Lucinda

He knew what he could do and what he could not. If she was a character in his comedy, she was his audience too. He played to her for all he was worth; he saw the occasional smile and understood it as well as I did. His eyes sought for any faint indications of her applause.

And the victim? As I said, he carried off the meeting well at first; the Frost composure stood him in good stead; he was not readily to be shaken out of it. But at last, under Arsenio’s swift succession of pricks, he grew sullen and restive. His puzzled ill-humor vented itself on me, not on his dexterous tormentor.

“When did you make up your mind to come here? You said nothing about anything of the sort in Paris!”

The half-smothered resentment in his tone accused me of treachery – of having stolen a march on him. Arsenio smiled impishly as he listened – himself at last silent for a minute.

“The news of our friends’ good fortune encouraged me to join them,” I said. It was true – roughly; and I was very far from acknowledging any treachery.

This was the first reference that any one had made to the grand coup– to the winning ticket – a reticence which had, no doubt, increased Godfrey’s puzzle. He could not put questions himself, but I had seen him eyeing Lucinda’s black frock; Arsenio too was uncommonly shabby; and, as the latter had incidentally mentioned, I was paying rent: “I can’t afford not to charge it,” he had added with a rueful air, ostentatiously skirting the topic. Now he took it up, quite artificially. “Ah, that bit of luck! Oh, all to the good! It settles our future – doesn’t it, Lucinda?” (Here came one of her rare faint smiles.) “But we’re simple folk with simple tastes. We haven’t substantially altered our mode of living. Lucinda has her work – she likes it. I stick on in the old ancestral garrets.” (“Ancestral” was stretching things a bit – his father had bought the palazzo, and re-christened it.) “But we shall find a use for that windfall yet. Still, now you’ve come, we really must launch out a bit. Julius is one of the family – almost; but you’re an honored guest. Mustn’t we launch out a little, Lucinda?”

“Do as you like. It’s your money,” she answered. “At least, what you don’t owe of it is.”

Then, at that, for a sudden short moment, the real man broke through. “Then none of it’s mine, because I owe it all to you,” he said. The words might have been a continuation of his mockery; they would have borne that construction. But they were not; his voice shook a little; his mind was back on Number Twenty-one and what that meant – or had meant – to him. But he recovered his chosen tone in an instant. “And behold her generosity! She gives it back to me – she won’t touch a penny of it!”

At that a sudden gleam of intelligence shot into Godfrey’s eyes. He fixed them inquiringly on Lucinda. She was in great looks that evening – in her plain, close-fitting, black frock, with never an ornament save a single scarlet flower in her fair hair; he might well look at her; but it was not her beauty that drew his gaze at that moment. He was questioning more than admiring. She gave him back his look steadily, smiling a little, ready to let him make what he could of her husband’s exclamation.

“Let me give one dinner party out of it,” implored Arsenio. “Just we four – a perfect partie carrée. If I do, will you come to it, Lucinda?”

She gave him an amused little nod; he had touched her humor. “Yes, if you give Mr. Frost a dinner, I’ll come,” she said. “What day?”

“Why, the first on which we can eat a dinner! And that’s to-morrow! Upstairs – in my apartment?”

“No – here – if Julius will let us,” she said mildly, but very firmly. “You accept, Mr. Frost? And we’ll all dress up and be smart, – to honor Mr. Frost, and Arsenio’s banquet.”

So the arrangement was made, and it promised, to my thinking, as I lay in bed, another queer evening. Somebody, surely, would break the thin ice on which Arsenio was cutting his capers! What if we all began to speak our true thoughts about one another? But the evening that I was recalling held still something more in it – the most vivid of all its impressions, although the whole of it was vivid enough in my memory.

Godfrey rose to take his leave. “Till to-morrow, then!” he said, as he took Lucinda’s hand, bowing slightly over it; he pressed it, I think, for her fingers stiffened and she frowned – Arsenio standing by, smiling.

“See him down the stairs, Arsenio,” she ordered. “The light’s very dim, and two or three of the steps are broken.”

The two went out! I heard Arsenio’s voice chattering away in the distance as they went down the high steep stairs. Lucinda stood where she was for a minute, and then came across to the chair on which I had sat down, after saying good-night to Godfrey. She dropped on her knees beside it, laying her arms across my knees, and looking up at me with eyes full of tears.

“I do pity him,” she murmured, “I do! And I’d be kind to him. I don’t want him to go on being as bitter and unhappy as he is – oh, you saw! One can’t help being amused, but every time he hit Godfrey, he hit himself too – and harder. But what’s the use? Nothing’s any use except the thing that I can’t do!”

I laid my hand on hers – they lay side by side on my knee. “It’s rather a case of ‘God help us all!’ I think.”

“You too?”

“Yes – when you’re unhappy.”

I felt her hands rise under my hand, and I released them. She took mine between hers and raised it to her lips. Then a silence fell between us, until I became conscious that Arsenio was standing on the threshold, holding the knob of the opened door. He had stolen back with the quietness of a cat; we had neither of us heard a sound of him.

Lucinda saw him, and slowly rose to her feet; she was without a trace of embarrassment. She walked across to the door; he held it wide open for her to pass – she always went upstairs alone – But to-night – against the custom of their nightly parting during the last week – she stopped and took his hand. Her back was towards me now; I could not see her eyes, but there must have been an invitation in them, for he slowly advanced his head towards hers. She did not need to stoop – she was as tall as he was. She kissed him on the forehead.

“If you will be content with peace, peace let it be,” she said.

He made no motion to return the kiss – the invitation could not have carried so far as that; he stood quite still while she passed out and while her footsteps sounded on the stairs.

There came the noise of a door opening and shutting, up above us, on the top floor. He shut the door that he had been still holding, and came slowly up to the hearthrug, by which I sat.

I lit a cigarette. All the while that it took me to smoke it he stood there in silence, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. His impishness had dropped from him, exorcised, as it seemed, by Lucinda’s kiss. His face was calm and quiet.

“Well, that’s finished!” he said at last, more to himself than to me. I did not speak; he looked down at me and addressed me more directly. “You saw her? You saw what she meant by that? It was – good-by!”

“I’m afraid I think so too, old friend – especially in view of what she’d just been saying to me. She’s greatly distressed about it, but – ” At that moment I myself was greatly distressed for him, indeed for both of them; but the next he spoilt my feeling (so to say) as far as he was concerned, and made Lucinda’s distress look overdone, or even gratuitous. He drew himself up pompously and spread his arms out on either side of him, holding his hands palms uppermost, rather as if he were expounding an argument to a public meeting.

“Very well! I accept. Whatever her future feelings may be, I take her at her word, and accept – once and for all! It is not consonant with my dignity, my self-respect – ” I sighed. He gave me a short, sharp look, but then went on in just the same fashion – “to prolong this situation, to persecute, to trouble. I will relieve her of my presence, of the thought of me. She is still young – almost a girl. She will find another life to live. She will find love again – though not the love I gave her. And if ever she thinks of Arsenio Valdez, let it be with charity and forgiveness!”

It seemed rather cruel to recognize the fact, – but a fact it obstinately and obviously was – that Lucinda’s future thinking of him formed part of the program; relieving her of the thought of him was a mere flourish; whatever he proposed to do with himself, he did not propose to do that.

“Time softens bitter memories, the mind dwells on what is sweet in the past. So may it be with her, when I am gone, Julius!”

“Where do you propose to go?’” I asked irritably. His pomposity and sentimentality seemed to me transpontine. The man could not be sincere for five minutes; he was cutting a figure again.

“Ah! that, my friend, need not be put in words. There is one course always open to a gentleman who has staked his all and lost.”

It occurred to me that Arsenio had very often staked his all and lost, and that his course had been to borrow some more from other people. But what was the good of saying that to him when he was on his high horse – a very prancing steed? In a different mood, though, he would have laughed at the reminder himself.

Of course I knew what he meant me to understand. But, frankly, I did not at the time believe a word of it; and now, as I lay thinking it over, I believed in it even less, if possible. I took it for another flourish, and smiled to myself at it, as Lucinda had laughed at the threat when she mentioned it to me on the Lido.

“Sleep on it, old fellow,” I advised him. “You’ll feel better about it, perhaps, in the morning. If you so decide to give her a separation or a divorce, it can all be arranged in a friendly way. She wants to be as kind and friendly as she can to you.”

“As I say, I trust that her memory of me will be that,” he said in his most solemn sepulchral voice. “And you, my friend, you too – ”

“Oh, damn it all, let my memories of you alone, Arsenio! I assure you that talking this sort of stuff won’t improve them.” I got up from my chair. “Go to bed now – think it over to-morrow. At any rate, you’ve got your dinner to-morrow evening; you can’t do anything till after that.”

“Yes,” he agreed thoughtfully. “Yes, I’ve got my dinner to-morrow.” He seemed to meditate on the prospect with a gloomy satisfaction. I meditated on the same prospect now with considerable apprehension. He had finally left me the night before still in his tragic vein, still on his high horse. But who in the world could tell in what mood this evening would find him? On whom might he not turn? What outrage on the social decencies might he not commit? Last night we had been presented with an extensive selection from his répertoire, ranging from schoolboy naughtiness to the beau geste– the insufferable beau geste– of a romantically contemplated suicide. What might we not be treated to to-night? And I did not feel at all sure how much Lucinda could stand – or how much Godfrey Frost would.

With a knock at the door, Louis came in, in his usual sleek and deferential fashion. He laid a little bundle of letters on the table by the bed, and inquired whether Monsieur would take déjeuner at home to-day – or would he perhaps prefer to go out? It was obvious, from the way the question was put, which Louis himself preferred. And the next moment he murmured the humble suggestion that there were the preparations, for dinner to-night, of course.

“Are there? Special preparations, do you mean, Louis?”

“Monsieur Valdez is, I understand, with your permission, Monsieur, intending to provide a few decorations for the salon. He tells me that he entertains to-night in honor of the arrival of his friend Monsieur Frost.” (Froost, he called it).

“Oh, all right! I’ll certainly lunch out, if it makes things easier for you, Louis.”

When he was gone, I opened my letters. Among them was one from Waldo, and another from Sir Paget, both of some length, touching the family arrangement which Waldo had suggested with regard to Cragsfoot. I decided to put them in my pocket and read them later – while I had my lunch. I had lain already overlong in bed, my thoughts busy with the events of the partie carrée of last night.

CHAPTER XXII

SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS

WALDO’S was a business letter; any feelings that might be influencing the proposed transaction, any sentiment that might be involved – whether of Nina’s, of his own, of his father’s, or of mine – he appeared to consider as having been adequately indicated in our talk at Paris, and accorded them only one passing reference. He assumed that I should be bearing all that – he had a habit of describing the emotions as “all that,” I remembered – in mind; what remained was to ask me whether I were favorably disposed to the arrangement, the value of his remainder – which must, alas, before many years were out, become an estate in possession – to be fixed by a firm of land agents selected by himself and me – “from which price I should suggest deducting twenty-five per cent. in consideration of what I believe the lawyers call ‘natural love and affection’; in other words, because I’d much sooner sell to you than to a stranger – in fact, than to anybody else.” The underlining of the last two words clearly asked me to substitute for them a proper name with which we were both well acquainted. He added that he thought the land agents’ valuation would be somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty thousand pounds, timber included – and so, with kindest remembrances from Nina, who was splendidly fit, considering (another underlining gave me news of possible importance for the future of the Dundrannan barony), he remained my affectionate cousin.

Though I suspect that son and father, at the bottom of their hearts, felt much the same about the matter, Sir Paget’s letter was expressed in a different vein. Leaving the business to Waldo, he dealt with the personal aspect:

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you that I hadn’t always hoped and expected that the heir of my body and the child of my dear wife should succeed me here. That’s nature; but Dis aliter visum. The All-Highest herself decides otherwise.” (I saw in my mind the humorous, rather tired, smile with which he wrote that.) “But I should be an ungrateful churl indeed if I repined at the prospect of being succeeded at Cragsfoot by you, who bear the old name (and, I am told, are to get a handle to it!) – you who are and have been always son of my heart, if not of my body – a loyal, true son too, if you will let me say it. So, if it is to be, I receive it with happiness, and the more you come to your future dominions while I —brevis dominus– am still here to welcome you, the better I shall be pleased. But, prithee, Julius, remember that you provide, in your own person, only for the next generation. When your turn comes for the doleful cypresses, what is to happen? You must look to it, my boy!”

After a touching reference to his old and now lost companion, Aunt Bertha, and to his own loneliness, he went on more lightly: “But Waldo comes over every day from Briarmount when they are ‘in residence,’ and the aforesaid All-Highest herself pays me a state visit once or twice a week. The Queen-Regent expects an Heir-Apparent. Oh, confidently! I think she can’t quite make out how fate, or nature, or the other Deity dared to thwart her, last time! I confess I am hypnotized – I too have no doubt of the event! So, as to that, all is calm and confidence – the third peer of the line is on his way! But is there anything wrong in her outlying dominions? Villa San Carlo, though it sounds like a charming winter palace, doesn’t seem to have been an unqualified success. ‘Rather tiresome down there!’ she said. I asked politely after the cousin. Very well, when she had seen him last, but she really didn’t know what he was doing; it seemed to her that he was taking a very long holiday from business – ‘Our works down there are of only secondary importance.’ I remarked that you had written saying how much you were enjoying yourself at Villa San Carlo, and how you regretted being detained in Paris. ‘Oh, he meant to leave us anyhow, I think!’ I fancied somehow that both of you gentleman had incurred the royal displeasure. What have you been up to? Rebellion, lèse-majesté, treason? You are bold men if you defy my Lady Dundrannan! Well, she’s probably right in thinking that Cragsfoot is too small for her, and not worth adding to her dominions!”

Though the purchase would need some contriving, the price that Waldo’s letter indicated was not an insuperable difficulty, thanks to the value which Sir Ezekiel was now kind enough to put on my services; I could pay it, and keep up the place on a footing of frugal decency when the time came. For the rest, the prospect was attractive. Cragsfoot had always been an integral part of my life; my orphaned childhood had been spent there. If it passed to a stranger, I should feel as it were dug up by the roots. If I did not fall in with the arrangement, pass to a stranger it would; I felt sure of that; the All-Highest had issued her command. “So be it!” I said to myself – half in pleasure, still half in resentment at the Dundrannan fiat, which broke the direct line of the Rillingtons of Cragsfoot. I also made up my mind to obey Sir Paget’s implied invitation as soon as —

As soon as what? The summons from Cragsfoot – the call back to home and home life (my appointment to our London office was now ratified) – brought me up against that question. I could answer it only by saying – as soon as Lucinda’s affair had somehow settled itself. She could not be left where she was; as a permanency, the present situation was intolerable. She must yield or she must go; Valdez would never let her alone, short of her adopting one of those alternatives; he would keep on at his pestering and posturing. She had no money; her mother had lived on an annuity, or an allowance, or something of that kind, which expired with the good lady herself. Clearly, however, she was able to support herself. She must not sell flowers on the Piazza all her life; I thought that she would consent to borrow enough money from me to set herself up in a modest way in business, and I determined to make that proposal to her on the morrow – as soon as we had got through the ordeal of this evening’s dinner. I fervently hoped that we might get through it without a flare-up between Arsenio and his honored guest Godfrey Frost. Out of favor at Briarmount was he, that young man? I could easily have told Sir Paget the reason for that!

The only one of the prospective party whom I encountered in the course of the afternoon – though I admit that I haunted the Piazza in the hope of seeing Lucinda – was the host himself. I met him in company with a tall, lean visaged, eminently respectable person, wearing a tall hat and a black frock coat. Arsenio stopped me, and introduced me to his companion. He said that Signor Alessandro Panizzi and I ought to know one another; I didn’t see why, and merely supposed that he was exhibiting his respectable friend, who was, it appeared, one of the leading lawyers in Venice and, indeed, an ex-Syndic of the city. Signor Panizzi, on his part, treated Arsenio with the greatest deference; he referred to him, in the course of our brief conversation, as “our noble friend,” and was apparently hugely gratified by the familiar, if somewhat lordly, bearing which Arsenio adopted towards him. But, after all, Arsenio was now rich – notoriously so, thanks to the way in which wealth had come to him; one could understand that he might be regarded as a highly-to-be-valued citizen of Venice. Perhaps he was going to run for Mayor himself – one more brilliant device to dazzle Lucinda!

There it was – in thinking of him one always expected, one always came back to, the bizarre, the incongruous and ridiculous. It was the overpowering instinct for the dramatic, the theatrical, in him, without any taste to guide or to limit it. That was what made it impossible to take him, or his emotions and attitudes, seriously; Waldo’s “all that” seemed just the applicable description. I walked away wondering just what particular line his bamboozlement of Signor Alessandro Panizzi might be taking. Moreover, that he could find leisure in his thoughts to posture to somebody else – besides Lucinda and myself – was reassuring. It made his hints of the night before seem even more unreal and fantastic.

That same last word was the only one appropriate to describe what I found happening to my unfortunate salon, when I got back early in the evening. Half a dozen men, under the superintendence of Louis and the fat old portière who lived in a sort of cupboard on the ground floor, opening off the hall, were engaged in transforming it into what they obviously considered to be a scene of splendor. The old portière was rubbing his plump hands in delight; at last Don Arsenio was launching out, spending his money handsomely, doing justice to Palazzo Valdez; the rich English nobleman (this was Godfrey Frost – probably after Arsenio’s own description) would undoubtedly be much impressed. Very possibly – but possibly not quite as old Amedeo expected! The table groaned – or at all events I groaned for it – under silver plate and silver candlesticks. The latter were also stuck galore in sconces on the walls. Table and walls were festooned with chains of white flowers; the like bedecked the one handsome thing that really belonged to the room – the antique chandelier in the middle of the ceiling; I had never put lights in it, but they were there now. And the banquet was to be on a scale commensurate with these trappings. “Prodigious! Considering the times, absolutely prodigious!” Amedeo assured me; he, for his part, could not conceive how Don Arsenio and Signor Louis had contrived to obtain the materials for such a feast. Signor Louis smiled mysteriously; tricks of the trade were insinuated.

It seemed to me that Arsenio had gone stark mad. What were we in for this evening?

Just as this thought once again seized on my mind, I saw something that gave me a little start. The butt of a revolver or pistol protruded from the side-pocket of Louis’s jacket, and the pocket bulged with the rest of the weapon.

“What in the world are you carrying that thing about for?” I exclaimed.

“Monsieur Valdez told me to clean it,” he answered quietly. “He gave it to me for that purpose – out of his bureau.”

“He didn’t tell you to carry it about with you while you did your work, did he?”

“No, he didn’t,” said Arsenio’s voice just behind me. The door stood open for the workers, and he had come in, in his usual quiet fashion. I turned round, to find him grinning at me. “Give it here, Louis,” he ordered, and slipped the thing into his own pocket. “The room looks fine now, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“What do you want with your revolver to-day?” I asked.

He looked at me with malicious glee. “Aha, Julius, I did frighten you last night then, after all! You pretended to be very scornful, but I did make an impression! Or else why do you question me about my revolver?”

“I didn’t believe a word of that nonsense you hinted at last night,” I protested. “But what do you want with your revolver?”

“My dear fellow, I don’t want to boast of my wealth, but there’s a considerable sum of money in my bureau – very considerable. No harm in being on the safe side, is there?”

That seemed reasonable: his manner too changed suddenly from derision to a plausible common sense. “Possessing a revolver – as most of us who served do – doesn’t mean that one intends to use it – on oneself or on anybody else, does it?”

I felt at a loss. When he wanted me to believe, I didn’t. When he wanted me not to believe, I did – or, at all events, half did. With Arsenio the plausible sensible explanation was always suspect; to be merely sensible was so contrary to his nature.

The busy men had apparently finished their ridiculous work. Louis came in and looked round with a satisfied air.

“Splendid, Louis!” said Arsenio. “Here, take this thing and put it on the bureau in my room.” As Louis obediently took the revolver and left us alone together, Arsenio added to me: “Don’t spoil your dinner – a good one, I hope, for these hungry days – by taking seriously anything I said last night. Perhaps in the end I did mean – No, I didn’t really. I was wrought up. My friend, wasn’t it natural?”