Chapter XXIV

Mrs. Averil was in the hall. "Give them another moment," he said. "I'm going outside."

Tears were in his own eyes. He stepped out on to the flagged path of the little plot in front of the house where strips of turf and rose-beds ran between the house and the high wall. Between the clipped holly-trees at the gate he saw Barney's car, and its lights, the wall between, cast a deep shadow over the garden.

The rain was falling thickly now and he stood, feeling it on his face, filled with a sense of appeasement, of accomplishment. They were together at last. It was not too late. At such a time, when all the world hung on the edge of an abyss, to be together for a moment might sum up more of real living than many happy years. They knew each other's hearts and what more could life give its creatures than that recognition.

Suddenly, how he did not know, for there was no apparent movement and his eyes were fixed on the pallid sky, he became aware that a figure was leaning against the house in the shadow beside him. His eyes found it and it was familiar. Yet he could not believe his eyes.

She was leaning back, her hands against the wall on either side, and he saw, with the upper layer of perception that so often blunts a violent emotion, that her feet were sunken in the mould of Mrs. Averil's rose-bed and that the cherished shoots of the new climbing rose were tangled in her clothes. The open window was but a step away.

She had come since they had come. She had crept up. She had looked in--for how long?--and had fallen back, casting out her arms so that it might not be to the ground. Her eyes were closed; but she had heard and seen him. As he stood before her, aghast, unable to find a word, he heard her mutter: "Take me away, please."

Barney's car blocked the egress of the gate and Barney might emerge at any moment. He leaned towards her and found that she was intricately caught in the rose. Her hat with its veil, her sleeve, her hair, were all entangled.

Dumbly, patiently, she stood, while, with fumbling fingers and terror lest they should be heard within--Mrs. Averil's voice now reached him from the drawing-room--Oldmeadow released her and, his fingers deeply torn by the thorns, he was aware, in all the tumult of his thought, more than of the pain, of the wet fragrance of the roses that surrounded her. He shared what he felt to be her panic.

She had come hoping to see Barney; she had come to say good-bye to Barney, who would not come to her; and his heart sickened for her at the shameful seeming of her plight. She knew now that it must be her hope never to see Barney again.

There was a narrow passage, leading to the lawn and garden, between the house and the stable walls. Thickly grown with ivy, showing only a narrow opening above, where chimneys and gables cut against the sky, it was nearly as dark as a tunnel, and into this place of hiding he half led, half carried the unfortunate woman.

With the darkness, the pungent smell of the wet ivy closed thickly, ominously about them. It was as if he and Adrienne Toner were buried there together. He heard a maid laugh far away and a boy passed on the green stridently whistling "Tipperary." It was like hearing, in the grave, the sounds of the upper world.

Adrienne leaned against the wall. The ivy closing round her, nearly obliterated her, but he could dimly see the grey disk of her face, showing the unexpectedness of contour that reveals itself in the faces of the dead. The trivial features were erased and only a shape of grief remained, strangely august and emotionless.

An eternity seemed to pass before the front door opened and Mrs. Averil's voice, steadied to a galvanized cheerfulness, came, half obliterated to a wordless rhythm. Barney's voice answered her, and his steps echoed on the flagged path. "Say good-bye to Roger for me if I don't see him on the road!" he called out from the gate. Then the car coughed, panted; the horn croaked out its cry and, above them, a shaft of light across the ivy, of which he had till then been unaware, flitted suddenly away, leaving the darkness more visible.

He heard then that she was weeping.

Putting his arm behind her, for the rain fell heavily and the ivy was drenched with it, he drew her forward and for a little while it was almost against his breast that she lay while her very heart dissolved itself in tears.

She had come, he knew it all, with a breakdown of her pride, with a last wild hope and, perhaps, a longing to atone, believing that she might snatch a word somewhere with her husband, and find her way, at this last moment, back to the heart she had so alienated. She had seen all. She had heard all. He was sure of it. It had been as an outcast that he had found her leaning there. He understood her through and through and the tender heaviness that had already so often visited his heart flooded it to suffocation.

Among her sobs, he heard her, at last, speaking to him. "Even Palgrave doesn't know. He told me--only this afternoon--that Barney was here. I thought I might find him. I was going to wait in the road. And when I got here there was no car and I was afraid that there was a mistake. That I had missed him. And I went up to the house; to the open window; and looked in; to see if he was there. It was not jealousy: not now. I did not mean to be an eavesdropper. But, when I saw them, I stayed and listened. It was not jealousy," she repeated. "It was because I had to know that there was no more hope."

"Yes," said Oldmeadow gently, while, with long pauses, she spoke on and on; to the impartial judge, to the one sure refuge; and he said "Yes" again, gently, after she had finished; a long time after. She still half lay against his breast. He had never felt such an infinite tenderness towards any creature; not since his boyhood and his mother's death.

She drew away from him at last. "Take me," she said. "There is a train; back to Oxford." She had ceased to weep. Her voice was hoarse and faint.

"Did you walk up from the station? You're not fit to walk back. I can get a trap. There's a man just across the green."

"No. Walking, please. I would be recognized. They might know me. I can walk. If you will help me."

He drew her arm through his. "Lean on me," he said. "We'll go slowly."

They went past the drawing-room windows and, softly opening, softly shutting, through the gate. The road, when it turned the corner, left the village behind; between its rarely placed trees, vague silhouettes against the sky that seemed of one texture with them, it showed its mournful pallor for only a little space before them; there was not enough light left in the sky to glimmer on its pools. The fields, on either side, vanished into obscurity. Pale cattle, once, over a hedge, put disconsolate heads and lowed and a garrulous dog, as they passed by, ran out from a way-side farm-yard, smelt at their heels, growled perfunctorily and, having satisfied his sense of duty, went back to his post. The sense of dumb emptiness was so complete that it was only after they had gone a long way that he knew that she was weeping and the soft, stifling sounds seemed only a part of nature's desolation.

Her head bent down, she stumbled on, leaning on his arm, and from time to time she raised her handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth and nose. He did not say a word; nor did she.

As he led her along, submissive to her doom, it was another feeling of accomplishment that overwhelmed him; the dark after the radiant; after Nancy and Barney, he and Adrienne. It was this, from their first meeting, that he had been destined to mean to her. She was his appointed victim. He had killed, as really as if with a knife, the girl whom he had seen at Coldbrooks, in the sunlight, on that Sunday morning in spring, knowing no doubts. She had then held the world in her hands and a guileless, untried heaven had filled her heart. Between her and this crushed and weeping woman there seemed no longer any bond; unless it was the strange aching that, in his heart, held them both together.