“And since you’ve borne your testimony, Barbara,” Oldmeadow suggested, “you might obey your mother and give us the benefit of your experience on an occasion when it’s invited.”
“Oh, I know you’re against Adrienne, Roger,” said Barbara, but with a sulkiness that showed surrender. “I shan’t force myself on you, I assure you, and girls of fifteen aren’t quite the infants in arms you may imagine. If Adrienne weren’t here to stand up for me I don’t know where I’d be. Because, you know, you are weak, Mother. Yes you are. You’ve been really wobbling like anything about my trip and trying to wriggle out of it whenever you had a loop-hole, and Adrienne thinks you’re weak, I know, for she told me so, and said we must help you to be brave and strong and that you belonged to a generation that had its eyes tightly bandaged from birth. So there!” And delivering this effective shot, Barbara marched away, not forgetting to pick up her plate of strawberries as she passed the table.
Mrs. Chadwick attempted to conceal her confusion by following her child’s retreating figure with grave disapprobation and Oldmeadow seized the propitious moment to remark: “I can’t help feeling that there’s something to be said for Barney, all the same. His wife has set you all against him, hasn’t she? I suspect Barbara’s right, too, my dear friend, and that in your heart of hearts you dislike this trip of hers as much as he does. Certainly Barbara isn’t a very pleasing example of Adrienne’s influence.”
“She is very naughty, very naughty and rebellious,” poor Mrs. Chadwick murmured, twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. “I know I’ve not a strong character, but I never spoiled my children and dear Adrienne does, I feel, spoil Barbara by taking her so seriously and talking to her as if she were grown up, you know. I had an aunt who married at sixteen; but it didn’t turn out at all happily. They quarrelled constantly and she had two sets of twins, poor thing—almost like a judgment, dear Mamma used to say. But of course Barbara is really too young to understand; and so I’ve told dear Adrienne. Not that she isn’t perfectly frank about it. She’s told me over and over again that weakness was my besetting danger and that I must stand up straight and let the winds of freedom blow away my cobwebs. So dear and original, always, you know. And of course I see her point of view and Barbara will, no doubt, be a bigger, finer person”—Mrs. Chadwick’s voice trailed off in its echo. “But I don’t agree with you, Roger; I don’t agree with you at all!” she took up with sudden vehemence, “about the trip. I don’t agree that my poor Meg is a leper to be avoided until a legal ceremony has been performed. I think that a cruel convention—cruel, base and cowardly. She must have suffered so much already. Nothing will give her so much courage as for us to be seen standing by her. Adrienne has explained all that most beautifully to Barbara. And how true love is the most sacred thing in life.”
“My dear friend, Meg isn’t a leper, of course, and we all intend to stand by her. But it is certainly best that a young girl like Barbara shouldn’t be asked to meet, or understand, or exonerate such difficult situations.”
“That’s what I’ve tried to say to Eleanor,” Mrs. Averil murmured.
“And why not, Roger! Why not!” Mrs. Chadwick cried, surprisingly yet not convincingly aroused. “Nothing develops the character so much as facing and understanding difficulty. And as for exoneration—I don’t agree with you, and Adrienne doesn’t agree. You and Monica are conventionalists and we must live on a higher plane than convention. I’m sure I try to, though it’s very hard sometimes, but the noblest things are hardest. There is nothing to exonerate. Meg was following her own light in doing what she did.”
“It’s not a question of Meg, but of her situation,” Oldmeadow returned.
“And because of her situation, because she is so in need of help and loyalty, you ask that Barbara should draw back her skirts from her! Oh! I knew it!” cried Mrs. Chadwick, “I knew that you would feel like that! That is why I felt it would be happier if you were not here with Adrienne.”
“You need hardly tell me that,” said Oldmeadow smiling. “But it’s not a question of convention, except in so far as convention means right feeling and good taste. Meg, whatever her lights—and personally I don’t believe that she followed them—has done something that involves pain and humiliation for all concerned with her, and whether she was or was not justified in doing it is a moral problem that a child shouldn’t be asked to meet. Such problems should be kept from her until she is old enough to understand them.”