THE NEEDLEWOMAN

ON the way home I made Waldo promise not to tell about our engagement till I agreed. He did promise, but I think he must have given a pretty strong hint at home. There was such a wonderful absence of awkward references or questions. My mother never spoke of Arsenio; Aunt Bertha refrained from comment when it became known that Mr. Frost and his daughter had suddenly gone on a holiday, yachting—at the very beginning of what would have been Nina’s first season! And Sir Paget, besides petting me more than ever, began to talk to me as if I had a proprietorial interest in Cragsfoot. Waldo himself was very gentle and patient with me; he felt that he had ‘rushed’ me, I think, and was anxious not to frighten me. I believe that the possibility of something like what did in the end happen was always at the back of his mind; he never felt secure. There was always Arsenio; and I was—unaccountable! So he soothed and smoothed me, and let me put off the announcement of the engagement for nearly six months. We weren’t at Cragsfoot all that time, but coming and going between there and London. Mother took the Mount Street flat then; my opinion was—and is—that Sir Paget or Waldo paid for it. But, whether in town or country, Waldo and I were meeting all the time.

“I didn’t announce the engagement because I didn’t want to burn my boats; and then I did agree to announce it because I did want to burn my boats! That was the kind of person I was then—at all events, the kind of condition I was in. I had got over my fears almost entirely. Nina had thrown up the sponge; Arsenio wouldn’t betray me; Waldo dreamt of nothing worse than the picturesque flirtation in a gondola (though he didn’t like even that!). Nobody could prove, or even plausibly suggest, anything; unless my own nerve gave way, I was quite safe. So I thought then, anyhow. And I had almost got over my sense of guiltiness too. It came over me now and then; but it didn’t any longer seem very real; perhaps I had just exhausted my feelings about it. It wasn’t what I had done which troubled me all through those long months, both before the announcement and after it; it was what I was doing and what I was going to do. I liked Waldo enormously, and more and more as I knew him better. In spite of his tempers, he’s a great gentleman. But he never kissed me, he never took me in his arms, without my thinking of Arsenio.

“I had the oddest sense that this thing wasn’t final, that something would occur to end it. I didn’t expect to finish it myself, but I expected that something would. The feeling made me terribly restless; and it often made me cold and wayward with Waldo: then I had to be very affectionate to make him happy again. I liked making him happy, and I could do it. But I always seemed to be playing a part. I suppose I loved Arsenio. Love Arsenio after what had happened! That seemed monstrous. I wouldn’t open my eyes to it. I wouldn’t have gone to him if I could. And yet I couldn’t go happily to Waldo. I felt I was Arsenio’s—I wouldn’t own it, but I couldn’t help it. Julius, I believe that I’m a very primitive woman.”

“You’ve been sounding rather complicated up to now; I don’t mean—well, unnatural.”

“You’ve had love affairs, of course. I know you’ve had one big one. I even know her name; Aunt Bertha told me.”

“She shouldn’t have done that.”

“I was one of the family then, you see. She is—dead?”

“Yes, some few years ago—two years before we met at Cragsfoot.”

“That’s how you come not to have married?”

“I don’t know; many men don’t marry. Well—probably. But it’s your story we’re after, not mine.”

“Yes, but your having had an affair like that may help you—may help me to make you understand. What is it that sometimes seems to tie two people together in spite of themselves? Arsenio’s coming back to me was just chance—chance on chance. He was in this very place where we are now; in very low water, living in the little house I’m living in now, and employed as clerk to a wine merchant. He had given up all thoughts of me, of coming back to England. He couldn’t do it; he hadn’t the money. The English papers hardly ever came his way. One day a man came in, for a bottle of whisky—an Englishman; he had a copy of the Times with him, and tore off a sheet of it to wrap the bottle in, and threw the rest on the floor. When he was gone, Arsenio picked it up and read it. And he saw the announcement of the date of my wedding—July the twenty-first.”

“He told me, that day in London, that he had already decided to come to England when he saw that.”

“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!”

We smiled together over that monstrous freak of the imagination. And so, still smiling, we parted—she to go back to Madame Chose and her lingerie, I to my wanderings and nosing about. I did from time to time send her an address that would probably find me; but, as her words had foreshadowed, I got no answers. So it was still Madame Chose—or worse? I had to suppose that; and I was sorrowful. She had been much to blame, but somewhat to be pitied; the root feeling under which she had in the end acted—fidelity to the man to whom she had first belonged—might be primitive, as she herself suggested; it did not seem to me ignoble. At all events, she had not in the end been worldly; she had not sold herself. No, not yet.

For a while I thought a good deal about her; she had made a vivid impression on me in those three days; her face haunted my eyes sometimes. But—well, we were all very busy; there was a lot to think about—plenty of food both for thought and for emotion, immediate interests too strong for memories and speculations to fight against. The echo of her voice was drowned by the clamor of war. The vision of her face faded.