Chapter XVIII

Oldmeadow did not see Barney again for some months. He met Eleanor Chadwick towards the end of April, in the park, he on his way to Mrs. Aldesey's, she, apparently, 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 pretend not to see him and hurry down a path that led away from his; but his resolute eye perhaps checked the impulse. She faltered and then came forward, holding out her hand and looking rather wildly about her, and she said that London was really suffocating, wasn't it?

"You've been here for so long, haven't you," said Oldmeadow. "Or have you been here all this time? I've had no news of any of you, you see."

"It's all been such a troubled, busy time, Roger," said Mrs. Chadwick. "Yes, I've been here ever since. But, thank goodness, the doctors say she may be moved now, and she and I and Barney are going down to Devonshire next week. To Torquay. Such a dismal place, I think; but perhaps that's because so many of my relations have died there. I never have liked that red Devonshire soil. But the primroses will be out. That makes up a little."

"I'm glad that Mrs. Barney is better. When will you all be back at Coldbrooks?"

"In June, I hope. Yes; she is better. But so feeble, still; so frail. And quite, quite changed from her old bright self. It's all very depressing, Roger. Very depressing and wearing," said Mrs. Chadwick, opening her eyes very wide and staring before her in a way characteristic of her when she repressed tears. "Sometimes I hardly 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 something 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. Chadwick. He had not meant it at all; but now he felt sure that so, exactly, did it happen. Poor Mrs. Chadwick left to herself would have drifted to the shore by this time and Barney, at all events, would be swimming with his head up; it was Adrienne, of course, that kept them suffocating under the surface. "Well, I think it a pity you three should go off to Torquay alone," he evaded. "What's happening to the farm all this time?"

"Nancy is seeing to it for Barney," said Mrs. Chadwick. "She understands those things so well. Barney would not dream of letting the farm come between him and Adrienne at a time like this. He wants to be with her of course."

"Of course. All I mean is that I wish he could be with her at Coldbrooks. I suppose the doctor knows what's best, however."

"I'm glad to hear you own that anybody can know what's best, Roger, except yourself," said Mrs. Chadwick with her singularly unprovocative severity. "Of course she must go to the sea and of course Barney and I must be with her. She has two excellent nurses; but I would never trust the best nurse for certain things. I remember so well when I was ill myself once and saw the nurse behind a screen, eating raspberry jam out of the pot with her finger. You can't trust anybody, really." And that was all he got out of Eleanor Chadwick. Adrienne had spoiled things.

It was in June that he heard from Mrs. Averil that she and Nancy were in London for a few days staying with an old aunt in Eccleston Square. Mrs. Averil asked him to come to tea and he asked her and Nancy to do a play with him; but before these meetings took place he saw them both. It was at a Queen's Hall concert on Sunday afternoon that Mrs. Aldesey called his attention to his friends and, to his surprise, Oldmeadow saw that Barney was with them. They sat across the gangway at some little distance and his first impression of the three was that they were not happy.

"Did you know he was in town?" asked Mrs. Aldesey. "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 Juggernaut.

"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."

Oldmeadow was wondering too. There was something 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 there, 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 César Franck with him. And then it appeared that Adrienne had made an engagement for them with the Lumleys. He refused to go, I'm afraid, and she made an issue of it and, from what poor Eleanor told me, there was rather a row. So Adrienne has gone off alone and Barney is here till this evening. He's gone out now with Nancy to show her some pictures by a friend of his. It had all been arranged. So what were we to do about it, Roger?"

"Do about it? Why just what you have done. Why shouldn't she go with him?"

"Why indeed? Except that Adrienne has made the issue. It's awkward, of course, when you know there's 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 perplexity. "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 first with the Lumleys. If it was to keep him from coming, that didn't come out. She wouldn't let it come out; not into the open; of course."

"So things are going very badly. I'd imagined, with all Barney's contrition, that they might have worked out well."

"They've worked out as badly, I'm afraid, as they could. He was full of contrition. He was as devoted as possible, when they came back in May. But nothing altered her unflagging melancholy. And I suppose what happened was that he got tired. Barney was always like that, from the time he was in the nursery. He'd go on being patient and good-tempered until, suddenly, everything would break down and he would sulk for days. It's when he's pushed too far. And she has pushed him too far. She's set them all against him."

"Who is them?" Oldmeadow asked. "I saw, when we met in London, that Mrs. Chadwick actually had been brought to look upon Barney as a sort of miscreant and Adrienne as a martyr. Who else is there?"

"Well, no one else except Palgrave and Barbara. Palgrave can be very exasperating, as you know, and he takes the attitude now that Barney has done Adrienne 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 takes 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. I'm 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--"

"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 scratching."

"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.

"Oh, Roger, Barney was so sorry to have to miss you," she said. And, at all events, whatever else Adrienne had spoiled, she had not spoiled Nancy's loving smile for him. "He had to catch the 4.45 to Coldbrooks, you know. There's a prize heifer arriving this evening and he must be there to welcome it. You must see his herd of Holsteins, Roger." Friesians were, at that date, still Holsteins.

"I'd like to," said Oldmeadow. "But I don't know when I shall, for, to tell you the truth, I've not been asked to Coldbrooks this summer. The first time since I've known them."

Nancy looked at him in silence.

"You'll come to us, of course," said Mrs. Averil.

"Do you really think I'd better, all things considered?" Oldmeadow asked.

"Why, of course you'd better. What possible reasons could there be for your not coming, except ones we don't accept?"

"It won't seem to range us too much in a hostile camp?"

"Not more than we're ranged already. Nancy and I are not going to give you up, my dear Roger, because Adrienne considers herself a martyr."

"I hope not, indeed. But it makes my exclusion from Coldbrooks more marked, perhaps, if I go to you. I imagine, though I am so much in her black books, that poor Mrs. Chadwick doesn't want my exclusion to be marked."

"You're quite right there. You are in her black books; but she doesn't want it marked; she'd like to have you, really, if Adrienne weren't there and if she didn't feel shy. And I really think it will make it easier for her if you come to us instead. It will tide it over a little. She'll be almost able to feel you are with them. After all, you do come to us, often."

"And I'll go up with you to Coldbrooks as if nothing had happened? I confess I have a curiosity to see how Mrs. Barney takes me."

"She's very good at taking things, you know," said Nancy.

Mrs. Averil cast a glance upon him. "It may be really something of a relief to their minds, Roger," she said, "if you turn up as if nothing had happened. They are in need of distractions. They are all dreadfully on edge, though they won't own to it, about Meg. The case is coming on quite soon now. Mrs. Hayward has lost no time, and poor Eleanor only keeps up because Adrienne is there to hold her up."

"Where is Meg? Do they hear from her?"

"They hear from her constantly. She's still on the Continent. She writes very easily and confidently. I can't help imagining, all the same, that Adrienne is holding her up, too. She's written to Nancy and Nancy hasn't shown me her letters."

"There is nothing to hide, Mother," said Nancy, and Oldmeadow had never seen her look so dejected. "Nothing at all, except that she's not as easy and confident as she wants to appear. Adrienne does hold her up. Poor Meg."