Beggar’s Choice (16 page)

All the same it sticks in my mind that it wasn't Bobby. I wonder if it was Arbuthnot. If Anna had never met Arbuthnot before, how did she get to the point of telling him to keep me away from the Tarrants, all in about half an hour? She spoke as if she was accustomed to giving him orders, too—I noticed that. She might have been speaking to the butler, and he took it the same way, as if it was a matter of course that she should fire orders at him out of a taxi. No, I couldn't believe that it was the first time they'd met. And if it wasn't, why go through the farce of an introduction, unless they particularly wanted me to think that they were strangers?

Well that's all I can get out of Bobby for the moment.

Then there's Fay. All the threads that connect Fay with this affair are as indefinite as the spider's threads that you get blown across your face on a dewy morning—you can't see them, and you can't find them, but you keep on feeling that they're there. Why should Fay want five hundred pounds just when five hundred pounds is being dangled in front of me? And then why should she afterwards go back on all that and swear she never said she was in a hole at all? And why did Isobel's letter disappear, and Z.10's first letter? And why did Fay cut her dance with me, just when cutting it obliged me to dance with Anna? It looks damned silly written down. Gossamer threads.

The post has just come in. Miss Willy has asked me to go down to them next Tuesday. That's one letter. The other is a registered one with twenty five-pound notes in it and not a line of writing. If any one had told me a week ago that I should have a hundred pounds spread out in front of me on this table, it would have sounded like something out of Grimm's fairy tales. And if they'd gone on to say that all I wanted to do with it was to send it back, I should have told them that they were talking through the back of their neck. A week ago I didn't know where my next meal was coming from, or how long my last pair of boots would hold together. Now I've got into a kind of twisted fairy story in which bank-notes come tumbling out of letters like the diamonds and pearls which dropped from the mouth of the wretched child with the fairy godmother in Grimm. I remember, even in the nursery, thinking how beastly it must have been, and wondering whether she got any of her teeth broken on the diamonds.

I am writing to Miss Willy to say I won't come. And this is what I'm going to write to Z.10:

D
EAR
S
IR
,

I have just received £100 in five-pound notes. I suppose these are the funds spoken of in the note I received last night. [There are too many “received's” but I want to keep it stiff.] I should be glad to be given some work to do. I want to make it clear that I cannot continue to receive money which I have not earned. I was willing to accept a retaining fee for a reasonable time, but a sum of £100 does not come under that heading. I shall therefore return it, unless in the course of the next week I am satisfied that I have done, or am doing, something to earn such a salary.

Yours faithfully,

C
ARTHEW
F
AIRFAX
.

XX

A Letter from Corinna Lee to Peter Lymington:

Peter honey, go right out and buy yourself a pair of yellow stockings. Did you know that meant being jealous? I didn't until Mrs. Bell, who is my cousin Car's landlady, told me. There's a girl in the same house—and isn't she a friend of yours, and why didn't you tell me about her? Her name is Fay Everitt, and she's pretty but very bad style, and she hates me like I hate cold water down the back of my neck, and I couldn't think why until Mrs. Bell said, “It's just her yellow stockings, Miss.” Well, I thought she was color blind, and I said, “They're not yellow, Mrs. Bell,—they're taupe.” And she laughed and laughed, and told me, “yellow stockings is just a way of saying folks is jealous, miss.” She said Fay Everitt “wears them constant.” I don't think she likes my being friends with my cousin Car.

Peter, he is a perfect lamb. So now you know why you've got to go out right away and buy yourself those yellow stockings. Isn't it a pity he's got a girl already?

Why didn't you tell me about her? I'm not wearing yellow stockings, because I love her too. She is an enchanting person called Isobel Tarrant, and she lives with a perfectly fierce aunt in a real old cottage with 1675 over the door. Why didn't you tell me about Isobel? I can't think why you didn't fall in love with her. Perhaps you didn't know her—that would be a good reason. Or perhaps you didn't want to snatch her from Car. Or perhaps you are secretly in love with her all the time. Please tell me about this when you write. If there are any dark secrets in your past, I would like to know about them right away, and not find them out afterwards like they always do in books. I think I have used the wrong adjective. Isobel couldn't be a dark secret—she isn't that sort. But even if she's a bright secret, I would want to know about her.

I am going down to Linwood to stay. I love Linwood and my cousin John, but I am glad that Anna Lang is not my cousin. She is only Cousin John's wife's niece, and not my relation at all. Car says he is glad about this too. I love Car. But perhaps you needn't be very jealous—I have just mailed a letter to Poppa to tell him that if he thinks I'm forgetting you over here, he's just got to think again. I'd be very lonely without you if I didn't think a lot about how real nice it was going to be when I get back.

Do you think about me every day? I hope you do. Poppa said I wasn't to write you love letters whilst I was over here. He couldn't call this one a love letter, could he—not reasonably? But it kind of feels as if it was going to turn into one, so I should think I had better stop.

C
ORINNA

If I hadn't promised Poppa, I would send you my love and a lot of kisses.

Dear Peter, I send you my kind regards. I will tell Poppa I sent them.

XXI

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 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 woman 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.”