“Yes, sir. The ladies will be very glad to see you, sir. These are sad days for them—the family dispersed as it is.”
Johnson defined the situation as he felt that it could be most fittingly defined and Oldmeadow inwardly applauded his “dispersed.”
The drawing-room, into which Johnson ushered him, had, for the first time in his memory of it, a mournful air. It had always been shabby, and these were the same faded chintzes, the same worn rugs; but now, fireless and flowerless, it neither spoke nor smiled and, with the sense it gave of an outlived epoch, it was almost spectral. The photographs all looked like the photographs of dead people and the only similitude of life was the loud, silly ticking of the French clock on the mantelpiece; Mrs. Chadwick’s cherished clock; one of her wedding-presents.
“I’m afraid it’s rather chilly, sir,” said Johnson. “No one has sat here of an evening now for a long time.” He put a match to the ranged logs, drew the blinds up farther so that the autumnal sunlight might more freely enter, and left him.
Oldmeadow went to the window and turned over the magazines, a month old, that lay on a table there.
He was standing so when Meg entered, and she had half the length of the room to traverse before they met. She was in black, in deep black; but more beautiful than he had ever seen her; her tossed auburn locks bound low on her forehead with a black ribbon, her white throat upright, her eyes hard with their readiness, their resource. Beautiful and distressing. It distressed him terribly to see that hardness in her eyes.
“How do you do, Roger,” she said, giving him her hand. “It’s good to see you. Mother will be glad.”
They seated themselves on one of the capacious sofas and she questioned him quickly, competently, while the hard eyes seemed to measure him lest he measure her. It was almost the look of the déclassée woman who forestalls withdrawal in an interlocutor. But, as he answered her quietly, his fond regard upon her, her defences began to fall. “It’s the only life, a soldier’s, isn’t it?” she said. “At all times, really. But, at a time like this, anything else seems despicable, doesn’t it; contemptibly smug and safe. The uniform is so becoming to you. You look a soldier already. One feels that men will trust and follow you. Didn’t you burn with rage and shame, too, when, for those four days, it seemed we might not come in?”
“I felt too sure we should come in, to burn with rage and shame,” said Oldmeadow.
“Ah! but it was not so sure, I’m afraid,” said Meg, and in her eyes, no longer hard, wild lights seemed to pass and repass. “I’m afraid that there are nearly enough fools and knaves in England to wreck us. Not quite enough, thank heaven! But, for those four days, Eric was terribly afraid. He was killed, you know, Roger, very splendidly, leading his men.”