Adrienne Toner: A Novel

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

He drew her to a chair and, seating herself, her faded face and eyes that had lost their old look of surprise turned to the light, Mrs. Chadwick assented, “It’s very fatiguing to live with, certainly. Sometimes I really think I must go away for a little while and have a change. Nancy would come and stay with Meg, you know. But I can’t miss Barney’s last weeks. He comes to us, now, again. And it might not be right to leave Meg. One must not think of oneself at a time like this, must one?” The knitting lay in her lap and she was twisting and untwisting her handkerchief after her old fashion; but her fingers moved slowly and without agitation and Oldmeadow saw that some spring of life in her had been broken.

“The best plan would be that Meg should, as soon as possible, take up some work,” he said, “and that you and Nancy should go away. Work is the only thing for Meg now. She’ll dash herself to pieces down here; and you with her. There’ll soon be plenty to do. Nursing and driving ambulances.”

“Nancy is going to nurse, you know,” said Mrs. Chadwick. “But she won’t go as long as we need her here. She has promised me that. I don’t know what I should do without Nancy. I shouldn’t care to be nursed by Meg myself, if I were a wounded soldier. She is so very restless and would probably forget quite simple things like giving one a handkerchief or seeing that hot-water-bottles were wrapped up before she put them to one’s feet. A friend of mine—Amy Hatchard—such a pretty woman, though her hair was bright, bright red—and I never cared for that—had the soles of her feet nearly scorched off once by a careless nurse. Dear Nancy. I often think of Nancy now, Roger. I believe, you know, that if Adrienne had not come Nancy and Barney might have married. How happy we should all have been; though she has so little money.”

“I wish you could all think a little more kindly of Adrienne,” said Oldmeadow after a silence. Mrs. Chadwick had begun to knit. “I must tell you that I myself feel differently about her.”

“Do you, Roger?” said Mrs. Chadwick, without surprise. “You have a very judicious and balanced mind, I know; even when you were hardly more than a boy Francis noticed it and said that he’d rather go by your opinion than by that of most of the men he knew. I always remembered that, afterwards. Till she came. And then I believed in her rather than in you. You thought us all far too fond of her from the very first. And now we have certainly changed. Meg is certainly very violent; much more violent than I could ever be.... I am sorry for Adrienne. I don’t think she meant to do us any harm—as Meg believes.”

“She only meant to do you good, I am sure of it. I saw her in Oxford, let me tell you about it, when I went in to see Palgrave. She is very unhappy. She wants Palgrave to go. She wants him to feel it right to go. It’s not she, really, who is keeping him back now.”

“My poor Palgrave. Meg is very unkind about him; very bitter and unkind; her own brother. But it was very wrong of Adrienne to go and set up housekeeping in Oxford near him. You must own that, Roger. She may not be keeping him back; but she is aiding and abetting him always. It made Barney even more miserable and disgusted than he was before. And it looks so very odd. Though I don’t think that anyone could ever gossip about Adrienne. There is something about her that makes that impossible.”

“There certainly is. I am glad she is with Palgrave, poor boy.”

“I am glad you are sorry for him, Roger”—Mrs. Chadwick dropped a needle. “How clumsy I am. My fingers seem all to have turned to thumbs. Thank you so much. I try to make as many socks as I can for our poor men; fingering wool; not wheeling, which is so much rougher to the feet. I’m sure I’d rather march, and, if it came to that, die in fingering than in wheeling. Just as I’ve always felt, foolish as it may sound, that if I had to be drowned I’d rather it were in warm, soapy water than in cold salt. Not that one is very likely, ever, to drown in one’s bath. But tell me about Adrienne and Palgrave, Roger, and what they said.”

Mrs. Chadwick’s discourse seemed, beforehand, to make anything he might have to tell irrelevant and, even while he tried to make her see what he had seen, he felt it to be a fruitless effort.