Mrs. Chadwick’s vehemence had only fictitiously sustained her. It dropped from her now and for a little while she sat silent, and the confusion of her heart was piteously revealed to her friend as she said at last, “If there is a war, it will all settle itself, won’t it, for then Barbara couldn’t go. I don’t try to wriggle out of it. That’s most unfair and untrue. I’ve promised Adrienne and I agree with Adrienne about it. I can’t explain it clearly, as she does; it’s all quite, quite different when Adrienne explains it. She seems to hold me up and you and Monica pull me down—oh, yes, you do, Roger. Of course it would kill me—I know that I should die, if Barbara were to do what Meg has done; you mustn’t think Adrienne wants her to behave like that, you know. Adrienne only wants people to be brave and follow their light; but your light needn’t be a married man, need it? And sometimes I think it isn’t really so serious—falling in love, you know. I’m sure I thought I was in love half a dozen times before Francis proposed. It’s a question of seeing what’s best for you all round, isn’t it, and it can’t be best if it’s a married man, can it? Oh! I know I’m saying what Adrienne wouldn’t like, now; because it sounds so worldly and as if I believed in the French way. But I don’t at all. I think love’s everything, too. Only it always seemed to me when I was a girl that love meant white satin and orange-blossoms; and my poor, poor Meg can never wear those now. I should feel miserable, quite miserable about her, of course, if Adrienne weren’t here to make me see the big, real things instead of the little ones. And Barney has been so unkind. Sneering and scoffing at everything”—her voice quivered. “However, if there’s a war, that will settle it. Barbara couldn’t go if there was a war.”
CHAPTER XX
THE war thus had its uses to Mrs. Chadwick. Barbara did not go to the Tyrol. By the end of September Oldmeadow and Barney were in training, one on the Berkshire and one on the Wiltshire downs, and Meg was ambiguously restored to her family at Coldbrooks.
Oldmeadow had not seen Barney for many days, when they met one afternoon at Paddington and travelled together as far as Didcot. They had the carriage to themselves and though Barney’s demeanour was reticent there were many things about which, it was evident, he found it a relief to be communicative. It was from him that Oldmeadow learned of Meg’s return.
“She’ll be in a pretty box, won’t she, if Hayward is killed,” he said, smoking his cigarette and not looking at his friend. “He’s over there, you know, and for my part I think there’s very little chance of any of them coming back alive.”
They both smoked in silence for a little while after this, contemplating the ordeal in which their country was involved rather than their own relation to it; but Oldmeadow’s mind returned presently to Barney’s difficulties and he asked him if it had been to see Hayward off that he’d just been up to London.
Barney, at this, had a quiet sardonic laugh. “Good heavens, no,” he said. “Hayward went in the first week and Adrienne and Palgrave went up with Meg to see him off. Even if I’d wanted to, I’d have been allowed to have no hand in that. Adrienne is seeing to it all. Lawyers, money, I don’t know what. No; I went up to spend my leave with old Boyd at his place in Chelsea. I didn’t want to go home. Home is the last place I want to be just now.”
Oldmeadow at this maintained a silence that could not pretend surprise and Barney continued in a moment. “Palgrave isn’t coming in, you know.”
“You mean he’s carrying out his pacifist ideas?”
“If they are his,” said Barney in his colourless yet sardonic voice. “Any ideas of Palgrave’s are likely to be Adrienne’s, you know. She got hold of him from the first.”