Chapter XX

The war thus had its uses to Mrs. Chadwick. Barbara did not go to the Tyrol. By the end of September Oldmeadow and Barney were in training, one on the Berkshire and one on the Wiltshire downs, and Meg was ambiguously restored to her family at Coldbrooks.

Oldmeadow had not seen Barney for many days, when they met one afternoon at Paddington and travelled together as far as Didcot. They had the carriage to themselves and though Barney's demeanour was reticent there were many things about which, it was evident, he found it a relief to be communicative. It was from him that Oldmeadow learned of Meg's return.

"She'll be in a pretty box, won't she, if Hayward is killed," he said, smoking his cigarette and not looking at his friend. "He's over there, you know, and for my part I think there's very little chance of any of them coming back alive."

They both smoked in silence for a little while after this, contemplating the ordeal in which their country was involved rather than their own relation to it; but Oldmeadow's mind returned presently to Barney's difficulties and he asked him if it had been to see Hayward off that he'd just been up to London.

Barney, at this, had a quiet sardonic laugh. "Good heavens, no," he said. "Hayward went in the first week and Adrienne and Palgrave went up with Meg to see him off. Even if I'd wanted to, I'd have been allowed to have no hand in that. Adrienne is seeing to it all. Lawyers, money, I don't know what. No; I went up to spend my leave with old Boyd at his place in Chelsea. I didn't want to go home. Home is 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."

"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."

"Ha! ha!" laughed Barney and for a moment, an acutely uncomfortable one for Oldmeadow, he turned his eyes on his friend. "Thinks she's right! You needn't tell me that, Roger!"

It had indeed, Oldmeadow felt, hardly been decent of him.

"I know. Of course she would. But, all the same, people must be allowed to hold their own opinions."

"Must they?" said Barney. "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 dishonouring 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.

"Dishonour is a strong word, Barney. Palgrave is hardly more than a boy."

"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 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 folly."

"I know. Yes. Folly," said Oldmeadow absently. "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 she can."

"Sink or swim without me!" Barney echoed. "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 firmly under her thumb. She steers because she intends to steer and intends I shan't. I've tried nothing with Palgrave, except to keep my hands off him. Mother's talked to him, and Meg's talked to him; but nothing does any good. Oh, yes; Meg hangs on Adrienne because she's got nothing else to hang to; but she's frightfully down on Palgrave all the same. They're all united against me, but they're not united among themselves by any means. It's not a peaceful family party at Coldbrooks, I promise you. Poor Mother spends most of her time shut up in her room crying."

Barney offered no further information on this occasion and Oldmeadow asked for no more. It was from Mrs. Aldesey, some weeks later, that he heard that Eric Hayward had been killed. Mrs. Aldesey was his most punctual correspondent and her letters, full of pungent, apposite accounts of how the war was affecting London, the pleasantest experiences that came to him on the Berkshire downs, where, indeed, he did not find life unpleasant. Mrs. Aldesey made time for these long letters after tiring days spent among Belgian refugees and his sense of comradeship had been immensely deepened by the vast, new experience they were, from their different angles, sharing. It was difficult, on the soft October 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 happened 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 Palgrave what she did for Meg--standing by him. It is all more unhappy than you can imagine. Palgrave is at New College, now, you know, and I'm writing, because Aunt Eleanor's one hope is that you may be able to talk to him. Kindly, you know, Roger; and not as if you thought him a criminal or a coward; that is worse than useless, naturally. Palgrave is very arrogant; but you know what a tender heart he really has and I am sure that he 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 time and he wrote to Palgrave and asked him to give him tea. "I've got to talk to you, if you'll let me," he said, "but I shan't make myself 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 they must give up tormenting themselves and you about it. I shall like talking over your work with you, too, if I may, and renewing my own Oxford memories." So conciliatory, so affectionate (and he found it easy to be affectionate to poor Palgrave) was the tone of the letter that he had a swift reply. Palgrave would be very glad to see him.

It was a melancholy, deserted Oxford into which Oldmeadow drove his little car on a late October afternoon. Most of the youths he saw were of a nondescript variety, a type to whom Oxford means scholastic opportunity and nothing more. There were dark-skinned lads from distant parts of the Empire looking, to Oldmeadow's eye, rather pitiful and doomed to disappointment, and a hurrying, absorbed little Jap had an almost empty Broad as a setting for his alien figure.

Palgrave's name was freshly painted at the bottom of a staircase in the Garden Quad and Oldmeadow mounted to rooms that most delightfully overlooked the garden and its catalpa-tree.

Palgrave was ready for him. The tea was laid and he stood at the table cutting a cake as Oldmeadow entered. 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."

"It's not quite true or fair to say that, Palgrave," said Adrienne, whose 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 preoccupation 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 made 'respectable.' Oh, I see further into Meg's grief than you do, my poor Adrienne. She's just as conventional and unheroic at heart as Mother; and that's what _she_ minds--more than anything."

Oldmeadow, sunken in the deep chair Palgrave had drawn for him to the table, watched the curious interchange, and after a pause, in her jaded voice, Adrienne from the window-seat commented: "I understand her rage and misery. It's because her grief is divided and spoiled and tainted like that that she is distracted."

"Will you pour out tea?" Palgrave asked her gloomily. "You'll 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 seen her; the short jacket tying across white in front and white ruffles falling about her neck and hands. A small, dark hat was bent down about her face.

Strange, brooding face. What was she thinking of, Oldmeadow wondered, as he watched her hands, impeded by the falling ruffles, moving with the old, fumbling gestures among the tea-things; she had constantly to throw back the ruffles, and the tea-pot, after all, was too heavy for her. It slipped on one side as she lifted it and the hot tea poured over her hand. She kept her hold bravely and Oldmeadow rescued her.

"How stupid I am!" she said, biting her lip.

"You've scalded your hand," said Palgrave, eyeing her with his air no longer of rapturous but of gloomy devotion.

They made Oldmeadow think of comrade political prisoners moving off together in a convoy to Siberia. There was something as bleak, as heavy, as uninspired in their aspect. He could not think that Palgrave could now catch much light or flame from such a companion. They would trudge through the snow; condemned, but together; to be together was the best thing, now, that life offered them.

She said that the scald was nothing and asked to be trusted to go on with the tea, grasping the handle with resolution. Oldmeadow, however, standing beside her, insisted on filling the cups for her.

"You can be allowed to put in the milk and sugar, you 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 Botticelli 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 playfulness. "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 mentioned, "Meg blames Adrienne now for the whole affair! About Eric and herself! Actually! On the one hand Eric is her hero for whom she'll mourn for ever and on the other Adrienne is responsible for the fact that she's not 'respectable' and can't claim to be his widow. Oh, don't ask me how she contrives to work it out! Women 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!" 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 very, very unhappy. We can hardly imagine what the misery and confusion of Meg's heart must be."

"Oh, you'll make excuses for anyone, Adrienne! You're 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 responsible."

"But I am responsible," said Adrienne, while the dull flush still dyed her face. "I've always said that I was responsible. It was I who persuaded them to go."

"Yes. To go. Instead of staying and being lovers secretly. I know all about it. And no doubt Meg would rather it had been so now. And so would Mother!" Palgrave ground his teeth on a laugh. "That's where 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 moment on his shoulder as she went past his chair. "Come in to-night, after dinner, and tell me what you decide," she said.

"I'll have no news for you," Palgrave replied.

Oldmeadow had gone to hold the door open for her 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 intention 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 Palgrave. 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 think so. But you ought to see each other at a time like this. He may be ordered to France at any time now." He could not see her face.

"Do you mean," she said, after a moment, keeping the rigidity of her listening poise, "that he won't come to say good-bye?"

"I know nothing at all," said Oldmeadow. "I can only infer how far the mischief between you 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 mistakes, Mrs. Barney, and it's for you to take the first step."

"Barney doesn't want to see me," she repeated, and she went on, while he heard, growing in her voice, the note of the old conviction: "He has made mistakes, too. He has treated me unfairly, too. I can't take the first step."

"Don't you love him, then?" said Oldmeadow, and in his voice was the note of the old harshness.

"Does he love me?" she retorted, turning now, with sudden fire, and fixing her eyes upon him. "Why should he think I want to see him if he doesn't want to see me? Why 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. And you've hurt him so. You've meant to hurt him; I've seen it! I've seen it, Mrs. Barney. If you'll put by your pride everything can grow again."

"No! no! no!" 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 things are 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 her for a moment and he heard her say, as she went: "It's 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.