“Good heavens! The cleverness of that woman!” Mrs. Averil exclaimed. “If she can’t be powerful, she’ll be pitiful! She’s worked on your feelings; I can see that, Roger. And I thought you, at least, were immune. Well; she does not work on mine. I am not in the least sorry for her.”
“She’s being unfairly treated,” said Oldmeadow. “It’s grotesque that Meg should have turned upon her.”
“And Eleanor has, too, you know,” said Mrs. Averil. “It’s grotesque, if you like; but I see a grim justice in it. She made them do things and believe things that weren’t natural to them and now she’s lost her power and they see things as they are.”
“It’s because she’s failed that they’ve turned against her,” said Nancy. “If she’d succeeded they would have gone on accepting what she told them and making her their idol.”
“Adrienne mustn’t fail,” said Mrs. Averil dryly. “The only justification for Adrienne is to be in the right. If the blood of Saint Januarius doesn’t liquefy, why should you keep it in a shrine? She’s a woman who has quarrelled with her husband and disgraced her sister and brother-in-law, and broken her mother-in-law’s heart. You can’t go on making an idol of a saint who behaves like that.”
“She never claimed worldly success,” said Nancy. “She never told Meg to go so that she could get married afterwards; she never told Palgrave that war was wrong because it was easier not to fight.”
“Oh, yes, she did claim worldly success, really,” said Mrs. Averil, while her eyes rested on her daughter with a tenderness that contrasted with her tone. “Her whole point was that if you were right spiritually—‘poised’ she called it, you remember—all those other things would be added unto you. I’ve heard her claim that if you were poised you could get anything you really wanted. I asked her once if I should find a ten-pound note under the sofa-cushion every morning after breakfast if I could get poised sufficiently!” Mrs. Averil laughed, still more dryly while she still maintained her tender gaze and Nancy said, smiling a little: “She might have put it there for you if she’d been sure you were poised.”
“Well, let us bury Adrienne for the present,” said Mrs. Averil. “Tell Roger about your nursing plans. She may go to London, Roger, this winter, and I’m to be left alone.”
“You’re to be left to take care of Aunt Eleanor, if I do go,” said Nancy; and Mrs. Averil said that there must certainly be some one left to take care of poor Eleanor.
Oldmeadow went up to Coldbrooks next morning. The first person he saw was old Johnson at the door and he remembered Eleanor Chadwick’s griefs on his account. Nothing, now, could have been kept from Johnson and his face bore the marks of the family calamities. He was aged and whitened and his voice had armed itself, since the downfall of his grave, vicarious complacency, with solemn cadences.