"Nicky," said Ishmael, "this is your Uncle Archelaus…. This is my boy."
Nicky got to his feet and said rather coldly that he hoped his uncle was well, but it was the old man whose eagerness in holding out his hand made Nicky's advance seem laggard. Nicky had taken a dislike to his uncle; he could not tell why. He flattered himself he was not a snob, but he thought this old Rip Van Winkle a terrible thing to drop into any family out of the blue. Archelaus lowered himself into a chair beside his nephew and began to try and make conversation. There was something pathetic about his evident efforts and Nicky's hidden distaste that was all there was to meet it, masked by courtesy. Ishmael suddenly felt his heart soften towards his brother; he told himself almost with a pang that he need not have been afraid that this old prodigal would have beguiled Nicky as he did the children; his simple wiles were not for grown men busy with affairs. Yet he still watched anxiously, though now the faint feeling of anxiety had rather transferred itself from Nicky to Archelaus.
As the days went on his heart grew no lighter, though in the society of Nicky, busy as he was with showing him all the latest improvements, he had not much time to think of anything else. Archelaus was too old and enfeebled to go all over the estate as Ishmael was still able to do, and gloried in the doing now he saw that there were others less able to than he. Yet, had he had more leisure to observe, his anxiety would have grown, not lessened, for a cloud began to gather upon Archelaus that was like the old brooding of his youth, though less articulate, but perhaps none the less dangerous for that. There had been a softening about him those first days of Nicky's return, as there was still when he played with Jimmy; but now the look that had held a timid eagerness when it was turned on Jimmy's father glowed with something else less good, a something that deepened when it was turned on Ishmael.
About this time Judith brought her visit to a close, and Ishmael was chiefly occupied with getting her off in safety and with as little fatigue as might be. Each year now their parting held something of the quality possessed by his yearly gamble with his crops, only in the former case the chances against them were doubled, for it might be Judy who failed to come again on the long journey from town.
She had a companion, a devoted creature but colourless, whom she could be said rather to suffer gladly than enjoy, and her interests, were divided between the little slum church she lived near in London, her friends at Cloom, and the rare visits of Lissa, of whom she was very fond, and who sometimes went and poured out to her enthusiasms about Futurist paintings, which Judy, who had remained true to the early Impressionist school, could only consider a perverse return to cave art.
"Shall I give your love to Lissa?" asked Judith as Ishmael tucked her into the cosiest seat of Nicky's car, which was to take her to Penzance. "No, I won't," she went on. "I shall tell her she's to come and give it for herself. She is coming, I know, now she's got her International picture off her mind. She's a very gifted woman, but I sometimes think it's a pity for her to fill her life with nothing but paint and canvases. I'm old-fashioned, I suppose!"
"Lissa and I understand each other," said Ishmael. "She is the only other human being beside myself I've ever met who finds the deepest joy in things and places instead of people."
"Do you still? Not you; they've failed you for a long time now, I know, and they'll fail Lissa. I wish I hadn't given her the advice I did when she came to town."
"What was that?" asked Ishmael, stepping back as Nicky climbed into the driver's seat.
"Never to trust a man or offend a woman. She's stuck to it too well. I've got to the age when I think it's better to have trusted too much than too little. Good-bye, my dear! Take care of yourself. I shan't come again."