Lucinda

“He couldn’t tell you all the truth that day. This is what happened. Seeing that notice, a queer fancy took him; he would see whether that number – my number he called it – would bring him luck. He scraped together some money, went over to Monte Carlo, and won, won, won! His luck went to his head; everything seemed possible. He came straight to England – to see if the luck held, he said. You can guess the rest.”

“Pretty well. You must have had a time of it, though!”

“I think my mind really made itself up the moment I saw Arsenio. The rest was – tactics! I mustn’t see Waldo; I invented excuses. Waldo mustn’t see Arsenio – that at all costs! He always suspected Arsenio, and Arsenio might give it away – you know his malicious little airs of triumph when he scores! You picture me as miserable? No! I was fearful, terrified. But I was irrepressibly excited – and at last happy. My doubt was done and ended.”

“You were not ashamed?” I ventured.

“Yes, I was ashamed too – because of Aunt Bertha and Sir Paget. Because of them, much more than because of Waldo. They loved me; they had taken me to be, as it were, their daughter. Between Waldo and Arsenio it had always been a fight – yes, from that first day at Cragsfoot. I was the prize! But in a way I was also just a spectator. I mean – in the end I couldn’t help which won; something quite out of my power to control had to decide that. And that something never had any doubt. How could I go against everything that was real in me?”

“I think you are rather primitive,” I said. “It seems to you a fight between the males. You await the issue. Well – and what’s happened? I hope things are – flourishing now?”

She looked at me with one of her slow-dawning smiles; evidently, for some reason, she was amused at me, or at the question which I had put.

“I’ve spent the greater part of the waking hours of three days with you, Julius. I’ve walked, lunched, and dined with you. I’ve talked to you interminably. You must have looked at me sometimes, haven’t you?”

“I’ve looked at you, to tell the truth, a great deal.”

“And you’ve noticed nothing peculiar?”

“I shouldn’t use the word ‘peculiar’ to describe what I’ve noticed.”

“Not, for instance, that I’ve always worn the same frock?” She was leaning her elbows on the table now, her chin resting between her hands. “And what that means to a charming woman – oh, we agreed on that! – invited out by a fine figure of a man – ! And yet you ask if things are flourishing!”

“By Jove, I believe you have! It’s a very pretty frock, Lucinda. No, but really it is!”

“It’s an old friend – and my only one. So let’s speak no evil of it.” Yet she did speak evil of the poor frock; she whispered, “Oh, how I hate it, hate it, this old frock!” She gave a little laugh. “If it came my way, I wonder whether I could resist splendor! Guilty splendor!”

“Didn’t poor old Waldo present himself to you – oddly, I must say – rather in that light? And you resisted!”

“I’ve changed. You’re talking to a different woman – different from the girl I’ve been boring you about. The girl I’ve been boring you about wouldn’t – couldn’t – marry Waldo with Arsenio there; I – the I that am – could and, I think, would.”

“Because of your old friend here?” I touched lightly the sleeve of her gown.

“For what it has meant, and does mean – oh, and for itself too! I’m no heroine. Primitive women love finery too.”

Her face was untouched by time, or struggle, or disillusion. Her eyes were as they always had been, clear, calm, introspective. Only her figure was more womanly, though still slim; she had not Nina’s statuesque quality. But the soul within was changed, it seemed. This train of thought brought me to an abrupt question: “No child, Lucinda?”

“There was to have been. I fell ill, and – It was one of the times when our luck was out. Arsenio made nothing for months. We soon spent what Number 21 brought us.”

“You don’t mean to say that you were – in want? At that time!”

“Yes. Well, I can’t learn all lessons, but I can learn some. I’ve a trade of my own now.”

I confess that I yielded for a moment to a horrible suspicion – an idea that seemed to make my blood stop. I did not touch her arm this time; I clasped it roughly. I did not speak.

“Oh, no,” she said with a little laugh. “But thank you, dear old Julius. I see that you’d have cared, that you’d have cared very much. Because I shall have a bruise there – and for your sake I’ll kiss it. I’ve neglected my work for your sake – or my pleasure – these last three days. But I work for Madame – well, shall we say Madame Chose? – because I don’t want you to go and criticize my handiwork in the window. I embroider lingerie, Julius – chemises and pants. There’s a demand for such things – yes, even now, on this coast. I was always a good needlewoman. I used to mend all my things. Do you remember that on one occasion I was mending my gloves?”

“But Arsenio?”

“Arsenio pursues Dame Fortune. Sometimes he catches her for a moment, and she pays ransom. She buys herself off – she will not be permanently his. She’s very elusive. A light-o’-love! Like me? No, but I’m not.” She leant forward to me, with a sudden amused gurgle of laughter. “But, you know, he’s as brave as a lion. He was dying to fight from the beginning. Only he didn’t know whom to fight for, poor boy! He wanted to fight for Germany because she’s monarchical, and against her because she’s heavy and stupid and rigid and cruel – and mainly Protestant! – and against France because she’s republican and atheistical – oh, no less! – but for her because she’s chivalrous, and dashing, and – well, the panache, you know! He was in a very difficult position, poor dear Arsenio, till Italy came in; and even then he had his doubts, because Austria’s clerical! However, Italy it is!”

“Didn’t England appeal to him?”

“For England, monsieur, Don Arsenio has now an illimitable scorn.”

“The devil he has!” said I softly.

She laughed again at that, and something of her gayety still illuminated her face as she gave me a warning. “I’ve told you nearly all my secrets – all I’m going to tell! If any of them get to that deplorable England, to that damp, dripping and doleful Devonshire (the epithets are Arsenio’s!) I’ll cut you dead. And if they get to – Briarmount – I’ll kill you!”

“I’ll say that you live in a palace, with seven attendant princes, and seventy-seven handmaids!”

“Yes!” she agreed gleefully. “Who’s that woman looking for?”

The woman in question was a stout person in a sort of official uniform. Her eyes traveled over the few guests at the little restaurant; in her hand she held a blue envelope. “She’s looking for me. She’s been sent on from my hotel, depend upon it,” I said, with a queer sense of annoyance. I, who had been fuming because my instructions did not come!

I was right. The woman gave me the envelope and took my receipt. I made a rapid examination of my package. “I must be off early to-morrow morning,” I said to Lucinda.

She did say, “I’m sorry,” but without any sign of emotion. And the next moment she added, “Because you’ll just miss Arsenio. He arrives to-morrow evening – to pay me a visit.”

“I think I’m rather glad to miss Arsenio,” I remarked frankly. “Oh, not because he ran away with you, and made fools of us all that day, but because of what you’ve been telling me just now.”

“If you liked him before, you’d like him still. He hasn’t changed a bit, he’s just as he always was – very attractive in his good and gay moods, very naughty and perverse in his bad ones. Yes, just the same. And that’s what makes it so unfair in me to – to feel as I do about him now. That’s one of the difficult things about love, isn’t it? And marriage. The other person may go on being just what he was – what you knew he was; but you may change yourself, and so not like him any more – at least, not be content; because there’s a lot about Arsenio that I still like.” Her eyes now wore their most self-examining, introspective look.

She pushed her chair back from the table. “It’s late, and you’ve got to start early. And I must be early and long at work, to make up for lost time – if it’s not rude to call it that.”

I raised my glass. “Then – to our next meeting!”

“When will that be, I wonder!”

“Heaven knows! I roam up and down the earth, like the Enemy of Mankind. But, after all, in these days to be on the earth and not under it, is something. And you, Lucinda?”

“I suppose I shall stay here – with Madame – Chose. War or no war, ladies must have lingerie, mustn’t they?”

“It seems a – well, a drab sort of life!”

“Well – yes,” said Lucinda. “But one of us must earn some money, you see. Even if I were that sort of person – and I don’t think I am – I couldn’t afford to do anything useful or heroic. The pay for that isn’t high enough.”

I walked to her house with her, according to our custom – now of three days’ standing. As we went, I was summoning up courage for a venture. When we reached the door I said, “May I let you know from time to time – whenever it’s possible – where I am? So that, if you were in – if real occasion arose, you could write to me and – ?”

“Yes, I shall like to hear from you. But I probably shan’t answer – unless I’ve something different to tell you – different from Madame Chose – and better.”

“But if it were – worse?”

“I couldn’t take money from you, if that’s what you mean. Oh, it’s not your fault, it’s nothing in you yourself. But you’re a Rillington.”

“Isn’t that, again, rather fanciful?”

“You seem to call all my deepest instincts fanciful!” she protested, smiling. “But that one’s very deep. Goodness, I could almost as soon conceive of myself accepting Nina Frost’s cast-off frocks!”