VIEWS AND WHIMS
SUCH, then, was Lucinda’s state of mind with regard to the matter.
Her encounter with Nina at Cimiez had opened her eyes; after that, no
evasions or lies from Arsenio could avail to blind her. The keys of
the fort had been sold behind her back. The one thing that she had
preserved and cherished out of the wreck of her fortunes, out of the
sordid tragedy of her relations with her husband, had been filched from
her; her proud and fastidious independence had been bartered; Arsenio
had sold it; Nina Dundrannan had bought it. It was in effect that
wearing of Nina’s cast-off frocks which, long ago at Ste. Maxime, she
had pictured, with a smile, as an inconceivable emblem of humiliation.
Arsenio had brought her to it, tricked her into it by his “presents”
out of his “winnings.”
A point of sentiment? Precisely—and entirely; of a sentiment rooted
deep in the nature of the two women, and deep in the history of their
lives, in the rivalry and clash that there had been between them and
between their destinies. The affair of the blue frock (to sum up the
offense under that nickname—there had probably been other “presents”)
might be regarded as merely the climax of the indignities which Arsenio
had brought upon her—the proverbial last straw. To her it was different
in kind from all the rest. In her _midinette’s_ frock, in her Venetian
shawl, she could make or sell her needlework contentedly; if on that
score Nina felt exultation and dealt out scorn, Nina was wrong; nay,
Nina was vulgar, and therefore a proper object for the laughter which
had amazed and impressed Godfrey Frost. But she had been made Nina’s
dependent, the object of her triumphant contemptuous bounty. That was
iron entering her soul, a sharp point piercing to the very heart of
it. This deadly stroke at her pride was fatal also to the last of her
tenderness for Arsenio. The old tie between them—once so strong, so
imperious, surviving so much—was finally broken. She was willing to be
friendly—if friendliness can co-exist with undisguised resentment, with
a sense of outrage bitter as death itself. But, in truth, how could it?
That same afternoon I made my way to the _palazzo_, rather a gloomy,
ruinous-looking old building, on a narrow side canal, facing across it
on to the heavy blank bulk of a convent. This, then, was the scene of
“Venice,” of the old romance. To this they had come back—not indeed
quite in the manner that I had imagined their return in my musings
at Paris, but still, I could not doubt, on his part at least with
something of the idea and the impulse which my fancy had attributed to
him. How was he now finding—and facing—the situation as it stood?
I climbed up the stone staircase—past the _piano nóbile_, now let, as
I had learnt, past another apartment _al secondo_—to the third floor.
There I knocked. The door was opened by a small wizened man, dressed in
seedy black. He looked like a waiter or a valet, run to seed. I asked
for Valdez. Yes, Monsieur was in, and would no doubt see Monsieur.
He himself was Monsieur Valdez’s servant—might he take my hat and
stick? He talked while he did it; he had come with Monsieur from the
Riviera—from Nice; he had been—er—in the same business establishment
with Monsieur at Nice before—before Monsieur’s great _coup_. In
fact—here he smiled proudly and detained me in the passage, laying
one grimy finger on my arm—Monsieur considered him a mascot; it was
from him that Monsieur had purchased ticket 212,121. Imagine that! “A
pity you didn’t keep it!” said I. He just shrugged his shoulders, a
weary smile acquiescing in that bit of bad luck. “However, Monsieur
is very good to me,” he ended as he—at last—opened an inner door.
Apparently Monsieur’s wonderful luck gave him a sort of divinity in a
fellow-gambler’s eyes.
I found myself in a long narrow room, with three windows facing on the
canal and the convent. The furniture was sparse, and looked old and
rickety, but it had the remains of elegance; only a small rug or two
mitigated the severity of the stone floor; one could see by dirty marks
where pictures had once hung on the walls, but they hung there no more;
altogether a depressing apartment.
Arsenio Valdez was sitting at a big bureau between two of the windows,
with his back towards the door. He turned round a dreary-looking face
as he heard my entrance. But the moment he saw who I was, he sprang
up and greeted me warmly, with evident pleasure. He even held my hand
while I accounted for my presence as best I could. I had a holiday, I
thought that perhaps the change in his fortunes would bring him back to
Venice, and I couldn’t resist the chance of congratulating him. I tried
to make a joke of the whole business, and ended by squeezing his hand
and felicitating him anew on his magnificent luck. “It took my breath
away when I read it in the papers,” I said.
“Oh, but I knew, I knew!” he declared, as he led me to where a couple
of armchairs were placed by a small table in the third window, and
made me sit down. “It was a question of time, only of time. If I could
keep afloat, it was bound to come! That was what nobody would believe.
People are so queer! And when Louis, that poor little chap who showed
you in, offered me the ticket—he worked at that little den in Nice—when
he offered me that ticket—well, it was growing dark, and I had to spell
out the figures one by one—two one, two one, two one! You see! There
it was. I was as certain as if I had the prize in my pocket. Hard luck
on him? No—he’d never have won with it—though the little fool may think
he would. That number would never have won except for me. It was my
number—and again my number—and once again!”
He poured this out in a torrent of excited triumph, every bit of
him from top to toe full of movement and animation. It was a great
vindication of himself, of his faith, that he was putting before the
skeptic’s eyes. He stood justified by it in all that he had done and
suffered, in all that he had asked others to do and to endure. He was
more than justified. It was a glorification of him, Arsenio Valdez,
who had never doubted or faltered, who had pursued Fortune for years,
unwearied, undaunted. He had caught her by the mantle at last. _Voilà!_
He ended with a last tumultuous waving of both his hands.
“Well, you’re entitled to your crow, old chap,” I said, “even if it
doesn’t alter the fact that you were a damned fool.”
“Ah, you never had any poetry, romance, imagination in you!” he
retorted, now with his old mocking smile. “You haven’t got it, you
Rillingtons—neither you, nor yet Waldo. That was why I——” He stopped,
looking monkeyish.
“Why Twenty-one became your lucky number? Exactly; I remember the day
very well myself. By the way, I ought to tell you that I’ve already
seen Lucinda.”
He listened to a brief account of our meeting and excursion in silence,
seeming to watch my face keenly. “You and she have always been very
good friends,” he remarked thoughtfully at the end. He seemed to be
considering—perhaps whether to take me into his confidence, to consult
me. I did not, of course, feel entitled—or inclined!—to tell him of the
confidences that Lucinda had reposed in me.
“Meanwhile,” I observed, “beyond acquiring a manservant——”
“Louis? Oh, well, I should have been a fool not to keep him about me,
shouldn’t I?”
“Yes! Didn’t Roman Generals at their triumphs carry a slave along,
whose business it was to remind them that they were mortal? If you look
at the unfortunate Louis from that point of view——”
“That fellow will bring me luck again,” he asserted positively and
seriously.
“Rot! What I was going to say was that you don’t seem to have launched
out much on the strength of your three millions.” I cast a glance round
the faded room.
He jerked his head towards the big bureau at which I had found him
seated. “The money’s all in there. I haven’t touched a penny of it. I
shan’t—just yet.” Again he was watching me; he was, I think, wondering
how much Lucinda had said to me. “I’ve got a tenant for the first
floor, and get along on the rent of that. And Lucinda——” He gave what
may be called an experimental smile, a silent “feeler”——“Well, she
persists in her whim, as you’ve seen. Whatever may be said of it down
at Nice, it’s purely a whim now, isn’t it?”
“Whims are powerful things with women,” I remarked. And platitudes are
often useful conversational refuges.
He sat frowning for a minute, with the weary baffled air that his face
had worn before he caught sight of me. “Perhaps you don’t care for such
a short let, but, if it suits you, I’ll take the second floor for a
month certain,” I continued.
In an instant his face lit up. “You, Julius! Why, that’s splendid!
You’ll have to rough it a bit; but Louis will look after you. He’s
really very good. Will you actually do it?”
“Of course I will—and glad to get it.”
“Well now, that is good!”
I knew that he was friendly towards me, but this seemed an excess of
pleasure. Besides, his face, lately so weary and dreary, had assumed
now the monkey smile which I knew so well—the smile it wore when he
was “doing” somebody, getting the better of somebody by one of his
tricks. But whom could he be doing now? Me? Lucinda? We two seemed the
only possible victims. That we were victims—that we fitted into his
plan—appeared clear, later on. But it was a mistake to suppose that we
only were concerned. His next words enlightened me as to that.
“I should be most delighted to have you for a neighbor, under my
roof, in any case. I’m sure you know that. Oh, yes, I’m grateful to
you. You might have cut me! I know it. But you’ve taken a broad view.
You’ve allowed for the heart—though not for the imagination, for the
certainties that lie beyond probability. Besides all that—which I feel
deeply—by taking that floor you relieve me of a little difficulty.”
“I’m glad to hear it. How’s that?”
“Since I came here, I have naturally paid some visits among my old
friends. You smile! Oh, yes, I’m human enough to like congratulations.
Some of them are people of rank, as you know—you used to chaff me
about my grandees! Their names appear in the papers—those society
paragraphs—the Paris editions of American papers—Oh, my Lord! My name
appeared—an item—‘Don Arsenio Valdez has returned to Palazzo Valdez!”
He rose, went to the big bureau, and came back with a telegram.
“Received to-day,” he added, as he put it into my hands.
I read it, looked across at him, and laughed. It was what I had
expected; the only surprise was that Godfrey had taken rather long to
track them. Scruples still obstinate, perhaps!
“So he wants to take an apartment in your _palazzo_, does he?”
“I’ve been under some obligations to him; it would be difficult to
refuse. We’re good friends, but—I didn’t want him here. It wouldn’t
be—convenient.” Now he was looking furtive and rather embarrassed, as
if he were uncertain how much truth and how much lie he had better
administer to me.
“I saw him in Paris,” I remarked, “the other day, and from what he said
it seemed that he’d made very good friends both with you and with your
wife.”
He smiled; having no such shame as ordinary mortals have, he accepted
exposure easily. He relapsed into the truth quite gracefully. “I don’t
know how the devil Lucinda feels about him,” he confessed. “I wish he
wouldn’t come at all, but I can’t help that. At all events he needn’t
be in the house with us now!”
“Have you any reason to suppose she doesn’t like him?” I asked.
His restlessness returned, and with it his dreary look. He got up and
began to wander about the long room, fingering furniture and ornaments,
then drifting back to me at the window, and the next moment away again.
Suddenly, from the other end of the room, he came out with, “What have
they told between them? Godfrey at Paris, and Lucinda here to-day?”
“Well, pretty nearly everything, I fancy. If you mean the money and
Nina Dundrannan, and so forth. He described that meeting at Cimiez,
for example.”
“Yes, they’ve told you everything—everything that matters. Well, what
do you think?”
“If we’re to be friends, I’d sooner not offer an opinion.”
He flashed out at me. “There’s your code—your damned code! Didn’t
I learn it in England? Didn’t I have it literally drubbed into
me—thrashed into me—at school? And you keep it even when you love a
woman!”
“H’m! Not always in that case, I’m afraid, Arsenio.”
“If you ever do love a woman,” he went on contemptuously. “For my part,
I don’t believe any of you know how!” He came to a stand before me.
“Why didn’t Waldo come after me and shoot me through the head?”
“There was the greatest difficulty in stopping him, I honestly assure
you. But the war came, you know, and it was his duty——”
“His duty! Oh, my Lord, his duty!” He positively groaned at the point
of view. “I give you my word, if he had come after me, I would have
never returned his fire. I would have bared my breast—so!” A rapid
motion of his hands made as though to tear the clothes from his chest;
it was a very dramatic gesture. “But when he didn’t come—pooh!”
“He was fighting for his country,” I suggested mildly.
“And even you might have taken up the quarrel with great propriety,” he
said gravely.
“I apologize for not having shot you. Try not to be such an ass,
Arsenio.”
“You and he can sit down under such an affront as I put on you and your
family, and shelter yourselves under duty. Duty! But up go your noses
and down go your lips when I, adoring the adorable, milk a couple of
vulgar millionaires of a few pounds to make her happy, splendid, rich
as she ought to be. Yes, yes, about that you—offer no opinion! And
these people—my dupes, eh?”
“The word’s rather theatrical—as you’re being, Arsenio. But let it
pass.”
“Oh, yes, theatrical! I know! If a man doesn’t love just like, and
no more than, a bull, in England, he’s theatrical. Well, what about
my dupes? The woman with her moneybags, meanly revengeful—Ah, you
give her up to me! You haven’t a word to say, friend Julius! And the
young man? Let us forgive the good God for creating the young man! He
would buy my wife! Ah, would he? And buy her cheap! All I’ve had of
him would perhaps buy her a fur coat! For the rest, he relied on his
fascinations. Cheaper than cash! I would have cashed a million pounds
and flung them at her feet!”
“But that’s just as vulgar,” I protested, rather weakly. I was a little
carried away by Arsenio’s eloquence; it was at least a point of view
which I had not sufficiently considered.
“Not from him! It would be giving what he loves best!” He laughed in a
bitter triumph, then suddenly flung himself down into his chair again.
“I had ten louis left—five of hers, five of his. With hers I bought the
ticket; on his I starved till the draw came. Am I not revenged on the
woman who would humiliate my wife, on the man who would buy the honor
of Donna Lucinda Valdez?”
“It’s about the oddest kind of revenge I ever heard of,” was all I
found to say. “You’ll complete it, I suppose, by dazzling Godfrey, when
he arrives, with the spectacle of Luanda’s virtuous splendor? Or is he
to find her still selling needlework on the Piazza?”
He leant across the little table and laid his hand on my arm. I
imagined that it must be the table at which Lucinda had once sat,
mending her gloves—most skillfully no doubt, for had she not proved
herself a fine needlewoman?
“You too are against me?” he asked in a low voice. “Bitterly against
me, Julius?”
“Once you took her—yes, here. Then you forsook her. Then you took her
again. And you’ve dragged her in the dirt.”
“But now I can——!”
“That to her would be dirt too,” I said. “I suppose she won’t touch
that money? That’s why she’s still peddling her wares on the Piazza?”
He made a despairing gesture of assent with his hands—despairing,
uncomprehending. Then he raised his head and said proudly, “But if she
doesn’t yet understand, I shall make her!” Then, with a sudden change
of manner, he added, “And you’ll move into the floor below to-morrow?
That’s capital! You might ask us both to dinner—give a housewarming!
Louis will look after your marketing and cooking.”
“With the greatest of pleasure,” I agreed, but with some surprise. It
would have seemed more natural in him to invite me on the first night.
He saw my surprise; what didn’t he see when he exercised his wits?
“It must be that way; because she never comes into my apartment,” he
said, but now quietly, cheerfully, as if he were mentioning another of
those whims which are so powerful with women.