Chapter XIX

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."