THE WINNING TICKET
THEN came the astonishing turn of fortune’s wheel—that is almost fact,
scarcely metaphor—which seemed to transform the whole situation. It
came to my knowledge on the very day on which those protracted labors
of ours reached a conclusion at last.
We had had a long and tedious final session—for this time there was
not only business to wind up, but compliments to be exchanged too—and
I came out of it at half-past six in the evening so exhausted that I
turned into the nearest _café_ at which I was known, and procured a
whisky-and-soda. With it the waiter brought me a copy of _Le Soir_,
and, as I sipped my “refresher” and smoked a cigar, I glanced through
it, hoping (to be candid) to find some complimentary notice of the
achievements of my Conference. I did not find that—perhaps it was too
soon to expect it—but I did find something which interested me a great
deal more. Among the miscellaneous items of “intelligence” I read the
following:
“The first prize in yesterday’s draw of the Reparation Lottery Loan
has been won by M. Arsenio Valdez of Nice. The amount of the prize is
three million francs. The number of the winning ticket was two hundred
and twelve thousand, one hundred and twenty-one. We understand that
the fortunate winner purchased it for a trifling sum from a chance
acquaintance at Monte Carlo.”
I re-read the winning number; indeed, I took my pencil out of my pocket
and wrote it down—in figures—on the margin of the newspaper. I believe
that I said softly, “Well, I’m damned!” The astonishing creature had
brought it off at last, and brought it off to some tune. Three million
francs! Pretty good—for anybody except the Frosts of this world, of
course!
Aye, Arsenio would buy that ticket from a chance acquaintance (probably
one of the same kidney as himself) if he had the coin, or could
beg, borrow, or steal it! Number 212, 121! There it was three times
over—21—21—21. He would have seemed to himself absolutely mad if he
had let that ticket escape him, when chance threw it in his way. It
was, indeed, as though Fortune said, “I have teased you long enough,
O faithful votary, but I give myself to you at last!” And she had—she
actually had. Arsenio’s long quest was accomplished.
What would he do with it, I pondered, as I puffed and sipped. I saw him
resplendent again as he had been on that never forgotten Twenty-first,
and smiling in monkeyish triumph over all of us who had mocked him
for a fool. I even saw him paying back Nina and Godfrey Frost,
though possibly this was a detail which might be omitted, as being a
distasteful reminder of his days of poverty. I saw him dazzling Lucinda
with something picturesquely extravagant, a pearl necklace or a carpet
of banknotes—what you will in that line. I heard him saying to her,
“Number twenty-one! Always twenty-one. _Your_ number, Lucinda!” And I
saw her flushing like a girl just out of the schoolroom, as Godfrey had
seen her flush at Nice.
Ah, Godfrey Frost! This event was—to put the thing vulgarly—one in
the eye for him, wasn’t it? He had lost his pull; his lever failed
him. He could no longer pose, either to himself or to anybody else, as
the chivalrous reliever of distress, the indignant friend to starving
beauty. And Nina’s gracious, though sadly unappreciated, bounty to a
fallen rival—that went by the board too.
These things were to the good; but at the back of my mind there lurked
a discontent, even a revolt. Godfrey had proposed to buy Valdez; to buy
Lucinda from Valdez, he had meant. Now Arsenio himself would buy her
with his winning ticket, coating the transaction with such veneer of
romance as might still lie in magic Twenty-one, thrice repeated. One
could trust him to make the most of that, skillfully to eke it out to
cover the surface as completely as possible. Would it be enough? His
hope lay in what that flush represented, the memories it meant, that
feeling in her which she herself, long ago, had declared to be hers
because she was a primitive woman.
I did not, I fear, pay much attention to the speeches—though I made
one of them—at the farewell dinner of our Conference that night; and
next day, my first free day, was still filled with the thought of
Arsenio and his three million francs; my mind, vacant now of pressing
preoccupations, fell a prey to recollections, fancies, images. A
restlessness took possession of me; I could not stay in Paris. I was
entitled to a holiday; where should I pass it? I did not want to go
to Cragsfoot; I had had enough of the Riviera. (There was possibly a
common element, ungallant towards a certain lady and therefore not
explicitly confessed to myself, in my reluctance to turn my steps in
either of those directions.) Where should I go? Something within me
answered—Venice!
Why not? Always a pleasant place for a holiday in times of peace; and
one read that “peace conditions” were returning; the pictures, and
so on, were returning too, or being dug up, or taken out of their
sandbags. And the place was reported to be quite gay. Decidedly my
holiday should be passed at Venice.
Quite so! And a sporting gamble on my knowledge of Arsenio, of his
picturesque instinct, his eye for a situation! As a minor attraction,
there were the needy aristocrats, his father’s old set, whom he
had been wont to “touch” in days of adversity; it would be fine to
flaunt his money in their eyes; they would not sniff, Frost-like, at
three million francs. Here I felt even confident that he would speak
gracefully of repayment, though with care not to wound Castilian pride
by pressing the suggestion unduly. But the great thing would be the
association, the memory, the two floors at the top of the _palazzo_.
Surely she would go there with him if she would go anywhere? Surely
there, if anywhere, she would come back to him? That, beyond all
others, was the place to offer the pearl necklace, to spread the carpet
of bank notes. If the two were to be found anywhere in the world
together, it would be at Venice, at the _palazzo_.
So to Venice I went—on an errand never defined to myself, urged by
an impulse, a curiosity, a longing, to which many things in the past
united to give force, which the present position sharpened. “I must
know; I must see for myself.” That feeling, which had made me unable to
rest at Villa San Carlo, now drove me to Venice. Putting money in my
pocket and giving my Paris bankers the name of my hotel, I set out, on
a road the end of which I could not see, but which I was determined to
tread, if I could, and to explore.
In spite of my “facilities”—I had them again, and certainly this time
Lady Dundrannan, if she knew my errand, would not have offered to
secure them—my journey was slow, and interrupted at one point by a
railway strike. When I arrived at my hotel on the Grand Canal—Arsenio’s
_palazzo_ was just round the corner by water, to be reached by land
through a short but tortuous network of alleys with a little high
stone bridge to finish up the approach to its back door—a telegram had
been waiting forty-eight hours for me, forwarded from Cragsfoot by way
of Paris. In it Waldo told me of Aunt Bertha’s death; influenza had
swooped down on the weakened old body, and after three days’ illness
made an end. It was hopeless to think of getting back in time for the
funeral; I could have done it from Paris; I could not from Venice. I
despatched the proper reply, and went out to the Piazza. My mind was
for the moment switched off from what I had come about; but I thought
more about Sir Paget than about poor old Aunt Bertha herself. He would
be very lonely. Would Briarmount allay his loneliness?
It was about eleven o’clock on a bright sunny morning. They were
clearing away the protective structures that had been erected round the
buildings—St. Mark’s, the Ducal Palace, the new Campanile. I sat in a
chair outside Florian’s and watched. There on that fine morning the war
seemed somehow just a bad dream—or, rather, a play that had been played
and was finished; a tragedy on which the curtain had fallen. See,
they were clearing away the properties, and turning to real ordinary
life again. So, for a space, it seemed to a man seduced by beauty into
forgetfulness.
They came and went, men, women and children, all on their business and
their recreations; there were soldiers too in abundance, some draggled,
dirty, almost in rags, some tidy, trim and new, but all with a subtle
air of something finished, a job done, comparative liberty at least
secured; even the prisoners—several gangs of them were marched by—had
that same air of release about them. Hawkers plied their wares—women
mostly, a few old men and young boys; baskets were thrust under my
nose; I motioned them away impatiently. I had traveled all night, and
uncomfortably, with little sleep. Here was peace; I wanted peace; I was
drowsy.
Thus, half as though in a dream, half as if it were an answer to what
my mood demanded,—beauty back into the world, that was it—she came
across the Piazza towards the place where I sat. Others sat there
too—a row of them on my left hand; I had taken a chair rather apart,
at the end of the row. She wore the little black frock—the one she had
worn at Ste. Maxime, the one Godfrey had seen her in at Cimiez, or the
fellow of it. On her left arm hung an open basket; it was full of fine
needlework. I saw her take out the pieces, unfold them, wave them in
the air. She found customers; distant echoes of chaff and chaffering
reached my ears. From chair to chair she passed, coming nearer to me
always.
I had upon me at this moment no surprise at seeing her, no wonder why
she, wife of the now opulent Don Arsenio Valdez, was hawking fine
needlework on the Piazza. The speculation as to the state of affairs,
with which my mind had been so insatiably busy, did not now occupy it.
I was just boyishly wrapped up in the anticipation of the joke that
was going to happen—that must happen unless—horrible thought!—she sold
out all her stock before she got to me. But no! She smiled and joked,
but she stood out for her price. The basket would hold out—surely
it would!—As she came near, I turned my head away—absorbed in the
contemplation of St. Mark’s—just of St. Mark’s!
I felt her by me before she spoke. Then I heard, “Julius!” and a little
gurgle of laughter. I turned my head with an answering laugh; her eyes
were looking down at my face with their old misty wonder.
“You here! I can’t sit down by you here. I’ll walk across the
Piazzetta, along to the quay. Follow me in a minute. Don’t lose sight
of me!”
“I don’t propose to do that,” I whispered back, as she swung away from
me. I paid my account, and followed her some fifty yards behind. I did
not overtake her till we were at the Danieli Hotel. “Where shall we go
to talk?” I asked.
“Once or twice I’ve done good business on the Lido. There’s a boat
just going to start. Shall we go on board, Julius?”
I agreed eagerly and followed her on to the little boat. She set me
down in the bows, went off with her basket, and presently came back
without it. “I’ve left it with the captain,” she explained; “he knows
me already, and will take care of it for me. No more work to-day,
since you’ve come! And you must give me lunch, as you used to at Ste.
Maxime. Somewhere very humble, because I’m in my working clothes.” She
indicated the black frock, and the black shawl which she wore over her
fair hair, after the fashion of the Venetian girls; I was myself in
an uncommonly shabby suit of pre-war tweeds; we matched well enough
so far as gentility was concerned. I studied her face. It had grown
older, rather sharper in outline, though not lined or worn. And it
still preserved its serenity; she still seemed to look out on this
troublesome world, with all its experiences and vicissitudes, from
somewhere else, from an inner sanctum in which she dwelt and from which
no one could wholly draw her forth.
“How long have you been here?” I asked her, as the little steamboat
sped on its short passage across to the Lido.
“Oh, about a fortnight or three weeks. I like it, and I got work at
once. I’d rather sew than sell, but they sew so well here! And they
tell me I sell so well. So selling it mainly is!”
“Then you came before the—the result of the lottery?”
“Oh, you’ve heard about the lottery, have you? From Arsenio, or——?”
“No. I just saw it in the papers.”
The mention of the lottery seemed to afford her fresh amusement, but
she said nothing more about it at the moment. “You see, I wanted to
come away from the Riviera—never mind why!”
“I believe I know why!”
“How can you? If you’ve not heard from Arsenio!”
“I’ve been in Paris—and there I saw Godfrey Frost.”
“Oh!” The exclamation was long drawn out; it seemed to recognize that
my having seen Godfrey Frost might explain a good deal of knowledge on
my part. But she went on with her explanation. “Since the air raids
have stopped, Arsenio has managed to let one floor of the _palazzo_—the
_piano nóbile_; and I suggested to him that I might come and live
on the top floor. I’d saved enough money for the journey, and I pay
Arsenio rent. I’m entirely independent.”
“As you were at Ste. Maxime—and at Nice—or Cimiez?”
“I believe you do know all about it!”
“Shall I mention a certain blue frock?”
She flushed—for her, quite brightly—and slowly nodded her head. Then
she sat silent till we reached the Lido, and had disembarked. Now she
seemed unwilling to talk more of her affairs; she preferred to question
me on mine. I told her of Aunt Bertha’s death.
“Ah, she liked me once. Poor Sir Paget!” was her only comment. “I think
he likes you still,” I suggested. She shook her head doubtfully, and
insisted on hearing about what I had been doing in Paris.
It was not till after we had lunched and were sitting drinking our
coffee—just as in old days at Ste. Maxime—that I brought her back to
her own affairs—to the present position.
“And you’re alone here—on the top floor of the _palazzo_?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered, smiling. “Alone—alone on the top floor. I came
here alone; we had had a quarrel over—over what we’ll call the blue
frock. Arsenio promised not to follow me here unless I gave him
leave—which I told him I never should do. ‘Oh, yes, you will some day,’
he said; but he gave me the promise. Oh, well, a promise from him!
What is it? Of course he’s broken it. He arrived here the day before
yesterday. He’s now at the _palazzo_—on the floor below mine. It’s just
like Arsenio, isn’t it?”
She spoke of him with a sharper bitterness than she had ever shown at
Ste. Maxime, though the old amusement at him was not entirely obscured
by it. Her tone made me—in spite of everything—feel rather sorry for
him. The dream of his life—was it to come only half true? Was the half
that had come true to have no power to bring the other half with it?
However little one might wish him success, or he deserve it, one pang
of pity for him was inevitable.
“Well, perhaps he had some excuse,” I suggested. “He was
naturally—well, elated. That wonderful piece of luck, you know!”
“Oh, that!” she murmured contemptuously—really as if winning three
million francs, on a million to one chance or something like it,
was nothing at all to make a fuss about! And that to a man who had
spent years of his life, and certainly sacrificed any decency and
self-respect that he possessed, in an apparently insane effort to do it.
Her profile was turned to me now; she was looking over the sands
towards the Adriatic. I watched her face as I went. “And he won on his
favorite number! On twenty-one, three times repeated! That must have
seemed to him——” There was no sign of emotion on her face. “Well, he
called it your number, didn’t he?”
She knew what I meant, and she turned to me. But now she did not flush
like a girl just out of the schoolroom. There was no change of color,
no softening of her face such as the flush must have brought with it.
“You’re speaking of a dead thing,” she told me in a low calm voice.
“Of a thing that is at last quite dead.”
“It died hard, Lucinda.”
“Yes, it lived through a great deal; it lived long enough—obstinately
enough—to do sore wrong to—to other people,—better people than either
Arsenio or me; long enough to make me do bad things—and suffer them.
But now it’s dead. He’s killed it at last.”
At the moment I found nothing to say. Of course I was glad—no use in
denying that. Yet it was grievous in its way. The thing was dead—the
thing that so long, through so much, had bound her to Arsenio Valdez.
The thing which had begun with the kiss in the garden at Cragsfoot,
years ago, was finished.
“He put me to utter shame; he made me eat dirt,” she whispered with
a sudden note of passion in her voice. She laid her arm on mine, and
rose from her chair. “It spoils my meeting with you to think of it.
Come back; I can do some work before it’s dark, and you can go and
see him—he’ll be at the _palazzo_. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be
friends with him still.”
“I don’t quite know about that,” I observed cautiously.
“I’m willing enough to be friendly with him, for that matter. But
that’s—that’s not enough. Come along, we shall just about catch a boat,
I think.”
We began to walk along to the quay where we were to embark.
“So he says he’s going to kill himself!” Lucinda added with a scornful
laugh.