Buch lesen: «Lucinda», Seite 7
“I don’t care about calling you Nina just because I used to, or just because you’re almost one of the family, Lady Dundrannan – ”
“There you go again!” she protested.
“Well, I rather admire the name. It sounds wild, feudal, Caledonian. But I’ll call you Nina if you like me well enough.”
“I’ve always liked you quite well, though I don’t think you used to like me much.”
“Let bygones be bygones, Nina!”
“Well, they are, aren’t they?” she said, with quite undisguised meaning – and undisguised triumph too. I was stupid not to suspect the cause. “But I believe you’re sorry for it!”
“I was sorry for it, of course, at the time it happened. We were all of us – well, much more than sorry. Stunned! Aghast!”
“You do use big words over that girl,” remarked Lady Dundrannan.
“You’re letting yourself go this evening! Hitherto you’ve been more subtle in trying to get at what I think – or thought – of Lucinda.” Mark my own subtlety here! I substituted “thought” for “think”; and what she had been trying to get at was not what I thought of Lucinda, but what I knew about her – if anything. But I meant to lead her on; I gave her a smile with the words.
“If you felt all that about it, I should have thought you’d have tried to get some explanation out of her – or him. Something to comfort the family! You yourself might have acted as a go-between.”
“But they vanished.”
“Oh, people don’t vanish so completely as all that!”
“There’s the war, you know. We’ve all been busy. No time for useless curiosity.” I did not advance these pleas in a very convincing tone.
She looked at me suspiciously. “You’ve never heard a word from either of them?”
I took it that she meant to ask if I had received any letters. “Never,” said I – upon the assumption, truthfully.
“Where do you suppose Arsenio Valdez is?”
“I don’t know where he is. Fighting for Italy, I suppose. He was bound to end by doing that, though, of course, he’s by way of being a tremendous Clerical. In with the Black Nobility at Venice, you see.”
“Nobility, indeed! A scamp like that!”
Now she had no particular reason for enmity against Valdez; rather the contrary. But Waldo had, and she reflected Waldo, just as I thought that Waldo’s flavor of bitterness towards Lucinda reflected her quality of mind, the sharp edge of her temper.
“How do you account for what she did?” she asked me, with a touch of irritation and restlessness.
“‘Account for it!’ Love is unaccountable, isn’t it?” I remembered that Lucinda had used the words about herself.
“Doesn’t her mother ever hear from her?”
“I don’t know. I’m not in touch with that excellent woman. She has, I fancy, vanished from the ken of Cragsfoot as completely as her daughter.”
“I expect they’ve just gone under, that pair – Lucinda and Arsenio. Because they were just a pair, weren’t they?”
I seemed to hear an echo of Waldo’s “like to like.” Or more probably Waldo’s “like to like” was an echo of what I now heard.
“Oh, I don’t see why they should have. We may very likely knock up against them some day,” I remarked with a laugh.
It was still light enough for me to see a flash in her eyes as she turned quickly on me. “If you think I’m – ” she exclaimed impetuously; but she pulled herself up, and ended with a scornful little laugh.
But of course she had not pulled herself up in time; I knew that she had been going to say “afraid,” and she knew that I knew it. Lucinda had avowed a feeling that it was not all over between herself and Nina yet. Something of a similar feeling seemed to find a place in Lady Dundrannan’s mind; she contemplated the possibility of another round in the fight – and she was not afraid of it. Or was she? Just a little – in her heart? I did not think that she need be, seeing the sort of man that Waldo was, knowing (as I now knew) Lucinda’s mind; knowing too, alas, Lucinda’s fate. But it was curious to find the same foreboding – if one could call it that – in both women.
“I really don’t see why you should think any more about Lucinda,” I said.
“I don’t think I need,” she agreed, with a smile that was happy, proud, and confident.
I looked her in the face, and laughed. She stopped, and held out her hand to me. As I took it she went on. “Yes, Waldo is telling the old people down there, and I’ll tell you here. We’re engaged, Julius; Waldo asked me this afternoon, and I said yes.”
“I hope you will believe that I congratulate you and him very sincerely, and, if I may, gladly welcome you into the family.”
“Without any arrière-pensée?” Her challenge was gay and good-humored.
“Absolutely! Why do you suspect anything else?”
“Well then, because you are – or were – fond of Lucinda.”
“Oh, you’ve got it out at last! But, even supposing so – and I’ve no reason for denying it – I’m not put to a choice between you, am I? Now at all events!”
“No,” she admitted, but with a plain touch of reluctance; she laughed at it herself, perhaps at her failure to conceal it. “Anyhow, you’ll try to like me, won’t you, Cousin Julius?”
“I do like you, my dear – and not a bit less because you don’t like Lucinda. So there!”
By now we were at the gates of Briarmount. I pointed to the house.
“You’ve got somebody else to tell your news to, in there. And you’d better tell him directly. I hope he’s not been cherishing vain hopes himself, poor boy!”
“Godfrey?” She laughed again. “Oh, nonsense! He’s just my little brother.”
“You’ve got two men to manage now. Your hands will be full, Nina.”
“Oh, I think I shall be equal to the task!”
“And, when you want, you can still unburden your mind to me about Lucinda.”
“I think I’ve done that! I shall take your advice and think no more about her. Good-night, Julius. I – I’m very happy!”
I watched her walk briskly up the Briarmount drive in the dusk. Certainly a fine figure of a girl; and one who improved on acquaintance. I liked her very much that afternoon. But she certainly did not like Lucinda! Put as mildly as possible, it came to that.
CHAPTER XI
DUNDRANNANIZATION
THE family history during the rest of the war – up to the Armistice, that is – will go into a brief summary. Waldo was discharged from the army, as permanently unfit for service, early in 1917. His wedding took place in February of that year. It was solemnized not at St. George’s, Hanover Square, but in the country, from the bride’s seat of Briarmount. I was not present, as I went abroad again almost directly after my Christmas visit to Cragsfoot, the salient features of which have already been indicated. All good fortune waited on the happy pair (here I rely on Aunt Bertha’s information, not having had the means of personal observation), and Nina became the mother of a fine baby in December. The child was a girl; a little bit of a disappointment, perhaps; the special remainder did not, of course, go beyond the present Baroness herself, and a prospective Lord Dundrannan was naturally desired. However, there was no need to pull a long face over that; plenty of time yet, as Aunt Bertha consolingly observed.
Finally, Captain Godfrey Frost – who must, I suppose, now be considered a member of the Rillington-cum-Dundrannan family and was certainly treated as one – made such a to-do in the influential quarters to which he had access, that at last he was restored to active service, sent to the Near East, and made the Palestine campaign with great credit. The moment that its decisive hour was over, however, he was haled back again. It may be remembered that there was a Ministry of Reconstruction, and it appeared (from Aunt Bertha again) that no Reconstruction worth mentioning could be undertaken, or at all events make substantial progress, without the help of Captain Frost. If that view be correct, it may help to explain some puzzles; because Captain Frost got malaria on his way home, and had to knock off all work, public and private, for two or three months – just at the time that was critical for Reconstruction, no doubt.
That is really all there is to say, though it may be worth while to let a letter to me from Sir Paget throw a little sidelight on the progress of affairs:
“Our married couple seem in complete tune with one another. Congreve says somewhere – in The Double Dealer, if I remember rightly – ‘Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves them still two fools.’ Agreed; but he might have added (if he hadn’t known his business too well to spoil an epigram by qualifications) that it doesn’t leave them quite the same two fools. I have generally observed (I would say always, except that a diplomatist of seventy has learnt never to say always) that when Mr. Black marries Miss White, either she darkens or he pales. The stronger infuse its color into the weaker – or, if you like to vary the metaphor, there is a partial absorption of the weaker by the stronger. Excuse this prosing; there is really nothing to do in the country, you know! And perhaps you will guess how I came by this train of reflection. In fact, I think that Waldo – about the happiest fellow in the world, and how good that he should be, after all he has gone through! – is experiencing a partial process of Dundrannanization. There’s a word for you! I made it this morning, and it pleased me! I should like to have suggested it to old Jonathan Frost himself. Don’t think it too formidable for what it represents. Not, of course, that the process will ever be complete with Waldo; there will remain a stratum of Christian weakness which it will not reach. But it may go far with him; the Frost (forgive me, Julius!) may be inches deep over his nature! And I am quite convinced that I have acquired a daughter, but not quite sure that I haven’t lost a son. No, not lost; half lost, perhaps. Briarmount overpowers Cragsfoot: I suppose it was bound to be so; of course it was; Aunt Bertha says so. She is an admirable herald of the coming day. He loves me no less, thank God; but the control of him has passed into other hands. He is, quite dignifiedly, henpecked; his admiration for her stops only short of idolatry. I don’t know that it ought to stop much sooner, for she is a notable girl. I’m very fond of her; if I ever saw her burst into tears, or have hysterics, or do anything really weak and silly, I believe I should love her even more.”
Quite so. It was what might have been expected. And Sir Paget’s assessment of his daughter-in-law was precisely in accord with all that he had had the opportunity of observing in that young woman. That she could burst into tears, could have something very like hysterics, could behave in a way that might be termed weak and silly, was a piece of knowledge confined, as I believed, to three persons besides herself. She thought it was confined to two. She had married one of them; did he think of it, did he remember? As for the other – it has been seen how she felt about the other. I was glad that she did not know about the third; if I could help it, she never should. I did not believe that she would forgive my knowledge any more than she forgave Lucinda’s. I don’t blame her; such knowledge about oneself is not easy to pardon.
There was a postscript to Sir Paget’s letter. “By the way, Mrs. Knyvett is dead – a month ago, at Torquay. Aunt Bertha saw it in the Times. An insignificant woman; but by virtue of the late Knyvett, or by some freak of nature, she endowed the world with a beautiful creature. Hallo, high treason, Julius! But somehow I think that you won’t hang me for it. I hope that poor child is not paying too dearly for her folly.”
I remember that, when I had read the postscript, I exclaimed, “Thank God!” Not of course, because Mrs. Knyvett had died a month before at Torquay; the event was not such as to wring exclamations from one. It was the last few words that evoked mine. Lucinda had a friend more in the world than she knew. If I ever met her again, I would tell her. She had loved Sir Paget. If his heart still yearned ever so little after her, if her face ever came before his eyes, it would, I thought, be something to her. The words brought her face back before my eyes, whence time and preoccupation had banished it. Did the face ever – at rare moments – appear to Waldo? Probably not. He would be too much Dundrannanized!
The process for which Sir Paget’s reluctant amusement found a nickname was a natural one in the circumstances of the case. If the Dundrannan personality was potent, so was the Dundrannan property. Cragsfoot was a small affair compared even to Briarmount alone; Waldo was not yet master even of Cragsfoot, for Sir Paget was not the man to take off his clothes before bedtime. Besides Briarmount, there was Dundrannan Castle, with its deer and its fishing; there was the Villa San Carlo at Mentone; never mind what else there was, even after “public objects” and Captain Frost had, between them, shorn off so large a part of the Frost concerns and millions. Moreover, another process set in, and was highly developed by the time I returned to England in the autumn of 1918, when my last foreign excursion on Government service ended. Family solidarity, and an identity of business interests in many matters, brought Nina, and, by consequence, Waldo, into close and ever closer association with Godfrey Frost. The young man was not swallowed; he had too strong a brain and will of his own for that; but he was attached. The three of them came to form a triumvirate for dealing with the Frost concerns, settling the policy of the Frost family, defining the Frost attitude towards the world outside. And everybody else was outside of that inner circle, even though we of Cragsfoot might be only just outside. So as Waldo, on his marriage, had shifted his bodily presence from Cragsfoot to Briarmount, his mind and his predominant interests also centered there; and presently to his were added, in great measure, Godfrey Frost’s. Nina presided over this union of hearts and forces with a sure tact; she did not seek to play the despot, but she was the bond and the inspiration.
Naturally, then, if the three saw eye to eye in all these great matters, they also saw eye to eye, and felt heart to heart, on such a merely sentimental subject as the view to take of Lucinda – of whom, of course, Godfrey derived any idea that he had mainly from Nina. Probably the idea thus derived was that she was emphatically a person of whom the less said the better! Only – the curious fact crops up again – she was not one of whom Nina was capable of saying absolutely nothing, of giving no hints. Her husband excepted, anybody really near to her was sure to hear something of Lucinda. Besides, there was the information, sketchy indeed, but significant, which he had received from Aunt Bertha, and perhaps that had made him question his cousin; then either her answers or even her reluctance to answer would have been enlightening to a man of his intelligence.
He got home some time in October, and at his request I went to see him in London, while he was convalescent from that malaria which so seriously impeded Reconstruction. From him I heard the family plans. They were all three going shortly to Nina’s villa at Mentone for the winter. For the really rich it seemed that “the difficulties of the times” presented no difficulty at all; a big motor car was to take the party across France to their destination.
“You see, we’re largely interested in works near Marseilles, and I’m going out to have a look at them; Waldo’s got doctor’s orders, Nina goes to nurse him – and the kid can’t be left, of course. All quite simple. Why don’t you come too?”
“Perhaps I will – if I’m asked and can get a holiday. It sounds rather jolly.”
“Top-hole! Besides, the war’s going to end. Nina’ll ask you all right; and, as for a holiday, you can’t do much at your game till the tonnage is released, can you?”
He seemed about right there; on such questions he had a habit of being right. At the back of my mind, however, I was just faintly reluctant about embracing the project, a little afraid of too thick a Dundrannan atmosphere.
“Well, I must go to Cragsfoot first. After that perhaps – if I am invited.”
“Jolly old place, Cragsfoot!” he observed. “I don’t wonder you like to go there – even apart from your people. It’s unlucky that Nina’s taken against it, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t know she had.”
“Oh, yes. You’ll see that – when the time comes – I hope it’s a long way off, of course – she won’t live there.”
“Waldo’ll want to live there, I think.”
“No, he won’t. He’d want to now, if it fell in. But by the time it does, he’ll have had his mind altered.” He laughed good-humoredly.
I rather resented that, having a sentimental feeling for Cragsfoot. But it would probably turn out true, if Nina devoted her energies to bringing it about.
“Regular old ‘country gentleman’ style of place – which Briarmount isn’t. Sort of place I should like myself. I suppose you’d take it on, if Waldo didn’t mean to live there?”
“You look so far ahead,” I protested. “The idea’s quite new, I haven’t considered it. I’ve always regarded it as a matter of course that Waldo would succeed his father there – as the Rillingtons have succeeded, son to father, for a good many years.”
“Yes, I know, and I appreciate that feeling. Don’t think I don’t. Still that sort of thing can’t last forever, can it? Something breaks the line at last.”
“I suppose so,” I admitted, rather sulkily. If Waldo did not live at Cragsfoot, if I did not “take it on,” I could not help perceiving that Godfrey had fixed his eye – that far-seeing Frost eye – on our ancestral residence. This was a further development of the Dundrannan alliance, and not one to my taste. Instinctively I stiffened against it. I felt angry with Waldo, and irritated with Godfrey Frost – and with Nina too. True, the idea of Cragsfoot’s falling to me – without any harm having come to Waldo – was not unpleasant. But everything was in Waldo’s power, subject to Sir Paget’s life interest; I remembered Sir Paget’s telling me that there had been no resettlement of the property on Waldo’s marriage. Could Waldo be trusted not to see with the Frost eye and not to further the Frost ambitions?
“It seems queer,” Godfrey went on, smiling still as he lit his cigarette, “but I believe that Nina’s dislike of the place has something to do with that other girl – Waldo’s old flame, you know. She once said something about painful associations – of course, Waldo wasn’t in the room – and I don’t see what else she could refer to, do you? She’s a bit sensitive about that old affair, isn’t she? Funny thing – nothing’s too big for a really clever woman, but, by Jove, nothing’s too small either!”
“Like our old friend the elephant and the pin that we were told about in childhood?”
“Exactly. Nina will hatch a big plan one minute, and the next she’ll be measuring the length of the feather on the scullery-maid’s hat.”
“Well, but – I mean – love affairs aren’t always small things, are they?”
“N – no, perhaps not. But when it’s all over like that!”
“Yes, it is rather funny,” I thought it best to admit.
Certainly it would be funny – a queer turn of events – if things worked out as I suspected my young friend Godfrey of planning; if Nina persuaded Waldo that he did not want to live at Cragsfoot, and Waldo transferred his old home to his new cousin. And if Nina’s reason were that Cragsfoot had “painful associations” for her! Because then, ultimately, if one went right back to the beginning, it would be not Nina, but that other girl, Waldo’s old flame, who would eject the Rillington family from its ancestral estate! It was impossible not to stand somewhat aghast (big words about that girl again!) at such a trick of fate.
“The fact is, I suppose,” he went on, “that she’s been fond of Waldo longer than she can afford to admit. Then the memory might rankle! And Nina’s not over-fond of opposition at any time. I’ve found that out. Oh, we’re the greatest pals, as you know, but there’s no disguising that!” He laughed indulgently. “Yes, that’s Nina. I often think that I must choose a wife with a meek and quiet spirit, Julius.”
“The Apostle says that it is woman’s ornament.”
“Nina certainly thinks that it’s other women’s. Oh, must you go? Awfully kind of you to have come. And, I say, think about Villa San Carlo! I believe it’s a jolly place, and Nina’s having it fitted up something gorgeous, she tells me.”
“Isn’t it rather difficult to get the work done just now?” I asked.
“Oh, no, not particularly. You see, we’ve an interest in – ”
“Damn it all!” I cried, “have you Frosts interests in everything?”
Godfrey’s good humor was imperturbable. He nodded at me, smiling. “I suppose it must strike people like that sometimes. We do bob up rather, don’t we? Sorry I mentioned it, old fellow. Only you see – it does account for Nina’s being able to get the furniture for Villa San Carlo, and consequently for her being in a position to entertain you and me there in the way to which we are accustomed – in my case, recently!”
“Your apology is accepted, Godfrey – if I go there! And I don’t seriously object to you Frosts straddling the earth if you want to. Only I think you might leave us Cragsfoot.”
“I wouldn’t get in your way for a minute, my dear chap – really I wouldn’t. We might live there together, perhaps. That’s an idea!” he laughed.
“With the wife of a meek and quiet spirit to look after us!”
“Yes. But I’ve got to find her first.”
“Sir Paget is very well, thank you. There’s no hurry.”
“But there’s never any harm in looking about.”
He came with me to the door, and bade me a merry farewell. “You’ll get your invitation in a few days. Mind you come. Perhaps we’ll find her on the Riviera! It’s full of ladies of all sorts of spirits, isn’t it? Mind you come, Julius.”
My little fit of irritation over what he represented was not proof against his own cordiality and good temper. I parted from him in a very friendly mood. And, sure enough, in a few days I did get my invitation to the Villa San Carlo at Mentone.
“If you’ve any difficulty about the journey,” wrote Nina, “let us know, because we can pull a wire or two, I expect.”
“Pull a wire or two!” I believe they control the cords that hold the firmament of heaven in its place above the earth!
Besides – so another current of my thoughts ran – if wires had to be pulled, could not Ezekiel Coldston & Co., Ltd., pull them for themselves? Did the Frosts engross the earth? I had no intention of letting Nina Dundrannan graciously provide me with “facilities”; that is the term which we used to employ in H. M.’s Government service.
