†said Barney, “while one -sister is living with a man whose name she doesn’t bear.â€</p> - -<p>“You mean to say,†said Palgrave, sitting cross-legged at Adrienne’s -feet and grasping his ankles with both hands, “that Meg, until she’s -legally married, isn’t fit for her little sister to associate with?â€</p> - -<p>“Just what I do mean, Palgrave. Precisely what I do mean,†said Barney, -and his face, reddening, took on its rare but characteristic expression -of sullen anger. “And I’ll thank you—in my house, after all—to keep -out of an argument that doesn’t concern you.â€</p> - -<p>“Barney; Palgrave,†murmured Mrs. Chadwick<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> supplicatingly. Adrienne, -not moving her eyes from her husband’s face, laid her hand on Palgrave’s -shoulder.</p> - -<p>“It does concern me,†said Palgrave, and he put up his hand and grasped -Adrienne’s. “Barbara’s well-being concerns me as much as it does you; -and your wife’s happiness concerns me a good deal more. I can promise -you that I wouldn’t trouble your hospitality for another day if it -weren’t for her—and Mother. It’s perfectly open to you, of course, to -turn me out of my home whenever you like to make use of your legal -privilege. But until I’m turned out I stay—for their sakes.â€</p> - -<p>“You young ass! You unmitigated young ass!†Barney snarled, springing to -his feet. “All right, Mother. Don’t bother. I’ll leave you to your -protector for the present. I only wish he were young enough to be given -what he needs—a thorough good hiding. I’ll go down and see Nancy. Don’t -expect me back to dinner.â€</p> - -<p>“Nancy is busy, my dear,†poor Mrs. Averil, deeply flushing, interposed, -while Palgrave, under his breath, yet audibly, murmured: “Truly -Kiplingesque! Home and Hidings! Our Colonial history summed up!â€</p> - -<p>“She would be here if she weren’t busy,†said Mrs. Averil.</p> - -<p>“I won’t bother her,†said Barney. “I’ll sit in the garden and read. -It’s more peaceful than being here.â€</p> - -<p>“Please tell dear Nancy that it’s ten days at least since <i>I’ve</i> seen -her,†said Adrienne, “and that I miss her and beg that she’ll give me, -sometime, a few of her spare moments.<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a>â€</p> - -<p>At that Barney stopped short, and looked at his wife. “No, Adrienne, I -won’t,†he said with a startling directness. “I’ll take no messages -whatever from you to Nancy. Let Nancy alone—do you see? That’s all I’ve -got to ask of you. Let her alone. She and Aunt Monica are the only -people you haven’t set against me and I don’t intend to quarrel with -Nancy to please you, I promise you.â€</p> - -<p>Sitting motionless and upright, her hand laid on Palgrave’s shoulder, -her face as unalterable as a little mask, Adrienne received these -well-aimed darts as a Saint Sebastian might have received the arrows. -Barney stared hard at her for a moment, then turned his back and marched -out into the sunlight and Oldmeadow, as he saw him go, felt that he -witnessed the end, as he had, little more than a year ago, witnessed the -beginning, of an epoch. What was there left to build on after such a -scene? And what must have passed between husband and wife during their -hours of intimacy to make it credible? Barney was not a brute.</p> - -<p>When Barney had turned through the entrance gates and -disappeared—Adrienne’s eyes dropped to Palgrave’s. “I think I’ll go in, -Paladin,†she said, and it was either with faintness or with the mere -stillness of her rage. “I think I’ll lie down for a little while.â€</p> - -<p>Palgrave had leaped to his feet and, as she rose, drew her hand within -his arm, and Mrs. Chadwick, her eyes staring wide, hastened to her: but -Adrienne gently put her away. “No, no, dearest Mother Nell. Paladin will -help me. You must stay with Aunt Monica and Mr. Oldmeadow.†Her hand -rested for a moment on Mrs. Chadwick’s shoulder and she<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a> looked into her -eyes. “I’m so sorry, Mother Nell. I meant no harm.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, my darling child! As if I did not know that!†Mrs. Chadwick moaned -and, as Adrienne moved away, she turned as if half distraught to her two -friends. “Oh, it’s dreadful! dreadful!†she nearly wept. “Oh, how can he -treat her so—before you all! It’s breaking my heart!â€</p> - -<p>Barbara came running out with the cream. “Great Scott!†she exclaimed, -stopping short. “What’s become of everybody?â€</p> - -<p>“They’ve all gone, dear. Yes, we’ve all finished. No one wants any more -strawberries. Take yours away, will you, dear, we want to have a little -talk, Aunt Monica, Roger and I.â€</p> - -<p>“I suppose it’s Barney again,†said Barbara, standing still and gazing -indignantly around her. “Where’s Adrienne?â€</p> - -<p>“She has gone to lie down, dear. Yes. Barney has been very unkind.â€</p> - -<p>“About my trip, I suppose? He’s been too odious about my trip and it’s -only the other day he made Adrienne cry. What possible business is it of -Barney’s, I’d like to know? One would think he imagined that wives and -sisters were a sort of chattel. Why mayn’t I stay, Mother—if you’re -going to talk about my trip? Adrienne has explained everything to me and -I think Meg was quite right and I’d do the same myself if I were in her -place. So I’m perfectly able to understand.â€</p> - -<p>“I know, dear; I know; Adrienne is so wonderful. But don’t say things -like that, I beg of you, for it makes me very, very unhappy. And please -run away for a little while, for we have other things to talk of.<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> I’m -afraid there may be no trip at all, Barbara; Meg may be coming home at -once. The letters had news about it, and Eric has to go to the war—if -there is a war, you see.†Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a supplicatory note -very unlike her usual placid if complaining authority.</p> - -<p>“But I’d like to hear about the letters, then. Do we really have to give -up the trip? I’m sure it’s Barney at the bottom of it. He’s been trying -to dish it from the first and I simply won’t stand it from him.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s not Barney at all, Barbara. You shall hear all that there is to -hear. And you mustn’t, really, forget that Barney is your elder brother -and has some right to say what you should do—even though we mayn’t -agree with him.â€</p> - -<p>“No, he hasn’t. Not an atom,†Barbara declared. “If anyone has any -right, except you, it’s Adrienne, because she’s a bigger, wiser person -than any of us.â€</p> - -<p>“And since you’ve borne your testimony, Barbara,†Oldmeadow suggested, -“you might obey your mother and give us the benefit of your experience -on an occasion when it’s invited.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, I know you’re against Adrienne, Roger,†said Barbara, but with a -sulkiness that showed surrender. “I shan’t force myself on you, I assure -you, and girls of fifteen aren’t quite the infants in arms you may -imagine. If Adrienne weren’t here to stand up for me I don’t know where -I’d be. Because, you know, you <i>are</i> weak, Mother. Yes you are. You’ve -been really wobbling like anything about my trip and trying to wriggle -out of it whenever you had a loop-hole, and Adrienne thinks you’re weak, -I know, for she told me so, and said we must help<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> you to be brave and -strong and that you belonged to a generation that had its eyes tightly -bandaged from birth. So there!†And delivering this effective shot, -Barbara marched away, not forgetting to pick up her plate of -strawberries as she passed the table.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick attempted to conceal her confusion by following her -child’s retreating figure with grave disapprobation and Oldmeadow seized -the propitious moment to remark: “I can’t help feeling that there’s -something to be said for Barney, all the same. His wife <i>has</i> set you -all against him, hasn’t she? I suspect Barbara’s right, too, my dear -friend, and that in your heart of hearts you dislike this trip of hers -as much as he does. Certainly Barbara isn’t a very pleasing example of -Adrienne’s influence.â€</p> - -<p>“She is very naughty, very naughty and rebellious,†poor Mrs. Chadwick -murmured, twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. “I know I’ve not a -strong character, but I never spoiled my children and dear Adrienne -does, I feel, spoil Barbara by taking her so seriously and talking to -her as if she were grown up, you know. I had an aunt who married at -sixteen; but it didn’t turn out at all happily. They quarrelled -constantly and she had two sets of twins, poor thing—almost like a -judgment, dear Mamma used to say. But of course Barbara is really too -young to understand; and so I’ve told dear Adrienne. Not that she isn’t -perfectly frank about it. She’s told me over and over again that -weakness was my besetting danger and that I must stand up straight and -let the winds of freedom blow away my cobwebs. So dear and original, -always, you know. And of course I see her point of<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a> view and Barbara -will, no doubt, be a bigger, finer person‗Mrs. Chadwick’s voice -trailed off in its echo. “But I don’t agree with you, Roger; I don’t -agree with you at all!†she took up with sudden vehemence, “about the -trip. I don’t agree that my poor Meg is a leper to be avoided until a -legal ceremony has been performed. I think that a cruel -convention—cruel, base and cowardly. She must have suffered so much -already. Nothing will give her so much courage as for us to be seen -standing by her. Adrienne has explained all that most beautifully to -Barbara. And how true love is the most sacred thing in life.â€</p> - -<p>“My dear friend, Meg isn’t a leper, of course, and we all intend to -stand by her. But it is certainly best that a young girl like Barbara -shouldn’t be asked to meet, or understand, or exonerate such difficult -situations.â€</p> - -<p>“That’s what I’ve tried to say to Eleanor,†Mrs. Averil murmured.</p> - -<p>“And why not, Roger! Why not!†Mrs. Chadwick cried, surprisingly yet not -convincingly aroused. “Nothing develops the character so much as facing -and understanding difficulty. And as for exoneration—I don’t agree with -you, and Adrienne doesn’t agree. You and Monica are conventionalists and -we must live on a higher plane than convention. I’m sure I try to, -though it’s very hard sometimes, but the noblest things are hardest. -There is nothing to exonerate. Meg was following her own light in doing -what she did.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s not a question of Meg, but of her situation,†Oldmeadow returned.</p> - -<p>“And because of her situation, because she is so in<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a> need of help and -loyalty, you ask that Barbara should draw back her skirts from her! Oh! -I knew it!†cried Mrs. Chadwick, “I knew that you would feel like that! -That is why I felt it would be happier if you were not here with -Adrienne.â€</p> - -<p>“You need hardly tell me that,†said Oldmeadow smiling. “But it’s not a -question of convention, except in so far as convention means right -feeling and good taste. Meg, whatever her lights—and personally I don’t -believe that she followed them—has done something that involves pain -and humiliation for all concerned with her, and whether she was or was -not justified in doing it is a moral problem that a child shouldn’t be -asked to meet. Such problems should be kept from her until she is old -enough to understand them.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick’s vehemence had only fictitiously sustained her. It -dropped from her now and for a little while she sat silent, and the -confusion of her heart was piteously revealed to her friend as she said -at last, “If there <i>is</i> a war, it will all settle itself, won’t it, for -then Barbara couldn’t go. I don’t try to wriggle out of it. That’s most -unfair and untrue. I’ve promised Adrienne and I agree with Adrienne -about it. I can’t explain it clearly, as she does; it’s all quite, quite -different when Adrienne explains it. She seems to hold me up and you and -Monica pull me down—oh, yes, you do, Roger. Of course it would kill -me—I know that I should die, if Barbara were to do what Meg has done; -you mustn’t think Adrienne <i>wants</i> her to behave like that, you know. -Adrienne only wants people to be brave and follow their light; but your -light needn’t be a married man, need it? And sometimes I think it isn’t -<i>really</i> so<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> serious—falling in love, you know. I’m sure I thought <i>I</i> -was in love half a dozen times before Francis proposed. It’s a question -of seeing what’s best for you all round, isn’t it, and it can’t be best -if it’s a married man, can it? Oh! I know I’m saying what Adrienne -wouldn’t like, now; because it sounds so worldly and as if I believed in -the French way. But I don’t at all. I think love’s everything, too. Only -it always seemed to me when I was a girl that love meant white satin and -orange-blossoms; and my poor, poor Meg can never wear those now. I -should feel miserable, quite miserable about her, of course, if Adrienne -weren’t here to make me see the big, real things instead of the little -ones. And Barney has been so unkind. Sneering and scoffing at -everything‗her voice quivered. “However, if there’s a war, that will -settle it. Barbara couldn’t go if there was a war.<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XX-a" id="CHAPTER_XX-a"></a>CHAPTER XX</h3> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> war thus had its uses to Mrs. Chadwick. Barbara did not go to the -Tyrol. By the end of September Oldmeadow and Barney were in training, -one on the Berkshire and one on the Wiltshire downs, and Meg was -ambiguously restored to her family at Coldbrooks.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow had not seen Barney for many days, when they met one afternoon -at Paddington and travelled together as far as Didcot. They had the -carriage to themselves and though Barney’s demeanour was reticent there -were many things about which, it was evident, he found it a relief to be -communicative. It was from him that Oldmeadow learned of Meg’s return.</p> - -<p>“She’ll be in a pretty box, won’t she, if Hayward is killed,†he said, -smoking his cigarette and not looking at his friend. “He’s over there, -you know, and for my part I think there’s very little chance of any of -them coming back alive.â€</p> - -<p>They both smoked in silence for a little while after this, contemplating -the ordeal in which their country was involved rather than their own -relation to it; but Oldmeadow’s mind returned presently to Barney’s -difficulties and he asked him if it had been to see Hayward off that -he’d just been up to London.</p> - -<p>Barney, at this, had a quiet sardonic laugh. “Good heavens, no,†he -said. “Hayward went in the first week and Adrienne and Palgrave went up -with Meg to see him off. Even if I’d wanted to, I’d have been allowed to -have no hand in that.<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a> Adrienne is seeing to it all. Lawyers, money, I -don’t know what. No; I went up to spend my leave with old Boyd at his -place in Chelsea. I didn’t want to go home. Home is the last place I -want to be just now.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow at this maintained a silence that could not pretend surprise -and Barney continued in a moment. “Palgrave isn’t coming in, you know.â€</p> - -<p>“You mean he’s carrying out his pacifist ideas?â€</p> - -<p>“If they are his,†said Barney in his colourless yet sardonic voice. -“Any ideas of Palgrave’s are likely to be Adrienne’s, you know. She got -hold of him from the first.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, after all,†Oldmeadow after another moment felt impelled to say, -“She got hold of you, too. In the same way; by believing in herself and -by understanding you. She thinks she’s right.â€</p> - -<p>“Ha! ha!†laughed Barney and for a moment, an acutely uncomfortable one -for Oldmeadow, he turned his eyes on his friend. “Thinks she’s right! -You needn’t tell me that, Roger!â€</p> - -<p>It had indeed, Oldmeadow felt, hardly been decent of him.</p> - -<p>“I know. Of course she would. But, all the same, people must be allowed -to hold their own opinions.â€</p> - -<p>“Must they?†said Barney. “At a time like this? Adrienne must, of -course; as a woman she doesn’t come into it; she brings other people in, -that is to say, and keeps out herself. Besides she’s an American. But -Palgrave shouldn’t be allowed the choice. He’s dishonouring us all—as -Meg has done. Poor, foolish, wretched Mother! She’s seeing it at last, -though she won’t allow herself to say it, or, rather, Adrienne won’t -allow her—†He checked himself.<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a></p> - -<p>“Dishonour is a strong word, Barney. Palgrave is hardly more than a -boy.â€</p> - -<p>“Jim Errington is a year younger than Palgrave, and Peter Layard six -months. They’re both in. I don’t think nineteen is too young to -dishonour your family. If Palgrave committed a murder, he’d be hanged. -But it will no doubt come to conscription and then we’ll see where he’ll -find himself. Herded in as a Tommy. All this talk of a few months is -folly.â€</p> - -<p>“I know. Yes. Folly,†said Oldmeadow absently. “Have you tried to have -it out with Palgrave, Barney? If he only hears Adrienne’s side what can -you expect of him? If you leave them all to sink or swim without you, -you mustn’t blame Adrienne for steering as best she can.â€</p> - -<p>“Sink or swim without me!†Barney echoed. “Why they’d none of them -listen to me. You saw well enough how it was with them that day in July -when you came up. Adrienne is twice as strong as I am when it comes to -anything like a struggle and she has them all firmly under her thumb. -She steers because she intends to steer and intends I shan’t. I’ve tried -nothing with Palgrave, except to keep my hands off him. Mother’s talked -to him, and Meg’s talked to him; but nothing does any good. Oh, yes; Meg -hangs on Adrienne because she’s got nothing else to hang to; but she’s -frightfully down on Palgrave all the same. They’re all united against -me, but they’re not united among themselves by any means. It’s not a -peaceful family party at Coldbrooks, I promise you. Poor Mother spends -most of her time shut up in her room crying.â€</p> - -<p>Barney offered no further information on this<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a> occasion and Oldmeadow -asked for no more. It was from Mrs. Aldesey, some weeks later, that he -heard that Eric Hayward had been killed. Mrs. Aldesey was his most -punctual correspondent and her letters, full of pungent, apposite -accounts of how the war was affecting London, the pleasantest -experiences that came to him on the Berkshire downs, where, indeed, he -did not find life unpleasant. Mrs. Aldesey made time for these long -letters after tiring days spent among Belgian refugees and his sense of -comradeship had been immensely deepened by the vast, new experience they -were, from their different angles, sharing. It was difficult, on the -soft October day, to dissociate the mere pleasure of reading her letter -from the miserable news she gave. Yet he knew, stretched at ease after -strenuous exercise, the canvas of his tent idly flapping above him and -the sunlight falling across his feet, that it was very miserable news -indeed and must miserably affect his friends at Coldbrooks. What was to -become of poor Meg now? And after his mind had paused on poor Meg a pang -of memory brought back the face of his setter John. Poor Hayward.</p> - -<p>“She must, of course, find some work at once,†Mrs. Aldesey wrote. “The -war does help to solve problems of this sort as nothing else before ever -could. She must nurse, or drive an ambulance and perhaps by the time -it’s all over we’ll have forgotten irrelevancies that happened so long -ago. Sometimes it feels like that to me and I know I’m much too old to -face the world that will have grown up out of the wreckage of the world -I knew.†Mrs. Aldesey, still, always spoke of herself as antique, -relegated and on the shelf. Rather absurd of her, as her friend pointed<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a> -out in his reply, when she was obviously one of the people who were -going to make the new world. She was organizing the Belgians in the most -remarkable manner.</p> - -<p>As to Coldbrooks he hesitated. He could hardly see himself writing to -Mrs. Chadwick or to Meg. Of Nancy he felt a little shy. There would be -too much to say to Nancy if he said anything and he allowed the -anonymous calamity that had overtaken his friends to pass without -comment or condolence. But after an interval of some weeks it was from -Nancy herself that he heard. Nancy seemed always to be selected as the -vehicle for other people’s emergencies.</p> - -<p>“Dear Roger,†she wrote. “You have heard how very unhappy we all are. It -is dreadful to see poor Meg, and Aunt Eleanor makes it really worse for -her. Meg wears mourning, like a widow, and she is terribly bitter about -Palgrave, and about Adrienne, too. Doesn’t that seem to you very strange -and unjust? Adrienne is doing for Palgrave what she did for -Meg—standing by him. It is all more unhappy than you can imagine. -Palgrave is at New College, now, you know, and I’m writing, because Aunt -Eleanor’s one hope is that you may be able to talk to him. Kindly, you -know, Roger; and not as if you thought him a criminal or a coward; that -is worse than useless, naturally. Palgrave is very arrogant; but you -know what a tender heart he really has and I am sure that he is very -lonely and unhappy. So be kind and understanding, won’t you? He really -cares for you and trusts you more than he likes to show; and of course -he would expect you to be against him.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow was going into Oxford in a week<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a>’s time and he wrote to -Palgrave and asked him to give him tea. “I’ve got to talk to you, if -you’ll let me,†he said, “but I shan’t make myself a nuisance, I promise -you. I only want to satisfy myself that you have thought everything out, -and if you have I’ll be able to tell your people that they must give up -tormenting themselves and you about it. I shall like talking over your -work with you, too, if I may, and renewing my own Oxford memories.†So -conciliatory, so affectionate (and he found it easy to be affectionate -to poor Palgrave) was the tone of the letter that he had a swift reply. -Palgrave would be very glad to see him.</p> - -<p>It was a melancholy, deserted Oxford into which Oldmeadow drove his -little car on a late October afternoon. Most of the youths he saw were -of a nondescript variety, a type to whom Oxford means scholastic -opportunity and nothing more. There were dark-skinned lads from distant -parts of the Empire looking, to Oldmeadow’s eye, rather pitiful and -doomed to disappointment, and a hurrying, absorbed little Jap had an -almost empty Broad as a setting for his alien figure.</p> - -<p>Palgrave’s name was freshly painted at the bottom of a staircase in the -Garden Quad and Oldmeadow mounted to rooms that most delightfully -overlooked the garden and its catalpa-tree.</p> - -<p>Palgrave was ready for him. The tea was laid and he stood at the table -cutting a cake as Oldmeadow entered. But some one else, too, was ready, -for there, in the window-seat, her gaze fixed on the waning golds and -russets beneath, sat Adrienne Toner. Oldmeadow, very much and very -disagreeably affected, paused at the door.<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a></p> - -<p>“Come in, Mr. Oldmeadow,†said Adrienne, and there was a strange, jaded -eagerness in the gaze she fixed on him. “I’ve only come for tea. I have -to go directly afterwards. I am staying in Oxford, now, you know. To be -near Palgrave.â€</p> - -<p>“Meg’s turned her out of Coldbrooks,†Palgrave announced, standing -still, over the tea-tray, his hands in his pockets while, with bent -head, he looked from under his brows at Oldmeadow. “Meg, you understand; -for whose sake she’s gone through everything. We’re pariahs together, -now; she and I.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s not quite true or fair to say that, Palgrave,†said Adrienne, -whose eyes had returned to the garden. “Meg hasn’t turned me out. I felt -it would be happier for her if I weren’t there; and for your -Mother—since they feel as they do about what has happened; and happier -for you and me to be together. You can’t be surprised at Meg. She is -nearly beside herself with grief.â€</p> - -<p>Adrienne was very much altered. The magic of the lime-tree scene no -longer lay about her. Her skin was sallow, her eyes sunken, her -projecting mouth was at once stubborn, weary and relaxed. She had been -almost beautiful on that July day and to-day she was definitely ugly. -Oldmeadow saw that some intent inner preoccupation held her thoughts.</p> - -<p>“I <i>am</i> surprised at her; very much surprised,†said Palgrave, “though I -might have warned you that Meg wasn’t a person worth risking a great -deal for. Oh, yes, she’s nearly beside herself all right. She’s lost the -man she cared for and she can’t, now, ever be made ‘respectable.’ Oh, I -see further into Meg’s grief than you do, my poor Adrienne. She<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a>’s just -as conventional and unheroic at heart as Mother; and that’s what <i>she</i> -minds—more than anything.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow, sunken in the deep chair Palgrave had drawn for him to the -table, watched the curious interchange, and after a pause, in her jaded -voice, Adrienne from the window-seat commented: “I understand her rage -and misery. It’s because her grief is divided and spoiled and tainted -like that that she is distracted.â€</p> - -<p>“Will you pour out tea?†Palgrave asked her gloomily. “You’ll see -anyone’s side, always, except your own.â€</p> - -<p>To this Adrienne, rising and coming forward to the table, made no reply. -She wore a dark dress that recalled to Oldmeadow the one in which he had -first seen her; the short jacket tying across white in front and white -ruffles falling about her neck and hands. A small, dark hat was bent -down about her face.</p> - -<p>Strange, brooding face. What was she thinking of, Oldmeadow wondered, as -he watched her hands, impeded by the falling ruffles, moving with the -old, fumbling gestures among the tea-things; she had constantly to throw -back the ruffles, and the tea-pot, after all, was too heavy for her. It -slipped on one side as she lifted it and the hot tea poured over her -hand. She kept her hold bravely and Oldmeadow rescued her.</p> - -<p>“How stupid I am!†she said, biting her lip.</p> - -<p>“You’ve scalded your hand,†said Palgrave, eyeing her with his air no -longer of rapturous but of gloomy devotion.</p> - -<p>They made Oldmeadow think of comrade political prisoners moving off -together in a convoy to<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> Siberia. There was something as bleak, as -heavy, as uninspired in their aspect. He could not think that Palgrave -could now catch much light or flame from such a companion. They would -trudge through the snow; condemned, but together; to be together was the -best thing, now, that life offered them.</p> - -<p>She said that the scald was nothing and asked to be trusted to go on -with the tea, grasping the handle with resolution. Oldmeadow, however, -standing beside her, insisted on filling the cups for her.</p> - -<p>“You can be allowed to put in the milk and sugar, you see,†he said. He -was aware, as he thus succoured and rallied her, of an influx of feeling -like the feeling that came with the uncanny dreams. Here she was, and -reality had caught her. She deserved to be caught, of course; tragic, -meddling Pierrot. But his heart was heavy and gentle; as in his dreams.</p> - -<p>They sat round the table together. On the mantelpiece was a large, -framed photograph of Adrienne; on the walls photographs of a Botticelli -Madonna, a Mantegna from Padua and the da Vinci drawing for the Christ -of the Last Supper. Seeing Oldmeadow’s eyes on them Palgrave said: -“Adrienne gave me those. And lots of the books.â€</p> - -<p>“And don’t forget the beautiful cushions, Palgrave,†said Adrienne, with -a flicker of her old, contented playfulness. “I’m sure good cushions are -the foundation of a successful study of philosophy.â€</p> - -<p>The cushions were certainly very good; and very beautiful, as Oldmeadow -commented. “That gorgeous chair, too,†said Palgrave. “It ought to make -a Plato of me.â€</p> - -<p>It was curious, the sense they gave him of trusting<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> him. Were they -aware, if only sub-consciously, that he was feeling Adrienne, her -follies and misdeeds thick upon her, ill-used? Or was it only that they -had come down to such fundamental securities as were left to them and -felt that with him, at all events, they were in the hands of an -impartial judge?</p> - -<p>“It’s a happy life Meg and Mother lead at Coldbrooks, as you may -imagine,†Palgrave took up the theme that preoccupied him. “They only -see Nancy and Aunt Monica, of course. Barbara is at school and Barney, -as you are probably aware, never comes near his disgraced sister. Would -you believe it, Roger,†Palgrave went on, while Oldmeadow saw that a -dull colour crept up to Adrienne’s face and neck as her husband was thus -mentioned, “Meg blames Adrienne now for the whole affair! About Eric and -herself! Actually! On the one hand Eric is her hero for whom she’ll -mourn for ever and on the other Adrienne is responsible for the fact -that she’s not ‘respectable’ and can’t claim to be his widow. Oh, don’t -ask me how she contrives to work it out! Women like Meg don’t need logic -when they’ve a thong in their hands and want to use it. And Adrienne’s -shoulders are bared for the lash! God! It makes me fairly mad to think -of it!â€</p> - -<p>“Please, Palgrave!†Adrienne supplicated in a low voice. She did not -eat. She had drunk her tea and sat looking down at her plate. “Don’t -think of it any more. Meg is very, very unhappy. We can hardly imagine -what the misery and confusion of Meg’s heart must be.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’ll make excuses for anyone, Adrienne! You’re not a shining -example of happiness either, if<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> it comes to that. It’s atrocious of Meg -to treat you as she does. Atrocious of her to hold you responsible.â€</p> - -<p>“But I am responsible,†said Adrienne, while the dull flush still dyed -her face. “I’ve always said that I was responsible. It was I who -persuaded them to go.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. To go. Instead of staying and being lovers secretly. I know all -about it. And no doubt Meg would rather it had been so now. And so would -Mother!†Palgrave ground his teeth on a laugh. “That’s where morality -lands them! Pretty, isn’t it!â€</p> - -<p>A silence fell and then Adrienne rose and said that Mr. Jackson would be -waiting for her. “He’s coming at half-past five,†she said, and, with -his gloomy tenderness, Palgrave informed Oldmeadow that she was reading -logic and Plato; “to keep up with me, you know.â€</p> - -<p>Adrienne, smiling faintly, laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder as -she went past his chair. “Come in to-night, after dinner, and tell me -what you decide,†she said.</p> - -<p>“I’ll have no news for you,†Palgrave replied.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow had gone to hold the door open for her and, as she paused -there to give him her hand, he heard her murmur: “Will you come down -with me?â€</p> - -<p>“Let me see you to the bottom of the stair,†he seized the intimation, -and, as she went before him, she said, still in the low, purposeful -voice, and he felt sure now that this had been her intention in coming -to tea: “It’s only so that you shan’t think I’ll oppose you. If you can -persuade him, I shall not<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a> oppose it. I think he’s right. But it’s too -hard. I mean, I hope you can persuade him that it’s right to go.â€</p> - -<p>She had stepped out on to the threshold at the foot of the stairs and he -paused behind her, astonished. “You want me to persuade him of what you -think wrong?â€</p> - -<p>She stood still looking out at the sunny quadrangle. “People must think -for themselves. I don’t know who is right or who is wrong. Perhaps I’ve -influenced Palgrave. Perhaps he wouldn’t have felt like this if it -hadn’t been for me. I don’t know. But if you can make him feel it right -to go, I shall be glad.†She stepped out into the quadrangle.</p> - -<p>“You mean,†said Oldmeadow, following her, and strangely moved, “that -you’d rather have him killed than stay behind like this?â€</p> - -<p>“It would be much happier for him, wouldn’t it,†she said. “If he could -feel it right to go.â€</p> - -<p>They were under the arch of the Library, she still going slowly, before -him, and Oldmeadow stopped her there. “Mrs. Barney, forgive me—may I -ask you something?†He had put his hand on her shoulder and she paused -and faced him. “It’s something personal, and I’ve no right to be -personal with you, as I know. But—have you been to see Barney at -Tidworth?â€</p> - -<p>As Oldmeadow spoke these Words, Adrienne turned away vehemently, and -then stood still, as though arrested in her impulse of flight by an -irresistible desire to listen. “Barney does not want to see me,†she -said, speaking with difficulty.</p> - -<p>“You think so,†said Oldmeadow. “And he may think so. But you ought to -see each other at a time<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> like this. He may be ordered to France at any -time now.†He could not see her face.</p> - -<p>“Do you mean,†she said, after a moment, keeping the rigidity of her -listening poise, “that he won’t come to say good-bye?â€</p> - -<p>“I know nothing at all,†said Oldmeadow. “I can only infer how far the -mischief between you has gone. And I’m most frightfully sorry for it. -I’ve been sorry for Barney; but now I’m sorry for you, too. I think -you’re being unfairly treated. But yours have been the mistakes, Mrs. -Barney, and it’s for you to take the first step.â€</p> - -<p>“Barney doesn’t want to see me,†she repeated, and she went on, while he -heard, growing in her voice, the note of the old conviction: “He has -made mistakes, too. He has treated me unfairly, too. I can’t take the -first step.â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t you love him, then?†said Oldmeadow, and in his voice was the -note of the old harshness.</p> - -<p>“Does he love me?†she retorted, turning now, with sudden fire, and -fixing her eyes upon him. “Why should he think I want to see him if he -doesn’t want to see me? Why should I love, if he doesn’t? Why should I -sue to Barney?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh,†Oldmeadow almost groaned. “Don’t take that line; don’t, I beg of -you. You’re both young. And you’ve hurt him so. You’ve meant to hurt -him; I’ve seen it! I’ve seen it, Mrs. Barney. If you’ll put by your -pride everything can grow again.â€</p> - -<p>“No! no! no!†she cried almost violently, and he saw that she was -trembling. “Some things don’t grow again! It’s not like plants, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Some things are like living creatures; and they can die. They -can die,†she repeated, now walking rapidly<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a> away from him out into the -large quadrangle with its grass plot cut across by the late sunshine. He -followed her for a moment and he heard her say, as she went: “It’s -worse, far worse, not to mean to hurt. It’s worse to care so little that -you don’t know when you are hurting.â€</p> - -<p>“No, it’s not,†said Oldmeadow. “That’s only being stupid; not cruel.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s not thinking that is cruel; it’s not caring that is cruel,†she -repeated, passionately, half muttering the words, and whether with tears -of fury he could not say.</p> - -<p>He stood still at the doorway. “Good-bye, then,†he said. And not -looking behind her, as she went out swiftly into New College Lane, she -answered, still on the same note of passionate protest: “Good-bye, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Good-bye.†He watched her small, dark figure hurry along in -the shadow of the wall until the turning hid it from view.<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXI-a" id="CHAPTER_XXI-a"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h3> - -<p class="nind">P<small>ALGRAVE</small>, apparently, had formed no conjectures as to their conversation -and was thinking still of Adrienne’s wrongs rather than of his own -situation. “Did you take her home?†he said. “I see you’re sorry for -her, Roger. It’s really too abominable, you know. I really can’t say -before her what I think, I really can’t say before you what I think of -Barney’s treatment of her; because I know you agree with him.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow felt all the more able, shaken though he was by the interview -below, to remember, because of it, what he thought. “If you mean that I -don’t consider Barney in the very least responsible for the death of the -baby, I do agree with him,†he said.</p> - -<p>“Apart from that, apart from the baby,†said Palgrave, controlling his -temper, it was evident, in his wish to keep the ear of the impartial -judge, “though what the loss of a child means to a woman like Adrienne I -don’t believe you can guess; apart from whose was the responsibility, he -ought to have seen, towards the end, at all events, if he’d eyes in his -head and a heart in his breast, that all she asked was to forgive him -and take him back. She was proud, of course. What woman of her power and -significance wouldn’t have been? She couldn’t be the first to move. But -Barney must have seen that her heart was breaking.â€</p> - -<p>“Well,†said Oldmeadow, taking in, with some perplexity, this new -presentation of Adrienne<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> Toner; “what about his heart? She’d led it a -pretty dance. And you forget that I don’t consider she had anything to -forgive him.â€</p> - -<p>“His heart!†Palgrave echoed scornfully, yet with a sorrowful scorn; “He -mended his heart quick enough. Went and fell in love with Nancy, who -only asks to be let alone.â€</p> - -<p>“He’s always loved Nancy. She’s always been like a sister to him. -Adrienne has infected you with her groundless jealousy.â€</p> - -<p>“Groundless indeed!†Palgrave reached for his pipe and began to stuff it -vindictively. “Nancy sees well enough, poor dear! She’s had to keep him -off by any device she could contrive. She’s a good deal more than a -sister to him, now. She’s the only person in the world for him. You can -call it jealousy if you like. That’s only another name for a broken -heart.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t know what Barney’s feeling may be, Palgrave, but I do know, it -was quite plain to me, that Adrienne was jealous long before she had any -ground for jealousy. If Nancy’s all Barney’s got left now, it’s simply -because Adrienne has taken everything else from him. You don’t seem to -realize that Adrienne drove him from her with her airs of martyrdom. -Took vengeance on him, too; what else was the plan for Barbara going -abroad with you? I don’t want to speak unkindly of her. It’s quite true; -I’m sorry for her. I’ve never liked her so well. But the reason is that -she’s beginning, I really believe, to find out that her own feet are of -clay, while her mistake all along has been to imagine herself above -ordinary humanity. All our feet are of clay, and we never get very far -unless we are aware<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> of the weakness in our structure and look out for a -continual tendency to crumble. You don’t get over it by pretending you -don’t need to walk and imagining you have wings instead of feet.â€</p> - -<p>Palgrave, drawing stiffly at his pipe during this little homily, -listened, gloomily yet without resentment. “You see, where you make -<i>your</i> mistake—if you’ll allow the youthful ass you consider me to say -so—is that you’ve always imagined Adrienne to be a self-righteous prig -who sets herself up above others. She doesn’t; she doesn’t,†Palgrave -repeated with conviction. “She’d accept the feet of clay if you’ll grant -her the heart of flame—for everybody; the wings—for everybody. There’s -your mistake, Roger. Adrienne believes that everybody has wings as well -as herself; and the only difference she sees in people is that some have -learned and some haven’t how to use them. She may be mortal woman—bless -her—and have made mistakes; but they’re the mistakes of flame; not of -earthiness.â€</p> - -<p>“You are not an ass, Palgrave,†said Oldmeadow, after a moment. “You are -wise in everything but experience; and you see deep. Suppose we come to -a compromise. You’ve owned that Adrienne may make mistakes and I own -that I may misjudge her. I see what you believe about her and I see why -you believe it. I’ve seen her at her worst, no doubt, and to you she’s -been able to show only her best. So let it rest at that. What I came to -talk about, you know, was you.â€</p> - -<p>“I know,†said Palgrave, and he gave a deep sigh.</p> - -<p>“Be patient with me,†said Oldmeadow. “After all, we belong to the same -generation. You can<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a>’t pretend that I’m an old fogey who’s lost the -inspirations of his youth and has marched so far down towards the grave -that the new torches coming up over the horizon are hidden from him.â€</p> - -<p>“That’s rather nice, you know, Roger,†Palgrave smiled faintly. “No; -you’re not an old fogey. But all the same there’s not much torch about -you.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s rather sad, isn’t it,†Oldmeadow mused, “that we should always -seem to begin with torches and then to spend the rest of our lives in -quenching them. It may be, you know, that we’re only trying to hold them -straight, so that the wind shan’t blow them out. However!—you’ll let me -talk. That’s the point.â€</p> - -<p>“Of course you may. You’ve been awfully decent,†Palgrave murmured.</p> - -<p>“Well, then, it seems to me you’re not seeing straight,†said Oldmeadow. -“It’s not crude animal patriotism—as you’d put it—that’s asked of you. -It’s a very delicate discrimination between ideals.â€</p> - -<p>“I know! I know!†said Palgrave. The traces of mental anguish were on -his worn young face. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose to -lean against the mantelpiece.†I don’t suppose I can explain,†he said, -staring out at the sky. “I suppose that with me the crude animal thing -is the personal inhibition. I can’t do it. I’d rather, far, be killed -than have to kill other men. That’s the unreasoning part, the -instinctive part, but it’s a part of one’s nature that I don’t believe -one can violate without violating one’s very spirit. I’ve always been -different, I know, from most fellows of my age and class. I’ve always -hated sport—shooting and hunting. The fox, the stag, the partridge, -have always spoiled<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a> it for me. Oh, I know they have to be killed—poor -brutes! I know that; but I can’t myself be the butcher.â€</p> - -<p>“You’ll own, though, that there must be butchers,†said Oldmeadow, after -a little meditation. He felt himself in the presence of something -delicate, distorted and beautiful. “And you’ll own, won’t you, when it -comes to a war like this, when not only our national honour but our -national existence is at stake, that some men must kill others. Isn’t it -then, baldly, that you profit, personally, by other people doing what -you won’t do? You’ll eat spring lamb as long as there are butchers to -kill the lamb for you, and you’ll be an Englishman and take from England -all that she has to give you—including Oxford and Coldbrooks—and let -other men do the nasty work that makes the survival of England and -Oxford and Coldbrooks possible. That’s what it comes to, you know. -That’s all I ask you to look at squarely.â€</p> - -<p>“I know, I know,†Palgrave repeated. He had looked at little else, poor -boy. Oldmeadow saw that. “But that’s where the delicate discrimination -between ideals comes in, Roger. That’s where I have to leave intuition, -which says ‘No,’ and turn to reason. And the trouble is that for me -reason says ‘No,’ too. Because humanity—all of it that counts—has -outgrown war. That’s what it comes to. It’s a conflict between a -national and an humanitarian ideal. There are enough of us in the world -to stop war, if we all act together; and why, because others don’t, -should I not do what I feel right? Others may follow if only a few of us -stand out. If no one stands out, no one will ever follow. And you can’t -kill England like that. England is more than<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> men and institutions,†-Palgrave still gazed at the sky. “It’s an idea that will survive; -perhaps the more truly in the spirit for perishing in the flesh, if it -really came to that. Look at Greece. She’s dead, if you like; yet what -existing nation lives as truly? It is Grecian minds we think with and -Grecian eyes we see with. It’s Plato’s conception of the just man being -the truly happy man—even if the whole world’s against him—that is the -very meaning of our refusal to go with the world.â€</p> - -<p>“You’ll never stop war by refusal so long as the majority of men still -believe in it,†said Oldmeadow. “There are not enough of you to stop it -now. The time to stop it is before it comes; not while it’s on. It’s -before it begins that you must bring the rest of humanity not to behave -in ways that make it inevitable. I’m inclined to think that ideas can -perish,†he went on, as Palgrave, to this, made no reply, “as far as -their earthly manifestation goes, that is, if enough men and -institutions are destroyed. If Germany could conquer and administer -England, I’m inclined to think the English idea would perish. And war -need not be unspiritual. Killing our fellow-men need not mean hating -them. There’s less hatred in war, I imagine, than in some of the -contests of peaceful civilian life. Put it fairly on the ground of -humanitarianism, then, Palgrave; not of nationality. It’s the whole -world that is threatened by a hateful idea, by the triumph of all you -most fear and detest, and unless we strive against it with all we are -and have it seems to me that we fall short of our duty not only as -Englishmen, but as humanitarians. Put it at that, Palgrave: would you -really have had England stand by and not lift a finger when Belgium was -invaded and France menaced?<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Palgrave was not ready with his reply and he turned away while he looked -for it and shuffled the papers on his desk with a nervous hand. “Yes, I -would,†he said at last. “Hateful as it is to have to say it—I would -have stood by.†He came back to his place at the mantelpiece and looked -down at Oldmeadow as he spoke. “The choice, of course, is hateful; but I -think we should have stood by and helped the sufferers and let France -and Germany fight it out. It always comes back to them, doesn’t it? -They’re always fighting it out; they always will, till they find it’s no -good and that they can’t annihilate each other; which is what they both -want to do. Oh, I’ve read too many of the young French neo-Catholics to -be able to believe that the hateful idea was all on one side. Their -ideals don’t differ much, once you strip them of their theological -tinsel, from those of the Germans. Germany happens to be the aggressor -now; but if the militarist party in France had had the chance, they’d -have struck as quickly.â€</p> - -<p>“The difference—and it’s an immense one—is that the militarist party -in France wouldn’t have had the chance. The difference is that it -doesn’t govern and mould public opinion. It’s not a menace to the world. -It’s only a sort of splendid pet, kept in a Zoo, for the delectation of -a certain class and party. Whereas Germany’s the <i>bona fide</i> hungry -tigress at large. What you really ask of England, Palgrave, is that she -should be a Buddha and lie down and let the tigress, after finishing -France, devour her, too. It really comes to that. Buddhism is the only -logical basis for your position, and I don’t believe, however sorry one -may be for hungry<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> tigresses, that the right way to deal with them is to -let them eat you. The Christian philosophy of the incarnation is the -true one. Matter does make a spiritual difference. It does make a -difference, a real difference, that the ideal should be made flesh. It’s -important to the world, spiritually, that the man rather than the -tigress should survive.â€</p> - -<p>“Christ gave his life,†said Palgrave, after a moment.</p> - -<p>“I’m not speaking of historical personages; but of eternal truths,†said -Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>But he knew already that he spoke in vain. Palgrave had turned away his -eyes again and on his sad young face he read the fixity of a fanatic -idealism. He had not moved him, though he had troubled him. No one would -move Palgrave. He doubted, now, whether Adrienne herself had had much -influence over him. It was with the sense of pleading a lost cause that -he said, presently, “Adrienne hopes you’ll feel it right to go.â€</p> - -<p>Palgrave at this turned a profound gaze upon him. “I know it,†he said. -“Though she’s never told me so. It’s the weakness of her love, its -yearning and tenderness, not its strength, that makes her want it. -Because she knows it would be so much easier. But she can’t go back on -what she’s meant to me. It’s because of that, in part at all events, -that I’ve been able to see steadily what I mean to myself. That’s what -she helps one to do, you know. Hold to yourself; your true, deep self. -It’s owing to her that I can only choose in one way—even if I can’t -defend it properly. It seems to come back to metaphysics, doesn’t it?â€</p> - -<p>“Like everything else,†said Oldmeadow.<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a></p> - -<p>“Yes. Like everything else. It would take a four-years’ course in Greats -to argue it out, Roger. Come back to me—if you’re here and I’m here -then—and we’ll see what we can make of it.â€</p> - -<p>“I will,†said Oldmeadow, rising, for the room was growing dark. “And -before that, I hope.â€</p> - -<p>“After all, you know,†Palgrave observed, “England isn’t in any danger -of becoming Buddhistic; there’s not much nihilism about her, is there, -but hardly much Christianity, either. England has evolved all sorts of -things besides Oxford and Coldbrooks. She’s evolved industrialism and -factory-towns.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t consider industrialism and factory-towns incompatible with -Christianity, you know,†Oldmeadow observed. “Good-bye, my dear boy.â€</p> - -<p>“Good-bye, Roger,†Palgrave grasped his hand. “You’ve been most awfully -kind.<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXII-a" id="CHAPTER_XXII-a"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h3> - -<p class="nind">“I<small>SN’T</small> it becoming to him, Mother? And how tall he looks!†said Nancy, -holding Oldmeadow off in his khaki for displayal.</p> - -<p>He had only written a line of his failure and that he would come as soon -as he could and see them all and tell in full of his interview with -Palgrave. And he had motored over to The Little House this afternoon in -early November.</p> - -<p>Nancy was showing an unexpected gaiety. “What a nice grilled-salmon -colour you are, too,†she said.</p> - -<p>He divined the self-protective instinct under the gaiety. Most of the -women in England were being gayer and more talkative at this time, in -order to keep up. Nancy was thin and white; but she was keeping up. And -she had put on a charming dress to receive him in.</p> - -<p>“I’ve been grilled all right; out on the downs,†he said. “But it’s more -like cold storage just now, with these frosts at night. Yes; the big -cup, please. I’m famished for tea. Ah! that’s something like! It smells -like your rose outside. I sniffed it as I waited at the door. Wonderful -for such a late blooming.â€</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it,†said Mrs. Averil. “And I only put it in last autumn. It’s -doing beautifully; but I’ve cherished it. And now tell us about -Palgrave.â€</p> - -<p>He felt reluctant to tell about Palgrave. The impression that remained -with him of Palgrave was that impression of beauty and distortion and he -did<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a> not want to have to disentangle his feelings or to seem to put -Palgrave in the wrong. It was so sweet, too, after the long, chilly -drive over the empty uplands, to sit here and forget the war, although -it was for scenes like this, for girls like Nancy, women like Mrs. -Averil—with so much else—that the war was so worth fighting. He turned -his thoughts back to the realities that underlay the happy appearances -and was aware, as he forced himself to tell, of what must seem a note of -advocacy in his voice. “He can’t think differently, I’m afraid,†he -said. “It’s self-sacrifice, not selfishness, that is moving him.â€</p> - -<p>“He can’t think differently while Adrienne is living there,†said Mrs. -Averil. “He didn’t tell you, I suppose, that she has now taken up her -abode in Oxford in order to study philosophy with him?â€</p> - -<p>He was rather uncomfortably aware of the disingenuousness that must now -be made apparent in his avoidance of all mention of Adrienne.</p> - -<p>“I saw her,†he said, and he knew that it was lamely. “She was there -when I got there.â€</p> - -<p>“You saw her!†Mrs. Averil exclaimed. “But then, of course you didn’t -convince him. I might have known it. Of course she would not let you see -him alone.â€</p> - -<p>“But she did let me see him alone. That was what she wanted. And she was -there only in order to tell me what she wanted. She wants him to go.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Averil was eyeing him with such astonishment that he turned to -Nancy with his explanations. But Mrs. Averil would not leave him to -Nancy’s sympathy. “It’s rather late in the day for her to want him to -go,†she said. “She may be sorry for what she’s done; but it’s her -work.<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Well, she’s sorry for her work. That’s what it comes to. And I’m sorry -for her,†said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“Good heavens! The cleverness of that woman!†Mrs. Averil exclaimed. “If -she can’t be powerful, she’ll be pitiful! She’s worked on your feelings; -I can see that, Roger. And I thought you, at least, were immune. Well; -she does not work on mine. I am not in the least sorry for her.â€</p> - -<p>“She’s being unfairly treated,†said Oldmeadow. “It’s grotesque that Meg -should have turned upon her.â€</p> - -<p>“And Eleanor has, too, you know,†said Mrs. Averil. “It’s grotesque, if -you like; but I see a grim justice in it. She made them do things and -believe things that weren’t natural to them and now she’s lost her power -and they see things as they are.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s because she’s failed that they’ve turned against her,†said Nancy. -“If she’d succeeded they would have gone on accepting what she told them -and making her their idol.â€</p> - -<p>“Adrienne mustn’t fail,†said Mrs. Averil dryly. “The only justification -for Adrienne is to be in the right. If the blood of Saint Januarius -doesn’t liquefy, why should you keep it in a shrine? She’s a woman who -has quarrelled with her husband and disgraced her sister and -brother-in-law, and broken her mother-in-law’s heart. You can’t go on -making an idol of a saint who behaves like that.â€</p> - -<p>“She never claimed worldly success,†said Nancy. “She never told Meg to -go so that she could get married afterwards; she never told Palgrave -that war was wrong because it was easier not to fight.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, she did claim worldly success, really,†said Mrs. Averil, -while her eyes rested on her<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> daughter with a tenderness that contrasted -with her tone. “Her whole point was that if you were right -spiritually—‘poised’ she called it, you remember—all those other -things would be added unto you. I’ve heard her claim that if you were -poised you could get anything you really wanted. I asked her once if I -should find a ten-pound note under the sofa-cushion every morning after -breakfast if I could get poised sufficiently!†Mrs. Averil laughed, -still more dryly while she still maintained her tender gaze and Nancy -said, smiling a little: “She might have put it there for you if she’d -been sure you were poised.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, let us bury Adrienne for the present,†said Mrs. Averil. “Tell -Roger about your nursing plans. She may go to London, Roger, this -winter, and I’m to be left alone.â€</p> - -<p>“You’re to be left to take care of Aunt Eleanor, if I do go,†said -Nancy; and Mrs. Averil said that there must certainly be some one left -to take care of poor Eleanor.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow went up to Coldbrooks next morning. The first person he saw -was old Johnson at the door and he remembered Eleanor Chadwick’s griefs -on his account. Nothing, now, could have been kept from Johnson and his -face bore the marks of the family calamities. He was aged and whitened -and his voice had armed itself, since the downfall of his grave, -vicarious complacency, with solemn cadences.</p> - -<p>“Yes, sir. The ladies will be very glad to see you, sir. These are sad -days for them—the family dispersed as it is.â€</p> - -<p>Johnson defined the situation as he felt that it could be most fittingly -defined and Oldmeadow inwardly applauded his “dispersed.<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a>â€</p> - -<p>The drawing-room, into which Johnson ushered him, had, for the first -time in his memory of it, a mournful air. It had always been shabby, and -these were the same faded chintzes, the same worn rugs; but now, -fireless and flowerless, it neither spoke nor smiled and, with the sense -it gave of an outlived epoch, it was almost spectral. The photographs -all looked like the photographs of dead people and the only similitude -of life was the loud, silly ticking of the French clock on the -mantelpiece; Mrs. Chadwick’s cherished clock; one of her -wedding-presents.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid it’s rather chilly, sir,†said Johnson. “No one has sat here -of an evening now for a long time.†He put a match to the ranged logs, -drew the blinds up farther so that the autumnal sunlight might more -freely enter, and left him.</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow went to the window and turned over the magazines, a month old, -that lay on a table there.</p> - -<p>He was standing so when Meg entered, and she had half the length of the -room to traverse before they met. She was in black, in deep black; but -more beautiful than he had ever seen her; her tossed auburn locks bound -low on her forehead with a black ribbon, her white throat upright, her -eyes hard with their readiness, their resource. Beautiful and -distressing. It distressed him terribly to see that hardness in her -eyes.</p> - -<p>“How do you do, Roger,†she said, giving him her hand. “It’s good to see -you. Mother will be glad.â€</p> - -<p>They seated themselves on one of the capacious sofas and she questioned -him quickly, competently, while the hard eyes seemed to measure him lest -he<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> measure her. It was almost the look of the <i>déclassée</i> woman who -forestalls withdrawal in an interlocutor. But, as he answered her -quietly, his fond regard upon her, her defences began to fall. “It’s the -only life, a soldier’s, isn’t it?†she said. “At all times, really. But, -at a time like this, anything else seems despicable, doesn’t it; -contemptibly smug and safe. The uniform is so becoming to you. You look -a soldier already. One feels that men will trust and follow you. Didn’t -you burn with rage and shame, too, when, for those four days, it seemed -we might not come in?â€</p> - -<p>“I felt too sure we should come in, to burn with rage and shame,†said -Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“Ah! but it was not so sure, I’m afraid,†said Meg, and in her eyes, no -longer hard, wild lights seemed to pass and repass. “I’m afraid that -there are nearly enough fools and knaves in England to wreck us. Not -quite enough, thank heaven! But, for those four days, Eric was terribly -afraid. He was killed, you know, Roger, very splendidly, leading his -men.â€</p> - -<p>“I know, Meg. My dear Meg,†Oldmeadow murmured.</p> - -<p>“Oh! I don’t regret it! I don’t regret it!†Meg cried, while her colour -rose and her young breast lifted. “It’s the soldier’s death! The -consecrating, heroic death! He was ready. And deaths like that -atone—for the others. He was not killed instantaneously, Roger.â€</p> - -<p>“I didn’t know,†said Oldmeadow, looking at her with a pitying, troubled -gaze.</p> - -<p>“He lived for a day and night afterwards,†said Meg, looking back, -tearless. “They carried him to<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> a barn. Only his man was with him. There -was no one to dress his dreadful wound; no food. The man got him some -water, at the risk of his own life. He was conscious until the end and -he suffered terribly.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow dropped his eyes before her fierce stare while, strangely, -dimly, there passed through his mind the memory of the embarrassed, -empty, handsome young face in the brougham and, again, the memory of his -dog John. He had seen John die and his eyes of wistful appeal. So Eric -Hayward’s eyes might have looked as he lay in the barn dying.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Roger!†Meg said suddenly, seizing his hand. “Kill them! Kill them! -Oh, revenge him! I was not with him! Think of it! I would have had no -right to have been with him—had it been possible. I did not know till a -week later. He was buried there. His man buried him.â€</p> - -<p>“My poor, poor child,†said Oldmeadow, clasping her hands.</p> - -<p>But, at once, taking refuge from his pity and from her own desperate -pain: “So you’ve seen Palgrave,†she said. “And he isn’t going. I knew -it was useless. I told Mother it was useless—with that stranger—that -American, with him. She has disgraced us all.—Wretched boy! Hateful -woman!â€</p> - -<p>“Meg, Meg; be soldierly. He wouldn’t have spoken like that.â€</p> - -<p>“He never liked her! Never!†she cried. “I knew he didn’t, even at the -time she was flattering and cajoling us. I saw that she bewildered him -and that he accepted her only because she was mine. How I loathe myself -for having listened to her! How I loathe her! All that she ever wanted -was<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a> power! Power over other people’s lives! She’d commit any crime for -that!â€</p> - -<p>“You seem to me cruelly unfair,†he said.</p> - -<p>“No! no! I’m not unfair! You know I’m not!†she cried. “You always saw -the truth about her—from the very beginning. You never fell down and -worshipped her, like the rest of us. And she knew that you were her -enemy and warned us against you. Oh—why did Barney marry her!â€</p> - -<p>“I never worshipped her; but I never thought her base and hateful.â€</p> - -<p>“You never knew her as I did; that was all. And I never knew her until I -came back and found her doing to Palgrave what she had done to us. -Paladin! Did you hear her call him Paladin? Always flattery! Always to -make one think one was wonderful, important, mysterious! She forced us -to go away, Roger. Sometimes I think it was hypnotism; that she uses her -will-power consciously. We did not want to go. We did not want the -divorce and the scandal.â€</p> - -<p>“What did you want, then, Meg?â€</p> - -<p>She felt the gravity of his tone but, like a fierce Maenad, she snatched -at the torch, not caring how it revealed her. “What of it! What if we -had been secret lovers! Who would have known! Who would have been -harmed! Some people go on for years and years. His wife loved another -man. He had no one. Why should we have been pushed—such pitiful fools -we were—into displaying our love to the world and being crushed by it! -Oh, he was so loyal, so brave; but it made him very, very unhappy. Oh, I -was cruel to him sometimes! I used to reproach him sometimes! Oh, Roger! -Roger!—<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a>†She broke into wild tears and stumbled to her feet.</p> - -<p>As she reached the door, covering her face with her hands, her mother -opened it and, meeting her on the threshold, Meg, with almost the effect -of beating her aside with the other impediments to her rage and grief, -pushed past her so that the knitting Mrs. Chadwick held was flung to the -floor, the ball of khaki wool running rapidly away under a sofa and the -socks and needles dangling at her feet.</p> - -<p>She stood looking down at them with a curious apathy and, as Oldmeadow -went to help and greet her, he saw that as much as Meg was wild she was -dulled and quiet.</p> - -<p>“Meg is so very, very violent,†she said, as he disentangled the wool -and restored her sock and ball to her. She spoke with listlessness -rather than sympathy.</p> - -<p>“Poor child,†said Oldmeadow. “One can hardly wonder at it. But it makes -a wretched existence for you, I’m afraid. You and she oughtn’t to be -alone together.â€</p> - -<p>He drew her to a chair and, seating herself, her faded face and eyes -that had lost their old look of surprise turned to the light, Mrs. -Chadwick assented, “It’s very fatiguing to live with, certainly. -Sometimes I really think I must go away for a little while and have a -change. Nancy would come and stay with Meg, you know. But I can’t miss -Barney’s last weeks. He comes to us, now, again. And it might not be -right to leave Meg. One must not think of oneself at a time like this, -must one?†The knitting lay in her lap and she was twisting and -untwisting her handkerchief after her old fashion; but<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a> her fingers -moved slowly and without agitation and Oldmeadow saw that some spring of -life in her had been broken.</p> - -<p>“The best plan would be that Meg should, as soon as possible, take up -some work,†he said, “and that you and Nancy should go away. Work is the -only thing for Meg now. She’ll dash herself to pieces down here; and you -with her. There’ll soon be plenty to do. Nursing and driving -ambulances.â€</p> - -<p>“Nancy is going to nurse, you know,†said Mrs. Chadwick. “But she won’t -go as long as we need her here. She has promised me that. I don’t know -what I should do without Nancy. I shouldn’t care to be nursed by Meg -myself, if I were a wounded soldier. She is so very restless and would -probably forget quite simple things like giving one a handkerchief or -seeing that hot-water-bottles were wrapped up before she put them to -one’s feet. A friend of mine—Amy Hatchard—such a pretty woman, though -her hair was bright, bright red—and I never cared for that—had the -soles of her feet nearly scorched off once by a careless nurse. Dear -Nancy. I often think of Nancy now, Roger. I believe, you know, that if -Adrienne had not come Nancy and Barney might have married. How happy we -should all have been; though she has so little money.â€</p> - -<p>“I wish you could all think a little more kindly of Adrienne,†said -Oldmeadow after a silence. Mrs. Chadwick had begun to knit. “I must tell -you that I myself feel differently about her.â€</p> - -<p>“Do you, Roger?†said Mrs. Chadwick, without surprise. “You have a very -judicious and balanced mind, I know; even when you were hardly more<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> -than a boy Francis noticed it and said that he’d rather go by your -opinion than by that of most of the men he knew. I always remembered -that, afterwards. Till she came. And then I believed in her rather than -in you. You thought us all far too fond of her from the very first. And -now we have certainly changed. Meg is certainly very violent; much more -violent than I could ever be.... I am sorry for Adrienne. I don’t think -she meant to do us any harm—as Meg believes.â€</p> - -<p>“She only meant to do you good, I am sure of it. I saw her in Oxford, -let me tell you about it, when I went in to see Palgrave. She is very -unhappy. She wants Palgrave to go. She wants him to feel it right to go. -It’s not she, really, who is keeping him back now.â€</p> - -<p>“My poor Palgrave. Meg is very unkind about him; very bitter and unkind; -her own brother. But it was very wrong of Adrienne to go and set up -housekeeping in Oxford near him. You must own that, Roger. She may not -be keeping him back; but she is aiding and abetting him always. It made -Barney even more miserable and disgusted than he was before. And it -looks so very odd. Though I don’t think that anyone could ever gossip -about Adrienne. There is something about her that makes that -impossible.â€</p> - -<p>“There certainly is. I am glad she is with Palgrave, poor boy.â€</p> - -<p>“I am glad you are sorry for him, Roger‗Mrs. Chadwick dropped a -needle. “How clumsy I am. My fingers seem all to have turned to thumbs. -Thank you so much. I try to make as many socks as I can for our poor -men; fingering wool; not<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a> wheeling, which is so much rougher to the -feet. I’m sure I’d rather march, and, if it came to that, die in -fingering than in wheeling. Just as I’ve always felt, foolish as it may -sound, that if I had to be drowned I’d rather it were in warm, soapy -water than in cold salt. Not that one is very likely, ever, to drown in -one’s bath. But tell me about Adrienne and Palgrave, Roger, and what -they said.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Chadwick’s discourse seemed, beforehand, to make anything he might -have to tell irrelevant and, even while he tried to make her see what he -had seen, he felt it to be a fruitless effort.</p> - -<p>There was indeed no enmity to plead against. Only a deep exhaustion. -Adrienne had pressed too heavily on the spring and it was broken.</p> - -<p>“I’m sure she is very sorry to have made so much mischief, but she isn’t -what I thought her, Roger,†she said, shaking her head, when he had -finished. “I’m sorry for her, but I used to believe her to be a sort of -saint and now I know that she is very far indeed from being one.â€</p> - -<p>“The mere fact of failure doesn’t deprive you of sainthood,†said -Oldmeadow, remembering Nancy’s plea. “You haven’t less reason now than -you had then for believing her one.â€</p> - -<p>But even with her broken spring Mrs. Chadwick had not lost all her -shrewdness. It flickered in the sad eyes she lifted from the khaki sock. -“Some kinds of failure do, Roger. That gift of healing, you remember; -all she could do for people in that way; she has quite, quite lost it. -That is a reason. It’s that more than anything that has made me feel -differently about her.â€</p> - -<p>“Lost it?†He felt strangely discomposed, little as the gift of healing -had ever impressed him.<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a></p> - -<p>“Quite,†Mrs. Chadwick repeated. “I think it distressed her dreadfully -herself. I think she counted upon it more than upon anything, perhaps -without knowing she did. It must have made her seem so sure to herself, -mustn’t it? The first time was before the war, just a little after you -were here that day in the summer—dear me, how long ago it seems; and I -had one of my headaches, one of the worst I ever had. I was so -dreadfully troubled, you know, about Barbara and Meg. And Adrienne came -and sat by me as she used to and put her hand on my forehead; and I know -it wasn’t my lack of faith, for I quite believed it would get well; but -instead of the peaceful feeling, it grew much worse; oh, <i>much</i>. As if -red hot needles were darting through my eyes and an iron weight pressing -down on my head. And such tumult and distress. I had to tell her. I had -to ask her to take away her hand. Oh, she felt it very much, poor thing, -and grew very white and said it must be because she was still not -strong; not quite herself. But I knew then that it was because she was -not <i>right</i>; not what I had thought her. I began to suspect, from that -very moment, that I had been mistaken; because hypnotizing people isn’t -the same as being a saint, is it, Roger? and—I think you said so once, -long ago; and that was all that she had done; hypnotized us all to think -her good and wonderful. Later on, after Meg had come, I let her try once -more, though it quite frightened me; she looked so strange. And!—oh, -dear—it was dreadful. It distressed me dreadfully. She suddenly put her -hands before her face and sat quite still and then she burst into tears -and got up and ran out of the room, crying. It made me<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a> feel quite ill. -And of course I knew there could be nothing saintly about a person who -made you feel like that—who could feel like that themselves, and break -down.â€</p> - -<p>“Even saints have their times of darkness and dryness,†Oldmeadow found -after a little time had passed. The picture she put before him hurt him. -“It was an error of judgment to have believed her a saint because she -could hypnotize you—if that was what it was; but the fact that she -can’t hypnotize you any longer—that she’s too unhappy to have any power -of that sort—doesn’t prove she’s not a saint. Of course she’s not. Why -should she be?â€</p> - -<p>“I’m sure I don’t know why she should be; but she used to behave as if -she were one, didn’t she? And when I saw that she wasn’t one in that way -I began to see that she wasn’t in other ways, too. It was she who made -me so unjust, so unkind to poor Barney. <i>She</i> was so unjust and so -unkind; and I never saw it till then. I was blind till then; though you -saw very well, that day you came to Connaught Square, that it was a sort -of spell she cast. It was a spell, Roger. The moment I saw her, after -the baby’s death, I forgot everything she’d done and felt I loved her -again. She willed me to. So as to get power over me. Everything, always, -with her, was to get power over other people’s lives,†said Mrs. -Chadwick, and as he had, in the past, heard echoes of Adrienne in all -she said, now he heard echoes of Meg, “It’s by willing it, you know. -Some people practise it like five-finger exercises. You have to sit -quite still and shut your eyes and concentrate. Meg has heard how it’s -done. I don’t pretend<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> to understand; but that must have been her way. -And she made poor Barney miserable and set me against him at once; you -said so yourself, Roger, and blinded me to all the cruel things she did. -It was to punish him, you know. To make him feel he was dreadfully wrong -and she quite right; about Meg, and everything else; for you came in, -too. It used to be so dreadful at Torquay. I knew it would be sad there; -but I never guessed how sad it would be—with that horrid blue, blue -sea. She used to sit, day after day, on the terrace of the house, and -gaze and gaze at the sea and if Barney would come, so lovingly, and ask -her what he could do for her and take her hand, oh, it was more and more -mournful, the way she would look at him; that dreadful, loving look that -didn’t mean love at all, but only trying to break him down and make him -<i>say</i> that he was down. I begged Barney’s pardon, Roger, for having -treated him as I did. We treated him dreadfully, all of us; because she -put him, always, in the wrong. Oh, no, Roger, I’m sorry for her, but -she’s a dangerous woman; or <i>was</i> dangerous. For now she has lost it all -and has become like everybody else; quite ordinary and unhappy.â€</p> - -<p>He felt, in the little silence that, again, followed, that he could -hardly better this summing-up. That was precisely what poor Adrienne -Toner had become; ordinary and unhappy. The two things she would have -believed herself least capable of becoming. There was nothing to be -gained in urging extenuating circumstances, especially since he was not -sure that there were any. Mrs. Chadwick, at bottom, saw as clearly as he -did. He asked her presently, leaving the theme of Adrienne, whether<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> she -would not seriously consider going away for a little while with Nancy. -“Meg could go down to The Little House,†he said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, she couldn’t, Roger,†said Mrs. Chadwick, “she won’t go -anywhere. She’ll hardly speak to Monica. She just sits out-of-doors, all -day, wrapped in a cloak, in the corner of the garden, staring in front -of her, and she pays not the slightest attention to anything I say. And -at night, in her room, I hear her sobbing, sobbing, as if her heart -would break. I can’t think hardly of Eric any longer, Roger. Isn’t it -strange; but it’s almost as if he were my son that had been killed. And -Barney may be killed,†the poor mother’s lip and chin began to tremble. -“And you, too, Roger. I don’t know how we shall live through all that we -must bear and I keep thinking of the foolish little things, like your -having cold feet and wearing the same clothes day after day in those -horrible trenches. He suffered it all, poor Eric. No, I can’t think -hardly of him. All the same,†she sobbed, “my heart is broken when I -remember that they can never be married now.<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII-a" id="CHAPTER_XXIII-a"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h3> - -<p class="nind">“T<small>HAT’S</small> the way Mummy surprises one,†said Barney as he and Oldmeadow -went together through the Coldbrooks woods. “One feels her, usually, -such a darling goose and then, suddenly, she shows one that she can be a -heroine.â€</p> - -<p>Barney was going to France in two days’ time and Oldmeadow within the -fortnight, and the Coldbrooks good-byes had just been said. It had been -poor Meg who had broken down and clung and cried. Mrs. Chadwick had, to -the very last, talked with grave cheerfulness of Barney’s next leave and -given wise advice as if he had been merely leaving them for a rather -perilous mountain-climbing feat. Oldmeadow could hardly believe her the -same woman that he had seen ten days before.</p> - -<p>He was staying at The Little House and had come up on this afternoon of -Barney’s departure to join him at Coldbrooks and walk down with him. -Barney had not yet seen or said good-bye to Nancy and her mother, and -Oldmeadow had seized this, his only chance, of a talk with him. But, as -they left the woods and began to climb the bare hill-side, Barney went -on:</p> - -<p>“I’ve wanted a talk, too, Roger. I’m glad you managed this.â€</p> - -<p>“It doesn’t rob anyone of you, does it,†said Oldmeadow. “We’ll get to -Chelford in time to give you a good half-hour with them before your car -comes for you.â€</p> - -<p>“That will be enough for Nancy,†said Barney.<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a> “The less she sees of me, -the better she’s pleased. I’ve lots of things I want to say, Roger. Of -course you understand that in every way it’s a relief to be going out.â€</p> - -<p>“It settles things; or seems to settle them,†said Oldmeadow. “They take -another place at all events.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; just that. They take another place. What difference does it make, -after all, if a fellow has made a mess of his personal life when his -personal life has ceased to count. I’m not talking mawkish sentiment -when I say I hope I’ll be killed—if I can be of some use first. I see -no other way out of it. I’m sorry for Adrienne, after a fashion, for -she’s dished herself, too. We made a hopeless mistake in getting married -and she knows it as well as I do; and when a man and woman don’t love -each other any longer it’s the man’s place to get out if he can.â€</p> - -<p>“It was about Adrienne I wanted to talk to you, Barney.†For the first -time in their long friendship Oldmeadow felt that he spoke to an equal. -Barney had at last ceased to be a boy. “I’ve seen her, since seeing you -that last time in the train.â€</p> - -<p>“Well?†Barney inquired, as Oldmeadow paused. “What have you got to say -to me about Adrienne, Roger? You’ve not said very much, from the -beginning; but everything you have said has been true and I’ve forgotten -none of it. I’m the more inclined,†and he smiled with a slight -bitterness, “to listen to you now.â€</p> - -<p>“That’s just the trouble,†Oldmeadow muttered. “You’ve forgotten -nothing. That’s what I feel, with remorse. That it was I who helped to -spoil things for you both, from the beginning. You’d not have<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> seen her -defects as you did if I hadn’t shown them to you; and if you hadn’t seen -them you’d have adjusted yourselves to each other and have found them -out together. She’d not have resented your finding them out in the -normal course of your shared lives. It’s been my opinion of her, in the -background of both your minds, that has envenomed everything.â€</p> - -<p>Barney listened quietly. “Yes,†he assented. “That’s all true enough. As -far as it goes. I mightn’t have seen if you hadn’t shown me. But I can’t -regret you did show me, for anything else would have been to have gone -through life blind; as blind as Adrienne is herself. And it’s because -she can’t stand being seen through that she revealed so much more; so -much that you didn’t see and that I had to find out for myself. What you -saw was absurdity and inexperience; they’re rather loveable defects; I -think I accepted them from the beginning, because of all the other -things I believed in her. You said, too, you remember, that she’d never -know she was wrong. Well, it’s worse than that. She’ll never know she’s -wrong and she won’t bear it that you should think her anything but -right. She’s rapacious. She’s insatiable. Nothing but everything will -satisfy her. You must be down on your knees, straight down, before her; -and if you’re not, she has no use for you. She turns to stone and you -break your head and your heart against her. It’s hatred Adrienne has -felt for me, Roger, and I’m afraid I’ve felt it for her, too. She’s done -things and said things that I couldn’t have believed her capable of; -mean things; clever things; cruelly clever that get you right on the -raw; things I can’t forget. There’s much more in her than you saw at the -beginning.<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a> I was right rather than you about that; only they weren’t -the things I thought.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow walked, cutting at the withered way-side grasses with his -cane. Barney’s short, slow sentences seemed to sting him as they came. -He had to adjust himself to their smart; to adjust himself to the -thought of this malignant Adrienne. Yet what he felt was not all -surprise; he had foreseen, suspected, even this. “I know,†he said at -last; “I mean, I can see that it would happen just like that.â€</p> - -<p>“It did happen just like that,†said Barney. “I don’t claim to have been -an angel or anything like one. I gave her as good as I got, or nearly, -sometimes, no doubt. But I know that it wasn’t my fault. I know it was -Adrienne who spoiled everything.â€</p> - -<p>They had come out now on the upland road. The country dropped away -beneath them wrapped in the dull mole-colour, the distant, dull -ultramarines of the November afternoon. The smell of burning weeds was -in the air and, in the west, a long, melancholy sheet of advancing -rain-cloud hid the sun. Oldmeadow wondered if he and Barney would ever -walk there together again, and his mind plunged deep into the past, the -many years of friendship to which this loved country had been a -background.</p> - -<p>“Barney,†he said, “what I wanted to say is this: All that you feel is -true; I’m sure of it. But other things are true, too. I’ve seen her and -I’ve changed about her. If I was right before, I’m right now. She’s been -blind because she didn’t know she could be broken. Well, she’s beginning -to break.â€</p> - -<p>“Is she?†said Barney, and his quiet was implacable. “I can quite -imagine that, you know.<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a> Everyone, except poor Palgrave—all the rest of -us, have found out that she’s not the beautiful benignant being she -thought she was, and that bewilders her and makes her pretty wretched, -no doubt.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow waited a moment. “I want you to see her,†he said. “Don’t be -cruel. You are a little cruel, you know. It’s because you are thinking -of her abstractly; remembering only how she has hurt you. If you could -see her, see how unhappy she is, you’d feel differently. That’s what I -want you to do. That’s what I beg you to do, Barney.â€</p> - -<p>“I can’t,†said Barney after a moment. “That I can’t do, Roger. It’s -over. She might want me back if she could get me back adoring her. It’s -only so she’d want me. But it’s over. It’s more than over. There’s -something else.†Barney’s face showed no change from its sad fixity. -“You were right about that, too. It’s Nancy I ought to have married. -It’s Nancy I love. And Adrienne knows it.â€</p> - -<p>At this there passed before Oldmeadow’s mind the memory of the small, -dark, hurrying figure, the memory of the words she had spoken: “Some -things are like living creatures; and they can die. They can die.â€</p> - -<p>He felt rather sick. “In that case, how can you blame your wife?†he -muttered. “Doesn’t that explain it all?â€</p> - -<p>“No, it doesn’t explain it all.†There was no fire of self-justification -in Barney’s voice. It was as fixed and sad as his face. “It was only -after Adrienne made me so wretched I began to find it out. She was -jealous of Nancy from the beginning, of course. But then she was jealous -of everything that wasn’t, every bit of it, hers. She had no reason for<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> -jealousy. No man was ever more in love than I was with Adrienne. Even -now I don’t feel for Nancy what I felt for her. It’s something, I -believe, one only feels once and if it burns out it burns out for ever. -With Nancy, it’s as if I had come home; and Adrienne and I were parted -before I knew that I was turning to her.â€</p> - -<p>They had begun the final descent into Chelford and the wind now brought -a fine rain against their faces. Neither spoke again until the grey -roofs of the village came into sight at a turning of the road. “About -money matters, Roger,†Barney said. “Mother and Meg and Barbara. If you -get through, and I don’t, will you see to them for me? I’ve appointed -you my trustee. I told Adrienne last summer that I couldn’t take any of -her money any longer, so that, of course, with my having thrown up the -city job and taken on the farms, my affairs are in a bit of a mess. But -I hope they’ll be able to go on at Coldbrooks all right. Palgrave will -have Coldbrooks if I don’t come back, and perhaps you’ll be able to -prevent him handing it over to his Socialist friends.â€</p> - -<p>“Palgrave would be safely human if it came to taking care of his mother -and sisters,†said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“Would he?†said Barney. “I don’t know.â€</p> - -<p>Across the village green the lights of The Little House shone at them. -The curtains were still undrawn and, as they waited at the door, they -could see Nancy in the drawing-room, sitting by the fire alone.</p> - -<p>“I want you to come in with me, please, Roger,†said Barney. “Nancy -hasn’t felt it right to be<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a> very kind to me of late and she’ll be able -to be kinder if you are there. You’ll know, you’ll see if a chance comes -for me to say what I want to say to her. You might leave us for a moment -then.â€</p> - -<p>“You have hardly more than a half-hour, you know,†said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“One can say a good deal in a half-hour,†Barney replied.</p> - -<p>Nancy had risen and, as they entered, she came forward, trying to smile -and holding out her hand to each. But Oldmeadow was staying there. He -was not going in half an hour. There was no reason why Nancy should give -him her hand and Barney, quietly, took both her hands in his. “It’s -good-bye, then, Nancy, isn’t it?†he said.</p> - -<p>They stood there in the firelight together, his dear young people, both -so pale, both so fixedly looking at each other, and Nancy still tried to -smile as she said, “It’s dear of you to have come.†But her face -betrayed her. It was sick with the fear that, in conquering her own -heart, she should hurt Barney’s; Barney’s, whom she might never see -again. Oldmeadow went on to the fire and stood, his back to them, -looking down at it.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, it’s not; not dear at all,†Barney returned. “You knew I’d come -to say good-bye, of course. Why haven’t you been over to see me, you and -Aunt Monica? I’ve asked you often enough.â€</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t scold me to-day, Barney, since it’s good-bye. We couldn’t -come,†said Nancy.</p> - -<p>“It’s never I who scold you. It’s you who scold me. Not openly, I know,†-said Barney, “but by implication; punish me, by implication. I quite -understood why you haven’t come. Well, I want<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a> things to be clear now. -Roger’s here, and I want to say them before him, because he’s been in it -all since the beginning. It’s because of Adrienne you’ve never come; and -changed so much in every way towards me.â€</p> - -<p>He had kept her hands till then, but Oldmeadow heard now that she drew -away from him. For a moment she did not speak; and then it was not to -answer him. “Have you said good-bye to her, Barney?â€</p> - -<p>“No; I haven’t,†Barney answered. “I’m not going to say good-bye to -Adrienne, Nancy. It must be plain to you by this time that Adrienne and -I have parted. What did it all mean but that?â€</p> - -<p>“It didn’t mean that to her. She never dreamed it was meaning that,†-said Nancy.</p> - -<p>“Well, she said it, often enough,†Barney retorted.</p> - -<p>“Barney, please listen to me,†said Nancy. “You must let me speak. She -never dreamed it was meaning that. If she was unkind to you it was -because she could not believe it would ever mean parting. She had -started wrong; by holding you to blame; after the baby; when you and -Roger so hurt her pride. And then she wasn’t able to go back. She wasn’t -able to see it all so differently—just to get you back. It would have -seemed wrong to her; a weakness, just because she longed so. And then, -most of all, she believed you loved her enough to come of yourself.â€</p> - -<p>“I tried to,†said Barney, in the sad, bitter voice of the hill-side -talk with Oldmeadow. “You see, you don’t know everything, Nancy, though -you know so much. I tried to again and again.<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. I know you did. But only on your own terms. And by then I had come -in. Oh, yes, I had, Barney. You didn’t know it. It was long, long before -you knew. But I knew it; and so did she and it was more than she could -bear. What woman could bear it? I couldn’t have, in her place.†Tears -were in Nancy’s voice.</p> - -<p>“It’s queer, Nancy,†said Barney, “that—barring Palgrave, who doesn’t -count—you and Roger are the only two people she has left to stick up -for her. Roger’s just been saying all that to me, you know. The two she -tried to crab whenever she got a chance. Well, say it’s my fault, then. -Say that I’ve been faithless to my wife and fallen in love with another -woman. The fact is there, and you’ve said it now yourself. I don’t love -her any longer. I shall never love her again. And I love you. I love -you, Nancy, and it’s you I ought to have married; would have married, I -believe, if I hadn’t been a blinded fool. I love you, and I can say it -now because this may be the end of everything. Don’t let her spoil this, -too. Nancy darling, look at me. Can’t you consent to forget Adrienne for -this one time, when we may never see each other again?â€</p> - -<p>“I can’t forget her! I can’t forget her!†Nancy sobbed. “I mustn’t. -She’s miserable. She hasn’t stopped loving you. And she’s your wife.â€</p> - -<p>“Do you want to make me hate her?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, Barney—that is cruel of you.â€</p> - -<p>There was a silence and in it Oldmeadow heard Barney’s car draw up at -the gate. He took out his watch. There were only a few more moments left -them. Not turning to them he said. “It does her no good, you know, Nancy -dear.<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“No. It does her no good,†Barney repeated. “But forgive me. I was -cruel. I don’t hate her. I’m sorry for her. It’s simply that we ought -never to have married. Forget it, Nancy, and forget her. Don’t let it -be, then, that I love you and don’t love my wife. Let it be in the old -way. As if she’d never come. As if I’d come to say good-bye to my -cousin; to my dearest friend on earth. Look at me. Give me your hands. -It’s your face I want to take with me.â€</p> - -<p>“Five minutes, Barney,†Oldmeadow whispered, as he went past them. Nancy -had given him her hands; she had lifted her face to his, and Barney’s -arms had closed around her.<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV-a" id="CHAPTER_XXIV-a"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h3> - -<p class="nind">M<small>RS</small>. A<small>VERIL</small> was in the hall. “Give them another moment,†he said. “I’m -going outside.â€</p> - -<p>Tears were in his own eyes. He stepped out on to the flagged path of the -little plot in front of the house where strips of turf and rose-beds ran -between the house and the high wall. Between the clipped holly-trees at -the gate he saw Barney’s car, and its lights, the wall between, cast a -deep shadow over the garden.</p> - -<p>The rain was falling thickly now and he stood, feeling it on his face, -filled with a sense of appeasement, of accomplishment. They were -together at last. It was not too late. At such a time, when all the -world hung on the edge of an abyss, to be together for a moment might -sum up more of real living than many happy years. They knew each other’s -hearts and what more could life give its creatures than that -recognition.</p> - -<p>Suddenly, how he did not know, for there was no apparent movement and -his eyes were fixed on the pallid sky, he became aware that a figure was -leaning against the house in the shadow beside him. His eyes found it -and it was familiar. Yet he could not believe his eyes.</p> - -<p>She was leaning back, her hands against the wall on either side, and he -saw, with the upper layer of perception that so often blunts a violent -emotion, that her feet were sunken in the mould of Mrs. Averil’s -rose-bed and that the cherished shoots of<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a> the new climbing rose were -tangled in her clothes. The open window was but a step away.</p> - -<p>She had come since they had come. She had crept up. She had looked -in—for how long?—and had fallen back, casting out her arms so that it -might not be to the ground. Her eyes were closed; but she had heard and -seen him. As he stood before her, aghast, unable to find a word, he -heard her mutter: “Take me away, please.â€</p> - -<p>Barney’s car blocked the egress of the gate and Barney might emerge at -any moment. He leaned towards her and found that she was intricately -caught in the rose. Her hat with its veil, her sleeve, her hair, were -all entangled.</p> - -<p>Dumbly, patiently, she stood, while, with fumbling fingers and terror -lest they should be heard within—Mrs. Averil’s voice now reached him -from the drawing-room—Oldmeadow released her and, his fingers deeply -torn by the thorns, he was aware, in all the tumult of his thought, more -than of the pain, of the wet fragrance of the roses that surrounded her. -He shared what he felt to be her panic.</p> - -<p>She had come hoping to see Barney; she had come to say good-bye to -Barney, who would not come to her; and his heart sickened for her at the -shameful seeming of her plight. She knew now that it must be her hope -never to see Barney again.</p> - -<p>There was a narrow passage, leading to the lawn and garden, between the -house and the stable walls. Thickly grown with ivy, showing only a -narrow opening above, where chimneys and gables cut against the sky, it -was nearly as dark as a tunnel, and into this place of hiding he half -led, half carried the unfortunate woman.<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a></p> - -<p>With the darkness, the pungent smell of the wet ivy closed thickly, -ominously about them. It was as if he and Adrienne Toner were buried -there together. He heard a maid laugh far away and a boy passed on the -green stridently whistling “Tipperary.†It was like hearing, in the -grave, the sounds of the upper world.</p> - -<p>Adrienne leaned against the wall. The ivy closing round her, nearly -obliterated her, but he could dimly see the grey disk of her face, -showing the unexpectedness of contour that reveals itself in the faces -of the dead. The trivial features were erased and only a shape of grief -remained, strangely august and emotionless.</p> - -<p>An eternity seemed to pass before the front door opened and Mrs. -Averil’s voice, steadied to a galvanized cheerfulness, came, half -obliterated to a wordless rhythm. Barney’s voice answered her, and his -steps echoed on the flagged path. “Say good-bye to Roger for me if I -don’t see him on the road!†he called out from the gate. Then the car -coughed, panted; the horn croaked out its cry and, above them, a shaft -of light across the ivy, of which he had till then been unaware, flitted -suddenly away, leaving the darkness more visible.</p> - -<p>He heard then that she was weeping.</p> - -<p>Putting his arm behind her, for the rain fell heavily and the ivy was -drenched with it, he drew her forward and for a little while it was -almost against his breast that she lay while her very heart dissolved -itself in tears.</p> - -<p>She had come, he knew it all, with a breakdown of her pride, with a last -wild hope and, perhaps, a longing to atone, believing that she might -snatch<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a> a word somewhere with her husband, and find her way, at this -last moment, back to the heart she had so alienated. She had seen all. -She had heard all. He was sure of it. It had been as an outcast that he -had found her leaning there. He understood her through and through and -the tender heaviness that had already so often visited his heart flooded -it to suffocation.</p> - -<p>Among her sobs, he heard her, at last, speaking to him. “Even Palgrave -doesn’t know. He told me—only this afternoon—that Barney was here. I -thought I might find him. I was going to wait in the road. And when I -got here there was no car and I was afraid that there was a mistake. -That I had missed him. And I went up to the house; to the open window; -and looked in; to see if he was there. It was not jealousy: not now. I -did not mean to be an eavesdropper. But, when I saw them, I stayed and -listened. It was not jealousy,†she repeated. “It was because I had to -know that there was no more hope.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes,†said Oldmeadow gently, while, with long pauses, she spoke on and -on; to the impartial judge, to the one sure refuge; and he said “Yes†-again, gently, after she had finished; a long time after. She still half -lay against his breast. He had never felt such an infinite tenderness -towards any creature; not since his boyhood and his mother’s death.</p> - -<p>She drew away from him at last. “Take me,†she said. “There is a train; -back to Oxford.†She had ceased to weep. Her voice was hoarse and faint.</p> - -<p>“Did you walk up from the station? You’re not fit to walk back. I can -get a trap. There’s a man just across the green.<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“No. Walking, please. I would be recognized. They might know me. I can -walk. If you will help me.â€</p> - -<p>He drew her arm through his. “Lean on me,†he said. “We’ll go slowly.â€</p> - -<p>They went past the drawing-room windows and, softly opening, softly -shutting, through the gate. The road, when it turned the corner, left -the village behind; between its rarely placed trees, vague silhouettes -against the sky that seemed of one texture with them, it showed its -mournful pallor for only a little space before them; there was not -enough light left in the sky to glimmer on its pools. The fields, on -either side, vanished into obscurity. Pale cattle, once, over a hedge, -put disconsolate heads and lowed and a garrulous dog, as they passed by, -ran out from a way-side farm-yard, smelt at their heels, growled -perfunctorily and, having satisfied his sense of duty, went back to his -post. The sense of dumb emptiness was so complete that it was only after -they had gone a long way that he knew that she was weeping and the soft, -stifling sounds seemed only a part of nature’s desolation.</p> - -<p>Her head bent down, she stumbled on, leaning on his arm, and from time -to time she raised her handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth and -nose. He did not say a word; nor did she.</p> - -<p>As he led her along, submissive to her doom, it was another feeling of -accomplishment that overwhelmed him; the dark after the radiant; after -Nancy and Barney, he and Adrienne. It was this, from their first -meeting, that he had been destined to mean to her. She was his appointed -victim. He had killed, as really as if with a knife, the girl whom<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> he -had seen at Coldbrooks, in the sunlight, on that Sunday morning in -spring, knowing no doubts. She had then held the world in her hands and -a guileless, untried heaven had filled her heart. Between her and this -crushed and weeping woman there seemed no longer any bond; unless it was -the strange aching that, in his heart, held them both together.<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a> </p> - -<p><a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II</h2> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-b" id="CHAPTER_I-b"></a>CHAPTER I</h3> - -<p class="nind">O<small>LDMEADOW</small> sat in Mrs. Aldesey’s drawing-room and, the tea-table between -them, Mrs. Aldesey poured out his tea. So it was, after three years, -that they found each other. So it was, all over the world, Oldmeadow -said to himself, that the tea-table, or its equivalent, reasserted -itself in any interval where the kindly amenities of human intercourse -could root themselves; though the world rocked and flames of anarchy -rimmed its horizons.</p> - -<p>It was more real, he felt that now, to sit and look at Lydia over her -tea than to parch on Eastern sands and shiver in Western trenches; from -the mere fact that the one experience became a nightmare while the other -was as natural as waking at dawn. Horrors became the dropped stitches of -life; and though if there were too many of them they would destroy the -stocking, the stocking itself was made up of tea-table talks and walks -in the woods with Nancy. He had just come from Coldbrooks.</p> - -<p>So he put it, trivially, to himself, and he felt the need of clinging to -triviality. The dropped stitches had been almost too much for him and -the nightmare, at times, had seemed the only reality. At times he had -known a final despair of life and even now he remembered that the worst -might still come. One might be called upon to face the death of the -whole order of civilization. Faith required one, perhaps, to recognize -that the human spirit was bound<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a> up, finally, with no world order and -unless one could face its destruction as one had to face the death of a -loved individual, one was not secure of the spiritual order that -transcended all mundane calamity. He believed, or hoped, that during -these last three years, in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, when, to the -last fibre, he had felt his faiths tested, he had learned to be ready -for the great relinquishment, should it be required of him; and it was -therefore the easier to doff that consciousness, as he might have doffed -a sword, and think of Lydia and of the order that still survived and -that she still stood for.</p> - -<p>Lydia did not look the worse for the war; indeed she looked the better. -She looked as if, in spite of long days in the hospital, she digested -better and, in spite of air-raids, slept better, and as they talked, -finding their way back to intimacy by the comparing of such -superficialities, she told him that for years she hadn’t been so strong -or well. “Nothing is so good for you, I’ve found out, as to feel that -you are being used; being used by something worth while. People like -myself must keep still about our experiences, for we’ve had none that -bear talking of. But even the others, even the people bereaved -unspeakably, are strangely lifted up. And I believe that the populace -enjoys the air-raids rather than the reverse; they give them a chance of -feeling that they are enduring something, too; with good-humour and -pluck. If anyone is pessimistic about the effect of war on average human -nature, I should only ask them to come and talk to our men at the -hospital. Of course, under it all, there’s the ominous roar in one’s -ears all the time.â€</p> - -<p>“Do you mean the air-raids?†he asked her and,<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a> shaking her head, -showing him that she, too, had seen with him and, he believed, with him -accepted: “No; I mean the roar of nation after nation collapsing into -the abyss. A sort of tumbril roar of civilization, Roger. And, for that, -there’s always the last resource of going gallantly to the guillotine. -But all the same, I believe we shall pull through.â€</p> - -<p>It was the spring of 1918 and one needed faith to believe it. She asked -him presently about his friends at Coldbrooks. He had gone to Coldbrooks -for three days of his one week’s leave. After this he went to France.</p> - -<p>“What changes for you there, poor Roger,†said Mrs. Aldesey.</p> - -<p>“Yes. Terrible changes. Palgrave dead and Barney broken. Yet, do you -know, it’s not as sad as it was. Something’s come back to it. Nancy sits -by him and holds his hand and is his joy and comfort.â€</p> - -<p>“Will he recover?â€</p> - -<p>“Not in the sense of being really mended. He’ll go on crutches, always, -if he gets up. But the doctors now hope that the injury to the back -isn’t permanent.â€</p> - -<p>“And Meg’s married,†said Mrs. Aldesey after a little pause. “Have you -seen her?â€</p> - -<p>“No. She runs a hospital in the country, at her husband’s place, Nancy -tells me; and is very happy.â€</p> - -<p>“Very. Has a fine boy, and is completely reinstated. It’s a remarkable -ending to the story, isn’t it? She met him at the front, you know, -driving her ambulance; and he has twice as much in him as poor Eric -Hayward.â€</p> - -<p>“Remarkable. Yet Meg’s a person who only<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a> needs her chance. She’s the -sort that always comes out on top.â€</p> - -<p>“Does it comfort her mother a little for all she’s suffered to see her -on top?â€</p> - -<p>“It almost comically comforts her. All the same, Eleanor Chadwick has -her depths. Nothing will ever comfort her for Palgrave’s death.â€</p> - -<p>“I understand that,†said Mrs. Aldesey. “Nothing could. How she must -envy the happy mothers whose boys were killed at the front. To have -one’s boy die in prison as a conscientious objector must be the -bitterest thing the war has given any mother to bear.â€</p> - -<p>“He was a dear boy,†said Oldmeadow. “Heroically wrong-minded.†He could -hardly bear to think of Palgrave.</p> - -<p>“He wasn’t alone, you know,†said Mrs. Aldesey after a moment. Something -was approaching that he would rather not have to speak of; a name he -would so much rather not name. And, evading it, feebly, he said, “His -mother got to him in time, I know.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. But all the time. She went and lived near the prison. Adrienne -Toner I mean.â€</p> - -<p>Her eyes were on him and he hoped that no readjustment of his features -was visible. “Oh, yes. Nancy told me that,†he said.</p> - -<p>“What’s become of her, Roger?†Mrs. Aldesey asked. “Since Charlie was -killed the Lumleys have lived in the country and I hardly see them. I -haven’t heard a word of her for years.â€</p> - -<p>He was keeping his eyes on her and he knew from her expression that he -showed some strain or some distress.<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a></p> - -<p>“Nor have I. Nancy said that they hadn’t either. She went away, after -Palgrave’s death. Disappeared completely.â€</p> - -<p>“Nancy told you, of course, about the money; the little fortune she gave -Palgrave, so that he could leave it to his mother?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes. Nancy wrote to me of that.â€</p> - -<p>“It was cleverly contrived, wasn’t it. They are quite tied up to it, -aren’t they; whatever they may feel. No one could object to her giving a -fortune to the boy she’d ruined. I admired that in her, I must confess; -the way she managed it. And then her disappearance.â€</p> - -<p>“Very clever indeed,†said Oldmeadow. “All that remains for her to do -now is to manage to get killed. And that’s easily managed. Perhaps she -is killed.â€</p> - -<p>He did not intend that his voice should be emptier or dryer, yet Lydia -looked at him with a closer attention.</p> - -<p>“Barney and Nancy could get married then,†she said.</p> - -<p>“Yes. Exactly. They could get married.â€</p> - -<p>“That’s what you want, isn’t it, Roger?â€</p> - -<p>“Want her to be killed, or them to be married?â€</p> - -<p>“Well, as you say, so many people <i>are</i> being killed. One more or less, -if it’s in such a good cause as their marriage—â€</p> - -<p>“It’s certainly a good cause. But I don’t like the dilemma,†said -Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>He knew from the way she looked at him, discreet and disguised as her -recognition was, that he was hiding something from her. Casting about -his mind, in the distress that took the form of confusion, he<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a> could -himself find nothing that he hid, or wished to hide, unless it was the -end of Adrienne’s story as Barney’s wife. That wasn’t for him to show; -ever; to anyone.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps she’s gone back to America,†said Mrs. Aldesey presently, -“California, you know. Or Chicago. She may very well be engaged in great -enterprises out there that we never hear of. They’d be sure to be great, -wouldn’t they.â€</p> - -<p>“I suppose they would.â€</p> - -<p>“You saw her once more, didn’t you, at the time you saw Palgrave,†Mrs. -Aldesey went on. “Lady Lumley told me of that. And how kind you had -been. Adrienne had spoken of it. You were sorry for them both, I -suppose; for her as well as for him, in spite of everything. Or did she -merely take it for granted that the kindness to him extended to her?â€</p> - -<p>“Not at all. It was for her too,†said Oldmeadow, staring a little and -gathering together, after this lapse of time that seemed so immense, his -memories of that other tea-table set up in the chaos: Palgrave’s -tea-table on that distant day in Oxford. What was so confusing him was -his consciousness that it hadn’t been the last time he had seen -Adrienne. “I was as sorry for her as for him,†he went on. “Sorrier. -There was so much more in her than I’d supposed. She was capable of -intense suffering.â€</p> - -<p>“In losing her husband’s affections, you mean? You never suspected her -of being inhuman, surely? Lady Lumley blamed poor Barney for all that -sad story. But, even from her account, I could see his side very -plainly.â€</p> - -<p>“Perhaps I did think her inhuman. At all events I thought her -invulnerable.<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. I remember. With all her absurdity you thought she had great -power.†Mrs. Aldesey looked at him thoughtfully. “And it was when you -found she hadn’t that you could be sorry for her.â€</p> - -<p>“Not at all,†said Oldmeadow again. “I still think she has great power. -People can have power and go to pieces.â€</p> - -<p>“Did she go to pieces? That day in Oxford? I can’t imagine her in -pieces, you know.â€</p> - -<p>He had a feeling of drawing back; or of drawing Adrienne back. “In the -sense of being so unhappy, so obviously unhappy, over Palgrave,†he -said.</p> - -<p>He saw that Lydia would have liked to go on questioning, as, of course, -it would have been perfectly natural for her to do. Was not Adrienne -Toner and her absurdity one of their pet themes? Yet she desisted. She -desisted and it was because she felt some change in him; some shrinking -and some pain. “Well, let’s hope that she is happy, now, or as happy as -she can be, poor thing, doing great deeds in America,†she said. And she -turned the talk back to civilization and its danger.</p> - -<p>They talked a good deal about civilization during their last three days -together. He wanted things, during these three days of mingled recovery -and farewell, to be as happy as possible between him and his friend, for -he knew that Lydia’s heart was heavy, for him and not for civilization. -The front to which he was going was more real to her, because it was -much nearer, and his peril was more real than during his absence in -distant climes. He felt himself that the French front, at this special -time, would probably make an end of him and, for the first time since -their early friendship, he knew conjecture as to his<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a> relation with -Lydia; wondered, if it had not been for Mr. Aldesey in New York, whether -Lydia might have been in love with him, and realized, with a curious -sense of anxiety and responsibility, that her friendship for him now was -the closest tie in her life. The war might to her, too, mean irreparable -loss. And he was sorry that it was so; sorry to think that the easy, -happy intercourse had this hidden depth of latent suffering.</p> - -<p>Lydia’s feeling, and its implications, became the clearer to him when, -on their last evening together, she said to him suddenly: “Perhaps -you’ll see her over there.â€</p> - -<p>He could not pretend not to know whom she meant, nor could he pretend to -himself not to see that if it troubled Lydia that he should be sorry for -Adrienne that could only be because she cared far more for him than he -had ever guessed.</p> - -<p>He said, as easily as he could manage it, for the pressure of his -realizations made him feel a little queer: “Not if she’s in America.â€</p> - -<p>“Ah, but perhaps she’s come back from America,†said Mrs. Aldesey. -“She’s a great traveller. What will you do with her if you do find her? -Bring her back to Barney?â€</p> - -<p>“Hardly that,†he said. “There’d be no point in bringing her back to -Barney, would there?â€</p> - -<p>“Well, then, what would you do with her?†Mrs. Aldesey smiled, as if -with a return to their old light dealing with the theme, while, still in -her nurse’s coiffe and dress, she leaned back against her chair.</p> - -<p>“What would she do with me, rather, isn’t it?†he asked. And he, too, -tried to be light.<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a></p> - -<p>“She’ll be mended then, you think? Able to do things to people again?â€</p> - -<p>“I’m not at all afraid of her, you know. She never did me any harm,†he -said.</p> - -<p>“Because you were as strong as she, you mean. She did other people harm, -surely. You warned me once to keep away from her unless I wanted to lose -my toes and fingers,†Mrs. Aldesey still smiled. “She does make people -lose things, doesn’t she?â€</p> - -<p>“Well, she makes them gain things, too. Fortunes for instance. Perhaps -if I find her, she’ll give me a fortune.â€</p> - -<p>“But that’s only when she’s ruined you,†she reminded him.</p> - -<p>“And it’s she who’s ruined now,†he felt bound to remind her; no longer -lightly.</p> - -<p>Leaning back in her chair, her faded little face framed in white, Mrs. -Aldesey looked at once younger yet more tired than he had ever seen her -look and she sat for a little while silent; as if she had forgotten -Adrienne Toner and were thinking only of their parting. But all her -gaiety had fallen from her as she said at last: “I can be sorry for her, -too; if she’s really ruined. If she still loves him when he has ceased -to care for her. Does she, do you think?â€</p> - -<p>With the question he seemed to see a fire-lit room and lovers who had -found each other and to smell wet roses. Lydia was coming too near; too -near the other figure, outside the window, fallen back with outstretched -arms against the roses. And again he felt himself softly, cautiously, -disentangle the sleeve, the hair, felt himself draw Adrienne away into -the darkness where the smell was now of wet ivy and where he could see -only the shape of an accepting grief.<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a></p> - -<p>“How could I know?†he said. “She was very unhappy when I last saw her. -But three years have passed and people can mend in three years.â€</p> - -<p>“Especially in America,†Mrs. Aldesey suggested. “It’s a wonderful place -for mending. Let’s hope she’s there. Let’s hope that we shall never, any -of us, ever hear of her again. That would be much the happiest thing, -wouldn’t it?â€</p> - -<p>He was obliged to say that it would certainly be much the happiest -thing; and he was too unhappy about Lydia to be able to feel angry with -her. He knew how tired she must be when, for the first time in their -long friendship, she must know that she was not pleasing him, yet not be -able to help herself.<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-b" id="CHAPTER_II-b"></a>CHAPTER II</h3> - -<p class="nind">“G<small>OOD</small> L<small>ORD</small>!†Oldmeadow heard himself groaning.</p> - -<p>Even as he took possession of his physical suffering he knew that there -was satisfaction in suffering, at last, himself. Until now the worst -part of war had been to see the sufferings of others. This was at last -the real thing; but it was so mingled with acquiescence that it ceased -to be the mere raw fact. “We’re all together, now,†he thought, and he -felt himself, even as he groaned, lifted on a wave of beatitude.</p> - -<p>Until now he had not, as a consciousness, known anything. There was a -shape in his memory, a mere immense black blot shot with fiery lights. -It must symbolize the moment when the shell struck him, bending, in the -trench, over his watch and his calculations. And after that there were -detached visions, the ceiling of a train where he had swung in a hammock -bed, looking up; clean sheets, miraculously clean and the face of a -black-browed nurse who reminded him of Trixie. The smell of chloroform -was over everything. It bound everything together so that days might -have passed since the black blot and since he lay here, again in clean -sheets, the sweet, thick smell closing round him and a raging thirst in -his throat. He knew that he had just been carried in from the operating -room and he groaned again “Good Lord,†feeling the pain snatch as if -with fangs and claws at his thigh and belly, and muttered, “Water!â€</p> - -<p>Something sweet, but differently sweet from the<a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> smell, sharp, too, and -insidious, touched his lips and opening them obediently, as a young bird -opens its bill to the parent bird, he felt a swab passed round his -parched mouth and saw the black-browed nurse. “Not water, yet, you -know,†she said. “This is lemon and glycerine and will help you -wonderfully.â€</p> - -<p>He wanted to ask something about Paris and the long-distance gun firing -on it every day and he seemed to see it over the edge of the trench, far -away on the horizon of No-man’s-land, a tiny city flaming far into the -sky. But other words bubbled up and he heard himself crying: “Mother! -Mother!†and remembered, stopping himself with an act of will, that they -all said that when they were dying. But as he closed his eyes he felt -her very near and knew that it would be sweet to die and find her.</p> - -<p>A long time must have passed. Was it days or only the time of daylight? -It was night now and a shaded light shone from a recess behind him and -thoughts, visions, memories raced through his mind. Nancy; Barney; he -would never see them again, then: poor Lydia and civilization. -“Civilization will see me out,†he thought and he wondered if they had -taken off the wings of the Flying Victory when they packed her.</p> - -<p>A rhythm was beating in his brain. Music was it? Something of Bach’s? It -gathered words to itself and shaped itself sentence by sentence into -something he had heard? or read? Ah, he was glad to have found it. -“Under the orders of your devoted officers you will march against the -enemy or fall where you stand, facing the foe. To those who die I say: -You will not die: you will enter living into immortality, and God will -receive you into his<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a> bosom.†He seemed to listen to the words as he -lay, quietly smiling. But it was music after all for, as he listened, -they merged into the “St. Matthew Passion.†He had heard it, of course, -with Lydia, at the Temple. But Lydia did not really care very much for -Bach. She might care more for “Litanei.†She had sung it standing beside -him with foolish white roses over her ears. How unlike Lydia to wear -those roses. And was it Lydia who stood there? A mental perplexity -mingled with the physical pain and spoiled his peace. It was not -Lydia’s, that white face in the coffin with wet ivy behind it. What -suffering was this that beat upon his heart? The music had faded all -away and he saw faces everywhere, dying faces; and blood and terrible -mutilations. All the suffering of the war, worse, far worse than the -mere claws and fangs that tore at him. Dying boys choked out their -breaths in agonies of conscious loneliness, yearning for faces they -would never see again. Oh, how many he had seen die like that! -Intolerable to watch them. And could one do nothing? “Cigarettes. Give -them cigarettes,†he tried to tell somebody. “And marmalade for -breakfast; and phonographs, and then they will enter living into -immortality‗No: he did not mean that. What did he mean? He could catch -at nothing now. Thoughts were tossed and tumbled like the rubbish of -wreckage from an inundated town on the deep currents of his anguish. A -current that raced and seethed and carried him away. He saw it. Its -breathless speed was like the fever in his blood. If it went faster he -would lose his breath. Church-bells ringing on the banks lost theirs as -he sped past so swiftly and made a trail of whining<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a> sound.—Effie! -Effie! It was poor little Effie, drowning. He saw her wild, small face, -battling. Bubbles boiled up about his cry.</p> - -<p>Suddenly the torrent was stilled. Without commotion, without tumult, it -was stilled. There was a dam somewhere; it had stopped racing; he could -get his breath. Still and slow; oh! it was delicious to feel that quiet -hand on his forehead; his mother’s hand, and to know that Effie was -safe. He lay with closed eyes and saw a smooth waterfall sliding and -curving with green grey depths into the lower currents of the stream. He -remembered the stream well, now; one of his beloved French rivers; one -of the smaller, sylvan rivers, too small for majesty; with silver -poplars spaced against the sky on either bank and a small town, white -and pink and pearly-grey, clear on the horizon. Tranquil sails were -above him and the bells from the distant church-tower floated to him -across the fields. Soundlessly, slowly, he felt himself borne into -oblivion.</p> - -<p>The black-browed nurse was tending him next morning. “You are better,†-she said, smiling at him. “You slept all night. No; it’s a shame, but -you mayn’t have water yet.†She put the lemon and glycerine to his lips. -“The pain is easier, isn’t it?â€</p> - -<p>He said it was. He felt that he must not stir an inch so as to keep it -easier, but he could not have stirred had he wanted to, for he was all -tightly swathed and bandaged. He remembered something he wanted -specially to ask: “Paris? They haven’t got it yet?â€</p> - -<p>“They’ll never get it!†she smiled proudly. “Everything is going -splendidly.<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a>â€</p> - -<p>The English surgeon was such a nice fellow. He had spectacles on a -square-tipped nose and a square, chubby face; yet his hair was nearly -white. Oldmeadow remembered, as if of days before the flood, that his -name was a distinguished one. Perhaps it was morphia they gave him, -after his wound was dressed, or perhaps he fainted. The day passed in a -hot and broken stupor and at night the tides of fever rose again and -carried him away. But, again, before he had lost his breath, before he -had quite gone down into delirium, the quiet hand came and sent him, -under sails, to sleep.</p> - -<p>Next day Oldmeadow knew, from the way the surgeon looked at him, that -his case was grave. His face was grim as he bent over the dressing and -he hurt horribly. They told him, when it was over, that he had been very -brave, and, like a child, he was pleased that they should tell him so. -But the pain was worse all day and the sense of the submerging fever -imminent, and he lay with closed eyes and longed for the night that -brought the hand. Hours, long hours passed before it came. Hours of -sunlight when, behind his eyelids, he saw red, and hours of twilight -when he saw mauve. Then, for a little while, it was a soft, dense grey -he saw, like a bat’s wing, and then the small light shone across his -bed; he knew that the night had come, and felt, at last, the hand fall -softly on his head.</p> - -<p>He lay for some time feeling the desired peace flow into him and then, -through its satisfaction, another desire pushed up into his -consciousness and he remembered that, more than about Paris, he had -wanted to speak to the nurse about what she did for him and thank her.<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a></p> - -<p>“It’s you who make me sleep, isn’t it,†he said, lying with closed eyes -under the soft yet insistent pressure. “I’ve never thanked you.â€</p> - -<p>She did not reply. She did not want him to talk. But he still wanted to.</p> - -<p>“I couldn’t thank you last night,†he said, “I can’t keep hold of my -thoughts. And when morning comes I seem to have forgotten everything -about the night. You are the nurse who takes care of me in the daytime, -too, aren’t you?â€</p> - -<p>Again, for a moment, there was no reply; and then a voice came. “No; I -am the night nurse. Go to sleep now.â€</p> - -<p>It was a voice gentle, cold and soft, like snow. It was not an English -voice and he had heard it before. Where had he heard it? Rooks were -cawing and he saw a blue ribbon rolling, rolling out across a -spring-tide landscape. This voice was not like a blue ribbon; it was -like snow. Yet, when he turned his head under her hand, he looked round -at Adrienne Toner.</p> - -<p>The first feeling that came uppermost in the medley that filled him at -the sight of her was one of amused vexation. It was as if he went back -to his beginnings with her, back to the rooks and the blue ribbon. “At -it again!†was what he said to himself, and what he said aloud, -absurdly, was: “Oh, come, now!â€</p> - -<p>She did not lift her hand, but there was trouble on her face as she -looked back at him. “I hoped you wouldn’t see me, Mr. Oldmeadow,†she -said.</p> - -<p>He was reminded of Bacchus and the laying on of hands; but a classical -analogy, even more ridiculous, came to him with her words. “Like Cupid -and<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> Psyche,†he said. “The other way round. It’s I who mustn’t look.â€</p> - -<p>The trouble on her face became more marked and he saw that she imagined -him to be delirious. He was not quite himself, certainly, or he would -not have greeted Adrienne Toner thus, and he made an effort to be more -decorous and rational as he said, “I’m very glad to see you again. Safe -and sound: you know.â€</p> - -<p>She had always had a singular little face, but it had never looked so -singular as now, seen from below with shadows from the light behind cast -so oddly over it. The end of her nose jutted from a blue shadow and her -eyes lay in deep hollows of blue. All that he was sure of in her -expression was the gravity with which she made up her mind to humour -him. “We want you to be safe and sound, too. Please shut your eyes and -go to sleep.â€</p> - -<p>“All right; all right, Psyche,†he murmured, and he knew it wasn’t quite -what he intended to say, yet in his flippancy he was taking refuge from -something; from the flood of suffering that had broken over him the -other night after he had seen that dead face with white roses over its -ears. This queer face, half dissolved in blue and yellow, was not dead -and the white coiffe came closely down about it. If he obeyed her he -knew that she would keep the other faces away and he closed his eyes -obediently and lay very still, seeing himself again as the good little -boy being praised. This was Psyche; not Ariane. “Ariane ma sÅ“ur,†he -murmured. It was Ariane who had the white roses—or was it wet ivy? and -after her face pressed all the other dying faces. “You’ll keep them -away, won’t you?†he murmured,<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a> and he heard her say: “Yes; I’ll keep -them quite away,†and, softly, a curtain of sleep fell before his eyes -crossed by a thin drift of mythological figures.</p> - -<p>“I thought it was you who sent me to sleep,†he said to the English -nurse next day. He could hardly, in the morning light, believe it was -not a dream.</p> - -<p>She smiled with an air of vicarious pride. “No indeed. I can’t send -people to sleep. It’s our wonderful Mrs. Chadwick. She does a good deal -more than put people to sleep. She cures people—oh, I wouldn’t have -believed it myself, till I saw it—who are at death’s door. It’s lucky -for you and the others that we’ve got her here for a little while.â€</p> - -<p>“Where’s here?†he asked after a moment.</p> - -<p>“Here’s Boulogne. Didn’t you know?â€</p> - -<p>“I thought I heard the sea sometimes. It’s for cases too bad, then, to -be taken home. Get her here from where?â€</p> - -<p>“From her hospital in the firing-line. Now that we’re advancing at the -front everything there is changed and she could come away for a little. -Sir Kenneth’s been begging her to come ever since he saw her. He knew -she would work marvels here, too.†The nice young nurse was exuberant in -her darkness and rosiness with a Jewish streak of fervour in her lips -and eyes. “It’s a sort of rest for her,†she added. “She’s been badly -wounded once. You can just see the scar, under her cap, on her forehead. -And she nearly died of fever out in Salonika. She had a travelling -ambulance there before she came to France.â€</p> - -<p>“It must be very restful for her,†Oldmeadow remarked with a touch of -his grim mirth, “if she<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a> has to sit up putting all your bad cases to -sleep. Why haven’t I heard of her and her hospital?â€</p> - -<p>“It’s not run in her name. It’s an American hospital—she is -American—called after her mother, I believe. The Pearl Ambulance is -what it’s called and everybody here knows about it; all of us nurses and -doctors, I mean. Her organizing power is as wonderful as her cures; her -influence over her staff. They all worship the ground she walks on.â€</p> - -<p>“Pearl, Pearl Toner,†Oldmeadow was saying to himself. How complete, how -perfect it was. And the nurse went on, delighted, evidently, to talk of -an idol, and rather as if she were speaking of a special cure they had -installed, a sort of Carrel treatment not to be found anywhere else: -“Everything’s been different since she came. It’s almost miraculous to -see what the mere touch of her hand can do. Matron says she wouldn’t be -surprised if it turned out she was a sort of nun and wore a hair shirt -under her dress. Whatever she is, it makes one feel better and stronger -just to see her and one would do anything for her just to have her smile -at one. She has the most heavenly smile.â€</p> - -<p>It was all very familiar.</p> - -<p>“Ah, you haven’t abandoned me after all, though I have found you out,†-he said to Adrienne Toner that night.</p> - -<p>He was able at last to see her clearly as she came in, so softly that it -was like a dream sliding into one’s sleep. She was like a dream in her -nurse’s dress which, though so familiar on other women, seemed to -isolate and make her strange. Her face was smaller than he had -remembered it and had the curious look, docile yet stubborn, that one -sees on<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a> the faces of dumb-mutes. She might have looked like that had -she been deafened by the sound of so many bursting shells and lost the -faculty of speech through doing much and saying nothing among scenes of -horror. But she spoke to him, after all, as naturally as he spoke to -her, saying, though with no touch of his lightness: “You mustn’t talk, -you know, if I come to make you sleep. Sir Kenneth wants sleep for you -more than anything else.â€</p> - -<p>“I promise you to be good,†said Oldmeadow. “But I’m really better, -aren’t I? and can talk a little first.â€</p> - -<p>“You are really better. But it will take a long time. A great deal of -sleeping.â€</p> - -<p>“No one knew what had become of you,†said Oldmeadow, and he remembered -that he ought to be sorry that Adrienne Toner had not been killed.</p> - -<p>She hesitated, and then sat down beside him. He thought that she had -been going to ask him something and then checked herself. “I can’t let -you talk,†she said, and in her voice he heard the new authority; an -authority gained by long submission to discipline.</p> - -<p>“Another night, then. We must talk another night,†he murmured, closing -his eyes, for he knew that he must not disobey her. All the same it was -absurd that Adrienne Toner should be doing this for him; absurd but -heavenly to feel her hand fall softly, like a warm, light bird, and -brood upon his forehead.<a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-b" id="CHAPTER_III-b"></a>CHAPTER III</h3> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HEY</small> never spoke of Coldbrooks, nor of Barney, nor of Palgrave; not -once. Not once during all those nights that she sat beside him and made -him sleep.</p> - -<p>He had heard from Coldbrooks, of course; letters came often now. And the -dark young nurse had written for him since he could not yet write for -himself. He had said no word of seeing Adrienne. Nor had he let them -know how near to death he had been and, perhaps, still was. He would -have liked to have seen Lydia and Nancy if he were to die; but most of -all he wanted to be sure of not losing Adrienne. And he knew that were -he to tell them, were they to come, Adrienne would go.</p> - -<p>She never spoke to him at all, he remembered—as getting stronger with -every day, he pieced his memories of these nights together—unless he -spoke to her; and she never smiled. And it came upon him one morning -after he had read letters that brought so near the world from which she -was now shut out, that she had, perhaps, never forgiven him. After all, -though he could not see that he had been wrong, she had everything to -forgive him and the thought made him restless. That night, for the first -time, she volunteered a remark. His temperature had gone up a little. He -must be very quiet and go to sleep directly.</p> - -<p>“Yes; I know,†he said. “It’s because of you. Things I want to say. I’m -really so much better. We can’t go on like this, can we,†he said, -looking<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a> up at her as she sat beside him. “Why, you might slip out of my -life any day, and I might never hear of you again.â€</p> - -<p>She sat looking down at him, a little askance, though gentle still, if -gentle was the word for her changed face. “That’s what I mean to do,†-she said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, but—†Oldmeadow actually, in his alarm and resentment, struggled -up on an elbow—“that won’t do. I want to see you, really see you, now -that I’m myself again. I want to talk with you—now that I can talk -coherently. I want to ask you; well, I won’t ask it now.†She had put -out her hand, her small, potent hand, and quietly pressed him back, and -down upon his pillow while her face took on its look of almost stern -authority. “I’ll be good. But promise me you’ll not go without telling -me. And haven’t you questions to ask, too?â€</p> - -<p>Her face kept its severity, but, as he found this last appeal, her eyes -widened, darkened, looked, for a moment, almost frightened.</p> - -<p>“I know that Barney is safe,†she said. “I have nothing to ask.â€</p> - -<p>“Well; no; I see.†He felt that he had been guilty of a blunder and it -made him fretful. “For me, then. Not for you. Promise me. I won’t be -good unless you promise me. You can’t go off and leave me like that.â€</p> - -<p>With eyes still dilated, she contemplated this rebellion.</p> - -<p>“You must promise me something, then,†she said after a moment.</p> - -<p>He felt proud, delighted, as if he had gained a victory over her.<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a></p> - -<p>“Done. If it’s not too hard. What is it?â€</p> - -<p>“You won’t write to anybody. You won’t tell anybody that you’ve seen me. -Only Lady Lumley knows that I am here. And she has promised not to tell. -Probably, soon, I shall have left France for ever.â€</p> - -<p>“I won’t tell. I won’t write. I can keep secrets as well as Lady Lumley. -She does keep them, you know. So it’s a compact.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. It’s a compact. You’ll never tell them; and I won’t go without -letting you know. I promise. Now go to sleep.â€</p> - -<p>She laid her hand on his forehead, but, for a little while, he heard her -breathing deeply and quickly and the sense of his blundering stayed with -him so that sleep was longer in coming.</p> - -<p>All the same he was much better next day. He was able to sit up and had -the glory and excitement of a chop for his midday dinner. And when the -pleasant hour of tea arrived it was Adrienne herself who came in -carrying the little tray.</p> - -<p>He had not seen her in daylight before and his first feeling was one of -alarm, for, if she were afoot like this, in daylight, must it not mean -that she was soon to leave the hospital? He felt shy of her, too, for, -altered as she was by night, the day showed her as far more altered. -Whether she seemed much older or much younger he could not have said. -The coiffe, covering her forehead, and bound under her chin in a way -peculiar to her, left only, as it were, the means of expression visible.</p> - -<p>She sat down by the window and looked out, glancing round from time to -time as he drank his tea and it was she who found the calm little -sentences,<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a> about the latest news from the front, the crashing of -Bulgaria, that carried them on until he had finished. When he had pushed -down his tray she turned her chair and faced him, folding her hands -together on her white apron, and she said, and he knew that she had come -to say it, “What was it you wanted to ask me?â€</p> - -<p>He had had, while she sat at the window, her profile with the jutting -nose, and her face, as it turned upon him now, made him think suddenly -of a seagull. Questing, lonely, with vigilant eyes, it seemed to have -great spaces before it; to be flying forth into empty spaces and to an -unseen goal.</p> - -<p>“Are you going away, then?†He had not dared, somehow, to ask her -before. He felt now that he could not talk until he knew.</p> - -<p>“Not yet,†she said. “But I shall be going soon. The hospital is -emptying and my nights on duty are very short. I have, really, only you -and two others to take care of. That’s why I am up so early to-day. And -you are so much better that we can have a little talk; if you have -anything to ask me.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s this, of course,†said Oldmeadow. “It seems to me you ought to -dislike me. I misunderstood you in many ways. And now I owe you my life. -Before we part I want to thank you and to ask you to forgive me.â€</p> - -<p>Her eyes, seen in daylight, were of the colour of distance, of arctic -distances. That had always been their colour, though he had never before -identified it.</p> - -<p>“But there is nothing to thank me for,†she said. “I am here to take -care of people.â€</p> - -<p>“Even people who misunderstood you. Even<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a> people you dislike. I know.†-He flushed, feeling that he had been duly snubbed. “But though you take -care of everyone, anyone may thank you, too, mayn’t they?â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t dislike you, Mr. Oldmeadow,†she said after a moment. “And you -didn’t misunderstand me.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh,†he murmured, more abashed than before. “I think so. Not, perhaps, -what you did; but what you were. I didn’t see you as you really were. -That’s what I mean.â€</p> - -<p>The perplexity, which had grown, even, to amazement, had left her eyes -and she was intently looking at him. “There is nothing for you to be -sorry for,†she said. “Nothing for me to forgive. You were always -right.â€</p> - -<p>“Always right? I can’t take that, you know,†said Oldmeadow, deeply -discomposed. “You were blind, of course, and more sure of yourself than -any of us can safely afford to be; but I wasn’t always right.â€</p> - -<p>“Always. Always,†she repeated. “I was blinder than you knew. I was more -sure of myself.â€</p> - -<p>He lay looking at her and she looked back at him, but with a look that -invited neither argument not protest. It remained remote and vigilant. -She might have been the seagull looking down and noting, as she flew -onward, that the small figure on the beach so far below had ceased to be -that of an assailant in its attitude. How remote she was, white strange, -fleeting creature! How near she had been once! The memory of how near -rushed over his mind. He had, despite the delirious visions of her -stricken face, hardly thought at all, since really seeing<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a> her again, of -that last time. Everything had fitted itself on, rather, to his earliest -memories of her, tinged all of them, it was true, with a deeper meaning, -but not till this moment consciously admitting it. It rushed in now, -poignant with the recovered smell of wet, dark ivy, the recovered sound -of her stifled sobs as she had stumbled, broken, beside him in the rain. -And with the memory came the desire that she should again be near.</p> - -<p>“Tell me,†he said, “what are you going to do? You said you might be -leaving France for ever. Shall you go back to America?â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t think so. Not for a long time,†she answered. “There will be -things to do over here, out of France, for a great many years I -imagine.â€</p> - -<p>He hesitated, then took a roundabout way. “And when I get home, if, -owing to you, I ever get there, may I not tell them that you’re safe and -sound? It would be happier for them to know that, wouldn’t it?â€</p> - -<p>Her vigilance still dwelt upon him as though she suspected in this -sudden change of subject some craft of approach, but she answered -quietly:</p> - -<p>“No; I think it will be happier for them to forget me. They will be told -if I die. I have arranged for that.â€</p> - -<p>“They can’t very well forget you,†said Oldmeadow after a moment. “They -must always wonder.â€</p> - -<p>“I know.†She glanced away and trouble came into her face. “I know. But -as much as possible. You must not make me real again by telling them. -You have promised. You care for them. You know what I mean.<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; I’ve promised. And I see what you mean. But,†said Oldmeadow -suddenly, and this, of course, was what he had been coming to. “I don’t -want to forget. I want you to stay real. You must let me know what -becomes of you, always, please.â€</p> - -<p>Astonishment, now, effaced her trouble. “You? Why?†she asked.</p> - -<p>He smiled a little. “Well, because, if you’ll let me say it, I’m fond of -you. I feel responsible for you. I’ve been too deeply in your life, -you’ve been too deeply in mine, for us to disappear from each other. -Don’t you remember,†he said, and he found it with a sense of -achievement, ridiculous as it might sound, “how I held the tea-pot for -you? That’s what I mean. You must let me go on holding it.â€</p> - -<p>But she could feel no amusement. She was pressing her hands tightly -together in her lap, her eyes were wide and her astonishment, he seemed -to see, almost brought tears to them. “Fond? You?†she said. “Of me? Oh, -no, Mr. Oldmeadow, I can’t believe that. You are sorry, I know. You are -very sorry. But you can’t be fond.â€</p> - -<p>“And why not?†said Oldmeadow, and he raised himself on his elbow the -more directly to challenge her. “Why shouldn’t I be fond of you, pray? -You must swallow it, for it’s the truth and I’ve a right to my own -feelings, I hope.â€</p> - -<p>She put aside the playfulness in which his grim earnest veiled itself. -“Because you saw. Because you know. All about me. From the first.â€</p> - -<p>“Well?†he questioned after a moment, still raised on his elbow but now -with the grimness unalloyed. “What of it?<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“You remember what I was. You remember what you saw. You would have -saved them from me if you could; and you couldn’t. How can you be fond -of a person who has ruined all their lives?â€</p> - -<p>“Upon my soul,†said Oldmeadow laughing, his eyes on hers, “you talk as -though you’d been a Lucrezia Borgia! What were you worse than an -exalted, stubborn, rather conceited girl? Things went wrong, I know, and -partly because of me. But it wasn’t all your fault, I’ll swear it. And -if it was, it was your mistake; not your crime.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, no, no,†said Adrienne, and the compulsion of his feeling had -brought a note of anguish to her voice. “It wasn’t that. It was worse -than that. Don’t forget. Don’t think you are fond of me because I can -make you sleep. It’s always been so; I see it now—the power I’ve had -over people; the horrible power. For power is horrible unless one is -good; unless one is using it for goodness.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, so you were,†Oldmeadow muttered, falling back on his pillow, her -vehemence, her strange passion, almost daunting him. “It’s not because -you make me go to sleep that I’m fond of you. What utter rubbish!â€</p> - -<p>“It is! it is!†she repeated. “I’ve seen it happen too often. It always -happens. It binds people to me. It makes them cling to me as if I could -give them life. It makes them believe me to be a sort of saint!â€</p> - -<p>“Well, if you can help them with it? You have helped them. The war’s -your great chance in that, you’ll admit. No one can accuse you of trying -to get power over people now.â€</p> - -<p>“Perhaps not. I’m not thinking of what I may be accused of, but of what -happens.<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“It doesn’t happen with me. I was fond of you—well, we won’t go back to -that. And you did use it for goodness. Power came by the way and you -took it. Of course.â€</p> - -<p>“I thought I was using it for goodness. I thought I was good. That was -the foundation of everything. We must go back, Mr. Oldmeadow. You don’t -see as I thought you did. You don’t understand. I didn’t mean to set -myself up above other people. I thought they were good, too. I was happy -in my goodness, and when they weren’t happy it seemed to me they missed -something I had and that it was a mistake that I could set right for -them. I’m going back to the very beginning. Long before you ever knew -me. Everything fell into my hand. I loved people, or thought I did, and -if they didn’t love me I thought it their mistake. That was the way it -looked to me, for my whole life long, until you came. I couldn’t -understand at first, when you came. I couldn’t see what you thought. I -believed that I could make you love me, too, and when I saw, for you -made it plain, that you disliked me, it seemed to me worse than mistake. -I thought that you must be against goodness; dangerous; the way you -pushed me back—back—and showed me always something I had not thought I -meant at the bottom of everything I did. I felt that I wanted to turn -away from you and to turn people who loved me away from you, lest you -should infect them. And all the while, all the while I was trying to -escape—the truth that you saw and that I didn’t.†She stopped for a -moment while, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow stared at her. Her breath -seemed to fail her, and she leaned forward and put her elbows<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a> on her -knees and bent her forehead on her joined hands. “It came at last. You -remember how it came,†she said, and the passion of protest had fallen -from her voice. She spoke with difficulty. “Partly through you, and, -partly, through my failure; I had never failed before. My failure with -Barney. My failure to keep him and to get him back. I couldn’t believe -it at first. I struggled and struggled. You saw me. Everything turned -against me. It was as if the world had changed its shape and colour when -I struggled against it. Everything went down. And when I felt I wasn’t -loved, when I felt myself going down, with all the rest, I became bad. -Bad, bad,†she repeated, and her voice, heavy with its slow reiteration, -was like a clenched hand of penitence beating on a breast: “really bad -at last, for I had not known before what I was and the truth was there, -staring me in the face. I did dreadful things, then. Mean things; cruel, -hateful things, shutting my eyes, stopping my ears, so that I should not -see what I was doing. I ran about and crouched and hid—from myself; do -you follow my meaning?—from God. And then at last, when I was stripped -bare, I had to look at Him.â€</p> - -<p>She raised herself and leaned back in her chair. Her voice had trembled -more and more with the intensity of the feeling that upheld her and she -put her handkerchief to her lips and pressed it to them, looking across -at him. And, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow looked back at her, -motionless and silent.</p> - -<p>Was it sympathy, pity or tenderness that almost overwhelmed him as he -gazed at her? He could not have said, though knowing that the unity that -was<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a> in them both, the share of the eternal that upheld their lives, -flowed out from his eyes into hers as he looked and from hers to his. -They were near at last; near as it is rarely given to human beings to -experience nearness, and the awe of such a partaking was perhaps the -ground of all he felt.</p> - -<p>“You see,†he said, and a long time had passed, “I was mistaken.â€</p> - -<p>She did not answer him. Perhaps she did not understand.</p> - -<p>“I never knew you were a person who could come to the truth like that,†-he said.</p> - -<p>Still holding her handkerchief to her lips, she slightly shook her head.</p> - -<p>“Even you never thought that I was bad.â€</p> - -<p>“I thought everybody was bad,†said Oldmeadow, “until they came to know -that goodness doesn’t lie in themselves. The reason you angered me so -was that you didn’t see you were like the rest of us. And only people -capable of great goodness can know such an agony of self-recognition.â€</p> - -<p>“No,†she repeated. “Everyone is not bad like me. You know that’s not -true. You know that some people, people you love—are not like that. -They need no agony of recognition, for nothing could ever make them mean -and cruel.â€</p> - -<p>He thought for a moment. “That’s because you expected so much more of -yourself; because you’d believed so much more, and were, of course, more -wrong. Your crash was so much greater because your spiritual pride was -so great. And I thought you were a person a crash would do for; that -there’d be nothing left of you if you came a crash. That was my mistake; -for see what there is left.<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a>â€</p> - -<p>She rose to her feet. His words seemed to press her too far. “You are -kind,†she said in a hurried voice. “I understand. You are so sorry. -I’ve talked and talked. It’s very thoughtless of me. I must go now.â€</p> - -<p>She came and took the tray, but he put his hand on her arm, detaining -her. “You’ll own you’re not bad now? You’ll own there’s something real -for me to be fond of? Wait. I want you to acknowledge it, to accept -it—my fondness. Don’t try to run away.â€</p> - -<p>She stood above him, holding the tray, while he kept his hold on her -arm. “All I need to know,†she said, after a moment, and she did not -look at him, “is that no one is ever safe—unless they always remember.â€</p> - -<p>“That’s it, of course,†said Oldmeadow gravely, “and that you must die -to live; and you did die. But you live now, really, and life comes -through you again. Your gift, you know, of which you were so much afraid -just now, lest it had enveigled me. Don’t you see it? How can I put it -for you? You had a sort of wholeness before. There must be wholeness of -a sort if life is to come through; harmony of a sort, and faith. It -wasn’t an illusion even then. When you were shattered you lost your -gift. The light can’t shine through shattered things; and that was when -you recognized that without God we are a nothingness; a nothingness and -a restlessness mingled. You know. There are no words for it, though so -many people have found it and tried to say it. I know, too, after a -fashion. I’ve had crashes, too. But now your gift has come back, for you -are whole again; built up on an entirely new<a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a> principle. You see, it’s -another you I am fond of. You must believe in her, too. You do believe -in her. If you didn’t you could not have found your gift.â€</p> - -<p>She had stood quite still while he spoke, looking down, not at him but -at the little tray between her hands, and he saw that she was near -tears. Her voice was scarcely audible as she said: “Thank you.†And she -made an effort over herself to add: “What you say is true.â€</p> - -<p>“We must talk,†said Oldmeadow. He felt extraordinarily happy. “There -are so many things I want to ask you about.†And he went on, his hand -still on her arm, seeing that she struggled not to cry and helping her -to recover: “You’re not going away for some time, yet, I hope. Please -don’t. There’ll soon be no need of hospitals of this sort, anywhere, -will there? and you must manage to stay on here a little longer. I -shan’t get on if you go. You won’t leave me just as you’ve saved me, -will you, Mrs. Barney?â€</p> - -<p>At the name, over-taxed as she was already, a pitiful colour flooded her -face and before his blunder made visible his own blood answered hers, -mounting hotly to his forehead. “Oh, I’m so sorry,†he murmured, -helpless and hating himself, while his hand dropped. She stood over him, -holding herself there so as not to hurt him by the aspect of flight. She -even, in a moment, forced herself to smile. It was the first smile he -had seen on her face. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for, Mr. Oldmeadow,†-she said, as she had said before. “You’re very kind to me. I wish I -could tell you how kind I feel you are.†And as she turned away, -carrying the tray, she added: “No; I won’t go yet.<a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-b" id="CHAPTER_IV-b"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3> - -<p class="nind">H<small>E</small> did not see her again for two days; and she did not even come at -night. But he now kept possession of his new strength and slept without -her help. The sense of happiness brooded upon him. He did not remember -ever having felt so happy. His life was irradiated and enhanced as if by -some supreme experience.</p> - -<p>It was already late afternoon when, on the second day, she appeared; but -in this month of August his room was still filled with the reflection of -the sunlight and the warm colour bathed her as she entered. She wore a -blue cloak over her white linen dress and she had perhaps been walking, -for there was a slight flush on her cheeks and a look almost of -excitement in her eyes.</p> - -<p>She unfastened her cloak and put it aside and then, taking the chair -near the window, clasping her hands, as before, in her lap, she said, -without preamble and with a peculiar vehemence: “You hear often from -Barney, don’t you?â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow felt himself colouring. “Only once, directly. It rather tires -him to sit up, you know. But he’s getting on wonderfully and the doctors -think he’ll soon be able to walk a little—with a crutch, of course.â€</p> - -<p>“But you do hear, constantly, from Nancy, don’t you,†said Adrienne, -clasping and unclasping her hands but speaking with a steadiness he felt -to be rehearsed. “He is at Coldbrooks, I know, and Nancy is with him, -and his mother and Mrs. Averil.<a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a> It all seems almost happy, doesn’t it? -as happy as it can be, now, with Palgrave dead and Barney shackled.â€</p> - -<p>Startled as he was by her directness Oldmeadow managed to meet it.</p> - -<p>“Yes; almost happy,†he said. “I was with them before I came out this -last time and felt that about them. Poor Mrs. Chadwick is a good deal -changed; but even she is reviving.â€</p> - -<p>“She has had too much to bear,†said Adrienne. “I saw her again, too, at -the end, when she came to Palgrave. She can never forgive me. Meg is -happy now, but she will never forgive me either. I wrought havoc in -their lives, didn’t I?â€</p> - -<p>“Well, you or fate. I don’t blame you for any of that, you know,†said -Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“I don’t say that I blame myself for it,†said Adrienne. “I may have -been right or I may have been wrong. I don’t know. It is not in things -like that that I was bad. But what we must face is that I wrought havoc; -that if it hadn’t been for me they might all, now, be really happy. -Completely happy. If I had not been there Palgrave would not have been -so sure of himself. And if I had not been there Nancy and Barney would -have married.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,†said Oldmeadow. “If Barney hadn’t fallen in love with -you he might very probably have fallen in love with some one else, not -Nancy.â€</p> - -<p>“Perhaps, not probably,†said Adrienne. “And if he had he would have -stayed in love with her, for Barney is a faithful person. And it may -have been because I was so completely the wrong person for him that he -came to know so quickly that Nancy<a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a> was completely the right one. What I -feel is that anybody but Nancy would always have been, really, wrong. -And now that he loves her but is shackled, there’s only one thing more -that can be done. I have often thought of it; I needn’t tell you that. -But, till now, I could never see my way. It’s you who have shown it to -me. In what you said the other day. It’s wonderful the way you come into -my life, Mr. Oldmeadow. You made me feel that I had a friend in you; a -true, true friend. And I know what a friend Nancy and Barney have. So -the way opens. We must set Barney free, Mr. Oldmeadow. He and Nancy must -be free to marry. You and I can do it for them and only you and I.â€</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?†Oldmeadow murmured as, after her words, the silence -had grown deep between them. He repeated, using now the name inevitably -and forgetting the other day. “What do you mean, Mrs. Barney?â€</p> - -<p>To-day she did not flush, but to-day there was a reason for her -acceptance. It was, he saw in her next words, only as Barney’s wife that -she could help him.</p> - -<p>“He must divorce me,†she said. “You and I could go away together and he -could divorce me. Oh, I know, it’s a dreadful thing to ask of you, his -friend. I’ve thought of all that. Wait. Let me finish. I’ve thought of -nothing else since the other day. It came to me in the night after you -had been so wonderful to me; after that wonderful thing had happened to -us. You felt it, too, I know. It was as if we had taken a sacrament -together. I’m not a Christian. You know what I mean. We felt the deepest -things together, didn’t we. And it’s because<a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a> of that that I can ask -this of you. No one else would understand. No one else would care for me -enough, or for him. And then, you could explain it all to him and no one -else could do that. You could explain that it had been to set him free. -To set <i>me</i> free. Because they’d have to think and believe it was for my -sake, too, that you did it, wouldn’t they? so as to have it really happy -for them; so that it shouldn’t hurt. When it was all over you could go -and explain why you had done it. All we have to do, you know, is to stay -in a hotel together; I bearing your name. It’s very simple, really.â€</p> - -<p>He lay staring at her, overwhelmed. The tears had risen to his eyes as -her beauty and her absurdity were thus revealed to him, and as she spoke -of their sacrament; but amazement blurred all his faculties. He had -never in his life been so amazed. And when he began to emerge, to take -possession of himself again, it was only of her he could think; not of -himself or Nancy and Barney. Only of her and of her beauty and -absurdity.</p> - -<p>“Dear Mrs. Barney,†he said at last, and he did not know what to say; -“it’s you who are wonderful, you alone. I’d do anything, anything for -you that I could. Anything but this. Because, truly, this is -impossible.â€</p> - -<p>“Why impossible?†she asked, and her voice was almost stern.</p> - -<p>“You can’t smirch yourself like that.†It was only one reason; but it -was the first that came to him.</p> - -<p>“I?†she stared. “I don’t think it is to be smirched. I shall know why I -do it.â€</p> - -<p>“Other people won’t know. Other people will think you smirched.<a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“No one I care for. Everyone I care for will understand.â€</p> - -<p>“But to the world at large? Your name? Your reputation?†Oldmeadow -protested. “Do they mean nothing to you?â€</p> - -<p>A faintly bitter humour touched her lips. “You’ve always taken the side -of the world in all our controversies, haven’t you, Mr. Oldmeadow? and -you were probably right and I was probably wrong; but not because of -what the world would think. I know I’m right now, and those words: name: -reputation—mean nothing to me. The world and I haven’t much to do with -each other. A divorced wife can run soup-kitchens and fever hospitals -just as well as the most unsmirched woman of the world. I’m not likely -to want to be presented at courts, am I? Don’t think of me, please. It’s -not a question of me. Only of you. Will you do it?â€</p> - -<p>“I couldn’t possibly do it,†said Oldmeadow, and he was still hardly -taking her monstrous proposal seriously.</p> - -<p>“Why not?†she asked, scrutinizing him. “It’s not that you mind about -your name and reputation, is it?â€</p> - -<p>“Not much. Perhaps not much,†said Oldmeadow; “but about theirs. That’s -what you don’t see. That it would be impossible for them. You don’t see -how unique you are; how unlike other people. Nancy and Barney couldn’t -marry on a fake. The only way out,†said Oldmeadow, looking at her with -an edge of ironic grimness in his contemplation, “if one were really to -consider it, would be for you to marry me afterwards and for us to -disappear.<a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a>â€</p> - -<p>She gazed at him and he saw that she weighed the idea. “But you’d be -shackled then,†she said, and her thoughts were evidently clear. “It -would mean, besides, that you would lose them.â€</p> - -<p>“As to being shackled,†Oldmeadow, still grimly, met the difficulty, -“that’s of no moment. I’m the snuffy, snappy bachelor type, you -remember, and I don’t suppose I’d ever have married. As to losing them, -I certainly should.â€</p> - -<p>“We mustn’t think of it then,†said Adrienne. “You and Barney and Nancy -mustn’t lose each other.â€</p> - -<p>“But we should in either way. I could hardly take up my friendship with -them again after Barney had divorced you on account of me, even if you -and I didn’t marry. It would give the whole thing away, if it were -possible for them to meet me again. As I say, they’d feel they had no -right to their freedom on such a fake as that.â€</p> - -<p>“They couldn’t feel really free unless some one had really committed -adultery for their sakes?†Again Adrienne smiled with her faint -bitterness and he wondered if a man and woman had ever before had a more -astonishing conversation. “That seems to me to be asking for a little -too much icing on your cake. Of course it couldn’t be a nice, new, snowy -wedding-cake; poor Mrs. Chadwick wouldn’t like it at all, nor Mrs. -Averil; but it would be the best we could do for them; and I should -think that when people love each other and are the right people for each -other they’d be thankful for any kind of cake. Even if it were a good -deal burned around the edges,†Adrienne finished, her slight bitterness -evidently finding satisfaction in the simile.<a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a></p> - -<p>“But they wouldn’t see it at all like that,†said Oldmeadow, now with -unalloyed gravity. “They’d see it as a cake they had stolen; a cake they -had no right to. It’s a question of the laws we live under. Not of -personal, but of public integrity. They couldn’t profit by a hoodwinked -law. It’s that that would spoil things for them. According to the law -they’d have no right to their freedom. And, now that I am speaking -seriously, it’s that I feel, too. What you are asking of me, my dear -friend, is no more nor less than a felony.â€</p> - -<p>She meditated, unmoved, still almost sternly, turning her eyes from him -and leaning her elbow on the window-sill, her head upon her hand. “I -see,†she said at last. “For people who mind about the law, I see that -it would spoil it. I don’t mind. I think the law’s there to force us to -be kind and just to each other if we won’t be by ourselves. If the law -gets tied up in such a foolish knot as to say that people may sin to set -other people free, but mayn’t pretend to sin, I think we have a right to -help it out and to make it do good against its own will. I don’t mind -the law; luckily for them. Because I won’t go back from it now. I won’t -leave them there, loving each other but never knowing the fullness of -love. I won’t give up a thing I feel right because other people feel it -wrong. So I must find somebody else.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow looked at her in a culminated and wholly unpleasant -astonishment. “Somebody else? Who could there be?â€</p> - -<p>“You may well ask,†Adrienne remarked, glancing round at him with a -touch of mild asperity. “You are the only completely right person, -because<a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a> only you and I feel enough for them to do it for them. What I -must do now is to find some one who would feel enough, just for me, to -do it for me. It makes it more unfair for him, doesn’t it. He’ll have -only the one friend to help. But on the other hand it will leave them -without a scruple. They’d know from the beginning that with you and me -it was a fake; but with him it might seem quite probable. Yes; it’s -strange; I had a letter from him only yesterday. I shouldn’t have -thought of him otherwise. I might have had to give up. But the more I -think,†Adrienne meditated intently, her head on her hand, her eyes -turned on the prospect outside, “the more I seem to see that Hamilton -Prentiss is the only other chance.â€</p> - -<p>“Hamilton Prentiss?†Oldmeadow echoed faintly.</p> - -<p>“You met him once,†said Adrienne, looking round at him again. “But -you’ve probably forgotten. At the dinner we gave, Barney and I, in -London, so long ago. Tall, fair, distinguished looking. The son of my -Californian friend; the one you and Mrs. Aldesey thought so tiresome.â€</p> - -<p>He felt himself colouring, but he could give little thought to the minor -discomfiture, so deeply was his mind engaged with the major one.</p> - -<p>“Did we?†he said.</p> - -<p>“And you thought I didn’t see it,†said Adrienne. “It made me dreadfully -angry with you both, though I didn’t know I was angry; I thought I was -only grieved. I behaved spitefully to Mrs. Aldesey that night, you will -remember, though I didn’t know I was spiteful. I did know, however, that -she was separated from her husband‗again Adrienne looked, calmly, -round at him—“and it was<a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a> a lie I told Barney when I said I didn’t. -Sometimes I think that lie was the beginning of everything; that it was -when I told it that I began to hide from myself. However—†She passed -from the personal theme. “Yes; Hamilton is, I believe, big enough and -beautiful and generous enough to do it.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, he is, is he?†said Oldmeadow. “And I’m not, I take it. You’re -horribly unkind. But I don’t want to talk about myself. What I want to -talk about is you. You must drop this preposterous idea of yours. Really -you must. You’ve had ideas like it before. Remember Meg; what a mess you -made there. I told you then that you were wrong and I tell you you’re -wrong now. You must give it up. Do you see? We’re always quarrelling, -aren’t we?â€</p> - -<p>“But I don’t at all know that I was wrong about Meg, Mr. Oldmeadow,†-said Adrienne. “And if I was, it was because I didn’t understand her. I -do understand myself, and I don’t agree that I’m wrong or that my plan -is preposterous. You won’t call it preposterous, I suppose, if it -succeeds and makes Barney and Nancy happy. No; I’m not going to drop it. -Nothing you could say could make me drop it. As for Hamilton, I don’t -set him above you; not in any way. It’s only that you and he have -different lights. I know why you can’t do this. You’ve shown me why. And -I wouldn’t for anything not have you follow your own light.â€</p> - -<p>“And you seriously mean,†cried Oldmeadow, “that you’d ask this young -fellow—I remember him perfectly and I’m sure he’s capable of any degree -of ingenuousness—you’d ask him to go about with you as though he were -your husband?<a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a> Why, for one thing, he’d be sure to fall head over heels -in love with you, and where would you be then?â€</p> - -<p>Adrienne examined him. “But from the point of view of hoodwinking, that -would be all to the good, wouldn’t it?†she inquired; “though -unfortunate for Hamilton. He won’t, however,†she went on, her dreadful -lucidity revealing to him the hopelessness of any protest he might still -have found to make. “There’s a very lovely girl out in California he’s -devoted to; a young poetess. He’ll have to write to her about it first, -of course; Hamilton’s at the front now, you see; and I must write to his -mother. She and Carola Brown are very near each other and will talk it -out together and I feel sure they will see it as I do. They’ll see it as -something big I’m asking them to do for me—to set me free. I’m sure I -can count on Gertrude and I’m sure Hamilton can count on Carola. She’s a -very rare, strong spirit.â€</p> - -<p>Oldmeadow, suddenly, was feeling exhausted, and a clutch of hysterical -laughter, as she spoke these last words, held his throat for a moment. -He laid his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes, while he saw -Adrienne and Hamilton Prentiss wandering by the banks of a French river -where poplars stood against a silver sky. He knew that he had accepted -nothing when he said at last: “Shall we talk about it another time? -To-morrow? I mean, don’t take any steps, will you, until we’ve talked. -Don’t write to your beautiful, big friend.â€</p> - -<p>“You always make fun of me a little, don’t you,†said Adrienne -tranquilly. She seemed aware of some further deep discomposure in him -and willing,<a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a> though not comprehending it, to meet it with friendly -tolerance. “If he is big and beautiful, why shouldn’t I say it? But I -won’t write until we’ve talked again. It can’t be, anyway, until the war -is over. And I’ve had already to wait for four years.<a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-b" id="CHAPTER_V-b"></a>CHAPTER V</h3> - -<p class="nind">S<small>HE</small> might feel that he had cruelly failed her; but when she came at the -same hour next day it was evident to him from her demeanour that she -imagined him resigned, if not converted, to her alternative plan. She -carried a bunch of late roses and said that she had been having a lovely -drive with a dear old friend from Denver, who had managed to get to -Boulogne to see her.</p> - -<p>“Your friends all come from such distant places,†said Oldmeadow with a -pretended fretfulness that veiled an indescribable restlessness. -“California, Denver, Chicago. They have, all of them, an implacably -remote sound, as if they were carrying you, already, off to other -planets.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, it doesn’t take so long, really, to get to any of them,†said -Adrienne, placing the roses in a glass of water by his side, a close, -funny little bunch, red roses in the middle and white ones all round. -She had taken off her cloak and laid a newspaper down on the little -table, seating herself, then, in the window and keeping in her hands a -pocket-book that, in its flatness and length and the way she held it, -reminded him of the little blue and grey fan of the dinner-party where -she had told her first lie. His mind was emptied of thought. Only -pictures crossed it, pictures of Adrienne and the tall, fair youth with -the ingenuous eyes, wandering by the French river; and, again, Adrienne -on that night, now as distant as California, when, with her fan and -pearl-wreathed hair, she had met his persiflage with<a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a> her rebuking -imperturbability. But under the pictures a sense of violent tension made -his breathing shallow. He fixed his eyes on the pocket-book and wondered -how she had nursed people with those ineffectual-looking hands.</p> - -<p>“Where were you trained for nursing?†he asked her suddenly. “Out here? -or in England?â€</p> - -<p>“In England. In Oxford. Before Palgrave was taken,†said Adrienne. “I -gave up my philosophy very soon for that. I worked in a hospital there.â€</p> - -<p>“And how came you to go out to Salonika? Tell me about it. And about -your hospital here,†he went on with a growing sense of keeping -something off. “It’s your own hospital I hear, and wonderfully run. Sir -Kenneth was talking to me about you this morning.â€</p> - -<p>“What a fine person he is,†said Adrienne. “Yes, he came to see us and -liked the way it was done.†She was pleased, he saw, to tell him -anything he chose to ask about. She told him about her hospital and of -all its adventures—they had been under fire so often that it had become -an everyday event; and about how admirable a staff she had -organized—“rare, devoted people‗and about their wounded, their -desperately wounded <i>poilus</i> and how they came to love them all. He -remembered, as she talked, that she was rich; even richer than he had -thought, since she could leave a fortune to Palgrave and yet equip -hospitals in France and in Salonika. She told him about Salonika, too. -It had been a fever hospital there and the misery and suffering had -seemed worse than the suffering here in France. Yes; she had caught the -fever herself and had nearly died.<a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a></p> - -<p>She had no gift for the apt or vivid word. Her nature had been revealed -to him as barbarous, or sublime, in its unconventionality, yet it -expressed itself only in the medium of trite convention. But his time of -jibbing at her platitudes was long since passed. He listened, rather, -with a tender, if superficial interest, seeing her heroic little figure -moving, unconcerned, among pestilences and bombardments. “It’s not only -what you tell me,†he said, when she had brought her recital up to date. -“I heard so much from Sir Kenneth. You are one of the great people of -the war.â€</p> - -<p>“Am I?†she said. That, too, unfeignedly, left her unconcerned.</p> - -<p>“You’ve the gift of leadership. The gift for big things generally.â€</p> - -<p>She nodded. “I’m only fit for big things.â€</p> - -<p>“Only? How do you mean?â€</p> - -<p>“Little ones are more difficult, aren’t they. My feet get tangled in -them. To be fit for daily life and all the tangles; that’s the real -test, isn’t it? That’s just the kind of thing you see so clearly, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Big things and the people who do them are just the kind of -things you see through.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, but you misunderstood me—or misunderstand,†said Oldmeadow. “Big -things are the condition of life; the little things can only be built up -on them. One must fight wars and save the world before one can set up -one’s tea-tables.†He remembered having thought of something like this -at Lydia’s tea-table. “Tea-tables are important, I know, and the things -that happen round them. But if one can nurse a ward of typhus patients -single-handed one must be forgiven for letting the tea-pot<a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a> slip. Really -I never imagined you capable of all you’ve done.â€</p> - -<p>“I always thought I was capable of anything,†said Adrienne smiling -slightly, her eyes meeting his in a tranquil partaking of the jest, that -must be at her expense. “You helped me to find that out about -myself—with all the rest. And I was right enough in thinking that I -could face things and lead people. But I wasn’t capable of the most -important things. I wasn’t capable of being a wise and happy wife. I -wasn’t even capable of being truthful in drawing-rooms when other women -made me angry. But I can go on battle-fields and found hospitals and -tend the sick and dying. Shells and pestilences‗her smile was -gone—“if people knew how trivial they are—compared to seeing your -husband look at you with hatred.â€</p> - -<p>She had turned her eyes away as she was thus betrayed into revealing the -old bitternesses of her heart and he dropped his to the little -pocket-book that now lay still between her hands. The feeling in her -voice, the suffering it revealed to him, with the bitterness, woke an -unendurable feeling in himself. He did not clearly see what the test was -to which he put himself; but he knew that what he must say to her was -the most difficult thing he had ever had to say; and he found it only -after the silence had grown long.</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Barney—everything has changed, hasn’t it; you’ve changed; I’ve -changed; Barney may have changed. It was only, after all, a moment of -miserable misunderstanding between you. He never really knew what you -were feeling. He thought you didn’t care for him any longer, when, -really, you<a name="page_321" id="page_321"></a> were finding out how much you cared. Don’t you think, -before you take final decisions, that you ought to see Barney again? -Don’t you think you ought to give him another chance? I could arrange it -all for you, when I got home.â€</p> - -<p>The flood of colour, deep and sick, had mounted to her face, masking it -strangely, painfully, to where the white linen cut across her brow and -bound her chin. And, almost supplicatingly, since he saw that she could -not speak, he murmured: “You can be a wise and happy wife now; and he -loved you so dearly.â€</p> - -<p>She did not lift her eyes. She sat there, looking down, tightly holding -the pocket-book in her lap.</p> - -<p>“Let me tell him, when I get home, that I’ve seen you again,†he -supplicated. “Let me arrange a meeting.â€</p> - -<p>Slowly, not lifting her eyes, she shook her head and he heard her, just -heard her say: “It’s not pride. Don’t think that.â€</p> - -<p>“No; no; I know it’s not. Good heavens, I couldn’t think it that. You -feel it’s no good. You feel that his heart is occupied. It is. I can’t -pretend to hide from you that it is. But your place in it was supreme. -There would be no unfairness if you took it again. Nancy would be the -first person to want you to take it. You know that that is true of -Nancy.â€</p> - -<p>“I know. I heard her plead for me,†said Adrienne.</p> - -<p>The sentence fell, soft and trenchant; and he remembered, in the silence -that followed, what she had heard. He drew a long breath, feeling half -suffocated. But he had met his test. It was inevitable,<a name="page_322" id="page_322"></a> he knew it now, -that she should say “Barney and I are parted for ever.â€</p> - -<p>Silence dropped again between them. He did not know what was passing -behind its curtain and whether bitterness or only grief was in her -heart.</p> - -<p>He lay, drawing the slow, careful breaths of his recovery, and saw her -presently put out her hand and take up her <i>New York Herald</i> and unfold -it. She looked down the columns unseeingly; but the little feint of -interest helped her.</p> - -<p>Slowly the colour faded from her face and it was as if the curtain -lifted when, laying the paper down, she said, and he knew that she was -finding words to comfort him: “Really everything is quite clear before -me now. I shall write at once to Hamilton, and to his mother. If he -agrees, if they all agree, he and I can go away very soon I think. -Afterwards, I shall stay over here. I’ve quite made up my mind to that. -There’ll be so much to do; for years and years; for all one’s lifetime. -Ways will open. When one is big,†she smiled the smile at once so gentle -and so bitter, “and has plenty of money, ways always do. I’m a -<i>déracinée</i> creature; I never had any roots, you know; and I can’t do -better, I’m sure, than to make soil for the uprooted people to grow in -again. That’s what’s most needed now, isn’t it? Soil. It’s the -fundamental things of life, its bare possibilities, that have been so -terribly destroyed over here. America has, still, more soil than she can -use, and since I’m an American, and a rich one, my best plan is to use -America, in my fortune and my person, for Europe. Because I love them -both and because they both need each other.â€</p> - -<p>She had quite recovered herself Her face had<a name="page_323" id="page_323"></a> found again its pale, fawn -tints and she was looking at him with her quietest contemplation while -he, in silence, lay looking at her.</p> - -<p>“It’s not about the things I shall do that I’m perplexed, ever,†she -went on. “But I’m sometimes perplexed about myself. I sometimes wish I -were a Roman Catholic. In an order of some kind. Under direction. To put -oneself in the hands of a wise director, it must be so peaceful. Like -French friends I have; such wise, fine women; so poised and so secure. I -often envy them. But that can’t be for me.â€</p> - -<p>She must feel in his silence now the quality of some extreme emotion, -and that she believed it to be pity was evident to him as she went on, -seeking to comfort him; and troubled by his trouble: “You mustn’t be -sorry. I am not unhappy. I am a happy person. Do you remember that -Sunday morning at Coldbrooks, long ago? How I said to Mother—to Mrs. -Chadwick—that I had no doubts? You thought me fatuous. I dimly saw that -you thought me fatuous. But it’s still true of me. I must tell you, so -that you shan’t think I’m unhappy. I’ve been, it seems to me, through -everything since then. I’ve had doubts—every doubt: of myself; of life; -of all the things I trusted. Doubt at last, when the dreadful darknesses -came—Barney’s hatred, Palgrave’s death—of God. We’ve never spoken of -Palgrave, have we? I was with him, you had heard, and at the very end it -was he who helped me rather than I him. He held me up. When he was dying -he held me up. He made me promise him that I would not kill myself—for -he guessed what I was thinking; he made me promise to go on. And he -saved<a name="page_324" id="page_324"></a> me. The light began to come back to me while I sat beside him -after he had died.â€</p> - -<p>She had not looked at him while she spoke, but down at her hands that, -trembling, turned and returned the little pocket-book. And controlling -her voice as she sought to control the trembling of her hands, she said: -“Perhaps it is always like that. When one confesses one’s sin and hates -it in oneself, even if it is still there, tempting one, the light begins -to come back. After that it came more and more. What you call my gift is -part of it. Isn’t it strange that I should have had that gift when I was -so blind? But what you said was true. I had a sort of wholeness then, -because I was blind. And now that I see, it’s a better wholeness and a -safer gift. That is what I wanted to say, really. To explain, so that -you shan’t be sorry. No one who can find that light can be unhappy. It -comes to me now, always, when I need it. I can make it shine in other -people—as Palgrave made it shine in me. Love does it. Isn’t it -wonderful that it should be so? Nothing else is real beside it. Nothing -is real without it. And when it happens, when one feels it come through -and shine further, it is more, far more, than happiness.â€</p> - -<p>All the while that she had spoken, pale, and with her trembling hands, -he had lain looking at her in silence, a silence that was dividing him, -as if by a vast chasm, from all his former life.</p> - -<p>He and Adrienne stood on one side of this chasm, and, while it seemed to -widen with a dizzying rapidity, he saw that on the other stood Barney, -Nancy, Coldbrooks, and Lydia—poor Lydia—and that they were being borne -away from him for ever. He saw nothing before him but Adrienne; and for -how<a name="page_325" id="page_325"></a> long was he to keep her? That was his supreme risk; but he could -not allay it or step back to the further brink. It was his very life -that had fallen in two while she had spoken and without the sense of -choice; though he dimly saw that, in the restlessness and urgency of the -hours since he had seen her last, the choice had been preparing.</p> - -<p>He was taking the only step possible for him to take on the narrow -foothold of the present when he said, in a voice so quiet that she might -even be unaware of his seeming gross irrelevance, “Do you know, about -your plan—for Barney and Nancy—I’ve been thinking it over and I’ve -decided that it must be I, not Hamilton.<a name="page_326" id="page_326"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-b" id="CHAPTER_VI-b"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3> - -<p class="nind">H<small>ER</small> eyes met his for a long time before he realized that she might find -not only irrelevance but even irreverence. She had shown him her very -soul and he had answered with this announcement. Of course it had been -because of what she told him that he had seen at last his own necessity; -but he could not tell her that.</p> - -<p>“I’m not sorry for you,†he said. “I envy you. You are one of the few -really happy people in the world.â€</p> - -<p>“But I’d quite given that idea up, Mr. Oldmeadow,†she said. “What has -made you change?â€</p> - -<p>He saw the trouble in her face, the suspicion of her power and its -compulsion over the lives of others. He took the bull by the horns.</p> - -<p>“You, of course. I can’t pretend that it’s anything else. I want to do -it for you and with you.â€</p> - -<p>“But it’s for Barney and Nancy that it’s to be done,†she said, and her -gravity had deepened. “It’s just the same for them—and you explained -yesterday that it would spoil it for them.â€</p> - -<p>“It may spoil it somewhat,†said Oldmeadow, contemplating her with a -curious tranquillity; she was now all that was left him in life to -contemplate; and she was all he needed. “But it won’t prevent it. I -still think it a wrong thing to do. I still think it a felony. But, -since I can’t turn you from it, what I’ve come to see is that it’s, as -you said, for you and me, who care for them, to do. It’s not right, not -decent or becoming, that anyone who doesn’t even know them should be -asked to do such a thing.<a name="page_327" id="page_327"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“But Hamilton wouldn’t do it for them,†she said. “It would be for me he -would do it. And he wouldn’t think it a felony.â€</p> - -<p>“All the more reason that his innocence shouldn’t be taken advantage of. -I can’t stand by and see it done. It’s for my friends the felony will be -committed and it’s I who will bear the burden for them. As to his doing -it for you, I know you better than he possibly can know you, and care -for you more than he possibly can. If you’re determined on committing a -crime, I’ll share the responsibility with you.â€</p> - -<p>“I know you care more. You are a wonderful friend. You are my best -friend in the world.†She gazed at him and he saw that for once he had -troubled and perplexed her. “And it’s wonderful of you to say you’ll do -it. But Hamilton won’t feel it a burden; not as you will; and for him to -do it won’t spoil it for them. If you do it, it will spoil it for them. -You said so. And how can I let you do a thing you feel so wrong for my -sake?â€</p> - -<p>“You’ll have to. I won’t have Hamilton sacrificed in order that their -cake shall have no burnt edges. They’ll have to pay something for it in -social and moral discomfort. It would be nothing to the discomfort of -Miss Brown, would it? I shall be able to put it clearly to Barney when I -write and tell him that it’s for your sake as well as his and that he -and Nancy, who have never sought anything or hoped for anything, are in -no way involved by our misdemeanour. I won’t emphasize to Barney what I -feel about that side of it. He’s pretty ingenuous, too. It will be a -less tidy happiness they’ll have to put up with. That’s all it comes to, -as far as they are concerned.<a name="page_328" id="page_328"></a>â€</p> - -<p>She was looking at him with the trouble and perplexity and she said:</p> - -<p>“They’ll have to pay in far more than social and moral discomfort.â€</p> - -<p>“Well? In what way? How?†he challenged her.</p> - -<p>“You said they’d lose you.â€</p> - -<p>“Only, if you married me,†he reminded her.</p> - -<p>But she remembered more accurately. “No. They’d lose you anyway. You -said so. You said that if they could ever see you again it would make it -too blatantly a fake. And it’s true. I see it now. How could you turn up -quietly, as if nothing had happened, after Barney had divorced me with -you as co-respondent? There’s Lady Cockerell,†said Adrienne, and, -though she was so grave, so troubled, it was with a touch of mild -malice. “There’s Mr. Bodman and Johnson, to say nothing of Mrs. Chadwick -and Nancy’s mother. No, I really don’t see you facing them all at -Coldbrooks after we’d come out in the ‘Daily Mail’ with head-lines and -pictures.â€</p> - -<p>Her lucidity could indeed disconcert him when it sharpened itself like -this with the apt use of his vocabulary. He had to stop to think.</p> - -<p>“There won’t, at all events, be pictures,†he paused by the triviality -to remark. “We shan’t appear. It will be an hotel over here and the case -will be undefended. We needn’t, really, consider all that too closely. -At the worst, if they do lose me, it’s not a devastating loss. They’ll -have each other.â€</p> - -<p>“Ah, but who will you have?†Adrienne inquired. “Hamilton will have -Carola and they will have each other. But who will you have?â€</p> - -<p><a name="page_329" id="page_329"></a>He lay and looked at her. There was only one answer to that question -and he could not make it. He was aware of the insufficiency of his -substitute. “I’d have your friendship,†he said.</p> - -<p>“You have that now,†said Adrienne. “And though I’m so your friend, I’ll -be leaving you, soon, probably for ever. We’ll probably never meet -again, Mr. Oldmeadow. Our paths lie so apart, don’t they? My friendship -will do you very little good.â€</p> - -<p>Her words cut into him, but he kept a brave countenance. “I’d have the -joy of knowing I’d done something worth while for you. How easily I -might have died here, if it hadn’t been for you. My life is yours in a -sense and I want you to use it rather than Hamilton’s. I have my work, -you know; lots of things I’m interested in to go back to some day. As -you remarked, a divorced wife can run soup-kitchens and in the same way -a co-respondent can write articles and go to concerts.â€</p> - -<p>“I know. I know what a fine, big life you have,†she murmured, and the -trouble on her face had deepened. “But how can I take it from you? A -felony? How can I let you do, for my sake, something you feel to be so -wrong?â€</p> - -<p>“Give it up then,†said Oldmeadow. And if he had found it difficult to -make his plea for Barney a little while before, how much more difficult -he found it to say this, and to mean it, now. “Give it up. That’s your -choice, and your only choice. You owe that to me. Indeed you do. To give -it up or to accept me as your companion in iniquity. I’m not going to -pretend I don’t think it iniquity to give you ease. You’re not a person -who needs ease. And I can do without it, too. For your sake. So there -you have it.<a name="page_330" id="page_330"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Not quite. Not quite,†she really almost pleaded. “I couldn’t ask it of -Hamilton if he felt about it in the least little way as you do. And -Carola doesn’t care a bit about the law either. She’s an Imagist, you -know.‗Adrienne offered this fact as if it would help to elucidate -Carola’s complaisances. “She’s written some very original poetry. If it -were Hamilton no one would lose anything, and Barney and Nancy would be -free. Indeed, indeed I can’t give it up when it’s all there, before me, -with everything to gain and nothing to lose for anybody, if it’s -Hamilton.â€</p> - -<p>“Then it must be me, you see,†said Oldmeadow. “And I shan’t talk to you -about the iniquity again, I promise you. I’ve made my protest and -civilization must get on as best it can. You’re a terrible person, you -know‗he smiled a little at her, finding the banter so that she should -not guess at the commotion of his heart. “But I like you just as you -are. Now where shall we go?<a name="page_331" id="page_331"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-b" id="CHAPTER_VII-b"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3> - -<p class="nind">H<small>E</small> could not have believed that it would be so delicious to live with -Adrienne Toner.</p> - -<p>Even at the moment when he had known that he loved her, he had been, -though filled with the sense of a present heaven, as aware as ever of -the discrepancies between them, and during the three months that -separated them, he at Cannes, she nursing in Paris, he knew many doubts; -never of his love, but of what it was making him do and of where it was -going to lead them. He couldn’t for the life of him imagine what was to -become of them if his hopes were fulfilled, for he hardly saw himself -following her off to Central Europe—it was to Serbia, her letters -informed him, that her thoughts were turning—nor saw them established -in London under the astonished gaze of Lydia Aldesey.</p> - -<p>She had selected Lyons as their place of meeting, because of the work -for the <i>rapatriés</i> that she wished to inspect there, and from the -moment that he saw her descend from the Paris express, dressed in dark -civilian clothes and carrying, with such an air of competence, her rug -and dressing-case, all doubts were allayed and all restlessness -dispelled.</p> - -<p>He had arrived the day before and had found an old-fashioned hotel with -spacious rooms overlooking the Saône, and, as they drove to it on that -November evening, she expressed herself, scrutinizing him with a -professional eye, as dissatisfied with his recovery.</p> - -<p>It was because of the restlessness, of course, that<a name="page_332" id="page_332"></a> he had not got as -well as he should have, and he knew that he must, in the stress of -feeling that now beset him, look strangely, and he promised her, feeling -that he spoke the truth, that now that he had his nurse again complete -recovery would be only a matter of days.</p> - -<p>“I want you to see our view,†he said to her when the porter had carried -up her little box and they were left alone in the brocaded and gilded -salon that separated their rooms; “I chose this place for the view; it’s -the loveliest in Lyons, I think.â€</p> - -<p>There was still a little twilight, and standing at the window they -looked down at the lighted quai with its double row of lofty plane-trees -and across the jade-green Saône at St. Jean, the grey cathedral, and at -the beautiful white <i>archevêché</i> glimmering in a soft, dimmed atmosphere -that made him think of London.</p> - -<p>“There’s a horrible modern cathedral up on the hill,†he said; “but we -don’t need to see it. We need only see the river and the <i>archevêché</i> -and St. Jean. And in the mornings there’s a market below, a mile of it, -all under huge mushroom-coloured umbrellas; flowers and cheeses and -every kind of country produce. I think you’ll like it here.â€</p> - -<p>“I like it very much. I think it’s beautiful,†said Adrienne. “I like -our room, too,†and she turned and looked up at the painted ceiling and -round at the consoles and mirrors, inlaid tables and richly curved, -brocaded chairs. “Isn’t it splendid.â€</p> - -<p>“Madame Récamier is said to have lived here,†Oldmeadow told her. “And -this is said to have been her room.â€</p> - -<p>“And now it’s mine,†said Adrienne, smiling<a name="page_333" id="page_333"></a> slightly as though she -found the juxtaposition amusing.</p> - -<p>Already the stealing sense of deliciousness was breathing over him. The -very way in which she said, “our room,†was part of it. Even the way in -which she said that made him feel the peace, comfort, and charm of a -shared life as he had never before felt it. And the sense grew and grew -on that first evening.</p> - -<p>It was delicious to hear the waiters address her as Madame, and to know -that it was his madame they imagined her to be, when he sat opposite to -her at their little table in the dining-room. She wore a grey dress now -and, with her quiet, her calm glances cast about her, might indeed have -been the veritable Madame Oldmeadow inscribed at the <i>bureau</i>. If they -had the aspect of a devoted, long-mated couple, it was because of her -calm. But she would have been as unperturbed, he felt sure, had she been -stopping there under her own name instead of his and looked upon as his -well-established mistress. Situations would never embarrass her as long -as she knew what she was doing with them. That night when she gave him -her hand at bedtime she said, looking at him with the affectionate, -professional eyes: “I’ll come and put you to sleep if you need me; be -sure to let me know.â€</p> - -<p>But he had no need to call her. He slept as soundly as though she sat -beside him with her hand upon his brow.</p> - -<p>So the mirage of conjugal felicity was evoked about him.</p> - -<p>She poured out his coffee for him in the morning wearing a silk -<i>négligé</i> edged with fur, and said, as<a name="page_334" id="page_334"></a> they buttered their rolls, that -they must buy some honey for their breakfasts. She said, too, that they -must do a great deal of sight-seeing in the afternoons. “There is so -much to be seen in Lyons. And I shall finish with my <i>rapatrié</i> work in -the mornings.†He asked if he might not come with her to the <i>rapatrié</i> -work, but was told that he was not yet strong enough for more than one -walk in the day. “In our evenings, after tea,†she went on, “I thought -perhaps you’d like to study Dante a little with me. My Dante is getting -so rusty and I’ve brought a very fine edition. Are you good at Italian?â€</p> - -<p>He said he wasn’t, but would love to read Dante with her.</p> - -<p>“And we must get a piano,†she finished, “and have music after dinner. -It will be a wonderful holiday for me.â€</p> - -<p>So the days fell at once into a series of rituals. He saw that she had -always mapped them out conscientiously, as Mrs. Toner had doubtlessly -taught her to do, careful of the treasure of time—as Mrs. Toner would -have said—entrusted to each soul by life. So, no doubt, Adrienne would -put it still. And what he would, in first knowing her, have found part -of her absurdity, he found now part of her charm.</p> - -<p>That was what it all came back to. He saw, reconstructing their past, -that from the beginning she had had her deep charm for him.</p> - -<p>It was the trivial word for the great fact; the compulsion of -personality; the overflow of vitality; the secret at once of the saint -and of the successful music-hall singer. Her own absorption in life was -so intense that it communicated itself. Her confidence<a name="page_335" id="page_335"></a> was so secure -that it begot confidence. Her power was implicit in all she did. It was -not only the <i>rapatriés</i> she dealt with, as, at the first, she had dealt -with the wounded. She dealt as successfully and as accurately with the -little things of life. Honey was on their breakfast-table; flowers on -the consoles; music on the piano. The gilded hotel salon became a home.</p> - -<p>She was still, in demeanour, the cultured, travelled American, equipped -always, for their walks, with a guide-book or history, from which she -often read to him as they paused to lean on the parapets of the splendid -quais. There were few salient facts in the history of the potent city -that were not imparted to him; and with anyone else what a bore it would -have been to have to listen! But he was more than content that she -should tell him about the Romans or Richelieu. It was everything to him -to feel that they shared it all, from the honey to Richelieu.</p> - -<p>And with all the intimacy went the extreme reserve.</p> - -<p>She had showed him, when it was necessary for their understanding as -friends, the centre of her life; yet she remained, while so gentle, so -absorbed, and even loving, as remote, as inaccessible, as he had felt -her to be on those first days in the hospital. She never referred to her -own personal situation not to any emotion connected with it. She never -referred to herself or expressed a taste or an opinion touched with -personal ardour. He did not know what she was really feeling, ever. -Though, when he looked at her, sitting opposite him in her grey and -addressed by the assiduities of the waiters, he could imagine that he -was living with a wife, he could imagine<a name="page_336" id="page_336"></a> more often that he was living -with a nun. Her control and her selflessness were cloistral. He could -not think her in any need of a director.</p> - -<p>They walked one afternoon along the Quai des Brotteaux, returning from -the park of the Tête d’Or, where they had wandered on the gravel under -the tall, melancholy trees and fed the deer. The ugly yet magnificent -city was spread before them in one of its most splendid aspects, -climbing steeply, on the further banks of the Rhône, to the cliff-like -heights of the Croix Rousse and marching, as it followed the grandiose -curve of the river, into a sunset sky where the cupola of the Hospice -hung like a dark bubble against the gold and the Alps, not visible from -the river level, seemed yet to manifest themselves in the illumined -clouds ranged high above the horizon.</p> - -<p>Ten days of their appointed fortnight had now passed and while Oldmeadow -kept a half unseeing yet appraising eye upon the turbulent glories of -the river, he was wondering when and how he should make his revelation -and his appeal. If her reserve made it more difficult to imagine, her -intimacy did not make it more easy. It was because she was so intimate -that she had remained so unaware. For all his self-command he felt sure -that in any other circumstances she could not, for these ten days, have -remained so blind.</p> - -<p>Here she walked beside him, the Madame Oldmeadow of the hotel, looking -before her as she walked and thinking, he would have wagered, not of him -but of Serbia.</p> - -<p>She wore a beautifully adjusted little costume, conveying in its sober -darkness the impression of<a name="page_337" id="page_337"></a> richness and simplicity that her clothes had -always given him. Fur was turned up about her ears and a small hat of -fur and velvet was turned down over her eyes as she had always worn her -hats. The straight fringe of gold showed under its brim and under the -gold were those calm, those questing, melancholy eyes.</p> - -<p>Or perhaps—he carried further his rueful reverie—she was thinking -about the date of the Hospice. He had the guide-book in his pocket.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it jolly?†he suggested, as she looked up at him, indicating the -prospect spread before them and adding, since he knew that his English -instinct for boyish understatement still puzzled her: “Like a great, -grim queen in shabby clothes; raised on such a throne and crowned with -such jewels that one feels her glorious rather than ugly.â€</p> - -<p>Adrienne studied the shabby queen attentively and then looked back at -him. Perhaps something dwelling in his eyes, something for her only and -not at all for Lyons, caught her more special attention, for she said -suddenly, and so unexpectedly that, with a sort of terror, he felt that -his crisis might be coming: “You’ve been very dear to me, Mr. Oldmeadow, -in all our time here. I feel it to have been a great privilege, you -know; a great opportunity.â€</p> - -<p>“Really? In what way?†He could at all events keep his voice quiet and -light. “I thought it had been you who made all the opportunities.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, no. I never make any of the opportunities I am thinking of,†said -Adrienne. “I only know how to take them. It isn’t only that you are more -widely and deeply cultured than I am—though your Italian accent isn’t -good!‗she smiled; “but I always<a name="page_338" id="page_338"></a> feel that you see far more in -everything than I do, even when you seem to be seeing less. I have to go -carefully and pick up fact by fact, while you see things in a sort of -vision and they are all related as they enter your mind. That’s where my -privilege comes in. You make me share your vision sometimes. You have -the artistic mind, and I am not really artistic at all—though Mother -always wanted that for me more than anything; with all that goes with -it.â€</p> - -<p>She was speaking of herself—though it was only in order to express more -exactly her gratitude, and, as he walked beside her, he was filled with -the mingled hope and terror. After all he had still four more days of -her. It would be terrible to spoil them.</p> - -<p>“No; you aren’t artistic,†he agreed. “And I don’t know that I am, -either. Whether I am or not, I feel mine to have been the opportunity -and the privilege.â€</p> - -<p>“I can’t understand that at all,†she said, with her patent candour.</p> - -<p>“It may be part of the artistic temperament to feel things one can’t -understand. Though I do understand why I feel it,†he added.</p> - -<p>“And it’s part of the artistic temperament not to try‗Adrienne turned -their theme to its more impersonal aspect. “Never to try to enjoy -anything that you don’t enjoy naturally. I don’t believe I ever enjoy -any of the artistic things quite naturally. I’ve always been trained to -enjoy and I’ve always tried to enjoy; because I thought it was right to -try. But since I’ve been here with you I’ve come to feel that what I’ve -enjoyed has been my own effort and my mastery of the mere study, and<a name="page_339" id="page_339"></a> I -seem to feel that it might be as well to give up trying and training and -fall back on the things that come naturally; scenery artists would think -sentimental, and babies; and patriotic songs.†She smiled a little as -she found her list. But she was grave, too, thinking it out and adding -another to her discovered futilities.</p> - -<p>“It may be as well to limit your attention to the sentimental scenery -and the babies, since you’ve so many other things to do with it,†he -acquiesced. “We come back to big people again, you see; they haven’t -time to be artistic; don’t need to be.â€</p> - -<p>“Ah, but it’s not a question of time at all,†said Adrienne, and he -remembered that long ago, from the very first, he had said that she -wasn’t stupid. “It’s a question of how you’re born. That’s a thing I -would never have admitted in my old days, you know. I would never have -admitted that any human soul was really shut out from anything. Perhaps -we’re not, any of us, if we are to have all eternity to grow in. But as -far as this life is concerned I see quite clearly now that some people -are shut out from all sorts of things, and that the sort of mistake I -made in my old time was in thinking that anyone who had the will could -force eternity into any given fragment of our temporal life. I did do a -little philosophy, you see! That’s what I mean and you understand, I -know. All the same I wish I weren’t one of the shut-out people. I wish I -were artistic. I’d have liked to have that side of life to meet people -with. I sometimes think that one doesn’t get far with people, really, if -all that one has to give are the fundamental things like the care of -their minds and bodies. One goes deep, of course; but one doesn<a name="page_340" id="page_340"></a>’t go -far. You can do something for them; but there’s nothing, afterwards, -that they can do <i>with</i> you; and it makes it rather lonely in a -way—when one has time to be lonely.â€</p> - -<p>He did not know, indeed, whether she saw the beauty of the scene spread -before them as they walked, and he was remembering, with a sort of -tranced tenderness, the flower-wreathed shepherdess and her crook; and -Mrs. Toner with her lilies and seagulls. But why should she see beauty -when she made it? It was all that he could see in her now.</p> - -<p>“What you can do for them afterwards is to pour out their coffee for -them in the most enhancing way,†he suggested, “and make sight-seeing a -pleasure, and arrange flowers and place chairs and tables so that a -hotel salon becomes loveable. If you find the person to whom you can -give the fundamental things and do all sorts of homely things with -afterwards, why be lonely? We are very happy together, aren’t we? We get -a great deal out of each other. I can speak for myself, at all events; -and you’ve just told me that I give something, too. So why should you go -off to Central Europe next week? Why not go back with me to the South,†-he finished, “and wander about together enjoying, quite naturally, the -sentimental scenery?â€</p> - -<p>He held his breath after he had thus spoken, wondering with intensity, -while he felt his heartbeats, what she would make of it. He knew what he -could make of it, seizing his opportunity on the instant, if only she -would recognize the meaning that underlay the easy words. And framed in -the little hat on the background of transfigured Lyons, Adrienne’s face -was turned towards him and, after<a name="page_341" id="page_341"></a> he had made his suggestion, she -studied him in silence for what seemed to him a long lapse of time. Then -she said, overwhelmingly:</p> - -<p>“That’s perfectly lovely of you, Mr. Oldmeadow.â€</p> - -<p>“Not at all; not perfectly lovely at all,†he stammered as he -contradicted her and he heard that his voice sounded angry. “It’s what I -want. I want it very much.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. I know you do. And that’s what’s so lovely,†said Adrienne. “I -know you want it. You are sorry for me all the time. And you want to -cheer me up. Because you feel I’ve lost so much. But, you know; you -remember; I told you the truth that time. I don’t need cheering. I’m not -unhappy. One can be lonely without being unhappy.â€</p> - -<p>“I’m not sorry for you,†poor Oldmeadow rejoined, still in the angry -voice. “I’m not thinking of you at all. I’m thinking of myself. I’m -lonely, too, and I am unhappy, even if you aren’t.â€</p> - -<p>She stopped short in her walk. He saw in her eyes the swift, almost -diagnosing solicitude that measured his need and her own capacity. It -was as though his temperature had gone up alarmingly.</p> - -<p>“Dear Mr. Oldmeadow,†she said; and then she faltered; she paused. She -no longer found her remedies easily. “It’s because you are separated -from your own life,†she did find. “It’s because all this is so bitter -to you; what you are doing now—how could I not understand?—and the -war, that has torn us all. But when it’s over, when you can go home -again and take up your own big life-work and find your own roots, -happiness will come back; I’m sure of it. We are all unhappy sometimes,<a name="page_342" id="page_342"></a> -aren’t we? We must be; with our minds and hearts. Our troubled minds; -our lonely hearts. But you know as well as I do, dear Mr. Oldmeadow, -that our souls can find the way out.â€</p> - -<p>Her nature expressed itself in platitudes; yet sometimes she had -phrases, rising from her heart as if from a fountain fed by unseen -altitudes, that shook him in their very wording. “Our troubled minds. -Our lonely hearts,†echoed in his ears while, bending his head -downwards, he muttered stubbornly: “My soul can’t, without you.â€</p> - -<p>She still stood, not moving forward, her eyes raised to his. “Please -don’t say that,†she murmured, and he heard the trouble in her voice. -“It can’t be so, except for this time that you are away from everybody. -You have so many things to live for. So many people near you. You are -such a big, rare person. It’s what I was afraid of, you know. It happens -so often with me; that people feel that. But you can’t really need me -any longer.â€</p> - -<p>He said nothing, still not raising his eyes to hers, and she went on -after a moment. “And I have so many things to live for, too. You’ve -never really thought about that side of my life, I know. Why should you? -You think of any woman’s life—isn’t it true?—as not seriously -important except on its domestic side. And you know how important I -think that. But it isn’t so with me, you see. I have no hearth and I -have no home; I have only my big, big life and it’s more important than -you could believe unless you could see it all. When I’m in it it takes -all my mind and all my strength and I’m bound to it, yes, just as -finally, just as irrevocably as a wife who loves is bound by her -marriage vows;<a name="page_343" id="page_343"></a> because I love it. Do you see? They are waiting for me -now. They need me now. There are starving people, dying people; and -confusion; terrible confusion. I have a gift for all that. I can deal -with it. Those are just the things I can deal with. And I mustn’t put it -off any longer—when our time is up. I must leave you, my dear, dear -friend, however much I’d love to stay.â€</p> - -<p>She was speaking at last with ardour, and about herself. And what she -said was true. He had never thought about her work except in the sense -that he thought her a saint and knew that saints did good deeds. That -she was needed, sorely needed, by the starving and dying, was a fact, -now that it was put before him, silencing and even shaming him. It gave -him, too, a new fear. If she had her blindness, he had his. His hopes -and fears, after all, were all that he had to think of; she had the -destinies of thousands. He remembered Sir Kenneth’s tone in speaking of -her; its deep respect. Not the respect of the man for the -tender-hearted, merciful woman; but the respect of a professional expert -for another expert; respect for the proved organizer and leader of men.</p> - -<p>“I have been stupid,†he said after a moment. “It’s true that I’ve been -thinking about you solely in relation to myself. Would you really love -to stay? If it wasn’t for your work? It would be some comfort to believe -that.â€</p> - -<p>“Of course I’d love to stay,†she said, eagerly scanning his face. “I’d -love to travel with you—to pour out your coffee in Avignon, Nîmes, -Cannes—anywhere you liked. I’d love our happy time here to go on and -on. If life could be like that; if<a name="page_344" id="page_344"></a> I didn’t want other things more. You -remember how Blake saw it all:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘He who bends to himself a joy<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Doth the winged life destroy.’<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">I mustn’t try to bend and keep this lovely time. I must let it fly—and -bless it as it goes. And so it will bless me.â€</p> - -<p>She seldom made quotations nowadays. For this one he felt a gratitude -such as his life had rarely known.</p> - -<p>“It’s been a joy to you, too, then?â€</p> - -<p>“Of course it has,†said Adrienne smiling at him and turning at last -towards the bridge that they must cross. “It’s been one of the most -beautiful things that has ever happened to me.<a name="page_345" id="page_345"></a>â€</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-b" id="CHAPTER_VIII-b"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3> - -<p class="nind">O<small>LDMEADOW</small> sat at the inlaid table in the gilded salon on the afternoon -of the last day. He had two letters to write, for, as he had put off -speaking to Adrienne till their last evening, so he had put off writing -to Barney and to Lydia Aldesey till this last afternoon, and he saw now -how difficult it would be to write coherently while his thoughts -stretched themselves forward to those few hours of the night when his -fate would be decided.</p> - -<p>Adrienne had gone out. She had written her short communication to Barney -and brought it in with its envelope and laid it before him, asking him -in the voice that, again, made him think of snow: “Is that quite right?â€</p> - -<p>It was, quite, he told her, after glancing through it swiftly. It -stated, in the most colourless terms, the facts that Barney was to take -to his solicitor. “Quite right,†he repeated, looking up at her. “Are -you going out? Will you post it?—or shall I?â€</p> - -<p>“Will you post it with yours? Yes. I must go out. But I’ll try to be -back by tea-time. It’s very disappointing; our last afternoon. But that -poor woman from Roubaix—the one with consumption up at the Croix -Rousse—is dying. They’ve sent for me. All the little children, you -remember I told you. I’m going to wire to Joséphine and ask her if she -can come down and look after them for a little while.â€</p> - -<p>“Joséphine?†he questioned. He had, till now, entirely forgotten -Joséphine. Adrienne told him<a name="page_346" id="page_346"></a> that she was with her parents in a -provincial town. “They lost their only son and are very sad. Fine, brave -old people. He is a baker, the old father, and makes the most wonderful -bread. I went to see them last summer.â€</p> - -<p>Their packing was done and the room denuded; the men had taken away the -piano that morning. He had his letters to write; so there was really no -reason why she should not go. And there was, besides, nothing that they -had to say to each other, except the one thing he had to say.</p> - -<p>The silence that overtakes parting friends on a station platform had -overtaken them since the morning, though, at lunch, Adrienne had talked -with some persistence of her immediate plans and prospects and about the -unit of doctors and nurses who were to meet her in Italy. There was no -reason why she should not go, and he would even rather she did. He would -rather see no more of her until evening when everything but the one -thing would be over and done with. And so he was left with his letters, -leaning his elbows on the table over the hotel paper and staring out at -the Saône and the white <i>archevêché</i>.</p> - -<p>Both letters were difficult to write; but beside the one to Lydia, the -one to Barney was easy. Barney, after all, was to gain everything from -what he had to tell him, and Lydia was to lose; how much was Lydia to -lose? He recalled their last evening together and its revelations and -saw that the old laughing presage was now more than fulfilled. Lydia was -to lose more than her toes and fingers; in any case. Even if he returned -to her alone, she cared for him too much not to feel, always, the shadow -of<a name="page_347" id="page_347"></a> his crippled heart; his heart not only crippled, but occupied, so -occupied that friendships, however near, became, in a sense, -irrelevancies. And if he returned with Adrienne—but could he return -with Adrienne? What kind of a life could he and Adrienne lead in -London?—even if Lydia’s door, generously, was opened to them, as he -believed it would be—knowing her generous.</p> - -<p>He laid down his pen and fixed his eyes on the river and he tried to see -Lydia and Adrienne together. But it was a useless effort. From this -strange haven of the Lyons hotel where he had spent the happiest -fortnight of his life, he could not see himself into any future with -familiar features. He could only see himself and Adrienne, alone, at -hotels. To attempt to place her in Lydia’s generous drawing-room was to -measure more accurately than he had yet measured it the abyss that -separated him from his former life. If it could be spanned; if Adrienne -could be placed there, on the background of eighteenth-century fans and -old glass, she became a clipped and tethered seagull in a garden, -awkward, irrelevant, melancholy. Lydia might cease to find her -third-rate and absurd; but she wouldn’t know what to do with her any -more than she would have known what to do with the seagull. So what, if -Adrienne became his wife, remained of his friendship with Lydia?</p> - -<p>He put aside the unresolved perplexity and took Barney first.</p> - -<p>“My dear Barney,†he wrote,—“I don’t think that the letter Adrienne has -written to you will surprise you as much as this letter of mine. You -will understand from hers that she wishes to free herself<a name="page_348" id="page_348"></a> and to free -you. You will understand that that is my wish, too. She only tells you -that she has been staying here with me, for a fortnight, as my wife; -that’s for your solicitor; you will read between the lines and know that -it seemed worth while to both of us to make the necessary sacrifice in -order to gain so much for you and for her. I hope that you and my dear -Nancy will feel that we are justified, and that you will take your -happiness as bravely as we secure it for you. You’ll know that our step -hasn’t been taken lightly.</p> - -<p>“But, now, dear Barney, comes my absolutely personal contribution. It is -a contribution, for it will make you and Nancy happier to know that I -have as much to gain as you and she. I have fallen in love with Adrienne -and I hope that I may win her consent to be my wife. Yes, dear Barney, -unbelievable as it will look to you, there it is; and she dreams of it -as little as you could have dreamed of it. I met her again, as her -letter informs you, at the Boulogne hospital. She asked me to say -nothing about our meeting. She wanted to disappear out of your lives. -She saved my life, I think, and I saw a great deal of her. What I found -in her that I had not seen before I need not say.</p> - -<p>“My great difficulty, my burden and perplexity now, lie in the fact that -she has no trace of feeling for me that might give me hope. We became, -at Boulogne, the best of friends; such friends that this plan suggested -itself to her; and we remain, after our fortnight here, the best of -friends; and that is all. Yet I have hope, unjustified and groundless -though it may be, and had I not had it from the beginning I couldn’t -have entered upon the enterprise;<a name="page_349" id="page_349"></a> not even for you and Nancy. From one -point of view it’s possible that you may feel that I’ve entered upon it -in spite of you and Nancy. You may feel inclined to repudiate and disown -the whole affair and to remain unaware of it. In that case it would come -down to an appeal from me to you to carry it through for my sake. But -from another point of view it makes it easier for you; easier for you to -accept, since my hope gives integrity to the situation. That’s another -thing that decided me. If it had been mere sham I don’t think I could -have undertaken it. Adrienne felt none of my scruples on this score. She -walked over legal and conventional commandments like a saint over hot -ploughshares. But I haven’t her immunities. I should have felt myself -badly scorched, and felt that I’d scorched you and Nancy, if my hope -hadn’t given everything its character of <i>bona fides</i>.</p> - -<p>“Dear Barney, dear Nancy, please forgive me if I’ve been selfish. It -hasn’t all been selfishness, that I promise you; it was in hopes for -you, too; and I have to face sacrifices. The worst of them will be that -if Adrienne takes me I’ll have to lose you. You can measure the depth of -my feeling for her from the fact that I can make such sacrifices. -Perhaps you’ll feel that even if she doesn’t take me I’ll have to lose -you. I hope not. I hope, in that case, that mitigations and refuges will -be found for me and that some day you’ll perhaps be able to make a -corner in your lives where I may creep and feel my wounds less aching. -In any case, after Adrienne, you are the creatures dearest to me in the -world and I am always and for ever your devoted friend,</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">Roger</span>.â€</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p><a name="page_350" id="page_350"></a></p> - -<p>And now Lydia. There was no use in thinking about it. The plunge must be -taken.</p> - -<p>“My dear Lydia,†he wrote,—“I have fallen in love with Adrienne Toner. -I feel that with such a friend as you it’s better to begin with the -bomb-shell. She doesn’t know it, and if we are here in this Lyons hotel -together, it’s only, she imagines, because she wishes to set Barney free -and that I’ve undertaken, for her sake and for Barney’s, a repugnant -task. It is a repugnant task, in spite of what it may mean to me of -happiness. I hate it for her, and for Barney and for myself. But since -she was determined on it and since, if it wasn’t I it was to be another -friend, and since I have fallen in love with her, I saw that it was only -decent that the co-respondent in the case should be the man who married -her afterwards. For I hope to become her husband, and I haven’t one jot -of ground for my hope. We are studying Dante together, and she shows me -the sights of Lyons. She is just the same. Yet completely altered.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know whether you’ll feel you can ever see me again, with or -without her. I don’t want to cast myself too heavily on your compassion, -so I’ll only remind you that even if I return to England alone I shall -probably have to lose Nancy and Barney and that you will be my only -refuge. It will be the culmination of my misfortunes if I have to lose -you.</p> - -<p>“Dear Lydia, I am always your devoted</p> - -<p class="r"> -“<span class="smcap">Roger</span>â€</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p>But he hadn’t lost her. He knew he hadn’t lost her; in any case. And the -taste of what he did was<a name="page_351" id="page_351"></a> sharp and bitter to him, for she was generous -and loyal and he had cut off her very limbs. When he had addressed and -stamped the letters he went downstairs, and, for the sense of greater -finality, carried them to the post instead of dropping them into the -hotel-box.</p> - -<p>He had almost the sense of disembodiment as he returned to the empty and -dismantled room. He seemed to have become a mere consciousness suspended -between two states of being. The past was gone. He had dropped it into -the post-box. And he saw no future. He felt, for the moment, no hopes. -At the moment it seemed absurd to think that Adrienne could ever love -him. He tried to picture Coldbrooks and Somer’s Place when the -bomb-shell struck them. Would Barney show Nancy the letter? Nancy would -be pale, aghast, silent. Barney would have to wait for days, perhaps, -before saying to her: “But, after all, it’s for their sakes, too, Nancy -dear. See what Roger says.†Mrs. Averil would cast up her hands and cry -“That woman!‗but, perhaps, with as much admiration as repudiation, and -Meg, if she were summoned to the scene of confusion, would say, “So -she’s got hold of Roger, too.†Funnily enough it was the dear March -Hare, he felt sure, who would be the first one to stretch out a hand -towards the tarnished freedom. “After all, you know,†he could hear her -murmuring, “it would be much <i>nicer</i> for Barney and Nancy to be married, -wouldn’t it? And Adrienne wasn’t a Christian, you know, so probably the -first marriage doesn’t <i>really</i> count. We mustn’t be conventional, -Monica.†Yes, perhaps it would go like that at Coldbrooks. But at -Somer’s Place Lydia would sit<a name="page_352" id="page_352"></a> among her fans and glass and wish that -they had never seen Adrienne Toner.</p> - -<p>He paced up and down before the windows and he had never been so lonely -in his life. He was so lonely that he became aware at last that his mere -negative state was passing into a positive and that grief at the -severance of old ties had become fear of losing Adrienne. The fear and -the loneliness seemed actualized when, at five, the waiter appeared -bearing the tea-tray on his shoulder. He had never had tea alone before -in this strange, foreign room. Adrienne always made a complicated and -charming ritual of the occasion, boiling the water on their own little -spirit-kettle and measuring the tea from her own caddy—the very same -kettle and caddy, she told him, that had accompanied herself and her -mother on all their travels. And to see the cups and bread and butter -and not to have her there, added a poignant taste of abandonment to his -loneliness.</p> - -<p>She kept the kettle in her room and when the boy was gone he softly -opened the door and went in. It would keep his heart up to have the -water boiling in readiness for her arrival. He recognized, as he stood, -then, and looked about him, that his instinct had also been that of -taking refuge. In her room he could more closely recover the sense of -her presence.</p> - -<p>She had finished all the essentials of her packing and her box stood -with its lid open ready for the last disposals. Yet the room seemed -still full of her personality. He noted it all gazing around him with -eyes almost those of a solemn little boy permitted to glance in at a -Christmas-tree.<a name="page_353" id="page_353"></a></p> - -<p>Her dressing-table, improvised from the mantelpiece, was neatly laid out -with small, worn, costly, and immaculate appurtenances. He moved forward -and looked at them, not touching. The initials intertwined on the backs -of the ivory brushes were her girlish ones: A. T. She had discarded, -long since, no doubt, her wedding toilet set.</p> - -<p>If he became her husband, the thought crossed his mind and quickened his -heart, he might brush her hair for her, that wonderful golden hair, -before many months were over.</p> - -<p>Near the ivory hand-glass stood two photographs in a folding frame of -faded blue leather. He stooped to look and saw that one was of Mrs. and -the other certainly of Mr. Toner, in their early days. Remote, -mysterious and alien, their formally directed eyes looked back at him -and in the father’s ingenuous young countenance, surmounted by a roll of -hair that was provincial without being exactly rural, the chin resting -upon a large, peculiar collar, he could strangely retrace Adrienne’s -wide brow and steadfast light-filled eyes. Mrs. Toner wore a ruffled -dress and of her face little remained distinct but the dark -gaze—forceful and ambiguously gentle.</p> - -<p>The room was full of the fragrance that was not a fragrance and that -had, long ago, reminded him of Fuller’s earth. A pair of small blue -satin <i>mules</i> stood under a chair near the bed.</p> - -<p>Only after he had withdrawn, gently closing the door behind him, did he -realize that he had forgotten the kettle and then he felt that he could -not go back again. A moment after the boy returned with a note, sent, by -hand, he was informed, from the Croix Rousse.<a name="page_354" id="page_354"></a></p> - -<p>“I am so dreadfully sorry, so disappointed,†he read. “Our last -afternoon, but I can’t get away yet. Don’t wait dinner for me, if I -should be late, even for that. I won’t be very late, I promise, and we -will have our evening.â€</p> - -<p>The note had no address. He rushed forth and down to find the messenger -gone. Had he only known where to seek her in the vast, high, melancholy -district of the Croix Rousse he would have gone to join her. His sense -of loneliness was almost a panic.</p> - -<p>Of course, he tried to fix his mind on that realization, as he went back -to the salon, her rapatriés had no doubt preoccupied her mind, from the -first, quite as much as their own situation. She had spoken to him in -especial of this family and of their sorrows. One child they had left -dead at Evian and the mother, on the eve of their return to their -Northern home, had become too desperately ill to travel. “Such dear, -good, <i>gentle</i> people,†he recalled her saying. No; he must not repine. -After all he had only the one thing to say to her; and the evening would -be long enough for that.</p> - -<p>It was nearly seven when he heard her quick footstep outside. When she -entered, the brim of her little hat, in the electric light, cast a sharp -shadow over her eyes, but he saw at once that she had been crying.</p> - -<p>She came in so quickly that he had not time to rise and, going to him, -behind his chair, she put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him -down, saying: “I’m so sorry to have left you all alone.â€</p> - -<p>It was astonishingly comforting to have her put these fraternal hands -upon him like this. She had<a name="page_355" id="page_355"></a> never done it before. Yet there was a salty -smart in her words to him. What else did she intend to do but leave him -all alone for always?</p> - -<p>“I’m dreadfully lonely, I confess,†he said, “and I see that you’re -dreadfully tired.â€</p> - -<p>She went round to the other side of the table and sat down, not looking -at him and said, in a low voice: “Oh—the seas—the seas of misery.â€</p> - -<p>“You are completely worn out,†he said. He was not thinking so much of -the seas of misery as of his few remaining hours. Were they to be -spoiled by her fatigue?</p> - -<p>“No; not worn out. Not at all worn out,†said Adrienne, stretching her -arms along the table in front of her as she sat, and though she had wept -he could see something of ardour, of a strength renewed, in the lines of -her pallid lips. “I’ve sat quite still all afternoon. I’ve been with -him. She died soon after I got there. At the end she was talking about -the little girl’s grave at Evian. I was able to comfort her about that. -She was so afraid it would not be tended. That it would have no flowers. -Joséphine will go to Evian afterwards and see about it. There are always -dear nuns to do those things. There was a nun with her to-day. That was -the greatest comfort of all; and the priest who came. But I was with the -father and the five poor little children; so frightened and miserable. I -could not leave them, you see. He talked and talked and talked. It -helped him to talk and tell me about their home and how they had had -everything so nice and bright. Linen, a garden, a goat and fowls. Oh, if -only she could have seen her home again! That was what he kept saying -and saying. They were<a name="page_356" id="page_356"></a> full of hope when they got to Evian. He told me -how the children sang at dawn when the train panted up the mountain -among the golden trees. Like birds, he said, and <i>Vive la France</i>! They -all believed they were to be safe and happy. <i>Et, Madame, c’était notre -calvaire qui commencait alors seulement.</i>â€</p> - -<p>She spoke, not really thinking of him, he saw, absorbed still in the -suffering she had just left, measuring her power against such problems -and the worse ones to which she was travelling to-morrow.</p> - -<p>“Joséphine will be with them, I hope,†she went on presently, “in three -or four days. She will help them to get home and then she will come back -and go to see about the grave at Evian. Joséphine is a tower of strength -for me.â€</p> - -<p>Her eyes were raised to him now, and, as they rested, he saw the -compunction, the solicitude, with which they had met him on her -entrance, return to them. “I’m not so very late, am I?†she said, -rising. “I’ll take off my hat and be ready in a moment.â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t hurry,†said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>She was tired, more tired than she knew. During dinner she hardly spoke, -and, finding the resolve suddenly, he said, as they came back to their -salon: “Do you know what you must do now. Go and lie down and rest for -an hour. Until nine. It’s not unselfishness. I’d rather have half of you -to talk to for our last talk, than none of you at all.â€</p> - -<p>“How dear of you,†she said. She looked at him with gratitude and, -still, with the compunction. “It would be a great rest. It would be -better for<a name="page_357" id="page_357"></a> our talk. I can go to sleep at once, you know. Like -Napoleon,†she added with a flicker of her playfulness.</p> - -<p>When she had gone into her room Oldmeadow went out and walked along the -quai. The night was dark and dimmed with fog, but there was a moon and -as he walked he watched it glimmer on the windows of St. Jean. He seemed -to see the august form of the cathedral through a watery element and the -grey and silver patterns of the glass were like the scales of some vast -fish. A sort of whale waiting to swallow up the Jonah that was himself, -he reflected, and, leaning his elbows on the parapet of the quai, the -analogy carried him further and he saw the cathedral like a symbol of -Adrienne’s life—her “big, big†life—looming there before him, -becoming, as the moon rose higher, more and more visible in its austere -and menacing majesty. What was his love to measure itself against such a -vocation?—for that was what it came to, as she had said. She was as -involved, as harnessed, as passionately preoccupied as a Saint Theresa. -How could he be fitted in with Serbia and all the hordes of human need -and wretchedness that he saw her sailing forward to succour? He knew a -discouragement deeper than any he had felt, for he was not a doctor and -his physical strength was crippled by his wounds; and, shaking his -shoulders in the chilly November air, he turned his back on the -cathedral and leaned against the parapet to look up through leafless -branches where the plane tassels still hung, at the lighted windows of -the hotel; their hotel, where the room, still theirs, waited for them. -He felt himself take refuge in the banal lights. After<a name="page_358" id="page_358"></a> all, she wasn’t -really a Saint Theresa. There was human misery everywhere to succour. -Couldn’t she, after a winter in Serbia, found crêches and visit slums in -London? The masculine scepticism she had detected in him had its -justification. Women weren’t meant to go on, once the world’s crisis -past, doing feats of heroism; they weren’t meant for austere careers -that gave no leisure and no home. The trivial yet radiant vision of -intimacy rose again before him. She slept there above him and he was -guarding her slumber. He would always watch over her and guard her. He -would follow her round the world, if need be, and brush her hair for her -in Serbia or California.<a name="page_359" id="page_359"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-b" id="CHAPTER_IX-b"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> gilt clock on the mantelpiece pointed to nine, but when he went to -Adrienne’s door and listened there was no sound within her room, and his -heart sank as he wondered if she might not sleep on, in her fatigue, -sleep past all possible hour for their colloquy. Yet he did not feel -that he could go in and wake her. The analogy of the cathedral loomed -before him. It would be like waking Saint Theresa.</p> - -<p>He walked up and down the empty, glittering salon; walked and walked -until the clock struck ten. Desperation nerved him then and he went -again to her door and knocked.</p> - -<p>With hardly a pause her voice answered him; yet he knew that he had -awakened her and it echoed for him with the pathos of so many past -scenes of emergency when it must so have answered a summons from -oblivion: “Coming, coming.†Among bombings, he reflected; and sudden -terrible influxes of dying men from the front.</p> - -<p>“Coming,†he heard her repeat, on a note of dismay. She had sprung up, -turned on her light and seen the hour.</p> - -<p>He was reminded vividly, as he saw her enter—and it was as if a great -interval of time had separated them—of his first meeting with her. She -was so changed; but now as then she was more composed than anyone he had -ever met.</p> - -<p>But it was of much more than the first meeting that the pale, still face -reminded him. His dreams were in it; the dream where she had come to -him<a name="page_360" id="page_360"></a> along the terrace, lifting her hand in the moonlight; and the dream -of horror when he had again and again pushed it down to drown.</p> - -<p>“I’m so ashamed,†she said, and he saw that it was with an effort she -smiled. The traces of her weeping were now, after her sleep, far more -visible, ageing her, yet making her, too, look younger; like a child -with swollen lids and lips. “I didn’t know I was so tired. I slept and -slept. I didn’t stir until I heard your knock. Never mind. We’ll talk -till midnight.â€</p> - -<p>She was very sorry for him.</p> - -<p>She sat down at the table and under the electric chandelier her braided -hair showed itself all ruffled and disarranged. She had on her dark -travelling dress and she had thrust her feet into the pale blue satin -<i>mules</i>. The disparity of costume in one so accurate, her air of -readiness for the morrow, made him feel her transitoriness almost more -than her presence, though his sense of that pressed upon him with a -stifling imminence. Even though she sat there the room kept its look of -desolate, glittering emptiness and more than their shared life in it he -remembered the far places from which she had come and to which she was -going. It was as if she had just arrived and were pausing for the night -<i>en route</i>.</p> - -<p>As he had seen them years ago, so he saw again the monster engines -crossing the prairies at night and flying illumined pennons of smoke -against the sky as they bore her away from blue seas, golden sands, a -land where the good and gifted lurked behind every bush; and before her -stretched the shining rails, miles and miles of them, running through<a name="page_361" id="page_361"></a> -ruin and desolation, that were to bear her ever onwards into the -darkness. This was what life had brought her to. She had been only a -sojourner among them at Coldbrooks. The linked life of order and family -affection had cast her forth and he saw her, for ever now, unless he -could rescue her, with only hotels to live in and only the chaos she was -to mould, to live for. She seemed already, as she sat there under the -light with her ruffled hair, to be sitting in the train that was to bear -her from him.</p> - -<p>“I think you owe me till midnight, at least,†he said. He had not sat -down. He stood at some little distance from her leaning, his arms -folded, against a gilded and inlaid console. “We’ve lots of things to -talk about.â€</p> - -<p>“Have we?†Adrienne asked, smiling gently, but as if she humoured an -extravagance. “We’ll be together, certainly, even if we don’t talk much. -But I have some things to say, too.â€</p> - -<p>She had dropped her eyes to her hands which lay, lightly crossed, on the -table before her, and she seemed to reflect how best to begin. “It’s -about Nancy and Barney,†she said. “I wanted, before we part, to talk to -you a little about them. There are things that trouble me and you are -the only person with whom I can keep in touch. You will know how I shall -be longing to hear, everything. You’ll let me know at once, won’t you?â€</p> - -<p>“At once,†said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“There might be delays and difficulties,†Adrienne went on. “I shall be -very troubled until all that is clear. And then the money. You know -about the money? Barney isn’t well off and he was worse off after I’d -come and gone. I tried to arrange<a name="page_362" id="page_362"></a> that as best I could. Palgrave -understood and entered into all my feelings.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes; I’d heard. You arranged it all very cleverly,†said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>He moved away now and, at the other end of the room, his back to her, -came to a standstill, while his eyes dwelt on a large gilt-framed -engraving that hung there; some former Salon triumph; a festive, -spring-tide scene where young women in bustles and bonnets offered sugar -to race-horses in a meadow, admired by young men in silk hats.</p> - -<p>“Do you think this may make a difficulty?†Adrienne asked. “Make him -more reluctant to take what is to come to him? It’s Mrs. Chadwick’s now, -you know.â€</p> - -<p>“You’ve arranged it all so well,†said Oldmeadow, noting the gardenias -in the young men’s button-holes, “that I don’t think they can get away -from it.â€</p> - -<p>“But will they hate it dreadfully?†she insisted, and he felt that her -voice in its added urgency protested, though unconsciously, against his -distance; “I seem to see that they might. If they can’t take it as a -sign of accepted love, won’t they hate it?â€</p> - -<p>“Well,†said Oldmeadow, trying to reflect, though his mind was far from -Barney and Nancy, “dear Eleanor Chadwick doesn’t mind taking it, -whatever it’s a sign of. And since it will come to Barney through her, I -don’t think there’ll be enough personality left hanging about it to hurt -much.â€</p> - -<p>“I wish they could take it as a sign of accepted love,†Adrienne -murmured.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps they will,†he said. “I’ll do my best that they shall, I -promise you.<a name="page_363" id="page_363"></a>â€</p> - -<p>It was one thing to promise it and another to know his hope that it -might be a promise never to be redeemed. The cross-currents in his own -thought made him light-headed as he stood there, his back to her, and -examined the glossy creatures in the meadow. “Do you think it will all -take a long time?†Adrienne added, after a little pause. “Will they be -able to marry in six or eight months, say?â€</p> - -<p>“It depends on how soon Barney takes action. Say about a year,†he -suggested. “They’d wait a little first, wouldn’t they?â€</p> - -<p>“I hope not. They’ve waited so long already. I hope it will be as soon -as possible. I shall feel so much more peaceful when I hear they’re -married. Could you, perhaps, make them see that, too?â€</p> - -<p>And again he promised. “I’ll make them see everything I can.â€</p> - -<p>He turned to her at last. She sat, her face still downcast in its -shadow, while the light glittered on her wreaths of hair. Her hands -still lay before her on the table, and the light fell on her -wedding-ring. Perhaps she was looking at the ring.</p> - -<p>“It all depends on something else,†he heard himself say suddenly.</p> - -<p>She turned her head and looked round at him. His attitude, his distance -from her, drew her attention rather than his words, for she repeated -mildly: “On something else?â€</p> - -<p>“Whether I can keep those promises, you know,†said Oldmeadow. “Yes, it -all depends on something else. That’s what I want to talk to you about.â€</p> - -<p>He hardly knew what he was saying as he approached the table and pushed -the brocaded chair,<a name="page_364" id="page_364"></a> companion to the one in which she sat, a little -from its place. He leaned on its back and looked down at her hands and -Adrienne kept her eyes on him, attentive rather than perplexed.</p> - -<p>“May I talk to you about it now?†he asked. “It’s something quite -different.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, do,†said Adrienne. She drew her hands into her lap and sat -upright, in readiness. And, suddenly, as he was silent, she added: -“About yourself? I’ve been forgetting that, haven’t I? I’ve only been -thinking of my side. You have quite other plans, perhaps. Perhaps you’re -not going back to England for ever so long. Is it an appointment?â€</p> - -<p>“No; not an appointment,†he muttered, still looking down, at the table -now, since her hands were no longer there. “But perhaps I shan’t be -going back for a long time. I hope not.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh,†she murmured. And now he had perplexed her. After what he had just -promised her, his hope must perplex and even trouble her. “Do tell me,†-she said.</p> - -<p>“It’s something I want to ask you,†said Oldmeadow—“And it will -astonish you. You may find it hard to forgive; because I’ve meant to ask -it from the beginning; from our deciding to go away together. As far -back as the time in the hospital.â€</p> - -<p>“But you may ask anything. Anything at all,†she almost urged upon him. -“After what I’ve asked you—you have every right. If there’s anything I -can do in the wide, wide world for you—oh! you know how glad and proud -I should be. As for forgiveness‗he heard the smile in her voice, she -was<a name="page_365" id="page_365"></a> troubled, yet tranquil, too—“you’re forgiven in advance.â€</p> - -<p>“Am I? Wait and see.†He, too, tried to smile, as he used the tag; but -it was a mechanical smile and he felt his heart knocking against the -chair-back as he went on: “Because I haven’t done what you asked me to -do as you asked me to do it. I haven’t done it from the motive you -supposed. It’s been for Barney and for Nancy and for you; but it’s been -most of all for myself.†He screwed his glass into his eye as he spoke -with a gesture as mechanical as the smile had been and he looked at her -at last, thus brought nearer. “I want you not to go on to-morrow.†It -was the first, the evident, the most palpable desire that rose to his -lips. “I want you never to go on again, alone. If you can’t stay with -me, I want you to let me follow you. When the time comes I want you to -marry me. I love you.â€</p> - -<p>The light as it fell on her seemed suddenly strange, almost portentous -in its brilliancy. Or was it her stillness, as she sat and gazed at him -after he had spoken the words, that was strange and portentous? It was -as if they arrested the currents of her being and she sat tranced, -frozen into the fixed shape of an astonishment too deep for emotion. Her -eyes did not alter in their gentleness; but the gentleness became tragic -and pitiful, like the inappropriate calm on the mask of a dead face at -Pompeii, fixed in an eternal unreadiness by the engulfing lava.</p> - -<p>She put up her hand at last and pushed back her hair. With her forehead -bared she became more like the photograph of her father. When she spoke -her voice was slow and feeble, like the voice of a person dangerously -ill. “I don’t understand you.<a name="page_366" id="page_366"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Try to,†said Oldmeadow. “You must begin far back.â€</p> - -<p>She still kept her hand pressed upon her hair. “You don’t mean that it’s -the conventionally honourable thing to do? Oh, no; you don’t mean that?†-Her face in its effort to understand was appalled.</p> - -<p>“No; I don’t mean anything conventional,†he returned. “I’m thinking -only of you. Of my love. I’ll come with you to Serbia to-morrow—if -you’ll let me. I could kneel and worship you as you sit there.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh,†she more feebly murmured. She sank back in her chair.</p> - -<p>“My darling, my saint,†said Oldmeadow, gazing at her; “if you must -leave me, you’ll take that with you; that the man who destroyed you is -your lover; that you are dearer to him than anything on earth.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh,†she murmured again, and she put her hands before her face. Her -eyes were hidden; she had spoken no word of reproach and he could not -keep himself from her. He knelt beside her, grasping the chair across, -behind her. She was so near that he could have laid his head upon her -breast. “Don’t leave me,†he heard his pleading voice, but she seemed so -much nearer than his own voice; “or let me come. Everything shall be as -you wish and when you wish. Tell me that you care, too; or that you can -come to care. Tell me that you can think of me as your husband.â€</p> - -<p>She was there, with her hidden eyes, within his arms, and inevitably -they closed around her, and though he heard her murmur, “Please, please, -please,†he could not relinquish her. She was free<a name="page_367" id="page_367"></a> and he was free. -They had cut themselves off from the world. They were alone in the -strange city; in the strange, bright, hallucinated room; and he knew -from the ache and rapture of her nearness how he had craved it.</p> - -<p>But, gently, he heard her say again, “Please,†and gently she put him -from her and he saw her face, and her eyes full of grief and gentleness. -“Forgive me,†she said.</p> - -<p>“My darling. For what?†he almost groaned. “Don’t say you’re going to -break my heart.â€</p> - -<p>She kept her hand on his breast, holding him from her while she looked -into his eyes. “It is so beautiful to be loved,†she said, and her voice -was still the slow, feeble voice of exhaustion. “Even when one has no -right to be. Don’t misunderstand. Even when one may not love back; not -in that way. Forgive me; not in that way; my dearest friend.â€</p> - -<p>“Why mayn’t you love back? Why not in that way? If it’s beautiful, why -mayn’t you?â€</p> - -<p>“Sit there, will you? Yes; keep my hand. How weak I’ve been, and cruel. -It can’t be. Don’t you know? Haven’t you seen? It has always been for -him. He must be free; but I can never be free.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, no. No. That’s impossible,†Oldmeadow said, leaning towards her -across the table and keeping her hand in both of his. “I can’t stand -that. I could stand your work, your vocation, better. But not Barney, -who loves another woman. That’s impossible.â€</p> - -<p>“But it is so,†she said, softly, looking at him. “Really it is so.â€</p> - -<p>“No, no,†Oldmeadow repeated, and he raised her hand to his lips and -kept it there, a talisman<a name="page_368" id="page_368"></a> against the menace of her words. “He lost -you. He’s gone. I’ve found you and you care for me. You can’t hide from -me that you care for me. Just now. For those moments. You were mine.â€</p> - -<p>“No,†she repeated. “I was weak and cruel, but I was not yours.â€</p> - -<p>She had been incredibly near so short a time ago before. Now, looking at -him, with her difficult breaths and gentle, inflexible eyes, she was -incredibly remote. “I am his, only his,†she said. “I love him and I -shall always love him. It makes no difference. He loves Nancy, but it -makes no difference. He is my husband. The father of my baby.â€</p> - -<p>She tried to speak on steadily while she thus gave him the truth that -ended all his hope; but the desperate emotion with which he received it -made real and overpowering to her her outlived yet living sorrow. With -all that she must relinquish laid bare to her in the passion of his eyes -she could measure all that she had lost, as she had, perhaps, till then, -never measured it. “Don’t you know?†she said. “Don’t you see? My heart -is broken, broken, broken.â€</p> - -<p>She put her head down on her arms as she said the words and he heard her -bitter weeping.</p> - -<p>He knew, as he listened, that it was all over with him. Dimly, in the -terrible suffering that wrenched at him, he received his further -revelation of the nature already nearer him than any in the world. Her -strength would be in all she did and felt. She had loved Barney and she -would always love him. Her marriage had been to her an ultimate and -indissoluble experience. That was why she had been<a name="page_369" id="page_369"></a> so blind. She could -not have thought of herself as a woman to be again loved and wooed.</p> - -<p>Her hair lay against his hands, still holding hers, and he found himself -stroking it, without tenderness or solicitude it seemed. It seemed to be -only automatically that his fingers passed across it, while he noted its -warmth and fineness and bright, lovely colour, remembering that he had -thought it at the first her one indubitable beauty.</p> - -<p>They sat there thus for a long time. The gilt clock paused, choked, then -in a voice of hurrying, hoarsened silver rang out eleven strokes. -Footsteps passed and faded up the corridor; doors closed. A tramway on -the quai clashed and clanged, came to a noisy standstill, and moved on -again with a rattling of cables and raucous blasts from a horn; and in -the profound silence that followed he seemed to hear the deep old river -flowing.</p> - -<p>“Really, you see, it’s broken,†said Adrienne. She had ceased to weep, -but she still leaned forward, her head upon her folded arms. “You saw it -happen,†she said. “That night when you found me in the rain.â€</p> - -<p>“I’ve seen everything happen to you, haven’t I?†said Oldmeadow.</p> - -<p>“Yes,†she assented. “Everything. And I’ve made you suffer, too. Isn’t -that strange; everybody who comes near me I make suffer.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, in different ways,†he said. “Some because you are near and -others because you won’t be.â€</p> - -<p>His voice was colourless. His hand still passed across her hair.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you see,†she said, after a moment, “that it couldn’t have been. -Try to see that and to accept<a name="page_370" id="page_370"></a> it. Not you and me. Not Barney’s friend -and Barney’s wife. In every way it couldn’t have done, really. It makes -no difference for me. I’m a <i>déracinée</i>, as I said. A wanderer. But what -would have become of you, all full of roots as you are? You can live it -down without me. You never could have with. And how could you have -wandered with me? For that must be my life.â€</p> - -<p>“You know, it’s no good trying to comfort me,†said Oldmeadow. “What I -feel is that any roots I have are in you.â€</p> - -<p>“They will grow again. The others will grow again.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t want others, darling,†said Oldmeadow. “You see, my heart is -broken, too.â€</p> - -<p>She lifted her head at last and he saw her marred and ravaged face.</p> - -<p>“It can’t be helped,†he tried to smile at her. “You weren’t there to be -recognized when I first met you and now that you are there, I’ve come -too late. I believe that if I’d come before Barney, you’d have loved me. -It’s my only comfort.â€</p> - -<p>“Who can say,†said Adrienne. Her gaze, as she looked at him, was deep -with the mystery of her acceptance. “Perhaps. It seems to me all this -was needed to bring us where we are—enmity and bitterness and grief. -And my love for Barney, too. Let me tell you. It’s in the past that I -think of him. As if he were dead. It’s something over; done with for -ever; yet something always there. How can one be a mother and forget? -Even when he is Nancy’s husband and when she is a mother, I shall not -cease to feel myself his wife. Perhaps you think that strange, after Meg -and what I believed right for<a name="page_371" id="page_371"></a> her. But it is quite clear to me, and -simple. It isn’t a thing of laws and commandments; only of our own -hearts. If we can love again, we may. But for me it would be impossible. -With me everything was involved. I couldn’t, ever, be twice a wife.â€</p> - -<p>Silence fell between them.</p> - -<p>“I’ll see about the little girl’s grave,†said Oldmeadow suddenly. He -did not know what had made him think of it. Perhaps something that had -gone on echoing in him after she had spoken of her maternity. “I’ll go -to Evian to-morrow. It will spare Joséphine the journey and give me -something to do. You’ll tell me the name and give me the directions -before you go.â€</p> - -<p>Tears filled her eyes as she looked at him; but they did not fall. They -could need no controlling. The springs of weeping must be nearly -drained. “Thank you,†she said, and she looked away, seeming to think -intently.</p> - -<p>It was now too late for the tramways. They had ceased to crash and -rattle by, but a sound of belated singing passed along the quais, -melancholy in its induced and extravagant mirth.</p> - -<p>The horrible sense of human suffering that had beaten in upon him at the -hospital, pressed again upon his heart. He saw himself departing next -day to find the abandoned grave and he saw himself standing beside her -train and measuring along the shining rails the vast distances that were -to bear her away for ever.</p> - -<p>“That’s the worst,†he said. “You’re suffering too. I must see you go -away and know that you are unhappy. I must think of you as unhappy. With -a broken heart.<a name="page_372" id="page_372"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Her eyes, after she had thanked him, had been fixed in the intent -reverie. She, too, perhaps, had been seeing those tides of misery, the -sea of which she had spoken, breaking in tragic waves for ever; so -unchanged by all the alleviations that love or mercy could bring; and it -was perhaps with despair that she saw herself as one with it. Her eyes -as she turned them on him were full of distance and of depth and, with -sickening grief, he felt that a woman with a broken heart could do -nothing more for herself or for him.</p> - -<p>But her thought, whatever the voids of darkness it had visited, drew -nearer and nearer to his need as she looked at him. Something of her own -strong vigilance was in the look, bringing the seagull to his mind. The -seagull caught and battered by the waves, with sodden wings, half -dragged down, yet summoning its strength to rise from the submerging -sea.</p> - -<p>“But you can be happy with a broken heart,†she said. Their hands had -fallen apart long since. She stretched out hers now and took his in her -small, firm grasp.</p> - -<p>“Can you?†he asked.</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t think of me like this,†she said, and it was as if she read -his thoughts and their imagery. “I went down, I know; like drowning. -Sometimes the waves break over you and pull you down, and there seems -nothing else in all the world but yourself and what you’ve suffered. But -it doesn’t last. Something brings you up again.â€</p> - -<p>Something had brought her up again now. His darkness. His misery. It was -as if he saw her spread her wings and saw her eyes measuring, for them -both, the spaces of sea and sky.<a name="page_373" id="page_373"></a></p> - -<p>He remembered a picture in a book he had loved as a little boy: little -Diamond held to the breast of the North Wind as she flies forth in her -streaming hair against a sky of stars. So he felt himself lying on her -breast and lifted with her.</p> - -<p>“I’ve told you how happy I can be. It’s all true,†she said. “It’s all -there. The light, the peace, the strength. I shall find them. And so -will you.â€</p> - -<p>“Shall I?†he questioned gently. “Without you?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes. Without me. You will find them. But you won’t be without me,†said -Adrienne.</p> - -<p>Already she was finding them. He knew that, for, as she looked at him, -he felt an influence passing from her to him like the laying of her hand -upon his brow. But it was closer than that. It was to her breast that -her eyes held him while, in a long silence, the compulsion of her faith -flowed into him. First quietness; then peace; then a lifting radiance.</p> - -<p>“Promise me,†he heard her say.</p> - -<p>He did not know what it was he must promise, but he seemed to feel it -all without knowing and he said: “I promise.â€</p> - -<p>She rose and stood above him. “You mustn’t regret. You mustn’t want.â€</p> - -<p>She laid her hands upon his shoulders as she spoke and looked down at -him, so austere, so radiant. “Anything else would have spoiled it. We -were only meant to find each other like this and then to part.â€</p> - -<p>“I’ll be good,†said Oldmeadow. It was like saying one’s prayers at -one’s mother’s knees and his lips found the child-like formula.</p> - -<p>“We must part,†said Adrienne. “I have my<a name="page_374" id="page_374"></a> life and you have yours and -they take different ways. But you won’t be without me, I won’t be -without you. How can we be, when we will never, never forget each other -and our love?â€</p> - -<p>He looked up at her. He had put out his hands and they grasped her dress -as a donor in a votive altarpiece grasps the Madonna’s healing garment. -It was not, he knew, to keep her. It was rather in an accepting -relinquishment that he held her thus for their last communion, receiving -through touch and sight and hearing her final benison.</p> - -<p>“I will think of you every day, until I die,†she said. “I will pray for -you every day. Dear friend—dearest friend—God bless and keep you.â€</p> - -<p>She had stooped to him and for a transcending moment he was taken into -her strong, life-giving embrace. The climax of his life was come as he -felt her arms close round him and her kiss upon his forehead. And as she -held him thus he believed all that she had said and all for which she -could have found no words. That he should find the light and more and -more feel their unity in it: that the thought of her would be strength -to him always; as the thought of him and of his love would be strength -to her.</p> - -<p>After she had gone, he sat for a long time bathed in the sense of her -life, and tasting, for that span of time, her own security of eternal -goodness.</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p class="c">THE END</p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="c">Typographical error was corrected by the etext transcriber:</p> - -<p class="c">“<span class="errata">Adriennes</span> mustn’t fail,†said Mrs. Averil dryly. “The only -justification for <span class="errata">Adriennes</span> is to be in the right. => “Adrienne mustn’t -fail,†said Mrs. Averil dryly. “The only justification for Adrienne is -to be in the right. {pg 241}</p> - -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - -***** This file should be named 42428-h.htm or 42428-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/2/42428/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project -Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you -charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you -do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the -rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose -such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and -research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do -practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is -subject to the trademark license, especially commercial -redistribution. - - - -*** START: FULL LICENSE *** - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project -Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at -http://gutenberg.org/license). - - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy -all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. -If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the -terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or -entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement -and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" -or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the -collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an -individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are -located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from -copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative -works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg -are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project -Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by -freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of -this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with -the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by -keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project -Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in -a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check -the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement -before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or -creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project -Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning -the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United -States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate -access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently -whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, -copied or distributed: - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived -from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is -posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied -and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees -or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work -with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the -work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 -through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the -Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or -1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional -terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked -to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the -permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any -word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or -distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than -"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version -posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), -you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a -copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon -request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other -form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided -that - -- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is - owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he - has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the - Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments - must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you - prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax - returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and - sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the - address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to - the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." - -- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or - destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium - and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of - Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any - money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days - of receipt of the work. - -- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set -forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from -both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael -Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the -Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm -collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain -"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or -corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual -property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a -computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by -your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with -your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with -the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a -refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity -providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to -receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy -is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further -opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER -WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO -WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. -If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the -law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be -interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by -the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any -provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance -with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, -promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, -harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, -that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do -or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm -work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any -Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. - - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers -including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists -because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from -people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. -To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 -and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive -Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at -http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent -permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. -Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered -throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at -809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email -business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact -information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official -page at http://pglaf.org - -For additional contact information: - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To -SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any -particular state visit http://pglaf.org - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. -To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate - - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm -concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared -with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project -Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. - - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. -unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - - -</pre> - -</body> -</html> diff --git a/old/42428-h/images/colophon.png b/old/42428-h/images/colophon.png Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 8c80b21..0000000 --- a/old/42428-h/images/colophon.png +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/42428-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/42428-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index df5a91c..0000000 --- a/old/42428-h/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/42428.txt b/old/42428.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 50bf389..0000000 --- a/old/42428.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11078 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Adrienne Toner - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42428] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER -_A Novel_ - -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Selincourt) - -AUTHOR OF "CHRISTMAS ROSES, AND OTHER STORIES," "TANTE" -"FRANKLIN KANE," "THE ENCOUNTER," ETC. - -[Illustration: colophon] - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge - -COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SELINCOURT -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - -THIRD IMPRESSION, MAY, 1922 - -The Riverside Press -CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS -PRINTED IN THE U . S . A. - - - - - -ADRIENNE TONER - - - - -PART I - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -"Come down to Coldbrooks next week-end, will you, Roger?" said Barney -Chadwick. He had been wandering around the room, pausing once to glance -at the Cesar Franck on the piano and once at the window to look down at -the Thames, and his voice now, though desultory in intention, betrayed -to his friend preoccupation and even anxiety. "There is going to be an -interesting girl with us: American; very original and charming." - -Roger Oldmeadow sat at his writing-bureau in the window, and his high -dark head was silhouetted against the sky. It had power and even beauty, -with moments of brooding melancholy; but the type to which it most -conformed was that of the clever, cantankerous London bachelor; and if -he sometimes looked what he was, the scholar who had taken a double -first at Balliol and gave brain and sinew to an eminent review, he -looked more often what he was not, a caustic, cautious solicitor, -clean-shaved and meticulously neat, with the crisp bow at his collar, -single eyeglass, and thin, wry smile. - -There was a cogitative kindness in his eyes and a latent irony on his -lips as he now scrutinized Barney Chadwick, who had come finally to lean -against the mantelpiece, and it was difficult before Roger Oldmeadow's -gaze at such moments not to feel that you were giving yourself away. -This was evidently what Barney was trying not to feel, or, at all -events, not to show. He tapped his cigarette-end, fixing his eyes upon -it and frowning a little. He had ruffled his brown hair with the nervous -hand passed through it during his ramble, but ruffled or sleek Barney -could never look anything but perfection, just as, whether he smiled or -frowned, he could never look anything but charming. In his spring-tide -grey, with a streak of white inside his waistcoat and a tie of petunia -silk that matched his socks, he was a pleasant figure of fashion; and he -was more than that; more than the mere London youth of 1913, who danced -the tango and cultivated Post-Impressionism and the Russian ballet. He -was perhaps not much more; but his difference, if slight, made him -noticeable. It came back, no doubt, to the fact of charm. He was radiant -yet reserved; confident yet shy. He had a slight stammer, and his smile -seemed to ask you to help him out. His boyhood, at twenty-nine, still -survived in his narrow face, clumsy in feature and delicate in contour, -with long jaw, high temples and brown eyes, half sweet, half sleepy. The -red came easily to his brown cheek, and he had the sensitive, stubborn -lips of the little boy at the preparatory school whom Oldmeadow had met -and befriended now many years ago. - -In Oldmeadow's eyes he had always remained the "little Barney" he had -then christened him--even Barney's mother had almost forgotten that his -real name was Eustace--and he could not but know that Barney depended -upon him more than upon anyone in the world. To Barney his negations -were more potent than other people's affirmations, and though he had -sometimes said indignantly, "You leave one nothing to agree about, -Roger, except Plato and Church-music," he was never really happy or -secure in his rebellions from what he felt or suspected to be -Oldmeadow's tastes and judgments. Oldmeadow had seen him through many -admirations, not only for books and pictures, but for original girls. -Barney thought that he liked the unusual. He was a devotee of the -ballet, and had in his rooms cushions and curtains from the Omega shop -and a drawing by Wyndham Lewis. But Oldmeadow knew that he really -preferred the photograph of a Burne-Jones, a survival from Oxford days, -that still bravely, and irrelevantly, hung opposite it, and he waited to -see the Wyndham Lewis replaced by a later portent. Barney could remain -stubbornly faithful to old devotions, but he was easily drawn into new -orbits; and it was a new star, evidently, that he had come to describe -and justify. - -"What have I to do with charming American girls?" Oldmeadow inquired, -turning his eyes on the blurred prospect of factory-chimneys and -warehouses that the farther waterside of Chelsea affords. One had to go -to the window and look out to see the grey and silver river flowing, in -the placidity that revealed so little power. Oldmeadow lived in a flat -on the Embankment; but he was not an admirer of Chelsea, just as he was -not an admirer of Whistler nor--and Barney had always suspected it--of -Burne-Jones. His flat gave him, at a reasonable cost, fresh air, -boiling-hot water and a walk in Battersea Park; these, with his piano, -were his fundamental needs; though he owned, for the mean little stream -it was, that the Thames could look pretty enough by morning sunlight -and--like any river--magical under stars. After Plato and Bach, -Oldmeadow's passions were the rivers of France. - -"She'll have something to do with you," said Barney, and he seemed -pleased with the retort. "I met her at the Lumleys. They think her the -marvel of the age." - -"Well, that doesn't endear her to me," said Oldmeadow. "And I don't like -Americans." - -"Come, you're not quite so hide-bound as all that," said Barney, vexed. -"What about Mrs. Aldesey? I've heard you say she's the most charming -woman you know." - -"Except Nancy," Oldmeadow amended. - -"No one could call Nancy a charming woman," said Barney, looking a -little more vexed. "She's a dear, of course; but she's a mere girl. What -do you know about Americans, anyway--except Mrs. Aldesey?" - -"What she tells me about them--the ones she doesn't know," said -Oldmeadow, leaning back in his chair with a laugh. "But I own that I'm -merely prejudiced. Tell me about your young lady, and why you want her -to have something to do with me. Is she a reformer of some sort?" - -"She's a wonderful person, really," said Barney, availing himself with -eagerness of his opportunity. "Not a reformer. Only a sort of mixture of -saint and fairy-princess. She cured Charlie Lumley of insomnia, three -years ago, at Saint Moritz. Nothing psychic or theatrical, you know. -Just sat by him and smiled--she's a most extraordinary smile--and laid -her hand on his head. He'd not slept for nights and went off like a -lamb. Lady Lumley almost cries when she tells about it. They thought -Charlie might lose his mind if he went on not sleeping." - -"My word! She's a Christian Science lady? A medium? What?" - -"Call her what you like. You'll see. She does believe in spiritual -forces. It's not only that. She's quite lovely. In every way. Nancy and -Meg will worship her. The Lumley girls do." - -Oldmeadow's thoughts were already dwelling in rueful surmise on Nancy. -He had always thought her the nicest young creature he had ever known, -nicer even than Barney; and he had always wanted them to marry. She was -Barney's second cousin, and she and her mother lived near the Chadwicks -in Gloucestershire. - -"Oh, Nancy will worship her, will she? She must be all right, then. -What's her name?" he asked. - -Barney had given up trying to be desultory, and his conscious firmness -was now not lost upon his friend as he answered, stammering a little, -"Adrienne. Adrienne Toner." - -"Why Adrienne?" Oldmeadow mildly inquired. "Has she French blood?" - -"Not that I know of. It's a pretty name, I think, Adrienne. One hears -more inane names given to girls every day. Her mother loved France--just -as you do, Roger. Adrienne was born in Paris, I think." - -"Oh, a very pretty name," said Oldmeadow, noting Barney's already -familiar use of it. "Though it sounds more like an actress's than a -saint's." - -"There was something dramatic about the mother, I fancy," said Barney, -sustained, evidently, by his own detachment. "A romantic, rather absurd, -but very loveable person. Adrienne worshipped her and, naturally, can't -see the absurdity. She died out in California. On a boat," said Barney -stammering again, over the _b_. - -"On a boat?" - -"Yes. Awfully funny. But touching, too. That's what she wanted, when she -died: the sea and sky about her. They carried her on her yacht--doctors, -nurses, all the retinue--and sailed far out from shore. It's beautiful, -too, in a way you know, to be able to do that sort of thing quite simply -and unself-consciously. Adrienne sat beside her, and they smiled at each -other and held hands until the end." - -Oldmeadow played with his penholder. He was disconcerted; and most of -all by the derivative emotion in Barney's voice. They had gone far, -then, already, the young people. Nancy could have not the ghost of a -chance. And the nature of what touched Barney left him singularly dry. -He was unable to credit so much simplicity or unself-consciousness. He -coughed shortly, and after a decently respectful interval inquired: "Is -Miss Toner very wealthy?" - -"Yes, very," said Barney, relapsing now into a slight sulkiness. "At -least, perhaps not very, as rich Americans go. She gave away a lot of -her fortune, I know, when her mother died. She founded a place for -children--a convalescent home, or creche--out in California. And she did -something in Chicago, too." - -And Miss Toner had evidently done something in London at the Lumleys'. -It couldn't be helped about Nancy, and if the American girl was pretty -and, for all her nonsense, well-bred, it might not be a bad thing, since -there was so much money. The Chadwicks were not at all well off, and -Coldbrooks was only kept going by Mrs. Chadwick's economies and Barney's -labours at his uncle's stock-broking firm in the city. Oldmeadow could -see Eleanor Chadwick's so ingenuous yet so practical eye fixed on Miss -Toner's gold, and he, too, could fix his. Miss Toner sounded benevolent, -and it was probable that her presence as mistress of Coldbrooks would be -of benefit to all Barney's relatives. All the same, she sounded as -irrelevant in his life as the Wyndham Lewis. - -"Adrienne Toner," he heard himself repeating aloud, for he had a trick, -caught, no doubt, from his long loneliness, of relapsing into -absent-minded and audible meditations. The cadence of it worried him. It -was an absurd name. "You know each other pretty well already, it seems," -he said. - -"Yes; it's extraordinary how one seems to know her. One doesn't have any -formalities to get through with her, as it were," said Barney. "Either -you are there, or you are not there." - -"Either on the yacht, or not on the yacht, eh?" Oldmeadow reached out -for his pipe. - -"Put it like that if you choose. It's awfully jolly to be on the yacht, -I can tell you. It _is_ like a voyage, a great adventure, to know her." - -"And what's it like to be off the yacht? Suppose I'm not there? Suppose -she doesn't like me?" Oldmeadow suggested. "What am I to talk to her -about--of course I'll come, if you really want me. But she frightens me -a little, I confess. I'm not an adventurous person." - -"But neither am I, you know!" Barney exclaimed, "and that's just what -she does to you: makes you adventurous. She'll be immensely interested -in you, of course. You can talk to her about anything. It was down at a -week-end at the Lumleys' I first met her, and there were some tremendous -big-wigs there, political, you know, and literary, and all that sort of -thing; and she had them all around her. She'd have frightened me, too, -if I hadn't seen at once that she took to me and wouldn't mind my being -just ordinary. She likes everybody; that's just it. She takes to -everybody, big and little. She's just like sunshine," Barney stammered a -little over his _s_'s. "That's what she makes one think of straight off; -shining on everything." - -"On the clean and the unclean. I see," said Oldmeadow. "I feel it in my -bones that I shall come into the unclean category with her. But it'll do -me the more good to have her shine on me." - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -Roger Oldmeadow went to have tea with Mrs. Aldesey next afternoon. She -was, after the Chadwicks, his nearest friend, and his relation to the -Chadwicks was one of affection rather than affinity. They had been -extraordinarily kind to him since the time that he had befriended Barney -at the preparatory school, hiding, under his grim jocularities, the -bewilderment of a boy's first great bereavement. His love for his mother -had been an idolatry, and his childhood had been haunted by her -ill-health. She died when he was thirteen, and in some ways he knew -that, even now, he had never got over it. His unfortunate and frustrated -love-affair in early manhood had been, when all was said and done, a -trivial grief compared to it. Coldbrooks had become, after that, his -only home, for he had lost his father as a very little boy, and the -whole family had left the country parsonage and been thrown on the -mercies of an uncle and aunt who lived in a grim provincial town. -Oldmeadow's most vivid impression of home was the high back bedroom -where the worn carpet was cold to the feet and the fire a sulky spot of -red, and the windows looked out over smoky chimney-pots. Here his -stricken mother lay in bed with her cherished cat beside her and read -aloud to him. There was always a difficulty about feeding poor Effie, -Aunt Aggie declaring that cats should live below stairs and on mice; and -Roger, at midday dinner, became adroit at slipping bits of meat from -his plate into a paper held in his lap and carried triumphantly to his -mother's room afterwards. "Oh, darling, you _oughtn't_ to," she would -say with her loving, girlish smile, and he would reply, "But I went -without, Mummy; so it's quite all right." His two little sisters were -kept in the nursery, as they were noisy, high-spirited children, and -tired their mother too much. Roger was her companion, her comrade; her -only comrade in the world, really, beside Effie. It had been Mrs. -Chadwick who had saved Effie from the lethal chamber after her -mistress's death. Roger never spoke about his mother, but he did speak -about Effie when she was thus threatened, and he had never forgotten, -never, never, Mrs. Chadwick's eager cry of, "But bring her here, my dear -Roger. I _like_ idle cats! Bring her here, and I promise you that we'll -make her happy. Animals are _so_ happy at Coldbrooks." To see Effie -cherished, petted, occupying the best chairs during all the years that -followed, had been to see his mother, in this flickering little ghost, -remembered in the only way he could have borne to see her explicitly -remembered, and it was because of Effie that he had most deeply loved -Coldbrooks. It remained always his refuge during a cheerless and -harassed youth, when, with his two forceful, black-browed sisters to -settle in life, he had felt himself pant and strain under the harness. -He was fonder of them than they of him, for they were hard, cheerful -young women, inheriting harshness of feature and manner from their -father, with their father's black eyes. It was from his mother that -Oldmeadow had his melancholy blue ones, and he had never again met his -mother's tenderness. - -Both sisters were now settled, one in India and one, very prosperously, -in London; but he seldom turned for tea into Cadogan Gardens and -Trixie's brisk Chippendale drawing-room; though Cadogan Gardens was -obviously more convenient than Somer's Place, where, on the other side -of the park, Mrs. Aldesey lived. He had whims, and did not know whether -it was because he more disliked her husband or her butler that he went -so seldom to see Trixie. Her husband was jovial and familiar, and the -butler had a face like a rancid ham and a surreptitious manner. One had -always to be encountered at the door, and the other was too often in the -drawing-room, and Trixie was vexatiously satisfied with both; Trixie -also had four turbulent, intelligent children, in whom complacent -parental theories of uncontrol manifested themselves unpleasantly, and -altogether she was too much hedged in by obstacles to be tempting; even -had she been tempting in herself. Intercourse with Trixie, when it did -take place, consisted usually of hard-hearted banter. She bantered him a -great deal about Mrs. Aldesey, who, she averred, snubbed her. Not that -Trixie minded being snubbed by anybody. - -It was a pleasant walk across the park on this spring day when the -crocuses were fully out in the grass, white, purple and gold, and the -trees just scantly stitched with green, and, as always, it was with a -slight elation that he approached his friend. However dull or jaded -oneself or the day, the thought of her cheered one as did the thought of -tea. She made him think of her own China tea. She suggested delicate -ceremoniousness. Though familiar, there was always an aroma of -unexpectedness about her; a slight, sweet shock of oddity and surprise. - -Mrs. Aldesey was unlike the traditional London American. She was neither -rich nor beautiful nor noticeably well-dressed. One became gradually -aware, after some time spent in her company, that her clothes, -soft-tinted and silken, were pleasing, as were her other appurtenances; -the narrow front of her little house, painted freshly in white and green -and barred by boxes of yellow wallflower; the serenely unfashionable -water-colours of Italy, painted by her mother, on the staircase; and her -drawing-room, grey-green and primrose-yellow, with eighteenth-century -fans, of which she had a collection, displayed in cabinets, and good old -glass. - -Mrs. Aldesey herself, behind her tea-table, very faded, very thin, with -what the French term a _souffreteux_ little face--an air of just not -having taken drugs to make her sleep, but of having certainly taken -tabloids to make her digest--seemed already to belong to a passing order -of things; an order still sustained, if lightly, by stays, and keeping a -prayer-book as punctually in use as a card-case. - -Oldmeadow owed her, if indirectly, to the Chadwicks, as he owed so much, -even if it was entirely on his own merits that he had won her regard. -They had met, years ago, in France; an entirely chance encounter, and -probably a futureless one, had it not been for the presence in the hotel -at Amboise of the Lumleys. They both slightly knew the Lumleys, and the -Lumleys and the Chadwicks were old friends. So it had come about; and if -he associated Mrs. Aldesey with tea, he associated her also with perfect -omelettes and the Loire. He had liked her at once so much, that, had it -not been for an always unseen yet never-repudiated husband in New York, -he would certainly, at the beginning, have fallen in love with her. But -the unrepudiated husband made as much a part of Mrs. Aldesey's -environment as her stays and her prayer-book. The barrier was so evident -that one did not even reflect on what one might have done had it not -been there; and indeed, Mrs. Aldesey, he now seemed, after many pleasant -years of friendship, to recognize, for all the sense of sweetness and -exhilaration she gave him, had not enough substance to rouse or sustain -his heart. She was, like the tea again, all savour. - -She lifted to-day her attentive blue eyes--with age they would become -shrewd--and gave him her fine little hand, blue-veined and ornamented -with pearls and diamonds in old settings. She wore long earrings and a -high, transparent collar of net and lace. Her earrings and her -elaborately dressed hair, fair and faded, seemed as much a part of her -personality as her eyes, her delicate nose and her small, slightly -puckered mouth that dragged provocatively and prettily at one corner -when she smiled. Oldmeadow sometimes wondered if she were happy; but -never because of anything she said or did. - -"I want to hear about some people called Toner," he said, dropping into -the easy-chair on the opposite side of the tea-table. It was almost -always thus that he and Mrs. Aldesey met. He rarely dined out. "I'm -rather perturbed. I think that Barney--you remember young Chadwick--is -going to marry a Miss Toner--a Miss Adrienne Toner. And I hope you'll -have something to her advantage to tell me. As you know, I'm devoted to -Barney and his family." - -"I know. The Lumleys' Chadwicks. I remember perfectly. The dear boy with -the innocent eyes and sulky mouth. Why don't you bring him to see me? -He's dancing the tango in all his spare moments, I suppose, and doesn't -care about old ladies." Mrs. Aldesey was not much over forty, but always -thus alluded to herself. "Toner," she took up, pouring out his tea. "Why -perturbed? Do you know anything against them? Americans, you mean. We -poor expatriates are always seen as keepers to so many curious -brethren.--Toner. _Cela ne me dit rien_." - -"I know nothing against them except that Mrs. Toner, the girl's mother, -died, by arrangement, out at sea, on her yacht--in sunlight. Does that -say anything? People don't do that in America, do they, as a rule? A -very opulent lady, I inferred." - -"Oh, dear!" Mrs. Aldesey now ejaculated, as if enlightened. "Can it be? -Do you mean, I wonder, the preposterous Mrs. Toner, of whom, fifteen -years ago, I had a glimpse, and used to hear vague rumours? She wandered -about the world. She dressed in the Empire period: Queen Louise of -Prussia, white gauze bound beneath her chin. She had a harp, and warbled -to monarchs. She had an astral body, and a Yogi and a yacht and -everything handsome about her. The typical spiritual _cabotine_ of our -epoch--though I'm sure they must always have existed. Of course it must -be she. No one else could have died like that. Has she died, poor woman? -On a yacht. Out at sea. In sunlight. How uncomfortable!" - -"Yes, she's dead," said Oldmeadow resignedly. "Yes; it's she, evidently. -And her daughter is coming down to Coldbrooks this week-end. I'm afraid -that unless Barney has too many rivals, he'll certainly marry her. But -what you say leads me to infer that he will have rivals and to hope they -may be successful. She will, no doubt, marry a prince." - -"Something Italian, perhaps. Quite a small fortune will do that. -Certainly your nice Barney wouldn't have been at all Mrs. Toner's -_affaire_. The girl on her own may think differently, for your Barney -is, I remember, very engaging, and has a way with him. I don't know -anything about the girl. I didn't know there was one. There's no reason -why she may not be charming. Our wonderful people have the gift of -picking up experience in a generation and make excellent princesses." - -"But she's that sort, you think. The sort that marries princes and has -no traditions. Where did they come from? Do you know that?" - -"I haven't an idea. Yet, stay. Was it not tooth-paste?--Toner's Peerless -Tooth-Paste. Obsolete; yet I seem to see, reminiscently, in far-away -nursery days, the picture of a respectable old gentleman with -side-whiskers, on a tube. A pretty pink glazed tube with a gilt top to -it. Perhaps it's that. Since it was Toner's it would be the father's -side; not the warbling mother's. Well, many of us might wish for as -unambiguous an origin nowadays. And, in America, we did all sorts of -useful things when we first, all of us, came over in the Mayflower!" -said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile. - -Oldmeadow gazed upon his friend with an ironically receptive eye. "Have -they ever known anyone decent? Anyone like yourself? I don't mean over -here. I mean in America." - -"No one like me, I imagine; if I'm decent. Mrs. Toner essayed a season -in New York one winter, and it was then I had my glimpse of her, at the -opera, in the Queen Louise dress. A pretty woman, dark, with a sort of -soulful and eminently respectable coquetry about her; surrounded by -swarms of devotees--all male, to me unknown; and with something in a -turban that I took to be a Yogi in the background. She only tried the -one winter. She knew what she wanted and where she couldn't get it. We -are very dry in New York--such of us as survive. Very little moved by -warblings or astral bodies or millions. As you intimate, she'll have -done much better over here. You _are_ a strange mixture of materialism -and ingenuousness, you know." - -"It's only that we have fewer Mrs. Toners to amuse us and more to do -with millions than you have," said Oldmeadow; but Mrs. Aldesey, shaking -her head with a certain sadness, said that it wasn't as simple as all -that. - -"Have you seen her? Have you seen Adrienne?" she took up presently, -making him his second cup of tea. "Is she pretty? Is he very much in -love?" - -"I'm going down to Coldbrooks on Saturday to see her," said Oldmeadow, -"and I gather that it's not to subject her to any test that Barney wants -me; it's to subject me, rather. He's quite sure of her. He thinks she's -irresistible. He merely wants to make assurance doubly sure by seeing me -bowled over. I don't know whether she's pretty. She has powers, -apparently, that make her independent of physical attractions. She lays -her hands on people's heads and cures them. She cured Charlie Lumley of -insomnia at Saint Moritz three years ago." - -Mrs. Aldesey, at this, looked at him for some moments in silence. -"Yes," she assented, and in her pause she seemed to have recognized and -placed a familiar object. "Yes. She would. That's just what Mrs. Toner's -daughter would do. I hope she doesn't warble, too. Laying on hands is -better than warbling." - -"I see you think it hopeless," said Oldmeadow, pushing back his chair -and yielding, as he thrust his hands into his pockets and stretched out -his legs, to an avowed chagrin. "What a pity it is! A thousand pities. -They are such dear, good, simple people, and Barney, though he doesn't -know it, is as simple as any of them. What will become of them with this -overwhelming cuckoo in their nest." - -At this Mrs. Aldesey became serious. "I don't think it hopeless at all. -You misunderstand me. Isn't the fact that he's in love with her -reassuring in itself? He may be simple, but he's a delicate, discerning -creature, and he couldn't fall in love with some one merely pretentious -and absurd. She may be charming. I can perfectly imagine her as -charming, and there's no harm in laying on hands; there may be good. -Don't be narrow, Roger. Don't go down there feeling dry." - -"I am narrow, and I do feel dry; horribly dry," said Oldmeadow. "How -could the child of such a mother, and of tooth-paste, be charming? Don't -try specious consolation, now, after having more than justified all my -suspicions." - -"I'm malicious, not specious; and I can't resist having my fling. But -you mustn't be narrow and take me _au pied de la lettre_. I assert that -she may be charming. I assert that I can see it all working out most -happily. She'll lay her hands on them and they'll love her. What I -really want to say is this: don't try to set Barney against her. He'll -marry her all the same and never forgive you." - -"Ah; there we have the truth of it. But Barney would always forgive me," -said Oldmeadow. - -"Well then, she won't. And you'd lose him just as surely. And she'll -know. Let me warn you of that. She'll know perfectly." - -"I'll keep my hands off her," said Oldmeadow, "if she doesn't try to lay -hers on me." - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -The Chadwicks all had a certain sulkiness in their charming looks, and -where in Barney it mingled with sweetness, in Palgrave, his younger -brother, it mingled with brilliancy. It was Palgrave who, at the -station, met the family friend and counsellor in the shabby, inexpensive -family car. He was still a mere boy, home from Marlborough for the -Easter holidays; fond of Oldmeadow, as all the Chadwicks were; but more -resentful of his predominance than Barney and more indifferent to his -brotherly solicitude. He had Barney's long, narrow face and Barney's -eyes and lips; but the former were proud and the latter petulant. -To-day, as he sat beside him in the car, Oldmeadow was aware of -something at once fixed and vibrating in his bearing. He wanted to say -something, and he had resolved to be silent. During their last encounter -at Coldbrooks, he and Oldmeadow had had a long, antagonistic political -discussion, and Palgrave's resentment still, no doubt, survived. - -Coldbrooks lay among the lower Cotswolds, three miles from the station, -and near the station was the village of Chelford where Nancy Averil and -her mother lived. Nancy was at Coldbrooks; Aunt Monica--she was called -aunt by the Chadwick children, though she and Mrs. Chadwick were first -cousins--was away. So Palgrave informed him. But he did not speak again -until the chill, green curve of arable hill-side was climbed and a -stretch of wind-swept country lay before them. Then suddenly he -volunteered: "The American girl is at Coldbrooks." - -"Oh! Is she? When did she come?" Somehow Oldmeadow had expected the -later train for Miss Toner. - -"Yesterday. She and Barney came down together in her car." - -"So you've welcomed her already," said Oldmeadow, curious of the -expression on the boy's face. "How does she fit into Coldbrooks? Does -she like you all and do you like her?" - -For a moment Palgrave was silent. "You mean it makes a difference -whether we do or not?" he then inquired. - -"I don't know that I meant that. Though if people come into your life it -does make a difference." - -"And is she going to come into our lives?" Palgrave asked, and Oldmeadow -felt pressure of some sort behind the question. "That's what I mean. Has -Barney told you? He's said nothing to us. Not even to Mother." - -"Has Barney told me he's going to marry her? No; he hasn't. But it's -evident he hopes to. Perhaps it depends on whether she likes Coldbrooks -and Coldbrooks likes her." - -"Oh, no, it doesn't. It doesn't depend on anything at all except whether -she likes Barney," said Palgrave. "She's the sort of person who doesn't -depend on anything or anybody except herself. She cuts through -circumstance like a knife through cheese. And if she's not going to take -him I wish she'd never come," he added, frowning and turning, under the -peak of his cap, his jewel-like eyes upon his companion. "It's a case of -all or nothing with a person like that. It's too disturbing--just for a -glimpse." - -Oldmeadow felt himself disconcerted. Oddly enough, for the boy was -capricious and extravagant, Palgrave's opinion had more weight with him -than Barney's. Barney, for one thing, was sexually susceptible and -Palgrave was not. Though so young, Oldmeadow felt him already of a -poetic temperament, passionate in mind and cold in blood. - -"She's so charming? You can't bear to lose her now you've seen her?" he -asked. - -"I don't know about charming. No; I don't think her charming. At least -not if you mean something little by the word. She's disturbing. She -changes everything." - -"But if she stays she'll be more disturbing. She'll change more." - -"Oh, I shan't mind that! I shan't mind change," Palgrave declared. "If -it's her change and she's there to see it through." And, relapsing to -muteness, he bent to his brakes and they slid down among the woods of -Coldbrooks. - -For the life of him and with the best will in the world, he couldn't -make it out. That was Oldmeadow's first impression as, among the -familiar group gathered in the hall about the tea-table, Miss Toner was -at last made manifest to him. She was, he felt sure, in his first shrewd -glance at her, merely what Lydia Aldesey would have placed as a -third-rate American girl, and her origins in commercial enterprise were -eminently appropriate. - -She got up to meet him, as if recognizing in him some special -significance or, indeed, as it might be her ingenuous habit to do in -meeting any older person. But he was not so much older if it came to -that; for, after he had met the direct and dwelling gaze of her large, -light eyes, the second impression was that she was by no means so young -as Barney had led him to expect. She was certainly as old as Barney. - -There were none of the obvious marks of wealth upon her. She wore a -dark-blue dress tying on the breast over white. She was small in stature -and, in manner, composed beyond anything he had ever encountered. With -an irony, kindly enough, yet big, he knew, with unfavourable inferences, -he even recognized, reconstructing the moment in the light of those that -followed, that in rising to meet him as he was named to her, it had -been, rather than in shyness or girlishness, in the wish to welcome him -and draw him the more happily into a group she had already made her own. - -They were all sitting round the plentiful table, set with home-made -loaves and cakes, jams and butter, and a Leeds bowl of primroses; Miss -Toner just across from him, Barney on one side of her--his was an air of -tranquil ecstasy--and little Barbara on the other, and they all seemed -to emanate a new radiance; almost, thought Oldmeadow, with an -irritability that was still genial, like innocent savages on a remote -seashore gathered with intent eyes and parted lips round the newly -disembarked Christopher Columbus. Mrs. Chadwick, confused, as usual, -among her tea-cups, sending hasty relays of sugar after the unsugared or -recalling those sugared in error, specially suggested the simile. She -could, indeed, hardly think of her tea. Her wide, startled gaze turned -incessantly on the new-comer and to Oldmeadow, for all his nearly filial -affection, the eyes of Eleanor Chadwick looked like nothing in the -world so much as those of the March Hare in Tenniel's evocation of the -endearing creature. Unlike her children, she was fair, with a thin, -high, ridiculously distinguished nose; but her mouth and chin had -Barney's irresolution and sweetness, and her untidy locks Meg's beauty. -Meg was a beauty in every way, rose, pearl and russet, a Romney touched -with pride and daring, and the most sophisticated of all the Chadwicks; -yet she, too, brooded, half merrily, half sombrely, on Miss Toner, her -elbows on the table for the better contemplation. Palgrave's absorption -was manifest; but he did not brood. He held his head high, frowned and, -for the most part, looked out of the window. - -Oldmeadow sat between Palgrave and Nancy and it was with Nancy that the -magic ended. Nancy did not share in the radiance. She smiled and was -very busy cutting the bread and butter; but she was pale; not puzzled, -but preoccupied. Poor darling Nancy; always his special pet; to him -always the dearest and most loveable of girls. Not at all a Romney. With -her pale, fresh face, dark hair and beautiful hands she suggested, -rather, a country lady of the seventeenth century painted by Vandyck. A -rural Vandyck who might have kept a devout and merry journal, surprising -later generations by its mixture of ingenuousness and wisdom. Her lips -were meditative, and her grey eyes nearly closed when she smiled in a -way that gave to her gaiety and extraordinary sweetness and intimacy. -Nancy always looked as if she loved you when she smiled at you; and -indeed she did love you. She had spent her life among people she loved -and if she could not be intimate she was remote and silent. - -But there was no hope for Nancy. He saw that finally, as he drank his -tea in silence and looked across the primroses at the marvel of the age. - -Miss Toner's was an insignificant little head, if indeed it could be -called little, since it was too large for her body, and her way of -dressing her hair in wide braids, pinned round it and projecting over -the ears, added to the top-heavy effect. The hair was her only -indubitable beauty, fine and fair and sparkling like the palest, purest -metal. It was cut in a light fringe across a projecting forehead and her -mouth and chin projected, too; so that, as he termed it to himself, it -was a squashed-in face, ugly in structure, the small nose, from its -depressed bridge, jutting forward in profile, the lips, in profile, flat -yet prominent. Nevertheless he owned, studying her over his tea-cup, -that the features, ugly, even trivial in detail, had in their assemblage -something of unexpected force. Her tranquil smile had potency and he -suddenly became aware of her flat, gentle voice, infrequent, yet oddly -dominating. Sensitive as he was to voices, he saw it as a bland, blue -ribbon rolled out among broken counters of colour, and listened to its -sound before he listened to what it said. All the other voices went up -and down; all the others half said things and let them drop or trail. -She said things to the end: when the ribbon began it was unrolled; and -it seemed, always, to make a silence in which it could be watched. - -"We went up high into the sunlight," she said, "and one saw nothing but -snow and sky. The bells were ringing on the mountains beneath; one heard -no other sound. I have never forgotten the moment. It seemed an -inspiration of joy and peace and strength." - -"You've walked so much in the Alps, haven't you, Roger?" said Mrs. -Chadwick. "Miss Toner has motored over every pass." - -"In the French Alps. I don't like Switzerland," said Oldmeadow. - -"I think I love the mountains everywhere," said Miss Toner, "when they -go so high into the sky and have the sun and snow on their summits. But -I love the mountains of Savoy and Jura best." - -It vexed him that she should. She was a person to stay in and prefer -Switzerland. "Joy and peace and strength," echoed in his ears and with -the words, rudely, and irrelevantly, the image of the pink glazed tube -with the gilt stopper. Miss Toner's teeth were as white as they were -benignant. - -"I wish I could see those flowers," said Mrs. Chadwick. "I've only been -to Vevey in the summer; oh, years and years ago. So dull. Fields of -flowers. You've seen them, too, of course, Roger. All the things we grow -with such pains. My Saint Brigid anemones never really do--though what I -put in of leaf-mould!" - -"You'll see anemones, fields of them, in the Alpine meadows; and violets -and lilies; the little lilies of Saint Bruno that look like freesias. I -love them best of all," the bland, blue ribbon unrolled. "You shall go -with me some day, Mrs. Chadwick. We'll go together." And, smiling at her -as if they had, already, a happy secret between them, Miss Toner -continued: "We'll go this very summer, if you will. We'll motor all the -way. I'll come and get you here. For a whole month you shall forget that -you've ever had a family to bring up or a house to take care of or -anemones that won't grow properly--even in leaf-mould." - -Her eyes, as they rested on her hostess, seemed to impart more than her -words. They imparted something to Oldmeadow. He had not before -conjectured that Eleanor Chadwick might be bored or tired, nor realized -that since Barbara's birth, fourteen years ago, she had not left -Coldbrooks except to go to London for a week's shopping, or to stay with -friends in the English country. He had taken Eleanor Chadwick's life for -granted. It seemed Miss Toner's function not to take things that could -be changed for granted. It was easy to do that of course, when you had a -large banking account behind you; and yet he felt that Miss Toner would -have had the faculty of altering accepted standards, even had she been -materially unequipped. She and Mrs. Chadwick continued to look at each -other for a moment and the older woman, half bashfully, seemed, with -what softness, compelled to a tacit confession. She'd never known before -that she was tired. Springs of adventure and girlishness within her were -perhaps unsealed by Miss Toner's gaze. - -"And where do the rest of us come in!" Barney ejaculated. He was so -happy in the triumph of his beloved that his eyes, their sleepiness -banished, were almost as brilliant as Palgrave's. - -"But you're always coming in with Mrs. Chadwick," said Miss Toner. She -looked at him, if with a touch of tender humour, exactly as she looked -at his mother; but then she looked at them both as if they were precious -to her. "I don't want you to come in at all for that month. I want her -to forget you ever existed. There ought to be waters of Lethe for -everyone every now and then, even in this life. We come out, after the -plunge into forgetfulness, far brighter and stronger and with a -renovated self to love the better with. Afterwards--after she's had her -dip--you'll all come in, if you want to, with me. I'll get a car big -enough. You, too, Miss Averil; and Mr. Oldmeadow; though he and Barney -and Palgrave may have to take turns sitting on the portmanteaus." - -"Barney" and "Palgrave" already. Her unpretentious mastery alarmed -almost as much as it amused him. He thanked her, with his dry smile, -saying that he really preferred to see the Alps on his legs and asked, -to temper the possible acerbity, "Do you drive yourself?" for it seemed -in keeping with his picture of her as an invading providence that she -should with her own hand conduct the car of fate. He could see her, -somehow, taking the hairpin curves on the Galibier. - -But Miss Toner said she did not drive. "One can't see flowers if one -drives oneself; and it would hurt dear Macfarlane's feelings so. -Macfarlane is my chauffeur and he's been with me for years; from the -time we first began to have motors, my mother and I, out in California. -Apart from that, I should like it, I think, with the sense of risk and -venture it must give. I like the sense of high adventure--of 'Childe -Roland to the dark tower came'; don't you, Palgrave? It's life, isn't -it? The pulse of life. Danger and venture and conquest. And then -resting, on the heights, while one hears the bells beneath one." - -This, thought Oldmeadow, as he adjusted his glass the better to examine -Miss Toner, must prove itself too much, even for Palgrave to swallow. -But Palgrave swallowed it without a tremor. His eyes on hers he -answered: "Yes, I feel life like that, too." - -"Oh, dear!" sighed Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldmeadow blessed her antidote to -the suffocating sweetness: "I'm afraid I don't! I don't think I know -anything about risks and dangers; or about conquest either. I'm sure -I've never conquered anything; though I have been dreadfully afraid of -ill-tempered servants--if that counts, and never let them see it. -Barbara had such an odious nurse. She tried, simply, to keep me out of -the nursery; but she didn't succeed. And there was a Scotch cook once, -with red hair--that so often goes with a bad temper, doesn't it? Do you -remember, Barney?--your dear father had to go down to the kitchen when -she was found lying quite, quite drunk under the table. But cooks and -nurses can't be called risks--and I've never cared for hunting." - -Miss Toner was quietly laughing, and indeed everybody laughed. - -"Dear Mrs. Chadwick," she said. And then she added: "How can a mother -say she has not known risks and dangers? I think you've thought only of -other people for all your life and never seen yourself at all. Alpine -passes aren't needed to prove people's courage and endurance." - -Oldmeadow now saw, from the sudden alarm and perplexity of Mrs. -Chadwick's expression, that she was wondering if the marvellous guest -alluded to the perils of child-birth. Perhaps she did. She was ready, he -imagined, to allude to anything. - -"You're right about her never having seen herself," said Palgrave, -nodding across at Miss Toner. "She never has. She's incapable of -self-analysis." - -"But she's precious sharp when it comes to analysing other people, -aren't you, Mummy dear!" said Barney. - -"I don't think she is," said Meg. "I think Mummy sees people rather as -she sees flowers; things to be fed and staked and protected." - -"You're always crabbing Mummy, Meg. It's a shame!--Isn't it a shame, -Mummy dear!" Barbara protested, and Barney tempered the apparent -criticism--peacemaker as he usually was--with: "But you have to -understand flowers jolly well to make them grow. And we do her credit, -don't we!" - -Miss Toner looked from one to the other as they spoke, with her clear, -benignant, comprehending gaze, and Mrs. Chadwick stared with her March -Hare ingenuousness that had its full share, too, of March Hare -shrewdness. She undertook no self-justification, commenting merely, in -the pause that followed Barney's contribution: "I don't know what you -mean by self-analysis unless it's thinking about yourself and mothers -certainly haven't much time for that. You're quite right there, my -dear," she nodded at Miss Toner, adding in a tone intended specially for -her: "But young people often exaggerate things that are quite, quite -simple when they come." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -"Come out and have a stroll," said Oldmeadow to Nancy. Tea was over and -a primrose-coloured sunset filled the sky. They walked up and down the -gravelled terrace before the house. - -Coldbrooks stood high, yet encircled by still higher stretches of bare -or wooded upland. Its walled garden, where vegetable beds and lines of -cordon apple-trees were pleasingly diversified by the herbaceous borders -that ran beneath the walls, lay behind it; most of the bedroom windows -looked down into the garden. Before it, to the south, lawns and meadows -dropped to a lake fed by the brooks that gave the place its name. Beyond -the lake were lower copses, tinkling now with the musical run of water -and climbing softly on either side, so that from the terrace one had a -vast curved space of sky before one. The sun was setting over the woods. - -It was Barney's grandfather, enriched by large shipping enterprises in -Liverpool, who had bought the pleasant old house, half farm, half manor, -and Barney's father had married the daughter of a local squire. But the -family fortunes were much dwindled, and though Barney still nursed the -project of returning one day to farm his own land there was little -prospect of such a happy restoration. In spite of the Russian ballet and -London portents, he was fonder, far, of Coldbrooks than of all of them -put together. But he could afford neither time nor money for hunting, -and his home was his only for week-ends and holidays. It was the most -loveable of homes, more stately without than within, built of grey-gold -Cotswold stone with beautiful stone chimneys and mullioned windows and -three gables facing the southern sky. Within, everything was rather bare -and shabby. There was no central heating, and no bathrooms. The -tiger-skin that lay on the stone flags of the hall had lost all its -hair. The piano rattled and wheezed in many of its notes. The patterns -of the drawing-room chintzes were faded to a mere dim rosy riot, and -stuffing protruded from the angles of the leather arm-chairs in the -smoking-room. But it was, all the same, a delightful house to stay in. -Eleanor Chadwick's shrewdness showed itself in her housekeeping. She -knew what were the essentials. There was always a blazing fire in one's -bedroom in the evening and the hottest of water with one's bath in the -morning. Under the faded chintz, every chair in the drawing-room was -comfortable. The toast was always crisp; the tea always made with -boiling water; the servants cheerful. Mrs. Chadwick had a great gift -with servants. She could reprove with extreme plaintiveness, yet never -wound a susceptibility, and the servants' hall, as she often remarked -with justice, was smarter and prettier than the drawing-room. Johnson, -the old butler, had been at Coldbrooks since before her marriage, and -the grey-haired parlourmaid had come with her when she had come as a -bride. These familiar faces added depth to the sense of intimacy that -was the gift of Coldbrooks. Oldmeadow loved the place as much as any of -the Chadwicks did, and was as much at home in it. - -"There is a blackcap," said Nancy, "down in the copse. I felt sure I -heard one this morning." - -"So it is," said Oldmeadow. They paused to listen. - -"It's the happiest of all," said Nancy. - -He had been wondering about Nancy ever since he had come. It was not her -voice, gentle and meditative, that told him now she was unhappy. It was -rather in contrast to the bird's clear ecstasy that he felt the -heaviness of her heart. - -"It's wilder than the thrush and blackbird, isn't it?" he said. "Less -conscious. The thrush is always listening to himself, I feel. Do you -want to go to the Alps with Miss Toner, Nancy?" - -Nancy would not see Miss Toner as an angelic being and he wanted to know -how she did see her. The others, it was evident, thought her angelic by -a sort of group suggestion. She thought herself so, to begin with; snow, -flowers, bells and all the rest of it; and they, ingenuous creatures, -saw the mango-tree rising to heaven as the calm-eyed Yogi willed they -should. But Nancy did not see the mango-tree. She was outside the group -consciousness--with him. - -"Oh, no!" she now said quickly; and she added: "I don't mean that I -don't like her. It's only that I don't know her. How can she want us? -She came only yesterday." - -"But, you see, she means you to know her. And when she's known she -couldn't imagine that anyone wouldn't like her." - -"I don't think she's conceited, if you mean that, Roger." - -"Conceit," he rejoined, "may be of an order so monstrous that it loses -all pettiness. You've seen more of her than I have, of course." - -"I think she's good. She wants to do good. She wants to make people -happy; and she does," said Nancy. - -"By taking them about in motors, you mean." - -"In every way. She's always thinking about pleasing them. In big and -little ways. Aunt Eleanor loves her already. They had a long talk last -night in Aunt Eleanor's room. She's given Meg the most beautiful little -pendant--pearl and amethyst, an old Italian setting. She had it on last -night and Meg said how lovely it was and she simply lifted it off her -own neck and put it around Meg's. Meg had to keep it. She gave it in -such a way that one would have to keep it." - -"Rather useful, mustn't it be, to have pendants so plentifully about you -that you can hand them out to the first young lady who takes a fancy to -them? Has she given you anything, Nancy?" - -"I'm sure she would. But I shall be more careful than Meg was." - -"Perhaps Meg will practise carelessness, since it's so remunerative. -What has she given Palgrave? He seems absorbed." - -"Isn't it wonderful," said Nancy. "It's wonderful for Palgrave, you -know, Roger, because he is rather sad and bitter, really, just now; and -I think she will make him much happier. They went off to the woods -together directly after breakfast." - -"What's he sad and bitter about? You mean his socialism and all the rest -of it?" - -"Yes; and religion. You remember; when you were here at Christmas." - -"I remember that he was very foolish and made me lose my temper. Is -there a chance of Miss Toner turning him into a good capitalist and -churchman?" - -Nancy smiled, but very faintly. "It's serious, you know, Roger." - -"What she's done to them already, you mean?" - -"Yes. What she's done already. She had Meg, after lunch, in her room. -Meg looked quite different when she came out. It's very strange, Roger. -It's as if she'd changed them all. I almost feel," Nancy looked round at -the happy house and up at the tranquil elms where the rooks were noisily -preparing for bed, "as if nothing could be the same again, since she's -come." Her clear profile revealed little of the trouble in her heart. -They had not named Barney; but he must be named. - -"It's white magic," said Oldmeadow. "You and I will keep our heads, my -dear. We don't want to be changed, do we? What has she done to Barney? -He is in love with her, of course." - -"Of course," said Nancy. - -He had never been sure before that she was in love with Barney. She was -nine years younger and had been a child during years of his manhood. -Oldmeadow had thought it in his own fond imagination only that the link -between them was so close. But now he knew what Nancy herself, perhaps, -had hardly known till then. The colour did not rise in her cheek, but -through her voice, through her bearing, went a subtle steadying of -herself. "Of course he is in love with her," she repeated and he felt -that she forced herself to face the truth. - -They stopped at the end of the terrace. A little path turned aside -towards the copse and the grass beneath the trees was scattered with the -pale radiance of primroses. Nancy seemed to look at the flowers, but she -sought no refuge in comment on them; and as they looked in silence, -while the rooks, circling and cawing above, settled on their nests, a -sense of arrested time came to Oldmeadow, and a phrase of music, -blissful in its sadness, where gentle German words went to a gentle -German strain, passed through his mind. Something of Schubert's--Young -Love--First Grief. It seemed to pierce to him from the young girl's -heart and he knew that he would never forget and that Nancy would never -forget the moment; the rooks; the primroses; the limpid sky. The -blackcap's flitting melody had ceased. - -"Do you think she may make him happy?" he asked. It was sweet to him to -know that she had no need of a refuge from him. She could take counsel -with him as candidly as if there had been no tacit avowal between them. -She looked round at him as they went on walking and he saw pain and -perplexity in her eyes. - -"What do you think, Roger?" she said. "Can she?" - -"Well, might she, if Barney is stupid enough?" - -"I don't feel he would have to be stupid to be happy with her, Roger. -You are not fair to her. What I wonder is whether he will be strong -enough not to be quite swept away." - -"You think she'll overpower him? Leave him with no mind of his own?" - -"Something like that perhaps. Because she's very strong. And she is so -different. Everything in her is different. She has nothing--nothing with -us, or we with her. We haven't done the same things or seen the same -sights or thought the same thoughts. I hardly feel as if the trees could -look the same to her as they do to us or the birds sound the same. And -she'll want such different things." - -"Perhaps she'll want his things," Oldmeadow mused. "She seems to like -them quite immensely already." - -"Ah, but only because she's going to do something to them," said Nancy. -"Only because she's going to change them. I don't think she'd like -anything she could do nothing for." - -Nancy had quite grown up. She had seen further than he had. He felt her -quiet comment big with intuitive wisdom. - -"You see deep, my dear," he said. "There's something portentous in your -picture, you know." - -"There is something portentous about her, Roger. That is just what I -feel. That is just what troubles me." - -"She may be portentous, in relation to us, and what she may do to us," -said Oldmeadow, "but I'm convinced, for all her marvels, that she's a -very ordinary young person. Don't let us magnify her. If she's not -magnified she won't work so many marvels. They're largely an affair, I'm -sure of it, of motors and pendants. She's ordinary. That's what I take -my stand on." - -"If she's ordinary, why do you feel, too, that she'll sweep Barney -away?" Nancy was not at all convinced by his demonstration. - -"Why, because he's in love with her. That's all. Her only menace is in -her difference; her complacency. What it comes to, I suppose, is that we -must hope, if they're to be happy, that he'll like her things." - -"Yes; but what it comes to then, Roger, is that we shall lose Barney," -Nancy said. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -Miss Toner did not come down to breakfast next morning and Oldmeadow was -conscious of a feeling of disproportionate relief at not finding her in -the big, bare, panelled dining-room where a portrait of Mrs. Chadwick in -court dress presided over one wall and Meg and Barney played with -rabbits, against an imitation Gainsborough background, on another. Both -pictures were an affliction to Barney; but to Mrs. Chadwick's eye they -left nothing to be desired in beauty, and, when Barney was not there to -protest, she would still fondly point out the length of eyelash that the -artist had so faithfully captured in the two children. - -The sense of change and foreboding that he and Nancy, with differences, -had recognized in their talk, must have haunted Oldmeadow's slumbers, -for he had dreamed of Miss Toner, coming towards him along the terrace, -in white, as she had been at dinner, with the beautiful pearls she had -worn, lifting her hand and saying as the rooks cawed overhead--for the -rooks cawed though the moon was brightly shining: "I can hear them, -too." - -There had been nothing to suggest such a dream in her demeanour at -dinner; nothing portentous, that is. Simple for all her competence, -girlish for all the splendour of her white array, she had spoken little, -looking at them all, and listening, gravely sometimes, but with a -pervading gentleness; and once or twice he had found her eyes on his; -those large, light eyes, dispassionately and impersonally benignant, -giving him, with their suggestion of seeing around but also very far -beyond you, a curious sense of space. Once or twice he had felt himself -a little at a loss as he met their gaze--it had endeared her to him the -less that she should almost discompose him--and he had felt anew the -presence of power in her ugly little face and even of beauty in her -colourless skin, her colourless yet so living eyes, and her crown of -wondrous gold. It had been, no doubt, this element of aesthetic -significance, merging with Nancy's words, that had built up the figure -of his dream; for so he had seen her, grey and white and gold in the -unearthly light, while the rooks cawed overhead. - -His friends this morning, though they were all talking of her, possessed -in their gaiety and lightness of heart an exorcising quality. So much -gaiety and lightness couldn't be quenched or quelled--if that was what -Miss Toner's influence menaced. Between them all they would manage to -quench and quell Miss Toner, rather, and he recovered his sense of her -fundamental absurdity as he felt anew their instinctive and -unself-conscious wisdom. - -"Isn't it odd, Roger, she hardly knows England at all," said Mrs. -Chadwick, as he finished his porridge, made his tea at the side-table, -and took his place beside her. "She's been so little here, although she -seems to have travelled everywhere and lived everywhere." - -"Except in her own country," Oldmeadow ventured the surmise, but -urbanely, for Barney sat opposite him. - -"Oh, but she's travelled there, too, immensely," said Barney. "She's -really spent most of her life in America, I think, Mother. She has a -little sort of bungalow on the coast in California, orange-trees and -roses and all the rest of it; a fairy-tale place; and a house in the -mountains in New England, high up among the pine-woods." - -"And a private train, I suppose, to carry her from one to the other. -What splendid pearls," said Oldmeadow, buttering his toast. "Haven't you -asked for them yet, Meg?" - -Meg was not easily embarrassed. "Not yet," she said. "I'm waiting for -them, though. Meanwhile this is pretty, isn't it?" The pendant hung on -her breast. - -"I believe she would give Meg her pearls, or any of us. I believe she'd -give _anything_ to _anyone_," sighed Mrs. Chadwick. "She doesn't seem to -think about money or things of that sort, material things you know, at -all. I do wish I could get the map of America straight. All being in -those uneven squares, like Turkish Delight, makes it so difficult. One -can't remember which lump is which--though Texas, in my geography, was -pale green. The nice tinned things come from California, don't they? And -New England is near Boston--the hub of the universe, that dear, droll -Oliver Wendell Holmes used to call it. I suppose they _are_ very clever -there. She has been wonderfully educated. There's nothing she doesn't -seem to have learned. And her maid adores her, Roger. I was talking to -her just now. Such a nice French woman with quite beautiful dark eyes, -but very melancholy; we make a mistake, I believe, in imagining that the -French are a gay people. I always think that's such a good sign. So kind -about my dreadful accent." - -"A good sign to have your maid like you, Mummy, or to have melancholy -eyes?" Meg inquired. "I think she's a rather ill-tempered looking woman. -But of course anybody would adore Adrienne. She's an angel of patience, -I'm sure. I never met such an angel. We don't grow them here," said Meg, -while Barney's triumphant eyes said: "I told you so," to Oldmeadow -across the table. - -After breakfast, in the sunlight on the terrace, Mrs. Chadwick confided -her hopes to him. "She really is an angel, Roger. I never met anyone in -the least like her. So good, and gifted, too, and all that money. Only -think what it would mean for dear Barney. He could take back the farm; -the lease falls in next year, and come back here to live." - -"You think she cares for him?" - -"Yes; indeed I do. She cares for us all, already, as you can see. But I -believe it's because she's adopting us all, as her family. And she said -to me yesterday that she disapproved so much of our English way of -turning out mothers and thought families ought to love each other and -live together, young and old. That's from being so much in France, -perhaps. I told her _I_ shouldn't have liked it at all if old Mrs. -Chadwick had wanted to come and live with Francis and me. She was such a -masterful old lady, Roger, very Low Church, and quite dreadfully jealous -of Francis. And eldest sons should inherit, of course, or what would -become of estates? My dear father used always to say that the greatness -of England was founded on landed estates. I told her that. But she -looked at me quite gravely as if she hardly understood when I tried to -explain--it all goes in with Waterloo being won on the fields of Eton, -doesn't it? It's quite curious the feeling of restfulness she gives me, -about Barney--a sort of Nunc Dimittis feeling, you know." - -"Only she doesn't want you to depart. Well, that's certainly all to the -good and let's hope England's greatness won't suffer from the -irregularity. Has she told you much about her life? her people?" -Oldmeadow asked. He could not find it in his heart to shadow such -ingenuous contentment. And after all what was there to say against Miss -Toner, except that she would change things? - -"Oh, a great deal. Everything I asked; for I thought it best, quite -casually you know, to find out what I could. Not people of any position, -you know, Roger, though I think her mother was better in that way than -her father; for _his_ father made tooth-paste. It's from the tooth-paste -all the money comes. But it's always puzzling about Americans, isn't it? -And it doesn't really make any difference, once they're over here, does -it?" - -"Not if they've got the money," he could not suppress; it was for his -own personal enjoyment and Mrs. Chadwick cloudlessly concurred: "No, not -if they have the money. And she has, you see. And besides that she's -good and gifted and has had such a wonderful education. Her mother died -five years ago. She showed me two pictures of her. A beautiful woman; -very artistic-looking. Rather one's idea of Corinne, though Corinne was -really Madame de Stael, I believe; and she was very plain." - -"Was she dressed like Queen Louise of Prussia; coming down the steps, -you know, in the Empire dress with white bound round her head?" - -"Yes; she was. How did you know, Roger? Extremely picturesque; but quite -a lady, too. At least"--Mrs. Chadwick hesitated, perplexed between -kindliness and candour--"almost." - -"I heard about her from Mrs. Aldesey. You remember my American friend. -She didn't know her, but had seen her years ago in New York in that -romantic costume." - -Mrs. Chadwick felt perhaps the slight irony in his voice, for she -rejoined, though not at all provocatively: "Why shouldn't people look -romantic if they can? I should think Mrs. Toner had a much more romantic -life than Mrs. Aldesey. _She's_ gone on just as we have, hasn't she, -seeing always the same people; and being conventional. Whereas Adrienne -and her mother seem to have known everyone strange and interesting -wherever they went; great scientists and thinkers, you know; and poets -and pianists. Adrienne told me that her mother always seemed to her to -have great wings and that's just what I felt about her when I looked at -her. She'd flown everywhere." As she spoke Miss Toner appeared upon the -doorstep. - -Although it was Sunday she had not varied her dress, which was still the -simple dress of dim, dark-blue; but over it she wore a silk jacket, and -a straw hat trimmed with a lighter shade of blue was tied, in -summer-like fashion, beneath her chin. She carried a sunshade and a -small basket filled with letters. - -Mrs. Chadwick, both hands outstretched, went to meet her. Oldmeadow had -never before seen her kiss an acquaintance of two days' standing. "I do -hope you slept well, my dear," she said. - -"Very well," said Miss Toner, including Oldmeadow in her smile. "Except -for a little while when I woke up and lay awake and couldn't get the -cawing of your rooks out of my mind. I seemed to hear them going on and -on." - -"Oh, dear! How unfortunate! But surely they weren't cawing in the -night!" cried Mrs. Chadwick, and Miss Toner, laughing and holding her -still by the hands, turned to tell Barney, who closely followed her, -that his mother was really afraid, because she had thought of rooks in -the night, that their Coldbrooks birds had actually been inhospitable -enough to keep her awake with their cawings. Meg and Barbara and Nancy -had all now emerged and there was much laughter and explanation. - -"You see, Mummy thinks you might work miracles--even among the rooks," -said Barney, while Oldmeadow testily meditated on his own discomfort. It -might have been mere coincidence, or it might--he must admit it--have -been Miss Toner's thoughts travelling into his dream or his dream -troubling her thoughts; of the two last alternatives he didn't know -which he disliked the more. - -"It's time to get ready for church, children," said Mrs. Chadwick, when, -after much merriment at her expense, the rooks and their occult -misdemeanours were disposed of. "Where is Palgrave? I do hope he won't -miss again. It does so hurt dear Mr. Bodman's feelings. Are you coming -with us, my dear?" she asked Miss Toner. - -Miss Toner, smiling upon them all, her sunshade open on her shoulder, -said that if they did not mind she did not think she would come. "I only -go to church when friends get married or their babies christened," she -said, "or something of that sort. I was never brought up to it, you see. -Mother never went." - -Mrs. Chadwick's March Hare eyes dwelt on her. "You aren't a -Churchwoman?" - -"Oh, dear, no!" said Miss Toner, and the very suggestion seemed to amuse -her. - -Mrs. Chadwick hesitated: "A Dissenter?" she ventured. "There are so many -sects in America I've heard. Though I met a very charming American -bishop once." - -"No--not a Dissenter; if you mean by that a Presbyterian or a Methodist -or a Swedenborgian," said Miss Toner, shaking her head. - -Palgrave had now joined them and stood on the step above her. She smiled -round and up at him. - -Mrs. Chadwick, her distress alleviated yet her perplexity deepened, -ventured further: "You are a Christian, I hope, dear?" - -"Oh, not at all," said Miss Toner gravely now and very kindly. "Not in -any orthodox way, I mean. Not in any way that an American bishop or your -Mr. Bodman would acknowledge. I recognize Christ as a great teacher, as -a great human soul; one of the very greatest; gone on before. But I -don't divide the human from the divine in the way the churches do; -creeds mean nothing to me, and I'd rather say my prayers out of doors on -a day like this, in the sunlight, than in any church. I feel nearer God -alone in His great world, than in any church built with human hands. But -we must all follow our own light." She spoke in her flat, soft voice, -gravely but very simply; and she looked affectionately at her hostess as -she added: "You wouldn't want me to come with you from mere conformity." - -Poor Mrs. Chadwick, standing, her brood about her, in the sweet Sabbath -sunlight, had to Oldmeadow's eye an almost comically arrested air. How -was a creedless, churchless mistress of Coldbrooks to be fitted in to -her happy vision of Barney's future? What would the village say to a -squiress who never went to church and who said her prayers in the -sunlight alone? "But, of course, better alone," he seemed to hear her -cogitate, "than that anyone should see her doing such a very curious -thing." And aloud she did murmur: "Of course not; of course not, dear. -And if you go into the little arbour down by the lake no one will -disturb you, I'm sure. Must it be quite in the open? Mere conformity is -such a shallow thing. But all the same I should like the rector to come -and talk things over with you. He's such a good man and very, very -broad-minded. He brings science so often into his sermons--sometimes I -think the people don't quite follow it all; and only the other day he -said to me, about modern unrest and scepticism: - - 'There is more faith in honest doubt, - Believe me, than in half the creeds.' - -Mamma met Lord Tennyson once and felt him to be a deeply religious -man--though rather ill-tempered; he was really very rude to her, I -always thought, and I do so dislike rudeness.--And travelling about so -much, dear, you probably had so little teaching." - -Miss Toner's eyes were incapable of irony and they only deepened now in -benevolence as they rested on her hostess. "But I haven't any doubts," -she said, shaking her head and smiling: "No doubts at all. You reach the -truth through your church and I reach it through nature and love and -life. And the beautiful thing is that it's the same truth, really; the -same beautiful truth that God loves us all, and that we are all the -children of God. I should be very pleased to meet your rector, of -course, because I like meeting anyone who is good and true. But I was -taught. My mother taught me always. And she was the freest, wisest soul -I have ever known." - -"I'll stay with you," said Palgrave suddenly from his place on the step -above her. His eyes, over her shoulder, had met Oldmeadow's and perhaps -what he saw in the old friend's face determined his testimony. "Church -means nothing to me, either; and less than nothing. I'm not so -charitable as you are, and don't think all roads lead to truth. Some -lead away, I think. You know perfectly well, Mummy, that the dear old -rector is a regular duffer and you slept all through the sermon the last -time I went; you did, really! I was too amused to sleep. He was trying -to explain original sin without mentioning Adam or Eve or the Garden of -Eden. It was most endearing! Like some one trying to avoid the eye of an -old acquaintance whom they'd come to the conclusion they really must -cut! I do so like the idea of Adam and Eve becoming unsuitable -acquaintances for the enlightened clergy!" - -"There is no sin," said Miss Toner. Barney was not quite comfortable; -Oldmeadow saw that. He kicked about in the gravel, a little flushed, -and when, once or twice, the old family friend met his eye, it was -quickly averted. "God is Good; and everything else is mortal -mind--mistake--illusion." - -"You are a sound Platonist, Miss Toner," Oldmeadow observed, and his -kindness hardly cloaked his irony. - -"Am I?" she said. When she looked at one she never averted her eyes. -She looked until she had seen all that she wished to see. "I am not fond -of metaphysics." - -"Socrates defined sin as ignorance, you know, and in a sense it may be. -All the same," said Oldmeadow, and he felt that they were all listening -and that in the eyes of his old friends it was more than unlikely that -he would get the better of Miss Toner--"there's mortal mind to be -accounted for, isn't there, and why it gets us continually into such a -mess. Whatever name you call it by, there is something that does get us -into a mess and mightn't it be a wholesome discipline to hear it -denounced once a week?" - -"Not by some one more ignorant than I am!" said Miss Toner, laughing -gently. "I'll go to church for love of Mrs. Chadwick, but not for the -sake of the discipline!" - -"Mr. Bodman never denounces. Roger is giving you quite a wrong idea," -said Mrs. Chadwick. She had stood looking from one to the other, -distressed and bewildered, and she now prepared to leave them. "And -Palgrave is very, very unjust. Of course you must not come, dear. It -would make me quite unhappy. But Mr. Bodman is not a duffer. If Palgrave -feels like that he must certainly stay away. Perhaps you can teach him -to be more charitable. It's easy to see the mote in our neighbour's -eye." Mrs. Chadwick's voice slightly trembled. She had been much moved -by her son's defection. - -"Come, Mummy, you're not going to say _I'm_ a duffer!" Palgrave passed -an affectionately bantering arm round her shoulders. "Dufferism isn't -_my_ beam!" - -But very sadly Mrs. Chadwick drew away, saying as she turned into the -house: "No; that isn't your beam. But pride may be, Palgrave. Spiritual -pride." - -Oldmeadow remained standing in the sunlight with Miss Toner and the two -young men. The girls had followed Mrs. Chadwick, Meg casting a laughing -glance of appreciation at him as she went. Religious scruples would -never keep Meg from church if she had a pretty spring dress to wear. - -"After all," he carried on, mildly, the altercation--if that was what it -was between him and Miss Toner--"good Platonists as we may be, we -haven't reached the stage of Divine Contemplation yet and things do -happen that are difficult to account for, if sin is nothing more -positive than illusion and mistake. All the forms of _ote-toi que je m'y -mette_. All the forms of jealousy and malice. Deliberate cruelties. -History is full of horrors, isn't it? There's a jealousy of goodness in -the human heart, as well as a love. The betrayal of Christ by Judas is -symbolic." - -He had screwed his eyeglass into his eye the better to see Miss Toner -and looked very much like a solicitor trying to coax dry facts out of a -romantic client. And in the transparent shadow of her hat Miss Toner, -with her incomparable composure, gave him all her attention. - -"I don't account. I don't account for anything. Do you?" she said. "I -only feel and know. But even the dreadful things, the things that seem -to us so dreadful--isn't it always ignorance? Ignorance of what is -really good and happy--and the illusion of a separate self? When we are -all, really, one. All, really, together." She held out her arms, her -little basket hanging from her wrist. "And if we feel that at last, and -know it, those dreadful things can't happen any more." - -"Your 'if' is the standing problem of metaphysics and ethics. Why don't -we feel and know it? That's the question? And since we most of us, for -most of the time, don't feel and know it, don't we keep closer to the -truth if we accept the traditional phraseology and admit that there's -something in the texture of life, something in ourselves, that tempts -us, or impedes us, or crushes us, and call it sin--evil?" - -He was looking at her, still with his latent irony though kindly enough -indeed, and he had, as he looked, an intuition about her. She had never -been tempted, she had never been impeded, she had never been crushed. -That was her power. She was, in a fashion, sinless. It was as if she had -been hypnotized in infancy to be good. And while the fact made her in -one sense so savourless, it made her in another so significant. She -would go much further than most people in any direction she wanted to go -simply because she was not aware of obstacles and had no inhibitions. - -"Call it what you like," said Miss Toner. She still smiled--but more -gravely. Barney had ceased to stroll and kick. He had come to a -standstill beside them, and, his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on -his beloved, showed himself as completely reassured. Palgrave still -stood on the step above her and seemed to watch the snowy, piled-up -clouds that adorned the tranquil sky. "I feel it a mistake to make -unreal things seem real by giving them big names. We become afraid of -them and fear is what impedes us most of all in life. For so many -generations humanity has seen ghosts in the evening mists and taken its -indigestion for the promptings of a demon. We've got away from all that -now, Mr. Oldmeadow. We see that mists are mists and indigestion -indigestion, and that there aren't such things as ghosts and demons. -We've come out, all together, hand in hand, on the Open Road and we -don't want, ever any more, to be reminded, even, of the Dark Ages." - -Before her fluency, Oldmeadow felt himself grow less kindly. "You grant -there have been dark ages, then? I count that a concession. Things may -not be evil now, but they were once." - -"Not a concession at all," said Miss Toner. "Only an explanation of what -has happened--an explanation of what you call the mess, Mr. Oldmeadow." - -"So that when we find ourselves misbehaving to one another as we march -along the Open Road, we may know it's only indigestion and take a pill." - -She didn't like badinage. That, at all events, was evident to him, even -in her imperturbability. She took it calmly--not lightly; and if she was -not already beginning to dislike him, it was because disliking people -was a reality she didn't recognize. "We don't misbehave if we are on the -Open Road," she said. - -"Oh, but you're falling back now on good old-fashioned theology," -Oldmeadow retorted. "The sheep, saved and well-behaved, keeping to the -road, and the goats--all those who misbehave and stray--classed with the -evening mists." - -"No," said Miss Toner eyeing him, "I don't class them with the evening -mists; I class them with the sick, whom we must be kind to and take care -of." - -Mrs. Chadwick was now emerging in her new spring hat, which was not very -successful and gave emphasis to her general air of strain. Meg's hat was -very successful, as Meg's hats always were; and if Nancy's did not shine -beside it, it was, at all events, exceedingly becoming to her. Nancy's -eyes went to Barney. Barney, in the past, had been very appreciative of -becoming hats. But he had no eyes for Nancy now. He had drawn Miss Toner -aside and Oldmeadow heard their colloquy: - -"Would you rather I didn't go?" - -"I'd rather, always, you followed your light, dear friend." - -"I do like going here, you know. It seems to belong with it all--and -Mummy can't bear our not going." - -"It makes your dear mother happy. It all means love to you." - -"Not only that"--Oldmeadow imagined that Barney blushed, and he heard -his stammer: "I don't know what I believe about everything; but the -service goes much deeper than anything I could think for myself." Their -voices dropped. All that came further to Oldmeadow was from Miss Toner: -"It makes you nearer than if you stayed." - -"Confound her ineffability!" he thought. "It rests with her, then, -whether he should go or stay." - -It certainly did. Barney moved away with them all, leaving Palgrave to -the more evident form of proximity. - -"You know," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to Oldmeadow as they went, between -the primroses, down the little path and through a wicket-gate that led -to the village--"you know, Roger, it's _quite_ possible that they may -say their prayers together. It's like Quakers, isn't it--or Moravians; -or whoever those curious people are who are buried standing up--so -dismal and uncomfortable, I always think. But it's better that Palgrave -should say his prayers with some one, and somewhere, isn't it, than that -he shouldn't say them at all?" - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -"Mother's got the most poisonous headache," said Meg. "I don't think -she'll be able to come down to tea." - -She had joined Oldmeadow on the rickety old bench where he sat reading -and smoking in a sunny corner of the garden. A band of golden -wallflowers behind them exhaled the deep fragrance that he always -associated with spring and Sunday and Coldbrooks, and the old stone wall -behind the flowers exhaled a warmth that was like a fragrance. - -"Adrienne is with her," Meg added. She had seated herself and put her -elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands as though she intended a -solid talk. - -"Will that be likely to help her head?" Oldmeadow inquired. "I should -say not, if she's going to continue the discourse of this morning." - -"Did you think all that rather silly?" Meg inquired, tapping her smart -toes on the ground and watching them. "You looked as if you did. But -then you usually do look as though you thought most things and people -silly. I didn't--I mean, not in her. I quite saw what you did; at least -I think so. But she can say things that would be silly in other people. -Now Palgrave is silly. There's just the difference. Is it because he -always feels he's scoring off somebody and she doesn't?" Meg was -evidently capable, for all her devotion, of dispassionate inquiry. - -"She's certainly more secure than Palgrave," said Oldmeadow. "But I -feel that's only because she's less intelligent. Palgrave is aware, -keenly, of a critical and probably hostile world; and Miss Toner is -unaware of everything except her own benevolence, and the need for it." - -Meg meditated. Then she laughed. "You _are_ spiteful, Roger. Oh--I don't -mean about Adrienne in particular. But you always see the weak spots in -people, first go. It's rather jolly, all the same, if you come to think -it over, to be like that. Perhaps that's all she is aware of; but it -takes you a good way--wanting to help people and seeing how they can be -helped." - -"Yes; it does take you a good way. I don't deny that Miss Toner will go -far." - -"And make us go too far, perhaps?" Meg mused. "Well, I'm quite ready for -a move. I think we're all rather stodgy, really, down here. And up in -London, too, if it comes to that. I'm rather disappointed in London, you -know, Roger, and what it does for one. Just a different kind of sheep, -it seems to me, from the kind we are in the country; noisy skipping -sheep instead of silent, slow ones. But they all follow each other about -in just the same way. And what one likes is to see someone who isn't -following." - -"Yes; that's true, certainly," Oldmeadow conceded. "Miss Toner isn't a -sheep. She's the sort of person who sets the sheep moving. I'm not so -sure that she knows where she is going, all the same." - -"You mean--Be careful; don't you?" said Meg, looking up at him sideways -with her handsome eyes. "I'm not such a sheep myself, when it comes to -that, you know, Roger. I look before I leap--even after Adrienne," she -laughed; and Oldmeadow, looking back at her, laughed too--pleased with -her, yet a little disconcerted by what she revealed of experience. - -"The reason I like her so awfully," Meg went on--while he reflected -that, after all, she was now twenty-five--"and it's a good thing I do, -isn't it, since it's evident she's going to take Barney; but the reason -is that she's so interested in one. More than anyone I ever knew--far -and far away. Of course Mother's interested; but it's _for_ one; _about_ -one; not _in_ one, as it were. And then darling old Mummy isn't exactly -intelligent, is she; or only in such unexpected spots that it's never -much good to one; one can never count on it beforehand. Whereas Adrienne -is so interested in you that she makes you feel more interested in -yourself than you ever dreamed you could feel. Do you know what I mean? -Is it because she's American, do you think? English people aren't -interested in themselves, off their own bat, perhaps; or in other people -either! I don't mean we're not selfish all right!" Meg laughed. - -"Selfish and yet impersonal," Oldmeadow mused. "With less of our social -consciousness in use, with more of it locked up in automatism, -possibly." - -"There's nothing locked up in Adrienne; absolutely nothing," Meg -declared. "It's all there--out in the shop-window. And it's a big window -too, even though some of the hats and scarves, so to speak, may strike -us as funny. But, seriously, what is it about her, do you think? How can -she care so much?--about everybody?" - -He remembered Nancy's diagnosis. "Not about everybody. Only about people -she can do something for. You'll find she won't care about me." - -"Why should she? You don't care for her. Why should she waste herself on -people who don't need her?" Meg's friendliness of glance did not -preclude a certain hardness. - -"Why indeed? It could never occur to her, of course, that she might need -somebody. I don't mean that spitefully. She is strong. She doesn't -need." - -"Exactly. Like you," said Meg. "She's quite right to pay no attention to -the other strong people. For of course you are very strong, Roger, and -frightfully clever; and good, too. Only one has to be cleverer, no -doubt, than we are to see your goodness as easily as Adrienne's. It's -the shop-window again. She shows her goodness all the time; and you -don't."' - -Oldmeadow knocked the ashes out of his pipe and felt for his -tobacco-pouch. "I show my spite. No; you mustn't count me among the -good. I suppose your mother's headache came on this morning after she -found out that Miss Toner doesn't go to church." - -"Of course it was that. You saw that she was thinking about it all -through the service, didn't you?" said Meg. "And once, poor lamb, she -said, 'Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners' instead of Amen. Did you -notice? It will bother her frightfully, of course. But after all it's -not so bad as if Adrienne were a Dissenter and wanted to go to chapel! -Mummy in her heart of hearts would much rather you were a pagan than a -Dissenter. I don't think it will make a bit of difference really. So -long as she gives money to the church, and is nice to the village -people. Mother will get over it," said Meg. - -He thought so too. His own jocose phrase returned to him. As long as the -money was there it didn't make any difference. But Meg's security on -that score interested him. With all her devotion to the new friend she -struck him, fundamentally, as less kind than Nancy, who had none. But -that, no doubt, was because Meg, fundamentally, was hard and Nancy -loving. It was because of Miss Toner's interest in herself that Meg was -devoted. "You're so sure, then, that she's going to take Barney?" he -asked. - -"Quite sure," said Meg. "Surer than he is. Surer than she is. She's in -love with him all right; more than she knows herself, poor dear. No -doubt she thinks she's making up her mind and choosing. Weighing Barney -in the balance and counting up his virtues. But it's all decided -already; and not by his virtues; it never is," said Meg, again with her -air of unexpected experience. "It's something much more important than -virtues; it's the thickness of his eyelashes and the way his teeth show -when he smiles, and all his pretty ways and habits. Things like that. -She loves looking at him and more than that, even, she loves having him -look at her. I have an idea that she's not had people very much in love -with her before; not people with eyelashes and teeth like Barney. In -spite of all her money. And she's getting on, too. She's as old as -Barney, you know. It's the one, real romance that's ever come to her, -poor dear. Funny you don't see it. Men don't see that sort of thing I -suppose. But she _couldn't_ give Barney up now, simply. It's because of -that, you know"--Meg glanced behind them and lowered her voice--"that -she doesn't like Nancy." - -"Doesn't like Nancy!" Oldmeadow's instant indignation was in his voice. -"What has Nancy to do with it?" - -"She might have had a great deal, poor darling little Nancy; and it's -that Adrienne feels. She felt it at once. I saw she did; that Nancy and -Barney had been very near each other; that there was an affinity, a -sympathy, call it what you like, that would have led to something more. -It wouldn't have done at all, of course; at least I suppose not. They -knew each other too well; and, until the last year or two, she's been -too young for him. And then, above all, she's hardly any money. But all -the same, if he hadn't come across Adrienne and been bowled over like -this, Barney would have fallen in love with Nancy. She's getting to be -so lovely looking, for one thing, isn't she? And Barney's so susceptible -to looks. He was falling in love with her last winter and she knew it as -well as I did. It's rather rotten luck for Nancy because I'm afraid she -cares; but then women do have rotten luck about love affairs," said Meg, -now sombrely. "The dice are loaded against them every time." - -Oldmeadow sat smoking in silence for some moments, making no effort to -master his strong resentment; taking, rather, full possession of its -implications. "Somewhat of a flaw in your angel you must admit," he said -presently. "She doesn't like people who are as strong as she is and she -doesn't like people who might have been loved instead of herself. It -narrows the scale of her benevolence, you know. It makes her look -perilously like a jealous prig, and a prig without any excuse for -jealousy into the bargain." - -"Temper, Roger," Meg observed, casting her hard, friendly glance round -at him; "I know you think there's no one quite to match Nancy; and I -think you're not far wrong. She's the straightest, sweetest-tempered -girl who ever stepped on two feet. But all the same Adrienne isn't a -prig, and if she's jealous she can't help herself. She _wants_ to love -Nancy; she thinks she does love her; she'll always be heavenly to her. -She can do a lot for Nancy, you know. She will do a lot for her, even if -Nancy holds her off. But she wishes frightfully that she was old and -ugly. She wishes that Barney weren't so fond of her without thinking -about her. She's jealous and she can't help herself--like all the rest -of us!" Meg laughed grimly. "When it comes to that we're none of us -angels." - -It was tea-time and the dear old gong sounded balmily from the house. As -they went along the path the rooks again were cawing overhead and dimly, -like the hint of evening in the air, he remembered his dream and the -sense of menace. "You know, it's not like all the rest of you," he said. -"It's not like Nancy, for instance. Nancy wouldn't dislike a person -because she was jealous of them. In fact I don't believe Nancy could be -jealous. She'd only be hurt." - -"It's rather a question of degree, that, isn't it?" said Meg. "In one -form of it you're poisoned and in the other you're cut with a knife; and -the latter is the prettier way of suffering; doesn't make you come out -in a rash and feel sick. Nancy is cut with the knife; and if she's not -jealous in the ugly sense, she dislikes Adrienne all right." - -"Why should she like her?" Oldmeadow retorted, and Meg's simile seemed -to cut into him, too. "She doesn't need her money or her interest or her -love. She doesn't dislike her. She merely wishes she were somewhere -else--as I do." - -The garden path led straight into the house. One entered a sort of -lobby, where coats and hats and rackets and gardening baskets were kept, -and from the lobby went into the hall. Tea was, as always, laid there -and Mrs. Chadwick, as Meg and Oldmeadow came in, was descending the -staircase at the further end, leaning on Adrienne Toner's arm. - -"You see. She's done it!" Meg murmured. She seemed to bear him no -ill-will for his expressed aversion. "I never knew one of Mother's -headaches go so quickly." - -"I expect she'd rather have stayed quietly upstairs," said Oldmeadow; -"she looks puzzled. As if she didn't know what had happened to her." - -"Like a rabbit when it comes out of the conjuror's hat," said the -irreverent daughter. - -That was precisely what poor Eleanor Chadwick did look like and for the -moment his mind was diverted by amusement at her appearance from its -bitter preoccupation. Mrs. Chadwick was the rabbit and Miss Toner was -the conjuror indeed; bland and secure and holding her trophy in a firm -but gentle grasp. Not until they were all seated did Barney and Nancy -appear and then it was evident to him that if Miss Toner were jealous of -Nancy she did not fear her, for it was she who had arranged the walk -from which the young couple had just returned. - -"Was it lovely?" she asked Barney, as he took the place beside her. "Oh, -I do wish I could have come; but I knew your Mother needed me." - -"The primroses are simply ripping in the wood," said Barney. - -Nancy carried a large bunch of primroses. - -"Ripping," said Miss Toner, laughing gently. - -"How absurd of you, Barney. Could anything be less ripping than -primroses? How beautiful they are and what a lovely bunch. One sees that -Miss Averil loves them from the way she has picked them." If she did not -call Nancy by her Christian name it was, Oldmeadow knew, not her but -Nancy's fault. - -Nancy still stood beside the table and from the fact of standing, while -all the rest of them were seated, from the fact of being called Miss -Averil, she seemed, for the moment, oddly an outsider; as if she hardly -belonged to the circle of which Miss Toner was the centre. "Do come and -sit near us," said Miss Toner. "For I had to miss you, too, you see, as -well as the primroses." - -"I'd crowd you there," said Nancy, smiling. "I'll sit here near Aunt -Eleanor." From something in her eyes Oldmeadow felt suddenly sure that -not till now had she realized that it had not, really, been her and -Barney's walk. She offered the primroses to Mrs. Chadwick as she took -the chair beside her, saying, "They'll fill your white bowl in the -morning-room, Aunt Eleanor." - -"Oh, I say; but I meant those for Adrienne, Nancy!" Barney exclaimed, -and as he did so Meg's eyes met Oldmeadow's over the household loaf. -"She didn't see them in the wood, so she ought to have them. Mummy is -suffocated with primroses already." - -But Nancy showed no rash and only an acute Meg could have guessed a cut -as she answered: "I'll pick another bunch to-morrow for Miss Toner, -Barney. They'll be fresher to take to London. These are really Aunt -Eleanor's. I always fill that bowl for her." - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -"I do so want a talk with you, Roger," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to him -when tea was over. The dining-room opened at one end of the hall and the -drawing-room at the other and the morning-room, Mrs. Chadwick's special -retreat, into which she now drew him, was tucked in behind the -dining-room and looked out at an angle of the garden wall and at the -dove-cot that stood there. Mrs. Chadwick's doves were usually fluttering -about the window and even, when it was open, entering the room, where -she sometimes fondly fed them, causing thereby much distress of mind to -Turner, the good old parlourmaid. A pleasant little fire was burning -there and, after placing her primroses in the white bowl, Mrs. Chadwick -drew her chair to it, casting a glance, as she did so, up at the large -portrait of her husband in hunting dress that hung above the -mantelpiece. It was painted with the same glib unintelligence as the -dining-room portraits, but the painter had been unable to miss entirely -the whimsical daring of the eyes or to bring into conformity with his -own standard of good looks the charm of the irregular and narrow face. -Francis Chadwick had been an impulsive, idle, endearing man, and, -remaining always in love with his wife, had fondly cherished all her -absurdities. Since his death poor Mrs. Chadwick had been perplexed by -her effort to associate with gravity and inspiration one who had always -been a laughing incentive to inconsequence. Oldmeadow reflected, as he, -too, looked up at him, that Francis Chadwick would neither have needed -nor have liked Miss Toner. - -"It's so very, very strange, Roger, I really must tell you," Mrs. -Chadwick said. Her hair, still bright and abundant, was very untidy. She -had evidently not brushed it since rising from her sofa. "I had one of -my dreadful headaches, you know. It came on at church this morning and I -really couldn't attend to Mr. Bodman at all. Perhaps you saw." - -"I heard. Yes. Miss Toner had disturbed you a good deal." - -"I did feel so bewildered and unhappy about it all," said Mrs. Chadwick, -fixing her blue eyes upon the family friend. Eleanor Chadwick's eyes -could show the uncanny ingenuousness and the uncanny wisdom of a baby's. -"Nothing so innocent or so sharp was ever seen outside a perambulator," -her husband had once said of them. "About her, you know, Roger," she -continued, "and Barney and Palgrave. The influence. I could not bear -them to lose their faith in the church of their fathers." - -"No," said Oldmeadow. "But you must be prepared to see it shift a good -deal. Faiths have to shift nowadays if they're to stand." - -"Well. Yes. I know what you mean, Roger. But it isn't a question of -shifting, is it? I'm very broad. I've always been all for breadth. And -the broader you are the firmer you ought to be, oughtn't you?" - -"Well, Miss Toner's broad and firm," Oldmeadow suggested. "I never saw -anyone more so." - -"But in such a queer way, Roger. Like saying one's prayers out of doors -and thinking oneself as good as Christ. Oh, it all made me perfectly -wretched and after lunch my head was so bad that I went and lay down in -the dark; and it raged, simply. Oh, dear, I thought; this means a day -and night of misery. They go on like that once they begin. Mamma used -to have them in precisely the same way. Absolutely incapacitating. I can -never see how anybody can deny heredity. That's another point, Roger. -I've always accepted evolution. I gave up Adam and Eve long ago; gave -them up as white and good-looking, I mean; because we must have begun -_somewhere_, mustn't we? And Darwin was such a good man; though you -remember he came not to care anything at all about music. That may mean -a great deal, if one could think it all out; it's the most religious of -the arts, isn't it? But there's no end to thinking things out!" Mrs. -Chadwick pressed her hand against her forehead, closing her eyes for a -moment. "And Adrienne is very musical." - -"You were at your headache," Oldmeadow reminded her. It was customary in -the family circle thus to shepherd Mrs. Chadwick's straying thoughts. - -"Yes, I know. But it all hangs together. Heredity and Mamma and my -headaches; and Adrienne's mother, who was musical, too, and played on a -harp. Well, it was raging and I was lying there, when there came a -little rap at the door. I knew at once who it was and she asked in such -a gentle voice if she might come in. It's a very soothing voice, isn't -it? But do you know I felt for a moment quite frightened, as if I simply -couldn't see her. But I had to say yes, and she came in so softly and -sat down beside me and said: 'I used to help Mother, sometimes, with her -headaches. May I help you?' She didn't want to talk about things, as I'd -feared. Such a relief it was. So I said: 'Oh, do my dear,' and she laid -her hand on my forehead and said: 'You will soon feel better. It will -soon quite pass away.' And then not another word. Only sitting there in -the dark, with her hand on my forehead. And do you know, Roger, almost -at once the pain began to melt away. You know how a dish of junket melts -after you cut into it. It was like that. 'Junket, junket,' I seemed to -hear myself saying; and such a feeling of peace and contentment. And -before I knew anything more I fell into the most delicious sleep and -slept till now, just before tea. She was sitting there still, in the -dark beside me and I said: 'Oh, my dear, to think of your having stayed -in on this lovely afternoon!' But she went to pull up the blinds and -said that she loved sitting quietly in the dark with some one she cared -for, sleeping. 'I think souls come very close together, then,' she said. -Wasn't it beautiful of her, Roger? Like astral bodies, you know, and -auras and things of that sort. She _is_ beautiful. I made up my mind to -that, then. She gives me such a feeling of trust. How can one help it? -It's like what one reads of Roman Catholic saints and people in the -Bible. The gift of healing. The laying on of hands. We don't seem to -have any of them and we can't count _her_, since she doesn't believe in -the church. But if only they'd give up the Pope, I don't see why we -shouldn't accept their saints; such dear, good people, most of them. And -the Pope is quite an excellent man just now, I believe. But isn't it -very strange, Roger? For a person who can do that to one can't be -irreligious, can they?" - -Mrs. Chadwick's eye was now fixed upon him, less wistfully and more -intently, and he knew that something was expected of him. - -"Hypnotic doctors can do it, you know. You needn't be a saint to do it," -he said. "Though I suppose you must have some power of concentration -that implies faith. However," he had to say all his thought, though most -of it would be wasted upon poor Eleanor Chadwick, "Miss Toner is -anything but irreligious. You may be sure of that." - -"You feel it, too, Roger. I'm so, so glad." - -"But her religion is not as your religion," he had to warn her, "nor her -ways your ways. You must be prepared to have the children unsettled; -everyone of them; because she has great power and is far more religious -than most people. She believes in her creed and acts on it. You must -give the children their heads. It's no good trying to circumvent or -oppose them." - -"But they mustn't do wrong things, Roger. How can I give them their -heads if it's to do wrong things? I don't know what Mamma would have -said to their not going to church--especially in the country. She would -have thought it very wrong, simply. Sinful and dangerous." - -"Hardly that," Oldmeadow smiled. "Even in the country. You don't think -Miss Toner does wrong things. If they take up Miss Toner's creed instead -of going to church, they won't come to much harm. The principal thing is -that there should be something to take up. After all," he was reassuring -himself as well as Mrs. Chadwick, "it hasn't hurt her. It's made her a -little foolish; but it hasn't hurt her. And your children will never be -foolish. They'll get all the good of it and, perhaps, be able to combine -it with going to church. - -"Foolish, Roger?" Mrs. Chadwick, relieved of her headache, but not of -her perplexity, gazed wanly at him. "You think Adrienne foolish?" - -"A little. Now and then. You mustn't accept anything she says to you -just because she can cure you of a headache." - -"But how can you say foolish, Roger? She's had a most wonderful -education?" - -"Everything that makes her surer of herself and makes other people surer -of her puts her in more danger of being foolish. One can be too sure of -oneself. Unless one is a saint--and even then. And though I don't think -she's irreligious I don't think she's a saint. Not by any means." - -"I don't see how anyone can be more of one, nowadays, Roger. She heals -people and she says prayers, and she is always good and gentle and never -thinks of herself. I'm sure I can't think what you want more." - -A touch of plaintiveness and even of protest had come into Mrs. -Chadwick's voice. - -"Perhaps what I want is less," he laughed. "Perhaps she's too much of a -saint for my taste. I think she's a little too much of one for your -taste, really--if you were to be quite candid with yourself. Has she -spoken to you at all about Barney? Are you quite sure you'll have to -reckon with her for yourself and the children?" - -At this Mrs. Chadwick showed a frank alarm. "Oh, quite, quite sure!" she -said. "She couldn't be so lovely to us all if she didn't mean to take -him! Why do you ask, Roger? You haven't any reason for thinking she -won't?" - -"None whatever. Quite the contrary." He didn't want to put poor Mrs. -Chadwick to the cruel test of declaring whether she would rather have -the children go to church and lose Miss Toner and all her money or have -them stay away and keep Miss Toner. After all such a test was not to be -asked of her. Miss Toner wanted people to follow their own light. "I -only wondered if she talked to you about him. Asked any girlish leading -questions." - -"None, none whatever," said Mrs. Chadwick. "But I feel that's because -she thinks she knows him far better than I do and that he's told her -everything already. It's rather hard to be a mother, Roger. For of -course, though she is so much better and cleverer than I am, I feel sure -that no one understands Barney as I do." - -"She'd be a little cleverer still if she could see that, wouldn't she?" - -"Well, I don't know. Girls never do. I was just the same when I was -engaged to Francis. Even now I can't think that old Mrs. Chadwick really -understood him as I did. It's very puzzling, isn't it? Very difficult to -see things from other people's point of view. When she pulled up the -blind this afternoon, she told me that Nancy and Barney were down in the -copse and she seemed pleased." - -"Oh, did she?" - -"I told her that they'd always been like brother and sister, for I was -just a little afraid, you know, that she might imagine Barney had ever -cared about Nancy." - -"I see. You think she wouldn't like that?" - -"What woman would, Roger?" And he imagined that Mrs. Chadwick, for all -her folly, was cleverer than Miss Toner guessed, as she added: "And then -she told me that she'd made Barney go without her. She wanted me to see, -you know, that it depended on her. That's another reason why I feel sure -she is going to take him." - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -He sat, for the first time, next Miss Toner that night at dinner and -Nancy sat across from them next Barney. Nancy was pale, and now that he -could scrutinize her he imagined that the walk had been more of an -ordeal than a pleasure. Barney, no doubt, with the merciless blindness -of his state, had talked to her all the time of Adrienne. But Nancy -would not have minded that. She was of the type that hides its cut for -ever and may become aunt and guardian-angel to the other woman's -children. It had not been Barney's preoccupation that had so drained her -of warmth and colour, but its character, its object. Her grey eyes had -the considering look with which they might have measured the height of a -difficult hedge in hunting, and, resting on Oldmeadow once or twice, -seemed to tell him that the walk had shown her more clearly than ever -that, if Barney married Miss Toner, they must lose him. He felt sure -that she had lain down since tea with a headache to which had come no -ministering angel. - -She and Barney did not talk to each other now, for he had eyes and ears -only for Miss Toner. At any former time they would have kept up the -happiest interchange, and Oldmeadow would have seen Nancy's eyelashes -close together as she smiled her loving smile. There was a dim family -likeness between her face and Barney's, for both were long and narrow, -and both had the singular sweetness in the very structure of the smile. -But where Barney was clumsy, Nancy was clear, and her skin was as fair -as his was brown. To the fond onlooker at both, they were destined mates -and only an insufferable accident had parted them. - -Nancy was as much a part of the Coldbrooks country as the primroses and -the blackcaps in the woods. Her life had risen from the familiar soil to -the familiar sky, as preordained to fitness, as ordered by instinct and -condition as theirs, and from her security of type she had gained not -lost in savour. The time that unfinished types must give to growing -conscious roots and building conscious nests, Nancy had all free for -spontaneities of flight and song. Beside her, to his hostile eye, Miss -Toner was as a wide-spread water-weed, floating, rootless and scentless, -upon chance currents: A creature of surfaces, of caprice and hazard. If -the multiplicity of her information constituted mental wealth, its -impersonality constituted mental poverty. She was as well furnished and -as deadening as a catalogue, and as he listened to her, receiving an -impression of continual, considered movings-on, earnest pursuits, across -half the globe, of further experience, he saw her small, questing figure -on a background of railways, giant lines stretching forth across plain -and mountain, climbing, tunnelling, curving; stopping at great capitals, -and passing on again to glitter on their endless way under the sun and -moon. That was what he seemed to see as Miss Toner talked: and -sleeping-berths and wardrobe-boxes and luxurious suites in vast hotels. - -She wore again her white dress, contrasting in its richness of texture -with the simplicity of her daytime blue, and, rather stupidly, an -artificial white rose had been placed, in her braids, over each ear. -Her pearls were her only other ornament, and her pearls, he supposed, -were surprising. - -Oldmeadow was aware, in his close proximity to her, while she ate beside -him with a meticulous nicety that made the manners of the rest of them, -by contrast, seem a little casual and slovenly, of the discomfort that -had visited him in his dream. Yet the feeling she evoked was not all -discomfort. It was as if from her mere physical presence he were -subjected to some force that had in its compulsion a dim, conjectural -charm. It was for this reason no doubt that he seemed to be aware of -everything about her. Her hands were small and white, but had no beauty -of form or gesture. She moved them slowly and without grace, rather like -a young child handling unfamiliar objects in a kindergarten, and this in -spite of the singular perfection of her table manners. She could have -made little use of them, ever, in games of skill or in any art requiring -swift accuracy and firmness. It was as if her mind, overtrained in -receptivity and retentiveness, had only dull tentacles to spare for her -finger-tips. He was aware of these hands beside him all through dinner -and their fumbling deliberation brought to him, again and again, a -mingled annoyance, and satisfaction. There was something positive and -characteristic about her scentlessness, for if she smelt of anything it -was of Fuller's Earth--a funny, chalky smell--and beside Meg, who -foolishly washed liquid powder over her silvery skin, Miss Toner's -colourlessness was sallow. She had hardly talked at all the night -before, but to-night she talked continuously. It was Meg who questioned -her, and Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldmeadow guessed that his ingenuous -friend, still perplexed by his use of the word foolish, was drawing out -and displaying her future daughter-in-law for his benefit. - -Miss Toner and her mother had been to Russia, to India, to China and -Japan. They had visited Stevenson's grave at Vailima and in describing -it she quoted "Under the wide and starry sky." They had studied every -temple in Greece and Sicily and talked of the higher education with -ladies in Turkish harems. "But it was always Paris we came back to," she -said, "when we were not at home. Home was, and is, a great many places: -California and Chicago--where my father's people live, and New England. -But Paris was, after it, closest to our hearts. Yes, we knew a great -many French people; but it was for study rather than friendship we went -there. It is such a treasure-house of culture. Mother worked very hard -at French diction for several winters. She had lessons from Mademoiselle -Jouffert--you know perhaps--though she has not acted for so many years -now. Our friendship with her was a great privilege, for she was a rare -and noble woman and had a glorious gift. Phedre was her favourite role -and I shall never forget her rendering of it: - - Ariane ma soeur! de quel amour blessee - Vous mourutes aux bords ou vous futes laissee! - -She taught Mother to recite Phedre's great speeches with such fire and -passion. There could hardly be a better training for French," said Miss -Toner, repeating the lines with a curious placidity and perfection. "I -preferred Mademoiselle Jouffert's rendering to Bernhardt's. Her Phedre -was, with all the fire, more tender and womanly." - -"Do you care about Racine?" Oldmeadow asked her, while the lines rang in -his ears--rather as in his dream the rooks' cawing had done--with an -evocative sadness that hung, irrelevantly, about their speaker. "It's -not easy for our English ears to hear the fire and passion, is it; but -they are there." - -"He is very perfect and accomplished," said Miss Toner. "But I always -feel him small beside our Shakespeare. He lacks heart, doesn't he?" - -"There's heart in those lines you've just recited." - -"Yes," said Miss Toner. "Those lines are certainly very beautiful. It's -the mere music of them, I think. They make me feel--" she paused. It was -unlike her to pause and he wondered what she made of Ariane, off her own -bat, without Mademoiselle Jouffert to help her. - -"They make you feel?" he questioned. - -"They are so sad--so terribly melancholy. The sound of them. They make -me want to cry when I hear them. But I think it's the sound; for their -meaning makes me indignant. There is such weakness in them; such -acceptance of destiny. I want to revolt and protest, too--for women. She -should not have died." - -Oldmeadow involuntarily glanced across at Nancy. She was looking at Miss -Toner and if she had been pale before, she was paler now. Nancy would -never think of herself in connection with Ariane and tragic grief; yet -something in the lines, something in Miss Toner's disavowal of their -applicability, had touched the hidden cut. And, once again, it was Meg's -eyes that met his, showing him that what he saw she saw, too. Barney saw -nothing. All his solicitude was for Miss Toner in her imaginary plight. -"I'm sure you never would!" he exclaimed. "Never die, I mean!" - -"You think Miss Toner would have come to terms with Bacchus," Oldmeadow -suggested. He didn't want to take it out of Barney, though he was vexed -with him, nor to take it out of Miss Toner, either. He only wanted to -toss and twist the theme and make it gay where Miss Toner made it -solemn. - -"Come to terms with Bacchus!" Barney quite stared, taken aback by the -irreverence. "Why should she! She'd have found somebody more worth while -than either of the ruffians." - -Miss Toner smiled over at him. - -"I'm sure that if Bacchus had been fortunate enough to meet Miss Toner -she'd have converted him to total abstinence in a jiffy and made a model -husband of him. He was a fine, exhilarating fellow; no ruffian at all; -quite worth reforming." Oldmeadow, as he thus embroidered his theme, was -indulging in his own peculiar form of mirth. - -He saw Miss Toner laying her hand on the head of Bacchus; Miss Toner -very picturesque on the rugged sea-shore in her white and pearls and -roses, and Bacchus dazed and penitent, his very leopards tamed to a -cat-like docility. His laugh was visible rather than audible and that -Miss Toner had never before been the subject of such mirth was evident -to him. - -She met whatever she saw or guessed of irreverence, however, as -composedly as she would have met Bacchus; perhaps already, he reflected, -she was beginning to think of him in the light of an undesirable -wine-bibber. Perhaps even, she was beginning to think of him as a -ruffian. He didn't mind in the least, so long as he succeeded in keeping -off her solemnity. - -"I should have been quite willing to try and reform him," she said; -"though it takes much longer than a jiffy to reform people, Mr. -Oldmeadow; but I shouldn't have been willing to marry him. There are -other things in life, aren't there, than love-stories--even for women." - -"Bravo!" said Oldmeadow. He felt as well as uttered it. She wasn't being -solemn, and she had returned his shuttlecock smartly. "But are there?" -he went on. He had adjusted his eyeglass for a clearer confrontation of -her. - -Miss Toner's large eyes, enlarged still further by the glass, met his, -not solemnly, but with a considering gravity. - -"You are a sceptic, Mr. Oldmeadow," she observed. "A satirist. Do you -find that satire and scepticism take you very far in reading human -hearts?" - -"There's one for you, Roger!" cried Barney. - -Oldmeadow kept his gaze fixed on Miss Toner. "You think that Ariane -might prefer Infant Welfare work or Charity Organization to a -love-story?" - -"Not those necessarily." She returned his gaze. "Though I have known -very fine big people who did prefer them. But they are not the only -alternatives to love-stories." - -"I am sceptical," said Oldmeadow. "I am, if you like, satirical. I don't -believe there are any alternatives to love-stories; only palliatives to -disappointment." - -Barney leaned forward: "Adrienne, you see, doesn't accept that -old-fashioned, sentimentalizing division of the sexes. She doesn't -accept the merely love-story, hearth-side role for women." - -"Oh, well," Oldmeadow played with his fork, smiling with the wryness -that accompanied his reluctant sincerities, "I don't divide the sexes as -far as love-stories are concerned. We are all in the same boat. For us, -too, Barney, it's love-story or palliative. You don't agree? If you were -disappointed in love? Hunting? Farming? Politics? Post-Impressionism? -Would any of them fill the gap?" - -It wasn't at all the line he had intended the talk to take. He knew that -as he glanced across at Nancy. Saying nothing, as if its subject could -not concern her, and with a dim little smile, she listened, and he knew -that for her, though she wouldn't die of it, there would be only -palliatives. If only Barney, confound him, hadn't been so charming. - -Barney did not know how to answer the last assault, and, boyishly, -looked across at his beloved for succour. She gave it instantly. - -"Sadness, sorrow, tragedy, even, isn't despair," she said. "Barney, I -believe, if sorrow overtook him, would mould the rough clay of his -occupation to some higher beauty than the beauty he'd lost. To lie down -and die; to resign oneself to palliatives. Oh, no. That's not the -destiny of the human soul." - -"Roger's pulling your leg, Barney, as usual," Palgrave put in -scornfully. He had been listening with his elbows on the table, his eyes -on the table-cloth. "He knows as well as I do that there's only one -love. The sort you're all talking about--the Theseus and Ariane -affair--is merely an ebullition of youth and as soon as nature has -perpetuated the species by means of it, it settles down, if there's any -reality under the ebullition, to grow into the other--the divine love; -the love of the soul for the Good, the True and the Beautiful," Palgrave -declared, growing very red as he said it. - -"Really--my dear child!" Mrs. Chadwick murmured. She had never heard -such themes broached at her table and glanced nervously up at old -Johnson to see if he had followed. "That is a very, very materialistic -view!" - -Oldmeadow at this began to laugh, audibly as well as visibly, and -Palgrave, as their eyes met in a glance of communicated comedy, could -not withhold an answering smile. But Barney's face showed that he -preferred to see Palgrave's interpretation as materialistic and even -Miss Toner looked thoughtfully at her champion. - -"But we need the symbol of youth and nature," she suggested. "The divine -love, yes, Palgrave, is the only real one; but then all love is divine -and human love sometimes brings the deepest revelation of all. Browning -saw that so wonderfully." - -"Browning, my dear!" Palgrave returned with a curious mingling of -devotion, intimacy and aloofness, "Browning never got nearer God than a -woman's breast!" - -At this, almost desperately, Mrs. Chadwick broke in: "Did you ever see -our Ellen Terry act, Adrienne? I liked her much better than Madame -Bernhardt who had such a very artificial face, I think. I can't imagine -her as Rosalind, can you? While Miss Terry was a perfect Rosalind. I met -her once with Henry Irving at a garden-party in London and she was as -charming off as on the stage and I'm sure I can't see why anybody -should wish to act Phedre--poor, uncontrolled creature. Rhubarb-tart, -dear, and custard? or wine-jelly and cream? How beautifully you speak -French. How many languages do you speak?" Mrs. Chadwick earnestly -inquired, still turning the helm firmly away from the unbecoming topic. - -Miss Toner kept her head very creditably and, very tactfully, at once -accepted her hostess's hint. "Rhubarb-tart, please, dear Mrs. Chadwick. -Not so very many, really. My German has never been good; though French -and Italian I do know well, and enough Spanish for Don Quixote. But," -she went on, while Mrs. Chadwick looked gratefully at her, "Mother and I -were always working. We never wasted any of our precious hours together. -She couldn't bear the thought of _missing_ anything in life; and she -missed very little, I think. Music, poetry, painting--all the -treasure-houses of the human spirit--were open to her. And what she won -and made her own, she gave out again with greater radiance. How I wish -you could all have known her!" said Miss Toner, looking round at them -with an unaccustomed touch of wistfulness. "She was radiance -personified. She never let unhappiness _rest_ on her. I remember once, -when she had had a cruel blow from a person she loved and trusted--in -the middle of her sadness she looked at me and saw how sad she was -making me; and she sprang up and seized my hands and cried: 'Let's -dance! Let's dance and dance and dance!' And we did, up and down the -terrace--it was at San Remo--she in her white dress, with the blue sky -and sea and the orange-trees all in bloom. I can see her now. And then -she rushed to get music, her harp, and flowers and fruit, to take to an -invalid friend, and we spent the afternoon with her, mother surpassing -herself in charm and witchery. She was always like that. She would have -found something, oh, very beautiful, to make from her sorrow if Theseus -had abandoned her! But no one," said Miss Toner, looking round at -Oldmeadow, now with a mild playfulness, "could ever have abandoned -Mother." - -There was something to Oldmeadow appealing in her playfulness; her -confidence, when it took on this final grace, was really touching. For -Mrs. Toner the light-giver he knew that he had conceived a rooted -aversion. And he wondered if she would go on, over the rhubarb-tart, to -tell, after the dancing on the terrace, of the death at sea. But he was -spared that. - -"And your father died when you were very young, didn't he, dear?" said -Mrs. Chadwick, fearful of the reference to Theseus. "I think your mother -must often have been so very lonely; away from home for such a great -part of the time and with so few relatives." - -Miss Toner shook her head. "We were always together, she and I, so we -could never, either of us, be lonely. And wherever we went she made -friends. People were always so much more than mere people to her. She -saw them always, at once, high and low, prince and peasant, as souls, -and they felt it always, and opened to her. Then, until I was quite big, -we had my lovely grandmother. Mother came from Maine and it was such a -joy to go and stay there with Grandma. It was a very simple little home. -It was always high thinking and plain living, with Grandma; and though, -when she married and became rich, Mother showered beautiful things upon -her, Grandma stayed always in the little house, doing for her poor -neighbours, as she had always done, and dusting her parlour--a real New -England parlour--and making her own griddle cakes--such wonderful cakes -she made! I was fifteen when she died; but the tie was so close and -spiritual that she did not seem gone away from us." - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -"Rather nice to think that there are so many good and innocent people in -the world, isn't it," Barney remarked, when he, Palgrave and Oldmeadow -were left to their wine and cigars. It was evident that he would have -preferred to omit the masculine interlude, but Oldmeadow was resolved on -the respite. She had touched him because she was so unaware; but he was -weary and disconcerted. How could Barney be unaware? And was he? -Altogether? His comment seemed to suggest a suspicion that Miss Toner's -flow might have aroused irony or require justification. - -"Miss Toner and her mother seem to have found the noble and the gifted -under every bush," he remarked, and he was not sure that he wished to -avoid irony though he knew that he did wish to conceal it from Barney. -"It's very good and innocent to be able to do that; but one may keep -one's goodness at the risk of one's discrimination. Not that Miss Toner -is at all stupid." - -Palgrave neither smoked nor drank. He had again leaned his elbows on the -table and his head on his fists, but, while Oldmeadow spoke, he lifted -and kept his gaze on him. "You don't like her," he said suddenly. He and -Oldmeadow had, irrepressibly, over Mrs. Chadwick's conception of -materialism, interchanged their smile at dinner; but since the morning -Oldmeadow had known that Palgrave suspected him of indifference, perhaps -even hostility, towards the new-comer. "Why don't you like her?" the -boy went on and with a growing resentment as his suspicions found voice. -"She _isn't_ stupid; that's just it. She's good and noble and innocent; -and gifted, too. Why should we pretend to be too sophisticated to -recognize such beauty when we meet it? Why should we be ashamed of -beauty--afraid of it?" - -Barney, flushing deeply, looked down into his wine-glass. - -"My dear Palgrave, I don't understand you," said Oldmeadow. But he did. -He seemed to hear the loud beating of Palgrave's heart. "I don't dislike -Miss Toner. How should I? I don't know her." - -"You do know her. That's an evasion. It's all there. She can't be seen -without being known. It's all there; at once. I don't know why you don't -like her. It's what I want to know." - -"Drop it, Palgrave," Barney muttered. "Let Roger alone. He and Adrienne -get on very well together. It's no good forcing things." - -"I'm not forcing anything. It's Roger who forces his scepticism and his -satire on us," Palgrave declared. - -"I'm sorry to have displeased you," said Oldmeadow with a slight -severity. "I am unaware of having displayed my disagreeable qualities -more than is usual with me." - -"Of course not. What rot, Palgrave! Roger is always disagreeable, bless -him!" Barney declared with a forced laugh. "Adrienne understands him -perfectly. As he says: she isn't stupid." - -"Oh, all right. I'm sorry," Palgrave rose, thrusting his hands in his -pockets and looking down at the two as he stood above them. He hesitated -and then went on: "All I know is that for the first time in my -life--the very first time, mind you--all the things we are told about in -religion, all the things we read about in poetry, the things we're -supposed to care for and live by, have been made real to me--outside of -books and churches. What do we ever see of them at home here, with dear -Mummy and the girls? What do we ever talk of, all of us--but the -everlasting round--hunting, gardening, cricket, hay; village treats and -village charities. A lot of chatter about people--What a rotter -So-and-so is; and How perfectly sweet somebody else: and a little about -politics--Why doesn't somebody shoot Lloyd George?--and How wicked Home -Rulers are. That's about all it amounts to. Oh, I know we're not as -stupid as we sound. _She_ sees that. We can feel things and see things -though we express ourselves like savages. But we're too comfortable to -think; that's what's the trouble with us. We don't want to change; and -thought means change. And we're shy; idiotically shy; afraid to express -anything as it really comes to us; so that I sometimes wonder if things -will go on coming; if we shan't become like the Chinese--a sort of -_objet d'art_ set of people, living by rote, in a rut. Well. That's all -I mean. With her one isn't ashamed or afraid to know and say what one -feels. With her one wants to feel more. And I, for one, reverence her -and am grateful to her for having made beauty and goodness real to me." -Having so delivered himself, Palgrave, who had, after his deep flush, -become pale, turned away and marched out of the room. - -The older men sat silent for a moment, Oldmeadow continuing to smoke and -Barney turning the stem of his wine-glass in his fingers. "I'm awfully -sorry," he said at last. "I can't think what's got into the boy. He's in -rather a moil just now, I fancy." - -"He's a dear boy," said Oldmeadow. "There's any amount of truth in what -he says. He's at an age when one sees these things, if one is ever going -to see them. I hope he'll run straight. He ought to amount to -something." - -"That's what Adrienne says," said Barney. "She says he's a poet. You -think, too, then, that we're all in such a rut; living Chinese lives; -automata?" - -"It's the problem of civilization, isn't it, to combine automatism with -freedom. Without a rut to walk in you reach nowhere--if we're to walk -together. And yet we must manage to ramble, too; individuals must; -that's what it comes to, I suppose. Individuals must take the risk of -rambling and alter the line of the rut for the others. Palgrave may be a -rambler. But I hope he won't go too far afield." - -"You do like her, Roger, don't you?" said Barney suddenly. - -It had had to come. Oldmeadow knew that, as the depth of silence fell -about them. It was inevitable between them, of course. Yet he wished it -might have been avoided, since now it must be too late. He pressed out -the glow of his cigar and leaned his arms on the table, not looking at -his friend while he meditated, and he said finally--and it might seem, -he knew, another evasion--"Look here, Barney, I must tell you something. -You know how much I care about Nancy. Well, that's the trouble. It's -Nancy I wanted you to marry." - -Barney had held himself ready and a deep, involuntary sigh of relief, or -of postponed suspense, now escaped him. "I see. I didn't realize that," -he said. And how he hoped, poor Barney! it was all there was to realize! -"Of course I'm very fond of Nancy." - -"You realize, of course, how fond she is of you." - -"Well; yes; of course. We're both awfully good pals," said Barney, -confused. - -"That's what Palgrave would call speaking like a savage, Barney. Own to -it that if Miss Toner hadn't appeared upon the scene you could have -hoped to make Nancy your wife. I don't say you made love to her or -misled her in any way. I'm sure you never meant to at any rate. But the -fact remains that you were both so fond of each other that you would -certainly have married. So you'll understand that when I come down here -and find Miss Toner installed as tutelary goddess over you all, what I'm -mainly conscious of is grief for my dear little relegated nymph." - -Still deeply flushed, but still feeling his relief, Barney turned his -wine-glass and murmured: "I see. I quite understand. Yes; I should have -been in love with her, I own. I nearly was, last winter. As to her being -in love with me, that's a different matter. I've no reason to think she -was in love. It would just be a difference of degree, with Nancy, -wouldn't it; she loves us all so much, and she's really such a child, -still. Of course that's what she seems to me now, since Adrienne's come; -just a darling child." - -"I suppose so. But you understand what I feel, too. I feel her much more -than a darling child, and it's difficult for me to like anybody who has -dispossessed her. I perfectly recognize Miss Toner's remarkable -qualities and hope to count myself among her friends one day; but, being -a satirist and a sceptic, I rebel instinctively against goddesses of -whatever brand. Nymphs are good enough for me; and I can't help wishing, -irrepressibly, that nymphs had remained good enough for you, my dear -boy." - -"It isn't a question of nymphs; it isn't a question of goddesses," -Barney said, glancing up now at his friend. "I'm awfully sorry about -Nancy; but of course she'll find some one far better than I am; she's -such a dear. You're not quite straight with me, Roger. I don't see -Adrienne as a goddess at all; I'm not like Palgrave, a silly boy, bowled -over. It's something quite different she does to me. She makes me feel -safe; safe and happy in a way I never imagined possible. It's like -having the sunlight fall about one; it's like life, new life, to be with -her. She's not a goddess; but she's the woman it would break my heart to -part with. I never met such loveliness." - -"My dear boy," Oldmeadow murmured. He still leaned on the table and he -still looked down. "I do wish you every happiness, as you know." He was -deeply touched and Barney's quiet words troubled him as he had not -before been troubled. - -"Thanks. I know you do. I know you care for my happiness. And I can't -imagine anything coming into my life that would make a difference to us. -That's just it." Barney paused. "It won't, will it, Roger?" - -The crisis was again upon them. Oldmeadow did not look up as he said: -"That depends on her, doesn't it?" - -"No; it depends on you," Barney quickly replied. - -"She likes you, quite immensely, already. She says you make her think of -one of Meredith's dry, deep-hearted heroes," Barney gave a slightly -awkward laugh, deprecating the homage as he offered it. "She says you -are the soul of truth. There's no reason, none whatever, why you -shouldn't be the best of friends, as far as she is concerned. It's all -she asks." - -"It's all I ask, of course." - -"Yes, I know. But if you don't meet her half-way? Sometimes I do see -what Palgrave means. Sometimes you misunderstand her." - -"Very likely. It takes time really to understand people, doesn't it." - -But poor Barney was embarked and could not but push on. "As just now, -you know, about finding nobility behind every bush and paying for one's -goodness by losing one's discrimination. There are deep realities and -superficial realities, aren't there, and she sees the deep ones first. -It's more than that. Palgrave says she makes reality. He didn't say it -to me, because I don't think he feels me to be worthy of her. He said it -to Mother, and puzzled her by it. But I know what he means. It's because -of that he feels her to be a sort of saint. Do be straight with me, -Roger. Say what you really think. I'd rather know; much. You've never -kept things from me before," Barney added in a sudden burst of boyish -distress. - -"My dear Barney," Oldmeadow murmured. - -It had to come, then. He pushed back his chair and turned in it, resting -an arm on the table; and he passed his hand over his head and kept it -there while he stared for a moment hard at the ceiling. - -"I think you've made a mistake," he then said. - -"A mistake?" Barney faltered blushing. It was not anger; it was pain, -simple, boyish pain that thus confessed itself. - -"Yes; a mistake," Oldmeadow repeated, not looking at him, "and since I -fear it's gone too far to be mended, I think it would have been better -if you'd not pressed me, my dear boy." - -"How do you mean? I'd rather know, you see," Barney murmured, after a -moment. - -"I don't mean about the goodness, or the power," said Oldmeadow. "She is -good, and she has power; but that's in part, I feel, because she has no -inhibitions--no doubts. To know reality we must do more than blow -soap-bubbles with it. It must break us to be known. She's never been -broken. Perhaps she never will be. And in that case she'll go on blind." - -Barney was silent for a moment, and that it was not as bad as he had -feared it might be was apparent from the attempted calm with which he -asked, presently: "Why shouldn't you be blind to evil and absurdity if -you can see much further than most people into goodness? Perhaps one -must be one-sided to go far." - -"Perhaps. But it's dangerous to be one-sided--to oneself and others. And -does she see further? That's the question. Doesn't she tend, rather, to -accept as first-rate what you incline to find second? You're less strong -than she is, Barney, and less good, no doubt. But you can't deny that -you're less blind. So what you must ask yourself is whether you can be -sure of being happy with a wife who'll never doubt herself and who'll -not see absurdity where you see it. Put it at that. Will you be happy -with her?" - -He was, he knew, justified of Miss Toner's commendation, for truth -between friends could go no further and, in the silence, while he -sickened for his friend, he felt it searching Barney's heart. How it -searched, how many echoes it found awaiting it, was proved by the -prolongation of the silence. - -"I think you exaggerate," said Barney at length, and in the words -Oldmeadow read his refusal to examine further the truths revealed to -him. "You see all the defects and none of the beauty. It can't be a -mistake if I can see both. She'll learn a little from me, that's what it -comes to, for all the lot I'll have to learn from her. I'll be happy -with her if I'm worthy of her. What it comes to, you see, as I said at -the beginning, is that I can't be happy without her." He rose and -Oldmeadow, rising also, knew that they closed upon an unresolved -discord. Yet these final words of Barney's pleased him so much that he -could not leave it quite at that. - -"Mine may be the mistake, after all," he said. "Only you must give me -time to find it out. I began by telling you I couldn't be really -dispassionate; and I feel much better for our talk, if that's any -satisfaction to you. If you can learn from each other and see the truth -together, you'll be happy. You're right there, Barney. That is what it -comes to." They moved towards the door. "Try not to dislike me for my -truth too much," he added. - -"My dear old fellow," Barney muttered. He laid his hand for a moment on -his friend's shoulder, standing back for him to pass first. "Nothing can -ever alter things between you and me." - -But things were altered already. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -Palgrave had not gone to the drawing-room, and that, at all events, was -a comfort. A wood fire burned on the hearth and near it Nancy was -holding wool for Mrs. Chadwick to wind. Barbara had been sent to bed and -Meg and Miss Toner sat on the sofa hand in hand. Even in the pressure of -his distress and anxiety Oldmeadow could but be aware of amusement at -seeing Meg thus. It had, of course, been Miss Toner who had taken her -hand. But no one else could have taken it. No one else could have been -allowed to go on holding it placidly before on-lookers of whose mirthful -impressions Meg must be well aware. She didn't mind in the least. That -was what Miss Toner had done to her. She enjoyed having her hand held by -anyone so much interested in her. - -Barney walked to the fireplace and stood before it. He had no faculty -for concealing his emotions and the painful ones through which he had -just passed were visible on his sensitive face. - -"Give us a song, Meg," Oldmeadow suggested. He did not care for Meg's -singing, which conveyed, in a rich, sweet medium, a mingled fervour and -shallowness of feeling. But to hear her sing would be better than to see -her holding Miss Toner's hand. - -Barney crossed at once to the seat Meg vacated and dropped down into it, -no doubt thanking his friend for what he imagined to be a display of -tact, and Oldmeadow saw the quiet, firm look that flowed over and took -possession of him. Miss Toner knew, of course, that Barney had been -having painful emotions; and she probably knew that they had been caused -by the dry, deep-hearted Meredithian hero. But after the long look she -did not speak to him. She sat in her pearls and whiteness and gave -careful attention to the music. - -Oldmeadow accompanied Meg, tolerantly, and a trifle humorously, throwing -a touch of mockery into his part. Meg's preference to-night seemed to be -for gardens; Gardens of Sleep; Gardens of Love; God's Gardens. "What a -wretch you are, Roger," she said, when she had finished. "You despise -feeling." - -"I thought I was wallowing in it," Oldmeadow returned. "Did I stint -you?" - -"No; you helped me to wallow. That's why you're such a wretch. Always -showing one that one is wallowing when one thinks one's soaring. It's -your turn, now, Adrienne. Let's see if he'll manage to make fun of you." - -"Does Miss Toner sing, too? Now do you know, Meg," said Oldmeadow, -keeping up the friendly banter, "I'm sure she doesn't sing the sort of -rubbish you do." - -"I think they're beautiful songs," Mrs. Chadwick murmured from her wool, -"and I think Roger played them most beautifully. Why should you say he -is making fun of you, Meg?" - -"Because he makes you think something's beautiful that he thinks -rubbish, Mummy. Come along, Adrienne. You will, won't you? I expect my -voice sounds all wrong to you. I've had no proper training." - -"It's a very lovely voice, Meg, used in a poor cause," said Miss Toner -smiling. "And it is badly placed. I think I could help you there. I've -no voice at all, but I have been taught how to sing. It would be more to -the point, though, if Mr. Oldmeadow were to play to us, for I hear that -he is an accomplished musician." - -"I'm really anything but accomplished," said Oldmeadow; "but I can play -accompaniments cleverly. Do sing to us. I know you'll give us something -worth accompanying." - -Miss Toner rose and came to the piano with her complete and unassuming -confidence. She turned the pages of the music piled there and asked him -if he cared for Schubert's songs. Yes; she was a watch wound to go -accurately and she could rely on herself, always, to the last tick. Even -if she knew--and he was sure she knew--that he had been undermining her, -she would never show a shadow or a tremor; and she would always know -what was the best music. Only, as she selected "Litanei" and placed it -before him, he felt that over him, also, flowed the quiet, firm look. - -"Litanei" was one of his favourites in a composer he loved, and, as she -sang there above him, he found the song emerging unharmed from her -interpretation. It was as she had said--no voice to speak of; the -dryest, flattest little thread of sound; and no feeling, either (what a -relief after Meg!), except the feeling for scrupulous accuracy. Yet her -singing was what he found in her to like best. It was disciplined; it -accepted its own limits; it fulfilled an order. There was no desecration -of the heavenly song, for, intelligently after all, she made no attempt -upon its heart. - -When she had finished, she looked down at him. They were removed by half -the length of the room from the fireside group. The lamps were behind -them. Only the candles set in the piano-rack illumined Miss Toner; and -while the white roses over her ears struck him anew as foolish, her eyes -anew struck him as powerful. - -"Thank you. That was a pleasure," he said. - -It was a pleasure. It was almost a link. He had found a ground to meet -her on. He saw himself in the future accompanying Barney's wife. He -need, then, so seldom talk to her. But, alas! she stepped at once from -the safe frame of art. - -"If we can rise from loss to feel like that, if we can lift our sorrows -like that, we need never turn to palliatives, need we, Mr. Oldmeadow?" -she said. - -Stupidity, complacency, or power, whatever it was, it completely -disenchanted him. It left him also bereft of repartee. What he fell back -upon, as he looked up at her and then down at the keys again, was a mere -schoolboy mutter of "Come now!" - -After all a schoolboy mutter best expressed what he felt. She was not -accustomed to having her ministrations met with such mutters and she did -not like it. That was apparent to him as she turned away and went back -to the sofa and Barney. She had again tried him and again found him -wanting. - - * * * * * - -Barney and Miss Toner left in her motor next morning shortly after -breakfast, and though with his friend Oldmeadow had no further exchange, -he had, with Miss Toner, a curious encounter that was, he felt sure, a -direct result of her impressions of the night before. They met in the -dining-room a few moments before breakfast, and as she entered, wearing -already her motoring hat, closely bound round her face with a veil, he -was aware that she looked, if that were possible, more composed than he -had ever seen her. He felt sure that she had waited for her opportunity, -and had followed him downstairs, knowing that she would find him alone; -and he realized then that she was more composed, because she had an -intention or, rather, since it was more definite, a determination. -Determination in her involved no effort: it imparted, merely, the added -calm of an assured aim. - -She gave him her hand and said good morning with the same air of -scrupulous accuracy that she had given to the rendering of "Litanei" and -then, standing before the fire, her hands clasped behind her, her eyes -raised to his, she said: "Mr. Oldmeadow, I want to say something to -you." - -It was the gentle little voice, unaltered, yet he knew that he was in -for something he would very much rather have avoided; something with -anybody else unimaginable, but with her, he saw it now, quite -inevitable. Yet he tried, even at this last moment, to avoid it and -said, adjusting his eyeglass and moving to the sideboard: "But not -before we've had our tea, surely. Can't I get you some? Will you trust -me to pour it out?" - -"Thanks; I take coffee--not tea," said Miss Toner from her place at the -fire, "and neither has been brought in yet." - -He had just perceived, to his discomfiture, that they had not. There was -nothing for it but to turn from the ungarnished sideboard and face her -again. - -"It's about Barney, Mr. Oldmeadow," Miss Toner said, unmoved by his -patent evasion. "It's because I know you love Barney and care for his -happiness. And it's because I hope that you and I are to be friends, and -friendship can only be built on truth. Try to trust more; will you? -That's all I want to say. Try to trust. You will be happier if you do -and make other people happier." - -Oldmeadow had never experienced such an assault upon his personality, -and he met it gagged and bound, for, assuredly, this was to be Barney's -wife. A slow flush mounted to his face. - -"I'm afraid I seem very strange and unconventional to you," Adrienne -Toner went on. "You've lived in a world where people don't care enough -for each other to say the real things. They must be felt if they've to -be said, mustn't they? Yet you do care for people. I have seen that, -watching you here; and you care for real things. It's a crust of caution -and convention that is about you. You are afraid of expression. You are -afraid of feeling. You are afraid of being taken in and of wasting -yourself. Don't be afraid, Mr. Oldmeadow. We never lose ourselves by -trusting. We never lose ourselves by giving. It's a realer self that -comes. And with you, I see it clearly, if you let the crust grow -thicker, it will shut life and light and joy away from you; and when -light cannot visit our hearts, they wither within us. That is your -danger. I want to be your friend, so I must say the truth to you." - -He knew, though he had to struggle not to laugh, that he was very angry -and that he must not show anger; though it would really be better to -show that than his intense amusement; and it took him a moment, during -which they confronted each other, to find words; dry, donnish words; -words of caution and convention. They were the only ones he had -available for the situation. "My dear young lady," he said, "you take -too much upon yourself." - -She was not in the least disconcerted. She met his eyes steadily. "You -mean that I am presumptuous, Mr. Oldmeadow?" - -"You take too much upon yourself," he repeated. "As you say, I hope we -may be friends." - -"Is that really all, Mr. Oldmeadow?" she said, looking at him with such -a depth of thoughtfulness that he could not for the life of him make out -whether she found him odious or merely pitiful. - -"Yes; that's really all," he returned. - -The dining-room was very bright and the little blue figure before the -fire was very still. The moment fixed itself deep in his consciousness -with that impression of stillness and brightness. It was an -uncomfortable impression. Her little face, uplifted to his, absurd, yet -not uncharming, was, in its still force, almost ominous. - -"I'm sorry," was all she said, and she turned and went forward to greet -Mrs. Chadwick. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -It was a soft June day and Oldmeadow was strolling about Mrs. Averil's -garden admiring her herbaceous borders. It was a day that smelt of -ripening strawberries, of warm grass and roses, and the air was full of -a medley of bird voices, thrushes and blackbirds, sweet as grass and -strawberries, and the bubbling rattle of the chaffinch as happy as the -sunlight. - -Adrienne Toner was Mrs. Chadwick now, and she and Eleanor Chadwick and -Barney were motoring together in the French Alps. Coldbrooks was empty, -and he had come to stay with Nancy and her mother. - -They lived in a small stone house with a Jacobean front that looked, -over a stone wall, at Chelford Green, and had behind it a delightfully -unexpected length of lawn and orchard and kitchen-garden, all enclosed -by higher walls and presided over by a noble cedar. Seen from the garden -The Little House was merely mid-Victorian, but the modern additions were -masked by climbing roses and a great magnolia-tree opened its -lemon-scented cups at the highest bedroom windows. The morning-room was -in the modern part, and from one of its windows, presently, Mrs. Averil -emerged, opening her sunshade as she crossed the grass to join her -guest. She wore a white straw garden hat, tipping over her eyes and -tying, behind, over her thick knot of hair, in a manner that always -recalled to Oldmeadow a lady out of Trollope. Her face was pale, like -Nancy's, and her eyes grey; but rather than blackcaps and primroses she -suggested lace tippets and porcelain tea-sets, and though it was from -her Nancy had her pretty trick of closing her eyes when she smiled, Mrs. -Averil's smile was cogitative and impersonal, and in her always -temperate mirth there was an edge of grimness. - -"Well, Roger, I want to hear what you thought about the wedding," she -said. She had not gone to church that morning with Nancy and it was, he -knew, because she wanted an interchange of frank impressions. She had -been prevented from attending Miss Toner's London nuptials by a touch of -influenza and, as she now went on to say, she had got little from Nancy, -who had no eye for pageants and performances. "Eleanor was so absorbed," -she went on, "in the fact that the Bishop had indigestion and had, at -her suggestion, taken magnesia with his breakfast, that I could not get -much else out of her. She seemed to have seen the Bishop's symptoms -rather than Adrienne and Barney. Now from you I expect all the relevant -details." - -"Well, if you call it a detail, Nancy was lovely," said Oldmeadow. "She -looked like a silver-birch in her white and green." - -"And pearls," said Mrs. Averil. "You noticed, of course, the necklaces -Adrienne gave them; quite the gift of a princess, yet so innocent and -unobtrusive looking, too. She has great taste in such matters. Did she -look well? Eleanor did say that she, like the Bishop, was very pale." - -"She was pale; but not a bit nervous. She rather looked as if she had -been married every day of her life. Nothing ever puts her out, you know. -She was very grave and benign; but she wasn't an imposing bride and the -wreath of orange-blossoms aged her. Nancy and Meg and Barbara and the -Lumley girl aged her, too. She must be older than Barney." - -"Yes; she is. A year older. But she's the sort of woman who will wear," -said Mrs. Averil, pausing before a bed of rose-trees to snip off a -fading flower. "She'll not look very differently at fifty, you know; and -her hair is the sort that may never turn grey. I can see her at seventy -with those big golden braids and all her teeth. There's something very -indestructible about her. Like a doll made of white leather compared to -one made of porcelain. She'll last and last," said Mrs. Averil. "She'll -outlast us all. Barney was radiant, of course." - -"Yes. But he _was_ nervous; like a little boy frightened by the -splendour of his Christmas-tree. He looked as though he were arm in arm -with the Christmas-tree itself as he came down the nave. A rather dumpy -little Christmas-tree, but exquisitely lighted and garnished." - -"Well, he ought to be radiant," Mrs. Averil observed. "With all that -money, it's an extremely good match for him. The fact of her being -nobody in particular makes no difference, really, since she's an -American. And she has, I gather, no tiresome relations to come -bothering." - -"She's very unencumbered, certainly. There's something altogether very -solitary about her," Oldmeadow agreed, watching Mrs. Averil snip off the -withered roses. "I felt that even as she came down the nave on Barney's -arm. It's not a bit about the money he's radiant," he added. - -"Oh, I know. Of course not. That was only my own gross satisfaction -expressing itself. He's as in love as it's possible to be. And with -every good reason." - -"You took to her as much as they all did, then?" - -"That would be rather difficult, wouldn't it? And Barney's reasons would -hardly be those of a dry old aunt. She was very nice and kind to Nancy -and me and she's evidently going to do everything for them. Barbara's -already, you know, been sent to that admirable school that was too -expensive for Eleanor; riding and singing and all the rest of it. And -Meg's been given a perfect trousseau of fine clothes for her London -season. Naturally I don't feel very critically towards her." - -"Don't you? Well, if she weren't a princess distributing largess, -wouldn't you? After all, she's not given Nancy a trousseau. So why be -mute with an old friend?" - -"Ah, but she's given her the pearls," said Mrs. Averil. "Nancy couldn't -but accept a bridesmaid's gift. And she would give her a trousseau if -she wanted it and would take it. However, I'll own, though decency -should keep me mute, that I should find myself a little bored if I had -to see too much of her. I'm an everyday person and I like to talk about -everyday things." - -"I can hear her asking you, in answer to that, if there is anything more -everyday than the human soul. I wish I could have seen you _aux prises_ -with her," Oldmeadow remarked. "Did she come down here? Did she like -your drawing-room and garden?" - -Mrs. Averil's drawing-room and garden lay very near her heart. Eleanor -Chadwick sometimes accused her of caring more about her china and her -roses than about anything else in the world except Nancy. - -"I don't think she saw them; not what I call see," Mrs. Averil now said. -"Oh, yes; she came several times and recognized, very appreciatively, -the periods of my Queen Anne furniture and my Lowestoft. Beyond their -period I don't think she went. She said the garden was old-world," Mrs. -Averil added, looking about her and twirling her parasol on her -shoulder. - -"She would," Oldmeadow agreed. "That's just what she would call it. And -she'd call you a true, deep-hearted woman and Nancy a gifted girl. How -do she and Nancy hit it off? It's that I want most of all to hear -about." - -"They haven't much in common, have they?" said Mrs. Averil. "She's never -hunted and doesn't, I imagine, know a wren from a hedge-sparrow. She -_does_ know a skylark when she hears one, for she said 'Hail to thee, -blithe spirit' while one was singing. But I felt, somehow, it was like -the Queen Anne and the Lowestoft--a question of the label." - -Oldmeadow at this began to laugh with an open and indulged mirth. He and -Mrs. Averil, at all events, saw eye to eye. "If you'd tie the correct -label to the hedge-sparrow she'd know that, too," he said. "Poor girl. -The trouble with her isn't that she doesn't know the birds, but that she -wouldn't know the poets, either, without their labels. It's a mind made -up of labels. No; I don't think it likely that Nancy, who hasn't a label -about her, will get much out of her--beyond necklaces." - -"I wish Nancy _had_ a few labels," said Mrs. Averil. "I wish she could -have travelled and studied as Miss Toner--Adrienne that is--has done. -She is such a little ignoramus. Adrienne may bore you and me, but Nancy -will never interest anyone--except you and me." - -It was always amusing to Oldmeadow, if a little sardonically so, to note -that any conception of himself as a possible suitor for Nancy had never -entered Mrs. Averil's mind. As a friend he was everything a mother could -desire; as a match for Nancy almost unimaginable. Well, he could not -give a wife even one hunter and he never had had any intention of -falling in love with his dear nymph; yet that other people might not do -so was a suggestion he repudiated with warmth. - -"Oh; in love, yes," Mrs. Averil agreed. "I don't deny that she's very -loveable and I hope she may marry well. But that's not the same thing as -being interesting, is it? A man may be in love with a woman who doesn't -interest him." - -"I dispute that statement." - -"I'm sure dear Eleanor never interested her husband--devoted to the day -of his death as he was. There's something in my idea. To be interesting -one must offer something new. If Nancy had been interesting to Barney -she would now, I think, have been in Adrienne's place. Not that it would -have been a marriage to be desired for either of them." - -So he and Mrs. Averil had been thinking the same thoughts. - -"And you contend that if Nancy had been to China and read Goethe and -Dante in the originals he'd have been interested? I think he was quite -sufficiently interested and that if Miss Toner hadn't come barging into -our lives he'd have known he was in love." - -"Going to China is a figure of speech and stands for all the things she -hasn't got and doesn't know. My poor little Nancy. All the same, _she_ -isn't a bore!" said Mrs. Averil with as near an approach to acerbity as -she could show. - -"No; she isn't a bore. The things she knows have to be found out, by -degrees, through living with her. Barney hasn't been to China, either, -so, according to your theory, Nancy didn't find him interesting." - -At this Mrs. Averil's eyes met his and, after a moment of contemplation, -they yielded up to him the secret they saw to be shared. "If only it -were the same for women! But they don't need the new. She's young. -She'll get over it. I don't believe in broken hearts. All the same," -Mrs. Averil stopped in their walk, ostensibly to examine the growth of a -fine pink lupin, "it hasn't endeared Adrienne to me. I'm too -_terre-a-terre_, about that, too, not to feel vexation, on Nancy's -account. And what I'm afraid of is that she knows she's not endeared to -me. That she guesses. She's a bore; but she's not a bit stupid, you -know." - -"You don't think she's spiteful?" Oldmeadow suggested after a moment, -while Mrs. Averil still examined her lupin. - -"Dear me, no! I wish she could be! It's that smooth surface of hers -that's so tiresome. She's not spiteful. But she's human. She'll want to -keep Barney away and Nancy will be hurt." - -"Want to keep him away when she's got him so completely?" - -"Something of that sort. I felt it once or twice." - -"My first instinct about her was right, then," said Oldmeadow. "She's a -bore and an interloper, and she'll spoil things." - -"Oh, perhaps not. She'll mend some things. Have you heard about Captain -Hayward?" - -"Do you mean that stupid, big, tawny fellow? What about him?" - -"You may well ask. I've been spoken to about him and Meg by more than -one person. They are making themselves conspicuous, and it's been going -on for some time." - -"You don't mean that Meg's in love with him?" - -"He's in love with her, at all events, and, as you know, he's a married -man. I questioned Nancy, who was with Meg for a few weeks in London, and -she owns that Meg's unhappy." - -"And they're seeing each other in London now?" Oldmeadow was deeply -discomposed. - -"No. He's away just now. And Meg is going to meet the bridal party in -Paris at the end of July. Nancy feels that when Meg gets back under -Adrienne's influence there'll be nothing to fear." - -"We depend on her, then, so much, already," he murmured. He was -reviewing, hastily, his last impressions of Meg and they were not -reassuring. The only thing that was reassuring was to reflect on his -impressions of Adrienne. "Grandma's parlour" returned to him with its -assurance of deep security. Above everything else Adrienne was -respectable. - -"Yes. That's just it," Mrs. Averil agreed. "We depend on her. And I feel -we're going to depend more and more. She's the sort of person who mends -things. So we mustn't think of what she spoils." - -What Adrienne Toner had spoiled was, however, to be made very plain next -morning both to Nancy's old friend and to her mother. Beside her plate -at breakfast was a letter addressed in Barney's evident hand, a letter -in a narrow envelope stamped with the name of a French hotel and -showing, over the address, an engraving of peaks against the sky. Nancy -met the occasion with perfect readiness, saying as she looked at the -letter, waiting to open it till she had made the tea--Nancy always made -the tea in the morning while her mother sat behind the bacon and eggs at -the other end of the table--"How nice; from Barney. Now we shall have -news of them." - -Nothing less like an Ariane could be imagined than Nancy as she stood -there in her pink dress above the pink, white and gold tea-cups. One -might have supposed from her demeanour that a letter from Barney was but -a happy incident in a happy day. But, when she dropped into her chair -and read, it was evident that she was not prepared for what she found. -She read steadily, in silence, while Oldmeadow cut bread at the -sideboard and Mrs. Averil distributed her viands, and, when the last -page was reached, they both could not fail to see that Nancy was -blushing, blushing so deeply that, as she thus felt herself betray her -emotion, tears came thickly into her downcast eyes. - -"I'll have my tea now, dear," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you wait a little -longer, Roger?" She tided Nancy over. - -But Nancy was soon afloat. "The letter is for us all," she said. "Do -read it aloud, Roger, while I have my breakfast." - -Barney's letters, in the past, had, probably, always been shared and -Nancy was evidently determined that her own discomposure was not to -introduce a new precedent. Oldmeadow took up the sheets and read. - - * * * * * - -"DEAREST NANCY,--How I wish you were with us up here. It's the most -fantastically lovely place. One feels as if one could sail off into it. -I dug up some roots of saxifrage for your wall yesterday, such pretty -pink stuff. It's gone off in a box wrapped in damp moss and I hope will -reach you safely. A horrid, vandal thing to do; but for you and Aunt -Monica I felt it justified, and there are such masses of it. I saw a -snow-bunting yesterday, much higher up than the saxifrage; such a jolly, -composed little fellow on a field of snow. The birds would drive you -absolutely mad, except that you're such a sensible young person you'd no -doubt keep your head even when you saw a pair of golden eagles, as we -did, floating over a ravine. I walked around the Lac d'Annecy this -morning, before breakfast, and did wish you were with me. I thought of -our bird-walks at dawn last summer. There were two or three darling -warblers singing, kinds we haven't got at home; and black redstarts and -a peregrine falcon high in the air. I could write all day if I'd the -time, about the birds and flowers. You remember Adrienne telling us that -afternoon when she first came to Coldbrooks about the flowers. But I -mustn't go on now. We're stopping for tea in a little valley among the -mountains with flowers thick all around us and I've only time to give -our news to you and Aunt Monica and to send our love. Mother is -extremely fit and jolly, though rather scared at the hairpin curves; -Adrienne has to hold her hand. I'm too happy for words and feel as if -I'd grown wings. How is Chummie's foot? Did the liniment help? Those -traps are beastly things. I feel just as you do about the rabbits. -Adrienne reads aloud to us in the evenings; a man called Claudel; -awfully stiff French to follow but rather beautiful. I think you'd like -him. Not a bit like Racine! Best love to you and Aunt Monica. Here's -Adrienne, who wants to have her say." - -Had it been written in compunction for _Ariane aux bords laissee_? or, -rather, in a happy reversion to sheer spontaneity, a turning, without -any self-consciousness, to the comrade of the bird-walks who would, -after all, best feel with him about snow-buntings and redstarts? -Oldmeadow paused for the surmise, not looking up, before he went on from -Barney's neat, firm script to his wife's large, clear clumsy hand. - - "DEAREST NANCY," ran the postscript, and it had been at the - postscript, Oldmeadow now could gauge, that Nancy had first found - herself unprepared. "I, too, am thinking of you, with Barney. It is - a great joy to feel that where, he says, I've given him golden - eagles and snow-buntings he's given me--among so many other dear, - wonderful people--a Nancy. I get the best of the bargain, don't I? - I can't see much of the birds for looking at the peaks--_my_ peaks, - so familiar yet, always, so new again. 'Stern daughters of the - voice of God' that they are. Radiantly white against a cloudless - sky we find them to-day. Barney's profile is beautiful against - them--but his nose is badly sun-burned! _All_ our noses are - sun-burned! That's what one pays for flying among the Alps. - - "Mother Nell--we've decided that that's what I'm to call - her--looks ten years younger all the same, as I knew she would. We - talk of you all so often--of you and Meg and Palgrave and Barbara, - and half a dozen times a day Barney wishes that one or the other of - you were with us to see this or that. It's specially you for the - birds I notice. You must take me for some bird-walks at dawn some - day and teach me to know all your lovely English songsters.... Dear - little Cousin-Sister, I send you my love with his and, with him, - hold you warmly in my heart. Will 'Aunt Monica' accept my - affectionate and admiring homages? - - "Yours ever - - "ADRIENNE" - - - -Oldmeadow had not expected that she could write such a human letter; yet -it explained Nancy's blush. Barney's spontaneous affection she could -have faced, but she had not been able to face his wife's determined -tenderness. Adrienne had meant it well, no doubt--Oldmeadow gazed on -after he had finished, but she had no business to mean so well, no -business to thrust herself, in this community of intimacy, into what was -Barney's place alone. There was more in it, he knew, with Meg and Mrs. -Averil to help him, than the quite successful playfulness. She was to be -more intimate than Barney, that was what it came to; more, much more -tender if Barney was to be allowed intimacy and tenderness. That was -really what she intended Nancy to see, and that Barney had no place at -all where she, Adrienne, did not also belong. - -"Very sweet; very sweet and pretty," Mrs. Averil's voice broke in, and -he realized that he had allowed himself to drop into a grim and -tactless reverie; "I didn't know she had such a sense of humour. -Sun-burned noses and 'Stern daughters of the voice of God.' Well done. I -didn't think Adrienne would ever look as low as noses. They must be -having a delightful tour. I know black redstarts. There was one that -used to wake me every morning at four, one summer, in Normandy, with the -most foolish, creaking song; just outside my window. Give Barney my love -when you write and return my niece's affectionate and admiring homages. -Mother Nell. I shouldn't care to be called Mother Nell somehow." - -So Mrs. Averil's vexation expressed itself and so she floated Nancy -along. But Nancy, long since, had pulled herself together and was able -to look at Oldmeadow, while her lashes closed together in her own smile, -and to say that she'd almost be willing to lose her nose for the sake of -hearing the new warblers. Mrs. Averil opened her "Times" and over -marmalade Nancy and Oldmeadow planned the trip that they would take some -day, when their ship came in, the three of them, a bird-trip to the -French Alps. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -Oldmeadow sat beside Adrienne Chadwick and knew that from the other end -of the room, where he talked to Mrs. Aldesey, Barney's eyes were on -them, though he tried to keep them off. It was the first dinner-party -the young couple had given since they had come up to town, for though -they were established at Coldbrooks in the communal family life Adrienne -seemed to find to her taste, and though Barney had at once immersed -himself in country pursuits, they had taken and furnished this large -house in Connaught Square and it was, apparently, settled that the -winter months were to be spent in London. How that was to be combined -with farming at Coldbrooks, or whether Barney intended to take a header -into politics and felt a London house, big enough for entertaining, part -of the programme, Oldmeadow hadn't an idea, and for the rather sinister -reason that he had hardly laid his eyes on Barney since his return from -his wedding-journey. Even though asked to tea once or twice, while, -established in an hotel, they were finding and furnishing the house, he -had never found them alone and either Barney had made no opportunity, or -his wife had seen to it that none should be made, for having a -_tete-a-tete_ with his old friend. - -Oldmeadow could not associate Barney with ambitions, either social or -political, nor, he was bound to say, as he looked round the -dinner-table, where Adrienne sat at one end with Lord Lumley and Barney -at the other with Lady Lumley, could one infer from its disparate and -irrelevant elements any such ambitions in Adrienne. He had taken Mrs. -Aldesey down and had felt her at moments to be almost too resourceful, -her air of graceful skill in keeping the ball rolling seeming too much -to emphasize its tendency to drop. Without Mrs. Aldesey, without -Meg--vividly engaged at one corner with a fair young American--without -himself, for he had aided and abetted Lydia to the best of his ability, -the dinner would have been a dull one and he was not sure that even -their enterprise had redeemed it. Adrienne had not any air of fearing -dullness or of being in need of assistance. Oldmeadow saw that the blue -ribbon was frequently unrolled and that, as always, it made a silence in -which it could be watched. Lord Lumley, his handsome, official head bent -in an attitude of chivalrous devotion, watched earnestly, and the fair -young American paused in the midst of whatever he might be saying to Meg -to take almost reverent note; but Oldmeadow fancied more than once that -he caught startled eyes fixed upon it, especially when there emerged a -lustrous loop of quotation:-- - - "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, - Never doubted clouds would break,--" - -The silence for that had been so general that even Barney, far away, and -protected by Mrs. Aldesey, was aware of it. - -"How wonderfully he _wears_, doesn't he, dear old Browning," said Mrs. -Aldesey, and in the glance that Barney cast upon her was an oddly -mingled gratitude and worry. The fair young American, he was very fair -and had clear, charming eyes, finished the verse in a low voice to Meg -and Meg looked at him affectionately the while. He was evidently one of -Adrienne's appurtenances. - -It was a dull dinner. Pretty, festive Mrs. Pope and young Mr. Haviland, -reputed to be a wit and one of Meg's young men as Mrs. Pope was one of -Barney's young women, would not with any eagerness again attend a board -where the hostess quoted Browning and didn't know better than to send -you down, the first with a stern young socialist who sat silent for the -most part and frowned when addressed, and the second with a jocular, -middle-aged lady from California, the mother, Oldmeadow gathered, of the -clear-eyed youth, from whose ample bosom Mr. Haviland's subtle arrows -glanced aside leaving him helplessly exposed to the stout bludgeonings -of her humour. Adrienne paused once or twice in her conversation to -smile approval upon her compatriot and to draw Lord Lumley's attention -to her special brand of merriment, good Lord Lumley adjusting his -glasses obediently to take it in. - -And now they were all assembled in the drawing-room. Like everything -about Adrienne, it was simple and rather splendid. Barney had wisely -kept his modernities for his own study and it was a pity, Oldmeadow -reflected, that Adrienne had not kept for her own boudoir the large -portrait of herself that hung over the mantelpiece, since it was a note -more irrelevant than any Post Impressionist could have been and cast a -shade of surmise over the taste displayed in the Chippendale furniture -and the Chinese screens. - -"Rather sweet, isn't it; pastoral and girlish, you know," Barney had -suggested tentatively as Mrs. Aldesey had placed herself before it. -"Done in Paris a good many years ago; the man was very much the fashion -then. Adrienne was only sixteen. It's an extraordinarily perfect -likeness still, isn't it?" - -To which Mrs. Aldesey, all old lace and exquisite evasion, had murmured, -her lorgnette uplifted: "Quite dear and ingenuous. Such a relief after -your arid Cubists. What would they make of Mrs. Barney _en bergere_, I'd -like to know? A jumble of packing-cases with something twisted in a -corner to signify a bleat." - -For the picture, painted with glib assurance and abounding in pink and -azure, portrayed Adrienne dressed as a shepherdess and carrying a -flower-wreathed crook. - -Adrienne, to-night at all events, was looking very unlike the -shepherdess, but that might be because of the approaches of her -maternity. Mrs. Chadwick, when he had last been at Coldbrooks, had told -him that the baby was expected in May and that Adrienne was wonderful -about it, dedicating herself to its perfection in thought and deed with -every conscious hour. - -"If only I'd thought about my babies before they came like that, who -knows what they might have turned out!" she had surmised. "But I was -very silly, I'm afraid, and the only thing I really did think of was how -I should dress them. I've always loved butcher's-blue linen for children -and I must say that mine did look very nice in it. For everyday, you -know." - -Oldmeadow found it extremely difficult to think of Adrienne as a mother; -it was much easier to think of her as a shepherdess. Such solidities of -experience gave her even a certain pathos in his eyes, though he was in -no whit dislodged from his hostility to her. She was as mild, as -satisfied, apparently, with herself and with existence, as ever, yet her -eyes and lips expressed fatigue and a purely physical sadness that was -uncharacteristic, and it was uncharacteristic that she should be rather -thickly powdered. - -They had not really met since the morning of her adjuration to him at -Coldbrooks and he wondered if she remembered that little scene as -vividly as he did. She would be very magnanimous did she not remember it -unpleasantly; and he could imagine her as very magnanimous; yet from the -fact that she had kept Barney from him he could not believe that she was -feeling magnanimously. - -She watched Barney and Mrs. Aldesey now, as they stood before her -portrait, and he fancied that the sadness in her eyes, whatever might be -its cause, deepened a little. When she turned them on him it was with an -effect of being patiently ready for him. Perhaps, really, she had been -more patient than pleased all evening. - -"So you are settled here for the winter?" he said. "Have you and Barney -any plans? I've hardly seen anything of him of late." - -"We have been so very, very busy, you know," said Adrienne, as if quite -accepting his right to an explanation. - -She was dressed in pale blue and wore, with her pearl necklace, a little -wreath of pearls in her hair. In her hands she turned, as they talked, a -small eighteenth-century fan painted in pink and grey and blue, and he -was aware, as he had been at Coldbrooks, of those slow and rather -fumbling movements. - -"We couldn't well ask friends," she went on, "even the dearest, to come -and sit on rolls of carpet with us while we drank our tea, could we? -We've kept our squalor for the family circle. Meg's been with us; so -dear and helpful; but only Meg and a flying visit once or twice from -Mother Nell. Nancy couldn't come. But nothing, it seems, will tear Nancy -from hunting. I feel that strange and rather sad; the absorption of a -fine young life in such primitiveness." - -"Oh, well; it's not her only interest, you know," said Oldmeadow, very -determined not to allow himself vexation. "Nancy is a creature of such -deep country roots. Not the kind that grow in London." - -"I know," said Adrienne. "And it is just those roots that I want to -prevent my Barney's growing. Roots like that tie people to routine; -convention; acceptance. I want Barney to find a wider, freer life. I -hope he will go into politics. If we have left Coldbrooks and the dear -people there for these winter months it's because I feel he will be -better able to form opinions here than in the country. I saw quite well, -there, that people didn't form opinions; only accepted traditions. I -want Barney to be free of tradition and to form opinions for himself. He -has none now," she smiled. - -She had been clear before, and secure; but he felt now the added weight -of her matronly authority. He felt, too, that, while ready for him and, -perhaps, benevolently disposed, she was far more indifferent to his -impressions than she had been at Coldbrooks. She had possessed Barney -before; but how much more deeply she possessed him now and how much -more definitely she saw what she intended to do with him. - -"You must equip him with your opinions," said Oldmeadow, and his voice -was a good match for hers in benevolence. "I know that you have so many -well-formed ones." - -"Oh, no; never that," said Adrienne. "That's how country vegetables are -grown; first in frames and then in plots; all guided and controlled. He -must find his own opinions; quite for himself; quite freely of -influence. That is the rock upon which Democracy is founded. Nothing is -more arresting to development than living by other people's opinions." - -"But we must get our opinions from somebody and somewhere. The danger of -democracy is that we don't grow them at all; merely catch them, like -influenza, from a mob. Not that I disbelieve in democracy." - -"Don't you, Mr. Oldmeadow?" She turned her little fan and smiled on him. -"You believe in liberty, equality, fraternity? That surprises me." - -"Democracy isn't incompatible with recognizing that other people are -wiser than oneself and letting them guide us; quite the contrary. Why -surprised? Have I seemed so autocratic?" - -"It would surprise me very much to learn that you believed in equality, -to start with that alone"; Adrienne smiled on. - -"Well, I own that I don't believe in people who have no capacity for -opinions being impowered to act as if they had. That's the fallacy -that's playing the mischief with us, all over the world." - -"They never will have opinions worth having unless they are given the -liberty to look for them. You don't believe in liberty, either, when you -say that." - -"No; not for everybody. Some of our brothers are too young and others -too stupid to be trusted with it." - -"They'll take it for themselves if you don't trust them with it," said -Adrienne, and he was again aware that though she might be absurd she, at -all events, was not stupid. "All that we can do in life is to trust, and -help, and open doors. Only experience teaches. People must follow their -own lights." - -He moved forward another pawn, and though he did not find her stupid he -was not taking her seriously. "Most people have no lights to follow. -It's a choice for them between following other people's or resenting and -trampling on them. That, again, is what we can see happening all over -the world." - -"So it is, you must own, just as I thought; you don't even believe in -fraternity," said Adrienne, and she continued to smile her weary, -tranquil smile upon him; "for we cannot feel towards men as towards -brothers, and trust them, unless we believe that the light shines into -each human soul." - -He saw now that unless they went much deeper, deeper than he could be -willing, ever, to go with Adrienne Toner, he must submit to letting -himself appear as worsted. He knew where he believed the roots of trust -to grow and he did not intend, no never, to say to Adrienne Toner that -only through the love of God could one at once distrust and love the -species to which one belonged. He could have shuddered at the thought of -what she would certainly have found to say about God. - -"You've got all sorts of brothers here to-night, haven't you," he -remarked, putting aside the abstract theme and adjusting his glass. -"Some of them look as though they didn't recognize the relationship. -Where did you find our young socialist over there in the corner? He -looks very menacing. Most of the socialists I've known have been the -mildest of men." - -"He is a friend of Palgrave's. Palgrave brought him to see me. Oh, I'm -so glad--Gertrude is going to take care of him. She always sees at once -if anyone looks lonely. That's all right, then." - -Oldmeadow was not so sure it was as he observed the eye with which Mr. -Besley measured the beaming advance of the lady from California. - -"I wonder if you would like my dear old friend, Mrs. Prentiss," Adrienne -continued, watching her method with Mr. Besley. "The Laughing -Philosopher, Mother used to call her. She is a very rare, strong soul. -That is her son, talking to Lady Lumley. He's been studying architecture -in Paris for the past three years. A radiant person. Mrs. Prentiss runs -a settlement in San Francisco and has a brilliant literary and artistic -salon. She is a real force in the life of our country." - -"Why should you question my appreciation of rarity and strength? I can -see that she is very kind and that if anybody can melt Mr. Besley she -will." - -"Gertrude would have melted Diogenes," said Adrienne with a fond -assurance that, though it took the form of playfulness, lacked its -substance. "I hope they will find each other, for he is rare and strong, -too. What he needs is warmth and happiness. He makes me think of Shelley -when he talks." - -"He's too well up in statistics to make me think of Shelley," Oldmeadow -commented. Barney, he saw, from his place beside Mrs. Aldesey at the -other end of the room, was still watching them, pleased now, it was -evident, by the appearance of friendly, drifting converse they -presented. "He's not altogether unknown to me for we often, in our -review, get our windows broken by his stones; well-thrown, too. He's -very able. So you thought it might do the British Empire good to face -him? Well, I suppose it may." - -"Which are the British Empire?" asked Adrienne. "You. To begin with." - -"Oh, no. Count me out. I'm only a snappy, snuffy scribbler. Good old -Lord Lumley, of course, with all his vast, well-governed provinces -shimmering in the Indian sun behind him. And Sir Archibald, who talks so -loudly in the House. Palgrave didn't bring him, I'll be bound." - -"No. Lady Lumley brought him. He and Lord Lumley are certainly more than -odds and ends." She had an air of making no attempt to meet his -badinage, if it was that, but of mildly walking past it. "They are, both -of them, rather splendid people, in spite of their limitations. They've -accepted tradition, you see, instead of growing opinion. That is their -only trouble. I was afraid you were going to say Mr. Haviland. He is -certainly an odd and end." - -Mr. Haviland and Mrs. Pope had found each other and were indulging in -mirthful repartee in the back drawing-room. "I feel safe with Lord -Lumley and Sir Archibald," Adrienne added. - -"I'd certainly rather trust myself in their hands than in Mr. Besley's. -I'd almost rather trust myself in the hands of Mr. Haviland." - -"You mean that they would, at least, keep you comfortable and that Mr. -Besley wouldn't." She, too, had her forms of repartee. - -"I expect it's just what I do mean," he assented. "If Mr. Besley and his -friends had their way, I for instance, and workers of my type, would -soon, I suspect, have to forego our tobacco and our chamber-music. We're -only marketable in a comfortable world. And there are more comfortable -people, I maintain, under Lord Lumley, than there would be under Mr. -Besley." - -"'Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive,'" said Adrienne. -"All revolutions must begin by burning away the evil and the refuse. Not -that I am a revolutionist, or even a socialist." - -"You can't separate good from evil by burning," he said. "You burn them -both. That's what the French did in their lamentable bonfire, for which -they've been paying in poorer brains and poorer blood ever since. We -don't want revolutions. All we want is slow, good-tempered reform. -Revolutions are always ill-tempered, aren't they, and nothing worth -doing was ever done in an ill-temper. You are making me very didactic." - -"Oh, but I prefer that so much to persiflage," said Adrienne, with her -tranquillity. "And I am glad to hear what you really believe. But it is -sad to me that you should see no ardour or glory in anything. With all -its excesses and errors, I have always felt the French Revolution to be -a sublime expression of the human spirit." - -"It might have been; if they could only have kept their -heads--metaphorically as well as literally. But the glory and ardour -were too mixed with hatred and ignorance. I'm afraid I do tend to -distrust those states of feeling. They tend so easily to -self-deception." - -She was looking at him, quietly and attentively, and he was, for the -first time since their initial meeting, perhaps, feeling quite -benevolently towards her; quite as the British Empire might feel towards -a subject race. It was, therefore, the more difficult to feel anything -but exasperation when she said, having, evidently, summed up her -impressions and found her verdict: "Yes. You distrust them. We always -come back to that, don't we? You distrust yourself, too. So that, when -you tell me what you believe, you can only do it in the form of making -fun of my beliefs. I feel about you, Mr. Oldmeadow, what I felt that -morning when I tried to come near you and you wouldn't let me. I feel it -more the more I see you; and it makes me sad. It isn't only that you -distrust ardour and glory, all the sunlight and splendour of life; but -you are afraid of them; afraid to open your heart to trust. You shut -your door upon the sunlight and take up your caustic pen; and you don't -see how the shadows fall about you." - -It was indeed a dusty tumble from the quite civilized pavement of their -interchange, and it was unfortunate that upon his moment of -discomfiture, when he saw himself as trying to clap the dust off his -knees and shoulders in time to be presentable, Barney and Mrs. Aldesey -should have chosen to approach them. Barney, no doubt, imagined it a -propitious moment in which to display to Mrs. Aldesey his wife's and his -friend's amity. - -Adrienne was perfectly composed. She had borne her testimony and, again, -done her best for him, pointing out to him that the first step towards -enfranchisement was to open his door to the sunlight that she could so -bountifully supply. She turned a clear, competent eye upon her husband -and his companion. - -"Well, dear, and what have you and Roger been so deep in?" Barney -inquired, looking down at her with a fondness in which, all the same, -Oldmeadow detected the anxiety that had hovered in his eye all evening. -"You've seemed frightfully deep." - -"We have been," said Adrienne, looking up at him. "In liberty, equality -and fraternity; all the things I believe in and that Mr. Oldmeadow -doesn't. I can't imagine how he gets on at all, he believes in so few -things. It must be such a sad, dim, groping world to live in when there -are no stars above to look at and no hands below to hold." - -"Oh, well, you see," said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile, "his -ancestors didn't sign the Declaration of Independence." - -"We don't need ancestors to do that," Adrienne smiled back. "All of us -sign it for ourselves--all of us who have accepted our birthright and -taken the gifts that our great, modern, deep-hearted world hold out to -us. You are an American, Mrs. Aldesey, so you find it easy to believe in -freedom, don't you?" - -"Very easy; for myself; but not for other people," Mrs. Aldesey replied -and Oldmeadow saw at once, with an added discomfort, that she -underestimated, because of Adrienne's absurdity, Adrienne's -intelligence. "But then the very name of any abstraction--freedom, -humanity, what you will--has always made me feel, at once, dreadfully -sleepy. It's not ever having had my mind trained, Mrs. Barney. Now -yours was, beautifully, I can see." - -Adrienne looked up at her, for Mrs. Aldesey, her lace about her -shoulders, her lorgnette in her hands, had not seated herself, and it -was further evident to Oldmeadow that she weighed Mrs. Aldesey more -correctly than Mrs. Aldesey weighed her. "Very carefully, if not -beautifully," she said. "Have I made you sleepy already? But I don't -want to go on talking about abstractions. I want to talk about Mr. -Oldmeadow. The truth is, Barney," and her voice, as she again turned her -eyes on her husband, had again the form but not the substance of gaiety, -"the truth is that he's a lonely, lonely bachelor and that we ought to -arrange a marriage for him, you and I. Since he doesn't believe in -freedom, he won't mind having a marriage arranged, will he?--if we can -find a rare, sweet, gifted girl." - -Barney had become red. "Roger's been teasing you, darling. Nobody -believes in freedom more. Don't let him take you in. He's an awful old -humbug with his Socratic method. He upsets you before you know where you -are. He's always been like that." - -"Yes; hasn't he," Mrs. Aldesey murmured. - -"But he hasn't upset me at all," said Adrienne. "I grant that he was -trying to, that he was doing his very best to give me a tumble; but I -quite see through him and he doesn't conceal himself from me in the very -least. He doesn't really believe in freedom, however much he may have -taken _you_ in, Barney; he'd think it wholesome, of course, that you -should believe in it. That's his idea, you see; to give people what he -thinks wholesome; to choose for them. It's the lack of faith all -through. But the reason is that he's lonely; dreadfully lonely, and -because of that he's grown to be, as he says, snappy and snuffy; so that -we must borrow a page from his book and find what is wholesome for him. -I know all the symptoms so well. I've had friends just like that. It's a -starved heart and having nobody to be fonder of than anyone else; no one -near at all. He must be happily married as soon as possible. A happy -marriage is the best gift of life, isn't it, Mrs. Aldesey? If we haven't -known that we haven't known our best selves, have we?" - -"It may be; we mayn't have," said Mrs. Aldesey, cheerfully; but she was -not liking it. "I can't say. Am I to have a hand in choosing his bride? -I know his tastes, I think. We're quite old friends, you see." - -"No one who doesn't believe in freedom for other people may help to -choose her," said Adrienne, with a curious blitheness. "That's why he -mayn't choose her himself. We must go quite away to find her; away from -ceilings and conventions and out into the sunlight. I don't believe -happiness is found under ceilings. And it's what we all need more than -anything else. Even tobacco and chamber-music don't make you a bit -happy, do they, Mr. Oldmeadow? and if one isn't happy one can't know -anything about anything. Not really." - -"Alas!" sighed Mrs. Aldesey, keeping up her end, but not very -successfully, while Barney fixed his eyes upon his wife. "And I thought -I'd found it this evening, under this ceiling. Well, I shall cherish my -illusion, since you tell me it's only that, and thank you for it, Mrs. -Barney. The Lumleys are going to give me a lift and I see that their car -has been announced." - -"Stay on a bit, Roger," Barney murmured, as the Lumleys approached. -"I've seen nothing of you for ages." - -Adrienne rose to greet her parting guests. - -"Darling Adrienne, good-night. It's been perfectly delightful, your -little party," said Lady Lumley, who was large, light and easily -pleased; an English equivalent of the lady from California, but without -the sprightliness. "Your dear young Mr. Prentiss is a treasure. He's -been telling me about Sicilian temples. We _must_ get there one day. -Mrs. Prentiss says they will come to us for a week-end before they go. -How extraordinarily interesting she is. Don't forget that you are coming -on the fifteenth." - -"I shall get up a headache, first thing!" Lord Lumley stated in a loud, -jocular whisper, reverting to a favourite jest on Adrienne's powers. -"That's the thing to go in for, eh? I won't let Charlie cut me out this -time. Not a night's sleep till you come!" - -"Go in for as many as you like, dear Lord Lumley," said Adrienne, -smiling her assurance of being able to deal with a series. - -"Good-night, Mrs. Barney," said Mrs. Aldesey. "Leave me a little -standing-room under the stars, won't you." - -"There's always standing-room under the stars," said Adrienne. "We don't -exclude each other there." - -The party showed no other signs of breaking up. The Laughing Philosopher -had melted, or, at all events, mastered Mr. Besley, and talked to him -with, now and again, a maternal hand laid on his knee. Mr. Haviland and -Mrs. Pope still laughed in the back drawing-room, Meg and Mr. Prentiss -had come together again and Sir Archibald was engaged with a pretty -girl. After looking around upon them all, Adrienne, with the appearance -of a deeper fatigue, sank back upon her sofa. - -"You know, darling," Barney smiled candidly upon his wife, "you rather -put your foot in it just now. Mrs. Aldesey's marriage isn't happy. I -ought to have warned you." - -"How do you mean not happy, Barney?" Adrienne looked up at him. "Isn't -Mr. Aldesey dead?" - -"Not at all dead. She left him some years ago, didn't she, Roger? He -lives in New York. It's altogether a failure." - -Adrienne looked down at her fan. "I didn't know. But one can't avoid -speaking of success sometimes, even to failures." - -"Of course not. Another time you will know." - -Adrienne seemed to meditate, but without compunction. "That was what she -meant, then, by saying she believed in freedom for herself but not for -other people." - -"Meant? How do you mean? She was joking." - -"If she left him. It was she who left him?" - -"I don't know anything about it," Barney spoke now with definite -vexation and Oldmeadow, in his corner of the sofa, his arms folded, his -eyes on the cornice, gave him no help. "Except that, yes, certainly; -it's she who left him. She's not a deserted wife. Anything but." - -"It's only Mr. Aldesey who is the deserted husband," Adrienne turned her -fan and kept her eyes on it. "It's only he who can't be free. Forgive me -if she's a special friend of yours, Mr. Oldmeadow; but it explains. I -felt something so brittle, so unreal in her, charming and gracious as -she is. It is so very wrong for a woman to do that, I think." - -"Wrong?" Barney echoed, staring at Oldmeadow while this firm hand was -laid upon his Egeria. "What the dickens do you mean, darling? She is a -special friend of Roger's. You don't surely mean to say a woman must, -under all circumstances, stick to a man she doesn't love?" - -"Anything but that, Barney. I think that she should leave him and set -him free. It's quite plain to me that if a wife will not live with her -husband it is her duty to divorce him. Then, at any rate, he can try for -happiness again." - -"Divorce him, my dear child!" Barney was trying to keep up appearances -but the note of marital severity came through and as it sounded Adrienne -raised her eyes to his: "It's not so easy as all that! Aldesey, whatever -his faults, may have given her no cause to divorce him, and I take it -you'll not suggest that Mrs. Aldesey should give him cause to divorce -her." - -On her sofa, more pallid under her powder, more sunken than before, and -with the queer squashed-in look emphasized, Adrienne kept steady eyes -uplifted to her husband. "Not at all, dear Barney," she returned and -Oldmeadow, though hardened against the pathos of her physical -disability, saw that she spoke with difficulty, "but I think that you -confuse the real with the conventional wrong. Mrs. Aldesey would not -care to face any unconventionality; that is quite apparent. She would -draw her skirts aside from any conventional wrong-doing. But the real -wrong she would be blind to; the wrong of keeping anyone bound in the -emptiness you have made for them. Setting free is not so strange and -terrible a matter as you seem to imagine. It's quite easy for brave, -unshackled people." - -"Well, I must really be off," Oldmeadow now seized the occasion to -declare. "I believe, as a matter of fact, that Mr. Aldesey lives very -contentedly in New York, collecting French prints and giving excellent -dinners. Anything open and scandalous would be as distasteful to him as -to his wife. They are, both of them, happier apart; that's all it comes -to. So you must read your lessons, even by proxy, to more authentic -misdemeanants, Mrs. Barney. All right, Barney. Don't come down. I'll -hope to see you both again quite soon." - -So he got away, concealing as best he might, his sense of tingling -anger. But it died away to a sense of chill as he walked down Park Lane. -Was not Barney unhappy, already? What did she say to him when she got -him to herself? He felt sure that she had never bargained for a husband -who could look at her with ill-temper. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - -"Roger, see here, I've only come to say one word--about the absurd -little-matter of last night. Only one; and then we'll never speak of it -again," said poor Barney. - -He had come as soon as the very next day--to exonerate, not to -apologize; that was evident at once. Oldmeadow had not long to wait -before learning what she had said to him when she got him to herself, -nor long to wait before realizing that if Barney had been unhappy last -night he thought himself happy to-day. - -"Really, my dear boy," he said, "it's not worth talking about." - -"Oh, but we must talk about it," said Barney. He was red and spoke -quickly. "It upset her frightfully; it made her perfectly miserable. She -cried for hours, Roger," Barney's voice dropped to a haggard note. "You -know, though she bears up so marvellously, she's ill. She doesn't admit -illness and that makes it harder for her, because it simply bewilders -her when she finds herself on edge like this and her body refusing to -obey her. The baby is coming in May, you know." - -"I know, my dear Barney. The evening was very fatiguing for her. I saw -it all I think. I noticed from the beginning how tired she looked." - -"Horribly tired. Horribly fatiguing. I'm glad you saw it. For that's -really what I came to explain. She was tired to begin with and Mrs. -Aldesey put her on edge. I think I saw that myself at dinner--and, oh, -before that; on the day we had tea with her, when we first came up, in -November--Adrienne felt then that Mrs. Aldesey didn't understand or care -for her. You know she is so full of love and sympathy for everybody -herself that she is literally sickened when she is treated in that -artificial, worldly way. And you know, Roger, Mrs. Aldesey _is_ -artificial and worldly." - -That was how she had put it to Barney, of course. But Oldmeadow saw -further than Mrs. Aldesey and her artificiality. He saw a dishevelled -and weeping Adrienne stricken to the heart by the sense of threatened -foundations, aghast by what she had seen in her husband's eyes; and he -was aware, even while he resented having it put upon Lydia, of a -curious, reluctant pity for the pale, weeping figure. Lydia had, -obviously, displeased her; but Lydia had been the mere occasion; she -could have dealt easily enough with Lydia. It had been the revelation -that Barney could oppose her, could almost, for a moment, dislike her, -that had set her universe rocking. Her first taste of reality, then. The -thought came rather grimly, with the pity. After all it was their best -chance of happiness; that she should learn to accept herself as a person -who could be opposed, even disliked, in flashes, while still loved. He -had sat silent while he thought, one of his silences which, when he -emerged from them, he often recognized as over-long. Barney must have -felt the weight of all he did not say when all that he found to say was: -"What it comes to, doesn't it, is that they neither of them take much to -each other. Lydia is certainly conventional." - -"Ah, but Lady Lumley is conventional, too," said Barney with an -irrepressible air of checkmate. "Hordes of conventional people adore -Adrienne. It's a question of the heart. There are people who are -conventional without being worldly. It's worldliness that stifles -Adrienne. It's what she was saying last night: 'They have only ceilings; -I must have the sky.' Not that she thinks _you_ worldly, dear old boy." - -"I hope you try to interpret me to her kindly," said Oldmeadow, smiling. -Even at the moment when Barney, all innocently, was revealing to him -Adrienne's tactics, the fragments of her vocabulary imbedded in his -speech were affording him amusement. "You must try and persuade her that -I've quite a fondness for the sky myself, and even published a volume of -verse in my youth." - -"I do. Of course I do," said Barney eagerly. "And I gave her your poems, -long ago. She loved them. It's your sardonic pessimism she doesn't -understand--in anyone who could have written like that when they were -young. She never met anything like it before in her life. And the way -you never seem to take anything seriously. It makes her dreadfully sorry -for you, even while she finds it so hard to accept in anyone she cares -for--because she really does so care for you, Roger"--there was a note -of appeal in Barney's voice--"and does so long to find a way out for -you. It was a joke, of course; but all the same we've often wished you -could find the right woman to marry." - -Barney, as he had done last night, grew very red again, so that it was -apparent to Oldmeadow that not only the marriage but the woman--the -rare, gifted girl--had been discussed between him and his wife. - -"Adrienne thinks everyone ought to be married, you see," he tried to -pass it off. "Since we are so happy ourselves." - -"I see," said Oldmeadow. "There's another thing you must try to persuade -her of: that I'm not at all _un jeune homme a marier_, and that if I -ever seek a companion it will probably be some one like myself, some one -sardonic and pessimistic. If I fixed my affections on the lovely girl, -you see, it isn't likely they'd be reciprocated." - -"Oh, but"--Barney's eagerness again out-stepped his -discretion--"wouldn't the question of money count there, Roger? If she -had plenty of money, you know, or you had; enough for both; and a place -in the country? Of course, it's all fairy-tale; but Adrienne is a -fairy-tale person; material things don't count with her at all. She -waves them away and wants other people to wave them away, too. What she -always says is: 'What does my money _mean_ unless it's to open doors for -people I love?' She's starting that young Besley, you know, just because -of Palgrave; setting him up as editor of a little review--rotten it is, -I think--but Adrienne says people must follow their own lights. And it's -just that; she'd love to open doors for you, if it could make you -happy." - -Oldmeadow at this, after a moment of receptivity, began to laugh softly; -but the humour of the situation grew upon him until he at last threw -back his head and indulged in open and prolonged mirth. Barney watched -him bashfully. "You're not angry, I see," he ventured. "You don't think -it most awful cheek, I mean?" - -"I think it is most awful cheek; but I'm not angry; not a bit," said -Oldmeadow. "Fairy-godmothers are nothing if not cheeky; are they? Oh, I -know you meant your, not her, cheek. But it's the fault of the -fairy-godmother, all the same, and you must convince her that I'm not in -love with anybody, and that if ever I am she'll have to content herself -with my small earnings and a flat in Chelsea." - -So he jested; but, when his friend was gone, he realized that he was a -little angry all the same and he feared that his mirth had not been able -to conceal from Barney that what he really found it was confounded -impudence. Barney's face had worn, as he departed, the look of mingled -gratitude and worry and Barney must feel, as well as he felt, that their -interview hadn't really cleared up anything--except his own readiness to -overlook the absurdities of Barney's wife. What became more and more -clear to himself was that unless he could enable Adrienne to enroll his -name on her banner she would part him from Barney and that her very -benevolence was a method. The more he thought of it the more -uncomfortable he felt, and his inner restlessness became at length an -impulse urging him out to take counsel or, rather, seek solace, with the -friend from whom Adrienne could never part him. He would go and have tea -with Lydia Aldesey and with the more eagerness from the fact that he was -aware of a slight dissatisfaction in regard to Lydia. She had not -altogether pleased him last night. She had put herself in the wrong; she -had blundered; she hadn't behaved with the skill and tact requisite; and -to elicit from her a confession of ineptitude would make his sense of -solace the more secure. - -The day was a very different day from the one in April when he had -first gone to ask Mrs. Aldesey for information about people called -Toner. It was early February, dull and cold and damp. No rain was -falling, but the trees were thick with moisture and Oldmeadow had his -hands deep in his pockets and the collar of his coat turned up about his -ears. As he crossed the Serpentine, an electric brougham passed him, -going slowly, and he had a glimpse within it, short but very vivid, of -Adrienne, Meg, and Captain Hayward. - -Adrienne, wearing a small arrangement of black velvet that came down -over her brows, was holding Meg's hand and, while she spoke, was looking -steadily at her, her face as white as that of a Pierrot. Meg listened, -gloomily it seemed, and Captain Hayward's handsome countenance, turned -for refuge towards the window, showed an extreme embarrassment. - -They passed and Oldmeadow pursued his way, filled with a disagreeable -astonishment though, absurdly, his mind was at first occupied only in an -attempt to recover a submerged memory that Captain Hayward's demeanour -suggested. It came at last in an emancipating flash and he saw again, -after how many years, the golden-brown head of his rather silly setter, -John, turned aside in shy yet dignified repudiation, that still, by a -dim, sick smile, attempted to conceal distress and to enter into the -spirit of the game--as a kitten was held up for his contemplation. A -kitten was a very inadequate analogy, no doubt, for the theme of -Adrienne's discourse; yet Captain Hayward's reaction to a situation for -which he found himself entirely unprepared was markedly like John's. And -he, like John, had known that the game was meant to be at his expense. -John and Captain Hayward got Oldmeadow out of the park before he had -taken full possession of his astonishment and could ask himself why, if -Adrienne were engaged in rescuing Meg from her illicit attachment, she -should do it in the company of the young man. Yet, strangely enough, he -felt, as he walked, a growing sense of reassurance. For an emergency -like this, after all, given amenable subjects, Adrienne was the right -person. He hadn't dreamed it to be such an emergency; but since it was, -Adrienne would pull them through. As she would have laid her hand on the -head of Bacchus and reformed him, so she would lay it on the head of -Captain Hayward. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - - -The incident put Mrs. Aldesey quite out of his mind, and it was not till -he stood on her doorstep and rang her bell that he remembered his -grievance against her and realized that it had been made more definite -by this glimpse of Adrienne's significance. That his friend was prepared -for him was evident at his first glance; she had even, he saw, been -expecting him, for she broke out at once with: "Oh, my dear Roger--what -_are_ you going to do with her?" - -He was actually pleased to find himself putting her, with some grimness, -in her place. "What is she going to do with us? you mean. You underrate -Mrs. Barney's capacity, let me tell you, my dear friend." - -But Mrs. Aldesey was not easily quelled. "Underrate her! Not I! She's a -Juggernaut if ever there was one. Her capacity is immense. She'll roll -on and she'll crush flat. That poor Barney! She is as blind as a -Juggernaut, but _he_ will come to see--alas! he is seeing -already--though you and I danced round him with veils and cymbals--that -people won't stand being pelted with platitudes from soup to dessert. -The Lumleys will, of course; it's their natural diet; though even they -like their platitudes served with a touch of _sauce piquante_; but -Rosamund Pope told me that she felt black and blue all over and Cuthbert -Haviland--malicious toad--imitates her already to perfection: dreadful -little voice, dreadful little smile, dreadful little quotations and all. -It will be one of his London gags. That shepherdess! My dear Roger, -don't pretend to me that _you_ don't see it!" - -Oldmeadow, sunken in the chair opposite her, surveyed her over his -clasped hands with an air of discouragement. - -"What I'm most seeing at the moment is that she's made you angry," he -remarked. "If what you say were all the truth, why should she make you -angry? She's not as blind as a Juggernaut. That's where you made your -mistake. She'll only crush the people who don't lie down before her. She -knows perfectly well where she is going--and over whom. So be careful, -that is my advice, and keep out of her way; unless you want to lose a -toe or a finger." - -Mrs. Aldesey showed, at this, that he had arrested her. In spite of the -element of truth in Adrienne's verdict upon her he knew her to be, when -veils and cymbals were cast aside, a sincere and gallant creature. She -did not attempt to hide from him now and, after a moment of mutual -contemplation, she laughed a little, with not unreal mirth and said: "I -suppose I am angry. I suppose I'm even spiteful. It's her patronage, you -know. Her suffocating superiority. To have to stand there, for his sake, -and _take_ it! You overrate her, Roger. No woman not abysmally stupid -could say the things she says." - -"Your mistake again. She's able to say them because she's never met -irony or criticism. She's not stupid," he found his old verdict. "Only -absurd. You know, you gave yourself away to her. You showed her what you -thought of her. You patronized _her_." - -"Is _no_ retaliation permitted?" Mrs. Aldesey moaned. "Must one accept -it all? Be scourged with the stars and Browning and then bow one's head -to her caresses? After all, Barney is your friend, not mine, and it's -as your friend that I've tried to be decent to his wife. But she hates -me like poison. She gave herself away, too, you know. I liked the way -she excluded me from her prospects for your welfare. And of course she -knew my marriage wasn't a happy one." - -"I don't think that she did. No; I don't think so. You _are_ poison to -her--cold poison," said Oldmeadow. "Don't imagine for a moment she -didn't see that you were dancing about him with veils and cymbals. She -didn't give herself away, for she had nothing to conceal. She was candid -and you weren't. She didn't pretend that you were under the stars with -her; while you kept up appearances." - -"But what's to become of your Barney if we don't keep them up!" Mrs. -Aldesey cried. "Is he to be allowed to see that nobody can stand -her--except people he can't stand? He'll have to live, then, with Mrs. -and Mr. Prentiss. Did you try to talk to Mrs. Prentiss? Do you know that -she told me that death was 'perfectly sublime'?" - -"Perhaps it is. Perhaps she'll find it so. They all seem to think well -of death, out in California"--Oldmeadow allowed himself to relax from -his admonitory severity. "Mrs. Prentiss isn't as silly as she seems, I -expect. And you exaggerate Barney's sensitiveness. He'd get on very well -with Mrs. Prentiss if you weren't there to show him you found her a -bore. He has a very simple side and we must hope it may become simpler. -The only chance for Barney, I see it more and more, is that we should -efface ourselves as much as possible. The people who find the Prentisses -a bore, I mean. And it won't be difficult for us to do that. She will -see to it that we are effaced. Only, of course, it's a grief. I'm so -fond of him"; and as Oldmeadow stretched forth his legs and put his -hands in his pockets there drifted across his mind, in a thin, sharp, -knife-like stroke, the memory of Barney--tall eighteen-year-old -Barney--with dear old Effie, luxuriously upturned in his arms, being -softly scratched--Barney's hand with a cat was that of an expert--and -told that she was the best and most beautiful of cats. - -"It's a great shame," said Mrs. Aldesey; "I've been thinking my spiteful -thoughts, too, instead of sympathizing with you. Of course, if it's any -consolation to you, one usually does lose one's friends when they marry. -But it needn't have been as bad as this. What a thousand pities he -couldn't have fallen in love with a nice girl of his own kind. You -couldn't do anything about it when you went down in the spring?" - -Oldmeadow had never said anything to Mrs. Aldesey about his hopes for -Nancy. He had a secretive instinct for keeping his friendships in -compartments and discussed only those portions that overflowed. -"Nothing," he said. "And the mischief was that I went down hostile, as -you warned me against doing. Barney saw at once that I didn't care for -her; and she saw it at once. He even forced a sort of expression of -opinion from me and I know now that it's always glooming there at the -back of his mind when he sees me. It was quite useless. Once he'd fallen -under her spell it was all up with him. She has her singular power and, -for a man in love with her, her singular charm. Even I, you know, -understand that." - -Mrs. Aldesey contemplated him. "I confess I can't," she said. "She is so -desperately usual. I've seen her everywhere, ever since I can remember. -Attending lectures at the Sorbonne; listening to Wagner at Bayreuth; -having dresses tried on at Worth's; sitting in the halls of a hundred -European hotels. She is the most unescapable form of the American woman; -only not _du peuple_ because of the money and opportunity that has also -extirpated everything racy, provincial and individual." - -"I don't know," said Oldmeadow. He mused, his hands clasped behind his -head. "She's given me all sorts of new insights." His eyes, after his -wont, were on the cornice and his friend's contemplation, relaxed a -little from its alert responsiveness, allowed itself a certain -conjectural softness as she watched him. "I feel," he went on, "since -knowing her, that I understand America, her America, better than you do. -You're engaged in avoiding rather than in understanding it, aren't you? -What you underrate, what Americans of your type don't see--because, as -you say, it's so oppressively usual--is the power of her type. If it is -a type; if she is as ordinary as you say. It's something bred into them -by the American assumption of the fundamental rightness of life; a -confidence unknown before in the history of the world. An individual, -not an institutional or social, confidence. They do, actually, seem to -take their stand on the very universe itself. Whereas the rest of us -have always had churches or classes to uphold us. They have all the -absurdities and crudities of mere individualism. They have all the -illusions of their ignorance. Yet I sometimes imagine, after I've seen -her, that it's a power we haven't in the least taken into our -reckoning. Isn't it the only racial thing that America has produced--the -only thing that makes them a race? It makes them independent of us, when -we've always imagined, in our complacency, that they were dependent. It -enables them to take what we have to give, but to do with it what they, -not we, think best. And by Jove, who knows how far it will carry them! -Not you, my dear Lydia. You'll stay where you are--with us." - -His eyes had come back and down to her, and her gaze resumed its -alertness and showed him that she found the picture he drew disquieting. -"You mean it's a new kind of civilization that will menace ours?" - -"It's not a civilization; that's just what it's not. It's a state of -mind. Perhaps it will menace us. Perhaps it does. We've underrated it; -of that I'm sure; and underrated power is always dangerous. It will be -faith without experience against experience without faith. What we must -try for, if we're not to be worsted, is to have both--to keep experience -and to keep faith, too. Only so shall we be able to hold our own against -Mrs. Barney. And even so we shan't be able to prevent her doing things -to us--and for us. She'll do things for us that we can't do for -ourselves." His mind reverted to the faces of the brougham. "In that way -she's bound to worst us. We'll have to accept things from her." - -Oldmeadow's eyes had gone back to the cornice and, in the silence that -followed, Mrs. Aldesey, as she sat with folded arms, played absently -with the lace ruffle at her wrist. The lace was an heirloom, like her -rings, and the contemplation of them may have afforded her some -sustainment. "She's made you feel all that, then," she remarked. "With -her crook and her hat and her rose-wreathed lamb. If such a sardonic -old lion as you does really grow bodeful before the rose-wreathed lamb -there is, I own, reason to fear for the future. I'm glad I'm growing -old. It would hurt me to see her cutting your claws." - -"Oh, she won't hurt us!" Oldmeadow smiled at her. "It's rather we who -will hurt her--by refusing to lie down with her lamb. If that's any -comfort to you." - -"Not in the least. I'm not being malicious. You don't call it hurt, -then, to be effaced?" - -"Smothered in rose-leaves, eh?" he suggested. "It would be suffocating -rather than suffering. She does give me that feeling. But you'll make -her suffer--you have, you know--rather than she you." - -"I really don't know about that," said Mrs. Aldesey. "You make me quite -uncomfortable, Roger. You make me superstitious. She's done that to me -already. I refuse to take her seriously, but I shall avoid her. That's -what it comes to. Like not giving the new moon a chance to look at you -over your left shoulder." - - - - -CHAPTER XV - - -On a morning in early March Oldmeadow found, among the letters waiting -for him on his breakfast-table, one from Nancy. Nancy and he, with all -their fondness, seldom wrote to each other and he was aware, on seeing -her writing, of the presage of something disagreeable that the -unexpected often brings. - - "Dear Roger," he read, and in his first glance he saw his presage - fulfilled. "We are in great trouble. Aunt Eleanor has asked me to - write because she is too ill and it is to me as well as to her that - Meg has written and she wants you to see Barney at once. Here are - Meg's letters. She has gone away with Captain Hayward. Aunt Eleanor - and Mother think that Barney may be able to persuade Adrienne to - bring her back. No one else, we feel convinced, will have any - influence with her. Do anything, anything you can, dear Roger. - Mother and I are almost frightened for Aunt Eleanor. She walks - about wringing her hands and crying, and she goes up to Meg's room - and opens the door and looks in--as if she could not believe she - would not find her there. It is heart-breaking to see her. We - depend on you, dear Roger. - - "Yours ever - - "NANCY." - - - -"Good Lord!" Oldmeadow muttered while, in lightning flashes, there -passed across his mind the face of John the setter and a Pierrot's face, -white under a low line of black velvet. He took up Meg's letters, -written from a Paris hotel. - - "DARLING MOTHER, I know it will make you frightfully miserable and - I can't forgive myself for that; but it had to be. Eric and I cared - too much and it wasn't life at all, going on as we were apart. Try, - darling Mother, to see it as we do see things nowadays. Adrienne - will explain it all--and you must believe her. You know what a - saint she is and she has been with us in it all, understanding - everything and helping us to be straight. Everything will come - right. Iris Hayward will set Eric free, of course; she doesn't care - one bit for him and has made him frightfully unhappy ever since - they married, and she wants to marry some one else herself--only of - course she'd never be brave enough to do it this way. When Eric is - free, we will marry at once and come home, and, you will see, there - are so many sensible people nowadays; we shall not have a bad time - at all. Everything will come right, I'm sure; and even if it - didn't, in that conventional way--I could not give him up. No one - will ever love me as he does. - - "Your devoted child - - "MEG." - - - -That was the first: the second ran: - - "DEAREST NANCY,--I know you'll think it frightfully wrong; you are - such an old-fashioned little dear and you told me often enough that - I oughtn't to see so much of Eric. Only of course that couldn't - have prepared you for this and I expect Aunt Monica won't let you - come and stay with us for ages. Never mind; when you marry, you'll - see, I'm sure. Love is the _only_ thing, really. But I should hate - to feel I'd lost you and I'm sure I haven't. I want to ask you, - Nancy dear, to do all you can to make Mother _take_ it. I feel, - just because you will think it so wrong, that you may be more good - to her than Adrienne--who doesn't think it wrong at all--at least - not in Mother's way. It would be frightfully unfair if Mother - blamed Adrienne. She did all she could to show us where we stood - and to make us play the game, and it would be pretty hard luck if - people were to be down on her now because we _have_ played it. We - might have been really rotters if it hadn't been for Adrienne; - cheats and hypocrites, I mean; stealing our happiness. I know - Adrienne can bring Barney round. It's only Mother who troubles me, - just because she is such a child that it's almost impossible to - make her see reason. She doesn't recognize right and wrong unless - they're in the boxes she's accustomed to. Everything is in a box - for poor, darling old Mummy. But I mustn't go on. Be the dear old - pal you always have and help me out as well as you can. - - "Your loving - - "MEG." - - - -"Good Lord," Oldmeadow muttered once more. He pushed back his chair and -rose from the table in the bright spring sunlight. He had the feeling, -almost paternal, of disgrace and a public stripping. He saw Eleanor -Chadwick stopping at Meg's door to look in at the forsaken room, -distraught in her grief and incomprehension. He saw Nancy's pale, -troubled face and Monica Averil's, pinched and dry in its sober dismay. -And then again, lighted by a flare at once tawdry and menacing, the -face of Adrienne Toner, the intruder, the insufferable meddler and -destroyer, a Pierrot among fire-works that had, at last, set fire to the -house. He found a taxi on the Embankment and drove to Connaught Square. -Freshly decorated with window-boxes, the pleasant, spacious house had a -specially smiling air of welcome, but the butler's demeanour told him -that something of the calamity had already penetrated. Adrienne, if she -had not heard before, would have had her letters; Barney, who had been -kept in the dark, would have been enlightened, and the irrepressible -exclamations that must have passed between them seemed dimly reflected -on the man's formal countenance. Mrs. Chadwick, he told Oldmeadow, was -breakfasting upstairs with Mr. Chadwick, and he ushered him into -Barney's study. - -Oldmeadow waited for some time among the Post Impressionist pictures, -one of which remained for ever afterwards vividly fixed in his memory of -the moment; a chaotic yet determined picture; featureless yet, as it -were, conveying through its unrecognizable elements the meaning of a -grin. And, as he stood in the centre of the room and looked away from -the derisive canvas, he saw on Barney's desk photographs of Adrienne, -three photographs of her; one as a child, a sickly looking but beaming -child; one in early girlhood, singularly childlike still; and one in her -bridal dress of only the other day, it seemed, mild and radiant in her -unbecoming veil and wreath. - -It was Barney who came to him. Poor Barney. He was more piteously boyish -than ever before to his friend's eye; so beautifully arrayed, all in -readiness for a happy London day with his angel, so pale, so haggard -and perplexed. "Look here, Roger," were his first words, "do you mind -coming upstairs to Adrienne's room? She's not dressed yet; not very -well, you know. You've heard, then, too?" - -"I've just heard from Nancy. Why upstairs? I'd rather not. We'd better -talk this over alone, Barney. All the more if your wife isn't well." - -"Yes; yes; I know. I told her it would be better. But she insists." - -The effect of a general misery Barney gave was heightened now by his -unhappy flush. "She doesn't want us to talk it over without her, you -see. She comes into it all too much. From Nancy, did you say? What's -Nancy got to do with this odious affair?" - -"Only what Meg has put upon her--to interpret her as kindly as she can -to your mother. Here are the letters. I'd really rather not go -upstairs." - -"I know you'll hold Adrienne responsible--partly at least. She expects -that. She knows that I do, too; she's quite prepared. I only heard half -an hour ago and of course it knocked me up frightfully. Meg! My little -sister! Why she's hardly more than a child!" - -"I'm afraid she's a good deal more than a child. I'm afraid we can't -hold Meg to be not responsible, though, obviously, she'd never have -taken such a step unaided and unabetted. Just read these letters, -Barney; it won't take a moment to decide what's best to be done. I'll go -down to your mother and you must be off, at once, to Paris, and see if -you can fetch Meg back." - -But after Barney, with a hesitating hand and an uncertain glance, had -taken the letters and begun to read them, the door was opened with -decorous deliberation and Adrienne's French maid appeared, the tall, -sallow, capable-looking woman whom Oldmeadow remembered having seen at -Coldbrooks a year ago. - -"Madame requests that _ces Messieurs_ should come up at once; she awaits -them," Josephine announced in unemphatic but curiously potent accents. -Adrienne's potency, indeed, was of a sort that flowed through all her -agents and Oldmeadow thought that he detected, in the melancholy gaze -bent upon Barney, reprobation for his failure to attain the standard set -for him by a devotion wholehearted and reverential. Mrs. Chadwick, he -remembered, had said that Adrienne's maid adored her. - -"Yes, yes. We're coming at once, Josephine," said Barney. Reading the -letters as he went, he moved to the door and Oldmeadow found himself, -perforce, following. - -He had not yet visited the morning-room and even before his eyes rested -on Adrienne they saw, hanging above her head where she sat on a little -sofa, a full-length portrait of Mrs. Toner; in white, standing against a -stone balustrade and holding lilies; seagulls above her and a background -of blue sea. - -Adrienne was also in white, but she wore over her long, loose dress a -little jacket of pink silk edged with swan's down and the lace cap -falling about her neck was rosetted with pink ribbon. It was curious to -see her in this almost frivolous array, recalling the shepherdess, when -her face expressed, for the first time in his experience of her, an -anger and an agitation all the more apparent for its control. She was -pale yet flushed, odd streaks of colour running up from her throat and -dying in the pallor of her cheeks. Her condition had evidently much -affected her complexion and her nose, through its layer of powder, -showed a pinched and reddened tint. It made Oldmeadow uncomfortable to -look at her; her mask of calm was held at such a cost; she was at once -so determinedly herself and so helplessly altered; and it was not with -an automatic courtesy only that he went up to her and held out his hand. -An impulse of irrelevant yet irrepressible pity stirred him. - -She had fixed her eyes on him as he entered, but now looking at her -husband and not moving, she said: "I do not think you want to take my -hand, Mr. Oldmeadow. You will think me a criminal too, as Barney does." - -"Darling! Don't talk such nonsense!" Barney cried. "I haven't blamed -you, not by a word. I know you've done what you think right. Look, -darling; Roger has had these letters. Just read them. You see what Meg -writes--there--to Nancy--about your having done all you could to keep -them straight. You haven't been fair to yourself in talking to me just -now." - -Adrienne, without speaking, took the letters and Oldmeadow moved away to -the window and stood looking down at the little garden at the back of -the house where a tall almond-tree delicately and vividly bloomed -against the pale spring sky. He heard behind him the flicker of the fire -in the grate, the pacing of Barney's footsteps as he walked up and -down, and the even turning of the pages in Adrienne's hands. Then he -heard her say: "Meg contradicts nothing that I have said to you, Barney. -She writes bravely and truly; as I knew that she would write." - -Barney stopped in his pacing. "But darling; what she says about -straightness?" It was feeble of Barney and he must know it. Feeble of -him even to think that Adrienne might wish to avail herself of the -loophole or that she considered herself in any need of a shield. - -"You can't misunderstand so much as that, Barney," she said. "Meg and I -mean but one thing by straightness; and that is truth. That was the way -I tried to help them; it is the only way in which I can ever help -people. I showed them the truth and kept it before their eyes when they -were in danger of forgetting it. I said to them that if they were to be -worthy of their love they must be brave enough to make sacrifices for -it. I did not hide from them that there would be sacrifices--if that is -what you mean." - -"It's not what I mean, darling! Of course it's not!" broke from poor -Barney almost in a wail. "Didn't you try at all to dissuade them? Didn't -you show them that it was desperate, and ruinous, and wrong? Didn't you -tell Meg that it would break Mother's heart!" - -The blue ribbon was again unrolled and Oldmeadow, listening with rising -exasperation, heard that the sound of her own solemn cadences sustained -her. "I don't think anything in life is desperate or ruinous or wrong, -Barney, except turning away from one's own light. Meg met a reality and -was brave enough to face it. I regret, deeply, that it came to her -tragically, not happily; but happiness can grow from tragedy if we are -brave and true and Meg is brave and true in her love. It won't break -your mother's heart. Hers is a small, but not such a feeble, heart as -that. I believe that the experience may strengthen and ennoble her. She -has led too sheltered a life." - -Oldmeadow at this turned from the window and met Barney's miserable -eyes. "There's really no reason for my staying on, Barney," he said, and -his voice as well as his look excluded Adrienne from their interchange. -"I'll take the 1.45 to Coldbrooks. What shall I tell your mother? That -you've gone to Paris this morning?" - -"Yes, that I've gone to Paris. That I'll do my best, you know. That I -hope to bring Meg back. Tell her to keep up her courage. It'll only be a -day or two after all, and we may be able to hush it up." - -"Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne in a grave, commanding tone. It was -impossible before it to march out of the room and shut the door, though -that was what his forcibly arrested attitude showed that he wished to -do. "You as well as Barney must hear my protest," said Adrienne, and she -fixed her sombre eyes upon him. "Meg is with the man she loves. In the -eyes of heaven he is her husband. It would be real as contrasted with -conventional disgrace were she to leave him now. She will not leave him. -I know her better than you do. I ask you"--her gaze now turned on -Barney--"I desire you, not to go to her on such an unworthy errand." - -"But, Adrienne," Barney, flushed and hesitating, pleaded, "it's for -Mother's sake. Mother's too old to be enlarged like that--that's really -nonsense, you know, darling. You see what Nancy says. They are -frightened about her. It's not only convention. It's a terrible mistake -Meg's made and she may be feeling it now and only too glad to have the -way made easy for her to come back. I promise you to be as gentle as -possible. I won't reproach her in any way. I'll tell her that we're all -only waiting to forgive her and take her back." - -"Forgive her, Barney? For what? It is only in the eyes of the world that -she has done wrong and I have lifted her above that fear. Convention -does not weigh for a moment with me beside the realities of the human -heart; nor would it with you, Barney, if it were not for the influence -of Mr. Oldmeadow. I have warned you before; it is easy to be -worldly-wise and cynical and to keep to the broad road; it is easy to be -safe. But withering lies that way: withering and imprisonment, and--" - -"Come, come, Mrs. Barney," Oldmeadow interposed, addressing her for the -first time and acidly laughing. "Really we haven't time for sermons. You -oughtn't to have obliged me to come up if you wanted to influence Barney -all by yourself. He sees quite clearly for himself the rights and the -wrongs of this affair, as it happens. If I were to preach for a moment -in my turn I might ask you how it was that you didn't see that it was -your duty to tell Meg's mother and brother how things were going and let -them judge. You're not as wise as you imagine--far from it. Some things -you can't judge at all. Meg and Hayward aren't people of enough -importance to have a right to break laws; that's all that it comes to; -there's nothing to be gained by their breaking laws; not only for other -people, but for themselves. They're neither of them capable of being -happy in the ambiguous sort of life they'd have to lead. There's a -reality you didn't see at all in your haste to flout convention. Barney -could have dealt with Hayward, and Meg could have been packed off to the -country and kept there till she'd learned to think a little more about -other people's hearts and a little less about her own. What business had -you, after all, to have secrets from your husband and to plot with the -two young fools behind his back? Isn't Meg his sister rather than -yours?" His bitterness betrayed him and conscious hostility rose in him, -answering the menace that measured him in her eyes. "What business had -you, a new-comer among us, to think yourself capable of managing all -their lives and to set yourself up above them all in wisdom? You take -too much upon yourself"; his lips found the old phrase: "Really you do. -It's been your mistake from the beginning." - -He could not have believed that a face so framed for gentleness could -show itself at once so calm and so convulsed. He knew that something had -happened to her that had never happened to her before in her life. She -kept her eyes steadily on him and he wondered if she were not reciting -some incantation, some exorcism, derived from the seagulled lady above -her: Power in Repose--Power in Love--Power in Light. Her mouth and eyes -and nostrils were dark on her pallor and he felt that she held back all -the natural currents of her being in order to face and quell him with -the supernatural. - -"Never mind all that, Roger," Barney was sickly murmuring. "I don't -feel like that. I know Adrienne didn't for a moment mean to deceive me." - -"We will mind it, Barney," said Adrienne, breathing with difficulty. "I -had, Mr. Oldmeadow, the business, first, of loyalty to another human -soul who, in the crisis of its destiny, confided in me. I have been -nearer Meg than any of you have guessed, from my first meeting with her. -You were all blind. I saw at once that she was tossed and tormented. I -am nearer, far nearer her, than her brother and mother. In them she -would never have dreamed of confiding and she came to me because she -felt that in me she would find reality and in them mere formulas. I do -not look upon women as chattels to be handed about by their male -relatives and locked up if they do not love according to rule and -precedent. I look upon them as the equals of men in every respect, as -free as men to shape their lives and to direct their destinies. You -speak a mediaeval language, Mr. Oldmeadow. The world, our great, modern, -deep-hearted world, has outstripped you." - -"Darling," Barney forestalled, breathlessly, as she paused, any reply -that Oldmeadow might have been tempted to make, "don't mind if Roger -speaks harshly. He's like that and no one cares for us more. He doesn't -mean conventionality at all, or anything mediaeval. You don't understand -him. He puts his finger on the spot about Meg and Hayward. It's exactly -as he says; they're not of enough importance to have a right to break -laws. If you could have confided in me, it would have been better; you -must own that. We'd have given Meg a chance to pull herself together. -We'd have sent Hayward about his business. It's a question, as Roger -says, of your wisdom; of your knowledge of the world. You didn't -understand them. They're neither of them idealists like you. They can't -be happy doing what you might be big enough to do. Just because they're -not big. Try to take it in, darling. And we really needn't go on talking -about it any longer, need we? It isn't a question of influence. All we -have to decide on is what's to be done. Roger must go to Mother and tell -her I'm starting this morning to try and fetch Meg back. Imagine Mother -with a divorce case on! It would kill her, simply. That's all. Isn't it, -Roger?" - -"Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, again. She rose as she spoke. As -he saw her stand before them, her approaching maternity dominated for a -moment all his impressions of her. Veiled and masked adroitly as it was, -its very uncouthness curiously became her. Her head, for once, looked -small. Like an archaic statue, straight and short and thick, her altered -form had dignity and amplitude and her face, heavy with its menace, hard -with its control, might have been that of some austere and threatening -priestess of fruitfulness. - -"Barney, wait," she said. Her arms hung straight beside her, but she -slightly lifted a hand as she spoke and Oldmeadow noted that it was -tightly clenched. "It is I, not your friend, whom you must question as -to what it is right that you should do. I do not consent to his reading -of my unwisdom and unworthiness. I ask you not to consent to it. I ask -you again not to go. I ask you again to respect my judgment rather than -his." - -"Darling," the unfortunate husband supplicated; "it's not because it's -Roger's judgment. You know it's what I felt right myself--from the -moment you told me what had happened. You say people must follow their -own light. It _is_ my light. I must do what Mother asks and try to bring -Meg back." - -"It is not your light, Barney. It is craft and caution and fear. More -than that, do you not see, must I make plain to you what it is you do to -me in going? You insult me. You treat what I have believed right for Meg -to do as a crime from which she must be rescued. You drag me in the dust -with her. Understand me, Barney"--the streaks of colour deepened on her -neck, her breath came thickly--"if you go, you drag me in the dust." - -"How can it drag you in the dust, Mrs. Barney, if Meg wants to come -back?" Oldmeadow interposed in the tone of a caustic doctor addressing a -malingering patient. "We're not talking of crimes; only of follies. -Come; be reasonable. Don't make it so painful for Barney to do what's -his plain duty. You're not a child. You have, I hope, courage enough and -humour enough to own that you can make mistakes--like other people." - -"Yes, yes, Adrienne, that's just it," broke painfully from Barney, and, -as he seized the clue thus presented to him, Adrienne turned her head -slowly, with an ominous stillness, and again rested her eyes upon him. -"It's childish, you know, darling. It's not like you. And of course I -understand why; and Roger does. You're not yourself; you're -over-strained and off-balance and I'm so frightfully sorry all this has -fallen upon you at such a time. I don't want to oppose you in anything, -darling--do try to believe me. Only you must give me the credit for my -own convictions. I do feel I must go. I do feel Roger must take that -message to Mother. After all, darling," and now in no need of helping -clues he found his own and the irrepressible note of grief vibrated in -his voice, "you do owe me something, don't you? You do owe us all -something--to make up, I mean. Because, without you, Meg would never -have behaved like this and disgraced us all. Oh--I don't mean to -reproach you!" - -"Good-bye then, I'm off," said Oldmeadow. "I'm very sorry you made me -come up. Good-bye, Mrs. Barney." She had not spoken, nor moved, nor -turned her eyes from Barney's face. - -"Good-bye. Thanks so much, Roger." Barney followed him, with a quickness -to match his own, to the door. But Adrienne, this time, did not call him -back. She remained standing stock-still in front of her sofa. - -"Tell Mother I'm off," said Barney, grasping his hand. "Tell her she'll -hear at once, as soon as I know anything. Thanks so awfully," he -repeated. "You've been a great help." - -It was unfortunate, perhaps, that Barney should say that, Oldmeadow -reflected as he sped down the stairs. "But she's met reality at last," -he muttered, wondering how she and Barney faced each other above and -hearing again the words that must echo so strangely in her ears: -"Disgraced us all." And, mingled with his grim satisfaction, was, again, -the sense of irrelevant and reluctant pity. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - - -It was Saturday and he had to wire to Mrs. Aldesey that he could not go -with her next day to the Queen's Hall concert they had planned to hear -together. - -Nancy was waiting for him at the station in her own little pony-cart and -as he got in she said: "Is Barney gone?" - -"Yes; he'll have gone by now," said Oldmeadow and, as he said it, he -felt a sudden sense of relief and clarity. The essential thing, he saw -it as he answered Nancy's question, was that he should be able to say -that Barney had gone. And he knew that if he hadn't been there to back -him up, he wouldn't have gone. So that was all right, wasn't it? - -As he had sped past the sun-swept country the reluctant pity had -struggled in him, striving, unsuccessfully, to free itself from the -implications of that horrid word: "Disgraced." It was Adrienne who had -disgraced them; that was what Barney's phrase had really meant, though -he hadn't intended it to mean it. She, the stranger, the new-comer, had -disgraced them. And it was true. Yet he wished Barney hadn't stumbled on -the phrase--just because she was a stranger and a new-comer. And Barney -would never have found it had he not been there. But now came the sense -of relief. If he hadn't been there, Barney wouldn't have gone. - -"Aunt Eleanor is longing to see you," said Nancy. "Her one hope, you -know, is that he may bring Meg back." Nancy's eyes had a strained look, -as though she had lain awake all night. - -"You think she may come back?" - -He felt, himself, unable to form any conjectures as to what Meg was -likely to do. What she had done was so strangely unlike her. - -"Not if it means leaving Captain Hayward for good," said Nancy. "But -Aunt Eleanor and Mother both think that she may be willing to come till -they can marry." - -"That's better than nothing, isn't it," said Oldmeadow, and Nancy then -surprised him by saying, as she looked round at him: "I don't want her -to come back." - -"Don't want her to come back? But you wanted Barney to go?" - -"Yes. He had to go. Just so that everything might be done. So that it -might be put before her. And to satisfy Aunt Eleanor. But, don't you -see, Roger, it would really make it far more difficult for Aunt Eleanor -to have her here. What would she do with her?--since she won't give up -Captain Hayward? She can love Meg and grieve and yearn over her now. But -if she were here she couldn't. It would be all grief and bitterness." - -Nancy had evidently been thinking to some purpose during her sleepless -night and he owned that her conclusion was the sound one. What -disconcerted him was her assurance that Meg would not leave her lover. -After Adrienne, Nancy was likely to have the most authentic impressions -of Meg's attitude; and, as they drove towards Chelford, he was further -disconcerted by hearing her murmur, half to herself: "It would be silly -to leave him now, wouldn't it." - -"Not if she's sorry and frightened at what she's done," he protested. -"After all the man's got a wife who may be glad to have him back." - -But Nancy said: "I don't think she would. I think she'll be glad not to -have him back. Meg may be frightened; but I don't believe she'll be -sorry; yet." - -He meditated, somewhat gloomily, as they drove, on the unexpectedness of -the younger generation. He had never thought of Nancy as belonging, in -any but the chronological sense, to that category; yet here she was, -accepting, if not condoning, the rebellion against law and morality. - -Mrs. Averil had driven down to the Little House where she was to be -picked up and, as they turned the corner to the Green, they saw her -waiting at the gate, her furs turned up around her ears, her neat little -face pinched and dry, as he had known that he would find it, and showing -a secure if controlled indignation, rather than Nancy's sad perplexity. - -"Well, Roger, you find us in a pleasant predicament," she observed as -Oldmeadow settled the rug around her knees. "Somehow one never thinks of -things like this happening in one's own family. Village girls misbehave -and people in the next county run away sometimes with other people's -wives; but one never expects such adventures to come walking in to one's -own breakfast-table." - -"Disagreeable things do have a way of happening at breakfast-time, don't -they," Oldmeadow assented. The comfort of Mrs. Averil was that even on -her death-bed she would treat her own funeral lightly: "I wonder it -remains such a comfortable meal, all the same." - -"I suppose you've had lunch on the train," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you -believe it? Poor Eleanor was worrying about that this morning. She's -got some coffee and sandwiches waiting for you, in case you haven't. I'm -so thankful you've come. It will help her. Poor dear. She's begun to -think of all the other things now. Of what people will say and how they -will hear. Lady Cockerell is very much on her mind. You know what a -meddlesome gossip she is, and only the other day Eleanor snubbed her -when she was criticizing Barbara's new school. The thought of her is -disturbing her dreadfully now." - -"I suppose these leech-bites do help to alleviate the pain of the real -wound," said Oldmeadow. - -"Not in the least. They envenom it," Mrs. Averil replied. "I'd like to -strangle Lady Cockerell myself before the news reaches her." - -Nancy drove on, her eyes fixed on the pony's ears. "I don't believe -people will talk nearly as much as you and Aunt Eleanor imagine," she -now remarked. "I've told her so; and so must you, Mother." - -"You are admirable with her, Nancy. Far better than I am. I sit grimly -swallowing my curses, or wringing my hands. Neither wringing nor cursing -is much good, I suppose." - -"Not a bit of good. It's better she should think of what people say than -of Meg; but when it comes to agonizing over them I believe the truth is -that people nowadays _do_ get over it; far more than they used to; -especially if Aunt Eleanor can show them that _she_ gets over it." - -"But she can't get over it, my dear child!" said Mrs. Averil, gazing at -her daughter in a certain alarm. "How can one get over disgrace like -that or lift one's head again--unless one is an Adrienne Toner! Oh, when -I think of that woman and of what she's done! For she is responsible -for it all! Every bit of it. Meg was a good girl, at heart; always. In -spite of that silly liquid powder. And so I tell Eleanor. Adrienne is -responsible for it all." - -"I don't, Mother; that's not my line at all," said Nancy. "I tell her -that what Meg says is true." Nancy touched the pony with the whip. "If -it hadn't been for Adrienne she might have done much worse." - -"Really, my dear!" Mrs. Averil murmured. - -"Come, Nancy," Oldmeadow protested; "that was a retrospective threat of -Meg's. Without Adrienne she'd never have considered such an -adventure--or its worse alternative. Encourage your aunt to curse -Adrienne. Your Mother's instinct is sound there." - -But Nancy shook her head. "I don't know, Roger," she said. "Perhaps Meg -would have considered the alternative. Girls do consider all sorts of -things nowadays that Mother and Aunt Eleanor, in their girlhood, would -have thought simply wicked. They _are_ wicked; but not simply. That's -the difference between now and then. And don't you think that it's -better for Meg and Captain Hayward to go away so that they can be -married than to be, as she says, really rotters; than to be, as she -says, cheats and hypocrites and steal their happiness?" - -"My dear child!" Mrs. Averil again murmured, while Oldmeadow, finding -it, after all, a comfort to have a grown-up Nancy to discuss it with, -said, "My contention is that, left to herself, Meg would have thought -them both wicked." - -"Perhaps," Nancy said again; "but even old-fashioned girls did things -they knew to be wicked sometimes. The difference Adrienne has made is -that Meg doesn't think herself wicked at all. She thinks herself rather -noble. And that's what I mean about Aunt Eleanor. It will comfort her if -she can feel a little as Adrienne feels--that Meg isn't one bit the -worse, morally, for what she's done." - -"Are you trying to persuade us that Meg isn't guilty, my dear?" Mrs. -Averil inquired dryly. "Are you trying to persuade us that Adrienne has -done us all a service? You surely can't deny that she's behaved -atrociously, and first and foremost, to Barney. Barney could have known -nothing about it, and can you conceive a woman keeping such a thing from -her husband?" - -But Nancy was feeling the pressure of her own realizations and was not -to be scolded out of them. "If Meg is guilty, and doesn't know it, she -will suffer dreadfully when she finds out, won't she? It all depends on -whether she has deceived herself or not, doesn't it? I'm not justifying -her or Adrienne, Mother; only trying to see the truth about them. How -could Adrienne tell Barney when it was Meg's secret? We may feel it -wrong; but she thought she was justified." The colour rose in Nancy's -cheek as she named Barney, but she kept her tired eyes on her mother and -added, "I don't believe it was easy for her to keep it from him." - -"My dear, anything is easy for her that flatters her self-importance!" -cried Mrs. Averil impatiently. "I'll own, if you like, that she's more -fool than knave--as Meg may be; though Meg never struck me as a fool. -Things haven't changed so much since my young days as all that; it's -mainly a matter of names. If girls who behave like Meg find it -pleasanter to be called fools than knaves, they are welcome to the -alternative. Noble they never were nor will be, whatever the fashion." - -Oldmeadow did not want the sandwiches, so, as soon as they reached -Coldbrooks, he was led upstairs to Mrs. Chadwick's room. He found his -poor friend lying on the sofa, the blinds drawn down and a wet -handkerchief on her forehead. She burst out crying as he entered. -Oldmeadow sat down beside her and took her hand and, as he listened to -her sobs, felt that he need not trouble to pity Adrienne. - -"What I cannot, cannot understand, Roger," she was at last able to say, -and he realized that it was of Adrienne, not Meg, that she was speaking, -"is how she can bear to treat us so. We all loved and trusted her. You -know how I loved her, Roger. I felt Meg as safe in her hands as in my -own. Oh, that wicked, wicked man! I hardly know him by sight. That makes -it all so much more dreadful. All I do know is that his wife is a -daughter of poor Evelyn Madderley, who broke her back out hunting." - -"I don't believe there's much harm in him, you know," Oldmeadow -suggested. "And I believe that he is sincerely devoted to Meg." - -"Harm, Roger!" poor Mrs. Chadwick wailed, "when he is a married man and -Meg only a girl! Oh, if there is harm in anything there is in that! -Running away with a girl and ruining her life! Barney will make him feel -what he has done. Barney _has_ gone?" - -"Yes, he's gone, and I am sure we can rely on him to speak his mind to -Hayward." - -"And don't you think he may bring Meg back, Roger? Nancy says I must not -set my mind on it; but don't you think she may be repenting already? My -poor little Meg! She was hot-tempered and could speak very crossly if -she was thwarted; but I think of her incessantly as she was when she was -a tiny child. Self-willed; but so sweet and coaxing in her ways, with -beautiful golden hair and those dark eyes. I always thought of Meg, with -her beauty, as sure to marry happily; near us, I hoped"--Mrs. Chadwick -began to sob again. "And now!--Will he find them in Paris? Will they not -have moved on?" - -"In any case he'll be able to follow them up. I don't imagine they'll -think of hiding." - -"No; I'm afraid they won't. That is the worst of it! They won't hide and -every one will come to know and then what good will there be in her -coming back! If only I'd had her presented last year, Roger! She can -never go to court now," Mrs. Chadwick wept, none the less piteously for -her triviality. "To think that Francis's daughter cannot go to court! -She would have looked so beautiful, with my pearls and the feathers. The -feathers are becoming to so few girls. Nancy could not wear them nearly -so well. Nancy can go and my daughter can't!" - -"I don't think the lack of feathers will weigh seriously upon Meg's -future, my dear friend." - -"Oh, but it's what they stand for, Roger, that will weigh!" Mrs. -Chadwick, even in her grief, retained her shrewdness. "It's easy to -laugh at the feathers, but you might really as well laugh at -wedding-rings! To think that Francis's daughter is travelling about with -a man and without a wedding-ring! Or do you suppose they'll have thought -of it and bought one? It would be a lie, of course; but don't you think -that a lie would be justifiable under the circumstances?" - -"I don't think it really makes any difference, until they can come home -and be married." - -"I suppose she must marry him now--if they won't hide--and will be proud -of what they've done; she seems quite proud of it!--everyone will hear, -so that they will have to marry. Oh--I don't know what to hope or what -to fear! How can you expect me to have tea, Nancy!" she wept, as Nancy -entered carrying the little tray. "It's so good of you, my dear, but how -can I eat?--I can hardly face the servants, Roger. They will all hear. -And Meg was always such a pet of Johnson's; his favourite of all my -children. He used to give her very rich, unwholesome things in the -pantry and once, when her father punished her for disobeying him and put -her in the corner, in the drawing-room, one day, after lunch, Johnson -nearly dropped the coffee, when he came in. It upset him dreadfully and -he would hardly speak to Francis for a week afterwards. I know he will -think it all our fault, when he hears, now. And so it is, for having -trusted to a stranger. I can't drink tea, Nancy." - -"Yes, you can, for Meg's sake, Aunt Eleanor, and eat some tea-cake, -too," said Nancy. "If you aren't brave for her, who will be. And you -can't be brave unless you eat. I remember so well, when I was little, -Uncle Francis saying that when it came to the pinch you were the bravest -woman he knew. You'll see, darling; it will all come out better than you -fear. Johnson and all of us will help you to make it come out better." - -"She is such a comfort to me, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick with a summoned -smile. "Somehow, when I see her, I feel that things _will_ come out -better. _You_ will have to go to court, dear, next spring. We can't -have none of our girls going. And you shall wear my pearls." Mrs. -Chadwick's tears fell, but she took up the tea-cup. - -Nancy more and more was striking Oldmeadow as the wisest person in the -house. He walked with her on the terrace after tea; it was an old custom -of his and Nancy's to step outside then, whatever the weather, and have -a few turns. This was a clear, chill evening and Nancy had wrapped a -woollen scarf closely round her neck and shoulders. Her chin was sunken -in its folds as she held it together on her breast, and with her dropped -profile, her sad, meditative eyes, it was as if she saw a clue and, far -more clearly than he did, knew where they all stood. - -"Adrienne was bitterly opposed to Barney's going," he said. "She seemed -unable to grasp the fact that she herself had been in error." - -Nancy turned her eyes on him. "Did Barney tell you she was bitterly -opposed?" - -"He didn't tell me. I was with them. It was most unfortunate. She -insisted on my coming up." - -"Oh, dear," said Nancy. She even stopped for a moment to face him with -her dismay. "Yes, I see," she then said, walking on, "she would." - -"Why would she? Unless she was sure of getting her own way? The only -point in having me up was to show me that she could always get her own -way with Barney." - -"Of course. And to make it quite clear to herself, too. She's not afraid -of you, Roger. She's not afraid of anything but Barney." - -"I don't think she had any reason to be afraid of him this morning. He -was badly upset, of course. But if I hadn't gone up, I imagine she'd -have kept him from going. And you own that that would have been a pity, -don't you?" - -"Yes. Oh, yes. He had to go," said Nancy, absently. And she added. "Were -you very rough and scornful?" - -"Rough and scornful? I don't think so. I think I kept my temper very -well, considering all things. I showed her pretty clearly, I suppose, -that I considered her a meddling ass. I don't suppose she'll forgive me -easily for that." - -"Well, you can't wonder at it, can you?" said Nancy. "Especially if she -suspects that you made Barney consider her one, too." - -"But it's necessary, isn't it, that she should be made to suspect it -herself? I don't wonder at her not forgiving me for showing her up -before Barney, and upholding him against her, but I do wonder that one -can never make her see she's wrong. It's that that's so really monstrous -about her." - -"Do you think that anyone can ever make us see we are wrong unless they -love us?" Nancy asked. - -"Well, Barney loves her," said Oldmeadow after a moment. - -"Yes; but he's afraid of her, too, isn't he? He'd never have quite the -courage to try and make her see, would he?--off his own bat I mean. He'd -never really have quite the courage to see, himself, how wrong she was, -unless he were angry. And to have anyone who is angry with you trying to -make you see, only pushes you further and further back into yourself, -doesn't it, and away from seeing?" - -"You've grown very wise in the secrets of the human heart, my dear," -Oldmeadow observed. "It's true. He hasn't courage with her--unless some -one is there to give it to him. But, you know, I don't think she'd -forgive him if he had. I don't think she'd forgive anyone who made her -see." - -"I don't know," Nancy pondered. "I don't love her, yet I feel as if I -understood her; better, perhaps, than you do. I think she's good, you -know. I mean, I think she might be good, if she could ever see." - -"She's too stupid ever, really, to see," said Oldmeadow, and it was with -impatience. "She's encased in self-love like a rhinoceros in its hide. -One can't penetrate anywhere. You say she's afraid of Barney and I can't -imagine what you mean by that. It's true, when I'm by, she's afraid of -losing his admiration. But that's not being afraid of him." - -Nancy still pondered; but not, now, in any perplexity. "She's afraid -because she cares so much. She's afraid because she _can_ care so much. -It's difficult to explain; but I feel as if I understood her. She's -never cared so much before for just one other person. It's always been -for people altogether; and because she was doing something for them. But -Barney does something for her. He makes her happy. Perhaps she never -knew before what it was to be really happy. You know, she didn't give me -the feeling of a really happy person. It's something quite, quite new -for her. It makes her feel uncertain of herself and almost bewildered -sometimes. Oh, I'm sure of it the more I think of it. And you know, -sometimes," Nancy turned her deep, sweet eyes on him, "I feel very sorry -for her, Roger. I can't help it; although I don't love her at all." - -Yes. It must be true. Though he had seen Adrienne's vanity rather than -her love. Nancy and Meg were united in their assurance and that must be, -he saw, because they both, in their so different ways, knew what it was -to care; to care so much that you were frightened. It was strange that -the pang of pity that came with his new perception should be for -Adrienne rather than for his dear little Nancy herself. Nancy had -suffered, he knew, and her life was perhaps permanently scarred; yet, -clear-eyed and unduped, he saw her as mistress of the very fate that had -maimed her. Whereas Adrienne was blindfolded; a creature swayed and -surrounded by forces of which she was unaware. - -Nancy had deepened his sense of perplexity, his sense of taking refuge -from something, and what it was came fully upon him that night when he -was at last alone. Meg and her misdemeanour sank into a mere background -for the image of the cold, convulsed face that he had seen that morning. -Almost angrily he felt himself pushing it back, pushing it down, as if -he pushed it down to drown, and again and again it re-emerged to look at -him. - -He fell asleep at last; but as, a year ago, on the first night of his -meeting with her, he had dreamed of her, so to-night he dreamed again. - -He did not see her, but she was in some dreadful plight and the sense of -her panic and bewilderment broke upon him in shocks of suffering. He -could not see her, but he was aware of her, horribly aware. All remained -a broken, baffled confusion, but it was as though, unable to shape and -assert itself, he yet felt her very being wrestling with extinction. - -The sharpness had gone out of the sunlight next day and Mrs. Chadwick -consented to come and sit with them in the warmest corner of the garden, -the corner where, a year ago, Oldmeadow remembered, Meg had sat with him -and explained to him the secret of Adrienne's power. Pitifully, with -swollen eyes and trembling fingers, Mrs. Chadwick resumed her -interrupted stocking while Oldmeadow read aloud from a Sunday paper the -leading article on the critical situation in Ireland. "I suppose every -one in London will be talking about Ulster and Sir Edward Carson, won't -they?" said Mrs. Chadwick, and it was evident that she derived a dim -comfort from the thought. The situation in Ireland, Oldmeadow reflected, -had, at all events, been of so much service. - -Upon this quiet scene there broke suddenly the sound of a motor's horn -and a motor's wheels turned into the front entrance. - -Mrs. Chadwick dropped her stocking and laid her hand on Nancy's arm. -"Dear Aunt Eleanor--you know he couldn't possibly be back yet," said -Nancy. "And if it's anyone to call, Johnson knows you're not at home." - -"Lady Cockerell is capable of anything. She might sit down in the hall -and wait. She must have heard by now," poor Mrs. Chadwick murmured. -"That married girl of hers in London must have written. With the -projecting teeth." - -"I'll soon get rid of her, if it's really she," said Mrs. Averil; but -she had hardly risen when the door at the back of the house opened and -they saw Johnson usher forth a hurrying female figure, obviously not -Lady Cockerell's; a figure so encumbered by its motoring wraps, so -swathed in veils, that only Mrs. Chadwick's ejaculation enlightened -Oldmeadow as to its identity. - -"Josephine!" cried Mrs. Chadwick and then, between the narrow framing of -purple gauze, he recognized the dramatic, melancholy eyes and pale, -pinched lips of Adrienne's maid. - -"Oh, Madame! Madame!" Josephine was exclaiming as she came towards them -down the path. Her face wore the terrible intensity of expression so -alien to the British countenance. "Oh, Madame! Madame!" she repeated. -They had all risen and stood to await her. "He is dead! The little child -is dead! And she is alone. Monsieur left her yesterday. Quite, quite -alone, and her child born dead." - -Mrs. Chadwick faced her in pallid stupefaction. - -"The baby, Aunt Eleanor," said Nancy, for she looked indeed as if she -had not understood. "Barney's baby. It has been born and it is dead. -Oh--poor Barney. And poor, poor Adrienne." - -"Yes, dead!" Josephine, regardless of all but her exhaustion and her -grief, dropped down into one of the garden-chairs and put her hands -before her face. "Born dead last night. A beautiful little boy. The -doctors could not save it and fear for her life. They will not let me -stay with her. Only the doctors and the nurses--strangers--are with -her." Josephine was sobbing. "Ah, it was not right to leave her so. -Already she was ill. It could be seen that already she was very ill when -Monsieur left her. I came to her when he was gone. She did not say a -word to me. She tried to smile. _Mais j'ai bien vu qu'elle avait la mort -dans l'ame._" - -"Good heavens," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, while Josephine, now, let her -tears flow unchecked. "She is alone and Barney has left her! Oh, this -is terrible! At such a time!" - -"He had to go, Aunt Eleanor. You know he had to go. We will send for him -at once," said Nancy, and Josephine, catching the words, sobbed on in -her woe and her resentment: "But where to send for him? No one knows -where to send. The doctors sent a wire yesterday, at once, when she was -taken ill; to the Paris hotel. But no answer came. He must have left -Paris. That is why I have come. No telegrams for Sunday. No trains in -time. I took the car. The doctor said, Yes, it was well that I should -come. Some one who cares for Madame should return with me. If she is to -die she must not die alone." - -"But she shall not die!" cried Mrs. Chadwick with sudden and surprising -energy. "Oh, the poor baby! It might have lived had I been there. No -doctor, no nurse, can understand like a mother. And I shall be able to -help with Adrienne. I must go. I must go at once. Mademoiselle will see -that you have something to eat and drink, my poor Josephine, and then -you and I will return together. It will not take me a moment to get -ready." - -"It will be the best thing for them all," Oldmeadow murmured to Mrs. -Averil, as, taking Josephine's arm, Mrs. Chadwick hurried her along the -path. "And I'll go with them." - -A little later, while Mrs. Chadwick made ready above and Josephine, in -the hall, ate the meal that Johnson had brought for her, Oldmeadow and -Nancy stood outside near the empty waiting car. - -"I'll wire to you at once, of course, how she is," he said. Adrienne had -put Meg out of all their thoughts. "But it's rather grotesque," he -added, "if poor Barney is to be blamed." - -Nancy stood and looked before her, wrapped, as she had been the day -before, in her woollen scarf. "Roger," she said after a moment, "no one -can be blamed; yet, if she dies, I shall feel that we have killed her." - -"Killed her! What nonsense, my dear! What do you mean?" He spoke angrily -because something in his heart, shaken by his dream, echoed her. The -dreaming had now revealed itself as definitely uncanny. What had he to -do with Adrienne Toner that his sub-consciousness should be aware of her -extremity? - -"I can't explain," said Nancy. "We couldn't help it. It's even all her -fault. But she never asked to come to us. She never sought us out. She -had her life and we had ours. It was we who sought her and drew her in -and worshipped her. She never hid what she was; never in the least -little way. It was for what she was, because she was so different and -believed so in herself, that Barney loved her. And now because she has -gone on believing in herself, we have struck her down." - -The rooks were cawing overhead and Oldmeadow was remembering his dream -of a year ago, how Adrienne had come to him along the terrace saying, as -she lifted her hand: "I can hear them, too." They had drawn her in. Yet -she had loved their life. She had wanted to understand it and to be part -of it. He wished he could get the pale, streaked, drowning face out of -his mind. "It's generous of you, my dear child," he said, "to say 'we.' -You mean 'you.' If anyone struck her down it was I." - -"You spoke for us all, Roger. And you only spoke for us. You were always -outside. I count myself with them. I can't separate myself from them. I -received her love--with them all." - -"Did you?" he looked at her. "I don't think so, Nancy." - -Nancy did not pretend not to understand. "I know," she said. "But I'm -part of it. And she tried to love me." - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - - -Oldmeadow sat in Barney's study, Mrs. Chadwick beside him. It was -Tuesday and the only news of Barney had been a letter to his mother, -from Paris, where he had not found Meg, and two wires from the South of -France, one to Oldmeadow and one to his wife, saying that he had found -Meg and was returning alone. He had not, it was evident, received the -doctor's messages. - -Oldmeadow had not seen his old friend since the Sunday night when he had -left her and Josephine in Connaught Square, and in his first glance at -her this morning he saw that for her, too, Adrienne's peril had actually -effaced Meg's predicament. It had done more. Faint and feeble as she -must be, scarcely able to take possession of her returning life and, as -Mrs. Chadwick told him, not yet out of danger, Adrienne had already -drawn her mother-in-law back into the circle of her influence. - -"You see, Roger," she said, sitting there on the absurdly incongruous -background of the Post Impressionist pictures and tightly squeezing her -handkerchief first in one hand and then in the other, "You see, when one -is with her one _has_ to trust her. I don't know why it is, but almost -at once I felt all my bitterness against her die quite away. I knew, -whatever she had done, that she believed it to be right; to be really -_best_ for Meg, you know. And oh, Roger, Barney has hurt her so -terribly! She can't speak of him without crying. I never saw her cry -before. I never imagined Adrienne crying. She feels, she can't help -feeling, that it is because of that they have lost their baby." - -Oldmeadow ordered with difficulty his astonished and indignant thoughts. -"That is absolutely unfair to Barney," he said. "I was with them. No one -could have been gentler or more patient." - -"I know you were with them. It would seem like that to you, Roger, -because you are a man and men still think of women as a sort of chattel. -That's how it looks to Adrienne. So much more independence, you know, -than we ever had.--Oh, I don't say it's a good thing! I feel that we are -weaker and need guidance." - -"Chattels? Where do chattels come in here? She said that to you. Barney -merely pleaded with her so that he could do what you wanted him to do." - -"I know--I know, Roger. Don't get angry. But if I had been here and seen -her I should have known that he must not go. I should have seen that she -was in danger. A woman would have understood. No; you didn't treat -Adrienne like a chattel; no one could treat Adrienne like one. It was -poor little Meg I meant. I see now how wrong it was to think of taking -her from the man she loves; when she _has_ gone, you know, so that -everyone must know and there can be no good in it. And they probably -_have_ bought a wedding-ring. Oh, Roger, she does comfort me about Meg. -She makes me feel the deeper things, the things conventions blind us to. -She makes me feel that the great thing, the only thing, is to follow -one's own light and that Meg did do that. And after all, you know, -Roger, Jowett had George Eliot and Lewes to breakfast and they were -never married." - -"Ha! ha! ha!" Oldmeadow laughed. He could not repress his bitter mirth. -"Follow your light if there's breakfast with a clergyman at the end of -it!" he cruelly suggested. Yet he was too much amused, while so -incensed, for there to be much cruelty, and Mrs. Chadwick, gazing at him -as if from under her twisted straw, murmured: "He _was_ a sort of -clergyman, Roger; and if people do what _seems_ to them right, why -should they be punished?" - -He saw it all. He heard it all, in her echoes. The potent influence had -been poured through her, all the more irresistible for the appeal of -Adrienne's peril. Adrienne, bereaved and dying; yet magnanimous, gentle -and assured; always assured. How could Mrs. Chadwick's feathers and -wedding-rings stand a chance against her? They had been swept away, or -nearly away, and what Nancy had seen as a possible hope was now an -accomplished fact. Mrs. Chadwick had been brought to feel about Meg as -Adrienne felt about her, and Oldmeadow, for his part, was not sure that -the game was worth the candle. There was something more than absurd in -his poor friend's attempts to adjust herself to the new standards. They -were pitiable and even a little unseemly. She began presently softly to -weep. "Such a pretty baby it was, Roger. A lovely little creature--that -was the first thing she said to me--'Oh, Mother Nell, it was such a -pretty baby.' And all that she said this morning--when it was taken -away--was: 'I wish Barney could have been in time to see our baby.' Oh, -it is terrible, terrible, Roger, that he is not here! Her heart is -broken by it. How can she ever forget that he left her alone at such a -time. And she begged him not to go. She told me that she almost knelt to -him." - -The tears, irrepressibly, had risen to Oldmeadow's eyes; but as Mrs. -Chadwick's sentence meandered on, his thoughts were roughly jolted from -their pity. "But I tell you that that is absolutely unfair!" he -repeated, fixing his glass to look his protest the more firmly at her. -"I tell you that I was there and saw it all. It wasn't for the baby. She -was thinking of the baby as little as Barney was; less than he was. What -she was thinking of was her power over Barney. She was determined that -she should not seem to be put in the wrong by his going." - -Like the March Hare Mrs. Chadwick was wild yet imperturbable. "Of course -she was determined. How could she be anything else? It did put her in -the wrong. And it put Meg in the wrong. That's where we were so blind. -Oh, I blame myself as much as anybody. But Barney is her husband; and he -was with her and should have seen and felt. How could she beg him to -stay for her danger when he would not stay for her love?" - -Yes; Adrienne had her very firmly. She had even imparted to her, when it -came to the issue, something of coherency. She was building up, in -Barney's absence, strange ramparts against him. Barney had dragged her -in the dust and there she intended to drag him. Wasn't that it? -Oldmeadow asked himself as he eyed his altered friend, muttering -finally: "I'm every bit as responsible as Barney, if it comes to that. I -upheld him, completely, in his decision. I do still. Adrienne may turn -you all upside down; but she won't turn me; and I hope she won't turn -Barney." - -"I think, Roger, that you might at all events remember that she's not -out of danger," said Mrs. Chadwick. "She may die yet and give you no -more trouble. You have never cared for her; I know that, and so does -she; and I do think it's unfeeling of you to speak as you do when she's -lying there above us. And she looks so lovely in bed," Mrs. Chadwick -began to weep again. "I never saw such thick braids; like Marguerite in -Faust. Her hands on the sheets so thin and white and her eyes enormous. -I don't think even you could have the heart to jibe and laugh if you saw -her." - -"I didn't laugh at Adrienne, you know," Oldmeadow reminded her, rising -and buttoning his overcoat. "I laughed at you and Jowett. No; Adrienne -is no laughing matter. But she won't die. I can assure you of that now. -She's too much life in her to die. And though I'm very sorry for -her--difficult as you may find it to believe--I shall reserve my pity -for Barney." - -Barney needed all his pity and the sight of him on the following Sunday -evening, as he appeared on his threshold, would have exorcised for -Oldmeadow, if Mrs. Chadwick had not already done so, the memory of the -pale, drowning face. He looked like a dog that has been beaten for a -fault it cannot recognize. There was bewilderment in his eyes and -acceptance, and a watchful humility. To see them there made Oldmeadow -angry. - -Barney had sent a line to say that he was back; but his friend had been -prepared not to see him. Once engulfed in the house of mourning it was -but too likely that he would not emerge for many days. And besides, what -would Barney have to say to him now? But here he was, with his hollow -eyes and faded cheeks, and it was with an echo of his old boyish manner -of dropping in when beset by some perplexity that, without speaking, he -crossed the room and sank on the sofa by the fireplace. But he had not -come to seek counsel or sustainment. Oldmeadow saw that, as, after he -had offered cigarettes, which Barney refused, and lighted his own pipe, -he walked to and fro and watched him while Barney watched the flames. He -had not come with a purpose at all. It was, again, precisely like the -unhappy dog who wanders forth aimlessly, guided merely by a dim yearning -towards warmth and kindliness. Barney had come where he would be -understood. But it was not because he believed himself to be -misunderstood that he came. - -"I went to Coldbrooks, first, you know," he said presently, and with an -effect of irrelevance. "I thought I'd find Mother there. So it was only -on that Thursday night I got back here. None of the wires caught me." - -"I know," said Oldmeadow. "It was most unfortunate. But you couldn't -have got back sooner, could you, once you'd gone on from Paris." - -"Not possibly. I went on from Paris that very night, you see. I caught -the night express to the Riviera. They'd left Cannes as an address, but -when I got there I found they'd moved on to San Remo. It was Tuesday -before I found them. My one idea was to find them as soon as possible, -of course. No; I suppose it couldn't be helped; once I'd gone." - -"And it was quite useless? You'd no chance with Meg at all?" - -"None whatever. Quite useless. Never was such a wild-goose chase. It was -exactly as Adrienne had said." - -"Still it couldn't have been foreseen so securely by anyone but -Adrienne. Many girls would have jumped at the chance." - -"Not if they'd had Adrienne to help them. We might have realized that. -That's what armed Meg. I heard Adrienne in everything she said. Even -Mother thinks Adrienne was right, now, you know, Roger. And it was all -for Mother, wasn't it? that I went. That makes it all so particularly -ironic. Only dear Mummy was never very strong at logic. She takes the -line now that we're narrow-minded conventionalists, you and I, for -thinking that a girl oughtn't to go off with a married man. I can't feel -that, you know, Roger," said Barney in his listless tone. "I can't help -feeling that Meg has done something shameful. You ought to have seen -her! Positively smug! sitting there with that ass of a fellow in that -damned Riviera hotel! I had the horridest feeling, too, that Meg had -brought him rather than he her. I don't mean he doesn't care for her--he -does; I'll say that for him. He's a stupid fellow, but honest; and he -came outside and tried to tell me what he felt and how it would be all -right and that he was going to devote his life to her. But I think he -feels pretty sick, really. While Meg treated me as if I were a silly -little boy. If anyone can carry the thing through, Meg will." - -"It won't prove her right because she carries it through, you know," -Oldmeadow observed. - -"No," said Barney, "but it will make us seem more wrong. Not that you -have any responsibility in it, dear old boy. I did what I felt I must do -and mine was the mistake. It's not only Mother who thinks I've wronged -Adrienne," he went on after a moment, lifting his arms as though he -felt a weight upon them and clasping them behind his head. "Even Nancy, -though she was so sorry for me, made me feel that I'd done something -very dreadful." - -"Nancy? How did you come to see Nancy?" - -"Why, at Coldbrooks. She's still there with Aunt Monica. That was just -it. It was my going there first, seeing her first, that upset her so. -She couldn't understand, till I could explain, how it came about. She -was thinking of Adrienne, you see. And I, knowing nothing, had been -thinking of Mother all the time. It was too late, then, to go back at -once. The next train wasn't for three hours. So I had to stay." - -"And it was Nancy who had to tell you everything?" - -"Yes; Nancy," said Barney, staring at the ceiling. There was a note, -now, of control in his voice and Oldmeadow knew that if he had said no -word of what must be foremost in both their thoughts it was because he -could not trust himself to speak of it. And he went on quickly, taking -refuge from his invading emotion, "Aunt Monica wasn't there. I didn't -even see Johnson. I went right through the house and into the garden and -there was Nancy, planting something in the border. Everything looked so -natural. I just went up to her and said 'Hello, Nancy,' and then, when -she looked up at me, I thought she was going to faint. Poor little -Nancy. I knew something terrible had happened from the way she looked at -me." - -"Poor little Nancy. But I'm glad it was she who told you, Barney." - -"No one could have been sweeter," said Barney, talking on quickly. "She -kept saying, 'Oh, you oughtn't to be here, Barney. You oughtn't to be -here.' But no one could have been sweeter. We sat down on the old bench, -you know, and she told me. That Adrienne had nearly died. That the baby -was dead. I could hardly believe her, at first. I stared at her, I know, -and I kept saying, 'What do you mean, Nancy?--what do you mean?' And she -began to cry and I cried, too. Men do feel, Roger, all the same, even -though they haven't the mother's claim to feel. I thought about our baby -so much. I loved it, too. And now--to think it's dead; and that I never -saw it; and that it's my fault"--his voice had shaken more and more; he -had put his hand before his eyes, and, then, suddenly, he leaned forward -and buried his head on the arm of the sofa. - -"My poor Barney! My dear boy!" Oldmeadow muttered. He came and sat down -beside him; he laid his arm around his shoulders. "It's not your fault," -he said. - -"Oh, don't say that, Roger!" sobbed Barney. "It's no good trying to -comfort me. I've broken her heart. She doesn't say so. She's too angelic -to say it; but she lies there and looks it. My poor darling! My poor, -courageous darling; what she has been through! It can't be helped. I -must face it. I'm her husband. I ought to have understood. She -supplicated me, and I rejected her, and the child is dead." - -"The child's death is a calamity for which no one can be held -responsible unless it is Adrienne herself," said Oldmeadow. While Barney -sobbed he was thinking intently, for this was a turning-point in -Barney's destiny. He would remain in subjugation to Adrienne's -conception of the wrong done her or he must be enabled to regain the -sense of innocence to which he had every right. "She forced the -situation on you. She chose to break rather than bend," he said. "Listen -to me, Barney. I don't speak in any enmity to your wife; but listen to -me and try to think it out. Don't you remember how you once said that -your marriage couldn't be a mistake if you were able to see the defects -as well as the beauty of the woman you love. Don't you remember that you -said she'd have to learn a little from you for the much you'd have to -learn from her. Nothing more reassured me than what you said that night. -And I was reassured the other day by your firmness. It implies no -disloyalty in you to see the defects now. It was power over you she -wanted the other day and to see herself put in the right, before me; and -to see me worsted, before you. You know it, Barney; you know it in your -heart. And she knows it too. There was no failure of love in what you -said. There was only failure of homage. You were right in opposing her. -She was wrong in the issue she made. She was wrong from the first of the -miserable affair in having concealed it from you. If you'd stayed behind -as she wanted you to do, you'd have shown yourself a weakling and she'd -have been further than ever from knowing herself in error. There is the -truth; and the sooner you see it, the sooner she will." - -For some time after his friend had ended, Barney lay silent, his face -still hidden. But his sobs had ceased. And his silence, at last, grew -too long for any disclaimer to be possible to him. He had been brought, -Oldmeadow knew it from the very rhythm of his breathing, to the -passionless contemplation where alone truth is visible. And what he said -at last was: "She'll never see it like that." - -"Oh, yes, she will," said Oldmeadow. And he remembered Nancy's wisdom. -"If you hold to it firmly and tenderly and make her feel you love her -while you make her feel you think her wrong." - -"She'll never see it," Barney repeated, and Oldmeadow now suspected, and -with a deep uneasiness, that Barney might be seeing further than -himself. "She can't." - -"You mean that she's incapable of thinking herself wrong?" - -"Yes, incapable," said Barney. "Because all she's conscious of is the -wish to do right. And she is right so often, she is so good and -beautiful, that it must be like that with her. She can break; but she -can't bend." - -Oldmeadow was silent for a moment and Barney, on the arm of the sofa, -was silent. "Of course," Oldmeadow then said, "the less you say about it -the better. Things will take their place gradually." - -"I've not said anything about it," said Barney. "I've only thought of -comforting and cherishing her. But it's not enough. I'll never say -anything; but she'll know I'm keeping something back. She knows it -already. I see that now. And I didn't know it till you put it to me." - -"She'll have to accept it; or to live with it unaccepted, then. You -can't consider yourself a criminal to give her moral ease." - -"No," said Barney after a pause. "No; I can't do that. Though that's -what Mummy wants me to do. But I can be horribly sorry." - -"Horribly sorry. Let the rest sink into the unspoken. When people love -each other they can, I'm sure, live over any amount of unspoken things." - -"It hasn't been unspoken between you and me, though, has it, Roger?" -said Barney, and he raised himself and got upon his feet as he said it. -"There's the trouble. There's where I _am_ wrong. For she'd feel it an -intolerable wrong if she knew that it hadn't been unspoken between you -and me. And she'd be right. When people love each other such reticences -and exclusions wrong their love." - -"But since you say she knows," Oldmeadow suggested after another moment. - -Barney stood staring out of the twilight window. - -"She doesn't know that I tell you," he said. - -"You've told me nothing," said Oldmeadow. - -"Well, she doesn't know what I listen to, then," said Barney. - -Oldmeadow was again conscious of the deep uneasiness. "It's quite true -I've no call to meddle in your affairs," he said. "The essential thing -is that you love each other. Let rights and wrongs go hang." - -"You haven't meddled, Roger." Barney moved towards the door. "You've -been in my affairs, and haven't been allowed to keep out. Yes. We love -each other. But rights and wrongs never go hang with Adrienne." - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - - -Oldmeadow did not see Barney again for some months. He met Eleanor -Chadwick towards the end of April, in the park, he on his way to Mrs. -Aldesey's, she, apparently, satisfying her country appetite for -exercise, since she seemed to be walking fast and at random. He almost -thought for a moment that she was going to pretend not to see him and -hurry down a path that led away from his; but his resolute eye perhaps -checked the impulse. She faltered and then came forward, holding out her -hand and looking rather wildly about her, and she said that London was -really suffocating, wasn't it? - -"You've been here for so long, haven't you," said Oldmeadow. "Or have -you been here all this time? I've had no news of any of you, you see." - -"It's all been such a troubled, busy time, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick. -"Yes, I've been here ever since. But, thank goodness, the doctors say -she may be moved now, and she and I and Barney are going down to -Devonshire next week. To Torquay. Such a dismal place, I think; but -perhaps that's because so many of my relations have died there. I never -have liked that red Devonshire soil. But the primroses will be out. That -makes up a little." - -"I'm glad that Mrs. Barney is better. When will you all be back at -Coldbrooks?" - -"In June, I hope. Yes; she is better. But so feeble, still; so frail. -And quite, quite changed from her old bright self. It's all very -depressing, Roger. Very depressing and wearing," said Mrs. Chadwick, -opening her eyes very wide and staring before her in a way -characteristic of her when she repressed tears. "Sometimes I hardly know -how to keep up at all. For nothing cheers her. And Barney isn't really -much help. He has very little power of fighting against depression." - -"You've all been too much shut up with each other, I'm afraid." - -Mrs. Chadwick still held her eyes widely opened. "I don't think it's -that, Roger. Being alone wouldn't have helped us to be happier, after -what's happened." - -"Being with other people might. You must get back to Coldbrooks as soon -as possible and see Nancy and Mrs. Averil and your neighbours. That will -help to change the current of your thoughts." - -"People don't forget so easily as that, Roger," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, -and it was now with severity, as though she suspected him of triviality. -"When something terrible has happened to people they are _in_ the -current and Nancy and the neighbours are not going to change it. Poor -Nancy; she feels it all as much as we do, I'm sure." - -And that Mrs. Chadwick thought of him as unfeeling he saw. She thought -of him, too, with Barney, as criminal; as responsible for the -catastrophe. The old phrase of presage floated back into his mind: -"She'll spoil things." She had spoiled, for ever perhaps, this deepest, -dearest relation of his life. What was Coldbrooks to become to him with -Adrienne Toner in possession? He said, and he was unable to keep a -certain dryness that must sound like lightness, from his voice: "You are -in it but you needn't keep your heads under it, you know. That's what -people tend to do when they shut themselves up with their misfortunes. -You and Barney and Mrs. Barney, I suspect, are engaged in drowning each -other. If one of you puts their head up the others pull it down." - -"I suppose you mean Adrienne does," said Mrs. Chadwick. He had not meant -it at all; but now he felt sure that so, exactly, did it happen. Poor -Mrs. Chadwick left to herself would have drifted to the shore by this -time and Barney, at all events, would be swimming with his head up; it -was Adrienne, of course, that kept them suffocating under the surface. -"Well, I think it a pity you three should go off to Torquay alone," he -evaded. "What's happening to the farm all this time?" - -"Nancy is seeing to it for Barney," said Mrs. Chadwick. "She understands -those things so well. Barney would not dream of letting the farm come -between him and Adrienne at a time like this. He wants to be with her of -course." - -"Of course. All I mean is that I wish he could be with her at -Coldbrooks. I suppose the doctor knows what's best, however." - -"I'm glad to hear you own that anybody can know what's best, Roger, -except yourself," said Mrs. Chadwick with her singularly unprovocative -severity. "Of course she must go to the sea and of course Barney and I -must be with her. She has two excellent nurses; but I would never trust -the best nurse for certain things. I remember so well when I was ill -myself once and saw the nurse behind a screen, eating raspberry jam out -of the pot with her finger. You can't trust anybody, really." And that -was all he got out of Eleanor Chadwick. Adrienne had spoiled things. - -It was in June that he heard from Mrs. Averil that she and Nancy were in -London for a few days staying with an old aunt in Eccleston Square. Mrs. -Averil asked him to come to tea and he asked her and Nancy to do a play -with him; but before these meetings took place he saw them both. It was -at a Queen's Hall concert on Sunday afternoon that Mrs. Aldesey called -his attention to his friends and, to his surprise, Oldmeadow saw that -Barney was with them. They sat across the gangway at some little -distance and his first impression of the three was that they were not -happy. - -"Did you know he was in town?" asked Mrs. Aldesey. "How ill he looks. I -suppose he was frightfully upset about the baby, poor fellow." - -Mrs. Aldesey knew nothing of the catastrophes that had followed the -baby's death. He had instinctively avoided any reference to the latest -progress of the Juggernaut. - -"She's much better now, you know," he said, and he wasn't aware that he -was exonerating Barney. "And they're all back at Coldbrooks." - -"She's not at Coldbrooks," said Mrs. Aldesey. "She's well enough to pay -visits and Lady Lumley told me she was coming down to them for this -week-end. I wonder he hasn't gone with her." - -Oldmeadow was wondering too. There was something about Barney's attitude -as he sat there beside his cousin, silent and absent-minded it seemed, -listening as little to the music as he looked little at her, that he -would rather Lydia Aldesey had not been there to observe. They had a -curiously marital appearance, the young couple, or, rather, Barney had; -the air of being safe with some one with whom no explanations were -needed and for whom no appearances must be kept up; some one, even, with -whom he was so identified that he was hardly conscious of her. Nancy was -not so unconscious. Once, when Barney leaned over to look at the -programme, she drew away a little; and Oldmeadow even fancied a slight -constraint in her glance when, now and then, he spoke to her. Had -Adrienne spoiled things there, too? Mrs. Averil next day, in Eccleston -Square, enlightened him as to Barney's presence. "It's been most -unfortunate. He had planned to come up to this concert for a long time. -He wanted Nancy to hear the Cesar Franck with him. And then it appeared -that Adrienne had made an engagement for them with the Lumleys. He -refused to go, I'm afraid, and she made an issue of it and, from what -poor Eleanor told me, there was rather a row. So Adrienne has gone off -alone and Barney is here till this evening. He's gone out now with Nancy -to show her some pictures by a friend of his. It had all been arranged. -So what were we to do about it, Roger?" - -"Do about it? Why just what you have done. Why shouldn't she go with -him?" - -"Why indeed? Except that Adrienne has made the issue. It's awkward, of -course, when you know there's been a row, to go on as if nothing had -happened." - -Oldmeadow meditated. His friend's little face had been pinched by the -family's distress when he had last seen it; it was clouded now by a -closer, a more personal perplexity. "I suppose she made the issue on -purpose so that Barney shouldn't come up," he said at length. - -"I really don't know. Perhaps it had been arranged first with the -Lumleys. If it was to keep him from coming, that didn't come out. She -wouldn't let it come out; not into the open; of course." - -"So things are going very badly. I'd imagined, with all Barney's -contrition, that they might have worked out well." - -"They've worked out as badly, I'm afraid, as they could. He was full of -contrition. He was as devoted as possible, when they came back in May. -But nothing altered her unflagging melancholy. And I suppose what -happened was that he got tired. Barney was always like that, from the -time he was in the nursery. He'd go on being patient and good-tempered -until, suddenly, everything would break down and he would sulk for days. -It's when he's pushed too far. And she has pushed him too far. She's set -them all against him." - -"Who is them?" Oldmeadow asked. "I saw, when we met in London, that Mrs. -Chadwick actually had been brought to look upon Barney as a sort of -miscreant and Adrienne as a martyr. Who else is there?" - -"Well, no one else except Palgrave and Barbara. Palgrave can be very -exasperating, as you know, and he takes the attitude now that Barney has -done Adrienne an irreparable injury. As you may imagine it isn't a -pleasant life Barney leads among them all." - -"I see," said Oldmeadow. "I think I see it all. What happens now is that -Barney more and more takes refuge with you and Nancy, and Adrienne more -and more can't bear it." - -"That is precisely it, Roger," said Mrs. Averil. "And what are we to do? -How can I shut my door against Barney? Yet it is troubling me more than -I can say. We are forced to seem on his side and against her. And -Adrienne has her eye upon them." - -"Let her keep it on them," said Oldmeadow in strong indignation. "And -much good may it do her!" - -"Oh, it won't do her any good--nor us!" said Mrs. Averil. "She's sick -with jealousy, Roger. Sick. I'm almost sorry for her when I see it and -see her trying to hide it, and see it always, coming in by the back door -when she shuts the front door on it--as it always does, you know. And -Nancy sees it, of course; and is quite as sick as she is; and Barney, of -course, remains as blind as a bat." - -"Well, as long as he remains blind--" - -"Yes. As long as he does. But Adrienne will make him see. She'll pick -and pull at their friendship until Nancy will be forced into drawing -back, and if she draws back Barney will see. What it's already come to -is that she has to stand still, and smile, while Adrienne scratches her, -lest Barney should see she's scratched; and once or twice of late I've -had a suspicion that he has seen. It doesn't endear Nancy to Adrienne -that Barney should scowl at her when he's caught her scratching." - -"What kind of scratches?" Oldmeadow asked, but Mrs. Averil had only time -to say, "Oh, all kinds; she's wonderful at scratches," when the -door-bell rang and Nancy, a moment after, came in. - -Nancy, if anything so fresh and neat could be so called, was looking -rather dowdy, and he suspected that some self-effacing motive lay behind -her choice of clothes. - -"Oh, Roger, Barney was so sorry to have to miss you," she said. And, at -all events, whatever else Adrienne had spoiled, she had not spoiled -Nancy's loving smile for him. "He had to catch the 4.45 to Coldbrooks, -you know. There's a prize heifer arriving this evening and he must be -there to welcome it. You must see his herd of Holsteins, Roger." -Friesians were, at that date, still Holsteins. - -"I'd like to," said Oldmeadow. "But I don't know when I shall, for, to -tell you the truth, I've not been asked to Coldbrooks this summer. The -first time since I've known them." - -Nancy looked at him in silence. - -"You'll come to us, of course," said Mrs. Averil. - -"Do you really think I'd better, all things considered?" Oldmeadow -asked. - -"Why, of course you'd better. What possible reasons could there be for -your not coming, except ones we don't accept?" - -"It won't seem to range us too much in a hostile camp?" - -"Not more than we're ranged already. Nancy and I are not going to give -you up, my dear Roger, because Adrienne considers herself a martyr." - -"I hope not, indeed. But it makes my exclusion from Coldbrooks more -marked, perhaps, if I go to you. I imagine, though I am so much in her -black books, that poor Mrs. Chadwick doesn't want my exclusion to be -marked." - -"You're quite right there. You are in her black books; but she doesn't -want it marked; she'd like to have you, really, if Adrienne weren't -there and if she didn't feel shy. And I really think it will make it -easier for her if you come to us instead. It will tide it over a -little. She'll be almost able to feel you are with them. After all, you -do come to us, often." - -"And I'll go up with you to Coldbrooks as if nothing had happened? I -confess I have a curiosity to see how Mrs. Barney takes me." - -"She's very good at taking things, you know," said Nancy. - -Mrs. Averil cast a glance upon him. "It may be really something of a -relief to their minds, Roger," she said, "if you turn up as if nothing -had happened. They are in need of distractions. They are all dreadfully -on edge, though they won't own to it, about Meg. The case is coming on -quite soon now. Mrs. Hayward has lost no time, and poor Eleanor only -keeps up because Adrienne is there to hold her up." - -"Where is Meg? Do they hear from her?" - -"They hear from her constantly. She's still on the Continent. She writes -very easily and confidently. I can't help imagining, all the same, that -Adrienne is holding her up, too. She's written to Nancy and Nancy hasn't -shown me her letters." - -"There is nothing to hide, Mother," said Nancy, and Oldmeadow had never -seen her look so dejected. "Nothing at all, except that she's not as -easy and confident as she wants to appear. Adrienne does hold her up. -Poor Meg." - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - - -The picture of Adrienne holding them up was spread before Oldmeadow's -eyes on the hot July day when Mrs. Averil drove him up from the Little -House to Coldbrooks. The shade of the great lime-tree on the lawn was -like a canvas, only old Johnson, as he moved to and fro with tea-table, -silver and strawberries, stepping from its cool green atmosphere into -the framing sunshine. The Chadwick family, seated or lying in the shade, -were all nearly as still as in a picture, and Adrienne was its centre. -She sat in a high-backed wicker chair, her hands lying listlessly in her -lap, a scarf about her shoulders, and in her black-veiled white, her -wide, transparent hat, she was like a clouded moon. There was something -even of daring, to Oldmeadow's imagination, in their approach across the -sunny spaces. Her eyes had so rested upon them from the moment that they -had driven up, that they might have been bold wayfarers challenging the -magic of a Circe in her web. Palgrave, in his white flannels, lay -stretched at her feet, and he had been reading aloud to her; Barbara and -Mrs. Chadwick sat listening while they worked on either hand. Only -Barney was removed, sitting at some little distance, his back half -turned, a pipe between his teeth and his eyes on a magazine that lay -upon his knee. But the influence, the magic, was upon him too. He was -consciously removed. - -Mrs. Chadwick sprang up to greet them. "This is nice!" she cried, and -her knitting trailed behind her as she came so that Barbara, laughing, -stooped to catch and pick it up as she followed her; "I was expecting -you! How nice and dear of you! On this hot day! I always think the very -fishes must feel warm on a day like this! Or could they, do you -think?--Dear Roger!" There was an evident altering in Mrs. Chadwick's -manner towards him since the meeting in the Park. She was, with all her -fluster, manifestly glad to see him. - -Palgrave had hoisted himself to his feet and now stood beside Adrienne, -eyeing them as a faithful hound eyes suspicious visitors. - -"Isn't it lovely in the shade," Mrs. Chadwick continued, drawing them -into it. "Adrienne darling, Aunt Monica after all. And we were afraid -the heat might keep you away. I suppose the hill was very hot, Monica?" -Adrienne was still, apparently, something of an invalid, for she did not -rise to greet them. Neither did she speak as she held out her hand to -each of them in turn, and while an enveloping smile dwelt fondly on Mrs. -Averil, she made no attempt to smile at Oldmeadow. - -He found himself observing her with a sort of wonder. All the flaws and -deformities of her maternity had fallen from her and she had the -appearance almost of beauty. Yet he had never so little liked her face. -Her dimly patterned features made him think of a Chinese picture he had -once seen where, on a moth-wing background, pale chrysanthemums, -mauvy-pink, a disk of carved jade with cord and tassel and a narrow -ivory box softly spotted with darkness, conveyed in their seeming -triviality an impression almost sinister of impersonality and magic. -There was as little feeling in her face. It was like a mask. - -"Where's Nancy?" Barney asked. He had got up and joined them, giving -Oldmeadow's hand, as they met, a curiously lifeless shake. - -"She had letters to write," said Mrs. Averil. - -"Why, I thought we'd arranged she was to come up and walk round the farm -after tea with me," said Barney and as he spoke Oldmeadow noted that -Adrienne turned her head slowly, somewhat as she had done on the ominous -morning in March, and rested her eyes upon him. - -"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Averil cheerfully. "She must have -misunderstood. She had these letters to finish for the post." - -Barbara was reconnoitring at the tea-table. "Strawberries!" she -announced. "Who said they'd be over? Oh, what a shame of Nancy not to -come! Roger, why aren't you staying here rather than with Aunt Monica, -I'd like to know? Aren't we grand enough for you since she's had that -bathroom put in!" Barbara had advanced to a lively flapperdom. - -"You see, by this plan, I get the bath with her and get you when she -brings me up," Oldmeadow retorted. - -"And leave Nancy behind! I call it a shame when we're having the last -strawberries--and you may have a bathroom with Aunt Monica, but her -strawberries are over. Letters! Who ever heard of Nancy writing -letters--except to you, Barney. She was always writing to you when you -were living in London--before you married. And what screeds you used to -send her--all about art!" said Barbara, and that her liveliness cast a -spell of silence was apparent to everyone but herself. - -Mrs. Chadwick took Oldmeadow's arm and drew him aside. "You'll be able -to come later and be quite with us, won't you, Roger?" she said -"September is really a lovelier month, don't you think? Adrienne is -going to take Palgrave and Barbara for a motor-trip in September. Won't -it be lovely for them?" Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a swiftness that did -not veil a sense of insecurity. "Barbara's never seen the Alps. They are -going to the Tyrol." - -"If we don't have a European war by then," Oldmeadow suggested. "What is -Barney going to do?" - -"Oh, Barney is going to the Barclay's in Scotland, to shoot. He loves -that. A war, Roger? What do you mean? All those tiresome Serbians? Why, -they won't go into the Tyrol, will they?" - -"Perhaps not the Tyrol; but they may make it difficult for other people -to go there." - -"Do you hear what Roger is saying?" Mrs. Chadwick turned to her family. -"That the Serbians may make war by September and that it might interfere -with the trip. But I'm sure Sir Edward will quiet them. He always does. -Though he is a Liberal, I've always felt him to be such a good man," -said Mrs. Chadwick, "and really patriotic. Simply sitting round a table -with him cools their heads more than one would believe possible. -Dreadfully violent people, I believe, killing their kings and queens and -throwing them out of the window. I always think there's nothing in the -world for controlling people's tempers like getting them to sit together -round a table. I wonder why it is. Something to do with having your legs -out of the way, perhaps. People don't look nearly so threatening if -their legs are hidden, do they? My poor cousin, Fanny Jocelyn, used -always to say that if any of the clergymen in Fred's diocese got very -troublesome her one recipe was to ask them to lunch, or, if they were -very bad, to dinner. But she had wonderful tact--that gift, you know, -for seeming to care simply _immensely_ for the person she was talking -to. Francis used to tell her that when she looked at you as if you were -the only person in the world she loved she was really working out her -next menu." - -"I'm afraid if war comes it won't be restricted to people, like Serbians -and clergymen, who can be quieted by being asked to dinner," said -Oldmeadow laughing. "We'll be fighting, too." - -"And who will we fight?" Palgrave inquired. After passing tea, he had -resumed his place at Adrienne's feet. "Who has been getting in our way -now?" - -"Don't you read the papers?" Oldmeadow asked him. - -"Not when I can avoid it," said Palgrave. "They'll be bellowing out the -same old Jingo stuff on the slightest provocation, of course. As far as -I can make out the Serbians are the most awful brutes and Russia is -egging them on. But when it comes to a crime against humanity like war, -every one is responsible." - -"Are you ready for strawberries, Aunt Monica," Barbara interposed. "If -there is a war, I hope we may be in it so that I can do some of my first -aid on real people at last." - -She was carrying strawberries now to Adrienne who, as she leaned down, -took her gently by the wrist, and said some low-toned words to her. "I -know, my angel. Horrid of me!" said Barbara. "But one can't take war -seriously, can one!" - -"I can," said Mrs. Averil. "Too many of my friends had their sons and -husbands killed in South Africa." - -"And it's human nature," said Mrs. Chadwick, eating her strawberries -mournfully. "Like the poor: whom you have always with you, you know." - -"Human nature is altered already a good deal more than governments -imagine," said Palgrave, "and they'll find themselves pretty well dished -if they try to bring on a capitalist war now. The workers all over the -world are beginning to see whose the hands are that pull the strings and -they'll refuse to dance to their piping. They'll down weapons just as -they've learned, at last, to down tools; and without them you can do -nothing. That's the way human nature will end war." - -"A spirited plan, no doubt," said Oldmeadow, "and effective if all the -workers came to be of the same mind simultaneously. But if those of one -country downed weapons and those of another didn't, the first would get -their throats cut for their pains." - -"It's easy to sneer," Palgrave retorted. "As a matter of principle, I'd -rather have my throat cut by a hired ruffian than kill an innocent -man--even if he did belong to a nation that happened to be cleverer and -more efficient than my own. That's a crime, of course, that we can't -forgive." - -"Don't talk such rot, Palgrave," Barney now remarked in a tone of -apathetic disgust. - -"I beg your pardon," Palgrave sat up instantly, flushing all over his -face. "I think it's truth and sanity." - -"It's not truth and sanity. It's rot and stupid rot," said Barney. "Some -more tea, please, Barbara." - -"Calling names isn't argument," said Palgrave. "I could call names, too, -if it came to that. It's calling names that is stupid. I merely happen -to believe in what Christ said." - -"Oh, but, dear--Christ drove the money-lenders out of the Temple very, -very roughly," Mrs. Chadwick interposed with the head-long irrelevance -characteristic of her in such crises. "Thongs must hurt so much, mustn't -they? He surely believed in punishing people who did wrong." - -"Which nation doesn't do wrong, Mummy? Which nation is a Christ with a -right to punish another? It's farcical. And punishing isn't killing. -Christ didn't kill malefactors." - -"The Gadarene swine," Mrs. Chadwick murmured. "They were killed. So -painfully, too, poor things. I never could understand about that. I hope -the Higher Criticism will manage to get rid of it, for it doesn't really -seem kind. They had done no wrong at all and I've always been specially -fond of pigs myself." - -"Ah, but you never saw a pig with a devil in it," Oldmeadow suggested, -to which Mrs. Chadwick murmured, "I'm sure they seem to have devils in -them, sometimes, poor dears, when they won't let themselves be caught. -Do get some more cream, Barbara. It's really too hot for arguments, -isn't it," and Mrs. Chadwick sighed with the relief of having rounded -that dangerous corner. - -Barbara went away with the cream-jug and Johnson emerged bearing the -afternoon post. - -"Ah. Letters. Good." Palgrave sat up to take his and Adrienne's share. -"One for you, Adrienne; from Meg. Now we shall see what she says about -meeting us in the Tyrol." His cheeks were still flushed and his eyes -brilliant with anger. Though his words were for Adrienne his voice was -for Barney, at whom he did not glance. - -Adrienne unfolded the foreign sheets, and held them so that Palgrave, -leaning against her knee, could read with her. - -Mrs. Chadwick had grown crimson. She looked at Oldmeadow. "Dear Meg is -having such an interesting time," she told him. "She and Eric are seeing -all manner of delightful places and picking up some lovely bits of old -furniture." Oldmeadow bowed assent. He had his eyes on Adrienne and he -was wondering about Barbara. - -"What news is there, dear?" Mrs. Chadwick continued in the same badly -controlled voice. Palgrave's face had clouded. - -"I'm afraid it may be bad news, Mother Nell," said Adrienne looking up. - -It was the first time Oldmeadow had heard her voice that afternoon and -he could hardly have believed it the voice that had once reminded him of -a blue ribbon. It was still slow, still deliberate and soft; but it had -now the steely thrust and intention of a dagger. - -"It's this accursed war talk!" Palgrave exclaimed. "Eric evidently -thinks it serious and he has to come home at once. What rotten luck." - -Adrienne handed the sheets to Mrs. Chadwick. "It will all have blown -over by September," she said. "As Mother Nell says, we can trust Sir -Edward to keep us out of anything so wicked as a war. I am so completely -with you in all you say about the wickedness of war, Paladin, although I -do not see its causes quite so simply, perhaps." - -It was the first time that Oldmeadow had heard the new name for her -knight. - -"For my part," said Barney, casting a glance at the house, Barbara not -having yet reappeared, "I shall be grateful to the war if it dishes your -trip to the Tyrol. It's most unsuitable for Barbara." - -He did not look at his wife as he spoke. His hat brim pulled down over -his eyes, he sat with folded arms and stared in front of him. - -"You find it unsuitable for one sister to meet another?" Adrienne -inquired. Her eyes were on Barney, but Oldmeadow could not interpret -their gaze. - -"Most unsuitable, to use no stronger word," said Barney, "while one -sister is living with a man whose name she doesn't bear." - -"You mean to say," said Palgrave, sitting cross-legged at Adrienne's -feet and grasping his ankles with both hands, "that Meg, until she's -legally married, isn't fit for her little sister to associate with?" - -"Just what I do mean, Palgrave. Precisely what I do mean," said Barney, -and his face, reddening, took on its rare but characteristic expression -of sullen anger. "And I'll thank you--in my house, after all--to keep -out of an argument that doesn't concern you." - -"Barney; Palgrave," murmured Mrs. Chadwick supplicatingly. Adrienne, -not moving her eyes from her husband's face, laid her hand on Palgrave's -shoulder. - -"It does concern me," said Palgrave, and he put up his hand and grasped -Adrienne's. "Barbara's well-being concerns me as much as it does you; -and your wife's happiness concerns me a good deal more. I can promise -you that I wouldn't trouble your hospitality for another day if it -weren't for her--and Mother. It's perfectly open to you, of course, to -turn me out of my home whenever you like to make use of your legal -privilege. But until I'm turned out I stay--for their sakes." - -"You young ass! You unmitigated young ass!" Barney snarled, springing to -his feet. "All right, Mother. Don't bother. I'll leave you to your -protector for the present. I only wish he were young enough to be given -what he needs--a thorough good hiding. I'll go down and see Nancy. Don't -expect me back to dinner." - -"Nancy is busy, my dear," poor Mrs. Averil, deeply flushing, interposed, -while Palgrave, under his breath, yet audibly, murmured: "Truly -Kiplingesque! Home and Hidings! Our Colonial history summed up!" - -"She would be here if she weren't busy," said Mrs. Averil. - -"I won't bother her," said Barney. "I'll sit in the garden and read. -It's more peaceful than being here." - -"Please tell dear Nancy that it's ten days at least since _I've_ seen -her," said Adrienne, "and that I miss her and beg that she'll give me, -sometime, a few of her spare moments." - -At that Barney stopped short, and looked at his wife. "No, Adrienne, I -won't," he said with a startling directness. "I'll take no messages -whatever from you to Nancy. Let Nancy alone--do you see? That's all I've -got to ask of you. Let her alone. She and Aunt Monica are the only -people you haven't set against me and I don't intend to quarrel with -Nancy to please you, I promise you." - -Sitting motionless and upright, her hand laid on Palgrave's shoulder, -her face as unalterable as a little mask, Adrienne received these -well-aimed darts as a Saint Sebastian might have received the arrows. -Barney stared hard at her for a moment, then turned his back and marched -out into the sunlight and Oldmeadow, as he saw him go, felt that he -witnessed the end, as he had, little more than a year ago, witnessed the -beginning, of an epoch. What was there left to build on after such a -scene? And what must have passed between husband and wife during their -hours of intimacy to make it credible? Barney was not a brute. - -When Barney had turned through the entrance gates and -disappeared--Adrienne's eyes dropped to Palgrave's. "I think I'll go in, -Paladin," she said, and it was either with faintness or with the mere -stillness of her rage. "I think I'll lie down for a little while." - -Palgrave had leaped to his feet and, as she rose, drew her hand within -his arm, and Mrs. Chadwick, her eyes staring wide, hastened to her: but -Adrienne gently put her away. "No, no, dearest Mother Nell. Paladin will -help me. You must stay with Aunt Monica and Mr. Oldmeadow." Her hand -rested for a moment on Mrs. Chadwick's shoulder and she looked into her -eyes. "I'm so sorry, Mother Nell. I meant no harm." - -"Oh, my darling child! As if I did not know that!" Mrs. Chadwick moaned -and, as Adrienne moved away, she turned as if half distraught to her two -friends. "Oh, it's dreadful! dreadful!" she nearly wept. "Oh, how can he -treat her so--before you all! It's breaking my heart!" - -Barbara came running out with the cream. "Great Scott!" she exclaimed, -stopping short. "What's become of everybody?" - -"They've all gone, dear. Yes, we've all finished. No one wants any more -strawberries. Take yours away, will you, dear, we want to have a little -talk, Aunt Monica, Roger and I." - -"I suppose it's Barney again," said Barbara, standing still and gazing -indignantly around her. "Where's Adrienne?" - -"She has gone to lie down, dear. Yes. Barney has been very unkind." - -"About my trip, I suppose? He's been too odious about my trip and it's -only the other day he made Adrienne cry. What possible business is it of -Barney's, I'd like to know? One would think he imagined that wives and -sisters were a sort of chattel. Why mayn't I stay, Mother--if you're -going to talk about my trip? Adrienne has explained everything to me and -I think Meg was quite right and I'd do the same myself if I were in her -place. So I'm perfectly able to understand." - -"I know, dear; I know; Adrienne is so wonderful. But don't say things -like that, I beg of you, for it makes me very, very unhappy. And please -run away for a little while, for we have other things to talk of. I'm -afraid there may be no trip at all, Barbara; Meg may be coming home at -once. The letters had news about it, and Eric has to go to the war--if -there is a war, you see." Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a supplicatory note -very unlike her usual placid if complaining authority. - -"But I'd like to hear about the letters, then. Do we really have to give -up the trip? I'm sure it's Barney at the bottom of it. He's been trying -to dish it from the first and I simply won't stand it from him." - -"It's not Barney at all, Barbara. You shall hear all that there is to -hear. And you mustn't, really, forget that Barney is your elder brother -and has some right to say what you should do--even though we mayn't -agree with him." - -"No, he hasn't. Not an atom," Barbara declared. "If anyone has any -right, except you, it's Adrienne, because she's a bigger, wiser person -than any of us." - -"And since you've borne your testimony, Barbara," Oldmeadow suggested, -"you might obey your mother and give us the benefit of your experience -on an occasion when it's invited." - -"Oh, I know you're against Adrienne, Roger," said Barbara, but with a -sulkiness that showed surrender. "I shan't force myself on you, I assure -you, and girls of fifteen aren't quite the infants in arms you may -imagine. If Adrienne weren't here to stand up for me I don't know where -I'd be. Because, you know, you _are_ weak, Mother. Yes you are. You've -been really wobbling like anything about my trip and trying to wriggle -out of it whenever you had a loop-hole, and Adrienne thinks you're weak, -I know, for she told me so, and said we must help you to be brave and -strong and that you belonged to a generation that had its eyes tightly -bandaged from birth. So there!" And delivering this effective shot, -Barbara marched away, not forgetting to pick up her plate of -strawberries as she passed the table. - -Mrs. Chadwick attempted to conceal her confusion by following her -child's retreating figure with grave disapprobation and Oldmeadow seized -the propitious moment to remark: "I can't help feeling that there's -something to be said for Barney, all the same. His wife _has_ set you -all against him, hasn't she? I suspect Barbara's right, too, my dear -friend, and that in your heart of hearts you dislike this trip of hers -as much as he does. Certainly Barbara isn't a very pleasing example of -Adrienne's influence." - -"She is very naughty, very naughty and rebellious," poor Mrs. Chadwick -murmured, twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. "I know I've not a -strong character, but I never spoiled my children and dear Adrienne -does, I feel, spoil Barbara by taking her so seriously and talking to -her as if she were grown up, you know. I had an aunt who married at -sixteen; but it didn't turn out at all happily. They quarrelled -constantly and she had two sets of twins, poor thing--almost like a -judgment, dear Mamma used to say. But of course Barbara is really too -young to understand; and so I've told dear Adrienne. Not that she isn't -perfectly frank about it. She's told me over and over again that -weakness was my besetting danger and that I must stand up straight and -let the winds of freedom blow away my cobwebs. So dear and original, -always, you know. And of course I see her point of view and Barbara -will, no doubt, be a bigger, finer person"--Mrs. Chadwick's voice -trailed off in its echo. "But I don't agree with you, Roger; I don't -agree with you at all!" she took up with sudden vehemence, "about the -trip. I don't agree that my poor Meg is a leper to be avoided until a -legal ceremony has been performed. I think that a cruel -convention--cruel, base and cowardly. She must have suffered so much -already. Nothing will give her so much courage as for us to be seen -standing by her. Adrienne has explained all that most beautifully to -Barbara. And how true love is the most sacred thing in life." - -"My dear friend, Meg isn't a leper, of course, and we all intend to -stand by her. But it is certainly best that a young girl like Barbara -shouldn't be asked to meet, or understand, or exonerate such difficult -situations." - -"That's what I've tried to say to Eleanor," Mrs. Averil murmured. - -"And why not, Roger! Why not!" Mrs. Chadwick cried, surprisingly yet not -convincingly aroused. "Nothing develops the character so much as facing -and understanding difficulty. And as for exoneration--I don't agree with -you, and Adrienne doesn't agree. You and Monica are conventionalists and -we must live on a higher plane than convention. I'm sure I try to, -though it's very hard sometimes, but the noblest things are hardest. -There is nothing to exonerate. Meg was following her own light in doing -what she did." - -"It's not a question of Meg, but of her situation," Oldmeadow returned. - -"And because of her situation, because she is so in need of help and -loyalty, you ask that Barbara should draw back her skirts from her! Oh! -I knew it!" cried Mrs. Chadwick, "I knew that you would feel like that! -That is why I felt it would be happier if you were not here with -Adrienne." - -"You need hardly tell me that," said Oldmeadow smiling. "But it's not a -question of convention, except in so far as convention means right -feeling and good taste. Meg, whatever her lights--and personally I don't -believe that she followed them--has done something that involves pain -and humiliation for all concerned with her, and whether she was or was -not justified in doing it is a moral problem that a child shouldn't be -asked to meet. Such problems should be kept from her until she is old -enough to understand them." - -Mrs. Chadwick's vehemence had only fictitiously sustained her. It -dropped from her now and for a little while she sat silent, and the -confusion of her heart was piteously revealed to her friend as she said -at last, "If there _is_ a war, it will all settle itself, won't it, for -then Barbara couldn't go. I don't try to wriggle out of it. That's most -unfair and untrue. I've promised Adrienne and I agree with Adrienne -about it. I can't explain it clearly, as she does; it's all quite, quite -different when Adrienne explains it. She seems to hold me up and you and -Monica pull me down--oh, yes, you do, Roger. Of course it would kill -me--I know that I should die, if Barbara were to do what Meg has done; -you mustn't think Adrienne _wants_ her to behave like that, you know. -Adrienne only wants people to be brave and follow their light; but your -light needn't be a married man, need it? And sometimes I think it isn't -_really_ so serious--falling in love, you know. I'm sure I thought _I_ -was in love half a dozen times before Francis proposed. It's a question -of seeing what's best for you all round, isn't it, and it can't be best -if it's a married man, can it? Oh! I know I'm saying what Adrienne -wouldn't like, now; because it sounds so worldly and as if I believed in -the French way. But I don't at all. I think love's everything, too. Only -it always seemed to me when I was a girl that love meant white satin and -orange-blossoms; and my poor, poor Meg can never wear those now. I -should feel miserable, quite miserable about her, of course, if Adrienne -weren't here to make me see the big, real things instead of the little -ones. And Barney has been so unkind. Sneering and scoffing at -everything"--her voice quivered. "However, if there's a war, that will -settle it. Barbara couldn't go if there was a war." - - - - -CHAPTER XX - - -The war thus had its uses to Mrs. Chadwick. Barbara did not go to the -Tyrol. By the end of September Oldmeadow and Barney were in training, -one on the Berkshire and one on the Wiltshire downs, and Meg was -ambiguously restored to her family at Coldbrooks. - -Oldmeadow had not seen Barney for many days, when they met one afternoon -at Paddington and travelled together as far as Didcot. They had the -carriage to themselves and though Barney's demeanour was reticent there -were many things about which, it was evident, he found it a relief to be -communicative. It was from him that Oldmeadow learned of Meg's return. - -"She'll be in a pretty box, won't she, if Hayward is killed," he said, -smoking his cigarette and not looking at his friend. "He's over there, -you know, and for my part I think there's very little chance of any of -them coming back alive." - -They both smoked in silence for a little while after this, contemplating -the ordeal in which their country was involved rather than their own -relation to it; but Oldmeadow's mind returned presently to Barney's -difficulties and he asked him if it had been to see Hayward off that -he'd just been up to London. - -Barney, at this, had a quiet sardonic laugh. "Good heavens, no," he -said. "Hayward went in the first week and Adrienne and Palgrave went up -with Meg to see him off. Even if I'd wanted to, I'd have been allowed to -have no hand in that. Adrienne is seeing to it all. Lawyers, money, I -don't know what. No; I went up to spend my leave with old Boyd at his -place in Chelsea. I didn't want to go home. Home is the last place I -want to be just now." - -Oldmeadow at this maintained a silence that could not pretend surprise -and Barney continued in a moment. "Palgrave isn't coming in, you know." - -"You mean he's carrying out his pacifist ideas?" - -"If they are his," said Barney in his colourless yet sardonic voice. -"Any ideas of Palgrave's are likely to be Adrienne's, you know. She got -hold of him from the first." - -"Well, after all," Oldmeadow after another moment felt impelled to say, -"She got hold of you, too. In the same way; by believing in herself and -by understanding you. She thinks she's right." - -"Ha! ha!" laughed Barney and for a moment, an acutely uncomfortable one -for Oldmeadow, he turned his eyes on his friend. "Thinks she's right! -You needn't tell me that, Roger!" - -It had indeed, Oldmeadow felt, hardly been decent of him. - -"I know. Of course she would. But, all the same, people must be allowed -to hold their own opinions." - -"Must they?" said Barney. "At a time like this? Adrienne must, of -course; as a woman she doesn't come into it; she brings other people in, -that is to say, and keeps out herself. Besides she's an American. But -Palgrave shouldn't be allowed the choice. He's dishonouring us all--as -Meg has done. Poor, foolish, wretched Mother! She's seeing it at last, -though she won't allow herself to say it, or, rather, Adrienne won't -allow her--" He checked himself. - -"Dishonour is a strong word, Barney. Palgrave is hardly more than a -boy." - -"Jim Errington is a year younger than Palgrave, and Peter Layard six -months. They're both in. I don't think nineteen is too young to -dishonour your family. If Palgrave committed a murder, he'd be hanged. -But it will no doubt come to conscription and then we'll see where he'll -find himself. Herded in as a Tommy. All this talk of a few months is -folly." - -"I know. Yes. Folly," said Oldmeadow absently. "Have you tried to have -it out with Palgrave, Barney? If he only hears Adrienne's side what can -you expect of him? If you leave them all to sink or swim without you, -you mustn't blame Adrienne for steering as best she can." - -"Sink or swim without me!" Barney echoed. "Why they'd none of them -listen to me. You saw well enough how it was with them that day in July -when you came up. Adrienne is twice as strong as I am when it comes to -anything like a struggle and she has them all firmly under her thumb. -She steers because she intends to steer and intends I shan't. I've tried -nothing with Palgrave, except to keep my hands off him. Mother's talked -to him, and Meg's talked to him; but nothing does any good. Oh, yes; Meg -hangs on Adrienne because she's got nothing else to hang to; but she's -frightfully down on Palgrave all the same. They're all united against -me, but they're not united among themselves by any means. It's not a -peaceful family party at Coldbrooks, I promise you. Poor Mother spends -most of her time shut up in her room crying." - -Barney offered no further information on this occasion and Oldmeadow -asked for no more. It was from Mrs. Aldesey, some weeks later, that he -heard that Eric Hayward had been killed. Mrs. Aldesey was his most -punctual correspondent and her letters, full of pungent, apposite -accounts of how the war was affecting London, the pleasantest -experiences that came to him on the Berkshire downs, where, indeed, he -did not find life unpleasant. Mrs. Aldesey made time for these long -letters after tiring days spent among Belgian refugees and his sense of -comradeship had been immensely deepened by the vast, new experience they -were, from their different angles, sharing. It was difficult, on the -soft October day, to dissociate the mere pleasure of reading her letter -from the miserable news she gave. Yet he knew, stretched at ease after -strenuous exercise, the canvas of his tent idly flapping above him and -the sunlight falling across his feet, that it was very miserable news -indeed and must miserably affect his friends at Coldbrooks. What was to -become of poor Meg now? And after his mind had paused on poor Meg a pang -of memory brought back the face of his setter John. Poor Hayward. - -"She must, of course, find some work at once," Mrs. Aldesey wrote. "The -war does help to solve problems of this sort as nothing else before ever -could. She must nurse, or drive an ambulance and perhaps by the time -it's all over we'll have forgotten irrelevancies that happened so long -ago. Sometimes it feels like that to me and I know I'm much too old to -face the world that will have grown up out of the wreckage of the world -I knew." Mrs. Aldesey, still, always spoke of herself as antique, -relegated and on the shelf. Rather absurd of her, as her friend pointed -out in his reply, when she was obviously one of the people who were -going to make the new world. She was organizing the Belgians in the most -remarkable manner. - -As to Coldbrooks he hesitated. He could hardly see himself writing to -Mrs. Chadwick or to Meg. Of Nancy he felt a little shy. There would be -too much to say to Nancy if he said anything and he allowed the -anonymous calamity that had overtaken his friends to pass without -comment or condolence. But after an interval of some weeks it was from -Nancy herself that he heard. Nancy seemed always to be selected as the -vehicle for other people's emergencies. - -"Dear Roger," she wrote. "You have heard how very unhappy we all are. It -is dreadful to see poor Meg, and Aunt Eleanor makes it really worse for -her. Meg wears mourning, like a widow, and she is terribly bitter about -Palgrave, and about Adrienne, too. Doesn't that seem to you very strange -and unjust? Adrienne is doing for Palgrave what she did for -Meg--standing by him. It is all more unhappy than you can imagine. -Palgrave is at New College, now, you know, and I'm writing, because Aunt -Eleanor's one hope is that you may be able to talk to him. Kindly, you -know, Roger; and not as if you thought him a criminal or a coward; that -is worse than useless, naturally. Palgrave is very arrogant; but you -know what a tender heart he really has and I am sure that he is very -lonely and unhappy. So be kind and understanding, won't you? He really -cares for you and trusts you more than he likes to show; and of course -he would expect you to be against him." - -Oldmeadow was going into Oxford in a week's time and he wrote to -Palgrave and asked him to give him tea. "I've got to talk to you, if -you'll let me," he said, "but I shan't make myself a nuisance, I promise -you. I only want to satisfy myself that you have thought everything out, -and if you have I'll be able to tell your people that they must give up -tormenting themselves and you about it. I shall like talking over your -work with you, too, if I may, and renewing my own Oxford memories." So -conciliatory, so affectionate (and he found it easy to be affectionate -to poor Palgrave) was the tone of the letter that he had a swift reply. -Palgrave would be very glad to see him. - -It was a melancholy, deserted Oxford into which Oldmeadow drove his -little car on a late October afternoon. Most of the youths he saw were -of a nondescript variety, a type to whom Oxford means scholastic -opportunity and nothing more. There were dark-skinned lads from distant -parts of the Empire looking, to Oldmeadow's eye, rather pitiful and -doomed to disappointment, and a hurrying, absorbed little Jap had an -almost empty Broad as a setting for his alien figure. - -Palgrave's name was freshly painted at the bottom of a staircase in the -Garden Quad and Oldmeadow mounted to rooms that most delightfully -overlooked the garden and its catalpa-tree. - -Palgrave was ready for him. The tea was laid and he stood at the table -cutting a cake as Oldmeadow entered. But some one else, too, was ready, -for there, in the window-seat, her gaze fixed on the waning golds and -russets beneath, sat Adrienne Toner. Oldmeadow, very much and very -disagreeably affected, paused at the door. - -"Come in, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, and there was a strange, jaded -eagerness in the gaze she fixed on him. "I've only come for tea. I have -to go directly afterwards. I am staying in Oxford, now, you know. To be -near Palgrave." - -"Meg's turned her out of Coldbrooks," Palgrave announced, standing -still, over the tea-tray, his hands in his pockets while, with bent -head, he looked from under his brows at Oldmeadow. "Meg, you understand; -for whose sake she's gone through everything. We're pariahs together, -now; she and I." - -"It's not quite true or fair to say that, Palgrave," said Adrienne, -whose eyes had returned to the garden. "Meg hasn't turned me out. I felt -it would be happier for her if I weren't there; and for your -Mother--since they feel as they do about what has happened; and happier -for you and me to be together. You can't be surprised at Meg. She is -nearly beside herself with grief." - -Adrienne was very much altered. The magic of the lime-tree scene no -longer lay about her. Her skin was sallow, her eyes sunken, her -projecting mouth was at once stubborn, weary and relaxed. She had been -almost beautiful on that July day and to-day she was definitely ugly. -Oldmeadow saw that some intent inner preoccupation held her thoughts. - -"I _am_ surprised at her; very much surprised," said Palgrave, "though I -might have warned you that Meg wasn't a person worth risking a great -deal for. Oh, yes, she's nearly beside herself all right. She's lost the -man she cared for and she can't, now, ever be made 'respectable.' Oh, I -see further into Meg's grief than you do, my poor Adrienne. She's just -as conventional and unheroic at heart as Mother; and that's what _she_ -minds--more than anything." - -Oldmeadow, sunken in the deep chair Palgrave had drawn for him to the -table, watched the curious interchange, and after a pause, in her jaded -voice, Adrienne from the window-seat commented: "I understand her rage -and misery. It's because her grief is divided and spoiled and tainted -like that that she is distracted." - -"Will you pour out tea?" Palgrave asked her gloomily. "You'll see -anyone's side, always, except your own." - -To this Adrienne, rising and coming forward to the table, made no reply. -She wore a dark dress that recalled to Oldmeadow the one in which he had -first seen her; the short jacket tying across white in front and white -ruffles falling about her neck and hands. A small, dark hat was bent -down about her face. - -Strange, brooding face. What was she thinking of, Oldmeadow wondered, as -he watched her hands, impeded by the falling ruffles, moving with the -old, fumbling gestures among the tea-things; she had constantly to throw -back the ruffles, and the tea-pot, after all, was too heavy for her. It -slipped on one side as she lifted it and the hot tea poured over her -hand. She kept her hold bravely and Oldmeadow rescued her. - -"How stupid I am!" she said, biting her lip. - -"You've scalded your hand," said Palgrave, eyeing her with his air no -longer of rapturous but of gloomy devotion. - -They made Oldmeadow think of comrade political prisoners moving off -together in a convoy to Siberia. There was something as bleak, as -heavy, as uninspired in their aspect. He could not think that Palgrave -could now catch much light or flame from such a companion. They would -trudge through the snow; condemned, but together; to be together was the -best thing, now, that life offered them. - -She said that the scald was nothing and asked to be trusted to go on -with the tea, grasping the handle with resolution. Oldmeadow, however, -standing beside her, insisted on filling the cups for her. - -"You can be allowed to put in the milk and sugar, you see," he said. He -was aware, as he thus succoured and rallied her, of an influx of feeling -like the feeling that came with the uncanny dreams. Here she was, and -reality had caught her. She deserved to be caught, of course; tragic, -meddling Pierrot. But his heart was heavy and gentle; as in his dreams. - -They sat round the table together. On the mantelpiece was a large, -framed photograph of Adrienne; on the walls photographs of a Botticelli -Madonna, a Mantegna from Padua and the da Vinci drawing for the Christ -of the Last Supper. Seeing Oldmeadow's eyes on them Palgrave said: -"Adrienne gave me those. And lots of the books." - -"And don't forget the beautiful cushions, Palgrave," said Adrienne, with -a flicker of her old, contented playfulness. "I'm sure good cushions are -the foundation of a successful study of philosophy." - -The cushions were certainly very good; and very beautiful, as Oldmeadow -commented. "That gorgeous chair, too," said Palgrave. "It ought to make -a Plato of me." - -It was curious, the sense they gave him of trusting him. Were they -aware, if only sub-consciously, that he was feeling Adrienne, her -follies and misdeeds thick upon her, ill-used? Or was it only that they -had come down to such fundamental securities as were left to them and -felt that with him, at all events, they were in the hands of an -impartial judge? - -"It's a happy life Meg and Mother lead at Coldbrooks, as you may -imagine," Palgrave took up the theme that preoccupied him. "They only -see Nancy and Aunt Monica, of course. Barbara is at school and Barney, -as you are probably aware, never comes near his disgraced sister. Would -you believe it, Roger," Palgrave went on, while Oldmeadow saw that a -dull colour crept up to Adrienne's face and neck as her husband was thus -mentioned, "Meg blames Adrienne now for the whole affair! About Eric and -herself! Actually! On the one hand Eric is her hero for whom she'll -mourn for ever and on the other Adrienne is responsible for the fact -that she's not 'respectable' and can't claim to be his widow. Oh, don't -ask me how she contrives to work it out! Women like Meg don't need logic -when they've a thong in their hands and want to use it. And Adrienne's -shoulders are bared for the lash! God! It makes me fairly mad to think -of it!" - -"Please, Palgrave!" Adrienne supplicated in a low voice. She did not -eat. She had drunk her tea and sat looking down at her plate. "Don't -think of it any more. Meg is very, very unhappy. We can hardly imagine -what the misery and confusion of Meg's heart must be." - -"Oh, you'll make excuses for anyone, Adrienne! You're not a shining -example of happiness either, if it comes to that. It's atrocious of Meg -to treat you as she does. Atrocious of her to hold you responsible." - -"But I am responsible," said Adrienne, while the dull flush still dyed -her face. "I've always said that I was responsible. It was I who -persuaded them to go." - -"Yes. To go. Instead of staying and being lovers secretly. I know all -about it. And no doubt Meg would rather it had been so now. And so would -Mother!" Palgrave ground his teeth on a laugh. "That's where morality -lands them! Pretty, isn't it!" - -A silence fell and then Adrienne rose and said that Mr. Jackson would be -waiting for her. "He's coming at half-past five," she said, and, with -his gloomy tenderness, Palgrave informed Oldmeadow that she was reading -logic and Plato; "to keep up with me, you know." - -Adrienne, smiling faintly, laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder as -she went past his chair. "Come in to-night, after dinner, and tell me -what you decide," she said. - -"I'll have no news for you," Palgrave replied. - -Oldmeadow had gone to hold the door open for her and, as she paused -there to give him her hand, he heard her murmur: "Will you come down -with me?" - -"Let me see you to the bottom of the stair," he seized the intimation, -and, as she went before him, she said, still in the low, purposeful -voice, and he felt sure now that this had been her intention in coming -to tea: "It's only so that you shan't think I'll oppose you. If you can -persuade him, I shall not oppose it. I think he's right. But it's too -hard. I mean, I hope you can persuade him that it's right to go." - -She had stepped out on to the threshold at the foot of the stairs and he -paused behind her, astonished. "You want me to persuade him of what you -think wrong?" - -She stood still looking out at the sunny quadrangle. "People must think -for themselves. I don't know who is right or who is wrong. Perhaps I've -influenced Palgrave. Perhaps he wouldn't have felt like this if it -hadn't been for me. I don't know. But if you can make him feel it right -to go, I shall be glad." She stepped out into the quadrangle. - -"You mean," said Oldmeadow, following her, and strangely moved, "that -you'd rather have him killed than stay behind like this?" - -"It would be much happier for him, wouldn't it," she said. "If he could -feel it right to go." - -They were under the arch of the Library, she still going slowly, before -him, and Oldmeadow stopped her there. "Mrs. Barney, forgive me--may I -ask you something?" He had put his hand on her shoulder and she paused -and faced him. "It's something personal, and I've no right to be -personal with you, as I know. But--have you been to see Barney at -Tidworth?" - -As Oldmeadow spoke these Words, Adrienne turned away vehemently, and -then stood still, as though arrested in her impulse of flight by an -irresistible desire to listen. "Barney does not want to see me," she -said, speaking with difficulty. - -"You think so," said Oldmeadow. "And he may think so. But you ought to -see each other at a time like this. He may be ordered to France at any -time now." He could not see her face. - -"Do you mean," she said, after a moment, keeping the rigidity of her -listening poise, "that he won't come to say good-bye?" - -"I know nothing at all," said Oldmeadow. "I can only infer how far the -mischief between you has gone. And I'm most frightfully sorry for it. -I've been sorry for Barney; but now I'm sorry for you, too. I think -you're being unfairly treated. But yours have been the mistakes, Mrs. -Barney, and it's for you to take the first step." - -"Barney doesn't want to see me," she repeated, and she went on, while he -heard, growing in her voice, the note of the old conviction: "He has -made mistakes, too. He has treated me unfairly, too. I can't take the -first step." - -"Don't you love him, then?" said Oldmeadow, and in his voice was the -note of the old harshness. - -"Does he love me?" she retorted, turning now, with sudden fire, and -fixing her eyes upon him. "Why should he think I want to see him if he -doesn't want to see me? Why should I love, if he doesn't? Why should I -sue to Barney?" - -"Oh," Oldmeadow almost groaned. "Don't take that line; don't, I beg of -you. You're both young. And you've hurt him so. You've meant to hurt -him; I've seen it! I've seen it, Mrs. Barney. If you'll put by your -pride everything can grow again." - -"No! no! no!" she cried almost violently, and he saw that she was -trembling. "Some things don't grow again! It's not like plants, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Some things are like living creatures; and they can die. They -can die," she repeated, now walking rapidly away from him out into the -large quadrangle with its grass plot cut across by the late sunshine. He -followed her for a moment and he heard her say, as she went: "It's -worse, far worse, not to mean to hurt. It's worse to care so little that -you don't know when you are hurting." - -"No, it's not," said Oldmeadow. "That's only being stupid; not cruel." - -"It's not thinking that is cruel; it's not caring that is cruel," she -repeated, passionately, half muttering the words, and whether with tears -of fury he could not say. - -He stood still at the doorway. "Good-bye, then," he said. And not -looking behind her, as she went out swiftly into New College Lane, she -answered, still on the same note of passionate protest: "Good-bye, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Good-bye." He watched her small, dark figure hurry along in -the shadow of the wall until the turning hid it from view. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - - -Palgrave, apparently, had formed no conjectures as to their conversation -and was thinking still of Adrienne's wrongs rather than of his own -situation. "Did you take her home?" he said. "I see you're sorry for -her, Roger. It's really too abominable, you know. I really can't say -before her what I think, I really can't say before you what I think of -Barney's treatment of her; because I know you agree with him." - -Oldmeadow felt all the more able, shaken though he was by the interview -below, to remember, because of it, what he thought. "If you mean that I -don't consider Barney in the very least responsible for the death of the -baby, I do agree with him," he said. - -"Apart from that, apart from the baby," said Palgrave, controlling his -temper, it was evident, in his wish to keep the ear of the impartial -judge, "though what the loss of a child means to a woman like Adrienne I -don't believe you can guess; apart from whose was the responsibility, he -ought to have seen, towards the end, at all events, if he'd eyes in his -head and a heart in his breast, that all she asked was to forgive him -and take him back. She was proud, of course. What woman of her power and -significance wouldn't have been? She couldn't be the first to move. But -Barney must have seen that her heart was breaking." - -"Well," said Oldmeadow, taking in, with some perplexity, this new -presentation of Adrienne Toner; "what about his heart? She'd led it a -pretty dance. And you forget that I don't consider she had anything to -forgive him." - -"His heart!" Palgrave echoed scornfully, yet with a sorrowful scorn; "He -mended his heart quick enough. Went and fell in love with Nancy, who -only asks to be let alone." - -"He's always loved Nancy. She's always been like a sister to him. -Adrienne has infected you with her groundless jealousy." - -"Groundless indeed!" Palgrave reached for his pipe and began to stuff it -vindictively. "Nancy sees well enough, poor dear! She's had to keep him -off by any device she could contrive. She's a good deal more than a -sister to him, now. She's the only person in the world for him. You can -call it jealousy if you like. That's only another name for a broken -heart." - -"I don't know what Barney's feeling may be, Palgrave, but I do know, it -was quite plain to me, that Adrienne was jealous long before she had any -ground for jealousy. If Nancy's all Barney's got left now, it's simply -because Adrienne has taken everything else from him. You don't seem to -realize that Adrienne drove him from her with her airs of martyrdom. -Took vengeance on him, too; what else was the plan for Barbara going -abroad with you? I don't want to speak unkindly of her. It's quite true; -I'm sorry for her. I've never liked her so well. But the reason is that -she's beginning, I really believe, to find out that her own feet are of -clay, while her mistake all along has been to imagine herself above -ordinary humanity. All our feet are of clay, and we never get very far -unless we are aware of the weakness in our structure and look out for a -continual tendency to crumble. You don't get over it by pretending you -don't need to walk and imagining you have wings instead of feet." - -Palgrave, drawing stiffly at his pipe during this little homily, -listened, gloomily yet without resentment. "You see, where you make -_your_ mistake--if you'll allow the youthful ass you consider me to say -so--is that you've always imagined Adrienne to be a self-righteous prig -who sets herself up above others. She doesn't; she doesn't," Palgrave -repeated with conviction. "She'd accept the feet of clay if you'll grant -her the heart of flame--for everybody; the wings--for everybody. There's -your mistake, Roger. Adrienne believes that everybody has wings as well -as herself; and the only difference she sees in people is that some have -learned and some haven't how to use them. She may be mortal woman--bless -her--and have made mistakes; but they're the mistakes of flame; not of -earthiness." - -"You are not an ass, Palgrave," said Oldmeadow, after a moment. "You are -wise in everything but experience; and you see deep. Suppose we come to -a compromise. You've owned that Adrienne may make mistakes and I own -that I may misjudge her. I see what you believe about her and I see why -you believe it. I've seen her at her worst, no doubt, and to you she's -been able to show only her best. So let it rest at that. What I came to -talk about, you know, was you." - -"I know," said Palgrave, and he gave a deep sigh. - -"Be patient with me," said Oldmeadow. "After all, we belong to the same -generation. You can't pretend that I'm an old fogey who's lost the -inspirations of his youth and has marched so far down towards the grave -that the new torches coming up over the horizon are hidden from him." - -"That's rather nice, you know, Roger," Palgrave smiled faintly. "No; -you're not an old fogey. But all the same there's not much torch about -you." - -"It's rather sad, isn't it," Oldmeadow mused, "that we should always -seem to begin with torches and then to spend the rest of our lives in -quenching them. It may be, you know, that we're only trying to hold them -straight, so that the wind shan't blow them out. However!--you'll let me -talk. That's the point." - -"Of course you may. You've been awfully decent," Palgrave murmured. - -"Well, then, it seems to me you're not seeing straight," said Oldmeadow. -"It's not crude animal patriotism--as you'd put it--that's asked of you. -It's a very delicate discrimination between ideals." - -"I know! I know!" said Palgrave. The traces of mental anguish were on -his worn young face. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose to -lean against the mantelpiece." I don't suppose I can explain," he said, -staring out at the sky. "I suppose that with me the crude animal thing -is the personal inhibition. I can't do it. I'd rather, far, be killed -than have to kill other men. That's the unreasoning part, the -instinctive part, but it's a part of one's nature that I don't believe -one can violate without violating one's very spirit. I've always been -different, I know, from most fellows of my age and class. I've always -hated sport--shooting and hunting. The fox, the stag, the partridge, -have always spoiled it for me. Oh, I know they have to be killed--poor -brutes! I know that; but I can't myself be the butcher." - -"You'll own, though, that there must be butchers," said Oldmeadow, after -a little meditation. He felt himself in the presence of something -delicate, distorted and beautiful. "And you'll own, won't you, when it -comes to a war like this, when not only our national honour but our -national existence is at stake, that some men must kill others. Isn't it -then, baldly, that you profit, personally, by other people doing what -you won't do? You'll eat spring lamb as long as there are butchers to -kill the lamb for you, and you'll be an Englishman and take from England -all that she has to give you--including Oxford and Coldbrooks--and let -other men do the nasty work that makes the survival of England and -Oxford and Coldbrooks possible. That's what it comes to, you know. -That's all I ask you to look at squarely." - -"I know, I know," Palgrave repeated. He had looked at little else, poor -boy. Oldmeadow saw that. "But that's where the delicate discrimination -between ideals comes in, Roger. That's where I have to leave intuition, -which says 'No,' and turn to reason. And the trouble is that for me -reason says 'No,' too. Because humanity--all of it that counts--has -outgrown war. That's what it comes to. It's a conflict between a -national and an humanitarian ideal. There are enough of us in the world -to stop war, if we all act together; and why, because others don't, -should I not do what I feel right? Others may follow if only a few of us -stand out. If no one stands out, no one will ever follow. And you can't -kill England like that. England is more than men and institutions," -Palgrave still gazed at the sky. "It's an idea that will survive; -perhaps the more truly in the spirit for perishing in the flesh, if it -really came to that. Look at Greece. She's dead, if you like; yet what -existing nation lives as truly? It is Grecian minds we think with and -Grecian eyes we see with. It's Plato's conception of the just man being -the truly happy man--even if the whole world's against him--that is the -very meaning of our refusal to go with the world." - -"You'll never stop war by refusal so long as the majority of men still -believe in it," said Oldmeadow. "There are not enough of you to stop it -now. The time to stop it is before it comes; not while it's on. It's -before it begins that you must bring the rest of humanity not to behave -in ways that make it inevitable. I'm inclined to think that ideas can -perish," he went on, as Palgrave, to this, made no reply, "as far as -their earthly manifestation goes, that is, if enough men and -institutions are destroyed. If Germany could conquer and administer -England, I'm inclined to think the English idea would perish. And war -need not be unspiritual. Killing our fellow-men need not mean hating -them. There's less hatred in war, I imagine, than in some of the -contests of peaceful civilian life. Put it fairly on the ground of -humanitarianism, then, Palgrave; not of nationality. It's the whole -world that is threatened by a hateful idea, by the triumph of all you -most fear and detest, and unless we strive against it with all we are -and have it seems to me that we fall short of our duty not only as -Englishmen, but as humanitarians. Put it at that, Palgrave: would you -really have had England stand by and not lift a finger when Belgium was -invaded and France menaced?" - -Palgrave was not ready with his reply and he turned away while he looked -for it and shuffled the papers on his desk with a nervous hand. "Yes, I -would," he said at last. "Hateful as it is to have to say it--I would -have stood by." He came back to his place at the mantelpiece and looked -down at Oldmeadow as he spoke. "The choice, of course, is hateful; but I -think we should have stood by and helped the sufferers and let France -and Germany fight it out. It always comes back to them, doesn't it? -They're always fighting it out; they always will, till they find it's no -good and that they can't annihilate each other; which is what they both -want to do. Oh, I've read too many of the young French neo-Catholics to -be able to believe that the hateful idea was all on one side. Their -ideals don't differ much, once you strip them of their theological -tinsel, from those of the Germans. Germany happens to be the aggressor -now; but if the militarist party in France had had the chance, they'd -have struck as quickly." - -"The difference--and it's an immense one--is that the militarist party -in France wouldn't have had the chance. The difference is that it -doesn't govern and mould public opinion. It's not a menace to the world. -It's only a sort of splendid pet, kept in a Zoo, for the delectation of -a certain class and party. Whereas Germany's the _bona fide_ hungry -tigress at large. What you really ask of England, Palgrave, is that she -should be a Buddha and lie down and let the tigress, after finishing -France, devour her, too. It really comes to that. Buddhism is the only -logical basis for your position, and I don't believe, however sorry one -may be for hungry tigresses, that the right way to deal with them is to -let them eat you. The Christian philosophy of the incarnation is the -true one. Matter does make a spiritual difference. It does make a -difference, a real difference, that the ideal should be made flesh. It's -important to the world, spiritually, that the man rather than the -tigress should survive." - -"Christ gave his life," said Palgrave, after a moment. - -"I'm not speaking of historical personages; but of eternal truths," said -Oldmeadow. - -But he knew already that he spoke in vain. Palgrave had turned away his -eyes again and on his sad young face he read the fixity of a fanatic -idealism. He had not moved him, though he had troubled him. No one would -move Palgrave. He doubted, now, whether Adrienne herself had had much -influence over him. It was with the sense of pleading a lost cause that -he said, presently, "Adrienne hopes you'll feel it right to go." - -Palgrave at this turned a profound gaze upon him. "I know it," he said. -"Though she's never told me so. It's the weakness of her love, its -yearning and tenderness, not its strength, that makes her want it. -Because she knows it would be so much easier. But she can't go back on -what she's meant to me. It's because of that, in part at all events, -that I've been able to see steadily what I mean to myself. That's what -she helps one to do, you know. Hold to yourself; your true, deep self. -It's owing to her that I can only choose in one way--even if I can't -defend it properly. It seems to come back to metaphysics, doesn't it?" - -"Like everything else," said Oldmeadow. - -"Yes. Like everything else. It would take a four-years' course in Greats -to argue it out, Roger. Come back to me--if you're here and I'm here -then--and we'll see what we can make of it." - -"I will," said Oldmeadow, rising, for the room was growing dark. "And -before that, I hope." - -"After all, you know," Palgrave observed, "England isn't in any danger -of becoming Buddhistic; there's not much nihilism about her, is there, -but hardly much Christianity, either. England has evolved all sorts of -things besides Oxford and Coldbrooks. She's evolved industrialism and -factory-towns." - -"I don't consider industrialism and factory-towns incompatible with -Christianity, you know," Oldmeadow observed. "Good-bye, my dear boy." - -"Good-bye, Roger," Palgrave grasped his hand. "You've been most awfully -kind." - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - - -"Isn't it becoming to him, Mother? And how tall he looks!" said Nancy, -holding Oldmeadow off in his khaki for displayal. - -He had only written a line of his failure and that he would come as soon -as he could and see them all and tell in full of his interview with -Palgrave. And he had motored over to The Little House this afternoon in -early November. - -Nancy was showing an unexpected gaiety. "What a nice grilled-salmon -colour you are, too," she said. - -He divined the self-protective instinct under the gaiety. Most of the -women in England were being gayer and more talkative at this time, in -order to keep up. Nancy was thin and white; but she was keeping up. And -she had put on a charming dress to receive him in. - -"I've been grilled all right; out on the downs," he said. "But it's more -like cold storage just now, with these frosts at night. Yes; the big -cup, please. I'm famished for tea. Ah! that's something like! It smells -like your rose outside. I sniffed it as I waited at the door. Wonderful -for such a late blooming." - -"Isn't it," said Mrs. Averil. "And I only put it in last autumn. It's -doing beautifully; but I've cherished it. And now tell us about -Palgrave." - -He felt reluctant to tell about Palgrave. The impression that remained -with him of Palgrave was that impression of beauty and distortion and he -did not want to have to disentangle his feelings or to seem to put -Palgrave in the wrong. It was so sweet, too, after the long, chilly -drive over the empty uplands, to sit here and forget the war, although -it was for scenes like this, for girls like Nancy, women like Mrs. -Averil--with so much else--that the war was so worth fighting. He turned -his thoughts back to the realities that underlay the happy appearances -and was aware, as he forced himself to tell, of what must seem a note of -advocacy in his voice. "He can't think differently, I'm afraid," he -said. "It's self-sacrifice, not selfishness, that is moving him." - -"He can't think differently while Adrienne is living there," said Mrs. -Averil. "He didn't tell you, I suppose, that she has now taken up her -abode in Oxford in order to study philosophy with him?" - -He was rather uncomfortably aware of the disingenuousness that must now -be made apparent in his avoidance of all mention of Adrienne. - -"I saw her," he said, and he knew that it was lamely. "She was there -when I got there." - -"You saw her!" Mrs. Averil exclaimed. "But then, of course you didn't -convince him. I might have known it. Of course she would not let you see -him alone." - -"But she did let me see him alone. That was what she wanted. And she was -there only in order to tell me what she wanted. She wants him to go." - -Mrs. Averil was eyeing him with such astonishment that he turned to -Nancy with his explanations. But Mrs. Averil would not leave him to -Nancy's sympathy. "It's rather late in the day for her to want him to -go," she said. "She may be sorry for what she's done; but it's her -work." - -"Well, she's sorry for her work. That's what it comes to. And I'm sorry -for her," said Oldmeadow. - -"Good heavens! The cleverness of that woman!" Mrs. Averil exclaimed. "If -she can't be powerful, she'll be pitiful! She's worked on your feelings; -I can see that, Roger. And I thought you, at least, were immune. Well; -she does not work on mine. I am not in the least sorry for her." - -"She's being unfairly treated," said Oldmeadow. "It's grotesque that Meg -should have turned upon her." - -"And Eleanor has, too, you know," said Mrs. Averil. "It's grotesque, if -you like; but I see a grim justice in it. She made them do things and -believe things that weren't natural to them and now she's lost her power -and they see things as they are." - -"It's because she's failed that they've turned against her," said Nancy. -"If she'd succeeded they would have gone on accepting what she told them -and making her their idol." - -"Adrienne mustn't fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only justification -for Adrienne is to be in the right. If the blood of Saint Januarius -doesn't liquefy, why should you keep it in a shrine? She's a woman who -has quarrelled with her husband and disgraced her sister and -brother-in-law, and broken her mother-in-law's heart. You can't go on -making an idol of a saint who behaves like that." - -"She never claimed worldly success," said Nancy. "She never told Meg to -go so that she could get married afterwards; she never told Palgrave -that war was wrong because it was easier not to fight." - -"Oh, yes, she did claim worldly success, really," said Mrs. Averil, -while her eyes rested on her daughter with a tenderness that contrasted -with her tone. "Her whole point was that if you were right -spiritually--'poised' she called it, you remember--all those other -things would be added unto you. I've heard her claim that if you were -poised you could get anything you really wanted. I asked her once if I -should find a ten-pound note under the sofa-cushion every morning after -breakfast if I could get poised sufficiently!" Mrs. Averil laughed, -still more dryly while she still maintained her tender gaze and Nancy -said, smiling a little: "She might have put it there for you if she'd -been sure you were poised." - -"Well, let us bury Adrienne for the present," said Mrs. Averil. "Tell -Roger about your nursing plans. She may go to London, Roger, this -winter, and I'm to be left alone." - -"You're to be left to take care of Aunt Eleanor, if I do go," said -Nancy; and Mrs. Averil said that there must certainly be some one left -to take care of poor Eleanor. - -Oldmeadow went up to Coldbrooks next morning. The first person he saw -was old Johnson at the door and he remembered Eleanor Chadwick's griefs -on his account. Nothing, now, could have been kept from Johnson and his -face bore the marks of the family calamities. He was aged and whitened -and his voice had armed itself, since the downfall of his grave, -vicarious complacency, with solemn cadences. - -"Yes, sir. The ladies will be very glad to see you, sir. These are sad -days for them--the family dispersed as it is." - -Johnson defined the situation as he felt that it could be most fittingly -defined and Oldmeadow inwardly applauded his "dispersed." - -The drawing-room, into which Johnson ushered him, had, for the first -time in his memory of it, a mournful air. It had always been shabby, and -these were the same faded chintzes, the same worn rugs; but now, -fireless and flowerless, it neither spoke nor smiled and, with the sense -it gave of an outlived epoch, it was almost spectral. The photographs -all looked like the photographs of dead people and the only similitude -of life was the loud, silly ticking of the French clock on the -mantelpiece; Mrs. Chadwick's cherished clock; one of her -wedding-presents. - -"I'm afraid it's rather chilly, sir," said Johnson. "No one has sat here -of an evening now for a long time." He put a match to the ranged logs, -drew the blinds up farther so that the autumnal sunlight might more -freely enter, and left him. - -Oldmeadow went to the window and turned over the magazines, a month old, -that lay on a table there. - -He was standing so when Meg entered, and she had half the length of the -room to traverse before they met. She was in black, in deep black; but -more beautiful than he had ever seen her; her tossed auburn locks bound -low on her forehead with a black ribbon, her white throat upright, her -eyes hard with their readiness, their resource. Beautiful and -distressing. It distressed him terribly to see that hardness in her -eyes. - -"How do you do, Roger," she said, giving him her hand. "It's good to see -you. Mother will be glad." - -They seated themselves on one of the capacious sofas and she questioned -him quickly, competently, while the hard eyes seemed to measure him lest -he measure her. It was almost the look of the _declassee_ woman who -forestalls withdrawal in an interlocutor. But, as he answered her -quietly, his fond regard upon her, her defences began to fall. "It's the -only life, a soldier's, isn't it?" she said. "At all times, really. But, -at a time like this, anything else seems despicable, doesn't it; -contemptibly smug and safe. The uniform is so becoming to you. You look -a soldier already. One feels that men will trust and follow you. Didn't -you burn with rage and shame, too, when, for those four days, it seemed -we might not come in?" - -"I felt too sure we should come in, to burn with rage and shame," said -Oldmeadow. - -"Ah! but it was not so sure, I'm afraid," said Meg, and in her eyes, no -longer hard, wild lights seemed to pass and repass. "I'm afraid that -there are nearly enough fools and knaves in England to wreck us. Not -quite enough, thank heaven! But, for those four days, Eric was terribly -afraid. He was killed, you know, Roger, very splendidly, leading his -men." - -"I know, Meg. My dear Meg," Oldmeadow murmured. - -"Oh! I don't regret it! I don't regret it!" Meg cried, while her colour -rose and her young breast lifted. "It's the soldier's death! The -consecrating, heroic death! He was ready. And deaths like that -atone--for the others. He was not killed instantaneously, Roger." - -"I didn't know," said Oldmeadow, looking at her with a pitying, troubled -gaze. - -"He lived for a day and night afterwards," said Meg, looking back, -tearless. "They carried him to a barn. Only his man was with him. There -was no one to dress his dreadful wound; no food. The man got him some -water, at the risk of his own life. He was conscious until the end and -he suffered terribly." - -Oldmeadow dropped his eyes before her fierce stare while, strangely, -dimly, there passed through his mind the memory of the embarrassed, -empty, handsome young face in the brougham and, again, the memory of his -dog John. He had seen John die and his eyes of wistful appeal. So Eric -Hayward's eyes might have looked as he lay in the barn dying. - -"Oh, Roger!" Meg said suddenly, seizing his hand. "Kill them! Kill them! -Oh, revenge him! I was not with him! Think of it! I would have had no -right to have been with him--had it been possible. I did not know till a -week later. He was buried there. His man buried him." - -"My poor, poor child," said Oldmeadow, clasping her hands. - -But, at once, taking refuge from his pity and from her own desperate -pain: "So you've seen Palgrave," she said. "And he isn't going. I knew -it was useless. I told Mother it was useless--with that stranger--that -American, with him. She has disgraced us all.--Wretched boy! Hateful -woman!" - -"Meg, Meg; be soldierly. He wouldn't have spoken like that." - -"He never liked her! Never!" she cried. "I knew he didn't, even at the -time she was flattering and cajoling us. I saw that she bewildered him -and that he accepted her only because she was mine. How I loathe myself -for having listened to her! How I loathe her! All that she ever wanted -was power! Power over other people's lives! She'd commit any crime for -that!" - -"You seem to me cruelly unfair," he said. - -"No! no! I'm not unfair! You know I'm not!" she cried. "You always saw -the truth about her--from the very beginning. You never fell down and -worshipped her, like the rest of us. And she knew that you were her -enemy and warned us against you. Oh--why did Barney marry her!" - -"I never worshipped her; but I never thought her base and hateful." - -"You never knew her as I did; that was all. And I never knew her until I -came back and found her doing to Palgrave what she had done to us. -Paladin! Did you hear her call him Paladin? Always flattery! Always to -make one think one was wonderful, important, mysterious! She forced us -to go away, Roger. Sometimes I think it was hypnotism; that she uses her -will-power consciously. We did not want to go. We did not want the -divorce and the scandal." - -"What did you want, then, Meg?" - -She felt the gravity of his tone but, like a fierce Maenad, she snatched -at the torch, not caring how it revealed her. "What of it! What if we -had been secret lovers! Who would have known! Who would have been -harmed! Some people go on for years and years. His wife loved another -man. He had no one. Why should we have been pushed--such pitiful fools -we were--into displaying our love to the world and being crushed by it! -Oh, he was so loyal, so brave; but it made him very, very unhappy. Oh, I -was cruel to him sometimes! I used to reproach him sometimes! Oh, Roger! -Roger!--" She broke into wild tears and stumbled to her feet. - -As she reached the door, covering her face with her hands, her mother -opened it and, meeting her on the threshold, Meg, with almost the effect -of beating her aside with the other impediments to her rage and grief, -pushed past her so that the knitting Mrs. Chadwick held was flung to the -floor, the ball of khaki wool running rapidly away under a sofa and the -socks and needles dangling at her feet. - -She stood looking down at them with a curious apathy and, as Oldmeadow -went to help and greet her, he saw that as much as Meg was wild she was -dulled and quiet. - -"Meg is so very, very violent," she said, as he disentangled the wool -and restored her sock and ball to her. She spoke with listlessness -rather than sympathy. - -"Poor child," said Oldmeadow. "One can hardly wonder at it. But it makes -a wretched existence for you, I'm afraid. You and she oughtn't to be -alone together." - -He drew her to a chair and, seating herself, her faded face and eyes -that had lost their old look of surprise turned to the light, Mrs. -Chadwick assented, "It's very fatiguing to live with, certainly. -Sometimes I really think I must go away for a little while and have a -change. Nancy would come and stay with Meg, you know. But I can't miss -Barney's last weeks. He comes to us, now, again. And it might not be -right to leave Meg. One must not think of oneself at a time like this, -must one?" The knitting lay in her lap and she was twisting and -untwisting her handkerchief after her old fashion; but her fingers -moved slowly and without agitation and Oldmeadow saw that some spring of -life in her had been broken. - -"The best plan would be that Meg should, as soon as possible, take up -some work," he said, "and that you and Nancy should go away. Work is the -only thing for Meg now. She'll dash herself to pieces down here; and you -with her. There'll soon be plenty to do. Nursing and driving -ambulances." - -"Nancy is going to nurse, you know," said Mrs. Chadwick. "But she won't -go as long as we need her here. She has promised me that. I don't know -what I should do without Nancy. I shouldn't care to be nursed by Meg -myself, if I were a wounded soldier. She is so very restless and would -probably forget quite simple things like giving one a handkerchief or -seeing that hot-water-bottles were wrapped up before she put them to -one's feet. A friend of mine--Amy Hatchard--such a pretty woman, though -her hair was bright, bright red--and I never cared for that--had the -soles of her feet nearly scorched off once by a careless nurse. Dear -Nancy. I often think of Nancy now, Roger. I believe, you know, that if -Adrienne had not come Nancy and Barney might have married. How happy we -should all have been; though she has so little money." - -"I wish you could all think a little more kindly of Adrienne," said -Oldmeadow after a silence. Mrs. Chadwick had begun to knit. "I must tell -you that I myself feel differently about her." - -"Do you, Roger?" said Mrs. Chadwick, without surprise. "You have a very -judicious and balanced mind, I know; even when you were hardly more -than a boy Francis noticed it and said that he'd rather go by your -opinion than by that of most of the men he knew. I always remembered -that, afterwards. Till she came. And then I believed in her rather than -in you. You thought us all far too fond of her from the very first. And -now we have certainly changed. Meg is certainly very violent; much more -violent than I could ever be.... I am sorry for Adrienne. I don't think -she meant to do us any harm--as Meg believes." - -"She only meant to do you good, I am sure of it. I saw her in Oxford, -let me tell you about it, when I went in to see Palgrave. She is very -unhappy. She wants Palgrave to go. She wants him to feel it right to go. -It's not she, really, who is keeping him back now." - -"My poor Palgrave. Meg is very unkind about him; very bitter and unkind; -her own brother. But it was very wrong of Adrienne to go and set up -housekeeping in Oxford near him. You must own that, Roger. She may not -be keeping him back; but she is aiding and abetting him always. It made -Barney even more miserable and disgusted than he was before. And it -looks so very odd. Though I don't think that anyone could ever gossip -about Adrienne. There is something about her that makes that -impossible." - -"There certainly is. I am glad she is with Palgrave, poor boy." - -"I am glad you are sorry for him, Roger"--Mrs. Chadwick dropped a -needle. "How clumsy I am. My fingers seem all to have turned to thumbs. -Thank you so much. I try to make as many socks as I can for our poor -men; fingering wool; not wheeling, which is so much rougher to the -feet. I'm sure I'd rather march, and, if it came to that, die in -fingering than in wheeling. Just as I've always felt, foolish as it may -sound, that if I had to be drowned I'd rather it were in warm, soapy -water than in cold salt. Not that one is very likely, ever, to drown in -one's bath. But tell me about Adrienne and Palgrave, Roger, and what -they said." - -Mrs. Chadwick's discourse seemed, beforehand, to make anything he might -have to tell irrelevant and, even while he tried to make her see what he -had seen, he felt it to be a fruitless effort. - -There was indeed no enmity to plead against. Only a deep exhaustion. -Adrienne had pressed too heavily on the spring and it was broken. - -"I'm sure she is very sorry to have made so much mischief, but she isn't -what I thought her, Roger," she said, shaking her head, when he had -finished. "I'm sorry for her, but I used to believe her to be a sort of -saint and now I know that she is very far indeed from being one." - -"The mere fact of failure doesn't deprive you of sainthood," said -Oldmeadow, remembering Nancy's plea. "You haven't less reason now than -you had then for believing her one." - -But even with her broken spring Mrs. Chadwick had not lost all her -shrewdness. It flickered in the sad eyes she lifted from the khaki sock. -"Some kinds of failure do, Roger. That gift of healing, you remember; -all she could do for people in that way; she has quite, quite lost it. -That is a reason. It's that more than anything that has made me feel -differently about her." - -"Lost it?" He felt strangely discomposed, little as the gift of healing -had ever impressed him. - -"Quite," Mrs. Chadwick repeated. "I think it distressed her dreadfully -herself. I think she counted upon it more than upon anything, perhaps -without knowing she did. It must have made her seem so sure to herself, -mustn't it? The first time was before the war, just a little after you -were here that day in the summer--dear me, how long ago it seems; and I -had one of my headaches, one of the worst I ever had. I was so -dreadfully troubled, you know, about Barbara and Meg. And Adrienne came -and sat by me as she used to and put her hand on my forehead; and I know -it wasn't my lack of faith, for I quite believed it would get well; but -instead of the peaceful feeling, it grew much worse; oh, _much_. As if -red hot needles were darting through my eyes and an iron weight pressing -down on my head. And such tumult and distress. I had to tell her. I had -to ask her to take away her hand. Oh, she felt it very much, poor thing, -and grew very white and said it must be because she was still not -strong; not quite herself. But I knew then that it was because she was -not _right_; not what I had thought her. I began to suspect, from that -very moment, that I had been mistaken; because hypnotizing people isn't -the same as being a saint, is it, Roger? and--I think you said so once, -long ago; and that was all that she had done; hypnotized us all to think -her good and wonderful. Later on, after Meg had come, I let her try once -more, though it quite frightened me; she looked so strange. And!--oh, -dear--it was dreadful. It distressed me dreadfully. She suddenly put her -hands before her face and sat quite still and then she burst into tears -and got up and ran out of the room, crying. It made me feel quite ill. -And of course I knew there could be nothing saintly about a person who -made you feel like that--who could feel like that themselves, and break -down." - -"Even saints have their times of darkness and dryness," Oldmeadow found -after a little time had passed. The picture she put before him hurt him. -"It was an error of judgment to have believed her a saint because she -could hypnotize you--if that was what it was; but the fact that she -can't hypnotize you any longer--that she's too unhappy to have any power -of that sort--doesn't prove she's not a saint. Of course she's not. Why -should she be?" - -"I'm sure I don't know why she should be; but she used to behave as if -she were one, didn't she? And when I saw that she wasn't one in that way -I began to see that she wasn't in other ways, too. It was she who made -me so unjust, so unkind to poor Barney. _She_ was so unjust and so -unkind; and I never saw it till then. I was blind till then; though you -saw very well, that day you came to Connaught Square, that it was a sort -of spell she cast. It was a spell, Roger. The moment I saw her, after -the baby's death, I forgot everything she'd done and felt I loved her -again. She willed me to. So as to get power over me. Everything, always, -with her, was to get power over other people's lives," said Mrs. -Chadwick, and as he had, in the past, heard echoes of Adrienne in all -she said, now he heard echoes of Meg, "It's by willing it, you know. -Some people practise it like five-finger exercises. You have to sit -quite still and shut your eyes and concentrate. Meg has heard how it's -done. I don't pretend to understand; but that must have been her way. -And she made poor Barney miserable and set me against him at once; you -said so yourself, Roger, and blinded me to all the cruel things she did. -It was to punish him, you know. To make him feel he was dreadfully wrong -and she quite right; about Meg, and everything else; for you came in, -too. It used to be so dreadful at Torquay. I knew it would be sad there; -but I never guessed how sad it would be--with that horrid blue, blue -sea. She used to sit, day after day, on the terrace of the house, and -gaze and gaze at the sea and if Barney would come, so lovingly, and ask -her what he could do for her and take her hand, oh, it was more and more -mournful, the way she would look at him; that dreadful, loving look that -didn't mean love at all, but only trying to break him down and make him -_say_ that he was down. I begged Barney's pardon, Roger, for having -treated him as I did. We treated him dreadfully, all of us; because she -put him, always, in the wrong. Oh, no, Roger, I'm sorry for her, but -she's a dangerous woman; or _was_ dangerous. For now she has lost it all -and has become like everybody else; quite ordinary and unhappy." - -He felt, in the little silence that, again, followed, that he could -hardly better this summing-up. That was precisely what poor Adrienne -Toner had become; ordinary and unhappy. The two things she would have -believed herself least capable of becoming. There was nothing to be -gained in urging extenuating circumstances, especially since he was not -sure that there were any. Mrs. Chadwick, at bottom, saw as clearly as he -did. He asked her presently, leaving the theme of Adrienne, whether she -would not seriously consider going away for a little while with Nancy. -"Meg could go down to The Little House," he said. - -"Oh, no, she couldn't, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick, "she won't go -anywhere. She'll hardly speak to Monica. She just sits out-of-doors, all -day, wrapped in a cloak, in the corner of the garden, staring in front -of her, and she pays not the slightest attention to anything I say. And -at night, in her room, I hear her sobbing, sobbing, as if her heart -would break. I can't think hardly of Eric any longer, Roger. Isn't it -strange; but it's almost as if he were my son that had been killed. And -Barney may be killed," the poor mother's lip and chin began to tremble. -"And you, too, Roger. I don't know how we shall live through all that we -must bear and I keep thinking of the foolish little things, like your -having cold feet and wearing the same clothes day after day in those -horrible trenches. He suffered it all, poor Eric. No, I can't think -hardly of him. All the same," she sobbed, "my heart is broken when I -remember that they can never be married now." - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - - -"That's the way Mummy surprises one," said Barney as he and Oldmeadow -went together through the Coldbrooks woods. "One feels her, usually, -such a darling goose and then, suddenly, she shows one that she can be a -heroine." - -Barney was going to France in two days' time and Oldmeadow within the -fortnight, and the Coldbrooks good-byes had just been said. It had been -poor Meg who had broken down and clung and cried. Mrs. Chadwick had, to -the very last, talked with grave cheerfulness of Barney's next leave and -given wise advice as if he had been merely leaving them for a rather -perilous mountain-climbing feat. Oldmeadow could hardly believe her the -same woman that he had seen ten days before. - -He was staying at The Little House and had come up on this afternoon of -Barney's departure to join him at Coldbrooks and walk down with him. -Barney had not yet seen or said good-bye to Nancy and her mother, and -Oldmeadow had seized this, his only chance, of a talk with him. But, as -they left the woods and began to climb the bare hill-side, Barney went -on: - -"I've wanted a talk, too, Roger. I'm glad you managed this." - -"It doesn't rob anyone of you, does it," said Oldmeadow. "We'll get to -Chelford in time to give you a good half-hour with them before your car -comes for you." - -"That will be enough for Nancy," said Barney. "The less she sees of me, -the better she's pleased. I've lots of things I want to say, Roger. Of -course you understand that in every way it's a relief to be going out." - -"It settles things; or seems to settle them," said Oldmeadow. "They take -another place at all events." - -"Yes; just that. They take another place. What difference does it make, -after all, if a fellow has made a mess of his personal life when his -personal life has ceased to count. I'm not talking mawkish sentiment -when I say I hope I'll be killed--if I can be of some use first. I see -no other way out of it. I'm sorry for Adrienne, after a fashion, for -she's dished herself, too. We made a hopeless mistake in getting married -and she knows it as well as I do; and when a man and woman don't love -each other any longer it's the man's place to get out if he can." - -"It was about Adrienne I wanted to talk to you, Barney." For the first -time in their long friendship Oldmeadow felt that he spoke to an equal. -Barney had at last ceased to be a boy. "I've seen her, since seeing you -that last time in the train." - -"Well?" Barney inquired, as Oldmeadow paused. "What have you got to say -to me about Adrienne, Roger? You've not said very much, from the -beginning; but everything you have said has been true and I've forgotten -none of it. I'm the more inclined," and he smiled with a slight -bitterness, "to listen to you now." - -"That's just the trouble," Oldmeadow muttered. "You've forgotten -nothing. That's what I feel, with remorse. That it was I who helped to -spoil things for you both, from the beginning. You'd not have seen her -defects as you did if I hadn't shown them to you; and if you hadn't seen -them you'd have adjusted yourselves to each other and have found them -out together. She'd not have resented your finding them out in the -normal course of your shared lives. It's been my opinion of her, in the -background of both your minds, that has envenomed everything." - -Barney listened quietly. "Yes," he assented. "That's all true enough. As -far as it goes. I mightn't have seen if you hadn't shown me. But I can't -regret you did show me, for anything else would have been to have gone -through life blind; as blind as Adrienne is herself. And it's because -she can't stand being seen through that she revealed so much more; so -much that you didn't see and that I had to find out for myself. What you -saw was absurdity and inexperience; they're rather loveable defects; I -think I accepted them from the beginning, because of all the other -things I believed in her. You said, too, you remember, that she'd never -know she was wrong. Well, it's worse than that. She'll never know she's -wrong and she won't bear it that you should think her anything but -right. She's rapacious. She's insatiable. Nothing but everything will -satisfy her. You must be down on your knees, straight down, before her; -and if you're not, she has no use for you. She turns to stone and you -break your head and your heart against her. It's hatred Adrienne has -felt for me, Roger, and I'm afraid I've felt it for her, too. She's done -things and said things that I couldn't have believed her capable of; -mean things; clever things; cruelly clever that get you right on the -raw; things I can't forget. There's much more in her than you saw at the -beginning. I was right rather than you about that; only they weren't -the things I thought." - -Oldmeadow walked, cutting at the withered way-side grasses with his -cane. Barney's short, slow sentences seemed to sting him as they came. -He had to adjust himself to their smart; to adjust himself to the -thought of this malignant Adrienne. Yet what he felt was not all -surprise; he had foreseen, suspected, even this. "I know," he said at -last; "I mean, I can see that it would happen just like that." - -"It did happen just like that," said Barney. "I don't claim to have been -an angel or anything like one. I gave her as good as I got, or nearly, -sometimes, no doubt. But I know that it wasn't my fault. I know it was -Adrienne who spoiled everything." - -They had come out now on the upland road. The country dropped away -beneath them wrapped in the dull mole-colour, the distant, dull -ultramarines of the November afternoon. The smell of burning weeds was -in the air and, in the west, a long, melancholy sheet of advancing -rain-cloud hid the sun. Oldmeadow wondered if he and Barney would ever -walk there together again, and his mind plunged deep into the past, the -many years of friendship to which this loved country had been a -background. - -"Barney," he said, "what I wanted to say is this: All that you feel is -true; I'm sure of it. But other things are true, too. I've seen her and -I've changed about her. If I was right before, I'm right now. She's been -blind because she didn't know she could be broken. Well, she's beginning -to break." - -"Is she?" said Barney, and his quiet was implacable. "I can quite -imagine that, you know. Everyone, except poor Palgrave--all the rest of -us, have found out that she's not the beautiful benignant being she -thought she was, and that bewilders her and makes her pretty wretched, -no doubt." - -Oldmeadow waited a moment. "I want you to see her," he said. "Don't be -cruel. You are a little cruel, you know. It's because you are thinking -of her abstractly; remembering only how she has hurt you. If you could -see her, see how unhappy she is, you'd feel differently. That's what I -want you to do. That's what I beg you to do, Barney." - -"I can't," said Barney after a moment. "That I can't do, Roger. It's -over. She might want me back if she could get me back adoring her. It's -only so she'd want me. But it's over. It's more than over. There's -something else." Barney's face showed no change from its sad fixity. -"You were right about that, too. It's Nancy I ought to have married. -It's Nancy I love. And Adrienne knows it." - -At this there passed before Oldmeadow's mind the memory of the small, -dark, hurrying figure, the memory of the words she had spoken: "Some -things are like living creatures; and they can die. They can die." - -He felt rather sick. "In that case, how can you blame your wife?" he -muttered. "Doesn't that explain it all?" - -"No, it doesn't explain it all." There was no fire of self-justification -in Barney's voice. It was as fixed and sad as his face. "It was only -after Adrienne made me so wretched I began to find it out. She was -jealous of Nancy from the beginning, of course. But then she was jealous -of everything that wasn't, every bit of it, hers. She had no reason for -jealousy. No man was ever more in love than I was with Adrienne. Even -now I don't feel for Nancy what I felt for her. It's something, I -believe, one only feels once and if it burns out it burns out for ever. -With Nancy, it's as if I had come home; and Adrienne and I were parted -before I knew that I was turning to her." - -They had begun the final descent into Chelford and the wind now brought -a fine rain against their faces. Neither spoke again until the grey -roofs of the village came into sight at a turning of the road. "About -money matters, Roger," Barney said. "Mother and Meg and Barbara. If you -get through, and I don't, will you see to them for me? I've appointed -you my trustee. I told Adrienne last summer that I couldn't take any of -her money any longer, so that, of course, with my having thrown up the -city job and taken on the farms, my affairs are in a bit of a mess. But -I hope they'll be able to go on at Coldbrooks all right. Palgrave will -have Coldbrooks if I don't come back, and perhaps you'll be able to -prevent him handing it over to his Socialist friends." - -"Palgrave would be safely human if it came to taking care of his mother -and sisters," said Oldmeadow. - -"Would he?" said Barney. "I don't know." - -Across the village green the lights of The Little House shone at them. -The curtains were still undrawn and, as they waited at the door, they -could see Nancy in the drawing-room, sitting by the fire alone. - -"I want you to come in with me, please, Roger," said Barney. "Nancy -hasn't felt it right to be very kind to me of late and she'll be able -to be kinder if you are there. You'll know, you'll see if a chance comes -for me to say what I want to say to her. You might leave us for a moment -then." - -"You have hardly more than a half-hour, you know," said Oldmeadow. - -"One can say a good deal in a half-hour," Barney replied. - -Nancy had risen and, as they entered, she came forward, trying to smile -and holding out her hand to each. But Oldmeadow was staying there. He -was not going in half an hour. There was no reason why Nancy should give -him her hand and Barney, quietly, took both her hands in his. "It's -good-bye, then, Nancy, isn't it?" he said. - -They stood there in the firelight together, his dear young people, both -so pale, both so fixedly looking at each other, and Nancy still tried to -smile as she said, "It's dear of you to have come." But her face -betrayed her. It was sick with the fear that, in conquering her own -heart, she should hurt Barney's; Barney's, whom she might never see -again. Oldmeadow went on to the fire and stood, his back to them, -looking down at it. - -"Oh, no, it's not; not dear at all," Barney returned. "You knew I'd come -to say good-bye, of course. Why haven't you been over to see me, you and -Aunt Monica? I've asked you often enough." - -"You mustn't scold me to-day, Barney, since it's good-bye. We couldn't -come," said Nancy. - -"It's never I who scold you. It's you who scold me. Not openly, I know," -said Barney, "but by implication; punish me, by implication. I quite -understood why you haven't come. Well, I want things to be clear now. -Roger's here, and I want to say them before him, because he's been in it -all since the beginning. It's because of Adrienne you've never come; and -changed so much in every way towards me." - -He had kept her hands till then, but Oldmeadow heard now that she drew -away from him. For a moment she did not speak; and then it was not to -answer him. "Have you said good-bye to her, Barney?" - -"No; I haven't," Barney answered. "I'm not going to say good-bye to -Adrienne, Nancy. It must be plain to you by this time that Adrienne and -I have parted. What did it all mean but that?" - -"It didn't mean that to her. She never dreamed it was meaning that," -said Nancy. - -"Well, she said it, often enough," Barney retorted. - -"Barney, please listen to me," said Nancy. "You must let me speak. She -never dreamed it was meaning that. If she was unkind to you it was -because she could not believe it would ever mean parting. She had -started wrong; by holding you to blame; after the baby; when you and -Roger so hurt her pride. And then she wasn't able to go back. She wasn't -able to see it all so differently--just to get you back. It would have -seemed wrong to her; a weakness, just because she longed so. And then, -most of all, she believed you loved her enough to come of yourself." - -"I tried to," said Barney, in the sad, bitter voice of the hill-side -talk with Oldmeadow. "You see, you don't know everything, Nancy, though -you know so much. I tried to again and again." - -"Yes. I know you did. But only on your own terms. And by then I had come -in. Oh, yes, I had, Barney. You didn't know it. It was long, long before -you knew. But I knew it; and so did she and it was more than she could -bear. What woman could bear it? I couldn't have, in her place." Tears -were in Nancy's voice. - -"It's queer, Nancy," said Barney, "that--barring Palgrave, who doesn't -count--you and Roger are the only two people she has left to stick up -for her. Roger's just been saying all that to me, you know. The two she -tried to crab whenever she got a chance. Well, say it's my fault, then. -Say that I've been faithless to my wife and fallen in love with another -woman. The fact is there, and you've said it now yourself. I don't love -her any longer. I shall never love her again. And I love you. I love -you, Nancy, and it's you I ought to have married; would have married, I -believe, if I hadn't been a blinded fool. I love you, and I can say it -now because this may be the end of everything. Don't let her spoil this, -too. Nancy darling, look at me. Can't you consent to forget Adrienne for -this one time, when we may never see each other again?" - -"I can't forget her! I can't forget her!" Nancy sobbed. "I mustn't. -She's miserable. She hasn't stopped loving you. And she's your wife." - -"Do you want to make me hate her?" - -"Oh, Barney--that is cruel of you." - -There was a silence and in it Oldmeadow heard Barney's car draw up at -the gate. He took out his watch. There were only a few more moments left -them. Not turning to them he said. "It does her no good, you know, Nancy -dear." - -"No. It does her no good," Barney repeated. "But forgive me. I was -cruel. I don't hate her. I'm sorry for her. It's simply that we ought -never to have married. Forget it, Nancy, and forget her. Don't let it -be, then, that I love you and don't love my wife. Let it be in the old -way. As if she'd never come. As if I'd come to say good-bye to my -cousin; to my dearest friend on earth. Look at me. Give me your hands. -It's your face I want to take with me." - -"Five minutes, Barney," Oldmeadow whispered, as he went past them. Nancy -had given him her hands; she had lifted her face to his, and Barney's -arms had closed around her. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - - -Mrs. Averil was in the hall. "Give them another moment," he said. "I'm -going outside." - -Tears were in his own eyes. He stepped out on to the flagged path of the -little plot in front of the house where strips of turf and rose-beds ran -between the house and the high wall. Between the clipped holly-trees at -the gate he saw Barney's car, and its lights, the wall between, cast a -deep shadow over the garden. - -The rain was falling thickly now and he stood, feeling it on his face, -filled with a sense of appeasement, of accomplishment. They were -together at last. It was not too late. At such a time, when all the -world hung on the edge of an abyss, to be together for a moment might -sum up more of real living than many happy years. They knew each other's -hearts and what more could life give its creatures than that -recognition. - -Suddenly, how he did not know, for there was no apparent movement and -his eyes were fixed on the pallid sky, he became aware that a figure was -leaning against the house in the shadow beside him. His eyes found it -and it was familiar. Yet he could not believe his eyes. - -She was leaning back, her hands against the wall on either side, and he -saw, with the upper layer of perception that so often blunts a violent -emotion, that her feet were sunken in the mould of Mrs. Averil's -rose-bed and that the cherished shoots of the new climbing rose were -tangled in her clothes. The open window was but a step away. - -She had come since they had come. She had crept up. She had looked -in--for how long?--and had fallen back, casting out her arms so that it -might not be to the ground. Her eyes were closed; but she had heard and -seen him. As he stood before her, aghast, unable to find a word, he -heard her mutter: "Take me away, please." - -Barney's car blocked the egress of the gate and Barney might emerge at -any moment. He leaned towards her and found that she was intricately -caught in the rose. Her hat with its veil, her sleeve, her hair, were -all entangled. - -Dumbly, patiently, she stood, while, with fumbling fingers and terror -lest they should be heard within--Mrs. Averil's voice now reached him -from the drawing-room--Oldmeadow released her and, his fingers deeply -torn by the thorns, he was aware, in all the tumult of his thought, more -than of the pain, of the wet fragrance of the roses that surrounded her. -He shared what he felt to be her panic. - -She had come hoping to see Barney; she had come to say good-bye to -Barney, who would not come to her; and his heart sickened for her at the -shameful seeming of her plight. She knew now that it must be her hope -never to see Barney again. - -There was a narrow passage, leading to the lawn and garden, between the -house and the stable walls. Thickly grown with ivy, showing only a -narrow opening above, where chimneys and gables cut against the sky, it -was nearly as dark as a tunnel, and into this place of hiding he half -led, half carried the unfortunate woman. - -With the darkness, the pungent smell of the wet ivy closed thickly, -ominously about them. It was as if he and Adrienne Toner were buried -there together. He heard a maid laugh far away and a boy passed on the -green stridently whistling "Tipperary." It was like hearing, in the -grave, the sounds of the upper world. - -Adrienne leaned against the wall. The ivy closing round her, nearly -obliterated her, but he could dimly see the grey disk of her face, -showing the unexpectedness of contour that reveals itself in the faces -of the dead. The trivial features were erased and only a shape of grief -remained, strangely august and emotionless. - -An eternity seemed to pass before the front door opened and Mrs. -Averil's voice, steadied to a galvanized cheerfulness, came, half -obliterated to a wordless rhythm. Barney's voice answered her, and his -steps echoed on the flagged path. "Say good-bye to Roger for me if I -don't see him on the road!" he called out from the gate. Then the car -coughed, panted; the horn croaked out its cry and, above them, a shaft -of light across the ivy, of which he had till then been unaware, flitted -suddenly away, leaving the darkness more visible. - -He heard then that she was weeping. - -Putting his arm behind her, for the rain fell heavily and the ivy was -drenched with it, he drew her forward and for a little while it was -almost against his breast that she lay while her very heart dissolved -itself in tears. - -She had come, he knew it all, with a breakdown of her pride, with a last -wild hope and, perhaps, a longing to atone, believing that she might -snatch a word somewhere with her husband, and find her way, at this -last moment, back to the heart she had so alienated. She had seen all. -She had heard all. He was sure of it. It had been as an outcast that he -had found her leaning there. He understood her through and through and -the tender heaviness that had already so often visited his heart flooded -it to suffocation. - -Among her sobs, he heard her, at last, speaking to him. "Even Palgrave -doesn't know. He told me--only this afternoon--that Barney was here. I -thought I might find him. I was going to wait in the road. And when I -got here there was no car and I was afraid that there was a mistake. -That I had missed him. And I went up to the house; to the open window; -and looked in; to see if he was there. It was not jealousy: not now. I -did not mean to be an eavesdropper. But, when I saw them, I stayed and -listened. It was not jealousy," she repeated. "It was because I had to -know that there was no more hope." - -"Yes," said Oldmeadow gently, while, with long pauses, she spoke on and -on; to the impartial judge, to the one sure refuge; and he said "Yes" -again, gently, after she had finished; a long time after. She still half -lay against his breast. He had never felt such an infinite tenderness -towards any creature; not since his boyhood and his mother's death. - -She drew away from him at last. "Take me," she said. "There is a train; -back to Oxford." She had ceased to weep. Her voice was hoarse and faint. - -"Did you walk up from the station? You're not fit to walk back. I can -get a trap. There's a man just across the green." - -"No. Walking, please. I would be recognized. They might know me. I can -walk. If you will help me." - -He drew her arm through his. "Lean on me," he said. "We'll go slowly." - -They went past the drawing-room windows and, softly opening, softly -shutting, through the gate. The road, when it turned the corner, left -the village behind; between its rarely placed trees, vague silhouettes -against the sky that seemed of one texture with them, it showed its -mournful pallor for only a little space before them; there was not -enough light left in the sky to glimmer on its pools. The fields, on -either side, vanished into obscurity. Pale cattle, once, over a hedge, -put disconsolate heads and lowed and a garrulous dog, as they passed by, -ran out from a way-side farm-yard, smelt at their heels, growled -perfunctorily and, having satisfied his sense of duty, went back to his -post. The sense of dumb emptiness was so complete that it was only after -they had gone a long way that he knew that she was weeping and the soft, -stifling sounds seemed only a part of nature's desolation. - -Her head bent down, she stumbled on, leaning on his arm, and from time -to time she raised her handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth and -nose. He did not say a word; nor did she. - -As he led her along, submissive to her doom, it was another feeling of -accomplishment that overwhelmed him; the dark after the radiant; after -Nancy and Barney, he and Adrienne. It was this, from their first -meeting, that he had been destined to mean to her. She was his appointed -victim. He had killed, as really as if with a knife, the girl whom he -had seen at Coldbrooks, in the sunlight, on that Sunday morning in -spring, knowing no doubts. She had then held the world in her hands and -a guileless, untried heaven had filled her heart. Between her and this -crushed and weeping woman there seemed no longer any bond; unless it was -the strange aching that, in his heart, held them both together. - - - - - -PART II - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -Oldmeadow sat in Mrs. Aldesey's drawing-room and, the tea-table between -them, Mrs. Aldesey poured out his tea. So it was, after three years, -that they found each other. So it was, all over the world, Oldmeadow -said to himself, that the tea-table, or its equivalent, reasserted -itself in any interval where the kindly amenities of human intercourse -could root themselves; though the world rocked and flames of anarchy -rimmed its horizons. - -It was more real, he felt that now, to sit and look at Lydia over her -tea than to parch on Eastern sands and shiver in Western trenches; from -the mere fact that the one experience became a nightmare while the other -was as natural as waking at dawn. Horrors became the dropped stitches of -life; and though if there were too many of them they would destroy the -stocking, the stocking itself was made up of tea-table talks and walks -in the woods with Nancy. He had just come from Coldbrooks. - -So he put it, trivially, to himself, and he felt the need of clinging to -triviality. The dropped stitches had been almost too much for him and -the nightmare, at times, had seemed the only reality. At times he had -known a final despair of life and even now he remembered that the worst -might still come. One might be called upon to face the death of the -whole order of civilization. Faith required one, perhaps, to recognize -that the human spirit was bound up, finally, with no world order and -unless one could face its destruction as one had to face the death of a -loved individual, one was not secure of the spiritual order that -transcended all mundane calamity. He believed, or hoped, that during -these last three years, in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, when, to the -last fibre, he had felt his faiths tested, he had learned to be ready -for the great relinquishment, should it be required of him; and it was -therefore the easier to doff that consciousness, as he might have doffed -a sword, and think of Lydia and of the order that still survived and -that she still stood for. - -Lydia did not look the worse for the war; indeed she looked the better. -She looked as if, in spite of long days in the hospital, she digested -better and, in spite of air-raids, slept better, and as they talked, -finding their way back to intimacy by the comparing of such -superficialities, she told him that for years she hadn't been so strong -or well. "Nothing is so good for you, I've found out, as to feel that -you are being used; being used by something worth while. People like -myself must keep still about our experiences, for we've had none that -bear talking of. But even the others, even the people bereaved -unspeakably, are strangely lifted up. And I believe that the populace -enjoys the air-raids rather than the reverse; they give them a chance of -feeling that they are enduring something, too; with good-humour and -pluck. If anyone is pessimistic about the effect of war on average human -nature, I should only ask them to come and talk to our men at the -hospital. Of course, under it all, there's the ominous roar in one's -ears all the time." - -"Do you mean the air-raids?" he asked her and, shaking her head, -showing him that she, too, had seen with him and, he believed, with him -accepted: "No; I mean the roar of nation after nation collapsing into -the abyss. A sort of tumbril roar of civilization, Roger. And, for that, -there's always the last resource of going gallantly to the guillotine. -But all the same, I believe we shall pull through." - -It was the spring of 1918 and one needed faith to believe it. She asked -him presently about his friends at Coldbrooks. He had gone to Coldbrooks -for three days of his one week's leave. After this he went to France. - -"What changes for you there, poor Roger," said Mrs. Aldesey. - -"Yes. Terrible changes. Palgrave dead and Barney broken. Yet, do you -know, it's not as sad as it was. Something's come back to it. Nancy sits -by him and holds his hand and is his joy and comfort." - -"Will he recover?" - -"Not in the sense of being really mended. He'll go on crutches, always, -if he gets up. But the doctors now hope that the injury to the back -isn't permanent." - -"And Meg's married," said Mrs. Aldesey after a little pause. "Have you -seen her?" - -"No. She runs a hospital in the country, at her husband's place, Nancy -tells me; and is very happy." - -"Very. Has a fine boy, and is completely reinstated. It's a remarkable -ending to the story, isn't it? She met him at the front, you know, -driving her ambulance; and he has twice as much in him as poor Eric -Hayward." - -"Remarkable. Yet Meg's a person who only needs her chance. She's the -sort that always comes out on top." - -"Does it comfort her mother a little for all she's suffered to see her -on top?" - -"It almost comically comforts her. All the same, Eleanor Chadwick has -her depths. Nothing will ever comfort her for Palgrave's death." - -"I understand that," said Mrs. Aldesey. "Nothing could. How she must -envy the happy mothers whose boys were killed at the front. To have -one's boy die in prison as a conscientious objector must be the -bitterest thing the war has given any mother to bear." - -"He was a dear boy," said Oldmeadow. "Heroically wrong-minded." He could -hardly bear to think of Palgrave. - -"He wasn't alone, you know," said Mrs. Aldesey after a moment. Something -was approaching that he would rather not have to speak of; a name he -would so much rather not name. And, evading it, feebly, he said, "His -mother got to him in time, I know." - -"Yes. But all the time. She went and lived near the prison. Adrienne -Toner I mean." - -Her eyes were on him and he hoped that no readjustment of his features -was visible. "Oh, yes. Nancy told me that," he said. - -"What's become of her, Roger?" Mrs. Aldesey asked. "Since Charlie was -killed the Lumleys have lived in the country and I hardly see them. I -haven't heard a word of her for years." - -He was keeping his eyes on her and he knew from her expression that he -showed some strain or some distress. - -"Nor have I. Nancy said that they hadn't either. She went away, after -Palgrave's death. Disappeared completely." - -"Nancy told you, of course, about the money; the little fortune she gave -Palgrave, so that he could leave it to his mother?" - -"Oh, yes. Nancy wrote to me of that." - -"It was cleverly contrived, wasn't it. They are quite tied up to it, -aren't they; whatever they may feel. No one could object to her giving a -fortune to the boy she'd ruined. I admired that in her, I must confess; -the way she managed it. And then her disappearance." - -"Very clever indeed," said Oldmeadow. "All that remains for her to do -now is to manage to get killed. And that's easily managed. Perhaps she -is killed." - -He did not intend that his voice should be emptier or dryer, yet Lydia -looked at him with a closer attention. - -"Barney and Nancy could get married then," she said. - -"Yes. Exactly. They could get married." - -"That's what you want, isn't it, Roger?" - -"Want her to be killed, or them to be married?" - -"Well, as you say, so many people _are_ being killed. One more or less, -if it's in such a good cause as their marriage--" - -"It's certainly a good cause. But I don't like the dilemma," said -Oldmeadow. - -He knew from the way she looked at him, discreet and disguised as her -recognition was, that he was hiding something from her. Casting about -his mind, in the distress that took the form of confusion, he could -himself find nothing that he hid, or wished to hide, unless it was the -end of Adrienne's story as Barney's wife. That wasn't for him to show; -ever; to anyone. - -"Perhaps she's gone back to America," said Mrs. Aldesey presently, -"California, you know. Or Chicago. She may very well be engaged in great -enterprises out there that we never hear of. They'd be sure to be great, -wouldn't they." - -"I suppose they would." - -"You saw her once more, didn't you, at the time you saw Palgrave," Mrs. -Aldesey went on. "Lady Lumley told me of that. And how kind you had -been. Adrienne had spoken of it. You were sorry for them both, I -suppose; for her as well as for him, in spite of everything. Or did she -merely take it for granted that the kindness to him extended to her?" - -"Not at all. It was for her too," said Oldmeadow, staring a little and -gathering together, after this lapse of time that seemed so immense, his -memories of that other tea-table set up in the chaos: Palgrave's -tea-table on that distant day in Oxford. What was so confusing him was -his consciousness that it hadn't been the last time he had seen -Adrienne. "I was as sorry for her as for him," he went on. "Sorrier. -There was so much more in her than I'd supposed. She was capable of -intense suffering." - -"In losing her husband's affections, you mean? You never suspected her -of being inhuman, surely? Lady Lumley blamed poor Barney for all that -sad story. But, even from her account, I could see his side very -plainly." - -"Perhaps I did think her inhuman. At all events I thought her -invulnerable." - -"Yes. I remember. With all her absurdity you thought she had great -power." Mrs. Aldesey looked at him thoughtfully. "And it was when you -found she hadn't that you could be sorry for her." - -"Not at all," said Oldmeadow again. "I still think she has great power. -People can have power and go to pieces." - -"Did she go to pieces? That day in Oxford? I can't imagine her in -pieces, you know." - -He had a feeling of drawing back; or of drawing Adrienne back. "In the -sense of being so unhappy, so obviously unhappy, over Palgrave," he -said. - -He saw that Lydia would have liked to go on questioning, as, of course, -it would have been perfectly natural for her to do. Was not Adrienne -Toner and her absurdity one of their pet themes? Yet she desisted. She -desisted and it was because she felt some change in him; some shrinking -and some pain. "Well, let's hope that she is happy, now, or as happy as -she can be, poor thing, doing great deeds in America," she said. And she -turned the talk back to civilization and its danger. - -They talked a good deal about civilization during their last three days -together. He wanted things, during these three days of mingled recovery -and farewell, to be as happy as possible between him and his friend, for -he knew that Lydia's heart was heavy, for him and not for civilization. -The front to which he was going was more real to her, because it was -much nearer, and his peril was more real than during his absence in -distant climes. He felt himself that the French front, at this special -time, would probably make an end of him and, for the first time since -their early friendship, he knew conjecture as to his relation with -Lydia; wondered, if it had not been for Mr. Aldesey in New York, whether -Lydia might have been in love with him, and realized, with a curious -sense of anxiety and responsibility, that her friendship for him now was -the closest tie in her life. The war might to her, too, mean irreparable -loss. And he was sorry that it was so; sorry to think that the easy, -happy intercourse had this hidden depth of latent suffering. - -Lydia's feeling, and its implications, became the clearer to him when, -on their last evening together, she said to him suddenly: "Perhaps -you'll see her over there." - -He could not pretend not to know whom she meant, nor could he pretend to -himself not to see that if it troubled Lydia that he should be sorry for -Adrienne that could only be because she cared far more for him than he -had ever guessed. - -He said, as easily as he could manage it, for the pressure of his -realizations made him feel a little queer: "Not if she's in America." - -"Ah, but perhaps she's come back from America," said Mrs. Aldesey. -"She's a great traveller. What will you do with her if you do find her? -Bring her back to Barney?" - -"Hardly that," he said. "There'd be no point in bringing her back to -Barney, would there?" - -"Well, then, what would you do with her?" Mrs. Aldesey smiled, as if -with a return to their old light dealing with the theme, while, still in -her nurse's coiffe and dress, she leaned back against her chair. - -"What would she do with me, rather, isn't it?" he asked. And he, too, -tried to be light. - -"She'll be mended then, you think? Able to do things to people again?" - -"I'm not at all afraid of her, you know. She never did me any harm," he -said. - -"Because you were as strong as she, you mean. She did other people harm, -surely. You warned me once to keep away from her unless I wanted to lose -my toes and fingers," Mrs. Aldesey still smiled. "She does make people -lose things, doesn't she?" - -"Well, she makes them gain things, too. Fortunes for instance. Perhaps -if I find her, she'll give me a fortune." - -"But that's only when she's ruined you," she reminded him. - -"And it's she who's ruined now," he felt bound to remind her; no longer -lightly. - -Leaning back in her chair, her faded little face framed in white, Mrs. -Aldesey looked at once younger yet more tired than he had ever seen her -look and she sat for a little while silent; as if she had forgotten -Adrienne Toner and were thinking only of their parting. But all her -gaiety had fallen from her as she said at last: "I can be sorry for her, -too; if she's really ruined. If she still loves him when he has ceased -to care for her. Does she, do you think?" - -With the question he seemed to see a fire-lit room and lovers who had -found each other and to smell wet roses. Lydia was coming too near; too -near the other figure, outside the window, fallen back with outstretched -arms against the roses. And again he felt himself softly, cautiously, -disentangle the sleeve, the hair, felt himself draw Adrienne away into -the darkness where the smell was now of wet ivy and where he could see -only the shape of an accepting grief. - -"How could I know?" he said. "She was very unhappy when I last saw her. -But three years have passed and people can mend in three years." - -"Especially in America," Mrs. Aldesey suggested. "It's a wonderful place -for mending. Let's hope she's there. Let's hope that we shall never, any -of us, ever hear of her again. That would be much the happiest thing, -wouldn't it?" - -He was obliged to say that it would certainly be much the happiest -thing; and he was too unhappy about Lydia to be able to feel angry with -her. He knew how tired she must be when, for the first time in their -long friendship, she must know that she was not pleasing him, yet not be -able to help herself. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -"Good Lord!" Oldmeadow heard himself groaning. - -Even as he took possession of his physical suffering he knew that there -was satisfaction in suffering, at last, himself. Until now the worst -part of war had been to see the sufferings of others. This was at last -the real thing; but it was so mingled with acquiescence that it ceased -to be the mere raw fact. "We're all together, now," he thought, and he -felt himself, even as he groaned, lifted on a wave of beatitude. - -Until now he had not, as a consciousness, known anything. There was a -shape in his memory, a mere immense black blot shot with fiery lights. -It must symbolize the moment when the shell struck him, bending, in the -trench, over his watch and his calculations. And after that there were -detached visions, the ceiling of a train where he had swung in a hammock -bed, looking up; clean sheets, miraculously clean and the face of a -black-browed nurse who reminded him of Trixie. The smell of chloroform -was over everything. It bound everything together so that days might -have passed since the black blot and since he lay here, again in clean -sheets, the sweet, thick smell closing round him and a raging thirst in -his throat. He knew that he had just been carried in from the operating -room and he groaned again "Good Lord," feeling the pain snatch as if -with fangs and claws at his thigh and belly, and muttered, "Water!" - -Something sweet, but differently sweet from the smell, sharp, too, and -insidious, touched his lips and opening them obediently, as a young bird -opens its bill to the parent bird, he felt a swab passed round his -parched mouth and saw the black-browed nurse. "Not water, yet, you -know," she said. "This is lemon and glycerine and will help you -wonderfully." - -He wanted to ask something about Paris and the long-distance gun firing -on it every day and he seemed to see it over the edge of the trench, far -away on the horizon of No-man's-land, a tiny city flaming far into the -sky. But other words bubbled up and he heard himself crying: "Mother! -Mother!" and remembered, stopping himself with an act of will, that they -all said that when they were dying. But as he closed his eyes he felt -her very near and knew that it would be sweet to die and find her. - -A long time must have passed. Was it days or only the time of daylight? -It was night now and a shaded light shone from a recess behind him and -thoughts, visions, memories raced through his mind. Nancy; Barney; he -would never see them again, then: poor Lydia and civilization. -"Civilization will see me out," he thought and he wondered if they had -taken off the wings of the Flying Victory when they packed her. - -A rhythm was beating in his brain. Music was it? Something of Bach's? It -gathered words to itself and shaped itself sentence by sentence into -something he had heard? or read? Ah, he was glad to have found it. -"Under the orders of your devoted officers you will march against the -enemy or fall where you stand, facing the foe. To those who die I say: -You will not die: you will enter living into immortality, and God will -receive you into his bosom." He seemed to listen to the words as he -lay, quietly smiling. But it was music after all for, as he listened, -they merged into the "St. Matthew Passion." He had heard it, of course, -with Lydia, at the Temple. But Lydia did not really care very much for -Bach. She might care more for "Litanei." She had sung it standing beside -him with foolish white roses over her ears. How unlike Lydia to wear -those roses. And was it Lydia who stood there? A mental perplexity -mingled with the physical pain and spoiled his peace. It was not -Lydia's, that white face in the coffin with wet ivy behind it. What -suffering was this that beat upon his heart? The music had faded all -away and he saw faces everywhere, dying faces; and blood and terrible -mutilations. All the suffering of the war, worse, far worse than the -mere claws and fangs that tore at him. Dying boys choked out their -breaths in agonies of conscious loneliness, yearning for faces they -would never see again. Oh, how many he had seen die like that! -Intolerable to watch them. And could one do nothing? "Cigarettes. Give -them cigarettes," he tried to tell somebody. "And marmalade for -breakfast; and phonographs, and then they will enter living into -immortality"--No: he did not mean that. What did he mean? He could catch -at nothing now. Thoughts were tossed and tumbled like the rubbish of -wreckage from an inundated town on the deep currents of his anguish. A -current that raced and seethed and carried him away. He saw it. Its -breathless speed was like the fever in his blood. If it went faster he -would lose his breath. Church-bells ringing on the banks lost theirs as -he sped past so swiftly and made a trail of whining sound.--Effie! -Effie! It was poor little Effie, drowning. He saw her wild, small face, -battling. Bubbles boiled up about his cry. - -Suddenly the torrent was stilled. Without commotion, without tumult, it -was stilled. There was a dam somewhere; it had stopped racing; he could -get his breath. Still and slow; oh! it was delicious to feel that quiet -hand on his forehead; his mother's hand, and to know that Effie was -safe. He lay with closed eyes and saw a smooth waterfall sliding and -curving with green grey depths into the lower currents of the stream. He -remembered the stream well, now; one of his beloved French rivers; one -of the smaller, sylvan rivers, too small for majesty; with silver -poplars spaced against the sky on either bank and a small town, white -and pink and pearly-grey, clear on the horizon. Tranquil sails were -above him and the bells from the distant church-tower floated to him -across the fields. Soundlessly, slowly, he felt himself borne into -oblivion. - -The black-browed nurse was tending him next morning. "You are better," -she said, smiling at him. "You slept all night. No; it's a shame, but -you mayn't have water yet." She put the lemon and glycerine to his lips. -"The pain is easier, isn't it?" - -He said it was. He felt that he must not stir an inch so as to keep it -easier, but he could not have stirred had he wanted to, for he was all -tightly swathed and bandaged. He remembered something he wanted -specially to ask: "Paris? They haven't got it yet?" - -"They'll never get it!" she smiled proudly. "Everything is going -splendidly." - -The English surgeon was such a nice fellow. He had spectacles on a -square-tipped nose and a square, chubby face; yet his hair was nearly -white. Oldmeadow remembered, as if of days before the flood, that his -name was a distinguished one. Perhaps it was morphia they gave him, -after his wound was dressed, or perhaps he fainted. The day passed in a -hot and broken stupor and at night the tides of fever rose again and -carried him away. But, again, before he had lost his breath, before he -had quite gone down into delirium, the quiet hand came and sent him, -under sails, to sleep. - -Next day Oldmeadow knew, from the way the surgeon looked at him, that -his case was grave. His face was grim as he bent over the dressing and -he hurt horribly. They told him, when it was over, that he had been very -brave, and, like a child, he was pleased that they should tell him so. -But the pain was worse all day and the sense of the submerging fever -imminent, and he lay with closed eyes and longed for the night that -brought the hand. Hours, long hours passed before it came. Hours of -sunlight when, behind his eyelids, he saw red, and hours of twilight -when he saw mauve. Then, for a little while, it was a soft, dense grey -he saw, like a bat's wing, and then the small light shone across his -bed; he knew that the night had come, and felt, at last, the hand fall -softly on his head. - -He lay for some time feeling the desired peace flow into him and then, -through its satisfaction, another desire pushed up into his -consciousness and he remembered that, more than about Paris, he had -wanted to speak to the nurse about what she did for him and thank her. - -"It's you who make me sleep, isn't it," he said, lying with closed eyes -under the soft yet insistent pressure. "I've never thanked you." - -She did not reply. She did not want him to talk. But he still wanted to. - -"I couldn't thank you last night," he said, "I can't keep hold of my -thoughts. And when morning comes I seem to have forgotten everything -about the night. You are the nurse who takes care of me in the daytime, -too, aren't you?" - -Again, for a moment, there was no reply; and then a voice came. "No; I -am the night nurse. Go to sleep now." - -It was a voice gentle, cold and soft, like snow. It was not an English -voice and he had heard it before. Where had he heard it? Rooks were -cawing and he saw a blue ribbon rolling, rolling out across a -spring-tide landscape. This voice was not like a blue ribbon; it was -like snow. Yet, when he turned his head under her hand, he looked round -at Adrienne Toner. - -The first feeling that came uppermost in the medley that filled him at -the sight of her was one of amused vexation. It was as if he went back -to his beginnings with her, back to the rooks and the blue ribbon. "At -it again!" was what he said to himself, and what he said aloud, -absurdly, was: "Oh, come, now!" - -She did not lift her hand, but there was trouble on her face as she -looked back at him. "I hoped you wouldn't see me, Mr. Oldmeadow," she -said. - -He was reminded of Bacchus and the laying on of hands; but a classical -analogy, even more ridiculous, came to him with her words. "Like Cupid -and Psyche," he said. "The other way round. It's I who mustn't look." - -The trouble on her face became more marked and he saw that she imagined -him to be delirious. He was not quite himself, certainly, or he would -not have greeted Adrienne Toner thus, and he made an effort to be more -decorous and rational as he said, "I'm very glad to see you again. Safe -and sound: you know." - -She had always had a singular little face, but it had never looked so -singular as now, seen from below with shadows from the light behind cast -so oddly over it. The end of her nose jutted from a blue shadow and her -eyes lay in deep hollows of blue. All that he was sure of in her -expression was the gravity with which she made up her mind to humour -him. "We want you to be safe and sound, too. Please shut your eyes and -go to sleep." - -"All right; all right, Psyche," he murmured, and he knew it wasn't quite -what he intended to say, yet in his flippancy he was taking refuge from -something; from the flood of suffering that had broken over him the -other night after he had seen that dead face with white roses over its -ears. This queer face, half dissolved in blue and yellow, was not dead -and the white coiffe came closely down about it. If he obeyed her he -knew that she would keep the other faces away and he closed his eyes -obediently and lay very still, seeing himself again as the good little -boy being praised. This was Psyche; not Ariane. "Ariane ma soeur," he -murmured. It was Ariane who had the white roses--or was it wet ivy? and -after her face pressed all the other dying faces. "You'll keep them -away, won't you?" he murmured, and he heard her say: "Yes; I'll keep -them quite away," and, softly, a curtain of sleep fell before his eyes -crossed by a thin drift of mythological figures. - -"I thought it was you who sent me to sleep," he said to the English -nurse next day. He could hardly, in the morning light, believe it was -not a dream. - -She smiled with an air of vicarious pride. "No indeed. I can't send -people to sleep. It's our wonderful Mrs. Chadwick. She does a good deal -more than put people to sleep. She cures people--oh, I wouldn't have -believed it myself, till I saw it--who are at death's door. It's lucky -for you and the others that we've got her here for a little while." - -"Where's here?" he asked after a moment. - -"Here's Boulogne. Didn't you know?" - -"I thought I heard the sea sometimes. It's for cases too bad, then, to -be taken home. Get her here from where?" - -"From her hospital in the firing-line. Now that we're advancing at the -front everything there is changed and she could come away for a little. -Sir Kenneth's been begging her to come ever since he saw her. He knew -she would work marvels here, too." The nice young nurse was exuberant in -her darkness and rosiness with a Jewish streak of fervour in her lips -and eyes. "It's a sort of rest for her," she added. "She's been badly -wounded once. You can just see the scar, under her cap, on her forehead. -And she nearly died of fever out in Salonika. She had a travelling -ambulance there before she came to France." - -"It must be very restful for her," Oldmeadow remarked with a touch of -his grim mirth, "if she has to sit up putting all your bad cases to -sleep. Why haven't I heard of her and her hospital?" - -"It's not run in her name. It's an American hospital--she is -American--called after her mother, I believe. The Pearl Ambulance is -what it's called and everybody here knows about it; all of us nurses and -doctors, I mean. Her organizing power is as wonderful as her cures; her -influence over her staff. They all worship the ground she walks on." - -"Pearl, Pearl Toner," Oldmeadow was saying to himself. How complete, how -perfect it was. And the nurse went on, delighted, evidently, to talk of -an idol, and rather as if she were speaking of a special cure they had -installed, a sort of Carrel treatment not to be found anywhere else: -"Everything's been different since she came. It's almost miraculous to -see what the mere touch of her hand can do. Matron says she wouldn't be -surprised if it turned out she was a sort of nun and wore a hair shirt -under her dress. Whatever she is, it makes one feel better and stronger -just to see her and one would do anything for her just to have her smile -at one. She has the most heavenly smile." - -It was all very familiar. - -"Ah, you haven't abandoned me after all, though I have found you out," -he said to Adrienne Toner that night. - -He was able at last to see her clearly as she came in, so softly that it -was like a dream sliding into one's sleep. She was like a dream in her -nurse's dress which, though so familiar on other women, seemed to -isolate and make her strange. Her face was smaller than he had -remembered it and had the curious look, docile yet stubborn, that one -sees on the faces of dumb-mutes. She might have looked like that had -she been deafened by the sound of so many bursting shells and lost the -faculty of speech through doing much and saying nothing among scenes of -horror. But she spoke to him, after all, as naturally as he spoke to -her, saying, though with no touch of his lightness: "You mustn't talk, -you know, if I come to make you sleep. Sir Kenneth wants sleep for you -more than anything else." - -"I promise you to be good," said Oldmeadow. "But I'm really better, -aren't I? and can talk a little first." - -"You are really better. But it will take a long time. A great deal of -sleeping." - -"No one knew what had become of you," said Oldmeadow, and he remembered -that he ought to be sorry that Adrienne Toner had not been killed. - -She hesitated, and then sat down beside him. He thought that she had -been going to ask him something and then checked herself. "I can't let -you talk," she said, and in her voice he heard the new authority; an -authority gained by long submission to discipline. - -"Another night, then. We must talk another night," he murmured, closing -his eyes, for he knew that he must not disobey her. All the same it was -absurd that Adrienne Toner should be doing this for him; absurd but -heavenly to feel her hand fall softly, like a warm, light bird, and -brood upon his forehead. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -They never spoke of Coldbrooks, nor of Barney, nor of Palgrave; not -once. Not once during all those nights that she sat beside him and made -him sleep. - -He had heard from Coldbrooks, of course; letters came often now. And the -dark young nurse had written for him since he could not yet write for -himself. He had said no word of seeing Adrienne. Nor had he let them -know how near to death he had been and, perhaps, still was. He would -have liked to have seen Lydia and Nancy if he were to die; but most of -all he wanted to be sure of not losing Adrienne. And he knew that were -he to tell them, were they to come, Adrienne would go. - -She never spoke to him at all, he remembered--as getting stronger with -every day, he pieced his memories of these nights together--unless he -spoke to her; and she never smiled. And it came upon him one morning -after he had read letters that brought so near the world from which she -was now shut out, that she had, perhaps, never forgiven him. After all, -though he could not see that he had been wrong, she had everything to -forgive him and the thought made him restless. That night, for the first -time, she volunteered a remark. His temperature had gone up a little. He -must be very quiet and go to sleep directly. - -"Yes; I know," he said. "It's because of you. Things I want to say. I'm -really so much better. We can't go on like this, can we," he said, -looking up at her as she sat beside him. "Why, you might slip out of my -life any day, and I might never hear of you again." - -She sat looking down at him, a little askance, though gentle still, if -gentle was the word for her changed face. "That's what I mean to do," -she said. - -"Oh, but--" Oldmeadow actually, in his alarm and resentment, struggled -up on an elbow--"that won't do. I want to see you, really see you, now -that I'm myself again. I want to talk with you--now that I can talk -coherently. I want to ask you; well, I won't ask it now." She had put -out her hand, her small, potent hand, and quietly pressed him back, and -down upon his pillow while her face took on its look of almost stern -authority. "I'll be good. But promise me you'll not go without telling -me. And haven't you questions to ask, too?" - -Her face kept its severity, but, as he found this last appeal, her eyes -widened, darkened, looked, for a moment, almost frightened. - -"I know that Barney is safe," she said. "I have nothing to ask." - -"Well; no; I see." He felt that he had been guilty of a blunder and it -made him fretful. "For me, then. Not for you. Promise me. I won't be -good unless you promise me. You can't go off and leave me like that." - -With eyes still dilated, she contemplated this rebellion. - -"You must promise me something, then," she said after a moment. - -He felt proud, delighted, as if he had gained a victory over her. - -"Done. If it's not too hard. What is it?" - -"You won't write to anybody. You won't tell anybody that you've seen me. -Only Lady Lumley knows that I am here. And she has promised not to tell. -Probably, soon, I shall have left France for ever." - -"I won't tell. I won't write. I can keep secrets as well as Lady Lumley. -She does keep them, you know. So it's a compact." - -"Yes. It's a compact. You'll never tell them; and I won't go without -letting you know. I promise. Now go to sleep." - -She laid her hand on his forehead, but, for a little while, he heard her -breathing deeply and quickly and the sense of his blundering stayed with -him so that sleep was longer in coming. - -All the same he was much better next day. He was able to sit up and had -the glory and excitement of a chop for his midday dinner. And when the -pleasant hour of tea arrived it was Adrienne herself who came in -carrying the little tray. - -He had not seen her in daylight before and his first feeling was one of -alarm, for, if she were afoot like this, in daylight, must it not mean -that she was soon to leave the hospital? He felt shy of her, too, for, -altered as she was by night, the day showed her as far more altered. -Whether she seemed much older or much younger he could not have said. -The coiffe, covering her forehead, and bound under her chin in a way -peculiar to her, left only, as it were, the means of expression visible. - -She sat down by the window and looked out, glancing round from time to -time as he drank his tea and it was she who found the calm little -sentences, about the latest news from the front, the crashing of -Bulgaria, that carried them on until he had finished. When he had pushed -down his tray she turned her chair and faced him, folding her hands -together on her white apron, and she said, and he knew that she had come -to say it, "What was it you wanted to ask me?" - -He had had, while she sat at the window, her profile with the jutting -nose, and her face, as it turned upon him now, made him think suddenly -of a seagull. Questing, lonely, with vigilant eyes, it seemed to have -great spaces before it; to be flying forth into empty spaces and to an -unseen goal. - -"Are you going away, then?" He had not dared, somehow, to ask her -before. He felt now that he could not talk until he knew. - -"Not yet," she said. "But I shall be going soon. The hospital is -emptying and my nights on duty are very short. I have, really, only you -and two others to take care of. That's why I am up so early to-day. And -you are so much better that we can have a little talk; if you have -anything to ask me." - -"It's this, of course," said Oldmeadow. "It seems to me you ought to -dislike me. I misunderstood you in many ways. And now I owe you my life. -Before we part I want to thank you and to ask you to forgive me." - -Her eyes, seen in daylight, were of the colour of distance, of arctic -distances. That had always been their colour, though he had never before -identified it. - -"But there is nothing to thank me for," she said. "I am here to take -care of people." - -"Even people who misunderstood you. Even people you dislike. I know." -He flushed, feeling that he had been duly snubbed. "But though you take -care of everyone, anyone may thank you, too, mayn't they?" - -"I don't dislike you, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said after a moment. "And you -didn't misunderstand me." - -"Oh," he murmured, more abashed than before. "I think so. Not, perhaps, -what you did; but what you were. I didn't see you as you really were. -That's what I mean." - -The perplexity, which had grown, even, to amazement, had left her eyes -and she was intently looking at him. "There is nothing for you to be -sorry for," she said. "Nothing for me to forgive. You were always -right." - -"Always right? I can't take that, you know," said Oldmeadow, deeply -discomposed. "You were blind, of course, and more sure of yourself than -any of us can safely afford to be; but I wasn't always right." - -"Always. Always," she repeated. "I was blinder than you knew. I was more -sure of myself." - -He lay looking at her and she looked back at him, but with a look that -invited neither argument not protest. It remained remote and vigilant. -She might have been the seagull looking down and noting, as she flew -onward, that the small figure on the beach so far below had ceased to be -that of an assailant in its attitude. How remote she was, white strange, -fleeting creature! How near she had been once! The memory of how near -rushed over his mind. He had, despite the delirious visions of her -stricken face, hardly thought at all, since really seeing her again, of -that last time. Everything had fitted itself on, rather, to his earliest -memories of her, tinged all of them, it was true, with a deeper meaning, -but not till this moment consciously admitting it. It rushed in now, -poignant with the recovered smell of wet, dark ivy, the recovered sound -of her stifled sobs as she had stumbled, broken, beside him in the rain. -And with the memory came the desire that she should again be near. - -"Tell me," he said, "what are you going to do? You said you might be -leaving France for ever. Shall you go back to America?" - -"I don't think so. Not for a long time," she answered. "There will be -things to do over here, out of France, for a great many years I -imagine." - -He hesitated, then took a roundabout way. "And when I get home, if, -owing to you, I ever get there, may I not tell them that you're safe and -sound? It would be happier for them to know that, wouldn't it?" - -Her vigilance still dwelt upon him as though she suspected in this -sudden change of subject some craft of approach, but she answered -quietly: - -"No; I think it will be happier for them to forget me. They will be told -if I die. I have arranged for that." - -"They can't very well forget you," said Oldmeadow after a moment. "They -must always wonder." - -"I know." She glanced away and trouble came into her face. "I know. But -as much as possible. You must not make me real again by telling them. -You have promised. You care for them. You know what I mean." - -"Yes; I've promised. And I see what you mean. But," said Oldmeadow -suddenly, and this, of course, was what he had been coming to. "I don't -want to forget. I want you to stay real. You must let me know what -becomes of you, always, please." - -Astonishment, now, effaced her trouble. "You? Why?" she asked. - -He smiled a little. "Well, because, if you'll let me say it, I'm fond of -you. I feel responsible for you. I've been too deeply in your life, -you've been too deeply in mine, for us to disappear from each other. -Don't you remember," he said, and he found it with a sense of -achievement, ridiculous as it might sound, "how I held the tea-pot for -you? That's what I mean. You must let me go on holding it." - -But she could feel no amusement. She was pressing her hands tightly -together in her lap, her eyes were wide and her astonishment, he seemed -to see, almost brought tears to them. "Fond? You?" she said. "Of me? Oh, -no, Mr. Oldmeadow, I can't believe that. You are sorry, I know. You are -very sorry. But you can't be fond." - -"And why not?" said Oldmeadow, and he raised himself on his elbow the -more directly to challenge her. "Why shouldn't I be fond of you, pray? -You must swallow it, for it's the truth and I've a right to my own -feelings, I hope." - -She put aside the playfulness in which his grim earnest veiled itself. -"Because you saw. Because you know. All about me. From the first." - -"Well?" he questioned after a moment, still raised on his elbow but now -with the grimness unalloyed. "What of it?" - -"You remember what I was. You remember what you saw. You would have -saved them from me if you could; and you couldn't. How can you be fond -of a person who has ruined all their lives?" - -"Upon my soul," said Oldmeadow laughing, his eyes on hers, "you talk as -though you'd been a Lucrezia Borgia! What were you worse than an -exalted, stubborn, rather conceited girl? Things went wrong, I know, and -partly because of me. But it wasn't all your fault, I'll swear it. And -if it was, it was your mistake; not your crime." - -"Oh, no, no, no," said Adrienne, and the compulsion of his feeling had -brought a note of anguish to her voice. "It wasn't that. It was worse -than that. Don't forget. Don't think you are fond of me because I can -make you sleep. It's always been so; I see it now--the power I've had -over people; the horrible power. For power is horrible unless one is -good; unless one is using it for goodness." - -"Well, so you were," Oldmeadow muttered, falling back on his pillow, her -vehemence, her strange passion, almost daunting him. "It's not because -you make me go to sleep that I'm fond of you. What utter rubbish!" - -"It is! it is!" she repeated. "I've seen it happen too often. It always -happens. It binds people to me. It makes them cling to me as if I could -give them life. It makes them believe me to be a sort of saint!" - -"Well, if you can help them with it? You have helped them. The war's -your great chance in that, you'll admit. No one can accuse you of trying -to get power over people now." - -"Perhaps not. I'm not thinking of what I may be accused of, but of what -happens." - -"It doesn't happen with me. I was fond of you--well, we won't go back to -that. And you did use it for goodness. Power came by the way and you -took it. Of course." - -"I thought I was using it for goodness. I thought I was good. That was -the foundation of everything. We must go back, Mr. Oldmeadow. You don't -see as I thought you did. You don't understand. I didn't mean to set -myself up above other people. I thought they were good, too. I was happy -in my goodness, and when they weren't happy it seemed to me they missed -something I had and that it was a mistake that I could set right for -them. I'm going back to the very beginning. Long before you ever knew -me. Everything fell into my hand. I loved people, or thought I did, and -if they didn't love me I thought it their mistake. That was the way it -looked to me, for my whole life long, until you came. I couldn't -understand at first, when you came. I couldn't see what you thought. I -believed that I could make you love me, too, and when I saw, for you -made it plain, that you disliked me, it seemed to me worse than mistake. -I thought that you must be against goodness; dangerous; the way you -pushed me back--back--and showed me always something I had not thought I -meant at the bottom of everything I did. I felt that I wanted to turn -away from you and to turn people who loved me away from you, lest you -should infect them. And all the while, all the while I was trying to -escape--the truth that you saw and that I didn't." She stopped for a -moment while, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow stared at her. Her breath -seemed to fail her, and she leaned forward and put her elbows on her -knees and bent her forehead on her joined hands. "It came at last. You -remember how it came," she said, and the passion of protest had fallen -from her voice. She spoke with difficulty. "Partly through you, and, -partly, through my failure; I had never failed before. My failure with -Barney. My failure to keep him and to get him back. I couldn't believe -it at first. I struggled and struggled. You saw me. Everything turned -against me. It was as if the world had changed its shape and colour when -I struggled against it. Everything went down. And when I felt I wasn't -loved, when I felt myself going down, with all the rest, I became bad. -Bad, bad," she repeated, and her voice, heavy with its slow reiteration, -was like a clenched hand of penitence beating on a breast: "really bad -at last, for I had not known before what I was and the truth was there, -staring me in the face. I did dreadful things, then. Mean things; cruel, -hateful things, shutting my eyes, stopping my ears, so that I should not -see what I was doing. I ran about and crouched and hid--from myself; do -you follow my meaning?--from God. And then at last, when I was stripped -bare, I had to look at Him." - -She raised herself and leaned back in her chair. Her voice had trembled -more and more with the intensity of the feeling that upheld her and she -put her handkerchief to her lips and pressed it to them, looking across -at him. And, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow looked back at her, -motionless and silent. - -Was it sympathy, pity or tenderness that almost overwhelmed him as he -gazed at her? He could not have said, though knowing that the unity that -was in them both, the share of the eternal that upheld their lives, -flowed out from his eyes into hers as he looked and from hers to his. -They were near at last; near as it is rarely given to human beings to -experience nearness, and the awe of such a partaking was perhaps the -ground of all he felt. - -"You see," he said, and a long time had passed, "I was mistaken." - -She did not answer him. Perhaps she did not understand. - -"I never knew you were a person who could come to the truth like that," -he said. - -Still holding her handkerchief to her lips, she slightly shook her head. - -"Even you never thought that I was bad." - -"I thought everybody was bad," said Oldmeadow, "until they came to know -that goodness doesn't lie in themselves. The reason you angered me so -was that you didn't see you were like the rest of us. And only people -capable of great goodness can know such an agony of self-recognition." - -"No," she repeated. "Everyone is not bad like me. You know that's not -true. You know that some people, people you love--are not like that. -They need no agony of recognition, for nothing could ever make them mean -and cruel." - -He thought for a moment. "That's because you expected so much more of -yourself; because you'd believed so much more, and were, of course, more -wrong. Your crash was so much greater because your spiritual pride was -so great. And I thought you were a person a crash would do for; that -there'd be nothing left of you if you came a crash. That was my mistake; -for see what there is left." - -She rose to her feet. His words seemed to press her too far. "You are -kind," she said in a hurried voice. "I understand. You are so sorry. -I've talked and talked. It's very thoughtless of me. I must go now." - -She came and took the tray, but he put his hand on her arm, detaining -her. "You'll own you're not bad now? You'll own there's something real -for me to be fond of? Wait. I want you to acknowledge it, to accept -it--my fondness. Don't try to run away." - -She stood above him, holding the tray, while he kept his hold on her -arm. "All I need to know," she said, after a moment, and she did not -look at him, "is that no one is ever safe--unless they always remember." - -"That's it, of course," said Oldmeadow gravely, "and that you must die -to live; and you did die. But you live now, really, and life comes -through you again. Your gift, you know, of which you were so much afraid -just now, lest it had enveigled me. Don't you see it? How can I put it -for you? You had a sort of wholeness before. There must be wholeness of -a sort if life is to come through; harmony of a sort, and faith. It -wasn't an illusion even then. When you were shattered you lost your -gift. The light can't shine through shattered things; and that was when -you recognized that without God we are a nothingness; a nothingness and -a restlessness mingled. You know. There are no words for it, though so -many people have found it and tried to say it. I know, too, after a -fashion. I've had crashes, too. But now your gift has come back, for you -are whole again; built up on an entirely new principle. You see, it's -another you I am fond of. You must believe in her, too. You do believe -in her. If you didn't you could not have found your gift." - -She had stood quite still while he spoke, looking down, not at him but -at the little tray between her hands, and he saw that she was near -tears. Her voice was scarcely audible as she said: "Thank you." And she -made an effort over herself to add: "What you say is true." - -"We must talk," said Oldmeadow. He felt extraordinarily happy. "There -are so many things I want to ask you about." And he went on, his hand -still on her arm, seeing that she struggled not to cry and helping her -to recover: "You're not going away for some time, yet, I hope. Please -don't. There'll soon be no need of hospitals of this sort, anywhere, -will there? and you must manage to stay on here a little longer. I -shan't get on if you go. You won't leave me just as you've saved me, -will you, Mrs. Barney?" - -At the name, over-taxed as she was already, a pitiful colour flooded her -face and before his blunder made visible his own blood answered hers, -mounting hotly to his forehead. "Oh, I'm so sorry," he murmured, -helpless and hating himself, while his hand dropped. She stood over him, -holding herself there so as not to hurt him by the aspect of flight. She -even, in a moment, forced herself to smile. It was the first smile he -had seen on her face. "You've nothing to be sorry for, Mr. Oldmeadow," -she said, as she had said before. "You're very kind to me. I wish I -could tell you how kind I feel you are." And as she turned away, -carrying the tray, she added: "No; I won't go yet." - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -He did not see her again for two days; and she did not even come at -night. But he now kept possession of his new strength and slept without -her help. The sense of happiness brooded upon him. He did not remember -ever having felt so happy. His life was irradiated and enhanced as if by -some supreme experience. - -It was already late afternoon when, on the second day, she appeared; but -in this month of August his room was still filled with the reflection of -the sunlight and the warm colour bathed her as she entered. She wore a -blue cloak over her white linen dress and she had perhaps been walking, -for there was a slight flush on her cheeks and a look almost of -excitement in her eyes. - -She unfastened her cloak and put it aside and then, taking the chair -near the window, clasping her hands, as before, in her lap, she said, -without preamble and with a peculiar vehemence: "You hear often from -Barney, don't you?" - -Oldmeadow felt himself colouring. "Only once, directly. It rather tires -him to sit up, you know. But he's getting on wonderfully and the doctors -think he'll soon be able to walk a little--with a crutch, of course." - -"But you do hear, constantly, from Nancy, don't you," said Adrienne, -clasping and unclasping her hands but speaking with a steadiness he felt -to be rehearsed. "He is at Coldbrooks, I know, and Nancy is with him, -and his mother and Mrs. Averil. It all seems almost happy, doesn't it? -as happy as it can be, now, with Palgrave dead and Barney shackled." - -Startled as he was by her directness Oldmeadow managed to meet it. - -"Yes; almost happy," he said. "I was with them before I came out this -last time and felt that about them. Poor Mrs. Chadwick is a good deal -changed; but even she is reviving." - -"She has had too much to bear," said Adrienne. "I saw her again, too, at -the end, when she came to Palgrave. She can never forgive me. Meg is -happy now, but she will never forgive me either. I wrought havoc in -their lives, didn't I?" - -"Well, you or fate. I don't blame you for any of that, you know," said -Oldmeadow. - -"I don't say that I blame myself for it," said Adrienne. "I may have -been right or I may have been wrong. I don't know. It is not in things -like that that I was bad. But what we must face is that I wrought havoc; -that if it hadn't been for me they might all, now, be really happy. -Completely happy. If I had not been there Palgrave would not have been -so sure of himself. And if I had not been there Nancy and Barney would -have married." - -"I don't know," said Oldmeadow. "If Barney hadn't fallen in love with -you he might very probably have fallen in love with some one else, not -Nancy." - -"Perhaps, not probably," said Adrienne. "And if he had he would have -stayed in love with her, for Barney is a faithful person. And it may -have been because I was so completely the wrong person for him that he -came to know so quickly that Nancy was completely the right one. What I -feel is that anybody but Nancy would always have been, really, wrong. -And now that he loves her but is shackled, there's only one thing more -that can be done. I have often thought of it; I needn't tell you that. -But, till now, I could never see my way. It's you who have shown it to -me. In what you said the other day. It's wonderful the way you come into -my life, Mr. Oldmeadow. You made me feel that I had a friend in you; a -true, true friend. And I know what a friend Nancy and Barney have. So -the way opens. We must set Barney free, Mr. Oldmeadow. He and Nancy must -be free to marry. You and I can do it for them and only you and I." - -"What do you mean?" Oldmeadow murmured as, after her words, the silence -had grown deep between them. He repeated, using now the name inevitably -and forgetting the other day. "What do you mean, Mrs. Barney?" - -To-day she did not flush, but to-day there was a reason for her -acceptance. It was, he saw in her next words, only as Barney's wife that -she could help him. - -"He must divorce me," she said. "You and I could go away together and he -could divorce me. Oh, I know, it's a dreadful thing to ask of you, his -friend. I've thought of all that. Wait. Let me finish. I've thought of -nothing else since the other day. It came to me in the night after you -had been so wonderful to me; after that wonderful thing had happened to -us. You felt it, too, I know. It was as if we had taken a sacrament -together. I'm not a Christian. You know what I mean. We felt the deepest -things together, didn't we. And it's because of that that I can ask -this of you. No one else would understand. No one else would care for me -enough, or for him. And then, you could explain it all to him and no one -else could do that. You could explain that it had been to set him free. -To set _me_ free. Because they'd have to think and believe it was for my -sake, too, that you did it, wouldn't they? so as to have it really happy -for them; so that it shouldn't hurt. When it was all over you could go -and explain why you had done it. All we have to do, you know, is to stay -in a hotel together; I bearing your name. It's very simple, really." - -He lay staring at her, overwhelmed. The tears had risen to his eyes as -her beauty and her absurdity were thus revealed to him, and as she spoke -of their sacrament; but amazement blurred all his faculties. He had -never in his life been so amazed. And when he began to emerge, to take -possession of himself again, it was only of her he could think; not of -himself or Nancy and Barney. Only of her and of her beauty and -absurdity. - -"Dear Mrs. Barney," he said at last, and he did not know what to say; -"it's you who are wonderful, you alone. I'd do anything, anything for -you that I could. Anything but this. Because, truly, this is -impossible." - -"Why impossible?" she asked, and her voice was almost stern. - -"You can't smirch yourself like that." It was only one reason; but it -was the first that came to him. - -"I?" she stared. "I don't think it is to be smirched. I shall know why I -do it." - -"Other people won't know. Other people will think you smirched." - -"No one I care for. Everyone I care for will understand." - -"But to the world at large? Your name? Your reputation?" Oldmeadow -protested. "Do they mean nothing to you?" - -A faintly bitter humour touched her lips. "You've always taken the side -of the world in all our controversies, haven't you, Mr. Oldmeadow? and -you were probably right and I was probably wrong; but not because of -what the world would think. I know I'm right now, and those words: name: -reputation--mean nothing to me. The world and I haven't much to do with -each other. A divorced wife can run soup-kitchens and fever hospitals -just as well as the most unsmirched woman of the world. I'm not likely -to want to be presented at courts, am I? Don't think of me, please. It's -not a question of me. Only of you. Will you do it?" - -"I couldn't possibly do it," said Oldmeadow, and he was still hardly -taking her monstrous proposal seriously. - -"Why not?" she asked, scrutinizing him. "It's not that you mind about -your name and reputation, is it?" - -"Not much. Perhaps not much," said Oldmeadow; "but about theirs. That's -what you don't see. That it would be impossible for them. You don't see -how unique you are; how unlike other people. Nancy and Barney couldn't -marry on a fake. The only way out," said Oldmeadow, looking at her with -an edge of ironic grimness in his contemplation, "if one were really to -consider it, would be for you to marry me afterwards and for us to -disappear." - -She gazed at him and he saw that she weighed the idea. "But you'd be -shackled then," she said, and her thoughts were evidently clear. "It -would mean, besides, that you would lose them." - -"As to being shackled," Oldmeadow, still grimly, met the difficulty, -"that's of no moment. I'm the snuffy, snappy bachelor type, you -remember, and I don't suppose I'd ever have married. As to losing them, -I certainly should." - -"We mustn't think of it then," said Adrienne. "You and Barney and Nancy -mustn't lose each other." - -"But we should in either way. I could hardly take up my friendship with -them again after Barney had divorced you on account of me, even if you -and I didn't marry. It would give the whole thing away, if it were -possible for them to meet me again. As I say, they'd feel they had no -right to their freedom on such a fake as that." - -"They couldn't feel really free unless some one had really committed -adultery for their sakes?" Again Adrienne smiled with her faint -bitterness and he wondered if a man and woman had ever before had a more -astonishing conversation. "That seems to me to be asking for a little -too much icing on your cake. Of course it couldn't be a nice, new, snowy -wedding-cake; poor Mrs. Chadwick wouldn't like it at all, nor Mrs. -Averil; but it would be the best we could do for them; and I should -think that when people love each other and are the right people for each -other they'd be thankful for any kind of cake. Even if it were a good -deal burned around the edges," Adrienne finished, her slight bitterness -evidently finding satisfaction in the simile. - -"But they wouldn't see it at all like that," said Oldmeadow, now with -unalloyed gravity. "They'd see it as a cake they had stolen; a cake they -had no right to. It's a question of the laws we live under. Not of -personal, but of public integrity. They couldn't profit by a hoodwinked -law. It's that that would spoil things for them. According to the law -they'd have no right to their freedom. And, now that I am speaking -seriously, it's that I feel, too. What you are asking of me, my dear -friend, is no more nor less than a felony." - -She meditated, unmoved, still almost sternly, turning her eyes from him -and leaning her elbow on the window-sill, her head upon her hand. "I -see," she said at last. "For people who mind about the law, I see that -it would spoil it. I don't mind. I think the law's there to force us to -be kind and just to each other if we won't be by ourselves. If the law -gets tied up in such a foolish knot as to say that people may sin to set -other people free, but mayn't pretend to sin, I think we have a right to -help it out and to make it do good against its own will. I don't mind -the law; luckily for them. Because I won't go back from it now. I won't -leave them there, loving each other but never knowing the fullness of -love. I won't give up a thing I feel right because other people feel it -wrong. So I must find somebody else." - -Oldmeadow looked at her in a culminated and wholly unpleasant -astonishment. "Somebody else? Who could there be?" - -"You may well ask," Adrienne remarked, glancing round at him with a -touch of mild asperity. "You are the only completely right person, -because only you and I feel enough for them to do it for them. What I -must do now is to find some one who would feel enough, just for me, to -do it for me. It makes it more unfair for him, doesn't it. He'll have -only the one friend to help. But on the other hand it will leave them -without a scruple. They'd know from the beginning that with you and me -it was a fake; but with him it might seem quite probable. Yes; it's -strange; I had a letter from him only yesterday. I shouldn't have -thought of him otherwise. I might have had to give up. But the more I -think," Adrienne meditated intently, her head on her hand, her eyes -turned on the prospect outside, "the more I seem to see that Hamilton -Prentiss is the only other chance." - -"Hamilton Prentiss?" Oldmeadow echoed faintly. - -"You met him once," said Adrienne, looking round at him again. "But -you've probably forgotten. At the dinner we gave, Barney and I, in -London, so long ago. Tall, fair, distinguished looking. The son of my -Californian friend; the one you and Mrs. Aldesey thought so tiresome." - -He felt himself colouring, but he could give little thought to the minor -discomfiture, so deeply was his mind engaged with the major one. - -"Did we?" he said. - -"And you thought I didn't see it," said Adrienne. "It made me dreadfully -angry with you both, though I didn't know I was angry; I thought I was -only grieved. I behaved spitefully to Mrs. Aldesey that night, you will -remember, though I didn't know I was spiteful. I did know, however, that -she was separated from her husband"--again Adrienne looked, calmly, -round at him--"and it was a lie I told Barney when I said I didn't. -Sometimes I think that lie was the beginning of everything; that it was -when I told it that I began to hide from myself. However--" She passed -from the personal theme. "Yes; Hamilton is, I believe, big enough and -beautiful and generous enough to do it." - -"Oh, he is, is he?" said Oldmeadow. "And I'm not, I take it. You're -horribly unkind. But I don't want to talk about myself. What I want to -talk about is you. You must drop this preposterous idea of yours. Really -you must. You've had ideas like it before. Remember Meg; what a mess you -made there. I told you then that you were wrong and I tell you you're -wrong now. You must give it up. Do you see? We're always quarrelling, -aren't we?" - -"But I don't at all know that I was wrong about Meg, Mr. Oldmeadow," -said Adrienne. "And if I was, it was because I didn't understand her. I -do understand myself, and I don't agree that I'm wrong or that my plan -is preposterous. You won't call it preposterous, I suppose, if it -succeeds and makes Barney and Nancy happy. No; I'm not going to drop it. -Nothing you could say could make me drop it. As for Hamilton, I don't -set him above you; not in any way. It's only that you and he have -different lights. I know why you can't do this. You've shown me why. And -I wouldn't for anything not have you follow your own light." - -"And you seriously mean," cried Oldmeadow, "that you'd ask this young -fellow--I remember him perfectly and I'm sure he's capable of any degree -of ingenuousness--you'd ask him to go about with you as though he were -your husband? Why, for one thing, he'd be sure to fall head over heels -in love with you, and where would you be then?" - -Adrienne examined him. "But from the point of view of hoodwinking, that -would be all to the good, wouldn't it?" she inquired; "though -unfortunate for Hamilton. He won't, however," she went on, her dreadful -lucidity revealing to him the hopelessness of any protest he might still -have found to make. "There's a very lovely girl out in California he's -devoted to; a young poetess. He'll have to write to her about it first, -of course; Hamilton's at the front now, you see; and I must write to his -mother. She and Carola Brown are very near each other and will talk it -out together and I feel sure they will see it as I do. They'll see it as -something big I'm asking them to do for me--to set me free. I'm sure I -can count on Gertrude and I'm sure Hamilton can count on Carola. She's a -very rare, strong spirit." - -Oldmeadow, suddenly, was feeling exhausted, and a clutch of hysterical -laughter, as she spoke these last words, held his throat for a moment. -He laid his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes, while he saw -Adrienne and Hamilton Prentiss wandering by the banks of a French river -where poplars stood against a silver sky. He knew that he had accepted -nothing when he said at last: "Shall we talk about it another time? -To-morrow? I mean, don't take any steps, will you, until we've talked. -Don't write to your beautiful, big friend." - -"You always make fun of me a little, don't you," said Adrienne -tranquilly. She seemed aware of some further deep discomposure in him -and willing, though not comprehending it, to meet it with friendly -tolerance. "If he is big and beautiful, why shouldn't I say it? But I -won't write until we've talked again. It can't be, anyway, until the war -is over. And I've had already to wait for four years." - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -She might feel that he had cruelly failed her; but when she came at the -same hour next day it was evident to him from her demeanour that she -imagined him resigned, if not converted, to her alternative plan. She -carried a bunch of late roses and said that she had been having a lovely -drive with a dear old friend from Denver, who had managed to get to -Boulogne to see her. - -"Your friends all come from such distant places," said Oldmeadow with a -pretended fretfulness that veiled an indescribable restlessness. -"California, Denver, Chicago. They have, all of them, an implacably -remote sound, as if they were carrying you, already, off to other -planets." - -"Well, it doesn't take so long, really, to get to any of them," said -Adrienne, placing the roses in a glass of water by his side, a close, -funny little bunch, red roses in the middle and white ones all round. -She had taken off her cloak and laid a newspaper down on the little -table, seating herself, then, in the window and keeping in her hands a -pocket-book that, in its flatness and length and the way she held it, -reminded him of the little blue and grey fan of the dinner-party where -she had told her first lie. His mind was emptied of thought. Only -pictures crossed it, pictures of Adrienne and the tall, fair youth with -the ingenuous eyes, wandering by the French river; and, again, Adrienne -on that night, now as distant as California, when, with her fan and -pearl-wreathed hair, she had met his persiflage with her rebuking -imperturbability. But under the pictures a sense of violent tension made -his breathing shallow. He fixed his eyes on the pocket-book and wondered -how she had nursed people with those ineffectual-looking hands. - -"Where were you trained for nursing?" he asked her suddenly. "Out here? -or in England?" - -"In England. In Oxford. Before Palgrave was taken," said Adrienne. "I -gave up my philosophy very soon for that. I worked in a hospital there." - -"And how came you to go out to Salonika? Tell me about it. And about -your hospital here," he went on with a growing sense of keeping -something off. "It's your own hospital I hear, and wonderfully run. Sir -Kenneth was talking to me about you this morning." - -"What a fine person he is," said Adrienne. "Yes, he came to see us and -liked the way it was done." She was pleased, he saw, to tell him -anything he chose to ask about. She told him about her hospital and of -all its adventures--they had been under fire so often that it had become -an everyday event; and about how admirable a staff she had -organized--"rare, devoted people"--and about their wounded, their -desperately wounded _poilus_ and how they came to love them all. He -remembered, as she talked, that she was rich; even richer than he had -thought, since she could leave a fortune to Palgrave and yet equip -hospitals in France and in Salonika. She told him about Salonika, too. -It had been a fever hospital there and the misery and suffering had -seemed worse than the suffering here in France. Yes; she had caught the -fever herself and had nearly died. - -She had no gift for the apt or vivid word. Her nature had been revealed -to him as barbarous, or sublime, in its unconventionality, yet it -expressed itself only in the medium of trite convention. But his time of -jibbing at her platitudes was long since passed. He listened, rather, -with a tender, if superficial interest, seeing her heroic little figure -moving, unconcerned, among pestilences and bombardments. "It's not only -what you tell me," he said, when she had brought her recital up to date. -"I heard so much from Sir Kenneth. You are one of the great people of -the war." - -"Am I?" she said. That, too, unfeignedly, left her unconcerned. - -"You've the gift of leadership. The gift for big things generally." - -She nodded. "I'm only fit for big things." - -"Only? How do you mean?" - -"Little ones are more difficult, aren't they. My feet get tangled in -them. To be fit for daily life and all the tangles; that's the real -test, isn't it? That's just the kind of thing you see so clearly, Mr. -Oldmeadow. Big things and the people who do them are just the kind of -things you see through." - -"Oh, but you misunderstood me--or misunderstand," said Oldmeadow. "Big -things are the condition of life; the little things can only be built up -on them. One must fight wars and save the world before one can set up -one's tea-tables." He remembered having thought of something like this -at Lydia's tea-table. "Tea-tables are important, I know, and the things -that happen round them. But if one can nurse a ward of typhus patients -single-handed one must be forgiven for letting the tea-pot slip. Really -I never imagined you capable of all you've done." - -"I always thought I was capable of anything," said Adrienne smiling -slightly, her eyes meeting his in a tranquil partaking of the jest, that -must be at her expense. "You helped me to find that out about -myself--with all the rest. And I was right enough in thinking that I -could face things and lead people. But I wasn't capable of the most -important things. I wasn't capable of being a wise and happy wife. I -wasn't even capable of being truthful in drawing-rooms when other women -made me angry. But I can go on battle-fields and found hospitals and -tend the sick and dying. Shells and pestilences"--her smile was -gone--"if people knew how trivial they are--compared to seeing your -husband look at you with hatred." - -She had turned her eyes away as she was thus betrayed into revealing the -old bitternesses of her heart and he dropped his to the little -pocket-book that now lay still between her hands. The feeling in her -voice, the suffering it revealed to him, with the bitterness, woke an -unendurable feeling in himself. He did not clearly see what the test was -to which he put himself; but he knew that what he must say to her was -the most difficult thing he had ever had to say; and he found it only -after the silence had grown long. - -"Mrs. Barney--everything has changed, hasn't it; you've changed; I've -changed; Barney may have changed. It was only, after all, a moment of -miserable misunderstanding between you. He never really knew what you -were feeling. He thought you didn't care for him any longer, when, -really, you were finding out how much you cared. Don't you think, -before you take final decisions, that you ought to see Barney again? -Don't you think you ought to give him another chance? I could arrange it -all for you, when I got home." - -The flood of colour, deep and sick, had mounted to her face, masking it -strangely, painfully, to where the white linen cut across her brow and -bound her chin. And, almost supplicatingly, since he saw that she could -not speak, he murmured: "You can be a wise and happy wife now; and he -loved you so dearly." - -She did not lift her eyes. She sat there, looking down, tightly holding -the pocket-book in her lap. - -"Let me tell him, when I get home, that I've seen you again," he -supplicated. "Let me arrange a meeting." - -Slowly, not lifting her eyes, she shook her head and he heard her, just -heard her say: "It's not pride. Don't think that." - -"No; no; I know it's not. Good heavens, I couldn't think it that. You -feel it's no good. You feel that his heart is occupied. It is. I can't -pretend to hide from you that it is. But your place in it was supreme. -There would be no unfairness if you took it again. Nancy would be the -first person to want you to take it. You know that that is true of -Nancy." - -"I know. I heard her plead for me," said Adrienne. - -The sentence fell, soft and trenchant; and he remembered, in the silence -that followed, what she had heard. He drew a long breath, feeling half -suffocated. But he had met his test. It was inevitable, he knew it now, -that she should say "Barney and I are parted for ever." - -Silence dropped again between them. He did not know what was passing -behind its curtain and whether bitterness or only grief was in her -heart. - -He lay, drawing the slow, careful breaths of his recovery, and saw her -presently put out her hand and take up her _New York Herald_ and unfold -it. She looked down the columns unseeingly; but the little feint of -interest helped her. - -Slowly the colour faded from her face and it was as if the curtain -lifted when, laying the paper down, she said, and he knew that she was -finding words to comfort him: "Really everything is quite clear before -me now. I shall write at once to Hamilton, and to his mother. If he -agrees, if they all agree, he and I can go away very soon I think. -Afterwards, I shall stay over here. I've quite made up my mind to that. -There'll be so much to do; for years and years; for all one's lifetime. -Ways will open. When one is big," she smiled the smile at once so gentle -and so bitter, "and has plenty of money, ways always do. I'm a -_deracinee_ creature; I never had any roots, you know; and I can't do -better, I'm sure, than to make soil for the uprooted people to grow in -again. That's what's most needed now, isn't it? Soil. It's the -fundamental things of life, its bare possibilities, that have been so -terribly destroyed over here. America has, still, more soil than she can -use, and since I'm an American, and a rich one, my best plan is to use -America, in my fortune and my person, for Europe. Because I love them -both and because they both need each other." - -She had quite recovered herself Her face had found again its pale, fawn -tints and she was looking at him with her quietest contemplation while -he, in silence, lay looking at her. - -"It's not about the things I shall do that I'm perplexed, ever," she -went on. "But I'm sometimes perplexed about myself. I sometimes wish I -were a Roman Catholic. In an order of some kind. Under direction. To put -oneself in the hands of a wise director, it must be so peaceful. Like -French friends I have; such wise, fine women; so poised and so secure. I -often envy them. But that can't be for me." - -She must feel in his silence now the quality of some extreme emotion, -and that she believed it to be pity was evident to him as she went on, -seeking to comfort him; and troubled by his trouble: "You mustn't be -sorry. I am not unhappy. I am a happy person. Do you remember that -Sunday morning at Coldbrooks, long ago? How I said to Mother--to Mrs. -Chadwick--that I had no doubts? You thought me fatuous. I dimly saw that -you thought me fatuous. But it's still true of me. I must tell you, so -that you shan't think I'm unhappy. I've been, it seems to me, through -everything since then. I've had doubts--every doubt: of myself; of life; -of all the things I trusted. Doubt at last, when the dreadful darknesses -came--Barney's hatred, Palgrave's death--of God. We've never spoken of -Palgrave, have we? I was with him, you had heard, and at the very end it -was he who helped me rather than I him. He held me up. When he was dying -he held me up. He made me promise him that I would not kill myself--for -he guessed what I was thinking; he made me promise to go on. And he -saved me. The light began to come back to me while I sat beside him -after he had died." - -She had not looked at him while she spoke, but down at her hands that, -trembling, turned and returned the little pocket-book. And controlling -her voice as she sought to control the trembling of her hands, she said: -"Perhaps it is always like that. When one confesses one's sin and hates -it in oneself, even if it is still there, tempting one, the light begins -to come back. After that it came more and more. What you call my gift is -part of it. Isn't it strange that I should have had that gift when I was -so blind? But what you said was true. I had a sort of wholeness then, -because I was blind. And now that I see, it's a better wholeness and a -safer gift. That is what I wanted to say, really. To explain, so that -you shan't be sorry. No one who can find that light can be unhappy. It -comes to me now, always, when I need it. I can make it shine in other -people--as Palgrave made it shine in me. Love does it. Isn't it -wonderful that it should be so? Nothing else is real beside it. Nothing -is real without it. And when it happens, when one feels it come through -and shine further, it is more, far more, than happiness." - -All the while that she had spoken, pale, and with her trembling hands, -he had lain looking at her in silence, a silence that was dividing him, -as if by a vast chasm, from all his former life. - -He and Adrienne stood on one side of this chasm, and, while it seemed to -widen with a dizzying rapidity, he saw that on the other stood Barney, -Nancy, Coldbrooks, and Lydia--poor Lydia--and that they were being borne -away from him for ever. He saw nothing before him but Adrienne; and for -how long was he to keep her? That was his supreme risk; but he could -not allay it or step back to the further brink. It was his very life -that had fallen in two while she had spoken and without the sense of -choice; though he dimly saw that, in the restlessness and urgency of the -hours since he had seen her last, the choice had been preparing. - -He was taking the only step possible for him to take on the narrow -foothold of the present when he said, in a voice so quiet that she might -even be unaware of his seeming gross irrelevance, "Do you know, about -your plan--for Barney and Nancy--I've been thinking it over and I've -decided that it must be I, not Hamilton." - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -Her eyes met his for a long time before he realized that she might find -not only irrelevance but even irreverence. She had shown him her very -soul and he had answered with this announcement. Of course it had been -because of what she told him that he had seen at last his own necessity; -but he could not tell her that. - -"I'm not sorry for you," he said. "I envy you. You are one of the few -really happy people in the world." - -"But I'd quite given that idea up, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said. "What has -made you change?" - -He saw the trouble in her face, the suspicion of her power and its -compulsion over the lives of others. He took the bull by the horns. - -"You, of course. I can't pretend that it's anything else. I want to do -it for you and with you." - -"But it's for Barney and Nancy that it's to be done," she said, and her -gravity had deepened. "It's just the same for them--and you explained -yesterday that it would spoil it for them." - -"It may spoil it somewhat," said Oldmeadow, contemplating her with a -curious tranquillity; she was now all that was left him in life to -contemplate; and she was all he needed. "But it won't prevent it. I -still think it a wrong thing to do. I still think it a felony. But, -since I can't turn you from it, what I've come to see is that it's, as -you said, for you and me, who care for them, to do. It's not right, not -decent or becoming, that anyone who doesn't even know them should be -asked to do such a thing." - -"But Hamilton wouldn't do it for them," she said. "It would be for me he -would do it. And he wouldn't think it a felony." - -"All the more reason that his innocence shouldn't be taken advantage of. -I can't stand by and see it done. It's for my friends the felony will be -committed and it's I who will bear the burden for them. As to his doing -it for you, I know you better than he possibly can know you, and care -for you more than he possibly can. If you're determined on committing a -crime, I'll share the responsibility with you." - -"I know you care more. You are a wonderful friend. You are my best -friend in the world." She gazed at him and he saw that for once he had -troubled and perplexed her. "And it's wonderful of you to say you'll do -it. But Hamilton won't feel it a burden; not as you will; and for him to -do it won't spoil it for them. If you do it, it will spoil it for them. -You said so. And how can I let you do a thing you feel so wrong for my -sake?" - -"You'll have to. I won't have Hamilton sacrificed in order that their -cake shall have no burnt edges. They'll have to pay something for it in -social and moral discomfort. It would be nothing to the discomfort of -Miss Brown, would it? I shall be able to put it clearly to Barney when I -write and tell him that it's for your sake as well as his and that he -and Nancy, who have never sought anything or hoped for anything, are in -no way involved by our misdemeanour. I won't emphasize to Barney what I -feel about that side of it. He's pretty ingenuous, too. It will be a -less tidy happiness they'll have to put up with. That's all it comes to, -as far as they are concerned." - -She was looking at him with the trouble and perplexity and she said: - -"They'll have to pay in far more than social and moral discomfort." - -"Well? In what way? How?" he challenged her. - -"You said they'd lose you." - -"Only, if you married me," he reminded her. - -But she remembered more accurately. "No. They'd lose you anyway. You -said so. You said that if they could ever see you again it would make it -too blatantly a fake. And it's true. I see it now. How could you turn up -quietly, as if nothing had happened, after Barney had divorced me with -you as co-respondent? There's Lady Cockerell," said Adrienne, and, -though she was so grave, so troubled, it was with a touch of mild -malice. "There's Mr. Bodman and Johnson, to say nothing of Mrs. Chadwick -and Nancy's mother. No, I really don't see you facing them all at -Coldbrooks after we'd come out in the 'Daily Mail' with head-lines and -pictures." - -Her lucidity could indeed disconcert him when it sharpened itself like -this with the apt use of his vocabulary. He had to stop to think. - -"There won't, at all events, be pictures," he paused by the triviality -to remark. "We shan't appear. It will be an hotel over here and the case -will be undefended. We needn't, really, consider all that too closely. -At the worst, if they do lose me, it's not a devastating loss. They'll -have each other." - -"Ah, but who will you have?" Adrienne inquired. "Hamilton will have -Carola and they will have each other. But who will you have?" - -He lay and looked at her. There was only one answer to that question -and he could not make it. He was aware of the insufficiency of his -substitute. "I'd have your friendship," he said. - -"You have that now," said Adrienne. "And though I'm so your friend, I'll -be leaving you, soon, probably for ever. We'll probably never meet -again, Mr. Oldmeadow. Our paths lie so apart, don't they? My friendship -will do you very little good." - -Her words cut into him, but he kept a brave countenance. "I'd have the -joy of knowing I'd done something worth while for you. How easily I -might have died here, if it hadn't been for you. My life is yours in a -sense and I want you to use it rather than Hamilton's. I have my work, -you know; lots of things I'm interested in to go back to some day. As -you remarked, a divorced wife can run soup-kitchens and in the same way -a co-respondent can write articles and go to concerts." - -"I know. I know what a fine, big life you have," she murmured, and the -trouble on her face had deepened. "But how can I take it from you? A -felony? How can I let you do, for my sake, something you feel to be so -wrong?" - -"Give it up then," said Oldmeadow. And if he had found it difficult to -make his plea for Barney a little while before, how much more difficult -he found it to say this, and to mean it, now. "Give it up. That's your -choice, and your only choice. You owe that to me. Indeed you do. To give -it up or to accept me as your companion in iniquity. I'm not going to -pretend I don't think it iniquity to give you ease. You're not a person -who needs ease. And I can do without it, too. For your sake. So there -you have it." - -"Not quite. Not quite," she really almost pleaded. "I couldn't ask it of -Hamilton if he felt about it in the least little way as you do. And -Carola doesn't care a bit about the law either. She's an Imagist, you -know."--Adrienne offered this fact as if it would help to elucidate -Carola's complaisances. "She's written some very original poetry. If it -were Hamilton no one would lose anything, and Barney and Nancy would be -free. Indeed, indeed I can't give it up when it's all there, before me, -with everything to gain and nothing to lose for anybody, if it's -Hamilton." - -"Then it must be me, you see," said Oldmeadow. "And I shan't talk to you -about the iniquity again, I promise you. I've made my protest and -civilization must get on as best it can. You're a terrible person, you -know"--he smiled a little at her, finding the banter so that she should -not guess at the commotion of his heart. "But I like you just as you -are. Now where shall we go?" - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -He could not have believed that it would be so delicious to live with -Adrienne Toner. - -Even at the moment when he had known that he loved her, he had been, -though filled with the sense of a present heaven, as aware as ever of -the discrepancies between them, and during the three months that -separated them, he at Cannes, she nursing in Paris, he knew many doubts; -never of his love, but of what it was making him do and of where it was -going to lead them. He couldn't for the life of him imagine what was to -become of them if his hopes were fulfilled, for he hardly saw himself -following her off to Central Europe--it was to Serbia, her letters -informed him, that her thoughts were turning--nor saw them established -in London under the astonished gaze of Lydia Aldesey. - -She had selected Lyons as their place of meeting, because of the work -for the _rapatries_ that she wished to inspect there, and from the -moment that he saw her descend from the Paris express, dressed in dark -civilian clothes and carrying, with such an air of competence, her rug -and dressing-case, all doubts were allayed and all restlessness -dispelled. - -He had arrived the day before and had found an old-fashioned hotel with -spacious rooms overlooking the Saone, and, as they drove to it on that -November evening, she expressed herself, scrutinizing him with a -professional eye, as dissatisfied with his recovery. - -It was because of the restlessness, of course, that he had not got as -well as he should have, and he knew that he must, in the stress of -feeling that now beset him, look strangely, and he promised her, feeling -that he spoke the truth, that now that he had his nurse again complete -recovery would be only a matter of days. - -"I want you to see our view," he said to her when the porter had carried -up her little box and they were left alone in the brocaded and gilded -salon that separated their rooms; "I chose this place for the view; it's -the loveliest in Lyons, I think." - -There was still a little twilight, and standing at the window they -looked down at the lighted quai with its double row of lofty plane-trees -and across the jade-green Saone at St. Jean, the grey cathedral, and at -the beautiful white _archeveche_ glimmering in a soft, dimmed atmosphere -that made him think of London. - -"There's a horrible modern cathedral up on the hill," he said; "but we -don't need to see it. We need only see the river and the _archeveche_ -and St. Jean. And in the mornings there's a market below, a mile of it, -all under huge mushroom-coloured umbrellas; flowers and cheeses and -every kind of country produce. I think you'll like it here." - -"I like it very much. I think it's beautiful," said Adrienne. "I like -our room, too," and she turned and looked up at the painted ceiling and -round at the consoles and mirrors, inlaid tables and richly curved, -brocaded chairs. "Isn't it splendid." - -"Madame Recamier is said to have lived here," Oldmeadow told her. "And -this is said to have been her room." - -"And now it's mine," said Adrienne, smiling slightly as though she -found the juxtaposition amusing. - -Already the stealing sense of deliciousness was breathing over him. The -very way in which she said, "our room," was part of it. Even the way in -which she said that made him feel the peace, comfort, and charm of a -shared life as he had never before felt it. And the sense grew and grew -on that first evening. - -It was delicious to hear the waiters address her as Madame, and to know -that it was his madame they imagined her to be, when he sat opposite to -her at their little table in the dining-room. She wore a grey dress now -and, with her quiet, her calm glances cast about her, might indeed have -been the veritable Madame Oldmeadow inscribed at the _bureau_. If they -had the aspect of a devoted, long-mated couple, it was because of her -calm. But she would have been as unperturbed, he felt sure, had she been -stopping there under her own name instead of his and looked upon as his -well-established mistress. Situations would never embarrass her as long -as she knew what she was doing with them. That night when she gave him -her hand at bedtime she said, looking at him with the affectionate, -professional eyes: "I'll come and put you to sleep if you need me; be -sure to let me know." - -But he had no need to call her. He slept as soundly as though she sat -beside him with her hand upon his brow. - -So the mirage of conjugal felicity was evoked about him. - -She poured out his coffee for him in the morning wearing a silk -_neglige_ edged with fur, and said, as they buttered their rolls, that -they must buy some honey for their breakfasts. She said, too, that they -must do a great deal of sight-seeing in the afternoons. "There is so -much to be seen in Lyons. And I shall finish with my _rapatrie_ work in -the mornings." He asked if he might not come with her to the _rapatrie_ -work, but was told that he was not yet strong enough for more than one -walk in the day. "In our evenings, after tea," she went on, "I thought -perhaps you'd like to study Dante a little with me. My Dante is getting -so rusty and I've brought a very fine edition. Are you good at Italian?" - -He said he wasn't, but would love to read Dante with her. - -"And we must get a piano," she finished, "and have music after dinner. -It will be a wonderful holiday for me." - -So the days fell at once into a series of rituals. He saw that she had -always mapped them out conscientiously, as Mrs. Toner had doubtlessly -taught her to do, careful of the treasure of time--as Mrs. Toner would -have said--entrusted to each soul by life. So, no doubt, Adrienne would -put it still. And what he would, in first knowing her, have found part -of her absurdity, he found now part of her charm. - -That was what it all came back to. He saw, reconstructing their past, -that from the beginning she had had her deep charm for him. - -It was the trivial word for the great fact; the compulsion of -personality; the overflow of vitality; the secret at once of the saint -and of the successful music-hall singer. Her own absorption in life was -so intense that it communicated itself. Her confidence was so secure -that it begot confidence. Her power was implicit in all she did. It was -not only the _rapatries_ she dealt with, as, at the first, she had dealt -with the wounded. She dealt as successfully and as accurately with the -little things of life. Honey was on their breakfast-table; flowers on -the consoles; music on the piano. The gilded hotel salon became a home. - -She was still, in demeanour, the cultured, travelled American, equipped -always, for their walks, with a guide-book or history, from which she -often read to him as they paused to lean on the parapets of the splendid -quais. There were few salient facts in the history of the potent city -that were not imparted to him; and with anyone else what a bore it would -have been to have to listen! But he was more than content that she -should tell him about the Romans or Richelieu. It was everything to him -to feel that they shared it all, from the honey to Richelieu. - -And with all the intimacy went the extreme reserve. - -She had showed him, when it was necessary for their understanding as -friends, the centre of her life; yet she remained, while so gentle, so -absorbed, and even loving, as remote, as inaccessible, as he had felt -her to be on those first days in the hospital. She never referred to her -own personal situation not to any emotion connected with it. She never -referred to herself or expressed a taste or an opinion touched with -personal ardour. He did not know what she was really feeling, ever. -Though, when he looked at her, sitting opposite him in her grey and -addressed by the assiduities of the waiters, he could imagine that he -was living with a wife, he could imagine more often that he was living -with a nun. Her control and her selflessness were cloistral. He could -not think her in any need of a director. - -They walked one afternoon along the Quai des Brotteaux, returning from -the park of the Tete d'Or, where they had wandered on the gravel under -the tall, melancholy trees and fed the deer. The ugly yet magnificent -city was spread before them in one of its most splendid aspects, -climbing steeply, on the further banks of the Rhone, to the cliff-like -heights of the Croix Rousse and marching, as it followed the grandiose -curve of the river, into a sunset sky where the cupola of the Hospice -hung like a dark bubble against the gold and the Alps, not visible from -the river level, seemed yet to manifest themselves in the illumined -clouds ranged high above the horizon. - -Ten days of their appointed fortnight had now passed and while Oldmeadow -kept a half unseeing yet appraising eye upon the turbulent glories of -the river, he was wondering when and how he should make his revelation -and his appeal. If her reserve made it more difficult to imagine, her -intimacy did not make it more easy. It was because she was so intimate -that she had remained so unaware. For all his self-command he felt sure -that in any other circumstances she could not, for these ten days, have -remained so blind. - -Here she walked beside him, the Madame Oldmeadow of the hotel, looking -before her as she walked and thinking, he would have wagered, not of him -but of Serbia. - -She wore a beautifully adjusted little costume, conveying in its sober -darkness the impression of richness and simplicity that her clothes had -always given him. Fur was turned up about her ears and a small hat of -fur and velvet was turned down over her eyes as she had always worn her -hats. The straight fringe of gold showed under its brim and under the -gold were those calm, those questing, melancholy eyes. - -Or perhaps--he carried further his rueful reverie--she was thinking -about the date of the Hospice. He had the guide-book in his pocket. - -"Isn't it jolly?" he suggested, as she looked up at him, indicating the -prospect spread before them and adding, since he knew that his English -instinct for boyish understatement still puzzled her: "Like a great, -grim queen in shabby clothes; raised on such a throne and crowned with -such jewels that one feels her glorious rather than ugly." - -Adrienne studied the shabby queen attentively and then looked back at -him. Perhaps something dwelling in his eyes, something for her only and -not at all for Lyons, caught her more special attention, for she said -suddenly, and so unexpectedly that, with a sort of terror, he felt that -his crisis might be coming: "You've been very dear to me, Mr. Oldmeadow, -in all our time here. I feel it to have been a great privilege, you -know; a great opportunity." - -"Really? In what way?" He could at all events keep his voice quiet and -light. "I thought it had been you who made all the opportunities." - -"Oh, no. I never make any of the opportunities I am thinking of," said -Adrienne. "I only know how to take them. It isn't only that you are more -widely and deeply cultured than I am--though your Italian accent isn't -good!"--she smiled; "but I always feel that you see far more in -everything than I do, even when you seem to be seeing less. I have to go -carefully and pick up fact by fact, while you see things in a sort of -vision and they are all related as they enter your mind. That's where my -privilege comes in. You make me share your vision sometimes. You have -the artistic mind, and I am not really artistic at all--though Mother -always wanted that for me more than anything; with all that goes with -it." - -She was speaking of herself--though it was only in order to express more -exactly her gratitude, and, as he walked beside her, he was filled with -the mingled hope and terror. After all he had still four more days of -her. It would be terrible to spoil them. - -"No; you aren't artistic," he agreed. "And I don't know that I am, -either. Whether I am or not, I feel mine to have been the opportunity -and the privilege." - -"I can't understand that at all," she said, with her patent candour. - -"It may be part of the artistic temperament to feel things one can't -understand. Though I do understand why I feel it," he added. - -"And it's part of the artistic temperament not to try"--Adrienne turned -their theme to its more impersonal aspect. "Never to try to enjoy -anything that you don't enjoy naturally. I don't believe I ever enjoy -any of the artistic things quite naturally. I've always been trained to -enjoy and I've always tried to enjoy; because I thought it was right to -try. But since I've been here with you I've come to feel that what I've -enjoyed has been my own effort and my mastery of the mere study, and I -seem to feel that it might be as well to give up trying and training and -fall back on the things that come naturally; scenery artists would think -sentimental, and babies; and patriotic songs." She smiled a little as -she found her list. But she was grave, too, thinking it out and adding -another to her discovered futilities. - -"It may be as well to limit your attention to the sentimental scenery -and the babies, since you've so many other things to do with it," he -acquiesced. "We come back to big people again, you see; they haven't -time to be artistic; don't need to be." - -"Ah, but it's not a question of time at all," said Adrienne, and he -remembered that long ago, from the very first, he had said that she -wasn't stupid. "It's a question of how you're born. That's a thing I -would never have admitted in my old days, you know. I would never have -admitted that any human soul was really shut out from anything. Perhaps -we're not, any of us, if we are to have all eternity to grow in. But as -far as this life is concerned I see quite clearly now that some people -are shut out from all sorts of things, and that the sort of mistake I -made in my old time was in thinking that anyone who had the will could -force eternity into any given fragment of our temporal life. I did do a -little philosophy, you see! That's what I mean and you understand, I -know. All the same I wish I weren't one of the shut-out people. I wish I -were artistic. I'd have liked to have that side of life to meet people -with. I sometimes think that one doesn't get far with people, really, if -all that one has to give are the fundamental things like the care of -their minds and bodies. One goes deep, of course; but one doesn't go -far. You can do something for them; but there's nothing, afterwards, -that they can do _with_ you; and it makes it rather lonely in a -way--when one has time to be lonely." - -He did not know, indeed, whether she saw the beauty of the scene spread -before them as they walked, and he was remembering, with a sort of -tranced tenderness, the flower-wreathed shepherdess and her crook; and -Mrs. Toner with her lilies and seagulls. But why should she see beauty -when she made it? It was all that he could see in her now. - -"What you can do for them afterwards is to pour out their coffee for -them in the most enhancing way," he suggested, "and make sight-seeing a -pleasure, and arrange flowers and place chairs and tables so that a -hotel salon becomes loveable. If you find the person to whom you can -give the fundamental things and do all sorts of homely things with -afterwards, why be lonely? We are very happy together, aren't we? We get -a great deal out of each other. I can speak for myself, at all events; -and you've just told me that I give something, too. So why should you go -off to Central Europe next week? Why not go back with me to the South," -he finished, "and wander about together enjoying, quite naturally, the -sentimental scenery?" - -He held his breath after he had thus spoken, wondering with intensity, -while he felt his heartbeats, what she would make of it. He knew what he -could make of it, seizing his opportunity on the instant, if only she -would recognize the meaning that underlay the easy words. And framed in -the little hat on the background of transfigured Lyons, Adrienne's face -was turned towards him and, after he had made his suggestion, she -studied him in silence for what seemed to him a long lapse of time. Then -she said, overwhelmingly: - -"That's perfectly lovely of you, Mr. Oldmeadow." - -"Not at all; not perfectly lovely at all," he stammered as he -contradicted her and he heard that his voice sounded angry. "It's what I -want. I want it very much." - -"Yes. I know you do. And that's what's so lovely," said Adrienne. "I -know you want it. You are sorry for me all the time. And you want to -cheer me up. Because you feel I've lost so much. But, you know; you -remember; I told you the truth that time. I don't need cheering. I'm not -unhappy. One can be lonely without being unhappy." - -"I'm not sorry for you," poor Oldmeadow rejoined, still in the angry -voice. "I'm not thinking of you at all. I'm thinking of myself. I'm -lonely, too, and I am unhappy, even if you aren't." - -She stopped short in her walk. He saw in her eyes the swift, almost -diagnosing solicitude that measured his need and her own capacity. It -was as though his temperature had gone up alarmingly. - -"Dear Mr. Oldmeadow," she said; and then she faltered; she paused. She -no longer found her remedies easily. "It's because you are separated -from your own life," she did find. "It's because all this is so bitter -to you; what you are doing now--how could I not understand?--and the -war, that has torn us all. But when it's over, when you can go home -again and take up your own big life-work and find your own roots, -happiness will come back; I'm sure of it. We are all unhappy sometimes, -aren't we? We must be; with our minds and hearts. Our troubled minds; -our lonely hearts. But you know as well as I do, dear Mr. Oldmeadow, -that our souls can find the way out." - -Her nature expressed itself in platitudes; yet sometimes she had -phrases, rising from her heart as if from a fountain fed by unseen -altitudes, that shook him in their very wording. "Our troubled minds. -Our lonely hearts," echoed in his ears while, bending his head -downwards, he muttered stubbornly: "My soul can't, without you." - -She still stood, not moving forward, her eyes raised to his. "Please -don't say that," she murmured, and he heard the trouble in her voice. -"It can't be so, except for this time that you are away from everybody. -You have so many things to live for. So many people near you. You are -such a big, rare person. It's what I was afraid of, you know. It happens -so often with me; that people feel that. But you can't really need me -any longer." - -He said nothing, still not raising his eyes to hers, and she went on -after a moment. "And I have so many things to live for, too. You've -never really thought about that side of my life, I know. Why should you? -You think of any woman's life--isn't it true?--as not seriously -important except on its domestic side. And you know how important I -think that. But it isn't so with me, you see. I have no hearth and I -have no home; I have only my big, big life and it's more important than -you could believe unless you could see it all. When I'm in it it takes -all my mind and all my strength and I'm bound to it, yes, just as -finally, just as irrevocably as a wife who loves is bound by her -marriage vows; because I love it. Do you see? They are waiting for me -now. They need me now. There are starving people, dying people; and -confusion; terrible confusion. I have a gift for all that. I can deal -with it. Those are just the things I can deal with. And I mustn't put it -off any longer--when our time is up. I must leave you, my dear, dear -friend, however much I'd love to stay." - -She was speaking at last with ardour, and about herself. And what she -said was true. He had never thought about her work except in the sense -that he thought her a saint and knew that saints did good deeds. That -she was needed, sorely needed, by the starving and dying, was a fact, -now that it was put before him, silencing and even shaming him. It gave -him, too, a new fear. If she had her blindness, he had his. His hopes -and fears, after all, were all that he had to think of; she had the -destinies of thousands. He remembered Sir Kenneth's tone in speaking of -her; its deep respect. Not the respect of the man for the -tender-hearted, merciful woman; but the respect of a professional expert -for another expert; respect for the proved organizer and leader of men. - -"I have been stupid," he said after a moment. "It's true that I've been -thinking about you solely in relation to myself. Would you really love -to stay? If it wasn't for your work? It would be some comfort to believe -that." - -"Of course I'd love to stay," she said, eagerly scanning his face. "I'd -love to travel with you--to pour out your coffee in Avignon, Nimes, -Cannes--anywhere you liked. I'd love our happy time here to go on and -on. If life could be like that; if I didn't want other things more. You -remember how Blake saw it all: - - 'He who bends to himself a joy - Doth the winged life destroy.' - -I mustn't try to bend and keep this lovely time. I must let it fly--and -bless it as it goes. And so it will bless me." - -She seldom made quotations nowadays. For this one he felt a gratitude -such as his life had rarely known. - -"It's been a joy to you, too, then?" - -"Of course it has," said Adrienne smiling at him and turning at last -towards the bridge that they must cross. "It's been one of the most -beautiful things that has ever happened to me." - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -Oldmeadow sat at the inlaid table in the gilded salon on the afternoon -of the last day. He had two letters to write, for, as he had put off -speaking to Adrienne till their last evening, so he had put off writing -to Barney and to Lydia Aldesey till this last afternoon, and he saw now -how difficult it would be to write coherently while his thoughts -stretched themselves forward to those few hours of the night when his -fate would be decided. - -Adrienne had gone out. She had written her short communication to Barney -and brought it in with its envelope and laid it before him, asking him -in the voice that, again, made him think of snow: "Is that quite right?" - -It was, quite, he told her, after glancing through it swiftly. It -stated, in the most colourless terms, the facts that Barney was to take -to his solicitor. "Quite right," he repeated, looking up at her. "Are -you going out? Will you post it?--or shall I?" - -"Will you post it with yours? Yes. I must go out. But I'll try to be -back by tea-time. It's very disappointing; our last afternoon. But that -poor woman from Roubaix--the one with consumption up at the Croix -Rousse--is dying. They've sent for me. All the little children, you -remember I told you. I'm going to wire to Josephine and ask her if she -can come down and look after them for a little while." - -"Josephine?" he questioned. He had, till now, entirely forgotten -Josephine. Adrienne told him that she was with her parents in a -provincial town. "They lost their only son and are very sad. Fine, brave -old people. He is a baker, the old father, and makes the most wonderful -bread. I went to see them last summer." - -Their packing was done and the room denuded; the men had taken away the -piano that morning. He had his letters to write; so there was really no -reason why she should not go. And there was, besides, nothing that they -had to say to each other, except the one thing he had to say. - -The silence that overtakes parting friends on a station platform had -overtaken them since the morning, though, at lunch, Adrienne had talked -with some persistence of her immediate plans and prospects and about the -unit of doctors and nurses who were to meet her in Italy. There was no -reason why she should not go, and he would even rather she did. He would -rather see no more of her until evening when everything but the one -thing would be over and done with. And so he was left with his letters, -leaning his elbows on the table over the hotel paper and staring out at -the Saone and the white _archeveche_. - -Both letters were difficult to write; but beside the one to Lydia, the -one to Barney was easy. Barney, after all, was to gain everything from -what he had to tell him, and Lydia was to lose; how much was Lydia to -lose? He recalled their last evening together and its revelations and -saw that the old laughing presage was now more than fulfilled. Lydia was -to lose more than her toes and fingers; in any case. Even if he returned -to her alone, she cared for him too much not to feel, always, the shadow -of his crippled heart; his heart not only crippled, but occupied, so -occupied that friendships, however near, became, in a sense, -irrelevancies. And if he returned with Adrienne--but could he return -with Adrienne? What kind of a life could he and Adrienne lead in -London?--even if Lydia's door, generously, was opened to them, as he -believed it would be--knowing her generous. - -He laid down his pen and fixed his eyes on the river and he tried to see -Lydia and Adrienne together. But it was a useless effort. From this -strange haven of the Lyons hotel where he had spent the happiest -fortnight of his life, he could not see himself into any future with -familiar features. He could only see himself and Adrienne, alone, at -hotels. To attempt to place her in Lydia's generous drawing-room was to -measure more accurately than he had yet measured it the abyss that -separated him from his former life. If it could be spanned; if Adrienne -could be placed there, on the background of eighteenth-century fans and -old glass, she became a clipped and tethered seagull in a garden, -awkward, irrelevant, melancholy. Lydia might cease to find her -third-rate and absurd; but she wouldn't know what to do with her any -more than she would have known what to do with the seagull. So what, if -Adrienne became his wife, remained of his friendship with Lydia? - -He put aside the unresolved perplexity and took Barney first. - -"My dear Barney," he wrote,--"I don't think that the letter Adrienne has -written to you will surprise you as much as this letter of mine. You -will understand from hers that she wishes to free herself and to free -you. You will understand that that is my wish, too. She only tells you -that she has been staying here with me, for a fortnight, as my wife; -that's for your solicitor; you will read between the lines and know that -it seemed worth while to both of us to make the necessary sacrifice in -order to gain so much for you and for her. I hope that you and my dear -Nancy will feel that we are justified, and that you will take your -happiness as bravely as we secure it for you. You'll know that our step -hasn't been taken lightly. - -"But, now, dear Barney, comes my absolutely personal contribution. It is -a contribution, for it will make you and Nancy happier to know that I -have as much to gain as you and she. I have fallen in love with Adrienne -and I hope that I may win her consent to be my wife. Yes, dear Barney, -unbelievable as it will look to you, there it is; and she dreams of it -as little as you could have dreamed of it. I met her again, as her -letter informs you, at the Boulogne hospital. She asked me to say -nothing about our meeting. She wanted to disappear out of your lives. -She saved my life, I think, and I saw a great deal of her. What I found -in her that I had not seen before I need not say. - -"My great difficulty, my burden and perplexity now, lie in the fact that -she has no trace of feeling for me that might give me hope. We became, -at Boulogne, the best of friends; such friends that this plan suggested -itself to her; and we remain, after our fortnight here, the best of -friends; and that is all. Yet I have hope, unjustified and groundless -though it may be, and had I not had it from the beginning I couldn't -have entered upon the enterprise; not even for you and Nancy. From one -point of view it's possible that you may feel that I've entered upon it -in spite of you and Nancy. You may feel inclined to repudiate and disown -the whole affair and to remain unaware of it. In that case it would come -down to an appeal from me to you to carry it through for my sake. But -from another point of view it makes it easier for you; easier for you to -accept, since my hope gives integrity to the situation. That's another -thing that decided me. If it had been mere sham I don't think I could -have undertaken it. Adrienne felt none of my scruples on this score. She -walked over legal and conventional commandments like a saint over hot -ploughshares. But I haven't her immunities. I should have felt myself -badly scorched, and felt that I'd scorched you and Nancy, if my hope -hadn't given everything its character of _bona fides_. - -"Dear Barney, dear Nancy, please forgive me if I've been selfish. It -hasn't all been selfishness, that I promise you; it was in hopes for -you, too; and I have to face sacrifices. The worst of them will be that -if Adrienne takes me I'll have to lose you. You can measure the depth of -my feeling for her from the fact that I can make such sacrifices. -Perhaps you'll feel that even if she doesn't take me I'll have to lose -you. I hope not. I hope, in that case, that mitigations and refuges will -be found for me and that some day you'll perhaps be able to make a -corner in your lives where I may creep and feel my wounds less aching. -In any case, after Adrienne, you are the creatures dearest to me in the -world and I am always and for ever your devoted friend, - - ROGER." - - * * * * * - -And now Lydia. There was no use in thinking about it. The plunge must be -taken. - -"My dear Lydia," he wrote,--"I have fallen in love with Adrienne Toner. -I feel that with such a friend as you it's better to begin with the -bomb-shell. She doesn't know it, and if we are here in this Lyons hotel -together, it's only, she imagines, because she wishes to set Barney free -and that I've undertaken, for her sake and for Barney's, a repugnant -task. It is a repugnant task, in spite of what it may mean to me of -happiness. I hate it for her, and for Barney and for myself. But since -she was determined on it and since, if it wasn't I it was to be another -friend, and since I have fallen in love with her, I saw that it was only -decent that the co-respondent in the case should be the man who married -her afterwards. For I hope to become her husband, and I haven't one jot -of ground for my hope. We are studying Dante together, and she shows me -the sights of Lyons. She is just the same. Yet completely altered. - -"I don't know whether you'll feel you can ever see me again, with or -without her. I don't want to cast myself too heavily on your compassion, -so I'll only remind you that even if I return to England alone I shall -probably have to lose Nancy and Barney and that you will be my only -refuge. It will be the culmination of my misfortunes if I have to lose -you. - -"Dear Lydia, I am always your devoted - - "ROGER" - - * * * * * - -But he hadn't lost her. He knew he hadn't lost her; in any case. And the -taste of what he did was sharp and bitter to him, for she was generous -and loyal and he had cut off her very limbs. When he had addressed and -stamped the letters he went downstairs, and, for the sense of greater -finality, carried them to the post instead of dropping them into the -hotel-box. - -He had almost the sense of disembodiment as he returned to the empty and -dismantled room. He seemed to have become a mere consciousness suspended -between two states of being. The past was gone. He had dropped it into -the post-box. And he saw no future. He felt, for the moment, no hopes. -At the moment it seemed absurd to think that Adrienne could ever love -him. He tried to picture Coldbrooks and Somer's Place when the -bomb-shell struck them. Would Barney show Nancy the letter? Nancy would -be pale, aghast, silent. Barney would have to wait for days, perhaps, -before saying to her: "But, after all, it's for their sakes, too, Nancy -dear. See what Roger says." Mrs. Averil would cast up her hands and cry -"That woman!"--but, perhaps, with as much admiration as repudiation, and -Meg, if she were summoned to the scene of confusion, would say, "So -she's got hold of Roger, too." Funnily enough it was the dear March -Hare, he felt sure, who would be the first one to stretch out a hand -towards the tarnished freedom. "After all, you know," he could hear her -murmuring, "it would be much _nicer_ for Barney and Nancy to be married, -wouldn't it? And Adrienne wasn't a Christian, you know, so probably the -first marriage doesn't _really_ count. We mustn't be conventional, -Monica." Yes, perhaps it would go like that at Coldbrooks. But at -Somer's Place Lydia would sit among her fans and glass and wish that -they had never seen Adrienne Toner. - -He paced up and down before the windows and he had never been so lonely -in his life. He was so lonely that he became aware at last that his mere -negative state was passing into a positive and that grief at the -severance of old ties had become fear of losing Adrienne. The fear and -the loneliness seemed actualized when, at five, the waiter appeared -bearing the tea-tray on his shoulder. He had never had tea alone before -in this strange, foreign room. Adrienne always made a complicated and -charming ritual of the occasion, boiling the water on their own little -spirit-kettle and measuring the tea from her own caddy--the very same -kettle and caddy, she told him, that had accompanied herself and her -mother on all their travels. And to see the cups and bread and butter -and not to have her there, added a poignant taste of abandonment to his -loneliness. - -She kept the kettle in her room and when the boy was gone he softly -opened the door and went in. It would keep his heart up to have the -water boiling in readiness for her arrival. He recognized, as he stood, -then, and looked about him, that his instinct had also been that of -taking refuge. In her room he could more closely recover the sense of -her presence. - -She had finished all the essentials of her packing and her box stood -with its lid open ready for the last disposals. Yet the room seemed -still full of her personality. He noted it all gazing around him with -eyes almost those of a solemn little boy permitted to glance in at a -Christmas-tree. - -Her dressing-table, improvised from the mantelpiece, was neatly laid out -with small, worn, costly, and immaculate appurtenances. He moved forward -and looked at them, not touching. The initials intertwined on the backs -of the ivory brushes were her girlish ones: A. T. She had discarded, -long since, no doubt, her wedding toilet set. - -If he became her husband, the thought crossed his mind and quickened his -heart, he might brush her hair for her, that wonderful golden hair, -before many months were over. - -Near the ivory hand-glass stood two photographs in a folding frame of -faded blue leather. He stooped to look and saw that one was of Mrs. and -the other certainly of Mr. Toner, in their early days. Remote, -mysterious and alien, their formally directed eyes looked back at him -and in the father's ingenuous young countenance, surmounted by a roll of -hair that was provincial without being exactly rural, the chin resting -upon a large, peculiar collar, he could strangely retrace Adrienne's -wide brow and steadfast light-filled eyes. Mrs. Toner wore a ruffled -dress and of her face little remained distinct but the dark -gaze--forceful and ambiguously gentle. - -The room was full of the fragrance that was not a fragrance and that -had, long ago, reminded him of Fuller's earth. A pair of small blue -satin _mules_ stood under a chair near the bed. - -Only after he had withdrawn, gently closing the door behind him, did he -realize that he had forgotten the kettle and then he felt that he could -not go back again. A moment after the boy returned with a note, sent, by -hand, he was informed, from the Croix Rousse. - -"I am so dreadfully sorry, so disappointed," he read. "Our last -afternoon, but I can't get away yet. Don't wait dinner for me, if I -should be late, even for that. I won't be very late, I promise, and we -will have our evening." - -The note had no address. He rushed forth and down to find the messenger -gone. Had he only known where to seek her in the vast, high, melancholy -district of the Croix Rousse he would have gone to join her. His sense -of loneliness was almost a panic. - -Of course, he tried to fix his mind on that realization, as he went back -to the salon, her rapatries had no doubt preoccupied her mind, from the -first, quite as much as their own situation. She had spoken to him in -especial of this family and of their sorrows. One child they had left -dead at Evian and the mother, on the eve of their return to their -Northern home, had become too desperately ill to travel. "Such dear, -good, _gentle_ people," he recalled her saying. No; he must not repine. -After all he had only the one thing to say to her; and the evening would -be long enough for that. - -It was nearly seven when he heard her quick footstep outside. When she -entered, the brim of her little hat, in the electric light, cast a sharp -shadow over her eyes, but he saw at once that she had been crying. - -She came in so quickly that he had not time to rise and, going to him, -behind his chair, she put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him -down, saying: "I'm so sorry to have left you all alone." - -It was astonishingly comforting to have her put these fraternal hands -upon him like this. She had never done it before. Yet there was a salty -smart in her words to him. What else did she intend to do but leave him -all alone for always? - -"I'm dreadfully lonely, I confess," he said, "and I see that you're -dreadfully tired." - -She went round to the other side of the table and sat down, not looking -at him and said, in a low voice: "Oh--the seas--the seas of misery." - -"You are completely worn out," he said. He was not thinking so much of -the seas of misery as of his few remaining hours. Were they to be -spoiled by her fatigue? - -"No; not worn out. Not at all worn out," said Adrienne, stretching her -arms along the table in front of her as she sat, and though she had wept -he could see something of ardour, of a strength renewed, in the lines of -her pallid lips. "I've sat quite still all afternoon. I've been with -him. She died soon after I got there. At the end she was talking about -the little girl's grave at Evian. I was able to comfort her about that. -She was so afraid it would not be tended. That it would have no flowers. -Josephine will go to Evian afterwards and see about it. There are always -dear nuns to do those things. There was a nun with her to-day. That was -the greatest comfort of all; and the priest who came. But I was with the -father and the five poor little children; so frightened and miserable. I -could not leave them, you see. He talked and talked and talked. It -helped him to talk and tell me about their home and how they had had -everything so nice and bright. Linen, a garden, a goat and fowls. Oh, if -only she could have seen her home again! That was what he kept saying -and saying. They were full of hope when they got to Evian. He told me -how the children sang at dawn when the train panted up the mountain -among the golden trees. Like birds, he said, and _Vive la France_! They -all believed they were to be safe and happy. _Et, Madame, c'etait notre -calvaire qui commencait alors seulement._" - -She spoke, not really thinking of him, he saw, absorbed still in the -suffering she had just left, measuring her power against such problems -and the worse ones to which she was travelling to-morrow. - -"Josephine will be with them, I hope," she went on presently, "in three -or four days. She will help them to get home and then she will come back -and go to see about the grave at Evian. Josephine is a tower of strength -for me." - -Her eyes were raised to him now, and, as they rested, he saw the -compunction, the solicitude, with which they had met him on her -entrance, return to them. "I'm not so very late, am I?" she said, -rising. "I'll take off my hat and be ready in a moment." - -"Don't hurry," said Oldmeadow. - -She was tired, more tired than she knew. During dinner she hardly spoke, -and, finding the resolve suddenly, he said, as they came back to their -salon: "Do you know what you must do now. Go and lie down and rest for -an hour. Until nine. It's not unselfishness. I'd rather have half of you -to talk to for our last talk, than none of you at all." - -"How dear of you," she said. She looked at him with gratitude and, -still, with the compunction. "It would be a great rest. It would be -better for our talk. I can go to sleep at once, you know. Like -Napoleon," she added with a flicker of her playfulness. - -When she had gone into her room Oldmeadow went out and walked along the -quai. The night was dark and dimmed with fog, but there was a moon and -as he walked he watched it glimmer on the windows of St. Jean. He seemed -to see the august form of the cathedral through a watery element and the -grey and silver patterns of the glass were like the scales of some vast -fish. A sort of whale waiting to swallow up the Jonah that was himself, -he reflected, and, leaning his elbows on the parapet of the quai, the -analogy carried him further and he saw the cathedral like a symbol of -Adrienne's life--her "big, big" life--looming there before him, -becoming, as the moon rose higher, more and more visible in its austere -and menacing majesty. What was his love to measure itself against such a -vocation?--for that was what it came to, as she had said. She was as -involved, as harnessed, as passionately preoccupied as a Saint Theresa. -How could he be fitted in with Serbia and all the hordes of human need -and wretchedness that he saw her sailing forward to succour? He knew a -discouragement deeper than any he had felt, for he was not a doctor and -his physical strength was crippled by his wounds; and, shaking his -shoulders in the chilly November air, he turned his back on the -cathedral and leaned against the parapet to look up through leafless -branches where the plane tassels still hung, at the lighted windows of -the hotel; their hotel, where the room, still theirs, waited for them. -He felt himself take refuge in the banal lights. After all, she wasn't -really a Saint Theresa. There was human misery everywhere to succour. -Couldn't she, after a winter in Serbia, found creches and visit slums in -London? The masculine scepticism she had detected in him had its -justification. Women weren't meant to go on, once the world's crisis -past, doing feats of heroism; they weren't meant for austere careers -that gave no leisure and no home. The trivial yet radiant vision of -intimacy rose again before him. She slept there above him and he was -guarding her slumber. He would always watch over her and guard her. He -would follow her round the world, if need be, and brush her hair for her -in Serbia or California. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -The gilt clock on the mantelpiece pointed to nine, but when he went to -Adrienne's door and listened there was no sound within her room, and his -heart sank as he wondered if she might not sleep on, in her fatigue, -sleep past all possible hour for their colloquy. Yet he did not feel -that he could go in and wake her. The analogy of the cathedral loomed -before him. It would be like waking Saint Theresa. - -He walked up and down the empty, glittering salon; walked and walked -until the clock struck ten. Desperation nerved him then and he went -again to her door and knocked. - -With hardly a pause her voice answered him; yet he knew that he had -awakened her and it echoed for him with the pathos of so many past -scenes of emergency when it must so have answered a summons from -oblivion: "Coming, coming." Among bombings, he reflected; and sudden -terrible influxes of dying men from the front. - -"Coming," he heard her repeat, on a note of dismay. She had sprung up, -turned on her light and seen the hour. - -He was reminded vividly, as he saw her enter--and it was as if a great -interval of time had separated them--of his first meeting with her. She -was so changed; but now as then she was more composed than anyone he had -ever met. - -But it was of much more than the first meeting that the pale, still face -reminded him. His dreams were in it; the dream where she had come to -him along the terrace, lifting her hand in the moonlight; and the dream -of horror when he had again and again pushed it down to drown. - -"I'm so ashamed," she said, and he saw that it was with an effort she -smiled. The traces of her weeping were now, after her sleep, far more -visible, ageing her, yet making her, too, look younger; like a child -with swollen lids and lips. "I didn't know I was so tired. I slept and -slept. I didn't stir until I heard your knock. Never mind. We'll talk -till midnight." - -She was very sorry for him. - -She sat down at the table and under the electric chandelier her braided -hair showed itself all ruffled and disarranged. She had on her dark -travelling dress and she had thrust her feet into the pale blue satin -_mules_. The disparity of costume in one so accurate, her air of -readiness for the morrow, made him feel her transitoriness almost more -than her presence, though his sense of that pressed upon him with a -stifling imminence. Even though she sat there the room kept its look of -desolate, glittering emptiness and more than their shared life in it he -remembered the far places from which she had come and to which she was -going. It was as if she had just arrived and were pausing for the night -_en route_. - -As he had seen them years ago, so he saw again the monster engines -crossing the prairies at night and flying illumined pennons of smoke -against the sky as they bore her away from blue seas, golden sands, a -land where the good and gifted lurked behind every bush; and before her -stretched the shining rails, miles and miles of them, running through -ruin and desolation, that were to bear her ever onwards into the -darkness. This was what life had brought her to. She had been only a -sojourner among them at Coldbrooks. The linked life of order and family -affection had cast her forth and he saw her, for ever now, unless he -could rescue her, with only hotels to live in and only the chaos she was -to mould, to live for. She seemed already, as she sat there under the -light with her ruffled hair, to be sitting in the train that was to bear -her from him. - -"I think you owe me till midnight, at least," he said. He had not sat -down. He stood at some little distance from her leaning, his arms -folded, against a gilded and inlaid console. "We've lots of things to -talk about." - -"Have we?" Adrienne asked, smiling gently, but as if she humoured an -extravagance. "We'll be together, certainly, even if we don't talk much. -But I have some things to say, too." - -She had dropped her eyes to her hands which lay, lightly crossed, on the -table before her, and she seemed to reflect how best to begin. "It's -about Nancy and Barney," she said. "I wanted, before we part, to talk to -you a little about them. There are things that trouble me and you are -the only person with whom I can keep in touch. You will know how I shall -be longing to hear, everything. You'll let me know at once, won't you?" - -"At once," said Oldmeadow. - -"There might be delays and difficulties," Adrienne went on. "I shall be -very troubled until all that is clear. And then the money. You know -about the money? Barney isn't well off and he was worse off after I'd -come and gone. I tried to arrange that as best I could. Palgrave -understood and entered into all my feelings." - -"Yes; I'd heard. You arranged it all very cleverly," said Oldmeadow. - -He moved away now and, at the other end of the room, his back to her, -came to a standstill, while his eyes dwelt on a large gilt-framed -engraving that hung there; some former Salon triumph; a festive, -spring-tide scene where young women in bustles and bonnets offered sugar -to race-horses in a meadow, admired by young men in silk hats. - -"Do you think this may make a difficulty?" Adrienne asked. "Make him -more reluctant to take what is to come to him? It's Mrs. Chadwick's now, -you know." - -"You've arranged it all so well," said Oldmeadow, noting the gardenias -in the young men's button-holes, "that I don't think they can get away -from it." - -"But will they hate it dreadfully?" she insisted, and he felt that her -voice in its added urgency protested, though unconsciously, against his -distance; "I seem to see that they might. If they can't take it as a -sign of accepted love, won't they hate it?" - -"Well," said Oldmeadow, trying to reflect, though his mind was far from -Barney and Nancy, "dear Eleanor Chadwick doesn't mind taking it, -whatever it's a sign of. And since it will come to Barney through her, I -don't think there'll be enough personality left hanging about it to hurt -much." - -"I wish they could take it as a sign of accepted love," Adrienne -murmured. - -"Perhaps they will," he said. "I'll do my best that they shall, I -promise you." - -It was one thing to promise it and another to know his hope that it -might be a promise never to be redeemed. The cross-currents in his own -thought made him light-headed as he stood there, his back to her, and -examined the glossy creatures in the meadow. "Do you think it will all -take a long time?" Adrienne added, after a little pause. "Will they be -able to marry in six or eight months, say?" - -"It depends on how soon Barney takes action. Say about a year," he -suggested. "They'd wait a little first, wouldn't they?" - -"I hope not. They've waited so long already. I hope it will be as soon -as possible. I shall feel so much more peaceful when I hear they're -married. Could you, perhaps, make them see that, too?" - -And again he promised. "I'll make them see everything I can." - -He turned to her at last. She sat, her face still downcast in its -shadow, while the light glittered on her wreaths of hair. Her hands -still lay before her on the table, and the light fell on her -wedding-ring. Perhaps she was looking at the ring. - -"It all depends on something else," he heard himself say suddenly. - -She turned her head and looked round at him. His attitude, his distance -from her, drew her attention rather than his words, for she repeated -mildly: "On something else?" - -"Whether I can keep those promises, you know," said Oldmeadow. "Yes, it -all depends on something else. That's what I want to talk to you about." - -He hardly knew what he was saying as he approached the table and pushed -the brocaded chair, companion to the one in which she sat, a little -from its place. He leaned on its back and looked down at her hands and -Adrienne kept her eyes on him, attentive rather than perplexed. - -"May I talk to you about it now?" he asked. "It's something quite -different." - -"Oh, do," said Adrienne. She drew her hands into her lap and sat -upright, in readiness. And, suddenly, as he was silent, she added: -"About yourself? I've been forgetting that, haven't I? I've only been -thinking of my side. You have quite other plans, perhaps. Perhaps you're -not going back to England for ever so long. Is it an appointment?" - -"No; not an appointment," he muttered, still looking down, at the table -now, since her hands were no longer there. "But perhaps I shan't be -going back for a long time. I hope not." - -"Oh," she murmured. And now he had perplexed her. After what he had just -promised her, his hope must perplex and even trouble her. "Do tell me," -she said. - -"It's something I want to ask you," said Oldmeadow--"And it will -astonish you. You may find it hard to forgive; because I've meant to ask -it from the beginning; from our deciding to go away together. As far -back as the time in the hospital." - -"But you may ask anything. Anything at all," she almost urged upon him. -"After what I've asked you--you have every right. If there's anything I -can do in the wide, wide world for you--oh! you know how glad and proud -I should be. As for forgiveness"--he heard the smile in her voice, she -was troubled, yet tranquil, too--"you're forgiven in advance." - -"Am I? Wait and see." He, too, tried to smile, as he used the tag; but -it was a mechanical smile and he felt his heart knocking against the -chair-back as he went on: "Because I haven't done what you asked me to -do as you asked me to do it. I haven't done it from the motive you -supposed. It's been for Barney and for Nancy and for you; but it's been -most of all for myself." He screwed his glass into his eye as he spoke -with a gesture as mechanical as the smile had been and he looked at her -at last, thus brought nearer. "I want you not to go on to-morrow." It -was the first, the evident, the most palpable desire that rose to his -lips. "I want you never to go on again, alone. If you can't stay with -me, I want you to let me follow you. When the time comes I want you to -marry me. I love you." - -The light as it fell on her seemed suddenly strange, almost portentous -in its brilliancy. Or was it her stillness, as she sat and gazed at him -after he had spoken the words, that was strange and portentous? It was -as if they arrested the currents of her being and she sat tranced, -frozen into the fixed shape of an astonishment too deep for emotion. Her -eyes did not alter in their gentleness; but the gentleness became tragic -and pitiful, like the inappropriate calm on the mask of a dead face at -Pompeii, fixed in an eternal unreadiness by the engulfing lava. - -She put up her hand at last and pushed back her hair. With her forehead -bared she became more like the photograph of her father. When she spoke -her voice was slow and feeble, like the voice of a person dangerously -ill. "I don't understand you." - -"Try to," said Oldmeadow. "You must begin far back." - -She still kept her hand pressed upon her hair. "You don't mean that it's -the conventionally honourable thing to do? Oh, no; you don't mean that?" -Her face in its effort to understand was appalled. - -"No; I don't mean anything conventional," he returned. "I'm thinking -only of you. Of my love. I'll come with you to Serbia to-morrow--if -you'll let me. I could kneel and worship you as you sit there." - -"Oh," she more feebly murmured. She sank back in her chair. - -"My darling, my saint," said Oldmeadow, gazing at her; "if you must -leave me, you'll take that with you; that the man who destroyed you is -your lover; that you are dearer to him than anything on earth." - -"Oh," she murmured again, and she put her hands before her face. Her -eyes were hidden; she had spoken no word of reproach and he could not -keep himself from her. He knelt beside her, grasping the chair across, -behind her. She was so near that he could have laid his head upon her -breast. "Don't leave me," he heard his pleading voice, but she seemed so -much nearer than his own voice; "or let me come. Everything shall be as -you wish and when you wish. Tell me that you care, too; or that you can -come to care. Tell me that you can think of me as your husband." - -She was there, with her hidden eyes, within his arms, and inevitably -they closed around her, and though he heard her murmur, "Please, please, -please," he could not relinquish her. She was free and he was free. -They had cut themselves off from the world. They were alone in the -strange city; in the strange, bright, hallucinated room; and he knew -from the ache and rapture of her nearness how he had craved it. - -But, gently, he heard her say again, "Please," and gently she put him -from her and he saw her face, and her eyes full of grief and gentleness. -"Forgive me," she said. - -"My darling. For what?" he almost groaned. "Don't say you're going to -break my heart." - -She kept her hand on his breast, holding him from her while she looked -into his eyes. "It is so beautiful to be loved," she said, and her voice -was still the slow, feeble voice of exhaustion. "Even when one has no -right to be. Don't misunderstand. Even when one may not love back; not -in that way. Forgive me; not in that way; my dearest friend." - -"Why mayn't you love back? Why not in that way? If it's beautiful, why -mayn't you?" - -"Sit there, will you? Yes; keep my hand. How weak I've been, and cruel. -It can't be. Don't you know? Haven't you seen? It has always been for -him. He must be free; but I can never be free." - -"Oh, no. No. That's impossible," Oldmeadow said, leaning towards her -across the table and keeping her hand in both of his. "I can't stand -that. I could stand your work, your vocation, better. But not Barney, -who loves another woman. That's impossible." - -"But it is so," she said, softly, looking at him. "Really it is so." - -"No, no," Oldmeadow repeated, and he raised her hand to his lips and -kept it there, a talisman against the menace of her words. "He lost -you. He's gone. I've found you and you care for me. You can't hide from -me that you care for me. Just now. For those moments. You were mine." - -"No," she repeated. "I was weak and cruel, but I was not yours." - -She had been incredibly near so short a time ago before. Now, looking at -him, with her difficult breaths and gentle, inflexible eyes, she was -incredibly remote. "I am his, only his," she said. "I love him and I -shall always love him. It makes no difference. He loves Nancy, but it -makes no difference. He is my husband. The father of my baby." - -She tried to speak on steadily while she thus gave him the truth that -ended all his hope; but the desperate emotion with which he received it -made real and overpowering to her her outlived yet living sorrow. With -all that she must relinquish laid bare to her in the passion of his eyes -she could measure all that she had lost, as she had, perhaps, till then, -never measured it. "Don't you know?" she said. "Don't you see? My heart -is broken, broken, broken." - -She put her head down on her arms as she said the words and he heard her -bitter weeping. - -He knew, as he listened, that it was all over with him. Dimly, in the -terrible suffering that wrenched at him, he received his further -revelation of the nature already nearer him than any in the world. Her -strength would be in all she did and felt. She had loved Barney and she -would always love him. Her marriage had been to her an ultimate and -indissoluble experience. That was why she had been so blind. She could -not have thought of herself as a woman to be again loved and wooed. - -Her hair lay against his hands, still holding hers, and he found himself -stroking it, without tenderness or solicitude it seemed. It seemed to be -only automatically that his fingers passed across it, while he noted its -warmth and fineness and bright, lovely colour, remembering that he had -thought it at the first her one indubitable beauty. - -They sat there thus for a long time. The gilt clock paused, choked, then -in a voice of hurrying, hoarsened silver rang out eleven strokes. -Footsteps passed and faded up the corridor; doors closed. A tramway on -the quai clashed and clanged, came to a noisy standstill, and moved on -again with a rattling of cables and raucous blasts from a horn; and in -the profound silence that followed he seemed to hear the deep old river -flowing. - -"Really, you see, it's broken," said Adrienne. She had ceased to weep, -but she still leaned forward, her head upon her folded arms. "You saw it -happen," she said. "That night when you found me in the rain." - -"I've seen everything happen to you, haven't I?" said Oldmeadow. - -"Yes," she assented. "Everything. And I've made you suffer, too. Isn't -that strange; everybody who comes near me I make suffer." - -"Well, in different ways," he said. "Some because you are near and -others because you won't be." - -His voice was colourless. His hand still passed across her hair. - -"Don't you see," she said, after a moment, "that it couldn't have been. -Try to see that and to accept it. Not you and me. Not Barney's friend -and Barney's wife. In every way it couldn't have done, really. It makes -no difference for me. I'm a _deracinee_, as I said. A wanderer. But what -would have become of you, all full of roots as you are? You can live it -down without me. You never could have with. And how could you have -wandered with me? For that must be my life." - -"You know, it's no good trying to comfort me," said Oldmeadow. "What I -feel is that any roots I have are in you." - -"They will grow again. The others will grow again." - -"I don't want others, darling," said Oldmeadow. "You see, my heart is -broken, too." - -She lifted her head at last and he saw her marred and ravaged face. - -"It can't be helped," he tried to smile at her. "You weren't there to be -recognized when I first met you and now that you are there, I've come -too late. I believe that if I'd come before Barney, you'd have loved me. -It's my only comfort." - -"Who can say," said Adrienne. Her gaze, as she looked at him, was deep -with the mystery of her acceptance. "Perhaps. It seems to me all this -was needed to bring us where we are--enmity and bitterness and grief. -And my love for Barney, too. Let me tell you. It's in the past that I -think of him. As if he were dead. It's something over; done with for -ever; yet something always there. How can one be a mother and forget? -Even when he is Nancy's husband and when she is a mother, I shall not -cease to feel myself his wife. Perhaps you think that strange, after Meg -and what I believed right for her. But it is quite clear to me, and -simple. It isn't a thing of laws and commandments; only of our own -hearts. If we can love again, we may. But for me it would be impossible. -With me everything was involved. I couldn't, ever, be twice a wife." - -Silence fell between them. - -"I'll see about the little girl's grave," said Oldmeadow suddenly. He -did not know what had made him think of it. Perhaps something that had -gone on echoing in him after she had spoken of her maternity. "I'll go -to Evian to-morrow. It will spare Josephine the journey and give me -something to do. You'll tell me the name and give me the directions -before you go." - -Tears filled her eyes as she looked at him; but they did not fall. They -could need no controlling. The springs of weeping must be nearly -drained. "Thank you," she said, and she looked away, seeming to think -intently. - -It was now too late for the tramways. They had ceased to crash and -rattle by, but a sound of belated singing passed along the quais, -melancholy in its induced and extravagant mirth. - -The horrible sense of human suffering that had beaten in upon him at the -hospital, pressed again upon his heart. He saw himself departing next -day to find the abandoned grave and he saw himself standing beside her -train and measuring along the shining rails the vast distances that were -to bear her away for ever. - -"That's the worst," he said. "You're suffering too. I must see you go -away and know that you are unhappy. I must think of you as unhappy. With -a broken heart." - -Her eyes, after she had thanked him, had been fixed in the intent -reverie. She, too, perhaps, had been seeing those tides of misery, the -sea of which she had spoken, breaking in tragic waves for ever; so -unchanged by all the alleviations that love or mercy could bring; and it -was perhaps with despair that she saw herself as one with it. Her eyes -as she turned them on him were full of distance and of depth and, with -sickening grief, he felt that a woman with a broken heart could do -nothing more for herself or for him. - -But her thought, whatever the voids of darkness it had visited, drew -nearer and nearer to his need as she looked at him. Something of her own -strong vigilance was in the look, bringing the seagull to his mind. The -seagull caught and battered by the waves, with sodden wings, half -dragged down, yet summoning its strength to rise from the submerging -sea. - -"But you can be happy with a broken heart," she said. Their hands had -fallen apart long since. She stretched out hers now and took his in her -small, firm grasp. - -"Can you?" he asked. - -"You mustn't think of me like this," she said, and it was as if she read -his thoughts and their imagery. "I went down, I know; like drowning. -Sometimes the waves break over you and pull you down, and there seems -nothing else in all the world but yourself and what you've suffered. But -it doesn't last. Something brings you up again." - -Something had brought her up again now. His darkness. His misery. It was -as if he saw her spread her wings and saw her eyes measuring, for them -both, the spaces of sea and sky. - -He remembered a picture in a book he had loved as a little boy: little -Diamond held to the breast of the North Wind as she flies forth in her -streaming hair against a sky of stars. So he felt himself lying on her -breast and lifted with her. - -"I've told you how happy I can be. It's all true," she said. "It's all -there. The light, the peace, the strength. I shall find them. And so -will you." - -"Shall I?" he questioned gently. "Without you?" - -"Yes. Without me. You will find them. But you won't be without me," said -Adrienne. - -Already she was finding them. He knew that, for, as she looked at him, -he felt an influence passing from her to him like the laying of her hand -upon his brow. But it was closer than that. It was to her breast that -her eyes held him while, in a long silence, the compulsion of her faith -flowed into him. First quietness; then peace; then a lifting radiance. - -"Promise me," he heard her say. - -He did not know what it was he must promise, but he seemed to feel it -all without knowing and he said: "I promise." - -She rose and stood above him. "You mustn't regret. You mustn't want." - -She laid her hands upon his shoulders as she spoke and looked down at -him, so austere, so radiant. "Anything else would have spoiled it. We -were only meant to find each other like this and then to part." - -"I'll be good," said Oldmeadow. It was like saying one's prayers at -one's mother's knees and his lips found the child-like formula. - -"We must part," said Adrienne. "I have my life and you have yours and -they take different ways. But you won't be without me, I won't be -without you. How can we be, when we will never, never forget each other -and our love?" - -He looked up at her. He had put out his hands and they grasped her dress -as a donor in a votive altarpiece grasps the Madonna's healing garment. -It was not, he knew, to keep her. It was rather in an accepting -relinquishment that he held her thus for their last communion, receiving -through touch and sight and hearing her final benison. - -"I will think of you every day, until I die," she said. "I will pray for -you every day. Dear friend--dearest friend--God bless and keep you." - -She had stooped to him and for a transcending moment he was taken into -her strong, life-giving embrace. The climax of his life was come as he -felt her arms close round him and her kiss upon his forehead. And as she -held him thus he believed all that she had said and all for which she -could have found no words. That he should find the light and more and -more feel their unity in it: that the thought of her would be strength -to him always; as the thought of him and of his love would be strength -to her. - -After she had gone, he sat for a long time bathed in the sense of her -life, and tasting, for that span of time, her own security of eternal -goodness. - -THE END - - -Typographical error was corrected by the etext transcriber: - -"Adriennes mustn't fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only -justification for Adriennes is to be in the right. => "Adrienne mustn't -fail," said Mrs. Averil dryly. "The only justification for Adrienne is -to be in the right. {pg 241} - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Adrienne Toner, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIENNE TONER *** - -***** This file should be named 42428.txt or 42428.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/2/42428/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project -Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you -charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you -do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the -rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose -such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and -research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do -practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is -subject to the trademark license, especially commercial -redistribution. - - - -*** START: FULL LICENSE *** - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project -Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at -http://gutenberg.org/license). - - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy -all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. -If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the -terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or -entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement -and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" -or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the -collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an -individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are -located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from -copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative -works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg -are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project -Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by -freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of -this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with -the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by -keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project -Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in -a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check -the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement -before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or -creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project -Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning -the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United -States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate -access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently -whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, -copied or distributed: - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived -from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is -posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied -and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees -or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work -with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the -work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 -through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the -Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or -1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional -terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked -to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the -permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any -word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or -distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than -"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version -posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), -you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a -copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon -request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other -form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided -that - -- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is - owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he - has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the - Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments - must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you - prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax - returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and - sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the - address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to - the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." - -- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or - destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium - and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of - Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any - money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days - of receipt of the work. - -- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set -forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from -both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael -Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the -Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm -collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain -"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or -corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual -property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a -computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by -your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with -your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with -the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a -refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity -providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to -receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy -is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further -opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER -WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO -WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. -If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the -law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be -interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by -the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any -provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance -with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, -promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, -harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, -that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do -or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm -work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any -Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. - - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers -including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists -because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from -people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. -To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 -and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive -Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at -http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent -permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. -Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered -throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at -809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email -business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact -information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official -page at http://pglaf.org - -For additional contact information: - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To -SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any -particular state visit http://pglaf.org - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. -To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate - - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic -works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm -concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared -with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project -Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. - - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. -unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/42428.zip b/old/42428.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 5bc9804..0000000 --- a/old/42428.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/readme.htm b/old/readme.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 1a09b1c..0000000 --- a/old/readme.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,13 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html> -<html lang="en"> -<head> - <meta charset="utf-8"> -</head> -<body> -<div> -Versions of this book's files up to October 2024 are here.<br> -More recent changes, if any, are reflected in the GitHub repository: -<a href="https://github.com/gutenbergbooks/42428">https://github.com/gutenbergbooks/42428</a> -</div> -</body> -</html> |
