HOMAGE

LUCINDA’S mental idiosyncrasy resisted any attempt at idealization; for all that she had accused me of making the attempt. Though she would not persist in cruelty, and would remove herself from the temptation to it when once she had realized what it was, yet she could be, and had been, cruel. In like manner she could be hard and callous, very inaccessible to sentimentality, to that obvious appeal to the emotions which takes its strength from our common humanity, with its common incidents—its battle, murder, and sudden death—and so on. She did not accept these things at their face value, or in what one may call their universal aspect. In her inner mind—she was not very articulate, or at all theoretical, about it—but in her inner mind she seemed to re-value each of such incidents by an individual and personal standard which, in its coolness and intellectual detachment, certainly approached what most of us good human creatures—so ready to cry, as we are so ready to laugh—would call a degree of callousness. There was a considerable clear-sightedness in this disposition of hers, but also fully that amount of error which (as I suppose) our own personality always introduces into our judgments of people. We see them through our own spectacles, which sometimes harden and sometimes soften the outlines of the objects regarded—among which is included the wearer of the spectacles.

She had loved Arsenio once; she had cleaved unto him with a fidelity to which—in these days—her own word “primitive” must be allowed to be the most obviously applicable; remorse had smitten her over her cruelty to him. All the same, in a measure she erred about him, judging his love solely by the standard of his conduct, his romance in the light of his frivolity and shamelessness, his sensibility by his failure adequately to understand a subtle and specialized sensibility in herself. That, at least, was the attitude to which her years of association with him—now intimate, now distant and aloof—had brought her. It was not, of course, to be attributed in anything like its entirety to the girl whom he had kissed at Cragsfoot, or whom he had loved at Venice, or carried off from Waldo. Her final judgment of him was the result of what is called, in quite another connection, a progressive revelation.

Thus it happened that his tragic death was—to put it moderately—no more tragic to her than it was to me his friend rather by circumstances than choice or taste, by interest and amusement more than by affection. She took him at his word, so to say, and accepted the note of ironical comedy which he himself was responsible for importing into the occurrence. Keen-eyed for that aspect, and in a bitter way keenly appreciative of it, she was blind to any other, and indeed reluctant to try to see it—almost afraid that, even dead, he might befool her again, still irremediably suspicious that he was deceiving her by lies and posturings. As a result, she was really and truly—in the depths of her soul—unmoved by the catastrophe, and not unamused by the trappings with which Arsenio had be-draped it—or, rather, his previously rehearsed but never actually presented, version of it.

For the outside observer—comparatively outside, anyhow—and for the amateur of comedy and its material—human foibles, prejudices, ambitions—there was amusement to be had. As soon as Lucinda’s decision to renounce the inheritance—except the palazzo which, as she observed to me, had been honestly come by, and honestly preserved by being let out in lodgings—Arsenio’s last will and testament became an animated topic of the day—and a rather controversial one. The clericals and their journals—Signor Panizzi’s black reactionaries and pro-Austrians—paid lip-service to the ten thousand lire for masses, but could not refrain from some surprise at the choice of trustees which the lamented Don Arsenio—a good Catholic and of old noble stock—had made (the trustees were all pestilent, as I had suspected); while the other side—the patriots, the enlightened, the radicals, the pestilents, while most gratefully acknowledging his munificence, and belauding the eminent gentlemen to whom he had confided his trust, pointed out with satisfaction how the spirit of progress and enlightenment had proved too strong in the end even for a man of Don Arsenio’s clerical antecedents and proclivities. As for Signor Panizzi, both sides agreed that his finger had been in the pie; his position as first and dominating trustee was for the one a formidable menace to, and for the other a sufficient guarantee of, a wise, beneficial, and honest administration of the fund.

Under the spur of this public interest and discussion, Don Arsenio’s funeral assumed considerable dimensions, and was in fact quite an affair—with a sprinkling of “Blacks,” a larger sprinkling of “pestilents,” a big crowd of curious Venetian citizens, a religious service of much pomp conducted by Father Garcia, followed at the graveside (the priests and the “Blacks” having withdrawn with significant ceremony) by a fiery panegyric from Signor Panizzi. Altogether, when I next go to Venice, I shall not be surprised to see a statue of Arsenio there; I hope that the image will wear a smile on its face—a smile of his old variety.

Lucinda did not attend the ceremony; it would have been too much for her feelings—for some of her feelings, at all events. But to my surprise I saw Godfrey Frost there. I had been thrust, against my will, into the position of one of the chief mourners; he kept himself more in the background, and did not join me until the affair was finished. Then we extricated ourselves from the crowd as soon as we could, and made our way back together, ending up by sitting down to a cup of coffee on the Piazza. I had seen and heard nothing of him since his disordered exit from my apartment, just before the catastrophe. I had indeed been inclined to conclude that he had left Venice and, not thinking that his condolences would be well received, had left none behind him. But here he was—and in a gloomy and disgruntled state of mind, as it seemed. He had been thinking things over, no doubt—with the natural conclusion that he had not got much profit or pleasure out of the whole business, out of that acquaintance with the Valdez’s, which he had once pursued so ardently.

“I didn’t choose to seem to run away,” he told me, “in case there was any investigation, or a trial, or anything of that kind. Besides”—he added this rather reluctantly—“I had a curiosity to see the last of the fellow. But they tell me I shan’t be wanted, as things have turned out, and I’m off to-morrow—going home, Julius.”

There was evidently more that he wanted to say. I smoked in silence.

“I don’t want to see Lucinda—Madame Valdez,” he blurted out, after a pause. “But I wish you’d just say that I’m sorry if I annoyed her. I’ve made a fool of myself; I’m pretty good at business; but a fool outside it—so far, at least. I don’t understand what she was up to, but—well, I’m willing to suppose——”

I helped him out. “You’re willing to give a lady the benefit of the doubt? It’s usual, you know. I’ve very little doubt that she’ll make friends with you now, if you like.”

He turned to me with a smile, rather sour, yet shrewd. “Would you think that good enough yourself?”

At first I thought that he was questioning me as to the state of my own affections. But the words which he immediately added—in a more precise definition of his question—showed that he was occupied with his own more important case. “In my place—situated as I am, you know?”

As a result of shock, or of meditation thereupon, or of contemplation of the lamentable life and death of Arsenio Valdez, Mr. Godfrey Frost was becoming himself again! I do not think that the Wesleyan strain had anything to do with the matter at this stage. It was the Frost business instinct that had revived, the business view. Godfrey might have counted the world well lost for Lucinda’s love—at all events, well risked; business-risked, so to put it. But not for the mere friendship, the hope of which I had held out to him. “In my place—situated as I am.” The phrases carried a good deal to me, a tremendous lot to him. The world—such a world as his—was not to be lost, or bartered, for less than a full recompense. After all, whoever did talk of losing his world for friendship? Most people think themselves meritorious if they lose a hundred pounds on that score. And Godfrey had in all likelihood—the precise figures were unknown—already dropped a good deal more than that, and had taken in return little but hard words and buffeting. No wonder the Frost instinct looked suspiciously at any further venture! Not of actual money, of course; that stood only as a symbol; and to be even an adequate symbol would have required immense multiplication. If a symbol were to be used in any seriousness, the old one served best—the old personification of all that he, in an hour of urgent impulse, had been willing to lose or to risk for Lucinda.

“Well, my dear fellow,” I said urbanely, “there were always circumstances, to which we needn’t refer in detail, that made any intimate acquaintance between you and the Valdez’s—well, difficult. Affectation to deny it! I’ve even felt it myself; of course in a minor degree.”

“Why a minor degree?” he asked rather aggressively. “If I’m Nina’s cousin, you’re Waldo’s!”

“There’s all the difference,” I said decisively, though I was not at all prepared to put the difference into words. However, I made a weak and conventional effort: “Old Waldo’s so happy now that he can’t bear any malice——”

He cut across the lame inadequacy of this explanation (not that there wasn’t a bit of truth in it).

“I’m damned rich,” he observed moodily, “and everybody behaves to me as if I was damned important—except you and the Valdez’s, of course. But I’m not free. Let’s have a liqueur to wash down that coffee, shall we?”

I agreed, and we had one. It was not a moment to refuse him creature comforts.

“I’m part of the concern,” he resumed, after a large sip. “And jolly lucky to be, of course—I see that. But it limits what one may call one’s independence. It doesn’t matter a hang what you do, Julius (This to me, London representative of Coldston’s!)—Oh, privately, I mean, of course. But with me, private life—well, family life, I mean—and business are so infernally mixed up together. Nina can’t absolutely give me the sack, but it would be infernally inconvenient not to be on terms with her.” He paused, and added impressively: “It might in the end break up the business.”

One might as well think of breaking up the great Pyramid or Mount Popocatepetl! Too large an order even for an age of revolution!

“But you and Nina have nothing to quarrel about,” I expostulated—dishonestly.

He eyed me, again smiling sourly. “Oh, come, you know better than that!” his smile said, though his tongue didn’t. “And, besides, it would upset that idea that she and I talked over, and that rather particularly attracted me. I think I spoke to you about it? About Cragsfoot, you know.”

“Have you heard from Lady Dundrannan lately?” I inquired.

“No—not since I left the Villa.” He made this admission rather sulkily.

“Ah, then you’re not up-to-date! Cragsfoot’s all arranged. I’m to have it.” And I told him about the family arrangement.

Here I must confess to a bit of malicious triumph. The things envisaged itself to me as a fight between Rillington and Frost, and Rillington had won. Waldo’s old allegiance had resisted complete absorption. But my feeling was—at the moment—rather ungenerous; he was a good deal humbled already.

He took the disappointment very well. “Well, it was a fancy of mine, but of course you ought to have the first call, if Waldo sells out. So you’ll be living at Cragsfoot after Sir Paget’s death?” He appeared to ruminate over this prospect.

“Yes—and I hope to be there a good deal of my time, even before that.”

“With Nina and Waldo for your neighbors at Briarmount?”

“Of course. Why not? What do you mean? I shall see you there too sometimes, I hope.”

“I hope you’ll get on well with her.” He was smiling still, though in a moody, malicious way—as one is apt to smile when contemplating the difficulties or vexations of others. “You and your family,” he added the next moment. And with that he rose from his chair. “No good asking you to dine to-night, I suppose?” I shook my head. “No, you’ll have to be on hand, of course! Well, good-by, then. I’m off early to-morrow.” He held out his hand. “It’ll interest Nina to hear about all this.” He waved his hand round Venice, but no doubt he referred especially to the death and burial of the eminent Don Arsenio Valdez.

“Pray give her my best regards. Pave the way for me as a neighbor, Godfrey!”

“Taking everything together, it’ll need a bit of smoothing, perhaps.” He nodded to me, and strolled away across the Piazza.

His words had given me material for a half-amused, half-scared reflection—the mood which the neighborhood of Lady Dundrannan—and much more the possibility of any conflict with Lady Dundrannan—always aroused in me. Sir Paget’s letter had reflected—in a humor slightly spiced with restiveness—the present relations between Cragsfoot and Briarmount. What would they be with me in residence, and presently in possession? With me and my family there, as Godfrey Frost said? My family which did not exist at present!

But I did not sit there reflecting. I paid for our refreshments—Godfrey, in his preoccupation, had omitted even to offer to do so—and went back to the palazzo. Old Amedeo waylaid me in the hall and told me that Donna Lucinda had requested me to pay her a visit as soon as I returned from the funeral; but he prevented me from obeying her invitation for a few minutes. He was in a state of exultation that had to find expression.

“Ah, what a funeral! You saw me there? No! But I was, of course. A triumph! The name of Valdez will stand high in Venice henceforth! Oh, I don’t like Panizzi and that lot, any more than Father Garcia does. My sympathies are clerical. None the less, it was remarkable! Alas, what wouldn’t Don Arsenio have done if he hadn’t been cut off in his youth!”

That was a question which I felt—and feel—quite incapable of answering, save in the most general and non-committal terms. “Something astonishing!” I said with a nod, as I dodged past the broad barrier of Amedeo’s figure and succeeded in reaching the staircase.

Right up to the top of the tall old house I had to go this time—past Father Garcia and his noble “Black” friends, past the scene of the banquet and the scene of the catastrophe. I think that Lucinda must have been listening for my steps; she opened the door herself before I had time to knock on it.

She was back in the needlewoman’s costume now—her black frock, with her shawl about her shoulders. Perhaps this attire solved the problem of mourning in the easiest way; or perhaps it was a declaration of her intentions. I did not wait to ask myself that; the expression of her face caught my immediate attention. It was one of irrepressible amusement—of the eager amusement which seeks to share itself with another appreciative soul. She caught me by the hand, and drew me in, leading me through the narrow passage to the door of her sitting room—much of a replica of Arsenio’s on the floor below, though the ceiling was less lofty and the windows narrower.

Then I saw what had evoked the expression on her face. Between the windows, propped up against the discolored old hangings on the wall, stood the largest wreath of immortelles which I have ever seen on or off a grave, in or out of a shop window; and, occupying about half of the interior of the circle, there was a shield, or plaque, of purple velvet—Oh, very sumptuous!—bearing an inscription in large letters of gold:

“To the Illustrious Donna Lucinda Valdez and to the Immortal Memory of the Illustrious SeÑor Don Arsenio Valdez, the City and Citizens of Venice offer Gratitude and Homage.”

“Isn’t it—tremendous?” whispered Lucinda, her arm now in mine.

“It certainly is some size,” I admitted, eyeing the creation ruefully.

“No, no! The whole thing, I mean! Arsenio himself! Oh, how I should like to tell them the truth!”

“The funeral too was—tremendous,” I remarked. “But I suppose Amedeo’s told you?”

“Yes, he has! Also Father Garcia, who paid me a visit of condolence. And a number of Arsenio’s noble friends have sent condolences by stately, seedy menservants. Oh, and those trustees have left their cards, of course! Panizzi and the others!”

All this time we had been standing arm in arm, opposite the portentous monument of grief, gratitude, and homage. Now Lucinda withdrew her hand from my arm, and sank into a chair.

“I’m having fame thrust upon me! I’m being immortalized. The munificent widow of the munificent Arsenio Valdez! I’m becoming a public character! Oh, he is having his revenge on me, isn’t he? Julius, I can’t stand it! I must fly from Venice!”

My attention stuck on the monstrous wreath. “What are you going to do with that?”

“I wonder if there would ever be a dark enough night to tie a flat-iron to it, steal out with it round our necks, and drop it in the Grand Canal!” Lucinda speculated wistfully.