<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER III</h2>
<p class="pch">A HIGH EXPLOSIVE</p>
<p class="drop-cap00">I HAVE said so much about Waldo’s “rages” that
I may have given quite a wrong impression of
him. The “rages” were abnormal, rare and
(if one may not use the word unnatural about a thing
that certainly was in his nature) at least paradoxical.
The normal—the all but invariable and the ultimately
ruling—Waldo was a placid, good-tempered fellow;
not very energetic mentally, yet very far from a
fool; a moderate Conservative, a good sportsman,
an ardent Territorial officer, and a crack rifle-shot.
He had an independent fortune from his mother,
and his “Occupation” would, I suppose, have to be
entered on the Government forms as “None” or
“Gentleman”; all the same, he led a full, active,
and not altogether useless existence. Quite a type
of his class, in fact, except for those sporadic rages,
which came, I think, in the end from an extreme, an
exaggerated, sense of justice. He would do no
wrong, but neither would he suffer any; it seemed to
him an outrage that any one should trench on his
rights: among his rights he included fair, honorable
and courteous treatment—and a very high standard<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</SPAN></span>
of it. He asked what he gave. It seems odd that a
delicacy of sensitiveness should result, even now and
then, in a mad-bull rage, but it is not, when one
thinks it over, unintelligible.</p>
<p>Sir Paget had spoken in his most authoritative
tone; he had not proffered advice; he issued an
order. I had never known Waldo to refuse, in the
end, to obey an order from his father. Would he
obey this one? It did not look probable. His retort
was hot.</p>
<p>“I at least must judge this matter for myself.”</p>
<p>“So you shall then, when you’ve heard my reasons.
Sit down, Waldo.”</p>
<p>“I can listen to you very well as I am, thank you.”
“As he was” meant standing in the middle of the
room, glowering at Sir Paget, who was still smoking
in front of the fireplace. I was halfway between
them, facing the door of the room. “And I can’t
see what reasons there can be that I haven’t already
considered.”</p>
<p>“There can be, though,” Sir Paget retorted
calmly. “And when I tell you that I have to break
my word in giving them to you, I’m sure that you
won’t treat them lightly.”</p>
<p>Frowning formidably, Waldo gave an impatient
and scornful toss of his head. He was very hostile,
most unamenable to reason—or reasons.</p>
<p>At this moment in walked Miss Fleming—Aunt
Bertha as we all called her, though I at least had no
right to do so. She was actually aunt to Waldo’s<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</SPAN></span>
mother, the girl much younger than himself whom
Sir Paget had married in his fortieth year, and who
had lived for only ten years after her marriage.
When she fell sick, Aunt Bertha had come to Cragsfoot
to nurse her; she had been there ever since, mistress
of Sir Paget’s house, his <i>locum tenens</i> while he
was serving abroad, guide of Waldo’s youth, now the
closest friend in the world to father and son alike—and,
looking back, I am not sure that there was then
any one nearer to me either. I delighted in Aunt
Bertha.</p>
<p>She was looking—as indeed she always did to me—like
a preternaturally aged and wise sparrow, with
her tiny figure, her short yet aquiline nose, her eyes
sparkling and keen under the preposterous light-brown
“front” which she had the audacity to wear.
I hastened to wheel a chair forward for her, and she
sank into it (it was an immense “saddlebag” affair
and nearly swallowed her) with a sigh of weariness.</p>
<p>“How I hate big hotels, and lifts, and modern
sumptuousness in general,” she observed.</p>
<p>None of us made any comment or reply. Her
eyes twinkled quickly over the group we made, resting
longest on Waldo’s stubborn face. But she
spoke to me. “Put me up to date, Julius.”</p>
<p>That meant a long story. Well, perhaps it gave
Waldo time to cool off a little; halfway through he
even sat down, though with an angry flop.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Aunt Bertha at the end. “And you
may all imagine the morning I had! I got to Mount<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</SPAN></span>
Street at half-past eleven. Lucinda still out for a
walk—still! At twelve, no Lucinda! At half-past,
anxiety—at one, consternation—and for Mrs. Knyvett,
sherry and biscuits. At about a quarter to two,
despair. And then—the note! I never went
through such a morning! However, she’s in bed
now—with a hot-water bottle. Oh, I don’t blame
her! Paget, you’re smoking too many cigarettes!”</p>
<p>“Not, I think, for the occasion,” he replied
suavely. “Was Mrs. Knyvett—she was upset, of
course—but was she utterly surprised?”</p>
<p>“What makes you ask that, Paget?”</p>
<p>“Well, people generally show some signs of what
they’re going to do. One may miss the signs at the
time, but it’s usually possible to see them in retrospect,
to interpret them after the event.”</p>
<p>“You mean that you can, or I can, or the Knyvett
woman can?” Aunt Bertha asked rather sharply.</p>
<p>“Never mind me for the minute. Did it affect
her—this occurrence—just as you might expect?”</p>
<p>“Why, yes, I should say so, Paget. The poor soul
was completely knocked over, flabbergasted, shocked
out of her senses. But—well now, upon my word,
Paget! She did put one thing rather queerly.”</p>
<p>“Ah!” said Sir Paget. Waldo looked up with an
awakened, though still sullen, animation. I was listening
with a lively interest; somehow I felt sure
that these two wise children of the world—what
things must they not have seen between them?—would
get at something.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“When her note came—that note, you know—what
would you have said in her place? No, I don’t
mean that. You’d have said: ‘Well, I’m damned!’
But what would you have expected her to say?”</p>
<p>“‘Great God!’ or perhaps ‘Good gracious!’” Sir
Paget suggested doubtfully.</p>
<p>“She’s gone—gone!” I ventured to submit.</p>
<p>“Just so—just what I should have said,” Aunt
Bertha agreed. “Something like that. What our
friend Mrs. Knyvett did say to me was, ‘Miss Fleming,
she’s done it!’”</p>
<p>“What did you say?” Sir Paget as nearly
snapped this out as a man of his urbanity could snap.</p>
<p>“I don’t think I said anything. There seemed
nothing to——”</p>
<p>“Then you knew what she meant?”</p>
<p>Aunt Bertha pouted her lips and looked, as it
might be, apprehensively, at Sir Paget.</p>
<p>“Yes, I suppose I must have,” she concluded—with
an obvious air of genuine surprise.</p>
<p>“We sometimes find that we have known—in a
way—things that we never realized that we knew,”
said Sir Paget—“much what I said before. But—well,
you and Mrs. Knyvett both seem to have had
somewhere in your minds the idea—the speculation—that
Lucinda might possibly do what she has done.
Can you tell us at all why? Because that sort of
thing doesn’t generally happen.”</p>
<p>“By God, no!” Waldo grunted out. “And I
don’t see much good in all this jaw about it.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>A slight, still pretty, flush showed itself on Aunt
Bertha’s wrinkled cheeks—hers seemed happy
wrinkles, folds that smiles had turned, not furrows
plowed by sorrow—“I’ve never been married,” she
said, “and I was only once in love. He was killed
in the Zulu war—when you were no more than a
boy, Paget. So perhaps I’m no judge. But—darling
Waldo, can you forgive me? She’s never
of late looked like—like a girl waiting for her lover.
That’s all I’ve got to go upon, Paget, absolutely all.”</p>
<p>I saw Waldo’s hands clench; he sat where he was,
but seemed to do it with an effort.</p>
<p>“And Mrs. Knyvett?”</p>
<p>“Nothing to be got out of her just now. But, of
course, if she really had the idea, it must have been
because of Arsenio Valdez!”</p>
<p>The name seemed a spur-prick to Waldo; he almost
jumped to his feet. “Oh, we sit here talking
while——!” he mumbled. Then he raised his
voice, giving his words a clearer, a more decisive
articulation. “I’ve told you what I’m going to do.
Julius can come with me or not, as he likes.”</p>
<p>“No, Waldo, you’re not going to do it. I love—I
have loved—Lucinda. I held my arms open to
her. I thought I was to have what I have never
had, what I have envied many men for having—a
daughter. Well, now——” his voice, which had
broken into tenderness, grew firm and indeed harsh
again. “But now—what is she now?”</p>
<p>“Monkey Valdez’s woman!”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>These words, from Waldo’s lips, were to me almost
incredible. Not for their cruelty—I knew
that he could be cruel in his rage—but for their
coarse vulgarity. I did not understand how he
could use them. A second later he so far repented—so
far recovered his manners—as to say, “I beg
your pardon for that, Aunt Bertha.”</p>
<p>“My poor boy!” was all the old lady said.</p>
<p>“Whatever she may be—even if she were really
all that up to to-day you thought—you mustn’t go
after her now, Waldo—neither you nor Julius with
you.” He paused a moment, and then went on
slowly. “In my deliberate judgment, based on certain
facts which have reached me, and reënforced by
my knowledge of certain persons in high positions,
all Europe will be at war in a week, and this country
will be in it—in a war to the death. You fellows
will be wanted; we shall all be wanted. Is that the
moment to find you two traipsing over the Continent
on the track of a runaway couple, getting
yourselves into prison, perhaps; anyhow quite uncertain
of being able to get home and do your duty as
gentlemen? And you, Waldo, are a soldier!”</p>
<p>Waldo sat down again; his eyes were set on his
father’s face.</p>
<p>“You can’t suspect me of a trick—or a subterfuge.
You know that I believe what I’m telling you, and
you know that I shouldn’t believe it without weighty
reasons?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Waldo agreed in a low tone. His passion<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</SPAN></span>
seemed to have left him; but his face and voice were
full of despair. “This is pretty well a matter of
life and death to me—to say nothing of honor.”</p>
<p>“Where does your honor really lie?” He threw
away his cigarette, walked across to his son, and laid
a hand on his shoulder. But he spoke first to me.
“As I told you, I am breaking my word in mentioning
this knowledge of mine. It is desirable to confine
that breach of confidence to the narrowest possible
limits. If I convince Waldo, will you, Julius,
accept his decision?”</p>
<p>“Of course, Sir Paget. Besides, why should I go
without him? Indeed, how could I—well, unless
Mrs. Knyvett——”</p>
<p>“Mrs. Knyvett has nothing to do with our side of
the matter. Waldo, will you come out with me for
an hour?”</p>
<p>Waldo rose slowly. “Yes. I should like to
change first.” He still wore his frock coat and
still had a white flower in his buttonhole. Receiving
a nod of assent from Sir Paget, he left the
room. Sir Paget returned to the fireplace and lit
a fresh cigarette.</p>
<p>“He will do what’s right,” he pronounced. “And
I think we’d better get him to Cragsfoot to-morrow.
You come too, Julius. We’ll wait developments
there. I have done and said what I could in
quarters to which I have access. There’s nothing to
do now but wait for the storm.”</p>
<p>He broke away from the subject with an abrupt<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</SPAN></span>
turn to Aunt Bertha. “It’s a damned queer affair.
Have you any views?”</p>
<p>“The mother’s weak and foolish, and keeps some
rather second-rate company,” said the old lady.
“Surroundings of that sort have their effect even on
a good girl. And she’s very charming—isn’t she?”</p>
<p>“You know her yourself,” Sir Paget observed
with a smile.</p>
<p>“To men, I mean. In that particular way,
Paget?”</p>
<p>“Well, Julius?”</p>
<p>“Oh, without a doubt of it. Just born to make
trouble!”</p>
<p>“Well, she’s made it! We shall meet again at
tea, Aunt Bertha? I’ll pick up Waldo at his room
along the passage. And I’d better get rid of my
wedding ornament too.” He took the rose out of
the lapel of his coat, flung it into the fireplace, and
went out of the room, leaving me with Aunt Bertha.</p>
<p>“On the face of it, she has just suddenly and very
tardily changed her mind, hadn’t the courage to face
it and own up, and so has made a bolt of it?” I
suggested.</p>
<p>“From love—sudden love, apparently—of Arsenio
Valdez, or just to avoid Waldo? For there
seems no real doubt that Arsenio’s taken her. He’s
only once been to the flat, but the girl’s been going
out for walks every day—all alone; a thing that I
understand from her mother she very seldom did
before.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“Oh, it’s the Monkey all right. But that only
tells us the fact—it doesn’t explain it.”</p>
<p>“Very often there aren’t any explanations in love
affairs—no reasonable ones, Julius. Waldo takes
it very hard, I’m afraid.”</p>
<p>“She’s made an ass of him before all London.
It can’t really be hushed up, you know.”</p>
<p>“Well,” Aunt Bertha admitted candidly, “if such
an affair happened in any other family, I should certainly
make it my business to find out all I could
about it.” She gave a little sigh. “It’s a shock to
me. I’ve seen a lot, and known a lot of people in my
day. But when you grow old, your world narrows.
It grows so small that a small thing can smash it.
You Rillington men had become my world; and I
had just opened it wide enough to let in Lucinda.
Now it seems that I might just as well have let in
a high explosive. In getting out again herself, she’s
blown the whole thing—the whole little thing—to
bits.”</p>
<p>“Love’s a mad and fierce master,” I said—with a
reminiscence of my classics, I think. “He doesn’t
care whom or what he breaks.”</p>
<p>“No! Poor Lucinda! I wish she’d a nice
woman with her!”</p>
<p>I laughed at that. “The nice woman would feel
singularly <i>de trop</i>, I think.”</p>
<p>“She could make her tea, and tell her that in the
circumstances she could hardly be held responsible<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</SPAN></span>
for what she did. Those are the two ways of comforting
women, Julius.”</p>
<p>“As it is, she’s probably gone to some beastly
foreign place where there isn’t any tea fit to drink,
and Monkey Valdez is picturesquely, but not tactfully,
insisting that her wonderful way has caused
all the trouble!”</p>
<p>“Poor Lucinda!” sighed Aunt Bertha again.</p>
<p>And on that note—of commiseration, if not
actually of excuse—our conversation ended; rather
contrary to what might have been expected, perhaps,
from two people so closely allied to the deserted
and outraged lover, but because somehow Aunt
Bertha enticed me into her mood, and she—who
loved men and their company as much as any woman
whom I have known—never, I believe, thought of
them <i>en masse</i> in any other way than as the enemy-sex.
If and where they did not positively desire that
lovely women should stoop to folly, they were always
consciously or unconsciously, by the law of
their masculine being, inciting them to that lamentable
course. Who then (as the nice woman would
have asked Lucinda as she handed her the cup of
tea) were really responsible when such things came
about? This attitude of mind was much commoner
with Aunt Bertha’s contemporaries than it is to-day.
Aunt Bertha herself, however, always praised Injured
Innocence with a spice of malice. There was
just a spice of it in her pity for Lucinda and in the
remedies proposed for her consolation.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>My own feeling about the girl at this juncture
was much what one may have about a case of suicide.
She had ended her life as we had known her life in
recent years; that seemed at once the object and the
effect of her action. What sort of a new life lay
before her now was a matter of conjecture, and
we had slender <i>data</i> on which to base it. What did
seem permissible—in charity to her and without disloyalty
to Waldo—was some sympathy for the
struggle which she must have gone through before
her shattering resolve was reached.</p>
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