"I do so want a talk with you, Roger," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to him
when tea was over. The dining-room opened at one end of the hall and the
drawing-room at the other and the morning-room, Mrs. Chadwick's special
retreat, into which she now drew him, was tucked in behind the
dining-room and looked out at an angle of the garden wall and at the
dove-cot that stood there. Mrs. Chadwick's doves were usually fluttering
about the window and even, when it was open, entering the room, where
she sometimes fondly fed them, causing thereby much distress of mind to
Turner, the good old parlourmaid. A pleasant little fire was burning
there and, after placing her primroses in the white bowl, Mrs. Chadwick
drew her chair to it, casting a glance, as she did so, up at the large
portrait of her husband in hunting dress that hung above the
mantelpiece. It was painted with the same glib unintelligence as the
dining-room portraits, but the painter had been unable to miss entirely
the whimsical daring of the eyes or to bring into conformity with his
own standard of good looks the charm of the irregular and narrow face.
Francis Chadwick had been an impulsive, idle, endearing man, and,
remaining always in love with his wife, had fondly cherished all her
absurdities. Since his death poor Mrs. Chadwick had been perplexed by
her effort to associate with gravity and inspiration one who had always
been a laughing incentive to inconsequence. Oldmeadow reflected, as he,
too, looked up at him, that Francis Chadwick would neither have needed
nor have liked Miss Toner.
"It's so very, very strange, Roger, I really must tell you," Mrs.
Chadwick said. Her hair, still bright and abundant, was very untidy. She
had evidently not brushed it since rising from her sofa. "I had one of
my dreadful headaches, you know. It came on at church this morning and I
really couldn't attend to Mr. Bodman at all. Perhaps you saw."
"I heard. Yes. Miss Toner had disturbed you a good deal."
"I did feel so bewildered and unhappy about it all," said Mrs. Chadwick,
fixing her blue eyes upon the family friend. Eleanor Chadwick's eyes
could show the uncanny ingenuousness and the uncanny wisdom of a baby's.
"Nothing so innocent or so sharp was ever seen outside a perambulator,"
her husband had once said of them. "About her, you know, Roger," she
continued, "and Barney and Palgrave. The influence. I could not bear
them to lose their faith in the church of their fathers."
"No," said Oldmeadow. "But you must be prepared to see it shift a good
deal. Faiths have to shift nowadays if they're to stand."
"Well. Yes. I know what you mean, Roger. But it isn't a question of
shifting, is it? I'm very broad. I've always been all for breadth. And
the broader you are the firmer you ought to be, oughtn't you?"
"Well, Miss Toner's broad and firm," Oldmeadow suggested. "I never saw
anyone more so."
"But in such a queer way, Roger. Like saying one's prayers out of doors
and thinking oneself as good as Christ. Oh, it all made me perfectly
wretched and after lunch my head was so bad that I went and lay down in
the dark; and it raged, simply. Oh, dear, I thought; this means a day
and night of misery. They go on like that once they begin. Mamma used
to have them in precisely the same way. Absolutely incapacitating. I can
never see how anybody can deny heredity. That's another point, Roger.
I've always accepted evolution. I gave up Adam and Eve long ago; gave
them up as white and good-looking, I mean; because we must have begun
_somewhere_, mustn't we? And Darwin was such a good man; though you
remember he came not to care anything at all about music. That may mean
a great deal, if one could think it all out; it's the most religious of
the arts, isn't it? But there's no end to thinking things out!" Mrs.
Chadwick pressed her hand against her forehead, closing her eyes for a
moment. "And Adrienne is very musical."
"You were at your headache," Oldmeadow reminded her. It was customary in
the family circle thus to shepherd Mrs. Chadwick's straying thoughts.
"Yes, I know. But it all hangs together. Heredity and Mamma and my
headaches; and Adrienne's mother, who was musical, too, and played on a
harp. Well, it was raging and I was lying there, when there came a
little rap at the door. I knew at once who it was and she asked in such
a gentle voice if she might come in. It's a very soothing voice, isn't
it? But do you know I felt for a moment quite frightened, as if I simply
couldn't see her. But I had to say yes, and she came in so softly and
sat down beside me and said: 'I used to help Mother, sometimes, with her
headaches. May I help you?' She didn't want to talk about things, as I'd
feared. Such a relief it was. So I said: 'Oh, do my dear,' and she laid
her hand on my forehead and said: 'You will soon feel better. It will
soon quite pass away.' And then not another word. Only sitting there in
the dark, with her hand on my forehead. And do you know, Roger, almost
at once the pain began to melt away. You know how a dish of junket melts
after you cut into it. It was like that. 'Junket, junket,' I seemed to
hear myself saying; and such a feeling of peace and contentment. And
before I knew anything more I fell into the most delicious sleep and
slept till now, just before tea. She was sitting there still, in the
dark beside me and I said: 'Oh, my dear, to think of your having stayed
in on this lovely afternoon!' But she went to pull up the blinds and
said that she loved sitting quietly in the dark with some one she cared
for, sleeping. 'I think souls come very close together, then,' she said.
Wasn't it beautiful of her, Roger? Like astral bodies, you know, and
auras and things of that sort. She _is_ beautiful. I made up my mind to
that, then. She gives me such a feeling of trust. How can one help it?
It's like what one reads of Roman Catholic saints and people in the
Bible. The gift of healing. The laying on of hands. We don't seem to
have any of them and we can't count _her_, since she doesn't believe in
the church. But if only they'd give up the Pope, I don't see why we
shouldn't accept their saints; such dear, good people, most of them. And
the Pope is quite an excellent man just now, I believe. But isn't it
very strange, Roger? For a person who can do that to one can't be
irreligious, can they?"
Mrs. Chadwick's eye was now fixed upon him, less wistfully and more
intently, and he knew that something was expected of him.
"Hypnotic doctors can do it, you know. You needn't be a saint to do it,"
he said. "Though I suppose you must have some power of concentration
that implies faith. However," he had to say all his thought, though most
of it would be wasted upon poor Eleanor Chadwick, "Miss Toner is
anything but irreligious. You may be sure of that."
"You feel it, too, Roger. I'm so, so glad."
"But her religion is not as your religion," he had to warn her, "nor her
ways your ways. You must be prepared to have the children unsettled;
everyone of them; because she has great power and is far more religious
than most people. She believes in her creed and acts on it. You must
give the children their heads. It's no good trying to circumvent or
oppose them."
"But they mustn't do wrong things, Roger. How can I give them their
heads if it's to do wrong things? I don't know what Mamma would have
said to their not going to church--especially in the country. She would
have thought it very wrong, simply. Sinful and dangerous."
"Hardly that," Oldmeadow smiled. "Even in the country. You don't think
Miss Toner does wrong things. If they take up Miss Toner's creed instead
of going to church, they won't come to much harm. The principal thing is
that there should be something to take up. After all," he was reassuring
himself as well as Mrs. Chadwick, "it hasn't hurt her. It's made her a
little foolish; but it hasn't hurt her. And your children will never be
foolish. They'll get all the good of it and, perhaps, be able to combine
it with going to church.
"Foolish, Roger?" Mrs. Chadwick, relieved of her headache, but not of
her perplexity, gazed wanly at him. "You think Adrienne foolish?"
"A little. Now and then. You mustn't accept anything she says to you
just because she can cure you of a headache."
"But how can you say foolish, Roger? She's had a most wonderful
education?"
"Everything that makes her surer of herself and makes other people surer
of her puts her in more danger of being foolish. One can be too sure of
oneself. Unless one is a saint--and even then. And though I don't think
she's irreligious I don't think she's a saint. Not by any means."
"I don't see how anyone can be more of one, nowadays, Roger. She heals
people and she says prayers, and she is always good and gentle and never
thinks of herself. I'm sure I can't think what you want more."
A touch of plaintiveness and even of protest had come into Mrs.
Chadwick's voice.
"Perhaps what I want is less," he laughed. "Perhaps she's too much of a
saint for my taste. I think she's a little too much of one for your
taste, really--if you were to be quite candid with yourself. Has she
spoken to you at all about Barney? Are you quite sure you'll have to
reckon with her for yourself and the children?"
At this Mrs. Chadwick showed a frank alarm. "Oh, quite, quite sure!" she
said. "She couldn't be so lovely to us all if she didn't mean to take
him! Why do you ask, Roger? You haven't any reason for thinking she
won't?"
"None whatever. Quite the contrary." He didn't want to put poor Mrs.
Chadwick to the cruel test of declaring whether she would rather have
the children go to church and lose Miss Toner and all her money or have
them stay away and keep Miss Toner. After all such a test was not to be
asked of her. Miss Toner wanted people to follow their own light. "I
only wondered if she talked to you about him. Asked any girlish leading
questions."
"None, none whatever," said Mrs. Chadwick. "But I feel that's because
she thinks she knows him far better than I do and that he's told her
everything already. It's rather hard to be a mother, Roger. For of
course, though she is so much better and cleverer than I am, I feel sure
that no one understands Barney as I do."
"She'd be a little cleverer still if she could see that, wouldn't she?"
"Well, I don't know. Girls never do. I was just the same when I was
engaged to Francis. Even now I can't think that old Mrs. Chadwick really
understood him as I did. It's very puzzling, isn't it? Very difficult to
see things from other people's point of view. When she pulled up the
blind this afternoon, she told me that Nancy and Barney were down in the
copse and she seemed pleased."
"Oh, did she?"
"I told her that they'd always been like brother and sister, for I was
just a little afraid, you know, that she might imagine Barney had ever
cared about Nancy."
"I see. You think she wouldn't like that?"
"What woman would, Roger?" And he imagined that Mrs. Chadwick, for all
her folly, was cleverer than Miss Toner guessed, as she added: "And then
she told me that she'd made Barney go without her. She wanted me to see,
you know, that it depended on her. That's another reason why I feel sure
she is going to take him."