LIVING FUNNILY

THE “housewarming” so adroitly suggested by Arsenio duly took place; it was followed by other meetings of the same kind. Louis had evidently received his instructions; every evening at half-past seven he laid dinner for three in my salon; and this without any apology or explanation. When his table was spread, he would say, “I will inform Madame and Monsieur that dinner is served.” Presently Madame and Monsieur would arrive—separately; Madame first (I think Arsenio listened until he heard her step passing his landing), Monsieur completing the party. I played host—rather ostentatiously; there had to be no mistake as to who was the host; and every morning I gave Louis money for the marketing.

Except for this evening meeting, we three saw little of one another. Arsenio was either out or shut up in his own apartment all day; Lucinda went punctually to her work in the morning and did not return till six o’clock; I did the sights, went sailing sometimes, or just mooned about; I met Lucinda now and then, but beyond a nod and a smile she took no notice of me; there were no more excursions to the Lido. Perhaps the claims of business did not permit them to her; perhaps she thought them unnecessary, in view of our opportunities for conversation in the evening.

For we had many. Arsenio’s views on the position in which he found himself had appeared pretty clearly from what he had said. By an incomprehensible perversity—of fate, of woman, of English temperament and morals—his grand coup had proved a failure; he would not accept that failure as final, but neither for the moment could he alter it. He always seemed to himself on the brink of success; every day he was tantalized by a fresh rebuff. She was friendly, but icily cold and, beyond doubt, subtly, within herself, ridiculing him. The result was that, in the old phrase, he could live neither with her nor without her. The daily meeting which he had engineered, with my aid (and at my expense), was a daily disappointment; his temper could endure only a certain amount of her society in the mood in which she presented herself to him. After that, his patience gave; he probably felt that his self-control would. So always, soon after our meal was finished, he would go off on some pretext or another; sometimes we heard him above in his own apartment, walking about restlessly; sometimes we heard him go downstairs past my landing—out somewhere. He seldom came back before ten o’clock; and his return was always the signal for Lucinda to retire to her own quarters at the top of the house.

During his absence she and I sat together, talking or in silence, I smoking, she sewing; if the evening was fine and warm, we sat in the armchairs by the little table in the window; if the weather was chilly—and in that dingy stone-floored room it was apt to seem chillier than it was—Louis made us a little fire of chips and logs, and we sat close by it. The old fleeting intimacy of Ste. Maxime renewed itself between us. After five or six evenings spent in this fashion, it almost seemed as though Arsenio were a visitor who came and went, while she and I belonged to the establishment.

“The atmosphere’s quite domestic,” I said to her with a smile. It was cold that night; we were close by the fire; her fingers were busy with her work under the light of the one lamp which showed up her face in clear outline—just as it had been defined against the gloom of the dark salle-À-manger at Ste. Maxime.

“Well, you see, you’re a restful sort of person to be with,” she answered, smiling, but not looking up, and going on with her sewing.

We had not talked much more about her affairs, or Arsenio’s. She seemed to think that enough had been said as to those, on the Lido; her conversation had been mostly on general matters, though she also took pleasure in describing to me the incidents and humors of her business hours, both here at Venice and in the past at Ste. Maxime and Nice. To-night I felt impelled to get a little nearer to her secret thoughts again.

“Wasn’t Waldo restful—barring an occasional storm?”

“Yes; but then—as I’ve told you—at that time I wasn’t. Never for an hour really. Now I am. I should be quite content to go on just as we are forever.” She looked up and gave me a smile. “I include you in ‘we’, Julius. You give me a sense of safety.”

“You can’t sell needlework on the Piazza all your life,” I expostulated.

“Really I could quite happily, if only I were let alone—otherwise. But I shan’t be, of course. Arsenio will get tired of his present tactics soon—the ones he’s followed since you came. We shall either go back to storms and heroics again, or he’ll discover something else. Just now he’s trying the patient, the pathetic! But he won’t stick to that long. It’s not in his nature.”

How calmly now she analyzed and dissected him! With amusement still mingled with her scorn, but—it must be repeated—with the old proportions terribly reversed. It cannot be denied that there was something cruel in the relentless vision of him which she had now achieved.

“He’ll try something spectacular next, I expect,” she pursued, delicately biting off a thread.

“You don’t mean—what you referred to on the Lido?” I asked, raising my brows and passing my hand across my jugular vein.

“Oh, no! That would be something real. His will be a performance of some sort. It’s ten days since he poured all his bank notes on the table before me, and swore he’d burn them and kill himself if I didn’t pick them up. Of course he hasn’t done either! He’s locked them up again, and he’s trying to get you to persuade me to see reason—in the way he sees it!”

“But I’ve told him that—I’ve told what I think of him—or as good as!”

“Well, as soon as he’s convinced this plan won’t work, he’ll try another. You’ll see!” She smiled again. “I shouldn’t wonder if the arrival of Godfrey Frost were to produce some manifestation, some change in his campaign.”

It was almost the first—I am not sure that it was not absolutely the first—time that she had referred to Godfrey. Though I felt considerable curiosity about her feelings with regard to that young man, I had forborne to question her. Whatever he might be in himself, he was friend, partner, kinsman to Nina Dundrannan. The subject might not be agreeable.

“What’s that young man coming here for?” I asked.

Something in my tone evidently amused her. She laid her work down beside her, drew her chair nearer the fire, and stretched out her legs towards the blaze. She was thoughtful as well as amused, questioning herself as well as talking to me; it was quite in her old fashion.

“I liked him; he amused me—and it amused me. He’s Nina, isn’t he? Nina writ large and clumsily? What she is delicately, he is coarsely. Oh, well, that’s rather a hard word, perhaps. I mean, obviously, insistently. Where she carries an atmosphere, he works an air pump. Still I liked him; he was kind to me; he gave me treats—as you did. And it was fun poaching on Nina’s preserves. After all, she didn’t have it all her own way when we met at Cimiez!”

“She’s not having it now, I should imagine—since he’s coming to Venice.”

“I like treats, and I like being admired, and I liked the poaching,” Lucinda pursued. “He gave me all that. And he really was generously indignant at my having to earn an honest living—no, having to earn a poor living, I mean.”

“He gave Arsenio money too, didn’t he?” Of course I knew the answer, but I had my reason for putting the question.

“Yes; I didn’t know it, but I suspected it—or Arsenio wouldn’t have been so accommodating to him. But he really wanted to help me, to make things easier for me. That wasn’t her motive!”

Remembering what I did of Lady Dundrannan’s attitude and demeanor during my stay at Villa San Carlo, I did not feel equal to arguing that it was.

“So—altogether—I let him flirt with me a good deal. I don’t think you know much about flirtation, do you, Julius? Oh, I don’t mean love! Well, it’s a series of advances and retreats, you see.” (She entered on this exposition with a feigned and hollow gravity.) “When the man advances, the woman retreats. But if the man retreats, the woman advances. And so it goes on. Do you at all see, Julius?”

“I’m disposed to believe that you’re giving me a practical demonstration—of the advance!”

She laughed gaily. “Pure theory—for the moment, at all events! But he didn’t always advance at the proper moment. Never you dare to tell Nina that! But he didn’t. I’m not a vain woman, am I, or I shouldn’t tell even you! Something always seemed to bring him up short. Fear of Nina, do you think? Or was he too big a man? Or had he scruples?”

“A bit of all three, perhaps.” I had had the benefit of another version of this story—at Paris.

“Anyhow he never did, or suggested, anything very desperate. And so—I’m rather wondering what’s bringing him to Venice. Because now we’re rich—we have at least a competence. We’re respectable. Monsieur Valdez can afford to be honest; Madame Valdez can afford to keep straight. Desperation might have had its chance at Nice. Oh, yes, it might easily! It hasn’t surely got half such a good chance now? I mean, it couldn’t seem to have—to Godfrey Frost.”

“I’m not quite sure about that. He saw the famous meeting at Cimiez. He’s told me about it—I told you I’d seen him since, didn’t I? I fancy he understands your feelings better than you think. He has a good brain and—plenty of curiosity.”

“Then if he does understand—and still comes to Venice——?” She looked at me with her brows raised and a smile on her lips. “Looks serious, doesn’t it?” she ended. She broke into low laughter. “It would be such glorious fun to become Mrs. Godfrey Frost!”

“You’ve got a husband still, remember!”

“That’s nothing—now. Or do you set up Arsenio as morality?”

“Oh, no! If Arsenio’s morality, why, damn morality!” I said.

“And there’s just the piquant touch of uncertainty as to whether I could do it—whether I could become even so much as an unofficial Mrs. Godfrey—whom Nina didn’t know, but whom she’d think about! Still—he is coming to Venice. It’s rather tempting, isn’t it, Julius?”

“Does a revenge on Arsenio come into it at all?”

Her smile disappeared, her face suddenly grew sad. “Oh, no, I’m having that already. I don’t want to have—not as revenge—but I can’t help it. It is so with me—no credit to me, either.”

“All the same, Arsenio isn’t pleased at our friend coming to Venice. He was very glad when I took this apartment—mainly because then Godfrey couldn’t.”

“If you hadn’t come, and he had—I wonder!”

“Do you care for him in the very least?” I asked, perhaps rather hotly.

“No,” she answered with cool carelessness. “But is that the question?” She dropped out of her chair on to her knees before the fire, holding out her hands to warm them. Her face, pale under the lamp, was ruddy in the blaze of the logs. “You’re a silly old idealist, Julius. You idealize even me—me, who did, in this very place, what shouldn’t be done—me who ran away from a good marriage and a better man—me who have knocked about anyhow for years—knowing I was always on sale—I’m on sale every afternoon on the Piazza—if only I chose to make the bargain. But you choose to see me as I was once.” She laughed gently. “Well, I think you’ve saved my life—or my reason—twice—here and at Ste. Maxime—so I suppose I must put up with you!”

“You’ll never go to a man unless you love him,” I said obstinately.

Suddenly she flung her hands high above her head. “Oh, what does one keep in this wicked world, what does one keep?”

Her hands sank down on to her knees—as though their reluctant fall pictured the downward drag of the world on the spirit. In that posture she crouched many minutes without moving; and I, not stirring either, watched her.

“I had my one virtue,” she said at last. “My primitive virtue. I was faithful to my man—even when I tried not to be, still I was. Now I’ve lost even that. It wouldn’t cost me an hour’s sleep to deceive or desert Arsenio. I should, in fact, rather enjoy it, just for its own sake.”

“I daresay. But you’re not for sale—in marriage or out of it. And, as you said, isn’t your revenge complete?”

“That’s the worst of revenge; is it ever, in the end, really complete?” She turned round on me suddenly and laid a hand on my knee. “Yes—that’s what has been in my mind. But it’s only just this minute that I’ve seen it. I daresay you’ve seen it, though, haven’t you? I’m becoming cruel; I’m beginning to enjoy tormenting him. I’ve read somewhere that people who have to punish do sometimes get like that, even when it’s a just punishment. But it’s rather an awful idea.”

Her face was full of a horrified surprise. “I do get things out so, in talking to you,” she added in a hurried murmur. “Oh, not words; thoughts, I mean. You let me go on talking, and I straighten myself out before my own eyes. You know? Till now, I’ve never seen what I was coming down to. Poor old Arsenio! After all, he’s not a snake or a toad, is he?” She laughed tremulously. “Though why should one be cruel even to toads and snakes? One just leaves them alone. That’s what I must do with Arsenio.”

“An illogical conclusion—since he isn’t snake or toad,” I said, as lightly as I could.

“Oh, you know! That’s it! Yes, I’ve been saying that I was very just, and fine, and all that! And I’ve really been enjoying it! Julius dear, has my honest work been all just viciousness—cattiness, you know?”

“God bless you, no! Why do you round on yourself like this? You’ve come through the whole thing splendidly. Oh, you’re human! There’s Nina, and all that, of course. But it’s nonsense to twist the whole thing like that.”

“Yes, it is,” she decided—this time quickly, even abruptly. “It hasn’t been that—not most of it anyhow. But it’s in danger of being it now. It almost is it, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes, at dinner, I’ve thought you a little cruel.”

“Yes—I have been.” She rose to her feet almost with a jump. “If I have to go—to rescue myself from that—will you help me, Julius? Because I’ve no money to go far—to take myself out of his reach.”

As—on this question—we stood opposite to one another, she just murmuring “Yes, that’s it,” I nonplussed at her question, at the whole turn her talk had taken—we heard the tramp of steps on the stone staircase. She flung me a glance; more than one person was coming up. “It’s just like Arsenio not to have told us!” she whispered with a smile.

“You mean——?” I whispered back.

“He’s been to meet him at the station, of course! Julius, how shall I behave?”

We heard the door of the apartment opened. The next moment Arsenio opened the door of the room, and ushered in Godfrey Frost, in a big fur coat, fresh from the train evidently.

“Here he is!” Arsenio cried, almost triumphantly.

Godfrey stood on the threshold, obviously taken aback. It was clear that Arsenio had not told him that he was to meet the pair of us.

Arsenio wore his most characteristic grin. I could not help smiling at it. Lucinda laughed openly. Godfrey, caught unawares as he was, carried the position off bravely.

“Delightful to see you both! But where am I? Whose charming room is this?”

“It’s the devil and all to know that! We live so funnily,” said Monkey Valdez.