Adrienne Toner: A Novel

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

After all a schoolboy mutter best expressed what he felt. She was not accustomed to having her ministrations met with such mutters and she did not like it. That was apparent to him as she turned away and went back to the sofa and Barney. She had again tried him and again found him wanting.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Barney and Miss Toner left in her motor next morning shortly after breakfast, and though with his friend Oldmeadow had no further exchange, he had, with Miss Toner, a curious encounter that was, he felt sure, a direct result of her impressions of the night before. They met in the dining-room a few moments before breakfast, and as she entered, wearing already her motoring hat, closely bound round her face with a veil, he was aware that she looked, if that were possible, more composed than he had ever seen her. He felt sure that she had waited for her opportunity, and had followed him downstairs, knowing that she would find him alone; and he realized then that she was more composed, because she had an intention or, rather, since it was more definite, a determination. Determination in her involved no effort: it imparted, merely, the added calm of an assured aim.

She gave him her hand and said good morning with the same air of scrupulous accuracy that she had given to the rendering of “Litanei” and then, standing before the fire, her hands clasped behind her, her eyes raised to his, she said: “Mr. Oldmeadow, I want to say something to you.”

It was the gentle little voice, unaltered, yet he knew that he was in for something he would very much rather have avoided; something with anybody else unimaginable, but with her, he saw it now, quite inevitable. Yet he tried, even at this last moment, to avoid it and said, adjusting his eyeglass and moving to the sideboard: “But not before we’ve had our tea, surely. Can’t I get you some? Will you trust me to pour it out?”

“Thanks; I take coffee—not tea,” said Miss Toner from her place at the fire, “and neither has been brought in yet.”

He had just perceived, to his discomfiture, that they had not. There was nothing for it but to turn from the ungarnished sideboard and face her again.

“It’s about Barney, Mr. Oldmeadow,” Miss Toner said, unmoved by his patent evasion. “It’s because I know you love Barney and care for his happiness. And it’s because I hope that you and I are to be friends, and friendship can only be built on truth. Try to trust more; will you? That’s all I want to say. Try to trust. You will be happier if you do and make other people happier.”

Oldmeadow had never experienced such an assault upon his personality, and he met it gagged and bound, for, assuredly, this was to be Barney’s wife. A slow flush mounted to his face.

“I’m afraid I seem very strange and unconventional to you,” Adrienne Toner went on. “You’ve lived in a world where people don’t care enough for each other to say the real things. They must be felt if they’ve to be said, mustn’t they? Yet you do care for people. I have seen that, watching you here; and you care for real things. It’s a crust of caution and convention that is about you. You are afraid of expression. You are afraid of feeling. You are afraid of being taken in and of wasting yourself. Don’t be afraid, Mr. Oldmeadow. We never lose ourselves by trusting. We never lose ourselves by giving. It’s a realer self that comes. And with you, I see it clearly, if you let the crust grow thicker, it will shut life and light and joy away from you; and when light cannot visit our hearts, they wither within us. That is your danger. I want to be your friend, so I must say the truth to you.”