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."