"Mother's got the most poisonous headache," said Meg. "I don't think
she'll be able to come down to tea."
She had joined Oldmeadow on the rickety old bench where he sat reading
and smoking in a sunny corner of the garden. A band of golden
wallflowers behind them exhaled the deep fragrance that he always
associated with spring and Sunday and Coldbrooks, and the old stone wall
behind the flowers exhaled a warmth that was like a fragrance.
"Adrienne is with her," Meg added. She had seated herself and put her
elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands as though she intended a
solid talk.
"Will that be likely to help her head?" Oldmeadow inquired. "I should
say not, if she's going to continue the discourse of this morning."
"Did you think all that rather silly?" Meg inquired, tapping her smart
toes on the ground and watching them. "You looked as if you did. But
then you usually do look as though you thought most things and people
silly. I didn't--I mean, not in her. I quite saw what you did; at least
I think so. But she can say things that would be silly in other people.
Now Palgrave is silly. There's just the difference. Is it because he
always feels he's scoring off somebody and she doesn't?" Meg was
evidently capable, for all her devotion, of dispassionate inquiry.
"She's certainly more secure than Palgrave," said Oldmeadow. "But I
feel that's only because she's less intelligent. Palgrave is aware,
keenly, of a critical and probably hostile world; and Miss Toner is
unaware of everything except her own benevolence, and the need for it."
Meg meditated. Then she laughed. "You _are_ spiteful, Roger. Oh--I don't
mean about Adrienne in particular. But you always see the weak spots in
people, first go. It's rather jolly, all the same, if you come to think
it over, to be like that. Perhaps that's all she is aware of; but it
takes you a good way--wanting to help people and seeing how they can be
helped."
"Yes; it does take you a good way. I don't deny that Miss Toner will go
far."
"And make us go too far, perhaps?" Meg mused. "Well, I'm quite ready for
a move. I think we're all rather stodgy, really, down here. And up in
London, too, if it comes to that. I'm rather disappointed in London, you
know, Roger, and what it does for one. Just a different kind of sheep,
it seems to me, from the kind we are in the country; noisy skipping
sheep instead of silent, slow ones. But they all follow each other about
in just the same way. And what one likes is to see someone who isn't
following."
"Yes; that's true, certainly," Oldmeadow conceded. "Miss Toner isn't a
sheep. She's the sort of person who sets the sheep moving. I'm not so
sure that she knows where she is going, all the same."
"You mean--Be careful; don't you?" said Meg, looking up at him sideways
with her handsome eyes. "I'm not such a sheep myself, when it comes to
that, you know, Roger. I look before I leap--even after Adrienne," she
laughed; and Oldmeadow, looking back at her, laughed too--pleased with
her, yet a little disconcerted by what she revealed of experience.
"The reason I like her so awfully," Meg went on--while he reflected
that, after all, she was now twenty-five--"and it's a good thing I do,
isn't it, since it's evident she's going to take Barney; but the reason
is that she's so interested in one. More than anyone I ever knew--far
and far away. Of course Mother's interested; but it's _for_ one; _about_
one; not _in_ one, as it were. And then darling old Mummy isn't exactly
intelligent, is she; or only in such unexpected spots that it's never
much good to one; one can never count on it beforehand. Whereas Adrienne
is so interested in you that she makes you feel more interested in
yourself than you ever dreamed you could feel. Do you know what I mean?
Is it because she's American, do you think? English people aren't
interested in themselves, off their own bat, perhaps; or in other people
either! I don't mean we're not selfish all right!" Meg laughed.
"Selfish and yet impersonal," Oldmeadow mused. "With less of our social
consciousness in use, with more of it locked up in automatism,
possibly."
"There's nothing locked up in Adrienne; absolutely nothing," Meg
declared. "It's all there--out in the shop-window. And it's a big window
too, even though some of the hats and scarves, so to speak, may strike
us as funny. But, seriously, what is it about her, do you think? How can
she care so much?--about everybody?"
He remembered Nancy's diagnosis. "Not about everybody. Only about people
she can do something for. You'll find she won't care about me."
"Why should she? You don't care for her. Why should she waste herself on
people who don't need her?" Meg's friendliness of glance did not
preclude a certain hardness.
"Why indeed? It could never occur to her, of course, that she might need
somebody. I don't mean that spitefully. She is strong. She doesn't
need."
"Exactly. Like you," said Meg. "She's quite right to pay no attention to
the other strong people. For of course you are very strong, Roger, and
frightfully clever; and good, too. Only one has to be cleverer, no
doubt, than we are to see your goodness as easily as Adrienne's. It's
the shop-window again. She shows her goodness all the time; and you
don't."'
Oldmeadow knocked the ashes out of his pipe and felt for his
tobacco-pouch. "I show my spite. No; you mustn't count me among the
good. I suppose your mother's headache came on this morning after she
found out that Miss Toner doesn't go to church."
"Of course it was that. You saw that she was thinking about it all
through the service, didn't you?" said Meg. "And once, poor lamb, she
said, 'Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners' instead of Amen. Did you
notice? It will bother her frightfully, of course. But after all it's
not so bad as if Adrienne were a Dissenter and wanted to go to chapel!
Mummy in her heart of hearts would much rather you were a pagan than a
Dissenter. I don't think it will make a bit of difference really. So
long as she gives money to the church, and is nice to the village
people. Mother will get over it," said Meg.
He thought so too. His own jocose phrase returned to him. As long as the
money was there it didn't make any difference. But Meg's security on
that score interested him. With all her devotion to the new friend she
struck him, fundamentally, as less kind than Nancy, who had none. But
that, no doubt, was because Meg, fundamentally, was hard and Nancy
loving. It was because of Miss Toner's interest in herself that Meg was
devoted. "You're so sure, then, that she's going to take Barney?" he
asked.
"Quite sure," said Meg. "Surer than he is. Surer than she is. She's in
love with him all right; more than she knows herself, poor dear. No
doubt she thinks she's making up her mind and choosing. Weighing Barney
in the balance and counting up his virtues. But it's all decided
already; and not by his virtues; it never is," said Meg, again with her
air of unexpected experience. "It's something much more important than
virtues; it's the thickness of his eyelashes and the way his teeth show
when he smiles, and all his pretty ways and habits. Things like that.
She loves looking at him and more than that, even, she loves having him
look at her. I have an idea that she's not had people very much in love
with her before; not people with eyelashes and teeth like Barney. In
spite of all her money. And she's getting on, too. She's as old as
Barney, you know. It's the one, real romance that's ever come to her,
poor dear. Funny you don't see it. Men don't see that sort of thing I
suppose. But she _couldn't_ give Barney up now, simply. It's because of
that, you know"--Meg glanced behind them and lowered her voice--"that
she doesn't like Nancy."
"Doesn't like Nancy!" Oldmeadow's instant indignation was in his voice.
"What has Nancy to do with it?"
"She might have had a great deal, poor darling little Nancy; and it's
that Adrienne feels. She felt it at once. I saw she did; that Nancy and
Barney had been very near each other; that there was an affinity, a
sympathy, call it what you like, that would have led to something more.
It wouldn't have done at all, of course; at least I suppose not. They
knew each other too well; and, until the last year or two, she's been
too young for him. And then, above all, she's hardly any money. But all
the same, if he hadn't come across Adrienne and been bowled over like
this, Barney would have fallen in love with Nancy. She's getting to be
so lovely looking, for one thing, isn't she? And Barney's so susceptible
to looks. He was falling in love with her last winter and she knew it as
well as I did. It's rather rotten luck for Nancy because I'm afraid she
cares; but then women do have rotten luck about love affairs," said Meg,
now sombrely. "The dice are loaded against them every time."
Oldmeadow sat smoking in silence for some moments, making no effort to
master his strong resentment; taking, rather, full possession of its
implications. "Somewhat of a flaw in your angel you must admit," he said
presently. "She doesn't like people who are as strong as she is and she
doesn't like people who might have been loved instead of herself. It
narrows the scale of her benevolence, you know. It makes her look
perilously like a jealous prig, and a prig without any excuse for
jealousy into the bargain."
"Temper, Roger," Meg observed, casting her hard, friendly glance round
at him; "I know you think there's no one quite to match Nancy; and I
think you're not far wrong. She's the straightest, sweetest-tempered
girl who ever stepped on two feet. But all the same Adrienne isn't a
prig, and if she's jealous she can't help herself. She _wants_ to love
Nancy; she thinks she does love her; she'll always be heavenly to her.
She can do a lot for Nancy, you know. She will do a lot for her, even if
Nancy holds her off. But she wishes frightfully that she was old and
ugly. She wishes that Barney weren't so fond of her without thinking
about her. She's jealous and she can't help herself--like all the rest
of us!" Meg laughed grimly. "When it comes to that we're none of us
angels."
It was tea-time and the dear old gong sounded balmily from the house. As
they went along the path the rooks again were cawing overhead and dimly,
like the hint of evening in the air, he remembered his dream and the
sense of menace. "You know, it's not like all the rest of you," he said.
"It's not like Nancy, for instance. Nancy wouldn't dislike a person
because she was jealous of them. In fact I don't believe Nancy could be
jealous. She'd only be hurt."
"It's rather a question of degree, that, isn't it?" said Meg. "In one
form of it you're poisoned and in the other you're cut with a knife; and
the latter is the prettier way of suffering; doesn't make you come out
in a rash and feel sick. Nancy is cut with the knife; and if she's not
jealous in the ugly sense, she dislikes Adrienne all right."
"Why should she like her?" Oldmeadow retorted, and Meg's simile seemed
to cut into him, too. "She doesn't need her money or her interest or her
love. She doesn't dislike her. She merely wishes she were somewhere
else--as I do."
The garden path led straight into the house. One entered a sort of
lobby, where coats and hats and rackets and gardening baskets were kept,
and from the lobby went into the hall. Tea was, as always, laid there
and Mrs. Chadwick, as Meg and Oldmeadow came in, was descending the
staircase at the further end, leaning on Adrienne Toner's arm.
"You see. She's done it!" Meg murmured. She seemed to bear him no
ill-will for his expressed aversion. "I never knew one of Mother's
headaches go so quickly."
"I expect she'd rather have stayed quietly upstairs," said Oldmeadow;
"she looks puzzled. As if she didn't know what had happened to her."
"Like a rabbit when it comes out of the conjuror's hat," said the
irreverent daughter.
That was precisely what poor Eleanor Chadwick did look like and for the
moment his mind was diverted by amusement at her appearance from its
bitter preoccupation. Mrs. Chadwick was the rabbit and Miss Toner was
the conjuror indeed; bland and secure and holding her trophy in a firm
but gentle grasp. Not until they were all seated did Barney and Nancy
appear and then it was evident to him that if Miss Toner were jealous of
Nancy she did not fear her, for it was she who had arranged the walk
from which the young couple had just returned.
"Was it lovely?" she asked Barney, as he took the place beside her. "Oh,
I do wish I could have come; but I knew your Mother needed me."
"The primroses are simply ripping in the wood," said Barney.
Nancy carried a large bunch of primroses.
"Ripping," said Miss Toner, laughing gently.
"How absurd of you, Barney. Could anything be less ripping than
primroses? How beautiful they are and what a lovely bunch. One sees that
Miss Averil loves them from the way she has picked them." If she did not
call Nancy by her Christian name it was, Oldmeadow knew, not her but
Nancy's fault.
Nancy still stood beside the table and from the fact of standing, while
all the rest of them were seated, from the fact of being called Miss
Averil, she seemed, for the moment, oddly an outsider; as if she hardly
belonged to the circle of which Miss Toner was the centre. "Do come and
sit near us," said Miss Toner. "For I had to miss you, too, you see, as
well as the primroses."
"I'd crowd you there," said Nancy, smiling. "I'll sit here near Aunt
Eleanor." From something in her eyes Oldmeadow felt suddenly sure that
not till now had she realized that it had not, really, been her and
Barney's walk. She offered the primroses to Mrs. Chadwick as she took
the chair beside her, saying, "They'll fill your white bowl in the
morning-room, Aunt Eleanor."
"Oh, I say; but I meant those for Adrienne, Nancy!" Barney exclaimed,
and as he did so Meg's eyes met Oldmeadow's over the household loaf.
"She didn't see them in the wood, so she ought to have them. Mummy is
suffocated with primroses already."
But Nancy showed no rash and only an acute Meg could have guessed a cut
as she answered: "I'll pick another bunch to-morrow for Miss Toner,
Barney. They'll be fresher to take to London. These are really Aunt
Eleanor's. I always fill that bowl for her."