Mrs. Aldesey knew nothing of the catastrophes that had followed the baby’s death. He had instinctively avoided any reference to the latest progress of the Juggernaut.
“She’s much better now, you know,” he said, and he wasn’t aware that he was exonerating Barney. “And they’re all back at Coldbrooks.”
“She’s not at Coldbrooks,” said Mrs. Aldesey. “She’s well enough to pay visits and Lady Lumley told me she was coming down to them for this week-end. I wonder he hasn’t gone with her.”
Oldmeadow was wondering too. There was something about Barney’s attitude as he sat there beside his cousin, silent and absent-minded it seemed, listening as little to the music as he looked little at her, that he would rather Lydia Aldesey had not been there to observe. They had a curiously marital appearance, the young couple, or, rather, Barney had; the air of being safe with some one with whom no explanations were needed and for whom no appearances must be kept up; some one, even, with whom he was so identified that he was hardly conscious of her. Nancy was not so unconscious. Once, when Barney leaned over to look at the programme, she drew away a little; and Oldmeadow even fancied a slight constraint in her glance when, now and then, he spoke to her. Had Adrienne spoiled things there, too? Mrs. Averil next day, in Eccleston Square, enlightened him as to Barney’s presence. “It’s been most unfortunate. He had planned to come up to this concert for a long time. He wanted Nancy to hear the César Franck with him. And then it appeared that Adrienne had made an engagement for them with the Lumleys. He refused to go, I’m afraid, and she made an issue of it and, from what poor Eleanor told me, there was rather a row. So Adrienne has gone off alone and Barney is here till this evening. He’s gone out now with Nancy to show her some pictures by a friend of his. It had all been arranged. So what were we to do about it, Roger?”
“Do about it? Why just what you have done. Why shouldn’t she go with him?”
“Why indeed? Except that Adrienne has made the issue. It’s awkward, of course, when you know there’s been a row, to go on as if nothing had happened.”
Oldmeadow meditated. His friend’s little face had been pinched by the family’s distress when he had last seen it; it was clouded now by a closer, a more personal perplexity. “I suppose she made the issue on purpose so that Barney shouldn’t come up,” he said at length.
“I really don’t know. Perhaps it had been arranged first with the Lumleys. If it was to keep him from coming, that didn’t come out. She wouldn’t let it come out; not into the open; of course.”
“So things are going very badly. I’d imagined, with all Barney’s contrition, that they might have worked out well.”
“They’ve worked out as badly, I’m afraid, as they could. He was full of contrition. He was as devoted as possible, when they came back in May. But nothing altered her unflagging melancholy. And I suppose what happened was that he got tired. Barney was always like that, from the time he was in the nursery. He’d go on being patient and good-tempered until, suddenly, everything would break down and he would sulk for days. It’s when he’s pushed too far. And she has pushed him too far. She’s set them all against him.”