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 messages.

Oldmeadow had not seen his old friend since the Sunday night when he had left her and Joséphine 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. Chadwick 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 against 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. I never saw her cry before. I never imagined Adrienne crying. She feels, she can't help feeling, that it is because of that they have lost their baby."

Oldmeadow ordered with difficulty his astonished and indignant thoughts. "That is absolutely unfair to Barney," he said. "I was with them. No one could have been gentler or more patient."

"I know you were with them. It would seem like that to you, Roger, because you are a man and men still think of women as a sort of chattel. That's how it looks to Adrienne. So much more independence, you know, than we ever had.--Oh, I don't say it's a good thing! I feel that we are weaker and need guidance."

"Chattels? Where do chattels come in here? She said that to you. Barney merely pleaded with her so that he could do what you wanted him to do."

"I 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 in danger. A woman would have understood. No; you didn't treat Adrienne like a chattel; no one could treat Adrienne like one. It was poor little Meg I meant. I see now how wrong it was to think of taking her from the man she loves; when she _has_ gone, you know, so that everyone must know and there can be no good in it. And they probably _have_ bought a wedding-ring. Oh, Roger, she does comfort me about Meg. She makes me feel the deeper things, the things conventions blind us to. She makes me feel that the great thing, the only thing, is to follow one's own light and that Meg did do that. And after all, you know, Roger, Jowett had George Eliot and Lewes to breakfast and they were never married."

"Ha! ha! ha!" Oldmeadow laughed. He could not repress his bitter mirth. "Follow your light if there's breakfast with a clergyman at the end of it!" he cruelly suggested. Yet he was too much amused, while so incensed, for there to be much cruelty, and Mrs. Chadwick, gazing at him as if from under her twisted straw, murmured: "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. Chadwick'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: '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. "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 determined that she should not seem to be put in the wrong by his going."

Like the March Hare Mrs. Chadwick was wild yet imperturbable. "Of course she was determined. 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 should have seen and felt. How could she beg him to stay for her danger when he would not stay for her love?"

Yes; Adrienne had her very firmly. She had even imparted to her, when it came to the issue, something of coherency. She was building up, in Barney's absence, strange ramparts against him. Barney had dragged her in the dust and there she intended to drag him. Wasn't that it? Oldmeadow asked himself as he eyed his altered friend, muttering finally: "I'm every bit as responsible as Barney, if it comes to that. I upheld him, completely, in his decision. I do still. Adrienne may turn you all upside down; but she won't turn me; and I hope she won't turn Barney."

"I think, Roger, that you might at all events remember that she's not out of danger," said Mrs. Chadwick. "She may die yet and give you no more trouble. You have never cared for her; I know that, and so does she; and I do think it's unfeeling of you to speak as you do when she's lying there above us. And she looks so lovely in bed," Mrs. Chadwick began to weep again. "I never saw such thick braids; like Marguerite in Faust. Her hands on the sheets so thin and white and her eyes enormous. I don't think even you could have the heart to jibe and laugh if you saw her."

"I didn't laugh at Adrienne, you know," Oldmeadow reminded her, rising and buttoning his overcoat. "I laughed at you and Jowett. No; Adrienne is no laughing matter. But she won't die. I can assure you of that now. She's too much life in her to die. And though 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 fireplace. But he had not come to seek counsel or sustainment. 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 unfortunate. But you couldn't have got back sooner, could you, once you'd gone on from Paris."

"Not possibly. I went on from Paris that very night, you see. I caught the night express to the Riviera. They'd left Cannes as an address, but when I got there I found they'd moved on to San Remo. It was Tuesday before I found them. My one idea was to find them as soon as possible, of course. No; I suppose it couldn't be helped; once I'd gone."

"And it was quite useless? You'd no chance with Meg at all?"

"None whatever. Quite useless. Never was such a wild-goose chase. It was exactly as Adrienne had said."

"Still it couldn't have been foreseen so securely by anyone but Adrienne. Many girls would have jumped at the chance."

"Not if they'd had Adrienne to help them. We might have realized that. That's what armed Meg. I heard Adrienne in everything she said. Even Mother thinks Adrienne was right, now, you know, Roger. And it was all for Mother, wasn't it? that I went. That makes it all so particularly ironic. Only dear Mummy was never very strong at logic. She takes the line now that we're narrow-minded conventionalists, you and I, for thinking that a girl oughtn't to go off with a married man. I can't feel that, you know, Roger," said Barney in his listless tone. "I can't help feeling that Meg has done something shameful. You ought to have seen her! Positively smug! sitting there with that ass of a fellow in that damned Riviera hotel! I had the horridest feeling, 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. He's a stupid fellow, but honest; and he came outside and tried to tell me what he felt and how it would be all right and that he was going to devote his life to her. But I think he feels pretty sick, really. While Meg treated me as if I were a silly little boy. If anyone can carry the thing through, Meg will."

"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 the 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 Oldmeadow 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 '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 on quickly. "She kept saying, 'Oh, you oughtn't to be here, Barney. You oughtn't to be here.' But no one could have been sweeter. We sat down on the old bench, you know, and she told me. That Adrienne had nearly died. That the baby was dead. I could hardly believe her, at first. I stared at her, I know, and I kept saying, 'What do you mean, Nancy?--what do you mean?' And she began to cry and I cried, too. Men do feel, Roger, all the same, even though they haven't 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"--his voice had shaken more and more; he had put his hand before his eyes, and, then, suddenly, he leaned forward and buried his head on the arm of the sofa.

"My poor Barney! My dear boy!" Oldmeadow muttered. He came and sat down beside him; he laid his arm around his shoulders. "It's not your fault," he said.

"Oh, don't say that, Roger!" sobbed Barney. "It's no good trying to comfort me. I've broken her heart. She doesn't say so. She's too angelic to say it; but she lies there and looks it. My poor darling! My poor, courageous darling; what she has been through! It can't be helped. I must face it. I'm her husband. I ought to have understood. She supplicated me, and I rejected her, and the child is dead."

"The child's death is a calamity for which no one can be held responsible unless it is Adrienne herself," said Oldmeadow. While Barney sobbed he was thinking intently, for this was a turning-point in Barney's destiny. He would remain in subjugation to Adrienne's conception of the wrong done her or he must be enabled to regain the sense of innocence to which he had every right. "She forced the situation on you. She chose to break rather than bend," he said. "Listen to me, Barney. I don't speak in any enmity to your wife; but listen 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 the much you'd have to learn from her. Nothing more reassured me than what you said that night. And I was reassured the other day by your firmness. It implies no disloyalty in you to see the defects now. It was power over you she wanted the other day and to see herself put in the right, before me; and to see me worsted, before you. You know it, Barney; you know it in your heart. And she knows it too. There was no failure of love in what you said. There was only failure of homage. You were right in opposing her. She was wrong in the issue she made. She was wrong from the first of the miserable affair in having concealed it from you. If you'd stayed behind as she wanted you to do, you'd have shown yourself a weakling and she'd have been further than ever from knowing herself in error. There is the truth; and the sooner you see it, the sooner she will."

For some time after his friend had ended, Barney lay silent, his face still hidden. But his sobs had ceased. And his silence, at last, grew too long for any disclaimer to be possible to him. He had been brought, Oldmeadow knew it from the very rhythm of his breathing, to the passionless contemplation where alone truth is visible. And what he said at last was: "She'll never see it like that."

"Oh, yes, she will," said Oldmeadow. And he remembered Nancy's wisdom. "If you hold to it firmly and tenderly and make her feel you love her while you make her feel you think her wrong."

"She'll never see it," Barney repeated, and Oldmeadow now suspected, and with a deep uneasiness, that Barney might be seeing further than himself. "She can't."

"You mean that she's incapable of thinking herself wrong?"

"Yes, incapable," said Barney. "Because all she's conscious of is the wish to do right. And she is right so often, she is so good and beautiful, that it must be like that with her. She can break; but she can't bend."

Oldmeadow was silent for a moment and Barney, on the arm of the sofa, was silent. "Of course," Oldmeadow then said, "the less you say about it the better. Things will take their place gradually."

"I've not said anything about it," said Barney. "I've only thought of comforting and cherishing her. But it's not enough. I'll never say anything; but she'll know I'm keeping something back. She knows it already. I see that now. And I didn't know it till you put it to me."

"She'll have to accept it; or to live with it unaccepted, then. You can't consider yourself a criminal to give her moral ease."

"No," said Barney after a pause. "No; I can't do that. Though that's what Mummy wants me to do. But I can be horribly sorry."

"Horribly sorry. Let the rest sink into the unspoken. When people love each other they can, I'm sure, live over any amount of unspoken things."

"It hasn't been unspoken between you and me, though, has it, Roger?" said Barney, and he raised himself and got upon his feet as he said it. "There's the trouble. There's where I _am_ wrong. For she'd feel it an intolerable wrong if she knew that it hadn't been unspoken between you and me. And she'd be right. When people love each other such reticences and exclusions wrong their love."

"But since you say she knows," Oldmeadow suggested after another moment.

Barney stood staring out of the twilight window.

"She doesn't know that I tell you," he said.

"You've told me nothing," said Oldmeadow.

"Well, she doesn't know what I listen to, then," said Barney.

Oldmeadow was again conscious of the deep uneasiness. "It's quite true I've no call to meddle in your affairs," he said. "The essential thing is that you love each other. Let rights and wrongs go hang."

"You haven't meddled, Roger." Barney moved towards 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."