SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS

WALDO’S was a business letter; any feelings that might be influencing the proposed transaction, any sentiment that might be involved—whether of Nina’s, of his own, of his father’s, or of mine—he appeared to consider as having been adequately indicated in our talk at Paris, and accorded them only one passing reference. He assumed that I should be bearing all that—he had a habit of describing the emotions as “all that,” I remembered—in mind; what remained was to ask me whether I were favorably disposed to the arrangement, the value of his remainder—which must, alas, before many years were out, become an estate in possession—to be fixed by a firm of land agents selected by himself and me—“from which price I should suggest deducting twenty-five per cent. in consideration of what I believe the lawyers call ‘natural love and affection’; in other words, because I’d much sooner sell to you than to a stranger—in fact, than to anybody else.” The underlining of the last two words clearly asked me to substitute for them a proper name with which we were both well acquainted. He added that he thought the land agents’ valuation would be somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty thousand pounds, timber included—and so, with kindest remembrances from Nina, who was splendidly fit, considering (another underlining gave me news of possible importance for the future of the Dundrannan barony), he remained my affectionate cousin.

Though I suspect that son and father, at the bottom of their hearts, felt much the same about the matter, Sir Paget’s letter was expressed in a different vein. Leaving the business to Waldo, he dealt with the personal aspect:

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you that I hadn’t always hoped and expected that the heir of my body and the child of my dear wife should succeed me here. That’s nature; but Dis aliter visum. The All-Highest herself decides otherwise.” (I saw in my mind the humorous, rather tired, smile with which he wrote that.) “But I should be an ungrateful churl indeed if I repined at the prospect of being succeeded at Cragsfoot by you, who bear the old name (and, I am told, are to get a handle to it!)—you who are and have been always son of my heart, if not of my body—a loyal, true son too, if you will let me say it. So, if it is to be, I receive it with happiness, and the more you come to your future dominions while I—brevis dominus—am still here to welcome you, the better I shall be pleased. But, prithee, Julius, remember that you provide, in your own person, only for the next generation. When your turn comes for the doleful cypresses, what is to happen? You must look to it, my boy!”

After a touching reference to his old and now lost companion, Aunt Bertha, and to his own loneliness, he went on more lightly: “But Waldo comes over every day from Briarmount when they are ‘in residence,’ and the aforesaid All-Highest herself pays me a state visit once or twice a week. The Queen-Regent expects an Heir-Apparent. Oh, confidently! I think she can’t quite make out how fate, or nature, or the other Deity dared to thwart her, last time! I confess I am hypnotized—I too have no doubt of the event! So, as to that, all is calm and confidence—the third peer of the line is on his way! But is there anything wrong in her outlying dominions? Villa San Carlo, though it sounds like a charming winter palace, doesn’t seem to have been an unqualified success. ‘Rather tiresome down there!’ she said. I asked politely after the cousin. Very well, when she had seen him last, but she really didn’t know what he was doing; it seemed to her that he was taking a very long holiday from business—‘Our works down there are of only secondary importance.’ I remarked that you had written saying how much you were enjoying yourself at Villa San Carlo, and how you regretted being detained in Paris. ‘Oh, he meant to leave us anyhow, I think!’ I fancied somehow that both of you gentleman had incurred the royal displeasure. What have you been up to? Rebellion, lÈse-majestÉ, treason? You are bold men if you defy my Lady Dundrannan! Well, she’s probably right in thinking that Cragsfoot is too small for her, and not worth adding to her dominions!”

Though the purchase would need some contriving, the price that Waldo’s letter indicated was not an insuperable difficulty, thanks to the value which Sir Ezekiel was now kind enough to put on my services; I could pay it, and keep up the place on a footing of frugal decency when the time came. For the rest, the prospect was attractive. Cragsfoot had always been an integral part of my life; my orphaned childhood had been spent there. If it passed to a stranger, I should feel as it were dug up by the roots. If I did not fall in with the arrangement, pass to a stranger it would; I felt sure of that; the All-Highest had issued her command. “So be it!” I said to myself—half in pleasure, still half in resentment at the Dundrannan fiat, which broke the direct line of the Rillingtons of Cragsfoot. I also made up my mind to obey Sir Paget’s implied invitation as soon as——

As soon as what? The summons from Cragsfoot—the call back to home and home life (my appointment to our London office was now ratified)—brought me up against that question. I could answer it only by saying—as soon as Lucinda’s affair had somehow settled itself. She could not be left where she was; as a permanency, the present situation was intolerable. She must yield or she must go; Valdez would never let her alone, short of her adopting one of those alternatives; he would keep on at his pestering and posturing. She had no money; her mother had lived on an annuity, or an allowance, or something of that kind, which expired with the good lady herself. Clearly, however, she was able to support herself. She must not sell flowers on the Piazza all her life; I thought that she would consent to borrow enough money from me to set herself up in a modest way in business, and I determined to make that proposal to her on the morrow—as soon as we had got through the ordeal of this evening’s dinner. I fervently hoped that we might get through it without a flare-up between Arsenio and his honored guest Godfrey Frost. Out of favor at Briarmount was he, that young man? I could easily have told Sir Paget the reason for that!

The only one of the prospective party whom I encountered in the course of the afternoon—though I admit that I haunted the Piazza in the hope of seeing Lucinda—was the host himself. I met him in company with a tall, lean visaged, eminently respectable person, wearing a tall hat and a black frock coat. Arsenio stopped me, and introduced me to his companion. He said that Signor Alessandro Panizzi and I ought to know one another; I didn’t see why, and merely supposed that he was exhibiting his respectable friend, who was, it appeared, one of the leading lawyers in Venice and, indeed, an ex-Syndic of the city. Signor Panizzi, on his part, treated Arsenio with the greatest deference; he referred to him, in the course of our brief conversation, as “our noble friend,” and was apparently hugely gratified by the familiar, if somewhat lordly, bearing which Arsenio adopted towards him. But, after all, Arsenio was now rich—notoriously so, thanks to the way in which wealth had come to him; one could understand that he might be regarded as a highly-to-be-valued citizen of Venice. Perhaps he was going to run for Mayor himself—one more brilliant device to dazzle Lucinda!

There it was—in thinking of him one always expected, one always came back to, the bizarre, the incongruous and ridiculous. It was the overpowering instinct for the dramatic, the theatrical, in him, without any taste to guide or to limit it. That was what made it impossible to take him, or his emotions and attitudes, seriously; Waldo’s “all that” seemed just the applicable description. I walked away wondering just what particular line his bamboozlement of Signor Alessandro Panizzi might be taking. Moreover, that he could find leisure in his thoughts to posture to somebody else—besides Lucinda and myself—was reassuring. It made his hints of the night before seem even more unreal and fantastic.

That same last word was the only one appropriate to describe what I found happening to my unfortunate salon, when I got back early in the evening. Half a dozen men, under the superintendence of Louis and the fat old portiÈre who lived in a sort of cupboard on the ground floor, opening off the hall, were engaged in transforming it into what they obviously considered to be a scene of splendor. The old portiÈre was rubbing his plump hands in delight; at last Don Arsenio was launching out, spending his money handsomely, doing justice to Palazzo Valdez; the rich English nobleman (this was Godfrey Frost—probably after Arsenio’s own description) would undoubtedly be much impressed. Very possibly—but possibly not quite as old Amedeo expected! The table groaned—or at all events I groaned for it—under silver plate and silver candlesticks. The latter were also stuck galore in sconces on the walls. Table and walls were festooned with chains of white flowers; the like bedecked the one handsome thing that really belonged to the room—the antique chandelier in the middle of the ceiling; I had never put lights in it, but they were there now. And the banquet was to be on a scale commensurate with these trappings. “Prodigious! Considering the times, absolutely prodigious!” Amedeo assured me; he, for his part, could not conceive how Don Arsenio and Signor Louis had contrived to obtain the materials for such a feast. Signor Louis smiled mysteriously; tricks of the trade were insinuated.

It seemed to me that Arsenio had gone stark mad. What were we in for this evening?

Just as this thought once again seized on my mind, I saw something that gave me a little start. The butt of a revolver or pistol protruded from the side-pocket of Louis’s jacket, and the pocket bulged with the rest of the weapon.

“What in the world are you carrying that thing about for?” I exclaimed.

“Monsieur Valdez told me to clean it,” he answered quietly. “He gave it to me for that purpose—out of his bureau.”

“He didn’t tell you to carry it about with you while you did your work, did he?”

“No, he didn’t,” said Arsenio’s voice just behind me. The door stood open for the workers, and he had come in, in his usual quiet fashion. I turned round, to find him grinning at me. “Give it here, Louis,” he ordered, and slipped the thing into his own pocket. “The room looks fine now, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“What do you want with your revolver to-day?” I asked.

He looked at me with malicious glee. “Aha, Julius, I did frighten you last night then, after all! You pretended to be very scornful, but I did make an impression! Or else why do you question me about my revolver?”

“I didn’t believe a word of that nonsense you hinted at last night,” I protested. “But what do you want with your revolver?”

“My dear fellow, I don’t want to boast of my wealth, but there’s a considerable sum of money in my bureau—very considerable. No harm in being on the safe side, is there?”

That seemed reasonable: his manner too changed suddenly from derision to a plausible common sense. “Possessing a revolver—as most of us who served do—doesn’t mean that one intends to use it—on oneself or on anybody else, does it?”

I felt at a loss. When he wanted me to believe, I didn’t. When he wanted me not to believe, I did—or, at all events, half did. With Arsenio the plausible sensible explanation was always suspect; to be merely sensible was so contrary to his nature.

The busy men had apparently finished their ridiculous work. Louis came in and looked round with a satisfied air.

“Splendid, Louis!” said Arsenio. “Here, take this thing and put it on the bureau in my room.” As Louis obediently took the revolver and left us alone together, Arsenio added to me: “Don’t spoil your dinner—a good one, I hope, for these hungry days—by taking seriously anything I said last night. Perhaps in the end I did mean—No, I didn’t really. I was wrought up. My friend, wasn’t it natural?”

Well, it was natural, of course. On a man prone to what Lucinda had called “heroics” the hour in which she had given him that kiss—the kiss of farewell, as we had both interpreted it to be—would naturally induce them. I should have been disposed to accept his disclaimer of any desperate intentions, except for the fact that somehow he still seemed to be watching me, watching what effect his words had on me, and rather curiously anxious to efface the impression which the sudden appearance of the revolver had made upon me.

“Last night—yes!” He dropped into a chair. “Her action affected me strangely. It is long since she kissed me. And then to kiss me like that! Can you wonder that I gave way?” He smiled up at me. “One doesn’t easily part from Lucinda. Why, you told me that Waldo—our old Waldo—went nearly mad with rage when I took her from him.” His brows went up and he smiled. “It needed a European War to save me, you said! Well, if my excitements are not as tremendous as Waldo’s, I must admit that they are more frequent. But to-day I’ve come to my senses. Pray believe me, my dear Julius—and don’t let any absurd notion spoil your dinner.”

He was very anxious to convince me. My mind obstinately urged the question: Was he afraid that I might watch him, that I might interfere with his plan? I tried to shake off the notion—not quite successfully. I had a feeling that “heroics” might be like strong drink; a man could indulge in a lot of them, and yet be master of them—and of himself. But there might come a point where they would gain the mastery, and he would be a slave. In which case——

“You think this dinner of mine a mad affair?” I found Arsenio saying. “Well, think so, in your stolid English fashion!” He shrugged his shoulders scornfully. “You don’t see what it means? Oh, of course you don’t! I suppose you love Lucinda as well—I said, Julius, that you loved Lucinda as well—and the one merit of the English language is, that ‘love’ is a tolerably distinctive word when applied to a woman—in that damned black frock as if she were dressed as her beauty deserves? Well, I don’t; I know—we know, we Southerners—how the setting enhances the jewel. By my cunning incitements—you heard, but you had no ears—she will dress herself to-night; you’ll see!” He waved his hands to embrace the room. “And I have given her suitable surroundings!”

“I suppose it’s about time that we bedecked ourselves,” I suggested, rather wearily.

“Yes—but one moment!” He leant forward in his chair. “What’s to become of her, Julius?”

I answered him rather fiercely, brutally perhaps. “I think you’ve lost the right to concern yourself with that.”

“I have, I know. Hence the occasion of this evening. But you, Julius?”

“I shall always be at her service, if she needs help. As you know, she’s very independent.”

He nodded his head. Then he smiled his monkey smile. “And there’s Godfrey Frost, of course. Entirely in a position to assist her! A sound head! A good business man! Wants his price, but——!”

“Oh, damn you, go and dress for your infernal dinner!”

The devil was in him. He got up with a grin. “I doubt whether you’ll be very good company! Oh, let’s see, where’s that revolver? Oh, I gave it back to Louis, so I did! Our esteemed friend ought to be here in half an hour. Do you happen to know that he and Lucinda have been to the Lido together this afternoon? No, you don’t? Oh, yes! My friend Alessandro and I saw them embarking. Doesn’t that fact add a further interest to this evening? But look at the room—the table! Shall we not outshine the Frost millions to-night—you and I, Julius?”

“It isn’t my affair, thank God!”

“Oh, that’s as it may turn out! Au revoir, then, in half an hour!”

He succeeded in leaving me in about as bewildered a state of mind as I have ever been in in all my life; I, who have often had to decide whether a politician was an honest man or not!——