Chapter XI

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.