Isobel Tarrant came down through the woods walking slowly. In a few minutes she would be clear of the trees. She walked more slowly still. The path was narrow, and on either side of it were the straight black trunks of pine trees frosted with gray-green lichen. It was a bright, clear morning. The sky above the pine trees was a very pale blue. The patches of sunlight which flecked the path were a very pale gold. It was still in the wood.
Isobel stood for a moment and let the stillness in. She had wept until she could weep no more; but now the pain that had made her weep had ceased. She felt as if her tears had washed it away and left an empty place where it had been. She shrank piteously from this emptiness. It was as if she had had Car in her heart all these years, and as if now he had gone and there was only an empty place. It would not have been so hard to bear if she had not allowed herself to hope. For three years she had not hoped. She had lived one day at a time and kept her eyes from the future. And then all at once the future had been irradiated with hope. Car was to come to Linwood to meet his uncle-to step back into his old place-to come back to them. She did not say he was coming back to her, but the thought lay warm at her heart. And then in a flash the radiance had gone and the dark closed down. Car wouldn’t come.
Isobel looked back to the moment at breakfast when Miss Willy had opened his letter and announced that he wouldn’t come. It didn’t hurt now, because nothing hurt any more; but in that moment it had hurt so much that she did not know how she had kept herself from crying out. It didn’t hurt now, because nothing hurt any more; there was only an emptiness and blackness where the pain had been. And she must come down out of the woods, and go back to lunch and hear Miss Willy say all over again the things which she had said at breakfast, and would say again at tea.
The stillness of the woods was broken by the sound of footsteps. Isobel began to walk on at once and quickly. She had nothing that she could say to any one at this moment. She felt a sort of faint panic at the thought of voice and words echoing in this emptiness. But she had not heard the footsteps soon enough. Mr. Carthew had almost caught her up, and when she began to walk on, he called after her:
“Isobel-wait a minute! Where are you off to in such a hurry, young woman?”
He was about the last person she would have chosen to meet, but there was no help for it. When you have been properly brought up, certain things become automatic. Isobel turned at once and, turning, smiled with her usual sweetness. She did not consciously make an effort. She smiled and waited for Mr. Carthew.
“Well, where are you off to?” he said again.
“Home to lunch.”
“Well, there’s no hurry about that. Miss Willy’s never been in time for a meal in her life-what? I can’t think how she ever gets a cook. I know she doesn’t keep ’em-she told me herself the other day she’d had thirteen since Christmas. And what beats me is, how does she get ’em-what? How does she get ’em? That’s what I want to know. You wouldn’t think there were so many cooks left in England -that is, you wouldn’t if you listened to the twaddle every one talks about the servant question. And the moral of that is-don’t listen to it. Least listened to, soonest ended-what? Did you ever hear that proverb before?”
Isobel went on smiling. Her lips felt a little stiff, but it was easier than saying anything. You didn’t really have to talk to Mr. Carthew. He liked people who would listen whilst he told long stories about things which couldn’t ever really have been very interesting to anybody, or said what he thought about the government and the condition of agriculture. He liked talking on these subjects to pretty young women who did not answer back or have views of their own.
Isobel prepared herself to listen, but for once in a way he fell silent and walked beside her, flicking at the pine needles with his stick, his broad shoulders stooped, his weather-beaten face wrinkled and puckered, and his bushy eyebrows drawn together in a frown over the small, rather sunken gray eyes.
He looked sideways once or twice at Isobel, and just as she became aware of this, he stopped dead, cleared his throat, and said gruffly,
“I wanted to see you.”
The trees were thinning out to the edge of the wood. A patch of sunlight touched Isobel’s cheek.
“She’s been crying,” said Mr. Carthew to himself. “Bless my soul, she has!”
Isobel stepped back into the shade. She looked faintly startled. Her heart beat a little faster.
He cleared his throat again.
“About that nephew of mine-” he said, and saw the color spring into the pale oval of her face.
“About Car?” Why should any one want to speak to her about Car? Car wouldn’t come-Car didn’t want to come. Why should any one want to speak to her about Car?
“Car-yes, Car. I’ve only got one nephew, and that’s been one too many. I suppose I may be thankful I never had a son, for a nephew has been as much trouble as I’ve wanted, and a bit more.” He spoke as if he were working himself up to be angry, bringing out each short sentence with a kind of jerk that reminded Isobel of Dr. Monk’s car starting up on a cold morning.
She did not say anything. What was there that she could say about Car to Car’s uncle? “He doesn’t care-he won’t come.” She couldn’t say that.
“Well?” said Mr. Carthew explosively. “Well?”
“What is it, Mr. Carthew?”
“That nephew of mine. Have you been seeing him?”
“Yes,” said Isobel, with her red flag flying.
“Ah, I thought so! Then you can tell me what I want to know. When did you see him last?”
“A day or two ago.”
He looked at her sharply under his bushy brows.
“A day or two ago? What does that mean? That you don’t remember-or that you don’t choose to tell me? It’s not my business-what? Well, if you can’t tell me when you saw him, can you tell me where you saw him? Carrying a pair of sandwich boards-or fetching up taxis after the theater-what?”
Isobel’s smiling ceased to be a convention. It became delightfully tinged with malice.
“Oh no, Mr. Carthew-it was at Leonardo’s. I danced with him.”
“And what’s Leonardo’s? You don’t expect me to know the name of every disreputable fourth-rate dancing hall in London, do you?”
“Now you’re being rude to me,” said Isobel-“because I’ve been very nicely brought up and I don’t go to fourth-rate dancing halls. Leonardo’s is the latest place to dine and dance at. You know-the sort of place where a cup of coffee costs as much as a whole dinner does in one of those little Italian places in Soho.”
“H’m!” said Mr. Carthew. He dug holes in the ground with his stick, making a vicious punch at each. “Car’s come up in the world, then! The last I heard of him, he couldn’t have risen to Soho. Splashing his money about, was he? Or sponging on a rich friend-what?”
A little vivid flame of anger burned suddenly in the cold empty places of Isobel’s thought. She said, quickly and warmly,
“You know that’s not true!”
“What was he doing there then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Pretty shabby-eh?”
The flame burned higher.
“No, he wasn’t!”
Mr. Carthew punched another hole and gazed at it earnestly.
“Some one who saw him a while ago told me that he looked down and out.” He prodded the hole with his stick. “Down and out-that’s what he said-a friend of mine, old Beamish- not at all the sort of man to exaggerate. That’s what he said to me in so many words. ‘I saw that nephew of yours the other day,’ he said, ‘Car what’s-his-name-Fairfax- and by Jove, he looks as if he’s got down to his uppers,’ he said. ‘Looked as he wasn’t getting enough to eat, by Jove.’ That’s the way he put it. Matter of fact sort of fellow, Beamish-didn’t mean to be offensive-said he thought I ought to know.”
“Yes,” said Isobel, still with that warmth in her voice.
“How do you mean ‘Yes’?”
“I think he was quite right-I think you ought to know.”
“Oh, you do, do you? And what am I to believe? He says Car’s down and out, and you say he’s flourishing around dining and dancing at one of the most expensive places in London. What am I to believe?”
“I think his employer sent him there,” said Isobel.
“Then he’s got a job-what? Why didn’t you tell me that at once?”
“Because that’s all I know. He just told me that-he didn’t tell me anything else.”
“H’m!” said Mr. Carthew. “Well, he’s coming to stay with you, isn’t he, and I can ask him about it myself. Sounds fishy to me-very fishy. But I can ask him about it when he comes.”
“He isn’t coming,” said Isobel in a low voice. It was as bitter to say it as if all those tears had not washed her clear of feeling.
“Not coming?” said Mr. Carthew sharply. “How do you mean ‘not coming’? Your Aunt Willy told me herself she’d asked him down. A couple of days ago she told me she was going to ask him, and yesterday she told me she’d done it.”
“Yes,” said Isobel. “He isn’t coming.” Why did people make you say things that hurt so frightfully?
“Nonsense!” said Mr. Carthew very loudly. “If she asked him to come, he’d be bound to jump at the chance.”
“Why?” said Isobel.
All at once she felt that she knew why Car wouldn’t come. How could he come to his uncle’s very door as if he were begging to be taken back? He couldn’t-of course he couldn’t. The relief was so great that it brought a mist to her eyes, and a lovely changing color to her cheek.
“Why?” said Mr. Carthew-“why? Because a lady’s good enough to ask him. That’s reason enough, isn’t it?-or it would have been when I was a young fellow. I suppose it’s no reason at all now that manners have gone out of fashion, and family feeling, and religion, and all the things that used to be expected of a man with a stake in the country. Dancing and enjoying themselves-that’s all the present generation cares for!”
Isobel’s heart gave a little leap. “He’s disappointed. He cares. He wants to see Car again and make it up. He’s angry because he’s disappointed.” Aloud she said:
“Why don’t you ask him to come? He’d come if you asked him.”
She was rather frightened as soon as she had said it. Suppose she had made him angry-he got angry rather easily. She might just have given him a push in the wrong direction.
His eyebrows were very bushy indeed. First he stared at her, and then he said explosively,
“I’m to ask him, am I-what? Go down on my knees to him and ask him to come back? Is that your idea, or it is his-what? Did he put you up to it?”
Isobel wasn’t sure whether she would be telling the truth if she said “No.” Car had certainly said “He’ll have to tell me so,” when she had declared that his uncle wanted to make it up. She blushed and said,
“Quarrels are such miserable things. Why shouldn’t you ask him to come back? It-it would be so lovely if we could all be friends again”
“H’m!” said Mr. Carthew. “Did he tell you to say that?”
“No-of course he didn’t. You know he’s proud-you said so yourself. If he’d been doing well and making money, he’d have asked you to be friends again long ago-but he’s been awfully, awfully poor. Don’t you see he simply couldn’t come back when it would look as if he were asking you to do something for him?”
Mr. Carthew planted his stick firmly behind him, put both hands on the crook, and leaned back against it.
“God bless my soul!” he said; and then, “You make him out a very fine, disinterested fellow, don’t you, my dear- eh? Most young fellows wouldn’t think so much about coming and asking an uncle to give them a helping hand. It’s his damned pride and obstinacy, I tell you, I wanted him to marry and settle down, and he wouldn’t-told me he’d no fancy for it. I’ve no patience with these young men of the present day-they’ve no sense of their obligations, no sense of responsibility. When a man’s got a property coming to him, it’s his duty to marry young. I married when I was twenty-three, and if I haven’t got a son of my own, it’s all the more reason why I should want to see Car’s children- isn’t it? Only, as I say, he set himself up against me, and the last thing he said to me-shall I tell you the last thing he said to me?”
“No, don’t,” said Isobel. “You ought to forget it. I expect you were both angry. Nobody means what they say when they’re angry-you know they don’t.”
Mr. Carthew stood bolt upright and brandished his stick in the air.
“He said, ‘I don’t care if I don’t ever see you again, and Linwood may go to-’ Well, I was brought up to consider a lady’s ears-so we’ll call it Jericho.”
Isobel looked at him with a sparkling challenge in her eyes. “And what had you just been saying to him?”
“God bless my soul, I forget.”
“Then don’t you think you’d better forget what he said too?”
“H’m!” said Mr. Carthew. He turned abruptly and began to walk away. “I shall be late for lunch,” he said, “Anna don’t like my being late for lunch.”