A.DRIENNE TOMER BY ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK (MRS. BASIL DE SLINCOURT) Author of "Xante," "Franklin Kane," "The Encounter," "Autumn Crocuses," etc. LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD & CO. 1921 (All rights reserved) . ADRIENNE TONER PART I CHAPTER I " Come down to Coldbrooks next week-end, wilj you, iloger ? " said Barney Chadwick. He had been wander- ng around the room, pausing once to glance at the Cesar ?ranck on the piano and once at the window to look clown it the Thames, and his voice now, though desultory in ntention, betrayed to his friend preoccupation and even mxiety. " There is going to be an interesting girl with is : American ; very original and charming." Roger Oldmeadow sat atjhis writing bureau in the window, and his high dark rilad was silhouetted against :he sky. It had power and even beauty, with moments >f brooding melancholy ; but the type to which it most conformed was that of the clever, cantankerous London Bachelor ; and if he sometimes looked what he was, the ;cholar who had taken a double first at Balliol and gave :>rain and sinew to an eminent review, he looked more )ften what he was not, a caustic, cautious solicitor, clean- >haved and meticulously neat, with the crisp bow at his collar, single eyeglass, and thin, wry smile. There was a cogitative kindness in his eyes and a latent rony on his lips as he now scrutinized Barney Chadwick, who had come finally to lean against the mantelpiece, wid it was difficult before Roger Oldmeadow's gaze at mch moments not to feel that you were giving yourself This was evidently what Barney was trying not h o .fe !, or, at all events, not to show. He tapped his 1 .... ADRJENXE TOXI : 1 t cigarette-end, fixing his eyes upon it and frowning a little. He had ruffled his brown hair with the nervous hand passed through it during his ramble, but ru tiled or sleek Barney could never look anything but perfection, just as, whether he smiled or frowned, he could n look anything but charming. In his spring-tide grey, with a streak of white inside his waistcoat and a tie of petunia silk that matched his socks, he was a pleasant figure of fashion ; and he was more than that ; more than the mere London youth of 1913, who danced the tango and cultivated Post- Impressionism and the Russian ballet. He was perhaps not much more ; but his differ- ence, if slight, made him noticeable. It came back, no doubt, to the fact of charm. He was radiant yet reserved ; confident yet shy. He had a slight stammer, and his smile seemed to ask you to help him out. His boyhood, at twenty-nine, still survived in his narrow face, elm in feature and delicate in contour, with long jaw, high temples and brown eyes, half sweet, half sleepy. The red came easily to his hn,wn cheek, and he had these: sitive stubborn lips of the little boy at the preparatory school whom Oldmeadow had met and befriended now many years ago. In Oldmeadow's eyes he had always remained the "little Barney" he had then christened him- Barney's mother had almost forgotten that hi was Eustace and he could not but know that Barney depended upon him more than upon anyone in the world. To Barney his negations were more potent than of people's affirmations, and though he had sometimes said indignantly, " You leave one nothing to agree about, Roger, except Plato and Church-music," he was never really happy or secure in his rebellions from what he felt or suspected to be Oldmeadow's tastes and jnd Oldmeadow had seen him through many admirations, not only for books and pictures, but for original girls. Barney thought that he liked the unusual. , He was a devotee of the ballet, and had in his rooms cushion* and ADRIENNE TONER 3 curtains from the Omega shop and a drawing by Wyndham Lewis. But Oldmeadow knew that he really preferred the photograph of a Burne-Jones, a survival from Oxford days, that still bravely, and irrelevantly, hung opposite it, and he waited to see the Wyndham Lewis replaced by a later portent. Barney could remain stubbornly faithful to old devotions, but he was easily drawn into new orbits ; and it was a new star, evidently, that he had come to describe and justify. " What have I to do with charming American girls ? " Oldmeadow inquired, turning his eyes on the blurred prospect of factory-chimneys and warehouses that the farther waterside of Chelsea affords. One had to go to the window and look out to see the grey and silver river flowing, in the placidity that revealed so little power. Oldmeadow lived in a flat on the Embankment ; but he was not an admirer of Chelsea, just as he was not an admirer of Whistler nor and Barney had always sus- pected it of Burne-Jones. His flat gave him, at a reasonable cost, fresh air, boiling-hot water and a walk in Battersea Park; these, with his piano, were his fundamental needs ; though he owned, for the mean little stream it was, that the Thames could look pretty enough by morning sunlight and like any river magical under stars. After Plato and Bach, Oldmeadow's passions were the rivers of France. " She'll have something to do with you," said Barney, and he seemed pleased with the retort. " I met her at the Lumleys'. They think her the marvel of the age." " Well, that doesn't endear her to me," said Oldmeadow. " And I don't like Americans." " Come, you're not quite so hide-bound as all that," said Barney, vexed. "What about Mrs. Aldesey ? I've heard you say she's the most charming woman you know." " Except Nancy," Oldmeadow amended. " No one could call Nancy a charming woman," said Barney, looking a little more vexed. " She's a dear, of 4 ADRIENNE TONER course ; but she's a mere girl. What do you know about Americans, anyway except Mrs. Aldesey ? " " What she tells me about them the ones she do know," said Oldmeadow, leaning back in his chair with a laugh. " But I own that I'm merely prejudiced. Tell me about your young lady, and why you want her to h;. something to do with me. Is she a reformer of some sort ? " " She's a wonderful person, really," said Barney, availing himself with eagerness of his opport un i a reformer. Only a sort of mixture of saint and fa: princess. She cured Charlie Luinley of insomnia, three years ago, at St. Moritz. Nothing psychic or theatrical, you know. Just sat by him and smiled she's a n extraordinary smile and laid her hand on his head. He'd not slept for nights and went off like a lamb. Lady Lumley almost cries when she tells about it. They t iu>i; Charlie might lose his mind if he went on not sleeping." "My word! She's a Christian Bti < lady? A medium ? What ? " " Call her what you like. You'll see. She does bt ' in spiritual forces. It's not only thnt. She's u lovely. In every way. Nancy and Meg will worship i The Lumley girls do." Oldmeadow's thoughts were already dwelling surmise on Nancy. He had always thought 1 1 est young creature he had ever known ; i lian Barney; and he had always wanted tli.-ia to runny. She was Barney's second cousin, and she and her mother lived near the Chadwicks in Gloucestershire. " Oh, Nancy will worship her, will she ? She must be all right, then. \Yhat's her name ? " he ask< Barney had given up trying to be desultory, and his conscious firmness was now not lost upon his friend as he answered, stammering a little, " Adrienne ; Adri< Toner." "Why Adrienne?" Oldmeadow mildly i: " Has she French blood ? " ADRIENNE TONER 5 " Not that I know of. It's a pretty name, I think, Adrienne. One hears more inane names given to girls every day. Her mother loved France just as you do, Roger. Adrienne was born in Paris, I think.' 7 " Oh, a very pretty name," said Oldmeadow, noting Barney's already familiar use of it. " Though it sounds more like an actress's than a saint's." "There was something dramatic about the mother, I fancy," said Barney, sustained, evidently, by his own detachment. " A romantic, rather absurd, but very lovable person. Adrienne worshipped her and, naturally, can't see the absurdity. She died out in California. On a boat," said Barney stammering again, over the b. " On a boat ? " " Yes. Awfully funny. But touching, too. That's what she wanted, when she died : the sea and sky about her. They carried her on her yacht doctors, nurses, all the retinue and sailed far out from shore. It's beautiful, too, in a way, you know, to be able to do that sort of thing quite simply and unselfconsciously. Adrienne sat beside her, and they smiled at each other and held hands until the end." Oldmeadow played with his penholder. He was dis- concerted ; and most of all by the derivative emotion in Barney's voice. They had gone far, then, already, the young people. Nancy could have not the ghost of a chance. And the nature of what touched Barney left him singularly dry. He was unable to credit so much simplicity or unself consciousness. He coughed shortly, and after a decently respectful interval inquired : " Is Miss Toner very wealthy ? " " Yes, very," said Barney, relapsing now into a slight sulkiness. " At least, perhaps not very, as rich Amerir go. She gave away a lot of her fortune, I know, when mother died. She founded a place for children a < vaiescent home, or creche out in California. And she did something in Chicago, too." And Miss Toner had evidently done something in 6 ADRIEXXE TONER London at the Lumleys'. It couldn't be helped about Nancy, and if the American girl was pretty and, for all her nonsense, well-bred, it might not be a bad thing, since there was so much money. The Chadwicks were not at all well off, and Coldbrooks was only kept going by Miv Chadwick's economies and Barney's labours at his um : stock-broking firm in the city. Oldmeadow could see Eleanor Chadwick's so ingenuous yet so pi ye fixed on Miss Toners gold, and he, too, could fix his. Mitt Toner sounded benevolent, and it was probable that her presence as mistress of Coldbrooks would be of benefit to all Barney's relatives. All the same, she sounded as irrelevant in his life as the Wyndham Lewis. " Adrienne Toner," he heard himself repeating aloud, for he had a trick, caught, no doubt, from his long Im. ness, of relapsing into absent-minded and audible medita- tions. The cadence of it worried him. It was an absurd name. " You know each other well already, it seems," he said. " Yes ; it's extraordinary how one seems to know her. One doesn't have any formalities to get through with i as it were," said Barney. " Either you are there, or you are not there." " Either on the yacht, or not on the yacht, eh ? " Old- meadow reached out for his pipe. 44 Put it like that if you choose. It's awfully jolly to be on the yacht, I can tell you. It /\ like a voyage, a great adventure, to know her." 44 And what's it like to be off the yacht ? Suppose I'm not there ? Suppose she doesn't like me ? " Oldmeadow suggested. 4t What am I to talk to her about of course I'll come, if you really want me. But she frightens me a little, I confess. I'm not an adventurous person." 44 But neither am I, you know ! " Barney exclaimed, 44 and that's just what she does to you : makes you adventurous. She'll be immensely interested in you, of course. You can talk to her about anything. It was down at a week-end at the Lumleys' I first met her, and ADRIENNE TONER 7 there were some tremendous big-wigs there, political, you know, and literary, and all that sort of thing ; and she had them all around her. She'd have frightened me, too, if I hadn't seen at once that she took to me and wouldn't mind my being just ordinary. She likes every- body ; that's just it. She takes to everybody, big and little. She's just like sunshine," Barney stammered a little over his s's. " That's what she makes one think of straight off ; shining on everything." " On the clean and the unclean. I see," said Old- meadow. " I feel it in my bones that I shall come into the unclean category with her. But it'll do me the more good to have her shine on me." CHAPTER II Roger Oldmeadow went to have tea with Mrs. Aldesey next afternoon. She was, after the Chadwickv friend, and his relation to the Chadwicks was one of affection rather than affinity. They had been extra- ordinarily kind to him since the time that he had befriended Barney at the preparatory school, hiding, under grim jocularities, the bewildi rinent of a boy's first great bereavement. His love for his mother had been an idolatry, and his childhood had been haunted by her ill-health. She died when he was thirteen, and in some ways he knew that, even now, he had never got over unfortunate and frustrated love-affair in ear had been, when all was said and done, a trivial compared to it. Coldbrooks had become, aftt his only home, for he had lost his father as a very 1 boy. and the whole family had left the country parsonage and been thrown on the mercies of an uncle and an a grim provincial town, Oldn impression of home was the high buck bed-room the worn carpet was cold to the feet and the fire spot of red, and the windows looked out over smoky chimney-pots. Here his stricken mother lay in bed with her cherished cat beside her and read aloud to ! was always a difficulty about feeding poor , imt Aggie declaring that cats should live below st.i on mice; and Roger, at midday dinner, became an at slipping bits of meat from his plate into a p:* in his lap and carried triumphantly to his mother's room afterwards. " Oh, darling, you 8 ADRIENNE TONER 9 say with her loving, girlish smile, and he would r " But I went without, Mummy ; so it's quite 8 His two little sisters were kept in the nursery, as they were noisy, high-spirited children, and tired their mother too much. Roger was her companion, her comrade ; her only comrade in the world, really, beside Effie. It had been Mrs. Chadwick who had saved Effie from the lethal- chamber after her mistress's death. Roger never spoke about his mother, but he did speak about Effie when she was thus threatened, and he had never forgotten, never, never, Mrs. Chadwick's eager cry of, " But bring her here, my dear Roger. I like idle cats ! Bring her here, and I promise you that we'll make her happy. Animals are so happy at Coldbrooks." To see Effie cherished, petted, occupying the best chairs during all the years that followed, had been to see his mother, in this flickering little ghost, remembered in the only way he could have borne to see her explicitly remembered, and it was because of Effie that he had most deeply loved Coldbrooks. It remained always his refuge during a cheerless and harassed youth, when, with his two forceful, black-browed sisters to settle in life, he had felt himself pant and strain under the harness. He was fonder of them than they of him, for they were hard, cheerful young women, inheriting harshness of feature and manner from their father, with their father's black eyes. It was from his mother that Oldmeadow had his melancholy blue ones, and he had never again met his mother's tenderness. Both sisters were now settled, one in India and one, very prosperously, in London ; but he seldom 1 \ for tea into Cadogan Gardens and Trixie's brisk dale drawing-room ; though Cadogan Gardens was obviously more convenient than Somer's Place, where, on the other side of the park, Mrs. Aldesey lived. He had whims, and did not know whether it was because he more disliked her husband or her butler that he went so seldom to see Trixie. Her husband was jovial and familiar the butler had a face like a rancid ham and a surrept i 10 ADRIENNE TONER manner. One had always to be encountered at the door, and the other was too often in the drawing-room and Trixie was vexatiously satisfied with both ; Trixie also had four turbulent, intelligent children, in whom complacent parental theories of uncontrol manifested themselves unpleasantly, and altogether she was too much hedged in by obstacles to be tempting; even had she been tempting in herself. Intercourse with Trixie, when it did take place, con c ' isually of hard-hearted ban She bantered him ft ^eat deal about Mix. Aldesey, she averred, snubbed her. Not that Trixie minded being snubbed by anybody. It was a pleasant walk across the park on this s; day when the crocuses were fully out in the grass, white, purple and gold, and the trees just scantly stitched with green, and, as always, it was with a slight elation that he approached his friend. However dull or jaded oneself or the day, the thought of her cheered one as did the thought of tea. She made him think of her own China tea. She suggested delicate cerem<> ss. Though familiar, there was always an aroma of unc iess about her ; a slight, sweet shock of oddity and surp: Mrs. Aldesey was unlike the traditional London A; can. She was neither rich nor beautiful nor noticeably well-dressed. One beea iually aware, after some time spent in her company, that her clothes, soft-tinted and silken, were pleasing. ; n -rot her appurten the narrow front of her little house, paint, ,1 lr, sl,l\ white and green and barred by box llow wal, the serenely unfashionable \vater-col< dy, pain by her mother, on the staircase ; and her drawing-room, grey-green and primrose-yellow, with eighteenth-century fans, of which she had a collection, displayed in cabinets, and good old glass. Mrs. Aldesey herself, behind her tea-table, very fad. -d. very thin, with what the French term a souffreteux little face an air of just not having taken drugs to make her sleep, but of having certainly taken tabloids t ADRIENNE TONER H digest seemed already to belong to a passing order of things ; an order still sustained, if lightly, by stays, and keeping a prayer-book as punctually in use as a card-case. Oldmeadow owed her, if indirectly, to the Chad\vi as he owed so much, even if it was entirely on his own merits that he had won her regard. They had met, years ago, in France ; an entirely chance encounter, and prob- ably a futureless one, had it nfrfr W^t* ^r the presence in the hotel at Amboise of the Luinteys. They both slightly knew the Lumleys, and the Lumleys and the Chadwicks were old friends. So it had come about ; and if he associated Mrs. Aldesey with tea, he associated her also with perfect omelettes and the Loire. He had liked her at once so much, that, had it not been for an always unseen yet never-repudiated husband in New York, he would certainly, at the beginning, have fallen in love with her. But the unrepudiated husband made as much a part of Mrs. Aldesey' s environment as her stays and her prayer-book. The barrier was so evident that one did not even reflect on what one might have done had it not been there ; and indeed, Mrs. Aldesey, he now seemed, after many pleasant years of friendship, to recognize, for all the sense of sweetness and exhilaration she gave him, had not enough substance to rouse or sustain his heart. She was, like the tea again, all savour. She lifted to-day her attentive blue eyes with age they would become shrewd and gave him her fine little hand, blue- veined and ornamented with pearls and diamonds in old settings. She wore long earrings and a high, transparent collar of net and lace. Her earrings and her elaborately-dressed hair, fair and faded, seemed as much a part of her personality as her eyes, her delicate nose and her small, slightly puckered mouth that dragged provocatively and prettily at one corner when she smiled. Oldmeadow sometimes wondered if she were happy ; but never because of anything she said or did. 44 1 want to hear about some people called Toner," he 12 ADRIEXXE TOXER said, dropping into the easy-chair on the opposite s of the tea-table. It was almost always thus that he and Mrs. Aldesey met. He rarely dined out. " I'm rather perturbed. I think that Barney you remember young Chadwick is going to many a Miss Toner Adrienne Toner. And I hope you'll have something her advantage to tell me. As you know, I'm devoted to Barney and his fani " I know. The Lumleys' Chad wicks. I r< perfectly. The dear boy with the inndcent eyes and sn mouth. AVhy don't you bring him to see me dancing the tango in all his spare moments, I suppose, and doesn't care about old ladies." Mrs. A! was not much over forty, but always thus alluded to i "Toner," she took up, pouring out his tea. " \\ perturbed ? Do you know anything against Americans, you mean. \Vc poor expatriates are always seen as keepers to so many curiou Celd ne me dit rien." " I know nothing against ,-s. Toner, the girl's mother, died, by arrangement, out at sea, her yacht, in sunlight. Does that say anything ? don't do that in America, do they, as a rule? t opulent lady, I inferred." " Oh dear ! Mrs. Aldesey now ejaculated, as it ened. " Can it be ? Do y< . posterous Mrs. Toner, of whom, a glimpse, and used to hear vague run wandered about the world. period: Marie-Louise of Pru^ md beneath her. chin. She had a harp, and war!) I archs. She had an astral body, and and everything handsome about her. cabotine of our epoch though I'm sure they i ays have existed. Of course it must be she. A could have died like that. Has she died, po m ? On a yacht. Out at sea. In sunlight. How uneom fortable ! " ADRIENNE TONER 18 " Yes, she's dead," said Oldmeadow resign* -illy. " Yes ; it's she, evidently. And her daughter is coming down to Coldbrooks this week-end. I'm afraid that unless Barney has too many rivals, he'll certainly marry her. But what you say leads me to infer that ho will have rivals and to hope they may be successful. She will, no doubt, marry a prince." 41 Something Italian, perhaps. Quite a small fortune will do that. Certainly your nice Barney wouldn't have been at all Mrs. Toner's affaire. The girl on her own may think differently, for your Barney is, I remember, very engaging, and has a way with him. I don't know anything about the girl. I didn't know there was one. There's no reason why she may not be charming. Our wonderful people have the gift of picking up experience in a genera- tion and make excellent princesses." " But she's that sort, you think. The sort that marries princes and has no traditions. Where did they come from ? Do you know that ? " " I haven't an idea. Yet, stay. Was it not tooth- paste ? Toner's Peerless Tooth-Paste. Obsolete ; yet I seem to see, rerniniscently, in far-away nursery days, the picture of a respectable old gentleman, with side- whiskers, on a tube. A pretty pink glazed tube with a gilt top to it. Perhaps it's that. Since it was Toner's it would be the father's side ; not the warbling mother's. Well, many of us might wish for as unambiguous an origin nowadays. And, in America, we did all sorts of useful things when we first, all of us, came over in the May- flower ! " said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile. Oldmeadow gazed upon his friend with an ironically receptive eye. " Have they ever known anyone decent ? Anyone like yourself ? I don't mean over here. I mean in America." " No one like me, I imagine ; if I'm decent. Mrs. Toner essayed a season in New York one winter, and it was then I had my glimpse of her, at the opera, in the Marie-Louise dress. A pretty woman, dark, with a B 14 ADRIENNE TONER sort of soulful and eminently-respectable coquetry about her ; surrounded by swarms of devotees all male, to me unknown; and with something in a turban took to be a Yogi in the background. She only tried the one winter. She knew what she wanted and where she couldn't get it. We are very dry York such of us as survive. Very little moved by warblings or astral bodies or millions. As you intimate, she'll have done much better over here. You are a strange mixture of materialism and ingenuousm ^<. y>u know." " It's only that we have fewer Mrs. Toners to ai us and more to do with millions than you hav Oldmeadow; but Mrs. Aldesey, shaking ith a certain sadness, said that it wasn't a '.s all 1 i "Have you seen hi ' \ \\ \ you seen Ad she took up presently, making him IT > of tea. " Is she pretty ? Is he very much in love ? " "I'm going down to Coldbrooks on Saturday to see her," said Oldmeadow, " and I gather that it's not to subject her to any test that Barney wants me ; it's to subject me, rather. He's quite sure of h r. H< ' she's irresistible. He merely wants to make assurance doubly sure by seeing me bowled over. I don't k; whether she's pretty. She has powers, appa' hat make her independent of physical attraction her hands on people's heads and cur< Charlie Lumley of insomnia at St. Morit / cars ago." Mrs. Aldesey, at this, looked at him for s in silence. "Yes," she assented, and in her p; seemed to have recognized and placed a familiar "Yes. She would. That's just what daughter would do. I hope she doesn't w,.'.! . too. Laying on hands is better than warbling." " I see you think it hopeless," said Oldmeadow, pushing back his chair and yielding, as he thrust his har*. his pockets and stretched out his legs, to an avowed cha- grin. " What a pity it is ! A thousand pities. They are such dear, good, simple people, and Barney, though ADRIENNE TONER 15 doesn't know it, is as simple as any of them. What will become of them with this overwhelming cuckoo in their nest." At this Mrs. Aldesey became serious. " I don't think it hopeless at all. You misunderstand me. Isn't the fact that he's in love with her reassuring in itself? He may be simple, but he's a delicate, discerning creature, and he couldn't fall in love with some one merely preten- tious and absurd. She may be charming. I can perfectly imagine her as charming, and there's no harm in laying on hands ; there may be good. Don't be narrow, Roger. Don't go down there feeling dry." " I am narrow, and I do feel dry ; horribly dry," said Oldmeadow. " How could the child of such a mother, and of tooth-paste, be charming? Don't try speci consolation, now, after having more than justified all my suspicions." " I'm malicious, not specious ; and I can't resist having my fling. But you mustn't be narrow and take me au pied de la lettre. I assert that she may be charm i I assert that I can see it all working out most happily. She'll lay her hands on them and they'll love her. What I really want to say is this : don't try to set Barney against her. He'll marry her all the same and never forgive you." " Ah ; there we have the truth of it. But Barney would always forgive me," said Oldmeadow. " Well then, she wont. And you'd lose him just as surely. And she'll know. Let me warn you of that. She'll know perfectly." "I'll keep my hands off her," said Oldmeadow, " if she doesn't try to lay hers on me." CHAPTER III The Chadwicks all had a certain sulkiness in their charming looks, and where in Barney it mingled with sweetness, in Palgrave, his younger brother, it mingled with brilliancy. It was Palgrave who, at t on, met the family friend and counsellor in the shabby, inex- pensive family car. He was still a mere boy, home from Marlborough for the Easter holidays ; fond of Oldmeadow, as all the Chadwicks were ; but more resentful of his predominance than Barney and more indifferent to his brotherly solicitude. He had Barney's long, narrow face and Barney's eyes and lips ; but the former were proud and the latter petulant. To-day, as he sat beside* him in the car, Oldmeadow was aware of something at once fixed and vibrating in his bearing. He wanted to say something, and he had resolved to be silent. During thrir last encounter at Coldbrooks, he and Oldmeadow had had a long, antagonistic political discussion, and Palgrave's resentment still, no doubt, survived. Coldbrooks lay among the lower Cotswolds, three miles from the station, and near the station was the village of Chelford where Nancy Averil and her mother h Nancy was at Coldbrooks ; Aunt Monica she was called aunt by the Chadwick children, though she and Mrs. Chadwick were first cousins was away. So Palgrave informed him. But he did not speak again until the chill, green curve of arable hillside was climbed and a str of wind-swept country lay before them. Then sudd. he volunteered : " The American girl is at Coldbrooks." " Oh ! Is she ? When did she come ? " Somehow 16 ADRIENNE TONER 17 Oldmeadow had expected the later train for Miss Toner. 14 Yesterday. She and Barney came down together in her car." " So you've welcomed her already," said Oldmeadow, curious of the expression on the boy's face. " How does she fit into Coldbrooks ? Does she like you all and do you like her ? " For a moment Palgrave was silent. " You mean it makes a difference whether we do or not ? " he then inquired. " I don't know that I meant that. Though if people come into your life it does make a difference." " And is she going to come into our lives ? " Palgrave asked, and Oldmeadow felt pressure of some sort behind the question. " That's what I mean. Has Barney told you ? He's said nothing to us. Not even to Mother. ' ' " Has Barney told me he's going to marry her ? No ; he hasn't. But it's evident he hopes to. Perhaps it depends on whether she likes Coldbrooks and Coldbrooks likes her." " Oh no, it doesn't. It doesn't depend on anything at all except whether she likes Barney," said Palgrave. " She's the sort of person who doesn't depend on anything or anybody except herself. She cuts through circumstance like a knife through cheese. And if she's not going to take him I wish she'd never come," he added, frowning and turning, under the peak of his cap, his jewel-like eyes upon his companion. " It's a case of all or nothing with a person like that. It's too disturbing just for a glimpse." Oldmeadow felt himself disconcerted. Oddly enough, for the boy was capricious and extravagant, Palgrave's opinion had more weight with him than Barney's. Barney, for one thing, was sexually susceptible and Palgrave was not. Though so young, Oldmeadow felt him already of a poetic temperament, passionate in mind and cold in blood. " She's so charming ? You can't bear to lose her now you've seen her ? " he asked. 18 ADRIENNE TONER "I don't know about charming. No; I don't think her charming. At least not if you mean something little by the word. She's disturbing. She changes everything." '" But if she stays she'll be more disturbing. She'll change more." "Oh, I shan't mind that! I shan't mind change," Palgrave declared. " If it's her change and she's there to see it through." And, relapsing to muteness, he bent to his brakes and they slid down among the woods of Coldbrooks. For the life of him and with the best will in the world, he couldn't make it out. That was Oldmeado'v impression as, among the familiar group gatl. hall about the tea-table, Miss Toner was at last made manifest to him. >iu was, he 1 It sure, in ;;ce at her, merely what Lydia A placed as a third-rate American girl, and commercial enter} > appropriate. She got up to meet him, as if remain/ special significance or, indeed, as it might be her ingenu habit to do in meeting any older person wa* not so much older if it came to that; for, after he had the direct and dwelling gaze of her lar^-, Ifgfa ves, the second impression was that she was by i, young as Barney had led him to expeet . Bhc A as certainly as old as Barney. There were none of the obvious marks of wea! her. She wore a dark-blue dress tyin^ on the breast white. She was small in stature and, i beyond anything he hn intend. \< irony, kindly enough, yet big, he kiu-w, with i: inferences, he even ree< L r ni/.ed, reconstructing t in the light of chose ti. : followed, thai i; iiim as he was named to her, it had been, rati shyness or girlishness, in the wish t draw him the more happily intoauroiip she h made her own. They were all sitting round the plentiful ta!>Ie, set ADRIENNE TONER 19 home-made loaves and cakes, jams and butter, and ;i Leeds bowl of primroses ; Miss Toner just across from him, Barney on one side of her his was an air of tranquil ecstasy and little Barbara on the other, and they all seemed to emanate a new radiance ; almost, thought Oldmeadow, with an irritability that was still genial, like innocent savages on a remote seashore gathered with intent eyes and parted lips round the newly disembarked Christopher Columbus. Mrs. Chad wick, confused, as usual, among her tea-cups, sending hasty relays of sugar after the un- sugared or recalling those sugared in error, specially suggested the simile. She could, indeed, hardly think of her tea. Her wide, startled gaze turned incessantly on the new-comer and to Oldmeadow, for all his nearly filial affection, the eyes of Eleanor Chadwick looked like nothing in the world so much as those of the March Hare in Tenniel's evocation of the endearing creature. Unlike her children, she was fair, with a thin, high, ridi- culously distinguished nose ; but her mouth and chin had Barney's irresolution and sweetness, and her untidy locks Meg's beauty. Meg was a beauty in every way, rose, pearl and russet, a Romney touched with pride and daring, and the most sophisticated of all the Chadwicks ; yet she, too, brooded, half merrily, half sombrely, on Miss Toner, her elbows on the table for the better contempla- tion. Palgrave's absorption was manifest; but he did not brood. He held his head high, frowned and, for the most part, looked out of the window. Oldmeadow sat between Palgrave and Nancy and it was with Nancy that the magic ended. Nancy did not share in the radiance. She smiled and was very Imsy cutting the bread and butter; but she was pale; not puzzled, but preoccupied. Poor darling Nancy ; always his special pet; to him always the dearest and most lovable of girls. Not at all a Romney. With her pale, fresh face, dark hair and beautiful hands she sug^ rather, a country lady of the seventeenth centun by Vandyck. A rural Vandyck who might have kept a 20 ADRIENNE TON K 11 devout and merry journal, surprising later generations by its mixture of ingenuousness and wisdom. Her lips were meditative, and her grey eyes nearly closed \N i she smiled in a way that gave to her gaiety an extra- ordinary sweetness and intimacy. Nancy always look as if she loved you when she smiled at you ; and indeed she did love you. She had spent her life among people she loved and if she could not be intimate she was remote and silent. But there was no hope for Nancy. He saw that finally, as he drank his tea in silence and looked across the primroses at the marvel of the age. Miss Toner's was an insignificant little head, if indeed it could be called little, since it was too large for body, and her way of dressing her h;iir in wide braids, pinned round it and projecting over the ears, added to the top-heavy effect. The hair was her only indubitable beauty, fine and fair and sparkling like the palest, purest metal. It was cut in a light fringe across a projecting forehead and her mouth and chin projected, too ; so that, as he termed it to himself, it was a squaslu -d-in lace, ugly in structure, the small nose, from its depressed bridge, jutting forward in profile, the lips, in proiile. llat yet prominent. Nevertheless he owned, studying her < his tea-cup, that the features, ugly, even trivial in detail, had in their assemblage something of unexpected foi Her tranquil smile had potency and he suddenly became aware of her flat, gentle voice, infrequent, yet oddly dominating. Sensitive as he was to voices, he saw it as a bland, blue ribbon rolled out among broken counters of colour, and listened to its sound before he listened to what it said. All the other voices went up and down ; all the others half said things and let them drop or trail. She said things to the end : when the ribbon began it was unrolled ; and it seemed, always, to make a silence in which it could be watched. " We went up high into the sunlight," she said, " and one saw nothing but snow and sky. The 1 -11s v ADRIENNE TONER 21 ringing on the mountains beneath ; one heard no other sound. I have never forgotten the moment. It seemed an inspiration of joy and peace and strength." " You've walked so much in the Alps, haven't you, Roger ? " said Mrs. Chadwick. " Miss Toner has motored over every pass." " In the French Alps. I don't like Switzerland,'' said Oldmeadow. " I think I love the mountains everywhere," said Miss Toner, " when they go so high into the sky and have the sun and snow on their summits. But I love the mountains of Savoy and Jura best." It vexed him that she should. She was a person to stay in and prefer Switzerland. " Joy and peace and strength," echoed in his ears and with the words, rudely, and irrelevantly, the image of the pink glazed tube with the gilt stopper. Miss Toner's teeth were as white as they were benignant. " I wish I could see those flowers," said Mrs. Chadwick. " I've only been to Veveyin the summer ; oh, years and years ago. So dull. Fields of flowers. You've seen them, too, of course, Roger. All the things we grow with such pains. My St. Brigid anemones never really do though what I put in of leaf mould ! " " You'll see anemones, fields of them, in the Alpine meadows ; and violets and lilies ; the little lilies of St. Bruno that look like freesias. I love them best of all," the bland, blue ribbon unrolled. " You shall go with me some day, Mrs. Chadwick. We'll go together." And, smil- ing at her as if they had, already, a happy secret between them, Miss Toner continued : " We'll go this very summer, if you will. We'll motor all the way. I'll come and get you here. For a whole month you shall forget that you've ever had a family to bring up or a li to take care of or anemones that won't grow properly even in leafmould." Her eyes, as they rested on her hostess, seemed to impart more than her words. ] imparted something to Oldmeadow. He had not before 22 ADRIENNE TONER conjectured that Eleanor Chadwick might be bored or tired, nor realized that since Barbara's birth, fourteen years ago, she had not left Coldbrooks except to go to London for a week's shopping, or to stay with friends in the English country. Hehadtakm KK-an.T v life for granted. It seemed Miss Toner's function not to take things that could be changed for granted. It was easy to do that of course, when you had a large banking account behind you; and yet he felt that Miss To would have had the faculty of altering accepted sta even had she been materially um -ij nipped. She and } Chadwick continued to look at each other for a mom and the older woman, half bashfully, sreined, wit ;i what softness, compelled to a tacit confcssio; known before that she was tired. Springs of adventure and girlishncss within her were perhaps unsealed by Mitt Toner's gaze. "And where do the rest of jjs come in!" B;. ejaculated. He was so happy in the triumph (,i beloved that h their sleepiness almost as brilliant as Palgrav "But you're always coining in with Mrs. Ci. < said Miss Toner. She looked at him, if v. it;, tender humour, exactly as she ! but then she looked at them both . >us to her. "I don't want you to come in at all for that month. I want her to forget you e. ought to be waters of Lethe for c\ and then, even in this life. \\ out, ai: plunge into forget fulness, far brighter and strong with a renovated self to love the better with. after she's had her dip you'll all conu to, with me. I'll get a car big enough. You, it, Averil ; and Mr. Old meadow ; though he and Bar. and Palgrave may have to take tu portmanteaus." " Barney " and " Palgrave " already, tious mastery alarmed almost as much as it ai ADRIENNE TONER 23 He thanked her, with his dry smile, saying that he really preferred to see the Alps on his legs and asked, to temper the possible acerbity : " Do you drive yourself ? " for it seemed in keeping with his picture of her as an invading providence that she should with her own hand conduct the car of fate. He could see her, somehow, taking the hairpin curves on the Galibier. But Miss Toner said she did not drive. " One can't see flowers if one drives oneself ; and it would hurt dear Macfarlane's feelings so. Macfarlane is my chauffeur and he's been with me for years ; from the time we first began to have motors, my mother and I, out in California. Apart from that, I should like it, I think, with the sense of risk and venture it must give. I like the sense of high adventure of " Childe Roland to the dark tower came " ; don't you, Palgrave ? It's life, isn't it ? The pulse of life. Danger and venture and conquest. And then rest- ing, on the heights, while one hears the bells beneath one." This, thought Oldmeadow, as he adjusted his glass the better to examine Miss Toner, must prove itself too much, even for Palgrave to swallow. But Palgrave swallowed it without a tremor. His eyes on hers he answered : " Yes, I feel life like that, too." " Oh dear ! " sighed Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldmeadow blessed her antidote to the suffocating sweetness : "I'm afraid I don't ! I don't think I know anything about risks and dangers ; or about conquest either. I'm sure I've never conquered anything ; though I have been dreadfully afraid of ill-tempered servants if that counts, and never let them see it. Barbara had such an odious nurse. She tried, simply, to keep me out of the nursery ; but she didn't succeed. And there was a Scotch cook once, with red hair that so often goes with a bad temper, doesn't it. Do you remember, Barney ? your dear father had to go down to the kitchen when she was found lying quite, quite drunk under the table. But cooks a nurses can't be called risks and I've never cared for hunting," 24 ADRIENNE TONER Miss Toner was quietly laughing, and indeed everybody laughed. " Dear Mrs. Chadwick," she said. And then she added : 46 How can a mother say she has not known risks and dangers ? I think you've thought only of other people for all your life and never seen yourself at all. Alpine passes i aren't needed to prove people's courage and endura Oldmeadow now saw, from the sudden alarm and perplexity of Mrs. Chadwick's expression, that she was wondering if the marvellous guest alluded to the per IN of child-birth. Perhaps she did. She was ready, imagined, to allude to anything. " You're right about her never having s 1 f. " said i'algrave, nodding across at Miss Toner. She never has. l She's incapable of self-analy " But she's precious sharp when it comes to analysing ! other people, aren't you, Mummy dear ! " said Ban " I don't think she is," said Meg. M I think Mir sees people rather as she sees flowers ; things to be fed and staked and protected." i4 You're always crabbing Mummy, Meg. It's a shai; Isn't it a shame, Mummy dear ! " Barbara protested, and Barney tempered the apparent criticism peace- maker as he usually was with : " But you have to understand flowers jolly well to make them grow. And we do her credit, don't we ! " Miss Toner looked from one to the other as they spoke, with her clear, benignant, comprehending gaze, and Mrs. Chadwick stared with her March Hare ingenuousness that had its full share, too, of March Hare shrewdness. She undertook no self -justification, commenting in the pause that followed -ontributi don't know what you mean l>\ srll-anal\ >i- onlea thinking about yourself and mothers certainly hav much time for that. You're quite right ther she nodded at Miss Toner, adding in a tone i specially for her: "But young people p iggerate things that are quite, quite simple when t! CHAPTER IV " Come out and have a stroll," said Oldmeadow to Nancy. Tea was over and a primrose-coloured sunset filled the sky. They walked up and down the gravel Jed terrace before the house. Coldbrooks stood high, yet encircled by still higher stretches of bare or wooded upland. Its walled garden, where vegetable beds and lines of cordon apple-trees were pleasingly diversified by the herbaceous borders that ran beneath the walls, lay behind it ; most of the bedroom windows looked down into the garden. Before it, to the south, lawns and meadows dropped to a lake fed by the brooks that gave the place its name. Beyond the lake were lower copses, tinkling now with the musical run of water and climbing softly on either side, so that from the terrace one had a vast curved space of sky before one. The sun was setting over the woods. It was Barney's grandfather, enriched by large ship- ping enterprises in Liverpool, who had bought the pleasant old house, half farm, half manor, and Barney's father had married the daughter of a local squire. But the family fortunes were much dwindled, and though Barney still nursed the project of returning one day to- farm his own land there was little prospect of such a happy restoration. In spite of the Russian ballet and London portents, he was fonder, far, of Coldbrooks than of all of them put together. But he could afford m-itlu T time nor money for hunting, and his home was his only for week-ends and holidays. It was the most lovable of homes, more stately without than within, built of grey* 25 26 ADRIENNE TONKK gold Cotswold stone with beautiful stone chimneys and mullioned windows and three gable sky. Within, everything was rather bare and sha There was no central heating, and no bathrooi: tiger-skin that lay on the stone flags of the hall had lost all its hair. The piano rattled and whec/cd in ma" its notes. The patterns of the drawing-room chintzes were faded to a mere dim rosy riot, and stuffing pro- truded from the angles of the leather arm-chair smoking-room. But it was, all the same, a delightful house to stay in. Eleanor Chadwiek's shr<\\ y .wed itself in her housekeeping. Sin- knew wh:\t wer- flu- essentials. There was always a blazing tin- in one's bed- room in the evening and the hottest of wai one's bath in the morning. Under the fa " It's the happiest of all," s; ry. He had been wondering aboui Nancy < had come. It was not her voice, gentle that told him now she was unhappy. It v. . r j n contrast to the bird's clear ci heaviness of her heart. ADRIENNE TONER 27 " It's wilder than the thrush and blackbird, isn't it ? " he said. " Less conscious. The thrush is always listening to himself, I feel. Do you want to go to the Alps with Miss Toner, Nancy ? " Nancy would not see Miss Toner as an angelic being and he wanted to know how she did see her. The others, it was evident, thought her angelic by a sort of group suggestion. She thought herself so, to begin with ; snow, flowers, bells and all the rest of it ; and they, ingenuous creatures, saw the mango-tree rising to heaven as the calm-eyed Yogi willed they should. But Nancy did not see the mango-tree. She was outside the group conscious- ness with him. " Oh no ! " she now said quickly ; and she added : "I don't mean that I don't like her. It's only tl. I don't know her. How can she want us ? She came only yesterday." " But, you see, she means you to know her. And when she's known she couldn't imagine that anyone wouldn't like her." " I don't think she's conceited, if you mean that, Roger." " Conceit," he rejoined, " may be of an order so mon- strous that it loses all pettiness. You've seen more of her than I have, of course." " I think she's good. She wants to do good. She wants to make people happy; and she does," said Nancy. " By taking them about in motors, you mean." " In every way. She's always thinking about pleasing them. In big and little ways. Aunt Eleanor loves her already. They had a long talk last night in Aunt Eleanor's room. She's given Meg the most beautiful little pendant- oearl and amethyst, an old Italian setting. She had it >n last night and Meg said how lovely it was and she simply lifted it off her own neck and put it around Meg's. Meg had to keep it. She gave it in such a way that one would have to keep it." " Rather useful, mustn't it be, to have pendants so plentifully about you that you can hand them out to 28 ADRIENNE TONKU the first young lady who takes a fancy to them ? Has she given you anything, Nancy ? " 44 I'm sure she would. But I shall be more careful than Meg was." " Perhaps Meg will practise carelessness, since it's so remunerative. What has she given Palgrave ? He seems absorbed." 44 Isn't it wonderful," said Nancy. " It's wonderful for Palgrave, you know, Roger, because he is rather sad bitter, really, just now ; and I think she will make him much happier. They went off to the woods together directly after breakfa 44 What's he sad and bitter about ? You mean his socialism and all the rest of it ? " 44 Yes ; and religion. You remember ; when you were here at Christmas." " I remember that he was very foolish and mad lose my temper. Is there a chance of Miss TCHHT turning him into a good capitalist and churchman ? " Nancy smiled, but very faintly. 4t It's . you know, Roger." M \\lia! she's done to them already, you mean?" 44 Yes. What she's done already. She had Meg, lunch, in her room. Meg looked quite different when she came out. It's very strange, Roger. It's as if she'd changed them all. I almost feel," Nancy lo<>kl r< at the happy house and up at the tranquil ebnfl where the rooks were noisily preparing for bed, 44 as if nothing could be the same again, since she's come." Her clear profile revealed little of the trouble in her heart. They had not named Barney; but he must be nan 44 It's white magic," said Oldmeadow. "You and I will keep our heads, my dear. \\V don't want to be changed, do we? What has she done to Barney? He is in love with her, of course." 44 Of course," said Nancy. He had never been sure before that she was in love with Barney. She was nine years younger and had been a ADRIENNE TONER 29 child during years of his manhood. Oldmeadow had thought it in his own fond imagination only that the link between them was so close. But now he knew what Nancy herself, perhaps, had hardly known till then. The colour did not rise in her cheek, but through her voice, through her bearing, went a subtle steadying of herself. " Of course he is in love with her," she repeated and he felt that she forced herself to face the truth. They stopped at the end of the terrace. A little path turned aside towards the copse and the grass beneath the trees was scattered with the pale radiance of prim- roses. Nancy seemed to look at the flowers, but she sought no refuge in comment on them ; and as they looked in silence, while the rooks, circling and cawing above, settled on their nests, a sense of arrested time came to Oldmeadow, and a phrase of music, blissful in its sadness, where gentle German words went to a gentle German strain, passed through his mind. Something of Schubert's Young Love First Grief. It seemed to pierce to him from the young girl's heart and he knew that he would never forget and that Nancy would never forget the moment ; the rooks ; the primroses ; the limpid sky. The black-cap's flitting melody had ceased. " Do you think she may make him happy ? " he asked. It was sweet to him to know that she had no need of a refuge from him. She could take counsel with him as candidly as if there had been no tacit avowal beUuvn them. She looked round at him as they went on walking and he saw pain and perplexity in her eyes. " What do you think, Roger ? " she said. " Can she ? " " Well, might she, if Barney is stupid enough ? " " I don't feel he would have to be stupid to be happy with her, Roger. You are not fair to her. What I wonder is whether he will be strong enough not to be quite swept away." " You think she'll overpower him ? Leave him with no mind of his own ? " "Something like that perhaps. Because she's very o 30 ADRIENNE TONER strong. And she is so different. Kvrrvthi;^ in In- different. She has nothing nothing with us, or we with her. We haven't done the same things or s< -m the s ime sights or thought the same thoughts. I hardly feel as if the trees could look the same to her as they do to us or the birds sound the same. And she'll want such diffr: things." "Perhaps she'll want his things," Oldmeadow mi "She seems to like them qn ly already." "Ah, but only because she's going to do sormt to them," said Nancy. " Only because she's going to change them. I don't think she'd like anything she could do nothing for." lite grown up. She had seen fur he had. He felt her quiet comment big with intuit wisdom. u You sec deep, my dear," he said. "There's s thing portentous in your picture, you know." icre is something | ^ about hor, 1J <>_:< T. lliat is just what I feel. That is just what t> ne." " She may be portentous. she may do to us," said Oldn "but I'm < vinced, for all her marvels, that she's a very onlir young person. Don magnify IHT. magniiifd she won't work so i largely an affair, I'm sure of it, of motors and pendants. She's ordinary. That's what I take my why do you feel, too, t! sweep Barney away ? " Nancy was not at all convinced by his demonstration. " Why, because he's in love with her. That's all. Her only menace is in her .cy. What it comes to, I suppose, is th;. , it they're to be lu.; >t lu-'li likr her thi:i 4 Yes ; but what it comes to th- n, Hoijer, is that shall lose Barney," Nancy said. CHAPTER V Miss Toner did not come down to breakfast next morn- ing and Oldmeadow was conscious of a feeling of dispro- portionate relief at not finding her in the big, bare, panelled dining-room where a portrait of Mrs. Chadwick in court dress presided over one wall and Meg and Barney played with rabbits, against an imitation Gainsborough back- ground, on another. Both pictures were an affliction to Barney ; but to Mrs. Chadwick's eye they left nothing to be desired in beauty, and, when Barney was not there to protest, she would still fondly point out the length of eyelash that the artist had so faithfully captured in the two children. The sense of change and foreboding that he and Nancy, with differences, had recognized in their talk, must have haunted Oldmeadow's slumbers, for he had dreamed of Miss Toner, coming towards him along the terrace, in white, as she had been at dinner, with the beautiful pearls she had worn, lifting her hand and saying as the rooks cawed overhead for the rooks cawed though the moon was brightly shining : " I can hear them, too." There had been nothing to suggest such a dream in her demeanour at dinner; nothing portentous, that Simple for all her competence, girlish for all the splendour of her white array, she had spoken little, looking at them all, and listening, gravely sometimes, but with a pervading gentleness ; and once or twice he had found her eyes on his ; those large, light eyes, dispassionately and imper- sonally benignant, giving him, with their suggestion of seeing around but also very far beyond you, a curious 31 32 ADRIENNE TONER sense of space. Once or twice he had felt himself a little at a loss as he met their gaze it had endeared her to him the less that she should almost discompose him he had felt anew the presence of power in her ugly little face and even of beauty in her colourless skin, her colour- less yet so living eyes, and her crown of wondrous gold. It had been, no doubt, this element of aesthetic signifies i merging with Nancy's words, that had built up the figure of his dream; for so he had seen her, grey and white and gold in the unearthly light, while the rooks cawed overhead. His friends this morning, though they were all talking of her, possessed in their gaiety and lightness of heart an exorcising quality. So much gaiety and lightness couldn't be quenched or quelled if that was what Miss Toner's influence menaced. Between them all they would manage to quench and quell Miss Toner, rather, and he recovered his sense of her fundamental absurdity as lie felt anew their instinctive and UMM If conscious wis- dom. " Isn't it odd, Roger, she hardly k ngland at all," said Mrs. Chadwick, as he finished his porridge, made his tea at the side- table, and took lr beside 1 44 She's been so little here, although she seems to have travelled everywhere and lived everywht 44 Except in her own country," Oldmeadow the surmise, but urbanely, for Barney sat opposite him. "Oh, but she's travelled there, too, imm Barney. 44 She's really spent most of In -r lilt in A I think, Mother. She has a little sort of bungalow on the coast in California, orange-trees and roses and all the rest of it ; a fairy-tale place ; and a house in the mounts in New England, high up among the ]>i IK --woods." 44 And a private train, I suppose, to carry her from one to the other. What splendid pearls," said Oldmeadow, buttering his toast. 44 Havn't you asked for tli Meg ? " Meg was not easily embarrassed. 44 Not yet," she said. ADRIENNE TONER 33 " I'm waiting for them, though. Meanwhile this is pretty, isn't it ? " The pendant hung on her breast. " I believe she would give Meg her pearls, or any of us. I believe she'd give anything to anyone," sighed Mrs. Chadwick. " She doesn't seem to think about money or things of that sort, material things you know, at all. I do wish I could get the map of America straight. All being in those uneven squares, like Turkish Delight, makes it so difficult. One can't remember which lump is which though Texas, in my geography, was pale green. The nice tinned things come from California, don't they ? And New England is near Boston the hub of the universe, that dear, droll Oliver Wendell Holmes used to call it. I suppose they are very clever there. She has been wonder- fully educated. There's nothing she doesn't seem to have learned. And her maid adores her, Roger. I was talking to her just now. Such a nice French woman with quite beautiful dark eyes, but very melancholy ; we make a mistake, I believe, in imagining that the French are a gay people. I always think that's such a good sign. So kind about my dreadful accent." " A good sign to have your maid like you, Mummy, or to have melancholy eyes ? " Meg inquired. " I think she's a rather ill-tempered looking woman. But of course anybody would adore Adrienne. She's an angel of patience, I'm sure. I never met such an angel. We don't grow them here," said Meg, while Barney's triumphant eyes said : " I told you so," to Oldmeadow across the table. After breakfast, in the sunlight on the terrace, Mrs. Chadwick confided her hopes to him. " She really is an angel, Roger. I never met anyone in the least like her. So good, and gifted, too, and all that money. Only think what it would mean for dear Barney. He could take back the farm the lease falls in next year, and come back here to live." " You think she cares for him ? " " Yes ; indeed I do. She cares for us all, already, as you can see. But I believe it's because she's adopting 34 ADRIEXNE TONER us all, as her family. And she said to me yesterday that she disapproved so much of our English way of out mothers and thought families ought to love each other and live together, young and old. That's from b so much in France, perhaps. I told her / shoul<: have liked it at all if old Mrs. Chadwick had wanted to come and live with Francis and me. She was such a masterful old lady, Roger, very Low Church, and quite dreadfully jealous of Francis. And eldest sons should inherit, of course, or what would become of estates ? My dear father used always to say that the greatness of England was founded on landed estates. I told I that. But she looked at me quite gravely as if she hardly understood when I tried to explain it all goes in with Waterloo being won on the ii< Ids of Eton, doesn't It's quite curious the feeling of restfulness she gives i about Barney a sort of Xunr Dimittis feeling, kno " Only she doesn't want you to depart. Well, that's certainly all to the good and let's hope England's greatness won't suffer from the irregularity. Has she told you much about her life? her people?" Old He could not find it in his heart to shadow such ingenuous contentment. And after all what was then- to say against Miss Toner, except that she would change things t " Oh, a great deal. Kvcryt hing I asked ; for I thought it best, quite casually you know, to lind OUl i uld. Not people of any position, you know, UO^'.T, though I think her mother was better in that way than for his father made tooth-pa^ <. It's from the tooth- paste all the money comes. I Jut It's a] r-likr fashion, beneath her chin. She carried a sunshade and a small basket filled with letters. Mrs. Chadwick, both hands outstretched, went to meet her. Oldmeadow had never before seen her kiss an acquaintance of two days' standing. " I do hope you slept well, my dear," she said. 36 ADRIEXNE TONER 14 Very well," said Miss Toner, in< -In. ling Oldmcadow in her smile. "Except for a lit tit- while when I woke up and lay awake and couldn't get the cawing of your rooks out of my mind. I seemed to hear them going on and on." " Oh dear ! How unfortunate ! But suivly they w. cawing in the night!" cried Mrs. I'hadwick and Miss Toner, laughing and holding her still by the hands, turned to tell Barney, who closely followed her, that his moth r was really afraid, because she had thought of rooks in the night, that their Coldbrooks birds had actually l> inhospitable enough to keep her awake with their ca wings. Meg and Barbara and Nancy had all now emerged and there was much laughter and explanati 44 You see, Mummy thinks you might work miracles u among the rooks," said Harnev, whil.- ()1<1 meadow testily meditated on his own discomfort. It might have been mere coinci Off it might he must admit it have been Miss T< houghts travelling into his dream or his dream troubling her thoughts; of tin two last alternatives he didn't know which he disliked the more. "It's time to get ready for ehureh, childr. Mrs. Chad wick, when, after much merriment at her expense, the rooks and their occult misdemeanours were disposed of. 44 \Yhere is Palgrave ? I do hope he won't a^jain. It does so hurt dear Mr. Bodma ings. Are you coming with us, my dear ? " she asked Miss Ton Toner, smiling upon them all, her sunshade open on her shoulder, said that it they did not mind sh- did not think she would come. 44 1 only go to church ^ friends get married or their babies christened," she 44 or something of that sort. I was never brought up to it, you see. Mother never went." Mrs. Chadwick's March Hare eyes dwelt on her. k ' aren't a Churchwoman ? " 44 Oh dear no ! " said Miss Toner, and the very sugges- tion seemed to amuse her. ADRIENNE TONER 37 Mrs. Chad wick hesitated : " A Dissenter ? " she ven- tured. " There are so many sects in America I've heard. Though I met a very charming American bishop once." " No not a Dissenter ; if you mean by that a Presby- terian or a Methodist or a Swedenborgian," said Miss Toner, shaking her head. Palgrave had now joined them and stood on the step above her. She smiled round and up at him. Mrs. Chadwick, her distress alleviated yet her perplexity deepened, ventured further : " You are a Christian, I hope, dear ? " " Oh, not at all," said Miss Toner gravely now and very kindly. "Not in any orthodox way, I mean. Not in any way that an American bishop or your Mr. Bodman would acknowledge. I recognize Christ as a great teacher, as a great human soul ; one of the very greatest ; gone on before. But I don't divide the human from the divine in the way the churches do ; creeds mean nothing to me, and I'd rather say my prayers out of doors on a day like this, in the sunlight, than in any church. I feel nearer God, alone in His great world, than in any church built with human hands. But we must all follow our own light." She spoke in her flat, soft voice, gravely but very simply ; and she looked affectionately at her hostess as she added : " You wouldn't want me to come with you from mere conformity." Poor Mrs. Chadwick, standing, her brood about her, in the sweet Sabbath sunlight, had to Oldmeadow's eye an almost comically arrested air. How was a creedless* churchless mistress of Coldbrooks to be fitted in to her happy vision of Barney's future? What would the village say to a squiress who never went to church and who said her prayers in the sunlight alone? M But, of course, better alone," he seemed to hear her cogitate, " than that anyone should see her doing such a very curious thing." And aloud she did murmur : " Of course not ; of course not, dear. And if you go into the little arbour down by the lake no one will disturb you, I'm sure. a 38 ADRIENNE TONER Must it be quite in the open ? Mere conformity is m a shallow thing. But all the same I shoul re rh-r to come and talk things over with you. He's such good man and very, very broad-mimic <1. lie brings scit : so often into his sermons sometimes I think UK- ;KU don't quite follow it all ; and only the other day he said to me, about modern unrest and scepticism : 'There is more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.' Mamma met Lord Tennyson once and felt him to be a deeply religious man though rather ill-temper he was really very rude to her, I always thought, and I do so dislikr rudeness. And travelling about so much, . you probably had so little teaching." MUs Toner's eyes were incapable of irony and tlu v only 1 now in Ix-nrvolenceasthey rested on IK r hostess. " But I haven't any doubts," she said, shaki icad and smiling : No doubts at all. \ nth through your church and I reach it through love and life. And the beautiful tiling i- Mill it's tin- same truth, really; the same beautiful truth that God loves us all, and that we are all the child nn of God. I should be very pleased to meet your rector, of course, because I like meeting anyone who is good and t; Hut I was taught. My mother taught me always. And she was the freest, wisest soul I have e\ " I'll stay with you," said Palgrave suddenly from his e on thestep above lit r. Ilis eyes, o\ . i!d( r, had me t Old meadow's and perhaps what he saw in old friend's fu mentioning Adam or Eve or the Garden of Eden. It was most endearing ! Like some one trying to avoid the eye of an old acquaintance whom they'd come to the conclusion they really must cut ! I do so like the idea of Adam and Eve becoming unsuitable acquaintances for the enlightened clergy ! " " There is no sin," said Miss Toner. Barney was not quite comfortable ; Oldmeadow saw that. He kicked about in the gravel, a little flushed, and when, once or twice, the old family friend met his eye, it was quickly averted. " God is Good ; and everything else is mortal mind mistake illusion. ' ' " You are a sound Platonist, Miss Toner," Oldmeadow observed, and his kindness hardly cloaked his irony. " Am I ? " she said. When she looked at one she never averted her eyes. She looked until she had seen all that she wished to see. " I am not fond of meta- physics." " Socrates defined sin as ignorance, you know, and in a sense it may be. All the same," said Oldmeadow, and he felt that they were all listening and that in the eyes of his old friends it was more than unlikely that he would get the better of Miss Toner " there's mortal mind to be accounted for, isn't there, and why it gets us continu- ally into such a mess. Whatever name you call it by, there is something that does get us into a mess and mightn't it be a wholesome discipline to hear it denounced once a week ? " " Not by some one more ignorant than I am ! " said Miss Toner, laughing gently. " I'll go to church for love of Mrs. Chadwick, but not for the sake of the discipline ! " " Mr. Bodman never denounces. Roger is giving you quite a wrong idea," said Mrs. Chadwick. She had stood looking from one to the other, distressed and bewildered, and she now prepared to leave them. " And Palgrave is very, very unjust. Of course you must not come, dear. It would make me quite unhappy. But Mr. Bodman 40 ADRIENNE TONER is not a duffer. If Palgrave feels like that he n. certainly stay away. Perhaps you can teach him to be more charitable. It's easy to see the mote in our neighbour's eye." Mrs. Chad\vi< -k\ rafae slightly tr bled. She had been much moved by her son's defect i - " Come, Mummy, you're not going to say I'm a duf l Palgrave passed an affectionately bantering arm round her shoulders. " Dufferism isn't my beam ! " But very sadly Mrs. Chadwick drew away, saying as she turned into the house : " No ; that isn't your beam. But pride may be, Palgrave. Spiritual pn Oldmeadow remained standing in tin- sunlight with Miss Toner and the two young men. The girls had fol- lowed Mrs. Chadwick, Meg casting a laughing glane appreciation at him as she went. Religious scruples would never keep Meg from church if she had a pretty spring dress to wear. " After all," he carried on, mildly, the altercation if that was what it was between him and Miss Toner " good Platonists as we may be, we haven't reached _:c of Divine Contemplation yet and things do haj> that arc dillieult to account for, i! sin is nothing more positive than illusion and mistake. All the forms of ote-toi que je m'y metU. All the forms of jealousy and malice. Deliberate cruelties. History is full of horrors, isn't it? There's a jealousy of goodness in the liu heart, as well as a love. The betrayal of Christ by Judas is symbolic." lie had snvwed his eyeglass into his eye the better to see Miss Toner and looked very much like a solicitor trying to coax dry facts out of a romantic client. And in the transparent shadow of her hat Miss TOIHT. with her incomparable composure, gave him all her attention. " I don't account. I don't account for anything. Do you ?" she said. " I only feel and know. Hut CVCO the dreadful things, the things that seem to us so dreadful isn't it always ignorance ? Ignorance of what is really irood and happy and the illusion of a separate self? When ADRIENNE TONER 41 we are all, really, one. All, really, together." She held out her arms, her little basket hanging from her wi " And if we feel that at last, and know it, those dreadful things can't happen any more." " Your 'if is the standing problem of metaphysics and ethics. Why don't we feel and know it ? That's the question. And since we most of us, for most of the time, don't feel and know it, don't we keep closer to the truth if we accept the traditional phraseology and admit that there's something in the texture of life, something in ourselves, that tempts us, or impedes us, or crushes us, and call it sin evil ? " He was looking at her, still with his latent irony, though kindly enough indeed, and he had, as he looked, an intui- tion about her. She had never been tempted, she had never been impeded, she had never been crushed. That was her power. She was, in a fashion, sinless. It was as if she had been hypnotized in infancy to be good. And while the fact made her in one sense so savourless, it made her in another so significant. She would go much further than most people in any direction she wanted to go simply because she was not aware of obstacles and had no inhibitions. " Call it what you like," said Miss Toner. She still smiled but more gravely. Barney had ceased to stroll and kick. He had come to a standstill beside them, and, his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on his beloved, showed himself as completely reassured. Palgrave still stood on the step above her and seemed to watch the snowy, piled-up clouds that adorned the tranquil sky. " I feel it a mistake to make unreal things seem real by giving them big names. We become afraid of them ami fear is what impedes us most of all in life. For so many generations humanity has seen ghosts in the evening mists and taken its indigestion for the promptings of a demon. We've got away from all that now, Mr. Old- meadow. We see that mists are mists and indigestion indigestion, and that there aren't such things as ghosts 42 ADRIENNE TONKK and demons. We've come out, all tr.L hand, on the Open Road and we don't \ er any more, to be reminded, even, of the Dark Ages." Before her fluency, Oldmeadow felt himself grow less kindly. " You grant there have been dark ages, then ? I count that a concession. Things may not be evil now, but they were once." " Not a concession at all," said Miss Toner, an explanation of what has happened an explanation of what you call the mess, Mr. Oldmeadow." "So that when we find ourselves mi >ig to 000 another as we march along the Open Road, we may know it's only indigestion and take a pill." She didn't like badinage. That, at all events, was lent to him, even in her i .rbability. She took lir.lv n< >t lightly ; and if she was not already begin- ning to dislike him, it was because disliking people was a reality she didn't recognize. " We don't rni>t we are on the Open Road," she said. " Oh, but yoi . ng back now on good old-fashioned theology," Oldmeadow retorted. " The sheep, saved well-behaved, keeping to the road, and the goats all those who misbehave and stray classed wit h the evening mists." ," said V er eyeing him, " I don't class them with the evening mists; I class th<-M' uitli the sick, whom we must be kind to and take care of." Mrs. Chadwick was now emerging in her n< hat, which was not very successful and liasis to her general air of strain. Meg's hat y successful, as Meg's hats always were ; and beside it, it was, at all evei g to her. Nancy's eyes v, ey. Barney, in t : had been very appreciative of becoming hat^. had no eyes for Nancy n-w. lie had drawn Mis aside and Oldmeadow h ir colloquy : "Would you ratii go?" " I'd rather, ah\ >u followed your light, dear friend." ADRIENNE TONER 43 " I do like going here, you know. It seems to belong with it all and Mummy can't bear our not going." " It makes your dear mother happy. It all means love to you." " Not only that " Oldmeadow imagined that Barney blushed, and he heard his stammer : " I don't know what I believe about everything ; but the service goes much deeper than anything I could think for myself." Their voices dropped. All that came further to Old- meadow was from Miss Toner : " It makes you nearer than if you stayed." " Confound her ineffability ! " he thought. " It rests with her, then, whether he should go or stay." It certainly did. Barney moved away with them all, leaving Palgrave to the more evident form of proximity. " You know," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to Oldmeadow as they went, between the primroses, down the little path and through a wicket-gate that led to the village " you know, Roger, it's quite possible that they may say their prayers together. It's like Quakers, isn't it or Moravians ; or whoever those curious people are who are buried standing up so dismal and uncomfortable, I always think. But it's better that Palgrave should say his prayers with some one, and somewhere, isn't it, than that he shouldn't say them at all." CHAPTER VI 44 Mother's got the most poisonous headache," odd Meg. " I don't think she'll be able to come down to tea." She had joined Oldmeadow on the rickety old 1> where he sat reading and smoking in a sunny corner of the garden. A band of golden wallflowers behind tl exhaled the deep fragrance that he always associ; vith spring and Sunday and Coldbrooks, and the stone wall behind the flowers exhaled a warmth that was like- a fragrance. " Adrienne is with her," Meg added. She had seated herself and put her elbows on her knees and her in her hands as though she intended a solid talk. "Will tl.:it I.e likely to lu-lp IHT head?" Oldmeadow inquired. " I should say not, if she's going to eonti the discoid -'x.f this morning." " Did you think all that rather silly ? " Meg ; tapping her smart toes on the ground and watching th * You looked as if you did. JJut tlu-n you usually do look as though you thought most things and pe< silly. I didn't I mean, not in In r. I quite saw what you did ; at least I think so. But she can say things that would be silly in other people. Now Pal<_: silly. There's just the cliff erenee. Is it because he always feels he's scoring off somebody and she doesn't ? " Meg was evidently capable, for all her devotion, of dispassionate inquiry. 44 She's certainly more secure than Palgrave," said Oldmeadow. " But I feel that's only becaus less 44 ADRIENNE TONER ir> intelligent. Palgrave is aware, keenly, of a critical and probably hostile world ; and Miss Toner is unaware of everything except her own benevolence, and the need for it." Meg meditated. Then she laughed. " You are spiteful, Roger. Oh I don't mean about Adrienne in particular. But you always see the weak spots in people, first go. It's rather jolly, all the same, if you come to think it over, to be like that. Perhaps that's all she is aware of ; but it takes you a good way wanting to help people and seeing how they can be helped." " Yes ; it does take you a good way. I don't deny that Miss Toner will go far." " And make us go too far, perhaps ? " Meg mused. 46 Well, I'm quite ready for a move. I think we're all rather stodgy, really, down here. And up in London, too, if it comes to that. I'm rather disappointed in London, you know, Roger, and what it does for one. Just a different kind of sheep, it seems to me, from the kind we are in the country ; noisy skipping sheep instead of silent, slow ones. But they all follow each other about in just the same way. And what one likes is to see some one who isn't following." "Yes; that's true, certainly," Oldmeadow conceded. "Miss Toner isn't a sheep. She's the >l person who sets the sheep moving. I'm not so sure that she knows where she is going, all the same." " You mean Be careful ; don't you ? " said Meg, looking up at him sideways with her handsome eyes. " Tin not such a sheep myself, when it comes to that, you know, Roger. I look before I leapeven after Adrienne," she laughed ; and Oldmeadow, looking back at her, laughed too pleased with her, yet a little dis- concerted by what she revealed of experience. " The reason I like her so awfully," Meg went on- while he reflected that, after all, she was now twenty-five " and it's a good thing I do, isn't it, since it's she's going to take Barney; but the reason is that she s 46 ADIUKNM; TOXKU so interested in one. More than anyone I < w far and far away. Of eourse Mother's ii it -rested ; but it's for one ; about one ; not in one, as it were. And then darling old Mummy isn't exactly ini or only in such unexpected spots tl: much good to one ; one can never count on it beforehand. Whereat Adrienne is so interested in you tha! ikes you feel more interested in yourself than you ever dreamed } could feel. Do you know v i can ? Is it because she's American, do you tin. nL'lish j>eople art interested in themselves, off their own bat, i : or in other people either! I don't mean we're not sel all right I " Meg laugi " Selfish and yet impersonal," Oldmeadow mused. " V. of our social isness in use, iore of it locked up in aui n, possil s nothing locked up in ; absoi ling," Meg declared. out in the mdow. And it's a big wi -ugh some of the hats and ties, so to speak, n ke us as !>'. I>U' can she care so much .' -about everybody? " He remcmlx liagnosi tabout(\ body. Only about people she can do something id she won't care about ; hy should she? ^ M she waste herself on people who don't need her? " Me<^'s of glance did not preclude a certain hardness. \\ l,y indeed ? It could never occur to her, of course, that she might need somebody. I don't mean t'' spitefully. She is strong. She doesn't need." "Exactly. Like you," sai.i Meg. to pay no attention to the oi ng people, i of course you are very strong, Roger, illy clever ; and good, too. Only one has to be < 1< \ doubt, than we are to see \ as Adriennc's. It's the shop-window again. She shows her goodness all the time; ADRIENNE TONER 47 Oldmeadow knocked the ashes out of his pipe and felt for his tobacco-pouch. " I show my spite. No ; you mustn't count me among the good. I suppose your mother's headache came on this morning after she found out that Miss Toner doesn't go to church." " Of course it was that. You saw thaj she was thinking about it all through the service, didn't you ? " said Meg. " And once, poor lamb, she said, ' Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners ' instead of Amen. Did you notice ? It will bother her frightfully, of course. But after all it's not so bad as if Adrienne were a Dissenter and wanted to go to chapel ! Mummy in her heart of hearts would much rather you were a pagan than a Dissenter. I don't think it will make a bit of difference really. So long as she gives money to the church, and is nice to the village people. Mother will get over it," said Meg. He thought so too. His own jocose phrase returned to him. As long as the money was there it didn't make any difference. But Meg's security on that score interested him. With all her devotion to the new friend she struck him, fundamentally, as less kind than Nancy, who had none. But that, no doubt, was because Meg, fundamen- tally, was hard and Nancy loving. It was because of Miss Toner's interest in herself that Meg was devoted. " You're so sure, then, that she's going to take Barney ? " he asked. " Quite sure," said Meg. " Surer than he is. Surer than she is. She's in love with him all right ; more than she knows herself, poor dear. No doubt she thinks she's making up her mind and choosing. Weighing Barney in the balance and counting up his virtues. But it's all decided already; and not by his virtues; it m said Meg, again with her air of unexpected experience. "It's something much more important than \irtues; it's the thickness of his eyelashes and the way his terlh show when he smiles, and all his pretty ways and habits. Things like that. She loves looking at him and more than that, even, she loves having him look at her. I have 48 ADRIENNE TONKU an idea that she's not had people very much in love with her before; not people with eyela - d tn-th like Barney. In spite of all IHT money. A 'ting on, too. She's as old as Barney, you know. It's the one, real romance that's ever come to her, poor dear. Funny you don't see it. Men don't see that sort of thing I suppose. But she couldn't give Barney up i ly. It's because of that, you know" Meg glanced behind them and lowered her voice " that she doesn't like Nancy." " Doesn't like Nancy ! " Oldmeadow's instant indi tion was in his voicr. " What has Nancy to do with it ? " "She might have had a great deal, poor darling little Nancy; and it's that Adrienne feels. She felt it at once. I saw she did ; that Nancy and Barney had been y near each other ; that there was an allinit y, a sym- pathy, call it what you like, that would have led to something more. It wouldn't have done at all, of cour at least I suppose not. They knew each other too \\ and, unf :1 the last year or two, she's been ton young for him. And then, above all, she's hardly any moi But all the same, if he hadn't come across Adrienne and been bowled over li Harney would hav< t';dl< -n in love with Nancy. She's getting to be so lovely looking, for one thing, isn't she ? And Barney's so susceptible to looks. He was falling in love with her last winter and she knew it as well as I did. It's rather rottm luek for Nancy because I'm afraid she cares; but then womni do have rotten luck about love affairs," said Meg, now sombrely. " The dice are loaded against them every time." Oldmeadow sat smoking in silence tor some mom making no effort to master his strong resentment ; taking, rather, full possession of its implications. "Somewhat of a flaw in your angel you must admit," he said presently. 44 She doesn't like people who are as strong ;:s she is ; >nd she doesn't like people who miizht have been loved instead of herself. It narrows the scale of her i> ADRIENNE TONER 49 you know. It makes her look perilously like a jealous prig, and a prig without any excuse for jealousy into the bargain." "Temper, Roger," Meg observed, casting \er hard, friendly glance round at him ; " I know you think there's no one quite to match Nancy ; and I think you're not far wrong. She's the straightest, sweetest-tempered girl who ever stepped on two feet. But all the same Adrienne isn't a prig, and if she's jealous she can't help herself. She wants to love Nancy ; she thinks she does 1 jve h< she'll always be heavenly to her. She can do a lot for Nancy, you know. She will do a lot for her, even if Nancy holds her off. But she wishes frightfully that she was old and ugly. She wishes that Barney weren't so fond of her without thinking about her. She's jealous and she can't help herself like all the rest of us ! " Meg laughed grimly. " When it comes to that we're none of us angels." It was tea-time and the dear old gong sounded balmily from the house. As they went along the path the rooks again were cawing overhead and dimly, like the hint of evening in the air, he remembered his dream and the sense of menace. " You know, it's not like all the rest of you," he said. " It's not like Nancy, for instance. Nancy wouldn't dislike a person because she was jealous of them. In fact I don't believe Nancy could be jealous. She'd only be hurt." " It's rather a question of degree, that, isn't it ? " said Meg. " In one form of it you're poisoned and in the other you're cut with a knife ; and the latter is the pretti. i way of suffering ; doesn't make you come out in a rash and feel sick. Nancy is cut with the knife ; and if she's not jealous in the ugly sense, she dislikes Adrienne all right." " Why should she like her ? " Oldmeadow retorted, and Meg's simile seemed to cut into him, too. " She doesn't need her money or her interest or her love. She doesn't dislike her. She merely wishes she were somewhere else as I do." 50 ADRIENNE TOM I; The garden path led straight i entered a sort of lobby, where coats and hats and rackets and gardening baskets v :,t, and from the loi t into the hall. Tea was, as always, laid tli Mrs. Chad wick, as Meg and Oldmeadow came in, was descending the staircase at the further end, leaning on Adrienne Toner's arm. " You see, she's done it ! " Meg murmured. She seemed to bear him no ill-will for his expressed aversion. 1 never knew one of Mother's headaches go so quickly/* " I expect she'd rather have stayed quietly upstairs," 1 Oldmeadow ; " she looks puzzled. As if she di< know what had happened to her." 44 Like a rabbit when it comes out of the conjurors hat," said the im\ lughter. t was precisely what poor Eleanor Chad look like and for the moment his mind was di\ei;< .1 by amusement at her appearance from its bi occupa- ti .n. Mrs. Chadwick was the rabbit, and Bliss T< was the conjuror indeed ; bland and secure and holding her trophy in a firm but gentle grasp. Not until t were* all seated did Barney and Nancy appear and then it was evident to him that if Miss Toner were jealou Nancy she did not fear her, for it was she who liad arranged the walk from which the young couple had ji :ied. 44 Was it lovely ? " she asked Barney, as he too., place besile her. 44 Oh, I do wish I could have cor 1 knew your Mother needed ' The primroses are simply ripping in the wood," said ney. ncy carried a large bunch of primroses. M lapping," said it was and asked in such a gentle voi< < It's a very soothing voice, isn't > you know I felt for a moment quite frightened, a- ply couldn't see her. Hut I had to say yes, and she earn, in IQ PQ and sat down beside me and said : * I used to 1 1 ics, with her headaches. May I help you?' She . ant to talk about things, as I'd feared, a relief it was. So I said : ' oh, do my dear,' : laid her hand on my forehead and said: 4 You will soon It will soon quite pass away. 9 And then not another word. Oni i the dark, with hand on my forehead. And do you k> ger, almost at once the pain began to nu it *W*y, You k how a dish of junket melts after you cut into r . It was like that. 'Junket, junket,' I seemed to hear myself saying; and such a feeling of peace and o And before 1 knew anything more I fell into the most delieious sleep and slept till now, ji, re tea. E was sitting there still, in the dark 1>< 1 -.nd: 4 Oh, my dear, to think of your having stayed in lovely afternoon!' Uu ,t to pull uj ADRIENNE TONER and said that she loved sitting quietly in the dark \vith some one she cared for, sleeping. 'I think souls come very close together, then,' she said. Wasn't it beaut i of her, Roger ? Like astral bodies, you know, and auras and things of that sort. She is beautiful. I made up rny mind to that, then. She gives me such a feeling of trust. How can one help it ? It's like what one reads of Roman Catholic saints and people in the Bible. r i gift of healing. The laying on of hands. We don't si to have any of them and we can't count her, since she doesn't believe in the Church. But if only they'd give up the Pope, I don't see why we shouldn't accept their saints ; such dear, good people, most of them. And the Pope is quite an excellent man just now, I believe. But isn't it very strange, Roger ? For a person who can do that to one can't be irreligious, can they ? " Mrs. Chadwick's eye was now fixed upon him, less wist- fully and more intently and he knew that something was expected of him. " Hypnotic doctors can do it, you know. You needn't be a saint to do it," he said. "Though I suppose you must have some power of concentration that imj faith. However," he had to say all his thought, though most of it would be wasted upon poor Eleanor Chadwick, "Miss Toner is anything but irreligious. You may be sure of that." " You feel it, too, Roger. I'm so, so glad." " But her religion is not as your religion," he had to warn her, "nor her ways your ways. You must be prepared to have the children unsettled ; c . of them; because she has great power and is far more religious than most people. She believes in her creed and acts on it. You must give the child It's no good trying to circumvent or oppose tin "But they mustn't do wrong things, Hogi-r. can I give them their heads if it's to do wrong things I don't know what Mamma would have said to tht-ir not going to church especially in the country. 5G ADRIENNE TONK1! would have thought it very wrong, simply. Sinful and dangerous." "Hardly that," Oldmeadow smiled. "Even in the country. You don't think Miss Toner does wrong things. If they take up Miss Toner's creed instead of going to church, they won't come to much harm. The principal thing is that there should be something to take up. After all," he was reassuring himself as well as Mrs. Chad wick, " it hasn't hurt her. It's made her a little foolish ; but it hasn't hurt her. And your children will never be foolish. They'll get all the good of it and. perhaps, be able to combine it with going to church. Foolish, Roger?" Mrs. Chadwick, relieved of h< r headache, but not of her perplexity, gazed wanly at him. 4 You think Ad >olish ? " "A little. Now and then. You mustn't accept any- thing she says to you just because she can cure you of a headache." P.ut how can you say foolish, Roger? She's had a t wonderful educati- crything that makes i r of herself and makes other people surer of her puts her in more danger of being foolish. One can be too sure of oneself. Unless one is a saint and even then. And though I don't think she's us I don't think she's a saint. Not by any means." I don't see how anyone can be more of one, nowadays, Roger. She heals people and she says prayers, and she is always good and gentle a r thinks of her I'm sure I can't think what you want more." A touch of plaintiveness and even of protest had come into Mrs. Chadwiek's \ <>ice. "Perhaps what I want U 1 -s" he laughed. " Perhaps she's too much of a saint for my taste. I think she's a little too much of one for your taste, really if you were to be quite candid with yourself. Has she spoken to you at all about Barney? Are you quit. >u'll have to reckon with her lor yourself and the cliildrcn ? " ADRIENNE TONER 57 At this Mrs. Chadwick showed a frank alarm. " Oh, quite, quite sure ! " she said. " She couldn't be so lovely to us all if she didn't mean to take him ! Why do you ask, Roger ? You haven't any reason for thinking she won't ? " " None whatever. Quite the contrary." He didn't want to put poor Mrs. Chadwick to the cruel test of declaring whether she would rather have the children go to church and lose Miss Toner and all her money, or have them stay away and keep Miss Toner. After all such a test was not to be asked of her. Miss Toner wanted people to follow their own light. " I only wondered if she talked to you about him. Asked any girlish leading questions." " None, none whatever," said Mrs. Chadwick. " But I feel that's because she thinks she knows him far better than I do and that he's told her everything already. It's rather hard to be a mother, Roger. For of course, though she is so much better and cleverer than I am, I feel sure that no one understands Barney as I do." " She'd be a little cleverer still if she could see that, wouldn't she ? " " Well, I don't know. Girls never do. I was just the same when I was engaged to Francis. Even now I can't think that old Mrs. Chadwick really understood him as I did. It's very puzzling, isn't it ? Very difficult to see things from other people's point of view. When she pulled up the blind this afternoon, she told me that Nancy and Barney were down in the copse and she seemed pleased." " Oh, did she ? " " I told her that they'd always been like brother and sister, for I was just a little afraid, you know, that she might imagine Barney had ever cared about Nancy." " I see. You think she wouldn't like that ? " "What woman would, Roger?" And he imagined that Mrs. Chadwick, for all her folly, was cleverer than Miss Toner guessed, as she added, " And then she told 58 ADRIENXE TONER me that she'd made Barney go without her. She me to see. you kn<> crths and wardrobe-boxes and luxurious suites in vast hot She wore again her white dress, contrasting in its rich- ire \\i\\\ the simplicity of her da\-tinie blue, and. rather stupidly, an artificial white rose had been placed, in her braids, over each ear. Her pearls v her only other ornament, and her pearls, he supposed, were surprising. Oldmeadow was aware, in his close proximity to her, while she ate beside him with a meticulous nicety that made the manners of th- rest of them. 1\ >t, seem a little casual and slovenly, of the discomfort that had visited him in his drean the feeling she evoked ADRIENNE TONER 61 was not all discomfort. It was as if from her mere physical presence he were subjected to some force that had in its compulsion a dim, conjectural charm. It was for this reason no doubt that he seemed to be aware of everything about her. Her hands were small and white, but had no beauty of form or gesture. She moved them slowly and without grace, rather like a young child handling un- familiar objects in a kindergarten, and this in spite of the singular perfection of her table manners. She could have made little use of them, ever, in games of skill or in any art requiring swift accuracy and firmness. It was as if her mind, over-trained in receptivity and retentiveness, had only dull tentacles to spare for her finger-tips. He was aware of these hands beside him all through dinner and their fumbling deliberation brought to him, again and again, a mingled annoyance, and satisfaction. She had a funny, chalky smell, like Fuller's Earth. There was something positive and characteristic about her scentlessness, and beside Meg, who foolishly washed liquid powder over her silvery skin, Miss Toner's colour- lessness was sallow. She had hardly talked at all the night before, but to-night she talked continuously. It was Meg who questioned her, and Mrs. Chadwick, and Oldrneadow guessed that his ingenuous friend, still perplexed by his use of the word foolish, was drawing out and displaying her future daughter-in-law for his benefit. Miss Toner and her mother had been to Russia to India, to China and Japan. They had visited Stevenson's grave at Vailima and in describing it she quoted " Under the wide and starry sky." They had studied every temple in Greece and Sicily and talked of the higher education with ladies in Turkish harems. " But it was always Paris we came back to," she said, " when we were not at home. Home was, and is, a great many places : California and Chicago where my father's people live, and New England. But Paris was, after it, closest to our hearts. Yes, we knew a great many French people ; 62 ADRIENNE TONER but it was for study rather than 1 p we went there. It is such a treasure-house of culture. Me very hard at French diction for several winters, had lessons from Mademoiselle Jouffert you ki perhaps though she has not acted for so many years now. Our friendship with her was a great privilege, for she was a rare and noble woman and had a glorious gift. Phedre was her favourite role and I shall n forget her rendering of it : Ariana ma SJBUT f de qua! amour bleaaee Voufl mourutee aux bonds oil voos futee \n\\mf\f\ \ She taught Mother to recite Phedre's great speeches with such fire and passion. There could hardly be a be riing for French/' said Miss Toner, repeating the lines with a curious placidity and perfection. " I preferred Mademoiselle Jouffert's rendering to Bernhardt's. Her Phedre was, with all the fire, more tender and uom.u 44 Do you care about Racine ? " Oldmeadow asked her, while the lines rang in his ears rather as in his dream rooks' cawing had done with an evocative sadness that hung, irrelevantly, about their speak < r not easy for our English ears to hear the fire and passi but they are there." IK is very perfect and accomplished," said Miss TOIKT. " Hut I always feel him small beside our Shake- speare. He lacks heart, doesn't he ? " " There's heart in those lines you've just rerit.-.l." "Yes," said Miss Toner. 4t Those lines are certainly y beautiful. It's the mere music of them. I think. They make me fed " she paused. It was unlike lit r to pause and he wondered wliat she made oi . off IK r own bat, without Mademoiselle Jouffert to help i 44 They make you feel? " he questio 44 They are so sad so terribly melancholy. The sound of them. They make me want to cry wlu-n I hear tl But I think it's the sound ; for their meaning makes indignant. There is such weakness in them ; such ADRIENNE TONER 68 acceptance of destiny. I want to revolt and protest, too for women. She should not have died." Oldmeadow involuntarily glanced across at Nancy. She was looking at Miss Toner and if she had been pale before, she was paler now. Nancy would never think of herself in connection with Ariane and tragic grief; yet something in the lines, something in Miss Toner's disavowal of their applicability, had touched the hidden cut. And, once again, it was Meg's eyes that met his, showing him that what he saw she saw, too. Barney saw nothing. All his solicitude was for Miss Toner in her imaginary plight. " I'm sure you never would ! " he exclaimed. " Never die, I mean ! " " You think Miss Toner would have come to terms with Bacchus," Oldmeadow suggested. He didn't want to take it out of Barney, though he was vexed with him, nor to take it out of Miss Toner, either. He only wanted to toss and twist the theme and make it gay where Miss Toner made it solemn. " Come to terms with Bacchus ! " Barney quite stared, taken aback by the irreverence. " Why should she ! She'd have found somebody more worth while than either of the ruffians." Miss Toner smiled over at him. " I'm sure that if Bacchus had been fortunate enough to meet Miss Toner she'd have converted him to total abstinence in a jiffy and made a model husband of him. He was a fine, exhilarating fellow ; no ruffian at all ; quite worth reforming." Oldmeadow, as he thus embroi- dered his theme, was indulging in his own peculiar form of mirth. He saw Miss Toner laying her hand on the head of Bacchus ; Miss Toner very picturesque on the rugged sea-shore in her white and pearls and roses and Bacchus dazed and penitent, his very leopards tamed to a cat-like docility. His laugh was visible rather than audible and that Miss Toner had never before been the subject of such mirth was evident to him. 64 ADRIENNE TON K U She met whatever she saw or guessed of irrcver- however, as composedly as she would have m< . he reflected, she was beginning to think of him in the light of an undesflaM iblxr. Perhaps even, she was beginning to think of him as a ru! 1 lie didn't mind in the least, so long as he succeeded in ning off her solemn it 44 1 should have been quite willing to try and reform hiiii," she said; "though it takes much longer tha jiffy to reform people, Mr. Oldmeadow ; but ' lift o been willing to marry him. tilings in life, ar ian love-stories " Bravo ! " said Oldmeadow. He felt as well : it. She wasn't being solemn, and she had i his ock smartly. " But are th had adjusted his eyeglass for a clearer confronts i of i Miss Toner's large eyes, enlarged still further 1> glass, met his, not so! n ity. >u are a sceptic, Mr. Oldmeadow," si \ cd. " A irist. Do yo that sati tirism take you very far in reading human h'- trK '. for you, Roger ! Oldmeadow I. gaze fixed on Miss Toner. 4i You think that Ariane might prefer I ire work or ity Organization to a >t those necessarily." She r<-turnl his gaze. "Though I have known very fine big people who did in-iii. But they are not the onl s to 41 1 ; .tical," said Oldmeadow. " I am, if you lik- . !. 1 n't b here are any after to I palliatives to disappointment. Barney leaned forward : '" Adrirnne. you see, do accept th;it old-fashioned, sent inu-ntali/in the ..-n-ly lo\-c'-story, lirarth- K >lr for won 44 Oh. well," Oldmeadow pin; his fork. ADRIENNE TONER 05 with the wryness that accompanied his reluctant sinceri- ties, " I don't divide the sexes as far as love-stories are concerned. We are all in the same boat. For us, too, Barney, it's love-story or palliative. You don't agree ? If you were disappointed in love ? Hunting ? Farming ? Politics ? Post-Impressionism ? Would any of them fill the gap ? " It wasn't at all the line he had intended the talk to take. He knew that as he glanced across at Nancy. Saying noth- ing, as if its subject could not concern her, and with a dim little smile, she listened, and he knew that for her, though she wouldn't die of it, there would be only palliatives. If only Barney, confound him, hadn't been so charming. Barney did not know how to answer the last assault, and, boyishly, looked across at his beloved for succour. She gave it instantly. " Sadness, sorrow, tragedy, even, isn't despair," she said. " Barney, I believe, if sorrow overtook him, would mould the rough clay of his occupation to some higher beauty than the beauty he'd lost. To lie down and die ; to resign oneself to palliatives. Oh no. That's not the destiny of the human soul." " Roger's pulling your leg, Barney, as usual," Palgrave put in scornfully. He had been listening with his elbows on the table, his eyes on the table-cloth. "He kno\\s as well as I do that there's only one love. The sort you're all talking about the Theseus and Ariane affair is merely an ebullition of youth and as soon as nature has perpetuated the species by means of it, it settles down, if there's any reality under the ebullition, to grow into the other the divine love ; the love of the soul for the Good, the True and the Beautiful," Palgrave declared, growing very red as he said it. " Really my dear child ! " Mrs. Chadwick murinun-d. She had never heard such themes broached at her table and glanced nervously up at old Johnson to see if he had followed. " That is a very, very materialistic vi< Oldmeadow at this began to laugh, audibly as well as 66 AimiEXNE TONER visibly, and Palgrave, as their eves nu-t in a glance of communicated comedy, could not withhold an answering smile. But Barney's face showed that he preferred to see Palgrave's interpretation as materialistic, and c\ Miss Toner looked thoughtfully at her champion. "But we need the symbol of youth and nature," she suggested. 4i The divine love, yes, Palgrave, is the only real one; but then all i livin. and human love sometimes brings the deepest revelation of till. Bn >wning saw that so wonderfully." " Browning, my dear ! " Palgrave returned with a curious mingling of devotion, intimacy and aloofness, 44 Browning never got nearer God than a woman's breast ! " At this, almost desperately, Mw. Chadwick broke in : id you ever see our Ellen Terry act, Adri.-nnr ? I likl IK r much better than Madame Bernhanlt who had such a very artificial face, 1 think. I can't imagine her as Rosalind, can you? While Miss Terry was a perfect lind. 1 met her once with Henry Irving at a gard party in London and she was as charming off as on stage, and I'm sure I can't see why anybody should to act Ptedre poor, uncontrolled creatur. II hub. , dear, and custard ? or wim -jrlly and < Tram .' How beautifully you speak French. y languages do you speak? " Mrs. Chadwick earnestly inquired, still tumiriLr the helm firmly away from the unbecoming to- kept her head very creditably a tactfully, at once accepted her hostess's hint. " Rhubarb- tart, please, dear Mrs. Chadwick. Not so very many, really. My German has never been good ; though French and Italian I do know well, and enough Span for Don Quixote. But," v ( >"* while Mrs. Chadwick looked gratefully at her, "Mother and I were always working. \\ e never wasted any of our together. She couldn't bear the thought of missing anything in life; and she missed very little, I think. MuMe. r m g all the treasure-houses of the human s open to her. And what she won and ADRIENNE TONER 67 made her own, she gave out again with greater radiance. How I wish you could all have known her ! " said Miss Toner, looking round at them with an unaccustomed touch of wistfulness. "She was radiance person iiil. She never let unhappiness rest on her. I remember once, when she had had a cruel blow from a person she loved and trusted in the middle of her sadness she looked at me and saw how sad she was making me ; and she sprang up and seized my hands and cried : ' Let's dance ! Let's dance and dance and dance ! ' And we did, up and down the terrace it was at San Remo she in her white dress, with the blue sky and sea and the orange-trees all in bloom. I can see her now. And then she rushed to get music, her harp, and flowers and fruit, to take to an invalid friend, and we spent the afternoon with her, mother surpassing herself in charm and witchery. She was always like that. She would have found something, oh very beautiful, to make from her sorrow if Theseus had abandoned her ! But no one," said Miss Toner, looking round at Oldmeadow, now with a mild playfulness, " could ever have abandoned mother." There was something to Oldmeadow appealing in her playfulness ; her confidence, when it took on this final grace, was really touching. For Mrs. Toner the light- giver he knew that he had conceived a rooted aversion. And he wondered if she would go on, over the rhubarb- tart, to tell, after the dancing on the terrace, of the death at sea. But he was spared that. " And your father died when you were very young, didn't he, dear ? " said Mrs. Chadwick, fearful of the reference to Theseus. " I think your mother must often have been so very lonely ; away from home for such a great part of the time and with so few relatives." Miss Toner shook her head. " We were always toget lu-r, she and I, so we could never, either of us, be lonely. And wherever we went she made friends. People were always so much more than mere people to her. She saw them always, at once, high and low, prince and peasant, as souls, 68 ADRIEXNE TONER and they felt it always, and opened to her. Thru, until I was quite big, we had my lovi-ly grandmother. Me.: came from Maine and it was such a joy to go and stay there with Grandma. It was a very simple little home. It was always hi^h thinking and plain living, with Gr;; m:i ; and though, when she married and became rich, Mother showered beautiful things upon IHT. (irmdma stayed always in the little house, doing for her poor neighbours, as she had always done, and dusting her parlour a real New England parlour and making her \ griddle cakes such wonderful cakes she made ! I was fifteen when she died ; but the tie was so close and spiritual that she did not seem gone away from us." 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 Old- meadow 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? Ami was he ? Altogether ? His comment seemed to suggest a suspicion that Miss Toner's flow might have ar< irony or require justification. " Miss Toner and her mother seem to have found th 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 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 but, while Oldmeadow spoke, he lifted and kept his gaze on him. " You don't like her," he said suddenly, and Oldmeadow had, irrepressibly, over Mrs. Chadwirk's conception of materialism, interchanged their smiU- at dinner ; but since the morning Oldmeadow liad known that Palgrave suspected him of indifference, perhaps 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 70 AD1MKNNK TONER just it. She's good and noble and innocent ; and gift 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. Hushing deeply, looked down into his wine-glass. " My dear Palgruve, 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. should I? I don't know 1. i do know her. That's an evasion. It's all t She can't be seen without being known. It's all at once. I don't know why you don't like h what I want to kn<> "Drop it, Palgrave/' Barney m 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. 14 I m sorry to have displeased you," said Oldmeadow with a slight severity. I D unaware of havi played my disagreeable qualities more than is usual v. me." " Of course not. What rot, Palgrave ! Roger is always disagreeable, bless him ! " Barney declared with a for laugh. " Adrienne understands him perfectly. As he says : she isn't stupid." "Oh, all right. I'm sorry," Palgrave rose, thru his hands in his pockets and looking down at the two as stood above them. He hesitated and then went on : " All I know is that lor 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, t he tilings 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 round hunting, gardening. village treats and village char A lot of chatter about ADRIENNE TONER 71 people What a rotter So-and-so is ; and How perfectly sweet somebody else : and a little about politics \\ 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 ? " " Ic'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 7- AD1MKNNK ToNER take the risk of rambling and alter the line of the rut for the others. Palgnu be a rambler, lint I i he won't go too far alield. M Y..u do like her, Roger, don't you?'' irney suddenly. It had had to come. Old meadow knew that, as the depth of silence fell about thrin. It \N ablebetween them, of course. \ wished it might have been avoided, sin be too late. He pressed out the glow of his cigar a?. i his arms on the ta not looking at his friend while he meditated, and he said finally and it might seem, he knew, another evasio: , Barney, I must tell you s know how much I care about Nancy. \\V11, that's the trouble. It's Nancy I wanted you to mai Harm v had held himself ready and a deep, involuntary .'. or of postponed ow escaped him. 44 1 see. I didn't realize that," he said. And hou hoped, poor Barney I it was all there was to reah 1 in very fond of . of course, 1: \\V11: yes; of course \\ awfully good y. confused. M That's what Palgrave would rail speaking like a savage, Barney. Own to it that if .Miss Toner had appeared upon the scene you could have hoped to make icy your wife. I don't say you made love to her or misled hT in any way. I'i >eant to at any rate. Hut the fact remains that you were both so fond of each other that you would certainly have BMU BO you'll understand that \\hen I comedown and find Mitt Toner installed as tutelary goddess over you all, what I'm mainly eonseious of is ^ri< ; dear little relegated nymph." Still deeply Hushed, but still feeling his relief, Harney turned his wine-glass and murmured : M 1 see. I (JU understand. 1 should have been in love with i I own. I nearly was, last winter. As to her being in ADRIENNE TONER 73 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 he 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 a.L 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 loveli- ness," " My dear boy," Oldmeadow murmured. lie 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, Ro," The crisis was again upon them. Oldmeadow did not 74 ADRIENNE TONER look up as he said : " That depends on her, doesn't " No ; it depends on you," Barney quickly r- " 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 are the soul of truth. There's no reason, none whatt why you shouldn't be the best of friends, as far as die 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 1. \Yry 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 nohility behind every bush and paying for one's goodness by losing one's discriminat ; :,. There are deep realities and super- ficial realities, aren't there, and she sees the deep ones OHM than th.it. Palgrave says she makes reality. lie didn't say it to me, because I don't think he feels me to be worthy of her. He said it to M<>t and pu//led her by it. Hut I know what he means. Its because of that he feels her to be a sort of sa Do be straight with me, Roger. Say what you really think. I'd rather know; much. You've ne\or. Try not to dislike y truth too much," he acl< "My dear old fellow," Barney muttered. IK bid his h.'ind for a moment, on his iVimd's shoulder, standing back for him to pass first. " Nothing can ever alter :s between you and But things were altered already. CHAPTER X Palgrave had not gone to the drawing-room, and that, at all events, was a comfort. A wood fire burned on the hearth and near it Nancy was holding wool for Mrs. Chadwick to wind. Barbara had been sent to bed and Meg and Miss Toner sat on the sofa hand in hand. Even in the pressure of his distress and anxiety Oldmeadow could but be aware of amusement at seeing Meg thus. It had, of course, been Miss Toner who had taken her hand. But no one else could have taken it. No one else could have been allowed to go on holding it placidly before onlookers of whose mirthful impressions Meg must be well aware. She didn't mind in the least. That was what Miss Toner had done to her. She enjoyed having her hand held by anyone so much interested in her. Barney walked to the fireplace and stood before it. He had no faculty for concealing his emotions, and the painful, ones through which he had just passed were visible on his sensitive face. " Give us a song, Meg," Oldmeadow suggested. lie did not care for Meg's singing, which conveyed, in a rich, sweet medium, a mingled fervour and shallowness of feeling. But to hear her sing would be better than to see her holding Miss Toner's hand. Barney crossed at once to the seat Meg vacated dropped down into it, no doubt thanking his friend for what he imagined to be a display of tact, and Oldmeadow saw the quiet, firm look that flowed over and took posses- sion of him. Miss Toner knew, of course, that Barney 77 F 78 ADRIKNNK ToNER had been having painful emotions ; and she probably knew that they had been caused by the dry, deep-hearted Mrrcdithian hero. But after the long look she did not speak to him. She sat in her pearls and whiteness and gave careful attention to the music. Oldmeadow accompanied Meg, tolerantly, and a trifle humorously, throwing a touch of mockery into his part. Meg's preference to-night seemed to be for gardens ; lens of Sleep; Gardens of Love; God's Gardens. \Vh:it n wn-teh you are, Roger," she said, when she had finished. " You despise feeling." * I thought I was wallowing in it," Oldmeadow returned. 44 Did I stint you ? " 44 No; you helped me to wallow. That's why you r. such a wretch. Always showing one that one is wallowing when one thinks one's soaring. It's your turn, now, Adriennc. Let's see if he'll manage to make fun of you." 44 Does Miss Toner sing, too ? Now do you know; Meg," said Oldmeadow, keeping up the friendly ban Tin sure she doesn't sing the sort of rubbish you do." 44 1 think they're beautiful songs," M^. Chftdwkk murmured from her wool, "and I think Roger played them most beautifully. Why should you say h- making fun of you, Meg ? " cause he makes you think something's beautiful tint he thinks rubbish, Mummy. Come along, Adric' i will, won't you? I expect my voice sounds all ig to you. I've had no proper training." It's a very lovely voice, Meg, used in a poor ca said M r smiling. 4k And it is badly placed. I think 1 could help you there. I've n at all, but I have been taught hov ild he n. to the point, though, if Mr. Oldmeadow were to play to us, for I hear that he is an accomplished music: 44 I'm really anything but accompli Old- meadow ; ^ but I can play accompanim< ; rly. Do sing to us. I know you'll give us something worth accompanying." ADRIENNE TONER 79 Miss Toner rose and came to the piano with her complete and unassuming confidence. She turned the pages of the music piled there and asked him if he cared for Schubert's songs. Yes ; she was a watch wound to go accurately and she could rely on herself, always, to the last tick. Even if she knew and he was sure she knew that he had been undermining her, she would never show a shadow or a tremor ; and she would always know what was the best music. Only, as she selected " Litanei " and placed it before him, he felt that over him, also, flowed the quiet, firm look. " Litanei " was one of his favourites in a composer whom he loved, and, as she sang there above him, he found the song emerging unharmed from her interpretation. It was as she had said no voice to speak of ; the dryest, flattest little thread of sound ; and no feeling, either (what a relief after Meg !), except the feeling for scrupulous accuracy. Yet her singing was what he found in her to like best. It was disciplined ; it accepted its own limits ; it fulfilled an order. There was no desecration of the heavenly song, for, intelligently after all, she made no attempt upon its heart. When she had finished, she looked down at him. They were removed by half the length of the room from the fireside group. The lamps were behind them. Only the candles set in the piano-rack illumined Miss Toner ; and while the white roses over her ears struck him anew as foolish, her eyes anew struck him as powerful. 44 Thank you. That was a pleasure," he said. It was a pleasure. It was almost a link. He had found a ground to meet her on. He saw himself in the future accompanying Barney's wife. He need, then, so seldom talk to her. But, alas ! she stepped at once from the safe frame of art. " If we can rise from loss to feel like that, if we can lift our sorrows like that, we need never turn to pallia! i i need we, Mr. Oldmeadow ? " she said. Stupidity, complacency, or power, whatever it was, it 80 ADRIENNE TnNi:i: completely disen him. It left him also bereft of repartee. What he fell back upon, as he looked up at her and then down at the keys again, was a mere school- boy mutter of " Come now I " After all a schoolboy mutter best expressed what he felt. She was not accustomed to having h- t ra- tions met with such mutters and she did not like it. 'I was apparent to him as she turned away and ick to the sofa and Barney. She had again tried him and again found him wanting. * * * * * ney and Miss Toner 1< r motor next morning shortly after breakfast; and though with his >ld- meadow had no further exchange, he had, with V. Toner, a curious encounter that was, he felt sure, a direct t of her impressions of the night before. They in the dining-room a few moments before breakfast, and as she entered, wearing already her motoring hat, closely bound round her face with a veil, he was aware t looked, if that were possible, more compos r seen her. II. : that she had waited for her opportunity, and had followed him dov LT that she would find him alone; and he realized ii that she was more composed, because she had an n or, rat 1 it was more definite, a det ivolvednoeff added calm of an assured aim. She gave him her hand and said good morning .vith ir of scrupulous accuracy that she had given to t irring of " Litanei " and then, standing before the fire, her hands clasped behind In r, her eyes ra to his, she said : " Mr. Oldmeadow, I want to say so thing to you." It was the gentle little voice, unaltered. ;iu w that he was in for something he would very much rat In r have avoided ; something with anybody els able, but with her, he sav.* it n<> itable. he tried, even at this la^t n it and ADRIENNE TONER 81 adjustin his eye-glass and moving to the sideboard: " But not before we've had our tea, surely. Can't I get you some ? Will you trust me to pour "it out ? " " Thanks ; I take coffee not tea," said Miss Toner from her place at the fire, " and neither lias been brought in yet." He had just perceived, to his discomfiture, that they had not. There was nothing for it but to turn from the ungarnished sideboard and face her again. " It's about Barney, Mr. Oldmeadow," Miss Toner said, unmoved by his patent evasion. " It's because I know you love Barney and care for his happiness. And it's because I hope that you and I are to be friends, and friendship can only be built on truth. Try to trust more ; will you ? That's all I want to say. Try to trust. You will be happier if you do and make other people hap: Oldmeadow had never experienced such an assault upon his personality, and he met it gagged and bound, for, assuredly, this was to be Barney's wife. A slow flush mounted to his face. "I'm afraid I seem very strange and unconventional to you," Adrienne Toner went on. " You've lived in a world where people don't care enough for each other to say the real things. They must be felt if they've to be said, mustn't they? Yet you do care for people. I have seen that, watching you here ; and you care for real things. It's a crust of caution and convention that is about you. You are afraid of expression. You are afraid of feeling. You are afraid of being taken in and of wasting yourself. Don't be afraid, Mr. Oldmeadow. We never lose ourselves by trusting. We never lose ourselves by giving. It's a realler self that conies. And with you, I see it clearly, if you let the crust grow thicker, it will shut life and light and joy away from you ; and when light cannot visit our hearts, they wither within us. That is your danger. I want to be your friend, so I must say the truth to you." He knew, though he had to struggle not to laugh, that 82 ADRIENNE TOM K he was very angry and that he must not show anger; though it would really be better to show that than his intense amusement ; and it took him a moment, during which they confronted each other, to find words ; dry, donnish words ; words of caution and convention. T were the only ones he had available for the situation. 44 My dear young lady," he said, " you take too much upon yourv She was not in the least disconcerted. She met his eyes steadily. " You mean that I am presumptuous Mr. Oldmeadow?" You take too much upon yourself," he repeated, you say, I hope we may be that really all, M adow ? " she said, kx at him with such a depth of thoughtfulness that he could not for the life of him make out whether she found him odious or rm iful. really all," he returned. The dining-room was very bright and the little l>lue figure before the fire was very still. The momei If deep in his consciousness with that impression of stillness and brightness. It was an uncomfortable impression. I i r little face, uplifted to his, absurd, > not urn-harming, was, in its still force, almost on ii sorry," was all she said, and she turned and forward to greet Mrs. Chadwick. 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. Adrienrie 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, present ly. 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 IHT 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 black- caps and primroses she suggested lace tippets and porce- lain tea-sets, and though it was from her Nancy had her 83 84 ADRIENNE TnNKlI rty trick of closing her eyes when she smiled, M -ril's smile was cogitative and impersonal, and in always temperate mirth there was an edge of grimness. Weil, Roger, I want to hear what you thought about the wedding," she said. She had not gone to chi 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 v. on to say, she had got link- from Nancy, who had no eye for pageants and performances. " Eleanor was so absorbed," she went on, M 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 <>f her. She seemed to have seen the Bishop's symptoms rather than Adrienne and Barney. Now from you I rt all the relevant deta * \\YII, if you call it a detail, Nancy was lovely," said OMmeadow. " She looked like a silver-birch in her white and green." 44 And pearls," said Mrs. Averil. You noticed, of course, the necklaces Adrienne gav ; quite the gift of a princess, yet so innocent and unobtrusive looking, too. She has great tast I, Did the took well? Eleanor did say tha !M Bishop, was Shr was pale; but not a bit nervous. SI looked as if she had been married every day of her lift-. puts her out, you know. grave and benign ; but she wasn't an im{x>sing bride and the wreath of orange-blossoms aged her. Nancy and Meg and Barbara and the Lumley girl aged her, too. must be older than Barney." ' Y'-; lhc is. A year older. But she's the sort of w(in:m who will wear," lore a bed of rose-trees to snip off n f.uliiiL: il<^ 11 not look very different ly at fifty, you know; and her hair is the sort that may urn grey. I can see her ADRIENNE TONER 85 at seventy with those big golden braids and all her teeth. There's something very indestructible about her. I. doll made of white leather compared to one made of porcelain. She'll last and last," said Mrs. Avcril. " Shell 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 as he came down the nave. A rather dumpy little C i mas-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 some- thing altogether very solitary about her," Oldmeadow agreed, watching Mrs. Averil snip off the withered roses. " 1 felt that even as she came down the nave on Bar: 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 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. Natur- ally I don't feel very critically towards her." " Don't you ? Well, if she weren't a princess distribut- ing largess, wouldn't you ? After all, she's not given Nancy a trousseau. So why be mute with an old in "Ah, but she's given her the pearls," said Mrs. Avcril. 86 ADIMKNNK ] "Nancy couldn't but accept a bridesmaid's And she would give her a trousseau if she wanted it and ild take it. However, I'll own, though dec uld [> me mute, that I should find myself a little bored it I had to see too much of her. I'm an everyday person and I like to talk about everyday things." " 1 can hear her asking you, in answer to that, it there is anything more everyday than the human soul. I wish I could have seen you aux prises with her, * Oldmeadow arked. "Did she come down here? Did she like your drawing-room and garden ? " Mr-. Averil's drawing-room and garden lay very near h-T heart. Eleanor Chad wick sometimes accused her of caring more about IUT ehina 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 "d I don't think she went. She said the garden was orld," Mrs. Averil added, looking about her and twirling her parasol on her shoulder. " She would," Oldmeadow agreed. " That's just what would call it. And she'd call you a true, deep-hearted an and Nancy a gifted girl. How do she and Nancy hit it off ? It's that I want most of all to hear about" Miueh in common, have they?" said Mrs, Averil. " S r hunted and doesn't, I imapi know a wren from a hedge-sparrow. She does know a ^kylark when she hears one, for she said 4 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. lie and Mrs. A tt, saw to eye. ' It'ynu'd tie the correct label to l ; she isn't a bore. The things she knows to be found out, by degrees, through living with 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 mo* of contemplatioi ielded up to him the secret t. saw to be shared. " If only it were the same for wom< But they don't need the new. She's young, get over it. I don't Ix broken hearts, same," Mrs. Averil stopped in their walk, ostensibly to examine the growth of a 1 k lupin, "it h;. endeared Adrienne to me. I'm too terrc-d-terrc, about that, too, not to feel vexatioi Nancy's acco< And v. hat 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 ; know." "You don't think she's spiteful?" Oldmeadow suggested after a moment, while > i ned her lupin. 1 V;.i'. no ! I wish she could be! It's that smooth lace of hers that's so tiresome. She's not spite But she's human. She'll want to keep Barney away and ill he hurt." Want to keep him away when she's got him so completely ? " -omething of that sort. I felt it once or twice." ict about her was right, then," said Oldmeadow. " She's a bore and an interloper, and sh spoil things." "Oh, perhaps not. She'll meiul some t. Have you heard about Captain Hayward ? "' ' Do you mean that stupid. i>ii:. * ' ' about him ? " ADRIENNE TONER 89 " 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 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 mur- mured. 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. 44 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 lett 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 \\ith 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 UK* bacon and eggs at the other end of the table " How nice ; from Barney. Now we shall have news of them," 90 ADllIKNNE TONER liing less like an Ariane could be imagined than is she stood there in her pink dress abo ink, white and gold tea-cups. Onemi'jht 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 pt^ pared for what she found. She read steadily, in silence, whilr Oldmeadnw cut bread at the sideboard and V. Avcril distributed her viands, and, when the last page was reached, 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. Ill hare my tea now, dear," said Mrs. Avcril. " Will you wait a little longer, Roge She tided Na But Nancy was soon afloat " The letter is for us all," she said. " Do read it aloud, Roger, while I have my Barney's in the past, had, probably, always been shared and Nancy was evidently determined that >wn discomposure was not to introduce a ece- Oldmeadow took up the sheets and read. 44 DEAREST NANCY, I low I wish you were with us up st fantastically lovely place. One s 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 sal !\ . A horrid, vandal thing to do; but for you and Aunt Monica I felt it justified, and t: are such masses of it. I saw a snow-hunting yesterday, much higher up than the saxifrage; such a jolly, composed little fellow on a field of snow. Tin birds would d you absolutely mad, except that you're such a sensible young person you'd no doubt keep your head c when you saw a pair of golden eagles, as iloating : a ravine. I walked around the Lac d'Ani:- morning, before breakfast, and did wisi \ith ADRIENNE TONER 91 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 remem- ber Adrienne telling us that afternoon when she 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 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 hair-pin 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 laissee? 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 92 ADRIENXE TONER 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 ag:-; them but his nose is badly sun-lninu-d ! All our noses are sun-burned ! That's what one pays for flying among Mother Nell we've decided that that's what Im to call her looks ten yean younger all the same, as I knew she would. We talk of you all so often -of and Meg and Palgrave and Barbara, and half a dozen times a day Barney wishes that one or the other of 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 i >w all your iy English songsters Dear little Cousin-Si- I send you my love with his and, with him, hold ;:iiv in my heart. Will 4 Aunt Monica' accept my affectionate and admiring homages? Yours ever, 44 AD Oldmeadow had not expected t could write- such a human lettrr: yet it explained Nancy's blush. Barney's spontaneous affection she could have faced; I ut she had not been able to face his wife's determined ss. Adrienne had meant it \\vll, no doubt Old- meadow gazed on after he had finished ; but she had no business to mean so well ; no business to thrust hers in this community of intimacy, into what was Barn, place alone. There was more in it, he knew, with Meg and Mrs. Averil to help him, than the quite succes playfulness. She was to be more intimate than Harney, that was what it came to; more, much more tender, if U.irney was to be allowed intimacy and ess. That was really what she intended Nancy to see, and that I.inuy had no place at all where she, A- ilid not also belong. I ADRIENNE TONER .>;* " Very sweet ; very sweet and pretty," Mrs. AvcriFs roice broke in, and he realized that he had allowed limself to drop into a grim and tactless reverie ; " I didn't snow she had such a sense of humour. Sun-burned loses and 'Stern daughters of the voice of God.' \\V11 lone. I didn't think Adrienne would ever look as low is noses. They must be having a delightful tour. I blow 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. CHAPTER Oldmeadow sat beside Adricnne Chadwick n that from the ot of the room, where he talked to Mrs. Aldesey, Barney's eyes were on them, though he hem off. It was the first dinner-party the young couple had given since they had come up to town ; for though they were established at Coldbrooks 'lie communal fa ic seemed to find to taste, and though Barney had at OIK sed 'iintry pursuits v t!u-y had taken and furnished - large house in Connaugl - was, appar- ttled that the winter months were to be sp i Condon. How that was to be combined with farming at Coldbrooks, or whether 1 nded to take a der into politics and felt a London house, big enough entrrta: irt of the programme, Oldmeadow hadn't an idea; and for the rather sinister reason t iiad hardly laid his eyes on Barney since his return from his wedding- journ i hough asked to tea or t \\irr. uhile, established in an hotel, they were ling and I'urnishini: i, c had never found m alone and either Barney had made no opportunity, had seen to it that none should l>e made, for having a tlU-d-lttt with his old iV; rid. Oldmeadow could not associate Barney with ambitions, icr social or political, nor, he was 1>< say, as round the dinnrr-taMr, when- A at one end \\ith Lord Lumley and Barney at the other h Lady Lumley, could on- :ents any such ambitions in Adrie 94 ADRIENNE TONER emphasize its tendency to drop. Without Mrs. Aldesey, without Meg vividly engaged at one corner with i young American without himself, for he had aided and abetted Lydia to the best of his ability, the dinner would have been a dull one and he was not sure that even enterprise had redeemed it. Adrienne had not any air of fearing dullness or of being in need of assistance. Old- meadow saw that the blue ribbon was frequently unrolled and that, as always, it made a silence in which it could be watched. Lord Lumley, his handsome, oflicial head bent in an attitude of chivalrous devotion, watched earnestly, and the fair young American paused in the midst of whatever he might be saying to Meg to take almost reverent note ; but Oldmeadow fancied more than once that he caught startled eyes fixed upon it, especially when there emerged a lustrous loop of quota- tion : " One who never turned his back but marched breast forward Never doubted clouds would break, " The silence for that had been so general that even Barney, far away, and protected by Mrs. Aldesey, was aware of it. "How wonderfully he wears, doesn't he, dear old Browning," said Mrs. Aldesey, and in the glance Barney cast upon her was an oddly mingled gratitude and worry. The fair young American, he was very fair and had clear, charming eyes, finished the verse in a low voice to Meg and Meg looked at him affectionately while. He was evidently one of Adrienne's appurten- ances. It was a dull dinner. Pretty, festive Mrs. Pope young Mr. Haviland, reputed to be a wit and 01 Meg's young men as Mrs. Pope was one of 1'ar young .women, would not with any eagerness again at 96 ADHIIANK ToNER a board where the hostess quot< mm: and cli know better than to send you down, the first with a stern young socialist who sat silent for the most part and frowned when addressed, and the second with a jocular, middle-aged lady from California, the mother, Oldmeadow gathered, of the clear-eyed youth, from whose ample bosom Mr. Haviland's subtle arrows glanced aside leaving him helplessly exposed to the stout bludgeonings of her humour. Adrienne paused once or twice in her converse smile approval upon her compatriot and to draw Lord Lumley's attention to her special brand of i: nt, good Lord Lumley adjusting his glasses obediently to tak And now they were all assembled in the drawing-room. Like everything about Adrienne. it was simple and rather !. Barney had wisely 1 for own study and it was a pity, Oldmeadow reflected, th.it Adrienne had not kept for her own boudoir the large portrait of herself that hung over the i ece, e it was a note more irrelevant than any Post-Impres- sionist could have been and cast a shade of surmise < taste displayed in the Chippendale furniture and the Chinese screens, " Rather sweet, isn't it ; pastoral and girlish, you know," Barney had suggested tentative!) sey had placed herself before it "Done in Paris a good many years ago; the man was uch the fashion . Adrienne was only sixteen. It's an ex y perfect likeness still, bn't it ? " To which Mrs. Aldesey, all old lace and exquisite ev;i had murmured, her lorgnette uplifted : " Quite dear and ingenuous. Such a i i your arid C uhi-ts. What would they make of Mrs. Barney en bergere, I'd like to know ? A jumble of packing-cases with something d in a corner to signify a bleat." For the pie ainted with irlib assurance and abounding in pink ai portrayed Adrienne dressed as a shepht 1 earrying a flower-wreathed crook. ADRIENNE TONER OT Adrienne, to-night at all events, was looking very unlike the shepherdess, but that might be because of the approaches of her maternity. Mrs. Chad wick, when h< had last been at Coldbrooks, had told him that the baby was expected in May and that Adrienne was wonderful about it, dedicating herself to its perfection in thought and deed with every conscious hour. " If only I'd thought about my babies before t ' came like that, who knows what they might have turned out ! " she had surmised. " But I was very silly, I'm afraid, and the only thing I really did think about was how I should dress them. I've always loved butcl blue linen for children and I must say that mine did look very nice in it. For everyday, you know." Oldmeadow found it extremely difficult to think of Adrienne as a mother ; it was much easier to think of her as a shepherdess. Such solidities of experience gave her even a certain pathos in his eyes, even though he was in no whit dislodged from his hostility to her. She was as mild, as satisfied, apparently, with herself and with existence, as ever, yet her eyes and lips expressed fatigue and a purely physical sadness that was unchar- acteristic, and it was uncharacteristic that she should l>o rather thickly powdered. They had not really met since the morning of her adjuration to him at Coldbrooks and he wondered if she remembered that little scene as vividly as he did. would be very magnanimous did she not remember it unpleasantly ; and he could imagine her as very magnani- mous ; yet from the fact that she had kept Barney from him he could not believe that she was feeling magnanimously. She watched Barney and Mrs. Aldesey now, as they stood before her portrait, and he fancied that the sadness in her eyes, whatever might be its cause, deepened a little. When she turned them on him it was with an effect of being patiently ready for him. Perhaps, really, she had been more patient than pleased all evening. '.is ADKIKNNK TONKU k4 So you are settled here for the winter ? " he said. * Have you and Barney any plans? 1 lly seen anything of him of late." 44 \Ye have been so very, very busy, you know," said Adrienne, as if quite accepting his right to an explanat was dressed in pale blue and wore, with her pearl necklace, a little wreath of pearls in h hands she turned, as they talked, a small eighteenth- ury fan painted in pink and grey and blue, and lie was aware, as he had been at Coldbrooks, of those slow and rather fumbling movenu We couldn't well ask friends," she went on, " even the dearest, to come and sit on rolls of carpet with us while we drank our tea, could we ? We've kept our squalor for the family circle. Meg's been with us; so dear and helpful ; but only Meg and a flying visit once from Moth* r N't 11. Nancy couldn't DOOM. But iinL f , it seems, will tear Nancy from hunting. I feel that strange and rather sad; the absorption of a : such primitivcness." "Oh., w.-ll ; it's n, ,t her only interest, you know," 1 meadow, very determined not to allow himself is a creature of such deep country roots. Not the kind that grow in London." "1 know," said Adrirmu ; "and those roots t to prevent my Barney's growing. Roots t hat tie people to routine ; < I want Barn da wider, 1'ivrr life. I hope he \\ill go into If we ha\ - 1 it Coldbroo! the dear people th> re for tin sc winter mi ise I feel he will be better able to fon than in the country. I saw quite well, i it people di< lorm opinio: / accepted traditions. I want Barney to be free of tradition and t ^elf. lie has none now," She had been clear 1>< : but he 1 now the added weight of her matr< 1'elt, too, that, while ready for him and, {>erhaps, benevo- ADRIENNE TONK1J w lently disposed, she was far more indifferent to his impres- sions than she had been at Coldbrooks. She had possessed Barney before ; but how much more deeply she possessed him now and how much more definitely she saw what she intended to do with him. " You must equip him with your opinions," said Old- meadow, and his voice was a good match for hers in benevolence. " I know that you have so many v formed ones." " Oh no ; never that," said Adrienne. " That's how country vegetables are grown ; first in frames and in plots ; all guided and controlled. He must find his own opinions ; quite for himself ; quite freely of influence. That is the rock upon which Democracy is founded. Nothing is more arresting to development than living by other people's opinions." " But we must get our opinions from somebody and somewhere. The danger of democracy is that we don't grow them at all ; merely catch them, like influenza, from a mob. Not that I disbelieve in democracy/' " Don't you, Mr. Oldmeadow ? " She turned her little fan and smiled on him. " You believe in liberty, equality, fraternity ? That surprises me." " Democracy isn't incompatible with recognizing that other people are wiser than oneself and letting them guide us; quite the contrary. Why surprised? Ha seemed so autocratic ? " " It would surprise me very much to learn that you believed in equality, to start with that alone." Adi smiled on. " Well, I own that I don't believe in people v no capacity for opinions being empowered to act as if they had. That's the fallacy that's playing the mischief with us, all over the world." " They never will have opinions worth having unless they are given the liberty to look for them. You don't believe in liberty, either, when you say that." " No ; not for everybody. Some of our brothers are 100 ADRIENXE TONER too young and others too stupid to be trusted with it." " They'll take it for themselves if you don't trust them with it," said Adrienne, and he was again aware that though she might be absurd she, at all events, was not stupid. " All that we can do in life is to trust, and help, and open doors. Only experience teaches. People must follow their own lights." He moved forward another pawn, and though he did not find her stupid he was not taking her seriously. "Most people have no lights to follow. It's a ch< for them between following other peoples' or resenting and trampling on them. That, again, is what we can see happening all over the world." " So it is, you must own, just as I thought ; you don't even believe in fraternity," said Adrienne, and she con- tinued to smile her weary, tranquil smile upon In " for we cannot feel towards men as towards brothers, and trust them, unless we believe that the light shines into each human soul." He saw now that unless they went much deeper, deeper than he could be willing, ever, to go with Adrienne Toner, he must submit to letting himself appear as worsted. He knew where he believed the roots of trust to grow and he did not intend, no never, to say to Adrienne Toner that only through the love of God could one at once distrust and love the species to which one belonged. He could have shuddered at the thought of what she would certainly have found to say about God. " You've got all sorts of brothers lure to-night, haven't you," he remarked, putting aside the abstract theme and adjusting his glass. " Some of them look as though tL didn't recognize the relationship, \\here did you find our young socialist over there in the corner ? He looks very menacing. Most of the socialists I've known have been the mildest of men." " He is a friend of Palgrave's. Palgrave brought him to see me. Oh, I'm so glad Gertrude is going to take ADRIENNE TONER 101 care of him. She always sees at once if Anyone looks lonely. That's all right, then." Oldmeadow was not so sure it was as he observed the eye with which Mr. Besley measured the beaming advance of the lady from California. " I wonder if you would like my dear old friend, Mrs. Prentiss," Adrienne continued, watching her method with Mr. Besley. "The Laughing Philosopher, Mother used to call her. She is a very rare, strong soul. That is her son, talking to Lady Lumley. He's been studying architecture in Paris for the past three years. A radiant person. Mrs. Prentiss runs a settlement in San Francisco and has a brilliant literary and artistic salon. She is a real force in the life of our country." " Why should you question my appreciation of rarity and strength ? I can see that she is very kind and that if anybody can melt Mr. Besley she will." " Gertrude would have melted Diogenes," said Adrienne with a fond assurance that, though it took the form of playfulness, lacked its substance. " I hope they will find each other, for he is rare and strong, too. What he needs is warmth and happiness. He makes me think of Shelley when he talks." " He's too well up in statistics to make me think of Shelley," Oldmeadow commented. Barney, he saw, from his place beside Mrs. Aldesey at the other end of the room, was still watching them, pleased now, it was evident, by the appearance of friendly, drifting converse they presented. " He's not altogether unknown to me for we often, in our review, get our windows broken by his stones ; well-thrown, too. He's very able. So you thought it might do the British Empire good to face him ? Well, I suppose it may." " Which are the British Empire ? " asked Adrienne. " You. To begin with." " Oh no. Count me out. I'm only a snappy, snuffy scribbler. Good old Lord Lumley, of course, with all his vast, well-governed provinces shimmering in the Indian l,vj- ADK1ENNE TOM SUB And Sir Archibald, who talks so lou< in the House. Pulgrave didn't bring him, I'll he ho "No. Lady Lumley brought him. lie and Lord Luraley are certainly more than odds and ends." > had an air of making no attempt to meet his badinage, if it was that, but of mildly walking past it. " They are, both of them, rather splendid people, in spite of tl limitations. They've accepted tradition, you see, instead of growing opinion. That is their only trouble. 1 was afraid you were going to say Mr. Havilaiul. lie is cer- tainly an odd and end." M". Haviland and Mrs. Pope had found each other and were indulging in mirthful r -partee in the back drawing-room. " I feel safe with Lord Lumley and Archibald, Adrienne added. k * I'd r rtainly rather trust myself in their h in Mr. I'M -lev's. I'd almost rather trust myself in hands of Mr. Havil;' u mean that they would, at least, keep you comfortable and that Mr. Besley wouldn't." She, too, <>f repartee. " I what I do mean," he assented. "If Mr. Besley y, I for ance, and workers of my type, would sooi >cct, e to forego our tobacco and our chamber-mi, 're only marketable in a comfortable world. .' e arc more comfortable people, I maintain Lord Lumley, 1 re would be under Mr. IJesi- 'Heartily know, half-gods go, the gods arch >egin by burning away the evil and the refuse. Not that I am a revolutionist, or even a social M You can't separate good IV i by burning," he said. k " You burn them both. Thul did in their lamentable bon whieh 11: \ \e been paying in poorer brains and poorer blood nee. We don't A lutions. want i- . ,od- tempercd reform. ill-tempt ADRIENNE TONER 103 aren't they, and nothing worth doing was ever done in an ill-temper. You are making me very didactic." " Oh, but I prefer that so much to persiflage," said Adrienne, with her tranquillity. "And I am glad to hear what you really believe. But it is sad to me that you should see no ardour or glory in anything. With all its excesses and errors, I have always felt the French Revolution to be a sublime expression of the human spirit." " It might have been ; if they could only have kept their heads metaphorically as well as literally. But the glory and ardour were too mixed with hatred and ignorance. I'm afraid I do tend to distrust those states of feeling. They tend so easily to self-deception." She was looking at him, quietly and attentively, and he was, for the first time since their initial meeting, perhaps, feeling quite benevolently towards her ; quite as the British Empire might feel towards a subject race. It was, therefore, the more difficult to feel anything but exasperation when she said, having, evidently, summed up her impressions and found her verdict : " Yes. You distrust them. We always come back to that, don't we ? You distrust yourself, too. So that, when you tell me what you believe, you can only do it in the form of making fun of my beliefs. I feel about you, Mr. Old- meadow, what I felt that morning when I tried to come near you and you wouldn't let me. I feel it more the more I see you ; and it makes me sad. It isn't only that you distrust ardour and glory, all the sunlight and splendour of life ; but you are afraid of them ; afraid to open your heart to trust. You shut your door upon the sunlight and take up your caustic pen ; and you don't see how the shadows fall about you." It was indeed a dusty tumble from the quite civilized pavement of their interchange, and it was unfortunate that upon his moment of discomfiture, when he saw himself as trying to clap the dust off his knees and shoulders in time to be presentable, Barney and Mrs. 104 ADRIEXNE TONER Aldesey should have chosen to approach them. Bar. no doubt, imagined it a propitious moment in which to display to Mrs. Aldesey his wife's and his friend's amity. Adrienne was perfectly composed. She had borne her testimony and, again, done her best for him, pointing out to him that the first step towards enfranchisement was to open his door to the Minli^ht that she could so bountifully supply. She turned a clear, competent eye upon her husband and his companion. " Well, dear, and what have you and Roger been so deep in ? " Barney inquired, looking down at her with a fondness in which, all the same, Oldmeadow detected the anxiety that had hovered in his eye all evening. Y, seemed frightfully deep." l * We have been," said Adrienne, looking up at him. * In liberty, equality and fraternity; all the things I believe in and that Mr. Oldmeadow doesn't. I can't -ine how he gets on at all, he believes in so few things. It must be such a sad, dim, groping world to live in when there are no stars above to look at and no hands below to hold." " Oh well, you see," said Mrs. Aldesey with her dragging smile, " his ancestors didn't sign the Declaration of Independent-. v We don't need ancestors to do that," Adrienne smiled back. " All of us sign it for ourselves all of us A'. have accepted our birthright and taken the gifts that our great, modern, deep-hearted world holds out to us. You are an American, Mrs. Aldesey, so you find it easy to l><-lirvr in freedom, don't you?" Very easy; for myself: but not for other peoj !," Mrs. Aldesey replied and Oldmeadow saw at once, with an added discomfort, that she underestimated, beca of Adrienne's absurdity, Adrienne's intelligence. " But then the very name of any abstraction freedom, humanity, what you will has always made me tVd, at once, dreadfully sleepy. It's not ever having had my ADRIENNE TONER 105 mind trained, Mrs. Barney. Now yours was, beautifully, I can see." Adrienne looked up at her, for Mrs. Aldesey, her lace about her shoulders, her lorgnette in her hands, had not seated herself, and it was further evident to Oldmeadow that she weighed Mrs. Aldesey more correctly than Mrs. Aldesey weighed her. " Very carefully, if not beauti- fully," she said. " Have I made you sleepy already ? But I don't want to go on talking about abstractions. I want to talk about Mr. Oldmeadow. The truth is, Barney," and her voice, as she again turned her eyes on her husband, had again the form but not the substance of gaiety, " the truth is that he's a lonely, lonely bachelor and that we ought to arrange a marriage for him, you and I. Since he doesn't believe in freedom, he won't mind having a marriage arranged, will he ? if we can find a rare, sweet, gifted girl." Barney had become red. " Roger's been teasing you, darling. Nobody believes in freedom more. Don't let him take you in. He's an awful old humbug with his Socratic method. He upsets you before you know where you are. He's always been like that." '' Yes ; hasn't he," Mrs. Aldesey murmured." " But he hasn't upset me at all," said Adrienne. " I grant that he was trying to, that he was doing his very best to give me a tumble ; but I quite see through him and he doesn't conceal himself from me in the very least. He doesn't really believe in freedom, however much he may have taken you in, Barney ; he'd think it whole- some, of course, that you should believe in it. That's his idea, you see ; to give people what he thinks whole- some ; to choose for them. It's the lack of faith all through. But the reason is that he's lonely ; dreadfully lonely, and because of that he's grown to be, as he says, snappy and snuffy ; so that we must borrow a page from his book and find what is wholesome for him. I know all the symptoms so well. I've had friends just like that. It's a starved heart and having nobody to 106 ADKIKNN be fonder of than anyone else ; no one near at all. must be happily married as soon as pos^ i \ marriage is the best gift of lite, isn't it. Mrs. A If v :ft known that we haven't known our best s, have ' It may be ; we mayn't have," said Mrs. Aldesey, cheerfully ; but she was not liking it. " I can't say. Am I to have a hand in choosing his bride ? I know tastes, I think. We're quite old fri ui see." DM who doesn't believe in freedom for other people may help to choose her," said A . with a curious blitheness. "That's why he mayn't choose . We ipnst 1:0 quite away to find IHT ; away from ceilings and conventions and out into the sunlight. ! don't believe happiness is found under ceilings. And what we all need more than anything else. Kven tobacco and chamber-music don't make you a bit happy. do thy, Mr. Old meadow ? And t happy w anything about anything. Not really." 44 Alas ! " sighed Mrs. Aldesey, keeping up her end, but not very successfully, while Hnrney fixed his eyes upon his wife. 4 * Ai :ht I'd found it t ing, under this ceiling. \ ,^h my illu^i tell me it's only that. And thank yon for it, Mrs. Barney. The Lumleys are going to give me a lift and I see that their car has been announced." 44 Stay on a bit, Roger," Barney murmured, as the Lumleys approached. 44 I've seen nothing of you for ' Adrienne rose to greet her parting guests. :lin<: A< ood night. It's been perfectly delightful, your little party," said Lady Lumley, who izhtandf -livahnt of the lady from -. ithoiit the sprint lineSB. * Your dear young Mr. Prentiss is a treasure. He's been telling me about > temples. We mitt* get there one day. Mrs. they will eo*i tor a week- lore they go. How linarily ADRIENNE TONER 107 interesting she is. Don't forget that you are coming on the fifteenth." " I shall get up a headache, first thing ! " Lord Lumley stated in a loud, jocular whisper, reverting to a favourite jest on Adrienne's powers. " That's the thing to go in for, eh ? I won't let Charlie cut me out this time. Not a night's sleep till you come ! " " Go in for as many as you like, dear Lord Lumley," said Adrienne, smiling her assurance of being able to deal with a series. " Good night, Mrs. Barney," said Mrs. Aldesey. " Leave me a little standing-room under the stars, won't you." " There's always standing-room under the stars," said Adrienne. " We don't exclude each other there." The party showed no other signs of breaking up. The Laughing Philosopher had melted, or, at all events, mastered Mr. Besley, and talked to him with, now and again, a maternal hand laid on his knee. Mr. Haviland and Mrs. Pope still laughed in the back drawing-room, Meg and Mr. Prentiss had come together again and Sir Archibald was engaged with a pretty girl. After looking around upon them all, Adrienne, with the appearance of a deeper fatigue, sank back upon her sofa. " You know, darling," Barney smiled candidly upon his wife, " you rather put your foot in it just now. Mrs. Aldesey's marriage isn't happy. I ought to have warned you." "How do you mean not happy, Barney? " Adrienne looked up at him. " Isn't Mr. Aldesey dead ? " " Not at all dead. She left him some years ago, didn't she, Roger ? He lives in New York. It's altogether a failure." Adrienne looked down at her fan. " I didn't know. But one can't avoid speaking of success sometimes, even to failures." " Of course not. Another time you will know." Adrienne seemed to meditate, but without compunc- tion. " That was what she meant, then, by saying she 108 AIHUKNNK TONER believed in freedom for herself but not for ot M ant ? How do you mean ? She was jok ' If she left him. It w:> Ho left him .' " M I don't know anything about it" Barney spoke now with definite vexation and Oldmeadow, in his corner of the sofa, his arms folded, his eyes on the cornice, gave him no help. " Except that, yes, certainly ; it's she who left him. She's not a deserted wife. Anything but that." 41 It's only Mr. Aldesey v. he deserted hush. Adrienne turned her fan and kept her eyes on it. " It's only he who can't be free. Forgive me if she's a sp< ( >urs, Mr. Oldmeadow ; but it explains. I sunn-tiling so brittle, so unreal in her, charming and gracious as she is. It is so very wrong for a woman to do that, I think." " \Yr>ng?" Barney echoed, staring at Oldmeadow while liis firm hand was laid upon his Egeria. " What the diekens do you mean, darling? She is a special id of Roger's. You don't surely mean to say a nan must, under all circumstances, stick to a man " Anything but that, Barney. I think that she should leave him and set him free. It's quite plain to me that wife will not live with her husband it is h, r duty to divorce him. Then, at any rate, he can try for happiness again. 44 Di im, my dear child ! " Barney was trying to keep up appearances, but the note of marital severity came through, and as it sounded Adrienne raised her eyes to his. Its not so easy as all that ! Aldesey, whate his faults, may have given her no cause to divorce him, and I take it you'll not suggest that Mrs. Aldesey should give him cause to divorce her." On her sofa, more pallid under her powder, more sunken than before, and with the queer squashed-in look emphasized, Adrienne kept steady eyes uplifted to husband. ki Not at all, dear Barney," she returned and Oldmeadow, though hardened against the pathos of her ADRIENNE TONER 109 physical disability, saw that she spoke with difficulty, " but I think that you confuse the real with the conven- tional wrong. Mrs. Aldesey would not care to face any unconventionality ; that is quite apparent. She would draw her skirts aside from any conventional wrong-doing. But the real wrong she would be blind to ; the wrong of keeping anyone bound in the emptiness you have made for them. Setting free is not so strange and terrible a matter as you seem to imagine. It's quite easy for brave, unshackled people." " Well, I must really be off," Oldmeadow now seized the occasion to declare. " I believe, as a matter of fact, that Mr. Aldesey lives very contentedly in New York, collecting French prints and giving excellent dinners. Anything open and scandalous would be as distasteful to him as to his wife. They are, both of them, happier apart ; that's all it comes to. So you must read your lessons, even by proxy, to more authentic misdemeanants, Mrs. Barney. All right, Barney. Don't come down. I'll hope to see you both again quite soon." So he got away, concealing as best he might his sense of tingling anger. But it died away to a sense of chill as he walked down Park Lane. Was not Barney unhappy, already ? What did she say to him when she got him to herself? He felt sure that she had never bargained for a husband who could look at her with ill-temper. ( 1 1 AFTER XIII " Roger, see here, I've only come to say one word about the absurd little matter of last night. One 01 and then we'll never speak of it again/ 1 said poor Barney. 1 1 had come as soon as the very next day to exoner- ate, not to apologize ; that was evident at once. Old- meadow had not long to wait before learning what she said to him when she got him to hersdt nor long to wait before realizing that if Barney had been unhappy last night he thought himself happy to-day. "Really, my dear boy," he said, "it's not worth talking about. " 44 Oh, but we must talk about it," said Barney. He red and spoke quickly. M It upset her frightfully ; it made her perfectly miserable. She cried for hours, Roger." Barney's voice dropped to a haggard note. Yu know, though she bears up so marvellously, si ill. She doesn't admit illness and that makes it harder for her, becausr it simply bewilders her when she li: >n edge like t his and her body refusing to c>l The baby is coming in May, you know." 1 know, my dear Barney. The evening was fatiguing for her. I saw it all I think. 1 noticed from the he^innini: how tircn the lovely girl, you see, it isn't likely they'd be reeipro- cated." "Oh, but" Barney's eagerness again outstepped his discretion " wouldn't the question of money count tn Roger? If she had plenty of money, you know, or you had; enough for lx)th ; and a place in the country ? Of course, it's all fairy-tale ; but Adrienne is a fairy-tale ADRIENNE TONER 113 person ; material things don't count with her at all. She waves them away and wants other people to wave them away, too. What she always says is : ' What does my money mean unless it's to open doors for people I love ? ' She's starting that young Besley, you know, just because of Palgrave ; setting him up as editor of a little review rotten it is, I think but Adrienne says people must follow their own lights. And it's just that ; she'd love to open doors for you, if it could make you happy." Oldmeadow at this, after a moment of receptivity, began to laugh softly ; but the humour of the situation grew upon him until he at last threw back his head and indulged in open and prolonged mirth. Barney watched him bashfully. " You're not angry, I see," he ventured. " You don't think it most awful cheek, I mean ? " " I think it is most awful cheek ; but I'm not angry ; not a bit," said Oldmeadow. " Fairy-godmothers are nothing if not cheeky, are they? Oh, I know you meant your, not her, cheek. But it's the fault of the fairy-godmother, all the same, and you must convince her that I'm not in love with anybody, and that if ever I am she'll have to content herself with my small earnings and a flat in Chelsea." So he jested ; but, when his friend was gone, he realized that he was a little angry all the same, and he feared that his mirth had not been able to conceal from Barney that what he really found it was confounded impudence. Barney's face had worn, as he departed, the look of mingled gratitude and worry, and Barney must feel, as well as he felt, that their interview hadn't really cleared up any- thing except his own readiness to overlook the absurdities of Barney's wife. What became more and more clear to himself was that unless he could enable Adrienne to enroll his name on her banner she would part him from Barney and that her very benevolence was a method. The more he thought of it the more uncomfortable he felt, and his inner restlessness became at length an impulse 114 ADRIEXXE TONER urging him out to take counsel or, rather, seek solace, with the friend from whom Adrienne could never part him. lie would go and have tea with Lydia Aldesey and with the more eagerness from the fact that he was aware of a slight dissatisfaction in regard to Lydia. She had not altogether pleased him last night. She had put herself in the wrong; she had blundered ; she hadn't behaved with the skill and tact requisite; and to elicit from her a confession of ineptitude would make his sense of solace the more secure. The day was a very different day from the on< in April when he had first gone to ask Mrs. Aldesey for information about people called Toner. It was early February, dull and cold and damp. No rain was falling, but the trees were thick with moisture, and Oldraeadow had his hands deep in his pockets and the collar of his coat turned up about his ears. As he crossed the Serpentine, an trie brougham passed him, going slowly, and he had a glimpse within it, short but very vivid, of Adrienne, Meg and Captain Hayward. Adrienne, wearing a small arrangement of black velvet that came down over her brows, was holding Meg's hand and, while she spoke, was looking steadily at her, her fiace as white as that of a Pierrot. Meg listened, gloomily it seemed, and Captain Hayward's handsome countenm turned for refuge to wards the window, showed an extn < mharrassment. They passed and Oldmeadow pursued his way, fill- <1 with a disagreeable astonishment, though, absurdly, his mind was at first occupied only m an attempt to reco a submerged memory that Captain Ilayward's demean- suggested. It came at last in an emancipating flash and he saw again, after how many years, the golden-brown head of his rather silly setter, John, turned aside in shy 1 repudiation, that still, by a dim, sick smile, attempted to conceal distress and to enter into the spirit of the game as a kitten was held up for his cent em tion. A kitten was a very inadequate analogy, no doubt, ADRIENNE TONER 115 for the theme of Adrienne's discourse; yet Captain Hayward's reaction to a situation for which he found himself entirely unprepared was markedly like John's. And he, like John, had known that the game was meant to be at his expense. John and Captain Hayward got Oldmeadow out of the park before he had taken full possession of his astonishment and could ask himself why, if Adrienne were engaged in rescuing Meg from her illicit attachment, she should do it in the company of the young man. Yet, strangely enough, he felt, as he walked, a growing sense of reassurance. For an emer- gency like this, after all, given amenable subjects, Adrienne was the right person. He hadn't dreamed it to be such an emergency; but since it was, Adrienne would pull them through. As she would have laid her hand on the head of Bacchus and reformed him, so she would lay it on the head of Captain Hayward. \PTER XI The incident put Mrs. Aldesey quite out of his mind, and it was not till he stood on her doorstep and rang bell that he remembered his grievance against her and ized that it had been made more definite by this glimpse of Adrienne's significance. That his friend was ;>ared for him was evident ; rst glance; she had ev< n. he saw, been expecting him, for she broke out at once with : " Oh, my dear Roger what are you going to do with her ? " was actually pleased to find himself putting Die .L'rimness, in her place. "What is she going to do with us ? you mean. You underrate Mrs. Barney's ity, l<-t me tell you, my dear friend." Hut Mrs. Aldesey was not easily quelled. " Underrate ! Not I ^ a Juggernaut if ever there was one. Her capacity is immeiiv. S 1 roll on and she'll crush Oat. That poor Barney ! She is as blind as a Jugger- naut, but he will come to see alas I he is seeing already though you and I danced round him with veils and iiat people won't stand being pelted v platitudes from soup to dessert. The Lumleys will, of course; it's their natural di< -t : though even tiny like r platitudes served with a toueh of sauce piquante ; but Rosamund Pope told me that she felt black and blue all over and Cuthbert llaviland malicious toad imi- tates her already to perfection : dreadful litti- dful little smile, dreadful little qu and all. It will be one of his London gags. Tl, iess! 116 ADRIENNE TONER 117 My dear Roger, don't pretend to me that you don't see it*! " Oldmeadow, sunken in the chair opposite her, surveyed her over his clasped hands with an air of discouragement. " What I'm most seeing at the moment is that shw$ how far it will cany them! Not you, my dear Lydia. You'll where you are with us." eyes had come back and down to 1 her gaze resumed its alertness and showed him that she found the picture he drew disquieting. "You nu an it's a new kind of eivili/.ation that will menace ours? " s not a civilization: tl ts just what it's not. It ? s a state of mind. Per will menace n i haps iocs. \\Y\e underrated it; of that 1 in Mire; and underrated power is always dangerous. It will I without ex against experience without faith. \Yhat we must try for, if we're not to be worsted, is to e both to keep experience and to th. too. Only so shall we be able to hold our own against V Barney. And even so we shan't be able to prevent her doing things to us and for us. She'll do things for that we can't do for ou md iwrrU-d to - of the brougham. In that way she's bound si us. We'll have to accept things from lu ADRIENNE TONER 121 Oldmeadow's eyes had gone back to the cornice and, in the silence that followed, Mrs. Aldesey, as she sat with folded arms, played absently with the lace ruffle at her wrist. The lace was an heirloom, like her rings, and the contemplation of them may have afforded her some sustainment. " She's made you feel all that, then," she remarked. " With her crook and her hat and her rose- wreathed lamb. If such a sardonic old lion as you does really grow bodeful before the rose-wreathed lamb there is, I own, reason to fear for the future. I'm glad I'm growing old. It would hurt me to see her cutting your claws." " Oh, she won't hurt us ! " Oldmeadow smiled at her. " It's rather we who will hurt her by refusing to lie down with her lamb. If that's any comfort to you." 46 Not in the least. I'm not being malicious. You don't call it hurt, then, to be effaced ? " " Smothered in rose-leaves, eh ? " he suggested. " It would be suffocating rather than suffering. She does give me that feeling. But you'll make her suffer you have, you know rather than she you." "I really don't know about that," said Mrs. Aldesey. " You make me quite uncomfortable, Roger. You make me superstitious. She's done that to me already. I refuse to take her seriously, but I shall avoid her. That's what it comes to. Like not giving the new moon a chance to look at you over your left shoulder." ( IIAPTKU XV On a morning in early March Oldmeadow found, among letters waiting for him on his breakfast table, one from Nancy. Nancy and he, with all their fondness, seldom wrote to eaeh other and he was aware, on seeing her writing, of the presage of something disagreeable that the unexpected often brings. " Dear Roger," he read, and in his first glance he saw his presage fulfilled. " We are in great trouble. Aunt i nor has asked me to write because she is too ill and it is to me as well as to her that Meg has ' and she wants you to see Barney at once. Here are Meg's letters. She has gone away with Captain Hayward. Aunt Elea and Mother think that Barney may be able to persuade Adrienne to bring her back. No one eke, we feel con- vineed, will have any influence with her. Do anything, anything you can, dear Roger. Mother and I are almost frightened for Aunt Eleanor. She walks about wringini: her hands and crying, and she goes up to Meg's room and opens the door and looks in as if she could not believe would not find her there. It is heart-breaking to see her. \Ye depend on you, dear Roger. Yours ever, Nancy.' 1 " Good Lord ! " Oldmeadow muttered while, in light- ning Hashes, there passed across his mind the fare of .John the setter and a Pierrot's face, white under a low line of black velvet. He took up Meg's letters, written from a Paris hotel. "Darling Mother. I know it will make you frightfully miserable and I can't forgive myself for that; but it had to be. Eric and I cared too much and it wasn't life at all, going on as we were apart. Try, darling Mot her. ADRIENNE TONER 123 to see it as we do see things nowadays. Adrienne will explain it all and you must believe her. You know what a saint she is and she has been with us in it all, understanding everything and helping us to be straight. Everything will come right. Iris Hayward will set Eric free, of course ; she doesn't care one bit for Jiim and has made him frightfully unhappy ever since they married, and she wants to marry some one else herself only of course she'd never be brave enough to do it this way. When Eric is free, we will marry at once and come home, and, you will see, there are so many sensible people now- adays ; we shall not have a bad time at all. Everything will come right, I'm sure ; and even if it didn't, in that conventional way I could not give him up. No one will ever love me as he does. Your devoted child, Meg." That was the first : the second ran : " Dearest Nancy, I know you'll think it frightfully wrong ; you are such an old-fashioned little dear and you told me often enough that I oughtn't to see so much of Eric. Only of course that couldn't have prepared you for this and I expect Aunt Monica won't let you come and stay with us for ages. Never mind ; when you marry, you'll see, I'm sure. Love is the only thing, really. But I should hate to feel I'd lost you and I'm sure I haven't. I want to ask you, Nancy dear, to do all you can to make Mother take it. I feel, just because you will think it so wrong, that you may be more good to her than Adrienne who doesn't think it wrong at all at least not in Mother's way. It would be frightfully unfair if Mother blamed Adrienne. She did all she could to show us where we stood and to made us play the game, and it would be pretty hard luck if people were to be down on her now because we have played it. We might have been really rotters if it hadn't been for Adrienne ; cheats and hypo- crites^ I mean ; stealing our happiness. I know Adrienne can bring Barney round. It's only Mother who troubles me, just because she is such a child that it's almost impos- sible to make her see reason. She doesn't recognize right l-Jl ADIUKNNE TONER 1 wrx>ng unless they're in the boxes s 1 med to. K\ H Tythin^ i> in a box for poor, darling oil Mummy. Hut I mustn't go on. Be the dear old pal you always have and help me out as well as you can. Your loving "Good Lord," Oldmeadow muttered once more, lie pushed back his chair and rose from the table in the bright ing sunlight. He had the feeling, almost paternal, of _rrace and a public stripping. He saw Eleanor Chad- k stopping at Meg's door to look in at the forsaken room, distraught in her grief and incomprehension, saw Nancy's pale, troubled face and Monica \ 1 and dry -,,,! -r dismay. And then again, by a flare at once tawdry and menacing, the face of Adrienne Toi i fferable meddler and destroyer, a Pierrot among fire-works that had, at lirr to the house. : id a taxi on the Embank- ment and drove to Connaught Square. Freshly decorated \\ith v. imlow-boxes, the pleasant, spacious house had a specially smiling air of welcome, but the but neanour him that something of the calamity had already .etrated. Ad r i t she had not heard \ uld have had her letters ; Barney, who had 1 t in the dark, would have been enlightened, and the irrepressible ? i< ms that must have passed between them seemed ly reflected on the man's formal com C iiadv. irk. lie told Oldmeadow, was breakfast! airs \vith Mr. Chadwick, and he ushered him into Banv :v. Oldmeadow waited for some time among the Post- Impressionist ].ietur<-s, one of which remained for e afterwards vividly iixrd in his memory of the moment ; a chaotic yet ( i featureless yet, as it were, conveying through it -^nizable elements the mean- ing of a grin. And, as he stood in the centre of the room and looked away from the derisive canvas, he saw on Bar- ographs of Adrienne, tin graphs of her ; one as a child, a sickly looking but beaming child ; ADRIENNE TONER one in early girlhood, singularly childlike still ; and one in her bridal dress of only the other day, it seemed, mild and radiant in her unbecoming veil and wreath. It was Barney who came to him. Poor Barney. He was more piteously boyish than ever before to his friend's eye ; so beautifully arrayed, all in readiness for a happy London day with his angel, so pale, so haggard and per- plexed. " Look here, Roger," were his first words, " do you mind coming upstairs to Adrienne's room ? She's not dressed yet ; not very well, you know. You've heard, then, too ? " " I've just heard from Nancy. Why upstairs ? I'd rather not. We'd better talk this over alone, Barney. All the more if your wife isn't well." " Yes ; yes ; I know. I told her it would be better. But she insists." The effect of a general misery Barney gave was height- ened now by his unhappy flush. " She doesn't want us to talk it over without her, you see. She comes into it all too much. From Nancy, did you say? What's Nancy got to do with this odious affair? " " Only what Meg has put upon her to interpret her as kindly as she can to your mother. Here are the letters. I'd really rather not go upstairs." " I know you'll hold Adrienne responsible partly at least. She expects that. She knows that I do, too ; she's quite prepared. I only heard half an hour ago and of course it knocked me up frightfully. Meg ! My little sister ! Why she's hardly more than a child ! " " I'm afraid she's a good deal more than a child. I'm afraid we can't hold Meg to be not responsible, though, obviously, she'd never have taken such a step unaided and unabetted. Just read these letters, Barney ; it won't take a moment to decide what's best to be done. I'll go down to your mother and you must be off, at once, to Paris, and see if you can fetch Meg back." But after Barney, with a hesitating hand and an un- certain glance, had taken the letters and begun to read iw ADRIENNE TONKU them, the door was opened with decorous deliberat and Adrienne's French maid appeared, the tall, sallow, capable-looking woman whom Oldmeadow remembered ing seen at Coldbrooks a year ago. " Madame requests that ces Messieurs should come up at once; she awaits them," Josephine announced in unemphatic but curiously potent accents. Adrinr potency, indeed, was of a sort that flowed through all her agents and Oldmeadow thought that he detected, in ineholy gaze bent upon Barney, reprobation for his failure to attain the standard set for him by a devot whole-hearted and reverential. Mrs. Chad I, had said that Adiimnc's maid adored i Yes, yes. We're coming, at once, Josephine," said Barney. Reading the letters as he went, he moved to t In- door and Oldmeadow found himself, perforce, following. Ilr had not yet vifl morning-room and even before his eyes rested on Adrienne they saw, hanging abo\ c she sat on a little sofa, a full-length portrait of Mrs. Toner ; in whit.', standing against a stone balustrade and holding lilies ; seagulls above her and a i^Tound of blue sea. Adrienne was also in white, hut she wore ovi-r h-r long loose dress a little jacket of pink silk edged with swans- down, and the lace cap falling about her neck was resetted with pink ribbon. It was curious to see her in this aln. frivolous array, recalling the sh pherdess, when her face ressed, for the fir>t time in his experience of her, an anger and an agitation all t fie more apparent for its contr. A. She was pale yet flushed, odd rtretkl of colour running up from her throat and dyinut happiness can grow from tragedy if we are brave and t and Meg is brave and true in her love. It won't break your mother's heart. Hers is a small, but not such a feeble, heart as that. I believe that the exprrience may ngthen and ennoble her. She has led too sheltered a life." Oldmeadow at this turned from the window and Barney's miserable eyes. "Tin-re's > reason for my staying on, Barney," he said, and his voice as well as his look excluded Adrienne from their interchange. " I'll take th L4I to Cdldbfoeb. What shall I tell your mother '.' That you've <;one to Paris this morning? " it r\e gone to Paris. That 111 do my best; you know. That I hope to bring Meg back. Tell to keep up her courage. It'll only be a day or two a 1 all, and we may be able t<> hush it up.'' "Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne in a <_" commanding tone. It was impossible before it to march out of the room and shut the door, though that was what forcibly arrested attitude showed that he wished to do. You as well as B. uust hear my protest," said Adrienne. and she ti\l her sombre eyes upon him. 4t Meg is with the man she loves. In the . her husband. It would be real as contrasted with < ventional disgrace v, to leave him nov, will not leave him. I know her bitter than you do. I ADRIENNE TONER 129 you " her gaze now turned on Barney " I desire you, not to go to her on such an unworthy errand." " But, Adrienne," Barney, flushed and hesitating, pleaded, " it's for Mother's sake. Mother's too old to be enlarged like that that's really nonsense, you know, darling. You see what Nancy says. They are frightened about her. It's not only convention. It's a terrible mistake Meg's made and she may be feeling it now and only too glad to have the way made easy for her to come back. I promise you to be as gentle as possible. I won't reproach her in any way. I'll tell her that we're all only waiting to forgive her and take her back." " Forgive her, Barney ? For what ? It is only in the eyes of the world that she has done wrong, and I have lifted her above that fear. Convention does not weigh for a moment with me beside the realities of the human heart ; nor would it with you, Barney, if it were not for the influence of Mr. Oldmeadow. I have warned you before ; it is easy to be worldly-wise and cynical and to keep to the broad road ; it is easy to be safe. But withering lies that way ; withering and imprisonment, and " " Come, come, Mrs. Barney," Oldmeadow interposed, addressing her for the first time and acidly laughing. " Really we haven't time for sermons. You oughtn't to have obliged me to come up if you wanted to influence Barney all by yourself. He sees quite clearly for himself the rights and the wrongs of this affair, as it happens. If I were to preach for a moment in my turn I might ask you how it was that you didn't see that it was your duty to tell Meg's mother and brother how things were going, and let them judge. You're not as wise as you imagine far from it. Some things you can't judge at all. Meg and Hayward aren't people of enough importance to have a right to break laws ; that's all that it comes to ; there's nothing to be gained by their breaking laws ; not only for other people, but for themselves. They're neither of them capable of being happy in the ambiguous sort of 130 AD1MKNNK TONER life th.-v'd h.-.ve to lead. There's a ren n t see at all in your haste to flout convention. Barney could have dealt with Hayward, and Meg could have been ked off to the country and kept there t learned to think a little more about other people's hearts and a little less about her own. What business had you, after all, to have secrets from your husband and to plot with the two young fools behind his back? Isn't M _; r rather than yours ? " Efobittt mess betrayed him and conscious hostility rose in him, answering the menace t measured him in her eyes. " \\ hat business had you, a new-comer among us, to think yourself capable of Caging all t! and to set yourself up above them all in wisdom ? You take too much upon yoi; his lips found the old phrase ; " Really you do. It's been ke from the beginning." eould not have believed that a face so frame* ss could show itself at once so calm and so convulsed. He knew that something had happened to that had never happened to her before in She kept her eyes steadily on him and he wonden were not reciting some incantation, some e from the seagulled lady above her : Power in Hepose Power in Love Power in Liirht. Her mouth and eyes and nostril^ were dark on her pallor, and he t she held back all the natural currents of her being in order to face and quell him with the supernatural. \er mind all that, Roger," Barney was s murmuring. "I d< like that. I know Adrie didn't for a moment mean to me." " \Ye will mind it. ! said Adricnnc, breathing i difficulty. " I had, Mr. Oldmeadow, the business, Ft, of loyalty to another human soul who, in t of its ( ; onfided in me. I have been than any < guessed, from my first meeting with her. Von were all blind. I saw at once 1 was tossed and tormented. I an . far near lian her brother and mother. In llinn she would ADRIENNE TONER 131 dreamed of confiding and she came to me because she felt that in me she would find reality and in them mere formulas. I do not look upon women as chattels to be handed about by their male relatives and locked up if they do not love according to rule and precedent. I look upon them as the equals of men in every respect, as free as men to shape their lives and to direct their destinies. You speak a mediaeval language, Mr. Oldmeadow. The world, our great, modern, deep-hearted world, has out- stripped you." " Darling," Barney forestalled, breathlessly, as she paused, any reply that Oldmeadow might have been tempted to make, " don't mind if Roger speaks harshly. He's like that and no one cares for us more. He doesn't mean conventionality at all, or anything mediaeval. You don't understand him. He puts his finger on the spot about Meg and Hayward. It's exactly as he says ; they're not of enough importance to have a right to break laws. If you could have confided in me, it would have been better ; you must own that. We'd have given Meg a chance to pull herself together. We'd have sent Hayward about his business. It's a question, as Roger says, of your wisdom; of your knowledge of the world. You didn't understand them. They're neither of them idealists like you. They can't be happy doing what you might be big enough to do. Just because they're not big. Try to take it in, darling. And we really needn't go on talking about it any longer, need we ? It isn't a question of influence. All we have to decide on is what's to be done. Roger must go to Mother and tell her I'm starting this morning to try and fetch Meg back. Imagine Mother with a divorce case on ! It would kill her, simply. That's all. Isn't it, Roger ? " " Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, again. She rose as she spoke. As he saw her stand before them, her approaching maternity dominated for a moment all his impressions of her. Veiled and masked adroitly as it was, its very uncouthness curiously became her. Her 132 ADRIENNi; 'I head, for once, looked small. Like an archaic statue, straight and short and thick, her altered form had digi and amplitude; and her face, heavy with its menace, hard with its control, might have been that of some austere and threatening priestess of fruitfulnett. 44 Banu y,wait," she said. Her arms hung straight beside her, but she slightly lifted ahand as she spoke, and Old- meadow noted that it was tightly < It is I, not your friend, whom you must question as to what i ri^ht that you should do. I do not consent to his reading of my unwisdom and unworthiness. I ask you not to consent to it. I ask you again go. I jisk you again to respect my judgment rather than i 44 Darling," the unfortunate husband supplicated ; ' not because it's Roger's judgment. You know it's what It right myself from the moment you told me what had happened. You say people must follow their own light. It is my light. I must do what Mother asks and try to bring Meg back." 44 It is not your light, Barney. It is craft and caution and fear. More than that, do you not see, must I make plain to you what it is you do to me in going? ^ ilt me. You treat what I have believed right forMeg N to do as a crime from which she must be rescued. ^ drag me in the dust- with her. Understand me, Barney " the streaks of colour deepened on her neck, her breath came thickly " if you go, you drag me in the du I low can it drag you in the dust, Mrs. Barney, if Meg wants to come back ? " Oldmeadow interposed in the tone of a caustic doctor addressing a malingering pat i UY're not talking of crimes; only of follies. Come ; be reasonable. Don't make it so painful for Hanuy to do what's his plain duty. Y i :v not a child. Y have, I hope, courage enough and humour enough to own that you can make mistakes like other people." "Yes, yes, Adrienne, that's just it," broke painfully from rarney, and, as he sei/ed the clue thus presented to him, Adrienne turned her head slo\vly. with an ominous ADRIENNE TONER i:j:j stillness, and again rested her eyes upon him. " It's childish, you know, darling. It's not like you. And of course I understand why ; and Roger does. You're not yourself ; you're over-strained and off balance, and I'm so frightfully sorry all this has fallen upon you at such a time. I don't want to oppose you in anything, darling do try to believe me. Only you must give me the credit for my own convictions. I do feel I must go. I do feel Roger must take that message to Mother. After all, darling," and now in no need of helping clues he found his own and the irrepressible note of grief vibrated in his voice, " you do owe me something, don't you ? You do owe us all something to make up, I mean. Because, without you, Meg would never have behaved like this and disgraced us all. Oh I don't mean to reproach you ! " " Good-bye then, I'm off," said Oldmeadow. " I'm' very sorry you made me come up. Good-bye, Mrs. Barney." She had not spoken, nor moved, nor turned her eyes from Barney's face. " Good-bye. Thanks so much, Roger." Barney fol- lowed him, with a quickness to match his own, to the door. But Adrienne, this time, did not call him back. She remained standing stock-still in front of her sofa. " Tell Mother I'm off," said Barney, grasping his hand. " Tell her she'll hear at once, as soon as I know anything. Thanks so awfully," he repeated. " You've been a great help." It was unfortunate, perhaps, that Barney should say that, Oldmeadow reflected as he sped down the stairs. 41 But she's met reality at last," he muttered, wondering how she and Barney faced each other above and hearing again the words that must echo so strangely in her ears ; " Disgraced us all." And, mingled with his grim satisfac- tion, was, again, the sense of irrelevant and reluctant pity. CHAPTER XVI It was Saturday, and he had to wire to Mrs. Aldesey that he could not go with t day to the Queen \ Hall concert they had planned to hear togetl Nancy was waiting for him at the station in h r own litth- pony-cart and as be got in she said : " Is Barney gone s ; hell have gone by now," said OKI and, as he said it, he felt a sudden sense of relief and ( -lai The essential thing, he saw it as he answered Nancy's stion, 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, lit wouldn't have gone. So that was all it ? ic had sped past the sun-swept count r; had stniL f< _r!-(l in him, strivii essfully, to free !f from the implications of that horrid word : M ! graced." It was Adrienne who had disgraced th< hat Barney's phrase had really meant, tho lu hadn't intended it to mean it. She, the stranger, the '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. A ney 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 p< is longing to see you," said Na "11 hope, you know, is that he may bring Meg s eyes had a look, as though she had lain awake all i. ADRIENNE TONER 135 " 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 wer 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 conclu- sion 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 tliink 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 130 ADUIKNNK TONER 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 th< 1 the corner to th< (in-eii, they saw 1 ing at the gate, her furs turned up around her ears, her neat little face pinched and dry, as he had known that he would lind it, and showing a secure if controlled indignation, rather than .cy's sad perplexity. k Well, Roger, you find us in a pleasant predicament," she observed as Oldmeadow settled the rug around knees. "Somehow one things happening in one's own family. Village girls misbehave and people in the next county run away sometimes with other people ; but one never expects such ad\ turcs to come walking in to one's own breakfast- table." sagreeable things do have a way of happening at breakfast-time, Oldmeadow assented. The comfort of Mrs. Averil was that even on her death-bed she would treat her own funeral lightly : M I wonder it remains such a comfortable meal, all the sai I :; pose you've had lunch on the train." said Mrs. Averil. Will you believe it? poor Eleanor was worry- ing about that this morning. She's got some coffee and waiting for you, in case you :. I'm SO thankful DOOM. It will help her. Poor cl She's begun to think of all the other things now. Of what people will say and how they will hear. Lady Cock erell is very much on her mind. You know what a meddlesome gossip she is, and only the other day Elcn ; >t>ed her was erit iei /ing Barbara's ,l. thought of her U disturbing her dreadfully now." 4 ' I suppose these leech-bites do help to alleviate the pain of the real wound," said ()ldnu-ad ; the It . .-in it." Mrs. A replied. "I'd like to I Lady Cockerell myself her.' 1 ADRIENNE TONER 137 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 respon- sible 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. i:;s A13KI1 !.K 1 don't you think t >r Meg and Cap! IIayw;ird 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?" 44 My dear child ! " Mrs. Averil again murmured, wliile Oldmeadow, finding it, after all, a comfort to have a grown-up Nancy to discuss it with, said, " My con ten: is that, left to herself Meg would have thought them both wicked/' 44 Perhaps," Nancy said again ; " but even old-fashioned irls did things they knew to be wicked some f different- Adrienne has made is that Meg doesn't think herself wicked at all. She thinks herself rather in- 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 do 44 Are you trying to persuade us that Meg isn't g* my dear? " Mrs. A\< ri! 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 h MI nothing about it, and can you conceive a woman :\g surh a thing from her husband? " Nancy was feeling the pressure of her own realiza- tinns and was not to be scolded out of th< :n. If Mrgis guilty, and doesn't k dreadfully v she finds out, won't she ? It all depends she has rself or not, doesn't it ? I'm not jus ing her or Adriemie. Mother; only trying to see tlu truth about them. How could Ailrienne 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 named Barney, but she kept her tired eyes on her mother and added: " I don't believe it was easy for her < p it from him." 11 My dear, anything is easy for her that Hat NTS JUT -importance!" cried Mrs. Averil impatiently. "I'll own, if you like, thai ghe'l more fool than knave as Meg ADRIENNE TONER 139 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. Old- meadow 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 sin- cerely 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 jshe was thwarted ; but I think of her incessantly as she 140 ADRIENNE TOXKH 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 beauty, as sure to marry happily; near u<. I hop Mrs. Chadwick began to sob again. M And now ! Will In- iind them in Paris? Will they not have on? " " In any case he'll be able to follow them np. I don't they'll think of hid; " No ; I'm afraid they won't. That is the worst of it ! They won't hid-, and every one will come to know, i what good will there he in her coining back 1 If on! 1 IMT present, d last year, Roger! She can o to court now," Mrs. Chadwick wept, none the less piteously for her triviality. "To think D daughter cannot go to court I She would ha\ e looked so beautiful, with my pearls and Die I*. -at her feathers are becoming to so few girls. Nancy could n- t wcmi \ 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." 44 Oh, but it's what they stand for, Roger, that will b ! Mrs. Chadwiek. in her gri< f, wdness. u lt f i easy to lau^h at t! rs, 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 Diey'll have thought of it and bought one? 1 be a lie, of course ; but don't you think that a li would be justifiable under the eir< e*T" "I don't think it really makrs any di f ' until they can come home and be marri< M I suppose she must marry him now- if they won't hide and will be proud of what they've quite proud of it ! everyone will know, so that they will have to marry. Oh I don't know what to hope or what to fear ! How can y me to have tea. she \\c| :it( red carrying the little ' It's so good of you, my dear, but how can I eat? I can ADRIENNE TONER 141 hardly face the servants, Roger. They will all know. 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, John- son 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. Chad- wick 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. " Adrieime was bitterly opposed to Barney's going," he said. " She seemed unable to grasp the fact that she herself had been in error." 142 ADKIENNE TOM II Nancy turned her eyes on him. M I): she was bitterly opposed? " M II.- didn't tell me. I was with them. It was most unfortunate. She insisted on my cominu r up. "Oh dear," said Nancy. . v n stopp moment to face him with hi -r di-- : said, walking on, " she would." w \\ }i\ 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 Barn< " Of course. And to mak t e clear t . ( too. She's not afraid of you, Roger. She's not afraid of ;. thing but Barney." 44 1 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. Oli yrs. lie had to go," said Nancy, absently. And she added. ' \\ very rough and scornful .' f Hough and scornful? I don't think so. I think I kept my temper very well, considering all things. I \ved her pretty clearly, I suppo- -red I XT a meddling ass. I don't suppose she'll for: easily for that." \V-ll. you can't wonder at it, can you ? " said Nancy. "Especially it she suspects that you made Barn sider her one, too." 44 But it's necessary, isn't it, that she should be made to suspeet it herself? I don't wonder at her not forgh me for showing her up before Barney, and upholding him against hi -r, but I do wonder that one can never make her st -c she's wrong. It's that that's so really monstrous about h "Do you think that anyone can ever make us see we are wrong unless th Nancy asked. \\<11. r.unry i r," said Oldmeadow after a moment. ADRIENNE TONER 143 " 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." " 1 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 any- where. 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 some- times. Oh, I'm sure of it the more I think of it. Ai d ADRIENM: TONER you know, sometimes," ( turned her deep, sweet eyes on him, M I i y sorry for her, Roger. I can't help it; although I d< her at all. Yes. It must be true. Though he had set it y rather than her love. Nancy and Meg were united in t id 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 frighten < < 1. It was strange ; the pang of pity that came wit! ion should be for A rather than for his dear li: ey ht-rstlf. Nancy had suffered, he knew, and her life was perhaps permanently scarred ; yet, clear-c> unduped, he saw her as mistress of the very fate that had r. Whereas Adrienne was 1 >lind folded ; a creature swayed and surrounded by forces of which she was unaware. Nancy had deepened his sense of pcrp!--xity. IIK sense of taking refuge hing, and w- fully upon him that niu'ht when he was at last alone. Meg and h r misdt mcanour sank into a mere ba< the image of the cold, convulsed face that he had seen that morning. Almost angrily he felt himself pushing it back, hing it down, as if ho puxM.-d it down to drown* and again and again it re-emerged to look at him. t last ; but as, a year ago, on th tin.i: with her, he had dreamed of her, so i-jht h< dreamed again. lie did not see her, but she was in some dread: and the sense of her panic and bcwilderi; iK>n i in shoe 1 - ferin<:. He could m.t se- was aware of her, horribly aware. All remained | baflled confusion, hut it was as though, and assert itself, he yet felt in.-r very IK ini: vivstii;iu r u ith out of the sunlight and Mr - in ! .f the garden, the corner \ ir ago, Old meadow remembered, Meg ! ADRIENNE TONER l i :, and explained to him the secret of Adrienne's power. Pitifully, with swollen eyes and trembling fingers, Mrs. Chadwick resumed her interrupted stocking while Old- meadow 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 Cocker- ell'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. " Josephine ! " 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 ! " Josephine was oxchumiin; as she came towards them down the path. Her face won- the terrible intensity of expression so alien to the Bnlisli countenance. " Oh, Madame ! Madame ! " she repeated. They had all risen and stood to await her. " He is dead ! 11<; AD1MKNNK ] littlr child is dead! And she is alone. M<'Hsi,ur her yesterday. Quite, quite alone, and h born dead." Mrs. Chadwick faced her in pall tact ion. M The baby, Aunt Eleanor," said v >oked indeed as if she had not understood It has been born -dead. Oh poor Bar \nd poor, poor Adrici es dead ! " Josephine, regardless of all but a us t ion and her grief, dropped down into on* garden-chairs and put her hands before her face. " Born dead last night. A beautiful little ho 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."' Josephine was sob 1 Ah, it was not right to leave her so. Already she was ill. It could be seen that already she was very ill when .V sieur left her. I came to her when he was gone. She (iid not say a word to me. She tried to smile. Mais fai bicn vu qu'elle avail la mart dans lame." "Good heavens," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, while Josephine, now. tears flow unchecked. ** She is alone and Barney has left her! Oh. this is terrible! At : a time ! " He had to go, Aunt Kleanor. You know he had to go. We will send for him at once," said Nancy, and Josephine, catching the words, sobbed on in her woe and h< T resentment : M Hut \\here to send for him? knows where to send. The doctors sent a \v i: day, at once, when she was taken ill ; to 1. Hut no : -.me. Il< must i . ' -.\hy I have com. s for Sunday. No : time. I took the car. The doctor said, Yes. well that I should come. Some one who cares for Mad. i!d return with inc. If she is to die she must not die alon M r>ut she shall not die! Mrs. Chad wick with sudden and surprising energy. " Oh, the poor baby ! ADRIENNE TONER 147 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 Josephine, 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 Josephine'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 Josephine, 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 absurd," 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-conscious- ness 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 Barm v loved her. And now because she has gone on believing in herself, we have struck her down." 148 ADRIENXE T The rooks were cawing overhead and Oldmcadow was > dream of a year ago, how A< iiad come to him along the terrace saying, as she lifted (i : "I can hear them, too." They had drawn her in. she had loved their life. She had wanted to under- stand 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 4 we.* You mean 'yon. 1 If anyone struck her down it was I." u spoke for us all, Roger. And you only spoke for us. You were always outside. I count myself w i. I can't separate myself from them. I received love wit ou?" he looked at her. " I don't think so, Nancy." Nancy did not pretend not to understand. k ' I know," she said. " But I'm part of it all. And she tried lo love me." CHAPTER XVII Oldmeadow sat in Barney's study, Mrs. Chadwick beside him. It was Tuesday and the only news of Barney had been a letter to his mother, from Paris, where he had not found Meg, and two wires from the South of France, one to Oldmeadow and one to his wife, saying that he had found Meg and was returning alone. He had not, it was evident, received the doctor's mes- sages. Oldmeadow had not seen his old friend since the Sunday night when he had left her and Josephine in Connaught Square, and in his first glance at her this morning he saw that for her, too, Adrienne's peril had actually effaced Meg's predicament. It had done more. Faint and feeble as she must be, scarcely able to take possession of her returning life and, as Mrs. Chad wick told him, not yet out of danger, Adrienne had already drawn her mother-in-law back into the circle of her influence. " You see, Roger," she said, sitting there on the absurdly incongruous background of the Post-Impressionist pictures and tightly squeezing her handkerchief first in one hand and then in the other. " You see, when one is with her one has to trust her. I don't know why it is, but almost at once I felt all my bitterness againsj her die quite away. I knew, whatever she had done, that she believed it to be right; to be really best for Meg, you know. And oh, Roger, Barney has hurt her so terribly ! She can't speak of him without crying. 149 ADKIl.NNK TONKH I never saw her cry before. I i agined A crying. She feels, she can't help feeling, tliat it is because of that they have lost their baby." Olclmeadow ordered wi ulty his astonl and indignant thoughts, " That is absolutely unfair to Barney," he said. " I was with them. No one could have been gentler or more path M I know you were with them. It would seem like that to you, Roger, because you are a man and i still think of women as a sort of chattel. Th;i it looks to Adrienne. So much nmr- you know, than we ever had Oh, I don't say it's a good t hin<: ! I feel that we are weaker and need guidance." iattels? Where do chattels come in here? She said that to you. Barney merely pleaded with her so he could do what you wanted him to do." 44 1 know I know, Roger. Don't get angry. But if I had been here and seen her I should have known that he must not go. I should have seen that she was A woman would have understood. No ; j didn't treat Adricnne like a chattel : no one could treat :UH like on.. It was poor little Meg I me: now how wrong it was to think of taking her from man she loves ; when she has gone, you know, so that every one must know and there can be no good in it. And thry probably have bought a \\< ring. Oh die does comfort me about Meg. She makes fed the deeper things, the things conventions blind us to. She makes me feel that the great tiling, the only thing, is to follow one's own li-jlit and that Meg did do that. And after all, you kn >v . Roger, Jov had George Eliot and Lewes to breakfast and th r married." M I la ! ha ! ha ! " Oldmeadow laughed. 1 1 not his Litter mirth. it h a clergyman I cruelly s too much am so incensed, tor there to be much cruelty, and Mrs, Chadwick. ADRIENNE TONER 151 gazing at him as if from under her twisted slniw, mur- mured : " He was a sort of clergyman, Roger ; and if people do what seems to them right, why should they be punished ? " He saw it all. He heard it all, in her echoes. The potent influence had been poured through her, all the more irresistible for the appeal of Adrienne's peril. Adrienne, bereaved and dying; yet magnanimous, gentle and assured ; always assured. How could Mrs. Chadwiek's feathers and wedding-rings stand a chance against her ? They had been swept away, or nearly away, and what Nancy had seen as a possible hope was now an accomplished fact. Mrs. Chadwick had been brought to feel about Meg as Adrienne felt about her, and Oldmeadow, for his part, was not sure that the game was worth the candle. There was something more than absurd in his poor friend's attempts to adjust herself to the new standards. They were pitiable and even a little unseemly. She began presently softly to weep. " Such a pretty baby it was, Roger. A lovely little creature that was the first thing she said to me ' Oh, Mother Nell, it was such a pretty baby.' And all that she said this morning when it was taken away was : fc I wish Barney could have been in time to see our baby.' Oh, it is terrible, terrible, Roger, that he is not here ! Her heart is broken by it. How can she ever forget that he left her alone at such a time ? And she begged him not to go. She told me that she almost knelt to him." The tears, irrepressibly, had risen to Oldmeadow's eyes; but as Mrs. Chadwick's sentence meandered on, his thoughts were roughly jolted from their pity. " But I tell you that that is absolutely unfair ! " he repeated, fixing his glass to look his protest the more firmly at her. Ck I tell you that I was there and saw it all. It wasn't for the baby. She was thinking of the baby as little as Barney was ; less than he was. What she was thinking of was her power over Barney. She was deter- i.vj ADRIEXXE TONER <1 t hat she should not seem to l>c put in the wrong Like the March hare, Mrs. Chadwick was wild rturbable. "Of course she was det How could she be anything else ? It did put her in the wrong. And it put Meg in the wrong. That's where we were so blind. Oh, I blame myself as much as anybody. But Barney is her husband; and he was with her and shot seen and felt. How could she beg him to stay for her danger when he would not stay for her love?" Yes; Adrienne had ry lirmly. arted to her, when it came to the issue, something of coherency. She was building up, in Barney's abaci strange ramparts against him. Barney had dragged in the dust and there she intended to drag him. that it ? Oldmeadow asked himself as he eyed his :ilt< : ring finally: "I'm every bit as responsible as Barney, if it comes to that. I up! him, completely, in his d--ision. I do still. A >u all upside down; but she ^ and I hope she won't turn Ban k * I think, 1 1 ( >ger, that you might at all events remember t she's not out of danger," said Mrs. Chadwick. ne may die \ Lnve you no more trouble. v , hav< eared for her ; I know that, and so does s and cling of you to speak as you do above us. And she looks so in bed," Mrs. Chadwick began to weep again. 11 I n ver saw such thick braids ; like Marguerite in Faust. Her hands on the sheets so thin and wl. her eyes enormous. I don't think even you could have the heart to jibe and laugh if you saw li 44 1 didn't laugh at Adrienne, you ki adow inded h <* and buttoning his overcoat. " I laughed at you and . I : Adiien ! mghing it she won't di- . I can assure you I t(H) much life in her to die. And though ADRIENNE TONER I'm very sorry for her difficult as you may find it to believe I shall reserve my pity for Barney." Barney needed all his pity and the sight of him on the following Sunday evening, as he appeared on his threshold, would have exorcised for Oldmeadow, if Mrs. Chadwick had not already done so, the memory of the pale, drowning face. He looked like a dog that has been beaten for a fault it cannot recognize. There was bewilderment in his eyes, and acceptance, and a watchful humility. To see them there made Oldmeadow angry. Barney had sent a line to say that he was back ; but his friend had been prepared not to see him. Once engulfed in the house of mourning it was but too likely that he would not emerge for many days. And besides, what would Barney have to say to him now ? But here he was, with his hollow eyes and faded cheeks, and it was with an echo of his old boyish manner of dropping in when beset by some perplexity that, without speaking, he crossed the room and sank on the sofa by the fire- place. But he had not come to seek counsel or sustain- ment. Oldmeadow saw that, as, after he had offered cigarettes, which Barney refused, and lighted his own pipe, he walked to and fro and watched him while Barney watched the flames. He had not come with a purpose at all. It was, again, precisely like the unhappy dog who wanders forth aimlessly, guided merely by a dim yearning towards warmth and kindliness. Barney had come where he would be understood. But it was not because he believed himself to be misunderstood that he came. " I went to Coldbrooks, first, you know," he said presently, and with an effect of irrelevance. " I thought I'd find Mother there. So it was only on that Thursday night I got back here. None of the wires caught me." " I know," said Oldmeadow. " It was most unfor- tunate. But you couldn't have got back sooner, could you, once you'd gone on from Paris." A1MMKNNK TON F.I! >t possibly. I went on from Paris that I caught the ni- tin- llivicra. left t'annes as an ad I got tl d on to San Renio. It was Tuesday before I found them. .Y idea was to find them as soon as possible, of course. No ; I siipjxjsc it couldn't once I'd go: 44 And it was quite useless ? You'd no chance with Meg at all ? " >ne whatever. Quite useless. Never was such a wild-goose chase. It was exactly as Adrienne had said/' 44 Still it couldn't have been foreseen so securely by anyone hut Adrienne. Many girls would have- jumped at the char.. t it they'd had Adrienne to help them. \Ye might have reali/.cd that That's what armed Me. I heard Adrienne thing she said. her thinks Adrienne was right, now, you know, Roger. And it was all for Mother, wasn't it? that I r. That makes it all so particularly ironic. <> dear Mummy was never very strong at logic. takes tl now that we're narrow-minded con\ .dUts, you and I, for thinking that a girl oughtn't to go off with a married man. I OHiH feel that, said Barney in his listless ton I Meg has done something shameful. You ought to have seen her \vly smug! sit tin -re with that ass of a fellow in that damned Riviera hotel! 1 had the horn too. that Meg had brought him rather than he her. I don't mean he doesn't care for her he does; I'll say that for him. 1I< "s a stupid fellow, l.n ; and he came < and . tell me what he felt and how it would be all ri^ht and th;i ^ going to de life to her. But I think he fee y sick, really. \Vhile V me as ; ,- a silly little hoy. If anyone y the tiling through, Meg ADRIENNE TONER 155 " It won't prove her right because she carries it through, you know," Oldmeadow observed. "No," said Barney, "but it will make us seem more wrong. Not that you have any responsibility in it, dear old boy. I did what I felt I must do and mine was t he- mistake. It's not only Mother who thinks I've wronged Adrienne," he went on after a moment, lifting his arms as though he felt a weight upon them and clasping them behind his head. " Even Nancy, though she was so sorry for me, made me feel that I'd done something very dreadful." " Nancy ? How did you come to see Nancy ? " " Why, at Coldbrooks. She's still there with Aunt Monica. That was just it. It was my going there first, seeing her first, that upset her so. She couldn't understand, till I could explain, how it came about. She was thinking of Adrienne, you see. And I, knowing nothing, had been thinking of Mother all the time. It was too late, then, to go back at once. The next train wasn't for three hours. So I had to stay." " And it was Nancy who had to tell you everything ? " " Yes, Nancy," said Barney, staring at the ceiling. There was a note, now, of control in his voice, and Old- meadow knew that if he had said no word of what must be foremost in both their thoughts it was because he could not trust himself to speak of it. And he went on quickly, taking refuge from his invading emotion, " Aunt Monica wasn't there. I didn't even see Johnson. I went right through the house and into the garden, and there was Nancy, planting something in the border. Everything looked so natural. I just went up to her and said 4 Hello, Nancy,' and then, when she looked up at me, I thought she was going to faint. Poor little Nancy! I knew something terrible had happened from the way she looked at me." "Poor little Nancy! But I'm glad it was she who told you, Barney." " No one could have been sweeter," said Barney, talking 156 ADRIENNE T on quickly. "She kept saying, * Oh, you ougl be here, Barney. You oughtn't to be here.' But no one could have been sweeter. We sat down on eld bench, you know, and she told me. Tiiat Adricnne trly died. That the baby was dead. I e.uld hardly believe her, at first. I stared at her, I know, I kept saying, ' What do you mean, Nancy ? what do you mean ? ' And she began to cry and I cried, too. Men do iVd, Roger, all the same, even though they the mother's claim to feel. I thought about our baby so much. I loved it, too. And now to think it's dead; and that I never saw it; and that it's my fault"- re had shaken more and more; he had put his hand before his eyes, and, now, sudde he leaned forward and buried his head on the arm of the sofa. "My poor Barney I My dear boy!" Ol muttered. He came and sat down beside him : h laid arm around his shoulders. " It's not your fault," aid. 44 Oh. .I M t say that, Roger ! " sobbed Barney, no good trying to comfort me. I've broken her heart She doesn't say so. She's too angelic to say it; but lies there and looks it. My poor dnrliii- ! My poor, courageous darling; what she has been through! can't be helped. I must face it. I'm her husband. I outfit to >tood. She supplicated me, and I rejected her, and the child is reed the situation on you. She chose to break rather than he said. M Listen to n I don't speak in any enmity to your wife ; bu ADRIENNE TONER 157 to me and try to think it out. Don't you remember how you once said that your marriage couldn't be a mistake if you were able to see the defects as well as the beauty of the woman you love. Don't you remember that you said she'd have to learn a little from you for bhe much you'd have to learn from her. Nothing more reassured me than what you said that night. And I ?ras reassured the other day by your firmness. It implies 10 disloyalty in you to see the defects now. It was Dower over you she wanted the other day and to see lerself put in the right, before me ; and to see me worsted, 3efore you. You know it, Barney ; you know it in your leart. And she knows it too. There was no failure of love in what you said. There was only failure of homage. k r ou were right in opposing her. She was wrong in the ssue she made. She was wrong from the first of the niserable affair in having concealed it from you. If rou'd stayed behind as she wanted you to do, you'd lave shown yourself a weakling and she'd have been urther than ever from knowing herself in error. There s the truth ; and the sooner you see it, the sooner she will." For some time after his friend had ended, Barney ay silent, his face still hidden. But his sobs had ceased, ^.nd his silence, at last, grew too long for any disclaimer -o be possible to him. He had been brought, Oldmeadow :new it from the very rhythm of his breathing, to the >assionless contemplation where alone truth is visible, ^nd what he said at last was : " She'll never see it like ,hat." " Oh yes, she will," said Oldmeadow. And he emembered Nancy's wisdom. " If you hold to it irmly and tenderly and make her feel you love her while rou make her feel you think her wrong." " She'll never see it," Barney repeated, and Oldmeadow low suspected, and with a deep uneasiness, that Barney night be seeing further than himself. "She can't." " You mean that she's incapable of thinking herself srong ? " 158 ADUII.NNK TONKK s, incapable, scious of is the wish t<> do rii:ht. And s| lr i i . ihe is so good and beautiful, that it must be like that with her. She can break : l>ut - ? bend." Oldmeadow was silent for a nioincnt and H.irney, on the arm of the sofa, was silent. "Of course," < dcm thru said, " the less you say about it the bet Things will take their place gradually." M I've not said anything about it." said Barne only thought of comforting and cherishing her. Hut not enough. I'll never say anything; but shell know I'm keeping something back. She knows it already. I see that now. And I didn't know it till you put it ton II have to accept it ; or to live with it unaccepted, usidcr yourself a criminal to moral ease." 44 No," said Barney after a pause. I can't do that. Though that's what Mummy wants me to da Hut I can b<- horribly sorry." M Horribly sorry. Let the rest sink into the unsj>oken. When people love each other they can, I'm sure, live* any amount of unspoken things." It hasn't been unspoken between you and me, ugh, has it, Roger?" said Barney, and he ra himself and got upon his feet as he said it. " There's trouble. There's when I am wrong. For she'd feel it an intolerable wrong if she knew that it ha< been u n you and me. And she'd be right. \Vhcii people love each other such reticences and roni: their ! 44 But since you say she knows," Oldmeadow suggested after another moment. Barney stood staring out of the twilight wind bent know that. I tell you," he said. ' Noii've told me nothing." said Oldmeadow. 14 \\. II. Mi't know what I listen to, fc] Old meadow was again conscious < ADRIENNE TONER " It's quite true I've no call to meddle in your affairs," be said. " The essential thing is that you love each sther. Let rights and wrongs go hang." " You haven't meddled, Roger." Barney moved to- wards the door. " You've been in my affairs, and haven't been allowed to keep out. Yes. We love each other. But rights and wrongs never go hang with Adrienne." CHAPTER XVIII Oldmeadow did not see Barney again for some months. He anor Chadwick towards the end of April, in t he park, he on his way to Mrs. Aldesey's, she, apparei satisfying her country appetite for exercise, since she seemed to be walking fast and at random. He almost thought for a moment that she was going to not to see him and hurry down a path that led away from his ; but his resolute eye perhaps cheeked the impulse. She faltered ami then earn.- forward, holding out her hand and looking rather wildly about h.-r. and she said that London was really suffocating, wa it? >u've been here for so long, ha >u," said Oldmeadow. "Or have you been here all this time? I'\c had no news of any of you, you see." 44 It's all been such a troubled, busy time, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick. " Yes, I've been here Hut, thank goodness, the doctors say she ma now, and she and I and Barney are going down to Dc\ rxt week. To Torquay. Such a dismal pi I think; but perhaps that's because so ru relations have died there. I never have liked that iv d D.-vonshire soil. Hut the primroses will be out. That makes up a little." !i glad that Mrs. Barney is better. \Vhrn will all be back at Coldbrooks ? " v ' In June. I hope. Yes ; she is better. But so feeble, still; so frail. And quite, quite changed from her brig! it self. It's all very depressing, Roger. \ ADRIENNE TONER 161 depressing and wearing," said Mrs. Chadwick, opening her eyes very wide and staring before her in a way character- istic of her when she repressed tears. "Sometimes I hatdly know how to keep up at all. For nothing cheers her. And Barney isn't really much help. He has very little power of fighting against depression." " You've all been too much shut up with each other, I'm afraid." Mrs. Chadwick still held her eyes widely opened. " I don't think it's that, Roger. Being alone wouldn't have helped us to be happier, after what's happened." " Being with other people might. You must get back to Coldbrooks as soon as possible and see Nancy and Mrs. Averil and your neighbours. That will help to change the current of your thoughts." " People don't forget so easily as that, Roger," Mrs. Chadwick murmured, and it was now with severity, as though she suspected him of triviality. " When some- thing terrible has happened to people they are in the current and Nancy and the neighbours are not going to change it. Poor Nancy ; she feels it all as much as we do, I'm sure." And that Mrs. Chadwick thought of him as unfeeling he saw. She thought of him, too, with Barney, as criminal ; as responsible for the catastrophe. The old phrase of presage floated back into his mind : " She'll spoil things." She had spoiled, for ever perhaps, this deepest, dearest relation of his life. What was Coldbrooks to become to him with Adrienne Toner in possession? He said, and he was unable to keep a certain dryness that must sound like lightness, from his voice : " You are in it but you needn't keep your heads under it, you know. That's what people tend to do when they shut themselves up with their misfortunes. You and Barney and Mrs. Barney, I suspect, are engaged in drowning each other. If one of you puts their head up the others pull it down." " I suppose you mean Adrienne does," said Mrs. Chad- ADIMKNM; TONER wick. He had not meant it at all ; hut now sure that so. exactly, did it happen. Poor wick left to h-: ;ld have swum to shore ly this time, and Barney, at ail events, would be swimming with his head up; it was Adrirnne, of eourse, that kept them suffocating under the surface. "Well, 1 think it a pity you three should go off to Torquay alone," he eva<: happening to the farm all this time?" "K seeing to it for Barney," said M wick. "She understands those things so well. Bar would not dream of letting the farm come between him and Adrienne at a time like this. He wants to be with , of course." "Of course. All I mean is that I wish h< could be with her at Coldbrooks. I suppose the doctor knows what's best, 1 1 in glad to hear you own that anybody can know what's Ix-st. Koger, except yourself," said Mrs. Chadwiek i her singularly unprovocative severity. M Of eoune she must go to the sea and of course Barney and 1 i be with her. She has two excellent nurses ; hut I would never t rust t he best nurse for certain things. I remember \\ell when I was ill myself once and saw the nurse behind a screen, eating raspberry jam out of the pot with her finger. You cant trust an\lmd\. really." i that was all he got out of Eleanor Chadwick. Adrienne had spoiled things. It was in .June that he heard from Mrs. Averil that i Nancy were in London for a few days staying with an old aunt in Ecclcston Squa ril asked him to come to tea, and he asked her and N to do a play with him ; hut hefniv thfiM meetings t place he saw them both. It was at a Querns Hall concert on Sunday afternoon that Mrs. Aldesey called his attention to his friends and, to his surprise, Old- meadowsaw that Barney was with tin -m. Tin \ sat across the gangway at sonic little distance, and his lirst imj sion of the three was that they were not happy. ADRIENNE TONER 163 " Did you know he was in town ? " asked Mrs. Aidesey. "How ill he looks. I suppose he was frightfully upset about the baby, poor fellow." Mrs. Aldesey knew nothing of the catastrophes that had followed the baby's death. He had instinctively avoided any reference to the latest progress of the ju.u'ger- naut. " She's much better now, you know," he said, and he wasn't aware that he was exonerating Barney. " And they're all back at Coldbrooks." " She's not at Coldbrooks," said Mrs. Aldesey. " She's well enough to pay visits and Lady Lumley told me she was coming down to them for this week-end. I wonder he hasn't gone with her." Oldrneadow was wondering too. There was some- thing about Barney's attitude as he sat there beside his cousin, silent and absent-minded it seemed, listening as little to the music as he looked little at her, that he would rather Lydia Aldesey had not been there to observe. They had a curiously marital appearance, the young couple, or, rather, Barney had ; the air of being safe with some one with whom no explanations were needed and for whom no appearances must be kept up ; some one, even, with whom he was so identified that he was hardly conscious of her. Nancy was not so unconscious. Once, when Barney leaned over to look at the programme, she drew away a little ; and Oldmeadow even fancied a slight constraint in her glance when, now and then, he spoke to her. Had Adrienne spoiled things th< too ? Mrs. Averil next day, in Eccleston Square, enlightened him as to Barney's presence. " It's been most unfortunate. He had planned to come up to this concert for a long time. He wanted Nancy to hear the Cesar Franck with him. And then it appeared that Adrienne had made an engagement for tluni \vitli the Lumleys. He refused to go, I'm afraid, and s fu- made an issue of it and, from what poor Eleanor told me, there was rather a row. So Adrienne has gone off 101 AD1UKNNK TONER alone and Barney is here till this evening. He's Lr<>ne out now with Nancy to show her some pictures by a friend of his. It had all been arranged. So what v. we to do about it, Ilo<: 44 Do about it ? Why just what you have don shouldn't she go with him ? " " \\liy indeed? Except that Adrienne has made the issue. It's awkward, of course, when you know tli been a row, to go on as if nothing had happened." Oldmeadow meditated. His friend's little face had been pinched by the family's distress when he had last seen it : it was clouded now by a closer, a more personal y I suppose she made the issue on purpose so that Barney shouldn't come up," he said at length. I really don't know. Perhaps it had been arranged Lumleys. If it was to keep rom coming, tha come out. She wouldn't let it come out ; not into the open ; of course." 44 So things are going very badly. I'd imagined, with all Barney's contrition, that they might have worked out well." \e worked out as badly, I'm afraid, as could. Hi- was full of contriti- was as i. aspossi! ;ime back in May. But nothing unflagging melancholy. And I suppose what happened was that hep time he was in the nursery. He'd go on being patient and good-tempered until, suddenly, Pf vould break down and he would sulk for days. It's when he's pushed too far. And she has pushed too far. She's set them all agai: M \Vho is them? " Oldmeadow asked. M I MW, when we met in London, that Mrs. Chadwick actually had I- brought to look upon Barney as a sort of miscrc; Adrienne as a martyr, \\iio M Well, no one else except Palgrave and Barbara. Palgrave can be very exasperating, as you know. takes the attitude now that Barney has done A ADRIENNE TONER 165 an irreparable injury. As you may imagine, it isn't a pleasant life Barney leads among them all." "I see," said Oldmeadow. "I think I see it all. What happens now is that Barney more and more tuk< s refuge with you and Nancy, and Adrienne more and more can't bear it." " That is precisely it, Roger," said Mrs. Averil. " And what are we to do ? How can I shut my door against Barney ? Yet it is troubling me more than I can say. We are forced to seem on his side and against her. And Adrienne has her eye upon them." " Let her keep it on them," said Oldmeadow in strong indignation. " And much good may it do her ! " " Oh, it won't do her any good nor us ! " said Mrs. Averil. "She's sick with jealousy, Roger. Sick. Fin almost sorry for her when I see it and see her trying to hide it, and see it always, coming in by the back door when she shuts the front door on it as it always does, you know. And Nancy sees it, of course ; and is quite as sick as she is ; and Barney, of course, remains as blind as a bat." " Well, as long as he remains blind " ' 6 Yes. As long as he does. But Adrienne will make him see. She'll pick and pull at their friendship until Nancy will be forced into drawing back, and if she draws back Barney will see. What it's already come to is that she has to stand still and smile, while Adrienne scratches her, lest Barney should see she's scratched; and once or twice of late I've had a suspicion that he has seen. It doesn't endear Nancy to Adrienne that Barney should scowl at her when he's caught her scratch in^.*' " What kind of scratches ? " Oldmeadow asked, but Mrs. Averil had only time to say, " Oh, all kinds ; she's wonderful at scratches," when the door bell rang and Nancy, a moment after, came in. Nancy, if anything so fresh and neat could be so called, was looking rather dowdy, and he suspected that some self-effacing motive lay behind her choice of clothes. ADKIKNM. 'Oh, I\o<:er, Barney was so sorry to ha iss you." she said. And, at all events, whatever . be Adrieime had spoiled, she had not spoiled Nancy's 1. .\ih_f smile for him. u He had to catrh the 4.4f> to I 'old brooks, you know. There's a prize heifer arriving this .-veiling and he must be there to welcome it. You must s ( < his } of Hoist. i;.t more than we're ranged already. Nancy and I are not going to give you up, my to and fro \\ it h tea-table, silver and strawberries, stepping from its cool green atmosphere into the framing suns! The Chadwick family, seated or lying in the shade, were all m arl\ as still as in a picture, and Adrienne was its Slu- sat in a high-backed wi Is lyinLT listlessly in her lap, a scarf about hershoul ; and in IMT Uaek-veiled white, her wide, transpar was like a el>uded moon. There was something n of daring, to Oldmeadow's imagination, IM f approach across the sunny spaces. Her eyes had so 'ed upon them from the moment that they had dr; t hat t hey might have been bold v^yfarers cha the magic of a Circe in her web. Palgra flannels, lay ied at her feet, and he had ! reading aloud to her; Barbara and Mrs. chadwiek sat HMtininLT lH y worked on cither hand. Only Harney wa^ rig at some little distance, back half turned, a pipe between his te- his eyes on a magazine that lay upon his knee. Hut inlhune nagic, was upon him too. He was con- sciously ( -d. : up to gre< . " This is nice 1 d, and her knitting trailed behind her : -l>ara, laughing, stooped to catch 168 ADRIENNE TONER 109 and pick it up as she followed her ; " I was expecting you ! How nice and dear of you ! On this hot 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 con- tinued, 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 Old- meadow. 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 c; 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 tin -y met, a curiously lifeless shake. "She had letters to write," said Mrs. Avi-ril. "Why I thought we'd arranged she was\ to come up and walk round the farm after tea with me," said Barney 170 ADRIKNNi; T i as IK- spoke Oldmeadow noted that Adrienne turned be* head slowly, somewhat had done on t ious morning in March, and rested JUT ryes upon him. 44 Oh, I'm so sorry," said She must have misunderstood. She had these letters to b tor the JH- Barbara was reconnoitring at the tea-table. "St berries ! " she announced. * fc Who said they'd be ov what a shame of Nancy not to come ! K<> staying here rather than \\ith Aunt Monica, I'd like t<> know? Aren't we grand enough for j since shi 's had that bathroom put in!" Barbara had advanced to a lively flapperdom. >u see, by this plan, I get the hath \\ith her and get you when she brings me up," Oldmeadow retorted. 44 And leave Nancy In-hind ! I rail it a shame when we're ha\inL f the last strawberries and .y have a bathroom \\\\\\ Aunt ;t her strawberries are over. Letters I Whoever heard of Nancy writing letters except to you, Han writing to you win were Imnu' in London before \ . 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 every one but 1 (had wick took Oldmeadow's arm and drew him asid N "ii'll he aMe to MMM later and be (juite with t \(.u. Roger? " she said. "September is really a lo\ch M. don't you think? Adricnne is go to take Palgrave and Harl>ara 1'nr a motor-trip in > \\- t ' !y for them '.'" M rs. C'hadwick spoke with a swiftness that did not veil a sense of inse- y. M Barbara's never seen the A are going to the Tyrol." M If we don't have a Iuirof)ean war by then," Old- low suggested. "What is Barney L r <>in<: to do?" "Oh. is going to the 1 - land, to shoot, lie lo\cs that. A war, \\hat ADRIENNE TONER 171 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 ft It 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. 44 We'll be fighting, too." " And who shall we fight? " Palgrave inquired. After passing tea, he had resumed his place at Adrienne's feet. " W 7 ho 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 in ADKIKNM: TONER provocation, of course. As far as I can make out the bians are the most awful brutes and Russia is egging in on. But when it comes to a crime against humanity like war, every one is responsil "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 Adriennr 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 ! " an," said Mrs. Avrril. " Too many of my friends had thrir sons and husbands killed in South Africa," iman nature," said Mrs. Chadwick, c her strawberries mournfully. " Like the poor : whom you have always with you, you kn< l ' Human nature is altered already a good deal : nagine," 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 st rin.L's and t hcv'll refuse to dance to their piping. The 'iis just as they've learned, at last, to down tools; and without them you em at's the way human nature will end war.** 44 A spirited plan, no doubt," said Oldmeadow, effective if all t : rs came to be of the same n. ultaneously. But if those of one country dow weapons and those of another didn't, the first would ieir throats cut for iins." " It's easy to sneer," Palgrave retorted. " As a I'd rather have my throat cut by a hired ruilian than kill an innocent man even it !clon v we shall see what she says about meeting us in the Tyrol." His cheeks wen still Huv eyes hrilliant with anger. Though his \\ords were for Adrienne his voice was for Barney, at whom he did not glai Adrienne unfolded the foreign sheets, and held i so that Palgrave, leaning against hi T knee, could read with Mrs. Chadwick had grown crimson. She looked at Oldmeadow. "Dear Meg is having such an in! ," she told him. " She a are seeing all manner of delightful places and pick some lovely bits lof old furnitur.-." Oldmeadow bowed as& He had his eyes on Adrienne and he was wondering about \\ ; t u. \vs is there, dear?" Mrs. Chadwick con- tinued in the same badly contnllon. It was still slow, still drill (i soft; 1 ut it had now the steely thnist and it of a dagger. ccursed war talk!" Palgrave c>. lias to come I nnc handed the sheets to " ' U N\il! < blown over by > . As Mother Nell says, we can trust Sir i > us out of n ; uith \ on in all you say about tlie \\iekediM-ss although I do not sec its causes quite so It waf the : .t Oldnuadow had heard the new nanir for i ADRIENNE TONER ir:, " 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 T 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." ic You mean to say," said Pal grave, 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 >\vll- 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 ri.u'ht, Mother. Don't bother. I'll leave you to your protector for the present. I only wish he were young enough to 176 ADRIENNE TOM be given what he needs a thorough good hiding. I'll go down and see Nancy. Don't expect in back to (limit r." n< Y is busy, my dear," poor M llushin.L'. interposed, while Palgravr. u yet audibly, murmured: "Truly KiplinizeMjiie ! Home and hidings ! Our Colonial history summed up ! " lie would be here if she weren't bu Mrs. Averil. 1 won't bother said Bar 111 sit in tin- garden and read. It's more peaceful than being hi Please tell dear Nancy that r since FVC seen her," said Adrienne, " and niss her and beg that she'll give me, some time, a few of her spare moments." At that Barney stopped short and looked at his \\l\\-. "No, A ' >ii t," he said with a startling dr ness. " 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 al and Aunt Monica are the only people you ha\ < -n't set against me and I don't to quarrel with Nancy to please \ I promise you." Sitting motionless and upright, her hand laid on Pal- grave's should t T. h T ; u-c as unalterable as a little mask, Adrien: ved these well-aimed darts as a S Sebastian might have received the arrows. Barney stared har r for a moment, thru turned h. ;md marched out into the sunlight ; and Oldmead* -saw him go, felt that he witnessed tin < -ml, as h< had, little more than a year ago, witnessed the begii an epoch. What was thm- left to build on after such a scene? And uhat must have passed between husi and wife during their hours of intimacy to make it cn-d- iblc ? Harm -y was not a brute. \Vhen Harney had turned through tl L^ateS and disapprared. Adrie- 44 1 think I'll go in, Paladin/' she said, and it was either ADRIENNE TONER 177 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 Adririme 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 ? Adrirnnr 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 doirt say things like that, I beg of you, for it makes 178 ADRIENNE TOXEll me very, very unhappy. And please r \ 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 ! has to go to the war if there is a war, you see," Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a supplicatory note very unlike lu r 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 sun it's Barney at the bottom of it. He's been trying to dish it irmn 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 li him." No, he hasn't Not an atom," Barbara declared. " If anyone has any light, 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 n y your mother and give us the benefit of your experience on an occasion when it's invited." "Oh, I know you're against Adrienne, 1\>- r. ' said Barbara, but with a sulkiness that showed surrender. " I shan't force myself on you, I assure you, and girls of fifteen arc n't quite the infants in arms you may imagine. If Adrienne hnv to stand up for me I d know where I'd be. Because, you know, you err v.eak, 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 K lravc and strong and that you belonged to a generation that had its iitly bandaged from birth. So th d delivering this effect i\ Barbara marched away, not forgetting to pick up her plate of strawberries as she passed the tal ADRIENNE TONER 179 Mrs. Chadwick attempted to conceal her confusion by following her child's retreating figure with grave dis- approbation 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." 180 ADRIENNK JON'ER My dear friend, Meg isn't a leper, of course, and we all intend to stand by her. Hut it is certainly best that a young girl like Barbara shouldn't be asked to meet, or understand, or exonerate such dillirult situations." 44 That's what I've tried to say to Eleanor/* Mrs. Avi-ril murmured. 44 And why not, Roger ! Why not ! " Mrs. Chadwick cried, surprisingly yet not convincingly aroused. il Not h- ing develops the character so much as facing and uin standing difficulty. And as for exoneration I d agree with you, and Adrienne doesn't agree. ^ Monica are conventionalists and we must li\ < <>M a hi<_ r lu T plane than convention. I'm sure I try to, though i hard sometimes, but the noblest things are hard There is nothing to exonerate. Meg was following her own li.u'ht in doing what she did." It's not a question of Meg, but of her situation," Oldmeadow returned. id because of her situation, because she is so in need of help and loyalty, you ask that Barbara should drawback 1 from her I Oh! I knew it ! H a Mrs. Chadwick, 44 1 knew that you would feel like that I That is why I felt it would be hapi>i< r if you \\nv not here with Adrici u nerd hardly tell me that," said Oldmeadow smiling. M But it's not a question of convention, exe in so far as < n means right feeling and good ta Meg, whatever In r lights and personally I don't bell that she followed them has done some -thin<: that involves pain and humiliation for all concerned with her, and whether she was or was not justiiicd in d^in^ 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 SU- tained her. It dropped from her now and for a lit t It- while she sat silent, and the confusion c in a pretty box, won't she, it II killed/ 5 he said, smoking his cigarette and not looking at h i. I It's over there, you know, and for ray part I think tl v little chance of any o 'hack all / both smok< .1 in silence lor a little v i the ordeal in v, hieh th was involved rather than their own relation to it; hut Oldmcadi.w's mind returned pn M ntly to Ba- iilli- cultics and he asked him it' it had been to see 1 1 off that he'd just been up to London. Barney, at this, had a quiet sardonic lai: Clood heavens, no," he said. " Ilayward went in the !irM \ and Adi id Palgrave went up \\ith Me^ to M him off. liven it' I'd wan!, il tO, I'd have been allowed to h. no hand in that. Adrienne is seeing to it all. Lawy, money, I don't know what. No ; I went up to spend 182 ADRIENNE TONER 183 leave with old Boyd at his place in Chelsea. I didn't want to go home. Home's the last place I want to be just now." Oldmeadow at this maintained a silence that could not pretend surprise, and Barney continued in a moment. " Palgrave isn't coming in, you know." 14 You mean he's carrying out his pacifist ideas ? " " If they are his," said Barney in his colourless yet sardonic voice. " Any ideas of Palgrave's are likely to be Adrienne's, you know. She got hold of him from the first." " Well, after all," Oldmeadow after another moment felt impelled to say, " She got hold of you, too. In the same way ; by believing in herself and by understanding you. She thinks she's right." 44 Ha ! ha ! " laughed Barney and for a moment, an acutely uncomfortable one for Oldmeadow, he turned his eyes on his friend. 44 Thinks she's right ! You needn't tell me that, Roger ! " It had indeed, Oldmeadow felt, hardly been decent of him. 44 1 know. Of course she would. But, all the same, people must be allowed to hold their own opinions." 44 Must they ? " said Barney. 44 At a time like this ? Adrienne must, of course ; as a woman she doesn't come into it ; she brings other people in, that is to say, and keeps out herself. Besides she's an American. But Palgrave shouldn't be allowed the choice. He's dis- honouring us all as Meg has done. Poor, foolish, wretched Mother ! She's seeing it at last, though she won't allow herself to say it, or, rather, Adrienne won't allow her " He checked himself. 44 Dishonour is a strong word, Barney. Palgrave is hardly more than a boy." 44 Jim Errington is a year younger than Palgrave, and Peter Layard six months. They're both in. I don't think nineteen is too young to dishonour your family. If Palgrave committed a murder, he'd be hanged. But 184 ADK1KNNE TOXKU it will no doubt come to conscription, and then we'll see where he'll find himself. Herded in as a Tommy. All this talk of a few months is fully." "I know. Ye*. Folly," said Old meadow absently. 44 Have you tried to have it out with Palgrave, Barney? If he only hears Adrienne's side what can you expect of him? If you leave them all to sink or swim without you, you mustn't blame Adrienne for steering as best - can." ^" Sink or swim without me ! " Barney echoed. M Why they'd none of them listen to me. You saw well enough how it was with them that day in July when you came up. Adrienne is twice as strong as I am when it comes to anything like a struggle and she has them all fir under IHT thumb. She steers because she intends to st and intends I shan't. I've tried nothing with Palgrave, pt to keep my hands off him. Mother's talked to him, and Meg's talked to him ; but nothing does I good. Oh yes; Meg hangs on Adrienne l.ecan got nothing else to hang to; but sh \ friirht fully down on Palgrave all the same. They're all united against me, li it they're not united among themselves by It's not a peaceful family party at Coldbrooks, I pn.n you. Poor M.th-r |pa shut up her room crying." Barney offered no further information on this occasion and Oldmeadow asked for no more. It wa^ Aldesey, some weeks later, that Oldmeadow heard that Eric Hayward had been killed. Mrs. Aldesey was his mo>t punetual correspondent and her letters, full of pun- gent, apposite aecoiints of how the war was affef London, the pleasantest experiences that came to him on the Berkshire do\\ns, \\hen. indeed, he did not find lif- unpleasant. Mrs. Aldesey made- time for these long let f after tiring days ipdll among Belgian refugees, and sense of comradeship had been immensely deepened by the vast, new cx|>cricne< ! <-s, sharing. It was diiiieult, on the soft October ADRIENNE TONER 185 day, to dissociate the mere pleasure of reading her letter from the miserable news she gave. Yet he knew, stretched at ease after strenuous exercise, the canvas of his tent idly flapping above him and the sunlight falling across his feet, that it was very miserable news indeed and must miserably affect his friends at Coldbrooks. What was to become of poor Meg now ? And after his mind had paused on poor Meg a pang of memory brought back the face of his setter John. Poor Hayward. "She must, of course, find some work at once," Mrs. Aldesey wrote. " The war does help to solve problems of this sort as nothing else before ever could. She must nurse, or drive an ambulance and perhaps by the time it's all over we'll have forgotten irrelevancies that hap- pened so long ago. Sometimes it feels like that to me and I know I'm much too old to face the world that will have grown up out of the wreckage of the world I knew." Mrs. Aldesey, still, always spoke of herself as antique, relegated and on the shelf. Rather absurd of her, as her friend pointed out in his reply, when she was obviously one of the people who were going to make the new world. She was organizing the Belgians in the most remarkable manner. As to Coldbrooks he hesitated. He could hardly see himself writing to Mrs. Chadwick or to Meg. Of Nancy he felt a little shy. There would be too much to say to Nancy if he said anything and he allowed the anonymous calamity that had overtaken his friends to pass without comment or condolence. But after an interval of some weeks it was from Nancy herself that he heard. Nancy seemed always to be selected as the vehicle for other people's emergencies. " Dear Roger," she wrote. " You have heard how very unhappy we all are. It is dreadful to see poor Meg, and Aunt Eleanor makes it really worse for her. Meg wears mourning, like a widow, and she is terribly bitter about Palgrave, and about Adrienne, too. Doesn't that seem to you very strange and unjust ? Adrienne is doing for isr> ADRIENNE TONKU Palgrave what she did for Meg LT by hii all more unhappy than you can imagine. Palgrave is at College, now, you know, and I'm writing, because Aunt Eleanor's one hope is t y be able to t to him. Kindly, you know, Roger; and not as if thought him a criminal or a coward ; that is worse than useless, naturally. Palgrave arrogant ; but you know what a tender heart he really has and I am sure that In- is very lonely and unhappy. So be kind and understanding, won't you ? He really cares for you and trusts you more than he likes to show; and of course he would expect you to be against him." Oldmeadow was going into Oxford in a week's tim IK wrote to Palgrave and asked him to give him te. got to talk to you, if you'll let me," he said, "but I shan't t a nuisance, I promise you. I only want to satisfy myself that you have thought everything out, and if you have I'll be able to tell your people that th< y must give up tormenting tin nisei ves and you about it. I shall talking over your work with you, too, it' I may, and reii- y own Oxford memories." So conciliatory, so affectionate (and he found it easy to be affectionate to poor Pa MM the tone of the letter that he had a swift reply. Palgrave would be very glad to ser him. .t Wfcfl a nit -lam-holy, deserted Oxford into which Old- dow drove his little car on a late October afternoon. -t of the youths he saw were of a nondescr a type to whom Oxford means scholastic opportin nothing more. There were dark-skinn d lads ji tant parts < npir.-, looking, to Oldmeadow's i; rather pitiful and doomed to disappointment, and a hurry- ing, absorbed little Jap had an almost empty Broad as a setting for his alien tiin Palgrave's name was freshly painted at the bottom of a staircase in the (iarden Quad and Oldmeadow n to rooms that most delightfully overlooked the gan its cat;i' Palgrave was ready for him. The te d he ADRIENNE TONER 187 stood at the table cutting a cake as Oldmeadow en- tered. But some one else, too, was ready, for there, in the window-seat, her gaze fixed on the waning golds and russets beneath, sat Adrienne Toner. Oldmeadow, very much and very disagreeably affected, paused at the door. " Come in, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, and there was a strange, jaded eagerness in the gaze she fixed on him. " I've only come for tea. I have to go directly afterwards. I am staying in Oxford, now, you know. To be near Palgrave." " Meg's turned her out of Coldbrooks," Palgrave announced, standing still, over the tea-tray, his hands in his pockets while, with bent head, he looked from under his brows at Oldmeadow. " Meg, you understand ; for whose sake she's gone through everything. We're pariahs together, now ; she and I." 46 It's not quite true or fair to say that, Palgrave," said Adrienne, wliose eyes had returned to the garden. " Meg hasn't turned me out. I felt it would be happier for her if I weren't there ; and for your Mother since they feel as they do about what has happened ; and happier for you and me to be together. You can't be surprised at Meg. She is nearly beside herself with grief." Adrienne was very much altered. The magic of the lime-tree scene no longer lay about her. Her skin was sallow, her eyes sunken, her projecting mouth was at once stubborn, weary and relaxed. She had been almost beautiful on that July day and to-day she was definitely ugly. Oldmeadow saw that some intent inner preoccupa- tion held her thoughts. " I am surprised at her ; very much surprised," said Palgrave, " though I might have warned you that Meg wasn't a person worth risking a great deal for. Oh yes, she's nearly beside herself all right. She's lost the man she cared for and she can't now ever [be maxle * respect- able.' Oh, I see" further into Meg's grief than you do, my poor Adrienne, She's just as conventional and un- 188 AIHUKNNK '1 heroic at heart as Mother ; and that's what she mi more than anytl Oldmeadow, sunken in the iir Palgrave had drawn for him to the table, wateh< d the e . u-r- change, and after a pause, in her jaded voice, Adrienne from the window-seat commented: "I und< Ts{ ; md I ur rage and misery. It's because her grief is di\idrd and spoiled and tainted like that that she is (list * Will you pour out tea ? " Palgrave asked her gloomily. if 11 see anyone's side, always, except your own. To this Adrienne, rising and coming forward to the table, made no reply. She wore a dark dress that recalled to Oldmeadow the one in which he had first se tin- short jark< t tying across white in front and \vl rutlles falling about her neck and hands. A small, dark hat was bent down about her face, j Strange, brooding face. ^ sin thinkim; of, Old- idow wondered, as he watched her hai < ded by the falling ruilli % with the old, fumbling gestures among the tea-things ; she had constantly to throw back the rullles, and the teapot, after all, was too heavy her. It slipped on one side as she lifted it and the hot tea poured over her hand. She kept her hold bra\ and Oldmeadow rescued her. "How stupid I am ! " she said, biting her lip. k ' You've scalded your hand," said Palgrav* with his air no longer of rapturous but of gloomy devol They made Oldmeadow think of comrade po! prisoners moving off together in a convoy to Silxria. There was something as bleak, as heavy, as uninspired in their aspect. He could not think that Palgrave could now cat eh much light or llame from such a companion. They would trudge through tin- snow ; condemn* d, but together; to be tog as the best thing, now, that i'fered ti. said that the scald was nothing and to be trusted to go on with the tea, grasping t :C with ADRIENNE TONER 189 resolution. Oldmeadow, however, standing beside her f insisted on filling the cups for her. " You can be allowed to put in the milk and sugar, yon see," he said. He was aware, as he thus succoured and rallied her, of an influx of feeling like the feeling that came with the uncanny dreams. Here she was, and reality had caught her. She deserved to be caught, of course ; tragic, meddling Pierrot. But his heart was heavy and gentle ; as in his dreams. They sat round the table together. On the mantelpiece was a large, framed photograph of Adrienne ; on the walls photographs of a Boticelli Madonna, a Mantegna from Padua and the da Vinci drawing for the Christ of the Last Supper. Seeing Oldmeadow's eyes on them Palgrave said : " Adrienne gave me those. And lots of the books." " And don't forget the beautiful cushions, Palgrave," said Adrienne, with a flicker of her old, contented play- fulness. " I'm sure good cushions are the foundation of a successful study of philosophy." The cushions were certainly very good ; and very beautiful, as Oldmeadow commented. " That gorgeous chair, too," said Palgrave. " It ought to make a Plato of me." It was curious, the sense they gave him of trusting him. Were they aware, if only sub-consciously, that he was feeling Adrienne, her follies and misdeeds thick upon her, ill-used ? Or was it only that they had come down to such fundamental securities as were left to them and felt that with him, at all events, they were in the hands of an impartial judge ? " It's a happy life Meg and Mother lead at Coldbrooks, as you may imagine," Palgrave took up the theme that preoccupied him. " They only see Nancy and Aunt Monica, of course. Barbara is at school and Barney, as you are probably aware, never comes near his disgraced sister. Would you believe it, Roger," Palgrave went on, while Oldmeadow saw that a dull colour crept up to Adrienne's face and neck as her husband was thus men- N 190 ADRIEXNE TOXER tioned, " Meg blames Adrienne now for the whole affa About Eric and herself I Actually ! On the one hand Eric is her hero for whom she'll mourn f ;md on the other Adrienne is responsible for the fact K*'S not ' respectable ' and can't claim to be his widow. Oh, don't ask me how she contrives to work it out ! V like Meg don't need logic when they've a thong in their hands and want to use it. And Adrienne's shoulders are bared for the lash ! God ! It makes me fairly mad to think of it!" " Please, Palgrave 1 " Adrienne supplicated in a low voice. She did not eat. She had drunk her tea and sat looking down at her plate. " Don't think of it any more. Meg is ry unhappy. We can hardly ima< what the misery and confusion of Meg's heart must be." " Oh, you'll make excuses for anyone, Adrienne ! ^ not a shining example of happiness either, if it comes to that. It's atrocious of Meg to treat you as she does. Atrocious of her to hold you responsi lint I am responsible," said Adrienne, while the dull Hush still dyed her face. " I've always said that I was responsible. It was I who persuaded them to "Yes. To go. Instead of staying and ben secretly. I know all about it. And no doubt Meg would rather it had been so now. And so would Mot Palgrave ground his teeth on a laugh. "That's wl morality lands them ! Pretty, isn't it ! " A silence fell and then Adrienne rose and said that Mr. Jackson would be waiting for her. " He's coming at half-past five," she said, and, with his gloomy tenderness, Palgrave informed Oldmeadow that she was reading logic and Plato ; " to keep up with me, you know." Adrienne, smiling faintly, laid her hand for a mo- on his shoulder as she went past his chair. fck Coiur in to-night, after dinner, and tell me what you decide," she said. "I'll have no news for you,' 1' replied. Oldmeadow had gone to hold the door open for her ADRIENNE TONER 191 and, as she paused there to give him her hand, he heard her murmur : " Will you come down with me ? " " Let me see you to the bottom of the stair," he seized the intimation, and, as she went before him, she said, still in the low, purposeful voice, and he felt sure now that this had been her purpose in coming to tea : " It's only so that you shan't think I'll oppose you. If you can persuade him, I shall not oppose it. I think he's right. But it's too hard. I mean, I hope you can persuade him that it's right to go." She had stepped out on to the threshold at the foot of the stairs and he paused behind her, astonished. " You want me to persuade him of what you think wrong ? " She stood still looking out at the sunny quadrangle. " People must think for themselves. I don't know who is right or who is wrong. Perhaps I've influenced Pal- grave. Perhaps he wouldn't have felt like this if it hadn't been for me. I don't know. But if you can make him feel it right to go, I shall be glad." She stepped out into the quadrangle. '' You mean," said Oldmeadow, following her, and strangely moved, " that you'd rather have him killed than stay behind like this ? " " It would be much happier for him, wouldn't it," she said, "if he could feel it right to go." They were under the arch of the Library, she still going slowly, before him, and Oldmeadow stopped her there. " Mrs. Barney, forgive me may I ask you something ? " He had put his hand on her shoulder and she paused and faced him. " It's something personal, and I've no right to be personal with you, as I know. But have you been to see Barney at Tidworth ? " As Oldmeadow spoke these words, Adrienne turned away vehemently, and then stood still, as though arrested in her impulse of flight by an irresistible desire to listen. " Barney does not want to see me," she said, speaking with difficulty. " You think so," said Oldmeadow. " And he may 192 ADRIENNE TONER think so. But you ought to see each other at a time like this. He may be ordered to France at any moment now. " lie could not see h( "Do you mean," she said, after a moment, keeping the rigidity of her listening poise, " that he \ >me to say good-bye ? " " I know nothing at all," said Oldmeadow. " I can only infer how far the mischief betv u has gone. And I'm most frightfully sorry for it. I've been sorry for Barney; but now I'm sorry for you, too. I think you're being unfairly treated. But yours have been the takes, Mrs. Barney, and it's for you to take the first 44 Barney doesn't want to see me," she repeated, and she went on, while he heard, growing in her voiiv, the n< te of the old conviction : " He has made mistakes, too. He has treated me unfairly, too. I can't take the first M Don't you love him, then? " said Oldmeadow, and in his voice was the note of the old harshness. 44 Does he love me ? " she retorted, turning now, with suddt n Ihv, and fixing her eyes upon him. " Why should hink I want to see him if he doesn't want to see me ? \Vhy should I love, if he doesn't? Why should I sue to Barney?" " Oh," Oldmeadow almost groaned " Don't take that line; don't, I beg of you. You're both young. An. I you've hurt him so. You've meant to hurt him. I seen it; I've seen it, Mrs. Barney. If you'll put by your pride everything can grow again." > ! no ! no 1 " she cried almost violently, and he saw that she was trembling. " Some things don't grow again! It's not like plants, Mr. Oldmeadow. Some thing's arc like living creatures; and they can die. They can die," she repeated, now walking rapidly away from him out into the large quadrangle with its grass plot cut across by the late sunshine. He followed lu r for a moment and he heard her say, as she : " It's ADRIENNE TONER 193 worse, far worse, not to mean to hurt. It's worse to care so little that you don't know when you are hurting." "No, it's not," said Oldmeadow. "That's only being stupid ; not cruel." " It's not thinking that is cruel ; it's not caring that is cruel," she repeated, passionately, half muttering the words, and whether with tears of fury he could not say. He stood still at the doorway. " Good-bye, then," he said. And not looking behind her, as she went out swiftly into New College Lane, she answered, still on the same note of passionate protest : " Good-bye, Mr. Oldmeadow. Good-bye." He watched her small, dark figure hurry along in the shadow of the wall until the turning hid it from view. CHAPTER XXI Palgrave, apparently, had formed no conjectures as to their conversation and was thinking still of Adrienne's wrongs rather than of his own situation. " Did you take home ? " he said. " I see you're sorry for her, Roger. Its really too abominable, you know. I really can't say before her what I think, I really can't say before you what I think of Barney's treatment of her ; because I know you agree with him." Oldmeadow felt all the more able, shaken though he was by the interview below, to remember, because of it, what he thought. " If you mean that I don't consi Barney in the very least responsible for the death of the baby, I do agree with him," he said. Apart from that, apart from the baby," said Palgrave, controlling his temper, it was evident, in his wish to keep the ear of the impartial judge, " though what the loss of a child means to a woman like Adrienne I don't believe you can guess ; apart from whose was the responsibility, he ought to have seen, towards the end, at all events he\l mt in his head and a heart in his breast, that all she vas to forgive him and take him back. She was ]>rond, of course. \Vhat woman of her power and wouldn't have been couldn't be lirst to move. Hut Barney must have seen that 1 heart was breaking." \Yell," said Oldmeadow, taking in, with some per- plexity, this new presentation of Adrienne To hat about his heart ? She'd led it a pretty dance. And you ADRIENNE TONER 195 forget that I don't consider she had anything to forgive him." " His heart ! " Palgrave echoed scornfully, yet with a sorrowful scorn. " He mended his heart quick enough. Went and fell in love with Nancy, who only asks to be let alone." " He's always loved Nancy. She's always been like a sister to him. Adrienne has infected you with her ground- less jealousy." " Groundless indeed ! " Palgrave reached for his pipe and began to stuff it vindictively, " Nancy sees well enough, poor dear ! She's had to keep him off by any device she could contrive. She's a good deal more than a sister to him, now. She's the only person in the world for him. You can call it jealousy if you like. That's only another name for a broken heart." " I don't know what Barney's feeling may be, Palgrave, but I do know, it was quite plain to me, that Adrienne was jealous long before she had any ground for jealousy. If Nancy's all Barney's got left now, it's simply because Adrienne has taken everything else from him. You don't seem to realize that Adrienne drove him from her with her airs of martyrdom. Took vengeance on him, too ; what else was the plan for Barbara going abroad with you ? I don't want to speak unkindly of her. It's quite true ; I'm sorry for her, I've never liked her so well. But the reason is that she's beginning, I really believe, to find out that her own feet are of clay, while her mistake all along has been to imagine herself above ordinary humanity. All our feet are of clay, and we never get very far unless we are aware of the weakness hi our struc- ture and look out for a continual tendency to crumble. You don't get over it by pretending you don't need to walk and imagining you have wings instead of feet." Palgrave, drawing stiffly at his pipe during this little homily, listened, gloomily yet without resentment. " You see, where you make your mistake if you'll allow the youthful ass you consider me to say so is that you've 196 ADRIENNE TONKU always imagined Adrienne to be a self-righteous prig who s herself up above others. She doesn't ; she doesn Palgrave repeated with conviction. " S the feet of clay if you'll grant IRT the heart of flame for everybody; the wings for !>ody. There's your mistake, Roger. Adrienne believes that ody has M ings as well as herself ; and the only differ* sees in people is that some have learned and some haven't how to use them. She may be mortal woman bless her and have made mistakes ; but they're the mistakes of flame ; not of earthiness." You are not an ass, Palgrave," said Oldmcadow, after a moment. " You are wise in everything but experien i you see deep. Suppose we come to a com] You've owned that Adrienne may make mistakes and I own that I may misjudge her. I see what you believe about her and I see why you believe it. I've seen her at her worst, no doubt, and to you she's been able to show only her best. So let it rest at that. What 1 came to talk about, you know, was you." " 1 know, said Palgrave, and he gave a deep sigh. 44 Be patient with me," said ( )Ki meadow. " After all we belong to the same generation. You can't pretend that I'm an old fogey who's lost the inspirations of his youth and has marched so far down towards the gra the new torches coming up over the horizon are hidden from him." ' That's rather nice, you know, Roger," Palgrave smiled faintly. "No; you're not an old fogey. But same there's not much torch about you." " It's rather sad, isn't is," Oldmeadow mused, " that we should always seem to begin with torches and then to spend the rest of our lives in quenching them. It may be, you km >w, t hat we're only trying to hold them straight, so that the wind shan't blow them out. However you'll let me talk. That's the point." 44 Of course you may. You've been awfully decent," Palgrave murmured. ADRIENNE TONER 197 " Well, then, it seems to me you're not seeing straight," said Oldmeadow. " It's not crude animal patriotism as you'd put it that's asked of you. It's a very delicate discrimination between ideals." " I know ! I know ! " said Palgrave. The traces of mental anguish were on his worn young face. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose to lean against the mantel- piece. " I don't suppose I can explain," he said staring out at the sky. " I suppose that with me the crude animal thing is the personal inhibition. I can't do it. I'd rather, far, be killed than have to kill other men. That's the unreasoning part, the instinctive part; but it's a part of one's nature that I don't believe one can violate without violating one's very spirit. I've always been different, I know, from most fellows of my age and class. I've always hated sport shooting and hunting. The fox, the stag, the partridge, have always spoiled it for me. Oh, I know they have to be killed poor brutes ! I know that ; but I can't myself be the butcher." " You'll own, though, that there must be butchers," said Oldmeadow, after a little meditation. He felt him- self in the presence of something delicate, distorted and beautiful. " And you'll own, won't you, when it comes to a war like this, when not only our national honour but our national existence is at stake, that some men must kill others. Isn't it then, baldly, that you profit, personally, by other people doing what you won't do ? You'll eat spring lamb as long as there are butchers to kill the lamb for you, and you'll be an Englishman and take from England all that she has to give you including Oxford and Cold- brooks and let other men do the nasty work that makes the survival of England and Oxford and Coldbrooks possible. That's what it comes to, you know. That's all I ask you to look at squarely." " I know, I know," Palgrave repeated. He had looked at little else, poor boy. Oldmeadow saw that. " But that's where the delicate discrimination between ideals comes in, Roger. That's where I have to leave intuition, 198 ADRIENNE TONKK which says * No,' and turn to reason. And the trouble is that for me reason says ' No,' too. Because Immunity all of it that counts has outgrown war. That's what it comes to. It's a conflict between a national and an humanitarian ideal. There are enough of us in the world to stop war, if we all act together ; and why, because others don't, should I not do what I feel right ? Others may follow if only a few of us stand out. If no one stands out, no one will ever follow. And you can't kill Engl like that. England is more than men and i Palgrave still gazed at the sky. " It's an idea that will survive ; perhaps the more truly in the spirit for perishing in the flesh, if it really came to that. Look at Greece. She's dead, if you like ; yet what existing nation lives a* truly? It is Grecian minds we think with :mrc it begins you must bring the rest of humanity not to behave in ways that make it inevitable. 1 in inclined to think that ideas can perish," he went on, as Palgrave, to t made no reply, " as far as their earthly manifesto goes, that is, if enough men and institutions are destroyed. If Germany could conquer and administer England, 1 in inclined to think the English idea would perish. And war need not be unspiritual. Killing our t\ How-men need not mean hating them. There's less hatred in wit imagine, than in some of the contests of pear ilian life. Put it fairly on the ground of humanitarian ism. then, Palgrave ; not of nationality. It's the whole world that is threatened by a hateful idea, by the triumph of all you most fear and detest, and unless we strive aga it with all we are and have it seems to me that we fall ADRIENNE TONER 199 short of our duty not only as Englishmen, but as humani- tarians. Put it at that, Palgrave ; would you really have had England stand by and not lift a finger when Belgium was invaded and France menaced ? " Palgrave was not ready with his reply and he turned away while he looked for it and shuffled the papers on his desk with a nervous hand. " Yes, I would," he said at last, " Hateful as it is to have to say it I would have stood by." He came back to his place at the mantelpiece and looked down at Oldmeadow as he spoke. "The choice, of course, is hateful ; but I think we should have stood by and helped the sufferers and let France and Germany fight it out. It always comes back to them, doesn't it ? They're always fighting it out ; they always will, till they find it's no good and that they can't annihilate each other ; which is what they both want to do. Oh, I've read too many of the young French neo-Catholics to be able to believe that the hateful idea was all on one side. Their ideals don't differ much, once you strip them of their theological tinsel, from those of the Germans. Ger- many happens to be the aggressor now ; but if the mili- tarist party in France had had the chance, they'd have struck as quickly," " The difference and it's an immense one is that the militarist party in France wouldn't have had the chance. The difference is that it doesn't govern and mould public opinion. It's not a menace to the world. It's only a sort of splendid pet, kept in a Zoo, for the delectation of a certain class and party. Whereas Germany's the bona fide hungry tigress at large. What you really ask of England, Palgrave, is that she should be a Buddha and lie down and let the tigress, after finishing France, devour her, too. It really comes to that. Buddhism is the only logical basis for your position, and I don't believe, however sorry one may be for hungry tigresses, that the right way to deal with them is to let them eat you. The Christian philosophy of the incarnation is the true one. Matter does make a spiritual difference. It does make a 200 ADRIEXXE TONER difference, a real difference, that the ideal should be made flesh. It's important to the world, y, that the man rather than the tigress should - " Christ gave his life," said Palgrave, after a moment. " I'm not speaking of historical personages ; but of eternal truths/' said Oldmeadow. But he knew already that he spoke in vain. Palgrave had turned away his eyes again and on his sad young face he read the fixity of a fanatic idealism. He had not moved him, though he had troubled him. No one would move Palgrave. He doubted, now, \vlu- Adrienne herself had had much influem irn. It was with the sense of pleading a lost cause that he said, presently, " Adrienne hopes you'll feel it right to go." Palgrave at this turned a profound gaze upon him. M I know it," he said. " Though she's never told me so. It's the weakness of her love, its yearning an < 1 nest* not its strength, that makes her want it. Because she knows it would be so much easier. But she can't go back on what she's meant to me. It's because of that, in part at all events, that I've been able to sec stea' what I mean to myself. That's what she helps one to do, you know. Hold to yourself: fOOi true, deep self. It's owing to her that I can only choose in one even if I can't defend it properly. It seems to come back to metaphysics, doesn't it ? " l.ik< (\ rytliiug else," said Oldmeadow. 44 Yes. Like everything else. It would take a four- years' course in Greats to argue it out, Roger. C< back to me if you're here and I'm here thru and we'll see what we can make of it. 44 1 will," said Oldmeadow. rising, for the room was growing dark. 44 And before tliat, I hope." "After all, you know." Pal.L r r;i\v <.I.M-rved, " En^: isn't in any danger of becoming Huddhi- not much nihilism about her, is there, but hardly much Christianity, either. Knghuul luis evolved all sorts of ADRIENNE TONER 201 things besides Oxford and Coldbrooks. She's evolved industrialism and factory- towns." " I don't consider industrialism and factory- to wn& incompatible with Christianity, you know," Oldmeadow observed. " Good-bye, my dear boy." " Good-bye, Roger." Palgrave grasped his hand^ " You've been most awfully kind." CHAPTER XXII " Isn't it becoming to him, Mother ? And how tall he looks ! " said Nancy, holding him off in his khaki for displayal. II had only written a line of his failure and that he would come as soon as he could and see them all and Ml in full of his interview with Palgrave. And he had motored over to The Little House this afternoon in early November. Nancy was showing an unexpected gaiety. M What a nice grilled-salmon colour you are, too," she said. He divined the self-protective instinct under the gaiety. Most of the women in England wore being gayer and more talkative at this time, in order to keep up. Nancy was thin and white; but she was keeping up. And she had put on a charming dress to receive him in. I've been grilled all right; out on the downs,' he said. " But it's more like cold storage just now, with these frosts at night. Yes; the big cup, please, famished for tea. Ah 1 that's something like ! It sir like your rose outside. I sniffed it as I waited at the door. Wonderful for such a late blooming." "Isn't it," said Mrs. Averil. "And I only put it in last autumn. It's doing beautifully ; but I've cherished it. And now tell us about Palgrave." He felt reluctant to tell about Palgrave. The impreswm j that remained with him of Palgrave was that imjm- of beauty and distortion and he did not want to have 202 ADRIENNE TONER 203 to disentangle his feelings or to seem to put Palgrave in the wrong. It was so sweet, too, after the long, chilly drive over the empty uplands, to sit here and forget the war, although it was for scenes like this, for girls like Nancy, women like Mrs. Averil with so much else that the war was so worth fighting. He turned his thoughts back to the realities that underlay the happy appearances and was aware, as he forced himself to tell, of what must seem a note of advocacy in his voice. 44 He can't think differently, I'm afraid," he said. " It's self-sacrifice, not selfishness, that is moving him." 44 He can't think differently while Adrienne is living there," said Mrs. Averil. " He didn't tell you, I suppose, that she has now taken up her abode in Oxford in order to study philosophy with him? " He was rather uncomfortably aware of the disingenu- ousness that must now be made apparent in his avoidance of all mention of Adrienne. 46 1 saw her," he said, and he knew that it was lamely. " She was there when I got there." 44 You saw her ! " Mrs. Averil exclaimed. 44 But then, of course you didn't convince him. I might have known it. Of course she would not let you see him alone." 44 But she did let me see him alone. That was what she wanted. And she was there only in order to tell me what she wanted. She wants him to go." Mrs. Averil was eyeing him with such astonishment that he turned to Nancy with his explanations. But Mrs. Averil would not leave him to Nancy's sympathy. 44 It's rather late in the day for her to want him to go," she said. " She may be sorry for what she's done ; but it's her work." 44 Well, she's sorry for her work. That's what it comes to. And I'm sorry for her," said Oldmeadow. 44 Good heavens ! The cleverness of that woman ! " Mrs. Averil exclaimed. 44 If she can't be powerful, she'll be pitiful ! She's worked on your feelings ; I can see that, Roger. And I thought you, at least, 204 ADRIENNE TONER were immune. Well : she does not work on mine. I am not in the least sorry for 1; 44 She's being unfairly treated," said Oldmeadow. 41 It's grotesque that Meg should huv. turn. .1 upon her." 44 And Eleanor has, too, you know," said Mrs. \\.ril. 44 It's grotesque, if you like ; but I see a grim jus' in it. She made them do things and believe things that weren't natural to them and now she's lost her pow, r and they sec things as they are." s because she's failed that they've turned against her," said Nancy. " If she'd succeeded they would have gone on accepting what she told them and making their idol." fail. said Mrs. Averil <1 he only justification for Adriennes is to be in light. If the blood of Saint Januarius doesn't li.p: Mild you keep it in a shrine? She's a woman who has quarrelled with IUT husband and disgraced her r and 1 .rot n -r-m-law, and broken her mother-in- law's heart. You can't go on making an idol of a saint who behaves like that" "She Hera dbimed worldly success," said Nancy. 14 SI i told Meg to go so that she could get married afterwards ; she never told Palgrave that war was wrong because it was easier not to i , yes she did claim worldly success, really," said Mrs. Averil, while her eyes rested on her daughter with a tenderness that contrasted with h< T tone. HT was that if you were right spiritually 4 poised ' she called it, you remember all those other things would be added unto you. I im thai if e poised you could get anything you re: 1 once if shon the sofa-cushioi get Milieu ntl\ I' 1 M- 1 laughed, still n clr\ly. while s), r still n ilin.L' a 1 She might have put it tlier. i\, r you i T you v ADRIENNE TONER 205 " Well, let us bury Adrienne for the present," said Mrs. Averil. "Tell Roger about your nursing plans. She may be going to London, Roger, this winter, and I'm to be left alone." "You're to be left to take care of Aunt Eleanor, if I do go," said Nancy; and Mrs. Averil said that there must certainly be some one left to take care of poor Eleanor. Oldmeadow went up to Coldbrooks next morning. The first person he saw was old Johnson at the door and he remembered Eleanor Chadwick's griefs on his account. Nothing, now, could have been kept from Johnson and his face bore the marks of the family calamities. He was aged and whitened and his voice had armed itself, since the downfall of his grave, vicarious complacency, with solemn cadences. " Yes, sir. The ladies will be very glad to see you, sir. These are sad days for them the family dispersed as it is." Johnson defined the situation as he felt that it could be most fittingly defined and Oldmeadow inwardly applauded his " dispersed." The drawing-room, into which Johnson ushered him, had, for the first time in his memory of it, a mournful air. It had always been shabby, and these were the same faded chintzes, the same worn rugs ; but now, ftreless and flowerless, it neither spoke nor smiled and, with the sense it gave of an outlived epoch, it was almost spectral. The photographs all looked like the photographs >f dead people, and the only similitude of life was the oud, silly ticking of the French clock on the mantel- piece ; Mrs. Chadwick's cherished clock ; one of her wedding-presents. 64 I'm afraid it's rather chilly, sir," said Johnson. ' No one has sat here of an evening now for a long time." He put a match to the ranged logs, drew the blinds ip further so that the autumnal sunlight might more 'reely enter, and left him. o 206 ADREENNE TONER Oldmeadow went to the window and turned OVT the magazines, a month old, that lay on a table there. He was standing so when Meg entered, and she had half the length of the room to traverse be met. She was in black, in deep black, but more beautiful than he had ever seen her ; her tossed auburn locks bound low on her forehead with a black ribbon, her white it, her eyes hard with their readiness, -ource. iful and distressing. It distressed him t to see that hardness in her eyes. ' How do you do, Roger," she said, giving him her hand. " It's good to see you. Mother will be glad." They seated themselves on one of the capacious sofaa and sin- questioned him quickly, competently, whi hard eyes seemed to measure him lest he measur It was almost the look of the d&classte woman who fore- stalls withdrawal in an interlocutor. But, as he answered her quietly, his fond regard upon 1 began ; It's the only lit'.-, nttttcr 9 * i P w she said. "At all times, really. But, at a time like this, anything else seems despicable, doesn't it; cont mptibly smug and safe. The un 5 Turin is so becoming to you. You look a soldier already. One fe n will trust and follow you. Didn't you burn with rage and shame, too, when, for those four days, it seemed we Tint OQi too sun- we should come in, to burn with rage and shame," said Oldmeadow. :i ! but it was not so sure, I'm a TIM id," said Meg, and in her eyes, no longer hard, wild lights seemed to pass and repass. "I'm afraid that there n enough fools and knaves in Kn-_r!and to wreck us. Not quite enough, thank heaven ! But, for those Tour l.rie was terribly afraid. II ill< d, you know, Roger, \ ididly, leading his T> " Ik _'. My dear Meg,' Oldmeadow murim; " Oh ! I don't regr I don't regret it ! '' cried, while her colour rose and her young breast ADRIENNE TONER 207 " It's the soldier's death ! The consecrating, heroic death ! He was ready. And deaths like that atone for the others. He was not killed instantaneously, Roger." " I didn't know," said Oldmeadow, looking at her with a pitying, troubled gaze. " He lived for a day and night afterwards," said Meg, looking back, tearless. " They carried him to a barn. Only his man was with him. There was no one to dress his dreadful wound ; no food. The man got him some water, at the risk of his own life. He was conscious until the end and he suffered terribly." Oldmeadow dropped his eyes before her fierce stare while, strangely, dimly, there passed through his mind the memory of the embarrassed, empty, handsome young face in the brougham and, again, the memory of his dog John. He had seen John die and his eyes of wistful appeal. So Eric Hayward's eyes might have looked as he lay in the barn dying. " Oh, Roger ! " Meg said suddenly, seizing his hand. " Kill them ! Kill them ! Oh, revenge him ! I was not with him ! Think of it ! I would have had no right to have been with him had it been possible. I did not know till a week later. He was buried there. His man buried him." " My poor, poor child," said Oldmeadow, clasping her hands. But, at once, taking refuge from his pity and from her own desperate pain : " So you've seen Palgrave," she said. " And he isn't going. I knew it was useless. I told Mother it was useless with that stranger that American, with him. She has disgraced us all. Wretched boy ! Hateful woman ! " " Meg, Meg ; be soldierly. He wouldn't have spoken like that." " He never liked her ! Never ! " she cried. "I k be didn't, even at the time she was flattering and cajc us. I saw that she bewildered him and that he accepted 208 ADRIENNE TONT.I! her only because she was mine. How I loathe myself for having listened to her ! I low I loathe her ! All that she ever wanted was power! Power over < people's lives! She'd commit any (rime for tl " You seem to me cruelly unfair," he said. 44 No ! no ! I'm not unfair ! You know I'm not ! " she cried. " You always saw the truth about her from the very beginning. You never fell down and worshipped her, like the rest of us. And she knew that you were her enemy and warned us against you. Oh why did Barney many her ! " 44 1 never worshipped her ; but I never thought her base and hateful." You never knew her as I did ; that was all. And I ne\ er knew her until I came back and found her doing to Palgrave what she had done to us. Paladin ! Did you hear her call him Paladin? Always flattery! always to make one think one was wonderful, important, mysterious ! She forced us to go away, Roger. S< times I think it was hypnoti-i i ; that she uses her \vill- power consciously. \Ve did not want to go. \\ e did not want the divorce and the scandal." \Vh:it did you want, then, Meg? " She felt the gravity of his tone but, like a fierce Maenad, she snatehed at the torch, not caring how it revealed her. " What of it ! What it we had been secret lovers 1 Who would have known ! Who would have been han Some people go on for years and years. II loved another man. He had no one. Why should we have ushed such pitiful fools we were into displaying our love to the world and being crushed by it ! Oh, he was so loyal, so brave ; but it made him very, unhappy. Oh, I was cruel to him sometimes ! 1 to reproach him sometimes ! Oh, Roger ! Roger ! She broke into wild tears and stumbled to her feet. As she reached the dcMM ML: her face with her hands, her mother opened it and. meeting her on the threshold. Meg, with almost the cl'feet of beating ht failure do, Roger. That gift of healing, you remember ; all she could do for people in that way; she has qi; quite lost it. That is a reason. It's that more than anything that has made me feel differently about h< r. "Lost it?" He felt stran^ ly discomposed, little as the gift of healing had ever impressed him. "Quite," Mrs. Chadwick repeated. "I think it distressed her dreadfully herself. I think she counted upon it more than upon anything, perhaps without knowing she did. It must have made her seem so sure to herself, mustn't it? The first tim- was before the war, just a little after you were here that day in the uner dear me, how long ago it seems; and I had one of my headaches, one of the worst I ever had. I was so dreadfully troubled, you know, about Barbara and Meg. And Adrienne came and sat by me as she used to and put her hand on my forehead ; and I know it wasn't my lack of faith, for I quite believed it would get well ; but instead of the peaceful feeling, it grew much worse ; oh much. As if red hot needles were darting through my eyes and an iron weight pressing down on my head. And such tumult and distress. I had to tell her. I had to ask her to take away her hand. Oh, she felt it very much, poor thing, and grew v white and said it must be because she was still not strong ; not quite herself. But I knew then that it was because she was not right; not what I had thought her. I began to suspect, from that very moment, that I had been mistaken; because hypnotizing people isn't the same as being a saint, is it, Roger? and 1 think you so once, long ago; and that was all that she had do hypnotized us all to think her good and wonderful. Later on, after Meg had I 1 t h< r try OQM more, though it quite frightened Httj she looked so strange. And oh dear it was dreadful. It distressed i ADRIENNE TONER 213 dreadfully. She suddenly put her hands before her face and sat quite still and then she burst into tears and got up and ran out of the room, crying. It made me feel quite ill. And of course I knew there could be nothing saintly about a person who made you feel like that who could feel like that themselves, and break down." " Even saints have their times of darkness and dry- ness," Oldmeadow found after a little time had passed. The picture she put before him hurt him. " It was an error of judgment to have believed her a saint because she could hypnotize you if that was what it was ; but the fact that she can't hypnotize you any longer that she's too unhappy to have any power of that sort doesn't prove she's not a saint. Of course she's not. Why should she be ? " " I'm sure I don't know why she should be ; but she used to behave as if she were one, didn't she ? And when I saw that she wasn't one in that way I began to see that she wasn't in other ways, too. It was she who made me so unjust, so unkind to poor Barney. She was so unjust and so unkind ; and I never saw it till then. I was blind till then ; though you saw very well, that day you came to Connaught Square, that it was a sort of spell she cast. It was a spell, Roger. The moment I saw her, after the baby's death, I forgot everything she'd done and felt I loved her again. She willed me to. So as to get power over me. Everything, always, with her, was to get power over other people's lives," said Mrs. Chad wick, and as he had, in the past, heard echoes of Adrienne in all she said, now he heard echoes of Meg. "It's by willing it, you know. Some people practise it like five-finger exercises. You have to sit quite still and shut your eyes and concentrate. Meg has heard how it's done. I don't pretend to understand ; but that must have been her way. And she made poor Barney miserable and set me against him at once ; you said so yourself, Roger, and blinded me to all 214 ADIMEXXE TOM.K the cruel things she did. It was to punish him, you know. To make him feel he was dreadfully wrong and quite right; about Meg, and everything else; for you came in, too. It used to be so dreadful at Torqi: I knew it would be sad there ; but I never guessed how sad it would be with that horrid blue, blue sea. She 1 to sit, day after day, on the terrace of the house, and gaze and gaze at the sea and if Barney would cc so lovingly, and ask her what he could do for her and take her hand, oh it was more and more mournful, the *way she would look at him ; that dreadful, loving look that didn't mean love at all, but only trying to break him down and make him say that he was down. I begged Barney's pardon, Roger, for having treated him as I did. \Y< treated him dreadfully, all of us ; because she put him, always, in the wrong. Oh no, Roger, ' sorry for her, but she's a dangerous woman ; or was dangerous. For now she has lost it all and has become lik<- everybody else; quite ordinary and unhappy." He felt, in the little silence that, again, followed, t he could hardly better this summing-up. T was precisely what poor Adrienne Toner had becoi nary and unhappy. The two things she would have : self least capable of becoming. There was ; to be gained in urging extenuating rim mi- stances, especially since he was not sure that there were any Chadwick, at bottom, saw as clearly as he did. lie asked her presently, leaving the theme of Adrienne, whet \\<>uld not seriously consider going away lor a little \\-\\\\c \vith Nancy. "Meg could own to The Little House," he said. 44 Oh, no, she couldn't, Roger," said Mrs. Chad \\irk, 44 she won't go anywhere. She'll hardly speak to Monica. just sits out-of-doors, all day, wrapped in a cloak, in the corner of the garden, staring in front of 1. lightest ; i to anything I say. obbing, sobbing, as if li \vould break* I can't think hardly of ADRIENNE TONER J15 Eric any longer, Roger. Isn't it strange ; but it's almost as if he were my son that had been killed. And Barney may be killed," the poor mother's lip and chin began to tremble. " And you, too, Roger. I don't know how we shall live through all that we must bear and I keep thinking of the foolish little things, like your having cold feet and wearing the same clothes day after day in those horrible trenches. He suffered it all, poor Eric. No, I can't think hardly of him. All the same," she sobbed, " my heart is broken when I remember that they can never be married now." CHAPTER XXIII " That's the way Mummy surprises one/' said Barney as he and Oldmeadow went togcthrr through the Cold- brooks woods. " One feds her, usually, such a darling goose and then, suddenly, she shows one that she can be a heroine." Barney was going to France in two days' time and Oldmeadow within the fortnight, and the Coldbrooks good-byes had just been said. It had been poor Meg who had broken down and clung and cried. Mrs. Chad- wick had, to the very last, talked with grave cheerfulness of Barney's next leave and given wise advice as if he had been merely leaving them for a rather perilous mountain-climbing feat. Oldmeadow could hardly be- lirve her the same woman that he had seen ten days bef( II was staying at The Little House and had come up on this afternoon of Barney's departure to join him at Coldbrooks and walk down with him. Barney had not yet seen or said good-bye to Nancy and IUT mother, and Oldmeadow had seized this, his only chance, of a talk with him. But, as they hit the woods and began to climb the bare hill-side, Barney went on : 44 I've wanted a talk, too, Roger. I'm glad you managed this." 44 It doesn't rob anyone of you, does it," said Old- meadow. "We'll get to Chelford in time to give you a good half- hour with them before your car comes for you." 44 That will be enough for Nancy," said Barney. 44 The 216 ADRIENNE TONER 217 less she sees of me, the better she's pleased. I've lots of things I want to say, Roger. Of course you understand that in every way it's a relief to be going out" " It settles things ; or seems to settle them," said Oldmeadow. " They take another place at all events." " Yes ; just that. They take another place. What difference does it make, after all, if a fellow has made a mess of his personal life when his personal life has ceased to count. I'm not talking mawkish sentiment when I say I hope I'll be killed if I can be of some use first, I see no other way out of it. I'm sorry for Adrienne, after a fashion, for she's dished herself, too. We made a hopeless mistake in getting married and she knows it as well as I do ; and when a man and woman don't love each other any longer it's the man's place to get out if he can." " It was about Adrienne I wanted to talk to you, Barney." For the first time in their long friendship Oldmeadow felt that he spoke to an equal. Barney had at last ceased to be a boy. " I've seen her, since seeing you that last time in the train." " Well ? " Barney inquired, as Oldmeadow paused. " W T hat have you got to say to me about Adrienne, Roger ? You've not said very much, from the beginning ; but everything you have said has been true and I've forgotten none of it. I'm the more inclined," and he smiled with a slight bitterness, " to listen to you now." "That's just the trouble," Oldmeadow muttered. "You've forgotten nothing. That's what I feel, with remorse. That it was I who helped to spoil things for you both, from the beginning. You'd not have N her defects as you did if I hadn't shown them to you ; and if you hadn't seen them you'd have adjusted yoursrlt to each other and have found them out together. She'd not have resented your finding them out in the normal course of your shared lives. It's been my opinion of her, in the background of both your minds, that has envenomed everything." 218 ADKIKNM; TONKU Bamey listened quietly. " Yes," he assented. " That's all true enough. As far as it goes. I mightn't have seen if you hadn't shown me. But I can't reg; show me, for anything else would have been to have gone through life blind ; as blind as Adrienne is herself. And it's because she can't stand being seen through that she revealed so much more; so much that you didn't see and that I had to find out for myself. V you saw was absurdity I nee : they're rather lovable defects; I think I accepted them from the beginning because of all the other tilings I believed in in 1 11 said, too, you remember, that she know she was wrong. \NY11, it's worse than that. SI never know she's wrong and she won't bear it t k her anything but right. She's rapacious, isatiable. Nothing but everything will sat her. You must be down on your knees, straight down, : and if you're not, she has no use for \ turns to stone and you break your head a heart against her. It's hatred Adrienne has felt for me, Roger, and I'm afraid I've felt it for her, too. SI don and said things that I couldn't have 1 her capable of; mean things; clever things; cm clever that get you right o MW ; things I can't foiy re's much more in her than you saw at beginning. I was right rather than you about th y weren't the things I thought." Oldmeadow walked, cutting at the withered wayside grasses with his cane. Barney's short. Mow sentences seemed to sting him as they came. He had to adj himself to their smart; to adjust himself to the thought of tliis malignant A< hat he felt was i all surprise; he had foreseen, suspected, even t " I know," he said at last ; " I mean, I can see that it would happen just like that." "It did happen just like that," said Barney. I don't claim to have been an angel or anything like one. I gave her as good as I got, or nearly, s< S no doubt ADRIENNE TONER 219 But I know that it wasn't my fault. I know it was Adrienne who spoiled everything." They had come out now on the upland road. The country dropped away beneath them wrapped in the dull mole-colour, the distant, dull ultramarines of the Novem- ber afternoon. The smell of burning weeds was in thenir and, in the west, a long, melancholy sheet of advancing rain-cloud hid the sun. Oldmeadow wondered if he and Barney would ever walk there together again, and his mind plunged deep into the past, the many years of friend- ship to which this loved country had been a background. 4 6 Barney," he said, "what I wanted to say is this: All that you feel is true ; I'm sure of it. But other things are true, too. I've seen her and I've changed about her. If I was right before, I'm right now. She's been blind because she didn't know she could be broken. Well, she's beginning to break." " Is she ? " said Barney, and his quiet was implacable. " I can quite imagine that, you know. Every one, except poor Palgrave all the rest of us, have found out that she's not the beautiful benignant being she thought she was, and that bewilders her and makes her pretty wretched, no doubt." Oldmeadow waited a moment. " I want you to see her," he said. " Don't be cruel. You are a little cruel, you know. It's because you are thinking of her abstractly ; remembering only how she has hurt you. If you could see her, see how unhappy she is, you'd feel differently. That's what I want you to do. That's what I beg you to do, Barney." "I can't," said Barney after a moment. 'That I can't do, Roger. It's over. She might want me bad she could get me back adoring her. It's only so she'd want me. But it's over. It's more than over. There's something else." Barney's face showed no change from its sad fixity. " You were right about that, too. It's Nancy I ought to have married. It's Nancy I love. And Adrienne knows it." 220 ADRIENNE TONER At this there passed before Oldmeadov l the memory of the small, dark, hurrying figure, the memory of the words she had spoken : Some things iirc like living creatures ; and they can die. They can ii He felt rather sick. 4t In that case, how can blame your wife?" he muttered. "Doesn't that explain it all / " No, it doesn't explain it all." There was no fire of self- justification in Barney's voice. It was as fixed and sad as his face. " It was only after Adrienne made me so wretched I began to find it out. She was jealous v from the beginning, of course. But then she was jealous of everything that wasn't, every bit of it, hers. She had no reason for jealousy. No man was I more in love than I was wit Kven now I don't feel for Nancy what 1 tVlt for her. It's some- thing, I believe, one only feels once and if it burns out it burns out With Nancy, it's as if I had come home ; and Adrienne and I were parted before I knew that I was turning to 1 y had begun the final descent into C lulford and the wind now brought a fine rain against their faces. ther spoke again until the grey roofs of the village came into sight at a turning of the road. " About money matters, Roger," Barney said. " > Meg and Barbara. If you get through and I don't, will you see to them for me ? I've appointed you my t nis 1 told Adrienne last summer that I couldn't take any of h T money any longer, so that, of course, \\il\\ my having thrown up the city job and taken on the far my affairs are iu a bit of a mess. But I hope they'll be able to go on at Coldbrooks all right. Palgrave will have Coldbrooks if I don't come back, and perhaps you'll be able to prevent him handing it over to his Socialist friends." 44 Palgrave would be safely human if it came to taking his mother ." said ( Mdmeadow. 14 Would hr?" said Barney. "I r! ADRIENNE TONER L>JI Across the village green the lights of The Little House hone at them. The curtains were still undrawn and, is they waited at the door, they could see Nancy in the Irawing-room, sitting by the fire, alone. " I want you to come in with me, please, Roger," said Barney. " Nancy hasn't felt it right to be very kind o me of late and she'll be able to be kinder if you are here. You'll know, you'll see if a chance comes for tie to say what I want to say to her. You might leave is for a moment then." >4 You have hardly more than a half- hour, you know," aid Oldmeadow. " One can say a good deal in a half-hour," Barney eplied. Nancy had risen and, as they entered, she came forward, rying to smile and holding out her hand to each. But )ldmeadow was staying there. He was not going in talf an hour. There was no reason why Nancy should ;ive him her hand, and Barney, quietly, took both her Lands in his. " It's good-bye, then, Nancy, isn't it ? " te said. They stood there in the firelight together, his dear r oung people, both so pale, both so fixedly looking at ach other, and Nancy still tried to smile as she said, ; It's dear of you to have come." But her face betrayed ter. It was sick with the fear that, in conquering her >wn heart, she should hurt Barney's ; Barney's, whom he might never see again. Oldmeadow went on to the ire and stood, his back to them, looking down at it. " Oh no, it's not ; not dear at all," Barney returned. ; You knew I'd come to say good-bye, of course. Why taven't you been over to see me, you and Aunt Monica ? Ve asked you often enough." "You mustn't scold me to-day, Barney, since it's ood-bye. We couldn't come," said Nancy. " It's never I who scold you. It's you who scold me. Jot openly, I know," said Barney, " but by implication ; mnish me, by implication. I quite understood why P ADIMKNNK TONER you b iven't come. Well, I want things to be Koger's here, and I want to say them before him, ise he's been in it all since the beginning. It's se of Adrienne you*v< n< \ ( r come; and changed so i h in every way towards n had k* 1 lands till then, but Oldmeadow i now th.-tt she drew away from him. For a moment she did not speak; and then it was not to answer him. " Have you said good-bye to her, Barney? " " No ; I haven't," Barney answered. ' I'm not going to say good-bye to Adrienne, It must 1 to you by this time that Adrienne and I have pelted. \\hit did it all mean but that?" M It didn't mean that to her. She never dreamed it was meaning that," said '\\Y11, she said it, often enough," Barney ret< v, please listen to me," said Nancy must let me speak. She never dreamed it was m that. If she was unkind to you it was because she could not belirve it would ever mean parting. She had started wrong ; by holding you to blame ; after the baby ; when you and Roger so hurt IHT pride. And then she wasn't able to go back. She wasn't able to see it al! so differently -just to get you back. It would havt seemed wrong to her ; a weakness, just because she longed so. And then, most of ail, she believed yoi loved her enough to come of yourself." "I tried to," said Barney, in the sad. 1 of the hill-side talk with Oldmeadow. don't know everything, Nancy, though you know s< much. I tried to again and again." fes. I know you did. But only on your own terms And by then I had come in. Oh, yes, I had, Barney You didn't know it. It was long, long before you knew But I knew it; and so did she W9M mo: she could bear. What woman could bear it '.' 1 . have, in her ]>laee." Tears were in Nancy's v<> 41 It's queer, Nancy," said Barney, M that barring ADRIENNE TONER 223 Palgrave, who doesn't count you and Roger are the 3nly two people she has left to stick up for her. Roger's just been saying all that to me, you know. The two she tried to crab whenever she got a chance. Well, say it's tny fault, then. Say that I've been faithless to my wife and fallen in love with another woman. The fact is bhere, and you've said it now yourself. I don't love tier any longer. I shall never love her again. And I love you. I love you, Nancy, and it's you I ought to have married ; would have married, I believe, if I hadn't been a blinded fool. I love you, and I can say it now because this may be the end of everything. Don't let her spoil this, too. Nancy darling, look at me. Can't you consent to forget Adrienne for this one time, when we may never see each other again ? " " I can't forget her ! I can't forget her ! " Nancy sobbed. " I mustn't. She's miserable. She hasn't stopped loving you. And she's your wife." " Do you want to make me hate her ? " " Oh, Barney that is cruel of you." There was a silence and in it Oldmeadow heard Barney's car draw up at the gate. He took out his watch. There were only a few more moments left them. Not turning to them he said : "It does her no good, you know, Nancy dear." " No. It does her no good," Barney repeated. * But forgive me. I was cruel. I don't hate her. I'm sorry for her. It's simply that we ought never to have married. Forget it, Nancy, and forget her. Don't let it be, then, that I love you and don't love my wife. Let it be in the old way. As if she'd never come. As if I'd come to say good-bye to my cousin ; to my dearest friend on earth. Look at me. Give me your hands. It's your face I want to take' with me." "Five minutes, Barney," Oldmeadow whispered, as he went past them. Nancy had given him her hands ; she had lifted her face to his, and Barney's arms had closed around her. CHAPTER XXIV Mrs. Averil was in the hall moment," he said. " I'm going outs Tears wen- in his o\\n eyes. He stepped out on to the flagged path of tin- little plot in trout of tin- hou- stri}>s ot turf and rose-beds ran I* he house and high wall. Between the dipped holly-trees at the gate he saw Barney's car, and its lights, the wall 1 cast a deep shadow < The rain was falling thickly now and he stood, f< it on his face, filled with a sense of appeasement, of accomplish n i< :t. 1 > v, < re together at last. It was not too late. At such a time, when all rid hung on the edge of an abyss, to be together for a i mi^ht sum up more of real living than many happy years. They knew each other's hearts and what more could give its creatures than that recogniti> Suddenly, how he did not know, for t apparent > were fixed on the pallid . he became awa a figure was leaning agai the house in the shadow beside him. His eyes found it it was familiar. Yet he could not belie \ She was leaning back, h< ll against the wall on either side, and he saw, witli the upjKT layer c that so often blunts a violent emotion, that her !'<< t v sunki u in the mould of Mrs. Averil's rose-bed and : the i >ots of the new climbing rose were tani: in her cloth.- open window was but a step away. She had come si y had come. SI up. She had looked in for how long ? and had fallen ADRIENNE TONER 225 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 kne\v now that it must be her hope never to see Barney a^ain. 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. 2-JG ADI1IKNNK TONER An eternity M em< d to pass before the front door opened and Mrs. AveriTs voice, steadied to a galvanized ch< ness, came half obliterated to a wordless rhythm. Bar- voice answered her, and his steps echoed on the flagged path. " Say good-bye to Roger for m don't see him on the road ! " he called out from the gate. Then the car coughed, panted ; the horn croaked out it> cry and, above them, a shaft of light across th of which he had till thru 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 1.- and the ivy was drenched with it, lie drew her forward tor 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 . IM li.-ving that she might snatch a word somewhere with her husband, and find her way, at this lastm< 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. 1 i- rstood her through and through and t heaviness that had already so often visited his heart flooded it to suffocation. Among her sobs he heard her, at last, speaking to " K\vn 1'algrave doesn't know. He told me onl noon that Barney was here. I thought I might mi. 1 was going to wait in the road. And when I got here there was no car and I was afraid that 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 j< l now. I did not mean to be an eavesdrop] I saw them, I stopj>ed and 1 It was not jealousy," she repeated. w It Wftl 1 < OMK I had to know was no more he " Yes," said Oldmeadow gently, while, with long ADRIENNE TONER 227 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 disconso- late 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 empti- ness 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 desola- tion. 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 228 ADRIENNE TONER another feeling of accomplishment that overwl him; the dark after the radiant; afU-r N;mcy and Barney, he and Adrienne. It was t meeting, that he had been destined to mean to lur. She was his appointed victim. He had killed, as really as if with a knife, the girl whom he had seen at Cold- brooks, in the sunlight, on that Sunday morning in spring, _r no doubts. She had thru lu-ld the \\nrld in her hands and a guileless, untried heaven had filled her heart Between her and this crushed and weeping woman ti seemed no longer any bond ; unless it was the strange aching that, in his heart, held them both together PART II CHAPTER I Oldmeadow sat in Mrs. Aldesey's drawing-room and, the tea-table between them, Mrs. Aldesey poured out his tea. So it was, after three years, that they found each other. So it was, all over the world, Oldmeadow said to himself, that the tea-table, or its equivalent, reasserted itself in any interval where the kindly amenities of human intercourse could root themselves ; though the world rocked and flames of anarchy rimmed its horizons. It was more real, he felt that now, to sit and look at Lydia over her tea than to parch on Eastern sands and shiver in Western trenches ; from the mere fact that the one experience became a nightmare while the other was as natural as waking at dawn. Horrors became the dropped stitches of life ; and though if there were too many of them they would destroy the stocking, the stocking itself was made up of tea-table talks and walks in the woods with Nancy. He had just come from Coldbrooks. So he put it, trivially, to himself, and he felt the need of clinging to triviality. The dropped stitches had been almost too much for him and the nightmare, at times, had seemed the only reality. At times he had known a final despair of life and even now he remembered that the worst might still come. One might be called upon to face the death of the whole order of civilization. Faith required one, perhaps, to recognize that the human spirit was bound up, finally, with no world order and unless one could face its destruction as one had to face the 229 L>.;O ADlilKNNE TONER death of a loved individual, one was not secure of the itual order that transcended all mundane calami . or hoped, that during these last three years, in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, when, to the last fibre, he had felt his faiths tested, he had learned to be ready for the great relinquishment, should it be required of him ; and it was therefore the easier to doff that consciousness, as he might have doffed a sword, and think of Lydia and of the order that still survived and that she still stood for. Lydia did not look the worse for the war ; indeed she looked the better. Sin looked as if, in spite of long days in the hospital, she digested better and, in spite of air- raids, slept better, and as they talked, finding their way back to intimacy by the comparing of such superficialities, she told him that for years she hadn't been so strong or well. _' is so good for you, I've found out, as to feel that you are being used ; being used by something worth while. People like myself must keep still about our experiences, for we've had none that bear talking of. But even the others, i-ven the people bereaved unspeak- ably, are strangely lifted up. And I believe that populace enjoys the air-raids rather than the reverse; ance of feeling that they are enduring something, too ; with good-humour and pluck. If any- is pessimistic about the effect of war on average human nature, 1 should only ask them to come and talk to our men at the hospital. Of course, under it all, there's the ominous roar in one's ears all the th " Do you mean the air-raids ? " he asked her and, shaking her head, showing him that she, too, had seen uith him and, he believed, with him accepted: "No; I mean the roar of nation at; i < -cHap -in'_r into abyss. A sort of tumbril roar oi Koger. And, for that, there's always the last resource of going gallantly to the ^uillot : i all the same, I beli we sjjall pull through.' It was i ing of 1918 and one needed faith to ADRTENNE TONER believe it. She asked him presently about his friends at Coldbrooks. He had gone to Coldbrooks for thn. days of his one week's leave. After this he went to France. 44 What changes for you there, poor Roger," said Mrs. Aldesey. " Yes. Terrible changes. Palgrave dead and Barney broken. Yet, do you know, it's not as sad as it was. Something's come back to it. Nancy sits by him and holds his hand and is his joy and comfort." " Will he recover ? " " Not in the sense of being really mended. He'll go on crutches, always, if he gets up. But the doctors now hope that the injury to the back isn't permanent." " And Meg's married," said Mrs. Aldesey after a little pause. " Have you seen her ? " " No. She runs a hospital in the country, at her husband's place, Nancy tells me ; and is very happy." "Very. Has a fine boy, and is completely reinstated. It's a remarkable ending to the story, isn't it ? She met him at the front, you know, driving her ambulance ; and he has twice as much in him as poor Eric Hayward." 44 Remarkable. Yet Meg's a person who only needs her chance. She's the sort that always comes out on top." "Does it comfort her mother a little for all she's suffered to see her on top ? " " It almost comically comforts her. All the same, Eleanor Chadwick has her depths. Nothing will ever comfort her for Palgrave's death." 44 1 understand that," said Mrs. Aldesey. 44 Nothing could. How she must envy the happy mothers whose boys were killed at the front. To have one's boy ( prison as a conscientious objector must be the bitterest thing the war has given any mother to bear." 44 He was a dear boy," said Oldmeadow. 44 Heroically wrong-minded." He could hardly bear to think of Palgrave. 232 ADRIENNE TONER He wasn't alone, you know," said Mrs. Aldesey after a moment. Something was approaching that he would mther not have to speak of; a name he would so much rather not name. And, evading it, feebly, he said. mother got to him in time, I know." s. But all tht time she went and lived near the prison. Adrienne Tom r 1 mean." eyes were on him and lu hoped that no readjust- ment of his features was visible. " Oh, yes. Nancy told that," he said. \\ hat's become of her, Roger ? " Mrs. Aldesey asked. " Since Charlie was killed the Lumleys have lived in t In- country and I hardly ever see them. I havrn't heard a word of her for years." He was keeping his eyes on her and he knew from her expression that he showed some strain or some distress. r have I. Nancy said that they hadn't cither. went away, after Palgrave's death. Disappea; 'letely." t<.ld you, of course, about the money: the little fortune she gave Palgrave, so that he could leave it to his mother ? " 44 Oh, yes. Nancy wrote to me of that." It was cleverly contrived, wasn't it. They are quite tied up to it, aren't they; whatever they may feel. one could object to her giving a fortune to the boy she'd ruined. I admired that in her. 1 must confess : the way she managed it. And then her disappearance." 44 Very ebra indeed,* 1 said Oldmeadow. 'All that remains for her to do now is to manage to get killed. And that's easily managed. Perhaps she is killed." He did not intend that his voice should be erupt dryer, yet Lydia looked at him with a closer attention. 44 Barney and Nancy could get married then," she said. 44 Y 1 hey could g- icd." "That's what you Wpttt, isn't it, Ho<:< o he killed, or them to be m \Ycll, as you say, so many people are being killed. ADRIENNE TONER 233 One more or less, if it's in such a good cause as their marriage " " It's certainly a good cause. But I don't like the dilemma," said Oldmeadow. He knew from the way she looked at him, discreet and disguised as her recognition was, that he was hiding something from her. Casting about his mind, in the distress that took the form of confusion, he could himself find nothing that he hid, or wished to hide, unless it was the end of Adrienne's story as Barney's wife. That wasn't for him to show, ever, to anyone. " Perhaps she's gone back to America," said Mrs. Aldesey presently, " California, you know. Or Chicago. She may very well be engaged in great enterprises out there that we never hear of. They'd be sure to be great, wouldn't they?" " I suppose they would." " You saw her once more, didn't you, at the time you saw Palgrave," Mrs. Aldesey went on. " Lady Lumley told me of that. And how kind you had been. Adrienne had spoken of it. You were sorry for them both, I suppose ; for her as well as for him, in spite of everything. Or did she merely take it for granted that the kindness to him extended to her ? " "Not at all. It was for her too," said Oldmeadow, staring a little and gathering together, after this lapse of time that seemed so immense, his memories of that other tea-table set up in the chaos : Palgrave's tea-table on that distant day in Oxford. What was so confusing him was his consciousness that it hadn't been the last time he had seen Adrienne. " I was as sorry for her as for him," he went on. " Sorrier. There was so much more in her than I'd supposed. She was capable of intense suffering." " In losing her husband's affections, you mean ? You never suspected her of being inhuman, surely ? Lady Lumley blamed poor Barney for all that sad story. Hut, even from her account, I could see his side very plainly." ADIUENNE TONKK " Perhaps I did think her inhuman. At all events I ._rht hrr invulnrraMr." Yrs. I remember. With all her absurdity thought she had great power." Mrs. Aldesey looked at him thoughtfully. "And it was when you found she hadn't that you could be sorry f said Oldmeadow again. " I still think she has great power. People can have power and go to pieces." 44 Did she go to pieces ? That day in Oxford ? I can't imagine her in pieces, you know. 9 * He had a feeling of drawing back ; or of dn Adrienne back. " In the sense of being so unhappy, so ol>\ iously unhappy, over Palgrave," he said. He saw that Lydia would have liked to go on question- ing, as, of course, it would have been perfectly natural her to do. Was not Adrienne Toner and her absurdity one of their pet themes ? Yet she desisted. She desisted and it was because she felt some change in him ; some shrinking and some pain. " k Well, let's hope thai happy, now, or as happy as she can be, poor thing, doing great deeds in America," she said. And she turned the talk back to civilization and its danger. \ talked a good deal about civili/ation during tin -ir last three days together. He wanted things, during t hree days of mingled recovery and farewell, to be as happy as possible between him and his friend, for he knew that Lydia's heart was heavy, for him and not for civilization. The front to which he was going was more real to her, because it was much nearer, and his peril was more real than during his absence in dist climes. He felt himself that the French front, at this special time, would probably make an end of him and, for the first tin. their early friendship, he knew conjecture as to his relation with Lydia : wondered, if it had not been for Mr. Aldesey in New York, whether Ha might have been in lovr with him, ;. /-ed, with a curious sense of anxiety and responsibility, that her friendship for him now was the closest tie in hrr life. ADRIENNE TONER 235 The war might to her, too, mean irreparable loss. And he was sorry that it was so ; sorry to think that the easy, happy intercourse had this hidden depth of latent suffering. Lydia's feeling, and its implications, became the clearer to him when, on their last evening together, she said to him suddenly : " Perhaps you'll see her over there." He could not pretend not to know whom she meant, nor could he pretend to himself not to see that if it troubled Lydia that he should be sorry for Adrienne that could only be because she cared far more for him than he had ever guessed. He said, as easily as he could manage it, for the pressure of his realizations made him feel a little queer : " Not if she's in America." " Ah, but perhaps she's come back from America," said Mrs. Aldesey. " She's a great traveller. What will you do with her if you do find her ? Bring her back to Barney ? " " Hardly that," he said. " There'd be no point in bringing her back to Barney, would there ? " " Well, then, what would you do with her ? " Mrs. Aldesey smiled, as if with a return to their old light dealing with the theme, while, still in her nurse's coiffe and dress, she leaned back against her chair. " What would she do with me, rather, isn't it ? " he asked. And he, too, tried to be light. "She'll be mended then, you think? Able to do things to people again ? " " I'm not at all afraid of her, you know. She never did me any harm," he said. " Because you were as strong as she, you mean. She did other people harm, surely. You warned me once to keep away from her unless I wanted to lose my toes and fingers." Mrs. Aldesey still smiled. " She does make people lose things, doesn't she ? " " Well, she makes them gain things, too. Fortunes for instance. Perhaps if I find her, she'll give me a fortune." J3G AD1UEXXE TONER only when she's ruined you," she reminded him. "And it's she who's ruined now," he felt bound to remind her ; no longer lightly. Leaning back in her chair, her faded little face framed in white, Mrs. Aldesey looked at once younger yet more 1 than he had ever seen her look and she sat for a little while silent ; as if she had forgotten Adrienne Toner and were thinking only of their parting. But all her gaiety had fallen from her as she said at last : 1 can be sorry for her, too ; if she's really ruined. It die still him when he has ceased to care for her. Does - do you think ? " With the question he seemed to see a fire-lit room and rs who had found each other and to smell wet roses. Lydia was coming too near ; too near the other fig outside the window, fallen back with ouNtivtr!i-d ; against the roses. And again he felt himself sol cautiously, disentangle the sleeve, the hair, felt 1m draw Adrienne away into the darkness where the si was now of wet ivy and where he could see only the shape of an accepting gr How could I know?" he said. "She was unhappy when I last saw lu-r. But three years have passed and people can mend in three years." 44 Especially in America," Mrs. Aldesey suggested. M It's a \voml. rt'ul place for mending. Let's hope she's s hope that we shall never, any of us, < hear of her again. That would be much the hapj- thin^. woiil: Nvas obliged to say that it would certainly be much the happiest thing ; and he was too unhappy about Lydia to be able to feel angry with In T. He knew tired she mu t be when, for the first tiim in thur long friends! lip, she must know that she was not pleasing him yet not be able to help hers. CHAPTER II " Good Lord ! " Oldmeadow heard himself groaning. Even as he took possession of his physical suffering he knew that there was satisfaction in suffering, at last, himself. Until now the worst part of war had been to see the sufferings of others. This was at last the real thing ; but it was so mingled with acquiescence that it ceased to be the mere raw fact. "We're all together, now," he thought, and he felt himself, even as he groaned, lifted on a wave of beatitude. Until now he had not, as a consciousness, known anything. There was a shape in his memory, a mere immense black blot shot with fiery lights. It must symbolize the moment when the shell struck him, bending, in the trench, over his watch and his calculations. And after that there were detached visions, the ceiling of a train where he had swung in a hammock bed, looking up ; clean sheets, miraculously clean and the face of a black- browed nurse who reminded him of Trixie. The smell of chloroform was over everything. It bound everything together so that days might have passed since the black blot and since he lay here, again in clean sheets, the sweet, thick smell closing round him and a raging thirst in his throat. He knew that he had just been carr in from the operating room and he groaned again " Good Lord," feeling the pain snatch as if with fangs and ch- at his thigh and belly, and muttered, " Water ! " Something sweet, but differently sweet from the smell, sharp, too, and insidious, touched his lips and opening them obediently, as a young bird opens its bill to the 237 Q ADKIKNM: TONER pare i t bird, he felt a swab passed round his parched and saw the black- 1> rowed nurse . ter, you know," she said. "This is lemon and glycer and will h< lp you wonderfully." He wanted to ask something about Paris and the long- distance gun firing on it every day and he seemed to see it over the edge of the trench, far away on the horizon of No-man's-land, a tii ito the sky. But < rds bubbled up and he heard himself crying : * Mother I \ ' and remembered, stopping himself with an act of will, that tiny all said that : hey were dying. But as he closed his eyes 1 rr very near and knew that it would be sweet to die an. I find her. A long t ist have passed. Was it days or .< of daylight? It was night now and a shaded light shone from a recess behind him and thouu. visions, memories raced through his mind. Nancy ; Barney; he would never see them again, thru : poor Lydia and civilization. " Civilization will see me ex he thought and he wondered if tiny had taken off tin- wings of the Flying Victory when they packed h< r. A rhythm was beating in his brain. Music was it? Something of Bach's ? It gathered words to itself and shaped itself sentence by sentence into somet i had -d. or read. Ah, he was glad to have found "Undrr the orders of your devoted officers you ^ill march against the enemy or fall wh( ing the foe. To those who die I say: You will i you will enter living into immortality, and God will receive you into his bosom. 1! seemed to listen to tin- \\ords as he lay, qu But it was m' after all for, as IK y merged into the St. Matthew Passion. He had heard it, of course 1 , \\ith Lydia. at . But Lydia did not really care \< r\ n.uch for Baeh. She might care r i S!u had sung it standing beside him \vith fool V ra^s ears. How unlike Lydia to wear those roses. And was ADRIENNE TONER 289 it Lydia who stood there ? A mental perplexity mingled with the physical pain and spoiled his peace. It was not Lydia's, that white face in the coffin with wet ivy behind it. What suffering was this that beat upon his heart ? The music had faded all away and he saw faces everywhere, dying faces ; and blood and terrible mutila- tions. All the suffering of the war, worse, far worse than the mere claws and fangs that tore at him. Dying boys choked out their breaths in agonies of conscious loneliness, yearning for faces they would never see again. Oh, how many he had seen die like that ! Intolerable to watch them. And could one do nothing ? " Cigarettes. Give them cigarettes," he tried to tell somebody. " And marmalade for breakfast ; and phonographs, and then they will enter living into immortality " No : he did not mean that. What did he mean ? He could catch at nothing now. Thoughts were tossed and tumbled like the rubbish of wreckage from an inundated town on the deep currents of his anguish. A current that raced and seethed and carried him away. He saw it. Its breath- less speed was like the fever in his blood. If it went Easter he would lose his breath. Church-bells ringing on the banks lost theirs as he sped past so swiftly and made a trail of whining sound. Effie ! Effie ! It was poor little Effie, drowning. He saw her wild, small face, battling. Bubbles boiled up about his cry. Suddenly the torrent was stilled. Without commo- tion, without tumult, it was stilled. There was a dam somewhere ; it had stopped racing ; he could get his breath. Still and slow ; oh ! it was delicious to feel bhat quiet hand on his forehead ; his mother's hand, and bo know that Effie was safe. He lay with closed eyes and saw a smooth waterfall sliding and curving with green grey depths into the lower currents of the stream. He remembered the stream well, now ; one of his beloved French rivers ; one of the smaller, sylvan rivers, too small for majesty ; with silver poplars spaced against the sky on either bank and a small town, white and pink 240 ADRIENXE TONER and pearly-grey, elear on the horizon. Tranquil sails were above him and the bells from the distant church- tower floated to him across the fields. Soundks slowly, he felt himself borne into oblivion. The black-browed nurse was tending him next nur 44 You are better," she said, smiling at him. " You ^ all night. No ; it's a shame, but you mayn't have w yet." She put the lemon and glycerine to his lips. 4% pain is easier, isn't it ? " He said it was. He felt that he must not stir an inch so as to keep it easier, but he could not have stirred had he wanted to, for he was all tightly swathed and bandaged. He remembered something be wanted specially to ask : 44 Paris ? They haven't got it yet ? " 44 They'll never get it ! " she smiled proudly. 44 K thing is going splendidly." The English surgeon was such a low. He had spectacles on a square-tipped nose and a square, chubby face ; yet his hair was nearly white. Oldmeadow ren bered, as if of days before the flood, that his name was a distinguished one. Perhaps it was morphia they gave him, after his wound was dressed, or perhaps he The day passed in a hot and broken stupor and at i the tides of fever rose again and carried him away. Hut, again, before he had lost his breath, before he had quite gone down into delirium, the quiet hand came and him, under sails, to sleep. Next day Oldmeadow knew, from the way the surgeon looked at him, that his case was grave. His face wai grim as he bent over the dressing and he hurt horribly, They told him, when it was over, that he had b< brave and, like a child, he was pleased th;i( they should tell him so. Hut tlu pain was worse all day and the sense of the submerging fever imminent, and he lay with closed eyes and longed for the ni^rht that brought the hand. Hours, long hours pass< ,nn -. Hourf of sunlight when, behind his eyelids, i hours of twilight when he saw mauve, >r a littl* ADRIENNE TONER 241 while, it was a soft, dense grey he saw, like a bat's wing, and then the small light shone across his bed ; he knew that the night had come, and felt, at last, the hand fall softly on his head. He lay for some time feeling the desired peace flow into him and then, through its satisfaction, another desire pushed up into his consciousness and he remembered that, more than about Paris, he had wanted to speak to the nurse about what she did for him and thank her. " It's you who make me sleep, isn't it]? " .he said, lying with closed eyes under the soft yet insistent pressure. 44 I've never thanked you." She did not reply. She did not want him to talk. But he still wanted to. " 1 couldn't thank you last night," he said, " I can't keep hold of my thoughts. And when morning comes I seem to have forgotten everything about the night. You are the nurse who takes care of me in the daytime, too, aren't you ? " Again, for a moment, there was no reply ; and then a voice came. " No ; I am the night nurse. Go to sleep now." It was a voice gentle, cold and soft, like snow. It was not an English voice and he had heard it before. Where had he heard it ? Rooks were cawing and he saw a blue ribbon rolling, rolling out across a spring-tide landscape. This voice was not like a blue ribbon ; it was like snow. Yet, when he turned his head under her hand, he looked round at Adrienne Toner. The first feeling that came uppermost in the medley that filled him at the sight of her was one of amused vexation. It was as if he went back to his beginnings with her, back to the rooks and the blue ribbon. " At it again ! " was what he said to himself, and what he said aloud, absurdly, was : " Oh come now 1 " She did not lift her hand, but there was trouble on her face as she looked back at him. " I hoped you wouldn't see me, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said. 242 ADRIENNE TONKU He was reminded of Bacchus and the laying on of hands; but a classical analog} more ridiculous, came to him with her words. " Like Cupid and 1' he said. "The other way round. It's I who mustn't look." The trouble on her face became more marked and he saw that she imagined him to be delirious. He was not quite himself, certainly, or he would not have greeted Adrienne Toner thus, and he made an effort to be more >rous and rational as he said : " Tin very glad to see you again. Safe and sound, you know." She had always had a singular little face, but it had never looked so singular as now, seen from below with shadows from the light behind cast so oddly over it. The end of her nose jutted from a blue shadow and eyes lay in deep hollows of blue. All that he v of in her expression was the gravity with \\hieh she made up her mind to humour him. "We want you to be safe and sound, too. Please shut your eyes and go to si "All right; all right. Psyche," he murmured, ami he knew it wasn't quite what he intended to say, yet in his i>ancy he was taking refuge from something ; from the flood of suffering that had broken over him the , t after he had seen that dead face with white roses r its ears. This queer face, half dissolved in blue and yellow, was not dead and the white coiffe came closely down about it. If he obeyed her he knew that she would keep the other faces away and he closed eyes obediently and lay very still, seeing hin. again as the good little boy being praised. This was : not Ariane. " Ariane ma sceur," he murmured. It was Ariane who had the white roses or was it wet ? and after her face pressed all the other dying faces. "You'll keep them away, won't you?" he murmir and he heard her say I'll keep them quite away," and, softly, a eurtain of sleep fell before his i crossed by a thin drift of mythological figures. ADRIENNE TONER 243 " I thought it was you who sent me to sleep," he said to the English nurse next day. He could hardly, in the morning light, believe it was not a dream. She smiled with an air of vicarious pride. " No indeed. I can't send people to sleep. " It's our wonderful Mrs. Chadwick. She does a good deal more than put people to sleep. She cures people oh, I wouldn't have believed it myself, till I saw it who are at death's door. It's lucky for you and the others that we've got her here for a little while." " Where's here ? " he asked after a moment. " Here's Boulogne. Didn't you know ? " " I thought I heard the sea sometimes. It's for cases too bad, then, to be taken home. Get her here from where ? " " From her hospital in the firing-line. Now that we're advancing at the front everything there is changed and she could come away for a little. Sir Kenneth's been begging her to come ever since he saw her. He knew she would work marvels here, too." The nice young nurse was exuberant in her darkness and rosiness with a Jewish streak of fervour in her lips and eyes. " It's a sort of rest for her," she added. " She's been badly wounded once. You can just see the scar, under her cap, on her forehead. And she nearly died of fever out in Salonika. She had a travelling ambulance there before she came to France." " It must be very restful for her," Oldmeadow remarked with a touch of his grim mirth, " if she has to sit up putting all your bad cases to sleep. Why haven't I heard of her and her hospital ? " " It's not run in her name. It's an American hospital she is American called after her mother, I believe. The Pearl Ambulance is what it's called and everybody here knows about it ; all of us nurses and doctors, I mean, Her organizing power is as wonderful as her cures ; her influence over her staff. They all worship the ground she walks on." 244 ADRIENNE TONER 44 Pearl, Pearl Toner," Oldmeadow was saying to him- self. How complete, how perfect it was. And the nurse went on, delighted, evidently, to talk of an idol, and rat as if she were speaking of a special cure they had installed, a sort of Cun-1 treatment not to be found anywherec -1 " Everything's beendifh r e she came. It's almost miraculous to see what the mere touch of her hand can do. Matron says she wouldn't be surprised if it turned out she was a sort of nun and wore a hair shirt under her dress. ^ T she is, it makes one feel better and stronger just to sec her and one would do anything for her just to have her smile at one. She has the most heavenly MI It was all very familiar. 44 Ah, you haven't abandoned me after all, though I have found you out," he said to Adrienne Toner that night. He was able at last to sec her dearly as she came in, so softly that it was like a dream sliding into one's sleep. She was like a dream in her nurse's dress which, though so familiar on other women, seemed to isolate and make strange. Her face was smaller than he had remem- bered it and had the curious look, docile yet stubborn, that one sees on the faces of duml>-mutes. She might have looked like that had she been deafened by the sound of so many bursting shells and lost the faculty of speech through doing much and saying nothing among scenes of horror. But she spoke to him, after all, as naturally as he spoke to her, saying, though with no touch of his lightness: 44 You mustn't talk, you know, it I come to make you sl < j>. Sir Kenneth wants slc< >u more than anything else." 44 1 promise you to be good," said Oldmeadow. But I'm really better, aren't I? and can talk a little first/' 44 You are really better. But it will take a long time. A great deal of sleeping." 44 No one knew what had become of you," said Old- ADRIENNE TONER 245 meadow, and he remembered that he ought to be sorry that Adrienne Toner had not been killed. She hesitated, and then sat down beside him. He thought that she had been going to ask him something and then checked herself. " I can't let you talk," she said, and in her voice he heard the new authority ; an authority gained by long submission to discipline. " Another night, then. We must talk another night," he murmured, closing his eyes, for he knew that he must not disobey her. All the same it was absurd that Adrienne Toner should be doing this for him ; absurd but heavenly to feel her hand fall softly, like a warm, light bird, and brood upon his forehead. CHAPTER III y never spoke of Coldbrooks, nor of Bamey, nor of Palgrave ; not once. Not once during all those nights that she sat beside him and made him sleep. 1 1 < liad heard from Coldbrooks, of course ; letters came often now. And the dark young nurse had written for him since he could not yet writr t.r himself. He had aid no word of seeing Adrienne. Nor had he let them know how near to death he had been and, perhaps, still was. He would have liked to have seen Lydia and Nancy to die ; but most of all he wanted to be sure iot losing A* And he knew that were he to U-ll tli- m, were they to come, Adrienne would go. She never spoke to him at all, he i>ered as ing stronger with every day, he pieced his memories of these nights together unless he spoke to her ; and or smiled. And it came upon him 01 < m<>r after he had read letters that brought so near the world from which she was now shut out, that she h ips, never forgiven him* After all, though he could not see that he had been wrong, she had evi TV thing to forgive him and the thought made h ss. That night, the first time, she volunteered a remark. 11 is tempera- ture had gone up again a little. He must be very quirt and go to sleep dirtctly. s; I know," he >.i id. 1 : > l>e cause of you. Things I want to say. I'm really so much betU r. \\ ean't go on likr this, can we," he said, looking up at her as she sat beside i,i \\ < v, you might slip out of my life any day, and I might never hear of you again." 246 ADRIENNE TONER 247 She sat looking down at him, a little askance, though gentle still, if gentle was the word for her changed face. " That's what I mean to do," she said. " Oh, but " Oldmeadow actually, in his alarm and resentment, struggled up on an elbow " that won't do. I want to see you, really see you, now that I'm n again. I want to talk with you now that I can coherently. I want to ask you ; well, I won't ask it now." She had put out her hand, her small, potent hand, and quietly pressed him back, and down upon his pillow while her face took on its look of almost authority. " I'll be good. But promise me you'll not go without telling me. And haven't you questions to ask, too ? " Her face kept its severity, but, as he found this last appeal, her eyes widened, darkened, looked, for a moment, almost frightened. " I know that Barney is safe," she said. " I have nothing to ask." " Well; no; I see." He felt that he had been guilty of a blunder and it made him fretful. " For me, t Not for you. Promise me. I won't be good unless you promise me. You can't go off and leave me like that." With eyes still dilated, she contemplated this rebellion. "You must promise me something, then," she said after a moment. He felt proud, delighted, as if he had gained a victory over her. " Done. If it's not too hard. What is it ? " " You won't write to anybody. You won't tell any- body that you've seen me. Only Lady Lumley knows that I am here. And she has promised not to tell. Prob- ably, soon, I shall have left France for ever." " I won't tell. I won't write. I can keep secrets as well as Lady Lumley. She does keep them, you know. So it's a compact." " Yes. It's a compact. You'll never tell them ; and 248 ADIMKNNK TONER I won't go without letting you k: I promise. Now go to sleep." She laid hi-r hai-: forehead, hut, for a little while, he heard her breathing deeply and quickly and the sense of his blundering stayed with him so that sleep was longer in coming. All the same he was much better next day. He was able to sit up and had the glory and excitement of a chop for his midday dinner. And when the pleasant hour of tea arrived it was Adrienne herself who came in carrying the little tray. He had not seen her in daylight before and his first feeling was one of alarm, for, if she were afoot like this, in daylight, must it not mean that she was soon to leave the hospital ? He felt shy of her, too, for, altered as she was by night, the day showed her as far more alter Whether she seemed much older or much younger could not have said. The ooiffe, covering her forehead, and bound under her chin in a way peculiar to her, left only, as it were, the means of expression visible. She sat down by the window and looked out, glancing round from time to time as he drank his tea and it was the who found the calm little sentences, about the latest news from the front, the crashing of Bulgaria. that carried them on until he had finished. When he had pushed down his tray she turned her chair and faced him. folding her hands together on her white apron, and she aid, and he knew that she had come to say it, " What was it you wanted to ask me ? " 11 had had, while she sat at the window, her profile with the jutting nose, and her face, as it turned upon him now, made him think suddenly of a seagull. Qu ing, lonely, with vigilant eyes, it seemed to have great spaces before it ; to be flying forth into empty spaces and to an nnaf^ti goal. "Are you going away, the: lie had not dared, somehow, to ask her He felt now that he could not talk until he knew. ADRIENNE TONER 249 "Not yet," she said. "But I shall be going soon. The hospital is emptying and my nights on duty are v short. I have, really, only you and two others to take care of. That's why I am up so early to-day. And you are so much better that we can have a little talk ; if you have anything to ask me." " It's this, of course," said Oldmeadow. " It seems to me you ought to dislike me. I misunderstood you in many ways. And now I owe you my life. Before we part I want to thank you and to ask you to forgive me." Her eyes, seen in daylight, were of the colour of distance, of arctic distances. That had always been their colour, though he had never before identified it. " But there is nothing to thank me for," she said. " I am here to take care of people." " Even people who misunderstood you. Even people you dislike. I know." He flushed, feeling that he had been duly snubbed. " But though you take care of every one, anyone may thank you, too, mayn't they ? " " I don't dislike you, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said after a moment. " And you didn't misunderstand me." " Oh," he murmured, more abashed than before. " I think so. Not, perhaps, what you did ; but what you were. I didn't see you as you really were. That's what I mean." The perplexity, which had grown, even, to amazement, had left her eyes and she was intently looking at him. "There is nothing for you to be sorry for," she said. 44 Nothing for me to forgive. You were always right." " Always right ? I can't take that, you know," said Oldmeadow, deeply discomposed. 44 You were blind, of course, and more sure of yourself than any of us can saiVly afford to be ; but I wasn't always right." "Always. Always," she repeated. " I was blinder than you knew. I was more sure of myself." He lay looking at her and she looked back at him, but with a look that invited neither argument nor protest. It remained remote and vigilant. She might have been the 250 ADKIKNNi: TONER seagull looking down anelow had ceased to be that of an assaiknt in its attitude. How was, white, strange, fleeting creature ! How near she had been once ! The memory of how near rushed < hi^ mind* II had, despite the delirious visions of i face, hardly thought at all, since really se her again, of that last time. Everything had tit t on, rat IK r, to his earliest memories of her, tinged all of iu it was true, with a deeper meaning, but not till t consciously admitting it. It rush* d in now, poignant with the recovered smell of wet, dark ivy, recovered sound of her stifled sobs as she had stumMi d, broken, beside him in the rain. And with the memory came the desire that she should again be near. 44 Tell me," he said, " what are you going to do ? aid you might be leaving France for ever. Shall you go baek to Ameriea ? " 44 I don't think so. Not for a lorn -he answered. here will be things to do over here, out of France, for a great many years I imapi 1I< h< itated, then took a roundabout way. M when I get home, if, owing to you, I ever get niay i il t h< -in that you're safe and sound T It would be for them to know that, wouldn't it ? " I!- r \i-jh. .nee still dwelt upon him as though she sus- pected in this sudden change <> t some craft of approach, hut she answered qui.-tly : i think it will be happi r fur them to forget me. y will be t.-ld it I dir. 1 have arranged for that." "They can't very well forget you," said Oldmeadow after a moment. "They must always wond- 44 1 know." She glanced away and trouble came into I know. But as much as pos must not make me real again by telling them. You have promised . Y. >u care for them. You know what I mean." promised. And I see what you mean. But," said Oldmeadow suddenly, and this, of course, was ADRIENNE TONER 251 what he had been coming to, " I don't want to forget. I want you to stay real. You must let me know what becomes of you, always, please." Astonishment, now, effaced her trouble. " You ? Why ? " she asked. He smiled a little. " Well, because, if you'll let me say it, I'm fond of you. I feel reponsible for you. I've been too deeply in your life, you've been too deeply in mine, for us to disappear from each other. Don't you remember," he said, and he found it with a sense of achievement, ridiculous as it might sound, " how I held the tea-pot for you ? That's what I mean. You must let me go on holding it." But she could feel no amusement. She was pressing ber hands tightly together in her lap, her eyes were wide and her astonishment, he seemed to see, almost brought tears to them. " Fond ? You ? " she said. " Of me ? Oh no, Mr. Oldmeadow, I can't believe that. You are sorry, I know. You are very sorry. But you can't be fond." " And why not ? " said Oldmeadow, and he raised him- self on his elbow the more directly to challenge her. " Why shouldn't I be fond of you, pray ? You must swallow it, for it's the truth, and I've a right to my own feelings, I hope." She put aside the playfulness in which his grim earnest veiled itself. " Because you saw. Because you know. All about me. From the first." " Well ? " he questioned after a moment, still raised on his elbow but now with the grimness unalloyed. ' 4 \N hat of it ? " " You remember what I was. You remember what you saw. You would have saved them from me if you could ; and you couldn't. How can you be fond of a person \s ho has ruined all their lives ? " " Upon my soul," said Oldmeadow laughing, his eyes on hers, "you talk as though you'd been a Lucrezia Borgia ! What were you worse than an exalted, stubborn. 252 ADIUENXE 1 rather conceited girl ? Things went wrong, I know, and partly because of me. Hut it wasn't all your 1 swear it. And if it was, it was your mistake ; not > crime." 44 Oh, no, no, no," said Adrienne, and the compulsion of his feeling had brought a note of anguish to her voice. 44 It wasn't that. It was worse than that. Don't for Don't think you are fond of me because I can make sleep. It's always been so ; I see it now the power had over people ; the horrible power. For power is horrible unless one is good ; unless one is using it for goodness," \\Y11. so you were," Oldmeadow muttered, falling back on his pillow, her vehemence, her strange passion, almost daunting him. 44 It's not because you make me go to sleep that I'm fond of you. What uttrr rul>l>ish ! " it is I " she repeated. " I've seen it h; too often. It always happens. It binds people to me. It makes them cling to me as if I could -jivr th-in :-c me to be a sort of saint ! " \\Y11. if you can help them with it .' You have helped them. The war's your great chain v in that, you'll a< No one can accuse you of trying to get power over p< now." rhaps not. I'm not thinking of what I may be accused <>1. In it of what happci i-xsn't happen with me. I was fond of you- we won't go back to that. And you did use it for good- ness. Power came by the way and you took it. Of course." 44 1 thought I was using it for goodness. I thought I was good. That was the foundation of everything, must go back, Mr. Oldmeadow. You don't see as 1 t you did. You don't understand. I didn't mean to set in; up above other people. I thought t hey were good, too. I was happy in my goodness, and when tin t happy < emed to me they missed something I had and t it was a mistake that I could set right for tlu in. I'm ADRIENNE TONER going back to the very beginning. Long before you ever knew me. Everything fell into my hand. I loved people, or thought I did, and if they didn't love me I th it their mistake. That was the way it looked to n my whole life long, until you came. I couldn't under- stand at first, when you came. I couldn't see what you thought. I believed that I could make you love me, too, and when I saw, for you made it plain, that you disliked me, it seemed to me worse than mistake. I thought that you must be against goodness ; dangerous ; the way you pushed me back back and showed me always something I had not thought I meant at the bottom of everything I did. I felt that I wanted to turn away from you and to turn people who loved me away from you, lest you should infect them. And all the while, all the while I was trying to escape the truth that you saw and that I didn't." She stopped for a moment while, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow stared at her. Her breath seemed to fail her, and she leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees and bent her forehead on her joined hands. " It came at last. You remember how it came," she said, and the passion of protest had fallen from her voice. She spoke with difficulty. " Partly through you, and, partly through my failure ; I had never failed before. My failure with Barney. My failure to keep him and to get him back. I couldn't believe it at first. I struggled and struggled. You saw me. Everything turned against me. It was as if the world had changed its shape and colour when I struggled against it. Everything went down. And when I felt I wasn't loved, when I felt myself going down, with all the rest, I became bad. Bad, bad," she repeated, and her voice, heavy with its slow reiteration, was like a clenched hand of penitence beating on a br< '"Really bad at last, for I had not known before \vhat I was and the truth was there, staring me in the face. I did dreadful things, then. Mean things; cruel hateful things, shutting my eyes, stopping my ears, so that I should not see what I was doing. I ran about and R J.VI ADRIENNE TONER crouched and hid from myself; do you follow my mean- ing ? from God. And then at last, when I was stripped bare, I had to look at Him. She raised herself and leaned back in her chair. Her voice had trembled more and more with the intensity of the feeling that upheld her and she put her handki r to her lips and pressed it to them, looking across at him. And, sunken on his pillows, Oldmeadow looked back at h-T, motionless and silent. Was it sympathy, pity or tenderness that almost whelmed him as he gazed at h< r .' He could not have said, though knowing that the unity that was in them both, the share of the eternal that upheld their lives, flowed out from his eyes into hers as he looked and h r- to his. They were near at last ; near as it is rar< ly given to human beings to experience nearness, and awe of such a partaking was perhaps the ground of all he i " You see," be said, and a long time had passed, " I was mistaken. did not answer him. Perhaps she did not u stand. 1 nevrr knew you were a person who could coi truth like that," he sin .still holding her handkerchief to her lips, she slightly shook lu T head. 1 . fon iiou^ht that I was bad." " I thought everybody was bad," said Oldmeadow, "until they ean now that goodness doesn ason you angered me so was that didn't see you were like the rest of us. And only people capable of great goodness can know such an agony recogniti 44 No," she repeated. 44 Every one is not bad like me. You know that's not true. You know that - people \ are not like that. Tin of recognition, lor not lung could ever make them m and can 1. ADRIENNE TONER 255 He thought for a moment. "That's because you expected so much more of yourself ; because you'd believed so much more, and were, of course, more wrong. Your crash was so much greater because your spiritual pride- was so great. And I thought you were a person a crash would do for ; that there 'd be nothing left of you if you came a crash. That was my mistake ; for see what there is left." She rose to her feet. His words seemed to press her too far. " You are kind," she said in a hurried voice. " I understand. You are so sorry. I've talked and ta '. It's very thoughtless of me. I must go now." She came and took the tray, but he put his hand on her arm, detaining her. " You'll own you're not bad now ? You'll own there's something real for me to be fond of? Wait. I want you to acknowledge it, to accept it my fondness. Don't try to run away." She stood above him, holding the tray, while he kept his hold on her arm. "All I need to know," she said, after a moment, and she did not look at him, " is that no one is ever safe unless they always remember." '' That's it, of course," said Oldmeadow gravely, "And that you must die to live ; and you did die. But you live now, really, and life comes through you again. Your gift, you know, of which you were so much afraid just now, lest it had enveigled me. Don't you see it ? How can I put it for you ? You had a sort of wholeness before. There must be wholeness of a sort if life is to come through ; harmony of a sort, and faith. It wasn't an illusion even then. When you were shattered you lost your gift. The light can't shine through shattered things ; and that was when you recognized that without God we are a nothing- ness ; a nothingness and a restlessness mingled. You know. There are no words for it, though so many people have found it and tried to say it. I know, too, after a fashion. I've had crashes, too. But now your gift has come back, for you are whole again ; built up on an entirely new principle. You see, it's another you I am fond of. ADRIENNE r l You must brlirve in her, too. You dob If you didn't you could not have found your -jilt. had stood quite still while he spoke, lo< down, not at him but at the little tray between her hai and he saw that she was near tears. II< r voice was scarcely audible as she said: "Thii And she made an effort over herself to add : " What you say is tni. "We must talk," said Oldmeadow. \l frit extra- ordinarily happy. "There are so many thin_^ I v to ask you about." And he went on, his hand still on h T arm, seeing that she struggled not to cry and helping IK r to nrovrr : M You're not going away for son I hope. Please don't. ThereTl soon be no need hospitals of this sort, anywhere, will there ? and you must manage to stay on here a little longer. I shan't get <> you go. You won't leave me just as you've saved me, \sill you, Mrs. Barney?" At the name, over-taxed as she was already, a pitiful colour flooded her face and before his blunder made l>le his own blood answered hers, mounting hotly to his inn-head. " Oh, I'm so sorry," he murimuvd. help- less and hating himxrlf, while his hand dropped, stood over him. holding hr.xrlf there so as not to hurt him by the :INJ .light. S . in a i- smile. It was the first smilr h< h.id i on I You've nothing to be sorry for. Mr. Old- meadow," si 1 said I* kind to mr. 1 v.Mi I <,.uld trll you how kind I I you an ." And as she turned away, carrying tl she add- so; I won't go y CHAPTER IV He did not see her again for two days ; and she did not even come at night. But he now kept possession of his new strength and slept without her help. The sense of happiness brooded upon him. He did not re me in I XT ever having felt so happy. His life was irradiated and enhanced as if by some supreme experience. It was already late afternoon when, on the second day, she appeared ; but in this month of August his room was still filled with the reflection of the sunlight and the warm colour bathed her as she entered. She wore a blue cloak over her white linen dress and she had perhaps been walking, for there was a slight flush on her cheeks and a look almost of excitement in her eyes. She unfastened her cloak and put it aside and thru, taking the chair near the window, clasping her hands, as before, in her lap, she said, without preamble and \vith a peculiar vehemence: "You hear often from Bur don't you ? " Oldmeadow felt himself colouring. " Only < directly. It rather tires him to sit up you know. Hut he's getting on wonderfully and the doctors think h< '11 soon be able to walk a little with a crutch of course." " But you do hear, constantly, from Nancy, don't you ? " said Adrienne, clasping and unclasping her hands Imt speaking with a steadiness he felt to be rehearsed. M lit is at Coldbrooks, I know, and Nancy is with him, and his mother and Mrs. Averil. It all seems almost happy, doesn't it? as happy as it can be, now, with Palgrave dead and Barney shackled." 257 258 ADlMKNNi; TONER Startled as he was by her directness Oldmeadow man- aged to meet V almost happy," he said. " I was with them before I came out this last time and felt that about them. Poor Mrs. Chad wick is a good deal changed ; but even she viving." ic has had too much to bear," said Adricnnc. saw her again, too, at the end, when she came to Palgn She can never forgive me. Meg is happy now, but she will ve me either. I wrought ha\ iicir "Well, you or fit-. I don't blame you for any of that, you know," said Old meadow. lon't say that I blame myself t nne. %t I may have been right or I may have been wrong. I don't know. It things like that that I was bad. But what we must face is that I wrought havoc : that if it hadn't been T<< -n there Nancy and Barney would have marri< I don't know," said Oldmeadow. " If Barney hadn't fa Urn In love with you he might very probably have tall, n in love with some one else, not Nai "Perhaps, not probably, said A\ her hut is shackl'd. t hnv's only one t him: more that can !>< done. I have oft ( n llmn-jlit of it ; I needn't tell that. Hut. till now. I con! sec my way. 1 you who ha In what you said tin otl way you come into my life. Mr. Oldmradow. You made me feel that I had a friend in you ; a true, true friend. And I know what a ADRIENNE TONER 1>51 if a man and woman had ever before had a more astonish- ing conversation. " That seems to me to be asking for a little too much icing on your cake. Of course it couldn't be a nice, new, snowy wedding-cake ; poor Mrs. Chadwirk wouldn't like it at all, nor Mrs. Averil ; but it would be the best we could do for them ; and I should think that when people love each other and are the right people for each other they'd be thankful for any kind of cake. E\ if it were a good deal burned around the edges," Adrienne finished, her slight bitterness evidently finding satisfac- tion in the simile. 262 ADRIKNM: TONKU 44 But they wouldn't see it at all like that," said Old- meadow, now with unalloyed gravity. as a cake they had stolen ; a cake they had no right to. It's a question of the laws we live under. Not of personal, but of public integrity. They couldn't profit by a hood- winked law. It's that that would spoil things for tl According to the law they'd have no right to their free- dom. And, now that I am speaking seriously, it's that I feel, too. What you are asking of me, my dear friend, is no more nor less than a felony." She meditated, unmoved, still almost sternly, turning her eyes from him and leaning her elbow on the window- sill, her head upon her hand. " I see," she said at last. " For people who mind about the law, I see that it would spoil it. I don't mind. I think the law's t lure to force us to be kind and just to each other if we won't be by ourselves. If the law gets tied up in sueh a foolish knot as to say that people may sin to set other people free, but mayn't pretend to sin, I think we have a right to help it out and to make it do good against its own will. I don't mind the law ; luckily for them. Because I won't go back from it now. I won't leave them there, loving each other but never knowing the fullness of love. I won't give up a thing I feel right because other people feel it wTong. So I must find somebody < Oldmeadow looked at her in a culminated and wholly unpleasant astonishment. "Somebody else? Who could there be? " "You may well ask," Adrienne remarked, glai round at him with a touch of mild asperity. are the only completely right person, because only ymi and I feel enough for them to do it for them. What 1 must do now is to find some one who would feel enough, j for me, to do it for me. It makes it more un mi. doesn't it. He'll have only the one friend to help. P.ut on the other hand it will leave tln-m without a scruple. They'd know from the beginning that with \- it was a fake ; but with him it might seem quite proba'. ADRIENNE TONER 263 Yes ; it's strange ; I had a letter from him only yester- day. I shouldn't have thought of him otherwise. I might have had to give up. But the more I think," Adrienne meditated intently, her head on her hand, her eyes turned on the prospect outside, " the more I seem to see that Hamilton Prentiss is the only other chance." " Hamilton Prentiss ? " Oldmeadow echoed faintly. " You met him once," said Adrienne, looking round at him again. " But you've probably forgotten. At the dinner we gave, Barney and I, in London, so long ago. Tall, fair, distinguished looking. The son of my Cali- fornian friend ; the one you and Mrs. Aldesey thought so tiresome." He felt himself colouring, but he could give little thought to the minor discomfiture, so deeply was his mind engaged with the major one. " Did we ? " he said. "And you thought I didn't see it," said Adrienne. 44 It made me dreadfully angry with you both, though I didn't know I was angry ; I thought I was only grieved. I behaved spitefully to Mrs. Aldesey that night, you will remember, though I didn't know I was spiteful. I did know, however, that she was separated from her husband " again Adrienne looked, calmly, round at him " and it was a lie I told Barney when I said I didn't. Sometimes I think that lie was the beginning of every- thing ; that it was when I told it that I began to hide from myself. However " She passed from the per- sonal theme. " Yes ; Hamilton is, I believe, big enough and beautiful and generous enough to do it." " Oh, he is, is he ? " said Oldmeadow. " And I'm not, I take it. You're horribly unkind. But I don't want to talk about myself. What I want to talk about is you. You must drop this preposterous idea of yours. Really you must. You've had ideas like it before. Remember Meg ; what a mess you made there. I told you then that you were wrong and I tell you you're wrong now. 264 ADRIENNE TONER You must give it up. Do you see? We're always quarrelling, aren't we ? " " But I don't at all know that I was wrong about Meg, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adricnne. " And if I was, it was because I didn't understand her. I do understand mys. and I don't agree that I'm wrong or that my plan is preposterous. You won't call it preposterous, I suppose, if it succeeds and makes Barney and Nancy happy. > I'm not going to drop it. Nothing you could say could make me drop it. As for Hamilton, I don't set him above you ; not in any way. It's only that you and he have different lights. I knn-.v why you can't do this. You've shown me why. And I wouldn't for anything not have you follow your own light." "And you seriously mean," cried Oldmeadow, "that you'd ask this young fellow I remember him prrf< < and I'm sure he's capable of any degree of ingenuousness you'd ask him to go about with you as though he were your husband ? Why, for one thing, he'd be sure to fall head over heels in love with you, and where would you 1><> then?" Adrienne examined him. " But from the point of of hoodwinking, that would !>< all to the good, wouldn't it ? " she inquired ; " though unfortunate for Hamilton. He won't, however," she went on, her dreadful lucidity revealing to him the hopelessness of any protest he mi still have found to make. "There's a very lovely girl out in California he's devoted to ; a young poetess. He'll have to write to her about it first, of course ; Hamilton's at the front now, you see ; and I must write to his moth< r. She and Carola Brown are very near each other and \sill talk it out together and I feel sure they will see it as I do. They'll see it as something big I'm asking them to do lor me to set me in . I'm sure I can count on Gertrude and I'm sui*e Hamilton can count on Carola. She's a very rare, strong spirit." Oldrnea<< Idenly, was feeling exhausted, and a clutch of hysterical laughter, a s s i ADRIENNE TONER 265 held his throat for a moment. He laid his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes, while he saw Adrienne and Hamilton Prentiss wandering by the banks of a French river where poplars stood against a silver sky. He knew that he had accepted nothing when he said at last : " Shall we talk about it another time ? To-morrow ? I mean, don't take any steps, will you, until we've talked. Don't write to your beautiful, big friend." " You always make fun of me a little, don't you ? " said Adrienne tranquilly. She seemed aware of some further deep discomposure in him and willing, though not compre- hending it, to meet it with friendly tolerance. " If he is big and beautiful, why shouldn't I say it ? But I won't write until we've talked again. It can't be, anyway, until the war is over. And I've had already to wait for four years." (II AFTER V She might feel that he had cruelly failed her ; but \ she came at the same hour next day it was i to him from her demeanour that she imagined him rcsiir if not converted, to her alternative plan. She carried a bunch of late roses and said that she had been having a lovely drive withadearold friend from Denver, who had managed to get to Boulogne to see 1 1 44 Your friends all come from such distant pla< Oldmeadow with a pretended fn t fulness that veiled an indescribable restlessness. " California, Denver, Chicago. They have, all of them, an implacably remote sound. as if they were carrying you, already, off to ot plane is." M Well, it doesn't take so long, really, to get to any of them," said Adrienne, placing the roses in a glass < by his side, a close, funny little hunch, red roses in middle and white ones all round. She had taken off cloak and laid a newspaper down on the little t;;! seating herself, then, in the window and keeping in hands a pocket-book that, in its flatness and length and the way she held it. reminded him of the little !! grey fan of the dinner-party where she had told her i lie. His mind was emptied of thought. Only pictures crossed it, pictures of Adrienne and the tall, fair youth with the ingenuous eyes, wandering by th and, again, Adrienne on that night, now as distant as California, when, with hi r fan and pearl- wreathed hair, she had met his persillu^c \\iili her n hukin.-: imi>crturba- 266 ADRIENNE TONER 267 bility. But under the pictures a sense of violent tension made his breathing shallow. He fixed his eyes on the pocket-book and wondered how she had nursed people with those ineffectual-looking hands. " Where were you trained for nursing ? " he asked her suddenly. " Out here ? or in England ? " " In England. In Oxford. Before Palgrave was taken," said Adrienne. " I gave up my philosophy very soon for that. I worked in a hospital there." " And how came you to go out to Salonika ? Tell me about it. And about your hospital here," he went on with a growing sense of keeping something off. " It's your own hospital I hear, and wonderfully run. Sir Kenneth was talking to me about you this morning." " What a fine person he is," said Adrienne. " Yes, he came to see us and liked the way it was done." She was pleased, he saw, to tell him anything he chose to ask about. She told him about her hospital and of all its adventures they had been under fire so often that it had become an everyday event ; and about how admirable a staff she had organized " rare, devoted people " and about their wounded, their desperately wounded poilus and how they came to love them all. He remem- bered, as she talked, that she was rich ; even richer than he had thought, since she could leave a fortune to Palgrave and yet equip hospitals in France and in Salonika. She told him about Salonika, too. It had been a fever hospital there and the misery and suffering had seemed worse than the suffering here in France. Yes ; she had caught the fever herself and had nearly died. She had no gift for the apt or vivid word. Her nature had been revealed to him as barbarous, or sublime, in its unconventionality, yet it expressed itself only in the medium of trite convention. But his time of jibbing at her platitudes was long since passed. He listened, rather, with a tender, if superficial interest, seeing her heroic little figure moving, unconcerned, among pestilences and bombardments. " It's not only what you tell me," he 268 ADRIENNE TONER said, when she had brought her reeital up to date. M I heard so much from Sir h. You are one of the great people of the " Am I ? " she said. That, too, unfeignedly, left her unconcerned. " You've the gift of leadership. The gift for big things generally." She nodded. " I'm only fit for big things." " Only ? How do you mean .' "Little ones are more diilieult. aren't they. My i get tangled in them. To be fit for daily life and all the tangles; that's the real test, isn't it ? That's JIM the kind of thing you see so clearly, Mr. Oldmeadow. Big things and the people who do them are just the kind of things you see through." " Oh, but you misunderstood me or misunderstand/' Oldim -adnw. "Big things are the condition of life; the little tilings can only be built up on them. One must fight wars and save the world before one can set up one's tea-tables." He remembered ha\ lit of something like this at Lydia's tea-tabl are important, I know, and the things that happen round them. But if one can nurse a ward of ' patients single-handed one must be forgiven for letting the tea-pot slip. Really I never imagined you capn 1 of all you've done." " I always thought I was capable of anything," sa Adrienne smiling slightly, her eyes meeting his in a tranquil part a king of the jest, that must beat h -ise. "You helped me to find that out about mys< If with all the rot. And I was riirht enough in thinking that I could face things d people. But fwasn't eapaMe of the most important things. I wasn't capable of being a wise and ha) . I wast a capable of beine so muHi to do ; for years and yea Ways will When one is big," sh< smil at once so gentle and so bitter, " and has plenty of ways always do. I'm a dtracinte creature ; 1 had any roots, you know; and I can't do better. I than to make soil for the uprooted people to grow in in. That's what ,,w, \^~ It's the fundamental things of lif< . its bare possibili that have lx rrihly d< Mca has. still, more soil than sir ^e, and si American, and a rich on< ADRIENNE TONER 271 n my fortune and my person, for Europe. Because ! love them both and because they both need each other." She had quite recovered herself. Her face had found igain its pale, fawn tints and she was looking at him vith her quietest contemplation while he, in silence, ay looking at her. " It's not about the things I shall do that I'm perplexed, :ver," she went on. " But I'm sometimes perplexed ibout myself. I sometimes wish I were a Roman Catholic, 'n an order of some kind. Under direction. To put >neself in the hands of a wise director, it must be so >eaceful. Like French friends I have ; such wise, fine vomen ; so poised and so secure. I often envy them. 3ut that can't be for me." She must feel in his silence now the quality of some ixtreme emotion, and that she believed it to be pity was evident to him as she went on, seeking to comfort him, tnd troubled by his trouble: "You mustn't be sorry. '. am not unhappy. I am a happy person. Do you emember that Sunday morning at Coldbrooks, long tgo ? How I said to Mother to Mrs. Chadwick hat I had no doubts ? You thought me fatuous. I limly saw that you thought me fatuous. But it's still rue of me. I must tell you, so that you shan't think ''m unhappy. I've been, it seems to, me, through every - hing since then. I've had doubts every doubt : of nyself ; of life ; of all the things I trusted. Doubt it last, when the dreadful darknesses came Barney's latred, Palgrave's death of God. We've never spoken >f Palgrave, have we ? I was with him, you had heard, ind at the very end it was he who helped me rather han I him. He held me up. When he was dying he leld me up. He made me promise him that I would ot kill myself for he guessed what I was thinking ; ie made me promise to go on. And he saved me. The ight began to come back to me while I sat beside him fter he" had died." She had not looked at him while she spoke, but down 272 ADRIENNE TOM K at her hands that, trembling, tur : returned the little pocket-book. And controlling In r voice as she sought to control the trembling of her hands, she said " Perhaps it is always like that. When one confesses one's sin and hates it in oneself, even if it is still there tempting one, the light begins to come back. Aftei that it came more and more. What you call my gift ii part of it. Isn't it strange that I should have had that gift when I was so blind ? But what you said was true I had a sort of wholeness then, because I was blind And now that I see, it's a better wholeness and a safei gift. That is what I wanted to say, really. To explain so that you shan't be sorry. No one who can find thai light can be unhappy. It comes to me now, always when I need it. I can make it shine in other peoph as Palgrave made it shine in me. Love does it. Isn'1 it wonderful that it should be so. Nothing else is rea beside it. Nothing is real without it. And when 11 happens, when one feels it come through and shin< further, it is more, far more, than happiness." All the while that she had spoken, pale, and will her trembling hands, he had lain looking at her in silence a silence that was dividing him, as if by a vast chasm from all his former life. He and Adrienne stood on one sid< of this ehasn and, while it seemed to widen with a at last his own necessity ; but he could not tell her that. M I'm not sorry for you," he said. ' I you. You are one of the few really happy people in the world." M Hut I'd quite given that idea up, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said. " What has made you change ? " lit saw the trouble in her face, the suspicion of h< T power and its compulsion over the 1 rs. He took the bull by thr horns. "You, of course. I can't pretend that it's any- thing else ... I want to do it for you and with you." " But it's for Barney and NV she said, and h< v had deepened. M 1 .10 for them, and you explained yesterday would spoil it for th- "It may spoil it somewhat," said Oldmeadow, oon- .platini: her with a curious tranquillity : shr was now all that was left him in life to contemplate; and was all he needed. "But it won't pr< I still think it a wrong thing to do. I still think if a felony. But, since I can't turn you from it, what I've corr.< see is that i: ,11 said, for you and me, who care for 274 ADRIENNE TONER 275 them, to do. It's not right, not decent or becoming, that anyone who ' doesn't even know them should be asked to do such a thing." " But Hamilton wouldn't do it for them," she said. " It would be for me he would do it. And he wouldn't think it a felony." " All the more reason that his innocence shouldn't be taken advantage of. I can't stand by and see it done. It's for my friends the felony will be committed and it's I who will bear the burden for them. As to his doing it for you, I know you better than he possibly can know you, and care for you more than he possibly can. If you're determined on committing a crime, I'll share the responsibility with you." " I know you care more. You are a wonderful friend. You are my best friend in the world." She gazed at him and he saw that for once he had troubled and per- plexed her. " And it's wonderful of you to say you'll do it. But Hamilton won't feel it a burden ; not as you will ; and for him to do it won't spoil it for them. If you do it, it will spoil it for them. You said so. And how can I let you do a thing you feel so wrong for my sake ? " " You'll have to. I won't have Hamilton sacrificed in order that their cake shall have no burnt edges. They'll have to pay something for it in social and moral dis- comfort. It would be nothing to the discomfort of Miss Brown, would it ? I shall be able to put it clearly to Barney when I write and tell him that it's for your sake as well as his, and that he and Nancy, who have never sought anything or hoped for anything, are in no way involved by our misdemeanour. I won't emphasize to Barney what I feel about that side of it. He's pretty ingenuous, too. It will be a less tidy happiness they'll have to put up with. That's all it comes to, as far as they are concerned." She was looking at him with trouble and perplexity and she said : 276 ADRIKNNK TONKR " They'll have to pay in fur more than social and moral discomfort." " Well ? In what way ? How ? " he challenged h< T. "You said they'd lose \ " Only if you married me," he reminded h r. But she remembered more accurately. " No. They'd lose you*anyway. You said so. You said that if t could ever see you again it would make it too blatantly a fake. And it's true. I see it now. How could you turn up quietly, as if nothing had happened, after Barney had divorced me with you as co-respondent ? There's Lady Cockerell," said Adrienne, and, though she was so grave, so troubled, it was with a touch of mild malice. "There's Mr. Bodman and Johnson, to say nothing of Mrs. Chadwick and Nancy's mother. No, I really don't see you 1 acini; th-m all at Coldbrooks after we'd c<> out in t IK- Daily Mail with head-lines and pictures." Her lucidity could indeed disconcert him when it sharpened itself like this with the apt useof his vocabulary. He had to stop to think. u There won't, at all events, be pictures," he paused by the triviality to remark. ** We shan't appear. It will be a hotel over here and the case will be unoY We needn't, really, consider all that too closely. At tin- worst, if they do lose me, it's not a devastating toss. They'll have each other." "Ah, but v,lio will you have?" Adrienne inquired. "Hamilton will have Carola and they will have each other. But who will you have ? " He lay and looked at her. ^here was only one answer to that question and he could not make it. He was aware of the insnlliciency of his substitut- -. "I'd have your friendship," he said. " You have that now," said Adrienne. " And though I'm so your friend, I'll be leaving you, soon, probably for ever. We'll probably never nu < Hd- meadow. Our paths lie so apart, don't they? My friendship will do you very little good." ADRIENNE TONER 277 Her words cut into him, but he kept a brave countenance. " I'd have the joy of knowing I'd done something worth while for you. How easily I might have died here, if it hadn't been for you. My life is yours in a sense and I want you to use it rather than Hamilton's. I have my work, you know ; lots of things I'm interested in to go back to someday. As you remarked, a divorced wife can run soup-kitchens, and in the same way a co- respondent can write articles and go to concerts." " I know. I know what a fine, big life you have," she murmured, and he had never seen her look so troubled. " But how can I take it from you ? A felony ? How can I let you do, for my sake, something you feel to be so wrong ? " " Give it up then," said Oldmeadow. And if he had found it difficult to make his plea for Barney a little while before, how much more difficult he found it to say this, and to mean it, now. " Give it up. That's your choice, and your only choice. You owe that to me. Indeed you do. To give it up or to accept me as your companion in iniquity. I'm not going to pretend I don't think it iniquity to give you ease. You're not a person who needs ease. And I can do without it, too. For your sake. So there you have it." " Not quite. Not quite," she really almost pleaded. " I couldn't ask it of Hamilton if he felt about it in the least little way as you do. And Carola doesn't care a bit about the law either. She's an Imagist, you know " Adrienne offered this fact as if it would help to elucidate Carola's complaisances. " She's written some very original poetry. If it were Hamilton no one would lose anything, and Barney and Nancy would be free. Indeed, indeed I can't give it up when it's all there, before me, with everything to gain and nothing to lose for anybody, if it's Hamilton." "Then it must be me, you see," said Oldmeadow. "And I shan't talk to you about the iniquity again, I promise you. I've made my protest and civilization 278 ADKIENNE TOXJ must get on as best it can. You're a terrible person you know" he smiled a little at h< r. linciini: th- l>. so that she should not guess at the commotion of rt. " But I like you just as you are. Now where shall we go ? " CHAPTER VII He could not have believed that it would be so delicious to live with Adrienne Toner. Even at the moment when he had known that he loved her, he had been, though filled with the sense of a present heaven, as aware as ever of the discrepancies between them, and during the three months that separated them, he at Cannes, she nursing in Paris, he knew many doubts ; never of his love, but of what it was making him do and of where it was going to lead them. He couldn't for the life of him imagine what was to become of them if his hopes were fulfilled, for he hardly saw himself following her off to Central Europe it was to Serbia, her letters informed him, that her thoughts were turning nor saw them established in London under the astonished gaze of Lydia Aldesey. She had selected Lyons as their place of meeting, be- cause of the work for the rapatries that she wished to inspect there, and from the moment that he saw her descend from the Paris express, dressed in dark civilian clothes and carrying, with such an air of competence, her rug and dressing-case, all doubts were allayed and all restlessness dispelled. He had arrived the day before and had found an old- fashioned hotel with spacious rooms overlooking the Saone and, as they drove to it on that November evening, she expressed herself, scrutinizing him with a professional eye, as dissatisfied with his recovery. It was because of the restlessness, of course, that he had not got as well as he should have, and he knew 279 280 ADRIENNE TONER that he must, in the stress of iVt -liriLT that now beset him. look strangely, and he promised in r. ft ding that In- spoke the truth, that now that he had his nurse again complete recovery would be only a matter of days. " I want you to see our view," he said to her when the porter had carried up her little box and they were left alone in the brocaded and gilded salon that separated their rooms ; " I chose this place for the view ; it's the loveliest in Lyons I think." There was still a little twilight, and standing at the window they looked down at tin- lighted Quai with its double row of lofty plane-trees and across the jade-green Saone at St. Jean, the grey cathedral, and at the beautiful white archevSche glimim -ring in a soft, dimmed atmosphere that made him think of London. "There's a h>rriMe modern cathedral up on the hill," he said ; " but we don't need to sec it. We need only see the river and the archevecht and St. Jean. And in the morning there's a market below, a mile of it, all under huge mushroom-coloured umbrellas; U<>\\r him. It was the trivial word for the great fac' eom- pulsion of personality: tl tlow of vitality; the at once of the saint and of the successful music- hall sinner. Her own absorption in life was so ir that it communicated itsrlf. Her confidence waft 80 that it begot confidence. Her power was implicit in all she did. It was not only th< rapatrUs she dealt with, as, at the fir had dealt \\i\\\ the v,.unded. She dr.-dt as successfully and as accurately \\ith the little things of life. Honey was on their 1 >rcakfast-table ; soles ; music on the piano. T hotel salon became a home. She WM still, in demeanour, the cultured, travelled d always, for th-ir v book or history. I'mm \shi<-h -} 1 to 1< an on the parapets of the splendid quais. There wen- few salient facts in the history of the potent city that were not imparted to him ; and with anyone hat a K ;l ve to listen ! But he was more than content that she should tell him about the J{ r lviehli Ah, but it's not a question of time at all," said Adrienne, and he remembered that long ago, from tin- very first, he had said that she wasn't stupid. 4k It's a question of how you're born. That's a thing I would never have admitted in my old d; \v. I wo never have admitted th:tt any human soul was really shut out from anything. Perhaps we're not, any of if we are to have all eternity to grow in. But as far as this life is concerned I see quite clearly now that some people arc shut out from all sorts of things, and that the sort of mistake I made in my old time was in thinking that anyone who had the will could force eternity any given fragment of our temporal life. I did do a little philosophy, you see ! That's what I mean, and you understand I know. All the same I wish I one of the shut-out people. I wish I were artistic. I'd have liked to have had that side of life to meet pe< with. I sometimes think that one doesn't get far with people, really, if all that one has to give are ^da- mental things like the care of their minds and Ixxi One goes deep of course ; but one doesn't go far. You can do something for them ; but there's not wards, that they can do with you ; and it makes i' lonely in a way -when one has time to be ! He did not know, indeed, whether she saw the 1> of the scene spread before them as they walked and he was remembering, with a sort of tranced ness, the ilowcr-wrcathed sh | and her erool, Mrs. Toner with her lilies and seagulls. But >uld she see beauty when she made it? It was al! tha 1 could see in her now. " What you can do for them afterwards is to pour out their coffee for them in tl suggested, " and make sight-seeing a ADRIENNE TONER 287 arrange flowers and place chairs and tables so that a hotel salon becomes loveable. If you find the person to whom you can give the fundamental things and do all sorts of homely things with afterwards, why be lonely ? We are very happy together, aren't we ? We get a great deal out of each other. I can speak for myself, at all events ; and you've just told me that I give something, too. So why should you go off to Central Europe next week ? Why not go back with me to the South," he finished, " and wander about together enjoying, quite naturally, the sentimental scenery ? " He held his breath after he had thus spoken, wondering with intensity, while he felt his heart-beats, what she would make of it. He knew what he could make of it, seizing his opportunity on the instant, if only she would recognize the meaning that underlay the easy words. And framed in the little hat on the background of trans- figured Lyons, Adrienne's face was turned towards him and, after he had made his suggestion, she studied him in silence for what seemed to him a long lapse of time. Then she said, overwhelmingly : " That's perfectly lovely of you, Mr. Oldmeadow." " Not at all ; not perfectly lovely at all," he stammered as he contradicted her and he heard that his voice sounded angry. " It's what I want. I want it very much." " Yes. I know you do. And that's what's so lovely," said Adrienne. " I know you want it. You are sorry for me all the time. And you want to cheer me up. Because you feel I've lost so much. But, you know ; you remember ; I told you the truth that time. I don't need cheering. I'm not unhappy. One can be lonely without being unhappy." " I'm not sorry for you," poor Oldmeadow rejoined, still in the angry voice. " I'm not thinking of you at all. I'm thinking of myself. I'm lonely, too, and I am unhappy, even if you aren't." She stopped short in her walk. He saw in her eyes the swift, almost diagnosing solicitude that measured 288 ADRIENNE TONKU his need and her own capacity. It was as though his temperature had gone up alarmingly. " Dear Mr. Oldmeadow," she said ; and then she faltered ; she paused. She no longer found her remedies easily. " It's because you are separated from your own life," she did find. " It's because all this is so bit to you ; what you are doing now how could I not understand ? and the war, that has torn us all. But when it's over, when you can go home again and take up your own big life-work and find your own roots, ha ppiness \vill come back ; I'm sure of it. We are all unhappy sometimes, aren't we ? \Ve must be ; with our minds and hearts. Our troubled minds ; our lonely hearts. But you know as well as I do, dear Mr. Oldmeadow, that our souls can find the way out." Her nature expressed itself in platitudes ; yet some- times she had phrases, rising from her IK art as if from a fountain fed by unseen altitudes, that shook him in t very wording. " Our troubled minds. Our 1< u echoed in his ears while, bending his head downwards, he muttered stubbornly : " My soul can t , without you." She still stood, not moving forward, her eyes raised to his. "Please don't say that," she murmured, and he heard the trouble in her voice. " It can't be so, except for this time that you are away I ry- body. You have so many things to live for. So many people near you. You are such a big, rare person. what I was afraid of, you know. It happens so often with me; that people feel that But you can't it; need me any longer. ' He said nothing, still not raising his eyes to hers, and she went on after a moment. "And I have so many things to live for, too. You've never really th<.i about that side of my life, I know. Why should y You think of any woman's liiV- isn't it true ? as not seriously important except on its domestic side. And you know how important I think that. But it isn't so with me, you see. I have no hearth and I have no ADRIENNE TONER 289 home ; I only have my big, big life and it's more important than you could believe unless you could see it all. When I'm in it it takes all my mind and all my strength and I'm bound to it, yes, just as finally, just as irrevocably as a wife who loves is bound by her marriage vows ; because I love it. Do you see ? They are waiting for me now. They need me now. There are starving people, dying people ; and confusion ; terrible con- fusion. I have a gift for all that. I can deal with it. Those are just the things I can deal with. And I mustn't put it off any longer when our time is up. I must leave you, my dear, dear friend, however much I'd love to stay." She was speaking at last with ardour, and about herself. And what she said was true. He had never thought about her work except in the sense that he thought her a saint and knew that saints did good deeds. That she was needed, sorely needed, by the starving and dying, was a fact, now that it was put before him, silencing and even shaming him. It gave him, too, a new fear. If she had her blindness he had his. His hopes and fears, after all, were all that he had to think of ; she had the destinies of thousands. He remembered Sir Ken- neth's tone in speaking of her ; its deep respect. Not the respect of the man for the tender-hearted, merciful woman ; but the respect of a professional expert for another expert ; respect for the proved organizer and leader of men. " I have been stupid," he said after a moment. " It's true that I've been thinking about you solely in relation to myself. Would you really love to stay ? If it wasn't for your work ? It would be some comfort to believe that." " Of course I'd love to stay," she said, eagerly scanning his face. " I'd love to travel with you to pour out your coffee in Avignon, Nimes, Cannes anywhere you liked. I'd love our happy time here to go on and on. If life could be like that ; if I didn't want other things more. You remember how Blake saw it all : 290 ADRIENNE TOM U " He who bends to himself a joy Doth the winged life destroy. I mustn't try to bend and keep this lovdy tim -. I i: let it fly and bless it as it goes. And so it \vill Mess me." She seldom made quotations nowadays. For this one he felt a gratitude such as his life had rarely known. " It's been a joy to you, too, then ? " " Of course it has," said Adrienne smiling at him and turning at last towards the bridge that they must cross. " It's been one of the most beautiful things that have <. happened to CHAPTER VIII Qldmeadow sat at the inlaid table in the gilded salon on the afternoon of the last day. He had two letters to write, for, as he had put off speaking to Adrienne till their last evening, so he had put off writing to Barney and to Lydia Aldesey till this last afternoon, and he saw now how difficult it would be to write coherently while his thoughts stretched themselves forward to those few hours of the night when his fate would be decided. Adrienne had gone out. She had written her short communication to Barney and brought it in with its envelope and laid it before him, asking him in the voice that, again, made him think of snow : "Is that quite right ? " It was, quite, he told her, after glancing through it swiftly. It stated, in the most colourless terms, the facts that Barney was to take to his solicitor. " Quite right," he repeated, looking up at her. " Are you going out ? Will you post it ? or shall I ? " " Will you post it with yours ? Yes. I must go out. But I'll try to be back by tea-time. It's very disappoint- ing ; our last afternoon. But that poor woman from Roubaix the one with consumption up at the Croix Rousse, is dying. They've sent for me. All the little children, you remember I told you. I'm going to wire to Josephine and ask her if she can come down and look after them for a little while." " Josephine ? " he questioned. He had, till now, entirely forgotten Josephine. Adrienne told him that she was with her parents in a provincial town. " They 291 292 ADRIENNE TONKK lost their only son and are very sad. Fine, brave old people. He is a baker, the old father, and makes : most wonderful bread. I went to see them last sun in Their packing was done and the room denuded ; the men had taken away the piano that morning. He had his letters to write ; so there was really no reason why she should not go. And there was, besides nothing that they had to say to each other, except the one thing he had to say. The silence that overtakes parting friends on a station platform had overtaken them since the morning, though, at lunch, Adrienne had talked with some persistence of her immediate plans and prospects and about tin- unit of doctors and nurses who were to meet her in Italy. There was no reason why she should not go, and he would even rather she did. He would rather see no more of her until evening when everything but the one thing would be over and done with. And so he was Kit wit h his letters, leaning his elbows on the table < the hotel paper and staring out at the Saone and the white archevScht. Both letters were diilieult to write ; but beside th to Lydia, the one to Barney was easy. Barney, a i was to gain everything from what he had to tell him. Lydia was to lose ; how much was Lydia to lose ? 1 1 < recalled their last evening together and its revelations, and saw that the old laughing presage was now more than fulfilled. Lydia was to lose more than her toes and fingers ; in any case. Even it he returned to her ah she cared for him too much not to feel, always, the shadow of his crippled heart; his heart not only crippled, but occupied, so occupied that friendships, however near, became, in a sense, irrelevancies. And if he returned with Adrienne but could he return with Adrienne? \Yhat kind of a life could he and Adriemie 1. ;tl in Ixmdon ? even if Lydia's door, generously, was opened to them, as he believed it would be knowing her gen< BOOS, He laid down his pen and fixed his eyes on the ADRIENNE TONER 293 and he tried to see Lydia and Adrienne together. But it was a useless effort. From this strange haven of the Lyons hotel where he had spent the happiest fortnight of his life, he could not see himself into any future with familiar features. He could only see himself and Adrienne, alone, at hotels. To attempt to place her in Lydia's generous drawing-room was to measure more accurately than he had yet measured it the abyss that separated him from his former life. If it could be spanned ; if Adrienne could be placed there, on the background of eighteenth- century fans and old glass, she became a clipped and tethered seagull in a garden, awkward, irrelevant, melancholy. Lydia might cease to find her third-rate and absurd ; but she wouldn't know what to do with her any more than she would have known what to do with the seagull. So what, if Adrienne became his wife, remained of his friendship with Lydia ? He put aside the unresolved perplexity and took Barney first. " My Dear Barney," he wrote," I don't think that the letter Adrienne has written to you will surprise you as much as this letter of mine. You will understand from hers that she wishes to free herself and to free you. You will understand that that is my wish, too. She only tells you that she has been staying here with me, for a fortnight, as my wife ; that's for your solicitor ; you will read between the lines and know that it seemed worth while to both of us to make the necessary sacrifice in order to gain so much for you and for her. I hope that you and my dear Nancy will feel that we are justified, and that you will take your happiness as bravely as we secure it for you. You'll know that our step hasn't been taken lightly. " But, now, dear Barney, comes my absolutely personal contribution. It is a contribution, for it will make you and Nancy happier to know that I have as much to gain as you and she. I have fallen in love with Adrienne, and I hope that I may win her consent to be my wife. 204 ADRIENNE TON Yes, dear Barney, unbelieveable as it will look to \ there it is ; and she dreams of it as little as you could have dreamed of it I met her again, as her 1 rms you, at the Boulogne hospital. She asked me to say nothing about our meeting. She wanted to disappear out of your lives. She saved . I think, and I saw a great deal of her. What I found in her that I had not seen before I need not say. " My great difficulty, my burden and perpl \ity now, lie in the fact that she has no trace of feeling for me that mivli< n tin- bomb-shell struck them. Would Barney sh would say : 44 So she's got hold of Roger, too." Funnily enough it was the dear March Hare, he felt sure, who would be the first one to stretch out a hand towar .mMircl freedom. "After all, you know," he conl.l h look and saw that one was o nd the other cert Mr. Toner, in their early days, i and alien, their formally directed eyes looked back at him and in the father's ingenuous young countenance, suri by a roll of hair that was provincial without being exactly rural, the chin resting upon a large, peculiar collar, he could straniri-ly n trace Adrienne's wide brow and stead- iasf lijht ; Mrs. Toner wore a ruffled dress and of her face little remained distinct but the dark gaze forceful and ambiguously L'- ntlc. The room was full of the fragrance that was not a fragrance and that had, long ago, reminded him of fui h. A ]>.'.ir of small blue satin mules stood under a ir near the bed. Only after he had withdrawn, gently closing the door behind him, did h< realize that he had forgotten the kett ! and then he felt that he could not go back again. A moment after the boy returned with a note, sent, by hand, he was informed, from the Croix ! " I am so dreadfully sorry, so disappointed," he read. " Our last afternoon, but I can't get away \ t . 1 > wait dim;- T tor DM, it I should be late, i-\ lhat. I won't be very late I promise, and we will have evening." The note bad no address. He rushed forth and (i to find the messenger gon< . H.nl he only known wl. to seek her in the vast, high, melancholy district of the Croix Kousse he \\ould have gone to . His sense neliness was almost a panic. Of eoursc. h- tril t.* ti\ hfa that n all/ as h o.ick to the salon, her rapatrUs had no do preoecupird h< r mind, fn.ni t hr iirst. (jnite as much as tht-ir OW n situation. She had s]>okrn to linn in or little childr- so frightened and miserable. I could not 1 you see. He talked and talked and talked. It helped him to talk and tell me about tin ir home and how they had had everything so nice and bright 11, a garden, a goat and fowls. Oh, if only she could have seen her home again ! That was what he kept saying and saying. They were full of hope when they got to Evian. IK : me how the children sang at dawn when the train panted up the mountain among the golden trees. Lik he said, and Vive la France ! They all believed they v to be safe and happy. Et, Madame, c'ttait noire calvaire qni commencait alors settlement" She spoke, not really thinking of him be saw, absorbed still in the suffering she had just left, measuring her po against such problems and the worse ones to wlii-i. was travelling to-morrow. 44 Josephine will be with them, I hope," she went on presently, "in three or four days. She \vill li< lp them to get home and then she will come back and go to see about the grave at Evian. Josephine is a tower of strength for me." Her eyes were raised to him" now and, as rested, he saw the compunction, the solicit mir. \\ith which tlu-y had met him on h< r < ntr.mer, return to tl. 44 I'm not so very late, am I ? " she said, rising. kk I'll take off my hat and be ready in a mom 44 Don't hurry, 1 ' said Oldmcadow. She was tired, more tired than she knew. During dinner she hardly spoke, and, finding the n solve n he said, as they came back to their salon : 44 Do you know what you must do now. Go and lie down and rest for an hour. Until nine. It's not unselfishness. I'd rather have half of you to talk to for our last talk, than none of you at all." 44 How dear of you," she said. She looked at him with gratitude and, still, \\ith the compunction, would be a great rest. It would be better for our talk. ADRIENNE TONER 301 I can go to sleep at once, you know. Like Napoleon," she added with a flicker of her playfulness. When she had gone into her room Oldmeadow went out and walked along the quai. The night was dark and dimmed with fog, but there was a moon and as he walked he watched it glimmer on the windows of St. Jean. He seemed to see the august form of the cathedral through a watery element and the grey and silver patterns of the glass were like the scales of some vast fish. A sort of whale waiting to swallow up the Jonah that was him- self, he reflected, and, leaning his elbows on the parapet of the quai, the analogy carried him further and he saw the cathedral like a symbol of Adrienne's life her " big, big " life looming there before him, becoming, as the moon rose higher, more and more visible in its austere and menacing majesty. What was his love to measure itself against such a vocation ? for that was what it came to, as she had said. She was as involved, as har- nessed, as passionately preoccupied as a Saint Theresa. How could he be fitted in with Serbia and all the hordes of human need and wretchedness that he saw her sailing forward to succour ? He knew a discouragement deeper than any he had felt, for he was not a doctor and his physical strength was crippled by his wounds ; and, shak- ing his shoulders in the chilly November air, he turned his back on the cathedral and leaned against the parapet to look up through leafless branches where the plane tassels still hung, at the lighted windows of the hotel ; their hotel, where the room, still theirs, waited for them. He felt himself take refuge in the banal lights. After all, she wasn't really a Saint Theresa. There was human misery everywhere to succour. Couldn't she, after a winter in Serbia, found creches and visit slums in London ? The masculine scepticism she had detected in him had its justification. Women weren't meant to go on, once the world's crisis past, doing feats of heroism ; they weren't meant for austere careers that gave no leisure and no home. The trivial yet radiant vision of intimacy u 302 ADRIEXNE TONER rose again before him. She slrpt thrre al>ove him and he was guarding her slumber. Ilr would always watch over her and guard her. lie would follow IHT n>n world, if need be, and brush her hair for her in Serbia 01 California. CHAPTER IX The gilt clock on the mantelpiece pointed to nine, but when he went to Adrienne's door and listened there was no sound within her room, and his heart sank as he won- dered if she might not sleep on, in her fatigue, sleep past all possible hour for their colloquy. Yet he did not feel that he could go in and wake her. The analogy of the cathedral loomed before him. It would be like waking Saint Theresa. He walked up and down the empty, glittering salon ; walked and walked until the clock struck ten. Despera- tion nerved him then and he went again to her door and knocked. With hardly a pause her voice answered him ; yet he knew that he had awakened her and it echoed for him with the pathos of so many past scenes of emergency when it must so have answered a summons from oblivion : " Coming, coming." Among bombings, he reflected ; and sudden terrible influxes of dying men from the front. " Coming," he heard her repeat, on a note of dismay. She had sprung up, turned on her light and seen the hour. He was reminded vividly, as he saw her enter and it was as if a great interval of time had separated them of his first meeting with her. She was so changed ; but now as then she was more composed than anyone he had ever met. But it was of much more than the first meeting that the pale, still face reminded him. His dreams were in it ; the dream where she had come to him along the ter- 303 804 ADRIENNE TONER race, lifting her hand in the moonlight ; and the dream of horror when he had again and again pushed it down to drown. " I'm so ashamed," she said, and he saw that it was with an effort she smiled. The traces of her weeping were now, after her sh ep, far more visihlr, ageing i yet making her, too, look younger; like a child with swolK n lids and lips. "I didn't know I was so tired. I s and slept. I didn't stir until I heard your knock. N< mind. We'll talk till midnight." She was very sorry for him. She sat down at the table and under chan- delier he r braided hair showed itself all ruffled and dis- arranged. She had on her dark travelling dress and she had thrust her feet into the pale blue satin muUs. Tl* disparity of costume in one so accurate, her air of readiness for the morrow, made him feel her transitoriness almost more than her presoiu < , though his sense of that pressed upon him \\itli a stillini: imminence. Bfl D though she sat there the room kept its look of desolate, ore her away from blue seas, golden sands, a land where the good and gifted lurked behind every bush ; and before her stretched the shining rails, mile.s . s <>i tl. running through rum and desolation, that were to \ her ever onwards into the darkness. This was what life had brought her to. She had been only a BO among them at Coldbrooks. 1! link, d li < ol CM and family affection had cast her forth and ) for ever nov, he could rescue her. with only h to live in and only tin- chaos she was to mould, to 1 for. She seemed already, as she sat there under the light] ADRIENNE TONER 305 with her ruffled hair, to be sitting in the train that was to bear her from him. *' I think you owe me till .midnight, at least," he said. He had not sat down. He stood at some little distance from her leaning, his arms folded, against a gilded and inlaid console. " We've lots of things to talk about." " Have we ? " Adrienne asked, smiling gently, but as if she humoured an extravagance. " We'll be together, certainly, even if we don't talk much. But I have some things to say, too." She had dropped her eyes to her hands which lay, lightly crossed, on the table before her, and she seemed to reflect how best to begin. " It's about Nancy and Barney," she said. " I wanted, before we part, to talk to you a little about them. There are things that trouble me and you are the only person with whom I can keep in touch. You will know how I shall be longing to hear, everything. You'll let me know at once, won't you ? " " At once," said Oldmeadow. " There might be delays and difficulties," Adrienne went on. "I shall be very troubled until all that is clear. And then the money. You know about the money ? Barney isn't well off and he was worse off after I'd come and gone. I tried to arrange that as best I could. Pal- grave understood and entered into all my feelings." " Yes ; I'd heard. You arranged it all very cleverly," said Oldmeadow. He moved away now and, at the other end of the room, his back to her, came to a standstill, while his eyes dwelt on a large gilt-framed engraving that hung there ; some former Salon triumph ; a festive, spring-tide scene where young women in bustles and bonnets offered sugar to race -horses in a meadow, admired by young men in silk hats. " Do you think this may make a difficulty ? " Adrienne asked. " Make him more reluctant to take what is to come to him ? It's Mrs. Chadwick's now, you know." 306 ADRIEXNE TONER "You've arranged it all so noting the gardenias in the young men's button-holes, " that I don't think they can get away from it . " But will they hate it dreadfully ? " she insisted, and he felt that her voice in its added urgency protested, though unconsciously, against his distann ; "I m in to see that they might. If they can't take it as a sign of accepted love, won't they hate it ? " 44 Well," said Oldmeadow, trying to reflect, though his mind was far from Barney and Nancy, "dear Eleanor Chadwick doesn't mind taking it, whatever it's a sign of. And since it will come to Barney through her, 1 think there'll be enough personality left hanging about it to hurt much/ 44 1 wi*h they could take it as a sign of accepted love,' 1 Adricnne murmured. 41 Perhaps they will/' he said. " I'll do my best they shall, I promise you." It was one thing to promise it and another to know his hope that it might be a promise never to be redeem The cross-currents in his own thought made him light- headed as he stood there, his back to her, and examr the glossy en aturc.s in the meadow. " Do } x it will all take a long time ? " Adricnne added, after ah pause. "Will they be able to marry in six or eight months, say ? " " It depends on how soon Barney takes action. Say about a year," he suggested. "They'd wait a little first, wouldn't they." 44 1 hope not. They've waited so long already. I hope it will be as soon as possible. I shall feel so much more peaceful when I hear they're married. Could you, per- haps, make them see that, too ? " And again he promised. " I'll make them sec every- thing I e He turned to her at last. She sat, her face still to- graph of her father. \Vhcn ^hc spnk ice was s 1 and IM. hlc, like the voice of a person dangerously ill. *' I don't understand you." ADRIENNE TONER 309 "Try to," said Oldmeadow. "You must begin far back." She still kept her hand pressed upon her hair. " You don't mean that it's the conventionally honourable thing to do ? Oh no ; you don't mean that ? " Her face in its effort to understand was appalled. " No ; I don't mean anything conventional," he returned. " I'm thinking only of you. Of my love. I'll come with you to Serbia to-morrow if you'll let me. I could kneel and worship you as you sit there." " Oh," she more feebly murmured. She sank back in her chair. " My darling, my saint," said Oldmeadow, gazing at her ; " if you must leave me, you'll take that with you ; that the man who destroyed you is your lover ; that you are dearer to him than anything on earth." " Oh," she murmured again, and she put her hands before her face. Her eyes were hidden ; she had spoken no word of reproach and he could not keep himself from her. He knelt beside her, grasping the chair across, behind her. She was so near that he could have laid his head upon her breast. "Don't leave me," he heard his pleading voice, but she seemed so much nearer than his own voice ; "or let me come. Everything shall be as you wish and when you wish. Tell me that you care, too ; or that you can come to care. Tell me that you can think of me as your husband." She was there, with her hidden eyes, within his arms, and inevitably they closed around her, and though he heard her murmur : " Please, please, please," he could not relinquish her. She was free and he was free. They had cut themselves off from the world. They were alone in the strange city ; in the strange, bright, hallucinated room ; and he knew from the ache and rapture of her nearness how he had craved it. But, gently, he heard her say again " Please," and gently she put him from her and he saw her face, and her eyes full of grief and gentleness. " Forgive me," she said. 310 ADRIKNV BB "My darling. For what?" he almost groaned. 44 Don't say you're going to break my h< She kept her hand on his bn-ast. him from her while she looked into his eyes. 44 It is so beautiful to be loved,'' she said, and her voice was still the slow, feeble voice of exhaustion. M Ev0 "h-n one has no right to be. Don't misunderstand. Kven when one may not love back ; not in that way. Forgive me ; not in that way ; my dearest 1'riend." M \Yhy mayn't you love back ? Why not in that way ? It it's beautiful, why mayn't you ? " 44 Sit tin-re, will you? Yes; keep my hand, weak I've been, and eniel. It can't be. Don't you know ? ll.ivrn t you seen? It has always been for him. must be In e ; hut I can never be free." 44 Oh no. No. That's impossible," Oldmeadow leaning towards her across the table and keeping her hand in both of his. " I can't stand that. 1 ild stand your work, your vocation, better. But not Barney, who lovrs another woman. That's impossible." 4 * Hut it is so," she said, softly, looking at him. 4i Really it is so." 44 No, no," Oldmeadow repeated* and he raised her hand to his lips and kept it there, a talisman against the nace of her words. 44 He lost you. He's gone. I've found you and you care for me. You can't hide from me that you can for me. Ju.st now. For those moments. You were mine." 44 No," she repeated. 4t I was weak and cruel, i was not your-. She had been incredibly near 8O short a time ago before. N\< him. It makes no di i icy, but it makes no difference. He is my husband. : my baby." Slu- tried to speak 01. > I ims -:ave him ADRIENNE TONER 311 the truth that ended all his hope ; but the desperate emotion with which he received it made real and over- powering to her her outlived yet living sorrow. With all that she must relinquish laid bare to her in the passion of his eyes she could measure all that she had lost, as she had, perhaps, till then, never measured it. " Don't you know," she said. " Don't you see ? My heart is broken, broken, broken." She put her head down on her arms as she said the words and he heard her bitter weeping. He knew, as he listened, that it was all over with him. Dimly, in the terrible suffering that wrenched at him, he received his further revelation of the nature already nearer him than any in the world. Her strength would be in all she did and felt. She had loved Barney and she would always love him. Her marriage had been to her an ultimate and indissoluble experience. That was why she had been so blind. She could not have thought of herself as a woman to be again loved and wooed. Her hair lay against his hands, still holding hers, and he found himself stroking it, without tenderness or solici- tude it seemed. It seemed to be only automatically that his fingers passed across it, while he noted its warmth and fineness and bright, lovely colour, remembering that he had thought it at the first her one indubitable beauty. They sat there thus for a long time. The gilt clock paused, choked, then in a voice of hurrying, hoarsened silver rang out eleven strokes. Footsteps passed and faded up the corridor ; doors closed. A tramway on the quai clashed and clanged, came to a noisy standstill, and moved on again with a rattling of cables and raucous blasts from a horn ; and in the profound silence that followed he seemed to hear the deep old river flowing. fct Really, you see, it's broken," said Adrienne. She had ceased to weep, but she still leaned forward, her head upon her folded arms. 6k You saw it happen," she said. " That night when you found me in the rain," AD1M1 NXE TOXKK 'I've 1MB everything happen to you, haven't I?" said Oldraeadow. Yes," she assented. "Everything. And I've made you suffer, too. Isn't that strange ; everybody who comes near me I make suffer." "Well, in different ways," he said. "Some because you are near and others because you won't be." c was colourless. His hand still passed across her i Yt you *aid. after a mop 'iat it couldn't have been. Try to see that and to accept it. you and me. Not Barney's friend and Barney's \\ii very way it couldn't have done, really. It makes no difference for me. I'm a dtracinte, as I said. A wanderer. Hut what would have become of \ all full of roots as you are ? You can live it down with- out me. You never could have with. And how could you have wandered with me? For that must be my life." 11 You kn no good trying to comfort me." said OldnM ;idow. "What I feel is that any roots 1 have arc in > M They will grow again. The others will grow aji. " I don't want oth< rs, darling," said Oldmeadow. v Y< i pee, my heart is broken, too." lifted h< r head at last and he saw her marred and ravaged face. can't be h !pk he had loved as a little lx>y : little Diamond held to the breast of ' North Wind as she Hies forth in In r stn amini: hair a^iinst a sky of stars. So he felt himself lyinu en h< r breast und lifted with 1 M I've told you how happy I can be. It's all tr she said. " It's all there. The light, the peace, the strength. I shall find them. And so will you." ADRIENNE TONER 315 44 Shall I ? " he questioned gently. " Without you ? " 44 Yes. Without me. You will find them. But you won't be without me," said Adrienne. Already she was finding them. He knew that, for, as she looked at him, he felt an influence passing from her to him like the laying of her hand upon his brow. But it was closer than that. It was to her breast that her eyes held him while, in a long silence, the compulsion of her faith flowed into him. First quietness ; then peace ; then a lifting radiance. " Promise me," he heard her say. He did not know what it was he must promise, but he seemed to feel it all without knowing and he said : 4t I promise." She rose and stood above him. " You mustn't regret. You mustn't want." She laid her hands upon his shoulders as she spoke and looked down at him, so austere, so radiant. 4t Any- thing else would have spoiled it. We were only meant to find each other like this and then to part." 44 I'll be good," said Oldmeadow. It was like saying one's prayers at one's mother's knees, and his lips found the child-like formula. 44 We must part," said Adrienne. u I have my life and you have yours and they take different ways. But you won't be without me, I won't be without you. How can we be, when we will never, never forget each other and our love ? " He looked up at her. He had put out his hands and they grasped her dress as a donor in a votive altarpiece grasps the Madonna's healing garment. It was not, he knew, to keep her. It was rather in an accepting relin- quishment that he held her thus for their last communion, receiving through touch and sight and hearing her final benison. 44 1 will think of you every day, until I die," she said. 44 1 will pray for you every day. Dear friend dearest friend God bless and keep you." 816 ADIUKNNi; TONT.U had stooped to him and for a transcending momeiSt he was takm into her strong, life-pi ibrace. '1 clii was come as he felt her ; und him and IUT kiss ujxm liis forehead. And as she 1 him thus In Inliivcd all that she had said and all for which she could havr found no words. Th.v >uld find the light and more and more feel tluir unity in it : that the thought of her would be strength to him alwa as the thought of him and of his love would be strength to her. After she had gone, he sat for a long time bath the sense of her life, and tasting, for that span of time, her own security of eternal goodness. P ,-in ted in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frame and London THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. SEP JAN 17 1933 MAR 3 1 196$ 2 JAN 2 ' FEB 221935 JUL 2- JVM. 26 LD . UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY