<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
<p class="pch">THE AIR ON THE COAST</p>
<p class="drop-cap16">“AND did a dark enough night ever come, Julius?”
Sir Paget asked with a chuckle.</p>
<p>It was late summer. I had arrived that
day to pay him a visit and, incidentally, to complete
the transaction by which Waldo was to convey
to me the reversion to Cragsfoot. My uncle and
I sat late together after dinner, while I regaled
him with the story of the last days of Arsenio Valdez—of
his luck, his death, and his glorification.</p>
<p>“Alas, sir, such things can’t actually happen in
this world. They’re dreams—Platonic ideas laid up
in heaven—inward dispositions towards things
which can’t be literally translated into action! We
did it in our souls. But, no; the wreath doesn’t, in
bare and naked fact, lie at the bottom of the Grand
Canal. It hangs proudly in the hall of Palazzo
Valdez, the apple of his eye to fat old Amedeo, with
whom Lucinda left it in charge—a pledge never
likely to be demanded back—when she leased the
<i>palazzo</i> to him. He undertakes the upkeep and
expenses, pays her about two hundred a year for
it, and expects to do very well by letting out the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</SPAN></span>
apartments. He considers that the wreath will add
prestige to the place and enhance its letting value.
Besides, he’s genuinely very proud of it, and the
Valdez legend loses nothing in his hands, I assure
you.”</p>
<p>“It’s a queer story. And that’s the end of it, is
it? Because it’s nearly six months since our friend
the Monkey, as you boys used to call him, played
his last throw—and won!”</p>
<p>“There’s very little more to tell. As you know,
Sir Ezekiel’s death sent me on my travels once
again—to the States and South America; I was
appointed Managing Director, and had to go inspecting,
and reorganizing, and so forth. That’s
all settled. I’m established now in town—and here,
thank God, I am—at old Cragsfoot again!”</p>
<p>“You’ve certainly been a good deal mixed up in
the affair—by fate or choice,” he said, smiling, “but
you’re not the hero, are you? Arsenio claims that
<i>rôle</i>! Or the heroine! What of her, Julius?”</p>
<p>“She came back to England four or five months
ago. She’s living in rooms at Hampstead. She’s
got the <i>palazzo</i> rent, and she still does her needlework;
she gets along pretty comfortably.”</p>
<p>“You’ve seen her since you came back, I suppose?”</p>
<p>“Yes, pretty nearly every day,” I answered. “She
was the first person I went to see when I got back
to London; she was the last person I saw before I
left London this morning.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>He sat rubbing his hands together, and looking
into the bright fire of logs that his old body found
pleasant now, even on summer evenings; the wind
blows cold off the sea very often at Cragsfoot.</p>
<p>“You’re telling me the end of the story now,
aren’t you, Julius?”</p>
<p>“Yes, I hope and think so. Indeed, why shouldn’t
I say that I know it? I think that we both knew
from the hour of Arsenio’s death. We had been
too much together—too close in spirit through it all—for
anything else. How could we say good-by
and go our separate ways after all that? It would
have seemed to us both utterly unnatural. First,
my head had grown full of her—in those talks at
Ste. Maxime that I told you we’d had; and, when
a woman’s concerned, the heart’s apt to follow the
head, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“I don’t wonder at either head or heart. She was
a delightful child; she seems to have grown into a
beautiful woman—yes, she would have—and one
that might make a man think about her. There
was nothing between you while he lived? No, I
don’t ask that question, I’ve no right to—and, I
think, no need to.”</p>
<p>“With her there couldn’t have been; it was as impossible
as it proved in the end for her to marry
Waldo. For her it was a virtue in me that I
knew it.”</p>
<p>“She wasn’t married to Arsenio Valdez when she
ran away from Waldo?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“In her own eyes she was, and when he called her—called
her back—well, she had to go.”</p>
<p>“Ah, I’ve sometimes fancied that there might
have been some untold history like that.”</p>
<p>“She now wishes that you and Waldo—just you
two—should know that there was. Will you tell
him, sir? I’d rather not. She thinks it may make
you and him feel more gently to her; she’s proud
herself, you know, and was sorry to wound others
in their pride.”</p>
<p>“It’s generous of her. I’ll tell him—what I
must; and you need tell me no more than you have.
I shouldn’t wonder if the idea isn’t quite new to
him either. There are—quarters—from which
something of the sort may have been suggested, eh,
Julius?”</p>
<p>“I know nothing as to that, but, as you say, it’s
very possible. You’ll have gathered how the feelings
of these two ladies towards one another runs
through the whole business. And we’re not finished
with them yet. Before Waldo sets his hand to that
agreement, he must know that the arrangement
which is to bring me to Cragsfoot will bring Lucinda
there too.”</p>
<p>“Yes, as its mistress; even in my lifetime, if she
so pleases; after me, in any case.” He looked across
to me, smiling. “And the moment so difficult—the
more difficult because it’s otherwise so triumphant!
The Heir-Apparent is born—a month ago—I wrote
you about it. The dynasty is assured; Her Majesty<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</SPAN></span>
is at her grandest and—I will add—her most gracious.
I saw her about again for the first time the
day before yesterday, and she said to me, ‘Now I’m
really content, Sir Paget!’—implying, as it seemed
to me, that the subject world ought to be content
also. All the Court was there—the Heir itself,
our dear old Prince Consort, the Grand Vizier—forgive
me mixing East and West, but that seems to
be the sort of position which she assigns to young
Godfrey Frost; an exalted but precarious position,
with a throne on one hand, and a bowstring on the
other! Oh, yes, and there was a Lady-in-Waiting
into the bargain, a pretty girl called Eunice Something-or-other.”</p>
<p>“Oh, yes, she was at Villa San Carlo—Eunice Unthank,”
said I, smiling. Nina—pertinacious as a
limpet!</p>
<p>“And now we’re to come breaking in on this
benevolent despotism! Our schemes border on conspiracy,
don’t they?” He grew graver, though he
still smiled whimsically. “A reconciliation possible?”
he suggested doubtfully.</p>
<p>I laughed. “There’s a crowning task for your
diplomacy, Sir Paget!”</p>
<p>“If I could change the hearts of women, I should
be a wizard, not a diplomatist. Their feuds have a
grand implacability beside which the quarrels of
nations are trivial and transient affairs. In this
matter, I’m a broken reed—don’t lean upon me,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</SPAN></span>
Julius! And could you answer for your side—for
your fair belligerent?”</p>
<p>“Lucinda makes war by laughing,” said I, laughing
myself. “But—well, I think she would go on
laughing, you know.”</p>
<p>“Just what my Lady Dundrannan always hates,
and occasionally suspects—even in me!”</p>
<p>“I wish to blazes that Waldo would have one of
his old rages, and tell her it’s not her business!”</p>
<p>“I daresay he may wish you hadn’t taken so much
interest in his runaway <i>fiancée</i>,” was Sir Paget’s pertinent
retort. “No, he’ll have no rages; like you,
I sometimes regret it. If she vetoes, he’ll submit.”
He shook his head. “Here are we poor men up
against these grand implacabilities; they transcend
our understanding and mock our efforts. Even Arsenio,
the great Arsenio, though he made use of
them, tripped up over them in the end! What can
you and I, and poor Waldo, do?” He got up.
“I’ll write a line to Waldo on the point—on the two
points—to-night; and send it up by the car to-morrow;
he can let us know his answer before Stannard
is due here, with the deeds, in the afternoon. There
might even be time to telephone and stop him from
starting, if the answer’s a veto!”</p>
<p>Diplomatist though Sir Paget was, man of affairs
as I must assume myself to be—or where stands the
firm of Coldston’s?—our judgments were clumsy,
our insight at fault; we did no justice to the fine
quality of Lady Dundrannan’s pride. It was not<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</SPAN></span>
to be outdone by the pride of the needlewoman of
Cimiez—outwardly, at all events; and do not many
tell us that wholly to conquer, or even conceal, such
emotions as fear and self-distrust is a moral triumph,
where not to feel them is a mere fluke of nature—just
the way one happens to be concocted? The
only answer that came to Sir Paget’s no doubt very
delicately, diplomatically expressed note, came over
the telephone (Sir Paget had not trusted its secrecy!),
from butler to butler. Marsden at Briarmount
told Critcher at Cragsfoot that he was to inform
Sir Paget that Colonel Rillington said it
was all right about this afternoon. Critcher delivered
the message as Sir Paget and I were sitting
in the garden before lunch—on that bench by the
garden door whereon Lucinda had once sat, listening
fearfully to the quarrel of angry youths.</p>
<p>“Very well, Critcher,” said Sir Paget indifferently.
But when the man had gone, he turned to me and
said, with a tremor in his voice, “So you can come,
you see—you and Lucinda, Julius.” I had not
known till then how much he wanted us. “I say,
what would poor old Aunt Bertha have said? She
went over, bag and baggage!”</p>
<p>“She’d have come back—with the same <i>impedimenta</i>,”
I declared, laughing.</p>
<p>There was a stateliness in Lady Dundrannan’s
assent, given by her presence and countenance to the
arrangement which the allied family of the Rillingtons
had—well, I suppose Waldo had—submitted<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</SPAN></span>
to her approval. The big Briarmount car—even
bigger, more newly yellow, than the car of Cimiez—brought
down the whole bunch—all the Court, as
Sir Paget had called it. Briarmount’s approval
was almost overwhelmingly signified. It was not,
of course, the thing to mention Lucinda—that was
unofficial; perhaps, moreover, slightly shameful.
Godfrey, at least, wore an embarrassed air which
the ostensible character of the occasion did not warrant;
and little Lady Eunice—I suspected that the
information had filtered down to her through the
other three of them—seemed to look at me with
something of the reproachful admiration one reserves
for a dare-devil. Waldo, for his part, gave
my hand a hard, though surreptitious, squeeze,
smiling into my eyes with his old kindness, somehow
conveying an immense deal to me about how he for
his part felt about the implacabilities, and the way
they had affected his life—and now mine. Of
course I was myself in the mood to perceive—to
exaggerate, or even to imagine—such thoughts in
him; but there it was—his eyes traveled from my
face to his lady’s shapely back (she was putting Mr.
Stannard, the lawyer, at his ease—he was a cadet of
an old county family, and one of the best known
sportsmen in the neighborhood), and back to my
face again, and—well, certainly the situation was
not lost on Waldo. But it was only after our business
was finished—a short recital of the effect of the
deeds from Stannard—didn’t we know more than<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</SPAN></span>
he did about that? But no doubt it was proper—and
then the signatures (“Dundrannan” witnessing
in a fine, bold, decisive hand!)—that he said a word
to me. “God give you and yours happiness with
the old place, Julius!” The pang of parting from
it spoke there, as well as kindliness and forgiveness
for us.</p>
<p>Sir Paget insisted—certainly not to the displeasure
of Mr. Stannard—on “wetting the signatures”
with a bottle of his Pommery 1900. Nina
just wetted her lips—even to that vintage she could
condescend. Then we all strolled out into the
garden, while tea was preparing. There was the
old place—the high cliffs above it, one narrow
wooded ledge fronting the sea; scant acres, but, as
it were, with all our blood in them. I felt like a
usurper (in spite of the honest money that I was
paying), the younger branch ousting the elder, even
through an abdication. But I was a usurper happy
and content—as, I daresay, they often are, in spite
of the poets and the dramatists. Sir Paget and
Stannard paired off; Godfrey and Eunice; Waldo
sat down on the bench by the door and lit his pipe;
I found myself left with Nina Dundrannan. With
the slightest motion of her hand she invited me to
accompany her along the walk towards the shrubbery.
At once I knew that she meant to say something
to me, though I had not the least idea on what
lines her speech might run. She could be very candid—had
she not been once, long ago, she the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</SPAN></span>
“skeleton at the feast”? She could also put the
truth very decisively in its proper place—a remote
one. Fires burnt in her—I knew that; but who
could tell when the flames would show?</p>
<p>There was a seat placed where a gap in the trees
gave a view of the sea; here we sat down together.
With her usual resoluteness she began at once with
what she had made up her mind to say.</p>
<p>“Waldo didn’t show me Sir Paget’s note, but he
told me a piece of news about you which it gave
him; he gave me to understand that you and Sir
Paget thought that I, as well as he himself, should
know it. He told me that the arrangement was no
longer repugnant to his own feelings, although it
once would have been; he felt both able and willing
to ignore the past, and start afresh on terms of
friendship with Madame Valdez—with Lucinda.
He asked me what my feelings were. I said that
in my view that was hardly the question; I had married
into the Rillington family; any lady whom Sir
Paget and he, the heads of the family, were prepared
to accept and welcome as a member of it, would, as
a matter of course, be accepted by me; I should treat
her, whenever we met, with courtesy, as I should no
doubt be treated by her; a great degree of affection,
I reminded Waldo, was not essential or invariable
between relations-in-law.” Here Lady Dundrannan
smiled for a moment. “Least of all should I
desire that any supposed feelings of mine should interfere
with the family arrangement about Cragsfoot<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</SPAN></span>
which you all three felt to be desirable; the
more so as it had in a way originated with myself,
since, if I had wished to make this place our principal
residence, the present plan would never have been
thought of at all. So I told him to put me entirely
out of the question; he would be quite safe in feeling
sure that I should accept the situation with a good
grace.”</p>
<p>She paused, and I took occasion to say: “I think
we’re all much indebted to you—and myself most of
all. Any other attitude on your part would have
upset an arrangement which I have come to have
very much at heart. I’m grateful to you, Nina.”</p>
<p>“You know a great deal—indeed, you probably
know pretty well everything—that has happened between
Lucinda and me. You wouldn’t defend all
that she did; I don’t defend all I did. When I’m
challenged, I fight, and I suppose Jonathan Frost’s
daughter isn’t dainty as to her weapons—that’s
your point of view about me, anyhow, isn’t it?
You’ve always been in her camp. You’ve always
been a critic of me.”</p>
<p>“Really I’ve regretted the whole—er—difficulty
and—well, difference, very much.”</p>
<p>“You’ve laughed at it even more than you’ve regretted
it, I think,” she remarked drily. “But I’ve
liked you better than you’ve liked me—though you
did laugh at me—and I’m not going to make things
difficult or uncomfortable for you. When I accept<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</SPAN></span>
a state of things, I accept it without reservation.
I don’t want to go on digging pins in.”</p>
<p>“If I have ever smiled—as you accuse me of
having done—as well as regretted, it was because I
saw your qualities as well as hers. The battle was
well joined. You’ve both had your defeats and
your victories. I should like you to be friends
now.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I believe you would; that’s why I’m talking
like this to you. But”—her voice took on a sudden
ring of strong feeling—“it’s impossible. There are
such memories between us.”</p>
<p>I did not urge the point; it would be useless with
her, very likely also with Lucinda. I let it go with a
shrug.</p>
<p>She sat for a moment in the stately composed
silence that so well became her.</p>
<p>“It’s probable that we shall divide our time mainly
between London, Dundrannan, and Villa San
Carlo in future. It’s even likely that if Godfrey
settles matters with Eunice Unthank, as I think he
will, he’ll take a lease of Briarmount. That would
not be disagreeable to you, would it?”</p>
<p>“Not the least in the world,” I answered, smiling.
“I like them both very much.”</p>
<p>She turned to me with a bland and simple sincerity
of manner. “The doctor thinks that the air
on this coast is too strong for baby.”</p>
<p>I seemed to be hearing an official bulletin—or
<i>communiqué</i>, as for some occult reason—or pure<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</SPAN></span>
love of jargon—they used to call it. There was no
question of a reverse at the hands of the enemy;
but climatic conditions rendered further operations
undesirable; the withdrawal was being effected voluntarily,
in perfect order, and without loss. That
the enemy was taking possession of the evacuated
territory was a circumstance of no military significance
whatever—though, to be sure, it might make
some little difference to the inhabitants.</p>
<p>“It won’t do to run any risks with that precious
boy!” I observed, with an approving smile, and (as
I flatter myself) with just the artistic shade of jocosity—as
if I were gently chaffing her on a genuine
but exaggerated maternal solicitude.</p>
<p>“Well, when the doctor says that, what can one
do?” asked Lady Dundrannan.</p>
<p>“Oh, one must follow his advice, of course!” I
murmured, with a nod of my head.</p>
<p>The bark of our conversation (another metaphor
may well be employed to illustrate her skill) being
thus piloted through the shoals of truth into the calm
deep waters of humbug, its voyage ended prosperously.
“I should never forgive myself, and Waldo
would never forgive me, if I took the slightest risk,”
Nina concluded, as she rose from the seat.</p>
<p>But as we stood there, facing one another—before
we began to stroll back to the house—as we
stood facing one another, all alone, we allowed ourselves
one little relapse into reality.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“Do you think of being off soon?” I asked, with
a smile.</p>
<p>She gave me one sharp glance and a contemptuous
smile. “Before your wedding—whenever that may
be, Julius!”</p>
<hr class="chap" />
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