“You’ve the gift of leadership. The gift for big things generally.”
She nodded. “I’m only fit for big things.”
“Only? How do you mean?”
“Little ones are more difficult, aren’t they. My feet get tangled in them. To be fit for daily life and all the tangles; that’s the real test, isn’t it? That’s just the kind of thing you see so clearly, Mr. Oldmeadow. Big things and the people who do them are just the kind of things you see through.”
“Oh, but you misunderstood me—or misunderstand,” said Oldmeadow. “Big things are the condition of life; the little things can only be built up on them. One must fight wars and save the world before one can set up one’s tea-tables.” He remembered having thought of something like this at Lydia’s tea-table. “Tea-tables are important, I know, and the things that happen round them. But if one can nurse a ward of typhus patients single-handed one must be forgiven for letting the tea-pot slip. Really I never imagined you capable of all you’ve done.”
“I always thought I was capable of anything,” said Adrienne smiling slightly, her eyes meeting his in a tranquil partaking of the jest, that must be at her expense. “You helped me to find that out about myself—with all the rest. And I was right enough in thinking that I could face things and lead people. But I wasn’t capable of the most important things. I wasn’t capable of being a wise and happy wife. I wasn’t even capable of being truthful in drawing-rooms when other women made me angry. But I can go on battle-fields and found hospitals and tend the sick and dying. Shells and pestilences”—her smile was gone—“if people knew how trivial they are—compared to seeing your husband look at you with hatred.”
She had turned her eyes away as she was thus betrayed into revealing the old bitternesses of her heart and he dropped his to the little pocket-book that now lay still between her hands. The feeling in her voice, the suffering it revealed to him, with the bitterness, woke an unendurable feeling in himself. He did not clearly see what the test was to which he put himself; but he knew that what he must say to her was the most difficult thing he had ever had to say; and he found it only after the silence had grown long.
“Mrs. Barney—everything has changed, hasn’t it; you’ve changed; I’ve changed; Barney may have changed. It was only, after all, a moment of miserable misunderstanding between you. He never really knew what you were feeling. He thought you didn’t care for him any longer, when, really, you were finding out how much you cared. Don’t you think, before you take final decisions, that you ought to see Barney again? Don’t you think you ought to give him another chance? I could arrange it all for you, when I got home.”
The flood of colour, deep and sick, had mounted to her face, masking it strangely, painfully, to where the white linen cut across her brow and bound her chin. And, almost supplicatingly, since he saw that she could not speak, he murmured: “You can be a wise and happy wife now; and he loved you so dearly.”
She did not lift her eyes. She sat there, looking down, tightly holding the pocket-book in her lap.