He went to bed and he slept badly. A few hours later, with his morning tea Pillar brought him a note. He opened it and read:
You have trespassed where an uncle may not go—there are places in our hearts that are barred, even to mothers, and mothers know it and understand. I know, dear old thing, you don’t realize how big your feet are or how heavily you tread. You have squashed all sorts of little plants that were beginning to grow in my heart—that’s a pity, you know! Aunt Elsie never trespasses, for all her violence. You have lived too long in your narrow world, dear old Marcus. A world in which no man can be trusted at all and women only a little. I have become more distrustful of men since I lived with you than I ever was before. You will say that is what you wish. But it is not what I wish. Why are you and Aunt Elsie both afraid of the opposite sex? Aunt Elsie is frightened if she meets a drunken bricklayer in a lane after sundown. Why? You are just as afraid of a woman. Why? I would rather go round the world alone with a man than with a woman. I shan’t do it because it’s not done—as they say. But Dick says there should be no possible harm in it.
When Marcus came down to breakfast he was as silent, as quiet, as a heron fishing on the shore of a Highland loch—and as shy. He was sure Diana would put her arms round his neck and forgive him—and ask his forgiveness. (He was an old-fashioned uncle.) But no Diana came. When he told Pillar to send up word that—Pillar said Miss Diana had been called very early—in fact had not been to bed, he believed—and had gone—
“Where?”
“To Miss Carston, sir.”
“How did she go?”
“The car, sir; it happened—Tooke chanced to be about; after all, it’s the best way of going, sir, isn’t it?”
“When Tooke returns I want to see him.”
The joys of living alone were once more Marcus’s. What were they? There was no one to seize the coffee-pot when he wanted it; to ask him whom his letters were from; to read him bits out of the paper; bits he didn’t want to hear; bits he had read the evening before. There was no one to discuss plans that could never come off. There were no engagements read out to him, between people he had never heard of—at all events, by the names of Toddy and Doddy and Buffy and Bunny.
On the other hand, there were things he missed. She had amused him. Her girl friends had seemed to him amazing people: her boy friends not less amazing. Their spirits were wonderful, their ways past finding out, their ingenuity remarkable, their patronage almost tender in its pity. Diana and her friends were no more. Pillar remained. And in the country lived Miss Carston and to her Diana had gone—in his car!