The picture of Adrienne holding them up was spread before Oldmeadow's
eyes on the hot July day when Mrs. Averil drove him up from the Little
House to Coldbrooks. The shade of the great lime-tree on the lawn was
like a canvas, only old Johnson, as he moved to and fro with tea-table,
silver and strawberries, stepping from its cool green atmosphere into
the framing sunshine. The Chadwick family, seated or lying in the shade,
were all nearly as still as in a picture, and Adrienne was its centre.
She sat in a high-backed wicker chair, her hands lying listlessly in her
lap, a scarf about her shoulders, and in her black-veiled white, her
wide, transparent hat, she was like a clouded moon. There was something
even of daring, to Oldmeadow's imagination, in their approach across the
sunny spaces. Her eyes had so rested upon them from the moment that they
had driven up, that they might have been bold wayfarers challenging the
magic of a Circe in her web. Palgrave, in his white flannels, lay
stretched at her feet, and he had been reading aloud to her; Barbara and
Mrs. Chadwick sat listening while they worked on either hand. Only
Barney was removed, sitting at some little distance, his back half
turned, a pipe between his teeth and his eyes on a magazine that lay
upon his knee. But the influence, the magic, was upon him too. He was
consciously removed.
Mrs. Chadwick sprang up to greet them. "This is nice!" she cried, and
her knitting trailed behind her as she came so that Barbara, laughing,
stooped to catch and pick it up as she followed her; "I was expecting
you! How nice and dear of you! On this hot day! I always think the very
fishes must feel warm on a day like this! Or could they, do you
think?--Dear Roger!" There was an evident altering in Mrs. Chadwick's
manner towards him since the meeting in the Park. She was, with all her
fluster, manifestly glad to see him.
Palgrave had hoisted himself to his feet and now stood beside Adrienne,
eyeing them as a faithful hound eyes suspicious visitors.
"Isn't it lovely in the shade," Mrs. Chadwick continued, drawing them
into it. "Adrienne darling, Aunt Monica after all. And we were afraid
the heat might keep you away. I suppose the hill was very hot, Monica?"
Adrienne was still, apparently, something of an invalid, for she did not
rise to greet them. Neither did she speak as she held out her hand to
each of them in turn, and while an enveloping smile dwelt fondly on Mrs.
Averil, she made no attempt to smile at Oldmeadow.
He found himself observing her with a sort of wonder. All the flaws and
deformities of her maternity had fallen from her and she had the
appearance almost of beauty. Yet he had never so little liked her face.
Her dimly patterned features made him think of a Chinese picture he had
once seen where, on a moth-wing background, pale chrysanthemums,
mauvy-pink, a disk of carved jade with cord and tassel and a narrow
ivory box softly spotted with darkness, conveyed in their seeming
triviality an impression almost sinister of impersonality and magic.
There was as little feeling in her face. It was like a mask.
"Where's Nancy?" Barney asked. He had got up and joined them, giving
Oldmeadow's hand, as they met, a curiously lifeless shake.
"She had letters to write," said Mrs. Averil.
"Why, I thought we'd arranged she was to come up and walk round the farm
after tea with me," said Barney and as he spoke Oldmeadow noted that
Adrienne turned her head slowly, somewhat as she had done on the ominous
morning in March, and rested her eyes upon him.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Averil cheerfully. "She must have
misunderstood. She had these letters to finish for the post."
Barbara was reconnoitring at the tea-table. "Strawberries!" she
announced. "Who said they'd be over? Oh, what a shame of Nancy not to
come! Roger, why aren't you staying here rather than with Aunt Monica,
I'd like to know? Aren't we grand enough for you since she's had that
bathroom put in!" Barbara had advanced to a lively flapperdom.
"You see, by this plan, I get the bath with her and get you when she
brings me up," Oldmeadow retorted.
"And leave Nancy behind! I call it a shame when we're having the last
strawberries--and you may have a bathroom with Aunt Monica, but her
strawberries are over. Letters! Who ever heard of Nancy writing
letters--except to you, Barney. She was always writing to you when you
were living in London--before you married. And what screeds you used to
send her--all about art!" said Barbara, and that her liveliness cast a
spell of silence was apparent to everyone but herself.
Mrs. Chadwick took Oldmeadow's arm and drew him aside. "You'll be able
to come later and be quite with us, won't you, Roger?" she said
"September is really a lovelier month, don't you think? Adrienne is
going to take Palgrave and Barbara for a motor-trip in September. Won't
it be lovely for them?" Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a swiftness that did
not veil a sense of insecurity. "Barbara's never seen the Alps. They are
going to the Tyrol."
"If we don't have a European war by then," Oldmeadow suggested. "What is
Barney going to do?"
"Oh, Barney is going to the Barclay's in Scotland, to shoot. He loves
that. A war, Roger? What do you mean? All those tiresome Serbians? Why,
they won't go into the Tyrol, will they?"
"Perhaps not the Tyrol; but they may make it difficult for other people
to go there."
"Do you hear what Roger is saying?" Mrs. Chadwick turned to her family.
"That the Serbians may make war by September and that it might interfere
with the trip. But I'm sure Sir Edward will quiet them. He always does.
Though he is a Liberal, I've always felt him to be such a good man,"
said Mrs. Chadwick, "and really patriotic. Simply sitting round a table
with him cools their heads more than one would believe possible.
Dreadfully violent people, I believe, killing their kings and queens and
throwing them out of the window. I always think there's nothing in the
world for controlling people's tempers like getting them to sit together
round a table. I wonder why it is. Something to do with having your legs
out of the way, perhaps. People don't look nearly so threatening if
their legs are hidden, do they? My poor cousin, Fanny Jocelyn, used
always to say that if any of the clergymen in Fred's diocese got very
troublesome her one recipe was to ask them to lunch, or, if they were
very bad, to dinner. But she had wonderful tact--that gift, you know,
for seeming to care simply _immensely_ for the person she was talking
to. Francis used to tell her that when she looked at you as if you were
the only person in the world she loved she was really working out her
next menu."
"I'm afraid if war comes it won't be restricted to people, like Serbians
and clergymen, who can be quieted by being asked to dinner," said
Oldmeadow laughing. "We'll be fighting, too."
"And who will we fight?" Palgrave inquired. After passing tea, he had
resumed his place at Adrienne's feet. "Who has been getting in our way
now?"
"Don't you read the papers?" Oldmeadow asked him.
"Not when I can avoid it," said Palgrave. "They'll be bellowing out the
same old Jingo stuff on the slightest provocation, of course. As far as
I can make out the Serbians are the most awful brutes and Russia is
egging them on. But when it comes to a crime against humanity like war,
every one is responsible."
"Are you ready for strawberries, Aunt Monica," Barbara interposed. "If
there is a war, I hope we may be in it so that I can do some of my first
aid on real people at last."
She was carrying strawberries now to Adrienne who, as she leaned down,
took her gently by the wrist, and said some low-toned words to her. "I
know, my angel. Horrid of me!" said Barbara. "But one can't take war
seriously, can one!"
"I can," said Mrs. Averil. "Too many of my friends had their sons and
husbands killed in South Africa."
"And it's human nature," said Mrs. Chadwick, eating her strawberries
mournfully. "Like the poor: whom you have always with you, you know."
"Human nature is altered already a good deal more than governments
imagine," said Palgrave, "and they'll find themselves pretty well dished
if they try to bring on a capitalist war now. The workers all over the
world are beginning to see whose the hands are that pull the strings and
they'll refuse to dance to their piping. They'll down weapons just as
they've learned, at last, to down tools; and without them you can do
nothing. That's the way human nature will end war."
"A spirited plan, no doubt," said Oldmeadow, "and effective if all the
workers came to be of the same mind simultaneously. But if those of one
country downed weapons and those of another didn't, the first would get
their throats cut for their pains."
"It's easy to sneer," Palgrave retorted. "As a matter of principle, I'd
rather have my throat cut by a hired ruffian than kill an innocent
man--even if he did belong to a nation that happened to be cleverer and
more efficient than my own. That's a crime, of course, that we can't
forgive."
"Don't talk such rot, Palgrave," Barney now remarked in a tone of
apathetic disgust.
"I beg your pardon," Palgrave sat up instantly, flushing all over his
face. "I think it's truth and sanity."
"It's not truth and sanity. It's rot and stupid rot," said Barney. "Some
more tea, please, Barbara."
"Calling names isn't argument," said Palgrave. "I could call names, too,
if it came to that. It's calling names that is stupid. I merely happen
to believe in what Christ said."
"Oh, but, dear--Christ drove the money-lenders out of the Temple very,
very roughly," Mrs. Chadwick interposed with the head-long irrelevance
characteristic of her in such crises. "Thongs must hurt so much, mustn't
they? He surely believed in punishing people who did wrong."
"Which nation doesn't do wrong, Mummy? Which nation is a Christ with a
right to punish another? It's farcical. And punishing isn't killing.
Christ didn't kill malefactors."
"The Gadarene swine," Mrs. Chadwick murmured. "They were killed. So
painfully, too, poor things. I never could understand about that. I hope
the Higher Criticism will manage to get rid of it, for it doesn't really
seem kind. They had done no wrong at all and I've always been specially
fond of pigs myself."
"Ah, but you never saw a pig with a devil in it," Oldmeadow suggested,
to which Mrs. Chadwick murmured, "I'm sure they seem to have devils in
them, sometimes, poor dears, when they won't let themselves be caught.
Do get some more cream, Barbara. It's really too hot for arguments,
isn't it," and Mrs. Chadwick sighed with the relief of having rounded
that dangerous corner.
Barbara went away with the cream-jug and Johnson emerged bearing the
afternoon post.
"Ah. Letters. Good." Palgrave sat up to take his and Adrienne's share.
"One for you, Adrienne; from Meg. Now we shall see what she says about
meeting us in the Tyrol." His cheeks were still flushed and his eyes
brilliant with anger. Though his words were for Adrienne his voice was
for Barney, at whom he did not glance.
Adrienne unfolded the foreign sheets, and held them so that Palgrave,
leaning against her knee, could read with her.
Mrs. Chadwick had grown crimson. She looked at Oldmeadow. "Dear Meg is
having such an interesting time," she told him. "She and Eric are seeing
all manner of delightful places and picking up some lovely bits of old
furniture." Oldmeadow bowed assent. He had his eyes on Adrienne and he
was wondering about Barbara.
"What news is there, dear?" Mrs. Chadwick continued in the same badly
controlled voice. Palgrave's face had clouded.
"I'm afraid it may be bad news, Mother Nell," said Adrienne looking up.
It was the first time Oldmeadow had heard her voice that afternoon and
he could hardly have believed it the voice that had once reminded him of
a blue ribbon. It was still slow, still deliberate and soft; but it had
now the steely thrust and intention of a dagger.
"It's this accursed war talk!" Palgrave exclaimed. "Eric evidently
thinks it serious and he has to come home at once. What rotten luck."
Adrienne handed the sheets to Mrs. Chadwick. "It will all have blown
over by September," she said. "As Mother Nell says, we can trust Sir
Edward to keep us out of anything so wicked as a war. I am so completely
with you in all you say about the wickedness of war, Paladin, although I
do not see its causes quite so simply, perhaps."
It was the first time that Oldmeadow had heard the new name for her
knight.
"For my part," said Barney, casting a glance at the house, Barbara not
having yet reappeared, "I shall be grateful to the war if it dishes your
trip to the Tyrol. It's most unsuitable for Barbara."
He did not look at his wife as he spoke. His hat brim pulled down over
his eyes, he sat with folded arms and stared in front of him.
"You find it unsuitable for one sister to meet another?" Adrienne
inquired. Her eyes were on Barney, but Oldmeadow could not interpret
their gaze.
"Most unsuitable, to use no stronger word," said Barney, "while one
sister is living with a man whose name she doesn't bear."
"You mean to say," said Palgrave, sitting cross-legged at Adrienne's
feet and grasping his ankles with both hands, "that Meg, until she's
legally married, isn't fit for her little sister to associate with?"
"Just what I do mean, Palgrave. Precisely what I do mean," said Barney,
and his face, reddening, took on its rare but characteristic expression
of sullen anger. "And I'll thank you--in my house, after all--to keep
out of an argument that doesn't concern you."
"Barney; Palgrave," murmured Mrs. Chadwick supplicatingly. Adrienne,
not moving her eyes from her husband's face, laid her hand on Palgrave's
shoulder.
"It does concern me," said Palgrave, and he put up his hand and grasped
Adrienne's. "Barbara's well-being concerns me as much as it does you;
and your wife's happiness concerns me a good deal more. I can promise
you that I wouldn't trouble your hospitality for another day if it
weren't for her--and Mother. It's perfectly open to you, of course, to
turn me out of my home whenever you like to make use of your legal
privilege. But until I'm turned out I stay--for their sakes."
"You young ass! You unmitigated young ass!" Barney snarled, springing to
his feet. "All right, Mother. Don't bother. I'll leave you to your
protector for the present. I only wish he were young enough to be given
what he needs--a thorough good hiding. I'll go down and see Nancy. Don't
expect me back to dinner."
"Nancy is busy, my dear," poor Mrs. Averil, deeply flushing, interposed,
while Palgrave, under his breath, yet audibly, murmured: "Truly
Kiplingesque! Home and Hidings! Our Colonial history summed up!"
"She would be here if she weren't busy," said Mrs. Averil.
"I won't bother her," said Barney. "I'll sit in the garden and read.
It's more peaceful than being here."
"Please tell dear Nancy that it's ten days at least since _I've_ seen
her," said Adrienne, "and that I miss her and beg that she'll give me,
sometime, a few of her spare moments."
At that Barney stopped short, and looked at his wife. "No, Adrienne, I
won't," he said with a startling directness. "I'll take no messages
whatever from you to Nancy. Let Nancy alone--do you see? That's all I've
got to ask of you. Let her alone. She and Aunt Monica are the only
people you haven't set against me and I don't intend to quarrel with
Nancy to please you, I promise you."
Sitting motionless and upright, her hand laid on Palgrave's shoulder,
her face as unalterable as a little mask, Adrienne received these
well-aimed darts as a Saint Sebastian might have received the arrows.
Barney stared hard at her for a moment, then turned his back and marched
out into the sunlight and Oldmeadow, as he saw him go, felt that he
witnessed the end, as he had, little more than a year ago, witnessed the
beginning, of an epoch. What was there left to build on after such a
scene? And what must have passed between husband and wife during their
hours of intimacy to make it credible? Barney was not a brute.
When Barney had turned through the entrance gates and
disappeared--Adrienne's eyes dropped to Palgrave's. "I think I'll go in,
Paladin," she said, and it was either with faintness or with the mere
stillness of her rage. "I think I'll lie down for a little while."
Palgrave had leaped to his feet and, as she rose, drew her hand within
his arm, and Mrs. Chadwick, her eyes staring wide, hastened to her: but
Adrienne gently put her away. "No, no, dearest Mother Nell. Paladin will
help me. You must stay with Aunt Monica and Mr. Oldmeadow." Her hand
rested for a moment on Mrs. Chadwick's shoulder and she looked into her
eyes. "I'm so sorry, Mother Nell. I meant no harm."
"Oh, my darling child! As if I did not know that!" Mrs. Chadwick moaned
and, as Adrienne moved away, she turned as if half distraught to her two
friends. "Oh, it's dreadful! dreadful!" she nearly wept. "Oh, how can he
treat her so--before you all! It's breaking my heart!"
Barbara came running out with the cream. "Great Scott!" she exclaimed,
stopping short. "What's become of everybody?"
"They've all gone, dear. Yes, we've all finished. No one wants any more
strawberries. Take yours away, will you, dear, we want to have a little
talk, Aunt Monica, Roger and I."
"I suppose it's Barney again," said Barbara, standing still and gazing
indignantly around her. "Where's Adrienne?"
"She has gone to lie down, dear. Yes. Barney has been very unkind."
"About my trip, I suppose? He's been too odious about my trip and it's
only the other day he made Adrienne cry. What possible business is it of
Barney's, I'd like to know? One would think he imagined that wives and
sisters were a sort of chattel. Why mayn't I stay, Mother--if you're
going to talk about my trip? Adrienne has explained everything to me and
I think Meg was quite right and I'd do the same myself if I were in her
place. So I'm perfectly able to understand."
"I know, dear; I know; Adrienne is so wonderful. But don't say things
like that, I beg of you, for it makes me very, very unhappy. And please
run away for a little while, for we have other things to talk of. I'm
afraid there may be no trip at all, Barbara; Meg may be coming home at
once. The letters had news about it, and Eric has to go to the war--if
there is a war, you see." Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a supplicatory note
very unlike her usual placid if complaining authority.
"But I'd like to hear about the letters, then. Do we really have to give
up the trip? I'm sure it's Barney at the bottom of it. He's been trying
to dish it from the first and I simply won't stand it from him."
"It's not Barney at all, Barbara. You shall hear all that there is to
hear. And you mustn't, really, forget that Barney is your elder brother
and has some right to say what you should do--even though we mayn't
agree with him."
"No, he hasn't. Not an atom," Barbara declared. "If anyone has any
right, except you, it's Adrienne, because she's a bigger, wiser person
than any of us."
"And since you've borne your testimony, Barbara," Oldmeadow suggested,
"you might obey your mother and give us the benefit of your experience
on an occasion when it's invited."
"Oh, I know you're against Adrienne, Roger," said Barbara, but with a
sulkiness that showed surrender. "I shan't force myself on you, I assure
you, and girls of fifteen aren't quite the infants in arms you may
imagine. If Adrienne weren't here to stand up for me I don't know where
I'd be. Because, you know, you _are_ weak, Mother. Yes you are. You've
been really wobbling like anything about my trip and trying to wriggle
out of it whenever you had a loop-hole, and Adrienne thinks you're weak,
I know, for she told me so, and said we must help you to be brave and
strong and that you belonged to a generation that had its eyes tightly
bandaged from birth. So there!" And delivering this effective shot,
Barbara marched away, not forgetting to pick up her plate of
strawberries as she passed the table.
Mrs. Chadwick attempted to conceal her confusion by following her
child's retreating figure with grave disapprobation and Oldmeadow seized
the propitious moment to remark: "I can't help feeling that there's
something to be said for Barney, all the same. His wife _has_ set you
all against him, hasn't she? I suspect Barbara's right, too, my dear
friend, and that in your heart of hearts you dislike this trip of hers
as much as he does. Certainly Barbara isn't a very pleasing example of
Adrienne's influence."
"She is very naughty, very naughty and rebellious," poor Mrs. Chadwick
murmured, twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. "I know I've not a
strong character, but I never spoiled my children and dear Adrienne
does, I feel, spoil Barbara by taking her so seriously and talking to
her as if she were grown up, you know. I had an aunt who married at
sixteen; but it didn't turn out at all happily. They quarrelled
constantly and she had two sets of twins, poor thing--almost like a
judgment, dear Mamma used to say. But of course Barbara is really too
young to understand; and so I've told dear Adrienne. Not that she isn't
perfectly frank about it. She's told me over and over again that
weakness was my besetting danger and that I must stand up straight and
let the winds of freedom blow away my cobwebs. So dear and original,
always, you know. And of course I see her point of view and Barbara
will, no doubt, be a bigger, finer person"--Mrs. Chadwick's voice
trailed off in its echo. "But I don't agree with you, Roger; I don't
agree with you at all!" she took up with sudden vehemence, "about the
trip. I don't agree that my poor Meg is a leper to be avoided until a
legal ceremony has been performed. I think that a cruel
convention--cruel, base and cowardly. She must have suffered so much
already. Nothing will give her so much courage as for us to be seen
standing by her. Adrienne has explained all that most beautifully to
Barbara. And how true love is the most sacred thing in life."
"My dear friend, Meg isn't a leper, of course, and we all intend to
stand by her. But it is certainly best that a young girl like Barbara
shouldn't be asked to meet, or understand, or exonerate such difficult
situations."
"That's what I've tried to say to Eleanor," Mrs. Averil murmured.
"And why not, Roger! Why not!" Mrs. Chadwick cried, surprisingly yet not
convincingly aroused. "Nothing develops the character so much as facing
and understanding difficulty. And as for exoneration--I don't agree with
you, and Adrienne doesn't agree. You and Monica are conventionalists and
we must live on a higher plane than convention. I'm sure I try to,
though it's very hard sometimes, but the noblest things are hardest.
There is nothing to exonerate. Meg was following her own light in doing
what she did."
"It's not a question of Meg, but of her situation," Oldmeadow returned.
"And because of her situation, because she is so in need of help and
loyalty, you ask that Barbara should draw back her skirts from her! Oh!
I knew it!" cried Mrs. Chadwick, "I knew that you would feel like that!
That is why I felt it would be happier if you were not here with
Adrienne."
"You need hardly tell me that," said Oldmeadow smiling. "But it's not a
question of convention, except in so far as convention means right
feeling and good taste. Meg, whatever her lights--and personally I don't
believe that she followed them--has done something that involves pain
and humiliation for all concerned with her, and whether she was or was
not justified in doing it is a moral problem that a child shouldn't be
asked to meet. Such problems should be kept from her until she is old
enough to understand them."
Mrs. Chadwick's vehemence had only fictitiously sustained her. It
dropped from her now and for a little while she sat silent, and the
confusion of her heart was piteously revealed to her friend as she said
at last, "If there _is_ a war, it will all settle itself, won't it, for
then Barbara couldn't go. I don't try to wriggle out of it. That's most
unfair and untrue. I've promised Adrienne and I agree with Adrienne
about it. I can't explain it clearly, as she does; it's all quite, quite
different when Adrienne explains it. She seems to hold me up and you and
Monica pull me down--oh, yes, you do, Roger. Of course it would kill
me--I know that I should die, if Barbara were to do what Meg has done;
you mustn't think Adrienne _wants_ her to behave like that, you know.
Adrienne only wants people to be brave and follow their light; but your
light needn't be a married man, need it? And sometimes I think it isn't
_really_ so serious--falling in love, you know. I'm sure I thought _I_
was in love half a dozen times before Francis proposed. It's a question
of seeing what's best for you all round, isn't it, and it can't be best
if it's a married man, can it? Oh! I know I'm saying what Adrienne
wouldn't like, now; because it sounds so worldly and as if I believed in
the French way. But I don't at all. I think love's everything, too. Only
it always seemed to me when I was a girl that love meant white satin and
orange-blossoms; and my poor, poor Meg can never wear those now. I
should feel miserable, quite miserable about her, of course, if Adrienne
weren't here to make me see the big, real things instead of the little
ones. And Barney has been so unkind. Sneering and scoffing at
everything"--her voice quivered. "However, if there's a war, that will
settle it. Barbara couldn't go if there was a war."