“Well,” he said hesitatingly, then paused.
“I know. You’d like to help me. But there’s nothing you can do, Stacey. That’s sad, but it’s so. It only—”
“Yes. Gives you an extra worry.” He gazed at her. “Odd,” he thought, “how strong you are! Stronger than Phil, stronger than I!” But he only said yes, that he would go.
His father greeted the suggestion almost joyfully. “The best thing possible!” he exclaimed. “There’s the house, standing empty—hardly been used six months in ten years. Saddle horse eating his head off in the stable—old Elijah perishing for want of conversation. I was down there for a couple of months two years ago, but it bored me. I haven’t cared for the place since your mother died.”
Stacey nodded. “I understand how you feel about it,” he said. And, indeed, he did for a moment receive a sudden poignant memory of their winter life down there when his mother had been alive and they had all been young and gay. The memory faded almost at once. “Then I might as well be off some day this week, sir,” he remarked.
“You’d better wait till after Christmas,” said his father. “Er—Julie’s rather counting on Christmas together.”
“Of course,” Stacey assented remorsefully.
“Mind you have Elijah look after Duke’s feet,” Mr. Carroll added, in obvious haste to avoid the appearance of sentiment. “His hoofs were always brittle.”
So presently, Christmas over, Stacey departed. It was capitulation, but he did not care about that. The only thing that interested him—and this but idly—was that he should so crave to get away from men and women when men and women had become such intangible phantoms.
For the rest, there was only the heavy sense of Phil’s death and of Catherine bearing up under it bravely.