<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
<p class="pch">IN FIVE YEARS</p>
<p class="drop-cap04">WINTER had set in again when Lucinda
and I came together to Cragsfoot. The
picture of her on her first evening there
stands out vivid in my memory.</p>
<p>Sir Paget had received her with affectionate, but
perhaps somewhat ceremonious, courtesy; there was
a touch of ratifying a treaty of peace in his manner.
She was minded to come closer in intimacy; for in
these recent days—before and just after our wedding—a
happy confidence seemed to possess her. Self-defense
and the hardness it has to carry with it
were necessary to her no longer; she reached out
more freely for love and friendship, and broke the
bounds of that thoughtful isolation which had so
often served to keep the woman herself apart from
all about her. She was not on guard now; that was
the meaning of the change which had come over her;
not on guard and not fighting.</p>
<p>After dinner she drew a low stool up beside the
old man’s big armchair before the fire, and sat down
beside him, laying one arm across his knees; I sat
smoking on the other side of the hearth. Sir Paget<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</SPAN></span>
laid his hand on hers for a moment, as though to
welcome her bodily presence thus in touch with him.</p>
<p>“You’ll be wondering how it happened,” she began,
“and Julius won’t have been able to tell you.
Probably it never occurred to him to try, though I
suppose he’s told you all the actual happenings—the
outward things, I mean, you know. It was at
Ste. Maxime that we—began to be ‘we’ to one
another. I knew it in him then—perhaps sooner
than he did—but I don’t know; he’s still rather
secretive about himself, though intolerably inquisitive
about other people. But I did know it in him;
and I searched, and found it in myself—not love
then, but a feeling of partnership, of alliance. I
was very lonely then. Well, I can stand that. I
was standing it; and I could have gone on—perhaps!
I wonder if I could! No, not after I found out
about Arsenio’s taking that money! That would
have broken me—if it hadn’t been for Ste. Maxime.”</p>
<p>She paused for a moment; when she spoke again,
she addressed me—on the other side of the fireplace.</p>
<p>“You went away for a long while; but you remembered
and you wrote. I’m not a letter-writer,
and that was really the reason I didn’t answer. I
have to be with people—to feel them—if I’m to
talk with them to any purpose—to ask then questions
and get answers, even though they don’t say
anything.” (I saw her fingers bend in a light pressure
on old Sir Paget’s knee.) “I should have
sounded stupid in my letters. Or said too much!<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</SPAN></span>
Because the only thing was to say nothing about it,
wasn’t it? You knew that as well as I did, didn’t
you? If once we had talked—in letters or when
you came back——! I did nearly talk when you
suddenly appeared there on the Piazza at Venice.
It was pretty nearly as good as a declaration, wasn’t
it, Julius?”</p>
<p>She gave a low merry laugh; but then her eyes
wandered from my face to the blaze of the fire,
and took on their self-questioning look.</p>
<p>“I think it’s rare to be able to see the humor of
things all by yourself—I mean, of course, of close
things, things very near to you, things that hurt, although
they’re really funny. You want a sympathizer—somebody
to laugh with. Oh, well, it goes
deeper than that! You want to feel that there’s
another world outside the miserable little one you’re
living in—outside it, different from it—a place
where you yourself can be different from the sort of
creature which the life you’re leading forces you to
be—at least, unless you’re a saint, I suppose; and I
never was that! You want a City of Refuge for
your heart, don’t you, Sir Paget? For your heart,
and your feelings; yes, and your humor; for everything
that you are or that you’ve got, and want to
go on being or having. Because the worst thing
that anybody or any state of things can do to you,
or threaten you with, is the destruction of yourself—whether
it’s done by assault or by starvation! In
the world I lived in—the actual one as it had come<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</SPAN></span>
to be for Arsenio and me—I was done for! There
was hardly anything left of me!” She suddenly
turned her face up to Sir Paget, with a murmur of
laughter. “It was like the Cheshire cat! Nothing
left but a grin and claws! A grin for his antics,
claws to protect myself. That’s what I had come
to in my own world—the little world of Arsenio and
me! Claws and a grin—wasn’t I, Julius?”</p>
<p>“I would not hear your enemy say so, but——”</p>
<p>“You know it’s true; I knew at the time that you
felt it, but I couldn’t alter myself. Well, I told you
something about it at Venice—trying to change, not
succeeding! Even his love for me had become one
more offense in him—and that was bad. The only
thing that carried me through was the other world
you gave me—outside my own; where you were,
where he wasn’t—though we looked at him from it,
and had to!—where I could take refuge!”</p>
<p>She went on slowly, reflectively, as though she
were compelled reluctantly to render an account to
herself. “I have escaped; I have gained my City of
Refuge. But I bear the marks of my imprisonment—even
as my hands here bear the marks of my work—of
my sewing and washing and ironing. I’m
marked and scarred!”</p>
<p>Sir Paget laid his hand on hers again. “We keep
a salve for those wounds at Cragsfoot,” he said
gently. “We’ve stored it up abundantly for you,
Lucinda.”</p>
<p>She turned to him, now clasping his arms with her<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</SPAN></span>
hands. “You! Yet I put you to shame; I betrayed
you; I was false—Oh, and cruel to Waldo!” For
the first time in all my knowledge of her I saw tears
running down her cheeks. Sir Paget took her hands
into his and kissed her upturned face.</p>
<p>“Waldo’s as happy as a king—or, at least, a
Prince Consort,” he said, smiling, though I think
that his voice shook a little. “And, since it’s an evening
of penitence and confession, I’ll make my confession
too. I’ve always been a bit of a traitor, or a
rebel, myself. You know it well enough, Julius!”
He smiled. “Sitting here, under the sway of Briarmount,
I’m afraid that I have, before now, drunk a
silent toast to the Queen over the Water. Because
I remembered you in old days, my dear.”</p>
<p>The mention of Briarmount brought the smiles
back to Lucinda’s face. She rose from her stool
and stood on the hearthrug between us, looking from
one to the other. She gave a defiant toss of her
fair head. “Guilty, my lords! I can’t abide her.
And I’m glad—yes, I am—that she’s not here at
Cragsfoot!”</p>
<p>“Moreover, she has retreated even from Briarmount
before you,” chuckled Sir Paget.</p>
<p>“When I advanced in strength, she always retreated,”
said Lucinda with another toss. “The
fact is—I had the least bit more effrontery. I could
bluff her, whatever was in my heart. She couldn’t
bluff me.”</p>
<p>“Reconciliation, I suppose, impossible?” hazarded<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</SPAN></span>
the diplomatist <i>en ratraite</i>, not able to resist the
temptation of plying his trade, of getting round the
grand implacability; what a feather in his cap it
would be!</p>
<p>“Looking down the vista of years,” said Lucinda,
now gayly triumphant in her mastery over the pair
of us, “a thing I used to do, Julius, oftener than I
need now—I see two old ladies, basking somewhere
in the sun—perchance at Villa San Carlo—which I
have not, up to now, visited, though I know the surrounding
district. From under their wigs, in old
squeaky voices——”</p>
<p>“I thank God for my mortality,” murmured old
Sir Paget as he looked at her.</p>
<p>“They’re telling one another that they must both
of them have been very wonderful, clever, attractive,
beautiful! Or else they’d never have made so much
trouble, and never squabbled so much. And I
shouldn’t wonder if they said—both of them—that
nothing in the whole business was their fault at all;
it was only the men who were so silly. But then
they made the men silly. What men wouldn’t they
make silly, when they were young and beautiful so
long ago?”</p>
<p>“How much of this is Lady Dundrannan—and
how much more is you?”</p>
<p>“Mostly me, Julius. Because I have, as I told
you, the least bit more effrontery. But her ladyship
agrees, and the two old gossips sip their tea and
mumble their toast, with all the harmony and happiness<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</SPAN></span>
of superannuated sinners. I’m sure I needn’t
explain that feeling to men—they knew all about
it!”</p>
<p>“This picture, distant though it is, saps my conception
of Lady Dundrannan,” I protested. “Perhaps
of you too; do you mind if I call you a good
hater?”</p>
<p>A smile hung about her lips; but her voice passed
from the gay to the gentle, and the old inward-looking
gaze took possession of her eyes. “No, I
don’t mind, I like my hatreds; even for me there
never failed to be something amusing in them. I
wonder if I do myself too much credit in saying—something
unreal? Did I play parts—like poor
Arsenio? But still they seemed very real, and they
kept my courage up. I suppose it’s funny to think
that one behaves well—honorably—sometimes, just
to spite somebody else. I’m afraid it is so, though—isn’t
it, Sir Paget?”</p>
<p>“The Pharisee in the Temple comes somewhere
near your notion.”</p>
<p>She came and sat herself down on the arm of my
chair, and threw her arm round my neck. “Yes,
hatreds serve their turn. But they ought to die;
being of the earth earthy, they ought to, oughtn’t
they? And they do. Do any of us here hate poor
Arsenio now?” Suddenly she kissed me. “You
never did, because you’re so ridiculously understanding—and
I thank you for that now, because it
helped me to try not to, to try to remember that he<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</SPAN></span>
loved me, and that he couldn’t help being what he
was. But where’s all my anger gone? Why, you
and I often talk of him, and enjoy his tricks, don’t
we? They can’t hurt us now; they’re just amusing,
and we’re grateful to the poor man, and don’t feel
hard to him any more, do we?” She fell silent for
a moment, and then, with a broader smile, and with
one hand uplifted in the air, she said, “And so, Sir
Paget, very, very dear Sir Paget, I back myself
to make friends with Nina in—well, say five years!”</p>
<p>The prudently calculated audacity of this undertaking
made us laugh. “And with Waldo—how
soon?” asked Sir Paget.</p>
<p>“Oh, to-morrow! But if I do that, I must take
ten years, instead of five, for Nina!”</p>
<p>“You’d better arrange the time-table in your own
way, my dear,” Sir Paget admitted discreetly.
“Now I’ll go off to bed and leave you to have a talk
together.”</p>
<p>He rose from his chair and advanced towards her,
to give her his good-night greeting. Quicker than
he was, she met him almost before he had taken a
step. Catching his hands in hers, she fell on her
knees before him. “Have you a blessing left for
the sinner that repenteth—for your prodigal
daughter?”</p>
<p>She was not in tears now, nor near them. She
was just wonderfully and exultantly coaxing.</p>
<p>The old man disengaged his hands, clasped her
face with them, turned it up to him, and gallantly<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</SPAN></span>
kissed it. “Your sunshine warms my old bones,” he
said. “I’m glad you’re back at Cragsfoot, Lucinda.”
He turned away quickly and left us.</p>
<p>I went to her and raised her from her knees.</p>
<p>“That’s all right!” she said, with a tremulous but
satisfied little laugh. “And I love him even more
than I’ve tried to make him love me—and that’s
saying a good deal to you, who’ve seen me practice
my wiles! Are the tricks stale to you, Julius?”</p>
<p>“Yes. Try some new ones!”</p>
<p>“Ah, you’re cunning! The old ones are, I believe—I
do believe—good enough for you.”</p>
<p>“The new ones had better be for Nina!”</p>
<p>“In five years, Julius, as sure as I live—and love
you!”</p>
<p>“How do you propose to begin?” I asked skeptically.
I knew my Nina! I knew Lucinda. It
seemed, at the best, a very even bet whether she
could bring it off.</p>
<p>Lucinda laughed in merry confidence and mockery.
“Why, by giving her to understand that you make
me thoroughly unhappy, of course. How else
would you do it?”</p>
<p class="pc4 mid">THE END</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />