It was Saturday and he had to wire to Mrs. Aldesey that he could not go
with her next day to the Queen's Hall concert they had planned to hear
together.
Nancy was waiting for him at the station in her own little pony-cart and
as he got in she said: "Is Barney gone?"
"Yes; he'll have gone by now," said Oldmeadow and, as he said it, he
felt a sudden sense of relief and clarity. The essential thing, he saw
it as he answered Nancy's question, was that he should be able to say
that Barney had gone. And he knew that if he hadn't been there to back
him up, he wouldn't have gone. So that was all right, wasn't it?
As he had sped past the sun-swept country the reluctant pity had
struggled in him, striving, unsuccessfully, to free itself from the
implications of that horrid word: "Disgraced." It was Adrienne who had
disgraced them; that was what Barney's phrase had really meant, though
he hadn't intended it to mean it. She, the stranger, the new-comer, had
disgraced them. And it was true. Yet he wished Barney hadn't stumbled on
the phrase--just because she was a stranger and a new-comer. And Barney
would never have found it had he not been there. But now came the sense
of relief. If he hadn't been there, Barney wouldn't have gone.
"Aunt Eleanor is longing to see you," said Nancy. "Her one hope, you
know, is that he may bring Meg back." Nancy's eyes had a strained look,
as though she had lain awake all night.
"You think she may come back?"
He felt, himself, unable to form any conjectures as to what Meg was
likely to do. What she had done was so strangely unlike her.
"Not if it means leaving Captain Hayward for good," said Nancy. "But
Aunt Eleanor and Mother both think that she may be willing to come till
they can marry."
"That's better than nothing, isn't it," said Oldmeadow, and Nancy then
surprised him by saying, as she looked round at him: "I don't want her
to come back."
"Don't want her to come back? But you wanted Barney to go?"
"Yes. He had to go. Just so that everything might be done. So that it
might be put before her. And to satisfy Aunt Eleanor. But, don't you
see, Roger, it would really make it far more difficult for Aunt Eleanor
to have her here. What would she do with her?--since she won't give up
Captain Hayward? She can love Meg and grieve and yearn over her now. But
if she were here she couldn't. It would be all grief and bitterness."
Nancy had evidently been thinking to some purpose during her sleepless
night and he owned that her conclusion was the sound one. What
disconcerted him was her assurance that Meg would not leave her lover.
After Adrienne, Nancy was likely to have the most authentic impressions
of Meg's attitude; and, as they drove towards Chelford, he was further
disconcerted by hearing her murmur, half to herself: "It would be silly
to leave him now, wouldn't it."
"Not if she's sorry and frightened at what she's done," he protested.
"After all the man's got a wife who may be glad to have him back."
But Nancy said: "I don't think she would. I think she'll be glad not to
have him back. Meg may be frightened; but I don't believe she'll be
sorry; yet."
He meditated, somewhat gloomily, as they drove, on the unexpectedness of
the younger generation. He had never thought of Nancy as belonging, in
any but the chronological sense, to that category; yet here she was,
accepting, if not condoning, the rebellion against law and morality.
Mrs. Averil had driven down to the Little House where she was to be
picked up and, as they turned the corner to the Green, they saw her
waiting at the gate, her furs turned up around her ears, her neat little
face pinched and dry, as he had known that he would find it, and showing
a secure if controlled indignation, rather than Nancy's sad perplexity.
"Well, Roger, you find us in a pleasant predicament," she observed as
Oldmeadow settled the rug around her knees. "Somehow one never thinks of
things like this happening in one's own family. Village girls misbehave
and people in the next county run away sometimes with other people's
wives; but one never expects such adventures to come walking in to one's
own breakfast-table."
"Disagreeable things do have a way of happening at breakfast-time, don't
they," Oldmeadow assented. The comfort of Mrs. Averil was that even on
her death-bed she would treat her own funeral lightly: "I wonder it
remains such a comfortable meal, all the same."
"I suppose you've had lunch on the train," said Mrs. Averil. "Will you
believe it? Poor Eleanor was worrying about that this morning. She's
got some coffee and sandwiches waiting for you, in case you haven't. I'm
so thankful you've come. It will help her. Poor dear. She's begun to
think of all the other things now. Of what people will say and how they
will hear. Lady Cockerell is very much on her mind. You know what a
meddlesome gossip she is, and only the other day Eleanor snubbed her
when she was criticizing Barbara's new school. The thought of her is
disturbing her dreadfully now."
"I suppose these leech-bites do help to alleviate the pain of the real
wound," said Oldmeadow.
"Not in the least. They envenom it," Mrs. Averil replied. "I'd like to
strangle Lady Cockerell myself before the news reaches her."
Nancy drove on, her eyes fixed on the pony's ears. "I don't believe
people will talk nearly as much as you and Aunt Eleanor imagine," she
now remarked. "I've told her so; and so must you, Mother."
"You are admirable with her, Nancy. Far better than I am. I sit grimly
swallowing my curses, or wringing my hands. Neither wringing nor cursing
is much good, I suppose."
"Not a bit of good. It's better she should think of what people say than
of Meg; but when it comes to agonizing over them I believe the truth is
that people nowadays _do_ get over it; far more than they used to;
especially if Aunt Eleanor can show them that _she_ gets over it."
"But she can't get over it, my dear child!" said Mrs. Averil, gazing at
her daughter in a certain alarm. "How can one get over disgrace like
that or lift one's head again--unless one is an Adrienne Toner! Oh, when
I think of that woman and of what she's done! For she is responsible
for it all! Every bit of it. Meg was a good girl, at heart; always. In
spite of that silly liquid powder. And so I tell Eleanor. Adrienne is
responsible for it all."
"I don't, Mother; that's not my line at all," said Nancy. "I tell her
that what Meg says is true." Nancy touched the pony with the whip. "If
it hadn't been for Adrienne she might have done much worse."
"Really, my dear!" Mrs. Averil murmured.
"Come, Nancy," Oldmeadow protested; "that was a retrospective threat of
Meg's. Without Adrienne she'd never have considered such an
adventure--or its worse alternative. Encourage your aunt to curse
Adrienne. Your Mother's instinct is sound there."
But Nancy shook her head. "I don't know, Roger," she said. "Perhaps Meg
would have considered the alternative. Girls do consider all sorts of
things nowadays that Mother and Aunt Eleanor, in their girlhood, would
have thought simply wicked. They _are_ wicked; but not simply. That's
the difference between now and then. And don't you think that it's
better for Meg and Captain Hayward to go away so that they can be
married than to be, as she says, really rotters; than to be, as she
says, cheats and hypocrites and steal their happiness?"
"My dear child!" Mrs. Averil again murmured, while Oldmeadow, finding
it, after all, a comfort to have a grown-up Nancy to discuss it with,
said, "My contention is that, left to herself, Meg would have thought
them both wicked."
"Perhaps," Nancy said again; "but even old-fashioned girls did things
they knew to be wicked sometimes. The difference Adrienne has made is
that Meg doesn't think herself wicked at all. She thinks herself rather
noble. And that's what I mean about Aunt Eleanor. It will comfort her if
she can feel a little as Adrienne feels--that Meg isn't one bit the
worse, morally, for what she's done."
"Are you trying to persuade us that Meg isn't guilty, my dear?" Mrs.
Averil inquired dryly. "Are you trying to persuade us that Adrienne has
done us all a service? You surely can't deny that she's behaved
atrociously, and first and foremost, to Barney. Barney could have known
nothing about it, and can you conceive a woman keeping such a thing from
her husband?"
But Nancy was feeling the pressure of her own realizations and was not
to be scolded out of them. "If Meg is guilty, and doesn't know it, she
will suffer dreadfully when she finds out, won't she? It all depends on
whether she has deceived herself or not, doesn't it? I'm not justifying
her or Adrienne, Mother; only trying to see the truth about them. How
could Adrienne tell Barney when it was Meg's secret? We may feel it
wrong; but she thought she was justified." The colour rose in Nancy's
cheek as she named Barney, but she kept her tired eyes on her mother and
added, "I don't believe it was easy for her to keep it from him."
"My dear, anything is easy for her that flatters her self-importance!"
cried Mrs. Averil impatiently. "I'll own, if you like, that she's more
fool than knave--as Meg may be; though Meg never struck me as a fool.
Things haven't changed so much since my young days as all that; it's
mainly a matter of names. If girls who behave like Meg find it
pleasanter to be called fools than knaves, they are welcome to the
alternative. Noble they never were nor will be, whatever the fashion."
Oldmeadow did not want the sandwiches, so, as soon as they reached
Coldbrooks, he was led upstairs to Mrs. Chadwick's room. He found his
poor friend lying on the sofa, the blinds drawn down and a wet
handkerchief on her forehead. She burst out crying as he entered.
Oldmeadow sat down beside her and took her hand and, as he listened to
her sobs, felt that he need not trouble to pity Adrienne.
"What I cannot, cannot understand, Roger," she was at last able to say,
and he realized that it was of Adrienne, not Meg, that she was speaking,
"is how she can bear to treat us so. We all loved and trusted her. You
know how I loved her, Roger. I felt Meg as safe in her hands as in my
own. Oh, that wicked, wicked man! I hardly know him by sight. That makes
it all so much more dreadful. All I do know is that his wife is a
daughter of poor Evelyn Madderley, who broke her back out hunting."
"I don't believe there's much harm in him, you know," Oldmeadow
suggested. "And I believe that he is sincerely devoted to Meg."
"Harm, Roger!" poor Mrs. Chadwick wailed, "when he is a married man and
Meg only a girl! Oh, if there is harm in anything there is in that!
Running away with a girl and ruining her life! Barney will make him feel
what he has done. Barney _has_ gone?"
"Yes, he's gone, and I am sure we can rely on him to speak his mind to
Hayward."
"And don't you think he may bring Meg back, Roger? Nancy says I must not
set my mind on it; but don't you think she may be repenting already? My
poor little Meg! She was hot-tempered and could speak very crossly if
she was thwarted; but I think of her incessantly as she was when she was
a tiny child. Self-willed; but so sweet and coaxing in her ways, with
beautiful golden hair and those dark eyes. I always thought of Meg, with
her beauty, as sure to marry happily; near us, I hoped"--Mrs. Chadwick
began to sob again. "And now!--Will he find them in Paris? Will they not
have moved on?"
"In any case he'll be able to follow them up. I don't imagine they'll
think of hiding."
"No; I'm afraid they won't. That is the worst of it! They won't hide and
every one will come to know and then what good will there be in her
coming back! If only I'd had her presented last year, Roger! She can
never go to court now," Mrs. Chadwick wept, none the less piteously for
her triviality. "To think that Francis's daughter cannot go to court!
She would have looked so beautiful, with my pearls and the feathers. The
feathers are becoming to so few girls. Nancy could not wear them nearly
so well. Nancy can go and my daughter can't!"
"I don't think the lack of feathers will weigh seriously upon Meg's
future, my dear friend."
"Oh, but it's what they stand for, Roger, that will weigh!" Mrs.
Chadwick, even in her grief, retained her shrewdness. "It's easy to
laugh at the feathers, but you might really as well laugh at
wedding-rings! To think that Francis's daughter is travelling about with
a man and without a wedding-ring! Or do you suppose they'll have thought
of it and bought one? It would be a lie, of course; but don't you think
that a lie would be justifiable under the circumstances?"
"I don't think it really makes any difference, until they can come home
and be married."
"I suppose she must marry him now--if they won't hide--and will be proud
of what they've done; she seems quite proud of it!--everyone will hear,
so that they will have to marry. Oh--I don't know what to hope or what
to fear! How can you expect me to have tea, Nancy!" she wept, as Nancy
entered carrying the little tray. "It's so good of you, my dear, but how
can I eat?--I can hardly face the servants, Roger. They will all hear.
And Meg was always such a pet of Johnson's; his favourite of all my
children. He used to give her very rich, unwholesome things in the
pantry and once, when her father punished her for disobeying him and put
her in the corner, in the drawing-room, one day, after lunch, Johnson
nearly dropped the coffee, when he came in. It upset him dreadfully and
he would hardly speak to Francis for a week afterwards. I know he will
think it all our fault, when he hears, now. And so it is, for having
trusted to a stranger. I can't drink tea, Nancy."
"Yes, you can, for Meg's sake, Aunt Eleanor, and eat some tea-cake,
too," said Nancy. "If you aren't brave for her, who will be. And you
can't be brave unless you eat. I remember so well, when I was little,
Uncle Francis saying that when it came to the pinch you were the bravest
woman he knew. You'll see, darling; it will all come out better than you
fear. Johnson and all of us will help you to make it come out better."
"She is such a comfort to me, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick with a summoned
smile. "Somehow, when I see her, I feel that things _will_ come out
better. _You_ will have to go to court, dear, next spring. We can't
have none of our girls going. And you shall wear my pearls." Mrs.
Chadwick's tears fell, but she took up the tea-cup.
Nancy more and more was striking Oldmeadow as the wisest person in the
house. He walked with her on the terrace after tea; it was an old custom
of his and Nancy's to step outside then, whatever the weather, and have
a few turns. This was a clear, chill evening and Nancy had wrapped a
woollen scarf closely round her neck and shoulders. Her chin was sunken
in its folds as she held it together on her breast, and with her dropped
profile, her sad, meditative eyes, it was as if she saw a clue and, far
more clearly than he did, knew where they all stood.
"Adrienne was bitterly opposed to Barney's going," he said. "She seemed
unable to grasp the fact that she herself had been in error."
Nancy turned her eyes on him. "Did Barney tell you she was bitterly
opposed?"
"He didn't tell me. I was with them. It was most unfortunate. She
insisted on my coming up."
"Oh, dear," said Nancy. She even stopped for a moment to face him with
her dismay. "Yes, I see," she then said, walking on, "she would."
"Why would she? Unless she was sure of getting her own way? The only
point in having me up was to show me that she could always get her own
way with Barney."
"Of course. And to make it quite clear to herself, too. She's not afraid
of you, Roger. She's not afraid of anything but Barney."
"I don't think she had any reason to be afraid of him this morning. He
was badly upset, of course. But if I hadn't gone up, I imagine she'd
have kept him from going. And you own that that would have been a pity,
don't you?"
"Yes. Oh, yes. He had to go," said Nancy, absently. And she added. "Were
you very rough and scornful?"
"Rough and scornful? I don't think so. I think I kept my temper very
well, considering all things. I showed her pretty clearly, I suppose,
that I considered her a meddling ass. I don't suppose she'll forgive me
easily for that."
"Well, you can't wonder at it, can you?" said Nancy. "Especially if she
suspects that you made Barney consider her one, too."
"But it's necessary, isn't it, that she should be made to suspect it
herself? I don't wonder at her not forgiving me for showing her up
before Barney, and upholding him against her, but I do wonder that one
can never make her see she's wrong. It's that that's so really monstrous
about her."
"Do you think that anyone can ever make us see we are wrong unless they
love us?" Nancy asked.
"Well, Barney loves her," said Oldmeadow after a moment.
"Yes; but he's afraid of her, too, isn't he? He'd never have quite the
courage to try and make her see, would he?--off his own bat I mean. He'd
never really have quite the courage to see, himself, how wrong she was,
unless he were angry. And to have anyone who is angry with you trying to
make you see, only pushes you further and further back into yourself,
doesn't it, and away from seeing?"
"You've grown very wise in the secrets of the human heart, my dear,"
Oldmeadow observed. "It's true. He hasn't courage with her--unless some
one is there to give it to him. But, you know, I don't think she'd
forgive him if he had. I don't think she'd forgive anyone who made her
see."
"I don't know," Nancy pondered. "I don't love her, yet I feel as if I
understood her; better, perhaps, than you do. I think she's good, you
know. I mean, I think she might be good, if she could ever see."
"She's too stupid ever, really, to see," said Oldmeadow, and it was with
impatience. "She's encased in self-love like a rhinoceros in its hide.
One can't penetrate anywhere. You say she's afraid of Barney and I can't
imagine what you mean by that. It's true, when I'm by, she's afraid of
losing his admiration. But that's not being afraid of him."
Nancy still pondered; but not, now, in any perplexity. "She's afraid
because she cares so much. She's afraid because she _can_ care so much.
It's difficult to explain; but I feel as if I understood her. She's
never cared so much before for just one other person. It's always been
for people altogether; and because she was doing something for them. But
Barney does something for her. He makes her happy. Perhaps she never
knew before what it was to be really happy. You know, she didn't give me
the feeling of a really happy person. It's something quite, quite new
for her. It makes her feel uncertain of herself and almost bewildered
sometimes. Oh, I'm sure of it the more I think of it. And you know,
sometimes," Nancy turned her deep, sweet eyes on him, "I feel very sorry
for her, Roger. I can't help it; although I don't love her at all."
Yes. It must be true. Though he had seen Adrienne's vanity rather than
her love. Nancy and Meg were united in their assurance and that must be,
he saw, because they both, in their so different ways, knew what it was
to care; to care so much that you were frightened. It was strange that
the pang of pity that came with his new perception should be for
Adrienne rather than for his dear little Nancy herself. Nancy had
suffered, he knew, and her life was perhaps permanently scarred; yet,
clear-eyed and unduped, he saw her as mistress of the very fate that had
maimed her. Whereas Adrienne was blindfolded; a creature swayed and
surrounded by forces of which she was unaware.
Nancy had deepened his sense of perplexity, his sense of taking refuge
from something, and what it was came fully upon him that night when he
was at last alone. Meg and her misdemeanour sank into a mere background
for the image of the cold, convulsed face that he had seen that morning.
Almost angrily he felt himself pushing it back, pushing it down, as if
he pushed it down to drown, and again and again it re-emerged to look at
him.
He fell asleep at last; but as, a year ago, on the first night of his
meeting with her, he had dreamed of her, so to-night he dreamed again.
He did not see her, but she was in some dreadful plight and the sense of
her panic and bewilderment broke upon him in shocks of suffering. He
could not see her, but he was aware of her, horribly aware. All remained
a broken, baffled confusion, but it was as though, unable to shape and
assert itself, he yet felt her very being wrestling with extinction.
The sharpness had gone out of the sunlight next day and Mrs. Chadwick
consented to come and sit with them in the warmest corner of the garden,
the corner where, a year ago, Oldmeadow remembered, Meg had sat with him
and explained to him the secret of Adrienne's power. Pitifully, with
swollen eyes and trembling fingers, Mrs. Chadwick resumed her
interrupted stocking while Oldmeadow read aloud from a Sunday paper the
leading article on the critical situation in Ireland. "I suppose every
one in London will be talking about Ulster and Sir Edward Carson, won't
they?" said Mrs. Chadwick, and it was evident that she derived a dim
comfort from the thought. The situation in Ireland, Oldmeadow reflected,
had, at all events, been of so much service.
Upon this quiet scene there broke suddenly the sound of a motor's horn
and a motor's wheels turned into the front entrance.
Mrs. Chadwick dropped her stocking and laid her hand on Nancy's arm.
"Dear Aunt Eleanor--you know he couldn't possibly be back yet," said
Nancy. "And if it's anyone to call, Johnson knows you're not at home."
"Lady Cockerell is capable of anything. She might sit down in the hall
and wait. She must have heard by now," poor Mrs. Chadwick murmured.
"That married girl of hers in London must have written. With the
projecting teeth."
"I'll soon get rid of her, if it's really she," said Mrs. Averil; but
she had hardly risen when the door at the back of the house opened and
they saw Johnson usher forth a hurrying female figure, obviously not
Lady Cockerell's; a figure so encumbered by its motoring wraps, so
swathed in veils, that only Mrs. Chadwick's ejaculation enlightened
Oldmeadow as to its identity.
"Joséphine!" cried Mrs. Chadwick and then, between the narrow framing of
purple gauze, he recognized the dramatic, melancholy eyes and pale,
pinched lips of Adrienne's maid.
"Oh, Madame! Madame!" Joséphine was exclaiming as she came towards them
down the path. Her face wore the terrible intensity of expression so
alien to the British countenance. "Oh, Madame! Madame!" she repeated.
They had all risen and stood to await her. "He is dead! The little child
is dead! And she is alone. Monsieur left her yesterday. Quite, quite
alone, and her child born dead."
Mrs. Chadwick faced her in pallid stupefaction.
"The baby, Aunt Eleanor," said Nancy, for she looked indeed as if she
had not understood. "Barney's baby. It has been born and it is dead.
Oh--poor Barney. And poor, poor Adrienne."
"Yes, dead!" Joséphine, regardless of all but her exhaustion and her
grief, dropped down into one of the garden-chairs and put her hands
before her face. "Born dead last night. A beautiful little boy. The
doctors could not save it and fear for her life. They will not let me
stay with her. Only the doctors and the nurses--strangers--are with
her." Joséphine was sobbing. "Ah, it was not right to leave her so.
Already she was ill. It could be seen that already she was very ill when
Monsieur left her. I came to her when he was gone. She did not say a
word to me. She tried to smile. _Mais j'ai bien vu qu'elle avait la mort
dans l'âme._"
"Good heavens," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, while Joséphine, now, let her
tears flow unchecked. "She is alone and Barney has left her! Oh, this
is terrible! At such a time!"
"He had to go, Aunt Eleanor. You know he had to go. We will send for him
at once," said Nancy, and Joséphine, catching the words, sobbed on in
her woe and her resentment: "But where to send for him? No one knows
where to send. The doctors sent a wire yesterday, at once, when she was
taken ill; to the Paris hotel. But no answer came. He must have left
Paris. That is why I have come. No telegrams for Sunday. No trains in
time. I took the car. The doctor said, Yes, it was well that I should
come. Some one who cares for Madame should return with me. If she is to
die she must not die alone."
"But she shall not die!" cried Mrs. Chadwick with sudden and surprising
energy. "Oh, the poor baby! It might have lived had I been there. No
doctor, no nurse, can understand like a mother. And I shall be able to
help with Adrienne. I must go. I must go at once. Mademoiselle will see
that you have something to eat and drink, my poor Joséphine, and then
you and I will return together. It will not take me a moment to get
ready."
"It will be the best thing for them all," Oldmeadow murmured to Mrs.
Averil, as, taking Joséphine's arm, Mrs. Chadwick hurried her along the
path. "And I'll go with them."
A little later, while Mrs. Chadwick made ready above and Joséphine, in
the hall, ate the meal that Johnson had brought for her, Oldmeadow and
Nancy stood outside near the empty waiting car.
"I'll wire to you at once, of course, how she is," he said. Adrienne had
put Meg out of all their thoughts. "But it's rather grotesque," he
added, "if poor Barney is to be blamed."
Nancy stood and looked before her, wrapped, as she had been the day
before, in her woollen scarf. "Roger," she said after a moment, "no one
can be blamed; yet, if she dies, I shall feel that we have killed her."
"Killed her! What nonsense, my dear! What do you mean?" He spoke angrily
because something in his heart, shaken by his dream, echoed her. The
dreaming had now revealed itself as definitely uncanny. What had he to
do with Adrienne Toner that his sub-consciousness should be aware of her
extremity?
"I can't explain," said Nancy. "We couldn't help it. It's even all her
fault. But she never asked to come to us. She never sought us out. She
had her life and we had ours. It was we who sought her and drew her in
and worshipped her. She never hid what she was; never in the least
little way. It was for what she was, because she was so different and
believed so in herself, that Barney loved her. And now because she has
gone on believing in herself, we have struck her down."
The rooks were cawing overhead and Oldmeadow was remembering his dream
of a year ago, how Adrienne had come to him along the terrace saying, as
she lifted her hand: "I can hear them, too." They had drawn her in. Yet
she had loved their life. She had wanted to understand it and to be part
of it. He wished he could get the pale, streaked, drowning face out of
his mind. "It's generous of you, my dear child," he said, "to say 'we.'
You mean 'you.' If anyone struck her down it was I."
"You spoke for us all, Roger. And you only spoke for us. You were always
outside. I count myself with them. I can't separate myself from them. I
received her love--with them all."
"Did you?" he looked at her. "I don't think so, Nancy."
Nancy did not pretend not to understand. "I know," she said. "But I'm
part of it. And she tried to love me."