Chapter XVI

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."