The Snare

5. ISABEL

5. ISABEL When she left to go away she was frightened , frightened at why she was going, what she was leaving, what might happen to Maurice in her absence, and frightend too because it was the first time she had ever been away without him. She remembered Julia, a little girl on the train coming South to them, and thought that she knew now how the child felt, the sense of stepping off into the void. But once the Parhams got hold of her, everyone made over her, and she was praised and fed and housed like visiting royalty. They esteemed the connection so much. For one thing Maurice had represented them well over the years. For another his acquaintance had got them into things—Mardi Gras balls, old houses, names and legends, and the sense that the very best thing to do was by the Parhams actually being done. Now he in turn needed them. They would allow the impression to surround Isabel that she was Creole, of course, and explain that this didn't mean Negro blood, oh my goodness no, it meant Spanish and French, the aristocratic blend. Isabel, no more Creole than they, sat quietly, studying them through her glasses, now repaired. Her blond hair had passed quietly into gray, but in certain lights it looked simply fair; her dresses in their clear shades could have been worn at any season. Little girls in the family trailed her upstairs to see what her cosmetics looked like, and the little boys in sitting rooms watched her silently, from the edge of their chairs. She spoke to Maurice on the telephone nightly and by the third day was looking better, 392 Elizabeth Spencer 393 dark shadows gone; she even laughed a time or two. Her appetite picked up. She was passed out among the family members in their beautifully furnished secluded houses; they took turns with her; from luncheon, tea, cocktail, and dinner invitations she had no hour's freedom, and there were morning drives as well. So all passed until Maurice called her to return, and she returned as she had gone, chauffeur-driven in the family Cadillac, feeling small and demure inside. What she had to tell Maurice was what had happened the very evening of his final call, when she had been at the house of one of the younger Parhams for drinks. He was a nephew of Martin's who had taken over the house which Martin had left, and which, soon after his death in the airplane accident, his widow had left too. For a while it seemed to Isabel that she had been forgotten. She had been brought in, and then a phone call had taken some of the Parhams back to pick up another member of the family. The host, a dark silent young man whose wife was not there, sat reading for a time even though Isabel was with him, then suddenly got up and left the room. Alone, she wandered about, admired on the stairway the French sculptures that Martin had collected, the plants that grew and trailed about their shapes, shadowing and softening, rendering them mysterious, she thought, for the plants were really like a miniature jungle; and at length the darkening room at twilight gave her the impression that she was visiting a ruin. She examined pictures and ornaments, and passing near the stairwell heard voices coming up from below: "You don't mean Julia's aunt . . . I didn't know Julia had an aunt, or anybody . . . you know what she said that last time we . . ." There was a trailing off, and then: "You going next weekend? It's time we told her that . . ." Isabel could hear no more except, presently, a burst of male laughter, and then the car drew up, the door was assailed by arriving guests. And the footstepsof the host were heard ascending the basement stairs. 394 THE S N A R E There was even a hostess, it appeared; a long-haired girl in a chiffon mini-skirt with long balloon-type sleeves floated among them. And this was all. Back home, Isabel, sitting in the living room alcove relating this episode to Maurice, had been, he thought, unduly shaken by it. "They see her, Maurice. I know it now. Don't you see she's still there, in a sense. Just as she's still here." She sighed. "Why...