“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 in our structure 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 always imagined Adrienne to be a self-righteous prig who sets herself up above others. She doesn’t; she doesn’t,” Palgrave repeated with conviction. “She’d accept the feet of clay if you’ll grant her the heart of flame—for everybody; the wings—for everybody. There’s your mistake, Roger. Adrienne believes that everybody has wings as well as herself; and the only difference she 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 Oldmeadow, after a moment. “You are wise in everything but experience; and you see deep. Suppose we come to a compromise. 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 I came to talk about, you know, was you.”
“I know,” said Palgrave, and he gave a deep sigh.
“Be patient with me,” said Oldmeadow. “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 grave that 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 all the same there’s not much torch about you.”
“It’s rather sad, isn’t it,” 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 know, that 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.”
“Of course you may. You’ve been awfully decent,” Palgrave murmured.
“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 mantelpiece.” 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.”