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?"