Adrienne Toner: A Novel

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

MRS. AVERIL was in the hall. “Give them another moment,” he said. “I’m going outside.”

Tears were in his own eyes. He stepped out on to the flagged path of the little plot in front of the house where strips of turf and rose-beds ran between the house and the high wall. Between the clipped holly-trees at the gate he saw Barney’s car, and its lights, the wall between, cast a deep shadow over the garden.

The rain was falling thickly now and he stood, feeling it on his face, filled with a sense of appeasement, of accomplishment. They were together at last. It was not too late. At such a time, when all the world hung on the edge of an abyss, to be together for a moment might sum up more of real living than many happy years. They knew each other’s hearts and what more could life give its creatures than that recognition.

Suddenly, how he did not know, for there was no apparent movement and his eyes were fixed on the pallid sky, he became aware that a figure was leaning against the house in the shadow beside him. His eyes found it and it was familiar. Yet he could not believe his eyes.

She was leaning back, her hands against the wall on either side, and he saw, with the upper layer of perception that so often blunts a violent emotion, that her feet were sunken in the mould of Mrs. Averil’s rose-bed and that the cherished shoots of the new climbing rose were tangled in her clothes. The open window was but a step away.

She had come since they had come. She had crept up. She had looked in—for how long?—and had fallen back, casting out her arms so that it might not be to the ground. Her eyes were closed; but she had heard and seen him. As he stood before her, aghast, unable to find a word, he heard her mutter: “Take me away, please.”

Barney’s car blocked the egress of the gate and Barney might emerge at any moment. He leaned towards her and found that she was intricately caught in the rose. Her hat with its veil, her sleeve, her hair, were all entangled.

Dumbly, patiently, she stood, while, with fumbling fingers and terror lest they should be heard within—Mrs. Averil’s voice now reached him from the drawing-room—Oldmeadow released her and, his fingers deeply torn by the thorns, he was aware, in all the tumult of his thought, more than of the pain, of the wet fragrance of the roses that surrounded her. He shared what he felt to be her panic.

She had come hoping to see Barney; she had come to say good-bye to Barney, who would not come to her; and his heart sickened for her at the shameful seeming of her plight. She knew now that it must be her hope never to see Barney again.

There was a narrow passage, leading to the lawn and garden, between the house and the stable walls. Thickly grown with ivy, showing only a narrow opening above, where chimneys and gables cut against the sky, it was nearly as dark as a tunnel, and into this place of hiding he half led, half carried the unfortunate woman.