Lucinda

His words had given me material for a half-amused, half-scared reflection – the mood which the neighborhood of Lady Dundrannan – and much more the possibility of any conflict with Lady Dundrannan – always aroused in me. Sir Paget’s letter had reflected – in a humor slightly spiced with restiveness – the present relations between Cragsfoot and Briarmount. What would they be with me in residence, and presently in possession? With me and my family there, as Godfrey Frost said? My family which did not exist at present!

But I did not sit there reflecting. I paid for our refreshments – Godfrey, in his preoccupation, had omitted even to offer to do so – and went back to the palazzo. Old Amedeo waylaid me in the hall and told me that Donna Lucinda had requested me to pay her a visit as soon as I returned from the funeral; but he prevented me from obeying her invitation for a few minutes. He was in a state of exultation that had to find expression.

“Ah, what a funeral! You saw me there? No! But I was, of course. A triumph! The name of Valdez will stand high in Venice henceforth! Oh, I don’t like Panizzi and that lot, any more than Father Garcia does. My sympathies are clerical. None the less, it was remarkable! Alas, what wouldn’t Don Arsenio have done if he hadn’t been cut off in his youth!”

That was a question which I felt – and feel – quite incapable of answering, save in the most general and non-committal terms. “Something astonishing!” I said with a nod, as I dodged past the broad barrier of Amedeo’s figure and succeeded in reaching the staircase.

Right up to the top of the tall old house I had to go this time – past Father Garcia and his noble “Black” friends, past the scene of the banquet and the scene of the catastrophe. I think that Lucinda must have been listening for my steps; she opened the door herself before I had time to knock on it.

She was back in the needlewoman’s costume now – her black frock, with her shawl about her shoulders. Perhaps this attire solved the problem of mourning in the easiest way; or perhaps it was a declaration of her intentions. I did not wait to ask myself that; the expression of her face caught my immediate attention. It was one of irrepressible amusement – of the eager amusement which seeks to share itself with another appreciative soul. She caught me by the hand, and drew me in, leading me through the narrow passage to the door of her sitting room – much of a replica of Arsenio’s on the floor below, though the ceiling was less lofty and the windows narrower.

Then I saw what had evoked the expression on her face. Between the windows, propped up against the discolored old hangings on the wall, stood the largest wreath of immortelles which I have ever seen on or off a grave, in or out of a shop window; and, occupying about half of the interior of the circle, there was a shield, or plaque, of purple velvet – Oh, very sumptuous! – bearing an inscription in large letters of gold:

“To the Illustrious Donna Lucinda Valdez and to the Immortal Memory of the Illustrious Señor Don Arsenio Valdez, the City and Citizens of Venice offer Gratitude and Homage.”

“Isn’t it – tremendous?” whispered Lucinda, her arm now in mine.

“It certainly is some size,” I admitted, eyeing the creation ruefully.

“No, no! The whole thing, I mean! Arsenio himself! Oh, how I should like to tell them the truth!”

“The funeral too was – tremendous,” I remarked. “But I suppose Amedeo’s told you?”

“Yes, he has! Also Father Garcia, who paid me a visit of condolence. And a number of Arsenio’s noble friends have sent condolences by stately, seedy menservants. Oh, and those trustees have left their cards, of course! Panizzi and the others!”

All this time we had been standing arm in arm, opposite the portentous monument of grief, gratitude, and homage. Now Lucinda withdrew her hand from my arm, and sank into a chair.

“I’m having fame thrust upon me! I’m being immortalized. The munificent widow of the munificent Arsenio Valdez! I’m becoming a public character! Oh, he is having his revenge on me, isn’t he? Julius, I can’t stand it! I must fly from Venice!”

My attention stuck on the monstrous wreath. “What are you going to do with that?”

“I wonder if there would ever be a dark enough night to tie a flat-iron to it, steal out with it round our necks, and drop it in the Grand Canal!” Lucinda speculated wistfully.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE AIR ON THE COAST

“AND did a dark enough night ever come, Julius?” Sir Paget asked with a chuckle.

It was late summer. I had arrived that day to pay him a visit and, incidentally, to complete the transaction by which Waldo was to convey to me the reversion to Cragsfoot. My uncle and I sat late together after dinner, while I regaled him with the story of the last days of Arsenio Valdez – of his luck, his death, and his glorification.

“Alas, sir, such things can’t actually happen in this world. They’re dreams – Platonic ideas laid up in heaven – inward dispositions towards things which can’t be literally translated into action! We did it in our souls. But, no; the wreath doesn’t, in bare and naked fact, lie at the bottom of the Grand Canal. It hangs proudly in the hall of Palazzo Valdez, the apple of his eye to fat old Amedeo, with whom Lucinda left it in charge – a pledge never likely to be demanded back – when she leased the palazzo to him. He undertakes the upkeep and expenses, pays her about two hundred a year for it, and expects to do very well by letting out the apartments. He considers that the wreath will add prestige to the place and enhance its letting value. Besides, he’s genuinely very proud of it, and the Valdez legend loses nothing in his hands, I assure you.”

“It’s a queer story. And that’s the end of it, is it? Because it’s nearly six months since our friend the Monkey, as you boys used to call him, played his last throw – and won!”

“There’s very little more to tell. As you know, Sir Ezekiel’s death sent me on my travels once again – to the States and South America; I was appointed Managing Director, and had to go inspecting, and reorganizing, and so forth. That’s all settled. I’m established now in town – and here, thank God, I am – at old Cragsfoot again!”

“You’ve certainly been a good deal mixed up in the affair – by fate or choice,” he said, smiling, “but you’re not the hero, are you? Arsenio claims that rôle! Or the heroine! What of her, Julius?”

“She came back to England four or five months ago. She’s living in rooms at Hampstead. She’s got the palazzo rent, and she still does her needlework; she gets along pretty comfortably.”

“You’ve seen her since you came back, I suppose?”

“Yes, pretty nearly every day,” I answered. “She was the first person I went to see when I got back to London; she was the last person I saw before I left London this morning.”

He sat rubbing his hands together, and looking into the bright fire of logs that his old body found pleasant now, even on summer evenings; the wind blows cold off the sea very often at Cragsfoot.

“You’re telling me the end of the story now, aren’t you, Julius?”

“Yes, I hope and think so. Indeed, why shouldn’t I say that I know it? I think that we both knew from the hour of Arsenio’s death. We had been too much together – too close in spirit through it all – for anything else. How could we say good-by and go our separate ways after all that? It would have seemed to us both utterly unnatural. First, my head had grown full of her – in those talks at Ste. Maxime that I told you we’d had; and, when a woman’s concerned, the heart’s apt to follow the head, isn’t it?”

“I don’t wonder at either head or heart. She was a delightful child; she seems to have grown into a beautiful woman – yes, she would have – and one that might make a man think about her. There was nothing between you while he lived? No, I don’t ask that question, I’ve no right to – and, I think, no need to.”

“With her there couldn’t have been; it was as impossible as it proved in the end for her to marry Waldo. For her it was a virtue in me that I knew it.”

“She wasn’t married to Arsenio Valdez when she ran away from Waldo?”

“In her own eyes she was, and when he called her – called her back – well, she had to go.”

“Ah, I’ve sometimes fancied that there might have been some untold history like that.”

“She now wishes that you and Waldo – just you two – should know that there was. Will you tell him, sir? I’d rather not. She thinks it may make you and him feel more gently to her; she’s proud herself, you know, and was sorry to wound others in their pride.”

“It’s generous of her. I’ll tell him – what I must; and you need tell me no more than you have. I shouldn’t wonder if the idea isn’t quite new to him either. There are – quarters – from which something of the sort may have been suggested, eh, Julius?”

“I know nothing as to that, but, as you say, it’s very possible. You’ll have gathered how the feelings of these two ladies towards one another runs through the whole business. And we’re not finished with them yet. Before Waldo sets his hand to that agreement, he must know that the arrangement which is to bring me to Cragsfoot will bring Lucinda there too.”

“Yes, as its mistress; even in my lifetime, if she so pleases; after me, in any case.” He looked across to me, smiling. “And the moment so difficult – the more difficult because it’s otherwise so triumphant! The Heir-Apparent is born – a month ago – I wrote you about it. The dynasty is assured; Her Majesty is at her grandest and – I will add – her most gracious. I saw her about again for the first time the day before yesterday, and she said to me, ‘Now I’m really content, Sir Paget!’ – implying, as it seemed to me, that the subject world ought to be content also. All the Court was there – the Heir itself, our dear old Prince Consort, the Grand Vizier – forgive me mixing East and West, but that seems to be the sort of position which she assigns to young Godfrey Frost; an exalted but precarious position, with a throne on one hand, and a bowstring on the other! Oh, yes, and there was a Lady-in-Waiting into the bargain, a pretty girl called Eunice Something-or-other.”

“Oh, yes, she was at Villa San Carlo – Eunice Unthank,” said I, smiling. Nina – pertinacious as a limpet!

“And now we’re to come breaking in on this benevolent despotism! Our schemes border on conspiracy, don’t they?” He grew graver, though he still smiled whimsically. “A reconciliation possible?” he suggested doubtfully.

I laughed. “There’s a crowning task for your diplomacy, Sir Paget!”

“If I could change the hearts of women, I should be a wizard, not a diplomatist. Their feuds have a grand implacability beside which the quarrels of nations are trivial and transient affairs. In this matter, I’m a broken reed – don’t lean upon me, Julius! And could you answer for your side – for your fair belligerent?”

“Lucinda makes war by laughing,” said I, laughing myself. “But – well, I think she would go on laughing, you know.”

“Just what my Lady Dundrannan always hates, and occasionally suspects – even in me!”

“I wish to blazes that Waldo would have one of his old rages, and tell her it’s not her business!”

“I daresay he may wish you hadn’t taken so much interest in his runaway fiancée,” was Sir Paget’s pertinent retort. “No, he’ll have no rages; like you, I sometimes regret it. If she vetoes, he’ll submit.” He shook his head. “Here are we poor men up against these grand implacabilities; they transcend our understanding and mock our efforts. Even Arsenio, the great Arsenio, though he made use of them, tripped up over them in the end! What can you and I, and poor Waldo, do?” He got up. “I’ll write a line to Waldo on the point – on the two points – to-night; and send it up by the car to-morrow; he can let us know his answer before Stannard is due here, with the deeds, in the afternoon. There might even be time to telephone and stop him from starting, if the answer’s a veto!”

Diplomatist though Sir Paget was, man of affairs as I must assume myself to be – or where stands the firm of Coldston’s? – our judgments were clumsy, our insight at fault; we did no justice to the fine quality of Lady Dundrannan’s pride. It was not to be outdone by the pride of the needlewoman of Cimiez – outwardly, at all events; and do not many tell us that wholly to conquer, or even conceal, such emotions as fear and self-distrust is a moral triumph, where not to feel them is a mere fluke of nature – just the way one happens to be concocted? The only answer that came to Sir Paget’s no doubt very delicately, diplomatically expressed note, came over the telephone (Sir Paget had not trusted its secrecy!), from butler to butler. Marsden at Briarmount told Critcher at Cragsfoot that he was to inform Sir Paget that Colonel Rillington said it was all right about this afternoon. Critcher delivered the message as Sir Paget and I were sitting in the garden before lunch – on that bench by the garden door whereon Lucinda had once sat, listening fearfully to the quarrel of angry youths.

“Very well, Critcher,” said Sir Paget indifferently. But when the man had gone, he turned to me and said, with a tremor in his voice, “So you can come, you see – you and Lucinda, Julius.” I had not known till then how much he wanted us. “I say, what would poor old Aunt Bertha have said? She went over, bag and baggage!”

“She’d have come back – with the same impedimenta,” I declared, laughing.

There was a stateliness in Lady Dundrannan’s assent, given by her presence and countenance to the arrangement which the allied family of the Rillingtons had – well, I suppose Waldo had – submitted to her approval. The big Briarmount car – even bigger, more newly yellow, than the car of Cimiez – brought down the whole bunch – all the Court, as Sir Paget had called it. Briarmount’s approval was almost overwhelmingly signified. It was not, of course, the thing to mention Lucinda – that was unofficial; perhaps, moreover, slightly shameful. Godfrey, at least, wore an embarrassed air which the ostensible character of the occasion did not warrant; and little Lady Eunice – I suspected that the information had filtered down to her through the other three of them – seemed to look at me with something of the reproachful admiration one reserves for a dare-devil. Waldo, for his part, gave my hand a hard, though surreptitious, squeeze, smiling into my eyes with his old kindness, somehow conveying an immense deal to me about how he for his part felt about the implacabilities, and the way they had affected his life – and now mine. Of course I was myself in the mood to perceive – to exaggerate, or even to imagine – such thoughts in him; but there it was – his eyes traveled from my face to his lady’s shapely back (she was putting Mr. Stannard, the lawyer, at his ease – he was a cadet of an old county family, and one of the best known sportsmen in the neighborhood), and back to my face again, and – well, certainly the situation was not lost on Waldo. But it was only after our business was finished – a short recital of the effect of the deeds from Stannard – didn’t we know more than he did about that? But no doubt it was proper – and then the signatures (“Dundrannan” witnessing in a fine, bold, decisive hand!) – that he said a word to me. “God give you and yours happiness with the old place, Julius!” The pang of parting from it spoke there, as well as kindliness and forgiveness for us.

Sir Paget insisted – certainly not to the displeasure of Mr. Stannard – on “wetting the signatures” with a bottle of his Pommery 1900. Nina just wetted her lips – even to that vintage she could condescend. Then we all strolled out into the garden, while tea was preparing. There was the old place – the high cliffs above it, one narrow wooded ledge fronting the sea; scant acres, but, as it were, with all our blood in them. I felt like a usurper (in spite of the honest money that I was paying), the younger branch ousting the elder, even through an abdication. But I was a usurper happy and content – as, I daresay, they often are, in spite of the poets and the dramatists. Sir Paget and Stannard paired off; Godfrey and Eunice; Waldo sat down on the bench by the door and lit his pipe; I found myself left with Nina Dundrannan. With the slightest motion of her hand she invited me to accompany her along the walk towards the shrubbery. At once I knew that she meant to say something to me, though I had not the least idea on what lines her speech might run. She could be very candid – had she not been once, long ago, she the “skeleton at the feast”? She could also put the truth very decisively in its proper place – a remote one. Fires burnt in her – I knew that; but who could tell when the flames would show?

There was a seat placed where a gap in the trees gave a view of the sea; here we sat down together. With her usual resoluteness she began at once with what she had made up her mind to say.

“Waldo didn’t show me Sir Paget’s note, but he told me a piece of news about you which it gave him; he gave me to understand that you and Sir Paget thought that I, as well as he himself, should know it. He told me that the arrangement was no longer repugnant to his own feelings, although it once would have been; he felt both able and willing to ignore the past, and start afresh on terms of friendship with Madame Valdez – with Lucinda. He asked me what my feelings were. I said that in my view that was hardly the question; I had married into the Rillington family; any lady whom Sir Paget and he, the heads of the family, were prepared to accept and welcome as a member of it, would, as a matter of course, be accepted by me; I should treat her, whenever we met, with courtesy, as I should no doubt be treated by her; a great degree of affection, I reminded Waldo, was not essential or invariable between relations-in-law.” Here Lady Dundrannan smiled for a moment. “Least of all should I desire that any supposed feelings of mine should interfere with the family arrangement about Cragsfoot which you all three felt to be desirable; the more so as it had in a way originated with myself, since, if I had wished to make this place our principal residence, the present plan would never have been thought of at all. So I told him to put me entirely out of the question; he would be quite safe in feeling sure that I should accept the situation with a good grace.”

She paused, and I took occasion to say: “I think we’re all much indebted to you – and myself most of all. Any other attitude on your part would have upset an arrangement which I have come to have very much at heart. I’m grateful to you, Nina.”

“You know a great deal – indeed, you probably know pretty well everything – that has happened between Lucinda and me. You wouldn’t defend all that she did; I don’t defend all I did. When I’m challenged, I fight, and I suppose Jonathan Frost’s daughter isn’t dainty as to her weapons – that’s your point of view about me, anyhow, isn’t it? You’ve always been in her camp. You’ve always been a critic of me.”

“Really I’ve regretted the whole – er – difficulty and – well, difference, very much.”

“You’ve laughed at it even more than you’ve regretted it, I think,” she remarked drily. “But I’ve liked you better than you’ve liked me – though you did laugh at me – and I’m not going to make things difficult or uncomfortable for you. When I accept a state of things, I accept it without reservation. I don’t want to go on digging pins in.”

“If I have ever smiled – as you accuse me of having done – as well as regretted, it was because I saw your qualities as well as hers. The battle was well joined. You’ve both had your defeats and your victories. I should like you to be friends now.”

“Yes, I believe you would; that’s why I’m talking like this to you. But” – her voice took on a sudden ring of strong feeling – “it’s impossible. There are such memories between us.”

I did not urge the point; it would be useless with her, very likely also with Lucinda. I let it go with a shrug.

She sat for a moment in the stately composed silence that so well became her.

“It’s probable that we shall divide our time mainly between London, Dundrannan, and Villa San Carlo in future. It’s even likely that if Godfrey settles matters with Eunice Unthank, as I think he will, he’ll take a lease of Briarmount. That would not be disagreeable to you, would it?”

“Not the least in the world,” I answered, smiling. “I like them both very much.”

She turned to me with a bland and simple sincerity of manner. “The doctor thinks that the air on this coast is too strong for baby.”

I seemed to be hearing an official bulletin – or communiqué, as for some occult reason – or pure love of jargon – they used to call it. There was no question of a reverse at the hands of the enemy; but climatic conditions rendered further operations undesirable; the withdrawal was being effected voluntarily, in perfect order, and without loss. That the enemy was taking possession of the evacuated territory was a circumstance of no military significance whatever – though, to be sure, it might make some little difference to the inhabitants.

“It won’t do to run any risks with that precious boy!” I observed, with an approving smile, and (as I flatter myself) with just the artistic shade of jocosity – as if I were gently chaffing her on a genuine but exaggerated maternal solicitude.

“Well, when the doctor says that, what can one do?” asked Lady Dundrannan.

“Oh, one must follow his advice, of course!” I murmured, with a nod of my head.

The bark of our conversation (another metaphor may well be employed to illustrate her skill) being thus piloted through the shoals of truth into the calm deep waters of humbug, its voyage ended prosperously. “I should never forgive myself, and Waldo would never forgive me, if I took the slightest risk,” Nina concluded, as she rose from the seat.

But as we stood there, facing one another – before we began to stroll back to the house – as we stood facing one another, all alone, we allowed ourselves one little relapse into reality.

“Do you think of being off soon?” I asked, with a smile.

She gave me one sharp glance and a contemptuous smile. “Before your wedding – whenever that may be, Julius!”

CHAPTER XXVII

IN FIVE YEARS

WINTER had set in again when Lucinda and I came together to Cragsfoot. The picture of her on her first evening there stands out vivid in my memory.

Sir Paget had received her with affectionate, but perhaps somewhat ceremonious, courtesy; there was a touch of ratifying a treaty of peace in his manner. She was minded to come closer in intimacy; for in these recent days – before and just after our wedding – a happy confidence seemed to possess her. Self-defense and the hardness it has to carry with it were necessary to her no longer; she reached out more freely for love and friendship, and broke the bounds of that thoughtful isolation which had so often served to keep the woman herself apart from all about her. She was not on guard now; that was the meaning of the change which had come over her; not on guard and not fighting.

After dinner she drew a low stool up beside the old man’s big armchair before the fire, and sat down beside him, laying one arm across his knees; I sat smoking on the other side of the hearth. Sir Paget laid his hand on hers for a moment, as though to welcome her bodily presence thus in touch with him.

“You’ll be wondering how it happened,” she began, “and Julius won’t have been able to tell you. Probably it never occurred to him to try, though I suppose he’s told you all the actual happenings – the outward things, I mean, you know. It was at Ste. Maxime that we – began to be ‘we’ to one another. I knew it in him then – perhaps sooner than he did – but I don’t know; he’s still rather secretive about himself, though intolerably inquisitive about other people. But I did know it in him; and I searched, and found it in myself – not love then, but a feeling of partnership, of alliance. I was very lonely then. Well, I can stand that. I was standing it; and I could have gone on – perhaps! I wonder if I could! No, not after I found out about Arsenio’s taking that money! That would have broken me – if it hadn’t been for Ste. Maxime.”

She paused for a moment; when she spoke again, she addressed me – on the other side of the fireplace.

“You went away for a long while; but you remembered and you wrote. I’m not a letter-writer, and that was really the reason I didn’t answer. I have to be with people – to feel them – if I’m to talk with them to any purpose – to ask then questions and get answers, even though they don’t say anything.” (I saw her fingers bend in a light pressure on old Sir Paget’s knee.) “I should have sounded stupid in my letters. Or said too much! Because the only thing was to say nothing about it, wasn’t it? You knew that as well as I did, didn’t you? If once we had talked – in letters or when you came back – ! I did nearly talk when you suddenly appeared there on the Piazza at Venice. It was pretty nearly as good as a declaration, wasn’t it, Julius?”