“No. She runs a hospital in the country, at her husband’s place, Nancy tells me; and is very happy.”
“Very. Has a fine boy, and is completely reinstated. It’s a remarkable ending to the story, isn’t it? She met him at the front, you know, driving her ambulance; and he has twice as much in him as poor Eric Hayward.”
“Remarkable. Yet Meg’s a person who only needs her chance. She’s the sort that always comes out on top.”
“Does it comfort her mother a little for all she’s suffered to see her on top?”
“It almost comically comforts her. All the same, Eleanor Chadwick has her depths. Nothing will ever comfort her for Palgrave’s death.”
“I understand that,” said Mrs. Aldesey. “Nothing could. How she must envy the happy mothers whose boys were killed at the front. To have one’s boy die in prison as a conscientious objector must be the bitterest thing the war has given any mother to bear.”
“He was a dear boy,” said Oldmeadow. “Heroically wrong-minded.” He could hardly bear to think of Palgrave.
“He wasn’t alone, you know,” said Mrs. Aldesey after a moment. Something was approaching that he would rather not have to speak of; a name he would so much rather not name. And, evading it, feebly, he said, “His mother got to him in time, I know.”
“Yes. But all the time. She went and lived near the prison. Adrienne Toner I mean.”
Her eyes were on him and he hoped that no readjustment of his features was visible. “Oh, yes. Nancy told me that,” he said.