Chapter VI

Her eyes met his for a long time before he realized that she might find not only irrelevance but even irreverence. She had shown him her very soul and he had answered with this announcement. Of course it had been because of what she told him that he had seen at last his own necessity; but he could not tell her that.

"I'm not sorry for you," he said. "I envy you. You are one of the few really happy people in the world."

"But I'd quite given that idea up, Mr. Oldmeadow," she said. "What has made you change?"

He saw the trouble in her face, the suspicion of her power and its compulsion over the lives of others. He took the bull by the horns.

"You, of course. I can't pretend that it's anything else. I want to do it for you and with you."

"But it's for Barney and Nancy that it's to be done," she said, and her gravity had deepened. "It's just the same for them--and you explained yesterday that it would spoil it for them."

"It may spoil it somewhat," said Oldmeadow, contemplating her with a curious tranquillity; she was now all that was left him in life to contemplate; and she was all he needed. "But it won't prevent it. I still think it a wrong thing to do. I still think it a felony. But, since I can't turn you from it, what I've come to see is that it's, as you said, for you and me, who care for 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 perplexed 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 discomfort. 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 the trouble and perplexity and she said:

"They'll have to pay in far more than social and moral discomfort."

"Well? In what way? How?" he challenged her.

"You said they'd lose you."

"Only, if you married me," he reminded her.

But she remembered more accurately. "No. They'd lose you anyway. You said so. You said that if they 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 facing them all at Coldbrooks after we'd come out in the 'Daily Mail' with head-lines and pictures."

Her lucidity could indeed disconcert him when it sharpened itself like this with the apt use of his vocabulary. He had to stop to think.

"There won't, at all events, be pictures," he paused by the triviality to remark. "We shan't appear. It will be an hotel over here and the case will be undefended. We needn't, really, consider all that too closely. At the worst, if they do lose me, it's not a devastating loss. They'll have each other."

"Ah, but who 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. There was only one answer to that question and he could not make it. He was aware of the insufficiency of his substitute. "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 meet again, Mr. Oldmeadow. Our paths lie so apart, don't they? My friendship will do you very little good."

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 some day. 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 the trouble on her face had deepened. "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 must get on as best it can. You're a terrible person, you know"--he smiled a little at her, finding the banter so that she should not guess at the commotion of his heart. "But I like you just as you are. Now where shall we go?"