“I don’t know,” Nancy pondered. “I don’t love her, yet I feel as if I understood her; better, perhaps, than you do. I think she’s good, you know. I mean, I think she might be good, if she could ever see.”
“She’s too stupid ever, really, to see,” said Oldmeadow, and it was with impatience. “She’s encased in self-love like a rhinoceros in its hide. One can’t penetrate anywhere. You say she’s afraid of Barney and I can’t imagine what you mean by that. It’s true, when I’m by, she’s afraid of losing his admiration. But that’s not being afraid of him.”
Nancy still pondered; but not, now, in any perplexity. “She’s afraid because she cares so much. She’s afraid because she can care so much. It’s difficult to explain; but I feel as if I understood her. She’s never cared so much before for just one other person. It’s always been for people altogether; and because she was doing something for them. But Barney does something for her. He makes her happy. Perhaps she never knew before what it was to be really happy. You know, she didn’t give me the feeling of a really happy person. It’s something quite, quite new for her. It makes her feel uncertain of herself and almost bewildered sometimes. Oh, I’m sure of it the more I think of it. And you know, sometimes,” Nancy turned her deep, sweet eyes on him, “I feel very sorry for her, Roger. I can’t help it; although I don’t love her at all.”
Yes. It must be true. Though he had seen Adrienne’s vanity rather than her love. Nancy and Meg were united in their assurance and that must be, he saw, because they both, in their so different ways, knew what it was to care; to care so much that you were frightened. It was strange that the pang of pity that came with his new perception should be for Adrienne rather than for his dear little Nancy herself. Nancy had suffered, he knew, and her life was perhaps permanently scarred; yet, clear-eyed and unduped, he saw her as mistress of the very fate that had maimed her. Whereas Adrienne was blindfolded; a creature swayed and surrounded by forces of which she was unaware.
Nancy had deepened his sense of perplexity, his sense of taking refuge from something, and what it was came fully upon him that night when he was at last alone. Meg and her misdemeanour sank into a mere background for the image of the cold, convulsed face that he had seen that morning. Almost angrily he felt himself pushing it back, pushing it down, as if he pushed it down to drown, and again and again it re-emerged to look at him.
He fell asleep at last; but as, a year ago, on the first night of his meeting with her, he had dreamed of her, so to-night he dreamed again.
He did not see her, but she was in some dreadful plight and the sense of her panic and bewilderment broke upon him in shocks of suffering. He could not see her, but he was aware of her, horribly aware. All remained a broken, baffled confusion, but it was as though, unable to shape and assert itself, he yet felt her very being wrestling with extinction.
The sharpness had gone out of the sunlight next day and Mrs. Chadwick consented to come and sit with them in the warmest corner of the garden, the corner where, a year ago, Oldmeadow remembered, Meg had sat with him and explained to him the secret of Adrienne’s power. Pitifully, with swollen eyes and trembling fingers, Mrs. Chadwick resumed her interrupted stocking while Oldmeadow read aloud from a Sunday paper the leading article on the critical situation in Ireland. “I suppose every one in London will be talking about Ulster and Sir Edward Carson, won’t they?” said Mrs. Chadwick, and it was evident that she derived a dim comfort from the thought. The situation in Ireland, Oldmeadow reflected, had, at all events, been of so much service.
Upon this quiet scene there broke suddenly the sound of a motor’s horn and a motor’s wheels turned into the front entrance.
Mrs. Chadwick dropped her stocking and laid her hand on Nancy’s arm. “Dear Aunt Eleanor—you know he couldn’t possibly be back yet,” said Nancy. “And if it’s anyone to call, Johnson knows you’re not at home.”