It was a soft June day and Oldmeadow was strolling about Mrs. Averil's
garden admiring her herbaceous borders. It was a day that smelt of
ripening strawberries, of warm grass and roses, and the air was full of
a medley of bird voices, thrushes and blackbirds, sweet as grass and
strawberries, and the bubbling rattle of the chaffinch as happy as the
sunlight.
Adrienne Toner was Mrs. Chadwick now, and she and Eleanor Chadwick and
Barney were motoring together in the French Alps. Coldbrooks was empty,
and he had come to stay with Nancy and her mother.
They lived in a small stone house with a Jacobean front that looked,
over a stone wall, at Chelford Green, and had behind it a delightfully
unexpected length of lawn and orchard and kitchen-garden, all enclosed
by higher walls and presided over by a noble cedar. Seen from the garden
The Little House was merely mid-Victorian, but the modern additions were
masked by climbing roses and a great magnolia-tree opened its
lemon-scented cups at the highest bedroom windows. The morning-room was
in the modern part, and from one of its windows, presently, Mrs. Averil
emerged, opening her sunshade as she crossed the grass to join her
guest. She wore a white straw garden hat, tipping over her eyes and
tying, behind, over her thick knot of hair, in a manner that always
recalled to Oldmeadow a lady out of Trollope. Her face was pale, like
Nancy's, and her eyes grey; but rather than blackcaps and primroses she
suggested lace tippets and porcelain tea-sets, and though it was from
her Nancy had her pretty trick of closing her eyes when she smiled, Mrs.
Averil's smile was cogitative and impersonal, and in her always
temperate mirth there was an edge of grimness.
"Well, Roger, I want to hear what you thought about the wedding," she
said. She had not gone to church that morning with Nancy and it was, he
knew, because she wanted an interchange of frank impressions. She had
been prevented from attending Miss Toner's London nuptials by a touch of
influenza and, as she now went on to say, she had got little from Nancy,
who had no eye for pageants and performances. "Eleanor was so absorbed,"
she went on, "in the fact that the Bishop had indigestion and had, at
her suggestion, taken magnesia with his breakfast, that I could not get
much else out of her. She seemed to have seen the Bishop's symptoms
rather than Adrienne and Barney. Now from you I expect all the relevant
details."
"Well, if you call it a detail, Nancy was lovely," said Oldmeadow. "She
looked like a silver-birch in her white and green."
"And pearls," said Mrs. Averil. "You noticed, of course, the necklaces
Adrienne gave them; quite the gift of a princess, yet so innocent and
unobtrusive looking, too. She has great taste in such matters. Did she
look well? Eleanor did say that she, like the Bishop, was very pale."
"She was pale; but not a bit nervous. She rather looked as if she had
been married every day of her life. Nothing ever puts her out, you know.
She was very grave and benign; but she wasn't an imposing bride and the
wreath of orange-blossoms aged her. Nancy and Meg and Barbara and the
Lumley girl aged her, too. She must be older than Barney."
"Yes; she is. A year older. But she's the sort of woman who will wear,"
said Mrs. Averil, pausing before a bed of rose-trees to snip off a
fading flower. "She'll not look very differently at fifty, you know; and
her hair is the sort that may never turn grey. I can see her at seventy
with those big golden braids and all her teeth. There's something very
indestructible about her. Like a doll made of white leather compared to
one made of porcelain. She'll last and last," said Mrs. Averil. "She'll
outlast us all. Barney was radiant, of course."
"Yes. But he _was_ nervous; like a little boy frightened by the
splendour of his Christmas-tree. He looked as though he were arm in arm
with the Christmas-tree itself as he came down the nave. A rather dumpy
little Christmas-tree, but exquisitely lighted and garnished."
"Well, he ought to be radiant," Mrs. Averil observed. "With all that
money, it's an extremely good match for him. The fact of her being
nobody in particular makes no difference, really, since she's an
American. And she has, I gather, no tiresome relations to come
bothering."
"She's very unencumbered, certainly. There's something altogether very
solitary about her," Oldmeadow agreed, watching Mrs. Averil snip off the
withered roses. "I felt that even as she came down the nave on Barney's
arm. It's not a bit about the money he's radiant," he added.
"Oh, I know. Of course not. That was only my own gross satisfaction
expressing itself. He's as in love as it's possible to be. And with
every good reason."
"You took to her as much as they all did, then?"
"That would be rather difficult, wouldn't it? And Barney's reasons would
hardly be those of a dry old aunt. She was very nice and kind to Nancy
and me and she's evidently going to do everything for them. Barbara's
already, you know, been sent to that admirable school that was too
expensive for Eleanor; riding and singing and all the rest of it. And
Meg's been given a perfect trousseau of fine clothes for her London
season. Naturally I don't feel very critically towards her."
"Don't you? Well, if she weren't a princess distributing largess,
wouldn't you? After all, she's not given Nancy a trousseau. So why be
mute with an old friend?"
"Ah, but she's given her the pearls," said Mrs. Averil. "Nancy couldn't
but accept a bridesmaid's gift. And she would give her a trousseau if
she wanted it and would take it. However, I'll own, though decency
should keep me mute, that I should find myself a little bored if I had
to see too much of her. I'm an everyday person and I like to talk about
everyday things."
"I can hear her asking you, in answer to that, if there is anything more
everyday than the human soul. I wish I could have seen you _aux prises_
with her," Oldmeadow remarked. "Did she come down here? Did she like
your drawing-room and garden?"
Mrs. Averil's drawing-room and garden lay very near her heart. Eleanor
Chadwick sometimes accused her of caring more about her china and her
roses than about anything else in the world except Nancy.
"I don't think she saw them; not what I call see," Mrs. Averil now said.
"Oh, yes; she came several times and recognized, very appreciatively,
the periods of my Queen Anne furniture and my Lowestoft. Beyond their
period I don't think she went. She said the garden was old-world," Mrs.
Averil added, looking about her and twirling her parasol on her
shoulder.
"She would," Oldmeadow agreed. "That's just what she would call it. And
she'd call you a true, deep-hearted woman and Nancy a gifted girl. How
do she and Nancy hit it off? It's that I want most of all to hear
about."
"They haven't much in common, have they?" said Mrs. Averil. "She's never
hunted and doesn't, I imagine, know a wren from a hedge-sparrow. She
_does_ know a skylark when she hears one, for she said 'Hail to thee,
blithe spirit' while one was singing. But I felt, somehow, it was like
the Queen Anne and the Lowestoft--a question of the label."
Oldmeadow at this began to laugh with an open and indulged mirth. He and
Mrs. Averil, at all events, saw eye to eye. "If you'd tie the correct
label to the hedge-sparrow she'd know that, too," he said. "Poor girl.
The trouble with her isn't that she doesn't know the birds, but that she
wouldn't know the poets, either, without their labels. It's a mind made
up of labels. No; I don't think it likely that Nancy, who hasn't a label
about her, will get much out of her--beyond necklaces."
"I wish Nancy _had_ a few labels," said Mrs. Averil. "I wish she could
have travelled and studied as Miss Toner--Adrienne that is--has done.
She is such a little ignoramus. Adrienne may bore you and me, but Nancy
will never interest anyone--except you and me."
It was always amusing to Oldmeadow, if a little sardonically so, to note
that any conception of himself as a possible suitor for Nancy had never
entered Mrs. Averil's mind. As a friend he was everything a mother could
desire; as a match for Nancy almost unimaginable. Well, he could not
give a wife even one hunter and he never had had any intention of
falling in love with his dear nymph; yet that other people might not do
so was a suggestion he repudiated with warmth.
"Oh; in love, yes," Mrs. Averil agreed. "I don't deny that she's very
loveable and I hope she may marry well. But that's not the same thing as
being interesting, is it? A man may be in love with a woman who doesn't
interest him."
"I dispute that statement."
"I'm sure dear Eleanor never interested her husband--devoted to the day
of his death as he was. There's something in my idea. To be interesting
one must offer something new. If Nancy had been interesting to Barney
she would now, I think, have been in Adrienne's place. Not that it would
have been a marriage to be desired for either of them."
So he and Mrs. Averil had been thinking the same thoughts.
"And you contend that if Nancy had been to China and read Goethe and
Dante in the originals he'd have been interested? I think he was quite
sufficiently interested and that if Miss Toner hadn't come barging into
our lives he'd have known he was in love."
"Going to China is a figure of speech and stands for all the things she
hasn't got and doesn't know. My poor little Nancy. All the same, _she_
isn't a bore!" said Mrs. Averil with as near an approach to acerbity as
she could show.
"No; she isn't a bore. The things she knows have to be found out, by
degrees, through living with her. Barney hasn't been to China, either,
so, according to your theory, Nancy didn't find him interesting."
At this Mrs. Averil's eyes met his and, after a moment of contemplation,
they yielded up to him the secret they saw to be shared. "If only it
were the same for women! But they don't need the new. She's young.
She'll get over it. I don't believe in broken hearts. All the same,"
Mrs. Averil stopped in their walk, ostensibly to examine the growth of a
fine pink lupin, "it hasn't endeared Adrienne to me. I'm too
_terre-à-terre_, about that, too, not to feel vexation, on Nancy's
account. And what I'm afraid of is that she knows she's not endeared to
me. That she guesses. She's a bore; but she's not a bit stupid, you
know."
"You don't think she's spiteful?" Oldmeadow suggested after a moment,
while Mrs. Averil still examined her lupin.
"Dear me, no! I wish she could be! It's that smooth surface of hers
that's so tiresome. She's not spiteful. But she's human. She'll want to
keep Barney away and Nancy will be hurt."
"Want to keep him away when she's got him so completely?"
"Something of that sort. I felt it once or twice."
"My first instinct about her was right, then," said Oldmeadow. "She's a
bore and an interloper, and she'll spoil things."
"Oh, perhaps not. She'll mend some things. Have you heard about Captain
Hayward?"
"Do you mean that stupid, big, tawny fellow? What about him?"
"You may well ask. I've been spoken to about him and Meg by more than
one person. They are making themselves conspicuous, and it's been going
on for some time."
"You don't mean that Meg's in love with him?"
"He's in love with her, at all events, and, as you know, he's a married
man. I questioned Nancy, who was with Meg for a few weeks in London, and
she owns that Meg's unhappy."
"And they're seeing each other in London now?" Oldmeadow was deeply
discomposed.
"No. He's away just now. And Meg is going to meet the bridal party in
Paris at the end of July. Nancy feels that when Meg gets back under
Adrienne's influence there'll be nothing to fear."
"We depend on her, then, so much, already," he murmured. He was
reviewing, hastily, his last impressions of Meg and they were not
reassuring. The only thing that was reassuring was to reflect on his
impressions of Adrienne. "Grandma's parlour" returned to him with its
assurance of deep security. Above everything else Adrienne was
respectable.
"Yes. That's just it," Mrs. Averil agreed. "We depend on her. And I feel
we're going to depend more and more. She's the sort of person who mends
things. So we mustn't think of what she spoils."
What Adrienne Toner had spoiled was, however, to be made very plain next
morning both to Nancy's old friend and to her mother. Beside her plate
at breakfast was a letter addressed in Barney's evident hand, a letter
in a narrow envelope stamped with the name of a French hotel and
showing, over the address, an engraving of peaks against the sky. Nancy
met the occasion with perfect readiness, saying as she looked at the
letter, waiting to open it till she had made the tea--Nancy always made
the tea in the morning while her mother sat behind the bacon and eggs at
the other end of the table--"How nice; from Barney. Now we shall have
news of them."
Nothing less like an Ariane could be imagined than Nancy as she stood
there in her pink dress above the pink, white and gold tea-cups. One
might have supposed from her demeanour that a letter from Barney was but
a happy incident in a happy day. But, when she dropped into her chair
and read, it was evident that she was not prepared for what she found.
She read steadily, in silence, while Oldmeadow cut bread at the
sideboard and Mrs. Averil distributed her viands, and, when the last
page was reached, they both could not fail to see that Nancy was
blushing, blushing so deeply that, as she thus felt herself betray her
emotion, tears came thickly into her downcast eyes.
"I'll have my tea now, dear," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you wait a little
longer, Roger?" She tided Nancy over.
But Nancy was soon afloat. "The letter is for us all," she said. "Do
read it aloud, Roger, while I have my breakfast."
Barney's letters, in the past, had, probably, always been shared and
Nancy was evidently determined that her own discomposure was not to
introduce a new precedent. Oldmeadow took up the sheets and read.
* * * * *
"DEAREST NANCY,--How I wish you were with us up here. It's the most
fantastically lovely place. One feels as if one could sail off into it.
I dug up some roots of saxifrage for your wall yesterday, such pretty
pink stuff. It's gone off in a box wrapped in damp moss and I hope will
reach you safely. A horrid, vandal thing to do; but for you and Aunt
Monica I felt it justified, and there are such masses of it. I saw a
snow-bunting yesterday, much higher up than the saxifrage; such a jolly,
composed little fellow on a field of snow. The birds would drive you
absolutely mad, except that you're such a sensible young person you'd no
doubt keep your head even when you saw a pair of golden eagles, as we
did, floating over a ravine. I walked around the Lac d'Annecy this
morning, before breakfast, and did wish you were with me. I thought of
our bird-walks at dawn last summer. There were two or three darling
warblers singing, kinds we haven't got at home; and black redstarts and
a peregrine falcon high in the air. I could write all day if I'd the
time, about the birds and flowers. You remember Adrienne telling us that
afternoon when she first came to Coldbrooks about the flowers. But I
mustn't go on now. We're stopping for tea in a little valley among the
mountains with flowers thick all around us and I've only time to give
our news to you and Aunt Monica and to send our love. Mother is
extremely fit and jolly, though rather scared at the hairpin curves;
Adrienne has to hold her hand. I'm too happy for words and feel as if
I'd grown wings. How is Chummie's foot? Did the liniment help? Those
traps are beastly things. I feel just as you do about the rabbits.
Adrienne reads aloud to us in the evenings; a man called Claudel;
awfully stiff French to follow but rather beautiful. I think you'd like
him. Not a bit like Racine! Best love to you and Aunt Monica. Here's
Adrienne, who wants to have her say."
Had it been written in compunction for _Ariane aux bords laissée_? or,
rather, in a happy reversion to sheer spontaneity, a turning, without
any self-consciousness, to the comrade of the bird-walks who would,
after all, best feel with him about snow-buntings and redstarts?
Oldmeadow paused for the surmise, not looking up, before he went on from
Barney's neat, firm script to his wife's large, clear clumsy hand.
"DEAREST NANCY," ran the postscript, and it had been at the
postscript, Oldmeadow now could gauge, that Nancy had first found
herself unprepared. "I, too, am thinking of you, with Barney. It is
a great joy to feel that where, he says, I've given him golden
eagles and snow-buntings he's given me--among so many other dear,
wonderful people--a Nancy. I get the best of the bargain, don't I?
I can't see much of the birds for looking at the peaks--_my_ peaks,
so familiar yet, always, so new again. 'Stern daughters of the
voice of God' that they are. Radiantly white against a cloudless
sky we find them to-day. Barney's profile is beautiful against
them--but his nose is badly sun-burned! _All_ our noses are
sun-burned! That's what one pays for flying among the Alps.
"Mother Nell--we've decided that that's what I'm to call
her--looks ten years younger all the same, as I knew she would. We
talk of you all so often--of you and Meg and Palgrave and Barbara,
and half a dozen times a day Barney wishes that one or the other of
you were with us to see this or that. It's specially you for the
birds I notice. You must take me for some bird-walks at dawn some
day and teach me to know all your lovely English songsters.... Dear
little Cousin-Sister, I send you my love with his and, with him,
hold you warmly in my heart. Will 'Aunt Monica' accept my
affectionate and admiring homages?
"Yours ever
"ADRIENNE"
Oldmeadow had not expected that she could write such a human letter; yet
it explained Nancy's blush. Barney's spontaneous affection she could
have faced, but she had not been able to face his wife's determined
tenderness. Adrienne had meant it well, no doubt--Oldmeadow gazed on
after he had finished, but she had no business to mean so well, no
business to thrust herself, in this community of intimacy, into what was
Barney's place alone. There was more in it, he knew, with Meg and Mrs.
Averil to help him, than the quite successful playfulness. She was to be
more intimate than Barney, that was what it came to; more, much more
tender if Barney was to be allowed intimacy and tenderness. That was
really what she intended Nancy to see, and that Barney had no place at
all where she, Adrienne, did not also belong.
"Very sweet; very sweet and pretty," Mrs. Averil's voice broke in, and
he realized that he had allowed himself to drop into a grim and
tactless reverie; "I didn't know she had such a sense of humour.
Sun-burned noses and 'Stern daughters of the voice of God.' Well done. I
didn't think Adrienne would ever look as low as noses. They must be
having a delightful tour. I know black redstarts. There was one that
used to wake me every morning at four, one summer, in Normandy, with the
most foolish, creaking song; just outside my window. Give Barney my love
when you write and return my niece's affectionate and admiring homages.
Mother Nell. I shouldn't care to be called Mother Nell somehow."
So Mrs. Averil's vexation expressed itself and so she floated Nancy
along. But Nancy, long since, had pulled herself together and was able
to look at Oldmeadow, while her lashes closed together in her own smile,
and to say that she'd almost be willing to lose her nose for the sake of
hearing the new warblers. Mrs. Averil opened her "Times" and over
marmalade Nancy and Oldmeadow planned the trip that they would take some
day, when their ship came in, the three of them, a bird-trip to the
French Alps.