REBELLION
THERE was the situation; for Godfrey was quick enough to see what had
happened as soon as he had read Arsenio’s letter; he finished it,
which was more than I had done, and so found more lies than I had. We
discussed the situation far into the night, Godfrey still doing most of
the talking. He had come to Paris to see me about it, to ask my advice
or to put some question to me; but he had not really got the problem
clear in his mind. On subsidiary points—or, perhaps, one should rather
say, on what seemed such to him—his view was characteristic, and to
me amusing. He thought that most of Nina’s anger was due to the fact
that she had been “done” by Arsenio, that he had got her money for
Lucinda and for himself on false pretenses; whereas Nina was really
furious with Lucinda herself for not having consciously accepted her
charity, and made comparatively little of friend Arsenio’s roguery.
He was much more full of admiration of Lucinda for not minding being
discovered carrying a bandbox—and for laughing at her encounter with
Lady Dundrannan while she was doing it—than of appreciation of her
indignation over the blue frock; he thought she made a great deal too
much of that. “Since she didn’t know, what does it come to?” he asked.
And he wasted no reprobation on Arsenio. He had known Arsenio for a
rogue before—a rogue after his money, and willing to use his wife as
a bait to catch it; that he now knew that Arsenio was more completely
a rogue all round—towards Nina as well as towards him—was merely a
bit of confirmatory evidence; he saw nothing in the fact that Arsenio
had, after all, given Lucinda the blue frock, though he would have
been quite safe—as safe, anyhow—if he had given her nothing. His whole
analysis, so far as it appeared in disjointed observations, of the
other parties to the affair, ran on lines of obvious shrewdness, and
was baffled only where they appeared—as in Lucinda’s case—to diverge
from the lines thus indicated. Lucinda was a puzzle. Why had she hidden
herself from him? She could “have it out” with Valdez, if she wanted
to, without doing that!
But he was not immensely perturbed at her temporary disappearance; he
could find her, if he wanted to. “It’s only a matter of trouble and
money, like anything else.” And if she were furious with Valdez, no
harm in that! Rather the reverse! Thus he gradually approached his
own position, and the questions which he was putting to himself, and
had found so difficult that he had been impelled to come and talk
them over. These really might be reduced to one, and a very old one,
though also often a very big one; it may be variously conceived and
described as that between prudence and passion, that between morality
and love, that between will and emotion, between the head and the
heart. For purposes of the present case it could be personified as
being between Nina and Lucinda. As a gentleman, if as nothing more, he
had been obliged to own up to his engagement to lunch with Lucinda and
to stand by it. But that act settled nothing ultimately. The welcome
of a returning Prodigal would await him at Villa San Carlo, though
the feast might perhaps be rather too highly peppered with a lofty
forgiveness; he was conscious of that feature in the case, but minded
it less than I should have; Nina’s pupil was accustomed to her rebukes,
and rather hardened against her chastisement. But if arms were open to
him elsewhere—soft and seducing arms—what then? Was he to desert Nina?
Her and what she stood for? And really, in this situation, she stood
for everything that had, up to now, governed his life. She stood (she
would not have felt at all inadequate to the demand on her qualities)
for prosperity, progress, propriety, and—as a climax—for piety itself.
Godfrey had been religiously brought up (the figure of the white-haired
Wesleyan Minister at Briarmount rose before my eyes) and was not
ashamed to own that the principles thus inculcated had influenced his
doings and were still a living force in him. I respected him for the
avowal; it is not one that men are very ready to make where a woman is
in question; it had been implicit in his reason for knowing nothing of
women, given to me a long time ago—that he had not been able to afford
to marry.
Piety was the highest impersonation which Nina was called upon to
undertake. Was it the most powerful, the most compelling? There were so
many others, whose images somehow blended into one great and imposing
Figure—Regularity, with her cornucopia of worldly advantages, not
necessarily lost (Godfrey was quite awake to that) by a secret dallying
with her opposite, but thereby rendered insincere—that counted with
him—uneasy, and perpetually precarious. He was a long-headed young
man; he foresaw every chance against his passion—even the chance that,
having first burnt up all he had or hoped for, it would itself become
extinct. Then it was not true passion? I don’t know. It was strong
enough. Lucinda impersonated too; impersonated things that are very
powerful.
He spoke of her seldom and evasively. In the debate which he carried
on with himself—only occasionally asking for an opinion from
me—he generally indicated her under the description of “the other
thing”—other (it was to be understood) from all that Nina represented.
Taken like that, the description, if colorless, was at least
comprehensive. And it did get Lucinda—bluntly, yet not altogether
wrongly. He saw her as an ideal—the exact opposite of the ideal to
which he had hitherto aspired, the ideal of regularity, wealth,
eminence, reputation, power, thirty per cent., and so on (including,
let us not forget, piety). So seen, she astonished him in herself,
and astonished him more by the lure that she had for him. Only he
distrusted the lure profoundly. In the end he could not understand it
in himself. I do not blame him; I myself was considerably puzzled at
finding it in him. To say that a man is in love is a summary, not an
explanation. Jonathan Frost—old Lord Dundrannan—had been a romantic
in his way; Nina too in hers, when she had sobbed in passion on the
cliffs—or even now, when she cherished disturbing emotions about things
and people whom she might, without loss of comfort or profit, have
serenely disregarded. There was a thread of the romantic meandering
through the more challenging patterns of the family fabric.
Half a dozen times I was on the point of flying into a rage with
him—when he talked easily of “buying Valdez,” when he assumed Lucinda’s
assent to that not very pretty transaction, when he hinted at the
luxury which would reward that assent, and so on. But the genuineness
of his conflict, of his scruples on the one hand, of his passion
on the other, made anger seem cruel, while the bluntness of his
perception seemed to make it ridiculous. Perhaps on this latter point
I exaggerated a little—asking from him an insight into the situation to
which I was helped by a more intimate knowledge of the past and of the
persons; but at all events he was, as I conceived, radically wrong in
his estimate of the possibilities. At last I was impelled to tell him
so.
It was very late; in disregard of his “Don’t go yet, I haven’t
finished,” I had actually put on my coat, and taken my hat and stick in
my hand. I stood like that, opposite to where he sat, and expounded my
views to him. I imagine that to a cool spectator I should have looked
rather absurd, for by now I too was somehow wrought up and excited;
he had got me back into my pre-Paris state of mind, the one in which
I had been when I intimated to Nina that I must hunt the Riviera for
Lucinda and find out the truth about her at all costs. The Conference
on Tonnage was routed, driven pell-mell out of my thoughts.
“You can’t buy Valdez,” I told him, “not in the sense that you mean.
He’ll sell himself, body and soul, for money—to you, or me, or Nina, or
all of us, or anybody else. But he won’t sell Lucinda. He sells himself
for money, but it’s because of her that he must have the money—to
dazzle her, to cut a figure in her eyes, to get her back to him. He
used her to tempt you with, to make you shell out—just as he did, in
another way, with Nina. But he knew he was safe; he knew he’d never
have to deliver what he was pretending to sell. She’s not only the one
woman to him, she’s the one idea in his head, the one stake he always
plays for. He’d sell his soul for her, but he wouldn’t sell her in
return for all you have. You sit here, balancing her against this and
that—now against God, now against Mammon! He doesn’t set either of them
for a moment in the scales against her.”
If what I said sharpened his perception, it blunted his scruples. The
idea of Valdez’s passion was a spur to his own.
“Then it’s man against man,” he said in a sullen, dogged voice. “If I
find I can’t buy her, I’ll take her.”
“You can try. If she lets you, she’s a changed woman. That’s all I can
say. I need hardly add that I shall not offer you my assistance. Why,
hang it, man, if she’s to be got, why shouldn’t I have a shot at her
myself?”
He gave a short gruff laugh. “I don’t quite associate the idea
with you, but of course you’d be within your rights, as far as I’m
concerned.”
I laughed too. “There’s fair warning to you, then! And no bad blood,
I hope? Also, perhaps, enough debate on what is, after all, rather
a delicate subject—a lady’s honor—as some scrupulous people might
remind us. By way of apology to the proprieties, I’ll just add that
in my private opinion we should neither of us have the least chance
of success. She may not be Valdez’s any more—as to that I express
no opinion, though I have one—but I don’t believe she’ll be any one
else’s.”
“What makes you say that?” he grumbled out surlily.
“She herself makes me say it; she herself and what I know about her.
And, considering your condition, it seems common kindness to tell you
my view, for what it’s worth. Now, my friend, thanks for your dinner,
and—good-night!”
“Are you staying here—in Paris—much longer?”
“I shall be for a week—possibly a fortnight—I expect.”
“Then good-by as well as good-night; I shall go back to-morrow.”
“To Villa San Carlo?”
“No, I don’t know where I shall go. It depends.”
“To where you can test the value of my view, perhaps?” He had now
risen, and I walked across to him, holding out my hand. He took it,
with another gruff laugh.
“This sort of thing plays hell with a man; but there’s no need for us
to quarrel, Julius?”
“Not at present, at all events. And it looks as if you had a big enough
quarrel on your hands already.”
“Nina? Yes.” It was on that name, and not on the other, that at last we
parted. And I suppose that he did “go back” the next day; for I saw him
no more during the rest of my stay in Paris.
But a week later—our “labors” being “protracted” to that extent and
longer—I had an encounter that gave me indirect news of him, as well as
direct news of other members of the Rillington-cum-Dundrannan family.
To my surprise, I met my cousin Waldo in the Rue de la Paix. Nina and
he—and Eunice—were on their way home. In the first place, Sir Paget
had written that Aunt Bertha was seedy and moping, and wondering when
they would be back. In the second, Nina had got restless and tired of
Mentone, while he himself was so much better that there was no longer
any reason to stay there on his account.
“In fact, we got a bit bored with ourselves,” Waldo confessed as he
took my arm and we walked along together, “after we lost you two
fellows. Dull for the ladies. Oh, I know you couldn’t help yourself,
old fellow; this job here was too big to miss. But we lost Godfrey
too.” His voice fell to a confidential pitch, and he smiled slyly as
he pressed my arm. “Well, you know, dear Nina is given to making her
plans, bless her! And she’s none too pleased when they don’t come
off, is she? I rather fancy that she had a little plan on at the
Villa—Eunice Unthank, you know—and a nice girl she is—and that Godfrey
didn’t feel like coming up to the scratch. So he tactfully had business
at the works that kept him away from the Villa. Do you see what I mean?”
“Well, I suppose he was better away if he didn’t mean to play up. If
he’d stayed, it might have put ideas in the girl’s head that——”
“Exactly, old chap. Though we were awfully sorry he went, still that
was the view Nina took about it. I think she was right.”
Facts had supplied a sufficient explanation of my disappearance from
Villa San Carlo; here plainly was the official version of Godfrey’s.
In order to cover a great defeat, Lady Dundrannan, with her usual
admirable tactics, acknowledged a minor one. It was a quite sufficient
explanation to offer to unsuspecting Waldo; and it was certainly true,
so far as it went; the Eunice-Godfrey project had miscarried.
“I liked the girl and I’m sorry,” said Waldo. “But there’s lots of
time, and of course, the world being what it is, he can always make a
good marriage.” He laughed gently. “But I suppose women always like to
manage a man’s future for him, if they can, don’t they?”
His ignorance of the great defeat was evidently entire; his wife
had looked after that. But it was interesting to observe that—as a
concomitant, perhaps, of his returning physical vigor—his mind gave
hints of a new independence. He had not ceased to love and admire his
wife—there was no reason why he ever should—but his smile at her foible
was something new—since his marriage, I mean. The limit thus indicated
to his Dundrannanization was welcome to me, a Rillington. What the
smile pointed to was, the next moment, confirmed by the sigh with
which he added, pursuing what was to him apparently the same train of
thought, “Nina’s against our living at Cragsfoot when I succeed.”
“Well, if you will marry thumping heiresses, with half a dozen palaces
of their own——”
“Yes, I know, old man. Still—well, I can’t expect her to share my
feeling about it, can I?” He smiled again, this time rather ruefully.
“In fact, she’s pressing me to settle the matter now.”
“What do you mean? Sir Paget’s still alive! Is she asking for a
promise, or what?”
“She wants me to sell my remainder—subject to my father’s
life-interest. Nina likes things definitely settled, you see. She
doesn’t like Cragsfoot.” To my considerable surprise, he accompanied
these last words with a very definite wink. A smile, a sigh, a
wink—yes, Waldo was recovering some independence of thought, if not of
action. But in this affair it was his action that mattered, not his
thoughts. Still, the fact remained that his wink was an unmistakable
reference to the past—to Lucinda.
“Sir Paget wouldn’t like it, would he?” I suggested.
“No, I’m afraid not—not the idea of it, at first. But a man is told
to cleave to his wife. After all, if I have a son to inherit it, he
wouldn’t be Rillington of Cragsfoot, he’d be Dundrannan.”
“Of course he would. I’d forgotten. But does it make much difference?”
“And amongst all the rest of it, Cragsfoot wouldn’t be much more than
an appendage. I love Nina, Julius, but I wish sometimes that she wasn’t
quite so damned rich! Don’t think for an instant that she ever rams it
down my throat. She never would.”
“My dear chap, I know her. I’m sure she’d be incapable of——”
“But there the fact is. And it creates—well, a certain situation. I
say, I’m not keeping you? My ladies are shopping, and I’ve an hour off,
but if you——”
“I’ve time to hear anything you want to say. And you’re not tired?”
“Strong as a horse now. I enjoy walking. Look here, old chap. Of
course, there are lots of these ‘new rich,’ as the papers call them,
who’d pay a long price for Cragsfoot, but——”
“Thinking of anybody in particular?” I put in.
“Never mind!” He laughed—almost one of his old hearty laughs. “Well,
yes. Have you ever had any reason——? I mean, it’s funny you should ask
that.”
“Something a certain friend of ours once let fall set me thinking.”
“Well, if that idea took shape, if Nina wanted it——”
Perhaps in the end she wouldn’t! I was thinking that possibly the
course of events might cause Lady Dundrannan not to wish to see her
cousin—and his establishment—at Cragsfoot.
“If she did—and he did,” Waldo went on, “well, I should be in a tight
corner. Because, of course, he could outbid practically everybody, if
he chose—and what reason for objecting could I give?”
“You seem to have something in your mind. You’re looking—for you—quite
crafty! Out with it!”
“Well, supposing I’d promised that, if I sold, I’d give you first
offer?”
Waldo had delivered himself of his idea—and it seemed nothing less
than a proposal to put a spoke in the wheel of his wife’s plans as he
conceived them! Decidedly rebellion was abroad—open and covert! It
worked mightily in Godfrey; it was working even in Waldo.
“I don’t like your selling,” I said. “You’re the chief—I’m a cadet. But
if you’re forced—I beg your pardon, Waldo! If you decide”—he pressed my
arm again, smiling at my correction, but saying nothing—“to go, there’s
nothing I should like so much as to settle down there myself. But I
can’t outbid——”
“A man doesn’t ask his own kinsman more than a fair price, when the
deal’s part of a family arrangement,” said Waldo. “May I speak to my
father, and write you a proposal about it? And we’ll let the matter
stand where it does till we know what he thinks and till you’ve had an
opportunity of considering.”
“All right,” said I, and we walked on a little way in silence. Then I
felt again the slight pressure on my arm. “Well, here’s where we’re
staying. I promised to meet them at tea. Will you come in?”
I shook my head, murmuring something about business. He did not press
the point. “We’re off again early to-morrow, and dining with some
friends of Eunice’s to-night. See you again soon at Cragsfoot—we’re
going to Briarmount. Good-by!”
But that was not quite his last word. He gave my arm a final squeeze;
and he smiled again and again a little ruefully. “I rather think that,
in his heart, the old pater would prefer what I’ve suggested even to
our—to any other arrangement, Julius.”
It was quite as much as it was diplomatic to say about his father’s
feelings on that point. Like the one which had been discussed by
Godfrey and myself, it might be considered delicate.