I knew that it would be indeed a sort of comfort to tell her all my troubles, and to ask for her opinion the tragedy of my life, and she was the only person to whom I felt I could speak freely about the blow which had fallen on me. I believe that a truly manly man locks up all his sorrows in his own breast, and throws the key into the dust-bin of dead memories. But I have never been the sort of manly creature that female novelists delight to honour. There is a great strain of woman in me, and always has been: and not the most heroic sort of woman, either.
But though I longed for the consolation and counsel of Isabel, I felt that in my present morbid condition I could not stand the principles and politics of Paul. In the old days I had put up with Paul on account of Isabel: now I gave up Isabel on account of Paul. The difference was merely chronological. When we are young, the pleasure of anything always swallows up the attendant pain: as we grow older, the attendant pain swallows up any possible pleasure. And that is life.
So I refused Lady Chayford's kind invitation.
But the woman who had once been Isabel Carnaby was not the woman to be put off by a mere refusal. So she invited herself to motor over and have lunch with me instead: and she never even suggested to bring his lordship with her.
She was one of those rare people—and most especially rare women—who could put herself in another person's place: and though at one time she had wanted Paul Seaton dreadfully—wanted him more than anything in the world—she was still capable of knowing that at another time I might not want him at all. And she acted upon this knowledge.
She arrived just in time for luncheon, and of course we could talk of only surface matters as long as the servants were coming in and out of the room. But it was a comfort to hear her talk, even of only surface matters, and to feel her feminine presence in the house.
Of course Annabel often came over to see me, and to have what she called her eye upon my establishment: in fact, she seemed to keep one eye always at Restham, as some men always keep a change of clothes at their Club; but Annabel's was never a "feminine presence," in the sense that Isabel's and Fay's were. Even the cult of the "Ladies' Needlework Guild," ultra-feminine though the name of the fetish sounds, had never taken away the true gentlemanliness from Annabel. I now always called my sister and her husband "the Dean and the Sub-Dean." They thought that by the "Sub-Dean" I meant Annabel. But I did not.
When lunch was over and we were having coffee in the great hall, Isabel settled herself comfortably on the big Chesterfield by the fire. Unlike most women, she could sit for hours with unoccupied hands. Though her tongue was never idle, her hands often were. To me there had always been something fatiguing in the ceaseless travail of Annabel's fingers. I don't remember ever seeing them at rest, except on a Sunday; and even then they were not unoccupied: they always held some book or other containing sound Evangelical doctrine. But just now Isabel's hands held nothing: and the sight somehow rested me.
"Please begin to smoke at once, Reggie," she said: "I shan't enjoy myself a bit if you don't. I shall get exhausted like people do in Egypt, and places like that, when there is no atmosphere, don't you know?—nothing but black Pyramids and bright yellow sand, till everybody thirsts for a real London fog."
"Won't you?" I asked.