Adrienne, without speaking, took the letters and Oldmeadow moved away to the window and stood looking down at the little garden at the back of the house where a tall almond-tree delicately and vividly bloomed against the pale spring sky. He heard behind him the flicker of the fire in the grate, the pacing of Barney’s footsteps as he walked up and down, and the even turning of the pages in Adrienne’s hands. Then he heard her say: “Meg contradicts nothing that I have said to you, Barney. She writes bravely and truly; as I knew that she would write.”
Barney stopped in his pacing. “But darling; what she says about straightness?” It was feeble of Barney and he must know it. Feeble of him even to think that Adrienne might wish to avail herself of the loophole or that she considered herself in any need of a shield.
“You can’t misunderstand so much as that, Barney,” she said. “Meg and I mean but one thing by straightness; and that is truth. That was the way I tried to help them; it is the only way in which I can ever help people. I showed them the truth and kept it before their eyes when they were in danger of forgetting it. I said to them that if they were to be worthy of their love they must be brave enough to make sacrifices for it. I did not hide from them that there would be sacrifices—if that is what you mean.”
“It’s not what I mean, darling! Of course it’s not!” broke from poor Barney almost in a wail. “Didn’t you try at all to dissuade them? Didn’t you show them that it was desperate, and ruinous, and wrong? Didn’t you tell Meg that it would break Mother’s heart!”
The blue ribbon was again unrolled and Oldmeadow, listening with rising exasperation, heard that the sound of her own solemn cadences sustained her. “I don’t think anything in life is desperate or ruinous or wrong, Barney, except turning away from one’s own light. Meg met a reality and was brave enough to face it. I regret, deeply, that it came to her tragically, not happily; but happiness can grow from tragedy if we are brave and true and Meg is brave and true in her love. It won’t break your mother’s heart. Hers is a small, but not such a feeble, heart as that. I believe that the experience may strengthen and ennoble her. She has led too sheltered a life.”
Oldmeadow at this turned from the window and met Barney’s miserable eyes. “There’s really no reason for my staying on, Barney,” he said, and his voice as well as his look excluded Adrienne from their interchange. “I’ll take the 1.45 to Coldbrooks. What shall I tell your mother? That you’ve gone to Paris this morning?”
“Yes, that I’ve gone to Paris. That I’ll do my best, you know. That I hope to bring Meg back. Tell her to keep up her courage. It’ll only be a day or two after all, and we may be able to hush it up.”
“Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow,” said Adrienne in a grave, commanding tone. It was impossible before it to march out of the room and shut the door, though that was what his forcibly arrested attitude showed that he wished to do. “You as well as Barney must hear my protest,” said Adrienne, and she fixed her sombre eyes upon him. “Meg is with the man she loves. In the eyes of heaven he is her husband. It would be real as contrasted with conventional disgrace were she to leave him now. She will not leave him. I know her better than you do. I ask you”—her gaze now turned on Barney—“I desire you, not to go to her on such an unworthy errand.”
“But, Adrienne,” Barney, flushed and hesitating, pleaded, “it’s for Mother’s sake. Mother’s too old to be enlarged like that—that’s really nonsense, you know, darling. You see what Nancy says. They are frightened about her. It’s not only convention. It’s a terrible mistake Meg’s made and she may be feeling it now and only too glad to have the way made easy for her to come back. I promise you to be as gentle as possible. I won’t reproach her in any way. I’ll tell her that we’re all only waiting to forgive her and take her back.”
“Forgive her, Barney? For what? It is only in the eyes of the world that she has done wrong and I have lifted her above that fear. Convention does not weigh for a moment with me beside the realities of the human heart; nor would it with you, Barney, if it were not for the influence of Mr. Oldmeadow. I have warned you before; it is easy to be worldly-wise and cynical and to keep to the broad road; it is easy to be safe. But withering lies that way: withering and imprisonment, and—”