"How long has he been dead?"
"Priday says he's only been in the house half an hour. That was fifteen minutes ago, perhaps. He can't have been dead long. Why?"
"Because I feel as if something has snapped inside me since I feel down in that faint. It must have been at the same time…Do you think it strange that I don't express a wish to go up and see him?"
"I'm exceedingly sorry, Isbel, but I can't enter into your wishes of feelings. Of course, there's not the slightest need for you to go up, and I strongly advise you not to…"
She directed a pitiful smile towards him. "I know there's no going back to the old state. Please don't imagine that I even wish to. I merely want to tell you that perhaps my feelings towards him were not altogether what you think they were. I…"
"But you came here to meet him?"
Isbel dived into her handbag impulsively. "Marshall, you've shown me a letter; now I'll show you one…Read that."
He took it rather unwillingly, and skimmed it through.
"Who is this Mrs. Richborough he speaks about?"
"The person who wrote to you."
"It seems a fatal business all round. And is this letter of Judge's a blind, or did it really extend no further?"
"I wish you to believe that Mr. Judge was a man of honour…That's all. Now I'll go…I won't insult you by expressing my sorrow for the position I've put you in…You have always been good to me, and I'm afraid I've repaid you in the meanest possible way…Good-bye, for the time being!"
She got up, and started to stumble towards the door.
"Do you feel yourself able to walk as far as I proposed?" Marshall asked in a singular tone.
She stopped to look back over her shoulder. "It seems to me that I have no alternative."
"That's quite true. I can't come with you, for I have this awful business to attend to. How long will it take you to get clear of the grounds by the way you're going?"
"I don't know-ten minutes…"
"I'll sit here for ten minutes by my watch, and then make my way to the lodge. Walk on towards Steyning, and, if I haven't picked you up by the time you have reached there, wait fir me at the station. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Marshall."
"Incidentally, how did you get here?"
"By hired car form Worthing, but I dismissed the driver short of the house."
"All right, then-you'd better clear off."
He sat down in the chair which she had vacated, and pulled out his watch. Isbel hesitated a moment, as if she wished to say something more, then a flash of anger at her own weakness seemed to come across her, for she suddenly straightened herself, and walked directly to the door.
Ten minutes later Marshall rose, left the house, and started down the drive towards the lodge.
It was nearing four o'clock when he and Isbel returned to the Gondy together. Isbel went straight to her room. Marshall sought Mrs. Moor, and, without beating around the bush, informed her that the engagement was broken off, by mutual agreement. He referred her to Isbel for all explanations. She was greatly upset, but had too much good sense to attempt to combat his decision there and then, without learning more about the affair. She wished him godspeed, and begged him, with tears in her eyes, at least to leave the road open for future negotiations. However, he declined to make any kind of promise, or to discuss things with her at all…He spent the night at the hotel, but dined out, and retired to his room early. On the following morning he packed his belongings, settled his bill, and started back to town in the car, without having attempted previously to see Mrs. Moor for the purpose of saying farewell.
The inquest was held on Tuesday. Marshall was called upon to give evidence as to the finding of the body, but everything was purely formal. The medical witness certified that death was due to cerebral hemorrhage, and the jury returned their verdict accordingly. Isbel did not attend.
The two ladies returned to Kensington, as arranged, in the middle of the week. Isbel refused to discuss matters with her aunt, or to see any of her friends. Blanche behaved with great tact; she neither wrote to her, nor called, but she was continually sending flowers and kind messages by way of Mrs. Moor, and Isbel was not ungrateful…a few weeks afterwards, aunt and niece went to the Riveira.
Blanche thought the occasion propitious to resume a correspondence with her friend, and Isbel aquiesced, though without any particular pleasure. The first letters were very correct, but, as time passed, Marshall's name began to appear on Blanche's side with greater frequency. In the beginning Isbel thought that it was an unintentional blundering against good taste. It was not long before she realised that the thin end of the wedge had become too securely hammered in to be easily dislodged. She passed over the allusions in silence.
Then the time came for them to return home. It was March. "…I want to know how we're to stand, Billy," she wrote her friend. "We see a good deal of Marshall in these days. If you happen to run up against him in my house, may I take it that you will behave towards him with common politeness?…"
Isbel wrote back: "…If Marshall is able to endure my society, I shall certainly be able to endure his…"
On the evening of the same day that Blanch received this letter, she showed these lines to Marshall himself. He coloured violently.
"Well-how am I to answer?" she demanded.
"Tell her I'm not quite a savage."
"Is that all?"
"Don't you think we'd better take one step at a time?" asked Marshall.
Blanche smiled, and suddenly grasped his wrist.
David Lindsay
David Lindsay was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus (1920).
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, although growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where his family originally came from. Although he won a scholarship to university, he was forced by poverty to go into business and he became an insurance clerk at Lloyd's of London. He was very successful but, after serving in the First World War, at the age of forty, he moved to Cornwall with his young wife to become a full-time writer. He published A Voyage to Arcturus in 1920 but it was not a success, selling fewer than six hundred copies. This extremely strange work was not obviously influenced by anybody, but further reading shows links with other Scottish fantasists (for example, George MacDonald), and it was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.
Lindsay attempted to write a more "commercial" novel with his next work The Haunted Woman (1922), but this was barely more successful than theVoyage. He continued to write novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, but after Devil's Tor in 1932 he found it increasingly difficult to get published, and spent much of his time on his last work The Witch which was unpublished in his lifetime.
He and his wife opened a boarding house in Brighton, but they did not prosper and their marriage underwent considerable strain. The house was damaged by the first bomb to fall on Brighton in the Second World War and Lindsay, who was in his bath at the time, never recovered from the shock. His death from an infection resulting from an abscess in his tooth was unrelated to the bomb.
