Palgrave had not gone to the drawing-room, and that, at all events, was
a comfort. A wood fire burned on the hearth and near it Nancy was
holding wool for Mrs. Chadwick to wind. Barbara had been sent to bed and
Meg and Miss Toner sat on the sofa hand in hand. Even in the pressure of
his distress and anxiety Oldmeadow could but be aware of amusement at
seeing Meg thus. It had, of course, been Miss Toner who had taken her
hand. But no one else could have taken it. No one else could have been
allowed to go on holding it placidly before on-lookers of whose mirthful
impressions Meg must be well aware. She didn't mind in the least. That
was what Miss Toner had done to her. She enjoyed having her hand held by
anyone so much interested in her.
Barney walked to the fireplace and stood before it. He had no faculty
for concealing his emotions and the painful ones through which he had
just passed were visible on his sensitive face.
"Give us a song, Meg," Oldmeadow suggested. He did not care for Meg's
singing, which conveyed, in a rich, sweet medium, a mingled fervour and
shallowness of feeling. But to hear her sing would be better than to see
her holding Miss Toner's hand.
Barney crossed at once to the seat Meg vacated and dropped down into it,
no doubt thanking his friend for what he imagined to be a display of
tact, and Oldmeadow saw the quiet, firm look that flowed over and took
possession of him. Miss Toner knew, of course, that Barney had been
having painful emotions; and she probably knew that they had been caused
by the dry, deep-hearted Meredithian hero. But after the long look she
did not speak to him. She sat in her pearls and whiteness and gave
careful attention to the music.
Oldmeadow accompanied Meg, tolerantly, and a trifle humorously, throwing
a touch of mockery into his part. Meg's preference to-night seemed to be
for gardens; Gardens of Sleep; Gardens of Love; God's Gardens. "What a
wretch you are, Roger," she said, when she had finished. "You despise
feeling."
"I thought I was wallowing in it," Oldmeadow returned. "Did I stint
you?"
"No; you helped me to wallow. That's why you're such a wretch. Always
showing one that one is wallowing when one thinks one's soaring. It's
your turn, now, Adrienne. Let's see if he'll manage to make fun of you."
"Does Miss Toner sing, too? Now do you know, Meg," said Oldmeadow,
keeping up the friendly banter, "I'm sure she doesn't sing the sort of
rubbish you do."
"I think they're beautiful songs," Mrs. Chadwick murmured from her wool,
"and I think Roger played them most beautifully. Why should you say he
is making fun of you, Meg?"
"Because he makes you think something's beautiful that he thinks
rubbish, Mummy. Come along, Adrienne. You will, won't you? I expect my
voice sounds all wrong to you. I've had no proper training."
"It's a very lovely voice, Meg, used in a poor cause," said Miss Toner
smiling. "And it is badly placed. I think I could help you there. I've
no voice at all, but I have been taught how to sing. It would be more to
the point, though, if Mr. Oldmeadow were to play to us, for I hear that
he is an accomplished musician."
"I'm really anything but accomplished," said Oldmeadow; "but I can play
accompaniments cleverly. Do sing to us. I know you'll give us something
worth accompanying."
Miss Toner rose and came to the piano with her complete and unassuming
confidence. She turned the pages of the music piled there and asked him
if he cared for Schubert's songs. Yes; she was a watch wound to go
accurately and she could rely on herself, always, to the last tick. Even
if she knew--and he was sure she knew--that he had been undermining her,
she would never show a shadow or a tremor; and she would always know
what was the best music. Only, as she selected "Litanei" and placed it
before him, he felt that over him, also, flowed the quiet, firm look.
"Litanei" was one of his favourites in a composer he loved, and, as she
sang there above him, he found the song emerging unharmed from her
interpretation. It was as she had said--no voice to speak of; the
dryest, flattest little thread of sound; and no feeling, either (what a
relief after Meg!), except the feeling for scrupulous accuracy. Yet her
singing was what he found in her to like best. It was disciplined; it
accepted its own limits; it fulfilled an order. There was no desecration
of the heavenly song, for, intelligently after all, she made no attempt
upon its heart.
When she had finished, she looked down at him. They were removed by half
the length of the room from the fireside group. The lamps were behind
them. Only the candles set in the piano-rack illumined Miss Toner; and
while the white roses over her ears struck him anew as foolish, her eyes
anew struck him as powerful.
"Thank you. That was a pleasure," he said.
It was a pleasure. It was almost a link. He had found a ground to meet
her on. He saw himself in the future accompanying Barney's wife. He
need, then, so seldom talk to her. But, alas! she stepped at once from
the safe frame of art.
"If we can rise from loss to feel like that, if we can lift our sorrows
like that, we need never turn to palliatives, need we, Mr. Oldmeadow?"
she said.
Stupidity, complacency, or power, whatever it was, it completely
disenchanted him. It left him also bereft of repartee. What he fell back
upon, as he looked up at her and then down at the keys again, was a mere
schoolboy mutter of "Come now!"
After all a schoolboy mutter best expressed what he felt. She was not
accustomed to having her ministrations met with such mutters and she did
not like it. That was apparent to him as she turned away and went back
to the sofa and Barney. She had again tried him and again found him
wanting.
* * * * *
Barney and Miss Toner left in her motor next morning shortly after
breakfast, and though with his friend Oldmeadow had no further exchange,
he had, with Miss Toner, a curious encounter that was, he felt sure, a
direct result of her impressions of the night before. They met in the
dining-room a few moments before breakfast, and as she entered, wearing
already her motoring hat, closely bound round her face with a veil, he
was aware that she looked, if that were possible, more composed than he
had ever seen her. He felt sure that she had waited for her opportunity,
and had followed him downstairs, knowing that she would find him alone;
and he realized then that she was more composed, because she had an
intention or, rather, since it was more definite, a determination.
Determination in her involved no effort: it imparted, merely, the added
calm of an assured aim.
She gave him her hand and said good morning with the same air of
scrupulous accuracy that she had given to the rendering of "Litanei" and
then, standing before the fire, her hands clasped behind her, her eyes
raised to his, she said: "Mr. Oldmeadow, I want to say something to
you."
It was the gentle little voice, unaltered, yet he knew that he was in
for something he would very much rather have avoided; something with
anybody else unimaginable, but with her, he saw it now, quite
inevitable. Yet he tried, even at this last moment, to avoid it and
said, adjusting his eyeglass and moving to the sideboard: "But not
before we've had our tea, surely. Can't I get you some? Will you trust
me to pour it out?"
"Thanks; I take coffee--not tea," said Miss Toner from her place at the
fire, "and neither has been brought in yet."
He had just perceived, to his discomfiture, that they had not. There was
nothing for it but to turn from the ungarnished sideboard and face her
again.
"It's about Barney, Mr. Oldmeadow," Miss Toner said, unmoved by his
patent evasion. "It's because I know you love Barney and care for his
happiness. And it's because I hope that you and I are to be friends, and
friendship can only be built on truth. Try to trust more; will you?
That's all I want to say. Try to trust. You will be happier if you do
and make other people happier."
Oldmeadow had never experienced such an assault upon his personality,
and he met it gagged and bound, for, assuredly, this was to be Barney's
wife. A slow flush mounted to his face.
"I'm afraid I seem very strange and unconventional to you," Adrienne
Toner went on. "You've lived in a world where people don't care enough
for each other to say the real things. They must be felt if they've to
be said, mustn't they? Yet you do care for people. I have seen that,
watching you here; and you care for real things. It's a crust of caution
and convention that is about you. You are afraid of expression. You are
afraid of feeling. You are afraid of being taken in and of wasting
yourself. Don't be afraid, Mr. Oldmeadow. We never lose ourselves by
trusting. We never lose ourselves by giving. It's a realer self that
comes. And with you, I see it clearly, if you let the crust grow
thicker, it will shut life and light and joy away from you; and when
light cannot visit our hearts, they wither within us. That is your
danger. I want to be your friend, so I must say the truth to you."
He knew, though he had to struggle not to laugh, that he was very angry
and that he must not show anger; though it would really be better to
show that than his intense amusement; and it took him a moment, during
which they confronted each other, to find words; dry, donnish words;
words of caution and convention. They were the only ones he had
available for the situation. "My dear young lady," he said, "you take
too much upon yourself."
She was not in the least disconcerted. She met his eyes steadily. "You
mean that I am presumptuous, Mr. Oldmeadow?"
"You take too much upon yourself," he repeated. "As you say, I hope we
may be friends."
"Is that really all, Mr. Oldmeadow?" she said, looking at him with such
a depth of thoughtfulness that he could not for the life of him make out
whether she found him odious or merely pitiful.
"Yes; that's really all," he returned.
The dining-room was very bright and the little blue figure before the
fire was very still. The moment fixed itself deep in his consciousness
with that impression of stillness and brightness. It was an
uncomfortable impression. Her little face, uplifted to his, absurd, yet
not uncharming, was, in its still force, almost ominous.
"I'm sorry," was all she said, and she turned and went forward to greet
Mrs. Chadwick.