Chapter IX

"Rather nice to think that there are so many good and innocent people in the world, isn't it," Barney remarked, when he, Palgrave and Oldmeadow were left to their wine and cigars. It was evident that he would have preferred to omit the masculine interlude, but Oldmeadow was resolved on the respite. She had touched him because she was so unaware; but he was weary and disconcerted. How could Barney be unaware? And was he? Altogether? His comment seemed to suggest a suspicion that Miss Toner's flow might have aroused irony or require justification.

"Miss Toner and her mother seem to have found the noble and the gifted under every bush," he remarked, and he was not sure that he wished to avoid irony though he knew that he did wish to conceal it from Barney. "It's very good and innocent to be able to do that; but one may keep one's goodness at the risk of one's discrimination. Not that Miss Toner is at all stupid."

Palgrave neither smoked nor drank. He had again leaned his elbows on the table and his head on his fists, but, while Oldmeadow spoke, he lifted and kept his gaze on him. "You don't like her," he said suddenly. He and Oldmeadow had, irrepressibly, over Mrs. Chadwick's conception of materialism, interchanged their smile at dinner; but since the morning Oldmeadow had known that Palgrave suspected him of indifference, perhaps even hostility, towards the new-comer. "Why don't you like her?" the boy went on and with a growing resentment as his suspicions found voice. "She _isn't_ stupid; that's just it. She's good and noble and innocent; and gifted, too. Why should we pretend to be too sophisticated to recognize such beauty when we meet it? Why should we be ashamed of beauty--afraid of it?"

Barney, flushing deeply, looked down into his wine-glass.

"My dear Palgrave, I don't understand you," said Oldmeadow. But he did. He seemed to hear the loud beating of Palgrave's heart. "I don't dislike Miss Toner. How should I? I don't know her."

"You do know her. That's an evasion. It's all there. She can't be seen without being known. It's all there; at once. I don't know why you don't like her. It's what I want to know."

"Drop it, Palgrave," Barney muttered. "Let Roger alone. He and Adrienne get on very well together. It's no good forcing things."

"I'm not forcing anything. It's Roger who forces his scepticism and his satire on us," Palgrave declared.

"I'm sorry to have displeased you," said Oldmeadow with a slight severity. "I am unaware of having displayed my disagreeable qualities more than is usual with me."

"Of course not. What rot, Palgrave! Roger is always disagreeable, bless him!" Barney declared with a forced laugh. "Adrienne understands him perfectly. As he says: she isn't stupid."

"Oh, all right. I'm sorry," Palgrave rose, thrusting his hands in his pockets and looking down at the two as he stood above them. He hesitated and then went on: "All I know is that for the first time in my life--the very first time, mind you--all the things we are told about in religion, all the things we read about in poetry, the things we're supposed to care for and live by, have been made real to me--outside of books and churches. What do we ever see of them at home here, with dear Mummy and the girls? What do we ever talk of, all of us--but the everlasting round--hunting, gardening, cricket, hay; village treats and village charities. A lot of chatter about people--What a rotter So-and-so is; and How perfectly sweet somebody else: and a little about politics--Why doesn't somebody shoot Lloyd George?--and How wicked Home Rulers are. That's about all it amounts to. Oh, I know we're not as stupid as we sound. _She_ sees that. We can feel things and see things though we express ourselves like savages. But we're too comfortable to think; that's what's the trouble with us. We don't want to change; and thought means change. And we're shy; idiotically shy; afraid to express anything as it really comes to us; so that I sometimes wonder if things will go on coming; if we shan't become like the Chinese--a sort of _objet d'art_ set of people, living by rote, in a rut. Well. That's all I mean. With her one isn't ashamed or afraid to know and say what one feels. With her one wants to feel more. And I, for one, reverence her and am grateful to her for having made beauty and goodness real to me." Having so delivered himself, Palgrave, who had, after his deep flush, become pale, turned away and marched out of the room.

The older men sat silent for a moment, Oldmeadow continuing to smoke and Barney turning the stem of his wine-glass in his fingers. "I'm awfully sorry," he said at last. "I can't think what's got into the boy. He's in rather a moil just now, I fancy."

"He's a dear boy," said Oldmeadow. "There's any amount of truth in what he says. He's at an age when one sees these things, if one is ever going to see them. I hope he'll run straight. He ought to amount to something."

"That's what Adrienne says," said Barney. "She says he's a poet. You think, too, then, that we're all in such a rut; living Chinese lives; automata?"

"It's the problem of civilization, isn't it, to combine automatism with freedom. Without a rut to walk in you reach nowhere--if we're to walk together. And yet we must manage to ramble, too; individuals must; that's what it comes to, I suppose. Individuals must take the risk of rambling and alter the line of the rut for the others. Palgrave may be a rambler. But I hope he won't go too far afield."

"You do like her, Roger, don't you?" said Barney suddenly.

It had had to come. Oldmeadow knew that, as the depth of silence fell about them. It was inevitable between them, of course. Yet he wished it might have been avoided, since now it must be too late. He pressed out the glow of his cigar and leaned his arms on the table, not looking at his friend while he meditated, and he said finally--and it might seem, he knew, another evasion--"Look here, Barney, I must tell you something. You know how much I care about Nancy. Well, that's the trouble. It's Nancy I wanted you to marry."

Barney had held himself ready and a deep, involuntary sigh of relief, or of postponed suspense, now escaped him. "I see. I didn't realize that," he said. And how he hoped, poor Barney! it was all there was to realize! "Of course I'm very fond of Nancy."

"You realize, of course, how fond she is of you."

"Well; yes; of course. We're both awfully good pals," said Barney, confused.

"That's what Palgrave would call speaking like a savage, Barney. Own to it that if Miss Toner hadn't appeared upon the scene you could have hoped to make Nancy your wife. I don't say you made love to her or misled her in any way. I'm sure you never meant to at any rate. But the fact remains that you were both so fond of each other that you would certainly have married. So you'll understand that when I come down here and find Miss Toner installed as tutelary goddess over you all, what I'm mainly conscious of is grief for my dear little relegated nymph."

Still deeply flushed, but still feeling his relief, Barney turned his wine-glass and murmured: "I see. I quite understand. Yes; I should have been in love with her, I own. I nearly was, last winter. As to her being in love with me, that's a different matter. I've no reason to think she was in love. It would just be a difference of degree, with Nancy, wouldn't it; she loves us all so much, and she's really such a child, still. Of course that's what she seems to me now, since Adrienne's come; just a darling child."

"I suppose so. But you understand what I feel, too. I feel her much more than a darling child, and it's difficult for me to like anybody who has dispossessed her. I perfectly recognize Miss Toner's remarkable qualities and hope to count myself among her friends one day; but, being a satirist and a sceptic, I rebel instinctively against goddesses of whatever brand. Nymphs are good enough for me; and I can't help wishing, irrepressibly, that nymphs had remained good enough for you, my dear boy."

"It isn't a question of nymphs; it isn't a question of goddesses," Barney said, glancing up now at his friend. "I'm awfully sorry about Nancy; but of course she'll find some one far better than I am; she's such a dear. You're not quite straight with me, Roger. I don't see Adrienne as a goddess at all; I'm not like Palgrave, a silly boy, bowled over. It's something quite different she does to me. She makes me feel safe; safe and happy in a way I never imagined possible. It's like having the sunlight fall about one; it's like life, new life, to be with her. She's not a goddess; but she's the woman it would break my heart to part with. I never met such loveliness."

"My dear boy," Oldmeadow murmured. He still leaned on the table and he still looked down. "I do wish you every happiness, as you know." He was deeply touched and Barney's quiet words troubled him as he had not before been troubled.

"Thanks. I know you do. I know you care for my happiness. And I can't imagine anything coming into my life that would make a difference to us. That's just it." Barney paused. "It won't, will it, Roger?"

The crisis was again upon them. Oldmeadow did not look up as he said: "That depends on her, doesn't it?"

"No; it depends on you," Barney quickly replied.

"She likes you, quite immensely, already. She says you make her think of one of Meredith's dry, deep-hearted heroes," Barney gave a slightly awkward laugh, deprecating the homage as he offered it. "She says you are the soul of truth. There's no reason, none whatever, why you shouldn't be the best of friends, as far as she is concerned. It's all she asks."

"It's all I ask, of course."

"Yes, I know. But if you don't meet her half-way? Sometimes I do see what Palgrave means. Sometimes you misunderstand her."

"Very likely. It takes time really to understand people, doesn't it."

But poor Barney was embarked and could not but push on. "As just now, you know, about finding nobility behind every bush and paying for one's goodness by losing one's discrimination. There are deep realities and superficial realities, aren't there, and she sees the deep ones first. It's more than that. Palgrave says she makes reality. He didn't say it to me, because I don't think he feels me to be worthy of her. He said it to Mother, and puzzled her by it. But I know what he means. It's because of that he feels her to be a sort of saint. Do be straight with me, Roger. Say what you really think. I'd rather know; much. You've never kept things from me before," Barney added in a sudden burst of boyish distress.

"My dear Barney," Oldmeadow murmured.

It had to come, then. He pushed back his chair and turned in it, resting an arm on the table; and he passed his hand over his head and kept it there while he stared for a moment hard at the ceiling.

"I think you've made a mistake," he then said.

"A mistake?" Barney faltered blushing. It was not anger; it was pain, simple, boyish pain that thus confessed itself.

"Yes; a mistake," Oldmeadow repeated, not looking at him, "and since I fear it's gone too far to be mended, I think it would have been better if you'd not pressed me, my dear boy."

"How do you mean? I'd rather know, you see," Barney murmured, after a moment.

"I don't mean about the goodness, or the power," said Oldmeadow. "She is good, and she has power; but that's in part, I feel, because she has no inhibitions--no doubts. To know reality we must do more than blow soap-bubbles with it. It must break us to be known. She's never been broken. Perhaps she never will be. And in that case she'll go on blind."

Barney was silent for a moment, and that it was not as bad as he had feared it might be was apparent from the attempted calm with which he asked, presently: "Why shouldn't you be blind to evil and absurdity if you can see much further than most people into goodness? Perhaps one must be one-sided to go far."

"Perhaps. But it's dangerous to be one-sided--to oneself and others. And does she see further? That's the question. Doesn't she tend, rather, to accept as first-rate what you incline to find second? You're less strong than she is, Barney, and less good, no doubt. But you can't deny that you're less blind. So what you must ask yourself is whether you can be sure of being happy with a wife who'll never doubt herself and who'll not see absurdity where you see it. Put it at that. Will you be happy with her?"

He was, he knew, justified of Miss Toner's commendation, for truth between friends could go no further and, in the silence, while he sickened for his friend, he felt it searching Barney's heart. How it searched, how many echoes it found awaiting it, was proved by the prolongation of the silence.

"I think you exaggerate," said Barney at length, and in the words Oldmeadow read his refusal to examine further the truths revealed to him. "You see all the defects and none of the beauty. It can't be a mistake if I can see both. She'll learn a little from me, that's what it comes to, for all the lot I'll have to learn from her. I'll be happy with her if I'm worthy of her. What it comes to, you see, as I said at the beginning, is that I can't be happy without her." He rose and Oldmeadow, rising also, knew that they closed upon an unresolved discord. Yet these final words of Barney's pleased him so much that he could not leave it quite at that.

"Mine may be the mistake, after all," he said. "Only you must give me time to find it out. I began by telling you I couldn't be really dispassionate; and I feel much better for our talk, if that's any satisfaction to you. If you can learn from each other and see the truth together, you'll be happy. You're right there, Barney. That is what it comes to." They moved towards the door. "Try not to dislike me for my truth too much," he added.

"My dear old fellow," Barney muttered. He laid his hand for a moment on his friend's shoulder, standing back for him to pass first. "Nothing can ever alter things between you and me."

But things were altered already.