Adrienne Toner: A Novel

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

Their packing was done and the room denuded; the men had taken away the piano that morning. He had his letters to write; so there was really no reason why she should not go. And there was, besides, nothing that they had to say to each other, except the one thing he had to say.

The silence that overtakes parting friends on a station platform had overtaken them since the morning, though, at lunch, Adrienne had talked with some persistence of her immediate plans and prospects and about the unit of doctors and nurses who were to meet her in Italy. There was no reason why she should not go, and he would even rather she did. He would rather see no more of her until evening when everything but the one thing would be over and done with. And so he was left with his letters, leaning his elbows on the table over the hotel paper and staring out at the Saône and the white archevêché.

Both letters were difficult to write; but beside the one to Lydia, the one to Barney was easy. Barney, after all, was to gain everything from what he had to tell him, and Lydia was to lose; how much was Lydia to lose? He recalled their last evening together and its revelations and saw that the old laughing presage was now more than fulfilled. Lydia was to lose more than her toes and fingers; in any case. Even if he returned to her alone, she cared for him too much not to feel, always, the shadow of his crippled heart; his heart not only crippled, but occupied, so occupied that friendships, however near, became, in a sense, irrelevancies. And if he returned with Adrienne—but could he return with Adrienne? What kind of a life could he and Adrienne lead in London?—even if Lydia’s door, generously, was opened to them, as he believed it would be—knowing her generous.

He laid down his pen and fixed his eyes on the river and he tried to see Lydia and Adrienne together. But it was a useless effort. From this strange haven of the Lyons hotel where he had spent the happiest fortnight of his life, he could not see himself into any future with familiar features. He could only see himself and Adrienne, alone, at hotels. To attempt to place her in Lydia’s generous drawing-room was to measure more accurately than he had yet measured it the abyss that separated him from his former life. If it could be spanned; if Adrienne could be placed there, on the background of eighteenth-century fans and old glass, she became a clipped and tethered seagull in a garden, awkward, irrelevant, melancholy. Lydia might cease to find her third-rate and absurd; but she wouldn’t know what to do with her any more than she would have known what to do with the seagull. So what, if Adrienne became his wife, remained of his friendship with Lydia?

He put aside the unresolved perplexity and took Barney first.

“My dear Barney,” he wrote,—“I don’t think that the letter Adrienne has written to you will surprise you as much as this letter of mine. You will understand from hers that she wishes to free herself and to free you. You will understand that that is my wish, too. She only tells you that she has been staying here with me, for a fortnight, as my wife; that’s for your solicitor; you will read between the lines and know that it seemed worth while to both of us to make the necessary sacrifice in order to gain so much for you and for her. I hope that you and my dear Nancy will feel that we are justified, and that you will take your happiness as bravely as we secure it for you. You’ll know that our step hasn’t been taken lightly.

“But, now, dear Barney, comes my absolutely personal contribution. It is a contribution, for it will make you and Nancy happier to know that I have as much to gain as you and she. I have fallen in love with Adrienne and I hope that I may win her consent to be my wife. Yes, dear Barney, unbelievable as it will look to you, there it is; and she dreams of it as little as you could have dreamed of it. I met her again, as her letter informs you, at the Boulogne hospital. She asked me to say nothing about our meeting. She wanted to disappear out of your lives. She saved my life, I think, and I saw a great deal of her. What I found in her that I had not seen before I need not say.

“My great difficulty, my burden and perplexity now, lie in the fact that she has no trace of feeling for me that might give me hope. We became, at Boulogne, the best of friends; such friends that this plan suggested itself to her; and we remain, after our fortnight here, the best of friends; and that is all. Yet I have hope, unjustified and groundless though it may be, and had I not had it from the beginning I couldn’t have entered upon the enterprise; not even for you and Nancy. From one point of view it’s possible that you may feel that I’ve entered upon it in spite of you and Nancy. You may feel inclined to repudiate and disown the whole affair and to remain unaware of it. In that case it would come down to an appeal from me to you to carry it through for my sake. But from another point of view it makes it easier for you; easier for you to accept, since my hope gives integrity to the situation. That’s another thing that decided me. If it had been mere sham I don’t think I could have undertaken it. Adrienne felt none of my scruples on this score. She walked over legal and conventional commandments like a saint over hot ploughshares. But I haven’t her immunities. I should have felt myself badly scorched, and felt that I’d scorched you and Nancy, if my hope hadn’t given everything its character of bona fides.

“Dear Barney, dear Nancy, please forgive me if I’ve been selfish. It hasn’t all been selfishness, that I promise you; it was in hopes for you, too; and I have to face sacrifices. The worst of them will be that if Adrienne takes me I’ll have to lose you. You can measure the depth of my feeling for her from the fact that I can make such sacrifices. Perhaps you’ll feel that even if she doesn’t take me I’ll have to lose you. I hope not. I hope, in that case, that mitigations and refuges will be found for me and that some day you’ll perhaps be able to make a corner in your lives where I may creep and feel my wounds less aching. In any case, after Adrienne, you are the creatures dearest to me in the world and I am always and for ever your devoted friend,

Roger.”