OLDMEADOWdid 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 areinthe 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 noexplanations 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 willtide 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.”
THEpicture 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 behindher 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 sothreatening 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 simplyimmenselyfor 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 thewrist, 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. Chadwicksupplicatingly. 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 sinceI’veseen 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 shelooked 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, youareweak, 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 helpyou 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 wifehasset 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 ofview 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 inneed 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 thereisa 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 Adriennewantsher 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’treallysoserious—falling in love, you know. I’m sure I thoughtIwas 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.”
THEwar 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 thisoccasion 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 pointedout 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.
“Iamsurprised 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 whatsheminds—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 toSiberia. 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 trustinghim. 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, ifit 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 notoppose 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 timelike 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 rapidlyaway 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.
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 AdrienneToner; “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 awareof 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 makeyourmistake—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 spoiledit 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 thanmen 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.”